Barn Talk - The Truth About Corn: Why It Runs America (And Your Life) w/ Steve Kuiper

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

Welcome to Barn Talk! In today’s episode, hosts Tork and Sawyer welcome fifth-generation Iowa farmer and Iowa Corn Growers Association First Vice President, Steve Kuiper, for an honest, wide-ranging conversation about the realities of modern corn farming in America. Steve shares stories from his family’s multi-generational farm, the crucial role corn plays in everything from food and fuel to clothing, and the challenges of keeping the business strong in a time of rising costs and tighter margins. The trio discusses the impacts of ag policy, environmental stewardship, and the importance of speaking up and getting involved in organizations like Iowa Corn. If you’re curious about the future of farming, how technology and tradition mix, or what it takes to grow a farm business in tough times, this episode will give you fresh insights and plenty to think about. Let’s get started! Shop Farmer Grade 👇🏻 https://farmergrade.com/  SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c   LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  APPLE ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk   ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS   ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4   ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS     00:00 "Support Barn Talk & Farmer Grade" 10:25 Farming Progress Over Generations 14:05 "Iowa Corn Drives Farmer Advocacy" 21:31 Farm Life and Environmental Responsibility 24:36 "Technology Saving Farming Costs" 29:30 Cover Crops and Nutrient Runoff 36:15 "Growth Journey and Support" 38:24 "The Farming Bug's Impact" 45:54 Farming Finances: Quick Cash Options 48:18 Cold Storage Shed with Concrete 55:51 Resource Stewardship and Agricultural Innovation 01:01:25 Renewable Fuels Boost Farm Economy 01:08:55 "Business Leadership and Collaboration" 01:09:56 "Money Matters in Equipment Sales" 01:14:45 "Loss of Knowledge in Companies" 01:24:27 Country Life: Close to God 01:28:58 "Iowa Corn: Member Impact" 01:30:56 "Supporting Farmers and Iowa Corn" ------------------------------- ⚠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

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 IG Private Wealth.com.

Welcome aboard via rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and stretch. Steep. Flip. Or that. And enjoy. Via rail, love the way. All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn? stays in the barn, but not today. We're going to let it all. all out for you guys. Stay is going to be another guest episode. Got a great guest coming to the barn, have a great conversation with us.

I know we've been doing guests after guest after guest, but it's just been more fortunate enough that we've had enough people that want to make the trip to Southeast Iowa to talk to us. So we're not going to pass down on any of those opportunities, but there is a lot of stuff going on in the Ag World

and we'll probably get into that in a future episode, Q&A, hot topics. So we'll be looking out for that. But before we get into today's episode, if you guys get any value from the show, please, please, please share it out with the people that you know. The more that you guys do that, the more that this show can grow,

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Farmergrade.com. We are officially full into gifting. So if you own a business, if you're a sales guy, if you're a seed guy, chemical guy, you're a farmer, you got employees, you got team members. We would love to be able to help you out on the gifting side this year if you want to gift a meat box. We have it all on the website.

If you go to Farmergrade.com, click on the corporate. Gifting or group gifting tab. It should give you all the information you need and you can always reach out to us too. But we'd love to take care of you this holiday. Love to take care of you this holiday season. So I would love to be taken care of this holiday season. Yeah. Just a subtle hint. You're you're just about you're close. You're on the naughty list, but you might get taken off. Okay. You're you're right on the spectrum. I'll try it. Well, some people have said that I am on the spectrum. Yeah. No doubt about that. So I don't know this fall. or this winter you might get some coal. I don't know. It might be a repeat of last year. Well, if you're going to do that, at least get like an LP pig so we can plug in the Mr. heater up here

when it gets really cold. Yeah, there you go. It's a cool, cool morning here in southeast Iowa. We, harvest is getting pretty close to being done. There's actually a few guys out there talked to a guy farming big acres and they were about half done.

And there's a few guys actually combine problems that are like barely started but for the most part people are done around here and we're actually drag line and manure right now and spreading lime this morning so if you hear a rumble in the background it's it's dump trucks haul and lime and it is a great morning for a cup of coffee and a good conversation with a fellow farmer and that's exactly what we've got today Good string of guest episodes, and you'll have plenty of time to hear us ramble later, but we just lucked out, and we've had a good group of people headed down to talk to us, and today is no different.

So we have a farmer from Southwest Iowa, and we're going to talk about everything, Iowa Corn Growers Association and what they got going on, and I'm sure we're going to talk about markets and trade and all the hot. button issues. So without any further ado, let's get into it. Well, before we get too far down the road, I got to just say, we're live, boys. So Steve Kuiper, welcome to Barn Talk. We appreciate you coming. Where are you coming from today? What's that? Where are you coming from the day? So I, myself and my son's farm over by Knoxville, Oskie, we farm in the Mahaska County, Marion County, Warren County area. We're spread out a lot.

Yeah. But, you know, I got two sons that want to grow the farm business. And, yeah, you know, in this day and age, you got to grow your farm business. And so, yeah, I got two sons at farm with me. You know, it's a pleasure farming with my sons. Until it's not. What's that? Until it's not.

Well, you know. Guided moments. Well, you know, in your farm with family. Some days you love them to death And some days You're probably best Just to get in your pickup and drive off Because you're

You know, you just need to calm them down a little bit The shovel starts looking really good to you That's right, exactly Well, but you know And and you know I Our today in today's environment I worked about 30 years in manufacturing and farmed

And I learned a lot in manufacturing And I learned You know my sons have to be able to do things, and I hope I've put it in their heads to do things, and I think I have because there's a lot of days I feel really dumb around my sons. I've got one that really focuses on the technology and the equipment operation, equipment maintenance,

and that's just inherently his best position. Then I got another one that loves the agronomy thing, and he gets to rattling off about micros and everything. I mean, he's passionate about it, And I love that part of it because that has made us money. His, his passion for the agronomy end of it is why our yields are where they're at today. Yep.

And so I guess I'm just the financier. That's what I feel like some days. Yep. You know, we have those discussions about, yeah, gee whiz, it'd be great to have a new this or a new that, but that's just kind of expensive and we have to justify it. But we seem to be able to justify it. Yeah.

You know, and our operation is one that we don't shy away from a challenge. I get the eye roll and the, you know, the shrugs once in a while, you know, I mean, you know, one day, you know, we're construction workers and the next day we might be mill rights. And I think one of my biggest things was I bought a 70,000 bushel bin on eBay during COVID, and we put that sucker up. and I think I spent all of my family equity there as far as help getting stuff done. But, you know, we're, we don't step away from a challenge either.

And you can't always hire somebody to do everything you need. And that's what we've realized. And so it's made my sons better farmers. It's made me a better farmer. And, you know, the things we're doing always have to have some sort of purpose. Yeah. 10.4. It's always rewarding working.

You know, you have your days, but it's rewarding to work with your family, I think. Yeah. And we got, my son's got some close friends that help us. I mean, you know, when we get to going full throttle, I mean, it's like ants. We've got 100 things going on, but we get a lot done in a day too, you know. And that's the important things. We've got to be productive. And I guess, you know, my oldest son, he's pretty high-strung.

You know, and he sees that end goal years down the rest. road and he thinks we like we need to be there today and i told him i said we got to be better every year to get to that point yeah you know you do a better job of mowing road sides or weed control or crop production or equipment maintenance all those things and we do get better every year you know and um that's part part of that i learned what working in manufacturing you know you you just continually have to improve your yeah business so are you guys strictly grain farming yeah okay Yep. Yeah.

Porn and poverty peas. Okay. Yes, I like that. I like that. A buddy of mine from Georgia, we was on a Zoom meeting, he said something about poverty peas. And I'm like, that's exactly right because that's, they're just, they're a killer right now. They are a killer right now.

Yeah. How many generations has the farm been around? Four. So I'm fourth. My sons are fifth. And I've got grandkids. They're going to be the sixth. Yeah.

And, you know, and I've said more than once, I'd really, like to see what my grandfathers would say about where we're at today. Because, you know, I've tried to explain to my sons that, because we had some old ear cribs on the yard that we got rid of. And I said, you know, my granddad, he would spend a week filling a 4,500 bushel ear crib. And I said, and we do that in a couple of hours. Yep. And I'd just be curious to see what he had to say about that, you know, you know, riding in the combine today. And even the productivity on the farms, like, I, I farm our home farm or family farm, you know,

and, you know, I can remember combiting for him when I was in high school or college, you know, holy cow, you had 150 bushel corn. Yep. And, you know, we're double that almost now, you know, and I'd just, I'd like to see what he had to say about that. Yep. I'm the exact same way. So my, you know, like, I remember my dad the first time we had corn that went 150 bushel,

and he just thought that was crazy because when he was, as a kid. Well, even when he first, I don't know when he farmed on his own, but as a kid, they checked all the corn. Yep. He remembers,

like, he collivated corn both ways, that whole nine yards. And, you know, he and his brother grew seed corn for Pioneer back in the 50s.

And I can't remember what, um, like, I don't remember what a good yield was, uh, on their conventional corn back then. Like you, I remember when we got 150 bushel corn and he really thought we had something.

But yeah, it's just, it's crazy. What, how productive we've been. And people always make the, people always make the argument that, you know, will we, will we take that further? When you compare where we were in our lifetime to where we are now, and people like, well, there's no way you're going to be able to.

And I'm like, I don't think so. I don't, I think the, the amount of technology is out there, who knows what we'll be doing, you know, 30 years from now. Well, and I think we're really just starting to understand the corn plant. You know, and when I have folks out to my farm, I explain to them that little corn plant is no different than a baby pig or a baby calf. And you need to think of it that way. It's a living, growing organism.

and you need to treat it that way. You know, you wouldn't throw a baby pig out there in the dirt, give it all its feed it needs for its whole life and just let it go. Yeah. You know, and so that's where our mentality's changed a little bit, where, yeah, it's a little more maintenance for this crop, but we're also getting rewarded for that. And that's where my oldest son comes into play.

I mean, you know, he's identifying all these different things we need to be doing, and we're coming up with cocktails and concoctions of stuff. And we're plugging planners and plugging sprayers. And, you know, some of these things don't mix necessarily that great. And it's, but in the end, you know, we're seeing some good results from it. And so, yeah, it's exciting. And I'm getting to the point, though, you know, I'm let them start messing with that stuff and taking care of it. And then I can fill in all the gaps.

So, yeah, 10, 4. I don't have to drive combine 14 hours a day anymore. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's good. So what do you do when you're not farming? What else do you do? So I am about six years ago. A buddy of mine approached me and said,

hey, we're looking for somebody to run for Iowa corn. He said, we just need a name for the ballot. It's four meetings a year. And yeah, well, yeah. Funny how that works. Yeah, yeah. So I'm the, I'm now the first vice president of Iowa corn growers. And so that consumes some of my off season time.

But it's, it's rewarding. You know, and I was very apprehensive when I went into this. I'm like, gosh, this is a whole different deal, you know. And it's, it's a good organization. The first year, it literally is like drinking from a fire hose. I mean, there is so much coming at you. the Iowa corn is involved and supports USMEF Meat Federation, National Corn, U.S. Grains Council.

You know, we're constantly working on trade, different trade missions, going to countries. You know, it's great to say the federal government, you know, is going to India to sign a trade agreement. Well, that's the end of it. You know, all the other work has been done by your Iowa corn, your soy, your farm bureaus, your state folks going out there and creating those relationships. And Iowa corn has been a big part of that. You know, and then working in Washington, D.C. or at the statehouse with all of our elected officials, you know, we have to, as farmers, get our voice heard. Otherwise, somebody else is going to dictate to us what our policy is going to be. And so Iowa corn has been a big part of that.

and my kids sometimes wonder what we're doing and they don't always agree with our policy but they understand that there's a reason for it and then when you know things finally come to fruition it's like oh well yeah that does make some sense now dad wasn't completely nuts when he was talking about this yeah but but yeah so and i also sit on one of the national corn growers a teams the research and new uses a team and uh that's some pretty cool stuff that we're working on there too so so what's been the biggest uh when you got swallowed up into all this like what's been what was the biggest challenge for you for for you personally for me personally um is getting out there and and talking to folks about it you know some people are going to challenge you and that's tough

yeah um you know i got i got farmers that are going to challenge me i got i got a good friend i mean he just, he will chew my butt off if we're, if he doesn't agree with us. But yeah, then in the end, when we sit down and have a discussion about it, he's like, oh, yeah, that does, that makes sense. I don't always agree with it, but it does make sense. And then working with our legislators, you know, those are pretty, those are intimidating people. But then when you take a step back, they're, they're no different than you and I. And, you know, they're willing to listen. Um, you know, I run into one of our local senators and representatives in Tyson's, one day and we talked for about 15 minutes, you know, just casually, you know, and used to be,

ooh, yeah, that was, that's our state senator, you know. Yeah. And now they're, you know, they're, they're, they're friends, you know, and that's, it's, that's kind of changed my whole perspective of this thing. So yeah. I think that's, uh, this episode is brought to you by FedEx. These days, the power move isn't having a big metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate launch. The real power move is leveling up your business with FedEx intelligence and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx. The new power move. It's the family and friends event at Shoppers Drug Mart. Get 20% off almost all regular priced merchandise. Two days only.

Tuesday, April 28th, and Wednesday, April 29th. Open your PC Optimum app to get your coupon. I think that's one of the biggest challenges that we have in ag, but I think really our whole country is the fact that to get involved with, one, to get people that want to get involved. Because people kind of have this, well, people see politics today, whatever level it is. and most people don't want anything to do with that.

They don't. Because it seems very toxic. Right. All the way from the grassroots level, all the way to the top. And I think also people, there's more distractions than ever before. Yeah. People got so many damn things they can do with their time. That's right.

And I think being selfish is being promoted more than ever before. It's about me. It's about how I look. It's about working on myself. and it's hard to get people to rally for a bigger mission, I think. But even, you know, just the simple things. Like for Iowa corn, you know, we send out a questionnaire every year talking about policy. That funnels up to roundtables.

Growers are welcome to come and be involved in these things. And then it goes to the grassroots summit, which we have in Des Moines. You know, we nominate people to go to the grassroots summit. You know, and that's, and that information funnels to the national corn growers. and we create those policies at corn congress and farmers and they need to be involved in those things and it's not just corn growers it's farm bureau it's soy you know those all those agricultural organizations farmers are crazy busy every every one of them are crazy busy but take a few minutes out and get your voice heard if they send you a questionnaire they'll

a darn thing out. Yep. Get your voice heard because what happens is the people that are more vocal. Yep. They get their, I'm trying to be as political as I can, but. Right. But the people that are more vocal, they get their voice heard. And pretty soon you're looking at this policy.

Well, I don't agree with that. Yeah. And, you know, you didn't take the time out to go and fill out the questionnaire. When they're asking your opinion, give it to you. I got one from soy yesterday. I did too. And it was a text, and while I was unloading corn, I went through the darn thing and filled it out. You know, because that's, that's the information, they're wanting that information.

They're, and it's not that they're just trying to justify their job. Right. They're wanting that information because it gives them a direction of where you want them to go. Yeah. And that's exactly where, like Craig Floss, our CEO will tell you, what do you want us, where do you want us to go? What do you want us to do? And our policy dictates that. Yeah.

And it's not what Steve Kuyper thinks. It's what the growers say. The growers say, hey, we want you to do this. That's what Iowa corn is going to do. Yeah, I think that's one of the most important messages that you can get out in whatever organization it is. Because I can tell you, at every level, you know, I'm on the session at my local church. And you'd be amazed how many people come up to you. It's budget time.

you know it's budget time and nobody likes the sermons about uh budgets and about tithing and all that oh yeah but boy people it takes a lot of money to run anything like anything and you get all these people that call you because you're on session they call you well i don't you shouldn't be doing that or you need to do this and i tell every one of them i'm like you can come to any meeting it's you know everything is out there and that level your local government, your commodity groups, because I get the same thing. I get people calling me about issues with Iowa corn,

and I'm like, call, you know, call them up. That's right. Go to the stuff. Because that is a great, that was a very, you played that very well too. I'll say it less eloquently, but, you know, those people that have really loud voices that you don't agree with,

they're the ones that are going to go, they're going to scream the loudest and they're going to hear that voice. So if you don't like that, you need to counter that. That's right. I mean, that's just the way it is. I mean, that's why we got, I mean, that's why we got on social media. I mean, when we first started, we saw nobody was showing the modern day hog farming side on YouTube and we got tired of seeing, I got tired of seeing animal rights activist groups and PETA telling our story for us. And that's why we got on social media. I mean, that's why it's so important. And that's just one other example.

But yeah, and it's like local politics, school board, all that. You got to get out there and say what you think or nothing's going to change. And you're going to let these other people dictate. They're going to tell the story that they want to tell. Yeah. Well, and that's why my sons hate it when I have people out to the farm because it's a distraction. But I've tried to explain to them. We got a half a dozen fields around like Red Rock.

and I've told people that come to visit, I don't want to be that guy that has runoff that goes into that darn lake, for one, because we enjoy, you know, the lake. We enjoy the, whenever we have time, you can go fishing or boating or whatever. And I don't want to be that person that pollutes. And then when they're out there, I explain to them the technology that we use.

I had some folks out from, you know, the East Coast. I mean, they'd never been on a farm before. and, you know, the spray trailer was set in there, the sprayer was set in there, and our spray trailer set up to where we draw the chemical out of a shuttle. We don't touch it. We draw the chemical out of a shuttle through a mixer. It goes right into the sprayer, and it's metered out to the ounce. And I had a water bottle in my hand, and I said, this is about how much chemical we put per acre.

And this woman goes, oh, my gosh. And I'm like, I was like, well, here we go, you know. I said, well, what? And she goes, I put that much on my address. driveway. And I'm like, there you go. Now that is some good honesty right there. Right. You know, and so I explained to them, you know, the sprayer, it shuts off each nozzle individually. You know, we did that because we don't want the overlaps. We don't over, we don't want over, we don't want over application. It for one, it's better for the ground. It's better for a crop.

It saves us a ton of money. Exactly. And, and, you know, like, like handling our chemicals like that. You know, those shuttles are safe. I got a buddy. they barrel rolled their spray trailer a couple years ago, and those shuttles took the roll, with the exception of one they didn't have a cap on. Yeah. And, you know, that's, that's, I don't, I don't want to handle that stuff anymore than I have to.

My son doesn't. Yeah. When we're cutting jugs, you know, it's a closed system. You drop the jug in there, you flush it. You know, we don't, we don't want to have to monkey with that stuff anymore than we need to, and we don't want to apply any more than we need to. We have, we have prescriptions for various different farms.

We've got this weed problem here, or that weed problem there. And that's what we put on. Yeah. And that's, we need to have our voice heard to every other consumer around. We got, we got tons of neighbors.

We want to be a good neighbor. You know, and literally, I've had people get mad at me because we put mud on the road. And we don't try. And I, that,

that was a trickle down theory because the person that did, it got their butt chewed. Yeah. But they, and they knew better. But, you know,

farmers are trying to do the very best job they can. and I don't think people realize how much time and effort we put into detail. Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I think the chemical thing is a big, I think more light needs to be shed on that because I don't think people, just like that, people do not realize how, like, actually how little chemical is applied. That's right. And to your point, like the, the guys that are.

our chemical dealer and they do a lot of application. Like, the amount of money that can be saved and the technology is so good today, like they literally, they switched brands of sprayers. And they were able to justify that just in the amount of money they were going to save on product over the thousands of acres that they spray. I mean, they spray an incredible amount. And, like, he told me that and I was just like dumbfounded. But I mean, that's another example of what, you know, people get leery of technology,

but they also buy a narrative that makes sense because you see this big equipment and you see, if you have nothing to do with farming and you're driving down the interstate and you see farmers out there and you see these big sprayers with 100 foot booms and somebody says that, oh, these farmers are just poison and everything, you could go, oh, gosh, kind of looks like it. Look at the tank on that thing. But like to your example, when you show them actually how much chemical we use. And the automatic shutoffs and prescription.

Compared to my dad applying Treflan with the disc, you know, with the tanks on the tractor. And up there mix pouring in a chuck and a garden hose. I mean, it's amazing what we're doing today. But that story doesn't get told. And then there's also, it's not even that it doesn't get told. It gets told. But if you don't have that, like for that person standing there, seeing that comparison and knowing what size an acre is,

then it makes sense and it clicks. But I feel like there's such a disconnect between most people in ag that they don't have a frame of reference. So many people are removed from ag. That's right. Agriculture. And that's what we got to fix because. it's just if you don't know anything and somebody just says that in the car that you're riding with yeah it's like you said it's easy to think oh yeah or you see mud on the road we have the same thing

when we're we're drag line and manure they see mud on the road and people you know you try to avoid that but yeah you know it's it's mud it's not hog shit and you know we're the same thing that we're doing on the chemical side we're doing with the hog manure we're applying that we got a prescription and we know how much we're going to apply to it per acre for this field. We're not over applying because that's like liquid gold for us. We're not going to overapply that. We don't want that to leach out. We don't want that to run off.

We want to make sure that stays there. Yeah, the best is when you're draglining manure. So you're not, nothing goes on the road because you pump it through a hose. And then somebody gets mud on the road. And then the DNR calls you and asks you if you're tanking manure because somebody complained that you're tracking mud on the road. And you're like, well, Well, that's kind of difficult because, you know, nobody's driving on the road.

And they're like, oh, yeah, well, we kind of figured that. So it's just interesting. It is, it is. You know, and we talk about overapplication. I about fell out of my chair here a while back. I was just flipping through some stuff. And the guys from hoxy seed, one of those guys was talking about how much urban grass there is

and how much residential application of fertilizer. And I don't think that gets out there. Oh, it's insane. So I think that in the state of Iowa, I think that's got to get, that's got to come to a head because one of the things, I know Iowa corn is working on this. I know pork producers are working on this.

I know soy is working on this because we're worried about runoff. We're worried about nitrate levels in all of our waterways. And we haven't seemed to be able to move the needle. but we've all done a heck of a lot in that department and it really begs the question and nobody seems to be able to give an answer how much of that is actually coming from agriculture and how much of it is actually coming from residential

because we all know that one, the amount of chemical used to get weeds out of people's yards and the amount of fertilizer used in urban areas per acre is absolutely insane. but I don't feel like that story is told nearly enough. And if we want to get a whole, if we want to get our hands wrapped around this problem with our rivers and nitrate levels,

I think that's got to get, that's got to come to light. It does. Because it's not, I am convinced that it is not solely on agriculture. No, not at all. So we've, iVicorn has funded some research

with Illinois corn, to try to understand if it's organic nitrogen and organic phosphorus or commercial phosphorus or commercial nitrogen. And so that study isn't done yet. But there are other researchers out there that are saying, okay, we put cover crop out. Why do we do that? Well, we want to bring nutrients out of the soil and make it available for a crop. So now they're scratching their heads and going, so if we're putting this cover crop out and we're pulling these nutrients out of the soil and making it available,

you get a hard rain, you got the, you got dead crop out there and it washes down the creek. Is that potentially where some of these nutrients are coming from? Because we've put in buffer strips, we do cover crop. We do no-till, I mean, yeah. But, you know, in the tons of stover out on a cornfield, as it decomposes, you know, they say there's 50, 60 pounds per acre phosphorus in that. Yep.

It's like, well, shoot, where is that all going? is it you know it's blown around it's washing away what whatever you know as it is it decomposes you know it becomes really readily available and yeah i kind of got a feeling that we're doing the right things but the things we're doing could be contributing to it also yeah and so you know that's one of the things iowa corn is is really working on is trying to help figure this stuff out and that's that's the stuff that we do i mean you know when there's a huge issue we try to be in the forefront of it. Yeah. Um, you know, and yeah, that's sometimes it's a tough, it's a tough deal because on the one hand, uh, the soil is the most valuable thing we have.

And so we've done all these things to keep the soil in place, but then you may be paying the price for doing all that. So I don't know. I don't know what the answer is, but I don't either. We definitely have got to, uh, dig into it deeper. Yeah. How's, uh, being a part of Iowa. corn impacted you as a farmer? Oh, it's, it's made me more conscious about what I'm doing, you know, because, you know, you see it, all you have to do is look at the media. And, you know, this person is a part of XYZ group and he's doing this and holy cow, you know. But there too, I've made a lot of connections.

through Iowa corn, even all around the nation. Yeah. You know, and farmers like to compare stories or network. Yeah. And, you know, I've learned a lot from folks that I've been involved with, you know, a national corn. You know, we'll go to like corn congress or something like that, and you sit down and have a beer with somebody from Mississippi, you know,

or I got a buddy from Kansas. I was just talking to him last night, you know, and he was pretty excited. Their corn was pretty decent. it was 120 bushel. I'm like, holy smokes. Yep. You know, and, you know, it's just there's, you just learn a lot about different farming operations.

And there's a lot of nuggets you can take home because, you know, they've tried this or they've tried that. And I was like, gosh, I wish we ought to try that, you know. And vice versa, you know, you say, hey, we're doing this. And oh, hell, we haven't even thought about that. And so it's, it's made me a better farmer. And, you know, I was, when I took this role, our district didn't have their own district field manager and really, you know, they think Southern Iowa, you guys don't raise much corn down there, you know. And truthfully, by acre, we don't.

Yeah. But then when I start talking about what our yields are and, you know, on some of our hills, then they're like, holy cow, they do do a pretty good job of farming down there. And we have to. You know, we want to produce as much as we can and be as profitable as we can and take care of our soils. And it's tougher to take care of soils, you know, when they're, you know, when they're, they're in an angle. They're in an angle. Water tends run off pretty quick.

And so, you know, some of the stuff we're putting in place, you know, whether it's like for us, you know, we're patterned tile and stuff, putting some terraces in place and really trying to understand water quality and what, what are water's doing, you know, and, and, and, and, and, I learn a lot from, you know, fellow corn grower members what they're doing in regard to that stuff, too. So going back a little bit, in the time that you've been farming, like, what has been your biggest struggle? Like, what time in your farming career were you like, I don't know. whether I may. So you worked off farm and you came back. So I worked off farm. I worked off farm and farm.

Yep. So there was there was a couple years there. I was a full-time employee at Vermeer preparation and I farmed 1,200 acres. I didn't really sleep much. Yeah, I bet not. And finally you just have to decide, you know, you have to do one or the other. Yeah. You know, but the enticement of that city job, you know, you got your benefits, you got your wages. Yep. You know, it's, boy, that's tough. Yep. And, you know, there are days when I'm farming, I'm like, what the same hill?

Why didn't I just? Yep, I could have just punched out. So, all right. Yeah. I'll see you tomorrow. Exactly. But, you know, I think I was, I started out at the end of the 80s. So, you know, and when I say that to my boys, you know, we could see the 80s.

And I, and, you know, you got, you got some of these folks, oh, we'll never have that again. Never's a long cotton picking time. And I'm starting to see things line up, not much different than the 80s. I don't know how old you are, but I can remember when I was in high school, there'd be one or two farm sales every weekend through the winter. Yep. And they were selling folks out. Yep. and, you know, getting started was a struggle.

I mean, my parents weren't excited about me wanting to farm at all. Yeah. You know, so you start farming these little pickle patches. And, you know, and I bought my first farm, you know, I bought a farm. And, you know, I remember what percentage I was leveraged. I mean, there was no reason I should have made it. Yeah. I had a town job to help support that.

Yep. And even a town job today will not help you get into farming. No. And you've got to have a dad. or an uncle or somebody helping you. And I think my biggest struggle was getting started. And it's like I explained to somebody the other day, I have been in growth mode ever since I started.

My wife even said, you know, because it's my second marriage, she goes, just in the period of time that she's known me from where we were to where we are today, she goes, it's amazing how much you guys have grown. Yeah. And that's tough. If you want to grow your business, that's a hard thing. Yeah.

One of the lessons I learned working in manufacturing, though, is to be a viable business and you have to maintain growth every year. And in manufacturing, they always figured 10%. And that's probably a pretty good number to cover cost of inflation and cost of doing business and cost of replacing capital equipment, your combine tractor or whatever. You constantly need to be growing. And with that growth, the sad thing is, is there's some places that somebody won't be involved in it anymore, whether they're retiring or, you know, and yeah, it's, I look at the folks that are all my age that

kind of started farming at that point in time. There's very few of us left. Yeah. And the ones that are left are like me. It's like, gosh, you know, this is tough. Is it worth it? Yep. You know. You mentioned in there that your parents didn't want you to. to farm, you know, because going through the 80s and all that of how hard it was. And what, when did you know growing up? Like, did you grow up and just know this is what you wanted to do? Oh, I loved it. Yeah. I mean, I'm no different than my, my sons. I got a three-year-old grandson who his parents don't farm, but my wife watches him every day. And he's all farming. I mean, first thing he does when he gets there is he's got a blanket that's laid out like a farm.

he's putting toys out there and he's farming. He goes, when he went to school, he went to preschool and, and they asked him what you want to do him. I want to be a farmer. And, you know, that's kind of how I was. Yeah. You know, that's just, once you've got that bug, it's, it's hard to get rid of it. Yeah.

And, you know, and I think a lot of kids get that bug. And it's, they need to understand being involved in some, in some manner. There's no shame in that. Right. I know one guy that, you know, he was. involved in he was an agronomist you know love farming and and those folks that are agronomists that loved the farm those are always your good agronomy people yeah the ones that are that's just a job and i you know enjoy doing it those those are good but the ones that grew up on a farm and love

farming they're the ones you want to have on your side yeah yeah uh you're talking about the 80s so i'm 54 so we're probably pretty we're probably pretty close um but um but it's so interesting when you talk to you talk to younger farmers like one of the craziest ideas that people just don't grasp is i've i've talked to many a guy you know a little older than me and they'll talk about how like the price of a farm the price of the farmland itself didn't make much difference whether it was whether it was 800 dollars an acre or whether it was $1,000 an acre or whether it was $500 because the interest was 18%. That's right.

So it's like the price, because everybody looks at it's like, oh, man, if I would have known it was that cheap, I would have bought all this. No, you couldn't have because it didn't matter what you paid for it. You couldn't make enough money to service the debt. That's exactly right. And people are just like, I don't, like they can't believe it. And I've said this before. We had a guy on here that raises a lot of hogs.

And he was talking about his operating loan was 18 or 19 or 17 or whatever. And we got so many comments and people are like, that can't, like, that's not true. Like, there's no way. That would never work. I'm like, welcome to the 80s. I bought my first tractor and they had one of those end of the year, you know, boy, we got this crazy interest rate. It was 11%.

Yeah. And you're like, wow. Yeah, I was thought, gee whiz, this is great. And I bought my first farm. I bought it on the young farmer program, you know, where they buy down the interest. It was 9%. Yeah. And so, you know, one of my sons bought a farm here a few years ago. And, you know, it was like,

you know, the bank was going to be like six or six and a half. He's like, oh, that's just horrible. I'm like, what? Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, when I grew up, got, you know, kind of becoming an adult, you know, it was interest was three, three and a half, four. Yeah. And then now we're starting to, you know, obviously it's changed. But when you grow up and that's all you know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we, lucked out in the fact that as we when we grew our hog business every one of those barns the first barn i built 16 years ago the interest was five and a quarter percent and it got we and farm credit was great about being proactive and they would literally call you and go well interest is you know four we should refinance it interest is three and a quarter we should refinance it's right

and we ended up the highest interest we paid on any of them was yours and it was four seven five and that was right at the end. From then it's just gone. And you talk about that is one of the biggest problems that we kind of have is we condition an entire generation of people that money costs nothing. And so you were able to do a lot of things

that you probably shouldn't have done because developed bad habits. You developed some bad habits. Well, in the housing industry is in the same boat. Exactly right. I talked to a realtor friend of mine. She said, you know, there's a house in Pellas, like $2.2 million.

I'm like, that's insane. Yeah. And, but people are buying them. People are buying these expensive homes. They got a dual income. Yeah. They got low interest rates. But this thing comes unwired.

There is so much money tied up in that debt. She said they're doing 40 and 45 year notes on a house. Holy smokes. It's the same thing as companies loan in 15, 20 year money on a hog building. Yep. A hog billing that's going to be, you're going to be shoveling. shoveling money. Like, you're not even, the depreciation's gone after seven. The repairs start about seven. Yeah. And you're not even going to have it half paid for. That's right.

How's that work? Well, you're going to be back in refinance. Yeah. And that's where this whole thing, it's a tower of cards ready to collapse. Yeah. You know, and if interest doesn't get squared away, I think that's going to be one of the things that messes this up. Yep. You know, it, it's, And it just takes one thing to set this thing on fire. Yep. And that's kind of what the 80s, you know, when Jimmy Carter put the embargo on grain. Yeah. That was it.

I mean, it was just everything imploded. Yeah. And something will happen. 2008 was the exact same deal. You know, and all of a sudden realized how messed up this financing was on these homes. Yep. And it just caused everybody anxiety. We listened to a guy at NPIC.

It's probably been. five years ago now. And, you know, you hear a lot of people talk, and this has always stuck with me. And I don't remember what company he worked for, but his point was, there's what you know, there's what you don't know,

but what will screw you is what you don't know that you don't know. And like that 08 housing deal, yep. Nobody, like it was there, it was there, but nobody, like nobody saw it until, everybody saw it and then all it all went it all went to pot and then everybody's standing there how did we not see this that's what's scary i think there was one guy who did so there was one guy

yeah he shorted i can't remember his name but yeah there's like short he yeah he's shorter that is yeah yeah the bank's thought he's the biggest idiot in the world yeah until he wasn't yeah yeah how do you prepare for that like uh If you feel like that's in our future potentially for farmers out there, like what are you saying to yourself to prepare for a time like that? Balance sheet health. Yeah. You know, and that's where I kind of spun the idea when we talked about this

with my folks at Iowa corn. And I've talked to my farm credit guy about this. I said him and I both agreed liquidity for farmer. right now. It's a big deal and interest is a big deal. And I've spun this to several folks. It hasn't gained a lot of traction, but instead of all these government handouts, my idea was have an extended government loan program, not like

they had in the 80s that ended up being a burdensome thing, but have an extended loan program with the banks facilitate it. So if you've got 50,000 bushels of corn in the bin, the government give you a loan against that 50,000 bushels of corn at 80% of border trade value because today the FSA values like $1,96 or something stupid. And a 2% loan, make it a 24, 36 month term.

Yep. And gets, so that way you can get some cash immediately to be able to get your farming operation, some traction, help pay down your operating, whatever. And then you get the opportunity to hedge that grain also. Yeah, exactly. Right now I talk to the folks at Cargill, and there's tons of spot corn coming in there. There's very little deferred. So you know that folks are needing cash.

And that would give you some liquidity. Let the banks administer it. So if you've got a good partnership with your lender, you know, you can sit down and say, okay, well, let's put half your corn under loan right now, get you some cash, pay down your operating, or pay down this expensive tractor note or whatever that thing is. Um, you know, and, and, and kind of what another thing it's going to do then is it's going to take that corn off the market or the soybeans off the market or wheat or cotton and make the trade have to pay to get it out. Yep. Because the only way you're going to unlock my bin door is I want five bucks or whatever that number is that, that golden number is.

And, and, uh, you know, make the trade have to come and pay for it. Because right now, if you watch Tommy Grosophy and some of those guys, there's an abundant supply of grain. they don't have to pay for it because they know farmers are in trouble and they're going to liquidate their commodity to get cash. Yep. And so it would stiffen things up a little bit. Yep. That's 100% right.

And you can see that firsthand if you live in a community where you have a big end user. So in our area, hogs are king. And there's a few really big producers that grind a lot. All you have to do is look at their basis. and you know there's a lot of people that need cash. Yep. Because they don't have to pay up because they're getting all the corn. And the other side of that is that's why you have seen those guys spend an amazing amount of money building storage

because they want to cut that corn off from going to the river. But also they know the way the economy has moved in ag, there's a huge amount of people that need cash in the fall and they want to be able to take in as much of that crop as they can then because they're going to pay the lease for it because they're just going to beat the basis and why wouldn't you because it's going to come to you yeah so yeah and well i was thinking about this we my on-farm construction crew we put up a cold storage shed this this fall or late summer and one of the i had a contractor helping us and i said he goes you're going to put concrete in this thing i said I don't know.

And he goes, well, you have to put concrete in here. Then he can store corn in it. And I got to thinking about that. I thought, you know, that's not such a bad idea, really. And my son's both like, oh my gosh, we're going to get corn out of flat storage. Yeah. But, you know, that perpetually, when that happened in the 80s, there's a lot of machine sheds got filled with corn.

A lot of grain bins got put up. Yep. And boy, I'll tell you what, it stopped that grain flow right now. And Basis had to improve, which in long term, basis improves. it'll also improve the futures price. Yep. Because they've got to keep poking the bear to get that grain broke free.

And so I think something where we tie up these commodities, corn, wheat, soy, everything, and put it under loan, I think we'd have an opportunity to bolster these markets, but at least keep farmers healthy because I got a feeling that this coming year is going to be ugly for some folks. Yeah, I agree. I agree.

And the thing about it is if they start liquidating large assets like ground, that's going to be bad for everybody because you put quite a bit of stuff out there on the market, then all of a sudden the price of everything goes down because there's only limited amount of folks that are going to buy dirt. Yep. Mm-hmm. How is land prices your area? Oh, crazy.

Yeah. I mean, we've got a lot of urban sprawl around Pella. You know, and that's one thing people don't realize Marion County has a tremendous industrial base. We've got We've got Weiler Manufacturing. We got 3M, we got Vermeer Corporation, we got Pella Corporation, we got Precision Polly. There was a period of time when I worked at Vermeer. There were more people coming to Pella to work than lived in Pella.

And so, you know, there's a lot of urban sprawl. And so that keeps poking this land market. You know, there's a lot of people want to have that five acres out in the country. You know, so, you know, when ground comes up for auction, if it's close to town, you know, The checkbooks are coming out. Yeah. And unfortunately, you know, there's some good dirt that's getting gobbled up and

put houses put on it. Yeah. And I hate to see that. You know, in the southern part of our county is rougher. It's cow country. Yeah. But, you know, all these hunters, you know, I want my cabin in the woods. And so, you know, those rough pieces of ground are bringing big money.

You know, crap ground bringing $7,000, $8,000 an acre. Yep. And driving the cattle guys out. Well, here's your land price update for Southeast Iowa. So yesterday there was 900 acres that got sold over by the interstate by Ainsworth. And I think it was nine tracks that sold. And the average price per tillable acre for the whole thing was $16,700. So I would say there hasn't been any softening.

in the price for that much land to go at for that as an average for tillable acre yeah i got friends around us that's not a bad price oh gosh that's crazy nope that's crazy that is crazy i agree with you but yeah yeah what kind of CSR is that then so that varied quite a bit there i think there was two or three tracks that were very good uh but then there was also the the worst or the different, the poorest track in there, I want to say CSR in the low 80s maybe. That's the poorest? Yeah, yeah.

I live in Southern American County. You know, 80 CSR dirt's pretty dang good dirt. I think it was right around 80 or 78 or something like that. Somebody will beat me up about it. Probably. Anyway, for that amount of land to come, in one shot and there was enough buyers to to take it. I had a few people to call today to see whether or not they had bought that for me and we're going to sign my adoption papers, but I haven't heard

anything back. Yeah, my buddy texted me yesterday. He said, hey, get your checkbook out today. You'll feel a whole lot better. I'm like, yeah, I'll get right on that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to, but yeah. What do you, what's one thing about corn farming that you think most people don't get? and don't know. I mean, I know we talked about the chemical side a little bit, but...

Well, but for corn as a product, you know, corn goes into 4,000 different products. Mm-hmm. You know, I heard somebody quote while back that, you know, corn,

corn kind of runs the country to some extent. You know, there's corn raised in all sorts of states. And so it is a big deal, you know, when somebody says, oh, we need to quit raising corn. No,

tell me how that's going to work out for you because it is a big deal. And as a corn farmer, you know, it concerns me when people say that. But yeah, corn is, corn is a country for our country is a big cotton pick and deal. Yeah. What are some of those uses that people might not know that uses corn? You know, Lulu Lemon clothing is the first one that comes to mind. You know, my wife, used to start Christmas shopping, you know, and the daughters-in-law would say, oh, we want a gift card from Lulu Lemon. I thought that was the devil because, you know, everything's expensive there.

But yeah, I actually have a couple Lulu Lemon shirts. But, you know, the new core plant down at Eddyville, they're taking corn, starch, and creating an acid to make Lulu Lemon clothing or multiple other clothing brands, but that's the first one that comes to mind. And, you know, it's a very viable option to take that and use it in, and replace petroleum products. And one of the messages I tell people is, you know, corn's not going to take over petroleum.

We still need petroleum in this country. I mean, we absolutely do. But there's a finite amount of petroleum. When my grandkids or whoever comes to the end of that, we need to have some solutions or we need to be able to extend the life of it. And so if we can use corn, whether it's in ethanol or sustainable aviation fuel or any of these things that are very viable. And we can use corn for those products.

You know, that's going to extend the life of petroleum. It's going to help the corn farmer. It's renewable. Yep. It's great for this green initiative. You know, I mean, you can't really find any negatives about it. Yeah. And folks need to understand that, that corn is a good deal.

truthfully, you know, as corn can, it rules the country. Yeah. And it could be a great alternative to a lot of things. Yeah. And honestly, you know, as you get older, you know, I don't know if you've got any grandkids, but, but, you know, as you get older and you think about their life, if they're at our point in life, what's that going to be like? Yep. And, you know, I just look at how much change has happened through my life. And so, yeah, you start, I'm, I'm not a huge, jump on the bandwagon of the Green New Deal and all that stuff. But we do have to be, we have to be good stewards of our resources. And, you know, corn and soy are good stewards of our resources. You know, the commodities that we produce in this state can fuel a lot of stuff. But,

you know, other stuff that's made, you know, a lot of plastics are made out of corn. You know, and it's just amazing how much stuff we do with it. We worked on some research, not necessarily to make a flame retardant, but a drip suppressant. So like, you know, when your combine catches fire and, you know, the plastic starts to drip,

they want to stop that drip because it stops the fire from spreading. Yep. So it only burns the wire harness up and just doesn't burn the whole combine up. Yep. But, you know, those are products that corn goes into. Yeah.

What about the what else go to trade what? What, uh, what are you seeing on the trade side when it comes to corn and what are the future opportunities? What are you seeing now? What's being talked about? You know, Mexico, we, we need to keep Mexico. We keep our arm around Mexico. Yeah. We need to take care of them and Canada. Canada buys a tremendous amount of ethanol. Um, you know, there's, and that's what really, blows my mind why in this country we can't get year-round e-15 passed or or some ethanol bill passed for sustainable aviation fuel 45Z any of that stuff when you got countries like Canada that wants e-10 Brazil swipe of a pen they went to e-30 yeah um you know Japan's interested in ethanol India's interested in ethanol well our ethanol exports have never been higher my right on that. And actually China would like ethanol, but, you know, they've kind of got their heels dug in, you know, and we're mad at each other. But, you know, as a country, we could export

tons of ethanol and DDGs. You know, and like India, you know, we've talked about trade with India. You know, they want ethanol and they want DDGs, but they don't want corn. Well, you know, that's kind of, you got both pieces right there, you know. But there is huge amounts of operations for our products all over the world. Now we're tapping into the EU and Britain. You know, and I remember when the GMO thing came out, and that's another thing.

And people, you know, they come out and visit, you know, they're all freaked out about GMO. But Europe really put their foot down, what was that, 15 years ago on GMOs.

Yep. And how it was going to, it was going to kill us and, you know, we're all going to grow a third arm or something stupid, you know, and now,

everything's been pretty good. Yeah. And the thing about it is, I don't think people realize that GMOs have actually made our environment better because I remember before we had insect resistant plants that every summer we would go out and we would spray insecticide with a plane. And that's a Hail Mary, if anything. And we've reduced the use of those insecticides like crazy.

Tremendously. And so, you know, people need to realize that that's a good thing. and those other countries are starting to see that. You know, we haven't, we haven't screwed up our environment by, we've learned how to use them, and they've been a good thing for us. So you think Mexico, like in the next five years, Canada and Mexico are going to be our most important relationships. They need to be.

Yeah. Yeah, it's the same way with the hog deal. I mean, Mexico has been our biggest, our biggest export partner for the hog business is Mexico. Yeah. And really, I feel like we're moving to a time where Mexico, Central America, South America, I mean, your population growth, those are some of the youngest populations in the world, and the demand is going to grow there.

India also. And even some of the Asian countries, you know, they're tired of just eating rice. Yep. You know, and that's... Well, that's the first thing that happens when you start to have an economy that grows is people start eating meat. That's right. which in turn you need corn and you need soy. That's right.

And USMEF, you know, I've heard presentations from them, you know, and there's certain cuts of meat that we don't want here in the U.S. that are a delicacy in those other countries. Like send it all to them, you know, like cow tongues and intrals and stuff. They want that stuff. So, you know, we use every bit of a hog or a cow and, you know, those pieces get shipped overseas. and it's a good deal.

And, you know, there's a ton of third world countries either, like you say, in South America and, you know, Mexico, but you start talking about Africa. Look at how poor those people are. Yep. But if you can start to get them to where, you know, they have jobs and they have a little income, next thing they're going to want is a better food source. Yeah.

Yep. Absolutely. What do you feel like is the biggest opportunity for? corn in our future, five to ten years? I think sustainable aviation fuel and ethanol I think are the biggest things. You know, and that's where us as a commodity group, but like Farm Bureau, soy, we all need to be working together to help support this. You know, I think they all need to realize that if we all work together and get renewal,

fuels really ramped up in this country, it helps the farm economy as a whole. You know, if you've got plenty of DDGs, it's great for the livestock industry. You know, because, you know, I got a couple buddies that raise cattle, you know, and sometimes they're having a hard time getting those products. You know, and just helping the farm economy in general, you know, most folks at farm have some sort of a grain operation. and so yeah we might we need to help those folks out and you know the more voices you have in Washington D.C. or the state house the better things are going to be yep going back a little bit

who do you think's had the biggest impact and been like the best mentor for you in your farming career hmm actually it was one of my plant managers when I worked at Vermeer Corporation, because I learned a lot of business stuff from him and, you know, really understand the benefit of margin. Yeah. And, you know, I don't think farmers think that way. I started, when I was working for him, I started an Excel spreadsheet that I kept track in my farming business, clear back in 2005 or 2006.

And I went back to some of those, I was like, golly, you know, this, I was only spending this on fertilizer. But he was adamant, you know, that we had to have a certain amount of margin in our manufacturing environment. And he was also adamant that, you know, your overhead only went to this certain point. When it went past that certain point, we started just chewing into profit like crazy. And I talked to my sons about that. My oldest son's like, well, let's hire this guy or hire that guy or do this or do that. It's like, no, no, we got to watch our overhead. And it's a hard thing for farmers to understand. Yep.

And that's kind of the biggest thing. I mean, business management was the thing that I really learned from him. In our farming operations, grown big enough. My biggest struggle today is spending time in my office. I'd rather be doing something. And I need to spend more time in my office doing that business management portion of it. Yep. Yep.

I think that's true for all of us. I was going to say. Oh, Sawyer's looking at me. Sawyer's looking at me. Yeah, that sounds familiar. Yeah. My wife will help out some, but, but then, you know, my wife gets a bill for fertilizer. What's this?

$90,000? I'm like, yeah, that's just fertilizer. Yep. $90,000? I'm like, yeah. Or she'll, you know, I'll, I'll kind of poke the bear a little bit, you know, we'll have a payment and do, you know, farm credit will set a thing. You've got a farm payment due. Why are you going to pay for that?

Oh, with a check. Yeah. Yep. Yep. You know, all this. Well, and that. one of the things though the numbers that we're all playing with today are just it would boggle you talk about you know your dad or your grandpa yeah I mean it's I have uh the home I

live in is is I have inherited a pile of things because uh when you never get rid of a house and nobody ever leaves just all this stuff stays and like I have the I have the the the uh the bank registers from like when my dad and his brother farmed in the 50s and to look at the numbers of what they paid for things it's it'll just boggle your mind yeah mean it's just like but you also see the the deposit slips for selling a crop so well and you see the receipts for for grain sales you know like a dollar 25 or a dollar 50 for the corn it's like we're not far off of that yeah that's true too i mean in the 90s I sold corn for a buck 50 buck 70.

Oh, yeah. And, you know, and people just can't get their brain wrapped around that where the commodity prices are today versus that. We're just so much more productive. Yeah. But if we wouldn't have gained that productivity, this whole game would be different. No. We wouldn't be here. You know, and like you say, yeah, I mean, handling money, that's why my wife, I tell people this story.

When we were dating, we were headed up to Des Moines to go to dinner. And she was talking about, we were talking about farming and stuff. I said, well, inherently farmers carry quite a bit of debt. She goes, oh, I'm not afraid of debt. And I said, really? I said, well, what do you think is a lot of debt? And she goes, oh, you know, three, four thousand dollars is a lot of debt. She goes, how much debt have you got?

And I just bought, in the past 18 months, I bought two farms. And I told her, and she didn't really say anything. And for quite a while. And I said, you okay? And she goes, I think I'm going to puke. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and so, yeah, I mean, you get.

numb to the numbers. And that's, you kind of have to, but then that also, if you don't have good, if you haven't got a good grip on your numbers, it'll eat your lunch too. Because the other side of it is we do, we get a custom of those numbers and we say, oh, it'll be all right. Well, it's very easy to need something, you know, different piece of equipment, go to John Deere. John Deere, you know, they're really willing to work with you. Uh-huh.

But it's almost too easy to work with you. Right. Yeah, I think that's something that we all need to be educated on. And I've said this before, but you have to be able to step back and look at things through your other partner's eyes because at the end of the day, your equipment dealer wants to sell you equipment. And they'll come up with every reason why it'll work. And they'll make it easy to work.

and your banker likes to loan money. And while they want you to be profitable at the end of the day, they also want a loan money. And another thing that doesn't get talked about enough is, depending on your accountant, accountants have different ways of looking at things. And there's been many a farmer that has gotten themselves into trouble with an accountant that's very focused on,

appreciation and not paying taxes. There's actually nothing wrong with paying taxes when it serves you because you get on the game of depreciation and trading equipment for the sake of trading equipment and all that. I mean, so everybody you work with, you have to be your own advocate at the end of the day. You have to have your North Star, what's really important to you, and then look at everybody else that's giving you business advice through that lens of, okay, does this actually serve my goals or does it serve theirs more? I got a friend that works for Apollis marketing, green merchandising, and he had a slide

when he first came to visit me. He had a slide, and it really get home with me. He said, you're sitting at the head of your table of your business. You're the CEO. And your banker, your machinery guy, you're. your agronomy person, all those folks are on your board of your business. And their focus needs to be on the success of your business. And that really struck home with me. And I've, I've used that with several folks that I do business with. You need to be thinking about the

benefit to my business. And we've dumped suppliers because of that, because I just don't feel they have my best interest at heart. Right. And, you know, when you're spending hundreds, of dollars with folks. You deserve more than a transactional relationship. That's exactly right. A new ball cap doesn't cut it, boys. That's right. That's exactly right. We have to be looking at the dollars and cents. And I got a friend that's a John Deere salesman, you know, and I'm also friends with these ex-brother-in-law, and we were having a discussion about equipment the other day because we're thinking about a different combine. I said, my worry is your former brother-in-law is, is, your former brother-in-law, is just worried about what he's getting for commission

and not worried about what I'm getting for a piece of machinery. And I said, that's where the rubber hits the road is what I'm getting. And he agreed with me. He said, there's a lot of sales folks that they're just worried about getting commission and not worried about the benefit to their customer. And if we're making money, we're going to spend more money. If we lose our keister, we're not going to darken the door to buy anything. Well, yeah, that's exactly right.

Yeah, I had a situation just not very long ago, a guy that, fertilizer guy, but kind of like a one-off, I only buy one thing from them. And last year, last fall, I didn't have a great experience. It wasn't with the product as much as it was with the application and when they did it and all that. And I hadn't heard anything from him, nothing from him. for pretty much the whole year. And he showed up in my place. And, you know, everything's higher.

And so he basically came at it like, how much do you want, when do you want it? And this is the price. And, you know, oh, hey, by the way, how's everything going? And I really like the product. And I just told him, I said, you know, I said, I have enough transactional relationships. that I need to start eliminating them.

And I said, you really can't show up here and check on me once a year and expect that I'm going to buy anything from you, especially when there's no, you're not going to work with me. And he was kind of taken aback of that. But I feel like you're 100% right. I mean, there's just a lot of people in ag business today that look at the farmer as, it's their honey hole.

It's their subscription. Yeah, it's their subscription. Exactly right. That plant manager I was telling you about, he said we live in a McDonald's environment and everybody just wants a quick gratification. And those salespeople are no different. They just want to drive on your yard and check the box. Check the box.

And I look at the salespeople that I've worked with over the years that I've liked to do business with, that have been successful. You know, and one of them is our former pioneer guy, you know, He'd come out late summer and we'd drive around the pickup and we'd go look at corn. And, you know, he, and he was a chemical engineer by trade. So, I mean, he was real nerdy about every disease and everything we looked in the field. And if I showed him, you know, a pioneer number that was doing well, but I showed him a DeKalb number that was doing well, you know, he probably didn't like it.

But he knew that I was weighing what the differences were for my business. Or I know an old machinery, we had an old machinery salesman. and he had a machinery dealership, 6.30 in the morning, he'd be like, hey, what do I need to be doing for you? I was like, not call me at 6.30 in the morning, but, you know, right now I don't really need anything. But he did that to everybody in the area. I mean, he had this long list. But his trick was he would sell you a new disc, but you were training in your disc. So he'd call me, I'd buy your disc, and mine would go to him. And all those transactions that take place, and none of them would cross the yard.

He made a little bit of money on everybody. And he was constantly shuffling machinery from one place to another. And he would, oh, you know, you're getting a hell of a deal here because, you know, you don't have, we don't run it through the shop. But we'll bring it down. He said, well, you know, we'll help you on parts. You go see the parts guys. And they'll help you out on parts. And you could fix this yourself.

And he sold the crap out of stuff. Yep. And you know what? You felt like you were getting a decent deal from him. And he was taking care of it. That's right. And if something wasn't right, he had the mechanics to come down and fix it. Mm-hmm.

Yep. Yeah, there's not enough emphasis, I think, not even just an ag, but business in general, not enough emphasis is focusing on the customers that you already have. Yep. And not focusing all your time, energy on getting more customers. I feel like everybody in every industry is like that. They want to get more. They want to get more.

They want to get more. and you forget the people that got you to where you're at. And you can't forget that. And straight from the corporate mentality. And those companies, though, the other problem is, to what you were talking about earlier, we have lost a lot of investment into the people within those companies.

And we've talked about this many times. But, you know, I can go down and name a handful of ag businesses in our community, where there's a guy working there that knows everything about whatever it is, whether it's LP gas, whether it's the guy at the parts counter, whether it's the seed dealer, whatever, they have a lifetime of knowledge, and the company that owns that entity has not invested in anybody

to just follow them around and learn from them. And when that person walks out the door, all that knowledge is walking out with them, and they're going to lose a shitload of customers, because they're going to plug a guy in there that through no fault of his own might be a nice guy, has no knowledge and no skills of his, like doesn't know his customer base, has no relationship with him, and doesn't know how to take care of those people.

And I think it's a travesty, but that's where we're at. I think business schools need to teach the benefit of that. Because I've seen it in manufacturing. I've seen it in ag business. You know, the institutional knowledge that's there has a value that you cannot realize. Yep. And, you know, I've seen it when, you know, Joe that used to work on this assembly line leaves, and everybody's like, how in the world do you put this thing together?

Yeah. Because he just knew it. Yeah, and he was the only guy that ever, yeah. It is, I'll tell you, I'll give you a good analogy for you. This, you can use this in your own operation because this really hit home for me. a guy that we work with that does ag accounting, ag

coaching, he said to me, he said, what do you think, he goes, how successful do you think you would have been as a farmer, but also how successful do you think your kids can be if you were able to successfully teach them everything you know

and not just expect them to learn by seeing you do it? A lot of farmers are not good teachers. That's right. They just expect Junior to follow him around and just he'll figure it out. Training by osmosis. Exactly right. And we do a poor job of it.

And he said, how successful do you think the next generation would be if you were able to transfer everything that you knew to them intact? And I was like, that's very convicting. And I think most businesses are that way, to your point, it's like we don't,

we do not, we do not invest enough into, sharing what we know in a way that it can be used. And you need to get it on video. And that's right. And that's something. Honestly. Yep. You got to make a whole course and just video everything.

Well, you got nothing better to do. Yeah, I know. Just crank that out. Yeah, it's time. But, I mean, really, if you think about it, if you could get all your knowledge in a Google Drive on, and it's all the videos of how to fix this, how to do this, my thought process on this.

Coming soon. Coming soon, Bartok listeners, for the low monthly rate of 1995, you can purchase. You can be a founding member of Torque's short course on successful pig raising. I don't know how helpful it would be, but it'd be long sessions of me rambling. What do you think the biggest struggle that farmers are going to face here? I mean, you talked about, we talked about balance sheet and we talked about how Harry thinks are looking coming up in this next year but you know I think everybody especially with this whole soybean price deal people talking about that on the mainstream media farmers getting on there

talking about the tariffs and the soybean price I've seen a lot of guys on TikTok and social media just talking about the margin it's it's not it's these tariffs yeah they're not great but at the end of the day our core problem I hear from people is the margins just keep getting more squeezed because the input cost of production. You know, the inputs just continue to rise and these companies that we rely on know that. I mean, what do you think is the thing that we struggle are going to struggle with? Well, I agree. It's cost of production. But if you look at it from a business standpoint, you analyze this cost of production and how it affects your business, why would you grow? And the thing about it is we're going to be forced into some sort of growth

because, what is it, 55% of farmers are going to retire in the next 10 years? Who's going to take that over? And if you look at it from a lender standpoint, how insane would you be to loan a guy money when you're only making a couple percent margin? Yeah. You know, I mean, that's the thing. We've got to right-size this margin to our business to be able to allow people to grow. Yeah.

And, you know, and I always hear, you know, the big get bigger and all that. that stuff, but those big guys come and go. You know, I've seen guys that, you know, they're farming 10,000 acres and all of a sudden, poof, they're gone. And that has, I hate to say it, but that has to be sustainable because there just isn't anybody out there to do it.

Yeah. And young folks, they don't want to work the hours you and I have over the years. And I, my oldest son and I talked about this two nights ago, I said, there are things that I look back in my life where I think, gosh, I wish I had spent more time doing this with the kids or that with the kids instead of working my keister off and young folks have seen that and they're not they're like you know it's six o'clock dad i'm i want to

go home yeah and and i don't blame them you know what what industry would you work from six or seven o'clock in the morning go 10 o'clock at night and make what we do i tell people I tell people just by off the cuff remark when somebody not involved in ag starts to ask me about you know like harvest time or whatever or what we've got going

and I just look at them and I go yeah in hindsight heroin would have been cheaper probably you know it's like because it is it gets like I always using analogy and you're a perfect example of that you never had the idea that you were going to farm

to be able to work at Vermeer but you worked at Vermeer so you could afford to farm. And what other industry? Would you own a hardware store and work at another store to do that? Exactly right. You know, the only analogy I have is we got a guy that has a bar and he's a mailman. And I don't know which is, you know, his mainstream.

But yeah, what industry would you have that? Yeah. You know, and yeah, it's completely crazy. It is. You know, and the hours that, you know, when you tell people like in the fall, you know, last year, I've been trying to work with an app to try and track hours. And between me and my youngest son who farms with me full time, you know, we were running like 92, 96 hours a week.

And, you know, I can remember on a Sunday morning, I was sitting in the easy chair because we don't run on Sundays. And my wife looks at me, she goes, I just don't understand where you're tired all the time. I think the look I gave her, she probably was pretty sure that there was going to be some sort of legal intervention by the police or something because, I mean, it was just, it's like you're just dead. Yeah. And that ain't good either. I mean, you know, you put in all sorts of hours through the week. You just, you have nothing, there's nothing left in the tank by the weekend. Yeah. And I don't blame young, the younger generation for not wanting to do that. Yeah. I don't know what the solution is.

You know, I hear autonomy and all that stuff. I can't use autonomy on my acres. Yeah. You know, nice, big square fields probably works okay. But, I don't know what the simple answer is. Yeah. And, you know, the smaller acreage farmer, yeah, I think that's a, I think that's fantastic. Who's that going to be? Yeah. There's not a lineup.

No, you're exactly right. Yeah, we say it on here all the time. It's, I feel like you got two, you got two routes. You either got to create your own market in some capacity and not rely on the commodity market for everything and have a premium. or have a guaranteed somehow, or you got to just get bigger because what else do you do? Yep.

I mean, what else do you do? I don't know. Yep. But what keeps you fired up? What, what fires you up to continue to farm and continue to advocate like you do with Iowa corn growers? It's ingrained in you. You know, when you've got a decent harvest and, you know,

you just, it's no, different than raising pigs or raising cattle, you know, you plant this seed and you watch, you nurture that crop to the end. And, you know, I've been taking some pictures while we're harvesting too, you know, you're sitting on top of grain bin at seven o'clock in the morning and that watching the sunrise and gosh, you know, there's something about that. I didn't see that in a factory. Or, you know, in the fall, you know, towards the evening harvest, you know, it's just like, there's just, there's a piece about that stuff. Yeah. You know, when you do have some downtime, you know, you know, there's just something about being out in the country that people, the folks that are

buying these rougher farms and, and wanting their weekend getaway, they see it. Yep. They don't want a farm to get it because they know better. They're smart enough to not jump into this. But there's just something about it that it's a lifestyle and it's, it's, you know, you're, for lack of better terms, you're close to God. Yeah. I mean, it's just how it is.

and yeah, it keeps me going every day. And I'm not one to, you know, I couldn't be that guy that sets the coffee shop every day. I couldn't, you know, I've been in manufacturing, you know, and I, and, you know, I was, I was in management in manufacturing, you know, and, you know, that plant manager that was my mentor, you know, he said, people that do like what we did, he said, they're kind of adrenaline junkies. Yeah. you know you got to constantly be going constantly doing stuff yeah something you know you're always thinking about the next thing you know and and there's a lot of truth to that yeah what is that next thing yep that's 100% right we talk about it we get overwhelmed sometimes and we sit and we think about you know it's too much it's too much and then we're like yeah but what else would you be doing

like what would you be doing so yeah we all go ahead i was just going to say when you said when you worked at Vermeer and then you made that jump and sometimes now you go, gosh, why, why am I, why am I doing this? I mean, we have, I think everybody that is working for themselves or has a business or farmer, every one of us has those days where you go, gosh, it'd be a lot easier if I could just not have all this going on and it's all on me. But it's really rewarding at the same time. We, you know, I'm getting, starting to think about retirement, you know, but we've been wanting to build a new shop because we've way outgrown our shop. We work on most stuff, the big stuff outside, and it's not much fun. Yeah. Anyway, I had a contractor friend of mine. We were talking about new shops,

and I told him, I said, you know, yeah, you know, here's the things I want in a new shop. I said, and I'd really like to have a buddy of mine built a mobile paint booth. So when he wanted to, they wanted to paint something, they'd set it up with a for the forklift. then they got done. They'd take it down, stack it up, put it in the corner. And he goes, what do you want that for? And I said, well, I said, when I get closer retirement, I said, I got a number of these old tractors.

I'd like to fix them all up, you know, and my dad's got some old tractors that I want and fix them old tractors up. And my youngest son looks at me, great. They have all that old crap in the shop, you know. But when I get to that age of retirement, I don't think I can just set in, you know, I'm not a set on the beach kind of guy.

No. No. And I don't think many of us are. I think the people that live the longest aren't those type of people. Yep. I mean, grandpa lived to be 99. He stopped farming at 90. Yeah.

But he still was outgoing even after that, you know. My dad's 86 and I got a neighbor that's the same age as my dad. My dad, his health doesn't allow him to do stuff. We took the grain cart away from him about four or five years ago, backed into a semi in a tractor in the same day. But, you know, he still putters around in the pickup. He likes going chasing parts. You know, you're in the middle of something.

He drives right in the middle of it to see what's going on, you know. And my neighbor, you know, he still gets around good, you know. He's constantly puttering around on the yard doing this or doing that. And we custom farming's ground for him because he, and I do that. I haven't really tried to rent his ground because the fact that he still wants to have skin in the game. And that's what's important. That's right.

Because the mind is as important as the body. Yeah. I'm sure that he spends, I'm sure he looks at the markets every day and figures about what he's going to sell it for and all that. He asked me the other day because we were hauling 24 corn into town. He goes, what should we be doing with corn? I said, well, that's a million dollar question that 70,000 farmers would like to know the answer to you.

Yep, exactly right. Well, Steve, it's been a great, great episode. I wanted to ask you one more thing, though, how do people, if people listen to this, they're corn farmers, how do they get involved to help and advocate and get their voice heard if they want to? Go to iawakorn.org or talk to one of us,

one of us directors or DFMs. You know, Iowa corn is a 7,000 member organization. And, you know, the people that belong to Iowa corn, once they become members, are like, gee whiz, you guys are doing a lot of stuff. There's a lot of member benefits. And your voice doesn't just get stuck here at Iowa. We go to, your voice is heard in Washington, D.C.

You know, and, you know, that's one thing I have learned is you're no sense being shy in doing this. You know, we were in Washington, D.C. for a fly-in to talk to legislators. And we were standing in the airport. and I was a little late getting to where everybody was at, and they were saying, oh, Bernie Sanders just walked by, you know, and they were like, oh, somebody ought to stop and talk to him. So, yeah, I stepped out there and introduced myself. Yeah.

You know, but. Did you try to take your wallet? What's that? Did you try to take your wallet? He did not try and take the wallet. Sorry, we might have to edit that out. I will tell you, he is the grumpiest old fart. Yeah.

He just, he's an all, all it is his climate change. And I said, I personally invited him to Iowa to come and see the good stuff we're doing here. You know, and that's part of being a part of Iowa Corn is get people out here and see what we're doing because farmers are doing good stuff. Yeah, we are. They inherently want to do good stuff because we live in the middle of our work area, you know. We don't want to pollute or do anything bad.

Yeah. But, you know, Iowa Corn is a tremendously well-reying organization. You know, we have a number of member benefits. You know, we sponsor the race in Newton. You know, that's a pretty neat deal. It is a neat deal. And the thing about it is it gets the voice of ethanol and the American farmer to millions of people all over the world. Yeah.

And, you know, I was kind of when we first started sponsoring that, I was like worried, you know, you know, what the feedback would be from that. But my gosh, that is, that is a big deal. And, you know, that's where our promotion dollars go to, to, to, you know, that's. sponsor things like that to try and get farmers voice out there because nobody else is going to do it for us if we didn't say anything you know people would want to cover all of our acres with solar panels or houses or you know flowers or whatever and they don't realize that farmers are really the backbone of this country to some extent and iowa corn is a organization that supports that they drive it every day tirelessly. There's there's times the Iowa corn staff when we're we got functions going on.

You can tell they're, they're darn tired. They're hustling. They're hustling and they, you know, and, you know, for stuff like this, they know we're busy, you know, and I know that sometimes they're like, oh, gee whiz, we got to help with this or help with that. And I truly appreciate our Iowa corn staff. They're second to none, you know, and I, and I know soy and, and, I know, soy and, Farm Bureau and all those organizations have that too. But yeah, our Iowa corn staff is unbelievable. But I encourage farmers to be a part of it. You know, and it's important.

It is very important. And if folks think that they're just going to ride along on people's shirttails, that's not going to happen. Our voice needs to be heard. Well, I couldn't have said it any better myself. I think that was damn good last message for people to hear. So yeah, guys, if you're a corn farmer out there, get involved. Go to IowaCorn.org.

Steve, we really appreciate you making the trip. If you got any value, guys, please share the show with the people that you know. Leave a review on Spotify or Apple. We love you guys. We appreciate you. We'll see you back here next week for another episode. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time.

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