Latest / Conservation Stories / Dryside Dispatch • September 4th • Space4Ag with Tillery Sims

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Dryside Dispatch • September 4th • Space4Ag with Tillery Sims · Conservation Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to the Dry side Dispatch, brought to you by HSI Water. And we've got a little bit different show this morning as our guest this morning was spent the week last week with the NASA on the the Space for Ag NASA tour. And so our guest this morning is Tillery Sims, the creator of the podcast.
• 0:20
  Speaker B: The creator of the podcast.
• 0:21
  Speaker A: The reason we're all here.
• 0:23
  Speaker C: That's right.
• 0:24
  Speaker A: But Tillery with the. The space frag tours came in. It's all the, you know, pretty high up people up in NASA that came in and they haven't looked at, at agriculture out here on the high plains. They also, I know they were in Oklahoma and various other places as well.
• 0:42
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 0:42
  Speaker A: But you know, they were basically, they come out here to look at stuff in real life, but they are also touting some of the new stuff, new technology that they've got, which if you're in agriculture, interested in agriculture, interested in weather, interested in, you know, existing period, they've got stuff for you.
• 1:00
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 1:00
  Speaker A: And yes. So start us off on this thing. Let's go down the road and see what they.
• 1:06
  Speaker C: Okay, so NASA, NASA Acres is the ag, a strategic ag collaboration with farmers. And so NASA launched a satellite many years ago, recognized that they were catching all this plant data, and they said this is surely good for agriculture. So they created a project called Harvest, NASA Harvest. And it was a global look at agriculture. And it was so successful, they said, okay, now let's, let's do the same thing, but let's do a really deep dive and see what we can provide for US Agriculture. So the. They did a grant. This was a grant program. And the person that won the grant was the co director of Harvest. So she and her crew are out of the University of Maryland. So that's why there were a lot of people there from the University of Maryland. So that group are the NASA Acres group.
• 2:07
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 2:08
  Speaker C: So Karen St. Germain is the director of the Division of Earth Science. So she has a $21 billion budget. And what she does, everything that looks down on the Earth, that looks down on the Earth, it's under her responsibility. And so she, she came up with this, this idea because she said several years ago, obviously we, what we can do for agriculture is more than we ever anticipated, but I know nothing about it. And so I need to go learn. And so they're really listening Tours is what they're called. And so they've done Ours was this one in Texas was the fourth, I think so. But this was the first time that they'd Ever had one that was very strategically planned. So I knew that they had done these. And so when we went, we first, the first time that we collaborated with them was at Commodity Classic, not this year, but last year. And that's where I met Karen and just said, please, please, please come to Texas. Please come to Texas. We'll, we'll get it all done. We'll make it. It'll be great. You can't imagine how wonderful it'd be. And it's all this cotton and everything. And so she agreed. And then we horse missed because we had the shutdown.
• 3:28
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 3:29
  Speaker C: So we didn't get good. It was going to be in October of last year, which would have been much better time because we actually had cotton. They could have seen ye and it wouldn't have been 105 degrees before the drought yet. Yeah. So but you know, it was, I would say wildly successful anyway, regardless, so they, she brought her a couple other folks with her. The guy that is the head of the Goddard State Space center was there and Tom, he's such a nice guy. I mean all these people are just like so normal. They're just people that you would just see at Walmart.
• 4:10
  Speaker A: You know the Goddard Space. Is that in New Mexico?
• 4:13
  Speaker C: Goddard is in Maryland.
• 4:15
  Speaker A: In Maryland. Okay.
• 4:16
  Speaker B: There is, there's a Haskell Goddard. Haskell in Roswell. I don't know if he was from there or if it's because of White Sands where they launched missiles.
• 4:23
  Speaker C: I don't know. I don't know why.
• 4:24
  Speaker A: That's why I was asking.
• 4:25
  Speaker C: Well, this, when, when Connor Watts and I were up, up there last month. In August. July. In July we got to tour Goddard and we got to see the last. The shuttle that they just launched this last week or a week before was like Sunday after the tour. The Roman. It's called Roman. It has a new name. It's named after really brilliant woman scientist at NASA. First in leadership there.
• 4:52
  Speaker A: It wasn't a shuttle, it was a rocket. Right.
• 4:56
  Speaker C: It's a, it's a satellite because they.
• 4:57
  Speaker A: Okay, it's a satellite.
• 4:58
  Speaker C: Yeah, sorry.
• 4:59
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 4:59
  Speaker C: So anyway, they, I got to see where that was built. So they have this big clean room, three story clean room.
• 5:08
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:08
  Speaker C: And then it has like this. I don't even know it. It looks like a massive silver cauldron with a lid. I don't know how else to describe it. But they put it down in there. It's the size of a bus. So they put these satellites down in that thing and they screw it closed and then they Simulate all of the environment of the space to see how they're going to handle up to everything. So it's really amazing. That was crazy. So we learned a lot during that time. Just about like what the satellites, different satellites do and how many we have. And there's a lot.
• 5:44
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 5:45
  Speaker B: I keep thinking the more we keep launching, like when are they going to start hitting each other?
• 5:50
  Speaker C: So they, they literally have that. I mean, that's, they identify like I think they said, oh, man, I can't remember if it's 59 new like obstacles in space every week. And so they're including.
• 6:08
  Speaker B: That includes satellites or just talking about debris.
• 6:10
  Speaker C: That includes satellites. Mostly satellites.
• 6:12
  Speaker B: Well, it didn't. One SpaceX thing launched like on 100
• 6:16
  Speaker A: a time SpaceX low earth orbit.
• 6:19
  Speaker C: So they all, they're all, they all have their own orbit. So mostly they won't, mostly they won't collide because there's literally someone there that is like getting notifications about collisions. I mean, they're just, they're constantly like Frogger.
• 6:32
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 6:33
  Speaker C: It's crazy. So we got to see all of like everywhere where they're set up for each one ever. It's crazy. There's a lot of, there's a lot of trash up there. I mean, there's a lot of old decommissioned things. And I mean, and it's, it's, I mean, because it's everybody in the world, it's all the countries,
• 6:51
  Speaker B: rockets launching them.
• 6:52
  Speaker C: Yes, exactly. So I mean it's a. But everything is also based off of like calibrated and everything is based off of NASA, so everything except for China.
• 7:05
  Speaker B: They don't want anybody. But they know where they are.
• 7:07
  Speaker C: But, oh, China knows. And, and China knows. I mean, their satellite, I would say that like their AG satellite is, is definitely can surpass ours at this point. And, and if we cut our budget with theirs, which they're wanting to do by over half, then they'll be kicking our asses in a. Pardon me, donkey. I meant that as a donkey. They'll be kicking our rears by.
• 7:32
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 7:33
  Speaker C: You know what I mean? Because the stuff that they can see, you know, just to be able to say we can see soil moisture levels,
• 7:40
  Speaker A: you know, that's the thing about it is that when you look at, you know, like the, over the last couple of weeks, all the crop forecasts are coming out and you're starting to see movement in the grain market. Corn is up and they're expecting it to keep going up. Cotton's from the time that we first talked to Todd Bomb and cotton's up about 20 something.
• 8:02
  Speaker B: Was it 90?
• 8:03
  Speaker A: It was 90 something cents. This earlier this week
• 8:08
  Speaker B: they finally came down and looked west Texas crop and saw that there was basically not. It might be half a million bells instead of 3 million like I've seen.
• 8:16
  Speaker A: I mean. Yeah, it's. I'm not even sure it'll be that high. I talked to a guy this, this week that had gone out and done bowl counts and it, you know how you're supposed to do it?
• 8:27
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 8:27
  Speaker A: 13 foot bowls and it came up to £7.
• 8:30
  Speaker B: Yeah, I figured a bunch of it, I think. Who was it? I was talking to a grower. Like maybe you can't. They can't start adjusting it until like September 30th or something like that. There's some date. They can't start adjusting it.
• 8:44
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 8:44
  Speaker B: Or it has to be so many days after planning. I don't know. There was some reason.
• 8:47
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 8:48
  Speaker B: I went to Midland a couple weeks ago and saw one field being plowed up and that's the first one I've seen. But I expect to see a whole lot more of that.
• 8:54
  Speaker A: But anyway. But I was going on that though, with, with all this, the stuff that, that, that NASA Acres can't. What they can already do with it.
• 9:01
  Speaker C: Right.
• 9:02
  Speaker A: You know, it's, it's interesting that we don't know what every, I mean somebody somewhere in the government has to know, but the fact that that does not trickle down to the US USDA and have an actual solid number of. Hey, you know what? China's crop is X. You know, the water in Brazil is.
• 9:20
  Speaker C: Well, and I'll tell you why. Here's here, here's why China is
• 9:27
  Speaker A: more.
• 9:28
  Speaker C: They, I think that they can gather better data than we can. And it is because it. Everything that they see from remote sensing, they have to confirm that, that they are seeing what they're seeing. So which means that was calibrated really well then. Yeah. So it has to be ground truthed.
• 9:49
  Speaker B: Right.
• 9:49
  Speaker C: Right. Okay. So if you're in China, like you don't go ask for data, you just go get it. You just go get it belongs to the government. Right. So but if they're saying I think that we're seeing protein, this certain protein in corn. Well, in order for them to actually know for sure that they were, they had to work with the corn growers and corn growers had to like say, here's the protein count on this field and this field and this field.
• 10:14
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 10:15
  Speaker C: You know, and so they have to have that. And so until they have that amount of collaboration. We won't ever have that kind of.
• 10:21
  Speaker A: Well, I mean, I think that you could get on a. Depending on how broadly you wanted that data, you could, it could be done. But mind, there's reason China would. China. Well, China knows what our crop is like before they come, before the USDA says anything. You know, they don't. Because, you know, the one thing that China. There's one thing. There's two things that they do. They, you know, do things cheap and they do whatever the heck they want. And so, you know, while we have, you know, we'll be bound by. By treaties and, you know, agreements and
• 10:56
  Speaker B: stuff like that Bill of Rights.
• 10:57
  Speaker A: The bill. Yeah, things like the bill. You know, things like.
• 11:01
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 11:01
  Speaker A: You know, they don't like, they don't like it. It's just that they just throw you in jail. Just ask the Uyghurs. But I mean, you know, when you go into that and you have the ability. When you have the ability to do something which we have the ability to do a lot of things that we don't do.
• 11:17
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 11:18
  Speaker B: Well, on a, on an elementary scale, it would be like, you know, they have all these precipitation, estimated precipitation maps that they put out. And so you, you may see the app and it says, oh, you got one inch of rain and then you go look at your rain gauge and you got a tenth.
• 11:32
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 11:32
  Speaker B: Like that's the kind of calibration on a very rudimentary scale that they're trying to do with saying, like, okay, we're looking at infrared discolored. You know, wave is like this, we think. And so we're gonna. And then they go check it and say, okay, well that correlates to 10 protein, weed or whatever.
• 11:49
  Speaker C: They also correlate like they also track the movement of the core of the earth because it's all. It's shifting.
• 11:56
  Speaker B: Oh yeah.
• 11:57
  Speaker C: And so if they don't. That's how they keep GPS is accurate.
• 12:01
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 12:02
  Speaker C: Is by tracking that movement.
• 12:04
  Speaker B: Yeah. You know, they would forever wouldn't let us get. They wouldn't let us get GPS within like 6 or 8 inches or a foot maybe. I don't remember what it was because they. They in the U. S. Intentionally put, you know, an anti correction or correction device and it would. It scrambled it a little bit. But now they've got it down to.
• 12:24
  Speaker A: I think that obviously US Military using different stuff now.
• 12:28
  Speaker B: Ah.
• 12:29
  Speaker A: I think that their technology passed it far enough that now they're like, okay, you can use this because we're not using that anymore. I Mean, yeah, you know, you see some of the stuff they got, but, I mean, it's.
• 12:40
  Speaker C: Well, there's a lot of different.
• 12:42
  Speaker A: So what, you know, we've talked a little bit and kind of hit a little bit on what they can do. What can NASA already provide to it.
• 12:51
  Speaker C: So what now, what we're looking on. Maybe best to start with, like, what we're looking at doing right now. So the goal was for us to have projects to identify needs with growers here that we could. We could meet. And so what we did was we started out on Sunday night with about 30, 25 or 30 people in the room. And we were supposed to end at like 8, and it was like 10:30 before we left. You know, I mean, like, it was a really good meeting. People really talked about needs and that kind of stuff. And then we did that. We spent then. So that was Sunday. Then we did Monday night, we did Monday. And then Tuesday and Tuesday night we repeated that same conversation because then they had really seen on ground. And that was the thing that. That most of them said was they did not realize how bad it was here.
• 13:48
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. About the forest water situation. Yes.
• 13:52
  Speaker C: Yeah. They're like, no, we had. No, we didn't realize. I mean, we knew. You know, you hear people say it, but you didn't. They didn't realize it until they got here.
• 13:59
  Speaker B: It's kind of like if you, you know, we live in it, and so we see little, tiny incremental changes, you know, but we don't see that because they're tiny incremental changes. But now we know it's dry. But, you know, when somebody that hasn't been here for 20 years and you go back and it's terrible there, you're like, well, it's not that bad.
• 14:18
  Speaker C: Yeah. But, you know, we were standing and we went to see Barry Evans, and he has a grain sorghum field that's just. I mean, it's just crisp. Yeah, it's like. It's crisp. It's like.
• 14:27
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 14:28
  Speaker C: Cooked. Yeah. It's crazy. So what. What came out of that, though, was a conversation about planting dates and how, you know, if you could move the planting date further out, then. So some farmers are planting as late as possible and having some success where they're not dropping the fruit because they're
• 14:52
  Speaker A: missing the highest part of the heat.
• 14:53
  Speaker C: Right? Yes. And so they're looking at a couple of things. So one is, can you. Can you look at. And help me predict how far I could go? Like, what is our. Like, look at our Freeze. What is the potential? Go as far back as possible and on a specific site to help a farmer say okay, my, the chances of me having a freeze are this percent. And do I. Is that low enough for me to go ahead and plant later than I would normally plant? So. And I, which I think is actually a good idea because you're. I mean it's just staying warmer.
• 15:34
  Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I mean weather has just as a whole, in my opinion has just got to get better. Like they can't even. You can't trust anything really. 24 hours out is about maybe 48.
• 15:48
  Speaker C: That's the, that's the other thing. If we cut. So you gotta remember like this year we're seeing all this weird. Like you can't. It's not predictable. How many NOAH stations were closed this year? Well, but they're just not staffed anymore.
• 15:59
  Speaker A: But there's, but there's a, there's a, there is a plethora of meteorologists that are looking at NOAA data that is still being collected. Well, and there are people that, that are, that have, they're well educated that are doing this.
• 16:16
  Speaker B: Well, I think if there's demand the private sector would take. I mean, you know what you talk about. Who knows what the crop is like, you know who else knows the crop is the people, the commodities traders. They probably have room on some satellite that they least. That has whatever camera and they have proprietary data that they get off that big tour that they do up in the Midwest. You know where they go look at all the corn and stuff and give an estimate on.
• 16:39
  Speaker A: I think it's the proactor and that.
• 16:42
  Speaker B: And so that gives them. Then they can go back and look at historical data through multiple crop insurance and say, well, hey, this county, we estimated it was going to be this but we're off by. I guarantee you those the people buying the commodities know more about the crop than the usda.
• 16:58
  Speaker C: I mean every. Yeah, yeah. And there is, there's a conversation ongoing right now on helping NAS with some of that.
• 17:08
  Speaker B: They're bad. You know, I mean farmers are pissed too because it affects the price of corn. Like last year, I mean they was bad.
• 17:14
  Speaker A: I mean like they killed the price of corn last year.
• 17:16
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 17:17
  Speaker A: On faulty data, on fault.
• 17:18
  Speaker B: Yeah. It's just like it's looks like when unemployment numbers come out, you know, like today or the employment number was like a big number. Well, next month it's going to be revised down like when they really know what it was.
• 17:29
  Speaker C: Right. Yeah, yeah. I mean it's a, It's A comp. That is a complicated issue because part of it is, you know, they're getting their numbers from that survey.
• 17:39
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 17:40
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I don't know anybody that survey has anything.
• 17:44
  Speaker B: Part of it last year was they like, changed the acres at the last, like, they revised the acres so they had 100, whatever, 134 bushel of average or whatever. Well, sudden they found like 2 or 3 million more acres.
• 17:57
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 17:58
  Speaker B: Or 90 million more bushels, which is
• 18:00
  Speaker C: very odd when people have to turn in acreage reports.
• 18:04
  Speaker A: Well, a lot of that too is, you know. Yeah. I mean, unless.
• 18:06
  Speaker B: I mean, there's nobody out there that's far. Maybe there is some. But nobody's farming some row. Crop. Commodity. Crop. Commodity without having it insured.
• 18:13
  Speaker A: It does not on a scale big enough to make. Not enough. Not.
• 18:18
  Speaker B: They're. I mean, maybe hay farmers may not do it, but I mean, even they. They probably do it now because you have the. What is it? The drought policies and stuff or rainfall. The policies that you can get piggybacked on.
• 18:29
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 18:29
  Speaker B: The forged. The forest thing.
• 18:31
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 18:32
  Speaker C: Well, I don't know. I know that the satellites that. That the ones that they have prepared for in the future like that, there will be three that'll be launched specifically for agriculture, which would mean that we would collect data every three days. So the budget would cut it to one.
• 18:48
  Speaker A: Like the universe, the whole United States data every three days. Not. So like your place is getting checked every three.
• 18:56
  Speaker C: Every three days.
• 18:57
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 18:57
  Speaker C: Yeah. So I mean, if you're doing every three days, you could start estimating like when you would want to harvest silage.
• 19:04
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 19:05
  Speaker C: Through remote sensing. You can do that right now because it's too, too far apart, too many days apart, you know.
• 19:10
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 19:11
  Speaker C: But. But if, if we, if the budget gets cut, which I. I don't know. I'm not sure that it will happen because it didn't happen last year because it just. There were a lot of people that were like, we just can't do this.
• 19:23
  Speaker B: I don't think they're going. I don't think that nobody's going to cut anything. I think that's going to be a Democrat windfall in the. In the fall and. Or even they're going to win the House or one of them. They're going to win one of them and then they ain't going to be nothing done for two years.
• 19:36
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 19:37
  Speaker B: Which honestly is probably the best thing.
• 19:39
  Speaker C: We can all cross our fingers and hope they get nothing done.
• 19:42
  Speaker A: All I can say is that, well, I hope they do nothing for more than two years. I mean, if they didn't. But I mean, it's frustrating because you've got, you know, you've got projects like this that you can see a benefit to. I mean, okay, they've got. This is the thing that has always just amazed me from the time, the first time you told me about it, and it's probably been a couple months that they can from space tell you what your soil moisture content is.
• 20:09
  Speaker C: Right.
• 20:09
  Speaker A: And tell you what your planting moisture looks like.
• 20:12
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 20:13
  Speaker A: Everywhere.
• 20:13
  Speaker C: Well, and if you think about like, even. Well, now you've got better. Like those in drip soil probes are better. But most soil probes for drip, they're not going to catch that top four inches or so.
• 20:24
  Speaker A: Well, I think.
• 20:25
  Speaker C: And so if you get. You combine that with remote sensing, you
• 20:28
  Speaker A: know, I've played with. We've got. I don't. I don't know how many different types of soil moisture probes me and Andy have dealt, have dealt with, looked into, experimented with, looked at the data from. And I mean, you know, out here. So moisture probe is just basically tells you, hey, don't turn your water off, you know. Yeah, let's drop $10,000 for set to have a piece of data that tells us, an instrument that tells us, hey, it's hot, dry, don't water, don't stop watering, or, hey, look, you got three inches of rain. We don't, you know, so it's. Those information for us is less critical. I mean, from, from where we're standing on. Because irrigation decisions are based upon. Hey, the sun's up. It's.
• 21:08
  Speaker B: Well, I could see, I could see where it could work on like, let's say somebody does have fairly adequate drip irrigation on coffee.
• 21:15
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
• 21:15
  Speaker B: And they're doing, you know, a set. Maybe it takes them two days to get across it or mo. You know, and then. Okay, well then maybe as it gets hotter, it needs to be like, everybody always starts their pivots out on like 10%. Right. It takes a week to make a circle, and then it starts burning up ahead of the water. You're like, okay, I'm gonna turn it up to 12 and a half. And then, and then you look at it and you're like 30%. We're trying to make a circle every day, and you're not ever getting ahead. But maybe there's some way they could do the interval of the water. Well, but as it gets into drought
• 21:45
  Speaker A: situation, what I was getting, getting to that was there are places that it does matter, you know, that those that those moisture probes work. You know, they were designed for something.
• 21:54
  Speaker C: Well, and the ones that indrip has, they have a. A horizontal tape that the plants grow into. So they're not just taking up moisture, they're taking up a lot more damage.
• 22:05
  Speaker B: I want to move somewhere where they have so much water, they have to put tile down to get rid of it.
• 22:09
  Speaker C: Can you imagine? Right.
• 22:09
  Speaker B: That's what. That's what I wanted. That's where I want.
• 22:11
  Speaker C: I read somewhere the other day that infrastructure is like 100 years old.
• 22:17
  Speaker A: That's not. I'm telling you right now.
• 22:18
  Speaker B: Well, there's stuff that's not. I mean, all that land evidently was a swamp.
• 22:23
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 22:23
  Speaker B: That they're doing that tile. I mean, like, they totally changed. But that's where people first settled, I guess, after the colonies was up in that area.
• 22:32
  Speaker A: Well, you know, Iowa, there's a. There's a big. There's a big conundrum in our. In Iowa in that the nitrates in their water are astronomically high. I mean, it's. You know, they have. They have the highest cancer rates in the country. Um, but they also have among the highest rates of alcohol consumption, among the highest rates of smoking.
• 22:54
  Speaker B: Wisconsin, I think it beats everybody on alcohol. I think I've been doing a lot of deep dives on, like, where the wine market's going and stuff.
• 23:01
  Speaker C: Interesting.
• 23:01
  Speaker B: Wisconsin. I don't know how they get any work done up there.
• 23:07
  Speaker A: I don't know.
• 23:08
  Speaker C: Because it's.
• 23:08
  Speaker A: It's pretty up there. I've been up there. It is pretty. But one of the things. And. But the other thing that they're. They've got the highest. They got not highest nitrate levels in their water. And they're saying, you know, and they're. Obviously a lot of that is coming from. That is big corn country and they're tiling stuff and so that, you know, you get a shot of Anhydrous on, and then you get six inches of rain and it goes right through that soil profile right to their tile and right. It dumped right into.
• 23:33
  Speaker B: Yeah, they'll dump them in the creeks, right?
• 23:35
  Speaker A: Yeah, they just dump it right into the tributary.
• 23:37
  Speaker C: That's why. I mean, there's a whole dead zone down at the coast from all of that. I mean, it's a thing. But I mean, Kansas is the same way. Kansas has a. I can't remember how many million acres area that is. Their water, groundwater is contaminated by nitrogen. They had to go in and like. But I mean, they're having to haul in water. But like. Because I can't remember. They found out because of. I can't remember what type of cancer it was, but so much of it in this.
• 24:05
  Speaker A: Kansas is such an amazing state. I don't know.
• 24:07
  Speaker C: I mean, Kansas. I do.
• 24:09
  Speaker A: I do, too, because it is. It is.
• 24:11
  Speaker B: I've only been in Kansas City. I'm not a fan.
• 24:13
  Speaker A: It is like a. It is like. Well, yeah. Well, listen, if you've got a city that's more than 10,000 people, I'm more than likely not that big of a fan, but it's like a bipolar state. It is. I mean, because it's like. It's like Texas is bipolar, too. You know, you got the dry side of Texas, where we are over here, and then you got over there where it, you know, rains. And people, like. People live by the. By the droves. But in Kansas, it's. It seems like it's so compressed because you can get across it, you know, I mean, it doesn't take. You know, I can't drive all day and still be in the same state.
• 24:45
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 24:45
  Speaker A: And so you go. You hit western Kansas. And it's really odd because it's like every time I've been. Every time I've been there, which, granted, I have not spent a bunch of time in western Kansas, but it's always seems like it's dry, but their grass will be waist deep. You know, I was. I was there last October, and obviously nothing was growing and they'd harvest this stuff. And I was asking a farmer, I said, well, how was it? He said, well, it's pretty dry this year. We didn't really, you know, get the rains we normally got. And I'm, like, looking at this at the CRP field across from it, and it's literally waist deep, at least in grass and just solid. And I'm not going. How much rain do y' all usually get? Well, you know, there's a beast, and it's gorgeous.
• 25:23
  Speaker B: There's a line of latitude that.
• 25:26
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 25:26
  Speaker B: You can see it on a map, that. Of where it rains and where it. It starts. The demarcation where it doesn't rain as much. And it's like, it's getting really close to the Mississippi River. Like, it keeps moving east. You can see the. The. You know, over the last 30 years,
• 25:42
  Speaker C: that's why the tornado alleys moved.
• 25:44
  Speaker B: It's moved. Yeah. It's moved east and north. Yeah. I mean, like, way up into past Missouri, up into Iowa. I see these guys that, you know, are like, this is the first hell I ever got, you know, where you at? I'm in southern Indiana or whatever. And it held my. I'm like, we didn't even get rain to even have hail anymore. Hardly. I mean, but when it comes here, you know, it's like the size of the hell here is getting bigger too. Like when it hills it, it's bigger than it used to be too.
• 26:10
  Speaker C: Well, and I know when I was in Poland, we were in a city that had flooded like the night before and it held the first time in 100 years there was literally no one there who had ever seen hell before. Now think about how freaky that would be.
• 26:23
  Speaker B: Like, it'd be like snow in Miami or something.
• 26:26
  Speaker C: Yes. It's just like what? No one had ever even seen it in anyone's lifetime. Had anyone ever seen it. Yeah, you know, I mean that, that's, that's pretty nerve wracking.
• 26:36
  Speaker A: Circle back around the NASA a little bit.
• 26:38
  Speaker C: So. Yeah. So back to the. So the planning dates. They did this. They did a project with NASA corn growers in Kansas did. And they got the, they got the planning dates moved.
• 26:51
  Speaker A: That would, that would be big. That, that would be, that would be a, that would be a, that would be a move that like 99% of the population would not even kind of understand but could potentially be really big.
• 27:03
  Speaker C: Oh, I think it'd be super helpful. But I, that's that and you know, because they, they're like, we know exactly how to do it and what needs to be done because they're the ones that did it before. So. Which is Ignacio Campidi, who's the one that's at Purdue and he's the one that really kind of this, he and Ray Flickner in Kansas kind of created this brainchild of the idea of the farmer collaboration with the. On farm research with a researcher that's overseen by NASA. So it's kind of their idea. I've born out of their friendship, you know. So he, he led that effort in Kansas, will lead the effort here as well. And so if anybody wants to participate by that, we'll just need, we need some information from them. We need, you know, yields and dates and that kind of stuff. Planning dates, harvest dates, yields.
• 27:59
  Speaker A: Yeah, most of that stuff is, I
• 28:01
  Speaker B: mean they have, it exists, it's in the FSA database. Because you have to tell them like what.
• 28:07
  Speaker C: Right.
• 28:07
  Speaker B: What the plant date was.
• 28:09
  Speaker C: And I mean for us, like, I think that we could even just say, you know, call and, and have the FSA office, you know, put it together and we'll come and pick it up.
• 28:18
  Speaker B: I mean like, do it even easier than that. Like if you have a file that has all the data in it, just put it AI and like tell it to do it like parse it. I mean, right. Yes, there's that. I know that's huge. A huge file. But as they get compute going up and stuff like, I mean, I'm, I'm using stuff that probably has four, four or five thousand files that it can gl. It can glean from. And surely they have computers that are better than my five year old Mac.
• 28:47
  Speaker C: No. To do it on usda.
• 28:49
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, usda.
• 28:51
  Speaker C: No, they don't.
• 28:51
  Speaker A: They're ancient. They spent.
• 28:53
  Speaker B: Yeah, I'm talking about NASA.
• 28:55
  Speaker C: Oh, absolutely.
• 28:56
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because that, that, that data is uploaded to somewhere in usda. So there's a file. Yes. Even if they had to do it county by county and load every county in separately in a different Excel spreadsheet or whatever.
• 29:09
  Speaker C: Right.
• 29:09
  Speaker B: Yeah, they could still go through and I don't know.
• 29:12
  Speaker C: I don't know if they. So this is one thing that I thought was really interesting that, that someone said is like, it's been like, as I had to use the word, destructive, but like this whole, the last, you know, two years, there's just been this huge dismantling of, of a lot of what people would call like sacred cows. You know what I mean? No. No president before has ever touched this department or this for this. So everybody's kind of like on this shaky ground. But what it's also done, they said is it's really given them the freedom to start getting out of their silos and collaborating with other agencies. Instead of having to repeat what they're doing, they can go over and say, hey, we don't really want to. We don't have the capacity to do this, but you do.
• 29:56
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 29:56
  Speaker C: And so that's, I think NASA just hasn't been very active with USDA and so, well, NASA we're seeing.
• 30:07
  Speaker B: NASA's also never really had any competition and now they do.
• 30:11
  Speaker C: Well, you know, that's funny because I asked. So the guy that was, he was the head, the administrator of NASA in the first Trump administration and he was on the tour in Kansas and he works for an aerospace. And I said, well, I don't want to say is, do you see them as a competitor? And he was like, absolutely not. They are. Everyone calibrates their tools from NASA. Like we would not have and could not have the industry that we have if we don't have NASA, it is that important, you know, and so which I Thought was really interesting because I've wondered that same thing too. Like are you competing? But I know what I can remember, it was like $26 billion a year is what that old 1970s Landsat satellite brings in in commercial use. So I mean people are building everything from this.
• 31:01
  Speaker B: You know, I think they said the other day, because SpaceX is about to start getting in the phone business. Not making a. Well, they may make a phone. I doubt it. He's on. Elon said he's never gonna make a phone, but just the service part of it. But it's a 600 billion dollar business. Just what we, what you pay for having access to cell towers and stuff like that.
• 31:22
  Speaker C: Exactly.
• 31:23
  Speaker B: They've already floated, you know, they've. Dr. Oz floated about a week ago. You know, we're in $40 trillion worth of debt. 40 trillion.
• 31:31
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 31:32
  Speaker B: So that's why they keep looking at the 10 year and the 30 year note. I mean like it keeps going up, it's bumping up against 5%. Well that's what. But he floated the other day, he's like, you know, if people would just that feel great, would just work one more year than they plan to retire at, it would save us a trillion dollars.
• 31:50
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 31:51
  Speaker B: So he's already, they've already floated. They're gonna raise Social Security.
• 31:55
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 31:56
  Speaker B: The age that you can take Social Security, that, that's the only, that's the only way to say it, but it's the only way. And the, the. Let me finish real quick. The younger generation is going to be all for that.
• 32:07
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 32:07
  Speaker B: They don't realize like we paid into that thing way more than we're ever going to get back out of it. Some people pay all their life and never get anything back because they die early. So it's a, it can be a popular thing that they do because they're gonna do that anyway. But the whole thing, it all goes back to the budget and it all goes back to our debt.
• 32:28
  Speaker C: Yes, it is.
• 32:29
  Speaker B: And that's why they're looking at cutting stuff.
• 32:31
  Speaker C: There's a really great, a conservative economist, I can't remember her name, that did a podcast and they were asking like what is one of the things that we could do? And they were like, if everyone over that made over a certain million dollars a year just didn't take their Social Security.
• 32:52
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 32:53
  Speaker C: Now this was a podcast from a year and a half ago.
• 32:55
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 32:56
  Speaker C: But she said that that would fix our.
• 32:58
  Speaker B: The government should give them back the money they paid in it.
• 33:02
  Speaker C: Right.
• 33:02
  Speaker B: Or just call it.
• 33:03
  Speaker C: She just Says they should just donate it is what she's saying.
• 33:06
  Speaker B: If they just said whatever, yeah, here,
• 33:08
  Speaker C: we're not going to take it. And they were like, they could start in the, it could start in the legislature.
• 33:13
  Speaker B: Well, the other thing that they could do I think they're gonna do is right now, if you make over like a hundred, don't quote me on this, $184,000. You pay Social Security tax up to that, but anything over that, you don't, you don't. So if they made that where it went all the way up to however much money you made, then that would, that would bring in quite a bit of money. Because I mean there, I mean you get, I mean you get two dinks. I mean they're working and making a hundred thousand bucks a year, 150,000 bucks a year, that's $300,000, which I read the other day that really they think a mid, the average middle class income now is somewhere above $200,000 to, you know, when you, when you put it all, it's not in love Texas, but if you.
• 33:54
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 33:55
  Speaker B: Average it across the United States.
• 33:57
  Speaker A: I mean I've got, I've got two dinks in my family and that's, you know, they're just starting out and they're making as much as my. Almost as much as my wife and I think.
• 34:06
  Speaker B: So dinks is double income, no kids.
• 34:08
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 34:09
  Speaker B: That's what a dink is.
• 34:10
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. But it's, it's, you know, it's, it's funny. It's, you know, you look at, there's a, you know, there's a huge hate fest on boomers.
• 34:18
  Speaker B: Yeah. Which is just, that's what I'm saying. It's fair. That's the only thing that they could go to.
• 34:22
  Speaker C: That's a two way street, right.
• 34:24
  Speaker B: No, it is, but the problem is, is that, is it, that's an easy, they're both, it's an easy thing like as, as the boomers die off and that money goes to Gen X, there's. Gen X. Is this, I think the smallest generation that's left. I think, I think, I think there's less. But it may be because it's because of smaller time. Time horizons is why there's less Gen X people than there are. But they're gonna, it's, it's, that's the only way. I mean if you just look at it from.
• 34:54
  Speaker A: But it's, you know, it's funny because you see. Keep seeing headlines like Boomers now control more wealth than any other Generation like. Well, we've had massive inflation which driven the price of everything up. You know, they've also been in the workforce longer than any generation that's still working in the workforce. And so you had more time to raise to have money and to, you know, 30 years ago they might have bought a vacation cottage on, on a lake. They made about a, you know, $75,000 house on LBJ.
• 35:24
  Speaker B: You know, now this now.
• 35:25
  Speaker A: And it's now worth a million dollars. Well, they didn't sock away anything extra. They didn't. They just.
• 35:31
  Speaker B: Well, and their parents go back before that, lived through the depression.
• 35:35
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 35:36
  Speaker B: So they were raised on parents that saw everything they had gone.
• 35:41
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 35:41
  Speaker B: And so there. That still carried over to the boomers and it's a little bit, you know, less from the Gen X because of the stock market.
• 35:48
  Speaker A: I'm starting.
• 35:49
  Speaker C: I don't know how much because we've
• 35:50
  Speaker A: managed to go from NASA and satellites to.
• 35:53
  Speaker B: Well, it started with budget cuts. Right? I mean, that's Right.
• 35:55
  Speaker C: Yeah. I mean that's, there's always a point that we, we, we never go somewhere without being.
• 36:00
  Speaker B: No, I mean that's what start. Yeah, that's what starts. The interesting stuff is when you get off the road.
• 36:04
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 36:04
  Speaker B: You stay on the highway. It's not very interesting. You know, it's true. But you get off in the dirt.
• 36:09
  Speaker A: Speaking of getting.
• 36:10
  Speaker C: This is.
• 36:10
  Speaker A: This is completely random. So I was.
• 36:13
  Speaker B: Quail. No, it's not, not at all about quail.
• 36:16
  Speaker A: It's about Texas country reporter.
• 36:18
  Speaker B: Oh.
• 36:18
  Speaker A: So I was going on the Instagram.
• 36:21
  Speaker B: Yeah, he's up here in the high plains.
• 36:22
  Speaker A: Yeah, he's up here in the high plains. Well, the other day he was at some little diner that is on Route 66 and it's like the middle, the almost the exact middle of wherever you
• 36:32
  Speaker B: saw the traces of Texas guy.
• 36:34
  Speaker A: I think. So anyway, he was there and he said I was just sitting at the counter eating my. Eating lunch and he said I hear this guy talking with a funny accent and I start listening to him and it's a guy from England that was gonna come and it's gonna, was gonna like walk the Route 66 or travel Route 61 something like that. Anyway. And he does in I think Covid hit and so he got canceled. So he's like, well you know what, I'm just gonna do it anyway. And so he got a treadmill in his house and he started walking in on a treadmill in his house and he would research the part of Route 66 he was gonna be on and what was on it. And then he came back over here and he was visiting those things, and he just happened to run into him there. But I thought that was the wildest thing. But that had nothing to do with anything whatsoever.
• 37:20
  Speaker B: That was an unpaved county road that you. Not even dirt road that was tracking
• 37:27
  Speaker C: BLM land right there that the county commissioner hadn't had to take care of in five years.
• 37:32
  Speaker B: Land.
• 37:32
  Speaker A: But. So isn't Napa NASA coming out with an app? Don't.
• 37:35
  Speaker C: Don't they. Yes, so we released an app. That's. That is one thing that came out of the first meeting that we had in. In Commodity Classic is let's get Nap out. And so farmers that are in the fiat that are participating with the farmer innovation team, they have it right now. Basically, they've been tasked to break it. You know, here, take it. Break it.
• 38:01
  Speaker B: Yeah, I'm doing that right now with the deal at work. Like, I did this. Like, don't trust it, but, like, try to break it. Like.
• 38:07
  Speaker C: Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So they're breaking it, and also. They're also saying, here's what we need. So you. You can get it and they'll put your field maps on there and you can get all the information. All the different kinds of information that you want.
• 38:23
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 38:24
  Speaker A: So.
• 38:24
  Speaker C: And they're. They're saying, can you get. Well, what about this? And so the more they're playing around with it, the more things they're going, hey, can we get this? And could we get this? In fact, I was talking to somebody from one of the groundwater districts this week at the groundwater summit, and they were like, I want. I want stuff like that we need on an app. Like, can we do that? Like, yeah, that's the kind of stuff that's.
• 38:46
  Speaker B: You can do anything right now.
• 38:48
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 38:48
  Speaker B: If you have somebody that just knows how to. Which is. It's not that hard.
• 38:53
  Speaker C: It's amazing.
• 38:54
  Speaker B: It really isn't that. It really isn't that.
• 38:56
  Speaker C: You just got to be persistent and, you know, like, to get from AI what you need.
• 39:02
  Speaker B: It's. You just have to know what the information's there. All you have to ask is the right question.
• 39:07
  Speaker C: That's right.
• 39:08
  Speaker A: And the show's resident troglodot even used Chat GPT two weeks ago for the first time ever. What?
• 39:13
  Speaker C: Show
• 39:16
  Speaker A: it out. That's me.
• 39:17
  Speaker C: Oh, well, I don't even know what that word is. It sounds pretty awful, though.
• 39:22
  Speaker B: I don't either.
• 39:23
  Speaker A: It's a guy. Somebody doesn't like technology. Oh, technology.
• 39:27
  Speaker C: And again,
• 39:29
  Speaker A: I'M just not a. I'm not an again or I'm just not a user.
• 39:32
  Speaker C: Well I'll tell you what you be. You'd be if you you struggle man.
• 39:36
  Speaker A: If I do something that has to. That I have to use AI for. I've. I've gone on off ramp that I'm not sure I want to get on to.
• 39:44
  Speaker C: Well yeah, it's pretty nice honestly but
• 39:48
  Speaker A: when is that app supposed.
• 39:50
  Speaker C: When is it so it'll go. They're going to release it knock in lock around Thanksgiving sometime. Okay so it's kind of right now we know the name sitting there. I don't think it has a name.
• 40:00
  Speaker A: Okay, well check back with us around Thanksgiving. We'll as soon as we know a name.
• 40:05
  Speaker C: Well maybe we need to have a naming it contest. I don't know. It's just the NASA.
• 40:09
  Speaker A: Hey listen put a dollar in entry into it and we can see if we can.
• 40:14
  Speaker C: There you go.
• 40:15
  Speaker A: They can get right there. Just everybody in the US has to throw in a dollar and name it.
• 40:19
  Speaker C: You know what I've. I've suggested several times and if there's anybody listening that has any influence at Tech, I think this is a great idea. I have suggested. This is really off the topic so I have suggested that they at every game where they have a theme. So like they have veterans theme.
• 40:40
  Speaker B: There's a cotton game and there's a.
• 40:41
  Speaker C: There's an ag game.
• 40:42
  Speaker B: Ag game. Yeah.
• 40:43
  Speaker C: That they pick a veteran. So Veterans Day you pick a veterans non profit from Tech and then the opponent they. They pick a veterans non profit from their area and then you have a text a dollar campaign during the football game and if everyone text a single dollar it's like $62,000.
• 41:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
• 41:06
  Speaker C: And what would who. It would be the skin off anybody's nose.
• 41:09
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 41:09
  Speaker C: And how many people are. I mean every student can text a single dollar and you know there'll be people that will text more than that. You can compete and think about what good PR that would be for Tech.
• 41:19
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 41:20
  Speaker C: I mean like has anyone ever done this? Probably not. Tech would be the first people to do it. It would be an amazing pr.
• 41:27
  Speaker A: You know it didn't happen back in the olden days because they didn't have the money to tax dollars at that time. You know the olden days back in the, in the 90s in the odds.
• 41:34
  Speaker C: Well they sure do now. I mean that think about just the people that are there watching that game. They come every week. You know what I mean?
• 41:40
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 41:41
  Speaker C: And think about how influential it was when. When Utah came and all the students, like these people just. They gave money to all of our non profits. They spent time.
• 41:51
  Speaker B: Right.
• 41:51
  Speaker C: The food bank. And they did all these different.
• 41:53
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's very different. That's byu, not Utah, you know.
• 41:58
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Brigham Young. Yeah, yeah. But they're from Utah.
• 42:01
  Speaker B: Yes, they are. They are.
• 42:02
  Speaker A: But they're not the only thing. They don't. Yeah.
• 42:04
  Speaker B: They don't like each other. And BYU is the one that gave.
• 42:08
  Speaker C: Yes, but I mean, it made national news.
• 42:10
  Speaker B: Yeah, Well, I think that we did something like. We did something like that and they kind of returned the favor or something. I can't, you know.
• 42:17
  Speaker C: No, there was somebody here that was sick.
• 42:20
  Speaker B: Well, it was the barber.
• 42:21
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think they.
• 42:22
  Speaker B: Right. It was the barber's wife that had something happened. Yes, they do that Barber.
• 42:26
  Speaker A: I think they do. Everywhere they go.
• 42:28
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:29
  Speaker A: Everywhere they go.
• 42:30
  Speaker C: I think they call it love bombing.
• 42:32
  Speaker B: Dusty's been. Dusty's been there.
• 42:34
  Speaker A: I have been there.
• 42:35
  Speaker B: He watched Tech play out there. You got.
• 42:38
  Speaker A: I watched Tech be on the field out there. I don't think I saw them actually play, but they were on the field. Yeah. At the same time, they played, like, not very good, which is about par for the course. I go on a road go. Go to a road game thinking, oh, this will be great, and I'm not going. Okay, it's halftime. We've got our free ice cream. Let's go. Yeah, that's the best thing about it. You get that for their. In their visitor section, they have people come. Have people that come through there. I can't remember when. It is early and relatively early in the game and they give you free ice cream from their creamery. And that ice cream is incredible.
• 43:12
  Speaker C: Wow.
• 43:12
  Speaker A: I mean, it is really ridiculously good. Like, it's. Thank God it comes in a small container because I would not have been able to get out of that place. It was so good.
• 43:23
  Speaker C: Wow. I love ice cream, but that's off the topic, too, so. But if you do have an ice cream, if you're an ice cream company, you want to sponsor our show, Blue Bell.
• 43:34
  Speaker B: I know the guy that runs the Blue Bell here.
• 43:36
  Speaker C: Hey, Blue Bell. We love Blue Bell.
• 43:38
  Speaker A: So the app's coming out around Thanksgiving.
• 43:41
  Speaker C: App's coming out. And then we. We also are going to look at quantifying how much brush we have, like mesquite and salt cedar, to find out how much water we're losing to those invasive species. And we're going to look at wildfire prevention measures through remote Sensing some things like that. And then we have another project that. This one I'm most excited about is it's strategic row crop to grazing land or dry land conversion. So it be paying to farmers income replacement for turning off their wells.
• 44:27
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 44:27
  Speaker C: Leaving infrastructure in place so that if there's drought conditions, you don't have to sell off herds. You know, we can still keep it diversify.
• 44:36
  Speaker A: That's not a NASA. NASA program, though. That's something else.
• 44:39
  Speaker C: NASA is going to. NASA is going to help us with that program because. Because it would be looking at. You'd be looking at. First of all, you want to quantify and you got to verify how much groundwater was used. And so you can do that. So say a farmer turns in his data for X amount of years. Then they actually can then verify that that's how much water was used.
• 44:57
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 44:57
  Speaker C: And so they'll kind of be the verifier, certifier type thing. So we're actually going to go to a meeting in a big textile meeting in October to.
• 45:12
  Speaker A: When you say we, you're referring to Sarah. Correct.
• 45:14
  Speaker C: So. Yes. But we'll be there with like Cotton Trust Protocol. Who was going to partner with us. HSI is going to partner with us. And Sorghum is interested in, you know, being in some type of partnership, which, by the way, Global Sorghum Conference is in Lubbock. Not this week, but the next. It's going to be amazing. And NASA Acres will be there speaking.
• 45:38
  Speaker A: Really?
• 45:39
  Speaker C: Yep. I think it's Ignacio that's speaking.
• 45:41
  Speaker A: So I didn't. I did not realize the Global conference was here.
• 45:46
  Speaker C: It's a big deal.
• 45:47
  Speaker A: Yeah. Especially for an area that's lost almost all of its grain. Sorghum infrastructure.
• 45:52
  Speaker C: Exactly.
• 45:54
  Speaker A: Man. That you can think it on.
• 45:58
  Speaker C: Well, and that's the whole reason to look at something that's strategic. So like if we said NASA, help us identify, like, what. What wells we should keep, which are our strongest wells to keep. And then you say it's a hypothetical farmer somewhere has two wells that are really great and then surrounded by. And when I say wells, I mean like a circle that has four 14 wells and. Right. You know what I mean? So. But they have. So they. You identify whatever. It's like a section or a quarter section. And then they put, you know, the other into the program.
• 46:33
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 46:34
  Speaker C: So then that we want to look and see what's happening at that. At the. At the well that they're using. You know what I mean? We want to keep it. Being able to see, like, is It Is this helping?
• 46:49
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 46:49
  Speaker C: To retain some water there and so that they can continue to grow crop there and have water longer there without. How far can you do that without it damaging your infrastructure? Yeah, because once the 20 man cotton Jen's gone, it's gone.
• 47:06
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 47:06
  Speaker C: You're not going to get back. But I'm like, to me it's like you're either going to hit a brick wall going 100 miles an hour or going 20. And there's a lot less damage if you're going 20.
• 47:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, well. And you know, a lot of the. It's like we had. Good grief. I just. His name was on my tongue. Buster. Gin.
• 47:23
  Speaker C: Oh yeah. Dan.
• 47:24
  Speaker A: Dan Taylor. We had him on a couple weeks ago and he was talking about how, you know, brown baling has changed Jenning, you know, you don't have to have a gin, you know, that's really close to your farm. We're not dragging cotton trailers or even sending module trucks out for modules. You're going out there and loading a semi load of round bales up and taking half the farm in one, you know, in a go.
• 47:46
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 47:46
  Speaker A: And so that's changed a lot of the infrastructure demands that you have to have on it. But it's still, you know, that's still a Infrastructure to me is still the number one limiting factor on what can be grown. What can be grown on diversification 100%.
• 48:04
  Speaker C: Well, and I think that's one of the things that makes this project appealing to funders is that they, let's just say it's, you know, a large company that's name might start with a G and they say, you know, we want to help participate. We want to put X million dollars in or something. Well, what they're getting out of it is what you call a water offset credit. So like a carbon credit.
• 48:25
  Speaker B: Right.
• 48:25
  Speaker C: Because that water is, you know, not going to be used. You know, it's staying there. Yeah, they're turning it off.
• 48:32
  Speaker B: I've noticed. Have y' all noticed a significant shift in the way data centers are like approaching stuff? Did you see, you know, they're. They're fixing to build a new water tower for Turkey all of a sudden help their infrastructure. Like they finally realized that. And you got to give a little bit of credit to the state is saying like, okay, hold on a second, let's. You guys are getting taken advantage of.
• 48:53
  Speaker A: I never got, never understood how I
• 48:55
  Speaker C: think you take advantage. I think you give credit to the people who've been screaming to high heaven about it because they wouldn't have done nothing.
• 49:01
  Speaker B: That is true. But the original article that some chick wrote out of the New York Times about how much water was used was way, way high.
• 49:10
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 49:11
  Speaker B: Way high. And they just went out like a viral thing. So everybody thinks, oh, I use this.
• 49:16
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 49:17
  Speaker B: I promise you, the farms that touches that data center use way more water than that.
• 49:22
  Speaker A: Well, that's what I'm saying.
• 49:23
  Speaker B: And they're going to figure out some other way to cool it.
• 49:25
  Speaker A: I mean, there's. That's what I've seen. I'm saying, well, we don't use as much money, as much water as ag. And I'm like, yeah, but you don't eat. You know, I'm not eating a data center.
• 49:33
  Speaker C: So, you know, that's officially. I mean, I think this is just like, what they. I think that they didn't all have bad intentions, that I think there are. I think the folks that are coming in and legit already, like, have someone that's gonna be in that data center. They're not just speculating. Those are people that have a better reputation. But the problem is, and I've seen this with so many different, like, brands and retailers is they want to do something for their esg. That's the word. You know, their environmental standing with their investors.
• 50:14
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 50:15
  Speaker C: So they. They hire somebody, and bless their hearts, they've graduated from a great school, you know, on the west coast, and they live in a beautiful west coast city, and they have a great idea. And one. One example I've heard is, like, that someone was, like, they hired someone, not even local, to. To build a sculpture that's a. I'm like, I have no idea what it looks like. But apparently people in the town, they put the sculpture on the river as a gift to the town. And, like, the town has a petition to get it removed because everyone hates it.
• 50:51
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 50:52
  Speaker C: You know, and they're like, why? Why? We don't want this. You know what I mean? And they're like. Or somebody said, well, we. We did something. You know, we cleaned up a brownfield site. Well, if you've been living in an area where no one cares about brownfield sites, I mean, who cares?
• 51:08
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 51:08
  Speaker C: Like, I mean, just to be honest, all of Midland and Odessa is like, pretty much a brownfield side. I mean, just go down to permit basin.
• 51:15
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 51:15
  Speaker C: It's like, it's everywhere. You know, it's not something that, like, people are. But people do care if they get a new school. But here's the difference. To me, a new school in 50 years is going to have to be repaired. And it's, it's important to put that investment there. But if you help diversify economy, you know, where you, like now you have a. You totally have a brand new infrastructure for something that you've never had before, then that continues, you know, and you get taxes from that. And it's going to continue to be beneficial. Way after said company that starts with a G leaves.
• 51:49
  Speaker A: Well, I heard, and there's a couple things I wanted to get to. One was during the. The lunch that I went to on Tuesday.
• 52:00
  Speaker B: Monday.
• 52:00
  Speaker A: Was it Monday?
• 52:03
  Speaker C: We're up on Monday.
• 52:03
  Speaker A: Okay, on Monday I went to one on Monday. I had them come up on Tuesday, couldn't make it to that one. So on Monday I was. My phone doesn't ring very often, but it rang that. And so. And so I was. As I was going out, I was hearing him talking about being able to measure the depth of the aquifer with these satellites. Did I dream that in my head?
• 52:27
  Speaker C: I don't think that you can. They can do that.
• 52:28
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 52:28
  Speaker B: That had to be like ground penetrating.
• 52:30
  Speaker A: They were doing. They were doing it. I think they were doing it magnetically, so.
• 52:33
  Speaker C: Magnetically. Well, that's how they tell. Well, maybe so. I know that's how they tell if water. Water.
• 52:39
  Speaker A: So maybe I did. Maybe I did dream it.
• 52:41
  Speaker C: Groundwater. Groundwater use. If that's how they tell. Groundwater. Okay, so there is. If you're ever in dc, you can go and tour NASA headquarters. It's in DC downtown, you know where all the other headquarters stuff are. So they have this like chandelier that's coming down. Like, you know, the entrance is like two stories and it's coming down. This is glass, strips of glass coming down from the ceiling. And it's. It lights up with the name of the satellite. And then all the data that's coming in on all of these little. Looks like strings of light all the way down to the floor. And it is going constantly. One, one will stop. And then two seconds later there's another name. And then all this data is just pouring down like raindrops.
• 53:32
  Speaker B: Sounds like the Matrix. That movie, the Matrix where it's just all the green dots and the computers running.
• 53:38
  Speaker C: It is totally insane. Insane. And like when I. We think about like AI data centers, like how valuable they are to us. I mean, and I. I don't know, I think a lot about this reminds me kind of the Y2K scare, you know, like everybody was terrified when, you know, we went from 99. All the, all the computers are gonna.
• 53:57
  Speaker A: I'M not sure there's this many people.
• 53:59
  Speaker B: It reminds me more of the Cold War, like, where it's a. Like, it's kind of like a.
• 54:04
  Speaker C: It is an arms race. It definitely is.
• 54:06
  Speaker B: Between us and China.
• 54:08
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 54:08
  Speaker B: And I think that's why. That's why the government's behind it, is because they can see.
• 54:13
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 54:13
  Speaker B: That. And there's some things that they don't want in here from other countries that they're trying to figure out. But, you know, their AIs, when they test them out, they put them in what's called a sandbox, which is like a deal that kind of keeps them from getting outside of where they're testing them.
• 54:27
  Speaker C: Right.
• 54:28
  Speaker B: And. And it's pretty scary what those things have tried to do. Like, it's tried to blackmail people because it's found, like, the CEOs texting or something or send the email to some other lady that's not his wife. And. Well, we're going to blackmail you. Don't shut us down.
• 54:43
  Speaker C: Well, you know, don't you think that goes to the fact that it's pulling all this data in? And that's what it's pulling in is like, parts of our world there. That's why, like, anthropic is like. Has somebody hired this literally teaching it ethics?
• 54:58
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 54:59
  Speaker A: You know.
• 55:00
  Speaker B: Well, and who. What ethics do they have to be teaching?
• 55:02
  Speaker C: But it's just basic ethics. You know what I mean? Like what.
• 55:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, but what's.
• 55:05
  Speaker C: In college.
• 55:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's still.
• 55:07
  Speaker C: But it's Socratic.
• 55:08
  Speaker B: It is, it is, but it's. It's still. You worry about who's teaching it.
• 55:11
  Speaker C: Yeah. Right.
• 55:11
  Speaker B: Like, what are you training it to.
• 55:13
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 55:13
  Speaker B: To do.
• 55:14
  Speaker C: To do.
• 55:15
  Speaker A: It's, it's, you know, I don't get. I mean, it's, it's amazing what it can do, and it's terrifying what it can do. And, you know, it's. It's here whether we want it or not. But you're going back to arms race stuff. Really. The biggest arms race between us and China is actually energy. It's.
• 55:31
  Speaker B: They have way more energy than we,
• 55:33
  Speaker A: and they are beating the thunder out of the rest of the world.
• 55:35
  Speaker B: Yeah, we'll. We'll get them, though, because there's so much stuff that's wasted. Forget Venezuela. There's so much stuff that's wasted. Gas that's flared off that could be running. It could be running turbines and stuff. I mean, they just did one of the largest geothermal things in Utah. They just started putting it online. They think geothermal will be as big as solar eventually.
• 55:56
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 55:56
  Speaker A: I mean, but it's. I mean, yeah, I'm not even talking. I mean, like, just discount solar entirely and don't put another solar panel up in China. And it's going to take decades for us to catch them. But they're putting. They bring in. Was it 30 new coal fire plants a year?
• 56:12
  Speaker B: Yeah. They don't have the environmental concern, they just do whatever.
• 56:15
  Speaker A: There's a new coal fire plant opening in China basically every other week.
• 56:19
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 56:19
  Speaker B: That's why it's so important we unlock nuclear here.
• 56:22
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I think so too.
• 56:23
  Speaker A: And I mean the. Well, they're building nuclear plants too. I mean, they've built God only knows how many nuclear plants since the last one we opened was, you know, and nuclear has changed so much now. It's, I mean, it's not even the same thing that you have with Chernobyl.
• 56:35
  Speaker C: Well, and I think, you know, they're also reclaiming a lot of, like, they've just ruined a lot of their land, you know, so made it where it wasn't farmable. But they've gone back and have been working to reclaim all that because. So I think food independence and energy independence is like, it's going to be
• 56:52
  Speaker A: interesting to see what happens with them because their population, their population demographics look bleak in China. I mean, bleak. Like ours don't look great.
• 57:02
  Speaker C: Nobody's.
• 57:02
  Speaker A: But there's. I mean, it. The only place that.
• 57:05
  Speaker C: Well, when I hear people say we're gonna have. We've got all these people to feed. I'm like, that is just. I mean, we're gonna peak like at 2050. Right.
• 57:14
  Speaker A: Something.
• 57:14
  Speaker C: Our population is.
• 57:15
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 57:16
  Speaker C: And then it's like over the cliff.
• 57:18
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 57:19
  Speaker C: Decline. You know, there's.
• 57:21
  Speaker A: There's several people. People that I've, I've. That I follow and I'm not a genius on it, but there's. They think that China's already hit the tipping point. They've already peaked and are collapsing to the point where it can't become. We can't come back. But one of the things I did want to talk about too was I heard and I did not have time to dig into the details of this because I heard about it about, you know, an hour before I got here. Apparently there has been an executive order where the USDA that feed. The part of the USDA that feeds like prisons and schools and stuff like that. There are. Have been. Has been an executive order to locate to try to buy beef as local as you can to an area to where your. Your area is, and it comes and it goes back into watching to deal with systems.
• 58:10
  Speaker C: Well, that would be great. I mean, they should be doing that. They grow a bunch of their stuff, though. It's got to be contractors that heard of a lot.
• 58:18
  Speaker B: Some, I don't know, it's HEB or United, but they're doing a deal. There's about. With local beef producers, but I think there's. They said you could get 80 or 85% lean, I want to say, for $4 a pound, or 4.99. What. What is it right now? If it, if you get. I think it's like 8, 7 or 8, but I wonder if that's. That's cheap stuff. But it says. It says they're connecting with local people. But then the US Just import a whole bunch of beef and it has
• 58:48
  Speaker A: £3 million of ground beef.
• 58:49
  Speaker B: I think that's way more than that, right?
• 58:51
  Speaker C: Oh, I think it was a lot.
• 58:53
  Speaker B: I thought it was like 25 million.
• 58:55
  Speaker A: It was. It was a three. It was either three or 30.
• 58:57
  Speaker C: Well, it's 3%, I think. I think, is what it was. I mean, it's not like a huge.
• 59:02
  Speaker B: But. But Trump was wanting them to sell it for $5 a paint. I mean, that's like. I mean. I mean, I don't know what they're paying for it.
• 59:10
  Speaker A: What I, I have learned is that they. Most of the ground beef that we consume is not US Ground beef. Most of the beef that's grown in the US Is grown for the steaks and roasts and stuff like that. And there's very little waste that they use to put into the ground beef. And most of the ground beef is cattle that come from south and Central America and Australia. It comes as a huge chunk. A surprisingly large amount comes from Australia because their beef is typically not suitable for. What would be for you at the. For the US State market. Yeah. Because they don't raise a whole. They don't raise a whole lot of USDA Prime.
• 59:48
  Speaker B: Right.
• 59:48
  Speaker A: You know, in the deserts of Austria, Western Australia.
• 59:51
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 59:51
  Speaker A: You know, and so.
• 59:53
  Speaker C: Well, to me, that's where we have a huge. That's a huge opportunity. I mean, that is a market demand that we're not anywhere near meeting.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker A: No. Yeah.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker C: You know, and so.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker A: And there has been some easing of restrictions on being able to get for a grower, a cattleman to actually be able to sell.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker C: But, you know, the other thing is, I think that we've done a. Probably a disservice to ourselves in trying to explain subsidies to people that it's actually like subsidizing your grocery cost.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker C: Because now it feels like we all think we have the, like we have a constitutional right to cheap groceries.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker A: Yeah. And that's what, I mean, that's what it was designed for. I mean, that's what I was told in multiple different economic. Multiple economics, both ag economics and.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker C: Well, it was designed because we had a ton of. We had too much, we were growing too much. And they had to find a way to do something with it and keep farmers in business. And so they bought it and started giving it away. And they still do. I mean, if you go to the food bank, a lot of the stuff that you load up in those boxes in the food banks are grown, you know, on different farms, beans and rice. And it tells you where they're from.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker A: I don't imagine there's. There's not a whole lot of rice production that I would. Well, there is probably. Well, I know there's a lot of rice production. I just don't know how much of it goes in into that.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker C: Well, every time I've been there, I'm, I'm. I've packed a bag of rice. Now. I haven't worked since COVID but I used to work every. Yeah, twice a week or something packing
• 1:01:27
  Speaker A: beans and rice a week more than me.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker C: That's a great place to go.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker B: So Saint Benedict's. Wait, I'm gonna plug Saint Benedict's because we do that. I'm on the board there and they're, they. We feed. We started feeding like 200 people and now it's gone to like 340 hot meals a day.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker C: A day? I didn't know it was daily.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker B: Yes, daily. Every day of the week. Yeah. Hot meals every day of the week. They have volunteers that do it. It's totally non profit. I mean, it's.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker C: Yeah, it's.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker B: But it's been. It's. It's a really good. It's a ministry. I mean, honestly. But yeah, there's. It's amazing. Like you can tell the numbers. Like when everybody's EBT card gets like filled, we're not as busy. But then like towards the end of the month when the EBT stuff starts running out, we get busy. We might do 400 or something in a day. But yeah, the local people really stepped up and supported that place. So I'll plug.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker A: Say where is is.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker B: It's on Q. North of Park Tower, south of Park Towers apartment though. It used to be really cool. They're real. It's on cue By Orlando. Right across from Orlando. St. Benedict's is right south of it.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker C: Okay.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker B: So I mean we, there's a bus stop right by it.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker C: So we get, you know, people come from all over.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker B: Yeah. I mean there's, you know, there may be a grandmother that has like eight kids that she's taken care of from her for that don't take care of them and.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker C: Right.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker B: It's a good ministry.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker C: Yeah. It is always shocking. Like I, I, people want to go back and listen to the. I did. I've done a two with the chase head at the food bank now.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker B: We should have, yeah, we should have, we should have our ED on here sometime from Saint Benedict's.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker C: Oh, exactly. Let's do it.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, we should do that.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker C: That's a great idea because I was thinking about having like the United Way director because they're really trying to expand outside of just Lubbock too. But I think it's good for. We just don't realize how many hungry people there are.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker B: Well, but also. Well, I just don't get into that because there's a lot of competition between non profits for money to get to stay, operate and so like some people don't want you to know how many, how much money they have in their bank account when they do canned food drives and like. Yeah, you're like, oh, they're gonna run out. Well, no, they have like millions of dollars in the bank. Like.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker C: Right.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, fine. I mean we're like month to month.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker A: I did some looking around which, you know, because, you know with, you know, I feel like the government does a lot of things that it would be better served more. The, the more local control we get on it, the better I think it's going to be. You have a lot of variability there and it's very confluent and complex. But anyway. But I was looking at, you know, what can be done with NGOs and you start. There's Pro Publica, I think has got a, they have got a website where you can go and you can look at the financials of an NGO.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker C: Well, NGOs have to release that every.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker B: But not. I don't think a non profit has to do.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker B: Yeah, only if they take.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker C: If it's over 50,000 a year, I think then you have to do more than.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker B: I'm pretty sure there's a lot of people that don't know how much money some of these.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker A: That's what I was.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker B: They're not an ngo. They're like.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker A: It was, it was non profits, it was not NGOs. It was. Was nonprofits is what. Yeah, but that NGOs. A lot of. Not all NGOs are non profits, but all nonprofits would be NGO.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker B: It was.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker A: If you take any government money, but it goes. And you can see how much money they brought in, the rate. What brought it up was this.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker C: It's on, it's on the U.S. it
• 1:04:49
  Speaker A: was a non profit hospital in Oregon or Washington state. Something up there. It was. And it served the rural. Rural part of the state. And they fired all of their emergency room staff and replaced them with a physicians group that was on private equity. They contracted it and they're like, well, it's, you know, we're financial headwinds. And the guys said, I pulled up, I went to this thing. So didn't know existed, went, looked at it and they made $104 million. They netted $104 million the year they did this.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker C: Whoa. And so it wasn't a financial move.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker A: No, no. But then you start. But if you can track, you can also think on that thing. You can also see what, you know, how much they pay for director.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker A: You know, and I'm gonna throw a curveball because I'm gonna say pheasant forever, not quail. So. But pheasant forever is like, it's like 96%, I think, of what they receive goes back out in.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker B: That's a really high.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker A: And it's an insanely high number.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker A: And it's one of the reasons that you have a lot of turnover down on their biologists and stuff, because they just can't. But yeah, some of these things, it's like completely inverted and they're like 96% of it stays in the director's pockets and the board's pockets. And that's why I'm not calling any name because I don't know any. I just know that the numbers.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker C: Well, that's what. And one of the things as we've talked as we've been raising money for this grassroots conversion, I mean, this grassland conversion thing, which we call rooted returns, because part of it is then you take the beef or whatever protein they're growing and it's water smart. And so if you can, if you can then market that through local restaurants and grocery stores, especially in Lubbock, to consumers to educate them, because how many people live in Lubbock understand what is going to happen to the economy of Lubbock when we hit the brick wall of no irrigation?
• 1:06:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker A: At any mile an hour.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker C: Yeah. At any moment. That People don't understand, like, it's not, it's not half, but it's quite a bit of. Of the income of Lubbock runs off of.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker A: Well, the, you know, that's. When I was outside, I was listening to the podcast up from up in Iowa and they were talking about, you know, getting this out, you know, farmers, you know, and these ranchers are still spending money out. I mean, everybody does. But the farmer dollar turns over in the economy more than any other sector. Let me rephrase that. As of about 15, 20 years ago, the farmer dollar turned around over more times in the economy, in a local economy, than any other dollar that could, that was spent.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker C: Interesting.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker A: So, like, if a dollar came in to, like I say, you get a subsidy, $100, that farmer. And back in the day, the reason was farmers didn't say that. The thing was, you know, farmers don't save anything. Everybody knows they don't save anything. They're going to spend it. And so it goes. And it goes into, you know, the, to the parts store who pays the employee, goes to the grocery store who pays it, you know, and it just, it just, it turns over a lot of times. And I don't know if that number still holds true. And I don't even know where to get it done. Somebody better than me with Claude would have to figure that out. But, you know, that's one of the things that as you push the local, you know, with pushing in local beef demand, you know, because that's the. And like you're talking about on this grazing deals, the infrastructure required to get low local beef is going to have to change. It's going to have to change because, you know, you just look at.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker C: But that's a whole nother restaurant.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker A: You go and you're like, okay, well, I want to serve ribeye steaks. We don't get X number of ribeye steaks out of a cow. Well, if they go in and you have 50 of them, that may be three cows worth. I don't know what it is, but it may be, let's call it two cows worth of ribeyes. But what do you do then with the brisket? You know, is that, you know, that restaurant that serves state, the steakhouse is not necessarily going to get. Not necessarily going to get a brisket and smoke a brisket too, and have all of a sudden become a barbecue joint overnight. You know, that was one of the things that I had never thought about until I was watching Clarkson Farms and he started that pub and his chef was Telling him, here's your problem, you know, you've got X number of cows. Well, this right here is gonna, you know, this is enough meat for this many meals, which is like, you know, say three months or whatever he said. But it's only enough hamburgers for two. So, you know, so you gotta have that whole process in there. And it's not just one thing that, and that's why you got, you wind up with people like Cisco that, you know, that can, that, you know, you go into a restaurant and have a popper in San Francisco and you can have the same popper in Charleston, South Carolina. Because Cisco so.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker C: Well, and which that says like there's a need for both of those. I mean, it's not like I think to say that we have to replace a long supply chain with a short supply chain is wrong. Yeah, we just need to, we. Our long supply chain is solid.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker C: We just need to invest in our shorts.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. Because you really need them both.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker C: You need both of them and we don't have them.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker A: And it, I mean, it's, to me, it's a natural. And I've heard this. It's not an original thought. I very seldom have original thoughts, but they are, you know, it's a national security issue. Food insecurity, you know, is why you have problems in third world countries most of the time is because they can't get food because poverty and it just follows in through there.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker B: Or if they do get food, it gets withheld by the people that control the country to control the rest of the population.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker A: That's true. Exactly. And you know, so it becomes a, it becomes a deal where, hey, you know, we've got to be able to go in the grocery store and get food or go into a farmer's market and get food. And for the longest time, I mean, this is not a new deal. For the longest time, public policy has been we want to get as efficient so it can be as cheap as possible, which means big. I mean, invariably that's what it means. And which means that you. Consolidation, you might wind up with massive consolidation. I mean, Cisco is, they do their one there. I think they are the largest. There's only three food distribution companies that do the same thing. And it's. I can't remember what the other two are. So I'm, you know, I'm not calling out Cisco, you know, if anybody out there that works for Cisco, I'm not calling you out. I'm just, that's the name I can remember because I've said everybody's seen the truck. But they've gone in and been able to buy up all the local competition, all the regional distributors and move into it. They move in, you know, they can move into an area by four regional distributors and send it there. You've seen the same. We've seen the same thing happen in the three tier alcohol distribution. Yeah, you mean. And you know, you wind up with Southern Glazers and well, which I think
• 1:11:36
  Speaker C: we have laws, you know that should prevent some of those monopolies from happening, you know, because I, I think at one time we understood the damage that they can do. You know.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker A: We do. The problem is that they stop at an oligarchy. Oligarchy. You know, there's four meat packers that control 85% of the US meat market. Four. Well, that's not, that's not technically a monopoly.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker C: Not just the U.S. isn't it global?
• 1:12:00
  Speaker A: I don't know if it's. Well, I just know, I know that at least two of them are owned by global corporations. But. So you got. But it's still four.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker C: Right?
• 1:12:09
  Speaker A: And I know in the US it's like 85%, you know, and they're like, well you know, there's four. So that's not a monopoly. It accomplishes the same deal, you know, so.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker C: So I think that that's like goes back to this feeling that it. Efficiency is the most important thing. Like it has to be efficient and has to make the most money. And you've brought this up before that like corporations are required by law to make the most money they can. That they can.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker A: Thank you. Court case in. I think it was Minnesota back in the 50s, I think.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker C: So it hasn't gone to the Supreme Court.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker A: I don't know that just that was the court that said that said it because a shareholder, the guy that owned the business, wanted to give a bigger chunk of the profits to them to the employees. And the shareholders sued and won and said that he had to. The first step they had to look out for was not his employees. He had to look out. He had a fiduciary duty to the shareholders to make as much money.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker B: On the antithesis of that, you have. Elon's pay package was declared, you know, in Delaware Corporation. They wouldn't, they did. They said no, you can't have that pay package. Even though every shareholder voted and it voted overwhelmingly to give him the pay package. Well then he moved to Texas and that. He got it. He got his pay package. Yeah, but I mean it was, it was a pay package full of Incentives like, hey, if you get us to a trillion dollar company.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker C: Right.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker B: We're gonna. Which in the ultimate scheme of things does make shareholder.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker B: And he said, he said, you know, the largest IPO ever until Anthropic will beat it.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker B: When Anthropic drops theirs, they'll. They'll probably beat it. If I be. They're saying it could be 2 trillion dollar.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker B: Company when it's. When it starts.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker A: But. Yeah. I mean that's. Yeah. And it, I mean, it's, you know, wow. It's. The bigger corporation gets the tougher it is because I mean, even as small as, you know, even as small as looking at a small farm, you know, every decision has got to be viewed through, you know, am I going to get a nickel if I spend this quarter? You know, it's not, it's not a matter of am I going. It's. It's so many decisions in the current marketplace are how can I lose the least amount.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker B: Yeah. That's what I was going to say. If I do this, am I going to lose a nickel or am I going to lose a quarter? I mean, that's the bad thing.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker C: Well, and that's the thing. And I think that like, you know, understanding for. For all of us that, you know, that want to pay for more expensive groceries. But at the same time, I think, I think to me it's worth. And. And also a lot of times these people that are. That are at farmers markets, they can take EBT cards. They can take your.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker C: SNAP benefits and. Which is not.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker B: I just saw that they make $7 made it illegal to use it. I didn't know you could use a EBT card at like Taco. What's it. What's the Taco Bell and KFC and Pizza Hut. You could, you could, you could. You can't. Now I didn't know that you could.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker C: Well, having had one of those before. I've had one of those cards during COVID Yeah. Because Joseph went to. That was not something I could do. The only place that you could get something. So like we used to have single moms that have those.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker C: They could get a frozen pizza from Papa John's, which you could. Absolutely.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker B: I wonder if it's. I wonder if it's do that.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker A: I think it varies by state.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker B: I was gonna say by the state
• 1:15:33
  Speaker A: because I think Florida just changed their law where you could know they couldn't. You couldn't buy vape products and lottery tickets with it.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker C: What.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker A: What I'm like, that was a thing but they just changed the, I mean,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker C: and I don't know, it's hard to know what the actual news is, but I, I think he's right that. So the money goes to the state and then the state decides because like I have a friend now that has three kids, single mom, has, it now has like some kind of pancreas something or another and has not been able to qualify for SNAP benefits. Yeah, she hasn't been able to work for like she was in the hospital and she's just now, I mean, where she might possibly be able to get out and work.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker C: But because she hasn't worked, she doesn't qualify for benefits. That's why she doesn't get benefits now. It's because she hasn't worked. Because you have to have work. There are work requirements for it, right?
• 1:16:31
  Speaker A: Yeah, they're.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker B: Unless you 18 and they're like 18 hours a week.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker C: I think it's so much, so many months out of the, I think quarter or something.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker A: It is, it is, it has to break out to something like 18 hours. And I mean, but there, you know, there's also what makes it tough is, you know, I'm like, like my knee jerk reaction is you should buy, you know, healthy foods. You should buy stuff. You can buy stuff to make a meal for pretty stinking cheap, you know, and you can make that thing stretch. But at the same time though, you do have the single mom with three kids and like, when am I going to cook? I can't, you know, like me when we had the boys at home, I could cook. I could put something into four different containers and in one Sunday afternoon I had it all done. But I, you know, we could have meals planned out going through there. But you know, not everybody has the luxury of being able to go out and buy that. Even go out and buy the stinking Tupperware that it goes into. You know, then when you, you know.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker C: So if you want to know anything about, about food stamps, you can listen to our podcast from Brandon Lips, who was in the first Trump administration. That was his job. He was the.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker B: Okay, so what I was saying is a, is a law was introduced to do that. To take to what?
• 1:17:42
  Speaker C: A federal law.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker B: Where you cannot use SNAP cards.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker C: They couldn't even restaurants, they couldn't even get a rotisserie chicken until like.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker B: So it just says recently. Yeah, it's, it's, it's state level. It's, let's see, it said. I just that here's the people that currently qualify for restaurant meal programs and on SNAP ages, adults age 60 or older, individuals with qualifying disabilities or individuals experience homelessness. That's the three that can qualify for restaurant meal program right now. But it does. It ultimately does go back to the state.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker C: They're elderly. If they're disabled or homeless. Or homeless, then they're saying they might need to eat at a restaurant because they might. Could go get groceries, but they might not have the ability to cook them.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker C: Because they're disabled, they're old or.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker A: Which, I mean. I mean, which makes sense.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker C: Makes some sense.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker A: I mean, you know, let's just go
• 1:18:37
  Speaker C: back also to the fact that it's $7 a day. $7 a day a person. That's the max that you can get.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker C: Well, where are you gonna eat?
• 1:18:47
  Speaker A: I don't know that that's.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker C: You wanna go eat two, three times? I don't know what's gonna be gone.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker A: There was somebody that was on it that got her BMW taken away because she was on Instagram bragging about how she just bought a brand new BMW. And then she was like, I got all this with my food stamp. I mean, there's. There's an amazing amount of wealth. I mean, this person. This person, this person was actually arrested and was actually prosecuted. So it. We know that that was real.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker C: So you should listen to my podcast because this is what I ask Brandon about fraud. And most of it is like organized crime. It's not. It's not the. What do you call her? The welfare queen? It's.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker A: It's organized organized crime.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker C: Organized crime. And a lot of it's international.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker A: Yes. Russia is big in it and the Triads, I believe, are big in it.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker C: I mean, like, why don't we just fix that problem? How can. I mean, we do have like an FBI and all this. Why don't we just fix that problem?
• 1:19:42
  Speaker B: Because it's some random judge from somewhere stops it. I mean, it's just, look, I mean, go way off the deal and go to athletics. Like, LSU wants to have pro quarterbacks play on their team. That has been on the roster this afternoon. Well, they got a local judge to do a temporary restraining order.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker B: Lovell got one for basketball player the other day, which is great because I love him. I'm glad he's back. But I mean, the way that these local judges can, like, do stuff is just beyond me. Well, they can stop stuff nationally.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker A: That's the thing about it, is that the Supreme Court's pushed back on that, but it hasn't each one, you know, the Supreme Court can push back and say, listen, you know, you can't do this. Well, the judge can do that. And it's got to make it to the Supreme Court again before the, you know, the good judge gets slapped down. But I mean, it's, it's wild. I mean, it. There's there for every way that there is someone trying to help someone and get them money in a way that will make their life better. There is four people trying to figure
• 1:20:50
  Speaker B: out how to deal Covid in the PPP program.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker B: I mean, they haven't even scratched the surface to that yet. If you go back and look at all our problems we're having now with inflation stuff, it started with all the COVID money. Yep. I mean, we all know people that got money that didn't need it.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker B: Their businesses actually flourished during that time.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker C: I've wondered that too, about, like, what will the impact, you know, all of the Trump accounts that are coming out now. I've wondered if we would have. If there would be impacts.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker B: No, because it has to be locked up for.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker C: I know, but I'm saying when it all comes out in 18 years, maybe.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker A: But there's. That gives you. The thing about it is you'll have
• 1:21:25
  Speaker C: the end of their career.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker A: Let's say 18. Let's.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker A: Because. Well, let's say 18 years. You'll have 18 years where that'll be factored into the economy. Whereas with COVID you had. Didn't even have 18 months.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker B: Yeah. They just dump so much in a shorter period of time.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker A: And that's the thing about everybody. I mean, it is a commonly held belief by a large number of economists that, you know, government spending drives inflation. That's just the way it. It works because you dump it in there and there's. And it's like free money.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker B: Yes. To many dollars tasting, chasing too few assets. That's the housing market.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker B: I mean, that's why housing got so high, is that people kept the house they were in, went and bought a house in the mountains or whatever. Yeah. And, you know, but now it's starting to, you know, in area. In areas. It's starting to come back a little bit. But I did see lumber. Lumber actually has come way down in
• 1:22:19
  Speaker A: the last six months, which is, which is interesting. I mean, but we have. I mean, there's a lot of lumber that has been grown in the US for the housing market. And then the meals went away.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker A: And they shut down the mills and moved production to Canada or something like. Something like that.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker B: That's off the table right now. But Canada's not giving us nothing, and we're not giving them anything. I never seen such a ridiculous thing.
• 1:22:46
  Speaker C: It is so in my life.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker A: Well, okay, I. I saw the reason that. Okay. I don't know. I don't know what. Nobody knows the exact details. Right. But the speculation amongst the, you know, talking heads in. In Canada, which. Their news is weird up there because, you know, all their news is from the cbc, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, which is like getting your news from the BBC and them telling you or.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker C: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think they're all. That way. They're all bought by somebody.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker A: They're all about. They're all about somebody. But this particular branch happens to be bought by their own government. But anyway, they're saying that the reason he did that, you know, Alberta, is October 19th, I think, is voting to basically leave Canada.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I don't understand. How are they not. So they're under the Crown, right? Like, they're an English.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker A: No.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker B: Well, I thought this. Dude, they're not.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker A: They used to be, but they're in there. But the Crown, I don't think has any control over Canada any longer. Okay.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker B: I thought. I don't know why I thought they did because I thought they just. Like the crown appointed Carney. No. To be the.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker A: I don't know how their politics works because it's a different system and.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker B: But they can. They can they keep states from. Like Alberta from.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker A: Apparently not, because becoming independent will it.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker B: But they have all those. They got all the oil.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker B: And there's.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker C: It's a conservative.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker A: There's only two provinces. And I think there's two provinces in Canada, maybe three that are, you know, because they have equalization payments that each, you know, every. So they know. So some people, some countries, some states or province, they ship the money to Ottawa and Ottawa sends it back.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker B: That's why Robin Hood was out here with, like, the oil districts.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker A: They have equalization payments. And we have an answer.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker B: We do.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker C: Alberta cannot legally leave Canada on its own even if a majority of Albertans vote for independence. The legal framework comes mainly from their supreme court decision in 1998, which was referencing the secession of Quebec and the Federal Clarity Act. The Supreme Court held that a province has no constitutional right to secede unilaterally. However, a sufficiently clear document, democratic vote for independence would create an obligation for the other participants in the confederation to negotiate.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker B: So the whole nation would have to vote in favor of them leaving.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker A: Well, yes, but anyway, what I was going to do is Alberta, Saskatchewan, and I. And I think those the only two
• 1:25:19
  Speaker C: have to amend the constitution.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker A: They are. They are net negative on equals equalization payments.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker B: They give more than.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker A: They give more money than they get. And to the tune of some of them. It's. It's a pretty big dollar amount Canadian dollar. But I mean, it's a dollar amount. Pretty big dollar amount that they get in the other. Other provinces. So. I mean, it's odd, but.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker B: Well, I think cat hair.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker A: It's 128.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker C: 128.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker A: We managed to wrap.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker B: We didn't even do a commercial or nothing.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker C: I know. We didn't even finish talking about NASA, by the way. Went to Oklahoma and Kansas and it was great.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker B: Okay, cool.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker C: But we're also doing the fly lake thing and we're doing. We're doing several things, so it was great. If anybody wants to know any more about it, we're gonna have some really great videos follow.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker B: Do we know who we're gonna have on next week for.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker C: Yes, we have.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker B: Is coming back.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker C: He is coming back, but I don't think it's till the 18th. Okay, so the 11th is Catherine.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker B: I'm gonna be sorry, I forgot her last name. By the way.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker C: She is the one that has been doing the research on soil health and produce water.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker B: Oh, I have to listen to that on the road.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker C: It's gonna be good. Yep. On the 11th. So next week. And I think Todd's coming on the 18th, so.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker A: Okay, then we've got. Well, I'm still efforting the fire guy, but every time, every time I get close to getting him, he gets sent somewhere else to fight another fire.
• 1:26:47
  Speaker C: So that's because we keep having too many fires.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker A: Tell you what, we got a lot of brush to burn, but you could open a whole nother can of worm. We could talk another half an hour on that. But anyway, we won't.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker C: So we'll see y' all next week.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker B: On the dry side, dispatch.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker C: On the dry side, dispatch.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker A: Yes, I water.