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We're here today on Bitcoin Study Sessions to talk about something that is near and dear to both of our hearts, which is the intersection of Bitcoin and agriculture.

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For a little background in bona fides, I guess, Grant and I both came from farms in western Kansas.

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He grew up in Decatur County. I grew up in Norton, out in the northwest corner of the state.

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Um, and, uh, I myself, I've been involved in agriculture my entire life as a FFA through

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state FFA officer, um, working with, uh, frontier farm credit as a, uh, as a lending, uh, lending

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officer as well.

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And, um, kind of seeing the back end of this, of what is the credit machine that drives

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commodity agriculture, large scale, non-differentiated, and what direction is that

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going? What are the pitfalls? We do have some historical references for that, which is wonderful.

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And then how perhaps can Bitcoin resolve some of these issues that we see in agriculture?

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Basically, coming at this from the premise of Bitcoin is for everyone, as we've talked about

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before. It's for angels and demons, for criminals and politicians. I repeated myself, but it is

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for everyone. And how can it help you if you're raising carrots in your backyard or if you've got

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12,000 acres in Western Nebraska? So if you want to orange pill somebody, talk to them in their

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own language and in their own locality, frame it in terms of what it's going to do for them in their

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community. Yeah. And the reason, and that's kind of the emphasis of why we're here. So we're here

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to discuss this article that recently appeared it's the cover story of the this december 2025

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edition of farm journal magazine um and uh what what kind of inspired grant to want to talk about

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this was i was just back for christmas and then this is a publication you've been trying to orange

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peel your dad for five years you know yeah you know just kind of here and there but like it's

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not right the really casual but loving way you try to do with family where it's not pushy

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and you're not trying to sell an investment thesis to them.

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It's just something you're interested in,

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something you believe deeply in,

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so you want them to understand it.

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And yeah, I came back for Christmas

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and this came in the mail

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and to see Bitcoin on the cover of Farm Journal,

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you had some information about Farm Journal.

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Yeah, Farm Journal, I mean, it's a historic,

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it really is an American institution.

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It's been around since 1877.

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So 149 years, I think is what that is.

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I found a guy by a name, Wilmer Atkinson.

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It has a pretty strong subscription.

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They claim it's like 335,000,

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which today for print media is unbelievable.

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And it just goes out.

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That goes to operators.

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So that goes to people that have like 250 acres

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or more, basically.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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And so we find that this may be an opportunity

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for us to stop speaking for a minute

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about Bitcoin maybe in the theoretical or in the political

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and really truly bring it home to the farm.

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Yeah.

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And yeah, so with that,

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we're here to just kind of have a sort of

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a free range discussion on this.

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Grant's gone through the article,

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I've gone through the article,

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and we're gonna kind of talk about maybe

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how this can relate, particularly my place here

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is to sort of offer some of the experiences

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that I had working in agriculture as a lender and with legacy companies

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and like commodity companies and supplement companies

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and also in kind of the tech world as well.

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And just always a farm boy.

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You never grow out of that.

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Yeah, and you really don't.

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I mean, that's the thing is that you never leave those lessons behind.

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and years and decades later they they pop back up as something very valuable yeah so it's kind

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of got this article on the cover the dawn of bitcoin that's good subtitle five farmers unleash

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crypto as a store of value or medium of exchange so it's kind of the vocabulary issue at least

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bitcoin first and then crypto so i like that it's kind of educational maybe that

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taught crypto what you really the only thing you should be talking about really is bitcoin

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and so this is farmers speak out on bitcoin five producers explain why bitcoin will fundamentally

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change farming again a trade publication going to many operators many people in all sectors of the

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ag economy and it's structured around five different not just farmers fighting for people

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doing different things within agriculture and they're kind of their perspectives on bitcoin

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and we'll try to maybe distill this it's a it's a really great article it's available online we'll

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link to it so take a look at it it's not long um the author was is it chris dennett right

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chris dennett yeah chris dennett yeah um so the it's structured around five different people and

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we'll go through each of their insights um and see what we can glean from that so the first one

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was zach smith he had 1200 acres of row crops and some livestock in iowa um and so he really

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focused on store value, that function of Bitcoin. A lot of farmers and a lot of people use land as

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a store of value. And he kind of observes that that use of land as a store of value,

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people putting their money into as an investment, that raises the price of land for everybody. So

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you have farmers out there who want to get land for its use value. They want to do something with

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it, but the price is inflated because other people just want the land to put their money in.

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so it doesn't melt away, right?

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Their fiat.

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And so he observes that,

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the effect that outside investors have had

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on the price of land for people who want to use it.

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And then notes that, you know, farmers can do the same

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and that he compares the utility of land

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as a form of store value with Bitcoin.

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And it's clear, of course,

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like Bitcoin is something you don't have to maintain.

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You don't have to go out there and keep the grass cut

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and keep the land in order.

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It's something that you don't have to pay property taxes on.

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It's portable and take it with you.

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It's finite like land.

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And you can break it down into small pieces,

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sell tiny pieces away.

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You can't sell an acre.

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You can sell 0.001 and sell it to Satoshis.

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So Bitcoin just as an investment thesis

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for people who are looking at land,

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that's what Zach Smith observes

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as the first person in the ag sector.

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Anything to add to that?

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Yeah, a couple of things I want to talk about.

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So first off, the utility aspect of land

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versus the investment aspect.

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Yeah.

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This is the same thing that we see with gold,

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where gold has utility.

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Gold is an incredible conductor.

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Right.

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But very little of it is used as conducting.

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So I think the numbers is about like 10% of it

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is actually used as what it is for utility.

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And about 90% of gold is just hung around somebody's neck

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or stuck into a vault.

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And so what that does of course,

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is that you've got nine buyers for every 10

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that are gonna throw it into a vault

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and not use it for what it's worth.

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And if you think about that,

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if I was trying to buy a gallon of milk

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and 90% of the people that were buying a gallon of milk

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were buying it just to put it away,

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that would severely drive the cost of that milk up, right?

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You've just, this is simple law of supply and demand.

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You have more buyers and with more buyers comes a higher price.

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And so land as an investment,

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I guess the one thing that I want to say is that,

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and this is going to be,

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I guess we'll open this up with a very hot take.

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one of the most concrete sayings in agriculture has always been if you own dirt you can't get hurt

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so basically they're saying that if you own the land then you'll be able to have options

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and those options are typically you typically only have one option which is that you can finance

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your losses onto the land.

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So you have a bad year or the way agriculture works, you know, in a decade, you're probably

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going to have four bad years.

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You're probably going to have four good years or decent years.

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And you're probably going to have like one catastrophic year and one great year, something

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like that.

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You're in terms of the produce that you're going to land.

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In terms of your return, right?

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Yeah.

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Well, yeah, because, you know, there's the thing about obviously agriculture.

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is that you can have an incredible harvest

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and still have a horrible price.

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And you can have, and by the way,

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those things, because of the way

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that commodity market works,

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that happens more often than not, right?

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So if everyone has a great year,

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there's a great supply.

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If there's a great supply,

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then there's less demand, right?

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If everyone has a horrible year,

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then there's a great demand.

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And so there's great prices, but you don't have anything to sell.

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And so another one of the sayings in agriculture is that high prices cure high prices, right?

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So if the price of corn goes way up, then more people are going to plant corn.

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And next year, there's going to be more corn, and the price of corn is going to go down.

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You see that in Kansas with corn more and more often replacing wheat.

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Yeah, and there's a lot even behind the scenes with that.

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with, I don't know, behind the scenes, it's not, it's not behind the scenes, but it's because

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the United States has chosen maybe at the direction of, or at the request of, or definitely

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under the lobbying impact of large international, multinational companies, such as like Monsanto

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and Cargill, et cetera. Hey, you know, we, we want to have ethanol and we want to afford,

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makes the uh uh the cushions and bumpers and stuff out of corn like how can we have more and more

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products made out of corn yet they're all incredibly subsidized i think as they're all

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subsidized like three dollars for every one dollar of ethanol that comes out and so you end up

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creating a price for on corn that artificially boosts the market and because you do that you

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artificially increase the amount of marginal acres acres that typically would not be planted

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into corn because they're not suited for it.

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Where you and I are from is not suited for corn.

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It's a horrible place to grow corn.

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But if you've got a company that is gonna, you know,

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spend millions of dollars developing drought resistant corn

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and then you're gonna drill a hole in the ground

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and you're gonna mine water.

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And then you're gonna spend $300 an acre on nitrogen

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in order to get it to you.

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You've got something coming up out of the ground.

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So, but anyways, the thing that I want to say, the hot take here, in agriculture, the driving factor has always been to own the land.

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Land is a horrific investment.

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And I'm going to say that again so that people, land is a terrible investment.

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First off, land does not keep up with inflation.

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So farmland across the United States on average goes up around 5% to 6% per year since 1971.

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It's obviously higher in some places.

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in Iowa, in Northeast Kansas, you know, there's places in the pockets that it skyrockets.

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However, that brings on another problem.

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So let's assume that, let's even assume that you do outpace inflation.

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Let's assume that your ground goes up 10% per year, inflation being, you know, around

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7% per year on average.

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And we're talking monetary inflation, not S&P, or sorry, not consumer price index, not the cherry-picked basket of goods that has been reselected over 40 times since 1980 to appear that inflation is lower.

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That is the lie.

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The truth of inflation is, inflation is how much money is in the market and how much did we produce?

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And so on average, the numbers are somewhat depends on who you ask, but it's between seven and 12 to 13 percent per year.

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Just assume seven. Let's say that you're getting 10 percent on your ground. Great.

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So you're beating inflation. However, every single year that ground goes up, you get taxed higher.

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Right. Because you get taxed every single year. This, by the way, is another issue I think that is not talked about enough,

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which is that the taxation of land is taxing an unrealized gain so technically this is something

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we don't do but we do uh just like we tax your house yeah every every year you you know if you

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own your house every year you pay the government for the right to live in the house that you own

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if you own your land every year you pay the government for the right to own the land that

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you own. That's literally what you're doing. Yeah. And just one scenario that popped in mind,

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I remembered going over a balance sheet for one of my farmers who had purchased ground,

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I want to say in the late 80s, early 90s for around $800 an acre. And it was worth at that

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time, it was worth like close to 8,000. So it 10x. So what does that mean for him?

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he's paying 10 times the tax on it if the taxes haven't gone up and the taxes in most jurisdictions

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have increased this is a problem we see in kansas in the northern tier of counties because the taxes

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in nebraska are i think around eight times higher on agricultural land than they are in kansas and so

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if you're in the northern tier of kansas counties not only do you have competition among your fellows

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You also have competition from people in Nebraska who find that it's cheaper for them to buy land in Kansas and just drive across the state in order to farm it.

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So you've got that problem.

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So first off, land's a terrible investment because it doesn't keep up inflation.

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Second, land is a terrible investment because you get taxed on it and you get taxed on the unrealized gain every single year.

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Third, it's not finite.

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I myself lived on a fake island.

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Land is certainly not finite.

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um and not only is it not finite um every year we'll we'll make more ground you know the everglades

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you know that used to be a swamp now it's what groves or it's plantations and it's places that

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we farm and stuff um anytime you want to make ground farmable you can there is a cost to it

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but if that cost is less than the cost of buying the ground that is currently being fought over

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there you go then you've got you got the opportunity and so um with land prices going

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the way that they are um and again we want to make sure i want to make sure that we state this

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understand that your land price is not going up understand that the thing that you are measuring

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with is getting smaller the land is not getting any better it's not getting any more productive

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00:15:55,620 --> 00:16:08,080
In fact, if you look at the ground, you take soil samples, the amount of organic matter, which is the number one factor in the productivity of land, continues to decrease.

231
00:16:08,380 --> 00:16:14,120
But doesn't that contradict what you said earlier, that gold, for example, has a financial premium on it or a monetary premium?

232
00:16:14,380 --> 00:16:22,460
If investors are piling in the land because they perceive it as finite, won't there be at least some monetary premium on land due to investors competing for it?

233
00:16:22,460 --> 00:16:25,400
I mean, there's a massive monetary premium on it.

234
00:16:25,400 --> 00:16:26,700
Yeah, due to competition.

235
00:16:28,180 --> 00:16:30,320
That's not to say that they're right, right?

236
00:16:30,320 --> 00:16:33,280
I mean, it's just, it's incorrect.

237
00:16:33,800 --> 00:16:36,040
Because you're being taxed on a monitor of premium too, so.

238
00:16:36,180 --> 00:16:36,560
Exactly.

239
00:16:36,700 --> 00:16:36,880
Yeah.

240
00:16:37,120 --> 00:16:37,280
Yeah.

241
00:16:39,280 --> 00:16:41,120
Yeah, so let's see.

242
00:16:41,280 --> 00:16:43,120
Yeah, land is a terrible investment.

243
00:16:43,300 --> 00:16:44,600
It doesn't keep up with inflation.

244
00:16:45,340 --> 00:16:47,640
Also, you can't compete, right?

245
00:16:47,640 --> 00:17:14,380
So as a, as a lending officer, um, by the time I got out in 2022, um, the majority, I, I really want to say, I don't know this, that this is true, but it truly felt like the majority of our business was land loans to people who were not involved in production agriculture.

246
00:17:14,380 --> 00:17:19,960
who had had a HVAC company and sold it for a couple million dollars

247
00:17:19,960 --> 00:17:23,440
and wanted to buy a section of land.

248
00:17:23,440 --> 00:17:28,480
Or they're a doctor and they need to buy some ground

249
00:17:28,480 --> 00:17:31,960
to get rid of some money before they blow it all on, you know,

250
00:17:32,780 --> 00:17:34,580
small engine airplanes and cocaine.

251
00:17:36,700 --> 00:17:38,280
They've got to do something with it.

252
00:17:38,380 --> 00:17:40,860
And the average farmer simply can't compete.

253
00:17:41,000 --> 00:17:44,240
And the reason, of course, they can't compete is that farming,

254
00:17:44,380 --> 00:17:46,040
is not a profitable business.

255
00:17:46,040 --> 00:17:46,880
Yeah.

256
00:17:46,880 --> 00:17:48,140
You're in a commodity business,

257
00:17:48,140 --> 00:17:50,300
which means that you sell the product

258
00:17:50,300 --> 00:17:51,940
for the same cost as everybody else.

259
00:17:51,940 --> 00:17:53,620
If you go to the store, you buy,

260
00:17:53,620 --> 00:18:06,642
notice that if you go to buy a Pepsi or a Dr Pepper or a Mountain Dew or a Coke they all happen to be the exact same price And it not because all those companies have the exact same unit economics

261
00:18:06,642 --> 00:18:09,502
It's because soda is a commodity.

262
00:18:10,162 --> 00:18:16,882
And if you're dealing in a commodity business, the only way that you can compete is on scale, which is to get larger.

263
00:18:16,982 --> 00:18:17,522
Yeah.

264
00:18:17,622 --> 00:18:20,462
In order to amortize your costs over more acres.

265
00:18:20,462 --> 00:18:27,102
and practically speaking the cultural trend that that cashes out as that manifests as is family

266
00:18:27,102 --> 00:18:32,342
farmers are getting eaten up by big industrial operations and so the culture in kansas in the

267
00:18:32,342 --> 00:18:38,022
midwest changes along with that you have an institution um one generation teaching the next

268
00:18:38,022 --> 00:18:44,362
generation about the land being stewards of the land caring for the land and then suddenly that

269
00:18:44,362 --> 00:18:51,622
long chain of stewards of the land is interrupted by industrial exploitation or use of the land.

270
00:18:51,622 --> 00:18:57,662
And there's a lot of incentives that there's a lot of, I guess you would call it a negative

271
00:18:57,662 --> 00:19:05,462
incentives that contribute to that. One is that in the last two decades, we've really seen a rise

272
00:19:05,462 --> 00:19:12,782
of these cash rent operators, which are guys that they have the equipment. And what they do

273
00:19:12,782 --> 00:19:18,382
is they go around and they kind of treat themselves like a sort of like a salesman.

274
00:19:18,382 --> 00:19:22,622
They build up a baseball card of statistics of themselves as a farmer.

275
00:19:23,742 --> 00:19:26,882
And they go around and they try to bid for ground.

276
00:19:27,722 --> 00:19:31,322
And, you know, most of the ground is not owned by the farmer.

277
00:19:31,562 --> 00:19:38,642
Most of the ground is owned by the disconnected relatives of who used to farm it two generations

278
00:19:38,642 --> 00:19:39,042
ago.

279
00:19:39,042 --> 00:19:44,202
You know, the brother in Boston, the sister in Atlanta, the cousin in Houston, et cetera.

280
00:19:44,602 --> 00:19:46,482
And they don't see the land.

281
00:19:46,582 --> 00:19:47,842
They don't care about the land.

282
00:19:48,342 --> 00:19:53,542
All they know is this guy is offering $60 an acre per year more than the other guy.

283
00:19:54,862 --> 00:20:01,162
The hidden negative in that is that if you've got a one-year lease or a three-year lease,

284
00:20:01,262 --> 00:20:05,322
typically they don't, I mean, three years is typically, is pretty typical where they'll

285
00:20:05,322 --> 00:20:09,982
literally do a cash rent auction every three years and just put it up again and see who's

286
00:20:09,982 --> 00:20:10,622
going to pay more.

287
00:20:11,962 --> 00:20:14,082
So obviously, what's your incentive then?

288
00:20:14,322 --> 00:20:16,922
Well, your incentive is to treat that land like a rented meal.

289
00:20:17,182 --> 00:20:18,942
It's to beat it, right?

290
00:20:18,982 --> 00:20:19,162
Right.

291
00:20:19,462 --> 00:20:21,262
And to extract as much as possible.

292
00:20:21,402 --> 00:20:22,682
You're not thinking long term.

293
00:20:23,242 --> 00:20:27,302
And by the way, this is no condemnation of cash rent farmers.

294
00:20:27,302 --> 00:20:30,422
This is no condemnation of this process.

295
00:20:30,422 --> 00:20:38,342
this process arose because the cost of getting into agriculture had become prohibitively high.

296
00:20:38,902 --> 00:20:47,282
And for a young farmer who was energetic and tech savvy, that's a way to get your foot in the door

297
00:20:47,282 --> 00:20:53,742
is to buy a combine and run it over six times as many acres as you normally would,

298
00:20:53,742 --> 00:20:59,202
buy a tractor. But these are guys that are often farming in six, seven, eight,

299
00:20:59,202 --> 00:21:03,782
10 different counties, you know, running trackers all over the place and stuff.

300
00:21:03,922 --> 00:21:07,222
So it's had a lot of downstream.

301
00:21:07,622 --> 00:21:10,742
There's been a lot of downstream consequences.

302
00:21:10,742 --> 00:21:12,782
So bring that back to Bitcoin then.

303
00:21:13,102 --> 00:21:19,562
From Zach Smith's perspective, then people now, if they invest in Bitcoin rather than

304
00:21:19,562 --> 00:21:21,062
land, does that fix some of that?

305
00:21:21,402 --> 00:21:21,542
Yeah.

306
00:21:21,682 --> 00:21:25,722
So the thing about Bitcoin compared to land is Bitcoin is finite.

307
00:21:26,042 --> 00:21:26,902
Land is not finite.

308
00:21:27,582 --> 00:21:30,542
Bitcoin is not taxed every single year.

309
00:21:30,542 --> 00:21:35,462
By the way, how could you find a justification to tax Bitcoin?

310
00:21:35,622 --> 00:21:40,522
I've said this before, but when I send you an email, what I'm doing is I'm sending bits

311
00:21:40,522 --> 00:21:43,222
of data using electricity.

312
00:21:43,742 --> 00:21:48,982
And you don't tax me on that email, even though I'm using electricity that comes from a provider

313
00:21:48,982 --> 00:21:53,382
in my state and probably a server that's located in the United States.

314
00:21:53,382 --> 00:22:00,002
when I send Bitcoin to somebody, I'm sending bits of information using electricity. And

315
00:22:00,002 --> 00:22:05,962
the servers are not all located and not even mostly located in the United States.

316
00:22:07,842 --> 00:22:14,222
It's just free open source software. So there's no justification to tax it. So if we ever get to

317
00:22:14,222 --> 00:22:20,462
that point, I hope that there's a riot and a revolt. But yeah, so Bitcoin is actually finite,

318
00:22:20,462 --> 00:22:28,422
unlike land um you can instead of if you've got your 640 acres you can carve off a tiny piece of

319
00:22:28,422 --> 00:22:34,662
that if it's bitcoin and you can buy a diet coke or you could buy a car or you can send your kid to

320
00:22:34,662 --> 00:22:41,782
college you don't have to um go through and by the way it's a it's a terribly costly process if

321
00:22:41,782 --> 00:22:48,302
somebody i've been through this a number of times um oftentimes you'll have a guy that he owns the

322
00:22:48,302 --> 00:22:53,502
section and somebody from town comes to him and says, hey, you know, this spot right here,

323
00:22:53,622 --> 00:22:57,502
I'd really love to buy these eight acres from you and put a house on it.

324
00:22:57,962 --> 00:23:01,902
And and he goes, well, you know, it's on the other side.

325
00:23:01,962 --> 00:23:02,942
I won't have to see it.

326
00:23:03,122 --> 00:23:03,502
Blah, blah, blah.

327
00:23:03,562 --> 00:23:04,342
They're nice people.

328
00:23:04,342 --> 00:23:07,962
Plus, he's going to charge them, you know, that land.

329
00:23:08,082 --> 00:23:13,802
He's going to charge probably eight to ten times per acre what the rest of the land is

330
00:23:13,802 --> 00:23:22,022
useful because typical building sites are usually bad pasture sites or bad farm ground sites.

331
00:23:22,782 --> 00:23:27,042
Like you want to be up on the hill, you know, ground, you want to be down in the bottom

332
00:23:27,042 --> 00:23:33,682
where the water is, where the nutrients are. So, so yeah, but going through that process,

333
00:23:33,682 --> 00:23:37,842
you have to do a survey, you have to do an appraisal, you have to get it all marked and

334
00:23:37,842 --> 00:23:42,042
measured out. And there's somebody with their hand out at every step of that process,

335
00:23:42,042 --> 00:23:44,022
taking, you know,

336
00:23:44,082 --> 00:23:46,282
charging you for the privilege of

337
00:23:46,282 --> 00:23:47,242
selling your ground.

338
00:23:48,442 --> 00:23:50,322
You know, with Bitcoin, you want to sell a little bit,

339
00:23:50,482 --> 00:23:51,702
you know, you don't have to have it

340
00:23:51,702 --> 00:23:54,962
appraised and assessed.

341
00:23:55,342 --> 00:23:57,062
Absolute peer-to-peer transactions.

342
00:23:57,242 --> 00:23:59,222
That's what it does. That's what it's designed to do.

343
00:23:59,222 --> 00:23:59,482
Yeah.

344
00:24:00,482 --> 00:24:03,402
And then, as far as being a store

345
00:24:03,402 --> 00:24:03,942
of value,

346
00:24:05,022 --> 00:24:07,182
that's what he's talking about in the article.

347
00:24:07,442 --> 00:24:09,362
Bitcoin is an actual store of value.

348
00:24:10,662 --> 00:24:11,822
And it

349
00:24:12,042 --> 00:24:13,202
it outpaces inflation.

350
00:24:13,442 --> 00:24:15,122
And the reason it outpaces inflation

351
00:24:15,122 --> 00:24:16,822
is because it's better than the thing

352
00:24:16,822 --> 00:24:18,102
that is being measured against.

353
00:24:18,742 --> 00:24:21,042
So our next individual here,

354
00:24:21,042 --> 00:24:22,662
who is one of the five people

355
00:24:22,662 --> 00:24:25,022
big on Bitcoin and agriculture,

356
00:24:25,722 --> 00:24:26,322
Vance Crow.

357
00:24:26,582 --> 00:24:28,202
So he's an interesting person

358
00:24:28,202 --> 00:24:29,322
who I hadn't heard of.

359
00:24:29,402 --> 00:24:32,442
You had, he has kind of a media guy

360
00:24:32,442 --> 00:24:33,642
within the ag sphere.

361
00:24:33,862 --> 00:24:35,502
He does something called legacy interviews

362
00:24:35,502 --> 00:24:37,022
where this sounds really cool.

363
00:24:37,082 --> 00:24:37,942
I'm going to check this out

364
00:24:37,942 --> 00:24:40,982
after we get done with this podcast

365
00:24:40,982 --> 00:24:44,842
where it seems like it's kind of conducting oral histories of people,

366
00:24:45,022 --> 00:24:49,382
which is as far as preserving the cultural heritage of the place you're from,

367
00:24:49,482 --> 00:24:54,002
there's nothing more important than the stories that are lost

368
00:24:54,002 --> 00:24:55,482
when someone passes away,

369
00:24:55,522 --> 00:24:59,682
if they haven't committed that to some sort of more immutable ledger, right?

370
00:24:59,702 --> 00:25:00,582
If they haven't recorded that.

371
00:25:00,642 --> 00:25:04,002
So he does legacy interviews and a thing called Ag Tribes,

372
00:25:04,002 --> 00:25:09,662
which looks like a YouTube channel, maybe a podcast on ag topics.

373
00:25:09,662 --> 00:25:31,302
So he's a longtime, according to this article, a longtime proponent of Bitcoin. And kind of the point he makes here, or the journalist through him, is that people involved in ag lending will realize eventually that it's better to collateralize loans with Bitcoin rather than land or cattle or something like that.

374
00:25:31,302 --> 00:25:36,742
that's the first point we get two things that one that land or that bitcoin is better collateral

375
00:25:36,742 --> 00:25:44,222
and also that farmers are currently incentivized to spend all of their fiat money for tax reasons

376
00:25:44,222 --> 00:25:49,542
and also for reasons of inflation the declining value of the dollar but bitcoin is of course

377
00:25:49,542 --> 00:25:54,602
better on that front so those are kind of the two points that um vance crow makes here what do you

378
00:25:54,602 --> 00:26:00,402
think about i think bitcoin is collateral is a really good point here for farmers yeah um

379
00:26:01,302 --> 00:26:05,622
I mean, so Leon Nycom is the guy who introduced me to this idea.

380
00:26:06,062 --> 00:26:10,142
He's talking about traditional residential and commercial real estate.

381
00:26:10,142 --> 00:26:29,342
And the way that he framed it was this introductory idea of for every investment they had that was real estate, they also set aside a certain amount, a percentage of the value of that home or building or whatever to absorb any costs that would be needed.

382
00:26:29,342 --> 00:26:41,782
So maintenance and updates and things like that, because Bitcoin is gaining strength and continues to gain strength because truly what it what it is, is a measure of human productivity.

383
00:26:42,702 --> 00:26:47,602
When it when it reaches its its final apex, it'll just be a measure of human productivity.

384
00:26:47,602 --> 00:26:55,862
Um, and so it increases and that idea makes a whole lot more sense than saying, oh, I'm

385
00:26:55,862 --> 00:27:00,782
going to put aside this amount in order to replace the windows or this amount in order

386
00:27:00,782 --> 00:27:01,662
to replace the carpets.

387
00:27:01,802 --> 00:27:04,182
So how does that relate to agriculture?

388
00:27:05,122 --> 00:27:14,222
So agriculture is a tough one because, um, because there's, there's not a whole lot you're

389
00:27:14,222 --> 00:27:16,742
going to do to improve the land, right?

390
00:27:16,742 --> 00:27:44,062
You can change your farming practices. You can move into like regenerative agriculture or do something in order to add nutrients to the soil. It's not like you're changing out carpet, changing out windows, etc. But what you're doing is you are building additional collateral so that like if you think about it, I'd take out a loan to buy ground and part of that money goes into Bitcoin.

391
00:27:44,062 --> 00:27:50,222
so the ground goes up five to six or maybe 10 percent a year bitcoin goes up 30 percent a year

392
00:27:50,222 --> 00:27:58,382
you can see how in just a few years you will no longer need the land to be the collateral and you

393
00:27:58,382 --> 00:28:03,482
can just use the bitcoin as the collateral so then you as the farmer can own the land free and clear

394
00:28:03,482 --> 00:28:08,962
and you can walk around feeling as though you don't have that weight on your chest that if i

395
00:28:08,962 --> 00:28:14,722
have a bad year, I may lose the farm. Yeah. That my loans will get called like they did in the 80s

396
00:28:14,722 --> 00:28:27,782
when people lost everything in the late 70s as well. And the benefit to farmers is just

397
00:28:27,782 --> 00:28:38,602
emits because you can set aside money that you otherwise would have. And this is the second part

398
00:28:38,602 --> 00:28:42,822
that Vance points out is that farmers are incentivized to spend everything at the end

399
00:28:42,822 --> 00:28:47,642
of the year. Like no farmer ever pays taxes. If they do, then they're doing it wrong. Right.

400
00:28:49,382 --> 00:28:53,862
At the end of the year, their accountant tells them how much, this is how much you need to spend

401
00:28:53,862 --> 00:28:59,782
in order to not pay taxes. And they go, okay, it's time to upgrade this tractor. And I can,

402
00:29:00,422 --> 00:29:05,722
I need to buy, I'll buy a new pickup and I can trade in my planter and upgrade,

403
00:29:05,722 --> 00:29:12,362
maybe put new row units on my old planter you do whatever but the point is that what you do is you

404
00:29:12,362 --> 00:29:18,502
end up buying things you don't need yeah and the problem is that comes back and bites you in the ass

405
00:29:18,502 --> 00:29:25,162
really really hard because when you have a bad year you're not the only one who has a bad year

406
00:29:25,162 --> 00:29:30,522
so when you have a bad year it's more than likely that everyone around you is having a bad year

407
00:29:30,522 --> 00:29:35,502
and so when you have a bad year and you don't have the money that you need to pay the loans

408
00:29:35,502 --> 00:29:39,842
and you need to sell that tractor that you bought the year before because you had to spend money.

409
00:29:40,442 --> 00:29:40,902
Guess what?

410
00:29:41,002 --> 00:29:42,022
So does everybody else.

411
00:29:42,122 --> 00:29:43,662
They also need to sell that tractor.

412
00:29:43,782 --> 00:29:44,922
They need to sell that combine.

413
00:29:45,262 --> 00:29:46,462
They need to sell that semi.

414
00:29:46,882 --> 00:29:49,242
And so now we're back to the law of supply and demand.

415
00:29:49,662 --> 00:29:57,002
Now you've got a large supply of assets that previously were bought at a high value

416
00:29:57,002 --> 00:30:01,162
because the year before everybody had a good year and everybody had to buy a pickup and a Baylor,

417
00:30:01,282 --> 00:30:02,322
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

418
00:30:02,522 --> 00:30:04,802
And so the prices were up because demand was high.

419
00:30:04,802 --> 00:30:11,602
now everything's turned around and it's on the market and it's there's no buyers for it right

420
00:30:11,602 --> 00:30:17,042
like who's going to buy when they didn't have the good year yeah so it it bites you it bites you

421
00:30:17,042 --> 00:30:24,642
twice and so if there's a way to avoid that um and even though i am we talked about this when

422
00:30:24,642 --> 00:30:30,222
adam samaka was on was on the podcast i'm not opposed to taxes i am fundamentally opposed to

423
00:30:30,222 --> 00:30:37,342
the way the tax decision in the United States works or doesn't work. And again, we have to ask

424
00:30:37,342 --> 00:30:41,342
the question, and I hope that there are farmers listening to this because this should strike them

425
00:30:41,342 --> 00:30:47,082
exactly where their heart lies. But the question is, why do they need to tax you if they can print

426
00:30:47,082 --> 00:30:53,562
the money? Full stop. Why do they need to tax you if they can just make it up out of nothing?

427
00:30:53,862 --> 00:30:58,322
And the truth is they don't. They just make it up out of nothing whenever they feel as though

428
00:30:58,322 --> 00:31:03,682
if they were to tax you even more, you would vote them out of office. So beyond that,

429
00:31:04,462 --> 00:31:12,442
even in that system, it is usually cheaper to just pay your taxes, take the hit and keep the money.

430
00:31:13,042 --> 00:31:17,362
And so if you were to do that, let's say you could tax your 15% or whatever it is,

431
00:31:18,282 --> 00:31:23,142
you put it into an asset like Bitcoin that's growing at 30%. So then your money ahead,

432
00:31:23,142 --> 00:31:29,122
instead of putting it into a, you know, a $400,000 tractor that next year is going to be worth 320.

433
00:31:29,882 --> 00:31:35,682
Right. So, yeah, you know, all of these things like a tractor is a depreciating asset.

434
00:31:36,522 --> 00:31:41,862
Cattle are kind of here and there. Right. You know, like you have great risk with cattle.

435
00:31:41,862 --> 00:31:47,742
Cattle get old, they die. They can get stolen. You know, there's all these things that

436
00:31:47,742 --> 00:31:53,862
are inherent risks to expanding your operation just because you have money that you have to spend.

437
00:31:54,642 --> 00:31:58,722
And the thing is that farmers don't really have an alternative to that right now.

438
00:31:58,722 --> 00:31:59,122
Yeah.

439
00:31:59,982 --> 00:32:01,862
So this does provide an alternative.

440
00:32:02,162 --> 00:32:05,422
And the thing is that it gives you that cushion.

441
00:32:05,702 --> 00:32:09,462
So the next year, when you have the bad year, now you've got this cushion.

442
00:32:09,822 --> 00:32:15,102
You've got this cushion in Bitcoin and it should be able to get you through the next year.

443
00:32:15,102 --> 00:32:18,982
So you talked about Bitcoin as collateral from the farmer's perspective.

444
00:32:19,242 --> 00:32:21,382
There's also advantages from like the lender's perspective.

445
00:32:21,922 --> 00:32:22,542
Huge, massive.

446
00:32:22,822 --> 00:32:26,802
Like if you're a lender, you should love to have Bitcoin.

447
00:32:27,162 --> 00:32:27,882
Why should I love to?

448
00:32:28,042 --> 00:32:33,842
It is an incredibly horrific and painful process to take someone's land and sell it.

449
00:32:33,902 --> 00:32:34,102
Yeah.

450
00:32:34,222 --> 00:32:34,442
Right.

451
00:32:34,582 --> 00:32:37,002
It takes months, maybe a year.

452
00:32:37,242 --> 00:32:39,662
There's a huge cost to market it.

453
00:32:40,062 --> 00:32:43,402
You have to pay three or six percent to the auctioneer.

454
00:32:44,002 --> 00:32:47,662
If it's a distress sale like this, obviously it's going to be a distress sale.

455
00:32:47,722 --> 00:32:48,822
So it's a distress asset.

456
00:32:49,662 --> 00:32:52,202
People are going to pay what it's worth, typically.

457
00:32:53,782 --> 00:32:55,762
It's hard to get a hold of, et cetera, et cetera.

458
00:32:57,422 --> 00:33:02,622
If you own Bitcoin and you have your Bitcoin as collateral, when you don't pay your loan

459
00:33:02,622 --> 00:33:08,582
and it comes time for the bank to do what they do and call that loan and clear it off

460
00:33:08,582 --> 00:33:11,322
the balance sheet, literally all they do is sell the Bitcoin.

461
00:33:11,322 --> 00:33:15,562
So the most liquid asset, like, I mean, they can sell it in a millisecond.

462
00:33:16,082 --> 00:33:17,342
They don't have to have an appraiser.

463
00:33:17,482 --> 00:33:18,382
There's no auctioneer.

464
00:33:18,622 --> 00:33:21,342
There's nobody to come out, look at it, check it over.

465
00:33:21,522 --> 00:33:24,842
You don't have to advertise it, get buyers, et cetera, et cetera.

466
00:33:25,062 --> 00:33:26,182
It's just done.

467
00:33:26,442 --> 00:33:26,662
Yeah.

468
00:33:26,962 --> 00:33:27,282
You know?

469
00:33:27,822 --> 00:33:28,042
Yeah.

470
00:33:28,202 --> 00:33:28,802
And it's secure.

471
00:33:29,222 --> 00:33:29,962
Great collateral.

472
00:33:29,962 --> 00:33:34,162
So the next operator individual within the ag sphere.

473
00:33:34,422 --> 00:33:40,562
One more thing I want to say is that one of the things that I have had experience with,

474
00:33:40,562 --> 00:33:45,762
not personally in my portfolio, but other lending advisors had told me about, you know, they give a

475
00:33:45,762 --> 00:33:50,622
loan to a guy, he buys the land and, you know, 10 years later or whatever, he declares bankruptcy

476
00:33:50,622 --> 00:33:57,522
and they have to sell the land. Well, that land, probably not in the same condition that it was

477
00:33:57,522 --> 00:34:02,922
when they bought it. Yeah. You know, guy didn't keep up fences, guy raped the land for the nutrients

478
00:34:02,922 --> 00:34:09,022
and now it's hardly raising anything. Yeah. You know, bulldoze stuff here, use it as a dump site,

479
00:34:09,022 --> 00:34:13,722
et cetera, et cetera. Like there's all kinds of things that you can do. And I don't think people

480
00:34:13,722 --> 00:34:24,342
quite understand how, how little verification is done on land and on assets in the agriculture world.

481
00:34:24,502 --> 00:34:32,102
If you get a loan, typically an appraiser is like, if you're one of my customers,

482
00:34:32,662 --> 00:34:36,082
typically an appraiser is going to come out. I think it's every like three years,

483
00:34:36,082 --> 00:34:41,782
maybe to verify that what you put on your balance sheet is actually what you have.

484
00:34:42,162 --> 00:34:47,502
So I've got 72 tractors and they come out three years later. I have none. Yeah. Like,

485
00:34:47,562 --> 00:34:53,842
where'd they go? Like, I don't know, man. Yeah. They walked off. Right. Bitcoin is,

486
00:34:53,842 --> 00:34:58,622
it's instantly verifiable. You can't, you can't degrade it. Like you can degrade the land,

487
00:34:58,782 --> 00:35:02,502
let the, let the trees grow and not clear them, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah,

488
00:35:02,502 --> 00:35:08,762
just another point on that yeah bitcoin as pristine collateral compared to land is it's it's

489
00:35:08,762 --> 00:35:13,262
so much better in this thing it's so much better for both parties it's better for the farm for the

490
00:35:13,262 --> 00:35:19,262
operator and for the lender that's great yeah and the next individual it kind of talks about a link

491
00:35:19,262 --> 00:35:23,422
in the chain now given that as we've already discussed and you've really fleshed out very

492
00:35:23,422 --> 00:35:30,202
clearly there are a lot of advantages for bitcoin for people who are dealing with the land so kevin

493
00:35:30,202 --> 00:35:32,462
Kimley, the next individual.

494
00:35:32,822 --> 00:35:35,302
He's an entrepreneur and ag economist.

495
00:35:36,002 --> 00:35:42,602
And his point really is that farmers are really well situated to understand Bitcoin too.

496
00:35:42,742 --> 00:35:47,422
Not just the advantages as you've described them, but kind of brass tacks get right down

497
00:35:47,422 --> 00:35:47,862
to it.

498
00:35:47,862 --> 00:36:03,964
A farmer they will understand the idea first of all of barter just like trading something this for that some beef for something you have They understand okay I can trade a new thing for something else They also tied maybe to cash to get things

499
00:36:04,044 --> 00:36:04,944
So he makes that point.

500
00:36:05,644 --> 00:36:10,604
And so really then it just becomes an educational project of teaching people that Bitcoin is

501
00:36:10,604 --> 00:36:12,744
another thing that can be exchanged for other things.

502
00:36:12,744 --> 00:36:18,844
And so his project is something called Bitcoin, which is some sort of, you can, you look into

503
00:36:18,844 --> 00:36:22,084
this, you can explain this, but it's a way for farmers to learn about Bitcoin.

504
00:36:22,084 --> 00:36:29,484
um farmers are he says natural entrepreneurs so once they learn about a new tool they're going to

505
00:36:29,484 --> 00:36:37,004
want to and be able to apply that tool so so what is bitcoin uh hold on i had it pulled up and i

506
00:36:37,004 --> 00:36:44,824
lost it as i understand it it's educating farmers by helping them set up nodes which are nodes

507
00:36:44,824 --> 00:36:46,564
which are called Bitcoin nodes.

508
00:36:47,204 --> 00:36:47,284
Yeah.

509
00:36:47,344 --> 00:36:48,144
Something like that.

510
00:36:48,404 --> 00:36:48,864
Bitcoin node.

511
00:36:49,084 --> 00:36:49,424
Yeah.

512
00:36:49,724 --> 00:36:52,984
And so Bitcoin, if I'm not slurring my word,

513
00:36:53,124 --> 00:36:54,824
like corn, like the crop, of course.

514
00:36:55,344 --> 00:36:57,344
And if you've ever, you know,

515
00:36:58,224 --> 00:36:59,484
if you want to learn about Bitcoin,

516
00:36:59,764 --> 00:37:00,624
you know, set up a wallet,

517
00:37:00,964 --> 00:37:02,544
do something with Bitcoin.

518
00:37:02,744 --> 00:37:04,424
And a node is something that

519
00:37:04,424 --> 00:37:05,824
it takes a little bit to do.

520
00:37:05,984 --> 00:37:07,704
You know, you have to have the laptop

521
00:37:07,704 --> 00:37:09,104
or whatever to get it going,

522
00:37:09,204 --> 00:37:11,104
kind of learn what a node is

523
00:37:11,104 --> 00:37:12,424
and how Bitcoin functions.

524
00:37:12,424 --> 00:37:14,244
You kind of maybe get a feeling of autonomy

525
00:37:14,244 --> 00:37:16,924
within the operation of Bitcoin once you have a node.

526
00:37:17,404 --> 00:37:20,644
So it's a tool and it's also just a way to get people

527
00:37:20,644 --> 00:37:24,004
maybe thinking that Bitcoin is a real thing

528
00:37:24,004 --> 00:37:26,604
because it involves, oh, here's what the node does

529
00:37:26,604 --> 00:37:27,184
within Bitcoin.

530
00:37:27,504 --> 00:37:29,364
It's not just a thing out there, right?

531
00:37:29,744 --> 00:37:30,524
Let me take a shot.

532
00:37:31,224 --> 00:37:35,224
So for farmers to think about this,

533
00:37:35,724 --> 00:37:39,664
if you want to think about Bitcoin compared to a bank,

534
00:37:39,884 --> 00:37:41,904
you can think of setting up a wallet

535
00:37:41,904 --> 00:37:43,764
as opening an account.

536
00:37:43,764 --> 00:37:46,224
So it's like opening an account with a bank.

537
00:37:46,564 --> 00:37:52,564
The difference is that Bitcoin is a bank that no one owns and it's free to use.

538
00:37:52,684 --> 00:37:54,704
So I can set up an account.

539
00:37:54,924 --> 00:38:00,324
I don't have to give any of my information unless you go through certain places, but I

540
00:38:00,324 --> 00:38:07,624
can set up an account using Mana Wallet in literally, I did this in literally 30 seconds

541
00:38:07,624 --> 00:38:10,764
and I have, it's have, I have an account.

542
00:38:10,764 --> 00:38:19,924
setting up a node is like having your own private vault at that bank except you hold it um so your

543
00:38:19,924 --> 00:38:26,484
your node is the thing that not only verifies all the other transactions um and it gives you an

544
00:38:26,484 --> 00:38:33,504
opportunity to to see that but you can store your bitcoin in your own personal vault yeah there that

545
00:38:33,504 --> 00:38:40,664
no one else um can literally no one else can touch um so it's an exercise in self-sovereignty

546
00:38:40,664 --> 00:38:44,784
that inherently every farmer wants to believe

547
00:38:44,784 --> 00:38:47,964
that is their driving force.

548
00:38:48,784 --> 00:38:50,344
I think the unfortunate thing is that

549
00:38:50,344 --> 00:38:53,504
in traditional large-scale American agriculture,

550
00:38:54,264 --> 00:38:55,864
what has happened is that we have,

551
00:38:57,104 --> 00:39:00,104
we have like, agriculture is a welfare,

552
00:39:01,104 --> 00:39:04,304
it's a welfare industry right now.

553
00:39:05,564 --> 00:39:09,724
You think about no tax, that's fine.

554
00:39:09,724 --> 00:39:11,644
If you think you deserve it, that's fine.

555
00:39:11,744 --> 00:39:13,104
And I think they deserve it too.

556
00:39:13,724 --> 00:39:15,264
No tax on inputs, that's cool.

557
00:39:16,464 --> 00:39:20,544
But insurance subsidized at, I think, 65%.

558
00:39:20,544 --> 00:39:24,424
You know, I would love to have my car insurance subsidized that high.

559
00:39:24,484 --> 00:39:25,464
I would love to have my house.

560
00:39:25,544 --> 00:39:29,224
And of course, the claim is always that, oh, we're feeding the American people.

561
00:39:30,024 --> 00:39:31,484
You kind of are.

562
00:39:31,484 --> 00:39:48,644
But really what we're doing is we are feeding a machine that is supplying Washington, D.C. with a lot of dollars and doing a lot of useless projects that otherwise don't make a whole lot of sense.

563
00:39:48,644 --> 00:39:55,504
And, you know, every year there's these huge disaster payments and emergency payments, et cetera, et cetera.

564
00:39:55,504 --> 00:40:02,764
um so anyways um yeah that's just kind of my own personal rant on that and again it's not this is

565
00:40:02,764 --> 00:40:08,224
not condemning agriculture this is not certainly not condemning farmers at all but what it is saying

566
00:40:08,224 --> 00:40:15,924
is that i believe in the value of the american farmer to the extent that i don't think that they

567
00:40:15,924 --> 00:40:21,864
need a government backstop i do think that they can do things on their own but when you have to

568
00:40:21,864 --> 00:40:26,524
playing that game you have to play by their rules and so their rules make it very difficult for you

569
00:40:26,524 --> 00:40:33,324
to do anything that's differentiated it makes it very difficult to do organic or um or any sort of

570
00:40:33,324 --> 00:40:41,824
like uh any sort of product that is not a a commodity um to differentiate yourself from

571
00:40:41,824 --> 00:40:45,624
from the people around you is that because you wouldn't get the subsidies that are available

572
00:40:45,624 --> 00:40:53,164
standardized so like if you wanted to grow saffron right super high value crop yeah um

573
00:40:53,164 --> 00:40:58,384
i think uh i think i think my brother and i looked into this one time i think there are

574
00:40:58,384 --> 00:41:04,584
places in kansas you could grow up or in the midwest at least um but whatever it is saffron or

575
00:41:04,584 --> 00:41:12,904
um almonds you know like i mean people forget that or wine like people forget that or that

576
00:41:12,904 --> 00:41:17,604
Kansas used to be like the number three wine producer in the United States like a while ago.

577
00:41:17,604 --> 00:41:17,864
Yeah.

578
00:41:18,184 --> 00:41:22,424
And we had groves of nut trees in Southeast Kansas, et cetera, et cetera.

579
00:41:22,924 --> 00:41:26,184
But if you want to grow those crops now, they're not in the program.

580
00:41:26,504 --> 00:41:28,444
So you can't get any subsidies.

581
00:41:28,704 --> 00:41:29,724
You can't get any insurance.

582
00:41:29,824 --> 00:41:31,064
You can't get any coverage, nothing.

583
00:41:31,464 --> 00:41:36,924
And so it just forces and funnels you into this, you know, go grow corn.

584
00:41:37,144 --> 00:41:37,324
Yeah.

585
00:41:37,484 --> 00:41:38,164
Grow corn and soybeans.

586
00:41:38,344 --> 00:41:38,484
Yeah.

587
00:41:38,484 --> 00:41:58,744
You know, go grow corn and soybeans because those are the things that we can then overproduce and then we can create a new industry and we can create new jobs which are subsidized by the government so that we can take the gluten out of this and we can put the gluten back in and we can smash the beans and make biodiesel.

588
00:41:58,744 --> 00:42:14,604
and we can, you know, we can, we can extract the ethanol from the corn and do all these things that at the end of the day, they're spinning the wheel because they are not productive in terms of actually producing more than they consume.

589
00:42:14,604 --> 00:42:25,104
viable industries if they have a product that can be economically created. But if what you're doing

590
00:42:25,104 --> 00:42:31,924
is you're artificially increasing supply, which decreases price, but you've got farmers hooked on

591
00:42:31,924 --> 00:42:39,584
this heroin drug of commodity payments and subsidy payments and all kinds of support that they can't

592
00:42:39,584 --> 00:42:45,864
get off of, you know, it makes it very difficult in order to go somewhere else and do your own

593
00:42:45,864 --> 00:42:46,084
thing.

594
00:42:46,084 --> 00:42:52,504
Yeah. And so the next individual kind of dials in on that. So this is Dennis Campbell at the helm of

595
00:42:52,504 --> 00:42:58,964
Crystal Creek Enterprises in Iowa. Corn, soybeans, and some wheat. And evidently it's a

596
00:42:58,964 --> 00:43:04,364
internationally renowned operation and kind of very innovative in the way that they think.

597
00:43:04,364 --> 00:43:14,024
And so here's a quote that really talks about that aspect of farming being under the overbearing hand or whatever of government.

598
00:43:14,024 --> 00:43:18,784
So he says, I don't believe any more than anybody else.

599
00:43:19,304 --> 00:43:27,344
I don't know any more than anybody else, but I believe Bitcoin at a minimum is becoming a major tool in the toolbox to protect ourselves against an out of control government.

600
00:43:27,884 --> 00:43:29,084
Just for crop insurance.

601
00:43:29,084 --> 00:43:31,924
you can spend $45 to $55 an acre

602
00:43:31,924 --> 00:43:35,084
insuring 250 BU an acre,

603
00:43:35,324 --> 00:43:36,864
HTH corn, bushels an acre.

604
00:43:36,984 --> 00:43:37,624
What's APH?

605
00:43:37,944 --> 00:43:39,284
Average production history.

606
00:43:39,804 --> 00:43:42,484
Yeah, so just it takes your like last 10 years

607
00:43:42,484 --> 00:43:44,324
and how much you averaged.

608
00:43:44,444 --> 00:43:44,704
Yeah.

609
00:43:44,764 --> 00:43:46,444
That throws out the high and the low or something.

610
00:43:46,704 --> 00:43:48,304
This is the point I think you were making.

611
00:43:48,384 --> 00:43:50,604
Even if Bitcoin only gave some independence

612
00:43:50,604 --> 00:43:52,324
back on crop insurance,

613
00:43:52,324 --> 00:43:53,924
that by itself is enough for me.

614
00:43:54,044 --> 00:43:54,184
Yeah.

615
00:43:54,224 --> 00:43:55,384
So the independence there

616
00:43:55,384 --> 00:43:57,104
would then be independence to branch out

617
00:43:57,104 --> 00:43:58,404
and do different things.

618
00:43:58,404 --> 00:44:06,244
You know, like the trade-off is always that it's, you know, it's going to be a smaller, like going to be a smaller market.

619
00:44:07,184 --> 00:44:12,384
And it may be a little more intensive in terms of like the work that you have to do.

620
00:44:12,384 --> 00:44:23,804
But maybe I want to go fight sweet corn and maybe I want to play organic sweet corn and I can get literally 10 times the price or 50 times the price selling it by the year.

621
00:44:23,984 --> 00:44:24,264
Yeah.

622
00:44:24,424 --> 00:44:24,644
Right.

623
00:44:25,144 --> 00:44:26,564
But I can't get coverage for that.

624
00:44:26,564 --> 00:44:41,704
But there's nobody that's going to come for that. And, you know, you know, first, you know, it's going to take me, I think, three years to get verified as an organic producer, which they have this verification that truly has no standard.

625
00:44:42,824 --> 00:44:49,564
This great story came out a couple of years ago, the largest organic producer of corn and soybeans in the United States.

626
00:44:49,564 --> 00:44:55,504
So I was in Missouri. Turns out that effectively nothing of what he did was organic.

627
00:44:56,564 --> 00:45:03,464
and uh it was just a facet it's fun it's a fun story to look up because he yeah he bought fake

628
00:45:03,464 --> 00:45:10,584
boobs for his girlfriend in vegas and uh his wife and uh they found out they weren't happy about that

629
00:45:10,584 --> 00:45:15,904
neither was the church that he was a deacon at um i mean it's just rough all the way around he

630
00:45:15,904 --> 00:45:20,104
bought an apartment for another girlfriend in paris something like that but government money

631
00:45:20,104 --> 00:45:25,164
incentivizes that type of thing for money coming and yeah if you you you get all that you get all

632
00:45:25,164 --> 00:45:31,464
of that tantalizing, you know, government support. But what could you do if you weren't doing that?

633
00:45:31,464 --> 00:45:38,624
You know, like maybe more people would have small herds of cattle and they would sell locally.

634
00:45:39,124 --> 00:45:47,684
Yeah. You know, maybe more people would raise heritage crops of wheat and they would create

635
00:45:47,684 --> 00:45:54,544
local bread. Right. And there's people that want to do that. And there's people that want to do that

636
00:45:55,164 --> 00:46:03,984
A, for the autonomy and the sovereignty of it, but there's also such a growing population of people that want to do that for the health benefits of it.

637
00:46:04,684 --> 00:46:05,844
We have a new food pyramid now.

638
00:46:05,904 --> 00:46:06,744
Yeah, we do.

639
00:46:06,744 --> 00:46:10,284
And I can attest to that.

640
00:46:10,884 --> 00:46:12,964
I lived in Colombia for 66 days.

641
00:46:13,104 --> 00:46:19,064
I ate like a glutton, like a pig, and I came back 17 pounds lighter because everything I ate was organic.

642
00:46:19,204 --> 00:46:21,204
Before, I was not a believer in organic food.

643
00:46:21,364 --> 00:46:23,044
I thought that it was all hogwash.

644
00:46:23,364 --> 00:46:23,464
Yeah.

645
00:46:23,464 --> 00:46:38,264
You know, hey, let's shoot the cattle up with, I can't remember what, but, you know, as long as it's past the time where, you know, such and such company tells me that trace elements of that are out of their system, there's nothing wrong with it.

646
00:46:38,464 --> 00:46:41,184
And you can spray all the Roundup you want.

647
00:46:41,264 --> 00:46:43,124
I can drink Roundup and it won't kill me.

648
00:46:43,744 --> 00:46:44,364
I don't know, man.

649
00:46:45,344 --> 00:46:47,184
Almost every farmer I know has cancer.

650
00:46:47,564 --> 00:46:47,684
Yeah.

651
00:46:47,944 --> 00:46:50,964
Almost every single farmer I know has cancer.

652
00:46:51,964 --> 00:46:52,804
And that's.

653
00:46:53,464 --> 00:47:00,924
terrifying like um just to think about so you know i i and again like i was the guy who was

654
00:47:00,924 --> 00:47:06,764
totally not on the side of that yeah i was raised into that propaganda i just remember like helping

655
00:47:06,764 --> 00:47:12,244
my dad with stuff and just help managing the fertilizer and the anhydrous and all the chemicals

656
00:47:12,244 --> 00:47:16,884
and stuff you got to use and even as a young kid i'm like this is not good i said this chemistry

657
00:47:16,884 --> 00:47:21,764
class now yeah we're not right well we can't sit here we're supposed to be big time gardeners

658
00:47:21,764 --> 00:47:26,544
you know that's really what we're supposed to be like big time gardeners and and fun zoo keepers

659
00:47:26,544 --> 00:47:31,824
you know but instead we're running these chemical experiments and shooting up cattle with steroids

660
00:47:31,824 --> 00:47:38,564
and um spraying noxious chemicals onto what we call noxious weeds yeah yeah and you you know you

661
00:47:38,564 --> 00:47:43,544
smell it like that's the thing yeah all you need to do in order to know that that's not healthy for

662
00:47:43,544 --> 00:47:50,424
you is smell it and you go oh god no no no yeah yeah yeah and so dennis campbell made one other

663
00:47:50,424 --> 00:47:55,424
point but it's kind of similar to one we made earlier that um just as you can't kind of peel

664
00:47:55,424 --> 00:48:00,784
off an acre and sell it you also if you want to buy 500 acres you don't have the cash for you can

665
00:48:00,784 --> 00:48:05,624
buy 500 with a bitcoin and then save up and keep it in a savings technology and it's going to

666
00:48:05,624 --> 00:48:10,744
appreciate over time given based on historical kind of performance so he just makes that point

667
00:48:10,744 --> 00:48:16,864
that 500 can be you can buy that in bitcoin right yeah well and not only can you buy it in bitcoin

668
00:48:16,864 --> 00:48:23,104
You can also, there's, I don't know, I think in Arkansas is where I first saw this three or four years ago.

669
00:48:23,184 --> 00:48:27,364
And I know that there's more of them popping up, but fractional ownership of land.

670
00:48:27,424 --> 00:48:27,684
Yeah.

671
00:48:27,904 --> 00:48:32,064
Like with a split, you know, split payment, you know, verified on the blockchain.

672
00:48:32,264 --> 00:48:41,604
It's very easy to have 37 different people each putting in a different amount to make a million dollars in order to go buy X amount of acres.

673
00:48:41,604 --> 00:48:44,064
And so, I mean, that's what the next individual kind of talks about.

674
00:48:44,164 --> 00:48:44,864
So we'll move on to him.

675
00:48:44,864 --> 00:48:48,404
Matt Gilbert, an entrepreneur from Texas cotton country.

676
00:48:48,664 --> 00:48:53,604
So he first kind of describes almost like a speculative attack that farmers can engage in.

677
00:48:53,844 --> 00:49:03,184
So the smartest thing somebody in agriculture could do is go down and borrow a bunch of money against traditional collateral and use that money to buy Bitcoin.

678
00:49:03,344 --> 00:49:14,524
And then later on in kind of Chris Bennett talking to Matt Gilbert here, he talks about tokenizing agricultural land, that commercial assets have already been tokenized.

679
00:49:14,524 --> 00:49:15,904
and that ag will follow.

680
00:49:16,624 --> 00:49:18,044
And then he kind of discusses that,

681
00:49:18,104 --> 00:49:18,964
that a family in Iowa,

682
00:49:19,104 --> 00:49:20,464
an investor in Mississippi

683
00:49:20,464 --> 00:49:22,384
and stakeholders from across the nation

684
00:49:22,384 --> 00:49:24,104
can jointly tokenize a farm.

685
00:49:24,264 --> 00:49:25,644
The blockchain ledger

686
00:49:25,644 --> 00:49:28,544
transparently records every transaction,

687
00:49:28,704 --> 00:49:30,684
making ownership, lending, and risk

688
00:49:30,684 --> 00:49:31,804
radically clearer

689
00:49:31,804 --> 00:49:33,684
and more efficient than ever,

690
00:49:34,104 --> 00:49:35,964
which will overhaul deed registries,

691
00:49:36,144 --> 00:49:37,924
middlemen, banking and title services,

692
00:49:38,124 --> 00:49:39,344
drastically cutting costs

693
00:49:39,344 --> 00:49:40,544
and speeding processes.

694
00:49:41,024 --> 00:49:41,104
Yeah.

695
00:49:41,644 --> 00:49:43,664
Every time a piece of land is sold,

696
00:49:43,664 --> 00:49:50,964
you have to pay someone literally to do nothing more than look up that that land is that land.

697
00:49:51,204 --> 00:49:51,324
Yeah.

698
00:49:52,184 --> 00:49:53,164
And they get paid for it.

699
00:49:53,204 --> 00:49:54,744
And it's big business.

700
00:49:55,384 --> 00:49:57,984
Title companies are big business, highly profitable.

701
00:49:58,964 --> 00:50:01,064
And there's no need for them to exist.

702
00:50:03,004 --> 00:50:07,124
You know, if I have that title and it's on the blockchain,

703
00:50:07,764 --> 00:50:11,024
I can transfer it to you when you post the money.

704
00:50:11,024 --> 00:50:19,404
and you know we just this is with with blockchain technology in particular um we just we don't need

705
00:50:19,404 --> 00:50:24,944
middlemen we don't need middlemen but back to the thing about um performing a speculative attack

706
00:50:24,944 --> 00:50:30,564
it's it's absolutely true i mean you go i don't know what operating loans right now are they're

707
00:50:30,564 --> 00:50:35,524
probably between seven and nine percent or something like that operating loan so an operating

708
00:50:35,524 --> 00:50:39,984
loan would be your short-term money that would be the money that you need to get the crop into the

709
00:50:39,984 --> 00:50:47,524
this year to pay for this year's expenses, seed, fertilizer, chemical, et cetera. And that's,

710
00:50:47,564 --> 00:50:51,784
it's typically going to be your highest interest rate loan and your lower interest rate. And it's

711
00:50:51,784 --> 00:50:56,624
going to be highest interest rate because it is collateralized by chattel. The way to think of

712
00:50:56,624 --> 00:51:02,484
chattel is something that can die, burn, be stolen, be carried off. So chattel, cattle are the ultimate

713
00:51:02,484 --> 00:51:10,884
chattel yeah um but you know your machinery um you know your your uh your your corn in the bin

714
00:51:10,884 --> 00:51:17,524
your hay bales out in the out in the windbreak etc etc that's your collateral your chattel

715
00:51:17,524 --> 00:51:23,684
collateral and then you've got land collateral and land is a much better collateral um than

716
00:51:23,684 --> 00:51:28,644
chattels because it's hard to steal land right it's hard for it to walk off you can't burn burn

717
00:51:28,644 --> 00:51:34,564
it in the night or crash it or you know your your wife's husband can't steal it and wreck it drunk

718
00:51:34,564 --> 00:51:44,084
yeah etc etc so um your longer term loans are going to be secured by land so you know say you

719
00:51:44,084 --> 00:51:52,484
get your between a three more like a five but um five to a 30-year loan um you're going to secure

720
00:51:52,484 --> 00:51:56,564
that with the end you're probably looking you know i don't know five to seven or something like that

721
00:51:56,564 --> 00:52:02,684
right now. When I was there, you know, in the craziness of zero interest rates, you know,

722
00:52:02,724 --> 00:52:10,064
we were doing land loans for in the mid twos, high twos, mid twos, and they would get a full

723
00:52:10,064 --> 00:52:14,464
percentage of that back as a dividend payment at the end of the year. So your effective interest

724
00:52:14,464 --> 00:52:22,084
rate was like 2%. Imagine if you had taken that 2% and bought Bitcoin as it, you know.

725
00:52:22,084 --> 00:52:28,324
And, and by the way, that's, that's kind of the scary part, I think, of all of this is

726
00:52:28,324 --> 00:52:32,784
that what that of course does is that it speeds the collapse.

727
00:52:32,784 --> 00:52:33,784
Yeah.

728
00:52:33,784 --> 00:52:38,444
Like you, you want to be the guy who starts the speculative attack.

729
00:52:38,444 --> 00:52:40,764
You don't want to be the guy who finishes it.

730
00:52:40,764 --> 00:52:41,764
Right.

731
00:52:41,764 --> 00:52:45,244
Because if you're the guy who finishes it, if you're the guy who places the straw on

732
00:52:45,244 --> 00:52:49,244
the camel's back that breaks it, then your loan gets called immediately.

733
00:52:49,244 --> 00:52:50,244
Right.

734
00:52:50,244 --> 00:52:51,244
Okay.

735
00:52:51,244 --> 00:52:51,704
The value of your ground drops.

736
00:52:52,084 --> 00:52:55,884
to back where the utility value is instead of the monetized value.

737
00:52:56,324 --> 00:52:57,844
It's going to have no monetized value.

738
00:52:57,844 --> 00:53:00,324
It's the money that you're measuring it with has no value.

739
00:53:00,484 --> 00:53:02,384
Yeah. Right.

740
00:53:02,384 --> 00:53:04,684
This again is what happened in the in the 80s

741
00:53:06,244 --> 00:53:09,844
when basically the farm credit system overextended

742
00:53:10,844 --> 00:53:13,684
and a bunch of guys couldn't make their loans

743
00:53:14,384 --> 00:53:16,324
primarily because they were on variable interest rate,

744
00:53:16,324 --> 00:53:18,484
which very few people do variable anymore.

745
00:53:18,724 --> 00:53:19,724
Everybody is fixed.

746
00:53:19,724 --> 00:53:21,844
So that that's good.

747
00:53:21,844 --> 00:53:47,504
But, yeah, I mean, if you're a farmer and you want to do something productive that will sustain your operation and put you in a position to set up not just your next few years, but set up your family farm for the next 10 generations, take out all the money you can and buy Bitcoin with it.

748
00:53:47,504 --> 00:53:47,784
Yeah.

749
00:53:47,924 --> 00:53:49,404
Not financial advice, whatever.

750
00:53:49,604 --> 00:53:49,784
Right.

751
00:53:49,784 --> 00:54:07,226
But why would you not borrow at 6 7 8 in order to make 30 Yeah yeah and at that point it yeah at that point it becomes more financial engineering but

752
00:54:07,226 --> 00:54:11,306
that's all you're doing anyways that's all you're doing people say that they're farming but really

753
00:54:11,306 --> 00:54:16,026
like you're just trying to figure out a way to make it work yeah and that's what you got to do

754
00:54:16,026 --> 00:54:21,066
is you got to figure out how to make it work and this is a way to make it work in the I remember my

755
00:54:21,066 --> 00:54:26,666
dad saying you know they talking about how hard it was in the 80s he said there was a time when

756
00:54:26,666 --> 00:54:34,566
you could buy i think he said the price of aluminum had gone up so high that you could buy milwaukee's

757
00:54:34,566 --> 00:54:41,906
best beer and then sell the empties and make your running back you know as it's like all right well

758
00:54:41,906 --> 00:54:48,346
you know you gotta do something to make it work yeah and uh you'll see guys in tough times my

759
00:54:48,346 --> 00:54:53,246
grandpa did this the last couple of years of his life. He was out there, you know, things weren't

760
00:54:53,246 --> 00:55:00,186
good in terms of, in terms of prices like 2012, 2013, 2012 was a horrible year in Kansas and

761
00:55:00,186 --> 00:55:05,086
they're out there cutting up scrap iron and hauling it off. You know, whatever makes it work,

762
00:55:05,206 --> 00:55:11,806
you know, plant some potatoes, do something. But I think farmers and ranchers should look at Bitcoin

763
00:55:11,806 --> 00:55:17,486
as this is something that I should consider as a way to make it work. Yeah. Ultimately,

764
00:55:17,486 --> 00:55:22,546
the reason that people get involved in farming and ranching is not for the money it's for the

765
00:55:22,546 --> 00:55:31,546
lifestyle right they want to be out there among animals among nature they want to be doing these

766
00:55:31,546 --> 00:55:40,126
things that makes them feel productive and valued and how can we protect that lifestyle yeah and

767
00:55:40,126 --> 00:55:54,046
And I think Bitcoin is a vehicle that allows you to do that, not just for the next couple of years, but once you understand it truly for the next 10 generations of your family.

768
00:55:54,446 --> 00:56:02,446
Yeah, the happiest farmers were those that had the luxury through independent wealth or just the legacy of wealth to do it almost as a hobby.

769
00:56:02,446 --> 00:56:02,846
Yeah.

770
00:56:03,026 --> 00:56:03,246
Yeah.

771
00:56:03,246 --> 00:56:15,126
Yeah. And that's like, you know, very few people are like that because the name of the game is take as much credit as you can and expand your operation as big as you can.

772
00:56:15,286 --> 00:56:19,026
Because the only way that you can make more money is on scale.

773
00:56:19,326 --> 00:56:19,746
Yeah.

774
00:56:19,826 --> 00:56:26,986
Is to have more acres, to have more cattle, to go to put up more bushels so that you can take your costs.

775
00:56:26,986 --> 00:56:31,986
you know if i have a two hundred thousand dollar tractor and i'm breaking that cost down over a

776
00:56:31,986 --> 00:56:37,566
thousand acres it's way cheaper to break that cost down over five thousand acres combine new

777
00:56:37,566 --> 00:56:44,566
combines a million dollars now um so how can i take how can i justify right you know spending a

778
00:56:44,566 --> 00:56:50,926
million dollars for a combine the only way i can do it is to take on more and more and more and more

779
00:56:50,926 --> 00:56:56,266
and more and more and more acres and as you do that then you create a more and more complex machine

780
00:56:56,266 --> 00:56:57,886
with more and more moving parts.

781
00:56:57,986 --> 00:56:59,806
And the thing that we know about complex machines

782
00:56:59,806 --> 00:57:02,646
is that they work until they do not.

783
00:57:02,766 --> 00:57:04,946
And when they stop working, they explode.

784
00:57:05,206 --> 00:57:05,346
Yeah.

785
00:57:06,026 --> 00:57:06,266
Yeah.

786
00:57:06,266 --> 00:57:06,766
Yeah.

787
00:57:06,986 --> 00:57:09,326
So that's the five individuals

788
00:57:09,326 --> 00:57:13,066
that are bringing Bitcoin into agriculture,

789
00:57:13,286 --> 00:57:15,026
but kind of offering different perspectives.

790
00:57:15,566 --> 00:57:19,346
This article, just imagine the sensation

791
00:57:19,346 --> 00:57:20,366
of being a farmer,

792
00:57:20,506 --> 00:57:22,626
being open to whatever it's going to take.

793
00:57:22,726 --> 00:57:24,126
You get the farm journal,

794
00:57:24,286 --> 00:57:25,826
like it comes to you every month.

795
00:57:25,826 --> 00:57:31,286
you get some interesting topics. Some of the topics are in this one, one way to save on fertilizer,

796
00:57:31,686 --> 00:57:38,106
tips to choose your 2026 seed corn, real practical stuff. And then the cover article, December 2025,

797
00:57:39,166 --> 00:57:44,046
the dawn of Bitcoin. And so again, farmers are entrepreneurs, farmers are people that are open

798
00:57:44,046 --> 00:57:49,466
to new types of ideas. And just some of the rhetoric too with this article, I encourage

799
00:57:49,466 --> 00:57:54,606
everybody to read this and to put yourself in the position of a farmer who is an entrepreneur,

800
00:57:54,606 --> 00:57:56,206
who is open getting this.

801
00:57:56,806 --> 00:57:57,766
You know, just as Bitcoiners,

802
00:57:57,866 --> 00:58:00,746
kind of we don't want to watch price action,

803
00:58:00,866 --> 00:58:01,886
but we're kind of stuck to it

804
00:58:01,886 --> 00:58:03,666
because it just kind of is what we do.

805
00:58:04,006 --> 00:58:06,426
We're looking for any news of bullishness

806
00:58:06,426 --> 00:58:08,886
to kind of maintain our spirit,

807
00:58:09,066 --> 00:58:10,146
maintain us at high spirits

808
00:58:10,146 --> 00:58:12,346
and kind of maintain that power

809
00:58:12,346 --> 00:58:13,486
to keep on hodling on.

810
00:58:14,106 --> 00:58:16,346
This is one story that really does that for me.

811
00:58:16,726 --> 00:58:19,026
And to read it, the guy, Chris Bennett,

812
00:58:19,586 --> 00:58:21,666
ends it with a little kind of

813
00:58:21,666 --> 00:58:23,166
conclusion paragraph section

814
00:58:23,166 --> 00:58:24,086
called What is Money?

815
00:58:24,086 --> 00:58:31,086
and he asked that question and he encourages people to go out and buy the bitcoin standard so

816
00:58:31,086 --> 00:58:35,966
farmers out there getting recommendations spend twenty dollars it may be the best twenty dollars

817
00:58:35,966 --> 00:58:41,326
you ever spent going to get safety ends book going to take a look at that maybe you know a

818
00:58:41,326 --> 00:58:46,386
whole generation of farmers not by this one article of course but more and more maybe they

819
00:58:46,386 --> 00:58:54,726
will be orange-pilled um and the way this article starts too just compares so the this is the dawn

820
00:58:54,726 --> 00:59:01,586
of bitcoin you kind of you know ask and rhetorically maybe this is the cotton gin the steel plow right

821
00:59:01,586 --> 00:59:07,126
this may be the next thing for agriculture as it may be the next thing for every industry that is

822
00:59:07,126 --> 00:59:14,666
going to touch and transform yeah and i guess one thing i i just want to say personally is that

823
00:59:14,666 --> 00:59:22,226
it pains me so much to as somebody who was you know i was a chapter ffa officer i was a state

824
00:59:22,226 --> 00:59:28,446
ffa officer i was involved in agriculture my entire life and to go inside the system of

825
00:59:28,446 --> 00:59:37,106
agriculture and see how difficult it is to make it work yeah you know you don't own your land

826
00:59:37,106 --> 00:59:43,806
anymore the bank owns it and and maybe you never did in the first place but you're you're stretched

827
00:59:43,806 --> 00:59:49,046
you don't even get to own your seed anymore you literally rent your seed every year because you

828
00:59:49,046 --> 00:59:54,786
you have to you're not allowed to you're not allowed to keep seed on your farm

829
00:59:54,786 --> 01:00:01,626
in storage to plant the next year because monsanto owns the genetics yeah so they're

830
01:00:01,626 --> 01:00:10,046
not selling you the seed they're renting you to see um the subsidy payments the the commodity

831
01:00:10,046 --> 01:00:19,866
support, all of these things that have weaved their way into taking away sovereignty and

832
01:00:19,866 --> 01:00:26,786
the ability to make sound decisions and instead force people to just play the game.

833
01:00:27,086 --> 01:00:27,186
Yeah.

834
01:00:28,186 --> 01:00:36,126
There is no group of people better suited to look at the board and go, I'm not going

835
01:00:36,126 --> 01:00:37,906
to play this game anymore than foreigners.

836
01:00:37,906 --> 01:00:44,066
and this would not be the first time in the 70s there were the tractor brigades um brigades and

837
01:00:44,066 --> 01:00:53,006
it was 1978 was the first one 79 was the big one but this was because we disconnected our money

838
01:00:53,006 --> 01:01:00,646
supply from gold in 1971 and inflation just went crazy during the 70s and by that time you know

839
01:01:00,646 --> 01:01:07,826
the dairy industry had been utterly broken. Everybody was suffering. And thousands of

840
01:01:07,826 --> 01:01:13,466
farmers got into their tractors and they drove from Nebraska, Kansas, the Dakotas, Texas,

841
01:01:14,106 --> 01:01:20,406
all of, they drove tractors, 14 miles an hour, 20 miles an hour to Washington, DC.

842
01:01:20,766 --> 01:01:24,546
And they protested and they protested peacefully. They cleared snow. They,

843
01:01:25,226 --> 01:01:30,006
but they were there because they, they knew that the money system was breaking.

844
01:01:30,006 --> 01:01:44,626
Yeah. And now is a time when we can look around and we can, I think, very confidently say the system is not breaking. The system is broken. Yeah. And we have reached the point where.

845
01:01:44,626 --> 01:01:53,766
that type of resistance um and we've seen it in we've seen in europe with the the tractor uh

846
01:01:53,766 --> 01:01:58,306
protests that they've had over there where that you you're just breaking people you're just you're

847
01:01:58,306 --> 01:02:06,386
just breaking people to the point that they have nothing left and um i guess my message would be

848
01:02:06,386 --> 01:02:11,506
i hope that anybody who listens to this if you're a farmer or rancher you're involved in agriculture

849
01:02:11,506 --> 01:02:20,726
learn about bitcoin because it is hope it is hope for you to make a change that protects yourself

850
01:02:20,726 --> 01:02:27,786
from the vagaries and the overreach of a government that has simply gone out of control because it's

851
01:02:27,786 --> 01:02:33,446
just blind it's not evil it's just blind yeah um and it's a it's a parasite that needs to feed

852
01:02:33,446 --> 01:02:39,146
itself and it got really hungry and it forgot that if it kills the host it kills itself um

853
01:02:39,146 --> 01:02:45,506
so yeah that's my father and farmer farmers are the hosts we live on the produce of farmers they

854
01:02:45,506 --> 01:02:52,966
make us secure as a nation and it always struck me too you know the complex fiat machinery that

855
01:02:52,966 --> 01:03:00,646
we've built and that one has to manage in order to be a farmer and yet a farmer typically the most

856
01:03:00,646 --> 01:03:05,206
self-sovereign individual you will meet in other respects somebody repairs their own machinery

857
01:03:05,206 --> 01:03:10,466
somebody can't do that anymore like i mean that's that's another thing that i forgot to mention but

858
01:03:10,466 --> 01:03:15,186
like i mean that's a huge lawsuit i think it's a i think it made it to the report called right to

859
01:03:15,186 --> 01:03:20,426
repair like um and it's primarily against john deere i think i don't know if there's anybody

860
01:03:20,426 --> 01:03:26,726
else involved but yeah um you know they said like this is your tractor but you are not allowed to

861
01:03:26,726 --> 01:03:31,346
repair it we have to repair it we and it's going to cost a thousand dollars every time they send

862
01:03:31,346 --> 01:03:35,846
somebody out there just to change an air filter or sit and the the stories about that you can look

863
01:03:35,846 --> 01:03:42,706
this up online stories about right to repair abuses are horrific yeah you know so yeah they

864
01:03:42,706 --> 01:03:46,786
would if they could right and just in our nation's history people went west because they wanted that

865
01:03:46,786 --> 01:03:51,906
bit of sovereignty which was how many acres at a mule or whatever right they wanted to own something

866
01:03:51,906 --> 01:03:57,886
and be free from control except for their own their own decisions and yet like now you're forced

867
01:03:57,886 --> 01:04:01,286
to play fiat games, to win fiat prizes if you want to be a farmer.

868
01:04:01,466 --> 01:04:02,286
And that's tragic.

869
01:04:02,506 --> 01:04:03,806
It's spiritually sad.

870
01:04:04,026 --> 01:04:07,066
And yeah, I hope that Bitcoin can be integrated.

871
01:04:07,226 --> 01:04:09,146
It can be a part of reforming that.

872
01:04:09,546 --> 01:04:12,226
Yeah, the cows have come home and thankfully they brought Bitcoin.

873
01:04:12,466 --> 01:04:13,886
So we're happy for that.

874
01:04:14,566 --> 01:04:15,686
We very much are.

875
01:04:16,026 --> 01:04:17,106
So that's the article.

876
01:04:17,446 --> 01:04:19,246
Do you have any other insights?

877
01:04:19,366 --> 01:04:20,126
Thank you, Lucas.

878
01:04:20,206 --> 01:04:21,926
You have so much expertise in this topic.

879
01:04:22,726 --> 01:04:26,706
I'm kind of the city boy, farm boy, the one that doesn't know a lot,

880
01:04:26,706 --> 01:04:28,186
but you have a wealth of knowledge here.

881
01:04:28,286 --> 01:04:30,246
And I appreciated hearing all that really did.

882
01:04:30,426 --> 01:04:34,286
I just want to, like, if anybody from Farm Journal or Chris Bennett,

883
01:04:34,606 --> 01:04:37,586
you know, Vance, everybody that was involved in this article,

884
01:04:37,766 --> 01:04:38,726
man, thank you guys.

885
01:04:38,786 --> 01:04:39,566
Yeah, absolutely.

886
01:04:39,566 --> 01:04:42,166
Because it's so encouraging to hear as somebody who,

887
01:04:42,926 --> 01:04:45,026
you know, all I ever wanted to do was play baseball and farm

888
01:04:45,026 --> 01:04:46,826
and wasn't good enough to play baseball.

889
01:04:47,006 --> 01:04:48,986
There was no way that we could farm.

890
01:04:49,226 --> 01:04:52,646
Like, it just wasn't going to, I would have been in horrendous debt

891
01:04:52,646 --> 01:04:54,026
working 100 hours a week.

892
01:04:54,026 --> 01:04:56,566
And there's guys that go ahead and do that.

893
01:04:56,566 --> 01:04:57,406
and I've bought them.

894
01:04:58,126 --> 01:05:00,566
But I think this gives hope

895
01:05:00,566 --> 01:05:02,086
for a new generation of farmers.

896
01:05:02,226 --> 01:05:03,066
Like this has been the thing

897
01:05:03,066 --> 01:05:04,366
that we've been so worried about

898
01:05:04,366 --> 01:05:05,486
in agriculture so long.

899
01:05:05,566 --> 01:05:06,726
The average age of a farmer

900
01:05:06,726 --> 01:05:07,966
is in the high 60s.

901
01:05:08,066 --> 01:05:08,286
Yeah.

902
01:05:08,506 --> 01:05:08,746
Right.

903
01:05:08,906 --> 01:05:11,006
And the cost to get started

904
01:05:11,006 --> 01:05:13,166
on farming is so prohibitive

905
01:05:13,166 --> 01:05:14,906
that if you're a 20 year old guy,

906
01:05:14,946 --> 01:05:15,826
you just can't do it.

907
01:05:15,866 --> 01:05:16,826
You got to go to town

908
01:05:16,826 --> 01:05:17,906
and get a job

909
01:05:17,906 --> 01:05:18,746
and you got to get a wife

910
01:05:18,746 --> 01:05:19,266
who has a job.

911
01:05:19,346 --> 01:05:19,946
Like that's the thing.

912
01:05:20,026 --> 01:05:21,266
Like you always have to have

913
01:05:21,266 --> 01:05:22,886
the ideal thing

914
01:05:22,886 --> 01:05:23,746
is to have a wife

915
01:05:23,746 --> 01:05:24,386
who's an accountant.

916
01:05:24,826 --> 01:05:25,026
Yeah.

917
01:05:25,186 --> 01:05:26,506
You know, that's my mom's

918
01:05:26,506 --> 01:05:28,386
a CPA or as a tax preparer.

919
01:05:28,606 --> 01:05:28,726
There you go.

920
01:05:28,726 --> 01:05:28,926
Yeah.

921
01:05:29,346 --> 01:05:30,746
See, it worked out well for you.

922
01:05:30,746 --> 01:05:30,966
It did.

923
01:05:31,146 --> 01:05:31,306
Yeah.

924
01:05:31,826 --> 01:05:32,006
Yeah.

925
01:05:32,126 --> 01:05:37,346
Now, my brother wanted to take over the family farm, briefly contemplated it, but just balked

926
01:05:37,346 --> 01:05:41,866
at having to manage the complexity of that and all the debt he'd have to take on and

927
01:05:41,866 --> 01:05:43,606
just, yeah, it was terrifying.

928
01:05:44,186 --> 01:05:44,326
Yeah.

929
01:05:44,546 --> 01:05:46,846
It's just a money game right now.

930
01:05:47,506 --> 01:05:52,186
The banking system, especially the farm credit system, and I worked at it.

931
01:05:52,346 --> 01:05:53,186
They're wonderful people.

932
01:05:53,546 --> 01:05:54,186
They truly are.

933
01:05:54,186 --> 01:06:01,126
But it really is just a mainline vein in order to stream government debt into the pockets of farmers.

934
01:06:01,486 --> 01:06:01,626
Yeah.

935
01:06:01,766 --> 01:06:03,186
And put them on the hook of it.

936
01:06:03,666 --> 01:06:08,326
You know, the farm credit system was developed off of a German system called Landschaft,

937
01:06:08,586 --> 01:06:16,746
which is created because farming has very particular lending needs, incredibly long payback periods,

938
01:06:16,866 --> 01:06:21,386
where typically if you're going to run like a donut shop or whatever,

939
01:06:21,386 --> 01:06:26,406
a couple of years, you know, until you hit profitability. But it's going to be a long time

940
01:06:26,406 --> 01:06:31,326
with agriculture because you've got such huge startup costs and such huge input costs every

941
01:06:31,326 --> 01:06:36,926
single year. So, you know, the Germans developed this program that the Americans copied that was

942
01:06:36,926 --> 01:06:43,186
supposed to be a lender of last resort, which means that if none of the community banks can

943
01:06:43,186 --> 01:06:48,166
give you a loan, then we'll step in. And that's just not what it became. It became going after

944
01:06:48,166 --> 01:06:52,706
Tyson and it became going after the largest operators and the most profitable operators

945
01:06:52,706 --> 01:06:53,706
in the United States.

946
01:06:53,706 --> 01:06:57,506
And instead of taking the bottom 5%, they're trying to take the top 30.

947
01:06:58,846 --> 01:07:00,866
And again, I don't curse them for that.

948
01:07:00,966 --> 01:07:06,186
I think they're wonderful people, but it's just a factor of the systems that we create

949
01:07:06,186 --> 01:07:11,366
so much debt as a government that somebody's got to suck it up.

950
01:07:11,766 --> 01:07:14,706
And agriculture has been one of the ways to do that.

951
01:07:15,046 --> 01:07:15,186
Yeah.

952
01:07:15,186 --> 01:07:21,586
Yeah. And agriculture has been such a preservator, guarantor of our nation's freedom as far as

953
01:07:21,586 --> 01:07:27,086
one of the things that America depends on is creating people with a strong sense of sovereignty,

954
01:07:27,286 --> 01:07:31,706
a strong sense of wanting to defend their native land. I mean, we have a second amendment because

955
01:07:31,706 --> 01:07:37,026
we presume that the citizenry should be able to defend themselves, should want to defend themselves,

956
01:07:37,026 --> 01:07:41,926
should know how, should feel that they have something worth defending. And I just feel that

957
01:07:41,926 --> 01:07:47,746
that like the family farm, people who owned a small plot of land, became stewards of that land,

958
01:07:47,746 --> 01:07:52,726
was such an important part of the fabric of the United States, creating what we are. And,

959
01:07:52,846 --> 01:07:57,686
you know, as we industrialize and lose that, we lose something very important, which is

960
01:07:57,686 --> 01:08:03,446
that type of person who is the true patriot. The spirit of the American farmer.

961
01:08:03,726 --> 01:08:06,746
Yeah. And I just want to read a quote. I'm reading Nature as a Measure,

962
01:08:06,746 --> 01:08:13,226
the selected essays of Wes Jackson. He is a founder of the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas,

963
01:08:13,866 --> 01:08:19,886
and he notes, our task is to build cultural fortresses to protect our emerging nativeness.

964
01:08:20,186 --> 01:08:24,346
They must be strong enough to hold at bay the powers of consumerism, the powers of greed and

965
01:08:24,346 --> 01:08:29,046
envy and pride. One of the most effective ways for this to come about would be for our universities

966
01:08:29,046 --> 01:08:33,706
to assume the awesome responsibility to both validate and educate those who want to be

967
01:08:33,706 --> 01:08:39,466
homecomers, not necessarily go home, but go someplace and dig in and begin the long search

968
01:08:39,466 --> 01:08:41,486
and experiment to become native.

969
01:08:41,886 --> 01:08:43,506
I think Bitcoin will do that.

970
01:08:43,586 --> 01:08:47,266
It can offer hope to do that and give them the collateral to do that.

971
01:08:47,266 --> 01:08:50,606
And it'll make our nation better and preserve our heritage.

972
01:08:51,006 --> 01:08:52,346
I've got one for you too.

973
01:08:52,806 --> 01:08:59,326
So when I was little, I would get up on Saturday mornings during the winter.

974
01:08:59,706 --> 01:09:03,226
You got to go check the cows and you take a veil, a fade to the cows.

975
01:09:03,226 --> 01:09:08,126
and be in the truck with dad and listening to Paul Harvey on the radio.

976
01:09:08,626 --> 01:09:09,126
All right.

977
01:09:09,546 --> 01:09:13,526
And maybe take a sip of dad's cold coffee that he left in the truck from the night before.

978
01:09:13,746 --> 01:09:16,946
But yeah, I remember, I remember this.

979
01:09:17,026 --> 01:09:19,026
And so I just want to say, this is God made a farmer.

980
01:09:19,146 --> 01:09:19,726
Have you heard this?

981
01:09:20,066 --> 01:09:20,626
No, go ahead.

982
01:09:21,146 --> 01:09:21,946
What is this though?

983
01:09:21,986 --> 01:09:23,046
This is from Paul Harvey.

984
01:09:23,146 --> 01:09:23,586
This is Paul Harvey.

985
01:09:24,386 --> 01:09:29,006
And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, I need a caretaker.

986
01:09:29,486 --> 01:09:30,666
So God made a farmer.

987
01:09:31,546 --> 01:09:37,746
God said, I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields,

988
01:09:38,106 --> 01:09:43,386
milk cows again, eat supper, and go to town at the state past midnight at a meeting of the school

989
01:09:43,386 --> 01:09:48,966
board. So God made a farmer. I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet

990
01:09:48,966 --> 01:09:54,546
gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery,

991
01:09:55,026 --> 01:09:59,866
come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife's done feeding, visiting ladies,

992
01:09:59,866 --> 01:10:03,586
then tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon and mean it.

993
01:10:03,886 --> 01:10:04,886
So God made a farmer.

994
01:10:05,826 --> 01:10:10,146
God said, I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt and watch it die,

995
01:10:10,786 --> 01:10:12,966
then dry his eyes and say, maybe next year.

996
01:10:13,606 --> 01:10:16,966
I need somebody who can shape an axe handle from a persimmon sprout,

997
01:10:17,806 --> 01:10:19,466
shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire,

998
01:10:19,866 --> 01:10:23,646
who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps,

999
01:10:24,006 --> 01:10:28,726
who planting time and harvest season will finish his 40-hour week by Tuesday noon

1000
01:10:28,726 --> 01:10:32,426
and then painting from tractor back, put it in another 72 hours.

1001
01:10:32,926 --> 01:10:33,826
So God made a farmer.

1002
01:10:34,866 --> 01:10:38,086
God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed

1003
01:10:38,086 --> 01:10:40,026
to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds

1004
01:10:40,026 --> 01:10:42,586
and yet stop in midfield and race to help

1005
01:10:42,586 --> 01:10:44,786
when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor's place.

1006
01:10:45,086 --> 01:10:46,026
So God made a farmer.

1007
01:10:46,986 --> 01:10:50,706
God said, I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bales,

1008
01:10:51,246 --> 01:10:53,666
yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs

1009
01:10:53,666 --> 01:10:57,726
and tend the pink cone pullets who will stop his mower for an hour

1010
01:10:57,726 --> 01:10:59,746
to splint the broken leg of a meadowlark.

1011
01:11:00,446 --> 01:11:03,166
It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight

1012
01:11:03,166 --> 01:11:04,146
and not cut corners.

1013
01:11:04,726 --> 01:11:06,886
Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed,

1014
01:11:07,006 --> 01:11:09,826
and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece

1015
01:11:09,826 --> 01:11:12,526
and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder

1016
01:11:12,526 --> 01:11:14,506
and finish a hard week's work

1017
01:11:14,506 --> 01:11:16,486
with a five-mile drive to church.

1018
01:11:17,126 --> 01:11:18,926
Somebody who would bale a family together

1019
01:11:18,926 --> 01:11:20,966
with the soft, strong bonds of sharing,

1020
01:11:21,406 --> 01:11:24,026
who would laugh and then sigh and then reply

1021
01:11:24,026 --> 01:11:26,046
with smiling eyes when his son says

1022
01:11:26,046 --> 01:11:29,146
that he wants to spend his life doing what dad does.

1023
01:11:29,706 --> 01:11:30,606
So God made a farmer.

1024
01:11:31,486 --> 01:11:33,406
So now you know how we've got to end this.

1025
01:11:33,846 --> 01:11:35,206
You've got to be your best Paul Harvey here.

1026
01:11:38,006 --> 01:11:39,806
Only one way to end this podcast.

1027
01:11:39,966 --> 01:11:40,846
The rest of the story.

1028
01:11:41,086 --> 01:11:41,926
I'm Paul Harvey.

1029
01:11:42,026 --> 01:11:42,666
Is that what he said?

1030
01:11:42,726 --> 01:11:43,866
And now you know.

1031
01:11:43,926 --> 01:11:46,286
And now you know the rest of the story.

1032
01:11:46,506 --> 01:11:46,726
Yeah.

1033
01:11:46,946 --> 01:11:47,806
What a great guy.

1034
01:11:48,926 --> 01:11:50,306
I'm probably listening to that tonight.

1035
01:11:50,846 --> 01:11:51,106
Yeah.

1036
01:11:51,526 --> 01:11:51,806
Great.

1037
01:11:52,026 --> 01:11:52,446
Been a pleasure.

1038
01:11:52,606 --> 01:11:53,266
Been a pleasure, man.

1039
01:11:53,406 --> 01:11:53,586
All right.

1040
01:11:53,586 --> 01:11:54,286
Thank you very much.

1041
01:11:54,346 --> 01:11:55,486
We'll catch you guys on the flip side.

1042
01:11:56,046 --> 01:12:26,026
Thank you.