In 2017, Jason was recognized as one of the "10 Up and Comers in Agriculture" by Successful Farming, a title well-deserved for his pioneering work in cover cropping, interseeding, and relay cropping. He’s also the CEO of Constant Canopy, where he’s developing cutting-edge farming methods that maximize profitability while protecting the environment. From breaking yield records to producing renewable natural gas and bio-char, Jason’s #farmweird approach is something every farmer can learn from.In today’s episode, we’ll explore Jason’s journey, his thoughts on the future of farming, and how he uses social media to spread his innovative ideas. Jason Mauck, a pioneering farmer and the CEO of Constant Canopy, who is redefining what it means to farm in today’s world. Jason also opens up about how social media has changed his life, why he does it, and which platform he prefers. Tune in to learn from one of agriculture’s most forward-thinking minds and discover what’s next for this #farmweird innovator. Don’t forget to like the podcast on all platforms and leave a review where ever you listen!Websitewww.Farm4Profit.comShareable episode linkhttps://intro-to-farm4profit.simplecast.comEmail [email protected] to YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSR8c1BrCjNDDI_Acku5XqwFollow us on TikTokhttps://www.tiktok.com/@farm4profitConnect with us on Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/Farm4ProfitLLC/
If I can produce the same amount of wheat bushels as bean bushels in that 70, 70, 80, 80, then each bushel that I sell as a commodity is worth 2x of that of corn. So if I do 150 collectively, that's the same as 300 bushel corn, and I can grow this for half the cost of 300 bushel corn.
Join Corey. You boys want some popsicles?
david so tanner what i really gotta know is the juice worth the squeeze and tanner all right it's about time to wrap this baby up they're my favorite like farm for fun it's time to put aside the stress of the work boots sit down grab your favorite adult beverage and listen to the boys from farm for profit yay it says applause
And listeners, welcome back to the Farm for Profit podcast. We got Tanner sitting here on a trailer. Corey's here. Dave's here and a special guest. That's right. We are excited to do a live on the site recording out here at the Stock Copper Field Day. And we are probably now the first time recording off the flatbed of a trailer.
So we've been on a train. We've been on a plane. Been now on a trailer. In a hotel lobby and on a trailer on the flatbed.
Planes, trains and automobiles. I like this. Andrea, this is exciting. We're excited to have you guys tune into us. We thank you so much for listening. We appreciate all that you've done for this podcast. Continue to share this with your friends, especially if this is the first time that you found us. We have two different show formats. Today, we're going to have a farm for fun conversation.
Typically, we crack a couple of beers. And we're sitting here without a beer in our hand. Maybe that comes a little bit later today. But we also have profit shows that come out on Monday or every other show in your queue. And those are a little bit more focused on something to help your farm make more money.
Where the fun show today, we're going to spend our time getting to learn more about an individual and maybe pull away some techniques or some tips just through casual conversation.
I don't know if we stopped doing this, but if you're not, make sure you like, rate, review. We need the reviews. Give us five stars on whatever comment you want.
I do love the comments. Don't forget to send us a text message if you've got an idea or a guest, 515-207-9640. Those are fun. I get to see them first before I send them on to these guys, so it's kind of a little fun game for me to play.
Vance, is that apple good?
We are having a little bit of fun, if you can't tell. Corey, why don't you jump into introducing our guests today? We're going to have to imagine our music. I'll overlay this when we get started. Drum roll, please.
Today on the Farm for Fun show, we are up in north central Iowa, Buffalo Center, to be exact, at the Stockcropper Field Day. We meet up with a friend of the podcast.
like i said here at the farm farm weird field day this man has a brain that's constantly ticking outside the box where he constantly fills twitter or x with his ideas about his business constant canopy from relay cropping to yard golf this guy is one of the best follows on twitter please welcome from gaston indiana mr jason mock you're supposed to clap out there Vance.
We have a packed crowd. Not a single one of them.
We were doing this before the field day actually starts, so no one's here. Just Vance Crowe. It's a test run on the equipment. Jason's biggest fan. Tanner's biggest fan. So welcome to the show, Jason. Back to the show, I should say.
Thanks. I've just been looking forward to this my whole life.
The field day or the podcast?
We paid him to say that.
Yeah.
Well, Jason, we had you speak at our conferences before we actually started recording a podcast. And then we had you on when we were audio only. We had to do a phone call, which those weren't super prime content. It's been, what, four years? Probably four years. Four years back. Yeah. Why don't you reintroduce yourself to our listeners? Who's Jason?
Okay. Who's Jason is a 43-year-old white male, lost 24 pounds this summer, eating clean. I've Yeah, so I'm a family farmer. I think I'm the fifth generation. I get curious. Sometimes it hurts me a little bit. I did a meat company deal a few years back. But we've got about 3,000 acres we farm, a lot of pigs, a lot of manure.
What makes me weird, if you will, is my mom said, hey, there's no money in farming. Go get a real job. So I got a marketing degree, went to the city, suit and tie, learned how to sell, started a business, and then my dad passed of cancer, and they just ripped me right out of that world into the farm world.
So it's just 10 years of different experience brought into that, just probably the root of the weirdness.
And probably the biggest follow that most people know you for, at least in the Twitter sphere, or sometimes you're on Facebook and other places too, but would be your relay cropping. right? You're always constantly talking about that and different angles of light and trying to make the most of space.
Yeah. When I was, I mean, I was a pretty hardcore landscape contractor in my twenties. I took my sales skills and I got people on paper and I built a pretty decent business with a lot of college kids employment. I had a lot of horsepower and we did a lot of landscapes. And then, like I said, I just, I was ripped out of, I had about a
$600,000 book of business with a group of friends and then they said, hey, farm 3,000 acres. And dad was here and gone and it was my crop. And pain teaches, that's the thing. And I think a lot of times we meet at places like this, hey, crops look like crap, everything looks good or bad. And I had some really bad crops that I was responsible for early on from weather.
And intercropping, relay cropping to me is a way to use my useless skills of landscaping and farming. And as I've became experienced in it, I really feel like I have a somewhat of a handle when mother nature goes crazy a little bit. So that's why I love it. And just the productivity and efficiency that I see in a lot of things, a lot of things.
So when was it that you came back and took over the farm? 2010 was when we found out my dad and he was, he passed April of 2011. So over the course of that fall and then, uh, 2011 back home, just short story. It was like the worst monsoon ever.
We got like 50 inches of rain and, uh, I, I couldn't get a wheel turned and I ended up planting in the mud and the people that like waited had a decent crop and then 12 was a drought. Uh, so it was just like, You know, I helped out on the farm. I was the dumb cowboy sort board guy in the pig barn. So that was kind of my skill and helped out.
But it was just my crop to screw up or whatever because my dad was such a leader. He was such an asshole in a good way. But he kept everyone like if you screwed up, you would know about it from my dad. And he was gone. So they kind of looked at me to figure it out.
And I've always known you on social anyways. The short amount of times we've met is innovation. You know, always looking for the next idea. And I think that's kind of what spurred Constant Canopy, correct?
Yeah. I mean, Constant Canopy is basically the Twitter-like manifestation of the relationships and stuff like that. And I met a guy locally. And the name actually came from Joe Bassett when we were first kind of drinking beer and hanging out and stuff. And it was part of another. I was going to call it Occupy, this idea of cover crops and cash crops always kind of occupying the space.
And it was constant canopy unleashes progress. And he's like, constant canopy, that's it. So that's just kind of how that started. And now I talk about like making gaps so it has some, it's not a full canopy all the time.
But that's the evolution. Yes. That's how, because I'm curious if your dad passed, that's most of the time these farmers, their mentor is their parent.
Yeah.
And you didn't have that. So how have you taught yourself? I mean, you were looking at the clouds earlier, making sure we didn't start this recording until they came over and cooled us off a little bit. But you understand weather. You understand agronomics. You understand the finance side, the marketing side. Obviously, you've got a degree in marketing.
Yeah.
But how have you learned the rest of it?
I'm a dork. Like my oldest is a dork like me. I would lock myself in the room and like remember baseball cards and stuff. And then as the internet came along, you know, I'm that rare age where I had the old school, like castrate pigs and throw testicles at your cousin to like, we're like AI everything. Now this election cycle is crazy with all the AI and everything.
Anyway, like I came on when the internet was coming. So I came in love with computer models for weather. And I just became so dorked out on predicting my own forecast.
And that manifested into the cropping system where I enjoy chaos and I like to look at chaos and I like to look at the response of not just the plant, but the soil and the grasshoppers and the winds and the sun angles and the shadows and like where the frost melts off and how the shadow. And I'm just always in this, my own little,
weird dorky world and i found twitter as like i'm gonna get really weird on you here but when i was little i had an imaginary friend named poe that lived at my belly button and when i was doing my dorky shot poe i think the twitter thing is like my poe okay i'm like i'm out here thinking about this stuff i might as well make a video yeah and my wife was like when i first got on twitter she's like you are doing this all wrong no you are weird
No one wants to listen to you for two minutes and 20 seconds. And I just kept doing it.
But it's also kind of like your diary as well. Like you can keep notes that way.
Yeah. It's very effective journaling.
Yeah.
Just seeing.
So were you on Twitter before you started the weird stuff? No.
Or were you weird and then Twitter? No, I didn't really have any social media. And then I started doing that. Okay. And then I started meeting all you yahoos and traveling around and. It's just been fun.
So for people who aren't on Twitter or haven't seen your videos, what is relay cropping? What mostly do you do?
So the definition of relay cropping is basically starting another crop while another crop is growing. Relay. I mean, poly is growing basically two at once. And, you know, it's a sequencing. And from a marketing degree or economics degree, you know, I loved economics, the supply and demand curves.
And I think a lot of our problems are we're not reflecting on our landscape, what's happening with the weather and our precipitation and our heat and everything like that. So for me, relay cropping is being in position. I may be too colorful for this, but I hate being a bitch, if you will. I feel out of place if I don't have a crop that's rooted into the ground to kind of play off of.
And when I was a landscaper, you know, I had hundreds of acres of turf and beds and And I had to keep everyone's place upkeeped. And I see what happens with waterhemp, especially the last three or four years. It's like our tools are just turning into like air BB guns anymore. And I think it's going to go back to the basics of longer rotations, of canopy, of suppression.
And we've got to kind of solve these problems like old school because... Our new school only lasts like three or four or five or six years, and then it's like nothing.
Yeah, it's coming so fast. I was at a seed day, and they were talking about technology that's coming not next year, 10 years down the road. And we were talking about Enlist for, you know, so we could use 2,4-D on spraying on beans. And now we're going to be able to spray it in corn and all that. And they're like, guys, we know this is already being a problem, not solving it.
We have to get by for the next eight to ten years before the next technology is here. So I was like, that's not good. That's too long. Yeah. And now a quick word from one of our sponsors, Brandt Agricultural Products.
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And in a way, it makes all of this stuff, a lot of this stuff that you'll see today that you can scale easier because, I mean, look at that. You can spray dicamba 2,4-D, Roundup. You can spray metrotrion on beans soon. Mezotrion, yeah. Yeah, like the corn herbicide.
So this stuff isn't really that complicated, but it goes back to harvesting the water and the sunlight, these free things that there's no reason why you should have a field day to sell air. or time or space or water or hog shit or how to use it more effectively. But to me, um, going back to my story, my family is the most conservative family, like squeeze the Buffalo and make it fart.
You know, like anything I spend any money with grandpa, it was just impossible. So I just learned how to, you know, ask for forgiveness way more before permission cause it would never happen. So, um, The relay cropping is like, I have an idea to solve a problem, whether it's not have the water wrecker crop or stop the water hemp from spraying.
I'm going to go out on a limb and try this and figure it out. And then eventually the people that, especially my direct family or locals, they'll eventually start doing it. And we're seeing that.
I was going to ask, I wanted to save that question for a little bit later as to how many people have started doing what you've been doing. But I want you to step through for the listener that doesn't know and hasn't seen it. So you have the right geographical location that allows you to grow wheat and you're seeding winter wheat? Yes. Explain what your process looks like.
So ideally how we set it up, we grow primarily corn and soybeans and we've got wheat acres. But we'll plant an earlier maturity corn. We're 20-inch corn, and we found that we can raise a little bit earlier corn at higher densities and get that yield right up there with a full-season corn. So we try to get that off at 23%, 25%, shell it off late September, and then we're planting wheat and strips.
And I've done a million different ways. We primarily drill the wheat. We're going to be planting it with a planter this year, but I've planted it also with our hog manure tank and planted it. above the manure, which I think is a fantastic idea. I just need Bill Gates or somebody to cut me a check to actually design a manure seeder.
But basically what we can do with our hog manure is we have a static, very fertile soils. You know, even if we don't put manure on it for 10 years, our P and K levels are going to be up. So we can basically just put nitrogen where we want to kind of foster tillering of the wheat. Sometimes we follow manure, but most of the time not. And we plant reduced populations.
And that's a big thing that I learned as a marketer. And I think America is this, sorry if this hurts anybody's feelings, but the whole marketing circus is just with holidays and everything. It's just to corral people to exploit, you know, fireworks and just up the valuation of everything. Just make sure everyone does their routine. And agriculture is no different.
And we meet at all these field days and figure out, you know, how can we gain five to seven bushels with a monocrop? And what you can do with slope curve is you can do exactly what you can do with selling fireworks of saying, I'm going to buy this cheap Chinese piece of crap firework for two dollars.
And I get people horny enough June 31st to come here, June 30th and spend, you know, 500 percent more than I paid for it and exploit that. And we can do that with a single seed where if we plant like 25% of the wheat, I can get about 75, 80% of the yield. But what I am more interested in is consuming and getting ahead on the demand curve of water.
And I know I'm getting way ahead of your simple question here, but I can get ahead on the water curve to where I have a water equilibrium. And that's what actually makes plants grow well is balance much more than throwing the kitchen sink at things.
I think Dave witnessed that first thing this year. It's first-year farming, and his field's wet. Yeah. Very wet, and he realizes that installing tile is going to be extremely beneficial to him to hit that water equilibrium.
And everybody was worried it was too dry, and then some is too wet. It's the old too wet, it's too dry, and I still want a free hat. Yeah. But, yeah, the equilibrium of just being – You know, we always love those rains that aren't, I remember you called me one day, Corey, he's like, this sucks, turn the damn water off, we're ready to go. Water's good, but too much of it was bad.
There was a happy medium in the middle.
Too much in our soils hurt.
we would rather be on the edge of dry yes not not drought but edge of dry yeah so you're short season corn and then you plant lower population wheat in strips and we've been on 60s i might change that up a little bit more narrow i think 30 is too narrow and it's all a shadow effect where i'm you know six foot tall my shadow is going to cast so far so wheat's only about 32 inches tall or whatever it is so it's going to cast so big of a shadow
Now, when you put it in the big wide strips, it changes its motive because no longer it has to grow up to compete against all the other wheat, it can grow laterally sideways. And that's where we create the additional yield is capturing the drivers in different shapes and lengths of time.
So the wheat is, each plant is gonna tiller and the tillers in the competition of field can't go up and actually reach that sun So it actually drags energy down where the tillers can go out and figure out a way to capture light. And then that brings that back to the plant. So, you know, I'm only putting like $15 worth of wheat out there.
And then it all works off of a proxy system where it's like our mics. If you went out there 200, 300 yards, you couldn't hear me anymore. I want to put that bean right off that big root mass so far. So the wheat isn't the beans aren't the bitch again of the wheat. Right. But it's in a.
favorable position where it can breathe but then have access to more of a reservoir of water so that's just taking time of messing with the densities messing with the how much i push the wheat because all this stuff if you get too aggressive of one thing you can have your ego ruins it because you're so worried about impressing someone on the first part but then you the bed on the second part so there's no reason to do it in the first place we plant the beans in between there we get a big solar corridor
And that's changed over the years. Early as of cereal as possible, the better. Full season beans, big splits. And, you know, we've raised really good soybeans this way. And if I was in a yield contest, I would start with strips of cereals, if nothing else, just to reflect the sunlight off the ground.
How much of this is you just, as you said, dorking out on it? Or does it make any more money? So when I look at it, I don't have a whole lot more time. So I'm like, all right, what is everybody doing? What's the basics? And just do the basics. But we've got the opportunity to interview hundreds of people that all have a different way to make two more bushel, two more something.
Is this you just really like the science of it?
Or are we making more money? We spend a lot less money on the makers and we produce just as much or more revenue than high yielding corn that gives everyone boners. Gotcha. So like you get, It has to be the perfect year to get that field average of corn up there to 50 to 75. Like you can't have holes. You can't have yellow spots. You can't have deers procreating in the corner.
And if I go out there and I put $15 a week, I can lower my herbicide. I get good full season, full yield beans. Then you add those two togethers and I do all my costs. The other thing with corn that people rarely talk about and it's getting worse and worse is, You know, we had a feed mill two miles north and we take most of our corn, but that's kind of going away.
A lot of people have to truck their corn 20 miles. And you take the logistics of drying all those bushels, moving all those bushels multiple times and all the work. I mean, that can add up to 50 to 100, $150 an acre and less bushels. What I, my formula is, is if I can produce the same amount of wheat bushels as bean bushels in that 70, 70, 80, 80,
then each bushel that I sell as a commodity is worth 2x of that of corn. So if I do 150 collectively, that's the same as 300 bushel corn, and I can grow this for half the cost of 300 bushel corn. So $200 to $300 per acre pretty easily.
So you started off with the manure tank, and you were putting a strip of – because it was a splash plate, right?
Yep. Well, no, I was actually injecting a knife. Really? I took off every other knife. So I was taking 60 inches – And just driving as fast as I can, blowing as much as I can. But the wheat was coming off the splash plate. And I had a, yeah, I had a Gandhi box that was dropped, and I splashed it into the closing wheels. Yep.
And so how wide of strip was that wheat? 60-inch. 60 inches between, but the actual row was probably of wheat.
12 inches?
Yeah, it was wider. Yeah, it was about 20. Okay. And now you're, you said you were at 30-inch wheat. Yeah. So now I'm going to probably 45. But planted?
Planted, yeah. So it'll be just a single row of wheat? Well, no, it'll be 15 inches wide.
Okay, you'll still plash it.
Right now it's 60 and 22 inches wide with my drill.
Okay, and then you've got a bean plant on either side of that?
Yep, yep, and we're probably going to go to zero space soybeans to where this is all an evolution of eventually, and it might take two or three years... to where we do it. If you remember, I think it was Chuck Woolery on Love Connection. You guys are probably too young. I don't know that. Nope. Okay.
You always say I'm back in two and two and I always like two plus twos, but basically making a machine that seeds, sprays, tills, side dresses all in one pass. Because looking at this, I can, if I design the right equipment, I can make this less work than monocrops simply because I'm managing the landscape with plants. Seeds, sprays, tills, and what was the fourth one? Back rubs. Back rubs.
Fertilizes.
It fertilizes all the time. Imagine you've got these wheat strips. You come out there. You're doing...
like a little concave disc out ahead that cuts up right up to the wheat, and you have some kind of hoe drill that places the soil in the ground and does a little bit of shallow cultivation behind it, a little bit of ETE leveling, and then you've got a Y-drop that's putting nitrogen on your wheat and then your hood spraying behind your beans.
So if you zero-space them and you plant zero space in only like 45%, 50%, 60% of the landscape, then those plants will expedite canopy closure. It'll have the ancillary benefits of the wheat, and then that'll make you to harvest, and then we're clean slate.
Because my problem is I'm spraying my beans, my monocrop beans, at least three times, if not four times, because I'm trying to get a baby from birth, from the fetus to the baby, and it's six weeks before I have anything significant out there as far as defending the soil surface. So that's the whole point to me on these multiple crops is let's get
Reduce densities, but things out there to manage what?
Makes me spend money. So zero spacing you mean like so in between your 45 inches of wheat and
45 inch zero space so then you're going to have beans that fill up the gap in between yeah yep and the great thing about that is at every inch is different so when i'm right in the center of the row i have the most water availability yes so those beans will grow the tallest right out of the gate the ones close to the wheat will be like you know it's kind of down but when the wheat dies that day like in june 20th it's like hell yeah it's like home alone like
The kids are gone, the ice cream's full, and the freezer, hell yeah. And those beans live in the corpse of the cereal, and they turn into these, like, Gary Coleman on roids, like these little midget beans with 300 pods. We're getting canceled for this show. And it turns into this beautiful algo.
And you're like, you're looking at the weed like, okay, the weed only made $70, but I only had, you know, $80 in components.
total cost that's harvest and everything so i have a contribution margin here i take my contribution margin and i compare that to any inflection point on the soybeans and then i overlay my cost of production on soybeans and a lot of times the cost of production savings is much over than the inflection and then you add the contribution margin that's where we come to 200 300 easily but the whole manure application in the fall if i can not lose that value get it in a plant and morph it
that's so does this only work for those that have access to manure no and i and i do a lot of acres without manure just to prove and it's actually easier to grow better wheat because i don't have those like cocaine rails all over the field where i have this crazy bushed out weed it's kind of not uh not ideal because i have to worry about lodging so i might even cut it back even further on my manure wheat i i would rather use uh you know regular nitrogen and have
And you get the tax write-off for R&D. That's funny. That show's not out yet.
That show's not out yet. That's one of those you need to stay tuned. There's going to be some great value coming at the end of the month.
You can't write it off. You have a tax credit on your whole farm.
Tax credit, yeah, when you make money. Yeah, we do need to connect him with Jason. I think that would be a pretty easy connection. But, yes, here in about a month there will be a good episode that comes out. You're going to really like that, Listers.
What's the biggest pushback you have from people on the socials that are saying, you can't do that because of this or whatever? Easy times.
That's the biggest pushback. If corn's six bucks, then I could have a call center just calling and sending out letters. Hey, I'll pay you $400, $500 cash rent. Everything's cherry because I have equity at Grandpa. I have crop insurance coming in. I can back up the shortstop here, there, and there. But when corn goes to 325 and it's not candy land anymore, it's like I got to be resourceful.
And I think.
as is evil dr evil as it sounds i'm kind of excited about it being a little tougher maybe sometimes i i so i found myself getting down too but that's like no this is what we want right if we're the best managers that there's opportunity in this yeah because yeah right but i think the biggest i'm not gonna say pushback but when i look at your comments and things it's always questions about how do you harvest it how do you harvest the wheat if there are beans out there yeah so that's
that would you know that's trial and error we didn't have any equipment the first few years and then we teamed up with a company called flexi finger there's a pad that goes on to my cutter bar so i basically make the beans do a limbo and i have pushed that when we had the 108 bushel soybeans they were over two foot tall and we bend them down to six or eight inches to bring those wheat heads in and they'll bend and they'll come back but it's just managing your uh combine traffic so you know
the people on Twitter really gave me shit early because I had my, all my kids crayons out, but my kids were, you know, nine months old when I'm doing all this early stuff and you have to draw out the schematics and have a, you know, you have to be a year or two ahead of what you do in the field and figure all that out.
Cause the last thing you want to do is go out and plant a bunch of stuff and then figure that out. That's everything.
You did a lot of maybe you still do a lot of posting with a chalkboard, right? Yeah. In the kitchen.
Yes. A lot of a lot of chalk talks. I don't do as much as I used to, but I especially before I got in the meat stuff, I was really trying to figure out what industry I wanted to get in and, you know, the cropping stuff. And you got you got to do that.
I mean, I encourage everybody, if you've got a group of creative friends, start writing stuff down, because a lot of times you'll get on the tangent and you need. The best friend that you have is like, hey, this won't work because of this. You know, you don't think of it.
So you were thrown into this. It kind of sounds like when your father passed and you were going a different direction. Are you happy you went back this direction or are there other things you want to chase? Landscaping, marketing, something new?
No, not really. Man, it was quite the life in my 20s because I could just kick ass for like three or four months. And then there's so much more time for vacation and golf and all that stuff. So that's the one thing I do miss about life outside the farm.
But you brought some of that to you because you have a golf course at your place.
Yes, yes. And my kids are eight and nine now, so they're out there playing. And that's really fun. How do you have time to maintain a golf course?
uh knowledge i mean uh i i what what's again what's bad is good all the golf courses have went belly up around me so the i have auctions and we can buy all these like i have three 17 foot reel mowers so i can mow uh like eight acres of fairway and like two beers basically i like time with beer it becomes a hobby right i just know what it takes to maintain a green and yeah
so my hose never shuts off from like mid-may till september i just if we run over a few with the semis um i might get a hole in one but i just have like 15 from rural king and then i got a route i'll put it around my gator and i'll drive around this tree and i just drag a hose and it's just always on but make sure green's receptive so you can score well that's true that's very true we
but i just know you you got to mow those every day at least every other day at least yeah you can let them go a little bit longer if you want but i got a rider now i i did i had like uh six different walking greens mowers they were all kind of pos's but i kept them up and i just leave them outside next to a tree next to a green it wasn't too hard so i enjoy it let's talk about some of your failures because i know you didn't just do the relay cropping and wheat and beans you had some corn stuff wide wide rows the meat business uh where where do you want to start there
I don't know. I, the, the meat thing was maybe a little ambitious. I I'm glad that I did it. You know, a lot of people will run away from failure, but I think, I think it's very good to get people together on an idea.
Uh, there's a lot of people that I work with that I still talk to today and I think there'll be something else, but we gotta have, we gotta have people that are willing to fail to figure things out because I'm not as, uh, religious of community centric as maybe I was three years ago. Cause I see the pain involved, but we've got to get more food on a local level of distribution infrastructure wise.
What was the meat project?
So we bought a company during COVID that basically is called Muncie Meats from 1957. They had the McDonald's contract. They had the Burger King contract in the sixties. They were doing like 15 million in the seventies. And then the guy stuck around and,
and uh basically held on to all the local restaurants but covid happened and all the restaurants were closed so he was old and he wanted out so we bought it for like next to nothing and i was pretty ambitious i wanted to kind of create a slaughterhouse constellation stars for farmers to connect farmers to consumers and use the restaurant business as a node to gain economies of scale to build the infrastructure in place and the and the connections to make that
a reality for farmers and I thought I could leverage my social media to to help facilitate brands for people because you know if you if you make a good brand and you're connecting people across state a lot of it's going to come where you got to distribute that we made a run we were at it for three years but we were a USDA facility so we had an office there.
And if, you know, whenever I thought I had money in the bank account, the, you know, the guy would come out and say, Hey, you need to spend a hundred thousand fixing this or we'll shut you down. You know, it was just like being married to a gold digging. It was tough aside from the, uh, from the personnel there.
What I thought the coolest part of that was you had meat vending machines.
Yes.
And that worked very well. That was cool. Yeah. I think you were almost ahead of your time, Porter, because I think that would work right now.
Yeah. Once the people started doing it, it was intimidating at first. That was the biggest hurdle is they had to be aware. They had to know how it worked. So you were kind of in your own fishbowl, and you needed to make your fishbowl bigger of awareness. But we called it the automated farmer's market, and people would order online. We would put it in the machine.
The machine would actually send a QR code via text and email to the consumer. And we were moving over 10 orders a day. Our average order was $80. So it was decent revenue, but it was a spoke of a much bigger business. And the much bigger business was more into wholesale with smaller margins and scale. And it's just hard to get the transactions of the Meijer and the Walmart.
If you had 10% of their meat transactions, you would have it made.
I think you just got to hit that time right because I think back to LaserDiscs. they were way more space than a CD or a Blu-ray or a DVD, but they might have been ahead of their time, and by the time we needed that much space, well, then direct downloads were there or SSD hard drives were there. That's in the technology space as an example of what that looks like. Even think of Redbox.
I mean, I remember thinking, like, It finally went down. Yeah, it finally went down. They had a vending machine. I'm like, who's going to do this and bring it back? And then it just kind of took off. But they pivoted, you know, and it's more Netflix-ish. And now look at Netflix. So they just happened to hit it right at the right time and know when to pivot.
I saw a red box the other day next to a McDonald's, and I couldn't believe that it was still there and still operational. Who had a DVD player? It is quite interesting when you look at, how you can take a failure and learn from it and build and continue to push forward on things that are working. It allows you to reinvest that energy and push and continue to grow what you've got going on.
You said 108 bushel soybeans. Is that the best soybeans you've ever grown?
Yes, yep. And I went over 100 several times with relay crops. And I always, if you get in good soil types and you're conservative with your wheat, you can actually raise better soybeans. And it's a function of exponential math and crop architecture. And I ripped up a bean plant over there to just show people what a bean is capable of, where he ran them over and it had like a foot or two to live.
And that's the whole name of the game with all this polycropping is build these plants and focus on the plant yield and the time sequences and the perceptions.
If I take you back to social media wise, there's not a lot of people on social media that show their mistakes. So we just talked about meat and then didn't pan out. We might have lost money, but we broke even maybe or something in that nature. Being first time farmer, I've tried to show some mistakes online because it's not all peaches and cream.
And nobody at the coffee shop says, oh, man, my yield is just, you know, I mean, they don't say that. What's the reception from the rest of the world if you posted some of this stuff? as far as failure. Yeah. Everybody loves like, okay, you got a hundred and you know, whatever bushel beans. Hey, that's fantastic. Oh great.
He's doing that over there, but nobody really says I'm going to lose 80 grand this year.
I mean, I, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of humility told you so's, but, uh, I feel like people have my back a little bit. So when there's still people that challenge you. Oh yeah. There's not enough people to challenge me. I mean, that's, That's that's what's more concerning for me. I love I love criticism. I mean, that means people are awake and they're and they're engaged.
And I think that's the number one problem is we've just kind of taken a backseat and said, hey, industry, you you tell us what's new. We're here for you know, we're here for the trip, you know, and and I love these events like you guys are here today. I mean, this is this is good stuff.
So what got you started with the farm weird guys here?
Just communication on social media. I mean, me and Zach have communicated for several years before even stockcropper. And he kind of called me one February when him and Lance and Sheldon were all putting this together. And I was like, that is absolutely brilliant. And I think that first I was working on the chicken tractor concept. So we kind of did it.
on our own ways and both arrived that this is actually magical. Now, I don't know if we're going to get the whole landscape of the Corn Belt to do it, but it works.
Yeah.
That's very cool. Speaking of what works, right, the relay cropping works for you. Yeah. Do you do that on every acre? I hope to. We've got a family dynamic to it. My grandpa just passed this year, and, you know, I love him to death, but he's kind of,
rain me back a little bit and and you know if i would have went after this just balls deep six or eight years ago when i didn't understand it would be a train wreck and i think sometimes it's good to fester on things this will be my 10th year and i'm not saying i understand it inside and out but i you know i am comfortable doing it on every acre but at the same time you know you you can't have 16 combines we're not running dallas we need everything's timely
So I think that's even the wrong goal. If we can get to 25% of our acres, then I can get small grains every four years. That's kind of my goal. I'm getting pretty close to that now. But, you know, everything has to be timely. I think that's something little talked about, and people don't want to say this. They say you need to be at your family.
But I think, you know, sometimes you need to not sleep, Bob. You need to sleep for two days.
It might make more money than anything. There you go. What about – I know you and I talked about this earlier. Because we don't have a wheat market really here in Iowa. We'd have to truck it or get it on a rail somewhere, and we just can't grow that good a quality of wheat. We've talked about oats.
Is there any other things that are similar to this that could happen in other regions of the country?
Yeah, I mean, my big push, I'm a board of director of a big feed mill, and we bag a lot of feed. And, you know, looking at barley, you know, getting that more into value-add stuff. But looking at some of these small grains as a feed,
feedstock and started and replaced some corn and corn gets that price point down the other gets price point down and you can justify that but you know any any cereal but the oats is pretty interesting out here i think he can do some modifications getting the oats in earlier out earlier some fuller season beans and it's going to be very profitable with this processing in the in the region yeah the covers that my in-laws use is rye and so we like trying to find locally sourced rye and
Typically, since the way it's spread now is it's through a tarragator and then lightly tilled in the fall. So we don't necessarily care so much about having a great germ because we're putting out more bushels per acre than what we need to. I could see somebody around here being able to grow rye as a cover to get to seed for those that want more cover.
But is it too late? Because rye is a later crop, right? If you want to harvest for seed, it's like mid-July. Yeah.
Yeah.
that's true i'd be pushing it when you guys it works for you guys because you're taking it off for feed yeah yep yeah same thing we're planting beans back first week or two of june yeah um i mean you could definitely really crop it for sure and i'll try to get zach to do it the other method is the over the top like a stripper header and a lot of these big combines put a track on them and then you get a big 45 or 50 foot head you're only running over like five percent of the surface area so you could
justify going out there and just stripping the heads off the top and using as weed control i've also seen the old uh oh what do you call them the belt drive look like corn head but it's a row crop header some people use some of those yeah those are pretty slick was that a john deere 612a yeah yep yep we actually i used to work for pioneer and we actually used to run that for our research bean trials it's fun so pretty slick yeah that's good right
Well, just a couple more minutes here sitting in the sun. Dave, why don't you ask that question you were laughing at?
Well, this is a Farm for Fun episode without the drinks. So rather than talking crops the whole time, if you were an animal, what would you be?
I'd probably be some kind of bird in a warmer climate, I'm guessing, or an apex predator of some sort.
Yeah, I like that.
It's warm enough here. Your clouds went away.
Yes. So as you golf in the backyard, is that your favorite course to play?
No, no. We're going on a men's trip called the Ron Jeremy Invitational coming up next week.
Where's your mustache?
It's got some pretty good propaganda going floating around there for the guys. But Northern Michigan, you cannot beat Northern Michigan. The color of the water and the hills and everything. Wow.
We should go sometime.
Someone sent me a golf course in North Dakota the other day that just looks amazing. It's on TikTok.
Jason knows.
Looks like he's got a five iron. Can we have a handicapped event and a win them, take them all event? Oh, yeah. I think you could. Okay.
Get a bunch of big sponsors. Big prize pool. That'd be fun.
Yeah.
Tanner's pretty good.
We should do it. We just set up a golf tournament at every farm show. Farm Progress this week. You guys could go to Farm Progress or come to our golf tournament. What's your handicap? Do you know?
I get, this time of year, I'm pretty much scratch. Oh, wow. I won't get scratch strokes in Michigan because it's a lot tougher. But if you take me at a local course, then I don't shoot par. I'm pretty bad. You'd get me then.
What's your handicap, Tanner? I'm down to an eight now. That's pretty good. Yep. It took me. That was a slow start. What's your weakness? My weakness? Putting. Really? Yeah. You should see him putt. It's weird. You hold the shaft weird. I just reverse grip. Oh, you got like the claw. Left hand low. Okay.
It just seems like I'm great at putting it within a foot of the hole, and I just don't make the birdie putts. Oh. Hmm. Huh. Quite interesting. Well, let's wrap up with one of the questions we've been asking all of our guests. And you alluded to a little bit of the answer already. We're wanting to give our listeners a little bit of perspective and maybe some security in their thought process.
But how do you juggle work and personal or family life?
Oh, man. I mean... As you're on a nine-day away from family trip. Well, just make everyone in the family know that they're number one. Be there everything that you can. And also communicate when... You have to be away from them. Why you have to be there and make it a priority and knocking it out. Everything just boils down to touch point and communications.
As long as you're in communication with people and you're honest, then everything takes care of itself. From what you post online, you take your boys with you a lot during work. They're with you a lot.
Yeah, that's good.
Yeah.
So before we wrap up, did we miss anything? Is there anything else you want our audience to know as we've reintroduced him to Jason?
No, I just, I always tell people to, to try things on their farm because everything's a two or three year process of making it comfortable yourself. You got to sell yourself before anyone else sells you. And then when that knowledge base is so invaluable when we get adversity, so get hard.
And how'd they find you? It's X is where you spend Jason mock one on X. Okay.
Any other platforms? That's the best one to hit. You can follow me on Facebook, but I'm just a crop dork and family man. That's pretty much it. I love it.
Well, thanks again for spending some time here sitting in the sun. Now let's go enjoy ourselves a field day.
Yeah.
Crack a cold one. You deserve it.