Latest / The Vance Crowe Podcast / ATR: Canada gets tough with the US, ADM slashes jobs, Egg imports undercut farmers; with @ChrisBennettMS

Transcript

ATR: Canada gets tough with the US, ADM slashes jobs, Egg imports undercut farmers; with @ChrisBennettMS · The Vance Crowe Podcast

0:00
Unknown: The Ag Tribes Report is brought to you by Legacy Interviews,
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a video service that captures people as they really are so the future knows who they really were.
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This Mother's Day, honor your parents with the opportunity to tell their stories and share the wisdom they've learned along the way.
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Here is Legacy Interviews guest, Patricia Showalter, on the fun she had reflecting on her life as an individual, a mother, and a grandmother.
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Unknown: I really didn't know what to expect.
0:29
Were you nervous about it before, or how did you feel about it before? I just wondered what the heck was gonna happen. If somebody was on the fence, what would you tell them? Yeah. I'd tell somebody to do it. Just go and have fun. I'll have fun.
0:42
You're only here for a short time.
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My grandkids are gonna
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say, oh, holy cow. Can we believe this stuff?
0:59
Unknown: Welcome to the AgTribe's report, a breakdown of the top stories affecting the culture of agriculture
1:04
with your host, Vance Crow.
1:07
The report begins in three,
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two,
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one. Let's begin.
1:13
Unknown: Welcome to the Ag Tribes Report. I'm your host, Vance Crowe. Each week, I bring on a cohost that represents
1:20
perspectives of one of the many ag tribes that collectively make up US and Canadian agriculture.
1:26
This week, we have my good friend and one of the people I admire most in the ag world, Chris Bennett, a journalist from Farm Journal. Chris is one of the rare rednecks that has the ability to find other rednecks out in the world, gets them to open up and tell their story, and the stories they have to tell are of grift, are of government overreach, and really some of the most shocking and amazing
1:49
and important stories in all of agriculture. Chris Bennett, I couldn't be any happier than to welcome you to the Ag Tribes report.
1:56
Unknown: A a a most irreverent welcome, and I per
1:59
appreciate like you can't believe, brother. It's a privilege to be on here. Love your show. Love your format. No fluff in the vein. Let's go, brother.
2:07
Unknown: So you have been,
2:09
doing Ag Media for a very long time. What is Ag Media like right now?
2:14
Unknown: Donald Trump.
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Man has sucked all the air out of the room. That's him by nature.
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And I would say that the driver,
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when I say driver, that's what I mean. The driver of all Agnews right now is policy related policy related stories, which are normally,
2:32
right, the most boring of the boring stories,
2:35
but not right now.
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Things change literally by the day. And when I say, those are the top stories, those are the one, two, three, four, everything else is running distant second. That's reality.
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Unknown: Well, we're gonna have some stuff to talk about with Trump because tonight, we're gonna explore Canada's bold economic shift away from The US with prime minister Mark Carney promising autonomy
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and retaliatory
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tariffs away from what Trump is putting up. We're also gonna put talk about ADM's job cuts in the grain trading division slashing up to 700
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rolls.
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Then we're gonna talk about US egg crisis.
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The prices are going down, what this means for farmers, and what farmers like Jared McDaniel are saying about it. And we're also gonna check-in on the honeybee declines. There is big news yet again
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from some pretty big name ag universities saying there are bee honeybees
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are on the decline. We're also gonna do the Bitcoin land price report. We're gonna hear Chris's
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Peter Thiel paradox and find out who he thinks
3:38
is a worthy adversary. We're gonna try and do that all in just thirty minutes.
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So kicking it off, Canada plans to completely change
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their economic relationship with The United States. Today, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney declared a shift
3:54
in Canada's economic relationship with The US. He said the old relationship based on deepening integration of our economies
4:01
and tight security cooperation
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is over. Take a listen to what else he had to say.
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We will fight The US tariffs
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with retaliatory
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trade actions of our own
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that will have maximum impact in The United States
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and minimum impacts here in Canada.
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So facing US tariffs with Carney emphasizing that Canada is gonna hit back, this, of course, is going to lead to more action from Trump. I think he has never backed down
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from a fight.
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Chris, Canada seems like they are trying to get in shape for the fight of the century.
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Who do you think are gonna be the big winners and losers out of this fight?
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Unknown: You know, Lance, I I think
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my opinion is that Carney
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is speaking to Trump,
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but he's looking at Pierre Poliyev.
4:53
They got that election, what, at the April?
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Something like April 28. Don't quote me on that, but I'm I'm close.
5:01
And, I think
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it's just opinion.
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I think there's a lot of peacocking going on. I don't necessarily blame Carney,
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but I do think he wants to flex his biceps right now.
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And,
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look,
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my my my opinion is that Canada is going to bite off more than they can chew with this Kearny fella.
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You're talking about putting a world,
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economic forum guy, a banker,
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a climate I mean, you know, climate alarmist in the extreme.
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At the wheel,
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he he's your man. Just like, you know, Rishi Sunak was
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in England. He's a banker. Old Macron,
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he's a banker.
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This fella, Carney, is cut from that same fabric.
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And shoot, man. When I when I talk to, farmers in Canada
5:50
since time immemorial,
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great fellas, just great people,
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ideologically
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seem
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aligned with rural America.
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So I hope
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I hope that Pierre wins and him and Trump can sit down and talk
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brass tacks. Trump is opening the books.
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It's a very painful process.
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I I I support the process.
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But he's looking at the numbers and saying, what are we gonna cut? What are we gonna fix?
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All of that is going
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on in the background as you and I speak. I I hope that, you know, a couple of years from now, this is a tempest in a teapot.
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But we all know
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where Canada ranks on the ag export list. We know where The US does on Canada's ag export list and many other things as well. We know the, problems with fentanyl at the border.
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We know the problems with,
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Chinese businesses pumping products
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into The US from Canada
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and others as well. So how how does this end? I don't know. Once again, I hope Trump and mister Poliyev
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sit down and hash it out
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if Poliyev wins. If he doesn't, I don't know where it goes with mister Carney.
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Unknown: It seems clear to me that, whatever ship shaping he's talking about doing, we're gonna do these big economic reforms inside of Canada need to be done. I mean, they have incredibly complicated trade system within their own country. We were talking just last week about the inner, provincial tariffs.
7:24
And, I think that,
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Pierre Poliyev all the way up until this point got to take the big muscle. We're gonna we're gonna push back on The US and we're gonna do these things, and now Carney is doing it. It's gonna be interesting to see what this kind of puffing up goes, But I can tell you, I am hearing from my friends out West, and I've had a chance to visit Canadian West several times. I've heard multiple people say there will be secession in the air if, if Kearney wins. And, you know, I told that to some of my American friends and they kinda laugh at it. But I don't think these Canadians are laughing.
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Unknown: Larsa, I wanna ask you about that.
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What is your opinion?
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What's the feel from the fellows that you speak with in Alberta, for example,
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on secession,
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not next year? I don't I don't mean it. But is it something that they feel will happen in the next twenty to thirty years?
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Unknown: Is it on the clock, so to speak? I think they've thought this for a long time. I mean, I can remember being at a talk,
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back before COVID where a guy stood up and said, and that's why I think, you know, Canada, Alberta should become the fifty first state of the union. And everybody chat clapped and cheered, and they thought it was a great idea, room full of people. I thought it was gonna go down badly, but it didn't. And I think it's because the West has been getting
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slapped down, beat up. They've had been taken advantage of. They can't they have all these natural resources and they're just getting extracted
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from the East. So I think the West and I was just in the East. I was in Ontario. The East feels very differently than the West. I think the East isn't even prepared for how serious the West is about secession, whether it's I don't think we're talking 20. I think we're talking five.
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Unknown: Wow. It's gonna be absolutely fascinating to see how these cards play out. Certainly, in the coming weeks, it won't be the last headline that Carney grabs.
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I'm guessing the headlines that we all read today
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help him in the polls.
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I I don't know that. That's just a guess because it's human pilot. You have one of them coming out of the pack. So here we go.
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Unknown: Alright. On to headline number two. This is from Reuters. ADM cuts jobs in the grain trading division. I saw this because Grain Stats, one of the best follows on x, posted about the job cuts.
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ADM said in February that that it would cut 700 jobs and reduce costs by 500
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to $750,000,000
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in the next three to five years after posting its lowest fourth quarter adjusted profits in six years. The job cuts would represent about 1.7%
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of the company's global workforce.
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This particular wave of job cuts was aimed at its largest unit, the grain trading and oilseed processing divisions.
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So I personally know a trader that was let go as a result of this decision, and it seems like some of the,
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the heartache and burning that's gone on with grain trading is finally trickling down and companies are having to make those kind of tough decisions.
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So, Chris, farmers typically don't have a lot of sympathy for traders, but this seems like a lot. What are you hearing out there? There's natural friction
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Unknown: between the two,
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arguably
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as it should be. You know, not not not to make light of anything, but, you know, ADM,
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you you you gotta ask tongue in cheek to the 700 jobs that
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get axed, are they replaced by a thousand
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h one b visa applications.
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You know,
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the
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pulse,
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what you feel, what you see when you see a headline like this
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is what's going on, not just in agriculture,
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but across the country.
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And that is everyone seems to be I'm talking about average Joe and Jane included. Everyone seems to be taking stock
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of
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employees,
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who does what,
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amount of money spent.
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All of this going on, of course, with Doge,
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in the background.
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But audit here, audit there,
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questions that no one wants answered, but everyone wants asked.
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Again, I say, you know, Trump wants to open the books on all of it, and it's a very nasty,
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painful process.
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But I personally believe it has to be. The light has to be shined in.
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So
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I don't know how it all translates out, but
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we are at a point, you know,
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not I'm speaking of ADM, but a larger point, my lower advance.
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USDA.
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Right? What what is it when is it instituted? Maybe 1862,
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not far off there.
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And you look at USCAs
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created, that would be Abraham Lincoln
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in the middle of the civil war.
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And just
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not too long after,
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we are now several lifetimes after, we are now we have, what,
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hundred thousand employees,
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dollars 200,000,000,000
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budget.
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And
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and I I have a question for my chef, got one for
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your listeners, got one for you, and that is
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if you were fine,
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if we were fine and we said, okay, yeah, yeah, USDA needs 100,000 employees,
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100,000.
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At what point
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was I going to stand up and say something Or you and say, you know what?
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200,000.
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That's too many. You start asking these questions, you realize
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just
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what a Goliath
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all of this has become.
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Very uncomfortable,
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very nasty.
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Something something must be done.
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Unknown: Well, to your point, in corporate America, the the stat is that you can take the square root of the number of employees and they do half of all of the work in in a given environment.
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And so, you know, you have a a hundred employees,
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it is, 10 of them are gonna do the as 50% of the work. And I cannot possibly imagine what it's like when it comes to government. I bet it's, you know, something even smaller than that. And, you know, when you talk about the USDA, I I used to tell people this all the time. If you go to Washington DC and you drive past the USDA, you have to go past multiple stoplights
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and the whole thing is a gigantic building
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of government employees.
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And I I like I I have no answer for this other than just cut cut way, way beyond what you should cut. And then if we find out, oh, we we messed up some services, there was something we needed here, then bring it back. But I think that we'll be when we get closer to a thousand employees
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than, than 50,000 and certainly more than 200,000.
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Unknown: Yeah. You know, I mean, why is that USDA building not in Iowa?
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Unknown: Why is that USDA building not in Kansas or Nebraska? Kearney, Nebraska is what I always say. Yeah. Put it out there so that that way, there's no bureaucrats that are just jumping through the USDA that love being out in Washington DC, and instead, they have to go out to somewhere in the middle of nowhere and and be among farmers, be among you rednecks.
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Unknown: Right. I'm not picking on USDA
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because
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all government department fall into that same
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pattern.
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Right? But USDA, by definition,
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is part of the bureaucracy.
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So,
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by by the way, you know, I just saw today, I mean, it may have came out before, but I saw Brooke Rollins. She had she posted a video on social media holding up the packs of tomato seeds. If you saw if you didn't see that, if your followers didn't see that, the USGA apparently had had printed off these packs of tomato seeds that were diversity,
15:19
equity, and inclusion tomato seeds.
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They had logos, they had a flyer that went with it in rainbow something. It was amazing. And she said, hey, you know, we found these really are she was just showing people.
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And and when you see it, it just your your mind goes to
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what else has gone on in USDA
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that we're gonna be finding out twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years from now. It's a very uncomfortable feeling because, you know, it's gonna be bloody.
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Unknown: Well, I'm glad to see that. I'm also looking forward to when they stop,
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doing the, like, let's beat down the DEI stuff. Let's just assume that it's all there. Cut it, get rid of it, quit doing the photo ops, and now let's get to cutting the other way bigger programs that really aren't just about the DEI initiatives and all this because there is so much more fat there that is pork that was put in in the eighties and the nineties, and it's people getting fat cat contracts
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for doing work that is not making things better. But we gotta keep moving. Speaking of Brook Rollins, the US is buying hundreds of millions of eggs from South Korea, Turkey, and soon Brazil. This is what Donald Trump had to say about that. And I wanna just congratulate you, Brooke. What a job you've done over there with the eggs, and I don't know what the hell magic wand you use.
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Unknown: And now they don't talk about it anymore. It's terrible. Well, we'll talk. We have to talk about it. You know? If they don't talk about it, we talk about it. Right, Brooke? But what a job you've done.
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Unknown: Well, speaking of talking about it, the way that they spring down prices was that they're starting to import hundreds of millions of eggs, but also at the same time, it doesn't take that long for the egg market to bounce back. Surely, they killed a lot of, birds. Avian flu killed it, and then the government came in and tried to do a bunch of culling. But the temporary measures are are are aimed to ease consumer prices which have surged up to 65%
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and were projected to rise another 41%,
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but with the repopulation, we've started to see egg prices go down. They've dropped nearly 50%
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since, February of twenty twenty five, and, the pledge alone of bringing in eggs from South Korea and some of these other countries was enough to bring some of the prices down, but somebody like Jared McDaniel took to x and pointed out that if farmers command high prices, the government is gonna come in and say, wait, wait, wait. The consumers want lower prices, so we're gonna add supply in. He's not wrong. Right? At just at the moment when farmers are finally making,
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hay when the sun is shining, the government comes in in and undercuts them. What do you think, Chris? Is this a good strategy? Should The US be bending to make sure eggs are priced for consumers? Or should they be letting farmers make money at a at a valuable time? No, sir. I don't agree with miss Rollins,
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Unknown: on this at all.
18:06
You know,
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we need government to move
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only in necessary areas and that's it.
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So
18:14
how many Band Aids will you apply?
18:18
You know, it goes to the larger question of this month was what 10,000,000,000
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in payments, something like that, from USCAs to producers.
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I'll bluntly say I I don't agree with any of that. You look at something like an egg. Right? You think we're gonna import eggs from Turkey, from South Korea.
18:36
Once again,
18:37
government needs to be involved
18:39
only when and where necessary, and that's it. I absolutely believe in economic hardball, and that
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is not it. It's just my position always has been since the nineteen thirties, since FDR.
18:53
It is a big government approach.
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It's been detrimental to agriculture.
18:59
To me, the more you get government involved,
19:02
the worse things get long term. It's a Faustian deal or Faustian deal, however you pronounce that. So whether it's whether it's,
19:11
ethanol mandates, whether it's crop insurance, whether it's crop subsidies,
19:16
there is
19:17
a price you will pay down the road. So it's peaches and cream for one producer, but maybe for the grandson
19:25
or the great grandson,
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they will be put through hell later. You you you gotta pay at some point.
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Unknown: And what is what about the, egg farmer that said, you know, the egg prices are finally high enough. I'm gonna take the risk. I'm gonna put together, a couple of barns, and I'm gonna go out and buy those eggs, and I'm gonna put my family's future on the line by making this capital investment. And, oh, boom. Now the US government is undercutting them. It seems like,
19:54
sabotage,
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and I think, like, it's, so easy to say, oh, I'm all for farmers. I'm all for farmers. But then when you wanna get those consumers votes, then you go out and you start buying eggs on the cheap from somewhere else. I I I hate it. I think it's a bad sign, and I think it's,
20:09
it certainly should be considered anti American to do that.
20:13
Unknown: Yeah. You know, Vance, there's there's a strong there's a strong knee jerk element to it to me.
20:19
And, you know, I'm I'm just thinking, alright.
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Eggs from South Korea and Turkey, who whose palm
20:25
got crossed with silver here? Because it's it's just not adding up to me, period.
20:31
Unknown: Alright. Let's move on to the final headline. Worry spreads that the honeybee population
20:36
is in decline.
20:38
Losses of commercial honeybee colonies are projected to be the highest on record in the last decade
20:43
according to the Washington State University
20:46
scientist press release
20:48
that came out saying colonies could decline by up to 70% this year. While there's been a steady decline in bee populations according to the release, there is no definitive cause as to why the colony losses are higher this year. The scientists,
21:03
posit that it could be a combination of nutrition issues,
21:06
mite infestation,
21:07
diseases,
21:08
as well as, and they stick this in at the end, pesticide
21:11
exposure.
21:12
So, Chris, with a press release like this coming out, are you worried about honeybees?
21:17
I'm fascinated
21:19
Unknown: by honeybees
21:20
and certainly recognize the general role that they play, which is integral to agriculture. However,
21:26
I'm just gonna come with a man in the street
21:28
comment here.
21:32
And
21:33
the the the the honeybee deal, right?
21:38
How many times
21:39
have we heard it was the end of the world for honeybee? We've heard it over and over and over. So now
21:45
I I think we're actually at the point when they come out with releases like this, everyone ignores it because you've heard
21:52
it seemingly year by year for the last twenty years. I'm not saying their report doesn't have merit. I'm not saying it's not true. I don't know. I just know that when I see this kind of thing,
22:02
I I I walk home.
22:05
Unknown: I'm the same way. I, actually had a really good chance to meet,
22:09
a beekeeper named Gerald Hayes, Jerry Hayes. He now runs Bee Culture magazine.
22:14
And until that guy comes to me and says, Vance, this is a real problem. I I just I I have to believe that a lot of these scientists are trying to make sure their press release gets coverage. It is something that people feel really deep about. It's it's like saying kittens are dying,
22:29
and it may be true. But I I think that, there's been a lot of hyperbole here and it's really dangerous. I actually think if the ag community is hearing this, they should be doing everything they can to get out there and verify whether or not these scientists have real data and it's the right thing because the next step will be, well, why don't we just ban pesticides? But they're not going to look closely at what pesticides actually hurt bees, how it works, what are the rules. They're just gonna say, that's the pesticide. I hear this word neonicotinoids.
22:59
I feel like I know what it is because I know this fancy word. That's the one that should get banned. So if egg is not operationalizing
23:06
right now, you are already behind the eight ball.
23:09
Unknown: Right. I I feel like there's a boy who cried wolf element to the whole thing. It's just opinion.
23:15
Unknown: Yeah. Carl Schlegel says every year. Alright. So that is gonna do it for our headlines this year, this week. If you have any headlines you think we should cover, it is so helpful to me if you'll send them to vance@legacyinterviews.com
23:29
or send them to me on x at vance crow. Moving on to the Bitcoin land price report, last week, Bitcoin was up 4% making it to $84,380.
23:40
And today, we're sitting at $87,475,
23:45
which is up 3.6%.
23:47
Now as a long term Bitcoin holder, I can say I'm not actually all that excited about it. I like sale prices. It was getting good, for a little while,
23:56
but it looks like prices are headed slowly back up. But we're talking about, Bitcoin in terms of land prices. So, Chris, where do you live and, how much does an acre of high quality farm ground cost where you are? I live in Northeast Mississippi, very close to the Lafayette
24:12
Unknown: and Union County line. I do my living, I guess, you could say in Union County.
24:18
And acreage would be
24:20
anywhere from, you know, I'm gonna say 4,545
24:24
Unknown: hundred per acre. And what are people growing on a on a $4,500
24:29
acre of land? Predominantly,
24:30
Unknown: right here is gonna be soybeans.
24:34
And then I would reckon,
24:36
hay, forage hay would come next and followed by corn.
24:41
Number three, your cotton would be just a stone's throw away. Cotton and and rice would be a little bit further.
24:47
And, I don't know for a fact, but I'm guessing there's some sweet taters in the ground too.
24:52
Unknown: Alright. So at, $4,500
24:55
an acre, that means one acre is worth 0.051
24:59
Bitcoin.
25:00
Or to put it in another term, one Bitcoin would purchase you just about 19.4
25:05
acres.
25:06
How does that sit with you, Chris?
25:08
Unknown: It rocks and rolls with me. A few years ago,
25:12
you know, I did not understand Bitcoin. I do not understand it now. But I said I'm not going to watch this from a historical perspective.
25:22
Here.
25:23
And, you know, you tell your kid, you tell your kid, when you go to get to the plate, don't you watch strike three without swinging. Don't touch that.
25:31
If it goes by, you swing.
25:33
So here it came. I put what I could afford in there, Vance, and I put it in long term. Just leave it.
25:39
I just put it in there for the kids. So I enjoy watching it. What do I think is going to happen with Bitcoin?
25:46
Personally, I think it's got legs. I don't see how you can mock Bitcoin.
25:50
I don't see how you can say it's based on fantasy when our normal currency, our normal dollar or dinar or pound is also based
26:00
on an agreed lie. So
26:04
I'm,
26:05
I'm I'm very curious and and I definitely consider buying more. Buy, you know, buy what you can afford afford to lose.
26:13
Unknown: Well, man, you are singing my song. I absolutely agree with this, and I think one of the best parts about buying even just a little bit of Bitcoin is you've had a ton of questions. If you unless you've bought Bitcoin and done all the way to mining and setting up a node, you have questions, but you won't know exactly how to even ask that question until you go buy a little bit and then you're like, alright, how does this work and then how do I move it off a wallet and what does this mean? So I think anytime somebody touches it one of the things I've been doing lately is talking about, Bitcoin. I wanted to throw up this graph right here. So the yellow line on this graph is the price and you can see it's going up and it kind of goes up and down, up and down, but the green line here, that is actually maybe even more interesting. What that line represents is how many Bitcoin are listed on exchanges right now, and this shows I think about three years worth of Bitcoin.
27:05
And as it turns out,
27:07
we are just 30,000
27:09
coins away from being the lowest amount on exchanges
27:12
in the history of exchanges having Bitcoin.
27:15
There is now I think it's two point,
27:18
what is it, 2.8, and I think the the lowest amount there's ever been is 2.7,
27:24
Bitcoin a 2.17.
27:25
I'm sorry. And we are really just, we're about to find out what happens when that number starts, dropping down below 2,000,000.
27:33
And, the interesting thing about Bitcoin is unlike stock, when the price of a stock goes up, the share the the people on the board say, you know what? This price is so high. Why don't we just issue some more stock? And then that dilutes you and it gives them a chance to make bring more money into the company. Well, with Bitcoin, you can't do that. So we've never seen a market where you literally can't,
27:55
bring any more on. The closest thing will either be land or maybe heifers because it takes so long to bring them on. You know, when when demand starts going up, it is, it is going to have an an impact on the price. So I just thought if you ever wanna see a very cool chart, go out to this comes from, Coin Glass. You can check that out. And if you are interested
28:15
in, purchasing Bitcoin,
28:17
I recommend the, the river.com
28:19
as a place to buy Bitcoin.
28:21
I switched. I used to use another,
28:24
platform and when I switched over to River and I set up a a regular purchase, it made it so I didn't have fees on my purchase. So they have, supported the show by saying, hey, if people buy using my show code link,
28:37
then we'll give the show Bitcoin. And so, check out river.com. I will put it in the, show notes below.
28:44
Alright. Moving on to the Peter Thiel paradox.
28:47
This is where I'm gonna ask Chris, what is one thing that you believe that no one in your tribe agrees with you on?
28:55
Unknown: I
28:56
I I personally believe that the,
28:59
I'll just say it.
29:01
The beef act, 1985,
29:04
the soybean act, roughly 1990.
29:09
I I believe those are antithetical
29:12
to The US constitution.
29:15
I'll challenge anybody.
29:16
Go back and read that b four order 95.
29:20
Go back and read the soybean act.
29:23
Unknown: You know, the dollar per head and the I'm hooked. What what is this? What do they even talk about? I I couldn't tell you what they are.
29:29
Unknown: Beef act of '85
29:31
gave,
29:32
a dollar per head,
29:34
a dollar a cow
29:36
for research, beef council, and so on.
29:39
It was part of the foreign bill.
29:41
In 1990,
29:42
the soybean
29:43
act did the same thing,
29:46
took, I think, one half a half of 1%
29:49
of every soybean sale and pumped it into recharge.
29:52
Soybean Association, a lot more groups.
29:56
I look at it now, a few years later,
29:58
I think
30:03
That ain't kosher with the Constitution.
30:06
Now,
30:07
the money may go to fantastic research, marketing, and so on. But I look back and
30:13
I think I can't
30:15
I can't go with those. It strikes me again
30:19
of the troubles that we have in so many areas of this country right now,
30:23
and that's extra constitutional
30:26
action by the government. And your next generation goes to sleep, and then the generation after that asks, hey.
30:33
How
30:34
did this get instituted
30:36
to begin with? Questions like EPA and NRCS. Hey. How did they manage to get this regulation and this code
30:42
passed?
30:44
And you go back and check and see.
30:46
You think about your constitutional
30:48
fathers. Right? Think about old,
30:51
Jimmy Madison when he writes the bill of rights,
30:54
and you think, what would old Jimmy think?
30:57
No. No. Seriously. You know James Madison would not abide
31:02
these things, these paths that we have gone down. And that's not just an old man talking.
31:08
It's simply the fact. And and
31:11
I I say,
31:13
you go back and read these documents and you think,
31:16
how did this happen? How did this happen? So we as next generations
31:21
wake up, read the stuff, hold our
31:25
reps and our senators accountable.
31:27
How many of our senators and reps right now right now as I speak in Washington, DC
31:33
have read
31:35
the constitution
31:36
itself?
31:37
Right? How many of them could rattle off the bill of rights?
31:42
And I say in totality for both of those,
31:45
not many senators and reps, and that is one heck of an indictment, but I do believe that.
31:51
Unknown: Well, I gotta say, everything you're saying resonates with me. I am so against anything that's mandated that I I have trouble even,
32:00
communicating with my friends sometimes where I'm like, that's something you support. I don't. And so, but I had never thought about it actually as a constitutional argument. I've heard people say they didn't wanna have it be a law, but I actually didn't even realize those,
32:14
the way that those were brought into being. So,
32:17
I I gotta give you a higher score. I think there are a lot of people that already agree with you, but the fact that you brought the heat and the receipts when it came to where did these things come into existence. So I'm gonna give you an eight five on that one. Hey, Vash. Let me add also. But since I'm throwing things out that I don't agree with, I don't agree with flat bill caps,
32:36
Unknown: gender reveal parties,
32:39
men wearing Lululemon
32:41
clothes,
32:44
travel ball, kids running around with all these trophy rings.
32:49
Unknown: Hey. And just a curmudgeon. But anyway, there it is. Well, I I love it. Yeah. And actually, then we'll go in eight six. We'll give you an extra point one on that for, for throwing more out there.
33:00
Alright. Now we're gonna do your worthy adversary. Who is one person that you respect
33:06
but you strongly disagree with on social media?
33:10
Unknown: The gentleman's handle is at pharaoh
33:13
underscore
33:15
q underscore lucas, I believe. He's independent
33:19
thinker. That's his name, independent thinker.
33:23
And
33:24
on on on Twitter, all the time, he posts all these
33:30
IRA money. He posts the inflation reduction act money, government money that's been pumped into all sectors of the agriculture industry, including
33:39
agriculture media. So you can tar and feather me as well.
33:43
But he posts these things and they're fantastic
33:46
because they show you where all the money has been thrown against the wall,
33:51
with without hardly any,
33:53
reckoning or responsibility.
33:55
At the same time, this fellas kinda
33:58
feely, kinda touchy feely, puts,
34:01
kind of flowy statements out there as well.
34:04
And
34:05
that's not my kind of thing. But if you just want something
34:10
to chew on that you may or may not agree,
34:14
I like him.
34:15
He's good, and he he will show you something that you won't be getting,
34:20
elsewhere. You may see a company name,
34:22
or you may see someone in agriculture pop up on one of his lists
34:26
that, makes you very uncomfortable.
34:28
Or you may, you know, you may see your own name pop up on there.
34:32
So, hey, put the light on it.
34:35
Open the books.
34:36
Unknown: I think that's, that's a good one. I, will get his name on the worthy adversary list. If you're interested in this list, it is, great. I have it on x. You can go to my profile, look at my list, and it is a list of worthy adversaries, and we will get him on there. I have to throw this one out there. I I saw a farmer today that, got quite a bit of,
34:56
positive feedback. I even saw some negative feedback where he was talking about the need for the the,
35:02
bailouts and that, there would otherwise be farmer suicides as a result of this. And I'd I do. I respect that man. I've seen him post things before,
35:12
but I think that that is
35:15
deeply the wrong approach. I I think to to say that men are going to kill themselves, men and women are gonna take their own lives if they don't get money from the government
35:24
is something that I,
35:26
I I don't know. I I, I I really buck against. I maybe should have put this in the Peter Thiel paradox. I feel for people. I have personally been in spots where I'm like, how am I going to take care of my family? What is going what am I going to have to give up that I don't wanna give up? And,
35:41
I I there's something
35:43
I feel really strongly about this and it's not it's not to say that I don't understand or I don't appreciate his plight or how how difficult and dangerous a time when people are going through this, but man, I really
35:57
I really don't like when somebody says you better give the money, otherwise, people are gonna take their lives.
36:03
Unknown: I I agree a %
36:05
with you, Vance. And to me, it screams out, hey,
36:09
Here's the end result of what happens when you get government involved over and over and over
36:14
at various levels of agriculture.
36:17
Again, dating back to the nineteen thirties. It's not hard to figure out. If a fellow says to you, hey. I can't farm. Right? I can't make a living without x or y from the government
36:29
or all the above from the government. Right?
36:32
He was partially put into that situation
36:36
by the government,
36:38
by programs
36:39
decade after decade after decade that were too big of plums
36:44
that were such low hanging fruit, they couldn't
36:47
it couldn't pass up.
36:49
So now we are where we are.
36:51
And I don't I'm not I'm not an economist by any means. I don't have a magic wand. I don't know how to interpret and to fix it all. But I do know
37:00
that when government gets involved,
37:02
whether that's,
37:03
ethanol mandate, carbon
37:06
credits,
37:07
or a myriad of other things.
37:09
Decades down the road, it always
37:12
ends bad. That I know.
37:15
Unknown: Yeah. I,
37:16
I I couldn't agree more. I think that's once, once the government's involved, there is inevitably going to be a bubble. If they take away risk like they do with student loans, now all of a sudden you're gonna have kids that can take away, you know, huge student loans and then are buried under them and cause all these problems for their getting married and having kids and all kinds of other problems. And, you know, they're sitting there being like, what? We're trying to help. We tried to make it easy to go to college. I think the same thing happens in farming, and it's sad, but,
37:44
I I think the conversation about mental health,
37:47
shouldn't be about if we don't get this, then what? It should be, hey, if you gotta make changes,
37:52
this is what happened to me or this is what happened to my farm and this is how I moved on and this is what what, was on the other side of that tunnel. I've just done too many legacy interviews where I've heard of families
38:03
making big, big changes
38:05
that they didn't wanna make, but they said twenty, thirty years later, you know, that was the right decision. That's what we had to do and even though it was hard.
38:13
Unknown: Tenfold.
38:14
Yes, sir. Mhmm.
38:16
Unknown: Alright. Well, that is going to do it for this week's Ag Tribes report, but we are six weeks away from Mother's Day. So I'm gonna spring this question on you, Chris. I didn't prepare you for it. I've been asking guests, questions about their own mothers. What is a turn of phrase that, your mom has that still rings in your ears today?
38:37
Unknown: I am, Vance.
38:40
My my mom is the best in the world.
38:42
Something about, hey, you know, you're gonna have to cut your own switch.
38:50
Did you have to cut your own switch back in the day? Oh, I did I did I did have to a few times. But,
38:56
no. She that
38:58
I didn't have to because there wasn't, you know, there was always some leather somewhere she grabbed.
39:03
But let me tell you something, man.
39:06
Every whooping I got,
39:07
I needed it.
39:09
I probably probably needed a
39:11
a heck of a lot more, actually.
39:14
Unknown: Well, I can I I can relate? My mother used to, she's gonna be mad that I told this, but she doesn't listen to the show. So she used to, get a hairbrush and that for me and my brother. And I remember one time putting a bunch of toilet paper in our in our pants
39:28
and then going and getting in trouble.
39:31
And, I never got a harder spanking than I did when my mom did the first spanking and found out there was, toilet paper in there, and then I got a bare bottom spanking.
39:41
Unknown: Oh, my. Hi. Listen.
39:43
Corporal punishment,
39:44
let's bring it back to American schools, and and we'll change them, brother. You corporal punishment with holes drilled in the panel. That's our solution right there. Turn the country around.
39:56
Unknown: Well, if you are interested in doing something that's really special for your mother or grandmother,
40:02
consider doing a legacy interview. I can tell you that the stories you will get from your mother will surprise you, they will delight you, and you will learn things about her. And you're gonna give her an experience that, is truly deeply meaningful. So check out legacyinterviews.com
40:19
for more on that. Chris, if people wanted to learn more about you, read your stories,
40:24
where should they go?
40:26
Unknown: I'm out there on Twitter at Chris Bennett m s. You can Google my name on,
40:32
Farm Journal website, agweb.com.
40:35
My email's out there and,
40:37
holler anytime. I'm always looking for something wild. Got one coming out. Vance, very wild on four siblings
40:44
that were in their seventies
40:46
that ran a 10 plus million dollar scam
40:49
on USDA.
40:51
You talk about a geriatric
40:53
heist.
40:54
Right? Golden Girls? This is it, brother.
40:57
Unknown: Oh, man. Can't wait. Alright.
40:59
Well, thank you so much, Chris, for that. I'm also continuing to run my, Satoshi's,
41:06
prompt. If you go to river.com and you, sign up for the for the app and you you download it, you can send me a lightning wallet,
41:15
receive address. And if you do, I will send you 75 satoshis. We've been cutting that down in half,
41:21
every time, but I will include,
41:23
my link in the show notes so you can support,
41:26
the show by buying bitcoin with river.com.
41:29
Alright. That's gonna do it this week. We'll be back next week with a different host, and as always,
41:35
feel free to disagree.