Latest / Beyond Labels Premium / Episode #218: When China Says “No” to Soy, Whiskey Slop & Lily Pads

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Episode #218: When China Says “No” to Soy, Whiskey Slop & Lily Pads · Beyond Labels Premium

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Beyond Labels with your hosts, Joel Salatin.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: That would be me, the farmer, and Dr.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Cena McCullough, our favorite researcher.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Before we start in, Cena has a little bit of announcement about the chapters that we're starting.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: We thank you for your response on these local Beyond Label chapters.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so she'll bring us up to speed a little bit on that, and then we're going to jump right into content.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so as Joel mentioned, we've started Beyond Label chapters based on listener feedback.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's very exciting for us.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: These are going to be local chapters where you can plug in with like-minded people and have great chats and discussions and fellowship.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: We have begun the chapters.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: We have about 10 leaders that have volunteered so far.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we have a lot of people interested in joining them.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're interested in either leading a chapter or joining a local chapter, there will be information provided in the show description, um, in links you can click on so you can sign up.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Great, Cena.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so for today's uh podcast, we're going to go into a bunch of uh questions and answers.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: But before we do, I want to uh just touch bases with you on some of my thoughts regarding the um the supposedly pending agriculture crisis uh in the U.S.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you've if you're watching the news at all, uh you know that we've seen farmers in the news over the last you know um month uh in a in in in a pretty spectacular fashion.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Normally farmers don't ever make the news, you know, it's just uh they're just out there and uh they don't make the news.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: But um they're definitely making the news recently because uh the the tariffs that Trump is putting on uh China have resulted in retaliatory moves on China's part.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: And um they have they have decided in 2025, this year, to not buy any U.S.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: soybeans.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now the Chinese soybean market is roughly one-fourth.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Think about this, one-fourth of the entire U.S.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: crop.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: So you take the entire U.S.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: crop, one-fourth of that goes to China every year.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's about$12 billion.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: B with a B,$12 billion.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and so that's been lost.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it does a couple things.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, here we are right at, you know, they're they're harvesting soybeans.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it's it's they're almost done now.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're we're certainly two-thirds of the way through the soybean harvest.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: And where do you go when your single biggest buyer uh doesn't want any?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so I don't want this to dwindle into a tariff discussion.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: What I do want to uh touch bases with everybody on is uh the soybean farmers are asking for two things now.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: They're of course, you know, they're cranking up the the soybean industry, has a huge lobby, which includes, you know, uh the glyphosate manufacturers, because a lot of you know um uh Roundup ready soybeans, you've heard that probably.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's glyphosate, okay?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so there it's not just the farmers.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's an entire I want you to understand when you read these things, it's not just farmers growing soybeans.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's the fertilizer companies, the combine companies to harvest them, the planting companies to make the equipment to plant them, the storage companies, those big, you know, those big butler building, but butler bins that you see, these big, you know, silos that they store it in, the natural gas that's bought to dry them in, the you know, the the herbicides that are applied like glyphosate to keep the weeds down.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: What I'm getting at is that that this isn't just the the the the the soybean lobby is not just a bunch of soybean farmers.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very, very broad um uh massive uh industry.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so what's happening is that with this loss of the Chinese market, the I'm gonna say the soybean lobby, now you understand this is bigger than just soybean farmers, the soybean lobby is pressing the Trump administration to A, number number one, find markets, find a you know find somebody else we can sell this to, and B, um offer the farmers somewhere between 11 and 12 billion dollar bailout for the farmers who are gonna lose, supposedly, according to you know USDA um uh pencil pushers, uh they're gonna lose$200 per acre on their soybeans this year.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: And corn farmers are gonna lose about$100 per acre per year.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Just it's just too much corn.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, so so what's happening is all of this uh, you know, um angst, uh, you know, agricultural um angst uh over the depressed commodity prices and that these guys aren't making any money.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: What's interesting is that if you're also watching the news, you know that the cow numbers in the U.S.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: are right now lower than they've been since the 1940s.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's caused by a number of things.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: The the the most precipitous one recently was the drought in the low in the lower half of the United States during 1920 uh 19.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: 20 during 2021 to 22 and into a little bit of 23.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: And at that time, uh many herds were literally liquidated because there just wasn't any grass to feed them.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, these are cows, and uh, so they were liquidated.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that's happening, of course, is the aging farmer.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, the average American farmer is now 60, the average American cattle farmer is almost 70.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's about a 10-year, there's about a 10-year um age difference between the average crop farmer and the average livestock farmer.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I'm not sure why that is.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: I I actually don't know why that is.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um except that, you know, if you've got a little herd of cows, uh you can do that, uh you can do that pretty for a pretty long time.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh crop farming now is so big and industrial intensified that um you know that that old old farmers tend to not want to you know drive con drive combines, you know, from midnight to four in the morning anymore.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um course it it could be too that all the chemicals used in crop farming, they all die, you know, before they uh get that old.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't I don't know what I don't know what the answer is of why there's about a 10-year difference.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, the point is that uh that on this cycle, there's uh historically, if you go way back to the you know 1800s, even there's about a 10 to 12 year cattle cycle.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they they they build up and then the price goes low, people get out, and then the numbers drop down, and then the price comes up, and and it's about a 10 to 12 year cycle.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you and you can see it is pretty regular throughout.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this one is uh an anomaly.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: It it is the the the um the high price and and the prices right now are higher than anything I've ever seen anywhere close in my life.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I mean we're talking about uh a baby, a day old baby calf selling for$700.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I mean, these things are like they've got you know, they're like four-legged gold bars.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um, compare that to uh like historically, how much?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: Historically, I I can remember buying day old baby calves for 25 and 30 bucks.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh okay wow.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, so uh, you know, if if if it if it can walk through the sale barn, it'll be 150 bucks, even if you think it might die in the next hour, it's gonna be 150 bucks, which you know, which historically is just um is just unprecedented.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: And and and feeder, feeder cattle, you know, which have in most of my lifetime, uh I mean, obviously, you know, they've they've come up in my lifetime, but um, you know, it's been a it's been a gradual thing to where, you know, in the last 15 years, you know, somewhere between a dollar, a dollar fifty, a dollar seventy a pound for a you know, for a four or five hundred pound calf, that that would be a calf that's that's weaned.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's so he so he he was born in the spring or or born, you know, and then grew up and now he's weaned.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um those calves would sell for you know one one fifty, one forty to one um seventy.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and of course I can I can remember when they were sold for you know 70 or 80 cents.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm talking about, you know, more more I'm I'm older now, so uh I'm one of those old cattle geezers too now, you know.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: So um uh but the difference between me and most of these others is that I've got this young youthful team here, and I'm surrounded by young, youthful energy.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not just you know a single old uh fart out here, you know, uh going around uh with his little herd of 20 cows, which I'm not trying to denigrate that.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying that that is, I mean, the average, the average cow herd in America is like 30 cows.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, a lot of people don't realize that.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: There they're a lot of very, very, very small, small kind of hobby, you know, hobby herds, you know, guy he works in town, he's a factory worker, he's a you know, lawyer or doctor or whatever.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: He's got this, you know, little um, you know, 80, 100 acre farm, and he's and he's uh got you know this little herd of cows, which is his you know, his therapy, call them therapy cows, um, you know, from his from the stresses of of work, of uh town job.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, the the fact is that a lot of these guys are are older and um and so they don't want to they don't want to expand their herds even if they have the grass and even if there's a huge demand and the and the the price is unbelievable.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um they don't want to expand because there's finally a time when you age and you don't want to expand at any price.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't want the headache.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't need it, don't need that in my life.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I'm thinking about selling a farm, you know, kind of thing.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and so that has retarded that has retarded the response to this to this uh huge um price increase.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: So here's my thought about the whole soybean thing.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm listening, and it's crickets, I don't hear anything.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm listening for somebody in that soybean or agriculture community to say, why don't we why don't we plant replant some perennial prairie polyculture forages on this soybean acreage and grow cows?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh cows are you know like gold right now, and um and soybeans, you know, cycle up and down and up and down.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: See the the problem with crop with with annuals, uh Cena, the the difference between between livestock and um and annual cropping is that in annual cropping, you know, corn, soybeans, cotton, rice, uh, wheat, you you can you can um you you plant the crop and you harvest the crop in the same season.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's like a it's like an you know a six-month window, all right?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you can make huge adjustments.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: And Cena, if there is one group that is um peer dependent, it's farmers.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I mean, they're like a uh they're like a fraternity, you know, and and they're watching what each other's doing.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, here, you know, uh this is bringing a good price, that's bringing a good price, whatever.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: And and so they flock to it.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the beauty of crop cropping is that you can that you can put the crop in and you can get your money back in one season.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to livestock, you know, you've got to birth them, breed them, wait for them to grow, birth them again.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's a long cycle, you know.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: The day, if I decided today to increase my cow herd, that means that I would say, okay, this year we're not gonna take this many as many heifers to slaughter.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Heifer is a female, you know, that can have babies.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're gonna we're gonna keep our calf.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna breed that heifer in the spring.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: She's gonna have a calf.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: That calf we're gonna raise, and and she it's almost uh it's all it's a nine and a half month gestation.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: So now we got almost another year till that calf has a calf, and then two more years till that calf's ready to sell.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about a four-year, a four-year window out there.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: The day you say, let's expand, on soybeans, the whole cycle happens in six months.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: In cattle, that cycle happens in four years.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Which is which is which is which creates its own protection from the volatility of the marketplace.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: This is why crop farmers are always, it seems like they're always skating on the edge because they're watching, they're watching the commodity prices, watching the futures, watching Chicago Board of Trade, and they're making the decision in spring uh how many acres I'm gonna go plant in corn or soybeans or wheat or or cotton or whatever.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And and they they they are making these decisions um you know on on a very on a very narrow horizon.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas in livestock, cows, sheep, pigs, even chickens for that matter, uh, the the horizon is way longer, which means, A, you can't respond as fast, but B it means that you can't that it doesn't crash as fast.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: So the the commodity and uh the the the the the the annuals over here the crop um stuff uh uh rises and crashes um like a like a roller coaster uh precipitously.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas cattle, yes, it rises and falls, but it's a much more gentle curve, much more gentle curve because of the long horizon.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: But you think that might also be why you're hearing crickets, because that seems like it could be an impediment to get to switch from soybeans over to like raising cattle, for example, right?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean you're even switching your whole mindset of farming toward the long term.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, and the thing is with a crop, you know, so you you you know, you have these, you know, 24-hour days sitting on the tractor for you know, for three or four weeks to get it all in, and then and then you basically sit, you know, while it grows, and then you have another month sitting on a tractor uh 24 hours a day, uh getting it harvested, and then you go to the Bahamas for the winter.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and and and and so so um, yeah, that's a that that is one whatever lifestyle, okay?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: But as soon as soon as you have animals, then you have kind of a daily thing.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: You've you know you've got to check on them.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Soybeans don't get up and get on the highway.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, cows can actually, you know, um, they move.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: And and so there is a difference.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: But but um I mean I just I just did a I just did a um an economic analysis and and showed that right now the average soybean farmer is losing$200 per acre and at current cattle prices they would they would net not gross net$1,000 an acre under good management.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because the thing is, if you're if your land is fertile enough to grow soybeans, that's good land.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: You don't grow soybeans on on rangeland, BLM land, and rock piles, okay?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: You grow you you you this this is the best land.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: So when you start talking about growing grass and and and and converting uh uh reconverting to prairie the you know what was broken to grow the soybeans, the original sod, the original prairie that was broken, um, we're not talking about marginal land, we're talking about good land.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this this is fertile stuff, and uh and and it'll grow tremendous, tremendous grass.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh so so the the the ability and I realize yes, it's a change in in numerous things, but goodness, how many times in the last 50 years have crop farmers gone through this this you know um binge and bust cycle?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, you hear about it all the time.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, because oh, prices are up.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: So suddenly, you know, 10 million additional acres get planted.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: And because all the farmers are reading the same magazines, they're all getting information from the same, you know, extension service, the same USDA, the same, the same um, you know, now they're probably getting it from AI, which is still coming from the same source.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, so so they're getting all this information coming in from the same thing.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: And and and so it's this, you know, yeah, you have you ever seen uh you know, you like you see a flock of birds uh and you see them, whoo, you know, over here and then over here and over here, you know, and well, that's the way farmers are, you know, and and and they just respond in mass.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: And and and the ability to um to change the cropland acreage and what's planted, the ability to do that on a huge scale, on a whim, makes the entire cropping program subject to this boom bust, this boom bust cycle, which anybody with any age has seen happen over and over and over again.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: So this one, this one is certainly one of the one of the worst ones I've ever seen in my lifetime.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, right now, the supposedly the break-even for soybeans, the break-even is like$12,$12.31 a bushel.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: And uh right now the price is uh is about 10 is about$10 a bushel.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, and and and seeing a uh just uh four years ago, uh soybeans were over sixteen dollars a bushel, just just to show you.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and these are massive price fluctuations.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, from 16 to 10 in you know, in in in four years, um, you know, is a is a massive price fluctuation.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so um well, so do you think they're gonna get the bailout?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm confident they'll get the bailout.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was gonna say I I can almost say 100% certainty I think they're gonna get the bailout.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not gonna incentivize uh shift then.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're not gonna change.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's the problem.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: When I talk, so I was out in Iowa a couple times this summer doing uh seminars, and I talked to some of these guys, and and and and they're completely um uh enslaved to the the the subsidy program.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Soybeans are one of the crops that get subsidies.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Corn, soybeans, uh cotton, rice, uh, sugar cane, and wheat.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: The six six crops get the subsidies.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: And and so uh, I mean, like while I was in Iowa, uh in Iowa alone, just the state of Iowa, farmers get 1.3 billion with a B,$1.3 billion a year in crop subsidies, just in the state of Iowa.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, these these are massive, massive programs.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: And and so the farmers, they literally look at you, you say, well, why don't you do, you know, you can suggest anything, you know, uh put in an orchard, you know.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, anything, okay?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh even on a corner, a couple of acres of something, you know, uh pastured poultry, whatever.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and they just look at you like you're from Pluto because it's not on the government form.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's not, there's not a box to check.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's not, you know, and so so these crop programs have simply created a complete dependency class.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my heart breaks for them that they've that they've allowed themselves to to um to buy this notion.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, well, in in in farming circles, they call it farming the government.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: And and they they laugh about it.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: They don't they don't uh apologize for it.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm farming the government.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: They're not farming the soil or farming their farm, they're farming the government.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're you know, they're they're they're they're farming these these government forms and these uh programs.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so what that does is that it it stymies, it stigmatizes.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: The ability of a farmer to think creatively because the program is all about maintaining what is.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: The program is never about innovation, it's always about protecting what is.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so the entire crop farming class becomes um uh becomes you know uh uh um real literally uh scared of innovation, scared of creativity, because they've got to follow this, you know, the the paperwork, the forms, and and and grow the way the government wants them to grow.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I am I am waiting to hear um somebody in that community say, you know, guys, um maybe about a quarter of us should think about growing something else.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, in Cena, in what business, in what business can you overgrow if if customers don't want your stuff or you're producing too much, you either do something else or you or you go bankrupt.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean you you know you you you unless you get the bailout.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, you yeah, you you can't you can't, you know, if if I'm producing widgets that nobody wants, uh, or I can't get a price that makes it work, well then I quit I I produce another kind of widget.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: I I do something else.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and I I don't hear I don't hear that at all, at all.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's not even mentioned in that in that community.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a that's a tragedy.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it's a it's a cultural, it's a it's a true, it's a true um agricultural breakdown.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and I don't know, you know, I can't solve it, but I but I do I do want pe I want our listeners to understand that as much as your heart breaks when you see the articles and you see the farmers you know crying and whining on on the news, and they are and they will and they will continue, and and they're they're they're lobbying for and look, who who doesn't want to help the farmer?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, I I mean if if there's one group that gets a lot of whatever you know positive emotion in our culture, it's who wants the farmers to suffer?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: No, you know, almost nobody wants the farmers to suffer.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: And and so so you know, they they employ great messaging and they're on there talking about, oh, you know, I can't sell my soybeans.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and what I want our listeners to understand is let's go beyond, we're back to the beyond the labels, beyond the label of a soybean farmer.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're you're not just a soybean farmer, you're a caretaker and a steward of a piece of God's creation.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: How can you best handle this piece of God's creation?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: How can you best steward it and love it and caretake it and and make it abundant and flourishing and productive for our culture?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: So go beyond the soybean farmer label.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when people ask me, you know, what what kind of a farmer are you?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: What what do you grow?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're well I'm a I'm a dairy or I'm an apple orchard or I'm a soybean or I'm a corn or you know, whatever.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Farmers are are known.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I I say, um, I'm I'm just a caretaker of a piece of God's creation.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that leaves a lot of options out there.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can do a lot of things, but as soon as you say I'm a soybean farmer, then that becomes your identity.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: And and and and it's game over.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, now I've got a I've got a I've got to figure out how either I or somebody else can make sure that I'm a successful soybean farmer because I'm a soybean farmer.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and and um and that that's the tragedy of our situation.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: And one reason why I wanted to bring it to our to our our listeners, because I think this is a classic example of label speak and and of label identity where where farmers are so stuck with their label and their identity and are unable to see the bigger the bigger opportunity and even the bigger responsibility out there that really I'm a I'm a caretaker and a steward of something you know, broad and big and and and eclectic.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's beautiful.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what a great example of how we put limitations on ourselves and get ourselves stuck in a box.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's hard even for yourself to get out of that box.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um one question I have, and then if you want, I mean, I don't want to belabor this, but this is fascinating to me.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: These, um, I'm trying to think of reasons why maybe these soybean farmers don't want to make the shift.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: And what came to mind was these farmers who are, as you say, farming the government, uh, who are dependent on you know the subsidies, um, are they living kind of paycheck to paycheck?
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, do they have the capital to put into becoming, let's say, a cattle farmer, right?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm because there's upfront costs for that, and it's a longer, a longer-term gain on your investment, right?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's more down the road.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: So do you think that they don't have the financial means to make the transition?
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you think it's more based on the fear of being the first one out the gate to try something new?
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I think it's all the above.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh many of them are, many of them are literally, when you say paycheck to paycheck, it's worse.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's line of credit to line of credit.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: And and so they they literally, they literally are depending on a line of credit this year to put in the crop to receive, you know, then they pay off that line of credit, then they get another line of credit next year.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like, it's not like they ever, it's not like they ever get so far ahead that they can actually self-capitalize the fertilizer, the planting, the seed costs.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, um uh in general, in general, uh the USDA says it costs about um$800 to$900 an acre to put an acre of soybeans.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, so if you're and a lot of these outfits are huge, you know, they're they're doing 2,000 acres uh or more, all right.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you've got 2,000 acres and it costs, let's just say$800, that's$1.6 million of cost just to get that crop in and harvested, you know, until you can sell it.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and what's the return again on an acre?
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the return on an acre, well, it it hopefully it's$800, but this year they're saying it's only going to be like$600.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: This just seems like a fundamental problem with the system.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is a fundamental problem.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, and so you know, my thing is, well, you know, the average the average crop farmer of this size has literally millions of dollars tied up in equipment, in machinery.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need any of that for cows.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Sell the equipment and get the cows.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: And if you say, well, if everybody does that, then you know, well, the fact everybody's not gonna do it.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this this is the the biggest, I don't know, the biggest impediment.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: I I find this all the time when I suggest something innovative.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if everybody did that, uh, you know, well, everybody's not gonna do it.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have you don't have to answer for everybody else.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: What you have to answer for yourself.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's like uh I liken it to um to you're out, you know, you're out trekking on a glacier, and um and and and while you're out there, a a chasm opens up, you know, between you and and home base.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: And there's only one person in the group physically fit enough to jump the chasm and you know and go get a rope, you know, so the rest of you can get across.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't just stand there on one side and say, well, if all of us can't cross, you know, then nobody should cross.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: No, the guy that can, that you know, that's able, jumps and he brings help back for the others.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: And and so and and so when we talk about innovation, you don't have to answer the question, well, what if everybody does this?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because everybody's not gonna do it.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: They're never all gonna do it.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: What you have to do is decide, what are you gonna do?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and and once you make that, then that's all that matters.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: So the fact is, the first guy that hears this, soybean farmer, and says, hey, you know, that sounds like a good idea, and puts his equipment on the market, he's gonna get great, great value from all the other, you know, dependencies and whiners out there, and and they're gonna keep and and he and and then what he does is if he if he can make a conversion, then now now you have a now you have a um a path.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: You have a you know, you you have a a roadmap for somebody else to see.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: And somebody else looks over and says, oh, yeah, that and then yeah, you know, way down the line, then it obviously it starts changes economics, and of course the price of cattle comes down, and you know, the price of soybeans goes up because there aren't as many people growing them.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so the price, the so the ones that want to stay in win, and the ones that want to get out win, and you know, and and and you have this this um you know this economic uh disturbance in the in the system.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as you're talking, I was thinking that the government's probably gonna bail them out anyway, right?
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, oh yeah.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want that to happen.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, I don't want the government involved in agriculture or food supply, of course.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: But knowing that the government's probably going to bail them out anyway, what would maybe be a little more innovative is if the government gave them an option to like some of that money could be used to help them transition out of soybeans into something else, like the orchards or you know, raising cattle, for example.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like if they felt like that was a huge impediment and that if they got a little bit of a boost, they can make that transition.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, again, not that I'm in favor of giving out, you know, rescuing them, giving the money out.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: I want free market, but if they're gonna do it anyway, be at least add an option to make it a little more innovative and help them because that helps us too, as consumers.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you shift some of the market into a different, you know, away from these row crops, yeah, um, into something that has less volatility and um is healthier.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: So the we we could go on to QA now, but but just to to leave the topic, uh, I just want our folks to understand that that there is there is culpability here on farmers too.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody's holding a gun to the head of the farmers saying you've got to grow soybeans.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's the thing I want you to understand.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, when you when you signed up to be a soybean farmer and you made that your identity, you signed on to an entire, whatever, entire network, okay, of schemes that are out there to um take advantage of you saying you're a soybean farmer.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so the day that you say I'm I'm more than a soybean farmer, I'm other things besides a soybean farmer, I could be somebody else than a soybean farmer, that is the day that you start looking at at um uncoupling yourself, you know, from from an entire network that um that thrives on you being stuck in a soybean farmer mentality.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and that goes perfectly aligned with our theme that I mean don't let yourself get stuck um in any label uh because it will define you and become your identity, and it will ultimately limit your opportunities, you know, in life and in relationships.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: So this is fascinating.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm so grateful that you brought this up.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't aware of a lot of this, so yeah.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, the the average the average person just you know um they they just don't live.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: There are so few of us farmers, you know, we've got we've got twice as many people in in uh jail in the U.S.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: as we have farmers.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it it's just such it's such a subculture that we don't even, you know, the normal person, I'm convinced, just doesn't even think about a farmer once a week.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I mean we you we just we just don't live in that.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um you you consider how much we think about you know ex and and um and uh tick tock versus thinking about farmers, you know, it's a pretty it's a pretty amazing thing.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: All right, Clead us on into some QA here.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: We've got another um half hour or so.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh let's let's jump on some some see if we can get some QA.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: So hopefully we can answer more than two questions.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's our goal.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: So the first question came from email, and this was from Dan.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he asks, um, a while back, uh, Cena had a conversation about glyphosate, and I think she mentioned that it chelated several minerals.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: It made me wonder if there was anything out there regarding glyphosate and magnesium in particular.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I'm wondering if glyphosate could be affecting magnesium in soil, interfering with the plant's ability to uptake or even chelating within our bodies after consumption.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Does this make any sense?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: And my response is um, and Joel, uh, chime in too here, please, if you'd like.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: My response is yes.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, glyphosate is actually a potent chelator.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we know this.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's one of its described abilities, and it easily binds to what we call divalent cations.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: So these are like calcium, magnesium, manganese, and iron.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: And when it binds up these minerals, it forms what are called stable complexes.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, a glyphosate magnesium complex will tie up the magnesium, which means it can immobilize it and prevent the plant from absorbing it through the roots.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it's interesting too because in aquatic ecosystems where heavy metals and glyphosate can occur together, uh, glyphosate and roundup can control the toxicity and the bioavailability of heavy metals in that system because it binds so tightly to them.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, if you think of things like um lead or you know, too much selenium or copper or whatever, you can actually add glyphostate or roundup to that water-based solution and bind it up.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so this can occur again in soil, but it also can occur, like we said, in water.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: It can occur in the plant, and it can occur in humans.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, not magn, not magnesium, but manganese.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: There was a study showing that cows that were fed Roundup Ray feed did end up having, quote, severe depletion in their blood levels of manganese.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: So both uh both of those are going to be divalent cations.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we can extrapolate some from that, that it probably also occurs with magnesium.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one thing that I thought was interesting um in relation to this question, uh, because you know, he asked if um it would chelate within the human body.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I found this study from 2025 that showed stable levels of glyphosate in the urine.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, meaning there must be and glyphosate's water soluble.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it can be, you know, filtered out in through the urine.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: But there's stable levels in this study among all these subjects indicating that there must be some um consistent input, you know, into the body.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the cool part.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I guess cool as a scientist.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: So within minutes of the glyphosate entering the bloodstream, it actually moved into the bone marrow.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then it moved into the bone tissue and then back into the circulation.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: So this is really actually a devastating discovery for human health because as the glyphosate moved through the bone, it actually came into contact with minerals like calcium and it would chelate or bind up a portion of that calcium, which could weaken the bones.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we talk about like the prevalence of you know osteoporosis, for example.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: And here we are seeing a study just from this year of a potential mechanism or one mechanism behind which glyphosate uh may indeed uh uh be associated with the increased risk of osteoporosis.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was news to me that within minutes it can go from the bloodstream into the marrow in the bone tissue and back out.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it just how it shows you just how pervasive and potentially dangerous uh these these different herbicides can be.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and and uh I've read too, I don't have studies in front of me, but I've certainly um listened to people smarter than I am talk about the same thing happening in the soil.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so you have this this entire mineral uh mineral depletion.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: And as we know, uh minerals are really, really important uh for a lot of things.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you start uh run uh running into these mineral deficiencies, it um has devastating consequences to both plants and animals.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, great.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's move on to the next question.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: We want to roll.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this one doesn't have a name associated with it, but this person wants your thoughts, Joel.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Jack Daniels is ending its 45-year cow feeder program, cutting off free corn slop to more county farmers, and threatening local livestock livestock operations.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, what are your thoughts on them doing that?
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um well um you know, just because just because you like something doesn't mean that it's good for you.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's and and cows are the same way.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh cows like this slop.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's the you know, it's the um leftovers.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I read about this in the news, and um, you know, the the the what they're trying to do is is use it, they've always just given it away.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's the leftovers from the fermentation process.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: And um they've been they've always just given it away to the to cow po folks in the in the county, and the cows love it.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's like uh it's like eating a candy bar.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's not good for them at quantity.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: It um hurts their liver, it uh hurts other things.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're feeding it to growth stock that's gonna be slaughtered anyway, you don't care if their lit liver is good or not, because they're gonna die anyway, pretty, pretty soon.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: So um so it is you know very, very high calorie helps them to grow better.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: And um and so I I you know I understand all that.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's not actually certainly it certainly isn't good for the nutrition of the beef.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it certainly uh doesn't help the quality of the beef.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, in that respect, um, I'm glad to see this stop.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh even though, you know, I understand that if you're a farmer and you depend on this for your feed, it can uh rattle your, you know, it'll again rattle your cage a little bit.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: And but the decision that Jack Daniels is making is they've got another, they've got another outlet, another salvage outlet that they think they can get, they can uh salvage this with a more income.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so um more power to them.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now this question is also for you, Joel.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's from Denny.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: Denny says, We've invested in land and some tillage ground, but a good portion is woodlands.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to turn the woods into pasture.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: Most of these are black locust trees.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: My question is uh how thin should I make the trees?
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: And do you have any tips for planting grass in the thinned woodland acres?
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't you have an equation for how thin you should make the trees?
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: So here's the equation.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the equation.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: It is you take the diameter of the tree in inches, double it, convert it to feet, and that's the radius of the thinning.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: So if you have a six inch tree, six a six inch diameter tree.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Six times two is 12.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: So you can thin out 12 feet from that tree.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the the reason for that, um, and by the way, uh he doesn't say how old these are, but uh black locust if they are if they are yellow.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: And there is no such thing in the in the literature in the forestry books as a yellow locust.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I can tell you that in the vernacular here among us farmers, there's a black locust and there's a yellow locust.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: They're all you know uh considered black locusts, but um the black, the when you cut it down and the the in insides, the innards of that tree are black, cut it up for firewood.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's no good.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: But if it's yellow, then that is extremely rot resistant, is equivalent to cedar.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what you make posts and poles and things like that out of.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: And with the price of posts today, uh, it would be uh it would be uh a moral sacrilege almost to cut up yellow, you know, the yellow colored, and sometimes they're growing right together.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think anybody's ever figured out, well, why is this one you know blackish and this one's yellowish?
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, nobody, I don't think anybody's ever figured that out.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: But um, you know, we've certainly gone into locust groves like this, and you know, uh 20% of them are black, cut them up for firewood or chip them, and um and and 80% are yellow, and um, and sometimes they're going side by side, and there's no no apparent rhyme or reason as to why one's uh one's black and one's yellow.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: But the yellow is good posts, and you certainly want to hold those for posts because a a six inch, eight foot post right now is worth about uh what twenty-three, twenty-four dollars.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, so you might you might be onto a gold mine there.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: So the reason that you don't that you do this formula the the you know a six-inch tree times two is 12, converted to feet is 12 feet around that for a radius.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: The reason you do that is because every tree has thousands of dormant buds on the trunk that are stimulated by light.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: And if they're shaded enough, they won't sprout.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's called epicormic sprouting.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: Epicormic sprouting.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times you see this like in a housing development where you've you know you got a housing development in the in the woods, and they've gone and they've cut a bunch of trees out and they build the houses, and in two years, all those yard trees have suckers, suckers all up and down the stem.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they turn what we call fuzzy.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's epicormic sprouting.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: It destroys the tree, it kills it, it harms the tree, it just makes the tree worthless and very uh sickly, actually, unhealthy, fragile, and um and and you know, is not good for anything.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh so you don't want to allow a shock of too much sunlight against the trunk of those trees too fast, or they will uh epicormic sprout.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the beauty of locusts is that they have they do not have an opaque canopy, it is a very translucent canopy.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: So grass will grow under a locust tree that say wouldn't grow under a white oak or a red oak or you know, uh a maple tree or something like that that has much more dense foliage.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: A locust tree has a very open, open uh canopy, and so you can get grass.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: So um a pasture, a silvo pasture situation with uh locust trees and grass under it is just about as pretty and functional uh a thing as you can imagine.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you've you've got a a wonderful thing there.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: As far as establishing pasture, you can uh there are a couple things you can do.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: You if you want to plant seed, plant a cocktail, you know, about you know, three grasses and four, or I mean, I'm sorry, uh five grasses and and a couple of legumes, along with a nurse crop like rye or oats or barley uh that'll jump quickly and act as a nurse crop until the grass gets established under it.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um or you if you've got cows, you can just feed hay and the hay will have seeds in it to, you know, to offer uh grass seed and the hay will mulch the you know, overfeed them.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: And you can you know do this with some kind of this this is a place where we use junky hay.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: If we're converting a two-acre spot, say just like this, that we're converting it from forest to pasture, uh, we'll use junky hay, and that way we can overfeed the cows, feed the cows twice as much as they want, and they eat half of it and strew the rest of the half around and and you know mulch down the top of the ground, put seeds down, and you're good to go.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: So you can plant it uh if it's if it's really um if the ground is really open, in other words, it doesn't have a bunch of weeds and grass and stuff on it already, then a real cheap, easy way to plant is just with a cyclone cedar or a or a uh three-point hitch mounted um funnel, you know, funnel type uh fertilizer spreader, you know, the kind that goes on a three-point hitch.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: Put your seed in there, spread it, and drag a drag a couple treetops.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: Just go out and cut a couple treetops, drag them along behind to kind of just disturb the ground enough to get a little bit of um of uh soil, soil to seed uh contact, and um, and you'll be that that's a poor boy way to plant.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: We've planted, we've planted numerous uh things like that, and it works, it works quite well.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you want to do that, you want to do that when the soil is dry enough to be disturbed, but not wet enough that you're just gonna go up and and uh well in in plowing we call it scarify to scarify.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: You want it you want the soil to be damp enough to germinate, but not so, but not so damp that it won't that it won't um roll a little bit um uh you know with your with your disturbance there.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: And uh ideally you see a little bit of dust.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, ideally there there'll be a little bit of dust fly as you pull your treetop over.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: And we've done I've done this with everything from tying a piece of baler twine around me and a couple branches and literally physically dragging them through a spot to pulling it with a four-wheeler, to doing it with a tractor, a pickup truck.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, you you can do this with, you know, depending on the size that you're dealing with, you can do this um on on many uh many different levels.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, quick question.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: The equation for the tree thinning, can that be applied to any type of tree?
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like not like even like a white oak, for example, like uh if you have a forest with a bunch of oak.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: That that is the official that is the official um thinning recipe for for maximizing for two things.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: One is for making sure that you don't get epicormic sprouting, so you know, so you have enough shade to maintain a a forestal type environment.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: And number two, to maximize the growth potential of the keeper trees, the selective trees that you want to keep to maximize their growth.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because an acre, see an acre will only grow so many square feet of material.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and trees are measured at diameter at breast height.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's called DBH.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: DBH, diameter at breast height.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so imagine you know you're hugging the tree, and you can get diameter tapes.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I have diameter tapes uh that that um you know, just a tape measure, a wind up tape measure, just like any other tape measure, except that it has a hook on the end.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: You hook that in the tree, you wrap it around, and it already has pi figured.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it gives you diameter in it gives you inches on one side and diameter inches on the other.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: So you wrap it around and you can see your diameter, and and then, and then you just double it, convert it to feet, and that's how far you go out and make a circle.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's how far out your radius is.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: But that that is a that is like you know, the official uh 150-year never changed, you know, recipe for thinning, uh, especially a deciduous, a deciduous um forest.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, awesome.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm gonna go try that and I'll take pictures and show you.
• 52:43
  unknown: Okay.
• 52:44
  unknown: Yeah.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh okay.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: This next one is also a farm question for you.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm probably gonna butcher this name.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's Kayla.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Kayla says we are a small farm operation in West Virginia.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: We currently process our own meat birds under a state poultry exemption.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: We've had some friends reach out that have their own birds that they want to process, but they don't have either the equipment, which we do, or the know-how, which we also do to process the birds.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: I've inquired with our Department of AG, but they indicate we would basically need to set up a whole commercial facility in order to offer processing of the poultry for others.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: Our plan would be to have them bring us the live birds, we process them, we package them, and return those birds to them for their dinner table.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: Fiscally building a whole facility is not doable as much as it is needed in this area.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: What are your thoughts on us selling this service as quote educational, wherein we are marketing this as we will teach you and assist you in processing the animals?
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um yes, uh, that is you can absolutely charge them um an education, sell your sell your services as education uh for so much an hour.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know about how many birds you can process an hour.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so just use that as your educational component, you know, charge uh you know$200 an hour or$300 an hour and and and give away the give away the service.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's one way.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: Another way that I've seen people uh uh work around on this is to rent their equipment.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: So we rent this for X amount per hour and uh and the processing is free.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: What the state is complaining about is you charging for processing.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: So if you can either sell education or rent your equipment and give away the processing, the state can go pound sand.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, love that answer.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: The next one is for me.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is off Discord.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is from Rogue73K.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he says, uh, Dr.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: McCullough, what are your go-to resources for quote the scientific literature and how do you distill it to flush out the real value?
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we could do an entire podcast on this.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this was um something I learned in graduate school uh through a lot of training.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll um highlight here.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I go to PubMed, but PubMed, I I have found in my own experience, is somewhat limited.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like there's an algorithm or something that um that shows you more of the mainstream narrative conclusions, shall we say?
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I also will scout outside of PubMed, like uh, for instance, GreenMed Info has done a great job of capturing um abstracts, for example, of more fringe theories or what we might call these alternative um you know treatment theories and studies that talk about um herbals.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_00: Is that is that is that Sayer G?
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, green media yeah, GreenMed Info is Sayers, uh Sayer G's website.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I will go on to his.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: So if if PubMed isn't giving me great answers, I will go on to GreenMed and see if they have the abstracts, and then I can go from there to find the studies.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you can also just go to your internet browser and type in a topic and then say, like plus scientific studies, and and studies will pop up.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: Once I have a study in hand, uh well, the way I was trained is you look at the journal, the impact factor of that journal.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: Is it peer-reviewed?
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: Is it in pre-print?
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, now that I know more about how impact factors work and the politics behind it, I don't actually take that into consideration.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: But but that's what um um a typical trained scientist would do.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I obviously look to see though if the journal looks uh like if it's if it feels suspicious to me, if it feels like it has low quality um data, things like that.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't just take any um scientific article um as like a like a golden rule.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: I then look at the authors and any affiliations they might have.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh first I look do the do the expertise of these authors match the subject?
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: Are there any obvious conflicts of interest like industry ties?
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: They're supposed to acknowledge those right there in the study, but that doesn't always happen.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes you have to search the person's name in your internet.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then you look at what type of study it is.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, from a scientific perspective, we think of randomized control trials as being a gold standard, and then there's perspective cohort, then there's case control, cross-sectional, a case series or opinion.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's systematic reviews or meta-analysis that can also be in the top tier if they're well done.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the type of study matters.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: Then you need to look at the population that they're studying.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, who is the population that's being studied?
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, is it a population that could be applicable to the subject that's being studied?
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: And Joel, you and I have talked about this before as well.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes some of these industries will use like an animal species that they know is going to um produce a favorable result for the outcome that they're desiring.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um so you have to actually look at who the population is.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, same thing if it's a human population, what are the ages?
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, was it randomized, like truly randomized?
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: Is it like so?
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a double blind placebo-controlled study?
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: So are the patients blinded and the um researchers blinded and the whoever's analyzing the data, are they blinded?
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: And is there a true placebo group in that study?
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_00: Is the sample size high enough?
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or is it underpowered?
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because that can that can result in false positives or false negatives.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_00: Then you got to look at what methods are they actually using?
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: Are they doing computer modeling?
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, are they extrapolating data?
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: Are they building on data sets that were previously published and those were based on modeling or um extrapolation of data?
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: Are they excluding subjects or even groups in this study for legitimate reasons?
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: We came across this when we reported on heavy metals and chocolate, if you recall, Joel, and they excluded um an entire group once the study was already um underway.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_00: They excluded an entire group for, you know, uh, because it it, in my opinion, they excluded them because it didn't fit the narrative that they were trying to conclude.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: So are they excluding them?
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: Are they missing key details um in the methodology?
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: Was the duration of the study long enough to capture any meaningful outcomes?
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you have a lot of, for example, vaccine studies that are done on a short-term basis.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're not going to capture everything, uh, you're not gonna capture long-term consequences if you're studying it for like seven days, for example.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_00: And importantly for me, uh, especially now in practice, is does the dose that they gave, for example, um, or the methodology that they followed, does it reflect the real world use?
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we've talked about this as well with um with researchers like in industry, for example, studying glyphosate by itself versus in the formulation.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that has no meaning in the real world because that's not how we spray it or consume it.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, then you look at the endpoints, the outcomes.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: Do they look at um hard clinical data points like mortality or hospitalizations?
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: Or are they looking at surrogates, which are biomarkers?
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sarrogates can have uh misleading um conclusions behind them.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then, and then are they making claims of causal based on these endpoints when it should only be like an association or a correlation?
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: Have the results been replicated, right?
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is a huge thing that we're missing in the scientific literature is reproducibility of these studies.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, there's various reasons for that, but one of them is funding sources.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: So has it been reproduced?
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: So once you find one study and you look at the conclusions they made, go find another study and see if somebody else making a similar conclusion?
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_00: And is it practical?
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is it is it a big enough impact to actually matter?
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like is and is the intervention, for example, that they might be proposing, is it feasible, affordable, and is it safe?
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then also the biggest thing for me is I is I use my intuition.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_00: Does this conclusion that they're making intuitively make sense, right?
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like based on what I know.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, based on that that that feeling of intuition.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's really important and it's often understated, and it's something that's really not um taught in uh, you know, to us Western scientists, we're not taught to really use that intuition.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're taught to just, there's the data, that's what it is, you know.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think that is what one thing that's really missing in in modern science is that if we used more of our intuition and allowed ourselves to kind of um be imaginative and connect the dots, you know, think outside that box, then I think we wouldn't end up in some of these um uh some of these predicaments that we are in today.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we certainly wouldn't be giving some recommendations that we are today, which are based on these studies and kind of this limited perception that what's on that paper is actually truth.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds sounds like a pretty good, pretty good list to me.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yay.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, do we have time for one more?
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_01: One more, one more.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's go with this one.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_00: Jessica, she asks, are lily pads a problem?
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: My understanding is lily pads provide filtration to the water.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_00: The ponds are filled with various sized frogs.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: I have noticed that blue herons never stop at my pond, despite the abundance of frog life.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_00: They just fly right over us.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_00: So could the lily pads inhibit other forms of life within the pond?
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_00: Can I feed the lily pads to hogs?
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_00: I read certain types of pond growth can be toxic.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_00: If they are toxic to livestock, I suppose I could compost them.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I I I think lily pads are great in general.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in general, uh, if you have a lot of vegetation in your pond, generally that indicates that your pond has numerous um I wanna uh I wanna I don't want to say pollutants, but that's the only thing I'm thinking of right now.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, certain things that nature is saying, I want to filter this.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, you know, uh cattails, for example, are are wonderful uh filters and that they grow around the edge to handle to handle filtration.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so um I think lily pads kind of work in the same in the same approach.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_01: Off top of my head, you know, without looking into it, I I I don't know if they're toxic or not.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um I would also I I don't know if your pond, I don't know how big this is, does it have fish in it?
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh blue herons tend to like fish, and um they don't like frogs.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so if your pond has a lot of frogs but no fish, I can see why the blue herons wouldn't want to be there.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um the lily pads maybe could impede the herons, blue herons' ability to see into the water, and you know, I mean it's it's a it's a surface covering.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm just trying to I'm just trying to think of of why uh a blue heron wouldn't want to, we we have blue herons in our ponds all the time, but we don't have any lily pads.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_01: We have cattails around the edges, but no lily pads.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um it it it could be uh so uh just digging just a little deeper here, pun fully intended.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um it could be that your pond is too shallow.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_01: And and so shallow, shallow ponds are problematic.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um Because they're easily too clogged with vegetation and too much turbidity.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_01: Turbidity is like dust in the water.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so, in general, we want our ponds to be at least, you know, at least I'm going to say eight feet deep at some point.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_01: That way you get deep enough that no plant can attach to the bottom and go all the way to the surface of the water.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_01: That way you get some clean open water.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times ponds get silted in, cattle are pushing the edges in, and over time they they silt in and get uh and get to be almost glorified mud puddles instead of an actual functional pond.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so I don't know what of those issues are an issue for you.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I I've never seen lily pads grow on a out where the water is eight feet deep.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_01: So um it could be that you're simply too shallow, too much silt, and you know, uh a drainage and either rebuild or get a track hoe in there that can reach out 30 feet, 30 feet from the side gives you a 60-foot, 60-foot draw from the edge, and you can actually um clean that out a lot, get out the muck, take the muck and put it in a ditch somewhere, or build a terrace or you know, um uh something.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_01: And and um I mean you can even take that silt and put it in a manure spreader and spread it on your land uh as a fertilizer.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a wonderful, that muck is a is a wonderful, wonderful fertilizer.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_01: So um could be a couple things, could be you've got you know a little bit uh too much runoff, uh uh um some pollutant type runoffs going in there, could be too shallow.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um but if you if you have frogs and and healthy frogs and salamanders, aquatic, you know, amphibian, amphibian population, then you probably are are are not toxic.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um you're dealing more with a with a physical you know, a physical structural dynamic.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna start calling you the pond detective.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like this is so great.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like you just know so much about so many things.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_00: But uh well, okay, so we're we are over time.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh do you have a community question?
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_00: I know our topics today are all over the place, but um community question.
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well we've had these we've had these all these questions.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_01: We spent a lot of time talking about um the soybeans.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: Soybeans.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know one of the one of the things the soybean people are asking for is to uh to use more of them in biodiesel.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_01: And um so this would be an interesting question.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_01: Do you do you look for um ethanol or you know um uh corn or soybean additions to your fuel?
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_01: Or do you do you look for fuel for your car, your uh diesel truck, or whatever?
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh do you look for fuel that is pure pure petroleum and not enhanced by US subsidized corn or soybeans?
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's a um that might that might be an interesting, you know, we don't we don't think about fuel, but um, you know, half half of all corn in the US goes into ethanol fuel.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't even go to livestock feed.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_01: So so think about that as a you know when we talk about subsidies, um that a lot of it is going into growing corn, um which is then going into ethanol for fuel, do you do you um go to stations that use um plant-based additives for the fuel, or do you um tend to stay away from those?
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um so can you elaborate a little bit?
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because like, so are you talking about for anybody or like a farmer who's I'm talking about anyone, you go to a gas station, go to the gas station, it says 10% ethanol, 15% ethanol.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um Willy Willie Nelson, Willie Nelson started all this back years ago uh demanding that the government mix ethanol into um you know into gasoline.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_01: And some stations um don't use any ethanol enhanced or or on the on the diesel end by um soybean uh-based uh diesel, and other stations uh do.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_01: And uh there's there's a bit of a a roaring debate out there among mechanics as to um what's better, what's worse, um, and and just and just philosophically, have you ever thought about uh about the ramifications of buying fuel for your car that is partly you know um corn-based?
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_00: I like that a lot.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so so this would be just for diesel, or is this like also for like regular gasoline for cars?
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_01: So so so corn, corn alcohol, and you know, the U.S.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_01: government has bent has spent billions of dollars building these great big, you know, ethanol, corn ethanol um uh refineries out west, which is one of the reasons why farmers grow corn.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh another, again, think about half of the U.S.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_01: corn crop goes into gasoline.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um so so you know, what are the what are the philosophical implications, not to mention mechanical implications, uh ecological implications, um, economic implications of of uh buying ethanol, ethanol fuel, uh, you know, gasoline or or biodiesel.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_01: So soybeans, those oils go into um into diesel, some of it.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and and stations, all uh gas stations, they they tell you on the pump if this is has ethanol in it or not.
• 1:13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's a raging debate among mechanics that ethanol, I know my mentor Alan Nation, he would never buy ethanol uh get enhanced gas for his automobile.
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_01: He said it cut his cut, he cut it, he cut the gas mileage.
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of mechanics say that it, I mean, I I can tell you our chainsaw mechanic says you never want to burn ethanol in a chainsaw.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's it just it doesn't it doesn't uh do as well.
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_01: And uh something just interesting to know if anybody's do you do you think about this?
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Do you look at the pump and and do you know which stations have the ethanol and which ones don't?
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, is this even a is this even something that's on your radar?
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is a fabulous question because you know I've even written about corn being used for gas, but I just assumed it was in all gas.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't think I had a choice when I went to the pump.
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_00: So now I'm gonna look and I'm gonna not um I'm not gonna support the gas that has the corn subsidies in it because I don't want to support subsidies.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So this is incredible.
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_00: This will be our next homeschool outing going to the gas station and reading the pumps.
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's a good lesson to teach the kids too.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you can literally survey through and you'll find there are brands, there are brands that use it and brands that don't.
• 1:14:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the brands that don't usually promote it as you know, ethanol free.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like it's like glyphosate free, you know, uh gluten-free, all right, for uh gluten-free for your car.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and and uh and and so yes, because it it does, it does that whole thing, uh, you know, when we talk about the world that we want to see, um, you know, if you're buying fuel from a you know, uh a subsidy to grow the corn, a subsidy to build the refinery, a a tax incentive to get the the gas company to mix it in their gas, and then and then you have more uh mechanical failure and poor mileage because of all these subsidies.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that uh that's just a whole you know, it's a whole uh uh typical typical thing.
• 1:15:12
  SPEAKER_01: So um I I can tell you that um that it it is a it is a big deal among the um you know in in energy.
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, awesome.
• 1:15:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is probably my favorite question that we've ever posed.
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I'm excited to hear from the listeners too.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, if if they are actively trying to avoid this gas or if they don't care, or if if they're like me, where they just assume this happened to all gas.
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_00: This would be great.
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_00: All right, thank you, Joel, for another great, thought-provoking episode.
• 1:15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I know for sure I always appreciate your insights.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_00: You get me to think outside of my little health space here and brought in brought in my my knowledge base.
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate it.
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_00: And all the listeners, thanks for sticking with us.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_00: We went a little longer this week, but um, Joel is just it's too good to stop him when he's on a roll.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we look forward to seeing you all next week.