In this episode of the Ag Tribes Report, host Vance Crow welcomes Jason Mauck, a US farmer and innovative thinker in agriculture, to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing the industry. Jason shares insights into his 'farm weird' philosophy, which emphasizes regenerative practices and polyculture systems to optimize yields and resilience. The conversation delves into the impact of recent policy changes, such as Trump's ICE raid reversals and the EPA's biofuel mandates, on the agricultural sector. Jason offers his perspective on the need for diversity in farming practices and the importance of understanding the motivations behind agricultural decisions.
The episode also explores the volatility in the cattle market, the USDA's efforts to combat the screw worm threat, and the implications of Bitcoin on land prices. Jason shares his unique approach to farming, advocating for polycropping and questioning the widespread adoption of cover crops. The discussion highlights the importance of innovation and adaptability in agriculture, as well as the need for farmers to manage natural resources effectively. Vance and Jason also touch on the significance of community and collaboration in driving agricultural progress, inviting listeners to engage with new ideas and approaches to farming.
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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. Bring the wisdom of Legacy Interviews to your next agricultural conference with a keynote by Vance Crow. Listen on for a preview of one of Vance's most popular offerings, my grandfather's axe.
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Someone once told me the greatest threat to our civilization is our inability to pass down our institutions. That's exactly what's happening to agriculture. Farmer led organizations even the farms themselves are struggling to keep young people engaged and those that can't end up faltering even going away. So many conversations about succession focus on the legal or accounting side of it, but in my grandfather's acts, I offer principles for starting conversations that will help your organization or farm survive the test of time. I give audiences tangible ways to discover the motivations of others, to delegate power so new leaders can emerge, and to identify a path to succession even if one isn't obvious. This talk will empower your audience to begin some of the most important conversations of their lives so that what they've built can be passed on and we can preserve the culture of agriculture.
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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.
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Welcome to the Ag Tribes Report. I'm your host, Vance Crow. Each week, I bring on a cohost to represent the perspectives of one of the many ag tribes that collectively make up US and Canadian agriculture. This week, we have Jason Mach, a US farmer and data driven innovator reshaping agriculture through regenerative practices and polyculture systems under his farm weird philosophy. As founder of Constant Canopy, he pioneers diverse crop systems to optimize yields and resilience while sharing insights on agricultural innovations through his social media presence. Jason, welcome to the Ag Tribes Report.
[00:02:11] Unknown:
Thanks for having me on here, Vance.
[00:02:13] Unknown:
So, what is going on? How are how are your crops growing in this farm weird system in Indiana right now?
[00:02:22] Unknown:
Well, it's been, they're actually fantastic. You know, we lost maybe sixty, eighty acres have drowned out on our 3,000 this week. We got about eight to nine inches of rain in a hurry. We got six one night. I think that storm Friday dropped four in maybe an hour. I mean, it was just epic. And then yesterday, we had sustained winds, 70 mile an hour for probably ten minutes. I've never seen a blow like that. So I don't know who's pissed, but something's going on right now. It needs to stop. So
[00:02:55] Unknown:
And is your, so for people that don't know about your kind of farm weird practices, what's your, like, thirty second this is how we do it differently here?
[00:03:05] Unknown:
So, you know, still drain out of a sandbox when I was two, then I was a landscape contractor, then my dad passed, and I I came to the farm, and I have a completely different lens. So other people are comfortable with scorched earth and this this, like, let's make one thing grow to this maximum. I'm like, this is so wasteful. If we could let everything live, let's do the mathematics behind it. And when you do that, you can actually get a lot more value out of each plant and sequence them, prime things. And it's just a lot more complex way of farming that's actually takes on weather and it and and it you can create a lot more profit with it.
[00:03:47] Unknown:
Well, for anybody that, is not been a long time listener to the podcast, Jason's been on several times. He is a good friend of mine, and he's what I call a chaos, which is one of these people that goes out into the chaos, and they can see things that look crazy to everybody else. But every once in a while, they'll able to take some of these ideas and bring them back. And, it is fascinating to watch Jason and, his approach to agriculture. So, hopefully, he can bring some of that farm weird to this week's Ag Tribes report. So jumping right in, we're gonna talk about Trump's policy whiplash on the ice raids, that are gonna hit farms. The EPA's record breaking biofuels mandate that have agriculture and oil at odds, cattle market reaching astronomical highs that could reshape the industry. And if we have time, we're gonna talk about the USDA's plan to unleash sterile flies against an ancient enemy. We're also gonna explore the Bitcoin land price report, hear Jason's take on the Peter Thiel paradox, and learn about his worthy adversary. And we're gonna try to do it in just thirty minutes. So let's get started.
Headline number one, Trump reverses ice raid and, pauses on farm. The policy whiplash is hitting agriculture. On June 16, the Trump administration reversed a brief pause on ICE raids targeting agricultural businesses after just four days of conflicting directives. The policy flip flop began on June 12 when Trump announced on Truth Social that raids were harming very good long time workers in agriculture following pressures from agricultural secretary, Brooke Rollins, who warned labor shortages with 25 to 45% of places like Ventura County farm workers skipping work due to fear.
But after the pushback from hard line adviser, Stephen Miller, DHS reversed the pause on June 16, instructing ICE to resume raids and meet Miller's target of 3,000 daily arrests. The reversal came after major operations, including over 70 arrests at a Nebraska meat packing plant and multiple detentions at California farms with farm workers hiding in fields and harvest disrupted. Actual deportations of agricultural workers remain difficult to quantify, but farm industry advocates report that the psychological impact has been more severe than actual removals with absenteeism ranking all the way up to 45% in some regions.
So, Jason, ag is, deeply conflicted over this. Some people think if it doesn't matter how much you pay American workers, you're not gonna find any anybody to come out and do this work. And others say the reason Americans won't do the work is because you've got cheap farm labor to come in and fill the gap. Where are you at on this?
[00:06:30] Unknown:
Well, you can be really disruptive in a in a hurry, but, you know, it really comes down to putting in the work and finding the people. I think you can I think you can now now there is scale beyond what you can find locally? But if you just need a couple couple people, you know, if you're active in the community, you're gonna find those people. But, you know, we've got 12,000 hogs. Wilmer, he's a legal citizen, but he's from Honduras, and he's got a a a bunch of friends that come out that are legal. And so we we use them. We have a good relationship, but we've been working with them for ten years now or something like that. So, I don't know. You know? At the end of the day, you gotta be you gotta be legal.
[00:07:15] Unknown:
Yeah. When I talk to farmers in all different situations, there are people that are, like, you know, doing apple harvest where they're like, hey. Our window to get all this done is two weeks, and there are not a bunch of people that we can go in town and go get these laborers. So from their perspective, they're saying we can't do this. The flip side is, how are you ever gonna do this if, if you if the wages are always depressed by people willing to pay get paid less because they're sending their US dollars depressed by people willing to pay get paid less because they're sending their US dollars home where those US dollars buy a lot more? Is there any way out of this situation, or is this an inevitable, casualty of of being at the top of the of the pyramid in terms of countries?
[00:07:52] Unknown:
I mean, technology is gonna come in, and and I think we're gonna be able to automate a lot of things. But some things you can't get around. But, you know, if you're if you're racing to the bottom, really throwing the product out there and you need the cheap labor, then until that comes, then that's pretty much your option. And, you know, the other thing is more retail or you pick or something like that, but, you know, that's not realistic solution for everything.
[00:08:18] Unknown:
To me, this is people look at the immigration issue, and they don't realize it is never gonna get solved until we stop inflating our currency. And US, we have inflation here. We can see that, but every single other country has it way worse. So there is such a strong incentive for people to come into this country and be way more willing to work here than other people for lower rates because they can send that money home, and it buys so much more. I don't think we solve this problem until we get hard money.
[00:08:45] Unknown:
Yeah. And I don't wanna sound like a a crusty old guy or whatever, but, you know, it we're you can get way more work out of someone that that's motivated to work. I mean, and sometimes it might be five or 10 times more, and, that's just simple economics.
[00:09:05] Unknown:
Alright. Everyone's on the phone. Right? Headline number two, EPA proposes record high biofuels mandate. On June 13, the EPA proposed record high bio fuel blending volumes under the renewable fuel standards for 2026 and 2027, up from 22,330,000,000 in 2025. The plan emphasizes biomass based diesel and reduces RINs for imported biofuels to prioritize domestic production. RINs are renewable identification numbers or tradable credits in The US biofuel systems under the RFS standards. Rising RIN prices indicate that market expects increased demand for biofuels, making those credits more valuable. The proposal to reduce, I'm gonna just say RINs, for imported biofuels could make domestic RINs more valuable by limiting foreign competition. Ag secretary, Brooke Rollins, and Iowa officials praise the increased demand for corn and soybeans supporting farmers and rural economies.
Biofuel producers like Green Plains saw stock gains with RIN prices rising. However, small refiners face high compliance costs, risking closures, while critics highlight the environmental trade offs, including unsustainable land and water use for biofuel crops. Jason, what's your take on the massive biofuel mandates?
[00:10:29] Unknown:
I don't know. I don't think I really have a big take here. I think I think there's gotta be something, but it's you know, it it just seems like it never actually filters down to the farmer. It's just a bunch of schemes for the for the men institutes.
[00:10:46] Unknown:
Oh, so you're saying even though they're increasing demand by, doing this, it's not actually making the farmers better. It's somebody else in the chain is is making that money.
[00:10:55] Unknown:
Yeah. But, you know, that's just that's just the way ag works. It don't matter what the price is. Everyone's you know, a man is the only as faithful as his option. So set the bar, and everyone will get their piece a little bit more.
[00:11:09] Unknown:
I would have thought that you'd had a harder hard line on on biofuels that that, any of these mandates is increasing the the desire to do monocropping as opposed to doing more complex, sophisticated things.
[00:11:22] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at the yeah. I mean, we need diversity more than anything. We need processing. America needs to make things instead of just come up with something on paper that that looks better.
[00:11:34] Unknown:
Yeah. And somebody on somewhere down the line is paying for this. Right? That just because they increase the mandate, it means, like, you know, when you start mandating ethanol go into gasoline that people put in their cars, that money isn't coming from from thin air. It just means that anybody that drives a vehicle is paying for that. And and, it's, I guess, it's one way to make sure that you have the farm system stay exactly the way that it is.
[00:11:57] Unknown:
Yeah. We're just buying time on this corn, man. I and, you know, we just keep on inventing things, you know, because it's just more units for for the for the industry that supports it. So, yeah, I don't know.
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Cattle markets hit astronomical highs. 248, dollars and 75¢ per 100 weight at the Yankton, cattle market with steers selling for this huge, price in Yankton and South Dakota, a stark example of the extreme volatility hitting the industry. US cattle herd is a more than six decade was in a six decade low due to years of droughts, higher input costs, and profitability challenges. But when I heard that these high prices were going up, there were all these people out there saying this is a terrible thing. This is gonna cause consolidation, and I didn't get it. So I looked into it a little bit. And one of the reasons that, small producers suffer despite high prices is that small producers often can't capture these peak prices due to the cash flow pressures that force them to sell when they need money for loan payments or feed bills, not when the market prices peak. Large operations can afford to hold cattle for longer waiting for optimal pricing while small ranchers, have they lack the capital to feed their animals through all these dips.
Kate, the meat lady, who on x, warns that long term consequences, they, quote, packers don't just get to pass on those costs. That's not the way it works. Your processor will start importing more and more as we're seeing from grinding meat to higher quality beef from Australia, and US will lose market share. Your smaller regions will close doors. Big packers will close inefficient plants. And in three to five years, there will be a flood of the same guys beating their chest about the cattlemen making money and and f and f the packers right now who will be on they're crying that they were not able to make it when the margins flips. So there's a lot of people out here that, even though the price of cattle is going way up, they seem to be pretty concerned about, about what that means for for the long term viability of the cattle market.
Jason, you've been in a world where, where hogs, is now, is a vertically integrated thing. What do you think about these cattle prices, and and what's gonna happen to the to the market if you have these giant price swings?
[00:14:19] Unknown:
Well, I I you know, maybe a tangent here, but the first part of that where, you know, we're paying for feed and all this stuff. You know, this is a big part of FarmWhere. Just can we multipurpose our land and the people farm in small acreage that has a small cattle herd? We gotta figure out ways to get those herds out on the land and grow corn and do other things, and that's going to really create resilience and staying power and scale scale that down. And that's that's what we need is we need a lot of people with 50 cows instead of, you know, these conglomerate feedlots.
[00:14:55] Unknown:
I think a lot of cattle producers would say, like, yeah. You can, be producing smaller amounts, but you still gotta sell them into a market where somebody else is able to do this at scale. And, you're not getting that much more for for producing them, you know, the in the smaller scale way. Yeah.
[00:15:16] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, again, it it goes back to design. What what are you what are you actually feeding them? Are you feeding them what they'll treat and, you know, stuff off the grain dryer, or are you buying it retail and selling your products wholesale? I don't know.
[00:15:34] Unknown:
Alright. Well, let's move on to headline number four. The USDA reopens the sterile fly facility to combat the screw worm threat. The USDA announced plans to reopen more air force base near Edinburgh, Texas with an $8,500,000 investment to deploy sterile flies against the new world screw worm, a parasitic fly, that is that was eradicated from The US in the nineteen sixties, but now spreading northwards from Mexico. The screw worm causes severe tissue damage to livestock and a mortality rate of fifty to seventy percent in untreated herds and a potential economic loss of over $9,000,000,000 nationally.
The sterile insect technique releases sterilized male flies to mate with wild females, producing no offspring and disrupting the pest life cycle. Moore Air Force Base was originally used for this purpose in 1963, helping to eradicate screw worm through innovative biological control methods, but recent detections 700 miles south of Texas have triggered urgency for this proactive defense. Jason, is, opening a sterile fly facility a type of farm weird concept, or is this, Frankenstein?
[00:16:44] Unknown:
Oh, Frankenstein for me. I don't understand it enough, but seems like we need to let nature take the course a little bit. I don't know.
[00:16:54] Unknown:
Really? So you think, like, just just, no no interventions? Just let the screwworm come and and, knock away at the Texas herd?
[00:17:03] Unknown:
I I don't know. I I I was, I I don't know. I don't know. But, yeah, we don't need to, like, engineer some GMO bug to, like, fight it or something like that. So, you know, we're we're messing with things a lot sometimes.
[00:17:25] Unknown:
Yeah. So I looked into the screw room because I've heard people talking about this. I was actually at an event last week, and there were some, venture capitalists that were like, hey. I've heard this issue is really big. Is there where can we invest into this? And so it's clearly going to be an issue. And, you know, when we think about Central America and Mexico, those cattle, they really do, they are hurt. Their entire herds are really getting decimated by this. You gotta do something, I think. Like, I think, like, this is a part of, of, like, national herd upkeep or, you know, national defense is to try and do what you can to keep, parasitic diseases out. I to I you know? And I'm I I'm probably more open to GMO than you are.
[00:18:07] Unknown:
Mhmm. Yeah. I I I don't know. I don't know. Not gonna give you a good take on this.
[00:18:16] Unknown:
Yeah. Clearly not. So, I mean, like, if this was going on with with, hogs, I mean, you you you protect, you have biofacilities there, like, like, what do you think? You've gotta have some kind of a take. There's there's just no nothing you should do. Just let it run its course?
[00:18:37] Unknown:
Well, what what do they thrive in? Like, the the problem is, like, there's one hot center, and then somebody will just turn it into this fear fear mongering where it just goes beyond where it it's really relevant.
[00:18:53] Unknown:
I can appreciate that you like, right now, the reason you're not able to give a good take is because you can't come up with anything creative if you don't understand the problem. Right. Like, if you don't know, like, is it that it's a drought? Is it that it's, like, things are too wet? Is it that cattle are too close together? Like, without understanding the actual issue, the only thing that's that's given to you can either be thumbs up or thumbs down, and that's not a very good thing to, to analyze a problem with.
[00:19:20] Unknown:
Right. Right. Yeah.
[00:19:23] Unknown:
Shit. I'm pretty good at this farm weird stuff.
[00:19:27] Unknown:
I'm not good at everything.
[00:19:29] Unknown:
That's gonna do it for this week's headlines. If you have stories that you think we should be covering on the Ag Tribes report, you can send it to at Vance Crowe on x or Vance at Legacy interviews. Now onto the Bitcoin land price report. Last week, Bitcoin sat at a 107,000, and today we're sitting at a 105,000, which is down 2% from last week. So, Jason, you live in Delaware County, Indiana. How much does an acre of good quality farmland go for up there?
[00:20:02] Unknown:
We had a auction, 560 acres go for $18.05 about three weeks ago.
[00:20:09] Unknown:
Wow. And, and that seem high to you? Did that seem the right price to you? What did that feel like?
[00:20:15] Unknown:
Yeah. It's way out of reach. I mean, it makes no logical sense. You pay 6% interest on that. You're paying a thousand before you put a dollar towards principal. I mean, it doesn't make any logical sense
[00:20:26] Unknown:
if you're going to farm corn and beans on there. Or Are they going to? I mean, do you think it's gonna stay that, or is this going to be turned into houses and and, take it out of It's staying farmland.
[00:20:39] Unknown:
Somebody that has a big, egg factory over in Ohio, does very well bought it. And second in line, there was a big group of, of Amish. I don't know if it's that Amish church, but they were running it up trying to get it. And that's a big deal. I mean, whether it's the Church of Latter day Saints or Amish or or, you know, what whatever. There's just a lot of, lot of, competing competing bids getting it up there.
[00:21:08] Unknown:
Yeah. And people that can work together can pay a lot more for it. Alright. So let's run this through. If, Bitcoin's at a 105,000 and land was at 18,000, that means that, point $1.07 Bitcoin would buy you an acre of farm ground in Delaware, Indiana. Or in other words, 1 Bitcoin would buy you 5.83 acres of, of land. What do you what do you think about that, Jason? How does that price comparison in Bitcoin strike you?
[00:21:38] Unknown:
Wish I would have bought it ten years ago, but, you know, it is it feels just like that acre of land at this point.
[00:21:47] Unknown:
Do you own any Bitcoin now? I don't. I'd like to. I mean, this is one of those things that for an experimental guy, just buying a $100 worth and then figuring out how do I get it how do I buy it, and then how do I get it from the exchange to a wallet would would be something, that once you got that education, then you'd be like, oh, I can do this. I can do this over and over and over again. Yeah. You wanna you wanna do that after the show? You wanna buy a $100 worth of Bitcoin?
[00:22:14] Unknown:
Sure.
[00:22:15] Unknown:
Alright. Great. Well, if we do, we will, use the river, which is where I buy my Bitcoin, and I'll put a link in the show notes. If you buy your Bitcoin on using that, that link, you will both, use a great product, but you'll also support the show. Alright. Moving on now to the Peter Thiel paradox. This is where I'm gonna ask Jason, what is one thing that you believe that almost no one you know agrees with you on?
[00:22:43] Unknown:
Yeah. So it's it's let live. That's what Farm Weird is all about. And I you know, what what I believe is that monocropping is a huge waste of our natural resources, and you saw it this week. I mean, the water's running off. It's killing crops because we're basically dropping a a baby a baby boy. You just had a baby. We're dropping it right by the fire firehouse, garage door. And then when it gets ran over, we just, you know, we just complained to all our friends that the weather sucks or the market sucks. And I just think that we can take on weather. We can do a lot more with our assets if we figure out how to grow multiple things at once. And not even I I I'm even against not against cover crops, but it's just not a financial advantage. There might be some long term things, but, you know, what I do is figure out the math and science behind growing multiple things at once and let them live their life out. You know, something like stock cropper, we can grow 20 things at once, and they're all growing at the same time.
That's the only way we're gonna be able to, a, get young people on a farm and, b, have a chance.
[00:23:49] Unknown:
So you said something you said a couple of things that are pretty interesting there, but the cover crops one, I think, is pretty countercultural because this has become huge. This is like everybody saying, hey. The only way you're gonna increase carbon in your soil, this is the way you're gonna, make sure your organic matter is going up is if you do cover crops. You're not for cover crops?
[00:24:08] Unknown:
I mean, some people use it well, and some people need it, you know, with specific use. But for the most part, people exploit the system. You know, they're half assed doing it. My dad always said, if you're gonna do anything, do it don't do it half assed. I just see people, you know, plant rye in November, and then they kill it off before it even grows. And then they cash some $50 an acre check or whatever it is. And then so they bought the cover crop seed. They bought the glyphosate to kill it, and, you know, it just really didn't do anything. And, you know, what I do is I have a significant cash cover crop that I can harvest and create, you know, $5,600 of revenue per acre, and I've figured out a way to, sustain soybean yields and lower the cost of production on that. And I can't do that if I just kill it off early.
And then the other thing, when I'm harvesting, I'm actually creating a cover crop with harvest loss. So, you know, $15.20 bucks an acre in wheat, and, I have a cover crop that I didn't have to pay somebody, and I didn't have to kill it.
[00:25:09] Unknown:
Man, this is truly countercultural because I remember, when it was seeming like, big ag finally capitulated, and they they gave in to cover crops, and they started supporting it. But then you realize, actually, if you're selling glyphosate, cover crops are a great thing. Right? You you get somebody to go out there and they plant a thing that they're not actually trying to grow, and then when you wanna terminate it so you can plant into it, you just knock it all down. In the, polycropping system, what is the first one out of the ground? What are you what are you able to plant that you don't have to just kill with glyphosate?
[00:25:43] Unknown:
Wheat. Wheat for the most part. I mean, we do this alley crop corn is has huge legs where we're, you know, growing a six significant cover crop and wider, wider corn rows, but blocks of corn. You know, it's all evolved. But, you know, going back to $18,000 an acre, you know, we're all competing. So, you know, we've got to whether it's pumping out yield or or creating more value for our product, we've gotta compete. And and it's just you're really behind the eight ball if you're delayed planting. And if you're starting something from seed later than everyone else, then you're actually more vulnerable to weather than you are of maybe if you you could have planted it earlier.
So you know? And and then you got the whole drought thing. You know? We're actual we're not farmers are getting paid commission on the water that they can sell and, you know, the sunlight that they can capture. And, there's just another dimension of efficiency if we if we figure out the math behind letting live.
[00:26:50] Unknown:
Wow. That is a fascinating way to do to say that. Farmers are getting a commission on the sunlight and water that they can capture.
[00:26:58] Unknown:
Yeah. We we get to sell 13% of some, 15% of others. And if you've got multiple crops and they're growing, substantially way before anyone else, then I'm, you know, I'm actually making money when when everyone else is just working it for the third time trying to grow this glorious corn crop. And you see it right now. You know, we got eight inches of rain. I'd say 20% of the landscape is dead right now because we had nothing significant to you gotta stop the water where it is, and you gotta figure out a ways to slow it, spread it, and get it in the soil. And you can't do that by killing something and then starting something else. You've gotta let things grow and have something substantial out there.
I don't care what we're doing. You know, we could do we could do anything a lot better if we if we just think in a different lens.
[00:27:48] Unknown:
And what is your crop doing in all this rain? Are you are you faring any better than the monocroppers?
[00:27:53] Unknown:
Yeah. We're gonna blow the doors off our records this year. Our wheat is phenomenal. Our beans are phenomenal in there. And and and we've got several fields where you know, one down the road here, we got a 150 acre field. Half of it's monocrop soybeans, no tilled. The other half is this relay. Probably 40% of it has had three or four foot of water on it in the monocrop beans because all the water just ran off after an inch. Didn't lose anything in the relay. We're gonna harvest 100 bushel wheat out of it, and our beans will probably kick the shit out of the monocrops by 25, 30 bushels. So we're looking at $5.06, $7,800 more per acre.
And it's not, you know, 5 or 600. It it's like this might be in the red $200, and this might be in the black $500. And that's that's that's the whole thing about being competitive is we can't just rely on crop insurance or some government subsidy or some biomass standard or whatever it is to get us whole. We've gotta innovate on our farm and figure out how to be profitable, you know, if you're gonna still be doing this.
[00:28:56] Unknown:
What percentage of your acreage is in this, polycropping system?
[00:29:01] Unknown:
We're at 400 right now out of our 3,000 wheat and beans, but we're doing alley crop corn. We're doing some wet bale triticale, which, I'm really excited about what we're doing with that. So we're we'll grow, triticale up to about my chin, and we'll cut it on May 10, and we'll bale it. And we got about 400 bales when we planted corn in there. And with with the moisture, I think that corn will be just as good as our regular corn. So, you know, the market value of all them bales are about 6 or $800 an acre, and that'll feed a cattle herd. So we'll take that wet bale biomass, and then we'll take all of our, screenings from our grain dryer. So we'll run, you know, half a million bushels of corn through there, and we might have 20 thou ten, twenty thousand bushel of of corn hearts and bee's wings that we can mix with the biomass, and you feed cattle for, like, next to nothing.
So it's just, resourcefulness. You know, Jared McDaniel's a real good guy about growing stuff all the time and feeding in his cattle. And when we got away and we got into special eight specialization in ag, not only did you lower the value of your corn because you didn't own the livestock to get it in there to value add, but then you took the manure off the farm. So you kinda got hit two or three different times, and and and we're just becoming very, you know, reliant on this welfare welfare system to become whole. And I think the next step is the the the whole structure of the pork industry, which no one owns their pigs. We don't own our pigs. That's coming to ag. And the problem, as I said, people will love it because, you know, they might park a new John Deere tractor in there. They bring your seed. They give you your crop and crop protection, and you're just like, oh, just do what I always did. I just don't have the risk.
And that's not my future. I'll fight.
[00:30:50] Unknown:
And,
[00:30:51] Unknown:
do you when do you think the 400 acres will turn into 3,000 acres that you'll be able to implement this for? The you know, that's never the goal. And, you know, I would say that I've scaled this to over a 100,000 acres when I when I look at my all the people that I've persuaded to do it on their farm. So I scale exponentially just on my influence, and it's never my goal to do one thing. I mean, that's it goes against everything that I that I wanna do. I just I I wanna come up and and and do a lot of things, and then by watching it come up with better and better ideas year after year out. And and and then, you know, my goal is to have 10 or 20 different concepts in our farm that are substantially better than just planting a seed and praying.
[00:31:37] Unknown:
Alright, man. Well, I'm gonna give you a straight nine point zero on your Peter Thiel paradox because, it's not fair to penalize you that you've convinced me a long time ago. I got to see your field day. We've known each other for a long time, and and, I think I think you do actually believe things that nobody else agrees with you on. Alright. Moving on to the worthy adversary section. This is where we, try and get out of our ideological echo chambers by by trying to focus on who is somebody out there that you respect but you strongly disagree with.
[00:32:09] Unknown:
I'm gonna go with Randy Dowdy. And,
[00:32:14] Unknown:
and and the disservice, you know, we sell this dream and and Well, first, who is Randy Dowdy? He's one of the the greatest high efficient farm, corn farmers in the country, in the world, maybe.
[00:32:25] Unknown:
Sure. And I and I'm sure he's a great guy and he does value it, but the disservice is, you know, if you seen Talladega nights, you know that Ricky Bobby, if you don't chew red, then f you. And and these people, you know, they get sponsored and and, you know, their crops are on IV, and and it's this perceptive play that, you know, if you would just farm like me, you could have 600 bushel corn too. And that's a big disservice to farming because going back to, you know, farmers get paid on commission. A lot of people don't have irrigation and and unlimited funds because sponsors just know that that there's such a a big big mouthpiece to to their sales. And the the services, they get all these people to pay $5,000 to be on a Zoom call with them to say, hey. Throw the kitchen sink at it.
And and then the reality is we've gotta manage our free things way more than the the shit that you gotta buy.
[00:33:24] Unknown:
What does that mean, manage the free things?
[00:33:27] Unknown:
Water, sunlight, sequencing plants, time. Time is the most valuable thing. It's just always be doing something, you know, on the land. But, you know, this idea that I'm just gonna, you know, go to Florida, and then I'm I'm gonna grease the planter and do I'm gonna do everything right. And then, you know, if if mother nature doesn't work out, then then it was her fault. You know? And it's just it's just it just propels this idea that that we're gonna solve everything and yield. We're gonna feed the world, and we need to figure out how to feed our family, feed our community, and and kinda do you know, I'm an old soul, but I I see the future, and I I don't like it. So I think we've gotta create our own future.
[00:34:10] Unknown:
And we'll ask that. I'm gonna add Randy Dowdy to the, list of worthy adversaries that you can find on my x, if you wanna see a list of people. I think that is some of the best follows on x because it's constant churn there. A lot of people believe in a lot of different things. Alright. Well, Jason, I wanna thank you for coming on. I did invite you on this week. Originally, I was gonna have John Kemp. That didn't work out. And so then I was like, oh, well, Jason has his field day coming on. So I'd love to give you a chance to talk about your field day. Where is it? Who should come? What's what's going on with that?
[00:34:45] Unknown:
Yeah. So Friday tomorrow is our VIP, which we'll have a really nice dinner. First, we start with a golf round, then the VIP dinner, then a private tour, and then Saturday is the main event. I've got 10 different projects around the farm all demonstrating how you can let live, how you can have multiple things growing, creating value on your farm, not just the revenue side, but the ancillary benefits, you know, soil health, soil wealth, livestock integration. And I'm inviting all my friends that that believe in the system, and and it's a it's a paid ticket event. It's $99 again. VIP is $3.49.
But but I love it because everyone that's going to be there you know, we didn't pull our hands to get CUE credits or anything like that. They wanna be there. They think this way, and we're creating our own tribe. And that's the only way that we're really gonna make a difference is through numbers and and and sharing and group think and and kinda bottom up. So they ain't gonna come from top down. We're we're not we're not doing anything. You know, we're not gonna get anywhere with that.
[00:35:57] Unknown:
So what's the kind of person that shows up? Are these gonna be a bunch of people with dreadlocks and, driving Priuses, or who shows up to a farm weird
[00:36:06] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, if if you ask the people around here, they think it's just gonna be incense candles and, you know, hippies and all this shit. But it's actually the people that just like to think, and they like to try things. And, you know, they've they're in the grind. They they wake up, and they they wanna farm in a way, they're looking at their kids, and they actually you know, tough love is actually the real love, and and you've got to be engaged in farming if you want to give that to the next generation. These are the the people that make that a top priority.
[00:36:40] Unknown:
Yeah. I think the best example of the type of person that comes to your field day I I've come before. I, I love it, but it is a guy named Wes Carney. I did a podcast with him last year at Zach Smith's, podcast. He is like an engineering type that probably built with Legos. Right? But, like, he looks at the world. He sees he's like, oh, there's a different way to do things. I can experiment. Great guy to talk to you. And when you find out that at the farm weird events, it's like hundreds of West Kearneys. Everybody there has a purpose. They're not just showing up for the free seed hat or the CEUs. It's I I can't recommend it enough. We just had a new baby boy, so I'm not going anywhere. But, I would encourage anybody to go to this. It's it's an experiment e experience even if you're not farming. You you get to learn and see things you you don't get to see every day. And it's turned for me, it's turned it into this huge resource pool. And I think the more and more people that join it and and they
[00:37:37] Unknown:
make those connection relationships with another, they get to access one another and and that's a huge, huge value to the farmer. You know, when you can you know someone's very good at something, and you can reach out to them, and they're gonna be forthright in their knowledge. And that's that's why we do it.
[00:37:56] Unknown:
And you are planning to have the communist Zach Smith's, stock cropper on on, display there?
[00:38:03] Unknown:
Yeah. You're talking about a tough week for that. I, I had it in the low spot because I was trying to grow this 600 bushel corn down there, and I had water gushing down there and chickens in there. And and, boy, I learned a valuable lesson. Let's just put it along a little bit higher ground.
[00:38:23] Unknown:
So for anybody that doesn't know, that is the stock cropping system is where you actually graze animals in between rows of corn, and you see how well the the the crops, respond, how well the animals are doing. It's a fascinating thing, and, I I hear Zach Smith, the stock cropper, will be there. So alright. Jason, thank you so much for, for coming on. I really appreciate all your time.
[00:38:48] Unknown:
Thank you.
[00:38:50] Unknown:
Alright. That's gonna do it for this week's Ag Tribes report. But before I go, I, I wanted to mention something I've been working on. A couple of years ago, I had a business partner, and, he and I worked great together. And then it was time for him to head out into the world, and he started his own biotech firm. And then he went around the world and raised, tens of millions of dollars. And when he came back, he assembled a team of scientists, and he said, Vance, I want my scientists to be able to communicate the way you taught me to communicate. So I put together a class. It was five sessions, and it was great. We covered everything from how to negotiate to how to introduce yourself, storytelling, how to ask better questions, how to manage conflict, and how do big organizations like bureaucracies make decisions.
It turns out a hedge fund here in Saint Louis heard about the class and invited me in to do it, and they have told me in no uncertain terms that they want to do this for more of their people. They wanna do the class in a bigger way, and, I've really been encouraged to move this forward. So many people have asked me, questions like, hey. Have you ever written a book or have you ever done something? I think I'm going to do this class. I'm certainly gonna do another one in Saint Louis, but I'm thinking about doing one online. The in person class is a thousand dollars a seat. I don't think I'll charge that for online. But if you have ever thought about, taking a communications class, with me, you wanna learn how to articulate your point, how to communicate with people in a deep and profound way, then, send me an email, [email protected], and I will put you on a list.
And we'll figure out how many people we think we could do for an online class and, the right price, and, we'll go from there. I'm not sure when I'm gonna do it, but I I have that little voice in my head say, hey. You should you should really throw this out to podcast listeners. So send me a note, [email protected], and, I would love, to to put a put an online class for you. Also, if you're thinking about doing a legacy interview for your loved one, this is where I sit down with, individuals and couples to record their life stories. Then go to legacyinterviews.com and learn more about the service and about how we can record your loved one. Alright. That's gonna do it for this week's show. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you have a chance, go to Jason's, field day. It's gonna be great.
And, as always, feel free to disagree.
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. Bring the wisdom of Legacy Interviews to your next agricultural conference with a keynote by Vance Crow. Listen on for a preview of one of Vance's most popular offerings, my grandfather's axe.
[00:00:22] Unknown:
Someone once told me the greatest threat to our civilization is our inability to pass down our institutions. That's exactly what's happening to agriculture. Farmer led organizations even the farms themselves are struggling to keep young people engaged and those that can't end up faltering even going away. So many conversations about succession focus on the legal or accounting side of it, but in my grandfather's acts, I offer principles for starting conversations that will help your organization or farm survive the test of time. I give audiences tangible ways to discover the motivations of others, to delegate power so new leaders can emerge, and to identify a path to succession even if one isn't obvious. This talk will empower your audience to begin some of the most important conversations of their lives so that what they've built can be passed on and we can preserve the culture of agriculture.
[00:01:19] 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.
[00:01:33] Unknown:
Welcome to the Ag Tribes Report. I'm your host, Vance Crow. Each week, I bring on a cohost to represent the perspectives of one of the many ag tribes that collectively make up US and Canadian agriculture. This week, we have Jason Mach, a US farmer and data driven innovator reshaping agriculture through regenerative practices and polyculture systems under his farm weird philosophy. As founder of Constant Canopy, he pioneers diverse crop systems to optimize yields and resilience while sharing insights on agricultural innovations through his social media presence. Jason, welcome to the Ag Tribes Report.
[00:02:11] Unknown:
Thanks for having me on here, Vance.
[00:02:13] Unknown:
So, what is going on? How are how are your crops growing in this farm weird system in Indiana right now?
[00:02:22] Unknown:
Well, it's been, they're actually fantastic. You know, we lost maybe sixty, eighty acres have drowned out on our 3,000 this week. We got about eight to nine inches of rain in a hurry. We got six one night. I think that storm Friday dropped four in maybe an hour. I mean, it was just epic. And then yesterday, we had sustained winds, 70 mile an hour for probably ten minutes. I've never seen a blow like that. So I don't know who's pissed, but something's going on right now. It needs to stop. So
[00:02:55] Unknown:
And is your, so for people that don't know about your kind of farm weird practices, what's your, like, thirty second this is how we do it differently here?
[00:03:05] Unknown:
So, you know, still drain out of a sandbox when I was two, then I was a landscape contractor, then my dad passed, and I I came to the farm, and I have a completely different lens. So other people are comfortable with scorched earth and this this, like, let's make one thing grow to this maximum. I'm like, this is so wasteful. If we could let everything live, let's do the mathematics behind it. And when you do that, you can actually get a lot more value out of each plant and sequence them, prime things. And it's just a lot more complex way of farming that's actually takes on weather and it and and it you can create a lot more profit with it.
[00:03:47] Unknown:
Well, for anybody that, is not been a long time listener to the podcast, Jason's been on several times. He is a good friend of mine, and he's what I call a chaos, which is one of these people that goes out into the chaos, and they can see things that look crazy to everybody else. But every once in a while, they'll able to take some of these ideas and bring them back. And, it is fascinating to watch Jason and, his approach to agriculture. So, hopefully, he can bring some of that farm weird to this week's Ag Tribes report. So jumping right in, we're gonna talk about Trump's policy whiplash on the ice raids, that are gonna hit farms. The EPA's record breaking biofuels mandate that have agriculture and oil at odds, cattle market reaching astronomical highs that could reshape the industry. And if we have time, we're gonna talk about the USDA's plan to unleash sterile flies against an ancient enemy. We're also gonna explore the Bitcoin land price report, hear Jason's take on the Peter Thiel paradox, and learn about his worthy adversary. And we're gonna try to do it in just thirty minutes. So let's get started.
Headline number one, Trump reverses ice raid and, pauses on farm. The policy whiplash is hitting agriculture. On June 16, the Trump administration reversed a brief pause on ICE raids targeting agricultural businesses after just four days of conflicting directives. The policy flip flop began on June 12 when Trump announced on Truth Social that raids were harming very good long time workers in agriculture following pressures from agricultural secretary, Brooke Rollins, who warned labor shortages with 25 to 45% of places like Ventura County farm workers skipping work due to fear.
But after the pushback from hard line adviser, Stephen Miller, DHS reversed the pause on June 16, instructing ICE to resume raids and meet Miller's target of 3,000 daily arrests. The reversal came after major operations, including over 70 arrests at a Nebraska meat packing plant and multiple detentions at California farms with farm workers hiding in fields and harvest disrupted. Actual deportations of agricultural workers remain difficult to quantify, but farm industry advocates report that the psychological impact has been more severe than actual removals with absenteeism ranking all the way up to 45% in some regions.
So, Jason, ag is, deeply conflicted over this. Some people think if it doesn't matter how much you pay American workers, you're not gonna find any anybody to come out and do this work. And others say the reason Americans won't do the work is because you've got cheap farm labor to come in and fill the gap. Where are you at on this?
[00:06:30] Unknown:
Well, you can be really disruptive in a in a hurry, but, you know, it really comes down to putting in the work and finding the people. I think you can I think you can now now there is scale beyond what you can find locally? But if you just need a couple couple people, you know, if you're active in the community, you're gonna find those people. But, you know, we've got 12,000 hogs. Wilmer, he's a legal citizen, but he's from Honduras, and he's got a a a bunch of friends that come out that are legal. And so we we use them. We have a good relationship, but we've been working with them for ten years now or something like that. So, I don't know. You know? At the end of the day, you gotta be you gotta be legal.
[00:07:15] Unknown:
Yeah. When I talk to farmers in all different situations, there are people that are, like, you know, doing apple harvest where they're like, hey. Our window to get all this done is two weeks, and there are not a bunch of people that we can go in town and go get these laborers. So from their perspective, they're saying we can't do this. The flip side is, how are you ever gonna do this if, if you if the wages are always depressed by people willing to pay get paid less because they're sending their US dollars depressed by people willing to pay get paid less because they're sending their US dollars home where those US dollars buy a lot more? Is there any way out of this situation, or is this an inevitable, casualty of of being at the top of the of the pyramid in terms of countries?
[00:07:52] Unknown:
I mean, technology is gonna come in, and and I think we're gonna be able to automate a lot of things. But some things you can't get around. But, you know, if you're if you're racing to the bottom, really throwing the product out there and you need the cheap labor, then until that comes, then that's pretty much your option. And, you know, the other thing is more retail or you pick or something like that, but, you know, that's not realistic solution for everything.
[00:08:18] Unknown:
To me, this is people look at the immigration issue, and they don't realize it is never gonna get solved until we stop inflating our currency. And US, we have inflation here. We can see that, but every single other country has it way worse. So there is such a strong incentive for people to come into this country and be way more willing to work here than other people for lower rates because they can send that money home, and it buys so much more. I don't think we solve this problem until we get hard money.
[00:08:45] Unknown:
Yeah. And I don't wanna sound like a a crusty old guy or whatever, but, you know, it we're you can get way more work out of someone that that's motivated to work. I mean, and sometimes it might be five or 10 times more, and, that's just simple economics.
[00:09:05] Unknown:
Alright. Everyone's on the phone. Right? Headline number two, EPA proposes record high biofuels mandate. On June 13, the EPA proposed record high bio fuel blending volumes under the renewable fuel standards for 2026 and 2027, up from 22,330,000,000 in 2025. The plan emphasizes biomass based diesel and reduces RINs for imported biofuels to prioritize domestic production. RINs are renewable identification numbers or tradable credits in The US biofuel systems under the RFS standards. Rising RIN prices indicate that market expects increased demand for biofuels, making those credits more valuable. The proposal to reduce, I'm gonna just say RINs, for imported biofuels could make domestic RINs more valuable by limiting foreign competition. Ag secretary, Brooke Rollins, and Iowa officials praise the increased demand for corn and soybeans supporting farmers and rural economies.
Biofuel producers like Green Plains saw stock gains with RIN prices rising. However, small refiners face high compliance costs, risking closures, while critics highlight the environmental trade offs, including unsustainable land and water use for biofuel crops. Jason, what's your take on the massive biofuel mandates?
[00:10:29] Unknown:
I don't know. I don't think I really have a big take here. I think I think there's gotta be something, but it's you know, it it just seems like it never actually filters down to the farmer. It's just a bunch of schemes for the for the men institutes.
[00:10:46] Unknown:
Oh, so you're saying even though they're increasing demand by, doing this, it's not actually making the farmers better. It's somebody else in the chain is is making that money.
[00:10:55] Unknown:
Yeah. But, you know, that's just that's just the way ag works. It don't matter what the price is. Everyone's you know, a man is the only as faithful as his option. So set the bar, and everyone will get their piece a little bit more.
[00:11:09] Unknown:
I would have thought that you'd had a harder hard line on on biofuels that that, any of these mandates is increasing the the desire to do monocropping as opposed to doing more complex, sophisticated things.
[00:11:22] Unknown:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at the yeah. I mean, we need diversity more than anything. We need processing. America needs to make things instead of just come up with something on paper that that looks better.
[00:11:34] Unknown:
Yeah. And somebody on somewhere down the line is paying for this. Right? That just because they increase the mandate, it means, like, you know, when you start mandating ethanol go into gasoline that people put in their cars, that money isn't coming from from thin air. It just means that anybody that drives a vehicle is paying for that. And and, it's, I guess, it's one way to make sure that you have the farm system stay exactly the way that it is.
[00:11:57] Unknown:
Yeah. We're just buying time on this corn, man. I and, you know, we just keep on inventing things, you know, because it's just more units for for the for the industry that supports it. So, yeah, I don't know.
[00:12:12] Unknown:
Cattle markets hit astronomical highs. 248, dollars and 75¢ per 100 weight at the Yankton, cattle market with steers selling for this huge, price in Yankton and South Dakota, a stark example of the extreme volatility hitting the industry. US cattle herd is a more than six decade was in a six decade low due to years of droughts, higher input costs, and profitability challenges. But when I heard that these high prices were going up, there were all these people out there saying this is a terrible thing. This is gonna cause consolidation, and I didn't get it. So I looked into it a little bit. And one of the reasons that, small producers suffer despite high prices is that small producers often can't capture these peak prices due to the cash flow pressures that force them to sell when they need money for loan payments or feed bills, not when the market prices peak. Large operations can afford to hold cattle for longer waiting for optimal pricing while small ranchers, have they lack the capital to feed their animals through all these dips.
Kate, the meat lady, who on x, warns that long term consequences, they, quote, packers don't just get to pass on those costs. That's not the way it works. Your processor will start importing more and more as we're seeing from grinding meat to higher quality beef from Australia, and US will lose market share. Your smaller regions will close doors. Big packers will close inefficient plants. And in three to five years, there will be a flood of the same guys beating their chest about the cattlemen making money and and f and f the packers right now who will be on they're crying that they were not able to make it when the margins flips. So there's a lot of people out here that, even though the price of cattle is going way up, they seem to be pretty concerned about, about what that means for for the long term viability of the cattle market.
Jason, you've been in a world where, where hogs, is now, is a vertically integrated thing. What do you think about these cattle prices, and and what's gonna happen to the to the market if you have these giant price swings?
[00:14:19] Unknown:
Well, I I you know, maybe a tangent here, but the first part of that where, you know, we're paying for feed and all this stuff. You know, this is a big part of FarmWhere. Just can we multipurpose our land and the people farm in small acreage that has a small cattle herd? We gotta figure out ways to get those herds out on the land and grow corn and do other things, and that's going to really create resilience and staying power and scale scale that down. And that's that's what we need is we need a lot of people with 50 cows instead of, you know, these conglomerate feedlots.
[00:14:55] Unknown:
I think a lot of cattle producers would say, like, yeah. You can, be producing smaller amounts, but you still gotta sell them into a market where somebody else is able to do this at scale. And, you're not getting that much more for for producing them, you know, the in the smaller scale way. Yeah.
[00:15:16] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, again, it it goes back to design. What what are you what are you actually feeding them? Are you feeding them what they'll treat and, you know, stuff off the grain dryer, or are you buying it retail and selling your products wholesale? I don't know.
[00:15:34] Unknown:
Alright. Well, let's move on to headline number four. The USDA reopens the sterile fly facility to combat the screw worm threat. The USDA announced plans to reopen more air force base near Edinburgh, Texas with an $8,500,000 investment to deploy sterile flies against the new world screw worm, a parasitic fly, that is that was eradicated from The US in the nineteen sixties, but now spreading northwards from Mexico. The screw worm causes severe tissue damage to livestock and a mortality rate of fifty to seventy percent in untreated herds and a potential economic loss of over $9,000,000,000 nationally.
The sterile insect technique releases sterilized male flies to mate with wild females, producing no offspring and disrupting the pest life cycle. Moore Air Force Base was originally used for this purpose in 1963, helping to eradicate screw worm through innovative biological control methods, but recent detections 700 miles south of Texas have triggered urgency for this proactive defense. Jason, is, opening a sterile fly facility a type of farm weird concept, or is this, Frankenstein?
[00:16:44] Unknown:
Oh, Frankenstein for me. I don't understand it enough, but seems like we need to let nature take the course a little bit. I don't know.
[00:16:54] Unknown:
Really? So you think, like, just just, no no interventions? Just let the screwworm come and and, knock away at the Texas herd?
[00:17:03] Unknown:
I I don't know. I I I was, I I don't know. I don't know. But, yeah, we don't need to, like, engineer some GMO bug to, like, fight it or something like that. So, you know, we're we're messing with things a lot sometimes.
[00:17:25] Unknown:
Yeah. So I looked into the screw room because I've heard people talking about this. I was actually at an event last week, and there were some, venture capitalists that were like, hey. I've heard this issue is really big. Is there where can we invest into this? And so it's clearly going to be an issue. And, you know, when we think about Central America and Mexico, those cattle, they really do, they are hurt. Their entire herds are really getting decimated by this. You gotta do something, I think. Like, I think, like, this is a part of, of, like, national herd upkeep or, you know, national defense is to try and do what you can to keep, parasitic diseases out. I to I you know? And I'm I I'm probably more open to GMO than you are.
[00:18:07] Unknown:
Mhmm. Yeah. I I I don't know. I don't know. Not gonna give you a good take on this.
[00:18:16] Unknown:
Yeah. Clearly not. So, I mean, like, if this was going on with with, hogs, I mean, you you you protect, you have biofacilities there, like, like, what do you think? You've gotta have some kind of a take. There's there's just no nothing you should do. Just let it run its course?
[00:18:37] Unknown:
Well, what what do they thrive in? Like, the the problem is, like, there's one hot center, and then somebody will just turn it into this fear fear mongering where it just goes beyond where it it's really relevant.
[00:18:53] Unknown:
I can appreciate that you like, right now, the reason you're not able to give a good take is because you can't come up with anything creative if you don't understand the problem. Right. Like, if you don't know, like, is it that it's a drought? Is it that it's, like, things are too wet? Is it that cattle are too close together? Like, without understanding the actual issue, the only thing that's that's given to you can either be thumbs up or thumbs down, and that's not a very good thing to, to analyze a problem with.
[00:19:20] Unknown:
Right. Right. Yeah.
[00:19:23] Unknown:
Shit. I'm pretty good at this farm weird stuff.
[00:19:27] Unknown:
I'm not good at everything.
[00:19:29] Unknown:
That's gonna do it for this week's headlines. If you have stories that you think we should be covering on the Ag Tribes report, you can send it to at Vance Crowe on x or Vance at Legacy interviews. Now onto the Bitcoin land price report. Last week, Bitcoin sat at a 107,000, and today we're sitting at a 105,000, which is down 2% from last week. So, Jason, you live in Delaware County, Indiana. How much does an acre of good quality farmland go for up there?
[00:20:02] Unknown:
We had a auction, 560 acres go for $18.05 about three weeks ago.
[00:20:09] Unknown:
Wow. And, and that seem high to you? Did that seem the right price to you? What did that feel like?
[00:20:15] Unknown:
Yeah. It's way out of reach. I mean, it makes no logical sense. You pay 6% interest on that. You're paying a thousand before you put a dollar towards principal. I mean, it doesn't make any logical sense
[00:20:26] Unknown:
if you're going to farm corn and beans on there. Or Are they going to? I mean, do you think it's gonna stay that, or is this going to be turned into houses and and, take it out of It's staying farmland.
[00:20:39] Unknown:
Somebody that has a big, egg factory over in Ohio, does very well bought it. And second in line, there was a big group of, of Amish. I don't know if it's that Amish church, but they were running it up trying to get it. And that's a big deal. I mean, whether it's the Church of Latter day Saints or Amish or or, you know, what whatever. There's just a lot of, lot of, competing competing bids getting it up there.
[00:21:08] Unknown:
Yeah. And people that can work together can pay a lot more for it. Alright. So let's run this through. If, Bitcoin's at a 105,000 and land was at 18,000, that means that, point $1.07 Bitcoin would buy you an acre of farm ground in Delaware, Indiana. Or in other words, 1 Bitcoin would buy you 5.83 acres of, of land. What do you what do you think about that, Jason? How does that price comparison in Bitcoin strike you?
[00:21:38] Unknown:
Wish I would have bought it ten years ago, but, you know, it is it feels just like that acre of land at this point.
[00:21:47] Unknown:
Do you own any Bitcoin now? I don't. I'd like to. I mean, this is one of those things that for an experimental guy, just buying a $100 worth and then figuring out how do I get it how do I buy it, and then how do I get it from the exchange to a wallet would would be something, that once you got that education, then you'd be like, oh, I can do this. I can do this over and over and over again. Yeah. You wanna you wanna do that after the show? You wanna buy a $100 worth of Bitcoin?
[00:22:14] Unknown:
Sure.
[00:22:15] Unknown:
Alright. Great. Well, if we do, we will, use the river, which is where I buy my Bitcoin, and I'll put a link in the show notes. If you buy your Bitcoin on using that, that link, you will both, use a great product, but you'll also support the show. Alright. Moving on now to the Peter Thiel paradox. This is where I'm gonna ask Jason, what is one thing that you believe that almost no one you know agrees with you on?
[00:22:43] Unknown:
Yeah. So it's it's let live. That's what Farm Weird is all about. And I you know, what what I believe is that monocropping is a huge waste of our natural resources, and you saw it this week. I mean, the water's running off. It's killing crops because we're basically dropping a a baby a baby boy. You just had a baby. We're dropping it right by the fire firehouse, garage door. And then when it gets ran over, we just, you know, we just complained to all our friends that the weather sucks or the market sucks. And I just think that we can take on weather. We can do a lot more with our assets if we figure out how to grow multiple things at once. And not even I I I'm even against not against cover crops, but it's just not a financial advantage. There might be some long term things, but, you know, what I do is figure out the math and science behind growing multiple things at once and let them live their life out. You know, something like stock cropper, we can grow 20 things at once, and they're all growing at the same time.
That's the only way we're gonna be able to, a, get young people on a farm and, b, have a chance.
[00:23:49] Unknown:
So you said something you said a couple of things that are pretty interesting there, but the cover crops one, I think, is pretty countercultural because this has become huge. This is like everybody saying, hey. The only way you're gonna increase carbon in your soil, this is the way you're gonna, make sure your organic matter is going up is if you do cover crops. You're not for cover crops?
[00:24:08] Unknown:
I mean, some people use it well, and some people need it, you know, with specific use. But for the most part, people exploit the system. You know, they're half assed doing it. My dad always said, if you're gonna do anything, do it don't do it half assed. I just see people, you know, plant rye in November, and then they kill it off before it even grows. And then they cash some $50 an acre check or whatever it is. And then so they bought the cover crop seed. They bought the glyphosate to kill it, and, you know, it just really didn't do anything. And, you know, what I do is I have a significant cash cover crop that I can harvest and create, you know, $5,600 of revenue per acre, and I've figured out a way to, sustain soybean yields and lower the cost of production on that. And I can't do that if I just kill it off early.
And then the other thing, when I'm harvesting, I'm actually creating a cover crop with harvest loss. So, you know, $15.20 bucks an acre in wheat, and, I have a cover crop that I didn't have to pay somebody, and I didn't have to kill it.
[00:25:09] Unknown:
Man, this is truly countercultural because I remember, when it was seeming like, big ag finally capitulated, and they they gave in to cover crops, and they started supporting it. But then you realize, actually, if you're selling glyphosate, cover crops are a great thing. Right? You you get somebody to go out there and they plant a thing that they're not actually trying to grow, and then when you wanna terminate it so you can plant into it, you just knock it all down. In the, polycropping system, what is the first one out of the ground? What are you what are you able to plant that you don't have to just kill with glyphosate?
[00:25:43] Unknown:
Wheat. Wheat for the most part. I mean, we do this alley crop corn is has huge legs where we're, you know, growing a six significant cover crop and wider, wider corn rows, but blocks of corn. You know, it's all evolved. But, you know, going back to $18,000 an acre, you know, we're all competing. So, you know, we've got to whether it's pumping out yield or or creating more value for our product, we've gotta compete. And and it's just you're really behind the eight ball if you're delayed planting. And if you're starting something from seed later than everyone else, then you're actually more vulnerable to weather than you are of maybe if you you could have planted it earlier.
So you know? And and then you got the whole drought thing. You know? We're actual we're not farmers are getting paid commission on the water that they can sell and, you know, the sunlight that they can capture. And, there's just another dimension of efficiency if we if we figure out the math behind letting live.
[00:26:50] Unknown:
Wow. That is a fascinating way to do to say that. Farmers are getting a commission on the sunlight and water that they can capture.
[00:26:58] Unknown:
Yeah. We we get to sell 13% of some, 15% of others. And if you've got multiple crops and they're growing, substantially way before anyone else, then I'm, you know, I'm actually making money when when everyone else is just working it for the third time trying to grow this glorious corn crop. And you see it right now. You know, we got eight inches of rain. I'd say 20% of the landscape is dead right now because we had nothing significant to you gotta stop the water where it is, and you gotta figure out a ways to slow it, spread it, and get it in the soil. And you can't do that by killing something and then starting something else. You've gotta let things grow and have something substantial out there.
I don't care what we're doing. You know, we could do we could do anything a lot better if we if we just think in a different lens.
[00:27:48] Unknown:
And what is your crop doing in all this rain? Are you are you faring any better than the monocroppers?
[00:27:53] Unknown:
Yeah. We're gonna blow the doors off our records this year. Our wheat is phenomenal. Our beans are phenomenal in there. And and and we've got several fields where you know, one down the road here, we got a 150 acre field. Half of it's monocrop soybeans, no tilled. The other half is this relay. Probably 40% of it has had three or four foot of water on it in the monocrop beans because all the water just ran off after an inch. Didn't lose anything in the relay. We're gonna harvest 100 bushel wheat out of it, and our beans will probably kick the shit out of the monocrops by 25, 30 bushels. So we're looking at $5.06, $7,800 more per acre.
And it's not, you know, 5 or 600. It it's like this might be in the red $200, and this might be in the black $500. And that's that's that's the whole thing about being competitive is we can't just rely on crop insurance or some government subsidy or some biomass standard or whatever it is to get us whole. We've gotta innovate on our farm and figure out how to be profitable, you know, if you're gonna still be doing this.
[00:28:56] Unknown:
What percentage of your acreage is in this, polycropping system?
[00:29:01] Unknown:
We're at 400 right now out of our 3,000 wheat and beans, but we're doing alley crop corn. We're doing some wet bale triticale, which, I'm really excited about what we're doing with that. So we're we'll grow, triticale up to about my chin, and we'll cut it on May 10, and we'll bale it. And we got about 400 bales when we planted corn in there. And with with the moisture, I think that corn will be just as good as our regular corn. So, you know, the market value of all them bales are about 6 or $800 an acre, and that'll feed a cattle herd. So we'll take that wet bale biomass, and then we'll take all of our, screenings from our grain dryer. So we'll run, you know, half a million bushels of corn through there, and we might have 20 thou ten, twenty thousand bushel of of corn hearts and bee's wings that we can mix with the biomass, and you feed cattle for, like, next to nothing.
So it's just, resourcefulness. You know, Jared McDaniel's a real good guy about growing stuff all the time and feeding in his cattle. And when we got away and we got into special eight specialization in ag, not only did you lower the value of your corn because you didn't own the livestock to get it in there to value add, but then you took the manure off the farm. So you kinda got hit two or three different times, and and and we're just becoming very, you know, reliant on this welfare welfare system to become whole. And I think the next step is the the the whole structure of the pork industry, which no one owns their pigs. We don't own our pigs. That's coming to ag. And the problem, as I said, people will love it because, you know, they might park a new John Deere tractor in there. They bring your seed. They give you your crop and crop protection, and you're just like, oh, just do what I always did. I just don't have the risk.
And that's not my future. I'll fight.
[00:30:50] Unknown:
And,
[00:30:51] Unknown:
do you when do you think the 400 acres will turn into 3,000 acres that you'll be able to implement this for? The you know, that's never the goal. And, you know, I would say that I've scaled this to over a 100,000 acres when I when I look at my all the people that I've persuaded to do it on their farm. So I scale exponentially just on my influence, and it's never my goal to do one thing. I mean, that's it goes against everything that I that I wanna do. I just I I wanna come up and and and do a lot of things, and then by watching it come up with better and better ideas year after year out. And and and then, you know, my goal is to have 10 or 20 different concepts in our farm that are substantially better than just planting a seed and praying.
[00:31:37] Unknown:
Alright, man. Well, I'm gonna give you a straight nine point zero on your Peter Thiel paradox because, it's not fair to penalize you that you've convinced me a long time ago. I got to see your field day. We've known each other for a long time, and and, I think I think you do actually believe things that nobody else agrees with you on. Alright. Moving on to the worthy adversary section. This is where we, try and get out of our ideological echo chambers by by trying to focus on who is somebody out there that you respect but you strongly disagree with.
[00:32:09] Unknown:
I'm gonna go with Randy Dowdy. And,
[00:32:14] Unknown:
and and the disservice, you know, we sell this dream and and Well, first, who is Randy Dowdy? He's one of the the greatest high efficient farm, corn farmers in the country, in the world, maybe.
[00:32:25] Unknown:
Sure. And I and I'm sure he's a great guy and he does value it, but the disservice is, you know, if you seen Talladega nights, you know that Ricky Bobby, if you don't chew red, then f you. And and these people, you know, they get sponsored and and, you know, their crops are on IV, and and it's this perceptive play that, you know, if you would just farm like me, you could have 600 bushel corn too. And that's a big disservice to farming because going back to, you know, farmers get paid on commission. A lot of people don't have irrigation and and unlimited funds because sponsors just know that that there's such a a big big mouthpiece to to their sales. And the the services, they get all these people to pay $5,000 to be on a Zoom call with them to say, hey. Throw the kitchen sink at it.
And and then the reality is we've gotta manage our free things way more than the the shit that you gotta buy.
[00:33:24] Unknown:
What does that mean, manage the free things?
[00:33:27] Unknown:
Water, sunlight, sequencing plants, time. Time is the most valuable thing. It's just always be doing something, you know, on the land. But, you know, this idea that I'm just gonna, you know, go to Florida, and then I'm I'm gonna grease the planter and do I'm gonna do everything right. And then, you know, if if mother nature doesn't work out, then then it was her fault. You know? And it's just it's just it just propels this idea that that we're gonna solve everything and yield. We're gonna feed the world, and we need to figure out how to feed our family, feed our community, and and kinda do you know, I'm an old soul, but I I see the future, and I I don't like it. So I think we've gotta create our own future.
[00:34:10] Unknown:
And we'll ask that. I'm gonna add Randy Dowdy to the, list of worthy adversaries that you can find on my x, if you wanna see a list of people. I think that is some of the best follows on x because it's constant churn there. A lot of people believe in a lot of different things. Alright. Well, Jason, I wanna thank you for coming on. I did invite you on this week. Originally, I was gonna have John Kemp. That didn't work out. And so then I was like, oh, well, Jason has his field day coming on. So I'd love to give you a chance to talk about your field day. Where is it? Who should come? What's what's going on with that?
[00:34:45] Unknown:
Yeah. So Friday tomorrow is our VIP, which we'll have a really nice dinner. First, we start with a golf round, then the VIP dinner, then a private tour, and then Saturday is the main event. I've got 10 different projects around the farm all demonstrating how you can let live, how you can have multiple things growing, creating value on your farm, not just the revenue side, but the ancillary benefits, you know, soil health, soil wealth, livestock integration. And I'm inviting all my friends that that believe in the system, and and it's a it's a paid ticket event. It's $99 again. VIP is $3.49.
But but I love it because everyone that's going to be there you know, we didn't pull our hands to get CUE credits or anything like that. They wanna be there. They think this way, and we're creating our own tribe. And that's the only way that we're really gonna make a difference is through numbers and and and sharing and group think and and kinda bottom up. So they ain't gonna come from top down. We're we're not we're not doing anything. You know, we're not gonna get anywhere with that.
[00:35:57] Unknown:
So what's the kind of person that shows up? Are these gonna be a bunch of people with dreadlocks and, driving Priuses, or who shows up to a farm weird
[00:36:06] Unknown:
Yeah. Well, if if you ask the people around here, they think it's just gonna be incense candles and, you know, hippies and all this shit. But it's actually the people that just like to think, and they like to try things. And, you know, they've they're in the grind. They they wake up, and they they wanna farm in a way, they're looking at their kids, and they actually you know, tough love is actually the real love, and and you've got to be engaged in farming if you want to give that to the next generation. These are the the people that make that a top priority.
[00:36:40] Unknown:
Yeah. I think the best example of the type of person that comes to your field day I I've come before. I, I love it, but it is a guy named Wes Carney. I did a podcast with him last year at Zach Smith's, podcast. He is like an engineering type that probably built with Legos. Right? But, like, he looks at the world. He sees he's like, oh, there's a different way to do things. I can experiment. Great guy to talk to you. And when you find out that at the farm weird events, it's like hundreds of West Kearneys. Everybody there has a purpose. They're not just showing up for the free seed hat or the CEUs. It's I I can't recommend it enough. We just had a new baby boy, so I'm not going anywhere. But, I would encourage anybody to go to this. It's it's an experiment e experience even if you're not farming. You you get to learn and see things you you don't get to see every day. And it's turned for me, it's turned it into this huge resource pool. And I think the more and more people that join it and and they
[00:37:37] Unknown:
make those connection relationships with another, they get to access one another and and that's a huge, huge value to the farmer. You know, when you can you know someone's very good at something, and you can reach out to them, and they're gonna be forthright in their knowledge. And that's that's why we do it.
[00:37:56] Unknown:
And you are planning to have the communist Zach Smith's, stock cropper on on, display there?
[00:38:03] Unknown:
Yeah. You're talking about a tough week for that. I, I had it in the low spot because I was trying to grow this 600 bushel corn down there, and I had water gushing down there and chickens in there. And and, boy, I learned a valuable lesson. Let's just put it along a little bit higher ground.
[00:38:23] Unknown:
So for anybody that doesn't know, that is the stock cropping system is where you actually graze animals in between rows of corn, and you see how well the the the crops, respond, how well the animals are doing. It's a fascinating thing, and, I I hear Zach Smith, the stock cropper, will be there. So alright. Jason, thank you so much for, for coming on. I really appreciate all your time.
[00:38:48] Unknown:
Thank you.
[00:38:50] Unknown:
Alright. That's gonna do it for this week's Ag Tribes report. But before I go, I, I wanted to mention something I've been working on. A couple of years ago, I had a business partner, and, he and I worked great together. And then it was time for him to head out into the world, and he started his own biotech firm. And then he went around the world and raised, tens of millions of dollars. And when he came back, he assembled a team of scientists, and he said, Vance, I want my scientists to be able to communicate the way you taught me to communicate. So I put together a class. It was five sessions, and it was great. We covered everything from how to negotiate to how to introduce yourself, storytelling, how to ask better questions, how to manage conflict, and how do big organizations like bureaucracies make decisions.
It turns out a hedge fund here in Saint Louis heard about the class and invited me in to do it, and they have told me in no uncertain terms that they want to do this for more of their people. They wanna do the class in a bigger way, and, I've really been encouraged to move this forward. So many people have asked me, questions like, hey. Have you ever written a book or have you ever done something? I think I'm going to do this class. I'm certainly gonna do another one in Saint Louis, but I'm thinking about doing one online. The in person class is a thousand dollars a seat. I don't think I'll charge that for online. But if you have ever thought about, taking a communications class, with me, you wanna learn how to articulate your point, how to communicate with people in a deep and profound way, then, send me an email, [email protected], and I will put you on a list.
And we'll figure out how many people we think we could do for an online class and, the right price, and, we'll go from there. I'm not sure when I'm gonna do it, but I I have that little voice in my head say, hey. You should you should really throw this out to podcast listeners. So send me a note, [email protected], and, I would love, to to put a put an online class for you. Also, if you're thinking about doing a legacy interview for your loved one, this is where I sit down with, individuals and couples to record their life stories. Then go to legacyinterviews.com and learn more about the service and about how we can record your loved one. Alright. That's gonna do it for this week's show. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you have a chance, go to Jason's, field day. It's gonna be great.
And, as always, feel free to disagree.
The Challenge of Succession in Agriculture
Introduction to the Ag Tribes Report
Farm Weird: A New Approach to Agriculture
Policy Whiplash: ICE Raids and Agriculture
EPA's Biofuel Mandate: Impact on Agriculture
Cattle Market Volatility and Its Consequences
USDA's Sterile Fly Facility: A Controversial Solution
Bitcoin and Land Prices: A Comparative Analysis
The Peter Thiel Paradox: Challenging Agricultural Norms
Worthy Adversary: The Debate on High-Efficiency Farming
Farm Weird Field Day: Innovation and Community
