Barn Talk - The Massive Investment Coming To A Field Near You w/Mitchell Hora

Episode Date: April 8, 2022

Welcome to BarnTalk! Dirt Digging Edition. We’ve got some actual knowledge here today so get out your notebook because you’re going to learn something! If we’re playing’ BullShit Bingo Ag Addition then Soil health, Regenerative Ag and Sustainability are big winners these days. But what does it all mean? Do any or all of these pay their way or better yet, can they make us more money per acre? With input costs through the roof, none of us can afford to make a mistake. So we’re going to try to clear up some of the fuzziness and give you all some information to help figure out where to start. Please welcome Mitchell Hora Go Follow Mitchell! Website: https://continuum.ag/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/continuumag/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsvRPNOAtfBtlqq44RLPq2A Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchell-hora-2778a6109/ Barn Talk Merch! 👇🏻 https://www.thislldo.co/ SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c SUBSCRIBE TO BARN TALK CLIPS ➱ https://bit.ly/3BlZnqq LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY ITUNES ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4 ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS ------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Barn Talk is a significant break from the typical content viewers have come to expect from This’ll Do Farm. Please be advised that we will be exploring a wide variety of topics (some adult-themed) and our younger viewers (and their parents) should be advised that some topics will be for mature audiences only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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What they could do is my corn has a digital footprint to it, that when my corn goes and is sold at the mill or sold to the pork producer or put on a barge, now all of the bushels of grain in that bin, they get a new aggregate digital asset associated with it to show here's the average of that whole barn. Yep. Or of that whole bin or of that mill or whatever.

Yeah. That's what it would be in. So my corn that is actually sequestering carbon as a net in part of the process of me delivering it to the hog buyer, they can utilize my corn that's offset, that has a negative carbon. And it's offsetting somebody else's. So now all the corn in that bin has a new net carbon footprint.

Yep. And they're going to want that corn to be net negative or net neutral, net zero, whatever. And then, or if it's actually sequestering carbon, if that carbon in there is offsetting the electricity that's being utilized in that. barn.

There you go. Now the pig coming out is already carbon neutral. Now you've got to offset the truck and the getting it to the market, but you could do that in other way so that when it gets to the consumer, now it's carbon neutral. That's not that far out of touch at all. That was broken down very, very well. I bet that'll be here within, easily within the next 18 months. 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, Dirt Digging Edition. We got some actual knowledge today. So get your notebooks out, get your pens out. We're going to drop some real, real knowledge on you, and we're going to learn some stuff today. If we were playing bullshit bingo ag edition,

words like soil health, regenerative ag, sustainability, those would be all like triple letter score. But the question, and what we're going to get into, to today is can you make that pay? Does it pay? Are those just buzzwords or is there really real value there? And can they actually make you money? With input costs going through the roof this year, we can't afford to make a mistake. So we're going to try to clear all the fuzziness around these terms and kind of give you guys some information to help you figure out how you can get an advantage on your operation and pay the fee. If you guys get any value,

you from the show at all. You know the drill. Share it with your friends, family, co-workers. We're trying to do some good in this world, trying to show some light, shine some light on agriculture. And also, we got Barn Talk merch available if you guys want to cop some merch. We got that in the link into the description if you're watching on YouTube or in the show notes on iTunes or Spotify. So pay the fee, guys. Really appreciate all of the people that are doing it. By good in the world, you mean fun and dad's retirement. Yeah, that's right. Fun and Torque's retirement. Got to get that beer, swivel coozy on the mower somehow. That's right. Real nice one.

And you got to get a good mower. I mean, that's the first step. Yeah. Yeah. We're always looking for better equipment. Put the crocs in four-wheel drive. I do got to get, I'm looking forward to crock weather. We thought we'd be there. We thought we'd be in the barn, but we chickened out.

It took a turn. We had one good weekend, and then it took a turn. It's coming, though. It's coming. As you drink your coffee to stay warm in the garage. Well, we didn't have to go very far today. So we got, there's something in the water in Jackson Township. It just, it just breeds excellence, I guess.

And so our guest today is a southeast Iowa farm kid who went to Iowa State, you know, with dreams of farming for himself, another generation. And that part of the story sounds pretty familiar. But while he was there, that kind of took a turn and then took off for a rocket, or like a rocket. So before graduating Iowa State with a degree. and ag systems technology and agronomy, he'd already started a soil health consulting company called Continuum Ag. And since 2015, Continuum's topsoil program has amassed one of the largest private soil health databases in the world,

with farmers from 36 states and 15 countries. He's seen tremendous growth not only in his company, but an agriculture's worldwide role in carbon sequestration, green energy and sustainability. His unique tools and knowledge have taken him around the world, and he was recently named to Forbes' under 30 list. He's also the co-host of the Fieldwork podcast and his new Top Soil podcast.

It is a pleasure to welcome Mitchell Hora. Welcome to Barn Talk. Welcome to Barn Talk. Thanks, guys. It sounds like I got like a little too much going on. It does sound like that a little bit. But it's okay. I mean, we're having fun.

I mean, it's all part of it. That's right. As you well know, and that's common in most people that we talk to, when you get, I guess I'd call it a blessing. Sometimes it's a curse. But when you find what you really like and what you're really good at, it's real easy to bite off more than you can chew. And then all you can do is just keep chewing. I've a really hard time saying no to things. I've actually gotten better at it.

I've had to work very hard on it. I used to say yes to everything, every opportunity, every speaking thing, whatever. And so I've been it. I've been better. Yeah. I still say yes to probably 97.5% of everything. But, yeah, I mean, it's all about knowing where that shining star is at the end of the day. We're doing this because it matters and because I want to help farmers and bring opportunity

back here to Jackson Township, Washington County. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So where can people find you? Before we get this ball rolling, where can people find you, website, social media, everything, lay it out. Trying to be all over the place. Websites continuum.

Ag, the software's topsoil. I'm pretty much all my social media stuff. You can search Mitchell Hora or my handle is at Continuum Ag on pretty much everything. Continium underscore Ag on Twitter. I don't know. I got to beat somebody up to get Continuum Ag on that one, I guess. But you'll get it. I'm sure.

But yeah, so at Continuum Ag though. Follow them. Go follow them, folks. You're going to get some real value. So go follow them. Pay the fee and go follow Mitchell. So it's going to be really easy to get off into the weeds on this. And so for people that don't know.

who you are and what you're doing from that intro, kind of give us the 50,000 foot view of what continuum is about and what topsoil is about. Yeah, I mean, I always start from the very beginning. I'm seventh generation on my family's farm, right up the road, shoot four miles from where we're sitting right now. And, you know, family farm there, of course, corn and soybeans like everybody else. We've been farming rye as well. We've had some barley and some wheat and mustard and all kinds of different fun stuff.

So, you know, experimenting, doing things out on the family operation. right there. But then I started Continuumagic in 2015. We're a soil health data intelligence company. So I started the company in 2015 when I was at Iowa State with just looking at being back in this area doing soil sampling, doing consulting

for farmers. That was the plan. Just have a consulting company, have a nice little, you know, kind of deal there and be on the farm and that was going to be it. And then in 2020, we launched the software topsoil, which basically takes our system that we were doing here

locally and takes it to the masses. And, you know, as you guys pointed out earlier, 30 some states, almost 40 states and 15 countries that are in top soil right now. And I don't know, something, 1,400 farmers or something like that as we record this here today. So it's been a pretty wild deal.

And just being able to showcase, how do we document this soil health stuff? And how do we actually, what is soil health and what is regenerate? And how do we tell this story? And we needed data to be able to do it. And nobody else had the right. platform and so we said well let's build around so let's touch on that a little bit so you were going to iowa state and you thought because that was a that was a niche that needed filled um to do soil

sample and do a little consultant but something changed yeah to make you think well wait this is bigger than what i thought i was good well there's no good tools for document this so what was that process yeah so i started basically you know um it was actually 2015 summer 2015 i was at an internship up in Minnesota. And I was in Wilmer, Minnesota, working for a group called Innes Consulting, and that's where I got connected with this hainy soil health test. It was like, okay, this is cool.

I can look at my nutrients, but I can also quantify biology and water extractable carbon, which is basically just micro food. And it was like, okay, this is a really interesting test that shows us a lot more info than what we have ever looked at before.

I already knew at this point that I wanted to get into consulting, but now I found my niche. this hainy test. That was the kind of the route that I could bring back here. And on our farm, you know, we were just getting into the cover crop kind of stuff. And we'd been using no-till, of course, for a long time. But traditional soil sampling was just not really working out.

And dad was having a lot of issues and stuff with it. So we started to use the handy test on our farm. And I was doing it with a wide array of other farmers here, you know, mostly in Washington County. And we were helping them out using this test. It was really interesting. We were learning a lot. It was very, very new at the time. And we built out a really big data set.

I needed better systems to be able to actually interpret the data and help the farmers to make decisions with the data. And rather than try to build it into SMS or build it into somebody else's platform, we said, well, let's go build our own. We've raised some venture capital to be able to do it. You know, we've got some investors. We've got my CTO, my chief technology officer is a PhD

from the University of Illinois. And he lives over in Illinois. and his brother owns a software development firm in India. Wow. So we have like nine, we have like nine employees in India too that are building out all the software and my software designers in L.A.

and team is all over the place. We're at 24 people now. Continuum, I guess. Technology, we were talking to this off air, but you know, you couldn't do what you're doing today even, what? 10 years ago?

10, 15 years. Because it is just a, amazing how you can get people together. You can find people with the skills you need and you can do it all remotely. Doing it all remote. We do a lot of boots on the ground stuff. So as we're recording this, I've got two of my employees are down in fields in Arkansas right now. My other guys up at the farm, I've got a couple of my people up at the farm right now working on projects there up the road. And shoot, what else we got? Tomorrow I got to go up to, I'm in Iowa City tomorrow and then going up to Dyersville and we're traveling all over. I got to go to North.

Carolina, D.C., Arkansas, Mississippi, all within the next couple weeks. Yeah, we kind of had to get you in this window because we were talking to you and you're like, I got, I got like a weak window and then I'm gone for months. But it's just kind of how it works for me. I do a lot of stuff virtual. And actually Zoom has probably, or sorry, COVID has probably actually helped us a little bit. That before I had a lot of these big companies that we were working with that typically they would want you to come to their office. you would get, you know, maybe doing business that way, I'd be able to get maybe three meetings a week. Well, now they're all used to having all their meetings on Zoom.

So now I can get three meetings before lunch, you know, and be going with these huge companies that before you can never even hardly get in the door. But now, shoot, they'll take a 15 or 30 minute Zoom meeting. Sure, they don't care. That's what they do all day any day. How hard was it for you? because today, I know that you are much more of a manager than you probably ever thought you were going to have to be.

So how has that, like, what's the biggest struggle been in building? And I think I might be skipping ahead, but since we're on it, I just wanted to, I just wanted to touch on that. Well, and I'll tee it up a little bit. So I started the company 2015. It was basically a one-man show. Obviously, I have my brother, David. that of course he was my guinea pig that of course he had to help out.

Get out there a day. It's like, throw the drone up. Yeah, get the drone up, do something fun. But hey, we got to pull soil samples and we're doing consulting. I mean,

it was direct to farmer and it was around here. And David could help out and do that. And 2017, I graduated from Iowa State in May. We had a really great year. I was often running because I sacrificed a lot in college to do this. Now I had plenty of fun too. But I had the right balance of,

okay, I knew what I was going to do, and I'm super fortunate about that. Like, I mean, the original business plans for Cotinia Mag came together after my freshman internship or during my freshman internship. So I had years for school. Pretty early. I knew what I was, I knew where we were heading. I didn't know that early on, and you were kind of getting at this earlier, that what's the real goal and what's the real vision? It was never this.

You know, I didn't really know, actually, now I think about it. It's like, I went to Iowa State just because my whole family's always going to Iowa State. That's just what we do. but I had no idea what I was going to do, but now I think about it, like there's no way I could go and work for one of the big companies. It's always been entrepreneurship,

but I just never labeled it before. I never knew what it was, but I've just grown up in that, you know, that dad's very entrepreneurial as well and a lot of my family and stuff. So it was just like what we've always done, it just never had a label.

I can totally relate with you on that because you don't really, you just, it's how life is when you grow up. My mom was always did her own little thing. You were kind of doing your thing. thing, Clay did his thing. And I never knew entrepreneurship, the term entrepreneurship, till it started really picking up and picking up steam. And the term entrepreneurship really

blasted all over. And then I was like, you know, this, this kind of sounds like I might be an entrepreneur. I kind of think like this. And that's exactly how I was too. Like, I didn't really know. I just kind of always figured, okay, I was going to be back involved in the farm. The farm's only 700 acres. Like, that's not going to pay the bills. Yep. So I've got to do other stuff. Plus, I've always been very entrepreneurial. Anyway, way. It was, here's a consulting company. How do we scale a consulting company? Hire people. Yep. And I hired three full-time people in 2018. Because I'm finally getting back to your question your torque. Hired three full-time people in

2018 and I did not know what the heck I was doing. It was, I was just running and gun and because I am an entrepreneur because I could go into the office every day and figure it out. Most people can't do that. Nope. Right. Most people, you've got to have set systems in place and show them and tell them what to do. And I learned that the hard way. Right. I've got, had some great people and my, I'm still good friends with, with the people that I had and they're great.

But I did not have the systems in place. Yeah. Be able to actually bring people into the operation and grow it. Instead, I was just. Here you go to do this and figure it out. Figure it out. And it was, and then I ended up just having to help them and hold,

handhold them all day every day to try to figure it out. Now, my first full-time hire was actually a full-time head of marketing. Wow. So as a ag company, My first full-time hire was marketing. That's surprising. My second was agronomy. My second was agronomy.

Yep. But from the very beginning, I knew that marketing was the thing. And I'm definitely a marketing kind of guy. We've now been able to hone in on our actual processes. And now, like this past fall, I didn't pull a single soil sample. I didn't write a single fertilizer recommendation. Nothing. I'm the CEO.

Right. I'm running the top of the ship. And I am not down in the... The trenches. Nope. It's... I've got people to be able to do all of it. And now I'm very much in that.

I'm a manager. I'm the CEO. I'm bringing in the opportunity. And here's the processes in place. Everybody keep picking up the wake. And luckily, I've got a great C.O. That's why we're able to really do this. But he's in Chicago.

He's a farm guy too. And a hog producer from up by Manchester. And Brad's all, you know, in Chicago. And if he doesn't know what's going on from there, then we have to assume that nobody knows what's going on. So it really helps that he's, on top of everything. And now we have metrics,

metrics and processes and goals and very clear alignment. That's why it works. You think that's one of the most important things when you start any company is just building out that team. Team is the most important thing. No, processes are most important.

That's why I screwed up. I thought it was, oh, cool, I got this company. We're crushing it. We got this good thing. I'm back from school and like had this awesome year, even just with basically half a year

because I was in school. I was like, shoot, we got a freaking go. And, but I didn't have those processes documented. And I needed to have those processes documented better. Then I could bring in a team to fill specific pieces of the process that I needed to offload. And I could focus on the most important things that I need to focus on, which my piece I need to focus on was customer feedback and customer support and relationships.

And because I was managing these people, that really fell through. And there's a lot of those key relationships. at the beginning that we still work with those customers, but not to the extent that we really should be because at the beginning, I was too focused on trying to build too far, too fast, and not build out the processes the right way. But now what I found is, still today, I don't build the processes. I don't sit still long enough to do that, document and write all this stuff down and do all this. So instead, it's the people themselves in those departments, they write the processes or I workshop it initially with them. They build it. Then I just review it and tweak it

so that's the way I want it done. Then we go. And then it's repeatable. Then it's repeatable. That's a really smart way. That's a good way. Because I've always thought about that myself if, you know, setting up processes like sometimes the person that you hire could do a better job at that job than you can. So having them do it and write that out. What's really important is they then could write it all out in their terms, which is, is going to be much easier for them to be able to teach the next person than my turns. My way of doing it, I just skip all these things because I just do it. Here's the thing. That's good advice. And that's universal. I mean, that's the thing.

Is any business, that's what you got to do. And that's why I know now for like the next businesses and stuff. Because Continuumag is not my end all beyond. There'll be plenty of other things. But now I know that. That's probably the number one thing that I've learned from this is build out those processes first. And now I know a, I have my own process for how I do it. And it's not me. You sit down and write it all out. Maybe on a piece of scratch paper kind of draw it and do it in like seven minutes. Here's how, here's how you do it.

Here's the overall bubble kind of flowcharts kind of thing done. Give it to somebody else. They build it for real. When you talked about how hard you were going when you, that summer you graduated, was that a case of just that you were so damn excited for what was going? or did you feel a sense of urgency that you had to get on this because you thought the window was? No, definitely not about the window. It was, here is this Haney test that was great.

I really saw the light in it. And there were so many other farmers here that are also jumping into cover crops and no-till and using hog manure and using all this stuff where that test can really shine. And it was like, oh, perfect. Like it was the right timing. It was the right tool, the right tech. And, of course, I had the right energy. in the right way to be able to really do it and was completely fearless and had no idea what the heck I was doing. So I would just run a gun and get a sale. You're just excited every time.

You're just like, I'm doing this. You know, I sit down with the grower, which I knew a lot of these guys for us. Yes. From growing up with them and going to church for these guys and all this stuff. They knew me and I knew them. So the relationship was already there. Now I had something I could sell them. And they said, yeah, sure, let's do it. You know, let's try it at least. and then, you know, so it was really able to take off and be good. But I just need a better process to make sure that that full value was really being delivered back to them. How hard was it to sell? Because it was, I feel like recently in the last five years, soil health has became a really popular term.

And it's starting to really pick up speed. And more and more farmers are getting on it and understanding that it's important. But you said in 2015, you were kind of thinking about starting. getting into it. How hard is it to sell a farmer on the idea of soil health is important when they might not even know about soil health and the trendy topic, you know? It's a great point. So actually in 2015, I was working up there in Minnesota and in my exit interview at the end of the internship, you know, my boss at the time knew I was getting all this going and he said, hey, you know, definitely want to help. I want to support you, but you should

focus on regular crop consulting, regular sampling, not really focus on the, the soul health thing. Maybe that can be a niche or a little side kind of thing, but you should really stick to the bread and butter and keep that as a side thing. Obviously, now soul health is all we do. Yep. And unfortunately, Jared was the guy's name. He passed away in 2017, died suddenly of a blood clot. And so he's not able to be here to see all of it fully go through. But what and why I bring up that story is number one to, you know, to remember Jared. But number two, that was 2015 where he was saying hey no don't even don't do this don't even try that route that's not a thing shoot blew up oh it's the ultimate thing and that's right everyone wants to talk about and we're saying

before trillions that we're now like it's not just millions of dollars and billions of dollars I want to go to this it's trillions now circle back to that one so how when you when you first started how hard was it to get somebody on the train of understanding that hey this is something that I need on my operation this is something I need in my farm business. So I targeted farmers that were already doing no-till and cover crops. I already doing this. Had a little slight of it.

Being from this county is a huge part of why I've been able to be successful from the beginning. Washington County, when I started the company, there was more cover crops in this county than all other 98 counties combined. Wow. That's crazy. More cover crops in Washington County than all other 98 counties combined. Now today, we're still triple the cover crop acreage in this county versus any other county. I think Iowa County is second or something like that. And we have triple the cover

cover crop acreage here than what they do. So we're still very much the hotbed for it. So I got plenty of customers right here that are in my wheelhouse that are trying to do this regents up. So I'm not going in there selling them. Hey, so I'll help. Sell them the idea. They're already kind of on it. Gotcha. They're already on board. Gotcha. And that's been super critical. And something I've really had to focus on too is don't sell the unsellable. Yep. And make sure that you're going in there, that here's what I can offer to you. It's very clean and clear. And here's the value prop,

which we've really been able to hone in on recently. And but it's knowing that target customer. And if they're like, I don't know about the sole health thing, not even worth my time. Right. Don't even spend a second on it. They'll come.

Because they got to come to it. They'll figure it out eventually. Isn't that interesting? And as you've gone, as your business has expanded, it's not just Washington County. there's there's pockets but isn't it funny when you go like you'll go to an area where what you're talking to people are very receptive to it and it's like everybody is but then you'll go a county away

they want nothing to do with it yep it's just it's so interesting when so when we were doing when i was selling hog buildings and solar you know came i mean washing county had the most solar of any county in the state for a while. I think we still are number one. We might be. And somebody asked me from an equipment manufacturer, they're like, man, all these hog billings have got solar, what, you know, what's the deal?

And I said, well, I said, if there's a tax advantage to be had, pretty much every farmer in Washington County is going to extract the maximum, the maximum amount they can. So I said, somebody sees their neighbor doing something, and they're like, what's that about? And as soon as they find out, they're on it. And it's the same, well, the trickle-down effect to it is, it ends up being a competition thing.

Because when you're buying land, you're rent and land, you're raising pigs, you're doing whatever you're doing to keep your farm viable. Because you have so many people that are of that mindset, it basically floats the entire boat. Yeah, everyone's able to learn from it. And you bring up a really, important thing that because Washington County is so deep into this, we're getting to those later

folks on the adoption curve. Yeah. And there's a lot of farms in this area that have been using cover crops for the one example. A lot of farms have been using cover crops for seven, 10, 12 years, a big chunk of them in that kind of window. And so now there's farms that are just now catching on or that are watching that guy saying, well, shoot, they've been doing it for eight years now and they haven't gone broke yet. Right. Right. And it must be, be something going on and they're spending less time and less money and their crops look really good and they don't have very much weeds. And so, hey, maybe I should figure this out. Yep. Very interesting to me. The calls that I get now and obviously we can't really name anyone here,

but the folks that are starting to say, hey, I'm not going to send the whole thing yet, but I'm interested. I'm interested. I want to learn more and maybe we'll start small scale out in the back corner somewhere off the highway to try to get this started. And so that's been really, really interesting, but I think it's really crucial to watch who is expanding and who is getting things figured out. And obviously, Washington County is skewed because you do have so many people buying land for the hog purpose. So you have a different enterprise that's bringing in revenue. But you also see a lot of farmers that are doing these practices and stuff that are having good success. Their stuff looks really good. They're well-known family farms that it's not, you know,

there's plenty of other areas of the world, to your point from before, that the guy that's doing this is kind of the weird, like, hippie. Outcast. You know, on fieldwork, Zach and I joke about that. There's like, here's this weird, like, guy that's doing this cover crop stuff. Here it's fairly normalized. Right. So it's a completely different shift.

Just like having, you know, solar panels on hog barns. Right. It's not weird. Right. See it all the time. It's just been normalized. Yep. So do you think that farmers are your biggest asset for your marketing?

Like other farmers existing. Existing. Existing farmers that come on. and they take your on your services and they're like, this is working, they stick with it. And do you feel like that's, because you said, I'm not going to waste my time trying to convince people.

So the farmers that get on the program and you kind of highlight their story, you think that's the best way to get people to buy in? It's definitely the best way to highlight their story and to enable farmers to highlight stories on their own. And we really are just now starting to be able to do that because we have enough proof in the pudding. We've got enough systems developed where I can even start,

to scale and where I can put some fuel on that fire because before I was like, okay, I've got to scale at the right pace here because I've seen what scaling too quickly looks like. And I've got to make sure that, okay, if we are going to market, we're going to bring on more acres and stuff that we're able to actually facilitate and do that. So just now get to the point where we can enable our growers to sell on their own. But the other big thing for me that we've been able to expand to. So we launched the software. But we also now, okay, we still do direct to farmer consulting, but my big customers now are the large enterprise customers. So Robobank is my customer. And CBO is a big carbon group. And there's a couple others that I can't publicly say

that are freaking massive. And what they're doing is they're saying, okay, you're helping your farmers directly to do this regent stuff. We know that we got to do regent and we got to take that to our growers, but we don't know how to do it. We're not a regent company. We're not agronomists. So they're hiring us to take our system that we've done direct to farmer and do it to their farmers. Gotcha. That's how we're scaling. Gotcha. That's nice. And I thought at the beginning, I thought my scale was going to be, okay, I go direct to farmer. Everywhere. Then I build it out. No, no, no, I can't go direct to forever. I knew that from the beginning. Not enough hours in a day. Not enough hours in a day

to try to help every farmer direct. We can't do it. So I thought that my scale was going to be, well, I'll work with other crop consultants because they already have farmers. And I was a crop consultant. And I thought that it was build tools for other crop consultants. And we still have that, but because the market overall isn't fully developed, that piece of it, it's been easier for them to just kind of still do what they do versus change their whole system to quantify soil health and quantify carbon and go this route. It's easier for them to kind of stay the same. But for these large enterprise customers that are making massive claims, like putting billions and trillions of dollars towards us,

they got to figure it out. And they don't know how to do it. And they don't have time. They don't have time. They can't. And it's not their wheelhouse. It's not their wheelhouse. And they know that they're big companies. They can't stick their neck out that far and fail. Right. That's worse for them.

They got to focus on what they're good at and hire. They got to stay within their business model and figure somebody else out to help them build on new business models. And we've been able to ride that. And that has been. That's amazing. Did that? And I think you kind of answered that.

But that never even entered your mind when you were starting, did you? Not even close. But don't you feel like that's just another example of how. the world has changed so much in the last, well, definitely in the last five years. Definitely in the last five years. A lot of that's been in definitely more recent than that. And obviously my space very politically driven too. Oh yeah. We thought that multiple years ago, obviously we thought that this was all going to happen even faster in 2016. Didn't happen. But the carbon space and sustainability trucked on anyway.

Now with this administration, it's definitely pushing things further. They've put a bill, You know, they've got a RFP out right now to put a billion dollars towards this. That's big. We're applying for one of those. A bunch of other people are applying for these grants. It's called Climate Smart Commodities. And the USDA is putting a billion dollars in grant funding out there for markets to be developed. But in however long they've been in, year and a half or whatever, to just now start to maybe put in a billion, it actually hasn't happened that quick.

Yeah, nothing's really happened. It hasn't really happened yet. Yeah. Well, do you think that's because there's a lot of people at the top of that that they don't really know where to send it? They don't know where to send it. They don't know where to start. The science isn't up to date enough to enable the markets the way that they've been developing, like these carbon markets and stuff. The science really isn't fully there.

Right. And the transparency is not there. Yeah. Traceability is not there. The traceability is not there. The systems are not there. So I hope that that's where some federal money can go to help to actually get these things developed. but it's obviously it's entrepreneurship that is going to drive it and the free market's going to

drive it. In what you're doing, how many people are out there? Because obviously you can't do it all. How many people are out there? Is this a deal where there's hundreds of people that are chasing the same thing? You are, or 10 people chasing it? If you're getting these big corporations, you're one of the well-known companies out there doing this thing. So to answer the question, nobody else is really doing it holistically.

like we are. Okay, so there's really good Regen Agagramus, and there's sustainability data platforms, and there's Ag GIS data platforms, and there's people that can help you to develop carbon markets, so there's people that know about certain piece of how to implement it on the farm, and then you've got farmers. I'm all of them. Right. Nobody else has that, and that's been super unique for me that, hey, I'm doing these things on my own farm. I built a software, or I built a company to help farms like mine implement these practices. And it was before it was called Regen Ag and before it was really even these sole health principles. It was just

we're going to just try to manage and use better data. And it wasn't even a thing yet. Even in 2015. It was okay, well now I need to scale this company that's helping my farm. So we built the software. Well, hey, other consultancy in that software and hey, these massive companies need to document all this stuff and they

need access. So it's just been solving a problem for a higher level opportunity within my own business. Ecosystem, right? So it's been a wild, wild deal. And where does it go? I mean, our overall mission now is to help a million farmers profit from improved soul health.

We didn't have that before. Okay, so before I thought it was, you know, help Washington County farmers and maybe some others in throughout Iowa or whatever. And that was it. And farm and hang out. Right. And I bought a little 40, you know, in 2017, right around the corner there from mom and dads. And so I've got that.

and obviously want to continue to expand the operation. But I'm very much like, okay, it's, you got a gold pot here, you know. I've got this other piece that I got to go. It's definitely not a gold pot yet. It's going. I wanted sitting in a good spot. We're sitting in a good spot,

but it's there's a couple pieces on the farmer side that we've got to get a little further. And there's some developments within like carbon and sustainability that got to go a little further. And there's some business models on the big money side that kind of get developed a little further, and then it's going to go. And I, gosh, I hope we're getting close, and I think we are. I think you're on the right path, definitely.

I was just going to comment on, I mean, from your start of your story, it just seems like you are not afraid of risk. You didn't know all the answers. You didn't know what it was going to be like, but you just jumped in and you went after it. And there's so many people out there that just don't risk it. They're afraid to take the jump, but it's served you very well to just keep going and figuring it out.

And I think people just lack that. They don't understand that as you just keep chugging along. We're taught that. Yeah. We're taught that. I mean, on the farm, it was you risk everything every year.

I mean, in this business, I've been down to nothing. Literally nothing. And it always comes through. The next check always comes right at the nick of time. And we've had to make cuts. And I've had to sacrifice a lot to be able to do it.

But I know what, if it all goes to zero, I can still consult. I can still just do the farm stuff. I can still do soil sampling. I've got a software that can help me to do that. If all these big projects fall apart, I can still be fine. Now I'm going to owe some people some things.

It's not going to be fun, but I'm not afraid to go back to zero. But I really don't think it's going to happen. You obviously know by now you've pretty much ruined yourself forever being just a farmer. Yeah, I was just going to say that. I was just going to say, I mean, what do you enjoy more? What is more fulfilling to you? Because it's, it feels like this is just a wild ride. And getting that call from these big corporations of saying, hey, we need you on our,

on our team and you got the skills. We got a lot of funding. I mean, how does that feel having those big calls? Like, those are pretty wild. But even just some of these other accolades and stuff like that or like, I mean, to be at that level at my age, I mean, I'm 27. So I try to be ultra humble, although I'm sure a lot of times I don't necessarily come off as being humble because I'm very confident of course too. But I know that I'm not the smartest guy in the room.

I have a lot to prove to these companies and they could go with whoever the heck they want. And they chose me. So I better figure my crap out and be able to deliver. Now, I love farming. I mean, shoot. There's nothing better hanging out on the farm doing that thing. but I've got to keep doing this. I'm not able to farm as much as what I want.

But shoot, dad's out on the farm. We don't have that terrible much going on more than what he can handle. He's got his boards and things that he does too. You know, he's got other stuff he's involved with now as well. And but learning and doing these things has really been able to take our farm to the next level and make it really fun that shoot.

We got all kinds of crazy stuff going on. Yeah. We had a gallon on Saturday from, UC Davis. She's in grad school out there and we're showing her around and I'm out there with the shovel and we dad's got the soil temperature probe and it's 39 degrees. I open up a small shovel full of soil and there's nine worms right there. It's like, shoot. Like, all right, this is freaking awesome. And this gallon from California is like, look at this. Like this is freaking amazing. And she doesn't have any context for what it should or shouldn't look like. Right, right. But you can see nice green grass grown on top of the soil with the cover crop, amazing black soil underneath and all these worms. It's like, okay. Yep. This is good soil. Yeah. It's help. Well, anybody could look at that and say, obviously, that's healthy.

Yeah. That must be good. You know, so. Well, you do both. You think always. Being an entrepreneur and a farmer, even if it's one or the other more. I love always in my intro. I still always say seventh generation farmer first.

And it's so important for us to promote that, I think, because so many times in these big meetings or in with these groups or in with these mega operations stuff I've been in on, there's no other farmers there. Or like I was in on a working group with the climate policy at the White House or the office for climate policy at the White House. I'm on a working group with them. We did a couple of webinar deals last summer. It sounds really fancy.

It was, it's a big deal, but it was, they showed us some government stuff. And it was just mostly a waste of my time because they're not actually getting it figured out yet. But it was myself and then the guy from Cargill, that's a buddy of mine. And we're the only two farmers that are on this thing. of like, you know, 90-some people. And obviously we're there not because we're farmers. We're there because of our day jobs. That's a nice, that's a little credibility that other people don't have when you're talking about that.

And I feel like it's something that we overlook because we're like, oh, everyone around here's, everywhere around where I grew up is a farmer, you know. But when you go outside of this county or. That's why I always say at first you're like, oh, you're a real farmer. Yeah. And it's like, oh, yeah. Because to your point, I'm like, well, yeah. This is just what we all do. Right.

But it is really important for us to be able to showcase that piece of this and that mindset. And that's why we've been able to be so in on this, I think, and because I see it at so many different levels, like I said. I want to try to get us a little bit down to, I guess, farmer level. Yeah. So my first question, and maybe this should be my last question, but I'm going to throw it out here now, when you look into the future, when you look into your crystal ball,

Yeah. All of us as farmers, we worry a hell of a lot about the crop we're growing above the ground. That's what pays the bills. Yep. And it has for generations. Do you see a time as we go in the future where what's below the ground maybe as valuable as what's above it? Or how is that value? Because a lot of these outside companies, they think there's value.

in what is underneath that. Right. But how does the farmer, like what's the potential for the farmer? So in actual monetary value, there's a couple different ways I can answer this. Today, that stuff that's going on below the ground is already more valuable than what's above it.

What? Ground just sold here north of here, $26,000 an acre to the other bank. Okay, that ground itself is more valuable than that crop above it. So that's a cop out on your answer. But what you're getting at is the carbon and that story going to be more valuable than the grain?

I don't think so. Okay. All right. I think the grain itself, the commodity of tangible asset itself is still going to be more valuable. Yep. Is the story that goes with it going to drive the value? You bet you.

Yep. And I think that's going to be the same thing for corn and soybeans as is for pork and beef and whatever else you're selling. Yep. Absolutely. And that story, and the story is going to go further than what it is today. So, you know, today that bushel of corn has a couple of metrics to it, like the moisture. Test weight.

Test weight. FF. You know, foreign material, stuff like that. And then they typically, they only knock the price down from the Mac. Start best case scenario and work backwards in there. I think this is going to have some opportunity to take it either way. That you could earn a premium. You could get a little bit of extra benefit if you do have like carbon neutral grain and stuff

like that. That'll be a tack on additional. benefit. I'm assuming, you know, sustainably raised pork and stuff like that's going to be the same kind of thing. Yep. And you can have the label on it or it's just it's taking the differentiated brand and

direct to consumer marketing stuff. It's just taking that to scale and blockchain and all the stuff is how it's going to work. Yeah, because we talk about it all the time that you know, direct to consumer in the hog, but in the animal production world, the reason

that's so valuable is because if you're not doing that, all you're producing is a commodity that is... Nothing special. No different than anybody else's. But if you can tell the story of it, and if people are interested in that story,

then it becomes valuable. Then there's a value there. And nobody's been able to really scale it yet. So there's plenty of farms around here, you know, that are doing direct to consumer, but they might be able to sell, you know, a couple sides of beef a year. Right.

Or a couple hogs, you know. And there's not the infrastructure to be able to really do it either, with the local lockers and stuff like that. So you've got some issues there. There's some hurdles. But just even to be able to open up a supply chain where you've got all the consumers

looking at buying it direct to farmer. Right now they don't. They just go to fairway and just buy it right there. And it's just easier, you know, at least at this point, perceived as easier and more cost effective and whatever. And they just get it in time. Most of them don't have big chest freezers like we do.

Right. To hold a half a side of beef, you know. Right. So the, but I think, opening up just scaling that system is still going to be crucial. Even for our pigs that are going to China, and they're still going to need to know some of these metrics or for those companies that are trying to be carbon neutral

or whatever outcomes they want, they're going to need that story. And that's what we'll end up eventually happening is your, you know, your pork loin that's being grown here, I don't think they're going to actually track it all the way to somebody's dinner plate. I don't think that's going to have, maybe on the pork side of things or consumer side, definitely not on corn. Right.

It's not going to be, here's this pig, they eat the corn from Mitchell Horace Farm. It's not going to happen. But what they could do is my corn has a digital footprint to it, that when my corn goes and is sold at the mill or sold to the pork producer or put on a barge, now all of the bushels of grain in that bin, they get a new aggregate digital asset associated with it to show here's the average of that whole barn. or of that whole bin or of that full mill or whatever. That's what it would have been in. So my corn that is actually sequestering carbon as a net in part of the process of me delivering it to the hog buyer. They can utilize my corn that's offset,

that has a negative carbon footprint. And it's offsetting somebody else's. So now all the corn in that bin has a new net carbon footprint. And they're going to want that corn to be net neutral, net zero, whatever, and then, or if it's actually sequestering carbon, if that carbon in there is offsetting the electricity that's being utilized in that barn, now the pig coming out. Now the pig coming out is already carbon neutral. Now you've got to offset the truck and the, you're getting it to the market, but you could do that in other way so that when it gets to the consumer, now it's carbon

neutral. That's not that far out of touch at all. That was broken down very, very well. I bet that'll be here within, easily within the next 18 months. If you remember back when I was, what, in the 90s, tri-oak, tri-oak went around to all their growers because they wanted to buy for a different reason, but they wanted all their growers to plant a certain number of corn. They partnered with Pioneer. Didn't work out all that well for them, but for a lot of different reasons. But their idea was great, it was a great idea.

Sure. They knew the starch level and the, the nutrient content of that one variety. And so their nutrition program, they could just basically cook cookie cutter every ton of feed they made. And so, you know, they thought that was a great idea. And it was, but it was very hard to put in practice.

But you think about a closed system raising pigs, and you can get, you can source the majority of that corn that is offsetting the carbon footprint of the production of the pig. That's right. And you can sell a low, a low carbon, a sustainable, a sustainable pork loin in wherever, Sam's Club. Because of the production itself.

That is a- It's called your scope three emissions. So at the pork producer, their scope three would be the supply chain underneath them, the corn itself. Yep. And the fuel that's being, whatever, the trucking and all that stuff. And then you have your own scope one, scope two emissions, which is what kind of like. light bulbs do you use? What kind of heating system do you use and what do you burn in to keep the barns warm and stuff like that? That'll be within there. It's just a piece of the, which you got to

lower that as well, but then you can offset it with what you're buying or eventually, you know, that's how these companies now are funding carbon markets overall is because they can only get their supply chain so low. Yep. So whatever they can't offset. They're buying credits. in themselves. Now they buy it from somebody else to be carbon neutral. But ag is one of those really neat spots that we can do it internal to our own supply chains and have now a value ad. So back to your actual question being, what's going to be more valuable?

Well, it's that whole story. Oh, yeah. Brand. Value of the product and its brand at scale. And what's really cool is a couple of weeks ago, I bought a couple of carbon offsets as NFTs. Oh, NFTs. On the blockchain. Nice.

And I've been watching this for a long time. And as you said, Gary Vee. Gary Vee is all about it, baby. I'm on it. So I've been watching this for a long time. And I've bought $200 worth of Ethereum. I don't know, probably. It wasn't at the beginning.

It was like maybe eight months ago or something. Not that long. Still pretty early. Well, and a good time to buy. It was right at the time the NFTs were starting to be a thing. And I was watching. And within 10 minutes of being on OpenC, I was looking at carbon offsets on the blockchain.

Wow. It wasn't necessarily a thing at that point. What I was seeing was very clearly BS. Right. And I knew that and I wasn't going to fund these guys. And I reached out to him on Twitter and stuff like that. And I tried to get it in with these kind of guys. Then here, like I said, maybe a month ago, a month and a half ago, I was looking again.

And here's these guys selling these carbon offsets. It's a French company buying offsets from a Swedish, nonprofit that's buying carbon offsets or running the projects, and these guys are just buying the credits and then reselling them on the blockchain. Gotcha. And I bought four tons of an offset from these guys, and they say anyway that it's from this project in Sweden,

and they're buying these, they're funding these projects all over. But I had a meeting with the CEO already. Wow. Talk to him right away, hit him up on Twitter and stuff. We had a Zoom meeting. He's in France. and as a tech entrepreneur. And yeah, it's already, it's a thing.

And that's how all this will be, but it'll be that, what I'm getting as that digital asset right now, bought this random BS forest stuff, whatever. And I did it just to prove the concept. I have no idea if it's real. They've got the, they have the documentation.

I believe him that it is real. Well, and if you bought it on the blockchain and they, they've got it, it should be. I can trace it all. I can see that they did buy some stuff. I can see the company.

And I know, Okay, it's probably real. But what will happen is that I'll have that digital asset that each bushel of my grain has a FT associated to it. That's not an NFT like we're thinking today. That it's a picture or whatever. It's not going to be that. It's not a picture of every single bushel my grain.

It's just going to be a digital asset that represents that bushel. That then when they buy that truckload, that truckload has one digital asset for the whole, for the lot, for the lot, for the, not. 950 bushel, then it goes into that 50,000 bushel grain tank that now that has a new digital asset to it, that that digital asset, say there's 50,000 bushels, you have 50,000 NFTs that each represent all these other ones, but it won't track it all the way through to my original NFT. It'll be re aggregated at each level. I think that's what's going to happen because you're not going to be able to actually track it all right through. So instead you aggregate it.

But to the guy buying your 900 bushel, your data that that was raised, sustainable, or that you've got the sequester, whatever trait they're wanting, your price is going to be, you may have a, you may have a premium based on that information that you have on. Back to the story of what brought this about is, okay, if they're after starch content, just open up the transparency around how do I measure my starch content. and pay me based on that. And I guarantee you, especially with carbon or some of these things, if that premium is good enough to actually reward farmers for that desired outcome,

the market will come. Damn right. That's going to happen. The market will come. Damn right. They're going to do it. So that's what I've been pushing for with carbon. Yep.

It's not just here, do no tiller here, check the box and plant some cover crops and you magically sequestered carbon. That ain't going to do it. It's the, how do I reverse engineer how to actually calculate that and then be rewarded based on how aggressive I can and be paid based on how much I put into the system, now farmers are going to do it because they already have proved it. It's called yield. Right. Right. They know how to grow a bushel of corn and they know that the more I put into it and the better genetics do these things, I can get more yield and therefore I can make more money.

When carbon or sustainability or, you know, sustainably source, whatever the things are, when it gets to that point where you're being rewarded based on what you actually bring to the table, and now it's going to be real, which is what direct to consumer is. But it's telling your story that you can only do at a small scale. This is a good, this is, if we had a bomb button, we'd be hitting the shit out. I know we got to get that. Well, no, this. Okay, I got one.

I got one little question to throw after. Did you buy a V friend from Gary? No, no, no. I know, I should have bought one. Way too expensive. I know they are, but God, I was like, I should have bought one. I should have bought one at the very beginning. I know.

I think he's got more coming out. And there's been other projects stuff that I've been watching. but like a V friend would be one that would be like okay I mean I believe in the whole thing I see some value in that but just regular like I'm not oh yeah right he else's random one I bought this one it was um I bought those four tons for like 80 bucks okay so I spent 80 80 bucks to prove a concept right and to tell a good story yeah that's all I actually care about right I'm not I didn't buy it because of the actual carbon I didn't buy it because I knew these guys no but it's a great for the proof of concept right it's a great exercise to see how the process works

so you can speak intelligently about it. What I want to ask it, and you can tell me whatever, but I put in here because I'm thinking about the average guy out there that's running a corn bean rotation, and he's getting his soil test every five years, whether he needs it or not, on a 10-acre grid, and they're formulating what he's spreading every spring. So the guy that, you know, pretty much through the Midwest,

he chisels everything in the fall. you feel colovating spring 30 inch rows you're putting on smoke um you side dress if you need it your co-op is your guy yep what are the what are the what is what am i leaving on the tape what should i be doing what should i be looking at so when we go to farms we go to first understand what are we dealing with today okay i think of a lot of what we do as just like if you're going and doing a new workout regime or you're going to lose weight and you got a trainer first thing they do is they're going to weigh you. They're going to check your body mass index and stuff like that. And they're going to lay out, okay, what are some of our goals? We do the same thing. Go to the farm, do soil sampling,

10 bucks an acre. We don't have to have that every time, but it sure helps to have some numbers based on where you're starting. And then we lay out where your management practices at today, just like for the health side, what do you eat? How do you work out? Do you sleep decent? How many packs of cigarettes do you smoke a day? Things like that. Yep. And then we look at, okay, where do you need to be in the future. And what are some of those goals? Which for us, it's, okay, here's these kind of sustainability metrics and here's the principles of soil health to minimize disturbance and keep armor and living roots and diversity and maybe get some livestock out there. And we take a look at what is the potential for your operation and put together those goals and then help you

to actually get there on kind of a systematic approach. On average, our farmers that we did that soul sampling for, we compared their traditional program versus our program. And on average, we're able to save them $106.24 an acre on fertilizer. Okay. It costs $10 an acre for sole sample program. And after they paid us, they had $106.24 an acre extra in their pocket from their NPK savings. And how we got that is that traditional soul sample that the co-op's always done only looks at the inorganic nutrients in the soil. It only looks at PNK. It doesn't even look at nitrogen. Right. That's a different test that does that. And nitrogen, we're told it takes a pounded nitrogen per bushel, which it does, but it's not synthetic nitrogen that we have to apply

every time. A lot of our farms here, we got good organic matter. We have good nutrients already in the soil in the inorganic form, plus this organic form, which I didn't know about before until we got this hainy test. In that organic process, we got... pool is what's built up by our natural Iowa soils, by manure, by the cover crop, by the crop residue. That organic pool becomes bigger and bigger and more and more important as you go down this region path. So that's why I've targeted these guys. They're already doing the stuff because they've already built up this pool.

They just haven't ever been able to quantify it before. Now we can quantify and say, well, shoot, look at all these other nutrients out here. We don't have to buy all this fertilizer, especially right now when it's through the roof. Exactly. And on those fertilizer savings, $106 because the fertilizer through the roof, so typically you're saying it's $50. But still spend 10 to make 50. Yep, pretty good.

Not a lot of other places in Ag that you can do that. Exactly. And so that's what we start with. And then it's, okay, what else can we do to holistically position ourselves and tell our data story and get all of our ducks in a row? And we basically have a subscription, you know, $5 an acre subscription process that we do to help our growers to be able to do that. And that takes a look at, okay, what cover crop should I do? And how do I kill it? And what am I going to do for my herbicides? And what am I going to do for the rest of my rotation and fungicides? All the rest of the stuff we have to think about.

So today, because you've got as much dirt that you've sampled in your database, you, there's probably, you pretty much have it covered. When you come to my farm and you pull those samples and you see all my soil types, you've got that in your system. that you can show me comparing me to somebody that is doing all those things. That's right. That's right. So being able to show basically the percentile breakdown

so we're benchmarking you against the rest of the aggregate, which is what I've been able to build here over time. That's why we're finally getting into that. Okay. Because at the beginning, there wasn't that data. There wasn't a calibration of the tool.

There wasn't this is good and this is better and this is freaking awesome. There wasn't that. Now I have that. And I have more of that than anybody else in the world. Right. This podcast would not be complete if I didn't do a Tesla tie-in. That's just like all those miles on full self-driving because Tesla, they got more data than anybody.

That's right. See, he likes that, Sawyer. I do, yeah. The Sawyer told me I couldn't go off on any Tesla tirade. He's a little unique in the fact that he likes Tesla and we're farmers. And some people just don't like the EV thing, you know. We didn't know how you'd feel about it, but it is a good tie-in because the data does matter, no matter what you're in, having that data is important.

The data matters. I, so my wife and I bought a new Jeep here a couple months ago, and it's electric. Oh, really? Hybrid. Oh, yeah. That's what my mom, I don't know, for some reason she didn't even realize that this car that we got was like part electric. She's like, who the heck are you?

And I was like, no, it's cool. Like, it actually works really well. Because I've got a Jeep that I bought. that is not electric. And I can tell you, you want the electric one because that thing's 14 miles a gallon, no matter what you do. And I couldn't get a Tesla, though. I had a Rivian, I had a Rivian on order,

and they're making like three cars a week, so I'll never see that. And so then I have a cyber truck that I have a deposit. Freaking ugly. I love it. I'm going to get an American flag wrap for it with an eagle on it, just to piss Sawyer off when that thing comes out. So anyway, yeah, kudos to you. But anyway. No, it's a wild deal. And it's pretty cool. And I mean, there's a, of course,

there's some tax benefits to it as well. It's nothing crazy, but definitely doesn't pay for it. But it goes like 25 miles on the charge. So it's really not that great. But for my wife, running back and forth down to Fairfield, it basically can get her there and back from her house. And yeah, other than that, it gets 13 miles a gallon. Yep. And but with that, I mean, we can be driving back and forth and averaging a lot better. Makes a lot. sound 35 40 mile gallon heck yes so i take it yeah my girlfriend was uh she works up at the u and she was spending 220 on gas a month yeah she bought a tesla and she also had all these she had a bunch of problems with her transmission and brake pads and all this shit so she got rid of her old car that was

just breaking down on her buy this tesla and in her situation it makes sense she's spending 30 to 40 on power now to power this thing up. And she doesn't have to spend $220 on gas a month. So, you know, and I don't, I, I'm not buying, dad and I aren't so high on Tesla because of the environmental purposes of EVs and what they sell on that side of it. We like Tesla because it's cool. Yeah.

And we think it's a kick-ass company. Oh, I thought it was just because I bought the stock back. Well, that's true. We think it's, we think it's going to, I mean, yeah, we think it's going to crush. It's probably going to be a monster. It's definitely going that route. But the biggest thing, especially for like going longer distances and stuff like that, electric is not the way to be able to do it.

No, we're not there today. I do. The lack of like the ability to get it charged up real quick and all this, it's going to, we're a long way. We're not there. Right. And they like to say that we're closer than we actually are. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you've got, it's like everything. It's a hot button issue. Yeah. You've got two sides. You got the side that is against it, exploits every weakness to the instigree and the people that are for it paint it in as pretty a light as they possibly can and the truth lies somewhere in the

middle so some of this is being driven by it's something else here now something new from exclusively on paramount plus it's the series stephen king calls scary as hell everything here is impossible but it's also real sci-fi Vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus.

So simply put ESG scores because these corporations, sustainability has become a bigger and bigger part of what they're doing. And so what's the connection between that side of it and ag as far as why are they looking to ag for that yeah it's the full thing i mean that's what's driving all this stuff okay so it's all these the esg the environmental social and governance goals okay that all these corporates have and they're doing all this stuff because they want their shareholders to be happy and they want to have it's basically being able to pay to play essentially that it's the right to continue to do what we do which is exactly how we're thinking about it

for ag and stuff too how do you continue to do the things we want to do and for the most part, keep everyone kind of out of our business and have some clearance on doing what we do. It's definitely the thing that's driving all of it. As we were talking before, you know, Bank of America, for example, looking at it because the United Nations is saying, hey, ag is one of the cheapest places that you can get these outcomes and where you can put your dollars and make it real.

Now, I think that that's because in ag we can stack outcomes. Yep. When we're chasing carbon, we're not just getting carbon. We're getting water quality and flood mitigating. and we're feeding more people and we're getting nutrient density and we're getting habitat for all the little critters

and all this stuff. And we're helping to make more money directly too. So it actually pays for itself and you actually get the stackable outcomes versus like direct capture kind of stuff on carbon where it's like you put in this multi, you know, billion dollar facility and all it does

is capture carbon and all it is is a tax ploy to utilize taxpayer funding. It doesn't actually make any money. Make anybody any money. And that's the big. big thing on ag is that it has the ability to actually be self-sustaining and be able to be an actual real business model. So I think that's the interesting piece, you know, within the ag side of it.

Another big piece I've been watching of, okay, where is the money coming from and what's driving all this? At the COP 26 event, whatever, whatever they call it, their summit thing that was back in like November or something like that. The biggest financial institutions in the world that cover 60% of the global finance, global portfolio or whatever, something like $430 trillion. Yep. Okay, 60% of the nation's wealth held by these groups, $430 trillion, they all pledged to be carbon neutral by 2050. Holy mother, Mary. Wow.

The biggest ones. And everyone else is just going to have to follow behind these massive dogs. That's like, okay. Yes. That type of money that's all saying we have to go clean this up, okay? So what's really interesting on the financial side too is just like in the pork operation, okay, you can only get your barn and your transport system.

So efficient. You can't fully do all of it. So you can maybe offset it via insets is what they call it to do it within your supply chain, your scope three, within your corn and sort of stuff. That's where buying that bushel of corn becomes very valuable. Yeah, offsets your own carbon right there. You don't have to buy somebody else's credits.

you can do it cheaper within your own supply chain. For the banks and for these financial institutions, what's their carbon footprint? Right. They've got these buildings, sure, they've got some lights and they've got some, maybe some, you know, LP to keep the place,

or some natural gas to keep the place warm, and sure, they've got their private jet that they fly around and burns fuel there. But it's not that much. Right, right. Their scope three emissions are all their customers, all their people that are financed. They got to clean up

all that to meet their goal. And then if you're somebody, say you're, say your Procter & Gamble, you got this mammoth factory that cranks out paper products. And you're harvesting this lumber. Yeah, the factory is nothing. The hundreds of thousands of acres of trees, that's your problem. Yeah. That's what you got to figure out how you're going to.

And so then, and, yeah, that's just an example, but about any industry that makes anything. So if you're a car manufacturer, or you're John Deere and you're using huge amounts of steel. Okay, that's a huge footprint. Huge footprint. You got to try to offset. Do you think it's possible? Do you think that'll happen by 2050?

Do you think? I actually do all of it. It's going to be interesting. It's going to be really interesting to see. Now, part of it being like the amount of credit, so the amount of money that's going into this is way more than what the availability is to supply this. And that's why they're also. looking at how do we diversify and how do we develop enough of these gains and all this

to be able to meet those goals. Now, I see it in a couple different ways. You've got all these companies that are saying, we need to be carbon neutral by this time, or making these massive pledges. And even if we do all the carbon things and we suck up every little drop of carbon from the atmosphere and put it on the ground, which is also a really bad idea. Right. Right. But eventually, you know, you basically, it's like, well, I guess. the problem solved. I mean, and essentially what I believe,

at least the goal is, is today we've got about 415 part per million CO2 in the atmosphere. We got a bunch of methane and nitrous oxide and other stuff too, but they mostly focus on CO2, 450 part per million, and they want to get it down to 230 or 250.

Half of what it is. Not quite. Back to what it was before the Industrial Revolution is, I think, what the goal is. But you pull all that down, now what's going to happen on the other side. Okay, so this is a different,

rabbit hole that we can go into, but hit it. Go down that thing. So in the in the 80s, 80s, 80s, 90s, all this farmers, we always used to get all of our sulfur from the atmosphere. And we had acid rains. We had all the sulfur in the atmosphere. Well, then Clinton put it in the Clean Air Act, and now we have to apply sulfur. Yep. We don't have it from the atmosphere anymore. And a lot of farms are very limited in sulfur. Yep. Well, CO2 is, so carbon is the most important element for, a corn crop to use. It's the most abundant one. I believe within our own bodies, too. It might be the most abundant element in our bodies. And CO2 is actually one of the most limiting factors to growing high yielding corn. Already. Oh, Lord. So if we get it back to half. Where is that corn going to come from?

Because we got to have more, we got to feed the world. We got to have more. We got to have more. Yep. More production. Where is it going to come from? This is why they need you on the, on the seat at the White House. Talking somehow. Because you know, you know, you know, They're probably not thinking that. Well, they don't know. Well, and I think I would have to draw it out in colored pencil too. Oh, definitely. For this administration for sure.

Bring my crayons and draw it out. But thinking about that is really interesting. But you take it back to, okay, how is this supposed to work? Well, the stomata of the plant, which is where they breathe in the CO2, it's on the underside of the leaf. And God put it there because the carbon's supposed to come from the soil. Right. It's not supposed to come from the atmosphere. Right.

Like a portion of it at least does today. And some of it will always come. from the atmosphere, of course. But you put it on the underside of the leaf because it comes from the soil naturally and then the plant captures it and it pumps 70% of that carbon back into the ground as liquid and it feeds the microbes and it repeats. So if CO2 is going to be even more of a limiting resource for us as farmers, we better get that CO2 in our soil.

So it's there. In a more natural revolving system that we can actually grow a better corn crop and be able to make sure that we're cycling those nutrients in our system, which is a huge limiting factor already for a lot of these crops in other parts of the world where they don't have organic matter, they don't have carbon in their soil, they don't have biological activity, they can't grow a decent corn crop. Yeah. Same thing.

It's already happening. But luckily we're in Iowa, so we'll be some of the last ones to run out, but we still need to get that. Something to look into and be prepared for it. Well, you'll be on your silver coozy on the mower. You won't be worrying about it, but I will be. And I'll call Mitchell and be like, is this here? You know, we better get some shit going here.

We got to figure this out. But it's just continuing to think, and no matter any of these major trends, I think we've always got to look back at like, okay, what is the actual implications of this? Because what we're doing right now, with ag being a part of the carbon footprint or water issues or whatever,

we never intended for that to happen. Right, right. It's just we were pushed to feed the world, feed the world, max productivity at all cost. and now it's led to some issues. And so now if we're going to go to the opposite direction, we've got to be looking at a little bit.

Yeah, balanced. And I came to that realization a couple months ago of like, shit, like, we got to be. Carbon is already one of our biggest limiting factors. And if it's not going to be the atmosphere anymore, what are we going to do? Where are we going to get it? And then I was like, well, shoot, that already happened to a sulfur.

We already don't have the sulfur. We ought to apply it. Is that what we're going to have to do for carbon? I don't know. Yeah, well, I feel like you're right. I mean, it's, you got to, we got to find a balance. We can't go too much one way or too much the other way. People just got to look at their history.

It's plenty far away. Yeah. It is something real important. So you got this, you got this Jaggernaut company, Continuumag running, and you say that it's not everything you want to go after. But what's, you know, you say, you know, you don't really know what the end goal is. But do you want to run Continuum Ag for a very long time? Do you want to get it acquired? Do you want to start another thing?

Do you want to eventually say, hey, I want to get my paycheck and live the American dream of a farm in as many acres as I want? Because that's my- I'm hanging out and chasing torque around with my beer. There you go. Do you want to do that? I mean, I can drag race. I think it sounds great. No, so at the beginning, I thought it was just going to be farm and do the consulting and continue to make for forever.

That was always the plan. Right. and my wife is an entrepreneur too. You know, she's got the dance studio down in Fairfield. It was just going to do that and, you know, have some kids and do the thing. That's what I've always seen. My whole family, that's what they've always done, you know, just like a lot of us around here. And, but now it's more so, you know, if Continiumaga is going to help a million farmers profit from improved soul health, I sure as heck can't do it.

And I probably can't do it from Brighton, Iowa, right? Right. Right. so it's going to have to go beyond me. And that's why processes and systems have been so crucial to be able to enable it to scale and have other people in it, that it's not just me. I'm driving the ship,

but the whole company and stuff, it's beyond just me. So I foresee us being acquired to take our processes and systems and implement them through somebody else's chain so that you can help as many people as possible. It's got to be the right strategic folks for us to align with. I'm not just going to like, pick up anybody.

Yeah. Sorry, bears, but like, I can't do it. Yeah. It ain't got to happen. Got to align with your beliefs. I've got to align with the right folks that can actually take our systems and go take it to scale. I'm going to have to help them to implement it for multiple years, travel all over the place

and help to teach this and help to implement it through those systems. And then we'll go do the next thing. And I've always been very entrepreneurial. There's always, you know, I've... Next idea. Now I look back at it as, like, when I was a little kid, you know, I had multiple entities. I had multiple businesses and stuff always. Like from the very beginning, when I was really little,

I always had these side gigs and stuff going on and always making money and selling. Yeah, you know, I always had that, but it was never a business. Right. Well, now I know, okay, here's the first business, build that up, take it where it's beyond me so it can help more people.

It's still continuing mag. It's still the topsoil tool. Right. That's great, but we're just able to help even more people. And I think it's going to bring a heck of a lot of opportunity back to the farmers that helped us it going from the beginning, your information, your opportunity to participate in this just goes to the next level because now it's real. Oh, yeah, it's doing a lot of good. Do you think you'll

stay in ag? Do you think you'll always stay in ag because it's just what you're passionate about? Yeah, I mean, it's got to probably be ag, but I don't know. I mean, you just never know. I don't want to think, I don't want to get too far out there because we still got a long way to go. Yeah, got a lot of work. Focus on what's ahead. Got to stay focused on this here for a while. Obviously, I love doing the media stuff. So now going back to you to Ud S or earlier, I'm like, okay, what do I really care about? Like, obviously, I love being out on the farm. I love just digging around and doing that.

But for the most part, what I'm doing out there, like it doesn't actually pay the bills. We're scurred around and we're like, we're messing with stuff, you know. Like, it's fun hanging out with dad out there, showing people, you know, we have all kinds of events and field days and all kinds of stuff. Like, that's fun.

And showing it on social media, you know, I enjoy that. But on the, on this company side, like, I really enjoy speaking and traveling and doing these big meetings and stuff, that like, okay, yeah, landing big deals is great. Working directed with farmers and helping them. I'm like, I love that, of course. But going and speaking in front of a thousand people to teach

and be able to do all this, like that's... That's your breadmeau. Like you have some impact. Yeah, that's my thing. And I know that that's where I need to be here too, because there's not that many people that can be in the shoes of you guys to know us to be able to tell that story. Not that many people that should be the ones out there telling the story.

Right, that's true too. You've got to put on the right. we have to put on the right face here. We have to be able to showcase ourselves in the right mindset and be knowledgeable about it. Right. And make sure that we're getting, we're portraying things in the right manner. Right. So I know that's a really important spot that I got to be in here too within this deal. Now I get, you know, I'm in a really neat spot with the podcast and with things I do that.

Like I'm in a position to be a thought leader and to get paid for going and speaking at that. So it works. It's an actual business. But I think that's going to be the next pieces is helping to think. think about these things from a different mindset because I've got so many different rungs in the ladder that I mean that's always going to be the long term is where does this have to go at an even higher level just like I've been solving problems for myself here well now we can continue to progress that upwards from there sounds like you need a D rock I need a D rock you need a Drock

just follow you everywhere you go yeah I mean day to day life and trying to document our stuff and document the story I mean I think we've done a pretty decent oh yeah I mean I've got a couple hundred YouTube videos and now. Most companies out there don't do a really good job of what their social media. Personal brands like do a great job. But most companies out there, they, they don't, and you guys have done very well. We've kind of gone back and forth where a lot of the social media, it is me. So it's one and the same. Okay. So I've got my personal brand and I've got the company and they're for the most part synonymous. You're aligned. Yep. Yeah. For the most part, pretty dialed in. I've, I've gone through waves of where I don't want it to be that. Right. Because I want to separate it. I want to separate it. And I want to be able to have it

be its own thing and have it not be, oh, well, that's Mitchell Hora. And because I don't want to overshadow anybody else that's in the company. They're the ones that are running the whole thing. They're the ones making it actually happen. Shoot, I'm not out there doing the actual work right now. And, but I've got to be out there driving the boat and bringing in those next things. So it is important. Yeah. And that's not for everybody. Being the one to tell the story. and being the one to get up in front of large group of people. It's for a very small minority. Right.

If you can do that, that's important work. And if your employees, I mean, your employees should understand that that's super important. It's where all the business comes. Right. I mean, that shouldn't be shadowing them at all. If they are, you know, they should know that. They know that it's the right spot and they see that. And they don't necessarily want to be the ones out there.

Right. They want to do more. They want to be able to do it. But not like at the level and at the crowd that I'm at. Like with the farmer group, with the smaller kind of thing, things like that, for sure. They want to be well versed. They want to know what they're talking. They want to be a thought leader in that space.

But I mean, yeah, this is where the revenue comes from. It's for me going and doing stuff. And whether be podcasts or whether it be events or just going out there, like, that's where all the revenue comes from. Because it is relationships. We're in ag. It's meeting people. It's being able to be out there and be aware and being having those connections. Getting eyeballs.

It's where the, it's what pays the bill. But luckily it's my, it's my best spot to be in other than spending a lot of time on the road, a lot of time driving. So there's some of those bits and pieces of the process that I got to be involved in that sometimes aren't not as quick as what they should be. Right. Because I'm not at the computer. I'm not there. I'm driving. And yeah, spending, you know, you were saying spend $200 a month on fuel.

If I'm spending $400 a week on gas, it's a light week. Oh, wow. Holy cow. So my average, holy cow. Typically, I'm 1,500 to 2,000 miles a week, but that's just how it's been.

And it's through conference season and stuff like that. You know, it goes in ebbs and flows. But yeah, I mean, it's a lot. What I was going to say is, I think, though,

you're very well positioned. You know, as you said, today, your personal brand and continuum is aligned. Yeah. But as it grows,

and if the day comes that you step off, that ship and then it's acquired. You're, all of the other things that you're in and all the places that you are speaking, that your brand, at some point it will diverge. Yeah. And you're totally going to be able to take that with you. Yeah. So the time you're spending. And I mean, your entrepreneurial, your entrepreneurial story.

I mean, yeah, you're, you know an ag and being an ag and being known for, you know, being a farmer's awesome. But you have, you're so multi. diverse and who you are and like what you're about and your story like well you're a builder you're a builder you know you have the you have multi things within that same passion of it and stuff too that like right i mean i do this too because it's fun right because this is what i like to do and like you know we this is and i think for a lot of farmers too i mean this is what we do like we're doing this because it's a lifestyle and now i've been able to take it further into okay this can be a real scalable tech kind of business too.

So it's just taking it to that next level. But yeah, I mean, shoot. I mean, I think about like being able to just be like out there planting corn running the combine stuff. Like that's what I want to do when I'm like, am retired and stuff. Right. And still have other projects and things. So what I really want to be able to do after is like, okay,

I'm going to be directly building businesses but also investing in other people and investing in helping them build businesses too based on what I've learned. and then continuing to, you know, build out the farm, but I don't need to have a, you know, 30,000 acre farm by any. Right. You know, we could be a little bit bigger than what we are now and would probably be good. You don't want to stress you out too. It's got to be in the right balance.

But the robots are going to do all the farming anyway, so it'll be. There you go. So, hey, maybe having that 30,000 acres wouldn't hurt. Because if you're not, if you're not out there, it's all right. Well, it's been a pleasure having you on here. Yeah, this has been damn good. This has been a great conversation that went. I don't know.

What are we in? Like 20 minutes in or something like that? it's flown by time is definitely one more time because people want to know people may get to the end and want to know how's the best way to get a hold of you yeah so I mean throughout our website

continuum.ag but on social media at continuum ag for sure trying to be out there I mean just like you guys I mean it's so much about telling this story you guys have a specific story within your operation that you're telling I'm just trying to tell it from my angle as well the consumer folks watching they can watch whatever the heck they want. We have to give them as much as possible. We're not going to saturate the market.

We need more and more farmers. And people are curious. They want to know. They're curious. They want to know. And they're becoming more and more aware of us too. And we've got to be able to show them. Here's what we're doing. I always try, at least I haven't always succeeded, but we've got to work together as a cohesive ag community to us. And I haven't always done the best at it. But my way of farming is not to shame your way of farming or anybody's way of farming. Exactly. It's no, we're doing this because this is the best way that we know how to do it. Now, do I think that more farmers can, you know, use no-till, use cover cups? Yeah, not because of this is this, again, this hippie thing. No, it's because you made more money. That's why we're

doing it. Like, we're doing it because it's making money. And then it just happens to give all these other things too. Right. But it's the same thing on how we raise pigs and stuff today that there's you know folks in from out of town here over the weekend that they're like, oh gosh, those pigs in that barn, yeah, you can raise 1,200 pigs in that barn right there so much more cost effective, so much better than what we were doing before. You know how much land and what kind of footprint. Have 1,200 pigs just out running all over the freaking place. Talk about unleashing some carbon. Put 1,200 pigs out on your alpha off. Get some runoff going. See how fast you can. can unsequester that carbon.

Yeah, they'll be. Say goodbye to the topsoil. You ain't going to have any. No, you want it. So, but I think that they haven't thought about it though in that system of, no, this is actually is better for the environment. A lot of reasons. And it was cold over the weekend and all winter, it's freezing outside.

That pig doesn't want to be out there. Maybe they, okay, sure, whenever, when it's nice, whatever, but the windows are open the whole thing. They got plenty of fresh air. They got plenty of sunshine kind of coming in there. They're getting that. feel as well. They don't know anything different either. And just like all of our pets and stuff, it's like when it's winter and it's freezing cold, do you think they want to be outside?

No, you have them coming inside and hanging out there. It's like we're doing the same thing for livestock because it's better for them and keep them more consistent. Yeah, it's better to make it cost effective and it's in the production system that we're in. But I think we've got to be able to really showcase that story, you know, too, that, you know, we're doing things because we're trying to make this cost effective for everybody and luckily we're in america that has the lowest cost of food as a percentage of your take home than any other country in the world yeah is because we do the things the way that we do you're hitting on it you're hitting all the points because like i think there's a lot of consumers out there that just don't even know what why we do the

practices we do yeah well that's what we all and they hear they hear the they hear what the media tells them or hear it from one person that oh this is the way you should do it but they don't hear it from an actual farmer. Yeah. And that's why it's really important for all of us to hop on and tell your story, no matter what it is. Tell your story and show the why. Show the why, but, you know, don't be stupid either.

If you, you know, it's back to that having a good thought leader out there. If you don't think you can rein it in a little bit, you know, you got to be, you got to be a conscious. Yeah. Well, you got to be articulate. Yeah. But you have to be honest. Well, we have to have empathy for those other people and understand, like, how they're

approaching it. Right. that they don't necessarily know any different. Just like I don't know nothing about, you know, on medical side or whatever. So many of these different things, I don't understand anything about it. Do I want to know everything about it?

No. No. Tell me what I absolutely have to know and make sure that I understand to the extent that I want. And that's it. All are good. And I don't know, but yeah,

we've got to be able to tell that. But I think that's also our opportunity within things like this, too, to promote and tell the rest of those other people's stories. and that's why I like always doing stuff like this. It's like, okay, we got to promote and share the people that can tell the right thing. And most people aren't going to be able to sit down and edit all this stuff like what you guys do, like what we do, have the equipment, have the know how to do all this.

Very few people are going to be able to do that. So we can enable them to go further. That's why having the right people in like sponsors and stuff like that to help us to do this. Because most farmers aren't going to be able to do what we do. Right. So I think that's an important part too. that not everybody has the logistic, you know, means. We all got to work together.

That's right. Mitchell, it's been an absolute pleasure, buddy. It's been fun. It has been fun. Thanks everybody for tuning in. Go follow Mitchell, pay the fee. There was a lot of value in this one, and I hope you guys got something out of it.

We'll see you guys back here next Friday for another Barn Talk episode. Have a great rest of your week.