00:00:00 Does size matter? Okay, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about farmer size. 00:00:05 I'm sitting at a table with some people that are pretty good sized farmers. If they have to do it over again, would they decide 00:00:10 to go small scale farmers? Maybe a little less money to manage big, small, medium size, size matter when it comes to your farming operation. 00:00:17 That's what we're talking about in this episode of the Reek on a Farm. The work's never really done. 00:00:22 We're calling the day anyway because my friends from extreme Ag coming over You ready for a conversation with some real farmers about real issues? 00:00:30 And the best part, you are invited. Support yourself a drink, grab a snack. Most importantly, pull up a chair. Welcome to the greenery. 00:00:42 Hey guys. Alright guys. I know we could obviously make some sophomoric jokes about this, but let's ask the question. 00:00:54 The size matter, you're all larger scale farming operations. Generally. That's the direction everything's gone in 00:01:00 American agriculture consolidation, bigger, more acres. Each of you are quite a bit bigger farmers than your parents were, than your grandparents were. 00:01:08 Do you ever wonder, you know, I think maybe it'd be a lot more fun if I farmed 400 acres, especially crops and everything was on a smaller scale 00:01:15 and I didn't have as much money in the air. Ever think about that? Does size matter, Matt? Oh yeah. That's some in, in my opinion, 00:01:21 that's the American dream. I would love to farm 2000 acres a ground, you know, and, and make the money that I need 00:01:27 to make to provide for my family. Back 20 years ago, you could do that. You know, equipment's gotten bigger, 00:01:33 commodities have stayed, low inputs that went up. We've gotta farm more, more acres per hour, even though we gotta do it. 00:01:39 Quality. Mm-Hmm. We've gotta farm more acres per hour. But I don't think there's a farmer out there that's, that's poked their chest out because I farm 20,000 acres. 00:01:47 I think each one of us would rather farm 2000 acres and have a life than to, than spend all of our time trying to make a dollar. 00:01:56 Uh, you know, and that's something we've looked at and I've had to increase my operation as I went. What I've always looked at is a lower profit margin. 00:02:03 If you're making 50 bucks an acre and you've got 10,000 acres, that's, you do the math versus 2000 acres, you know, 00:02:10 we get a bad name for that. I mean, you get on some of these social media sites, they're like, well, all these big farmers do. 00:02:15 The big farmer, you know, we've been forced to do that and unfortunately some haven't been able to do that. But we're not doing this on a large scale 00:02:23 because we think it's cool we're doing it to provide for our families. That's my opinion on it. 00:02:28 You also provide for multiple families, you know what I mean? Like, you could do it, 00:02:32 but you would have to get rid of a lot of your labor, which is a lot of your family. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, so I I get why you do it. 00:02:39 You know, as far as the size matter as far as farm operations, I don't think that it matters at all. And here's why. You, you take the guy 00:02:47 that is a small scale farmer, I don't care if he's three, 400 acres or 500 acres. 00:02:52 That guy is so in tune with everything that he does because he has to make every acre count for the most. He does a way better job than I do. 00:03:02 And Matt does, or, or Chad, any of us. He's thinking way outside the box. And those guys right there is 00:03:09 who I've learned the most from. I really have. There's no throwaway acres when you're a smaller steel operator because the intensity, obviously per acre, 00:03:18 first day, uh, one of the first days you and I worked together was at the Farm Progress Show in 2021 and you spent a bunch of time with a couple 00:03:26 of these companies that were in specialty crop. And you said, I'd go over here and learn because these people are 10 years ahead 00:03:31 of broad acre row crop. And I think you may have even said, man, I'd be kinda neat. Just farm a couple hundred acres. 00:03:37 But I don't know if he said it or not. I know he said it a number of times. Oh, well, you know, I always said, said a lot 00:03:41 of times if I could farm 2,500 acres and just do it with family and it'd be all irrigated. Yeah. Oh, it'd be fun. It'd be fun. 00:03:50 You know, and, and you know, we talk about that and I listen to your angle and it, you know, small guy. Listen to Matt saying on it on the larger guy, you know, 00:03:57 and it takes so many acres, you know, for Matt to justify one cotton picker, you know, there's so many acres 00:04:03 That hundred minimum to, To justify the pave on a cotton picker. Okay. Well if you look at it in that way, yeah. 00:04:08 You know, this guy that farms 300 acres. Well think about what he has to, at 300 acres, look at what he has to do to figure out how to make, get a tractor. 00:04:17 Now I'm not talking about a brand new tractor. We're talking about a tractor that's let's say a, you know, 8,400 Yeah. 00:04:24 By saying 98 model 2000, model 8,400 right now. Which will bring 80, 80, 80 5,000 for 300. Figure that out because it's, 00:04:33 the math is the same. Yeah. You know, The, the equipment costs the same, the best only way you can make it, it's 00:04:38 Cost per acre. Spread it over it's cost per Acre. We don't have 300 acre farmers left in our area. 00:04:43 I mean we don't have, there's a 15, I mean there's, there's a lot of 'em. What? They Have something else. Oh 00:04:47 Yeah, absolutely. Well, yeah, that would they want to just farm? Yeah, that's absolutely what they'd like to do. Most 00:04:52 Of the guys that, a lot of guys that work for me now were a thousand, 1200 acre farmers that couldn't increase their land. 00:04:58 Mm-Hmm. And they just didn't work. So they go and drive the tractor and run the truck for the guy down the road, which is you. 00:05:03 And then maybe the acres they own you pick up. Yep. And that's kind of the common. Yeah. But you'd look at the, some of the stuff that we do 00:05:09 And then some of 'em still work their acres and work for you. Yeah. Yeah. I've got one guy that's been with 25 00:05:13 Farms. What? That's what so good. Yeah. I mean he gets opinions from all these other farmers that are working with inside his, his operation. 00:05:22 You know, you take those guys that are, that are smaller scale that are doing all this crazy outside box thinking and you're doing it too, Matt, 00:05:30 but how many large, large, like you are larger, say sky scale farmers are doing what you do on their acres. Not very many, if any at all. 00:05:38 Because the only thing that they have to do is you per hour. Yeah. I mean those guys are real acres per hour 00:05:43 because nothing else matters. Run as hard as they can run it. Like you stole it 24 7 until we're done. 00:05:50 Yet the weather's right. They don't have time to go and make that extra application, which costs money. Now is there a big ROI on it? Absolutely. 00:05:59 But there's just not enough time in a day. You guys intensively manage for as many acres you cover. You still cover it exceedingly well and intensively. 00:06:09 'cause one argument might be, well, once you get so big, you just can't really pay attention. 00:06:12 You guys are somehow walking that tight rope. And I, I say that it's kind of a tight rope to be damn good at it 00:06:19 and intensively managing that many acres. That's the challenge. That's where you guys are. And I'm, that's where I, I've got a cer um, 00:06:27 a healthy amount of respect. So, you know, um, if you look at it, there's certain things that come through our in industry, 00:06:34 you know, uh, Roundup Ready? Yeah. When Roundup ready come in, it allowed people to go back to farming a few acres, 50 acres, 00:06:42 a hundred acres, work a steady job, work at the water department, or work at a plant and then come in they could farm on the weekends. 00:06:48 They could farm Roundup ready. Well guess what happened in our area? Roundup ready Palmer pigweed. Yeah. 00:06:53 When pigweed come in, they couldn't handle it no more because you couldn't, that that thing grows so fast that it would get outta hand 00:07:00 and it put 'em back outta business again. Well no-till did the same thing for people And no-till did the same thing. 00:07:04 So there's things that come along that will get people back into business. And then you take years exactly like this year. Low prices. 00:07:11 You mean like a part-timer? Like a, a guy like me that has a business. Yeah. I could farm my own acres, buy some old used equipment 00:07:19 and cover a couple hundred acres. But you're talking full-time farmers. Yeah. So well around here, like you talked about, there's people 00:07:26 that have a job in town and they may be inherited a 160 and then they've, their buddy down the road, they farm a couple hundred acres be or 400 acres, you know, 00:07:36 because they can. But obviously the town job subsidizes that quite a bit. But his point is that person when they're at work for a week 00:07:45 and things are getting outta hand. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it was the same way back when we, when we didn't have all this technology, when we had cotton 00:07:52 and wheat, you could have your cotton in the best shape possible. You go cut a wheat crop and it'd take you 10 days 00:07:58 and you come back and they're like, you ain't never farmed cotton before. Like it'd be run smooth away. 00:08:02 'cause we'd cultivating that's time. You know? And it would you spraying underneath cotton. I would be run smooth away plant bugs, be beating it up, 00:08:08 got big bold weils be three of 'em in there, two of 'em doing something other than watching for the airplane. You know, I mean, it isn't bad. 00:08:14 You got you two just like I do. We get tons and tons and tons of phone calls from members and other people across the country 00:08:20 that have a question that they want to help. Who do you get that phone call from? You getting a phone call from a guy 00:08:26 that's telling 15,000 acres or you getting a guy that you're gonna get a phone call from 2000 acres or less. 00:08:32 Oh, 2000 acres. Yeah, exactly. Yep. And you know why? Because he needs to make every acre count. 00:08:36 The big guy is worrying about production acres per day and slamming it in. And, and I, look, I don't blame that guy at all. 00:08:43 But you can't blame the little guy either. Those little guys, I can help those guys. I can't help that large scale fan karma. 00:08:50 Well, let's just say, all right, uh, your wives are all capable of working. They have bad corporate jobs. Still do. 00:08:59 Would you be, would you be content if you farmed 1200 acres, wife has a good job, you get some help on harvest season to kind 00:09:11 of move some semis. Generally you could cover yourself. Would that satisfy you? You're kind of a go-getter. 00:09:19 Would that satisfy you to be a thousand acre farmer at, at what age would that satisfy you? 00:09:25 Well, it'd be hard to run the Buick on that. The is car. The is if you didn't have the Buick that wasn't, that wasn't killing you, 00:09:35 then your lifestyle would change. 'cause you wouldn't have enough money to fuel. The reason I Wouldn't be, by the way, Is it a Contemplation? 00:09:38 I would be, I would be bored. Okay. I, I mean the reason that let, let's take or let's Matt told you kind of what, what he said. 00:09:45 And every one of us have a different angle for, for farming more acres. You know what my angle is? 00:09:49 'cause I don't know when I'm gonna lose the ground that I've got To an Amazon facility or a Warehouse to, to production. 00:09:55 I would, I mean development, I think there's plenty enough land for all of our, all of us farmers to make a good living. 00:10:01 And I think you don't need people being out here working 20 or 30,000 acres or, or 00:10:05 however, you know, if that's what they want to do, that's fine. But if not, that's fine too. 00:10:09 But my, I have to keep my rent ground up because I don't know when I'm gonna lose. I lost 130 this year, you know? Yeah. 00:10:16 Lose 150 last year you lose 500. You, you and you and you lose it around. And you have to keep that up 00:10:21 because remember, if it was just me, I wouldn't need that. But you have four entities 00:10:25 trying to make a living outta this thing. Yeah. Yeah. Your cousin, you got your son. Your Son. So it'd be just, so 00:10:29 really, it'd be just like me working 2000 acres. Yeah. 2200 acres. But he makes a great point though. 00:10:35 I, I lost a pile of acres about, I don't know, four or five, six years ago. I mean, I lost a bunch of acres and I 00:10:41 So half your acre, 25%. What? No, I lost, uh, over, over over 1500 acres and one crack. And I mean, I'm telling you what you, I thought, holy crap, 00:10:50 like the world's going to end. Like I don't know what I'm gonna do. I pretty much was freaking out. 00:10:55 But at the end of the day, my help was tired of going as far out and stretching as far out as we were stretching. We were too damn big. 00:11:03 We were on, we didn't have enough equipment to cover it all. So we got back to the place where I kind 00:11:09 of felt more comfortable and I'm doing a lot better job now than what I did Then. Your 00:11:15 Favorite saying, which you said this in my first, in my first eight months With you gonna make him say that in every episode. 00:11:21 I think it's a good, it's, it's a brilliant statement and it's an accurate, It's brilliant until you hit you right in the mouth. 00:11:27 What is it Like it's done on me multiple times. Say it. Well you can either be over cropped or undermanaged and there's a fine line there where that, 00:11:35 and you know, that's what I've been trying to find. You know, I was farming about half of what I'm farming today and then when lane come in, 00:11:42 I didn't have a whole lot of choice. It was either increase Yeah. Or decrease my income. Well, I had enough obligations on land payments and stuff. 00:11:49 I really couldn't decrease my income. Okay. So to allow him to be able to come on the farm, we had to rent more ground. 00:11:53 Mm-Hmm. Well then he, you know, he wanted, he wanted to rent more ground itself. You know, you were joking with me the 00:11:59 other day about, alright, so, so What do you do when you're in an area like Chad and I are in and you don't have the opportunity 00:12:05 to farm more ground because it's leaving there every day because that's sort the area that we live in. 00:12:09 We live in a different area. We just can't go out there and be like, you know what we're gonna do? We're Gonna move to Desha County. Well, 00:12:14 You, I mean, I mean that's a good idea. Mega farm. I've tried to diversify some other ag businesses vertically integrate, do some things that 00:12:21 that's not just going out there and plow on the field. You know, that's why my hands don't feel like yours do right now. 00:12:27 It's 'cause I have to run a few other different businesses. I'm Gonna be honest with my wife's hands 00:12:31 are got a little more calouses on. Okay. I'm gonna talk to you. How about you talk, look At that scene. You, you've 00:12:36 now he's Shunning you offended. He's Oh, You offended Him. Talk. Call him. Tell him I'm offended. 00:12:41 Okay. She literally, He said, you're a dirty redneck. He ain't wrong there. No, But I mean, you asked the question, what do you do you, 00:12:48 what options do you, you have to go with the options you've got. Yeah. And if you can't diversify into something else, 00:12:53 you've either gotta suck it up and try to live on less income. That's why when we, we talked in an earlier episode, 00:12:59 I didn't farm, you know, I would help my dad, but I didn't start actually farming. I had a job first. Yep. There wasn't enough land there. 00:13:04 When the time comes. You just gotta be patient till there's land there available now in y'all situation 00:13:09 where you're losing acres. Yep. You know what you're doing. Driving me crazy. The the dry land where you can't plan your marketing, 00:13:16 have no idea what your yield's gonna be and every day somebody's taking some building warehouse on it. 00:13:20 I mean, that would absolutely drive me insane. Those three things. If I'd a farm like you probably wouldn't be farming. 00:13:26 It's, you Know, I don't have the mental capability to do what you do. Is that what, does that make sense? Oh 00:13:31 Yeah. We, we kinda knew that. But anyway. Yeah. I I Oh, am I supposed to tell you I'm a fan? Tell him I'm a fan. Yeah. 00:13:41 So I, I appreciate And you know what, speaking of middle capability, uh, this is one more episode where I'm gonna point out. 00:13:46 But this is the proper spelling of grain v it's spelled like canary with a GR on our front Google. 00:13:50 It comes from the word granular. Look it up on dictionary.com. Gran e He's found one website to this Pel like out of 27. 00:13:58 He, he Keeps referring back this. It's just like canary. So is this granary? You know, this is granary. Welcome to the granary. You 00:14:07 Can grant run here. You know what I want? I just want you to keep coming back. Alright. So this is a real thing. 00:14:12 We don't have warehouses and all that, but I'm closer to suburbia. If I what you're saying about farm size, 00:14:19 there're gonna be consolidation around here. But the idea that you could just tomorrow run up and grab a 640 AC acres square, look at that map behind me. 00:14:26 There ain't no 640 acre squares. 'cause we've been a go get, Go get a hundred acres. 00:14:30 Yeah. So good luck. But it's hard. It's hard to do. So that thing about scale, but I guess if it's me looking at it, 00:14:37 are you the right size? Are you still, you're still trying to grab acres 'cause you're losing 'em to a subdivision. 00:14:43 But, but I mean, Matt, Matt's exactly right. I mean, the guys, you know, that, that farm 20,000 acres. I I sit back there and I look at 'em 00:14:49 because they've got such a great plan in place, you know, like Matt does with his acres. 00:14:53 He is got such good people in place. You know, they Have not many acres though. Yeah. But, but I mean, not like that, 00:14:58 but you're on the larger scale, you know. But I mean those, and, and maybe me and temple's at that point where we're not quite big enough 00:15:04 to have an agronomist, you know? Yeah. And you, and you are. And those guys are, and they seem 00:15:08 I'm building one in house. I got That's right. But they do such a good job of putting people in place, you know, for those type things. 00:15:16 And running that business as he, as a Business, he hit the nail on the head. So when you're farming the larger acres, 00:15:22 you've got a little bit bigger budget per acre. Yeah. So if you've got 20 cents an acre for something and you've got 2000 acres 00:15:29 and that 20 cents an acre on 10,000 acres, you can afford to, I mean, I've got an in-house agronomist, 00:15:34 and I didn't realize what that was worth when I was a smaller farmer today, I wouldn't do it without 00:15:40 It actually. And, um, and, and not, anyway. Correct me, you said you got more dollars per acre, really what you have this, you have more, more acres, more dollars, 00:15:47 more acres to fund the dollar If you have a 20 cent budget an acre for XX input Yeah. And you've got 10,000 acres versus 2000. Yeah. 00:15:55 Then you can go and hire somebody. And the point is, it even gets to where as old diminishing, uh, economies of scale, you now, 00:16:02 because of having so many acres for you to say, we're going to do this and it's gonna cost 50, 00:16:07 it might cost you 50 grand if you farmed 2000 acres or 50 grand if you farmed 12,000 acres. And so it becomes a more 00:16:13 Easily, and if he don't manage it that way, then he won't have those acres. I mean, these landlords are, you know, they, they, 00:16:19 they do it because you're doing a good job. These guys are doing a good job. They've got to manage in place, 00:16:23 You know, share, Tell him about your, your, that equation you told me about the other day. You had to go make one decision 00:16:29 and you averaged it across to every acre instead of that one particular Farm. Yeah. It was 00:16:34 a cash rent decision. Yeah. And the cash rent was higher than I'd ever paid before. Mm-Hmm. I can't take credit 00:16:39 for this if I told you I said it. No, you didn't. And I'm wrong. You didn't. And we're going through this and, and, and Sherry and Lane 00:16:44 and I are sitting down at the table and I said, this is probably too much cash rent. Mm-Hmm. And dad said, well take it, 00:16:49 divide it over to total acres. We have 3 cents an acre. And so when he did that, it's like boom, light went off. Yeah. Okay. I can handle that. I can't do it on every farm. 00:16:58 Mm-Hmm. But I can do it on this specific farm. And so th those kind of things, efficiencies, whether it's buying. 00:17:05 So, uh, prime example, you know, I I, well, when I was farming half acres, I am now, well I, I went and bought everything two and a half gallon jugs, you know, 00:17:13 because my crop Mm-Hmm. Wasn't big enough for tote or whatever. Then I built a warehouse, a small warehouse, just big enough 00:17:21 so I could buy trailer truck loads of chemicals paid for the warehouse in one year, just in the savings of the chemical. 00:17:26 So there's a lot of different, you know, ways you could do that now you can be a smaller farmer and co-op. 00:17:31 Yeah. If Chad Timble and I were all 2000 acres, we said, Hey, we're gonna buy our chemicals together. 00:17:36 We get a 6,000 AC price. Yeah. Right, right. You know, there's ways around that. But those things like that, the, the equipment, the, 00:17:42 the rolling equipment, you know, I look at my equipment as a cost per acre. It's actually, believe it 00:17:48 or not, contrary to what you believe. Cheaper. Don't look at Me. He's him Too. No, he said he 00:17:52 would like to do it. You said it throwed you on the bus. Well, I Would like to do it, but that don't mean you can. 00:17:56 Well, if you Look alright, so my cost per acre rolling this equipment is cheaper than maintaining old equipment. We actually, I mean, not Chad and I, but me 00:18:05 and Matt had a conversation about that one day. Um, and he asked the question, he said, what do you, what is your expenses per year? 00:18:12 And I told him, he's like, holy hell on repairs. Mm-Hmm. And he goes, and you do all the repairs yourself. 00:18:18 You're dirty, you're greasy every day. You run around in a tool truck. That's all you want to do. And 00:18:22 The tool Truck's breaking down to get to them. Yeah. I'm broke down on the way to the, to the field and I gotta fix it first. 00:18:29 I had to jump it yesterday so I could get outta outta the shop. But anyway, he makes a good point. 00:18:33 He was like, he was like, you know what my repair bill is on, you know, on such set equipment. I said, what? He goes, zero, zero dude. Zero. 00:18:42 You're spending more money on that than you are on what I'd be paying on a payment. Are you out your mind? And I thought, 00:18:50 S**t, He's right. I'm glad you guys. Sure. Well You've been on my last I run, I I run the math this year 00:18:56 because we were looking at, you know, can we continue to do, they went up a percent on interest, you know, 00:19:01 which we still gotta get a good interest rate. Interest rate what we're doing. But I did, they went up per percent on interest. 00:19:07 So I could go to the bank and borrow it at 8% or I could do what I was doing. It still panned out again. 00:19:13 I'm gonna ride this horse till it falls down. I can just tell you that Temple I was at your farm. 00:19:18 I've been there three times. Like to point out again that I've been to his farm three times. His farm three times your farm. 00:19:24 How many times, how many times have you been to meds? If I count all the times together, I'm still at zero. But mentally I've been there a lot. Spiritually. 00:19:31 Years. Spiritually, spiritually, spiritually years. He, he, he, he saw it on a map. He knows where McGee is. His wife 00:19:38 Promised me 30 minutes ago that she was coming to my farm. Now if he don't wanna come, I'm good either 00:19:43 Way. Incidentally, she Ain't coming without Mely. You go your wife Caroline has been to my far and I'm not even really a farmer. 00:19:50 More than she'd been to yours. And you guys are best buddies and been doing this business together for years. 00:19:55 I mean, is this true? I'm Not saying I'm not, I'm saying You should be offended, but you might 00:20:00 Be on the edge. I'm getting a lot. I would be counseling now so I can get better. 00:20:04 Well, I wanna talk to and I'm better. No, you don't wanna talk to that guy. I'm telling you. I really do. He throws me under the bus a lot. You ain't. 00:20:09 Oh, me and him. I don't need two of them. Lemme give some don't need. Hey, when I was at Temples you said, 00:20:16 of course it's different there. We all know that Maryland and all know Chesapeake Bay. God knows we've heard eastern, Eastern children. 00:20:21 Anyway, what is very interesting, you said I lost 1500 acres. I about dropped my drink and I thought, wait a minute. 00:20:27 I don't know any farmer that could, most of 'em that I know are not quite the size of you. That That wouldn't all one time. 00:20:35 That was over a period of like two and a half feet. Right. Well, most farming operations rough lose 1500 of rent 00:20:40 to acres of rent to the land in two years time. Probably end up having to make some major like adjustments or liquidate. I mean that's a big, 00:20:51 Well the, the problem was he must close With Greenage by 1100 last year. You Know. Well 00:20:56 He turned back 1100. I mean it what Adjust Was what? Adjustments. So equipment, 00:21:00 what adjustments did you make? Equipment. I was rolling equipment all the time. So you and I needed to stop that. Jerry 00:21:06 Was a machinery. People, People, machinery. I got rid of those two and I thought, you know what? I can do this without all these people, with, without 00:21:15 All this equipment. Is it safe to say that you are better per acre now than you were then because you got less distraction? I 00:21:21 Got less risk outta that. Less distraction. I'm spending more time, you know, teaching the next generation instead of just being annoyed 00:21:29 with what the, the what was in my background. I don't know. I know if there's less distraction or not because you know, that was before us. 00:21:38 Yeah. And now we're in the picture. So you have definitely more Distraction. Had to make some 00:21:42 decisions in my life to cut y'all out too. Because that's that fuzz and that distraction that's in the back of my head. It's 00:21:49 Like an AM radio. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, and it's just like, I'm gonna kick the dash outta this thing right now. 00:21:54 If I keep paying attention to this versus this, I have to refocus my life. So The bigger you are and, and, 00:22:00 and I don't wanna get labeled as a big farmer. 'cause we do get down for being large. I'm not gonna lie. I labeled you like that all the time. 00:22:07 No you don't. I know. You don't Actually what It allows you to Do more things like, we're like being here today. 00:22:13 Now they made Joe make a joke and I'm not leaving during harvest. I'm not Right. But we were talking about a trip 00:22:18 and may go on during planning time, you know, I'm comfortable. But you've doing that, you're 00:22:22 Big enough to have an employee and a son, employee's and can, It actually makes your job easier. Well 00:22:27 You're a business owner to that certain point. Yeah. And by the way, when you said, and I think all the folks that we've invited via the camera 00:22:32 to come here and sit at this table with us, they've had these questions. Whether they're a largest scale, they get judged on 00:22:37 Time and, and you know, I, and and you know, a larger scale is per area, you know, a large scale farmer. 00:22:42 Yeah. In in it, you know, up north right here is is different from what it is in Alabama. I know, I know. Several 4,000 acre operators 00:22:50 and that's a pretty damn good sized operator here because the land's tight. You know, its very Expensive. I'm not at 00:22:55 the top of the, and If you were a 4,000 acre operator in DHA County, he had people Thousand acres down there, 5,000 acres who worked for him 00:23:02 At, at what Farm? Yeah. Yeah. Right. No, no, no. If you were a 5,000 acre grower in your area, you would be considered a small farmer. 00:23:09 Yes. You'd be on the high side of the small farmer range. And if you were a 5,000 acre operator here, you'd be one 00:23:14 of the 20 bigger ones in the county. Seven, 8,000. That's Probably accurate. And that's where us as 00:23:19 farmers just need to get away from the whole thing of big farmer, big farmer, little farmer. You know, just do a good job 00:23:24 and figure out where that breaking point is on you making Money. What works for you, works 00:23:28 For you, works for you. And that's what's what we sum this up. It's whatever makes you happy. You know, I love Russ also. 00:23:34 At what point, at what point you're in your life. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I'm starting to wanna go backwards a little bit. Yeah. 00:23:39 Now I'm repositioning some land. Mm-Hmm. Strategically. But, but in five years I will be farming less acres than I am now. 00:23:46 I could promise you. Yeah. Unless Lane says I'm going full bowl, you promised me that and I'm actually gonna, uh, 00:23:50 I'm gonna put money on the table. No you won't be because Lane won't want to be. So I'm gonna put money in against that. You're you're wrong. 00:23:57 You betting on the wrong person. I'm telling you they both feel those same way because they, but they are worried about their family 00:24:04 and doing the right thing and you're wrong. So they're gonna scale down. This is the problem though. 00:24:08 This was my problem. How many? Ten five. I say five. I thought you Should tell you light and taught me I'm 00:24:12 Wrong. I won't be alive at 10. I I actually did. I wanna put 20 on the bandit. I won't be 00:24:17 And 10 you go In, you go in band. I you, so me and Chad say you'll be bigger because of Yeah. Of Lane Daddy gimme 20 on the bandit. What 00:24:24 You gotta think about though, and this is what made me stay when Lane was 16 years old, I didn't know which way he was gonna go. 00:24:30 You know, you got some kids and you're like, that kid's gonna be a farm kid. Mm-Hmm. You got some that says he 00:24:35 may be a doctor, lawyer, farmer. I'm not sure what he is gonna do. Mm-Hmm. If we go to dropping large amounts 00:24:40 of acres, I've got two grand. He's got two sons. Mm. How's four people gonna make a living outta that smaller acreage? So you got, 00:24:46 So that's what medium banking on. And that may happen. I may need to Oh, whoa. 00:24:52 He, he doesn't bet William. And you retracted his statement. So I went and shook hands. By the way, 00:24:56 It's a thousand bucks. So if you wanna go ahead. No, he just had, he'd take 20 on the band. So that's, I know he never Well, 00:25:01 20 large 20 grand. 10 me, 10 Him. I tell you what, I made a 10 grand over, Hey 00:25:05 for 20,000. I've made one Say for 20 now for 20 grand. You just start dropping. Uh, it this, you go through these things and, 00:25:16 and he brought something that's very interesting and everybody again that's watching this, there's judgment about this. 00:25:22 Well, them big time operators, you know, like you said. Oh, Oh yeah. But there's judgment on 00:25:26 both sides and there's large scale farmers out there. Not, not, I mean, not being ignorant that looks down at the little guy. 00:25:32 Yeah. And you were getting ready to say something about Russ go ahead and finish that. Yeah. Like, like Russ, I, I learned more from him. 00:25:38 It's what you said, they have their boots in the field a hundred percent of the time. Yeah. 00:25:44 He's a small school farmer in Tennessee. He's an extreme. Jackson Golden is crazy. 00:25:48 He doesn't, and he's very on top of every day. If Jackson goes his sprays two, 400 acres for Chad, he's not gonna have looked at that 400 acre. 00:25:55 Yeah. That's why I love to run a picker because I, cotton will tell you your mistakes more than any other crop you got. 00:26:01 And I can find every single problem. I had Six rows at a time. Slow six Rows at a time. 00:26:07 Is he, he he cleaned Miles farms and is gonna have out cover plus acres in five years. We disagree with me and him. Got money on that. 00:26:15 Is Chestnut Manor Farms going to cover less acres or more acres five years from now? It Can, I mean, I hope, I I it can't be less for us. 00:26:23 I, I hope that it grows more. But if Du Bois don't grow it anymore than what it is today. 'cause eventually when five years I hope 00:26:30 to be a little more out of the, out of the picture. Mm-Hmm. I I'll never be out of the picture. Bob was 86 and was running a combine last month when I was there. 00:26:38 So you're you're saying that you I respect my father for being the person that he is and I really appreciate who he is 00:26:46 and what he's done for all the generations that come after him. But, um, as much as, you know, I'd like to be like my dad. 00:26:53 I don't wanna be like him. Um, uh, in a lot of Ways I put 20 on Bandit again. They're Gonna be bigger. 00:26:59 He's not gonna be bigger, but he's never gonna get outta that combine. Now he may not run the day to days, but 00:27:04 Yeah. But that's, but that's my point. I can do what I'm good at. That's right. You'd Love to do so. 00:27:08 And then I'd love it and then all my pressure would be off. That's what I'm saying. What 00:27:12 I'm saying's gonna be in a combine. He's gonna be running my little TA Is 85 years old, run the combine listening to the weather, 00:27:18 weather channel when he is on there. He never listens to the radio unless it's a weather channel. 'cause you know it when he's been in something. 00:27:25 'cause it's on the Weather channel and it's the same thing. This is no weather radar. Yeah. 00:27:31 You know, and they're telling you the radar and what the weather's gonna be. I don't wanna be like him because you know what he is, 00:27:35 he's worried about the weather, the markets and where we're going to go tomorrow. And he's 85. I don't wanna be him. 00:27:42 And, and he really don't even have to have a job. I, What I wanna be is the boys and Madeline running the farm and me out there on the combine 00:27:51 and I'll be in there laid back and You'll be like, Hey, but you let, you know these six rows suck over here. 00:27:56 And yeah, I'm gonna make a phone call and be like, like everybody does now, Hey, I'm broke down, I'm in the back. 00:28:01 I wanna be like, Hey, I'm broke down. I'm gonna sit in this thing with the air conditioner and I'm gonna sit here until you get here. Good luck. 00:28:07 That's almost me sometimes. I mean, I ran more equipment this year than I have in the last five because lane taking over the daily operation, 00:28:15 I can just get on a tractor or picker. Yeah. I like the freedom. It's a little, little less Toxic. You're damn right 00:28:20 man. You sit up there, you can answer the radio or phone call and, and make decisions from there and just hang out. 00:28:26 You Another 20. He don't answer the phone. But it his you won't my side or his side. No, He's gonna start answering. If 00:28:33 he don't have any obligation, don't need to worry no more. There you go. He'd be on the phone all the time. 00:28:37 I'd be like, why is Matt calling again? Oh, I've Got my goofy headset on and everything. Oh Hell yeah. Chad, 00:28:43 I would say that you and Kevin Matthews are likely, or and Johnny Rell, the three that live with suburbia and in development encroaching on you the most. 00:28:57 Therefore you would say most likely of about Extre act guys. It ain't gonna happen to Lee Luber because 00:29:02 It ain't happen to Kelly. There's 14 people that live within 80 miles of Lee Lubers. It Ain't gonna happen to Kelly. 'cause Crawford 00:29:08 County Iowa's, It ain't gonna happen to Kelly 'cause he owns the whole town. So, and, and, but Rell and you 00:29:16 and Kevin Matthews, you're, you're going a lot more miles to pick up some acres. 00:29:20 You've got more development, the Sunbelt and all that. You're the one that's most likely to be a smaller scale farmer, uh, 00:29:27 five years from now than these two. I mean, we don't need put weeds on that. I try to get him to move. 00:29:33 I was gonna say, or do you just pick up sticks? He won't, I don't, I done try. I've 00:29:36 gave him thousands acres that he could farm and he is like, I can. Yeah, No, I mean at this point, I mean, 00:29:40 I'm not saying at this point in my life, but I mean, I'm content with where we're at. Yeah. You know, I mean, our farm's doing well. 00:29:47 We're making a living and you know, we, we'll just, we'll just try to farm better. You know, let's just, we'll just keep honing in on 00:29:54 what we're doing, you know, and, and do a good job. Say Chad, that you're going to not be expanding acres just because of 00:30:02 The non short of the Egg that Right. Larger scale farmer with a small scale farmer's mentality. That may be a derogatory statement. 00:30:12 It's not, it's not. Because a small scale farmer is per has to do everything. Slap my he Has everything perfectly. 00:30:19 And that's exactly what he does. So this is what's gonna happen to Chad. He may not, he may not, he may get bigger 00:30:25 because there's not another generation coming in there. What lands left. Yeah. He's probably got a lot of old guys 00:30:31 that he's, that could retire. He's the best farmer in that area. Oh, That could be. So, 00:30:35 but the number of, because it's, because it's getting so suburbanized, We just mess up and 00:30:40 tell people about it more than most people. You, the farmers go away and the the land that's not 00:30:45 developed, somebody needs to operate. It's got, and that's what, that's what we're saying, you know, that that, you know, there's, 00:30:50 there's I'd say a handful of guys that's my age and there's three times that many that's my dad's age, you know, so between us handful, you know, we'll just keep, 00:30:59 keep divvying it down until we get to where there's a handful of guys walking. Well, how both is, if you had a, a super duper 00:31:06 2000 acre farm to come up for rent 2000 acre, that's a pretty big block. Mm-Hmm. And it come up 00:31:13 and it was a perfect scenario with either, either one of you rent it today. Yep, absolutely. Would you, no question. 00:31:21 Yeah, I know the answer to it. Yeah. So then Let's go. So how many states away is it In your Town? Oh 00:31:27 really? I didn't know that. Well, you got Oh, size. I'm going with you. Well, there, There's the thing that you just said. 00:31:32 Is there any farmer that doesn't want to get bigger? They might say, oh, we're fine right now. But as he just pointed out Yeah. 00:31:39 And you know, If I tell my wife I'm about to slow down, I'm about to one more reduce ground, she immediately goes, the bank gets more money. 00:31:47 'cause she says, I know you're fixing to rent some wagon every time you say it. And, 00:31:51 And you know, you think about that And it has happened that way. It ain't on purpose. And let's just talk about that for a second. 00:31:56 You know, everybody says, oh, well, let's just, man, it's a thousand acres. Let's just pick that up. Well if you, you've done it, it has 00:32:02 to be the right ones. You've done it or lost it either way. But man, you tell em about a, if you already go in 00:32:08 and sit down at that chair, well your banker and be like, Hey, I just rented this farm over here. And he is like, you did what? Yeah. Right. 00:32:13 He like, you know where you gonna get that money from? You know, like, oh, i's gonna get it from you. Like, yeah, yeah. You, you up here now. 00:32:18 So there was, it's a, it's a different mentality when you have to start going in and you have to go to all your co-ops. 00:32:23 You have to up that number. You have to go to all your places and up that number, you know. Well, This economy where I have now, yeah. 00:32:29 I, I've had access to rent 9,100 acres this Year. And that's not a good thing. No. That'ss not a good thing. 00:32:39 Tell it's a scary thing. And I told this in the meeting the other day. I didn't tell the amount of acres, 00:32:43 but I said thousands of acres I've been offered to rent. Now 5,000 of it's in one block is too far from me. 00:32:49 But that's scary. I'd went, it's A big number to take on. Well, could you, well, 00:32:54 Just scary for all the farmers that are having a problem. Yeah. Right? Yeah. That, that money's coming up. Yeah. 00:32:59 That means, and and in down economy Yeah. When consolidation and, And since that time that that happened, I can think 00:33:06 of about including that nine, there's probably 20,000 acres of changed hands in my two counties in the last 30 days. 00:33:14 Well, we, way back when, this has been quite a few years ago. Um, when prices first, what, what year was that? 00:33:23 Was that 12 or whatever It was. Well, blew Up. Well, when they run up 13. When that, when that blew up 00:33:28 was though that, that exact time there's a bunch of farms that came up for rent because the, the landowners said, oh man, 00:33:35 our farms are worth a lot more money. And they start putting 'em out to bid. Mm. Well that one year I, I'd literally put bids in 00:33:43 and I was like, all right, I'm ready. And we went and we picked up like almost 1600 acres. That was a mistake. 00:33:49 You don't want to, like, that was too, that was hard for me. It's not hard for you 00:33:53 'cause you already got the equipment to do it. I didn't quite, I wasn't quite there to have that much equipment. 00:33:58 So then I'm like, okay, I gotta pick up, I gotta get more money. I gotta pick up more. I'm picking up more land. 00:34:03 I need another planter, I need another sprayer, I need more tractors, I need this, I need that. And I was like, I'll be fine. I'll be fine. 00:34:09 Pressure are real good. Well, two years later, what happened When it's not just prices. 00:34:14 You've gotta figure out in your mind how many acres you can manage. And if you can manage 10,000, farm 10,000, 00:34:21 do you farm 10,000 and manage it and make a good yield? Yeah. But if you go to 12 and you lose two bushel on that other 10, picking up 00:34:29 that extra two. Yeah, right. You just, you Haven't done a damn thing. Yeah. You just banged yourself. Yeah. 00:34:34 I love the statement first off, I like that you asked the question if 2000 acres came up for rent, you even say, oh, we're happy. 00:34:39 We're, we're the right size. Oh no, we'd drive, we'd rent that. So farmers want to take on more. 00:34:44 It's natural has happened for a long time. And then your favorite statement, my favorite statement that you've ever said about what's the right size? 00:34:51 What's the right size? The right size. You are either, Oh, you're either over cropped or undermanaged. You're either 00:34:56 Over cropped or you're undermanaged Or both. Temp is both. I both. Alright. We ask the question, does size matter? 00:35:03 We're talking about farm size. You know, whether you're a big farmer or a small farmer, a little farmer. 00:35:07 However you qualify yourself, it really doesn't matter. You're always invited to join us right here at this table and we want you to join us. 00:35:13 Have a little fun, sit down with real farmers for real discussion. It's what we do here at the Green Reef. 00:35:18 We're so glad you came along to great conversation guys. I really appreciate you having me. Till next 00:35:22 time, we'll see you next time here. 00:35:24.855 --> 00:35:25.755