Barn Talk - Farm Bankruptcies Are Up 70% and Nobody Is Talking About It

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

Welcome to another episode of Barn Talk! In this Hot Topics edition, Sawyer and Tork open up about what's happening in rural America and beyond.They kick things off by reflecting on an exciting month filled with outstanding guests and conversations, and they offer heartfelt thanks to listeners for making it all possible. Today's episode covers some of the biggest issues impacting farmers and rural communities: rising farm bankruptcies, major changes in the ag markets, and mounting financial pressures faced by producers. Sawyer and Tork discuss the struggles of rural hospitals under federal budget cuts, share first-hand perspectives on input costs, and question whether the government or politicians have any real solutions for the challenges ahead. But there’s plenty of optimism, too. The hosts explore how innovation and technology—like AI, robotics, and the upcoming public offering of SpaceX are beginning to reshape the world. They share practical advice on adapting to change, insights into market trends, and examples of the unwavering American work ethic they see all around them. If you want to stay informed, inspired, and connected to the pulse of rural America, this episode is packed with eye-opening updates, personal reflections, and plenty of straight talk from the barn. JOIN THE BARN TALK NEWSLETTER & GET LIVE EVENT ACCESS: We're on a mission to get 10,000 subscribers, and once we do, we're hosting a live event at the barn! Sign up to get exclusive access to tickets and details.👇🏻 Help us get there: https://www.joinbarntalk.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c  LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  APPLE ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● Barn Talk Instagram ➱ https://www.instagram.com/barntalkshow  ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS    ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4    ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS ● Sawyer’s X ➱ https://x.com/SawyerWhisler  ● Tork’s X ➱ https://x.com/TorkWhisler       00:00 Thanking listeners for their support 08:57 Discussing Iran's deal proposal 14:27 Discussing farm credit non-performing loans 21:12 Expanding farmland and environmental impact 23:18 Comparing farming now and the 80s 30:22 Impact of hospital closures 33:11 Community fundraising for local hospital 43:18 China's economic challenges and chip development 44:17 Current geopolitical tensions and impacts 52:22 Tesla robot factory transition 59:41 Reflecting on recent Star Wars movies 01:04:49 Growth of Cursor's AI platform 01:06:09 Building rapid, efficient data centers 01:11:49 Discussing innovation and entrepreneurship 01:17:13 Learning AI with Dan Martel 01:25:18 Importance of reading and grounding 01:27:04 Balancing self-improvement and self-care 01:34:15 Embracing personal responsibility 01:38:09 Suggesting guests for Barn Talk ------------------------------- ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠  The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional, professional broker or financial advisory. Understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this website at your own risk. RISK STATEMENT– The trading of Bitcoins, alternative cryptocurrencies, NFTs, individual stocks, etc. has potential rewards, and it also has potential risks involved. Trading may not be suitable for all people. Anyone wishing to invest should seek his or her own independent financial or professional advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. What happens at the barn stays in the barn, but not today. We're going to let it all out for you guys. Today is going to be a Barn Talk hot topics episode. Man, the month of May has been awesome at Barn Talk. I don't know about you guys, but for us personally, we have had a hell of a lot of fun recently this month with the guests that we've had come to the barn. And this is the first time we've been able to sit down and actually shoot a hot topics and talk about what's going on in rural America, the world, just give you guys our

perspective on things. But I just want to say before we get into the nitty gritty of the show, thank you to every single one of you that supports this show on a weekly basis, whenever you can sit down and listen to us, whether you see our shorts and like them or comment there, whether you're following us on, you know, YouTube and watching there, or you're listening on Spotify or Apple. Like, we, I feel like we've really taken a step this year and we're going to continue to take a step this year. And it's because of you guys. And the caliber of guests that we're landing on the show just continually gets better and better and better. And I just can't say thank you enough to you guys for that. Because without you, this would not, the show would not be

where it is and we would not be having the success that we're having. And we just can want to continue to bring on more and more awesome guests that can deliver as much value to you as we possibly can land. They can possibly land to you guys. So you guys know the drill. Before we get into the show, if you get any value from this show, all that we ask is you share it out with the people that you know. It's a ticket to admission to watch or listen to the show. And it really does help us out tremendously in growing this show. And, and, and, making it one of the top podcasts out there. Another thing you can do to help us out here at BarnTalk is leave our view on Spotify or Apple. The more you guys do that, the more credible you make our show,

which in turn allows us to have more great guests come to the barn and have some awesome conversations with us. Last thing you can do to help us out here at Barn Talk is go sign up for our weekly newsletter. We're talking about everything rural America within that newsletter. We're sending it out weekly. just giving you guys our overall take on things. And we have a goal with that right now. If we get to 10,000 newsletter subscribers, we're going to throw a live event right here on the farm, on the farm in the barn,

have some great whiskey, bring on all the great guests that we've had, bring the great guests that have been on the show to the farm, to the live event and try to put on a cool kick-ass party. And as a special treat, every person that comes, you're either going to get a brush and paint, or you're going to get a hammer and nails,

or you're going to get a broom. Sorting panel? No, none of that. This is all about beautification. Okay. This is going to be like that chapter out of Tom Sawyer, where he got all the kids in the neighborhood to paint the fence. Yeah.

We're just going to give you a little project because, you know, there's a lot of beautification that needs to be done around here, especially if we're going to have company. My daddy always said Never hurts to have company Because that's when you finally get a lot of shit done So we should have it done ahead of time But you know since you're all coming

I figured tool belts for everybody I like that idea That'd be great Take some hours off our shoulders for sure But I mean how do you feel about the month of May For Barn Talk? Loved it Yeah loved it

Some of the best guests They're all great guests but just some of the conversations, and, you know, we say this all the time, the greatest part of having this podcast is the people we meet. And, you know, people are like, oh, yeah, that's probably cool. You get to meet these people. And they all have a story. But just the way that people can look at a problem. And as an example, our last guest, he, I'm not going to talk about it right now, but there was just a casual conversation that we were having and the way he looked at that problem that I gave him, and I've looked at that problem like eight ways from Friday, totally different take on it. And he just, the way it connected, and that's what's great about it is the people you meet and the conversations you have. And we're glad we can share those with you. And we're definitely going to keep doing it. We got a lot of great guests coming in June. I guess I should probably

say that I'm going to be at World Pork Expo on that Tuesday and Wednesday. So if any of you are up there, I have to do a round table about manure separation. I think NutraDrip is kind of putting that together. And then I'm going to be in the Heinhold booth on, I think, Tuesday from like, I don't know, two to five or whenever they get sick of me. So if you're up there and you want a cold drink and get out of the sun because it looks like it's going to be hot and dry. Go down there and say hi. And what else do we got going? We got a few more live events we're going to do this year. I think we got one in the winter and we got a few in the summer. I'll keep you posted on that. We'll definitely be at the state fair this year at least one day. That's for sure. So when we know more about that, we'll tell you

guys because we love, like we said, we love meeting you guys, hearing you guys, talking to you, knowing your stories. It's amazing to connect with you guys. So, no, when we know more about all that stuff, we'll definitely plug it on the show and make sure you guys know about it because we want to see you guys. We want to meet you. So how's the, how's the markets? How are the markets looking? Well, gosh, we haven't done a market update. Well, over a month since we did market update. So it was funny when I was going through and I was updating the prices. It's amazing how some things have changed a lot and some things haven't changed very much at all. They've moved a long ways up and down, but at the end of the day, they ended up being about where they are.

Corn for July, 456, December corn 481, local 437 at one of the hog feeders. And Big River, Big River is the winner. $4.44. cents delivered in for them. And beans for July 1187, November beans 1175, ADM and Burlington's got 1164, and if you want to drive across the river to the great state of Illinois, you can get 1192 in Quincy. Bean meal, $330 a ton. Wheat for July 628, and the USDA cut the wheat crop by what, like 25%, something like that. it's very dry out there and the wheat crop does not look very good. I think only about 25% of it is rated good to excellent.

I think they might have gotten some rain, but it's probably too little too late, not enough, and so we'll see where that goes. And along with that, and I haven't really heard anybody talking about this, but I saw a story the other day that there is a Leninia, this is a Leninia year, and supposedly it is one of the strong, strongest they've recorded since they've been keeping track.

As far as how much heat the ocean temperature, the ocean temperature is four degrees warmer than normal in that part of the world, wherever that phenomena forms. And the repercussions of that can be pretty bad for a lot of wheat crop around the world. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. hogs for June $97 December hogs $78 and part of that comes from

our good friends of the USDA that somehow think that we're going to have just a whole bunch of hogs come to market later in the year and I don't really see how that's going to happen I have one of the worst hog groups that I've had

in a long time got purrs brought clean pigs in from Illinois and not clean around here and the death loss terrible and that is very common around the Midwest and I just don't really see those hog numbers being at the level that they think they're going to be come the end of the year but hey I can be wrong June cattle 250 dollars feeder cattle 353 dollars crude oil 89 bucks there is we'll talk about it but there is a lot of speculation that they're finally going to get some kind of a deal

done with Iran. Iran put out a statement just a little bit before we came on that I got the text. They said that they basically think they can reach an agreement with the United States and that they pledged to open the Strait of Hormuz in less than a month after the U.S. leaves. So they're not going to open it. Their proposal to the U.S. is, well, we'll open it, but we just won't open it while any of your Navy is sitting there. I doubt that probably flies very well, but whatever. Tesla $439 a share and June 12th,

the SpaceX IPO comes out and that ticker symbol is SPCX. Look for that. It is a huge valuation. We're going to talk about it because, yes, I'm still a geek. John Deere, 529, 529.

Their earnings were down. We're going to talk about that a little bit. Bitcoin, 75,000. gold, $4,459, silver, $67. T-bills, 30-year treasuries hit 5%. They're actually a little over 5%. Inflation, a lot of people thought with the new Fed chairman, it was a shoe in that we were going to cut rates. Consumer Price Index is probably going to get revised upwards because the government is going to figure out what every single one of you and I know, everything costs more, and it keeps going up.

So 5% and the 10 years 4.46. And my last piece is, Beyond Meat at 77 cents, drop the meat name from their name. Now they're just beyond. And they're going to focus on protein, energy drinks, and supplements. Because once again,

the American consumer has decided to vote with their dollar on value, not virtue of, signaling. And people, when you go to the grocery store and you get a half a cart and it's $100, you are not overpaying when you can just go buy 80% ground beef. And I'd say that after a long and somewhat dubious history, I think Beyond Meat is finally on its way out. And I couldn't be happier. Our market update today is sponsored by our good friends at Contera Ag, Contra finance. It's a tough time in agriculture, and as we talk about today, it's probably only

getting tougher. And if you are looking for options when it comes to financing, those guys might just have your answer. So check them out. They are one of our gracious sponsors of Orntok. All I can say is I'm sick of the gas prices already. Oh, I filled up my pickup. I've been filling up my pickup. And holy smokes, that's just... What was it? I think it was $130. I filled up my Sequoia yesterday with 87 and it was $95. Yeah, it's insane. We're back to the grind.

It's like it was when I was in high school. Yeah. It's not fun to fill up your pickup and I know everybody's feeling it. But man, that's, that's tough. We got to get that shit figured out. Yeah, and my barometer, when I go to the grocery store with sweetheart, Hormel black label bacon, was $8. I think it was $8.

I think it was $7.99. I don't think it was $8.99. That's pretty expensive. It's getting pretty expensive for some bacon. Well, our first topic's going to be farm bankruptcies are up 70% in the Midwest, and nobody's talking about it. it. So 315 family farm operations filed Chapter 12 bankruptcy in 2025 up from 216 in 2024 and 139 in 2023. That is a 70% increase in just two years. The farm credit total loan volume has grown from

$398 billion to $456 billion since 2023. Non-performing loans have more than doubled to over percent. Net farm income is expected to drop another billion dollars in 2026 to 1.53.4 billion dollars. Farmers are increasingly borrowing to cover operating costs not to grow. A farm journal survey of nearly a thousand farmers found that 39 percent described themselves as persuadable heading into the midterms, including 50 percent of farmers who usually are always vote Republican. Yep. We're starting off with kind of a doomy one, but it's a very important one. I have one last statistic I want to throw out there.

94% of farmers said the Iran conflict is hitting their operation through high, wait. Yep, I'm still on the right one. 94% of farmers said the Iran conflict is hitting their operation through high fertilizer and energy costs. 78% named input costs as their top three challenges. Yep. a couple things about those numbers you said that within farm credit their non-performing loans doubled and were at 1%. I thought that was interesting because that's probably one of the things that will get brought up by the media and that's probably a reason why maybe they're not

saying much about it because on paper you'd go, oh, well, you know, 1%. But what they don't tell you is farm credit is pretty finicky. When you get to the point that you are what they call a non-performing loan, basically they do everything they can to kick your ass out of farm credit. And that's where you get into secondary lenders and all that. So, I mean, amongst the farm credit system, those loans that they make are heavily collateralized. In other words, like for me, if I needed more money to operate on,

they basically have way more in collateral than what they're going to loan me. And if you get to the point that that number gets too high, they're going to work hard to shuffle you off on somebody else. And, I mean, this thing's a monster, and it's just compounding. And that's the problem. it is a deal where you have losses. There's a lot of farmers out there that have losses, and then what they're doing is they're refinancing,

burn in equity to refinance that or amaturize that against land. They're taking operating loan losses, and they're amateurizing that over multiple years against equity, against land. And that works for a while, but as farm income gets stagnant, when you can't service that, you can't service it. And you can only kick that can so long. And the problem we got,

I mean, the problem we have is cash flow as far as, you know, this year it looks like we may get farm prices may increase. But what if you're in, what's your inputs done? are they going to increase as much as your inputs have? I don't know. Yeah, and the whole political thing about, you know, 50% of people that normally vote Republican are thinking about they're persuadable in the midterms

and, you know, probably the presidential election next time comes around. But I think the mindset needs to be, nobody's coming to save you because the next end administration could just make it even worse. You know, I mean, it comes and goes. I'm not saying that, like, like Trump's kind of dropping the ball a little bit right now.

Let's be honest. Everybody's feeling it. Farmers are definitely feeling it. He's not helping us in that regard. He needs to solve this deal sooner rather than later. I think everybody can agree with that. But like at the end of the day, you could have, you know, the other side get voted in and it make it even worse. Maybe they'll come and save you.

Maybe they won't. But I just wouldn't plan on it. Don't put their, don't put your trust in politicians to come save you and, and, solve this problem because it's bigger than just government. I mean, their government's only going to help you so much anyway. And, you know, I think, you know, if you guys didn't listen to John Haskell's podcast

that we had our last episode, I mean, that's a guy that's all about taking matters into your own hand and controlling your own destiny and figuring out of a way. And I think, I just think this is a time of an ag where you, thinking outside the box is almost a necessity at this point.

It just really is. This is a time. I mean, it's not quite as bad as the 80s yet, but could it get there? Maybe. And I just think, I don't know, man. I mean, the stuff that he was talking about of,

there's some ways to diversify your operation, make it more profitable, but you might have to lose that identity that you've always carried of. We're strictly grain farmers, or we're strictly cattlemen or whatever, right? Like, I just think if you want to stay and survive, you might have to lose the identity that you've held for so long

and change some things on your operation, and it might be uncomfortable, but it's what's going to save you at the end of the day. That or, you know, be a big farmer and have a lot of cash on the sidelines, and you're probably sitting okay right now and just knowing that you've got outlast everybody because the market will turn

at some point. Yeah. But it's like you said, though, too. I mean, I don't know. Like the cattle guys, it looks like the prices are going to stay great for the foreseeable future because, you know, her numbers aren't going up. And it's going to take some time for her numbers to grow. And demand doesn't seem to like it's going to go down anytime soon because people

are going to buy beef. But on the grain farming side, everybody's planting corn and soybeans. Yeah, we need to lose acres. Like you hear some guys say, well, we need to lose some farmers because we got to stop growing corn and soybeans but you know what at the end of the day

the big farmer is probably going to end up buying another farmer is going to end up buying that ground and keep it in production most likely anyway so I don't know if you're really going to come out on top at all but I mean we're over supplying the market with corn and soybeans and I don't know how long we can keep playing that game

but it seems pretty Blake right now in that regard I felt myself getting hangary. I had to come get a snack. If you could see crop issues before they cost yield, would you? That's exactly what Sky Scout from Landis does. With advanced in-season aerial imagery and agronomic insight, Sky Scout helps farmers catch stress earlier and make smarter decisions across every acre. Learn how SkySkout works for your operation at landis.ag. Now, I'm going to finish my snack and get back to it.

Just a side note, I had kind of forgotten about this, but I was talking to a guy yesterday. And it's just so funny how things just run in a cycle. Do you all remember when the sustainable fuel standard got passed originally and the corn market, I mean, that run we had in the corn market, do you know how much ground came out of CRP? and do you know how many fence rows that were grown over that guys were farming 10 foot from the fence row

all got dozed. Like I just think about in our neighborhood here how much scrub ground got cleaned out, dozed, fences torn out, ground coming out of CRP, old farmsteads that somebody bought the farm, you know, and the house was dilapidated, all that stuff got pushed out.

Hell, there were people talking about that on the interstates, they should move the, they should move the, uh, boundary line, the, the, the right-of-way of the interstate in closer so we could grow more corn because we're going to need all this corn. And, and, you know, there was no, there was no voice of reason going, oh, yeah, it's not, you know, it's not always going to be like this. No, it was hammered down, boys, this is what we're going to do. Well, now here we are. And, Now, weather, weather can change a lot of things. And we could have a issue somewhere in the world that changes the demand.

You know, it doesn't take, it doesn't have to roll too far for wheat to get to a point where the ground out on the fringe will go back to wheat. And you'll cut, you'll cut corn acres. and maybe that, excuse me, maybe that, you know, gives us a bump. But I go back to this, I don't think people realize outside of farming, we're so far, like $5 corn today, $5 corn today is not what $5 corn was 15 years ago, 10 years ago. not when your input costs have done what they've done. And we're just in this vicious cycle. And so I don't know how you get off that train,

but it is tough right now. And the comparison between this and the 80s, I don't think you can compare the two because the number of farmers and the number of farmers that were kind of a diversified farm in the 80s versus today where we have so much specialization and just the scale it was.

which you've got guys operating. I think it's one of those deals where if it goes poorly, I don't think you'll ever have the numbers of people of farm. You'll never have the numbers of farms fail that you did in the 80s just because we have so many fewer than we did then. But the size of the losses to banks and to elevators and to input companies, there's co-ops out there that like one or two of their customers went down, it'd take the whole co-op down.

So, I mean, I don't know. I don't know what the future happens, but it is a darn good time to know your numbers, and it is a darn good time to be holding money when other people are spending it if you can make it. Yeah, and I think you've got to think outside the box. Yep. You just do.

It's a different time. It's a different time. Even if you are a big guy, you got to be looking at the future and be thinking, man, do we want to keep doing, do we want to keep invested in this grain farming deal?

I mean, how long can this game keep going? Will it turn around? You know, I don't know. It's just, we got to do something. Something's got to change or we got to, we got to do something differently. And I think everybody is putting their ear to the ground, trying to figure that out.

But I think the, There are answers out there. I mean, a couple things. I think there's guys out there that are profitable grain farming because they run equipment that's paid for, and they do their own maintenance, they do their own repairs, they're low-cost producers.

They're not overpaying for rented ground. They may not be renting any. You have guys that are doing, like, I hate to beat the drum, but doing what Mock's doing, where you're finding a way to add another level of income in there, growing three crops in two years. You got the people on there that are,

they're grazing or they're doing something, they're growing something, that ground is never bare. They're either, you know, rotate, they're grazing in the fall or they're doing something. There's things you can do, but to just do it the way we've always done it, I don't think it's going to work. And the last thing I'll say about the politics is,

everybody would vote. Politics, politicians are like accountants. If you ask somebody the name of a good accountant, they'll tell you the accountant they know, and they'll say he's okay. But if you find a good one, let him know because they're interested in changing. Politicians the same way.

The politician you have, he sucks. You know, look at all this. Boy, if you give me a better politician, I'll vote for him. Okay, well, what's the other party going to throw up? I don't know. They may look at that guy and go, well, I don't have any faith in that guy. And I mean, the truth is, if you're looking at politicians to save you, you better get your ass to church because those, they're not going to, they're not going to help you any.

Yeah. So that's all. I agree with that. That's all. I agree with that. Topic number two is the one big beautiful bill is gutting rural hospitals. So the 2025 federal budget reconsal reconciliation. Reconciliation.

package included massive cuts to Medicaid projected at roughly one trillion over the next decade. Independent rural hospitals could lose an estimated $465 million from Medicaid cuts alone this year, averaging over $630,000 per hospital. More than 40% of rural hospitals are already operating out of loss with 417 facilities vulnerable to close. The Fed, announced a $50 billion rural health transformation program grant fund, but a lot of hospital administrators

are warning it is just a drop in the bucket and cannot be used for normal operations. This is one of those things that I think all of us in rural America worry about. I mean, it's kind of one of those things that probably doesn't get talked about

enough, but man, you want to talk about consolidation that worries you, consolidation in health care is one of those things that you see a ton of. And, you know, we're thankful for the health care we have in this country as far as when you get in a serious accident or you have something really bad happened. I mean, we're lucky you. We have the University of Iowa, one of the best hospitals in the country, close to us that we can go and get patched up and most likely get fixed. But man, it's nice to have a local hospital. It's nice to have a local

hospital and we keep this it's worrisome when you have an emergency or if you have something you don't like i know a lot of people like in the you know in the dakotas and and real deserts where the small towns have gone away and there's no rural hospitals driving driving an hour plus to go get a baby delivered i mean that's that's serious that's tough or any emergency like that you got to drive a very very long time or whatever to get some help that's that's not that's suck Yeah. And it just seems like this has not, obviously didn't help hospitals. No. Help healthcare. And this, this isn't just a rural hospital thing because what's interesting is, so we have a local hospital in our town and it's actually very well run. If you go back,

I don't know, when was he on, the guy that runs Washington County Hospital, we had him on the podcast. Todd Patterson, Sharp guy, and I think he's done a great job. And that hospital, I think, is actually profitable, which is, you know, surprising. But you mentioned the University of Iowa,

Mercy Hospital in Iowa City, which was, you know, well-regarded hospital, and it had a chain of clinics around eastern Iowa. That closed, and it was losing a pile of, money. And there was a big uproar about it because basically they put it out for bid and I don't

know how many people like bid on it, but the University of Iowa ended up buying it. So now then it's part of University of Iowa. But that's, I don't even think they call it University of Iowa Hospital anymore. It's, it's, it's, they've rebranded because they've gotten so big. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's something else. But that was an example of, I would say, you know, probably a mid-send, and Iowa City, Iowa is by no means a huge city, but it's, you know, it's good size for Eastern Iowa. But to a lot of communities, hospitals is kind of the lifeblood of that community. Because one, if you are, Iowa's an older population. So usually if you have a small town and it has a retirement community in it or it has nursing homes in it,

it's a pretty good idea to have a hospital there. And when that hospital closes, then it makes it harder for everything else that is servicing a more elderly clientele. And it's just another dagger in the heart of small town America. And that's the problem. And I think, you know, when we had, when we had, gosh, David Guy running for governor, Zach Lane. When we had Zach Lane on, we talked about this. Small towns all across America, all the retail is getting replaced.

And what do they got? You got a Dollar General. Who's the biggest shareholder in Dollar General? BlackRock. You got health care that's either getting consolidated or going out of business. And then what happens, when that happens, you have to go to the big city hospital, and those are all owned, you know, they're owned for profit. And you're just funneling money. Every cut of this just funnels money out of the community. And it's just another reason why we need to do everything we can to buy local if you

can, but also, uh, we need to do a good job, a better job. I don't, this is kind of a stretch tying this into this subject, but it's why you got to have livestock in these small communities because nothing brings, nothing keeps money in a community more than livestock and that money gets spent local. Well, that's our experience, but I, I just think what I like the whole idea of builders, builders staying in rural America and building. I think entrepreneurs and people working for themselves, if you can stay and. build in a community and understand how important that is, we need more of that. We need more people

that want to stay in rural America for the betterment of that community, for the betterment of that town. Because, you know, there's so many examples from all the towns that were around of cornerstone businesses that keep the town alive. And honestly, like our hospital has done an amazing job fundraising and without the great people of this town that care about it, the people that have been in operation that have businesses or our farmers, they're the ones pledging money to keep the hospital, you know, upgrade the hospital, invest in the hospital, which in turn invests in the community. And that's just another example of why it's so important to stay and build in a small town and stay and build in rural America. I don't think that gets talked about

near enough. But that's what we're missing is we're missing, yeah, people are leaving these small towns, but nobody's staying to build in these small towns. And I get it. You know, it's appealing to want to go to Austin, Texas, where all these young entrepreneurs are building and getting around each other and making each other better and learning new things. But at the same time, there's a lot of, I think there's a lot of pride. And I think there's, it's really cool if you can be one of those cornerstone businesses and build in the heartbeat of America because that is it's very, very important and it's, it's the fabric of what has made this country at this country. And I know for just our neck of the woods where we live,

like, if we didn't have the people that's decided to stay here and build, we wouldn't have a community. Yep. That's right. And that's, that's, I think that's really, really important and definitely doesn't get talked about enough. I, one thing that I wanted to say is, you know, politicians cut trillion dollars for Medicaid and then throw a $50 billion $50 billion. $50 billion back as a grant. It's kind of like, they kind of like abandoned rural America and then they kind of like

try to like, it's kind of like the whole farmer bailout. Yeah, it's like the whole farmer bailout thing. Like, oh yeah, we're for the farmers and, you know. We're for small towns. Yeah, nobody, no farmer is really asking for bailouts. All the lobbyist groups. So, well, I'm doing my- Cover their ass a little bit.

it seems like. Yep. There's a lot of that. Yeah. There's a lot of that. Well, I'm doing my part because I turned 55 on the 29th and so any of you that are of that age. So I got to go have a colonoscopy. So rather than being violated in the big city, I decided that I was going to get it done right here in my local town. Are the Amish going to do it? That, I, oh. They got to stick their dirt finger up your butt. No. Now that, that is actually worse. So thank you for that. No. I don't, think so. Maybe that is how they keep cost down. Maybe they got an Amish surgeon that's going to do my colonoscopy, but I don't know. Anyway. What is that? They just, they stick their thumb up your ass. Is that how that goes? That's your, that's your prostate. Okay. So colonoscopy, they stick a camera

up your ass. Oh. That's where you get a drink. That's where you get a drink the, the Miralax powered gatorade to where you just basically office from the bathroom for an entire day until there's nothing left. And then they, they go up to see whether there's anything in there. Any polyps and cancers. Oh, boy. Well, let's pray for nothing up there, but that's, they put you out for that. Oh, God, I hope so. I hope so. Yeah, now that I think about it, I don't think Amish could perform that act. No, you can't do that with a gas-powered lantern.

No, you can't. I don't think it'd give you enough life. I asked the doctor if he, like, cuddled me when I was done, and he didn't seem, he took a little offense to that. so I don't know. Well, yeah. Let's move on. Happy birthday to you. Yeah, you bet you. Let's see here.

You know, do you want to talk about the whole Iran deal? I think we could give the, I think we could give the, I think people are exhausted over it. I kind of feel that way too. I mean, I, it's gone on way too long. I don't, I think Trump missed, I think, I think he totally misguessed that. as to how long that was going to take. Well, I just think we should give them the numbers, but I don't know how long I want to stay on this one.

I mean, nitrogen fertilizer prices have spiked 25 to 30% since late February. Andhydrous ammonium jumped from $8.28 a ton to over $1,123 a ton in Illinois. By mid-April, that is 27 an acre increase for corn. 28% of nitrogen solutions jump from 400. $536 to $543 a ton. And it just, you know, the Middle East controls a massive share of the world's urea supply and energy shipping routes. You know, when this happens, this is the result you're going to get. And I don't know if they just didn't think about that.

I mean, we've speculated on his thought process, but it's hard to know with President Trump. what he's necessarily thinking. I don't know if he thought that we were going to just go in here and rain hell fired down on them like we did with Venezuela and just make this a one-two McGregor and get that out of there or what. But it's not going that way. It hasn't gone that way. And the repercussions of it have been really tough on agriculture,

but tough on everybody because oil is where it is today because of this as well. But oil is $89. bucks. Oil's come down quite a bit from where it was, and I think it's going to keep coming down because I think that what we realize out all this is the world supply oil is a lot greater. Like, you hear it in abstract numbers and you don't put it together, but basically the United States can export a pile of oil to the rest of the world. And the countries that are most hurt by this being closed is Asia, China, and Europe, and the European

they chose to sit this one out. And so I think Trump feels a little bit like, well, you get what you paid for. You should have probably come and helped us out. But I don't think they ever planned on the Iranians just decided and screw it. We're going to attack everybody. And like they attack the Saudis,

Qatar, UAE, everybody. And so part of the problem we have with nitrogen was there's a huge nitrogen factory, if you want to call it that processor, right on the coast in Qatar. And I think Qatar might be United Arab Emirates, but I mean, it's going to take years to rebuild what's damage there,

and that's going to have repercussions in the fertilizer market for a long time. But, and I mean, Ukraine and Russia, same thing. I mean, we're just in a point where there's a breakdown in global trade, and I don't think it's ever coming back. I think that you need to surrender yourself to the fact that the idea that the United States is going to patrol the world and guaranteed free trade to everybody around the world is done. That's never coming back, no matter who the president is. And I also don't think that any politician's going to fix this. Whoever comes next, if it's not a Republican, regardless of who it is, they're going to get,

if it's a Republican, they are going to say, stay the course because they're not going to throw Trump under the bus. And if you get a Democrat, they're just going to blame everything that this is all Trump's fault. And the reason we can't fix is because it was so screwed up because of what he did. And they ain't going to do anything for you because they're politicians. But anyway.

Let's talk about, since we're on kind of like trade right now, let's talk about the China trade deal, though. Yeah. China agreed to purchase 17 billion in U.S. ag products annually. then China's own ministry of commerce called it a guiding target, not a hard commitment. So, you know, Hog Futures ran up on the news and, you know, kind of came back. But, you know, it just, it was relevant to what we were talking about. I mean, what, do you think that will actually happen?

Because it seemed like the guy, like when it first came out and broke, they made it seem like, oh, they're committing, they're pledging, they're going to do this every year, $17 million annually to buy U.S. Ag products, but then it was kind of like, oh, no, but it, yeah, we maybe can do that. Well, so they're very, they're very

strong partners with Brazil. They buy a lot of stuff from Brazil, and that's where they get a lot of their soybeans. So every bushel that they declare they're going to buy from us is a bushel. They're not going to buy from Brazil. So I don't know what that, how that relationship

is, whether it's, there's any strain there that they see an opening to strengthen ties with the United States. I go back to, I guess there's a couple things. On the hog thing, I've said this a lot of times, and I probably catch a lot of flack, and I'm going to show up at World Pork Expo. Somebody will probably bounce beyond this, but pork producers need to get over it because that huge export market that we had in China will never come back. it will never come back.

And the reason it'll never come back is because China's demographics is the worst in the world so bad that they quit, they don't do a census. They don't release population numbers. And the reason they don't do it is because it's worse than what even they thought it was.

The one child policy kicked their ass. It will be so much worse than what Japan, everybody looks at Japan and they're terrible. China will be much worse. everybody talks like i just thought it was so interesting the way the press portrayed this like that china they still portray china as a rising like they're a rising power in the world economically no they're not they they are at their peak right now and they're starting to decline and the reason they're starting to decline is because they have they have printed so much money

and engineered this growth for the sake of growth, they don't have enough labor, their labor is aging, and their cost of labor already is the point they can't compete with other places in the world that can provide labor cheaper than what the Chinese can. They have an amazing infrastructure, and they also have the ability because you don't have to deal with elected politicians, that if they decide they want to do something, and the example I'll give you on this is uh, chips. So when they went through this whole thing where the United States and countries around the world basically cut them off from the latest chip technology, they poured everything they've got, the amount of money they've poured into research and development to build chips, to build the

smaller, uh, I don't know, five nanometers or whatever it is chips. Their technology has just jumped in that because the sheer amount of, of money and and resources they've put behind it. They can still do that. They're printing a lot of that money out of thin air. But from the commodity side, China will never be the export partner that they once were for us

because they just don't have... There isn't hardly any gas left in the tank. That said, Cuba is done. Venezuela is done. Russia, we are basically letting the Ukraine, It doesn't even hardly get talked about anymore, but Ukraine is launching drone strikes at will anywhere they want across the countryside of Russia.

They're hitting power stations. They're hitting pipelines. They're hitting drone factories. They're hitting fuel depots. I mean, pretty much it will. The Chinese economy and a whole generation of the Chinese – sorry, not Chinese, the Russian population. China is going to be alone.

Russia. Well, Russia is falling, but China is going to be alone. Iran, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia. They're all, and that is all part of Trump. That's what Trump's trying to do. Cuba is on the, on the edge of collapse, basically. And that's not by accident. I don't know why this doesn't get talked about.

more because he is systematically dismantling China's partners that they were able to use to get raw materials. That country runs on resources that they have to import. So anyway, all of this to say that there wasn't much in that trade deal. There was the ag,

there was a bunch of planes from Boeing, a little bit of tech. I think we're going to loosen the strings on technology to them. And that was about it. The thing is, there's probably a lot of stuff that's off the record that nobody knows about or it'll come out later. But on the ag side,

we don't have any guarantee from them. But even if they gave you a guarantee, what's their word worth? The thing that the Chinese looks at everybody else in the world and it's the same thing as, as, I'm trying to think of a better example, but basically if you're not Chinese, they don't have any loyal to you.

They're not going to, they'll say whatever they want if it serves their purpose. So I don't know. I think the only thing that will save them is if they can outwin us in the AI race. I mean, that's, I think they're putting their whole wagon behind AI

because they know that they have the infrastructure, they have smart people there, and they know that it's a race. So if they can win that, they can... But let's just remember one thing about China. But what I'm talking about with this is, all that to say, like, it still doesn't...

It still doesn't go away from the argument of they have less people to feed. I mean, you're never going to have the peak of what we had because there's just less people to feed and there will be continue to be less people to feed. Even if they win the AI race or not, they're still not going to import as much food as they once were importing. Yeah.

And the main thing that no matter what you can talk about, anything you want about their dominance in this or they're rising in this, they import almost all their oil. And they have a blue water navy that they can't sail more than 400 miles from shore. And you cut off the oil, you cut off the country. They're not a superpower because they cannot control their own destiny. So how do you like that? I like it. America, fuck yeah. Oh, boy.

All right. Let's get into human, humanoid robots. Or do you want to go to SpaceX? Well, I think it all kind of plays in together. Yeah, okay. I've been looking at this and, you know, I know everybody hates AI.

Everybody hates talking about it. But guys, it's here. It's going to, it's here to play. It's a really important development in our, in the human race right now. the world of as we evolve, like AI is just one of those important things that you can't not talk about, okay? Um, so here's some facts for you. So figure AI humanoid, humanoid robots spent 11 months at BNW's Spartanburg plant contributing to producing over 30,000 vehicles and

loading more than 90,000 sheet metal components. Japanese, Japan Airlines committed to a three-year program deploying humanoid robots at Hyanda. Airport for baggage loading, container transport, and cabin cleaning. These are not science fair projects. These are robots clocking in for 10-hour work week-day shifts and replacing human labor in physical and blue-collar jobs. If they can load sheet metal and add a BMW plant, they can throw square bales, they can run a packing plant or work a grain elevator.

The technology is getting there. And, you know, I know that everybody likes talking about AI and how it's not replacing the blue collar jobs. And I don't think it will replace blue collar jobs for a long time because you still need the specialty. There's so many variables that go into it. There are so many, you have to be precise. You can't half-ass shit.

And I don't know how precise a robot can get. But I can say, like, I can foresee robots in a packing plant, nope, like easily. I mean, you're already, you've been to one. You've seen it with the jets and the, the water and all the stuff. Like they got that thing automated, but that's going to continue to automate.

Factory work, I think, is going to be robotic before we know. Like, that, I think, is going to be the fastest adoption of robots is those type of repetitive. Repetitive, systemized, factory jobs. But, I mean, everybody likes to talk about how robots are so far from the future. But here was just some hard facts. I mean, these are some real things going on. some real, I guess you'd say, trials or projects. I mean, they're working at plants. They're working at, you know, Japan is doing this three-year program, trying to get them to work, you know, for baggage and

loading and container trans. I mean, people are really playing around with this whole thing. And so it's something to keep your eye on. I mean, you know, I think staying up to date on AI and robotics is something that I think a lot of people should do because as humans, you got to see what's coming. You got to see what's coming. You got to see, are you in an industry that could get displaced? Are you in a job that could get displaced? Be on the lookout for that stuff because if you don't, you could get displaced and not realize it, not plan for it, not see what's coming. And that's going to hurt way more than versus if you're proactive and knowing what's coming. But it's pretty insane. It's pretty insane. Robots is something that's, that's pretty crazy.

Yeah. You know, Tesla is basically planning to be their own best customer. So they shut down. I think they're done. I can't remember if the last car is rolled off the line yet or not. I guess I don't know that for sure. But in California, their original Tesla plant, when they built a new plant in Texas, that became the Model S and the Model X plant exclusively, and they have discontinued those two models. So they only make the Model 3 and the Model Y now. And that plant is being converted 100% to the Tesla robot. And the first customers of that is Tesla. They're going to use them, and they are using them at SpaceX. They're using them at Tesla in Texas.

And they expect to use them a lot on the Robotaxie. And it's going to be a very gradual... I mean, this isn't like this is going to happen overnight. Because one, there's a cost involved. Two, there's an infrastructure to be able to recharge these. And our electrical grid is already going to be maxed. So, I mean, it's going to take a while. But I think, to your point, what you said, I mean, repetitive jobs within the factory world are probably the first ones to get displaced.

And to say it, you know, to put your head down and say, oh, that'll never happen. Well, I mean, it's probably going to happen. It's already happening. And Japan, it makes sense because. we just talked about their demographics are so poor. They honestly do not have enough young people. Their society is one of the oldest in the world. And so, you know, they need baggage handlers.

They need people to do things like that, and they just don't have them. And so automation to them is practically a necessity to keep their country going because they just don't have the people. And you're going to see that places, and you're going to see it in jobs where you just can't hire your way. And the packing industry,

how would you like to be the HR director for a packing plan? Yeah. I mean, those are good paying jobs. I mean, when they can get them to work in packing plants, you know for a fact those big packing plants, they are 100% going to move that way because the liability of having all those people with knives, down there on that floor when the lights go out.

Yeah. You don't know what's going to happen in there. Yeah. And, you know. Well, to their, to their, I'm pretty sure I remember this, right? If you go through the trium plant in St. Joe or Sioux City, I think, honestly, the only people in that plant that have a regular knife are the people that work on the Ham-deboning line. Every other cut that's made in there is either a robotic, water, jubble.

cut or someone running a machine that actually does the cutting that doesn't have a knife that's removable. So, I mean, it's already pretty far there. And the reason the deboning line is is because that's as much an art as it is. Like you literally, that'll be one of the last jobs that gets displaced because the people that do that, not just anybody can do it. It takes craftsmanship. Craftsmanship to do it. So. Yeah. But, uh, All that to say, it's not a doom and gloom thing. I'm just saying it's happening.

And I think people need to just keep that on their radar because when we think of AI, I think most people just think of chat GPT. Like that's the reality. But no, it's evolving not only just on how, not just the tools available to us through AI, but also it is going to be incorporated into robotics. And that's going to continue to get better as time progresses.

and I'm sorry, I'm all for it. I'm all for it. Well, and the thing is, the labor is a problem in a lot of industries. I mean, just in agriculture alone, I mean, yeah, I'm not going to lie, if there was a robot that could go into a hog barn and get dead pigs out and spot problems

and make sure that the feed was ran and the water was, there was water in the barn. And just, if you could have a robot go chore your pigs for you, would you do it? Yep. Would you have a robot go chore your turkey barns? Would you have a robot go, chore your chicken barns.

I'm just coming off of one of the worst groups that I've ever had for Per's and I've spent pretty much half my day, every day, for the last two and a half weeks relocating dead pigs to the compost pile because it's bad.

And I mean, it's kind of demoralizing. And I just think, I'm like, you know, if you could get a robot to do this, I would happily chore my barn every day if I just had a robot

there to go check the pigs, remove any deads, and like spot pigs that are, that need to be treated and marked them or moved, and then I'd go do it happily because it cuts my chore time from, from four hours, five hours, whatever

to maybe an hour. Yeah. Well, and, you know, I think if you want to be, if you want to be, I guess, in this new world that we're heading towards. I think being a owner, an owner of assets, an owner of a business,

an owner is what you need to strive to be. The owner of the land, the owner of the hog barn, the owner of the factory, the owner of whatever it is, you're not going to get displaced because you own the asset. The plumbing shop, the backhoe guy,

the, the, trenching guy, whatever it is. Being an owner is going to serve you well in the future. I think that's what people need to think about is because I don't know what industry is, I don't know what industry is bulletproof and what's not. And I don't think anybody knows. We don't know where this could go. But what I do know is, if you want to hedge your bet, become an owner of things. Become an owner of a business, owner of assets. Because whether you got to put robots in there or not, you own the damn thing and it's going to it's going to still make you money at the end of the day no matter if a human's in there chorn of pigs or a robot's in their chorn pigs you know but i definitely

see a future of a personalized home robot that's going to do landscaping that's going to cook clean i mean that's that's definitely going to happen yep i think so anyway okay the only reason i came today was just talked about this one subject soyer sawyer wrote up the outline for every other point we hit because I was just too excited to talk about just one thing. And I'll preface this by saying one that I turned 55 this week. And you know what? I try really hard to keep a little bit of my childlike wonderment of what is possible. Because one of the things,

one of the things that happens to you as you get older is you have there are less things that like excite you and less things that you find like wonderment in and I'm an 80s kid I'm a star wars kid and might I add that the latest Star Wars movie while not as bad not as bad as the final Star Wars trilogy movie or really the last three if you've seen this you know I don't quite understand who in the right mind thought that they should cast Sigourney Weaver in that movie and put her in a star, put her in an X-wing. And two, why is every X-wing pilot my age? Apparently, there's no young people in the galaxy that could learn how to fly an X-wing because every person in that movie is like an old man flying an X-wing. All right, that's all I'm going to say about my geekdom. We're going to talk about SpaceX because SpaceX is, they did an IPO and they go public on June 12th.

It's a $1.75 trillion valuation. And it is the largest IPO in history. It is double the size of when the Saudis took their oil business, a Ramco public there, I don't know, 10 years ago. they want to raise $75 billion in this IPO, and they'll hit that easily. I think they'll raise more than that. So SpaceX is basically three businesses. It's Starlink.

It's the space business, taking satellites to space, launching, taking people to the International Space Station, doing the Artemis Mission to the moon, and then hopefully going to Mars, that's all SpaceX. And then the last part is X-A-I, which is the parent of GROC. A lot of people think GROC as being Twitter, but Twitter is part of X-A-I,

which is in turn part of this IPO. And just to kind of go through how they are getting to this valuation, Starlink is $11.6 billion in revenue last year, and it's growing at 40% a year. It has $4.4 billion in income, and it has 10 million subscribers. And we actually had Starlink when it first started because we didn't have decent internet here,

and we used it for a few years. But it was still kind of spotty because as the satellites launch, and eventually we got fiber going right past our house, so we used that today. But I was very happy with Starlink when I got it. So that 10 million subscribers over the next few years, I mean, the potential is hundreds of millions subscribers. Airlines are using it.

Shipping as far as, you know, you think about a train going across the country. Union Pacific is going to use it because you can have internet to your train and it never loses signal going. the handoff between satellites is flawless. SpaceX is $4 billion in revenue, 17% gross, but it lost $650 million last year. They basically, you know,

they learn a lot, but they blow a lot of shit up learning. So it's not like it's... And then the AI side is $3.2 billion in revenue, 100% growth rate, but it lost $6.4 billion. last year. And so you might be looking at that and you're thinking, well, how in the hell do you get that to that kind of valuation? But here's the part that people don't get. So Anthropic, that's Claude, right? Yep, yep.

So they just signed a deal with XAI. Their pain, their pain, you know how Amazon, they sell space on their servers to business. And it's called, it's called AW. Yeah. So XAI does that in their data centers, and they call it EWS, Elon Web Services. That's no shit what they call it. So they're paid EWS, $1.25 billion a month for use of Colossus 1 and Part of Klos 2, that's two of their data centers. It's $45 billion over three years. So basically you have just taken, you have just taken that $3.2 billion in revenue that the AI said that the AI did last year and you've what what is that that's 12xed it it's already 12x from there um and it's only going to grow and then the most important i think the most important part of this and i'm sorry for all of you because this is probably a little geeky but i feel like it's important so there's a company called cursor and what cursor is, is it's a coding model. It's a, it's an AI platform that does coding. And they bought it. They

signed a deal with them, but basically they're buying them. And they, cursor is using Colossus and that adds $3 billion in revenue and that's growing, it's doubling every year. but their model called Composer 2.5 has only had access to the Colossus data center for three weeks and now it's on track to be the dominant model out there and it's competing against Anthropic. It's a huge deal and it'll be part of XAI. And the other thing that I did not realize this,

but this will kind of blow, I mean, it blew, my mind. So, you know, all of this hubbub about data centers being built. We've got a couple being built just north of us up by Cedar Rapids. And I mean, it's like a five-year deal to build these out. And the amount of money being spent is just, it's insane. And Elon, SpaceX, or X-A-I, they have taken a completely different approach to doing this. What they have done is the big data centers they have, they have built those out like in existing space so they didn't have to pay all the construction costs. And their first AI set, or their first data center, Colossus 1, took 122 days to build. The second one took 91 days to build, and the third one took 66 days.

they can build a data center faster and cheaper than anyone, and they can probably do it without getting sued because they're not out taking up farm ground to do them. And I think that they will become, what will happen is a lot of these companies that need compute, they'll just give up on trying to build their own data center, and they're just going to buy, they're just going to buy compute from SpaceX. And I didn't put this in there, but the guy that is the CEO of Nvidia,

they were asking him about all this demand for his CPUs. And he made the statement that part of the decision making as far as who they sell their GPUs to is based on how fast can those computers be deployed. and there is nobody today that is deploying that technology faster than SpaceX. And so in my mind, what that means is that they're going to get access to these computers more readily faster than anybody. And the last thing I'll say is, I think global compute is a thing. So in other words, the next step in this evolution is to put your data centers in space.

and if you see a pattern here, Elon talked about this like, I don't know, like five years ago. And that is the reason Starship is the size it is, and it's only getting bigger because he wants to be able to deploy not only Starlink satellites, but Starlink GPUs in space,

powered by solar, and be able to not have to build those down here. And I think it'll happen. And like I said, SpaceX, SPCX goes public on the 12th. And I would be a buyer of it all day long. And I think that when it closes on the 12th, its valuation will probably be over $2 billion. I don't know what the closing. $2 trillion. Sorry, I can't. The numbers are too big. And one last thing I want to say about this for any of you that are looking at this and you're like, there's no way that Torque could have that many big words coming out of his head.

I will just tell you anybody out there, and if you're interested in business and politics and what's going on around the world and you want it like concise, in my mind, there's no better podcast out there than All In. And I listen to it every week. And they obviously did a deep dive that I've poorly plagiarized part of the number. but that's where I get my information. And those guys are very sharp.

And so anytime Chimoth would like to come sit down to the barn and have a cigar with us, we'd even play. We'd teach him how to play pepper. He plays a lot of poker, but we teach him how to play pepper. Yeah, that's what I got. I mean, everybody says don't bet against Elon. And I think there's a lot of merit to that because the guy love him or hate him,

he has built a fucking monster. He's a visionary. He is a visionary. He is one of the greatest inventors in human history. I don't give a shit when anybody says, how many guys have IPOed? I mean, he's IPOed a shitload of companies. He had PayPal.

But he, and I don't know how long dad has been saying this. You guys can go back to early, early episodes when dad was talking about Tesla, but dad has been saying Tesla is, not going to be, and SpaceX is different, right? This is a whole other business, but Tesla is not going to be a car company. Yeah. People are going to look back and forget that Tesla started as a car company. They are all about the robotaxy of having cars deployed

in these cities to have the autonomous driving being so good that they're going to overthrow Uber. They're going to have their own cars self-driving themselves or having a Tesla bot in there just for safety protocol, whatever, driving people around and Uber's going to be obsolete because you're going to just get in a Tesla because it's easier. And I mean, his thought process is that eventually the cost of a robotaxie for daily use as far as, you know, you want to go to the store, so you go to the store and when you come out, you order up the robo taxi and then takes you home with the groceries or it takes you to work in the morning, takes you home at night. The cost of that versus owning an automobile,

you're going to look at it, like nobody's going to want to own a car. In a city. In a city, right. Real America is a totally different story. But that and then the robot thing, I mean, he's going all in on the robot thing. He's going all in on the robotaxy and autonomous driving. And then you add this whole other component of another business

with all of this stuff, AI, X is the platform, Starlink, uh, going to space. I mean, the dude is, undeniably great when it comes to innovation and entrepreneurship and being an inventor and pushing. If there's nothing else, you've got to respect that he's pushing the human race towards, I mean, to a level, like the guy is doing real shit that is innovating the world and innovating the human race. I mean, that's, he's not, he doesn't just create a widget

that's stupid. Like, the dumbest thing he might own is X, is which is a social media platform, But it's not dumb because social media is here to stay. But if you want to talk about like just usefulness, social media is kind of stupid. And if you actually think about it in the grand scheme of things of how useful it is to the human race. But outside of that, basically everything he does is big problems for the human race. Yeah. In the world. And what I'll say is there are plenty, especially since he got involved in pointing out all the fraud in government. There is a whole group of lefties out there that hating, that just hating, that he is just this monster, which he don't care. I mean, the guy doesn't care. But what I like about him is this. He is, at his core, 100% an optimist in what is possible and the opportunity for. incredible abundance. He believes this. This isn't, so there are guys out there involved in the AI world that are very, they're almost, they're almost like they have their, their hand

and two sides of the street in the fact that they're driving this technological chain and then change, and then on the other side, they're telling you how danger it is, how dangerous it is. Elon is 100% in the camp of there is amazing opportunity out there and the future has never, there's never been a point in human history with as much potential for abundance as what we have today. Now, granted, there are plenty of pitfalls to that and there's plenty of things that can go wrong. But that's what I respect more than anything about him,

is that he truly is an optimist, and he truly is trying to, everything he does is geared towards optimization and abundance. And, you know, people say, because at this point it's not about the money, because there isn't anybody that's ever going to catch him. If he quit today, nobody's going to catch you. Fuck, Jeff Bays, I mean, you get to that level, well,

none of those guys are doing it for fucking. of money my god they don't give a shit about money it's about it's about the purpose of what they're doing why they're doing what they're doing i mean that's what it is it's the game those guys love the fucking game yeah they want to just build and make the human race better and they want to they're they want to solve bigger and more problems because that's fun that's exciting to them it's not about money i don't think he gives a flying fuck about the money yeah and one more thing i'll say uh this is just pure speculation my part but at some point when tesla transitions to manufacturing robots and robotexies,

SpaceX will buy Tesla and it will all become one company. That's my guess. Probably. So if you're Tesla shareholders, hang on because there will be another stock split. However, at some point, you'll get a buyout and it'll be worth, your stock will be very profitable. This is not financial advice.

This is not financial advice. That's just my hunch. Yeah. So, all right, back to reality. Yeah, back to reality. you haven't geeked out in a while about it. I know. I haven't. You know, if you go back to our earliest, I talked about Tesla a lot,

but it's like it just, we have so much going on, and there's so much to talk about, and there's always stuff that it just always gets kind of pushed the back burner. And I realized, I mean, it's not exactly like, not everybody's quite as interested in it as I am, but the convergence that we're seeing between what SpaceX, Tesla and X-A-I, how it's all coming together. I might get my jet pack after all.

And I watched a lot of Johnny Quest. And I'm like, where's my jet pack? You spoiled the gift I was going to give you. Oh, no, feel free. Don't worry. Feel free. I was thinking about giving you one of those on your birthday this year. All right.

I don't know. Maybe you better get that colonoscopy done with the Amish lamp first. Yeah. You're a hell of a unit. All right. So last thing up. is Sawyer section. So, or Sawyer Spotlight, sorry, not Sawyer section. I should have read that for you. You should. Up next, our last segment is Sawyer Spotlight. Take it away. All right. So I got two things.

One, one is what I learned this week. And we're staying on the subject to AI. So I think in my personal opinion, if you want to learn AI outside of just chat GPT and you want to apply things to help your business today or yourself or how you operate your life and you want to get better with AI so you can just buy back your time and know what's going on and use the tools that are available to the public for your own flourishment. I recommend you check out Dan Martel on YouTube. I think personally he's the best, most credible person to watch when it comes to learning how to actually use the tools available to us for AI. He was. on Open Residency Podcasts a few weeks ago,

and I think it was by far the best podcast on where we are in the world of AI today and how to actually use the tools available to help you. But his personal own YouTube channel on YouTube is also very, very good at actually breaking down how to use these tools. So I recommend that to all of you. I know that this is a subject that a lot of people just, I don't want to do that. I don't want to talk about AI.

I don't want to talk about AI. I don't want to learn it. I don't want to learn it. Don't be one of those people. It's not going anywhere. This is not, this is not crypto. This isn't a crypto boom.

Now, do I think it's going to end in human race dying? I don't think it's going to go that far. I mean, in the beginning, there was a lot of crazy shit being talked about. But I look at AI like I look at social media. There was a lot of people

that looked at social media and said, oh, this is never going to stick. Traditional media is going to be the way forever. Look what's happened. Social media has been around for two decades plus now. It continues to eat away at traditional media day after day after day, and it continues to take more and more market share. Every brand in the world has a social media account if you're a relevant brand.

Everybody knows the impact social media has on a business. Everybody knows how important it is to be successful in business, right? AI is the same way. AI is the same way and it's so early. It still is extremely early, but I'm telling you personal, personal experience, I have optimized, systemized, and bought a lot of my time back by leveraging these tools that are talked about in this podcast with Dan Martel on it and watching his YouTube videos. It's been extremely helpful for me. I'm using Claude. I'm using Manus. I'm using Whisperflow. there's other tools that I'm using that has significantly cut back my time that I'm spending actually working on tasks because I'm automating stuff.

And also help me to stay organized on knowing where we're going, how we're accomplishing things, what are the plans. I mean, it's insane what it can do. So I challenge every single one of you listening or watching. get outside of just thinking about AI as chat GPT. If that's all you, when you hear the word AI and all you think about is chat GPT, if you're one of those people, brother, sister, whoever you are, please for the love of God, get a little more well versed in the world of AI when it comes to the tools that are available to you. Because chat GPT is honestly probably one of the shittiest tools you can use at this point when it comes to AI.

I'm just telling you right now. It's like one of the worst ones you can use. There are so much shit you can do. So I think being competent in this subject, no matter who you are, whether you're a farmer, whether you're a small business owner, whether you're a rancher, whether you're a truck driver, whether you're a well, it does not matter.

Becoming competent in this subject is going to serve you. It is going to serve you. I think it's really, really important, and it's the way that the world is moving. Be an early adopter of it. Don't be somebody that's late to the party. Don't be somebody that's late to the party. I'm not saying you got to integrate

your whole entire life into this thing. I'm not saying you got to give it 100% of your support. I'm not saying that you got to be a fucking cyborg someday. That's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is just do yourself a favor. Just get in and play with it. Just get in and play with it. Do yourself a favor.

I promise you it can help you and serve you in a lot of ways. Look at it as a tool, not as something that's going to displace you, because it's not there. If you use these tools to help you, it's going to help out in a lot of ways. I can testify to this. I am not using it to the extent that Sawyer is using it. However, if you listen to that to Dan Martel's podcast on Open Residency, even I could comprehend what he was talking about, and I actually downloaded Claude, I downloaded Whisper,

and I built like a profile of myself. So it has like a framework of when I ask a prompt, it knows where I'm coming from. As far as told it, you know, who I am. You have a master brief. Yes, it's called a master brief. And what you can do with that is, and we could do a whole episode about it.

But yeah, just get in and play with it. Yeah. So if I can do it, anybody can do it. Yeah, if 55-year-old can do it, you can do it. Hey, 54. If a 54-year-old can get in and do it and download Claude, you sure as fuck can too, okay? Let's just be honest.

Let's be real about it. Yeah. Sawyer wasn't even standing over my shoulder yelling at me while I was doing that. I wasn't. I wasn't. So last thing on Sawyer Spotlight is what I'm working on or wrestling with. And this is something I've talked about on my personal TikTok, but I think it's one of those things that I think a lot of people struggle with this nowadays.

I know I did for a while and it's a constant struggle for me. But, you know, I've realized this as I've gotten older. I'm somebody that is wanting to improve. Self-improvement is really, really important. And I think striving to become better is important. Striving for more is important. so that we can, you know, ultimately leave our mark on the world, help our communities, do great things, serve others, you know, I think you have to become the best version of yourself

so you can be better for the people around you, right? But at the same time, if you do that too much, it almost can become self-obsessing and you never are giving yourself credit, you're always constantly beating yourself up, you're constantly thinking, about what you're not doing right, what you need to improve upon, and that can be a miserable place to be in if you're not careful. And so what I have found for myself is, I think it's great to want to self-improve and I think you should still do that, but try to find ways to ground yourself. If you're somebody like that and you're resonating with what I'm saying, that's where I fell into for a while. And I'm starting to slowly figure out how,

to not stay in that self-improvement state all the time. And the ways that I'm doing that, and I'm going to frame this as grounding yourself, is number one, reading. I think reading's really important, but I think as men, especially, we always are thinking, if you're not reading self-improvement, then what the fuck are you reading for? You shouldn't read. All you should be reading for is for a purpose. I agree to that. I think you should read self-improvement. I think you should read history. I think you should read in general. I think reading is a really important thing for just learning and the human experience. But I also think reading fiction and listening or reading a story that isn't on a screen and on the TV screen all the time and getting into something

that gets you outside of yourself isn't a bad thing. So read some fiction sometimes too. Use your imagination. Use your imagination. It's not going to hurt you. Get into a story that's not on a screen. So reading, I think praying to God and getting in touch with God and just surrendering the path to him and understanding he knows what's best for you in your life and talk to him often has helped me tremendously in grounding myself. Sitting in nature with no AirPods in my head, no phone on me and just being has been good. And what else? has been good too, just getting your thoughts on paper. But these are just some ways that have worked for me to ground myself

and not always be in this constant state of self-improvement, fight or flight, got to do this, got to do that. I'm not good at this. I need to get better at this. And it's kind of helped me just like take a moment and realize and understand where I'm at right now and that life's pretty good and you're doing pretty good. It's okay to pat yourself on your back every once in a while and say, hey, you're not great at this, but you're pretty damn good at these things.

And if you don't take the time to reflect or sit and think about those things or get outside of yourself sometimes, you can just stay in the state. You can just stay in the state of self-improvement and self-obsession way too long. And so I encourage any of you that feel like you've ever been in that state. to try to counterbalance that and find ways to ground yourself and get outside of yourself and your own thoughts of what you're not good at or what you need to prove upon. Because I think as go-getters, that's kind of your innate instinct

is to want to go and want to improve and want to figure things out. But I think you've got to try to find a way to counterbalance that inside yourself. And I know for me that's worked really good. I'm not perfect. I don't bat a thousand when it comes to that. I have good days where I feel like I'm doing a good job at balancing myself out, and then I have days where I don't. Nobody's perfect, and my ways of doing it might not be the ways that you need it. Maybe it's for you going out and being in the woods and bow hunting. Maybe it's shooting,

shooting a bow. Maybe it's sitting in the shop and welding on something or fixing something. Whatever it is, find those ways to ground yourself to get outside of your own, get out of your own way and enjoy where you are right now. So that's my kind of. kind of young man thought of the week and what I'm what I've been wrestling with as a young guy um but yeah that's that's all i got for soyer spotlight you know that's really good you know long time ago uh a good friend of mine his name was ferris bueller he said life moves pretty fast and if you don't stop and look around once a while you might miss it that's true that is those are true words to live by.

Those are true words to live by. He was a good guy. He was a good guy. Easier said than done. Great movie. That was a piece of pop culture. Yeah, has lived on. So a couple things.

First of all, we had a guy stopped by the barn last week, actually, while we were just getting ready to shoot a podcast and brought us a high quality bottle of Basil Hayden. So, you know, I'm not saying that this is a prerequisite if you, if you, if you stopped by, but it was awful nice of him. All the way from Canada. Good guy. I want to just take a minute all this talk earlier about like kind of gloom and doom and ag and, you know, there are people out there that just they will always find a way to win. maybe not just win, but just like to be successful no matter what the hand is that's given to them. And there's a lot of people that I could talk about.

But somebody that stuck out to me this week in one of the podcasts that I was listening to, I've kind of gotten on a little bit of a cattle kick after having John on. because it just, man, it really, it really got me going. But there is a woman from far southwestern Kansas, and her name is Marlene Moore, and you can find her out there. She's done a fair amount of interviews. But she's, and I hate to say this because I don't know for sure,

so I hope I'm not insulting her, but I just did my rough math in my head. And I want to say that she's in her 60s. But she basically, her grandfather died, and she took over her grandfather's ranch at a pretty young age. And she, she is a contrarian. And she basically, she does 12 months of work and 11 months because the way she runs her ranch is, by the time she gets the first of September, all her cattle are gone,

first of September, and she does not buy another steer or another cow or whatever she decides she's going to do until November. So for two months, she doesn't do anything, or she doesn't have any cattle on that ranch. And basically, she's a contrarian

in the fact that she looks at the market and she looks at what she's, given and she is buying cattle basically like number two cattle, cattle that aren't perfect because what she said was, what can you do with a number one steer? You can only do two things. You can either put weight on it or it can die. And it's awfully hard to get margin in that because it's a perfect perfect steer. So she buys project cows, basically.

And then she fixes them on her ranch. And I'm talking at scale. This isn't like me going by and, you know, 20 cows here, 20 steers here and 20 steers here making one potload. No, she makes, she makes a lot. And she's been doing this for a long time, rotational grazing. and just the passion that she has and the way her mind works,

because it's kind of counterintuitive, the way she looks at things, what normal people would look at as a disadvantage, she looks at an opportunity. And it just got me thinking about that's agriculture today. Like that's what we have to do, is we have to look at operational. opportunities that the market

gives us because it's whatever at a discount because it's a problem and find the ways to take advantage of that and make a profit. And so I guess kudos to her.

She probably won't ever see this podcast, but Marlene Moore was definitely inspiration to me this week as I was listening to what she's doing out there. and um yeah i you know if you guys didn't listen to john haskell's podcast episode we did with him last week i highly recommend that you do especially if you are a farmer a rancher or business owner that guy made a very big impression on me uh he is somebody i learned a shitload of

shitload from just from the time that we had dinner with him the night before and had him in the barn. The idea of winners winning, no matter what is, I mean, that's that guy. I mean, he left home at 15 years old and made something of himself. He's a hell of a cattleman. He's a hell of a hell of a producer. He has a, you know, he's got cattle across the country. And then also has another business at the same time. And he has no victim mentality in him whatsoever. He is, and his, what he said in that podcast about our obligation as Americans. I mean, that is so good.

And I think that is the truth. No matter what you're going through, no matter what shit hand you were dealt, you as an American have an obligation to make your life worth living. Make your life worth something, mean something. And freaking do something with the freedom that you have

because if more Americans embody that mindset, I think that America would be in a way different spot and a better spot. We have a lot of people that like to sit on their ass and bitch and moan and not take that obligation seriously. Like, it is on us. It is on us as farmers, as ranchers, as business owners, as people to set the standard of what America is supposed to embody and mean.

I mean, that is the truth. And Annie Fersela, I'll give him his flowers. He's been saying that for so many years, but it is the truth. You don't have to start your own business. I'm not saying you got to be, it's not, you don't have to be a business owner. You don't have to be a farmer. You don't have to be a rancher. There's young people that I know that are firemen that are making a difference in their community that are set in the standard.

They're good fathers, their good husbands, they're good members of the community. They throw host community events for the community. they've started a workout program for all the men in that community and like that's making a difference that's set in the standard of what an American is supposed to be you know and I I just that mindset those kind of people you what you said winners win that that's what we need more of 100% that's what we need more of and I think that would fix a hell of a lot of problems me too 100% I think that's

the answer. I mean, if you're born, if you're born in this country, you're born a winner. I mean, you may not feel like it, but compare to the rest of the world,

you've already won. You've already won. And it's, you just got to go out and figure out what, what is your, what is your piece of the American dream?

Yeah. So, yep, got to go get it. And I'll say this last thing. If, if nothing, else this podcast has shown and taught me is how alive and well the American dream is.

Based on the people that we get to sit down with, not a single one of those people are a victim. Not a single one of those people are thinking somebody else is coming to save them. Not a single one of those people doesn't have an optimistic mindset. They all are looking for the next opportunity. they're all looking for how to better themselves. They're all constant learners. Their egos aren't out of whack. And they're going to win by any means necessary.

And they know a lot of winners themselves, too, that are going to win at any means necessary. And they, that to me has shown me more than anything. Like, American Dream is alive and well, and I truly do believe it. And because we've been exposed to so many of these types of people, it's, I believe it. to my core.

Me too. Anyway, did you get all your words out? I think so. I think I'm good for another week, but we're back. I'm sorry, we're going to have to like schedule. I think we might have to schedule this in, and the guy doing the editing is not going to like this, but I think we're probably going to have to go doing five a month instead of four because we got a lot of guests.

Yeah. So it's going to be another run of guess here for a while. And that being said, if you guys have any guest recommendations that you want to see on Barn Talk. Please let us know. Doesn't have to be just agriculture. It can be rural America. Your favorite creators across the board that you think would be good fits for Barn Talk, let us know in the comments because we are going to be reaching out. We are reaching out to guests. We are building systems. We are getting a team built. We're humming and we want to continue to hum and we want to continue to give you guys the content that you want and the guests that you want

to have on this show. So we love you guys. We love you guys. We appreciate you. We appreciate all the support. Thank you for sharing the show or leave an review or signing up for the newsletter. All of it really does mean the world to us. And we wouldn't be here without you. So thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We love you guys.

And we'll see you back here next week for another episode.