Latest / Conservation Stories / The Dry Side Dispatch • August 21th • Todd Baughman

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The Dry Side Dispatch • August 21th • Todd Baughman · Conservation Stories

• 0:01
  Speaker A: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome back to the dry side. Dispatch brought to you by HSI Water. We're back here again today and Tillery will be here. She is just running late. As the boss, that is her prerogative. She can do that kind of thing. She can do that now. Andy doesn't have an excuse. He's off where it's nice and cool and cold and enjoying things. But we're here today with Todd Baumann from the Texas AgriLife extension again. And thank you for coming back, Todd. I really appreciate it. I know that everything to do with agriculture is tense and annoying right now,
• 0:34
  Speaker B: to say the least. It's not a lot of fun.
• 0:37
  Speaker A: We were just talking before we came on the air about how, you know, when June hit, I thought we, you know, it's one of those times, you know, June hits, I get five inches of rain. I think, oh, it's never good. You know, the climate is. This is the kind of climate change I can get behind. You know, I always wonder why it is that when climate changes, how come it never gets better? I mean, like, I know that, you know, based upon the amount of oil here, there used to be all sorts of organic material out here, you know, I'd sure like to see that again.
• 1:05
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of interesting you talk about that because we've had. We've had two of the exact opposites on two of our stations. We've had 7 inches at Lamesa at our ag care facility since June, and we've had less than an inch at our Lubbock Center. And in fact, I was talking to our farm manager, and he was telling me last night at the center, we've had less rain this year than in 2011.
• 1:35
  Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. Well, I always tell people what the weather like in. Is like in West Texas, because in 2011, the vineyard I had on the east side of Brownfield, I got two and a half inches of rain that's measured out of a rain gauge. That's me being an OCD farmer checking that rain gauge. I got two and a half inches of rain. Now, in 2010, I had 30, 32, 33 and a half inches of rain in 2010. So I had our average rainfall in
• 2:04
  Speaker B: each year scattered over two years.
• 2:07
  Speaker A: Unfortunately, it's like the story Reagan used to tell about the Secretary of Agriculture going to Kansas and he was having a farm meeting, and they were. There's a bunch of farmers there complaining about how drought was and how terrible it was the year that then it was in Like December, how terrible it had been, and you know, what kind of drought they are. And he looked at it and he said, wait, the guy the Ag department was looking at, and he said, wait a second, I show here where you all got 18 inches of rain last year. And that farmer said, that's right. And I remember the day it fell.
• 2:35
  Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. No, and unfortunately, I remember back to Oklahoma. Mesonet has a guy that writes a little blurb every day, and I still remember him talking about when we get in one of these patterns that with the lack of moisture in the soil, then this heat just builds on itself. There's no way for that soil to absorb any of this heat, which gives us a little bit of a break. It's just basically all reflective. And so we just get in this pattern and until we get a rain to get some soil moisture to help absorb some of that heat, it's really tough to break out. And then you were talking about the.
• 3:14
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I was, I was talking, I was looking at the mezzanine. You know, if you're in that interested in agriculture at all. The West Texas Mesonet is an awesome thing and it has expanded beyond West Texas now. I mean, they've had one in Colorado for eons, but there's a lot of stuff that, through the big country, down into the western hill country. And you can really track, you know, who's getting rain, what kind of rain they've gotten. But one of the things you can look at is the 8 inch soil temperature. And I looked at the Welch Station yesterday and at this was probably 9:15 in the morning, the 8 inch soil temperature was 90 degrees. At 8 inches, it was 90 degrees. I'm like, that's warm.
• 3:55
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 3:55
  Speaker A: You know, and you do get in that pattern. You know, it's, it's unfortunate that the way that the geography and the continental climate works is that you get into a dry pattern and it builds on itself, but a wet pattern doesn't necessarily build on itself. You got to have some help coming either out of the Gulf or out of Baja to pump some moisture into this thing. And you know, they're talking about that super El Nino. And you know, I mentioned before on this thing that my theory on El Nino is with El Nino, it doesn't rain as much, and with La Nina it's a drought. And so like, we get it coming and going on that. But, you know, there are a lot of models that are showing, hey, we could break out this thing. We could get some, some good rains in here. But it's been interesting looking at the mezzanet and spinning and obsessing over different, different things and looking at the best rainfall has obviously been off the cap and the rolling plains and rolling plains is that way. What's up end up towards Amarillo anyway, off the cap. And it's wild how we have not had. There's been a lot of rain in that area. And some of them. Some of the sites are sitting at 17 inches, and some of them are sitting at three, you know, but looking at just all of it overall, we haven't had a really broad general rain.
• 5:15
  Speaker B: You know, that's exactly what I was talking to somebody. I don't remember the last, like, cloud that, say, went from Dumas to Midland.
• 5:23
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 5:24
  Speaker B: You know, and we used to get those big clouds, and that was really what would bring us some moisture. You know, they're either spotty or they're thin lines. There's not just that big giant cloud that, you know, goes from here to Tulsa once it hits.
• 5:37
  Speaker A: Right. And it's, you know, it's not like it's been, you know, decades since that occurred. I mean, I believe we had. I think we had one last year. Well, I know we did because there was hail in it in. In places and stuff. And so. But I mean, it's when you start dealing with. With weather forecasting and then climate stuff. And it was really interesting watching one of the. One of the. All the. The YouTube meteorologists, you know, which you get on the YouTube meteorologist not going, does this guy really know what he. What he's talking about? But if you go, you know, if you. If you're not talking to somebody with National Weather Service, that's always a legitimate guess. You know, you're like, you know, I know there are meteorologists that started off as news anchors and they needed somebody to fill in. And all of a sudden, lo and behold, we have a meteorologist. Yes, yes. But he was talking about it. He was showing all these different models and trying to compare. You know, this is not this the super El Nino that they're making a big fuss about right now. It's not the first time in history. That's may. It has the potential to be the strongest one that we've recorded, but it's not the first time it happened. So he took, like, the. The three most recent. Let's see, it was 82. No, it was like 82, 83, 96, 97. And then, like, 15, 16 or something like that was the same when we had the same kind of you know, a pretty strong. And he did that. And he was like comparing them. Hi, Tillery. For those of you watching, Tillery just came in. But he compared those three, and then he compared this one. He's like, okay. And then he took every different thing that they measured. The temperature oscillation in the Indian Ocean, you know, something else off the coast, you know, all these different things and none of it lined up. He's like, so I can tell you there's a chance that something's going to happen. And I'm like, well, he's drawing it.
• 7:29
  Speaker B: Exactly. Well. And, you know, if we think back probably a year or better, you know, it was going to be here this spring.
• 7:36
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 7:37
  Speaker B: Then it kind of got pushed back. Now we're into fall.
• 7:41
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 7:41
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 7:41
  Speaker B: I hope at some point they're right, that we're gonna get it.
• 7:44
  Speaker A: Yeah. Now they're like, well, it's gonna be last quarter October, November, December, and I'm not going. And then I heard somebody, you know, and as somebody that's outside and, you know, I. It's very easy to obsess over it and start digging through it until you find like 8, 000 different opinions and you have analysis paralysis and you don't know what's going on. And, you know, it's just the same as if you, you know, if you can. You can watch all the weather forecasts and not know what's going on, or you can watch none of them and not know what's going on and not worry about it. And so, yeah, so you're kind of in the same boat in that thing. But, you know, nobody really knows, you know, the. The one. I heard that. I heard one outlier that was saying, well, this could be, you know, this is going to come in. It's going to be in January, and I'm not going to do it. If it makes it to January, it's not gonna be a thing, you know, I mean, it's just going to be just something else we talk about, you know, oh, this was this way and it didn't rain. But you know what? It was that way, you know, for, you know, back this time. This time, this time. And it rained a lot, you know. But I am. I am heartened by the fact that there, at least when you look at the map, most of the projections are actually showing us to be at least kind of green, which indicates moisture. So, yes, I'm like. I like to. I like that one where it's above average precipitation, you know.
• 8:54
  Speaker B: Oh, I totally agree. And of Course that on, on another note of that, that's where I always struggle with crop prediction models because just like this El Nino prediction or I go back to two years ago, the three weeks of 100 degree weather in August, if you used that prediction that a model that predicted probably July 1st, you'd be throwing everything at the crop and all of a sudden it fell apart. And I don't know if we'll ever get to the point that that model can predict weather enough to really help us.
• 9:27
  Speaker C: Well, and that's why I think that I was in D.C. and Maryland visiting with NASA and we got to do some great tours and you know, see some of the stuff that's coming out and long range for the tools that they are going to be launching for long grain forge casts are gonna, they're gonna be game changing.
• 9:47
  Speaker B: Well, that would be great because to me that's been the missing component. It is to help us to be able to use them.
• 9:52
  Speaker C: If we don't cut the budget.
• 9:53
  Speaker B: Make some of those, if they don't
• 9:55
  Speaker C: cut the budget by 2/3 and they don't get to launch them.
• 9:58
  Speaker A: I gotta give you 38 trillion reasons why budgets need to be cut. That's the sad thing about it.
• 10:04
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 10:04
  Speaker A: I mean, God almighty. I mean we've, we've done a great job of just. Well, I can't say it that way on the air. Never mind. But you know, that kind of stuff
• 10:15
  Speaker C: is, but that kind of stuff saves money in the end.
• 10:17
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean if, if you could more accurately predict the long range weather. I mean right now, I mean the old farm was Farmers Almanac, which this was the last year for publication of the farmers. It'll still be available online but it will no longer be available in print. So if you run it, if you're in tractor supplier someplace like that and they've got the farmers all neck, buy one so you can show your kids. See, this is how we used to do was just as accurate as anything else.
• 10:43
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 10:43
  Speaker A: And it's literally, I mean I pulled it a couple years and I always just get it on a lark. You know, I don't ever base anything on it and, but it's, it's cool to see and you're like looking at it like, well, you know, they're, they're right as, as often as they're wrong, which is the same as everybody else. But if you could, you know, if you could improve the, the for the long range forecast where you can go out three or four months and say, okay listen, it's Going to be dry out here, you know, then do you have the opportunity then to make policy? Hey, if this says X, you don't have to do anything, right? And you can collect, you know, you collect your disaster on it and don't spend anything, don't put anything out. Just. Just, you know, and cut back on. Because, you know, I've been. I've been faced with the. I'm not sure if it's an opportunity or a curse of looking at. Trying to see if I would need to pick up. Was going to pick up a half section of dryland to form. And I started running a spreadsheet and, you know, the vineyard spreadsheets. One thing I've done vineyards, like I said, for, you know, almost 30 years now. And this would be a. My personal first foray into cotton since 94 or 5. So it's been a day or two. And so I build a spreadsheet and I call in my buddies that do stuff. And, you know, Andy has farmed quite enough and I've helped him, you know, on. In part of our operation. But as far as digging down into the spreadsheet. So I'm building a spreadsheet and looking at it and trying to see. And I'm not going, okay, if cotton prices don't go down, which I looked at them yesterday and I think it was $0.87. If it doesn't go down, I'll only lose 15 an acre on my spreadsheet, right? And I'm like that. I'm like. So I ask a buddy of mine that's he's getting ready to retire, and I said, you know, how do you. How do you make it? And he said, well, here's my break even. He said, my or my operation, my break even is 80 cents. He said, if I make my average yield at 80 cents, I'll break even anything I make over that. You know, poundage wise or price wise, it's profit. And I'm not going. How do you live? He said, oh, you don't. He said, you just try to break even and collect a go. And then the government.
• 12:58
  Speaker C: And then you help the government check comes in, it's going to come in lighter and you never know.
• 13:04
  Speaker A: And that's the thing. I mean, that's. And, you know, that's the thing about it is nobody wants to farm that way.
• 13:10
  Speaker C: No.
• 13:11
  Speaker B: Well, no. And I go back to. So and when I started at Vernon, worked with the ag economist Stan Beavers, and if I remember correctly, a dry land wheat budget was about $80 an acre and a dry land cotton budget was about 100 to 120. So let's say even 120. Well, if you made 250 pounds at 50 cents, you made $5 an acre on that budget. But you made. That's it. And that was on the low end. Obviously, you made a better yield. But even unless you just had a total disaster, you had an opportunity to make money on that crop. And I'd say that was when we grew a million acres in the rolling plains. Because that $80 wheat budget was a lot more iffy.
• 14:00
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 14:00
  Speaker B: To be able to make money on it. So cotton was the crop that year in and year out. Yeah.
• 14:06
  Speaker C: You could rely.
• 14:06
  Speaker B: You could rely on.
• 14:08
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 14:08
  Speaker B: Well, now, you know, I don't. I don't know what the dry land budget is, but it's nowhere close to 120.
• 14:12
  Speaker A: Well.
• 14:13
  Speaker B: Well, yeah, you just.
• 14:14
  Speaker A: I was. I was talking. That was. That was a text from Andy, who texted. He just texted us from the crabbing boat he's on.
• 14:24
  Speaker C: Oh, well, coast of Canada, bless his heart. Jerk.
• 14:29
  Speaker A: It's good to have friends, that's all. I'll network so you can know people that have boats. That's the thing.
• 14:37
  Speaker C: There you go.
• 14:37
  Speaker A: Because the two happiest days in a man's life. The day he buys his boat and the day he sells his boat.
• 14:41
  Speaker B: Exactly.
• 14:41
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 14:43
  Speaker A: But no, I was looking at it and like, I was using, like when we started this year, we were in the 65 cent range, I think is what the cotton market was looking at right then. And so it's gone up substantially since then. So, you know, it seems, you know, and this is, you know, it's one of those things you get stuck in your head and you don't know if I don't know if it's true or not. But I'm not going. I'm just going to slap 65 cents in this thing. And I can. It's just a sale. I can change that number to whatever. But it's. My buddy was telling me, and this is an operation that he has no land payment, he has no equipment payment. His only overhead is he has. Has one guy that works for him probably 35 hours a week, and he rents one of his farms. He rent one of the farms he owns. He pays rent on. And so he was like, you're talking about 40 bucks an acre for seed, and it's 40 bucks an acre to keep it clean on top of that. And I was like, okay. And he said planting it's gonna cost him 20 bucks to plant it. And so you got. That's $100 right there. Well 240 pounds which is a bell's 480 pounds. For those who don't know which. I don't know why it's 480, but that's a whole other.
• 15:59
  Speaker B: I guess we can break out Wikipedia one day, have a whole discussion on that.
• 16:03
  Speaker C: Exactly.
• 16:05
  Speaker A: I've been around. I've grown it or been around it my whole life. And I don't know why a bell Cotton is 480 pounds but it probably has something to do with a piece of equipment they had in 1845.
• 16:16
  Speaker B: I'm guessing maybe the first press. That's what size they happen to roll
• 16:19
  Speaker A: them out of the. But so you go through that and it was 40 for seed, 40 for the. For the chemicals. 20 bucks an acre to plant. That's. He said that's about what cost him to break it, to break even run his equipment. About 20 bucks and that. So that's got it planted. It doesn't. That does not. Every time I go across it it's about 20 bucks with diesel. I mean diesel. Road diesel at Brownfield right now at the Farmers co op is $4.99 and 9 10, 9, 9, 10%. So it's $5 for road diesel down there. So farm diesel is going to be in the 420 range probably down there. And so you've got. That doesn't have it. You don't have it listed you. You haven't stopped you. You didn't cut your stocks, you haven't listed it, you haven't, you know anything else to it. And so you start running into that deal. Well the like 65 something. It was either 60 or 65 cents I used. It was $156 in gross revenue. An acre is what you were looking at at a half a bale.
• 17:22
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 17:22
  Speaker A: And so I'm not going. Wait a second. I lost money. I'm like sitting here trying to. What does that number have to be to be a break even. And you know, and a lot of times at least fortunately now with the cotton prices up, if a guy's tech savvy enough and willing to do it, you can at least lock in your. Your price now.
• 17:43
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 17:44
  Speaker A: You know where you're, you know, back in the spring, if you were to try to do the same thing, all you're doing is locking in a loss.
• 17:50
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. Now this has been a little bit like. I don't. It probably was 10 or 15 years ago, you know, where the price was around 50 or 60 cents going in. And it was like, why are we planting it? And then all of a sudden, you know, this same time of year, that year it hit a dollar.
• 18:08
  Speaker C: Yes, exactly.
• 18:09
  Speaker B: And the big deal was at least people I was talking to, it was like there was no explanation why either.
• 18:14
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 18:14
  Speaker B: It was not a direct thing you could point to and I think even a little bit now. I mean, I know maybe stocks are down a little bit, but it's not like.
• 18:21
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 18:21
  Speaker B: You know, we pulled a whole lot off of this crop for it to change that much. But thank goodness for the guys that do have a crop.
• 18:27
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 18:27
  Speaker B: That it has.
• 18:28
  Speaker A: Well, there's, you know, first part of July, driving from Brownfield to. To Lubbock and back and everything. I was seeing some. I was seeing some very pretty cotton crops. There were some really pretty cotton crops. And I went past one the other day that was brown. I mean it hit. That means it hit permanent wilting point. Then we got that little shower on it and it just fried it all. It was gone. Which is. I mean it's heartbreaking. I mean, you hate to see it. I mean you really do because I mean, you know, even if a guy. Even if a farmer is like one is ambivalent to whether the like cotton market blows. But I've got to do this anyway. You know, there's still mean the amount of stress that puts on a guy is main. I think is agriculture one of the highest. Had one of the high suicide rates. I think it's. I think it's the military and then agriculture.
• 19:17
  Speaker C: Have you all seen the Zoc Doc advertisement with the two auctioneers?
• 19:25
  Speaker B: No, I haven't seen it yet.
• 19:26
  Speaker C: It is hilarious. And I'm like that is somebody who gets it. It's about. It's Zoc Doc, I think but it's about therapy. Counselors. They're looking for counselors and they're looking all over again. Every dude the auction. That's what they're doing. And it's hilarious. And I thought that that company knows. They know who. Who needs it.
• 19:51
  Speaker A: They can look at the demographic charts pretty good.
• 19:53
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 19:53
  Speaker B: No, and you bring that up and that'll kind of throw a. For our. So Agri Life has a Farm Hope program that works with suicide prevention. Some opportunities for people to contact, you know, people to discuss issues and so. So you can. You can Google Farm Hope if you have those types of issues. Free service, a lot of mental health
• 20:15
  Speaker C: help with that and for like even descendants of so like your Grandparents could have been in agriculture, and they will still visit with you, you know, and I mean. Because I thought that was really interesting because our kids, you know, went through it with bankruptcy with us, and it was very impactful.
• 20:33
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 20:34
  Speaker C: Very impactful.
• 20:36
  Speaker A: Well, I did. I did not know that that existed.
• 20:38
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 20:39
  Speaker B: In fact, unfortunately, I did not know that until a year ago. And it got brought up in a meeting, and I. We just kind of started, and then all of a sudden it was like, well, it's sitting here. And we actually hosted a meeting at Lubbock last December. It was scheduled in connection with estate planning.
• 21:00
  Speaker C: Tiffany Lashmit's just been amazing.
• 21:02
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Her and Mikayla Smith have done a tremendous job leading that effort and using that estate planning to kind of get people there. So they don't, you know, because, I mean, you think of all of us, the last thing we want to do is either one. In a lot of cases, we're kind of taught it's a weakness.
• 21:21
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 21:21
  Speaker B: To admit we have any mental health issues. And then the fear of somebody seeing you going into a meeting, that was. But if you go in. In estate planning.
• 21:30
  Speaker C: Right. Exactly.
• 21:32
  Speaker B: Additional help.
• 21:32
  Speaker C: Exactly.
• 21:33
  Speaker B: So that plan and that thought process was just amazing that they came together.
• 21:37
  Speaker C: Right.
• 21:38
  Speaker B: Put those two things together.
• 21:39
  Speaker C: So the number for that organization is 9794-3607-0097-9436, 0700.
• 21:51
  Speaker A: I was looking at this.
• 21:52
  Speaker C: Yes. Yeah, you can call that. And. And they get y' all set up. And. And the. The folks that are doing that counseling, they. I mean, they're ag folks. They get it.
• 22:01
  Speaker B: Yeah, Yeah. I think that's the big key is it's people that understand what, you know, what potentially you are going through. I mean, none of us can ever know. Exactly.
• 22:08
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 22:09
  Speaker C: And I think even, you know, just. Even if it's not, you know, I feel like, you know, I'm suicidal or anything like that, but it's like, how do. Just. It's smart to me to think, how do I need to be talking to this about my kids, to my kids, to my family? How do I need to support, you know, the people around me? You know, even if you don't feel like you're the one that needs the help, it really is, you know, smart to get some ideas on how to walk through the process, you know?
• 22:39
  Speaker B: Yeah. I think a couple of things they do. One is obviously it's, you know, stress. Also not, you know, so, you know, so there's opportunity to help there. And then also, you know, there some of that. They even talk about tools on helping you recognize that in another individual. A friend.
• 22:57
  Speaker C: Exactly.
• 22:58
  Speaker B: You know, a brother, sister.
• 22:59
  Speaker C: I think education is so important.
• 23:01
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, there's so much about. There's so much about handling stress and what stresses has effects on the human body and not, I mean, not just the mind, but the human body itself. That is that we've learned over the last, you know, decade or two decades or so. I think it's gone a long ways in there that you. Most people don't dig into the weeds enough to learn that stuff. And, you know, there's. There are white tools and you know, like, not like physical tools, but there's like mental tools, mental tricks that you can do to help to change behavior and how you handle things. It's not, you know, stress is always going to be with us. I mean, that's just the nature of the beast. There's going to be. You're going to be under stress, but it's how you handle the stress and process the stress and function through the stress.
• 23:50
  Speaker C: Well, and I think we've always. The shame has come from. Because we. We have assigned blame for our body's response to things and our mental response to thing when it's just actually biological. More than. Much more so than it is. I choose to make this response. And once the body is. The pathways are built and responding away, as in childhood, it's very difficult to get out of those pathways, you know.
• 24:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, it is difficult, but it's not impossible if you can.
• 24:20
  Speaker C: No, it's not.
• 24:21
  Speaker A: But if you don't know enough to handle something.
• 24:24
  Speaker C: Right. I mean, one of the best books out there, and this is a nerdy book because it's a big one, is the Body Keeps the Score. And that was really the book that started the conversation about what causes this. This response. You know, he was the guy that figured out that, oh, this is a. This is a brain response, you know.
• 24:45
  Speaker A: Well, you get. I mean, you know, you get stress. Stress causes inflammation. Inflammation causes thousands of problems in the body. I mean, from heart disease to hardening the arteries to your cancers that respond to. I mean, there's a lot of.
• 25:01
  Speaker C: I took a class from this guy. This has been probably 15 years ago. And what shocked me the most was he was saying that mothers that are under stress during pregnancies, that the children actually have the same hormone response as if they were in war. Like they're literally. Bodies are born thinking that they're in a danger zone, you know, because the body is preparing that child for the Stress and it's generational again.
• 25:35
  Speaker A: It's, you know, if you're in that spot, you know, don't despair. The most dare thing is you just don't know what you don't know.
• 25:42
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 25:43
  Speaker A: And that's the thing. That's the thing that most people get that, you know, I don't know what I don't know. And when you realize that you don't know what you don't know, then you can start finding an answer and help that you.
• 25:52
  Speaker C: Well, and also to know that there's like, you know, even if you go through bankruptcy, like, there, there is another side of it. And I mean, farm bankruptcy is different from. And I know that other people are attached to their.
• 26:05
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 26:05
  Speaker C: Businesses or jobs, but when you're the one that, like, it ends here for. Yeah. You know, centuries probably. It just, it lands different. Just lands different. And it's. Because it's also not just your job, it is your entire way of life and your culture and everything.
• 26:28
  Speaker A: Well, it's, it's who you are.
• 26:31
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 26:31
  Speaker A: You know, and that's the thing about it is you don't lose your, you don't just lose your livelihood, you lose your identity.
• 26:36
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 26:37
  Speaker A: You know, I'm a farmer.
• 26:39
  Speaker B: Well, yeah. And I think, you know, so many of us were either brought up or, you know, that. That we can just work through this facing now both, you know, like, you know, the cost of a budget to put a crop in, the price for the crop now and then, the weather. You know, there's a lot of things that are in agriculture especially that are 100% of out of our control. So it's. So working harder is not. You can be working harder than anybody and not get yourself well.
• 27:09
  Speaker A: That's the thing about it, is it, you can be, you can do everything right. You can sit there and do everything right. And one rain in Argentina runs your spreadsheet and runs your friends to everything you've done. Yeah.
• 27:21
  Speaker C: Well, and I think even, you know, you think about past generations and you look the things that they, they've been through, they went through a lot of really hard and difficult things, but they also didn't carry X million dollars worth of debt. You know what I mean? And I'm not, I'm not dismissing the horror, but I think it's easy for us to like, put what we go through now and what they went through on a scale and they outweigh us because the depression because of all of these things, you know, but the expectations on us and that the provisions that we have to make now to be part of and to leave our. Keep our families part of society is very different, you know.
• 28:05
  Speaker A: Well, I mean, you look at it, it's, you know, obviously in, in real dollar. I mean dollar. In real dollars. It's not as glaring as it would seem. But it still, you know, it, it takes like, let's say 1930, $100 was a big deal. Well, that same hundred dollars is not a big deal now, but $10,000 is a pretty big deal. I mean, so you're kind of. It's, it's whatever that scale is. I don't know what the scale works out, but it's still, you know, you don't have it easier going through bankruptcy now than they did.
• 28:41
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 28:41
  Speaker A: You know, because. Because it's not just what it takes to get by. It's what society expects you to have.
• 28:48
  Speaker C: That's what I'm trying to say.
• 28:49
  Speaker A: And so you go through. And you know, if you're, you know, in 1947 and you went broke farming and you're, you know, you're, you know, went and got a job at, you know, shoveling hay or start chomping cotton or something like that, and your family is living, you know, like mom and pop, my grandparents, you know, they made. Made underwear out of toe sacks, you know, and that's what they did. But that was just everybody, you know,
• 29:14
  Speaker C: everybody was doing it. Yeah, it's kind of like Covid.
• 29:17
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 29:17
  Speaker C: When Covid happened, it was like it kind of leveled the playing field for everybody, you know what I mean? And everybody, that community. And I, I don't know, I think that's something that I wish that we'd have been able to keep. That came out of COVID was that sense of camaraderie across. It didn't last very long.
• 29:37
  Speaker B: Well, it also didn't last how important food is. We've already forgotten that lesson.
• 29:41
  Speaker C: Absolutely.
• 29:43
  Speaker B: At that point it was like, we have to do better. And now it's like, oh, we're better.
• 29:47
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 29:47
  Speaker C: Yes, I know. We just have such short memories.
• 29:51
  Speaker A: I think the thing that annoys me the most that went away and this is talking about not going in. During World War II, they had victory gardens. Everybody had a victory Gordon. Everybody's backyard was a garden. And now nobody's backyard. I mean, there's like one in 150 houses or 250 houses. I mean, they'll have, you know, rose bushes. They'll have, you know, magnolia trees or, you know, whatever. And like, hey, you know what, Plant some black eyed peas.
• 30:21
  Speaker C: I know I have not had a garden since we moved to town, and I think about it a lot, you know, just wonder. But I know one of the facts I heard a couple weeks ago was, like, 1.2% of our food comes from within 500 miles of us.
• 30:39
  Speaker A: I wouldn't doubt it. Well, I mean. I mean, that's. I have. I have no doubt that if you think about what we grow here, but
• 30:46
  Speaker C: you have to make an effort. Like, you know, that's the thing. I mean, I think HEB does a pretty good job keeping us and I think united, too, like, trying to buy from folks that are local, you know. But, you know, I know our friends at Frontier Market have been getting some backlash. Cause they are commercial growers. They have 35 acres of vegetable production. You know, that is really. We need to have Leighton back on. And just.
• 31:11
  Speaker A: You know, what's so funny about that is we want to have local production, but do math.
• 31:17
  Speaker C: But we're going to like. It has to look the way we want it to look.
• 31:20
  Speaker A: It's like, hey, listen, listen. I'll grow an acre of something, and you can come pick your own. It's just going to cost you 50 bucks a pound for black eyed peas. Because I got to make enough money for that to do something. If, you know, there's economies of scale, is. Is a real thing, you know, and you have to. If, like, if a guy wants to. If you want to. A family wants to live on 110,000, $150,000, which, I mean, I think it's. Well, let's. Let's just do. I think that the average household is 75. Roughly 75,000. Okay. If you want to make 75,000 and you want to. You want to grow, you mean that's. That's all. Everything's paid but the taxes and maybe a car payment and a house payment. Okay, let's say that you got a car payment, house payment in that. Okay. And you're gonna make 75,000. Well, those black Eyed peas are going to be expensive if you've only got five acres of them and you're trying to make 75,000.
• 32:11
  Speaker C: I think it also points to, like, you know, the. The skill that he has.
• 32:16
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 32:16
  Speaker C: And that. That is such a. You know, it is. To me, it's insulting to say you are. I mean, because it's intended. To me, it seems like it's intended to be some kind of slight that you're not really a local producer because you're commercial. And. And they all. He's done is diversified so that they could stay on the farm.
• 32:41
  Speaker B: And.
• 32:42
  Speaker C: And you'd rather it doesn't look the way you want it to look.
• 32:45
  Speaker A: And so, I mean, there's sacks of hammers that are smarter than the people that are complaining about that.
• 32:51
  Speaker C: I can't.
• 32:51
  Speaker A: It's unbelievable. And if that. If the person was complaining, I tell them to their face they're dumb in the sack of rocks. But.
• 32:56
  Speaker C: Well, and I think it's, you know, probably. To me, it's like, probably competition from maybe smaller, you know, little spots, but people that. It's maybe something that they're doing on the side or. And I mean, it's not. It is. He is a skilled farmer.
• 33:13
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 33:13
  Speaker C: And to think that somebody can just, like, pick that up and be like, well, I can do what he can do, and I will be local if I'm, you know, one acre, you know.
• 33:27
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I think people have a. They overestimate what yield is, you know, and they underestimate how hard it is.
• 33:35
  Speaker C: Well, I don't know what exactly what happened. I just read it. I read a post that. And I thought they handled it very graciously. Like, he was just saying, you know, hey, this is who we are.
• 33:47
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 33:47
  Speaker C: You know.
• 33:48
  Speaker A: Well, and the thing is, that's. To me, that's like, you know, it really bugs me when. When, like, politicians or people that are, you know, like. Or heads of organization stuff, complain about corporate farming. Corporate farming is.
• 34:07
  Speaker C: I feel like that's what they're trying to say.
• 34:08
  Speaker A: It's. Yeah. Like. Well, it's a corporate farm. Like the government, the way it's set up. Every family farm is a corporation.
• 34:14
  Speaker C: But who. You're saying. But at the same time, it's like, you don't. You think we're hayseeds?
• 34:19
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 34:20
  Speaker C: But guess what? You know why we're corporate farmers? Because we want tax breaks. We want corporate laws to protect our. I mean, everybody starts an llc.
• 34:30
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
• 34:31
  Speaker C: I mean, you know, and not just farmers.
• 34:34
  Speaker A: Yeah. But it's like. I mean, it's like that's the biggest. Like, oh, we don't want corporate. We don't want a corporate farmer to. You know, I was listening to the. A candidate for the AG Commissioner of Iowa, Oddly enough, on one of the podcasts I listened to, and he was talking about. And he was railing pretty hard against corporate farm farmers. And what is what everybody thinks in their head when they say corporate farmers is Monsanto farming land?
• 34:57
  Speaker C: That's. No, that's exactly right. That's what they.
• 34:59
  Speaker A: Microsoft or Microsoft.
• 35:00
  Speaker C: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
• 35:01
  Speaker A: And you know, because they're like, Microsoft is the biggest landowner or Bill Gates is the. One of the biggest landowners. You know, And I'm like, okay, he doesn't farm any of that. He probably rents it. It's probably all rented out. He's just a landlord. Okay. But I mean, you know, you look at. When I first got out of college, I worked for ConAgra under the UAP Southwest, which is no longer. They spun it off, sold it off to private capital. And it's, you know, done what everything that's ever been bought by private equity does. They run it to the ground and then, you know, piece it out. But. So I worked for Conagrar at that time, had 90,000 US employees and I had fantastic health insurance through them. Thank God they had 90,000 because it cost me almost nothing to have twin boys mourning. And it was a high risk pregnancy and it was. Would have been really expensive. But ConAgra at that time did everything but farm because that was the only part of the supply chain that they couldn't control risk on.
• 35:59
  Speaker C: Yep.
• 35:59
  Speaker A: They control risk all the way up.
• 36:01
  Speaker C: Right.
• 36:02
  Speaker A: But they could not farm it. And I don't know to this day, I think that one of the peanut buying points is. It was it Card. It wasn't Cargill. Not Cargill, anyway.
• 36:15
  Speaker C: I don't remember.
• 36:16
  Speaker A: Well, it was. It wasn't. It's. Who owns Birdsong now?
• 36:21
  Speaker C: I don't know. I'll look.
• 36:23
  Speaker B: I think Birdsong's still on. I think it's golden.
• 36:26
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 36:27
  Speaker B: Was owned by. I'm not sure if they still are or not, but.
• 36:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, but they tried to go to Brazil and farm a bunch of peanuts on their own down there. That was true corporate farming. That was a big corporation. Went down there and thanked them. As near as I can remember, they lost their hind parts in about two years and come back and said, yeah, we're just gonna farm the farmer again.
• 36:45
  Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I remember when I was in North Carolina, I think it was Del Monte, but it was one of the big vegetable groups broke out a bunch of Blackland country, like 20,000 acres. And we're gonna basically use that to farm their vegetables. And just like you said, realize real quickly, within a short, you know, three to five years that this is not what we do. We buy the vegetables and can them and freeze them.
• 37:10
  Speaker A: And that's. That's the thing about it is like, you know, even back in the in. I think that our family's corporation started in the early 90s.
• 37:20
  Speaker C: It was in the 90s late 80s, early 90s, probably in the late 80s, early 90s,. Very late 80s.
• 37:27
  Speaker A: I think it was late 80s because I was not old enough to be put on anything and on it. And so we weren't. From one day to the next, nothing changed. I mean it was. We still had to get up one morning I got up and milk cows and took care of the bottle fed bottle calves and made sure they were taken care of and fed the chickens and you know what did the next day after we did that? The same damn thing. Pardon me? Well, not 20 odd episodes.
• 37:57
  Speaker B: No, but. And I mean we all know, I mean what everybody would think is a classical family farm.
• 38:03
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 38:04
  Speaker B: That is incorporated.
• 38:05
  Speaker A: Absolutely.
• 38:06
  Speaker B: Because of tax breaks. Maybe it was because one family member was no longer going to be a part, but they deserved a portion of that inheritance and it was easiest to incorporate that rather than try to buy them out.
• 38:19
  Speaker A: I mean, number one thing is liability. You can keep your homestead set, you could keep a house separate from it. And if something went tragically wrong on the farm, you didn't have to worry about losing your house too.
• 38:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
• 38:32
  Speaker A: And it's one of the things that it's interesting that everybody will get hung up on and will complain about. The number one thing that anybody that does any kind of business consulting will tell that the first thing they tell you to do is, well, you need to start a corporation or an LLC or they always, they vary from one advisor to another as to what structure it should be in. And it varies wildly with CPAs too. As someone who's married to a CPA that, you know, I'll ask her and say, well, what, what should I put this in? It doesn't matter, I'll figure it out. But I mean it's it, but it's it. That's the number one thing that's the first step that you should do is start a corporation.
• 39:11
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 39:12
  Speaker A: And start up is start a business in my legal business entity, whatever that business entity is, you know, that's need to be set up. And people are so used to sound bites that corporate farming has gotten, you know, a bad rap. And that's. And there, I mean, now that's not to say that there aren't some massive corporate farms out there that are, you know, that do skate on the edge of what's good.
• 39:38
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 39:39
  Speaker A: But you know, every decision the farmer makes is based upon long term viability of his business. You know, nobody goes out there and says, you know, and for example, Iowa has got one of the highest cancer rates in the Us.
• 39:54
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 39:55
  Speaker A: And they also, their nitrate levels in their water are ridiculous. It's corn country. Lots of nitrogen goes on. There's very little. I have never heard anybody argue that it comes from anywhere other than ag. That's just where it is. But the guy was like, well, you know, we've just got to, you know, we got to cut. We gotta cut corn subsidies to ethanol so we can cut down ethanol and biofuels so that people drive the corn prices down so people quit printing corn. And, and he's like, he's like, well, think about this way. He said, you know, we bring in, we're, we're import. I don't care how many billions of dollars. He said. I looked, I went back and looked it up because. And he was right. It was that number that he said. But let's, let's just call it for. Let's say 10 billion, though. We import $10 billion worth of agricultural products from the Chile. You know, if we didn't grow corn, we could grow that stuff here. You know what we import from Chile? Shellfish, mussels, fruit, citrus, nuts. You know, how many of those are going to grow in Iowa?
• 40:56
  Speaker C: Right.
• 40:56
  Speaker A: Not a one of them.
• 40:58
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 40:58
  Speaker A: You know, and so, yeah, you're locked in. Everybody, every region is locked in to some extent.
• 41:04
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 41:04
  Speaker A: On what they can do. The only outlier that I know of, and I'm sure there are smaller ones too, is the Central Valley of California. That is. I mean, if you could have, if they could have unlimited, continue to have unlimited water, that would just. That's the closest that you can come to the Garden of Eden in the United States.
• 41:20
  Speaker B: Yeah. And you're going to get me off on a whole.
• 41:22
  Speaker A: Nother somebody else needs to get off. I've been on it for entirely too
• 41:27
  Speaker B: long, you know, because I've. I've talked to a number of people, and I'm definitely no expert on California or California politics, but, but, you know, it's. It's a classic example of regulations and the waters there. It's a distribution problem.
• 41:43
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 41:44
  Speaker B: Unfortunately, and I agree with you, it's a shame because, you know, you know, it still is a Mecca, no doubt, but. But it could be even more so.
• 41:55
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 41:55
  Speaker C: Well, it's a castle.
• 41:56
  Speaker B: I think people would think of that again.
• 41:58
  Speaker C: Yeah. Actually interviewed a guy that's from California. He, he grew up on a dairy, worked in the dairy, then he was a regulator, and now he represents dairies. And so I wanted to talk to him about, like, how sometimes, you know, the right balance of regulation can Fix a problem when you use the right tools. Because, you know, they. They told them they have to lower methane emissions at dairies, but then they actually said, here's the. Here's the equipment to do it. Now we're going to create a market for it, you know, and so they actually help them diversify.
• 42:35
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 42:35
  Speaker C: And. But you don't see that happen very often, you know, but it's. It is a complicated problem in California because there are also a lot of people that choose to live there.
• 42:47
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yes, there are. And I mean, it's. But listen, I've only been there twice. I've been through the Central Valley one time and looked at. I was at Dinuba, which, if you. In case you're wondering where Dinuba is, you go to Fresno, which is not a really great place to go to, and you go south. But I was out there at basf, had a research farm out there, and I went and looked at the new fungicide they're bringing on, and that was. It was amazing to me. And then we went from there and drove up to Lodi and on into Napa. And, you know, that's. It's. It's amazing. I mean, like, listen, I always tell the boys, I said, if the apocalypse comes and you can't get to me here within a week, look for me in Napa, because that's where I'm going to be. That's about as easy living as it gets. And it's a beautiful. I mean, it's a gorgeous place. It's a great place to be, you know, but one of the things that guy from Iowa was saying, and that I'm going to give him his due, and if I was in Iowa, probably wouldn't vote for the guy, but I did like this idea, and it made me think maybe I might eat that mayonnaise sandwich and vote for him anyway, if I was up there. But he was saying. He was talking about if you could take that corn production and put it back into native prairie land. They get so much rain in Iowa that you could basically shift the cattle herd, the herds from the west back to the Midwest and you would grow. You could put. You put. Obviously put more cow per acre than you're going to put in Wyoming, where they get a third of the rain or a tenth of the rain that they get in Iowa. And, you know, you do that, you put it in native pasture. You've got that all that native pasture is going to buffer, but, you know.
• 44:26
  Speaker C: Yeah, because that's tall. That's tall grass.
• 44:28
  Speaker A: It's tall grass. It's big blue stem.
• 44:29
  Speaker C: And also tall grass prairies are the number one most endangered ecosystem in the world.
• 44:36
  Speaker A: It is amazing.
• 44:38
  Speaker C: But I don't know about that. What do you think?
• 44:39
  Speaker B: So I'll argue that point because I'm
• 44:42
  Speaker C: like, I think, I want them, I think them to take our.
• 44:45
  Speaker B: And I'm going to go on two tangents here. Number one, I think a lot of people forget that, you know, they bring up the ethanol product and they forget that the majority of corn is still fed.
• 44:56
  Speaker C: It's going to.
• 44:57
  Speaker B: It's not going to ethanol.
• 44:58
  Speaker A: Okay. They were saying that 70% of the Iowa corn product corn production went to ethanol production.
• 45:05
  Speaker B: I'd have to look.
• 45:05
  Speaker C: I'll look it up because.
• 45:06
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 45:07
  Speaker B: And maybe Iowa is different than we had because we have now.
• 45:11
  Speaker A: I know they were saying that Iowa has embraced biofuels in a big way, apparently more than anybody.
• 45:16
  Speaker B: They must be important corn in for. For hog production. Yeah, because that was what I was saying. I mean, it's not just beef. It's beef, pork, chickens, all corn is a major food source for them.
• 45:29
  Speaker C: And I mean, I think people are like going, we're eating corn and everything. And you know, so you see pushback on that, on that tv.
• 45:40
  Speaker A: I mean, human consumption of corn. I know this. Right. The predominance of human consumption of corn is through beef or through meat.
• 45:49
  Speaker B: Right.
• 45:50
  Speaker A: Most. Most corn goes through livestock before it gets to humans.
• 45:54
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 45:55
  Speaker A: Which is very, very little love. Grape grain, fed grain, finished beef. I'm a big corn guy myself.
• 46:01
  Speaker C: Okay, so let him continue to argue his point.
• 46:04
  Speaker B: Are you gonna.
• 46:05
  Speaker C: Okay.
• 46:05
  Speaker B: National.
• 46:06
  Speaker C: No, national. National ethanol use. 5.44 billion bushels of corn in 24 and 25, 36% was for ethanol. So in my state, it's not giving me. Oh, here we go. Iowa. Iowa, 50 to 65%. Dakota. South Dakota, 65 to 80. Nebraska, 50 to 60. While the lowest is Missouri, 20 to 30.
• 46:41
  Speaker A: So.
• 46:41
  Speaker C: And potentially in Texas, 100% of Texas corn in some years. Do you think that would be true?
• 46:47
  Speaker B: I think that's gotta be off.
• 46:48
  Speaker A: That can't be. They make whiskey.
• 46:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. Some goes to dairy, some, obviously. I mean, I do know the reason part of that country's going to silage is it's cheaper to ship corn in and make the forage.
• 47:04
  Speaker C: Yes, exactly.
• 47:05
  Speaker B: Both the dairies and the feedlots.
• 47:08
  Speaker A: But.
• 47:08
  Speaker B: But even that.
• 47:09
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 47:09
  Speaker B: Then it can't be going to ethanol. Unless they're not calling that grain corn production, I guess.
• 47:15
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 47:16
  Speaker B: So anyway, but so, so first off, you know, a majority of our corn for the US is, Is going to. To feed stocks. Secondly, and I've heard this brought up, and I think it was a good point was if you go back 30 or however many years ago, prior to ethanol, the big deal was find another market for your crop.
• 47:41
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 47:41
  Speaker B: And the producers found another market for the crop, whether it was government subsidized or not. They found another market and now they're being told, why did you.
• 47:51
  Speaker A: Why are we doing that?
• 47:52
  Speaker C: You know what else they did though, too? Like, I mean, they're not just, just not just that. I mean like they've released like they're gonna. They found ways to use corn for clothing, for makeup. I mean, like, they have not just ethanol, they have really done some amazing research in using.
• 48:10
  Speaker B: And I just now thought, okay, so part of that corn is going to ethanol, but then the distiller's grain off of that corn is coming back to feed.
• 48:19
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 48:19
  Speaker B: So actually.
• 48:21
  Speaker C: Yes. So I guess, I guess what I think is don't complain about subsidies for other things like solar farms or whatever and complain about subsidies for. I mean, like just, just to be. If you don't like one for one, like, don't like that. That's just my opinion.
• 48:39
  Speaker A: I. About subsidies for anything I don't like. That's my. That's my.
• 48:47
  Speaker B: Don't mess with my.
• 48:52
  Speaker C: If I get the money, it's not social. If you get the money, it's socialism. But if I get it, Elon Musk
• 49:00
  Speaker A: don't need no money. He's got. He's fine. He's fine. But.
• 49:04
  Speaker B: But then on the grass deal, yes, you could turn Iowa into grass. But, but I. And again, there's probably somebody that has numbers that differ with me. But. But you couldn't turn over the number of cattle.
• 49:17
  Speaker C: No, because they're pro. The. The grass is not as high protein as even ours is part of the
• 49:23
  Speaker B: year to be as even as high protein as it is other things. You have a consistent. When you're running those cattle through that deal, and I would say the prime example is our cow herd numbers right now. Think what the price of beef would be if all of those cattle were on grass. Because one of the things that they've helped this. And I don't know if people talk about it enough, the size of the cattle we're butchering now are way bigger than they were even 10 years ago. And they've been able to push that and, and maintain the quality through grain fed. Because I'm pretty sure if you took A grass fed as big as they're killing some of these cattle now.
• 50:00
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 50:01
  Speaker B: We probably wouldn't be as happy grind
• 50:04
  Speaker A: that stuff up and mix it with something else.
• 50:06
  Speaker B: So you know, that's where that has been adjusted. Now we can get off on the whole deal about how many foreign countries own our meat packing place.
• 50:16
  Speaker C: Oh my goodness. Exactly, exactly. That's where I feel like, you know, our region could really be beneficial. I think, you know, local, local production. We can't grow vegetables year round, but we sure grow cows year round.
• 50:30
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 50:31
  Speaker C: And, and while we don't have, you know, I'd love for us to have some medium, more medium packing houses, some more cabinets, you know what I mean?
• 50:38
  Speaker A: Like, and I don't know enough about the meatpacking industry to.
• 50:41
  Speaker C: I think it's hard to make money, they say to hard to be fit into.
• 50:45
  Speaker A: I mean I think it's, I think you've got an economy of scale in there. That's, that's big. But that economy of scale, it could have been mitigated 20 or 30 years ago when they let them start getting, bind each other up. You know, I've got one of. I mean I'm gonna, I'm going to tap on this soapbox and then get off of it. But the, I don't believe people, the people that do investigate monopolies and stuff have for the last 50 years done an absolutely God awful job. If you're, if that is your job, you stink at your job. You know, go find another one and find somebody else that'll do it. Right. Because it is, it is criminal what they've allowed to skate by and say, oh well that's not a monopoly. Like if three people own or four people own 85% of an industry, that's an oligop. Oligopoly. What do you call it when you got a small number of people that run everything. At the very least change. Let's change the definition then. If the definition needs to be changed then by God, let's get it changed.
• 51:47
  Speaker B: Yeah, well, and I could, I could even take I guess that a step further. You know, if we're going to have more competition out there, and I know there'll be a lot of people argue with me but, but we've got to think about our regulations because that's how some of these have been able to do that is they can afford the regulations.
• 52:07
  Speaker C: Regulations that a smaller operator cannot afford.
• 52:13
  Speaker B: You know, and we're dealing with that. A couple of things, you know, we've had a really hard Time getting pesticides through epa, the last say four or five years. Well, and I've been in part of some business plans where basically when you think about bringing a pesticide to market, there's basically it's almost a regular bell shaped curve. You start out not making a lot because you got a lot invested in it. Then you get to the peak and then you go downhill. Well, when you could bring, if you had, let's say a 20 year patent and you could get that product to market in say eight years. Well, you had 12 years to be a part of that curve.
• 52:58
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 52:59
  Speaker B: Now we're getting into a period where it's like four and five years. Well, now you've got to make that money back. You've got to hit that bail.
• 53:06
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 53:07
  Speaker B: And make. And that's got to be bigger.
• 53:09
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 53:09
  Speaker B: So there's even innovation that I think is getting shelled because it's like we can't make our money back in that short a period of time with that product and that's hurting, you know, our bottom line, you know, what's available, potential future option. And we, you know, I mean, I know everybody wants to rail on the corporations, but also if we want innovation, we've got to help.
• 53:33
  Speaker C: Well, I always wonder like, but why do, why does the US have to carry the cost of all the innovation in pharmacy, in chemical development? Well, you know, speaking of the corn.
• 53:43
  Speaker A: Right. The corn board that came out two or three weeks ago and compared the price of inputs in US corn versus Brazilian corn. That's what I mean, it was drastically different.
• 53:55
  Speaker C: Yeah, that's what I mean. And you know, it's the same thing with medication. And I mean my son takes a medication that would be fifteen hundred dollars a month and it's just, it's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous.
• 54:08
  Speaker B: No, no, and I don't disagree. And I think there's two things that go into that. Obviously there's probably some opportunities to make money in those situations that maybe they need a higher price here. But, but then I think some of those regulatory constraints.
• 54:22
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 54:22
  Speaker B: It's easier to get a product. Like there's products they're using in foreign countries.
• 54:26
  Speaker C: Oh yeah.
• 54:26
  Speaker B: That we're still waiting to get labeled.
• 54:28
  Speaker C: Well, and, and like, and it's funny too, like what they won't let, what they won't have and what we won't have. And it's, you know, it's not the same. It's not the same list. It's so, you know, but I also think that, you know, we, we're just in a weird, I think, place of, like, deciding where we're going to go with science, you know?
• 54:51
  Speaker B: Yeah. I don't disagree. You know, and of course, I've always said this. I've said this for 30 years. You know, maybe everything's not perfect in America, but do we really want to trust all of our food to come from a foreign country?
• 55:04
  Speaker C: Well, apparently we do from a safety
• 55:06
  Speaker B: standpoint, not a political.
• 55:08
  Speaker C: Exactly. Exactly. And that's why I say to men, if Leighton and Frontier Market is a corporate farmer or we need more. We need more. We need more commercial farmers like that around here. Because. Wouldn't you rather go to him and buy your lettuce?
• 55:24
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
• 55:24
  Speaker C: Then go. I don't know where this. It doesn't have that thing in it.
• 55:27
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 55:28
  Speaker C: And that thing now is in eggs. And that thing is in. Right. You know, that was.
• 55:32
  Speaker A: I was. When you thinking. It reminded me of being down in Mexico consulting on peanuts. And there's a. An insecticide that we would use up here that had required a section 18, which is a special emergency use label. And we'd get it pretty much every September to kill aphids. And they were putting it in furrow on peanuts at planting down there to protect for thrips. And I'm not going. Can y' all actually do that? Oh, yeah. We do it all the time. And I'm not going. I'm like, I saw what they were doing, looked at the jug and my going three giant steps backwards here, you know, like.
• 56:06
  Speaker C: Well, and that, you know, and that's the thing. And that's what, to me, it was frustrating, like with the EU and like, some of the things that they were like, you know, regulating for farmers there, but they weren't enforcing that. What was being. Coming in was under the same regulations. And so. And in some ways, you can see, it's like with the. You know, they. They can pollute their water very quickly there. You know what I mean? So there's some things. It's just location more than anything else. Like, we've got to protect our groundwater, you know, but for some things, I'm like, I. I don't know that I think the. One of the best things that we could do is incentivize more local production of edible food.
• 56:58
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 56:59
  Speaker C: And even local production of proteins. It doesn't have to fill the entire market, just fill a portion of it.
• 57:09
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 57:10
  Speaker C: I think it should come from the Department of Defense.
• 57:13
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 57:14
  Speaker C: Don't bring it through usda. Bring it through Defense Department.
• 57:17
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 57:18
  Speaker C: They're the ones that have all the money.
• 57:20
  Speaker A: That's one thing about it too, is that you go in and you start looking at our water. You know, that's one topic. Water is getting smaller. Getting smaller, get smaller, Smaller. Well, there are places, even in areas that I know have, quote unquote, no water, that have got a 40 acre patch of cotton that's under drip that looks fantastic. I know one that's. There's a, there's a place I know that does not have water for nothing. And they've got, you know, 15 acres of corn that's 8 foot tall right now. Sadly, it tasseled last week and so, you know, it tasseled light and then so, so it got smoked. I haven't looked at any of the ears, but I would have imagined pollination on it. It's probably not very good, but there's enough. But I'm like, if you can grow that kind of corn, then you can grow a vegetable patch. But it takes a special mindset and it takes a special person to grow a vegetable crop and bring it to the garden.
• 58:14
  Speaker C: You know what our grandmother used to always said, anyone can plant a garden, but not just everyone can grow one. And that's why I think about Layton. I think maddens me that somebody who has grown, I think like 70 something different types of vegetables they have been growing and trying and continues to try. Shame on you for like ever complaining about anything.
• 58:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, you know, well, I mean, you know, if all you've grown is grass and that's with the help of Mr. Green, you know.
• 58:45
  Speaker C: Right.
• 58:46
  Speaker A: Don't complain about, you know, how guys growing vegetables too much until you do some science and digging in and pick up a hoe and go hoe for a while.
• 58:54
  Speaker B: Well, that's what I was thinking, kind of the old classical, you know, don't complain till you've done it.
• 58:58
  Speaker C: Yeah, yes, exactly, exactly.
• 59:00
  Speaker A: I mean that. But just the mindset though of, you know, a lot of farmers are borderline introverts or either introverts or borderline introverts. And so that's, I mean that's. And I'm not saying it's good or bad, I'm just saying it's a person. That's a pretty dependable personality trait in farmers that you're going to find and they're not going to want, they don't, you know, they grow a lot. Some of them will grow vegetables or food crops, but they want somebody else to deal with. You know, I'll deal with the growing and the harvesting you deal with the selling.
• 59:34
  Speaker C: Yes, you know, exactly.
• 59:36
  Speaker A: You know, anytime you do that, you wind up with, you know, that, you know, people that. Those brokers like, that are just like everybody else. You got really good ones and you got really bad ones, and you got the mass in between.
• 59:50
  Speaker C: Mm. Yeah.
• 59:52
  Speaker A: And so, I mean, this. It is disheartening for a grower to grow a semi load of watermelons, ship it to the dock in New York, and somebody at a grocery store says, well, I'm gonna reject this load because they either don't need them, you know, because they didn't sell the last bunch as fast they wanted to. Nothing necessarily wrong with it. And so then, you know, the truck driver's like, what do I do with this load of them? And they said, well, you know, and then, you know, the guy that rejected them and said, well, go around here. This guy will give you a thousand dollars for the truckload.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker C: I know. Local farmer that they did, you know, they took squash. Unknown, unnamed. Grocery store said grocery store rejected them. And then they couldn't even give them to the food bank because they'd been rejected by the grocery store.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker B: Which is back to my regulations.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker C: Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker B: I was thinking back to your point, too, that people don't realize because, you know, you think about growing up with the garden and say you picked a tomato or potato or whatever that had a spot on it and you cut it off.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker C: You just ate it.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker B: But trying to sell that. Yeah, you're out.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker A: You're out.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker B: So bringing a product, fresh market product to a consumer that they will actually buy is. Is a tremendous challenge. And anybody does that.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker A: I'm telling you about now, anybody that finds that said that's buying organic produce and it says, you know, products of Mexico, product of chili, product of. Exactly.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker C: Thank you.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker A: And you look at it and it's pristine and beautiful. Yeah. That's probably not organic. You better wash it a little bit extra. Yeah, that's just. I mean, and that's just. I'm just telling you how that's. Yeah, I've seen it. I've. I'm. I'm giving you the benefit of, see, of telling what I've seen.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker A: But I mean.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker B: And I think that's an excellent point. Yeah. They may have a law on the books.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker B: And I think you brought this up. But the regulatory process.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker B: There to make that law.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker C: Well, and I think that, I mean, I. I think that's part of, you know, people's fear. Right. A lot of things here. And I think that's the fear of data centers. It's like, yeah, well, you might create some laws, but that didn't mean you're going to enforce them. Yeah, you know.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker A: Well, I mean, we've documented multiple times the Texas Railroad Commission not enforcing what the laws are on the books. Well, yeah, you know, but I mean, it's, you know, it's a more complicated issue.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker C: It is.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker A: Wants to think it is.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker C: Right.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker A: And I mean we do have. We. Even with our declining Ogallala, we still have the opportunity to have more. 35 acres.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker C: More. Yes. And bright spot HSI, which is our wonderful sponsor and they'll be here next week for the tour, so you'll get to meet them. And they have a farm in the Lamisa area that's been used in there. It's not really desalination.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker A: No.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker C: And so I'm not able to like explain it sciency enough. Dusty probably can, but they've had it in California for decades and they're just bringing it here. And that guy's the only one that has a crop in the. I've met the owner yesterday and he said that he had four people come up to him in Seminole this week and say, is it your equipment that's out on his place? Because it's working.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker A: It's a sulfur burner.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker C: Yes. Yep.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker A: Lower the ph of water. It helps.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker C: And it's clear. It's small build up and soil pivot size. They make them based on how many gallons per minute you have. And. Yeah, I mean, it's a. I think it's a cool rig. And it's a, you know, I mean, I'm pretty. I mean, they didn't. It wasn't any question as to whether it would work or not. But it's really nice to hear that. It's like you can go see it now.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker C: You know, and just in one year.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker A: I know guys that have used, you know, sulfuric acid in the hill country on grapes. Every time they water, they inject something and it did help their. Help their vineyard, but they got some really rough water in some places down the hill country.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker A: But that's, I mean, that's pretty cool.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker C: Yeah, I'm excited to see more of that go out. Yeah, I'm. It was really great to meet him and Jake and. And we're having the tour as you know, coming up. This is the last business day before the tour, so this is why I might have been late. I'm like running around today as the chicken with the head cut off. As I said, you might want to
• 1:04:04
  Speaker A: tell people what tour we're talking about.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker C: We're talking about the NASA Space for Ag tour. So we've been mentioning it and it's some of the top leaders at NASA and lots of researchers and scientists want to understand agriculture and they want to figure out how can they take what they know about what's going on and get it into the hands of farmers. So we're talking about maybe we could start some classes that farmers could come to, learn some remote sensing tools and get some training. But also we'll be talking about the app that's coming out and there's a roadmap now where it's going to be hopefully by Thanksgiving so that it'll be more publicly accessible by then, but everybody will get to see it here.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker A: The amount of information that NASA collects, it has the ability to collect and does already collect is unbelievable.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker C: It is. And to be able to, as a farmer, learn how to, how to use it and translate it yourself it you just your tax dollars at work and you can start paying for it. Yeah.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker A: But the, the coolest one, and I haven't done a deep dive into figuring out what thing that I don't know a third of what Tillery knows.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker C: Yeah. I said last week now I can answer any question the second grader has.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker B: Well, that's 100 more questions than acronym.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker A: But they grow groundwater analysis. They can do from space. Holy cow. I'm not talking about like groundwater is like a lake. It's like the soil moisture. They can tell you if it, you know what your soil moisture is from space.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker C: Yeah, at the root level.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker A: At the root level.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker C: And you know what? If we don't cut our budget, we have three satellites that will be amazing for agriculture and it would be information. Every third day. You could, you could then go, how dry is my silage? Every third day. That would be putting to like you're gonna be able to predict when you're gonna be at what field. That, that's amazing. So call, call, call Senator Cruz and tell him to fight again for us. He saved the earth science budget last year and we need him to do the same thing. That's his committee central cruise. Well, he's on the committee that does the NASA budgets. So. And that is the extent of my knowledge to what committee that would be called. All I know is he did that for us.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker B: Well, I mean, it's obviously exciting. I mean, we think about all of the technologies through history that NASA's been involved in and, and to see a potentially more focus specifically on agriculture. Which also would, I think falls back into defense, which I was gonna, I was gonna say, I've always thought that a part of it should come out of the defense budget for agriculture. I think.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker C: So if, if an army marches on its stomach. Right. You know, what, what does a nation travel on?
• 1:07:05
  Speaker B: Well, and I've always argued just, I mean, I'm no one to go down this track. But just like the Iran situation.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker B: We do not have to have food as part of that negotiation and we never have. And I think that has always helped us negotiate from a place of strength. I mean, obviously military plays into that, but we've never had to say, oh gosh, we gotta have your corn.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker C: Yes, right. We gotta have your sardines or coffee. Yes, yes, exactly.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker B: You know, oh my gosh, what will we do if, you know, I mean even, you know, Brazil has become the 8,000 pound gorilla. But we don't have to have their commodity.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker A: Right.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker B: Some of the other parts of the world do.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, look at.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker C: Exactly.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker A: I think one of the things that's always just boggled my mind was the amount of soybeans that's imported to China. I mean, holy cat hair. Like we don't use a fraction of the soybeans that are produced in the United States. They're all go to China. Like, man, that's a huge number. I'm not going. And of course I know, you know, next to, I would say next to nothing, but that would be a lie that would give me that I knew something about the Chinese geography. I roughly know where Shanghai is. And so that is a.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker C: Well, I do, I do, I do know that they are, I mean they're, they have a, I think they have a better satellite than we do, but they, to tell them more data. And of course, you know, they're not askers, they're takers. So they just go and take whatever data they want from wherever it is. So they know more, but they're never going to tell us, you know, but I do. There is a huge push of environmental cleanup and increasing their own food production. So maybe we'll get more. My boys are going next year. So.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker A: Biggest thing I've seen is the hills that are completely covered in solar panels and they're building 30. Was it 30 new coal fire. Coal plants a year in China. I mean it's just, I mean as far as like an energy if, I mean if you're talking an energy race, they're kicking our on parts.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker C: Well, they definitely, I mean everybody's wanting to be energy. They're independent for sure.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker A: Yeah. But they got. I think it's 30 new coal fires and like five or seven new nuclear power plants every year goes up in China. I mean and I think we're about to cut five last one down.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker C: I think we actually got off on China last week too. Like we started talking about this. We. Andy said last week he said we should call this the off the topic show.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker A: Exactly. So anything interesting going on out at the station?
• 1:09:38
  Speaker B: Well, as, as, as I mentioned earlier we. This the center has been one of the dry spots for the district.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker B: Or the region unfortunately. We thank goodness and I'll throw a shout out to High Plains Water District who helped support our advancements in irrigation technology out there. We have 80 acres I think roughly in drip that started two years ago. They supported both of those projects we just ran. Unfortunately I guess it was Last week a 12 row lateral system that we have where we can water individual trials rather than having to water say a whole pit pool or even a lateral. And so we can concentrate that water on individual trials and timing wise makes it a lot easier. Like say if I spray a pre emergence herbicide that afternoon I can water that in to see how it's effective and not have. Because even on drip that's difficult to do some of that. And they've supported all three of those projects. So shout out to them. Also AgriLife Research at College Station has supported all three of those projects and put funding into that because I hate to think the situation we'd be in if we didn't have that 80 acres of drip. What the crop would look like, how we would have been able to keep up with it with the current situation. And so where we've got that technology the crop looks pretty fair. I mean obviously I wish it looked a lot better. It's definitely showing its head but you know and it's. And it's. And it's allowing our faculty to concentrate on things rather than having to lay out pipe.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker B: Thing I think, I think our field.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker A: I just got cold Chelsea PTSD
• 1:11:34
  Speaker B: memories and so we've. You know I think our fields are cleaner in our breeding plots with that situation we haven't had to till and we haven't had to break that up. So I think that's helped. Got some really neat projects going on. We're doing some stuff with els, the extra long staple cotton.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker C: Oh really?
• 1:11:56
  Speaker B: And the hybrids that are a hybrid between them.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker C: Between them.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker B: I think y' all are probably aware there's three roller gens.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker B: In The.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker C: Well, I see. I knew there was two. There's one in Brownfield, one at Brown
• 1:12:09
  Speaker B: and one at Petersburg.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker C: In Petersburg. Okay.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker B: I believe is correct.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker C: Okay.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker A: Wow. So, so just as a, as the guy that drew, you know, HS26 cotton, thinking about growing long staple cotton and ginning it at Petersburg is mind numbing. Like it's, it's, that's almost as wild as the first. When I go into Kansas in that first year and they put up in Kansas.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker A: That's really exciting because for people that
• 1:12:31
  Speaker C: don't know you couldn't grow cotton because it just didn't have, didn't have the growing season for it. Right. No, basically it.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker B: And I mean obviously the way we can move cotton around now.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker C: Yeah. So much different. Yes.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker B: You know, we can even put it on a semi.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker B: And move it around now. So, so that, that makes that I think more practical because, because now I will say amazingly I talked to one of the gins. It wasn't going to take as many bales as I thought to make it work because you know, when they were first going in, I guess I was skeptical thinking, you know, how are we going to get enough acres?
• 1:13:03
  Speaker C: Right.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker B: But I think they were talking in the neighborhood of 10 to 20,000 bales. They could make it work.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker C: Well, there you go.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker A: And so.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker B: Yeah, not as much as I thought. And so now again where we can move cotton from a lot more acres because I know they were breathing, bringing some in from Memphis to that gin.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker C: Interesting. I'd love to see a roller gin. I've never seen one. Is it as expensive to put in as a what I would call a traditional gin?
• 1:13:29
  Speaker B: You probably need to talk to John 1 here and ask that question. Being much more of a ginning expert than me, I think a lot of these, and I may be talking completely out of turn are probably used. So I don't know what the cost situation versus say like getting a whole new stain.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker C: Yeah. Because the new, a new one, new J Cotton gins, big ones are really expensive.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker B: Oh, really, really expensive. Yes. Which I again, we get off on.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker C: People don't understand. They don't understand equipment now. Right, right.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker A: Another thing you talk about when you start bouncing to different crop is the whole infrastructure. Infrastructure you have.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker C: Exactly. I, I, you know, Lacy and I go places and people like could you grow this? And she's like I can grow anything. I just don't have a place to take it.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker C: You know.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker B: No, that's all the minor crops. That's always been my concern through my history you know, go back to like safflower.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, we can grow safflower. Yeah.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker B: But we can't necessarily sell it anywhere.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker C: Yeah, right, right. Well, and I think too, that's the other thing to think about, like when we think about converting to grassland is we gotta. You gotta be strategic because once you lose your infrastructure, it's gone. Yes, yes. And the end, somebody's not just gonna be like, hey, I'll just put in another $20 million in, no problem, or
• 1:14:36
  Speaker A: you know, grain elevator that'll handle grain,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker C: sorghum or a huge peanut facility or whatever. I mean, like, we have to, we've got to be strategic. I mean, it's going to happen. But if we could be strategic about it, wouldn't that be amazing? We could shelter that infrastructure some.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker B: No, and you know, that's a good point too. And I guess shout out to the state for the infrastructure funding that's been opened up this year that hopefully can help some of those.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker C: Do you know, I haven't even looked to see what that money's going to. Have you heard of anything exciting?
• 1:15:07
  Speaker B: I don't know if they completely.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker C: I think it's gone. I think it's gone.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker B: Okay. I haven't had to look. I'll have to.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker C: Yep. So I got, I got a call, I got a call this last week. I mean I got a friend that got a call last week that they got one. So. Yeah, so that's really great.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker B: So that, so that's exciting that. And that the state sees the importance of maintaining that infrastructure.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker B: Because like you said, generally speaking, when you lose it, it don't come back.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. And that's, that's the thing, you know, agriculture is expensive to. Farming is expensive. I mean, tractors are expensive. I mean if you just start at whatever you, wherever you want to on the list, it's all expensive. But when you start talking about the infrastructure in it and somebody coming in and having to, you know, payroll that, you know, bankroll that stuff. Holy cow.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker B: Oh yeah.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker A: I mean it's, it is amazing how much that stuff will cost. And you know, like, you know, Brownfield used to have. We used to have a couple of different places you could bring. You can bring to Anderson grain. You can bring it to Goodpatcher. You know, we could bring, you know, so we plant. Back in the days when the. You had to set us. Back in the days of the set aside program, you had 30% set aside. 30% was in a grain crop and 30% was in cotton in a row crop. You Know, you could do that and, you know, you could take it there, you could bring it to a couple places up here, you know, wherever you want to do it. You could stack it, you know, stack grain, some weight, piled it in big old gigantic piles and then sold it off as the mark, you know, in. Throughout the season like they do more in the north northwest, in the mid upper Midwest. But, you know, good pastures is no longer there. You know, they got bought out by the outfit out of Amarillo that wound up closing down. So there's the good pasture elevators going, you know, when it ropes is. It's still standing there. It's still a, you know, showpiece, but that's all it is. And I don't assume that this big stuff out here in lumber gear still it's functioning, but I couldn't swear to it.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker B: I thought it wasn't functioning.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker C: I don't think that there's. I mean, I knew people were taking sorghum to, like, the Plainview maybe area.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker B: I was thinking it was like even maybe two years ago was the last crop they bought.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker A: That may be.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker B: Yeah. Here.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker A: Well, they can do what Oklahoma City did with theirs, and somebody bought it and put a climbing wall on the inside of it. It's like the world's largest climbing deal.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker C: Oh, my goodness. Well, somebody's taking the helium, the old helium plant in Amarillo, and turning it into an event center thing. So always fun, always fun things going on.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker B: But anyway, the neat thing about that project and the way we approached it is, so we've got conventional upland cotton, we've got the hybrids, and then we've got the els or the Pima type varieties. And we're looking at. And my thought was, and we've got a graduate student working on this, was, what if a guy grows a Pima and for whatever reason, can't get somebody, say, from south Texas to come pick it? So what if we have to strip it? And then what? Okay, if we strip it, what if we run it through a roller gin? What does that look like? Or what if we.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker C: Oh, my goodness.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker B: What if we strip it and run it through a saw gin? Because. Because that's what we just want to get it out. What does that do to that Pima variety or that els? And then what if we take a better quality upland and run it through a roller gen? What does that look like? Or what if we pick it. So we're picking each one of them or stripping each one of them, then we're running them through either a roller gin Or a saw gin.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker C: Each of those. Oh gosh, that's such a great idea.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker A: That is.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker C: Whose idea was that?
• 1:18:37
  Speaker B: There was a whole group of us involved.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker C: That's awesome.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker B: A team of people. Brendan Kelly, Ken Lagay, Carol Kelly, our breeder all were involved in that thought process.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker C: What a great idea.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker B: John Winera is leading the.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker A: Well make sure that when you come back on if you got, you know, even you give us the way too early, way too early results.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker C: Yeah, that'll be fun to talk about. Yeah.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker B: And yeah. And then I get a. Cotton Incorporated is fun in this project. And then we're actually going to take some of the mini bales and send it to them to spin.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker C: Oh, that'll be really cool. That is cool.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker A: Yeah, that would be.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker B: I'm pretty excited about that. Katie Lewis is doing and her and Joseph Burke are doing a lot of cropping system stuff. She's working on some salinity. She's getting involved with hsa. I don't think she has a project in place this year but her name
• 1:19:26
  Speaker C: came up yesterday and I was like, you got a good one. Yeah.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker B: And then actually we had a meeting just yesterday talking about defoing and desiccation of cotton. Moving forward. If we lose paraquat, what do we do? There's a move where we'll have a PPO tolerant cotton in probably the next three to five years.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker A: Okay, what is a ppo?
• 1:19:53
  Speaker B: That would be your. That would be your aim sharpen.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker A: Oh my gosh. So that pulls another whole nother defoliant out of the.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker C: Wow.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker B: So if we lose paraquat and the PPOs. Yeah, the ET aim sharpen. How do we manage this cotton?
• 1:20:11
  Speaker C: Well, you have to do, especially if you're organic, you just have to do what you do down on the. Well we may just wait and wait and wait.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker B: Organic wait for a freeze. And then the other project that we're going to work on is so a lot of the defoliants have become tremendously cheaper than they were 10 years ago. And so our idea is can we come up with a one shot treatment? Because now it's gotten that the trip is more expensive than the chemical itself. So can we eliminate a trip by adding say four products into the tank and running one time? And so that's one of the other things.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker A: Well, one of the things if they do get PPO cotton and you can do the PPO and the glyphosate at the same glufosinate, not glyphosate, but glufosinate at the same time, one of the best herbicide combinations to control weeds in the vineyard is it was aim. I'm not sure. I think it's still got the label on it. I haven't used it. I've moved to something else. But it used to be we used AIM and glufosinate together. And you talk about just smoking weeds. I mean, it just does a beautiful job of controlling. And in a vineyard, we're not as on. I tend to not be as on top of it as I should be. So they're a little bit larger than what you'd expect. You know, what you see. But that's both very exciting and very terrifying at the exact same time. Because. Just because the. Of the. As a def. Because it is such a good desic. Such a good one.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker C: Well, this has been great and we talked your ear off as usual, Todd.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker B: Always enjoy it and never know in what direction we're going to go.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker C: You never know. You never know with us. So next. Next week is space Frag, if anybody wants to know. Sarah-conservation.com and there's. Right there, front and center is the agenda. We'll be out at Todd's place at noon on Tuesday. Out at the center. It's gonna be great. It is going to be. I. I really, really think that there's going to be some good collaboration coming out of this and there's. It's going to be beneficial for. For decades to come. I really think it can be. You just got to take. Take advantage of it.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker A: You sure do. Until there's so much new technology and there's so many. So many things going that, you know, it's. I never dreamed that ag. That watching the technology move in ag would be like watching computers or cell phones.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker C: Right.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker A: But it's. It's almost changing that fast.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker C: So we'll be at Todd's at noon there by the. What, what, what is the address out there? It's. Everybody knows where it is.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker B: 1102 East Drew is the 911 address.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker C: The 9 11. I always just say, you know, the one that's north of the airport right
• 1:22:53
  Speaker A: there by New Deal. Yeah.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker B: Like the shallow water exit.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker C: There you go. That's it. That's right. That's noon on Tuesday.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker A: Big thing on your left.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker C: And about 11, 11:30 will be at Farmhouse. The Armory in Brownfield. If you don't know where that is, you can stop and ask anybody. The Armory, it's up on the hill behind Coleman Park. And NASA's gonna do. That's a really Good one to come. Like, just public, you know, for the public to come to. We'll gonna be having some extra food out there, so if extra folks show up, we'll have plenty. And they're gonna do a couple of presentations out there, so we'll have some NASA slides and let people also see the app, and it's gonna be great. So I'm really excited about.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker A: About what they've got in there. And. And it's, you know, I'm. I won't use it near as much as what a big farmer could use it, but there's just so much that you can get off.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker C: I know it. It's gonna be great. It's gonna be great. Thank you. And thank you, HSI for sponsoring us again. And we're just super grateful for the time that Todd, that you take and spend with us. And we're gonna have a great time next week. And y' all just get ready because you'll get an earful. I won't be here. I'll be. I'm going on the tour, finishing, so I'll be in Kansas, so we will.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker A: Well, I'm. I'm hoping. Hoping that Dwayne will be here next week and we can talk.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker C: Okay. Dwayne Lucia will be here next week to talk about fire. Okay. So we're crossing our fingers. We've been trying to get him for a while because he's. He's fighting fires.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker A: He's been fighting fires. We've been trying to get him since the month before the canyon fire, the one that.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker C: Yeah. So no wildfires next week.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker A: If you want to go outside and light a fire, don't do it.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker C: Don't do it next week.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker A: Anywhere in the U. S. Because he just goes everywhere. Last 10 days, he has been in Idaho and in Reno, Nevada, fighting fires.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker C: So, my goodness.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker C: Wow.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker A: He's been all over. I think he's been in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho, California, Nevada. And that's just the ones I know of on top of my head.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker C: Right.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker B: I think if you're west of the 98th meridian, you need.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker C: Yes, yes, exactly. Just don't like ours. Yes, exactly. We'll see you folks again or we'll come to you again via the airwaves. Next. That's right. Next time Here again on KRFE at 12 o', clock, signing off.