Controversy and Change in Farming

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to Just Say hey .

Speaker 1 0:01

The podcast a podcast where we talk about the things that matter to small farms I was reading in Farm Week I don't know if y'all subscribe to Farm Week Farm Week is the publication of the Illinois Farm Bureau , ifb . Illinois Farm Bureau has recently come under fire lately because of a decision by their one of their partners or their partner country insurance , to drop a requirement to be a member of the Illinois Farm Bureau if you're going to be insured by country companies , country insurance , country financial . It's kind of one of those things . They've come under a lot of fire . The American Farm Bureau Federation , I guess is the national organization , has voted to expel Illinois from their roster because of this deal , because Illinois Farm Bureau gets a lot of money from membership .

Speaker 1 0:56

My mom is a god lover , not a farmer , grew up on a farm , music teacher for longer than she'd care to admit , but she is required to be a member of the illinois farm bureau if she's going to be insured by country companies . And I'm not a fan of anybody forcing me to be a member of anything . I'm just not . I , I really am not and anyway . So I want to talk about that . I want to talk about ? I really am not and anyway . So I want to talk about that . I want to talk about Doge because I just think it's . It's fun To to see how stupid Our government can be and pointing out some of the atrocious wastes . I mean just horrible waste . But as we look at that waste some of the changes and there's a lot of big changes on the horizon . I mean the things they're talking about . If even half of those come true , they're going to impact a lot of people . They're going to impact farms . They're going to impact how we farm some for the better , some for the worse . But it's a time that we all need to stay cognizant of what's going on , so let's get into it .

Speaker 1 2:10

Welcome to Just Say hey . The podcast where we talk about what matters to small farms , whether it's business , marketing , agronomy , equipment , livestock , health . If it matters to small farms , we'll probably talk about it here . So let's get into it . Be a member of the Illinois Farm .

Speaker 1 2:26

To be insured by country companies , you have to be a member of the Illinois Farm Bureau , even if you don't farm , have no connection to farming no , you don't even care about farming . If you're going to be insured by country financial , country insurance , country companies you have to be a member and they're dropping that requirement , controversial in some circles . Afbf , like I said , american Farm Bureau Federation has voted to get rid of Illinois . I think half the country would agree to getting rid of Illinois . Wouldn't be the worst thing in the world Our government's kind of kooky but I don't like being told that I have to be a member of anything . I don't like being told that I have to be a member of anything . It's , in my opinion , for what it's worth , not that anybody's asked . In my opinion , being a member of an organization that you don't agree with don't have any impact and you're just giving them money because they're requiring you to Is ridiculous . It is , you know . I think it brings to mind the biggest one I can think of .

Speaker 1 3:30

The most glaringly obvious , in my opinion , is the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the NPR . I have never now don't ? I'm going to say this right up front . If you're a fan of NPR and you're a fan of Corporation for Public Broadcasting , I understand . I like a lot of their programming . I have seen a lot of it . I love some of their stuff . Heck Car Talk was an NPR program for years , one of my favorites , but that can be better done in the private sector . And the thing that really gets me about the NPR thing and you'll see in a second why I think it correlates to the IFB deal is NPR produces a news program , great commentators great . I mean . They do a good job with it on the production side . It's a good sound . I like it , I like the look , I like all of that stuff .

Speaker 1 4:24

But what I don't like is they have a decided I mean almost anybody say they have a decided political viewpoint and their newscasts , in my humble opinion , try to sway you to their viewpoint . And I think that's fine . I think that in the free market that you should be able to do that . You have the freedom to do those things . Where I disagree with it is I don't want you to try to sway my opinion with my tax dollars . I want you to give me the unbiased news , provide opinions on both sides and allow me to make a decision . I'm not the most intelligent guy in the world , but I want to weigh what's being done , opinions on both sides . I want to weigh that against my life experience and my experience as a human being and decide for myself . That's not what goes on . If you want to do that , do it with your money . Don't do that with my money .

Speaker 1 5:38

The country is forcing everybody to be a member , and I say forcing . It was a requirement to . If you were going to be insured by country companies , you had to be a member of the Illinois Farm Bureau and they're dropping that requirement . I think that's great . If the Illinois Farm Bureau provides value to farmers , we'll be willing to pay for it . But you have to show that you provide value and that's how the free market works . So you know I'm not a fan of that . I side with country and probably a rare time you're ever going to hear me side with an insurance company . But we're insured by them . I've always had pretty good luck with them . You know I don't like being forced into a decision , being forced to be a member . Maybe I'm wrong . I mean , if you think I'm wrong , let me know in the comments . Let's talk about it . But it's sort of like our tax dollars go into some of these . And I brought up NPR just because I was reading an article about it and I have a decided opinion on it , obviously .

Speaker 1 6:42

But this new Doge deal going on , with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy going to head Doge for the incoming president-elect , trump . It's an outside agency . And I say it's an outside agency . It's not even an agency . It is not federally funded . And the cool thing about it that I like is there's an expiration date . It's set to close down July 4th 2026 . I'm sure that there was a plan to this , but country's 250th birthday .

Speaker 1 7:21

I hope that what comes out of this is we expose a lot of the waste in our government and hopefully we can get that the waste and corruption in our government . I mean , we all assume it's there . I mean , you know 500 and some million dollars to study the difference between country frogs and city frogs . What was it ? There was a seven . I forget how much it was , but there was hundreds of thousands of dollars spent to determine whether different types of fish increased their sexual activity . On cocaine . Okay , wasn't even in America , they did this in a foreign country . What was it ? I mean the stuff that we're finding out , that we , the people , have been paying for it . It's just ridiculous . I just I think it's . You know , if it wasn't so horrible , I would you know I'd probably be crying about it . But you know , you just got to laugh at it and hope , and the hope is they bring a lot of this stuff to light .

Speaker 1 8:27

Hopefully change happens and hopefully it is a , you know , a change , change that can unify us as a country and unify us as people . But in change , I think that we have to be a little cognizant of changing too much , of changing too much . So you know the reason I say that is if you look at our society over the past I don't know , let's take 50 years and you align it with kind of the two , you know , sort of seemingly opposing ideologies of liberal , you know , liberal , and conservative , and we have this pendulum that swings too far conservative , too far liberal . And what we need in my again , in my humble opinion , is centrists , people who can compromise , because in a country , in a political environment as complex as the United States of America , there has to be compromise . There just does . I mean , you know the the idea of winner take all and that type of a mentality . That type of a mentality it's great , it's great on the football field , but we have to be able to compromise to get things done . And hopefully we compromise . And I'm going to say this , I'm going to say a word that I politicians can take the will of the people , learn to compromise , to get things done . And with that , there's going to be a lot of change going on .

Speaker 1 10:10

I think the incoming administration a lot of radical things happening and I think we need to be prepared for change . I think we need to be prepared for some glass getting broken too . I mean this you know , with change on this massive of a scale , there's going to be some bumps in the road , but right now I think I saw the stat the other day that the United States is $36.5 trillion in debt . It's like $200,000 for every taxpayer in debt . The interest payment on the debt alone is over a trillion dollars a year out of a 6.5 , 6.8 trillion dollar budget . That's more than the spending on the Defense Department , on our national defense , you know , and I don't want this podcast to get political . That's not my point . I national defense , you know , and I don't want this podcast to get political . That's not my point . I think that you know . The point in this is that there is going to be a lot of change and with that change , bad things can happen .

Speaker 1 11:19

But there's also opportunity and when we need to be cognizant and need to stay vigilant watching this change happen and look actively , be searching for how it's going to impact our business and our businesses as farmers . I mean , right now grain prices are really low . Corn last time I looked it was like four and change . Soybeans were nine and change I think Wheat was five or six . I mean they're not great prices . Our goods coming into their country . We're going to tax their goods coming into our country until they play by the same rules and they reduce the tariffs on goods coming from not just China . There are others but they're the biggest and the most . You know they get the most coverage .

Speaker 1 12:29

But I think we as farmers need to be looking and say , hey , is this time to diversify our operation ? Or do we think these changes are going to be positive for green prices and we're going to double down ? Or we're going to stay pretty conservative and make sure we've got plenty of capital or make sure we have plenty of assets . You know those are things that we as farmers have to be thinking about through this whole thing . I mean , if you're a large grain farmer , maybe you're not as agile in changing your crops and changing all of that , but if you're a small producer , you know what you can . You know there's going to be some opportunities to like RFK set to take over the provided he can get confirmed set to take over health and human services , which is the , you know , among other things , food and drug administration , centers for Disease Control and the National Institute of Health , I believe , are the three biggies that's going to have an impact on food . We grow food with that we have to .

Speaker 1 13:34

You know , if there's going to be some sort of a change , should we be looking at what food is going to be desirable for going to ? If they're going to try to force Americans and at this point I think you're going to have to force Americans to eat healthy I like a bag of chips as much as the next guy , but maybe I should eat a carrot or two , but let's not go crazy but there's going to have to be some radical changes if we're going to change some of the childhood obesity , if we're going to change some of these chronic diseases . I think there is an opportunity to do that , but it's not going to be without its pain points for the consumer , the American people , or us , the farmers . So what are the steps ? You know what are , what are the steps we go through , how do we do that and that's where we have to stay vigilant , be looking for , you know , be looking for these opportunities , you know , I think going back and reading , listening to the things RFK has said in the past , I don't know that they're . Listening to the things RFK has said in the past ? I don't know that they're . You know , I don't know what to think . I read all of it . You try to think what of its political maneuvering and what of it is . You know , really the way he believes , but set to be a man with a lot of power to change some obvious problems in our country . So , you know , I got to

Government Efficiency and Budget Realignment

Speaker 1 14:58

keep an eye on that .

Speaker 1 14:58

I don't know who has been proposed as the Secretary of Agriculture . I did see a stat the other day that kind of shocked me . So the USDA , the US Department , united States Department of Agriculture Department , united States Department of Agriculture Annual budget is half a trillion dollars . Of that half a trillion dollars , I think 90 or 95 , 90% of that money is for the SNAP program , food stamps , it's supplemental nutrition and whatever 90 plus percent of that budget goes to and I might be wrong , but it's high , it's 80 , 90 , something like that you know goes to that program , the USDA handling that . I know I understand why , how it could get there , but in today's world probably , you know , does that need to be there ? I don't know . I mean , hopefully people smarter than me are thinking about this because that seems like there could be a better place for that , for that , the administration of that , that wouldn't be burdensome . I mean , I saw the USDA again .

Speaker 1 16:17

Farming stuff I mean it's 10% of what they do is directly has direct impact on farmers . The other part is basically a state benefit program Huge budget , huge budget . Very little of that goes to farmers . You know , I don't know that . I've seen it .

Speaker 1 16:43

You know , when you look at these programs and I think part of what is going on and if you follow the way Elon Musk has run a lot of his businesses in the past , when he took over Twitter and changed it to X , I think what he did on the outside looks very noble . I mean the idea of stopping the bots , the foreign actors , foreign governments who are trying to sway American public opinion by with fake posts , fake news , fake . You know , all of these things from a Social engineering point of view is fascinating , how they're doing it , why they're doing it . Maybe not so good , but I applaud Elon Musk's attempt to rein that in by charging a little subscription fee if you want to get rid of a lot of that stuff , because if you're making millions of posts and you have to set up a new account for all of these posts , well it could . It probably gets more than they want to spend . So it just by the financial side , would get rid of a lot of it . But again , I applaud him .

Speaker 1 17:50

But if you look at the way he has has run his businesses very efficient , very , very efficient . Twitter was 7,400 employees I think it was 7,500 , something like that Took it down to 3,000 and rebranded it . Didn't see much of a hiccup . So you know , when you look at his track record he's looking for , in my opinion again , I'm an outsider here but when you look at , when you read about it , he's looking for these efficiencies . So if you are USDA and 90 , high 90% of your work is administering what's basically a health and human service , a food stamp program , snap , if you're administering that program and that's your budget , well the American people think that you know . Oh man , usda has $450 billion going to help farmers Yay , farmers , no , not . What happens ?

Speaker 1 19:00

So realigning some of it is not going to be cutting out agency , it's going to be realigning tasks or administration of things to streamline that process . We have a lot of bloat . Have you ever heard of a government agency that got created and then went away ? Meant agency that got created and then went away ? I haven't . I've never heard of one . Maybe they exist . They're sort of like unicorns . But that idea of realigning and reshaping how the agencies run and what tasks they're doing seems like a pretty natural fit to gain some efficiencies .

Speaker 1 19:40

And a guy like you know , elon Musk , if you look at his history of running businesses , he has always been very , very efficient . Line those , those businesses , because efficiency for him as a capitalist means he makes more money . We as a country need to spend less money . We're on a trajectory to bankruptcy . I mean we're . We're getting there . 36.5 trillion dollars , I think , is the number I saw for our , our deficit . I want to say I think the calculation is well , it's like every , it's like $250,000 for every voting American , how much you owe just for the . You know the privilege of living here , and that doesn't include the stuff we have to borrow this year . We have to pay money to service that debt and the payment to service the debt is huge . It's bigger than the Pentagon's budget

Navigating Uncertainty in Business

Speaker 1 20:45

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Speaker 1 20:45

This is a time of a lot of uncertainty . I read , I'd say , a year ago . This time I probably read , you know , stayed up with the news , maybe an hour a week . And now , just because I think for our business , our farm , I'm reading and diving into things , probably half an hour to an hour a day , half an hour to an hour a day because I want to gain some insight into things that are going to happen or things that I think will happen , so that I can be better prepared , so that our businesses , our farm , can be better prepared for these changes . And I want to see those opportunities because when they come , because in chaos there's opportunity . And I think for the next while we're going to have some chaos , stay vigilant on the information , Stay vigilant on these things .

Speaker 1 21:42

I think there's going to be a lot of shakeup and you're going to see a lot of misleading things being said in the press , in the public space , by so-called influencers . I don't know much about some of the influencers , but I think there's a lot of things that are going to be said in the media over the coming months and year that we need to take with a grain of salt and dig out our own information . What we believe is truth , don't accept . I think you are doing yourself and doing those around you a disservice if you accept these things that we see once as truth Without looking into it a little bit further .

Speaker 1 22:24

Be cognizant of all of this change going on . I'm going to try to bring it to you . So follow the podcast , because I'm going to try to bring this to you . When I see these things happening , I'm going to try to highlight them here on the podcast so we can at least be Talking about it . Have conversations with those people that we respect . So , with that said , you have a blessed day . I'm going to get out of here . Good luck and God bless .