12 July 2024
Ag Tribes Report: John Deere focus of Anti-DEI campaign, Corn headed to zero? Corey Hillebo 7/11/24 - E368
The first Ag Tribes Report- a weekly live streamed podcast designed to talk about what is going on in the ag world, which is comprised of many different tribes focused on different parts of farming and ranching.
On the first episode of the Ag Tribes Report host Vance Crowe welcomes Corey Hillebo of the Farm 4 Profit Podcast to guest co-host.
On today’s show Vance and Corey discuss:
1. John Deere becomes focus of campaign to expose DEI implemented throughout corporation
Robby Starbuck Tweet: https://x.com/robbystarbuck/status/1810675517248483344
2. Grain prices hitting lowest levels since 2020 https://www.agriculture.com/grain-prices-hitting-lowest-levels-since-2020-8675761
3. Data Reveals Weak Farm Equipment Demand https://www.agweb.com/news/machinery/latest-aem-data-reveals-weak-farm-equipment-demand
4. Land Values Have The Resilience Of a Dandelion https://www.agweb.com/news/business/farmland/land-values-have-resilience-dandelion
Follow Friday:
Randy the Farmer/Field Rows YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FieldRows
Shows to watch:
Farm for Fun: Jen Hartman https://open.spotify.com/episode/4607e1HstsClNb2iwEIStm?si=Je0DYuttSpCGl9zqNmmeQQ
Vance Crowe Podcast: Nick Cizek Farm Test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_l1rkVcJ6Q
Vance Crowe (01:54.945)
All right, welcome to the Ag Tribes Report where we discuss the news affecting communities that make up agriculture. Each week we're going to invite a new guest co -host to talk about news from their perspective of their own ag tribe. Today I invited Corey Hillibow of Farm for Profit podcast. Welcome to the Ag Tribes Report.
Corey Hillebo (02:14.967)
cover.
Vance Crowe (02:18.499)
I chose you because I decided that if this thing were gonna just crash and burn, I would want a ride or die homie like you to blame it on. So welcome, Corey.
Corey Hillebo (02:28.31)
Thank you for having me Vance. I'm a great test dummy for these type of things and if every time we've tried to live stream something like this there's usually several fires to put out so so far so good I think. It looks like we're live so this is going to be fun.
Vance Crowe (02:42.778)
So why don't you give just like a quick description for people that don't know what farm for profit is. Imagine not just Ag, but any old audience coming along. How do you describe what your podcast is and who listens to it?
Corey Hillebo (02:54.274)
So Farm for Profit is a five -year -old podcast started out as actually an in -person event that two of my co -hosts, David Whitaker and Tanner Winterhoff started. And they quickly went to podcasts because people wanted more than once a year. And they were focusing on helping your farm be more profitable. I joined in 2020 during the COVID era when no one could be doing anything. And I said, your information is great, but it's boring.
And so I brought the farm for fun side of things and now they have been a sweet melody together, feeding off of each other. Mondays we put out a show that's still farm for profit, helps your farm be more profitable. And Thursdays we put out a show that usually we kick back, have a couple beers, maybe coffee if it's in the morning and we learn about a guest that we have, no script, nothing like
Vance Crowe (03:44.15)
Yeah, I've gotten to be on the show a couple of times and it's a blast to see what you and Tanner have grown this thing into is just absolutely wild. So we're gonna get into the news. The way this thing is gonna work is we're gonna have a few news stories about what's been going on that's relevant to ag communities. And then we're gonna take a little bit of time to ask you what we call the Peter Teal paradox for your ag tribe, which is what is one thing you believe that nobody agrees with you on. And then we're gonna wrap
with pointing out somebody from social media that you think is somebody that people should pay attention to and and then we'll talk a little bit more about your show. So before we get started I want to talk about today's sponsor which is Legacy Interviews. Legacy Interviews is a service that video records individuals and couples sharing their life stories so that future generations have an opportunity to know their family history. And at Legacy Interviews we believe that when you share
with people, that's where you share meaning. And we've discovered that not only is it a meaningful experience to sit down with your parents and have them describe their life stories, but then when they get the video and they get to watch it with their whole family, we get letters back describing just how meaningful this whole thing is to be able to start new conversations, to be able to get new questions asked. And oftentimes, mom and dad who told these stories all of a sudden realize there's a whole lot that they want to share that they can do now because they've had
chance. So we should head straight into the news now because it has been a wild week in agriculture. When I first brought this up with you we were like I don't know maybe we'll talk carbon credits I don't know what's going on.
Corey Hillebo (05:27.137)
Yeah, yeah, what a week to start a news podcast there because there's no shortage of it
Vance Crowe (05:34.494)
Yeah, and I think the biggest one is the one that a lot of people in ag have been talking about there have been an endless amount of tweets going on about this but if you're not following it john deere became the focus of a campaign to expose
DEI being implemented throughout their corporation. So that's the diversity, equity and inclusion that, that, that is often talked about in the news. But this guy, his name was Rob Starbuck came out with a tweet and I think it was like a Tik TOK video where he was describing in detail exactly the way that, money is being spent, what kind of classes some of the employees are being asked to take. And this really caught ag by storm.
How did you come across this story?
Corey Hillebo (06:21.538)
I feel like I'm like one of those parents that's like I'm not surprised. I'm disappointed. I'm very disappointed but John Deere is not the only company that's doing it. I love John Deere the brand. I'm just going to say that right now. So I have that bias. I use John Deere on our farm. They have great tractors and great technology. But I was very disappointed to see this even though why would I think that they weren't doing it? I want to throw a question back to you.
When did this DEI thing really become relevant? Was that a thing that you guys were doing when you were at
Vance Crowe (06:57.544)
So when I was at Monsanto, so 2015 to 2019, somewhere in there, it was just starting. So they were starting to do the implicit bias testing. they would ask your HR group would have you come in and be like, hey, we're going to have you take this test.
And we wanna know, are you implicitly biased towards people, young, old, people from different races? And there were starting to be some classes, there were definitely a lot of movement about how we need to have more gender equality, but it was nowhere near the fever pitch that it is now. But by the time Bear came in, I left and I sensed strongly that their DEI initiatives were a lot bigger than Monsanto's.
Corey Hillebo (07:41.654)
Right. And I'm not going to say that what they're trying to do is wrong. I just feel that in the workplace, it should be a neutral area that I don't care what. I mean, it should be like that in all your lives, but we shouldn't be promoting, you know, who you're sleeping with, what gender you are, anything like that. It's like, I think at the workplace, you should be working, right? You should be making quality products, doing what you were hired to do. I don't know why this is such a deal.
for a tractor company and a software company to be putting this out. And I mean, it's just kind of snowballed into this because they've had a lot of negative press starting a month or two ago from their chief tractor officer deal to laying off employees to moving some of their production to Mexico. So it all feels actually,
Vance Crowe (08:28.516)
Let's slow that down for people that aren't aren't aware. So for people that aren't in the ag tribes, what you might not realize is John Deere put on this amazing media campaign. Like you got to give him credit. They were like, we're going to hire a new chief tractor officer. You got in on it. You were doing all these funny videos. That's how I knew about it. I mean, it was generating all this attention. And then the person that they chose was somebody that didn't really fit the bill of a real chief tractor officer. was a guy that was, you know, maybe on
periphery of ag but he wasn't a guy that knew a lot about tractors he wasn't somebody that you could like celebrate in that way he became more like probably what my role was when I was at Monsanto he's kind of the director of of Gen Z engagement or something like
Corey Hillebo (09:13.526)
Yep. Yeah. I, so Rex Curtis is who they hired for that role, a recent college graduate without a job. his family does farm his grandparents farm. He does not, doesn't have any experience farming. We actually interviewed him on the farm for profit podcast. His show hasn't come out yet. Rex is a good dude. He's a good dude. I'm not faulting him, but Ag did feel like they kind of got their back turned on them by John Deere. I think John Deere
kind of bait and switched and didn't deliver. should have just said they wanted to connect with Gen Z and they were going to hire, like you said, director of Gen Z engagement instead of the chief tractor officer on a guy that probably doesn't know much about
Vance Crowe (09:55.427)
Yeah, because when Monsanto hired me as director of millennial engagement, I had even less interaction with Ag than that guy did. But the difference was there was no implication that it was coming from Ag or that I was going to do that. And then after that, then they announced that they're going to have 6 ,000 layoffs. And so people went from
Mocking them about the way they were doing this media campaign to then being upset that they're moving these jobs down to Mexico and then then this thing with Robbie starbuck comes up so I wanted to do a little bit of research on this because I had seen that tik -tok video and I Thought this is a guy that clearly understands how this whole game is working inside of corporate America So this is probably not the first time he's targeted somebody and it turns out he has a film called the war on children and it is about a lot of
the sexualizing of children and like drag queens at libraries and these kinds of things are really inflammatory and he's created a movie and I think that a lot of his targeting is around, I'm trying to draw attention to this. And so is very effective at getting people's attention. I don't know how you felt about the video itself.
Corey Hillebo (11:10.538)
It made me mad because I know I have young daughters and a lot of people have young kids and they're on social media and they're seeing this stuff, you know, this DEI score stuff like, oh, what's this mean? And they're looking into it. Like we're making our eight, nine, 10, 14, 15 year old kids take stuff in that like they shouldn't have to. They're supposed to just be a kid. They shouldn't be worried about what gay is or what, you know,
I just, it's mind blowing to me and it's a crazy world we live in. It pisses me off.
Vance Crowe (11:44.287)
Yeah, we don't need to stay here the whole time, although I do think this is by far the biggest story going on in ag right now. But I wanted to say one thing, like for this guy, Robbie, I appreciate, you know, he's following one of those laws of power, which is try and get as much attention as you can. But and he's pushing back on something that a lot of us that are independent think, hey, I want to see corporations not doing this stuff. I don't want to see it pushed in. I wouldn't want to work in a company where they were making me do these DEI things.
But the flip side of it is he's doing it by rounding up a mob. And mobs, in my opinion, are the most dangerous force on earth. And even though that mob might be cheering in a chant for your team that you like, you always have to remember this mob will eventually turn on me. So I have mixed feelings about this. I'm glad to see companies being forced to reconcile with the public.
or with their customers, the things that they're doing inside of the company, but I'm also very, very wary of people generating mobs. Any last words?
Corey Hillebo (12:42.944)
Yeah, yeah, I do got a couple things on this Someone very close to me said remember to separate the brand From the business of John Deere the brand of John Deere has built farming has built communities has built families Provided a lot of careers and opportunity for people There that is still alive John Deere firing people
moving to mexico if you think that none of your other brands that you like are doing that that's that's the game that we as a society have have given them to play right we have elected officials to put that stuff into play and if it there there but their job is to make money and make good products and if they have to go somewhere else to do that because we have a lot you know made it not competitive for them to do that here that's just playing by the rules that we are the people that we elected
So it's partly on us and yeah, just John Deere and this whole cancel culture stuff. This happened with Anheuser -Busch. You know, I got that a lot, like they bud lighted it and that's, don't think that's the case. And I don't think canceling people is going to send the right message because you're going to hurt more people. mean, collateral damage.
You're going to hurt the truck driver that's driving parts, the mechanics that's working on your tractors, the dealers that's selling you the tractors, the people that are making them in the warehouse that don't deserve it at all. So I do think it's probably on leadership and culture shift that we have to figure out. We let this small percentage of society creep into the workplace that it doesn't need to be
Vance Crowe (14:23.216)
Yeah, I think it's gonna be an interesting thing to see balance. personally like...
don't want to see any of that in corporate America, but they're going to do what they're going to do. And they're going to chase those dollars. And I think at the end of the day, they believe that by supporting these policies, they're making more money. And so, you your customers can show them otherwise. Let's keep going. The next big story, and this is not going to be a story of a new show about prices and commodity markets, but we got to talk about the fact that grain prices are hitting the lowest level since 2020. But the difference between now and
2020 is the input costs are totally wild. So what are you hearing about grain prices in the ag world?
Corey Hillebo (15:06.21)
That's always how it goes, right? Like when the grain prices go up, you have a little short time of cheaper inputs. That's a great year, right? And that year that they race up. But man, it seems like they lag when it comes back down. Everyone's reluctant to set their prices back down. I mean, we had such a major shift in input prices from, I mean, John Deere tractors to semi -trailers, fertilizer, all this kind of stuff. mean, not, we're not talking 10, 15, 20%. We're talking doubled in price.
And I think that was magnified by the whole COVID era of couldn't get anything. So everyone just raised their prices because of scarcity. And now they're just reluctant to bring it back down, but it has to come back down, right? When people quit buying things.
Vance Crowe (15:52.642)
Yeah, mean, I think a big problem that is going on that if you're outside of ag, you wouldn't have any understanding of this. But for the last two decades, particularly the last decade, people have been building all sorts of grain storage on their property. And this has been thought of as, hey, this is a great way to protect yourself. You can hold the grain till it's the right time for you to sell it. You don't have to go give it to an elevator. You don't have to pay for them to keep the grain.
Well, there are a lot of people that weren't happy with 2023 prices, so they didn't sell. And now they're growing an abundant 2024 crop. So there's a pretty like reasonable chance that not only are these prices not going to go up anytime soon, but they might continue to go down because where's all this grain gonna go? Right now we got bins that are full, people that haven't sold. It's looking like a pretty intense situation.
Corey Hillebo (16:44.514)
farmers were historically under sold in their 23 crop, whether they didn't like the prices. Yeah, we were coming down at the time. I also think it was maybe because we were flush with cash. You know, if you weren't putting that cash to use, you didn't want to have a big tax problem. So people were under sold and now we're getting caught with our pants down a little bit. And it's, it's not a fun thing. Markets are an attitude and it feels bad.
right now. mean, constantly down daily. even us, we felt like we sold pretty good on our farm, but we still have those bushels at the end that you want to make sure that you have them in your bin before you go let them go to town. And it doesn't feel good hauling sub $4 corn to town. I can tell you that right
Vance Crowe (17:33.035)
Yeah, I mean, I think there's gonna be a lot of people come the fall where they're gonna say, in order to make my cashflow work, I have to sell. I can no longer hold onto this and hope that that price is gonna go up. What I'm hearing from people is no chance the price goes up before January. How do you feel about that prediction?
Corey Hillebo (17:52.214)
Yeah, rain makes grain in Chicago, in the Chicago Board of Trade, where they set the price. So every time it's rain, and we've had plenty of it this spring and summer. So it doesn't matter whether dams are breaking in Northwest Iowa and Southwest Minnesota because of floods or that several hundred acres are getting hailed out here or there. Normally, the people that didn't got a great rain. I will say here in central Iowa, we've been saturated
I don't think we'll do as well yield wise as we've done in last two or three years. We do better in a drought
Vance Crowe (18:29.716)
Yeah, I mean, it is absolutely wild to see what's going on in Northern Iowa, Southern Minnesota. I mean, some of that, they just kept getting rain. I was talking to one of my good firm friends up there and he said, just this morning, said, I'm planting soybeans today. It's the latest I've ever planted in my entire life. I mean, I just can't even imagine, know, Joe.
Corey Hillebo (18:46.018)
It's the 11th July. That is late for Iowa.
Vance Crowe (18:49.621)
And it's because he's like, otherwise that land's just going to lay bare all the rest of the summer. So this leads into the last two headlines I want to talk about. We can talk about them simultaneously. It is coming out that combine sales have declined 31 % below what they were last year. And sales of two -wheel drive tractors dropped 16 and 1 % percent. Four -wheel drive tractors, I mean, they only fell a little bit. But we're watching equipment prices fall. But land prices
Corey Hillebo (18:55.458)
So he's trying to cover
Vance Crowe (19:18.512)
Land values, as I read it, I thought it was an interesting headline, land values have the resilience of a dandelion. They just keep coming up. So what is going on? What do you think about low equipment prices, low sales, and high land prices?
Corey Hillebo (19:33.73)
Well, first of all, as an agronomist or an agronomy background, want to say dandelions aren't that resilient. They do keep coming, but like I'm talking about the one that won't die. And I'm thinking like Palmer amaranth, you know, or something like that. But anyway, it is crazy. Equipment is probably the most liquid asset, right? So think that's just the one we're going to see first, right? It's easy. It's easy to let that go. You have maybe
Vance Crowe (19:44.237)
Yeah,
Corey Hillebo (20:25.474)
a lot of 1031 exchange, which 1031 exchange is basically a way to skirt capital gains taxes. We're talking a lot, a lot of money here. And if you sell a piece of farmland and you reinvest that into a like kind of exchange, you can kick the can down the road. You're not not paying taxes. It's going to be paid eventually, but.
Vance Crowe (20:45.906)
Yeah, and with that 1031, there's time pressure. You can't just be like, well, I'm going to one day rebuy land. mean, you have, I don't even know what it is.
Corey Hillebo (20:52.194)
45 days to declare several properties and that you potentially might buy and 180 days to get closed. So, you you got a half a year basically to shit or get off the pot.
Vance Crowe (21:05.519)
I think you're also competing because the entire world knows that your money is being inflated away. So there's more and more hedge funds. There's more and more private equity going into land prices because if there's one thing you know is that scarce things are valuable and land is scarce. so even if they're not planning on farming that land, they don't have any intention. It is a way to make it so your dollars aren't just having their value burned off in the furnace that is inflation.
Corey Hillebo (21:33.994)
Right. My co -host Dave sells land and would tell you, don't wait to buy land, buy land and wait. it'll always go up. Land is a store of wealth. Let's think of it as like a gold. If you don't know much about land, it's, it's a great hard asset that you can own. There's plenty of things you can do with it. can, you can mine aggregate, you can farm, you can put houses on it if you really want, or all of this solar and all that other crap. There's so many uses for it,
It's not a commodity. They're not making any more of that. Tractor.
Vance Crowe (22:05.806)
Yeah, and I would say in that respect, I would say if you can't buy land, because it's just too much for you, go buy Bitcoin, because it's the only other thing that is so scarce. All right, that's the end of the headlines. I'm glad I got my Bitcoin pump in there.
Corey Hillebo (22:19.458)
There we go. I like a little bit. We could talk about that too.
Vance Crowe (22:22.287)
So what I want to do now is switch to the Peter Thiel paradox, the ag edition. So if you're a listener of the Vance Crow podcast, you know, during certain interviews, if I've had a good conversation with somebody, because not everybody can handle this question, I asked the question, what is one thing that you believe that almost no one you know, agrees with you on? And since we're talking about the ag tribes, you know, there's got to be something that you believe that everybody else in your tribe disagrees with you on. And I think this is a really tough
interesting question. It's an interesting question because it proves you're not an NPC. You're not just like sitting there just doing whatever the the world tells you to think. But the challenge of this question is you have to first say something that I disagree with or that other everybody disagrees with. So that's the first hard part. And then once you do it, you have to give an answer that explains why your your perspective is right.
interested to hear your Peter Thiel paradox and then I'm going to give you a rating on it afterwards and we'll keep that going.
Corey Hillebo (23:20.616)
It's already gonna be bad because I didn't think about a title for it or like something to make you disagree with I was just gonna go into my rant about it but Let's see farming the farming community
shouldn't just romanticize farm families, the American dream farm families of what we think about during farm families. We'll just say that. And I'm going to go into why. feel like, so I'm going to just go, I'm happily married. I have two kids, love my wife. I do not live on the farm that I farm. I actually live in a small town that's actually between where our pigs are and the family farm. So I'm like perfectly in between.
And I do have a cornfield on two sides of me. So I don't feel like I'm living in a town. It's a town of 1 ,400 people. Every time you see one of these commodity groups bring a family or give an award for Young Farm Family of the Year, it's always the wife that's on the farm too, and the kids are out helping, and the dad's his butt off too, and everyone's involved. That's great. I'm not knocking those people at all. But I have a non -traditional.
family is what I would say. My wife didn't grow up on a farm. She's a nurse. She works in town. The life that we live in town is kind of great. I have this disconnect when I leave the farm that I'm not dragging it home with me. And every time you see one of those awards, not that I'm a big award person on that, it's always the farm family that we think about. So I don't know, we need to normalize non -traditional
Ag families. Like it's okay that the wife doesn't give a crap about the farm or maybe the wife is the one on the farm and the husband's got a job in town or stays home with the kids. Like we're just normal people too, man. Why do we all, why does the wife have to be in the kitchen at home bringing out field lunches and that
Vance Crowe (25:17.717)
So as I hear this, I think it's an interesting one. It's not where I thought you were going with the way you framed your title, but to kind of go with
Corey Hillebo (25:24.992)
I didn't know how to title it, so that's, yeah.
Vance Crowe (25:26.993)
One of the big parts of raising your family on a farm is this idea that your kids can be more active, they can be more engaged, they get to fix things, they get to be around animals that are living and dying. So in your farm world, do your kids get that or are you the equivalent of going off to a factory in the day where you wouldn't bring them?
Corey Hillebo (25:48.706)
No, I do take them out to the farm. They come out and ride with me. I take them out on the weekends and things like that, but they're just not there all the time. And I will say it, there is times during peak periods of, you know, working a hundred plus hours a week during harvest and planting. Like, yeah, I would, I would love to pull back into the farm and at least see my kids for 15 minutes. But at the end of the day, that's a great lifestyle. I love farming, but it is a job to feed my family. This whole.
thank a farmer you know all this all this bull crap like we're trying to do our job and see our family as well or not i mean feed the world like yeah we're going south but i'd be doing the same thing if i was you know working for ht your apple you know i just want to my
Vance Crowe (26:38.249)
All right, so we're gonna get to the judgment part, and this is on a scale of one to 10. The first part is like how much do people disagree with what you have to say, and then how good was your explanation? I'm gonna give you a two on your actual Peter Thiel paradox, because I think there are a lot of people that are the like, I'm tired of the think a farmer thing.
Corey Hillebo (26:43.095)
Bye.
Vance Crowe (26:58.363)
But your explanation and you're like, hey, let's widen out how we view ourselves and not push ourselves into that frame. I think that's good and I think it's valuable. And I think that the reality is in order for farms to survive, they need to income families. Oftentimes they need insurance, they need these things. And if the only people you're giving awards to are the Instagram mom that's sitting out there in her work boots while dad's in the combine and the kids
you know, showing pigs, you're missing out on what the reality is. So I'll give you a three and half on that. So you're going to get a five and a half, I think.
Corey Hillebo (27:34.37)
Yeah, that's well, it's better than I said. I said 4 .8 and if I could have done my Peter Thiel paradox that I was originally gonna do, I literally was originally going to do it with John Deere. I think it would have been a 10 and I just couldn't bring myself to do it after the whole, I can't remember the guy's name, but after the whole DEI thing going on. Like, no, I can't get on board with that. So I did it to myself, I guess.
Vance Crowe (27:44.508)
hahahaha
Vance Crowe (28:02.937)
All right, so I'm gonna give you an easier question, but one I think that's valuable. This segment is sponsored by Legacy Interviews, and this is where I'm gonna ask you a question that'll bring you back to another time in your life where you can think about an experience you had and maybe a lesson you learned from it. here's the question I want you to answer. This is one that I asked during Legacy Interviews. Tell me about how your parents spent time with friends when you were growing
Corey Hillebo (28:29.024)
I instantly, it's a smell. Is that weird that I get this like smell, like smoke, right? Like I remember my parents like going, like they would have a babysitter come probably, I don't know, when I could start remembering things six, seven, eight years old, they would go bowling. Like they'd go to bowling league and they did that or they'd go to slow pitch softball. And everyone smoked back then, especially when you went into a bar or a bowling alley. And I just remember that smell when they got home, cause I would wait up for them.
And I just, I think that was awesome. Like they, they were socially active with friends. And I feel like a lot of people aren't like that anymore. you know, everyone's kind of just keeping in their little tick tock realm of like, yeah, they're my friends, but I've never met them before. So that my parents were very socially active and I think that's pretty cool. And they still keep up with their friends
Vance Crowe (29:20.384)
So I love that this question because like what it does exactly what to do with you if I had been like tell me about your parents there's no time that you would have been like they used to smoke and go to bowling alleys right but when you start to ask people about like who were their friends then you then people start talking about mom and dad used to break out the ashtrays and get the bourbon out and and it and it allows people to tell these kinds of stories that I think really opens them up so thanks I'm glad we did that that's that's a fun thing and thank you to the
Corey Hillebo (29:31.329)
What?
Vance Crowe (29:50.277)
sponsor legacy interviews. All right. This is the part that I am trying to bring back. You know, like there are things in your life that you see in the world and you're like, I wish we were doing that again. And the thing I really miss is follow Friday because it used to be that on Fridays back in the day with Twitter now X people used to be like, Hey, these are some people that I think you should follow. And some people did it as like a, you know,
I just, you know, throwing out praise to everybody that they can was kind of bullshit, but I took it super serious. I was like, I'm going to give one name. I want people to follow this person because I think it's important. So if you were going to throw out an underrated person on social media that people should be following, who would you choose?
Corey Hillebo (30:33.888)
I'm going to throw out Randy the Farmer. His name is Fieldrose on most social medias. You would say maybe he's not unappreciated because he does have quite a bit of followers, but I think he should be up there with the likes of Zach Johnson, Millennial Farmer, the Welkers, and Larsons, and Laura Farms. think that he's a talent that Ag has not seen before because he is bringing in this perfectly awkward, funny side of
And I love it. really light. It's entertaining. Because on weeks like this, when everything is negative, we need someone like that. That's going to fake fall or fall down accidentally. It's hilarious.
Vance Crowe (31:16.715)
I think this guy is great. I saw his Instagram. He's got a TikTok. He's got YouTube. And I mean, I just looked at it this afternoon and was like, I'm in. In order to have the level of humor that he has, you gotta understand Ag. You have to be doing it all the time. mean, he reminded me, I don't even know who to compare him to, but he's actually an excellent comedian and I love having him around. So Randy the Farmer, who does Field Rose on YouTube.
Corey Hillebo (31:44.044)
Yep. Yep.
Vance Crowe (31:45.606)
All right, so that's gonna do it for the Ag Tribes Report this week. I wanna thank you, Corey, for coming on. This was an adventure. I'm glad to have done it with you. And if people were gonna check out your show, why don't you point them to a specific episode that you think, hey, this really shows what we do on Farm for Profit.
Corey Hillebo (32:04.716)
Yeah, actually got to bring that back up because I got to I actually wrote this down. I think I was going to point you to the show, our Farm for Fun show with Jen Hartman from John Deere, head of PR and social. I'm sure her job is extra busy right now. And I don't have the exact date, but Farm for Profit, the number four farm right here, farm for profit on
Vance Crowe (32:22.127)
Hahaha!
Corey Hillebo (32:32.684)
Spotify, Apple, YouTube, find us anywhere on all the socials and go back to like early June, late May. And it's one of our Farm for Fun shows. It was our second time talking to Jen. She is just a sweetheart, a tremendous person and means well. And I've been thinking about her a lot lately and I hope she can get through the bad times of John Deere right now.
Vance Crowe (32:57.596)
Yeah, I have to say like her job must be one of the hardest in AG right now. And as somebody that was at Monsanto when all kinds of crazy stuff went on, I brought Jordan Peterson and that blew up. Like you're just a person doing a job and the AG tribe, the AG world is, you know, put so much focus on you. It's a ton of pressure. So good on you, Jen. Good luck out there with all the, the chief tractor officer and the, all the craziness with the DEI stuff. Good luck out there. want to point out as an
from that I did recently with a physicist named Nick Cizik. Nick created a company called Farm Test.
And it's a fascinating thing. is actually helping farmers to be able to do scientifically valid tests on their fields with their own equipment that they already have. So if you've got an input salesman that keeps coming to tell you that you've got to use this fungicide or you've got to use more nitrogen, he'll actually allow you to run randomized tests on your own fields for a year or two. And then you can say, hey, this works. Or no, it didn't work. So that was Nick Siesek. It was just this last week on the Vance Crow podcast.
All right, man, I wanna thank you so much for coming on here. And one quick note, this is a little bit of a housekeeping note. If you are listening to us on Twitter or YouTube, that's great. There is an app called the Fountain app. And the Fountain app will actually allow you
do what's called value for value so you can get bitcoin small amounts of it and you can just stream it to the people that you're the podcast you're listening to so you could say i want to give ten satoshis per minute which is you know less than a penny far less than a penny
Vance Crowe (34:38.907)
And these satoshis go. So if you listen to 10 minutes, then you give them 100 satoshis. I use the Fountain app. think agriculture is definitely an area that should be using Bitcoin. And this is a good way to get an introduction because what Fountain does is they give you Bitcoin for listening. So you can get that Bitcoin and then share it with people. So I just wanted to throw that out there. Any closing words, Corey, before we sign off?
Corey Hillebo (35:02.144)
I want to know if you've made a one Bitcoin yet. Yeah. No, thanks for having me Vance. Hopefully we didn't burn it down too good. I'm sure this was a great test run and everything from here on out is going to be great.
Vance Crowe (35:05.301)
from streaming? No, no.
Vance Crowe (35:21.219)
Yeah, and I'll be very open to telling me who is an ag tribe leader, somebody that's running a podcast or doing a great bit of entertainment out there. Let me know so can bring them on and have them be a co -host. Thank you so much, Corey.
All right, welcome to the Ag Tribes Report where we discuss the news affecting communities that make up agriculture. Each week we're going to invite a new guest co -host to talk about news from their perspective of their own ag tribe. Today I invited Corey Hillibow of Farm for Profit podcast. Welcome to the Ag Tribes Report.
Corey Hillebo (02:14.967)
cover.
Vance Crowe (02:18.499)
I chose you because I decided that if this thing were gonna just crash and burn, I would want a ride or die homie like you to blame it on. So welcome, Corey.
Corey Hillebo (02:28.31)
Thank you for having me Vance. I'm a great test dummy for these type of things and if every time we've tried to live stream something like this there's usually several fires to put out so so far so good I think. It looks like we're live so this is going to be fun.
Vance Crowe (02:42.778)
So why don't you give just like a quick description for people that don't know what farm for profit is. Imagine not just Ag, but any old audience coming along. How do you describe what your podcast is and who listens to it?
Corey Hillebo (02:54.274)
So Farm for Profit is a five -year -old podcast started out as actually an in -person event that two of my co -hosts, David Whitaker and Tanner Winterhoff started. And they quickly went to podcasts because people wanted more than once a year. And they were focusing on helping your farm be more profitable. I joined in 2020 during the COVID era when no one could be doing anything. And I said, your information is great, but it's boring.
And so I brought the farm for fun side of things and now they have been a sweet melody together, feeding off of each other. Mondays we put out a show that's still farm for profit, helps your farm be more profitable. And Thursdays we put out a show that usually we kick back, have a couple beers, maybe coffee if it's in the morning and we learn about a guest that we have, no script, nothing like
Vance Crowe (03:44.15)
Yeah, I've gotten to be on the show a couple of times and it's a blast to see what you and Tanner have grown this thing into is just absolutely wild. So we're gonna get into the news. The way this thing is gonna work is we're gonna have a few news stories about what's been going on that's relevant to ag communities. And then we're gonna take a little bit of time to ask you what we call the Peter Teal paradox for your ag tribe, which is what is one thing you believe that nobody agrees with you on. And then we're gonna wrap
with pointing out somebody from social media that you think is somebody that people should pay attention to and and then we'll talk a little bit more about your show. So before we get started I want to talk about today's sponsor which is Legacy Interviews. Legacy Interviews is a service that video records individuals and couples sharing their life stories so that future generations have an opportunity to know their family history. And at Legacy Interviews we believe that when you share
with people, that's where you share meaning. And we've discovered that not only is it a meaningful experience to sit down with your parents and have them describe their life stories, but then when they get the video and they get to watch it with their whole family, we get letters back describing just how meaningful this whole thing is to be able to start new conversations, to be able to get new questions asked. And oftentimes, mom and dad who told these stories all of a sudden realize there's a whole lot that they want to share that they can do now because they've had
chance. So we should head straight into the news now because it has been a wild week in agriculture. When I first brought this up with you we were like I don't know maybe we'll talk carbon credits I don't know what's going on.
Corey Hillebo (05:27.137)
Yeah, yeah, what a week to start a news podcast there because there's no shortage of it
Vance Crowe (05:34.494)
Yeah, and I think the biggest one is the one that a lot of people in ag have been talking about there have been an endless amount of tweets going on about this but if you're not following it john deere became the focus of a campaign to expose
DEI being implemented throughout their corporation. So that's the diversity, equity and inclusion that, that, that is often talked about in the news. But this guy, his name was Rob Starbuck came out with a tweet and I think it was like a Tik TOK video where he was describing in detail exactly the way that, money is being spent, what kind of classes some of the employees are being asked to take. And this really caught ag by storm.
How did you come across this story?
Corey Hillebo (06:21.538)
I feel like I'm like one of those parents that's like I'm not surprised. I'm disappointed. I'm very disappointed but John Deere is not the only company that's doing it. I love John Deere the brand. I'm just going to say that right now. So I have that bias. I use John Deere on our farm. They have great tractors and great technology. But I was very disappointed to see this even though why would I think that they weren't doing it? I want to throw a question back to you.
When did this DEI thing really become relevant? Was that a thing that you guys were doing when you were at
Vance Crowe (06:57.544)
So when I was at Monsanto, so 2015 to 2019, somewhere in there, it was just starting. So they were starting to do the implicit bias testing. they would ask your HR group would have you come in and be like, hey, we're going to have you take this test.
And we wanna know, are you implicitly biased towards people, young, old, people from different races? And there were starting to be some classes, there were definitely a lot of movement about how we need to have more gender equality, but it was nowhere near the fever pitch that it is now. But by the time Bear came in, I left and I sensed strongly that their DEI initiatives were a lot bigger than Monsanto's.
Corey Hillebo (07:41.654)
Right. And I'm not going to say that what they're trying to do is wrong. I just feel that in the workplace, it should be a neutral area that I don't care what. I mean, it should be like that in all your lives, but we shouldn't be promoting, you know, who you're sleeping with, what gender you are, anything like that. It's like, I think at the workplace, you should be working, right? You should be making quality products, doing what you were hired to do. I don't know why this is such a deal.
for a tractor company and a software company to be putting this out. And I mean, it's just kind of snowballed into this because they've had a lot of negative press starting a month or two ago from their chief tractor officer deal to laying off employees to moving some of their production to Mexico. So it all feels actually,
Vance Crowe (08:28.516)
Let's slow that down for people that aren't aren't aware. So for people that aren't in the ag tribes, what you might not realize is John Deere put on this amazing media campaign. Like you got to give him credit. They were like, we're going to hire a new chief tractor officer. You got in on it. You were doing all these funny videos. That's how I knew about it. I mean, it was generating all this attention. And then the person that they chose was somebody that didn't really fit the bill of a real chief tractor officer. was a guy that was, you know, maybe on
periphery of ag but he wasn't a guy that knew a lot about tractors he wasn't somebody that you could like celebrate in that way he became more like probably what my role was when I was at Monsanto he's kind of the director of of Gen Z engagement or something like
Corey Hillebo (09:13.526)
Yep. Yeah. I, so Rex Curtis is who they hired for that role, a recent college graduate without a job. his family does farm his grandparents farm. He does not, doesn't have any experience farming. We actually interviewed him on the farm for profit podcast. His show hasn't come out yet. Rex is a good dude. He's a good dude. I'm not faulting him, but Ag did feel like they kind of got their back turned on them by John Deere. I think John Deere
kind of bait and switched and didn't deliver. should have just said they wanted to connect with Gen Z and they were going to hire, like you said, director of Gen Z engagement instead of the chief tractor officer on a guy that probably doesn't know much about
Vance Crowe (09:55.427)
Yeah, because when Monsanto hired me as director of millennial engagement, I had even less interaction with Ag than that guy did. But the difference was there was no implication that it was coming from Ag or that I was going to do that. And then after that, then they announced that they're going to have 6 ,000 layoffs. And so people went from
Mocking them about the way they were doing this media campaign to then being upset that they're moving these jobs down to Mexico and then then this thing with Robbie starbuck comes up so I wanted to do a little bit of research on this because I had seen that tik -tok video and I Thought this is a guy that clearly understands how this whole game is working inside of corporate America So this is probably not the first time he's targeted somebody and it turns out he has a film called the war on children and it is about a lot of
the sexualizing of children and like drag queens at libraries and these kinds of things are really inflammatory and he's created a movie and I think that a lot of his targeting is around, I'm trying to draw attention to this. And so is very effective at getting people's attention. I don't know how you felt about the video itself.
Corey Hillebo (11:10.538)
It made me mad because I know I have young daughters and a lot of people have young kids and they're on social media and they're seeing this stuff, you know, this DEI score stuff like, oh, what's this mean? And they're looking into it. Like we're making our eight, nine, 10, 14, 15 year old kids take stuff in that like they shouldn't have to. They're supposed to just be a kid. They shouldn't be worried about what gay is or what, you know,
I just, it's mind blowing to me and it's a crazy world we live in. It pisses me off.
Vance Crowe (11:44.287)
Yeah, we don't need to stay here the whole time, although I do think this is by far the biggest story going on in ag right now. But I wanted to say one thing, like for this guy, Robbie, I appreciate, you know, he's following one of those laws of power, which is try and get as much attention as you can. But and he's pushing back on something that a lot of us that are independent think, hey, I want to see corporations not doing this stuff. I don't want to see it pushed in. I wouldn't want to work in a company where they were making me do these DEI things.
But the flip side of it is he's doing it by rounding up a mob. And mobs, in my opinion, are the most dangerous force on earth. And even though that mob might be cheering in a chant for your team that you like, you always have to remember this mob will eventually turn on me. So I have mixed feelings about this. I'm glad to see companies being forced to reconcile with the public.
or with their customers, the things that they're doing inside of the company, but I'm also very, very wary of people generating mobs. Any last words?
Corey Hillebo (12:42.944)
Yeah, yeah, I do got a couple things on this Someone very close to me said remember to separate the brand From the business of John Deere the brand of John Deere has built farming has built communities has built families Provided a lot of careers and opportunity for people There that is still alive John Deere firing people
moving to mexico if you think that none of your other brands that you like are doing that that's that's the game that we as a society have have given them to play right we have elected officials to put that stuff into play and if it there there but their job is to make money and make good products and if they have to go somewhere else to do that because we have a lot you know made it not competitive for them to do that here that's just playing by the rules that we are the people that we elected
So it's partly on us and yeah, just John Deere and this whole cancel culture stuff. This happened with Anheuser -Busch. You know, I got that a lot, like they bud lighted it and that's, don't think that's the case. And I don't think canceling people is going to send the right message because you're going to hurt more people. mean, collateral damage.
You're going to hurt the truck driver that's driving parts, the mechanics that's working on your tractors, the dealers that's selling you the tractors, the people that are making them in the warehouse that don't deserve it at all. So I do think it's probably on leadership and culture shift that we have to figure out. We let this small percentage of society creep into the workplace that it doesn't need to be
Vance Crowe (14:23.216)
Yeah, I think it's gonna be an interesting thing to see balance. personally like...
don't want to see any of that in corporate America, but they're going to do what they're going to do. And they're going to chase those dollars. And I think at the end of the day, they believe that by supporting these policies, they're making more money. And so, you your customers can show them otherwise. Let's keep going. The next big story, and this is not going to be a story of a new show about prices and commodity markets, but we got to talk about the fact that grain prices are hitting the lowest level since 2020. But the difference between now and
2020 is the input costs are totally wild. So what are you hearing about grain prices in the ag world?
Corey Hillebo (15:06.21)
That's always how it goes, right? Like when the grain prices go up, you have a little short time of cheaper inputs. That's a great year, right? And that year that they race up. But man, it seems like they lag when it comes back down. Everyone's reluctant to set their prices back down. I mean, we had such a major shift in input prices from, I mean, John Deere tractors to semi -trailers, fertilizer, all this kind of stuff. mean, not, we're not talking 10, 15, 20%. We're talking doubled in price.
And I think that was magnified by the whole COVID era of couldn't get anything. So everyone just raised their prices because of scarcity. And now they're just reluctant to bring it back down, but it has to come back down, right? When people quit buying things.
Vance Crowe (15:52.642)
Yeah, mean, I think a big problem that is going on that if you're outside of ag, you wouldn't have any understanding of this. But for the last two decades, particularly the last decade, people have been building all sorts of grain storage on their property. And this has been thought of as, hey, this is a great way to protect yourself. You can hold the grain till it's the right time for you to sell it. You don't have to go give it to an elevator. You don't have to pay for them to keep the grain.
Well, there are a lot of people that weren't happy with 2023 prices, so they didn't sell. And now they're growing an abundant 2024 crop. So there's a pretty like reasonable chance that not only are these prices not going to go up anytime soon, but they might continue to go down because where's all this grain gonna go? Right now we got bins that are full, people that haven't sold. It's looking like a pretty intense situation.
Corey Hillebo (16:44.514)
farmers were historically under sold in their 23 crop, whether they didn't like the prices. Yeah, we were coming down at the time. I also think it was maybe because we were flush with cash. You know, if you weren't putting that cash to use, you didn't want to have a big tax problem. So people were under sold and now we're getting caught with our pants down a little bit. And it's, it's not a fun thing. Markets are an attitude and it feels bad.
right now. mean, constantly down daily. even us, we felt like we sold pretty good on our farm, but we still have those bushels at the end that you want to make sure that you have them in your bin before you go let them go to town. And it doesn't feel good hauling sub $4 corn to town. I can tell you that right
Vance Crowe (17:33.035)
Yeah, I mean, I think there's gonna be a lot of people come the fall where they're gonna say, in order to make my cashflow work, I have to sell. I can no longer hold onto this and hope that that price is gonna go up. What I'm hearing from people is no chance the price goes up before January. How do you feel about that prediction?
Corey Hillebo (17:52.214)
Yeah, rain makes grain in Chicago, in the Chicago Board of Trade, where they set the price. So every time it's rain, and we've had plenty of it this spring and summer. So it doesn't matter whether dams are breaking in Northwest Iowa and Southwest Minnesota because of floods or that several hundred acres are getting hailed out here or there. Normally, the people that didn't got a great rain. I will say here in central Iowa, we've been saturated
I don't think we'll do as well yield wise as we've done in last two or three years. We do better in a drought
Vance Crowe (18:29.716)
Yeah, I mean, it is absolutely wild to see what's going on in Northern Iowa, Southern Minnesota. I mean, some of that, they just kept getting rain. I was talking to one of my good firm friends up there and he said, just this morning, said, I'm planting soybeans today. It's the latest I've ever planted in my entire life. I mean, I just can't even imagine, know, Joe.
Corey Hillebo (18:46.018)
It's the 11th July. That is late for Iowa.
Vance Crowe (18:49.621)
And it's because he's like, otherwise that land's just going to lay bare all the rest of the summer. So this leads into the last two headlines I want to talk about. We can talk about them simultaneously. It is coming out that combine sales have declined 31 % below what they were last year. And sales of two -wheel drive tractors dropped 16 and 1 % percent. Four -wheel drive tractors, I mean, they only fell a little bit. But we're watching equipment prices fall. But land prices
Corey Hillebo (18:55.458)
So he's trying to cover
Vance Crowe (19:18.512)
Land values, as I read it, I thought it was an interesting headline, land values have the resilience of a dandelion. They just keep coming up. So what is going on? What do you think about low equipment prices, low sales, and high land prices?
Corey Hillebo (19:33.73)
Well, first of all, as an agronomist or an agronomy background, want to say dandelions aren't that resilient. They do keep coming, but like I'm talking about the one that won't die. And I'm thinking like Palmer amaranth, you know, or something like that. But anyway, it is crazy. Equipment is probably the most liquid asset, right? So think that's just the one we're going to see first, right? It's easy. It's easy to let that go. You have maybe
Vance Crowe (19:44.237)
Yeah,
Corey Hillebo (20:25.474)
a lot of 1031 exchange, which 1031 exchange is basically a way to skirt capital gains taxes. We're talking a lot, a lot of money here. And if you sell a piece of farmland and you reinvest that into a like kind of exchange, you can kick the can down the road. You're not not paying taxes. It's going to be paid eventually, but.
Vance Crowe (20:45.906)
Yeah, and with that 1031, there's time pressure. You can't just be like, well, I'm going to one day rebuy land. mean, you have, I don't even know what it is.
Corey Hillebo (20:52.194)
45 days to declare several properties and that you potentially might buy and 180 days to get closed. So, you you got a half a year basically to shit or get off the pot.
Vance Crowe (21:05.519)
I think you're also competing because the entire world knows that your money is being inflated away. So there's more and more hedge funds. There's more and more private equity going into land prices because if there's one thing you know is that scarce things are valuable and land is scarce. so even if they're not planning on farming that land, they don't have any intention. It is a way to make it so your dollars aren't just having their value burned off in the furnace that is inflation.
Corey Hillebo (21:33.994)
Right. My co -host Dave sells land and would tell you, don't wait to buy land, buy land and wait. it'll always go up. Land is a store of wealth. Let's think of it as like a gold. If you don't know much about land, it's, it's a great hard asset that you can own. There's plenty of things you can do with it. can, you can mine aggregate, you can farm, you can put houses on it if you really want, or all of this solar and all that other crap. There's so many uses for it,
It's not a commodity. They're not making any more of that. Tractor.
Vance Crowe (22:05.806)
Yeah, and I would say in that respect, I would say if you can't buy land, because it's just too much for you, go buy Bitcoin, because it's the only other thing that is so scarce. All right, that's the end of the headlines. I'm glad I got my Bitcoin pump in there.
Corey Hillebo (22:19.458)
There we go. I like a little bit. We could talk about that too.
Vance Crowe (22:22.287)
So what I want to do now is switch to the Peter Thiel paradox, the ag edition. So if you're a listener of the Vance Crow podcast, you know, during certain interviews, if I've had a good conversation with somebody, because not everybody can handle this question, I asked the question, what is one thing that you believe that almost no one you know, agrees with you on? And since we're talking about the ag tribes, you know, there's got to be something that you believe that everybody else in your tribe disagrees with you on. And I think this is a really tough
interesting question. It's an interesting question because it proves you're not an NPC. You're not just like sitting there just doing whatever the the world tells you to think. But the challenge of this question is you have to first say something that I disagree with or that other everybody disagrees with. So that's the first hard part. And then once you do it, you have to give an answer that explains why your your perspective is right.
interested to hear your Peter Thiel paradox and then I'm going to give you a rating on it afterwards and we'll keep that going.
Corey Hillebo (23:20.616)
It's already gonna be bad because I didn't think about a title for it or like something to make you disagree with I was just gonna go into my rant about it but Let's see farming the farming community
shouldn't just romanticize farm families, the American dream farm families of what we think about during farm families. We'll just say that. And I'm going to go into why. feel like, so I'm going to just go, I'm happily married. I have two kids, love my wife. I do not live on the farm that I farm. I actually live in a small town that's actually between where our pigs are and the family farm. So I'm like perfectly in between.
And I do have a cornfield on two sides of me. So I don't feel like I'm living in a town. It's a town of 1 ,400 people. Every time you see one of these commodity groups bring a family or give an award for Young Farm Family of the Year, it's always the wife that's on the farm too, and the kids are out helping, and the dad's his butt off too, and everyone's involved. That's great. I'm not knocking those people at all. But I have a non -traditional.
family is what I would say. My wife didn't grow up on a farm. She's a nurse. She works in town. The life that we live in town is kind of great. I have this disconnect when I leave the farm that I'm not dragging it home with me. And every time you see one of those awards, not that I'm a big award person on that, it's always the farm family that we think about. So I don't know, we need to normalize non -traditional
Ag families. Like it's okay that the wife doesn't give a crap about the farm or maybe the wife is the one on the farm and the husband's got a job in town or stays home with the kids. Like we're just normal people too, man. Why do we all, why does the wife have to be in the kitchen at home bringing out field lunches and that
Vance Crowe (25:17.717)
So as I hear this, I think it's an interesting one. It's not where I thought you were going with the way you framed your title, but to kind of go with
Corey Hillebo (25:24.992)
I didn't know how to title it, so that's, yeah.
Vance Crowe (25:26.993)
One of the big parts of raising your family on a farm is this idea that your kids can be more active, they can be more engaged, they get to fix things, they get to be around animals that are living and dying. So in your farm world, do your kids get that or are you the equivalent of going off to a factory in the day where you wouldn't bring them?
Corey Hillebo (25:48.706)
No, I do take them out to the farm. They come out and ride with me. I take them out on the weekends and things like that, but they're just not there all the time. And I will say it, there is times during peak periods of, you know, working a hundred plus hours a week during harvest and planting. Like, yeah, I would, I would love to pull back into the farm and at least see my kids for 15 minutes. But at the end of the day, that's a great lifestyle. I love farming, but it is a job to feed my family. This whole.
thank a farmer you know all this all this bull crap like we're trying to do our job and see our family as well or not i mean feed the world like yeah we're going south but i'd be doing the same thing if i was you know working for ht your apple you know i just want to my
Vance Crowe (26:38.249)
All right, so we're gonna get to the judgment part, and this is on a scale of one to 10. The first part is like how much do people disagree with what you have to say, and then how good was your explanation? I'm gonna give you a two on your actual Peter Thiel paradox, because I think there are a lot of people that are the like, I'm tired of the think a farmer thing.
Corey Hillebo (26:43.095)
Bye.
Vance Crowe (26:58.363)
But your explanation and you're like, hey, let's widen out how we view ourselves and not push ourselves into that frame. I think that's good and I think it's valuable. And I think that the reality is in order for farms to survive, they need to income families. Oftentimes they need insurance, they need these things. And if the only people you're giving awards to are the Instagram mom that's sitting out there in her work boots while dad's in the combine and the kids
you know, showing pigs, you're missing out on what the reality is. So I'll give you a three and half on that. So you're going to get a five and a half, I think.
Corey Hillebo (27:34.37)
Yeah, that's well, it's better than I said. I said 4 .8 and if I could have done my Peter Thiel paradox that I was originally gonna do, I literally was originally going to do it with John Deere. I think it would have been a 10 and I just couldn't bring myself to do it after the whole, I can't remember the guy's name, but after the whole DEI thing going on. Like, no, I can't get on board with that. So I did it to myself, I guess.
Vance Crowe (27:44.508)
hahahaha
Vance Crowe (28:02.937)
All right, so I'm gonna give you an easier question, but one I think that's valuable. This segment is sponsored by Legacy Interviews, and this is where I'm gonna ask you a question that'll bring you back to another time in your life where you can think about an experience you had and maybe a lesson you learned from it. here's the question I want you to answer. This is one that I asked during Legacy Interviews. Tell me about how your parents spent time with friends when you were growing
Corey Hillebo (28:29.024)
I instantly, it's a smell. Is that weird that I get this like smell, like smoke, right? Like I remember my parents like going, like they would have a babysitter come probably, I don't know, when I could start remembering things six, seven, eight years old, they would go bowling. Like they'd go to bowling league and they did that or they'd go to slow pitch softball. And everyone smoked back then, especially when you went into a bar or a bowling alley. And I just remember that smell when they got home, cause I would wait up for them.
And I just, I think that was awesome. Like they, they were socially active with friends. And I feel like a lot of people aren't like that anymore. you know, everyone's kind of just keeping in their little tick tock realm of like, yeah, they're my friends, but I've never met them before. So that my parents were very socially active and I think that's pretty cool. And they still keep up with their friends
Vance Crowe (29:20.384)
So I love that this question because like what it does exactly what to do with you if I had been like tell me about your parents there's no time that you would have been like they used to smoke and go to bowling alleys right but when you start to ask people about like who were their friends then you then people start talking about mom and dad used to break out the ashtrays and get the bourbon out and and it and it allows people to tell these kinds of stories that I think really opens them up so thanks I'm glad we did that that's that's a fun thing and thank you to the
Corey Hillebo (29:31.329)
What?
Vance Crowe (29:50.277)
sponsor legacy interviews. All right. This is the part that I am trying to bring back. You know, like there are things in your life that you see in the world and you're like, I wish we were doing that again. And the thing I really miss is follow Friday because it used to be that on Fridays back in the day with Twitter now X people used to be like, Hey, these are some people that I think you should follow. And some people did it as like a, you know,
I just, you know, throwing out praise to everybody that they can was kind of bullshit, but I took it super serious. I was like, I'm going to give one name. I want people to follow this person because I think it's important. So if you were going to throw out an underrated person on social media that people should be following, who would you choose?
Corey Hillebo (30:33.888)
I'm going to throw out Randy the Farmer. His name is Fieldrose on most social medias. You would say maybe he's not unappreciated because he does have quite a bit of followers, but I think he should be up there with the likes of Zach Johnson, Millennial Farmer, the Welkers, and Larsons, and Laura Farms. think that he's a talent that Ag has not seen before because he is bringing in this perfectly awkward, funny side of
And I love it. really light. It's entertaining. Because on weeks like this, when everything is negative, we need someone like that. That's going to fake fall or fall down accidentally. It's hilarious.
Vance Crowe (31:16.715)
I think this guy is great. I saw his Instagram. He's got a TikTok. He's got YouTube. And I mean, I just looked at it this afternoon and was like, I'm in. In order to have the level of humor that he has, you gotta understand Ag. You have to be doing it all the time. mean, he reminded me, I don't even know who to compare him to, but he's actually an excellent comedian and I love having him around. So Randy the Farmer, who does Field Rose on YouTube.
Corey Hillebo (31:44.044)
Yep. Yep.
Vance Crowe (31:45.606)
All right, so that's gonna do it for the Ag Tribes Report this week. I wanna thank you, Corey, for coming on. This was an adventure. I'm glad to have done it with you. And if people were gonna check out your show, why don't you point them to a specific episode that you think, hey, this really shows what we do on Farm for Profit.
Corey Hillebo (32:04.716)
Yeah, actually got to bring that back up because I got to I actually wrote this down. I think I was going to point you to the show, our Farm for Fun show with Jen Hartman from John Deere, head of PR and social. I'm sure her job is extra busy right now. And I don't have the exact date, but Farm for Profit, the number four farm right here, farm for profit on
Vance Crowe (32:22.127)
Hahaha!
Corey Hillebo (32:32.684)
Spotify, Apple, YouTube, find us anywhere on all the socials and go back to like early June, late May. And it's one of our Farm for Fun shows. It was our second time talking to Jen. She is just a sweetheart, a tremendous person and means well. And I've been thinking about her a lot lately and I hope she can get through the bad times of John Deere right now.
Vance Crowe (32:57.596)
Yeah, I have to say like her job must be one of the hardest in AG right now. And as somebody that was at Monsanto when all kinds of crazy stuff went on, I brought Jordan Peterson and that blew up. Like you're just a person doing a job and the AG tribe, the AG world is, you know, put so much focus on you. It's a ton of pressure. So good on you, Jen. Good luck out there with all the, the chief tractor officer and the, all the craziness with the DEI stuff. Good luck out there. want to point out as an
from that I did recently with a physicist named Nick Cizik. Nick created a company called Farm Test.
And it's a fascinating thing. is actually helping farmers to be able to do scientifically valid tests on their fields with their own equipment that they already have. So if you've got an input salesman that keeps coming to tell you that you've got to use this fungicide or you've got to use more nitrogen, he'll actually allow you to run randomized tests on your own fields for a year or two. And then you can say, hey, this works. Or no, it didn't work. So that was Nick Siesek. It was just this last week on the Vance Crow podcast.
All right, man, I wanna thank you so much for coming on here. And one quick note, this is a little bit of a housekeeping note. If you are listening to us on Twitter or YouTube, that's great. There is an app called the Fountain app. And the Fountain app will actually allow you
do what's called value for value so you can get bitcoin small amounts of it and you can just stream it to the people that you're the podcast you're listening to so you could say i want to give ten satoshis per minute which is you know less than a penny far less than a penny
Vance Crowe (34:38.907)
And these satoshis go. So if you listen to 10 minutes, then you give them 100 satoshis. I use the Fountain app. think agriculture is definitely an area that should be using Bitcoin. And this is a good way to get an introduction because what Fountain does is they give you Bitcoin for listening. So you can get that Bitcoin and then share it with people. So I just wanted to throw that out there. Any closing words, Corey, before we sign off?
Corey Hillebo (35:02.144)
I want to know if you've made a one Bitcoin yet. Yeah. No, thanks for having me Vance. Hopefully we didn't burn it down too good. I'm sure this was a great test run and everything from here on out is going to be great.
Vance Crowe (35:05.301)
from streaming? No, no.
Vance Crowe (35:21.219)
Yeah, and I'll be very open to telling me who is an ag tribe leader, somebody that's running a podcast or doing a great bit of entertainment out there. Let me know so can bring them on and have them be a co -host. Thank you so much, Corey.
