The Vance Crowe Podcast

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In this episode of the Ag Tribes Report, host Vance Crowe is joined by John Kempf, an Amish farmer from Northeast Ohio and founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture. They delve into the intriguing launch of an AI agronomist by Kempf's company, exploring the potential of AI in agriculture and its implications for the industry. The conversation also touches on the Trump administration's new farm security initiative, examining its impact on national security and the agricultural sector. The discussion raises questions about foreign land ownership and the broader implications for food security.

The episode further explores the USDA's recent decision to open and then close the border to Mexican cattle due to screw worm concerns, highlighting the complexities of agricultural policies. Vance and John also discuss the adoption of AI products by farmers, the Bitcoin land price report, and the controversial topic of geoengineering. The episode concludes with a thought-provoking conversation on the role of agriculture in public health and the impact of sugar and high fructose corn syrup on nutrition.

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[00:00:00] Unknown:

Support for the AgTribes 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 Interview's guest Phil Bender on how the experience allowed him time for personal reflection and an opportunity to honor his parents.  

[00:00:37] Vance Crowe:

What was the experience like of being interviewed?  

[00:00:41] Unknown:

At this depth?   Very,   rewarding, very refreshing. You know, you're just your sense of interest and the depth of the questions   was really impressive. And you stayed present through the whole thing because I pay attention to that kind of thing. You were really were walking with   me through it.   This is a keepsake for me, but also a great way to honor my parents. There are a couple things about my dad you drew out today that I don't know if,   if I've said, said that to him. I think it's a moment   in time   to reflect,   engage,   deepen   your   perspective   on,   what you've accomplished.  

I am reflecting on my version of what I saw,   what I felt,   how I responded to it. That is a legacy.   That's valuable.  

[00:01:37] Unknown:

Welcome to the AgTribe's report, a breakdown of the top stories affecting the culture of agriculture   with your host, Vance Crow.   The report begins in three,   two,   one. Let's begin.  

[00:01:53] Vance Crowe:

Welcome to the Ag Tribes Report. I'm your host, Vance Crowe. Each week, I bring on a cohost that represents one of the many ag tribes that make up US and Canadian agriculture.   This week, the great John Kempf returns.   John is a farmer from Northeast Ohio and founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture, a regenerative agronomy consulting company established in 02/2006.   Driven by a mission to make regenerative agriculture mainstream by 2040,   Kemp developed an innovative soil and plant management system after witnessing the failure of conventional pesticides on his own family's farm.   Now his company advancing eco ag has launched his own AI agronomist,   and, that is an interesting thing for,   John to talk about. So, John, welcome to the show, and tell us why'd you launch an AI agronomist?  



[00:02:44] John Kempf:

Hi, Vance. Thanks for having me on.   But I'm curious about why you use the adjective great to describe me. After all, Jesus said nothing is good. No one is good.  

[00:02:56] Vance Crowe:

That's fair. I, I think I described you that way because I enjoy our conversations, and I would say, I don't know how adversarial you are, but I find that our ideas, can clash, and it's definitely a good good conversation. I I walk away feeling refreshed after talking to you. Yeah. Likewise. There's this aspect of, iron sharpening iron.  

[00:03:15] John Kempf:

If you don't disagree occasionally, then one person is doing most of the thinking or all the thinking.   Yeah.   Launching an AI has been interesting. It's kind of an interesting paradox, you know, having an Amish guy working on building and launching an AI. How does that work exactly?  

[00:03:31] Vance Crowe:

I mean, that that's the the obvious first question right out of the gate. When did you start using AI enough that you thought, hey. I can I can pile information into here, and and how'd you do it?  

[00:03:42] John Kempf:

Well, I read some of Ray Kurzweil's work on the, the coming of the singularity. And so   I I've been paying attention to this field   starting probably fifteen or more years ago, and it was probably ten years ago that,   I first outlined a vision that I had   of what   an AI agronomist   could become and could be, and that was before   before the advent of large language models, before that technology had been developed. And so I had what I envisioned as an AI agronomist is something quite different from the way AI the meaning of AI today,   the way that people generally understand it. But, I first sketched out what an AI should look like in in the winter of twenty fourteen. Actually, it was late twenty thirteen, spring of twenty fourteen.  

So   this has been something I've been spending quite a lot of, quite some time thinking about what it might look like. And, you know,   it really comes out of this,   when we take an integrated approach to plant nutrition and to agronomy management,   there are there are two pieces that make AI   and and large datasets   particularly   appropriate here.   And that is this this aspect of non linearity   and just the multi dimensional data, the multiple factors. So when you start looking at,   soil microbiome data, plant microbiome data, plant nutritional profiles, soil nutritional profiles, meteorological data,   There are   these   hundreds or thousands of potential data points that the human mind just can't grasp, but it's difficult to see all the patterns and see all the interactions.  

And so there's an obvious fit here for,   deep learning,   statistical analysis,   and for AI to make sense of large datasets.   And, of course, the quality of the data going into that is a large part of what makes that dataset valuable,   what makes an AI potentially valuable.  

[00:05:43] Vance Crowe:

Well, I, I'm I'm   staggered by how far AI has come, and, I'm excited that you've done something. We will take a much longer podcast sometime and sit down and really talk about what you did, how you did it, what engine you're using behind it. But,   I just thought, man, let's let's jump right into it and find out a little bit about, your AI agronomist.   But we gotta head into the show. There is a lot going on. And on this week's episode,   we're gonna dive into the Trump administration's new farm security is national security initiative. We're gonna talk about whether that's a genuine policy or just pure propaganda.   We're also gonna examine why the USDA opened and then immediately shut the border to Mexican cattle due to the new world's screw worm.  

And, we're gonna explore   other AI products that farmers are actually buying. You know, there's a lot of people out there saying, oh, they have, the farmers have access to this, but what are they willing to pay for?   And then if we have a little bit of time left over, we're gonna talk about the, cloud seeding and if it impacted the, Texas flood. We're also gonna explore the Bitcoin land price report with Bitcoin's   brand new all time highs. And we're gonna hear John's,   newest Peter teal paradox and learn about another worthy adversary. And we're gonna try and do that in just thirty minutes. So let's get started.   The Trump administration   launches farm security is national security. Agricultural secretary, Brooke Rollins announced the Trump administration's   new plan on July 8 aimed at prohibiting future purchases of US farmland   by Chinese nationals and entities from other countries of concern.  

The initiative seeks to claw back existing foreign held land where possible and safeguard the nation's food supply from potential adversarial influences.   The announcement made alongside defense secretary Pete Hegseth and homeland security secretary Kristi Noem   involves removing over 550   foreign linked entities from the USDA system, enhancing monitoring near near military bases,   and promoting state level bans on land sales to adversaries like China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela.   Currently, Chinese investors hold approximately 277,000   acres,   which is just point 02%   of all privately held US agricultural land. And, you can make a comparison here. Canada's foreign land ownership is 12,800,000   acres.  

The Netherlands owns 4.9,   and, total foreign ownership overall   is 45,000,000   acres or about three and a half percent of privately owned land. The the plan also targets Chinese owned ag companies, Smithfield Foods   and Syngenta, which are both owned by, Chinese companies.   And, I think it is worth listening to just a few moments of what Brooke Rollins had to say about this project. Chinese owning a farmland  

[00:08:37] Unknown:

in our country is a massive national   security issue. And for the media, you can see the yellow is where all of the farms have been purchased over the last number of years. And the red is around all of the military bases   where that farmland has been purchased.   So this is a massive national security issue.  

[00:08:59] Vance Crowe:

Okay, John. What do you think? Is this, propaganda? I mean, it's not like the Chinese just bought this yesterday.   What's going on with their,   the US government, jumping in on this?  

[00:09:13] John Kempf:

Well, there's a number of thoughts that come to mind, but if we just look at what happened in Iran during the recent Iran or Israeli conflict,   One of the aspects of modern warfare has changed with the development of drone technology and AI. Now all you need is a lone drone launching base. And when you consider,   land close to military bases as a possible   drone launching base, then obviously,   the implications of that from a national security perspective become very important. But it's worth asking a whole bunch of questions around this.   Why just land?  

Because you don't just require land. I mean, you can do this from a warehouse. You can do it from a larger building. There's lots of,   lots of considerations and things things to think about there. But there's also,   when you consider,   Brooke used the phrase national security perspective, but   what does national security actually mean? Is this from a worker perspective? Is it from a food security perspective? Because I would argue   that,   from a food security perspective, we actually have much bigger concerns about the the quantity and quality of food that we're importing from outside the country.  

[00:10:24] Vance Crowe:

Yeah. I mean, I think that that's perfect example would be when we started to have an egg shortage after they killed all the chickens, then they started importing from South Korea and Turkey and from wherever else.   And,   but to go back to your earlier point about the drones   and being near military bases, I am completely comfortable with the US government saying foreign entities can't own farmland and they certainly can't own them close to military bases.   It just seems very precarious to me to make, farm security and national security synonymous, which is the new mantra that came out just a couple of days ago. It makes me really uncomfortable because it feels like they're going to assert,   power in,   over farmland in a way that I don't think is good for people like you and me.  



[00:11:12] John Kempf:

Well, why are again, why are we limiting it to farmland?   Who cares about Chinese ownership of Smithfield, for example? I mean, you wanna talk about a food security perspective.   What about the the significant processors and significant supply chain constraints? If you wanna if if we're concerned that   Chinese are going to exercise sovereignty over that in in the event of a food shortage and export to the detriment of Americans, then, let's have a conversation about much more than just land.  

[00:11:37] Vance Crowe:

Yeah. And it's not yeah. I mean, Syngenta   is owned by ChemChina, And then you even look on a wider level. Of course, you know, right now, company or countries like Germany are our our allies,   but we have very little, ownership of our packing houses or our seed companies,   which if it really is national security,   why did these deals get allowed to go through? Why why were they allowed to sell,   a company like Monsanto to Bayer?  

[00:12:04] John Kempf:

Yeah. The list goes on and on of again, as you point out, if you really if this really is considered a national security threat, which I'm in I'm in favor or I'm in alignment with that. I can get I can see that,   food security   and the integrity of the supply chain   should be considered a a national security,   from a national security perspective. I mean, what is the what's the old,   rule of thumb? We're we're three square meals away from a revolution or something like that. So food security   from a national security perspective is a framing that I can that I can align with, that I can see why it would be framed that way. But then what does that mean exactly? Why is it being interpreted that way? Why now? And what is it that we expect to really do differently? And the bottom line question is, who does it benefit?  

[00:12:56] Vance Crowe:

Yeah. I mean, the biggest question for me that comes out of all of this is is not, like, should we or shouldn't we? It's why now? Like, the the push on this became so big. The the propaganda that I was having in a photo's sent to me where the map of The United States was just covered in Chinese red flags with giant stars, and it was obvious that they were overhyping this. But why now? Is it to distract from something else? Is it to secure power? It feels very uncomfortable to me.  

[00:13:24] John Kempf:

Yeah.   And why   why this tactic? Why this approach? You know, it's worth asking,   what has this administration   done   that,   unique actions? There's been supposedly some things in   the big, beautiful bill that just passed. But,   what has this administration   done truly   to benefit farmers in a significant way? And if there's much, I haven't seen it.  

[00:13:50] Vance Crowe:

No. But the supernational FFA officer that is Brook Rollins absolutely is out there talking and and, pumping up the system all the time. But for the most part, it seems like, it's,   tilted towards the large,   industry groups and talking about what is going to happen as opposed to anything that's actually happened.  

[00:14:10] John Kempf:

You know, it was quite interesting.   I I had a conversation   several weeks ago with with a DC insider who is,   who's a part of the Maha Commission in putting the reports together.   And he said something to me quite interesting when there were there were some conversations   around,   the inclusion of glyphosate and GMOs in the first Maha commission report,   or they were being considered. I don't think they were actually included.   And he said   the agriculture lobby   is 50 times more intense than the pharmaceutical lobby. It was the most intense lobbying pressure that he had ever experienced.   What does that say?  



[00:14:50] Vance Crowe:

Yeah. I mean, it's it's often been said, that Bayer, who I used to work for, I worked for Monsanto, and then Bayer bought them, that one of the primary things that they bought when they were buying Monsanto was not for the seeds and the genetics. It was for the,   the apparatus   to be able to get things through the FDA, the USDA, and the and the whole lobbying system. And it's because the bureaucratic system is,   definitely tilted towards those who are,   willing to pay to play, I think. Alright. We could stay on this all night, but we need to move on because new world screw worm both open and shut the border. Let's talk a little bit about what's going on. In a whiplash move, the USDA first reopened cattle imports from Mexico   after screw worm concerns. And then just two short days later, slammed them shut again. Secretary Rollins announced decisive action to shut down the southern border ports for   decisive action to shut down the southern border ports for livestock,   for trade due to this, screw worm. So I'm posting up right now a map of just where that is right now.  

Reuters reports that The U S again, halts the cattle imports from Mexico.   The pest can devastate,   livestock by laying eggs and,   creating open wounds. The screw room, as we've talked about on this show was eradicated in The U S in 1966.   And, for a little while there, they were saying, Hey, it's coming. We're going to shut down the border. Then they opened it back up. There's a lot of talk from people like Jared McDaniel online that what they were really trying to do was open it up so they could move through a bunch of cattle to get processed from, Mexico and Central America. And then they shut it down really quickly,   because it's now less than 300 my it's 300 miles away from the border.  



[00:16:35] John Kempf:

So, John Do we have any evidence of cattle being moved through the border in that two day window in large numbers? Because it's   if that's true, that's kind of a big deal.  

[00:16:46] Vance Crowe:

Yeah. Well, so the the,   anecdotal evidence on x was that a lot of people were saying how long the trucking lines were to get into the packing houses in Texas.   But I mean, outside of that, I I only have anecdotal   conversations that were going on in x.  

[00:17:02] John Kempf:

Yeah. The the whole the whole timing of that. I mean, I think closing the border is something that,   farmers and ranchers generally would all agree on was the right move and the right call, but why open it for two days? Why why the again, just lots of questions of who does it benefit?   We know who it doesn't benefit. It sure doesn't benefit the US rancher.  

[00:17:22] Vance Crowe:

Yeah. And then this is a dangerous pest. And, I think that anybody that's got cattle out on range land definitely doesn't want this in the system, and you definitely don't want these put into,   you know, if cattle are contaminated with this, putting them into our feedlot system would be just, horrific. So   the opening and closing just seemed stupid, stupid, stupid on behalf of the administration because now if it comes to The US, it's gonna be blamed at least in part on that open border.  

[00:17:49] John Kempf:

You   know, this is a slight shift of topic, but an aligned topic. But, there's a there's a quote that comes to mind. I forget who it's attributed to. But is there any other agency   like the USDA who, over the course of its history, has counted its success as the decimation   of its   constituents.   Like, who are the USDA constituents, really? Are they farmers and renters and growers, or are they the agribusiness industry groups?   And if it is the former, if it's farmers and ranchers,   then that population has been decimated   over the course of the last century or more, particularly in the last 20 or thirty. Well, there's been this ongoing trend.  

And so this is not just a point about the most recent administration,   but,   it it appears that   they count as success the decimation of their conforming and growing constituents to a degree.  

[00:18:47] Vance Crowe:

Well, I strongly believe that the decimation of this is a result of wild inflation. But to your point on the USDA, I don't know how much time you spent in Washington, DC.   But when you see the building that the USDA   is housed in, it is so staggering because it is blocks long. You start driving by this building and you just keep driving and you're like, oh, the building just keeps going. And you have to ask yourself, what are all these people doing in Washington, DC that you need all these USDA   people?  

[00:19:18] John Kempf:

Who knows? But it doesn't seem like they're helping farmers maintain. And when you consider the environmental context, the environment of of DC,   it's the obvious question is,   is that the best location   to have someone,   or to have a group of people that is responsible for administering the Department of Ag? You know,   who is it? Robert Cialdini.   He'd written several   great books on framing, including the book Presuasion, but he describes how   just the context, the environment that someone finds themselves in and the context of a conversation   rapidly changes how they show up and who they show up as. And so if you really want to have people that are there to support agriculture, to support farmers, why are you having it in DC?  



[00:20:05] Vance Crowe:

Absolutely. I mean, my my it's kind of a joke I always say is that we should move the USDA to Kearney, Nebraska   because it's at least an hour away from an airport, and so everybody that's there would only be there to work for the USDA. Whereas when it's in Washington, DC, the USDA is just one place that a part of the bureaucratic system swings through,   and it's controlled by people that wanna be in Washington, DC. They wanna be a part of that   hyper connected,   network   of people in politics.   And so if you if you really wanted to make the USDA more about farmers, you would put them in a far more decentralized place that didn't make it easy for people to come and go. Well, you would put them in a in an area that is, surrounded by a rural ag community where the people who work would work at the USDA would have some type of  

[00:20:55] John Kempf:

of life connection to agricultural community.  

[00:20:59] Vance Crowe:

Alright. Moving on. What AI products are farmers actually buying right now? You know, in in anticipation of you coming on, I did a little research using Grok's new model four,   which was incredibly powerful. If you haven't used that particular system just in the last day or so, I've been staggered by it. But the AI in agriculture market is projected to reach 4,700,000,000   by 2028.   And farmers are according to AI, directly purchasing AI integrated tools right now.   Top purchases include autonomous machinery like John Deere's see and spray system that uses computer vision to identify weeds and cut herbicide use by up to 90%.   Farmers are buying these through dealers for around $200,000.  

FJD's   a t two auto steer system provides AI powered GPS guidance for 5 to $10,000.   And as for software platforms like Fairmont fair Farm a knot, which includes AI advisory services   for crop strategies and satellite monitoring,   small farmers start at 10 to $50 a month per acre. And Microsoft   farm vibes,   is an AI offering soil mapping and yield forecasting. Of course, drones are in there with AI.   And, as I was going through this list and kind of seeing what AI was produced,   I don't buy it. I don't think there's that many farmers paying directly for AI, but what's been your experience so far, John? I haven't seen it either.  

[00:22:27] John Kempf:

And how much I mean, where the places where I've seen   I I don't think we can even accurately call it AI. There's there's,   deep learning and machine learning for photo identification of insects on laser weeders or not insects,   on, of of weeds for laser weeders,   for robotic weeders.   There's, there's,   image   image detection of disease and insects and pathogens and so forth. So there's some of that out there, but how much of it are growers actually paying for? I haven't seen very much.  

[00:23:01] Vance Crowe:

Yeah. I mean, one of the most staggering podcasts I've ever put out was when I had,   Grok interview me for the podcast,   and it was then that I got literally hundreds of phone calls, text messages, emails from people saying, I had no idea it was like this, and this is just a few weeks ago. They didn't know it's there. And so, you know, maybe there there are some people at the top of the   of the, large industrial scale that are that are buying John Deere systems, but I I don't I don't think I think almost nobody is using AI. I heard Jason Mach at his,   field day had been exposed to AI and started being like, oh, I can start asking it questions about my field and getting responses back. What's adoption been like for you?  



[00:23:45] John Kempf:

Well, it's, we're just approaching public launch this next week. So we've been in a, a private beta,   up to this point, just providing beta access   to a limited number of people. And,   of that particular group,   Everyone. I mean, obviously, it's been by invitation   or by people who expressed a desire and interest. So we've had virtually everyone that we offered access to has been in the system and playing around with it,   which is under a thousand people at this point and just robustly testing everything out. But,   what is fascinating   is the feedback and the responses. I I've had, I had one agronomist who's been a successful agronomist for twenty five years   say, John, this thing has solved more problems for me in the last thirty days than I've been able to solve in the last ten years on my own. Like, I and he he said verbatim. He said, I would pay $10,000   a month for this tool.  



[00:24:41] Vance Crowe:

I mean, I believe it. When when a system works with AI, it does solve problems. Like, in my own office, all these tiny problems that you just don't know how to solve. Right? How do you get that printer to network? How do you get this, you know,   supplier to get something back to you? Write an email for me to about this problem we've been trained to figure out. It it radically does that. So on a farm, what is it figuring out? What's your AI system working on? Well, our AI system is, is focused and trained on  

[00:25:11] John Kempf:

all the things that are agronomy   and plant and livestock agriculture related. So that it has a deep dataset behind it that's focused and framed on that.   And of course, it it can also do other things above and beyond that. But that's the specialty that's really focused on. And so, you know, I'm fascinated by it. It can entertain questions at all levels, just like the scenario that you described where you had these very entry level questions of how do I fix x?   But then also,   just this morning,   I was having a conversation,   with   one of the dairy clients that we work with here at AEA that we do consulting work for, and they're measuring the nutritional profile of their milk, and they're they're   intending to make changes to the label claims,   of their nutritional profile because they have a nutritional profile that is markedly different from the USDA averages. It's significantly better.  

But there was this one characteristic, it was CLA, conjugated linolenic acid, that didn't match the trend of everything else. Like everything else was elevated 40 to 60% above above baseline averages   except this one marker.   And all right. Why? So I just asked our AI the question.   Forget exactly how I framed the prompt, but   what nutritional management factors   could be correlated   with lower levels   of CLA   in plants and in milk?   And lo and behold, it gave me an answer of   of four different nutrients, the first one of them being selenium because of its association with glutathione peroxidase,   and it described in detail the mechanisms   by which these nutrients could influence lower levels of CLA. And guess what? Those four nutrients are nutrients that this farm's soil is systemically low in.  

So it just it nailed it right on the spot with no context, no information.   And so   there is,   I I think my my assessment or my perspective is similar to yours, Vance, in that   agriculture in general, farmers and grower and and agronomists   generally haven't yet really deeply leaned into even the   the the mainstream AI models like ChatGPT and Gemini and and Grok and so forth,   and they don't really know what's out there, what capabilities it has because when you start really digging into it, the capabilities are pretty impressive. And like you, I checked out GROC four today, and wow.  

[00:27:38] Vance Crowe:

Stunning. It's absolutely stunning.   Well, John, we will do a full on podcast about this. I'll let you get your system out there up and running. And, and we'll do a full on podcast about this because I got a lot of questions for you, but it is time for us. We're gonna skip over the cloud seeding. The, long and short answer is I had grok four do some, hardcore research on this. And they say, even if the cloud seeding wanted to, all the timing was off. It was not,   the cause of those floods.   No matter what way you feel about cloud seeding, whether it works or doesn't work, it does not appear that that caused the flooding. Alright. Moving on to the things. Oh, Oh, go ahead, John. Two things. I would be remiss. I haven't even mentioned the name of our AI. It's called FieldLarg.  

[00:28:19] John Kempf:

So people can look that up. It's launching public this coming week.   And, on cloud seeding,   cloud seeding is not the only form of geoengineering.   I asked Grok   for for a list of patents. How many patents are there   that,   use some type of electromagnetic   radiation   for geoengineering?   And the answer blew me away. I knew it was quite a few because I've personally read dozens.   GRAC four found 1,300.   And what does that tell you then, John? Well, what it tells me is let's not get just focused let's not get focused on just cloud seeding alone. That's kind of what everyone's aware of at the moment, but geoengineering is much bigger than cloud seeding.  

[00:29:04] Vance Crowe:

And do you think there should be laws? Should we be trying to control and or stop this?  

[00:29:10] John Kempf:

Well,   the evident the fact that everyone,   the the military and the USDA bureaucracy apparatus is all hush-hush conspiracy theory. This doesn't exist. This doesn't this isn't real. When there are 1,300 patents for it tells me that it's probably something that we need to be transparent about, need to to work on, revealing more of what is happening and what's going on rather than just sweeping it under the carpet because   the moment the the moment they label something a conspiracy theory, it's worth going after.  

[00:29:38] Vance Crowe:

To your point, the EPA came out just today saying, hey. We're gonna release everything we know about chemtrails   and, anything going on with this sort of geoengineering.   And my immediate thought is, well, the reason you're doing that is because you wanna distract from the fact that you just came out and said there are no Epstein files. He didn't have any clients.   And what we'd really rather you focus on is not this Epstein case, but the chemtrails.   But to hear you,   maybe there is something here to look at.  

[00:30:07] John Kempf:

Well, it's it's not yet. Ignore cloud seeding. Look at geoengineering from an electromagnetic perspective, and then you'll find where the heat is.  

[00:30:15] Vance Crowe:

Alright. I'm glad you stopped me and then we didn't just jump right through. So,   if you have stories that you think we should cover on the Ag Tribes report, send them to me on x at Vance Crowe or   [email protected].   All right. Moving on   to a very exciting topic this week, the Bitcoin land price report.   Last November, which is when I had you on, the show last,   Bitcoin was $76,500   And today we are sitting at $116,000   a staggering   52 percent increase as today is a new all time high.   So, John, have, have land prices changed that much since we spoke last? No. Not significantly. They're still in the 12 to 14, maybe high $15,000  

[00:31:03] John Kempf:

range, but 14,000 is a safe number, which is where we were last November.  

[00:31:07] Vance Crowe:

So what that means is that,   now Bitcoin would buy you,   one acre of land is worth point one two Bitcoin,   or one Bitcoin would buy you 8.3   acres. Whereas last year, or at last November, it was just a little bit over five, acres,   per Bitcoin.   How does that sit? What's been your experience with Bitcoin since we last spoke, John?  

[00:31:32] John Kempf:

Well, since we last spoke, I now own a little bit of Bitcoin. Enough to skin enough that I can say that I'm dabbling. But, you know,   I feel like   Bitcoin is, is an asset on your balance sheet is really what it is. And it's in that aspect, it's,   has some of the same characteristics   as Goldwood, for example.   And I'm a little bit like Warren Buffett in my perspective on holding assets on a balance sheet, even on a personal balance sheet. I prefer to invest those assets in growing something, particularly because of my association with agriculture. So,   it's interesting. I'm certainly playing around with it. I'm intrigued by it. I think it has   something it's worth it's worth people digging into and trying to understand well. Because when you understand Bitcoin,   you can't help you can't help but also learn a lot about monetary policy in the way that how dysfunctional it is.  



[00:32:26] Vance Crowe:

I totally agree with that. I think just just the very act of of purchasing Bitcoin will make your brain have to understand things in a in a different way. I've actually heard something, this week that kinda struck me that Bitcoin is a new thing to buy that normally you can't buy. It's it's buying a technology,   like, as a whole. It it'd be the equivalent of buying, the Internet in a way because this technology   is actually growing. It's spreading. It's becoming,   it's changing philosophic   philosophies. It's it's, changing governments.   So it is something more than just an, a single asset. That's not doing something. It is   more alive than that in some way.  



[00:33:11] John Kempf:

But very abstract.  

[00:33:13] Vance Crowe:

Yeah.   All right. Well, we are gonna keep moving on because we're running out of time, but, we're gonna turn now to the Peter Thiel paradox.   Yeah. So, John, what is something that you believe in that almost nobody in your ag tribe agrees with you on?  

[00:33:30] John Kempf:

You know, I I've been thinking about that since our last conversation. I struggled to answer that a little bit then, and I'm I'm surrounded by I'm fortunate enough to be surrounded by a lot of critical thinkers. We're constantly,   testing each other's thought processes. And,   so there are I don't know how many there is. I certainly have many things that are very different from the mainstream.   One is,   I believe that pesticides   actually   create future   insect and disease susceptibility in a significant way, and I mean future in terms of five days and in terms of five years.   I also believe   that   agriculture is the foundation of good public health.  

It's not alone the foundation of poor public health because you can have poor public health as a result of   there's a number of contributing factors. There is,   there are environmental factors. There is processed food. There is stuff that's in our water.   The list kind of goes on and on. But,   you can only have good public health, optimized public health when you have a good good food system, a healthy food system that's at the foundation of that. And, you know, just recently,   the,   with the Maha,   movement,   Kennedy   and Brook Rollins have really been incentivizing and promoting,   removing   stOTUS   and   sugary drinks from the SNAP program,   specifically targeting,   as I understand it, sugar in general, but high fructose corn syrup in particular.  

And since we're having a conversation in the agricultural   context, you know, it's not that far of a jump from   no longer,   incentivizing   and subsidizing   sugary sodas to no longer sugar subsidizing the source of the sugars that are in those sodas, I e corn syrup.  

[00:35:25] Vance Crowe:

Well, that's interesting. I mean, I think there are a lot of people that feel strongly that we should not be making it as cheap as possible for people to eat sugar. I think where I would actually my my kind of latest Peter Thiel paradox is I think that sugar has been   unduly maligned   and that, that high fructose corn syrup is, is, is actually an innovation that is quite interesting.   It's the fact that it allows so many more calories to be accessed for so cheaply. That's what's caused the problem, But I I'm I don't think high fructose corn syrup is in and of itself bad.  

[00:36:00] John Kempf:

Yeah. You and I are not aligned on that one. That's where we need more time to have a conversation. But, you know, I'll just give you just give you one data point, and there's many.   But as I understand it, high fruits high fructose corn syrup   will not give you a feeling of satiation.   So   you can eat large amounts and still feel hungry or not feel satiated. So you can just eat and eat and eat.   Whereas other forms of sugar do contribute that feeling of satiation. You eat a little bit, and you feel full.  

[00:36:31] Vance Crowe:

So I actually had heard this and believed it for a very long time, and not that long ago, tried some I'm an end of one. So, but I can only use my own experience on something like satiation.   And, I don't find that to be true at all. I find that if I eat an equivalent amount of honey versus high fructose corn syrup, the satiation   is the same. And what really makes a big difference is am I eating fats or protein around with them? And what hormones are being released in your body as a result of the other factors that you're adding in, not just the your body's access to sugar.   But what do I know? This is just my my end of one experience. Well, since you rebuffed that, I'll give you one more,  

[00:37:13] John Kempf:

and that is,   I'm I'm a passionate beekeeper. I have around a 100 honeybee colonies,   and the evidence is pretty clear. There's, where was this researcher from? I want to see University of South Carolina or Georgia or somewhere in the South. I forget right now, but there have been several studies on the health impacts of high fructose corn syrup versus sucrose on honeybees.   And sucrose wins by a significant distance,   not because of the Frito or the sugar form as I understand it, but because HFCS   contains   goodness, the name of the molecule is escaping me right now. But there's actually a contaminant that is a result of the manufacturing process that has a very detrimental   effect on honeybee health. Now we're not honeybees.  

It may not have the same metabolic health effects on us as it does on honeybees,   but there's another red flag for  

[00:38:04] Vance Crowe:

me. Yeah. I mean, when I first heard these ideas, it was by a guy that goes by Anabology. I've had him on the podcast. I thought he was ridiculous,   and now I'm just glad I've encountered it because I think I I had a lot of received wisdom about this, but I still don't think the the the case is settled by any stretch. Well, let's go one let's go one level further. Alright.  

[00:38:25] John Kempf:

You know, the FDA originally classified sugar as a drug,   and there was intense lobbying activity   to get sugar   reevaluated   and reassigned and assigned as a food instead of as a drug.   Because as a drug, there were very limited amounts that you could include in food products.   And, so if you go back in in history, I forget the exact timeline around this. I wanna say it's thirties, 40, somewhere in there.   There was quite an intense lobbying pressure to get food   or excuse me, sugar reclassified as a food instead of as a drug.  

[00:38:59] Vance Crowe:

I am convinced by, or at least it it makes sense to me,   that you   get cravings,   from sugar. But I think that we live in a world now that is so different than what we grew up with or not what we grew up, what we evolved for. So it used to be the only time you could get access access to carbohydrates would be in the middle of summertime. You know, carbohydrates are not easily accessible.   And at that point in time, you were eating carbs and that signal to your body, hey, turn up the temperature, burn them as fast as you can because what you really need is protein.   But now, and then in the wintertime, you need a lot more fats.  

And I think that when you have this combination of fats and sugars, it's doing something to our metabolism that is probably not great. But I think that we are maligning sugar   when really it's a network effect that's more complicated than high fructose corn syrup is the enemy. And that that the the end result is   that,   we're going after the wrong problems, at least in in terms of human nutrition. Well, I certainly can agree with the fact that we have,  

[00:40:04] John Kempf:

we have a list of acceptable ingredients in our food supply here in North America that's ten ten thousand plus ingredients long, which is, like,   two factors   of magnitude greater than what is permissible in Europe.   And that,   there isn't   you know, if we get caught in just going after one ingredient or one group of ingredients like food dyes, we will miss   many, many other things that are without question also having a detrimental effect in combination.   It's not like one of these things alone is going to kill us, but the the sheer exposure that we have in combinations that have never been studied and safety tested   is something we should  

[00:40:43] Vance Crowe:

correct. Yeah. I mean and no doubt. And food preservatives, you know, we're trying to make food last longer. The the and they're all studied in isolation because that's the only way you can do it. And, really, our bodies, just like you were describing the microbiome, is a network, and and it's signaling, and it's much more complicated. So I'm with you on that.   Well, John, do you have a worthy adversary, somebody that you respect but you strongly disagree with?  

[00:41:07] John Kempf:

Someone who I respect who I strongly disagree with. I probably have lots of those people that I disagree with on different things on.   Probably you, actually.  

[00:41:19] Vance Crowe:

I will take that as as a badge. Does anything come to mind in particular?  

[00:41:24] John Kempf:

We've never really gotten into the whole conversation around GMOs and and pesticides, and,   I don't know if we have the time, the bandwidth for that right now. But I think that'd be a pretty interesting conversation around how they influence,   microbiomes,   how they influence health generally in soils and livestock and people.  

[00:41:43] Vance Crowe:

Yeah. I would definitely have that conversation with you. I on GMOs, I'm I'm certainly a strong opinions loosely held. Like, if somebody can show me something that demonstrates,   the danger you and I have talked about, like, the Sara Lini research and, you know, should we believe in it? Should we not? But, I'm I'm absolutely open to having that conversation and to hearing anything you have to say about it. If if people know stuff about that that I don't know, I'm I'm very open to it.  

[00:42:10] John Kempf:

Well, that's that's a very respectable position, Vance. You know, there is I think we would live in a very different world if more people lived by,   by Charlie Munger's advice where he says you have no business. I actually think he says you have no right. You have no right to have an opinion   unless you can articulate the opposing point of view better than the opposition.   And if we lived by that   more generally,   we would have   much more loosely held opinions in general as a society and as individuals.  

[00:42:37] Vance Crowe:

Yeah. I strongly I that I agree with that 100%.   I mean, the the when you learn how to steel man another person's argument   and, like, listen to what they're saying and be able to repeat it back for them, all of a sudden you realize, like, oh, man, there was nuance in what they were saying. They knew things I didn't know, but we just don't do that as a part of our culture.   Right.   Well, John, if people were interested to pursue more about the, Advancing Eco agriculture AI system.   You said it was LARC. Tell me a little bit more about it and where they could where they could go to find out more. You can find it on the advancingecoag.com  

[00:43:12] John Kempf:

website. You can also just do a search for FieldLARC.   Yeah. It's just gonna be called FieldLARC AI. And, you know, actually,   the inspiration for that name came from, where is it? I think it's Job 12 verse seven and eight.   God is telling Job, he says,   ask the Earth, and it will teach you. Ask the birds of the air, and they will tell you. Ask the trees, and they will show you how. I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but you get the essence of it. It's like,   How can we embody more of that in the way that we show up in the world?  

[00:43:44] Vance Crowe:

I love it. I'm really glad you're putting your ideas out there, and I'm looking forward to doing a much longer podcast where we can explore some of these ideas. Thank you so much for coming on, John. Thanks, Vince. Have an awesome day.   Alright. That's gonna do it for the Ag Tribes report. If you are interested in having me sit down with one of your loved ones to record their life stories so that future generations can know their family history,   go to legacyinterviews.com   to find out more. I, just this last week, did a fascinating   family discussion where   the adult children,   sat around a a table, and I interviewed them about the stories that they remember and what made their family so great and what they wanted their parents to know that they were,   respected them about. I did a full interview with,   all all both of the grandparents, the mom, the dad, and then an interview with them together. And then all of their grandchildren   sent us a video that we are now editing together to show the grandparents.  

So this entire family tree, was something we were able to put together. We did the work over about a week. We did it all online. And if that sounds like something that you wanna create for your family, an heirloom that will last for generations,   then go to legacyinterviews.com   and schedule a, a meeting with me. We could set something up that's really truly beautiful.   Also with Bitcoin's price screaming to the roof, if you are interested in buying Bitcoin and wanna support the show, I'm going to include a link in the show notes to river.com   who has kindly been an affiliate to the show. So we, we benefit when you buy from that site. That is where I buy, my Bitcoin from.  

Alright. That is going to do it for, this week's Ag Tribes report. I did do an interview on,   it's,   the future of agriculture with Tim Hamarich all about Bitcoin. I have to say those are some of the best questions I've ever gotten about Bitcoin.   So tune in to Tim Hamarich's show. It's either gonna be this week or next week, but check it out If you're interested in Bitcoin, it was quite an, interesting experience.   Alright. We'll be back next week with another guest,   host. And until then,   feel free to disagree.