Barn Talk - Surviving the 80s Farm Crisis and Embracing AI as Farmers

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

In today’s episode, your hosts Tork and Sawyer are coming to you from the barn with a special hybrid episode—no guest this week, but they’re diving into a mix of hot topics and answering listener questions straight from the barn floor. The guys kick things off with their signature market updates, breaking down the latest in corn, beans, cattle, and hogs. They discuss the current state of the meat market and why pork is having a moment as the affordable protein option for families. You’ll also hear their thoughts on commodity prices, challenges in the cattle industry, and how upcoming harvests could play out based on this year’s stellar weather. If you thought artificial intelligence and farming don’t mix, think again. Tork and Sawyer share their excitement—and a few cautionary thoughts—about the rapid rise of AI tools like Grok 4, and how technology is already changing the way they run their direct-to-consumer meat business, Farmer Grade. Next, they get real about the future of farming. From surviving the farm crisis of the 1980s to the current challenges facing family farms, Tork reflects on how hard work (and a lot of pork) helped their family make it through tough times. Both hosts discuss the ongoing shake-up in agriculture, warning that the days of the “middle-class” farmer are numbered—and sharing ideas on how today’s farm businesses can adapt, innovate, and work together as families to survive and thrive. You’ll also get insights on tough subjects like farm succession, the value of running your operation like a business, and why open, honest conversations are key to keeping the legacy alive. Shop Farmer Grade 👇🏻 https://farmergrade.com/  SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c  LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  APPLE ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk   ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS   ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4   ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS    00:00 Pollination Issues in Corn Crops 09:22 MP Materials: North America's Rare Earth Monopoly 15:45 Avoid Fungicide Experimentation This Year 20:01 Optimism and Grok 4 Adoption 24:59 "Grok's Rapid AI Advancement" 31:29 Adapt Fast or Fall Behind 38:10 Life on the Farm: Simple Summers 41:41 "Family Rift Over Farm Inheritance" 45:46 Modern Farming Challenges and Costs 51:31 Rethinking Car Ownership and Farming 57:58 "Handling Difficult Family Dynamics" 01:01:42 "Wrap-Up and Thanks" ------------------------------- ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠  The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional, professional broker or financial advisory. Understand that you are using any and all Information available on or th... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays in the barn, but not today. We're going to let it all out for you guys. Today is going to be a hybrid episode. So, you know, we're Jones and to get a guest on here. We got some potential guests lined up, but we couldn't get anybody to the barn this week. So we got a mix of questions that you guys have asked, and we got a mix of hot topic.

that we're going to talk about and just share our overall thoughts and get those questions answered. But before we do, you guys know the drill. If you get any value from the show, all that we ask is you shared out with the people that you know. The more that you guys do that, the more that this show can grow. It's kind of the ticket to admission to watch or listen to the show. And we found here at Barn Talk, the best way to grow a podcast is through word of mouth. And so it's through you guys and we appreciate all you that do do that. another thing you can do to help us out here at barn talk is leave a review on Spotify or Apple.

The more that you guys do that, the more that it gives our show credibility so we can get more guests to come to the barn. And overall, the podcast just gross. And it gets more credibility and more notice and more fame or whatever you want to say. Because, you know, really there's only, that's about the only metric people can see is reviews on podcasts. It's so weird. We talk about a lot on here. Podcasts, like the podcast platforms are just not very good. They don't give you a lot of metrics.

They don't give people that are tuned in to shows a lot of information about how well the show's doing. I wish there was a feature that allowed you to, like, see your most, most viewed or most listen to episodes. Yeah, and you know they've got that info. Yeah. The one thing I will say that I enjoy, definitely leave those reviews. share it with people you know. But I have to wonder, like when we get an episode that does really well, like I think the highest rating episode we got was one that got up to like number 36 or 39 on Spotify.

And I don't remember what it was on Apple. It was in the top 50. But, you know, there's a lot of people. There's a lot of shows out there, especially in the business. I don't even know how many shows are in that category, but it is a pile. and there's probably some people out there that actually spend a shitload of money producing these episodes.

I mean, they're very high quality. And I just have to wonder, well, I don't know, I'll never know one way or another, but I get a lot of pleasure out of the thought that somewhere there's somebody that produces this stuff, and they're just like, who are these idiots? Like, where is this?

What's this about? Yeah, that's what I like about it. Yeah, it's a good thought. We're just two dirty old hog farmers figuring it out as we go here. So, yeah, so please leave those reviews. We love hearing from you guys as well and see what you're thinking of the show. Last thing you can do to help us out here at Barn Talk is support our direct-to-consumer meat business, farmergrade. Farmergrade.com.

We are going to get a restock, a total restock of the site. So all new pork products, all new Wagyu products that are going to be back on the site. We ran out for a while after Memorial Day, but we're going to have everything back online. So you can always use code Barn Talk to save 10% off your next order, and we really appreciate it. So what are the markets looking like, Pops? Oh, well, kind of mediocre at best.

Yesterday was actually a pretty good day in the corn market. I mean, exports are good, which they should be, because the dollar's cheap. But corn for September, we're on September now is the is the nearby month. 404, December 423, best cash bid I've seen locals 393 or 405 if you want to go to Cedar Rapids. Corn was down a penny when I checked.

Coca-Cola announced it's going back to using sugar. And so X is ripe with people letting the world know that now then we're going to start to deport Mexican Coke because what everybody loved about Mexican Coke was, you could snort it. No, that's not right. Oh, that's different. That's totally different. No, it was, they made that with sugar.

And now then Coca-Cola is going to make theirs with sugar in America. Not good for the corn market if that trends because we sell a pile of corn syrup. So, and something that's kind of going on and I've seen some pictures and I've talked to a few people about this, there's a lot of, well, I don't know if it's a lot. We don't know yet. but there's definitely some pollination problems around there, around the countryside. So southern Illinois,

and then I want to say out in areas of Nebraska, guys have been posting pictures of ears of corn that are like, did not pollinate at all. And I don't know how big that problem is, but maybe that gets the market going a little bit, but we got a lot, we got a lot of new crop coming. I think we might get some strength,

just because the exports are so strong and the carryout keeps shrinking. But when we get to that new crop, it's going to be a monster. Beans, August, 1014, November 1021, $10.201. $10.303 across the river. Bean meal, $267 a ton. Wheat for September, 536. Hogs for August 105. And when you get past the August contract, so if you're buying pork,

if you get past the August contract, $89. So if you're the packer, you might have a little relief, but if you're the seller, you ain't going to be so happy. Cattle 223, feeder cattle for August, $324. I don't know. I don't think I'm jumping in to feed a bunch of cattle. I hear, you know, I think the only way this beef market's going to go down is obviously herd size have to increase, but who wants to buy,

feeder cattle right now. You know? I mean, there's going to be some people that do because they probably have enough money to go out and do it. I mean, the guys that are winning on the beef market, cattle market, are the ones that had everything already established and now they're just riding this wave. So it's like the only way that I see,

the only way it comes down is there's more supply, but like I think herd numbers are still down. And until the herd numbers get rise, you still have another year, year and a half, before that actually gets to the packer and then now, you know what I mean? Yeah. So it's like until these herd sizes go up

and we can see that and there's data out there to show that, you're still even after that, you still got a year, year and a half to see the price come down. Well, the only thing that changes the price now is demand destruction. And we've been talking about,

people have been talking about demand destruction for two years that, oh yeah, beef's going to get too high and nobody's going to buy it. And guess what? They just keep buying it. I will say, I think something that I'm noticing just in the meat business is having pork as an offering right now

has been awesome because I think it's in that middle, middle price range. And I definitely think a lot of, like our pork's selling really, really good right now. Yeah, a lot of ground. I think it's that. A lot of ground stuff selling better too. Yeah, I think it's just that.

I think it's that middle option between chicken and beef and it's way more affordable than beef right now. So it's been nice to see. Yeah, it's, I don't know. Nothing is going to change for a while, for sure. The only thing that, The only thing it's going to change the cattle market is demand because we're a long ways from growing this herd to where we're going to have more beef to. How long has it been?

Is this the best bowl, like, is this the best bull run for cattle? For cattle ever? I think so. Like, in my lifetime, I don't remember. I mean, there's been times when cattle have gotten high, but I don't think they've ever stayed high this long. Yeah. I don't think. So, yeah, so this is like, this is like a opportunity of a lifetime kind of thing.

For cattle guys. I mean, this is like... If you're a 74-year-old guy and you got 80 cows out on pasture somewhere, this might be, if my words are hearing you, it might be a good time for you to think about retiring and liquidate your herd. Yeah. And just get that time share down in Sun Valley. Because you're never going to be able to get rid of those cows

for the kind of money that you are right now. It's crazy. Yeah. So crude oil, 66 bucks. S&P 500 is 6277, Google $175. Here is a good one for you. There's a company called MP Materials, and I don't know if we talked about it before or not,

but they own the only rare earth mine in North America and it's MP Materials, because the name of that is Mountain Pass. And it was a $10 stock a year ago, and we actually talked about it on the show when we were talking about the whole battery thing and how important rare earth minerals were to it. and, you know, I bought a million shares of it, so I'm really happy. Nope, I didn't.

I talked about buying some, and I might have even owned a little for a while on on cash app and then sold it. But the U.S. government decided that under the War Powers Act, that they needed to make sure that we had a hedge against Chinese, so they put $400 million in it. And guess what? Today, MP Materials is $56.76. So if you were somebody that saw the vision and bought some of that, you're probably feeling

pretty good. And if you didn't, you're like me and you're like, ah, damn it. Bitcoin, $118,000. I think it got up to $122,000. It's catching its breath. I think we only go higher because, you know, we're going to print more money. Tesla $322. I'm not going to go off on a Tesla rant because that's coming a little later in the show.

But cheap at twice the price. So gold $3, $3,300. and $14, silver $33. And I didn't get what the treasuries have done, but my guess is they haven't done a darn thing because interest rates don't seem to save much. Is there any meat news in the world? I got a little bit of meat news.

I thought there hasn't been a lot of great interesting meat news recently. Well, you guys in the meat business are kind of quiet. You're low-key. Yeah, I'll tell you what. I subscribe to some newsletters that is all meat, and that's where you really start to get the lowdown on the meat business, because you get, you're seeing people that get hired. You're seeing companies expand in their facility.

It's like, it gives you the really nitty gritty shit. But this one I thought was pretty interesting for the consumer. So 2025, Fourth of July cook, cookout was the second highest, um, total cost in like the last decade or maybe even more of a longer period than that. But total cost for 10 people on average was $70. and 92 cents, $7.9 each, down 30 cents from 2024's high, which 2024 was the highest, and that's the record. Why it's so high, obviously we all know this.

Inflation, less food supplies, beef. So like it broke it down here. So what I do is I have Grock break down this article and simplify it for me. So beef was up 4%. Uh, beans in a can up 20 cents because of metal tariffs. Uh, potato salad up 7% because eggs are still costly. Uh, pork chops are down 9% actually. Chips were down 10 cents.

Buns are down 3%. Uh, big picture though, food prices are up 2% overall. So, okay. That's kind of the breakdown on 4th July. Nobody gives a fuck, though, because it's Fourth of July, and you're going to spend what you're going to spend because you got company coming. I don't have any idea, but just to guess, I think you spent more than $7. Oh, I definitely did.

That's if you're going to do the burgers and hot dogs, like, but when you're doing racks or ribs and pork belly and brisket. Briscuit. Yeah, you're definitely going to pay for that on that side. Yep, with charcoal and wood and the meat itself. So all of this market update and the meat news courtesy to you from our good friends at Contera Ag. And as we're going to talk about later in this episode, if you don't know your cost of production,

you should probably figure that out. And with the way these grain markets are, it is a good idea to make sure you have a good banker in your corner. And if you don't have one, get a hold of our good friends at contaraag.com. and see if they can help you. So off to the races we go. Where do you want to start? Well, we say it every time, every episode this, you know,

as the corn just keeps growing, it just keeps looking better and better. I mean, like we said in previous episodes, I haven't seen this caliber or weather in my life when it comes to growing a corn crop. I mean, this has just been absolutely stellar across the board of what you could want. if you're a farmer dreaming about weather helping you out

and mother nature helping you out on growing your crop there's not a lot to bitch about she's really uh helping out a lot this year so uh just keeps going tasseling um i don't know you think we'll be harvesting by late september yeah i think i think we will be um i i know we will be there that are going to uh get in there and get it try to try to try to to deliver it. So a lot of fungicide going on right now. And you can get around here, you can get the generic stuff for $24 an acre. And if you think you have tar spot, you better go check because if you spray the cheap

stuff, it doesn't do anything for tar spot. And if you get the L-Primo 3-Mode-action, I think that's an FMC product that our dealer uses that's a that's a 30 34 is that right yep 24 and 34 pick your poison and uh I don't know but I would say this you need it though you need it yep I should have I should have my need every bushel you can get I should have Jeff on I should just have that should be one of the buttons just my

my chemical dealer just being like yeah you need it I think you do need it though I don't know and somebody rake me over the holes in the comments. But if I was going to pick a year that I was going to do some kind of like, oh, I'm going to spray half my field or I'm going to spray these strips and see what it does, I don't think this is a year to do it because I've been out walking in my fields. And when you get up in the morning and it is like, I mean, you just walking, I get out and walk down the road, I mean, you just are like, it's like you're getting rained on just from the humidity. And out there in those fields that if you got a lot of trash, which I have a lot of trash, I just am thinking,

yeah, I wonder how much crap is growing in that. And I think it's definitely a year that you're probably going to want to spray fungicide. I don't know if that corn ends up with a three behind it. That's going to be kind of a hard pill to swallow, but it's still a lot easier than driving around trying to pick corn up off the ground. Yeah, so what's your outlook and feeling of this is going to be a really important year for marketing. Yeah. Because it's not looking good on the marketing side. And I feel like, I mean, I'm feeling optimistic that we're going to have more bushels than maybe.

I don't know. I don't know what the yield will end up being. But right now, I feel like this corn just looks phenomenal. And I have high expectations. I mean, I have. And we did corn on corn all this year. so I don't know we don't have another bin so we're probably going to have to sell some we got to move we'll have to move about 30 30 or 35000 bushels like PDQ we'll dry it put it the bin and then we'll haul it somewhere either we'll sell it and buy it back or we'll store it I don't think I'm going to haul it down and store it I think that because I'm I'll be broke so I'm sure I'm going to need some money so I'll probably sell it and then if there's an opportunity to reown it somewhere down the road, maybe we do that.

You definitely need to know your cost of production. So I'll give you my shameless plug for, like, legacy farmer because I actually have a legacy farmer call today at 4 o'clock. And, like, their farmer metrics program for, like, it's an super easy spreadsheet that you can do per field. I think you can get that for free. I think they'll give you that just, you know, to try out. I would highly recommend using something to know what your figure out what your cost

production is and then you mark you know what you got to sell your corn at then yeah I mean you know what the bottom number is it's got to be and that's where we all get caught up because you know what we had we had an opportunity it wasn't much of an opportunity but you had a chance to get 30 cents better than what you're looking at now or so, which for a lot of people would get you a lot closer to that cost of production. Now, there's some guys out there. There's some guys out there, which gets into a question somebody asks us later on. They're way off from where their cost of production is. And that's not a good place to be. But if you're marketing your own grain, want to go electric without

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Visit vw.ca to learn more. SUVW, German engineered for all. Ooh, I don't know. I mean, I'm to the point where I definitely lean a lot on people that do it every day and can help you navigate. But I think there's a lot of corn out there that's probably going to have to get reowned

in some form or another on the board to try to make up, try to make up some lost revenue on what's going to have to move right out of the field or very early in the fall. So, yeah, it's going to be tough. I thought I had something else I was going to ask about or I was going to say about that.

yeah i think i think it's just now more than ever you really have to know your numbers for yourself it's not enough to you know haul your stuff in and you know what it looks like for your tax returns like you have to know what what your cost of production is so that's my that's my advice on that that's your message yeah but overall feeling optimistic about the corn crop here in southeast Iowa GROC 4 is rising to the top, baby.

So they came out with a new version of GROC and it's arguably the most powerful AI out there right now. Dad has a lot more to say about this topic than me because he listened to the All In podcast that went all in on GROC 4. But I will tell you as a business owner, last night I had a team meeting with my guys and I just was like on the spot.

we were thinking about a better way to forecast meat. And I was like, we were like, it was on the tip of our tongue and we were figuring it out and we were like, we were getting this formula. And we just couldn't like articulate it well enough though. And I was like, well, let's just put this thing in grok. And I'm like, do you guys have grok? And they're like, no, you know, I just, I use the free version. And I'm like, fuck it. I'm swiping the card right now.

We're getting a farmer grade grok right now and we're going to all use this thing so we can go. go through our ideas better. And yeah, I mean, I think if you're a business owner, if you're not a business owner, if you're an independent thinker, if you're just somebody, you got to get on top of these tools and act on them quick. So if GROC 4 becomes the most powerful AI in the world, you got to hop on it and you got to start using it and understanding it. Because I would go back and forth between chat and GROC, but now that GROC has taken over

as the smartest and most powerful, well, okay, I'm going to get good at using GROC, GROC 4, you know. And I started using it a little bit. And yeah, it's just smarter. It's just smarter. It's just better. So did it give you good answers to what you asked? We haven't asked it yet. We got off the call and then I bought it and sent them the information. But we're going to work through that problem and kind of talk about it. So, but yeah, I mean, I use, at this point I'm using AI every day. Every day I'm using AI at some capacity just to think about things. And if there's new projects that I'm spearheading inside Farmer Grade or if there's

something I'm trying to figure out on my computer, like having that is your assistant to go out and find the answers is huge, right? And it's not always 100% accurate. Just AI in general. Like sometimes it'll tell you that you can do this on this app and plug in, but you really can't. You know, it just has a few things wrong. Now, I haven't worked enough with Grock 4 to know.

Yeah. But it's good. It's really good right now. So you just got to keep adapting with the tools that keep coming out, keep your head on a swivel. I think at some point we need to do an episode and talk about agents. because one of the big advantages or one of the big tools that are available within all these AIs is you can use something like GROC to create an AI agent that does very specific things for you. Like you can create an agent to go through all your emails every morning and then give you a summary.

so that you, instead of having to go through and read all of them, it'll give you a summary of what's important and what's not. And I think you can probably, I mean, it's kind of like setting really, like spending the time setting really great preferences in your inbox to sort all your junk. But that's just one example. But I think the most telling, so the craziest thing that I have soaked up in the last couple of days, Sawyer's right in that I, I mean, those of you that don't know, I use all-in podcasts as like my show prep a little bit because that is a great group of people

there that kind of a little bit differing points of view and they really do a good job of breaking down a subject and if I mean I have I have learned a lot and then it kind of inspires you to go down a rabbit hole and learn more about things that they might or might not have discussed or that they have discussed. But, so one of the things that makes GROC 4 different is that it is, it's learning off of Colossus, which is Tesla's AI, or a server cluster. And if you go back a little bit,

when Elon announced that they were going to build this cluster, it was going to be 100,000 CPUs, and people are like, man, that's crazy. That's crazy. And then before it even started, he said, ah, you know what? We're going to make it 250,000.

And they have been building it out, and now then he is set that it's going to have a million CPUs in it. So arguably, one of the largest connected networks anywhere. And that's what they're training Grock on.

And last night I was just reading I was reading around on X and on YouTube and watching some tutorials and watching some commentary about it. And I came across a guy and I thought this was a very interesting point of view. And he said that he believes that when the next version of Grock comes, which we're not like that's the other thing, this could be a matter of a few weeks to a few months because all of these AIs are learning at a very rapid rate. He said his personal opinion is that when the next version of GROC comes, GROC 5, he said that is when Tesla or when X AI reaches escape velocity from everybody else. And the reason for that is because the sheer volume of learning that is getting done

because they have such a huge cluster of a network to learn on, that just by the math of it, it is going to learn faster than everybody else. So now that it's made its way to the top, it is going to learn at a rate that is so much faster than everybody else, that nobody's going to be able to catch it. And I was just like, that's kind of like, that's kind of mind-blowing. And, you know, everybody knows if you've listed this for any amount of time.

I've been pretty high on Tesla from Clearback when we started this thing. But they're in such a unique position in the fact that you can take that and you can now integrate that AI into, Optimus, which is their robot that they're building. You can integrate that into full self-driving. You can integrate that, I mean, you already have it, integrated into X, their social media platform. And I think where you're going to come to is I think the voice, the voice part of AI, the general intelligence part, is going to be powerful enough to where it is going to completely up-end search. In other words, I think Google, I think it already kind of is. I mean,

you don't, like, I use, I use grok or chat to, to solve a problem. I don't go to Google anymore. Right. And I think that's the key right there. Now, if I'm looking up a restaurant, I'm going to, I'm going to search it on Google. Yeah. But if I'm looking to solve a problem, Yep. I'm either going, what Google has for them that is still YouTube. So I would go,

I would either go to YouTube or I would go to GROC or chatGBT. So the example that I saw last night was if you're using it, so eventually you're going to get to the point that you're going to let, you're going to let GROC operate

in the background on your desktop. And you're going to be able to, instead of saying, you know, search barbecue restaurants on Google, you're going to be able to just say, hey, Big Rock, search barbecue restaurants in, you know, this area that are open, you know, between this time and whatever. And it's going to know, I mean, it's just going to go and it's going to find and it's going to give you your search results tailored to what you want.

Or like when it comes to buying plane tickets. You know, you're going to be able to tell it, hey, get me options on plane tickets to Philadelphia a week before Thanksgiving for me and three other people. And I don't want to, you know, I don't want to fly whatever. And it'll just do it. So it's going to be a game changer. And I just, it's going to be, it's hard to keep up. It's really hard to keep up.

And what's interested in me is like, I try to think of things that I can use it for because I want to interact with it more and like solve problems, but sometimes you are so like in your box of thinking that you don't even think about what you could be using it for. Yeah, I think there's a lot of great, there's a lot of ex posts on X about guys coming up with prompts

to like set up your AI to think this way. Yeah. For like, you know, you can start a new chat and then this chat is like, you are my, you are my assistant or you are my data researcher. Yeah. You are my entrepreneur. You're my business coach. Like there's people that set up different, different prompts for your AI to act a different way

and kind of guide you with this lens. So yeah, you got to get creative and you definitely have to play around with it. And, you know, I think a lot of our, maybe our audience doesn't like some of the AI talk. But I don't give a shit if you're a farmer, if you're not. You got to, you got to get on top of this, man. This is the future, especially, you know, guys my age. I mean, guys, your age, too. It's here and it's only going to get faster and better and smarter and it's going to continue to grow and grow and I know it's easy to like say I'm not going to use it.

And I'm not going to think about it. And I don't want to think about the negativity of it, which none of us do. Like, yeah, obviously, it can be a little scary and daunting to think about if it does, you know, turn on us or something. But like, what are we going to do about it? Yeah. At the end of the day, what are we going to do about it? What are you going to do about it? Nothing.

So you might as well adopt the tools that are going to help you to solve problems, make better, decisions and move faster because it's in the game of business right now it's all about speed it's all about speed now i mean the guys like you know as i think about in the d to c meat business how many are you know how many are adopting these tools how many are moving with these tools how many of them are you know your competitors if they're not adapting these tools and using them they're going to get left behind so you have to you kind of have to move with it and i'm not saying you got to adopt all the technology that ever comes out because like I don't know robots is where I kind of like get a little like I don't know because we don't want to displace the workforce and I think that there will be

companies that put humans first and that will be an attractive thing for the the consumer so there's there's limits there but this is one of those tools on the back end that I think can help you out tremendously with no matter who you are yeah you got to start using grok or something or whatever you're using yeah cloud whatever and i'll the last thing i'll say about this is you're going to be using it anyway you're just not going to be realizing it when you're interacting with other with companies and with vendors and with uh in your day-to-day life you're going to be you're going to be uh interacting with an ai and not even know it and i'll give you a good example of how this how this moves is like okay

remember if you're not in the Apple ecosystem you maybe you don't understand this oh it's like google pay kind of um so when Apple Pay came out you know I didn't really see the need for it like I didn't it wasn't it wasn't anything special until you realize that okay when you buy something on Apple pay it all it fills in your shipping address and everything it's just so easy so you're like man that's great and so really enjoyed that and then my kids started using tap to pay, and I'd see him use tap to pay, and I was like, oh, yeah, that's crazy.

And like, 10 days ago, I lost my wallet somewhere here on the farm. I've been using tap to pay for everything for the last 10 days. And it's like now then all my cards have arrived back, and I got my license and all that renewed. But I'm like, I don't know. need them. Well, that's how, that's exactly where this is. You're going to start, you're going to, there's going to be something that you're going to use, you're going to use an AI assistant for. You're going to use something like Brock. And it's going to change your mind. And then one day,

uh, nine months from now, you're going to think about the way you used to do things. And you're going to be like, yeah, I couldn't go back to doing it that way. I mean, that's how it works. So, anyway, we'll move on. I'll just get, I'll give you a quick announcement because I would be remiss if I didn't. I want to give a shout out to Ty Haywood. He's a young man from Albee, Iowa, and he has a steer, actually the Monroe County Fair, the steer show, I think, is Saturday. I think it's actually next Saturday. But his steer, was chosen to go to the state fair and show at the governor's charity steer show. And a kid asked me to show it for him. So I'm going to the steer show. I'm very privileged. It should

be a lot of fun. And it raises a lot of money for the Ronald McDonald houses around the state Iowa. It's a worthwhile charity. And so if you're at the state fair, I think it, I've never done this. I don't know anything about it, but I'll be there. I'll be the guy that's just barely taller than the steer that he's showing. And they renamed the steer this will do after our farm.

So that, anyway, shout out to Ty and his family, and I appreciate the heck out of it. And I'm going to try to do y'all proud and do a good job. And I'm probably a little rusty on my steer, But I think I can stand there and I think this steer is not going to be like the ones that my friends showed when I was a kid that you had to keep firmly, firmly locked down all the time. I think this one's probably pretty well trained. It's probably like a pet at this point.

Yeah, I'd say so. If it's at the steer show at the state fair, I'm sure it's practically a, it'll rub up on you probably. You think they did a little more than just drag it behind the hay rack? Yeah. Probably so. They did a lot of walking with it. Probably so. Anyway, I think that is the 9th of August

is the Governor's Charity Steer Show and there's 25 steers. They limit it to that every year and I don't remember what number we are but we'll be there on the 9th of August. Yep, so yep, show up and and I think there's a website for it too. When they get, I'll get that actually

and we'll try to put the link to that in the description if I can get it. So anyway, I wanted to share that. What else is new and exciting? So we're going to get in kind of the Q&A portion now. So Wade asked, and I appreciate you guys from last episode,

a lot of you on Spotify put a shitload of questions down and on YouTube. So thank you for submitting your questions because that helps us out a lot. But Wade asked, how did you get through the 80s? How did this farm get through the 80s? And can it happen again? We didn't buy anything for a definitely. Okay. So my brother graduated in, I want to say, graduated in 81. Is that right? Yeah, I think so, 81.

So, I mean, my parents were right in the midst of it and raising three boys. And I don't remember, the early 80s, I don't really remember anything. being, I don't remember my parents being stressed out about money, but you know what? Here's the thing. If they were, we wouldn't have known it. Um, and we didn't, we had a swimming pool that my parents built in the late 70s and we didn't go anywhere because we had hogs. So we, we were fairer to finish. And, you know, it was like every year when you went to school and, went back to school in the fall and you know they had what'd you do on summer vacation this year

and I never had anything to write because we never went anywhere but we didn't know any better so it was no big deal and we had an oldtmobile delta 88 and when the rear fenders of that rusted through we took it to per docks and we bought another

delta 88 I think we had two cars in that decade. And my dad had a 73, three-quarter-ton Chevy pickup that was mostly rust-colored, and that was the only truck he had almost the entire time.

I just think we didn't really spend any money, but the other part of that is until like 80, until like 80, 3 or 4 or 5, we only We farmed 160 acres. We had 200 sows fair to finish.

We farmed 160 acres. We grew corn on corn. We ground all the corn, fed it to the pigs, and we sold hogs. That was how my parents made their living. And my dad and next door neighbor owned a combine together and a Massey 510. And we had a four-row head on it. and my when the neighbor retired my dad started crop renting the 240 acres that we own now that um soyers hog building is on that site and so is my two barn site but we crop rented that

for a good long time and in in like 1987 my dad bought that 240 acres for 1750 acres for 1750 dollars an acre and he was pretty sure that that was going to be the end of him he had no he like he was so stressed out about that that man

everything was going to have to work perfect for him to be able to pay for that ground and then within about three years of that corn or land was 3,000 an acre and then it just kept going from there but

um I think The hog business really is what carried us through the 80s. It wasn't grain farming. And so my dad, when he started farming, he farmed with his brother, and they farmed a pretty good chunk of ground. I would say they probably farmed about 800 acres altogether, and they had bought 160 together. And this would have been back in the 60s,

early 70s, and then when my dad had to buy his brother and sister out of the 160, because when my grandparents died, my dad inherited a one-third interest in the 160 at home. And that was the start of a family destroying, you know, we talk about it on here all the time. My dad lived that. when my grandparents died it destroyed the family because one brother wanted the farm the other brother wanted the farm and it didn't work out that way my dad had to buy his brother and sister out and then to do that he had to sell his half of this 160 that they had bought and then that split up them farmed together and they didn't speak to each other for like 50 years um but then when he he married my mom he ended up farming

240 acres that my grandfather owned on my mother's side but then I don't know what happened there but at some point he decided it wasn't worth doing maybe they couldn't get along maybe my dad was not as nice a guy as I thought he was but I knew he wasn't a very nice guy sometimes anyway but anyway

so for a good for half of the 80s we farmed 160 acres So it was the hogs that carried us through. I also say you guys, that time, you had a garden, right? Yep. Grandma canned a lot of shit. Yep. Did you guys ever butcher your own hog?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we, we, there was a locker in Colona, Iowa, and we took hogs to that locker, and we used to have sheep, and we'd take a couple lambs up there every year, and get them butchered, get lamb chops out of it and lamb roast, whatever. And my mother cooked the living shit out of those lamb chops.

It were like hockey pucks. I'm surprised my teeth made it through that. But anyway, yeah, I mean, we didn't, we, we ate a lot from the garden, canned a pile of sweet corn, my grandmother. I can remember my grandmother coming down here on my mom's side, and, you know, they would spend, they'd get set up in the garage, and we had a stove out there and a big, sink and all that. I mean, they canned everything. And we had a big pantry down in the basement.

So I think what it comes down to is we didn't go out and buy a lot of land in the late 70s. So we didn't have a bunch of debt that had high interest on it or anything like that. And in fact, I think that my dad was a guy that he borrowed some of money when he built our first confined buildings, but that was back in the 70s where I don't think people really knew how much money they were making. And he put those on a seven-year note, and he paid them off in like three and a half years. And then after that, he pretty much operated on cash. And somehow we got through it, you know, so the 80s, the 80s were not nearly as hard on us as the 90s were. The 90s were way harder because the hog business in in 95 through 98,

that was, I mean, that was when we exited the hog building. And for me, that was, that was way more stressful. That was way more difficult than the 80s were. But to your point, can that all happen again? Well, I totally think it can and I think it is. I think it's happening right now. And I think you're going to see it this year. The amount of leverage it's out there. I think the farm, I think the farm economy is a product of the same thing that our government is.

It's the product of cheap money. There are a lot of guys. We're so over-equipped as farmers today. It's ridiculous. And I don't give a shit what anybody says. you know, if you don't get all your corn planted in, you know, a week, people, you know, they go in a panic. When I was a kid, it took you a month to plant, and somehow we grew a crop. Now, you can make the argument that, you know, you're missing your top yield and all that,

but we also didn't have an equipment payment. Today, every farmer out there doing it for the most part is probably over-equipped. and we've grown, we've gotten big because that's what has been pushed is you've got to get big and there are a lot of guys out there right now that are in a hell of a shape because they're leveraged hard,

they're paying high cash rent. If you have an excellent marketing plan, that really helps. In this day and age, if you're an expert, if you're really good at marketing, That helps you a lot. But if you do it wrong,

just might sink the boat. And I don't know. I think as we go through the next few years, ag is going to look a lot different than what it looks today. And I think you're going to have a divergence. I think you're going to have a world where you have extremely large farmers

and then you have small farmers that some people, some of those guys may be part-time farmers, and the number of guys that are farming full-time with smaller amounts of land, I think... Square knows that in hospitality, efficiency is everything. That's why their system lets you take payments. Track sales, handle inventory, manage staff, send invoices,

and keep up with finances all in one place. Fly through orders with zero mistakes. Get the data you need and keep everything working together. So you're ready for whatever's next. more about their customized little plans that's swearup.com. I think the only way you make that work is if you create your own market. Yeah, or you have

ag tourism of some sort or like you can't be a small farm and just do the commodity yeah, commodity method. The only way you could be a small farm and make it and do that full time was probably if

you had a big enough market to sell your own produce, eggs, chickens, you know, livestock or you did ag tourism of some sort or you just got smart nitty gritty with a tactic and created your own market that's the only way i see it working yeah and i it's almost like the middle class of farming is going to get taken out just like the middle class almost seems like it's getting taken out right now out of the economy the middle class of farmers is it's either get big or get pushed out of the business unless you change something yeah or

Yeah, that's, I mean, that's it. Yeah, and I just sit around. I just thought this the other day, you know, I'm growing 100% corn because the economics of beans is terrible. And I'm like, that, I hate that. I absolutely hate that because I think, I mean, I think that's, that's one of the problems we've got, is we've become so beholden to the corn, the corn, soybean rotation,

We had a guy that messages off that last podcast, and it really wasn't a question, but he was from Georgia, I think. And he said down there, the only two things anybody grows today is corn or peanuts, because you can't make any, the economics of cotton is completely shot, so nobody grows cotton anymore.

And it's corn or peanuts. And they never used to grow corn, I mean, very much. And it's driven to that. Well, now, and it's like the Dakotas, You know, the front used to not be any corn or soybeans grown in the codas. It was wheat. And now then it's the footprint of corn production has gotten huge. And soybeans to some as a byproduct of that because a lot of people are rotating that.

And really? I mean, and if you think ethanol is your savior, then you're crazier in a pet coon because we've about maxed out. We've about maxed out the amount of ethanol that you're going to get. get and I would argue that with all this technology and remote work and streamlining and robots and AI and all of that, we've already surpassed peak mileage and the number of cars on the road. I think that deal, I think that ship's sailed too. I think you're going to see fewer cars sold in this country and because of robo taxis and all that, you're going to see fewer people owning cars. And so you're ethanol. I think you've

already hit. I think you're at peak. I think you're at peak. I mean, the population ain't growing. No, it's not growing. Well, I don't know. In the world scale, it could be growing. But I mean, I guess when you break it down per country, like Europe's in trouble, China's in trouble. Mexico and India, they're in a good spot. South America, Mexico, India, those populations are going to grow. Europe, Russia, United States, China, Japan. We're not having enough babies. The only thing saving us is immigration.

Yeah. That's the only thing that's saving us. Legal immigration, thank you for the haters that are going to come at me. But, yeah, I mean, I think you're, I think you're right. I mean, I think that's probably a good prediction. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what the world's going to look like when I'm your age, but I know it's going to be more advanced, more tech,

there's going to be more technology. And I think everybody values their time more than anything. And everybody wants the quick, fastest thing possible. And so that might not be owning your own car. That might not be. There could be a service out there that, you mean, you know, you might not even leave your house as much as you used to, you know, because you just get everything.

Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. But, yeah, I had a, I put out a thought out there on my personal TikTok not too long ago. And it was just talking about the point that we always say of passing on family operations. Why are we still passing on family operations the same way? You're pushing the guy that actually wants to farm the family's acres out by splitting it up and giving it to every single kid or every single sibling. And you just, there's not enough money in farming. left, you know, to break up your all your, all your ground, all your assets that make your

farm money to all your kids. And it's just, that's just another area of like, it's, it's getting too hard. And I think these next five years of farming, we're in 25, I mean, they might be some dark times for folks, but I feel like that's why you're seeing, you're seeing people get, they're innovating. I think people are innovating more than ever before in agriculture because they know that they have to. They have to. You know,

and that's what we all going to have to have our mindset on is you got to think differently. You got to do something differently if you want to stay in this game and carry on the operation. That's the only way you're going to keep things going. On that, on what you said, there was a guy that commented on that on LinkedIn. I had to look up his name.

His name is Dave Speck. And he had a great comment on that. He said, in most family farm operations, if you ask all the kids, do you want to be involved in the farming operation? Every single kid's like, yeah, yeah. And then he says, the second question needs to be, are you willing to sign personal guarantees to guarantee the debt of the farm? No.

And then nobody answers. So that's the problem is all these kids, they want the asset, because that asset is worth so much money, but are you willing to put your ass on the line? No. No. And that should be your answer right there when you're figuring out what you're going to do.

It's like that's where the rubber meets the road. So sadly what's happening is a lot of the kids are getting ground and selling it. Yeah. And then the one that actually wants to farm isn't able to buy their siblings out and they're not able to buy the ground back. And that's just fucked up to me. And like I said on that video that I put out there, what other,

I just, I don't understand why we're not, with the times that we're in an agriculture, why are we not running our farms, our family farms like businesses, in the fact that, like I feel like we're one of the few industries that everything is separate.

Families don't truly actually work, together enough. It's all about me, me, my stuff, your stuff, my stuff, your stuff. Here's the agreement. But it's too hard. Like if you can work a way to work out with your family to like grow the farm and have a vision together and making it happen, I think that's the, that's your superpower right now. Because the amount of families out there that are just fighting over petty shit and fighting over this ground or this ground or this ground or this ground and they can't come together. and realize, all right, let's, let's form this and run it like a business. There's going to be revenue.

There's going to be profit. What do you bring to the table? What do you bring to the table? What value is everybody bringing to the table? Okay. What are we going to do with the profit? Where do we want to grow the farm? All those things.

Run it like a business. Well, run it like, I think the way we need to head is I think these, I think something that isn't talked about enough, and I don't know why, is I think you need to run, you need to run these operations like a family office. And by that I mean, like, the farmland is a huge, a huge avenue of collateral to help you in businesses outside ag that complement the farm and bring more value that can help everybody prosper

and everybody has a job within that family office. So it's like if you can just all get along and, you know, somebody has a trucking business, somebody has a plumbing business, somebody has, I mean, I don't care, somebody's into real estate, somebody's into car washes, somebody's into whatever. Well, my thing too is, even if you're somebody that works a job, and it's a really good job,

you still can find a way to contribute to the farm. I mean, you could come, back and hey we need this much money to go get this piece of dirt. All right, I got the money here. Let's do it. Like I just, at the end of the day to me, you shouldn't have a seat of the table or feel like you're entitled to inherit your farm ground if you're not providing any value to the family and the family's operation. Yeah. And that's like I was amazed at all the comments. I mean, there's a lot of people that agreed with me with that statement on that TikTok, but there was a lot of people that were like, Well, I was there when I was, you know, I was there as a kid. I helped out when I was a kid. Yeah.

But I left. So now what? Now I don't get a seat at the table? Fuck no, you don't. You left. Yeah. You go into a business, you leave a business, and you get out. You're not going to get paid after you leave.

Yeah. You weren't with us the whole way. Yeah. Well, you can boil all this down to within a lot of families in ag, there is an unwillingness to have difficult conversations without it. ending in a knockdown dragout. I mean, that's what ruined, that's what ruined this family farm. My dad and his brother, his sister wasn't involved.

I mean, she wasn't involved in the farm, but it ruined the relationship between the three of them. And they just couldn't, they just couldn't have, they just couldn't have a difficult conversation without, you know, ended up hating each other. And that happens a lot. I don't understand it because you know what, you can go to a job and work with people that you absolutely can't stand every day and you figure out how to make it work and you say, well, it's because I don't have any choice. Well, if you want the, if you want the fruits of this amazing asset that has been built for you over generations, you might have to get rid of.

You might have to find a way to get along with Brother Don that's a complete pain in the ass. But you know what? He shows up every day and does whatever. And, you know, his ass is on the line. Well, you're going to have to work with him. It's just like any other business. So anyway. I don't know where I was going with that.

I don't either. But, yeah, it's just a crazy state of where we're at today's ag world. It is. but there's a lot to be optimistic about too. There is. If you're, you know, if you're willing, I hate to be doom and gloom. If you are willing to think a little, and you know what, that's, that's part of what, that's part of what AI brings is the opportunity for you to like just spitball and just think outside the box and try to find solutions and different things that you can do to create value

that will help carry, you know, whatever your family, whatever your family's into. whatever business you're into. There's opportunities out there. You just got to, you're sad to say, the truth is, it's not getting any easier. You got to hustle,

but you got to be, you got to think, you have to, don't let anybody else do, do your thinking for you and tell you, especially me, don't let me sit up here and tell you, oh, yeah, this is what's coming.

No, you might think I'm full of shit. And that's great. If you do, go, go figure it out for yourself. Go find out. find your own truth as far as, you know, dig and weigh it out and know for yourself. So, I don't know, maybe we should call it. I think so.

I mean, I think that was a good, that was a good hurrah-rah at the end there. It was. Yeah, no, I think that was a good episode. I think we got some questions answered. We talked about some trending topics. We strapped some shit on some people. Yep.

Everybody, a lot going on. I'm sure a lot of people out there. there listen you're you're if you're an ag country county fairs going on our county fairs just wrapping up here uh what two days there's two more nights of it i think it was a big success uh i love fairs i love county fairs it's it's that is pure americana um state fair getting started in here in the state of iowa the greatest fair in the united states of america um that's starting in early August. I'm leaving this weekend going to Kentucky. Might go take a couple of distillery tours and eat a lot with some high school friends of

mine that we haven't done anything with in a long time. And I'm leaving Sawyer here. But all my hog buildings are basically empty, so I don't feel too guilty. It'll be easy peasy for me. I just have to make sure nobody died overnight. Yep. But that's all right. that's all that I can stay plenty busy. I'll hold it down. Mo. When you haven't got anything better to do and you get six inches of rain and you're only at the 15th August or whatever,

always mow. Yep, there's always stuff to mow. There's no doubt about it. Mo, spray weeds, weed whack. Yeah. All right. All right. Well, we're going to wrap it up, guys.

Thank you so much for tuning in today's video. Thank you so much for tuning in today's podcast. You got any value, share the show, leave your view on Spotify or Apple. and support Farmergrade, use code barn talk, save 10%. We'll see you back here next week for another episode.