Latest / The Vance Crowe Podcast / ATR: IL Farm Bureau gets boot, CAFO’s survive in California and milk pricing stays stupid with organic dairy farmer Josh Tranel
Transcript
- 0:00 The Ag tribes Report is brought to you by farm test, a field trial, design, execution and analysis service that makes it easy to ask your fields which management practices perform best to start your field trials. Visit farm test.ag, 0:16 and legacy interviews, a video service that captures people as they really are, so the future knows who they really were. Here's legacy interviews customer Dave Helland on the joy of giving his parents space to reflect on their lives. My parents never in their life had such a long period of time where they spoke about themselves. At first they were uncomfortable with that, but then quickly became comfortable, and we got that forever. 0:50 Welcome to the Ag tribes report, a breakdown of the top stories affecting the culture of agriculture with your host, Vance Crowe, the report begins in 321, 1:02 let's begin. 1:04 Welcome to the Ag tribes Report. I'm your host. Vance Crowe, each week I bring on a new co host to talk about the many perspectives that come from the world of agriculture. This week, we have as our co host Josh Tranel. Josh farms in partnership with three of his first cousins in the southwest corner of Wisconsin. They are sixth generation on his land, managing an organic dairy farm alongside a cattle feeding operation, Josh also serves on the board of directors for the CRO p p cooperative, better known for its flagship brand, Organic Valley. Recently, Josh had the honor of serving as FSA chairperson for the state of Wisconsin. Josh, welcome to the Ag tribes report. Thanks, Vance, happy to be here. I invited Josh on because he wrote me a very lengthy response to some of my thoughts about glyphosate and why people were concerned about it. And I, while I, you know, strongly feel that glyphosate is a is a net positive. Anybody that's going to take the time to write something out that's so detailed, something he thought about, and something he put time into, made me say, Hey, this is going to be somebody that's interesting to talk to you, in particular, because I have about as many doubts about organic farming, as I do about ministers and pastors, but I think that it's really good for us to have all these different perspectives. And as this week's stories popped up, it shows that Josh actually has a ton of insight. So this week, what we are going to cover is Illinois Farm Bureau gets the boot from the American Farm Bureau. Also, we're going to talk about the CAFOs that are going to stay in Sonoma County, California. We're also going to cover the milk pricing shenanigans that go on in that weird world. And we're going to talk about some of the Trump appointments that are coming down the line. We're also going to do the Bitcoin land price report. And wow, what a week it has been for Bitcoin. And then we're going to go through the Peter Thiel paradox, and Josh is worthy adversary, and we're going to try and do that in just 30 minutes. So let's get started. From Holly Spangler at the prairie farmer, the American Farm Bureau kicks the Illinois Farm Bureau out of the Farm Bureau family, the Illinois Farm Bureau affiliate company Country Financial decided in September to no longer require non farmer members in the Illinois Farm Bureau. So what this decision did was it could reduce membership from 400,000 to 78,000 3:37 next year, meaning that if you were getting one of these country financial insurance programs, you had your Farm Bureau membership thrown in with it, which meant the overall Farm Bureau got to count those people as members, and there were some dues and money that was being taken care of. Well, I reached out both to the American Farm Bureau and the Illinois Farm Bureau. The Illinois Farm Bureau responded. Sierra Henry let me know about what their executive management team is saying. We believe that the American Farm Bureau is choosing to abandon our more than 70,000 Illinois farmer members because of our affiliate insurance company does not want to force non member farmers to join. We believe that the American Farm Bureau is choosing to put out our farms, our families and our communities at risk at a time when we need to support through federal policy. In short, we believe that AFBF has chosen to break its promise to Illinois farmers. Josh, what do you think should is this something that hit your radar, and what do you think about the American Farm Bureau kicking a state out. Yeah, a little crazy, and I would have loved to been in the boardroom for these decisions. I'm curious if the American Farm Bureau was more worried about the loss of membership just because of the total sway or the dollars behind the membership. And I'm also curious to know then, if Illinois was going to. 5:00 Let them be non voluntary members and still put forth the membership. Or if it's just one of the other had to be voluntary, or had to be total. But interesting decision by the National Farm Bureau there to kick them out. Yeah, you know, and I can really only speak for the Illinois Farm Bureau, I reached out to both of them, and the Illinois Farm Bureau sent me back quite a few stuff. They sent the lawsuit that they were putting forward, and they also, in that press briefing, they also talked more about how they tried to do a mediated settlement to say, hey, this doesn't have to be a financial loss for you. There are other ways we could approach it. But they said that the American Farm Bureau just didn't want to. In fact, they said they got up from the table and left. Now, I don't know, you know, of course, that's only one team side, but it is really important to the American Farm Bureau to be able to count the number of members. Right? That allows you to go to Capitol Hill and say, Look, you know, we have four, you know, 400,000 people in Illinois alone. And if all of a sudden that drops to 70,000 does your clout get reduced? I think, I think it probably does. Yeah. And it looked like this negotiation was going on for about 45 days between the two groups. But, 6:09 yeah, I mean, that's a big clout to say, Hey, you got 450,000 people behind you, versus only 75,000 but at the same time, if you got 75,000 farmers behind you and the rest of them aren't even farmers, does it really get you anywhere? 6:23 Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it seems like it may also have to do with like, hey, what happens if other states do this? I know that Ohio is a massively large Farm Bureau, and they have a big insurance program, and I wonder if that's not a big contributor to it, but it does seem pretty bold for that step to be taken, because once you kick a group out, you know, like that sends a pretty bold signal to everybody else. So it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. I think they aren't officially kicked out until the end of December, something like December 20. Yeah, I know Wisconsin's the same way. I mean, I'm a member on my house of the roll route, and that's another affiliate membership. You have to be a part of it. And so Wisconsin's counting the same way. So I'm sure there's a lot of states that are counting like this. Well, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. All right, moving on to our next story. This was a shocker that Josh sent me from KQED in San Francisco, a public radio station, actually, which I was ribbing on on Twitter this week, Sonoma County shocks the California ag system by voting to stop the CAFO ban. So in recent elections, Sonoma County voters considered measure J an initiative aimed at phasing out concentrated animal feeding operations within three years. This measure targeted large scale industrial agricultural facilities, specifically egg, poultry and dairy farms, by prohibiting future CAFOs and requiring existing ones to either modify their operations to comply with new regulations or shut down. But it was rejected. 85% 7:57 of voters voted against measure J which is stunning. And I have heard through the grapevine that there were a lot of farmers, a lot of energy going here. Josh, how did this hit your radar screen? Yeah, this hit my radar screen from a couple friends I have out in Sonoma County that were living through this for the past three months. To me, it's insane that something this could even get on the ballot. Because not only were they just changing what the CAFO, the allowance of CAFOs, but they were bringing that down to, like, 250 animal units. So it was going to take out almost all of agriculture in that county. And I mean, if you want to pay attention to what's coming the rest of the country in the next five years, these California counties are a good place to start paying attention to what's coming. I know that's how prop 13 got into the system. And Scary, scary, scary, that something like this can hit a ballot and all of a sudden be over farmers heads for three, four months because of that I got and voted through, that'd be 7580 families that had to divest from reparations. Yeah. Sonoma County, for those not familiar with California geography, is just north of San Francisco. So in the southern part, you have people that are, you know, have their homes just outside of of the Bay Area. But the rest of the state, the rest of the county, is massively rural. This is like a deeply farm community. And what was crazy about this particular ballot was all of the members, I don't know all, but most of the members on the county board didn't want it. They were, they were saying, No, I don't want this. You had groups coming out that normally would have been kind of pro environment and anti agriculture come out and say, No, we're this is not right. But in California, if you can get enough signatures on the ballot, you can put a measure like this forward, and it the Sonoma County sent a resounding no back. But that was not obvious that that was going to happen, no, and it took a lot of grassroots effort to get that to happen. I know a lot of them were out working for months and months and months, and a lot of money raised, um, and yeah, Farm Bureau. I know California Farm Bureau was a big part in getting this stop. So hopefully. 10:00 Didn't get a stop at a state level now, but 10:03 scary times if you're out there, yeah. I mean, it's a testament to, I mean, AG, superpower, and referring to the story earlier, Farm Bureau itself does such a good job of organizing to take such a small group of people to be able to get things organized and pushed back. But every minute you're spending organizing against crazy bureaucracy is a minute you are not spending money. 10:26 And speaking of crazy bureaucracies, on to our third story. This comes straight out of Twitter, RKO to milk on X said the USDA Agricultural Marketing Services releases federal milk marketing order, final decision. That is a mouthful, but the FF Mo, which is a thing we talked about when Dwayne Faber was one of our guests, is the crazy pricing system that happens where you you would think that the way that milk gets priced is a person that wants to turn that milk into cheese or sell it as milk, comes to the farmer and says, I'm going to pay you this much for your milk, and the farmer agrees to it, and that's all done. But that is not actually what happens. What happens is, after the farmer sells that milk to a producer, what that producer turns that milk into, whether it's cheese or fluid milk or various types of cheese, he has to pay money back to the farmer based on what he is producing. To me, this is a wildly crazy system, and it made me a little embarrassed for making fun of the Canadians for their absurd token system. But in talking to Josh, he actually had a front row seat for this, Josh, you were one of the people to testify before Congress on this subject. Tell us what we don't know just by looking on the outside. Yeah, I was actually the first farmer. I got to testify in this federal hearing for it online when they had it down in Indiana. 11:53 But, yeah, it's a crazy system. But the one correction I would say, is it, it regulates the minimum price you can pay so people can pay over it. And it was seemed to set up, I think early 1920s it was set up just to make sure people weren't jumping between producers or jumping between cooperatives where we're selling milk, and make sure everybody kind of got a fair price. 12:12 It's going to go for a vote here in January. It sounds like it'll be, I'm guessing it'll pass in most orders. It sounds like the upper upper midwest order might be a little bit of a close vote, but interesting enough, you just need that two thirds majority of either the milk or the farmers to produce or to pass it. You don't need one, or you don't need both of them, so it can get passed by a few large cooperatives here if they block vote, and 12:37 I'm guessing it will, but yeah, you're asking farmers to vote against the pay price increase, which is something I can't imagine is gonna be popular, but it looks like it's gonna decrease farmer pay across the country about 75 cents or so. 12:51 So tell me a little bit about this, because before the show, we were chatting about how the the farming, the way that you vote on this is not to say, Hey, I like some of these changes and I don't like others of these changes. What happens is they put forward a slate of hey, these are what we're going to do. We're going to change how much we pay for either fluid milk or for a 500 pound barrel cheddar. And then you either vote yes or no, and both sides, the farmer and the producer get a chance to do it, and if two thirds of either side says yes, we like it, then it goes forward. Is that right? So, yeah, you got a yes vote or no vote. The yes vote is yes, you're gonna accept these changes. The no is no working out not have a federal order system. So like Idaho depooled, I think in the early 2000s last time is Idaho deployed last time this came up for a vote. But yeah, it's either two thirds of the total milk represented in your pool or two thirds of the farmers have to say yes for it to go through. 13:52 And so where did organic dairy farmers come out on this? 13:58 I think most of us are probably going to vote no. I hope most of us are gonna vote no. When I testified, my testimony was about the fact that I don't think organic milk should be put into the system, just the way the system works, and calling out milk our cooperative specifically, and a lot of organic milk is in fluid, and we pay well, well, well over these federal class minimums anyways, but just the way the fluid balancing works. It's so the fluid people are paying into the system. So for the benefit of them, when milk is tight or when milk is short in their order, they can call up milk from other orders into their order. The problem, what does that mean? Call up like you can request milk to come into your order, or request milk to come into your plan. If you're a fluid plant, the problem being for an organic 14:44 product producer, if you call up milk into your order or into your plant, you're going to get conventional milk, and you can't process that anyways. So we're just paying into a system. It's essentially a big tax on to us just to play in this silly system that has been developed and has. 15:00 Continued on for the last almost 100 years now. 15:03 Well, since I gave you a quick barb at the beginning about being an organic farm, can you make the case for what is the value of organic milk? 15:13 Yeah, to me, it's just two big things. I mean, it's milk that's 100% antibiotic free. I mean, those animals are raised without any antibiotics from day one, and that's really important for a lot of consumers. The other thing that is probably even more important for consumers is that the fact that 15:31 all the land and all the food grown for the animals 15:35 is doesn't use any pesticides or herbicides, so no glyphosate or anything like that getting into their food. And that's even more important when you talk about just a total, whole organic food spectrum. And then the other thing that really draws a lot of consumers to organic is just the fact that it's grown on small family farms across the country. That's something that really draws a lot of consumers in that story, and that pasture usage is something that they believe in, and that's why they pay for that organic seal, I think 16:02 consumer research would show that that organic USDA Organic seal is probably the most trusted seal in the industry compared to a lot of these other seals. And people pay for it and it's a good product. 16:14 Yeah, I have to say that in the last few, I don't know, maybe even just the last year, my mind has really been changed on a lot of things. And largely because of eggs, I was getting eggs from the grocery store, and I would crack them, and they cracked funny, crazy case, yeah, and, and I started getting organic eggs and pasture raised eggs, and all of a sudden the shell was thicker and it cracked the way I remembered it. And so that I had to finally admit, like, there is something different going on. And you, you know, I can't necessarily nail down why, but I'm open to the idea that my original ideas were not correct. Okay, two minutes left, and I want to talk a little bit about the appointments. The huge news this afternoon was that RFK, who many people thought might be tapped to run the USDA, was actually tapped to run HHS Health and Human Services, which shockingly, is the largest part of the United States budget, and he is going to have oversight, and they've already started calling for trials and hearings on things with vaccine manufacturers and people that participated not only in COVID, but the entire vaccine system. What else are you hearing about there? What are people paying attention to? And do you have a prediction on who's going to get tapped for USDA, 17:31 yeah, I think this is a much more fitting place or kind of where I thought RFK would end up. I didn't really think him or Massey would end up as the Secretary of Agriculture, just because of a few other things. And I know Trump's been welcoming the RFK crowd in, but he's also kept RFK at a good arms distance. As far as the egg secretary. I don't have a good idea, but I can tell you, it's probably not going to come out of the house. If you think Trump's going to start pulling people out of the house when the house is sitting this tight, I think the Republicans only have about 119 right now. So I don't think it's gonna be massy. And if they do pull some other house, I probably like gt a little bit better than Massey. You are the only person I know personally that doesn't think it's gonna be Massey. That's what everybody is saying. It is, yeah, that's what everybody in circles are saying. I just don't think it's gonna end up being Massey. His his race would be way too competitive also to come bring somebody out of the house right now, I just don't see that happening. I think there's a lot of other choices that make a lot more sense. 18:32 I do think Trump's getting on on board with this RFK crowd and those circles. I just don't think he's ready to make that step, especially with the trade wars and things coming, I think the if history repeats itself, I think corn farmers and grain farmers are going to be in for some massive payouts from the government once Trump starts this trade war. And that's, I think, how his egg sector is going to go. So you think as Sonny Purdue, then maybe a repeat. 18:59 Yeah, Sonny's Purdue. There's a couple other names out there, and there's a i There's a farmer from Indiana, I think his name's been thrown out, and a couple guys from Texas, and then one from are you talking about? Tom, maybe USDA, yeah. Okay, there's a yeah, there's a longer list. I think that's in that would make a lot more sense than Massey. 19:19 Well, that is, I just don't think anybody can pull out this house unless it's GT because he's not in a very competitive district, and he wrote this Farm Bill, essentially, it is definitely something that a lot of people are watching, and it is going to shape the next four years and maybe the next generation of people. When you think about putting Kennedy in at HHS, it means you could put a big wild card in on ag as well. All right, it's got a lot of wild cards in so far, so we'll see what comes Yeah, and you know what I've been talking to people, even if you didn't like one or two picks, you might like some of the other ones, like and everybody, everybody, everybody should like the idea of cutting out as much bureaucracy as humanly possible. 20:00 Because we are not a democracy, we are a bureaucracy, and I love seeing it cut down. All right, that irony of making, except the irony of making one more department to cuddle the departments, is a little I did. I do think that's just like always, whatever the the department is named, it's going to do the opposite. So I am afraid that it'll do more, right? So, all right, that's going to do it. If you have any news that you think we should cover on the Ag tribes report? Definitely hit me up on x at Vance Crowe, and if you have any comments, go ahead and leave them here. We will read them as we go. Now we are headed to the Bitcoin land price report. This was a monster week for Bitcoin. Last week, when we were talking with John Kemp, Bitcoin was priced at $76,015 20:45 today, as of press time, it hit $87,273 20:52 so a big, big week for Bitcoin. Where you are, Josh, right now, how much does an acre of land cost? 21:01 Yeah, I mean, Grant County, Wisconsin, um, good till the lion will go anywhere from 12 to 18,000 an acre, just depending on how it lays and how much is actually tillable versus pasture. But 1516, is a good range to be in, Yeah, beautiful. Uh, area I used to go to school up there. It's awesome. And lots of rain and good, good pasture. So if you are going to try and buy that in Grant County, Wisconsin, at 16, five an acre, which is a little bit about the average, you said a little less than point one nine Bitcoin would buy it. Or in other words, one bitcoin would buy you approximately 5.3 acres of farmland in Grant County. How does that sit with you? Josh, where are you at on Bitcoin? Well, I wish I would have bought a bunch in 1819, I would only want more farmland right 21:49 now, but I I mean more investments that pop up like this, I think the better, because it's going to pull investors out of farmland, which is going to be a big help. Um, I mean farmland and Grand County is way above use value. And so I think the more people that stick money into something like this, the better, because lesser people, less people are gonna be sticking money into land as an investment versus a use value. I absolutely agree with that. And one thing I wanted to mention today is two years ago, almost to the day, I had one of my first full on Bitcoin podcast, I had a financial advisor named David oransky who came on. He said, You should allocate one to 2% of your portfolio into Bitcoin. And people all over the place were like, I wish I would have gotten in, you know, before, but now it's $20,000 22:36 of Bitcoin. So it just doesn't seem right, and now it's at 8000 22:40 Yeah? So the thing that's true about this is it's going to keep going up, and you're gonna minimize regret by starting to get into it now. And I am not suggesting go out and put more than you can afford to lose in there. It's still probably gonna go wildly up and down, but don't let your ego get in the way like, oh, I should have done it. The train is passing you by. The train has not passed you by, but it is time to get on. If you've been at all interested, definitely, definitely explore it. Try and learn a little bit more about it. Don't let your ego get in the way. Any last words on the Bitcoin land price report, Josh, wish I'd have bought some two weeks ago. 23:19 All right, now we're moving on to my favorite part, which is where I ask about Josh's Peter Thiel paradox. This is when we find out what is one thing Josh, that you agree that you believe, that almost nobody in your tribe agrees with you on 23:36 I will say that the average Midwest crop farmer can feed themselves, let alone accomplish this mantra of feeding the world. 23:44 Whoa. Say more about that. 23:47 I just think I mean Midwest crop farmers. You're talking corn soy, most of that goes into fuel and high fructose corn syrup or other oils. You're not essentially growing food. And then I mean 2023 the US imported, what, 52 53% of its food. So we're not even feeding ourselves. I don't know how we can accomplish this mantra feeding the world if we're not actually growing food, can you feed yourself on your farm? 24:12 Yeah, we have a couple acre garden. And, you know, milk is the most nutritious thing on our tea and then got some beef cattle as well. And, yeah, that's fantastic. You know, I do these legacy interviews, and largely, most of my clients are actually in agriculture. They come in from all over the United States. And if you are over the age of, say, 55 or 60, your experience of childhood was gardening and canning, like is a huge percentage of your time and people like I now know I can. I can start up a conversation with somebody that grew up on a farm that's over 60, and be like, tell me about your mom's garden. And they'll laugh, and they'll talk about either how much they hated it or how much they loved it, and how they canned and how they canned meat. But you're right. We don't do that anymore. It is, it is fence row to fence row, corn and soy, but not. 25:00 Gardens. 25:02 Nope, it's fencer or fence row, fuel and oils. 25:06 Yeah. And as a person that now eats a huge amount of butter and I drink half and half as a part of a keto diet, I mean having a dairy cow, I one of the times I was giving a talk to a dairy group, and I pointed out that they are the original warriors, because cattlemen and goat herders could take these animals along, have them eat grass and turn it into mobile protein factories. And so those guys went around and dominated the world because they had these protein factories they could eat and drink really healthy. Yeah, I heard you say one time you thought your keto diet was a little bland. I don't understand what's bland about butter and bacon and avocados and all those goodies. I think the keto diet is probably one of the most enjoyable diets. Have you done it? Are you on it? I do it usually, like late winter, you know, when I don't have enough work to do and need to lose some weight. 25:56 I mean, I don't, I don't hate it. It's, it's a good diet, I think if you're doing it the right way, where it's 70% fat, it just, there's just things, a lot of bacon and butter, yeah? And, like, the only thing that you can eat in that way that's crunchy is bacon and I guess pork rinds. But there's so much that, like, there's something really satisfying about eating crunchy things. And I've got a terrible sweet tooth, just like chips too much. Yeah, so, okay, that was a good one. You know, I'm gonna give you a pretty high score on this one. I'm gonna say an an eight, seven, and that's because you are really gonna hurt a lot of people's feelings. But I think it's true, and I don't have anywhere to stand on. I, you know, I have some peach trees that have not yet fruited, and a paw paw tree. So if I cannot feed myself either, there's no judgment there. But I think it's true, and I think a lot of people wish that they could find a way to have the time to do that, because it's a deeply satisfying part of living. So 8687, 26:54 I'm going eight, seven on this one. 26:57 All right, now we're gonna wrap up with the very last segment, which is the worthy adversary segment 27:03 with this is where we spotlight a person that you respect but you strongly disagree with. 27:11 Yeah, I'm not on social media too, too much here, but I'll throw one out to Carrie mess. Is her name, Derek Carey, and really just that whole conglomerate of people like her and a Mexican milk made an Iowa dairy farmer. I think they do a great, great job advocating for the conventional dairy industry. They say a lot of nice stuff. I just think they miss the boat entirely when they start talking about organic and how it's all the 27:36 same. Say more about that. What do they say? Because I think I probably default believe a lot of the things that they're communicating. I think a lot of the things I just say is that there's no nutritional differences, and that it's just a big marketing scheme. And I think that's not true at all. 27:51 Do you think there is a nutritional difference? Yeah, that's the one thing. Um, I think it was the 2018 27:58 food science journal, the in milk, especially the conjugate conjulaic conjugate Linux acids profile and organic milk is a lot different than conventional milk just because of how much fresh pasture the cows are eating. 28:15 Yeah, you know, it's one of those things that there's probably so much going on here. I have so little faith in nutrition science that I am open to other ways of thinking about it. And so I was really glad when you wrote me that note. And I think that, I hope it's a testament to other people. You should know that if you know something about ag that I don't know, you're not gonna upset me and I'm not gonna be alienated by it. I read all of what Josh wrote, and was like, this is a guy that didn't just go copy paste something. He actually sat down and wrote this, and I'm really glad he did, because I got to learn a bunch today. Thank you so much for for coming on today, Josh. If people wanted to support you or learn anything about what you're doing, where would you direct them? 29:00 The grocery store. You can go to your local grocery store and pick up a nice half gallon of Organic Valley milk. That's probably the best way to support me. But if you want to get a hold of me, you probably gotta go to Facebook or LinkedIn. Just look up Josh Tranel, and that's probably the best way to get a hold of me. Fantastic. Well, that's how he got a hold of me. All right, I want to thank our sponsor, farm test.ag where you can test out your fields and really find out if what you are being marketed to is the real deal. Does the pesticide or the different treatments you're using actually work as reported and legacy interviews? This is where I sit down with your loved ones to record them telling their life stories and actually capture them as they are laughing, telling emotional stories, talking about things that they don't often get a chance to talk about. We have spots open that if you wanted to watch your family's legacy interview at Christmas, we could still get those recorded sometime around the Thanksgiving holiday, if you're interested, go to legacy. 30:00 Interviews.com. To find out more. All right, that's going to do it for this week. We'll be back next week. Just feel free to disagree. You Transcribed by https://otter.ai