In this solo-hosted Ag Tribes Report by Vance Crowe, Vance covers four major headlines shaping agriculture and adjacent markets after the scheduled guest drops out during harvest. The report dives into the unusual coalition of farmers and food companies backing state-level animal welfare laws like California’s Prop 12, unpacks the DOJ’s massive seizure tied to a Southeast Asian “pig butchering” crypto scam and what it could signal for government Bitcoin accumulations, assesses Nestlé’s 16,000-job global restructuring and what it may mean for supply chains and food inflation, and reacts to prosecutors seeking a prison term and restitution in the $4 million crop insurance fraud case involving Steve McBee—plus why crackdowns on fraud matter for producers who rely on transfer programs.
In the Bitcoin land price segment, Vance explains recent volatility, why 24/7 liquidity makes Bitcoin the shock absorber for weekend macro news, and why dips remain opportunities compared with gold’s run-up. Vance also shares a reflection from an impromptu conversation with a Vietnamese Uber driver on managing “energy ripples” in relationships, and explores what genuine respect looks like in the Worthy Adversary segment—including how naming respect can transform high-stakes conversations. As always, listeners are invited to send in stories for future shows and 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. Here is Legacy Interviews guest, Carol Hensley, discussing the quiet person to speak their mind.
[00:00:17] Unknown:
How was it for you, the experience? Very comfortable. Tried to sit down every morning for a week or two and reflect on my life, and I'm recalling well over seventy years. I may not talk very much, but I think a lot, and I listen to other people. If they don't talk a lot, they're surely thinking. And if you ask them their opinion, they may share it with you. You'll ask for my opinion. I don't mind sharing that. I think I probably talked more than I should have. No. Not at all.
[00:00:50] 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.
[00:01:04] Unknown:
Welcome to the Ag Tribes Report. I'm your host, Vance Crow. Each week, I bring on a new guest that represents one of the many tribes that make up US and Canadian agriculture. This week, I do not have a guest. I had a guest as of this morning when they dropped out. I made several reach outs to people, and all of them are like, I'm in the middle of harvest. I can't do this. So instead of having a guest on here, I'm going to just guest host it. We're gonna do the same format where we cover four news stories, then we're gonna talk about Bitcoin, and then we'll talk a little bit about my Peter Thiel paradox and we're the adversary, and we're gonna try and do this in just thirty minutes. On today's show, we are going to be covering, some interesting show things that have come up. I know everybody's talking about soybean prices in China and Argentina.
That is the same as last week, but I wanted to cover some different stories. We're gonna cover one where there is a meat producers association defending prop 12 out of California. That's the one that says state laws, should override national laws in terms of animal welfare. We're also going to talk about the, the giant, Cambodian, pig butchering crypto scam that was broken wide open. And, I've got some interesting notes on that. Then we'll talk about Nestle slashing over 16,000 jobs globally, and we'll talk about the, $4,000,000 crop insurance, fraud case by, Steve McBee.
And, we're gonna get to all of those stories and more. And, why don't we just jump right into it? So the first story, story number one, farmers and food companies form group to defend state animal welfare laws. A new coalition, the American Meat Producers Association, AMPA, launched to defend state animal welfare laws like California's Prop 12, which mandates crate free pork production. Backed by farmers like Joel Salatin and companies like ButcherBox, AMPA argues preempting these laws in the farm bill would hurt small farmers and consumer choice. About 27% of US pork producers are prop 12 compliant, but the National Pork Producers Council pushes for federal preemption, citing a costly patchwork of regulations.
Ag Secretary Rollins estimates compliance costs between 3,500 to $4,500 per sow. So this is one of those stories that on first blush you're like, wait a second, what's going on here? Because normally when there is an Animal Producers Association, some kind of coalition, they are arguing against a patchwork of state laws. So if you're not familiar with this, what can happen is in The United States, if you have a state like California, which is either producing a lot of the agriculture or they are consuming a lot of the agriculture, they make a law that says, hey. You're not allowed to use farrowing crates on any of the pork that's sold in our state or you're not allowed to raise it in our state that way. Well, now California, since it is such a big market, because they are creating these state laws that are maybe more narrowly defined than some of the federal laws, what you end up having is people coming on and saying, like, wait. We don't want these laws. You, California, are not allowed to dictate to us, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, how we should be raising pigs. So what they do is they get together and they try and go to the national level and say, there shouldn't be any laws that make it more difficult for us to do interstate commerce.
Now I can understand this. From From when I was working at Monsanto, what used to happen was, some of the activists that were trying to get, different, GMO regulations passed. For example, they wanted to have GMOs be labeled in a certain state. They knew that if they did it in that one state, California, not only is there so much pressure for other manufacturers to follow that because they wanna get into that market, they knew that that, this would eventually then kind of spread out into the rest of the country. As, as Monsanto, they're sitting there saying, we wanna just focus on the national level. We don't wanna have to go state by state by state and have to fight this. So they wanted to fight state regulation.
This is what's going on with the pork. And I can tell you personally, me, I am a big time libertarian and if I'm not a libertarian I'm a federalist. And what I want is a state to be able to control how they manage their own laws, how they how they manage the way they raise animals, what they expect, in terms of food. I believe the states should be left to regulate themselves as much as possible. And I know this drives the large ag companies, crazy because of the amount that they're gonna have to spend on lobbying and what kind of advantage this gives, different states. But, I mean, what else are you gonna do? You're gonna make this all national level, federal level law? We don't want this. This is not better to make the federal government, better able to control what our decisions are and how we, raise our animals and crops. So while I am generally suspicious of people like Joel Salatin coming in and throwing his support behind something because usually it's a larger thing than the aw shucks kind of mentality that they put forward, I have to say, overall, if a state wants to create those laws, you gotta let them do it. And anything else is, a prohibition on our freedoms.
So I hope that, they are successful and I'd like to hear more. If you have different opinions about this go ahead throw them into the comments. You can write them on x or wherever you're streaming this, because I know there are a lot of people that feel very differently and, they wanna get rid of the patchwork of laws and instead just have one standard to follow. If you're running a business, I can understand your perspective, but from the legal side, it's just not where I'm at. Alright. Story number two, this goes out to a man named Vance Kreger who pointed out that there was a pig butchering crypto scam, and he wanted to know all about it.
So I went in looking for this, like, are they butchering pigs in Cambodia in some way that's going to impact us in The United States? Why in the world is Kash Patel, the head of the FBI, talking about there being, you know, a crypto seizure with this? So let me give you the lowdown on this story, and I'm going to, burst your bubble here a little early. It does not have anything to do with ag crops. But I did see this multiple times, and because I looked into it, I thought it'd be worth sharing with you. So DOJ indicts Cambodian tycoon in a massive pig butchering crypto scam seizing over over 15,000,000,000 in Bitcoin. In a major blow to global cybercrime, the US Department of Justice indicted Cambodian billionaire, Shen Chi, chairman of the Prince Holding Groups for running forced labor scam compounds that executed a, quote, pig butchering fraud, defrauding victims worldwide of billions.
A pig butchering scam is a type of romance or investment fraud where scammers build trust with victims via a dating app or some kind of social media, and then they pose as attractive partners. They fatten the relationship like pigs for slaughter, by convincing victims to invest in a fake cryptocurrency scheme leading to financial ruin. This was named after Chinese slang for fattening pigs before butchering, which is a lot more prevalent in, Southeast Asia. These schemes involve trafficking workers into prison like facilities in Cambodia where they were coerced under threat of violence to groom victims via fake romance.
Federal authorities seized a 127,271 Bitcoin worth about $15,000,000,000, which is the largest, crypto forfeiture ever. And this was stashed in wallets controlled by Shen. This highlights, the, the risks of, participating in dating apps and social media. And, as people have been looking at this, like, what do you mean they seized those assets? I also looked into that and it turns out they were able to seize the hardware wallets that Chen had been using and then they will use those wallets, and say, hey as a part of a plea deal if you, wanna plead down you've gotta give us access to those. Now, I don't know very much about pig butchering scenarios but one thing I know is that the US government has said they were going to try and really increase the holdings of Bitcoin for the United States government. And Trump made a promise saying, I'm not going to spend a single tax dollar on it. Alright, great. You know, you wanna have a reserve and you somehow wanna get it without raising taxes.
But if what that means is the way that they are going to get it is by seizing people's, Bitcoin, this is not good. I do not want that. That is not the way we want to, induce or celebrate our government, for trying to do the right thing with their, with with, you know, stopping illegal activities. But then at the same time, I don't want them going around saying, ah, what a what a piggy bank that we could go after. If we ever find somebody with a large amount of Bitcoin, maybe we can charge them with something, grab their hardware wallets, and extort it out of them. So, Vance, I just wanted to throw it out there that I did look into this story. It, unfortunately, is not about agriculture, but, we should always be mindful that this may be the way that the US government is getting their hands on a lot more Bitcoin.
Alright. Moving on to story number three, a little bit more closely related to agriculture. Nestle slashes 16,000 jobs globally in a major restructuring push. Swiss food giant, Nestle, announced on October 16 that it's going to cut 16,000 jobs which represents 6% of its 277,000 employees over the next two years, marking one of the largest layoffs in the food sec sector in decades. New CEO, Philip Novritill, aims to save $3,400,000,000 by 2017 by, putting out targeted cuts including 12,000 white collar workers and 4,000 manufacturing jobs.
Nestle came out and said this was driven largely by automation, AI, inflation and competition. And, this move could, disrupt Ag supply chains as Nestle is a major producer of processed goods. I went around looking for a little more information on this and many of you may remember that I had, Doctor Sylvain Charlebois, on. He is known as the food professor. Professor. He was talking all about this and he said Nestle cutting 16,000 jobs is one of the largest layoffs that's ever been done. To put this in perspective, Hostess, laid off 18,500 workers in its 2012 liquidation.
And so this is the only thing to come anywhere close to this, and that was major international news when that happened. It seems like to me that this has barely been talked about in the world. There's so much going on around tariffs, around Trump. In ag world, it's definitely about soybeans. In Argentina, nobody's talking about this, but 16,000 jobs in two years from an industry leader. This is absolutely going to impact agriculture because, hey, those goods are not going to be manufactured in the same way and I am sure sure they are hurting. I don't know about you but, the other day I was in the grocery store and I saw that a bag of peanut M and M's was $3.50.
And, my daughter had asked me to buy her a a package of M and M's with money she had made from doing, some extra work for me. And I realized, like, oh my gosh. I need to change the rate that I'm paying her because I think I'd I'd like to give her about a candy bar per hour, and that's no longer the 50¢ that I was paying for a candy bar. I don't know what you paid for it back then, but, now it's moved from 50¢ to $3.50. This is clear that they are, shrinking the size of packaging, increasing the prices. They're trying to do anything they can to stay afloat in, this crazy chaotic time.
So I would expect that we will see a lot more companies, coming out with, notes about laying off people and, oftentimes pointing towards, artificial intelligence and automation for that. But I have to say, it's likely mostly the printing of money. Alright. Moving on to story number four. Prosecutors push forty one month sentence for McBee dynasty star in his $4,000,000 insurance fraud case. Federal prosecutors are now seeking forty one months for, in prison for fifty three year old Missouri farmer Steve McBee, star of the reality show, The McBee Dynasty, Real American Cowboys, plus 4,000,000 in restitution to the USDA for crop insurance fraud spanning from 2018 to 2020.
McBee who pleaded guilty last year to underreporting yields equivalent to 830 semi truck trailers of grain to inflate indemnity payments. He faces sentencing today in Missouri in federal court, and he could get up to thirty years max. His rapid farm expansion to 40,000 acres across three states left records unreliable amid the 2018 drought per defense memos blaming overgrowth and inexperience as a first gen farmers. Prosecutors call, McBee a greedy betrayal of honest growers urging no leniency despite his clean record, save a minor DUI, and community support letters praising his generosity. There were many letters in there and it did feel pretty weird to hear people, talking about his generosity when it seems as though some of that generosity was through, ill gotten gains.
So, McBee's team seeks to, just get supervised release. You know, I would have probably just overlooked this story, but I did see several people coming out on x really supporting to throw the book at him. To say like, hey, this guy clearly was cheating the system. He was that's straight up theft. It's fraud. It's hurting the entire system. Throw the book at him. And I I can understand that, right? If we look at the fact that 13.5% of the bottom line of most, farmers is some kind of transfer payment. It is a bailout, it is, insurance, it is some of the money that the government is giving farmers to make sure they can stay afloat and the public sees that there's some guy out there that's, pretending to have sent eight thirty semi truck trailers full of grain, but he didn't. Well, they're gonna look around at that and say, why are we giving money to these fraudsters, to these people that are stealing? I don't think we should do that. And so if you are in this space and you're, in need of transfer payments, this represents a pretty big threat to your overall ability to stay solvent.
And, you know, the size and scope as I looked into this, fraud was so absurd. It was so large that it just felt like plotting. Right? It didn't feel like somebody that accidentally got themselves in a situation and now they're trying to bail themselves out. You know? I don't really know his core story. This the size of it was just so large that, it seems like it was somebody sitting down being like, you know what you could get away with? You could get away with doing some of this stuff. And, so I'm I'm kinda with you on that through through the book at the guy that, is trying to, hijack the system that, taxpayers support because they're trying to support farmers.
Alright. That is going to do it for the four stories this week. I know there is a lot going on. I didn't wanna do anymore about Argentina and the crush facilities. There's all this stuff coming out about secretary Rollins saying, hey, Argentina has some capacity for us to send our soybeans down there to do crush. This had everybody up in arms, but this is stuff that I'm sure you have more access to information, than even I do on it. So if you have stories that you think I should cover on the Ag Tribes report, you can always send them to me at vance crow on x, or you can send them to [email protected].
Alright. Moving on. Now we're going to move to the Bitcoin land price report. And instead of me comparing Bitcoin to land prices around here, which I've done in the past when I've done some solo episodes, I decided I would talk about a little bit of what's been going on in the Bitcoin world. If you're watching at all, you saw that just, was it, week and a half ago, we we were a thousand dollars away from the all time high. And now we wake up today, and it was at 01:12 and then went all the way down to 01:08. So this is a major crash down. More than, you know, 10,000, 12,000, $15,000, is down with Bitcoin.
What's going on here? I had some people like Keith Dorman, you know, pointing at me saying, hey. Look at the people that made money on shorting this. Seems like it could be a scam. And, other people, you know, being like, hey. Does this look like as good of a trade? To me, it looks like an awesome trade. To me, '1 2008 looks like the best buying day you could have. Right? We may not get these prices again. But it's important to think about why is it that when we have a, a big jump to the market, why is it that Bitcoin sells off so fast? Well, if we go and we look at the timeline, we see that Trump, waited until after markets were closed to announce that the the, interaction, the trade negotiations with China had gone south. So he goes out and makes this announcement.
The markets, I think they were just about to close. They reacted right then. And then on Sunday night, he goes out and says, things are getting better. And then Alakazam, the markets are back up. In between those two points, the only liquid market that's open is Bitcoin. Right? So if you are trying to cover short positions, you are trying to get money out of the market, you can't just go to your stock market and you you know, your stock portfolio and make those trades because they aren't gonna go through. The markets are closed. Well, there is no market close for Bitcoin. And the upside to that is you have always access to your capital. Right? The government just came out a couple of weeks ago and said, hey. By 2028, we're gonna make it so, you can still do wire transfers on the weekends and, on the holidays and maybe at night. Right? They're saying eventually we'll get to the point where you'll be able to move your money from one place to another, when you want to. But Bitcoin's like that already.
And so while you have access to Bitcoin anytime that you want, this means that when something comes up, that liquid asset is going to be used. And I think that, that's gonna create some volatility. But on the other hand, it also opens up a ton of, potential. And it means that the markets are not being controlled by a group of people that decide when are you allowed to make trades and when aren't you. So I think you can always expect that if the market is gonna have some gyrations, Bitcoin's gonna be the first one to drop, drop, but it's also gonna be one of the ones that jumps back up. I am watching gold prices surge and, I did a very interesting interview with, economist, Luke Groman. I should release that maybe next week.
But I'm happy to see gold going up. I think this is a lot to do with the way that China is now setting up their currency. I believe they are doing a lot of trading for goods, even things like oil in the Chinese yuan. And the way that they are getting these other countries to do this is they're saying, hey. If you buy this in Chinese yuan, we will also make a market for you to trade yuan in for gold, and we will also store that gold for you. So there is a big push for, I think, countries that want to do, deals with China to, you know, get gold. And I also think that right now, retail is always the last to know. So retail spenders, consumers, have, seen the price of gold going up. There starts to be some lines at the, gold bullion shop, and there's solid research that shows if somebody sees a line, they're more likely to get in that line as paradoxical as that seems. And so I think there are a lot lot of people that are saying other people are buying gold. Maybe I should buy gold too. I'm happy to see it. It's, an almost finite asset. I think it's, got a lot of good properties. But if you're one of those people, I recommend just going ahead and buying Bitcoin. It's got all the attributes of gold and then many more. It's allowed to be traded. You know, even these gold markets, the ETFs, all of those, you can only get access when the markets are open.
So, anyway, I think that, I'm happy that gold is going up, but I would always still say buy Bitcoin. If you're interested in, finding out more about Bitcoin, you've been like, alright. I've heard enough. I've kinda figured out what's going on here. The best podcast in the English speaking world, as far as I can find, and I have listened to dozens, if not hundreds of them, on Bitcoin is a podcast called This Week in Bitcoin. It is a fantastic rundown. The guy that does it is an expert podcaster. He does a great job of explaining things technically so the detailed people that know what's going on are like, hey. This guy gets it. But then also, he explains it in a macro way, in a in a high enough view that anybody could watch it. So I highly recommend the podcast This Week in Bitcoin. If you are looking to purchase Bitcoin and you'd like to support the show, I would encourage you to use the link in the show notes, and I'll post it on x for, purchasing on River. River is where I purchased my Bitcoin, and, it's been a great, support of the podcast. If you buy it using that link, you'll be supporting the podcast. And we've had some big buys this week. I can tell, a lot of people out there are taking the opportunity of this dip to buy more.
I'm going to do the, Peter Thiel paradox. Right? So this is normally where I ask, who is one person that you respect that you strongly disagree with? And, I've done this several times and, I had some ideas on, like, I could kinda poke at this person and I could kinda talk about this person that I respect but I disagree with, but I actually had a thought that I wanted to share with you. This last Tuesday, I ran a really unorthodox podcast. It was with a man from Vietnam that was driving my Uber. His name was Thomas Wynn, and, by the time we got out of my neighborhood, I was like, this man is amazing. The way he's talking about communism and Catholicism and Buddhism, I'm just gonna record this. So I pull out my phone and set it on the console. He can see it. I hit record, and we have a great conversation. He has a really thick accent, so it's it's kind of hard to understand him. There's a little bit of car noise. I tried to clean that up. But in that interview, he says, he starts talking about Buddhism, and he talks about how when he realized the metaphor of a drop of water falling into a stream or a pond and the waves ripple out from that. He said, normally, in our reactions with other people, people, when they give us energy, they are a ripple out. They give us negative energy. Maybe they're upset. Maybe they're feeling down.
They give you that energy and if you're anything like me, when somebody gives me negative energy, they start to get a little hot with me. They start to be grouchy or whatever. My natural reaction, despite the fact that I have had years of studying negotiations and I know how to behave in a professional circumstance, but I'm in my personal life, maybe I'm talking with my daughter. She's getting upset. I come back at her and give her back the exact same energy she's giving me. Maybe I even make it stronger. So in this analogy, as the ripple is going out, then I'm shoving ripples back towards the center and we have more chaos. Good things don't come from that. Well, what Thomas said was if you let those ripples just calm down and then what you return to the conversation with is the energy that you want to see brought to this conversation, well then, you're you are the one that's in control of the energy between the two of you. You can choose to decline the negative energy that other people give you and you can give people positive energy and they can choose whether to accept that or not.
When I heard this, I realized that that's not actually how I interact with my children. A lot of times I react because I'm thinking, hey, I'm the one in charge here. If you're gonna get mad, I'm gonna get more mad. I don't think it's logical. I just think that's what happens. Well, ever since having heard this from Thomas, I have started instituting it in my own home, and I can tell you that this whole week went so much better, was so much more profound because I was the one in control of what energy I was bringing to the conversation, what I was bringing to the situation. And it was profound and powerful, and I'm glad that I sat and listened to a guy. If you'd like an interesting podcast, go back and check that one out. Try and make it past all of the, the the difficulty to understand it and really hear a person that may change the way that you view and interact with other people.
Alright. Now we're gonna move on to the worthy adversary. This is where I ask, who is one person that you disagree you respect but you strongly disagree with? I maybe said that before. The Peter Thiel paradox that I was talking about, that's normally when I talk about, what is one thing people believe that, that or what is one thing you believe that nobody agrees with you on? The worthy adversary is about respecting somebody. Right? Who is it that you respect but disagree with? Respect is one of those things that I think is worth thinking about because we kind of intuitively know who we respect, but you never really thought about why.
And I, not that long ago, heard somebody describe respect as an involuntary action. You don't actually choose who you respect. You maybe choose how you react to people. Do you treat them with respect? Are you a respectful person? But who do we respect? Those are people that can do something that we can't do. And I I can see that, like, when my wife had our children, it brought me to a whole different level of understanding of the respect they should have for women. They literally can do something I can't do. And I don't just mean the biological aspect of it. I just mean the walking over of hot coals that my wife did to bring these children into the world. You have to respect that.
But there are a lot of other people that we interact with and we engage with that we respect and we're not always cognizant of it. In fact, I found myself this morning on my drive into work. I was going to be meeting with a guy named Heath and, I had told two of the people that I spoke with in the morning, man, I, I'm I've I lost a little bit of sleep last night. I'm a little nervous to meet with Heath. He is the most well put together person. He's disciplined. He has a wonderful family. He's on top of things. Like, I gotta be ready for this.
And, as I sat down with Heath, he was well put together, sharp early to the meeting, you know, everything that I was saying. The advice of my mentor, Pete, came to my ears and the advice that Pete talks about was if you observe something about another person that they would want to know and you are the right person to deliver that feedback, you should tell them. So if you see something that somebody else would say, yeah, I wanna know that, good or bad, and am I the right person to deliver that news? Sometimes there's something you observe, you're not the right person. But in this case, with Heath, I'm feeling this anxiety. I'm sitting with him. I'm kinda nervous. I'm thinking about all the things I wanna talk with him about and I decided to tell him, you know, Heath, you're an incredibly well put together person. I really admire how, you know, prepared you are for things. I love interacting with you and I found myself last night being a little nervous about this meeting so I sat up and prepped and I had some notes and some things I wanted to go through with this, but I wanted you to know that that's how you present yourself. You present yourself as somebody that really is well put together and it's kind of intimidating to me.
Now, picture yourself doing this with another person. The person that you are a little intimidated by. The person that, you know, makes you go like, I don't know. Am I good enough? I don't know. And when you can actually articulate these things, you can have the experience that I had where Heath, you know, kinda lets out a sigh and says, oh, man. I'm glad to hear you say that. I was nervous about this meeting too. I too made notes and he pulls up a sheet and he shows me and he's like, I really like the way we talked and the way we think about things and I really enjoyed that. This is what I've done with those conversations and these are the types of relationships I I have now and how this one is different. And it began this beautiful and rich and interesting conversation. And I share this with you because you can do this too.
And certainly, you have people in your life that you respect but it is hard to not be intimidated or a little self conscious of. And so I'd ask you to really think about if you respect somebody and you think that they should know it, you should go ahead and tell them and watch how that changes the interaction that you have, together. So I know that's a little bit different than the worthy adversary that we normally do because normally we jump right into it, but I thought it was worth exploring a little bit more about what this is all about because, I am going to in the next few weeks. I have a few people lined up that, are pretty strong worthy adversaries. They're people that, you don't necessarily get along with, but you gotta respect the way they think about problems and issues. So I'm looking forward to that.
Alright. That is going to do it for this week's show. If you're interested in having me sit down with your loved ones to record their life stories so that your kids or your grandkids can know the story about where they come from, then go to legacyinterviews.com. When you get there, you can see some videos about how the process works and other people that have done the interviews, and there's a contact page where you can, sign up to have a meeting with me and we will talk about who it is that you're hoping to capture, what it is that you wanna get out of it, and what we can do to make the experience truly profound. So if you're interested in doing that, go to legacyinterviews.com. As always, we will put the, link to River in the show notes. It is a wonderful buying opportunity at a hundred and eight, and, I am really glad to be here. So thank you so much for joining me, and as always, feel free to disagree.
Opening snippet: Carol Hensley on quiet voices and opinions
Show intro and solo format: four stories, Bitcoin, and reflections
Story 1: AMPA coalition defends state animal welfare laws and Prop 12
Story 2: Unpacking the Cambodian "pig butchering" crypto scam
Story 3: Nestlé to cut 16,000 jobs—implications for ag supply chains
Prices, shrinkflation, and why layoffs may accelerate
Story 4: Steve McBee crop insurance fraud and sentencing debate
Bitcoin segment: weekend liquidity, volatility, and market moves
Listener tips and other ag headlines not covered
Gold’s rise, China’s yuan–gold link, and the Bitcoin case
Peter Thiel paradox setup and a lesson from an Uber conversation
Resources: best Bitcoin podcast and buying via River
Worthy adversary reframe: what respect really means
Closing: upcoming adversaries and Legacy Interviews call to action