31 January 2025
ATR: ICE Raids, MAHA Confirmation Hearings, soybeans burn in Brazil @TRFyeomanfarmer - E417
In this episode of the Ag Tribes Report, host Vance Crow welcomes Steve Strasheim, a vegetable farmer from Northern Iowa, to discuss a variety of pressing issues in agriculture. Steve shares insights into his unique farming practices, including the use of greenhouses and geothermal technology to grow vegetables in the harsh Iowa winters. He also explains his innovative sales model, which includes farmers markets, a CSA, wholesaling, and an on-farm retail store.
The conversation shifts to the potential impact of ICE raids on agriculture, with a focus on the role of illegal aliens in the farming industry. Steve shares his perspective on the H-2A program and the challenges of bureaucracy in hiring legal farm workers.
The episode also covers the controversial appointment of RFK Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, with a discussion on how his policies might affect agriculture. Steve and Vance debate the potential benefits and drawbacks of increased regulation and the importance of promoting healthier eating habits.
In a segment on Brazilian soybeans, Vance highlights recent logistical issues and quality concerns in Brazil's soybean industry, sparking a discussion on the risks of relying too heavily on a single crop.
The episode concludes with a look at the new right's stance on crated hogs and the potential for significant changes in animal agriculture. Steve shares his thoughts on the ethics of factory farming and the consumer demand for affordable protein.
Listeners are also treated to the Bitcoin land price report, where Steve discusses the current farmland prices in his county and his cautious approach to investing in Bitcoin. The episode wraps up with the Peter Thiel paradox and worthy adversary segments, where Steve shares his unique perspectives and challenges common beliefs in his agricultural community.
[00:00:00]
Unknown:
The ag tribes report is brought to you by Legacy Interviews, a video service that captures people as they really are so the future knows who they really were. Listen to Legacy Interviews guests, Dan and Kathy Brooks, on the unexpected experience they had sharing stories from their lives.
[00:00:19] Unknown:
I learned a lot about you that I didn't know. Oh. Oops. Oh my goodness. All the things about his youth. He doesn't talk a lot about it. And if somebody were on the fence about doing this, what would you tell them? Don't overthink it. Just do it because we were really nervous about coming. I wish I would have known more about my mom and dad and and you've said that too that you wish you would have known more about your family history. Wow. I have no idea.
[00:00:52] Unknown:
Welcome to the Agtribe's report, a breakdown of top stories affecting the culture of agriculture with your host, Vance Crow. The report begins in 321. Let's begin.
[00:01:06] Vance Crowe:
Welcome to the Agtribes report. I'm your host, Vance Crow. Each week, I bring on a cohost to represent one of the many perspectives of the ag tribes that collectively make up US and Canadian agriculture. This week, I have Steve Strasheim, aka trfeoman farmer. I in a if which he is a northern I northern central Iowa's vegetable farmer. Steve, welcome to the Ag Tribes Report. Vance, thank you for having me on. What an honor to be here. Thank you. So how in the world do you grow, vegetables in Northern Iowa here in the middle of January?
[00:01:46] Steve Strasheim:
With a lot of plastic. No. We have, we have about 6 greenhouses that we grow into. We use some geothermal technology in one of them to help us stretch into the deepest parts of the winter. And then, we're mostly a traditional seasonal vegetable farm like what you might think of, only on a very small scale. We're only about 5 acres going into 2025. So, but you can grow a lot of vegetables on 5 acres.
[00:02:09] Vance Crowe:
Yeah. And you also have a a sales model, I understand. When I when I brought you on, people wanted to tell me all about you, but you have an interesting sales model and how you're how you're monetizing your farm.
[00:02:20] Steve Strasheim:
Yeah. So, you know, like a typical vegetable farm, we do the couple farmers markets. We do a CSA, which is like a subscription box for people that aren't familiar with that. We do a little bit of wholesaling into some restaurants and grocery stores. And then in 2024, we actually built an on farm store, so we actually have our own retail space here on the farm.
[00:02:42] Vance Crowe:
Absolutely incredible, and, I think you are my, first, maybe second vegetable farmer here on the show. And, this week's show is gonna be an interesting one. We will be talking about the, the ice raids and the fear that may become that that it may be coming to agriculture. We are moments away from an up or down vote on RFK Jr, so we'll see what ag economists think he's gonna do for the ag economy, and we're gonna talk about some of the shenanigans going on with Brazilian, soybeans. And finally, we're gonna talk a little bit about how the new right is gonna pressure the hog industry on a scale that I don't think the, the hog industry has ever seen before. We'll also go over the Bitcoin land price report. We'll hear Steve's Peter Teal paradox and ask about his worthy adversary, and we're gonna do that all in just 30 minutes. So let's get started.
Alright. Headline number 1, will Americans starve if ICE raids continue? I wanna start off by playing this clip of a of the White House deputy chief, of staff for policy and homeland security, Stephen Miller. He's debating, CNN's Jake Tapper on the subject of the need for illegal aliens to pick our food.
[00:03:53] Unknown:
How do you how does president Trump make sure that the effort to deport people who are not in this country legally doesn't end up hurting Americans who want safe borders, absolutely, but also don't want to see even more higher prices in groceries.
[00:04:12] Unknown:
Well, I mean, I'm sure it's not your position, Jake. You're just asking the question that we should supply America's food with exploitative illegal alien labor. I obviously don't think that's what you're implying. Only 1% of alien workers in the entire country work in agriculture. The top destination for illegal aliens are large cities like New York, like Los Angeles, and small, industrial towns, of course, all across the heartland that we as we've seen with the Biden floods. Mhmm. None of those illegal aliens are doing farm work. Those 30,000 legal aliens that Joe Biden dumped into Spring Hill. Talking about the ones that are No. No. No. But I'm but I'm no. No. But I'm explaining this. It's important to understand. No. You're kinda changing the subject. I mean, I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm talking about the ones that could that that work in the agriculture industry. What I'm I'm splitting your audit. About the ones in the cities. I swear. I'll do the I'll do the whole answer. The illegal aliens that Joe Biden brought into our country are not full stop doing farm work. They are not. The illegal aliens he brought in from Venezuela, from Haiti, from Nicaragua, they are not doing farm work there in our cities collecting welfare. As for the farmers, there is a guest worker program that president Trump supports.
Over time as well, we will transition into automation, so we'll never have to have this conversation ever again. But there's no universe in which this nation is going to allow the previous president to flood our nation with 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of illegal aliens who just get to stay here, and we are especially not going to allow a subset of those illegal aliens to rape and murder our
[00:05:49] Vance Crowe:
Okay, Steve. They get way away from the illegals in vegetable farming. But, what do you think? You're in vegetable farming. Does the US need illegal aliens in order to feed ourselves?
[00:06:01] Steve Strasheim:
You know, I know a lot of, farmers on Twitter. I mean, there's guys you could bring on the show that, are on Twitter that utilize the h two a program. And, you know, I've talked to a lot of them in person, on Twitter. I haven't really ran into anybody that's had a bad experience with that program, at least anything widespread. It sounds like they all really like it. We all encourage that legal process, but I I don't really know how much I I don't know the actual statistics on how much of that's illegal. Just a few weeks ago, we saw, some retweeting or whatever of that clip of a guy. I think he was in Wisconsin talking about if they deport all the illegals, we're not gonna have anybody to work on our dairy farms.
That might be the case on that side of egg, but I I don't really know in vegetables. I don't really deal with that directly, but just kinda what I see and what I hear first you know, firsthand from some of those farmers. I I don't know of anybody that's really utilizing illegal work.
[00:06:57] Vance Crowe:
Yeah. It seems to me that the h two a program, the challenge of it is just the, the massive amount of bureaucracy. Most people say, hey. If you will pay for the consultants to get it done, you can get it all done. I've also been on the border right in Arizona where we have what is not an h two a program. We just, you know, allow Mexicans to come through a fence in the morning, and then they go back at night. Yep. Yep. And if we don't have those programs, the price of our produce and, our milk, I think, are undoubtedly going to go up. But do you take his point on, well, you know, like, it's it's not good for us to be saying we want cheap food, so let's have people working slave labor.
[00:07:37] Steve Strasheim:
Yeah. Yeah. I don't agree with, the slave labor part. Like, I I think that just distorts what the prices truly should be. And for a small farmer like us that you know kind of the I don't wanna say the the bad guy, but what we compete is against is the grocery store stuff. You know we we always say we have better quality, but you know we're never gonna touch them on price kind of a thing. And present day, I don't know if we're that far away on price. So,
[00:08:05] Vance Crowe:
I I don't know. I really don't know what to say on that. Is that right? Do you think prices are coming in line between the person like you producing at a small scale in the groceries?
[00:08:14] Steve Strasheim:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'll take lettuce, for example. I mean, I used to be able to go into, like, say our local Walmart, and I I don't really check our prices that often anymore, but I used to go into, like, our Hy Vee, which is our kind of our big, you know, regional grocer here, and and check and see, you know, for, like, a head of a romaine. I mean, they're up at 2 and a half, $3 a head, and that's what we've been at for the last 5 years. You know, so we're right there on a head of lettuce.
[00:08:43] Vance Crowe:
Well, we're getting quite a few comments, and I'm loving it. Adam Lash says, I'm starting to think the dollars are going to be shifted from unnecessary items to higher priority consumables like food. And, Carl Schlegel says it's the burdensome paperwork and the cost. The the alien worker program has gone up year over year plus travel and housing. So it does seem like this is a huge part of the ag system that's totally hidden from us. Yeah. Carl is one of the guys I'd point to for firsthand experience. He's out in Maryland. Great vegetable producer,
[00:09:15] Steve Strasheim:
great guy. He's on Twitter. He'd have a lot more insight on the h two a than I would, but, yeah.
[00:09:21] Vance Crowe:
Well, I think we're gonna watch this play out more. I don't think the Trump administration is saying they're not gonna go after farm workers, but I think that's definitely not the top priority. Alright. Moving on to headline number 2. 90% of ag economists think that RFK Jr is bad for ag. This is from the Farm Journal Ag Economist Monthly Monitor survey. This is where they, they put in put out a survey to a bunch of the ag economists at different universities, and they asked if Robert f Kennedy junior, the pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services is a positive for US agriculture, and 90% said no. One economist said his disrespect for science is troubling. Another economist weighed in by saying his position on crop production will be an interesting storyline to watch in early 2025.
Another economist says there are concerns about the division it will create within agriculture. There's gonna be a policy that might limit or restrict crop protection. However, not all economists, 10% of them, don't think that it'll be bad for agriculture. In fact, it might restore confidence in agriculture. So, Steve, what do you think of an RFK Junior's potential impact on American agriculture?
[00:10:32] Steve Strasheim:
You know, I I guess I certainly like the attention he's been bringing to all this. I mean, I haven't heard so much talk and chatter on Twitter in 10 years of being on Twitter about, hey, we need to be eating better and, you know, eliminating the sugars and stuff out of our diets. And I I start to maybe get a little bit fuzzy on some of the regulation. I guess I'm not really big on regulation in general. So, you know, I don't know if that's always the best tool to use, but I think just encouraging people, and letting them know what some of those choices might be about, not having to necessarily go with the conventional type stuff. And maybe there's other options out here. I think might be a little bit better take, but
[00:11:18] Vance Crowe:
Yeah. I mean, I strongly suspect that his take on things like glyphosate are seem motivated to me, and so I, at the beginning, had really strong anti feelings against RFK Junior. But a few months into people yelling and screaming about how he he would be bad and, you know, you start looking at all of the decisions that health and human services have done in the past, and I kinda threw up my hands and said, you know what? Like, something's gotta change. You look around at the world. You have obese children. You have, you know, people wanting to take Ozempic instead of being able to eat healthy. Something is wrong Right. With our food system, and I'm willing to give it a shot. Yeah. I mean,
[00:11:57] Steve Strasheim:
I would agree with that. I mean, what how could it get worse, really? You know? You know? And I hate to sound so cynical about it, but I mean, we might have to break some stuff just to see what happens and maybe we go back to the way we were. I don't know. I don't know what the right answer there is, but, yeah, I I like I said, I think the promotion, just the awareness is just a better take rather than, you know, wielding a hammer and saying you can't do this, you can't do that. You know, especially when it comes to chemical usage, I mean, I I I think that there's a lot of misconception about some of that stuff, and we don't utilize a lot of that on our farm, but I always say it's a it's a tool in the toolbox and have we overused some of those tools by trying to pound a square peg in a round hole? Absolutely.
But is regulation the best way? I don't know.
[00:12:48] Vance Crowe:
Man, I love hearing you say that. I'm clearly a free market libertarian that thinks regulation often creates bubbles. One of the things that I think will probably come out is food manufacturing and additives there. There is definitely a lot going on in the preservatives worlds, in the coloring worlds that I think, a long time ago, I had a podcast with a guy named Laszlo Barabasi, who is the father of network science, and he said he believes that a lot of the obesity and problems that we're having with people's health is the, little tiny bits of things that are in food manufacturing to create these preservatives.
[00:13:21] Steve Strasheim:
And I think it no one was even taking a potential look at that, so maybe RFK Junior will bring bring that to light. And we're seeing a lot of stuff on seed oils. I mean, there's just just so much of this conversation now that's just kind of a breath of fresh air, quite honestly, that we're even having these conversations. I mean, those 1st couple years, I really got on to Twitter back in, like, 2013 14 specifically around agriculture. And I remember some of these same people that are kinda championing, you know, RFK and let's do away with all this stuff. We're kinda making fun of people that were talking about this stuff. So it's kind of a fun fun, experiment to see people reverse their, tune and their messaging here. So There is absolutely been a flippening where, you know, people that were on the left used to believe these things and people on the right believe this thing, and it's it's amazing.
[00:14:08] Vance Crowe:
Yeah. Alright. Well, let's head on to headline 3, the land of fire and sand is Brazil's harvest soybean harvest as assured as everyone thinks. Just this morning, I heard a clip of Torque from Barn Talk saying he was gonna plant all corn this year, and he said he talked to his input guy, and that guy said most of their customers were planting corn because soybeans didn't look like they had a prayer with how much Brazil has been producing and selling to the global market. Well, at the same time, news out of Brazil has, maybe shaken that a little bit, and I'm putting this out there to hear what other people think. Last night, a transshipment conveyor belt in Mato Grosso, which is a large soybean processing area, caught fire disrupting logistic operations. While the blaze was brought under control, it highlights vulnerabilities in the soybean transportation infrastructure.
And then earlier this week at the point at the ports of Pernawang Paraguana, I don't I'm not pronouncing that right. In Anatanya in southern Brazil, inspections revealed that sand had been mixed in with the soybean meal cargoes, specifically in over 50 trucks amounting to over 22100 metric tons of adulterated soybean, meal. So this is a a fascinating thing because it just goes to show you might be able to get it cheaper. You might be able to get more in Brazil, but some of their production methods and supply chain may not be that healthy. So, Steve, I know you're a vegetable guy, but what do you think? Are row crop farmers missing a big opportunity going all corn when Brazil's operations may have some serious problems? Boy, to me, that just screams,
[00:15:46] Steve Strasheim:
risk because of lack of diversity. I mean, I I I grow 45 crops, and I already feel, you know, kind of, a slave to risk in terms of crop failure and everything else because we don't have those little insurances and safety nets that maybe some of the crop guys have. But yeah I've I don't know I don't know what to II couldn't give any advice on that other than it just to me screams like maybe that just shows where we're at in commodity agriculture that if you're just down to one option, what does that say where we're at? You know? Well, you said something really interesting here worth pursuing.
[00:16:24] Vance Crowe:
If ag insurance, crop insurance seems to me to be an absurdity, like a like a circus of absurdities, are you not able to get access to the type of crop insurance that a corn and soybean farmer might be looking? I I shake my head no, but they're coming out with some products now that
[00:16:40] Steve Strasheim:
vegetable and and specialty crop producers can have access to. But, you know, like, it it just unless you're growing a field of one thing, it just doesn't really make sense. You know, it doesn't pencil out. And a lot of us are just so mixed, like, how do you divide up? You know, we might have 3 props in, you know, in a quarter acre, you know, type of a thing. And that's a that's a lot of produce in that quarter acre. You know, and you can extrapolate that into some bigger operations than I am into, you know, the 25 acre, 50 acre, even a 100 acre guys. You know, they're just it's just so tight that it just doesn't make much sense.
[00:17:18] Vance Crowe:
Yeah. It's, it's gotta be a little bit aggravating. I know, you know, for a lot of people that aren't involved in row crops, they don't understand that if a farmer can get 5 years of history on a field, then from then on, they're always gonna be able to get, you know, subsidized insurance to cover 85% of that or somewhere around there. And it makes it so once you're in the system, it'd be very, very difficult to lose due to a crop failure, and that just isn't true with vegetables.
[00:17:42] Steve Strasheim:
Not at all. No. I mean, look at the here in Iowa, the director a couple years ago, I know I personally know farmers that lost their whole season, and there's just nothing that they could do other than hopefully, they had some savings. Some of them created GoFundMe's, you know, that kind of stuff. They lost fields. They lost equipment. They lost, you know, just and they're just totally wiped out. There's just nothing there. So some of them got out of the business, you know, it's just and that's just one instance. I mean, you look at droughts we've been having, you know, we get these odd rain patterns where you get 10 inches and then nothing, and I mean, it just yeah. It's so hard to mitigate any risk on that.
[00:18:19] Vance Crowe:
Alright. Well, I'm glad we were able to talk about it even though neither of us, do it soybean farming. I'll be interested to see what Tork thinks after the news. Alright. Headline number 4, the final one of the night. The new right is slamming Brooke Rollins' position on crated hogs. Anna Kacchna, who is host of the Red Scare podcast, which if you have never heard, it is, a wild, female podcast about culture and art and what's going on in politics, and they are definitely a part of this new right movement. She posted on x a response to Brooke Collins, telling congress.
So Brooke Collins told congress that she is going to force states to allow the sale of pork from crated pigs. States like California had banned these sales to stop what they called animal cruelty, and the Supreme Court had held up those bans. So Brooke is going back and saying, I'm still gonna find a way to make this happen. So Anna goes on and writes, factory farming should actually be the next big agenda item to pursue after you fix immigration and gut DEI. We need an effective young roofo type. I assume that means Mark Ruffo, to take on factory farms like they did with anti racism and and, gender ideology.
Enough needless animal cruelty and waste. So, Steve, where are you at on crated hogs? Is Brooke Rollins backing cruelty, or is Anna way off in her understanding of of the way we need to raise food in this country?
[00:19:46] Steve Strasheim:
Boy. We can spend a whole podcast talking about this, and, again, I'm not an expert on this, but I did our farm started with pasture poultry because I wanted to feed our family and give our customers. What I thought was a better quality product and not have things in a cage. So I guess my my gut is to say, you know, I'm not a big fan of that system. I don't think it's I think there's better ways, and I think Niman Ranch and some other, you know, companies are kinda showing that there are some ways to scale better ways. But, you know, consumers spend with you know, they vote with their dollars and right now there's just so much demand for cheap, you know, protein that I don't know how we change that. Again, going back to the regulation thing, I'm not again a huge fan, but when it comes, I mean there's a life right there and I don't know that might be where my politics on that get a little wonky. I kind of more or less agreed with the the the ban on that, but
[00:20:44] Vance Crowe:
You know, for me, the I I've had a chance to work with the hog industry, and one of the things you come to realize is why they made every single one of those choices about the way they put them in segregated systems, the way they have slats in those barns, the reason they're made out of the material they are. You understand they're trying to resist disease. They're trying to do it at a scale in order to be able to compete. They were trying to deliver meat in a in a way that people wanted it. But when the outsider comes in and looks at the final result, they don't like it, and they have a lot of things that they can point to that says that's something you ought to change.
And I think that this happened about 10 years ago, right right when I came into Monsanto. But I think that the difference is now, it does not appear to me that ag is ready for a radical pushback on the on the systems, particularly animal agriculture, crop production like seed oils. You see the American Farm Bureau having fractures fighting and doing infighting. You don't see any major corporations wanting to stick their heads up. Most of them are owned owned by foreign countries now, so those people aren't gonna jump into this fight. I think that we could see wild changes because I don't think the ag industry is ready to to stop things even if they're doing it for the right reasons. Right. I agree. I totally agree. And, you know, I I know a lot of local meat producers, you know, through our local channels,
[00:22:04] Steve Strasheim:
you know, through farmer's markets and some nonprofit, you know, organizations, and they've never been busier. You know, the last since covid. I mean it's just been a it's like the wild West out there for local food. We've never seen anything like it and so and it just keeps continuing and they're they're having a hard time to keep up and I think you made a great point there about like the egg industry in general is just not ready for that demand and like how do we scale up for that demand while at the same time kind of you know, keeping you know supplies where they're at so challenges ahead.
[00:22:38] Vance Crowe:
Yeah. I think, consumers are gonna choose with their dollars, what they want. I know I personally started making different choices about what eggs I eat even though they're more expensive. I just like them better. And if if you can spend that money, you will. Alright. That is gonna do it for our news headlines this week. If you have news that that you think we should cover, send it to Vance at legacy interviews.com, or you can always send it to me on x@vancecrow. Now onto the Bitcoin land price report. Bitcoin last week was at, 103. Now it's up to 105, which is, you know, just barely about a percent and a half, up from last week. And, Steve, we love asking about what is an acre of good farmland in your county. What county are you in, and what is a good acre of farm ground cost? We're up here, in Mitchell County in the town of Mitchell. So,
[00:23:27] Steve Strasheim:
our land prices, I didn't really hear any astronomical numbers this year. There might have been a couple, but, I think we're kinda hovering in that 15 for good stuff right now in Mitchell County, I know you know a year or maybe a little bit more ago. We're here in 18 even a couple 20s 21. I think a little south end of the county, but haven't really heard anything like that. Usually when you hit those numbers you hear everywhere, but I didn't hear anything like that this year. So I think we're in that 15 average, probably 12 and a half ish, you know, somewhere in that neighborhood.
[00:23:58] Vance Crowe:
Yeah. I think that sounds right. I was actually looking up some stuff. The farmland guy or the land guy from, Farm For Profit was posting some stuff from Farm Credit America about how Iowa farmland prices are actually ticking down just a little bit. So but at the $15,000 per acre, that means 0.15 Bitcoin would buy an acre of farm ground in Mitchell County, or, one Bitcoin would get you 6.6 acres. How does that sit with you, Steve?
[00:24:24] Steve Strasheim:
Well, you and I've had some conversations about Bitcoin on Twitter, and I you know, I'm skeptical. I, you know, I have a little tiny bit of it little tiny bit of it, but. The wild swings that we saw the last couple of years are what give me a lot of pause. It's stabilized seemingly right now. I kinda follow it every other day or so, but I don't know if I'm quite ready to jump off that diving board yet. But Well, you already did if you bought some. Right? You you at least have gotten a little bit. I'm in the kiddie pool right now.
[00:24:56] Vance Crowe:
I think that that's actually a really good place to be when you're first learning about Bitcoin. People think, oh, I don't have a $105,000 to buy a Bitcoin, but a Bitcoin is actually made up of a 100,000,000 satoshis. And, those that is the tiniest unit. And so somebody could actually throw in a $100 and get quite a bit of Bitcoin. And I think that that's one of those mental hurdles that keeps people from understanding like, oh, I could buy just a little bit and I could experience this. Have you have you gotten a lightning wallet? Are you familiar with this at all?
[00:25:29] Steve Strasheim:
No. I haven't. I just am on the, oh, what is it? Coinbase, I think, is the the exchange I'm on. That's all I have, really. I haven't really I mean, I've kinda read up on some of that stuff. I just haven't gotten into that before. I think for somebody that like you, that's running, like, a farm shop or a or something at a CSA,
[00:25:48] Vance Crowe:
it's amazing if you can get your customers on lightning because right now, every time somebody pulls out that credit card, you have to give the credit card company 2.9% for that part of that. Transaction. Right? It's insane. Well, I think that what we really want is a digital way to hand money so I don't have to have a a pile of cash to hand to you. So lightning, what it does is you get a little wallet, you put it on your phone, and then you move Bitcoin into it, and then it works super fast. It's not like the slow every 10 minutes Bitcoin system. It's still Bitcoin, but it's in a different system. And so if you have a Lightning Wallet, I can send you, you know, 10,000 sats, and and then you're able to get that, and you're only taking, you know, a fraction of a penny to get paid for it. Is that I think it sounds like a pretty good idea for for, for businesses like yours and mine.
[00:26:38] Steve Strasheim:
Yeah. I mean, eventually. Yeah.
[00:26:41] Vance Crowe:
I don't think eventually. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna prove this. So I I want people to go out and get a a lightning wallet. So in the US, you can get an Albigo wallet, you can get a blue wallet, or in Canada, you can get the wallet of satoshi. Anybody that goes out and gets one of those, if you send me your receive address, I will send you 500 satoshi, and, that'll get you started. And then now you can find your friends, and you and your friends can send that money back and forth. And all of a sudden, you'll be like, this is not in the future. This is right now. So I'm gonna do that for the first ten people that that send me a receive address. I'll send you 500, 500 satoshis. Will you try that out with me, Steve?
[00:27:20] Steve Strasheim:
Sure.
[00:27:21] Vance Crowe:
Alright. Then we'll we'll see if you'll, by this summer, be accepting, Bitcoin. Alright. So I'll leave that behind. Now moving on to the Peter Thiel paradox. So this is where I ask Steve, what is one thing that you believe that almost nobody in your ag tribe agrees with you on?
[00:27:39] Steve Strasheim:
So your your typical crowd might not be too aware of this, but, like, in my tribe, in in small scale vegetable agriculture specifically, there's this group of people that we call the rock star farmers that have created these YouTube channels and TikToks and everything else. And I have you know, in my early years, I give all the credit to some of those guys for getting me started and whatever. It's really, really shifted though a lot in the last, I don't know, couple of I don't know what the time frame is, 5 years, maybe longer. I don't know. But it's all about I think the content that they're putting out there, I I kinda grab a couple of their videos every once in a while, and I think they're extremely hard extremely harmful to, like, young farmers in terms of what their expectations are.
They're on there if you if you get onto these, you know, your, the algorithm, you know, will start feeding you all sorts of them. They're like, oh, you can make a $100,000 on an eighth of an acre. Oh, I made $350,000 in my backyard or in my basement with microgreens. And maybe they did, but I the reality is that's super hard to do. And we see so many of these young kids and new farmers coming in that put a lot on the line on a real wish upon a star idea, and I we I was on the phone with Chris Jager. He's on Twitter as well. He's a vegetable farmer in Southern Oregon this morning, and we were talking about that. And, we both agree that it's just it's it's I think it it's it's helped a lot of people with a lot of knowledge, but at the same time, it's just morphed. And I think a lot of YouTube channels are doing this where it's click baity titles and, you know, they're just trying to monetize monetize and and the quality of the information that goes out doesn't really matter anymore. It's just so I I think where that makes it a paradox to my world is there's so many people that look up to those guys, and I think they're just extremely harmful.
And it's it's very rampant, very rampant.
[00:29:45] Vance Crowe:
Well, I can't argue with you there. I don't have a a feeling one way or another. I think you're probably right. I know that I had a a camera guy that worked for me for,
[00:29:53] Steve Strasheim:
about a year, and the way he had come to work for me was his failed pressure washing business because he had watched all these YouTube videos of pressure washing and how easy it was. And so he made all this big investment, and he found out, no. This is not easy. Well, you're seeing that in other on other channels of Twitter, you know, on, like, the small, medium business Twitter community. You call that real estate Twitter, Fin Twitter, whatever you wanna call it. And so many of these guys that are just seeing these numbers, you know, they're going out and rolling up plumbing companies and everything because they saw a course on it or something like that, and they're just man, use use some, you know, your bullshit meter is really gotta be going wild when you read some you know, see some of that stuff, and I don't know if their meter is quite working.
[00:30:37] Vance Crowe:
Alright. I'm gonna give you a 65 for this one. I think you're probably right for pushing back on some of those people, but not quite controversial enough to get one of those high scores. Alright. Now let's move on to the worthy adversaries. This is where I ask Steve, who is one person that you deeply respect but you really strongly disagree with?
[00:30:57] Steve Strasheim:
I had a hard time with this one, as we were talking a little bit earlier because I'm not that controversial or confrontational, especially online. I like to kinda keep an even keel and take in both sides of an argument and kinda meet in the middle on a lot of stuff, but I have to give like yourself, a nod, on Bitcoin. Disagree on that II think, but I respect you a lot and II mentioned Adam Jones too. If you're watching Adam, hey, how's it going? You know him and I don't agree probably on a lot of stuff, but we've kinda met in the middle a little bit on you know some of the big Packer kinda you know the the big egg.
[00:31:38] Vance Crowe:
Vertical integration type stuff choking out the little guys and not treating up you know, but we probably disagree on some political things and different points of view. So I'm gonna give you and Adam a nod on my worthy adversary. So thank you. Take it. When you were saying I don't really push back on people on x, I'm like, woah. I've heard I've gotten plenty of pushback from you, but I actually love the way you do it. I I love that you're, like, dropping there a question. It's an honest question, but it's also, like, not always easy to answer. So I I think you're a a great interaction with on x. I really, really enjoy it, and that's why I'm I'm glad you were willing to come on to do the podcast to to meet in as close to real life as you can without, you know, shaking hands.
For sure. So you you did good on that one. I like it. And Adam Jones, yeah, that guy, that fucking guy. Yeah. He's definitely worthy of guy. I you know? Not about great guy. He's a guy that's fun on x. Yeah. I mean, it'd be fun to get around the table with you 2 and a beer and, see what happens and be I gotta say I did when I had a a big choice to make. I was invited to be on a board, and I didn't know whether I should do it or not. I called up Adam because he's my worthy adversary. And I was like, if there was anybody that was gonna tell me this is a bad idea and I shouldn't do it, it'd be you. And he gave me really great advice. I think that's the benefit of having a worthy adversary. You find somebody that's not just, like, cheering you on no matter what you do. Well, I think, you know, a lot of people sometimes, I've always wondered, you know, as I've been on egg Twitter for the last 10 or more years now,
[00:33:06] Steve Strasheim:
since 2012 or 13, you know, like, I wonder if people question, why is this little tiny vegetable guy circling around like the big egg communities on Twitter and interacting with that. It's it's for that. It's a channel I mean, I've learned so much about egg in general business. I mean, everything and it's challenged a lot of my maybe hive mind thinking that you get from kind of these small egg, you know, niche group, circles, and, that's why I hang around. I've just learned a ton, shifted my point of view a lot on a lot of different things. So great question.
[00:33:42] Vance Crowe:
I think it's open for anybody. You don't even have to be an ag to be around ag Twitter because you as long as you bring something to the table, a good argument. So, man, this has been great. I'm so glad you were willing to come on. If people wanted to learn more about your vegetables, if they wanted buy from you or they wanted to learn about you where should they go?
[00:33:59] Steve Strasheim:
You're gonna have to come to a local farmer's market because we don't ship lettuce real well so, twistedriverfarm.com is our website. We're on Facebook. We're on Instagram Twitter again at, TRF Yeoman Farmer, and, that's the best way to get a hold of me. I don't have much else to promote. I don't have a SoundCloud or a course to buy. So, that's what you're gonna have to deal with. So
[00:34:21] Vance Crowe:
Well, come for Steve's, very simple, very polite, but very probing questions. Thank you so much, Steve. If you've been thinking about doing a legacy interview, I strongly recommend you either go to legacy interviews.com or just call us directly. 314-866-2991. As you can see, we have a new background. We have continued to work on how can we make these more beautiful, how can we make the focus on the guest, something truly profound? And as I said on x this week, we finally set up this studio in a way where it is actually just me and the guest in the room. We have the cameras there, and, everybody else is away in another room. And it is an amazing experience to just sit with 2 people, talking about their life stories, capturing all these experiences, and putting it on video so that future generations know who their grandmother was, who their father was. So if you're thinking about doing that, go to legacy interviews.com.
Also, I'm gonna say this again. If you are interested in getting Bitcoin, you've not really known how to do it, go out and get a lightning wallet. And if you're in Canada, get a wallet of Satoshi. If you're in the US, get an AlbieGo wallet. And, if you send me your receive address, I already saw on the comments that, Jay Curtis is pumping me for, some satoshis. If you get a a, lightning wallet and you send me the receive address, I will send you 500 satoshis if you're, among the top the the next 9 people to do it because there's only 9 left. So, that'll be an interesting thing. You can either send it to me on act@vancecro [email protected].
Alright. Join us next week for another Ag Tribes report with guest cohost, Steve Conaway. So thank you so much for joining, and as always, feel free to
The ag tribes report is brought to you by Legacy Interviews, a video service that captures people as they really are so the future knows who they really were. Listen to Legacy Interviews guests, Dan and Kathy Brooks, on the unexpected experience they had sharing stories from their lives.
[00:00:19] Unknown:
I learned a lot about you that I didn't know. Oh. Oops. Oh my goodness. All the things about his youth. He doesn't talk a lot about it. And if somebody were on the fence about doing this, what would you tell them? Don't overthink it. Just do it because we were really nervous about coming. I wish I would have known more about my mom and dad and and you've said that too that you wish you would have known more about your family history. Wow. I have no idea.
[00:00:52] Unknown:
Welcome to the Agtribe's report, a breakdown of top stories affecting the culture of agriculture with your host, Vance Crow. The report begins in 321. Let's begin.
[00:01:06] Vance Crowe:
Welcome to the Agtribes report. I'm your host, Vance Crow. Each week, I bring on a cohost to represent one of the many perspectives of the ag tribes that collectively make up US and Canadian agriculture. This week, I have Steve Strasheim, aka trfeoman farmer. I in a if which he is a northern I northern central Iowa's vegetable farmer. Steve, welcome to the Ag Tribes Report. Vance, thank you for having me on. What an honor to be here. Thank you. So how in the world do you grow, vegetables in Northern Iowa here in the middle of January?
[00:01:46] Steve Strasheim:
With a lot of plastic. No. We have, we have about 6 greenhouses that we grow into. We use some geothermal technology in one of them to help us stretch into the deepest parts of the winter. And then, we're mostly a traditional seasonal vegetable farm like what you might think of, only on a very small scale. We're only about 5 acres going into 2025. So, but you can grow a lot of vegetables on 5 acres.
[00:02:09] Vance Crowe:
Yeah. And you also have a a sales model, I understand. When I when I brought you on, people wanted to tell me all about you, but you have an interesting sales model and how you're how you're monetizing your farm.
[00:02:20] Steve Strasheim:
Yeah. So, you know, like a typical vegetable farm, we do the couple farmers markets. We do a CSA, which is like a subscription box for people that aren't familiar with that. We do a little bit of wholesaling into some restaurants and grocery stores. And then in 2024, we actually built an on farm store, so we actually have our own retail space here on the farm.
[00:02:42] Vance Crowe:
Absolutely incredible, and, I think you are my, first, maybe second vegetable farmer here on the show. And, this week's show is gonna be an interesting one. We will be talking about the, the ice raids and the fear that may become that that it may be coming to agriculture. We are moments away from an up or down vote on RFK Jr, so we'll see what ag economists think he's gonna do for the ag economy, and we're gonna talk about some of the shenanigans going on with Brazilian, soybeans. And finally, we're gonna talk a little bit about how the new right is gonna pressure the hog industry on a scale that I don't think the, the hog industry has ever seen before. We'll also go over the Bitcoin land price report. We'll hear Steve's Peter Teal paradox and ask about his worthy adversary, and we're gonna do that all in just 30 minutes. So let's get started.
Alright. Headline number 1, will Americans starve if ICE raids continue? I wanna start off by playing this clip of a of the White House deputy chief, of staff for policy and homeland security, Stephen Miller. He's debating, CNN's Jake Tapper on the subject of the need for illegal aliens to pick our food.
[00:03:53] Unknown:
How do you how does president Trump make sure that the effort to deport people who are not in this country legally doesn't end up hurting Americans who want safe borders, absolutely, but also don't want to see even more higher prices in groceries.
[00:04:12] Unknown:
Well, I mean, I'm sure it's not your position, Jake. You're just asking the question that we should supply America's food with exploitative illegal alien labor. I obviously don't think that's what you're implying. Only 1% of alien workers in the entire country work in agriculture. The top destination for illegal aliens are large cities like New York, like Los Angeles, and small, industrial towns, of course, all across the heartland that we as we've seen with the Biden floods. Mhmm. None of those illegal aliens are doing farm work. Those 30,000 legal aliens that Joe Biden dumped into Spring Hill. Talking about the ones that are No. No. No. But I'm but I'm no. No. But I'm explaining this. It's important to understand. No. You're kinda changing the subject. I mean, I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm talking about the ones that could that that work in the agriculture industry. What I'm I'm splitting your audit. About the ones in the cities. I swear. I'll do the I'll do the whole answer. The illegal aliens that Joe Biden brought into our country are not full stop doing farm work. They are not. The illegal aliens he brought in from Venezuela, from Haiti, from Nicaragua, they are not doing farm work there in our cities collecting welfare. As for the farmers, there is a guest worker program that president Trump supports.
Over time as well, we will transition into automation, so we'll never have to have this conversation ever again. But there's no universe in which this nation is going to allow the previous president to flood our nation with 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of illegal aliens who just get to stay here, and we are especially not going to allow a subset of those illegal aliens to rape and murder our
[00:05:49] Vance Crowe:
Okay, Steve. They get way away from the illegals in vegetable farming. But, what do you think? You're in vegetable farming. Does the US need illegal aliens in order to feed ourselves?
[00:06:01] Steve Strasheim:
You know, I know a lot of, farmers on Twitter. I mean, there's guys you could bring on the show that, are on Twitter that utilize the h two a program. And, you know, I've talked to a lot of them in person, on Twitter. I haven't really ran into anybody that's had a bad experience with that program, at least anything widespread. It sounds like they all really like it. We all encourage that legal process, but I I don't really know how much I I don't know the actual statistics on how much of that's illegal. Just a few weeks ago, we saw, some retweeting or whatever of that clip of a guy. I think he was in Wisconsin talking about if they deport all the illegals, we're not gonna have anybody to work on our dairy farms.
That might be the case on that side of egg, but I I don't really know in vegetables. I don't really deal with that directly, but just kinda what I see and what I hear first you know, firsthand from some of those farmers. I I don't know of anybody that's really utilizing illegal work.
[00:06:57] Vance Crowe:
Yeah. It seems to me that the h two a program, the challenge of it is just the, the massive amount of bureaucracy. Most people say, hey. If you will pay for the consultants to get it done, you can get it all done. I've also been on the border right in Arizona where we have what is not an h two a program. We just, you know, allow Mexicans to come through a fence in the morning, and then they go back at night. Yep. Yep. And if we don't have those programs, the price of our produce and, our milk, I think, are undoubtedly going to go up. But do you take his point on, well, you know, like, it's it's not good for us to be saying we want cheap food, so let's have people working slave labor.
[00:07:37] Steve Strasheim:
Yeah. Yeah. I don't agree with, the slave labor part. Like, I I think that just distorts what the prices truly should be. And for a small farmer like us that you know kind of the I don't wanna say the the bad guy, but what we compete is against is the grocery store stuff. You know we we always say we have better quality, but you know we're never gonna touch them on price kind of a thing. And present day, I don't know if we're that far away on price. So,
[00:08:05] Vance Crowe:
I I don't know. I really don't know what to say on that. Is that right? Do you think prices are coming in line between the person like you producing at a small scale in the groceries?
[00:08:14] Steve Strasheim:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'll take lettuce, for example. I mean, I used to be able to go into, like, say our local Walmart, and I I don't really check our prices that often anymore, but I used to go into, like, our Hy Vee, which is our kind of our big, you know, regional grocer here, and and check and see, you know, for, like, a head of a romaine. I mean, they're up at 2 and a half, $3 a head, and that's what we've been at for the last 5 years. You know, so we're right there on a head of lettuce.
[00:08:43] Vance Crowe:
Well, we're getting quite a few comments, and I'm loving it. Adam Lash says, I'm starting to think the dollars are going to be shifted from unnecessary items to higher priority consumables like food. And, Carl Schlegel says it's the burdensome paperwork and the cost. The the alien worker program has gone up year over year plus travel and housing. So it does seem like this is a huge part of the ag system that's totally hidden from us. Yeah. Carl is one of the guys I'd point to for firsthand experience. He's out in Maryland. Great vegetable producer,
[00:09:15] Steve Strasheim:
great guy. He's on Twitter. He'd have a lot more insight on the h two a than I would, but, yeah.
[00:09:21] Vance Crowe:
Well, I think we're gonna watch this play out more. I don't think the Trump administration is saying they're not gonna go after farm workers, but I think that's definitely not the top priority. Alright. Moving on to headline number 2. 90% of ag economists think that RFK Jr is bad for ag. This is from the Farm Journal Ag Economist Monthly Monitor survey. This is where they, they put in put out a survey to a bunch of the ag economists at different universities, and they asked if Robert f Kennedy junior, the pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services is a positive for US agriculture, and 90% said no. One economist said his disrespect for science is troubling. Another economist weighed in by saying his position on crop production will be an interesting storyline to watch in early 2025.
Another economist says there are concerns about the division it will create within agriculture. There's gonna be a policy that might limit or restrict crop protection. However, not all economists, 10% of them, don't think that it'll be bad for agriculture. In fact, it might restore confidence in agriculture. So, Steve, what do you think of an RFK Junior's potential impact on American agriculture?
[00:10:32] Steve Strasheim:
You know, I I guess I certainly like the attention he's been bringing to all this. I mean, I haven't heard so much talk and chatter on Twitter in 10 years of being on Twitter about, hey, we need to be eating better and, you know, eliminating the sugars and stuff out of our diets. And I I start to maybe get a little bit fuzzy on some of the regulation. I guess I'm not really big on regulation in general. So, you know, I don't know if that's always the best tool to use, but I think just encouraging people, and letting them know what some of those choices might be about, not having to necessarily go with the conventional type stuff. And maybe there's other options out here. I think might be a little bit better take, but
[00:11:18] Vance Crowe:
Yeah. I mean, I strongly suspect that his take on things like glyphosate are seem motivated to me, and so I, at the beginning, had really strong anti feelings against RFK Junior. But a few months into people yelling and screaming about how he he would be bad and, you know, you start looking at all of the decisions that health and human services have done in the past, and I kinda threw up my hands and said, you know what? Like, something's gotta change. You look around at the world. You have obese children. You have, you know, people wanting to take Ozempic instead of being able to eat healthy. Something is wrong Right. With our food system, and I'm willing to give it a shot. Yeah. I mean,
[00:11:57] Steve Strasheim:
I would agree with that. I mean, what how could it get worse, really? You know? You know? And I hate to sound so cynical about it, but I mean, we might have to break some stuff just to see what happens and maybe we go back to the way we were. I don't know. I don't know what the right answer there is, but, yeah, I I like I said, I think the promotion, just the awareness is just a better take rather than, you know, wielding a hammer and saying you can't do this, you can't do that. You know, especially when it comes to chemical usage, I mean, I I I think that there's a lot of misconception about some of that stuff, and we don't utilize a lot of that on our farm, but I always say it's a it's a tool in the toolbox and have we overused some of those tools by trying to pound a square peg in a round hole? Absolutely.
But is regulation the best way? I don't know.
[00:12:48] Vance Crowe:
Man, I love hearing you say that. I'm clearly a free market libertarian that thinks regulation often creates bubbles. One of the things that I think will probably come out is food manufacturing and additives there. There is definitely a lot going on in the preservatives worlds, in the coloring worlds that I think, a long time ago, I had a podcast with a guy named Laszlo Barabasi, who is the father of network science, and he said he believes that a lot of the obesity and problems that we're having with people's health is the, little tiny bits of things that are in food manufacturing to create these preservatives.
[00:13:21] Steve Strasheim:
And I think it no one was even taking a potential look at that, so maybe RFK Junior will bring bring that to light. And we're seeing a lot of stuff on seed oils. I mean, there's just just so much of this conversation now that's just kind of a breath of fresh air, quite honestly, that we're even having these conversations. I mean, those 1st couple years, I really got on to Twitter back in, like, 2013 14 specifically around agriculture. And I remember some of these same people that are kinda championing, you know, RFK and let's do away with all this stuff. We're kinda making fun of people that were talking about this stuff. So it's kind of a fun fun, experiment to see people reverse their, tune and their messaging here. So There is absolutely been a flippening where, you know, people that were on the left used to believe these things and people on the right believe this thing, and it's it's amazing.
[00:14:08] Vance Crowe:
Yeah. Alright. Well, let's head on to headline 3, the land of fire and sand is Brazil's harvest soybean harvest as assured as everyone thinks. Just this morning, I heard a clip of Torque from Barn Talk saying he was gonna plant all corn this year, and he said he talked to his input guy, and that guy said most of their customers were planting corn because soybeans didn't look like they had a prayer with how much Brazil has been producing and selling to the global market. Well, at the same time, news out of Brazil has, maybe shaken that a little bit, and I'm putting this out there to hear what other people think. Last night, a transshipment conveyor belt in Mato Grosso, which is a large soybean processing area, caught fire disrupting logistic operations. While the blaze was brought under control, it highlights vulnerabilities in the soybean transportation infrastructure.
And then earlier this week at the point at the ports of Pernawang Paraguana, I don't I'm not pronouncing that right. In Anatanya in southern Brazil, inspections revealed that sand had been mixed in with the soybean meal cargoes, specifically in over 50 trucks amounting to over 22100 metric tons of adulterated soybean, meal. So this is a a fascinating thing because it just goes to show you might be able to get it cheaper. You might be able to get more in Brazil, but some of their production methods and supply chain may not be that healthy. So, Steve, I know you're a vegetable guy, but what do you think? Are row crop farmers missing a big opportunity going all corn when Brazil's operations may have some serious problems? Boy, to me, that just screams,
[00:15:46] Steve Strasheim:
risk because of lack of diversity. I mean, I I I grow 45 crops, and I already feel, you know, kind of, a slave to risk in terms of crop failure and everything else because we don't have those little insurances and safety nets that maybe some of the crop guys have. But yeah I've I don't know I don't know what to II couldn't give any advice on that other than it just to me screams like maybe that just shows where we're at in commodity agriculture that if you're just down to one option, what does that say where we're at? You know? Well, you said something really interesting here worth pursuing.
[00:16:24] Vance Crowe:
If ag insurance, crop insurance seems to me to be an absurdity, like a like a circus of absurdities, are you not able to get access to the type of crop insurance that a corn and soybean farmer might be looking? I I shake my head no, but they're coming out with some products now that
[00:16:40] Steve Strasheim:
vegetable and and specialty crop producers can have access to. But, you know, like, it it just unless you're growing a field of one thing, it just doesn't really make sense. You know, it doesn't pencil out. And a lot of us are just so mixed, like, how do you divide up? You know, we might have 3 props in, you know, in a quarter acre, you know, type of a thing. And that's a that's a lot of produce in that quarter acre. You know, and you can extrapolate that into some bigger operations than I am into, you know, the 25 acre, 50 acre, even a 100 acre guys. You know, they're just it's just so tight that it just doesn't make much sense.
[00:17:18] Vance Crowe:
Yeah. It's, it's gotta be a little bit aggravating. I know, you know, for a lot of people that aren't involved in row crops, they don't understand that if a farmer can get 5 years of history on a field, then from then on, they're always gonna be able to get, you know, subsidized insurance to cover 85% of that or somewhere around there. And it makes it so once you're in the system, it'd be very, very difficult to lose due to a crop failure, and that just isn't true with vegetables.
[00:17:42] Steve Strasheim:
Not at all. No. I mean, look at the here in Iowa, the director a couple years ago, I know I personally know farmers that lost their whole season, and there's just nothing that they could do other than hopefully, they had some savings. Some of them created GoFundMe's, you know, that kind of stuff. They lost fields. They lost equipment. They lost, you know, just and they're just totally wiped out. There's just nothing there. So some of them got out of the business, you know, it's just and that's just one instance. I mean, you look at droughts we've been having, you know, we get these odd rain patterns where you get 10 inches and then nothing, and I mean, it just yeah. It's so hard to mitigate any risk on that.
[00:18:19] Vance Crowe:
Alright. Well, I'm glad we were able to talk about it even though neither of us, do it soybean farming. I'll be interested to see what Tork thinks after the news. Alright. Headline number 4, the final one of the night. The new right is slamming Brooke Rollins' position on crated hogs. Anna Kacchna, who is host of the Red Scare podcast, which if you have never heard, it is, a wild, female podcast about culture and art and what's going on in politics, and they are definitely a part of this new right movement. She posted on x a response to Brooke Collins, telling congress.
So Brooke Collins told congress that she is going to force states to allow the sale of pork from crated pigs. States like California had banned these sales to stop what they called animal cruelty, and the Supreme Court had held up those bans. So Brooke is going back and saying, I'm still gonna find a way to make this happen. So Anna goes on and writes, factory farming should actually be the next big agenda item to pursue after you fix immigration and gut DEI. We need an effective young roofo type. I assume that means Mark Ruffo, to take on factory farms like they did with anti racism and and, gender ideology.
Enough needless animal cruelty and waste. So, Steve, where are you at on crated hogs? Is Brooke Rollins backing cruelty, or is Anna way off in her understanding of of the way we need to raise food in this country?
[00:19:46] Steve Strasheim:
Boy. We can spend a whole podcast talking about this, and, again, I'm not an expert on this, but I did our farm started with pasture poultry because I wanted to feed our family and give our customers. What I thought was a better quality product and not have things in a cage. So I guess my my gut is to say, you know, I'm not a big fan of that system. I don't think it's I think there's better ways, and I think Niman Ranch and some other, you know, companies are kinda showing that there are some ways to scale better ways. But, you know, consumers spend with you know, they vote with their dollars and right now there's just so much demand for cheap, you know, protein that I don't know how we change that. Again, going back to the regulation thing, I'm not again a huge fan, but when it comes, I mean there's a life right there and I don't know that might be where my politics on that get a little wonky. I kind of more or less agreed with the the the ban on that, but
[00:20:44] Vance Crowe:
You know, for me, the I I've had a chance to work with the hog industry, and one of the things you come to realize is why they made every single one of those choices about the way they put them in segregated systems, the way they have slats in those barns, the reason they're made out of the material they are. You understand they're trying to resist disease. They're trying to do it at a scale in order to be able to compete. They were trying to deliver meat in a in a way that people wanted it. But when the outsider comes in and looks at the final result, they don't like it, and they have a lot of things that they can point to that says that's something you ought to change.
And I think that this happened about 10 years ago, right right when I came into Monsanto. But I think that the difference is now, it does not appear to me that ag is ready for a radical pushback on the on the systems, particularly animal agriculture, crop production like seed oils. You see the American Farm Bureau having fractures fighting and doing infighting. You don't see any major corporations wanting to stick their heads up. Most of them are owned owned by foreign countries now, so those people aren't gonna jump into this fight. I think that we could see wild changes because I don't think the ag industry is ready to to stop things even if they're doing it for the right reasons. Right. I agree. I totally agree. And, you know, I I know a lot of local meat producers, you know, through our local channels,
[00:22:04] Steve Strasheim:
you know, through farmer's markets and some nonprofit, you know, organizations, and they've never been busier. You know, the last since covid. I mean it's just been a it's like the wild West out there for local food. We've never seen anything like it and so and it just keeps continuing and they're they're having a hard time to keep up and I think you made a great point there about like the egg industry in general is just not ready for that demand and like how do we scale up for that demand while at the same time kind of you know, keeping you know supplies where they're at so challenges ahead.
[00:22:38] Vance Crowe:
Yeah. I think, consumers are gonna choose with their dollars, what they want. I know I personally started making different choices about what eggs I eat even though they're more expensive. I just like them better. And if if you can spend that money, you will. Alright. That is gonna do it for our news headlines this week. If you have news that that you think we should cover, send it to Vance at legacy interviews.com, or you can always send it to me on x@vancecrow. Now onto the Bitcoin land price report. Bitcoin last week was at, 103. Now it's up to 105, which is, you know, just barely about a percent and a half, up from last week. And, Steve, we love asking about what is an acre of good farmland in your county. What county are you in, and what is a good acre of farm ground cost? We're up here, in Mitchell County in the town of Mitchell. So,
[00:23:27] Steve Strasheim:
our land prices, I didn't really hear any astronomical numbers this year. There might have been a couple, but, I think we're kinda hovering in that 15 for good stuff right now in Mitchell County, I know you know a year or maybe a little bit more ago. We're here in 18 even a couple 20s 21. I think a little south end of the county, but haven't really heard anything like that. Usually when you hit those numbers you hear everywhere, but I didn't hear anything like that this year. So I think we're in that 15 average, probably 12 and a half ish, you know, somewhere in that neighborhood.
[00:23:58] Vance Crowe:
Yeah. I think that sounds right. I was actually looking up some stuff. The farmland guy or the land guy from, Farm For Profit was posting some stuff from Farm Credit America about how Iowa farmland prices are actually ticking down just a little bit. So but at the $15,000 per acre, that means 0.15 Bitcoin would buy an acre of farm ground in Mitchell County, or, one Bitcoin would get you 6.6 acres. How does that sit with you, Steve?
[00:24:24] Steve Strasheim:
Well, you and I've had some conversations about Bitcoin on Twitter, and I you know, I'm skeptical. I, you know, I have a little tiny bit of it little tiny bit of it, but. The wild swings that we saw the last couple of years are what give me a lot of pause. It's stabilized seemingly right now. I kinda follow it every other day or so, but I don't know if I'm quite ready to jump off that diving board yet. But Well, you already did if you bought some. Right? You you at least have gotten a little bit. I'm in the kiddie pool right now.
[00:24:56] Vance Crowe:
I think that that's actually a really good place to be when you're first learning about Bitcoin. People think, oh, I don't have a $105,000 to buy a Bitcoin, but a Bitcoin is actually made up of a 100,000,000 satoshis. And, those that is the tiniest unit. And so somebody could actually throw in a $100 and get quite a bit of Bitcoin. And I think that that's one of those mental hurdles that keeps people from understanding like, oh, I could buy just a little bit and I could experience this. Have you have you gotten a lightning wallet? Are you familiar with this at all?
[00:25:29] Steve Strasheim:
No. I haven't. I just am on the, oh, what is it? Coinbase, I think, is the the exchange I'm on. That's all I have, really. I haven't really I mean, I've kinda read up on some of that stuff. I just haven't gotten into that before. I think for somebody that like you, that's running, like, a farm shop or a or something at a CSA,
[00:25:48] Vance Crowe:
it's amazing if you can get your customers on lightning because right now, every time somebody pulls out that credit card, you have to give the credit card company 2.9% for that part of that. Transaction. Right? It's insane. Well, I think that what we really want is a digital way to hand money so I don't have to have a a pile of cash to hand to you. So lightning, what it does is you get a little wallet, you put it on your phone, and then you move Bitcoin into it, and then it works super fast. It's not like the slow every 10 minutes Bitcoin system. It's still Bitcoin, but it's in a different system. And so if you have a Lightning Wallet, I can send you, you know, 10,000 sats, and and then you're able to get that, and you're only taking, you know, a fraction of a penny to get paid for it. Is that I think it sounds like a pretty good idea for for, for businesses like yours and mine.
[00:26:38] Steve Strasheim:
Yeah. I mean, eventually. Yeah.
[00:26:41] Vance Crowe:
I don't think eventually. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna prove this. So I I want people to go out and get a a lightning wallet. So in the US, you can get an Albigo wallet, you can get a blue wallet, or in Canada, you can get the wallet of satoshi. Anybody that goes out and gets one of those, if you send me your receive address, I will send you 500 satoshi, and, that'll get you started. And then now you can find your friends, and you and your friends can send that money back and forth. And all of a sudden, you'll be like, this is not in the future. This is right now. So I'm gonna do that for the first ten people that that send me a receive address. I'll send you 500, 500 satoshis. Will you try that out with me, Steve?
[00:27:20] Steve Strasheim:
Sure.
[00:27:21] Vance Crowe:
Alright. Then we'll we'll see if you'll, by this summer, be accepting, Bitcoin. Alright. So I'll leave that behind. Now moving on to the Peter Thiel paradox. So this is where I ask Steve, what is one thing that you believe that almost nobody in your ag tribe agrees with you on?
[00:27:39] Steve Strasheim:
So your your typical crowd might not be too aware of this, but, like, in my tribe, in in small scale vegetable agriculture specifically, there's this group of people that we call the rock star farmers that have created these YouTube channels and TikToks and everything else. And I have you know, in my early years, I give all the credit to some of those guys for getting me started and whatever. It's really, really shifted though a lot in the last, I don't know, couple of I don't know what the time frame is, 5 years, maybe longer. I don't know. But it's all about I think the content that they're putting out there, I I kinda grab a couple of their videos every once in a while, and I think they're extremely hard extremely harmful to, like, young farmers in terms of what their expectations are.
They're on there if you if you get onto these, you know, your, the algorithm, you know, will start feeding you all sorts of them. They're like, oh, you can make a $100,000 on an eighth of an acre. Oh, I made $350,000 in my backyard or in my basement with microgreens. And maybe they did, but I the reality is that's super hard to do. And we see so many of these young kids and new farmers coming in that put a lot on the line on a real wish upon a star idea, and I we I was on the phone with Chris Jager. He's on Twitter as well. He's a vegetable farmer in Southern Oregon this morning, and we were talking about that. And, we both agree that it's just it's it's I think it it's it's helped a lot of people with a lot of knowledge, but at the same time, it's just morphed. And I think a lot of YouTube channels are doing this where it's click baity titles and, you know, they're just trying to monetize monetize and and the quality of the information that goes out doesn't really matter anymore. It's just so I I think where that makes it a paradox to my world is there's so many people that look up to those guys, and I think they're just extremely harmful.
And it's it's very rampant, very rampant.
[00:29:45] Vance Crowe:
Well, I can't argue with you there. I don't have a a feeling one way or another. I think you're probably right. I know that I had a a camera guy that worked for me for,
[00:29:53] Steve Strasheim:
about a year, and the way he had come to work for me was his failed pressure washing business because he had watched all these YouTube videos of pressure washing and how easy it was. And so he made all this big investment, and he found out, no. This is not easy. Well, you're seeing that in other on other channels of Twitter, you know, on, like, the small, medium business Twitter community. You call that real estate Twitter, Fin Twitter, whatever you wanna call it. And so many of these guys that are just seeing these numbers, you know, they're going out and rolling up plumbing companies and everything because they saw a course on it or something like that, and they're just man, use use some, you know, your bullshit meter is really gotta be going wild when you read some you know, see some of that stuff, and I don't know if their meter is quite working.
[00:30:37] Vance Crowe:
Alright. I'm gonna give you a 65 for this one. I think you're probably right for pushing back on some of those people, but not quite controversial enough to get one of those high scores. Alright. Now let's move on to the worthy adversaries. This is where I ask Steve, who is one person that you deeply respect but you really strongly disagree with?
[00:30:57] Steve Strasheim:
I had a hard time with this one, as we were talking a little bit earlier because I'm not that controversial or confrontational, especially online. I like to kinda keep an even keel and take in both sides of an argument and kinda meet in the middle on a lot of stuff, but I have to give like yourself, a nod, on Bitcoin. Disagree on that II think, but I respect you a lot and II mentioned Adam Jones too. If you're watching Adam, hey, how's it going? You know him and I don't agree probably on a lot of stuff, but we've kinda met in the middle a little bit on you know some of the big Packer kinda you know the the big egg.
[00:31:38] Vance Crowe:
Vertical integration type stuff choking out the little guys and not treating up you know, but we probably disagree on some political things and different points of view. So I'm gonna give you and Adam a nod on my worthy adversary. So thank you. Take it. When you were saying I don't really push back on people on x, I'm like, woah. I've heard I've gotten plenty of pushback from you, but I actually love the way you do it. I I love that you're, like, dropping there a question. It's an honest question, but it's also, like, not always easy to answer. So I I think you're a a great interaction with on x. I really, really enjoy it, and that's why I'm I'm glad you were willing to come on to do the podcast to to meet in as close to real life as you can without, you know, shaking hands.
For sure. So you you did good on that one. I like it. And Adam Jones, yeah, that guy, that fucking guy. Yeah. He's definitely worthy of guy. I you know? Not about great guy. He's a guy that's fun on x. Yeah. I mean, it'd be fun to get around the table with you 2 and a beer and, see what happens and be I gotta say I did when I had a a big choice to make. I was invited to be on a board, and I didn't know whether I should do it or not. I called up Adam because he's my worthy adversary. And I was like, if there was anybody that was gonna tell me this is a bad idea and I shouldn't do it, it'd be you. And he gave me really great advice. I think that's the benefit of having a worthy adversary. You find somebody that's not just, like, cheering you on no matter what you do. Well, I think, you know, a lot of people sometimes, I've always wondered, you know, as I've been on egg Twitter for the last 10 or more years now,
[00:33:06] Steve Strasheim:
since 2012 or 13, you know, like, I wonder if people question, why is this little tiny vegetable guy circling around like the big egg communities on Twitter and interacting with that. It's it's for that. It's a channel I mean, I've learned so much about egg in general business. I mean, everything and it's challenged a lot of my maybe hive mind thinking that you get from kind of these small egg, you know, niche group, circles, and, that's why I hang around. I've just learned a ton, shifted my point of view a lot on a lot of different things. So great question.
[00:33:42] Vance Crowe:
I think it's open for anybody. You don't even have to be an ag to be around ag Twitter because you as long as you bring something to the table, a good argument. So, man, this has been great. I'm so glad you were willing to come on. If people wanted to learn more about your vegetables, if they wanted buy from you or they wanted to learn about you where should they go?
[00:33:59] Steve Strasheim:
You're gonna have to come to a local farmer's market because we don't ship lettuce real well so, twistedriverfarm.com is our website. We're on Facebook. We're on Instagram Twitter again at, TRF Yeoman Farmer, and, that's the best way to get a hold of me. I don't have much else to promote. I don't have a SoundCloud or a course to buy. So, that's what you're gonna have to deal with. So
[00:34:21] Vance Crowe:
Well, come for Steve's, very simple, very polite, but very probing questions. Thank you so much, Steve. If you've been thinking about doing a legacy interview, I strongly recommend you either go to legacy interviews.com or just call us directly. 314-866-2991. As you can see, we have a new background. We have continued to work on how can we make these more beautiful, how can we make the focus on the guest, something truly profound? And as I said on x this week, we finally set up this studio in a way where it is actually just me and the guest in the room. We have the cameras there, and, everybody else is away in another room. And it is an amazing experience to just sit with 2 people, talking about their life stories, capturing all these experiences, and putting it on video so that future generations know who their grandmother was, who their father was. So if you're thinking about doing that, go to legacy interviews.com.
Also, I'm gonna say this again. If you are interested in getting Bitcoin, you've not really known how to do it, go out and get a lightning wallet. And if you're in Canada, get a wallet of Satoshi. If you're in the US, get an AlbieGo wallet. And, if you send me your receive address, I already saw on the comments that, Jay Curtis is pumping me for, some satoshis. If you get a a, lightning wallet and you send me the receive address, I will send you 500 satoshis if you're, among the top the the next 9 people to do it because there's only 9 left. So, that'll be an interesting thing. You can either send it to me on act@vancecro [email protected].
Alright. Join us next week for another Ag Tribes report with guest cohost, Steve Conaway. So thank you so much for joining, and as always, feel free to
Introduction to the Ag Tribes Report
Vegetable Farming in Northern Iowa
Impact of ICE Raids on Agriculture
RFK Jr.'s Potential Impact on Agriculture
Challenges in Brazilian Soybean Production
The New Right and Factory Farming
Bitcoin Land Price Report
The Peter Thiel Paradox
Worthy Adversaries Discussion
