Latest / The Vance Crowe Podcast / ATR Trent Loos: Property vs sales tax, Barges carrying less freight and solar rent checks

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ATR Trent Loos: Property vs sales tax, Barges carrying less freight and solar rent checks · The Vance Crowe Podcast

• Vance Crowe (04:25.476) Welcome to the Ag Tribes Report. I'm your host, Vance Crowe. Each week I bring a co -host to represent the perspectives of one of the many Ag Tribes that collectively make up U .S. agriculture. This week I am joined by Trent Luce. He is the host of several daily podcasts, including Luce Tales and Rural Route Radio, where he seeks to bridge the divide between rural and urban. Trent is the very definition of grassroots. Working on behalf of Protect Our Harvest and several other causes to protect U .S. farmland, Trent Luce, welcome to the Ag Tribes Report. Trent (05:01.941) Thanks, Vance. It's great to be with you. I'm not sure I want to be the co -host, though. That sounds like it brings about a lot of responsibility. Can I just be your guest? Vance Crowe (05:10.562) You could just be the guest, you have some responsibility here, because you've got to have an opinion on some of the stories. And I've known you for quite a while, and I don't think that's going to be a problem for you. So today we... Trent (05:22.115) an opinion I'll work on that I'll try to do better Vance Crowe (05:25.596) Today we are going to be covering the drought affecting barges that will be carrying the 2024 harvest, a proposal to end property tax in South Dakota that could change the country and take another look at the amount of crop land being taken out of production for quote unquote sustainable energy. Trent is also gonna share his Peter Thiel paradox and we will hear about his worthy adversary. So without further ado, since we're gonna try and get this all done in 30 minutes, let's jump straight into the headlines. This first story comes from Susan Stroud, who's been hammering this on her No Bull Ag newsletter. And that is that the Mississippi River is running low and it is going to cost somebody a lot more money to move freight down the Mississippi River. So what Susan is saying in her Twitter feed just last night, she was writing a bunch of threads on this, a line boat pushing a full -size 25 barge tow at full draft can carry two million bushels of soybeans to the US Gulf in one trip. But currently, you're gonna need not 25 barge tows, but instead 33 to transport the same amount of grain. That's because low water conditions on the lower Mississippi are limiting the capacity to 10 feet of draft, meaning the ship can only sit 10 feet in there. So what this is doing is it's causing freight to go 8 % higher than what it did last year. and 57 % up compared to the three year average. So Trent, as freight costs run higher, how does this impact how much the grain farmer is gonna make from selling his grain in a market that is flooded with grain right now? Trent (07:07.562) Well, we know that the grain farmer's not in a good position right now, but it's interesting, Vance, that we're talking about this because just one week ago today, a very longtime friend, in fact 33 years, Steven Dahme has been a friend of mine. He and his wife Shelly were on their way from Cape Girardeau, Cape Girardeau County, I should say. They live at Daisy, Missouri, and they were headed to Yellowstone. They stopped and spent the night here, and we had some wonderful discussions. And Steve is right now. on the path of being a Cape Girardeau County Commissioner. And one of the impetus for him to even get into the race to be a County Commissioner was the fact that they're hearing rumors that California is talking about building a pipeline from Southeast Missouri tapping into the underground water as well as the Missouri and the Mississippi River water. and he was like, we cannot afford to send water from this part of the country to California. He got into the race, first time he's ever been in pursuing any political position. He won the primary. He does not have a Democrat challenger in the general election. This is a real issue that everybody needs to be paying attention to because truth of the matter is we have the same amount of water on the planet that we had when Jesus walked the planet. The question is, where is that at and how much salt is in that water? and we need to understand these challenges that are in front of American food producers around the world. Vance Crowe (08:38.63) Well, I've never even heard of that. I mean, it doesn't surprise me that California is going around searching for more water, but is this still a legitimate threat? This is something they're gonna try and buy it from, is it just regular water owners in the state of Missouri? Trent (08:54.217) That is what he continues to be told and why he got into the race. know, California is trying to throw their weight around in every respect. You talk to anybody in the ethanol business and they're trying to meet the standards for California in order to produce and sell ethanol into California. You talk to any livestock producer, they're trying to meet the standards of Proposition 12 and sell meat products into California despite the fact that only 13 % of all pork sales, which had all started in the pig business, go into the state of California. I go to Wisconsin, I talk to dairymen, they're investing 40 million dollars in capturing methane, putting it liquid natural gas into a pipeline because they want to meet the standards for California. And now we see where we have water users and water owners. We do own this water, this resource and Mississippi River. Who owns that? And California is trying to buy it. We have a state that has completely rejected the resources of their state. now trying to interrupt access to the resources in our states and we cannot let that happen. Vance Crowe (09:58.886) Well, and you see how much market power California has with changing things like the livestock laws and minimum wage. They have a tremendous amount of power and they don't seem to hesitate to throw it around at all. Trent (10:14.44) No, in fact in 2008, and this is where it all stems back to, I went to California 14 times in that calendar year because we were fighting what was called Proposition 2 at the time. And Proposition 2 was mostly about chickens laying eggs in cages. And we lost Proposition 2 in every single county in that particular election because we didn't do it right. We tried to outspend everybody else, and particularly the animal rights groups, in a presidential election year. My advice to the committee, and there was a committee of us of 21, I said, we need to do a grassroots effort. We need to have every person that's involved in agriculture talking to their family members in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and we need to do this at the grassroots level. We tried to buy our way into a position to win. That never works. All things must be at the grassroots level, Vance. Vance Crowe (11:10.332) Well, I know that you are a big proponent of this and you travel around the United States talking about things, which brings us to my second headline today. This I pulled out of South Dakota, the Capital News Report saying, they recognize property taxes are too high. The South Dakota citizens are telling lawmakers. So the Capital News Report's a panel was assigned to search for possible improvements to the way California counties set property tax values. And they wanted to get the public's input. and the public said the property taxes are too high. In particular, Tim Goodwin, a Republican former legislator who I guess is running for office now, used the hearing to lay out an idea for eliminating residential property taxes and raising the state's sales tax from 4 .2 % to 9 .2%. Tim went on to say during his opportunity at Five Minutes to Speak that, If South Dakota were to do that, they would be the first state to eliminate it and they would cause a cascade of other states to do it because there'd be such an economic boom. What do you know about the property taxes going on in South Dakota and Tim Goodwin's plan? Trent (12:20.519) So I know that South Dakota is talking about proposing this in 2025. You may not know that North Dakota has on their general election in 2024, the same exact plan. And in the state of Nebraska, we had a proposal for a ballot initiative, what we call the EPIC tax, which was to do the same thing, eliminate property tax and move over to a 100 % consumer sales tax that would replace the money. Montana, my friends who are county commissioners in Montana are also looking at the same situation. And the reason that everybody's looking at this is because we're now in a position where we are no longer land owners. We're leasing land from the government and paying. I can take you to places in the state of Nebraska, my home state, and I interviewed a guy in Wayne County, Nebraska, which happens to be the highest. property tax valuation of any county in the state and I can take you and sit you down with a guy at his kitchen table that he is currently paying more in property tax than he paid to buy the place and he's paying that annually each year paying more money. Now this is a very detailed situation and something that I've spent a great amount of time with the only thing I've spent more time on in the past three years is actually CO2 pipelines and the CO2 debacle. and what's going on with that. But Vance, in the state of Nebraska, which is the number one state for taxing, taxable valuation problems leading to property tax issues, we have increased our valuations of land by 154 % since 2021. My wife and I bought this piece of property that we own in Nebraska. raise cattle. pigs and horses on this property and our property tax has increased by 300 % since 2006. How can anybody continue to pay the property tax to make this work? So where does that property tax money go? In the state of Nebraska, 71 % of the property tax payments go to fund schools, 26 % go to fund the county government in itself. Trent (14:44.774) Case in point and why we have a problem in my home school district, Loop City, Nebraska, this week on Monday night there was a budget hearing. We knew the budget hearing was coming. We know that we have a property tax problem. Most of that problem stems from schools that are spending too much money. In a school district that has 300 students, we increased the budget by $3 million. The budget ask went to 10 .2. million dollars. If you do the math on that Vance, it's thirty thousand dollars per student. We are not even educating kids to be achievers and their test scores continue to plummet each and every year. So as a taxpayer, we got to ask the questions. What are we doing with the taxpayer money that's going into these schools? And often the county government gets the blame for why the property taxes are a problem. But state by state, it is a schools. And I've gotten a tremendous number of phone calls from Iowa. The number in Iowa is about 57 % of the property tax go to fund schools. We have a spending problem and I now have enough data put together, not just in Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, all across this nation, where people have figured out there's a concerted effort to go through the National Association of School Boards into the State School Boards Association. and work with these principals to get them to spend more money than what the taxpayers of that particular school district can handle. And it is leading to the inability to continue to own land because we can't afford to pay the property tax because the schools are spending too much money. Vance Crowe (16:24.22) Well, I mean I just know on my own little small acreage that the property taxes continue to drive up But I've never looked at it that close of going in and finding out how much you making per student I mean shoot at $30 ,000 a student you could just give two students one private, you know tutor and they would have an amazing opportunity to learn But it's just unbelievable how much money you're saying they're spending Trent (16:46.98) Let me take it one step further. So we've had a problem in Nebraska and we have this TOSO formula, which in a very abbreviated form, it's an equalization formula that was put in place in 1976 in the state because we have Omaha, Lincoln, areas that do not have taxable property and yet they need to be funded in order to meet the needs of the higher number of students that they have. Well, this TOSO formula was so weighted to those schools that our school district got $29 ,000 total in the calendar year 2023 or excuse me 2022 $29 ,000 in state aid to the Loop City Public School. The Omaha Public School system got $14 ,000 per student. Interesting to note that in the same year the cost per student for education statewide. the entire state of Nebraska, the cost per student was just over $14 ,000. So with the infinite wisdom of the state government, which government never fixes anything that has caused bigger problems, they decided they were gonna increase the state aid to every school and last year in the calendar year they give every school $1 per student state aid. Problem being, the cost of education statewide went from $14 ,000 to $17 ,000, so the school boards took the $1 ,500 per student they got from state aid and spent the same amount more, so they increased spending by $3 ,000 per student. And you show up at these budget hearings and people are not there. Vance, we have to be present at these hearings. We were really happy that we had 47 people present at this budget hearing in Loop City, Nebraska on Monday night this week when we should have had 470 people there. saying what are you doing? Every single person who had something to say at this budget hearing was opposed to increasing the budget by three million dollars in this year, calendar year 24, 25 for the school year, and yet the school board sat in front of us and approved it right after. We all voiced our opinion on how bad it was for our county, and because when you start increasing taxes, Trent (19:10.71) and the tax base can no longer be afforded by childbearing age people. They leave the district, the school dries up. What do you have left? Vance Crowe (19:20.518) Well, that sounds like a terrible situation when you're trying to voice your opinion. Let's head on to the third headline so we can stay on track because I know another story you wanted to talk about was, and this comes from Investigate Midwest. As investors pay top dollar for land, farmers are often priced out. We looked at this issue a couple of weeks ago when we're talking about how much money is flooding into farmland to be able to fund sustainable energy projects. So growth in things like solar farms is driving rental rates way up. So for example, in this article cited, rent may go for four to $500 per acre per year in agriculture, but when they're using it for sustainable energy, those groups which are often getting government subsidies are getting between 1200 to $1 a year. So quickly Trent, what do you think? Farmers wanna make money. What's wrong with tripling your rent payment if it's for solar power instead of just growing crops? Trent (20:19.62) Starvation. This is not a United States issue. I do a TV program every morning at 6 .30 live called Across the Pond. And tomorrow I'll have a young lady from Australia. Today I had a young lady from the UK. Yesterday I had somebody from France. On Monday I had somebody from New Zealand. And every week I rotate these people from New Zealand and France and the UK and Australia. And guess what every single one of them are doing? Subsidizing wind and solar development centers, replacing food production. The United Kingdom in 2000, I was in the United Kingdom in February of 2000, got home just in time on February 28th before the world went completely crazy. And when I learned that the United Kingdom was 65 % of their food was coming from other countries, I thought that's crazy. They can't be importing more food than they're producing. Vance, we're doing that now in the United States. The USDA announced last week that our exports of agricultural products to other countries in the past 12 months has decreased by 2 billion. Our imports from other countries has increased by 8 billion. A new report came out since that report came out and it said that by the middle of 2025, our trade deficit with other countries is going to be $42 .5 billion. Why? We live in a nation with an abundance of resources and infrastructure to get the resources from the farm to the market, down the river, to other countries, and we're becoming a net food importing nation under our watch because we're taking a payment because we create these problems and these artificial costs and cost more to pay your property tax so you seek any revenue source possible, which is the government giving you a handout telling you what you're going to do with your land. And for perpetuity, you're told you cannot put this land back into food production. I come back to the one word that I started with and I'll end with starvation. Vance Crowe (22:34.222) It is truly staggering to me that we are subsidizing this so much and I think that it is the power of propaganda. People believe so much that this is green energy when we think the reality is the original green energy is growing crops. That's the most green of all and it's absolutely absurd that we're subsidizing this with tax dollars. All right, that's gonna wrap it up for the headlines. If you have any news that you think we should cover, send it to Vance at VanceCrow .com or you can always send it to me at X. You also are free to comment in X now as we're doing this thing and we'll see if you have any points we should bring up with Trent. But we're gonna keep going. Trent, you live in Nebraska and right now we're gonna talk about the Bitcoin land price report. This is where we take what would an acre of land cost in terms of Bitcoin. So where you're at in Nebraska, how much does an acre of land cost? Trent (23:26.433) I can tell you that I just looked at this because I've been studying these tax valuations and the statewide average for all farmland including grazing and irrigated cropland and dryland is $4 ,021. Vance Crowe (23:41.82) Well, that's incredible. That's a really different price than what we're hearing in the, you know, the Iowa, Indiana, a couple of prices we've gotten, but a $4 ,020 acre of land in Bitcoin right now is at $58 ,200. So if you had one acre would cost you 0 .069 Bitcoin. In other words, if you had one Bitcoin, you could buy... 4 .4 acres in Nebraska. What do you think of that? Are you interested in pricing land in Bitcoin? Trent (24:15.586) I'm still trying to figure out how to price it and make it work in American dollars. I don't know how to take care of it in Bitcoin. But I need to, you know, we have land in the state of Nebraska, say in York County, that will sell farmland for $17 ,000 an acre. You gotta realize the west or the sand hills of Nebraska, you're talking about entire sections of land, 640 acres, that will take care of 50 cow -calf pairs for a grazing period. So when you have your AUM cost that high is putting a real damper on the future of food production, particularly inspiring young people to get into the business. Vance Crowe (24:54.703) Absolutely. And it makes it really difficult for families to be able to keep their land in their family because as that price goes up, it makes it so you've got to pay more taxes on it. It's really becoming very complicated. actually believe, and we can have a deeper discussion about this sometime, Trent, that I think one of the ways that it'll be able to keep farmland in the hands of farmers and their families is to actually move over to a Bitcoin standard. But more on that in the future. because now we're gonna turn to the Peter Thiel paradox section. This is where I'm gonna ask Trent, Trent, what is one thing that you believe that almost nobody in your tribe agrees with you on? Trent (25:33.842) that Donald Trump is dangerous to the future of America. Vance Crowe (25:38.349) Wow, yeah, in Ag, that is very controversial. Tell me more about that. Trent (25:44.255) Well, here's the problem. Kamala Harris is worse. So we have been forced into a corner where we have no choice. Now, let me also back up Vance that I served as on the Trump Ag Advisory Committee for four years during the first administration. I was the very first interview that Sonny Perdue did as USDA Ag Secretary. I'm a huge fan of Sonny Perdue. There were 12 people that were put into administrative positions within the USDA that I already had their cell phone numbers. And I say that not to be braggadocious, but just to say that the people from grassroots America were put in those positions. But there were several things that happened during that time frame. One is the connection that Donald Trump has always had with the Rothschilds, which control the entire world's banking system. In fact, Wilbur Ross was one of his first appointments as a secretary of commerce. Wilbur Ross has for his lifetime represented the Rothschilds and represented Donald Trump in his bankruptcy in the 80s with the casino business. Then when he signed and championed the animal rights legislation that made animal rights a federal offense and in most cases more severe in punishment than if you were abusing your child, I began asking questions and I got a hold of Sonny Perdue and I said, Sonny, you got to go talk to this guy. Does he not understand these animal rights people do not have the future of food in their mind? He went to him three times. and he could not get a discussion with the president about that particular situation. And there's been several things happened since then, Vance, and I know we're short on time. But I also will tell you that I started sharing these stories two years ago. Nobody in my tribe, everybody in my tribe thought I was nuts. Today, it's unbelievable the number of people that will say to me, I thought you were absolutely crazy, Trent, and now I see what you're talking about. We're in trouble. Vance Crowe (27:40.357) Well, I totally see where you're talking about. It's so easy to be drawn into the politics and say, well, I hate the other person so much that I'm not going to see the flaws in my own person or in the person that I think best represents us. What do you think somebody does in this situation? Do you choose the cleaner of the two dirty shirts or what do do? Trent (27:59.231) No, what I'm doing is I'm bringing, you know, I carry this book in my pocket every single day, Vance. It's called the United States Constitution. And the Constitution says that the most important and most powerful government we have is local government. Why am I spending so much time on property tax? Why am I spending so much time in South Dakota on referred law 21? because all of those things are removing local control. The President of the United States, over the past 248 years, has assumed more power than the Constitution ever granted him. The answer does not reside in Washington, D .C. The answer to our future, and for your kids' future, resides in your county courthouse and your school board. And how much time are you spending paying attention to what's happening in your county versus what's happening in the next, whether or not they're gonna have a debate or not? The President of the United States is trying to rule, no matter whether it's Joe Biden, Donald Trump, or Barack Obama, or George W. Bush, trying to rule this country like a king through executive order. That is not even constitutional. So the answer is quite simple. Engage and prepare your county and your community for what is coming, and you will all be better off. Vance Crowe (29:14.576) I absolutely love it. think it is one of the most important messages anybody can have. I was just doing a podcast with a guy named Sean Newman. We discussed a very similar thing. So I'm glad you brought it up. You I hope persuasive to a lot more people because I think that's important. All right, the final section of the interview today, this is where we talk about worthy adversaries. This is where I try and get my guests to spotlight an individual that challenges our perspectives. so that that way we don't ignore the kind of criticisms or different ways of thinking that make us better. So, Trent, who is a worthy adversary to you out there on social media? Trent (29:52.435) So I won't say it's on social media because Vance, don't know if you know this or not, but I'm currently banned from almost every social media outlet. am only on X and Substack. I'm banned from Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Vance Crowe (30:00.091) I didn't know that. Vance Crowe (30:08.911) Wow, that's insane, because your Facebook viewing was astounding. How many people watched you on Facebook? Trent (30:19.102) It was easy to get 100 ,000 people to watch me on Facebook. And they banned me. will be three years in November. In fact, they didn't ban me. They took over my account and started posting pornographic material pretending to be me. But if you go look at where the administrator was, it was in Kosovo. And my attorney general, I have to give a major shout out to Mike Hildre's attorney general of Nebraska because I spent two years trying to get it shut down and it took him six months. But he finally got them to stop trying to slander me with the pornographic material they were putting on there. So I'm speaking not from an adversary in term because I don't live on social media. I use that for some outreach, but I live in the world of travel and the people that I know. People that have known me for 25 years since I started doing media know that I had an adversarial relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In fact, I walked up to him one day and I said, you're lying about my industry and I'm going to hold you accountable. And that was six months after 9 -11. It's been that long. And for three years, we had a dog and pony show. for almost every month, we had a personal interaction. And he lost a class action lawsuit against livestock producers. And so we just kind of parted ways and didn't pay attention to each other. And then a mutual friend during COVID sent me an email and said, Trent, you really need to talk to Bobby Kennedy because you two are on the same page on more things. And you realize I sent him an email. He responded. And until he got out of the race, He would regularly check with me on agricultural issues when he had a challenge. And I've got several interviews with Bobby during the campaign. Since he got out of the race and endorsed Donald Trump, he has not contacted me. I've actually sent him a couple notes about South Dakota. But that relationship's been very interesting through the years. I think that's where we're at, and probably top of mind when you ask about an adversary. Vance Crowe (32:15.832) I think that's exceptional. I'm glad to hear that. You know, he's somebody that I knew a lot of his glyphosate litigation and I didn't think very highly of it. And so to hear you going across the aisle to try and say, hey, well, there are some things we align on. I have a good friend named Zach Smith who's always telling me that about Robert Kennedy and I've ignored it. But now after hearing you, he will get added to our list of worthy adversaries that we keep on X. If you would like to see other worthy adversaries. I think it is a great list of eclectic people that have very different perspectives. So I want to thank you Trent for coming on to do this. You jumped in kind of last minute when another guest dropped out and I'm so appreciative of it. I want to thank our sponsors, Legacy Interviews and FarmTest .Ag. Trent, if somebody wanted to listen to what you're doing, get more involved in everything you have going on, where would they go to do that? Trent (33:10.266) Loosetails Media, that's L -O -O -S, tails, T -A -L -E -S, media .com, and all of my television programs are here. I wear it on my vest, beck .news, B -E -K, .news. Vance Crowe (33:25.775) Well, I am so glad that you're willing to come on. You are a huge figure in many, grassroots movements. It's just great to reconnect. Thank you. Next week, we'll be back with another Ag Tribes Report. And as always, feel free to disagree.