Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 205 - Jeff Smith

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

Growing up in the mountains and fields outside of Pendleton, Oregon, Jeff Smith has spent most of his life surrounded by, and working in, the agricultural industry. In 2005, he obtained a bachelor's degree in Agricultural Business from Colorado State University and has become a highly skilled business consultant specializing in food production and heavy construction, with an emphasis on sales, operations, and business development. He has led business initiatives with a wide range of objectives, and throughout his career, he's had direct exposure to the business cycles of over 30 different commodities. Building on his early career successes, Jeff worked in private equity before establishing his own consulting firm. He continues to apply his experience and knowledge to his clients' unique situations, helping them reach their financial and business goals while also ensuring they are set up for long-term success. In 2015, Jeff and his wife Kara; (a fifth-generation cattle rancher from the plains of Eastern Colorado) moved back to the family ranch just outside Akron, CO that was settled in 1913. After some discussion, Jeff and Kara founded Colorado Craft Beef in 2017 as a way to diversify the ranch's operations and establish a business model that can meet the demands of current and future generations. Capitalizing on current eCommerce trends and technology, Colorado Craft Beef offers high-end beef delivered straight from their ranch to customers' homes and businesses. To date, they have shipped to 49 states, and continue to grow due to their commitment to a great customer experience. Jeff and Kara share a passion for agriculture, endeavoring to do their part to ensure people not only have access to nutritious foods but also remain engaged with the process that allows all of us to have sustainable food stocks that are available when and where we need them. https://helixsleep.com/clearedhot https://drinklmnt.com/clearedhot https://betterhelp.com/clearedhot https://magicspoon.com/clearedhot  

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So if you don't like it for any reason, they'll refund you. your money, no questions asked. Remember, get your next delicious bowl of guilt-free cereal at magic spoon.com slash cleared hot and use the code cleared hot to save $5 off. That's it. We did it. Let's talk about my guest today. His name is Jeff Smith, and we are connected through a very circular or loosely knit friend's circle. He comes from a world that I know really nothing about, which made for a very fascinating and enlightening conversation for me. He comes from the world of agriculture. He grew up in the fields outside of Pendleton, Oregon, and spent most of his life, has spent most of his life, surrounded by and working in the agricultural industry. Got a bachelor's

degree in agricultural business from Colorado State University and has become a highly skilled business consultant specializing in food production in 2015. Jeff and his wife Kara, a fifth generation cattle rancher from the plains of eastern Colorado, moved back to their family ranch just outside of Akron. That was settled in 1913 and founded Colorado, craft beef, which offers high-end beef delivered straight from their ranch to customers, homes, and businesses. Now, the reason I wanted to sit down and talk with Jeff is that I find myself, and I suspect for most people, we have a very detached view of agriculture in general, specifically where our food comes from, but what agriculture even means. So instead of trying

to explain all of that, I will just let you guys enjoy episode number 205 with Jeff Smith. Oh, and also apologies before we get into the episode. For whatever reason, one of the cameras shut off at about the 25-minute mark. So if you are a fan of the visual medium, you get to look at our beautiful faces for about 25 minutes. And beyond that, you'll just have to use your imagination. I'm looking at danger close now. I've never had somebody come here with a notebook, which was obviously full of scribbles that I'll assume was writing and topics that you wanted to talk about. So, Jeff, where would you like to begin? Man, this is, you know, if we follow Greg Putnam and we follow Micah Think, we can be

the agricultural horse to death if we want to. No pun intended. Yeah. But it's such a deeper industry. Love what those guys are doing. I've actually reached out. We're donating some stuff to Micah for the gala this weekend. Yeah.

He was a fascinating cat. So people think that the SEAL community, that if you were a SEAL, apparently it seems to be that at any given time, you know all SEALs. Well, shouldn't you? And that's what we think, the general public. I would like to think so. It's the Dunbar's number, like 150 social connections. is the most you can actually keep track of.

So it was about 2,000 seals, I think. And I legitimately am still surprised by the number of people that I will meet or names that will have a duty station. On the West Coast, the SEAL teams, at least when I was there, if you had a shitty nine iron shot, you could go from team one to three to five and then seven. But I didn't know really anybody working at any of those buildings except for the guys that I directly worked with. So I had never met Greg, even though I know Trevor.

which is a mutual connection. Okay. I had never met Micah. And I actually, I don't know if we had any mutual, I'm sure we had mutual friends, but his organization reached out. And I was like, yes, this would be spectacular. But both of them were fascinating to me.

Yeah. And I started talking to them, just like you and I, just it. We literally came up, turned everything on. It's like, well, hello, tell me your life story. But it was great. And I love, my favorite part of it is, is they're taking aspects of what, they learned in their old job and they're completely doing something different, but taking those

lessons learned and driving, you know, driving the ball down the field to use a very shitty sports analogy. Right. You know, the weird thing about agriculture, and I certainly don't want to take anything way up in the military because agriculture traditionally supports the military at every turn. The parallels of the type of person you need to be, the type of dedication you have to have, accountability, all those things that a lot of my military friends have are also required an ag because you actually made a comment with Greg when you guys talking about SDVs.

I believe this statement was, Mother Nature is a bitch. Oh, yeah. Talking about the cold water. Mother Nature doesn't care. So think about that from an ag standpoint. Are we going to be able to fool Mother Nature into letting us grow more crops if we're treating the ground incorrectly? All right.

Are the cows going to gain weight like they should? Like, Mother Nature is a great equalizer in all things. And in ag, man, that's our biggest accountability, aside from our consumers. But if you're doing something incorrectly, it's going to show. Or if you decide not to do it, the consequences are unavoidable. Sure. That's what I think of when you were saying Mother Nature is a bitch in ag. It's like we put all this train, you know, the plan together and this is how we're going to do it.

And this is what we're going to do. But, oh, I don't feel good today. Who gives a shit? Oh, I'm tired. Get out of bed. Well, you know, Greg and Micah would both also agree. The cows need to eat on Christmas. And they need to eat during a blizzard.

And they need to eat when it's 110 degrees. And they depend on you. So the selfless nature of it is pretty crazy. And the legacy side of it, you know, in the military, of course, in your old job, man, if you do something wrong and somebody on your team suffers the consequences, it's the worst. It's horrible. Now think about a, you know, my wife's fifth generation on the,

the family ranch where we're at. Now, instead of it being, hey, kid, you got to learn how to do this so you don't mess up the guy next to you. The message is, hey, kid, you got to figure this out, because for five generations we have already, don't mess it up on your watch. Yeah. Dude, the legacy side is deep. That's a burden to carry for sure. I would also imagine, and when we had briefly talked on the phone before when we were texting it and we talked, you actually asked me the question, like, what connection do you have to agriculture? I was only thinking on the meat consumption side of the house. And then you were asking me if I was wearing pants.

I'm like, that's a moderately awkward question for our first call. However, I know you were getting to the cotton side of the house. In my own head, I was thinking of ag only from the, I don't know why, the beef perspective. I mean, obviously it's much more than that. But the ties to it and the legacy with that, I would imagine are deep, but I also would imagine that there are generations that come up in that environment and say, hey, I'm not doing this. Yeah. No, that's 100% correct.

You know, my father-in-law, for instance, he took over the family ranch in 1976. He's 60, he'll be 65 this month. So he's been added for a piece. He's got a little bit of knowledge. He's forgotten more about the cattle industry. 1976 he took it over? Yeah. How old's he going to be?

65. So he took it over in his 20s. Yeah. Damn. Yeah. I was not in a place in my 20s, whether that be 20 or 29, and 364 days to take over a goddamn thing. So good on him for that, let alone the care of animals and the whole pipeline that goes along with that.

Well, they had a really nasty blizzard that winter. And his youngest brother had a taste of that and went to college and he's a banker. Yeah. And he has his own operation. He does some other stuff. He's still in agriculture, but he was like, man, I do not want to live and breathe this every day. He took more of a white-collar approach to ag than a blue. Yeah. And, you know, he still has his assets and he has some cows and he's a president of a bank down in northern Texas.

Good dude, very knowledgeable on ag, but saw this, you know, six-foot blizzard roll through where literally they stepped over the power lines in the yard of the ranch because of the drifts in there. And he's like, yeah. The drifts, oh, you mean the power lines weren't having followed down. The drifts were just that high. Yeah. Oh, daddy. Yeah. And this is in the 70s when, you know, tractors wouldn't start because they were too cold.

We didn't have near the technology we have now. Wow. Sorry about that. Is that Jiu-Jitsu cough? Yeah, dude. Your guys wrecked me today. I did get an Americana on a blue belt, though. Did you?

I got one submission. I don't remember how many times. First off, we never tap and tell, all right? That's Fight Club 101. Yeah. Having said that, who was it? I don't. Super good dude.

He said he was new, so, you know, maybe you guys just haven't got him into speed yet. Did he have a bunch of tattoos? He did the 1776 ski. All right. I know you're talking about. He's good, dude. He's a lot of fun. But then everybody else promptly tapped me like nine times.

But like I told you on the phone. I've got one strap in my white belt. I'm almost an assassin, really? Yeah. Until I walk into a school and I'm like, dude, I suck. People right now are probably listening going, what's going on here? We were just talking about ag and now you chuckleheads are talking about jiu. Come along for the ride, people.

Bear with this. I do have notes. What I didn't do, you know, before we get into my backstory, I reached out to every corner of agriculture I could get a hold of from my network. The pork board, the chicken council, corn growers, cattlemen's groups. I've talked to farmers in Iowa, Texas, Oregon, Idaho, Colorado to get their take on what our conversation should be. Yeah.

Because the voice of ag is very disaffirms. aggregated. It's very scattered. Does it almost trunch up depending on what they're doing? Like these particular types, like the pork focuses on pork issues, beef, focuses on beef issues, and then the, what would it be like, what's fruits and vegetables? It's still agriculture, but it's just farming. Farming. Yeah. It doesn't surprise me that they have different points of view because they're all specializing in different things.

Well, and the sad part about agriculture, and this is what a lot of people don't think about, you know, pork and beef compete for the same dollar. So for one side of a ag industry, typically to win, another side of agriculture has to have a bloody nose. And that's just the cold hard truth of it. You know, nobody gets to win without costing someone else. It's kind of true of almost, well, any industry. I mean, if you look at cars, GMC versus Ford versus Toyota. They're trying to, you know, compete for everybody's dollar. I get that.

Yeah. So what I didn't do is print off all the data I got and put it in a binder and bring it with me because I felt like death by statistics wouldn't be that fun. I would have thrown you up. Yeah, yeah, right. I just went back to the hotel and sat by myself. So I brought just enough notes to make sure that I kept my head on straight. Yeah.

Because, you know, after lack of oxygen six or eight times in the last couple hours, wanted to make sure I knew what I was going to say. Don't let people do that to you. I was trying. It just didn't work as well as I hope. There's levels to this. Yeah. It's, yeah, you think you're making some progress and then you encounter somebody

and you spend some time on the car ride home. not listening to music. Windows down, crying by yourself. Well, cry in the shower because then it's harder for people. First off, hopefully nobody's in there with you watching. But if they were, it'd be hard to determine what was the water and what was the tears. Right. men should cry in the shower and then push their emotions down deep.

You should talk to your buddy, the 30 seconds out guy, and he should make that t-shirt. Just about everything about who you are as a person because of what somebody physically was able to do, regardless of the level of effort, energy, and desire you were putting up against it. It's head scratching for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, not to beat on the agricultural drum too much, but that's the same thing. You know, did we get enough rain at the right time to have more grass to keep cows outside? But, you know, if I can back up a little bit. Yeah, please. So I'm from Oregon originally. My hometown is Pendleton. You might have heard of Pendleton Whiskey. Yes.

And also shirts. The wool. Yes. Pendleton woolen mills. That's my hometown. Okay. Big agricultural community. The Pendleton Roundup actually was founded as an after planting party back in 1910.

So ag, rodeo, all of it kind of goes together. I went to school at Colorado State University. I got a degree in agricultural business, minors in finance and accounting. only because I liked ag and I was good with money. So figure out what happens there. Yeah. Went to work for a company. Cargill is the name of the company,

largest privately owned company in the world at the time, running grain elevators. So big grain storage facilities that ship product all over, doing a lot of capital projects, things of that nature. And then have circled around in different parts of agriculture, in processing, construction, things of that nature, and a lot of technical sales. as well for a company named the Bratney company in Iowa.

Built seed plants for people like Landlakes. I was the Coors guy. I got to call on Coors as a capital account. That was a lot of fun. And no matter what sector of agriculture I went to, and I just breathed through, you know, 35 years of whatever, it's all good dudes for the most part. I mean, there's a bell curve to everything.

Yeah. Right. And they all want, hmm, that's right, what it's it? they all want to do what they do and have people appreciate it, but they don't want to thank you. And so it's what explanation makes sense to me. Yeah. I mean, like my father-in-law, if you were to ask him, I didn't ask him the question I asked all my other ag friends of, what do you want me to say on the podcast?

What would you say if you were sitting there? Because his comment would be something like, I just want to do what I do and have people leave me alone. Because he doesn't have a neighbor within six miles of him that's not family. And he does his thing. Yeah. I mean, some people. Probably is very happy in that life as well. For sure. Yeah. And he wouldn't want to go to downtown Denver or come and talk on a mic to, you know,

whoever's going to listen. Maybe nobody. I probably wouldn't listen to me either. You might be surprised. Yeah. Probably get some people reaching out. Maybe. But what I'd really just like to talk through if you would indulge me is some of the myths around agriculture. And I'd really like to talk about different technology.

are used, different words that are used, like the term factory farming. Yeah. People talk about that. They throw it out without maybe understanding what goes into that. I might be guilty of that myself for clarity. Yeah, no worries. And it happens because we are removed from agriculture. You know, most people are at least two generations removed from the farm.

The number of people working on farms and working in ag is decreasing every day. It's less than 2% of the population. But they're producing more with less to feed a growing population and trying to do the very best they can. And I think there are some things that the general public could hear, for instance, that help. How sustainable is that trajectory? Exceptionally sustainable. Really? Yes.

That's the fun thing. Sustainability is this conversation that people have had in general public for what? The last couple decades? Probably. Yeah. In 1935, the Clean Air Act was passed out. after the dust bowls in Oklahoma. I mean, agriculture's been working on sustainability since they were business,

because what we have in agriculture, if you are a corn farmer in Iowa like my buddy Rob, or you ranch in Colorado like my father-in-law, or, you know, you grow barley for cures and billings. Your asset is land. If you take too much out of that land, your asset's worth nothing. So sustainability, for instance, this is what I've said to some other people, My wife's family has ranched in the same spot we're in in Colorado since 1913.

Do you think that's sustainable? I mean, just on definitional level. I mean, it has been so far. Right. Is it perfect? No, nothing ever is. It's like a battleship. You can't really change things overnight.

Yeah. But things are moving in the right direction. How about on the farming side of the house? It was one thing that Mike mentioned on the podcast that, And I think I'd heard it before. It's kind of shocking to me. It's essentially, I'll paraphrase what he said and correct me, because I know you listened if I, if I do so incorrectly. But there's only a certain number of times that some of the farmers he's talking to are able to churn the dirt again and produce the amount of crops that they are. I mean, that to me seems worth for looking at the definition of sustainable of what your family or your father-in-law and that ranch has been able to do to five generations. If they're already looking at, we only have X amount left on the farming side of the house, I mean, that's almost a different definition of sustainability. Kind of. So what I try to define sustainability as is like a three-legged stool.

You have economically sustainable, you have environmentally sustainable, and then this really weird new stool leg that came out that puts a ton of pressure on us is socially sustainable. You know, what do people think of what you're doing, not what does the data say? And that's one of the things that's really starting to spin things. Well, I don't know if you know this, but emotions are more important than facts. Certainly, because, you know, we have all the things. these scientists for no reason. So that's one of the things that really struggle, that we struggle with is because people are disconnected from any number of things. You know, like we were just

talking about structural steel and some of the supply chain issues that are happening in the country right now. Nobody knows. Nobody knew that was coming. Yeah. Not only are they happening right now, they're accelerating in a direction that's not beneficial for the future. For sure. So if we take, if we want to talk supply chains, I guess we're just going to bounce all over the We can go over. I'll tell you what, let's start wherever you want to. You can crack that book open and we can go to town. Okay, well, let's just get after it. The good news is I only have these pages. Perfect. And like you said, it is a ton of scribbles. I think I can read most of them. Nobody else probably can. Well, as long as I don't have to read it, we're good.

There's a benefit of writing in code. Yeah. I type most everything I need to share with someone. So if I could just ask you a few questions. Yeah, by way. You know, we talked about your connection to agriculture. And a lot of people say, oh, well, yeah, I'm connected to agriculture. Or most people tell me, yeah, I have no connection to ag, even though they ate three times today. And I was wearing a set at the time I was wearing a set of origin jeans, which is cotton, wearing a pair of their boots, which is leather. Like there's, I just was, like I said, for me, for whatever reason, when you asked me that, I was thinking only from

from a food consumption perspective. Yeah. Well, and if you think about really all of it boils down, you know, like from a cattle processing standpoint, you know, gelatin, glue, a ton of different things come from cattle. And we can go down that rabbit hole that I don't have the data. So what I don't want to do is make this a data podcast because people are going to fact check me.

And I'm going off memory on most of this stuff. For sure, because, you know, nobody knows. Anyway, so for instance, we want to talk. about sustainability. Sustainability is paramount in every ag producer's mind. So I think what we could probably guess or what we could probably agree on, very few people come out of their bed every morning choosing to do negative things, most people. I would like to believe that. My faith in humanity in general, and I will be the first to admit, my perspective on human beings and what they are capable of is probably not the healthiest, but it is framed through the experiences I have

had in my life and the interactions that I have had by my own pursuit, looking for these individuals. So I would love to say that I have a deep faith in humanity. I don't. But I do like to at least tell myself, and I want to believe that most people, they're intent, if you look at a needle pointing it positive or negative, almost everybody's intent is pointing towards positive. Great way to say it.

I couldn't agree more. The people that have negative intent, I think we're able to figure out sooner or later or something else figures them out for us, hopefully. And I also think it's important for everybody listening or watching to realize that that needle can drift. Oh, for sure. There's circumstances that can happen,

chemical imbalances in the body. but I think, and I think life is better if you have faith that most people are pointed in a positive direction. Well, it's, you know, Rogan talks a lot about the book, The Four Agreements. Yeah. He doesn't know shit, though. I'm not going to say that, man. He's got... Joe's awesome.

I'm just joking. I like a joke. He's, I think you and him in a lot of ways think the same way. You're willing to listen to a discussion and form an opinion instead of doing it the other way that I I think is probably one of the things that hurts our society right now. Everybody wants to have an opinion and then tell you about it instead of trying to hear you. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that is exacerbated by communication through social media. I think it's easier to form your opinion through a conversation or exploration of information when you're face to face. Yeah. These interactions are so fast online. And so sterile. Well, all you have to do is just watch somebody on their phone and people will, And I've been thinking about this recently, and I don't know why, but it caught my attention because I was thinking about the oftentimes negativity of comments or the interactions that are just unhealthy. And you watch people as they flip through their social media, whatever it may be, they're going through it so fast that there's not even enough time to develop a robust understanding of even how you, it's just like, boom, fire and forget.

And then on to the next. And boom, fire and forget. It's just, it's too fast. And there's no empathy. Yeah. I mean, there's a man, that sucks. good luck, whatever. They just keep moving on.

So one of my, I've thought about this a lot and one of the things I really come back to and when I talk to youth groups or whoever I'm talking to on the consulting side, do you want to be right or do you want to be correct? Because sometimes right and correct are the same thing. But it's when wanting to be right and being correct drift that it gets really ugly. Yeah, this could have very, very different definitions for sure. Sure. Yeah. And when they intersect, it's best. Yeah. Because you can be right and incorrect about the same thing. But social media, to your point with like being on your phone and just firing stuff out, they would rather you told them they were right instead of mentioning, hey, you know, that's not quite right. Yeah. Where we see that in ag a lot is GMOs. You know, genetically modified organisms. For those of you following along, I'll help you with the acronyms and the ag side, Andy. I get crushed when I have a military guess on and we start, I do my best.

as we're blasting through them, but sometimes they're on a roll. I'm like, sorry, peeps. Like, yeah, Google that one. Google, yeah. So GMOs, yeah, I'm sure you've heard of that term. To be honest, though, I don't know what level of modification is allotted or required for something to become a GMO. I know the term genetically modified. And my initial reaction is to think, well, I probably should avoid that.

But that's based on the fact that I actually don't know necessarily what it is. Right. So most people think almost everything is genetically modified. Well, there's only 10 approved GMOs in the country, 10 crops, cotton, corn, papaya, potatoes, apples, corn, I already said corn, soybeans, sugar beets, canola. I got as far as I could get. But most of them have been genetically modified to resist bugs. pest pressure. As opposed to spraying?

Yeah, well, so you don't have to spray them, but what they'll do is they'll make the leaves taste bad to the bug, so the bugs just won't hang there. Moths is a big one. Bowl weevils in cotton, for instance, just trying to keep the bugs out of them so you don't have to spray it. But also, one of the other GMOs like in potatoes makes them not bruise when you cut them. Interesting. Yeah.

Apples are the same way. Now, GMOs also in some instances include herbicide resistance, i.e. Roundup. I mean, Roundup's a bad word. Everybody thinks it's horrible. And there's mechanical reasons why people did GMOs to resist Roundup. It's so you can spray over the crop and kill the weeds to allow the crop to grow better. The other reason is you can do pre-emergent spraying so that you can actually plant and then spray the weeds out. And you don't. have to till, you don't have to cultivate, because cultivating fields actually releases carbon. So if we want to talk carbon sequestration, organic material and soil, all these different things, it all comes to the tradeoff, much like, you know, everything in life. Yeah. But if we talk about Roundup, I actually pulled some data to make sure I did this correctly. Most Roundup, glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, a square foot in a field with

an average application rate of Roundup has 0.016 grams of Rond, of glyphosate. So most people... That sounds small to me, but I have no relative perspective on what that means. So you're, I think your coffee right there's, what, 16 ounces? Yep. Double that for an acre. It doesn't seem like that much. It's really not.

Unless that shit's super lethal. It's really not. So depending on, and I don't want to have the pitchfork community after me, so. whatever. In general, the biggest issue I heard from some of my friends in the chemical industry that I reached out to, which of course they're going to say I'm a shill for them, whatever. Glyphosate actually doesn't interact with mammals. It doesn't interact with us. The surfactant that actually is the soap that makes it stick interacts with us. Now, there's reasons you could not use Roundup, but it's more tillage. It's more. It's more.

more passes. It's breaking the ground up, you know, but it all comes with the tradeoff. And let's understand that that stuff's not cheap. It was $14 a gallon before COVID. It's going to be $70 this spring because of just supply chain issues and things of that nature. Yeah, some of these price increases are going to hit people on the chin like a Mike Tyson uppercut. For sure. And it's happening everywhere. You know, beef prices are up 18% in the last, well, since December. Um, corn prices are up a ton. Um, but what I, I mean, Roundup, for instance, is a great one because a ton of people here Roundup and they instantly back away. They think it's this horrible stuff. Um, and actually, if I could look, I have this really fun thing on my phone if you don't mind. Yeah, go for it. Uh, this is where things kind of start to get into perspective a little bit. Um, sorry about that. Yeah, no worries. There it is. Uh, uh, Just so you know, if we start thinking about ag versus things we like in the world, homes, golf courses, and parks grow more acres of turf grass than U.S. farmers devote to corn, wheat, and fruit trees combined.

So just open spaces. Grass takes approximately triple the amount of water corn does. Really? Yeah. And we grow grass in longer durations than we grow corn. You know, some of the corn varieties are 90-day grows. Homeowners use up to 10 times more chemical pesticides per acre on their lawns than farmers use on crops. Nearly 80 million pounds of pesticides are used on U.S. lawns annually,

and on top of this, 90 million pounds of chemical fertilizers are used on lawns annually. 26.7 million tons of air pollutants are coming from mowing annually, and Yale University has estimated that the United States uses more than 600, million gallons of gasoline to mow and trim lawns annually. So I like lawns. I play golf. I mean, I'm about as good at it as Jiu-Jitsu. So I sometimes drive home.

I sometimes drive home wondering what happened and why I have clubs. With your golf clubs smashed into the dumpster. I've not done that yet. I did break one club one time. We don't need to talk about that. So I listened to you, read that off. And that all makes sense. I think about the areas that I have lived in.

I've lived, when we were living in San Diego, we lived in a gated community. And man, before people get all, oh, must be nice. Like, the housing market, when we bought that house, had just tanked. We bought it on a short sale. It's like half the price of what we were eventually able to sell it for when we moved up to Montana. I had no business being in a gated community. The opportunity to present it itself. Did the neighbors not like you be in there?

I mean, I figured they would have, you know, weeded you out after that. No, they were pretty, one of them was cool. one of them sucked. Okay. Just massive dung. But that's a different story. And, but there was grass areas, common spaces, a pool area. And it's like, okay, all of those were maintained. We lived right across the street from an athletic complex that was mowed and sprayed and watered. And then the pool itself, you know, not obviously mowed and sprayed. It would not be a good place to take a lawnmower, but chemicals in that. So intuitively, when you say those things, I can think back to the places

where I have lived. And I can kind of see that where those numbers come from. But how does that get lost in the conversation? And maybe this isn't correct, but it almost sounds like the producers, and I'll use agriculture to include farmers, are being vilified for those exact same, what would be the term, the exact same products that are being used. How is that conversation lost? Because a lot of ag doesn't speak up.

A lot of them don't have time. So one of the weirdest things is in 1970, for every dollar you put into agriculture, you got about a dollar 35 back. So you netted 35%. Today it's 14 cents. So the same person that was running X farm 50 years ago now is making less than half of what he did then. So you don't have the younger generation coming up that can farm because this year economics don't allow it unless you've gotten so big you bought out the neighbor. Now your kid can farm. Now maybe you can be active in the community to discuss these types of things. But people don't want to hear that they're doing something incorrect.

Or the yeah but argument, right? Everybody, well, what about your yard? Well, it's easier to talk about another community of people. In this case, if you were a non-producer, non-agriculture, it's easier to talk about what somebody else is doing than to take the looking glass at your own behavior. Sure. And it's one of the things that I have no issue with electric cars whatsoever. But it's pretty shocking to me how some people will think that the purchasing of an electric car detaches them from the fossil fuel industry. And again, live your life however you want to.

And I'm not saying that you shouldn't do those things. But if you take a critical look at your own actions, oftentimes I see those same people commenting very negatively on the fossil fuel industry. while they are still an active participant in it, they just don't want to observe their own behavior. And that's just, and that's not like my main example. That's an easy one that I can bring up highlighting what we're talking about. What percent of the power grid do you think is fossil fuels? 25. 60.

I was super close. 60 percent fossil fuels, 20 percent nuclear. Yeah. And 20 percent renewable. Now, that is shifting. There's been a ton of investment in solar. I talked to a friend of mine that is a former director at a big, power company and so like I said I reached it to every side of my blue collar

network I could get to to try to have things to just talk to the public about so interestingly enough with fracking and horizontal drilling just five years ago natural gas overtook coal as the largest part of the fossil fuels industry for the first time in the history of electricity and now fracking and horizontal drilling is horrible because they think there's environmental and I can't speak to that. That's not my wheelhouse. But you're seeing these changes. Like these industries are all able to try to do better because there's incentive to do so. We have a capitalistic society. That's what's going to help fix the supply chain.

If somebody can't make money fixing the supply chain, they're just going to put their head in a box and not worry about it. And all the industries that you spoke to, which one of them would you say is the most vocal about what it is that they're facing? Hmm. Like you never hear, well, I never hear like the nuclear power crew talking much. I can't really say any of them are the most vocal. Every one of the ag industries in particular has an outreach group. So the cattle industry has National Cattlemen's Beef Association. They have the beef checkoff.

Every state has at least one cattleman's group, and they all try to talk. They're in D.C. They're doing policy things. The National Pork Board based in Des Moines sent me some great information, and they're trying to talk about pork. But there's really not an aggregated voice. You know, probably the best aggregated voice that agriculture's had in a very long time was Mike Rowe, the dirty jobs guy. Yeah. These fucking awesome. Oh, no kidding, dude.

I'd love to have a beer with that guy. Yep. Or seven. You know, as many as he wants. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to be a quitter. So I just love the fact that he will I mean obviously his show is called Dirty Jobs. I just love the fact that he will get in there and he's open and honest about what he knows and what he doesn't know. And he's in there just interfacing with people who are at the end of the day.

They are the gears that are meshing that is making shit actually able to function. So he had an address to Congress. If you just look at Mike Rowe addressed to Congress that was awesome. It's on YouTube. It's like seven minutes long. Okay. It's one of those things that I. I showed a young, you know, high school kids and they're like, what can I do? I'm like,

there's a million opportunities out there, you know, think about this. And he talks about his toilet not working, you know, versus when his grandpa's toilet didn't work, you know, two different mentalities. Yeah, grandpa just got it done. Yeah, we just, we just fixed it. And that's what we do in ag a lot, right? We just figure it out. You know, you bust a fitting on whatever machine you're working on or you weld stuff back together. You know, like Greg was talking about the amount of different tasks you have to do. We do the same thing at our ranch. I have a welder that's on a metal skid that I built that I can carry around with my skid steer and fix things over there. And it's also a generator. So now I have power. And we become our own carpenters. We're our own welders.

Maybe don't inspect some of the work sometimes. You know, we just built a new building at the ranch where we house the beef company. And I built new offices in there and double insulated the wall between my wife and I's office. I asked her if she wanted to pass through. She declined. Really a smart call. I outkicked my coverage in the wife department to a level that even some of my friends are like, has she figured it out yet? I don't think so. Maybe you needed to put the office on the other side of the building. I mean, I'm in the office in town because it's simpler. But, you know, like I mentioned, she's fifth generation on the ranch. We have two little girls. That's generation six. and our whole motivation for conversations like this or the beef company or whatever it may be

is what can we do for them? Where are we going to leave them when we are 65? You know, what have we provided? What have we not provided? You know, the Paws Act and the regulatory stuff in ag is crazy that we can talk about that in a little bit because they've got a similar act to that going in Oregon. And it's going to try to outlaw hunting. Interesting philosophy.

Sophie? Yeah. I mean, hunting and animal husbandry, not a big deal. Are they, is that being driven by activists or hunters? Activists. Yeah. So in a slightly rhetorical question. Right. Yeah. So the Paws Act got defeated in Colorado based on, based on language. So when a bill gets passed, it has a title committee that has to approve the title of the bill. The agricultural industry fought against this act. Title bill upheld it. They took it to Supreme Court. Supreme Court defeated it and made the bill go away. What was the bill supposed to do? So it outlawed harvesting of cattle under five years of age. It outlawed artificial insemination. It outlawed pregnancy checking and cows and

other livestock. It outlawed spaying and neutering dogs, just all sorts of craziness that in general would have just wiped out animal agriculture in Colorado overnight. They have a very similar thing going in Oregon, and just the addition to that is hunting will now be illegal if this passes. We're talking in Oregon. Yes. Yeah, the Colorado bill got defeated. What was the inception of the Colorado bill? Where did that start?

Boulder. So I'm trying to think. You're super conservative town. Yeah. That's what we'll call it. Known to lead right to hard right. Yeah, the Berkeley of Colorado, if you will. Yeah.

Yeah. It came from some activists over there, and they did. defeated it in the Supreme Court because the bill was misleading in a lot of ways. It said, hey, we're going to protect the animals from, and I believe the term was sexual acts, was what they used with sexual acts, sexual activity with an animal. And the Supreme Court said, there's laws on the books for that. You don't need a bill to then cover that. It will probably be back. And why would you phrase it like that in the first place? So that you can stand in front of Whole Foods in Boulder and get people to sign your petition to get it on the ballot. Because you say, look, we're going to

eliminate this, but it's not a problem. But they'd only sign it if they had that very deep level of disconnection that you're talking about, that disconnection from what is actually going on. Which is everywhere. Yeah. Especially in ag. Because if somebody came out to, I looked at that, well, I look at that, like, okay, I'm in Boulder. This is obviously a, well, actually, you know what?

Boulder's a beautiful place. Oh, it's absolutely beautiful. Reckin Ridge is also beautiful. Love many places in Colorado. But let's say I'm at that Whole Foods, which I've shopped at Whole Foods many time. They'll find selection of many things. Yeah. And a guy comes up to me and says, will you sign?

this piece of paper to help fight sexual acts against animals. I have some fucking questions. First off, what are you talking about? What animals are we talking about? And what sex act are you talking about? I would hope that people would ask those questions before they sign. I suspect some people would just either ignore or sign so that they can end that interaction because of course they ambush you as you're leaving with shit in your hands or a cart and kids that don't want to be in the grocery store. But that doesn't even pass. And again, I don't know anything about this topic. Like this whole conversation for me will be an education and agriculture. But sex acts with an animal, that doesn't pass the sniff test. Right. Well, the title of the bill, I believe,

was like something in terms of protect Colorado's animals or something, something, if you could say, hey, do you want to protect Colorado's animals with this new bill? And they only needed something like 130,000 signatures statewide. It doesn't have to be in every district. Yeah. So you could focus on down. To get it on the docket to vote? Yeah, to actually get it on the bill. Yeah.

Where some of the other initiatives, depending on what state you're in, you have to have a certain percentage of every district to get it there. The way this one was written by the numbers, had the Supreme Court not crushed it, it would have been on the ballot for sure. Wow. luckily the Colorado cattlemen's and the Farm Bureau got together and they lobbied against it and they did get it defeated. Not sure what's going on with the one in Oregon. But what that shows is this regulatory risk we have. So we can go back to sustainability. I've got some decent numbers on that.

But the regulatory risk that agriculture faces is unbelievable because people can get things passed like that. You know, the U.S. has the most regulated, safest food system in the country, or in the world. And I don't mean, you know, our company, Colorado Kraft beef and our beef. I mean the beef chain. Yeah. I mean the pork chain, whether you get it from a local farmer that raises 10 or you get it at the grocery store. It's absolutely safe. I feed my family, all that stuff.

No, we don't buy beef at the store, obviously. We'll be an excessive trip. You could probably just go outside. Probably. Yeah. We have a building for that. With a rifle and a chain. sawed me back. It might not be the cleanest cut of beef, but you...

Oh, the optic on that's not great. It's really not great, but that's what I think of. Right. But I don't know what that says about me. Right. I mean, we'll leave that one to interpretation. But, you know, the regulatory risk that can come down from people that aren't attached to ag is pretty incredible. And what that's going to do is cause supply chain issues on actual production. Because the supply chain issues that everybody saw during COVID in beef and other proteins getting to the grocery store or cheese or whatever it may be wasn't necessarily

a supply chain issue most of it was trucking so if you are in callusbell and you get whatever i haven't seen any grocery stores up here the there's the rose hours chain there's super one albertsons okay all rightsons probably the biggest i've probably the biggest national chain so they probably get a delivery once a week of protein if not more i'd imagine yeah Maybe. But what they don't have is five trucks sitting at the distribution center waiting to be dispatched in case somebody runs out. They just don't. They know that a certain store typically sells this much product. You need to make your order by the week before. It's a just-in-time delivery service. And that works great until there's a hiccup. And everybody in Callisbell hits the stores and says, oh, my goodness, the famine's coming. We're going to wipe out the store. There's not another truck to bring it. So when the truck resocks next week, you have the same issue. Or replace what you're talking about with toilet paper. Or ammunition.

I don't, well, fuck, that was, to be honest, we're not out of the woods with the ammo one yet. And the toilet paper one fluctuates here too. And I don't know if that's, sometimes. And I don't know if it's a supply chain issue or an ordering issue. Yeah. But I was looking at people hoarding toilet paper. And again, live your life how you want to. but you can also artificially create a crisis that doesn't exist.

I feel like there was more than enough toilet paper for everybody. There wasn't enough toilet paper for people to go out and buy 10 families' worth at one time. And that was what happened with beef too. Yeah, that's what. There was plenty of beef. Is there really a shortage? Or are we creating the shortage because we're letting our emotions lead as opposed to objectivity? Very dangerous.

For sure. And that's happening, you know, ad nauseum right now. Yeah. with any number of things. Ammo is another great example. You know, where we live, we... Son of a bitch, it's hard to get. Yeah.

I remember, you know, our good buddy Mickey. The first S-12 I went to, I said, hey, can you get me ammo from Superville? He's like, yeah, no problem. And he brought it with him, and I paid for it. And I went to S-12 this May. I said, hey, can you get ammo? It's like, maybe. It was a totally different conversation.

That's a hard maybe, too. Yeah. So I figured it out. It's no big deal. But, you know, for a guy that's... that's that connected in the firearms industry to struggle to get ammunition for his class. Oh, it's real. Yeah, it's absolutely real. And hopefully it's coming back. I know there's a lot of people making moves in ammo. There's new processing plants going up for all the proteins. The market

is trying to correct. It's going to take time. And then the problem is when all those supply chains get back to normal, your cost of production, some of these new facilities is going to be out of this world. and they're probably not going to last very long. Yeah. The market's going to self-correct. So I'm kind of a business nerd, working in the private equity sector to a degree. So it's interesting to watch the whipsaw nature of the economy and what it's causing to a lot of people. But I had a really interesting interaction with a farmer buddy of mine.

And he goes, you know what's interesting? We got a ton of heat in our sector during COVID because of supply chain issues. and the negative things attached to what happened in their industry. He goes, but they never quit asking for a product. They just wanted to yell at us. Hmm. Because nobody's looked at ag and said, man, I'm sure glad you guys kept working, but we did. We made sure everybody was still fed.

You know, there's a lot of families that work on all this. So, you know, there's a ton of, on the factory farming side, there's a ton of talk about, you know, these factory farms. They're huge. They're this, they're that. 95% of the chicken industry is family farms. Ninety-eight percent of the cattle industry is family farms. Ninety-four percent of the pork industry is family farms. And 88 percent of all food consumed in the U.S. is from family farms. Now, those family farms may be growing on contract for a bigger producer, and they may be very large facilities. But we've already talked about the lack of profit and the profitability curve change in ag, you have to raise more to feed the family. And, you know, there's a lot of people that use the term, you know, put food on the table to feed my family, whether you are special operator or you are a rancher or you are a white-collar banker.

in Denver. We all define our ability to be economically sustainable as a family unit by the term put food on the table. Yeah, I don't know of a community that doesn't use that term actually. Right. But they don't have the reverence to look back at who actually puts the food on the table and ask questions instead of making judgment. I think most people get lost in their own bullshit. And I'm talking about myself when I say that as well. I'd raise my hand in that one too. I never really think when I pull up to the gas station, right? I'm not sitting there as I'm putting the pump into my truck going, you know, I wonder where this came from. I'm just, I mindlessly do it without thinking about the, what would it be, the downstream things that it would have had to have occurred or the upstream things that would have had to occur for it to get its way down to me.

Yeah. I do that largely when I go grocery shopping too or use my cell phone. You know, what is it that actually allows me to punch into this device that gives me more. answers and has more knowledge than the library of Congress. Right. I don't think it's uncommon for people to live their life not thinking about those things, but I think it would round the edges, I think, on the behavior or some behaviors if they spent a little bit of time.

Well, what it comes down to is regulating things you don't know, wanting to change the cycle of something without actually understanding it. Which you're seeing the law enforcement profession go through. right now. Oh, dude. They are being crucified and restricted and restrained largely through doctrine or policy by people that I'm not sure have ever actually been in the situations that they're asked to go into every single day or put whatever metaphor you want to use, put a mile in their shoes or stepped a foot onto their beat or, you know, it's, it is, again, I never spent a second in law enforcement, but I have a lot of law enforcement friends.

I think I understand the complexities of their job and the burden that that job holds as well as what is expected of them. And they should be held to the highest standard. But what's happening to them and the way they are being vilified is not, it's not justified in my opinion. Not at all. But it's a great example, though, if you look at some of these large police departments who are putting into effect policy and you look at what the policy is, And who's writing it? There's such a disconnect between the conceptual idea of this utopia that people want it to be and the reality of what they're dealing with. They're being regulated by people who have no idea what the fuck they're talking about.

Yeah. And outside of ag, outside of LEO, I mean, the fire departments and all those other guys, like, as a society, we've got to be able to look around and say, hold on. Like, let's not knee-jerk reaction a policy of X for Y industry. And we need to start asking better questions. How about just ask questions in general? Yeah. Instead of yelling shit. I mean, do both.

Yell as much as you want to, but also maybe spend equal amount of time doing research on your own. Yeah. Develop an understanding of the topic with which you are incredibly passionate about. For sure. Yeah. Yeah, one of my notes here is complacency leads to a disconnect. So complacency about where things come from. Disconnect turns to a non-fact-based opinion, and that becomes a social justice issue.

It's an interesting breadcrumb trail. I mean, how do we get to the social justice issue that is based on nothing but cupcakes and unicorns? I don't have the answer to that because if I'm being totally honest, I don't understand. a lot of the social justice issues. I totally support people being passionate. I support people believing what they want to believe, but I get very lost along the way as to where and where and how they landed on their beliefs and became so passionate about it.

And for me, it actually creates a disconnect because I just kind of want to keep it at an arm's distance. And by that I mean like 50 arms stacked up on top of each other. There's a reason we live where we live, right? It is, but at the same time, it'll, I want to be able to help prepare my kids for entering into that world. And I don't know if social justice, it's such a broad thing. And I would like to give it more definition, but I don't know if I'm able to. What I can say is I'm watching my kids navigate in the public schooling system some very different and shifting.

I don't want to say social justice, but social dynamic. that I never had to deal with. Basically, everything that's making the national news, even though I live in the northwestern portion of Montana with a population size equal to the gated community that I used to live in. And by the way, it's super ugly here. I mean, just so everybody knows.

It's totally not worth it. I have the cat's already out of the bag. Fuck all those people. Like, oh, you did tell them the winters are terrible. This place is glorious. Come visit. And, yeah, spend your money here at the Black Rifle Coffee Shop in Calispell. It's not a big deal.

Nice plug. I dig it. But so everything that I'm seeing on the, the national news, whether it be identity issues. And I'm trying to think, probably the biggest one that I am talking with or talk to. I don't talk. I am talking with my kids and more than anything, I'm listening because I'm trying to understand the world that they're trying to navigate their way through. Or not that they're trying to, that they're forced to navigate their way through, because it is their world. A lot of them are more on the social identity issues. And I'm curious how

the administration at the schools are handling it, how the other kids are handling, how my children feel about it and it's it doesn't make a lot of sense to me a thousand percent i wish i had a more um elegant way to say it than that but i sit back scratching my head i don't know if that that says about me i don't know what that says about the issue i'm not a great litmus test for anything i have a functioning retard actually i can't say that i'm a moron apparently that's less offensive to other people gonna edit that one out no i'm not going to edit it out at all i'm responsible for anything that comes out of my mouth but i i i don't know how it gets to a social justice issue. And I also don't know how to turn that battleship

incrementally, get that wheel spinning so it starts training in the right direction. I think the bad part is, I think to change that directional move or to make that shift in trajectory, it's going to take something ugly. I mean, real food shortages like Micah talked about. Yeah. If we take the ag model and say, how do people start to try to understand, well, they're really fortunate to not have to worry about their next meal. Therefore, it's not front and center. And when it hopefully never comes to that, when someone's then forced to say, man, where did this come from? Whatever it may be, then they have to learn about it. Then they have to make that bigger decision. They have to, you know, root cause analysis is one of the corporate terms that blasts around all the time. I'm sure you guys did

stuff like that. We probably had some fancy military acronym for it. Right. So it's, it's, It's interesting, and I hope it never comes to that. You know, our daughter, our oldest daughter is almost two, our other one's almost three months old. Man, that's the scariest thing I've ever done. It's like, how do I prepare these girls for the changing dynamics of the world? Because they're changing faster than they ever have, right? Spoiler alert, it's only going to get worse. Yeah.

For you, I mean, as the parent. I've got 18, 16, and 13 right now. And, I mean, I was. be like, oh, young kids are, aren't you worried and scared? I'm like, yeah, I mean, like, I'm not scared. I'm like worried they won't sleep well. You know what I mean? We're going to figure it all out.

Now I'm thinking, oh, God, don't drink and drive, please. That's the same amount of worry actually may be more and the problems are more complicated. So Emma is almost two. She'll be two next week or next month. Enjoy it when you're worried about sleep and dirty diapers. Well, I was actually thinking the other day, she's starting to get a little more opinionated. she's getting a lot more vocal. You know, I figure I got another six months of that.

Then it's smooth sailing, right? It's just everything's, the more she learns to talk, she'll be more reasonable. You can totally talk down to teenage girl. It'll be no problem. Yeah, don't do that one. I got a teenage girl and she is a sass pot. She's amazing. But damn, she can come back with some zingers.

Yeah, it's a fun ride, but looking at, you know. I worry about the world they're entering into, though. Yeah. I really do. And I'm sure my parents were worried. I'm sure that is actually. a generational thing because if you look at the evolution of just our society in general over the past decades or generations, we're on a trajectory that's not shallow.

So I'm curious your thoughts on this because I think you've got a pretty good perspective on a lot of things. I'll bet if we went back two generations, my grandparents probably thought in the 70s with the gas shortages and inflation and everything. It was all going to hell in a handbasket. For sure. So maybe we could be fortunate enough that things were now aren't as bad as they look maybe. I don't know. What do you think? Well, I think the view often is determined by where you're standing.

For some people, I think it may be as bad as we are hearing about. And for others, I don't necessarily know. I think that, and again, I'm not a great, God, I'm not a great sounding board for this. I was talking about, or I was doing a public speaking gig last week, and I did a Q&A at the end of it. And somebody at the end of it raised their hand and said, you know, what's the most important thing that you learned or got out of your military service? And then, you know, what's the most important thing that you've gotten out of being a civilian? And the answer to both of them is the same.

It's an incredibly deep and unwavering and I think unbreakable appreciation for what we have. And that is not to say that I don't recognize the tarnishes. and the flaws that we have as a country because we're super fucked up in a lot of ways. We're also super fortunate in a lot of ways. That's what I'm saying. I just have happened to spend some pretty formative years

of my earlier adult life in places that people would never voluntarily go to live. Where there's a different understanding and meaning of the term oppression. Yeah. Of life expectancy, of quality of life. And again, I am not, I am not trying to,

to say that the United States doesn't have its issues. And I think the best that we could do as a society is continuously just try to incrementally move them in the right direction. And when we can make a catastrophic leap, I think we should. But I have no ability to lose the appreciation for what we have. So I'm not a great. I'm not a great sounding board because even on my worst day. My worst day here in the United States, it is better than probably the best days of people living their best life in some of the places where I spent years. And I can't unsee that or know that or unexperienced that. So it, you know what I mean? It jades me. I'm not the, I'm not the best person to answer that question. I've got a buddy of mine that was combat

engineer in the army. He did three tours in Iraq. And then he came back, got his, his master's in geotechnical engineering and just moved back from Peru. So he seen a lot of the same types of things. He just moved back. He married a really nice Peruvian girl. They've got a little boy. And he's like, man, people just don't know. You know, he was up here last fall.

I think he came in in October for Thanksgiving. And then Peru with the coronavirus actually made it. So you had to quarantine like at a soccer stadium. It was, you couldn't even go to your home. And he's like, yeah, we're staying until that's over. Yeah. And he just stayed in the States with his folks until, I think it was April. And then the-

I'm glad people don't know. And in the same breath, maybe they'd be better if they did? I think they would. I mean, I've traveled. I don't have a balance of both, though. Yeah. They need to have that other perspective. That's why I'm like, yeah, agriculture, farming, I mean, police,

none of those systems are perfect, but they're pretty damn good compared to the alternative. Well, they'll never be perfect because, you know, going back to Rogan and, you know, the books that he likes to talk about are one of the ways that he often describes human beings, which I think is incredibly accurate, is it's sloppy.

Those systems can't be perfect because at the end of the day, they're populated by human beings. Yeah. So, sorry. Yeah, the word, I think the word, the word that he uses a lot as nuance.

Yeah. And man, more people need to understand that. Like true and false. No one takes time though. Right. And again, you go back to the velocity with which they engage on a variety of subjects on social media or their phone. I think it's, I don't know if it is the problem, but I think it is part of the problem. That as fast as you can blast it out and then just move on to the next.

Yeah. It takes time. So that human interaction is going away. Yeah. Yeah. Even though there might be a human on the other end of what you're interacting with, the interaction itself, I think is just. I think it's fatally flawed. Yeah, we get random messages on the beef companies, Instagram.

Oh, I bet those are some juicy ones. You know, it's not as much as you would think, but we got one that was like, I forgot exactly what our post was, but it was, hey, what do you think about or what would you like to know about? What would you like to discuss? And somebody's like, we would like to discuss you not destroying our planet. I'm like, delete. Yeah. Like you're coming from that place.

There's not going to be any conversation to be had. You would have to sit down for a good amount of time to listen to that person unload their thoughts before you ever had the chance to actually engage with them on where those thoughts came from. That shit's not happening on Instagram. No. And the bigger side of that would be at some point they would need to be willing to listen to you. And look at themselves. Yeah. And that's a tough one.

Right. So. And I know that because it's tough for me to take a look critically at myself as it is for everybody else. I understand why it's avoided. But it's also, I think it's critical for our continued growth. Yeah. For sure.

To get back to your question, I think, you know, how things are. I wouldn't say that they're great. And again, a lot of that depends on the view that you're looking at from where you're standing. For some people, it's probably amazing. But on average, I would say it's good. We can consistently and constantly do better. but I do have faith that we're going to figure it out.

Agreed. Yeah. And I want to be part of the, part of the solution. Yeah. I mean, and I think. I'm worried, though, for like law enforcement. And again, to go back to we're talking about, I think for the understanding that the regulation and policy restrictions on that occupation that are not commensurate with the job and what is expected, it may take a catastrophic event to rattle the cages metaphorically and get. people to understand to reverse course in that occupation. I think that's my what it might be what it takes in the ag world. That would be that would get a little wild. Oh man. People have to start wondering if they're going to have food. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's that's going to be pretty wild. Yeah. Well, and the interesting thing, I mean, how many of the households in the U.S., how many do you

think are food insecure on a percentage level. Define food insecure for me. They're not sure where the food for tomorrow is going to come from or if they're going to have enough. So we're talking about from an economic perspective? Yeah. Are they going to have enough food? 30%. 10 and a half. I'm so bad at this game. I know. It's like you're not an egg guy. Fuck. Now if you ask me these questions again, I'm going to answer it in my head and be like That's obviously not correct. So shit, do I go higher or lower? Yeah.

So when we've got 10% of people in this country. It's about 36 million people. Yeah, that are food insecure today. And that number hasn't moved in the last three years, just to be clear from, I forgot the website I got the data from. It was super secure, though. Do you have any idea what it was maybe 50 years ago? It was more, of course, during the depress. and things like that.

But then it got, it's kind of wavered in that same number. Okay. So it's not gotten significantly different. And some of that's economics. Some of that is just people's access to whatever. Some of it's any number of things. But there was a really interesting meeting that my wife attended. And this would be another fun question for you.

In 50 years. In 50 years, who are the three international? superpowers. Are we talking about military power? We're talking about GDP? Are we talking? Who's going to be running the show? It was basically the way this guy pitched it.

In 50 years. Yeah. Man. I'd like to say that the USA is going to be inside of that top three. Yeah. According to this guy, we are. Okay. I don't know if I'd put him at the one or two spot, though, to be honest.

The other two countries are going to blow your doors off. And then I will show my work. Okay. China Not on the list It's fucking on my list Right So my number three

Superpowers I'm going to put the U.S. up there Because like I said I think we can figure it out Superpowers and the rest of the world I'm thinking that things of like influence And now remember I've been talking about ag the whole time

It's going to be an ag-based answer God damn it I'm thinking like Who's got the best missiles Ag-based answers I have no idea to be honest. So according to this economist, and I will have to find his name for you because I wasn't at the presentation. I did get a copy of it later.

He said that 50 years from now, with no geopolitical changes, there's the caveat. The three superpowers are going to be New Zealand, Argentina, and the U.S. Interesting. Because those are the only three countries in the world with current trends in food production and population that are going to be food, exporters that also have the ability to export. So Brazil, for instance, grows a ton of product, but they have like one major shipping port and two major highways. So it's not easy for them to change that infrastructure.

And so he had mentioned that it was going to New Zealand, Argentina, and the U.S. were the three countries that would be able to export the food needed, grow the food to export, and be able to do it efficiently. Does that imply as well that they also have essentially excess capacity? because they're feeding their population and therefore have the ability to export. Yeah, because China's outpacing their production abilities. China's on a weird trajectory. Man.

In a variety of categories. Indeed. Now, do I think the Kiwis are going to be a superpower? I don't know. That'd be an interesting mathematical exercise. One of the most beautiful countries I've ever been to. I have not been there, but my wife has, and she says the same thing. I've only been to the South Island, and I understand why they filmed the Lord of the Rings there.

Right. Did you go on a hunt down there? No, I've never been. I was actually not hunting when I went on that trip. I'm only about four or five years into hunting if we're talking about four-legged animals. Yeah, yeah. We don't need to go down that rabbit hole, right? But I hear that red stag hunting in New Zealand is legit.

It's like the elk of New Zealand, my understanding. They have a roar, not a rut. Yeah. And that's the limit of my knowledge. Right. So, and I basically repeat things that I hear other people say. Yeah, that's my whole career. My whole career has been being an interpreter in business, whether it's safety guys or operations guys or how does the accounting guy need to, you know, greenlight this project.

You know what was interesting about being in New Zealand, though? We spent about two weeks there is that the agriculture's front and center. For sure. You'd go to restaurants that were on the ranch, and you could see the livestock. They had a great, great producers of wine. I actually drank enough that I developed heartburn for a little bit, not recommending anybody. do that however it was great. Their like the lamb was unbelievable there.

Some of the the products that they had. It was, it was like, it was a beautiful country for a variety of reasons. It was great to see that agriculture front and center. Yeah. They do a great job. And then if you travel in like interior Europe, interior Europe, there we go, during different seasons, it's really fun to go to those local restaurants because, oh, it's asparagus season. Yeah. And, oh, we're having asparagus soup.

We're having asparagus. Oh, yes. And it's never been so. fresh. No. In the U.S., well, yeah, it's December. I want asparagus. I'm going to go buy it. Well, I mean, it's about to be Christmas time here in Calispo. I want pineapples all the time. Yeah, and you can get them. I know. I can't. Yeah, that's, and most of the rest of the world doesn't function like that. My wife spent a summer in Germany on an American Quarter Horse Association internship working with a veterinarian in Germany and teaching them how to rope and all sorts of

crazy things. And she had to beg for fridge space so she could have. have cold beer because they serve it, of course, warm. Room temperature, yeah. Yeah. And everybody has a fridge, you know, the size of a Kigarator. They don't have big refrigerators. They don't have freezers. Like, you probably have a couple chest freezers at your house full of, you know,

I think tag soup. They're full of, yeah, empty. I mean, I took a sweet Yeti cooler out to eastern Montana and brought back the freshest air. I mean, it just closed it up and really sealed it up to make sure it capture that air and just brought it back. Yeah. Let it out. to smell it. I love it, though. There's a reason why they call it hunting, not killing.

That's right. And I'm fine with that. It's, uh, and I actually would prefer it that way because if it wasn't challenging, much like jiu jitsu, I don't think I would enjoy it. Right. Well, and it's all a life, right? You want to challenge yourself. You want to push yourself further. And, you know, and I also wanted to mean something. And I hear people talk and it's probably maybe people are sick of hearing things like this because I hear it often. You know, the, when you go to the freezer and it's an animal that you, you did source yourself and process yourself, there is, it is just a different meaning. You're not putting table scraps of elk in the garbage.

Ever. I'll fucking, all prison ship somebody overdoing that. Like, that's not happening because it does mean something. I'm like, I'm not letting you throw the back straps in the garbage. Sorry, you got the eye roll there. I'm like, gosh, if people do that, my goodness. Well, you know what people do it with all the time? Cuts of beef.

But they're also, again, that detachment leads to complacency. And I'm not, I mean, maybe we're not making that full leap to social justice. But to a degree, if you look at Oregon, what you're talking about, where they're trying to shut down hunting, you can't almost see that. Right. And I think that's, I think it's a bad direction to go, especially if the people who are spearheading that don't actually have any experience in what it is that they're trying to stop. Yeah. I mean, most hunters, so I grew up hunting. Never did the archery thing.

Never got into that. But certainly, you know, and you've talked about it, and Rogan's talked about it, and the connection you have to that animal is, you know, paramount. And the story you have and the love you have for that animal, for what they did. And that is how 99% of ag producers feel about what they produce for the general public. Yeah. You know, the beef that we produce from our beef company or the commercial side of the ranch. You know, there's a love for that. It's a laborer love.

I mean, if your profit margin falls by 60% in a matter of five decades, you don't do it because of the money. Yeah, if you're making 13, 14 cents on the dollar, that's a tough road to hoe. And that's average. I mean, there's some industries that are way better than that. Like the almond industry in California, they crush it if they have water. That's a whole other deal, right? There's a drought on the West Coast. Or if you're a pecan guy in Georgia, they got wiped out by hurricanes twice in a row.

Two years in a row at harvest, they got hit by hurricanes that came up the Florida coast. And you don't hear anything about it. Yeah. They just keep on keeping on. Now, they don't do as much philanthropic effort because their industry did get a little decimated, but they're coming back. And that speaks to the resiliency of the community. So the company that my wife and I have is Colorado Craft Beef. We started the beef company from a conversation with her dad when he took.

talked about secession plan for the ranch and or, you know, business planning, et cetera. And I asked him, I said, you know, can we run the ranch like you do? And he said, no. Well, there's, that's a bit of a hiccup. Yeah. And he's not the answer I was looking for, dad. No. I'm like, you can't just, you know, write down an op plan and we'll just execute, no problem. And he goes, you guys have to find a new way. The market's changing. And so Kara and I both come from corporate sales. We both, she's got a master's degree in cattle nutrition. She's crazy smart.

I call her my cow nerd. She loves that, I think. I was going to say, have you run that name by anybody else other than your wife? Because you might want to change that one. No, she totally accepts it. I don't know if she accepts it, begrudgingly or not. But she has not shivved me, does she use your term, for saying it. Give a time.

Right. I'm sure I'll earn that at some point. And, you know, based on our experience and our ability to do marketing and outreach and talk to people and with the hope of developing a platform where we could talk about ag, not just what we do. We started the company, and in 2018, we ship our first beef. We ship nationally.

We ship nationally once a week. The business is now 10 times what it was, so we've had a 10x growth in, you know, four and a half years, which is incredible. We've got subscribers in Hawaii, had guys ordering from Virginia Beach, So I don't know if they're team guys or not. Well, there's quite a few people in Virginia Beach, so it's hard to say.

Right. Ryan was the most recent order from there, and he typed in all caps. I don't know if that's a seal thing. I mean, it just means he's yelling at you. I don't know why. I thought. Yeah. But, you know, we have the business as an effort, of course, to take the ranch to Generation 6.

And in doing that, what we've started to come up with is just misconceptions, exceptions, especially in the beef industry and how we can talk through those. Yeah. Because, you know, Colorado craft beef this year is going to produce a couple hundred animals and sell them. That doesn't sound like a lot. Nationally, the U.S. goes through 35 million cows a year. Okay, so that's not a lot. No.

It's not even on the radar of Colorado. Holy shit. Yeah. But, you know, like in talking to Micah, he's like, man, this is going to be fun. I said for sure, but understand that the average size of a company like Colorado Kraft Beef is 31 animals a year. It's very small. And the beef industry is 85% controlled by four companies. So even though there are family farms, those four companies are aggregating that growth of those animals out to those family farms.

But at the end of the day, what you're talking about when it comes back to that pyramid, it's pointing back to those four. Yeah, the beef industry is a little different. So chicken and if we talk protein, we just talk the three protein markets, we'll leave turkeys out because turkeys are a pretty small portion. I'm probably going to get a message about that. I hate turkeys. One day a year, man. They are assholes. One day a year, one day a year.

Thanksgiving, right? It's coming up. Yeah. But the pork in the chicken industry get the biggest wrap for factory farming because they are very large facilities. my buddy Rob from Iowa. And there's a lot of documentaries about those facilities and what goes on in there for sure. Right. And so my buddy Rob has 40,000 pigs.

Wow. And he's, you know, a family operation. So the chicken and the pork industries are the most vertically integrated. And most of their production is contracted out to family farms to grow for them at a certain percentage. And then it comes back up the ladder. The beef industry is completely different. The beef industry is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of families that have a couple hundred hundred cows, and those cows give birth to calves, and the calves are sold to people like my

father-in-law that are stocker operators, and then we sell to the feedyards, and the feed yards sell to the packers. It's not vertically integrated like the chicken and the beef and the beef, or chicken and pork are. So what are the packers? That's the harvest plants. Okay. So the big fours, Tyson, Cargill, National Beef, and JBS. Okay.

JBS is Brazilian, the other three are U.S.-based. But if you buy a steak, 85% of the industry goes through those four companies. And the beef industry harvest 600, they have capacity to harvest 680,000 head a week. That's a full-time J-O-B. For a lot of people. and the pork industry does 3 million a week. So, you know, if we're following along, it's 35 million cows a year. Yeah.

It's 156 million pigs a year. It's 9 billion chickens a year just for the protein market in the U.S. Those are insane numbers. It's incredible. The average person in the U.S. eats about 80 pounds of beef annually, which I think is low. we need to bump those numbers up. I wonder why you want to bump those up.

Nobody knows. Nobody knows. But, you know, and actually chicken is the most commonly consumed protein because it's usually the lowest price. I was just going to say that, yeah. Yeah. But, you know, the average person consumes about 95 or 100 pounds of chicken annually. And then there's a ton exported.

So we are a large producer of export meat, export meat into other ports of the world. What's the number one? What are the top three countries we export to when it comes to the protein market? So I would have to look that up. What would you guess? We send a lot of beef to Eastern Asia. So Japan, we send a lot of beef to China. We send a lot of beef to South America.

Of course, we export a lot to Canada and Mexico because they're our neighbors. But I mentioned the German veterinarian that my wife lived with for a summer. She was, her and her husband are both veterinarians in Germany. They were educated in the U.S. and my wife asked them, hey, what do you guys miss about the states the most? And they said a good rib-eye steak. Because meat production in Europe is significantly different.

But if you think about, you know, to use the term factory farming, factory farming, I think, is used as a term to describe efficient large operations. Most of them are still family-owned. And to a degree, they're necessary. if we're going to feed people. I was thinking that as you were talking about the numbers, what is actually required from an infrastructure perspective to handle all that. And I think that factory farming,

and this is a totally wild-ass guess, but I think that they're probably, when most people say that, and I think to include myself, it's not talking about the lots where they're giving birth. It's farther down the stream, probably where they arrive at, well, most people would call the slaughterhouse. I think they equate that or, and I've heard this term, and I don't know even how applicable

it is, basically where they go to fatten them up toward the finish. A feedlot. A feedlot. I think when it hits the feedlot and the, you know, the people have these images of, you know, cows getting shot in the head with the captive bolt. Yeah. Which, I mean, as far as ending a life, I'd probably choose that over, you know, getting a cut on your artery. I mean, if you end a life to it in the most efficient and humane way possible. But I think

those two areas are where it gets locked into that factory farming and then very vilified. Sure. But at the same time, I don't know how, I don't know anything about the feedlot aspect of it, but just the pure numbers itself, the infrastructure and the speed and efficiency you would need to move through that is unbelievable. Yeah. So I guess you could give it a bad rap if you want to, but then I don't know how you expect to have stock shelves in the grocery store. Yeah. And that's really what it boils down to. Yeah.

Is it ideal? You know, Rogan talks grass-finished beef a lot. Yeah. In general, grass-fed or grain-finished beef has 60% lower carbon footprint than grass-finished. Why is that? Because to get a grass-finished animal to the same natural endpoint, they are here longer. Yeah. They're on grass longer.

They don't gain as fast. Yeah. So it's just time. They need more carbs. And that's really what it is. They need more energy. Yeah. So a feed yard, for instance, a feedlot, is designed to feed a TMR, totally mixed ration

that is blended by a nutritionist designed and delivered in very high-end mixed trucks that is ground to a certain size so that cattle can't sort because they'll go in, they'll push things out of the way and eat the things they want. Oh, then pick your little sons of bitches? Yeah, if there's candy in there, you know, can't, and I don't mean skittles. Yeah. Just to be clear. Be sweet if you did mean that, though.

You know, there is some waste that's fed like that, and we don't get into that. And that's very uncommon. Like in the West Coast, bread waste is pretty common. Huh. Because there's a lot of flour. There's a lot of material in it. But a lot of, a lot of byproducts are fed in these feed yards. Malta or distillers grains from brew houses.

that's a waste product that we can then feed. Dry distillers grains from ethanol plants. Waste product that we can feed. Otherwise, it goes in a landfill. And again, I think I suspect that the issue for most people who are adverse to the concept of what we're talking about is that those animals are being fed the highest amount of calories so they can get as heavy as possible so then they can be killed and then consumed by us. Sure. Again, I'm detached. It's not ideal, right?

But I think that's where the resistance comes from. And that factory farming term, I really think it lands as an umbrella under those two last stages. Yeah. And so if you think, you know, chicken facilities, those broiler facilities, that's what you call a chicken that goes in a package. Yeah. You know, those broilers are seven weeks old when they're harvested. They're not that old. Pigs are four to six months old, depending on size.

I thought they'd be older than that. and I have no idea why because I know nothing about pigs. Everybody has an opinion, right? I didn't have an opinion. I just had a thought that was, again, as we've proven, I'm shitty a guessy thing. I'm almost out of data points to make you guess, though. I can almost assure you I'll get the rest of them incorrect.

Great. So if you think through that process, though, for instance, the pig market, those things are biosecure facilities. So if you walk into a commercial pig barn, you shower in. there's a bank of showers. You shower, you walk through the other side. They give you clothes to put on. Boots, everything is all sterile, down to your drawers.

You don't take anything in with you. Because those animals are very susceptible to disease in or out of confinement. If they're outside, they're still going to have the same issues. The air is cycled a certain amount of time. The temperatures are kept the same because if you're growing hogs in Iowa, it gets really hot and humid. Yeah. And it gets colder and balls.

Yeah. And we're creating the, an environment for them to be as comfortable as possible, to be able to convert feed as good as possible, to minimize the feed impacts and maximize the amount of output. And defining it like that, some people would say, well, that's the definition of a factory. I'm like, yeah, Henry Ford did it, and he did okay. Well, and also, there are some people that are just never going to be comfortable with that type of industrial complex engineering for our food. And I don't know what to say to some, I mean, I would agree with you. It's not ideal.

But if you are willing to participate in the end state, I don't know, you know what I mean? I don't know how to, I don't know what to say to somebody other than you have, you can vote with your dollars. That's the biggest vote that you probably. I'm going to cross that off my list because that's one of my things. Yeah. And that's another thing that, oh, God. I'm very good friends with Evan Haver. founder of Black Rifle Coffee.

Well, the co-founder, right? Because you were part of that. I mean, I put him in as a shadow CEO. We don't talk about it a lot openly. But I love having him on the podcast because I love the way his mind works. And he's a fantastic human being and an even better American. And every time that I have him on the show, people like, oh, the Manchurian candidate of the Republican Party, the fucking beta cuck of black rifle. I'm just like, shut the fuck up and vote with your dollars.

Yeah. You don't have to buy a shit. If you don't like his coffee or his politics, don't buy it. And save that energy of telling everybody in the world as you rapidly scroll through social media and go do something important. Yeah. So I... But when was the last time Starbucks supported vets? I'm not educated off on that point to be able to tell you either way.

I'm sure they have a program for it. Is it different, though, than being a company founded by vets who employ, I think, over 140 vats? It's very different, but by design. The point is, though, you have that choice. I don't think that the mechanics of what you're talking about are ideal, but I also don't have a better solution. Yeah. So for the people listening who are like, this is terrible, and what about the animals? And I totally hear you on all that.

But at the same time, what's the solution? What would you recommend? And if you truly are against that, you have the opportunity to vote with your dollars. Yeah. And what I would say is it is about the animals. And, you know, last year I'd horsefall down with me, separated my shoulder. Two months after that, I got hit in the face with a steel gate loading cattle. And we do it for them.

I mean, I was bleeding running up to the trailer to get the door shut because luckily my face stopped the gate. And the cattle turned around and went in the trailer. Safeest place to hit me too. Yeah. Just go to town. If it would have hit two inches to the left, I'd be so much uglier than I am right now. But it's not for lack of sacrifice. It's not for lack of love of the animals.

Yeah. But, you know, the ground we run cattle on where we live, it's not good for anything else. It's prairie. We can't farm it. It's all blow sand. If you start to break the root zone up, you're going to have a big dust storm,

but there's not a lot of tops oil. Yeah. And it's not because of practices. It's because of that's where Mother Nature put it. We live in sand dunes. Yeah. And that changes everywhere. So, you know, what Greg is able to do with intensive grazing because he's got hard

packed ground and different things, that's awesome. He might have a guy 100 miles away that can't do that. Yeah. So what I would say is to anybody that wants to know about ag, find a guy and ask him. Yeah. Because Greg, first generation guy, dude, his podcast was on point. I really liked everything he said. But do you think he isn't trying to do the very best for his?

his location. Probably 100% is. Yeah. As I'm sure is everybody else who is in that situation. They're doing the best they absolutely can. Exactly. And I think they get vilified because I didn't realize that all of those or most of those smaller organizations, they get funneled into those same facilities, right?

So they're going to get slapped that same label of the factory farming. And again, I don't know a way around that. I don't know a way to make people. Well, actually, I'm not even trying to make people comfortable with that. That's a decision that they're going to have to be. or a concept that they can either be comfortable with or not and choose to participate in the system or not. But you look at a guy like Greg or Micah. You know, damn well.

They're doing the absolute best that they can with what they have, as I have no doubt that you guys are as well. The fact that it flows through the same system, I mean, that's what a population of 360 million people. And we're feeding hundreds of millions around the world as well. That's what I'm saying. I don't have a better solution. I'm not saying it's perfect like every damn issue in this country or it probably. be in the world, but I mean, I'm open to suggestions. And I, well, I think the thing to know is every one of those guys in ag, guys and girls,

there's a ton of women in agriculture. I mean, this is pretty funny. I mean, you've certainly seen people that rope, you know, that use a rope to catch cows. I don't rope. My wife was third, her senior year high school at the national finals. She's still trying to teach me. But Greg's comment about, we just walk up and grab them. I'm like, man, I could do that.

Yeah, he basically described it as cow jujitsu. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Grab a long bone. And holding them down is like knee on belly. I'm a hard pass. They get four little hooves coming to probably right at your face. There's techniques. They don't have thumbs.

It makes it a little easier. Sure it does. You tell yourself whatever you want to. Yeah. And, you know, the... Is there anything about that term factory farming that you could pull back the veil on that perhaps would give people more comfort with that process? Because, again, small farm, you know, if it's all kind of leading into that same ecosystem, I do think that it's vilified because of those last steps.

But, I mean, what would you tell people who hear the term factory farming are inherently resistant to it? How would you try to dissuade some of that resistance? So most people in agriculture hate that term. I mean, that's like, I mean, that's stolen valor type stuff for us. That hits, I mean, right in the heart. Yeah. Because most of it's not factory farming, and everybody wants to scream that from the mountaintops and egg.

But if we think about, there are some feed yards that are 100,000 cows. There's one in Colorado. They're kind of all over. Yeah. Those things are more regulated than anything. And they actually generate enough of a profit. They're more managed than anything. So while from the outside, it looks big and ugly and scary,

they're extra efficient. Those cattle are taken exceptionally good care of. Their feed and water is on point every day. The systems they have in place are really high end, even compared to some of the stuff that the smaller guys do because they are under the microscope. So what I would really like to just point out to people is the same people that are operating those big yards,

the big feed yards, or the small feed yards, or the big chicken house or the small chicken house, we are all working for the same goal. Some of us just have different resources than others. And like you said, vote with your dollar. There's nothing wrong with the national food supply chain. You know, an interesting data point. I won't even ask you to give me a guess.

9% of disposable income in the U.S. is spent on food. I would have been way off on that one. It's 40 to 50% in the rest of the world. Really? That's an interesting statistic. Yeah. And now it varies country to country, but it gets as high as 45. Yeah, absolutely. So we get to spend significantly less money on our food. I mean, every week, my wife and I get messages about your prices are too high or, hey, can you make me a deal on this? Not really. Our cost of production is higher than the general beef market.

Now we do some different things that make quality a little different. we can age things longer. We have a little more control over our systems because we are smaller. But people still tell us we're expensive. It's okay to be expensive. I'm okay with that. Yeah. I want to try out with some of Josh Smith's knives because you and you had a month.

Yeah, exactly. Every time I try, you can't get them. But it's a good knife. Yeah. You know, if you buy Benchmate or you buy Josh Smith or you buy whoever, you can buy one at Walmart. You can buy a Gerber. Yeah. I've got a couple gerber.

hunting bag. I sharpen them up, using one I need to, but you can tell quality difference. Same thing when you eat a steak. So, I don't know, did you get a chance to try our steak? I did. Actually, so I ate, you sent me a pack of, I think it was two rib-eyes, incredibly marvelled, threw him on the treas, of course, unbelievable. And then last night made a spaghetti sauce with all the ground beef and then cut up some zucchinies and had it over the top. Unbelievably good. Actually, I'm going to have the leftovers for dinner tonight. Awesome. Yeah, it's great.

Well, and thank you for sending it to me, by the way. Oh, of course, man. I mean, I'd hate to be like, yeah, look at look how good our stuff is or whatever. And you're like, okay. I trust your judgment. No, it was spectacular. It was really, really good. Well, and that's because we have, like I said, different controls that we can take.

So we age everything for 21 days. Yeah. Because the processing plant we use gives us that space. Well, in some of the big production facilities that are harvesting, you know, on commercial scale, there's 6,000 animals a day going through there. Yeah, there's no room to harvest like every day to put another 6,000 in a 21-day storage. There's no way. No, you just can't.

And there's nothing. You're like the biggest Amazon warehouse on the face of the planet. And then keep it at 34 degrees. Yeah. Good luck with that. The real estate problem is just, you know, unsolvable. So we're able to do things differently. Our cost of production is higher because we aren't at mass scale.

And that's okay. And till what you said, vote with your dollar. Yeah. You know, nothing wrong with stuff at the store. Well, not everything costs the same amount. There are entry-level cars and there are very high-end cars. There are entry-level car brands and there are luxury car brands. You get to choose where you devote your time, energy, effort, and cash.

For sure. And it's interesting to see the movement in the market because with the inflation, we've started to see people come to us because they're like, man, it's $20 for a rib-eye at the store. You're still more than... that. Yeah. But, you know, the leap in quality is significantly different. Yeah, it's worth it to us now. Yeah. What's interesting, though, is when COVID hit, I mean, our website was just overflowing with people. We were oversold for eight months last year. Do you think that's because you deliver directly to the door so they could control that departure from the house or their controlled

environment? Some of it. And some of it was probably scarcity. Some of it was, I mean, the morning after everything started to go crazy. A gentleman that's ordered boxes from us before ordered a quarter beef, which he'd never done. And I called him and said, hey, what's going on? He said, man, I just left cop. End of the world. No big deal. Yeah, no big thing. So he's like, I went to Costco. He's like, there's no meat. I'm like, okay, no problem. What we ended up being able to do was work through that supply chain issue. So we were harvesting animals as fast as we could when they were ready when they were at an end point that we would be happy putting our label on them, shipping them out. So if you ordered a quarter, you'd get a quarter of your quarter.

Are you talking about a quarter of a cow? Yeah, roughly 100 pounds of beef. Okay. And we would ship you a certain percent, and we tracked all the inventory, and we made sure everybody got it made out. But it was interesting because then you see people that really needed you at that moment, not come back. Yeah, that's fine.

I mean, we were there as a backstop for the supply chain. People have very short-term memories. For sure. So it's interesting to see that movement, to see people and how they react. I mean, the social dynamics and the psychology of it were really interesting. Well, the short-term memory of people or their short-term ability to follow through is sometimes shocking to me. COVID is a good example. I'm by no means a doctor.

But the one thing I have heard, truly, I mean, I might have. the PhD and being a jackass. But the one thing that I... And coffee, right. That's how you let Evan get his start. It's just brown water. You know, we're just enjoying some brown water I hear that wakes you up and makes you have to go to the bathroom.

But really educated people who study this stuff keep saying over and over and over again, the better are you going in, the better are you will likely be coming out of it if you are infected not only with COVID, but probably any medical issue that you could encounter. Sure. One of the number one things that is a comorbidity. is obesity. I mean, what better opportunity

would it be for the United States to take its obesity rates, which I believe are in the 40th percentile, low 40th percentile, in 18 months, maybe we drop that down to the 30th percentile or the 20th percentile.

But I bet it actually hasn't changed. I would wonder if it actually went the other way. Because people have fucking short-term memory problems. Yeah. They will survive a crisis and immediately look forward And it's like they can't. One of the things that I really enjoyed about my old job was the after-action review process,

where you can take the things largely based off the mistakes that you made or the improvements that could be made, and you could implement them into things going forward to incrementally lever yourself towards being an organization or a unit that is capable of doing more and more and more and more. It's equated to one of Josh's knives. His blade, by the way, can hold an incredible edge. but eventually at some point it would dull a little bit. But if you take a sharpener and you're consistently bringing that across the blade of the knife, it's going to get sharper and sharper and sharper. People have the opportunity to do those things.

And I see them ignoring what just happened in the past and only focusing forward. And again, live your life however you want to. But if you haven't had a huge wake-up call from the, we're almost at fucking two years of this at this point. If you haven't had a huge wake-up call, we're talking about walking over here. You're down 35 pounds. your trajectory is headed in the right direction. And it continued that, of course, by all means, or eat fucking nachos, whatever you want to do, Jeff.

You're cold. I'll judge you very harshly inside and then slightly on the outside if you go the nachos route. Right. But if you have short-term memory problems, you forget the lessons, and then we'll encounter, call it COVID-35, whatever it may be. And people are not going to be any more prepared, but they could be. Yeah. And they just don't action the lessons that they had. Well, so do you remember it would have been a few months back that JBS, the beef processing company?

They got ransomware. Oh, they did. That's right. Yeah. They had to pay an $11 million ransom to get their system back. And our message on social media, maybe not the softest way to approach this, was this is the fourth supply chain disruption in 16 months. if you're still looking to figure out what to do, what are you waiting for? Yeah.

Like, not trying to say the world's ending, but it's getting more and more prevalent. Well, there's indicators. Yeah. Just when Facebook and Instagram went down for 12 hours. Oh, worst time in the life, right? Well, horrible. For some people, and for other people, they're like, oh, that's interesting. I heard about it after it happened.

Yeah, me too. But there's a potential, let's say, your business that you run. And the only platform that you were on was Instagram. And you relied on that for messaging and communicating with your clients. And then it goes down. Let's say the next time it goes down, it's not 12 hours. It's 12 days. And you haven't thought about things you could improve from that, we'll call it a crisis

or emergency, depending on the lens you view it through them. It wasn't that bad. But you realize, you know what, maybe an email list would also be good. Maybe create an app or maybe have another way to interface and engage or a standalone website that we can host, whatever it may be. If you can aggregate that out, you're going to be so much more prepared. prepared to handle those situations in the future. But you've got to look in the mirror.

Right. And I don't know. I'm beating a dead horse for sure, no pun intended. Well, I think Daryl Cooper that does the unraveling podcast with Jocko. Yes. The guy is a machine. I mean, listen to those guys' talk is really incredible. They made a comment on a recent episode that I really liked.

They said, most people at best think two-dimensionally, you know, add the third dimension. Now I had four dimensions. And that's the supply chain issue we're running into now, right? I mean, you're probably familiar with the term, you know, second, third, fourth level effects. Man, what level are we at today? That's a good question. I mean, it's got to be double digits, right? This happened, then that happened, then that happened. And, yeah. I mean, and people are still surprised. You've had a ton of opportunity to see what was going on. Yeah. I'm not saying it's great. you know, like I mentioned, Roundup is going to be five times what it was last year this spring. That's, and we are hearing that there's fertilizer shortages.

There's going to be, you know, we've actually got some family friends that farm. And they were told if you want fertilizer for next year, you need to buy it now and get it delivered. Do not forward contract it because there's going to be a shortage. What is forward contracting? Just locking in a price and saying, yes, I need this much at this time. Gotcha. So you're saying you want it in hand. Yeah, they say deliver it to the farm today, if you want to have it.

Now, that could create some big ripples. You know, if you have fertilizer shortage and production falls by 30% due to lack of fertilizer on ex-commodity, man, that's a big deal. It is for sure. It is for sure. Going back to all the industries that you talk to, hit me with some of the wave points that the, like, the pork, when you told the pork, people from the pork industry that you were coming on, what do they want you to talk about? What was there a key point? They sent me their... Buy more bacon?

I mean... Which I support that. Yeah, who needs to be told to buy more bacon? I'm still going to try that a peanut butter, honey and bacon sandwich you talked about, though. I think that's a game changer. It is. They sent me their sustainability report. And what everybody, most of everybody I talked to an ag wanted to talk about was we are being more sustainable.

We are producing more with less. So from 1960 to today, the dairy. industry is using 60% less resources. Really? 60% less resources. Yet another statistic I would have gotten incorrect. We didn't ask, right? Yeah, she's learned your lesson.

You know, the pork industry is producing 60% more product than they were a few years ago, 20, 30 years ago, I forgot the date, but they're producing 60% more product with 2% less resources. and that's carte blanche across every ag industry. Are they just struggling to get that message out? Yeah. Because they're like, you're using too much water. It's like, well, we are using a lot of water in whatever industry. I think, I can't remember if it was Greg or Micah.

They were talking about it was like 4,000 gallons to produce a beef cow. 4,000 gallons of water necessarily or necessary throughout production. Well, a quarter of that is used in the processing plant. basically 8 to 900 gallons per carcass is utilized for washdown, all the other things that happened just in the processing plant. That is way down from what it used to be. And that's the biggest message is these numbers are changing all the time. From 1990 to now, you know, 30 years, the major crops in the U.S., cotton, rice, corn, soybeans,

we would need 100 million more acres to grow the resources needed today for the food population if we didn't get better at what we were doing. So to produce what, if you take all the rates from 1990 and you say that's all we can produce per acre, 100 million more acres would be needed today. And I don't know if you're familiar, but they're not making more dirt. Yeah. They're not making more ground. And that's every industry.

Forestry. It's in fish farming. It's in everything. But the nice thing is, you know, if we want to not be doomsday-ish for the whole podcast. California, lots of wildfires, NRCS, National Resource Conservation Society, maybe. Most likely. Yeah. Government organization.

They are giving grants to people to help clean up underbrush in California. California for the first time in history. They're helping to start to mitigate some of that fire danger based on what they're seeing. Colorado doing the same thing. They're going in. They're doing specified dinning operations because they've had big fires. So the nice thing is... Don't we need to have big fires sometimes?

Occasionally. Yeah. I'm not saying burning down neighborhoods and shit, but also isn't that part of the natural cycle? That's what the natives used to do. Native Americans used to light burns to minimize hunting acres and consider. consolidate ground, but then that kills fungus. It kills weeds. Yeah. I mean, you've probably elk hunted and re-prod, right? Yeah. That's a great. That's a great spot. It all takes a little bit of give and take. Yeah. Everywhere. And, you know, that's one of the things that I think

most people should be a little more understanding of, you know, this has to be perfect. It's like, well, for that to be perfect, this has to totally get dynamited. Or just shit can the term perfect from your vernacular. Agreed. What are your thoughts on people who think that cows are responsible for glow warming? Actually, here's a really funny thing. Everybody thinks it's cow farts. Of course.

I was just... They don't even release methane from their rear end. From their ass? No, it's a burp. When they chew their cud, there's very little methane emissions from the rear end of a cow. It's burps when they chew their cud because they regurgitate and chew their cud and reswallow. Yeah. So that's the best misconception to everybody.

cow farts. I'm like, no, it's cow burps. You don't even have the right end of the freaking animal. Yeah. But, you know, emissions in ag industry as a whole are down a lot. And the beef industry is less than 2% of total emissions. It's very, very low. In the hog industry and the chicken industry are the same thing. Yeah, I think a lot of the times those, and again, these are wild-ass guesses on my part. I think a lot of the resistance or issues or the statements that people make, if you really drew it all the way back, it would be more of a moral issue than an objective, scientifically based issue. And I don't know what to say to people about that. If you're a vegetarian or you are a carnivore and you just eat meat, something died for you to

survive. Yeah. That's the circle of life. Yeah, vegetarians do not have a clean slate. even in getting the producing the foods that they eat that they do eat there is loss of life well it's interesting and again i've heard joe talk about this people have this scale of of life where at some point it matters and it below that it doesn't like does the grasshopper matter but what about the mouse does the mouse not matter what about the rabbit yeah does the rabbit not matter what about the fox that eats like at some point they're like no that matters like okay right what about the other life below that and again i'm not saying that with any level of judgment, but let's just be honest about what it takes for us to have what we have.

Well, and aside from just food, right, for every, you want a new vehicle, the mining had to happen to get the metal to then be stamped, to then be made into a vehicle with the seats and the electronic system and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. the number of man hours in that vehicle and the sacrifice someone had to make of their time to feed their family is not inconsequential. And the fact that a new vehicle is $50,000 is unbelievably low. If you think of how incredibly complex that vehicle is and the sacrifices that it took to make that vehicle, it's pretty crazy. Yeah.

Talk to a metal recycling guy. and I asked him, but what are you seeing? He said, well, inflation is actually making us a ton of money right now because everything we do is domestic. And inflation is impacting the importers and the exporters, but we're actually doing okay for now.

Yeah. That's probably going to fall apart here pretty quick when somebody realigns the pricing. He said, but the interesting data point is, 10 years ago, if you recycle a vehicle, it had approximately 26 pounds of copper in it. It's up to 200 now with all. all the electric vehicles.

Oh, yeah, good luck finding a vehicle that doesn't have a goddamn supercomputer running inside that thing. Exactly. And so if you think about just resource management, we went from 26 to 200. That's not exactly a small move. And then he started talking about the exhaust systems and catalytic converters that have palladium and rhodium and some of those other really rare metals. Unobtainium.

Yeah. I didn't hear him mention that, but I think he meant it. It's in there somewhere. Right. He said they used to have five ounces. per vehicle, now it's like 26. And he said, Rhodium during the height of COVID was $28,000 an ounce.

And now it's down to only 15,000 an ounce. He said, so the sheer economics driving recycling, because they can do auto salvage, because it's now cheaper for them to recycle than to mine, is making that a better part of the business. But for anybody buying a new car to make the leap from I want that new Lexus to, boy, what's the resource allocation for this? Yeah.

It's not even in the wheelhouse. Yeah. And it's not. I'm guilty of that too. Like I said. Amen. I have to have my phone. Like there's the hard.

The complacency thing is very true. You get so comfortable navigating your way through life and you show up the places and put this expectation that everything that you need is going to be there and all throughout your day, stop here and grab this and grab that. And it's not until there's some massive interruption that you take the time to think about it. I'm as guilty of that as anybody else. But damn. Yeah, it's much more complex than you think. Well, and the biggest challenge we've had with the beef company is FedEx. Really? Man, they're 25% year-over-year profit increase, but they're struggling just like everyone

to get labor. They don't back up their packages. There's no insurance available. So if they don't deliver it on time, they don't back it up. They've cost, I mean, we have about a five a 6% shrink rate with FedEx. That's one of the things when I told Micah, I was like, hey, if you want to ship beef, we need to talk because you've got to understand the economic risk of that next step of the business. What about UPS? The best of the worst I have right now is FedEx.

UPS is we were with UPS for a while a couple years ago. They had the same issues, but they don't want to back them up. And that's the biggest issue. And it used to be that when you shipped a package in FedEx or UPS, that you could pay for the insurance, they would back it up if they had issues. Corporate contracts help with some of that, you know, actually negotiating that on the business side. And then usually from Thanksgiving to New Year's, they suspended all guarantees because of the surplus in work. Oh, yeah. And I can get behind that.

I get it. COVID happened. They suspended it. They haven't allowed them back. Um, interesting. So I was on a podcast in February with a buddy of mine and I made the comment to him. You know, I had the horse fall down with me and separated my shoulder and got hit in the face with a gate and both of those are still easier than dealing with FedEx. And, and I told that to the regional president of FedEx, uh, on the phone. And he's like, yeah, I get it.

Well, at least they're aware. They're aware. I hope they're not care. There, there's that. Um, well, the biggest issue we had with UPS when we were with him originally. is Amazon said they were going to launch their own delivery systems. FedEx and Amazon somehow parted ways. Amazon moved everything to UPS

and UPS is like, sorry, man, we're really busy. I'm like, well, that doesn't change that I need to make things happen. Yeah, handling the fulfillment for Amazon, I don't think would be a very easy task. No. The volume alone associated with that has got to be mind-boggling.

Yeah. And, well, and of course, all the people from COVID, all of us, collectively, myself included, we now order more stuff to our house. Oh, for sure. We're now home more often. And then if you think about the supply chain and you think about the shift in money, we used to go to concerts. We used to go on vacations. We're still spending that money somewhere.

And most of it is coming to our house from FedEx or UPS. And so the supply chain issue from that level, just the shift in where that money is being spent is also constraining. things. I would spend it on ammo, but I can't find any. Yeah. Just like everybody. God, it's so real. So, well, so training time is down is what you're saying. Yeah, but you can still do a bunch of stuff, dry fire. I've changed the drills that I would do. I'll do a lot of more of single shot reload type stuff, more manipulation. Like tack mag stuff. Yeah. I mean, there's ways around it where you could reduce your expenditure, but still stay pretty goddamn sharp. Yeah. To go back to something we talked about really early on, what would you say to people who are afraid of GMO food?

GMO cautious, GMO hesitant individuals. Right. Well, I'll actually ask you another question. Okay. What was the last non-GMO item you bought at the store? Steak. Okay. If you find a steak labeled non-GMO, send me the picture.

God, damn it. Are they GMO? No, they're not. Okay, good. That's the point. But like... A pair. Not GMO.

There you go. you'll find non-GMO stickers on tomatoes. You'll find non-GMO stickers on lettuce. You'll find non-GMO stickers on most things in the grocery store. When none of those have approved GMOs. So there's a marketing issue going on where people are, you know, you can buy oranges and it'll say non-GMO on it. And people go, oh, it must be safer. It's not GMO.

I'm like, but there's no approved GMO and oranges. So are we really sharing the story of what's going on? Are we just trying to sell to the masses? I would say that they're trying to market to the masses who are the people that I'm talking about, the GMO cautious, GMO hesitant individuals. When they see a sticker that says, hey, this is not GMO, I think it kind of paints the picture that maybe inherently or implicitly that there's something, if I have to point out that this product does not have it in it,

then perhaps there's something negative about that. Right. So GMOs are safe. Most of like 99.9% of the sugar beets planted in the country are GMO sugar beets. And they produce like 85% of all the sugar that is used in this country and have been for quite some time. I think it's a lack of education, to be honest. Yeah. And it's.

And again, something else I'm totally guilty of. Yeah. You know, things are safe. GMOs are tried and true. They're very tested. One of the negatives you see people talk about on GMOs is, oh, if you buy GMO seed, you can't keep the seed on the back end when you harvest the field. Well, that's true because it's a terminal seed. You're not allowed to produce it for more seed.

That's regulated by USDA. That's not a genetics company. This stuff goes through crazy amounts of testing. And it is done not necessarily in a production capacity. It's done to minimize water usage, minimize tillage, minimize bug pressure, minimize pesticide uses. So you can't demand less spraying and issues with pesticides and herbicides if you won't let us then breed around that. And the technology in ag on the GMO side and non-GMOs, especially even in the beef side, I've got a friend in Florida that works for a genomics company.

They can, in their computer, take DNA samples from a bowl and a cow and produce, depending on the heritability of a certain trait, they can look at what that cow is, what that cross is going to produce 10 generations in the future. We're too smart for our own good as a species. Yeah. Yeah, and the other misconception is most of the farmer community is a bunch of hay seeds with their overalls. Big old long, yeah. Yeah, a hay piece of wheat sticking out of their mouths.

Yeah, and that's really not the case either. Farmers today, ag people today, the software we have to use, the genetics we're employing to be more efficient would blow your mind. the GPS ability to spray different fields and not have overlap and minimize spraying and variable rate machines and man, the stuff that's out there is just unbelievable. And you know it's only going to get better too. Yeah. And it's growing at such a rate. So GMOs, yeah, they have their place.

And the reason we're able to feed everybody is because of some of those things. and from a national security standpoint, from an ability to export, from an ability to keep other regions stable by making sure they have appropriate food, that's not exactly a small thing. Yeah. And just trying to look at all of it through the lens of our people trying to do the best. I mean, sure, like the law enforcement example, I think the exceptional majority of people in that position are trying to do the very best they are trying to do the very best. can in a really bad situation. Totally agree. And almost everything I would guess is similar to that. And we need to have a little grace for each other. I mean, it's really what it boils down to. You know, try to be informed. Try to give a shit about your neighbor. How are you going to,

or what do you think of when you have, you know, your two young children? What are you going to try to leave behind for them when they take it over? Hmm. I mean, what do you think the biggest change will be? Is it going to be technology-based? Advancements in tech, advancements in, I mean, I don't know how much you could have an advancement in a cow. They're changing a little bit. If regulations don't stifle the industry, I would like to think they're going to continue to work on their own fulfillment with the beef company. or try to find another way to interact with ag,

at the very least, what Kara and I want to do is make sure they have the opportunity to make that choice. Maybe they aren't interested. But we want to make sure that what we've done, we can look in the mirror and say, hey, we did the best we could to advance your position. And if you don't want to do it, we get it. But I want to make sure that I can look at them.

You know, my parents are in their lives. late 60s and be able to look back and go, I did the best I could for you, kid. I hope it works out. Yeah. And, you know, with the Paws Act or any other regulatory issues you run into, it's a slippery slope trying to talk about that stuff in the public, especially with a beef company, man, you could get canceled in a second if you say the wrong things. You can't cancel beef.

No, you could cancel our beef, I guess. but can you look yourself in the mirror for not taking a stand on an issue? You know, what does that boil down to? And if you have to show your kids, hey, we took a stand because we really believe in what we're doing here and we want you guys to be able to do it and it didn't work out. I can explain that a lot better than I can say, we just kept keeping on and then one day we were out of business. Yeah, those are two very different outcomes. Yeah. Well, it's, would you rather, would you rather lose fighting or just get swept under the rug?

Is there a third option? When? There you go. I'll take door number three for 500, Alex. Right. And, man, it's, and that's everywhere, right? That's a, that's not just ag. That's manufacturing.

That's every business out there. Yeah. And it's the blue collar community that really is the hard. heartbeat of this country. You know, it's guys that work in power plants to make sure that when you plug in your phone, it still works. Or when you want gas for your vehicle because you're going to go to dinner. It sucks. They're so invisible until a crisis occurs. Right. And, you know, we're as a industry, you know, whether it's, you know, military or all the people that work to make life happen, you know, let's not forget about them. Let's not forget about the mission that

everybody's trying to do and try to be a part of that mission, try to help, you know. I think there's a big mindset change, and I'm sure you've seen this, you know, with the platform you've built, how many people call you saying, hey, what can you do for me instead of calling and saying, hey, can I help you with something? That's a good question. First off, I don't give anybody my phone number, so nobody's calling me for shit. I oftentimes will get emails from people who want to come on the podcast for the express, expressed reasoning of wanting to promote something that they have going on, which I'm not necessarily against. But oftentimes the topics that they want to talk about are incredibly self-serving.

And that is where I will develop a level of hesitancy, not with the person, but just, I'd want to I don't know if I would call this a platform I don't even know what the hell this is right it's been been at it for four plus years now I don't know where it's going I really like doing it I do realize that there are people out there who listen and who watch it depending on how you consume the media

so I want to be at more than anything I want to expose first and foremost myself to people that I consider to be interesting you shouldn't expose yourself to the public Andy I think well I I mean, I am part of the general public. I'm joking about the word expose. But a lot of people, well, yeah, not that type of exposure.

I'm surprised by people who think that I am at, like, a level beyond the general public because I am not. I consider myself to be a completely and utterly average person who is a part of the general public. And I want to expose everybody that I can to things that I think are interesting. But it starts with me. I love this podcast because I get to sit down and have conversations with people like yourself. And for people who are interested in this, and I hope a lot of people are because it will hopefully create a little bit of hiccup between that complacency, showing up and expecting to do whatever it is. In this essence, obviously we're talking about ag, where it can chip away at that complacency, which I need to do a better job of as well. I that's what I want from all of this you know to try to to do better to be a better version

to level up incrementally until we're all at a better spot yeah I don't know that's what I'm trying to do hey man I appreciate everything you're doing you're crushing it and you know it's I think I forgot exactly there's two things I've taken away from your podcast that really resonate with me one was a jiu jih Tzu comment sorry for everybody that hates on those. You're like, you know, it doesn't care. It doesn't matter what belt you are. You know, can you kick your own ass from a week ago? Oh, I love that 24-hour clone principle from Kevin Estella. Yeah. Yeah, it was, trust me, that's not mine. So every time that I bring that up, I throw his name out there because it's amazing. Yeah. I love it. And it's like, that is the easiest way

for me to think about life, you know, maybe coming on the podcast today helped one guy. You know, one person, Google something or. Well, I was going to have. ask you that. Because I think people will likely, and all the stuff that we've talked about it, it probably will peak the interest of some, but that interest will be in different areas. For people who want to, or maybe realize, like, hey, you know what, I actually do have this level of detachment and complacency from where my food come from, where would you direct them to start that journey about understanding and learning more? You can Google any of these things, but I would back that up.

Interesting shit shows up when you Google stuff, though. Not all websites are actually legitimate. So I would say the second level part of Googling it is considering the source. Every major university out there has more studies about all these things than we could ever read in a lifetime. You know, Cornell is an Ivy League university. It's an ag school. Penn State does a ton of stuff. Kansas State for cows, Iowa State for pigs.

The data is there. but understand that you need to read data, not curated data. Yeah. You know, there's any number of things that you can do. But if you're in an area and you want to know something, I will bet you that the vast majority of ag producers, when approached, will invite you onto their place. That's kind of what I want to do, is explore the Flathead Valley more and see what's going on up here. Yeah. Yeah.

And I would, I mean, 90% of them would. We have people out to the ranch three or four times a year. We have barbecues. We'll take them out. We show them what we do. You know, we just recently hired a marketing guy, a retired Marine. Good, dude. He's been a ton of help.

Helped us get the website. We did a new website launch this week, so the new website's up finally. But he came from a background kind of in ag. And even then we talk and he's like, man, this is great. and when people reach out and they want to come look, I'm like, yeah, come look. Do they leave with a different or enhanced perspective, do you find? Sometimes. We've not had a bad experience because when we invite them to the ranch, you know, we're inviting them to our home.

Like, you have dinner at our table. So we haven't had a bad experience. I think some people want, they just want to see the reassurance. It's not that they're looking for knowledge. It's that they're just like, hey, want to put my thumb on the pulse of this thing and see what. It would verify as a real term. I live and die by that one in the construction industry. Yeah.

I trust that you're going to do the right job, but we're going to look. But I'll fucking be there at 7 a.m. That's right. Boy, you poured that concrete when I wasn't here. That's suspicious. Yeah. But working through that's been good. What's actually been a lot of fun is going to in-town events.

You know, we sponsored a thing in Fort Collins where we interacted with the public for three straight days. And it is a grunt. mind. But see and we had some rope and dummies out there so the kids could rope and had a good time. Yep. But watching the impact of that was really cool. Now, of course, for every hundred good interactions you have, uh, I had a lady not to bash on Boulder again, but I will. She met us in an event and she said everyone should focus to be carbon neutral. And she's wearing a really nice wool jacket, carrying a Louis Vuitton bag. And I'm like, okay, where do you live?

Oh, I live in a high-reisen or a high-level townhome in Boulder. Okay. She's like, but I heard of a family in Kentucky that's completely off the grid and they're carbon neutral. We should all aspire for that. I'm like, I'm so confused with this interaction. Yeah. You're espousing one thing while doing the entire opposite and you think it's okay. That was an interesting interaction.

We've had people to say, oh, you have beef? I'm out. It's bad for the environment. I'm like, okay. I mean, I respect their opinion. Yeah, people are free to feel whatever they want to feel. Yeah, do what you want to do. It doesn't bother me.

But try to be informed, you know? That's really what it boils down to. So what ag questions do you have for me, Andy? To be honest, we covered quite a bit. Do we make it all the way through all the bullet points in your notebook? We got the high end, I think. What else is left? I don't even know where to begin when it comes to ad questions.

questions, to be honest. You know, there's one area we didn't talk about. Organic farming. Okay. So I talked to a buddy of mine. He runs a chemical warehouse in Idaho for a big ag supply company up there. And I asked him, I say, what would you want to say? And he said, you know, I have 60 hazardous materials in my barn in his warehouse.

He said, 55 of them are labeled for organic production. I thought you were not allowed to use those type of. No, you're allowed to use certified organic. So certified organic chemicals are non-synthetic and carbon-based, which means they're basically the raw ingredient. They're basically the raw particles, if you will. So they're very, very caustic. He's like, I'm not saying anything bad on organic farming.

What I do want to say is these things are still sprayed. They're sprayed with different stuff. And, you know, 55 of the 60 hazardous chemicals I have in my warehouse are certified organic. You know, some of the other interesting things, if you do talk certification game, whether it's organic or grass bed or whatever. It's all third-party verified. It's a paperwork game. It's also very expensive. We could be certified organic on our farm, but it's $5,000 a year.

Just for the label. Yeah, just for the label. And then not only do we have to be certified, but the processing facility has to be certified, the feed yard. We feed at every one of those is a little. another 5Gs. So when you see something in a grocery store that has all the labels, maybe do some homework because it very well could be coming from one of the, you know, bigger conglomerates that was really good at marketing. And on the organic side, I'm certainly not trying to say organic is bad. But I think, like you said, hey, I thought you couldn't do XYZ. Yeah. Well,

you can't, to a certain degree, there's certifications. But if you're having a pest issue and you can't fix it with organic chemicals, you can apply for a variance for that year because you have pest pressure from whatever, use whatever they approve on it, and you still keep the certification. So you can still label the products as organic even though they were approved. Yeah. Yeah, even if they were sprayed with a synthetic, you know. But I bet the packaging for that year would not say on there with a little asterisk spread to synthetic this year. No, it wouldn't. Um, because, you still have to manage the farm. You can't just, oh, well, we got we've got weevils this year.

I hope it works out. They're not going to take that hit. You know, on the organic side, I fully support it. I fully support people doing farm to table, having their own gardens, being completely self-reliant and off the grid, whatever that may mean to people. And I also am empathetic to those who, like that 10% of people who don't know where their next meal is coming from, and they're completely shopping from a budgetary perspective. So where I hate organic farming, and let me finish that.

I'm not saying I hate it. I said, where I hate it is when I see people maybe in different economic positions with kids, with whatever they're struggling with that are guilted for not buying organic because they say it's better for you. It's this, it's that. You know what? If you're feeding your kids, do the best you can. And everybody needs to shut the hell up.

Yeah, you have to survive first. Agreed. And that's what the social justice of that. I'm like, hey, that is misplaced. Broad morality judgments are tough. Any broad application, it just starts to lose its precision. Yeah. You know, it's like trying to smash a square peg into a round hole.

Mm-hmm. It's going to get sloppy. Yeah. And the flip side of organic is, on average, across all crops, organic produces 16% less food. Now, if you look at corn, organic will produce about 60% less food. you're going to get 80 bushels an acre instead of 240. Yeah.

And I'm okay with both of those existing. Totally agree. And I hope that people can educate themselves and make the decision that works for them absent judgment of the other side of the coin. Because for every – and I love Boulder, but for the people that we were alluding to earlier who perhaps have their nose turned up at those who maybe aren't in their economic status that can afford to go farm to table or. whatever certification that they want, that's great. But let's have a little bit of empathy for the person who's literally scraping by, buying whatever they can, like you said, to get food and calories into their kids. Like, those need to be able to exist and not have a moral judgment placed against them.

And we need to let the system work, right? It's all capitalism. If you want to buy organic. Yeah, go to town. Go nuts. Understand that the price per pound is going to be higher because it's harder to produce and it yields less. and don't hate on the farmer because he has to charge that, but also don't hit on the farmer that doesn't produce that

because they've got to make their system operate efficiently as well. Yeah. Yeah, man, I don't even know what to ask when it comes to to act. To say it's been an illuminating conversation for me would be an understatement. I guess the best thing to ask would be, would you be willing to come back up again? Because I suspect that there will be even more questions that come from this that I don't even know to ask right now.

I'm totally down. It's an easy flight from Denver. or if you want to come to the ranch, we do have the upcoming coyote season. So there's always that. There is always that. Where can people find specific information about what you have going on? So our easy way to find us is Colorado Craftbeef.com. We are on all social channels at Colorado Craft Beef.

Reach out to us directly. The one guy alluded to that works for us is a contract marketing guy. Everything that comes to the company lands on my phone. And like I mentioned, we don't have this crazy level of certifications, but my phone number's on the top line of the website. Yeah. We self-certify. And if you've got any questions, we'll answer whatever we can. If you're bringing your pitchfork, please don't bother.

I mean, if you want to have a conversation, we'll talk about anything. And it's not even about our beef. Hey, we have a great example. We had a guy from California, one of our subscribers, he was getting 80 pounds a month. carnivore diet guy. And he emailed in, canceled the subscription. And I said, hey, man, is everything okay? Like, did we mess something up?

He goes, no, I found a local guy. It's like, great. Yeah. I can't feed all at Denver. I'm not worried about where my next customer is going to come from because I trust our business. If you find somebody local, support that guy. Like you said, vote with your dollar.

Yeah. If you like a certain type of production, great. We don't need to regulate it across the chain because you're going to things up. What guys do in Montana, we can't do in Colorado. What guys do 100 miles from me? I can't do where we are. You know, trust in the system. Vote with your dollar and, you know, be nice. And all I would add to that is maybe spend a little bit of time, a fraction of an hour developing a better understanding of the system that is the foundation of kind of what allows us to do all the stuff that we're able to do. I'm not a genius by any stretch. I've never been accused

of being a genius, but I think that the brain works better when it's fueled. It's certainly, uh, be better to understand or perhaps it could, uh, expand your horizons if you understood and inform your opinions if you understood what it takes to fuel that brain. Yeah. Well, like the grass finish thing. If you're in Florida, you can grass finish. You can't grass finish where I live. You could hear for six months out of the year.

But it's, but what do you do with them the other six? Move them to Florida. Yeah. The carbon footprint of that. truck. I don't know. Do you guys have the electric trucks up here yet? Well, nobody has. No. It was a rhetorical. But no. Yeah, man, it's, it's been a pleasure. I really appreciate you taking the time. Yeah, it's great to meet you. I'm glad that you reached out and let's definitely do it again because I guarantee you I'll develop more questions now that we've had this conversation.

Have you come back on, give an update on how things are going? And then we'll do some more jihitsu. Yeah. We didn't get a chance to roll and I'm okay with that. It would have been fine. I got to, I got to sit on you. That's my game. I'm not going to let that happen. Okay. Well, thanks a lot, man. I appreciate it. Yeah, my pleasure.

Thank you. That was awesome, man. I hope so. It felt like we were bouncing all over the place. Because people just keep listening and they're like, what the fuck are they talking? Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Thanks for taking the time to tune in, whether you're listening on an audio-only platform or you're watching on YouTube. I appreciate that you take the time every week to tune in.

people ask me a lot what can they do to help me spread the word and the answer is actually embedded in the question the biggest thing you guys can do to help me if you enjoy the podcast and you think it would be helpful to others is subscribe and share it with other people and if you have the time go on to apple podcasts and leave me a rating and a review if you think the podcast sucks tell me it sucks and leave a zero star review or the lowest stars possible if you have a Question, comment or suggestion. You can go to clearedhotpodcast.com. And there is a contact me button right there, which will land in my inbox.

And the last thing, if people are interested in helping out, what you can do is fly the old flag. And by that I don't mean an actual flag because I don't have any of those. I'm talking about t-shirts or sweatshirts or hats, whatever it may be. Again, clearedhotpodcast.com, click on the shop tab. And hopefully something in there looks like. it would be an item you would like to wear around town. And then you can tell people what it is when they ask you. But that is it.

The biggest thing I can say is, thank you. I truly appreciate it. Until next time. See you.