Barn Talk - The Farming Hack Jason Mauck Used to Slash Inputs and Skyrocket Yields

Episode Date: March 8, 2025

Welcome to Barn Talk! Today, we're thrilled to welcome Jason Mauck to the barn for a conversation that's sure to inspire and inform. Jason is a well-known figure on Ag Twitter, or Ag X, and is recognized for his innovative and outside-the-box thinking when it comes to farming practices. Early on, Jason didn't lean on the phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Instead, he developed a reputation for experimenting and testing new ideas, from relay cropping to unique row widths, always pushing the boundaries of traditional farm operations. Jason's background in landscape management and entrepreneurial spirit led him back to the family farm, where he's embraced unconventional methods to achieve remarkable results. In this episode, he shares his journey, offering insights into his experiments with crops, his thoughts on agriculture's future, and the critical role of being adaptable in the ever-changing farming landscape. Whether you're here for the stories or the insights, this episode with Jason Mauck is one you don't want to miss. Get Tickets to Jason’s Field Day  https://conference.eco-ag.com/farmweird  Use code BARNTALK for 10% OFF your next order 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 "Support Barn Talk's Growth" 14:07 Balancing Game A and Game B 22:09 "Door-to-Door Sales Success Strategies" 38:04 "Complex Agricultural Strategy Insights" 42:12 Unconventional Farming Techniques Explained 01:01:42 Farming Challenges and Adaptations 01:02:24 Farming Economics Crisis 01:13:49 Bipartisan Hypocrisy in Politics 01:30:32 Traditional Lifestyles as New Rebellion 01:35:54 "8020 Principle: Attracting Your Right Audience" 01:52:08 Overcoming Adversity in Meat Business 01:57:23 Striving for Personal Growth 02:04:57 "Staying Connected Fuels Collaboration" ------------------------------- ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠  The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional, professional broker or financial advisory. Understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this website at your own risk. RISK STATEMENT– The trading of Bitcoins, alternative cryptocurrencies, NFTs, individual stocks, etc. has potential rewards, and it also has potential risks involved. Trading may not be suitable for all people. Anyone wishing to i... 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 guest episode. Got a really, really great guests coming to the barn today to lay down some good value for you guys. But before we get into it, you guys know the drill. If you get any value from the show, share it out with the people that you know. The more that you guys do that, the more that this show can grow.

If you get any value, if we make you laugh, if you learn something, if you're related to us on something, if we made you just ponder life's questions, all we ask is you just share it out with people, because that's how this show is going to grow. It's kind of the ticket to admission to watch or listen to the show. Another thing you can do to help support us and help support Barn Talk is leave a review on Spotify, our Apple. The more that you guys do that, the more it gives our show credibility. You need credibility to get more guests to come on the show. And so getting those five-star reviews on Spotify and Apple is the best way you can do that. And you can also subscribe to our YouTube channel where we put the video

podcast at as well. Last thing you can do to support us in our family farm is support our direct-to-consumer business, farmer grade. Farmergrade.com. You can always use code barn talk to save 10% off your orders. Everybody on this show, anybody that supports that can always use that code. And we got pork sticks, we got beef sticks, we got Wagyu, chicken, pork, everything that you can think of is on there. We don't have any pork sticks with us today, but that's the official snack of Barn Talk. I think it's pretty set in stone now. I'm kind of upset that you didn't bring any. I know.

I didn't have time to run in the warehouse and get any. I know. You just can't do everything, can you? No, I can't. No. But I would, now that you've said that, I'm thinking it would be nice to have. We need to just have a farmer grade fridge up here. Or hell, a farmer grade wrapped deep freeze.

Maybe just a small one. Or even maybe one of those freezers at the KCCC, or general store, pole top, get one of those that just has loads and loads of sticks in there. You know the owner pretty well. See if he'll spring for some of that. Who, who do I know? The owner of Farmer Grade. Oh, yeah. Get that shit done. Yeah, I don't know. We'll have to see how much one of those brings us or how much it runs us. But yeah, pork sticks are good if you want to, if you're a stick person, recommend for sure.

You know what else is good? What? Today's episode. I know. I'm, I'm really. excited about this one. I think there's, it's going to be, it's going to be fun. So I guess the moral the story is good people, no good people. And we wouldn't have probably made this connection if it wasn't for having Taylor Moyer on the podcast because he was like, you got to get this guy on. And Sawyer actually connected with him and worked this out. So kudos to him. I'm just riding his coat tails, like I always say. But our guest today is probably pretty well known on Ag Twitter, AgX.

That's kind of his primary platform. And some people are just built different. And this guy, he thinks about stuff different. Like he is not somebody that you're going to catch saying, well, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Because if it ain't broke, he's probably going to bust it and try to see what he can do different. relay cropping cover crops crazy row wits i mean he's done a lot of stuff i think he's kind of got i think he puts on a field day every year we haven't been but is that is it like called farm weird or

something like that that they do you're soon as soon as we get started you're going to know who he is but um really kind of right up our alley because he thinks outside the the box and I'm I'm really excited to talk to him and see what we can unpack today. So without any further ado, let's get into it. Jason Mock, welcome to Barn Talk. That was a great, that was a great rambling tidet. I kept him occupied. Yeah, you did. That's good. How are you doing today? Great. Thanks for coming on. I know that the weather's not great, but we're glad that you made the trip all the way to Southeast Iowa. I'm a weather dork, so I was looking forward to the the big storm.

I was hoping it'd be worse. Well, we got in the barn just in time before the snow started really blowing. So when we go outside, it should be. Wind shields will be frozen and covered and you might have to stay. You might be stuck. Yeah. Well, we don't know yet. We do have plenty of antifreeze in the barn, so you'll be all right.

Yeah, it's good. As long as the power doesn't go out. So where can people find you, kick things off? Most things I put out on X. And Jason McWarran is my handle there. I do a little bit of things on Facebook. Other than that, you pretty much got to go to my house and knock on my door because I kind of let people jump through some hoops to get to me.

So you definitely have a following. And you have a very unusual, you have some unusual ideas. I guess we'd put it that way. I guess when I was intro in you, I said, from what I've read and from what I've heard, you're not a guy that would say the phrase, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. You're more of the guy like, oh, well, this has been this way for far too long. Let's tear this, let's tear this apart and see what happens. So have you always been that way? Like, have you always been curious? Oh, definitely, definitely. I'm a first principles guy

and pain teaches, and I hate being in the same position twice. You know, I hate being kind of a bitch, if you will. And I feel like when I evolve and change things, it's just because I got in a spot that I didn't like and like, you know, how can we not do this again kind of deal. Yeah, you found out you were a price taker and went, ah, son of a bitch. Yeah.

Okay, well, I'm getting ahead of us. So you grew up on a farm, right? Mm-hmm. We're at? So it's a little town called Gaston, we're north of Indianapolis right between Indian Fort Wayne. 1A school graduated with 60 people, you know, played basketball, golf. And I was telling you my, there just wasn't room on the farm.

If I went and scraped hog shit or drove the tractor, you know, it was kind of like, well, we put a little sweet corn patch out for you. That's how you get paid. Right. And that's cool. You know, it instilled a work ethic. But there just wasn't a wage there for me. And mom encouraged me to go to school.

So I went and got a marketing degree and I actually moved to the city for about a year and a half to where I just could not stand being clean anymore. I mean, that really what it came down to? Where did you, what city? Indianapolis. Yeah. So the sweet corn patch, did you turn that into an enterprise? Because you said at a very young age, like that was just innate in you.

Yeah, you know, it went from right behind the shop. We put up maybe like an acre or two. and then we cleaned it all up and then it turned into the full patch and then we started putting stuff you know sequinsing it out and and at a at a point when I got my license we would drop corn off six different places and then I would go to Muncie at the main intersection and I had like 12 got corn signs I was all about size and I'd always have the cops be like hey they can't see right at the intersection here I had to make sure they knew where I was selling sweet corn and I loved it man, I love just selling.

Yeah. And getting to the end of the day and making deals and all that stuff. And, you know, you just got a brick at cash. Yep. And you store that below your bed and that was just living. How, so like what age were you when you got that going to? Did you do it all the way until you graduated? Yeah.

Okay. Into, into college. I still did it in the summertime. When you came back to? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I found out that once you've got to pay for the seed and the fertilizer and all the work,

then you're really only making about 15 bucks, maybe 12 bucks an hour. You know, it's that. Yeah. But when you're young and they put it out, you know. And you're sponging a little. Yeah. Yeah. But so that experience, did that make you want to be an entrepreneur or just a farmer?

Like, what did you want to be? Because it sounds like from early age, you knew there probably wasn't going to be a spot for you there. So like what was your, what was the thing? Did you have a dream when you're a kid? like, I want to be this. I always wanted a farm with dad. Yeah. That's what sucked about losing them because I came to the farm and I didn't have them anymore.

And that just flat out sucked. But I was just, you know, you just get a fulfillment on the sweet corn thing when you put that brick of cash at the end of the day and you wake up early and you just feel like you're, you're hustling. You're kind of out hustling the crowd, if you will. And, you know, when I got in the landscape business, it just, it was cool. I did things a lot differently than the guys I was competing. with. I found you're with my marketing degree, you, instead of putting out an ad, like in the yellow pages, and those would be like $6,000, $10,000 back in the day because that was the game. Well, you really dated yourself there. Oh, yeah. There's about 12% of the people that just went, what, yellow pages?

Yeah, but that was it, you know? And I figured out like, screw answering the phone and having to pick up walnuts and apples for a grandma and she's going to argue that you shouldn't charge her, you know, 40 bucks. And I learned from selling insurance to how to get people on paper. I did home improvement for a while, the closing process, putting people on paper. So I went out and built a book of business to about a half million and three years on the landscape side. Wow. And then it became a machine kind of deal.

I would go out and recruit at the basketball court. And I figured instead of having some guy, you know, 50 years old running a weed eater that's going to get wore out at one in the afternoon when it's 90, I need athletes. and then I can get 12 hours out of them. And then it just became how much can I get done? And then a Texas Holden kind of deal of, okay, I don't want to do this place anymore. We just got to keep going up the ladder. Getting higher quality.

You did that. So everything is just a ladder of how much can you produce in an hour and how can you drive the cost down. And then, you know, we're not making money in the truck. So we need a clover leaf off of this account. And I would get into neighborhoods. I'd really try to find nice new neighborhoods. A, you didn't have to deal with all the poison ivy and all that shit.

But we could line up yards and get, you know, 60 bucks apiece. You get put the trailer down and you go eight yards. Stay there for the whole day. Yeah. And I was starting to do like the Tide Ultra idea of like, okay, I can make $80 a man hour here and only make $35 an hour bidding these big accounts. So you could get rid of the big and go to the small and start. kind of, and that's what really opened my eyes up, not only the landscaping side going to farming,

but the packaging side of value of each individual thing that you're doing. So you did that, you started your own landscaping business, like right out of school, right out of college. Do you feel like you learned a lot at college that kind of helped you like have the knowledge to do that? Or do you feel like you were just like learned a lot more from actually doing the business and like what do you think about college with with my interaction with people on social media what you get from college yeah you get a framework of how things work but you get a framework of how to go to the bar and meet a girlfriend how to meet friends you're you have to you have to be in a new environment you don't have all your old high school friends you don't have

all the bullies trying to figure out who's top shit and all that stuff and that is everything and you know, the sales process, and it just come down to people or people. And if you can go in and just try to get together with people, you just build it. I mean, that's what I really learned. Learning the network. Yeah. Yeah. Connections, too. I'm sure you meant a lot of good people, too. I mean, that's worth a lot. Good friends from. Where'd you go? Where'd you go? I went to Ball State. Okay. Cool. It's pretty big. They got about 20,000 people. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Sweet. kids so how long did you do the landscape and four so i did some in college uh i probably mowed like 800 bucks a week in college you just had to kill it for two or three days and then it i kind of put

that down to get a real job if you will and then i started from scratch uh when you know two years out of college from so from 23 and a half 24 to 29 i i built that up and then my dad got pancreatic cancer the fall of 2010 and he knew something was going wrong and it just took five months between him knowing to where he was gone. Holy cow. That was a, yeah, that's a tough three or four years, honestly. Yeah. Going from from that to that. And you're, you said this before, but being successful and starting your business and building this out and scaling it was the vision always, I'm doing this to get back so I could farm with dad? Like was that the, North Star for sure.

I mean, I talk about like this game A, game B all the time. Like you want to be and create something, but you have to foster game A to give you the bandwidth to go out and travel and market or whatever you do to get there. It's going to take everything is going to take that's good three to five years to develop. And that's always what I thought is as I can replace myself. Maybe I go out and sell. I get a good group of people to go out and do the book of business.

then that frees me up to go farm and start the next chapter. Nice. Just nothing ever happens on schedule. That's right. So during the time that you were off farm, did you spend much time back in the operation as far as when you did have to come home, was a lot of stuff different? Or were you aware as far as how the technology had changed and all that?

Or were you like, holy shit? No, no, I was always, I mean, if we were busy in the field, I was driving the tractor. And I was the, I would say I would represent the United States and hog sorting when I was in my 20s. I mean, I was the dumb cowboy with the sortboard. And usually I was the only one in the, or Uncle David was at the gate. But you, I actually enjoyed hogs sorting. You know, you got to kind of read the eyes and the perception of the plant, of the, not the plan, it's how I was, you say that, but pigs. Yeah.

You knew exactly where you wanted to be, and you had to really hustle. And they needed me to do that. Yeah. And thank God we quit while we did, or none of us would have kneecaps. I mean, as they got bigger and bigger. Yeah. Got to have knee pads. I know what you mean, though, because I've had that same thought.

I think every, probably a lot of hog farmers think that, like, you know, this skill, I'm fucking great at this. But nobody fucking knows I'm great at this. Yeah. Like, most people have no fucking idea out what this takes. do this and be good at it. But I've had the same feeling like, yeah, pretty damn good at this. I'm good with a sorting board. I always make the comment, you know, to this day, I actually enjoy loading pigs. We talked a little off camera. I don't enjoy the time of day that we have to do it.

And so we hire a lot of loads done now. But I actually enjoy doing it. And people are like, I don't know what you like about that. I said, what I really like is, I want the last pig that goes on that truck to know that I fucking won. But the pigs will make you feel like a bitch. Yeah, they will. Well, and it is total, it's total, it's just a momentum game because, and I have had this happen. There's been two times in my life where a hog has hit me and I've actually had the

thought flying through the air. I don't know if I'm going to fucking get up when I land. I got knocked off the top deck of a trailer like two years ago. We were loading in the winter. And, you know, these hogs, if they stop and look at you and they think to themselves, you know what, fuck this, you're in trouble. And I had these pigs going up the trailer and the last one literally stopped. And I knew as soon as he stopped, I knew I was fucked because I didn't have any leverage.

And I'm like, son of a bitch. And he turned and he was like, yeah, fuck you. and he took me and I flew off that top deck and I landed right inside the door and Sawyer saw me as I was on the ground and I literally just sat there and I was like hmm can I feel my toes because I thought I bad but I turned out okay but I know exactly what you mean it's it's a deal they're that that low center gravity that they got yeah they decide to jump you it's a lot of power they've got the leverage They got the leverage for sure. Yeah.

So you were doing, you were coming back while you were building the scale in the landscaping business, you were coming back helping where you could with pigs and the grain farming and all that too. What was the biggest challenge with growing the landscaping business? What was like the thing that was every stage there was a hic like a big hiccup? Or was it kind of a consistent? It's so unfair. I mean, that business, the profit margins are. great. Yeah. The clientele is great because if you get rid of the big properties, you're only

working for the affluent population and they might want to mulch their house just because they're going to have a party. And it just, it was great because we could kick ass on snowstorms and kick ass from basically, we would move snow to start mulching the big places. And by mid-to-late May, I mean, I pretty much got everything mulched. My crew is all trained. So I could leave leave and go golfing. And you could just basically kick ass, you know, 100 days out of 365 and make a good living. Yeah. And then you're just taking somebody's pain because they're just happy that you're there to do it. Exactly. Yep. You could trade, get new equipment. You know, you could get turf tigers for 11,000, put 500 hours on them. And it was just, it was, it was a pretty good life. A lot of vacation.

You know, if it wasn't, if we weren't going to get a snowstorm, I could just go to Nashville, Tennessee, Florida for during the winter and yep I didn't have a family I didn't have a wife uh it was it was good times then yeah well so did you end up selling it then or no I just have phased it down but I okay finding guys that wanted to do my mowing route so I didn't really even get done done until two years ago I was still mowing like 15 or 20 homes out in the country just to just I mean the thing and then I was plowing snow I kept my uh I had my uh had this really a good route of about 12 or 13 accounts that were zero tolerance. So if it snowed a sniff, a dusting, I may salt 50 times. And by the mid of the winter, there was so much salt

on the pavement. It didn't matter if I added any salt. You just had to drive out there. Yeah. I get up like 2 a.m. put Rogan in and do my salt route. I'd be back home at 5 or 6 a.m. And you'd make 1,500 bucks. Yeah. It's great. So it's tough to, and that's where you learned the parado distribution of, of everything that you do, you can rate. Like, this sucks, screw this, fuck this, I'm done with this. And then you just keep on making your accounts better and better and better. And then that makes your productivity better. So what, I didn't catch what you said at its peak.

How, what did you grow it to at its peak? Right around a half a million is kind of where we stayed. Cool. And we, and the way that we grew is we would get rid of. We did, you know, at the beginning, we were doing like Section 8 housing, and then it went into nicer condominiums. And then, you know, you do a snow account. And you're like, shit, I got to get six people to shovel these 53 driveways.

You're like, screw this. Let's just get down to the nursing homes, the banks, the all the people that's just primo, primo, primo. So you would just be able to lower the hours and the fuel and the labor and all that set of better accounts. Yeah. For your time invested. Yeah. Yeah.

Do you have any advice for landscape business owners that they could use? You got knock on doors. Yeah. I get some pretty girls knock on doors. I would get girls to just knock and get mulch jobs, you know, and you just figure the timing. You know, everyone is this perceptive play, right? They want their shoes to match their bass boat and their mulch to be nice. So if you go out, you know, April 10th, everyone's looking to malle.

their house and you get a pretty girl on there, you would get leads and I'd just go follow up and close them and get them on paper and you know, you get 10, 15, 20 jobs ahead and you can start really kicking ass. We'd mow hard for three or four days and then we'd knock out a bunch of mulch jobs and it just, it was just an easy business because no one was, everyone wanted to hide behind the yellow pages or hide behind the radio ads and all this shit, but they're not effective in getting exactly what you want. So not only do you get the customers, you get the locations what you want

when you knock on the doors. One thing I love to do at a nice place, I'd always go find, I love when they have weeds in their landscaping, and I just rip it out of the ground, and I come in there with a bottle of wine in one hand and a weed, I'd be like, he's taking care of your place.

And it'd always be a 28-year-old chick. She had a budget, and that was my biggest thing. was willing to absorb on the cash flow side, I turned everyone into monthly payments. So we could just cash flow. When works slowed down, that filled in all your winter cash flow. And then I learned to change apples and oranges. So some people I put on per inch, some people per occurrence, and then you put all these different contracts out there and kind of decide, you know, kind of hedge, if you will with that. So you walk in, you had that bottle of wine. Did you end up drinking the wine with them or sometimes and that's what was great like when the crew got going we go to

mexican drink like a pitcher margaritas and come back and then you know you do that a few times you know you're on get to contract the next year and and some referrals and yeah yeah that's some good shit yeah you're and then you became a poor dirt farmer yeah yeah so how did that how'd that happen like how did you transition how did you or more importantly so when you you you you When your dad, when your dad got sick and you came back, was, was that decision, like, you taking over and keeping it all going, was that, uh, was that a given? Or were you torn with the idea of maybe we just rent this son of bitch out? No.

I mean, the backstory is my dad had two brothers. So there's two uncles in the operation. My dad was a very authoritative. But cool guy. He was just a hard ass and he was he made you accountable. If you fucked up, then he would tell you about it and you better not do it again. Yep. And and just the way it naturally occurred, he was the leader of his and I love all my uncles, but he, he planted, he sprayed. You know, grandpa wanted to run the combine, but when he'd get tired, dad was in there. He just knew how to weld. He needed to do all that shit. And they just needed somebody that was more agronomomical. And they just needed somebody that was more agronomical.

intuned. So, you know, I had always, with Grandpa, he'd always do the same shit I did with landscape. He'd be talking to Dick in the corner selling Pioneer Seed and me and my cousin be shoveling the bags into the barn. And so I was always around farming. I remember the hybrids. I was just in love with growing things. So it was never hard to figure that out. Yeah. So your dad, passes away, you go, you go into the operation. How do you, do you have the respect to your uncles? Do they respect your, like, decision making? Did you have a seat at the table where you could say, hey, I think we need to do this or this or that. Um, like, what's that look like and how does it progress over time? You just got to perform. Yeah. And I always felt I didn't have representation with my dad gone. And that kind of put you in a

weird spot so you just feel like you got to you just got to work and then you know you do that several years in a row and that eventually leads to respect yeah of other people and you know I took everything to heart if if something looked like shit you know I was trying to figure out how to not how to not do that just get just get better at it but you used when you came back you guys were doing conventional tillage or no till or what was the operation like? And what it comes down to, and then Grandpa just passed. And he, you know, he couldn't figure out the technology side. He wanted to run the combine, but he didn't know how to run it.

You know, he didn't know the button. So I was always facilitating him. So we couldn't really get out a full scale. We started doing less and less tillage, but that was his job. Yeah. So he earned it. He paid for all this ground, so I just kind of let him do his deal. And then when I started experimenting with things, it was never permission-based.

It was always, I'm just going to sneak this in. He's going to be pissed and it better fucking work. Ask for forgiveness. I'm not going to be able to do it again. So it kind of put pressure on you. And then, you know, as the social media stuff grew and I started speaking, I started creating the income where I could buy my own stuff. And then it no longer became a constraint.

Yeah, they didn't have any choice, but to just let you do it. But what was the catalyst that made you want to start experiment? Well, when I was a landscape contractor, you had to design things to, you know, if I'm doing a new landscape project, I got to think, okay, that tree is going to grow the next 20 years. Okay. When I did all these floral arrangements, and that was kind of my deal. I made, I made the place look better than anyone else. So the grass was going to be super tall, green and striped, flowers galore. And I was just accustomed to growing a lot of things.

And if I was managing 250 acres of turf, I could sell a contract to spray the place four times, but I knew if I kept the grass up, I'd only have to spray the edge of the concrete. And I could start lowering, I would only put your re out. I wouldn't put, you know, and I could figure out how to get the result with lower. And that just transpired to the farm. When I showed up, we were putting hog shit. We were spreading P&K and we were knifing in hydroson all on the same acre to have this because the hefty brothers were like, well, manure's not enough. Yep.

And I just, we got a soil guy out and he's like, Jesus, your pee levels are all in the tripled figures. You don't need fosters for the rest of your life. And we just shut it off. So we shut off. It's only pig shit. And, you know, sometimes it's three years between applications. We got everything lime right. And it just came down to like spectrum analysis.

Okay, what can we get by with? And I look at everything as, you know, the dumbest thing is these answers or the answer plot. Or you should do this across your whole thing. You need to be doing, you need to be changing your herbicide rates, changing your fertilizer rates and just figuring out, you know, how responsive things are. And that all started initially. That was a big savings. You know, you're talking about 15, 200 grand we saved right off the bat by not treating, you know. Every acre of the same.

Yeah. But we only started with 4,000. So we've built two quads since 2011. So now we have, you know, four million gallons of hog shit that we can put across, you know, 800 acres or so. So when you said that, it got me thinking because I feel like a lot of farmers. and when I first started making some of the decisions. So my dad was a guy that he, when he started, he started with, he had a one-third interest in 160 acres,

and he was basically playing crop rent to his brother and his sister. So tight, tight-ass, I mean, tight. And when we had hog manure, that's all we needed was hog manure. But our soils weren't as build up as like you're talking. And I remember the first time that I wanted to like side dress. And oh God, it was kind of the same deal only I had to get permission. It was like pulling teeth.

And even when he saw the numbers because it did improve, he was like, eh, but it cost this. But now then today, sometimes I feel like, and so Mitchell Horrah is a neighbor of mine. And I've talked to him a lot on this subject. And it's kind of something that's near and dear to his heart. But I feel like farmers get caught up with that top line yield, yield times X, maximum revenue. But what doesn't get talked up enough is what did you have to pay to, to get that revenue and is there a sweet spot in there

where you can spend a whole hell of a lot less on the input side and the yield doesn't suffer it might not be it's not bragging rights at the coffee shop but your revenue per acre is your profit yeah your profit per acre is way better

and I don't know I don't know if that gets I don't it's not sexy like nobody wants to sell you that nobody wants to sell you that biologic that's going to give you an extra five bushel. You know, they don't really want to talk about that because they want the guy that wants the bragging rights. Yeah. And but so your thought process, you were just looking at what you were throwing out there for money and you're like, holy shit. And you realize you didn't need it.

So then you cut that back and then you probably felt like, well, shit, you know, what else can we do? So what was the next evolution? So what happened? 2011, Dad passed April 15th, and we had the wettest year we've ever had. It was just straight monsoon. And we got to later part of May, and I'm like, we're not even going to get crop out.

So I started planting in the mud, and that looked like shit. The people that waited until, like, June 7th had some of the best corn they've had. So that was a lesson of fucking up, as you will. The next year, epic drought. So we planted, hell I planned March 19th some corn. And it was 80 for 10 straight days.

That was some of our best corn, but we had like 100 bushel corn. And then 13 came around. We had some wet years and I started messing with the relay stuff. And when I started doing that, we had some really wet years in 15, 16 and 17. To be honest, like I said, Grandpa did not like this stuff because I was, he thought I was risking the farm by growing two things at once, you know, he just was imagining a disaster. And, you know, I took it of like, okay, how can we build a way to harvest this? And we started, I kind of trying to get, make this make sense, but I started doing tram lines in our corn so we could wide drop and then

tram lines to harvest the weed out. So it just, it was system based. And it grew through time. We didn't really get to a couple hundred acres of relay until 2020. So it took about five years of figuring out before we really scaled it. Yeah. But it became of how do I take on this rain? The other thing, we had mats of chickweed and hen bit because our fertility was so high. So when we couldn't get out in the field, we had just balling up in the field collivator trying to plant in this shit. It'd never dry out.

So how do we get and grow what we want? instead of growing what we don't want and then having to deal with it. So that started the strips of wheat would consume water when in a wet spring. And I figured out how to grow better beans in a wet year with the strips. And then this whole thing just, I just started doing experiments. A for kicks and then B to just learn things and implement it the next year. Yeah. So for people that haven't seen your stuff, what is a typical?

Like, what is a typical rotation on the ground that you're doing relay cropping? So we'll start with an earlier maturity corn and we'll shell it at 23, 24, 26 percent and try to get it off in September 20th to 25th. And then we come in and plant strips of wheat. And I want to explain this fie or Fibonacci. It's the 80-20 principle. So a plant, if you plant, for example, in the garden, I planted one. corn plant. I dug it up and I had the kids pee on it all the time and it grew 31 ears. And the same plant right next to it in the field only has one ear. Plants are very perceptive. So if you plant a

plant, it's going to have so much time, so much CO2, so much light and it can have 10 times as much to itself and it responds. So I play the Pareto principle by, we may drag line fall hog manure and we'll plant the wheat strips out there and then that's our fertility and I'll only plant 30% of the wheat seed so wheat seed in in general is not even expensive to start with but if I can cut that in a third or a quarter I only got 16, 18 bucks in wheat seed that I can grow 80 or 100 bushel wheat off that has a contribution margin again when I take my costs if my costs are 60 bucks I create contribution margin if I don't hurt the bean yields then I make a lot of value there. So that's just the whole thing is instead of chasing the rabbit, you got to, it's like backing up two haywagons or a field collivator and a rolling basket.

You can't look at the this. You got to think of if I go left, this goes right. And that's just been this general discovery as I fuck around and find out that if I push A too much, B suffers and I don't make any money. My uncle on the other side, he'd always come to Christmas. So this is an analogy just to use. He would always get a new John Deere equipment. And he would drive it like shit. And he'd always be like, I got a new John Deere 9400.

You'd laugh at the horsepower at that thing. I got up to 13th gear and it only pulled that field collivator 11 mile an hour. And that's generally, you know, once you try to grab another gear, if it don't rain, you might hurt yourself 40 bushel an acre on the hills because you push the population too much. Yeah. or the fertility. And it's, we've got to be true to ourselves on this stuff. Okay. So you, you get the corn off and then you're stripping wheat. How, what are the, what's your gaps look like? So for year, we started twin 30s and the wheat was real good, but the beans were minute bulls. They just

didn't have any light. So we just weren't getting any good bean yield. So then we went to 37 inch. And then we went to quad 60. So four rows. with the drill four skips makes a big 37 inch gap between there and then I plant two bean rows between in between but this year we went to twin 45s we took the kensi planter and we put a seed right disc on there and I can singulate the wheat and I can really make it tiller and I can lower my seating rate even lower oh so now like when you started you were basically like broadcast in that wheat so it was actually well no we were I was I was planting it with the drill.

Okay. But there just wasn't enough space. The way, if the plant has space, it'll grow laterally and it'll just fill in that solar corridor. And then whatever you're trying to grow in between there, it doesn't have any light, so it'll just die. Gotcha. So we've had to, imagine I got a big, vicious dog right here. And I got it on a leash and it's just sitting there and barking at you.

Look, you've got to figure out if I juice this plant up, it's just whether it's a wheat plant or corn plant, whatever it is, it's going to grow out. Right, it's hard to hold it. And you've got to take that just apart enough that it will have full massive adaptation, but still allow that corridor to go down. And then you can play that Pareto distribution off of that. Yeah. And that's been all of my research is okay.

Phil Needham wants me to have four inch rows, hit it with fungicide, juice it a million times to get 125 bushel wheat. Well, that costs $284. Fucking great. Doesn't help you. You know, wax your carrot. Oh, yeah. If I take hog shit and I just Columbian bam-bam that underneath that.

So we made a machine that actually injected hog shit. And I put a gandy box and it sprinkled wheat seed right ahead of the closing disc. And I just drove as fast as I could. And it just buried it. And the next day I took the old coltapacker and I just pushed it down. And that worked great. Holy cow. Yeah.

But I only had, you know, three shanks at a time. And I'm trying to shell corn during that time. I'd like to revisit it. But that's a brilliant idea because you grow wheat. You can grow a wheat crop cheaper than I can pay the dragline guy. And when my fertility is up through the roof, why am I putting 5,000 gallons of hog shit on ground with a P level of 114? It doesn't make any sense.

You can put 1,500 right below the wheat and grow the whole crop. Yeah. And then you can chart changing how the plant responds by banding things. And it just, it's just a big chalkboard of how can we get better at this, this, this and this and this and this and this. And you package that. Yeah. And you just find those blind spots and you just figure out how you can alleviate them.

Okay. When you're, my mind's kind of fucking blown a little bit. Honestly. So you're not, you're not planting your soybeans until you take the wheat off. No, we're planting the beans as early as possible. Yeah. So they grow together for 100 days. Okay.

So when you harvest that wheat, how low are you cutting that wheat? As low as we can. So there's a product from Flexi Finger. that you snap onto your bean head and I've modified it with wings. So it goes into that wheat canopy where the beans are and it just makes them do the limbo. So it's just pushing them over. It just pushes them down. You'll stripe the beans.

It's badass. They're striped back, right back. And then you have all this trash. And the trash looks like you just douched and buried the beans. But the next morning they just shake it off or something. And then that'll preserve the light. And now since you prune the biomass, it's like what I learned from the landscape world. If I got a bush that looks like shit, I go on there and I cut out all the dead stuff

and now all the stuff that's green gets more light and it becomes alive. Well, now all the beans, all the leaves are now viable. They're not competing. And that's what we don't understand with monocrops. We're racing to get the canopy so we don't have to put the chemicals down, but we're turning every plant into a competition with one another. So our productivity per plant goes exponentially down. Right.

And what we can do is just sequence things and think about plant percept. and milk the curve on one end, and then what I started doing is planting much later maturing beans. So that peredo or the phi is one, one, two, three, five, eight, 13. It's the two previous numbers. So if you can plant a bean April 10th and you get it up and it has pods when I prune the wheat out of the way in June, if I've got a group four or five bean that's going to live until October, then I am making a higher interest rate on that plant because of its perception. Yeah. So I let that interest just play out forever.

And I get these big ass forage beans that grow huge. And then they zip back shut where the wheat was. But my light per plant, when I spaced it out, I got a big pissed off bean. It's getting more energy. So by the time you get late season, those beans have bushed out. Are they touching? or not quite? Oh yeah, I try to get them back shut in 10 days. It's basically like, you remember, or you know Thanksgiving dinner when you eat way too much? Like you go up three times and then you eat

pie and then you're just like, you just try to unbutton your pants. It's like, that's basically what we're doing is we're pissing. Those beans are grown so early. They might grow taller than the wheat heads. And then we push him down and they were forcefully actually bringing the wheat back up. because I got an old man in the nursing home here, and I got a 13-year-old that could, you know, pee 14 feet still right next to it. And it's just pushing right into it. And then it just comes right back. And we broke, you know, we had 108 bushel beans that way.

We've had field averages, you're 88 bushel this way. And it's just the discipline of, it's just a mathematical equation of if I, if I grow 110 bushel wheat, I'm going to drink 30 inches of water. water. Well, there's nothing left for the beans. But if I can, if I can do 75 bushel wheat, I'm going to drink my water, but I'm only going to drink my water right here. If I have wheat wheat right here, then there's a spot right here that those roots aren't going to drink the water. Right. So it becomes a reservoir. But also, I've got biomass up here that is blocking the wind. Yeah, I'm drying it off. It's colder right here. And you can start creating your own

microclimates in that cropping schematic. Yeah. And so, then you're, you're getting a better bean yield than what you would have had without the wheat, but then the wheat is contributing to your, your income off that acre. And then when you can start doing, if you go back in the 1960s, like the farm magazines, you cultivated everything. Yep. And shit was expensive. And what did you have on the planter?

You had a little prowl right there, right? Oh, boy, have yellow on his cheek because he's fucking with prowl all day. Well, they would put that only right above. of the plant. Why? The shit's expensive. Yeah. And they were going to cultivate everything else.

So they just needed to buy some time. So what you can do with that is you can start using proxy. So weeds aren't going to grow. If I get a pissed off wheat strip, A, I can push the density and fertility through tillering because it tempers by growing outward. Instead of racing up and falling down, it can grow outward.

So weeds will never grow in that space. So then you can only start spraying. in that space between it. You only put your fertilizer, like when I stream bar, I'll shut off three stream bars, and I'll put every fourth stream bar, and I'll just rail it right down the rows. So you can just portionalize everything.

Yeah. And think about the life cycles. So that's soybeans. What about corn? So soybeans sound like your inputs are lower and you're out yielding what you would traditionally. Oh, go ahead. Well, no.

So you, then you cut those beans in the fall. all right then what are you doing are you tilling all are you just basically conventional corn the following year or are you doing anything different on the corn it's it's different and no one will talk i call it sprigging so i've got all this volunteer weed out there hey i want to get a shit ton of cows and we're working on that i want to get collars on them because i have high protein forage that i could put one pass of cows out there get the cow shit and get them to grow it's amazing 10 4 but we'll come in there about the last dry day late november early December with a VT tool and I'll go on an angle because I got a lot of straw and

volunteer wheat out there and we'll, sorry, we'll, we'll hit it once with that and it doesn't kill the wheat. It kills maybe a third or a half of it. Yeah. And then it kind of re-routes, but it kind of sets it back a little bit. And then I get these big, I get the field nice and level and then I just no till in it to it the next year. And the wheat acts as natural allopathic effect. And I don't get any hint better. It's just pure wheat. And the way I look at all that, either the straw or that, A, it's exuding the sugars and feeding the microbiology and getting my soil better and better. But if I get fertility in my wheat straw, that's two or three or four years of nutrient release that I'm making. I'm just trying to grow as much biomass below and above ground as I can.

Yeah, so how, where you're doing this today, because you're not doing this obviously on all your acres, but are you rotating it to where you're doing this maybe once every, are you doing it on the same acres in rotation, or are you moving this around that you're doing this one year of this? It's growing in scale, but what is very interesting is where I started doing it, and I've had five passes, five wheat crops, you can get on Google Earth and literally see exactly where that field is from the fatch and organic matter that it is created. Okay.

It is just amazing what has happened to this. How many acres are you doing this on then? We're at 400 now. Okay. But on the backside, we have 400 volunteer weed acre, so I got 800 acres green, if you will. Yeah. So have your uncles, like, did it start out,

where they were like, he's fucking crazy. And now they're like, holy shit. Like this is work, like this is really working. Yeah, if I get any, you know,

if they get me any stuff, I just say, well, run the combine, you know, take it across. And they're like, well,

this is kind of cool. And, you know, you have a field day and you got, I'll have two people from 50 miles away and I'll have 200 people that drove states away.

Yeah. And when you talk to these people, you know, if you still disagree with it, then that's fine. but, you know, that's the dynamic you've got to kind of deal with locally when you've got something like that. So from a time standpoint and just operation standpoint, do you foresee yourself getting this over more of your acres? I want to expand.

So I want to talk about a lot of other ideas in the cropping schematics as well. So I want to grow that a little bit more. But like I said, if I could get the manure thing, then I could start doing low rates. instead of getting seven or 800 acres of manure, you know, how much more money do you make on own ground pig shit and 280 bushel corn than 60 bushel beans, $300 cash rent that cash, you know, it just doesn't make any sense. Right. So we want to grow life around and get a lot of cattle out there, fencing, and just continuously

add layers to it. So do you got cattle now? My cousin has a few. Our hired hand has a herd. My uncle has heard. My brother-in-law has a herd. But they all have like 15. Okay. So, yeah. But you're looking to, you'd like to get cows on your ground grazing that volunteer wheat. Yes. I want to make a pass there. And then on the corn side, I want to start doing different. So we're 20 inch corn. And that works pretty well, especially when the ground isn't quite as productive. we can get a few more bushels out of that through the shading, and we can use really low herbicide rates, which I like. But we're starting to do a lot of research with twin-rose 60-inch corn

and growing the cover and then bringing the cattle out there and have something substantial. Not only are they cleaning up after the combine, but they have a significant biomass that they can gain some pounds on. So 60-inch corn and leaving and having cover crop in between that. Yes. Have you done much work with that? Yes.

Yeah, I want to ask, yeah, what's the corn look like? You broke down the beans, but are you doing something different with the corn too, like as far as how it all is growing? You're going 20. What kind of population do you run on 20-inch road? It depends on the hybrid. And we've done, in general, narrow row corn, more upright, earlier maturities do better. If I want more yield out of the full ones, I need 40-inch rows or 30-inch rows or something like that.

They'll have bigger leaves that just gets too hot in there. But as far as what are we doing with corn, we've done 60s, but when you do 60s, if you remember a family guy, you got Stewie's head, that's what all the roots look like, because you're putting them every two or three inches. Yeah. But if you go twin 60s, you can diamond pattern that, and you can have the same spacing as 30 down the row. And what's really interesting, if you go strip till, now you've got half the strip till units,

now you've got half the planning units. Now you can band half the bands. and that all goes to the parade of distribution of, A, my depreciation in the barn is less, but now I can take a 300 horsepower tractor and pull a 40-foot strip-till bar with it instead of yanking a bunch more shanks in there. So we're working on developing some more aggressive strip-till to make a wider strip to facilitate that specific thing. But the other thing I'm talking about is a more perpetual concept,

and you take everything we learned from relay with the solar angles, the edge effect and all like that, and you start doing blocks of corn. So instead of twin 60s, you do four rows. The outside rows are extremely heavy, thick. The middle ones are a taller hybrid to have a carrot for a few nodes. And then you start growing your own nitrogen. And this is what will give me a hard on more than anything in the world. I want to start having like a 40-20 with a hog shit spreader

and a 40-20 with an old Vandale that I can open up both gates. and I want to go rogue gear applying hog shit in June, July, and August and September. And have an 80-inch trench that I can drive. And then the other thing, the organic guys, they're getting their turkey shit, chicken shit for their wheat and their corn in May. You can't stockpile it until August. So there is a point there where you can apply this stuff to your field and buy it for half the cost. And if you're the only game in town, that's pretty cool. to go compare. If I got on ground, I go continuous crop corn and I can't use my hog shit. I got high

inputs. I got to feed the carbon penalty and all that. But if I could do something like this, I could flip-flop my acres. So my corn is where my clover was the previous year. And I just continue to build that up. So we're going to be doing that this year. And then the other layer to that, if you follow the stock cropper, we can move animals between there to graze multiple times in a year. How many minutes a night do you sleep? I sleep like a baby. How many chalkboard hours do you got today? Yeah.

But the thing is, you know, all this stuff, when I was growing my social media, I challenged myself to talk about something different every day. And when you challenge yourself to come up with content, it just forces you. you to think about shit. And, you know, I did this thing called Random Thought of the Day for probably two years. And I bet I, between the sharing economy or cropping schematics or, you know, like, you know, this whole stock cropper thing before I saw a picture of Joel Salton. He had chicken tractors. And what I was keyed on, he had about 15 chicken tractors. And between them, there was this little landing strip of grass where he just missed a spot. And my mind just went, holy shit. We could build these chicken tractors to be just more narrow than the corn rows.

And just because you put it out on chalkboard, you put it out into the world, you have 100 people get their insight. You just get so much smarter with this kind of group thought. And so the next year, I was confident. You know, you think through all this shit and then you pull up to the field. And because you've thought about it for 10 hours, you just press all the buttons and you just fucking do it. and you've already thought it through. And so in 2020, we bought an organic farm that had, we had a house on it that we could rent out for 1,200 a month, had like three bedrooms,

but it had 10 pastures behind there. And if they sign off that they didn't put commercial fertilizer or anything on it, you can turn it organic immediately. And at that point, I had two interns. So we made 14 chicken tractors, and we religiously moved those chicken tractors between the the we had hemp CBD when that was the rage oh yeah and then we had popcorn and we made all these and we moved it and I thought in my head we were going to have all these weeds and we did not have one weed I took the pig shit from the farm I injected it and planted my rows just wider than the chicken tractor and then I threw BMR sorghum sedan grass and I literally just let the sheep and the chickens just eat it as fast as they could and it just stayed from you know four

inches to, you know, 30 inches just in that state. And that just choked leaves out. Yeah. They never had a chance to get started. And it really is a rationing algorithm. If you, if you use the business model of mom and pop to Walmart to Amazon, you know, it's a rationing algorithm instead of selling one thing, you're selling 10,000 things and then you're lowering the cost. And it's just a positive feedback loop. So you're still doing that? You still doing the? Yeah. And we're working right now with Zach and Joe on we're kind of getting out of uh you know we were really pushing on farmers and we realized that most farmers don't want to work more so i think the the new revolution what we're really looking

at is why you mowing five acres earl let's let's farm two acres of your yard and let's make a row of uh apple trees and peach trees and put a garden here and let's move some chickens in between there and we kind of let people farm their yard and create food sovereignty yeah because with this whole protein movement and all this shit, you know, it's, it's getting harder and harder. You get out in the country, you got a DG that's got slick meat, and then you might have to drive 40 miles to actually get meat. So that's where Farmer Grade comes in with a subscription package, or maybe they're supplementing Farmer Grade with some eggs, you know, something like that. Okay. We're going to go down that way. But I want to go back to something because you just, this really, that just is right up

my alley. So when you were talking about the idea of doing that trench where you could go out there middle of summer and just basically dump manure right in that trench to feed it. Wouldn't that be fun to sling it up in the air with a crosswind? Okay. So what we're trying to do we're hopefully a month away from doing this. We're going to start separating all our manure. With NutraDrip? No. No. We're working with. No. livestock, water, and energy is who we're working with out of Minnesota. And we're going to end up with a product

that is all your organic matter, but all the salts are going to be out of it. And it's going to be, what, 10% moisture, 10 or 12% moisture. But to your point, what we really like about that is we can apply that whenever we want, spring or fall. but I was just sitting here thinking that would be great to be able to go out there and just strip that any time of the year you want, you know, have that dry product semi-dry and just band it.

So the beautiful thing, you can portionalize everything. So if you're like, faking seed corn is $114 an acre. You can plant 60% of the corn. You can plant. You can spray 40% of the acre. You can start taking all your inputs. Yeah, your production is going to be slightly lower, but I think in these alleys we can get 85, 90% of the yield.

Yeah, I was going to ask you on the corn. Like, you talked about the beans, how you're out yielding most beans that are done traditionally and your cost is lower. Are you finding that on the corn side as well with everything that you're doing that, well, maybe the yield's not top in yield, but the cost is weight. Like, have you found that sweet spot on the corn side?

I mean, the sweet spot when you're next to a barn, it don't get any better than that. I mean, we drag line and we're indexing with a planter 12 gallons of nitrogen and that's our only input. You know, we got our chemistry side down to less than $10 an acre and we can leverage the canopy because we're going to be quicker. So it's hard to beat that because I'm basically getting everybody else's grain, phosphorus and everything like that. I'm getting it. Yeah. Yeah.

So your weed pressure is dramatically lower and you've been able to cut back on your chemical cost on those. going to corn the next year. And that's what pissed me off when I was talking about the hen bit. Why are we growing weeds and having to kill weeds? If we can grow what we want aggressively, then we never grow weeds. Right. And you don't have to buy chemicals to kill it. Yes. Yeah. And then you remember all these Dicamba days when we're out, we think we do a good job. And then Joe wants to kick your ass. Yeah. The neighbor shows up. Yeah. Yeah. Screw that. I do not miss those days. So hogs. You were talking about hogs earlier. Were you guys your own pigs before?

Yeah. And then... Up until 98. So they went through all that. And then now you custom feed and have some barns then? Yep. Okay. And that has been massive consolidation.

I'm on the board of directors at a feed mill. And we've watched, we had six or seven integrators when we started and now it's down to one. Yep. And we just lost our ability to feed all these pigs. We were feeding a quarter million pigs at one point. and they went completely vertically integrated. Yep. Thank God we kind of pivoted into show pig feed and bag and everything.

That business is just like everything else. It's like the chicken business. It's all starting to consolidate more and more. But that's why you've got to spend yourself out of that to some point. Yeah, I mean, everything we talk about right here, it's like everybody's looking for the solution. How do we take back power? How do we not be a price taker?

How can we either lower our costs or make more money and control our destiny? and like these are the kind of conversations that we gotta start thinking differently because what's fucking what we're doing most people are doing it's not well how long can we keep doing that the same way i mean i just get i just get god smacked every once in a while like you know we talk about like right now yeah i was a little god smacked uh i'll have to relisten to this about eight times to like get we should have fucking got you a chalkboard and literally had you just take us to school but maybe some other time we'll do it So I said, I think I might have said this, maybe we said it last week, I don't know, but every time I go to a seed deal or a fertilizer deal, I sit there and I always sit in the back or to one side and I just look at everybody.

And I'm like, son of a bitch, these fuckers are old. And then I sit and I go, wait a minute, that means, fuck you're old. damn it but there is so we've been doing the same thing for a really long time and to your point there are a hell of a lot of guys out there that's what they want to do if they can make it work let's face it if if you're the guy that you've got some paid up land and you can trade your line of equipment you can roll it and you can make that work and you don't have to you don't have to experiment you just call up bob you know your fertilizer guy and he's going to tell you we're going to do the same thing this year that we did last year and you're going to bitch about the water hemp but there ain't anything to do because we ain't

going to get any new chemistry that's why we went to dicamba because they're like well fuck I guess we're going to figure out how to use dichamva because there's no new chemistry and that's a perfect world I guess that's a perfect world but for all these acres to turn over to somebody else that is going to feed everybody the economics are full. fucking terrible. Like, I hear all these, all these, these Farm Bureau meetings or bank meetings or whatever, and they're like, you know, we got to, we got to incentivize, we got to find a way to get the next generation started farming. We all talk about that. But you're not. You're not because the economics do not work. And I'm sorry, but I'm convinced knowing the number of people I know

that farm 10,000 acres or more, there aren't enough of those people out there that really want to farm all those acres because those guys, even they are like, fuck, it's, that is a grind. And I mean, if that's our answer to how we're going to keep the United States food production is everybody's just going to get bigger, I think we're screwed because there is a limited number of people that want to do that. And I don't think the consumer wants that. No, they don't want that. But then on the economic side, to get started,

there ain't anybody getting started or not enough. I shouldn't say that. There's not enough. So it's like we got to come up with, we got to come up with ways to get more people involved in agriculture and then hopefully get them making some money that they can grow their operation to, you know, a thousand acres or a couple thousand acres. We need a hell of a lot more of those people than we do people farming 20, 30, 40,000 acres.

Because I just don't think that's in the cards and I don't think it's sustainable. It goes back to like getting the slick meat of DG that we've just eradicated all our processing, all our infrastructure so we can have these ideas, but we don't, we did, Rome was burnt down. Yeah, you know, right. 1954 county fair 11 swinging dicks for trying to sell you of Massey Harris Massey Ferguson Oliver you know they were all there they were all these entrepreneurs on Main Street and and they're no longer there oh that's right but but how do you get to the next acre out on the market and and one story I'd like to

share so my dad passed and then four years later on the other side of the family they had a 7,000 acre operation and they kept having kids until they had a boy, Lewis. And he's the guy I was talking about, just a million on hour. And he passed and he wanted me to come and farm him. But I was so, you know, I just wanted to farm what my family did, what I grew up. But what I watched happen was all this, these acres went to someone else, but the cash rent all went up $100 across the board. Yeah. Because it just all new meat in the safari that was just getting fought over. And that's the scary thing is you got to

if you want to grow, you got to pay that $450 flex lease. And now you got to have John Deere to have all these buttons to have all the shot off. So now John Deere's got to have tier seven. And it's just getting so damn expensive

that it's just going to turn into the hog model is what's going to happen. We're going to have two roads. You either have a brand or you're going to just farm to sit and the seed and just knock out the acres. So you think the future is custom growers for row cropping. It's going to be just like the hog model, except instead of getting paid for the barn, you're going to get paid for the acre space. They'll give you a guaranteed price. They're going to

ship in the seed, the chemical. It's all going to be an arranged marriage, if you will. You just need to go out when the, you know. It's that thing. Bear talked about doing that. Bear accidentally talked about that like two or three years ago and then everybody that was actually out in the country that worked for bear was like no shh don't know don't say that don't say that we don't want to do that because some bean counter somewhere just did the simple math and going well wait a minute if we if we just pay them give them a guarantee we can sell them the seed we can sell them the chemicals we can sell them we want to sell them yeah and yeah makes money they're like this is a great idea and they're like oh we can't say that though but you're exactly right yeah you're exactly right

And the worst part about that for our society, I guess I don't know if I'd say our society, but if you want to talk about the healthier soil, that's the worst thing can happen because those guys have, there is no money left to worry about anything having to do with soil health. Well, it's just straight economic. It's not their ground. They're like, I don't give a fuck that that, they don't care. They have no tie to the land. I mean, it's already.

It stifles all innovation. Yeah. It shackles your ability, any bandwidth to do anything except. Yeah. What's always been done. Yeah. So to answer your question earlier is you can't outrun your headlights. You've got to be diversified, but you've got to realize that if I push to scale, there is

economies of fail. And that's the problem that we run into. Our ego gets in the way. We want to get that next. We want to win the bid. and we just dilute our, you know, how much. And then you end up working 80 hours a week and hating life. Yeah.

And your kids don't know you. Start growing man boobs. Exactly right. God dang. Okay. Let's change gears just a little bit here. So you are predominantly on X, right? You were on Twitter.

You got on Ag Twitter. Why did you choose for that to be your main, platform. Like, yeah, why, why Twitter? Why X? Well, what got you picked that up and just? Yeah. I always call Facebook a fishbowl. I know my grandma's going to watch and it doesn't really radiate and X is more worldwide. So I just got a kind of a taste of that. You know, you're dealing with South African guys, European guys. You're doing translate tweet because it's in Dutch. And that's just cool. And, you know, when Elon bought it, I'm like, fuck yeah. I had all my marbles in that. So that was nice.

but yeah my wife was like you need to she just got tired of me talking to her yeah i was in the house like doing these like paper charts yeah because i was having kids and i was when you have a a bun in the oven your level of accountability in your mind you're like oh shit i better figure this out i don't even just worry about eating pizza and fucking bush light i got a kid coming yeah so i was just getting real creative and she got me on to that and uh i was They allowed you to make two minute and 20 second videos. And I just went out there just being a dork. And people just started eating it up.

Yeah. Authenticity is the most powerful. That trumps everything else, I think. Yeah. Because that's what people want. You see some big corporate multi-billion dollar multinational, and they're just trying to just teflon everything, and they get no traction.

Vanilla. Yeah, nobody likes vanilla anymore. Look at Tony Reed, like his weather forecast. That was fucking gold. Yeah, it's true. We live in an age now where the Hollywood bullshit and just fake, people smell it and they don't fucking want it anymore. Yeah. I think this whole diverse, you know, the DEI stuff, it was like this Kool-Aid cult camp, and it just weakened people.

And I wanted to bring up another subject. I don't want to divert you from the outline. No, go for it. When you think about this from a 10,000 foot thing, this whole Epstein thing, this blackmail operation. Yep. Think about how blackmail would work in a social credit score. If they knew you stopped at the dispensary or watched porn or whatever,

could they just get to a point where like, now Tork, remember 14 years ago you did this, this and this. It is a scary world if we, if we, you know, if that happened.

Oh, fuck yeah. And it still might. Well, the Chinese, they've perfected it. I mean, the Chinese are doing it.

So it's a very short, it's basically just take what they've done and bend it to our use here. And I think that's where they were headed. I mean, I, where, what would things look like today if, if when COVID came, Joe Rogan wasn't around. Yeah. What if, what if Elon didn't buy X? Well, right. I believe that totally, but you think about just... What if you didn't have satellites in the sky? Yeah. Right. I mean, there's a lot of things that pivoted just if they would have gone a different direction,

I think we'd be a hell of a lot further down the road to exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. Well, and the thing is, it'd be your social activity. Because like in China, they got cameras that they see somebody in their... Yeah, you jwalk. They know you jwalk. Brings down your score. Can't get into this hotel. Can't get into this restaurant. I don't like Cedar Rapids when you go through there. No shit. God, there's cameras everywhere. You got to, yeah, I hate it. It sucks. I always, I always am like looking around. But also your social activity, like you said, yeah, they'd have all your social data. And like, yeah, if we didn't have a free speech platform, if that didn't come to light that Facebook was actually doing

this and Twitter was actually doing this. Because you know, Twitter wasn't the only one doing it. You know, the whole the whole way that that fucking thing was ran was just a train wreck. So, yeah, it's definitely scary. I hope it doesn't get to that point.

And I think with Trump winning, I mean, he's getting shit done. I'm liking what's happening. Right now. I think you're right. It's, he doesn't, some people fucking hate it, but having Joe, blow that doesn't have a fucking brain running for the last four years to this. It's actually

nice to see some progress and thank God that she didn't win because who knows, the agenda would have just kept going. Yeah. Well, I think that it's really, really interesting that that crowd that would be right lockstep in that social score deal, that is the crowd that is basically taken the 20% stance on every issue. I mean, every issue that's out. They're the same people that are pissed that Elon and Doge is showing where our tax dollars are actually going. Those are the kind of people would be like, social credit score. Yeah, sounds fucking good. And they don't like the idea that we're going through all these taxes and figuring out, oh, this is going to trans rights for monkeys in Indonesia or fucking whatever.

It's going to Chelsea Clinton. I think, though, I will say this. I think our politicians are kind of equally hypocritical, and I think the best example of that was RFK's approval or whatever. Because I was sitting there and I was watching that, and I was thinking, so every Democrat that was there loved that guy when he was suing when he was suing Smithfield

and he was suing Pfizer and he was suing whoever Monsanto, they all fucking loved him. And now then Trump puts him up, not a single one of them had vote for him.

And that's what they wanted to talk about. But I thought when he was doing that if Obama would have put him in there, every one of those Republicans that were like, ah, this guy's the best. Those fuckers wouldn't have voted for him either

because it's all which side your bread is greased on. and as as it's the family and friends event at shoppers drug mark get 20% off almost all regular priced merchandise two days only Tuesday April 28th and Wednesday April 29th open your PC optimum app to get your coupon as the voters of this country you just got to realize that somehow we got to get back to a place where our elected officials actually work for us yeah and that's I think that's the biggest upside to where we are right now if they can swing that because these people are just fucking appalled that they have to come back to work and that they're not going to get paid for

doing nothing. I mean, and it's like it's like a God-given right that if you work for the government, you're never going to get fired and you're never going to be called out on your bullshit. And when that happens, then they do, holy shit, the sky's falling. Like, you can't do this. I just think that's just a sign of how far down that road that we were. It's funny that pretty much everybody, not everybody in his cabinet, but Tulsi was a Democrat, RFK was a Democrat, Trump was a Democrat. Who else am I missing?

They were all fucking Democrats. I don't know. And now they're not. They're not. And I don't know. You're just pondering life's questions over there. but it's it's a shit show either way but we got to get it figured out and I feel better where we are right now than I then last four years there was a lion and black sheep if you remember at the end

when they had all them dead people that voted yep and he asked the guy he's like you put you you put it up put us up to it and that really what it boils down to this constituents the interest groups they're elected because they pander to those and the only politicians you can find that aren't tied is who's representing eastern Kentucky. I mean, what do the constituents, one out of them. Yeah.

And that's more of a, you know, I got a house and I'm more of an independent kind of culture. Yeah. Until we think in that realm, we're going to continue to get. Yeah, it's scary.

Yes. It really is. Okay. Well, fuck. Lost my out. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So I was, we're on the Twitter. We were on X. And I, you put out a, you put out a post, not a tweet, just asking, hey, you're telling people you were coming on the show and let us know what you guys want to hear. So I just went through and took some of the best ones that I saw and I figured we could just answer me. So Taylor Moyer, the guy that actually introduced us to you,

because I never even seen your stuff. I wasn't very active on X, but he mentioned your name. And then I started seeing you on X and I was like, man, this guy's doing some pretty cool shit. Taylor wants to move next door. Yeah, Taylor is like, this guy's fucking awesome. So he wanted to ask, and this is pretty broad, but he wanted to ask about cows, 90% yields on 50% inputs, farmland with integrated theme parks, and solar conversion. Yeah, it's loaded. That is a loaded question.

I think we kind of touched on the cattle deal. Yep. Yeah. But talk about your solar conversion, because we kind of touched on. that and that's a whole different thought process and it's kind of your your split it's the idea of the way you split your what crop you're growing and i also want to know about the integrated theme parks but start with the solar first yeah so you got to think of the free stuff what actually drives playing i had a tweet earlier like if co2 is really dangerous then why are the pot factories

pumping it into the greenhousees it runs on co2 so if we can get an individual plant more of the free stuff, more of the light, regulate the temperature, regulate the water, it's just going to produce more and it's going to require a lot less nitrogen, a lot less input. So, I mean, it's as simple as that. And the whole problem is if you're only getting 80 or 90% on half and growing one, you didn't really accomplish anything because you still got the land costs and everything like that. That's why you've got to have two. Yeah. And, you know, the best analogy is if I had a space downtown, I could sell fireworks from June 20th to July 4th, and I could make a killing. I could go to vacation and then come back and have a Christmas store,

and I could exploit the same market that is in the same routine that just wants to wake up and be like, well, now's the time to go get fireworks. Yep. And it's just mirroring what nature wants to grow when, as simple as that. Cows, you know, I think we can convert so much of this farm ground to multi-purpose. ground if we just set it up. And that's going to be my big goal looking for the next 10 years is start consulting. And I want to start having multiple parties that Joe Blow has got a herd of cattle. He's got five trailers and he's willing to go to Don's house. And Don is willing to give up

10 bushel an acre growing twin 60 inch corn or whatever it is because he wants the cattle spit out there and the cattle shit and to build his ground up. And if we could get two parties to come together and both get value and a better thing, then, I mean, it's just combustible Edison at that point. Yeah. Yeah, on that. So your twin 60s, what's your gap between the two rows? If you go 8 inch, I'd be 52 inches.

And I said, Tim, a lot of guys are getting more yield. And if you get, you know, three nights of 77 degrees where, you know, if a bird fart at fucking storms, you want to set, humid out, then your corn is just so bottled up with, heat that you're just losing bushel. Yeah. And just having that flow through there significantly tempers.

And there's Eric Miller here in Iowa. Zach did a multi-hybrid static 30, static 60 and twin 60s and twin 60s won across the board. 10 bushel. Yeah. And then all the other synergies. Okay. It's pretty dynamic. So in your system, you would, you'd harvest those beans and then you'd be

looking to get somebody to dump cattle out there and run them. Okay, I think the, I think, with the no fence. Right. So have you seen those collars? You put a cattle, a collar on, and it goes through music. And you can section them off so you can put a hundred cows on four acres one day, and then you just get on your phone and you go to the next, and then they just. So you're basically rotational grazing. Exactly. Through your field, what based on whatever size. And I want to do that on corn and after the beans. So both sides. So you just ought to find somewhere something to do with those cows during the growing season. Yep. That's why you need along the creek, you need to have the buffer strip, have cattle, and then

you need to start renting all these. The other thing, pigs in the woods, run the pigs through there, and then it turns into a silvo pasture that you can use when it's hot out. And then you start doing small grain. So instead of relay cropping, you're doing early wheat and you're getting a cover crop out there. So you might be in the woods, you might be along the creek bank, and then you're out in the millet. You know, you just make 15 different venues on your farm. And then as your herd goes up, then you just keep converting and think more about the cattle. Your wheat that you grow, how far do you got to go to market that? How far? I can go two miles up the road. So there's I'll get about 10 or 15 cents trucking at 20 miles. Okay. Yeah, because that's one thing.

I usually carry it for three months and get about 40 cents. 10. If we can just hold it. And then you can use your binge twice, which is absolutely lovely. Oh yeah, that's a good. Yeah.

That's a good. Look at you. By God, I tell you what. Scary. Think about it. Thank God you weren't a twin or this. I don't think the president by now.

One of you would be. We'll move on. So Jared, he asked, talk about life state on crops. Folks seem to be in their feelings about it for some reason, stanchly defend it while still complaining about it. I don't know how to do that.

Yeah. You know, my dad farmed without glyphosate his whole life. So, you know, this idea that the world's going to like, everyone's going to starve. That's the dumbest shit I ever heard of my life. I'm sorry. Yeah. Well, nobody. My other complaint is the general public can only metabolize like one thing.

So we just turn this one thing into a scapegoat. And it's just, you know, I don't, I'm not like a big. defender of GMO I don't really care but if a bug goes up to it licks it and like I don't want to eat this it's probably better than just cocaine rail and fucking what is your 80s like insecticide that's not good for the farmer said for oil but the the general public can't metabolize this idea that if I don't use GMOs then this other thing doesn't have tools well it's worse tools sometimes you got to use more atrazine you got to use yeah

Well, and the thing is, I'm kind of surprised that the whole, that that's still, like, it's still such a big deal. Because for most grains, like for around here, nobody's using it anyway because it hasn't worked in like seven years. Like everybody's moved on because the water hemp drinks it. Like, unless you just go out there with a funnel and just pour it, it doesn't do shit. And every time I hear, you know, somebody getting on their high horse about it, I'm like, I don't know, I can't, I don't know what the sales figures are. But one of the, one of the dumbest, one of the dumbest corporate purchases of all times, got to be bare buying Monsanto. Cudos to Monsanto. Somebody there was like, oh, this son of a bitch is going to, this thing's going in the ditch. what you want to buy this you'll pay us how much fucking right yeah here take my headaches i'm taking my severance package and going to the caribbean because they unloaded that and i don't think bear i don't think they've gotten what it's cost them versus what they got out of that deal

talk about a bad investment that was a bad investment but anyway hindsight 2020 exactly right that's a sad thing like bears is i don't feel sorry for anything anybody, but it's like, they're running on the treadmill as hard as I can to pay for liability. The 10,000 acre guy is doing the same thing. We're just like building all this product and there's no margin unless you get off the treadmill and figure shit out. And I think generational knowledge, it's not instilled in anyone because, A, the generations are dying, but there's no money. As Chris Rock said, there ain't no money in the cure. Yeah. Yeah. You know. And I, I agree with you 100%.

I think that these chemical companies, they literally are. They're just running on the treadmill hoping that they can get to whenever the new technology comes. Because everybody talks about it's like, well, we're going to have, because there's nothing on the horizon for, what, five years, they think. So they're all just trying to figure out some way to recapulate, you know, rework it, come up with the new formula the same thing and convince all of us that yeah just keep using that uh till we come out with something better and i don't know it's a vicious the whole the whole uh the version of agriculture that we're all kind of stuck in now is really just kind of a vicious

circle for everybody and you know people want to uh bully up on deer well deer the reason equipment and keeps getting more expensive is because they know they're going to sell less of it. They're just going to keep selling less of it because they're part of the same deal that bigger is better, bigger's better and margins are terrible. So the only way you're going to be able to make the same you were making is far more acres. Well, you need a bigger tractor. But now then you replace three guys. So we're going to sell, you know, we're only going to sell one instead of three. They're just operating in the system they've been given. And it's not sustainable, I don't think. Let me ask you this. Why doesn't some big hedge fund go in while the market's in the pits and go buy a shit ton of 4650s and just get them all like perfect condition and then put them out in the market with like a two year warranty because the gap is getting so huge.

And if you're a young farmer and you could get something like that knowing there's 14,000 of them, I mean, that gives me a lot more of a chance. Yeah, 10-4. You know? Well, you might have just fucking cracked the code for somebody out there. They might end up doing that now. Black Rock just blew their load. They just bought the Panama Canal back. So they put together.

I can't remember how many billion dollars they spent, but they got the Panama Canal back. So they got no time for. All right. Well, last one. This one's fucking deep. We can go long on it. We can go short with it.

Sacrifice is needed today for the future of America. What do you got, Kingpin? You got to get hard, motherfucker. David Goggins. Yeah. Stay hard. It really is. I mean, we just, we've made everything, you know, look at Exemptic, look at penis enlargement pills, hair loss, everything.

It's just like, well, I want the result right now. And that's just the treadmill that we're on. Short-term gratification. That's it. It comes down to getting hard. I mean, getting more energy out of the day, going out, getting out of your comfort zone, connecting with people, being able to do something. something that the crowd's not doing that you know is the truth and sticking with it and figuring

it out and just making that gap bigger. And this whole like, the whole reason I'm here and this whole X platform grew was because I just kept going after it and it still hasn't really went off locally. And at first, I was pissed off that I wasn't seen everybody locally doing it. But I see a lot of people in other states, stuff doing it. But it actually gives you this like raccoon in the dumpster shit eating grin that you're figuring shit out and no one's even chasing you yeah of where you'll be in a few years so it's just it's just doing hard things and that's why i drove here i love that you guys are are developing something that is going to give you generational wealth hopefully and just open up options for other people hopefully pretty fucking soon

because i'm 53 we're working on it i want to add another thing too is we're It goes back to preferences. That's what the whole meat side, the whole problem, no one's cooking, no one wants to chuck roast, no one cooks. So you can sell rib eyes, tea bones, till you're blue in the face. You can sell tallow on girls' age lines till you're blue in the face. But it's just so many things that fall through the cracks because we just refuse to be uncomfortable, to be inconvenient, to be anything.

And until we save that and change our ways as a country, then it's just going to, each company that makes it is just going to pander to instant gratification, instant weight loss. You know, we can say whatever the fuck we want because by the time it's either proven or unproven, we've went on to 15 different tangents. Do you feel like, though, you see at all young people trying to, like it's almost becoming cool. and sexy to do the opposite of that. Like I'm seeing, I'm seeing people, younger people that are starting families, having a fucking garden, cooking more, can and shit, having like a men's group, having a, going to church on Sunday. Like being a rebel now is like doing that shit, going back to the traditional ways.

And like, I don't know if they're, that's trend is happening everywhere, but I see that just in our local, local town, local area. And you do see it occasionally on social media, people wanting to be homesteaders or trad wife, you know, the trad wife, that kind of shit. And hopefully, if you go back that way, maybe you don't get caught up in the short term gratification all the time. Because it takes time to can some shit. Takes time to grow a garden. Well, I think, you know. accelerating the emptiness, if that makes sense. Like, that's a good way.

When I was in my 20s, I was kind of a playboy, whatever. And when I met my wife, I was 32, I wanted to buy a minivan and just be dad. I'm still like dad, because I lived it. But now with the technology, you know, kids are vaping when they're 13. They're on Tinder. It's just so fast that they reach a point of sick and tired quicker. Yeah. I was just fucking telling you that.

the other, on the last podcast, I, we were talking about this same thing. And remember I said at the end the episode, I just think why this is happening, speaking from a young person, sick of feeling like shit. Yeah. Yeah. Sick of feeling empty. Yeah. Exactly what you're saying. I think people are going back to the traditional ways because, dude, I don't want to fucking feel like this anymore. Like, the way that I've been doing of partying, binge drinking, vaping, watching porn. fucking playing it being a playboy eating like shit eating fast food shit don't this just don't feel good or sitting on my ass playing video games or doom scrolling for fucking seven hours well i don't feel good i don't feel good i don't feel good on feedback loop and i'm telling you if you to your

viewership i started fasting so basically i don't eat until dinner and i eat a shit ton of meat ton of protein and I quit drinking beer and if you take out all those inflammations I shit you not I can go play open gym basketball I can jump higher than I did when I was 25 I feel like a fucking machine and it's awesome yeah I want to continue it on and now my golf game's getting better my basketball games going on because I you feel and have the energy and ability to to keep going and building those skill sets. What about, what about, what do you, what do you think about, like people say men today

have lower testosterone levels than ever before because of just everything, air, food, water, whatever the fuck. Nobody's getting outside working with their hands anymore, getting any D3. Don't use it, you lose it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this winter, my, I have this like stoner guy from getting, Gaston had always chopped wood for me.

And he'd sit in his car or whatever and was just like, that's what John Boy does. But he went away. So I had to heat my house and I'm like, fuck it. I'm not going to split wood. I am going to get an axe. I went and bought a mall and I chopped wood all this winter. And I kind of tore myself up a little bit going ape shit. Yeah.

But I think my testosterone is at an all time level high. From doing hard work. Yeah. From just going another. level like loading the pigs and all that shit and it's just as we get everything's easier and easier and easier that's just what happens yeah yeah and like tender like when i was in high school you had to work for it you fucking put tire shine on your car you with the 4-h you're like i'm all good talk to like it was you had to work for it you had to put your deer stand up and you had to have the whistle and all that

shit and we just we've just packaged and convenience everything and we're just turning into sacks of shit that just incapable of and then you can't take on any adversity at that point yep right yep because you're just so conditioned you're so conditioned to it being easy and quick and if you don't get easy and quick you can't do or anything yeah fuck we have been negative but i will say you know just about there is i think there's is hope out there. Oh, I do too. I do. Because I see that kind of shit. And when we were talking about, you know, the landscape ag being, you know, it's worrisome right now. But fuck people like you are showing, you know, you know, and we got a platform like this that's able to talk about this

shit. I mean, there's more hope out there than what people give it credit. You know, I think there's more hope out there. There's a guy with this 80-20 principal. I can't think of it was Phil Perry, Perry Mason, I don't know what it's in. But they call it Racking the Shotgun. And if you are just yourself, you're authentic, you have a platform like that. What happens is you're not going to be popular to 98% of the people, but the 2% that support you, they're going to drive to your field day. They're going to DM you.

And you keep after it. You'll just start harboring and attracting the right people that are doing all kinds of different things. And that is being built right now. And in five or ten years, those people are going to be in a bigger position because those people that are at the Farm Bureau meeting or whatever that want the Lawrence Welk program, listen, they're going to be gone. And we're just building this new deal. So just continue to be yourself, continue to work.

And it's being built. It's just not there yet. We can't get out of here. We all, like, I don't know how we got. this far down the road. We have common experience in the fact that you did, you started a meat business. Mm-hmm.

Okay, what are we doing wrong? What mistakes have we better not do? Just don't try to own the whole circus. That was, that was my biggest, you know, I got with the USDA. I'm like, we're going to buy this. I bought a company that sourced restaurants during COVID,

so we didn't have any, business. And I tried to get a slaughterhouse going and then the USDA was just something I took a week, took over a year. So just don't do whatever you can to steer your own ship or someone else will wreck it for you. Also, make sure no one puts strychnine in your coffee. Because when I was at the farm, I was gone a lot and it just takes one bad apple to just screw it up. Everyone has their own ego. If you get the wrong person, then they can really screw things up. So if you can attract the crowd that wants what you're doing, you're doing what I wanted

to get to of creating a way for farmers to create brands, package. that do the distribution that's beautiful if you can work with people that will do a cut shop you get a price that you can work off of so you're saying you don't think i should own a cutting facility fulfillment center i shouldn't fully integrate you can have a fulfillment center but the cutting's a bitch owning a cutting facility this is what lightened me when i was really struggling towards the end and stressed out we went on a vacation down to roswell new mexico then over to tucson we drove there and we went through West Texas, okay? The flies hit your window so high

because the feedlots are just huge. There is six train going trucking up, labor, trucking down corn, trucking it to this huge processing, the scale, the illegals, the robotics. You are Jesse Owens racing a horse. So if you think you're going to pay 20 dudes, It's 25 bucks an hour and they're going to drink 14 Budwisers and be on their vape pipe and you're going to get and compete with the fucking machine, then you're wrong.

You're just diluting yourself. You're over chasing your headlights. So allow your platform to attract the people that want to work, know your cost and work off of that cost and say the bars here and just be fine that that organically grows. Because if you just start chasing that down to compete with that. They're going to kick your ass. It's fucking poised. If I get the right people, if I attracted the right amount of people that were the right people, then you say, maybe.

Make everything perform in space. Do not, do not guarantee anything. Well, tell the story of the meat business, because I mean, you just told us what you wouldn't do if you were in our shoes. But talk about the story of how you got it going. Yeah, I mean, it was glorious. Yeah. Got back to the farm. Landscaping's kind of come down a little bit.

Yeah. How did the meat business come to the table of getting into that? I was pissed off. I went to Meyer and the meat shelves were empty. And what they were wanting is like $12 a pound for hamburger. What year was this? 2020. COVID.

Okay. Right at the being of COVID. So I just called the meat companies around. We found he was like 70 years old. You could tell he was spent. He lost all his business. So he's got guys showing up that they don't have a lot of work. And we went over there and he told me.

all the low ball offers that everyone offered them. And I went back home and I'm like, man, I could offer this guy 200,000. I could buy this company that did 5 million in business the last few years. And they were a $15 million business in the 70s. They had McDonald's, burger chef. They were a burger patty factory. So we got it. And, you know, it just grew quick because everything came back online. So we felt like if we aggressively sold, then it was either now or never. So we were selling, but we were cutting up stakes

and we would have premium hamburger and we couldn't turn it into hamburger, thinking it'd be a weak process. We were throwing shit in the dumpster for months and months and months. And everything was that way. And then they would say, you were grandfathered in. Yeah.

We let this shit slide. now that we have a new owner. Yep. And we end up spending over a million dollars on a facility. Premium hamburger, you were going to sell it as premium hamburger, but they wouldn't let you say that. Right. So you had to throw it away.

We couldn't guarantee the origin of where this box came from and this box. This might have came from Nebraska. This until you knew exactly where everything goes, you couldn't do it. And then we had, once we could go, then we had the lot everything. And we just kept selling, but we weren't whole ever. Like, you got to solve the riddle. off the get-go and I don't think you can scale that down. I mean, you can put hides on a skid and it Oh yeah, 10-4. But you got to get, you got to get into the pet food business. You got to get into

the tallow makeup business. You got to get in and figure out value for everything. Yeah, you got to get rid of everything. Yeah, I tell people that's the hardest part. The crazier, part of like the direct-to-consumer thing is the number of people that, mostly local people that know you. So when you start this, they're like, oh, yeah, that's great. I'd love to be able to have some place safe to buy that. It's got to be cheaper in fairway, doesn't it? Or that's our grocery, you know, local grocery store. It's like there is this disconnect. And the reason, like, the best way I explain it to people is, it's like, okay, the everything that, you know, everything that we can't use out of the pig, that we get charged to dispose of.

Triumph Foods takes that and they ship it to Asia and they make more money off of the head of the pig and everything we throw away than what they make off of everything they cut up and they sell domestically and people go, no shit. I'm like, yeah, no shit. So no, I can't sell you pork loin for $1.99 a pound. Yeah. I mean, it's it there's there's this huge disconnect that people don't understand that business is so on the one hand that's why we have the cheapest food supply in the world because it has been so cutthroat for generations that these companies that are in it you have to be ruthlessly efficient yeah and you have got to find every last possible thing. that you can, I mean, they say, you know, the joke is everything but the squeal when it comes to a pig.

That's 100% true. But they also have got to figure out how to actually, if nothing else, they got to break even on everything and they got to make something on all of it. And so when you're starting out, you know, everybody, like if we could make a pig that had 45 pounds of bacon in it, God, that'd be great, but you don't. It's 16 pounds. You know, at best you're going to get 16 pounds of bacon and and everything that everything that's popular comes at the expense of something else it's like you know oh love cottage bacon but if you cut up every if you cut up every pork butt make cottage bacon you don't have any pork butts to sell or you know whatever it is it's and then all of the things that we can't use that we literally have to pay to get away or to get rid of the other thing

you're working with the newspaper will come out and be like like, you know, buy one, get one free. And they'll come to you and thinking you're screwing them because they see the one thing that the other thing is advertising and everything else is 30% more. But it's tough. What about labor? What about labor? Is that one of the other?

You say USDA is a real pain in the ass, but is labor the private second thing that's the hardest part of it? Yeah. Would you rank USDA first then labor or labor than USDA? I would rank first the inefficiencies of getting rid of everything. And knives and logistics and everything's a racket. The whole cooling thing, you have no competition. So if a cooler goes down, it's $7,000. You can't just have Earl come out. Because there's no. Oh, that's a hundred percent.

The consolidation in that business. We have like 50 things that cooled things. So it was just always something. Yeah. But we did some really beautiful things that I'm proud of. I'd want to get that. fundraising platform integrated across the country. That was beautiful. We were working with every school raising money for that and getting our product in people's hands. And we had that AFM kiosk deal that worked great. But at the end of the day, you can't have 20% of the business do well. I mean, we were just racing to the bottom. Our scale was tremendous. We were basically packaging for the major broadliners. So we were in major restaurants everywhere, but it's just...

How did you land that? How'd you land that connection? Did he already, the previous owner had that connection? No, you're just, there, you're just won a few cut shops with the USDA that can distribute out of state. So when you're working with a restaurant that has restaurants in every city, they only have a few choices. Right. So then it just comes down to a bid and quality. We did have a break.

We had, you know, during COVID, they did, we did get some capital. so we were able to get patty machines, roll stock machines. You know, we could get a nice product out there in the marketplace. But again, it just, you can only go so fast. How hands on were you then? I was basically the... Balancing that all that. Fire, put her outer.

Like, you don't know how stressful it is for 42, 43 people to show up and put their time card in and just be like, no, you know, just, how expensive that is. Yeah. So you would just run into, if I don't get this and this and this, then this whole circus is stopping. And I was out, you know, figuring out how we could kill cattle, where we could get cattle from, you know, designing platforms on the back half, hiring, you know, all that stuff.

So you were in it, like 100% in it, like the whole time. Yeah, I wasn't showing up every day, but I was on the phone all the time. figuring out who's where and, you know, whatever. And then a lot of times no one would show up. So I might have to run a fucking truck or something like that or drive a truck, see what's matter with it, you know. Yeah. And that's the other thing, too.

If you buy an old business, you got a 1994 truck here and a, you know, shit with 450,000 miles on it. So it's just, it's like trying to be a BTO with, you know, 1970s. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, I do not miss. I have a lot of connections that I'd let left nobody hanging so my relationships are good. I just want to kind of come in from the outside and kind of work and let people know what I know and and figure it out that way. Yeah, well,

it's always much better to have a friend with a boat than have a boat. Yes, 100% on that. Yes, sir. You know, bring the kids. Yeah, we'll wind them up. some cookies, send them home. Well, somebody asked, you know, somebody was asking, you know, when you put out that tweet about coming on the show about the meat, what do you think people wonder the most about it? Do they just want to know, do they want to know how it ended, how it started, how, what were, what was wrong? Like, when people ask you that on, on X, what do you think they most want to know?

I don't know. I'm kind of, you know, I don't know what to tell people because I don't want to tell people it's easy. And I don't, but I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to scare me. to not trying. Yeah. But it's just, that's always my thing with everything.

If you think my farming shit's cool or if you want to do something ambitious, my grandpa always said a dog that shit's fast, don't shit long. And that's true. Yeah. And, you know,

so I just went in thinking that I had this false sense that I could just change the world. And I think you just need to. Well, I think what I say to, what I say to Sawyer a lot, is from the time he started that through, you know, today, every time you turn around, you learn something. But the only way you learn it is from what goes wrong, you know. But every time

something has gone wrong, I just look at him and go, I go, well, that's just another, that's just another moat that you don't have to worry about somebody else getting in this business, because that's part of the reason why. Back to resilience. It's so freaking hard. Most people won't push past. And nobody, you know,

nobody that's in that business at any scale, they're not giving out free advice because they fought so hard to, like, just surviving is an accomplishment that they're not looking to help anybody make more competition for them.

Because it's a, the meat business is a, it's not for everybody at all. But it's very rewarding when it's all works right. Like, you know, we sent out the coal sunny orders and what do we do, like 450 boxes that day. And, man, you get to the end of that and you're like, yeah, this is freaking awesome. And then... It's good seeing the meat go out.

Yeah. But it's good seeing the meat go out and then you turn around and go, holy shit. The logistics, it's what you're saying. I mean, we don't even have our own facility, but they're still fucking. problems. You still get back items that, oh, this is labeled wrong, or this doesn't package the way it needs to be packaged, or this isn't

up to our specs. These seals are bad. These seals are bad. And then you got, I mean, you still got issues with Box might show up thawed. Might have, you had human error of packing orders where fuck, we didn't put the right items in there. Watch fresh pork, too.

I mean, you know, I can put a steak in the fridge for four weeks and it gets good, but pork is just, very, it would break down our seals. Like we try to package sausage and stuff. Yeah, okay. It's pretty tough to intermingle that. Yeah. If you can go frozen, go frozen. Last thing I want to talk about on the, on the meat business is I saw you put, I saw you put out a post recently that really resonated with people on X. And you talked about a time where when you were trying to save a failing meat business, laying off half your team, and feeling like

everything you had worked for was slipping away. I know this is deep. but can you take us back to that moment and like what got you out of that hole? Because, you know, that was, I read it and I was like, man, that that was deep, but that was really, talk about vulnerable and authenticity. Like, that's the shit that nobody wants to fucking talk about that, like, means something and it really resonated with me. And, you know, that's value. Like that right there is value.

So if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to just kind of go back to that. The uppermost point is my wife. I just got lucky and I married like the best per human in the world. And when you're just kind of moping around wanting the days to go by, you're like, she deserves someone way better than who I am right now. And that's really what everything comes down to is if you're surrounded by good people, they're going to bring you up. But I just kind of got to a point where for some reason, I started watching all these old 80s MTV music videos. When they first started doing it, like the production was terrible. Yep. And I just enjoyed how sloppy it was. And I started getting these songs in my head.

And I got this song in my head. It was Phil Collins, Another Day in Paradise. Yep. And that was this shit talk. I had it in my head for like four months, as fucked up as it sounds. But it was literally like,

I'm going back worried that I accomplished these beautiful things, these people that I helped put the month, they found good ways out, no one was hurt. So this is actually paradise. Like my wife, my kids, my family, our farm,

like I wouldn't trade where I am today with anybody. So quit fucking feeling sorry for yourself and just put your shit back together and pick up everything that's good and make it better. And these days will pass. But when people are saying like, it'll pass, you're just at the time when you're going through shit, you're just like, fuck you.

You don't know. Like literally, you have to have some time. And you just have to crunch and get through it. And then once you make the choice to just be better, do better, then it just goes from there, but it was a process. Yeah. Because too, there was just a lot of uncertainties of how it all plays out and everything like that. And I would say, like, Doji needs to come because there are so many cracks in the system

to get out of the mess that I was in. Protect yourself in entrepreneurship. And if you do structure right on the first, on the front half, then you'll, you'll survive. Yeah. Yeah, it's, uh, at the end of the day, there's only like 50 swinging dicks that are dumb enough and ambitious enough to do these big projects and they're not just welling up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You just get better and stronger and harder. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's the thing. It just makes you better. And it's like dad said, most, most people aren't willing to go through the shit you have to go through. Mm-hmm. To, to, to be.

a better entrepreneur, better business person, better anything. And, you know, I bet that, I bet it was tough because, you know, if you're somebody that doesn't, doesn't have a business, you know, business is kind of like a baby in a way. And when you put all your fucking time and energy into something and it doesn't work, it feels like you, you know, that fucking hurts. That fucking hurts. And I put no shade on anyone else. But everyone that thought it wouldn't work when they get their way, they're still in the same place.

They never tried anything or did anything hard anyway. They just want to be in this comfort zone. Well, I told you so. Man in the arena. You just got to be like, you just got to swallow it and just move on. Is that the hardest part you think is just because I think every driven person has a, you know, you don't want you don't value other people's opinions because it doesn't stop you know you don't want it to stop you from doing what you set out to do but those fucking people just you want to

fucking you want to win because it's just it's at every little fucking comment every little oh you know you shouldn't do that or oh that's outside the box what are you fucking thinking you just want to win so big that they shut the fuck up but just have to accept the fact that that they will never will. You've got to throttle that because that'll get you in trouble. It will 100%. You actually have given probably one of the best analogies of of anything worth striving for to try to do to better yourself, not just building a business, but just raising a family

or just living. You start out. You kind of start out and everybody's kind of on. the same playing field and you kind of migrate to people that you kind of have similar interests but it's like you said as you start going your path there are people that for whatever reason they're connected to you and as you start trying to make yourself better or build a business or build a family or whatever do shit different they don't see you it's it's they don't see you, what they see is you're like a mirror to them and it makes them more unhappy about

what they're not doing. So they in turn, that's why they do that because you're like a mirror to, they don't want to be reminded of what they could be doing or think about the dreams that they have. So it's a hell of a lot easier to just, eh, yeah. It's just, and it's always going to be that way. so haters are going to fucking hate okay yeah that's the truth i just got the very i just have the last question i want to ask okay well i got one more i want to ask him this is too good of a you're too good to not go past two hours so we got to we got to keep going uh i also saw another video you put out on x and the caption with this as it's caption side note you put out some really raw thought and shit and I fucking love it. But the caption was, if we want to innovate the landscape of America,

we've got to open our minds to what is possible and quit worrying about who's the top dog of the tribe or the purest. Explain what you mean by that and kind of what that video was about. Yeah, I was just kind of sharing when I first went on the scene, I was just very excited about this thing, but I really hadn't built a substantial acreage or thing of it. And people, Maybe they were calling me out on it or whatever, but I just saw how ugly people could be. And the people that fought me the worst, one of them was here in Iowa. And they just weren't emotionally, they weren't emotionally developed. And that's what you're going to get when you're trying to do different things.

and you've got to be stronger than that. And what was, let's go back on the question. What was the question again? I think the main thing was, what did you mean by that caption? And what I got out of the video is just everybody, we all want to be an ag, it seems like you're either one thing or the other thing. Yeah.

And I'm the purest and you're not. Or Jenna Jamison. Yeah. Like we're either tillage kings or we're like the Jesus of regenerative ag. Yes. And my point is every single tribe, has beautiful things that they learned, but no one fucking listens to anyone else

because they want to be in this upper epschalon. And you see that with politics, you see that locally. Everyone wants to pick that low-hanging fruit and then they just get all this kind of free friends, if you will. Because the only people with balls are willing to say, fuck it. I don't care if you think I'm this, this, and this and this,

but I think everyone's got something to bring to the table. And that's how you're going to. to grow anything. Yep. Yeah. That's... I mean, us sitting here today talking about, you know, that some of the Democrats and some of the Republicans here, we just kind of found the people that are doing things. That's what it comes down to. Who's actually fucking getting rubber to the road and doing things? Yeah. Yeah, it's like, you know, we talk about white oak pastures and like sometimes he's gone on a Rogan and what he says pisses me off a little bit. But what I do find really valuable is he's created his own market for every product that he has on his farm. And I respect

the fuck out of that. I think that's amazing and that's awesome. Now, am I going to do everything that he does? No. And he ain't going to probably learn shit from me either. I don't know, but it's like what you said. You can get something from everybody. And I hate that we, and I feel like an ag it's this way really heavily but polarized you're either one way or the other and you're going to stay in your lane and you're in this box and you're not deviating and you don't even want to listen to what this person has to say i guess it isn't just an ag liberals conservatives it's same shit celebrating what we don't do instead of showing what we could do yeah we didn't have constraint there's always truth in the middle most of the time like this whole like i think the most

beautiful way to farm is cover crops and strip till and manure. Yep. Because you just have something growing all the time. But there's like this whole theology to no-till. And it's like, well, if I'm no-till, then I'm dependent on the chemistry industry. So it's almost like it's, you know, I don't want to be shackled. Well, I think, and this, I stole this because I did a little research, so I listened to some of your stuff. And what I want to know is, is there a, is there a secret ballot?

Is there a, is there a test? How do I get invited to the Ron Jeremy golf, golf tour? Because I heard that. I'm like, fuck, I want on that. I'll grow the stash out a little bit. Yeah. You should see the pamphlets that we, yeah. I bet you.

Pretty good. I heard that. I spit the coffee out of my mouth. I'm like, yep, that's, I was actually a little surprised that those, all three of those guys got that because they're all, especially Corey, Corey might be almost to the, to the fringe of knowing that, getting that joke, but I thought it was damn good. So when you're not doing everything else, what are your, what are your hobbies? Do you have time for any hobbies? Yeah, so I just try to get some repetitions and everything. I like to shoot threes up in the barn. I play one-on-one with my 10-year-old.

He plays basketball three hours a day. He's always got a finger, like with the ball spinning on it. Yeah. So I try to play one-on-one. My youngest wants to go like on nature walks and stuff. I try to hit like 100 or 200 wed shots at sunset. Stay sharp on my golf. Try to get, throw some weight around.

And I just try to do like things for 15 to a half hour and just structure the day. I like to get up really early. and drink a shit ton of coffee. What's early? Like how early? Oh, like five. Yeah. Something like that.

Is that when you do your chalkboards the most, you think? I wait until everyone's going to be online, but I have it figured out in my head. Yeah. You know, kind of go down a thought. Yeah. I try to call touch points. Touch points is everything. You know, if you haven't talked to somebody in over a month or two, they're pretty much gone.

So if you can just religiously try to find those 20 or 50 people, that you want to talk to on a weekly or monthly basis, then that keeps you connected. And the beautiful thing about that platform is you can come up with an idea, like I alluded to earlier, and you have all these different lenses looking at the problem and how you can not only get a different thought, but there's a lot of people a lot more structured than me that can put spreadsheets together that can put on videography or. Or, you know, I'll come up with an idea and I'll have DMs like Shea Falk or Bob Gunzenheiser. They make all this work from a thought that now you have access to that you can share other people.

And it just becomes its own. It's just beautiful what you can do with all that stuff. So I just, you know, just try to get, I'm going to dunk it again. I'm getting real close. I want to dunk it when I'm 50. Nice. 11 white guy. There you go.

That shit, like fulfillment is all about, you know, just trying to accomplish a little bit more, but you can't do it on your own. Yeah. Yeah, you think that's the ticket is, I think happiness gets talked about a lot in society. Everyone's trying to get to happiness, but happiness is just an emotion that keeps, it's fleeting. It's not a destination. But fulfillment to me, I want fucking fulfillment.

And that's, that's hard sometimes to get that because I feel like I find myself chasing the next thing always. It's so good to be disappointed, though. I mean, that's just the best medicine. I read something with Jack Nicholas when he was going, winning all those majors. And he just said, I wanted to show up at the course feeling like I fucking deserve to win because I put in the most work. I was the most prepared. And it's, it's good to fuck up. it's good to fail, I'd be pissed, and just let it grind, and then you just figure out... Makes you better.

Yeah, it just makes you better. That's just, no shortcuts, man. Yeah. It's all good. I try to tell that to my kids, too, and people get mad when they're, like, at a playoff, and I know my kid can't putt. I'm like, I hope he gets beat. Like, I hate this bumper bowling shit of, like, trying to play weak teams.

Like, it's... We were a single-A team, and we would play. the state champs and get our fucking ass beat 90 to 30. And that was awesome because we watched these people playing college and shit like that. We've got to, you know, life comes to the quality of people that you spend your time with. Yep. And how much you challenge yourself. Well, we're not, we're not doing our, we're not doing the next generation, any favors at all by making it easy on them.

That's one of the biggest, the whole idea of not grading stuff. and not ranking stuff and everybody's the same and everybody wins and everybody gets a participation that is the biggest load of shit because all you've done you're setting them up for well you've just they're going to learn you're going to learn every lesson that i learned it's just going to take them that much longer to learn it you're you're way better off i mean yeah and it and they're way better off your kids are way better off to learn when you're around to help them through it then it is to just let them think that it's this whole fucking life is going to be a cakewalk. And then when they get out into the world away from you where they don't have any,

they don't have any guidance. Guidance. Guidance. And then learn all those lessons. Bullshit. But you sell a lot more antidepressants. You sell a lot more Xanax. True. Yeah.

I think there's the, you know, you got to let your kid enjoy childhood. But at the same time, you got to teach them. what's going to really happen in life. I love that. There's that. If you've seen that clip, I don't even know, it's,

is it off of, it's off of some sitcom. And this little kid's got a nickel that he's over by the outlet. He's rubbing it on the wall. And he's like, trying to stick it into the outlet. And the mom comes in there

and she's like, Billy. And the dad goes, no, no, no, no. Just wait. Just wait. And then it just shows his face.

And you see the lights dim. And then he just goes, I bet you ain't going to do that again. I just thought, now that's an 80s kid there. You know, that's the kind of shit that Lawrence Whistler would have done. He would have been like, mm. You've got to be just a little negligent. Yeah. Yeah. Tony Reed. That was a good Tony Reid. Oh, man. Well, I think that, I mean, what are you most excited about? Like, we talked a lot about problems, but what are you most optimistic about?

I'm optimistic of all the people that I get to call a friend, all the places that they're going right now. And I just think that, like I said, I think if we just let the years pass and keep on these endeavors, there's just going to be opportunities galore. I mean, we can't get hung up on all this shit. We can't control. Just realize the gap gets bigger. Yep.

You know? Mm-hmm. Well, Jason, we really appreciate you coming on, man. It was a hell of a good episode. If you guys got any value at all, go follow Jason. What's your handle? Jason Mach 1. And then I have a field day with Acres USA, June 21st. So instead of going to the city and being in a hotel lobby and all that stuff, we're going to have the brilliant minds. We'll have John Kemp there. We'll have Zach. We'll have Mark Schenck. Shepherd, Gary Zimmer, a lot of these guys that can do anything. And this is kind of a 10,000 foot view. But everything I talked about in this show, you can see, you can kick the tires, you can see it. And we have a good time afterwards. We'll listen to music. And you can have just one whole day with nothing but Gary. So where he can talk first, like, he can, you got to like,

if you don't physically pull him off the stage, he'll just talk all day. But the thing is he, he, he knows he's forgotten more when it comes to like soil health i love the guy oh yeah but man he's crazy so where can people like go to get that information they buy tickets they go to a website they just yeah so we'll have a link when we uh shoot this out that you go to i think tickets are like 149 so we're going to have a ticket event and then we're going to have a VIP where we're going to have like a catalina wine mixer dinner nice and a golf round i have a golf course at my house that i've had for 15 years and it is like Primo. We'll do that and then have like a private tour the night.

So if you want a little bit more private thing, get that. If you want to be in with the crowd, and we're going to have some kind of concert afterwards with a Nashville band. And it's, if you ever had live music out in the country with electric guitar, five piece band, there's nothing better. When's it going to be? June 21st. June 21st.

It's a Saturday, the longest day of the year. Fuck, we better go. Better load it up. We better go. Well, if we're going, that means you guys should go too. So go check out Jason on X. Go check out the field day. Buy a ticket.

Get your ass there. When you get the link, send it to us. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the link in the description on YouTube. Check it out, guys. Share the show. If you got any value, leave your review on Spotify or Apple. Always can use code Barn Talk to save 10% on any farmer-grade order.

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