Barn Talk - Farming's Dirty Secrets: Lobbyists, Fake Farms, & Our Transparent Meat Empire Fix

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

Welcome back to Barn Talk! In today’s episode, Sawyer and Tork are opening up the barn doors and getting real with a good old-fashioned Q&A session. From farm life to local politics—and even makeup tips—nothing’s off the table. The guys kick things off with a lively market update, diving into the latest prices and trends for corn, beans, livestock, and more, before shifting gears to tackle your burning questions. You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at the realities of running a family farm, supporting a direct-to-consumer meat business, and what makes their farm-to-table operation unique. Sawyer and Tork also take a hard look at the bureaucracy plaguing small-town America, candidly sharing a recent situation in their own community that left their heads shaking. Plus, find out just how many weaner pigs, fat hogs, and tons of feed you can fit on a semi, and why truckers are truly the backbone of American agriculture. If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to stick to your core values as a business owner, when to pivot or power through a tough idea, or the real story behind meat labeling and marketing in the U.S., this episode is for you. Sprinkle in some classic Barn Talk humor, relationship advice, and serious takes on AI’s impact on our lives, and you’ve got an episode that’s just as entertaining as it is thought-provoking. So pull up a seat, grab a cup of coffee—or maybe a ribeye—and join us for an episode full of honesty, laughs, and some straight talk from inside the barn. Shop Farmer Grade 👇🏻 https://farmergrade.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👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk   ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS   ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4   ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS    00:00 "Barn Talk Growth & Call-Ins Coming" 09:25 "Lab-Grown Meat Skepticism" 13:56 Outsider Hired as City Administrator 19:29 Cherished Employee vs. Failing Administrator 24:28 Unexpected Reunion Humble Job Reveal 27:13 Transporting Wiener Pigs Explained 36:39 "Leadership Through Embodying Core Values" 40:40 Navigating Business Challenges at 25 43:31 Balancing Persistence and Adaptability 52:12 AI Development: Race or Restraint? 57:06 "Debate Over Meat Origin Labeling" 01:03:38 Disconnected Meat Production Perception 01:05:34 Misleading Farm-to-Table Claims ------------------------------- ⚠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... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amazon presents Laura versus Fruit Flies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen, these little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. 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 Q&A episode. Thank you to all that submit your questions and email them to us at barn talk show at gmail.com. That's where you guys can send your questions in to get them answered on the show. we're working on getting a call-in feature. We're working on that.

We're trying to figure it out, but that's going to be coming soon, hopefully. So that'd be a pretty fun thing to do. Some things that you can do to help us out here at Barn Talk to grow this show is if you get any value from the show, please share it out with the people that you know. The more that you guys do that, the more that this show grows,

the more guests we can get on, the more episodes we can make. It's kind of the ticket to admission to watch or listen to the show. Another thing you can do to help, support us here at barn talk is leave a review on spotify or apple the more that you guys do that the more it gives our show credibility and the more credible we are the more guests we can get on to the show so um we appreciate the hell out of all you that do that we love hearing from you guys we love seeing your feedback and it makes us better here on the show uh last thing you can do to help us

out here at barn talk and our family farm is support our direct to consumer meat business farmer grade you can always use code barn talk to save 10% off your order waggo, dry-aged beef, pork raised on our farm, pasture-raised chicken, we got it all. So get yourself a box of meat and pay the metri-ron because we don't have a Patreon. You know, we don't have, we don't got a Patreon, but we got a Metron. So get yourself a box of meat, and it directly helps this show out and helps us invest to make this show a better listen and watch for you. So get Torque a raise. Yeah.

Because I'm telling you, the pace. scale at Farmer grade for family is uh i won't say it's sweatshop but it's not uh it's not the best and so uh you know we're paying rib by steak uh helps boost my working environment yeah that's a good that's a good way to put it i was just going to say we do pay you and meat we do time to time we do that's right yeah but i'd like better snacks and uh higher quality higher quality vending options in the office yeah yeah get that vending machine. I'd like a nice carhart coat with my name on it. Yeah, said, you know. Yeah, well, I'm working on it. Yeah, it's a process. The meat business is not for the fainted heart. No, it's not. Neither is the commodity market. Farman's not for the faint at heart either. I'll give you

the hot and heavy market update for today. And Sawyer and I were just talking before we went on. several people have commented that grew up in the age of market to market on Iowa Public Television, which my dad was an avid follower of, and they said that you could tell how optimistic Sue Martin was about the bean market by the length of her skirt. The shorter the skirt, the more optimistic she was. And I would just tell you, we need to see whether, I don't know, we need to see if she's still around. We should try to get her on that podcast. That would be pretty awesome uh her skirt would be amish like right now like way down uh her feet wouldn't even be showing because this market these markets kind of suck um they're up today uh good export news but uh weather

warm drier after you know a lot of moisture so not not all that favorable and uh corn for september the last time I looked was four cents higher. So 384, December corn 406, locally, best cash bid locally, $3.67. So if you're like me and you have a production cost well above $4, let's just say $4.20 or $4. I mean, if you got a production, if you're paying some of this outrageous rent and you really value your numbers, I don't know, there's probably some guys out there with a five on it. And if you are, and you're not heavily pre-sold. Probably not feeling too good about things. But it could change on a dime, so who knows?

367 local, 385 in Cedar Rapids. I don't know. You know, we talked to people up north, and a lot of the corn and beans don't look very good up there. You've heard about all these problems about pollination. But I don't know at the end of the day whether any of that's going to make a hill of beans difference because the places where corn is going to be good,

I think it's going to be spectacular. So that may offset all that. Who knows? Beans for September, 969, November, 989, 942 at ADM in Muscatine, and 984. Did I say 942? 942 at ADM and 984 in Quincy. Bean meal for September, $274 a ton. Wheat 517.

Hogs for August, $108 bucks. cattle guy or the hog guys making a little money uh the disparage or the the difference between the price of pork and the price of beef is startling to say the least uh you would think that that that would just drag up you think that uh sales of pork would just drag up because of that but i don't know i saw an article today that uh beef exports are down 15 percent yeah i would think they were i'd like to know what beef imports are though yeah We'll talk about that a little bit. Cattle 236, feeder cattle, $345, $100,000, 100 weight.

Crude oil, $64. I had a little, I had a little right there. I had a really great thought, and then it was gone as fast as it came. John Deere, $513 share. Remember we talked about MP materials? I think it was like $53, last time we talked. $72.14 a share from the low of 10 bucks. So with all the back and forth with China and rare earth minerals and the continued investment by foreign companies in the United States, MP materials just

shoo. Bitcoin, $115 share. I think it's actually $116.000. It's moving up a little bit today. $116,000 a share. Yeah, $116,000. Right. uh it's been a little while if it was a hundred and fifteen dollars a share i would be you'd be buying i would be buying but this is a financial advice uh there'd be a lot of people to be crying their eyes out because a lot of people have bought at a hundred at 115 thousand uh Tesla three hundred twenty one dollars a share uh news out yesterday that the newest version of full self driving is coming out and they've changed the uh i did not read the whole article but basically the speed at which it's processing and the machine learning that it's using.

Oh, boy, I might have stepped in it there. I don't know. I read just enough of it to be dangerous, but supposedly 10 times faster than the current version that's out and should be out mid-September is what Elon said, which they need to because they did lose a lawsuit in Florida, a guy that was on his cell phone, wrecked his car, it wrecked his Tesla while it was in full self-driving.

And the judge ruled that even though the guy was an idiot and wasn't paying attention, he put too much faith in full self-driving. And so Tesla is partially liable. So, you know, you can't fix stupid. Anyway, gold 300 or $3,395, silver 35. I didn't update the treasury. I threw in beyond meat because I do like to bag on them.

They just came out with their second quarter and their sales were down 17% year over year so far this year and that equates to $75 million in sale. It's a loss of $43 a share. They cut 43 people off their workforce, which is like 10% now. and there's a quote in there by the CEO that basically, I think they're throwing in the towel.

They're headed there. Well, I just saw something the other day that I thought I saw that they're taking meat out of the, out of the title of the company. It's just going to be beyond. Beyond. Pretty soon it's going to be beyond broke. Yeah.

It's what it's going to be. So I don't know. Yeah, I think that whole wave is backfired on them. Yeah. And there's more and more people. I mean, I just read a company in Australia that's making lab-grown meat, and they're trying to make a run at it. And I just don't, I just, I don't know if that's going to really sit well with consumers in the future.

I just, I don't think people want fake shit with a bunch of artificial and preservatives and all that. You just see that movement. And I don't care how advanced we get with. AI and robots and technology, I still think when it comes to food, people are going to want the real thing. Yeah. Because they just don't trust that shit. Well, I think there was a, there was a time in there where a lot of this got hatched that there was this increasing idea of people not trusting the food supply and not trusting farmers. And these people thought that they could convince them, well, if you don't trust that, you should, you should trust us to make your food in a laboratory. But now then,

that's all come around that no they trust that even less well and the thing is they always like to point out the environmental impact of animal agriculture well i was i watched a video on this company in australia that's a lot that's growing meat in a lab i can't remember the company's name it was a couple of weeks ago that i watched the video and saw it but the reporter did a story on and they asked them what their carbon footprint was and she gave some bullshit answer that was total, it was like a politician talking. Yeah.

Because the power needed to run a lab grown meat facility is probably outrageous. Yeah. And it's like, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Right. It's bullshit. That environmental thing,

they're going to use more damn power than they even know. Power and water and all kinds of things. Yeah. That is the market update, courtesy of our good friends at Contera. If you are sitting there as a farmer or a rancher and you're looking at your bottom line and you're thinking about fall

and you're trying to decide what you're going to do and what you're going to do next year and you don't feel like you're getting good answers from the bank you got, hey, you know what? Doesn't cost you anything? Pick up the phone or hit your keyboard and go to contaraag.com

and talk to those good folks. great guys and it never hurts to have a second opinion and that's kind of what they specialize in. So without any further ado. Yeah, well, we're going to get into some questions here today, but there's something that we want to talk about that's happening in our local community here that we don't think is right. And this is probably happening in a lot of other small town communities around the country. And it's just the bureaucracy of local politics that's destroying small, all towns. We've talked about this a lot, you know, when when the election was around, you know, all these, all these local town boards and these local town meetings and these

votes on these things in local towns, it's all like at three o'clock, two o'clock, noon, in the middle of a workday. And guess who shows up to those meetings? Elderly people and people that don't have a job. So the people actually making the town thrive and go aren't the one showing up to that meeting and that's another stupid-ass thing going on in you know small towns but there was a i mean you could say it tell it better than i can because you know the guy personally we're not going to name names we're not going to shout out our our local town here but we're just going to give you the situation yeah and let you guys you know share your feedback on it and see if it's affecting your small town or not yeah so so uh our little town i think is a lot is is a lot like

a lot of places in America. It's no small task to keep the water running and the sewer running and the streets paved and everything done and find the money to pay for it. And running city government

is not, I'm not going to say that's an easy job. And one of the problems that people have is finding it's like everybody. It's like every business, trying to find quality people to do the work, but also to manage all of this.

And our little town hired a new city administrator and not from this area and came from another town. And I don't get involved hardly at all in local city politics because I'm not, I don't live in the city, and I hear about it once in a while. However, this really perk my ears up because a city employee that has been there for, how long has he been there,

28 years, 30 years, a long time, basically not long after he graduated high school, because he's basically my age, and he now is the head of the city department. In other words, you know, making sure the potholes get filled, the water mains get fixed, that when you flush the toilet,

goes down and doesn't come up. Permits, everything. new construction, he's out there permitting it and looking at it and making sure it's all kosher and he knows what the fuck he's doing. And when shit goes wrong, he's the person that gets called. And he's really good at it. And he's done a long time. He's very, you know, he's the one person that you can kind of get a hold of. Anyway, all that to say, he was let go. Here about, I think it's probably ended up being a month ago, and this has all been kind of smoldering. But the way that this was handled by this new city administrator, they waited until the HR director for the

city was on vacation, so he had no representation at this meeting, and the city administrator had the local police chief in this meeting, which I don't have any idea why that was other than he probably was afraid that when he spun this bullshit that the person in question I would have probably got up and popped him but I'm sure he wouldn't have done that but maybe that's, he was in fear

of violence maybe so that's why he had the chief of police there. I have no idea but so the and I don't even think we really need to get into the accusations as far as what he did. All I'll say is by every person with common

sense by their interpretation of the two things that this guy had done that violated city policy, they're ridiculous. If anything, it would be a deal where it would be, hey, probably shouldn't do that. I mean, I guess, so one of them was he attended an event outside of city limits, and he took, he took coworkers with him. And there's a policy that not more than two people that are part of whatever part of the city maintenance department can be gone, like on vacation at the same time, be out of the city in case something goes wrong. And this was like, I think it was a golf tournament or something, and he took a couple of guys that he worked with to that. And then the other one was, I'm not even going to talk about it.

it's so trivial that it's not worth mentioning. However, so they gave him the choice that either he could resign or they were going to fire him, and he had no representation, and so he resigned at that meeting. However, now there's no record of his resignation or minutes of it or anything on any of these guys' computers,

and there was enough protest, and people signing petitions and so forth that the city council meeting that happened last night or yesterday afternoon, they were supposed to have people voice their opinions about this. And they had just a few minutes at the beginning of the meeting. And I don't know how many people spoke, but not very many. And then they cut it off. And then the meeting was on Zoom. and they cut the Zoom feed off before the meeting was even over

because someone got on after the opening and then wanted to know what was going to be done about this person and at that point they cut the Zoom feed off. And a little background, the guy that they've hired is a city administrator, he was the city administrator at another town in Iowa up north. I'd say a comparable size town, maybe actually a little bit bigger, and he didn't even make it six months at that position. And then he, and I'm using my air quotes, resigned, and one of the city council members

voted against his resignation because he wanted to fire him. But that he was overruled, and they allowed him to resign. And his quote to the press was that it wasn't a good fit. Well, I'm pretty sure that most of the majority of people who are citizenry of our small town would say this guy is not a good fit. But it begs the question. So I have not said much about this, but yesterday I did say a little bit. And my point to residents of our little town is this person and his family, have been and are and will continue to be residents of this town.

And, you know, they've been here, his family's been here many generations, and he has been an excellent employee and a great citizen of the town. And long after this city administrator is gone, because he will not stay here from the way he has handled himself and the way he has handled this, it is only a matter of time before he will realize or the city council will realize that he's not a good fit. But when that happens, he will only be remembered for the things that he mishandled. But then the entire town has to live with the fact that they've lost a great employee that actually was really good at his job and actually was passionate about helping the city that he is a citizen of.

So to me, it's like weigh that out. Like in a time when, one, it's very hard to find people within the trades to work in the municipal side of things because he could make a lot more money being a private contractor in whatever he wanted to do because he has skills and all kinds of things. but he's chosen to do this for the city. And you know how hard it is to find somebody like that? But yet we're going to allow a guy that obviously has got some issues,

and I would say is not overly qualified for the position he's in when he was asked to leave the last one. And I don't know where he came from. I don't know anything about it. But, you know, he's not going to put down his roots and his family's not going to be here two generations from now. And why would you trade, why would you shortchange a member of your community for someone that obviously doesn't really care about your community?

Yeah. Does that make, does that make sense? I mean, yeah, it's, it's bullshit. There's a lot of people pissed off about it. And it's back to, you got a really good person in there that's experienced and that's rare that gives a shit about the community you lives in that's doing the right things and has always done the right things and always has put. the community first and done the job right, it's hard to replace that kind of person. That's a

cornerstone of the community. And yeah, allowing this guy to come in there and make that decision, people are pissed off. And so I don't know how much of that's going on in other communities, but this is the little shit that kills small towns. This is a little shit that, this is the little shit that it's the bureaucracy of local politics that ends up killing the towns that we need in this country in rural America because you let go of one good employee, you let go of another, you mishandle this, you mishandle that.

If you don't have somebody that's grown up in that community that knows that community, they don't give a shit. It seems like it's a power trip, and it just seems like you're not putting the best interest of the, well, it seems like national politics on a local level. You're not putting the citizens of the town's best interest in mind. you're not putting the town's best interest in mind you're just thinking about your your own ego

or your own power trip or whatever the fuck he is thinking that this was a good decision on but and it's BS and we got to keep that shit out of our small towns I mean I don't know this this guy's not this isn't going to be the last of this what this isn't going to be the last of this I mean this guy's going to hear it forever and yeah he's probably going to get kicked out of here. Well, I would hope that he does, actually. I don't wish him any ill well, but if that's the way that you're going to operate. And so you can say whatever, I'd be happy, you know, if he wants to argue the facts as to why he let this individual go, well, if it's so clear cut, why did you do it when the HR director is on vacation? And I think that's pretty crappy, because if you were going to

do this, you would want to make sure that everything is on the up and up, and he did not do that. And so, it's just kind of hokey. I just, I want to give you a great example of kind of the salt of the earth type of person that this guy is, because we were in the same class in high school, and I call him a friend of mine, and a class reunion that we had, I want to say this has been, maybe it was our 20 year I think it might have even been our 15 year class reunion and we're at the

we're at the country club in our little town and having the having the hospitality hour you know and so everybody's milling around talking to everybody and another young woman that was in my class who is now a professor at a college in California

she comes up to me and I am talking to her a little bit and my other friend, the person in question, comes up and she was, you know, very excited to see him. And he said to her, he said, so what do you, you know, what do you do? And she said, oh, I'm a professor of blah, blah, blah, at University of blah, blah, blah. And he's like, oh, that's awesome. And she goes, you know, what do you do? He said, oh, I work for the city. And she's like, oh, what do you do? And he goes, well, basically, I make sure that when you turn the faucet on, water comes out and when you flush the toilet, the shit goes down. And she, she, she,

she just had this really surprised look at her face. She goes, oh, okay, well, good to know. And she walked off. I mean, you know, calls it like he sees it. So anyway, we won't dwell on that anymore. But I guess I just like to know your thoughts about small town government and just how do we I think to your point we open one thing that I really don't like is I think all city council meeting county supervisor meetings

should be held after business hours and if you are an elected official you work for your you work for your citizenry so whether it's an inconvenience for you to meet at 5.30 or 6 o'clock at night should not really be a concern because that's part of the

that is part of your job working for your community is making yourself accessible on their time, not your time. And we got to get back to allowing the people that actually pay the taxes, that employ the people, that pay the bills that give the city, give the county, give the state the money to operate. They are the ones that are allowed to voice their opinions and keep their elected officials in check. So, amen. Amen. Amen to that. I love it. All right, we'll get in some questions. now. So,

uh, Leroy asks, how many weaner pigs on a semi? How many fat hogs on a semi? How many tons of feed on a semi? How many pounds of feed to make a market hog? How many semi loads of feed per barn? How many semi loads of hogs per barn?

Yeah. So we get the, we get these questions a lot, but this guy, uh, messes this and he actually, he only asked, uh,

the wiener pigs. and fat hogs, but I've had multiple questions about different ones. So I was like, you know what, we're just going to go through and knock these all out. So when we get wiener pigs, those pigs are, let's just say they're 15 pounds. They usually haul between, say, 1,200 to 1,500 weiner pigs on a semi. It has a little bit to do with what kind of a semi it is, because some livestock trailers are, what they call a double deck, and then some of them have a pot,

and they're kind of like a triple deck. So you can haul a few more pigs on there because the weight, the pigs are so small that weight is not the limiting factor. It's the space you have available. But usually for when we feel, we're getting somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 pigs, and then it also matters a little bit,

whether it's summer or winter, because summer you want to give them more room than winter, because there's a lot of heat coming off of the group of pigs. The flip side of that is when we sell fat hogs, pigs that weigh, you know, 280, 300 pounds, we put between 150 and 165 pigs on a load. Most of the time it's 160 to 162 just because of the way the trailers are laid out.

And then how many pounds of feed does it take to make a market hog? and it's it's roughly a thousand pounds um it takes about if you figure that pig comes in at uh 15 pounds and you're going to send him out at 290 300 pounds uh there's a 180 i mean between 175 and 185 pounds that you've got to put on that pig and they'll roughly eat three pounds of feed for every pound that they put on and so it's about a thousand pounds well on a 2400 head finisher, that is about 40 semi-loads because a semi-hulls 24-ton of feed. And our big bins, on all of our sites, we have 12-foot diameter bins, and they're called a, I think they actually call them a 30-ton bin, but that 30-tons is figuring straight ground corn,

I think, or even shelled corn is how they count the bushel capacity or ton capacity. And feed, because it's roller milled, is much fluffier. So you'll never get 30 tons in a bin. You might get 26, I suppose. If the bin wasn't completely empty, you can probably get a whole semi-load in there. But that's about what they hold. So a whole semi-load is 24 tons. It takes about 40 loads of feed per 2,400 head finisher to

get a group of pigs all the way to market and then there is about 16 loads of pigs to get that empty you if you go strictly off the numbers it's about 15 but you know you're going to have a load of lights that goes to the secondary market so there's your extra load and so the moral of this story is that no matter what type of livestock you're raising or uh corn you grow beans you raise, wheat, whatever. If it was not for the semi, the wheels of progress would fall off pretty fast

because everything to do with our industry runs on a semi. And I would argue once that pig goes to the packing plant and it's processed into meat, guess how it gets everywhere it goes? Shout out to the truckers. It goes on a semi. The world would be fucked without truckers. Yep, that's 100%.

So there is a lot of traffic on the roads in our county and into our site and out of our site when you have, you know, we have roughly 10,000 spaces here. And so there's something coming in on a semi pretty much every day. So I hope that answers your question. And I think I got them all. I think I got them all. So Ian asks, and you're the good one to answer this, what? What do you not compromise in your business and how do you know when to give up on an idea or power through it when it seems like it's a failure?

That's a really good question. I think for me and my just short experience of being a business owner, what I'm unwilling to compromise on is what makes us us. So what makes Farmer grade different from the rest? We're trying to really be farm to table and not just. say that but actually show that and be that embody what that means so every piece of meat that we send out to our customers they know where it's coming from with every touch point they come in contact with we are trying to be the most transparent 100% farm to table meat business out there so we want

people to know that believe that and just when they see this logo that's what it means and i don't want to deviate from that, right? I don't want to lose the fabric of who we are. And I think it's very easy in business to say this is our mission and then not live through, live by that mission. I feel like you've got to stay true to who you are and it's really easy to cut corners. You know, there's there's ways in the meat business that you could cut corners and say that it comes from one place, but it actually doesn't. And that's nobody's going to, no customer's going to know that. Well, they might if the quality of the meat shit. But everybody internally, everybody that works with you, you are going to know that you deviated from the thing

that makes you you and makes your business unique and what your mission is. And I've heard this from, you know, founders and entrepreneurs of bigger companies. The second you set out your core values and your mission and your decision making isn't aligned with those things is the second that all your employees look at those core values on the wall and look at that mission that you you like to preach to everybody and say well that doesn't mean a fucking thing yep the second you go away from the thing that you said that this mission this business is going to be about and you and you make decisions against that it's all out the door and that you're never going to have a culture, you're never going to have a buy-in from the people or your customers. You're never

going to build something that's truly great and meaningful. And so that's something that I just won't ever, I'm not going to deviate from. We're going to try to keep the farm-to-table transparency factor always a big part of who we are. And we're going to live through that in all our decision-making. So that's number one. But you've got to figure out what that is in your business. I whatever your mission is that makes you unique, you got to stick to it. And I'm not saying you can't change and adapt and evolve as a business. You definitely can. But you don't want to do it over and over again because you got to get people to buy into something

and you got to stay true to who you are or else you're just building something to make money and not meaning anything else. And that mission statement, you better think long and hard about that mission statement because I have seen way too many businesses that have this flowerly, whatever you want to call it, this sunshine rainbows. Yeah, and this mission statement, and it's so vague, and I'll give you a perfect example. If in your mission statement it says at the end of it, based on family values, or based on Christian values, or based on this value, okay, you may believe,

that and you may live that out every day. But that is such a broad, such a broad term to put in a mission statement that how are you going to get employees? What is their, what is their definition of those terms versus your definition of those terms? So if you're going to do a mission statement, it needs to be like, this is my, this is my. This is my. This is my. This is is the North Star. This is the North Star and this is what it is. And the other thing is you should, you should be unapologetic. Like, you should be, your mission is to be profitable. Your mission is to make enough money that your business is sustainable and that you can keep, you can stay in business. There's nothing wrong. I mean, I'm not telling anybody what to put in their mission statement,

but if you can't be brutally honest to your consumer and your employee of what your goal is with that business, you're not going to be in business very long. Well, I always, something else to think, talk about with this whole thing and you said it in there. I think also the founder and the leader of the company has to embody those core values and that mission too. If you're not living out what you say this company's about and you're not portraying those core values and those traits or conveying that mission to people on how you live, it's the same thing. They're not going to live, they're not going to live to the standard either. And they're not going to live up to what this company is about either, you know.

But a framework that I learned from somebody, and I'm not a big enough company yet to really, I haven't really sat down and thought about this super hard. But this is the best, this is the best framework I've ever heard on this. Your mission should be like your North Star of where you're going as a company. Like very, it should be, broad as far as we like for us we want to try to feed people in the most we want to be the number one

transparent meat company in the world right that's our mission right that could be your mission for farmer grade for example right we want to feed as many people as we possibly can farm to table whatever there's there's a different way to say it there but you get what i'm trying to say and then your vision is how the fuck are you going to do that and that's where you can have you know annual goals, your 10-year vision, your five-year vision, your one-year vision, your quarterly vision. That is how are you going to make that happen? And then your core values of your business are, okay, your vision's how we're going to do that, but your core values are kind of the parameters of making that, of making that how. So your vision is how, but your core values

kind of are your guardrails of, okay, we're going to do it this way, but it's got to be done through these core values because we're not going to deviate and make decisions that aren't what we stand for. Yeah, honesty and integrity. Yeah, whatever, whatever it is for whatever business. But that was the best framework I ever heard on that because you hear the, oh, you got to have core values, you got to have a vision, you got to have a mission, well, what the fuck does it all mean? How does it come together? How is it cohesive? And that, to me, made sense. That's like, okay, that's how you stay true to who you are as a business and people can buy into it and understand it and believe in something if that's how you conduct things.

So if the core value, if the top two core values at astronaut, was that what that was called, the guy, oh, it was an astronomer or astronomy, I don't know. I don't know. So if the top two core values was honesty and integrity. Yeah. And you're sitting home and you're watching, you're watching the, you're watching the, Coldplay clip. The Coldplay concert. You're like, ah, crap.

Nope. Nope. Your leader did not show either one of those traits. Your leader did not instill those values that night. No. That's what you got to be careful of is that when you put that down, that's what we all strive for. But when you put that down and you put it on the wall at your business or your farm or

your whatever, that you better drink that Kool-Aid because you set the standard. If you are the leader, you set the standard. And that's why leaders, I mean, that's why people fail. I mean, I'm not going to get off on too long of a tangent, but we're all human and we're all flawed and we all fail. So when you put those core values down and you own the business and your name's on that business and it's your baby,

by God, you better you better spend some time reflected as to how not only is the company going to follow those core values, how am I going to live up to those values that I've put on the wall? Yep, thousand percent. And then to answer your second part of your question,

how do you know when to give up on an idea or power through when it looks like a failure? This is really hard for me because I am super young in the journey of business and entrepreneurship. I'm only 25, but we've been doing social media for six years, and I'm two and a half years into the meat business. And so I think for me, what I'm looking for right now,

and I think we found it with Farmer Grade is product market fit. There's a stage in when you get a business off the ground that you, it's called the product market fit phase where you've got to see if this idea is even going to pan out and work. Now, I don't know what number you have to hit of revenue or, whatever your metric is of deciding if this is if this is working or not but if you give something i mean shit you give something three years three to five years and you don't have to be living high on the hog after those five years but are you generating enough revenue and seeing enough progress and you sustain it are you sustainable are you seen enough progress

are you generating revenue are you growing in an industry that is going to continue to grow and that has a lot of market to capture. You know, those are all questions you got to ask yourself, and I don't have the answer. But what I will say is, you know, yeah, you got to figure that out for yourself on if you want to give up an idea or if you want to power through. But what I do know is the best and brightest and greatest entrepreneurs,

and all of them will tell you the same thing, whether you give up on an idea or you stick, with it. The moral of the story is you can't fucking quit. You can't quit. The game of entrepreneurship or business is outlasting. You have to, you just have to have that cornerstone in your mind that no matter what idea you start, no matter what business you start, at the end of the day, you are not getting off this path of becoming a business owner and having a successful business. You are not going to deviate from that. You will not quit because a lot of people will say in the game of business and that are successful, you just can't quit.

It's all about outlasting, learning from your mistakes and continuing to just go, go, go, go, go. And I'm also, I don't say this, you got to give shit a real try. Because I think a lot of what's happened in culture today with entrepreneurship and businesses, you have the shiny obvious. subject syndrome too where you give something a year well fuck dude it's going to take longer than a year to see if there's product market fit there you know you can't you got to give something a real try i would say that three to five year range that's given something a real a real try of like hey i busted my ass for for three to five years this didn't we just can't get it to the point where we're seeing like this is the right idea but that doesn't mean you got to quit your

journey of being an entrepreneur. You just didn't find the right thing. You know, so you got to find that balance of being, being shiny objects, and you're moving on from one thing to the next thing to the next thing because you'll never build anything meaningful if you don't give it enough time. But at the same time, you also got to figure out for you, when is it time to maybe give up a night on an idea and move on to something that has greener pastures, I guess. And that's, I do not fucking have all the answers to that question. I'm still, we're still early on and, and what I, what we're doing.

So, um, but anyway, hope that helps, hope that helps a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. It, it, it never ends. Like, it never ends because even businesses that are fully established. Growing pains. Well, growing plain, growing pains, but things change. Demographics change, uh, preferences change, all that things. And I'll give you an example. I just read the article, a, an article about this the other day.

Top golf, Top golf is not doing very well. And the reason it's not doing very well is because they were on this growth trajectory and people kind of get to the point. It's like that was a destination, like, oh, let's go to Top Golf. But you get to a point where how many people are willing to go hit a golf ball

multiple times a week at someplace like that. Like, you know, it's the shiny, the demographics have changed and the preferences have changed and it's hard to sustain that. And like, you're kind of a one-trick pony. And, I mean, I don't have to,

I don't know anything about it because there's not a top golf close to where we are. But yeah, anyway, I just thought that was really interesting because that's a super unique business. They started it, a lot of interest, great thing. but then as you build it out and build it out, there's a limit. And so they're going to have to change.

They're going to have to figure it out. It's either sustainable or it's not. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. This is just kind of a fun one. So Mason, I'm going to do these in reverse because this is the way he did it. Mason asked, and I wish we were that good, he asked if we could get a read-only doc link on like the YouTube

with all of our rankings of the whiskey. minute that we've done since we started. And that would have been a really smart thing to do. That would have been smart. Except we didn't. So now then, we'll just have to go back and resample every whiskey. But going forward, we will record that. And I'll work on that.

So there is no doc of what our rankings were. And I think if we had them, we'd be like, wow, you guys don't know Jack about whiskey. But going forward, we will record it. And then his other one was, he said, what brand of makeup? Because he said, Torque's willing to talk about anything because I've said, oh, we'll talk about anything, whether we know anything about her or not.

He said, what brand of makeup should I get my girlfriend for her birthday? She's not brand. She has no brand preference. And I was like, you know what, Mason? Whatever Cindy Sweeney's wearing, that's what you get her. That's a good answer. That's a good answer. But I can tell you, damn, something that doesn't get talked about enough, a lot of that makeup that these women are

putting on their faces is made from fucking rendering dead animals from the livestock. Choice white grease. Yeah. So just know that. I think there's a lot of people out there that say fuck animal agriculture, but they don't realize that there's so many animal agricultural products that they use every day that aren't meat that come from rendering down dead animals, dead livestock. There's a lot of shit.

And that ain't a pretty thing. that is a not you want to talk about a dirty job that's a dirty job that is a fucking dirty job but yeah man anything that sinny sweetie's got going on see what she's putting on her face here i'll get because every guy every guy you know every guy they they've seen this american eagle ad and they're like hell yeah all right watch this hold my beer watch this soyer because this is what i would do okay i wouldn't get her makeup and i would tell her honey you know what, I was going to buy you some makeup, but I realized that you don't need any makeup.

I love you for just the way you are and you look. You don't need any makeup. So happy birthday and- Well, you got to get her something else to do that. But I'd use that line. Just say, you know what, you don't need any makeup. Yeah. Well, maybe she does, though.

Well, okay, I'll tell you, that's a whole other deal. If she really does, then you might want to, you got to rethink, what did I used, what did I always say? I don't know. I'm a natural, I'm a natural beauty kind of guy. I want my woman to, I mean, they got to put makeup on. Don't get me wrong. Girls like makeup. And if that's her thing, great.

But when she's looking at you, when you wake up and she's looking at you and you look at her, uh, you got to be, you know, you got to be. be still attracted through those hard you know through those days where the kids crying in her arms and you know you guys aren't at your best and you don't look the most stalled up because that's what you're going to see the most of the time and same to you she's got to look at you and go with your hair with your head being a bedhead and you got a couple of pimples on your face but hell you still look all right so yeah that's what you both need yeah you know what i talked about this my men's group last uh last friday and uh i'll give you this is kind of spilled over i'll give you a

great piece of uh marriage advice and uh people talk about how you know you got to give you got to give 110 percent well uh in marriage you need to be prepared to give about 190 percent because in a perfect world two people in a relationship you both are given 100 percent to that relationship but i can tell you from personal experience and with my wife, God bless her, because she has put up with a lot in 31 years, there are days that I'm going to walk in the house and if I was honest, I'm going to tell her, honey, you're going to have to carry the load on this deal because I got about 30%. And there are days that I'm going to walk in and she's still in her pajamas and you can tell it's been a hell of a day and she's going to say if she's honest she's going to be like

i got about 30 percent so uh you figure out what we're going to have for supper and uh you get the clothes out of the out of the washer and get them in the dryer and you know you do whatever that is what will get you through marriage because very rarely are both of you operating at 100 all the time so anyway yeah i would just uh i'd tell her she looks good with her without makeup and uh go from there. Yep. Get her lingerie instead. That could be tricky.

That can be tricky. And get it a size smaller than what you think. Yeah. Because it's flattering. It's the same way they're saying, man, you think I'm this, you think I'm this fit and fit and trim? Hell yeah, I do. Yep.

With any luck, it's not going to stay on very long anyway. Yeah. Okay. Something I wanted to talk about that's not on the list here, but I are on the outline, but I think it's really important. is, and we won't go along on this because it's, you need to just go watch it for yourself. But if you guys haven't heard about AI 2027 and that research report that was done by a lot of experts and people that have been inside AI, the development of AI have worked at former, you know,

they formerly worked at AI companies that are developing AI, they pretty much put out this report of all these experts and people that have been involved in that. that industry. And they projected what, how AI is going to develop to 2027. And they believe we're going to come to a crossroads of do we continue to try to race with China on developing AI the fastest because we look at it as a superpower of who's going to be the most advanced country in the world. or do we realize that we need to start looking at AI almost like we all look at nuclear bombs now throughout the world

where it's kind of just agreed upon that hey we're not going to just drop nukes left and right because of all the problems that come with that for everybody and they play out those two scenarios of how it could develop on either side of it and it's really I think it's really important for everybody to watch it because especially if you're the leader of your household and you're going to be the leader of the decisions

that are going to be made on how you're going to live and how you're going to spend time with your family, it'll fucking scare the shit out of you. I'm not going to lie. It'll scare the shit out of you. And I probably wouldn't share it with everybody that you love because it might scare people too much to spiral down a rabbit hole that they don't want to go down.

but I do think that we seriously do not know how fast this shit's going to change our lives, all of our lives, and how scary things could get in a short amount of time if we don't hold these companies in check and hold our government in check because this could become a problem. So I recommend if you don't know anything about it, go to YouTube and look up AI 2027. There's some really great phenomenal breakdown videos of this whole research report that was put out there of breaking down how they think it would happen. And people speculate that now that that won't be the way that it happens.

You know, there's people, there's other experts that have said, you know, there's this thing wrong with the report. There's this thing wrong with the report. It might not all happen the way that these guys have laid out, but I don't think anyone disagrees that what is going to happen, it might take until 2027, but it might take until 2034. I think the conclusion I got is people know this is coming. They just don't know how fast is going to be here. Right.

So please do look that up. please do go look that up if you're if you're if you're if you got a family you know because i think it's it's really important for you to know what's coming um so anyway please please do that well look at you you big wet blanket well i'm just i i think i i i really don't feel like people are are are are grasping how serious how fucking serious this can this is people people just are like oh yeah we got chat gp t now guys it's well beyond that

it's fucking moving at a rate that is insane like that is insane it's insane how fast it's moving it's going to be the fastest technology that we've ever seen in our entire life and I don't know we could very well become the most advanced civilization to ever be on this planet

we don't really know we don't have the evidence to prove that but I don't know man I don't know I just would recommend please please look into it you gotta keep up on what's going on. You do, you do. And this is,

this is important. This is, this is life and death at the end of the day. You watch video and you'll see how fucking serious it is. Boy, now what are we going to talk about? Well, nothing else seems.

Nothing else seems is important. Dan asks, why hasn't the Trump administration put country of origin labeling on the fast track to be in a law? looks like a perfect time to get it done. Yep. Yeah, I think that does need to happen because I think that is some bullshit.

I think people want to know that information. And for people that don't know what that is, there's a lot of people. There's a lot of companies out there, a lot of the big packers that, you know, they import beef. They can throw a country of, they can throw a label on beef that's come from Brazil. And since it was packaged in the United States or repackaged in the United States, they can say it's from the United States. Well, there is no country of label origin. Yeah.

There is no, there's no label that says, this rabbi made in the United States. So there is no, there is no law on that. And the idea of country of labeling, country of origin labeling is basically says, okay, if you get a box of beef, from Brazil, JBS, because let's face it, I'll just say the reason I don't think it's happened is because I have no idea what the amount of money that's being spent lobbying by people like JBS. And if you don't know anything about JBS, they're owned by a couple of brothers from Brazil, and those fuckers are crooked as shit. So they got their ass in a rigor down in Brazil because basically they were paying off everybody.

They were paying off everybody within the government of Brazil to pretty much let them do anything that they wanted to do. And then they came over and they bought the sows. They bought the whole pork operation from Cargill. So Cargill was they had a sow operation and they had a processing plants in the United States and distribution. JBS bought all of it. And it was a deal. If you talk to people at Cargill, JBS came to him and said,

hey, would you be willing to sell this? And Cargill was like, you know, for them, everything's for sale. The prices, right? And they threw out a number that they thought was stupid enough that they wouldn't pay it. And JBS was like, sold. And they bought it, just like that. So they own a fully integrated, vertically integrated pork production deal. But then they also own beef packing. They bought Pilgrim's Pride, which, is a poultry operation, but then they also own, I think they own like beef feedlots too. That's here in the United States, but they own a shitload of it in Brazil. And we just read off the, we just read off the live cattle, fat cattle price and the feeder

cattle price. You want to place their arbitrage, go get Brazilian beef, put it on a boat and ship the United States, I guarantee you you're going to make more money on it here than you're making on it down there. And who better, who better to take advantage of that than somebody that's fully integrated at both those countries that can produce it and get it wherever they're getting the best price out of it. Well, country of label origin or country of origin labeling, I'm sorry, I always get that. All that saying is the consumers should be able to know when they go to a, when they go to a grocery store.

And honestly, I think it would be great if a restaurant, a restaurant should know when they're buying beef or pork or chicken from a distributor, what I'm buying, is it American or is it imported? And I don't think you know that today. No, you don't. And I think that would be a good thing to know. And I don't know about you, but I think as a conclusion, consumer, I would like to know that. And you may make the decision that, you know what,

if I'm going to buy it, it's from Brazil and it's cheaper, it's a dollar, cheaper pound, which I don't know what it would be cheaper, or if it even would be cheaper. That's fine. I'll buy it. That's great. But I think you should be educated and be able to know that. But to that guy's point, I think the reason that it's not done is because I'm pretty sure that enough members of Congress are greased on that subject that that bill will never see the light of day. Whether or not the Trump... Now, I think the Trump administration could introduce that bill into Congress if they really wanted to.

I doubt it's high enough on Trump's agenda list that he would do it, although it could be, and maybe it's a deal where everybody needs to raise hell and we do it. But there is a pile of... involved in that in not making that happen. So, yeah, and just being in the meat industry for a little bit of time, I don't deal with the big packers, but there are just, let's just say there's some people out there that, um, there's, there's people out there that work with the big four more than what you think.

You know, there's, there's direct to consumer meat businesses out there that they have shit co-packed by the big four and say that it's not. You know, they're like they, it's funny, they like to go after the big four and say, fuck the big four, trust us because our meat is this, this, this, this and this. But little do you know, one of the big four is co-packing a product for them. Yeah. And then they're selling it. And so it's, you got to be, those are little trade secrets that nobody talks about,

but that shit is happening. That shit is happening a lot more than you know. And so that's the scary part. We need more. We got to have some more checks and balances in the meat industry. I am 100% agreeing with that because just being in it for a little bit of time, you can see some of that shit going on. And I wish more people realize that that shit was going on.

Once you get in, you realize, man, there is a lot of fucking marketing. There's a lot of marketing at play here. Yep, claims and marketing at play here that people have no idea what actually is going on. Yeah. You know? Well, there's a hell of a lot of people out there that are selling meat that their business is 100% marketing. They are selling an idea and they're selling claims and they're selling this idea of what their product represents. but they control nothing on the production side of it.

In other words, they couldn't tell you who the farmer was that that beef or that pork or that chicken came from. They have no idea. They're buying it from a cut facility, or they're co-packing it. They have some packer, and that packer might be telling them that, oh, well, we have a feedlot,

or we have growers that have signed up, that we pay them a premium, and they raise it this way. the connection is so far removed they have no idea who that person is and so they have some slick ads and they and they you know they got the they got the picture of the cows standing in the field and next to the red barn and it's da da da da but they have no idea that meat is all coming from a cut facility yeah and cut pack and ship facility yep exactly right yeah i i yeah there which that's fine That's fine, but I feel like you should have to,

you should not be able to make the claims that you know where all this comes from if you truly don't know where it comes from. Yeah, I agree. Anyway, that's the world we live. Yeah, that's why, like what I talked about, Farmer Grade, we're not one of these direct-to-consumer companies that's going to say, we're farmed a table, but not show you any proof that we are farmed, you know, that we are farmed to table.

I feel like that's a lot of the direct-to-consumer meat business. They like to say these things, okay, show me a fucking farm then. Show me your facility. Show me the shit that I can see that this is actually farm-to-table because nobody's going to do it. You look at a lot of the content, a lot of these direct-to-consumer meat marketers are doing these businesses.

It's all about recipes. It's all about their employees in their office. Okay, where's the farm? Where's the cutting facility that you work with or the processing facility you work with? Where's the warehouse workers that are? No, because they're not fully integrated. They're not doing the work. They have no connection to that side.

Like Dad said, there's no production side of their business. They are a marketing machine. And credit to them for scaling, that's how they've been able to scale so rapidly, is because they've cut their expenses down to nothing. And they've partnered with really great people that can make. it all happen and go, which is great. But like you said, you really shouldn't claim that it's farm to table then because you have no fucking idea where it's coming from.

It's somebody's farm somewhere. Yeah, somebody somewhere. Could be in the United States. Could be somewhere else. Yeah. I mean, a competitor. And that farm might look like a 10,000 head feedlot somewhere. Yeah.

I mean, it. Yeah. And don't show it as the cows roaming through the barn yard with the big red barn and some guy standing there with his pitchfork and his overalls when it came from a 10,000 head feedlot in, you know, Oklahoma, Nebraska, whatever. Exactly. That's exactly right. And there's, there's a competitor, you know, everybody knows I'm not going to name their name, but they got in trouble for sourcing B from Australia. Yeah. Nobody knew they were getting B from Australia, but they, they were getting B from Australia. And people didn't fucking like that

shit, you know, so as they should, as they should be. They should be not happy about that. So anyway, yeah, I think that needs to become a law, but I think you're right. There's too much lobbyist money out there that's not going to allow that to happen. So it is what it is. But I think that's all we got for today. I think that's all the questions we're going to be able to get through today, guys. If you got any value from the show, please share it out with the people that you know. It really helps us out a lot.

We appreciate the hell out of you guys. We love you. And we'll see you back here next week for another episode.