In this week’s Ag Tribes Report, Vance is joined by Missouri farmer and former Missouri Farm Bureau president Blake Hurst. They cover John Deere’s latest layoffs amid a tough farm economy and what this downcycle means for equipment buyers, the Trump team’s floated idea to fund farm aid with tariff revenues (and Blake’s sharp critique of running money “in a circle”), and USDA’s push to expand U.S. ethanol exports to the UK, including a frank debate about mandates, price impacts at the pump, and ethanol as a strategic grain reserve. We also examine concerns from Alberta about immigrant wage subsidies crowding out youth jobs and how labor realities are playing out on U.S. farms, including Blake’s experience with the H-2A program.
In the Bitcoin Land Price Report, they discuss volatility versus real assets, stablecoins for cross-border payments, and why instant, low-cost settlement could threaten credit card rails. We close with Blake’s Peter Thiel paradox—why losing some acres to other uses might actually help farmers by tightening supplies—and his broadside against protectionist trade instincts within agriculture. Plus, where to follow Blake’s writing and what’s coming up next on the road in Manhattan, Kansas for the Flinchbaugh Forum.
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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. Here's Legacy Interviews guests, Daryl and Jill Stamp, on the joy of filming their Legacy interview.
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What do you think you'll tell your kids about the experience?
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Oh, I'm gonna thank them a lot. I realize this is more for them and their kids and their kids than it is us, the grandkids Right. Who don't know these stories. I can't wait to for us all to get together and see it. This went better than I thought it was gonna. Time does go fast, so it's What time is it? It's almost 03:00. No way. Way. Yes. How did you talk so much? I know.
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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 member of one of the many tribes that collectively make up US and Canadian agriculture. Today, I have Blake Hurst. Blake is a seasoned Missouri farmer and former ten year president of the Missouri Farm Bureau known for his insightful writings on agricultural policy and rural life. As a third generation farmer growing up in corn, soybean, and greenhouse plants, this week's ag advocate caught my attention when, he wrote an article about a Peter Thiel paradox that he'd always wanted to be asked about. So, Blake, I'm excited that you're here. Alright. Well, it's good to be here. Good to good to be on the show. So, have you started harvest yet?
[00:01:48] Unknown:
Yeah. We've been in for about three days intermittently. We've had a couple of showers and a couple of breakdowns, so a pretty slow start.
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And, what prompted you this year? What what meant go time?
[00:02:00] Unknown:
Just the calendar, really, where our corn is a little bit, wetter than we normally, normally would pick, but but it's time to go. And all like everybody else, all the neighbors were running, and I got nervous.
[00:02:13] Unknown:
Oh, man. That's the I hear that from everybody. Nobody wants to be the first one, but they certainly as soon as they see one combine, fired up, it's go time. Yep. Well, speaking of go time, we should get on with it. Tonight on the show, we're gonna be covering John Deere's latest layoffs due to a sales downturn, a potential Trump administration plan to use tariff revenues to support American farmers, the USDA's effort to boost ethanol exports to The UK, and concerns from a Canadian panel about immigrant wage subsidies impacting local youth employment, particularly in agriculture.
We'll also explore the, value of Bitcoin compared to farmland, and we're gonna dive into Blake's perspective on his Peter Thiel paradox and his worthy adversary, and we're gonna try and do that in all just thirty minutes. So let's get started. If you're, interested, you can always throw up a comment or retweet it so we can get a large audience and a good conversation going. Headline number one, this comes from Ag Webb just this morning. John Deere announced further layoffs affecting a 141 Iowa employees with a 101 at Waterloo operations and 41 at the Des Moines Works, citing fewer machinery orders from farmers due to a tough farm economy expected to persist well into 2026.
This follows recent cuts impacting over 200 workers in the Quad Cities region. Despite the downturn, Deere plans to proceed with the $20,000,000,000 US investment strategy. The company's August earnings call warned of a 600,000,000 in tariff costs for fiscal year twenty twenty five with net income down 26% and sales down 9% year over year. Layoff benefits include recall rights, supplemental unemployment pay, transitional assistant, profit sharing, health care coverage. So while it seems like they are taking care of their people, this is another big hit to John Deere. Blake, what do you think? Is is this gonna be endemic? Are all the companies gonna do this, or is this rare just to John Deere? Oh, no. I think, there are other agriculture companies that are,
[00:04:20] Unknown:
are making cuts. My, this this hits me two ways. Obviously, I'm a consumer of John Deere products, but my grandson's a senior up at Iowa State in agate engineering. And the company where he had his, internship last year, I think, laid off 30% of their employees. I called him up and I said, hey, Aaron. You still got a job? And he said, yeah. They were standing by their contracts to interns. And, of course, he's nervous about, getting a job when he graduates in May. This is no surprise. You know? We're in a cyclical business. This is the down cycle. Some of it's caused by a huge crop in the field, and and and some of it's caused by
[00:05:01] Unknown:
government policy. So there you go. We're going to, be living this life for a while. Yeah. One of my, buddies that does is in the retail sector said that when they're it's easy to sell equipment to grain farmers regularly because most of the time, if they ever make profits, they're trying to get them off the tax rolls. And right now, it's the cattle guys that have been buying stuff hand over fist, but not these big combines, not planters, not sprayers because that's grain, and and grain guys are not spending money. Yep. Good good for the cattle, guys. I'm happy they're getting their their turn in the sun. Well, story number two, Trump administration explores tariff funded Farm Aid. This is from the Financial Times. The Trump administration is considering a plan to use revenue from new tariffs, particularly on Chinese imports to fund a support program for American farmers facing economic pressure from trade tensions.
Ag secretary, Brooke Rollins, recently indicated in an interview that the administration is developing this initiative, which could provide aid to offset declining exports and rising input costs. The proposal aims to make the program self funding through tariff collections, potentially avoiding additional congressional appropriations. The go this echoes past emergency payments during the Trump's first term, but with a focus on using tariff dollars directly. Farm groups are lobbying for relief amid a projected 20% drop in net farm incomes for 2025.
On x, this was stirring quite a bit of, of comments from people saying they don't really want, payments. What they want are good high prices. Where are you at, Blake? Is this a necessary thing? Why the most ridiculous
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idea I've ever heard. So we put on tariffs on Chinese imports. We take the money, and then we give it back to the people that are hurt because of the tariffs we put on Chinese imports. I've got a great idea. Let's get rid of the middleman and just sell our soybeans to China and, make a living that way.
[00:07:04] Unknown:
I mean, it does seem like if you're putting on these tariffs and this is what is causing or prompting low prices I mean, not least of which is China has not bought a single soybean this year, and this is not, you know, this is not something that helps out the economy. It seems,
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like, to your point, totally ridiculous. Yeah. We're we're running the money in a circle, and, the government's gonna take their cut, of course, and it makes no sense at all.
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Do you feel that the tariffs have done any good for US agriculture?
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Nope. I feel they've been a disaster for agriculture. They have you know, you started off with the with the John Deere story. I'm looking at, who's gonna pay that $700,000,000 in tariffs cost? Well, it's gonna be me and my family, but if and when we can afford to buy John Deere equipment. If we win, we can afford to buy a new combine. I'm running a thirteen year old combine. I'm ready for a new one, but 50% tariff on aluminum, but almost as much on steel. That's pretty, pretty large hit for a for a combine. And, so so I'm getting hurt that way. At the same time, as you mentioned, 02/2019, we'd sold 10% of our soybean crop by this point to China. That's how much they booked, the new crop, the crop that was in the field. This year, zero. Can you imagine what the markets would do if tomorrow the USDA announced a 10% cut in acreage that they made a mistake and there was 10% fewer acre? They'd be limited up for a week.
So that's what they've done to us. And the benefit is totally I can't see the benefit yet. I can't find it. I I you know, the the the the theory is, that we're going to out negotiate that everybody, every single person that has negotiated on the behalf of US trade in the past forty years has been an an idiot, weakling, or in the pay of a foreign government, has never made a good trade deal. Now we're gonna make great trade deals. Where are they? We've had tariffs since 02/2018. That's seven years. We haven't seen any great trade deals. All we've seen is a huge increase in what the agriculture trade deficit and a huge decrease in particularly our soybean exports.
[00:09:24] Unknown:
I remember talking to a guy one time about, whenever the government issues these payments back to regular taxpayers and they make this big announcement. Hey. We're gonna send you a check for $200, a thousand dollars. One of the reasons they allow there to be such a lag is because people will spend that two or three times over. And I think that's kinda what we're doing with the tariffs. We keep talking about, we're gonna get all this money from the tariffs. We're gonna spend it on this. We can spend it on that. And, really, it's going to the way out kick their coverage and not be able to keep up with, all the promises they've made on what they're gonna do with tariff payments. Yeah. Well, I mean, the the argument there's two arguments made for tariffs.
[00:10:02] Unknown:
They're gonna raise revenue. We're gonna get all this government money. That's great. Or they're going to in incentivize US production. We're gonna bring all these factories home, all these jobs home, all this work home. Well, they can't do both. If we're importing things and buying paying those tariffs, then we're not buying those things from US producers who don't exist. And if US producers can in some of these instances in Gary's production, then there's no tariff revenue. So either make your argument for tariffs, but use one or the other argument because you can't use them both at the same time. And I'm ticked off because my coffee's gone up in price too.
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That's true. I mean, everything has well, except for eggs because when those got too high, the US government decided they were going to cut the knees out from the other egg producers and import from Turkey and South Korea. So they'll let the prices of some things go up, but not others. There you go. There you go. BJ McNeal wanted to point out about the John Deere story. Let's not let's all remember that John Deere is still gonna make $4,000,000,000 this year. Their big, moves are because they're not hitting their original target, and that's the crazy thing about, forward looking statements.
Alright. On to story number three, the USDA trade mission to UK spotlights ethanol export push. In mid September, I saw it early this week, secretary Brooke Rollins led a trade delegation to The United Kingdom, meeting with top officials, including counterpart Emma Reynolds, to promote US agricultural exports with a key focus on ethanol. She was joined by undersecretary Luke Lindbergh and leaders from the Renewable Fuels Association, US Grains and Bioproducts Council, and Growth Energy. The group discussed opening UK markets fully to US ethanol, highlighting immediate export opportunities and potential for e 15 blends. Secretary Rollins emphasized putting The US farmer first by expanding market access for American products amid global demand. The industry identified $370,000,000 million gallon opportunity for The UK, with Rollins trying to allow Advanced this collaboration.
Blake, what do you think? Should we be exporting the, the the ethanol all over the world? Should this be the great hope that'll buoy demand for I hope I I hope I I wish her well. I hope it goes well. I hope we sell a lot of ethanol.
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Gosh knows we've got plenty of corn, in order to grind ethanol. You know, one of the things that I I I I think is interesting, and it might help people when they think about ethanol, because it gets a lot of criticism from outside agriculture. But when you think about it, it's a huge grain reserve in the sense that should we ever decide we were short of food, God forbid, we can change you know, a third of the corn acres can go into producing corn for corn for feed or or soybeans for feed and and oil or other goods.
It's a huge reserve that we've got out there, to protect our domestic food supply, and I I think it'd help people, who are critical of ethanol if they thought of it in that way.
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Well, I mean, the flip side of that, though, is that if you look at all the corn production as as, hey. We're you we're holding this land for Right. Food production if we need it. I mean Right. Right now, the way that we're holding that is we are paying out for farmers who are not able to make their ends meet because the grain prices are too low and the input prices are too high. So it's a very expensive program if we calculate out all the, you know, quote, unquote transfer payments to farmers to keep them farming this acreage.
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Yeah. But my my point was if we weren't if we weren't, farming ethanol for ethanol, selling ethanol, but producing ethanol, that then, obviously, price of corn go down, there'd be less corn grown. Some of that land would be in other things. So so I guess that's my that's my rationale, for being happy when we sell ethanol, and I guess I need one. I'm delighted
[00:14:08] Unknown:
to see that they are trying to, export ethanol to somebody else. I it's far, far better to get the British to say, yeah. We'd love to, you know, power our cars with corn instead of, you know, either coal through electricity or whatever. But, you know, the the challenge has been most of the demand created for ethanol started through legal mandates in The United States. Like, people didn't choose to put
[00:14:32] Unknown:
e 85 in the car. That's true. But we always have to remember that ethanol is cheaper right now than gasoline. So when you're just looking at the rack, when you're looking at a gallon of ethanol, a gallon of gas, obviously, I understand it doesn't have quite as much energy, but it's cheaper too. You take ethanol out of the gasoline supply supply, and you're gonna raise the grass price of gas at the pump for two reasons. One, because ethanol is cheaper, and two, because there'll be a 10% cut in the supply. We don't have enough, refining capacity to supply the gasoline without ethanol. So so anyway but but I I get the criticism.
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I've never heard that before. You think that it would it would make the price kick up considerably? Like, we're talking
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20¢, a dollar? How much do you want to kick up? Ethanol's cheaper. I don't know how much cheaper it is, but it's 10 or 20¢ cheaper than gasoline. So so there's there's there is, as you said, a financial mandate or, I mean, a a regulatory mandate to, to use ethanol. There's, you know, renewable fuel standard, but there's no subsidies that's cheaper than gas. If we can make it cheaper than gas with corn prices at this level. Obviously, a couple years ago, when corn prices were $7, it wasn't quite that way. But, you know, you can get almost three gallons of gasoline out of a bushel of corn. Bushel of corn today is $3.90 here.
So that's only a dollar 30, for the corn that goes into a gallon of ethanol, and that doesn't even count the, dried distillers grains that are fed to cattle. So there you go.
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Hey. It's, there's always, multiple sides to any argument, and I'm glad to hear, somebody sticking up for ethanol. Okay. Moving on to our final story. This one comes from the Great White North. Alberta panel warns immigrant wage subsidies hurt local youth jobs. I was stumbling around on x today and saw this video of a man talking about what's going on in Alberta with their labor. So I'm just gonna go ahead and play this video.
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Again. You covered one of my points here, Daniel. Thank you. I had a I hired a sixteen year old kid just before school started. I just needed help for a few days. I'm self employed in construction. And I asked him, why did you sit at home all summer? Why didn't you go to work? And he said, I applied to 53 places. I didn't get an interview because the government has programs for immigrants where they pay partial wages, so they won't hire. He said, none of my friends got friends, have jobs. So if we are doing that and taking the work away from our young kids, we are creating a huge problem for the future. I am very in favor of immigration if we can do it at a sustainable rate where they don't take the housing for from our seniors and don't take the jobs from our kids, and where we do it in a way that they integrate into our society.
If we put too many into one place, they will not integrate. Thank you.
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So I know this is totally different than United States, but as I was watching that and thinking, I think we've seen a very similar thing in The United States, and this is in large, measure similar to having illegal immigrants. I know where I grew up, for example, I used to detassel corn. So did everybody I knew that wanted to make as much money as possible. I was home this summer and asked some kids why they don't detassel, and they said, you can't get those jobs. They're already taken by, what the kids said was illegals. I don't know if they are or not. But, what do you think, Blake? Is the problem that Canada's facing similar to what we're facing with illegal immigrants?
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I I I think, I think probably the detangling jobs have been taken by machines rather than than immigrants. But as you mentioned earlier, we have a greenhouse business. We'll hire eight to 10 people seasonally to work in the greenhouse. Been doing this for almost forty years. Up until three years ago, everybody we hired was was local. And one, Saturday, if you know anything about the flower business, Mother's Day is a very big day. And on Saturday for Mother's Day, I looked around, and we didn't have a single employee on the farm. Not a single one. Not a single one had shown up for work that day. And we were waiting on customers loading trucks and trying to keep plants from drying.
Since then, we've been you know, doing watering. Since then, we've, used a couple of h two a employees. We go through the process. We do it legally, which is very expensive, by the way. And they're not subsidized. They're they're my most expensive employees by far. But it was the only way we could fill our workforce. So I don't think that, I mean, we'll we're gonna see we're gonna see whether, there's a huge increase in domestic demand for labor, because we are, you know, we are cutting down on the number of in the legal workforce. I can tell you the h two a program, we've been doing it for three years, is much much more paperwork than there was two years ago, last two year. I think most of that was the last administration made some changes, but but, it's more difficult to get, temporary temporary workers than it was. So we're gonna find out, but by but we couldn't hire people. I mean, we can't we couldn't get enough.
The people that we hire, good help. We're glad to have them. They're good friends.
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We've got folks that have worked here for twenty, twenty five years, but we couldn't find enough help, and that's all there is to it. It I mean, this is you are saying something. I've heard this over and over and over again from farmers all over The United States from people, whether it's on the Ag Tribes report or doing legacy interviews. And, and you look at it and you say, well, this is insane. Right? What what what do you mean there aren't? Because people are claiming that the unemployment rate, the number of jobs available to people, keep going up and up and up. And in fact, this is what is prompting the the Federal Reserve to say this is why we need to go start, you know, lowering the interest rate in effect to make it easier to to print money and and, inflate the economy.
And, at the same time, you're sitting there saying, we can't get anybody to work, and these are more expensive workers. So, obviously, we would pay local workers if we could. Yeah. What's the way out of this? Yeah. We could get I don't well, I mean,
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again, this is just totally anecdotal, not not particularly useful to make large, large generalizations. But, you know, we're a small town and and, you know, I graduated from high school with 65 kids in my class, and my kids graduated from high school with with 25 or 30 kids in their class. And my grandkids are gonna graduate from high school here here with 18 or 20 in a class. There's just fewer people here, to do the job. So so, you know, and all this all the reasons you know, it takes less people to farm. You know? People move away from these small towns because city city pays better, more exciting life, all those reasons. But, we just have a people problem. Now that's clearly not what's going on in urban areas, but that's our problem.
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Well, that sounds fair enough. Alright. That's gonna do it for the headlines today. If you have headlines you think we should cover on the Ag Tribes report, you can always send them to [email protected] or hit me up on x at Vance Crowe. Moving on to the Bitcoin land price report, this is where we take a look at how much farmland costs in our, in Blake's area, and then we compare it to the price of Bitcoin. So, Blake, where do you live, and, what does bit what does an acre of good quality farmland cost there? Live clear in the Northwest Corner of Missouri. So we're just South Of
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Iowa and East Of Nebraska, and an acre of good ground would bring, I've seen it sell as high as 17,000, but if I just a typical sale held tomorrow, my guess would be 10 to $11,000 an acre.
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Alright. So we'll call that 10,000, and you're in is it Atchison County? How do you pronounce that? Atchison County. Yeah. Alright. Atchison County. So as of press time, Bitcoin was 11, $117,500. So that means that for 0.085 Bitcoin, you could get one acre of farmland or one Bitcoin would buy you 11.75 acres. How does that strike you, Blake?
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Well, I should have bought Bitcoin, but I didn't.
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Where are you at on Bitcoin? What what are your thoughts on, on its role in the future?
[00:22:47] Unknown:
So I don't know. I I I I I I think that it's a huge speculative bubble right now. I don't think there's any doubt about that. If you look at the charts, if you look at the, increase in price, I think I would be, very nervous about, in investing my, my kids' inheritance into, into Bitcoin. But that doesn't mean it it doesn't have a use and a and a and isn't useful, and we shouldn't be glad we have it. When I read about stable coins, they strike me that the use of coins for an actual stable coin you could trust, strikes me as, really, really good, really important. And if and if everybody anybody ever comes up with a stablecoin that people can can trust and ties that to the blockchain, then I'm gonna have to sell my stock in American Express because, credit card companies are gonna be in big trouble, in a big hurry. Wow. So tell me tell me about this. Why do you prefer stable coins over Bitcoin? I didn't say I preferred them. Right now, I Well, you weren't selling your,
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I mean, express stock for Bitcoin. No. No. I'm not,
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I'm not, but but but the the thing about stable coins is if I can make an instantaneous transaction, across borders, in time for nothing, that is a huge deal. You know, I mentioned the h two a workers, that we've had the same same kids for, you know, young men for a couple of three years. They've gotten to be we we provide transport or, living quarters here. We build a build a apartment for them. They've got to be family friends, and we, you know, we help them when they need. And and both of them send mother money back to, one of them to their to their to their mother and one of them to their their spouse.
And it's hugely expensive. I mean, I just go to Walmart, you know, and it's, I don't know, six, eight, 7%. It's bulky or, I mean, cumbersome. It's a mess. And, and the same thing happens if I wanna buy I tried to buy us Canadian stock a couple of years ago, and it got to be a huge mess. And, because because it wasn't registered in The US, I didn't realize it at the time, or I had never done it. But, you know, I had to buy Canadian, you know, loonies, make the transfer, month to end. Oh, if I got if I got stable coin, if I got Bitcoin except that Bitcoin makes me nervous because tomorrow may be worth 10% less than it was today. So how can I do those payments over you know, if I have a long term relationship with a Canadian supplier?
How can I do those payments with a currency that's or rather with an item that's really been used, right now as a speculation as a store of wealth rather than as a means of exchange? So that's that's where stable coins, I think, kind of catch my imagination because, because they don't their value doesn't change.
[00:25:51] Unknown:
Well, I mean, it does because you're buying it in US dollars. So the US dollars lost 11% of its value just in this year alone. So if you had purchased stablecoins and held on to it, it's it's the purchasing power has gone down by 11%. But I will say if you like the idea of doing that cross border payment, I I currently have was trying to get paid by some people in Canada, and we have had to go through so much rigmarole and wire transfers and But it's terrible. And somebody's gonna pay for it. Right? They're gonna pay for it. I'm gonna pay for it, and it's not an insignificant amount of money. The cool thing about Bitcoin is you can actually, have your bank account, connected to a, a Bitcoin service. You can buy the Bitcoin and immediately send it if you already have your, bank account hooked up. And so you would be able to say, I will give you this at this price or we'll choose a strike price, and you get all the benefits of being able to send it without an intermediary. I I guess I guess I guess my point would be would be this. I have
[00:26:50] Unknown:
if if I buy the Bitcoin today, make the transaction, and I'm out of the Bitcoin market tomorrow, then no problem. I'm that's great. That'll do it. But you say that US dollars depreciated 11%. Well, I mean, official inflation rates, you know, closer to 3%, but but whatever. 1010%, no doubt is depreciated. But Bitcoin can move that much in a day, and that's what as a store of value, I've got to have an and and and if you told me that Bitcoin is gonna be worth more than it is today in fifty years from now, because, you know, there's a limit. And if they you know, they don't have any of it can be produced. I would say I absolutely agree with you. You tell me it's gonna be worth what it is today, ten days from now, six days, six months from now, or a year from now, I who knows?
[00:27:40] Unknown:
Who knows? Fair point. I mean, the only thing I can say is that, if you look year on year, you you can say there's a positive trajectory, but anybody that's trying to get in and get out of the market quickly, it's it's foolish, I think, to try and trade Bitcoin. It's not it's not a game I could play. Yeah. Well, fair enough. Alright, Blake. Moving on. Oh, if you are interested in purchasing Bitcoin, there has been a flurry of activity. I will include a link to River who supports the show. And whenever you buy Bitcoin on River, you support the show, by then them sending us a little bit of Bitcoin, and there has been a lot of people buying in the last week or so. Moving on to the Peter Thiel paradox.
Blake, what is one thing that you believe that almost nobody in your ag tribe agrees with you on?
[00:28:25] Unknown:
That we're, well, I have a whole bunch of things, but, I'll start with the one I wrote about a couple weeks ago, that we're in imminent danger of running out of productive farm ground. I don't think we are. And the reason is because the price of corn is $3.90 a bushel here in, Tarkio, Missouri today, and that's below, you know, not below my cash cost of production, but certainly below my total cost of production. If we're producing such a huge surplus that we can't do it properly, then we aren't we don't need as much ground farm as we have farmed. And there's lots of ways to get ground out of production. We can sweat it out by just grinding grinding prices ever lower and farmers' margins ever tighter.
Or, some of it can go into, some of it can go into shopping centers, some of it go into subdivisions, some of it go into solar power, and some of them can go into, heck, I don't care, recreational areas, whatever. But when when somebody says, oh, we can't let them use all of our good farm ground for use x, I think, well, it'd be okay if they use just a little bit more of it so my prices would be better.
[00:29:43] Unknown:
Hot damn, Blake. This is one of the best Peter Thiel paradoxes I have ever heard. There is minds exploding all over The United States and Canada right now. People, like, losing their minds. And I gotta say, because your your paradox is, challenging orthodoxy. And the orthodoxy is save farmland, do what we have to do. That's why we have to do payments. That's why we have to pattern tile, you know, any swampy area. We gotta clear it and make sure we can get enough more corn on there. And you're saying the opposite. Maybe we have too much acreage going towards, production.
[00:30:18] Unknown:
You know, my favorite a economist, a guy named John Newton, and he came out with a big report just last week or last month. It's two months ago, whatever. The recent past. And since we've already reached or very close to reaching peak population, and we're gonna start heading down, I think that demographics are backing up. We may have we may have you know, GP one is cutting food consumption. The people that are using it by what? Ten, twelve, 18. So people that are taking diet pills just eat less, which makes sense, I guess. You know, we we we may have seen the peak food demand, already.
And I I I don't think so. Obviously, as people get, have more money and move in the middle class and and developing countries, they eat more meat. They upgrade their diets. They consume more food. That's a great good thing. That's a good thing. Good thing for us, good thing for them. But but at some point, we're not gonna need to produce, you know, you and I and everybody else in agriculture has grown up saying, well, by the year 2050, we've got a double production. Maybe not.
[00:31:32] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, I think that I I've been saying for a while that the the push for, hey. We've gotta we we've gotta feed the world. This is gone. And I'm very interested to find who's gonna be the first ag company that's gonna come out and say, what we need to do is create higher quality crops, or we need to create a wider diversity of crops. But none of them are saying that right now. Now they're saying, you know, high density, get impact in as as much as you can. Oh, I'm same way. I'm,
[00:31:59] Unknown:
you know, I, took me a well, that's embarrassing, so I'm not gonna talk about it. But I had some, some combine setting mistakes. And as soon as I got my combine tuned in on Monday afternoon, I'm getting some really good yields here, which I know in a lot of the Corn Belt, there's various problems from disease or or this dry dry August that people have seen. But we're getting great yields, and I'm like, that makes me happy. And, so I'm like everybody else. I'm trying to get that last bushel squeezed out of every acre. But, you know, we've got to think about our markets as well.
[00:32:35] Unknown:
Well, I am gonna give you a a cool 9.2. This is a great one and, bravo. I, good for you. Alright. Moving along to the worthy adversary. Blake, who is one person that you respect but you strongly disagree with?
[00:32:53] Unknown:
Well, I I'm not gonna I'm gonna cheat, and I'm not gonna say one person. Farm journal did a survey, here a couple of months ago and found that, 70% of, my fellow farmers are full agreement that the, our present trade policy will be successful. I think that, and we could come up with, obviously, spokesman for various groups that are that are saying the same thing. I think that's, that's wrong, that we're gonna have to learn learn from history, learn from the history of past trade wars and change course. And, the sooner, the better.
[00:33:30] Unknown:
So so who is your worthy adversary here? You named a collection of people? Yeah. 70% of my fellow workers. You gotta put a finger on something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, my second choice,
[00:33:44] Unknown:
was to save Ants Crow and then argue with you about Bitcoin, but we already did that.
[00:33:49] Unknown:
My first choice, so I had to go to my second choice. Yeah. You know, Blake, there are a lot of people out there that when we're doing the podcast, they say, you know who my worthy adversary is? It's you. So I'm I must just have viewers that are sitting there that just hate listening to Whatever. Yeah. Whatever it takes to get viewers. That's it. Alright. Well, you did great on the Peter Teal paradox, but you failed utterly on the worthy adversary.
[00:34:14] Unknown:
But, I I can think of it. I can think of about six guys on x that, that, that are they're beating the ground. I mean, this idea that we have to make everything here and then we can't trade, is is the denial of every bit of economic progress we've made for a in a you know, for for it's since since since people climbed out of the primordial swamp. It's crazy. And there is one country, that is totally self reliant, depends on nobody else for anything, make everything they use at home, and that's North Korea, and people there are hungry enough for eating grass. We we we succeed by trade. We grow by trade.
We benefit from trade. We've known that, used to know that. I mean, you know, we're gonna learn the same lesson about the measles vaccine, but whatever it takes, we're gonna so, you know, somebody said once that, experience is the school of mankind. He will learn from no other. I I'm convinced that they should have changed that to screwing up is the school of mankind you'll learn from no other. We're making some big screw ups, and we're gonna learn some lessons.
[00:35:30] Unknown:
Well, I, you know, I'm a firm believer, and I I know this from interviewing people about their life stories is that, the only real wisdom is is getting yourself back up after you failed. Like, there is no way to get I'm afraid so. I'm afraid so. We gotta live it. You can't you can't you can tell the kid and tell the kid that what's gonna happen if he does a certain thing, but he's just gotta go do it. Yep. That's the dad's job is to keep mom, you know, from from jumping in there and and, stopping him. Yeah. Well, Blake, if people wanted to engage you with you more, where should they go to read things that you publish or interact with you? Well,
[00:36:08] Unknown:
you know, obviously, if you're a subscriber to AgriPulse, I write in there. I I'm I'm I'm lucky enough to get maybe two, maybe three, op eds in the Wall Street Journal every year. I have a relationship there. I'm on Twitter at at Hurst Blake, and I have a Substack, at Blake Hurst or at Hurst Blake where I, where I put out more personal stuff about, about the kids in the farm. So so I I hope people will go to the Substack. It's not. It's free.
[00:36:37] Unknown:
And, nothing is said on there that's very important, but I try to have a little fun with it. Well, I had a lot of fun with you today. And if you send me a link, I will include it in on the show notes. So thank thanks so much for coming on, Blake. Alright. That's gonna do it for this week's Ag Tribes report. This has been a, a a wild ride with, Blake. Next week, I will be coming to you live from Manhattan, Kansas. I've been invited to, give a keynote speech at the Flinchbaugh Forum in Manhattan, Kansas. For anybody that doesn't know, Barry Flinchbaugh was a prolific ag economist or ag policy analyst, and, he invited people in from all over the world and would have challenging conversations with them. And I'm quite excited to be doing this, so I'm gonna do the Ag Tribes report on the road with Jake Jorenstad.
And, Yeah. As we head out, I wanted to share this little video my team put together on, why it is, that I can help people solve their conference problem, you know, when the challenges of finding the right speaker for that. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to Blake for coming on. And, as always, feel free to disagree. So the conference organizer has a terrible challenge. The audience can pull out their phone and pull up anyone talking about anything. How do you find somebody that is both going to reach every single person in that audience and yet still have that spike of energy where people are electrified because they're hearing about things that they aren't used to or that make them think about things in a different way. The most important question that I ask a conference organizer is, what is it that you want people to feel? What emotion do you want them to have when we leave this talk? What's their disposition? How are they gonna interact with one another? What does this prompt in the people that are there?
It's not just the information. What you're giving them is energy, a reason to be there in that moment. Now they take that energy and they share it amongst each other. For me, the best speech is when people walk away being like, I now have a tangible skill, but they didn't necessarily readily accept it and they had to grapple with it. They set their phone down, they leaned forward, they said, how do I feel about this? And through that an energy is created that is not about the speaker, it's about the person listening to the speech. It's far beyond motivation. It's actually giving people skills.
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's Legacy Interviews guests, Daryl and Jill Stamp, on the joy of filming their Legacy interview.
[00:00:17] Unknown:
What do you think you'll tell your kids about the experience?
[00:00:20] Unknown:
Oh, I'm gonna thank them a lot. I realize this is more for them and their kids and their kids than it is us, the grandkids Right. Who don't know these stories. I can't wait to for us all to get together and see it. This went better than I thought it was gonna. Time does go fast, so it's What time is it? It's almost 03:00. No way. Way. Yes. How did you talk so much? I know.
[00:00:49] 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 member of one of the many tribes that collectively make up US and Canadian agriculture. Today, I have Blake Hurst. Blake is a seasoned Missouri farmer and former ten year president of the Missouri Farm Bureau known for his insightful writings on agricultural policy and rural life. As a third generation farmer growing up in corn, soybean, and greenhouse plants, this week's ag advocate caught my attention when, he wrote an article about a Peter Thiel paradox that he'd always wanted to be asked about. So, Blake, I'm excited that you're here. Alright. Well, it's good to be here. Good to good to be on the show. So, have you started harvest yet?
[00:01:48] Unknown:
Yeah. We've been in for about three days intermittently. We've had a couple of showers and a couple of breakdowns, so a pretty slow start.
[00:01:56] Unknown:
And, what prompted you this year? What what meant go time?
[00:02:00] Unknown:
Just the calendar, really, where our corn is a little bit, wetter than we normally, normally would pick, but but it's time to go. And all like everybody else, all the neighbors were running, and I got nervous.
[00:02:13] Unknown:
Oh, man. That's the I hear that from everybody. Nobody wants to be the first one, but they certainly as soon as they see one combine, fired up, it's go time. Yep. Well, speaking of go time, we should get on with it. Tonight on the show, we're gonna be covering John Deere's latest layoffs due to a sales downturn, a potential Trump administration plan to use tariff revenues to support American farmers, the USDA's effort to boost ethanol exports to The UK, and concerns from a Canadian panel about immigrant wage subsidies impacting local youth employment, particularly in agriculture.
We'll also explore the, value of Bitcoin compared to farmland, and we're gonna dive into Blake's perspective on his Peter Thiel paradox and his worthy adversary, and we're gonna try and do that in all just thirty minutes. So let's get started. If you're, interested, you can always throw up a comment or retweet it so we can get a large audience and a good conversation going. Headline number one, this comes from Ag Webb just this morning. John Deere announced further layoffs affecting a 141 Iowa employees with a 101 at Waterloo operations and 41 at the Des Moines Works, citing fewer machinery orders from farmers due to a tough farm economy expected to persist well into 2026.
This follows recent cuts impacting over 200 workers in the Quad Cities region. Despite the downturn, Deere plans to proceed with the $20,000,000,000 US investment strategy. The company's August earnings call warned of a 600,000,000 in tariff costs for fiscal year twenty twenty five with net income down 26% and sales down 9% year over year. Layoff benefits include recall rights, supplemental unemployment pay, transitional assistant, profit sharing, health care coverage. So while it seems like they are taking care of their people, this is another big hit to John Deere. Blake, what do you think? Is is this gonna be endemic? Are all the companies gonna do this, or is this rare just to John Deere? Oh, no. I think, there are other agriculture companies that are,
[00:04:20] Unknown:
are making cuts. My, this this hits me two ways. Obviously, I'm a consumer of John Deere products, but my grandson's a senior up at Iowa State in agate engineering. And the company where he had his, internship last year, I think, laid off 30% of their employees. I called him up and I said, hey, Aaron. You still got a job? And he said, yeah. They were standing by their contracts to interns. And, of course, he's nervous about, getting a job when he graduates in May. This is no surprise. You know? We're in a cyclical business. This is the down cycle. Some of it's caused by a huge crop in the field, and and and some of it's caused by
[00:05:01] Unknown:
government policy. So there you go. We're going to, be living this life for a while. Yeah. One of my, buddies that does is in the retail sector said that when they're it's easy to sell equipment to grain farmers regularly because most of the time, if they ever make profits, they're trying to get them off the tax rolls. And right now, it's the cattle guys that have been buying stuff hand over fist, but not these big combines, not planters, not sprayers because that's grain, and and grain guys are not spending money. Yep. Good good for the cattle, guys. I'm happy they're getting their their turn in the sun. Well, story number two, Trump administration explores tariff funded Farm Aid. This is from the Financial Times. The Trump administration is considering a plan to use revenue from new tariffs, particularly on Chinese imports to fund a support program for American farmers facing economic pressure from trade tensions.
Ag secretary, Brooke Rollins, recently indicated in an interview that the administration is developing this initiative, which could provide aid to offset declining exports and rising input costs. The proposal aims to make the program self funding through tariff collections, potentially avoiding additional congressional appropriations. The go this echoes past emergency payments during the Trump's first term, but with a focus on using tariff dollars directly. Farm groups are lobbying for relief amid a projected 20% drop in net farm incomes for 2025.
On x, this was stirring quite a bit of, of comments from people saying they don't really want, payments. What they want are good high prices. Where are you at, Blake? Is this a necessary thing? Why the most ridiculous
[00:06:44] Unknown:
idea I've ever heard. So we put on tariffs on Chinese imports. We take the money, and then we give it back to the people that are hurt because of the tariffs we put on Chinese imports. I've got a great idea. Let's get rid of the middleman and just sell our soybeans to China and, make a living that way.
[00:07:04] Unknown:
I mean, it does seem like if you're putting on these tariffs and this is what is causing or prompting low prices I mean, not least of which is China has not bought a single soybean this year, and this is not, you know, this is not something that helps out the economy. It seems,
[00:07:19] Unknown:
like, to your point, totally ridiculous. Yeah. We're we're running the money in a circle, and, the government's gonna take their cut, of course, and it makes no sense at all.
[00:07:30] Unknown:
Do you feel that the tariffs have done any good for US agriculture?
[00:07:34] Unknown:
Nope. I feel they've been a disaster for agriculture. They have you know, you started off with the with the John Deere story. I'm looking at, who's gonna pay that $700,000,000 in tariffs cost? Well, it's gonna be me and my family, but if and when we can afford to buy John Deere equipment. If we win, we can afford to buy a new combine. I'm running a thirteen year old combine. I'm ready for a new one, but 50% tariff on aluminum, but almost as much on steel. That's pretty, pretty large hit for a for a combine. And, so so I'm getting hurt that way. At the same time, as you mentioned, 02/2019, we'd sold 10% of our soybean crop by this point to China. That's how much they booked, the new crop, the crop that was in the field. This year, zero. Can you imagine what the markets would do if tomorrow the USDA announced a 10% cut in acreage that they made a mistake and there was 10% fewer acre? They'd be limited up for a week.
So that's what they've done to us. And the benefit is totally I can't see the benefit yet. I can't find it. I I you know, the the the the theory is, that we're going to out negotiate that everybody, every single person that has negotiated on the behalf of US trade in the past forty years has been an an idiot, weakling, or in the pay of a foreign government, has never made a good trade deal. Now we're gonna make great trade deals. Where are they? We've had tariffs since 02/2018. That's seven years. We haven't seen any great trade deals. All we've seen is a huge increase in what the agriculture trade deficit and a huge decrease in particularly our soybean exports.
[00:09:24] Unknown:
I remember talking to a guy one time about, whenever the government issues these payments back to regular taxpayers and they make this big announcement. Hey. We're gonna send you a check for $200, a thousand dollars. One of the reasons they allow there to be such a lag is because people will spend that two or three times over. And I think that's kinda what we're doing with the tariffs. We keep talking about, we're gonna get all this money from the tariffs. We're gonna spend it on this. We can spend it on that. And, really, it's going to the way out kick their coverage and not be able to keep up with, all the promises they've made on what they're gonna do with tariff payments. Yeah. Well, I mean, the the argument there's two arguments made for tariffs.
[00:10:02] Unknown:
They're gonna raise revenue. We're gonna get all this government money. That's great. Or they're going to in incentivize US production. We're gonna bring all these factories home, all these jobs home, all this work home. Well, they can't do both. If we're importing things and buying paying those tariffs, then we're not buying those things from US producers who don't exist. And if US producers can in some of these instances in Gary's production, then there's no tariff revenue. So either make your argument for tariffs, but use one or the other argument because you can't use them both at the same time. And I'm ticked off because my coffee's gone up in price too.
[00:10:48] Unknown:
That's true. I mean, everything has well, except for eggs because when those got too high, the US government decided they were going to cut the knees out from the other egg producers and import from Turkey and South Korea. So they'll let the prices of some things go up, but not others. There you go. There you go. BJ McNeal wanted to point out about the John Deere story. Let's not let's all remember that John Deere is still gonna make $4,000,000,000 this year. Their big, moves are because they're not hitting their original target, and that's the crazy thing about, forward looking statements.
Alright. On to story number three, the USDA trade mission to UK spotlights ethanol export push. In mid September, I saw it early this week, secretary Brooke Rollins led a trade delegation to The United Kingdom, meeting with top officials, including counterpart Emma Reynolds, to promote US agricultural exports with a key focus on ethanol. She was joined by undersecretary Luke Lindbergh and leaders from the Renewable Fuels Association, US Grains and Bioproducts Council, and Growth Energy. The group discussed opening UK markets fully to US ethanol, highlighting immediate export opportunities and potential for e 15 blends. Secretary Rollins emphasized putting The US farmer first by expanding market access for American products amid global demand. The industry identified $370,000,000 million gallon opportunity for The UK, with Rollins trying to allow Advanced this collaboration.
Blake, what do you think? Should we be exporting the, the the ethanol all over the world? Should this be the great hope that'll buoy demand for I hope I I hope I I wish her well. I hope it goes well. I hope we sell a lot of ethanol.
[00:12:31] Unknown:
Gosh knows we've got plenty of corn, in order to grind ethanol. You know, one of the things that I I I I think is interesting, and it might help people when they think about ethanol, because it gets a lot of criticism from outside agriculture. But when you think about it, it's a huge grain reserve in the sense that should we ever decide we were short of food, God forbid, we can change you know, a third of the corn acres can go into producing corn for corn for feed or or soybeans for feed and and oil or other goods.
It's a huge reserve that we've got out there, to protect our domestic food supply, and I I think it'd help people, who are critical of ethanol if they thought of it in that way.
[00:13:16] Unknown:
Well, I mean, the flip side of that, though, is that if you look at all the corn production as as, hey. We're you we're holding this land for Right. Food production if we need it. I mean Right. Right now, the way that we're holding that is we are paying out for farmers who are not able to make their ends meet because the grain prices are too low and the input prices are too high. So it's a very expensive program if we calculate out all the, you know, quote, unquote transfer payments to farmers to keep them farming this acreage.
[00:13:45] Unknown:
Yeah. But my my point was if we weren't if we weren't, farming ethanol for ethanol, selling ethanol, but producing ethanol, that then, obviously, price of corn go down, there'd be less corn grown. Some of that land would be in other things. So so I guess that's my that's my rationale, for being happy when we sell ethanol, and I guess I need one. I'm delighted
[00:14:08] Unknown:
to see that they are trying to, export ethanol to somebody else. I it's far, far better to get the British to say, yeah. We'd love to, you know, power our cars with corn instead of, you know, either coal through electricity or whatever. But, you know, the the challenge has been most of the demand created for ethanol started through legal mandates in The United States. Like, people didn't choose to put
[00:14:32] Unknown:
e 85 in the car. That's true. But we always have to remember that ethanol is cheaper right now than gasoline. So when you're just looking at the rack, when you're looking at a gallon of ethanol, a gallon of gas, obviously, I understand it doesn't have quite as much energy, but it's cheaper too. You take ethanol out of the gasoline supply supply, and you're gonna raise the grass price of gas at the pump for two reasons. One, because ethanol is cheaper, and two, because there'll be a 10% cut in the supply. We don't have enough, refining capacity to supply the gasoline without ethanol. So so anyway but but I I get the criticism.
[00:15:06] Unknown:
I've never heard that before. You think that it would it would make the price kick up considerably? Like, we're talking
[00:15:13] Unknown:
20¢, a dollar? How much do you want to kick up? Ethanol's cheaper. I don't know how much cheaper it is, but it's 10 or 20¢ cheaper than gasoline. So so there's there's there is, as you said, a financial mandate or, I mean, a a regulatory mandate to, to use ethanol. There's, you know, renewable fuel standard, but there's no subsidies that's cheaper than gas. If we can make it cheaper than gas with corn prices at this level. Obviously, a couple years ago, when corn prices were $7, it wasn't quite that way. But, you know, you can get almost three gallons of gasoline out of a bushel of corn. Bushel of corn today is $3.90 here.
So that's only a dollar 30, for the corn that goes into a gallon of ethanol, and that doesn't even count the, dried distillers grains that are fed to cattle. So there you go.
[00:16:02] Unknown:
Hey. It's, there's always, multiple sides to any argument, and I'm glad to hear, somebody sticking up for ethanol. Okay. Moving on to our final story. This one comes from the Great White North. Alberta panel warns immigrant wage subsidies hurt local youth jobs. I was stumbling around on x today and saw this video of a man talking about what's going on in Alberta with their labor. So I'm just gonna go ahead and play this video.
[00:16:29] Unknown:
Again. You covered one of my points here, Daniel. Thank you. I had a I hired a sixteen year old kid just before school started. I just needed help for a few days. I'm self employed in construction. And I asked him, why did you sit at home all summer? Why didn't you go to work? And he said, I applied to 53 places. I didn't get an interview because the government has programs for immigrants where they pay partial wages, so they won't hire. He said, none of my friends got friends, have jobs. So if we are doing that and taking the work away from our young kids, we are creating a huge problem for the future. I am very in favor of immigration if we can do it at a sustainable rate where they don't take the housing for from our seniors and don't take the jobs from our kids, and where we do it in a way that they integrate into our society.
If we put too many into one place, they will not integrate. Thank you.
[00:17:20] Unknown:
So I know this is totally different than United States, but as I was watching that and thinking, I think we've seen a very similar thing in The United States, and this is in large, measure similar to having illegal immigrants. I know where I grew up, for example, I used to detassel corn. So did everybody I knew that wanted to make as much money as possible. I was home this summer and asked some kids why they don't detassel, and they said, you can't get those jobs. They're already taken by, what the kids said was illegals. I don't know if they are or not. But, what do you think, Blake? Is the problem that Canada's facing similar to what we're facing with illegal immigrants?
[00:17:57] Unknown:
I I I think, I think probably the detangling jobs have been taken by machines rather than than immigrants. But as you mentioned earlier, we have a greenhouse business. We'll hire eight to 10 people seasonally to work in the greenhouse. Been doing this for almost forty years. Up until three years ago, everybody we hired was was local. And one, Saturday, if you know anything about the flower business, Mother's Day is a very big day. And on Saturday for Mother's Day, I looked around, and we didn't have a single employee on the farm. Not a single one. Not a single one had shown up for work that day. And we were waiting on customers loading trucks and trying to keep plants from drying.
Since then, we've been you know, doing watering. Since then, we've, used a couple of h two a employees. We go through the process. We do it legally, which is very expensive, by the way. And they're not subsidized. They're they're my most expensive employees by far. But it was the only way we could fill our workforce. So I don't think that, I mean, we'll we're gonna see we're gonna see whether, there's a huge increase in domestic demand for labor, because we are, you know, we are cutting down on the number of in the legal workforce. I can tell you the h two a program, we've been doing it for three years, is much much more paperwork than there was two years ago, last two year. I think most of that was the last administration made some changes, but but, it's more difficult to get, temporary temporary workers than it was. So we're gonna find out, but by but we couldn't hire people. I mean, we can't we couldn't get enough.
The people that we hire, good help. We're glad to have them. They're good friends.
[00:19:39] Unknown:
We've got folks that have worked here for twenty, twenty five years, but we couldn't find enough help, and that's all there is to it. It I mean, this is you are saying something. I've heard this over and over and over again from farmers all over The United States from people, whether it's on the Ag Tribes report or doing legacy interviews. And, and you look at it and you say, well, this is insane. Right? What what what do you mean there aren't? Because people are claiming that the unemployment rate, the number of jobs available to people, keep going up and up and up. And in fact, this is what is prompting the the Federal Reserve to say this is why we need to go start, you know, lowering the interest rate in effect to make it easier to to print money and and, inflate the economy.
And, at the same time, you're sitting there saying, we can't get anybody to work, and these are more expensive workers. So, obviously, we would pay local workers if we could. Yeah. What's the way out of this? Yeah. We could get I don't well, I mean,
[00:20:34] Unknown:
again, this is just totally anecdotal, not not particularly useful to make large, large generalizations. But, you know, we're a small town and and, you know, I graduated from high school with 65 kids in my class, and my kids graduated from high school with with 25 or 30 kids in their class. And my grandkids are gonna graduate from high school here here with 18 or 20 in a class. There's just fewer people here, to do the job. So so, you know, and all this all the reasons you know, it takes less people to farm. You know? People move away from these small towns because city city pays better, more exciting life, all those reasons. But, we just have a people problem. Now that's clearly not what's going on in urban areas, but that's our problem.
[00:21:20] Unknown:
Well, that sounds fair enough. Alright. That's gonna do it for the headlines today. If you have headlines you think we should cover on the Ag Tribes report, you can always send them to [email protected] or hit me up on x at Vance Crowe. Moving on to the Bitcoin land price report, this is where we take a look at how much farmland costs in our, in Blake's area, and then we compare it to the price of Bitcoin. So, Blake, where do you live, and, what does bit what does an acre of good quality farmland cost there? Live clear in the Northwest Corner of Missouri. So we're just South Of
[00:21:56] Unknown:
Iowa and East Of Nebraska, and an acre of good ground would bring, I've seen it sell as high as 17,000, but if I just a typical sale held tomorrow, my guess would be 10 to $11,000 an acre.
[00:22:09] Unknown:
Alright. So we'll call that 10,000, and you're in is it Atchison County? How do you pronounce that? Atchison County. Yeah. Alright. Atchison County. So as of press time, Bitcoin was 11, $117,500. So that means that for 0.085 Bitcoin, you could get one acre of farmland or one Bitcoin would buy you 11.75 acres. How does that strike you, Blake?
[00:22:34] Unknown:
Well, I should have bought Bitcoin, but I didn't.
[00:22:39] Unknown:
Where are you at on Bitcoin? What what are your thoughts on, on its role in the future?
[00:22:47] Unknown:
So I don't know. I I I I I I think that it's a huge speculative bubble right now. I don't think there's any doubt about that. If you look at the charts, if you look at the, increase in price, I think I would be, very nervous about, in investing my, my kids' inheritance into, into Bitcoin. But that doesn't mean it it doesn't have a use and a and a and isn't useful, and we shouldn't be glad we have it. When I read about stable coins, they strike me that the use of coins for an actual stable coin you could trust, strikes me as, really, really good, really important. And if and if everybody anybody ever comes up with a stablecoin that people can can trust and ties that to the blockchain, then I'm gonna have to sell my stock in American Express because, credit card companies are gonna be in big trouble, in a big hurry. Wow. So tell me tell me about this. Why do you prefer stable coins over Bitcoin? I didn't say I preferred them. Right now, I Well, you weren't selling your,
[00:23:58] Unknown:
I mean, express stock for Bitcoin. No. No. I'm not,
[00:24:02] Unknown:
I'm not, but but but the the thing about stable coins is if I can make an instantaneous transaction, across borders, in time for nothing, that is a huge deal. You know, I mentioned the h two a workers, that we've had the same same kids for, you know, young men for a couple of three years. They've gotten to be we we provide transport or, living quarters here. We build a build a apartment for them. They've got to be family friends, and we, you know, we help them when they need. And and both of them send mother money back to, one of them to their to their to their mother and one of them to their their spouse.
And it's hugely expensive. I mean, I just go to Walmart, you know, and it's, I don't know, six, eight, 7%. It's bulky or, I mean, cumbersome. It's a mess. And, and the same thing happens if I wanna buy I tried to buy us Canadian stock a couple of years ago, and it got to be a huge mess. And, because because it wasn't registered in The US, I didn't realize it at the time, or I had never done it. But, you know, I had to buy Canadian, you know, loonies, make the transfer, month to end. Oh, if I got if I got stable coin, if I got Bitcoin except that Bitcoin makes me nervous because tomorrow may be worth 10% less than it was today. So how can I do those payments over you know, if I have a long term relationship with a Canadian supplier?
How can I do those payments with a currency that's or rather with an item that's really been used, right now as a speculation as a store of wealth rather than as a means of exchange? So that's that's where stable coins, I think, kind of catch my imagination because, because they don't their value doesn't change.
[00:25:51] Unknown:
Well, I mean, it does because you're buying it in US dollars. So the US dollars lost 11% of its value just in this year alone. So if you had purchased stablecoins and held on to it, it's it's the purchasing power has gone down by 11%. But I will say if you like the idea of doing that cross border payment, I I currently have was trying to get paid by some people in Canada, and we have had to go through so much rigmarole and wire transfers and But it's terrible. And somebody's gonna pay for it. Right? They're gonna pay for it. I'm gonna pay for it, and it's not an insignificant amount of money. The cool thing about Bitcoin is you can actually, have your bank account, connected to a, a Bitcoin service. You can buy the Bitcoin and immediately send it if you already have your, bank account hooked up. And so you would be able to say, I will give you this at this price or we'll choose a strike price, and you get all the benefits of being able to send it without an intermediary. I I guess I guess I guess my point would be would be this. I have
[00:26:50] Unknown:
if if I buy the Bitcoin today, make the transaction, and I'm out of the Bitcoin market tomorrow, then no problem. I'm that's great. That'll do it. But you say that US dollars depreciated 11%. Well, I mean, official inflation rates, you know, closer to 3%, but but whatever. 1010%, no doubt is depreciated. But Bitcoin can move that much in a day, and that's what as a store of value, I've got to have an and and and if you told me that Bitcoin is gonna be worth more than it is today in fifty years from now, because, you know, there's a limit. And if they you know, they don't have any of it can be produced. I would say I absolutely agree with you. You tell me it's gonna be worth what it is today, ten days from now, six days, six months from now, or a year from now, I who knows?
[00:27:40] Unknown:
Who knows? Fair point. I mean, the only thing I can say is that, if you look year on year, you you can say there's a positive trajectory, but anybody that's trying to get in and get out of the market quickly, it's it's foolish, I think, to try and trade Bitcoin. It's not it's not a game I could play. Yeah. Well, fair enough. Alright, Blake. Moving on. Oh, if you are interested in purchasing Bitcoin, there has been a flurry of activity. I will include a link to River who supports the show. And whenever you buy Bitcoin on River, you support the show, by then them sending us a little bit of Bitcoin, and there has been a lot of people buying in the last week or so. Moving on to the Peter Thiel paradox.
Blake, what is one thing that you believe that almost nobody in your ag tribe agrees with you on?
[00:28:25] Unknown:
That we're, well, I have a whole bunch of things, but, I'll start with the one I wrote about a couple weeks ago, that we're in imminent danger of running out of productive farm ground. I don't think we are. And the reason is because the price of corn is $3.90 a bushel here in, Tarkio, Missouri today, and that's below, you know, not below my cash cost of production, but certainly below my total cost of production. If we're producing such a huge surplus that we can't do it properly, then we aren't we don't need as much ground farm as we have farmed. And there's lots of ways to get ground out of production. We can sweat it out by just grinding grinding prices ever lower and farmers' margins ever tighter.
Or, some of it can go into, some of it can go into shopping centers, some of it go into subdivisions, some of it go into solar power, and some of them can go into, heck, I don't care, recreational areas, whatever. But when when somebody says, oh, we can't let them use all of our good farm ground for use x, I think, well, it'd be okay if they use just a little bit more of it so my prices would be better.
[00:29:43] Unknown:
Hot damn, Blake. This is one of the best Peter Thiel paradoxes I have ever heard. There is minds exploding all over The United States and Canada right now. People, like, losing their minds. And I gotta say, because your your paradox is, challenging orthodoxy. And the orthodoxy is save farmland, do what we have to do. That's why we have to do payments. That's why we have to pattern tile, you know, any swampy area. We gotta clear it and make sure we can get enough more corn on there. And you're saying the opposite. Maybe we have too much acreage going towards, production.
[00:30:18] Unknown:
You know, my favorite a economist, a guy named John Newton, and he came out with a big report just last week or last month. It's two months ago, whatever. The recent past. And since we've already reached or very close to reaching peak population, and we're gonna start heading down, I think that demographics are backing up. We may have we may have you know, GP one is cutting food consumption. The people that are using it by what? Ten, twelve, 18. So people that are taking diet pills just eat less, which makes sense, I guess. You know, we we we may have seen the peak food demand, already.
And I I I don't think so. Obviously, as people get, have more money and move in the middle class and and developing countries, they eat more meat. They upgrade their diets. They consume more food. That's a great good thing. That's a good thing. Good thing for us, good thing for them. But but at some point, we're not gonna need to produce, you know, you and I and everybody else in agriculture has grown up saying, well, by the year 2050, we've got a double production. Maybe not.
[00:31:32] Unknown:
Yeah. I mean, I think that I I've been saying for a while that the the push for, hey. We've gotta we we've gotta feed the world. This is gone. And I'm very interested to find who's gonna be the first ag company that's gonna come out and say, what we need to do is create higher quality crops, or we need to create a wider diversity of crops. But none of them are saying that right now. Now they're saying, you know, high density, get impact in as as much as you can. Oh, I'm same way. I'm,
[00:31:59] Unknown:
you know, I, took me a well, that's embarrassing, so I'm not gonna talk about it. But I had some, some combine setting mistakes. And as soon as I got my combine tuned in on Monday afternoon, I'm getting some really good yields here, which I know in a lot of the Corn Belt, there's various problems from disease or or this dry dry August that people have seen. But we're getting great yields, and I'm like, that makes me happy. And, so I'm like everybody else. I'm trying to get that last bushel squeezed out of every acre. But, you know, we've got to think about our markets as well.
[00:32:35] Unknown:
Well, I am gonna give you a a cool 9.2. This is a great one and, bravo. I, good for you. Alright. Moving along to the worthy adversary. Blake, who is one person that you respect but you strongly disagree with?
[00:32:53] Unknown:
Well, I I'm not gonna I'm gonna cheat, and I'm not gonna say one person. Farm journal did a survey, here a couple of months ago and found that, 70% of, my fellow farmers are full agreement that the, our present trade policy will be successful. I think that, and we could come up with, obviously, spokesman for various groups that are that are saying the same thing. I think that's, that's wrong, that we're gonna have to learn learn from history, learn from the history of past trade wars and change course. And, the sooner, the better.
[00:33:30] Unknown:
So so who is your worthy adversary here? You named a collection of people? Yeah. 70% of my fellow workers. You gotta put a finger on something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, my second choice,
[00:33:44] Unknown:
was to save Ants Crow and then argue with you about Bitcoin, but we already did that.
[00:33:49] Unknown:
My first choice, so I had to go to my second choice. Yeah. You know, Blake, there are a lot of people out there that when we're doing the podcast, they say, you know who my worthy adversary is? It's you. So I'm I must just have viewers that are sitting there that just hate listening to Whatever. Yeah. Whatever it takes to get viewers. That's it. Alright. Well, you did great on the Peter Teal paradox, but you failed utterly on the worthy adversary.
[00:34:14] Unknown:
But, I I can think of it. I can think of about six guys on x that, that, that are they're beating the ground. I mean, this idea that we have to make everything here and then we can't trade, is is the denial of every bit of economic progress we've made for a in a you know, for for it's since since since people climbed out of the primordial swamp. It's crazy. And there is one country, that is totally self reliant, depends on nobody else for anything, make everything they use at home, and that's North Korea, and people there are hungry enough for eating grass. We we we succeed by trade. We grow by trade.
We benefit from trade. We've known that, used to know that. I mean, you know, we're gonna learn the same lesson about the measles vaccine, but whatever it takes, we're gonna so, you know, somebody said once that, experience is the school of mankind. He will learn from no other. I I'm convinced that they should have changed that to screwing up is the school of mankind you'll learn from no other. We're making some big screw ups, and we're gonna learn some lessons.
[00:35:30] Unknown:
Well, I, you know, I'm a firm believer, and I I know this from interviewing people about their life stories is that, the only real wisdom is is getting yourself back up after you failed. Like, there is no way to get I'm afraid so. I'm afraid so. We gotta live it. You can't you can't you can tell the kid and tell the kid that what's gonna happen if he does a certain thing, but he's just gotta go do it. Yep. That's the dad's job is to keep mom, you know, from from jumping in there and and, stopping him. Yeah. Well, Blake, if people wanted to engage you with you more, where should they go to read things that you publish or interact with you? Well,
[00:36:08] Unknown:
you know, obviously, if you're a subscriber to AgriPulse, I write in there. I I'm I'm I'm lucky enough to get maybe two, maybe three, op eds in the Wall Street Journal every year. I have a relationship there. I'm on Twitter at at Hurst Blake, and I have a Substack, at Blake Hurst or at Hurst Blake where I, where I put out more personal stuff about, about the kids in the farm. So so I I hope people will go to the Substack. It's not. It's free.
[00:36:37] Unknown:
And, nothing is said on there that's very important, but I try to have a little fun with it. Well, I had a lot of fun with you today. And if you send me a link, I will include it in on the show notes. So thank thanks so much for coming on, Blake. Alright. That's gonna do it for this week's Ag Tribes report. This has been a, a a wild ride with, Blake. Next week, I will be coming to you live from Manhattan, Kansas. I've been invited to, give a keynote speech at the Flinchbaugh Forum in Manhattan, Kansas. For anybody that doesn't know, Barry Flinchbaugh was a prolific ag economist or ag policy analyst, and, he invited people in from all over the world and would have challenging conversations with them. And I'm quite excited to be doing this, so I'm gonna do the Ag Tribes report on the road with Jake Jorenstad.
And, Yeah. As we head out, I wanted to share this little video my team put together on, why it is, that I can help people solve their conference problem, you know, when the challenges of finding the right speaker for that. So thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to Blake for coming on. And, as always, feel free to disagree. So the conference organizer has a terrible challenge. The audience can pull out their phone and pull up anyone talking about anything. How do you find somebody that is both going to reach every single person in that audience and yet still have that spike of energy where people are electrified because they're hearing about things that they aren't used to or that make them think about things in a different way. The most important question that I ask a conference organizer is, what is it that you want people to feel? What emotion do you want them to have when we leave this talk? What's their disposition? How are they gonna interact with one another? What does this prompt in the people that are there?
It's not just the information. What you're giving them is energy, a reason to be there in that moment. Now they take that energy and they share it amongst each other. For me, the best speech is when people walk away being like, I now have a tangible skill, but they didn't necessarily readily accept it and they had to grapple with it. They set their phone down, they leaned forward, they said, how do I feel about this? And through that an energy is created that is not about the speaker, it's about the person listening to the speech. It's far beyond motivation. It's actually giving people skills.
