Barn Talk - The Real State of Farming in 2026

Episode Date: February 2, 2026

Welcome to a special on-the-road edition of "Barn Talk," where Tork and Sawyer bring their honest, down-to-earth conversation about farming to a live audience in Buffalo Center, Iowa. In this episode, you'll hear about their multi-generational journey, the tough realities facing modern agriculture—from razor-thin profitability and labor shortages to the challenge of passing on the farm—and how they've used social media and creative business ideas to adapt and succeed. The hosts share candid stories from their own experiences, spotlighting both the hardships and the opportunities that come with farming today. They also dig into the importance of family, resilience, and leaving a legacy—all with a generous dose of humor and straightforward advice. If you care about what it takes to keep farming alive and thriving, this is the episode for you. Join Tork and Sawyer for a lively, practical, and heartfelt discussion that’s about more than just agriculture—it’s about family, community, and never giving up. SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c  LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  APPLE ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk   ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS   ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4   ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS    00:00 "Barn Talk: Wisdom & Community" 06:00 "Barn Talk Origin Explained" 14:32 "This’ll Do Farm Journey" 19:37 Corn and Bean Market Outlook 24:48 Crude Oil, Cattle, and Imports 30:01 "Declining Influence of Midwest Farmers" 36:06 Farmland and Real Estate Outlook 38:50 "Pride in Farming's Purpose" 48:08 "Decline of Brand Loyalty" 49:09 Breaking Brand Loyalty 58:16 "Building Family Farms Together" 01:02:06 Generational Legacy and Humility 01:08:51 Nitrogen System Private Investment Details 01:12:13 DVI Site  01:16:14 "This'll Do Farm Origins" ------------------------------- ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠  The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional, professional broker or financial advisory. Understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this website at your own risk. RISK STATEMENT– The trading of Bitcoins, alternative cryptocurrencies, NFTs, individual stocks, etc. has potential rewards, and it also has potential risks involved. Trading may not be suitable for all people. Anyone wishing to invest should seek his or her own independent financial or professional advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Hey, welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays at the barn, but not today. It's too stinking cold, so we had to move. We had to take her on the road. So get ready because this is going to be a Barn Talk on the road edition. It's about eight degrees in southeast Iowa, and the wind's blowing, and the heat.

couldn't keep up. So we decided that we were going to share with you an episode that we did here just a couple of days ago in Buffalo Center, Iowa, courtesy of the Central States Agency. We spoke to a group of their customers and potential customers, and we got done with that episode, and we were like, you know, this is pretty good. And very relevant. And we thought, we're just going to put it out. So today's episode is going to, look a little bit different because it was recorded live there at the site and it's going to sound a little different because we were wearing lapel mics but the audio might be a little bit glitchy but bear with us and we're going to clean it up and I think it'll be good. One last thing

before we get into it, we are going to do a few live events this year. If you or your company have an event coming up and you think that Sawyer and I might have have something relevant to say, let us know. Reach out to us at barn talk show at gmail.com, and we'd be happy to talk with you. We're not going to do a lot of them, but we're going to do a few. So hope you like this episode. Now, let her rip. Welcome to Barn Talk.

What happens at the barn, stays in the barn, but not tonight. This is our first ever on the road edition. So we're homebodies, and like I said, we shoot our podcast in a, barn on our farm my grandpa built so literally that's why we call it barn talk but are we live we're live we're live yeah we're giving her we're giving her to go tonight i you know we're we're gonna hit her hard tonight but you know the main objective tonight for us is we really just want to make sure you guys get something valuable uh something we like to always say on the show is if you get any value from the show share it out with the people that you know because we want to try to you know grow this show

do more of this kind of stuff in person and grow the community and hopefully try to get more and more interesting guests on the show. So we just really appreciate you guys coming out tonight and giving us a listen and supporting this agency but also just listen to us talk. And yeah, you know, like I was saying, we're not here to claim that we're experts. We're just here tonight to have a real honest conversation about agriculture and I think that's that's kind of the main goal so um you got anything to add to that wisdom wisdom humor that's how it goes when he says something snappy no uh i guess a little background on us for those how many people here have heard of us before yeah so pretty good yeah thank you too bad i think we came to the right place yeah um

i guess to know where you're going you need to know where you've been and so why are you tell them actually why don't you tell them a little bit about what it means to you like why we started bar and talking about what it means you because I think it's it's a kind of a good well yeah I mean it kind of all ties into the history but so I'm an 80s kid born in 71 and I grew up my father was a military guy he was he was a Mustang pilot in World War II so if you do the quick math on that there was a pretty big age gap between me and my father He was 52 when I was born. So everybody thought, oh, hey, you got a cute grandkid.

It's like, I don't know. That's my youngest boy. But kind of as a result of that, you know, what do I call that? I got a lot of colorful metaphors. Oh, a lot of colorful metaphors. But, you know, I wouldn't say that you got positive reinforcement. You just got a lot of reinforcement. And there was the, you know, the right way, the wrong way, and my way.

and we're going to do it my way. But as a kid, I was the youngest of three boys, and I was my dad's shadow. And so any time that he went to town, I went with him, and whether it was the feed store, which, you know, today we don't have that like we did back then, but, you know, we'd go to freshwater's feeding grain, and there would always be either four or six guys in there.

There'd either be a game of cards going or just everybody sitting around drinking coffee and chain smoking. And as a young kid, I just was amazed at how many really, really smart people there were, because these guys, they were solving all the world's problems. And they were using words that I had never heard before, but I thought, I need to remember that one. And it really made an impression on me because whether you went to the feed store or we went to Oscar Meyer to pick up the hog check or we went to Keating's welding,

there was a group, you know, that was their place that they went. And they, whether it was the local economy, whether it was the federal government, whether it was ag, they were all very passionate about what they thought, and they let everybody know what their opinion was. And when we started Barn Talk, you know, we wanted to do a podcast. We didn't really know what we wanted to, what we were going to call it or anything like that. And I was like, let's call it Barn Talk, because to me, the inspiration for that was the feed store and those honest conversations with people about what they really think because this was coming right out of COVID and I feel like that's when we really got into this

into this news cycle where whichever side of the aisle you're on these media companies they would only give everybody just enough time to say whatever the most abrasive thing they could to piss everybody off. And you never got like the whole story about anything and nobody could ever really make their points. And I wanted to just be able to talk at length about what was going on, what we thought about it, why we thought it that way. And if we had a guest, we wanted to do it to where they had time to explain their point. So for me, that was the, that was where Barn Talk came from. Now, I spoke earlier about, you know, my dad and growing up. So I'm the fifth generation, he's the sixth, and we row crop 400 acres, very small by today's standards.

We raised about 20,000 head of hogs a year. We got four 2,400 finishers between us. Our bread and butter was the hog business. I am a recovering farrow-to-finish farmer. You know, my whole life, I remember our first confinement was built the year I was born. And I remember when we moved all our sows inside in like 75, 76. And we always raised hogs. And my master plan was I was going to do just like my dad and I was going to raise pigs. And my mother was bound and determined that I should go do something else. So I went to Kirkwood Community College and learned how to drink beer out of a funnel, had a really good time there.

And then they said, we don't really want you to come back another year. Don't forget about the Coors Light Party Ball. Yes, we had a great conversation today about the Coors Light Party Ball. Anybody remember those? Oh, the best five and a half gallons of beer that you could put in a minivan. And I forgot about people, you could take it when it was done, and you could cut a hole in and put a light bulb in it and make a lamp out of it. It was awesome. They should bring them back. But anyway, so I came back home in I think 91, and we had 400 sows, Farrow to Finish.

And I bought, I had a neighbor that was moving to Williamsburg, Iowa that had 120 sow pharaoh to finish operation. And I purchased that. And my dad and I combined our sows. And then we went to offside nursery, and then we finished at both sites. not the most genius thing in hindsight, but at the time it made sense. And that was in 1992, and I was 20 years old, and hogs were 70 bucks, and I thought, man, I had the world by the tail. And then 95 came, and I realized the world had me by the tail. And then 98 came, and I realized I had no tail left. that life had chewed it off. And that was when my dad and I decided that we weren't going to beat this dead horse anymore.

We exited the Wien to Finish building. And when that happened, all we had was the rent on the building. We were renting them to somebody. And we were grain farming 400 acres. Well, I had a wife and one kid. And I knew my dad wasn't going to go get a job. So that was when I left the farm and I started working on a construction crew. And then eventually I ended up selling hog buildings.

I worked for a company out of Wellman, Iowa for 15 years. And then after that, I went to work for an integrator, Eichelberger Farms, out of Wayland, Iowa. And I did all their grower relations. But during that time, I never lost, you know, my goal was always to get back to the farm. Find a way to get back to the farm. But the economics just weren't there. And the way it finally happened is I finally woke up and realized that the product that I was selling was the perfect product for my family farm. And in 2010, I built my first contract finisher and then built one, I don't know, however long.

Sawyer built his last one in 20. So over that 10-year period, we built four sheds. And that is what gave, that's what gave me the income, ultimately, that I came back to the farm full-time, and I thought, this is how I'm going to get a spot that Sawyer can join me. And then it didn't quite work that way because Sawyer had other ideas. So none of this is by my design that I'm sitting here in front of you. And so you can tell them kind of the rest of the backstory. Yeah, so I saw my dad just, you know, fighting, crawling back to the family farm and saw the work ethic. That made a real impression on me, you know, growing up.

I didn't grow up a traditional farm kid because, you know, dad was always away. He was working. And there was 400 acres, and my grandpa, like dad said, he was an old guy. I mean, he was old. He had his way of doing things, and dad would come back and farm with him. But I just didn't think I would ever be back. But when dad started building hog barns, I saw, okay, there might be an opportunity here as I get older to get involved in the operation. And so ultimately, when I was getting closer to graduating from high school, you know, school is never my thing.

I love talking about business, farming, you know, money, entrepreneurship. That always appealed to me. But college, I just knew that I was probably going to go to Iowa State, get an Ag Studies degree, and probably do a lot of drinking beer out of a funnel, and probably meet a lot of great people. But I just knew I'd probably come back four years later and start chorn dad's barns and get started in farming. And so during that time, though, to help me kind of make that decision,

I started really diving into the internet and all the free game and free knowledge out there that was available to us. Just through, you know, when I'm talking about social media, talking about business, talking about entrepreneurship, investing, all that. And it really sparked my interest to say, okay, I really need to take advantage of the social media thing. I just don't know what I want to be known for. You know, I'm a young kid. I don't know squad. you know what am I going to get on social media and start talking about or showing and then as I was trying to figure that out and learn You know I saw a guy on on Instagram or YouTube probably like millennial farmer if you any of you know who Zach Johnson is

And he he inspired me you know was like okay this guy is going out at his grain farming operation every day on his family farm just showing what he does Why can't I do that and so literally I bought all this camera stuff when I was 19, 18, 19 years old while I was shorned dad's barns. And I just said, I went to him and I was like, I think I'm going to start a YouTube channel. I'm going to start showing what we do on our operation every day. And I think he gave me the hairy eyeball a little bit and just said, well, go for it. But in hindsight, I'll just tell you that I never thought it would work. I thought it was a complete waste of time.

but what I didn't tell him was I was looking at this and I told my wife this I told his mom this I said I need him way worse than he needs me because if this doesn't go well he can leave and if he leaves I'm screwed

because I don't want to do this forever you know and so I just let it go you know and it and he started bringing this GoPro around and I just tolerated it. Yeah, and then so when in our YouTube channel, this will do farm is what it's called.

And that's our farm name. When it took off, it was actually when I started building my first barn. So in 2020, we started documenting the building process of that barn. And our YouTube channel started to get some really good traction. And then that's when I think we both kind of looked at each other and said, okay, there's something here. And so we've been doing that YouTube channel and this will do farm on Instagram and all the social media for still to this day we post a video every single week and the clips we break up all the clips and post them across all platforms but in 2021 we made the decision to start barn talk and uh literally cleaned

out the hayloft of our barn that my grandpa built back in in 1950 when he came back from world war two used to ferro pigs in that in that barn and uh clean out the hayloft set all the stuff up and started making a making a podcast and like i said the first episode that's out it's the very first episode ever shot and we just looked at each other and said well I think that's pretty good so we just trying to get better every single episode and every single video we put out but it was definitely the best decision I could have ever made because you know I was a young guy wanted to help dad out wearing the ropes of farming but I was also just sitting you know and being like how can I add value to the farming operation how can I how can I contribute you know that was always the

thought in my head and so I'm glad that I did it and we wouldn't be honest the stage we're on today if it wasn't for you guys you know all the guys that raised their hand like it really mean it really does mean the world to us that you you know whether it's watching a clip or listen to an episode or watch it like we mean it means the world to us we wouldn't be able to do the things that we're able to do today so yeah side note we also wouldn't be able to do the things we do today if it wasn't for the omish because when we started when he started building that shed the videos that popped off were omish using power to it. I mean, the number of comments about these guys being fake Amish, those aren't real Amish.

So these guys were from Bloomfield, Iowa, and people don't understand that every sect of Amish is run by a bishop. And it's really up to the bishop, you know, what they can or they can't do. And so this community made the decision that they had all these guys that were carpenters. and so they owned a lease. The church would lease the telehandler, and then the church would pay somebody an Anglo to drive the van.

So every crew had one guy on it that wasn't Amish. He drove the telehandler, and he drove the van. And then every one of these vans pulled a trailer that had a giant air compressor in it, and them guys had every tool known to man running on air. And when they started building Sawyer's Shed, I mean, the views went off on that, and people, those aren't real Amish, you can't do that. No, no, no, no.

I mean, it just, it was crazy. So we owe them a debt of gratitude. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, I think that's kind of the main gist of our story. You know, we're, like I said in the intro, we're just trying to figure out how to make our farm viable for the next generation. You know, we're, I'm going to have kids someday, and like, that's our main priority, right? We want to, we're in the thick of it with you guys, you know, just trying to make a go with this farming thing and really pass on the family legacy and figure it out.

But it wouldn't be a Barn Talk podcast episode if we didn't do a market update. And we're not going to bore you with the markets, but if you've never listened to Barn Talk before, Torque always does a market update, talking about his, what he thinks about the markets and usually has some funny commentary in there. I'm show prep for Rojag. They watch the market update and then they concoct there. So when you get that 30 second phone call, you can thank me for that because I did all the research. Maybe, maybe not. So these numbers are off, and I know the core market was up a few cents today.

So this is slightly outdated. I always love it when people send us messages because when we shoot a podcast, it usually comes out three or four days after we shoot it. And somebody always comments that those numbers in the market update aren't right. I'm like, well, I know they're, I know they're not right. It's okay. It's all right. It's just for effect. Anyway, so corn for March 426 and December corn is 454. And so by my rough math, we're like 20 cents off of where we were pre-USDA report. And I was listening to the goddess of grain the other day. And it's not a very rosy picture for corn because basically we already had. record exports, record feed use, record ethanol demand, and thanks to the million acres of corn that we found and raising the yield a half a bushel, we've got like a 2.2 billion

bushel carryout. And if you figure that we got 98 million acres of corn next year and it yields trend line, you're going to end up with just about as big a carry as what we got this year and that's figuring all this all this excellent you know we're using as much corn as we can so that doesn't get you very excited and then the bean market's not a whole lot better beans 1067 for March November 1076 and really the only I think the only upside that I see in that is and I this is why it's good that this is why the internet's a good place because it makes you think about things that you didn't you wouldn't normally thought about. So Brazil has a hundred million bushels that they need to ship, but they basically got to get that

to the coast and get it shipped at a rate of 15 million metric tons a month. Right now in the United States we're shipping like six and a half million metric tons a month and we have way better infrastructure than they have. And there's already, there's There's already a lot of talk about stuff backing up down there. So I think you've got to wonder, like, does all that crop make it to market? What kind of quality problems they have? What kind of harvest problems they have? I don't know, but you might be able to see more upside in the bean market than the corn market.

I don't know. Anyway, bean meal 294 a ton, wheat 523, and cotton for March is 63. And the reason I threw them in there is because, and we'll talk about this later, but there is nothing worth a crap. So if you're a cotton guy, it's like we wonder, why are all these cotton guys planting beans and corn? Well, the reason is because the break-even on cotton is like, I don't know, it's around a buck 25 a pound. and that futures 63 cents a pound. So that's a money loser.

It's not even close to working. So they're going to plant beans or they're going to plant corn. And then you go to wheat. Wheat's not a whole lot better. So now where we are today, we've got this country where all of the fringe that used to get planted to something else is getting planted

to two commodities. and somehow we got to get rid of all of it. Now the dollar's cheap, the dollar is super weak, and that helps a lot, but I don't know how many mystery buyers are going to come in and how high exports can go. But, I mean, long term, I think that's a question we've got to figure out. Feed it to livestock. I think that's a good answer because the hog guys, February hogs, 8615,

July hogs 105. I'm a hog guy and I can tell you there isn't anybody that can mess up a market better than hog farmers because we all think that we're going to expand and nobody else is and then everybody expands and then we all look around like well how the hell did that happen and we're all trying to do it right now but the problem is the health is terrible anybody who talk to that feeds for whoever for the most part their health is terrible production we we have gotten super efficient on the same south side and these sow farms are kicking out pigs like crazy as long as they don't have purrs and as long as it doesn't mutate and as long as they can stay stable but most of them can.

And I know like in our operation, our group, it's all over southeast Iowa. And I just had a group that I finished out that were purchased pigs out of Nebraska. They were Livingston pigs. and I lost, and they double-stocked me, 5,000 head in 2,400. We took the overstocks out. We finished the rest of them. For the whole group, I lost 70 pigs. I haven't had a group that good in probably 10 years.

And I called my old boss, and I'm like, yeah, this is what it was like. This is what it was like raising pigs back when you could go three or four days, you know, and you wouldn't find a dead pig. But it's not that way. And he's like, well, get ready because that farm broke with purrs, so you probably won't get them again. But the thing keeping the cap on the hog market is that production. We're not going to grow that. We're not going to grow the size of the hog numbers near as fast as we have in the past

because we've got a lot of trouble with production. The cattle guys, though, Sawyer made a great comment we were driving in here. He's like, everybody's pissed at the cowl guys because they're making money. They've lost money for 30 years, but now they're going to make it for three, and everybody's like, them rotten cow guys, them greedy bastards. I'm like, I feel bad for the young guy that is like, man, I got to get in this cattle deal. And then somehow, some way, they scrape away and they get in it. And then they get it on the bottom side, and then they have to wait another 30 years before they make money again. So I don't know, you know, the cattle deal, it's just going to keep running because it takes so long to grow that herd.

The only thing it can mess it up, I guess, is if JBS just gets unlimited importation into the United States, but that probably isn't going to happen. The only other thing I was going to share is crude oil. It doesn't seem to matter what happens in the world. Crude oil is going to say 58 bucks, and OPEC is going to pump all they can because they would just soon have the United States cut back on the shale business. Shale business has the highest cost versus what they can pump oil out of the ground at. And so you would think they want the price higher, but I think they want to try to get rid of their competition. So they just raise production again. That's something to watch.

How many people got a bunch of gold buried in their yard and what's their address? Because holy mother Mary, gold's $5,000. And I think the crazier one is silver. Silver's $100. I honestly didn't think that would. ever happen. And there might or might not be a short on silver because I've seen like three stories where they think that the number of people that are trading silver futures, there's more paper traded than what there's physical silver. And everybody's starting to figure it out.

And they think there's going to be a push on it so it could go a lot higher. Anyway, did I go too long? No, I think that was good. I was wondering if you got any silver or gold. If I did, I sure as hell won't tell you because you would hit me with a shovel and steal it like Yeah, something like that. Something like that. I mean, the question, when you understood that they found all these this million acres corn,

what's your thought on? Is that real? Or is that just something that you're screwing? Boy, that's a great question. I don't think it's real. I don't. But then again, I don't think they're yield numbers, right? But the, now the acres is a different story. If that's, if that isn't real, I think that will show up.

in our supply, but it'll show up probably too late to move the market. But I think everybody thought that the yield number was going to be two bushel less. You know, I just, I felt like that was like a foregone conclusion. And when it came out a half a bushel higher, it was just like getting kicked square in the nuts. I mean, I was like, what the heck? And I don't think that number's right either. But if you take, with those acres, if you take that and you drop that yield, it doesn't change that any number that much. I mean it really doesn't. It would have been in hindsight it would have been a more a psychological bump than a reality and so It's like everything with the government by the time they figure it out We'll be into selling next year's crop before they figure out that it's not right. So I don't know, but I don't think that's right

and that's worth exactly what you paid for him Far from it. Far from it. Far from it. This is not market advice, financial advice. We could call it. Man, we should have so many disclaimers. Well, we should just wear a T-shirt with all the disclaimers.

We should have just called the podcast speculation, but that's not near as sexy. So, yeah. Yeah, so that is the Bartok Hot Off the Press Market Update, courtesy of Central States Agency. So now we're going to get into something a little more. Well, markets aren't, they're a little more doom and gloom right now. We're going to really depress you before we build you all up. Yeah, yep. We're going to break you down and build you up.

So we're going to get into the challenges that Dad and I kind of feel like are the biggest ones facing agriculture. And I'm sure most of you probably agree. But, you know, to me, as a young guy, getting into farming and been in it for a little bit now since 2020, I actually have some skin in the game. And the biggest thing that I worry about is, man, just the profitability of playing the commodity game. It just seems like the reality of agriculture today is, you know, it's get big or die or create your own market or do a little bit of both. And, you know, I, there's so many examples of people that are doing some creative things to, you know, bring outside income to the farm or trying to do something on the farm to help stable their operation.

And I think we're just going to have to see more of that. And I think we're heading into an era of just like having to think outside the box when it comes to farming because it's just getting harder and harder. Input costs continue to rise. We get paid relatively the same thing. You know, you have that $7 corn year every once in a while, but those are far and far and fetched between. So I think that to me is like the scariest thing. And I don't know about you guys, but I want to really enjoy farming and feel like, you know, let's make some good money at it and like carry it. and carry it on to the next generation.

And right now, it just seems like the profitability side is worrisome. Well, and at the same time that we're dealing with that, I think, I mean, I was happy to see Trump come to Iowa because at least it's perceived that people in Washington still are very interested in what the Midwest believes, what we all think. But there's fewer of us all the time.

The number of people engaged in agriculture and the number of pure farmers keeps dwindling. And a statistic that I couldn't find in any of you that are on X, there's a guy named Jason Mock from out in Indianapolis area. And I don't know how he comes up with the stuff he does or how he has enough time of the day to do the amount of research he does. But he's a smart cat. And it's been a few months ago, he had a really great statistic about agriculture's role in total GDP in the United States over from the 1950s to today. And if you want to know why you feel like your voice is not being heard like it used to be, it's because it's not. because agriculture's percentage of total GDP in the United States is shrinking. And so in my notes, I just put that you're all one percenters, but you're not one percenters like Warren Buffett.

There's fewer of us and fewer of us, and we don't have the poll with our political class that we used to. So at the same time that we're getting squeezed, we also, I feel like, are losing our voice a little bit. And so that worries me a lot. Yeah. I think another thing that worries me is just the diminishing workforce. I don't know about you guys, but getting labor, getting quality labor on your farm is one of the hardest things it feels like. And, you know, we have this discussion on the podcast, all these data centers going up in Iowa here and in the Midwest. You know, all these kids, all these kids getting out of school,

I mean, shit, I would wanna get in the trades. Think about how much electrical work's gonna need to be done. Think about how many welders need to get out there, plumbers, whatever. You know, as you're a young kid, you're looking at your pay on getting out and working at these data centers are working in the trades versus,

oh, let me go sit in my ass in the semi and haul grain. Well, I'm gonna get paid a heck of a lot more over here than I am over here. And I just think that's gonna continue, you know, why wouldn't you want to go for the bigger payday and the more opportunity? And so that, we already have kind of a labor problem. You know, the workforce just feels like it keeps dwindling on high-quality labor. But, you know, I felt like the opportunity would have been with young people

that are in the Midwest or in the South that have a good work ethic. But if I'm then, I'm looking at these jobs that are coming up, but I'm going, I'm going to go get, I'm going to go take that over the farm. And then the other side of that is, immigration is in the news every day. And the part that really pisses me off is at the same time that we're talking about immigration and we want to get people who here that are here illegally

or people that are here illegally that have a criminal element that we want to get out. Okay, that's fine and dandy. I think that's great. But why in the world can't both sides of our political class agree that it would be a really good idea to make it so that if you are a good person that wants to bring, wants to start, wants to come to America, wants to work, wants to build a life, why should it be that hard to legally come to this country? And there's no, I don't see any talk of that on either side. And it's just, it's so bizarre to me because every industry that you talk to, we all have the same problem. We don't have enough.

labor. And I think the only way we're going to get it is through immigration, but we're spending all the time and all of the rhetoric on the bad side of it and fixing a problem, but the real problem we have is brewing. And so many industries, I mean, ag definitely depends on the visa program, but we could fix a lot of that with just common sense, you know, it's not that hard. It really is, the technology is there as far as verification and background checks and all that. If you want to come to this country and you want to work, you should be able, I think you should be able to. Anyway, it's a problem. Yeah, it's a problem.

I guess I want to go one more thing. You know, when we were prepping for this, we talked about land prices. I can't remember if you can remember your thought on that. But, you know, something I think people don't think about enough is just the common knowledge that's out there of the average investor. There's so much free game on the internet to learn how to invest money, buy real estate, you know, just buy assets and build wealth. I feel like there's a lot of, you know, outside investors coming into the ag sector that are realizing, you know,

well, I can just rent my ground to a farmer and let him rent it, you know, or farm it. I don't need to farm it. They're looking at land almost like a rental property, you know, and it just seems like that's, there's more and more people that are just getting smarter and wanting to buy land, buy real estate. and the common investor, the average person, is just getting smarter. And that's something that is a little concerning because, you know, people talk about and they speculate, is land going to keep going up or is it going to go down? I think, man, a lot of farmers, we all want to farm.

We all want to keep buying land. But then you also got all these people from the outside that are getting smarter that want to get into agriculture and realize the land value and how great it is. And then you also have the institutions as well that they're trying to store value in something like land. Yeah, and the other thing that's hurting that, think is commercial real estate is a dumpster fire and I think it's gonna be I think you're gonna see I don't know I mean on the one hand there is an awful lot of land that's gonna have to turn over because there's more people over the age

of 65 than under the age of 55 farm and so naturally and we've been talking about this for years how there's all this land that's gonna turn over so on the one hand some people speculate that at some point there's a tipping point where there's more land that's gonna be for sale than people that want to buy However, when you have the stock market at all-time highs, commercial real estate as bad as it is, home prices maxed out to where you're hurting affordability, people that want to invest, farmland still doesn't look like it's run up as far as some of these other assets. So I think there's still going to be pressure there, and I think we're still going to be competing against commercial buyers or out-of-ag buyers on this land, which makes it that much harder. going forward. Yeah, and I don't, I feel like we've kind of gone long on the doom, you know. No more doom. No more doom. There's some other things we have on here. Costs of equipment,

replacement equipment, lack of crop options, all the other things. But I think we should get into some of the opportunities now and just talk about. You're all here. You're all here. You're all still farming. So by God, you should be proud of that because part of this game is just last it. I mean, it really is. It all gets a little bit easier, although you don't feel that way. But when I look back from when I started in the 90s and at my low, when I was fairly sure my wife was going to probably take my kids and leave me, which she, in hindsight, she probably should have been a little smarter, done something like that. But that's okay. I'm glad she stuck with me. I'm the best fixer-upper project that she's ever had. But, you know, from there to today,

I can look at that and go, well, you know, you're in pretty good shape. You've done a lot better. And I think sometimes we forget that because part of this business is just outlasting everybody else. I was going to say, you know, your one-percenter comment. Yeah. I mean, we are one-percenters, and that's something to be proud of. That you're still in this game. You're still in this business.

There's not a lot of us left, but that's something to be proud of. You know, I just, I had something I was going to say for the end, but just a little bit of a side note. I've really trying to challenge myself to get into, to grow in my faith this year. I just started reading a book. And in this book, it's from this pastor, Jobi Martin. He's a pastor down in Florida. But he talks about the story of Adam and the first thing that Adam ever got from God was work to enjoy. But he talks about the importance of co-creating on God's ultimate creation.

And I feel like as farmers, we embody that more than anybody. you know and just the fact that you're able to do that it's worth fighting for it's worth living for and you should be proud of that and you know I'm not saying we should all pat ourselves on the back and say oh we're you know we're because there's a lot of industries out there that do a lot of great things for people in the world but it's worth fighting for and so there's there's a lot of opportunities out there so I think we should all just remember that and it's it's it's okay to be proud to be a farmer and it's worth fighting for so I would say the biggest opportunity one of the biggest opportunities that I think about this era of where we are in farming and just the world is

the amount of free knowledge and tools that are available we've never seen anything like this before in our life. I mean, we're sitting here today because two pissed poor hog farmers from southeast Iowa figured out to start shooting podcast and started making YouTube content. We didn't go to college. I didn't go to college for that. That was all trial and error YouTube and just figured it out as I went. and we created an opportunity that has helped our farm tremendously. And there's so many things like that out there. All the knowledge that you could possibly ever want or need is on the internet, and you just got to go find it.

There is people that are giving out free game every day about business, about farming, about investing. You just got to go find it and search it. And I think the sky's the limit when it comes to opportunity in that regard. It's never been easier to start a business. I mean, it's hard economy right now, but, I mean, my God, if Grandpa, I mean, Grandpa would look at today and be like, man, you guys have so much opportunity and so much free knowledge available to you that we never had. I just think people forget how much knowledge is out there, how much free games out there, and how it's never been easier to start a business today.

Actually, Grandpa would look at all of you and go, you're paying for water? What in the hell is wrong with you? You can just go get it out of the tap. I don't understand this. He never really did like bottled water. He didn't like bottled water. He thought that was. He wished he would have started that.

Well, he did say that. He's like, boy, I tell you what, if I would have known people are going to be this damn dumb, I would have started that. No, you're 100% right. And you know, you had a guy up here talking about AI, and it's going to come. You're going to use it.

You may be suspicious of it, but I can tell you, we're building a, we're building a manure separation system. on our farm. That's a whole other story. But the crew of guys that are doing it, they are exactly what you would think a set of mill rights. They're basically industrial mill rights.

And they're exactly what you would think those guys would look like. And they act like that. But those guys, when they're calculating a run or they're figured out the load for the wire, for this motor or that motor, those guys, every one of them are using chat. They're on there and they're asking about loads, wire size, dimensions for this, you name it, incline.

I was amazed to sit and watch those guys do that because you would never, you would think that those would be the guys that would be like, I'm not using that, crazy. And I asked them about it and they said, it's made their job so much easier because it's their quick reference. It's their quick reference book now. And they use it every day. And it's coming.

Yeah, no. I 100% agree. You can either get on the trade or get ran over. I feel like AI is inevitable. So you can choose to be pissed off that it's here and not use it or adapt. You know, this is kind of the reality of it. But I think the one great thing that you can all feel good about is a lot of people are worried about being displaced by it.

You're not going to be displaced by it. You 100% are not. I tell robots. But I don't know how long that's going to be. I can't even get a Tesla bot to come drag my dead pigs out. I've been asking Elon. I'm messaging. I'm like, this is a perfect job for it.

Get that thing in here. I mean, it's all I got to do. And nope, can't, nothing. Crickets. He doesn't answer. We can't get up there with the DMs yet. Yeah, you know, funny thing about DMs. One, you can only send one.

And two, if they don't DM back, it doesn't work. And I've DMed him on every platform. And I think I'm out of options. Yeah. Yeah, I think that... Have I ruined your train of thought? Yeah, a little bit, but it's good. It's all good. I think the other big opportunity, and I kind of alluded to the challenge of, you know,

just finding profitability on your operation, you know, something that I think is a huge opportunity is thinking outside the box and trying to create your own market. And, you know, there's a farm out there, Krull Farms, Matt Kroll, he was a former Iowa football player. And we had him on the podcast, and they farm in Mountain, Vernon, north of Mount Vernon. Yeah, north of Mount Vernon here and I. Down by the river. Down by the river, yep.

And he is somebody that is a really good example of somebody that has found a way to create his own market on the farm, but also stay in the commodity game and play, you know, the traditional way of agriculture. So they have corn, soy beans, some row crop acres, and they have some cattle. But they also have a pumpkin patch. They have a farm store. They have greenhouses. They have a firewood business, and they have ag tourism come on their farm.

And direct-consumer beef. And they do direct-to-competal. Commercial beef and direct-customer. But we asked him, you know, what was your most profitable endeavor on your farm? And he was like, well, the row crops, they produce the most revenue, but the pumpkins were number two because they sell all their pumpkins to fairways and IVs locally and all that. And it was just like, here's an operation that has really figured out, we got to do something different and we just can't keep playing the same game that we're playing. We can play in it a little

bit and I think there's room to grow. I think we all know that we can keep growing a little bit there, but they're finding ways to bring profitability back into their operation by starting businesses on the farm or off the farm. And I think that that is what we all got to try to strive to do more of. I just truly believe it. We got to think outside the box. We got to try to start businesses. We got to try to find a way to bring. I want to find a way to control my own destiny. I don't know about you guys, but I get tired of being a price taker all the time. I want to be a price maker. I want to be a price maker sometimes.

And that's what we're trying to strive to do on our operation. It's find a way to do a little bit of both. We have room to grow. We can build some more sheds. We can buy some more acres. Hell, you know, like you said, cattle does look appealing right now, but knowing my luck, it'd fall out from underneath me if I ever got in. But, you know, there's room to grow.

Let me retire first. Yeah. Go do that. favorite saying to me as well, I won't have to worry about that right now, but you'll definitely have to. So that'll last me as long as I farm, but you'll have to deal with it later. So having an elderly father farming with you, you know, my dad was pretty active, very active in the farm, clear up into his early 90s. I'll tell you a quick story. So the last load of pigs that my dad loaded, he was 90 years old, and he loved loading.

pigs he counted every pig with a buzzer it it wasn't we tried to break you with that but anyway he would stand there make sure every pig went into the truck the packer would not yeah today he he would have gotten thrown out of Tyson probably but anyway we we finished loading I don't know we loaded two loads of pigs that that morning and we got done and he walked over the house and I finished up everything and I was leaving and I came by the house I stopped I came in and he He was slurring his words and I could tell something wasn't right and he said, I don't feel right. And for, you know, that's farmer.

If they say he don't feel right, he could drop dead right in your arms because never go to the doctor. So I take him the doctor and he'd had a slight stroke. And so they take him in, they put all these, give him all these tests and the doctor comes out and he asked me, what was your dad doing? I said, oh, we were loading pigs. and I mean he looked at me like he was going to charge me with elder abuse and I could see it his eyes and I just said to him I go oh no no you tell him that he can't help us load pigs I said I did not have anything to do with this and so then he went and you know he told my dad no no more of that so anyway that's the kind of guy he was but his favorite thing to do later in life was everything that got fixed on that farm he would get done and he would look at me and Pat me on the back and go, well, that'll last me as long as I'll need it, and then chuckle. And so now I get to do it with Sawyer. Yeah, and I hear it.

Trust me, I hear it. Well, I feel like you should definitely talk about an opportunity. I just talked about one. Talk about the equipment, the loyalty of the brands. Yeah, we talked about this with Austin a little bit today. I think that we might be heading in a time where brand loyalty isn't going to mean near as much as it used to, because most of us grew up and we were brand loyal. and the main reason we were brand loyal was because of the service we got from that dealer.

And I remember as a kid when we walked into the John Deere store, the parts guy there had worked there since he got out of high school. He knew what tractors we had. And as soon as you started rattling off what you needed, he knew what you needed. Now then you go to said dealer that now is one of eight locations. and the kid threw no fault of his own because they should have hired him back when they had two parts guy that had been there for 20 years, but they waited until those guys left, brought somebody in, and they don't know. They're lucky if they know what page of the screen to get to for you to point at the part number of what you need. So it's like it's not the same level of service as what it used to be. And unless there is a piece of technology that,

that company has that you just absolutely have to have. And I think we all need to ask ourselves, everything being equal and the price that we need something to be, is that one thing that you think you absolutely need to have that important? And if it's not, does that tractor, does that planter, does that chiseled, does that combine have to be that color? And I think the answer to that is, we may have to say, no, I don't think it does. And as our industry, that might be the best thing that ever happened to us because everybody else's service, excuse me, everybody's service might get a whole lot better if we weren't so damn brand loyal. So I think that's one opportunity.

Down where I live in the past, in the past three years, I've seen four of my neighbors that have gone from an entirely one-color fleet to a multicolored fleet. And I think you're going to see more of that because there's just not the convincing reason to just buy solely because, well, that's what we were up. Yeah, I agree with you. I had one other really great thing. Well, you can think on it. I think something I'll talk about is, and I don't want to beat a dead horse,

but I think the importance of building a brand around your farm. I mean, like I said earlier, man, that was the best decision we ever made. And despite, we just, you know, recently to be canon with you, we started making money doing it, you know, as time's going on. But that's honestly not the thing that has been the best part of it. The people we've met, the doors that have opened up because people know who we are, because we have shown what we did on our farm, has been huge. I mean, the opportunity, like Dad was talking about, this manure separation opportunity. We would have never had that opportunity to get involved in doing that if they didn't see our YouTube videos.

And yeah, people have heard about it before and they roll their eyes or whatever. But we're showing it on our YouTube channel. We'll see how it all pans out. But if it all fails, we can come back and say, you know, that was the biggest curse. We should have never, we should have never answered the phone with those. But right now it looks like it's pretty good deal. But all that to say, I think there's just, why not? Why not start a brand on your farm?

I think that what's the downside of it? What's the downside of it? I know people talk about, oh, there's militant vegans out there that are just going to harass me. It's really not that bad. I promise you, it's really not that bad. And there's more supporters than there are people that are going to hate on you. They really are. There's really a lot of people that want to support ag,

and there's a lot of opportunities that come with starting to show your friends. farm on social media. So I encourage anybody to do it or start a personal brand. Doesn't even have to be your farm. You're seeing that a lot on. If you're a young guy on TikTok, there's a hell of a lot of farmers that get on, I mean everybody does growing corn, Tony Reed. I mean, he just gets on there bullshits and he's built a brand and it's opened up doors for him. He's able to go to conferences, the people he's met, the opportunities he's been given. It's huge. It can be a huge thing for your farm. So I encourage anybody to give it a go. Okay. Yeah, did you figure it out? No, but it's, it's all good because what I really want to talk about and I don't want to keep you here too long,

but obviously one of the questions we get the most is this dynamic, you know, father and son. And the goal here is to transition this farm to another generation. I mean, that's what I've been about. My whole goal, when I came back to the farm, was the hog buildings was the way that I was able to come back to the farm. And I ask every banker that I run into this, I say, what is the next thing that is going to be the hog building that's going to enable another generation to farm? And those guys, they don't have any idea. Because what is it? I don't know what it is. But we have a growing problem because there is another generation. And we got to figure out a way that they can not only, not only that we can get them back there, but they can be satisfied and they can afford to raise a family

that we can keep this going. And, you know, we touched on when Sawyer started. I, yeah, I didn't think it was going to work, and it did. But it really, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and people ask us about that transition and how do you make that work? Because it's not like this all the time. When we really hit it big, we're going to release all the edited scenes where the violence and the hateful words, because that'll be a great episode. All the hog loading, yelling. It could just be an entire one hour of us loading pigs, throwing panels, percing at each other. Dad taking a buzzer and poking my butt, all that. Yeah.

You getting ran over by a pig and falling down to the. I'm not worried about the pigs. I'm more worried about what you do, Timmy. But anyway, this, if I could boil it down, This is kind of my, I don't know, this is my north star of how I look at trying to get another generation started. And that is, as you grow older, and now that I'm in my 50s, and there's something weird that happens when you get to be like 54, 55, all of a sudden, people start looking at you and asking you shit, like somehow you're supposed to have wisdom. Like just because your hair starts getting thin and your beard's this color, people are like, oh, look at that old bastard, he ought to know.

We'll ask him. And you're like, I don't know. I don't feel any smarter I did than when I was his age, but you're supposed to have wisdom. Well, part of that wisdom is experience of what doesn't work. I mean, we can all say that we have learned way more from the shift that's gone wrong than what's gone right. I mean, I know I have. but you develop this frame around your life and how you look at things. And anything outside of that frame is stuff that's gone wrong.

And it's ideas and its thoughts and it's this and that. And when you see an opportunity, you look at it through that window with that frame. And if it doesn't fit in that, nope. Because you know that as long as you stay within your little square, you have a higher probability of this. Okay, this might work because it's in here. Well, the problem is when you try to bring another generation back, they have no frame. The world is their oyster.

And they pick up TikTok and some guys growing walnuts and roast them in bourbon barrels and selling them the yuppies in San Diego. And they're like, ah, this is the greatest thing. Next thing you know, it's like, what are you doing? He's like, oh, I'm researching, you know, where I can buy walnut trees. And you're like, what the hell? okay, you have to be able, as the older generation, you have to be able to breathe, and you have to let, you have to let them figure some stuff out. And that means sometimes you have to let them fail because that's how they learn. Now then, the trick is to let them fail without costing you.

you a shitload of money. And that's an art as much as it, you know, that's not the easiest. But you have to be able to do that. And then the other thing is, like this social media, I was dead wrong. I was dead wrong. And I am so thankful that it worked.

And if I would have had my way, it would have never happened. Would have never happened. Yeah, I would say the best thing my parents ever did is they never crushed my spirit. You know, my parents always allow the market to decide if my idea was good or not. They never told me.

They might have had conversations when I wasn't there and said, oh boy, that ain't ever going to work. He's crazier than a pet coon. And that's not going to work. But they never told me that. They let me figure that out for myself. And I'm glad you didn't because I went through

with it and I started and it gave me the confidence to keep going. And keep going, keep going, and keep dreaming. And, you know, I start to film, you know, create my own frame, but, you know, I think for me working with dad, you know, honest to God, my dad is my business partner, my best friend, and we, like, we get along better. He's like, we can work together and shoot the shit together and have a damn good time, and we love each other. And, you know, I don't know if that's necessarily the case for everybody,

but I think a partner that makes that work so well is, you know, we communicate and we leave our egos at the door and we can resolve our conflicts pretty easy, you know, because we all know, we both know that our goal is to build this family farming operation up to something that's, that's great that we can pass on in the next generation. And sometimes you get passionate, sometimes you get pissed off at each other. But we're striving for the same thing. And, you know, you got to leave your ego at the door and just say, you know, I'm wrong. It is a lot easier. It is a lot easier and it used to be because he's so much bigger than me, now that I really don't have any choice because I haven't got a chance, so I just say, okay.

But I just think that ego can be an enemy sometimes, and I think a lot of people let the ego get in the way and they throw away a generational form because they can't get along with their dad. But it's like there's nothing better than working with your family. There's nothing better than building something great with your family. And if you can make it work, it's the ultimate in pursuit my opinion. And so we'll try not to piss each other off. But that's kind of my, that's kind of my two cents. Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting. An IG private wealth advisor

creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IGPrivatewealth.com. The last thing I'll say to, and another thing that I'm not an expert about, is building a transition plan. There's all kinds of people out there that would love to talk to you for two hours about building a transition plan. Well, I'm doing that right now. We're trying to figure out how we're going to make it work. Sawyer has a brother, his older brother, and they do real estate together.

He's not directly involved with a farm, but he's part of our group. And, you know, how do you make that work? I will just tell you this. Like a poor transition plan today and something happens to you is probably better than no transition plan today and something happens to you. and five years from now, you are going to look back at yourself, and this is for every generation. But five years from now, you're going to look back at yourself and you go, boy, that guy, that was an idiot.

And the problem is, five-year-old self, five years after that, is going to look back to that same person and go, boy, you weren't very smart. We learn as we go. And so if that is your goal, if your goal is to make it to where you're, another generation is going to be able to take over the farm. Don't wait till you're 75, and do not be one of those guys that thinks that, well, I would let them do it, but I just, I don't want him to piss it away, you know. I do not want to be the guy that's running the combine at 80 years old, and Sawyer's never run it.

I want to be the guy that does a poor enough job that Sawyer and Clay goes, God, we've got to get Dad out of here. I mean, God, he breaks more shit. Like that's my goal. I don't know that's weird, but I'm like, I'm ready. Boys, take it. And my level of, my level of ability, I, you know, I can actually work a lot harder than I really do. You always say, you always say, just give me a swivel coozy and I'll just, I'll just, I'll just fill everything. I want that new fold down deck, 120 inch John Deere Z mower with the double swivel insulated coozy. I'm happy. I'm tickled.

Top that. Yeah, that's pretty good. Well, I was going to say on that, what I was going to say on that is, you know, don't let your legacy be tainted because you didn't make a transition plan. Because if you piss away and put that off and put that off and something happens to you, you don't have it ready for the next generation. That is the last thing the next generation is going to remember you for. Is that burden that burden? Is that burden? I don't know about you, but I don't want to put that burden on my kids.

I don't want the last thing of them to remember me for was screwing them. Screwing them or make it harder to not carry on to the family's legacy. So that's the only point I'd add to that. But last thing I'd say as a young guy is just don't act like you know everything as a young guy. You know, yeah, I brought the social media to the table, and I encouraged it and fought for it. But shit, dad knows he can forget more about hog farming than I could ever learn, you know. And so back to that ego. So you can bring new ideas to the table and you can have a vision for what things look like,

but also know where you don't know shit and don't act like you know more than you do because you probably don't. There's still a hell of a lot to learn from the older generation. So, yeah, it's kind of a balance. Pick your battles, I guess. If you really want something and you want to bring an opportunity to the farm, fight for it. But also don't act like a jackass either and think you know everything. So I try to do a good job. That was awesome.

Yeah. I feel better. So I guess that's kind of the gist of what we got tonight for the show. We did want to do some Q&A if you guys had anything. And honestly, if it's not a question, just an overall thought. You know, what do you, I mean, what are you thinking? Where are you out on your operation? Like I said, we just want to have a real talk about ag.

So feel free to raise your hand. If not, no worries. Yeah, go ahead. You talked about having Minerza. Go ahead, Big Tom. All right. Slough Shady, go ahead, Slum Shady. So we have four 2,400 head finishers.

All the manure from those four barns is going to come to a central site. And within that, we have a holding tank that has, it circulates so that the solid stay in suspension. We're going to process. So the size of the system is based on the size of your total number of gallons. And the goal is that you can run the system a little quicker to get your pits to whatever level you want to get them to. Basically, we're trying to find the balance where, because all ours are deep pit, we're not ever going to take them down empty because we have to keep them at a level where we can agitate them. But the goal is to get it as low as you can and still be able to agitate it twice a year. What we're planning to do is when we empty the barns, we're just going to stir the living shit out of them.

them and then not agitate them other than the pump that's pumping to the system. And so I'll see how that works. But it comes in, goes to a holding tank. That holding tank pumps to a screw press. Pretty simple. A lot of dairies use it. The one we're using is from Italy and the company that sells it is called NutraDrip. And from there, the solids go in a conveyor that takes them to a holding tank.

the water that comes out of that goes through another smaller filter that filters out to a smaller micron any solids that the screw press left and then those solids go into that same conveyor and then the water comes across to a we call it a cross flow it is a ceramic membrane blah blah blah blah machine that it forces forces that water through a series of ceramic membranes and it takes out any of the fertility that's left in it. So the P&K potash that's in it come out and you end up with a brine. And that brine is, we condense that down to 300 parts per million, but that brine is like a 926 is what it is.

And we sell that brine. Most of your vegetable growers, fruit guys, they're really interested in a product like that because you can add whatever you want to it and it's super soluble. And you can sell that anywhere between $3 to $5 a gallon wholesale. So it's a pretty profitable product.

Then the water that's left goes through an RO and a pasteurization process. And when it comes out of there, it's less than 40 parts per million total dissolved solids, which is cleaner than most municipal wells. And our plan is to pump that water back to the cisterns on all our hog buildings and recycle it to our pigs. And if you can't do that, you can discharge it because it's, I mean, it's basically clean water. I wanted to bottle it all and start a bottled water company and just call it like Torx poo water and put like the tagline. Everybody knew Torque was full of shit, here you go, but they frowned on that.

They wouldn't let that happen. Carbon credits. And then because you're processing that manure in real time, you're stopping that, you're stopping the manure from sitting in that pit and off-gassing, so you create carbon credits. And companies like JBS, Smithfield, Tyson, Landlakes, Cargill, they're interested in buying those credits to offset what they're doing. And then the fertilizer from that hopper, it goes through a machine, and they call it a dryer. But really what it is, it's a pressurized dehydrator or a dehumidifier. And it's low temperature so that you don't volatize the ammonia that's in that dry fertilizer,

so you keep your nitrogen. And it comes out the end, and it's like a crumble. And we're going to apply that on our farm. what we're planning on doing. So we're going from a dragline system. We're draglining all liquid manure today. And our plan is to load that in a cart and blow it on ahead of a strip till unit and incorporate it that way. That's our plan until that doesn't work. And then, I don't know, we'll throw up the back of the spreader and V2 the whole thing. And I don't know, we'll figure it out. But that's the plan right now. You could also sell that though, too.

Yeah, and so... Because we're kind of going, we're going from gallons to tons. So we don't know. And we also think that the fertility might be better that, you know, you're pumping that manure out and separate it in real time rather than letting that manure just sit in a pit for, you know, a year. So you would think the nutrient value of that manure might be better. Therefore, you might not need as much.

Yeah, everything that we've tested so far, because we've run small batches through done everything. And it's about 90 pounds of nitrogen per ton. So you're looking at putting two and a half tons, two and a quarter ton on to the acre to get your baseline nitrogen. And we may, I don't know if we'll use any of the brine ourselves. It's too good of a deal economically to sell it.

And then, so the whole, this whole deal, one of the questions we get a lot, people seem to think that this has gotta be a deal, that we're getting money from the government to do this. This is some Ponzi scheme that we're getting money from it. This is all private investment. So the company that's doing it, their name is DVI, and their plan, the way it works is they will build the system.

You pledge the manure and a place, the ground to build the building, and it's a 10-year lease, and then it's renewable for another 10-year, two five-year chunks, renewable. And it's an 80-20 split on the revenue because they're putting up all the money. And that split really works out to, the easy way I can explain it for a wind or like a contract finishing guy, the amount of money that you're going to receive from that, plus you have the option of taking the manure, of buying, getting your 20% of the manure back, but buying the rest of it at wholesale if you want it. But it is the equivalent of roughly getting about what your

rent payment is on your 2400. You can just about double your income off the value of the credits, the dry, and the bribery. That's what the projections are anyway. Yeah, we don't know. We haven't got the whole thing all running yet, but we're documented on YouTube, the process of building it and all that. And we're hoping to have it running in March, March. But everything that's there has been built. We're just waiting on one piece of equipment and then we're going to fire it up and get going. If you built it yourself, what would it cost and what would be the payback period? Yeah. So there's really, what we've found out is you can really do this three different ways but I'll give you if if you are in a situation where you want that

manure dried down to 12% moisture and you're gonna recycle the water that's so you basically need everything that we're gonna have if you're gonna do that it's probably like a three and a half million dollar investment and you're probably looking at a four four year payback on that before it's you know a hundred percent profitable and I should back up well I was gonna say but you got if you're gonna do it your if you're gonna do it yourself and not work with like somebody like dvI you got to go get the off take agreements you know you got to find somebody that wants to take the off take you got to find you know you're gonna have to have somebody broker to carbon credits yeah and that's if you if you go

the route of maybe wanting to finance the project yourself and you maybe get that 80 and they get the 20 if they'd be willing to do that no they will so that's the other thing is dvi i will if you want to put up all the money, they'll flip it the other way and they'll do an 80, 20 where you get 80 and they take 20. And basically all they're doing is it's the expertise to build the site and they'll manage the site. And they'll, you know, they'll submit the carbon credits on your behalf and you get the offtake agreement, all that. They haven't done any of those yet. So our, our hog site is the first site. There's two other sites in Washington County that we're going to build right after ours is running. We're currently building a site at double-a dairy.

in Idaho and that's a brine only because the guy there he's already he's already separating he's already separating manure and taking that for himself so when I said the other options there are people that if they're going to take 100% of the fertilizer just out of the screw press you're probably like 28% moisture where if you were going to spread it yourself and you weren't trying to blow it on you wouldn't have to dry it, that dryer is like $800,000. So you could shave, you could shave, you know, three quarters of million dollars off that cost,

and you could probably get the, you could probably get the return down to two and a half years, something like that. So, I mean, there's options. The crazy thing about it is people have tried to do this for years, and there's been all kinds of companies that have screwed a lot of people over trying to do it and taking their money, and it really just came down to the two guys that really drive this are, what's his degree is?

Well, there's, one of them's a physicist, I think, and they've come from the oil and gas field, so they've separated fracking water for a long time, and they've worked in municipalities, and they've worked in wastewater treatment plants, and they've... So, yeah. The technology for cleaning up heavy,

water is what drove this because the cost oil companies were having to pay to transport heavy water to a municipal treatment center was I mean it's unbelievable what they spent and so this technology was spurned out of that so they could treat that water on site and discharge it and so now then they've just adapted this to to the to the manure business and just so for example fracking waters about 200 parts per million total dissolved solids hog manure is about 47. Couldn't you ever take that dried product and dry down a little bit further and try to sell it as an

organic product for people in the cities through a... 100%. 100%. I'm going to put my face on it. No, no, you absolutely could. Yeah, you absolutely could. Sorry, that was a long, that was a pretty winded dancer, but I keep trying to figure out a, like, a really quick way to explain it, and there is not. Yeah.

Anybody else? Anybody else? We wore them out. Oh, she's got... Yeah, so we raised pigs for Ikelberger Farms in Wayland, Iowa. They're about, I don't know, 15 minutes south of us, 20 minutes south of us. They're about 60,000 sows, and they're part of the Triumph Group, so a lot of their pigs go to St. Joe or Sioux City, and good family. Yep.

Okay. All right. Well, you got any... You want to close with something? You got something on the back. I said you had to do the prayer. I'm not going to pray. Oh, yeah, this is the last thing I'll say.

I think I've said that five times. But anyway, at the end of our driveway growing up, we had a sign that stood out there. It was a big, I think it was like five by five, double-sided. And it said, Whistler, LS and three T's, Lawrence, Shirley, Todd Trent Tork, I was the third T. This will do farm. That was our farm name. And the reason we got that was when my dad. came home and started farming in 49 he got a one-third interest in 160 acres with his

brother and his sister and they none of them could get along and he ultimately sold all of his all of his war bonds and everything that he could scrape together and he bought him out and he and he and he and my mom went to the uh courthouse to register it and they asked him the gal asked him what his farm name was and he had not given any thought to that he had no idea so he looked at my mom and he's like she didn't know what and he goes well i guess we'll just call it this'll do So that's where this'll do farm came from. And when I built my first hog building, I formed the LLC, and I didn't know what I wanted,

so I called it this'll do. And then when we started the farm channel, we call it this'll do. And really, it just kind of is, we've always just kind of done whatever we had to do to get by. That's kind of the motto of this'll do. But at the bottom of that sign, it said, co-evated to yield contentment.

And most people always looked at that, and they thought that it meant that we were trying to get pretty good. good yield. But that was not it at all. My dad always said that he had been all over the world. And when he came back here and started farming, he said, I'm never changing again. He did a lot of other things. He said, I'm never changing again. I'm going to be content no matter what. And really, at the end of the day, you know, you ask people, what do you want to be? And people like, oh, I just want to be happy. And Sawyer says, happy is like a shade of gray paint, you know.

like sometimes it's pretty dark sometimes it's pretty white but but contentment is a decision that we all make and it's it's it's really what I strive for is bad things are going to happen great things are going to happen but how you look at it up here that's all you can really control and to be content to be comfortable to be ready for whatever you have to do to get by that's all we can ever that's what we strive for so i hope that you all can be content yeah and i would just say co-create on god's ultimate creation that's what we can embody you know um that's that's something that i uh i think is really important it's worth fight this industry your farm your legacy it's worth fighting for it's worth it's worth working

for it's worth living for so continue to fight no matter how hard it gets because It's getting smaller and smaller, so we got to keep fighting. We really appreciate your guys this time tonight. Great crowd and drive home safe. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time. Let's play. Feel the fun with Playojo, the online casino with all the latest slot and live casino games.

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