Barn Talk - Fueling Farming Innovations: Exploring Propane's Role in Agriculture with Mike Newland

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

Welcome to Barn Talk! What happens at the barn, stays in the barn, but not today! We’re letting it all out. On this episode of Barn Talk, we had Mike Newland on the podcast to share his valuable insights on the role of propane in agriculture. Tune in as we dive into a great conversation about the benefits, applications, and future of propane in farming.  Interested in diving deeper into the world of propane? Discover a wealth of information, tips, and resources by visiting.. 👇🏻 https://propane.com/ Barn Talk Merch! 👇🏻 https://www.thislldo.co/  SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c  SUBSCRIBE TO BARN TALK CLIPS ➱ https://bit.ly/3BlZnqq   LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  ITUNES ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk   ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS   ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4   ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS    ------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Barn Talk is a significant break from the typical content viewers have come to expect from This’ll Do Farm. Please be advised that we will be exploring a wide variety of topics (some adult-themed) and our younger viewers (and their parents) should be advised that some topics will be for mature audiences only. ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠  The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional, professional broker or financial advisory. Understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this website at your own risk. RISK STATEMENT– The trading of Bitcoins, alternative cryptocurrencies, NFTs, individual stocks, etc. has potential rewards, and it also has potential risks involved. Trading may not be suitable for all people. Anyone wishing to invest should seek his or her own independent financial or professional advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 are going to let it all out for you. It is hot. It is hot in Southeast Iowa and bone dry. And nobody is thinking about drying corn or heating their house or heating their hog building. However, a lot of you may not know this is prime time where we'd be booking our propane for the following year. This is the time of year that we book all our propane that we're going to need for drying our corn, heating the hog barns and our houses. Today, we have a guest that thinks about propane 24-7.

He is the director of ag business development at the Propane Education and Research Council. that is a mouthful. Perk for short. We're just going to call it perk. We really wanted to concentrate on the research today, like fireballs and some explosions, but cooler heads prevailed, and we're going to concentrate on the education part.

But first, if you guys get any value from the show, you know the drill, pay the fee. If you get any value from the show, share it out your friends, family, co-workers, employees, whoever, it's kind of the ticket to a mission to watch or listen to the show. Also, if you want to help us out, you can leave the review on Spotify or Apple. You can subscribe to us on YouTube.

If you want to watch the podcast, you could also tell us what you think on Spotify. They have a feature that allows you to comment your thoughts on the episode. And that's what you can do to help us. If you want to leave some questions for them to be answered on the podcast, submit them at Barn Talk Show at gmail.com. And we'll get them answered next time we do a Q&A episode. So without further ado, let's get into it. Mike Newellyn, welcome to Barn Talk. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

Yeah. How is the flight? I know you were traveling. It was awesome. Flew into Des Moines. Came by like 50 or 60 Casey's stores on the way over here today. So I knew I was back in Iowa, which is awesome. The scourge of Iowa is Casey's.

I love it. You guys don't know what you got. I live in Ohio. We just got three or four or five around us. Long story. I used to travel the country a lot. I love Casey's. You know what you're getting.

I got a lot of stuff. But, yeah, rural Iowa and Casey's kind of go together. What about the corn? How'd the corn look on the way down? Well, so we talked a little bit about that. But as I came east, you guys need a drink. And you know, you know that. I know you know that.

Closer I got the compaction parts of the field, you start to see some discoloration. You know, it's just rude. root systems aren't as good in those spots. So you guys are looking for a drink of water. We're hoping today maybe a little later today you can get one. But everything even out our way is dry. I mean, we look in Ohio, Western Ohio, we look like it's August already.

Lawn doesn't need much mowing to keep up. That's unusual for this time of year. And I'm sure you guys are in the same boat. Yeah, I always, that's the only upside is that my yard is dead because we're your typical Midwest people and that somewhere up my family tree, we decided that we needed to mow acres. I understand. Just so that we can stand when we're done and go, well, boy, that looks good.

Then do it a week later. We gave that up a few years ago. We had about four acres we mowed and we finally downsized. The kids grew up. And so we've got a little smaller place and it doesn't take near as long to mow. See, there's people in this family that want to do that too. But their answer to all that mowing is to bring a horse to the farm. And I'm like, that's bad economics.

I'd rather buy three mowers than to bring a horse on the farm. Bad trade. I don't understand. I don't know how that's going to go. So yeah, hopefully you guys get your rain here real soon and good shot of water would help the crop. Stans look good, which is awesome. The plants are there. Just got to have a little water to get them going.

Yep, 100%. So first off, just kind of tell us a little bit about who you are, Mike, and kind of just what you do now and all that. So been an ag, probably longer, maybe longer. than you've been alive. I hate to admit, I'm going on like 28 years in various roles in ag. Started out with a tiny little seed company in Kalamazoo, Michigan, called Asgrove seed company.

And a lot of folks listening won't remember that Asgro used to be an independent seed company and used to be in Michigan. So when I was interviewing with them, they were in the process of talking to Monsanto. They had developed Roundupready soybeans with Monsanto. So we were right on the cusp of blowing up and really becoming a big player in the seed business. You know, it was Pioneer, then it was Asgrove, then it was DeKalb, and all that really came from the Asgir side of the Rounderbreddy soybean. So spent eight years of my career at Monsanto on the seed side of the business.

I've been with Pioneer, oddly enough. I'm probably one of the few that's been on both sides. of the fence. Both great companies, a little different in how they go to market, but both great companies. And more recently in my career, I've had some unique opportunities to do some things. Today brought back good memories. I used to get through a lot of Iowa. I had about 150 research plots around the country for some hedge funds, and I would tell those folks what that crop was going to make. Okay.

Prior to USDA coming out with their reports. Yep. So I know my way around all the corn states in the Midwest, and it's tough for me to break bad habits and not be looking at every cornfield going down the highway. So my drive today, my two-hour drive was very educational, and I was looking forward to get my eyes on the crop. So, but where I'm at today, I'm with the Propane Education Research Council, had an opportunity to come here.

It's a fantastic organization. Your listeners are going to understand what Perk is. Perk is a, in essence, a checkoff program. So we collect a tiny percent of a penny of every gallon of propane that's sold. And we do all the safety training for the industry. So if a person's bringing propane to your farm, they have access to all the training that we put together. we do all the outreach and marketing, if you will, for the industry. And then we also invest in private development of new products and projects.

We'll talk a couple about a couple of those here in a little bit. But we've invested some big dollars in some really unique projects that are coming to market here real soon. How do we get propane? Because a lot of people, I would imagine the majority of Americans, especially outside the Midwest, when you say propane, they think of their barbecue grill, and that's about the extent of... You're exactly correct. What they know about it. It's a 20-pound cylinder that hangs on a barbecue grill.

That's what most people think about, about the industry. They think rib-eyes come from the grocery store and 20-pound propane tanks come from Lowe's. And that's all you need for a good Saturday night. So propane comes from really two big sources. natural gas production and then also oil refining. Used to be, we got the majority of it out of refineries, that's flipped today, and we produce a lot of domestic propane, and we're exporting about 60% of what we could be using here domestically.

So we'll talk about some summer fill opportunities here in a little bit, but that's really why we get out, why we talk about the opportunities that are there because we're shipping so much product overseas and that's why I really perk invest in some development projects. We want to try to find more ways to burn it domestically instead of shipping it overseas. It's a great fuel. It's a clean fuel. We'll talk a little bit more about that, I think, down the road here, but it's a combustion fuel that's great for the environmental discussion that we seem to be drawn into right now as a country. Well, so on our farm, in our situation, I mean, we have roughly 10, we basically have a tanker.

We have 10,000-gallon tanks scattered. We have five at our drying site. Sawyer has two at his site. I have two at this site, and we have one at his house. Is that right? I think you're getting them all. But we use it a dry corn. Yep.

Heater hog buildings, heater house. but and we do a lot of barbecue. You can do a lot with that volume. Yeah, that's good. But, and I think that's pretty traditional for a good chunk of the Midwest, but there's also a lot of other things people use it for them. We're not part of. Well, I think you guys caught most of it.

So grain drying, we, propane powers 80 plus percent of the grain dryers in the country. You know, if it's not us, it's going to be a natural gas line. and we get that. We understand why folks want to move there if they have the opportunity. But if it's not natural gas, we're going to get that grain dryer, which is awesome. You mentioned the buildings, the hog buildings. I tell everybody if you're eating a pork chop, a chicken, a turkey, we've heated that thing somewhere in its lifetime. So that's a big use for us.

Some of the more non-traditional things that are around the farm that people may not think about, power generation. So, you know, you've got these big, thousand gallon tanks sitting there. We'd encourage you take a look at backup power. Little pigs don't do well if they're not warm. If they don't have lights, it's hard for you guys to do your chores, but it's tough to turn on feed your systems without electricity. So, you know, we've got tremendous backup power systems available throughout the market. Other things that we do are irrigation. We're not a big irrigation spot sitting here today, but you get to Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma,

California, the mid-south. We sell a tremendous amount of irrigation engines into those states. It's a clean fuel. Guy sits it out by his pivot. He doesn't have to worry about it leaking. It doesn't have to worry about a neighbor stealing his fuel out of it. It just works. The fuel never goes out of condition, which is a cool thing about propane that people really, I don't think, put much thought to, but it's going to be ready to go whenever you need it. So we've got some other interesting things that we also do. We've got weed flaming systems. It's a toolbar with torches on it. We control weeds. Most of the organic farmers are taking a look at a system like that. We're seeing more and more traditional chemistry guys also take a look at that type of system.

As weeds become tougher and tougher to control with chemistry, I think that's a cool tool in a toolbox that may fit some traditional chemistry guys that they just hadn't thought about that. So we've got videos and things like that on our website at propane.com. It'd be a cool opportunity for you to go take a look at it. Flame might be the only thing that water hemp is not resistant to because around here, and I think it's getting to be pretty much about anywhere that you're raising, corn, water hemp is getting to be just a very difficult weed to take care of. Let's just say a bear

to deal with. And you're exactly right. It doesn't matter. The weed, a weed is a weed and it reacts to fire exactly the same way, whether it's resist or not. So where I think we could go is, you know, it's a 16 row toolbar, if you will. That's about the biggest that we've got out there in the commercial space. I think it could. be a tool that you use on a rotational basis to get across your acres every three or four years. Just do a certain amount every year. But it's a great tool. In the same breadth, though, we've got a poultry house sanitizer.

We can sanitize the inside the buildings in between flocks. It's a cool tool. We got a lot of great press and coverage during the avian flu outbreak. We were doing interviews left and right about that technology, the company that makes that's in Kansas. and produce a really nice product. So all good technologies and things that most folks don't think about when they think about farm use and propane. Yeah, I think that's, it's something that you touched on a little bit on your point there. It's just kind of the norm that you just don't even think about.

But all the things that we use propane for, it's just you actually sit there and think about it. It's like, holy crap. It's almost like you don't even think about the advantages of it because you just had it. Like I've just had it my whole life. But it's just like when you touch on it, go on that rabbit hole. It's like, damn, there's a lot of stuff. And I think the ag guys are pretty comfortable with it. You know, we get into some other markets and people, you know, gosh, we're talking about banning gas stoves in the country.

And I mean, just makes no sense. But the ag community has been around propane for decades. We know what it is. We know how to use it. We know it's safe. You know, you talked about mowers. We've got commercial mowers, you know, 60-inch zero-turns at right. run on propane every single day across the country, commercial landscape companies that just love

them. So there's a lot we can do with it. There's more that we can do with it. And it's a grid fuel. It's cleanest combustion fuel available today on the planet. So gosh, we love talking about the environmental aspects of it as well. Yeah, you know, something that's unique as far as a reason or a use for propane when it comes to generators, the times change. And, there's a construction company that used to do a lot of work in previous life of mine when they would go to a job site that didn't have permanent power they would run you know gas they would run gas generators and they switched to propane and the reason they switched is because they were tired of them getting stolen sure and when people show up and they realize that

the generators running on propane they don't steal it no there's nothing to deal. Right. Tough to do. And there's, there's some big companies that are doing that temporary heat thing with propane power generators. They're running big construction sites in the middle of downtown cities on propane generators. That space is really booming. And believe it or not, we actually have a product that companies making now to charge electric vehicles with propane. We were demoing that at a big truck show out in Anaheim, California. And I think they sold, I don't know, a half a dozen units at that truck show, but every truck that ran a demo at that show was recharged with a propane power generator.

Well, I think that's a good, I mean, if anybody, if you're a listener to this show for any length of time, you'll know that I'm kind of a Tesla bug, and I think that the technology that they're building out is pretty neat, but something I found is curious within our country is when you have the guy that has his company has literally invented a lot of this technology and he's telling the United States government that they really don't need to incentivize to push this any faster because we're not ready for it because the infrastructure is not ready for it and the government doesn't listen to them that's a bad that's a bad deal and that and that's exactly you're the you guys are getting an answer to a problem that's been created because yes we can build all these electric vehicles and we can

build an electric heavy truck yeah but you sure as heck can't charge it everywhere and that's where the problem start because the infrastructure just is not there well and our grids has shown some vulnerability over the last few years to be honest with you we had a big storm in texas where we had some deaths, unfortunately. And some of that was solar and wind power that just couldn't do what it's engineered to do. I agree with you. Cool technology.

I don't think it's the only way to a clean planet, if you will. We've got a great fuel. We've got a lot of it. And we think we may have an engine solution down the road too. Yeah, we want to talk about that. Coming very soon. I thought another thing that, you know, another use case of propane that we don't

really talk about, but you kind of brought it up when we were talking to Mike, previous to the pot, getting on the podcast about these trucks getting baked after they load a set of pigs off a truck or for biosecurity reasons. And they go and they get their truck wash and then they have to obviously let them dry and bake them. And that's a really cool propane use of propane too. So there's just just so many ways that you don't even think of when it comes to propane. Anything that's energy or heat intense. gosh, I think we've got a great solution for it, to be very honest with you. And you, if I don't know, I'm not going to put you on the spot.

I thought about this, but one of the reasons that for us, propane has been so important to keeping our barns heated is because, as you know, we've talked about, we've got solar on our hog buildings. And the reason we've got it is because in 10 years, we've seen the cost of our electrical electricity double. Yeah. And we work on a contract rate. The price we're getting paid to raise these pigs on the contract side, that hasn't changed

in 10 years. So the difference in those costs, that squeezes us. And solar has been a good hedge against that. But a really interesting thing for us is, and I think people don't realize this, but in that 10 years, when I book, because let's talk about summer fill, because we talked about that in opening that this is just about prime time where my LP guy, my propane guy will be calling me and say, you know, this is about where it's at, what are you thinking, what do you want to do? And we book a lot of that propane or we book all of ours in the summer off of what we used last

year and figuring, you know, what are we going to use. But that price, it hasn't changed much. Now, there's been, we had a year, I don't know, I don't know when that was. Maybe it was 19. it was that propane got pretty high yeah but if you booked it early it still wasn't it was higher than normal but it wasn't too bad but i know last year it was it wasn't much different than it's been what probably the five-year average at least so you're exactly right um the energy run up during covid didn't impact us uh as i mentioned we're exporting more than half of what we've got available it's supply and demand, to be very honest with you. And you're exactly correct.

So, you know, oil's up. We're back off highs for sure now. But even during the big run-up, the oil, propane really didn't chase it. And historically, there's a very strong correlation between oil and propane. But we've seen that kind of uncouple here recently. And to your point, I never talk price because who knows who knows who's less. and where they live, and pricing's all local. But you've got opportunities for that conversation. And thank you for pointing it out. And I'm glad you guys talk about it right now because I also

have customers who will pick up the phone in the combine going to the first cornfield said, hey, I need propane. And I'm going to be there in, you know, half an hour for the first dump. You're doing it right. We appreciate you saying that. But right now it's the best time to have the conversations. You don't have any pressure on you. It's not cold. You're not on the way to the cornfield. And that's exactly the right way to go about it. But yeah, we've seen, we've seen very steady prices in general. We've seen some peaks. But in general, we've been very happy with where we've been over the last three to four years. Yeah. How many gallons of propane are consumed here in America? Do you know that? Domestically somewhere between nine and 10 billion gallons a year,

depending on how cold the winter is, how wet the corn is. Corn is probably the biggest variable we have at Perk in the propane industry. About a billion of that nine gets used in agriculture. So we're about 11, 12% of the market in the ag space. But a lot of it goes into those 20-pound cylinders, believe it or not. Oh, I can believe that. You know, residential is our biggest market. We cook with it.

We heat houses with it. You can dry your clothes with it. You know, all those cool things around the house and the aesthetic things out in the backyard that people love to do on the weekends, which is awesome. All run on propane, but ag's about 11 to 12 percent of that nine plus billion. Yeah. Well, and people aren't any different than pigs. Propane's nice heat. Like, I tell, there's basically two rules or two different ways that guys use supplemental heat.

on these wing to finish barns. They either use heat lamps or they use brooder heaters, which is propane. And the difference in the quality of the heat is huge. Yeah. Because that heat lamp, you can say it puts out so many,

I don't know how they classify, whether they put out so many BTOs or not. I don't know. It's not much. But I know if I'm a pig, I'd rather lay underneath a brooder heater than under a heat lamp. And it's the same way with your house

because that's nice heat when it turns on versus if you've got, you know, electric heat or you've got whatever. And that's part of the reason that for our business, those brooder heaters just make such a difference when you're trying to start pigs. It's got more BTO content than natural gas does, so it's a hotter, quicker heat than natural gas even. the studies we've done, it'll hold the closest range of any heat out there. A half a degree of heat either way is pretty easy to achieve in a well-insulated facility. So, yeah, I totally agree. And I know you guys, especially when those pigs are little, are probably cranking the heat, keeping those things warm to keep the disease down.

And it's a very efficient heat. It's very comfortable heat. Let's talk about generators because we have diesel generators on our farm. got a generator at my site. Dad's got a generator here at site two. We got their diesel, you know, they use diesel fuel, but talk about a little bit about, you know, the storage life, I guess, storage life of propane. Yeah. On generators, because, I mean, I guess we didn't, I never even knew that was really an option. So, that's okay. I got a buddy of mine that runs a hospital facility, and he put diesel generators in a brand new facility. And I'm like, what are you doing?

You can convert them. They're easy to convert. Yeah. So anyway, um, Fantastic question. We've got options from a lot of different companies. The cool thing about propane is, you know, gasoline, if you've got ethanol in your fuel, you're going to have carburetor problems eventually. Diesel, you've got to turn the tanks, so you're going to have problems with fuel quality. Propane can sit there indefinitely, and that's one of the things the irrigation guys love. You know, they may not run their center pivot. In a good year, with any luck, they don't have to turn that thing on. and the fuel is going to be ready to go whenever you need it.

The other thing that folks I don't think give us a lot of credit for is that fuel doesn't require containment. We don't have a second two-layer tank, a secondary tank. We don't have containment problems. If there's a problem, we don't have any issues. So, you know, it's a unique fuel in that regard. The cool thing is, as we were chit-chatting a little bit about this, conversation, there's a number of companies making tollable generators. So if you don't have a permanent facility that you want to install, maybe look at a tollable generator if you've got multiple

farms, multiple facilities, and you could have quick connects at those facilities and move them around as needed. So it's a good option. A lot of folks are doing it. We've got a lot of great companies, big companies that are making these things, the same folks that are making your diesel ones and probably making a propane version as well. And like I said before, you don't have fuel quality issues, you don't have theft issues. You know, if you've got a tank that's sitting out in a remote facility that you're worrying about, something like that. What do you say to the haters that, you know, say propane can't be a part of the, you know, the green movement of carbon? Because everybody obsesses about carbon and carbon footprint.

Like, what do you say to those people? We're worried about our ESG score. Yeah, worried about their ESG score. Because you can, you've said before, you know, you think propane can be part of that future. But like, you know, I'll tell you what, science is on our side. If we can get to a scientific discussion. So, you know, we talk about combustion fuels. What's available today?

Gasoline, diesel. We're cleaner than those, period. No conversation about it. Everybody wants to bring up hydrogen. Hydrogen is going to be a while. try to contain that exactly you talk about pressures and um it's a significant pressure on a tank i don't know that the public has thought that far down the path and what that's going to take from a refueling standpoint what happens during crashes things like that i mean it's it's not a good

situation i do not want to own a house right next to a hydrogen refilling station no No. That is a whole different. If you've ever seen, if you've ever seen somebody pull away from a gas, from a gas station, and somehow it catches on fire and the gas station catches on fire. A hydrogen station, that would be a whole different level of bad. If one of those was to, and I don't think people realize that. So then let's get down to the elephant in the room that everybody wants to talk about electric, EV. We've evaluated the electric grid everywhere in a country, and I can show folks the data, depending on where you live, how your electricity is generated. There's a better than average chance we're cleaner than your electric grid, than your EV, than your Tesla. Now, everybody wants to talk about tailpipe emissions. Great, perfect.

The electricity doesn't just magically appear at your house. house and at your outlet. So that's where we've got to get that conversation to. If we can have that conversation, propane wins. Nobody wants to admit that, but propane is the winner in that conversation too. It varies by state. There's a couple states, and I'll give them credit. There are a couple states that have a lot of hydroelectric generation. We don't win there. But everywhere else in the country, we win that conversation on a mission. So it's a super cool conversation to try to have if we get to a scientific discussion. I've heard about renewable propane.

Yep. What's the skinny on that? How does that make? So the molecule of a renewable molecule and a standard propane molecule, identical. Okay. It happens at a renewable diesel plant. So it's coming off of a process for a renewable product. and we're capturing that propane at a renewable diesel plant or a plant that's making sustainable

aviation fuel. Okay. So that's all it is. It's coming off of a process that's making a renewable fuel, and it counts as a renewable propane molecule at that point. Okay. So where it has value today, ag will be the last place it ever shows up. Sure.

Sure. The reason for that is there are tax credits for the on-road folks who are using propane to use that renewable propane molecule and collect that tax credit. So that's where it's going to go first. Eventually it'll make its way into the residential market in certain states that want to offer and issue those credits as well. But that's what it is. So it's coming off of a renewable diesel plant, a sustainable aviation fuel plant. But the molecule is the same exact molecule. to drop in fuel. So what do you feel like is the biggest threat to just the propane industry?

Is it EVs? Is it gasoline? Is it diesel? Is it legislation? You know, what do you think? I think it's, I think it could be legislation.

We don't do lobbying. Our organization is not allowed to talk about lobbying. I will tell folks, you got to pay attention to what's going in the energy sector. You know, I live in rural Ohio. we're in Iowa today. Don't think that it can't happen here or where you're at. Pay attention to what's going on with your lawmakers, pay attention to legislation,

make sure you've got a line of communication if necessary. But I think that's our biggest threat. Science isn't driving a lot of things that are happening today, and we've got to make sure that we keep it a science-based conversation, and we've got to continue. Our industry has to continue to innovate to make sure we're ready to go when that conversation does get ready to happen. Do you feel like that that's a conversation that within your industry you're going to have to have

as far as doing lobbying? And the reason I say that is because, you know, the poor producers, the corn growers, the soybean association, we're all lobbying. Yep. And I used to think about that a lot differently than I do today. And the reason is because a lot of, lot of people think that lobbyists are there to grease the wheels to get stuff that they want. But if you talk to enough people and enough industries that are involved in that, the majority of their time is spent trying to defend what they're doing because if you're basically what I hear is if you're not there standing up when somebody says, oh yeah those propane guys they're a bunch of blah da da da da da if there isn't anybody standing there

go wait a minute that's not true nobody goes to fact nobody goes to if you're not there standing up yourself then you're going to get steamrolled yeah so perk the propane education research council that i'm with cannot lobby there's another company in the propane industry the national propane gas association that does lobby for the industry so we are on the safety education side Yep. MPGA National Propane Gas Association actually does just that. And you're exactly right. You either part of the conversation or you're on the menu.

So we've got to be involved. We have 38 state propane gas associations as well. And those folks do a great job with their state folks. We support them with facts, figures. We're allowed to do that. But as far as direct conversations between our organization, and those lawmakers, we're not allowed to do that. We're able to provide data, and that's what we do.

We just want to provide them the facts, and we'd like to go through our state associations in that regard. With all this dry weather going on right now, let's circle back to irrigation a little bit, because, you know, that's something that I don't think a lot of people think about when you think about propane, you know, and kind of why producers should think about using propane it for irrigation system. Over 70% of irrigation is electric today.

Really? Yeah, how about that? 70% is electric. I would have never thought it was that high. Yeah. So if you can, and what I think drove that is folks were willing to run lines probably for a little of nothing or nothing back in the day.

That's tough to get done now today. Yeah, your RECs probably drove that. Yeah. So if you've got power there, you know, maybe I can, you can make the argument with me that, you know, I'm just going to put in another motor and we'll just continue to do it. Last week in Ohio, our biggest electricity provider announced a 30% increase on electricity. So even in the Midwest, where electricity's always been cheap, you know, it was, you can make an argument that it was economic to run an electric motor. I don't think I have to have that conversation much anymore.

You talked about your electric rates. Folks in Ohio just decided to crank the price up. So it's easy to set a tank, a propane tank, and get started on a brand new pivot. Engines are readily available. We're kind of through the glut of COVID and having supply chain issues on engines. And we've got various engine packages. all the way from gosh, pretty small horsepower up to big stuff that we sell in California. California, they require a lot of water. Water's really deep. We need big horsepower engines out

there to lift that much water. And we've got the offerings to do it out there. So it's a cool, cool technology. It's pretty basic, to be honest with you. We're driving a pump. Yep. We can do it electrically. You can do it with propane. You can do it with diesel. We think we've got a better option. And gosh, If anybody's listening or thinking about putting it in a new pivot, man, I think they need to really look at what options we've got from our industry. If I had a pivot, I'd be flipping the switch right now. This year, right?

There is actually a guy that I sold a couple of hog buildings to in Jefferson County, which is just south of us. I mean, he's literally, this guy is probably less than 30 minutes from here. And he's a little bit of a different cat. but he put he's got two 260 acre or maybe they're 320 acre fields and he put in he put in center pivots and this would have been like 10 years ago yep and every one of his neighbors along with us as we're as we're selling these hog billies i was just like do you got do you have a lot of sand here or something like where what's this coming from and he said to

me he said I think that our summers are getting drier and he said I think it's going to keep getting drier and I can't afford to go buy more ground because ground's getting more expensive so he said I got to get every bushel I can out of what I got so I'm going to irrigate it well I can tell you what the last couple years I think that guy is pretty he looks pretty smart I don't know whether anybody else around him is looked at doing it, but I'll bet you by today, I'll bet you those deals have penciled out pretty well for him. So I would bet so. Kudos to him. You know, it's the one limiting factor that we have the ability to control in agriculture in rural crop production is water. And it doesn't work everywhere, doesn't pencil out

everywhere. I don't live in an irrigation area. We've got a couple little sections of Ohio that that do irrigate. But man, you get to Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and the mid-south, like I said. What's the difference between race and a crop and not? Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, so I tell everybody that's never been to the Delta, the Mississippi Delta, they're trying to raise the crop and get it finished before the heat kills it. And that's the only way you can do it. And we were at farm, or I was at Commodity Classic down in Orlando. Yeah. And I sat down and had lunch sitting across. from this family from eastern Colorado.

And they were there because they set the yield record for non-irrigated corn in eastern Colorado. And they have, so they irrigate, but they're limiting factors how much water they get from, I don't know what reservoir it is, but they said last year their allotment was, six or seven inches of water. So they had a very poor crop. But you know what it takes to win the non-irrigated class as far as bushels the acre in eastern Colorado? It's probably not very much.

What did I tell you it was? It was low. It was low. Wasn't it like 47 bushel or something like that? Yeah, it was something like that. I think it was like 47 bushels. Oh my. Well, so that's a prime example because their irrigate, in a normal year, their irrigated acres yield comparably to what ours do. Yeah. But without that, you're not, I mean, that doesn't cover your cost of production, basically. So I thought that was very interesting.

Yeah, we grow a lot of cool stuff around the country that on ground that wouldn't produce without water. Exactly. 100%. What are you most excited about when it comes to this industry? What technology excites you the most? What do you really want people to think about when they think about propane? I'll tell you what. I've got a project going right now in California.

We did a research project with UC Davis a number of years ago on using steam to inject into the ground to control nematodes. And it was actually killing weed seed as well. So currently they're using methyl bromide to control the nematodes out there. And methyl bromide is a really bad chemical. but they keep grandfathering and keep allowing it to go because we don't really have a good alternative. We're building the first commercial steam unit right now out there in California in Salinas, California. It's going to be used on lettuce acres, strawberry acres. We've had discussions with some of the biggest berry producers in the country about the technology.

They're excited about it. but the unit we're building, I think, could change the way those folks are able to grow crop. And that's the one thing that I am pumped up about for our industry. If we can change the way that chemistry gets used and produce a cleaner strawberry, a cleaner head of lettuce, that's healthier, that we don't have to worry about residues, we don't have to worry about the people next to the farms that are being applied to. I mean, that's the big risk right now. So that's the one technology that I'm fired up about. It's going to be about another year before we can get it to the field.

But we've got pieces and parts and components coming for it. And I think it's got an opportunity to really change things out there. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay. Before we run out of time, I want to circle back because we kind of, we almost got to this. And we were talking about EVs and the grid and all that. but the diesel truck, that is like the, that is like the, that's kind of the backbone of really the American economy, because I don't care if you're a farmer, you're a contractor, you're anybody

that's delivering anything, anywhere, you're probably hauling it on, in the bed of something that's running, the chassis has got a diesel engine in it. Yep. And we all want to talk about EVs, but the EVs. but the EV business hasn't really had an answer for this. And as we talked about, I don't think the grid is anywhere close to being able to handle it. But you guys are working with a company that may have the answer for this

before anybody else. You want to talk about that a little bit? I do. We'll take a couple minutes, and I appreciate that. So, Perk, a number of years ago had conversation with Cummins. about building a propane engine. And to your point, I definitely agree.

And the sweet spot in that market, in my opinion, is that 6.7 liter engine. Everybody, no matter what pickup truck on the farm, whatever flavor you like, there's a diesel that's their mainstay within a, you know,

a point of a liter, 6.7, the 6A, whatever. I joke all the time. I bought a Cummins engine pickup and they gave me a ram body to go around it. Yep. I know the body's going to fail before the engine does. So I'm a believer in that Cummins engine. So where we are today is Cummins has built, hand-built, test units.

This has been, gosh, six, seven years in the making to get to this point. We've got two to two plus years on a propane delivery truck. right now in Columbus, Indiana, where Cummins is. That truck's been running around, delivering propane, and they're pulling data and all kinds of data off of that thing on a daily basis. But we are hoping that that engine is ready to go into production units for model year 2025, we hope. It's going to be close. But, you know, everybody, the first thing when they hear that says, man, where are you going to fuel this thing driving across the country? Well, where we think it's going to go first is to delivery.

Folks that are running fleets that are leaving the yard every morning running a route and coming right back to that same spot, then we can just put a refueling station there. It could be beer delivery, could be, you know, soda, water. We've got a lot of propane vehicles that are delivering mail across the country, point A to point B every night, and they're running propane engines today. So that engine is going to go a lot of places. School bus market is probably a little big for the school bus market, but we're big into the school bus market with propane as well.

But the Cummins has gotten a lot of attention. Cummins came out and made a release that they were bringing this fuel agnostic strategy to the marketplace. So in full disclosure, they are bringing a gasoline version as well, 6.7-liter gasoline. the propane version, they're working on hydrogen, as we talked about before. But Cummins was open to say that not every customer that we have is ready for an electric truck. Yeah, right. Nor do we think it's ready. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour.

Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in four. Free skills training programs for in-demand fields like software development and information technology. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. Well, and the idea of running an engine on propane isn't anything new. No. I mean, people have been doing that for a long time. So our local, when I was a kid, the guy that was our propane dealer, he had two one-ton pickups that they delivered bottle cylinders. and he had converted both them to run on propane.

Of course, obviously it's pretty easy because he had two 10,000 gallon bullets sitting there, but it just made sense. And there was a time that our local FS, they had a rig, one of their trucks, it might have been the truck they used to deliver it, ran on propane. So, I mean, the conversion of a regular engine to do it,

that isn't anything new. And the other thing that's nice about propane versus hydrogen is we've been hauling it all over God's Green Earth for a long time and storing it. So there isn't the safety concerns. And you already have the infrastructure because you're hauling propane all over the country. That's something I was going to ask. So propane, is there a pipeline system that it comes from or is it all trucked from the point of where it's made? Some of it does go into a pipe, but it does need to be picked up and moved.

Okay. So that's the one thing that, you know, as we're talking summer fill, that's a big deal when we can get that first fill, you know, to every grain dryer in the country. If we can get every tank filled up once, it gives us a big push and a big leg up on the deliveries. Because you've already got supply sitting where it needs to be. That's right. Yeah. And in a wet corn year, you referenced 2019 a little while ago, 2019 was a really wet corn year. And it was wet from east to west.

I mean, we didn't have any, we got planted so late everywhere that the corn was wet. You know, we didn't have a shortage of propane. We had a constraint on delivery because of every gallon needing to go on a truck and get into where it needed to go. And you guys, you guys know how fast those grain dryers can eat it up. Yeah. And, yeah, it was a, it's a year I won't forget. Let's put it that way. That's something that people don't understand, because we got caught by this.

when you update a grain dryer system so we used to have we used to have the really old cirque flow single burner yeah single screw and we put a twin screw twin burner with turbos on it and that thing will dry corn i mean for us we're we're not big grain farmers but man it'll dry grain fast however would you get both burners running with both turbos you also will burn a lot of gas in a hurry. And when we build our site, what we call our site one, we put five LP tanks there and they feed the building and they feed the grain dryer when we need it. But when we did it, we weren't thinking, well, I don't know. I think we were just, that was the way it had always been. Only two of those tanks were set up to draw liquid. Because there is a difference. The dryers

pull liquid propane and the buildings it's vapor yeah well heck i went over there and checked the tanks you know and all the tanks were half full and then the next thing i know i didn't my dryer wasn't running i had to call my fs guy and that was when we were like oh i think we better convert some more of these because otherwise we're going to be dumping gas a lot more often that's right so on our farm you know solar and propane are two you know we use those as our energy sources i feel like that's how it is around here for all of our neighbors and just kind of in our area because when the solar deal happened everybody was on it when the tax credit came in everybody's throwing solar on the on their hog barn just talk a little bit about you know kind of how propane and solar can kind of work together to you know meet the

ESG score that the government is shoving down and kind of meet the government mandates that keep getting pushed. Yeah, I think it's a fuel. Propane plays really well with all the renewables, whether it's solar. You know, gosh, I had a chance to go to Puerto Rico. It's been over a year ago already, but they've got fuel cells in their homes, and they're doing the exact same thing you guys are just doing on a residential scale down there. They've got a solar panel. It's feeding a battery and a fuel cell, propane fuel cell that's just running all the time to keep that battery charged. So similar concept to what you guys are doing. And I think it's a perfect system. Gosh, you guys get more sunlight than we do in Ohio. Solar in Ohio doesn't work as well as it does.

We've got those big bodies of water up there, the Great Lakes, and we've always got clouds. So here and further west, you've got a lot of sunlight. You might as well take. advantage of it. We're looking at a couple interesting projects that are pairing solar with propane-powered generation, power generation. And they've got a lot of promise. They get a lot more attention. We get out of those political discussions. I hate to think like that, but sometimes you've got to find a different mean to get to the end goal. But we do play really well. So I think it's a perfect fuel. We mentioned the condition of the fuel stays solid no matter what. Run your solar as much as you can, as often as you can. When you need the power, it's ready to go

with propane. So I think it's a perfect, perfect setup. Well, I think we're getting down to the, we're getting down and wrapping it up, but I do have one more question for you. I got one too. Well, I think I got the one that you got in your head. So I'm just going to come out with it. We'll see how close you are. So before we got on this, this podcast, you said you've been here to Washington County before. Yeah. And you said you're going to wait to tell us why on the podcast. So why have you been to Washington County and why the hell are we just meeting now and not earlier? So I mentioned earlier one of my career stops, the 150 test plots around. So some of those test plots, I know we had one in this county. Okay. So we would come and look at the

the corn and soybeans about five times a year at 150 different locations across the country. And one of those things was in this county, I'm sure. Well, that's not what I thought, because what I was going to hit you with, I did a little research on you. Uh-oh. And I learned that you are a recovering show pig addict. And as soon as I saw that, and knowing that you said you'd been to Washington County, I said, I bet you he's been, I bet he's been to Washington County hunting show pigs because

Washington County is like the mecca of show pigs, at least in the state of Iowa. So I just assumed that in a weak moment, you had been like, oh, we got it. We got to get over there to Washington against some of those show pigs. We never bought a pig out of Iowa. We probably should have. Yeah. Actually, I tried to. You would have placed better.

I tried to, but I think he was north of Des Moines. Long story. Yep. But no. And I didn't want to bring up show pigs. because I know commercial guys probably hate that segment of the business. Oh, we don't, we do not hate it. I think it's great.

I think it's good for kids to get out there and work with the animals, to give them something to do. But it's just a different way of life. It's something that I never got into because I just had, you know, I think we got out about the right time. My kids are 25 and 21, and it just looked like every year, it got dumber and dumber and dumber, the money we were spending. and I think it's increased since we've gotten done.

So I miss it. I miss time with the kids because we spent a lot of time in the truck, driving, talking, looking, you know, in the spring. But gosh, we'd put a lot of miles on a truck to buy five pigs. I mean, but you do what you can for your kids. You talk about renewable energy. Go to a show pig auction and just crack the door. The heat rolling out of that from the amount of knowledge.

that is in the group of people around there. I thought you were going to say from the money being lit on fire. Well, that's true too. There's no group smarter than a bunch of people at a show pig option. Oh my gosh. And I had the pleasure in my past career. I want to say what, like four out of the, four out of the six fieldmen that worked under me all had the show pig infection. They were all in various degrees of rehab. of no no they were still fully addicted and raising and showing and so it's a it's a deal it once you're in i for for people that have the people for people that aren't involved in that it's the equivalent of when your first daughter goes to dance or your first daughter goes to softball and somebody tells you she's pretty good it's kind of the same thing and then you know like 15 years later

You just under, you don't know where all the time or money went. Yeah. So. I, uh, I kept track of how much money we spent one time, well, for one year. And then you said I don't want to. I never did it again. I can't look at that ever. I don't want to see it anymore.

Yeah. Hey, the great thing about that is, I'm sure a lot of those guys need propane to heat their barns, too. So, you know what? We're in a lot of places. We love every pig in the country. There you go. So, no, it's all good. And, uh, you must have dug pretty deep looking into my background to find that.

That's, that's, that's. Yeah. Well, I think. Yeah, I think that's going to wrap it up. I think we got it covered. I think we pretty much hit it on all that guys. If you got any value from the show, you guys know the drill. Share it out with your friends, family, coworkers, employees, whoever. Go be sure to check out perk. Go check them out. They've got a website. We'll have it linked down in the description if you're watched on YouTube or in the show notes if you're listening. Leave your view on Spotify or Apple. Try to go find Mike on LinkedIn. Maybe. and reach out to him if you have any questions. And we'll see you back here for another episode next week.