Latest / The Vance Crowe Podcast / ATR: Secretary Rawlins; Cheerleader or Change Maker? with Elliot Henderson

Transcript

ATR: Secretary Rawlins; Cheerleader or Change Maker? with Elliot Henderson · 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. Here are Legacy Interviews guests, Mark and Stephanie Mendenhall,
• 0:13
  on the unexpected
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  ease of their experience.
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  Unknown: What'd you guys think? How was it? Much easier than I expected. Yep.
• 0:21
  Unknown: Much easier. You made us feel very comfortable. Was this something that weighed on you for a while? He had her ideas on it. Well, we looked at it and said, well, we'll just wing it. Because, you know, you give this list of figured out this out and figure this out. Oh, well. We didn't get that done. What what we remember, we remember, and what we forgot, we'll tell the kids later. Tomorrow, I'll say, god, why didn't I tell this story? Or why didn't I tell them about this? You do a good job of asking questions.
• 0:48
  Unknown: Welcome to the Agtribe's Report, a breakdown of the top stories affecting the culture of agriculture
• 0:54
  with your host, Vance Crow.
• 0:57
  The report begins in three,
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  two,
• 1:00
  one. Let's begin.
• 1:04
  Unknown: Welcome to the Ag Tribes Report. I'm your host, Vance Crow. Each week, I bring on a new cohost that represents one of the many tribes that make up US and Canadian agriculture.
• 1:14
  This week, I have none other than Elliot Henderson,
• 1:17
  an entrepreneur, farmer, combat veteran,
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  Iowa corn growers director, and cohost of the well known Rush Hour Ag podcast.
• 1:26
  Elliot, welcome
• 1:27
  Unknown: to the Ag Tribes Report. Yeah. Thanks for having me on.
• 1:30
  So what have you been paying attention to lately? I I guess I've probably been paying the most attention to my constituents
• 1:36
  here in,
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  District 3 up here in Northeast Iowa
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  with the Iowa Corn Growers Association. You know, just watching these ag markets,
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  seeing what's happened with trade,
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  just trying to do the best job I can to represent the people up here.
• 1:49
  Now when you get a representative position like that, is that a paid gig? Is it take a lot of hours? Is it full time? What do you what do you do there? It takes a ton of hours. And, sure, there's, like, maybe a $100 a day per diem, and they put me up in a hotel room, but, I don't know. I I know there's days when I'm gone. I'm probably losing $10,000
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  just going and represent my fellow farmers, but,
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  I do think it's important, and it's something that, I I hope I really hope somebody comes in
• 2:18
  and desires to replace me someday because it there's I can't carry all the water on my own, and I I really hope that there's a future for this organization because I think
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  with the representation that Iowa corn has, it's a it's a fantastic
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  association
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  to represent the farmers here in Iowa.
• 2:36
  Unknown: Yeah. I mean, it is such a big challenge to get people to be able to show up to things. I know I am I'm on one board, and it is so much effort that my wife has to endure. I know you've got kids.
• 2:47
  Yeah. And our time is so valuable because the value of it gets sucked out through inflation. So to use your time to go to a board is a big investment in the long term. That's all you can chalk it up to.
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  Unknown: And I know the hard work that's being done there and the people that are there, like, some of the smartest people I've ever met. And it's frustrating when you come back and you're talking to your constituents and they're just like, well, you know, what what are you doing? And you start sharing some of these stories about the action that's being taken. They're like, holy cow. How come you guys aren't talking about this? And it's like, well, we are, but it's just hard to engage with people. So we gotta do a better job of engaging with our constituents.
• 3:25
  Unknown: Well, I think everybody in ag thinks that right now because, man, we are in a crazy time.
• 3:30
  Tonight, the the
• 3:33
  the stories we wanna cover are, we're gonna talk about secretary Rollins going on grain markets and other stuff with Jo Valaklavec.
• 3:39
  We're gonna talk a little bit about what she mentioned and also what she's doing out there. You know, she's been a very unusual Ag secretary as far as I can tell. We're also gonna talk about California prop 50 passing, which is going to redistrict rural ag and likely give them even less of a vote. We're gonna talk about the Danish cows, that allegedly are dying after,
• 3:59
  Bovier, the Bill Gates backed, feed
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  used to cut down on methane production. And we're also gonna talk about how the New York City mayoral race won by Mam Dami,
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  could potentially want, $60,000,000
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  city grocery,
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  project,
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  which, we'll see how this goes. But we're gonna try and do all that, then we're gonna do the Bitcoin land price report. We'll ask Elliot
• 4:21
  his Peter Thiel paradox and find out who his worthy adversary is, which before we were talking on the show, it's pretty spicy.
• 4:29
  If you're watching the show and you're wondering what in the heck is going on, well, once a year, I make a pilgrimage,
• 4:34
  to Upstate Illinois where I visit a group of my buddies.
• 4:38
  And, I'm in a different shop, and I've gotta wear the hat because it has gone from being 70 degrees out to being about 40 degrees out, and I think it's headed colder.
• 4:48
  Unknown: Yep.
• 4:49
  Unknown: Alright. First,
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  story today, USDA secretary Brooke Rollins highlights a trade deal and Farm Aid in the podcast interview.
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  She went on on November 3 on grain markets and other stuff with, past guest of the Ag Tribes report, Jo Valaklavec.
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  This is a big show. Apparently, what happened is she,
• 5:08
  was supposed to be on a show months ago, then didn't happen. They kept trying to reschedule. Didn't happen. Didn't happen. The China deal goes off. And the very next day, Brooke Rollins is on as many podcasts as she can get on to try and talk about what's going on. She talks about the China deal, some of the grain trades that are being made, what she's working on in cattle markets, New World's screw worm, but they did it bang, bang, bang, fast in thirty minutes. I know you listened to this, particular episode, Elliot. What'd you think? You know, I'm an avid Joe, and I pronounce it Baklovic. So maybe he'll be listening and he'll pick which one of us says it right, but, I do. I listen to Joe every morning. I mean, it's the first thing I do when I wake up. I I know my wife's probably, like, so irritated
• 5:50
  Unknown: that he's but I'm listening to him before I'm listening to her in the morning. But, but, yeah,
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  what I think of it, I,
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  honestly, that was a much anticipated episode that I was really wanting to see, and I had never before
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  ever
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  clicked the fast forward button when I listened to that show.
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  And every time she started talking about some, I was fast forwarding through it. Just trying to get to the next question because I wasn't getting it was all just fluff, I thought, and I was very disappointed in what she had to say. And I love Brooke Rollins. I think she is an excellent cheerleader for the ag economy for the ag industry, but I just
• 6:25
  wasn't something that did it for me, I guess.
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  Unknown: You know, when I listen to it, I think she's an exceptional speaker. She's talking about so many issues. Right?
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  And she cannot vary one millimeter from Trump's agenda.
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  And this what this made me think of is there have been several times when FFA officers,
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  when they're trying to become the national FFA officer, they'll be introduced to me and they won't talk about, like, what can they do to prepare themselves,
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  what can they how can they answer questions, how should they think about it. And, like, I've I've worked with people that have been in the national office, the president of the national FFA,
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  and what I always tell them is don't do it. And the reason I tell them don't do it is
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  you what they're actually training you to do is to say what somebody else wants you to say.
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  Unknown: And it seems really great. The lights are glittering on you. The spotlight's there. But they're not your words. They're not your ideas. And that's what I think when I see her. She is a super FFA officer just out there saying exactly what she's supposed to say. So So do you think, like remember the last administration? They had a lot of turnover. It didn't take long, and they were going through people. Do you think that maybe they've even, like, polished her to be not like the people of the first administration and stick to,
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  you know, what they want them to say. 100%.
• 7:38
  Unknown: I mean, she was chosen as far as I could tell because she had spent the years after Trump got out of office
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  trying to do policy work that would get him back into office. She wasn't an ag policy person. She was trying to get him
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  reelected. And and so when it came time to choose who should be the ag secretary, I think we were hoping
• 7:56
  Thomas Massey,
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  maybe see a a John Kemp in there, something wild, you know. But but when she was brought there, you're like, okay.
• 8:04
  Unknown: It is gonna be somebody that's gonna say exactly what they're supposed to say, which, I mean, as a president, that's a smart pick. And the first time I saw her was out at Commodity Classic last spring or late winter, and I just I was met as a Verizon buyer. I really didn't think she was a great choice just like you were talking about. Well, I had other people I had picked. But, man, she really impressed me out there. I thought she did a great job and, you know,
• 8:24
  Unknown: I will Well, I mean, what I see there is there's no chance that what she actually wants to do is import Argentinian
• 8:31
  beef into The United States. Like, she's a cattle rancher. This is not what she wants. The new world screw worm, like, all the pressure that she had on her, she doesn't wanna be adding that stuff into the system. They're doing it because there's larger picture goals and that's what's gonna upset ag. They're gonna say, I know you don't actually believe what it is that you're doing,
• 8:48
  Unknown: and so you're one of them and not one of us. Yeah. And I know this cattle thing, I know I've I've upset a lot of people here in the last, you know, since these things all broke out too. And, you know, I wanna be longer cattle. So and I wanna buy I wanna buy beef at the grocery store. So I don't know. I I worry about,
• 9:05
  you know, the whole world getting burnt down at the expense of the American cattle producer, beef producer because, you know, we wanna maintain these higher prices. I I do think, you know, we we've gotta have an open mind to some of these these I don't know, man. Maybe maybe what we need is high quality beef and that costs money to make and that, like, messing around with these trade deals and importing beef in order to keep the prices down, maybe that's not the right answer. Yeah. But that I don't know. These these markets, the way they moved here in the last couple days, this is all managed money. It ain't like it's
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  beef producers that are moving this market around or even the the buyers of beef. It's managed money. It's the same thing that happens in grains
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  When when they wanna capitalize on a short position based on on the media
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  talking heads, that that that moves the markets when they bring that money in. I don't know. That's probably something I think people should be looking more at.
• 9:56
  Unknown: Well, it's just, as far as Brooke Rollins, I have to say she is an exceptional talent, but she is towing the administrative line. Is she it is not her she is speaking for. That's what that's clear to me.
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  Alright. Moving
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  moving on to story number two. This is out of California. California's prop 50 passes. Redistricting raises concern for rural ag communities.
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  I saw this being talked about on on x, but it wasn't until after it passed that I realized just how big this is.
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  California voters approved proposition 50 on November 4, allowing state lawmakers to redraw congressional districts, potentially shifting five seats towards Democrats and diluting rural voices.
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  The measure replaces independent redistricting commissions with partisan lines effective for 2026.
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  Newsom's push to counter the Republican gerrymandering elsewhere, places like Texas. So critics like the California Farm Bureau call it a setback for rural communities
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  as new maps consolidate areas like Modoc County, home to cattle ranchers and loggers, with urban Marin County, which is the rich rich rich rich area of California,
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  who wanna support doing things like removing,
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  dams and and all kinds of other stuff up in Sonoma and Mendocino County. America on one has been drawn a lot of attention to this. Seems like rural farmers in California, the largest ag producing state,
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  Unknown: they're they're going to be completely dominated by urban areas. Thoughts, Elliot? Yeah. Talk about more of the wrong stuff here. Like, this ain't good. You know, it's not good for America. It's not good for rural America.
• 11:25
  I I don't know. I don't know how you how you start fixing this stuff.
• 11:30
  Unknown: It seems like, you know, everything is being drawn into a national fight. And what I dislike about this is
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  the states are set up to be independent of this, like, larger how how are we gonna get as many Democrats as we can into The US system? And maybe it is not actually how it works in practice, but we're watching what happens
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  when everything gets funneled towards the money comes from the national government. The more the money comes from the national government for all their things,
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  Unknown: the more there's an emphasis there rather than making sure you have a really strong representative government in your own state. I have been following this story a lot, but it just makes me think here as we're talking, like, is this gonna drive,
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  a North and South California?
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  Unknown: Is this gonna drive that someday? Well, it's funny because just one year ago today when I was doing this last year, we were talking about the,
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  when I was living in Mendocino County just north of there, they they talk about the state of Jefferson,
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  which is this Northern California area.
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  And I know that Oregon is setting up the stage to to try and break away the western part of it. It's basically anything
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  on the leeward side of the the, yeah, the country that that doesn't get as much rain, but they're the ones doing all the production. Yep. Yeah. The eastern part.
• 12:41
  Yeah. That's right.
• 12:43
  Alright. Moving on to story number three. Danish farmers report cow deaths linked to mandatory bovir feed additive. On November 4, a ViralEx post highlighted a Danish farmer's claim that cows are dying, which is after they've been mandated to use bovir, the methane inducing,
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  the methane reducing feed additive backed by Bill Gates. Farmer reported that the first cow went down on Friday, two more on Saturday, and attributing it to Bovier. This is all alleged,
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  but that, tweet went totally viral. I saw it multiple times,
• 13:15
  earlier this week. And, so there was a lot of pushback a few months ago on Bovir, and it seems like more pushback now. Did this hit your feed?
• 13:23
  Unknown: No. I mean, we're not not that's not something that's really in our wheelhouse here, but I just again,
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  why why are we worrying about
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  these non issues? You know, this is
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  we we've gotten way too many well, this is the problem with agriculture. We're not getting involved enough. We're not speaking our mind enough. We're not educating the people on what's important and how how cow farts
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  is not the problem. And we're just not doing enough. We need to be doing more.
• 13:52
  Unknown: Yeah. I mean, I think in The United States, we are gonna end up developing a real cultural difference. I think even the the left wing of The United States has seen like, hey. We've used climate change to effectively raise the prices on everything that we possibly can, cars,
• 14:09
  your food, everything that we can. Now now that we've done that damage and kept prices high, let's abandon that. Now we're gonna move towards some other principle. And I see Europe is is doubling down on things like climate change and methane, while Bill Gates is making a reverse,
• 14:23
  you know, beating a path the other direction. I think that
• 14:27
  it won't take very many years of that being taken out of The US educational curriculum for that to be like, what are you talking about? Climate change? You you fed things to cows to stop methane whereas in Europe, they're just gonna keep going down this path.
• 14:40
  Unknown: Why do you think that is? Because they're gonna keep sticking the money into it?
• 14:44
  Unknown: I think the cultural changes here I mean, the the biggest reason to me that the US government gave in so much to climate change mandates was because it was a way to funnel money into the system,
• 14:56
  through another means, you know, by putting up solar panels and and wind farms.
• 15:01
  So I think that that that,
• 15:03
  process is not gonna be the way they inject money. Shit. The way they're injecting money is now now sending as many payments as they can to farmers as Brooke Rollins promised they were gonna do. Right. But, I mean,
• 15:14
  Unknown: this administration has stopped a lot of that green stuff from happening, and it was that was a total racket too. And
• 15:21
  but back to the European thing. So what do you think is happening in Europe? There's gonna continue to funnel those dollars? Because I don't think it's a culture
• 15:28
  Unknown: follow the money thing. Yeah. I think that it's both. I I think that the the culture is downstream from the money, and the money,
• 15:35
  is there,
• 15:37
  propagating. I I think that they are just following a different tack. They need to have
• 15:42
  this decentralized like, a lot of their climate change stuff has made it so they the farms have stayed small. For example, GMOs were not because they were afraid of GMOs. They wanted to keep more people farming. The more GMOs you use, the more efficient you become, the less farmers you have. They made that as an active choice because they didn't want their farmer class to be pushed out. This is just another way of manipulating the system to get more of what they want, less less efficient cows effectively.
• 16:06
  Unknown: Sure.
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  Unknown: Alright. Moving on to our last story of the day, New York City mayor elected,
• 16:12
  Mondami,
• 16:13
  Mamdani,
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  pushes for city run grocery stores to combat food costs. On November 6, CBS News reported
• 16:21
  that Mondami,
• 16:22
  is advancing a $60,000,000
• 16:24
  plan for city run grocery stores, one per borough in food deserts, to sell at wholesale prices without profit, covering rent and taxes for affordability.
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  Funding redirect subsidies from private grocers
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  plus higher corporate 11.5
• 16:38
  and millionaire 2% taxes.
• 16:41
  Stores would centralized distribution,
• 16:43
  source locally,
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  but face oppositions from those bodegas and supermarkets
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  fearing
• 16:49
  government competition.
• 16:51
  What do you think, Elliot? What is going on here that they want state run grocery stores in New York City?
• 16:58
  Unknown: Bring on the bread lines.
• 17:01
  I think you're not gonna you're not gonna drive
• 17:05
  you're not gonna drive advancements and better quality of service by having a government do it.
• 17:11
  Unknown: But what do you think is going on in the city of New York that says, hey. We we support this. What's making them forget the hard lessons of,
• 17:22
  Unknown: you know, socialism and communism? I I wanna, like, real,
• 17:26
  like, lazily
• 17:27
  blame the propaganda
• 17:29
  that it was just propaganda. But, honestly, I think, you know and it's I think it's bleeding into ag too where, you know,
• 17:36
  I I read something there on the action note. Those who don't experience the love of a village will burn it down to feel the warmth. And I think that's what's happening here. It's like people
• 17:46
  don't see prosperity in their path.
• 17:49
  And
• 17:50
  if they can't if they can't see, a way to get there, they're willing to burn everything down to to see that nobody else does.
• 17:58
  Unknown: Yeah. I mean, I am with you on at least part of that. I mean, my sense about what's going on in New York is that it has become obscenely expensive. I mean, inflation is gonna go there
• 18:09
  really quickly the same way it has with agriculture. You know, where money is dumping into the system is where it accelerates the fastest. And I think it's between rural America and major cities, major metropolitan areas where you see this inflation, and those people don't have capital. And to your point, they don't feel like they have any chance of getting it. So they're just going to constantly be in the renter class, and that renter class is watching infinite prices
• 18:33
  go up, but they're not seeing infinite wages go up. They're seeing wage reduction. I think they're scared
• 18:38
  and somebody's coming along being like, well, I'll make it easier for you. I'm gonna lift that burden
• 18:43
  using somebody else's money. And I think that seems real appealing if you're barely making your credit card payments. It's an easy lever to pull for people, and I I
• 18:52
  Unknown: see that I do see that coming for agriculture. I mean,
• 18:57
  I'm well aware of the the story of the Holdemore and what happened in in Ukraine
• 19:01
  in the nineteen twenties and thirties. Like, they will come after the prosperous farmers someday.
• 19:08
  Unknown: Well, I mean, it's kind of a hard thing for farmers to sit there and be like, hey. We don't want this socialized thing. I mean, they're getting transfer payments that equal 13 and a half percent of their of their bottom line. Right. So I mean, I I mean, are are these people in New York City gonna have 13 and a half percent of their, grocery bill cut out? I I doubt it. I imagine the farmers getting more money than the than the person living in the city. Yeah. You're right. But, you know,
• 19:32
  Unknown: when I talk to my fellow colleagues in agriculture,
• 19:35
  they wanna stop this shit.
• 19:37
  They don't want these payments. And I think it's because they're smart enough to see that this doesn't end well if we continue down this path.
• 19:45
  Unknown: So why do you think ag continues to get those payments? Because I I
• 19:49
  I I don't I mean, I think people talk
• 19:52
  they talk like, capitalists in the coffee shop and they become communist at the mailbox because they're cashing those checks.
• 19:59
  Unknown: Well, I think a lot of that's, you know, even like in Iowa corn, you know, most of the members and most of the people in the boardroom,
• 20:06
  they're cautious they're they're worried about this. They don't they don't wanna see us operate this way.
• 20:12
  But I think you've got, you know it's just it's not the farmer's voice that matters in this. It's the people who are taking the money that the farmers spend,
• 20:21
  and all this money's passed through. So, you know, the big banks, they want they want these loans paid. And the the they don't wanna have to rewrite these loans and take on the risk.
• 20:31
  The big equipment manufacturers, sure. Man, we don't wanna have to lower the price of these x nine combines.
• 20:37
  And then you got guys like me that are like, I wanna stop these payments because I'm sick of seeing the big guy next door continue to pay
• 20:44
  way too much for rent, and he's got his payments limits now lifted on how much money he gets to bring in from the government.
• 20:51
  I don't wanna make his x nine combine payment for him with my tax dollars. So it's like now I'm competing against my own prosperity
• 20:58
  with my own tax dollars. I'm I'm fed up with it. So it's like, maybe I'm one of the guys that's ready to burn the village down to fill the warmth too. I don't know.
• 21:06
  Unknown: You know, it's hard to say. It's it's very interesting to me because when I look at the local and maybe even the state level, there's a lot less asking for handouts, but you get to the national level. And those national organizations are like, we gotta do something for the farmers. Let's print more money. But I sense that you're right. A lot of the pressure they're getting isn't from their farmer constituents. It's from these other big groups that are saying, hey. We wanna be we wanna sell you corn in a bag that's pretreated and it's too expensive if we don't get a payment. Yeah. Hey. We want these guys to keep paying it. And by the way, you know, we're okay with these guys, you know, following the rules of not replanning the the product and,
• 21:44
  Unknown: and following labels on everything, but we're happy to sell it to somebody else cheaper and and they can do whatever they want with the stuff. I I
• 21:51
  I just think we gotta get serious about fighting back about this.
• 21:54
  Unknown: Well, we tried to talk about the New York City,
• 21:58
  run grocery stores, but I think it all does come down to, like you said, follow the money. So it's good for ag to be policing itself on that. I'm with you. I think most farmers don't want it, but there's a whole lot of money coming out the back of the government towards farmers. Okay.
• 22:12
  Moving on to something that the government can't inflate, and that is Bitcoin.
• 22:17
  This is the Bitcoin land price report.
• 22:19
  Right now, Bitcoin is sitting at 100,850,
• 22:24
  which is
• 22:25
  down almost
• 22:26
  24%
• 22:27
  from its all time highs just, earlier at the October,
• 22:30
  but it is taking quite a tumble. It is a buyer's market.
• 22:34
  Unknown: Elliot, how much does an acre a good farm ground cost where you're at? I've seen it land get pretty soft here. My brother just bought a farm yesterday for 12,000, I think, 12,500,
• 22:44
  and that's some pretty, like, 85 CSR ground.
• 22:48
  I thought it I thought he got a good buy on it. And you're saying that's soft a couple of months ago. It would have been something different? Yeah. 16 and last time I was on your show, I think we were throwing around $16,000
• 22:58
  or $18,000.
• 22:59
  So it's I mean, it's getting softer.
• 23:02
  Unknown: Well,
• 23:03
  so at 12,500
• 23:05
  and Bitcoin at just a little over a 100,000, it means that you could buy one acre of land with 1 point
• 23:11
  0.1239
• 23:13
  Bitcoin. So about 1.24
• 23:14
  Bitcoin. Or 1 Bitcoin would buy you just a little tiny bit over eight acres
• 23:20
  of land. Elliot, how does that strike you?
• 23:23
  Unknown: I don't
• 23:24
  you get my opinion on Bitcoin. I I just don't
• 23:28
  I wanted to say something there about the, you know who controls the Internet. Right?
• 23:33
  No.
• 23:34
  The government may can shut your Internet off anytime. I mean, they do it all over the world. So is that really something I wanna
• 23:41
  Unknown: be be tied into? I I don't know. I caution it. I think there's better things to stick my money in. So you're saying that your fear of Bitcoin is that the government could shut down the Internet and that would prevent you from getting to your money? You you perceive that to be a larger threat than to your bank?
• 23:56
  What do you mean? Well, I mean, the government can shut down your access to a bank. They did it all throughout COVID. They did it, you know, to the the people throughout Canada.
• 24:05
  Unknown: And you think it's it's that would be the better system than than trusting it with Bitcoin and how it's connected to the Internet? I'm a land guy, so it's like I I'm gonna pay debt down and and operate land. So I'm I'm still gonna be pretty firm on Londo and land.
• 24:20
  Unknown: Yeah. I agree with that. The I think land is what, I if, you know, if Bitcoin continues to do well, I will use that Bitcoin to exchange it for land. But I'm not worried about the Internet's still ran by the military. Right? Yeah. But the that's actually, like, a fundamental important thing to understand about Bitcoin. Because once you have a node, it would mean they would have to keep you off of the Internet everywhere all around the world without, like, knowing that's
• 24:44
  Vance connecting to the Internet. And and I would I would actually make the case that once you have a node,
• 24:49
  it doesn't unless they can shut the entire Internet around off in the entire world, only then could they stop Bitcoin transactions.
• 24:57
  Unknown: Maybe.
• 24:59
  Unknown: I mean, once you understand the structure, it's not a maybe. That's that's that's the way that it would be.
• 25:06
  Anyway, I recommend buying Bitcoin. It is at a great buy price. You can get it on river.com
• 25:11
  and, and one day, there may be a good place for us to do a buy, sell for land with Bitcoin, but not today.
• 25:18
  Unknown: Alright. Let's head on to the Peter Corey just popped in. He said he just bought some today.
• 25:23
  Did he? That's great. In the farm for profit studio. I don't know if you figured that out. We didn't talk about that, but, yeah, Corey just popped in. So
• 25:30
  So heading on now to the Peter Thiel paradox. Elliot, what is one thing that you believe that almost nobody in your ag tribe agrees with you on? Yeah. I think it's a lot of this policy is doing more harm than good. You know what? Some people are just now kinda starting to follow that, but,
• 25:46
  you know,
• 25:47
  I got into a little discussion here on, like, property tax and,
• 25:52
  and,
• 25:54
  h two a workers, you know, like,
• 25:56
  this stuff is walling off the opportunity for the entrance to come in. And we continue
• 26:02
  to to
• 26:03
  basically have these,
• 26:07
  senior citizen
• 26:08
  discount type programs that continue to
• 26:11
  protect the people that have been doing this the longest. And I just I you're gonna end up with a Mondami
• 26:19
  type event in ag if we're not careful.
• 26:22
  Unknown: Well, I mean, I gotta start off right away and say you failed because I agree with you already on its face. Like, I I'm totally with you. Said my hat looks cooler than yours. I
• 26:33
  Because I mean, like, you even heard Brooke Rollins talking about, like, oh, we're gonna do this to the the h two a program. We're gonna do this to the h two a program. And you're like, well, the reason you have to make all these switches on this thing you can control
• 26:44
  is because it's not it's too expensive to hire labor. You've inflated the price. We can only import workers from somewhere else.
• 26:51
  And now you're trying to do a band aid solution by bringing in foreigners to do the work. Well, I guess
• 26:57
  Unknown: I'm trying to go back to this paradox thing here that,
• 27:00
  I was just thinking about there as you were explaining that, but like
• 27:03
  a lot of these policies that need to get changed, you know, I guess that's where people disagree with me on it. It's like, they see themselves as a benefactors to them and so they don't wanna change them.
• 27:14
  And it's like,
• 27:15
  we gotta get serious about you gotta be a patriot here, and you gotta start thinking about how can you we can restructure ag so that the future has an opportunity to do it. Otherwise,
• 27:24
  the the damn state's gonna run the whole damn thing.
• 27:27
  Unknown: Well, that one, I I think you're correct. Like, every person that's cashing the check, every person that's,
• 27:32
  retweeting that they're gonna get this, transfer payment, like, they they don't agree with you. They all disagree with you. They want the system to keep going. I think that's a complaint that people have about things like Iowa corn. And what do you say to somebody that says, well, you're you're right there with them. You're with the checkoff program that's going out and advocating for these things. I got the answer for you. Get involved. If you don't like it, it's membership driven. It ain't driven by the dollars that Corteva or who are John Deere sticking into the association for advertisement.
• 28:04
  It's driven by what the members want. Their survey goes out every year. Fill the damn survey out. Come to the meetings. Get involved. Call me up. I wanna represent you. If you got an idea better than mine, I want it to be the idea that wins the day. I mean, I I think you are definitely one of the lone voices out there. That probably is your greatest Peter Thiel paradox is you are getting involved. And I know for a fact people that you've hounded to be more involved in Iowa corn to be like, you can't complain about it if you don't show up because
• 28:31
  you you can ask for your I think for Iowa corn, you can get your money back, can you? Yeah.
• 28:36
  Unknown: You know, it works on membership dollars. So as you're a member and then you got you're talking about check off probably. So, like, when you don't want to look corn, you know, the
• 28:44
  the the association's
• 28:46
  able to pull that check off off. Yeah. You can you can ask for a refund. I hate that people want to do that or desire to do that because, you know, really that's like the story of the tragedy of the commons.
• 28:56
  You familiar with that? Oh, sure. Yeah. You know, that's what it is. You know, you got people that are the smaller guys are willing to put into the thing and try to make it bigger and better, but they're really the ones that are really exploiting all the the people that are working are the ones that are taking their check off back. So I don't know. I think it's it's a it's a damn tragedy, but
• 29:15
  I gotta I also gotta take some responsibility for that too because I ain't doing enough good enough job
• 29:20
  Unknown: ex you know, putting the message out there, the hard work and efforts that are being made. Well, my hat off to you for showing up and and and trying anyway. Alright. Let's move to the last section. This is the worthy adversary.
• 29:32
  Unknown: This is where I'm gonna ask Elliott, who is one person that you respect but strongly disagree with? Oh, gosh. You know? And it's all probably just came about in the last twenty four hours here. And it and, I gotta give a shout out to Damien Mason because, like, the dude's the man when it comes to, like, talking about things in ag, and it's like, I I love his content.
• 29:51
  But, like, I can just tell that, like, when I'm talking about how we need to make some changes to some of these policies,
• 29:58
  like, he looks at it like you're really you're really taking something away from him. And it's like I don't know. I think of that Thomas Swole quote where it's like,
• 30:07
  hold on one second here. Let me just look at it. I got I know I got on my phone here. You
• 30:15
  know, Thomas Woll, it's like when people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like a discrimination.
• 30:23
  And I think that's what's happening with these people is like, oh, you you wanna I've had this preferential treatment my entire life or I'm in this position. And now when you're talking about trying to take some of that away from them, they feel like you're discriminating against them.
• 30:37
  Unknown: And you think that's kind of what, Damien Mason interpreted on on your back and forth? You and Shay and Damien had a had a pretty big back and forth. Different, but yeah.
• 30:47
  Unknown: What do you think his perspective is? Well, I think he's, you know, he's a landowner. He rents his land out, and he loves to he doesn't want his property taxes going up. He don't wanna pay the commercial property tax rate that the guy that owns the strip mall or the doctor's office or the dentist office,
• 31:02
  you know, he he he wants to enjoy his low property taxes on egg land.
• 31:06
  And I think that's the case for the 27,000
• 31:08
  acres in Buchanan County that are owned by people that don't live in the state of Iowa.
• 31:12
  It's not available to the to the entrance of the market because the privilege of owning that land and paying low property taxes is just one of the many things that, you know, our ag sector
• 31:22
  continues to
• 31:24
  to give preferential treatment to, you know, and it's all been,
• 31:28
  how do I say,
• 31:30
  exploited by
• 31:31
  people outside of ag now, whether it's the John Deere dealers or the the the landowner that has a a tenant farmer on it, they they're all capitalizing
• 31:41
  on subsidy programs. They're they're capitalizing on the low property taxes. They you know, it's all these things with inside ag that we're supposed to be trying to protect the margins of the farmers
• 31:52
  that it just gets funneled through the farmer.
• 31:55
  Unknown: Yeah. I mean, it ultimately becomes an aristocracy
• 31:58
  program where the where the owners of the land have it. And and frankly, I mean, from my perspective,
• 32:04
  the this is only going to get worse because in order to continue to give the amount of money that's gonna have an appreciable difference on the farmers that the dollars are go value is going down. So you're gonna have to print more and more and more. So this is only going to expand in terms of prices of everything. That's not slowing down. You bring up our aristocracy. I mean, you go to all over Europe. This is why we we're white dudes. We left our families left Europe two hundred years ago to get away from the churches and the noble class owning everything,
• 32:29
  Unknown: and we are going that way. I mean, the Mormon church is buying everything up around me
• 32:34
  for ag
• 32:36
  land. And, it's like, I won't be long and I'll probably live the day to see the day where, you know, it's just wealthy people that own this land and the autonomous equipment runs on it and it never changes hands.
• 32:47
  Unknown: I mean, I gotta say I got a a certain kind of respect for the religious groups that find ways to,
• 32:54
  grow the holdings of their people. Right? Whether you're talking about Mennonites, Hutterites, Amish, they found a way to coordinate without government interference.
• 33:02
  Unknown: You're talking about Joel Holstein too then probably.
• 33:04
  Well, I don't know. Does he buy farm ground? I don't know. I mean, he's pretty wealthy dude now. He runs a church.
• 33:11
  Unknown: Well I don't I mean, I'm a religious guy, so I ain't talking down on religion here, but it's just I mean, I just like that it coordinates people. Right? It gives them a way to work together for a larger purpose and and allows them to do things that you can't do as an atomized unit. I mean, I think one of the worst things that happened to the American public is the concept
• 33:28
  Unknown: of the atomic family being mom, dad, kids. Like, we're a network. I'm right there with you, man. I I'm right there with you. It's this ain't good what we've got going on here.
• 33:39
  And so, you know, these faith groups coming together and saying we're gonna we're gonna work on it. We're gonna help you. We're gonna do this. It's gonna transcend all the people that are asking for the handouts in a way. Yeah. And I think, I guess, probably what frustrates me the most with it is, like, you know, people used to die and they'd put a tombstone up. You'd, you know, harvest a piece of granite out of the out of the earth and you that was your tombstone. But now today, you know, we've got these trusts. We've got these gifts to these churches. We've got these, you know, gifts of land,
• 34:06
  the Shriners Association.
• 34:08
  And,
• 34:09
  you know, we've just totally deprived the next generation of opportunity to to build wealth the way that the generation before us had done. And I think it's it's a it's a theft on the future of our of of our, of our ag community.
• 34:22
  Unknown: You think that's a result of trust or printing money infinitely? One seems to have a much larger impact than trust.
• 34:31
  Unknown: No. I I mean, I'm referring to these trust being put up as, like, a forever tombstone
• 34:37
  in effigy of the person that, you know, made that decision, I guess. So
• 34:41
  Unknown: I I I don't I'm not sure I follow your question on, Well, I mean, I think, like, the the the way that the whole system is unwinding is is less to do with consolidation
• 34:50
  because I don't think actually
• 34:52
  farms last that long. I don't think trust last that long. I think they run out
• 34:56
  a lot quicker than most people realize, but I think the reason the inflation of the input costs and,
• 35:02
  seeds and
• 35:04
  tractors and land is all because the government just keeps dumping money into the system. It's not just that there are fat cats, it's that there the transfer payments get ever larger because the dollars get ever less valuable. Yeah. And I guess my problem, if a if an a farm operation's using a trust to to make themselves, you know, more independent
• 35:21
  Unknown: of other institutions,
• 35:23
  great. I'm all about that. You know, my problem with it is is that,
• 35:28
  you know, the fat cats, you said it. And there's a lot of fat cat type profiteering happening on agriculture,
• 35:35
  and those fat cats aren't the ones toiling in the earth. And I think we need to get these margins back into the hands of the people that are toiling in the soil.
• 35:43
  Unknown: This is why the Bitcoin standard is of critical importance because when you use Bitcoin of it. Yeah. You got working on it some more. This is this is the key. The key thing is that all these people that you're referring to as fat cats, the reason they're parking their money in land as opposed to keeping it in dollars or putting it in the stock market is because they're trying to get away from inflation.
• 36:01
  Unknown: Yeah. But it's the policy we've got is advantageous
• 36:04
  advantageous for them to do that, and I think it needs some it needs some reform. That's that's my whole point.
• 36:10
  Unknown: Well,
• 36:11
  this has been a great conversation, Elliot. If people wanted to tune in to your podcast, talk a little bit about Rush Hour Ag. Yeah. So Louie Zumbaugh, he's a previous representative.
• 36:22
  Unknown: And we've got the support of, farm for profit here. So Corey Tanner, you know, they've been a big part of it. And,
• 36:28
  you know, you'll get some of this this pushback between Louis and I. So if you like watching a couple dudes push back on ideas on each other, it's,
• 36:37
  you'll you'll see a lot more of that. I don't realize this phone call. It's beeping in here.
• 36:42
  Unknown: Well, I wanna say thank you so much for coming on. Elliott, if people wanted to find you, where where would they where should they look? Yeah.
• 36:49
  Unknown: Rush Hour Egg. It's on,
• 36:52
  YouTube, Spotify. It's on all the platforms.
• 36:55
  And, I'm on x. So,
• 36:58
  I love engaging in this, and I think we've got a bright future in agriculture. We're just gonna have to get it lit up.
• 37:04
  Unknown: Well, man, thank you so much for coming on, and we'll have you on again soon. Thanks, Vance.
• 37:09
  Alright. That's gonna do it for this week's show. We'll be back next week with another guest,
• 37:13
  to have all kinds of pushback and interesting observations on what's going on in the world.
• 37:19
  Maybe we'll even have, old Corey there, Corey Hillebeau from, the Farm for Profit podcast. He'd probably be a good guest to beat up on for a little while. But now that I hear he's buying Bitcoin, it's all good. But this really is gonna do it for the show. If you are interested in having me interview one of your loved ones to make sure we capture their life stories so that future generations know their family history, go to legacyinterviews.com
• 37:43
  to find out more.
• 37:44
  Also,
• 37:46
  one thing I have found is tremendously valuable. Some people started going to Spotify and Apple and giving me a five star rating and the show,
• 37:54
  writing in comments.
• 37:55
  That exploded, the number of people that listen to the next few episodes. So if you have just a couple of minutes right now,
• 38:01
  open it up, give me a five star rating, throw a comment in there, talk about what you like and why people should listen. It makes a huge difference. Alright.
• 38:08
  We'll be back next week.
• 38:10
  Feel free
• 38:11
  to disagree.
• 38:12
  Unknown: Good negotiation is one where both parties walk away slightly disappointed.
• 38:17
  That was probably my default world model BV before Vance.
• 38:21
  Well, Vance had a lot of these models that he created. I ingrained a lot of these models so deeply from working with Vance for a long time that I started to re communicate them to my friends.
• 38:32
  And my friends' eyes had the same sort of light up of understanding of, like, this is a thing that could help me be more effective in life. Whenever Vance let me know that he was working on sort of putting this into more of a workshop form, I was like, yeah, man. I want that for my team, like, now. If my first two employees go through this so that we have this shared set of context and a shared set of language, that's gonna create value for my team going forward.
• 38:55
  Unknown: I wanted to get better at communication myself. I knew I had good ideas in my head that I wanted to be able to communicate to potential investors, and I was not super confident in being able to do that before. I thought that negotiation
• 39:09
  Unknown: was basically for
• 39:11
  people in a boardroom, like CEOs.
• 39:14
  Words like shareholder
• 39:16
  are involved.
• 39:17
  So I thought that you had to have a lot of resources at your disposal. Do you even care about negotiations?
• 39:22
  Both people had to lose or both people weren't happy in the end. I found that what you both want is achievable by understanding the needs of the other person more. A negotiation is really a way to solve a problem that you have. You can rearrange the world in such a way where all parties get something that they're happy with. So you don't need to possess
• 39:42
  great resources
• 39:44
  to be involved in a negotiation or to really benefit from knowing how to negotiate.
• 39:49
  Unknown: RJ and I initially were two different businesses.
• 39:52
  It became clear to us over the long term that we would be much more bullish on our shared future if we, like, found a way to, like, actually
• 39:59
  be one entity, one whole working together. That required us to have what to many would be very hard conversations because we're both CEOs of our own independently funded businesses, but we were able to have conversations and get to the root of what our actual interests and what our actual skill sets were. Having both people understand this pattern of communication was useful to pull out those tools when we needed them the most in, like, difficult conversations.
• 40:25
  Unknown: It's very helpful to have that quick language to do something more productive than or continue to, like, misunderstand or
• 40:31
  whatever. Whatever else you're doing. Building relationships isn't just
• 40:36
  Unknown: you communicating to the other person. It's also figuring out how to let the other person communicate to you so that they trust you. Getting into a real conversation and diffusing tensions before you, you know, get to business.
• 40:47
  Unknown: A lot of people have a default model where they're like, I wanna raise my own money, I wanna start my own business, I wanna do my own thing. We find that they have specific interests that could help us. We become allies instead of competitors.
• 40:59
  Unknown: I guess the course gives you tools to know that you can say the right words to, like, extract those things out of the ether.
• 41:08
  Unknown: Put them in your life. Learning interest based communications from Vance might actually be the single highest leverage skill set that I ever developed before starting this company. I'm by default an introvert.
• 41:18
  I think that I've developed the ability to interact with people in such a way that it's energizing and it's fun, and I look forward to interacting with strangers on a regular basis. You should just take it. Just do it already. Yeah. I feel like you should just do it. Like no. I don't know. I feel like it's life content. It's, like, definitely fun life content. I am doing exactly what
• 41:35
  Unknown: I
• 41:39
  Unknown: Interspace Communications did that for me more than anything else that I've learned.