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From Drilled: Carbon Cowboys · Question Everything

0:03
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody.
0:07
Speaker 2: It's Brian. On Tuesday, June 16th, I'm going to be
0:11
Speaker 2: live on stage in New York interviewing Ashley St.
0:14
Speaker 3: Clair.
0:14
Speaker 2: Ashley used to date Elon Musk. They have a kid together.
0:18
Speaker 2: And the reason I've been wanting to interview her is
0:20
Speaker 2: she was the target of a terrible harassment campaign by
0:23
Speaker 2: Musk's supporters who used his AI service, Grok, to make
0:27
Speaker 2: all these hyper-realistic, sexually explicit images of Ashley without her consent,
0:31
Speaker 2: including images of her when she was as young as 14.
0:34
Speaker 2: These images were spread around X, used to humiliate Ashley.
0:37
Speaker 2: And she's now suing Musk's AI company, XAI, for allowing
0:42
Speaker 2: users to do this to her with its product. And surprise, surprise,
0:46
Speaker 2: XAI is trying to use Section 230 to shield themselves
0:50
Speaker 2: from liability. It's one of the first cases where Section
0:53
Speaker 2: 230 is being invoked to protect generative AI in this way.
0:56
Speaker 2: So Ashley and I are going to dig into that
0:58
Speaker 2: on stage. And also, she is just in such a
1:01
Speaker 2: singular situation where she has this intimate personal relationship with
1:05
Speaker 2: the man who owns the technology and platform that was
1:09
Speaker 2: used to harass her, who also just happens to be
1:12
Speaker 2: the world's richest man. So we're going to talk about
1:14
Speaker 2: what that's like. If you will be in New York
1:17
Speaker 2: on June 16th at 6.30 p.m. and are interested in
1:20
Speaker 2: coming to this, it's mostly filled up, but we have
1:22
Speaker 2: a handful of tickets available today. And we're going to
1:24
Speaker 2: give them out randomly to anyone who signs up for
1:27
Speaker 2: our free Question Everything sub stack before next Thursday, June 11th.
1:31
Speaker 2: You go sign up there before June 11th. We will
1:33
Speaker 2: do a little drawing to give out these tickets to
1:36
Speaker 2: the live taping of my interview with Ashley St. Clair
1:38
Speaker 2: in New York. OK, this week, while we're prepping for
1:44
Speaker 2: that live event and also a bunch of great new
1:46
Speaker 2: shows we have coming up for you, we're showing the
1:48
Speaker 2: first episode of a new season of Drilled, a podcast
1:51
Speaker 2: about the climate and energy industry. hosted by reporter Amy Westerbelt.
1:55
Speaker 2: Amy's great. I've admired her reporting for a long time.
1:58
Speaker 2: She focuses on document-heavy, follow-the-money reporting on a topic that
2:01
Speaker 2: is not easy to cover. The mystery she's taking on
2:04
Speaker 2: in this season of Drilled, a hospital in a Brazilian
2:07
Speaker 2: farm town has a new maternity ward that is named
2:10
Speaker 2: after Bruce Rastetter. Not a Brazilian, if you can't tell
2:13
Speaker 2: by the name. The staff at the hospital think Rastetter's
2:16
Speaker 2: a doctor from Ohio, but he isn't. He's a Republican
2:20
Speaker 2: pork entrepreneur from Iowa. Amy's been partnering with a reporting
2:26
Speaker 2: team in Brazil from The Intercept to figure out why
2:29
Speaker 2: Rastetter's name ended up on that hospital ward and the
2:33
Speaker 2: implications it has for energy policy, the environment, and politics.
2:37
Speaker 2: After a quick break, we'll hear the first episode of
2:39
Speaker 2: Drilled from Amy.
2:54
Speaker 4: In early September 2025, a handful of Brazilian government officials
2:59
Speaker 4: headed to North Dakota.
3:01
Speaker 5: On a mission.
3:02
Speaker 4: It was a technical mission. They were there to see
3:05
Speaker 4: a shiny new green technology in action. The idea behind
3:10
Speaker 4: this new technology was simple. When you turn corn into ethanol,
3:14
Speaker 4: it generates carbon dioxide. And that's a problem if you're
3:18
Speaker 4: trying to be a green fuel. But now, people from
3:22
Speaker 4: Iowa to North Dakota were capturing that carbon dioxide, storing it,
3:27
Speaker 4: and selling it. Never mind that they were selling it
3:31
Speaker 4: to people who would inject it underground to get more
3:34
Speaker 4: oil out. Some of it would surely still stay underground,
3:38
Speaker 4: and if you tilted your head and squinted a bit,
3:41
Speaker 4: that made it a climate solution. The American company selling
3:46
Speaker 4: the Brazilians on this idea had a lot riding on
3:50
Speaker 4: these officials believing that carbon capture connected to ethanol was
3:54
Speaker 4: a great green success story. Win-win for industry and the environment.
3:59
Speaker 4: An American dream they could take home to Brazil. But
4:03
Speaker 4: had the visiting bureaucrats scanned the local newspapers, they might
4:07
Speaker 4: have found a different story.
4:09
Speaker 1: If you live in Iowa, your land, your water, and
4:12
Speaker 1: your voice could all be at risk thanks to a
4:14
Speaker 1: man named Bruce Rastetter.
4:17
Speaker 6: You know, essentially paying him to capture CO2 at ethanol
4:23
Speaker 6: plants and then shipping it across private land and public
4:28
Speaker 6: land and then disposing of it somewhere many states away.
4:33
Speaker 4: On September 2nd, the Brazilian contingent met with an Iowa
4:37
Speaker 4: company called Summit Carbon Solutions. Summit has been trying for
4:41
Speaker 4: years to build a carbon capture pipeline to connect dozens
4:45
Speaker 4: of ethanol plants from Iowa to North Dakota. It's called
4:49
Speaker 4: the Midwest Carbon Express Project. Harold Hamm, who controls many
4:58
Speaker 4: of North Dakota's oil fields and is an energy advisor
5:02
Speaker 4: to President Trump, is a major investor in the company.
5:06
Speaker 4: Bruce Rastetter is the company's co-founder. He's also a founder
5:10
Speaker 4: and executive chairman of its parent company, Summit Agricultural Group.
5:15
Speaker 4: For all their cheerleading of the project to visitors, the
5:18
Speaker 4: summit pipeline is years behind schedule and facing multiple political
5:23
Speaker 4: and legal roadblocks. In fact, it's managed to do what
5:27
Speaker 4: almost no politician, issue, or campaign has been able to
5:30
Speaker 4: do in the U.S. for years, united far-left and far-right populace.
5:36
Speaker 4: People from both sides hate this pipeline. For Rastetter, it's
5:42
Speaker 4: not the first time he's faced opposition, especially in his
5:46
Speaker 4: home state of Iowa.
5:48
Speaker 7: Anyone who remotely follows politics or agriculture, you say Rastetter,
5:53
Speaker 7: you're going to.
5:53
Speaker 3: Get a response.
5:55
Speaker 4: Jess Mazur is the conservation coordinator for the Sierra Club, Iowa.
5:59
Speaker 5: For Jess, the carbon.
6:00
Speaker 4: Pipeline was not the first time she dealt with Bruce Rastetter.
6:04
Speaker 7: They know who it is and they go, oh, you know,
6:06
Speaker 7: that guy did this or that guy put a factory
6:08
Speaker 7: farm near my house or... He's the one that, you know,
6:12
Speaker 7: got Iowa State in trouble. So I think everyone's got
6:14
Speaker 7: an opinion of him. And he's really, really good at
6:18
Speaker 7: being able to avoid ever having to be in the public.
6:23
Speaker 7: He doesn't get interviewed. He doesn't take media requests. Kind
6:27
Speaker 7: of secretive. He lives out in the middle of nowhere
6:30
Speaker 7: in Hardin County, Iowa.
6:32
Speaker 4: Rastetter got his start as a big hog farmer. From there,
6:35
Speaker 4: it wasn't a big leap to growing corn. And then,
6:38
Speaker 4: like a lot of corn growers, that led quickly to
6:40
Speaker 4: getting into the corn ethanol business. As a longtime climate reporter,
6:49
Speaker 4: I keep waiting for people to stop calling corn ethanol green.
6:54
Speaker 4: Its current footprint is similar to regular old gas. It
6:57
Speaker 4: requires around 30 times as much land as solar, plus
7:02
Speaker 4: lots of water and chemical pesticides and fertilizers. But industrial
7:07
Speaker 4: agriculture gets loads of subsidies from it, so they're always
7:11
Speaker 4: finding a way to keep it alive. And in 2022,
7:14
Speaker 4: Congress handed it its latest lifeline.
7:17
Speaker 1: The Inflation Reduction Act contains some really incredible things for
7:22
Speaker 1: our shareholders. It contains sustainable aviation fuel. We think that's
7:26
Speaker 1: an incredible part of decarbonizing the planet.
7:30
Speaker 4: The Inflation Reduction Act, Biden's big climate policy, created a
7:34
Speaker 4: whole new revenue stream for the corn ethanol guys. Now
7:38
Speaker 4: they could sell to airlines, but only if they embraced
7:41
Speaker 4: carbon capture. Bruce Rastetter to the rescue.
7:46
Speaker 8: So I think without continuing to attain new markets, the
7:50
Speaker 8: ethanol industry is in jeopardy. So that's what lowering carbon scores,
7:56
Speaker 8: this project on the pipeline, is about with 34 ethanol
8:01
Speaker 8: plants across the upper Midwest, but in particular Iowa.
8:04
Speaker 4: Summit Carbon Solutions still talks about the project today as
8:08
Speaker 4: a way to open up new markets for Iowa corn farmers.
8:11
Speaker 4: So the company was caught off guard when people across
8:14
Speaker 4: multiple states began organizing against the Midwest Carbon Express. And
8:20
Speaker 4: it quickly became a big problem because Rastetter was not just.
8:24
Speaker 5: The ethanol kingpin of Iowa.
8:27
Speaker 4: His company was also the majority owner of a Brazilian
8:30
Speaker 4: ag company, FS Fueling Sustainability, and he'd helped to make
8:35
Speaker 4: corn ethanol a thing in Brazil too. Now Summit is
8:39
Speaker 4: trying to make carbon capture happen there too. Welcome to Drilled,
8:46
Speaker 4: Season 15, Carbon Cowboys. I'm Amy Westervelt, and this season
8:51
Speaker 4: we've partnered with the amazing reporters at The Intercept Brazil
8:54
Speaker 4: to learn more about what Rastetter is doing down there.
8:58
Speaker 3: I'm Felipe Sabrina with The Intercept Brazil. I will be
9:02
Speaker 3: hosting the Portuguese version of the season over on the
9:05
Speaker 3: Intercept Brazil feed. This is a story about how the
9:09
Speaker 3: ethanol kingpin of Iowa became the king of corn in Brazil.
9:13
Speaker 4: And how a bunch of ideas that are great for
9:15
Speaker 4: the oil and ag industries got rebranded as climate solutions
9:19
Speaker 4: and created a carbon gold rush. A few months ago,
9:31
Speaker 4: Felipe started telling me about this giant pig statue that
9:35
Speaker 4: greets people near Bruce Rastetter's home base in Brazil. Because, yes,
9:40
Speaker 4: his partners in Brazil also started out as pig farmers.
9:44
Speaker 4: These guys are all still in the pig business, and boy,
9:47
Speaker 4: do they love pigs. When Felipe sent me a picture
9:50
Speaker 4: of this pig statue, I was kind of shook. If
9:53
Speaker 4: you're imagining some sort of tasteful bronze statue, think again.
9:58
Speaker 4: This is a massive pig. porky pig looking thing wearing
10:02
Speaker 4: lederhosen and a bright green hat holding a corncob.
10:06
Speaker 3: And it even has a name, Luquinha or Little Lucas,
10:11
Speaker 3: because the town is called Lucas do Rio Verde. It
10:14
Speaker 3: tells you actually a lot about this place. It was
10:17
Speaker 3: proposed by one of the largest landowners in the area,
10:20
Speaker 3: big agriculture business guy. He comes from a German family,
10:24
Speaker 3: which is why the pig is wearing a German outfit.
10:28
Speaker 3: Around 50 years ago, the Brazilian agriculture industry came to
10:32
Speaker 3: this place looking for a cheap and easy land grab. Today,
10:35
Speaker 3: the American agriculture industry is doing the same thing.
10:40
Speaker 4: You are in Lucas do Rio Verde, the city of opportunities.
10:45
Speaker 3: Here, the generation of jobs and quality of life meet.
10:50
Speaker 4: This audio you're listening to with the epic background music
10:53
Speaker 4: is from a promotional video by the Lucas do Rio
10:55
Speaker 4: Verde city government, highlighting the.
10:58
Speaker 5: Wonders of the city.
10:59
Speaker 4: The video mixes images of macaws, forests in the sunset,
11:04
Speaker 4: and large cotton, soybean, and cornfields. The city government wants
11:08
Speaker 4: you to know that Lucas is the city of opportunities.
11:12
Speaker 4: It has more than 95,000 inhabitants and produces more than
11:16
Speaker 4: 2 million tons of grain per year. The narrator of
11:20
Speaker 4: the video says, we are one of the fastest growing
11:23
Speaker 4: cities in Brazil. And then the screen fills with a
11:26
Speaker 4: mix of smiling children, crops, and grain pouring out of machines.
11:31
Speaker 4: Lucas do Rio Verde is all money, growth, and seas
11:34
Speaker 4: of corn and soybeans, as far as the eye can see.
11:37
Speaker 3: The first time I visited, it shocked me to see
11:41
Speaker 3: massive crops right next to people's homes. But the more
11:45
Speaker 3: I learned about Lucas, the more it made sense. The
11:49
Speaker 3: town is a fiction, designed and built by the government
11:53
Speaker 3: to impose development on this region. Lucas was entirely created
11:58
Speaker 3: to serve agriculture and its owners. The wide avenues are
12:03
Speaker 3: lined with silos, agricultural machinery stores, supply stores, credit banks
12:09
Speaker 3: and real estate agencies. Trucks over 20 meters long, loaded
12:14
Speaker 3: with soybeans or corn, have plenty of space to drive
12:17
Speaker 3: around or park on the curb. Walking in Lucas, on
12:21
Speaker 3: the other hand, is a challenge because of the distances
12:25
Speaker 3: between the long avenues, the heat and the lack of
12:28
Speaker 3: trees to provide shade. The city is obsessed with imperial
12:33
Speaker 3: palm trees. There are hundreds of them in the town
12:37
Speaker 3: center and on the sides of the roads. With nothing
12:42
Speaker 3: but monoculture crops and imported palm trees, There is no
12:46
Speaker 3: vegetation in the area to insulate it from extreme temperature changes.
12:52
Speaker 3: Lucas can go from freezing cold to unbelievably hot from
12:57
Speaker 3: one moment to the next. It was weird for me,
13:00
Speaker 3: but the people I spoke with here didn't seem to mind.
13:04
Speaker 3: The image of abundant harvests has drawn people from all
13:08
Speaker 3: over the country to Lucas.
13:09
Speaker 9: My husband spent two years without a job.
13:14
Speaker 10: My husband was unemployed for two years. Then we saw
13:18
Speaker 10: reports about the city, which is a very good place
13:20
Speaker 10: to live, to raise children, even in terms of violence.
13:24
Speaker 5: So we packed our bags.
13:27
Speaker 4: Isabella is from Minas Gerais, a Brazilian state southeast of Lucas.
13:32
Speaker 4: But since 2021, she's been living here with her husband
13:35
Speaker 4: and children.
13:37
Speaker 5: She sells açaí bowls in.
13:38
Speaker 4: Front of the parking lot of a multinational grain company.
13:42
Speaker 4: Acai is a fruit typical of the Amazon. Isabella buys
13:45
Speaker 4: it from suppliers and sells it to truck drivers.
13:48
Speaker 5: Who load and unload grain here.
13:51
Speaker 4: She passes small bowls of acai cream through the fence
13:55
Speaker 4: and the truckers pass back cash. Isabella said Lucas is great,
13:59
Speaker 4: not least because when she needs to take her kids
14:02
Speaker 4: to a public hospital, she never waits more than an
14:04
Speaker 4: hour to be seen.
14:07
Speaker 10: Me in the city, I don't think anyone can complain
14:11
Speaker 10: about health care.
14:12
Speaker 4: She says the Lucas do Rio Verde Hospital São Lucas
14:16
Speaker 4: in particular is especially nice. It's run today by a
14:20
Speaker 4: partnership between the city and agribusiness entrepreneurs.
14:29
Speaker 10: Now they've opened a really nice ward there too. The
14:32
Speaker 10: whole hospital has been renovated.
14:38
Speaker 9: In fact, the new maternity ward at the São Lucas
14:40
Speaker 9: Hospital has a promotional video too. And a few seconds
14:43
Speaker 9: into it, listeners might recognize a not-so-Brazilian-sounding name. A few
14:46
Speaker 9: seconds into it, listeners might recognize a not-so-Brazilian-sounding name.
15:07
Speaker 4: Bruce Rastetter, the ethanol kingpin of Iowa. He wields a
15:12
Speaker 4: lot of power there, but outside the state, he's not
15:16
Speaker 4: exactly a household name. Now suddenly a new wing in
15:20
Speaker 4: the hospital in this Brazilian farm town was being named
15:24
Speaker 4: after this guy?
15:25
Speaker 5: How did that happen?
15:26
Speaker 3: The hospital canceled my tour just before I arrived. So
15:31
Speaker 3: our producer, Marce Heverdoz, and I just showed up to
15:35
Speaker 3: see what we could see. We talked to a hospital
15:38
Speaker 3: worker in the hallway.
15:50
Speaker 4: It's a little hard to hear there because Felipe and
15:53
Speaker 4: Marcia were trying to tape with their phone. And of course,
15:56
Speaker 4: she's speaking in Portuguese, too. But when they asked her
15:59
Speaker 4: about the name of the ward, the Bruce Rastetter wing,
16:02
Speaker 4: she said it was named after Bruce, a doctor from Ohio.
16:06
Speaker 4: We're still not sure where she got that idea. But
16:09
Speaker 4: funding big public projects, especially around hospitals and healthcare, is
16:14
Speaker 4: really common in Brazil. You just heard how when telling
16:18
Speaker 4: Felipe about what she likes about Lucas, Isabella mentioned healthcare.
16:23
Speaker 4: People think of hospitals as an example of how nice
16:26
Speaker 4: a city is or how well it's working. So if
16:29
Speaker 4: Lucas has a good hospital, no one can say that
16:32
Speaker 4: the politicians or the businessmen running things here are bad.
16:36
Speaker 4: That goes double for anything that's focused on women and children.
16:40
Speaker 4: So a maternity ward checks.
16:42
Speaker 5: A lot of boxes.
16:45
Speaker 4: And then we found out that the hospital is run
16:48
Speaker 4: by a foundation led by one of Rastetter's Brazilian business partners,
16:52
Speaker 4: Merino Franz. Marino's brother Paolo was the one that proposed
16:56
Speaker 4: that giant pig statue that looks out over Lucas. And
16:59
Speaker 4: to understand how Rastetter, the American farmer, ended up with
17:02
Speaker 4: a Brazilian rural maternity ward named after him, we had
17:06
Speaker 4: to figure out how the Franz brothers fit into it
17:09
Speaker 4: and what brought Bruce to Brazil in the first place.
17:12
Speaker 4: That's coming up after the break. Lucas do Rio Verde
17:29
Speaker 4: is in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, a state
17:32
Speaker 4: that is almost exactly half agriculture and half Amazon rainforest.
17:38
Speaker 5: It used to be even more Amazon.
17:40
Speaker 4: For decades, the state was considered the frontier in Brazil.
17:44
Speaker 4: The forests were preserved and it was home to even
17:46
Speaker 4: more indigenous people than it is today. But in the
17:49
Speaker 4: 1960s and 1970s, Brazil's military government deployed a new strategy.
17:54
Speaker 4: It was called the National Integration Plan. The idea was
17:58
Speaker 4: to eliminate indigenous communities that were seen as anti-development and
18:02
Speaker 4: integrate the north and midwest of Brazil into the national economy.
18:06
Speaker 9: The revolution reaches the jungle.
18:10
Speaker 3: Each tree that falls writes.
18:12
Speaker 11: A story very different from those that populated.
18:14
Speaker 3: The land of the Sardinians.
18:16
Speaker 4: This propaganda film from the 70s celebrates the, quote, revolution
18:20
Speaker 4: reaching the jungle, toppling trees in favor of roads. The
18:25
Speaker 4: goal was to develop the Amazon by building infrastructure in
18:29
Speaker 4: the wilderness, displacing indigenous residents and encouraging people from outside
18:34
Speaker 4: the region to move there, to be pioneers and go
18:38
Speaker 4: to this frontier.
18:39
Speaker 5: And tame it.
18:41
Speaker 4: The main farm towns in Mato Grosso today were deliberate
18:44
Speaker 4: colonization projects, many of them built and funded by the
18:48
Speaker 4: Brazilian government. The government offered people plots of land, housing,
18:53
Speaker 4: and sometimes even.
18:54
Speaker 5: Credit to move there.
18:55
Speaker 4: They even funded research to figure out how crops like
18:59
Speaker 4: soybeans and cotton could be grown in the tropical climate there.
19:02
Speaker 4: That's what brought the Franz brothers there decades ago. And
19:06
Speaker 4: according to Paulo, it's the Franz brothers who brought Bruce
19:09
Speaker 4: to the area. And Paulo's telling it all happened because
19:17
Speaker 4: of an internship he did in Iowa and an important
19:20
Speaker 4: contact he made there. Here he is talking about it
19:23
Speaker 4: on a Brazilian podcast.
19:25
Speaker 10: Terry Branstad, the governor of Iowa at the time, and
19:29
Speaker 10: eventually U.S.
19:30
Speaker 3: Ambassador to China during Trump's first presidency.
19:43
Speaker 4: Paolo says they all went to soccer games together a lot.
19:46
Speaker 4: Paolo says it was Branstad who introduced him to Bruce Rastetter.
19:51
Speaker 4: Bruce is the CEO of the company, the founder.
19:58
Speaker 12: He has a huge passion for pigs and has been
20:00
Speaker 12: involved with pigs his whole life. He was a pig
20:03
Speaker 12: farmer until he started getting into ethanol, which is a
20:06
Speaker 12: very recent thing. I don't know whether, just to clarify,
20:10
Speaker 12: Americans produce more ethanol from corn than we do from
20:14
Speaker 12: sugar cane. There, the philosophy, the culture is producing ethanol
20:18
Speaker 12: from corn. So as president, I met with this Terry Branstad,
20:22
Speaker 12: who is the governor of Iowa. We met and he
20:25
Speaker 12: wanted to buy some land here in Brazil.
20:28
Speaker 4: Bruce doesn't mention any of this when he's asked about
20:30
Speaker 4: how he wound up in Brazil. Here's how he talked
20:33
Speaker 4: about it on a farming podcast a couple of years ago.
20:36
Speaker 3: So when we sold Hawkeye to Koch Industries.
20:40
Speaker 5: That was one of his ethanol companies.
20:42
Speaker 8: That freed me up for the first time to do
20:44
Speaker 8: other things outside of being responsible for a larger company
20:49
Speaker 8: and started traveling to Brazil.
20:51
Speaker 4: This is how Bruce talks about it in other interviews, too.
20:55
Speaker 4: He was interested in Brazil because it's the main agricultural
20:58
Speaker 4: competitor to the U.S.
20:59
Speaker 3: Or because other U.S.
21:01
Speaker 5: Companies had done well there, etc., etc.
21:04
Speaker 4: It was when we were trying to verify Bruce and
21:07
Speaker 4: Paolo's differing versions of this story that our Brazil editor,
21:12
Speaker 4: Alice de Souza, found a guy with yet another version.
21:18
Speaker 11: Is this pro-ethanol? Are you tree huckers? Are you looking
21:23
Speaker 11: at this from a negative standpoint? Or are you looking
21:27
Speaker 11: at it from a neutral standpoint?
21:29
Speaker 13: I don't mind being neutral. I can be critical of
21:31
Speaker 13: this too.
21:33
Speaker 11: But because clients of mine have invested upwards of a
21:37
Speaker 11: billion dollars now in my Progroso, I don't want to
21:40
Speaker 11: fuck this up.
21:42
Speaker 4: That's Corey Melby, an agriculture consultant in Brazil.
21:47
Speaker 11: Sort of developing land. So of course, when in the
21:51
Speaker 11: early 2000s, when Mapa Grosso and all of this soybean
21:55
Speaker 11: expansion was taking place, I was going to be the
21:57
Speaker 11: land guy for a group from some of the first
22:00
Speaker 11: guys I went down with. You're going to be here, Corey.
22:03
Speaker 9: Pick up the language, pick up the contacts.
22:06
Speaker 3: You can be the real estate guy.
22:07
Speaker 11: So that's where I started was from that perspective.
22:12
Speaker 4: Full disclosure, we paid Corey Melody to be a fixer
22:16
Speaker 4: for us on the ground in Mato Grosso.
22:18
Speaker 5: The idea was that he would take us.
22:20
Speaker 4: Around and ideally arrange a meeting with the brothers Franz
22:24
Speaker 4: at their farm. None of that ended up panning out,
22:28
Speaker 4: but he did talk to Felipe and I, and he
22:31
Speaker 4: told us a lot about how Bruce started out in Brazil.
22:36
Speaker 4: He also added me to his newsletter list, which is
22:39
Speaker 4: a wealth.
22:39
Speaker 5: Of ag knowledge about Brazil.
22:41
Speaker 4: Although it comes out so many times a week, I
22:43
Speaker 4: still have about 500 unread emails in a folder marked Corey.
22:48
Speaker 11: So I've been on every farm in my proposal. I
22:51
Speaker 11: wrote the boom times and the bus and the boom
22:55
Speaker 11: times and the bus again with all my friends. So I...
23:00
Speaker 11: You know, I have that 25-year arc of experience now
23:04
Speaker 11: of the good, bad, and ugly of Mato Grosso. And
23:06
Speaker 11: believe me, there's plenty of all of it.
23:09
Speaker 4: He knows a lot about Bruce and the Franz brothers
23:12
Speaker 4: because he did for Bruce what he's done for the
23:13
Speaker 4: past 25 years for other Americans looking to get into
23:17
Speaker 4: the ag business in Mato Grosso. He toured them around
23:20
Speaker 4: looking for land.
23:22
Speaker 11: Back in 2011, I was visiting Uriba and he was
23:26
Speaker 11: a young dynamic guy. And he would say, Corey, we're
23:29
Speaker 11: looking to develop a corn oil mill processing. And investors
23:38
Speaker 11: are partnering in that.
23:41
Speaker 12: Corn oil.
23:42
Speaker 11: So I was writing about this BS in my newsletters
23:45
Speaker 11: at the time and also visiting Lucas de Overtain at
23:50
Speaker 11: the elevators at the time, talking to climbers.
23:52
Speaker 13: Oh, corn ethanol, corn ethanol.
23:55
Speaker 11: We've got to get corn ethanol or we're going to
23:57
Speaker 11: bury ourselves.
24:01
Speaker 4: Because of his newsletter and his ties to various American
24:04
Speaker 4: ag folks, Corey has kind of become known as the
24:07
Speaker 4: guy to call if you're an American who wants to
24:10
Speaker 4: get a sense of Mato Grosso. So when people started
24:13
Speaker 4: talking about corn ethanol there, it was only a matter
24:16
Speaker 4: of time before he got a call from you-know-who.
24:19
Speaker 11: Summit from Iowa, which I'm sure you are very familiar with,
24:23
Speaker 11: Bruce Rastetter and Eric and the whole club. I get
24:27
Speaker 11: a call from Bruce's email, hey, we would like a
24:31
Speaker 11: tour of Marcoso. We're going to be down there for
24:37
Speaker 11: another reason. Could we do something a la carte.
24:41
Speaker 9: With you, Corey?
24:42
Speaker 4: They didn't want to take one of Corey's pre-packaged ag tours.
24:48
Speaker 8: So this is 2011.
24:48
Speaker 11: We do a little quick power tour.
24:52
Speaker 8: They go home.
24:53
Speaker 11: I figure out just another tour.
24:58
Speaker 1: We're looking at land.
24:59
Speaker 4: We'd love to get going on some land deals. Corey
25:01
Speaker 4: carried on, thinking nothing of it. But six months or
25:04
Speaker 4: so later, he got a call from some friends in
25:07
Speaker 4: Mato Grosso.
25:08
Speaker 11: My good friend, the Francis, you know, they were, Corey,
25:13
Speaker 11: we want to get an ethanol mill going out here,
25:16
Speaker 11: but we need help. We need America, we need capital,
25:19
Speaker 11: et cetera, et cetera. So I was telling Bruce and
25:22
Speaker 11: the guys at the time, you know, I've got friends
25:24
Speaker 11: out here that want to get into ethanol.
25:26
Speaker 7: That's why I got hands.
25:28
Speaker 4: According to Corey, at the time, Bruce and the guys
25:31
Speaker 4: weren't quite ready to get into the ethanol business in Brazil.
25:35
Speaker 4: They were just looking for some farmland. Then they came
25:38
Speaker 4: back for another trip, and as Corey tells it, this
25:42
Speaker 4: is when they met the Franzes.
25:43
Speaker 11: All of a sudden, you know, Brazilians being Brazilians, we've
25:47
Speaker 11: got a farm for sale.
25:48
Speaker 4: Corey helped broker the deal between Bruce and the Franzes,
25:51
Speaker 4: and it kept them all talking.
25:53
Speaker 11: Three years, the tolls on this damn farm. But that
25:57
Speaker 11: farm purchase then opened the door with trust and capital. Hey,
26:02
Speaker 11: let's build an ethanol mill and Lucas together.
26:07
Speaker 4: The Franz brothers had hit the big time. They were
26:09
Speaker 4: getting into business with the ethanol kingpin of Iowa. It
26:13
Speaker 4: was a whole new level, or as Corey calls it,
26:16
Speaker 4: cycle three.
26:17
Speaker 11: Cycle one is deforestation and cattle. Cycle two is soil.
26:24
Speaker 11: Cycle 2.5 is... Soy corn, basically, you know, the combination.
26:30
Speaker 11: Cycle three now is the, what we would say, industrial
26:35
Speaker 11: or added value.
26:37
Speaker 9: No different than Iowa.
26:40
Speaker 4: For the Franz brothers, Bruce was a white whale. At
26:43
Speaker 4: a time of booming Brazilian industrial agriculture, he happened to
26:47
Speaker 4: have some free time on his hands. And now this
26:50
Speaker 4: international king of corn had picked them.
26:54
Speaker 3: What luck.
26:55
Speaker 5: But that story misses one important detail.
26:58
Speaker 4: At the time he was doing land tours in Brazil,
27:01
Speaker 4: Bruce Rastetter was having a really bad time back home
27:05
Speaker 4: in Iowa.
27:06
Speaker 7: Since 2012, since that big land grab attempt in Africa,
27:10
Speaker 7: he has become a dirty word in Iowa.
27:13
Speaker 3: It's just, that's what he does.
27:15
Speaker 14: It's like his business model, you know, and whether it
27:18
Speaker 14: was in Iowa with the you know, how he was
27:22
Speaker 14: treating Iowa farmers or now it's globally. Yeah, he just
27:25
Speaker 14: keeps pushing his business advancement, right? It's all about his
27:29
Speaker 14: corporate profits.
27:31
Speaker 13: Friends of friends have said that he's kind of over
27:33
Speaker 13: Iowa and more interested in Brazil, which I mean, I
27:36
Speaker 13: suppose if I was in his shoes, if I had
27:38
Speaker 13: the choice of, you know, being at a place where
27:40
Speaker 13: everybody hated me and a place where people fawned over me,
27:42
Speaker 13: I'd probably go to the place where people fawned over me.
27:45
Speaker 5: That's our story next time.
27:50
Speaker 4: We reached out to Bruce Rastetter, Harold Hamm, the Franz Brothers,
27:54
Speaker 4: Miguel Vaz-Ribero, and all summit companies and Brazilian government agencies
27:59
Speaker 4: mentioned in this season for comment and have incorporated any
28:02
Speaker 4: responses we received throughout the season.
28:05
Speaker 3: Carbon Cowboys, Cowboys of the Cerrado, is a collaboration between
28:10
Speaker 3: Drilled and The Intercept Brazil.
28:12
Speaker 4: The show was reported and written by Felipe Sabrina and me,
28:16
Speaker 4: Amy Westervelt.
28:17
Speaker 3: Our editors are Audrey Queen in the U.S. and Alice
28:21
Speaker 3: de Souza in Brazil.
28:23
Speaker 4: Our senior producer and sound designer is Martin Zaltz-Ostwick. Audio
28:27
Speaker 4: production and sound design in Brazil by Marcia Heberdosa and
28:31
Speaker 4: Felipe Mux.
28:33
Speaker 3: Our impact producer is Lindsay Crowder. Theme song and original
28:37
Speaker 3: music by Eric Terena.
28:39
Speaker 4: Additional music by Martin Zaltz-Ostwick. Our engineer is Peter Duff.
28:44
Speaker 3: Artwork for Drilled is by Matt Fleming.
28:47
Speaker 11: U.S.
28:47
Speaker 5: Fact-checking from Naomi Barr.
28:50
Speaker 3: Brazil fact-checking by Estúdio Fronteira.
28:53
Speaker 4: Our First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton with the First
28:55
Speaker 4: Amendment Project. We are also proud members of ReporterShield. Big
29:00
Speaker 4: thanks also to Andrew Fishman, president of The Intercept Brazil.
29:05
Speaker 3: Drilled is distributed by Pushkin Industries.
29:08
Speaker 4: Huge thanks to the team there, including Greta Cohen, Eric Sandler,
29:12
Speaker 4: Grace Ross, Morgan Ratner, Owen Miller, Kira Posey, Jordan McMillan,
29:18
Speaker 4: Brian Shreberneck, and Jake Flanagan. To hear the Portuguese version
29:23
Speaker 4: of this series, head over to the Intercept Brazil's site
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Speaker 4: or search for the Intercept Brazil's podcast feed wherever you
29:30
Speaker 4: listen to podcasts.