Are Nutrient Regulations Coming for Farmers? | The Granary

00:00:00 Will agriculture be faced with nutrient application regulations in the near future? It's my prediction, yes, but I'm going to hear from these experts in this awesome episode of "The 00:00:11 Granary." You ready for a conversation with some real farmers about real issues? And the best part, you're invited. 00:00:18 So pour yourself a drink, grab a snack, most importantly, pull up a chair. Welcome to "The Granary." 00:00:28 Hey, guys. Hey, welcome to another fantastic episode of "The Granary," sitting around your favorite table with some of my favorite guys, Kelly and Garrett with XtremeAg, 00:00:41 Tommy Roach with Nature's, one of our favorite sponsors. They are sponsoring this show right here. 00:00:45 Nature's Premium Liquid Fertilizer since 1946. If you want to learn more about their products, go to Nature's, N-A-T-U-R-E-S, .com. And then Todd Kimbrell, we sometimes call him Texas Todd Kimbrell. 00:00:55 We're talking about nutrient regulation. I've been covering this, and I've also seen it at some of my live speaking engagements where different jurisdictions are starting to really face this. 00:01:03 His home state of Iowa, it's a big deal there. This is not just something that's happening in Massachusetts or some anti-ag jurisdiction. We're hearing about it in Wisconsin, Iowa, 00:01:13 Nebraska. This is coming down the pike. I thought this would be a great one for you. Obviously, you're in the applied nutrient business, and then also you've got a 00:01:21 different sort of thing down in Texas. Okay, well, we don't have as many big rains. Well, that's not necessarily true. 00:01:27 And then also you are involved with the Texas Corn Growers Association, so you see things from a different perspective, where I think regulation is starting to be on 00:01:34 the radar for a lot of our professional trade organizations. It's happening in Iowa. This is not just a metro urbanized 00:01:41 estate issue. It's happening in the number two ag state in the country, Iowa. The Des Moines River, the Des Moines Watershed, it's a huge topic 00:01:50 of conversation. Yeah. The expense that the city of Des Moines is going to because of the nitrates in the river, 00:01:57 it's going all the way upstream, all the way into north central Iowa, and big problems. It'll be interesting to see what happens. 00:02:04 Well, to what your point is, a lot of people don't realize this, Des Moines had to put in nitrate removal 00:02:12 technology to get this out of the water because the drinking water, the well water, well the potable water in Des Moines comes from the river. 00:02:19 And I find this interesting, Tommy. I did an episode of my show, "The Business of Agriculture," about this, and said this idea that farmers saying, "Oh, it's not us, it's those people in the 00:02:28 subdivisions that are putting on fertilizer in their yard." And one guy I had on said to equal what we put on in broad acre 00:02:36 agriculture in Iowa, the average suburban resident of Des Moines would have to put about 15,000 pounds of Scotts lawn Weed 00:02:43 and Feed on their yard. Probably not happening. It's a matter of time. It's going to happen. There's already places, Chesapeake Bay, 00:02:55 around Lake Erie. They measure dead zones in the Gulf every year, and it varies between size of Rhode Island 00:03:06 and Massachusetts. You're talking about a dead zone in the Gulf of America. America. Sorry. 00:03:14 That pretty squarely comes back to ag. Yeah. It's what happens here in Indiana, that gets in the Wabash River, that gets in the Ohio River, that gets in the Mississippi River, and goes downstream. 00:03:23 It is, and it's nitrates principally, right? Yeah. And of course, this topic can go a lot of places, a lot of rabbit holes, but let's 00:03:33 face it, depending on who's in the White House, that's either going to speed it up or lessen it a little bit. If it would've kept on the track that it was going 00:03:46 the previous administration, if that would've fast-forward to this administration, it would've fast-tracked, and I think it would come a lot sooner, but we're dealing with 00:04:00 current landscape that's taking a backseat, in my opinion. We're going to see nutrient regulation on, and I say it's on farmers, on 00:04:07 retailers, maybe even the producers of the stuff at the top, because it all ends up in the same place. 00:04:15 Yeah, I think it's probably coming, but also, I like to think about the positive in it. We're in a downturn, an economic downturn, as everybody knows. 00:04:24 It's the elephant in the room. But the good to come out of that is nutrient management, in my opinion. When things are tight, we dial in. I 00:04:33 can tell you we do. Yeah. And we focus on how we place it, how much we place, and I've learned from these guys that I was putting out way too much in, and I didn't 00:04:42 really know it. I guess I would say I'm under-educated. So Texas Corn Producers is actually funding a research all across the state this year, one of them's on my farm, about nitrogen levels, 00:04:54 nitrate levels applied. So I think we have a ton to learn and a lot of room to be better stewards, 00:05:02 to be real honest. I booked a speaking engagement in February of 2025 in Nebraska, in western Nebraska, Gering, Scottsbluff, and it was all 00:05:10 about the wells that they tested. Two-thirds of them, I believe it were, were way over what would be acceptable levels of nitrates in the 00:05:17 aquifer or the wells. You can't blame industrialization or homeowners in Gering, Nebraska. Okay? There are none, 00:05:29 period. It's agriculture. So pretending that this isn't happening... I get people who say, "Well, it's like you're wanting this regulation." I'm like, 00:05:36 "No, I'm just telling you, I live in the suburbs half of the year in Phoenix. I travel around the general public a lot. 00:05:42 We better get in front of this, or we're going to get absolutely shellacked." Well, I agree, and I agree with what Todd said, and I think agriculture 00:05:50 Should embrace this rather than fight it, because I think it's coming no matter what, and I think it's the correct thing for us to do financially. 00:05:58 I do think that we are probably a bit under-educated on what's possible. I think nutrient use efficiency is not 00:06:06 just something for a regulation. I don't think it's something just for a sustainability program. I think it's something we should do on our farm because 00:06:12 there's a real ROI there. Well, there's the economic reason to do it. If not the environmental reason, surely to God, the checkbook reason. 00:06:19 Well, when I give a presentation and I talk about, at first I was on a high yield path, and then I was on a sustainable path, and now I'm on a nutrient-dense path. 00:06:27 The real trick to what you really need to figure out is all three of those have converged. They are one path. And when you follow the science and things like that, 00:06:35 I'm going to try to raise corn this year on 50 pounds of nitrogen. We're going to monitor it through the season, but that's all we're going to start 00:06:41 out with, because I really believe it's possible to do it. Yeah. And just so the person that says, "I'm in the cranberry business, I have no 00:06:46 idea what that compares to." 200- 25%. Yeah, 200 is what you've probably would put- 25% of 00:06:53 potentially, or 30% of normal. And that's applied nitrogen, which is the biggest, just for the person that says, "I'm not an agronomist, Damian. I tune into Grain because you guys are all 00:07:01 exciting." But anyway, roughly it's the biggest thing we put on. Right. 00:07:04 Nitrogen's the biggest applied nutrient, right? And then you're cutting it back by 75%. To me, it's easy because any nitrogen that leaves our farms is 00:07:14 money lost. So any way we can address that and keep it in the field, in the plant- 00:07:19 Mm ... it's better for us financially. And then, just to trickle down, there's tons to gain from that. 00:07:26 I'm going to take this in a different path. You may not know this, but there are two compounds that are used to treat municipal water. One of them is phosphorus, like 00:07:36 10-34-0. The other one is ammonium sulfate. And what is phosphorus price right now, and what's sulfur price doing? They're going- 00:07:44 Yeah ... out the roof. Mm-hmm. It's high, high. Yeah. And phosphorus, as far as North America, and specifically US, 00:07:53 like the Florida deposits, they're saying that at best, maybe 10 to 20 year life to where those deposits are going to be gone. 00:08:04 And we're sitting here being good stewards, quote unquote. Yeah. 00:08:09 We've got to do better. Not really. What do you think regulation looks like? I've got my predictions. What do you think regulation's going to look like? 00:08:15 Assuming, okay, first off, we all agree, we think it's coming. We think it's coming sooner versus later. 00:08:20 When you're hearing about it in Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Ohio, I think it's coming. We all agree it's coming? Okay. 00:08:28 Is it coming at the federal level? Chesapeake Bay, they can't put any fertilizer on between- Right 00:08:32 ... October 1st and March 31st. That's state, that's more state level. It is. 00:08:35 What's it going to look like? That's the best example I have. Do you see it at 00:08:40 state or federal? I think it'll be state first. That's much easier to do than- Yeah 00:08:46 ... than a federal. And is it just about pounds? Do they just go to Todd and say, "You can't put any more on than this." Or is it monitoring? 00:08:56 Is there somebody out there that we have to hire much more government employees who are out there with their white jumpsuit on, pulling water 00:09:02 samples out of a drainage ditch or what? I would like to relate it to atrazine, because that was the big one getting in our water back in the day, I don't know, maybe 20 years ago. 00:09:12 Yeah. And they were testing it in all of our local creeks there at home. And 00:09:17 I tell you what, it made us better farmers. It made us better users. To be fair, that was the one that was getting in our water 20 years ago. 00:09:22 It was getting in our water 50 years ago, also. We started actually- 20 years ago they started- 00:09:28 They started monitoring it. They started monitoring, yeah. And so they actually incentivized us to not spray it, and so a lot 00:09:34 of people did it. And not only that, we learned how to put it out and not let it run down the creek, because we were just over-applying it. 00:09:41 Everybody was. It was just one of those things that worked, and you put a bunch out and you were good, but everybody figured out that's pretty tough on the 00:09:48 environment, so. And they had monitors, and they'd even print it in the newspaper, the levels. And so it was pretty eye-opening. 00:09:56 Did your yields go down? Nope. Okay. There's the example that I use, Tom. You've sat at this table, you've been on our Cutting the Curve show. 00:10:03 We've been at Commodity Classic. We've talked about this at the panel at the Nature's Booth. 00:10:07 We always scream bloody murder. "They're taking my tools away. They're taking my tools away. Now they're out here monitoring my drainage ditch." 00:10:13 And with every one of the things that we cry wolf, the sky is falling, it doesn't matter. I saw it with the pigs. 00:10:19 They're going to make it so we can't use antibiotics in the rations. We got to only do it if there's an actual outbreak of something. 00:10:26 Oh, we're never going to have pork. Pork chops are going to be $15 a pound. It took a day- 00:10:31 Yeah ... a month, for those hog producers, like American farmers are, adapted and just boom. 00:10:38 And it's- They're using half as many, they're using two thirds less antibiotics on the hog operations today than they were 25 years ago. 00:10:45 It's going to make you plan, to actually- I made that number up, but I don't think it's too far off. Right. 00:10:49 Does it sound off to you? No, yeah. No, that sounds accurate. With our meat store, we want everything to be hormone and 00:10:56 antibiotic-free. Yeah. It's all natural. Yeah. So if we do have to treat a calf, we just want to treat that calf. You don't want to do the preventative anymore. 00:11:03 You don't want to treat the mass because the goal is to be all-natural. Well, it's expensive. It builds up antibiotic resistance, even though we claimed it 00:11:11 wasn't us. Yeah, it was that mom that takes her kid to the doctor and insists on getting a prescription. 00:11:16 Well, it's all of it. It's all of it. It is. But we were culpable in pushing on antibiotic resistance. But you said earlier, you said what does regulation look like? 00:11:23 And if it's on a state level, we have manure management plans now for manure. I don't think it would be hard to take those same sort of regulations into 00:11:32 synthetic fertility. He always is correcting me. I think it's manure. You think it's manure or manure? 00:11:39 Manure. There's no E-W. Manure. There's a few other words for it, too. So, 00:11:45 I think there's going to be that we squawk, and we carry on, and we'll end up realizing that we were over-applying stuff all along. 00:11:53 I don't see it setting my yields. I could see there being some big fines, though. I could see there being these situations where either a 00:12:02 regulation gets used to target somebody, or a person decides, "They're not going to tell me how to farm," and it becomes that old 00:12:11 boom, boom, boom. You see this. Well, they're going to make an example out of somebody. Yeah. 00:12:16 You think back years ago when they were brown bagging cotton seed, they made a few examples of 00:12:24 that. And then Monsanto- The tech fees The tech fees. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So Monsanto just needed to slap somebody hard. 00:12:31 And once they slap somebody hard about six places of a state, and then you've got everybody 00:12:36 scared. Right? Yeah. It's like the king bringing in one peasant and just cutting his foot off. Okay. And it's a two-prong reg... Nobody wants to be talked about, and certainly nobody 00:12:45 wants to write a check. Right. Because I think it'll start out as maybe pounds, but like transit, what water's done. 00:12:55 They've now got monitors on wells- Yeah ... in all these western states, whether it's Texas or Colorado or in Mexico, they're actually monitoring how much water you're 00:13:07 using. So I think it'll start simple, basic pounds, but it'll eventually get to kind of like what you said about monitoring atrazine levels. 00:13:17 Yeah. I think I could speak for my area. I think we're in the kindergarten phase of learning how to really use nitrogen. I think we're using it to overcompensate for a lot of 00:13:26 other shortfalls, and that's not true. Mineral balance, Kelly talks about it all the time. We've got to figure out how to achieve that in my soil. My soil is a challenge. 00:13:36 If you don't know, it's a real challenge, but- Clint talks about this, Clint Free. He said, "Well, it's a real problem when we put too much 00:13:44 nitrogen on and we waste that money and we throw the crop out of balance." But he said it's an even bigger problem if we're 20% short on nitrogen and the yield 00:13:51 shortfall that comes with it. That is a problem. But the technology exists now to monitor that crop and to know if there's going to be a shortfall, and the products 00:14:01 exist to use to address the situation. During the season. Yeah. 00:14:05 Isn't the bulk... You're the agronomic expert. By the way, I said that once on one of these recordings and people laughed. Anyway, you're the agronomic expert. 00:14:11 That's why I keep coming back. You call me an expert. Well, It's great 00:14:14 ... you're an agronomic expert. We appreciate that. So here's what I'm wondering. Isn't the bulk of the problem with it getting into our waters is 00:14:21 that overapplication, but also overapplication at one time? It's not, okay, you were 20% more than you needed to throughout the season. It seems like that's more metabolizable. 00:14:32 I don't know if that's the right word, but isn't the bigger problem throwing so much nutrient out there, particularly N and PE, phosphorus, right, 00:14:40 in October? Like, what the hell? This isn't even going to be needed till June. Isn't that the problem? 00:14:46 Well, look how many people pre-apply before they even put a crop in the ground. Yeah. 00:14:51 And that's where a lot of this stems from. Typically, it's talked about in phosphate terms, but guess what rides along with dry phosphate? There's some nitrogen that 00:15:01 comes along with it, and you get these copious amounts of... A standard in season, one application timing of nitrogen in season could range 00:15:13 from 15 to 50 gallons at one time. Now is that what we should be doing? No. 00:15:19 No. No. I like the fact that I'm at a table where the word copious got used. I mean, I just, it's just always been one of my favorite words. 00:15:26 I have a little bit of a different theory for North Central Iowa, and I know it might not be widely accepted, but when I was a kid growing up, there 00:15:35 was all these water pond holes and things like that, and there was a lot of waterfowl hunting. 00:15:39 Mm-hmm. And now because of the price of land, all of that has been tiled out. Right. 00:15:43 And since you've seen that tiled out, that's when the nitrate in the water has gone up. Okay? And so we keep talking about the application like it's all synthetic. 00:15:50 I would tell you the average farmer is putting on somewhere between 150 and 200 pounds of nitrogen. 00:15:55 Mm-hmm. But in North Central Iowa, I would also tell you that I believe the soil is mineralizing two to three times that. 00:16:01 Yeah. And I think that the tile that has been put in to drain... Now I can't speak to every area. 00:16:06 Mm-hmm. But I believe that the tile that has been put in to drain that area to farm the acres because of the value of the land is a much larger problem than just that. 00:16:13 So then if I'm correct, the regulations are not going to solve the problem because there's still 400 to 500 pounds of nitrogen being mineralized- 00:16:21 Yeah ... per acre. In my soil- And we're letting it get down to that drainage tile- Yes 00:16:26 ... whereas it used to be in a bog, in a wet hole that had nooks in it, and it would be 00:16:32 there for a long, long time. Now we get it right down to that drainage tile and into that drainage ditch like that. 00:16:37 What if the true source of the nitrogen problem in the city of Des Moines is the biological system of the soil of Iowa that we're all so proud of? 00:16:47 Now, it's not the whole problem, but I do believe that it's... I know what my soil mineralizes- 00:16:53 Yeah ... because now we're keeping track of it, and now we're turning down the nitrogen to create this nutrient use efficiency. 00:16:58 So do you see regulation then saying, "Guess what, guys? We're putting a moratorium on drainage tile," or worse yet, "You're going to plug 00:17:06 some of your drainage tile because this field has so much mineralized or mineralizable nitrogen." You're 00:17:15 worse here than if you were just going out and flinging the stuff out there, and all of a sudden you 00:17:20 got to hold water back. It becomes like a... Basically, you can't run drainage tile. Do you think 00:17:27 people are accounting for it? So you know how much- I know how much nitrogen's in my soil. Do you think people are accounting for that? 00:17:33 No. Because just easy math. No, they're not. Average corn yield- Average case 00:17:37 ... average corn yield's 180 bushels. Right. And if you put, you just said 180 to 200 pounds of nitrogen is what people do. 00:17:45 Yeah, that's right. So they're- They're putting on their 1.2 times ... factoring in 1.1 and they're not accounting for the 00:17:52 organic nitrogen piece. No, they're not at all. No. They're not at all because I started doing this in '22, and I have not met many other producers that do it 00:18:00 I've not met many. Well, the tough part then is, again, it's wasteful economically and it's bad for the environment, but then to not account for the fact 00:18:08 that what's coming out that discharge drain tile into that drainage ditch is 00:18:15 harmful. And because we've done so much drainage to make it so we can farm better, we're sending a lot of our nutrients to the ditch. 00:18:25 Now, I'll tell you, I don't find a lot of phosphorus that's in that water or anything like that. I've had to test it before because of the plant food that we spray, that byproduct. 00:18:34 I don't find a lot of phosphorus, but there is some nitrogen in that water. Our nitrogen isn't high in our water. 00:18:39 We've tested it, the nitrates aren't high there. I can't explain why it's high in the Des Moines River, but as a kid, everybody would talk about all the waterfowl hunting- 00:18:48 Yeah ... that went on there, and now there's not much. Yeah. There's not much at all. 00:18:51 And again, like you say, well, how can I justify having a bunch of bogs out here for waterfowl hunting at this $15,000 an acre that's on ground that's under 00:18:58 drainage? I would have done this. Yes, I would have done this. They're out here farming around these little half-acre bogs. 00:19:02 And I understand it from the production agriculture standpoint. You also understand the environmental, maybe not an environmental wacko, just 00:19:09 someone that says, "Well, I like hunting ducks, and I also like that I can drink water that doesn't have nitrogen in it." 00:19:15 Yeah. And the person that didn't want atrazine in their water starting 50 years ago, that finally started insisting there'd be tests, that's probably not an environmental 00:19:22 wacko. Might just be somebody that said, "Hey, I don't really want atrazine in my kid's water." 00:19:26 I agree. When all that tile went in, I don't think anybody foresaw- Right 00:19:29 ... or the technology maybe didn't exist to understand what the biological system of the soil is producing. In my high-yielding areas, it's not uncommon to be 00:19:36 over 7, even 800 pounds in the top two feet in the summertime. Wouldn't it the situation in Ohio, because I'm in Northeast Indiana, where you guys 00:19:44 are sitting right now. We're only 50 miles from the Ohio border, let's say. It became a thing about it wasn't nitrogen, it was P. 00:19:52 Right. Phosphorus, yeah. And it was because that's a boggy, swampy, flatter area in northern Ohio that got drained for agricultural purposes, and they 00:20:01 shucked all that water, drained all that water up to Lake Erie. We started hearing about the algae blooms 30 years 00:20:07 ago. It's because of drainage also. If they were just out there farming, even if they were over-applying, it makes you wonder. Maybe Lake Erie would've held up better, but not when you're over-applying 00:20:17 it and you've got the manure, and then all of a sudden it's at Lake Erie. With every inch of rain you get, a half hour later, it's over there in Lake 00:20:24 Erie. So you think the reason why phosphorus has been more in the forefront of people talking about it is because you can actually see the algae blooms. 00:20:37 You can see all the stuff in Chesapeake Bay. You really can't see- Can't see the nitrate 00:20:42 ... nitrate in water. You can't see it. It's kind of like atrazine. When you find out it's there, you're pretty damn scared about it. 00:20:47 Yeah. But before you knew it was there- Yeah ... yeah. Yeah, that was so big in the news, how many years ago in Lake Erie? Yeah. 00:20:54 That was- Yeah. Right And you see it every year. Every year. Especially around here. So anyway, what else do you see? 00:20:59 Okay, let's talk regulation. You're being probably monitored. Maybe they'll just be pulling water samples. 00:21:04 There'll be some fines, but you stay within your parameters. Traceability is going to be an issue. 00:21:10 All of a sudden, somebody with your Texas Corn Growers Association are going to say, "We're going to file a suit because you got to try and prove where this came 00:21:17 from because you're saying that I am the reason that there's this nitrate in the water problem, but I think it was Bob down the road." 00:21:25 That'll be tough. We have all this technology to track, and I think it'll be utterly important going forward. And honestly, I'm using a lot of technology. 00:21:34 I was telling Matt Miles the other day, on my op center, I found a thing in there where it'd take 10 years of nitrogen application, 00:21:42 and it shows I'm guilty of putting it in the sweet spot on the farm I own, and it actually shows a yield reduction. 00:21:49 So there will be tools like this to be used that can trace a lot of things. 00:21:54 Well, and then the farmers are concerned about their data being used against them. Then they won't use it. 00:21:58 This could be a thing where I don't want my data used against me to give me- Yeah 00:22:01 ... a fine for me being a reason that there's phosphates in Lake Erie. Right. 00:22:05 Absolutely. That's always a concern with regenerative root solutions when we're calling a farmer to talk about that, and they're worried, "Well, who's 00:22:13 going to see the data?" Mm-hmm. Last year, working with Arva, they had acres of sugarcane, and they wanted sugarcane growers in Florida. 00:22:22 We couldn't get a single one because they thought that it was the people of Miami calling out there looking for the data because they had a problem with agriculture. 00:22:28 Yep. So I've already experienced it. Yeah. And that's going to be... I'm not sure how we get that. I'm not sure how that's rectified. 00:22:35 No. I don't want to share my data, and I'm afraid of being blamed. And there's a truth to that. I'm getting blamed over here, but we've 00:22:41 also many times been to blame and pretend it's not us, too. I believe that 00:22:47 it could start at the state, but at the federal level, RFK has said there's more money coming for regenerative ag and things like that. 00:22:54 Right. And I think that we will be paid a subsidy to have a better nutrient use efficiency. And if you don't get it, I don't think you'll get the money, and 00:23:03 the administration change really comes into play. But if it stays constant under one administration or one side of the aisle, shall we say- 00:23:12 Yeah ... I think that that progresses faster. Right. And I believe that we will get paid for these regenerative acts, and then all of a sudden- 00:23:18 But anyway ... the payment will stop, and the requirement will stay. Yeah. One thing I also see happening, and people think I'm a little wacky, but 00:23:25 that's okay. If you disagree, that's fine. But I've said to get crop insurance through the United States Department of Agriculture, what, do they pay 75% of the premium or something like this? 00:23:35 You will also have a nutrient management plan in place, and you will basically be agreeing that you don't 00:23:42 violate those terms of that as a condition of your crop insurance, and maybe then there's even a liability thing tied into it. 00:23:48 We'll also make it crop insurance and liability insurance. Todd can't lose $1 million in a lawsuit as long as 00:23:55 he can prove that he did these practices. Now it becomes crop and liability insurance tied to you agreeing on nutrient utilization and application. 00:24:06 I would like to say, I think Adaptation seems like it would be slow, but if we can figure out how to balance these minerals in a wide array of soils, 00:24:16 adaptation's going to happen lightning fast because without any incentive, it's going to be instant money back in your pocket because you're not over-applying the nitrogen. 00:24:26 Mr. Roach might disagree. I think there's been clear economic signals for a long, long time to reduce 00:24:34 nutrients or spend less on some products. But if you just want to push the easy button, as we talk about, "Ah, you know, my buddy from the co-op just said this is what I should do, so we're 00:24:45 doing it." Been making good yields for the last 50 years, so. Well, I don't see economic- 00:24:52 That's right ... I see economic incentive if it looks like a fine more so than if it looks like saving on $21 an acre I've 00:24:59 not applied. When you have a situation like we have now with the war and with rising prices, it will, it affects, and you have 00:25:10 tight margins. And so, I do believe that- You think economic incentive is significant enough to make it happen. Okay, and then my last thought on this is, again, 00:25:21 I see the USDA crop insurance and liability insurance and the nutrient management plan to get those things, which I don't think most farmers would disagree too much 00:25:28 with that. There's a while ago they didn't really want crop insurance, but it became your operating loan is tied to that, et cetera. 00:25:34 The retailers are going to be more culpable also. When you're talking about four big national... They are going to have to play into the game also. 00:25:47 They know that they're flinging stuff out there that's ending up in the drainage ditch. And I'm not being in any way mean, it's just, "Eh, it's what we've always 00:25:53 done," whatever. I believe that there's going to be a component to that as well. Do you? 00:25:58 They make their money on- Selling stuff ... spreading costs. On spreading costs. 00:26:02 They don't make it on the material itself, but they make their money on application. I think there's going to be probably a little bit more magnifying glass on them. 00:26:12 You don't think so? Retailers won't have a magnifying glass on them? I'd say they do. 00:26:16 Maybe. But when you're talking about four big retailers and the lobbyists that they employ, I think it'll be pointed more in our direction. 00:26:23 Okay, what about the producers? Does all of a sudden Mosaic have a big old magnifying glass on them? "Hey, you make all this stuff. 00:26:32 You're the Philip Morris. You're the reason there's 14-year-old kids out here addicted to tobacco." They're 85% market share in the US. 00:26:41 I don't know how much more you can control a market than owning 85%. 00:26:47 That's what I'm saying. So if you're the government, if you're the regulatory agency and you say, "We got a problem. 00:26:51 I'm hearing about it now in a dozen states." You know what? Starts at the top. It starts with Philip Morris. You're the reason that 14-year-old kids are smoking 00:26:58 on the school bus. Guess what? Mosaic, you're the reason that you want to keep cranking out the fertilizer. 00:27:05 I just don't see a scenario where the government tells Mosaic that they can't sell. I see a scenario where they tell a farmer they can't put it on, and that solves it 00:27:12 all the way up the chain. It doesn't really matter what Mosaic does then. If we can't buy any more, we can't buy any more. 00:27:17 If we don't need it- Yeah ... or we can't use it. Well, is it easier to control one big or a million small actions, right? 00:27:25 Mm-hmm. So anyway, what are you seeing? Well, government can put the thumb on producer and say, "You can only apply- 00:27:34 Yeah ... this much," given what the set of criteria is. They're never going to. Mosaic's too big to- 00:27:41 Okay, they'll go after the big insurance companies. The crop insurance subsidy is a perfect example of what can be done if you don't follow your- 00:27:51 Yeah ... if you don't follow your nutrient plan- Yeah ... the subsidy is gone. Yeah. 00:27:54 You still get crop insurance- Sure ... because the banks want you to have it- Yeah 00:27:56 ... which is another thing they won't control. The government will not tell the banks. Right. Keep the federal money. 00:28:01 Yeah, you can still have your federal crop because we don't want to mess with the bank, but you're going to lose your subsidy. 00:28:05 Yeah. I see that. We're pretty much all in agreement on that. I'm the only one that sees the big companies being restricted. 00:28:10 But then again, I was there in 1995 when I said, "See, when I told you they were going to come after Philip Morris and R. J. 00:28:15 Reynolds and take billions of dollars from them." And nobody probably thought that was going to happen either, but it did. 00:28:21 And there's how many years of phosphorus in Morocco that we don't have access to right now? Oh, there's- 00:28:28 Several ... Morocco being a country about this size compared to China or US or anything, they've got more 00:28:36 phosphate deposits than the whole world. Several hundred years' worth is what the numbers I've heard. Yeah. So the point is we're not going to run out, but we're certainly still guilty of 00:28:44 over-applying, which means regulation's coming. Does it hurt us? I don't think it does. This is where the other countries that have less environmental regulation would 00:28:52 say, "Oh yeah, this is great because the United States..." I don't think it hurts our yields, of all things. I think it's like the antibiotic thing. I really do. 00:28:57 I don't think so. Yeah. We're too good at what we do. You get the closing thought. I think regulation's coming. I think that we should embrace it as farmers, 00:29:06 because I do think that we can dial it in, and we should dial it in because of the financial wellbeing of our operations. 00:29:12 And I'm telling you, those pork entities that I had worked with, they knew it was coming a year and a half advance, and they proactively had meetings with their 00:29:20 doctors of veterinary medicine, with their nutritionists, and just boom. The day the regulation happened, it 00:29:26 wouldn't even matter because they already were 12 months in front of it. That example is what I think we should do as producers. 00:29:32 Yeah. Exactly that. Be meeting- We're trying to do that now. Be meeting with our agronomists, be talking to guys like him and say, "How can I 00:29:37 back off on applied nutrients? Because I know regulation's coming, and I don't want it to clip my wings. I want to be already essentially operating under those 00:29:43 criteria." It'll make us better. His name's Todd Kimbrough. He's joined by... Texas Todd Kimbrough's joined by Kelly Garrett from Iowa, and we're also very 00:29:51 grateful to Tommy Roach with Nachurs for being here. We do this often. You can share this episode with somebody that'll enjoy it. 00:29:56 There's like 70, I counted like 60 or so episodes of The Grain Ry and more obviously coming after this one. So thank you very much for being here. 00:30:04 Till next time, thank you again. If you want to learn more about Nachurs and the fine array of products, they can help you cut back your applied nutrients 00:30:11 without losing yield, because that's what they do. You can use a full foliar or full liquid application fertility program like Todd Kimbrough's doing. Nachurs, N-A-C-H-U-R-S.com. 00:30:20 Go check it out. Thank you very much for being here. Till next time, cheers from The Grain 711 00:30:28.226 --> 00:30:28.235