Barn Talk - Barn Talk Q&A: Thoughts On Electric Cars, Risks With The Hog Business & What Made Us Entrepreneurs?

Episode Date: September 10, 2021

Welcome To Barn Talk! In today’s episode, we discuss how we became entrepreneurs, risks with pig farming, our thoughts on electric cars, African swine fever & much, much more. 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 ADD US ON: INSTAGRAM ➱ https://bit.ly/3gaobdN TIKTOK ➱ https://bit.ly/3eJfftr #barntalk #thislldofarm ------------------------------- ***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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So I'll just kind of give you my thought process. I am, I like to organize my thoughts a little bit. And I want to build pillars of wealth. And the reason I want to build pillars of wealth is I want to do, I want to experience one percent, one percent things. So what I mean by that is, you know, the wealthiest people in the world are the one percent. And I want to experience things that those people can experience. I want to do things that those people are able to do that, nine, nine, of people don't get to do. And that's, that's a really good goal, I think. And that's not me trying to be a douche or anything like that. It's just, I do- You do-s. Yeah. I just think that's, I just really, I just really want that. I want to be able to do that and have the opportunity to do that, and I want

freedom. All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. Pre-harvest edition. What happens at the barn stays in the barn until now. What happens after we let it all out? We're not responsible for it. So take it with caution.

Today is a Q&A episode. We had some folks drop some questions. We asked it on our Barn Talk YouTube, our this will do farm YouTube, and this will do Farm Instagram. So people drop questions and dad and I are going to answer three questions each. Might have some bonus questions thrown in there. We don't know.

If we got time, we'll do them. All we ask from you guys, if you get any value from the show, is to share it out. That's the ticket to admission to watch or listen to the show. We don't run ads on the show. If you get value from us, all we ask is you give us value in return by sharing the show. So without further ado, I'm here with my host with the most. Tork. I feel like I need to stretch that name.

out. It's kind of anticlimactic. Torquimmoor. Torka more. Yeah, Torka more. You know, we will run ads at some point because we're greedy. So we're just money-grabbing capitalist here. So guaranteed we're going to run ads. We're going to run it right up to the point that you're all like, God, if I see one more ad, I'm clicking out of this and then we'll back it off two notches. But we're not there yet. Anyway, anyway, Before I get started, I'll give a shout out. One of my very best childhood friends just had a birthday. Matt, if you're listening, kudos to you for waking up and to making it. I think that he's probably 51 because he was a little older than me.

So we'll have to do another episode where we talk about some of our good childhood stories growing up. But anyway, Matt was a great instigator. So he was one of those guys that he didn't necessarily want to. to do the crazy thing, but he was more than happy to sit there and say phrases like, you don't have a hair on your ass to do, fill in the blank, or you pussy, just do it. Although he, I shouldn't say that. I won't bag on him too hard because he did his fair share, and he was equally weak to the amount of peer pressure that we threw on everybody. But yeah, he was a good instigator.

I have a few friends like that. Yeah, you got to have them. You know who he are. It makes the trips or whatever you're doing a little bit better. Because you don't, with the instigators, you know, if you're getting, if you're booze in a little bit and you're just having fun and everyone's just feeling a little loose. Yeah. You don't really notice those instigating comments. Yeah.

They just suddenly come into your head all of a sudden. You're like, how did I get in my head? But yeah, I think that's a good idea. Well, you've talked about that because when you have run footage of your, like your trips. Yeah. When you're watching the footage, you're like, yeah, them bastards. are the instigators. Yeah. So yeah, we go on a, my buddies and I go on a yearly annual Brozark trip. We go out on the Ozarks and I usually shoot some footage down there for just

the memories and sometimes we make a video. Most of the time we make like a recap video of our trip that's supposed to be badass and fun or whatever. So I have some footage from this last time and yeah, I have, I have some friends that, they're twins actually, so that it's double trouble and they they are pretty good at instigating stuff without you really noticing it and then you look at the footage and you're like that's probably why we got we did some of the dumb stuff that we did because there there's always got to be somebody there to prod you along be like yeah but it was it was the most fun trip i've had so far in my life it was awesome just so that's kudos to them one of the funnest and most interesting trips that i ever took in my young life was when we went to the state

basketball tournament when our local team actually won state only we weren't there we never actually made it to the game which is a very long story for another episode but it was a good time it was a good time and Matt you might have had a small role in why we never made it to the game so anyway um while i think about it another another guy that had a birthday this week is Steve and Steve is a guy that I used to work with back in my construction days, and he coined the phrase, the illusion of progress. And I've used that many times in my life. So when we worked on a crew, and we did everything on these hog buildings, we did everything minus we didn't pour the foundations, but we framed them, wired them, put the gates in, did the water, wired everything, we did it all.

And when we would go to the job site, instead of having everybody work on one thing, Steve, Steve would have somebody running clicks, somebody like trying to put stud the end wall to put fans in, somebody working on putting curtain hooks up, basically somebody doing everything and nothing really got done. And I was like, Steve, why do we do it this way? Why don't we just, you know, concentrate on one thing? And then one day I figured it out because the owner of the company, he would call and when he would call, Steve would always give a glowing, a glowing progress report. He'd be like, oh, yeah, we got, we got the curtains going up. I mean, the fans are almost in. We got, we're about ready to hang plumbing. I mean, we got it going on, which was partially true. Sort of true,

sort of true, but not really. And so I, we coined the phrase, the illusion of progress, because man, on the phone, it sounded fantastic. Now, in reality, it was never that good. But anyway, so happy birthday to you, Steve,o. You're still getting it done, and I hope you had a good day. So I'll give you the market update, and this is the close. We're a little late, so we're actually getting the clothes on Friday. Corn 622 at Eddyville.

So Cargill and Eddiville, they, must have like went and tapped on a bin and been like, damn, we don't have as much corn as we thought we do because, in fact, I want to say I was in Des Moines at the Iowa corn growers grassroots thing this week. And I think one day they might have had like a, I want to say they had like a 634. It could have been higher than that. But anyway, they really needed corn. So that 622 bid, I think, is good to the, maybe good to the 10th, something like that. And then 560 is the best, like, local bid around that I've seen. Soybeans, 1263 at Burlington, $13 at Quincy, if you want to go across the river. Hogs, $89 on the nearby contract.

And I'll just say, I kind of say the same thing every week that, you know, weights are down and slaughter's down, but for last week, the slaughter for the U.S. was 2.4 million pigs, and that's down from a year ago, which was 2.76. And so there's fewer pigs around, and the weights are getting lighter. So 276 versus 279 a year ago. And because I was at the corn growers grassroots thing in Des Moines, there was a lot of talk about exports and what we can expect and, you know, what what the demand for corn is. So in China, if you're feeding pigs in China, and I mean, any data that you get out of China

is somewhat skewed. Yeah, because you don't really know, they're not real clear and transparent over there for some reason. But anyway, what I've heard is that basically, to buy corn to feed pigs over there, you're paying about 6, 79 a bushel American to feed pigs.

and the largest producers over there, which I think they call them like dragonheads, these guys that they own all the sows, and then they probably own the feed mill, and they're having people feed these pigs out. They're losing between $4 and $500 million a week. So they think there's actually a lot of liquidation over there, which is that bodes really well for our export market on pigs,

but it may not bode well for our export market on corn. So we'll just have to wait and see. And all of that information is worth exactly what you paid for it, because it could be wrong. But I got it from the best source that I could find. Cattle, 124. I might quit giving the cattle price because it just never changes. I mean, it's the same.

122, 124. It's high. Bitcoin, $50,300 as of about an hour ago. He's kind of maybe potentially getting over the hump. Yeah. 50 seems to be the hump a little bit. There's a lot of, there's a lot of, a lot of ammunition. People think that from here to the end of the year,

that it's just going to go crazy. A lot of $100,000 price estimates and, you know, a lot of charts thrown out there, stock to flow, the amount that's actually available on the exchanges, the amount that's being held that people that don't ever let go of it. I don't know. We'll just have to see. And so today would be, what would be today? Today would be the fourth? I don't know if it's the third or fourth. It doesn't matter. September 7th, which is Tuesday. It's the fourth. Yep. Yeah. September 7th, which is Tuesday,

is the day that El Salvador makes the change and goes on the Bitcoin standard. I saw that they're having protests in the streets about that whole deal. I'm sure. I'm sure. We'll just have to see. It can either be a complete disaster or it will be a really good thing and it might evolutionize how we do things. If you, uh, if you, uh, if you invest three Bitcoin in the, uh, exchange in El Salvador, they'll give you citizenship. Which is a lot more Bitcoin than what I have. I really need that to my, I need that to my resume. So if you're thinking about getting dual citizenship, that's the price, price of admission.

You just need $150,000. Pretty much. much right now anyway um ethereum is very close to an all-time high 3,900 and in fact I think that is a high um it might have gotten to 4,000 but right around there so it's high Tesla 734 there's all kinds of drama about uh they backed off cyber truck it's not going to be here I think I'm going to have to buy a truck because um I was really waiting for the cyber truck and now it looks like it would be a minimum them about midsummer 2023 so work's going to have to have to go buy something i don't know what i want but i'm going to have to get something yeah you're going to have to go test drive something i had to haul some

plywood the other day in the back end of the tahoe because soyer was gone and i got pretty frustrated about that so i think i'm going to have to break down and buy a truck anyway uh that is the long and short of the market report longer than usual hey we all need some updating so the markets not everybody checks the markets hell i don't really check the market tell i don't really check the markets. I check the crypto market and my stocks, but I don't really check commodities all too much. Well, corn market get ready because here in a few days, the first, well, I don't know how long it'll be. Around here, I still think we're probably, I would think around the 22nd will be when you'll see a lot of people roll. And as soon as the first combine rolls, the cash bids will all drop into the crapper.

But everybody's hedging their bet what that's going to take. So all the, All the hog guys, they're checking the bins, trying to decide whether they can make it until they get all that harvest corn. And so their bid reflects that. And as soon as they get the first load of new crop corn, that... Taking that down. That basis will get pretty wide. All right.

Well, I think we're going to get into the questions. Do you want to start by asking me? Yeah. My first question? I will. I'll give you a good question. And this is a good question because a lot of people wonder why in the world you would want to have stayed here and worked with your dad.

I ask myself that sometimes, too. What made you get into entrepreneurship and what made you decide to come back to the farm full time? And do you have any advice for somebody doing the same? Yeah, that's a really good question. It's going to be kind of an in-depth question. I'm just going to walk you through kind of my thought process. So as you guys know, I really wasn't about college, really wasn't about school.

So I figured that if I were to go to college, I was just going to get a bullshit degree probably and just cheat my way through or have somebody do my, you know, I wasn't going to put it in the effort because I didn't like school. And I was just going to probably party and I wasn't going to get much out of it. So I decided that's probably not the best thing for my future to do for me personally. I don't bag on anybody that does go to college. It's really personal preference. Thank you for that because I'm glad that I didn't sign for anything. student loans or help you in any way. Yeah, because I would have really just pretty much pissed away some money and I don't really feel good about that. So I came back and farm full time because really

it was either that or kind of go to trade school or whatever. And I, you know, there's a lot of legacy here like I've talked about. My biggest goal right now is to make the farm viable for another generation. And I think I really bought into that pretty early on when I made the decision. It was like, well, here we go. This is what we're going. This is what we're going. to do. So let's just figure out how we're going to do it. So the reason I'm really an entrepreneur and a farmer is I think entrepreneurship is kind of just in me. I am a dreamer through and through. I'm always thinking about new ideas. I'm always thinking about, you know, I love working for myself. I never really liked structure. That's probably why I didn't like school as much because I hate being

told what to do as far as what I can do. And I hate being capped. I don't like the fact of being capped. I like to control where I want to put my cap at. So I like that. I want it all on me. So I feel like it's just kind of in my DNA a little bit. But on the other side of that, so we got this farm. We got hog barns. Our grain farming operation isn't necessarily where dad and I would want it to be. We want to grow this thing. So we, I really got into it because to make, to fulfill my goal of, you know, making the farm viable for another generation. We needed some outside capital. So that's really why I got into social media because I said,

you know what, I'm seeing this opportunity of social media. We could probably make some money doing this by also helping people and showing people of the ag. You know, it was good for both, you know, the people watching and for us personally. And I got into real estate because,

well, my brother and I are partnered in real estate together. And it's a really good way to, you make some passive income. There's definitely work with it. It's just like any other business, but real estate is just a timeless thing that, you know, it's going to produce you money. Everyone needs a home all the time. So I like real estate in that way. So we got real estate going on, the social media thing going on. And I just, I want to keep going and keep finding opportunities. So if, you know, I think entrepreneurship's kind of a, it's turned into this cool thing to do.

Everyone wants to be a business owner, but you really got to ask yourself if that's really what you want to do. Because, you know, I have a lot of friends that they like the idea of starting their own business, but they really don't want all that pressure. Because if you're going to be an entrepreneur, it's all on you. If you start your own business, it's all on you. And if you hire employees, not only does your livelihood depend on your performance and your business performance, but the people working for you depend on that too. So it's a lot of pressure.

So just you need to take some time to just evaluate. yourself a little bit and see if that is for you because it's all it's a big it's a big responsibility talk about the time because i feel like that's one thing that probably a lot of people don't realize why it's not for everybody because touch on all the time you have for hobbies yeah that's a really good point i don't really have hobbies i'm going to be honest i'd someone asked us before do we hunt and fish we would I think dad and I would love to go hunting and fishing. But to be completely honest with you,

I don't have a burning fire desire to go out and hunt and fish because I love working and building what I'm doing. I like building and working on the farm. I like building and working on the things that I'm doing outside of the farm. And that's really what it takes to do all those things. I really don't have a lot of free time in the sense that I'm either working here on the farm or I'm working in my office or I'm working on my brother and I's real estate thing. And that's kind of it. Those are my hobbies. But to be honest with you,

that's, that fills me up. I love that. I love building. That's just who I am. I'm not bagging on anyone that, you know, loves hobbies and has hobbies that wants to hunt and fish because sometimes it's, you know, I'd want to go do it, but I just really don't have a lot of time for it. So it's a time commitment. You've got to understand that too. If you want to be an entrepreneur and you really want to be a hustler, you just understand that you might not have a lot of free time to do a bunch of hobbies if you're truly wanting to go. It's kind of a blessing and a curse. Yeah. Because on the one hand, I feel like, so I'm not, I'm not really in the, I'm not really in the real estate part of it. I mean, my real estate is hog buildings. I mean, I am a little bit in the fact that my wife has a store.

We purchased a building in town that she has that. We rent the, we rent the apartment out above it, but I'm not involved in the in the rest of it i think we all have that i think we all have that those days where we think boy it's sure be nice to just kick it pick up the hook on the boat and go to the res and you know just don't worry about it and then you're like well i would but and here's the other thing i'm i'm not trying to glorify entrepreneurship at all but i just for me personally i love it i do love it someday as I do have those days where I wish, but deep down inside of me, I know that there's nothing I'd rather be doing than that. So you don't have, and there's, there's levels to entrepreneurship. You don't have to be the, you don't have to build the biggest business in the world. You don't,

you can just kind of pick and choose, you know, how far you want to go with the thing. But for me, personally, I love it. So it's just kind of personal. So I'd, I'd ask yourself, do a little evaluate and learn about yourself, see if this is something you truly want to do. And the other thing is, so I'll just kind of give you my thought process. I'm, I like to organize my thoughts a little bit, and I want to build pillars of wealth. And the reason I want to build pillars of wealth is I want to do, I want to experience one percent, one percent things. So what I mean by that is, you know, the wealthiest people in the world are the one percent. And I want to experience things that those people can experience. I want to do things that those people are able to do that 99 percent of people don't get to do. And that's, that's a really good. good goal, I think. And that's not me trying to be a douche or anything like that. You do-you-dush. Yeah. I just think that's, I just really, I just really want that. I want to be able to do that and have the opportunity to do that. And I want freedom. So my, so I'll just kind of

give you my thought process. I am, I like to organize my thoughts a little bit. And I want to build pillars of wealth. And the reason I want to build pillars of wealth is I want to do, I want to experience one-per-one, one-per-one-per- things. So what I mean by that is, you know, the wealthiest people in the world are the 1%. And I want to experience things that those people can experience. I want to do things that those people are able to do that 99% of people don't get to do. And that's a really good goal, I think. And that's not me trying to be a douche or anything like that. It's just, I just, I just think that's, I just really, I just really want that. I want to be able to do that and have the opportunity to do that. And I want freedom. farming and they do all this work and they have all this ground or they have all these,

you know, hog barns or cattle or whatever, and then they have to pay everybody out and they, there's very little money. There's nothing left. There's nothing left. There's nothing left to grow the farm. For me, I would just like to get to the point where the farm could grow itself, the real estate thing could grow itself, and I could take very little from both of those, and I could live off of what other thing I'm doing. So I'm going to try my hardest to just kind of build pillars. and take money from a little bit of money from each, but not just leave a lot of money in those things

so we can continue to build them. Because that's what I love to do. I love to build it. I love to build in things. So that's where my passion is. So that's kind of my thought process for that. And what I love about it is that Sawyer and his brother are very driven. We'll get, we'll get Clay on here because the should.

The two of them together is, you think I'm crazy. You should get the two of them together and their ideas. But you see, because, because they want to be so successful and I'm 25 years older. My plan is to just sponge. I'm just going to sponge off of them. That's my goal. I used to have bigger goals.

And now that I'm like, oh, well, you guys pull that off. I'll just sponge off of you. It's not for everybody. So I'm not, I'm really just not trying to glorify it.

It's just what I love to do and not everyone's built like that. So any advice for you? I saw that for this question, you're a 17-year-old kid. Figure out yourself. and, you know, see if this is really, truly something you want to do. And try your best to, if your goal is to make your family farm viable for another generation or grow your family farm, you're going to have to get some outside capital.

So start some side hustles. You know, there's so many side hustles out there. There's, it's never been easier to build a business ever in the history of time with the internet and so many opportunities, Amazon, Shopify, drop shipping, starting a social media brand freelancing. I mean, there's so many things you can do to make some side income. I try to take as little, once you get to your family farm to the point where you want it to be, try to take as little away from the farm as you can to pay yourself so that you can just keep growing that farm if that's what you want to do. If you're happy with where your farm is, and then maybe you pay yourself a little bit more. But it's all personal preference. So, and be patient. You're 17 years old, dude. You don't have to

have everything figured out. When I was 18, I never thought that I'd be doing what I'm doing right now. I was, you just got a, biggest thing is you got to take action and try things and be patient because you're going to figure it out and you got a ton of time. You, you're not even walking out of the tunnel to go in pregame warmups yet for, you know, you're not. That analogy. That's a good analogy. It's not even, it's not, the game hasn't even started for you yet. So I'll add to that. I think one thing that Sawyer and Clay have taught me, which I thought I was pretty, optimistic, but do not be afraid to try something new. And at your age, it's a lot easier to do that because, you know what, if you're 17, 18, 19, 25 years old, and you do something that doesn't work,

you got a lot of time to make up for that. But I'll add to like what he said, if you're not a social media kind of person, if you're a farmer, the beautiful thing about being involved on a farm is you learn how to do a lot of stuff that the rest of the world doesn't know how to do as far as fixing stuff as far as doing doing things that other people like oh i better hire somebody to do that i see all the time guys that you know they got a skid loader and they got a brush bucket and they got this they got a chainsaw they run businesses where they clear fence rows they do businesses where they clean up uh they clean up waterways they clean up things that are that are uh grown over and the farmer somebody else they don't have time to do it and it's it's labor but they're paid very well because in

this country labor is at such a premium that if you're willing to put in the hard time to do it you can make good money and so like for a farm and not not many people know how to work yeah not very many people do that's the other advantage you got you you you've been it's embedded in you as a farm kid I'm assuming that you know how to work right and that's especially for young young kids gen z you know 17 year olds yeah I don't there's probably not a lot of 17-year-olds that know how to do really manual hard work labor. So if your farm needs a new skid loader, good way to pay for that skidloader is clear and brush, you know, whatever.

If you got a truck, you can make money doing all kinds of stuff. I've seen people now that are buying these dump trailers and they're renting these dump trailers out. And they got like three or four of these dump trailers and they're renting them out for, I don't know, $250 a week or whatever. You can pay for a dump trailer in pretty short order. and then after that, you're making good money. That's cash flow. Power washing business, power washing people's houses and sidewalks.

I've been seeing that. Or power washing hog barns. That's a huge around our place. I know a good buddy. Shout out to Derek. He has a power washing business. He's a farmer. And he's hustling every way he can.

And that's one thing that he does off the farm. He's got a power washing business. Yeah. And he does really, really good at it. And then the other thing is, whatever you're into, don't be afraid to try something else because I'll give the example. of you guys when you got into real estate. We just kind of jumped in. You got a couple of, you got a couple of properties, but then you got the idea to try to do Airbnb. You got a property that you thought would work.

You didn't know anything about it. Nope. But you jumped in. You jumped in. And it's working really, really well. Yeah. It's really. Yeah. So don't be afraid to, you never, you will never get anywhere if you don't take risk. I'm sorry, but you got to take some risk. You got to take some risk. If you're going to be an entrepreneur, you got to risk it to get the biscuit. That's how it goes. Oh, look at that. And you, you really can't, you really can't stand there and just contemplate and contemplate and contemplate. I know if you save up $10,000 to start a business, you're 17 years old, go all in on that thing. And I guarantee you, if, you know, you try to start something for $10,000 and it didn't work, you'd learn a lot about yourself, you'd learn a lot about from your mistakes. And that experience,

just get up and do it again. Because guess what? You're not even walking out of the freaking tunnel to go on to pregame warmups yet. So just keep going, keep digging, don't get discouraged, keep fighting, and you can figure it out like that. So there's so many opportunities on the internet and off the internet in real life that you could do for side hustles. So that's kind of my advice. That was a long, long question.

It was, but it was good. And I'll just add to it, and we don't need to go into it. But, you know, I've always said, we've talked about this. You learn a lot more from your mistakes than your, than your successes. And so like you guys, out of the properties that you own, you had one property that you purchased

and it ended up being... Complete disaster. Well, and it's working now. Yeah, we got it. But it was a complete disaster. It had multiple things go wrong. But you know what? You guys learned valuable, valuable information

about how things work when things go wrong. Yep. That you would have never... Never, never, never known. We would have never known. Yeah, one other thing, the last thing I want to say. There's so many people out there, and I've touched on the board. There's so many entrepreneurs, successful businessmen, successful people out there.

They're giving out information for free. I'll give you, I'll plug a couple. Bradley, dropping bombs podcast, Andy Fresslla, Real AF podcast. Gary V, if you want to learn about marketing, Gary Vaynerchuk, audio experience, great podcast. There's so many good people out there dropping amazing information on how to be a businessman, how to live a better life, you know, just how to be successful. So those are some people that you need to fill your brain with that kind of stuff because I'll be the first tell you. I wasn't a good learner because all I've been was all I thought about learning was school.

And then when I first was introduced to Gary Vaynerchuk or Andy Fursela or Brad Lee, all these people, I can't, I can't stop binge listening to their podcast because I love it. It's just value and value and value and stuff I can apply to my life. and it's really, really, really molded who I am now. It's made me hungry than I ever been before because when you see that, when you see and you hear these guys say that they're just like you and the fact that some days they don't want to get up and do what they do, and it took them 10 years to build a business. You know, that just gives you motivation that, you know, if they can do it, I can do it too. So listen to those people, fill your head with that good stuff.

There's plenty of people out there. I just drop some. So that's the last thing I'll say. All right. Ask me a question. Okay. All right. This is going to be another real good in-depth question. What are your thoughts and ideas on electric car batteries? There's a lot of scrutiny that these batteries get for electric vehicles. I feel like that's a really hot button issue for most people if they don't know much about electric vehicles. Are they really bad for the environment? How are these batteries going to last? Are they going to last up to 10 years with hot and cold climates? Are they just going to be when the batteries are done are they going to destroy them in a landfill and just have them pollute the shit out of the

ground that they're on, you know, for however long it takes them to, what do you call it, disintegrator, whatever? Breakdown. Breakdown. Yeah, so what's the whole deal with the batteries? Is there any hope at the end of the tunnel and is it really as bad as everyone wants to say it is? Okay, snarky answers first. It is not as bad.

It is not as bad as everybody says it is because no matter what the topic, negativity sells. So pretty much anything that you want to talk about, there's always. somebody saying the sky is falling, it's terrible, and blah, blah, blah. The second snarky answer is EVs and batteries are much better than wind turbine blades. If you've ever seen all the videos of wind turbine blades getting covered up at landfills, I'm not a big proponent of wind turbines, but that's just me. So on the battery side, I'll pick off the easy ones first. So 10 years, so if you buy a Tesla, I think that the warranty on that battery pack is that after 10 years, it should have at least 80% of the charging capacity that it did when you bought it.

And I should have looked that up before we started. I looked up a bunch of other stuff, but it's something like that. So they don't degrade very quickly. And then the other side of that is today there is over 100 companies. companies that are involved in recycling batteries. And I will also say that my guess is if you talk about the environmental concerns over lithium ion batteries or rechargeable batteries in general, I'll bet you that the biggest polluter when it comes to batteries is small devices like phones and power tools. I'll bet you that more of those batteries end up in places that they shouldn't than anything to do with car batteries.

Because they're so small, there's a certain amount of people that I guarantee they don't recycle them. They throw them in a trash can. really know, you haven't really heard of a power tool battery recycling company. You know, they don't recycle them. You just, when your battery on your DeWalt drill goes bad, you kind of just say, well, throw that fucker away. There's a, like most batteries, there's an 800 number that you're supposed to call. And I think a lot of big, I don't know, I think some big box stores have like recycling centers.

But even then, when you throw that in there or you give it to them, I don't know, I don't know where that ends up. So I think that's a problem. I will speak to the electric vehicle business, because that's kind of near and dear to my heart. People don't understand the business and how the batteries are made, and they don't understand what happens to them. And you've got to understand that there is a pretty big group in this country, or any country that is not in favor of us making the switch to electric.

vehicles. So there's a lot of misinformation that comes out. And one of the most popular is that batteries are terrible for the environment. Mine in the lithium is dirty and it employs a lot of people in unhealthy conditions and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And the EV business is very aware of that. And if you look at, you know, I can't speak to everybody, but I can kind of speak to Tesla because they made kind of a big deal about it. That's why they have done a good job of trying to pick who they work with as far as miners go to get the raw materials for the batteries that not only they're going to make and are making, but the suppliers to them and to make sure that they're doing it as ethically and environmentally friendly as they can. Getting back to all the people that are

recycling batteries. So, and I don't think this gets explained to, enough at all. So basically, once you've built a battery, a battery pack for a car, that battery pack, the components within it, the nickel, the copper, the aluminum, the cobalt, the iron, all of that stuff can be recycled. And you can get close to 100% of it recycled. And as the technology gets better, you will get to a point where whatever the supply of batteries that are in vehicles on the road at any given time, the supply of raw materials to make the next generation of batteries equal to what is there will not come out of the ground. It will all come from being recycled. And I should have looked up what the guy's name is because I can't

remember it off top of my head. But one of the guys that was one of the original founders of Tesla and who has a great relationship with Elon to this day, he left Tesla, I want to say three years ago, and he started a company called Redwood Materials. And their soul, and ironically, they work closely. So they actually have a, they actually have a facility that's in Las Vegas or in Nevada, close to where Tesla's joint venture with Panasonic is or with LG. I can't remember where they make batteries. And what they're trying to do is perfect the recycling techniques to where when a battery pack in a car gets to its end of life

where it doesn't hold a charge or it's less than 50 percent, that pack can be recycled. And pretty much we will get to the, no, we will. We will get to the point that the, that the only the only materials for batteries that will be mined will be whatever

the need is because they have all the rest of it. Right. Whatever the growth is. So as we grow the market, that lithium, iron, copper, aluminum, nickel, it will all have to be mined. But whatever the capacity

that's out on the road, as that ages, it will be able to be recycled up to 100% to where, and the other side of it is, it will actually be cheaper to recycle the material, to get the material out of the existing batteries,

than it will be to mine it. So the incentive for just about everybody will be to use recycled material because when you get the cobalt, once it is separated, that cobalt is in a powder form all ready to go. You don't have to mine it out of the ground and refine it and do all the things and the transportation.

So basically I think what you'll see is I think that you will see where a company like redwood materials or I think it's called manganese America or lifecycle. Life cycle. A company like that, they will probably build a plant next to say Gigga Berlin or Gigga Texas. And those are Tesla factories.

Or Fremont or wherever the Ford factory is or the Volkswagen factory. They will build it right there to where they will receive those batteries. And it's not just limited to car batteries. So like Redwood Materials, you know, Google it. There was a, I think it might have been like, I think it might have been 60 minutes. Somebody did a segment about them and showed, you know, their recycling. iPhones, they're recycling, um,

uh, ego, uh, lawnmower batteries. Basically anything that's a lithium ion battery, they're recycling. They're figuring out how to make that work. Don't believe everything that you hear.

Find out, you know, who's saying that and why they're saying it. So there's a huge incentive among the petroleum industry and others that have a horse in the game. You know, we say it all the time. Follow the money. They're not good.

Everything they can to stop EVs. Yeah, they're not good with it. They're not good with it because it's going to hurt their business. And yeah, is it a challenge? Yes, it's a challenge. Because today, if you take a battery and you throw in a landfill, it doesn't get recycled, that's not good. It's not good.

But there's people that are working on it, and there's places that are doing it, and it's going to get a lot better. What about graphite? I should have led with that. So the end... It's just like Tesla working on the 4680 cylindrical cell, which is a bigger cell, they're using less and less lithium all the time. They're using iron phosphate.

But there is a technology. It's called graphene. And what graphene is, if you take a piece of scotch tape, I mean, I'm super simplifying this, but if you take a piece of scotch tape and you take the lead out of a carpenter's pencil and you take that tape and you stick it on that lead and you pull it off and you know how there's a it shows lead on there okay graphene is one atom thick it is a one atom thick layer of graphite and graphite is super plentiful but it is crazy strong and it is crazy conductive and it is crazy conductive.

Durable. Very durable. And it is just kind of in its infancy, but it has the potential to really revolutionize. Basically, one of the big things that we have to get to to make all of this technology

cheap, cheap enough that it makes it into our everyday life, is you have to get the battery technology great enough that it can hold relatively a huge amount of power for the footprint it has. It has to be cheap enough to produce that it puts it on an even playing field or better than petroleum. And graphene has that potential. So that is that a lot of people think that that is going to be,

that is going to be the deal where it makes solar so, much cheaper than petroleum for producing electricity because you'll be able to build batteries at scale at a cost structure that's so low that you can have a huge amount of solar on your house, on your building, in the middle of the desert, whatever, and store that energy to where it's available 24 hours a day. And the same way with car batteries, you will be able to compact. you can store way more range at a much lower weight, which makes those electric vehicles superior, not just equal to, but superior to an internal combustion engine.

And that, I mean, like I said, it's just in its infancy. And is that better for the environment too if they use graph. Yeah, because graphite does not have any of the toxic toxicity as cobalt. And it's much easier to mine. It is way easier to mine than cobald is. And there's a lot more of it. Yeah, it's a huge amount of it. And I'll just say on lithium, everybody bags on lithium,

but the amount of lithium being used in batteries today than say when the first Tesla Roadster was made, it's much less. Much less. And everybody knows, I mean, that's what everybody's working towards is to make them cheaper to produce and the, and- Better for the environment.

And lithium is expensive to mine. So the less of it that you need, so the thing that they need more of than anything else, and you've heard Elon say this, their earnings call last year, he said, mine more nickel. If you're somebody that's mine and nickel, call us. We want your nickel.

Because nickel is going to be more important, quantity-wise, than what lithium is. is because they're using iron phosphate batteries and they're finding better ways to make the batteries that they don't need as much lithium. But nickel is whatever process, I'm not sure about graphene when they get to, if they get to where they perfect that, whether they need as much nickel. But today, nickel is a much bigger commodity for the production of the batteries where we are today than what lithium is. There you go.

Boom. I don't know if that covered... That covered, damn, that covered a lot, which is good. It's really good that you touched on that, because I think there's a lot of people that just read the headlines. Just like everything we talk about on here, you got to really dig deep because most people don't really dig deep. So if you just read the headlines and you got to understand that, you know, Ford,

well, they're working towards that. But these people that are in the... They're in petroleum. They're in petroleum. They're in ethanol. You know, these people don't want EV, become a thing. They really don't. And what are they going to do to, you know, try to stop that? Is they maybe, you know, slip a check to a media outlet and say, hey, give you some dividends if you

help us out here. I mean, I really believe in the good people, but man, money talks. Money's a powerful motivator. And you got to, well, you got to follow the money a little bit, you know. People, people are greedy sons of bitches. It's just the truth of it. Well, and when people feel, threatened so I will say I am walking I'm walking a thin line because so I'm a I'm a member of the corn the National Corn Grow Association and we raise corn and I want that product to be promoted so in our area the county we live in it is a it is a corn deficit county in other words more corn gets ground and fed to livestock in the county we live in then what gets exported say to the river or to ethanol

plants or to whatever. So to me, the ethanol business is, I don't really think about the ethanol business. I was at the grassroots meeting. Porn growers association meeting. In Des Moines. And we talked about their platform for this year. And they used an electronic voting deal called Slydo. And when they were prioritizing what is the most important items that they want the corn growers to work on, the winner, the thing that was most important to the majority of people that were at that meeting was ethanol production. And I was very surprised by that because I didn't know that it was that popular, but you have to understand that in, say, the state of Iowa, when you get to, there's a lot more counties in the state of Iowa

where animal agriculture is not near as popular as it is where we are, and they value those markets for ethanol because there is an ethanol plant, because if you're going to build an ethanol plant, build it where there's not a livestock, because the basis is a lot better. A lot of their items that they want to work on are based around ethanol. I'm not on that boat. I believe that we need to promote the exports we have of beef and pork and chicken and turkey

and everything else because we've got a hungry world and the more of it that we can grind and feed and find better genetics to get better nutritional value out of the corn. I'm all about it. Industrial use of corn. I love the packing peanuts. My wife gets a lot of stuff that's got packing peanuts that are made basically out of corn starch because I hate the packing peanuts because they go everywhere, but you know what? If you hose them down with water, they just disintegrate because they're basically mad out of corn starch. And a lot of the plastics that are on farm equipment, John Deere has been great about it. They're making plastic out of corn. I think that's great. Industrial use. Those are all the items that I'm really interested in. I'm not that interested in ethanol because I feel like it's

short-sighted because at the end of the day, my grandkids are not going to be driving a petroleum industrial internal combustion engine vehicles. They're not. I just don't think they are. They're not going to. You're already seeing it. You're already seeing it. The government is pushing for EVs. They're pushing for EVs. People, it's, people are going to wake up. And I'm just going to say this. These young kids, we're getting spoon fed. Environment, environment, environment. And I'm sorry. The oil business and gas combustion engines don't have a really good rap when it comes to environment. And if we're getting spoon fed this, I'm sorry to say, but people are, people are going to be all about EVs and it's just the idea of get on the train or get ran over. I mean, yeah, it sucks. It's scary if you're a farmer out there that relies on that ethanol market. But man, you better start figuring some stuff out and prepare yourself for that because I see that. It's coming.

It is coming. I don't know how fast it's coming, but it is coming. So if you're not concerned about it, if you're an older guy and your kids are farming with it, you need to tell your kids that they're going to have to figure out something. Yeah, I think this is probably one of our most unpopular views that we have. You can come at us for it, but that's our honest of thoughts. It's just like, it's just like anything. All industries change, the world changes, and you either can be somebody that's on the forefront of that change and adapt and pivot, or you can stay flat-footed and get ran over. I have no idea how long it will go, and I don't

know. But I do, I will just say this, that everybody that's involved in ethanol is they need to be aware and they need to be prepared to pivot because you're going to have to pivot at some point. The other thing I want to say is there's things in our lives, in our operation, that we're worried about. Oh, yeah. Future wise. I mean, we'll get to them. We're going to talk about that in this episode, actually, because we got a question on it. But African swine fever, that's a really big concern for us, hog producers, you know, that's a big concern. So there, I feel for you guys. I feel for you guys. If you are somebody that relies on that ethanol market, I feel for you, you know, but my advice for you is don't be so close-minded because it's coming. I think I personally believe

it's coming and I just don't really want to see somebody say that it's not and then get screwed over. Well, and do your own research. Yeah, right. Do your own research. Figure it out for yourself. Just because the world has always been a way does not mean that it will always be that way. That's our point. That's the truth. Okay. so my my EV battery rant is over so my question for you is what are your farm and brand goals for the next five years so the next five years let's just start with the farm dad and i you know we got these hog barns and we'll just be 100% transparent with you guys not all the hog barns are paid for we still owe some money to the banks that we you know finance through on some of these hog barns

So our main objective right now is to completely pay those off. So we're just cash flow and straight cash. I mean, we make money every month from them. But our main goal right now is we're just trying to put them, just pay them things off because then we can really start making some moves if we do that. The second thing is once we get that going and whatever, I'll touch on the brand side of things, but this starts growing a little bit. We make some money.

We give a lot of value to you guys. then we want to go buy some ground. I mean, that's our biggest goal right now is to go buy some ground. And once we've got some ground, I would love to get another tractor. I'd love to get a combine. I'd love to get a planner.

I mean, I want all the, I want to, hell, I love equipment. I want it. I like iron. Yeah, I want some iron. I want some, I want to do all of it. And that's kind of our goal. I want an 80320. I want David's, our 8420s.

He's got an 8420. He's got an 8420. Yeah, I want an 8420. I love those tractors. I think they're sexy. They're sexy. I mean, obviously, AARX is sexy,

but those are really nice tractors. So I'd want one of those, you know. As far as the brand goes, I love what we're doing. We're posting content on two channels. I love the podcast. I love posting our day-to-lay lives as farmers on TDF. but a lot of people keep asking us for merch and that's coming.

But there's something else I really want to do outside of the merch game. I think we got a unique opportunity of a product that we could make for consumers that not a lot of quote-unquote influencers can because we are farmers. So I'll just leave it at that. There's something I really want to do there that I think a lot of people would like. And it's just a big vision. And I have a really big goal and dream about that, but I'm just going to leave it that for now, because we got a lot of work to do to make that happen.

But as far as this goes, I want to continue to just keep meeting as many very successful and professional people I can to come on the podcast. I can drop a lot of value for you guys. I'd like to get, you know, some more sponsors, some sponsors for this podcast. I'd like to get some more sponsors for TDF, not spam you guys or anything. I'd like to, you know, just continue to grow and get more followers. And, you know, we love giving value to you guys. We love doing what we do.

But we also got to try to make a little bit of money from it. You know, that's just how it goes. You know, we started this for you guys, but we also started this for ourselves too. So we can, because the more we make, the more money we make from doing this, the better stuff we can do to this barn to make the experience better, the better stuff we can build and buy off for the farm and make it more entertaining. it all's going to go back into what we're doing. And somebody keeps moving the goalposts on this building the farm.

I mean, thank you, Grundy County, because I thought, you know, oh, you know, we can guys some ground for $15,000 an acre. Oh, no, now it's going to be $22,000 a acre. Yeah. And I was riding with a guy up to the corn growers thing, and he just said, he does some appraisal work. And he said, yeah, I think before 2021 is over, there'll be a piece of ground in your county that will probably sell for,

$20,000. Well, if you're... And that doesn't pencil. If you're, uh, even if you're an established farmer, and this, there's so much that plays into this, because the problem we're into, we're into an inflationary environment. And our government has decided that at no, no expense is going to be spared to keep the stock market going up. Because if you lay over what real inflation is, which it's awful hard to find,

numbers on what real inflation is. But if you look over the past few years and what, air quotes, real inflation is, and you lay that over the stock market, the stock market hasn't really gone up that much. We've just inflated all the prices to make up for the amount of money that are government's printing. And I don't even think that that's like a, I don't even think that's like a far out there. I think pretty much everybody understands that, we've inflated the dollar because we've printed so much of it, so assets keep going up. Well, now you're to the point where people that have a lot of money invested in financial instruments, they're getting nervous.

So they're going to the real estate market, which that's why the real estate market is driven up so much, minus commercial. I think commercial isn't under near as much pressure because of COVID. And then land prices. You've seen it. You've seen all the stories about Bill Gates buying land. why would Bill Gates buy land? He doesn't need any more money unless he was thinking that the mass fortune that he has that's in stocks and bonds and other things isn't going to be worth near as much,

so he's buying land. And so, you know, for us, it's a tough, it's a tough deal. And that will kind of tie into one of the next questions that somebody asked about, you know, why we do what we do. But we do want to get some sponsors. Our whole thing on the sponsor side, is we really want to work with people that we either use their product or I'll use barn tools as an example. So barn tools is a company that we use their alarm systems and our barns and they sponsor the TDF channel. The TDF channel. And that's a real easy, that's a real easy relationship because we use their product and we really like it. And so we don't have to be, you know, we don't have to sit there and say, we're not, we don't have to sit there and say,

We're not going to be those guys that sells you bullshit. And so that's, you know, that's kind of the thing. You know, we could sell sunglasses and I don't know what else. We could trinkets and this and that. Our biggest thing is real, authentic. We're real and authentic. We're no BS. We want to be as real as we can with you guys.

And we want to give you, if we do run, you know, we have sponsors and, you know, promote products, it's products that we actually use. And we think that you guys can get some value from just like everything else we do. So, yeah, I would just say I would love to get this channel. I'd love to grow this barn talk to be, you know, 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. I'd love to get, hell, hell, I'd like to get. I don't know how. Yeah, I'd love to get a lot of listeners per podcast.

As far as this will do farm, I'd love to get 100,000 subscribers on that. And I'd love to have some sponsors on both channels and make some merch and keep my secret a secret for now, but I'd love to launch that as well. And then we'll just grow the hell of the farm and make better content and grow this barn and make it cooler and more of a better experience. And just, yeah, that's my goal. I just want to keep building, baby. Keep building. There you go. And then Torque will get his goal of getting the nice as mower he can with the swivel coozy. I like that little swivel coozy on the armrest. I put my cold drink in there and I just mow grass. That'd be just fine with me. Yep. That's good with me too. So that's just, that, that,

I'll be honest with you guys that those goals right there that we just touched on, I think about those just about every single day. So a lot, a lot. All right. Dad, I know all business ventures have risks. How do you protect yourself if the companies, if the company you have a contract with, we're talking about our hog farming operation, we contract grow pigs, what if those companies don't renew the contract that you have?

and then when your contract's up for renewal, they try to lowball you. Because in his situation, that happened a lot for chicken producers in his area. And they didn't renew the contract. And then that company just bought them out for pennies on the dollar. So what do you say about that as far as contract growing pigs and, you know, our contracts and are you worried about it? And what's kind of the risk of it? So, yes, that is a risk. and if you are going to step out and try to grow your business,

grow your farm, there's risk involved. And that, that's a big risk. So the poultry business went vertically integrated at a pretty quick rate. And today, you can't build a, my understanding is, so there's a turkey, there's a turkey co-op, not very far from where we live, that has a bunch, you know, has a bunch of guys that grow that are involved, and they own, they own the packing plant and all that. But, you know, they can't build a shed unless the turkey sold. So unless they know that they have the market to sell more turkey, they don't produce any more.

And so there's nobody coming in from the outside and saying, I want to build a turkey shed or poultry shed because it's, if you're in it, you're in it. And if you're not, you're never getting in. The hog business traditionally has not been that way in the fact that it's much more fiercely independent. And so we've touched on this before that even today, there are still a lot of guys that own their own sows that feed out their own pigs. There's guys that own shares together, like eight guys own a sow unit, and they feed out their own pigs.

And they may or may not have a contract with a packer, or they might have a contract with a couple different packers. and then you get into the fringe, you get into guys that they pasture-raised pigs and they're selling them to Neiman Ranch or they're under contract to them or they have a really small operation where they're packing,

they're producing their own meat and labeling it and they're selling it at country markets or selling at different places across whatever state they're in. There's a gamut. So I think it's going to be a lot, and it has happened I mean consolidation is happening the biggest of the hog producers

have gotten bigger and like we I think we said this on maybe the last podcast or one before that you know in any business because of costs and because of regulations if you're not growing a little bit you're going backwards so we feed for what I would say is a

is a smaller of the biggest integrators So it's a family-owned company. They actually do have ownership in a packing plant. They're involved in a group. There's a group that owns a packing plant. And that's who are contracts with. And the way it works is when you decide you're going to build a building.

In the past, you could pretty much figure out if you could make it work to build a building. building and then you could go search for what we would call an integrator, somebody that wanted to give you a contract to feed pigs, and there would be multiple people that would be interested in that. Being in southeast Iowa, there's a lot of people that have interest. Today, it's not that way. You would have a much more limited number of people that would be interested in giving you a contract to build a building. And the reason for that is because of, what it kind of happened in the last couple years with COVID and the packing plant shutting down. And we talked about that in one of our first episodes when we touched on this subject,

it was kind of like a lot of these integrators, I think, were like, oh, I don't know if we want to keep scaling. Because for a while it was like, let's just keep scaling, keep scaling, and keep scaling this thing. And then that kind of happened. And they were like, oh, oh, boy. Maybe we should rein it back in a little bit and not take on so many new growers. So when I said, you know, before you decide you were going to build a building and then decide what packer you were going to, or what integrator you're going to feed for. Well, a lot of these integrators were in the same boat in that they were just growing and they would build the sow unit and figure out who was going to build buildings for them.

And then once they knew they had all that, they'd go to all the packers and say, hey, we're going to have an extra 40,000 pigs a year. do you want them? And they would just play one against the other, and all these packers were like, yep, give us more, you know, we'll take more. But then when, as Sawyer said, when COVID came, and we slowed down the line speeds, and we reached, we kind of reached capacity, basically we reached capacity as far as how many pigs we could, we could harvest a day. And when that happened, all these packers went back to the people they're buying pigs from and saying we'll guarantee you this much but we're not taking any more than that and if anything happens like COVID COVID was what they call in most contracts an act of God in other words it was out of their control so when they when you

signed a contract with a packer and it said that they guaranteed that you could deliver to them you had to promise that you were going to deliver, you know, 8,000 pigs a day or, I don't know, 2,000 pigs a day or whatever it was, when COVID came, that, they were able to breach that contract because it was an act of God. And because they didn't, they couldn't take them. They just couldn't, they could not process that many pigs. And that changed, that changed the business. So today, I'm not sure if you went to like the, the group we feed for, I'm not sure if you went to them and said, hey, I want to build another building,

whether they would let you do it or not. Because they're at capacity. They haven't really added any more sows. They don't need more space. And not everybody's like that, but a lot of the biggest integrators are that way. And that brings up another good point in the fact that there's been a lot of talk

within the federal government that they wanted to slow the line speed down. In other words, how fast they are processing pigs. They wanted to slow that down in the name of biosecurity for the workers as far as COVID and also for worker safety. And sadly, the people that that will affect the most are the smallest producers that they buy pigs from.

Because if you were processing, just say that you were processing, let's keep round numbers. Say you are processing 10,000 pigs a day. And because of regulation, you can only process 8,500 pigs a day. So you need to shed 1,500 pigs that you're receiving at that plant every day. Well, who is the easiest person for you to get that out of?

You can argue that it's your biggest producer, but since you depend on them for 900 pigs or 1,000 pigs out of that number, it's probably easier to just say I'm going to buy less pigs from the guy that brings me two semi-loads twice a week, just say, well, we're not going to keep doing that. Well, that hurts the smallest producer, and you drive out, you drive more people out of the bottom. I, that's the problem with government is they don't understand how, for as much as they have a lot of smart people, I don't think they understand how basic economics work. So, am I worried about my contract? Yeah, I am. One thing that we did when every time that I built

a new building and then when Sawyer built his building, we just renewed our contracts. So my first contract would have been up. It already would have been up. But when I built my second building, I re-upped it for 10 years. When I built my third building, I re-upped all three buildings for 10 years. And when we built Sawyer's building, we re-uped all four buildings, or all three buildings plus his for 10 years. So we have a contract.

Now you can say that, you know, that limits you because obviously, costs have gone up and the building costs has gone up and basically we renewed for the same price that we've had but the other side of it is today there is an excess number of buildings out um not as much in our area but northwest iowa and other places around um and we talked about this about how some of these sites that guys built that were bigger they're not nearly as desirable so some of those sites could be sitting empty or they've gone to somebody else or they've had to figure out how to feed their own pigs, whatever it is. And that's all, I mean, all of that can happen. And as we go forward, it's probably not going to be any easier. And the other thing I'll say is, and Sawyer can

probably touch on this, I will guarantee you that 10 years from now, and maybe five years from now, we probably, we may not be raising pigs the same way we are today. We may have to, change the feeders. We may have to change the square footage. We might have to change. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero, more like Habinero. More like Beniere yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Change.

Throw hay down. We might have to, we might change the control. There may be a technology out there that, and we've got to adapt. Yeah, and the other thing I would just say about contract safety. So really, we, we're not going to get, I don't think we're going to get lowballed. Just because dad's talked about a little bit about our buildings, but, you know, we, kind of build our buildings. If you're, if you're the, you know, the integrator we grow pigs for, we've, we have some

relatively newer kind of modern hog barns, you know, we've built over the last. And we try to keep them, we try to keep them in good shape. So what I would just say is do your absolute best to be the best grower you possibly can be. take care of your barns, mow it, you know, put rat bait out, do all the little things because if you're a good grower, not only for the pigs, you're taking good care of the pigs,

but you're taking care of the barns, the facilities that these pigs are being raised in, you're trustworthy, you don't lie, you do it, you know, you're doing a good job. Chances are, you're probably not going to get cut when times get tough. Right. So, you know, it's a concern of ours, but we try to do our absolute best to, you know, do a good job.

And we have a good relationship with the integrator we grow pigs for because we've been doing that. Dad, we've been doing that for a long time. Another thing that kind of helps us a little bit is we're a little closer to, you know, their feed mill. So it's just like easier for them to get feed to us. and et cetera, et cetera. So if we just keep, you know, just do a good job. Do a really good job. Keep up on your buildings.

Do everything you can to do so it's a no, it's not even a question if they're going to cut you or not. But if you're somebody that slacks and you don't take care of your barns, you better be a little, you know, you could be a little concerned. Yeah. And the other thing is keep the lines of communications open. So, you know, I have a little bit different experience in the fact that I've been in the industry and I've been on both sides of it and all that.

But you know what? I make it a point to call. People that I used to work with and the people that we work for, I make it a point to call them and talk to them because you might only see your fieldman every week and you might see a vet when something's wrong, but the guy that runs the production and the guy that runs the money,

they all want to know what's going on too. they don't get the chance to see that and they don't and they enjoy knowing because at the core of their business the core of their business is the people out making sure that the pigs that they raise get to the packing plant and are full value so they value that interaction and so i want and they want to see that you care yeah and i make it a point to talk to those guys whenever i can um and you know what heck i'll make no bones about it what we're doing right here I mean, pretty much everybody that listens to this and sees what we do and sees the social media knows. They know we raise pigs under contract, and they know who we raise them for.

We don't, we don't, we don't, we don't, we don't, we don't, we don't, we don't, we don't, we don't, we don't, we don't, we don't, we don't place to talk about that, but, I mean, pretty much, you don't have to dig very hard to figure out who we actually feed for and all that. And I feel like that's, that's an asset to us, because if it's, anything ever changes and we get in a situation where we need to look for somebody else, our business is no different than any other business, and I've said this so many times, the contacts you have, the people you know, the associations you're in, the relationships that you build will pay you dividends in ways that you never thought possible. And so we both, we love meeting people within our industry and outside our industry.

And the more connected that you can be, and the more that you can associate with people and just become known, the better off you are. Yeah. So, yeah, it's just like dad said, and I think what we're doing for the industry is good. And here's the honest truth about contract finishing. And I've said this before, but most people, most people that are raising pigs today are contract finishing pigs. and we are really truly the first open family farm to come out and kind of say, this is what we do. This is how it goes.

No one really wants, it's been kind of this unknown thing that farmers really just don't talk about because you want to keep it family farm. And we are a family farm. Dad and I take care of all these pigs by ourselves, just him and I. I mean, it's still a family farm. We're not controlled by the company we grow pigs for. You know, they help us out.

We talk to them. They are just there. And you'd want it that way anyway because they're professionals. They have a vet on staff that comes and let us know that, you know, you need to do these things. They got a fieldman that comes to our barns to ensure that we're doing the right things. I mean, for you guys, the consumer, honestly, you might be a little bit more concerned with a farmer that's really not having that that is producing pigs by themselves because no one is going over there to check. their barns. You don't know, I mean, most people, you know, they're doing the best they're doing the best they can. They're trying their best. But, you know, with this, you're, you know, we got people that are coming to our barn showing up, making sure we're doing all the right things. We get audited, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But it's been this unknown hidden gym that people contract finish. And there's a big misconception out there that these packing plants own everybody. We're, we're owned by the packing. We're owned by Smithfield. We don't, we have no association with them. We load the pigs on to the truck. and that's where they go, and that's the only, that's really the closest association we have with them.

Yeah. And they don't control us. They don't come to us and, you know, no, dad and I, it's family, we're still a family farm. That gets thrown around a lot, and I'll just say, you know what, the people, the integrator we feed for, they're a family farm. They are a family farm. So their own, there's a family that owns that operation. And you know what? Yeah, they've got, they've got, I don't know.

know how many people they were i mean 100 people a couple hundred people working for them but that's a family operation that grew it grew and it employs a pile of people and at the end of the day it's a family that makes the decisions and you know what's beautiful about that is they aren't making those decisions a hundred percent because oh we can make an extra 10 cents a pig by doing this they make a lot of those decisions because they live in the communities that they raise these pigs in. And they look at. They care about people. They care about.

They do what they do because they want to employ as many people as they can because, let's face it, there aren't that many opportunities in a lot of small towns around the Midwest. And they're one of the biggest employers. And I just hate it when people start bagging on, you know, all these integrators are just, all they're just monsters. Corporate, corporate. They're all corporate farming. They don't care.

They don't care about anybody. Corporate farming. It's not true. It's not true. Most integrators are started at their family, their family operated. They are. And it's, yeah, it's gotten to a big scale. They're to a big scale.

But that also creates huge opportunities to do the best job they can, to have the best accountability they can, and to deliver a product to the supermarket, that is safe and that is consistent and is good. And, you know, I don't know why it is in America that we have this thing where we love a success story, but then we love to tear it down. And it's like it's great when you're growing and you're growing and you're growing, but then you get to a certain, and it doesn't matter what industry is, you get to a certain point,

well, then you're just a monster. You're just a monster. and you need to pay, you need to pay. And I'm like, you know, worry about your own problems. And I know, I realize where I'm getting on a tangent, I realize there are situations where corporations get to a point, there's no accountability, they make decisions based on the bottom line, their stockholders and all that.

We're not talking about that. When you're down to the level of the people that are involved in the hog industry, it's not a corporate boardroom like that. It's people that still get their hands dirty that still know where everything gets done. They still care about their community, that still care about the people that work for them. I mean, yeah, these documentaries obviously have a agenda, clearly.

Oh, yeah, 100%. People that come out with videos and say that the Packers own everybody have an agenda, and they're not in the industry. They're not in the industry. We're in the industry. We live it every day. And I can just tell you, they care. We care.

Everyone, everything. Packers care. The guys that are raising the pigs for the integrators, we care. Yeah. And all that go on that, you know, when you're, you know, you talk about these packers. All of these packers are terrible. We take immense pride in what we do. That is the beautiful thing about capitalism and competition.

So, um, I, we deliver pigs to at least three different packers, uh, that are processed in the hogs and they're putting that meat in packages, and they're putting their label on it, and they're selling it all over the world. Guess what? That is an ultra-competitive market. And if there is any, if there is a hint of problems

when it comes to food safety, the quality of the product, how easy it is to cook, does it taste good? Is it efficient to make you? You know, is it easy for me to make for my family? Those guys are working on that 24-7 because they're in the fight of their life because they're competing against everybody else doing it.

It raises everybody else. You know, it raises the bar. It does. That's innovation. That's how innovation's created. That's how products get better. That's how we've started from here. This is, I wanted to say this.

And every time I want to bring up something and I forget it, and I regret forgetting it because then it doesn't come to me until you. I got it. I got it. If I, I hate, I hate when I see people say they don't like this new farming era. They don't like how productive things are because it's just, it's too productive. There's too many people involved. It's too large scale. It's too large scale. You're, you, people don't understand that not even a hundred years ago, you know, we could barely feed ourselves. Everyone was a farmer. Everyone was a farmer because we had to be because there wasn't, it wasn't productive enough. We're at this point now, and Pomp talked about this on Pomp's podcast. He's like,

we're at the point now that not everyone has to be a farmer. Right. And you can go do things and have jobs in other areas and we can still feed the whole world with just what 1% of the world is farming and producing the food for the rest of the 99% of people. Why would we want to go backwards? We got we got to get more productive. There's going to be more people getting born. And I think we need to do, you know, we're doing our very best we can to be productive and have ethics and care for the people and I think everyone has that in mind and we get a bad rap food production gets a bad rap because we produce this food and we produce it very efficiently but you know what it's up to you it's up to you whether you eat the chicken that you buy whether you eat a grilled chicken breast or whether you eat a chicken

nugget. It is not up to the farmers in the world to tell you to make good choices. And it's the same way with pork. You can decide that you're going to eat a sausage egg muffin or a pork ribby grilled, you know, or smoked or whatever. Or whether you're going to dump a gallon of barbecue, although it is pretty good when you dump a gallon of barbecue sauce on. I'm not, I love, I love pulled pork nachos and I am ready for winter. I've got my winter weight on, but that's my choice. And I feel like we get a bad rap. Everybody says, oh, you guys are producing trash food. No, we're not. It's how you decide you're going to ingest it. And I don't care what, I don't care what product you're selling. That's how it is. And I don't know how to change that. But, you know, whether you feed that pig,

whether you feed that pig in a dirt lot and give him acorns and Lord knows what else and granola and you claim that that makes that pork loin taste different or you buy a Tyson porkloin from Fairway, there is not very much difference. I would venture there's damn near no difference between it, but the marketing is done way better. But then when you take that home and you decide if you're going to grill it or you're going to roll it and breading and deep vat fry it, that's up to you. And that's the beautiful thing about what we have. We have such a supply of food that we're able to make bad choices

instead of many countries in the world where you can't even get meat. If you get meat, you are lucky. You're damn lucky. And so anyway, I think we went a little over on that. Well, I think it was a really good news necessary. The only, I will give, I'll just say this, that's my last thought. I'll give the pasture raised, whatever it is, credit.

They do a really good job of marketing and storytelling. Yes. And what we're doing right now is we're telling a story of how it actually is, how most people, most farmers in America that do pork production or, well, that's what we do. This is how it's done. We're going to show you how it's done. We're going to tell you everything and why it's done. And we're under the belief that if we can do that,

you know, no bullshit farming, we give you 100% transparency. Most people, they're not going to fall for the marketing gimmicks that the pasture raise industry likes to throw out there. That, yeah, the acorns is what does it. The acorns there are the one. And eating dirt.

And eating dirt, that's what makes the pig taste better. Well, in all of it. And, you know, the pasture rage crowd, which I'm fine with, if I could get $7 a pound for it and I had a way to do it, I, heck, I do it. It's good money, but I don't, I'm not that way. And the other thing is, you know, the people that say that we're monsters and that, you know, we've got these pigs and, and we treat them terribly and it's a horrible environment.

I work in that environment every day. If it's horrible, I wouldn't do it. I brought my pigs inside a long time ago because I know what it's like to raise them outside. I mean, everything we do, there's a reason we do it that way. And it's not about how we can just control these animals and make, you know, make their lives a living hell most of the time you know you walk in the barn they're hoo hawn and running around and loving life because they're together they're eating they got food at their disposal and water and a place to sleep and somebody's ear to chew on yeah they were a little passionate

we're a little bit passionate was that would i give you a question or is it my question well how long are we going right now i don't know we're ways we're not that bad all right we'll just have to be quicker with these ones yeah this is a really in-depth episode y'all These are good questions. This is the way I like it. Oh, well, what's going to be the next big leap in innovation and hog production? Yeah, I'll try to wrap this up. This can be a, I can talk and talk and talk and talk about this,

but we kind of talk and talk and talk on the last one. So I personally believe what the next innovation is is exactly what barn tools is doing. The sponsor we got on TDF, we will absolutely love the product as pork producers and just farmers that, you know, do animal agriculture. Just the whole idea that you can get all the information on your mobile device, cloud-based, you know, we don't have to mess around with them. An annoying alarm calls that don't take your password ever, you know, it's just, it's completely changing the game for us.

I love it. And I think they're just going to get better. They're going to, I think that, you know, if these companies partner up together, like we have bridge rid bin vibrators and we have some bin slides, bridge rids that automatically open and clothes and everything like that. Is that, is that, are we far enough along that we can talk about that? I think I'll get it out. Yeah, soon.

So talk about that for a minute because that's something brand new. Yeah, so Bridgered is a, they're a bin vibrator company, you know, everybody hates beating on their bins, and these bin vibrators have absolutely been a game changer. Dad got the bin vibrators a while ago, and we have them on. I've had them for a few years. We have them on all our sites, and they're amazing. And Bridgerid went ahead and put bin vibrators on my new bouleaders. barn and they also got these new automatic bin slides that came out and they open and close the bin

automatically and there's three bins and each in the workroom you have this little box and it has you know open it has on for a switch and that's the bin that it's on it's got an off switch and then it's got one that's like in standby so you can have a bin on that's feeding out of and then you got a bin that's on standby and when the bin that's on is off is that a fee goes empty it automatically closes those slides and goes to the bin that's on standby and opens those slides up. And then when you come in the next day and, you know, your pig's got feed and you don't even know that the bin switch, well, on that control, the bin that went empty has a red light that comes on. The bin that switched to has a green light on. So then you, you know, you switch the toggle. So you make the bin that went empty off.

You put the next bin in standby and the one that it's feeding out of now is on. So that's a really good way to, you know, always give the, make sure the pigs always have feed because that can be a problem sometimes when you, you know, you're sleeping at night and then the bin runs empty and you come up there the next morning, the pigs are out of feed. Yeah, because so the way, the way that works is our feed systems are set up that if, if they'll only run so long before they time out, they've got a timer on them. And the reason they do that is because if you ever, because pigs are like convex and they have nothing but time to dream up ways to screw you over, I should probably, trademark that put it on a t-shirt yeah anyway um say they get a drop tube say they get a tube out of a

feeder well you don't want the feed system it's just set to where it'll just run and run and run because if they happen to do that you could auger an entire bin a feed into the pit into the pit of that building which that makes nobody happy and you'll fight that for years so every time the feed system starts it's got a timer set that it'll only let it run so long and you try to dial that in I mean we about how long it takes for a whole set of feet to fill aside if it's empty and they should never be empty so they should only run you know maybe like 20 minutes 25 minutes whatever if the feet hangs up in the bin they'll run and run and run and run and they'll just run empty then it'll time out and it won't restart because you have to manually restart it right so the bin vibrators fixed that

problem in that if your feet hangs up 95% of the time unless you happen to have it deal where... Massive chunk of feed. Yeah, or, you know, I don't know. You had a seam that leaked in the bin and you got a bunch of wet feed in there or something. It's rare, but it could happen. So it keeps that feed flowing, but then we've always fought just exactly what you talked about. If the bin runs empty in the middle of the night, you don't know it. And with the automatic slides, it will sense.

So it's got some really great technology in it in the fact that when the bin vibrator turns on, if that bin is empty, it senses the amp draw on the vibrator. It will over vibe. And it understands that it's vibrating that hard because the bin's empty. So it says, oh, I got to open a new bin. So then it will shut that slide and it'll open the next bin and shut that vibrator off and turn on the new one. So my systems don't have the automatic slides.

So you have to manually open the slides and then you shut off the vibrator. that's on the empty bin and you turn the vibrator on on the next one. And open up the slides manually. Yeah, and all that. But what Sawyer has is the newest version. And that's the thing is... Another thing I want to throw in there in the wintertime. Oh, gosh.

Slides get frozen. So you've got to go outside and sit on the wet snow or ice and get a crowbar and try to pry those slides open. And it can be a major pain in the ass. So it's another great thing with the automatic bin slide is those slides will open up and they got a, They got a little motor on them, DC motor on them, and they'll just open up no matter. Well, I haven't really given a shot.

We haven't tried it out yet, but I hope, I'm hoping that that I won't have to do any more crowbar. But full disclosure, we haven't gone through a winner with them yet. Yeah, we're still trying them out. But so far, I'm very, very happy with them. So back to what I was saying, I was thinking, you know, barn tools has all this information that you're going to be able to see your water consumption from your water meter. You can see the temperature. You can see the humidity in your barn.

I think they're just only going to expand those type of, you know, that company and those kind of technologies is huge for the, not only for the integrator, but for the producer, the grower, the independent farmer that's growing the pigs, it's massive. And I think they're going to be able to maybe, you know, not saying any of this could happen, but if they partnered up with BridgeRaid and maybe you could get a notification, hey, your bin went empty, bin 11 went empty. We switched to 10. Order feed for Ben 11. Or maybe they just order it. Maybe they'll just order it for you. So you don't even have to do that step, which I can see those automated things happen. Another thing I could see happen is an automatic power washer. I power wash barns. Dad and I's barns, well, dad's barn, many times, well, not many times, about a few times until I was like, man, this stuff. Enough that he knew that he didn't want to do it. Yeah, it takes about 16 hours to do one 1,200 room, so 32 hours total to do a whole 2,400. and it is a grind.

It is a grind. I give mad props. Anybody out there that power washes full-time, that's your job because you got some. You're earning your money. You are earning your money and you are a tough, tough son of a gun. But I think for a long time, that's kind of how it's been. And there's really not been any innovation.

So if we can get an automatic power washer to wash these finishers, that'd be huge. I don't care if you got to run the damn thing three times through the barn to get it as clean as what we get it clean now, as long as I'm not up there for 32 hours. Well, it's time. Labor is going to get to be a bigger and bigger thing, and I think a lot of the innovation is being driven by that labor.

Yeah, because less people want to do all that work. So you got to figure out a way to automate it that way. And then Dad and I had, well, Dad, this is kind of Dad's thing. You could get a drone, these indoor drones, that there's a little box at the end of your barn that it opens like this. It's like a metal box on the outside of your barn. and this door opens up on the inside of the barn and your drone flies out and it goes through the pens and it's like a camera feed and it shows you if there's, you know, any pigs that are, you know, got a limp.

There shows you any, if there's any deceased pigs in the pen. It shows you if, you know, the feeders are full or empty. You know, it just, it does a little bit easier for your chore. So when you go up there that day, you know where you're going, you know, and it gives you like, let's say it rocks through the barn for you or flies through the barn for you and then it gives you an update. and says, we have a pig with a limp in this pen. The feeders seem to be out on this feed line, and this pig is the cease in this pen. So it makes your chore list that easier. You know exactly where to go. You don't have to walk through, and it's just a time thing. I could see that being a thing, too.

So there's a lot of opportunities out there for people if you're techie or into engineering and everything like that. Or better yet, I'll just get me a Tesla bot. Yeah, so I'm optimistic for sure about it. I think dad is too. I think there's a lot of innovation that could be coming here, but I'm very happy with what's coming so far. And I'm very happy to have the platform we do because we get to try cool stuff. We got to try some really cool stuff. And I believe in a lot of the companies that are coming out with stuff and the products we got, I'm really excited about them. So I think it's just going to get better and better. But those are kind of our ideas of what we think's coming. You know, there could be a lot more that we didn't touch on, but those are kind of the ones that come to

mine right away. All right. Last question. I don't think we're going to get to the bonus questions. I don't think so. So make this one relatively click as well. How long do you think before African swine fever reaches America or does it at all? I am an optimist and I'd like to tell you that it won't, but there are so many ways for it to get in, both in product and people. I don't know. I think we could have it here within three years. And I don't know. I think we're doing the best job we can to prepare for it,

but I don't think commodity groups and the hog industry in, I don't think we, I mean, I think we do know how serious it is, but if that happens, it'll be life-changing because, I don't know, roughly 30% of the pork we produce, give or take, is exported. And the initial reaction to it making landfall in the United States would be that all those exports would be halted. Yeah, talk about what happens if it does. So if it makes landfall, if it's found anywhere in the United States, the first thing that happens is you would set up a quarantine zone within so many miles around the area where it was found. So if it was found in my finisher, if it was found in my finisher here and where we live,

there's probably 27 finish, 27 other hog buildings within three miles. Three mile radius. And I'm not sure what the radius is for quarantine, but I think it's, I think it might be five miles. Three to five miles, something like that. And within that radius, every pig in that area would be euthanized and no animals would be allowed to leave. and so in the situation we're in, none of those deceased animals that you euthanize would be hauled to a rendering.

Like you're not going to take them to a rendering plant where they make choice white grease and all that. They're going to be either composted. I don't know. I don't think you could burn them. And people talk about compost them, but I don't think you would compost them because you would be worried about birds

getting in the compost. So I literally think that you would probably and this is this is not official i'm just thinking this through and i think this is still a little up in the air but i think what it comes down to is you would either a compost them in the building in other words you euthanize every pig in that building crank the curtains up shut the fans off probably plastic the fans so that no air is moving out of it shut the door and let them naturally compost which would be a horrendous stench if you're in the building um but don't move those out and let them compost there or you would bring them out and you would bury them immediately.

So you would be digging a big hole and burying those animals. And you're talking about thousands and thousands of pigs. So in that three mile radius, if they find another case, then the radius goes out. And then it goes another three miles. Or five miles. Or five miles. Whatever. So not only is that whole radius getting euthanized, but if they find another place with African swine fever there, then it goes another three to five or whatever. It's bigger and bigger and bigger. So, potentially. It could really, really, really mess some things up.

And there'd be a lot of people that are unhappy. And yes, that would be, that would just be, this is a big concern in what we're doing. And a lot of people are aware of it. And it is probably the number one scariest situation that could possibly happen. It would be an economic disaster on the scale of which, in ag. I don't know if you'd ever seen because the amount of money, I mean, it's not a situation where the U.S. government's going to write you a check for those pigs because it would be on a scale, depending on where it happened, it would be on a scale that I don't think

you could write a check like that. And so then- Export shut down, right? Exports completely shut down. Export any meat. Transportation shuts down within a, I don't quote me on these numbers, but I think it's like a 20-mile radius maybe. So no pigs moved, everything would just have to stop. So if you're at a sal unit that was in that, you would have to euthanize the pigs that you were weaning because you could not move them out to the finishers. So that would be another whole deal. But between the lack of exports, the lack of corn being ground, the lack of pigs and product being transported, the economic impact would be ginous. It would be so trastic. Yeah. And so, you know, it would ripple out through everything.

You'd have shortages of meat at... Too much corn. Corn price would be awful. Terrible. And, you know, not enough product to supermarkets, depending on where it got here and if it continued to spread. Now, the one thing I will say is I think America is probably much better equipped. to find it and to quarantine it and to stop it than probably any of these other countries that it's been in. Yeah, so it's been in China and where else has it been? It's been in China. It's been in Russia. It's been in part of Europe. It's been in Africa. It hasn't been in the Caribbean since the 80s. It was in the Dominican, I think, in the 80s. I wanted to say this a little bit. We talked about this before we shot this. Why don't you think if China's trying to, you know, it's, like you said, it's a really

weird relationship we have with China because they need us for some things, but also they want to overfrow us as the number one power to be that they want to be the dominant and they know that America's been dominant and they want to take us out a little bit. I feel like that's my assumption. I mean, that's how I feel. Why don't they just drop the virus in the United States if they want to tear us down? They need us until they don't need us. And so that, I mean, easy answer to that is one right now they need us to buy their products so the united states is the biggest consumer of chinese made products in the world so they need that um i think they're the they think i think they're our biggest export partner in other words they need our pork and beef and corn

and soy to feed their population because the one thing that the chinese do know we talked about how there's many different ethnic groups there and the number one goal of the ruling party, because they are all of one ethnic group, to keep control of everything else, you have to have a well-fed population because people that are not, people that are well-fed are much less likely to rise up, but if they get hungry enough, they'll do a lot of things. So it's a really weird situation in the fact that on the one hand, they are our biggest competitor on the world stage politically, militarily, and economically,

and then they're our biggest trading partner. And so I don't know if it is in their best interest. I mean, they have ASF, and here's the thing. So if you have African swine fever, it doesn't do anything to the meat as far as to consume it. It's not a virus that is transmissible between species, unlike, you know, bird flu or whatever they called the swine flu, any of those. So it doesn't affect the consumption. However, because we're trying to keep it from moving around the world, that's why they cut all the exports.

So the question will be raised if it continues to spread through Europe and then we get it in the United States, the number of countries that can export pork around the world gets really small. And I'm not sure if they can supply the need. So then you get the idea, will we continue to export? And if we do, then the economics of it are not near as great. But today, it is a huge. And let's just be honest. It doesn't affect humans.

It doesn't affect humans in any way. So you don't have anything to worry about it as far as humans. You're getting a virus. It's not going to be a new corona. Right. So the number one priority is keep it out of the United States. And so, you know, when you go to the Caribbean or you go on vacation, don't bring beef sticks back from China or don't bring,

just don't bring meat products back from some country and put it in your suitcase, because that's just stupid. So I guess we'll leave it at that. Yeah, we're optimists about it. I mean, so one other thing I wanted to say is like, okay, we were talking about contracts here. Yeah. What happens? Well, your contract is only as good as the end.

It's no different than any contract with any contract with any, anybody, you know, I agree to raise pigs for you and you're going to pay me. Well, when you have no money to pay me and I can't pay my bills and I can't pay the mortgage, then I'm probably not going to raise pigs for you. But I might be in a situation where I can't raise pigs for anybody. I feel like if that happens, the government's going to have to step in. Well, they are going to have to because if all the integrators and all the people produce in pork are essentially eliminated but everyone starts back to zero right i mean your food's production when we get this whole thing sorted out is going to be still terrible i mean that would all have to be worked out because that

would be an unprecedented event that there's never been ever it's never happened so the need for it has never been there so it would all have to get figured out Let's just hope it comes, if it ever does come, let's hope it comes after Biden's administration. Because if he handles this situation, if he handles that situation as bad he's handled Afghanistan, we're going to have to, I don't know, we're going to have to figure something out. So because Sawyer is modeling the brawny paper towel guy today, he looks like he's ready for fall. Hey, it's flannel season, baby. I'm getting my inner lumberjack fit looking here. I'm ready to lay some wood.

You guys said too. So throw your finals on. It's fall, baby. Come on. So on TikTok, there's a gal on there that she came up with an absolute genius. I just, I would saw it and I was like, that is so genius. So she is selling t-shirts, and I would shout her out, but I think she's already got more orders than what she can probably do. She has a t-shirt with the brawny paper towel logo, which is the guy.

in flannel with the trees behind him and it says bounty underneath only hers is joe biden and it says Biden and the the tagline for brawny paper towels is the quicker picker upper and hers says the quicker effer upper I didn't throw the I didn't throw the bomb but you know what I mean and I saw it and you know love him or hate him if that was if that was Trump's tagline, I would still laugh my butt off because that's just genius. That's great capitalism right there. Great capitalism on her part for sure.

She definitely probably made a buck and she's going to continue to make a month. She's going to print a few T-shirts. For sure, she's going to make some money. That pretty much wraps up the questions. We didn't get to the bonus questions this time. We'll get them into the next time. But keep asking questions. We'll keep doing polls where we get closer to the Q&A episode.

We'll do our Instagram poll and ask you on Barn Talk and YouTube channel. barn talk YouTube channel this will do farm YouTube channel um we'll get to your questions so just keep asking them i thought these are really good questions really in-depth these are the kind of questions we want we want to be able to go really in-depth we might have went a little maybe too in-depth on our 50 minutes yeah we think we probably did a little bit longer than we thought but these were some really important topics that we could discuss a lot about so just keep asking questions again if you guys got any value send it out to your friends coworkers family whoever

you know you got anything share this episode you know send the link to whoever and we'll rate us rate us on iTunes rate us on Spotify give us a review let us know what we can prove on let us know what you like about the show what you'd like to see more of

it just it just promotes a show out further for more people to discover us and hopefully you can give them some value so that's all we ask from you guys without further ado we'll see you back here next Friday and hope you guys have a great rest of your week So take care.

Thanks for watching and listening.