Barn Talk - Agriculture Under Attack w/Shay Myers

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

Welcome to Barn Talk. We are going to do our best not to cry today. There are many layers to our guest and we are going to peel them back for you. OK, No more cringy onion jokes. Our guest today has become the voice of the produce farmers that are fighting for their very survival. He has amassed a huge following  on just about all social media platforms and talking about the challenges facing farmers across the country. We are excited to welcome Shay Meyers to Barn Talk! Let's dive in. But first… Pay the fee! Follow Shay  Tiktok- https://www.tiktok.com/@shayfarmkid?lang=en  Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/shayfarmkid/  Linkedin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/shayfmyers/  YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/c/ShayFarmKid Barn Talk Merch! 👇🏻 https://www.thislldo.co/ SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c SUBSCRIBE TO BARN TALK CLIPS ➱ https://bit.ly/3BlZnqq LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY ITUNES ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4 ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS ------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Barn Talk is a significant break from the typical content viewers have come to expect from This’ll Do Farm. Please be advised that we will be exploring a wide variety of topics (some adult-themed) and our younger viewers (and their parents) should be advised that some topics will be for mature audiences only. ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠ The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional, professional broker or financial advisory. Understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this website at your own risk. RISK STATEMENT– The trading of Bitcoins, alternative cryptocurrencies, NFTs, individual stocks, etc. has potential rewards, and it also has potential risks involved. Trading may not be suitable for all people. Anyone wishing to invest should seek his or her own independent financial or professional advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The ride that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road, that's the Volkswagen Tiguan. Its sleek exterior makes a first impression you can't ignore. Step inside to find available full leather seats and wood accents. Under the hood, the available 201 turbocharged horsepower engine gives it a fun to drive edge. The refined Tiguan, you deserve more style. Visit vw.ca to learn more. SuvW, German engineered for all. I feel like the uncertainty is one of the toughest parts of being a farmer today

because you're trying to plan, we're thinking about the crop that we're going to plant next year, but we're also thinking about generations coming into the business or depending on your financials, how you're going to maintain where you are, let alone try to grow that. What is your biggest challenge when you look forward for your own operation? to make it viable for the next generation. Politics. I mean, I can dive into that,

but I mean, really, it's politics. I think politics are regulation. It's one of the two, and regulation is a result of politics. But that is the, we can figure out how to get this stuff done, but not if it really doesn't even make sense anymore. And I don't know if,

if you guys ever read Atlas Shrugged? Yes. I feel, I don't know what chapter we're in in, and Atlas Shrugged, but I feel like, I mean, this is that's the world we're living in and where the the disconnect continues or or the gap between reality and what the world is actually like yes is getting just broader and broader and so it just gets i don't know how how hard i'm only i'm only 42 but i sometimes i feel so freaking

exhausted i'm just i'm like this is not worth it like you you get the payroll audit and then you get the osha audit and then you do 13 food safety audits and then you have some troll on the internet tell you that you're a slave driver because you're employing workers from Mexico and you're putting them in free housing and you just you're like this may not be worth it and I hope when I say this that the people that are listening to you that those that aren't farmers understand this this is I mean I don't know how you guys feel but like I could I could either scream or cry sitting here right now because that's how true it is it is overwhelming it's already risky. We're already in a super, super volatile business. We already work on super thin margins. We

always, we all have to borrow a ton of money. And at the same time, you want to make our job harder and harder and harder and harder. And then on top of that, you want to tell us that we suck and that we're ruining the environment and that we don't care about our workers and that we don't care about anything. It's, it's overwhelming. It's overwhelming. And I just want to be like, forget it. You guys figure out. You guys figure it out. You guys figure it out. All of the food we eat and much of The clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk.

Today, we're going to do our best not to cry. The guests that we have has many layers, and we're going to peel them back for you. If Donkey was here, he'd say, that'll do, that'll do. No more cringy onion jokes. So our guest today is a produce farmer, but he's really become an advocate for just about all aspects of farming here in the United States. He has a huge following on just about all social media platforms, and we are super excited to have him here today. But first, before we get into that, guys, pay the fee. If you get any value from the show, you guys know the ticket to admission to watch or listen to the show is paying the fee shared out with your phone.

friends, family, coworkers, employees, whoever, we're trying to do some good in this world, grow this thing, and we don't run ads to promote the show. It's just all through you guys through organic growth. So we really appreciate everybody that does that. Also leave a review on Spotify and Apple, and we see everybody that's been doing that helps us out a lot too. So we really appreciate all you guys and let's get into the show. Welcome to Barn Talk. Shea Myers. It is a pleasure to have you. Not a desert here. And farmland, like I can't even imagine. I mean, as far as no pivots, no irrigation, you live in a special place.

So a good place to start is tell us a little bit about you and your business. And we'll go down that. How you grew up, all that stuff. Just give a little background. I live in a small town called Nisorrigan. That's where the farming operations started with my grandfather. He, after the Korean War, he came back and got some GI Bill money. started actually with chickens, which was a complete disaster for him. But by the,

and it took him another 20 years to where he was able to get on his own. And he started farming on his own in the, in the late 1970s. And the farm is on my mom's side of the family. So I work, there's eight, if I count this right, I think there's eight different families now. I've got, I've got my grandmother who's still actively involved at 90 years old in our farming operation. And who has been an integral part of obviously, as a partner with my father from the beginning. I've got my uncle Craig, my mom, and then there's myself, a cousin, Chase, two cousins-in-law and a brother-in-law. So there's eight separate families, and we have more that just came back, have Madison that just came back in a sales position,

and my little sister working her way back. So you could say there's even 10 family members, right, separate, potentially separate families that are part of our operation. We're a vertically integrated farming operation. We do everything from asparagus to watermelon. Works out nice. I need a Z. We need to do zucchini or something. It's like I can go A to Z.

Eight or nine crops typically in our rotation. We farm 4,000 acres. And our, really the core of what we grow, like most of our gross income comes from onions, probably 75 to 85 percent, depending on the year, is based on, you know, onion production. We farm about 1,200 acres of onions. We market as part of our operation and that vertical integration. So we grow onions. We pack onions. We process onions and we market onions. So we market onions our own, obviously, and then for other farmers and multiple locations throughout the country. And so we end up marketing about 2,000 acres worth onions somewhere in the realm of

2 million, 2.2 million bags or something a year. Wow. Wow. That's awesome. But we've worked together as best we can. There's only two of you, right? I just was sitting here thinking, okay, do you have a, do you have a, some people would want to have a lawyer on retainer with that much family? Do you have like a counselor on retainer? We should have.

We should have. Need a mediator to sit at the table. It's different. Everyone has different ways that they approach things. I think generation one, and I'm almost generation two, because I'm the oldest by like a decade or even a decade and a half, 15 years between me and the youngest. and you can definitely see the generational shifts and mindset in just the way that we approach things.

So it has made it certain assumptions that you make based on the way you grow up or your understanding. You see that they're incorrect, right? As reality starts to actually, you know, form in front of you. So before we get in any further, I just wanted to say, where can people find you on social? All your links and everything. Yeah, you can find me all over.

Probably the most obvious one is TikTok. um shay at shay farm kid i'm also on linkedin uh that's shay f meyers and hawaihy produce there and instagram was the same handle shame far can shay farm kid um tell us a little bit about i saw one of your tic talks and it said you know you you you said you were growing up that you didn't really want to be a farmer what changed your mind on that you said it was legacy but like what were you gonna do and then how did you transition to become what you are today yeah that's a good question um And I don't know that it's that good of a story. But the only reason I didn't want to be, okay, so first of all, farming is a really,

really special industry. It's a really special thing to work in. It's really something that I feel like we should and can be proud of. And I grew up with that mentality. Like I loved going about my life and being part of the farming operation. Where I struggled was in communicating to people, which is kind of what's led to my social media channels, communicating to. people what farming really is instead of what they think it is you know the the the the the big barn

with three cows in front and the chickens run in the yard the fork the pitchfork and the overalls and you know the straw uh in in your mouth i mean that's really what people picture when they picture agriculture and so i struggled with with that probably the fact that i didn't want to be thought of is that type of person um i also mechanically you don't want me to fix anything so if you make me be an operator and not and I mean an equipment operator or a farm manager I'm not going to be very happy so I knew that I couldn't do that and that's another reason I didn't want to be a farmer but when it came to the legacy my grandfather had always like his goal like his be hagg right his big hairy audacious goal for himself was to have multiple generations back on the farm and I was

getting to a point where I was the first, not the oldest in the third generation, but pretty close, the first one that really had a chance to come back. And I could either be a pilot, commercial pilot, which I'm fortunate to be able to fly. I still get to fly the airplane around and go visit customers and do that kind of thing. But I wanted to be a commercial pilot. But at that point in time, it wasn't like today at all. In fact, it was the exact opposite. You had to plan on making 19 or 20 grand for the first five to six, seven years. Wow. And you were going to have a quarter million dollars in debt paying for your training. So it just didn't make any sense.

I'm like, I've just got to figure how to make enough and be successful enough so that I can fly an airplane as a hobby or as part of my business and not be a pilot because it just didn't make sense. So that was, you know, what kind of prevented me from going, being a pilot. And then my, that effort that my grandfather had made and that dream that he had, I'm like, you know, I've got a chance where I can contribute. Like, I don't have to go back and drive a tractor. I don't have to go back and manage a farm specifically.

I can come back and run this as a business. I've always loved looking at businesses from an entrepreneurial standpoint and looking at, okay, what can I do that will help us stand out, that will help us grow, that will help us or that would help us be successful from a business standpoint. And that was lacking in the aspect that not that my grandfather wasn't a good businessman, not that my uncle wasn't a good businessman, Not even my mom was running our asparagus operations at that point. Not that she was bad either, but they were dedicated. Their time was farming. That's what they had to do. And by allowing me to

come back and my family taking a significant risk on allowing me to take some of these vertical integrations and with the onion packing facility, I was able to kind of put in practice some of the things that they weren't able to because they gave me the time and allowed me to make the mistakes. And that's where I ended up where I am. Yeah. So would you say, say, like, that generation, they viewed what you did, like, truly viewed that farming, you raised a commodity, and you looked at it. I feel like a lot of that generation didn't realize that there was a way that you could set yourself aside, and we got into, like, brand. You could become a brand. And that's kind of, our industry is the same way in that a lot of people,

I think we're just getting started of people realizing that, yes, we all make a product, and that product's very similar, but how you do it and how you market it and the way you do things, there's value there if you can show it to people. And what did they think, like, were they, obviously they must have been receptive to that idea. How did that all transition, yeah. So we, we, okay, so typically what happens in our area, what you do, did two decades ago is you would grow an onion crop. So you could kind of think of it like even a corner or a soy crop and you're going to deliver it to, you know, to be put away and and dried and sent off or whatever or to somebody who's going to buy it for feed. You grew the

onion as a commodity. You delivered those onions to a custom packer. And a custom packer would pack them and market them for you. And it wasn't so much that, well, and first of all, I guess it's important to qualify that even those that were selling, were selling as a commodity 20, 30 years ago, even as a packer, you would receive those onions in. So the onion, the farmer would deliver the onions to you, put them in a bag, and then you put them on a rail car and then you'd send them to what are called terminal markets. New York has a terminal market. Boston has a terminal market. LA, like all the major cities would have what is considered a terminal market.

Basically, it's a place where you would deliver the produce. And then there would be smaller produce distributors in those areas that would take offload those cars and market for you. And so you still didn't even know what the price was going to be. But as technology has improved in the ability to pick up the phone and talk to someone, I mean, it started really with fax machines, but now I can, even when I started to send a digital picture 18, 20 years ago, was a pretty significant undertaking. People don't realize. And now you just take a picture and you send it to somebody so they can see what they're buying.

But you had to deliver the commodity somewhere and boom, that was it. And yes, they saw the vision of taking it one step further from, the field to the packing shed, I don't think any of us realize what we could do from a branding standpoint until seven or eight or nine years ago. And what we were like, we got to figure out how to carve some space where we stand out, where we talk about what's different, about what we do. And a lot of the times, it's not that it's different. It's just that we're just talking about what we actually do and the other people just do what they do and they don't tell

anyone. So is that the driving force to why you got on social media? I know you touched earlier that it was to portray that we aren't these, you know, dumb farmers with hay in our mouth sitting in the field with pitchfork. But is it also to get your brand out there and show who you are behind the farm, behind your brand? Sure, it's definitely both. I think, so when I first started, I started on LinkedIn. And I saw a decent following on LinkedIn. And that's probably one of my favorite channels. For anybody that's not on LinkedIn, the quality of interaction and the commentary and the networking that's available on LinkedIn, plug for them because it's a great channel. It's probably my favorite place to go read comments and to actually communicate with people.

But I started there, but I started with the minutia. Like I thought people what they needed to, I wanted to be, so Grant Cardone, like if you go back to, I'm trying to think of one of his earlier books, but he wanted you to be like the expert, right? He wanted you to be the expert of your industry. And that's the way that I went about it. And I was the onion expert. In fact, if you go back and follow some of my stuff. you'll find that. I was going to be the onion expert.

But I was doing the minutia. I was like, okay, well, this is how many layers an onion has, and this is the type of internal decay to watch for, and this is how you extend your shelf life, and all of these things that would matter to an onion buyer, but not to anyone else. Not to anybody seeing an onion. Not to anybody seeing an onion. And as it turns out, not even to a lot of the onion buyers, because they didn't know anything. And that's, I mean, I tell the story of the onion tree, right? I mean, that's a real, conversation that I had over dinner in Phoenix, Arizona, 10, 12 years ago, and I was talking to an onion buyer about onions and flipping through and showing him pictures of the process. And he's like,

well, what's the tree look like that the onions grow on? And that was the moment where I'm like, whoa, I got a dumb stuff down. I've got to, I'm trying to talk it three inches and I need to get to 30,000 feet. I got to get way higher. And that was really a significant transformation in the way that our brand changed and developed because we were, I mean, not that I wouldn't talk about specifics, but way fewer specifics than what I started with. You had an idea of what you just assumed that everybody knew. Exactly.

You realized that nope, there's a lot that nobody knows that I need to back up. Right. Which I think is a problem we have in agriculture in general. Like, we assume that the consumer understands so much, more about what we do and why we do it and how we do it and the reasoning behind all these things that we're doing and they really don't and it's not their fault we live this every single day i was going to say i think it's every advocate out there goes through this stage of starting and they're they're giving out this content that's really in depth and like well not really in

depth it's not it's kind of broad and it's like you are been a part of the industry for a while and then people are like well what's this mean and what's this mean and what's this mean and then you're like, oh man, it's like that progression. It's like, oh, man, we can really talk about anything. Like, we can talk about a sorting board because people don't even know what a sorting board is and what it's used for, you know? I'm sure that you're no different. One thing that always, it was an aha moment for us is that the things that people really latch on to are the stuff that we don't spend enough time on because to us it's just so monotonous. It's what we, you know, the little things we do every single day that we don't give a second thought to, people literally

are like, you know, why is that that color? Or why do you use whatever, like a sorting board? Why are your gates blue? And they don't realize, you know, the pigs like blue gates. They move better with blue gates. So it's like that kind of stuff is just crazy. But yeah, that's interesting. So when you, you were going through like what your family was doing and they were, you know, really focused on the farming and they were operators on that. side and what's your current role at the business now. So would you say you're the CEO, you're like the business operator? I'm the business operator. I'm the CEO of a Waihi produce. We have a farming operation as well, but everything's really connected. When we do our financials,

we blend everything together because we don't want to, you know, separate, I mean, especially with all these family members involved, it's really important for us to bring everything together and say, you know, like as a group cohesively, this is what we're earning and this is what our financial return is so that we don't lose our focus or way. Because at the end, all the pieces matter to get to the end of profitability. Absolutely. I mean, there's other pieces that are going to contribute, but if we don't have onions at the packing shed, we don't make any money at the packing shed, and we certainly don't have anything to market as a marketing company. So it all, it all connects. I'd say you're probably an expert in doing family business. So can you give any

tips out there for family businesses and when they sit down on that table and they need to talk some shit through. Like, what tips can you give to... That is loaded. Yeah. What tips could you give to family businesses? We're experts at failing. However, I can give some really, really important advice that we, Generation 1 through 3, we all agree with. And that is when you make a decision, first of all, it needs to be written down. Because the way that I remember something versus someone else, and we're talking people that you'll trust your life with, the way that you both remember a conversation from 10 years ago is completely different. And what your expectations are for sweat equity, for example, for the younger generations, what your expectations are

and what the other generations want to give you can be two different things. And furthermore, what complicates this even more is sometimes if that contribution is too significant and creates too much growth and too much opportunity, then those that are looking at that contribution feel like they could be giving you too much. So you need to define to the very best of your ability what you're back for, what your time means, and what that should transfer to in ownership or equity or dollars through that period of time. Because if you don't, what you're expecting as the new guy is not going to be what the the older generation is going to give you. And then you're unhappy. I think you it's different father and son is different than right.

I'm talking grandmother to grandson or uncle to nephew, right? And now cousins to cousins or cousins or cousins to cousins in law. Like you're talking about different dynamics. Oh yeah. Different trust levels, different understanding, different work ethics. So that even complicates it more. but I think even in every setting define, and you can do that. You can sit down and just say, this is what we agree on, and this is what it should mean, and then it's written down. And at least then, if you go back and you don't agree because something's changed, you have a starting point.

This problem is only going to grow because the generations in agriculture, there is so much land, so much resources that are all going to have to turn over in the next decade. Just saying based on the age of the average farmer. Yeah. Okay. And these families, it's so hard. I mean, that's why. That's why it's so rare.

It is so rare to have any business pass down through multiple generations. There's an old guy that my dad went to country school with that used to stop by here once in a while. And his sons farmed for him. And they bought a new tractor one year. and they didn't tell him. And when he saw him with the new tractor, he raised the rent on all the ground that he had that they were renting. And he told my dad, he's like,

takes three generations to make a fortune only one to piss it away, Lawrence. And he goes, those boys, he goes, if they got enough damn money to buy a new tractor, then they got enough money to pay me a bunch more rent because I'm not making them a deal just so that they can look cool farming. And it was a big knock-down drag-out. And obviously, communication in that family

was very poor, but that's just an example of, to them, it made perfect sense, meaning the guys that bought the tractor, because they're like, I'm more efficient, X, Y, Z, like they've got a justification for it. Yeah. To him, it was just, you're trying to look cool. You're just wasting money. You've got too much money, so. So with the content, how has that altered your life slash business? Has it affected you positively? What have you seen as the R.O.I of doing it all? Yeah, I mean, I wish there was a significant financial ROI. I mean, certainly from, if you make the effort for me selling the commodity or the commodity of the commodities that I do, I've had lots of doors open. It also helps when you end up at a trade show. There's a lot of people that they recognize you. They're

comfortable with you. I mean, we showed up here 15, 20 minutes ago and we kind of feel like we know each other. You have a feeling for people's under their personality and for the way they interact with people and just the type of person that they are. That breaks some huge barriers down. So if you're in a business-to-bus type of B-to-B type of operation, that's huge. Other ROIs, I just think as an industry, agriculture has to. Look at every angle that we're getting attacked from. Nitrogen, carbon emissions, water for us in the West, water use in the West, you know, protein, when you're talking about animal production, whether you should even, you know, be consuming, you know, meat products.

we're getting attacked from every angle. So I don't know that the ROI is specific to me, but I sure hope that it's a significant contribution to the industry as a whole. I'm not out for this for myself. I mean, certainly I want some wins for myself for my business. As anybody would. But I feel like it's a responsibility

and there needs to be more of us speaking up and sharing our story because we're losing. Yeah. Our industry, agriculture is losing. And I would say it's back to the whole advocate thing. I think every advocate at their core feels the same way. We got to share our story, and it's about sharing the story first versus for our personal gain. You know, that's second.

I think it's curious, because I know we feel this way. Like, we didn't start. We did not start this with the idea that, oh, we're going to go out and we're going to be, we're going to advocate for the swine industry and for farm. Like I've always I say this often that you know people say you need to start with the why in mind We totally didn't start with the why in mind or our why was different than where we are today Okay but you wake up one day and you realize as you get into it and You realize that exactly what you said that we're getting we're in trouble the ag industry is in trouble and if more of us don't

don't speak up, don't show, it's only going to get worse. And so, like, that mission kind of found, found us, where we didn't go looking for it. It was found us. And I think, you know, you would... Kind of a realization, when you start posting, you start looking at the comments, you start reading this stuff, you start reading articles, you start just... You're in the community, you know, you're in the community with all the other advocates and people that are in ag, and they start posting these, some vegan in their comments, or somebody

was attacking them for the way that they do stuff on their farm. It's just like, you just get more and more passionate about it. And it does kind of just find you. Can I speak to that for a second? Like, there's something I want to add there. And that's that those of us that are in this and those that might be listening that are thinking about sharing their message, the other thing that we have trouble though with, though, in agriculture. And I'm going to pick a specific channel not to pick on them because the value there is good. But like, my job depends on ag. I don't know if you've seen that. If you haven't go look that up, it's a Facebook. I'm sure it's on Instagram as well. My job depends on ag. And it's based in the San Joaquina or the Central Valley of California. And it's, it's meant to promote agriculture.

But what ends up happening is, because that channel is meant for farmer to farmer. It's not meant for the consumer. But so often when we create our content, we are trying to justify what we're doing and why we're doing instead of communicating with, you know, the intent of creating an understanding. Like we're talking down to people, to put in simple terms, we're talking down to people and like, why don't you understand this? Right. And not to say, like, my most recent video is exactly that on TikTok, because I was just pissed because it was so straightforward and clear to me

and people couldn't understand it. And I lost it a little bit. But we need to be more specific and purposeful in the way that we communicate and talk to people and let them converse back with us. So those comments that you get frustrated about, at least people are taking the time. Like a lot of them are genuinely interested about what you're talking about and you're their source of information. But if you make them

feel stupid, they're just going to scroll right past and you're going to make no impact. No impact. Yeah, I totally agree with that. So what you said you grow onions, watermelon, asparagus. Is there anything else that you guys grow on your farm? Yeah, asparagus, beans, corn, alfalfa, mint. Wow. For, we have a mint distillery. Um, hemp, sugar beets. Corn. Did I say that already? Yep. I haven't said onions. onions yet though. And onions then. Okay, all right. That's, that's, that's, that's nine, which if you had hemp is nine. So yeah, oh, and the watermelons, which I didn't throw in there either. Yeah. So in any, any given year, we're growing between seven and nine crops.

What is the one crop that you think has the most potential long term? Like, you said hemp. And that kind of, that makes me kind of curious a little bit. Is there anything there for you? You jumped into the beginning and lost so much money. And it was full of so many terrible people in agriculture. That's one, another plug for us, but people in agar good people and they're honest and they're straightforward. That doesn't mean they don't lose money. That doesn't mean they don't go out of business. But hemp had so much VC money behind it when it started. You couldn't see through the facade. So people would show up with all kinds of, hey, we're going to do this. We're going to put this equipment in. We're going to extract, you know, the CBD using this process. And when it was done,

most of that was fake. Yeah. Like you couldn't. And you just have. had no way to know, right? It was a new industry anyway. So it's not like you're going to go see their facility in California because they were just building it, right? Just building it. Okay. So, but I do, I mean, Hemp's got some real viable potential utility for all kinds of things. And certainly it was a suppressed industry for a long time for, I think, plenty of reasons as well. I don't know how big the potential is, though. And it's certainly not a CBD. It's more for the fiber, if you're going to really look at what can be done there. I mean, it makes great wood product. It makes good, you know, it's a good cotton alternative,

you know, as far as textiles are concerned. But I don't, I don't play in that, with that commodity enough to really feel comfortable, you know, promoting it or pitching it too much. We played in it because we started and now we're just, I don't know, I want to see we're in that rut. But we started down that path and we're going to hold on for a minute and see if something develops. Beyond that, it's really, like, that's, I think the, For the type of agriculture that we do, like vegetable and food production for the most part, human food consumption, it's really hard to know where to pivot here. Because as labor increases, so we were just looking at our financials, my sister's meeting with a gubernatorial candidate this morning for Oregon. And we looked back at the financials.

Our payroll has doubled since 2015. Doubled. That's not that long. No. Okay. And it's not sustainable. And that's the scary part. So what do we do? onions, it's almost completely automated. We can keep playing in the onion game. Asparagus, 26,000 acres were grown in California just 15 years ago. They're down to 600 acres. Wow. They're down to 600 acres because they can't afford to pay the labor versus these other nations.

We're really in a place where there's this huge threat. And I know this is digressing from the core of the conversation, but that's why I can't answer it directly because I really, I wish I knew where to pivot. The onions were going to super hyperfocus there because we know we have, we've invested a lot in infrastructure and in technology and we have the know-how and we know we can stay competitive there, but if you look at watermelon and asparagus, we were doing sweet potatoes, we're out of sweet potatoes for the same thing. We couldn't, from a labor standpoint, we just straight up couldn't keep paying the labor. the western U.S., San Joaquin, like we're like a mini San Joaquin or Central Valley of California, we're all going to continue to struggle in a lot of ways for the next 10 years at least

until we see if there's another angle and I don't know what it is. So a better question might be when you look out like today, what's your biggest, what's your biggest challenge and what do you think is going to be for your operation and for for farmers in your industry what's going to be that biggest challenge over the next five years the biggest challenge is going to be straight up consolidation i think you're we're going to start seeing amazon presents jeff versus taco truck salsa whether it's verde roha or the orange one for jeff trying any salsa is like playing russian roulette with a flamethrower Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk.

Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Between potatoes and onions are kind of comparable, significant amounts of consolidation. People are going to start absorbing people because our margins are really thin and thinning, obviously. And economies of scale is the only thing that's left. And I think that's scary for the consumer because I think that's where ag in general is headed. that's absolutely in my area where it's headed, where there's, there were 300 onion growers, um, just probably 10 years ago, and that's below 200 today. Um, packing operations used to, you know, when, when you talk about packing, I'm talking about

onion packing, um, that continues to consolidate all the time. And so there, that's, that's what we're going to see moving forward is significant consolidation. I just was thinking about this, you know, for, for our industry, for the swine industry, We produce a very consistent product very consistently. So on the packing side of it, on the production or on the on the on the food side of it, if you can if you can get employees to do the jobs that you need to do, you repeat that every day, every hour of every day. Your industry though is seasonal in the fact that different things are ready to go at different times.

It's not a constant or it. Maybe it is a constant. In other words, is one of the challenge in that as you talk consolidation in the fact that your labor needs are elastic and it's so hard to have people when you need them, but then you can't have them consistently. No, the real problem is, so first of all, the labor challenge is it's the cost of labor. The availability with adapting to H2A, the Agriculture Visa, a guest worker program, has been pretty effective, but costly.

The biggest problem we have is just overproduction. Okay. Because how do you, as a farmer, and it's got to be similar, except for you, you have constraints, I think, on the packing side, you can't oversupply that by too much or there's nowhere for your product to go. When we look at packing, and I mean onion packing, there's way more capacity than there are growers to supply those packers. So we had a very good year in 2021, our 2021 season was very good from a pricing standpoint.

The crop was a disaster. That's why it was good. Traditionally, what you see is then the next year, I mean, the commodities markets, you see the same thing with corn or soy, then you overproduce. And that's what interjects this incredible volatility and makes it hard to maintain your profitability. But the only way to grow and improve as a farm yourself is to plant more acres. if I've already got a packing facility, then I want to grow more acres to run through that packing facility to lower my overhead. And so it's that. It's the fact that we probably have, in fact, that's probably the simplest way to look at. We can pack much, much more than we should be growing or more than can be consumed in the U.S. And it's got a limited shelf life. So it has to be market in that period of time. I mean, but, you know, we're packing 10 months of the year. So we're going to put stuff just like you would, you know, putting wheat in a silo or something. We're going to store onions for nine or 10 months. so we can consistently pull the supply. But there is a point in time when that stops and you start

in a new growing area or with a new crop. I was just sitting here thinking, is there regulations, because there's a lot of these online grocery stores are popping up online and they're shipping produce. They're shipping everything direct to consumer. Has that a thought, is that thought ever crossed your mind? You have, you know, you have a brand. You're speaking up. You got a, you got a person behind what you guys are doing as a business. Has that ever came into your mind? Is that ever came into your mind? as you grow this attention, maybe to do something like that? It has. And maybe this is just me making excuses.

It seems very difficult to get done independently. I think if you look, I think that the online grocery brands will continue to expand. I think Amazon obviously is a great example of that starting point. Walmart's really starting to do that too. But they already have their networks. They're going to buy through other people, because it has to get consistent. other people because it has to get consolidated. So I guess what I'm trying to say, for me to direct ship onions to you guys, it would cost you too much. I just can't do it. They're too dense and

they're too heavy. Now, if you want to buy a bottle of our mint oil or something, then no problem, right? I mean, I can put that in the mail in a regular envelope and get it here for three bucks. And then that makes sense. But when it comes to onions, heaven forbid, trying to ship a watermelon, right? Right. Um, asparagus, the shelf, I mean, it's hard on those items to get it done. Now, I think if you look at the guys that are doing it with, I see it on the beef side, guys that are butchering their own, or getting their own cattle butchered and then selling that direct to consumer, yeah, I think there's places where that makes sense, although I don't know how much more costly that is than, you know, somebody walking into the grocery store. Yeah, I was just thinking maybe one of these

companies could partner with you because you are, like, if I'm going to buy onions from somebody, I would rather buy onions from you because it's just like you said, when you walked in the this barn and it felt like we kind of knew each other. And I feel like everybody that watches you and kind of knows, well, this isn't the onion farmer that I know. This is the face. When I think of onions, this is who I think of. And I think, I think Packers in the meat business would be smart to do the same thing. If they saw what we were doing or if, you know, they saw what cattle guys were doing and had these brands, they should partner with them. Why don't they? Why don't they? Because I totally agree. I sit here and ask that question too. And try and partner with me for the same thing just to tell the

story so that the consumer can actually see the brand or the farmer that's putting those onions in the store. But in our industry, we're seeing the opposite, right? They're removing all branding. Like, if you go into, not to name the brands, but if you go in a grocery store, they want their store brand on their onions. They don't want any connection back to the farmer, because that allows them to buy as cheaply as they can. That onion is a commodity. And then another of whatever, you know, their justifications are for it. I feel like there's way more value in telling the story. 100%.

And we need that, but there's some, what's the fear? We've talked about this a lot on the meat side. Part of it is our industry on the processing side, they're getting hit just like we are with, you know, people are worried about the water because it takes an awful lot of water to process meat of any kind. Labor issues. Animal welfare.

Animal welfare. All transportation, their carbon footprint, their, what score is it? Yes. Yes, G scores, you know. And so many of them have this mentality. They have a mature business, and they've seen a lot over the life cycle of that business. and they literally, I feel like they just have the mindset that we're just going to keep her head down. Don't say anything about anything.

Like, don't have an opinion about anything and try to just weather whatever storm it is and just keep producing pork chops and getting them, you know, they don't want to do anything different than they've always done. They don't want to stir the pot. And that's going to hurt them. That's going to hurt them. They think it's a trend. Yes.

Yes. I think, yeah. Is it? I don't think it is. I don't think it is. I mean, on the animal agriculture side, I mean, I think it's an even more important question than it is on the produce production side. I think there's a shift. And I think it's here to stay and probably is going to become more so.

And I think that's going to be a huge problem for them. The longer they go that they don't, don't address it. Yeah, I agree. I don't know. I mean, that's what we scept or we think about. That's what we sit down and we always ask the question with each other. It's like, why doesn't Triumph Foods or somebody come to us and say, hey, you know, you guys are doing this.

It's great. But I think it's just the head down mentality. I think they just don't realize. I would buy a pack of bacon with my face on the back of the back. Yeah. It's got to be worth twice as much. Yeah. Give a little shock value.

You talked a little bit about. immigration. Do you have any tips for farmers out there that are wanting to do the visa program, bringing immigrants in to do work? What's some advice you can give to those farmers that are looking into get into that? You'll find some great folks. It looks like it's more expensive. Generally, from a productivity and a work ethic standpoint, it's a break-even, right? So you're going to get as, you know, you might be paying 25% more. For example, where we are in Oregon, our minimum wage presently is $12.50 an hour. Our H2A, because it's based on AWR, is 1741 an hour.

Plus, we have to provide housing and the transportation, and they're permitting to get here. So we're probably $20, $21 an hour by the time we're done. It's not any more expensive to bring those guys at those numbers than to pay somebody $12.5 an hour, at least with the current environment of those that are working on the farm. And so that's a lot of people look at that and they feel like it's too expensive. It's really about the same.

There's some headaches that are bigger, but there's also some huge advantages to knowing that the guy's going to show up. You know, their house is just down the road. It's on the farm probably because it's your house and you know they're going to be there. And they're just a lot of the time they're harder workers and just more consistent. What do you do to keep them happy? Because that's a huge thing. can't, if I'm understanding right, what I've looked into is they can, if they're not happy and satisfied, they can go back. They can go back. They can go back. So how do you keep them?

Well, it's really, it's not that hard to keep them happy. First of all, you're, I mean, everything that you're providing is significant. Um, the financial reward for them. And a lot of people don't know this. Even, even within the industry. I mean, these guys are making as much as a MD in Mexico is making. They're making very, very, very good money. And in two or three years, they can completely change the entire trajectory for themselves and their family. And so they want to be here and they want to be able to come back. And so they're motivated to do their work that they need to. And I don't, you know, I mean, like any worker, you want to have the right conditions for them

and the right opportunities. But the opportunity for them is the, like they can't even go get a job and work 40, 50 hours a week if they wanted in their home country a lot of the time. and if they did do that, they would make literally one-tenth to one-twentyth of what they're going to make, you know, on your farm. So that's not a struggle. I think another, in the swine industry, one of the biggest advantages that we've realized is you don't realize how much value there is to, when you bring a person here and you train them for that job and you know that you're going to have them to do that job for a set of, amount of time. The company that we feed for, the amount of time that was spent revolving

door, hire somebody, they're there two weeks and they quit, they're there a month and they quit, it is significant to have that consistency, to know that you're going to have somebody there doing that job for X period of time. And if that all goes into that, what that real cost is, it's a lot more efficient. Do you think this is kind of a, do you think the government really truly wants to solve immigration, or do you think that it's just a talking point for them to run on? Both sides.

Both sides. Either way. This isn't a one side issue or a one, one party issue. This has been kicked down the road by both parties for at least two decades. The Farm Worker Monetization Act is back on the table being discussed right now. Explain what that is for- The Farm Worker Modernization Act is some improvements on the H2A program.

So what it's going to do that's important for like the dairy industry is it allows workers to come as part of agriculture for year-round businesses. Like dairy, dairy's operating all the time. You guys are operating all the time. It allows you to be an ag worker in those industries because it's within agriculture. Because for some reason, the H2A visa is connected with temporary, less than nine month needs on a farming operation for people to come. So they want to change that. That's one significant change. The other one is a path to citizenship for those that have been in the United States working in

agriculture for a defined period of time. The initial definition was for the last three years as a minimum. They've toyed around with 10. I don't know what the final, you know, resolution will be, but there is a requirement for you to have been and to continue working in agriculture. And if you do so, you have the ability to, and frankly the requirement to get a green card so that you pulled into the system legally. And then the other piece about it that is the regulatory side is once that's done, because it's a pretty good fit. So you get the ag workers, you get the people that are working in agriculture,

which in the dairy industry is 80 to 90%, I think is the number. I don't know if it's 80 or 90, but it's very high. Undocumented workers that are working in the dairy industry. That's because they can't get H2A workers. so they pull those in. But then still, 70, 80% of ag workers in general and pickers and packers

and people working in the fields, the high, high percentage of them are undocumented. So the idea is, okay, let's get them registered and documented in some form. And then the third step, the regulatory side is,

okay, now that that's done, now all employers are truly required to do an E-Verify. So you can't employ someone if they don't have documentation to prove that they're in the country legally. And right now, there's loopholes galore on any verify. You know, like, just you don't have to do it. And frankly, if we did do it, we wouldn't have food to eat in the country anyway. So that's where the, you know, the Republicans can get on on that side. The Democrats, and a lot of the Republicans,

frankly, are excited about the ability to give people that have been here for a lengthy period time, a path to citizenship. Yes. What's it mucked everything up politically is the number of people crossing the southern border has just totally messed that up. Because before, you know, the previous two administrations, really even to the second half of the, basically for the second half of the Bush administration all the way through Trump, the numbers and people crossing were pretty low.

It was, I mean, manageable versus what it is today. So then there was there was the ability of the willingness to accept this and now that's what's mucked up the waters is this the sheer chaos at the border presently it just is it boggles my mind um because and this is personal experience but the people that are here on uh ag visas those are exactly the kind of people that you want to give a path to become a citizen of this country because they're the hardest working, they're here for a reason, that's exactly what we want. And I just could never understand why the process is not similar. Because we, we had several in my time, in my time working for the people we grow for. There are so many people

that we had that were trying to become citizens. But the amount of money that it takes and the time that it takes, it's just not, it's insanity. It should be much more streamlined. And it's, and frankly, it's almost impossible for those that have come illegally to get there. There's ways for it to happen. But why, why were they here? I mean, you think about the, the previous administrations on both parties, the border was not as open as it is today, but open, right? You could come, and we need those people, and that's why they're here. As much as, as farmers, we get criticized for hiring them. The reason they're here is because we need them and we, the government knows that we need them. Right. So in one way or another, they make it possible

to get the people, but then they don't solve the problem. It seems not solving immigration is just a perfect example of how broken our system is. And I don't mean to get all political on your podcast here, but I've heard you guys get a little political, but it's garbage. Because it's, it's something that could be answered and resolved. And it's just proof of like the polarization of politics and and dividing the dividing when the common ground is like i mean sometimes there's like a razor thin line of of common ground in the middle right this thing's like freaking yeah you can have a picnic on yeah it's it's a it's a 10 lane freeway you know like it's huge but we still can't seem to get it done yeah hopefully we will yeah do you think immigration you know will help do you think it's

like the savior to helping this huge labor problem long term or do you think we're going to have to, like, what do you think, what do you think is going to be the thing that solves labor? Or do you think it's always going to be constantly an issue? Has to be technology because we, we, my, my, another B-Hag, right? I like throwing those out there. But one of my, I want to, I want to write a book about what I, what I, my working title is how what we've, or how we get the opposite of what we vote for. The American consumer continues to want us to pay higher wages. They want us to give better benefits. And I'm in one of the best states is an example, right? We increase minimum wage from 925 to 1250,

and then it's attached to cost of living. So it constantly goes up every single year. We have a mandatory one week paid time off. We have a mandatory retirement match of 3%. So you have to do a 401k. We have a, what's the new one that we have is a mandatory paid family leave three months. You have to maintain the person. employment. We have all of these things that people are voting for on a federal and a state level. Some states are worse than others. The regulatory pressure that we're getting from every angle is not going to allow farmers to continue to do what they do from a labor standpoint. Technology is the only way forward. That or moving your production to another country. And that's happening on a massive level presently. And that's the only two options that I see for food, for vegetable

production. How long logistic wise, how long does it take to get a, let's say, watermelon or onion from your farm to the packer, to the grocery store, to the actual shelf that people shop on to buy an onion or a watermelon? Like, how long does that process take? Yeah, I mean, the planning process This is going to start 18 to 24 months in advance. From the time, though, that we plant, we'll plant an onion. I'm going to use onions so we're not doing multiple commodities. But we're going to plan the rotation two years in advance. When we finally do plant that seed, it'll happen in April.

That onion will get harvested in mid-September on average. And that onion can ship from September all the way through May because we'll take those onions, harvest them, put them in storage, and then pull them out as we need them. So from storage into the packing facility is a day, right? We'll come out of the storage. So let's say we, again, we harvested in September. We pull that onion out in May just to make this the longest duration of time as possible.

We'll run it to the packing shed. It'll ship that day and then four days to the distribution center and another two days to the store. So once it leaves the packing shed, it should be in the consumer's hands within seven days, roughly. And does that change depending on the commodity? Does it change depending on if it's a watermelon or an onion? But really the only thing that changes, the most gaming thing that changes is the way that it's harvested

and the way that it's packed and that duration of time. So for example, asparagus is only going to be like 72 hours old by the time you get it. Maybe, maybe, okay, so maybe it's a week old tops by the time you've got it at the grocery store because we're going to harvest it, bring it in, pack it and ship it all within about three days

and then it just depends on the distribution process there. Watermelon similar, we're picking those watermelon, bringing them directly to the packing shed, and then straight out the door to the distribution center. So the only difference between that and onions is just the fact that we can store onions for a decent amount of time and pull them out as we need them. I feel like the uncertainty is one of the toughest parts of being a farmer today, because, you know, you're trying to plan, you know, we're thinking about the crop that we're going to plant next year, but we're also thinking about generations coming into the business or depending on your

financials, how you're going to maintain where you are, let alone try to grow that. What is your biggest challenge when you look forward for your own operation to make it viable for the next generation? Politics. I mean, I can dive into that, but I mean, really, it's politics. I think politics are regulation. It's one of the two, and regulation is a result of politics. But that's, that is the, we can figure out how to get this stuff done. But, Not if, not if it really doesn't even make sense anymore. And I don't know if, you guys ever read Atlas Shrugged? Yes.

I feel, I don't know what chapter we're in in, and Atlas Shrugged, but I feel like, I mean, this is, that's the world we're living in and where the, the disconnect continues, or, or the gap between reality and what the world is actually like. Yes, is getting just broader and broader. And so it just gets, I don't know how hard, I mean, I'm only, I'm only, I'm only 42, but sometimes I feel so freaking exhausted.

I'm just, I'm like, this is not worth it. Like you, you get the payroll audit, and then you get the OSHA audit, and then you do 13 food safety audits, and then you have some troll on the internet, tell you that you're a slave driver because you're employing workers from Mexico and you're putting them in free housing. And you just, you're like, this may not be worth it. And I hope when I say this,

that the people that are listening to you, that those that aren't farmers understand this. This is, I mean, I don't know how you guys, but like I could I could either scream or cry sitting here right now because that's how true it is. It is overwhelming. It's already risky. We're already in a super, super volatile business. We already work on super thin margins. We always, we all have to borrow a ton of money. And at the same time, you want to make our job harder and harder and harder. And then on top of that, you want to tell us that we suck and that we're ruining the environment and that we don't care about our workers and that we don't

care about anything. It's, it's overwhelming. It's overwhelming. It's overwhelming. and I just want to be like, forget it. You guys figure out how to feed yourselves. I know how to feed myself. I know how to live. You guys figure it out. I think that that conversation and that thought is going on across, you know, across, not only agriculture, so many industries. I think agriculture, it's more acute just because of the amount.

It's so capital intensive and it intertwines. so many government agencies depending on what you do but um there's and it goes back to that disconnect with the consumer because we are so removed from agriculture as a society that people were blessed as a society in this country and the fact that um you were able to go to a job and make enough money at that job to feed your family and to you know, pay your house payment and do everything that you have to do. There's always food and the grocery story for you to buy. But you don't have to worry a whole lot.

You know, people have the luxury of working for an employer. And there isn't near the career employment as there used to be. In other words, the idea, you know, my parents' generation, there was a heck of a lot of people that you got a job working for, whatever. you worked at the concrete plant, you worked at the car plant, you worked here, you worked there, and that's where you worked, and your whole life. And that's not the case today. So there's not near as much of an investment on the individual's side as far as,

I feel like a lot of people go home and they don't give a second thought as to whether or not that business is going to be in business tomorrow. That's a great observation because I've never even thought about that. fact that like people just roll from job to job to job or industry to industry or whatever and they don't have yeah they're not invested in it at all they don't they just got their blinders on if you work for ford your whole life and ford goes bankrupt yeah you're not going to get your pension right so you actually like you're you're going to vote in in a way that that supports that industry or whatever else that's that's that's that's pretty profound actually and so when you go back to our industry

I just feel like it's so hard I think that goes back to when you say you started and you're three inches off the ground, you have to go to 30,000 feet because it's, I feel like it's foreign to people, the emotional investment that we have as farmers because this isn't a job where, so my home is where my farm is, it's not my livelihood, it's every, you know, it's my identity. It's every day. My identity is this. And it's not as simple is saying, okay, well, this isn't working anymore. Time to pack up. Yep.

Because, yes, if it gets bad enough, that's what we'll have to do. But you're so invested that it's just a tough, tough, it's a tough spot. And I don't know whether there's enough people, you know, as you look forward, I don't know if there's enough people out there that are going to be willing to carry that torch as this regulation gets harder and harder. Well, and that's another reason why this is so important because if you, I love the idea of advocating because it also teaches consumers, you know,

how we do things, and that's good. But it also sparks interest in young kids to maybe want to get in agriculture. You know, one video might spark a kid's interest to be like, man, I want to explore that. Because, you know, back when you were a kid, everybody in their dog was in FFA, and, you know, that was just the thing.

But now it's really not that way anymore. And the way that culture works is what's popular on social media kind of sets the culture and what young kids do with their lives and what they want to do. And I feel like this kind of stuff is really important in that aspect to not only teach people, but also recruit people to come work in ag. The hardest thing, though, is, I mean, as part of that, how do you, I can't even imagine, not that it doesn't happen,

and maybe the swine industry is a little different. There is no way is a slight exaggeration, but it would be almost impossible if I had wanted to start doing what I'm doing on my own because there'd be no way to scale it. No way. So that's the piece that I think the layman doesn't understand or someone outside the industry doesn't understand. You get frustrated sometimes that these are multi-generational businesses,

but it's really the only way that it works, because you're talking about so much to invest and so little return that that's the only way that it operates. It's like the same argument when people, you know, you had to have heard the subsidy argument. Okay, well, who, it's not us who sees, I mean, do the farmers see some of the advantages from the subsidy? Yes, but we still just try and out-compete each other and put each other out of business. And so we really don't capitalize on that investment. All we do is do it more cheaply and then pass that savings onto the consumer ultimately. Like the consumer, as much as that subsidy is there, it'd be really interesting. I've never seen a study on it, but I'm sure that the

consumer benefits probably more so than the farmers. The farmers do because of the competition. Because of the competition. We're all have to compete. And so it's not like, I mean, I'd love the idea of saying, hey, we're all going to get together and it's going to be $12 dollar corn. Right. But we don't do that and people would freak out if we did do that. But it's okay if you, you know, if somebody's building a widget and you've got an iPhone, it's okay if they make a thousand percent. Nobody, nobody has a problem with that. But when, I don't know if you guys run into that too, but it's like, it's always, well, you shouldn't be making that kind of profit. Farmers shouldn't make money. Farmer shouldn't make

money. Yeah. I've seen that argument. Okay. But you do. You see that. And I don't know. part of it is I think it's generational, so they think it's just generational wealth. You don't really earn it or you didn't really deserve it. You just inherited it. So therefore, I think that's the biggest one. Is that the biggest one? I see that a lot. People are so critical about inheritance.

If you inherited anything, everything in your life's been given. It's privilege. Yeah. That's huge in culture nowadays, unfortunately. I tell people all the time that if you woke up tomorrow and you, you, you had won the largest lottery that don't demand. And you said, I think I want to be in the top 10 pork producers in the United States. And money was no object.

You would give up long before the money ran out. Like you, you would, you would just, you would probably just break down and cry. Yeah, you'd just be like, what's the point? Yeah, the same conversation that we're having right now. I don't, I don't think people realize that it's, all of our businesses, you truly have to, you truly have to live it, to have that desire in you because otherwise it's just not worth it. Yeah.

You got to have the passion, and I think the legacy really helps. And it takes a special person to want to farm. You know, I think it's almost your brain. Like, I wouldn't have the desire to be a farmer unless I saw my grandpa and you work as much as you guys worked and operated on thin marches and did all these things. It breeds you to be that kind of person and wanting to do it.

So I don't know. I don't want to be a Debbie Downer by any means. I think there's a lot of good things. I think, you know, farming is amazing for the world. I think a lot of people appreciate farmers. But you just guys, we're trying to show you guys our perspective on what we live day to day. And in Chase's case, he's living the same thing that we're living over here on the livestock side. You know, it's kind of a labor, regulation, immigration, all these things are problems, not only in just one industry in agriculture, but the entire industry. And we have to solve these issues for us to be able to continue on, unless you want Bill Gates to own everything or, you know, elitist to own everything and be consolidated and have no family

aspect. I don't want that in my food system, and I hope you guys don't either. At the end of the day, it really is, it's a national security. If you really want to back out, I mean, food is a national security. Do we want our food raised here? Or do we want to rely on a supply chain to get it here from wherever? And do you want your choices to be fewer or do you want your choices to be more? Because consolidation is the natural progression as things get tougher. scale helps that but then as you scale you make decisions as to okay am I going to grow

am I going to grow eight things that five of them are marginally profitable or am I going to concentrate on three things that I can manage and are the most profitable well if I'm a if I'm a large if I'm a large integrated company I'm probably going to focus on those three and then as a result the next thing you know you have less choice as a consumer And that's, that's not what anybody wants. So it's a tough deal and, and it's something that we need to solve, but it's, it's not going to get solved easy and it may not get solved in my lifetime, but it's something worth fighting for.

So we'll all keep at it. Yeah. And I think that, you know, we're like, what's the solution? What's the solution? Well, the solution is when the government regulates the shit out of us and then all these family farms go out of business and there's famine. It really is. Like, it's, I feel it's got to hit the fan.

It really does. And that's the scary part. Yeah. Then everybody's going to wake up and go, what happened? And how do we get our food system back? Just whether they wake up in time or not. Yeah. So let's, yeah, we're going to try to get people to wake up a little earlier than that, hopefully.

But. And this isn't woe is me. Like, we're not sitting here telling you that this is like we hate the industry or obviously we love the industry or that, that I'll feel bad for us. What we're saying is let us have a fair fight. Yeah. And that's what we're missing out on is this, we're getting to a point. where it's not a fair fight anymore,

which is why the consolidation could happen, which is why our food could be coming from somewhere else, is because, yeah, we're getting beat up. When the deck gets stacked against you, at some point you just get tired of trying to fight the fight. What do you do for fun? Well, I combine playing fun when I'm flying the airplane. I've always loved that.

In fact, that came from my grandfather. He flew a Cessna 210 and would just tell me stories about flying all over. and his adventures, they'd go for a week, or they'd get the group together and they'd fly to Mexico for like a week, you know, kind of like adventures that I wouldn't even consider today. So he gave me that bug.

I like to ski when there's snow, at least. And I hate fishing, but my kids love it, so I spend a fair amount of time, you know, on the river with the kids fishing. So what do you fly? I have a Cirrus SR 22. Okay. It's a low wing.

People will know what there's the one with the parachute. So, oh, nice. Typically, that's what I do. And I would have, the weather was nasty here. You guys had a lot of thunderstorms. Otherwise, I would have flown out here. It's about as far as I go, about a thousand miles from home. It's kind of my, my, the maximum distance that I'll fly.

But it's a really, for me, it's nice because I can, I'm really mission driven and anything that I do anyway. And aviation's really cool that way. Like, you know, I got to get here for this. And you've got the challenges of air traffic and weather and everything else. It's a consistently, constantly challenging thing. And it's just cool. It's just cool to get up.

there and kind of set your own agenda to some extent. What's your, what's your dream location to fly to? You said you only fly a thousand mile, but if you could fly anywhere in the world, where would you want to fly to? There's a jungle, there's a jungle strip that I have, there's a picture actually under the glass on my desk of a jungle strip that my grandfather flew into in the 70s. I have a picture with him standing on the runway when we went back there like 20 years later. that's kind of on my list. I'd like to do that one trip, and it's not as scary,

at least from a, from a spatial orientation standpoint, from a, you know, the GPS and all the components that are on the airplane, it's easy to do it. It's more like the cartels and stuff like that that's scary.

Yeah, would you recreate the picture? Would you try to take a picture? Oh, absolutely. Not only the picture, hopefully though, you know, there's not guys standing there with guns or something when I land, trying to confiscate the airplane for a drug run

or something like that. So did your grandpa teach you how to fly? Like, how did you learn? Unfortunately, they had, so in the, in the, it was the late 80s, they had to sell the airplane. The bank called the loan. And they had to sell, they liquidated everything they had. So he, I flew the, I flew in the airplane. But that was one of those things that they had to, they had to get rid of that and some rental

property, a bunch of stuff. They had to, they had to sell to, to pay off their line when the bank called the note. Barked your interest and they just took it away. you've been just hunting for it ever since and now you finally got it my my dad my dad said that um you know he flew in a war situation but he said that some of the just uh he said it was almost therapeutic he said uh the time that he spent coming back from a mission were some of the the clearest thinking that he'd ever done, he said. He, he, and I think he, you know, he never flew, he flew commercial just one or two times in the years after he got, got out. But, um, I think that the time that he

spent in the cockpit of a P-51, probably some of the, the, probably some of his best memories, I think, the way he talked about it. That's some rare air he was breathing, doing that too. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and a lot of ways. He was stationed Lascena, Italy, and they had a 51 that they stripped all the armor out of, and they put a jump seat in it, and they would fly down to Naples if some, you know, if some army dignitary or somebody came and they were coming doing a tour, they would go pick them up. And he said that every time that that happened that somebody needed to go pick somebody up from Naples, it was practically a fist fight because that thing had, it had zip.

because they taken the guns out of it and all the armor out of it. So he said it would, you felt like it was really, and it would maneuver so much better that they just loved it. We got two more questions and we'll wrap it up. But most satisfying crop to grow out of everything that you grow, what's the most satisfying? Recently, I'm going to give watermelon that actually. We've grown so many crops that are hard to sell.

You know, people think, okay, that's another thing that I understand. Like, oh, well, if you grow the crop, you can sell it. Now, I mean, it's different when it's a commodity. When you're talking about produce, there's no, you don't have a contract, you don't have a customer, you don't have anything that's guaranteed. And we tried sweet potatoes and they were so hard to sell. You know, we would just, we'd harvest them and put them away in storage and then just trickle them out the door. And the water mills just come in and go on, come in and go on, come in and go out. And we've been fairly successful growing a good crop, a product that people like.

And that, that's been fun. That's been fun because you just, you sell loads and loads and loads. I guess I have two more questions after this one. I just thought about it. And it was kind of going back to what we were talking about. You know, we're not trying to be Debbie Downers and everything like that. But farmers got to find that edge. We've got to find that edge now. We're in a state now where doing this, this is our edge. Doing social media, it's our edge. Yes, it's great to promote agriculture and positive light, and that's our mission. But we're also doing it, you know, personal gain comes second. Yeah, right. And we're trying to do everything. That's our, that's our, that's our, that's our,

our goal here on our farm is to make it viable for my kids a seventh generation. And I'm in other things as well. You know, I'm working on a thing behind the scenes that's going to be coming out here next month that I'm excited about. But also, I do real estate investment with my brother. Is there anything that you're doing to find that edge that's maybe on farm, off farm that can, that you're, because, you know, we're in this weird state. So is there anything that you're doing to diversify that you're should be comfortable sharing?

more to diversify than what I am. I'm always looking for for to follow the verticals a little bit more. So the the the peeling that we do with the onions, right? So we we had all this byproduct that's that they couldn't be used. And so, you know, that was kind of one of those, I don't know, you want to call it epiphany. Epiphany. It was I mean, that wasn't like, you know, something that is that diversified, but it is taking something that is unusable otherwise, right? Essentially, we got two cents a pound for it and we get 20 now. But outside of agriculture, same thing. We have some rental properties and some stuff like that.

I wish I had done in hindsight, especially because I'm in the Boise market, right, watching what's happened there. I should have done a lot more, a lot more. But I mean, I think hindsight's always 20-20. But that's what I think I'm going to have to be more involved in is just rental properties in general. You can always do ag land, but I'm already tied to that.

So, yeah, the diversification for me is in rental properties. Sweet. Okay. Last question. You got anything else you want to throw in? Last question. If all your social media disappeared tomorrow and you, God forbid, but you passed away and you, this was the only video left on the internet of Shay Myers. What message, what couple things, three things would you want to leave with the consumers, the people out there? What would you want to leave? What message would you want to leave? The consumers are your audience. How about both? And I know this is a hard question. Take your time.

Take your time. Where did you pull that out? I was just thinking, you know, we got kind of deep. I think a couple of things. Number one, it's important that anyone doing anything that's contributing at all have confidence in themselves. I'm just getting old enough. I'm 42, right? Like, I wish I had believed in myself a lot more, a lot sooner because I'd be a lot farther than where I am today.

And there's just so many things that tell you. you know you can't do this or know that won't work or know this or know that. And a lot of the time I feel like your intuition combined with your work ethic and just your willingness to do things will make a lot of things happen. I mean, you guys are on social media so you know this. 90% of the battle is making the content. It's not what's in the content. It's not even what you say in the content. It's just doing something. So, um, that's something that I want people to know. Confide in yourself.

And then the other thing is, I hope that I could be a source of honest perspective on what agriculture is. I try really hard. And I mean from the politics of agriculture to the family dynamics of agriculture, to the logistics of agriculture, that has really turned into my goal. I just want people to know and understand what we do and why we do it and what it means to them. And if they get those, they understand those things will all be in a better place

because they won't be frustrated that we make a profit sometimes. They won't be frustrated that we use water. They won't be frustrated that we use fertilizer. They'll know that we're doing what we're doing for the right reason to try and feed them to try and make a living and to try and create an opportunity for the future for my family on our farming operation, but also for them and their kids so that they can work that city job and have something to eat too. That's well put. Very well put. Well, we really appreciate it, Shay. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for making the drive all the way down here to Iowa.

I know you got you're a busy guy. He's got a keynote. Go follow Shay on TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram. He's even got to YouTube. Go follow him. He dropped a lot of knowledge on this one, a lot of fire. So we really appreciate all of you listening or watching. We'll be back here next Friday and make sure to pay the fee, share the show, and we'll see you guys later.