Barn Talk - Why Farming Is The Backbone Of America..

Episode Date: May 8, 2021

Welcome To Barn Talk! In today’s episode, the boys discuss why agriculture is the backbone of AMERICA and how farming impacts local communities & much more... SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c ADD US ON: INSTAGRAM ➱ https://bit.ly/3gaobdN TIKTOK ➱ https://bit.ly/3eJfftr ------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Barn Talk is a significant break from the typical content viewers have come to expect from This’ll Do Farm. Please be advised that we will be exploring a wide variety of topics (some adult-themed) and our younger viewers (and their parents) should be advised that some topics will be for mature audiences only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amazon presents Laura versus Fruit Flies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen, these little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. 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 back to Barn Talk. What happens in the barn stays in the barn until us two knuckleheads came along. Now we're just going to let it all out for you guys. We had a little bit of an oopsie, and this is not a little bit of an oopsie. This is a big oopsie. and that oopsie is we actually just shot the podcast you're listening to right now and it was fantastic and it was a banger and probably the finest work that i've ever done yeah it was it was a masterpiece

let's just say that and with any banger sometimes they blow up in your face and this one blew up right in our face because one of the cameras that's recording us was not turned on the battery wasn't either the battery died or it wasn't plugged in or whatever and we missed the camera angle and some of you might be thinking oh that's not be that big of a deal well it is kind of a big deal because it was the camera that was on dad and i'll be the first one to admit dad does a lot of talking he does a lot of talking and that is probably the most important camera angle to have on so it is kind of a big deal but we're going to keep on keeping on pushing forward and we're going to get this damn podcast out for you guys because we cannot missed this opportunity. If I can just remember what I talked about, I had some really good ones, but we'll just struggle through it. We'll just have to wing it. We'll struggle through it.

We'll struggle through it. Well, let's talk about why the hell we're doing a podcast today and not why we didn't do it on this last Friday, because usually we shoot our podcast on Friday. But. Sorry is a little flustered. It's been a busy week at this-l-do farm. So, yes, we were supposed to shoot this Friday, and then Friday got away from us. It's really been a busy week.

We've had a long week, but Friday got away from us, and then we were going to do it Saturday, and then Saturday came and went, and we came to Sunday, and we, what'd you do today? Oh, well, let me just tell you, I had a good, on top of what happened just now with the previous podcast we recorded, I had a lot of bin, feed bin trouble. And if anyone works with feed bins or knows feed bins, sometimes that feed hangs up. And today was just one of those days that I don't know if the feed mill ground up, didn't grind the feed up enough,

or they made it too flowery or whatever. But it started clunking up bad in the hopper of the bin I'm on. And I had to go up there and beat on it and beat on it and beat on it. and every time I seem to leave, I'd get it started and I'd wait a couple minutes and make sure that, you know, it failed at least one feeder and then I'd leave. And, you know, it runs for about an hour or so. And if it doesn't, if it times out, then I have to go up there and restart it and it runs again. But every time I'd come back, it seemed like the feed wasn't still flowing. So then I'd have to be on it again.

But I finally think I got around to getting the pigs some freaking feed. I almost channeled my Michael Jackson right there I was going to chime in Did you have a flashback to the 80s? I was going to moonwalk. I don't know. I wish we had to beat it. We got to program that.

I think the listeners' ears would have probably bled if you would have started singing. No, no, that's true. That's 100% true. That's a beautiful voice. Not so much. Not so much.

You know, my bins used to hang up. But they didn't. Oh, I know. I know they did. I was there. I've got bin vibrators on all of mine. I've got bridge rids. I'm jealous.

And Sawyer, the plan was to actually do that on his barn. But the budget was, yeah, we can get into this, but Dad's first three hawk buildings were a little bit cheaper than the one that I built this last year. So mine was a little bit price year, and I'm 21 years old, so I can't just drop. Well, your budget, yeah, your building was more expensive, but then we had to build a lane, a lane to nowhere.

And it was, we built it in the fall into the winter. Yep. And we dumped. A ton of gravel. Well, we dumped a few hundred tons of gravel, I think. So the bridge rid budget got, got busted. Yes. So you're saving your pennies.

I am saving my pennies. I'm going to have to call up Greg and say, hey, buddy. I'm going to get on my knees and start. start begging them, hey, can we work out a deal where I can, I don't know. You could just annoy him every day. I could just DM him every day and say, hey, buddy. Just wear him down. Just wear him down.

Wear him down. Yeah, well, so why were we so busy this week, Dad? Besides today, this crazy ass day today. Yeah, so we started filling our site one barn. So we're going to put 8,000 head of wiener pigs in there. And we started getting pigs, and we get them every day, but Thursday. So that pretty much every morning, you can figure that if they come early, because they don't come the same time every day, because the sow farm, depending on their workflow, they don't wean at exactly the same time.

So if we're going to get them later, if we're going to get them at, say, 10 o'clock, we've got time. We'll go chore or other barns and then get the pigs. But if they're coming at, you know, if they load him at 530 or 6, and he's at our place at 6.30, quarter to 7, then we'll unload the pigs and pen them, size them, all that, and then go chore. But pretty much every day, the morning's pretty well shot by the time we get pigs in, and that's if nothing else is wrong and the feed bins don't hang up or whatever. Right. It's different every day. It's different every day, which is a beautiful thing.

It is a beautiful thing. You can't complain too much. Some days are better than others, but it's always an adventure. It is an adventure. It is an adventure. So we had that, and then what else do we do? Well, we got the seed in the ground. It's spring.

If you guys haven't been looking around or looking out your windows or been outside, it's springtime. And if you're familiar with agriculture, that means it's time to plant. So we planted some corn. And we were going to do it on Friday. Thursday. We were going to do it on Thursday, but the ground temperature wasn't high. enough. It was like at 45 degrees and what do you want it at? About 50 degrees or so. You'd like to have it. And it's okay. If it's 45 but it's headed the right direction, you know, the sun's out and it's getting

warmer. But the one was not coming out. No, it just, it was cold. It just wasn't, it just wasn't good. And so Thursday, we, we stood around and, uh, scratch our nuts for a while and try to decide if we should go. And so, you know, this time of year, if you don't, if you're sitting there rolling the dice, whether you should go or not, just take a after lunch drive to get a cup of coffee and just take the long way. And, you know, you just start driving around and you see what everybody else is doing. And so that's what. We pick the right day. Because on Friday, when we actually decided to plant, you could look out and you could see everybody around us. Everybody had the same bad idea, so everybody was going.

And being the BTOs that we are, we started on Friday and we finished on Saturday. So all 180 of our corn acres are all planted. And we feel pretty good about that. And we haven't done beans yet, but there'll be plenty of time to get that done. So, yeah, all in all, it was a busy week. And side note, we also had to move my grandpa. out of his house. Dad's father-in-law, my grandpa,

he's getting to the age where, well, if you know anything about these housing prices, it's a damn good time to sell your house. Yep, especially if you don't have to turn around and buy one, which he's lucky enough in his case that he's not going to have to buy one. And so he came out pretty good. But in the process, there's a lot of stuff to get rid of. And there was garage sales and yard sales and all that.

But when it's all said and done, there were some stuff that had to be moved and they always call in the muscle. Yeah, if you have the title as a farmer, this is kind of a generic thing. I think everybody says, oh, if he's a farmer, he's got to have, he's Farmsstrong. He's Farm Strong. We'll just call him up. All your friends and relatives will all be like, oh, yeah, they're Farmsstrong. They'll do the heavy lifting.

Except they don't realize that the Farm Strong guy, he's the one with the bad shoulders. Oh, bad, yeah, let's talk to bad shoulders when you got your taller son over here. that's going to have a freaking bad back and look like humpback and when he's probably 40. That's, I always tell dad, I always tell dad, I say, you know, it's hard being short when you're trying to find a woman, but once you find the right one, being, being a little short isn't all too bad because, you know, for what we do, when pigs come back on you, they don't hit you in the knee or shins. They hit you right in the quad, right in the muscle, and you can fit and you can fix things. and I don't know.

It's pretty, you know what, it's a pretty good gig. I don't know. And I don't think, I think you got enough charm. You charm on real, real, real nice, so. Oh, I didn't know what you're talking about. I didn't know I was short. Apparently I am. Well, I don't know.

I think you are. Well, I might be a little bit. I'm thinking if I wear my tall shoes, I can ride the tornado. I can ride the tornado adventure land. That dog, though, that darn dog. I was never tall enough. You had to be as tall as that dog's arm, and I could never quite make it. I could never quite make it.

Hey, you know what they always say, though? Dynamite comes in small packages. I think smart guy. You got that over me, so. Yeah. You bring the boom. And I don't ever hit my head. I do hit my head on the feedhoppers every so once in a while.

Yeah. Apparently, since I am short, I'll give you the short version of the market report today. And this market report is sponsored by nobody because we don't have any. Yeah, we don't have any sponsors. But, you know, if you'd like to sponsor that or, I don't know, sponsor my bottle of water, you could be the table sponsor or the mixing sponsor. We're looking for sponsors. We'll put a name on about anything at this point.

We're just trying to pay the power bill. But anyway, I'll give you the short. I sold my last two loads of corn last week, and I was feeling pretty, I was feeling, oh, man, I did. So I got 629. hauled down to one of the hog feeders, and I was pretty amped about that. And they actually told me, you know, when you haul it in, you got 10 days to price it. And they were like, oh, you don't, you know, you sure you want to price it? And my luck with not pricing it is it always goes down.

So I was like, nope, I'm just taking it. Just like Grandpa. That's Grandpa's mentality. Well, Grandpa's mentality was to hold it in, hold it like to you were destitute because he he was always trying to time it up yep because it was going to go up it was just a matter

he loved sue martin peer optimist just like yeah he loves sue martin every time that sue martin would talk about you know beans going up which was every time she was ever on market to market my dad was like oh yeah I think but sue martin she's smart

she knows we're gonna hold these we're gonna hold these anyway so I sold it but corn actually finished the week so the numbers I'm quoting are from Friday. So off the cat's grain website. So kudos.

Shoutouts, cat green, cat green. Anyway, corn, 653. And that is actually, that 653 price was good, I think, at three different feed mills. So all pretty local. So we've got one that's, what, eight miles away, five miles away, and about 15 miles away. Yep. So pretty,

pretty easy to get to, or you could haul it to the, you could haul it to Cedar Rapids, and they got a 660 bid at Cargill. Mm. But it's kind of a crap shoot. If you go up there, you might sit there for an hour,

or you might sit there for eight hours, and then they tell you, ah, well, it's broke down. Come back tomorrow. So I would just go with that. Go with the local. I would go with that. How about the soybeans?

The beans are 1543. and I think that's at Burlington, ADM and Burlington. And if you go across the river to Quincy, it's 1569. Pretty banging. Pretty good prices. So we're headed to, I'm just hoping that these prices drag up the futures for fall delivery because I haven't. Are you getting itchy?

I am getting itchy. Well, it would be nice to be able to, you know, pay everything off and still have money. in account. You know, that would be kind of nice. I might be able to pay you this fall even. That'd be really nice. I'm crossing my fingers. You might be able to buy it one bridge red.

Oh, yeah. I could get a bin vibrator. I'll call Greg up. You know, he can put the brackets on all three bins, and then he just puts a pin on the vibrator, and you move it from bend to bin. It's got a really long cord on it. Well, that could.

It's the, it's the econo. It's the, it's the econ. auto model. I could maybe do that. He could put you on an installment plan too. Anyway, and keeping with tradition, Bitcoin, bad week. Bitcoin has had a bad week. It did have a bad week.

I think the Coinbase IPO, I think there was a lot of people that had Coinbase, or bought Coinbase, and they either sold Bitcoin to buy Coinbase, or they were investors in Coinbase that had a pile of Bitcoin, and they sold part of their coin-based stock when it skyrocketed and sold a bunch of Bitcoin. And now they're just chilling on an island drinking coconut. Coconut water? Coconut water. I bet you they're not drinking coconut water.

That fad sailed. I think that's out. I don't think it's making it. It was a deal, but I don't think it's stated. But listen, if you're in Bitcoin, all the small people are out, you know, if you, well, I can't say I'm somebody that's big, But if you're somebody that just bought Bitcoin because of the hype and you sold, Bitcoin wasn't meant for you anyway. No, no, it's a long haul. It's for long haul. Time in the market. Time in the market. Right. And Tesla earnings come out after the close on Monday. I'm expecting a beat on that. So hope springs eternal.

There you go. I'm optimistic. There you go. Yep. Here's another thing about Torque. He's a pure optimist. Everything is going to be okay. We're going to figure it out. We're going to figure it out. We're going to figure it out. And you know what? It's a pretty good environment to put yourself in because I'm glad he's not a pestimist and pessimistic all the time because... You can't be a pessimist and be a farmer. That's true. I mean you can, but it's kind of miserable. It would be kind of a crap shoot if you were that way.

I think we should probably at some point do like a remote podcast from the kitchen table, like on a Sunday night when we have a dinner and everybody. So my other son, my older son, he's... He's in real estate, and he has just as goofy ideas as what Soyer and I do. And when we all get together, it's like a think tank. It is like a great value shark tank show. Great. I like that.

I like that. And then my wife, Tricia, she keeps us all together. Without her, we'd be lost. But let's just say she kind of probably gets a little frustrated when we start babbling off. like, yeah, let's do this. Let's do that. Oh, yeah. You need this. She's the voice of reason. She is.

And she can only take about so much before she's like, okay, just no, no, we're not no, we're not doing it. God bless you, Trisha. We love your ass. Yeah, we do. For sure, for sure. We'd never make. We would never make it. Anyway, so what are we going to talk about? Today, we have a special one for you. Today, we're going to talk about why rule America is the backbone.

of the U.S. economy. That is a good topic. Yes, sir. Especially in these trying times, because I think the disconnect as far as the importance and how much agriculture, how big a role agriculture plays in that.

And as we get further, as the generations get further and further removed from knowing where their food comes from, I think they also get further removed from knowing what agriculture does for the economy. And I think COVID, I think you could make the argument that that kind of brought that to the forefront. Yeah. I mean, I think it raised some questions like people were wondering, where the, where the hell are we going to eat? Where are we going to eat? Why is there no food?

Of course. Why can't I get my favorite freaking. I don't know, my organic chicken breaster. Yeah, exactly right. You know, that all played in when the packing plants, and we were right in the middle of that because we were dumping one of our sites right when several these packing plants were closing down.

And we really lucked out. The integrator we feed for, they, it was actually just, I guess you could say it was dumb luck, but, you know, they actually sell pigs to three different packers, which was a good thing, because not all of them had problems at the same time. I think they all had some problems, but in fact, one of them shut down for a while, and the other two got pretty slow because they kept slowing down the line speed. But, you know, there were guys out there that they were taking all their animals to one,

packer and they got screw yeah i mean there was no place to go and pigs got huge and we didn't know what we were going to do and let's touch on that a little bit because people don't really understand this this was a huge topic when this was all going on packing points so the reason people were like well why because some some let's be honest some integrators had to you euthanize some pigs because they got way too big and people are like well why do you do that why did you waste why'd you waste that pork Why did you waste that product? Why did you have to euthanize the animal? A perfectly good animal.

And the reason is these packing plants are built, the infrastructure that they run their lines on, is built a certain way to hold a certain amount, certain size. Certain size of a carcass. So it has to weigh a certain amount. And if a pig's too big, let's say if you have a packing plant that has a range of 300 to 350 for a carcass weight,

and this pig comes in at 375, and his snout touches the ground, and that surface is an FDA approved, then they can't sell that pork and that... It has to be destroyed. It has to be destroyed. So live weight. Yeah.

Yeah, live weight. So, you know, you're selling hogs in a window, um, anywhere between, oh, 280 to 320, let's say. But, you know, as these pigs, we, you back them off. You feed them a lower energy diet, you know, basically we were feeding them, ground corn with no bean meal and no vitamin pack in it. Nothing, given them the least amount of energy we could and keeping them fed to try to slow them down from growing.

But they're going to keep growing. They're going to keep gaining every day. And once a pig gets so big, these plants can't, physically, they can't move that animal through that plant. and like Sawyer said, if they come in contact, when they're hanging on the rail, if they come in contact with a floor or when they go around a corner, if they touch anything. They're not supposed to. That's not FDA approved. Right. That carcass has got to be destroyed. And then the other side is if that plant was shut down. And so it created a big mess. And then fast forward, you know, now part of the reason that hog prices are high, you know, I think it was a hundred and seven. $1 a carcass, a 100-weight carcass.

So the reason for that is because the supply of live hogs now is low. Well, back up, the reason that we're in that deal is because guys lost so much money when the market was so bad that there are northwest Iowa, for instance, I think there's somewhere around between 150 and 200,000 spaces of finishing that are sitting empty because there's no pigs to put in there. there's some smaller cell units that got shut down, didn't get reopened. There's guys, you know, this business, it's a people business just like everything else. And you have, there's a certain amount of people in the hog industry that are a lot older than I am.

You know, guys that have been in it for a long time and they're in their 60s and they're looking at it during this and saying, and they're losing so much money and they're like, I'm going to get out. I'm getting out. And if I get out now, I'm not getting money. back in. I've had it. And you had some of that. And then you have other people that are, that are in it that in a different time and a little more certainty in what was to come, they might look at that situation and say, I'd be interested in buying that sow unit. Or, you know, I'll add more sowls. If the capacity's there, I'll add more sales. Well, today,

it's so much more uncertainty that a lot of these established producers, they're not expanding. They're looking at it and being like, we're happy where we're at with this price and market being where it's at. We can get rid of our pigs. We're just happy to be here because of what they had to go through. And the certainty is not there. So I don't see this.

I think that we're in a little different time when it comes. to the pork production specifically, I can't really talk about, I mean, everything's high, but I can't really talk about anything other than hogs because that's all I know anything about. But I think that you're going to see the market, the production side of it change a lot slower. I don't think you're going to see the numbers come up. USDA, they're terrible. They can't count anything because you see, they still think that we're going to have more hogs coming later this summer.

You can see the futures prices down. I don't know. I don't see that happening. I think it's going to take a lot longer for us to rebuild this. Infrastructure. This herd than what they're saying. But anyway, that was kind of a rabbit trail. We kind of got off a little bit.

I think it needed to be said, though, because a lot of people had some confusion on why that was all going on. But that was just one of the things that happened during COVID. I mean, you look at everything. people so like we were saying you know people were out of touch with their food but since covid happened people were starting to be like all right where the hell's my food why aren't these restaurants open why isn't this hotel serving me food you know like every place that needed food was getting shut down and that had a massive effect on the economy as a whole agriculture economy

everything and it really if you sit back and really think about it agriculture you know plays a huge part in a lot of jobs a lot of businesses and a big part of of the economy and when the restaurants shut down the hotel's shut down there's no expos happening there's no parties happening and there's no sports happening um it's it's crazy it's crazy to see and yeah and i i'll be curious to see how this number and i honestly don't know where i find this number but i'll have to try to look i know that like two years ago so traditionally in the past obviously people have spent more money on buying groceries at the grocery store than they have on Eat Now. But, like, I think about two years ago was the first time that that number had switched

to where per capita, Americans spent more money on eating out than they did on groceries. And it's been headed that direction for a long time. but I imagine with COVID for this for 2020, I'm sure that flipped, obviously, because it was, you know, it was good for the grocery stores if they could get supply of what they were doing. But, you know, the ag economy in the United States,

that's going to come back as far as the service side, the restaurant's reopening, and that trend of people eating out, it's going to go, it's going to go that way. Right. And as a convenience for humans. That's what it just is. And we have Chick-Fleigh now, not, not, and we don't have crappy fast-food restaurants back in the 60s.

I mean, I don't know. How many fast food restaurants did you have back in the 40s and 50s and 60s? I don't know. Compared to today. And like you, you have a freaking fast food restaurant or restaurant in every corner you go. So, I don't know. They just try to lure you in. Chick-fil-A.

Chick-fil-A. I mean, let's all be honest here. If you've already ate Chick-fil-A, it is the premier fast-food restaurant. I mean. Yeah, the only way could be better is if it would. was tenderloin filet. No, exactly. I mean, where's the pork products out here?

Are these fast food restaurants or just restaurants in general? Why doesn't Longhorn Steakhouse have a premium pork ribbi that tastes damn good? Where's that at? Are you saying that you would like the Tuscan Moon to go show everybody else in America how to make, how to cook a pork ribby? Yes. If you are ever in southeast Iowa and you're in Clonai. Well, go to the Tuscan moon and order yourself a pork ribby with garlic mash, cabbage with bacon, and some side of Marsala sauce. The Marsala sauce.

You can thank me later, but that is the best cut of pork that I've ate besides barbecue, outside of the barbecue in my life. It is, if they had that at Longhorn Steak House or Texas Roadhouse, it would be 50-50 every time I walk in there. If I'm getting the pork rib by, if I'm getting a prime rib-b-ripe or just for a rink. regular ribby because it's it's that good it's that good and I'm not just being biased here because I'm a pork producer I'm you go you go taste it tell me how you feel about it it's it's better than bacon so so there's two there's two things there one that's a completely uh we're not being we're not being paid by the tuscan moon that we just it's just true it is it's a no-brainer it's just best rip best pork ribeye you'll ever have and two if longhorn had that pork rib buy you would be

able to afford to have both because we would be selling so much pork that your contract would probably double because we couldn't raise enough pigs. I'm fine with that. It's a win-win on my car. So why choose? Just get the, just get the six ounce. Oh, let's just get two. We'll get the eight, get the eight-ounce and the eight-ounce. There you go. Winners coming. They got to have a combo deal on there. There you go. Springs here, but winter's coming, so you got to keep that winter weight on. There you go. That should be it right there. But once again, we kind of get off. But so, you know, nationally between restaurant, food service, all of the shipping, all the packing, all the processing,

there's a huge amount of people that are employed indirectly from agriculture. But then you take all of the companies that provide chemistry. chemicals to the ag community. Seed companies. Equipment manufacturers. Pires. Yeah. Diesel fuel.

It's a huge, it's a huge part of the economy. And on a local level, too. Not only on the big scale of U.S. economy, but local level as well. Like all the stuff that we need to run our operation and every other operation around us, farm communities, we need. We got to go to AIS. hardware like three times a week because three times i gotta go there like every day every day because we got to find we got to get new stuff and we got to go we got to get uh diesel fuel from fs and we got i mean there's all kinds stop we got to get tires you well there's actually a skidloader parked out

right out front of our barn here that's got a flat tire we're gonna have to go to our local tire shop and get that you know why because we were just in the tire shop because we had to get tired we had two flat tires on the field cul-ovator. We took them there. And they had forgotten about us. We shouldn't have gone. I didn't want to go, but we had to. So then they were like, oh, yeah, Whistlers haven't been in here much.

So over the weekend, they drove out, scattered nails around, because that's what the people at the tire shop do. They got a whole freaking pocket full of nails. Oh, no. Whenever you go into our local tire shop, they have like a tub in there, and it's all the stuff that they pulled out of tires. and there's some crazy stuff in there. But then every once in a while you go in there and it's empty. Well, the reason it's empty is because on Sunday they just drive around and they scatter that stuff around for people to pick up their tires. I mean, it's the easiest way.

It's just they're just for reoccurring business. Yeah, they're protecting their business. And I guarantee you that's what happened. I guarantee you. They do a damn good job, though. Yeah, they do. But they could keep that stuff south and not bring it out here. But anyway, I totally lost my train of thought now that I was thinking about the tire.

Oh, well, I was saying, I was saying that you said we get different stuff. The only thing I go to Ace for most of the time is to buy more hammers than 9-16s or inches. Because when I die, somewhere on this farm, there's going to be, you're going to find a bunch of them. And I don't understand what happens. You know what? You might just one day when you pass away and hopefully this isn't the way you go, but you might just trip and fall and hit your head on one of those damn hammers that you felt you've lost around here. That would be kind of poetic.

karma that would be well i hope it's not karma it's not karma but it's that would be ironic that would be ironic it would be very ironic yeah but back to back to staring our way back on board here oh yeah so um locally and this is something that i'm i'm amazed to live in i mean rural america small town rural America and I run into so many people that have no like no idea how much ag adds to their local economy and like our our town's the same way you know we're very lucky in the fact that southeast Iowa is is known for hog production and we've got we've got a lot of hog producers both independent guys, smaller guys, and then larger family operations, integrators. And they employ a heck of a lot of people. They buy a lot of stuff. They get a heck of a lot of hamburgers at the drive-through.

They buy a lot of hammers at ACE or, you know, Orson, or whatever. But the amount of business gets added to our local economy from hog production specifically, but agriculture in general, is it's huge and it's one of the reasons that we're it's one of the reason that our community has actually grown a little bit when so many communities around the Midwest you know lose population I mean we're not growing a lot but we're hold our own and we're not we're not the only farm community out there I mean that's when you're not on the west coast and east coast it's in the middle there's a bunch of farm small towns like ours and a big part of our economy, not only, you know, nationally, but locally is small farm town communities.

You know, we, it's all, all the stuff that we said, you know, tires, diesel fuel, seed, chemicals, fast food burgers. Yeah. But then, you know, if you want to talk about economic development in the state of Iowa, and I was just thinking about this when I was driving, when I was just, riding in the tractor. One of the best, in my mind, and I mean, I'm biased, I'll admit I'm biased, but one of the best ways to stimulate the Iowa economy is the hog business, and specifically hog buildings.

And I mean, it's not going to be very good. I don't think it's going to be very good this year, and it may not be very good next year because the prices of the buildings are so high, it's going to be hard for people to build them. And then on the other side, you know, I don't think that, excuse me, I don't think that production's going to grow to where there's going to be the need that there has been in the past. But, and that's going to, that's going to hurt a lot of small towns because when you think about, when you think about your shed, pretty much everything that went in that building was local at the local level or in Iowa. Or at least in Iowa or the Midwest and pretty close the Midwest. Yep. So the...

TC tiling did our dirt work out of Wayland, Iowa. Dennis Dua, the man-myth legend, concrete guy. And he's from Wayland. Is he from Wayland, too? Wellman. Wellman. He's from Wellman, Iowa. F.S. did our gas lines and fuel tanks, and they're from... Where are they from? They're from Washington. Well, they're a co-op. They're from all over southeast Iowa.

Or southern Iowa. AP, all the AP, even barn equipment is from Assumption, Illinois. Gates are from Earlville, EIP. What about the feeders, Bremer? Bramers from Nebraska, and I can't remember what town that is in Nebraska. Sorry, guys. I can't, I can't remember. Cascade, Iowa, the slats, custom precast.

I mean, you can go on and on. You can go on and on. But all those communities benefit, and I mean, that's a lot of jobs. And I don't think that gets talked about enough. In our little town, there's a company, based here, uh, bazooka. And literally that business has boomed because of manure. Because when I was a kid, we, we hauled all the manure out of our hog billings with a little better built vacuum tank. And today, you know, you see them massive tanks, massive tanks and a lot of people drag

lining. And these guys, that's, they basically, they've basically built that business. Um, and I always told when I would see them at the show, you know, every good year that we had selling hog buildings, that meant that the next year, they were going to have, they were going to have a damn good year. Because all those guys that put up these sheds, they're going to need their manure hauled, and they're going to need to stop to do it. They're either going to be, they're either going to call somebody, or they're going to do it themselves. And if they do it themselves, they're going to be calling, you know, I need this. I need it all. And, but, and that's just, you know, that's just one little slice. That goes on for cattle, cattle sheds, poultry sheds, turkey sheds.

I mean, that's just a hog farm. Even your grain farmers, these grain operations, you know, you. The bins, the tractors, the, I mean, all the equipment, all that stuff, the building. I mean, if you want to build a machine shed, a shop, anything like that. I mean, I think it's the same thing you're going to like, you're going to like this tie in. Get ready for this. I'm going to hold back. This is just like Tesla.

Oh, boom. Are you wondering how this is just like Tesla? I'm waiting to hear it. So Tesla has figured out that it is better to make all the stuff that makes, so they're making the machine that makes the machine. So in other words, they're building the equipment that builds the cars. They're doing, they're building their own chips. They're building their own batteries. They're designing the factory that builds the car.

Did Henry Ford do that? You was the first. Ironically. Now, that's a great. Boy, that's good. I know. That's good. School did teach me something, guys.

Your dad is your parents be proud of you. I hope so. So, yeah, you go back when the automotive, when the automobile first came on, Henry Ford built, I think they called it the Rouge plant. I could be, or, yeah, I think it's called the Rouge. Oh, don't worry. Somebody will correct me. But literally, iron ore went in one end of it, and Model T's came out the other end of it.

They built everything in-house. Now then, eventually, they got real inefficient about it because it was so big. They couldn't manage it. And I'm sure, you know, they did everything on paper. It would be a nightmare. There was no Google Excel. Yeah, you didn't have the dojo. He didn't have the dojo computer to run.

all the scenarios. So we got away from that, and we went to outsourcing, outsourcing, outsourcing everything, and a bunch of that went overseas. And Tesla, they have figured out... We're going to do the Henry Ford program. They actually have, like, material science division. Like, they have people that are working on coming up with new formulas for aluminum, and they have people working on different metals.

They're doing all the stuff they need to do to build the infrastructure to build the product that they're selling. Well, that's what needs to happen, not just on that, but in everything in this country. And you're seeing it. You know, there's a big push now on microchips because guess what? Ford shut down making the F-150 for like two weeks here and two weeks there because they can't get enough chips. Nobody can get any chips. They can't get them. Guess where they're all made.

Where are they made? They're made in China. They're made in Taiwan. They're made in South Korea or whatever. And our country is figuring out that, hey, we should be. We need to invest in making stuff here. Well, guess what? The farmers, we've been making the raw products that have in turn been making

everything you eat and then a heck of a lot of other stuff. And we never, we never stopped doing that. Right. But I think the rest of the country is, is figuring out that that's a pretty good model. That's a pretty good idea. Boy, I just, I just thought that up on the fly.

That's mind-blowing. I don't know. The ultimate pork talk right there. I don't. Wow, that's pretty good. We should probably just, we need to just like, we need to just sit down and listen to this and just maybe make, I don't even know.

I was just going to say we'd probably better stop while we're ahead. I don't know where else we'd have to go. Have we completed all our thoughts? I think so. I think you guys might have gotten just the greatest. That might have been the better than the first one that we just recorded, what we recorded before that. I don't know, they'll tell us.

They may say it was the most boring thing that they've ever heard. But I guess to close, you know, our goal with what we're doing, Oh, and the one thing I wanted to say, we touched on this, the last podcast that we had to throw away and start over because of the camera deal. We want to get some guests on here. Our idea was that as we start, we want to figure out, well, we need to make a checklist so that when we do have a guest, we don't forget to turn on the camera because most of our guests aren't going to be like, oh. Yeah, yeah, let's wrap. Let's do it again, boys. Let's do it again.

Yeah. So we're getting the kinks worked out, but let us know who you like to see us talk to. There's a lot of subjects we like to tackle. I know one of the things that I'm really interested in is carbon and carbon sequestering and carbon credit, carbon credits. I don't know why. Carbon. I can't say carbon, but I apparently can't.

That's something that's really interesting to me. And I think it's getting, you know, obviously with the change and the political spectrum that we got now then that's a hot button issue um and there's a lot of other stuff too but there's a lot of guys that we we know personally that don't have a huge following i guess on social media that we think would provide a lot of value to guys but there's also a lot of guys out there that are on social media that if you want to see them on here tell us because we can probably shoot them a DM and we'll try them and we'll email them and we'll try to get them on here but yeah like dad said we got to we're trying to get our craft down here first because we are a little rusty since

this is our first time but yeah it's getting better it's getting better it's getting better i hope you think so too and we appreciate you sticking with us and so we're actually we're actually what are we two we're two weeks behind because we're from the we're sitting here recording the sunday after the first podcast was released and we did it that way because torque needs as much time as he can to edit these things because I'm old and slow and I get bored easy and then I get a snack and then I nod off and I don't get my work done. He falls asleep. Yeah. So what I was going to say was thanks for the comments. We really appreciate the positive feedback and let us know what you think. Let us know what you'd like to see and we'll see if we can't make it happen. And we appreciate it. We appreciate

you listening and watching. Yeah, we'll see you guys next Friday. Have a good week and keep on. We'll see you back here. Keep it on.