Latest / The Vance Crowe Podcast / ATR: Ag Sellout? Angus Takes Bezos $$, Iowa Corn Chooses Pipelines Over Members with Taylor Moyer

Transcript

ATR: Ag Sellout? Angus Takes Bezos $$, Iowa Corn Chooses Pipelines Over Members with Taylor Moyer · The Vance Crowe Podcast

• 0:00
  Unknown: The Ag Tribes Report is brought to you by Legacy Interviews,
• 0:04
  a video service that captures people as they really are so the future knows who they really were. Here's Legacy Interviews guest, Steve Alt, on the importance of preserving stories for future generations today.
• 0:16
  Unknown: I grew up with my dad and my uncle all the time, and I heard all the old stories. When the kids and the grandkids want to remember
• 0:23
  what happened those years ago, I think it's a really good idea. Legacies, I mean, it made me nervous, don't get me wrong, when he starts talking about all this stuff. But, you know, if you keep waiting so long, the memories
• 0:35
  do fade. I'm not saying I'm getting old, but when you can relax enough to get into it, that's where the stories come from.
• 0:48
  Unknown: Welcome to the AgTribe's report, a breakdown of the top stories affecting the culture of agriculture
• 0:54
  with your host, Vance Crowe.
• 0:57
  The report begins in three,
• 0:59
  two,
• 1:00
  one. Let's begin.
• 1:04
  Unknown: Welcome to the Ag Tribes Report. I'm your host, Vance Crow. Each week, I bring on a cohost to represent the perspectives of one of the many ag tribes that collectively make up US and Canadian agriculture.
• 1:16
  This week, I am welcoming back Taylor Moyer, a former NASCAR Xfinity series crew chief who founded Ridgeview Land and Cattle in 2018.
• 1:25
  Taylor currently serves as landowner marketing and partnerships manager for Land Trust working to enable the enjoyment, profitability, and sustainability of America's
• 1:34
  underdeveloped
• 1:35
  private lands. Taylor,
• 1:37
  welcome back.
• 1:39
  Unknown: Thanks, Vance. Glad to be back.
• 1:41
  Unknown: So what's been going on since we last spoke?
• 1:44
  Unknown: Had a baby, building a house, doubled the doubled the size of the ranch and amount of cows we have running around, and,
• 1:51
  just living the dream.
• 1:53
  Man, that is fantastic. So how old is baby now? She will be four months and a week. So Oh, man. Have you gotten a full night of sleep yet? Is she sleeping through the night? Don't tell anybody, but we're blessed. She's slept through the night since the beginning. She is spoiled us.
• 2:09
  Unknown: Oh, man. You don't have any idea what waits for you in baby number two because this is gonna come back and get you. We've heard that from many people.
• 2:18
  Alright. We have a lot to cover today. So as much as I'd like to catch up, we should just jump right in. This week on the Ag Tribes report, we're gonna dive into the Angus Association's
• 2:28
  controversial
• 2:29
  $4,850,000
• 2:31
  grant from Jeff Bezos's Earth Fund for methane research,
• 2:35
  Iowa's heated battle over carbon pipelines' eminent domain rights, and secretary Rollins' pledge to protect farmlands from solar installations.
• 2:44
  We'll also explore the Bitcoin land price report. We're gonna hear Taylor's take on the Peter Thiel paradox, and we're gonna hear about his worthy adversary. And we're gonna try and do that in just thirty minutes. So let's get started.
• 2:59
  Angus Association
• 3:00
  takes 4,850,000.00
• 3:03
  from the Bezos Earth Fund for methane research. Taylor, we got talking again because you were banging on about this. Why don't you give the the listeners the details instead of me reading some headlines about it? Sure. Yeah. So the American Angus Association is the largest breed registry,
• 3:18
  Unknown: beef cattle breed registry in America, probably the world.
• 3:21
  They accepted $4,850,000
• 3:24
  from the Jeff
• 3:25
  Bezos, Earth Fund, which is which is just a proportion a portion of the funding for a larger entity called the Global Methane Hub, which is exploring,
• 3:35
  yeah, methane production in,
• 3:37
  animal agriculture.
• 3:40
  It's a subsidiary of the American Angus Association. It's Angus Genetics Incorporated.
• 3:45
  They're partnering with the all these international researchers.
• 3:48
  They can't they did this before their members. The Angus Association is a member
• 3:53
  dues type of organization. They did this before the people were really aware. They
• 3:58
  they backtracked a bit. There was obviously an outrage. They just put out a statement.
• 4:03
  I I've read through their statement, and I think it's very
• 4:06
  well founded. They're saying that
• 4:08
  they're not looking
• 4:09
  they're looking at this through the scope of of feed efficiency and maternal performance.
• 4:15
  They're studying methane because it's a marker for basically the loss of energy when a cattle is grazing. And and the Angus Association is saying that they're focusing on
• 4:25
  trying to create a more efficient grazing animal which should put more money in the farmer's pockets, which I can appreciate. We all need that.
• 4:33
  However,
• 4:34
  if you go to the Bezos Earth Fund's homepage,
• 4:37
  it says their mission is this global effort aims to identify and promote naturally low methane emitting cattle and sheep, leveraging existing genetic traits
• 4:46
  without altering farmer sorry, without altering farming. Their objective is to integrate these traits into breeding programs to produce more climate efficient herds.
• 4:56
  That is their words on their home page. Everybody's in an outrage because we feel like we've let the fox
• 5:02
  into the hen house. They say let because I'm a member of the Angus Association. I have some registered cattle. That's the that is the breed registry where those pedigrees are kept.
• 5:11
  Some of the very prominent
• 5:13
  folks
• 5:15
  in the Angus Association, they did member polls, which I think 93%
• 5:19
  of people wanted,
• 5:20
  Angus Association to give the money back. The board, before the poll was even done, unanimously unanimously voted to accept the money.
• 5:29
  There's been polls. The the memes and gifts have been great. But,
• 5:33
  yeah, I think in the back of my mind,
• 5:36
  we've let the fox in the hen house. How do you feel about it, Vance?
• 5:39
  Unknown: Well, I mean, I wanna explore it a little bit more. Why do you think that? What what is going on that leads you to believe that this is for nefarious purposes or they're gonna do something wrong with, with the information that's being shared with them? Well, the breed registry holds all the data
• 5:55
  Unknown: of all of the members. So you have to submit the data
• 5:58
  to get a registration number for your cow and, you know, your registered animal, and that creates a value for that cow. And there's all these EPDs which is expected progenital difference.
• 6:07
  Now they're using genetic data to
• 6:09
  to,
• 6:11
  they can predict the EPDs using genetic data.
• 6:15
  So all of our a lot of the, you know, voluntary information that the members have
• 6:20
  put into the Angus Association, that information is there. And I think I think there's a big concern that information is gonna get passed on even though they say it's not and our data is gonna be secure
• 6:30
  and unanimous.
• 6:34
  But I think the bigger thing is the Bezos Foundation has they have they they are not quiet about their agenda for methane
• 6:43
  and and cow's contribution for global warming. And I think if you let these investors invest in a cattle company, you are
• 6:51
  succumbing you're you're just saying, okay. We believe that cattle actually do
• 6:58
  contribute to
• 6:59
  Unknown: to global warming. And I could go deep into that where all those studies have been debunked. We probably don't have time for that. But that's that is not that is not something I believe in. I don't think that's something a lot of cattle producers believe in. Well, if let's just say that they they perceive that methane being released into the environment is, less good than less methane being in there. And so they are trying to put forward a way to do this where you still have cattle. They're not talking about eliminating cattle.
• 7:27
  So what's the problem with them saying, hey. I'm gonna go to the best in the world, the Angus Association. We're gonna try and use their their data. We we aren't going to do it, where we know whose cattle are what, and we're not taking more information than anything about methane. If if you were to give them the benefit of the doubt here, would you still have a problem with it?
• 7:50
  Unknown: Yeah. I I would because I think the mission and the visions are not aligned,
• 7:55
  is my my personal opinion.
• 7:57
  If this was
• 7:59
  if they're the if they're the majority
• 8:01
  funder of you know, if they're if their funding is the majority but believe this, I think there's gonna be be some information bias, and I just don't trust it. I've seen this too many times in the food industries and the energy industries.
• 8:13
  It seems
• 8:15
  innocent on the surface, and it comes out twenty years later that it never was. Right? We've seen this with sugar the sugar industry, all types of things. I just don't trust it. I'm a skeptic.
• 8:24
  Unknown: Well, I mean, if if they if they are intending to do the right thing, what would you rather they do? They just can't have any opinion about this? They can't make any effort towards trying to lower methane?
• 8:38
  Unknown: No.
• 8:39
  No. I'd have to think about that a little more
• 8:42
  a little more. If if if that is the goal,
• 8:46
  I think they should do it. They should not go to an organization where the,
• 8:51
  I think the members of the the members of the organization they go to should have a choice whether their data is excluded from it somehow.
• 8:59
  When I submitted Yeah. When I submitted my data for my cattle, nobody's ever said, oh, we're gonna take funding in two years from Jeff Bezos.
• 9:08
  Unknown: Let let me put it that way. Yeah. I mean, that definitely feels, correct to me. Right? Like, if you've been contributing data to this, it's a part of a thing like, hey. Together, we can bring the whole breed up. And as the, you know, all rising tide, you know, lifts all boats, but, oh, wait. Now all of a sudden, you're giving this data out, and I didn't anticipate this, and I don't have any way to opt out of it. I can imagine that that's that's a that's a problem. And it does seem like if you have such strong membership,
• 9:35
  pushback against it, it it doesn't really,
• 9:38
  ring a positive that the that the organization
• 9:41
  itself is going against the member wishes. Why do you think they're doing that?
• 9:46
  Unknown: That I can't speak for other than I've been a part of plenty of professional organizations, and I feel like they all start as grass grassroot initiatives at some point, and they grow and they grow and they grow. And at some point,
• 9:58
  the top of the organizations
• 10:00
  lose
• 10:02
  perspective of what the on the ground people are going through. Like, I've this this is not unique to the American Angus Association. I've seen this in the sport that I left. I've seen this in all types of things.
• 10:14
  They forget what
• 10:16
  the the average cattle producer or the average race team goes through on the day to day. It's easy when you're sitting in a big house to forget where you started, I believe.
• 10:26
  Unknown: Well and so you've been banging the drum on this. What do you hope other Angus,
• 10:32
  association members do now that, the the flare has gone up that your your board is not operating the way the members want it?
• 10:42
  Unknown: It's hard to say because I don't there's a lot of great
• 10:45
  great people within the Angus Association and very talented cattle breeders that have pushed the pushed the breed and the beef industry as a whole along. And I think beef and meat, you know, protein in general is making its,
• 10:58
  its rise and its comeback in the American diet, which I'm so happy for.
• 11:02
  I hope I don't if they all walk away and form another breed registry, I don't really know if that's great. I mean, it would be great if we could all come to consensus and say this is
• 11:12
  if 93% of the organization doesn't want it, we just don't do it.
• 11:17
  Unknown: Alright. Well, it's, it's definitely been melting x. I I see it all the time. You've been banging on the drums, so I'm glad we were able to bring it up. Let's move to headline number two where we can talk about another member organization that is in hot water with its membership.
• 11:32
  Iowa Koringers,
• 11:34
  celebrate governor Reynolds' veto of the anti pipeline bill. Governor Kim Reynolds vetoed house file six three nine, which would have restricted companies from using eminent domain for pipeline projects unless they qualified as common carriers under federal regulation.
• 11:49
  The bill had strong bipartisan support and would have effectively blocked the summit carbon's,
• 11:55
  solution,
• 11:56
  at $8,900,000,000
• 11:58
  for a carbon capture pipeline.
• 12:00
  On x and their blog, the Iowa Corn Growers Association praised Reynolds' decision, calling it, quote, a win for Iowa's corn farmers, ethanol industry, and economy.
• 12:10
  They argued that the carbon capture sequestration technology will allow Iowa to capitalize on sustainable aviation fuel markets with jet fuel demand projected at a 120,000,000,000
• 12:21
  gallons by 2035.
• 12:23
  However, people like Benjamin Ranish
• 12:26
  shot back at the Iowa Corn Growers Association on x,
• 12:30
  stating that farmers,
• 12:31
  were full scale against this. And and to prove this point, he was, sharing the, the form that you need to request the checkoff money back. Because in Iowa, you pay in this checkoff money automatically, but you can request that money back. And he thought that this would be a good thing to do since,
• 12:49
  according to his words,
• 12:51
  donors were more important,
• 12:53
  than farmers were.
• 12:55
  A, farmer source
• 12:57
  that, I spoke to earlier today
• 13:00
  shared similar sentiment, noting that Iowa Corn Growers has multiple board members that also serve on the renewable fuels board,
• 13:07
  suggesting that perhaps they were confusing
• 13:11
  the the two organizations
• 13:12
  suggesting that, yes, they serve on both boards, but they do those two boards serve different interests. Renewable fuels is not the exact same thing as the corn growers. House speaker Pat Grassley called for a special session to override the veto, and, governor Reynolds defended her decision arguing the bill would threaten Iowa's leadership and economic competitiveness,
• 13:33
  noting that other Midwestern states are moving forward with the carbon capture.
• 13:38
  Taylor, the Iowa corn growers, must have regretted this blog because after they posted it, it got a lot of feedback on x. They decided to delete the post and deleted their their,
• 13:50
  blog. So what's your take on the tension between, what's going on with Iowa corn growers and their members?
• 13:57
  Unknown: Well, the thing that gave me a chuckle out of this, and I don't I'm not not making humor out of the situation, but the fact that you can fill out a form and get your checkoff dollars back sounds a lot like the answer to conversation we just had about getting my member dues back. But,
• 14:12
  yeah, I this this I had to read this a couple times. I originally read it the other way. I'm
• 14:18
  I don't think this carbon pipeline is the correct way, at all. I I really I I know a lot about carbon sequestration. It's something that is,
• 14:27
  fascinated me from the beginning, and I fully believe the most cost efficient and most natural way is through photosynthesis, which we all learned in, whatever, middle school. Right? The way to use photosynthesis to put carbon back on the ground is more grazing animals, and that can be cows or any other ruminant animals. You've got scrubbers, and you have all these other types of things they can do. And I commend them for trying to,
• 14:49
  you know, use waste products from the ethanol plant to go store this stuff underground.
• 14:54
  I'm I am completely against eminent domain. I've never liked that term. I sold that property
• 15:00
  because I was always afraid that somebody's gonna four lane a road and take more of my little property and, you know, by eminent domain, and I wasn't gonna I was gonna lose a lot of value. So I feel for anybody that's worried about that pipeline coming through and that land, for lack of a better term, being stolen from them.
• 15:18
  The whole thing about ethanol and how much it does for farmers, I agree. But on a deeper level, I hate building these markets
• 15:27
  that are kinda propped up on
• 15:30
  things like this versus
• 15:34
  what corn could really be used for. Like,
• 15:37
  distillers grain comes from ethanol plants, which feeds a lot of cows. You know, we export a lot of number two, corn.
• 15:43
  I'm an engines guy. I don't put ethanol in anything. If anybody's seen a small motor that you put ethanol gas for, after you let it sit for a year, you won't put it in your stuff either.
• 15:52
  But that
• 15:54
  somebody built this ethanol
• 15:56
  market so to help farmers out. So the last thing I ever wanna see is land get turned into housing tracks. I wanna see it stay as agricultural land. I have very mixed feelings about this one.
• 16:06
  Again, I don't like eminent domain. I I think it would have been neat if Iowa could block this. But I understand the governor's stance a little bit about this being a good revenue source for the for the farmers.
• 16:17
  Unknown: Yeah. What I found so interesting about this particular issue is the governor vetoes it, and then Iowa corn growers comes out and celebrates it, where there are going to be,
• 16:27
  many losers in this situation and then some big winners. And it was interesting to me. I kinda feel like,
• 16:34
  a lot of,
• 16:35
  ag was really late to the party on social media. So for a long time, they didn't respond to anything that was going on in social media. And now when something comes out, they've now gone to the other poll where they respond to everything. Hey. We wanna celebrate these things where we wanna knock these things. And this one clearly,
• 16:54
  did not sit well with some of their membership. So maybe they were supporting some of their members, but other people were really upset about this. Like, why are you supporting this? I don't want this. And, they went most of the day leaving that post up. And then when I went to actually check it right before the show, they had they had taken it down. So Iowa corn growers, you gotta give them credit. Maybe they're listening to their members?
• 17:16
  Unknown: I hope they are, honestly. Because that's what I was gonna say is
• 17:20
  I think even with our political spectrum, there's some of us that
• 17:24
  we we like, we're like, what farmers are they talking to when they pass this policy? Because the tribe that I run-in doesn't want these things. You last time you and I spoke, there was a big government handout coming down, and all of us agreed that it wasn't gonna help farmers. It's gonna go right through us, right to the tractor dealerships and all the big corporations. And it felt just like a lot of hand wringing from the pass the money from the from the government to the organizations as a feel good thing. So
• 17:49
  if the Iowa Corn Growers Association is actually listening to their members,
• 17:53
  more power to them. I I can appreciate that.
• 17:56
  Unknown: Well, you know, fuck eminent domain. There should never be a reason that the government comes through and says, you know, we we're gonna whether if you didn't accept the price that we were willing to pay, we're just gonna take it. One of the things that I think is so interesting is you look at pictures from China where they build these giant skyscrapers,
• 18:14
  they build these big, huge roads,
• 18:16
  and there's one hold out there that didn't wanna sell. They don't knock their house down. In communist China, if you don't wanna sell, your house stays, and the building goes up around you. It's kind of interesting to think about that in terms of,
• 18:29
  The United States where we always perceive ourselves to be the land of the free.
• 18:34
  Alright. Moving on to headline number three. This is one that you sent to me, Taylor, and it was about,
• 18:40
  what secretary Rollins
• 18:42
  has to say about solar farms. So why don't we let her go ahead and say it in her own words here? Thing I'll say is I spent my summers on our family's row crop farm in Minnesota,
• 18:52
  Unknown: and we would fly from Texas to Saint Paul every summer when I was growing up working up there. Take the hour drive from Saint Paul up to Clear Lake, Minnesota
• 18:59
  through the most beautiful farmland you've ever seen. And in the, well, fifty three years that I have been making that drive,
• 19:08
  watching the solar panels take over
• 19:11
  all of that farmland in that 72 mile drive is heartbreaking.
• 19:16
  And so not only is it important for national security, not only is it important for the preservation of our smaller family farms, not only is it important for our row croppers where that land is being taken off, but it's important for the fabric of America
• 19:28
  that we're not selling away
• 19:30
  this farmland for solar panels funded
• 19:33
  by, you know, some some some interesting things. So, yes, I am 100% on board. Anything I can do to help on that, I am at your beck and call.
• 19:42
  Unknown: So this came out, and, I actually a little bit of of looking around about, you know, how big of a deal is this.
• 19:50
  He described the emotional impact of seeing this, but but where's the data? So the USDA data shows that from 2012 to 2020, 43%
• 19:58
  of new solar projects were installed on active crop fields with 15%
• 20:03
  of those sites losing all agricultural use. The Midwest leads with 70% of solar installations
• 20:09
  on cropland followed by the Atlantic Region
• 20:12
  at 43%.
• 20:14
  But you gotta put this in context.
• 20:16
  While it's 424,000
• 20:18
  acres affected by solar farms, it's pretty small compared to the 897,000,000
• 20:24
  acres of total farmland.
• 20:26
  And, the Department of Energy solar future study,
• 20:29
  they are trying to double solar installations by 2030.
• 20:33
  And what I found was interesting about this particular post on x was right beneath it, Elon Musk said, he agreed and that maybe they should start installing,
• 20:43
  on the plentiful deserts that we have. So, Taylor, what do you think? Should the secretary of ag be saying that she will do whatever she can to keep farmland as farmland, or is that an overstep of her office?
• 20:57
  Unknown: I I appreciate her saying what she's saying because I think I I truly believe that her meaning is probably a similar meaning to what I have, but I don't think it's her right or the government's right to tell me what the heck I can do on my land.
• 21:10
  I love solar. I love the technology of solar. I have solar chargers that run my fences on you know, my electric fences, so how I rotate my cattle around. I would love to have enough solar on one of my old barns to run my whole farm here so I don't have to deal with the power company because they're a big corporate entity.
• 21:26
  I don't think you should
• 21:29
  I think solar should be put on the top of every zone commercial building, every parking lot that reflects the heat back before it's ever put on any green space. The three things we need to survive in this world are food, water, and shelter.
• 21:43
  We need to have a correct proportion of green space for photosynthesis,
• 21:47
  for air, for food production. Everything has to be in balance.
• 21:51
  Let's not take up the land that
• 21:54
  is
• 21:55
  used for food production and
• 21:58
  all of those
• 22:00
  I don't know. You can't undo that. You can't really take that put that genie back in the bottle. I've been I've duck hunted under wind farms in Kansas.
• 22:08
  I have been around grazing,
• 22:10
  sheep grazing operations that graze under solar panels.
• 22:14
  When I was laying in the duck blind or looking at those sheep, it was not the same.
• 22:18
  It wasn't the same experience, and that's a little bit of, you know, hoodoo stuff. But that's just my my personal opinion. I'm not against solar, but I wanna see
• 22:27
  us stack solar on top of other places where we've already used up our land before we ever touch agriculture land.
• 22:35
  Unknown: When she starts bringing up things like, oh, this is a national security issue, man, I bristle with with that because anytime you start putting those kinds of words out there, it starts giving the government the authority to do things that I wouldn't want them to do. I can imagine that,
• 22:51
  you might have some local level where you say, hey. We have agreed on the on the county level or this kinda township level. We're not gonna put these things up. But when you get up to the federal bureaucracy
• 23:02
  deciding what how who you can sell your land to and for what purpose, I despise that. That being
• 23:09
  said, so much of the money that is funneling into this is through
• 23:13
  the, you know, tax breaks and incentives that the government has been making for, you know, the this sort of electricity
• 23:21
  generation.
• 23:21
  And so if you wanna go if you really believe it's a national security threat, go wipe out all of that stuff and then come back and figure out how can we give as much local control to these people as possible.
• 23:33
  But then you look at it and you say, well, in Iowa, the local control that the governor kept him from being able to prevent imminent domain, so maybe that won't work either.
• 23:41
  Unknown: Yeah. No. I mean, I don't disagree with you there. I like to see politics work from the bottom up. That's why I think our system's broken. They shouldn't be able to live in DC for more than four years, and they should have to come back to their communities
• 23:52
  and hear our problems. And it's the same thing. I don't want any direction from inside that Washington, DC Beltway.
• 23:58
  Unknown: Well, that's gonna do it for this week's headlines. If you have any stories you think I should cover on the Ag Tribes report, you can always send them to vance@legacyinterviews.com
• 24:08
  or send them to me via dmonx@VanceCrowe.
• 24:13
  Alright. Moving on to the Bitcoin land price report. Taylor, the last time that you were on the the show,
• 24:19
  Bitcoin was priced at $96,900
• 24:22
  and today we're sitting at a $107,562
• 24:28
  which is up about 11%
• 24:30
  from last December.
• 24:32
  So,
• 24:32
  Taylor, you are in Union County, North Carolina.
• 24:37
  When we spoke last, land prices were at 15,000
• 24:40
  an acre.
• 24:41
  Is it still the same?
• 24:43
  Unknown: No. It just happens that between that time and now, there's been four large, I would say, farmable sized tracks around me.
• 24:51
  And they're all sitting at $19,000
• 24:53
  an acre, somewhere in that range, 18 to 19. None of them have sold, and I know a lot of the big farmers have kinda looked at the land, and nobody
• 25:01
  nobody's even flinched. They we we all know the only people that can afford that is a developer chunking up these pieces of land and turning them into tract houses.
• 25:08
  Unknown: Man, that is a huge jump up in price. The the you think there is there a lot of pressure to develop that? There's a lot of houses that that, people are wanting to buy there? Yeah. We're one county over from Charlotte, North Carolina, and our county has pretty much said they don't care about agriculture. They care about economic development.
• 25:26
  Unknown: Some of the other counties have have changed their tune, which is sad because this was a this is a huge Agriculture County. At one time, we were the biggest poultry producing county in the nation.
• 25:36
  But seems like the people that are running the county right now don't care about that. So
• 25:41
  Unknown: Well, even though they haven't sold, why don't we just put this into the tabulation? So if Bitcoin's sitting at a 107,000
• 25:47
  and you're saying land around you is going for 19,000,
• 25:52
  then that means,
• 25:53
  one acre of land will cost you 0.1775
• 25:57
  Bitcoin,
• 25:58
  or 1 Bitcoin would buy you 5.6
• 26:02
  acres
• 26:03
  of, of farm ground where you're at.
• 26:06
  So, this is interesting because that means land prices have jumped $4,000
• 26:11
  since your last,
• 26:12
  since you were last year, meaning 27%
• 26:15
  increase, and while bitcoin only jumped 11%
• 26:18
  during the same period. So what do you think? Would you rather own,
• 26:23
  land in Union County for its appreciation, or would you rather own Bitcoin?
• 26:27
  Unknown: Well, luckily, I own a little of both, but they redid a tax assessment this year, so
• 26:32
  that hurts.
• 26:33
  No. You actually got me into Bitcoin. But, honestly, right now, with where my goals are in life, I wish I had a little more land
• 26:39
  is my my personal opinion.
• 26:41
  Yeah. So you did buy Bitcoin. What was your, what was your experience of of going through that? It was good, and it was simple. And I'm not even though I've worked in technology, I'm not I'm not somebody who loves technology, but it was pretty easy to navigate.
• 26:55
  Unknown: Well, if you are interested in buying Bitcoin,
• 26:58
  River is the, the one that has been best for me.
• 27:02
  And if you buy Bitcoin using the, show code, the you the link that provided in the show, that will both, get you some great Bitcoin, but it'll also support the show. So consider buying it on river.com.
• 27:14
  Alright. Moving on to the Peter Thiel paradox.
• 27:16
  Unknown: This is where I'm gonna ask Taylor, what is one thing that you believe that almost nobody in your ag tribe agrees with you on? I'm glad you said almost nobody because I'll give him credit. Jerry McDaniel said this on Twitter the other day, and it got me thinking. This probably wasn't my thoughts two years ago when I decided to leave NASCAR to get into ranching.
• 27:36
  I believe now is the best time to get into cows even though we're at historic market highs. And the reason I say that is because,
• 27:44
  running cattle, whether you're in a grass situation like me or a feedlot, you generally have a carrying capacity of your farmer ranch.
• 27:50
  That means you can feed x amount of cows no matter whether the market is up or down. So when the market is up, you have much higher revenue.
• 27:58
  So when you have that higher revenue, your money has more time to compound. Now please note I did not say that you need to run out and buy $4,000
• 28:05
  pairs and the top of the line cows. You need to know your numbers very well and educate yourself on the classes of animals
• 28:11
  and and use the marketing tools that we have at to our discretion, whether that's hedging or anything like that,
• 28:18
  and and work on your marketing and your business acumen as hard as you work on your production.
• 28:23
  And there is there it is a good time to be in cattle because it can get in my case, it can get me to scale faster than if cattle were one quarter of the price that they were like they were five years ago.
• 28:35
  Unknown: So it's so funny you bring this up. So yesterday, I was in, North Dakota. I was at the Bushel,
• 28:41
  Buddy Seat Conference, and I was talking with a banker from Rabobank, and he said,
• 28:46
  yeah. I was talking with another banker the other day, and he said, hey. What do you think? Should I should I get into cattle? What should I do? And and, the banker said, well, what do you think? And he's like, I think it's a really good time, and I think everybody's starting to think that. And so the the banker was like, so that's when I knew it's not a good time to get into cattle. But you're saying literally the direct opposite. You're saying, hey. Market highs,
• 29:06
  Unknown: Everybody thinks that it's not a good time to get in, so maybe let's get in. I'm saying yes, but yes. But what I'm also saying is do not listen to your banker. Do not go borrow money on a long term note at 8% interest. Don't let them tie you up in that. Your business is different than their business. I'm saying learn your numbers, learn where the opportunities are, and learn
• 29:26
  and because the cattle values are high, use that to your advantage to make money quickly and let that money compound.
• 29:33
  That way, when cattle the cattle market goes back and drops, you have plenty of money to buy as many cows as you want.
• 29:39
  Unknown: Well, I do think that this is, a countercultural
• 29:43
  idea, but you said it yourself. You're standing behind Paul Bunyan,
• 29:47
  Jared McDaniel, and you're being like, hey. This is, this is something nobody agrees with me on, but that is the guy that wields a really big ax. So I'm gonna give you a seven five on this one, Taylor. Okay.
• 30:00
  Alright. Moving right along to the worthy adversary, this is where we try and get ourselves out of the, ideological
• 30:07
  echo chambers that we live in where, we only really talk and communicate and, and share ideas with people that we already agree with. So I love asking people about your worthy adversary.
• 30:19
  Who is somebody that you really respect but you strongly disagree with?
• 30:24
  Unknown: I'm actually gonna go back to our ag secretary, Brooke Rollins. I do have a lot of respect for her. I've been keeping track of what she's actually been doing. And now that she's being more vocal about things, I think she is getting stuff done. But there's a ideology within farming I don't agree with. And when I chat GPT who's the latest one to use this slogan, it was her. And it's that we need to get more efficient to feed the world.
• 30:45
  That's absolute BS in my opinion. We waste 1,300,000,000
• 30:49
  tons of food per year. We would only need 25%
• 30:54
  of that waste to end food shortages. So rather than work on
• 30:59
  a bigger tractor that's more efficient or this or that or carbon, like, why don't we go to the root cause
• 31:06
  of not wasting food? When's the last time you threw out leftovers?
• 31:10
  You know,
• 31:11
  we we could
• 31:13
  we have enough wasted food to solve our world this is just what chat g p t just told me based off statistics. But to solve our world hunger issue four times over in a year.
• 31:23
  So that's my worthy adversary. Anybody that hides behind that guys of of their marketing, that's not true. Let's if if that's true, if that's your initiative, feed the world. Let's work on the real problems.
• 31:33
  Unknown: Yeah. It's been interesting because clearly,
• 31:36
  this used to be the mantra of why you had to always do higher and higher seed populations to plant. You needed to push those rows closer and closer together because all the seed companies were like, we gotta produce as much as possible, feed the world, feed the world, but we know that we actually have a population
• 31:51
  collapse coming. And I think a lot of these ag companies have stopped saying that. They got pushback. What I wanna know is who's gonna be the major ag company to come out and say,
• 32:02
  what we need to do is not produce more. We need to diversify. We need to do things, you know, slower and and focus on quality.
• 32:10
  I don't think that's a marketing
• 32:13
  Unknown: slogan that's coming anytime soon. What do you think? I agree. Because that it's the same way, like, low input low input production never gets
• 32:22
  glamorized. Right? Because there's nothing to sell us. We wanna do more with less. We don't wanna buy more crap. We don't want more money taken out of our pockets. We can control the input side. We can't control the market. So, you know, that's why it's not pushed.
• 32:35
  Unknown: Well, it is good to hear that you respect Brooke Rollins.
• 32:38
  It's I'm a roller coaster on that one. Sometimes I think she's like a super FFA officer, and other times I think like, hey. She she knows what she's talking about. So it's, it's good to have that, respect put out there.
• 32:51
  Alright. So this is gonna wrap up the show, but Father's Day is just around the corner. You are a new dad, so I'm gonna throw a curveball at you
• 33:01
  and ask you, you know, what is one trait about your father or a father figure in your life that you really wanna emulate while raising your new baby child?
• 33:12
  Unknown: I know that I'm blessed to have amazing men in my family, and I hope that the trait that I emulate is
• 33:20
  tough love
• 33:22
  and never
• 33:23
  and and encouragement to pursue whatever makes you happy in life. Not money, happiness.
• 33:30
  We know, however that looks, whether that's racing, whether that's quitting racing to go back cattle farming, the support to do whatever you want as long as you are happy and fulfilled.
• 33:38
  Unknown: That sounds,
• 33:39
  absolutely great, man. So,
• 33:43
  Taylor, you why don't you talk a little bit about where people can find out more about,
• 33:47
  you and what you're working on, what,
• 33:49
  and the land trust, really.
• 33:51
  Unknown: Oh, sure. Yeah. Find to find out about me or anywhere, Taylor Seymour on all social platforms, Ridgeview Land and Cattle. And then, yeah, I work with Land Trust, landtrust.com.
• 34:00
  Please go there. Leave us a message. We're real people. You can call the number, and you'll talk to us. That's taylor@landtrust.com.
• 34:07
  But we are we are a company that helps farmers, ranchers, and landowners make more money.
• 34:13
  That's it. And it's not an extractive process by any means. We help you stack another
• 34:18
  revenue layer on the acres you already own and are paying taxes on.
• 34:22
  That's that's our bread and butter.
• 34:24
  Unknown: Well, Taylor, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it, and, thanks for, banging issues at me all this week. This has made this made the show great. Yeah. Thanks, Vance.
• 34:35
  Alright. It is Father's Day coming up like I was talking about with Taylor. If you are interested in getting your father a gift that will be profound not just for him, but for future generations who will get to hear his stories,
• 34:48
  find out about how he lived his life, what his life was like growing up, what he aspired to, what he did, and how he got through the many challenges
• 34:57
  that face our fathers,
• 34:59
  then go to legacyinterviews.com.
• 35:02
  You can sign up, to have a quick conversation with me. We still have, a little bit of time. We can make sure you can wrap this up as a gift for your dad. I assure you that this will be a gift that you are not only giving him, you're giving yourself and you are giving future generations.
• 35:17
  It is, a truly powerful thing to have somebody give have the experience of telling their stories.
• 35:23
  Alright. That's gonna do it for the, Ag Tribes Report this week. We'll be back next week with John Kempf,
• 35:30
  the, Amish regenerative farmer who is coming out with, believe it or not, his own AI agronomist. I'm looking forward to that, and we'll see you next Thursday. But as always,
• 35:42
  feel free to disagree.