The Business of Agriculture Podcast

Ed Ebert is the Senior Director of Grain Production and Utilization with the Indiana Corn Marketing Council and the Indiana Soybean Alliance. He joins me to explain how the corn and soybean check off program works and what the organizations do to promote our crops. We discuss the challenges and opportunities facing corn and soybean farmers and the industry in general. Ed tells us why seven dollar...

Randy Suess is a recently retired Washington wheat farmer and former chairman of U.S. Wheat Associates. Randy is still involved in Agriculture through farm ownership and lobbying on behalf of the wheat industry. He joins me to discuss trade – which is vitally important to Washington state's Ag sector. We also talk about the new world order of wheat and the impact on Ag from political movements mas...

For most of the 10,000 years since humans invented Agriculture, scarcity has been the norm. Food was difficult to produce, store, transport, and in many cases, financially challenging for many humans to buy. That's not really the case anymore, at least not in the developed world. Affluent countries such as the U.S. in the last half century have figured out food production. Scarcity no longer deter...

Tim Young chucked his corporate job to become an entrepreneur in his mid 30s. What he built was a marketing company that grew to employ 450 people. Then he sold it to pursue life as a small farmer. He bought an old dairy farm in rural Georgia and went about the process of making it into a business. His operation raised pasture pork and poultry. He decided the only way to make money as a small dair...

Pork is the world's most consumed meat. It's also increasingly a news item due to global trade tensions and a nasty virus that's currently eradicating China's hog herd. Before 2018, China produced five times the number of pigs as the United States. Before 2018, China had half the world's pig supply. Today, some estimates show China's hog herd will be cut in half by end of year due to African Swine...

You've likely not heard of Urner Barry but the company does a lot of behind the scenes work in the Business of Agriculture. Specifically, they report data and analytics on global protein production, consumption, and pricing. They've been doing this for 160 years, when Mr. Urner began a poultry pricing report on America's docks. In this episode, I talk to two Urner Barry specialists about the world...

By now you've likely seen the video and heard about the animal mistreatment at Fair Oaks Farms. Sadly, for the Business of Agriculture, this isn't going away any time soon. In fact, I see animal activists increasing their attacks on livestock production and processing based on the response to the Fair Oaks video. Katharine Lotspeich is a partner in her family's large scale Utah dairy operation and...

Farm folks, as I always joke, are obsessed with the weather. This Spring they have good reason to be, with the vast swath of Agriculturally productive area impacted by storms, floods, and incessant rains. At the time of this recording (May 31, 2019), record levels of unplanted corn and soybean acres sit idle. Combined with the weather issues are trade disputes with China, and now Mexico, the US's...

Andy Ambriole, proprietor of BioSteward Farms, rejoins me on the Business of Agriculture podcast. Andy was a guest way back in episode 6! Andy is a business-minded 30 year old who always wanted to farm. He had his first Ag enterprise at age 9 with a pumpkin patch. As a teenager, he operated his own tomato business and greenhouse. Today he farms 1,300 acres of certified organic wheat, oats, barley,...

Katherine Lotspeich is a 27 year old dairy farm girl from Utah (via Connecticut). She's now an Ag professional married to a Vo-Ag school teacher in Colorado. She's also a blogger with plenty to say. Which is why she joins me to discuss a whole host of Ag topics such as: the problem with "Thank a Farmer," why Ag groups should stop "going along to get along," and the damage caused by infighting amon...

Things aren't good at Bayer, and that's just how the activist groups dead set on destroying the chemical company like it. At this week's shareholder meeting, 55% of Bayer shareholders refused to endorse the management. Chiefly, the shareholders were reacting to Bayer's acquisition of Monsanto, a deal that closed in June 2018. Since the Monsanto purchase, Bayer's stock value has dropped 38%. The re...

You're gonna like this guy, although I'll warn you ahead of time, at times he's tough to keep up with. Jason Mauck is an Indiana farmer who thinks - and works - differently. Jason came back to his family's 3,100 acre crop and hog operation after his father was diagnosed with cancer. Jason's years away from the farm taught him about business and landscaping methods (he owned a landscaping company)....

I've been telling my Ag audiences for several years that "Feed The World" is outdated, much as we in Ag might love the mantra. We love it, because it's what we've always been told: that global populations are increasing rapidly and Ag needs to pump out massive amounts of food. We also love it because the slogan plays to our strength: commodity production in mass quantity. Only problem is, the popu...

Colorado Agriculture is either a crucible to predict what's coming for the rest of us, or an anomaly we'll all just witness from afar. The state has water issues, lots of suburban anti-Agriculture sentiment, and a burgeoning hemp industry. (Remember, Colorado was fast out of the chute on marijuana legalization.) I sat down with Justin Lewton of Lewton Farms, and Joe Rasnic of Agroplasma, Inc. to d...

You're likely familiar with the various technology platforms being marketed to farmers. The Climate Corporation's Climate FieldView™ digital ag platform is one of them. The platform offers many options for farmers to collect, store, and view current and historical field data to uncover valuable field insights. What sort of data are we talking about, and how does it impact agronomic decisions for i...

Nick Horob started Harvest Profit in 2015. As an Ag consultant with a finance background, he saw a need for better farm business management through technology. Harvest Profit now has 440 customers in 28 states and 4 Canadian provinces. Nick joins me to discuss what he sees from his perspective in Ag. What are farmers doing right and wrong, how can we improve our businesses and minimize risk, and w...

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the new shining star of the Democratic party. In February she rolled out her proposal for a Green New Deal. In two interviews since then, she's expanded on her vision for a changed Agriculture to combat climate change as she sees it. When socialists talk about "doing something about factory farms," what exactly do they mean? More importantly, who defines...

Catastrophic weather events in Nebraska and Iowa, as well as Missouri, South Dakota, Kansas, and Minnesota are in the news. Our hearts go out to those affected by the floodwaters. But what's the "downstream" impact of these floods? Dennis Haugen, North Dakota farmer, owner of General Grain grain salvage, and friend of the show joins me to discuss that. Railroads are unable to operate as track lies...

On March 19th, 2019 a San Francisco jury ruled that Roundup herbicide causes cancer. This is the second court ruling against Bayer (Monsanto). In this episode we look at the similarity between firearm lawsuits and chemical litigation. Ag chemicals and firearms have a lot in common: They're both legal products, they both evoke tremendous emotion, and they're both increasingly targeted by cause grou...

The host of Ag Uncensored and western Oklahoma farmer / rancher joins me to dig a little deeper on the subject of beef. Are those within the cattle industry dysfunctional, unable to get along, or is that just your perception? Is the checkoff program being funded fairly? Who's making money off beef? And, my favorite back and forth to date on Lab Meat. If you're looking for an episode with some "red...

As farmers head to the field to plant corn this spring, it's time to discuss something North American Agriculture doesn't want to hear: The world is going to require less corn someday. And that someday might be sooner than you think. At the risk of being run out of Indiana - the fifth most corn producing state - I share in this episode the fundamentals working against corn. Ethanol, processed food...

Real estate is the foundation of everything we do in Agriculture. Sometimes that real estate requires outside management or a professional to determine its value. Seth Baker and Ryan Aupperle are two guys who do just that. They are professional farm managers and appraisers in Illinois. They sit down with me to discuss what they do, what they see, and what things will be impacting Ag real estate an...

If you earn your living in the Business of Agriculture you likely are familiar with crop inputs. That's all the stuff we use to produce an actual crop, like fertilizer, chemistry, seed, and so on. In the old days there was a model: you had a facility, you brought in stuff from the manufacturer, and you retailed said inputs to a farmer. But technology, consolidation, and the online marketplace is c...

Jerod McDaniel is a farmer, rancher, and podcaster from Texhoma, Oklahoma. He joins me to discuss his operation, the challenges of rural western Oklahoma, and the business of agriculture from his perspective. We devote a good amount of time to the topic of cattle but you'll also like Jerod's take on the need for Ag to work with what you're given in any given year and the need for being adaptive to...

By now you've heard about and most likely seen the Bud Light Super Bowl commercial. The spot proudly proclaims Bud Light doesn't contain corn syrup whereas the brand's two biggest competitors do. Many of our co-horts in the Business of Agriculture - particularly corn growers- are up in arms. While I'm a pro-corn guy from a corn state, I'm gonna tell you in this episode why the commercial was proba...