Shaun Newman Podcast - #562 - Zack Smith

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

5th generation farmer from Iowa who is a co-creator of Stock Cropping, a new farming system that incorporates both crops and livestock in the field at the same time in a unique arrangement that leverages each off the other. Let me know what you think. Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastE-transfer here: [e-mail] Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Phone [phone] – general sales line, ask for Grahame and be sure to let us know you’re an SNP listener.

This is Danielle Smith. This is Tammy Peterson. This is Alex Kraner. This is Curtis Stone. This is Tom Longo. And you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Friday.

First week of January in the books. I recall a year ago when I first rattled off five going, oh, five, what am I doing here? And yet, that's just doing it become standard practice, hasn't it? Five in a row, the first full week in the books, man, January off to a running start. and before we get to today's episode sponsors, today's episode. Before we get to today's episode, I would we get to today's episode sponsors. That's Silver Gold Bull,

North America's premier precious metals dealer with state-of-the-art distribution centers in Calgary and Las Vegas. They're Alberta built. They are originally from Rocky Mountain House. Yeah, silver gold bull ensures fully insured discrete shipping right to your doorstep and offer a diverse set of services, including buyback, wholesale registered savings, like RRSP and TFSA, as well as storage and refining solutions.

All the information. information is in the show notes. You can email them. They got a specific email address for the SMP. They also got a rep, Mr. Graham. Feel free to give him a call, shoot him an email. He'll answer all your questions. And if you're looking to buy some silver or gold, silvergold.com, it ships right to your doorstep. It's pretty slick. Rec tech power products for the past 20 years. Rec tech power products have been committed to excellence in the power sports industry. They offer a full lineup including Canem, Skidu, Cidu, Spider, Mercury, Evaneroon, Mahinder Rocks, They got a parse department that's open Monday through Saturday, and for further details,

rectech power products.com, or if you're in Lloyd, West Side of Lloyd Minster, stop in and see their showroom. You will not be disappointed. It's distribution out of Wainwright, Alberta, that Shane Stafford and team. He's opening up his spot for the upcoming for the Kidsake event that's going to be January 11th at the Gold Horse Casino, Ken Drysdale, home of the, he did the 89 forensic audit, 89 page Drysdale Report, forensic audit on COVID-19.

He was on the National Citizens Inquiry. He was one of the guys that went across Canada with it. And he's coming to Lloyd Minster to talk about community basically getting involved and solving their problem via elections. And he's going to be the speaker that night. We got a night for, with all the upcoming elections here in 2024, we're going to be shining a light on that and hopefully getting a bunch of us involved in our community in the upcoming election.

So if that sounds like something that you're interested in, make sure you come to the Gold Horse Casino 7 o'clock on Thursday, January 11th. Finally, Tucker Carlson tickets. We got a bunch of different ways for you to get involved. Three different ways, exactly. One, if you're listening to this, text, your name and where you're listening from, you're automatically entered for tickets January 24th at Rogers Place in Eminton. That's a Wednesday.

Two, follow along to substack. You probably saw it yesterday with Chris Sims, and now you're seeing it with Zach Smith today, that they're both going to have substacks. If you follow along to substack, not only can you see the exclusive content only found there, but if you pledge to the podcast, and right now pledging, you can pledge,

which just means if I ever turn on the payment option, that you'll be charged. But right now you pledge, and you're entered in for three more sets. So you can text me right now, you're entered in for a set. Three more sets on just the pledges. So if you pledge, which is, I don't know, in the 50s right now, you got one in 50-some chance of getting a set of tickets.

And actually, it's better than that, three-and-some 50-some chance of getting a set of tickets to Tucker Carlson. The other way is social media. Regardless, we got five sets of two to Tucker Carlson, January 24th at Rogers Place in Emmington. And you find folks can be a part of that. All you got to do is, well, all the different ways I just listed. off. Okay, let's get on to that tale of the tape.

He's a fifth generation farmer located in Northern Iowa and a co-creator of stock cropping. I'm talking about Zach Smith. So buckle up, here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Zach Smith. So, you know, what a way to start out the new year, Zach. First, thanks for hopping on. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it. Um, Vance Crowe's got to be just doing fist pumps here. You know, um, close to back-to-back pattern spotters to start out the year. I did not plan that out, folks, but that's the way the year started. So, of course, I'm kind of giving a story that nobody knows about me and Zach met for the first time in St. Louis in November,

and this was kind of hatched there. He was telling me a bit about his idea. And then, of course, if you listen to Vance Crow, you've probably already heard of Zach. And it kind of stem from there. Now, I'm fast-forwarding this along a little bit. Zach, tell us a little bit about who you are, and we'll start from that. Yeah, sure. So I am a 44-year-old corn and soybean farmer from northern Iowa, so I live right between Minneapolis and Des Moines, right on the Iowa, Minnesota border for folks that are trying to put where I'm at. How far away is that from Minneapolis?

We're about two hours from Minneapolis. The next time we do this, we should have just met in person. I'm sitting right now I'm sitting two hours from you. Are you kidding me? No, I'm sitting in, I'm on the north side of Minneapolis right now. Yeah, no, that's, that probably be a two and a half hour drive for me. I'm just right off of 35, 15 miles is where I'm at. So it's easy for me to hop on and go either way. Interesting.

Well, okay, I just hijacked this side. No, no, that's fine. I'm on, I'm on the end of family, you know, one of the lovely things about a podcast is, you know, over Christmas, we didn't, not that we didn't go anywhere before, but when I was working, you know, you're a former salesman. when I was doing chemical sales in my other life, lots of times I was working on like the day after Christmas or in between Christmas and New Year's

and you kind of get the point. And now podcasting full time, don't get me wrong, I have to work, but I can work from anywhere. So if Mel wants to come see your family in Minnesota, we just pick up and go. And then I sit in the basement like this. I have a different background, obviously,

and away we go. It's not a big deal to me whatsoever, as long as the Internet holds out, right? I do miss the in-person point. portion. And the next time I know I'm coming here, I'll be bugging Zach. And next week, Ross Kennedy is on folks. And he's also in Minneapolis, I think. So we might get a couple of people in person the next time. Maybe I'm slowly building that. I don't know. But yes, that's one of the coolest things about my job now is anywhere I go, I can work.

Well, and that's the nice thing. So I used to be in sales too as part of my background. I worked in ag agricultural retail selling seeds and chemicals and fertility records. recommendations for about 18 years. And I've always, I've never liked the holidays for exactly the reason that you've said is like that end of the year prepaid stuff in my business. Like it just was never a fun time. I could never relax. And so I'm, I'm really happy to have transitioned out of that in the last couple of years.

And like to be able to enjoy Christmas to New Year's quite a bit. So it's been a, it's been a nice, it's been a nice transition. And so I guess to try to continue on with that, the background story. So, yeah, I worked in egg retail. And then the way I got to this podcast or met in advance and then met you was through. In about the time of COVID happening in 2020, a couple of buddies and I had this idea of trying to find an alternative production system for agriculture. So we were both or we were all like infused in the corn, soybean. matrix of producing things and highly specialized and concentrated. And we thought, you know,

was there a way for for something else? And drinking some whiskey and brainstorming ideas and Twitter DMs, we came up with this, this idea called the stock cropper and the system of stock cropping. And after that happened, I had an opportunity to go farm full time, which I'd wanted to my entire life. I'd farm part of time for the last 10 years, but the farming opportunity gave me the chance or gave me enough acres where I could support my family just doing that and then focusing on this kind of alternative cropping system that we call stock cropping. And it's just been a, it's been a dream come true, to be honest with you to kind of open up doors and allow, you know, just to meet cool people like what I'm doing today. This never would have happened if I would have stayed

on my old path, you know, three or four years ago. So I'm a father of two college-age girls. Now I've got a freshman in college, and I've got a senior in high school. I'll both be going to Iowa State University next year and married to my wife, and she works in the financial sector of things. So that's probably enough, and I'll let you do fire away at those things. Well, you've just given me 10 hours worth of material, so we'll try and break it down here into a couple things.

One of the things, I think at the start of a new year, what you just said there is, I think, well, I don't know, was important for me to hear once upon a time. And hearing it again, you know, is always awesome. Me and Jack talked a little bit about it. And that is like, you know, you said in your old life, well, I never would have been sitting here. And I go, in my old life, I certainly wouldn't have been sitting here. And so, you know, taking a chance and jumping in, it's pretty crazy where that path can lead when you find something that you want to do and you take the opportunity to come. go do it. So I think that's, you know, start of a new year. People are already setting goals. I don't think you need to wait to the start of the new year to set goals at all. I think you can

start literally, well, whenever you hear this or wherever you're at, because I didn't wait until the start of a new year to be like, I'm going to start a podcast. That was not what I did. As soon as I had the idea, we went to work on it. So I would assume you're the same way. But I am kind of curious here. You said an opportunity came up to go, you were part time. and then an opportunity to go full time. I always think, oh, man, who got out of the way for Zach? Is it a good thing that happened, a bad thing that happened? What happened that gave you the opportunity?

Yeah, so I had the last five years of being in professional retail, I had my own seed and chemical business, so I had a whole bevy of customers that I worked with. And thankfully, and it wasn't expected. I wasn't cordoned it. I never thought this was going to ever happen. But one day I was out helping this gentleman. And he said, you know, I'm thinking about back out of farming in the next couple of years.

And I'm wondering if you're interested. And I just, my jaw about hit the floor. And it aligned with the, we were about three months into the stock cropper. And we were far enough in and had gotten enough attention. I'm like, this, I know that there's something here. And I need more time to focus on that. And if this opportunity presents itself, it would give me that time to step away from my other businesses. Financially, it made absolutely zero sense to do what I did.

I just, you know, for, I don't know how much your, your audience is involved with agriculture, but I gave up one of like the best gigs you can give up and being a pioneer seed dealer. Like that's kind of the holy grail of businesses or franchises to be a part of. And why? Just because of the brand recognition, it's like, you know, the John Deer of Seed, right? And so, you know, it had a long-tailed history. So you're saying, forgive me, so as a salesman, you're saying you were selling, I don't know, the Cadillac, or maybe it's the minivan to the common person. And everybody wanted what you had.

So as a salesman, it was a very, I don't want to say easy career, but I'm going to say it. It was like you knew you were going to have sales. That's what you mean? That's what I mean, yeah. It was, you know, from a lot of other paths. It was not that, you know, that difficult in. that route and I was really lucky to get into it and it wasn't always easy uh you know I had to diversified business and do I work my my butt off for five or six years and sacrificed a lot of

stuff with family time to get there but it put me in a position to you know to you never know like you take a chance and you go a direction and and then this opportunity happened and then this opportunity yeah but but but what you're talking about there uh I think if I hop in here is like I don't mean easy in that you just open the doors and all of a sudden business came flooding in. Even easy takes a lot of tough work. But you built it to a place where it was becoming like, oh, wow, this is actually working. And I have the number one seed, I'm guessing, that people want. And now I've got this business built and I can almost coast is probably.

You're 100%. You're 100% right. I literally paid off all my debt. and I had the capacity just to run a printing press for the next, you know, however long I wanted to. So why switch? That, when you put it that way, you know, Zach, one of the things, me and you didn't get a whole lot of time to sit and chat, but as a chemical salesman, now, I didn't know my own business, but what I left was it took, I remember telling my wife when I first started at Baker, I was like, listen, next six months,

maybe to do a year, you're not going to see me a whole lot because I'm just going to push as hard as I can go. And then what happened was like I started to see the benefits of how hard I worked at the very beginning. And so it wasn't easy. I mean, like it's still work. He's still got to go out and work. You don't show up.

Nobody's going to buy anything from you. Right. But at the same time, you made a name for yourself. You've built this client list. You've got the customers. And on and on it goes. To walk away from that, for most people, they're staring at you going,

you're an idiot. So why? Why make the change then? Well, for a couple of reasons, you've got to believe in what you do when you get up in the morning. And if you don't, I mean, you don't have to, but I just think life's a lot more enjoyable to have that privilege. And I had the, you know, I just didn't feel like, you know, agriculture, you know, that's my space, right? And I'm really passionate about that space. And I, you know, while I was doing very, very well in it, I didn't believe on the path that it was on, nor did these other buddies that I had that helped foster this idea. And what is it about, and I apologize, I keep hopping in here, but what is it about the path of agriculture that's really bothering them?

Yeah, what bothers or what, you know, what, and it was really evident to me in that business. I mean, the, the business of agriculture is, it's like, oh, it's not unique to. to just ag. I mean, it's everything in the, you know, in the economy right now. But it's a funnel of consolidation, right? And, and we're eliminating participants within that business. In ag, it's been going on for the last, you know, I would say probably 80 years or so. I think American agriculture kind of peaked as far as numbers of participants in like the 40s or 50s, and it's been on a steady decline since then. And, you know, there's fewer and fewer people out here in in these small communities.

The community spirit is not what it used to be. You know, used to be that neighbors helped neighbors all the time. And it was kind of a communal network. And it's the neighbors are competition now. You know, the way that we farm is, is extractive and reductive in my opinion

with a lot of the practices that we use. Our soils well documented, have been eroded and lost over the intensive agricultural practices we've had. And I just kind of, refused to believe that there wasn't some kind of better path to potentially address some of the concerns I had. And instead of just participating and going along and extracting, I could have done that. I could have punched my ticket and just kept, you know, kind of working at the, you know,

working for the machine and done just fine. But I, I didn't, you know, I didn't believe in that path. And so thankfully, I mean, granted, not everyone can do this. A lot of things lined up where I was pretty damn fortunate. And so, and I want to make sure to state that, like, you know, I was at a point in life. There were just a lot of things that timed out right where financially I could bear the risk and the shock of doing this. But, you know, there's a lot of tough choices in life. And, you know, this, this was a tough one. I stood on it for about, you know, almost a year. Talk to my wife about it. And she's like, you know, this, you believe in this stuff. This is what you talk about all the time and I think I think you just got to go in this direction so we jumped off

that cliff pretty cool that your wife uh from what I'm inferring is she supported it you know uh that she was like I mean obviously if you stood on it for a year you you had several conversations I assume um but pretty cool she allowed you to jump or she jumped with you or she led the I don't know but there's a lot of people um you know you talk about the community and and and and how you know that's falling apart, you know, come from a farm or an agricultural slash oil gas sector area, right? That's Alberta, Saskatchewan. That's all it is. It's farmers and it's oil workers. And if you get out of the big cities, everybody's got their small little communities. They're trying to be a part of. And, you know, I'm not that old, but I still remember days of community, this, community, that,

everything was community. And certainly as time has sped up, that's slowly eroding. And part of that erosion is the family unit. And what you just said there is pretty cool to me. One of the things I hope to do is bring on a few different married couples this year, folks, to talk about it because, well, everything's fast, easy. Yeah. Right? You got your phone, you want to get on this, you want to get on that, you want to do this.

Well, the same thing about, you know, marriage is like, well, if it's not working out, just move the other direction and it's okay, you know, and as society. And I'm not saying there isn't a possible scenario where that is a. okay but overall I'm like one of the things I hope to teach my kids is like it's a really important decision getting married and you better be sure on who it is and then once you make that commitment then it takes work no different than going back to your sales career right like you have to put in the work in order to get to the point where you can coast and even if you think you can coast you can't coast that long because eventually you have to put the work back in it never ends and I you know

I think that's really cool I guess is what I'm trying to commit Yeah, it's, I mean, having that support and then, you know, along the way, you know, as far as, you know, her support and being kind of a cheerleader. And, you know, she's very much, my wife is very much into health and food and very, very conscious. We had a, we have a daughter that had a, has kind of an underlying, had an underlying cancer scare and it kind of lingers in the background when she was like eight. And so my wife's been very deliberate with like what we eat as a family and probably more so progressive in that space than what I am in fact. But she's just done a really nice job of taking good care of us and making sure we eat good stuff. And, you know, and it shows we have a healthy family because of it. And that's, you know, that's kind of what I, you know, that's the other part I look at the segues back in what we're talking about like with agriculture.

or when you look at the output of what we're making in food and then you look at the product in people and in in uh in overall human health like there's just a lot of things like when i go out in public uh and you know just make observations about the state of human beings like there's something askew that is changed substantially as far as just we have more disease than ever before we have more obesity than ever before we have all these underlying conditions on and on it goes and industry says oh that's just happenstance. And the rest of us are going, there's something more there. Yeah. And part of the other thing, you know, is this term, you know, of sovereignty. And that's one of the other problems in the businesses,

that farmers are no longer, or I shouldn't say no longer, that's not accurate. Farmers are continually losing their individual control and sovereignty of their businesses to the mega conglomerates. and, you know, it happened first in the chicken industry, then it came to hogs. You know, cattle has their own set of issues with the Packers controlling everything. And I think what's coming next is I think the same thing is going to come to people like me that are crop farmers, especially with the amount of turnover that's going to happen with generational shift over the next 10 to 15 years

when the baby boomers fully exit. And I just, I don't, I don't think that's good. I think the art of being a farmer is being lost because now everyone is just reliant on, well, what is the magic machine and the algorithms say? And we lose our ability to think and observe. And that's the piece I don't ever want to abandon. I love getting a farmer. I love going out and making observations and using my head to try to come up with my own solutions rather than from some. somebody else and that's kind of and that was the same that that same spirit you know what

connected me with these other guys that we started this idea from that's that was really the common bond so you're basically giving the sales pitch I'm putting on I've been getting people reaching out folks I'm still in the states I by the no I'm still in the states here for a couple more days so we will have more details next week about ungovernable but I'm putting on a conference and right now it's loosely tied on government some people hate that title title some people love it. All I just mean is we need to be more self-reliant because when you rely on the system, we're leading towards this world in which scares the crap out of me. And what you're talking about is, you know, just being self-reliant. What's the one thing you love about farmers of definitely

the olden days, but certainly there's a ton of them still. Is there self-reliant? They have to be. I mean, they don't live where government can control everything. They have a part break, or they have a machinery breakdown. They have cattle get out. They have on and on it goes. They solve their problems and the further you get away from solving your problems you realize they can control your entire life because they're the ones solving your problems and we need to um find ways healthy ways to just start to solve our problems again and once you start to solve your problems again holy dinah don't you just feel like you can think for yourself all over again and you start to see oh well we can just do a little ways we can just get a little away from what they're doing because

that isn't where i want to be and that's where they're leading us to oh boy i uh i uh you uh Man, you're speaking my language this morning, Zach. Let's talk about the stock cropping. And because people are like, what is this? You know, we have a bunch of farmers listening from Canada. The audience here is Alberta, Saskatchewan. So you're talking lots of grain farmers, lots of cattle farmers. Break it down this thing.

And let's see if we can't paint a visual form. Yeah, so the one thing I'll say is like, you know, I don't know that what I've come up with. I mean, context is everything. I'll lead with that. And so this system, in my opinion, that I'm going to describe, I think makes a lot of sense in the breadbasket of the United States. But I think that some of the concepts that we've come up with can be transferable to other regions and adapted.

So I'm not going to pretend to understand agriculture up in your neck of the woods because I've never been there. I know some of the things that are grown up there. But as far as how this transfers, we'll just have to see. But I'll get into it to explain it. So, you know, what we were trying to do with coming up with an alternative system was we were trying to find a way to lower our costs and raise the revenue outcome from how we were farming. And how we farm here, we raised corn one year and then soy soybeans the next year. And the system, though, that we were trying to really master was something called strip intercropping, where instead of just having corn on a field one year and then rotate it to beans the next year,

What we wanted to do was figure out how do we put corn and beans together in the field at the same time with a system called strip intercropping. And the reason you do that is because when corn grows next to a short plant in alternating strips that say are like eight rows or 20 feet wide and then 20 foot wide of corn, 20 foot wide beans, and you repeat this pattern. What it does is it allows the taller plant in corn to have more sunlight on the outside edge rows that. sit next to the shorter crop and the beans. And so what happens there is you get a substantial production bump, what I call a biohack for free just by changing the arrangement of the field. And so when we came up with the stock crop... Because more, because the corn, in order to grow taller, bigger plants,

needs sunlight. And when it's one field, the middle of the plants obviously get less sunlight. That's correct? That's correct. And so by changing the arrangement, you can allow those outside. edge plants to have sunlight all the way down to the bottom leaves. And that allows for instead like so relatively speaking, we grow like 230 bushel corn here in Iowa pretty consistently now. It's not uncommon in the outside edge rows without changing anything else from adding a bunch more inputs or

spending a lot of money just by changing the arrangement. We can easily get 400 to 450 bushel corn just by changing the arrangement of the field without any other input. So that's not a tech fee from a big company or license or you know paying so many dollars an acre it's just by using your brain and observation okay i haven't done agricultural for like i haven't done grain farming since i was like eight years old it's a long story behind that we're not going to get into that when you talk about going from 230 to four plus 400 plus like as a salesman would you go oh yeah that's that's just a you know yeah that's just a good year are you like this is freaking amazing it's i don't know you tell me Yeah, it's amazing because I worked in the sales realm of like trying to sell guys on the concept of, hey, spend $15 with me and I'll maybe return you 20 back in a response.

And so like this is there is nothing that I can sell a farmer today, like or in my old space that can give that type of a response. So no input, no input could bring about what you're doing. No, nothing. It's just changing the arrangement and letting plants react to that change in arrangement. And that's what makes it disruptive is that, you know, this is all free stuff. It's all out there. And it, you know, it also, like with this arrangement, it also lessens the need because when you change the arrangement of a corn canopy, you actually, and you have like, you create

these wind tunnels that go through it. And so the canopy dries out earlier in the morning, so you have less disease because you've altered that arrangement. don't need as much LP in the fall to dry the corn because the corn dries down because it has basically these radiator fins through it that the air moves through the entire canopy much easier. And so we, so that's strip intercropping, okay? The downside with that is that the soybeans are inflected upon by being shadowed by the corn next to it.

And so the idea with that first system we were playing with is how do you, how do you get enough corn boost to offset the loss in soybeans? and we were in the system because it was it's a major pain in the ass to have alternating strips of corn and soybeans across the field. So just so I'm painting, I want to make sure I'm getting this right. Your first iteration of what you're trying to do, you literally had corn followed by soy like bumping up together. Yeah. Right? So just no space.

Just think of alternating strips every other 20 feet. But no no space in between just back and forth, back and forth. Okay. Sorry. I'm following along. So, but that was the problem was like, especially in, and I know farmers up in your, I mean, they farm large and charged really big wide equipment. They're going to think about this and they're like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. How am I going to make that work with the equipment I have? And, and that was really,

it was the same thing for us. Like the, we were maybe gaining, you know, $40 or $50 an acre and going through a lot of extra work and hassle and it was slowing, you know, the actual, you know, planting and harvesting of things down, spraying becomes more difficult. And so what we were trying to iterate on how we got the stock cropping was, well, what if we grew something other than soybeans in between that took a loss? What if we could grow corn and grow,

you know, mega yield corn and then have something else in that space that could contribute as much as the corn? And so we were playing around with different ideas, different crops, relay cropping, which is where you plant a winter hardy crop in the fall, come back and plant a warm season crop into that one, at the same time, harvest the

cool season crop, and then harvest the, especially at our latitude. And so we kept kicking around and can come up with a good idea until one night my buddy Lance up, and he's actually probably just a little bit north of you this morning where you're at in central Minnesota. He had this idea while sipping whiskey and said, what if we put animals in between the corn? And animals how the hell would you put animals in between these strips of corn and like what would that even look like and so uh the first idea was just a pen of sheep and like well a pen of sheep is stupid there's not that much lamb that's consumed and who wants to raise sheep you know we're we're hog guys you know we've got you know there's a lot of poultry in iowa too and so we said what if

instead of just a pen of sheep what if this thing became like a literally a three ring animal circus on wheels and you know we're told all the time that we're we know in like a corn soybean rotation, that's not, that's really not a rotation. It's not biologically diverse. What if we introduced a whole shit ton of diversity with plants and animals in these alternating strips with corn? And so the idea was to come up with a mobile grazing barn that would be autonomous that would contain ruminants up front and then hogs and then chickens in the back. would have like three or four different species of livestock, all self-contained by this robotic autonomous device that would move through, instead of having a strip of soybeans next to the strip

of corn, we would plant strips of pasture. And the animals would move through. They would graze the pasture. They would fertilize, enhance the soil. And then the corn is grown next door to that, not to go to an ethanol plant, but rather to be ground up and feed and feed back to the animals the next year. And then the beautiful. thing about the system is at the end of the first year of doing this, you simply take the strips and rotate them so that where the animals went, now you plant the corn. And the corn now you don't have to buy, you know, hardly anything for nutrients because the animals have laid them all there. And you get this kind of perfect closed-looped self-sustaining system that we called, that we came up with the name, you know, right after COVID hit, we called it stock cropping. to the intersection of livestock and plants back on the landscape.

I missed something here, and so you're going to clarify it for me. You went from having the greatest corn crop ever without extra inputs, but you're no longer selling your corn crop, you're turning it back into feed and seed, and then just selling the animals? Did I catch that right? Yeah, because the livestock is really where the value is in the whole system. So how many, man, I don't, I don't.

I don't know where my brain went here. I'm trying to visualize this thing rolling down the field. And we've got to talk about some of the technicalities of that. But how many animals do you have in one of these? Yeah. So we called, so we had to come up with a name for this invention. And so,

you know, it was kind of a, you know, this three ring animal circus. So we called our barn, the cluster cluck 5,000. That was the name that we gave to the initial prototype. And the cluster cluck 5,000 contained,

I think it was four or five goats and sheep each out front in the ruminant pen. And when I, so I should kind of describe the barn as I go through the list of animals. So what I say it's a mobile grazing barn. There's a central barn with a roof and a raised floor for the animals to go in. But out front, the leading edge, there's an open pen that they can go out of the barn and graze on in front. And that's where the ruminants go first and they get, Yeah, you're popping up the imagery right there. They're able to go into the fresh forage and vegetation.

For people watching, they can at least see what you're talking about. Yep. And so the ruminants hit stuff first, and if you're looking on the image there, they go into the right side of the barn as it appears on the screen. On the left side of the barn, that is where the pigs are able to be segregated, and they go out the back side of the barn. They have a pen identical to the one that you see on the front here, out the back. And then trailing behind that, we have a separate structure known as what a lot of people know as chicken tractors.

So it's a large chicken tractor that drags behind. So we have four different species of livestock kind of parading at a relatively slow rate. So the barn moves several times a day, the width of the pen. So the barn that you see on the screen if you're watching moves anywhere between 24 to 32 feet a day. and it's advanced with solar power either by an electric winch that is controlled and guided or we've also developed GPS auto steer for the barns as well. So the barns, we have a phone app, we have the cluster clock app that you can program. The distance you want it to move, the time of day you want it to move,

and it just kind of creeps through the field. Okay. All right. I don't want to jump in because I'm like, I feel like I got a bunch of questions now. And I'm like, and you're probably, I'm ruining the flow of this. So if I'm taking it away and you're like, oh, let's get on to this. Then I'll just wait. No, go.

This is great. In my brain, you have this big field. I don't know how big, like, does it matter how big the field is that you're using this on? No. Does it matter the, you know, like I think back home, we got some, we got hills, we got different things like that. Does it have to be a certain grade? The grade thing, at least as we've developed things now, it helps to have it be relatively flat. We're not meant to go up, you know, well, I think it could be done, but we have to overcome some more engineering, you know, things that could resolve for that.

But, you know. And then does it, does it matter, Zach? sorry, does it matter then the size? Like, are you looking for a certain plot of land or you're like, oh, as big as you want to go? Well, I think, I mean, honestly, and we can get into this, I think this is something that truly could scale across the landscape. You know, so, yeah, it could be on a large field.

I think probably where it makes the most sense, at least initially, will be for plots that other people don't want to farm because they're too small to screw around with. So maybe, you know, corner pieces or things up against, you know, municipalities that are tough for somebody to pull in with a big sprayer and have people be concerned about pesticides, you know, being sprayed next to an urban area. You know, I think especially for some of that lower valued ground that maybe isn't as attractive to big egg, I think that could be some of the places where a system like this has at least the initial opportunity to go. But yeah, truly, I think, I mean, the idea when we came up with this is we thought this was a big idea that it could be truly like, you know, when people throw around the term regenerative agriculture, like this is, you know, from what I've been around, like this is probably, in my opinion, one of the most scalable actual regenerative production systems that's been put forward, you know, that you could actually do this at scale like we do, you know, big agriculture, but do it in a much, much more different way than what we do it today with livestock and crops both.

So. Farmers, like so many other business folk, are about making money. So they will do what, I'm sure you're the same way. They'll do what makes sense, right? They go, well, is it going to make me money? No. Well, then they're like, well, then there's no point. Or is it going to make me money?

Yes, right? It's like, well, then we should really take a look in this. I assume I'm just, most, if you aren't that way in farming specifically, along with a lot of different things, you're not farming for very, long um when when when when you talk about just a chunk of a plot of land take this take this corner piece of whatever but let's say it let's say it's it's it's a flat chunk so you can you can plot your you know your rose and then you have this go along what would a farmer what would you know like in your like what would you look at that and you go oh that'll make me x and this thing is going

to make you x plus what yeah so uh i get asked this question all the time the easiest way for me to just, you know, relay it is to talk in terms of gross and the net of like what's the stat. What's the static known? So like in corn production, you know, this last year, you know, say you grew 200 bush of corn and you were smart enough to sell it ahead for six bucks. You're gross 1,200 bucks an acre. Okay. If you look at, so one of the other things by changing the arrangement again of like having a system like this, now this is not just commodity, you know, feed lot or confinement protein that's being produced. It's being produced in a manner that consumers are desiring and are willing to pay a premium for.

And so when we look at the density of animals that we have in the system on a per acre basis, and we use just average USDA hanging prices for the protein and the value of what we're able to produce off of that acre, we're generating gross revenue somewhere between $12,000 to $15,000 an acre in a single year on the livestock acre. of the system. So, that's... So $1,200 to... 10x. 12, 10x.

Yeah, 10X. Gross. I feel like there's some farmers driving along right now going, what did he just say? Did he just say 10X? Doesn't that seem like it should be then on... Listen, I'm going to, now I'm going to have to have a farmer roundtable or something because I'm going to have farmers texting me like crazy going, well, you got to ask this. You got to ask this.

You got to ask this. and in fairness to all you lovely farmers uh case and point or points taken already because i have i know the phone will be i'll be getting a hammered here but um what's the what's the drawback then like what when you say i can 10x you know a little plot of land that uh you know is making you

maybe a little bit of money and on you know and you got and now i'm saying well actually you could do this and this and this yeah so the the drawback to it is that it's very, very difficult to scale because of all the other things that have happened within agriculture. So the only way that this has value is that as a farmer, you have to be able to deliver this livestock and get it to a consumer specifically that is able to pay you, you know, those price levels. If you're going to look at this system and just base it off of what commodity pricing is, the math doesn't work on it. So that's the key thing. So there's a lot of things that because of what has happened with the consolidation, the fact that there's only

three or four meat companies left and they have all the processing, you know, capacity tied up in these vertically integrated chains. That's why, you know, while we've come up with something really interesting and unique and incredibly productive, it's only worse something if there's an outlet for that to go and then to be able to get it in the hands of consumers. And that's, you know, that's what your farmer is going to be screaming. Like how in the hell do you get those type of prices and get that to market? And they're 100% right. That's the part, you know, I'm not equipped to solve at this point.

But I think you have to have, I think what we've done is important because we've shown that this is possible. And, you know, and it's just been a couple of self-funded farmers for the most part from Iowa that have been screwing around with this concept for the last four or five years really trying to figure out. out how we can reincorporate livestock back in land. But think differently about, again, the arrangement piece is so, so important to get the synergies that create, you know, the ability to 10x, you know, the value of what you can produce on an acre of land 100%. Well, I don't take any of my questions for being worried about, like, I think this idea is super freaking cool.

And I think the ability to think outside the box at a system. that is becoming, as you have pointed out, very consolidated, right? All of us face, no matter where you are in North America, face similar problems. And what you've done is, you know, when you talk about being disruptive, you're very disruptive, especially, you know, like I just, I think there's a, there's probably a ton of people that probably have a chunk of land

they'd probably want to do this on just for their own family, right? For getting away from the BS that is going on in our world. Like I can just hear those people right now. Like, I need to meet this. Well, I mean, if you can pull it off on your own, now you're feeding your own family and let's just extend it a little bit, your community. And all of a sudden, you get a couple of these, you know, and all of a sudden everybody's eating clean food. It's like, ooh, there's something to that idea. Well, that's a perfect segue.

So thanks for, because that's really the pivot that I'm, you know, that I feel that I'm making is that I've had that comment from others. and I've seen, especially after COVID and like the meat shortages and, you know, whatever the hell is going to happen in 2024 here. I mean, it could be a wild year on its own. Like there just seems to be. It's going to be a wild year. There's going to be more uncertainty. And, you know, that was the thing about COVID.

Like when people, you know, like I've never known that because I've always been sovereign with my protein. Like we've butchered all of our own meat for the last like 12 years now. So I don't know what it's like to go to the store and buy that stuff. But when you go and you don't, you start asking questions about, like, well, what happens if something else was to come up? What would I do? Or if it's not just that, it's like, you know, people like my wife that are concerned about what's going in their family's bodies and those impacts. And like, or just teaching, getting back to these things.

I mean, you know, the amount of population that used to be involved in agriculture and their familiarity with it was, you know, multitudes higher than what it is today. and I think people overall have a just a disarning a yearning to get back to real things. And one of the, you know, one of the pivots that, that I'm attempting to make right now from this initial idea is to pivot into making protein sovereign devices for people, you know, cluster clucks specifically for acreages or backyards. So that people, people, you know, because having, having livestock is a pain in the ass. because especially if you haven't had it before, you know, you've got to be there every day to take care and chore the animals. And you've got to have infrastructure in place and need a barn or something like that.

And so those things are all really expensive. But our idea with this concept now, at least in this lane, is how do we build devices that are small portable and keep livestock constantly moving and automatically so that people can, people don't have to be there three times a day? the device can just move itself. And they can be producing really, really healthy, clean protein for their family. And, you know, to me, that's where I, I mean, your pivot, your segue could have been better for where I think this concept is going. It's not that we're abandoning the idea of stockcropping is a big picture thing, but I think for the initial business case on what I'm working on right now, it's focusing

on developing products for protein sovereign yearning people. You know, it's, it's, I think, from a farmer's standpoint, and I don't dare speak for all the farmers out there, but I would just say you've already labeled some of the concerns they're going to have. Well, how do I get this? How do I get that? How do I get that? And I already know, Brian's probably listening to this, one of the members of the book club, and he's going, oh, I got some questions. Because, like, some of this is doable. I mean, it really is. It's just, there's more to it. than just putting this on and, oh, and you're 10x.

And I think that's what you're talking about. But then there's a whole bunch of us that are going, yeah, but, you know, if you think about it, you get one of these in your community, a couple of these in your community, especially as small as the community is. I know more and more people are starting to think about what's in their food at the supermarket. But not as many as we care to admit. Like there's a lot of people that are just going along to get along, and COVID didn't slow them down one iota.

And it's like, well, there's a whole bunch that if you, all of a sudden had a couple of these roaming around, I think there'd be, well, there'd be a huge target market because they're all thinking the same thing, this little cluster, maybe it's getting bigger, you know, and I just look at that and I go, you want, people want to be sovereign. This is a way to be sovereign. Yeah, and I think, you know, what you just talked about, that example of, like, say, you know, maybe it's a neighborhood of acreages and they kind of go together and say, listen, and we're going to do this together. And instead of having a, you know, trying to find a butcher or a processor,

we're just going to become that ourselves. We're going to have, you know, we've got 10 families. We're going to have 10 pigs and we're going to come together in November. And we're going to, you know, do what people used to do all the time is to come together and make meat. It's something I've been doing. I started it back in 2011. It's become a tradition. And it's one of my favorite things to do is to get with people and you spend a couple days together

and you learn a craft. and then, you know, I'm still doing it right now. Like I just finished smoking my hams and talking with the guys I did it with here. And it's just like I think the thing that gets me excited about this idea is giving people a tool like this that can help spawn all of these other axillary things that help people become more informed about food, bringing people together, community, you know, where you don't know who your neighbors are in a lot of neighborhoods. It's like this is an excuse once a year to get together, you know, and just do something communally together that's, you know, feeding your family, which I think is a really powerful thing. Well, as a kid, we used to do a ton of things, right?

We had everything out on the farm and then we got away from that. Once again, long story. But we, mom and dad had chickens. What was that? Two years ago? Yeah, we came together and we were, we, we butchered a whole. you know, I can't remember it was, 30 chickens, something like that. And, well, when you're talking about community, it's like, well, how can you build community?

Well, getting together. Food supply is a big one. And then helping and putting your hands to it and everything else and seeing how the meat gets from, you know, barn to table, essentially is educational. And then working together, you know, that is community. and all those different things, you make a very good point, actually, like of how do you pull people together? Well, it's building things.

It's helping one another out and doing things together, and we don't do enough things together anymore. Yeah, yeah, 100%. And it's, like I said, I started it 12 years ago, and it's... 12 years ago, Zach, what did you... Was it just kind of half a chance, Or are you like very, like, we need to do this intentional?

I had a buddy that was kind of this bohemian free spirit, and he wanted to make a certain type of ham, and then he couldn't get it at his butcher shop. And so he's like, I want to grow a couple pigs, and I had space, and so we did that. And we had no idea what the hell we were doing. We literally had a butcher book, and we were looking at the book,

and this hog carc was hanging in my shed, and we had no supplies. nothing was like sanitary. We just did it. And it was pretty rough the first year and we wrecked some meat. But we continued on. And then when we told people we did this, they thought we were nuts. But they wanted to be a part of it. And so then we brought more people in. And then they brought their resources.

We had a couple medical doctors that joined. So they helped us get our cleanliness standards up to snuff. And then it kind of just snowballed and it became this thing that people wanted just to come and be a part of every November. It was always the weekend before Thanksgiving we would gather. And it was three days of, you know, fellowship and jokes and, you know, eating good food and drinking beer and just having a wonderful time. And like, and now I'm friends with all those people, you know, and we talk about this stuff and we exchange recipes. And like it's just kind of developed this culture. and I think, you know, and especially like, you know, and the really fun thing is when the kids get involved,

when they want to come along for part of the day and see it and giving them exposure, that's one of the things like with my own kids, they've been around this stuff ever since they can remember anything. And, you know, I think that's one of the most powerful things, is when kids can come and learn those traditions along with adults and participate and have jobs to do that are, appropriate for them in the process. And it's, I don't know, it's been,

it's been one of the neatest accidents, I think, that's happened because it all has kind of parlayed into this, uh, you know, into this idea or concept that we're trying to work on right now. So. Yeah,

it's, um, I don't know, that line you said there is great. Yeah, they all thought we were nuts, but they wanted to be a part of it. It's like,

I understand, don't you just, that just, doesn't that just right there. That sums it right up. Yeah. Like, what are you guys doing?

You guys are nuts. Can I come along, though? Yeah. Well, and that was the thing is, like, we didn't know what we're doing. Like, I joke with my buddy that we do it with now. He's a medical doctor, and he built a house with a butchering, like, component to it. So, and I joke with it now, it's like, it's too damn easy doing this with you. You know, you've got everything laid out the way it should be. Like, part of it was the challenge and the newness of figuring out, like, how to go about it. And so that's not as much there now.

But now you move on to other challenges with it, you know, like, you know, different ways to, to do the cuts of meat and, you know, curing. And, like, it kind of, to me, it kind of, it's just an expansion about things like craft beer, you know, how people, you know, really get into that and, and that type of thing. I see the same thing maybe happening with, with meat in the future. And that's the one thing I'd say, too, that we haven't hit on yet is, like, when you raise, there is a difference. And I know that I'll piss, you know, some farmers off by saying this, but there's clearly a difference in meat that's produced where it's been on soil versus in a confinement.

I've, you know, I've been around. I've had confinement animals when we were a kid. You know, when COVID happened, we butchered some of the confinement animals that were going to be euthanized. And one of the really interesting things that when we took, we took like seven or eight of them in that we were going to do for. people. And we put them on our pasture out here outside of my, by my barn. And the first thing those animals did when they actually hit soil, so they've only been on concrete their entire life. And when those animals hit soil for the first time, all they did was eat the ground for an hour straight. They just gnawed at the ground. And it was the weirdest damn thing I'd ever seen. But like,

when I saw that, I'm like, there is definitely something going on here that we don't understand. And the carcasses look different, the taste is different. The fat context of the animal is different. It's just a different overall experience. And I think if people, if all you've ever had is store bought meat from the industrialized system, I don't know. That's one of the funest things like when I went to Vance's last summer and did his podcast. I took my bacon to him and, you know,

Gat served bacon at his house. He's like, this is the best damn bacon I've ever had in my life. And that was his opening question is what makes your bacon so good. And I think a big part of it is the fact that it interacts. It's bacon infused by soil. You need to come up to Canada because I'm like, you know, all I've eaten all my life is animals that have only known soil. I mean, don't get me wrong. Have I had, you know, have I had meat that is what you're talking about with never stepping on so well I'm like

oh guaranteed but like you know um oldest brother my dad well we have a farm and they run steers all summer long and I mean they don't know what the inside of a barn looks like right they're all they do is is graze out in the wilderness you know in the pasture and I'm like what a strange thing to see you should have videoed her so I don't know and there probably is videos on YouTube where I can go see this. But, you know, I hear about the, I hear about exactly what you're talking about. You've seen the videos of the chickens where they never leave the barn and they do things to each other. And then we try and fix that and whatever.

But where I'm from, they're just like free range, everything. Everything's free range. Because it's just, that's what we have up north. We have tons of land. We have tons of space for all these animals to go live. And so, you know, some of the problems the world faces at times, living in rural Alberta, or Saskatchewan. It's like, I don't understand it.

Like, I'm like literally sitting here and I'm watching, you know, animals, not right now, folks, but in the summertime, you know, you're just watching animals roam and that's all we eat. We eat, you know, grass-fed beef. That's what we do. Yeah, so. Very blessed, very blessed to be able to do that. So, so to clear, like, the one thing I haven't talked about is beef production. We've done beef actually in the system.

I don't know that it lends itself as well to what, you know, what, you know, what we're, doing with whether it's a backyard system or a field scale system of this. We're dealing with specifically small ruminants, so sheep and goats, pigs and chickens, all things that can be finished within a four-month period and then be processed at that point. And, you know, when I'm talking specifically about animals never on soil, I'm referring specifically to poultry and pork, which, you know, there's a very, very small number of animals that are produced in the way that you talk about, like, and when you look at the whole market as a whole. But yeah, grass-fed beef is not what I'm obviously referring to because it's,

yeah, that stuff. You're talking, you're talking pigs and chickens. Yeah, pigs and chickens, because, again, we don't have a lot of beef in my part of Iowa. You have to go quite a ways east and then south to really run into that. I mean, we are primarily, we are corn, soybeans, we have pig barns all over the place and then literally six miles down the road from my house there's six million chickens um uh in one site on 240 acres so that's you know that's where uh that's what i know and understand and that's what i'm talking about when i'm talking about animals on soil versus not so that's a six million chickens let's think about that for a second folks oh yeah um i know that goes on but you know when you when you like for me the the the person who never goes by that because

i don't know that world i assume there's just got to be a i don't know a smell uh or or hell a sound i don't know what does six million chickens look like uh yeah smell and flies it's not terrible i mean uh i don't like to be overly critical of things for what they are they aren't uh but yeah it's uh It doesn't, there's some days. It doesn't smell great going by there. You know, the manure gets piled and it stinks and it stinks when they spread it. But that's, that's kind of all manure. You know, the same thing with the, with the hog confinements.

Yeah, they can be pretty ripe when you go buy them. But it's usually only a couple days a year that that happens or when they're spreading, you know, in the fall. But, yeah, it's, I mean, it's an industrialized. It's incredibly, I mean, that's the thing, you know, it's a double-edged short. We've evolved into this system. that produces insanely cheap protein. When you look at the percentage of a consumer's dollar that goes to buying food versus 1950,

I think it was 30 or 40% of the budget went to food back 80, 100 years ago, and now it's like 9 or 10%, I think, from the latest figures I've seen. So we've gotten really, really good at making cheap stuff. But again, it comes back to what is the result of that and what are we potentially missing out by being driven by just making the cheapest pound for something. And this comes back to your earlier observation of when you walk around human beings and see what's going on. Yeah, and I'm not saying that pasture-raised meat is going to solve all that,

but I think it bear, I think it's time like we need to start opening up and asking questions on what's going on and being open to the fact that, you know, we in the agricultural space may have something to do with that. And if we're really interested about, you know, being the stewards of soil and stewards of animals and plants, like we have to be open to the fact that we may need to or be open to the fact that we may need to change for the benefit of everyone else, rather than just staying with the status quo. And the status quo is what, you know, especially in agriculture, it's really, really hard to buck. You know, it's a business with a lot of tradition, a lot of geriatric control, you know, dad and grandpa are in charge.

I'll get my chance when I'm 60 years old. That really keeps a hamper on, in my opinion, a lot of change that needs to happen, but just doesn't because of the structure of who has ownership in this business. So it's an industry that you think has a lot of. potential for innovation essentially. Oh, yeah, 100%. And I think it's a business that I think there's a chance.

If people decide that they want to regain something similar, not necessarily to turn back the clock, 80 years as far as the way things used to be, but try to, you know, focus more back on, you know, some of the core values that we had.

and something better than what today is. Maybe it's a happy medium between that and now. We take today's technology with some different ideas and come up with a better solution for ourselves and for the products and the people that consume them. Well, I mean, if you take your idea of stock cropping and put it even to just a percentage of the agricultural landscape, out there. You would drop the amount of chemicals being spent on, and fertilizer and everything

else, correct? Correct. Yeah. To be perfectly clear, too, I don't think that this is something that scales to 100%, you know, because, but I do think that there is a percentage of the market that would love to have the ability to buy something from an actual regenerative production system like what we've come up with. Now, what percent that is? Is it 3 percent? Is it 10 percent? 20? I'm not sure. But I do think every time we go to a city and talk to people about this idea, that people in the cities just absolutely light up with the creativity and the thought process and the closed loop system that we've kind of created and the fact that barns are solar power and, you know, don't require any other input.

And the animals are, you know, kind of act as our weed control. It's not that we're not, we're going to eliminate all chemicals. I'm not a complete Luddite when it comes to those terms because, you know, those things have been advantageous. But if we can lessen the amount of how we're putting them on, if we can lessen the amount of fertilizers applied in a fashion that poses risk to waterways or loss, which this system directly addresses because when my animals take a shit, I've got a living crop that's taking that right back up again.

It's not going to make it into my tile line and then get to the Mississippi River. Versus in a confinement type system, we wait until the crops are off in the fall and we then go put all of the manure on into a lifeless soil that has no ability to really hold that until six months from now when the crop starts growing again. And so it's just subject to a lot more opportunity for loss. And so again, it comes back to that thing of arrangement of, you know, some of the advantages that when we show folks to stuff, it just kind of the light bulb goes off and it clicks for them.

Well, I appreciate you coming on. There's going to be some farmers asking some questions, I think, you know, when this releases. Because I think it's an interesting thought process. And I'm not sure where it lands with the entire audience, but certainly an interesting idea that, you know, I think there's, I've got to find a way, like, I guess maybe next summer, like this summer we come down to Minnesota for, we always come down to see Mel's parents for roughly a month.

And maybe a guy just needs to hop in the car and come for a drive to come see it. Yeah. Because I think then I could actually, you know, we could come sit and have a conversation, maybe some of that fantastic bacon you're talking about and and and uh and and see this thing in action yeah it is it's hard to it's hard to describe it i've done a lot of podcasting and uh it's until unless you have a video aid or you can actually physically be here and see what we're talking about it is kind of a hard thing and and the other thing i'll say you know the criticism is all fair like this is a

wild ass crazy idea and it's it's a disruptive thought do we have it all figured out is it ready to just go to the masses no absolutely not. But the one thing I'm convinced of is that we've definitely touched a nerve. We've definitely unearthed some some possibilities that are out there. And, you know, I'm going to keep pushing ahead and hoping, you know, and taking chances and reaching out and talking with somebody like you, because maybe there's somebody today in the audience that's going to have an iterative idea to reach out and talk to me. It helps me kind of propel it forward, something I wasn't thinking about I'm interested in progress, not perfection.

And, you know, that's really where, really what I'm, you know, that's really the core of what drives me and kind of pursuing this space. Well, what we're going to do is we're going to ask you one final question, but we're going to head over to Substack, folks. So if you're interested in following along, we're going to head over to Substack. The first one of the new year, actually, good, sir. It's the first one in the new year on Substack. We haven't done on holidays.

folks I decided I was taking a break from it. That way I could just focus on being with family and not having to worry about 12 different things. But it is a new year, which means we are going to head over to Substack. So if Zach will hold on here for a second, we're going to slide over to Substack, and we're going to come at you with a final question there. Okay, we'll see you guys over on Substack.