00:00:00 Is it time to change everything about farming? And if we did so, how would we do so? I'm joined by special guest Jason Mock, 00:00:06 who lives about 50 miles down the road, and my friend Kelly, everything stream ag talking to you about the future of farming 00:00:12 and how it would change if it's needing to change in this episode of the Gravery. You ready For a conversation with some real farmers 00:00:18 about real issues? The best part? You are invited. Pour Yourself a drink, grab a snack. Most importantly, pull up a chair. Welcome to the greenery. 00:00:32 Hey guys. Alright Guys, you just heard the topic. Jason Mach, thank you for being here. You are a guy that could just be happily plotting along. 00:00:46 You've got, uh, traditional generational farm. You've got inherited assets, you've got conventional, uh, uh, contract hog barns. 00:00:53 You're in part of the world with very good farm ground, and yet you're b******g, yet you're not happy with the way things are. 00:00:59 You could just go out there and grow corn and soybeans, which are entirely too much of produce into the surplus play the USDA programs, 00:01:06 and you're on Twitter about every day saying this isn't right. Something's gotta change. Why? Well, I 00:01:11 Wouldn't call it b******g. I'm just curious. And I'm bored. Yeah, I think there, I think there's a hint of bored. 00:01:17 Would you say that since you started following on social media, Kelly, there's a hint of a hint 00:01:20 of dissatisfied dissatisfaction with the status quo? Yes. I would say Jason is looking for an edge. I would say we share that in common. 00:01:28 We're bored and we'd like to do it differently. To do it better. Why are you dissatisfied? You're making money. 00:01:35 Um, you know, the soybeans don't make money corn's tight. I would like to make money every year, 00:01:41 and I believe that if we look for a little different way when the crowd is walking, we should run. 00:01:45 When the crowd is running, we should walk. There typically is a niche to be able to carve out there. And if we do things a little differently, if we, 00:01:53 if we manage more intensively, I think we can increase the margins and have more security. You're doing things pretty differently. 00:01:59 You intercrop you get a boatload of following because most farmers love the agronomics. They don't necessarily get off on talking about the business 00:02:08 side of it that you love to push, but they do get excited about your agronomic experiments. But one goes hand in hand with the other. 00:02:16 You are doing that because you think that the agronomic changes, the cropping changes should also have an economic 00:02:21 benefit down the road. Yeah, and, and my background is marketing. So I, you know, my first 10 years outta school was, 00:02:30 was selling things and I just kind of saw the whole circus, if you will, of what that is like. And I pato everything. 00:02:39 And the, the whole intercropping to me is just a way to be a lot more economical with our inputs and, and, and use our assets throughout the whole year. 00:02:48 Most of the people think that you're crazy for doing what you do. You're putting soybeans 00:02:51 and wheat at the tank same time and all this. And just kind of talk a little bit about your experiments and then the sort of reaction. 00:02:58 Sure. So again, marketing background. I was a landscaper in my twenties. Then my father got cancer, so I came to the farm. 00:03:04 So I just had a different lens of what we could do with the acre instead of only growing something 80 or 90 days a year. 00:03:10 So let's, you know, it doesn't matter how early we plant our beans, everyone wants to plant in February, March, 00:03:16 I'll sit in the ground for a month. Mm-hmm. Because there's not enough growing degree units. So I like to see our fields green. 00:03:21 I like to see cattle out there. And intercropping was a way to handle the water. Mm-hmm. Uh, my first years in farming, we had some wet years 00:03:30 and we had a drought and I, I got tired of, of, uh, of failing. So intercropping was a way for me 00:03:38 to defend our farm against water weeds. And, um, that's my angle on the thing. Um, and, and I look at it as an education 00:03:47 as well for myself. And, and you, you talk to Adam Lash a few days ago, talk about how big of a percentage 00:03:55 of farmers are over 65 or over 50 fives. And if you can have the grit to kind of do your own research, when you have 00:04:04 that opportunity in the future, you're gonna be prepared. And, and that's, that's just the way I look at it. 00:04:10 I know it looks like a lot of noise, but it's, you went right down The road of generational stuff. 00:04:13 We're talking about changes. Um, why does generational stuff matter? Why do you think that? Do you, do you, are you convinced 00:04:19 that if it's gonna change, it's gonna ha a 43-year-old like you, is it gonna change with your group versus, uh, the people that are out here, 00:04:27 the, the status quo that are the average age of the American farmers, 61 years old, whatever it is, you think they're not changing? 00:04:34 No. No, they don't. They don't have to change. I mean, the, the policy has facilitated, the boomers to farm is turn light on. 00:04:42 You know, just, just keep, keep the, keep it running. And what I see happening in the future is, uh, we're just gonna have a lot of holes in the system. 00:04:53 They're gonna be looking for a farmer to, to farm the ground. And if you do things exactly like the other farmer, uh, 00:05:01 let's, let's, can we just stop for a second? I, I think we're off on a tangent here and I don't What tangent are you worried about? 00:05:10 I don't, I don't, I don't know. Let's maybe go back on that. Uh, is farming gonna change all? 00:05:15 He's worried about putting all a tangent. He he'll be on six more of 'em between now and the end of this. I agree. 00:05:19 No. So I'm not worried about it, but it just doesn't feel like I'm going exactly where I wanna go here. 00:05:24 So we're talking about why we should be doing it different, right? Yeah. I think that you think 00:05:31 we should be doing it different. And I don't disagree, nor does Kelly disagree. The point is, Jason policy, to your point, 00:05:37 his absolute foster, what's he say all the time in American agriculture is supposed to grow corn. 00:05:41 You wanna grow more corn, put out more nitrogen. That, that script hasn't changed for more than our lifetime. Oh yeah. That script hasn't changed 00:05:49 For since the fifties. Yes. 40, 50 post World War ii. 60, 70 years. Yeah. 00:05:52 And now with the technology that we have and the way things have changed and the way that we can understand things and human health 00:06:00 and animal health and soil health, agriculture needs to change so we can do a better job. So we can go back to what we were doing, uh, in the fifties, 00:06:09 in the sixties, when we produce better crops and we produce better food. That's what it's all about. We didn't produce more quantity. 00:06:16 No. And, and the system now is predicated towards yield. I think with the technology we have now, the things 00:06:21 that we're seeing on our farm, we can maintain yield, maybe even improve it while we can also improve diversity, soil health and nutrient density. 00:06:30 And I think what we're discovering is it doesn't matter if you have the million dollar planter 00:06:34 and you place it just perfectly, what matters to the seed is the soil that it's placed in. Right. And the venue that we create, the soil health, 00:06:41 the water infiltration, and we're not moving the needle anywhere by just investing more with our John Deere dealership. 00:06:48 It's going out and getting more diversity on the acre, getting more critters on the acre. And then that's how you're gonna level up. 00:06:55 Alright. So you were worried about being off on a tangent, but you really do generally in between spurts of A DHD, 00:07:01 which we all three have here. You, you bring it back to the thing you think the sy you think the system's not broken. 00:07:07 People have just say, oh, food doesn't broken. I'm like, did you go to the gr in my lifetime, in your lifetime, in your lifetime? 00:07:13 We've been to the grocery store where there was empty shelves for about a month, and that was during the COVID thing when we literally shut 00:07:19 down production facil processing facilities. Other than that, I always say, how do you think the system is broken? 00:07:24 There's more available food at the Kroger and hunting of Indiana than there has ever been. I, I don't think that the system is broken. 00:07:31 I don't think our food system has a problem. Our farming, our farming is very commodity mindset and there's no margin. That's what I think, Sean. 00:07:40 I I think that, but I think it depends on the perspective of, of what your definition of brokenness. 00:07:45 You know, like I would tell you that in some spots, I think that ag retail is broken because they're farming the farmer 00:07:51 and that they push the quantity, they push the yield, they push those things. And the, the diversity 00:07:56 and the intensive management that maybe would make things better in my opinion, goes down. 00:08:00 I would also tell you that I, I could see in some ways the food system is broken because of the obesity e epidemic in our country, 00:08:09 the disease epidemic in our country, things like that. The quality. Yes. All, all of those things are because of our food system. 00:08:14 You know, we, we've all seen the things on social media that there's a hundred new, you talk about the grocery store in Huntington, 00:08:21 there's a hundred new items in there. There's also a hundred and more autoimmune disorders. Mm. Things like that. And I, I believe that that is all related. 00:08:30 So I would tell you from that perspective, I do think it's broken. Is the system broken? I think that we, 00:08:38 we mail it in or, or it's just not a, the efforts that we should, we shouldn't have half our acres in monocrop soybeans. 00:08:45 I mean, what a waste. And there's, and, and the problem is when times get tough, we say, okay, this farm is marginal, 00:08:52 we're just gonna put it back in beans. And we get into these farms that aren't really managed by anybody. 00:08:58 It's just kind of an afterthought. Well, it it is on autopilot. And by the way, you, you don't have an enemy in me. 00:09:04 In fact, I commonly take what you say on your, in your commentary and, and spin off it. You know how many people I p**s off when I say you realize 00:09:12 we only need about 50% of the crops that we, the crop land that we even are farming right now. 00:09:18 Well, what we're supposed to do with it. Well, just because you have something that you deem as an asset and it has this value, it only has this value 00:09:25 because of the US Department of Agriculture policy. Yeah. We're in Indiana, he's in Iowa. We're gonna hold up fine. 00:09:31 Our friend flying in from Guyman, Oklahoma to, to today, I don't think there should be any 00:09:36 crop winning guyman, Oklahoma. Well, I mean, seriously. Why? You, you've already proven you can change things up 00:09:42 and still maximize yields. You can do, you're doing crazy stuff and still setting, setting the curve. 00:09:48 Yeah. Yeah. And because it just goes back to derivative and, and we just have all these false fears. Like if we lose glyphosate, we're not gonna be able 00:09:56 to feed the world and things like that. Like my dad farmed without glyphosate until he was in his thirties. 00:10:01 I mean, that age used us some. Right. Uh, but we, we could produce way more just by moving animals with the calculus that we put in, 00:10:10 how we put in our corn in the, in the ground with our planters. If we would think about how each plant lived its life 00:10:17 or each animal lived its life, instead of just how we can actually get across this, 00:10:22 you know, make up something. Does a coffee, Does a coffee shop crowd in Delaware County. Think you're kind of an out there dude. 00:10:29 Yeah. But you know, you, you pull it off enough and then eventually if you dini's not, uh, I, I don't know What I would say that we both walk in that world 00:10:37 and they used to, and you know, they used to think that I was crazy and probably some of them still do at home, but now they're just, i I think it went from crazy 00:10:43 to what's he gonna do next. Yeah. You did a thing talking about moving animals. So he's got the cattle 00:10:50 and he's all about the, to have a regenerative ag actually work, which I think the future is going 00:10:55 to have regenerative agriculture or practices already we're using them. It has to involve livestock. 00:10:59 It's interesting, the vegan crowd, our French chili had breakfast with a bunch of vegans. They, they, they harp about 00:11:06 regenerative and organic and all this. But not realizing that also means we have to have livestock. And for there to be livestock 00:11:12 means they have to get consumed. Nobody's gonna raise sheep and cows just to look at them. And, and 00:11:17 I don't, the people that are like that, you said two words that I don't think should go together. 00:11:21 Organic is not regenerative. That's true. Regenerative to me is a lower CI score is a lower carbon footprint, things like that 00:11:29 to be more efficient, to have better soil health. And, uh, I'm not trying to pick on organic people, but that's not regenerative 00:11:36 because of all the trips I have to make across the field. And I will, you know, 00:11:39 like yesterday I gave the agronomy talk at the Iowa State Research Farm. And I, I'm like, I've been on a high yield path 00:11:46 and I've been on a sustainable path and they're converging. Yeah. And I would tell you that I don't define myself 00:11:53 as a conventional high yield guy. I don't define myself as a sustainable guy. I'm a hybrid in the middle that wants to farm 00:11:58 and tune with Mother Nature because then special things happen. And livestock is a big part of that. 00:12:03 But to say that organic is regenerative is not true. True. To say that conventional farming is 00:12:08 regenerative is not true. Right there, there's a spot in the middle that, that, the way I say, we're farming in tune with Mother Nature 00:12:16 and we need to supplement her and get out of her way. You still doing your thing? You still putting sheep out there moving around? 00:12:21 Yeah. Yeah. Sheep and pigs in the woods and the stock cropper thing. But we're not, we're not looking at farmers anymore. 00:12:28 We've had several field days with the stock cropper and we, and we get people of interest and they can make their own. 00:12:34 We're looking at people that mow five acres and it's like, why are you spending three hours your weekend mowing? 00:12:40 Let's, let's get some apple trees out there. Let's get some eggs that you can pick. Let's kind of decouple this whole system of saying, 00:12:48 you know, maybe, maybe people need to be a little bit more, uh, responsible for their food needs. 00:12:55 All right. So the point is, you're, you're commonly not maligning, but certainly pointing out flaws in a modern food system. 00:13:03 And the argument's gonna be, it works, it works fine growing soybeans and corn on a rotation in Delaware County. You got great soils 00:13:12 and we get out of good, uh, rainfall. It works. If It worked fine, you wouldn't have farmers going out of business. 00:13:16 Right. That's just consolidation that the argument's gonna be Well, but That, that doesn't mean it's working fine though. 00:13:23 That doesn't mean it's working fine. Yeah. I I think at the end of the day, I mean, I don't want policy to change. 00:13:28 I don't want people to, to deter me from doing anything that I want. We have the ability to wake up 00:13:33 and do whatever we want with our farm. So in a way, when you are getting the neighbors at the coffee shop to shake their head, that means 00:13:41 you're accomplishing something. Especially if you're able to do it over and over and over again and, 00:13:46 and making the little tweaks to make your system work. So you don't want policy to change. You're changing it on your own. 00:13:53 Uh, what, what's it look like? You're, well, I guess I get, I get kind of frankly mad when we just add another 00:14:01 safety net and an, you know, I wish everything was true. Actuary science Agreed. I brought here because 00:14:07 I wanted you to change up the thinking. Actually some of our own extreme ag guys, I asked them, I said, so what's gonna grow in these fields? 00:14:13 What do you mean what would change? I said, well, we already are producing so much more supply than we even need. 00:14:19 What do you think happened when we keep getting better at making supply? And that's the reality. Uh, something's gotta give. Yeah. 00:14:26 I mean, consumption's not gonna continue to grow by six or 10% a year. It can't population stagnating. 00:14:32 Something's gonna give, what's gonna give, I don't know. We, we've gotta have diversity. 00:14:36 I mean, you look at all these crop acres that have been stolen from two, grow more corn and soybeans because of existing policy. 00:14:43 And again, I don't know exactly what it will be, will be a lot of things. But the value is figuring out, 00:14:48 like when you say organic isn't regenerative, organic can't be regenerative, but it's not if you take 14 trips across the field. 00:14:54 Right. Right. RTK cultivating, it's figuring out proxy. It's, it's having a lot of different things on the farm and a lot of different fields. 00:15:04 Bringing the fence back up and thinking in, in terms of three to five to seven year rotations. And old school, old school thinking, 00:15:11 just people that can decouple Stuff. He took back to the forties. He just took it 00:15:14 back to the forties. I, there's nothing wrong with That. Just think of all the technology we have now available to, 00:15:21 you know, the small milker. That's, that's the beauty that I'm seeing. You see all this, that high scale technology's going to be 00:15:28 Rick Morran down to the, you know, picking the 10 acre winery. Some the best adjectives of unfor. It 00:15:37 Did. Yes. That's you Just said in Rick Morran. Uh, here's the thing. Um, it involves work. 00:15:45 Uh, you just talked about listening to our conversation. I did on my business of agriculture with Adam Lash. 00:15:49 He's willing to do the work and he frankly admits, he says, I'm like a 40-year-old guy. 00:15:53 I don't think most people that are 40 wanna work this hard to, to do agriculture the way 00:15:58 it would've been done 50 or 60 years ago. Yeah. And With new technology to your point, But we are learning so much in the last 10 years. 00:16:05 When I bring up, I'll mess up his name, Rick Moranis, but he did a 1986 movie with the plant that would eat people. 00:16:12 Do you remember that? Yep. Yep. And what we're learning with the rise of Fiji cycle is if we always have plants out there from 00:16:18 Desynthesizing, which takes some thought, we gotta have plants that will grow in the winter, pencil grow on edges. 00:16:25 And that's why I do the different things is I can facilitate growth all the time. And what's happening is, is that plant 00:16:33 is actually exuding in its roots and it's attracting microbes to the roots and they're consuming 'em. 00:16:40 And the, the microbes are basically little truckers that are bringing, there's a trade fertility, there's a, There's a trade going on in The soil. 00:16:47 There's plant. And once this thought and knowledge is going to be more distributed, then it's going to revolutionize. 00:16:57 And you're already seeing it. Right. And the ag industry, and our first objective is no longer gonna be building up our soils with MP 00:17:04 and K just throwing out rock candy out there. It's going to be how can we grow the biology? Because now we can unleash the, the, the, 00:17:12 the all this fertility that your, your dad, your grandpa, your great-grandfather, it's all out there 00:17:16 Unnecessary. Just throwing out there. It's all there. It's just in jail. So It's tied up. I agree. It's 00:17:22 tied up. Yep. So we've talked about that, uh, a number of times from an agronomic standpoint, but that, that's agronomic. 00:17:27 I agree with all that. It also does tie into the economic and the business side of it. So you think that there's a lot of things wrong. 00:17:33 The system works. We produce load loads of stuff, but there's a lot of things wrong with it. As you said, there's no marginal, 00:17:38 there's no, I mean nobody's, You know, we have taken beans out. We're putting in corn now. 00:17:43 We're talking about, uh, we're both talking about this before we started taping. Uh, putting the cover crops out sooner. 00:17:49 You know, like Chad and Johnny and Temple, they, Chad will tell you he makes the most money when he can put three crops in two years. 00:17:56 Corn, wheat, beans. Mm-hmm. That's how he makes the most money. Well, I'm too far north. I can't always accomplish that. Mm-hmm. 00:18:02 He's doing the inner cropping. I wanna do the corn and the cattle. Mm-hmm. That's my double crop. 00:18:06 The corn and the cattle are the two most profitable things I have. It just takes more work. How Many of your acres, uh, 00:18:13 are you doing your experimental crazy stuff on? We're about 500 out of 2,800 that we farm. Okay. So the person that's the skeptic is gonna say, well, 00:18:23 why aren't you doing this on all of 'em? Why aren't you do this all 2,800? I mean, you shouldn't do everything on all your acres, 00:18:28 no matter how great it's Right. Um, but to his point, that's what we're trying to accomplish on these acres is three crops in two years. 00:18:35 And, and to kind of go back to explain it, the problem with policy is we're always worried about a PH and bringing those yields up. 00:18:42 Yeah. And if you can just throw, you know, 20 or 30 or 40% seed out there, it's still absorbing the CO2, the light. 00:18:52 Right. And you can play this Pareto distribution on the farm. And, and that's the whole problem with people having success 00:19:00 with intercropping, is understanding the finites of nature and the, at the same time, the exponentials that happen 00:19:08 by ringing the bell with biology. Right. So you already said that the average age 61 whatever, 60. 00:19:13 And, and there's a whole bunch of people that are in a really good position. They've got, uh, inherited assets. 00:19:17 They are well capitalized. They can live on a low margin business. 'cause they also play the 00:19:21 USDA programs and the crop insurance. I'm not being mean. We know this happens. When does it change? They're not gonna change the, 00:19:27 the person that's right now, and I hear this all the time from my suburban friends. Well, or should we be concerned 00:19:32 that all these farmers are getting old who don't take a place that you can sit in a tractor that drives itself when you're 70. 00:19:37 And that's where we are. So when's it gonna change? I think, I think it's a slow change. It's gonna be painful the next few years. You 00:19:44 Mean economics change it, you think the fact that a bunch of these even well capitalized 00:19:47 Organizations, economics will change it because it'll be forced to change pe you know, like we, um, with, with extreme ag 00:19:54 and the trials that we do, every farmer is ready to try something at six or $7 corn at $4 and 30 cents corn. They're not ready to try anything 00:20:03 because they have really scaled back. We should be trying, you should be doing running trials at six and $7 corn when you have the extra working capital. 00:20:10 So you know what you can survive on in the lean years. But people generally don't do that. So, so then the economics force change because of that. 00:20:18 Look at, uh, look at the, uh, you, you can't believe how the attendance has gone up in our webinars. You think that's because we've become more popular or that's 00:20:24 because people are searching for something. Mm-hmm. It's because people are searching for something. Economics drive change because people are forced to. 00:20:31 It's unfortunate, but it is true. That's what's gonna happen. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. And, 00:20:36 and again, it's gonna, it's gonna be painful the next few years. I think corn's gonna continue to, to struggle. 00:20:42 But, but look at the ratios now. I mean, beans are two to one to corn and it's historically two to five. 00:20:47 So people are just leaving that. And it's, you know, I don't know what we're gonna see specifically first, but we see it back home. 00:21:00 Our local dealership has sold out to a larger our and, and there's just y you gotta drive so far. I don't know where I'm answer that 00:21:09 Question. That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because you're fine. The point is it's gonna be economics that force to change, 00:21:16 but also the people that are not changing, you know, to the, the point about the demographics, the wealth, the best held, 00:21:22 the best held capital in the entire production agriculture are people that are 70 years old. 00:21:28 And you already said they're not gonna change. So it's doubtful that their economics are going to force them to do much because they're pretty well held. 00:21:35 It's the, it's the his age that are more strung out. Big operating loans that are gonna feel the pain is not gonna be the 00:21:45 70-year-old, the ones. So I've, I've struggled with economics forcing to change when it's those that are best held 00:21:51 that also are less likely to change. Uh, you're, The 70 year olds aren't gonna change 'cause they don't have to. 00:21:58 But as things roll over, things like that, you're seeing some change. Now. Again, uh, the attendance 00:22:04 and the webinars we talked about the engagement where people are searching for more things, things like that. 00:22:09 You're seeing the change start to happen now, but it is slow and painful. We've been talking for how many years now that the, 00:22:15 the average age of the farmer's getting older. And you're gonna see this turnover and it just continually gets talked about. 00:22:20 And, and I think the way it gets talked about, we think it's gonna happen like a light switch. Yep. It's not, it, it's slow. It's over time. 00:22:28 You Agree? Yeah. Yeah. I do agree. And I, and I, and I think the top end of the scale is just gonna continuously be eroded. 00:22:35 I mean the last, you know, we kind of went through this, this phase where there was a lot of high cash rent out there 00:22:42 and, and then people were willing to pay that to grow and it's just not gonna be there. And that's gonna cascade down the hill to, uh, 00:22:52 reward the people that are trying and innovating. And, and maybe if it's 50 or a hundred or 200 bucks an acre advantage, whatever it is, 00:22:59 that's eventually going have to realize too a big deal as we go forward. What about like, things like, uh, the, 00:23:06 the livestock sector, it's all completely contracted. There's not a, there's not a chicken or a pig of consequence, uh, being produced 00:23:13 or egg that's not under a huge, huge contractual arrangement. Multilayered, uh, you know, vertical, vertically integrated. 00:23:21 Does that change? Uh, not, not very quick, but, but again, uh, from a marketing standpoint, it doesn't have to be way everybody does it, 00:23:30 but if you capture a 0.1% of the market, there's just gonna be a lot of people that just sustain themselves, which is going 00:23:38 to be their way out. But it's, it's, there's nothing harder in the world than try to figure out how to make 30 or $40,000 on a small farm. 00:23:46 And I said it's not Work. That's what I'm saying. So if it's, if it's that much work, I'm not sure that there's a lot of people wanna do it. 00:23:53 That's what I'm saying. It's either x they're doing it on their house, or it's gonna be a big corporation. 00:23:57 And, and maybe in the next five or 10 years when we rebuild rum, when there's more processing facilities, when we start, you know, 00:24:05 taking in oats over here and we've got a a, a mid-size butchery over here and things like that, once we build that, 00:24:12 then there'll be a way, don't, don't waste a lot of that infrastructure. Well, and there's less people all the time. Mm-hmm. 00:24:18 You know, there, there's, you know, I, I've got the H two A workers, you just simply can't find enough bodies to do all the work. 00:24:24 So a lot of the diversity we talk about, in my opinion, needs to be scalable in some way because they're just, there's just less people and, 00:24:32 and there, there there's less people that wanna do the work. Employees, you mean? Well, 00:24:36 there's less people that wanna do the work. There's less employees, there's just less of everyone. And so, uh, I, I just don't know 00:24:44 that I see farms getting smaller, but it doesn't mean that they shouldn't be more diversified in having the four or five year rotation, 00:24:50 but there's simply less people. Hmm. And because there's less people, things are probably gonna get larger 00:24:55 And there's a lot less motivation. I mean, when you go back to when we were in high school, you know, you had to depend on the football team 00:25:02 and everyone to come out and they were willing, you know, they had a date that weekend, so they wanted 50 bucks in their pockets 00:25:07 About mail. Hey. Yeah. So you're almost Calling 'em for a return to the old days. Yeah. No other industry does that in the agricul. 00:25:15 I mean, yeah, I go and look at classic cars at the car auction, but nobody in Detroit says, you know what we really need to do? 00:25:21 We need to make cars just like we did in 1969. Uh, they should by the way, but they don't, uh, look at computers, look at technology, 00:25:27 look at the phone that's in your pocket right now. We're the only industry that still has this thing. And then, and almost a nostalgia. 00:25:32 Usually it's our customers that want those. Jason, they normally are the ones that say, I just wish it was like small 00:25:37 family farms like it used to be. I'm like, well what's that look like? Um, it's, you're kind of calling for 00:25:42 what a lot of our customers want. You wanna return to yesterday year? Well, I don't know if we're going back where again, 00:25:47 we're Rick Moring technology and what I found, and I go back to the same thing. If I wanna grow two rows of corn, I grow 600 bushel 00:25:55 of corn pretty easy because all 28 leaves are grab grabbing light. So if we could have small autonomous combines 00:26:02 and you could realize this competitive advantage of having diversity and sequencing with all the plants, it's gonna be such a big competitive advantage 00:26:09 of getting the livestock out there, getting the fertility through that way and, and having the value walk off. 00:26:15 People are gonna be able to lower the burdens in their head of all the work that they think that'll take 00:26:21 to run the small farm with technology. And that's when, that's what I see happening is, is we take the 60 acres 00:26:28 and we build 10 different value streams on that 60 acres that all work together for when the fertilizer guy comes 00:26:35 and says, Hey, we're gonna do what we did last year. You say, screw it, I'm paying this debt off. Yeah, I got it. And, and, and I've 00:26:41 got my manure and I've got this. So again, you took us back to the 1950s. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not, I I can farm that way, 00:26:47 uh, better than most. Uh, I, But here's the thing. I did it, here's where I'm getting at. 00:26:51 I think 80% will go off on the highway where it'll be this acre space contract, just like the hog model where if you want this brand new 00:26:59 class nine John Deere tractor and the new, guess what, we'll bring it here. We'll have the skids of of seed, 00:27:05 we'll have your crop protection, it'll all be here, we'll pay you whatever it Is. Yes. Contractually 00:27:09 Based. And then there'll be a 20% that goes off and says, I don't wanna participate in this model. I don't want other people shackling my ability to do, 00:27:17 to farm how I want. I'm gonna farm way one way, and they're gonna facilitate another market. If you right now, you gotta choose on which, 00:27:24 which way you're gonna go, You're gonna be, you think that big model is contractual because I've said that it is. 00:27:30 I think investor money comes in it Pretty much already is, it's quasi now Quasi contractual, meaning you might own the assets, 00:27:39 but you also are, the money comes from here and goes to there. I mean, it's, it's pa you're a pasture, you're pasture 00:27:44 Operator. Well, maybe if I have an operating note and I can get crop insurance that's subsidized at 85% and I can get another writer to give me the 97% 00:27:51 and the February price is 4 32 and I have a guaranteed $914 an acre, then the worst that I could do is 00:27:57 Break that. Yeah. Yes. That's contractual. I mean, we're, we're already there. Yeah. We're almost in a quasi 00:28:03 contractual production arrangement. It's just that Cargill doesn't just pay you to go out and put in your, 00:28:07 We are already there. If you're smart about the business side of it and you accomplish that, not everybody understands that 00:28:12 what you did, but I do that. Right. Why, why it helps you sleep at night. Exactly. It it lowers your risk. So that's the idea. That's a, 00:28:19 Yeah. So can you, can you facilitate game B while you're doing game A So when game A says, Hey, 00:28:27 we gotta have you commit even more, we're not even gonna do this. We're gonna go to this level. 00:28:32 And at that point you say, well, if I actually fostered this alternative Yeah. Lifestyle and we're gonna, we're gonna go that direction. 00:28:39 That's what the successful people see. I had never thought to describe it that way, but that's what I, I would tell you that that's almost 00:28:45 what we're trying to do at home. Well you're, you're participating in game A to Jason's point. 00:28:50 Yep. Which is almost verging on a contractual production. It is. And then your game B is direct to consumer beef, uh, 00:28:57 rotational grazing, regenerative farming, taking, not doing soybeans. How many of your neighbors are, are gonna go that game? 00:29:03 B they're not, they're gonna stick with the same damn thing. Right. And What happens with game B is you have all these ideas in 00:29:08 your head of how you envision it, and as you have the trials and tribulations and you learn 00:29:13 and you pivot your game B is going to change through the years, but you've learned so much in that time. Mm-hmm. Building networks. 00:29:21 And I think that's the, the beautiful thing in all this stuff with social media, with our phones. 00:29:25 We don't have to wait on Purdue to do a four year study and come out with something at the library. Yeah. I mean, it is a media. I can Right. 00:29:33 10 different things on my farm. I can get out there every day and you know, 35,000 people see it like that. 00:29:39 And you have to try the things on your, your farm because your farm is different than somebody else's farm. Yeah. You need to learn what happens on your farm. 00:29:45 And we traveled all these different places, so it's not just the scale of my backyard, it's the scale of you going to Kansas or Nebraska or you going anywhere 00:29:54 and finding these people. Just trying different things. And that I learned more, I, I've learned so much from Chad in Alabama, temple and Maryland 00:30:02 and Matt in Arkansas. I, it, it's not that people in Iowa aren't great farmers, but it's the same as me. 00:30:08 I need to go to a different location to learn more. I like the game A game B thing. Um, you know, your 80 20, that ratio. 00:30:15 It's, you know, you talk about the change and all that. Uh, I, I like it because the thing is, it's, it's hard to be that B player 00:30:22 because it's going against the grain. It's going what the what what happens out here? Vertically integrated contractual arrangement. 00:30:30 I mean, look at the picks you've got, you've got contract hog barns. You, you're gonna go up against that. 00:30:34 Uh, there's room for it now than there ever more than ever was. Mm-hmm. There's a consumer that wants it. Yeah. 00:30:39 The hardest part with game B is, is having that again, partial commitment that, you know, I wanna learn this, but I don't know if this is the way ahead. 00:30:48 The best analogy is it was real warm last week. I wanted to get the planner out, but I gotta talk to my uncle and my cousin. 00:30:54 If we get the planner out, it'll get rained on, but I just wanna be prepared. Mm-hmm. Right. I wanna drag 00:31:00 that thing in the ground for an AC or two. I wanna see the monitor work so when I have the nice day, I can go out to kick some ass. 00:31:08 And that's what you've gotta do. And it might be 10 or 20 different things. That's not, That's not completely game b 00:31:14 that's, that's like most most. Right. That is a commodity. Producers wanna get the player out also. They love 00:31:18 That is a game, a analogy. And They shoot videos with drones anyway. It's a different story for a different day. 00:31:22 Uh, put country music behind it. Uh, so you're a game B player. Um, what's your recommendation 00:31:30 to the person when we ask the question, is farming gonna change? And if so, how would it come about? 00:31:34 What's your recommendation? The person watching this that says, I feel like I just pulled up a chair degree in here. 00:31:37 I like talking to Jason and Kelly, I wanna be a game B player. What do you to 'em Sho you gotta start in the garden. 00:31:43 You gotta start in the field behind, you know, that no one can see but the f around and find out and you gotta get started and that's right. 00:31:51 And it's gotta take two or three or four years and then you gotta, it's starting To feel that nobody could see That's what he just said. 00:31:56 Yeah, you did, you did experiment. He does experiments across the road from his dad so that he can hear his dad b***h every day 00:32:02 that you're embarrassing me. We saw how far we turned down the soy soybean population. Yeah. I planted 30,000 population soybeans 00:32:09 and it was out my dad's front door. I should have moved that up the road a little bit. We should have done it over the hill, like you said. 00:32:14 But yeah. The, the people that wanna be game B, what do you enjoy to do? I think that's important. Yeah. 00:32:20 What is there an economic opportunity to do? And then try it, you know, 10% of your acres should be trial acres. 00:32:26 You know, he's at 20%. That's great. Are you Optimistic? Are you optimistic? This gonna happen? 00:32:32 I mean, it's, it's going to happen. It's not like, is it going to happen? We're all gonna die once, we're all gonna get older 00:32:39 and it's just a progression and you know, I think, I think the thing that I'm going through is, you know, you get outta school 00:32:48 and you just think you're gonna become wealthy and move to the city and, and have play nice golf courses and all this stuff and you realize that 00:32:55 actually the good life is hanging out with, you know, the people in your community and drinking a couple beers on a Tuesday 00:33:02 evening or whatever it is. And I think people are gonna have go kind of go back to their neighbors and they're gonna come 00:33:08 to the realization is why were we competing with one another the last 20 years? Right. The per the perspective of what wealth is when you're 24 00:33:16 and when you're 44 or two different things. And it, it's unfortunate that the competition exists because if we would transition more to game B, uh, 00:33:27 there's more than enough to go around And to Kelly's point, and, and this is why this is important. 00:33:32 If I can, if Kelly has cattle and, and I'm messing around with agronomy and I have this relay wheat 00:33:38 and I could get him to have, you know, a hundred cattle go over across and eat my forage and he got value out of it and I got value of it. 00:33:46 Mm-hmm. Then we come together and I think that that's what I'm gonna push. I mean, that's why I get up and, 00:33:51 and drive over here is, uh, to get that message out that we could do way more. And I don't want to have this deterrent of policies. 00:33:58 The problem or my old neighbor or whatever thinks I'm dumb. I don't really give a s**t, you know, I'm just gonna do it. 00:34:05 And I think there's enough people out here proud and loving what they're doing with that enthusiasm that we're just starting all these ideas in people's head. 00:34:14 And we don't know exactly how it'll all play out, but we know it'll play out better Think the marketplace is more open than it's been. 00:34:20 Uh, uh, you know, I I see more ness to what you guys are talking about than I would have, uh, probably at any other time in my 00:34:27 involvement with agriculture. Absolutely. COVID kind of changed the world. People wanna know where their food's coming from. 00:34:33 Now you talk about the food is health types of things. You talk about nutrient density types things. You, the farmers are getting older. 00:34:39 Everything is starting to come to a head from several different angles and perspectives. And, and agriculture is more 00:34:45 open to it because of that. I think, I think the most exciting thing about right now with our trends is, is this push towards carnivore diet 00:34:53 and how important it's to have protein in your diet. Yeah. Protein's really high, which again, 00:34:57 I think the vegan crowd is screaming bloody murder, but they, they still think we can get it from lentils, but, uh, humans aren't really designed 00:35:04 to be lentil consumers. We, we kinda like steak And we almost have that reactionary point where like, how dare you try to push that? 00:35:12 We need to eat 12 servings of Ritz crackers during the day. Yeah. Right, right. That could be so much healthier. Yeah. 00:35:19 So that mo that bodes well for the regenerative movement. Certainly. Right. All right. What else did I not ask you? 00:35:24 You said you got up and drove here because you wanna share this. Uh, and you also talked about, you know, 00:35:29 almost coming together friend, you almost had like a, uh, I wanna buy the world a coke moment there. 00:35:33 He almost, he almost, he almost hugged. He did. Anyway, What else? Uh, man, just what else? I mean, I 00:35:41 Said, is it as far need to change? You said it doesn't need to change. You said it's going to, you think it's gonna be 80 20. 00:35:45 You talking about B players versus a play game. A players, most people won't be B players. You think it's gonna change 'cause of demographics? 00:35:51 You think it's gonna because of economics, Right? Yeah, I think there's just gonna be more of a place for, I, I mean, I don't wanna be this idea of like, 00:35:59 you can do anything and it'll work out. Mm-hmm. But I think the, the world is going to need more people to understand how to farm like the forties 00:36:09 and be able to go to these people to make equipment or, or go to their neighbor and work with people to build something. 00:36:19 Um, there's fewer and fewer of those amount of people. So if you make the choice to do the hard things, then we can't complain about policy. 00:36:28 Just be thankful that you are the black sheep because that means you don't have a lot of competition in game B. 00:36:35 And that's what it comes down to. A game B player. It sure appears I some days I ly I might be a C game player some days. 00:36:43 Yeah. Let's, let's, let's talk about game CII call game C communication. I mean, seriously, if you, if you have the, uh, 00:36:50 vulnerability to put the content out there and and connect with people that that's really, it can be an X factor. 00:36:59 That's, that's how I ran across you six or 10 years ago. Because you're out there, you're, you're, you're kind 00:37:03 of bold boldly doing different stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I met some really good friends. I get to travel a lot. 00:37:12 I get to drink your beer in Arizona every once in a While. We, we did do that. Uh, and I appreciate that. 00:37:17 And then you went to medieval types. All right. His name's Jason Mach. He's joining me here at the Grainery. You're always invited to pull 00:37:22 up a chair right at this table. He drove up 50 miles, but you don't even have to be close by. You don't even have to pull up from Delaware County like 00:37:27 him, a pride of West Dell High School. I might point out, uh, best golfer they ever had, at least in the year 1993. 00:37:33 Anyway, you're always invited to come here to this, the table and, and join us. And he's joined by Kelly Garrett. 00:37:39 Uh, share this with some of my, that will benefit from it. And you can go check out all the other great 00:37:42 episodes@extremeag.farm. Also be sure to go to our YouTube channel. Hit subscribe, doesn't cost you Nothing, 00:37:47 and you'll see all the cool stuff that the guys from Extreme Ag and Me put out all the time. Until next time. Cheers. Been great. Not even 93. 00:37:53 You're you're younger than that. You 99. You 99. I ain't. Okay. That's it. 00:37:57.335 --> 00:37:57.815