Barn Talk - Agriculture's Lone Future: The Untold Hardships of Farming w/Ryan Kelly

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Use code BARNTALK for 10% OFF your next order https://farmergrade.com 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    00:00 Mom insisted on selling cows, shifted career. 15:54 Upgraded tractor for versatile field work. 21:28 Hog farming balanced grain farming in the county. 40:22 Farming payments helped cover crop inputs and feed. 44:44 Equipment business tough due to rising costs. 54:33 Nostalgic story about old farm equipment purchase. 01:11:28 Concern about future global crop supply and economics. 01:19:32 Agriculture brings passion and challenges, and needs attention. 01:25:06 Neglect of development led to failures. 01:34:51 Preserving farm history through tractor stories. 01:50:22 Adapting to modern farming challenges with innovation. 01:58:58 Focus on farming, manage money better. Enjoy storytelling. ------------------------------- ***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

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Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays in the barn, but not today. We're going to let it all out for you guys. Today is going to be a special episode. We got a guest coming on, and we're going to talk farming. But before we get into it, you guys know the drill. Pay the fee, share the show with who you know. The more that you guys do that, the more the show grows, the more people we can reach, the better guests we can get on, more episodes we can make. You can also submit questions for our Q&A episodes. You can email us those questions at barn talk show at gmail.com to get them answered on the show. You can leave a review on Spotify or Apple.

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enter. Yeah, we appreciate every single one of you guys. Thank you so much for all your support. and we're really looking forward to getting into this episode. How are you doing today? I'm good. I'm excited for this one. Yeah, you are excited. This is one that we've been trying to do for a little bit now. Yeah, we did.

We've been trying to put this together for a while. It's kind of a double shot because I will be appearing on our next guest's new YouTube channel at some point in the future. So we kind of killed two burns with one stone today. So today we are talking to a guy that was born into dairy farming. And he milked and he toiled and he toiled and he milked dreaming about someday, maybe having a day off. And from those humble beginnings, he would go on to become a true multi-sport. champion. Like, you know, they talk about Bo Jackson, they talk about Dion Sanders. But this guy, he farms, he trucks, he tiles, and he's pretty good at all of them. But his true calling is being a

TikTok Titan. With over 46,000 subs on TikTok and a brand new YouTube channel, he's roaming the countryside in search of a great tractor story and maybe a hot deal on a cab over. Without any further ado, let's get into it. So Ryan Kelly, yep, thanks for coming. Welcome to Barn Talk, better known as Wisconsin Titan. Yep, Wisconsin Titan, too. We tried to, Wisconsin Tyson, Titan, too. We tried to have this podcast happen two weeks.

Two weeks ago, but the crazy-ass snowstorm that went through the Midwest, slowed us down a little bit. And honestly, I think he was. would have made the trip. But we got stuck and it was kind of a shit show around here. So we had to tell him. We weren't worried about him getting here. Yeah. We were just afraid you were going to get here and then you weren't going to fucking lead. And we were like, I mean, I think I like this guy, but I don't know if I wanted to stay here for like three days. Well, and in the unfortunate part about not making it down two weeks ago is it really screwed up my candidacy for president because I was

really hoping, because when you invited all the candidates down, I got on the list right away. But now my caucus numbers just aren't there because I wasn't able to promote through you guys. So I guess I'm, the best thing I can hope for now is I'm hoping Tony will put me in his cabinet. I want Secretary of Agriculture. There you go. Or I want to be in charge of the EPA. Yes. Perfect.

Both of those, I would, I would back you on that. I would back you. You got our endorsement. If Tony gets elected, I wouldn't suggest investing heavily in deaf companies. No, I agree with you. I agree with you. Yep.

That's pretty good. Yeah, it is. You are a man of many talents. You're like the triple, you're like the triple threat of TikToks because you are trucks, tile, and tractors. I thought you were going to say like thirst traps.

And I'm like, yes, I know. You're like the bow. You're like the bow Jackson of farming, you know, playing baseball. Dion Sanders, playing baseball and football. But you're in all of it. Well, it's out of desperation. So first generation farmer. Yep.

I say that I'm not a first generation farmer. I have a first generation farmer. Right. Fifth generation farmer. None of us on the same farm. So I'm jealous that you guys have that, like I told Torque earlier, like those heirloom things. Like I don't have my great-grandpa's signs or any of that kind of stuff. But

there, a dairy farm, went to crop farming, wasn't enough to just crop farm, have to make income, doing something else. So it was trucks in the intermediate, you know, because I went to school right after high school, I got into trucks. Went to school for it and then. So, yeah, so you went to school for like diesel mechanics.

Yeah. They call it heavy duty truck technology, which makes it sound like I'm an engineer. It's sexy. Yeah, yeah. So you did that, but then you got the bug like to get a to truck. Believe it or not, sitting in the seat of one is easier work than it is climbing underneath one and trying to wrestle a drive shaft up and, you know, that kind of stuff. So which came first? So you went to school, but then were you trucking when you started farming or did you start farming and then were that realized, all right, I got to make some extra money and you knew or did it all kind of come together? Well, it's complicated there because so I wouldn't have went to school at all. Like I have my plan was similar to Sawyers like where I was going to get out of high school and I was just going to farm. I had dairy cows with my parents.

Yep. At the time they still were, they were contract. They weren't contract feeding. They supplied the facilities and hauled manure and maintained our own buildings for a guy that was raising breeding stock for hogs. Okay. And then I was always helping. If I wasn't at home, I was at neighbors all the time. And my plan was, well, between all that, I'm just, I'm just going to farm.

And my mom did not think that was a good idea. My dad was not a, my dad did not love dairy farming. So she said, you know, all my talk of going just farming, she goes, we're selling the cows, we're selling your cows with our cows, and you're going to go to school for something. And two things led me to heavy duty truck technology, as they put it, was first thing was growing up, I always thought, you know, trucks were kind of cool because growing up in an era we're smoky in the bandit.

Oh, yeah. We think a truck driving today, we kind of think of a guy that's in flip flops and sweatpants. It's like, but as a kid, snowman. Yeah. Gary Reed, you're like, damn right. You know, that's as cool as it gets, you know. 100%. So I always thought trucks were cool.

But then the other thing was truck engines were always more advanced than farm equipment. And I thought it would be an advantage to know more about that. for tractor pulling. Honest to God, tractor pulling played a big part in my future. So what you're saying is you weren't an economics major by any means. Later I did. So I ended up going back to four-year college. I never finished.

I just got too busy on the farm. So anyways, long story short, went to the heavy-duty truck technology. The intention was not to even work in the field. And then I'm going to school with these guys that were close to Minneapolis-St. Paul. These guys had jobs already in the industry, you know, working as part-time while they're going to school. Yeah. And, you know, the neighbor would give me $5 an hour to milk cows for him.

And these guys are like working part-time. And, you know, and this is mid-90s, late-90s. And they're working part-time for like $15 an hour. And I'm like, damn. Wait a minute. So then I kind of, yeah, I kind of got into that. And then I was like, well, I'll drive. And it was in that time frame that I was.

was like, I really miss farming. So I made the decision that I had to, I was going to get back to farming somehow. And then I, so I went on my own at 21. I, I bought, you know, I started farming on my own at 21. By 22, I had dairy cows again. And I was working out and milking cows. And then, your mother probably was not happy. No, no, I don't hear my mom swear a lot, but she did have some words when I finally so I ended up working in the city's really good job union job um you know being a mechanic and hauling heavy equipment so that was a really good pay up there and I used all that to get my own dairy farm bought and transition to that and she was like you are an effing idiot when I quit my job and my banker is so funny because I bought that and he's like yeah you can cash flow

this you have a really good job he says I know what you're up to. Yep. And he's like, I get it. But he's like, can you give me like six months? Yeah. To figure this out before you just quit your job and start milking cows? Yeah.

Yeah. So then, and when the dairy cow was left, it's like, you know, I had the land base for a 50 cow dairy and young stock. Well, that wasn't enough to make a living on. And being a one-man show, I didn't have the, uh, you know, the help where, and I was somewhat spread out. So it's like, it wasn't just a hobby. So that was that choice when I sold the dairy cows was, okay, this could just be somewhat of a hobby.

I could sell most of my equipment. I owned at the time, I only owned 41 acres on the building site. And I went, well, I could probably hold on to that, you know, keep a tractor or two. And I could fiddle around on my 41 acres while I could go back and finish my four-year degree and, you know, and get that kind of a job. I go, or I just want a farm.

I need something that it fills in the gaps. Yep. And you can't have that nine to five job where you have to schedule your time off. You know, oh, six months from now, we're going to plant corn this day. So I'm going to put in my week off this time. I was like, you need something flexible.

Yep. I could fix trucks. So then I bought an old cab over. So what was your first truck you bought? The first one I bought was an 83 GMC Aero Astro. Oh, nice. Cab over. $2,500 or $3,000.

And I was hauling grain with that, bought an old Wilson hopper. And then I started driving for another guy, too. And then I was like, well, this is stupid. I own a truck. And I'd go haul grain. And then I'd drive his truck. And I'm like, that's dumb. I might as well just have my own truck doing all this stuff.

So I was like, well, me and the cab over are going to go. and there was a guy that I've known since I was young, you know, they had a trucking company. And I was like, hey, I want to come over and be an owner-operator for it. And he goes, you know what? Yeah, that's great. And I said, I'm bringing my cab over. And he goes, no, I don't want your $3,000 GMC cab over pulling for me. Yeah.

He goes, you can buy a little better truck. He says, I'll help you out here. And he had like a 2,000 freight liner. Yep. He goes, the clutches out of it. It needs some stuff. But he goes, I'll sell it to your right. And he goes, I'll give you.

all the parts you need to fix it. He says, you got to fix it. He said, good deal. And then, and that, I called that 3,000 freightliner, I paid $10,000 for it. And this was like, oh, nine or 10, probably 10. And he gave me all the parts to fix it. I paid $10,000 for it.

I called that truck the ATM. Because anytime you needed money, he just went to it. Took off and drugs. Just go drive it. Yep. Because, you know, I mean, there's, that's some guys three months worth of truck payments. Right. You know, I kept that old fruit liner running and, you know, and then I was able to buy more land.

And, you know. Yeah, so you had the 40 acres, you had some dairy cows, and then you trucked and fixed, you just were hustling to just try to keep it all going. And then did you, when did the tiling come in? did a mix. I started the idea of the Thailand business in about 2011. I had bought a wet farm. That was, I moved from, my parents had beautiful dirt where they were at. And you thought it was all like that. Yeah. It was good land, but it was wet. And so I was like, I kept, I don't know if you remember back when they did the TV signal switch where you had

to buy like the little box so your TV would work again or you had to go to Dish Network. This was back in like the mid-2000s, right? I was milking three times a day by myself. Like I didn't watch TV hardly at all. And when that happened, I was like, well, I just give up on TV. And I would just, I read a lot. I love to read. And you'd get all the farm magazines they'd send them to you.

And you'd read about tile, like in successful farming. And you're like, that's what I need. Yep. That's what I need. So that got my. you know, thoughts going. And then you get to like Ohio, um, where everything was tiled, where we're out in Ohio with the semi and you're like, you'd look at these tile. Oh, let's run on everywhere. And you're like, gosh, you could have that tile running constantly

all the time. And I was like, well, I think I can do this. Yep. And so what was your first, you did you buy an existing somebody's business where you just bought everything or did you just go buy a, so did you buy a plow or did you buy a plow for a, for a tractor? Tractor plow. tractor mounted. So I had a 4455 and a 4452 wheel drive and I got rid of both of those and I bought an 8200 with front wheel assist because I was looking at a couple of these tractor plows. Yep. And they had, they showed like an 8,000 like a bigger front wheel assist pulling them. Yep. And I'm like, oh, well, they should be able to do it, you know. And I'm like, then if I bought like an 8,000, I could still do all my field work with it. It'd be capable of doing everything. And it worked. but it didn't. If you were going to tile for everybody,

and original thinking was, I mean, I don't think it'll become a business, but I'll do enough for everybody else that I can kind of do my own. Yeah. And do it for everybody else and then do your own for free, kind of.

Yeah. Yep. And then everybody's like, hey, can you put some tile on for me? Yep. So it turned into a business kind of. Yeah. And then I bought like an 8960 with triples.

I'm a difflock. And I put a three point. I found one of the three point, which is pretty rare. Yep. and ran that for another, I don't know, four years or something like that. And then it was like, I remember we had one tile job that was just a nightmare. I mean, this ground should have been just given back.

Like, Mother Nature wins that one. Just give it away. Yep. Let it go follow. But nope. This guy was bound into tournament and I was so pissed off. Like, just, we got the mini excavators stuck in this place. And I'm just like, holy cow.

I don't know what I'm going to do here. And got talking to a guy. And I'm like, all right, if I had a commercial tile plow, I mean, these things, I mean, I'm sure they can do a lot. They wouldn't be able to. He's like, oh, yeah. And I'm like, well, I don't, you know, I didn't want to keep trucking all the time. Because by then I had had kids. Yeah.

And I'm like, I got to get out of the truck anyways. So I'm like, I guess we're jumping in and bought a commercial tile plow. So you don't. So like, what are you all, what are you doing now? Like what, are you still trucking? Still doing it all? Are you still doing all of it? So you jumped into dairy cows, and are you out of that now? Do you have any?

Oh, the cow was left in 2008. Okay. I was 30 years old. Okay. That's when I got back into trucks. Okay. Trucks came back in when I got, I'm like, yep. Okay.

So then I still do a little trucking in the winter. You know, just if you're not making money, you are spending money. Yeah. Like, so it'd be very bad all winter and long if you had nothing to do. Yeah. So, and we need the money. I spent way too much money. we, you know, ended up buying a lot of land along the way and reinvest in.

So do you have you got, so you've got the farm to a point where that's kind of your main focus. Yeah. Tiling and you truck in the winter. Yep. And those are kind of your three things that you're focused on. Cool. Yep. So you kind of, are you happy with the decision you made of not going down that road of doing the whole truck or what would we call it?

Mechanic, truck mechanics. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Well, funny story. So I'm working this good union job, and I'm like 22 at the time or something. And they said, hey, there's a meeting up in the break room. You need to go to it. It was for retirement. It was for retirement fund. So I was a teamster. Oh, yeah. And they're like, so we've got to figure out where you're going to invest your retirement because they were changing something with our retirement. So you had to pick your plan or whatever. And I'm up there and blah, blah, blah, listening to all. You know, and I'm walking down out of the. the meeting or whatever, and there was this old mechanic that I worked with, who walked with his, his knuckles were curled up, his back was kind of hunched, you know,

and he walked like this, and he looks at me and he says, he says, you got her made. And I go, really? He says, yeah, you got her made. And I said, what do you mean? And he goes, in 30 years, he goes, you'll be retiring a multimillionaire with this retirement plan they had. And I looked at him and I go, well, not in 30 years. go, because I'm only 22, and they said that you still have to go to 55.

And he looks at me and he goes, yeah, but still. And I watched him walk away with all like, just like twist it up and that, working on concrete all those years. And he was like 54. That's not me. Yeah, I don't want that. Nope. Yeah.

So I'm like, we need to do something. Yeah. Yeah. Different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I was just sitting here thinking.

I think a lot of people. they feel the pressure of, I mean, your parents pretty much didn't want you to farm and like, and kind of influenced you not to go down that route and for you to be like, you know what, screw it, I'm doing it no matter what. I mean, not everybody's bold enough to do that. So I just wanted to know how you felt now that you went through all that. Well, your dad's just a little bit older than me, but I would say of that the Gen X, we're both Gen X. I think the Gen X farmers are probably the smallest group of farmers.

farmers. Gen X is a smaller generation, but I think even disproportionate, there's less farmers because growing up through the 80s and stuff like that and farming was not lucrative, you were kind of chased away. Like people were told, don't do this. This is not a good idea. You know. You think about just think about in our neighborhood how many guys are farming that are my age. Yeah. Not very men. Not a lot. I mean, usually a little old. some that are your age or younger but i mean even younger too that's getting rare too yeah there's pretty few like younger there's there's quite a few guys that are younger by like five years but and our county is kind of skewed because the hog deal was such a big deal basis to yeah you know when i was

selling hog buildings that was one of the biggest draws of that was you could if you if you were a guy and you had, you know, you had 400 acres or you had 800 acres or whatever. The grain farming was trash. Yep. But if you had the equity, you could throw up a couple of hog sheds. You could bring your kid home, have him chore of the pigs, plus paying, he get paid something for doing it. And then you had him for the help.

And at the end of seven years, you know, when we started selling these are 140 bucks of pig space. and if you took if you took a little bit out you could still pay for him in seven years now you can't pay for them in 20 but then you could so there was quite a few guys

little younger than me that around this area a lot of hog billings went up which if we didn't have that we would be much more representative of a lot of the ag community where you don't have that generation because they didn't have that opportunity

but, no, I just laugh about that because there's a lot of mothers of that generation that, you know, the dad, the dad probably was, like, let's face it, every dad, every dad, every farmer has a, has a soft spot, no matter how, no matter what the dynamic is, because, you know, someday we're going to make a highlight real of how we can treat each other because everybody comments on our on our farm videos and it's like oh it's so great to see you two working together sunshine and rainbows you two got such a good relationship and oh it's just great you know which we do have a good relationship 95% of time it's until we don't yeah yeah well hogs never bring out yeah right terrible emotions between people when they're yeah handling them right but but but i think a lot you know

think every farmer in the back of his mind you kind of have this you kind of have this dream that it'd be great to be able to farm with your kids agree but usually in that relationship especially through the 80s the wife who chances are had to get a job off the farm to help yeah subsidize the addiction or you know the farm they were the ones that instilled in that kid in that in those kids you are not you are going to school, you're going to get a job, you're going to have the opportunities because there's no opportunity here. Well, and you were sold that bill of goods in society that college was the predominant. It was going to solve all your problems. You were going to get an amazing job because you got the degree. And maybe it was like that back then, but now I feel like that's conversation

is starting to change a little bit more. But just one thing I thought was funny, though, is you go back you go back a hundred years because i told you this so my my uh great grandmother her daughters they had two daughters and she absolutely did not want them to be stuck on the farm so she sent both them to college she sent them to secondary stool to get their masters like to be teachers and the one what she do she met a professor and then he came back and looked the farm and was like damn this is pretty nice this is what i'm going to do and i don't have any idea but my dad always said that he's pretty sure that that like broke my grandmother's heart when she realized that her daughter was going to make the same mistake that she did so it's not it's not unusual i mean it just but i think

it's just a i think the 80s especially was a time where it was pretty bleak there was not a lot of opportunity. And I think, you know, she was doing what she thought. She was trying to save you a lot of pain. Yeah. Square knows that in hospitality, efficiency is everything. That's why their system lets you take payments, track sales, handle inventory, manage staff, send invoices, and keep up with finances all in one place. Fly through orders with zero mistakes. Get the data you need and keep everything working together. So you're ready for whatever's next. Learn more about their some other little plans that's clearup.com. And it's funny that, you know, it seemed like there was no opportunity in the 80s,

but you know what? The most successful farmers today were the guys that started in the 80s. Yep. The guys that paid the biggest price were the guys that started in the early 70s, because they paid top dollar for everything. And if they held onto it. If they made it through. Yep, they spent a couple decades.

fixing the problem. The guys that came along in the 80s with no debt and were able to buy land for, you know, it started at the bottom. It was pennies on the dollar. A lot of that land was cash flowing within. It cash flowed within a couple of years. Yep, it turned.

Yep, and those guys that were on that, in that era, are the ones that today got to be mega farms. because it just, it clicked. And like you said, the cash cropping wasn't very lucrative. It really wasn't. But the guys that did it and got into it and played the game, I mean, and let's face it,

there's been a game to it. You have to know the programs. You have to, you know, et cetera. Had to roll your pick certificates. Yep. Yep. No, the guys that just knew how to do it all. And crop insurance helped, et cetera.

They were set up for when the RFS kicked in. I mean, those guys took a jump that got so far ahead of everybody else. So like around us, I'd say if a guy, the livestock thing paid the bills for decades until it didn't. And the guys that continued to focus on that and, you know, well, livestock is what we do, didn't do near as well as the guys that said, we're going to just go to crops. We're just not going to continue to invest into the livestock part of it. Those guys today, I mean,

are just so far ahead of it. And the guys back then that got into it, really? Part of the reason that they're so successful is because they really wanted to farm. Yes. Got to have passion. Yeah, because you would have looked, I mean, nobody, you know,

and if you look at somebody's high school year, book from, you know, the mid-80s that says, I'm going to go be a farmer. Nobody thought that was smart. Said nobody ever. Yeah. Yeah. So the guys that did are very successful. Yeah. So when you, you know, you grew up daring and then you had your own dairy cows. And I went through this, like, I think we did a whole episode about this that. When, when you got out of that, was, was that a sense of relief? Or what did you have to work through? Did you feel guilty about like that you'd failed getting rid of them? Or were you like, don't let the door slap you on the ass on the way out, Bessie?

I felt fairly good about it because it wasn't a forced sale. There was no, if I don't do this, you know, the world's going to end. It was I did it on my terms and I got a little help from God for that. I mean, like, literally it was divine intervention to sell those cows when I did. And we got really good money at the time when I sold those cows. So it was, timing was really good. And I guess I kept heifers back, some of the younger heifers. And I thought, well, I'll raise them up.

I still had some feed left. We'll get them bread. If I feel like I missed the cows, then, you know, I'll be able to start again. Yep. And I sold those heifers bread for, less money a year later than what I could have got for him is calves. Yep. The market had tanked.

And that cured me of wanting the livestock. But I didn't milk cows or like with the pigs because I had a passion for milking cows or a passion for hogs. It was, it was, I loved a farm. Yeah. And you just, you had. That was live. You did livestock, right?

That's, you know. And I'll say this. like growing up around people like that, that always had livestock, one of the worst attitudes that you can have is to be that, well, this world wouldn't, would starve if it weren't for me out here doing chores every single day. The country doesn't, I mean, I had that mentality at one time. You know, it's like, well, the country owes me.

I'm putting, you know, I'm milking these cows. What would they do? If I didn't milk cows, Guess what? When I sold the cows, actually the milk price continued to go down because production just kept growing on the bigger farms. So you have to do it for you. Yep. Because nobody else really cared.

And once you put that away, it's like, oh. Yeah. Got to get your ego out of it. Yep. Yeah. Yep. So, but yeah, to me, the cash cropping seemed, you know, almost impossible. To a full-time farm, it seemed like it was so hard.

to get to. You had to have something. Yeah, that it's like, well, I mean, because there were guys that the cash, we're close to the Mississippi River. So we always had a market. Like, get some areas that's like, well, they didn't start growing soybeans until 25 years ago or whatever. There was, I mean, there's always been guys that did cash crop. But it's like, well, to come up with the acreage base and to,

and it wasn't that lucrative. I mean, actually some of the best money in raising crops was milking cows and then fill in your high moisture corn and your corn siloilage silos was not collecting an LDP check. Sure. Yep. Because you were getting paid for the feed you were raising. It was like, you know, well, this is great.

But that 07, everything changed. RFS started to kick in and then the $70 barrel oil. And it's like, wow. Yeah, well, it changed the whole. It changed everything. It did. It really did. And if you were one of those guys, like I said, that had been farming along in there,

when it turned, well, what a spot you were in. Yeah. Because I can remember that was the first time. So we're being right next to Minnesota like that, that you really heard about, like, there were Minnesota guys that came over and they went door to door trying to rent land. Yep. Or they put ads in the paper, you know, trying to rent this land. And, I mean, that just never happened.

Like you didn't rent land away from people. Yeah. And when everybody had livestock, there were some of them. guy would retire, he'd have to go around and find somebody that wanted to rent his farm. Yeah. Because it's like, well, we got enough feed to feed them. Yeah. Nobody's got time. Yeah. Because it was a time thing. Yep. It was like, exactly. It was if you had enough feed to feed the cows. Yeah.

There was no reason to farm more and you didn't have, it was all you could do to get everything done that you had to do. Yeah. So that guy that you had on the most recent YouTube video talking about the 1206. Yep. Is that right? Yep. Yep. When you two were rattling off every, thing he did. When he was talking about when he had cattle and he didn't, what he didn't do silage, he cut hailedage every day. Is that right? Green chop. Yeah. I didn't even know that was a thing. But basically, he went out every day, whatever he needed to feed the cows, he chopped that much. And I was just sitting there thinking about that and I was like, so you're milking these cows how many times a day and you're going out and you're chopping what you need to feed them.

Then you got a haul of manure. And then you probably got a haul manure. Yeah. I was like, so that guy would you go with that farmer goes to him and says, hey, you want to rent my 200 acres or my 160? He's going to look at and go, no, hell no. He got time. Especially when you just got done figuring out what your LDP is going to be. And you're like, so I'm going to run more corn that I don't, you know, if you didn't have a dryer. Sure. You're like, so I'm going to haul. this to the co-op. Yep.

I might make something on the LDP, but I might, might not. I might go backwards. Yep. So it's like, I'm good. Yeah. I'm good. Yeah. Isn't that crazy?

Yeah. And then it just, it just changed just like that. Like, well, there's margin. You had, you were basically, the way you survived was a low cost producer. Yep. To there was actually margin that the more land. you had the more money you made. Yeah.

And it hadn't been that way. It hadn't been that way since the 70s. Right. And land rents jumped like double. Yeah. Within months. Oh. Because it was like we first started hearing these rents here.

These guys are crazy. This was 2007. This happened. Yeah. By 2007. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Because I think the RFS kicked in, what, 405.

Explain to people what that RFS is because they might not know. Okay. Well, the renewable fuel standards were, started requiring blending ethanol. Yeah. Okay. Yep. And suddenly our demand for corn went out significantly.

So I don't know how many ethanol plants were built within a five-year period. Oh, yeah. It was a ton. Yep. It was a ton. And then the other part of that is they were built in areas away from the rivers, for the most part, not always, where traditionally the basis had been terrible. Because you had all that freight to get it to the river.

And so that's where they build them. And then that thing opened and overnight where you had, you know, yesterday you had a 45-cent basis. You had a zero basis or you had a positive basis. So basically is the equivalent of like we always talk about here. We're very lucky in the fact that we have all these hog feeders. Yep. So what our county is a corn deficit county to where we actually consume more corn than what we produce because we grind for so many pigs.

Well, you got the same thing around some of these ethanol plants. So it just was like you flipped a switch. And... So the money became... It was like the gold rush of grain farming. Like, everybody kind of made the switch like, okay, if I go all in on this, or if you were a little proactive before that hit,

you were set up in a great position to really make some money. Yeah. So where we're at today, though, it ain't that way anymore. So what, what, explain to people you both can and we can have a conversation. See, I was seven years old at that time. So, you know, I don't, I didn't live that, but it's just interesting hearing it. But so like where we're at today, why isn't it that way anymore?

What happened? Because the costs, the costs and the prices, everything caught up. And that was, that was high. corn prices we had now then we're our production is caught up and our yields so we're meeting demand we're meeting that prices of just operating have gone yeah so your operating costs have gone up and your your top line prices have actually come down i mean here we are as we sit here today what what's 440 435 i don't know what it'd be today you know we you know those years there if you if you were decent with your marketing. I mean, corn, there's a lot of $7 corn out there.

Yeah. And you got to remember that we're producing a commodity. So the idea of producing a commodity, the market doesn't want you to make a margin in a commodity. It will always go to the low-cost producer. And what happens is, and this is why farming is such a, you know, it's not an inner out thing. Like you play it out a long time because, you know, people say all the time, well, that won't cash flow. This won't care. How can he afford that? There's no way that'll work. And it's like, well, his cash flow and your cash flow are very different.

And so the guy that was, you know, farming a thousand acres before the RFS when everybody's like, well, there ain't no money in this. Suddenly is now in this position where he's got this margin that's insane. And then he doubles down. Yeah. Right. And that's where, so it kind of squeezed some people because even then I remember a buddy of mine, his brother never really wanted anything to do with the farm, suddenly took some interests in the farm wanted to be a farmer. And it's like, you know, that. So you've heard me say this.

So during that time, during that period, 2008, I mean, clear up 2009, 2010. I'd say the 13. Yeah. I always say, you know when it's not going to last, when you pick up every farm magazine and there's some ag economist that has an article that's titled, we've hit a new plateau in the corn market and we're never going back. As soon as you read that, you say, honey, we better get the budget out. We better figure out how we can tighten her belts because it's when everybody's

singing the praises of how the world demand, you know, the world's got money. They're going to buy corn. The ethanol blending is just going to get. We're going to go E85 everywhere. This is, we're never going back. It's never one hundred five dollars every day. That's when you know it's about to take to take a shit. Yeah. And you're like, well, that makes sense because I mean, it's $8 right now. So if it does drop to five. Yeah, no big deal. No big deal. Yep. And that's why I always had a problem when they were like with the the argument against ethanol where they're like the food versus fuel and it's like no if you if you pay like we could we could double the output yeah of america and corn production today if there's enough money in it yep it's it's just pay the

farmer yeah and we'll overproduce i mean there's no scenario where we won't be able to overproduce yeah it could be 10 dollar corn yep and guys will be upside down yep 100% Because it's like, well, because everything adjusts. So I always said that. Like when I milk cows, I can remember in like the mid, early 2000s. And back the old farm bill, remember that conservation payment you used to get in the spring? So as long as you were following the conservation program on your farm, there was a payment, just to trigger a payment. There was no PLC, ARC, whatever, the one that came after that where you had to pick your base acres and all this.

and it was that and then selling milk to a co-op we would get a dividend check every year and between the dividend check and that conservation payment that pay for my inputs to put in a crop to feed the cows to feed my dairy cows and it's like oh so it was no big deal and now the inputs are like because I was talking to a neighbor in like 2021 when things started to come up again and I said well here we go again it's going to be just like Like in 2012, when everybody and their brother suddenly wanted to start farming. Yeah. And he goes, I think it's different this time because in 2012, if you wanted to farm 80 acres,

like you could go to, you know, farm credit and get a $25,000 operating note and you're golden. Yep. You're going to get your 80 acres in and, you know, and everything's fine. Now the price of admission is so high. You and I just talked about this about seed corn. Yeah. you know my dad about had a coronary the first time corn went over $100 a bag it hasn't been that long ago no and now now it's like it's going to cost you $400 yeah I mean it's insane so that's that's the

thing is you know that those numbers came up and when they came up every one of these every one of these genetics companies, chemical companies, machinery companies that had been plugging away through all that time, just like the farmers. Yeah. They all said, Time to double down. Time to double down. And it's like these implement dealers. Do you remember there, you know, 2008, 2009, 2010? You walk into your local John Deer dealer. I mean, they had, they had precision planning guy. They had, they had a guy for everything. Oh, yeah. Like, they were knocking out walls to make more cubicles for all the freaking people they had. Now you go in there and there's a lot empty space because they don't need all those guys because now we've swung back the other way.

There was a frenzy of involvement in agriculture. And once again, like I said, with farming, it's, you have to be committed to farm, you know, like, you're not going to make mine now, but you will make money. That happened on the supplier side because look at Bear. Looking at Monsano going, oh my gosh, this is the slam dunk. Yeah, the goose that lays the golden egg. What could go wrong? And the board at Monsanto was like, yeah, yeah, here. Knock yourselves out. Yep. And they, you know, they jumped in quick. We're going to get into this. And Bear got burned. Oh, bad. Hard.

Like you couldn't They couldn't have timed that any worse, really, than what they did. No. I mean, it was like, yeah, it was bad. So the prices we see today, do you feel like part of it, do you think it's a little bit of both of inflation of just the dollar? But do you also feel like there's companies out there that, you know, a lot of people say, oh, well, these companies,

they're just raising prices because, you know, they know they can and they know inflation's kind of the thing that's just floating around, and people are, I don't know, people who are thinking, oh, it's just inflation, it's just inflation. Do you feel like these companies are inflating their prices internally and with inflation? Like with the prices that we're seeing today, or do you think it's just straight inflation from the government? Well, on equipment.

It's supply and demand. Yeah. It, it, it, look at what. the equipment business is every bit as tough as farming, I think, because everything that you, every,

their raw materials have gone up, I don't know what, but their labor, their labor has gone up incredibly. Yeah. The cost of technology. And the thing is, the cost of staying,

the cost of keeping up with the Joneses, because every company, out there is looking for an edge. Yeah. And to some degree, farmers, we've kind of bought this, this bill of goods that somehow this technology is going to make, like it's going to make, it's going to make us money.

We've got to have this. Right. It's going to save labor. It's going to save time. It's going to give us better yield. And so we've all hopped on this train that we've got to have all this stuff. So as a result, all these machinery companies and all these equipment companies, they're chasing that next thing.

And it's just a, the result is our equipment prices is just gone crazy. Well, and the demand for that equipment. I mean, you remember as a kid when somebody bought a brand new tractor in the area? You were like, holy smoke. How did that guy ever afford a new tractor? Yeah. And now, I mean, like, I can remember in like 2012. Like, everybody bought a new tractor and you're like, yeah.

But what the other thing that changed there in that time frame was, you know, when we grew up, you bought a track, you bought a new tractor or a new to you tractor. Yep. And you, that, it was like, just like we were just talking about for, for your bit, the tractor never left. Right. but then when all that when that profitability came the idea of trading so when i was a kid there was a few farmers there was like in our neighborhood there was like one guy you knew that he was the only child his dad died when he was young and he inherited 800 acres and he'd run he'd run a combine three or four years and they'd trade it yep and you're like boy that'd be nice

you know, you're sitting here, we're sitting here with a Massey 850, spinning the bearing that when you call the shop, they're like, well, that bearing should never go out because you're like, how do you get to this bearing? And they go, well, that bearing should never go out. That was a bad call. But anyway, you know, they're trading equipment. And nobody else is trading equipment. Right.

And then when that deal started, you saw these guys, interest was the cheap. Interest was cheap. Oh, absolutely. And you saw these guys that were growing and leasing equipment, that really got started, and then rolling it. Like, it was, there were guys that would buy a combine and set it up for annual payments. Yep. And at the end of the term, they traded the combine. Right.

And they were just playing that. They were just rolling it and rolling it and roll it and roll it. There was guys that were trading tractors every year or trading every two years anyway. Yeah. And you could make it work. because there was somebody lined up that they wanted to buy a two-year-old combine, and they were trained theirs four years, and then the very bottom of it got shipped to South America or wherever.

But that all worked because it was a time of prices just kept going up and income kept going up. Yeah, when it got really hot, these dealers, I mean, it was, well, machinery, Pete would talk on the radio show, like on Agritok or something, be like, it's not a matter of finding the right one, it's finding one. Yeah. So it was like your dealer would call you and you'd said, you know, well, I'm looking for, you know, an 8100. Yeah.

And he'd go, well, I have an 8100 and you'd say, okay, I'll take it. It wasn't. Yeah. You didn't have time to look at it because if he hung up the phone with you, it was gone because the next guy's like, yep, I'll take it. So when Deer and Case IH and everybody else is just like, well, let's just tack on another 20% this year. Let's just keep tacking it on until we see where the market is. Yeah.

Where the demand is. Yep. And unfortunately that that is catching up. Yeah. Now it has finally. And some of these guys, you know, there was the, those guys that were rolling equipment all the time, the least don't grease guys. Yes. When things tighten up in like 14, I remember some of those guys being like, oh, we didn't take care of this thing.

now we're stuck. Yeah, 100%. You know, so, but the thing is now, like, we're all so well equipped where, so if you didn't buy a single piece of equipment for five years, you'll be fine. You'll be fine. Where back years ago when everything was held together with, like, you had to buy a piece of equipment a year because everything was junk. Yeah, because you kept everything. So it was pretty much a deal where when you, when you, when the plane, The planner needed trade, it is because it was shot. Yeah. Because basically it's like, I can't weld on that frame anymore.

Yeah. Yeah. When you're calling your, you know, when you're getting your new planner lined up, your new to you planner lined up, you're like, well, what's mine worth on trade? And the guy's like, hold on me, call. What's it way? Yeah. Okay.

Yep. Yep. I think, because it was, it was just playing shot. It was. And new equipment was, you know, was rare. It was rare. It was rare to get, like people ran everything until it was shot. And now, I mean, look at all the consolidation in the machinery dealers that I mean,

because how many different dealerships were there? I bet today versus 30 years ago, there's 5% of the dealers in the state of Iowa. Yeah, we talked about that. You know, our little town, there was a John Deere dealer. There was an AC dealer, Fornashes. They're big tractor pullers. They ran the, Allison, they had an AC and they had an Allison, what was that, a V12?

Probably, yeah. That was a screaming machine. We had a pretty big, we had a pretty good sized AC dealership down here. So watch what you say about the AC guys. I'll be careful. Anyway, and we had an IH dealer and we had a, we had a case, case, Gale, Massey. Oh, we had a Massey dealer, and then we had a case store in Cologne. I mean, we had all of that.

And out of all that, we have a John Deere dealer. And that one John Deer dealer owns 12 stores now. Yeah. So I'll always say that, you know, of all of the place going through the 80s, John Deere would not be where they are today. If it wasn't for the fact, they made a calculated effort. to keep their dealers going. And it paid them because there was nobody left.

Yeah. I mean, that is probably more than anything else. I think the reason why they've become who they are is because there is a time in there where... That was the only brand you saw. Well, it's like if you're going to go buy something, here's your decision. I'm going to go 10 miles, or in our case,

I'm going to go four miles. Yep. or I'm going to drive 35 or 40 miles. Right. And then you had no, you know, if it was Agco, well, who knows whether they're going to be in business next year or not. So. Yeah, Deer had just their availability. And Deer in the 80s, the smart play, because I always laugh,

because you'll get people in the comments, you know, that'll talk like on a tractor video or something. They'll be like, well, you know, John Deere, just about went broke in the 80s, you know, just like the rest of them. And it's like, no, they didn't. But they actually turned a profit throughout the 80s. There's only like two years ever due to an turn to profit. And it's like, well, people say, well, they kept the sound guard cab too long.

And it's like, well, yeah, they weren't, they weren't going to. They weren't innovating. Yeah, they weren't going to do that in that time frame because there was no profit margin. Yeah. I don't know what the numbers would be, but I'd be curious to know. Like, through, there's a five-year period in there compared to before and after. like what their sales number of units? So I can't remember.

Somewhere I've got, I think I had it saved somewhere, but I think it was, it was 85 or 86. There was like a farm equipment association that did, or it might have been Wall Street Journal talking about the different manufacturers. And I want to say that at one point, I think at the worst of it, I want to say it was the market had shrunk by two-thirds. Yeah.

So at one point, you know, when things were at the peak, so from the peak to the valley, it was something like the market shrunk by two thirds. So they had a pie graph show and, you know, like Deer's market share versus everybody else. Yeah. At the valley, deer could have supplied the entire market. Wow. You wouldn't have needed the production of any other farm equipment manufactured. That's how bad it got.

Yeah. You know, a friend of mine, his dad, we're probably like, 16 and we were out in the yard as a summer night. We were just BS and if we'd all got done milk and cows or whatever. And we're looking around and, you know, he had a New Holland, New Holland blower, New Holland chopper. The New Holland haybine was sitting over there. And I don't remember what his chopper boxes were or something.

But he looked at us and he said, do you guys know, see that, see the hay buying over there? See the blower? See the chopper? See the chopper? He says everything about the tractors there basically. See all that? Oh, yeah? He said, I bought that all in 1979. he says you know and now this is like the mid 90s and he goes i haven't replaced it

since but that but if you look like the late 70s yeah boom time yep and these guys were just and i'm going to try and get them on a video one of these days but one of the an old farmer was telling me one time in our area he bought his farm in like 70 76 74 75 and he's at the bank they just got done closing on the farm and the banker does one of these like he leans out of out. He pulls the curtains. He goes, is that your pickup out there? He says, yeah. He says, that's not, you probably need a new pickup, don't you? If you're going to be a farmer. Like your banker telling you you should probably get a new pickup. My banker was never like, you should spend some money. No. So you guys talked about equipment and why equipment prices

have gone up the way that, you know, they've gone up. Now they're coming down. a little bit, aren't they? Yeah, they are. Especially auction. So what about seed? What about chemicals? Is that same thing? Supply and demand? Less farmers. I think that more than the equipment is the investment these guys made in technology.

And now they're like, I don't know. I don't know. To me, it just seems like, speculate. Just if you don't know, what do you think? Well, I think on the chemical end of it, they've finally gotten kind of pushed into a predicament because there's enough generics. Generics have taken over big time. And there's like you don't have to go buy a chemical at the co-op anymore.

There's independence. There's, you know, you name it. Cash and carry. Yep. So I think they have to become more lucrative than that. And then the seed end of it, there's some pushback. Because Roundup Ready technology was a plague on the seed industry. Because prior to Roundup Ready, like, I mean, think about how many seed companies when you're a kid.

Yep. Like, I mean, it was crazy, the amount of seed companies. Roundup Ready comes along and it's like, either got to pay Monsanto or you're not going to sell any seeds. So a lot of those seed companies kind of got out. It was bad for competition. Well, a few of them stayed in and then Monsano just went on a spree where they just bought everybody.

Well, when they bought Holdens, I mean, when they bought Holdens, they, that screwed a bunch of people because there were so many independent guys that got their germ from Holdens. Yep. And then Monsano stepped in and went. Yep.

So you had all this controlled and now, Roundup doesn't do shit anymore. You know what, even like a, even like a you can have a triple pro. Well, they go, well, you're going to have to either use insecticide or you're going to have to go to a smart stack or whatever. So I think the effects of that technology is worn off enough that there's still a few independent seat companies. I got a lap. So I have a DeKalb hat on right now.

I've only planned DeKalb like one year ever. But they make a good hat. Well, I was at a farm show. And DeKal was giving out hats. And I was like, that is a really nice hat. And so I plant a. the Wisconsin State Monsanto Brent is be youngs or jungs. Yeah.

I plant some of that and I plant Frontiersmen, which they are an independent. Yeah. That was his brother's original Funk's G. Oh, yeah. Funks G. Crows, which became Channel. Super crossed. Yep.

And Midwest. Those were all like Funk family members. Yeah. This Frontiersman, this is Dick Funk. He stayed independent. His brother sold out to Montano over the years. and he stayed independent. Well, buddy of mine started selling for him.

And if you can find an independent, if you're willing to plant non-GMO corn. So if you go to your DeKalb dealer and you say, I want some non-GMO corn, they're going to be like, well, it's only $10 a bag, cheaper than the Roundup Ready or whatever. An independent, they don't have to pay Monsano. Right.

Then it's like, oh, they'll cut you a deal. Yeah. So I think people, are working around that. There's, there's, there was just as much investment on the input and as there was the farmers investing into this. And just like the farmers aren't going to quit farming, you know, prices are down. Now these guys have to.

They got to play ball. Yeah. Because, yeah, you might, the co-op might be like, we're, we're married to this, you know, this contract we have on this chemical. And they're like, so, yeah, if you want this chemical, it's, it's, you know, 20, bucks an acre and this independence like well i'll sell it to you for 10 yeah you're going to go with that do you think that's well i think it all plays together but how close do you think we are to some of these big somebody like bear i don't mean to just pick on them by themselves but their

shoulders are broad so they can take it so to this idea that they want to build the model where they want to sell their product. They want to sell their seed and they want to sell their chemical. And them going to these guys that want to farm a gazillion acres and saying, okay, we'll supply all your inputs and you go rent the ground and we don't give a shit what you have to rent it for. We'll guarantee you so much an acre. And you can sell the crop through us.

We'll market it for you. And when it's all said and done, we'll guarantee you this much. profit. One, do you think that that is going to come to fruition? And two, do you think that that has any chance of like really growing? Because I've thought about that. And because I, there are some guys out there that. Well, we know there's guys that will get big just for the sake of getting big. If I can run, if I can run all new equipment and I get my seed corn trip Hawaii and I get my, if I get my winter trip,

my son or trip, I can be the big cock swinging son of a bitch. Yep. I'll sell my soul for it. Right. There is that, the beauty of it is and we take it for, we cuss them like crazy when it goes

the wrong way, but the Chicago border trade is a beautiful thing. Yeah, it is. And that's been one of the few things. So like we've talked about like, back years ago, like in the 40s, a lot of times a farm wife would sell eggs. That's where her money came from was selling eggs. Like there hasn't been an independent small egg market, you know, other than somebody

just selling, you know, the neighbors here will sell eggs. But like chickens, poultry and that went to the big model. They were the first verdict, totally vertically integrated animal. And then hogs, I mean, how many guys were independent hog producers? back years ago. It was everybody. Pharaoh to finish and you're like, well, what could be better than that? You got a guy. It's Pharaoh in his own, grower,

the nursery, you know, and then to finishing. Can't beat that. They got the hogs. Never go away. Yep. The 90s took care of that. And then we always said in the dairy, we're like, well, dairy, how are they ever going to get the dairy? Because you could have one guy that take care of 50 cows. He has everything he needs on that farm does all the work. He's the low cost

producer. Yep. It doesn't get any better than that. Well, they got the dairy. The only thing that's kept them from getting the grain is because, let's just say, say bear is doing that. So they've got, let's just say they have 15% of the acres in the United States are under the control of bear. And they're playing games with the market. Well, the market can make it hurt.

Yes, it can. So. Ask Bungi. They tried it. Yep. That has broke Vera son. Yep. I mean, there's been a lot of people that thought they were really, really big and could

throw their weight around. And I mean, there's funds that have lost everything trying to short something or going long at the wrong time. So the Chicago Board of Trade is good because it will find a market. So I think it'll it'll hurt some of them guys. And eventually what'll happen is things will adjust down. The new normal will hit. Farming won't be lucrative. Yep. And then a company like Bear or somebody's like it's going to go is this worth porn yeah because it's so because think of the capital that they're tying up for a margin and the the other thing about it is they're not cartil no they answer to a board they're a corporate and they want their 15% to the bottom or 30 yep they want their margin and if you can't get it's like you can do that for a while yeah

But at some point, they go, okay, no, we're not, you know, get the hell out of that. So you don't think it'll last if it happens. Do you think it will happen, though? I think they'll try. I think somebody's going to try. I guarantee you they will. Yeah. Because the idea is if you can eliminate, if you can eliminate enough of the variables,

and you can generate, they're figuring that they're going to generate their profit off their products. And everything else, that's just the cost of doing business. business. But it'll be, you're right. The problem is they can't control enough of it long enough. They can't withstand if somebody bets against them. So say Smithfield is a company that's involved in growing the pigs, Farrow to finish on the pigs,

but then they're not just selling the pigs on the open market. Smithfield is selling a finished product in the store. Right. Okay. And that makes sense now because I was kind of thinking, yeah, okay. I was like, so how is that different? But no, that's how it's different. So corn is just corn.

Right. They're not getting a premium to a grocery. Yeah, they're not selling it to a grocery store and getting a premium on the product. And that's why commodity markets work. The way they do is a bushel of corn from me is no different than a bushel of corn from you as long as it makes green. And that's why the value added stuff is important. long run. If you're, you know, and the small farm, you'll need probably to do more of that.

But I, I've said it before. I'll say we've talked about this, that people always say the small farm's coming back. It's not. The small farm isn't going away. Right. But like the small farm, you know, we're small farms. We're about the same size. Right.

Yeah. You know, we could be big farmers if we had a time machine and just could go back a couple of decades. Three decades, it'd be like, oh, yeah. Like as a kid. I will, I will rent that. I will buy that. Yeah.

Well, and if I could transport my farm back 30 years ago, I'd have been a big farmer. Yeah. Yeah, a hundred. Yeah, you would have been. But today it's like, so you're a small farm where 30 years ago, you were a big, big farm. Right. It'll happen. So now, you know, in 10 years from now, that 1,000 acre guy is really small.

Yeah. You know, that's where it's going to go. You're going to have your people that have. of, you know, a few animals, you know, do some specialty crops and that kind of stuff. But when it comes down to corn and beans and wheat and the commodities that the world needs, it bigger. It's going to keep going. It just keeps going up.

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livestock water and energy.com and watch our journey with them. We've partnered with these guys. Check out our YouTube channel. This will do farm and follow the journey there. Now let's get back to it. So yeah, just to finish this off and we'll get into something different, but what do you think is the, we're doing a lot of speculating on this one, but what do you think is the new, what do you think will be the gold rush? What's the next gold rush? You know, you talked about 2007, ethanol came and that brought everything up. So, and you talk about how the, you talk about how the, you go in farming, you have these long spurts where somebody's doing something that all the neighbors are looking at. I'm like, why they got all that land? And then they

hit, something hits and they go. What do you think is that coming up? If you had to guess what that would be. I think it's cycles. I think it cycles. I really thought, something that I just am really surprised about is when I saw the Russian in invasion of Ukraine, I thought that by now we would see commodity prices start to move because Russia's, Russian Ukraine are the two biggest producers of wheat in the world. Yep. And Ukraine's ag sector has got to be just absolutely decimated. Like, where is all of this wheat going to come from?

Because it's not coming from there because there's nobody farming that. ground, those guys are all in a trench with a gun pointed at some Russian somewhere. You know what I mean? Their production hasn't dropped that. And that's what I can't figure out. Could you say set up? I don't. Well, we need to get a roll of Reynolds rap. We always talk about our tinfoil and then we never have it. I know. We need to get, I mean, we need to have tinsfoil hats right here that we could just reach for and put on. I, yeah, because there's a lot of things. You know, so you'd read online last year, you know, when the crop prices were dropping. Yeah.

You know, and you're like, they kept saying that the reason, because the weather we were having looked like we were going to have a short crop. Yeah. But the price wasn't going up. And then they kept saying, well, there's no demand. There's no demand. As it turns out, like, I think our exports ended up being fairly strong. Yeah. So the system's rigged to a certain extent.

I mean, and just like with the, I remember in 2019 being just beyond pissed when it's the big prevent plant year. And you're like, there's no way we're going to get these kind of yields. There's zero chance. Because a wetter year is always worse than a drier year. And what they say this year when they did the August wazdi was the final adjustment in the crop down. They're the quarterly stocks. It was the final adjustment from the 2019 crop. And it's like, so.

There they go. They manipulated that market and trickled it along and trickled it along. And so they're obviously, you know, because if we're a wash and grain, like they said we were, why don't we see in $2 corn? Yeah, right. But they're keeping it here because it's not lucratively profitable. But it's also not devastatingly negative. You'll adjust.

Yeah. Yeah, the other thing about that, so to your point, I do think that at some point we're going to get, they're not, at some point they're going to get caught to where we do have demand and we don't have crop and we are going to have another run up in prices. I just don't know how long that's going to be. But something that the other part of that whole Russian thing and the whole, you know, we're pulling back from global markets. There's all this talk about how, you know, it's not going to be a world, it's not going to be a world economy anymore because people have gotten burned in China and we're bringing manufacturing back to the United States. And Europe is running out of people like the age deal is killing them. The age deal is killing the Chinese.

But fertilizer, so much fertilizer comes from China and comes from overseas. and like South America, they have built this, they have built this machine and they haven't got dirt. Like you go to South America where they're raising these crops, it's like fucking beach sand.

Yeah, it's not. But they pour a shitload. It takes a shitload of fertilizer. I think gypsum, right? They need gypsum because their pH is just terrible. Yeah. And they get all of it. of it from Russia and China. So when this all happened, when this was all going on, I was like,

okay, so the cost to get their fertilizer to them is going to go up exponentially. And wheat production is going to go in the shitter. So crop prices ought to just hammer. And it has not played out anywhere like I thought it was going to. I'm just like, I'm like, what the hell? So I don't know. I have no idea, but I do think that as the world becomes more uncertain, the chances to have big swings and crop prices, I think, I think there's a good year out there. But by the same token, I think you're going to see more volatility both ways. Absolutely. And I don't think we carry the stocks. No.

So like in the 80s, like I think, I can't remember if it was the 82 or 83. It was like with the pick years. Yeah. At one point in the U.S., no kidding. We had 100% carryout. There was a full year's crop.

Yep. You could just, you just didn't have to grow wheat and everything. Everybody could continue to eat the same way they did. Jeez. So we don't have that. No. Today.

And worldwide. they don't. Right. So, and like the whole South American thing, it still has to make sense economically. So like, because the cost of production, like they're saying, Brazilian corn production isn't going to be phenomenal because it doesn't pay. Right.

Like when corn's six bucks here, they're like, we'll grow corn. Absolutely. $4 corn. They're like, it isn't worth it. No. And I don't think, because I say this all the time, like, there's nowhere in the world, I think, that you could move to, and farming is lucrative. So, like, Central Illinois, farmland, is crazy expensive, but they get crazy yields and crazy

good basis. So you're like, well, it's too expensive there. I'm going to move to Oklahoma. And it's like, well, yeah, well, their yields are terrible. The weather is hit and miss. Or like, and you got to put it on a rail car to get it anywhere. Right. So it's like it all, it's a commodity.

It's, you know. It's like the hog market. I mean, we've said for the reason we raise pigs here is because there's nowhere in the world that you can produce a pound of pork as cheap as you can produce it in southeast Iowa. That's why it's here. Yeah. I mean, it just is. And it doesn't mean it's always profitable. It's still cheaper than anywhere else.

So. Yeah. And once you build the machine, it has to run. Right. Because you can't, you're like, we can't operate at a loss. And it's like, we can't make the payments if you're not operating. Right. So a lot of that, you know, goes on.

But yes, and the other thing with the volatility is, so we've added acres around the world. So even in the United States, like when we grew record acres, like we had the record last year wasn't quite a record, but it was close. Like what 12 might have been the record? Yeah. But it's like, so those acres that we added in that time frame,

they weren't in southwestern Minnesota, northwestern Iowa, central Illinois. It was... North Dakota. Yeah, it was... South Dakota. ...areas that weren't typical. I ran into a guy...

I went to the commodity classic in Orlando last year, and I ran it... I sat down and was eating lunch, and I ate lunch with this family from eastern Colorado, and they were there. They were getting the state yield, dry land yield certificate from Pollyland. ticket from Pioneer. They set the record for the dry land yield in Colorado that year.

And it was, what did I tell you? It's like 54 bushel or something like that, 60, 60 bushel maybe. I was like, damn, why did you do that? But the only reason they had is because all their shit was irrigated. But at that time, they weren't getting any water because that was during the time of all the droughts. So they got cut off. So they planted everything. It was dry land. And that was, they got the record yield that year, but anyway. Holy shit, we've gone over an hour and we haven't even talked about how it is that you and I and us

how you're here. Because we didn't read about you on the classifieds. We kind of met on social media. Yeah. So how the hell? How did that start? Fell into it. Yeah. I guess. Yeah, tell people what you do before. So I

just talk randomly about agriculture, very similar to like you guys do. Started on TikTok. Talking about, especially tractors, is something I love to do and really enjoy doing. So then that kind of started to bleed over now and just this last year, YouTube stuff with actually talking about guys about tractors, you know. And that's really important.

Yeah. To me, especially the older farming. is getting this history before it's gone. Right. No, that's, that's huge. I mean, we don't think young people, we're not, we're, we're, we're not good at looking back at the history, I don't think. And like, you got to have people, like for me, like just even this podcast, you know, what you guys were talking about, the swings and the market in 2007, like, you know, I was a kid. I wouldn't live that, you know, just even that alone, that's important. And I've watched your videos and like i'm not a huge equipment guy just because we're not we're not in a position

on our farm to really look at buying new equipment and i just haven't like educated myself enough but i still love just getting that history is seeing you know an old farmer tell the story about you know his tractor and his equipment it's awesome well and in your farming crew you'll see something and you'll think well this is unique to this era this This has never happened. Nobody's dealt with this before. And it's like, yeah, they did. This generation did deal with this and knows all about it.

So don't worry about it. So if you don't pay attention to that history, well, I would say, I mean, those that don't heed history, you know, are bound to repeat it, right? And there's a lot of lessons in there. And part of it, you get a little older and you realize, that gosh, this thing is changing on me and looking forward. You hate to see agriculture going the way it is.

It's sad because it is something I said, you have to be passionate, very passionate about agriculture if you're going to do it. And you had all these people that were very passionate about it. Now this group is this small. and it's heading to this small. Yeah. And as it's getting smaller and smaller, you've got these people that are all really passionate about it.

And they're either going to really get along because and share that camaraderie or they're going to really butt heads because they're all in competition. And I think we need to pay a little bit more attention to the history of it. There's more to life than finding the perfect car. But finding the perfect car

can help you get. the most out of life. Like the SUV that handles everything from drop off to off road, and the car that hulls groceries and hockey teams, or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family. Whatever you want, wherever you're going, start your search at atotrater.ca, Canada's car marketplace. You know, that's cool that you're doing that. I commend you for doing that because I think you're right. That's awesome. And so you mostly talk. So like what kind of, just for if somebody has never checked out your channel or your TikTok, if you had to break it up, what mostly is your content? Like talking old farmers about their tractors, you just talking about history. Like what,

what's the mix of it all? I'd say a lot of history, a lot of just about equipment. Yep. You know, comparing, a lot of comparing. A lot of. stuff. Criticizing Alice Chalmers is a significant portion. Did you and Tony Reed get together and just decide that you wanted to just crush the spirit of the AC Gleaner people? Or was that just totally haphazard? So this is how the Alice thing with me started was I did a video talking about, it was fairly early on, really early on. And I had said something about 4020s and 806s were like the backbones of farms.

Like they literally built somebody's farm. And that, you know, that they were, and those tractors were phenomenally, you know, reliable. And the fact that they were the tractor that propelled the farm forward because just like you're 4010 there, they put a turbo on it. Yeah. They added weights to it. They put saddle tanks on it. They went to six-row planters instead of four-row planners and they put the turbo on.

fluid in the tires and all that and you know and I said that and I said those so that era tractor was when we the demand for the output of the tractor grew so fast and those tractors they did all that stuff to it and they took it yeah they they're still you know bulletproof yeah and I said that in that video and this Alice guy gets on there and he goes 190 xT kicked the shit out of either of and I'm just like And I'm like, stop it. Yeah. Like just, just. And I didn't have anything against the Alice.

Yeah. Because I got some friends that are Alice guys. But I'm like, okay. Take your ego out of it. Yeah. Except the facts. So then it just became. Yeah.

Just, I just needle them all the time, you know, and kind of go after them. And they're relatively easy targets. Yeah. If I was going to needle anybody, I thought I'd go after the Oliver guys. Because when I was a kid, uh, we had. The only loader we had when I was a kid was on that 60. We had a mechanical, you know, spring-loaded dump bucket, you know. Yeah.

And I can't remember what we were doing, something that we were cleaning up, something we tore down. But our neighbor had an Oliver that had a hydraulic loader with a hydraulic pivot loader. Yep. and my dad borrowed that thing. And I don't think either me nor my brothers could run the fucking thing. It had so many levers. And I remember getting on it and my dad didn't let me run it because I was too young. But like my oldest brother, I remember him like chewing his ass because he wasn't able to do what he was supposed to.

And I could just remember getting on there and being, it was like we talk about guys that to this day couldn't run a synchro. I was I was I was I was like this this thing is and from then on I was like that Oliver that's trash no but I don't want an Oliver so I don't know witnessed all the ass it was all for me it could have been the greatest tractor ever but I just was like that thing fuck that Oliver and Alice both like had their moments of like technological you know innovation improvement that was like wow I mean Oliver was early on with six their engines. Yeah. And they streamlined a tractor and styled a tractor when, you know, when Deer and Farmall had the steering gears exposed and the steering wheel was straight. And I mean, Oliver, you know, had made some beautiful tractors.

They spent the time. Yeah. And they were early on with good hydraulics, I think live PTO, stuff like that. And like Alice, rubber tires, turbochargers. Yeah. Like, it's like, oh, they had so much going for him. And then, like, Alice had designed this. lighting package is so good for a tractor and all this they had going right and then they just mailed

it in and they're just like well here the shifter for the transmissions in the middle of the cab yep yep and you're like or or completely not put any development into the engine yeah you know because they small cubic inches terrible cylinder heads like that kind of stuff and you're like and i think it's because international harvesters did the same fate fell to International Harvester and to Oliver because Oliver became was bought by White. Yep. And White was trying to do a whole bunch of things. Same with International Harvester did a whole bunch of different things.

Alice was into create, Alice was building nuclear stuff. Oh, geez. And power generation. Oh, yeah. They built reactors. Holy shit. They're like fallout, man. Yeah.

So they're doing all this stuff. and they fell behind on their farm equipment and, you know, whether or not guys hate hearing it, but deer didn't do that. Deer was stuck with their farm equipment. And they were, actually they were, they were just very conservative.

Very. Because definitely, like you can, you can totally make the argument that when the box car magnum came out, 4960, yeah, deer was behind.

Yeah, absolutely. Now, it didn't take them very long to catch up. And they waited until they had, I think, you know, they waited until they had it right. And nice cap. They did a good job. But people, people, I don't think anybody can claim that deer was very often revolutionary,

but consistent. They were consistent and everything they brought out was a step change. It was a step change and it was consistent in that everything stepped up. And deer very rarely put out a lemon. Yeah. I mean, there's a few pieces of equipment that were crap that they came out with. But in general, deer wasn't putting something out that wasn't very refined where some of these other manufacturers introduced to tractor. And it's like, well, it had all these innovations.

but like the D-19 out, the first turbocharged farm tractor. Horrible, horrible reputation on the D-19 diesel. Yeah. And deer wouldn't, you know. Yeah, they wouldn't have done it. No, they were so late getting into the turbocharger game that because it had to be perfected. Yeah, before they would do it. But deer was revolutionary a few times.

You know, the 40-10 changed agriculture. Right. No, it did. And the 8,000 series tractor, to this day, every. tractor is based off that design. Absolutely. I was just talking with Nick about that. Today we were talking about the Ford Genesis and they were like, the Genesis guys

would be like, well, they had supersteer. Nobody even uses supersteer anymore because when they merge Case IH and New Holland together, they're like we're going with the Magnum because it was simpler just to move the engine up and make them turn shorter than it was to have all the parts of

super steer. And that's, they took that off a deer. And deer started on like the 8,000 series. in the, I think the first sketch, the guy, the engineer that did it was like on a napkin. He was on an airplane. That was in like the early 80s. Yep. But they took their time.

And once again, in the 80s, the farm equipment market shrunk. Yeah. Why would you innovate? Right. Exactly right. Where like KSAH, you know, they had to. Yeah. They had to do something because like International Harvester that 88 series or the 50 series, they called it.

Well, and yeah, when that all went south, Payton, what, 2394 is red. That wasn't selling very, that wasn't selling very well. No, they had to, I mean, they had nowhere to go. Right. You either quit or innovate or die. Yep. So that was, and that's where the, the 8,000 series really hurt because, you know, the red guys got the box car, Magnum, had this wonderful tractor.

and the 8,000 series comes out and suddenly they're behind again. And if you look like those early MX Magnums that came out were plagued with problems and they don't sell well. They got it right. Yeah. But they, because the deer 8,000 is introduced, you know, like the fall of 94 or something or they're 95 models, early 95. You could get an 8,000 series deer. KSIH is introducing the MX Magnum by 98. That is fast getting it out.

and they pushed it. They had to. They had to. Yep. Well, okay. We keep going. We were talking about your social media that we pulled ourselves right back into Tractor Talk, which is great. So what made you decide to start doing YouTube?

And what's your YouTube handle? Okay. So it's Ryan Kelly dash WI Titan 2. Yeah. So what made you make that jump? So background was 23. years old when I went back to college while I was farming. I thought I was somewhat academic at the time, you know, and get a little, you know,

wear a lot of abercrombie clothes and occasionally even a turtle neck, you know, I thought I could be an author. Nice. And I've always thought, I'd love to write a book, but it's never going to happen. And we were, I was at a buddy of mine's farm one day, and we used to screw around, tractor pulling all the time with stuff. You know, we were at his place drinking beer. you know, messing in the shop.

And his dad came in. Dad is an old dairy farmer, you know, worked hard. And we were talking about something. And he gets talking about his 40-10 was there. His dad was talking about his 40-10. And he almost teared up. Yep. And, I mean, this 40-10 looked like yours.

It was beat up. It done a lot of work. And this old farmer is talking about this 40-10. Like it's, I mean, it's... Part of the family. Yeah, it is. And I went, you know, that's so much cooler to listen to than the guy that's like talking about his orchard model, you know, all fuel engine, you know, that they only made three of that was out in, you know, Oregon doing, you know, tree fruit stuff or whatever. And it's like, yeah, but your farm is in, you know, Western Minnesota, you didn't grow tree fruit.

Because it's rare. Yeah. It's just a trophy. Mm-hmm. A tractor. And monetarily, yes, that's worth way more. that old 4010. Right.

But that story. Yeah. Because that means more to me than, you know, or like some of those really oddball tractors, it's like, well, they're oddball because nobody wanted them. You know. So to get that connection to me seem really important. And some of these old farmers are very quiet.

And then you get them going. Yeah. You know, you might ask them a few questions and they're pretty quiet. You get them talking about that tractor. Yeah. And they change. Yeah. And they come out of their show.

Yeah. And I really like that. So how many, how many episodes of the YouTube have you done so far? It's been about two and a half months. Okay. I think. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I really enjoy it. So I've watched them. And the one that you just put out, I thought was really interesting. The guy with the 1206. Yes. I really like that. And you're getting good traction on it.

But I think that's a, I think that's a, I don't think anybody's really telling that story. No. Because like I said, you'd have like these guys that would do classic tractor stuff. Like the classic tractor TV, I used to watch some of that, you know, in the guy I'll go. And it's like, here's my blah, blah, blah, my, you know, cock shut. Oh, yeah.

utility diesel that you know they only made four of and you know this the other two two of the other ones are scraps so there's only two left in the world or whatever and the guy's like we handmaid half the parts on this one yeah yep and it's like oh so what do you what do you do with it well i buff it with a diaper yeah and some of these guys don't even farm yeah right and there's nothing wrong with liking equipment and not being a farmer not everybody gets to farm there's there's nothing wrong with that but there is something about a guy that you know his life has been using that thing yeah that made his farm and the farm is his life and they're so connected to that it's like that's way more interesting to listen to so i was like well that's cool no that that that's really deep and

yeah that's awesome i think that is unique as hell and like nobody that has like has like Like nobody outside of ag would see the, well, not, I guess not. I guess that's, I'm just making an assumption. But nobody would recognize the value in that if you weren't a farmer. Like you have first world experience of just living that and knowing that and seeing that, you know. Yeah. Like that's a, that's a great concept for like an actual, you know, a TV show. That's, they do it with cars all the time.

You got Jay Leno, you know, doing the car stuff. And everybody's always showing the cars and the connection they had with the car but yeah i think what you're saying about i think goes deeper than that because yes like the the tractor is the tractor is a vehicle you're really kind of recording history from a farmer's point of view of a generation oh you know because it's the tractor but it's the story like that guy the guy with the 1206, I keep going back to that because I just thought it was so interesting because I learned something that I didn't know as far as how he, when he was daring and like all the stuff he did. And just, yeah, just each, each person that you do, their life experience and having

that preserved is, is great. It's so interesting. Because I've said this, I don't know how many times I said this. My greatest regret of this podcast is that we didn't start it when my dad was still alive. So I tell so many stories that got handed down to me. Yep. But he could have told him a whole lot better than I did. And, you know, there's people for every one of those guys that when that generation passes, they'll cherish having that story that you got them to tell. Because those are all memories that, you know, children probably have. but it's preserved now. And that's, so I've had, you know, a few people that I know,

just people that I know, you know, not like necessarily haters or anything, but just people saying, because I've asked a couple of old guys and they're like, I don't want to do that. You don't need to be talking about that kind of stuff. And I'm like, that's fine. You, that's say what you want. Yeah. But I really think that you're missing out because,

that matters to somebody. And it, and it's, there's people that, that don't know the guys that I'm, you know, talking to. Yeah. But they know a guy like that. Mm-hmm. That reminds them of that. Oh, 100%.

Also gives people of perspective. Yeah. On just how hard it, how much hard work it took and how hard they worked. And, you know, for young people, that's, we need more people telling stories. about the suck, the hard, the stories of that stuff. That really got me going. Like, once I was on TikTok, that really motivated me on this, it's because you'd hear the younger guys,

especially like your generation talking about, I wish these boomers would retire. So, because they want more ground. We want, we want a farm. I wish these boomers would retire. And it's like, if you had to cultivate all summer long until the corn got too tall with an open station tractor, with, you know, every single day, would you still want a farm as bad as?

So for a lot of these guys, like, just think of your dad when he finally got into that 7820 cab. Yeah. After a lifetime of doing what he had. Why would he not want to farm? Right. Why should he? It's the easiest time he's had his whole life.

And you could actually enjoy it. You can, you know, chop stocks and listen to Rush Limbaugh. AC. Yeah. Well, and like, like, I really like. Zach Johnson. Yeah. Like Larson Farms and those, they do great stuff.

But so the average people is tuning into the YouTube farmers and they think YouTube farming is really cool. And so they look at somebody that, you know, sits in this nice equipment. And they put in long days in the spring and in the fall. And we know a farmer can stay busy all year long. But it's like it looks pretty fun and pretty. and pretty easy with these guys with all new equipment and all this. And even some of the guys that don't have new equipment that have a YouTube channel,

some of that is just so they can have a YouTube channel. Yes. You know, so these guys are the ones that it's like, well, they did this the hard way. And it was not for credit on social media or. Right. I mean, these guys. To survive.

Yeah, these guys could outwork, you know. Anybody. these people, anybody today farming. Yeah. And they, they did that without asking for attention or it was just, I, I have to pay for this. I mean, there's, there's no way I'm going to get out of this. You know, I have to work. That whole, that whole generation in that time there, I mean, it's, I just saw this the other,

the other night, some random guy on, on. TikTok, but he said, you know, if you, if you want to succeed at anything and you decide that this is, this is what you're going to do, then you got to burn the boat. You got to burn the boat. You got to, go all in. Go all in and eliminate anything that is plan B. Your plan B or plan C. Well, that generation, there was no plan B or C. It was that or shit or get off the pot. Yeah. I mean, they had all, they had all, they were all in.

So. Well, and especially, like in John's case, they're, bought the cows in 76. Farming looked as good as it was as possible in 1976. You step into this. By 1980s, building a brand new setup. The 80s hit. Yeah. And, I mean, everything he had worked for at that point, it was survival.

Yep. Then, and these guys did. Yep. It, that, the landscape forever changed from these guys and, you know, save as much of that now as we can. Because the sad part is, as there's less and less farmers. Yep. That, you know, so it used to be, there, there's always been. less farmers. It's always been getting smaller, but it's going so rapidly now. So when I was a kid,

somebody would retire and they would sell, and they would have their auction, and maybe they would rent the farm out, and somebody would rent that farmstead from, or they would sell it and they would move. They'd build a house. They'd build a new house. They sold the farm. Somebody would come to that farm and they would farm at that farm. Yeah. Nobody does that. Nope. Somebody level it. Yep. Somebody owns owns that building site. You know, somebody around us, there's enough demand for houses. They want the house. and that just gets absorbed so it's not being replaced. Yeah. And that's going away, the silos.

And, you know, and those guys built all that. And it's just disappearing. And I, there's lessons in there if we, if you watch. Yeah. If we can learn from these guys, I think, you know, I read a book years ago. And it was this old farmer that was. he was dying he was terminal and he started doing like a really early blog or something this is like early 2000s mid 2000s something like that and he was they were bulldozing a building site

and he he stumbled around one of the buildings and found something you know it was like a i don't know it was a a cow chain or something that had been on you know a dairy cow at this family or whatever you know something like that and he he said he felt really sad and and in and wishes that agriculture didn't go the way it did because he said it was a better time when that was his friends when he was a kid he played in that at that farm with those kids there. Yeah. And, you know, these guys have so much knowledge and it takes time to get there because when you're young, you're like, I'm going to set the world on fire.

I am going to hell or high water. I'm going to make this work. And I feel the biggest problem in agriculture right now. is greed. I think that's where we're, you know, enjoy farming for what it is. Because like how many new combines do you need to drive? You can only drive one, right? Like, so do you need to, you know, because people, well, I told you the other day,

when people say, well, we need to get young people involved in agriculture. You hear that all the time. We don't get enough young people involved in agriculture. There's no shortage of young people that want to farm. Yeah. There's no opportunity. Mm-hmm. No. You know, it's like, well, yeah, they want you to come be a young person involved in agriculture.

We want you to haul grain. That's all you're doing is hauling back to the bin site, you know, 24 hours a day in the fall. Drive the Terragator in the summer. Yep. That's what we want you to do for, you know, $17 an hour. You're never going to be able to have your own farm. And the minute we can replace you with autonomous technology, we're, going to do that.

So why would a young person even want to do that, right? But if there was, so maybe, you know, maybe somebody out there is this massive farm were getting bigger and they might stop and think for a second.

They're like, wouldn't kill me to let that piece of ground just go and let somebody else. There's something else here now. Something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus, it's the series,

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The way it's going, there will be one farmer. he'll be the last one. Yep. He has it all. And that kind of leans into our next question here. Are you hopeful that your kids will have the opportunity to farm? Will it be possible? If they want to, yeah, full time, they're going to have to do something.

Or maybe they would marry another farm kid and they could combine some things. but farm out of the platbook now that's not a bad option you can make that work i know you can swing it i'm married for love had i had i known it differently looking at it now like you know yeah and i guess i'm going to let them figure it out because i mean i've spent a fortune on toy tractors for my kids over the years and sometimes they're interested sometimes they're not right um well you better want this real bad you figured that out didn't you yeah yeah i mean because monetarily actual dollar wage you're earning you're working awful hard for not a lot of cash money right so you better get some satisfaction and passion from this or otherwise you're wasting your time.

If this is the only thing for you is just monetarily, oh, find something else. Yeah. Mm-hmm. 100%. You know. But if you want it bad enough, you know, you can make it work. But I think a lot of people just have to just be okay with you're not going to be the BTO. You don't have to be the BTO.

Like, you know, would you take farming full time if that's all you had to do is roll crop cash cash crop. If it was a few hundred acres and your big tractor was a 44-55. That'd be all right, wouldn't it? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. If you love, if you, there's some real advantages to living where we live and be. and your own boss. Mm-hmm.

If you value those two things, farming's a pretty damn good deal. It is. If you want to be able to travel a lot, have a lot of widgets. Well, if you want to be rich, yeah. Yeah, it's like you said.

I mean, the other thing that's also working in this generation is entrepreneurship, business, money, it's shoved down our throats. Like, consumer. You want to be the 1%. You want to have the next.

nice experiences in life and the Instagram posts of we're here or we got this toy it's just more and more all the time and like we've grown up with that my generation we've grown up with that like it's all about the status it's all about what you got it's all about that and so yeah i mean i think i think young people like you said they they like the idea of farming but are you willing to accept the reality of it like that that you're probably, you can't have it both ways. You can't. I mean, and honestly, I don't have any experience being a BTO, but like I've heard people that

on podcasts, you know, it's a hard business to be running a lot of acres, a lot of equipment. And if you're hiring people to help you, it's a lot. I mean, it's, business is hard, but running a big farming business. Oh, that is, that's tough. That is a tough, tough life. Yeah, we talked about that outside. It's like, I think that's one of the, that's one of the things that really thins out the herd

because there's a lot of guys out there that love farming and they love the idea of, like, it's a contest. You want to get to the point, do you have a fresh line of equipment and you're running big acres? The problem you get into is, by the time you get there, you're not the one,

you're not the one running the equipment because you ain't got time to run it. You're a glorified HR. You're a business, I mean, you're a business owner. At the end of day, you're a CEO. You're in an office and you're managing that. And if your passion was farming,

if your passion was having your ass in the seat, technician, yeah. You're going to be a miserable son of a bitch. Yeah. Because you're not even scouting your crap. You don't have time to scout crop. So the agronomist is doing it for you. So you're not even getting,

dirt on your boots there. You know, you're not tinkering with a tractor in the shop. There's no, it's deer comes out. Yep. Takes care of the least stuff. I mean, is that, is that worth it? And like I said, and there's some people that it is.

There's some people that are geared to that that can manage that. Obviously there are. But I think there's a lot of people that are at that bubble. and they're not that great of managers. Or they don't want to be. Or they don't want to be. But they're stuck on this wheel now where they built this thing. Now it's a monster.

Yeah. And there's... And that's a bad place to be. Yep. And I feel like, I mean, we're doing... We're not a lot of doom and gloom, but we're kind of in the doom and gloom of it. But this is just the reality. And I mean, on the show, Dad and I always talk about just like,

you know, we try to find the answer. We try to think scheme up ideas like, well, it's, you might be able to have a smaller farming operation, but you're probably going to have to have a business off the farm. Yep. You're going to have to do social media. If you raise livestock, you're going to try to have to, you're going to have to try to create your own market maybe, you know.

Yep. And I feel like that's the only way you're going to be able to have a small farm, quote, unquote, and keep it going. you're going to have to get smart with bringing income in in other ways or else you're going to have to grow. Very a doctor. Yeah. I think that.

Yeah. I mean, that's the reality. Just don't marry a psychiatrist. Yeah. That would be really, really bad. Oh, because she's going to be like, this doesn't even make sense. Yeah. She's going to commit your ass is what's going to happen.

Yeah. So, yeah, I think it shouldn't be. all doom and gloom? Yeah. Like, but... Because, I mean, I don't know how do you change it? You know, that's my thing.

Because, like, I, for me, if I focus on the doom and gloom, that's what will make me go, well, yeah, what am I doing here? I got to have my mind thinking about, okay, what can I do? Because I'll just tell you flat out, I don't want to be farming

thousands and thousands and thousands of acres. I'm happy with getting to a thousand, maybe getting a 1200, having some livestock, doing the social media thing and being happy there, you know. Just to be able to farm. To enjoy it because. Is the goal. Yeah.

And too many people overshot that. Or, you know, so if, like at the end of the day, if you had a six-year-old planner, instead of a 24-roar-old planner. So if you had a six-ro planner in a 160-horsepower tractor was your big tractor, and you know, you still use augurs to fill your grain bins, not a leg, and you didn't have a tower dryer, you had a small, six-panel dryer or something like that.

But you made a living. Full-time farming on that, you made a living. Isn't that just as good as the guy with the, you know, so maybe you aren't taking the seed corn, trip that the company's paying for you. But if you're too stressed out and worried about it the whole time anyways, just enjoy what you have. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to be bigger or grow your business.

But I think too many people forget, too, that it's like, well, I'm hung up on the acres thing. We're going to continue to grow. How about just doing a way better job with what you have? Because that's moving forward to. It's like, well, we're going to run more acres. that's the only way through this. Meanwhile, you've got fence lines that have grown up everywhere and you're not farming 20 feet of every single field that you have fence lines around or,

or you got this wet spot that needs some tile in. Get your fertility right, this or that. That's a bigger deal. I told a big farmer one time and I don't think he liked it, but I said, if you want to farm all fall, you know, you could just buy a 40-20. you know, they were running around with a bunch of combines and everything else. And I'm like, well, if you just, if you just want to spend every minute farming, you could just buy smaller equipment. Yes. You know, I mean, and it's, and how many times are guys just farming for the equipment?

Yeah. Because of front of, that's a sad truth. The matter is, is, yeah. We've gotten in this cycle that you want to run bigger equipment, then to justify the equipment, you got to run more acres. And then guess what? You're just wearing out that equipment. I mean, it's a vicious circle. It really is.

Well, I'm going to buy a new combine and then I'm going to go do custom work to make the payment on it. You're like, oh, I got the combine payment made. Well, the combine needs a lot of work now where if you would have just had your older combine and did your small farm, man, I'd probably live a long time. I mean, Tony broke the internet. Oh, yeah. With that 9610 or 9610. Yeah.

Because, you know, when him and I talk, so I got a 9510. Yeah. And it's like a lot of people were blown away that this $30,000 combine was a- Got him all through fall. Go through harvest. And it's like that the combine and heads were less than the depreciation had he bought a brand new combine and ran at that one season. And, you know, years ago.

So that's the other thing with his equipment today. So 30-year-old equipment today is fine. to operate. Just like, oh, yeah. You could drive a 30-year-old pickup truck, right? Like a 30-year-old pickup truck wouldn't be,

but 30 years ago, a 30-year-old pickup pickup truck. You couldn't. It's not even close. No, you could not, like the yield penalty. Yeah. Like if you have a good 30-year-old planner

and a good 30-year-old combine, it's capable of doing anything you needed to do, right? Where 30 years ago, it was like. Yeah. If you got a 7,200, if you're going from a, If you're going from the latest and greatest to a 7,200 planner that you've gone through, yeah, probably going to work fine. Now, if you go back to a 595 or whatever, what, draw and John Deer planner with, yeah,

you're going to pay a penalty. You're not going to get. Yeah. So we've, we've reached a point where, I mean, some of this equipment is, yeah, is redundant. And actually, we've created ourselves more headaches with some of this equipment because is so much technology that we're chasing trying to keep technology going that I think, you know, sweet spot was 90s, whether, you know, even look at, look at vehicle, look at diesel pickups. 100%.

You know, I mean, they were really awesome 20 years ago, you know, and now it's like, oh, yeah. So if that goes out, you have to remove the entire cab to fix this. It's, you know, oh, that's good to know. Yeah. $7,000 later. Well, I was just going to say, last thing I'll say about the whole family farm thing and everything's got to get bigger. The irony of it all is, I think the consumer does not want that to happen. Does not want family farms to go away.

Doesn't want agriculture to get bigger. But yet, that's what's playing out. And I don't think, I don't think most people that have no idea how ag works don't even realize it. Yeah. But they're going to wake up because you see it. People hate Monsanto. People hate Bear. They hate Smithfield.

They hate Smithfield. They hate these huge corporations, these huge efficient corporations and machines. But they like cheap prices. They like cheap prices. They like the way that it is. But they don't realize that that's affecting the one thing that they don't want to have die. The American farmer is too damn good at it. and that's been his downfall.

Because the American people never. There has not been any kind of thought of famine in this country in centuries. No. Because now the Europeans are so damn dumb. They're headed back. Oh my gosh.

They're headed back the wrong direction. There will be a famine in Europe at some point. I'm convinced of that because they're going to ruin that. They're going to ruin that continent to where there will be no agriculture left over there. We'll just, at that. Yeah, speaking of technology, if we don't cut this off, our technology is going to totally freaking crash. Yeah, we're this that we got, we tried maxing out our RAM on our computer and that worked and it's helped us. But if we get over two hours, we're just about at two hours here. We start

having fits on the computer. Okay. So we're going to have to cut it short. So we'll, we'll fire off a few questions for you and then we'll wrap it up. So what's next for you? What's next in your world? What do you, what do you want like, what's your goal with everything you're, doing whether it be farming whether it be the channel whether it be just to continue to raise the family love to grow the farm some if i could but just do a better job with it um concentrate more on that less quit spending money so i don't have to do other stuff would really help i don't have an income problem i'm a spending problem um but uh i think just doing that going forward the continuing i do enjoy like the arguing with people about tractors on ticker

is fine. Yeah. But I genuinely have a passion for the, like doing these tractor stories. And I try not to be, I try to be colorblind when I do that. Now that one where I made the Massey comment, that was just, that was, that was, I like that. And that was just completely out of the blue. Like, I like that.

Yeah. But, you know, maybe we can get some company that's willing to sponsor that or maybe, you know, you know a media company would be willing to you know a farm journal or something like that would pick that up and actually produce it i don't want to overly produce but you know do it a little better than me you know last thing where could people find you again because we want to make sure that people do go check out your stuff and follow you and see what you're up to yep so um ryan Kelly dash W.I. Titan 2 on YouTube. TikTok, just W.I. Titan 2. It'll come up. And yeah, pretty simple. Now, now that I am thinking of it. Are you a Packers fan?

Not a big sports guy. Okay. Well, that's all right. I was just going to say, if you were, you could have had a chance to give me shit about my Cowboys. But that's good. No strife here. Hey, I get it. Too busy. Too busy. Too busy. I get it. Well, I don't dislike the Packers. I was hoping the Packers were going to beat 49ers, but I didn't watch the game. I just looked the next day. I'm like, oh, they lost. There's only so much room in your, before you run out of space up there.

Farming takes up a lot of it. And then four kids, my wife. And then I have one older. It's almost your age. There's just not enough time in the day. Yeah, I guess I got more important stuff to work. worry about it. But, yep, you know. All right. Well, I think that's going to wrap it up. So if you guys got any value, please share the show, share it out with who you know.

Leave a review on Spotify or Apple. Submit your questions for our Q&A episodes at barn talk show at gmail.com. And Ryan, we appreciate you coming on the show. Safe travels back to where your home is. And we'll see you guys back here next week for another episode.