Barn Talk - Saving Pigs & Saving Labor w/Matthew Rooda

Episode Date: December 17, 2021

Welcome To Barn Talk! In today’s episode, we have Matthew Rooda on to discuss pig care and how we can make it better, labor issues, the problem with pork, Iowa Hawkeye football, entrepreneurship & much, much more. Barn Talk Merch 👇🏻  https://www.thislldo.co/   Check Out Matt's Stuff! Popular Pig Podcast: https://spoti.fi/3E3ciPa   Swine Tech: https://swinetechnologies.com/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swinetechinc/ WATCH BARNTALK: 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 ITUNES ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 ADD US ON: INSTAGRAM ➱ https://bit.ly/3gaobdN TIKTOK ➱ https://bit.ly/3eJfftr #barntalk #farming #farm #pigfarming ------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Barn Talk is a significant break from the typical content viewers have come to expect from This’ll Do Farm. Please be advised that we will be exploring a wide variety of topics (some adult-themed) and our younger viewers (and their parents) should be advised that some topics will be for mature audiences only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's that the pigs that are in these barns are lean. Lean, lean, lean. They're too lean because we're for a while as a pork industry, we try to be the next lean meat. That was a dumbest. I mean, pork loins is healthy as healthy as chicken bread. It is healthy. I won't lie.

I do switch it up. I mean, I eat chicken a lot, but I also eat some porkloin occasionally for some lean protein. Well, the great denominator in the whole thing is so back, I remember when the money maker from pork was pork loin. Today, it is the least profitable product by far. What's the most profitable? Pork butt and bacon. That's it.

Because why? Because that's where the flavor is. Tastes. And all of this crap about people, consumers, are budget, whatever. Not when it comes to pork. They will buy what tastes good. Look at the beef market. Okay, the beef market.

hasn't grown that much, but it hasn't shrunk either. And people eat a steak. They're going to pay the money. They're going to pay the money. Well, you have, it's two worlds. It's ground beef and it's steak, and there's not much in between. But that steak side, they don't care what it costs. If they have a steak, if they're going to have a steak, they're going to have a steak.

They don't care. Well, let's look at the obesity rate in the United States. Let's not. Let's just look at that a second and say, how many people have self-control? of going to the store and saying, I'm going to eat a healthy little chicken. No. No. If we had self-control, we wouldn't be one of the most obese countries.

Well, they will tell themselves, then they'll take said chicken. They'll chop it up. They'll put it on a salad with an egg, bacon, French, and ranch, and some cute croutons. It won't go on a salad. And then they'll be like, oh, I mean, healthy. Guilty. Guilty. Oh, no, it's breaded chicken. Yeah.

I was about to say is, you know what you do? You put it in flour, you put it in, breadcrumbs, you throw it in the air fryer. And you hope that it tastes as good as Chick-fil-A, even though it won't. Oh, no. You just won't. Which now there's a debate. I mean, the Popeye's chicken sandwich.

Nope. No, it ain't good. It's not. It's not. All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk, garage episode edition, where the knowledge is free, but you get what you pay for. we're deep deep into the holiday season christmas is upon us and we have a real special gift for you guys

today we're going to discuss some of our favorite subjects pigs tech social media and the power of mixing them all together for the betterment of for the better good uh we have a man that's doing just that but first we want you guys to pay the fee if you guys get anything from the show get any value from the show at all. Share it out with your friends. Share it out with your family. Share it out with your coworkers. That's kind of the ticket to admission to watching or listening to the show. And it helps us grow. So we really appreciate all the guys and gals out there that have been doing that. You want me to talk about the markets? Yeah, go ahead. Talk about the markets. Okay. I'm going to do that. I'll give you the market update. But first, this guest has raised

the bar. So I want everybody to know that now then this is, this is expectations. So he not only showed up but he brought a bottle of blanton's so uh we're having we're having a little a snoot of whiskey this morning so that's pretty good so you know no pressure but a little bit you know whatever you want to bring along is is fine uh i appreciate that and then the other thing i got a beef i've got a little bit of a bone to pick so uh if the barn talk guys um i got this barn tools yeah well barn tools but barn talk is our alarm yeah so the barn tools guy they sent us this flyer and apparently I must not make the cut. So Sawyer must be the pretty one.

That's right. And now I've got a complex. I guess I'm going to have to go get a new hairdo because I didn't make the cut. But anyway, it is pretty cool. I was glad to get that and we love working with those guys. Shout out to Barn Tools. But, you know, I think that they could have probably found a more handsome model. Just saying.

I think it's great the way it is. Wisdom is sexy. Looks kill, looks, looks pays, looks as in Hollywood, so there you go. Okay, so the markets, as of the last time I checked them, courtesy of Katz Green in Washington, Iowa, corn was $5.89, and the local bid, I think you can find a bid that's actually a little bit better than that. I think at least one local feeder had a $590 bid. beans 1268 1241 at the river 1277 at quincy and hogs are 72 bucks and this is something we're going to get in today because the hog business has all kinds of problems most of them labor related

I don't think our problems are really demand related but we've got issues with production transportation and processing so it's a tough it's tough sled and right now if you're the integrator. Cattle, 136. That number just stays the same, but the price of corn keeps going up, so it's probably not quite as good as it used to be. Bitcoin's $50,000, give or take.

I don't know what it's doing. It just can't seem to get over the hump. We need to call our good friend Grant Hilbert and ask him what he thinks. Yeah, see, maybe they're mining too much, flood in the market. I don't know. He's just getting filthy rich right now. Yeah, that could be. Ethereum's 4200.

So Ethereum's actually hanging in there really good. They're pretty close to their all-time high, I think. And as the Metaverse keeps cranking out, I think you're going to see Ethereum be pretty strong because a lot of these exchanges and a lot of these projects are all running on the Ethereum blockchain. And I threw Cardano in there just because I feel sorry for him it's it's kind of in the tank i don't know he can't i thought there was a new i thought there was a new

what do they call that a split uh tap route uh something they were changing and when they got that done i thought it was really supposed to go i need to read up on that because it hasn't gone anywhere but sideways and down a little so tesla's a thousand dollars elon's got to sell like another six million shares before the end of the year to pay his tax bill so i don't expect it to do a whole lot. It's holding up pretty good, though, for as many shares have been dumped. I think he's dumped. I don't know. Is he dumped 10 million shares or something like that, I think? You would know at all the people here. You know, I don't think I look, but he's dumped a pile to pay. He's got to, and he's actually, when he's done dump and he's going to own more shares

than he did when he started because of all the options that he took. And yeah, we'll save that for another time. He had a CEO, he spoke at a CEO, CEO deal that the Wall Street Journal put on, and it was some pretty interesting comments about everything and anything, but we'll talk about another time. So today, this, the guess we've got today kind of reminded me how fast time flies, because when I thought about it, I realized that the last time that we had a chance to sit down with this guy was actually the first time that we were ever on a podcast, and it kind of galvanized our desire to do one of our own. And I don't know how long ago that was, but it was before we started our first one,

and we're 25 episodes in. So Matt's a graduate of the University of Iowa and has a BA in Enterprise Leadership, Sustainability, and Pre-Med. I had to read that off the sheet because you must have partied a lot, you know, to come out of there with all of that. Holy Mother Mary. He received his MBA from John Hopkins University, and today he's the president and CEO of Swine Tech and the host of the Popular Pig podcast. and he likes good whiskey, so that raises a stock. And he likes the Hawkeyes. Yeah, he's a Hawkeye fan.

That helps. And that might be a good segue into what we're doing. So, well, I'll let it go. So welcome Matt Rota to Barn Talk. Thank you. Yep. Okay. So before we go in and before I lose this thought,

since you're an Iowa graduate and a Hawkeye fan, I always like to pose people this question. So what's wrong with the Iowa Hawkeye football program? And I'd like for you to get that in like a one minute bit, but I'll even give you multiple choice. So is it our conservative coaching? Is it our lack of decent recruits? Or is it some sort of curse that has just been put upon us

that we can't consistently win big games? because I just can't understand, and I'll give you my thesis that I tell everybody. Iowa consistently puts out offensive and defensive linemen that are amongst the best in the NFL. In fact, they're known for it. In fact, guys, I've heard many interviews by head coaches that they know when they draft a lineman from Iowa, they don't have to worry about them getting up to speed because they come in and they know, they know so much because Farrant does such a good job of getting them ready. Yeah, it's incredibly low risk to draft an Iowa lineman.

Okay. So if you're a five-star, I'll even say, if you're a four or you're a five-star running back or quarterback, and you know that Iowa has a great line, and they've got great guys, they're going to protect you, why would you not want to come here and play football? And it's not because of the winners, because there's other people that have winners worse than us that consistently get.

I don't understand. Tell me your thoughts. There's a lot. I think there's a lot that goes into that, but I'll let you speak on it, Matt. Oh, man, it is a deep topic. You have to have a high tolerance for pain to be a Hawkeye fan. Yeah, you do. It's like the Cowboys.

Yeah. I mean, I'm a Cowboys fan. I grew up, and I went through so many eight and eight seasons, and I went through seasons where they get your hope up, like this year with the Hawkeyes. They get your hopes up. Go to the Big Ten championship. And they just get annihilated.

Oh, even throughout the year, we got our hopes up. Yeah. But I think we went into the season with our eyes wide open, and then we got scammed. Yeah. I mean, when we look at Iowa football, what, we're seven years in a row against Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa State. And yeah, if you're somebody that's an Iowa State fan

and you're laughing right now, or you're just saying, yeah, screw the Hawkeyes, they suck. You have no room to talk. You have no room to talk at all. No, the state of Iowa. You're way worse off. You're not even close. You're not even the Hawkeyes level yet.

You had one good year, two good years, and this year you shit the bed completely. They didn't even play us that year either. Yeah. That's true. If we played Iowa, we would have beat you this year. Yep. Just wanted to throw that in there.

I think it's, the other thing is you've got to have swag. You've got to be a cool school. Like, they're going to Florida. They're going to Alabama. They're going to LSU, these top recruits. You know, you got to have some. What's better than our logo, though? I know.

I will admit, it is pretty sweet. And I did go to the Penn State game where we beat up Penn State and we stormed the field and it was awesome. It was the best Hawkeye game I've ever been to. And Ferrence knew he knew what he was doing because he brought

all the recruits there to that game. Oh yeah. And it was loud, loud, loud, loud. The stadium, the energy in that stadium, the fans, it was incredible. If I was a player, I would have been like, If I know the fans got my back like this, I'm ready to get on this freaking field

because you just felt the energy. And I will say, Hawkeye fans, I feel like no matter how bad we are, we are one of the most loyal fan bases. And anytime, like on TikTok, someone will see my Hawkeye hat. And in TikTok,

you know how freaking big that is, how wide of an audience you can see. I'll see four Go Hawk comments on there. Because people just love the Hawks. I mean, our fan base, we know we're not going to win a national championship, but you would never guess that when you talk to a Hawkeye fan. You would think as another fan of another school

that we actually are delusional enough to think that we have a chance every single year like we're LSU, Clemson, Alabama. I think there's two things with the Hawkeye program that to me stand out. When we are looking at our identity within the Big Ten, I don't want to be, I mean, we're not Iowa State's rival. Right. We are, but we don't lose. Right.

We're not Minnesota's. We don't lose. Nebraska, no, we don't lose. Wisconsin, we lose a lot to Wisconsin, and they're the reason we often don't win the West. But Wisconsin doesn't want us to be their rival. Nope. They want to be Michigan's.

They want to be Ohio states. Michigan states. And so when we look at the West, the two best teams typically don't see each other as rivals like the East does. It's just a hurdle. It's a hurdle. And each team is like, we think we're your rival. No, you're your rival.

not. That's kind of his big brother, little brother thing. And then second, when Kirk Ferrence is my opinion, when he is recruiting quarterbacks, it feels like he's recruiting quarterbacks who he believes will be compliant to the process. And so, could we get better candidates? I think so. Are we getting the candidates that Kirk wants? I think so. Yep, I agree with you. 100%. Yeah, I just can't believe that we've never landed like a Justin Fields. Like Justin Fields that played for Ohio State, he was a freaking stunt. plays for the Bears now.

Like, why can't we get one of those mobile read-option pistol quarterbacks that can throw and run the ball, like a stud? I feel- Because I feel like you got the line. We have a decent running back pretty much every year. Well, you have to. Our defense is solid. Yeah, we just got that recruit out of Southeast Polk too.

That's huge. Five-star safety. He's from Southeast Polk. He's committing to Iowa. That was pretty big. But, man, I think if we just had a solid quarterback, that could do both. Because this year,

let's be honest, everybody knows, the offense this year just, it was the problem. It was the problem. Defense was solid. Hell, the special teams was solid. It was amazing.

The offense is just lackluster, and it's kind of always been that way. I can't mean, I remember when Stansey played and Marvin McNutt and DJK and Tony Moyaki, that was the best Iowa offense

I've seen in my lifetime. That was awesome. Which is crazy because it was pick-six Stanzy, but when I look back too, It's if there's a favorite quarterback that I've ever watched to Iowa, it's Ricky Stansy. Yes.

The guy had flare. And I think that's why, though, is because wouldn't you say that of the quarterbacks that are compliant, Ricky Stansy was the most aggressive? I feel like he was. Because when you look at this year, the two quarterbacks that we've seen, they both looked like game managers to me. And what, I hate to say this, but it. during the game last week,

they both looked a lot like, who was the Bears quarterback? Jay Cutler. Yeah, they looked like Jay Cutler, standing there forlorn. Like, how did I get here? Where am I? What's going on?

Anyway, you know what? We've just spent five minutes, and I don't feel any better than I did when I posed a question to start. I also think Brian Ferris is a problem. I'll just say it. I don't think he's a great offensive coordinator. I'm just going to say,

I think he wants to run the ball and be the ground pound. on Iowa football team that we've always been, but son of a bitch, we gotta open it up. I've heard good arguments to why Brian Ferrence is okay, and it's not him. I'm with you. I would agree it's Brian,

but I've heard good arguments when they dig into it. But there was this huge Twitter post talking about the game the other day, and when they were diving into it, on second down, we ran 82% after throwing on first. And our tendency this year, year's been like 77%. The teams know what's going on. They know exactly what's going on.

Like the other day, we were sitting there, and I was with my buddy, who's a way bigger Iowa fan than I am, and we called all three plays in a row. We scored a touchdown, but we were like, I bet we, on a, it was a third and two. Yep. And I bet we sat there and I said, I bet we run a shotgun draw on third and two. Well, actually, it was third and goal on the two. we ran a freaking draw. But don't you feel like

I feel that part of that is Ferrence wants to be he wants a team that is dominant enough that they know what you're going to run and they can't defend it.

Yeah, but you're not Alabama. No, you're not. I know you're not. But that's what, like when I see him do that, I think what's running through their mind is that they've got this offense line in the nation. They've got this line and that they can impose their will on who they're playing. And some people they can. And when they can, that's fun football to watch. The problem is, when you play Michigan that has an insanely good defense. You can't do that. You have to have a little bit of creativity. And what I heard was that there were a couple of plays.

I mean, I don't know. The example that I heard was that if people that were at the game, game heard him call a play and Farrence, elder Farron's vetoed it, basically said, no, we're not going to do that. So. Kirk Ferrence might be the best game manager. Yes, I agree. All of college football. I agree.

The confidence he has, the only reason we won Penn State was because he hung around. The defense. He trusted the process. Hell, that Nebraska game, we could have. easily lost that game. But defense special team showed out on that. Yeah, and they always have the idea that all they got to do is hang around for three quarters and then perform in the fourth quarter.

That's their goal. They want to wear people down, wear them down, wear them down, hang around, hang around, don't let manage the game and then come in and get it done. All right, I might feel a little better. I don't know. I just feel like this is my last statement. I feel like we're slowly getting more and more respected. as a big, one of the best big 10 teams in the nation and one of the best programs to go to in the

nation. I honestly think so. I think it's getting better. I think our, well, I mean, when we look outside of football and basketball too, well, football are rated two in the nation. We can argue we're overrated. But we're also rated what top two in the nation for basketball. Yeah. And our women's basketball wins a state or a conference championship or baseball wins a conference championship or volleyball wins a conference championship. So the athletic program as a whole is on the rise. And that's cool to see that it's not just one sport, but it's the whole system, because that's going to bring money from all directions. And the city's fun.

I'm just going to tell you if you're somebody that, you know, once you're an athlete and you want to go to a college, and you can go visit Iowa, go visit Iowa, because it's a great town to have fun, too. Yeah. So it's got it all. It's got it all. It's good.

It's good. Go it all around the city. Did you, Matt, did you listen to the Joe Rogan podcast when he had Dan Gable on? I didn't yet. I've been wanting to watch that. That's awesome. So talking about Iowa City nightlife, Dan Gable has an excellent little story. They talked about how in the heyday of Iowa wrestling

that on a Friday and Saturday night, he didn't go to bed. He just slept in his recliner because he had it, he had it pretty much down pat that every bar in Iowa City had his number. and at midnight, if any of his wrestlers, or at 2 a.m. or whatever, if any of his wrestlers were getting out of hand, he would get a phone call, and he would get up and put his hat and gloves on, and he'd go down down and he'd get them. Yeah, like he talked about that, how that, well, you know, these young guys, you just got, you just got to know how to manage him. And that's what he did. He would just go downtown and pick them up and make sure they got back to the dorm or wherever they were going. And I thought, you know, today. is it truly is it was different times i mean it was completely different times but i mean that's one of the best stories about him talking about just sleeping his recliner and then the phone and ring and he'd go wherever he had to go it's pretty cool though that he he was able to just let his you know his wrestlers know hey call me and i won't you know call me if you need a ride or something call me yeah well today i mean today you wouldn't have no you wouldn't have you wouldn't have the raster that he had

because of anyway that's neither here or that yeah Well, Matt, you were a busy guy. And so you grew up in Oskaloosa, but you moved, you're not a native, or are you? Did you move away and back? I wasn't sure, but you grew up in Oskaloosa. Is that right? Yeah, so I grew up in Oskalo, went to school in Pella, two for high school, and then was actually born in Kinsden, North Carolina. Okay. So my dad was managed his house for J.C. Howard down there in Eastern Carolina. And so that's, you inherited the NASCAR. That's how you're such a huge NASCAR fan. It's in your DNA.

Exactly. In the blood. Yeah. So give us a little background, just kind of how you fell in love with the swine industry and how you came to come to Iowa and then go to college and all that stuff. Just give us a little background. Yeah, so my passion for the swine industry, years in the making. Let's put it that way.

So my grandfather had a farm in Pella. My dad was originally from Pellum. my mom from Michigan, but when they met, got married, they decided to move to North Carolina to take that job with J.C. Howard. And from the time, my earliest memories is going to the farm with my dad, riding in the bucket as he's feeding sows and riding tractor and stuff like that. And then visiting my grandpa and helping him, helping him with pigs. But growing up, it was never the traditional perspective of pigs. Most kids you talk to today, they did show pigs. So I didn't have that luxury because of biosecurity.

My dad just couldn't have a couple show pigs on the farm. And so growing up, I would do contract vaccinations in third, fourth, fifth grade for a local producer and start power washing. And it just paid better. So I was able to go get all the stuff I wanted. And video games, people can say they're not great, but they're a great motivator when you don't have the game you want. So I use that as motivation to go out there and work and eventually started to manage and and become more involved.

I had the opportunity to work for a company Tri-County pork, you know those guys. And that's where I became more involved on the South side and on Farrowing than I ever had been before. And I really loved how you could chase perfection, but never get there. It's also frustrating.

But in the sow farm, there's always something you can be doing better, and it's very innovative in nature. And so that really caps. captivated me and made me look into it. I eventually went over to health care, which we can talk about, but that really is what I loved about the swine industry. It's the south side.

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please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-26-H-Hon. to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. You went to high school there in Pella, and you were working in the pig industry as you were in high school. So, you know, if you're an ag kid, Iowa State is the obvious choice if you're going to be an ag, because they have one of the best ag schools in the nation. So what got you, like what was your decision process?

that you decided to go to Iowa. And so you didn't go the path of ag business or vet or anything like that. You kind of went your own path. What was the decision-making process of that? So there's a couple things, and we start back with Iowa versus Iowa State. Some of my most frustrating memories as a kid was when I was in third, fourth grade, and my parents wouldn't let me stay up to watch the Greg Bruner, Adam Haluska, Jeff Horner team.

I loved Iowa. And I think I was lucky as a kid to have good teams to watch when I was young. So I knew I wanted to go to Iowa. Iowa was probably one of the things I knew the most. But when it came to studying agriculture, ag business is something you kind of grew up in. Didn't want to pay to learn it. Yep. I already got it.

And so if I'm going to go to school, let's try something different. My dad told me, do something different. Yeah, you can always come back. back to this. You can always come back to it. He did it. His dad did it. His dad's dad did it. And he's like, it's a tough industry. Yeah. Try something different. And so I started looking at business and I started looking in health care. And I really liked working in the salfarm, right? Not to dehumanize it, but I liked that birthing aspect. It was very rewarding. So I was like, well, let's try to be an obstetrician. And so I studied genetics and biotechnology at Iowa and did some shadowing and some work at hospitals and

nursing homes and worked at Oak Knoll here in Iowa City and for a couple years as a medication aid and that's the route I was going before we founded Swine Tech and took kind of a 180 on what that path was going to be. So you make it through what was the process. Like did you know, I always find it interesting when I'm talking to people that, you know, end up going out on their own. Usually there's a moment where you've worked for different people. You've worked for different people. You've you've worked, you've done internships, you've worked your way through college, at what point did you know or have the idea to go out on your own to do swine tech? It wasn't planned and it kind of caught me by surprise.

And so something I often tell young people who aspire to be entrepreneurs is find an industry, work as hard as you can to accomplish what you want in that industry, and something's going to prevent you from getting there. And when you find that wall, it's usually not just you who's facing it. It's probably an industry problem, and then go and try to solve it. And so find real problems, and the only way to find real problems versus kind of sitting in your room and trying to fabricate an idea is to go out there and be challenged by it.

And working as a man, manager and for a few years at Schneider, Pork Farms, and Waterloo area really put me against that wall where I was facing the labor issues, the mortality challenges. And so as I'm working in this nursing home for a couple of years, University of Iowa sends out an email saying we got $3,000 for a student with a good business idea. So I was pretty bored with chemistry and biology. Let's just say I liked the end result of what that work was, but I wasn't all that fascinated by the actual classes I was in at the time. So I attend this info session, hear a lot of ideas, like, wouldn't it be nice if somebody could come pick up your books and bring them back to the

library? I'm like, or do your laundry for you. And I'm like, these are such small problems. And I went and presented and brought Pig Champ data from a few different systems. Had the complete breakdowns of the mortality. And the individual looked at me and they're like, we've never had anybody come to us with data before. It was, I had the whole ROI case. And so we got to an incubator, got the funding, and actually started working with, speaking of football, Josie Jewell,

because he was doing some, he was doing some cattle technology work at the same time. And so through that whole process in school, we kind of worked back and forth with him and a guy named Lon Olenzak, who really helped us kind of think through a lot of those things early on. you got the idea, so there's a lot of ideas.

Yeah. So did you kind of go, oh, crap, well, what, yeah, what am I going to do now? What's the next step? Like, had you thought that far ahead when you presented as to how you were going to try to accomplish this, or was it like, okay? I kind of have an idea. Now, I kind of feel like I know what I could do. Let's just put this stat out here and see if I can get this funding and then we'll kind of

figure out the next step. Yeah, that's basically what. it was. It's taken it step by step. We knew piglet crushing was a huge issue. We knew that millions of pigs were dying from it. We could quantify the problem. And we knew that, at least in my time, on the sow farm, we could teach sows to start getting up every morning when you went into feed. And I thought, why can't we teach sows to get up off of their piglets? We as pork producers, within days, can understand the squeal of a piglet and know, I got to go save its life. Right. Why couldn't we teach technology? Amazon Alexa was popular at the time.

time. Why can't we create some voice recognition algorithms to figure this out for us? So what year would have this been? This has been 2015. 2015 we would have applied in February, got the award in March. We ended up getting a scholarship from the John and Elsie, Ferrence family gave us a scholarship. I guess we shouldn't have been bagging on Ferrence. Oh, no, you have to. That's the name of the game in college sports. But then we went into an incubator program at the University of Iowa for two months. where we were supposed to validate the business idea. And the whole concept of starting a business,

especially with hardware or anything, is understand that your business model canvas, who are your channel partners, all the different aspects of your business model before you actually jump in and think of a solution. And then go to the customer discovery. So they actually recommend that when you do want to solve a problem, don't start with having an idea of how to fix it.

Start with just the discussions with producers on the problem. breaking it down. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So you can understand it better from all levels. Absolutely. Nice. So was it, were you like a senior in college when you got this funding?

Or was it like, so you were at the end of your college career when you got this funding? And like right after you graduated, it was like full board. No, actually, I had a, I was the end of my junior year. Okay. And after this incubator program, we had a group called the Iowa startup accelerator and Cedar Rapids come to us and say, you know, we've been following you guys. We like what you're doing. our program is closed and we're kicking it off here soon, but we'd like to admit you guys as our last team.

So we were going to get $25,000 from them and we were going to be able to spend that on prototyping and whatever else we needed. And he said, kick is you got 24 hours to let me know and you got to drop out of school. Oh, yeah, yeah, that was tough. So that was that one of your hardest decisions? Was that one of the biggest hard decisions

you ever had to make in your young life? Yeah, I would say that was probably one of the toughest decisions to make, and I think watching college sports actually help me make that decision more. That's a great tie, and I'm so glad that we had the Hawkeye conversation on the front. Absolutely. So at the time, a friend of mine was dating Desmond King,

and Desmond decided because of his family's influence to stay in college his senior year. Yep. Killed his draft stock. Definitely did. And the reason he stayed was because he wanted to complete his education. You can always come back to college. There's never, ever, ever.

going to be a time where a college says, no, we will not accept your money for a degree. Might be a little more expensive depending on how long you wait. I'm thinking about going, I'm thinking about going back next year. Oh, yeah. I'm only 40 credits short. Don't do that. Just a little bit. I think I could run it.

I'll run it for you. I'll run this whole thing without you. Swear? It could be his internship. It can be your internship. That sounds like, this is sounding better all the time. Can you learn out of code or something? Can you learn something useful?

If I was going to go back today, that's what I would go to do, is learn to code. Absolutely. Just because people would think, I'd be like a freak. A 50-year-old man that can code and do social media as a podcaster and can edit on Adobe Premiere. My stock went way up. Good Lord. Huge. Okay.

We digress. So what did you, so did you end up dropping out? Yes. That was the decision. Yeah, so we ended up dropping out. You learned from Desmond. Yeah, learned from Desmond. because, man, if he would have gone at the end of his junior year.

First round pick, top 10 probably. Yeah, millions of dollars in difference for that guy. Oh, yeah. Could have sent his entire family for multiple generations to college. Oh, yeah. Versus just focusing on, I'm going to get my degree, which everyone has their priorities, and I respect that. Right.

That was something where I was totally thought he was off the wall on that one, and I was like, well, I'm not going to do the same thing here. And it was a great moment because my co-founder and I, co-founder was Abraham Espinoza from Mexico, met him in college, and, uh, best friends with the guy, we both had to make that decision together. And when we both committed to dropping out for a semester,

we both knew we were all in. And that was huge for us, because a lot of times people start companies and you're not quite sure, are we doing that? They're half pregnant. Yeah. They're all right. You're out.

You're totally right. You bring up a great point because when you, if you're a sole entrepreneur, the decisions are, it's easier because you only got to worry about you. When you're a partnership, then you got to be at the same frame of mind and you got to know that you can count on that person.

So, I mean, that's pretty cool, though, it's huge. It's cool that you both kind of were thinking the same thing. So then that made it even more like, okay, yeah, let's just do this thing. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. Because I think it's a little bit harder when you're by yourself and you're like, oh, man,

but then you got somebody else like, let's just do it, dude. Let's do it. Well, and my parents, they were like, I don't know. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So just. Give us a little bit of like what your company's products are and like what you can do for producers out there, what your goals are as far as what was your vision and where it is now as far as what you guys provide. Yeah, so when we were in that program, we were, our vision was prevent piglet crushing in an autonomous way.

Create a technology that could hear it. I analyze it, identify where that piglet was and alert us out to stand up. And so we would, we'd be going to, we went back to school. We did graduate. We did graduate. but we went back to school and from 10 at night till 6 in the morning, we'd be out at the farm, collected sound samples for months. And so I think there's football again.

Iowa, Iowa State had an overtime game in like 2017, and I'm at a stinking farm running sound samples, and I was so frustrated I couldn't be watching that thing. But with that, what we eventually did was we created a prototype that worked. A creator prototype that could hear pig, differentiate it between teet fights and other sounds, that are happening in the farm, and then alert the sow to stand up. But there were four different inventions we had to get along the way. We had to identify the sound. We had to locate the animal.

We had to actually find a way to incentivize the animal to stand up. Stimulate the sow to get up. Yep. And then we had to find a way to stick something onto a sow and keep it there. And so all four were very challenging. One thing that helped us through all this prototyping was pitch competitions. So the universities or universities have student competitions or even go pitch for money. Oh, sure. Free money, no strings attached. And we got about three. $350,000 in pitch competitions on 25 different competitions we did. MIT, Harvard, Microsoft, Under Armour. And when we went through that, we thought, why would they care about pigs?

That's the wrong question to ask. And there's a story element to all of this, too. It's they cared so much. Well, because it was so unique. Because they knew so little. Yeah. It mattered. It was such a big deal to them when they were able to see a video of a little piglet,

stressing for its life and then be saved. And so that mattered. We got that product. We got some funding initial $1.3 million in funding that allowed us to kind of get the initial version out there, raise another six. And ultimately created a product that went through Kansas State trials for welfare assurance. We were using a 10s impulse, which is used in muscle and nerve therapy for people to get this out of roll over. So incredibly safe. And we actually found there were some welfare benefits too for the sound piglets, which are pretty cool.

but we ran into a challenge and that challenge was that it wasn't completely autonomous. When we have sows that are at-risk sows delaying on piglets, somebody needs to intervene. And we found that the intervention or the last step of the mile

that was tied to people and the variability that came from that created variability and results long term for R-O-Y. And the more we looked into it, the more we identified that that was a challenge all precision technologies are having. I can have a camera that tells me an animal's sick,

but if somebody responds within the recommended eight hours versus 20, 25 hours. Right, right. Doesn't matter. I mean, it doesn't matter. There's no R-R-R-A-W. Because your results are the same as if they didn't get the, if they didn't get the signal. Absolutely. So all these producers we're talking to, we're recognizing a pattern that we're innovating,

but we're not expanding. And they're not expanding because they wisely know they have no clue what's happening in the farm. What's happening every day? who's doing it, are they compliant with our expectations? And because we don't know, we do know that there's going to be variability. So why would I spend all this money to bring this technology throughout all my operations with an unclear understanding of the ROI or the utilization of the technology as a whole? And that's when we founded Pigflow. Okay. Yeah,

because that product, okay, I'm going to back up just a minute. There's a lot there. I'm going to back up a minute because some of you that are watching or listening, you might not know what the problem is as far as a pig getting crushed by their mother, because that doesn't sound, your mom didn't lay down on top of you overseas. You got boring. It happens. It does happen, but it's not. And so part of it has to do with the fact that a nursing sow is not the most graceful animal. There's a lot of weight there, and when they go to get up, it's not a real smooth motion for them to stand up because they're carrying a lot of weight.

And when they go to lay down, there's kind of a, if you've ever watched them lay down, there's kind of a starting point where they start to move their legs to lay down, and then they kind of get over-center, and then they just kind of plop down. Yeah. And if you are a baby pig, the closer that mom's teat gets to your level, the more excited you get because you're going to get fed. And when a litter is first born, they haven't figured out yet that when mom goes down, it's kind of like an avalanche, and you need to wait for the avalanche to hit the ground

before you go grab that teat. And so what can happen is the pigs will be right underneath the southeastern. as she starts to lay down and, you know, if you don't get out of the way, you're going to get crushed. And then some sows, and I think you've probably, I'm speculating, but some sows are worse than others as far as their level of whether they care about getting back up or not. Because some of, and I imagine, are guilt's worse than second or third parity sows, or is it pretty even? Yeah, it's a, it's a weird distribution. It kind of depends on just, genetics sometimes, but one thing we actually found is you're alluding to it is when that

Sal lays down pops on a pig. Yep. Well, we've had some assumptions as an industry that we had to learn and disprove or prove throughout this process. And one of them was that the majority of piglets die when the mom lays down when it's about a third. Really? About a third.

And the weaker, slower pigs tend to be the ones that kind of, I mean, kind of tend to be in that bucket of a third. but the two-thirds of Leon's actually occur when she's not laying down at all. Really? Really? So it's about 4,000 hours of video. We have bad dreams of just hearing pig squeals because you hear it for so long every day. But when that sow is laying there and her teats are exposed.

And she rolls back over. Flips over. Those big pigs chase the teat. Yep, and they go right under. Squished. No kidding. Yeah. Because I wouldn't have thought that.

I wouldn't have thought that at all. Oh, it's crazy. It's crazy. And so they're, it's, it's the piglets fault. But some sows want to flop around more than others. Yeah. And so find the more they flop, the more they flop. The more chances that they risk. Absolutely. That's crazy. So there's two, there's two scenarios where they can get crushed. Yep. Oh man. Yeah, two major ones. Yeah. Okay. So, um, when you, I'm just thinking about, uh, me, as either a the south farm manager or you know the integrator so describe this product as far as how like where is it set how is how is it work yeah and then we'll talk a little bit about because i i bet you there's plenty of stories about the looks and phrases that you got when you first tried

to do oh my goodness so give us how does it how does it work so in the sal stall you've got that center divider yep and what we do is we hang basically a baby monitor like you would in a crib. Oh, sure, yeah. Right on the pen itself. And it's acoustically designed to block out noise

from outside of that pen and amplify the noise in the pen. And it's just going to be listening to that sound. Well, we have a wearable device that has that Tens impulse inside of it, which for clarification, Tens impulse is about a tenth

of an actual cattle prod and about a third or fourth of a dog collar. So it's probably a lot like when you, unless you're somebody that thinks that chiropractors are the devil, it's probably similar to those patches that chiropractors put on your back, like when they set you down, it's supposed to relax your muscles, you know? It's the exact same thing. Okay. Except the only difference we do is typically when you put those on, you know they're coming.

Well, right. Right. So you're not startled. Right. But when it happens when we attach it to a sow, is they're startled. They have a nice little reaction to it. And so that gives the piglet just enough time to get out. And so when we actually looked at the actual product,

now that we have this monitor in the pen, we have this wearable device that we insert into an adhesive patch with a medical-grade adhesive that goes right on the south flank. So we want her to go up. And so the flank's a great place for that. The time it took to figure out, we tried sound, we tried food, water, all these different conditioning methods, and none of them worked.

And then the amount of different, we had to go to Japan and Vietnam to get this adhesive. It was a process. That's crazy. It's crazy. And so what's the, is it just, is it a second? Is it a, so if you, so what's the, does it have some sort of a delay where it gives her stimulation and then it waits?

And if she doesn't, if the sound doesn't go away, then it goes again or how does that work? Absolutely. So when we look at the sounds of pigs, One thing that all pork producers can recognize is that when I hear a pig getting laid on, I sit there and I kind of stand and wait. Because what I'm trying to figure out is, do I hear a break in the rhythm? Because if I do, it's probably a teat fight.

Well, once you stand there and you wait about five to ten seconds, you're like, oh, my goodness, this is a land. Then I go go run and try to find this thing if I'm in the barn. Same thing with the technology. We listen for 10 to 15 seconds. And in that time frame, we're looking at the waveform, the frequency, and the time duration. figure out that rhythm, that breath, squeal, breath, squeal, breath, squeal until we actually alert the sow to stand up,

which is an impulse, and then what we'll do is we'll wait five seconds and give a second one. And if for whatever reason that squeal doesn't stop or she doesn't get up, we lock out the system and notify a team member to say, hey, this sow was laying on a pig, we tried to get her up, it didn't work. You need to come in and kind of look at the situation. So that's where the human error kind of thing kicked in for you guys. Well, I mean, that's one area because you really want someone to come in and look,

and say, well, is there a problem with the mesh flooring? Is there something, or is the sound no longer lactating? Oh, sure. Our pigs, non-stop squealing because they can't get anything to eat. And so you have these outliers, which at the end of the day, like, are huge welfare concerns if we don't identify those pigless that are starving. Right. And that was, that was huge for us.

The actual employee part comes in, because at Kansas State, we maxed the amount of times we could save pigs six times. So six different events, not six in a row, just six different events over four or five days. And we never wanted to go beyond that because our welfare research suggested that that was good. Well, when we hit that six threshold, the device is no longer going to stop it. And that sow is an outlier. Most sows do one or two times. There's about 15% of sows that are going to be at that six plus.

What are we going to do to those litters? And often people do nothing. Well, how do we drive and reinforce the right behaviors and actions in the moment to utilize the technology to do its fullest? How much does 24-hour care play into that success of that product? Because, you know, when I was on the production side, one of the things that we saw that we wanted to do, but we struggled to do, and I'm sure everybody's struggling to this day, was the idea of having somebody on the farrowing side 24 hours a day just in case

where with your product that would definitely be a benefit if you had somebody there the sow didn't react they got the notification and they could physically get her up actually when it comes to smart guard because of pricing and how it all works out is it's your autonomous solution to get around

24-7 because they come in the morning and then address it 24-7 farms are never a great fit for us but 24-7 hasn't been very positive just because it's so hard to have one or two people in the barn for both safety and actually knowing people that are getting things done. Yeah, because if I'm the 24-hour guy, I'm watching YouTube videos until I fall asleep. I'm not your go-getter. I mean, that's the sad truth of

it is. Well, when you're hiring people, it's for day zero, day one care. You're not breeding. You're not doing that stuff at night. So you're likely sitting on a bucket in a farrowing room. you're checking probably five to ten sows that are farrowing, which means you've got a lot of time to get disinterested. Yes, a lot of time to get, which isn't all that different from nursing homes of people who work third shift. Everyone's sleeping. You've got two hour rounds,

but there's some pretty cool parallels. Yeah. Yeah, just how do we help people overnight? Yeah, and that's a great idea to that. Yeah, that's a great insight. So do piglets die of suffocation, or is it more like they get curses? rush and they like crack their neck like because you said that you know you wait a little bit is

it because they're suffocating they can't get air because of sow is just on them yeah kind of the most common way yeah so you'll get about 25 30 seconds into it and that 15 to 25 second span is really when you're going to confirm this is a problem yeah they'll stop they'll start to lose the breath because they are so compressed they actually nine not more than nine times out of 10 they're going to die from suffocation not from actually crushing but uh When we actually look at that, there's, it's incredible. We did the size comparison. Imagine something the size of two mammoths or like three and a half elephants all in one,

one creature laying on a grown adult. That's the weight comparison. That's the equivalent. To a little pig. To a little pig. And so it's just a huge amount of weight placed on these little pigs. I had an experience similar to that when I was at Kirkwood Community College. one time I was in a galley kitchen and a person that will remain nameless caught me and I didn't think I was going to make it out.

But I did. I squeezed past. I made it out of there. It was horrible. I had nightmares about it. Kind of similar, kind of similar experience, but a little different. I thought that was going to a whole other direction. It could have, it could have, but I just let it go. So I want to just like, to the people out there that don't know much about, you know, sow units or sows or just pigs in general, what, why would an integrator or why would an independent grower want, and that was, you know, raising and breeding their own, or pharaoh in their own sows? Why would they want this product? Like, what's it going to do for production? Like, what are they going to see improvements on? Why would they want this? Why is it matter to save as many piglets as you can? Absolutely. And you brought up a great point for those of you who do not know sal farms. And so one of the things that was really helpful for us early on is we found a video on YouTube,

of a sow in an open, open 70 style pen. Yep. Running around with the little baby piglets. He had the dirt, the grass. They all look super happy. Yep. The sow flops on a piglet. Well, that piglet's staring at the screen.

Squeal, squeal, squeal, and eventually, after four seconds, it gets out. Kind of walks it off. Mm-hmm. That was eye-opening to a lot of people who don't understand animal agriculture. Yep.

Especially when it comes to sow crates. Yep. because I was able to show a video and show stats saying, if this is raised without a salf crate, we're going to have a way bigger welfare issue. Yeah, I think a lot of people don't, we've talked about this before, a lot of people don't understand that,

so I'm in a little bit of a unique situation in the fact that there's such a healthy gap between me and my dad in the fact that my dad was 52 years old when I was born, but I grew up here Pastor Farrowing, and I got in on the tail end of Pastor Farrowing, and then, you know, we built our first confinement buildings in the 70s. And the whole reason that he was so excited about that is because he ferroed in two Tenpen farrowing houses,

and also we should throw a picture when we're doing this. He was using Tamworth Cross, Durok. Durok Tamworth Cross Sous, which I wouldn't get in a pen with a Tamworth Because literally it's like today, what it looks like is a bore today with an utter. I mean, they're mean. Yeah, I wouldn't get in there for anything. And there's pictures of my dad kneeled down with this like this Durrock Tamworth sow that has like six pigs on her. Or maybe eight pigs on her, you know, whatever.

They're all good pigs. But he always said like it was just, It was just completely nuts to him as to why anybody would want to go back to Faroan in a pen. Because the whole reason that they built those buildings with crates, and the crates they had were pretty crude, they were straight crates with no rub bars, sidebars, anything like that. But they were so much better than what they had because that sow, when she decided she was going to lay down, she didn't get much thought to it.

it was time to lay down. And he just said that, you know, the number of good pigs that you lost from pigs getting crushed in a, in a, either a 10-pen farrowing house or a farrowing hut, it was just crazy. Which shows that a lot of this innovation around the actual crate itself came from a place of care. Yeah. And often when I'm talking with... People overlook that a lot. They do a lot. They think we're just monsters and we're just trying to get every dollar we can. But whether they know. It really didn't start from... efficiency, it started from the necessity. And then, of course, once you figured out that that was a better way to do it, then the efficiency of having them all in a farrowing room and not in multiple

ten-pen or multiple farrowing huts in an alfalfa pasture, that, you know, that came along. Well, I mean, in my role at Schneider farms at the time before they went to an ESF system, they were a, they were a, they were farrowing house and you moved them on a hog cart to breeding You can barn a hog cart to gestation. And every now and then you'd have a sow that would pharaoh out and the straw out in the gestation barn. And you have to go out there with a panel and try not to die from the sow attacking you as you're collecting these baby pigs, which are in the process of dying because of the weather conditions. And it was just a nightmare. So when we're talking with consumers, one thing we often say is that, you know, these sow crates for farrowing, they still are a solution.

purpose. They still serve a purpose. And the losses we have today, it's not a competitive solution for what we're doing because it's the standard. It's the benchmark. But on the gestation side, we brought in gestation creatures, another huge topic. Yeah. Because this was a way for us to provide individualized care. A hundred percent. Technology has allowed us to now get to a point where we can provide individualized care without them. Yep. Which drives us to a place where we can make a transition. But in the Farrowing House? Yeah. That's just not possible. It's not. For people safety and for piglet safety. Yeah. And I would, I would argue that, you know, ESF is... In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over

$24.50 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields like software development and information technology. and more at about amazon.ca it's not necessarily the best solution safety wise for the people for sure because if you've been in any sow unit um the due to the labor that we have um a lot of the people that work in these sow units are smaller people yes they just are um and um an esf unit if you are the that is in charge of going out and finding the sows that for whatever reason didn't go through didn't go through and eat that day before that that can be that can be a tough that can be a

dangerous job and so i i feel like sometimes we get i mean it has merit and um it has its advantages but it also it also has from a labor standpoint it has disadvantages too that you know we've got to think about not only the welfare of the animal, but the welfare of the people that we have tasked to provide the welfare for that animal. Absolutely. And that's where we've gone as a company with our product, Pigflow is focusing on the people. Because when we look at the past 40 years, there really isn't anything that's come along

where the people are the primary focus. Yeah. And so we're asking to do so much more than we used to. I mean, it's millions of dollars per person in responsibility right now. Absolutely. And our genetics are great. Well, we can't do today with people where we used to have eight live born. Now we have 16 live born.

And we're basically giving them the same resources. Yep. And it's taxing. It's stressful. It's disorganized. It's frustrating. So what's what's pig flow about? What's your goals with that?

What's it doing for integrators and for farmers and growers out there? what's your mission with that? So Pigflow was inspired by health care. I mean, we had a conversation with Dr. Brad Frecking, and it was through COVID. Smart cat. Very smart. That guy is smart.

Smart, and he's not going to hold anything back, which is exactly the way I like it. And he basically said, I wish that the government would have included veterinarians more with the whole COVID stuff, because they're the real epidemiologists. Doctors have a class on it. Veterinarians live and die by it.

Every day. Every day. Because everything we deal with is that way. Everything. And so it'd be nice if doctors were to say, veterinarians, you're the expert. Well, you're not going to get that. You're not going to get that.

No, but we kind of do the same thing. We're trying to get to individualized care. And yet we're not looking at health care and saying, well, what do they do? They're the experts at individual. And when we were working through this process, Randy Stacker was a huge, huge mentor for us. And he said, look at other industries.

Why is it when you bring someone into a restaurant, We're into a fast food chain, we're into a gas station or a manufacturing plant within one or two weeks. They're at full productivity. Why? Learn it. So we went and we did that. We went through Culvers. We went through manufacturing, food processing.

And we just couldn't find similarities. It was not alike. And a lot of ways, it was you can easily empathize with the end user or it was cookie cutter. Like if I go into a fast food chain, we all know what it's like to have undercooked food. We all know what it's like to not get your food on time. and we all know what it's like to have the wrong order. Well, that's their main three KPIs. You can't walk into a salfarm and understand this.

Oh, because it's totally different. It's completely different. But when we started looking at health care, man, are there some crazy parallels with what it's like to be a nurse versus what it's like to be an employee in the salfarm? And when we look at it, when we dive into the salfarm, once you step into that door, your quality of care. Your success is dictated by how the quality of care is provided.

management, external supervisors is different. That's more efficiency. That's more flow. But at the end of the day, it's about the care. And so when we started looking at healthcare and the solutions they were providing, like us today, they have sensors saying, you know, the resident had a fall. Or they need help. Or it's time for medication.

Well, if nurses didn't have some device that helped organize and facilitate the communication of all of this, what good is a sensor? Yeah, it all fall through the cracks. we're finding today. If I, if I respond to somebody who fell within 10 minutes versus four hours, huge variability and results. Well, nurses needed that foundational solution. Well, that's what we're creating for the pork industry, something that helps with workflow efficiencies, process, compliance, and individualized care, something that provides a more organized environment for workers where they can have better communication and be less stressed. And at the

end of the day, less stress leads to better attention, leads to more, a better sense of purpose because you know how you're doing and why it matters. And so we've been really focused at it. What are the people at the ground level doing? How can we make their life better? Look at that. We need a bomb button. Yeah, we got the buttons.

We just need to put it in there. We got a program a bomb button. So there you go, Sawyer. The next time you're having a conversation with your girlfriend's family. I mean, you can tell them. I know. I should tell, I should tell, I should tell Kat's mom to listen to this because she's in a You can tell her that, look, basically we're the same.

She works on the mother baby unit. We're basically the same. You and I are basically the same. There's so many, it's crazy. It is crazy. So it's really just kind of a, it's kind of a platform to make it sure that all the people working in that sow farm are on the same page. And people respond to this sow fallen or this, something happened in the South Farm.

Yeah. They respond, hey, I'm responding to this. I got this. And then it just keeps everybody organized and on track. Absolutely. Like, when we look at the South Farm today, we write everything on a card. Oh, yes. And then it goes on a notepad or a show.

sheet and then gets transcribing the office. And we can say, well, we'll look at this real-time record keeping. We've got the handhelds. Right. Oh, my goodness. You start to dive into that. Oh, these handhelds are an absolute, the, I had nothing to do with the South Side in my production, in my time in production. All I know is that nobody on the production had anything good to say about the handles. No, because what handhelds did was said, well, maybe we can get data faster. Yeah. Wow. Did they miss? something. How about we help people, help pigs, and as a result, we get the data? Because they'll take these handhelds, they'll implement them, and they'll write on the card. And a lot of these guys

are writing on a pad, going to the office, and sitting down and typing it. So it's just a different view. It just adds more, it adds another layer. It adds another layer. And like in another scenario, they write it on the card, and they'll have two people walk the entire farm at the end of the day and highlight on the card what got entered into the handheld. And, I mean, that's not real time. Time ain't. That's the problem. The biggest thing facing ag and the swine industry is labor in time.

We're not, we don't have enough guys and we don't, they don't have enough time. We got to get more efficient. Well, absolutely. We have put a big value on information. So we know we have all this information. And we know it's important. And we know it's important. So we're gathering it.

We're gathering it. But not efficient. And we're not efficient in the way we get. it, so we're wasting valuable labor gathering it that we don't have because we're short on labor everywhere. But then once we have the information, we don't use it. No, we do not. And even more so, when we look at all the information that's being entered at the farm level, not one drop of it impacts the person in the day at all. And let's for one example, say you create a real-time solution, which is pig flow. I'm biased here.

And everyone's on the same page, no notes that people are invisible to. But I say, this is how farroed and she just completed and she had 13 live-born. And she's got 14 functional teats. Well, I know right away I got a plus one on the litter. And I know the average age of the litter. So I know if our SOP is to move pigs right around 18 hours, well, I don't have to go count a whole room. Nope. I don't go have to or recount it over and over and over. The work we do with our data on the front end that we're putting on cards can be much more powerfully used to drive efficiencies downstream. And so it's taking that data we already collect, distributing it across the team so everyone's aware.

Everybody that needs to know knows. And then helping prompt individuals to know when and where to use that information. Because the skill sets take a month to teach. But knowing when and where to use those skill sets, take months. Yeah. And that's where our onboarding process is slow. So it's how do we help people know, you know, this is when and where to make a decision

and this is how you might want to go about that decision based on embedded goals and expectations from the producer. So we allow managers to embed those goals and expectations within the system. And then we use that to reinforce actions and behaviors as they're performing them. So if I'm checking sows in the expectations 20 minutes, I check a sow. She goes on a 20 minute timer. If the expectations to move pigs within 24, hours. I'm only showing the pigs available within 24 hours. And you can reinforce it. And that's

where we're going with technology as well to get back to the sensors. It's if our expectations that we tell you a sow is sick, you need to respond in eight hours. And then how can we report back to producers and tech companies? What is the utilization of your technology? How compliant are we or how successful are we in gaining the value based on your recommendations? Is it on your phone? Is it like an app? Like what, how would the tablet? Tablets. So you got a tablet. It's actually a phone. Is it a phone?

So users hate tablets. They hate them. They hate them. We interviewed almost 200 individuals, and it was far and few between who were like, I like this tablet. They were like, I wish I had a phone because it could just slide it in my pocket. That's the problem. It's like, where do you put it?

If you have a little station for every single sow creek, you could put the pad there or something. Maybe that'd work. But it's just too much to carry around. It's too much to carry around. Yeah, definitely. And you can drop some. expensive things in a hog barn or a salad.

I know that. And you will drop a tablet and a pit. Oh, so easy. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Surprisingly far more often than a phone. Easier that Tor can drop a gate rod and an aluminum sorting panel all within three minutes. Isn't that crazy?

You've got a sorting panel four feet long. And it is within millimeters of the same size as that slat hole. Yeah. And yet every time it falls, it just perfectly. Well, it's PSI's fault. It's PSI's fault because it is. It's not my fault. I'm going to totally cop out on this because, yeah, so Tim, this is your fault, my salesman at PSI.

They just happened to meet when they were laying slats. They met from each end right in the alley. And there happens to be two gangs. There's always one. There's two gangs. Hole that's just bigger. And that is. It's where two gangs.

meet and that gang you can see it there's this much of a gap between the two gangs because it's where they met and that just happened to be where torque dropped the panel it's not my fault it was a bad day for torque it was a bad day for torque he was a little i was calling him a rookie i was giving him a lot of shit yeah it was sure it was kind of funny okay i got i got to digress for or i don't know if i'm digressing from that but what we've just talked about is so like so current with every industry in this country. Because what you're talking about, because we're short on labor everywhere.

And what you're talking about doing is making the labor that you have more efficient. Making it more efficient. Less stressed, more skilled. Here's the deal. So you can keep the people you have. You got to make the job enjoyable. If you're stressed all the time,

I mean, it's the same with sow units and it's the same with the healthcare industry right now. I got my girlfriend works in health care and her mom works in health care. And it's stressful as hell right now. They don't have enough flavor. Understaffed. It's stressful. It's not fun.

And it's probably the same way. It's everywhere. And you got to make the job if we got to make it more efficient so they can enjoy their job. Exactly. Because that industry has these same problems as the swine production industry in the fact that it's not efficient that they have people that are doing things in antiquated ways that, that take up too much of their time, they're filling out too much paperwork, and there's too much repetition.

And I would venture to say, I think people look at the dollars that they make. They look, because they see the dollars that they make, and that's what matters. That's what matters. It's on paper. It's like, you know,

we're making more money. We're profitable. So everything we're doing must be good. We're doing good. We can't. Well, it's top down. Yeah. You know, it's like,

oh, well, we're fine. We're making money. That's our goal as a business. And hospitals are in the same way. In the same freaking way. We're working with emergency hospitals right now. And they're helping us understand and dig into some of these problems. And Epic Health is kind of one of those bigger software companies out there,

bringing process compliance and positive patient outcomes to fruition. And when we work with these guys, we start asking them. So hospitals, they're a low margin business, right? Yeah, very low margin. We've got to be very efficient. And your biggest challenge is labor. People. Same.

Yep, that's our biggest challenge. And your definition of success at the end of the day is providing high quality care. Yep. Yep. Wow. How is that any different than pig production? That's crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. Yet we don't look at it. No. We look at manufacturing floors to try to inspire us. And really, we need to be looking at human health. It's what do you always say? What do you always say about the swine industry? It's everybody focuses on the, it's not the pigs. It's not the animal that's the problem it's all the people yeah it's all the people we we can't seem to figure out how to work

the more efficient yeah and that's the problem that you face yeah i mean all the logistics that go into people in health care aging is it happens yep people get sick yep doctors who get to the end of their shift who are just burnt out make mistakes yep nurses who are sick of not being treated like they matter yeah make mistakes and so it's the people component of actually dealing with something that's fairly well known, fairly predictable, that ultimately drives the variability of success or failure. And we try to automate around it and say, well, the person's only responsible for the last 10%. They don't do the 10% right. It all fails.

Yeah, that's right. It's the weakest length. So what do you think is more important? Do you think, I mean, I best they're equally as important. But as if someone that's an integrator, as somebody that's fair in their own pitch, is the sow unit, pharaoh and your pigs more important. How many you get out of that litter? How many you keep alive more important than like the production side? Are they just as equally as important? Like what's more important to?

Well, it's all important. Yeah, it's so hard. But what's the hardest? What do you think has the most challenges right now? Do you think it's on the fairwin side? When we look at it, I think the number is your breed targets like 60% of what it means to cash flow with sow farm. And your pharaoh targets like,

30% or 25% and your, your wean target's 15% to 10%. And so at the end of the day, that breeding matter, we have to get sow's bread. We have to flow the farm efficient. We got to make sure we get that right. But I think the biggest challenge we have today is day zero, day one pig care.

It's inefficient, unknown. The only aspect of sow production where somebody can go in there and for the rest of their life, know their impact is breeder to conception rate. And that's why you find so many people that bred sows for 30, 40 years, because they can sit there and say, I know my purpose and I know my ability to contribute to the organization. Farrowing guys, we should be able to know I'm the best person farrowing sows. I'm the best person fostering.

I'm the best person with nurse sales. We have the data, but we do not do it well. But you can only do that if you have the sows to Pharaoh. So everything you do, if you don't have the sows to pharaoh, that salfarm is not going to make money. So to your point, point what it comes down to is i've got this sal unit and i've invested all this money in it and i've got all this breeding stock in it i've got all this labor so if i am only weaning x number of pigs my costs for everything that went into that has to be shoulder by that number of pigs so when it comes to you and i what we do out and finishing if we get a pig if we get a pig in the system that we're raisin and the cost of that pig is already too high, it doesn't matter how good a job.

I mean, yes, we can add to the liability of that pig, but if we're already behind the eight ball because that pig costs too much to produce, it doesn't matter what you do in finishing. You're going to be upside down in a market that is, you know, poor. I mean, if you get in a situation where hogs are crazy price, yeah, you can probably still make money. but if you're in a situation which in the hog industry, most of the time you have to be super competitive. So if you've already set yourself up for failure,

no matter what you do on finishing, it ain't going to help. So that's where farrowing rate in my mind is king. And it matters. I mean, when we look at the actual flow from breed to farrow to wean, you've got that first few weeks around conception rate, where I can know, based on whoever's breeding, are they doing a good job? How can we maximize our farrowing rate by ensuring a good conception rate? Well, then it's within my farrowing rate when are south falling out? Because we want them to

fall out as soon as possible. We want to identify them right away. As quick as we can. As quick as we can. And so if they're all following out toward the end, that's a real problem. That's really bad. And then when we get them into the, when we get them into the farrowing house, stillborn rate and pre-ween mortality are your next big numbers because that's going to impact that wean total. So if you know your fair wing rate, you know you're stillborns or your pre-ween or your survivability, fair wing rate and survivability, you can have a pretty good idea of what is my pigs out the door per sow bread? And as long as that's consistent and predictable, you can flow a farm fairly well and make it easy for your finishing guys.

Yep. Which you talked about numbers. Yeah. Man, the relationship between a sal farm and a finisher when it comes to sharing pigs back and forth. There's never agreement there, isn't it? Nope. There never is. There never is at all. So you got two, you got two, you got two, major companies. You got, you got Pigflow and you got Swine Tech. Am I correct? So Swine Tech has two products in Pigflow and Swine Tech. Okay, so it's all in one kind of deal. It's all kind of in one deal. Gotcha. Gotcha. So it's one company. And then you got the popular pig podcast too. Yep. So do you feel like you enjoy entrepreneurship more than when you

are working? Do you enjoy this journey? Do you feel like you're enjoying what you're doing? You feel like you're in a good path of what you kind of wanted to do with your life. You like entrepreneurship. Do you enjoy it? Yes, I enjoy it. I think, I think the reason why I enjoy it so much is because when I was in the Salf Farm, I love training new people. I loved, I loved seeing that first sign of, wow, this is my passion. It was really cool, especially when you have an industry where labor is so tough to find, finding individuals that you see, wow, this could be the lifelong journey for them. That was really cool. but you're confined to working with five to 20 people.

Right. And so to be able to do this and be able to work with teams all across the world, thousands of different people, that's what I love. I love how I am in no way constrained the amount of people I need to staff on a farm. I'm constrained by the industry as a whole, which means there's an endless opportunity to grow and an endless opportunity to meet new people. And I think that's what I like about it. You like abundance.

You like abundance. You like not having a cap on how far you can go. Yes, I do not like a cap. Oh, you're speaking Sawyers language. That's my whole thing. I mean, I, you know, we, yeah, I feel like we pretty much nailed the swine. So I kind of want to just get your take on entrepreneurship because it's just, it's one of those things that's overhyped nowadays, I think. I think a lot of people want to be entrepreneurs, they don't know what it takes.

And you don't know if you're, if you were born one or not. Some people say you can be, you can be made one. you can choose to be one and then some people say you're just born one you just know that you're an entrepreneur but you know i think it's i think you can choose to be one you and sometimes i think you got to discover that that's in you because you don't know unless you take that jump because you would have never known if you said you know we're going to jump and take this opportunity and drop out of school for a semester you would have never known that this is something that you might want to do a long term being an entrepreneur long term you know absolutely we're kind of talking with

another group the other day and, man, all the things that got me in trouble as a kid, all of them. I like where this is headed. All of them ended up being the raw forms of what make an entrepreneur really good. Like, I would get in trouble a lot in school. I was never the bad kid, but I was the kid always in trouble. And it was because I was always pushing the envelope at everything. And, and and when you get into the real world, most people have that coached out of them. Yep. 100%. Conform.

Follow the rules. Sit down. Shut up. Sit down. And I was never like that. And I wouldn't say that I ever thought I was an entrepreneur. I had no idea. I don't think our high school did a great job talking about entrepreneurship.

But once I was in it, oh, I knew. You knew. I knew. This was exactly how I was. It's exactly how I was. because when you say push the envelope, do you mean like, see how far you can push teachers?

I mean, like, see how far you can get away with stuff? Teachers, people, people, parents, family friends, video games. It was everything is where is the loophole? Yeah, how far could I go with this? Yes, and then when you get burned, you just are like, all right, back it off a notch. You try to talk your way out of it. Yeah.

But you get burned and you learn from it. And being able to test that, man, my school bus driver, he probably wasn't a fan of mine. I remember leaving the bus and they said he'd call me to the front of the bus for the next two years when somebody was doing something wrong. Matt, come to front of the bus. I wasn't even on the bus. I was just the loud kid always doing something that you probably shouldn't have been. But it was always, when you look back, it was always in the effort of understanding what is possible. Yeah.

Yeah, you know what? you probably, your mother, you would be even further ahead because both me and my wife grew up riding a school bus. So we knew what the cultural effects of riding on a school bus was. And when we had our kids, my wife was like, I'm going to take the kids to school. I'm not letting them ride the school bus because of everything that she learned on the school bus. And I'm like, man, Sawyer, he would be,

he would be even further than that. Hey, I rode the bus a couple of times. Yeah, you did a few times. Because you've got to go to your friend's house or whatever. But, oh yeah, I had some good friends that taught me the ropes that rode the bus. It doesn't matter if you ride the bus as long as your friend with bus kids. I spent two hours on the bus every day if my parents didn't drive me to school. And, yeah, you, I learned Santa Claus wasn't real on the school bus.

Yep. That's probably the most PG thing that you did. That is my far the most PG thing. I mean, there was always this guy and this girl in junior high. I was sitting in the back of the bus and he'd rubber leg and they'd be talking and kissing. So I'd sit next to her on the bus and he'd pay me five bucks to move and I'd made a business at it. There you go. That was your first shot at entrepreneurship.

Other than taking all the little bags of chips from the house and selling them on the bus, yeah, that was it. My parents were very supportive. They found out and they said, you need to stop doing this, but we're proud of you learning how to make money from something that's there. We should do a whole show just of young kid stories of making money. What was your first entrepreneurial deal? Because it is amazing. What it's so funny is when you're a kid, you don't even realize. No, you're just drawn to it.

You're just drawn to it. And you don't, like, it's just like you said. It's like you didn't know until late in life that, okay, this is, I was meant to do this. Yeah. I was meant to do this. My co-founder, Abraham, he's got way better stories than me. Like I could say I learned the importance of placement of a business. So I tried doing a lemonade stand on a gravel road.

Oh, yeah, tough. Yeah, don't work. Tough sled. My dad always cleaned it up too. I had it too good. So lemonade's a little crusty. He was in first grade. As a layer of just...

The mailman, the mailman who gave me five bucks instead of one dollar. He was great. But my co-founder, Abraham, he would actually redraw a Pokemon card. and he created a marketplace of it at the school. Yep. A couple quarters in at a parent teachers conference, they were asking final questions. The teacher stood up and said,

yeah, like, there's a kid here who's taking all my kid's school, like lunch money because he's selling these crappy Pokemon cards. And, of course, his mom was in the back kind of squirched down, like, oh, no. She knew. She knew. She knew.

And then he follows that up after being not allowed to do that with selling these uniquely glowy, looking ladybugs. And so he got everyone in his class to have a little container with a ladybug, which he sold for X amount of money that he would go use to buy candy. And it was just super creative. It's not just the idea, but it's creating the following. Yeah, I feel like I would have got more into entrepreneurship if I wasn't so. I love sports. That was my thing when I was in high school. You know, I just loved sports. And that was like my end all, be all when you're in that. But, you know, once you get out of that and I think I did some entrepreneurial stuff when I was little like I

remember doing lemonade stands in town and stuff like that but sports really jogged me in and then once I got out just like you said you just there's something about it you just know that this is what you're supposed to do and you I always did like to push the envelope I will admit I did like to do that on a lot of the ways but Midwest makes it hard because we're not really we don't have to get that scrappy yeah I saw my grandfather who on my dad's who ran a family farm. In the 80s and the 90s, when you start to hear stories

of what it meant to work two, three jobs as you're raising your sows, eye-opening, but you didn't know that as a kid. My grandfather ran a residential real estate business that he started. He was a history teacher. It took 20 years before he could step away from that to run his business full time.

So entrepreneurship was in the family, but it's not like I knew it was there until you're old enough to say, oh, that's where all of these lessons came from. Well, you're the first generation that knew that it was entrepreneurship. The rest of them, it was just survival. My grandpa will still say on the real estate, he's like, I'd do an interview for school. So I need to interview an entrepreneur. And he said, I'm not an entrepreneur. Right. I'm a traditional business owner. Yep. I didn't change a business model. I didn't create a new product.

I'm not an entrepreneur. And I'm like, wow, those lines are getting blurred today. They are. Oh, 100%. Totally. Totally. 100%. Yeah. Totally are. So do you feel like, because I, Dad and I feel this every day, you know, every day is new. It's something new all the time and always stuff comes up. Time management. You're doing the popular pig podcast. Yeah. And you're doing Swine Tech.

Is time management one of the hardest things you got to do? Like with everything you got going on, it's time management one of those hard things. And you have any tips for time management. So time management's very hard. Yep. I think with time management, you can get in your own way more than other people. Like in a day where I have 10. meetings booked. I'm at a point now where I'm selective in meetings, but when I have 10 booked,

great. It's when you have three booked and you have the rest of your day and you're pseudo-productive. And I call it pseudo-productive because I could have something really great. Let's say a producer called and said, I want you to install this in all my barns. I might not do anything the rest of the day because to me, wow, I had a big win today. How do I get myself to not just accept a win as my day was a win, but let's keep winning throughout the day, because sometimes you can let yourself kind of get away with that. Definitely. Yeah, because you get so excited. Well, I don't feel like you're as much this way as me, but I am 100% my father's child in the fact that, like, I can only go so long doing, so we had a, we had a meeting, we had a Zoom call yesterday morning, and I had a

bunch of office stuff I had to do. I pretty much spent most of my day in my office, and we've got this today and I will go stir crazy because if I'm not out physically doing something, I so much equate going out and doing with productivity, even though the time, see, that's the biggest challenge that I have is we're at the point now where the time I spend in that office and the time that I spend in meetings with people and creating content and doing stuff. That's probably, more valuable, but the way I was brought up, if I'm not out in the hog building doing something or I'm out chopping stocks or I'm out doing something like that, I don't feel productive. No, we're in a generation now where the tables have turned.

Your father and you grew up where if you outworked everyone, you got ahead. You got it. You can't do that anymore. You have to be smarter. You cannot work as hard, but work way smarter. and out succeed anybody. Right. And it's crazy.

Well, because the leverage. I feel like there's a balance there, though, because I feel like we're lucky in the fact that we get to get up every day and do chores, physical labor, and we get to come home and do some of those meetings,

do some editing, make some content. We get a little bit of both. And I still even, I'll chore. We'll do some other stuff with pigs. And I don't even need to go work out because I just feel like,

I feel that same way, little bit too where I feel good working out physically. I like to be I like to be challenged mentally and physically because I feel like that's you need that you need that I get what you mean when you need to be outside and doing something outside. I don't feel challenged that I need to go work out. You don't want to go run a 5k? No I feel like I just want to sit in my chair and 20 20 bud light curls. No no I can't even do I can't even do that I'll just pour another glass I'll just pour a glass. Why work so hard drinking, you know, six cans of beer, where you can just have this much whiskey.

It's more efficient. Beer hat. Yes, I don't have one. Thank God. Well, so speaking of time management, we didn't even really touch on. So through all of this, so you had Swine Tech going, so what got you, what came to you that you're like, you know, I need to start a podcast. Oh, yeah. How did that, like, how did that?

like how did that come? Yeah, and I kind of alluding on the time management thing, it's kind of follow up what are you guys saying? It's also when are you productive in the day? I'm not great in the morning. So if I can have meetings I can sit on where I can have more interpersonal kind of like this, I'm productive and I'm good at what I'm doing.

But if I have to sit in front of a computer at 8, 9, 10, 11 o'clock in the morning, I feel that. I might as well not be working. Yeah. And so I'm most productive at night, and which puts me to bad things. I like to be at work in the morning because I like to feel productive.

So I'm at work at 7, 8 o'clock in the morning. And then I am most productive at night. So now I'm going to bed at 12, 1 o'clock at night. And it's like, well, how can I self-manage my life in a way where I am getting my workout in? I'm getting some fun in. But with popular pig, we were kind of entering this pandemic. The thing that frustrates me the most about this industry,

it's probably a few things. But one of them is that the people who do, the work that that truly matters in the farm, have no clue everything else going out and outside of it. Out of their, out of their one little job. And so it's for me, it's yeah,

I'm helping the Sal Farrow and I got good at it. Well, what's next? Yep. Well, no, this guy's traveling back and forth overseas. This guy's doing this. They're genetic progress. It's like, this is an industry. How can we help them feel more included?

Yep. Because they just need to know. And so for me, it was, I was meeting with all of these very, reputable individuals is how can I share their stories? How can I help get the information or the stories that are happening at the high level that most don't get to see to the ground level? Because nowhere in my life did I see sow production or pig production being nearly as fascinating as it is. Right. 100% until I actually had to travel. Yeah, well, that's great. When did you start

that? So we would have started that. I mean, there was definitely a week and a half of me sitting in a chair after COVID. Yeah. Where everyone says with a good crisis, there's a great opportunity. Mm-hmm. I was sitting there like, what the hell is my opportunity? Yep. I couldn't freaking find it.

And I just started talking to people. And we found pig flow. We found popular pig. They're both rooted in one core problem, and that was people. Yeah. Is how do we help people become more involved, more efficient, less stressed, more a part of the solution? And that's where they both kind of came together. people were more accessible than ever before.

Zoom was now normal. And so I thought, let's do that. And it's turned into a really fun thing for me, time management-wise, is the ambitious side of me would love to make popular pig swine it, right? Like, those guys do a great job. Yeah, they do. They do a great job. I can do an episode, the preparation, the recording,

and the posting within an hour and a half a week of my time. Yep. I've got other things I need to do. Yep. There's not another swine that's needed out there. They're doing a great job. Let's, let's be unique. Let's do something different. You guys do a great job. We try to share stories. They're educational. Let's play the role. Let's be efficient in it. And let's make sure we're not overlapping so much that we're not making progress as an industry. And that's kind of what fueled our strategy. And that's why we do. We interviewed you guys. We're interviewing Marcio.

We interviewed Casey Bradley and Jim Eady. It's, it's how do we all work together to be better? Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center.

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Call 16-531-2600 or visit conexontario.ca. I think Jim's time management strategy is just not to sleep. Because I don't know how he, I don't know how he's always up. Yeah, because he'll message me on LinkedIn, you know, it doesn't matter whether it's five in the morning or it's midnight. I'm like, I pretty much convinced he doesn't sleep because either that or the idea is just wake him up. Like he just gets an idea and it's like, he's just scheduling it out.

He's like, I'm going to send this at three scheduled out for 2 a.m. And let's, let's make people think I'm working. Well, people used to speculate that Joe Connors did that. Oh, really? He would reply to your email like at 3 o'clock in the morning. Oh, I'd believe it, though, with Joe. Well, and that's true. If you know him at all, you'd be like,

maybe that's right. But some people thought he just did it to mess with him. Probably woke up, had to take a leak, and was like, I'm going to check my emails. And then he started sending out emails and go back to bed. I think he just did it so people felt like, gosh, dang, is he ever sleep? He's working at 4 in the morning? Gosh, dang, I got to get up earlier.

We do live in a time where you can schedule things out to make people leave you don't sleep. Totally. I mean, yeah, you could have written that email and had it just ready to go at 3 a.m. to send. Well, yeah, true. Something like that. Well, I totally agree with you because I think one of the things that on the production side, and I would say even on the south side, people get caught in whatever system they're in, and you're going to get taught the way to do it by whoever's running that system.

and everybody in that system gets comfortable in the way that you're doing it. And one of the biggest benefits I feel like of what you're doing and what IT does. And even to some extent what we do on the production side is, I love the comments we get from people that grow for somebody else. Yeah. Because, you know, when we do a walkthrough of how we start wean pigs or how we do this or how we do that. We always get all these comments because everybody does it different.

And we need to do a better job of sharing that because as an industry, I feel like we can all get a lot better when you question why you're doing what you're doing. And you may be, way you're doing it, that may be the best way to do it.

Possible. This is not ever quantified or measured, so there's no way to effectively communicate it. And the other thing is there's more than one way to do a lot of things. I think every farm is a unique version of itself. And so this actually lends itself to a problem with some of the bigger systems is you want that streamline, that consistency, the process compliance. We've talked to people that have stepped away from a larger role and they go to a smaller farm and they're like, oh my goodness, like there's just all this stuff I have to learn. Well, it's because you're not

following kind of a standard process. It's if the farm is turning to the left, how do you get it back center? If it's turned the right, how do you get it back center? And I think that there's there's so many differences between all the different systems and there isn't there isn't a right or wrong just the way you need to do to run a successful business and offer a high quality of care well what does that mean for you yeah part of that's culture yeah i mean and that's what that's a that's a whole we could do a whole story about culture but you know within an organization from the top to the bottom if you set the standard and you set what is expected and people can get behind it it's all a about people.

People got to get behind the vision. They got to feel like they're heard. They got to feel a part of something. I think that's the whole thing is if they feel heard. And I feel like an ag, the feel like you're a part of something is already there. Because you know you're a part of something. You're a part of feeding the world.

Ag is like the hawk eyes. Yeah. You face so many. You face so many hurdles. Yep. So many hurdles. Yep. And yet you do great.

things. And man, it feels like when you're in the ag, it feels like you're a hawk eye. Yeah. American needs farmers baby. That was the best damn thing they ever did. Ultimate tie. Ricky Stansy, if you don't love to leave it, right? If you don't love agriculture, then find somebody who does. Because we need people with a strong heart for this industry. Definitely. But you know what? That's what I, you know, I feel like in the ag, you got to just, you got to make your people feel hurt. Because the, the why and feeling a part of something's already there. Everyone knows that we're trying to feed the world. So that's there.

You know, a nugget that I'm stumbling upon is we're living in a world where a lot of individuals who have a farm are offloading it to somebody else to manage it. Yep. And those management companies do a great job of managing the farm. But I feel like there's a missed element of this transition, which is leading and causing a lot of problems. And that's, the owner has been driving culture. Yep. And they step away. And when they're stepping away and hiring a management company, they're like... All changes.

Hands off. Well, not only is the culture changing, when that management company comes in, they're like, we're managing. I don't think either one is having the conversation of, all right, you're managing now, you're stepping away, but who is the person working for? What is the purpose now?

What is the culture? There's a bigger element of, are you doing the things right to flow a farm? of am I flowing the farm right for this farmer here who I know in my community? And that culture can exist with a bigger company. It happens all the time. But are the management companies going that extra step of saying, you know, this is why you matter. Because it feels like a lot of the turnover. That is huge.

It feels like a lot of the turnovers coming from individuals that in those companies are 26 to 29 years old. They are good at what they do. They have the skill sets. And now they're like, now what? They don't feel valued. Or they feel like they've, they've, hit their peak. Yeah.

Well, if you know your purpose and you feel as a part of the organization, well, your purpose is, well, now I'm helping this company as an expert figure out how to get the next mile, but they don't feel that. And so it's how do we have more of a clear transition of culture from those situations? I think that would do a lot of good. And that's only going to multiply. Yeah, it's only going to multiply. And there's a huge opportunity there because you don't need technology.

You don't need to hire somebody special. You just need to make sure you hit that step of the process. Yeah. The value of an employee over time, it just... I think so many people just overlook that too. Yeah. Especially with like if we wanted to hire out chores one day sometime, you know? Yep.

We'd want to get a guy that... Is going to stay. It's going to stay. And I'm okay. You know what? I don't give a shit. I'd buy the guy a new, brand new pickup if it meant that he was going to be staying here. He does a good job and I know he does a great job and he needs a truck.

and that would mean you know, he just loves trucks, I'd get him a brand new pickup truck because I know that's important to him. You touch on a great point because... You've got to keep... Because that matters. Good luck trying to find somebody

that's going to replace him if he's good. I feel like as an industry, and this isn't everywhere, but we get caught up so much on efficiencies and what's the bottom dollar? We're all trying to hire. We're all trying to buy everything as efficiently as we can.

And when it comes to lay, labor. It's going to hit a point. Even, and I feel like it gets, if it gets greater the size of the operation, because at the size of the operation, you lose track of the individual. But like what you're saying, for us, if I can hire somebody that I can sleep at night and I know it's getting done, what's that worth to you? Oh my goodness, you're hitting it. You're hitting it. One of my biggest, other biggest unpopular beliefs for frustrations is labor is such a huge element of our, of our economy. of our industry. I have not met a producer who can give me an ROI in what it means to hire a person.

Yeah. Yet we talk about we want a three to four ROI on anything that helps us reduce labor. Yep. Yet we don't know what we have. So I am working with a large producer. We're putting together calculators to figure that out. But it's high. Yeah. Oh, it's huge. Like the standard six bucks of pig space take care of pigs for 24 or just any building. Dad and I've always talked about, you know, and this won't happen.

for a long time, but you know, everyone listening. It'll happen sooner for me than it will for you. Right. If we had a bigger, if we had a bigger grain farming operation, that took more of our time and this stuff took more of our time. And, you know, the pigs would just be coming too much where we're like, okay, we got to probably hire somebody to do this, right? But paying them six bucks, I don't know if I'd pay him six bucks. I'd probably pay him seven bucks.

You got to pay more. Pay more because the other thing is that we talked about on previous episodes is you want them to take care of that building just as good as you would because that building is an asset to us. The pigs are an asset too. Though pigs matter, and they're number one,

the welfare of the pigs matter. But that building is number two. If you want to put yourself through a real fun workshop, calculate based on a sal farm or a finishing farm. When you have somebody responsible for the farm, what amount of responsibility in dollars

are they carrying on a per person basis? We just talked. You liked that earlier. You got millions of dollars worth of liability out there. A guy paid $30,000 is carrying like a million and a half, two million dollars. What other industry do we allow one person with no experience to carry that? It's insane. It is.

It's absolutely insane. I don't know. And I think that's something that's going to come. It's hard because guess what? The end product that the consumer eats are trying to make it cheap. Right. So that people can afford it. And then so then we got to pay the.

these people that have that liability, we got to try to pay them cheap because we know what the product's going to at the end of the day. We're the other white meat. Like, it's talking about like, okay, okay. Like, right. The worst. Let's go into this. A little bit.

Let's go into this. Like, we market ourselves to a cheaper protein. Oh, God. That is the worst thing. I don't give a shit what anyone says. That is the worst thing the pork industry ever did. We, no one in the, no one in the right mind. You know, smoker, smoker,

is a big thing. Grilling culture is a huge thing now. And you know what? No one gives a shit that it's... About the price. No one cares that pork's a lean protein. They want a pulled pork that's fatty, juicy, tasty, smoked, barbecue.

They're not smoking a pulled pork to go in their food prep containers for the week. They're smoking a pulled pork because they're having people over for the freaking Super Bowl party. Well, people already think that pigs unhealthy. Yes. They already, and it's not, they already think that the organic version is healthier. And so I'm

meeting with people and I'm like, you know, if you bought organic bacon versus regular bacon, it's probably worse for you. It's going to taste a lot better. Yeah. She got a lot more fat in there. But that's it. We don't understand. It's the breed that matters. It's the breed of the pig that matters the most. It's not the conditions. It's not that these built, these barns, it's not that these pigs are in these barns. That doesn't matter. It's that the pigs that are in these barns are lean lean lean lean they're too lean they're too lean because we for a while as the pork industry we try to be the the next lean meat that was a dumbesty healthy though i mean pork pork loins is healthy it is healthy it is healthy i won't lie i do switch it up i mean i i eat chicken

a lot but i also eat some porkloin occasionally for some lean protein but well the the great denominator and the whole thing is so back uh i remember when the the the money money maker from pork was pork loin today it is the least profitable product yeah by far what's the most profitable pork butt and bacon that's it because why because that's where the flavor is that taste and and all of this crap about people consumers are budget whatever not when it comes to pork they will buy what tastes good yeah look at the look at the beef market okay the beef market hasn't grown that much but it hasn't shrunk either and people eat a steak

they're gonna pay the money they're gonna pay the money well you have it's two worlds it's ground beef and it's steak and there's not much in between but that steak side they don't care what it costs if they have a steak if they're gonna have a steak

they're gonna have a steak they don't care well let's look at the obesity rate in the United States all right let's just look at that a second and say how many people have self-control none of going to the store and saying I'm going to eat a healthy little chicken.

Yeah. Right. No. No. If we had self-control, we wouldn't be one of the most obese countries. Well, they will tell themselves.

Then they'll take said chicken. They'll chop it up. They'll put it on a salad with egg, bacon, French and ranch and some cute croutes. It won't go on a salad. And then they'll be like, I'm eating healthy. Guilty.

Guilty. Oh, no, it's breaded chicken. Yeah. I was about to say is, you know what you do? You put it in flour. You put it in breadcrumbs. You throw it in the air fryer.

And you hope. hope that it tastes as good as Chick-fil-A, even though it won't. Oh, no. You just won't. Which now there's a debate. I mean, the Popeye's chicken sandwich. Nope. No, it ain't good. It's not. It's not. It's not. I've heard if you take the Popeye's sandwich and you put it on the Chick-fil-A bun. Here's a hack for you. Go ahead. Go ahead. Keep going. I hear that's supposed to be the next-level sandwich. I'm no seller. Here's what I heard. Here's what I heard. You got to get your Chick-fil-A sandwich. You got to take that chicken, fried chicken, out of the buns, put it back in the sealed package that you get or whatever, right,

that you open up, put your sauce in there, shake it up, and then put it back on the bowl. Oh, wow. Oh, so it's coated in chick-fil-a sauce. Coated in chick-fil-a sauce. That sounds amazing. Or whatever sauce you want. But I heard that's a life hack. Well, yeah.

Man, that's like doing the McChicken McDouble thing, man. That's next level. Chick-fil-A, where's the pork filet? Where are we getting? I don't know. That's a damnedest thing. I want my pork burger. I know.

Come on. So I was talking with a meat scientist on a podcast, Dr. Chase Stahl, with Hypoor. And he was saying that one of the biggest issues is the coloring is you can have a pork burger that's pink and a pork burger that's white. They're both perfectly done, but it's really hard to create consistency in the color. And so fast food doesn't want to touch it. Because fast food is just that, yeah, we're going to have complaints about color and it's not done when it's completely done. And you go. I mean, I was at the World Pork Expo, and I bit into a pork burger,

and it was as pink as you can believe. General consumer is going to think they can't eat that. And that's the biggest reason, apparently, that pork burgers haven't made it. They got to be thin. Buds? Shout out to Buds. Riverside, Iowa. They make the best, the best pork burgers.

Oh, you're going to get some hate on that. I don't give a shit. There's a lot of people to love their Kyoto pork burgers. Okay, I don't care. No. Where are they at? Kyoto. Do they go to the?

Well, we don't go that way. County fair? Yeah. No, it's not. It's not even close. Not the same? Buds are way better. Buds are way better.

I can eat them all day, every day of the summer. I can throw them on the grill, and they're just as good. They got to be thin, and I feel like they come out pretty, the color is pretty consistent with them. Well, that's because they've got enough, they've got enough barbecue seasoning. The problem with that is, they're kind of orange. You could, I feel like, perfectly healthy. I feel like for a pork burger, you'd have to make it a smash burger almost a little bit. Because they're fit.

If you want that color, you'd have to have to have a cold. Like a culver? Yeah. Yeah. Because I don't feel like you can get a quarter, you know, a quarter pounder. Something like that, maybe. I don't know. But yeah, I am totally, I'm totally on your idea of we need to get, well, I don't know if you said

this, but my belief is we need to get away from trying to be the second lean meat. And we need to come back to what makes pork great. We need to make the breeds. We got to make them fatter. We got to get the fatter sows. We got to breed for food. fat in that fat. Marbling. It tastes. Marbling. That matters.

And guess what when that happens? Because it's going to happen. And I can't wait when it happens because everyone always comes at us when we're talking with our TDF stuff. That it affects the taste. Oh, those barn raised pigs. The taste is just different. It's taste

because they sit in those barns all day. They're bored. They're bored. They're bored. It's the grass and the walnuts and the dirt that they that makes the flavor. No. When we switch the breed over, and it's going to happen, in my lifetime, it will happen. When we switch the breed over, we have a fatter, juicier pig as an end result, and it tastes the same. Then we'll see.

Any of you non-believers, you go to an expensive restaurant. You order the Berkshire or the Durrock chop. No, it's probably raised indoors. Yeah. And taste that sucker. Yeah. Damn good. I had an investor reach out to me.

He ordered a pig. It was actually from the Jewel family that they got it from. And it was a Berkshire-Durrock Mangonica mix. Manganica is notorious for its woolly outside coating. It looks like a sheep. And it's like 80% fat or something like. It's crazy. Well, they cross-bred it to kind of marble it.

Yeah, it's marbled beautifully. He's like, this might be the best pork chop. He's like the flavor is pretty consistent, but the juiciness is unbelievable. That's what we got to get back to. We need to get there. When you taught, I remember. It was like a couple months ago. You, or not a couple months ago, a few months ago,

you go listen to a podcast with a swine nutritionist on there. And he talked about that, that it's the breed that makes the biggest difference out of everything. Yeah, the feed is not the, you can give a, you can give a York Landrace pig, all the walnuts, all the walnuts you want, and that meat's not going to be marbled and it's not going to be. Pigs are not bourbon.

We got bourbon there. They're not bourbon. Why is Kentucky and Iowa a great place for bourbon? Why does it age twice as well as scotch? Well, it's we got the seasonality. The compression and the release of the barrels helps bring in that flavor. Having a pig outside freezing its butt off or sweating it, or I won't sweat, but being overheated or freezing its butt off,

it doesn't affect the flavor. So why don't we have it indoors at 70 degrees? Yep, right. Control the environment, provide better welfare, get a better pet. God. This has been a good one. This has been a good one. It has been a good one.

We're running. We're running. We're running plenty far. We got to go. We got to do a little bit, though. Just let's shoot off a five-minute little tangent. What are your thoughts on Bitcoin, Metaverse, Winters or losers? What are your thoughts on these things?

Do you have any opinions on them? What do you think? I do. I had a bunch of friends who got in it in 2017, and I didn't believe them. Frustrating. I'm in crypto. I hopped out and I went into Cardano. Yep.

Okay. Oh, you're as pissed off as I am then. I'm pissed off because when you look at all the trends of crypto, Cardano was due. Yep. They were due. They ran that stretch. They're about a buck 90. Yep. Instacart makes grocery shopping easier. And just because you're not doing the shopping yourself doesn't mean you don't care how it's done. With Instacart shopper notes, you can get particular about what you want right in the app. Like rotissory chicken that's extra crispy, cheddar that's sharp as your skates, and lettuce you to actually pick yourself.

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And then they just couldn't. Awful. And I told my dad to invest. He got in around May. He's up. And I said, put one to $5,000 in crypto. And don't touch it until you retire. And you're likely going to have something of meaningful value that you're going to appreciate.

because this crypto thing's here. Yeah, it's here to stay. It is here to stay. And this NFT thing, I haven't got involved in it because... You got to listen to our last podcast. I need to. You will. You will.

It's a little deep. I have buddies that have made hundreds of thousands of dollars on NFTs. Trading them. Trading them. I can't get... I don't... It's too hard for me. Well, there's not enough hours in the day.

It's like the dough. It's just like when you... when Web 2.0 came out, or Web 1.0, the domain thing. Everyone trying to figure out what domains we're going to win and what were. It's hard. With the NFTs, it's like, you don't know who's going to win.

What NFT's going to hit with people and what's not? But I did see Pepsi's coming out with them, NFTs now. Tom Brady's coming out with his own NFT collection now. It's getting mainstream. We should do a pork net, or the pork board, should do a pork net. What I think, where you get free acceptance

into any pork board event. Yeah. What I think should happen, grocery stores need to take massive advantage of NFTs. Yes. Coupons. If I'm Costco, I'm making a whole division on NFTs. How can we make NFTs for Costco? Free rotisserie chickens, free pop pie for all, you know, because the thing with NFTs for them to work,

I feel like you need to have something attached to it. Yeah, it has to have some exclusive value. Right. So attach a free pop pie. pie for the whole seasonal fall chicken pot pie you can get a one a month one every two weeks right you got to have something and a grocery stores

could take massive advantage of that you know it would be another great one again we have it as a theme today what if you could buy a buffalo trace NFT oh and one if you because you owned your NFT had exclusive rights

to get in some of the most hard to find bottles Yeah. No, you're, because that's what Gary Vee. That's Gary's thing. That's what he did. He sold experiences. They did that. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Because it is in the, I mean, it's just not enough mainstream. But it's going. You know, like, the masses are not on NFT. NFT yet. You know what I mean? Yeah. When everyone starts to be like, okay, I'm looking at what's the main platform to buy NFTs, OpenC. I think it's what's called. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OpenC. Like when everyone's like perusing that, and that, like looking for NFTs to buy and it becomes real mainstream, then that kind of stuff will work because you need more and more people to get interested into it. Right now, I feel like we're just in this early stage of... It's so early.

Like you said, Cardardo is like, right now it's not doing very well, but it's still early. It's going to do well. I think so. It has done, they have done such a good job working the emerging markets. The amount of time they've spent in Africa. and Africa is the youngest. It's the youngest population, I think, anywhere, because obviously it's hard to live a long time in Africa

because they've got a lot of shitty leaders down there. But you look at like Nigeria, the adoption rate of crypto there is second-tale. Like we said, like we said, these several countries, they're looking at this, like, this is our opportunity to change. It's like we said, it's a difference between here you look at, you look at crypto as a hobby or like an opportunity,

a lot of these emerging markets, it's the difference between feeding your family and not because your currency is so upside down. Which is going to be crazy to see how well... I mean, these, the crypto and the NFT markets could be what gets Africa on its feet. I believe that. El Salvador. Because they're so bought in.

Oh, yeah. El Salvador, it seems like it's working pretty well there. They're on the Bitcoin standard. and Max Kaiser's going to go, he's moving there, he's getting citizenship. Is he really? Yeah, yeah. He was on, he was on, he was on, he was on pomp the other day, and he said he made some comment about, because there's a lot of, there's a lot of countries in the Caribbean that if you make a big

enough cash donation to their treasury, they'll give you, they'll fast track you to dual citizenship. Okay. And he was talking about that El Salvador should just do that if you make an investment in Bitcoin. Anyway, the president of En Salvador called him and said, hey, make an investment. Oh, wow. We'll have you up by the end of the year. So anyway, him and what's her name? He said he's going because he thinks it's just, he said he thinks it's the largest opportunity of his lifetime.

Well, what is it with these NFTs? I think one person really, I can't remember his name. It's in the upper echelon of people like Elon Musk, who we look at and we really listen to. He said that, I think it's Gary Vaynerchuk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He said that what you have in your NFT wallet

will be a better depicting of you as a person than your social media posts. It's just going to be exactly like, you got to listen to the last podcast. Our last podcast went deep into that. Yeah, Gary V is a, Gary Vee is a, that guy, I don't care what you say,

anyone listening to him, he is repetitive in what his content is about, but if any time there's something new coming out in the world, that guy is on it. When it comes to marketing and new opportunities, that guy's insight on stuff is smart. He predicted social media was going to be the way it is now.

That's why he was an early adopter of YouTube. That's why he was an early adopter of Facebook. Having a website before anyone else selling wine direct to consumer before anyone else. He knows trends. Yeah, he came out with his own NFT collection and he sells access to himself attached to every single NFT that he sold.

So everybody, no matter what NFT you bought, gets a three-year ticket to his V-conference he's going to be putting on. And then also some of them are like, one of them's like, go to a Jets game with Gary V. Go to a Knicks game with Gary V. Have a one-year mentorship with Gary V. All these access things. And I think artists, athletes, influencers, business people are going to take

huge advantage of it and sell access to them. Or even charities. Charities. Oh, yeah. That bourbon club you were saying, that's genius. I mean, they're grocery stores. I mean, it's going to get big. It's just how fast that it, until we get there.

So a question for you guys, because I know you guys like, talk Tesla. Yeah, yes, sir. I loved, I think you had a shirt that said Elon or something. What was it? Don't bet against Elon. Don't bet against Elon. If Elon acquired John Deere today, would the stock rise 10X?

No. You don't think so? No. Because its, its shareholder base is so not in, informed as to what Elon is. They just hear Tesla. They just hear Tesla in EV. I see, I would imagine that like general consumers would be like he's taking them to Mars.

John Deere's going to. I feel like outside people out of ag, out of the shareholders would be hype. I could be wrong in the fact. Here's what I think would happen. I think you would have massive selling because people that don't understand anything about what he is. They would rotate out and then the Tesla faithful would be like

I, we're buying it because exactly what you're saying, oh my gosh, they're going to, you know, yeah. I agree. How long before the SEC banned Zelon Musk from social media? Oh, man. He'll want up them because this is what he will do. People speculate that he's

going back to the chairman's role because his three-year thing is up. I think he will completely get out of management. I think he will just I think the Volkswagen guy is going to take over. Well, I did, but they didn't fire him. So I did. I had a hunch that the guy that runs Volkswagen group,

I can't remember what his name is now off the top of my head, they cut him back as far as they took a bunch of his responsibilities away. And I really thought they were going to fire him because he basically just said, Tesla can make a car in a third of the time that we can. And if we don't get our crap together, we're going to be bankrupt. And, you know, everybody hated it. The unions hated it. The ownership hated it.

They all got pissed at him. And I thought they would end up firing him. And if they did, my theory was that he would go to Tesla and Elon would just step away and concentrate on R&D. But so my answer is I don't think that the SEC will do that because if they do, he'll just say, all right, I'm out. I'm just an employee. Yeah, he says anytime he posts anything, the market's, response so much. He has such a strong control over markets.

And he plays it like a fiddle. Oh, he does. And the thing is, what's so impressive... Tax thing was... Oh, Jesus. Yeah. Because he had to sell it anyway. He was planning on selling these shares of Tesla for tax purposes.

Well, he had to. He had to. But he went on Twitter and said, what did he say? Oh, about feeding the world or something? Yes. Yes. And he made it sound like, hey, I'm doing this for... He just said, should I sell these shares?

Oh, yeah, right. He had to pull on Twitter. He had a poll on Twitter. Should I just sell these shares? He had to. He knew he was going to. But think about, you know, think about the money that General Motors spends on advertising in a year. Tesla doesn't even have that. They don't even have an ad company. They don't need one. They don't need one. And the thing, people, it's amazing to me because people play right into it in the fact that it doesn't matter if the news is good or bad as long as they report it. And on any given day on financial outlets, Tesla's out there every day. And sometimes it's bad. You know, the SEC's looking into them because solar is caught on fire in Walmart three years ago and some guy that they fired claimed that, you know, they fired him over that.

And now it's finally going to court. And so they're making a big deal about it. Well, doesn't matter because every day they're in the forefront. But I'll tell you what. So I just had a conversation with a guy, a financial guy, and he asked me, he asked me about Tesla, what I thought about or whatever. And I just told him, I said, and I could be totally wrong. I realize I could, I am like, I'm like you in the fact that there's some things that I know I'm blind because I'm so biased, because I've bought in, I've spent the time and I'm bought in and I think I'm right, but I could be wrong.

And, you know, he said, what's Tesla going to be worth in three years? and I said it'll be worth three times what it's worth today. And he's like, oh, I don't think that's right. Well, I might be wrong. But there's so many things that they're doing that is so far ahead of everybody else. And the thing is, by the time the rest of the competition gets to where they are today,

they'll be three times ahead of them again. And their culture. Their culture is totally different than Legacy Auto. Oh, absolutely. everything they do is different and it's we can't keep doing in any industry

we can't keep doing things the way we're doing it today just what we've talked about today and they're in the midst of that they're light years away it's a juggernaut. They're light years ahead of everybody and we talked about this on our last podcast

but everyone I would we post clips about us talking about Tesla on TikTok and everyone would categorize us as you know liberals hardcore liberal EVs, and they talked to us about tree huggers. Tree huggers, you know, just hardcore.

And, you know, we're hog farmers. We're mostly conservative. We have one opinion about Tesla and how we like it. And you categorize us as that. Just be like, we had self-driving tractors before these things we were running around. We know this more than you. Right. And the whole, our whole thing is we're not so.

Beholden. We're not beholden to, well, no. We're, our thing with Tesla is we don't, it's not like we are, We love Tesla because they're going to save the environment. Oh, yeah. Like, that's not our big thing. We love Tesla because, one, it's cool. It's cool.

We love it. My girlfriend actually has a Tesla. It's amazing. Oh, my goodness. They're so fast. They're fun to drive. They're fun to ride in. And two, we think they're going to be more as disruptive as Amazon, Apple,

if not more than those companies. We think they can be huge. And that's why we love them. That's why we're a fan of them. They got the phone coming out now with the sound like you gotta listen to our podcast. Last week, we went in depth on all that stuff. With Starlink and everything. I know there's a producer out here in Washington area.

You got Starlink. We have Starlink. Yeah, here it's amazing. It is. It is great. And it just gets better. Before it got overloaded with too many people to actually be any good. Yeah, and it gets better.

Every batch they launch gets better. And then version two is going to be laser. You know, the, the, the transfer of data from satellite to satellite, today it's radio wave. The next generation that's coming that they're looking to launch, it's laser, so it's much faster.

And so it's just, it's exponential growth as far as, oh, right, exponential quality, you know, growth. And, no, I don't even like Tesla because of that. I like Tesla because I'm greedy. I mean, I'll make no bones about it. I'm not trying to take the moral high ground with Tesla. My whole motivation of buying Tesla is because I looked at it,

and I said this company is going to be worth a shitload of money, and the stock price is going to be way higher, and that's why I bought it. And I think we could be among the first to recognize all of the carbon costs that go into even making a Tesla. Like, we're not in this for the environment, because there's not a really great case. No, and people beat up about that, but here's the thing. We know how bad the carbon footprint is of Legacy Auto and of, we know that, we know what it is.

So the carbon footprint of the battery world and EVs, it's not great. But the opportunity to make it much better is there. Is there. The opportunity to make coal. We've gone down this road for a long time. We can't make it any better than what we can. What we can do is go to China and say, hey, you guys need to stop, you know, dumping everything you can to the ocean

and, you know, probably stop burning so much. Burn coal. America is doing probably. it's absolute freaking best to make the environment as we as Americans we're ahead of everybody else. We're ahead of everyone. But if we're one of seven continents,

you know, we're one of, you know, we're doing this. And North America's the one continent that's doing this and all the rest of them are. How are we going to save the planet? If no one else is going to get on the program, how are we going to save it? How are we going to do it? Let's look at Europe.

Europe. Here we go. There was this great talk at NPC with Jack Bobo who wrote a great food. why smart people make bad food choices. And he was talking about local sustainability versus global sustainability. He's like Europe offloads all of its carbon footprint to Brazil. And what are we losing? The rainforest.

And so here Europe says, we don't use any of this stuff. Well, yeah, because you're using all of theirs. And there's is some of the most important in the world. And so what does it mean to actually hold people accountable for their local and global footprint? And not just say, wow, your town is really sustainable. You only use bikes. but you do this. It's a whole picture.

It's the whole packet. You can skew it however you want. We're over. We're over because if we keep going, I'm not going to be able to load this onto my desktop and then I'm going to be really pissed. So, Matt, it was a true pleasure to have you. And a great conversation.

Great conversation. Come back anytime. Anytime for sure. Where can they find you? Where can they find you? All this stuff that you're doing. Shout out your social media. Shout out your website.

We'll put everything in the link. We'll have all of Matt's stuff down below in the link of description and also in the show notes if you're listening. But, you know, tell them where they can find you on social. Yeah, I mean, if you want to hear great stories from pork producers or people in the industry, popular pig podcast is a great place to go. Swine Technologies.com is where you can find things about our products.

And if you go to Swine Tech on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn, you'll be able to see posts on them on a frequent basis. And yeah, we'd love to have everybody subscribe and keep in touch with what's going on because we like to share those stories with the industry. and he's exciting where we're all going.