Barn Talk - Ranchers Finally Got Paid So Washington Wants 300,000 Tons of Beef

Episode Date: August 23, 2026

Welcome back to Barn Talk! In today’s Hot Topics episode, the conversation focused on what’s really going on across the ag markets and beef industry. The discussion explored the effects of recent government moves to import more foreign beef, the ripple impact of packing plant closures, and what all of this means for ranchers, feedlots, and rural towns like ours. One concept discussed was how these short-term fixes and political decisions rarely touch the real, deep-rooted issues behind cattle shortages and rising grocery prices. A key theme that emerged was the vulnerability of independent cattle producers as big packers consolidate and government policies seem more aimed at quick wins than long-term solutions. Several points were raised, including how these structural problems are leaving producers with less leverage, what needs to change to keep rural America strong, and why supporting local, independent food systems matters more than ever. If you care about the future of American beef and the backbone of rural life, this episode is a must-listen. JOIN THE BARN TALK NEWSLETTER & GET LIVE EVENT ACCESS: We're on a mission to get 10,000 subscribers, and once we do, we're hosting a live event at the barn! Sign up to get exclusive access to tickets and details.👇🏻 Help us get there: https://www.joinbarntalk.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c  LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  APPLE ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● Barn Talk Instagram ➱ https://www.instagram.com/barntalkshow  ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS    ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4    ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS ● Sawyer’s X ➱ https://x.com/SawyerWhisler  ● Tork’s X ➱ https://x.com/TorkWhisler  00:00 Promoting the Barn Talk Newsletter 05:28 Ethanol production in Indiana 14:01 Attending a well-organized event 16:18 Value of Live Experiences 24:46 Impact of Guns N' Roses on music 26:52 Trump's foreign beef import plan 34:11 Impact of cattle prices on consumers 39:01 American agriculture and political influence 44:10 Supporting rural America through livestock 50:41 Consolidation of beef packers 55:26 Challenges in the cattle industry 01:02:35 Challenges in cattle industry 01:06:31 Sterile fly program update 01:14:03 Childhood memories of lamb chops 01:18:56 US-Canada trade tensions 01:21:01 US-Canada trade negotiations stall 01:30:55 Global debt crisis concerns 01:32:08 Concerns about future entitlements 01:37:58 Longtime friendship and staying connected 01:44:40 Thanking the audience and supporters ------------------------------- ⚠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. #EP214 #perc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms.

The farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays in the barn, but not today. We're going to let it all out for you guys. Today is going to be a Barn Talk Hot Topics episode. A lot going on in the Marble. markets in America in the world of ag, the world of rural America. And we're going to get into all those nitty-gritty topics here in a minute.

But before we do, if you get any value from the show, all that we ask is you share it out with the people that you know. The more that you guys do that, the more that this show grows. We found the best way to grow podcasts is through word of mouth, sharing it with your friends, sharing it with your loved ones. And we just appreciate all of you that do that because we would not be where we are today without you. So thank you.

Something else you can do to help us out here at BarnTalk is leave a review on Spotify or Apple. It gives us a lot of credibility so that we're able to have more interesting guests come on the show. We're over 4,000 five-star reviews on Spotify. We're getting close to 2,000 five-star reviews on Apple. And we just love seeing those roll in and we love seeing your guys' overall thoughts. Last thing that you can do to support Barn Talk is you can go sign up for our weekly newsletter that we're putting out. at join barn talk.com. I'm going to say it again, join barn talk.com. We're literally just given our perspective and thoughts on everything going out, going on in rural America and putting it in

your email inbox. It's completely free. And we're trying to have a goal with that right now. If we get over 10,000 newsletter subscribers, we're going to have a live event right here on the farm, right in the barn, have some great speakers come out, have some food trucks, drink some beer, just get people together and have a good time. So we've been on the road a lot lately, and it's just been great getting out and connecting with you all. And a lot of times, I feel like we both feel imposter syndrome, you know, because we are, we never started this thing with the intention of wanting to become famous. We started it because we're passionate about agriculture. We're passionate about rural America. We wanted to build a brand around our farm.

And as a result, it's just amazing to get out and meet people and realize that what we're doing is, it's got some traction actually. And it's weird. It's weird because, you know, you sit there and people come up to you and recognize you and you've never met them in your life. But it's also just, it's a blessing and we're so grateful for it. But just know, you guys can always come up to us and talk to us. how we are on this show is exactly how we are when you talk to us. Well, we're a little nicer in person because we treat people better than we treat each other. So it's actually good for us to be out.

I think the most common thing that we get a lot is that people say they always will come up and say, you don't know me, but I feel like I know you. And that is kind of the way it is because when you spend time listening to us, you kind of do feel like that. What I really like about it is, and we'll probably talk about this a little. bit, but sometimes when you're sitting here and we're doing this podcast and we have, you know, we read what's going on and listen to what's going on and we kind of have our own opinion and we expound those opinions. And then sometimes when we do that and we get done, I'm like,

man, I don't know. People are going to think I'm crazy. And then we go to those things and I always run into somebody that says, ah, you're spot on. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm only as crazy as this guy. So I guess I'm okay. Yeah, I guess I'm okay. Yeah, we'll touch on some highlights here in a bit, but I think before we do, we got to kick off with a good market update. Yeah, and there is plenty going on in the markets, both in livestock and in grains. And so today's market update, hot off the press, December corn, 498, best local bid, 453, Cargill and Cedar Rapids, 473. Beans for November, 1237, ADM in Burlington has 1220,

while Quincy, Illinois, has 1272. Pro Farmer, they are done, they did their crop tour, and that was kind of the bombshell that they dropped after the close on Friday. They estimated the crop at 15.3,4 billion bushels, and that's an average of 173.2 versus USDA, who had it pegged at $16.1 billion and 180 bushels. Beans were a lot closer. They actually estimated the bean crop a little larger than USDA

at $4.57 billion versus $4.519. But exports are strong. Argentina is just, they're about the only game left in town, and they're just about out of product to sell. So exports are going to stay strong here until their new crop comes in. Ethanol strong. Oh, my gosh.

It is crazy when you get out around the country because we're out in Indiana and they feel sorry for us back here because we actually have negative basis. Their basis out there is positive. I think they were telling us their five ethanol plants within two hours of them. I mean, we were around, we're around Lafayette,

Lafayette, Frankfurt, Indiana, and a lot of ethanol over there, a lot of biofuel. So, I mean, they've got a positive basis, and that's going to definitely keep going, because we're short on fuel everywhere, and that's the direct result of the whole oil thing, and so we're not just blending for our country. We're exporting it because everybody's blending, trying to stretch their fuels out as much as they can. And as we go into winter, I think diesel is going to be a big deal. So biodiesel, if there is a little extra bean crop out there, I think it's going to get eaten up pretty fast. Beanmeal 319. Wheat for December 697. Wheat hasn't participated as of yet, although with all the problems in the Black Sea,

Ukraine, and Russia, I can't imagine that the wheat crop, the wheat price doesn't get enhanced as we head through the winter months. Hogs for December, 71.50, May of $27, $84. Cattle, $217. We're going to talk about Trump and his, I don't know what you want to call that. His mouth. Yeah, I don't know what the hell he was thinking, but anyway, we'll talk about that. Feeder cattle, $336.

Crude oil, $84, Tesla, $362, SpaceX, $136 a ton, Deer, $647. Not a ton. Sorry. Yeah, I was... You were in ag mode there for a second. I was telling you about tons of freight shipped to space, but it's $136 a share. Deer, 647.

Google 341, and Google kind of, in not so many words, basically said that they're cutting back on the amount of money they're putting towards AI research, specifically Gemini. because I think Google's figured out that no matter who wins the large language model, they're going to profit from it because Google is like the hub that everybody works through. So it doesn't really matter to them. They're going to make their money anyway. So they profit no matter what. So why just burn all that cash on capital expenditures of trying to perfect AI model when you're going to make your money anyway?

Yeah, I think just one point. Well, I don't want to stay on this. but for me personally, like a lot of my Claude usage, I integrate it with Google Drive a lot of the time. Yep. So, and I use Google Business Manager and Suite, I have a bunch of Gmail accounts. I mean, I still feel like they're going to have a large chunk of AI usage

because the tools that integrate with AI are Google Drive, our Google Calendar, our Gmail. And like, even if you want a quick hit on Google, you're always getting the Gemini summary when you Google something. So I think they'll keep that feature, but I think that's like, for me,

when I think a Gemini, that's the only, like, use of AI Gemini I use, or a Google I use is just like the quick hit Gemini summary at the top of a Google search. Well, they're basically, they've built the hub.

Yeah, they're the hub that most, I mean, you got them and you got Microsoft. And Microsoft, they have their group of users that are dedicated to it, And, but I just, I don't feel like they're as easy as to use. I mean, I know there's a ton of corporate companies out there that, you know, have Microsoft 365 and they have, they use teams and all that. But the way that Google has really built a system with like Google Meet, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Gmail. Yeah, it integrates with AI and Claude and everything so well that I agree. I think it's a smart move personally. I do too. I had something real witty I was going to say, but that's all right. I'm sure it'll come to me. Bitcoin, $77,000. It's taken off a little bit. It hovered around upper 60s for quite a while, but it's been up lately, $77,000. Don't feel bad because I didn't take my own advice. If you remember, I talked about gold, and I was like, I said, one of my buddies said that if gold got back to $4,000 that you should buy it, well, $4680 is where it is today. So it's back. off to the races. And we'll talk about that too towards the end of this as to why we think it might

be doing what it's doing. Silver, 62, 72, 72, 32, 32, 32, 30-year treasuries, 5.28, and the 10-year 4.74 all up. And are good friends that Beyond Meat had to throw in there, they actually did a reverse stock split. So in other words, they combined shares because the share price was down to like pennies, and they were going to get delisted. So if you see the beyond, meat, bid, it's $14.77, but the reason it is is because there's way less shares than what there was. So they're still going to hit the skids, but they're just prolonging the pain. It's a slow, painful death over there. That is the market update. Brought to you by our good friends at Contara Ag. So things aren't getting any easier, and you need a good bank in your corner. And if you're in

the, if you're shopping for a bank, if you're looking to make a land purchase, if you're looking to do some leasing if you're looking to do maybe you're looking for hunting land maybe you're looking for an acreage out in the country all those things uh the boys at contara ag and girls can help you out with go to contara ag.com and they are the sponsor of the market update yeah that was a good one that was a lot of good stuff quick and easy fast it's hot people love it you do a good job with it i don't know how we're going to carry it on when you die because i don't think i can ever carry it on oh you'll get some there'll be some snappy You'll hire a real professional. I'll have a Jarvis that can spit it out for me. Yeah. Yeah, we wanted to touch on a few starters before we get in the hot topics. And the first one is just, thank you guys so much for all the feedback on our last episode we did.

I know we didn't get one out last week, but the week before we put out a good one. We've been on the road two weeks in a row. We went to the state fair and did a kind of a podcast on the road at the state fair interviewing a lot of ag people, politicians, stuff like that. And then we went to Keystone Co-op in Indiana. They put on a pretty damn cool in-person event for all their customers and vendors. And it was great getting out talking to farmers.

We did a speech there, a speaking engagement there, which was really cool. But since we've been on the road, we saw all your comments come in. And being on the road talking to you guys at those events, we got so many comments of people saying how much they enjoyed our last episode. and it was dad talking about where he was at 26 versus where I'm at currently today at 26 years old. And, you know, that's the kind of stuff we want to put out in the world, guys. I know we got some people that said, man, you guys really put it out there. You like really put your numbers and everything out there.

And it's like, yeah, that's the point of this thing is we want in this world of AI and this world of fake news and fake media and nobody being able to try. trust shit, we feel like it's really important for us to keep it real with you guys and stay authentic and bring you guys our perspective on things and not sugarcoat shit. And that's, that's the kind of stuff we want to keep putting out for you guys. So it was kind of a vulnerable moment for both of us, more probably so than you, you than me. I know I put out a lot of L's and things that I went through too, but that's not easy to do all the time is to put your nuts on the table and kind of like open yourself up to people judging you. And we just want to

say thanks for all the positive feedback because we didn't get a lot of negative people that hated on us. We got more positive than the negative. And that really means a lot because you don't know what's, you don't know who's going to come out of the woodwork when you put yourself out there like that. So yeah, I just want to say thanks for being so cool about it. Yeah, it was, it was, we really enjoyed getting out and talking to people. Like I said, it's nice to just get that feedback one-on-one to kind of know, are we right? I mean, are we right the way we feel? Are we like the outlier? Or do we really kind of have the pulse of what other people in our world, our demographics is feeling? And I think the answer is, at least in the two places that we've been, is that we do.

and as you said about Keystone, I just have to say congratulations to those guys. That was one of the best promoted, best, had the best continuity through all of the signage and all the pre-promotion and how they handled the day. I mean, they did a heck of a job, one of the best live events that I've been to as far as taking care of all.

Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. the details. And for all the rain they had, if you could have seen that place like at 10 o'clock the night before, we were driving into Lafayette and we didn't have any rain all day and we were getting there

about, I don't know, 630 or so, and it just cut loose and pounded. I think they got two inches of rain at the event site and blew a bunch of stuff over and by the time we showed up that next morning they had it all put together and you'd never know that it was a mess. But other than the fact that ditches were all full of water. Indiana has just gotten pounded with rain. But I think something that kind of hit me, and it's been brewing a little bit, and I've heard other people comment about this,

but it really made sense to me as we were there at that event. And that is how I feel like that our society is kind of waking up and getting back to maybe close to where we were pre-COVID as far as valuing live events, one-on-one conversations or group conversations, and just getting out and being with other people. Analog. Yeah, that's kind of what you refer to it as.

And I think that you're going to see, as we move down this road of AI, I think that it is going to become much more embedded in our society and the virtual versions of things are going to become much cheaper. But I think as a result of that, the real versions of things, whether that be music or whether that be going to a restaurant or whether that be going to a workshop with a group of people of like interest, the value of those analog experiences are only going to become more valuable.

And I told the people at Keystone that coming to a live event is something that you just can't really put, you can't put a value on it. I mean, obviously if you paid for a ticket, this was a customer appreciation deal. I mean, if you paid for a ticket, you can say it cost me this. But, you know, it only takes one conversation with somebody that you meet. at something like that to change your entire trajectory of what you may be doing in your life or on your farm or in your business or you personally. And you can't put a value on that. And that's something that you just don't get. I won't say you can't get that in a virtual setting. And there's

plenty of people that do coaching and do counseling and all that's great. But I think as we move forward, there is tremendous value. And I think there's a little bit of nostalgia. that people, when they go, when they finally do go to event like that, they kind of wake up and they go, you know, this is just pretty darn nice. Yeah. If it's done correctly. Yeah, I think it's just the human experience. I think part of our DNA is we're supposed to be like we grew up in tribes, right?

Like people, like the humans evolved. Like we were always supposed to be with each other, a sense of community, having a sense of a tribe, knowing your neighbor, knowing, people, helping people, working as a team. And as, as our, as the world's evolved, we've gotten more and more isolated, more more one-on-one time, more self-serving. And as we continue to evolve, we continue to go, we just adopt the digital stuff that they've just shoved down our throat. And I think, I've said it as so many times on this podcast, I feel like amongst young people, my generation and younger and even a little bit older than me, there's this sense of wanting to sprint back to our

traditional ways of life because we look and we ask ourselves and we feel when we doomscroll for eight hours or you're on your screen time six hours plus, how do you feel? You feel like shit. When you sit down and binge watch a Netflix show, how do you feel? You feel like shit. But when you get out and you go talk to people and you go to the fire, the, the, firemen breakfast that they put on once a year in your local community or you go to the farmer's market or you go to the fair or you go to an event and you talk with people, feels good. Feels good to get out there.

And I feel like it also gives people hope because, you know, when we went to the state fair and we went to this Keystone co-op, you realize you get outside of your box and you get outside of your phone and the media and all the negative shit that's constantly feeding you you realize most people are good people. I mean, I don't know. I just know from my lived experience being in the Midwest, you walk around. Most people are good people. Most people care about this country.

Most people are willing to lend a helping hand. And it's just refreshing to see that. Yeah. It's really refreshing to see that. And I agree with you. You never know who you're going to meet. And it's always good to get out there. And so I think, like you said, as this world evolved,

evolves, I think people are going to be more willing to pay for experiences with other human beings that don't necessarily involve technology as much because it's a way to get away from all that. You know? Gary V's talk, Gary Vaynerchuk, love him or hate him, he is very good with trends. He was on YouTube before anybody else. He was on Facebook before anybody else. He knew what was coming, and he's been pretty damn good. good at that outside of, I would say, Web 3.0 with like virtual reality and NFTs. He was wrong on

that. The rest he's been right on. He thinks that the world is going to head to a point where people are going to like want to go to a restaurant that makes you leave your phone in a locker before you enter the restaurant. And that people are going to pay for unique experiences like that that make you get literally away from technology to connect with human beings because it's going to be so, it already is so ingrained in us to be on our phone all the time. And a result of that, there's going to be just this movement of people that are like, put your phone away and come, come, you know, enjoy people being together. And so I'll give you a great example that.

I was just talking to my brother yesterday. and there's a new place that opened. I want to say it's in Nashville, but it could be in a suburb of Nashville. They live down there. It's a restaurant that opened. They have one menu. They're only open a few nights.

Like maybe they're open Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And they have one menu and everybody gets the same thing. And it's like, you know, it's like a three-course meal or four-course meal. but when you walk in there, there's no phones allowed, you leave your phone, and they sit you wherever there's room to sit you. So in other words, if you go with three people, they'll sit you at a table and it's a long table and there might be eight other people sitting at that table and they sit you there. If you're one person, they're going to sit you wherever there's one spot and no phones and everybody gets the same. It's the menu's the same for everybody.

And it was packed. Yeah, that's awesome. And that's just an example of, you know, that would have not flown, and I'm sure there's some people that probably that would put them way out of their comfort zone. But just imagine the conversations that you probably have that you wouldn't otherwise have. So those kind of things are happening. And you paid for a real life experience. I did.

I want to touch on this briefly. But, yeah, we were at the state fair and I ended up going to a concert. I went to the red clay strays. I was kind of a, I would say I would. as a casual listener of the red clay strays before the concert. I kind of got into it more before I went. And man, those guys are, that band is fantastic. If you're not listening to the red clay strays, you totally should.

They've, they, it just was a, again, it was another reminder of like getting people in a spot to listen to good music. And the music, I feel like the music industry needs to be disrupted again, too, because we are in this world of rap and generic and surface level pop music being the top music choice that has put out in the world and is at the top of the charts. But like go into like red clay strays where every song has a feeling and a meaning to it, it just like brings you back to the old ways of music. And I just look at the talent that they have and I'm like, man, if they were in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, they would have been huge. Like the talent level that that band has is insane. He'd like, guy, the lead singer is like a mix of Elvis and Johnny Cash put together. He looks like them. He has

an amazing voice. And I just wish music would go back to being like that where it was bands. It was like dirt road, you know, like red dirt country and rock. And like I always, everybody agrees 80s I think was the best, you know, that you guys had the best music culture in my opinion. Well, I think the 80s was the end of music. Yeah, it was just, it was you guys didn't. have every option. You can't just click every new song and go to new albums and pick and choose what you wanted. You had to actually download a record

or have a record and listen to the whole thing. Yeah. If you wanted a song, you had to go buy the album. And in the process of buying that, you ended up listening to the whole album. And that's why you had guys like Bob Seeger or you had bands like, you know, foreigner or sticks or... I mean, even as you you got late in the 80s, you know, Motley crew and Bon Jovi and Guns and Roses, I'd say

guns and roses, I loved Guns and Roses, but Guns and Roses was, that was the end and that was the flip, because before they came along, that, that music was mostly, it had an edge, but it was mostly positive, and it was mostly about having a good time and partying and, you know, fast cars and all of that. And Guns and Roses was the beginning. They straddled the line between rock and grunge, and they were the beginning of grunge. And then, and this is, you know, somebody's going to, somebody's going to pick this apart. But in my mind, there was a negative edge to that music, and it started, everything changed after that. And, and, and, and, you started, changed after that. And I think we're still feeling the effects of it. But yeah, I mean,

Red Clay Strays, that's a band where I think you could listen to every song on one of those albums. And they make me want to buy a record player and buy their record. Right. Because like I listen to their music and I'm like, every song has a, it makes you feel something. Yeah. And it has a meaning to it. And it's just good music. It's not rumble. It's not rumble mumble rap. It's not another pop song about a heartbreak. It's like meaningful shit, you know? So I love their music, and it was just good to get out there.

Setlist was great. Concert was great. All of it was great. And I think we need more music like that. Well, speaking of things that gave a lot of people a feeling. Yeah. So we're going to transition to our first hot topic. And today's main theme of the hot topics is going to be this.

the whole beef outrage. And we're going to, we're going to break down each part of this beef cycle that we're going through right now and every, every problem that's going on with it, and just touch on it and kind of round it out at the end. And the first point that we got kind of part one is Trump opens the door to 300,000 tons of foreign ground beef. So if you didn't see it in the news, Friday morning on truth social, he, he put out that he's, he's, he's, he's wanting to bring in up to 300,000 metric tons of ground beef product imported tariff free for 90 days with a commitment that it sells 25% below current market. He did not say who that was going to be, who that imported beef is where it's going to come from, but basically we have imported beef from

Australia, Brazil, New Zealand, Uruguay. And Brazil, they're sitting on a 76% tariff that Trump put on this spring. And so they're basically going to just do away with that, sounds like. And just to give you context on what is this beef that we're bringing in? It's not like it's stakes. It's all lean trimmings. And like the 90% lean stuff. So American cattle are fed, you know, they're fattier cattle.

right um foreign grass fed cattle and coal cows are lean so to make an 85% lean hamburger you got a you got to mix about seven pounds a lean trim with one pound a fatty trim we don't produce enough lean cattle in this country really to to kind of get that that lean part so they they're importing that trim to make more ground beef um the u.s already imported 5602 000 metric tons of beef last year. It's up to up 18% from the year before and 122% higher than five years ago, and that's from Farm Bureau. Imports are now about 17% of the U.S. beef supply chain. That's an all-time high. The herd is the smallest it's been since 1951. Hey, thanks for sticking with us. You know, farming gets more expensive every year, and diesel engines love to throw codes at the

worst possible time. Propane is safe. simpler, prices stay steady, and it's much cleaner and cheaper to maintain. Plus, the Propane Farm Research Program offers up to $10,000 towards new propane-powered equipment just for sharing your data. See the equipment in person at Farm Progress and Husker Harvest Days this year. Check it out at Propane.com backslash farm funding. Now, let's get back to it. Yeah, and I saw that a lot of people, Well, I wouldn't say a lot of people, but a lot of people find it curious. First of all, that number, that 300,000.

Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. It's not a huge number when you consider how much beef is consumed per person in the United States. But it's very interesting the timing of it because he came out and announced that

and then USDA came out in the afternoon and gave you the cattle numbers. And the most disturbing part, I guess if you're a packer of the cattle numbers, was, and I think you have it maybe, but the feedlot placements for July were down, I can't remember, like 17% or something like that. Basically, the gist of the report was that we have fewer cats. and ranchers aren't retaining very many more cows than what they have. So in other words, the herd isn't growing very much at all. So this cycle of not having enough cattle is probably going to continue.

And a lot of people think that this tweet or this statement that he put out was basically to head that off because after that report came out, cattle prices actually went down. And a lot of people think that if that would have been made, obviously they would have gone up because everybody would have saw on that, well, there's going to be less supply than what we've got now, and so the price are going to be higher. I think people are speculating that this is just a way to...

He's saying that importing this beef is going to get the price down at the grocery store. Well, people say, say we already ran this experiment in October of 2025. Trump opened the door to Argentine and Argentine beef or Argentine. Argentine beef and expanded expanded to 80,000 tons for 26 in February, 2026 in February.

So every cattle group Friday pointed out that it did not move the grocery store price. And it's not going to. This is the same play that he's already made but just four times bigger. And just to give you some content, how much is it really? 300,000 tons is about 8 to 12 days of total U.S. beef consumption

or about 44 days of ground beef specifically. So it's kind of a short-term drop in the bucket play. And I don't know if this is just to, again, I think, like, it's pointing out that this isn't going to help the grocery store price, but I'm thinking that they thought that it would. And I think that they're trying to alleviate it. some of the pressure that consumers feel at the grocery store to then buy some votes come election time. That's what people are speculating on. I don't know why else you would do this.

But, you know, every beef person, I mean, so the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, the big mainstream producer group, which Leans Republican most of the time, said they're disappointed. The CEO, quote, said, flooding the market with government subsidized below market beef is not the way to rebuild the American cattle herd. And it sacrifices long-term stability for short-term messaging. Or messaging. Yeah, messaging. And also a bunch of, you know, a bunch of Republican senators from the cattle states push back on it as well. And this is why cheap imports hurt the herd. A rancher grows the herd by keeping heifer's home.

to breed instead of selling them. That heifer costs him money for two years before she has a calf. He only does that if he believes high prices will last. When the president shows up and caps prices, the second hamburger gets expensive, what do you think the rancher is going to do? He's going to sell that heifer instead, and he's going to get paid for it. Get paid today rather than invest back in the herd. That's not going to help the herd, because the only way we're going to help herd is what?

Yeah, hold them back. Yeah. Hold those, hold more cows. back. Well, this might be, some people are going to say that I'm maybe being a little dramatic about this, but I think that the cattle business in the United States is, it is very valuable to the security, the food security of the United States. And that that, that, That whole beef deal, the supermarkets are not going to change the price on beef because it is no different. We've seen this with the hogs.

Once they have the consumer train to pay a price, they keep prices as even as they can. They take them up very slowly. And when their cost goes down, it takes them a long time to take their cost down. Because once they get somebody used to paying a price, they keep them there. So this little blip of increased supply is not going to help the consumer. And the uncertainty probably hurts the producer more than anything.

But the cattle business is the only protein business in the United States that has not been completely vertically integrated. And you can say, yeah, there's some independent cattle guys out there and there's some, you know, the chicken business, well, there really isn't anything that's not vertically integrated. hog guys in your last point? You mean that, yeah, there's still some independent hog guys out there? I mean, it's a decent amount, but they're selling to packers that are all vertically integrated, even though they don't own their, you know, their pigs. It's, it's pretty well

vertically integrated. The poultry business, 100% vertically integrated, as is the turkey business. The cattle business is one of the only independent groups left in this country. and I think it's very valuable, and I think we should do everything we can to keep it that way. Keep it that way. And we need to be, these cattle guys don't want, they don't want to bail out, they don't want a subsidy. The best thing we can do for them is, one,

we can help them secure financing because it's very expensive to run a cattle, a business, and the numbers because of the price of the animals and what they're getting for them, what you had, like if you had an operating loan, if you ran an operation and you had a million dollar line of credit, today you need a $2 million line of credit to operate the same number of cattle that you operated on, you know, five years ago.

There's fewer banks. The banks are getting consolidated. They need access to capital. They don't need, They don't need special financing. They don't need any of that. They just need certainty and bankers that have access to capital that can loan it to them so that they feel like that they've got a little bit of certainty. Because if you decide you're going to save back a calf and you're going to end up with a cow

and then you're going to sell the calf from that cow and get money, that's a three-year process. from the time you hold that calf back until you sell the first calf that comes from that cow, it's three years. Actually, it might be more than that. I don't know. I'm not a cow guy, although I'd like to be, but I'm not. And so you're sitting here and you're playing around with the market. It's just, I mean, it's basically like spitballing at the wall. You're not going to, you're not going to change the long-term problem, and we'll get into that, because this is just one small part of it. But the long-term problem is that it's it, we didn't get here overnight. This all started six, seven years ago. This is a structure problem. This is, like the government,

this is like, this is like a doctor solving the one of the symptoms and not the root cause. Yeah. Like this is just a band-aid. This is to look good. And I just, I don't really understand it because if his goal is to lower grocery store prices so that consumers feel better about, when they go into elections, they feel like the economy's better. Is it just to give off the perception that the economy is better than what it is? And it's not going to do it. It's not going to do it.

It's not even going to work. And nobody's going to remember this by election time anyway. Yeah. It's not going to do anything. Well, I want you to hit on this point because you bring this up a lot when we're talking at the dinner table. And it's this point of, and this is shout out to our friend,

good friend, he's been on the show before, Jason Mock. But it's this idea that the GDP of American agriculture back in the 50s and 60s was significantly higher than where we are today. And I feel like these politicians come out when they're running and even when they're in office, they all like to champion that they're for an American farmer and rancher.

They all like to do it. But at the end of the day, they're for you enough so that the food system is secure. But, and they've done a great job of having people come out to the White House. you know, this year and go to the, and listen to, we're listening to farmers and ranchers. But don't get it twisted. They're also listening to Tyson, JBS, Smithfield. Everybody in the meatpacking business that's lobbying hard, they're listening to them too. And Black Rock and Straight Street who own major positions at all those companies.

They're going to, the optics of being for the American farmer is a good thing for any politician. Yeah. On either side, they all say it. They all say it. Democrat, Republican, they're always going to say. because I don't know if it's just, it just has this, the American farmers is a story of America. Yeah. And so it is the preferred campaign trail stop to go to a farmer's shop, put on this hat, and put on your button up shirt and your blue jeans

that you won't put on for another four years and go out to the farm and tromp around, ride in the tractor, get those photos. That's what it's about. but to Jason's point, it doesn't, it's, it's, it's lip service today. They tell, they, they, they want that vote, although that vote's not as important as it used to be, because they don't hold as much power and there's not as many of us. And it's a great photo op for the rest of the country, because people look at it.

It's the same reason why you pick up a pack of hot dogs or meat, and there's a picture of a red barn with white trim on it, even though nobody's got a red barn with white trim out in the country, but Air Bay likes the nostalgic idea of the American farmer because it is. That is the American dream, the independent American farmer. But yeah, don't our, well, but to your point, and why I was saying the GDP thing was our voice as American farmers and ranchers has shrunk because what we bring to the economy has shrunk. AI and technology is one of the biggest sectors,

technology is one of the biggest sectors of our economy. And there's others too. But farming's getting lower and smaller, and where there's smaller and fewer amounts of farmers. So they say our voice is powerful. They say we have a voice. But when you actually look at the economics, our GDP in agriculture is a lot lower than what it used to be.

And I feel like we used to have a bigger say in what transpired in this country and our voice was valued. What we wanted was valued. now it just feels like it's more like you said. It's a photo op. It's the nostalgic vibe that we are for the farmers, but when it actually, in ranchers,

but when it actually comes down to the decisions, they have to walk this line of giving a little bit to the farmers or being for the farmers enough to keep them somewhat level, but also taking account all this other stuff. And this plays right into this whole thing. people, to that point, people will say, well, look at all the subsidies, look at all the money that Trump has given to the farmers this year. Well, but is he really given that money to the farmers? Because we've talked about that. All that really is, is a pass-through. The farmer is a

pass-through because most of that money didn't go to livestock producers. It went to row-crop guys, and that money that the row crop guys get, guess where it ended up? It ended up at the equipment manufacturers. It ended up at bear. It end up at your chemical companies, your fertilizer companies, your seed companies, your equipment companies.

That was a bailout for the ag manufacturing sector, not the farmer. I mean, it's just, it's very true. We always said that when that whole line was coming out, about the whole farmer bailout. I talked to a lot of farmers. We talk to farmers. We follow farmers.

We're in this world. The amount of farmers that were asking for a bailout. Yeah, there weren't any farmers lobbying for it. Nobody was asking for a bailout. Who was asking the government to bail them out is exactly who you're saying. It's the ones that profit off the farmer. They needed the bailout, not us. And so this is just, that's a whole other subject,

but that's an example of what we're talking about here. I want to say one more thing. That whole conversation about bailouts and money to the American farmer, the best thing, and this is why cattle producers are so important, but it's not only cattle guys, it is livestock producers in general. There is all this time and rah-rah spent

and politicians kick this ball back and forth about rural America and the decline of rural America. The single best thing that could be done for rural America is to increase the amount of and diversity of and number of people involved in animal agriculture in rural America. And one of the most stimulating businesses for a local economy is guys that feed cattle, guys that raise cattle. And I mean guys that raise hogs too

that aren't vertically integrated, but even the ones that are like, you take our community, contract finishing is huge here, and we have one of the most prosperous small communities in Iowa, and it's not because of row crops, and I'm not bagging on the row crop guys, but the amount of money that you stimulate a local economy

is much greater with animal agriculture, and it's much greater, within animal agriculture for guys that raise cattle because you're buying the tires, you're buying the hardware, you're buying the fencing, you're buying the post, you're buying the trucks, you're buying the stuff, that money stays local. And that, that's what scares me is there's two, there's like two worlds. These guys, these politicians talk the talk, but they all know this. This isn't, like, I, I'm sure as hell not a brainiac.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the economics of rural America. We should be doing everything we can to help more people get involved raising livestock. But we aren't doing that. Instead, we're playing word games and doing this photo op about bringing in ground beef to help lower the price. And I don't think it's going to do a darn thing. It ain't. And this is going into part two now. So this is more on the Packer side.

So a lot of stuff going on with Tyson specifically. So I'm just going to break it down here. We got five different examples of Tyson either selling a plan off, closing a plan off. So we got Jocelyn, Illinois. They closed about 2,500 workers, roughly 3,000 head a day, gone. Not much of a notice at all. Eagle Mountain, Utah, another closing. It was a case-ready plant, not a sloth.

water plant. Case ready means it packaged retail cuts for grocery store shelves, probably, you know, co-packed for butcher shops, direct-to-consumer meat businesses, etc. Tyson invested $300 million into that in 2019 to build it, saying that it would have 800 jobs with a capacity to expand to 1,200.

7-year-old plant, $300 million, closed. Pascoe Washington being sold, not closed. 2,000 head a day, NCBA welcomed Tyson's decision to seek a buyer rather than closing it outright. Lexington, Nebraska, this one, it was not a shift cut. It was a full closure. So there was a lot of speculation if they were just cutting shifts or if they were closing, but announced in November 2025 and it got closed in January, 2026, eliminating 3,200 jobs. Tyson was by far the

largest employer in that town of about 11,500 people, 5,000 head a day. So think about that. A town of 11,500 people lost 3,200 jobs like that. Armarillo, Texas, this is the one I think that was a shift cut. So this one, I think this one was just a shift cut. So that, and this happened around the same time of the Lexington, Nebraska announcement. So Tyson now plans to restore Armorello to two shifts as cattle availability allows. So they just cut the shift at that one, didn't close that one. But Barclays puts daily slaughter down for Tyson from about 10,000 head since the start of 2025. They've lost 10,000 head of daily kill capacity.

So they're at 18,000 to 20,000 today. They were roughly at 28,000 to 30,000. thousand. So they cut it down by a third. And why are they doing it? Well, so let me find where I'm out. I want to kind of go, I kind of want to go a little deeper on that because a packing plant is a giant fixed cost.

And I think you pay for the building, the line, the refrigeration, and the crew, whether you're killing 5,000 head a day, 3,000 head a day. Right now, packers have room for 6,000 to 8,000 more head of a day then exists. The reason is why this is happening is because the cattle herd is shrunk. There's not enough cattle to keep that thing running and humming at full capacity. And so as a result, they're not making very much money. They're losing money.

They're losing money. Sorry, they're losing money. And so you have all these packers outbid trying to outbid each other to fill up their plants. And right now, people are saying Sterling marketing has said that Packers are losing about 200 to 300 ahead most of this. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk.

Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. As bad as 311 ahead in July, Tyson's beef segment of their business could lose up to $650 million this year. So there's your answer as to why they're closing plants. That's 100% the reason why they're closing plants. And Tyson's come out and said,

the reason we've closed these plants or sold plants or took down shifts is we're going to maintain, we're going to maintain, it's all happening because of efficiency. We're going to maintain a similar level of cattle harvesting across a more efficient and modern network. But analysts don't buy that shit. They're trying to do damage control. And it's not really, you're not really fooling anybody. Yeah.

And I know you got more to say, but this is an example of the problem that you get into when you consolidate, consolidate, consolidate Packers. today we're left with, is it just three corporate packers in the beef business? They say the big four, but... Okay. You have to remember that when you have a corporation that owns a business, and I talked a little bit about this in the seed business, but there is a certain expected level of return to the bottom line, and if they can't make whether that be 20%

or whether it be 40% or whatever it is to the bottom line, they aren't going to do it because they have to answer to a board of the shareholders. And you know who the shareholders are? I mean, there's tons of people that own stock in these companies, but Black Rock, State Street, you name it. They own big chunks. these companies. And if they're not getting the return they want, the management team that's in there, they're going to get booted and they're going to get somebody else in there. And so this idea

that you have people within these companies, they have ad campaigns and they have media managers and they have a lot of money that gets spent to put out an image of what is important to them. and that money gets spent for them to tell you a story about they care about wholesome food, they care about the farmer, they care about, you know, being a strong partner to the American farmer. But on the backside of that, you have Wall Street that actually controls the board of directors that pulls the strings and the only thing they care about, the only thing they care about is that profit. And if that profit isn't there, you have to get it. more efficient. And the only, and admittedly, the packing business is a hard business, whether it be

cattle, whether it be hogs, whether it be poultry, it is a hard business and the margins are thin on it. And that's why we got to this point was they, they merged and merged and merge to get efficient because the bigger you get, the bigger, the bigger you can build a plant, the more efficient you, get on everything. The problem they have is there aren't enough capital. So it's hard for them to be efficient. So the pressure is there

from the corporate side to close any of these smaller plants because their cost per pound that they have to get to sell at the wholesale price is higher from these smaller plants. And they can say whatever they want about, you know...

Making it more efficient. Yeah. and them being part of the community and they want to be blah blah blah blah blah it comes down to if they aren't making money all of that's just pillow talk if they're not making money yeah yeah i would just i would say you know the chain in one breath herd is at a 70 the herd is at a 75 year low from drought and years of losing money cattle gets expensive ranchers finally in profit packers are losing two hundred dollars ahead packers closed plants rational for them permanent loss of rancher leverage, less domestic beef, hamburger gets expensive, election year, government doesn't fix the herd or the concentration, it imports 300,000 tons of foreign trim. The trim keeps the grinder full, which is exactly what the three remaining packers need or four remaining packers need. Rancher gets a smaller bid and a signal not to expand. So this, this is a structure problem. We're going to go back to it every, every part of this. But, I mean, this, this, this, this

This isn't a solution. No. This is a Band-Aid to look good and hopefully, I guess, again, solve the price at the grocery store, but I don't even think it's going to achieve that. Literally, I think all this was, was, I think there was fear that after that cattle report that the cattle market could go, could jump big. And I think they just put it out to put a cap on the cattle market. Yeah.

I honestly think that because it's not going to change anything for the consumer. and if we make it all the way to the end of this, one of the last points we have, I think, is probably the most important point. Well, you shouldn't say it then. Of all that. No, I'm not going to say it now. I'm going to wait.

But this is just another example of the problems that we have. And we are in a bad spot because we have a government who is only interested in short-term fixes because everybody involved at every level of government is only there as long as they can get re-elected. So when you have a problem in the cattle business that has taken more than a decade to get to where it is today,

and it's going to take at least, I would say, it's going to take at least six years to fix it because there's no way you're going to be able to hold back enough calves. If there was like a real incentive tomorrow for ranchers to hold back cattle, it would take you two cycles to hold back enough calves to grow this market of any size to fix this problem. So you have a, at best, a six-year fix within a government and a society that's on a two-year election cycle because you're trading the presidency every four years. and you're trading the House and you're trading the Senate.

Somebody's getting reelected every two years. And all they care about is, can I campaign on this? So if I'm the guy that's in power, I got to make it look like I'm fixing it. And if I'm not in power, I got to make that guy look like an idiot. He can't fix it. And as a result, nothing gets done. And they're not going to be able to do a damn thing about it. Yeah.

And this isn't just the problem in this specific issue that we see, we see in this country. This is a problem with all of all the problems we have in this country. It's the same shit. They run on shit. They don't do nothing about it. They all run on immigration one side or the other.

They all run on abortion one side or the other. But does anything actually get done? Yeah. No. And I'm not going to jump subjects at all, but as another example of how government just yo-yos, I saw a map

two days ago, the United States, of every proposed liquidified natural gas power plant that is either proposed or licensed or under construction. And it's like there's 260 sites. Three years ago,

there was like less than 100. There might have been less than 50. But when Trump came into office, and I'll say this, part of the reason that there was let that it had gotten that low is because under the Biden administration they had basically just vilified all fossil fuel uh power generation to the point the only the only plants that were had any incentive to them was wind and solar and that was all they cared about so nobody was proposing natural gas Trump comes in

and guess what he does. He incentivized fossil fuel and he cuts all the subsidies for solar and wind. So now then everybody jumps on that's where the money is. And the truth is we need all of it.

Like we need so much power that we need all of it. We need to incentivize all of it. But it's politics. And this is the same deal. It's just this yo-yo, this election cycle. this, I got to make it look good for me and make the other side look bad.

Short-term, short-term thinking. Yeah, I was just going to say this is, it's amazing that we have the food system that we have in this world and this country. We would not be able to do what we're doing without this infrastructure that we have. And we would not be able to feed all the people we got to feed. And we're fortunate to have food on our grocery stores in this country. but this is why both sides of agriculture, whether you're regenerative or you're doing regenerative practices or sustainable practices,

I feel like that subset of agriculture is a lot more open and wants to push for localized food system. And on the other side, you have the guys that have always played in the commodity game and want to stay in that game. But we have to come together and realize like something has to change, We can't go all the way this way and say,

we have to get rid of, you know, confinement. We have to get rid of all the ways that people do things in agriculture. And if it's not regenerative, it needs to get cut out. We only need to have regenerative farming in America. That's not going to work. So get that out of your head. But how can you bring both sides to the middle and say, okay. Well, we all need each other,

and we all need to be doing the best job we can. But we need, we, we, this is a result of consolidation. This is a result of consolidation. We need more localized options. We need more funding and more programs for, for, like you said, get young people, get people in animal agriculture, whether that's regenerative side or conventional side. We need it. We need more local processing. We need more food.

We just need more options. Yeah. Because this is an example of. big, big packing plants and government basically dictate what the heck happens to the American rancher and they can't do nothing about it. Right. They haven't, and there's no other way. There's no other outlet for them, really.

I mean, you can't do anything about it. And that sucks. That absolutely sucks. I hate that. And so I don't know what the answer is, but I know that I just can't stand not being able to control your own destiny. And we continue to just allow this all to happen. And somebody, something has to change. Yeah. No, amen to that. Because in the, in the, sorry, but in the consumer, I had a conversation with a guy at Keystone about this. When we owned, when I own Farmergrade and I

would have people say, you know, you're cheaper than the grocery store, right? It's like, the consumer wants this product, wants local food, wants all the, these things, but are they willing to pay the price for it? Well, and so it's just this complex, this is a very, very complex problem. Because the consumer wants one thing, but they won't pay the price. It's hard to run all these plants independently. It's a very hard business to do. Nobody wants to do it or nobody can sustainably keep them going.

And so what happens is everybody consolidated, and we have this big problem, but we also have to keep food security secure. and it's just like how do you it's a big big big problem and the consumer's getting squeezed on everything so it's hard for them you know it's hard it's hard to it's hard for them to spend that money because everything is everything is going up and the sad part about this whole deal is if you follow this to what is possibly the conclusion is that we'll close up enough plants to get the efficiency to where the big packers need it to be to make them profitable, and we will have shrunk the cattle herd, limited opportunities for young people to get started

in the cattle business, and take away any incentive to grow the cattle business, and we'll make up that gap. Instead of just importing hamburger, we'll be importing more and more and more beef from outside this country to fill that gap rather than it producing it here. And that to me is no different than what we're trying to do with bringing more fertilizer back to the United States and onshore it. It's the same thing as why we're trying to onshore building chips. It's the same thing why we're trying to build more power here, more oil exploration. We should be trying to grow as much of our food here. But instead, our policies and our politics are making it harder, and I don't think that's right. I don't either. Part three, the Mexican border opens Monday.

Screw worm just showed up in Sedona, Arizona. So what actually crosses the border? Not beef, but live feeder cattle, mostly like calves. They go into American feed yards, eat American corn, and get killed by an American packing plant. Mexico's cattle export business was $1.2 billion last year before the closure, and it was roughly a million plus head a year feeding into our system. Shutting down that border took over a million head a year out of the American feeding and packing pipeline on top of the drought shrunk domestic herd. That is another reason, that is another reason why Tyson is not filling these plants or JBS is not feeding or filling up these plants. This is just another issue, subissue, adding to this bigger overall issue.

So Monday, August 24th, the Douglas Arizona Post reopens to Mexican cattle for the first time since July 2025 closure. Sonora, sorry, Sonora, not Sedona. Did I say Sedona or did I say Sonora? I thought it said Sonora. Okay, Sonora confirmed its first screw worm case Wednesday and 292 miles from the border. And the USDA says no change to the, they say there's no change to the reopening. Sonora released 360,000 sterile flies around the case. Texas has confirmed more than 40 cases since the parasite crossed into the U.S. this summer. Mexico has 1969 active cases down more than half from a year ago.

But the current state is we shut the border for 13 months. It costs Sonora ranchers 40% of their income. Texas got 40 cases anyway. now reopening it with a case of with a case two hundred ninety miles away from the border. If you really wanted to get macro with it, the herd is at a 75 year low, so the packers can't fill their plants. So they're closing the plants permanently, which means the rancher's leverage is gone, right, as prices finally got good.

Washington's answer to expense, too expensive burger isn't to fix any of that. It's, it's, it's to buy foreign beef for 90 days and hope nobody. notices until after November. Yeah. One caveat on that is the U.S. is they, I think it's built or whatever, yeah, built. They spent a bunch of money and worked with Mexico building up their sterile fly production in Mexico, which is probably why the cases are going. going down there and they built and I don't know if it's in production and where are those

sterile flies that they released there came from but they they've built a massive facility down there in Texas and I think their thought process is that they're far enough along that they're going to be able to get enough sterile flies released that they're going to be able to get a handle on this and it's going to be I mean now once again that means that there's a bunch of people down there that are all saying, hello, we're from the government, we're here to help, which is never a good thing. But I think that's their thought process. So I don't know where this all ends. I mean, at the end of the day, I think it all goes back to exactly what we talked about earlier. There is no, there is no quick fix to this. Like literally, I think the best case

scenario, it's a six-year deal to get the cattle price or to get the cattle herd built back up to where we were before all this started. I mean, this is what I have, we have a section, it's just like what to leave with you guys. And this is, like we said, it's a complex problem. But first point is this didn't happen in 90 days and it's not going to get fixed in 90 days. A cow takes two years to make a calf and a calf takes two more to become a steak. the herd shrank over six years of drought and red ink nothing a president post on Friday morning changes that timeline

and anybody who tells you that it will change it is got some other agenda that they got another motive they got another motive that they're running on there another point that we have is every player everybody involved in this story did the rational thing but yet the American farmer and rancher still lost.

You know, Tyson closed plants it couldn't fill. If you're Tyson, what would you do? Yeah. You're going to shut them down. It's capitalism. That's rational. Washington imported cheap trim to call them grocery store prices, even though I don't think that's really going to work.

In their mind, somebody said that that was the rational thing to do. That's what's going to happen. We're going to get the price down at the grocery store. Mexico wants the border open. rational. I mean, it's a big part. They're bringing a lot of cattle to America. It was working. They were making good money probably doing that. They were shipping a lot of cattle over here. None of them, well, it says none of them are the villains, but I mean, there's, I think, I don't know. I don't think anybody's trying to do anything. They're all trying to survive. They're all trying to survive. That's right. So of all of the things that you listed off there, probably the, the, the best, the thing that could move the needle to help save packing that hurts the American cattleman probably the least of those

and it actually helps some cattle guys is being able to get those cattle into America out of Mexico. They're buying them. I mean, there's feedlots are buying those cows, those feeder calves to feed out. And the upside of that is that, they're feeding U.S. corn, it's jobs for those guys and those feedlots, and they're the ones that are ultimately making the money, and they're the ones that are hiring people. That's probably

the best of bad options. The thing that is going to do the least of all of it is any of this rhetoric out of what, pretty much anything Washington's going to do is not going to do anything. it's all it's all just show and tell and and uh sock puppets pretty much yeah and i just have a point on here it says when every individual decision is reasonable and the outcome is still bad the problem is the structure not the people yeah i mean and that and that just goes back to this system that we find ourselves in today something's got to change yep something's structurally got to change. This consolidated world

we find ourselves in, not just in agriculture, but everywhere you're seeing this consolidation. And it's going to catch up to us. It is going to catch up to us. And here is a case and point that it's catching up to us.

It's not good. It's not good. One thing that I think that has changed a little bit, and this is very small scale, but I would say the number of people that we talk to when we get out that are doing like selling freezer beef. So in other words, I think most cattle guys have figured out, I wouldn't say there aren't any

doing it, there are some doing it, but a lot of cattle guys, they know that it is a tremendous amount of work and it's difficult to do the whole nine yards of taking your cattle to a locker getting it processed, getting it packaged, getting it labeled, and retailing it. They don't want to do that. But a heck of a lot of guys that we have talked to, they do what they call freezer beef, where they get locker dates, they let, you know, they let people know on Facebook that we have cattle that are going to the locker, this is the date. You can get a whole, a half, a quarter, whatever, and they sell it, they get their price for that beef, and then they pay the locker for processing it. And there's a huge demand

for that. I mean, it's small per guy, but I think it's happening country over. I would say that is something that not to keep your thought on your point, but that's something that brings me a lot of optimism when it comes to agriculture and food and meat.

It is becoming cool again to have a garden, to buy produce straight from the farm, to buy farm fresh beef. It's becoming cool, even in the suburbs, even in the cities, to have a freezer full of, it's becoming a flex to have a freezer full of, full of farm fresh beef that comes from the farmer that you know, or pork or chicken, or chicken. It's becoming cool. It's becoming cool. And that's what

you're seeing in culture. I've said this before in my personal TikTok. It's not even just that. the whole country living, rural America, having your own acreage, having your own chickens, knowing your farmer, all of that stuff is becoming cool. It's becoming the way that young people are wanting to live and strive for. Like, it really is. People are, I don't know, I've gotten some backlash because people say, I don't necessarily see that. But I think you are seeing that in culture.

It's becoming a cultural thing. that's happening. I've never told you this. Maybe I have. And some of you out there may remember this. It may have been that way when you were younger. But when I was a kid, what we always did is we took a hog to the locker

and got it processed. Or we took lambs and got them processed. My mom could cook a lamb chop so hard that you could knock somebody out with it. When we came in and you smelled, lamb being cooked. Oh man. Because that that'll give your jaw a workout. My mom,

she, I don't know. She was a great cook, but those lamb chops, they were like hockey. That's where you went to the freezer and got the Schwann's ice cream. Yeah, that's right. But I don't know if I told you this, but when you would go to the locker in Colona, Iowa, when you went in there, they had this big area.

Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. and it was like a, it looked like kind of like a post office.

Like, you know, when you go to the post office, how they have PO boxes and you have your key, they had the exact same thing, but they were these big drawers and they were different sizes because some people had bigger ones. What you could do is, like, if you bought a quarter beef,

you paid so much like it was... To store it there. And you stored it there. And it was this big drawer, you unlocked it, and you pulled it out, and the whole back of it was the big freezer behind. but the front was these hoppers.

And so we would go up there. We had a deep freeze at home, but like if we had something processed and our freezer was full, we would just leave it there. And then every once in a while, we'd go up there. And I remember loading up cardboard boxes

and we'd go put it in the car and bring it home. But they probably had 50 drawers like that. So, I mean, that was a thing. And I'm wondering whether something like that, I mean, I don't know. That'd be really cool and not even just on the like the quarter half whole thing, but if you're a butcher shop,

it'd just be cool to like, you could almost do, that's like almost a subscription model just in real life. Right. Because you could just like, if you knew a guy was like, every week I need six ribbyes in this case and I want to come by on Saturday

and I want to pick them up. Yeah, and they didn't have to be there. That front was always unlocked. You just could go in and you had your key for your box. It was just like a mailbox. That's very cool. No, I've never heard of that.

I've never seen that. Yeah, that's, that's cool. So, yeah, that's the way we used to do it. Yeah, all I'm trying to say with that point, though, was like, that gives me, that makes me feel a little optimistic because I think the American consumer culturally is moving. They want, there is something there. The culture wants farm fresh produce, farm fresh meat. They want to support agriculture.

It's just, if they can pay the price, that's the biggest thing. Yep, that's exactly right. Last, you know, another point that we want to leave with you guys regarding this, Dad already touched on it, but the beef producer is the only protein producer left that is really independent. Hogs, chickens, turkey, all vertically integrated. One has to wonder if there is an effort to send the cattle business the same direction. And I think whether you're American farmer, rancher or whether you're an American consumer, we got to advocate for that not to happen.

We cannot allow that to happen. all to the points of what dad said. We animal agriculture stimulates rural America in a massive way. Our town is a perfect example of it, and there's plenty of towns in rural America that are the same way. We have got to keep cattle producers independent. We got to. We cannot let them be fully integrated either,

because if that happens, it's just adding, it's just making this structure even worse, not better. We can't, and it's not what the consumer wants. It's not what the consumer wants. Last one is, the fix is more doors, not fewer rules. We don't need the government to run the beef business. We need enough independent packing capacity than no single company and no single president can decide a rancher's price.

Conventional, region, big or small, that's the thing that everybody in this audience should agree on. Until then, the packer and the president will keep deciding what your cattle are worth and they'll both tell you it's for your own good. It doesn't matter if it's the left wing president, right wing president, doesn't matter, politicians, all of them. It's what we've said. It's just reiterating

the point that we've made. We got to do so. We got to get away from that. We got to get away from everybody else controlling our own destiny. Like usually, like usual, the solutions are actually going to come from the people involved and not from the politicians. Yeah. And the politicians just need

to stay out of the way. Yep. So 100%. Uh, the next the next topic that we got, this has been stewing for a while and we're not going to spend a lot of time on it because we've got some other, we got some other just kind of hot button things that are happening, but

the whole Canadian U.S. trade thing kind of blew up last night. So, not just Canada, but Mexico, but for this, we're going to talk about Canada, because the U.S.-Canada

Mexico trade agreement is up for renegotiating and renegotiation and they've been negotiating it. And back in July, Trump said Canada treats three American industries unfair, cars, booze, and dairy. And dairy is kind of an old complaint that Canada slaps huge tariffs on American milk and cheese to protect its own farmers. So he announced a 50% tariff on about 20 billion worth of Canadian stuff as payback. And Carney, who's the Canadian Prime Minister, he's just, he's, well, he likes a good photo op like Trump does. And he's been running his mouth every chance he gets about how bad, you know, the United States has been treating Canada. And Trump's been throwing it right back on him. And he came out and said that, where is that?

Oh, so he announced, Trump announced 50% tariff on about 20 billion worth of Canadian stuff as payback. Not every Canadian, not everything Canada sells us, which is about $380 billion a year, just targeted, just a targeted list. And those tariffs were supposed to hit on August 19. On Tuesday, Trump said that we had a deal. You know, this has been a season of Trump saying that we have a deal on a lot. of things and then we don't necessarily have a deal and this is this is where we were and he said we had a deal and paused everything for three days and Thursday he went on TV and said that Canadian tariffs would be non-existent for our farmers Friday night the two sides were still in a room in Washington at the

last hour Canada says the U.S. added new demands limiting Canada's ability to make trade deals with other countries and something about Canadian language and culture protections. Karnie said they were too much and offered too little and called his negotiators home, suspended talks, and at 1201 this morning, the 50% tariffs were all switched on. So Canada says it'll match dollar for dollar starting September 8. Steel is on their list, and we don't know what else. And so who knows where this ends up.

They both been playing hardball with each other, and it's kind of a war of words. Canada is by far our biggest trading partner. you know, the amount of goods that flow back and forth between the U.S. and Canada is insane. And the economies are so intermingled. When you go north, there's literally cities that sit on the border between Canada and the United States and, you know, products that move back and forth every day. And it's going to get, I believe it's going to get worked out.

It's just how much, how much pain are we going to go through to get them working? Well, yeah, and this is why it matters. I mean, potash. Canada ships us about 12 million tons a year, basically all of it from Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan. That's the K and your NPK. It's exempt right now on the U.S. side. The question is whether Canada puts it in on their September 8th list as a weapon.

Pork. Canada is one of the biggest pork buyers. if they put U.S. pork on their retaliation list, that's, you know, your barns, our barns. Whiskey, it's on the U.S. list. What? Jeez, they've kind of scared me there. Whiskey, it's on the U.S. list that hit this morning. It'll be on Canada's.

That's your, you know, that's our whiskey minute tie in. Lumber, 98 forestry products on the U.S. list. Canada supplies about a quarter of U.S. framing lumber. Home builders say tariffs have already added 10,000. thousand dollars to a new house every carpenter and every young couple trying to build a small town building a small town pays that um so those are just some of the goods that really why this matters so much i think that's probably one of the biggest things is the lumber because Canada definitely when it comes to plywood and um osb which you know every house the united states or

every house that gets built, you put in a ton of OSB and plywood in it and like glue lamb trusses and all that. And so, I mean, that's a big, it's a big deal. And it's one of those things. It's a perfect storm. It's a big deal when prices go up. But when prices are going up on everything, because it costs you more to fuel your car, cost you more to shop the grocery store, and then building prices are going up. I mean, the American consumer is the one that's just getting hammered. And I don't know where it ends. Yeah, I mean, this is the fourth or fifth

round of on again, off again, you know, thinking that we're going to get this deal done and then there's some big last minute thing that happens and the deal falls apart. But Trump keeps saying it's for the farmers and the actual costs lands on the farmers. Fertilizer,

risk, pork, retaliation, lumber. I mean, it's, we got something's got to get resolved there. and hopefully it happens sooner rather than later. A few quick hits. JBS closed the 2000 head a day in Pennsylvania beef plant in June, then announce it it'll convert into a value-added processing facility and keep about 400 jobs.

So JBS closing plants too, but hey, at least there's some, they're not closing them all the way. They're trying to find a way to keep some. I think they're trying to find a way to not completely lose all the plants that are out there and keep jobs in rural America as best they can. But, you know, they, it's, I wouldn't rely on the, I wouldn't rely on the Brazilians. Let's not forget that JBS is owned by, uh, that is a Brazilian company. And they're my example of if you're going to, um, if you're going to bribe politicians, do it the way JBS did, because back in their home country of Brazil, they didn't try to bribe just one

or two politicians. They bribed everybody. At one point, they literally were paying every single congressman. I don't know what their structure of legislature.

Basically, they were paying everybody. Yeah, I think they're low-key, the mafia. Oh, they are 100%. I would not be surprised

if they have done some crazy stuff to get to where they are today. But, yeah, those guys, or something else. So here's something positive

for everybody that loves hunting. The Iowa DNR gave its roadside count. They wrapped it up August 15th. Last year, it hit a 20-year high. And I can speak firsthand. You know, it's been, man, the pheasant

population in Iowa has declined for years. And we've noticed it every year when you harvest. When you come down to the end of the field down by the timber, down by the creek. You know, it used to be that you'd always, every round, you'd have a couple of pheasants fly out of there.

And I mean, there were years you didn't have any. But it's at a 20-year high, and they think that it's staying, and this year is going to be good. So, yeah, you better get your dog in shape. It's going to be good for guys that like to go fesson hunting, and that's positive. Missouri non-resident buck tags cut from two to one, non-resident deer hunters are up nearly 50 percent.

in 10 years and residents are complaining about land access. That's something. Shout out to the Meat Eater podcast and network. I think there's a ton of people that, I think this is just, this is just a point about just the way, where we're at with just culture and the digital age. Everything is so accessible now.

Like every hobby, every industry, every, every job opportunity is all accessible to anybody. And so you have so many people that get interested in, And hunting is one of those categories. You have got so many people interested in hunting now because of just the access to information and the lifestyle and what gets portrayed.

You know, there's just so many public figures and people that have shown the realities of hunting. And there's more and more young men, men in general, but young men that they just want to get out. They want something out a way where they can disconnect. And hunting has become one of those things. positive 100% it's definitely a net positive and honestly hunting brings a lot of people to rural america i mean there's people that straight up make the decision to live where they live because they want to hunt fish yeah and that's happening in rural america that's where you're going to do it so the only downside i'll give you to that is if you're a farmer uh it used to be that if a if a farm

sold and there was 20 acres of timber on it that 20 acres of timber brought maybe a fifth of what the land does. And there's examples now on marginal farm ground that has timber on it. The timber ground will bring more money than the marginal farm ground. It's very true. Because guys are looking for places to buy literally for no reason other than to be able to go hunting. Last few ones, rural ambulance, Rapid City Fire told Pennington County, South Dakota, it will stop running EMS in rural areas after December 31st unless the county pays about $800,000. Um, 200, 2,655 rule calls last year under South Dakota law. EMS is not, not an essential service.

Let that sit. Yeah. Just another point back to rural health care, rural hospitals. Uh, I don't know. That's no easy answers for that because that's probably a county that doesn't have $800,000 to pay that bill. Yeah. So another one, farm bankruptcy is a new NASDA tracker counting chapter.

11 on top of chapter 12 Iowa is the most chapter 11 Ag filings for any state at 26 Chapter 11 means bigger operations not just small family farms total farm debt headed to a record of 200 or 624.7 billion dollars national debt passed 40 trillion this week's this week month ahead of forecasts this is important we're not coming back from this I don't think It seems like the deaths.

So this is the point that I was talking about when we were up there at the top about politicians and programs and, you know, money for this and money for that and what politicians do. Well, every politician that I have seen run for national office, Republican, Democrat, Independence, House, Senate, president for my entire adult life. have pledged to cut the United States deficit and get our books in order. Yet we have hit $40 trillion in debt. So what does that tell you? It tells you that none of them, none of them. On either side.

On either side are ever going to get their shit together? The problem is this is how, this is what will eventually start a world war. because there is not enough money in the world to pay the world's debt. In other words, the amount of debt that every country in the world has accrued from running deficits is greater than all the money there is to pay for that debt. And somebody is going to get left holding a bag and they ain't going to be happy about it. And these people, so we were at the state fair and we sat down. and quite a few people that we talked to were politicians,

and we only had 15 minutes to talk to any of them. And so this isn't one of the items that we brought up, and I didn't bring it, I wouldn't have brought it up anyway because they all would have given the standard answer, that we need to get our house an order, and that's one of their priorities, and they're going to do it. However, they're not going to do it, because you know why?

We have already surpassed the tipping point in this country where there are more people that pay no taxes than people who pay tax. taxes. So you have a group of people that are getting more from government than they're paying for the services of government. They will never vote to have their entitlements cut. So they're never going to vote for anybody that is going to say, hey, you're going to have to start paying for some of this. Whether it be Medicaid, like one of the hot button issues, and we just, we referenced it here is the lack of rural hospitals.

And a big ding on the current administration is they cut Medicare, they cut reimbursements to hospitals. What is coming? What is coming for each and every single one of you out there if you live long enough and I honestly not sure whether I will successfully make my way to heaven before this happens, but I kind of hope I do. You have no idea how few services you're going to have at some point in the future. And I don't know when that is.

There won't be any Social Security. There probably is not going to be Medicare. There's probably not going to be Medicaid. There is not enough money to pay the IOUs that are piled up in the shoebox of the United States government for all the shit that we thought we needed to have as a social program. or defense or whatever. And it's like, it's going to come.

The bill is going to come due. And when it does, the amount of pain that people are going to go through, you're going to look back. There's, you know, people have like a little sign in their house that says, these are the good old days. These are the good old days.

You might bitch about, you know, whatever's wrong in your life today. Enjoy it because what's coming? I don't know when it's coming. I don't know how long we can go like this, but to say it's never going to happen, no, it's going to happen. And when it does, you ain't going to have shit for free. And so the idea of living on a little acreage and raising a garden and having a few head of beef and taking care of yourself, I think that's a real good plan because I think we're all going to have to take care of each other because

nobody from the government's coming. Mel Robbins, she didn't mean it this way, but when she says, nobody's coming to save you, nobody's coming to save you. It's enough to drive Amanda drinking. It is,

but before we do that, I want to go into Sawyer Spotlight. I got a little bit of the spotlight I want to shine. Bring us up. Raise us up. I think you're very right, Dad, but at the same time, like, hey, I think, I'm already at this point.

I think a lot of people in my generation are, the government is not coming to save you. I've been there for a long time. COVID was the last straw for me when it came to government assistance and saying that they have our best interest in mind. That was the example that showed me that they, that was the way to call. Clearly do not give a, I'm not going to say it. They don't care.

They don't have our best interest in mind. So yeah, it is all on us to make change. If we are going to make change in our communities, in our neighborhood, in our household. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have can't. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research.

Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. It is going to be on our shoulders, and the sooner you realize that, and it's that and accept that responsibility and step up to the plate, the way better off you're going to be down the line. Sore Spotlight, first thing I want to say is a favorite thing that I consume this month. It's kind of a fun one. I had my very first tomahawk at 801, 801 chop house in Des Moines. I'm so glad 801 stayed in business in Des Moines. I know they filed for bankruptcy. I think reorganization. They have a few across the country, but man, that thing was good. I don't care.

Top house, that steakhouse is fire. It is not the cheapest place to go in the world, but they had like a freaking, I don't even know what, 28 ounce. No, it was like a 36 ounce tomahawk, but so much of it was part of the bone, and I think like 20 plus ounces was the steak.

I ate the whole damn thing. I think I put bone marrow butter on it. And, oh, it was, honestly, and I don't say this, because like you can probably make the best steak at your house, but that was the best steak I've ever had in my life.

We have a picture of it. It was so good. I think it was dry age more. I think it was a 28-day dry-aged tomahawk, but holy smokes. If we can put that picture in the episode, the video version, we'll do it. Yeah, if I could find it, I'll put it in there.

But man, it was good. Got to eat a tomahawk. I was supporting the beef farmers out there. I was supporting the cattle guys out there. I was trying my best. I always try my best. And my young man thought of the week, and this is the last thing

I'm going to touch on in the sort of spotlight is, so my best friend is getting married. Shout out to Chip. My best friend's getting married this week, and it had me reflecting, and, you know, when you're talking about loving your neighbor, and it's on us,

and it's on your shoulders to help each other out, you cannot put a price on good, good friends and best friends and relationships that you know you're going to have for the rest of your life. And so I really just want to just reiterate a point that we've said on the show before. But if you have good people in your life, you have good friends in your life, keep them. And honor those relationships.

Show up when it matters. Show up when it counts because it pays to have good people in your life. It's a good thing to have good people in your life. And Chip is one of those guys that has stood in my corner. I've been best friends with him for since I was a kid. We were playing football at Lincoln Elementary School together back and way, way, way back. And we've stayed friends since then. And he's been with me through some of the hardest times in my life and vice versa.

And so I just can't reiterate enough that if you got good people in your life, keep them and nurture those relationships and don't let him go to the wayside. And things are going to change after he gets married next week as far as he's probably going to start having kids. and, you know, he's got a full-time job, but I think we're going to try our very best to stay in contact and find time to always make time for each other and show up when it matters because you don't want to lose that. Yeah, because you know what? I saw this, I don't know, quite a while ago,

and it stuck with me. I have just a handful of my friends from my childhood. I have a couple guys that we've started doing, trips every year and I cherish those because one thing you can't do is you can't make new old friends. Nope. And so the ones that you have that are like that, cherish those. Yeah.

And I'm trying my best to soak it in and cherish it. And, you know, I just say some of the best times, some of the best moments of my life as far as having the most fun come, came from hanging out with Chip. Yeah. You know, and that's just, you can't put a price on, put a price on that. You can't put a price on that relationship. And it's, we say it all the time. Success, going after what you want, building your life, none of it is worth it if you lose

the people that matter most to you. So care for the people that matter most to you, whether it's family, friends, or friends that you consider family. Take care of them and show up when it matters, nurture that. I will say congratulations to Chip. he is a family friend. He spent a lot of time at our house and his kid growing up. I can't necessarily say that the two of you made each other any smarter, but it was very entertaining to watch you. I've said this before. Sawyer and his friends, I used to say all of them together are

dumber than any of them by themselves, but hey, they made it through so they're okay. And I also will say this from a very young age, I told Sawyer and I told my wife, that kid is going to be a salesman. And he is a salesman and a damn good one, I think, and he's only going to get better. But sometimes there's a personality there, and I know because I was one, and I could have told you when that kid was 12 years old, that, yeah, he's probably going to be a salesman. So anyway, kudos to Chip. The Whiskey Minute today, I have to talk about a new friend. So at some point, we're going to talk more about something we've been working on on the farm for a long time. But in the process of all of that, I met a guy, and he's actually from Indiana.

We talked to him at the Keystone co-op deal out there. And he showed up, met us at the hotel. We had supper with him. I'm not going to share his name. He might not want all that publicity. But dang good guy. and we're kind of in this together and we have a similar

path and we really enjoy talking each other and we've kind of gotten a rhythm we talk about every week but I did not see this coming he showed up at the hotel and he brought this bag and in the bag was this bottle and this is a bottle of William

Leroo Weller and if you know you know it's very, and I'd say in Iowa you just don't ever see this I don't know where he got it I don't know how he got it and I honestly don't want to know because it's kind of hard to find

and maybe with you know the way the whiskey business is going maybe it'll get easier to find but anyway we're going to open it up and try it there isn't any age statement on it but it's a limited edition bottle right?

Yeah they release these every year it's part of the Buffalo Trace antique collection I think they call it and we're going to have a little pour. Your glass is a little dirty. Yes. I think it's just a little hazy as all. Okay.

This, hey, you know what? Here's something I was going to tell all of you. I thought you just had dandruff. There's probably just your dandruff in there. Yeah, probably. You know, when all that stuff was going down with lettuce about salmonella and bacteria, do you know something that has never given me explosive diarrhea? Whiskey.

Purifies your system. Just the Taco Bell after you had it. Well, that wasn't from the wisconsin. whiskey though. Yeah, I know. Whiskey or purify your system. Is that enough for you? Well, that's not, I don't want the dirty one.

Okay. All right. I don't want to catch whatever you got. Yeah, this is the good one because it was on, this one, mine was on top, so it smells good. Yeah. You know what kind of notes it's supposed to have? You know what flavor, like, is it supposed to have a, like a, like a sweet finish? It smells expensive.

It does smell expensive. All right. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Holy shit, that is good. I'd say cherry. Yeah, cherry for sure. And like not a burn.

I mean, it's got a slow burn on the back end, but does not have a punch in your mouth burn right when you drink it. But holy shit, the flavor on that is excellent. Very good. And it's what I like. I like a sweeter, I like a sweeter bourbon. That's good. You don't taste the oak. um that is good that that that is definitely one of that might be the best bottle we've ever tried

on the show currently i that was to me is like a nine five like that's in the nines for me okay well i think it is i could drink that straight no problem well yeah and that's the idea that's the idea of it so uh yeah i would i would recommend if you can get your hands on that bottle, get your hands on it, and I would probably only drink it when you're celebrating something special. Yeah. Because that is worth the money and worth the experience, and that would be something to share with friends that matter to you. Well, there you go. You matter to me. It was a great episode. I think people got some value. Yeah. And we, again, we always throw this disclaimer out there, guys. We do not claim to be experts. This is just our humble opinion of things. We,

appreciate the hell out of you guys we thank you for where this show has gotten or where the show has taken us to being able to go on the road and meet you guys in person and do speaking and build this show up to the point that it is it's just we could not do it without you we are we would not be here without you and we are very very grateful and we love you guys and we appreciate you and we'll see you back here next week for another episode Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk.

Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca.