AgCast 214: Farming with No Margin for Error, Lessons from the Delta, Part 6

Audio Transcription:

Terry Dabbs: We can take a brand new combine and wear it out in three years. Rice is very labor intensive. It is also very hard on your equipment.

Chad Fiechter: Welcome to the Purdue Commercial AgCast. This is Chad Fiechter. And Todd and I spent some time in Arkansas, talking with farmers about what they’re seeing. What’s working, what’s changing, and what might be surprising to Midwestern grain farmers. This special series, Lessons from the Delta, is what we learned.

Trent Dabbs: I’m Trent Dabbs. I’m here with my dad, Terry Dabbs, uh, LTD Farms. We’re about eight miles south, the Stuttgart, Arkansas. Right smack dab in the middle of the Grand Prairie area they call it. And, uh, big, big rice growing area. But we also grow corn, soybeans, and oats as well.

Chad Fiechter: Oh wow, okay. We feel more comfortable now.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah.

Trent Dabbs: We grow a little bit of Midwest stuff.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah. Yeah. That’s good.

Trent Dabbs: Not, not quite as good as ya are, but

Aaron Shew: We spend a lot of time talking to folks about water specifically, and you said something very interesting at the, when we, when we rolled up, which is that you’re not using groundwater here.

Trent Dabbs: Right. So this, this farm where we’re at and a large area right here in this southeast part of Arkansas, stretching up to the northeast, where you guys were earlier, uh, groundwater’s really been depleted and kind of in a cone of depression here. And, uh, this spot here, the, the last time we checked, um, groundwater, if we drilled a well, it had to be about 400 feet deep.

Chad Fiechter: Geez.

Trent Dabbs: And you’re only talking about getting what, maybe a thousand gallons per minute out of that.

Aaron Shew: Oh man.

Terry Dabbs: And then the energy cost to operate it.

Aaron Shew: Yeah. That’s crazy. You talking about two?

Trent Dabbs: We’ve got one, one deep well left on this, on this area, on this farm. We’ve got 1500 acre block and then another block and it still has one deep well. And it’s got a 200 horse electric that pulls it. Uh, and when you turn it on, the meter spins really fast.

Aaron Shew: Yeah.

Trent Dabbs: So we try not. Unless we just have to.

Chad Fiechter: How long, how long have you guys been farming here?

Trent Dabbs: Um, we took over in ’98.

Terry Dabbs: Yeah. ’98. Yeah. This farm was actually owned by my father-in-law, my wife’s family.

Chad Fiechter: Okay.

Terry Dabbs: And so he retired in ’98 and we started. We were farming down the road about eight miles.

Chad Fiechter: Okay.

Terry Dabbs: And, and then our families, our family farms down there.

Chad Fiechter: Gotcha.

Terry Dabbs: And then, so he decided to retire, asked us to take this over.

So like I said, we started here in ’98. And, uh, made lots and lots of improvements, uh, because of the water situation. We put in, it had open canals on it, so we put in all underground pipe and then we got in into a program that had some cost share in it and precision level this whole 1500 acre block.

Aaron Shew: Wow.

Todd Kuethe: Whoa. That’s, uh, we’re learning That’s quite an investment.

Terry Dabbs: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: Kidding? Yeah.

Terry Dabbs: Big investments.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah.

Terry Dabbs: And we couldn’t do it without some cost share programs. There’s no way you could do it on your own.

Todd Kuethe: Right. Yeah.

Terry Dabbs: It’s just too expensive.

Chad Fiechter: So are they, are they, uh, so we’ve learned a little bit that they’re some that are graded to some degree of, of slope. Are these flat? What are,

Terry Dabbs: We’ve got one field, the one right here behind you. Is what we call a zero grade. So it’s perfectly flat. The rest of them, uh, have straight levees and they’re just whatever fit that field.

Chad Fiechter: Okay.

Terry Dabbs: Some levees are 200 feet apart in some fields, and some are a hundred feet part. Uh, we just tried to work with what the natural contour of the ground was to start with, to, to keep from having to move a lot of dirt.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah.

Aaron Shew: And you put like a 10th, 10th drop on it?

Terry Dabbs: Yeah. Yeah. Some of ’em we have wherever you need to. We have a 10th, a 10th, every hundred feet, and some of ’em we have a 10th every 200 feet.

Aaron Shew: Right. Got it.

Chad Fiechter: Okay. So we told you when we walked up that we’ve talked to a lot of people who maybe tell you how you should, uh, you should be doing this. So give us the, what we wanna know now is like the real farmer behind the scenes, what’s reality of farming rice, corn, and soybeans here?

Trent Dabbs: Throw all that out the window that you’ve learned.

Um, it’s, this year especially has been real challenging. We thought we were set up really good. We had a early dry spring, got a lot of field work done. We got started planning probably what, uh, end of March, 1st of April, and then it started raining. Hasn’t quit yet. I mean, we, we’ve, we’re sitting here, we’ve been sitting for a week trying to get the rest of our beans planted behind our oats that we had.

And seems like about the time it dries up, we get another half. Fence to an inch rain. And so, uh, it’s been real challenging this year, and especially in rice, uh, it gets worse because the timing on getting chemical applications out for grass control, uh, is very important and, and getting, uh, fertilizer out and establishing that first flood on the rise, that’s, that’s really critical.

And it’s been a big challenge this year. And in the last four or five years, it’s been a big challenge trying to get that timing down. And, uh, get everything out on time.

Todd Kuethe: So the other thing we’ve, uh, heard folks talk about, uh, is like the challenge of finding good labor. Like what’s, what is that for you guys as well here?

How many people

Trent Dabbs: It is.

Todd Kuethe: So two of you and,

Trent Dabbs: well, up until this year we had my dad and I, and we had two full-time people and, uh, that was a stretch for, we farmed right at 3,500 acres. Uh, a little over a thousand of that rock. Rice is very labor intensive, especially the beginning of the year getting, getting that flood established.

Uh, it is pretty labor intensive. So we were, we were in a pretty tough situation. Uh, we were luckily enough to find another guy, a local guy this year who had a ton of experience. Him and his dad farmed and, uh, they decided to re decided to retire. So he’s, he’s helping us now. And then we, uh, went the H two A route and picked up a, a guy from South Africa.

Good. That’s, uh, he’s been here before. Worked for a neighbor of ours before, and it’s, uh, it’s, man, it’s, it’s, it’s made a huge difference for us. But yeah, the labor, labor situation’s bad. I, I would love to hire four local guys if I could, but we just. We can’t do it anymore. I mean, that’s worth, worth having,

Chad Fiechter: is it? Okay, so we on our farm too, we had it where we were paying virtually the same price to have H two A. It was just that they, he was, they were here and, and wanted to work. Do you find the same?

Trent Dabbs: I, I do. So far, like I said, that guy’s, he’s only been here a couple months with us. Uh, and, and I’m very pleased with it. Uh, yeah, like I said, he’s, he’s, he’s here to work and, and that’s fine. And like I said, we did the same thing. We, it’s not like we weren’t paying the guys to, to do the job. It just, it just wouldn’t show up or, you know, there was always something happening and, um, it just, sometimes you just get tired of it and you gotta do something.

I mean, we’ve gotta have, gotta have help. Uh, either he or i’s getting any younger, so.

Chad Fiechter: Okay. So, alright, so give us the, um, what I’m also interested in is like farming culture. It, it seems like you were saying it’s maybe a tiny bit with rice, especially more labor intensive. How does that affect sort of like the way you think through your year planning for next year labor machinery? Like what, what are the bottlenecks?

What do you, what are you planning for?

Trent Dabbs: Well, there’s the issue with rice that I see that’s different from the other crops is how do you manage. The residue at the end of the year. Uh, you know, a lot of programs now are, are cover crop programs, you know, minimum till no till conservation programs. We love those.

There’s nothing wrong with those, but in a rice situation that’s very difficult. There’s, there’s a lot of residue behind rice. You get a wet fall, you rut your fields up trying to get the rice out. I mean, you’ve got to do tillage. I mean, it’s, it’s either that or burn fields. I mean, that’s pretty much.

Options now, we do a lot of, of conservation efforts, uh, for waterfowl. We pretty, a lot of our rice, we flood back up at the end of the year, leave water on it, all winter comes duck and geese habitat. Uh, but then springtime now you’re in the situation where your ground’s been flooded. It’s extremely wet now.

You gotta have a month or so to get all that water off and dried up. So, uh, that’s, that’s the difference, the biggest difference to me in rice farming culture versus grow crop. Other, other culture is how we had to manage residue and, and get ready for the next year.

Todd Kuethe: And then, uh, again, trying to always contrast our experience in corn Belt in Midwest. Um, what are the sort of like. Inputs that you like, not like the, in, like how many people like, do, like, do you have like seed sales and crop protection and all the same sort of things, right? Uh, um, but like, sort of like how many different kind of businesses are you interact. With or entities, if that makes sense.

Trent Dabbs: So we usually about two companies that we deal with mainly on seed, um, that are large national companies. And then we have some, a couple companies that we, uh, deliver direct to us that we work with. Uh, kind of the same deal on chemicals. Um, okay. As far as application, I do all, we do as much of our own spraying, especially as we can.

We’ve got our own ground rig. Matter of fact, I got a drone that’s supposed to be here Tuesday, so I’m going to get into that.

Todd Kuethe: Nice.

Trent Dabbs: Uh, but then we use, and that’s the other difference on rice is once it’s flooded, we have to use an airplane. Yeah. Yeah. There, there’s no going out there with a ground rig or like I said,

Todd Kuethe: so is that something you like custom in, you pay somebody to come do the airplane right there.

Trent Dabbs: So there’s a couple services around here that have three or four planes each and, and they pretty much cover the whole area, uh, especially spraying and, and fertilizing. So

Todd Kuethe: when we first got here, I saw one and I was so. That was like the coolest, and then we just like every 20 minutes kept seeing him again.

Again. I was like, I guess it’s not special. It was special to me the first time I saw it, but I could see you guys being like, this dude’s a total tourist dude.

Trent Dabbs: So yeah, that, but kinda like Midwestern as far as chemical and seed. I mean, you got a couple, couple. Companies that we deal with and kind of same varieties.

We, we grow decal corn, we grow revere corn. That’s one of the varieties that uh, we get that bring us direct to us. And, uh,

Aaron Shew: are y’all mostly hybrid rice or,

Trent Dabbs: well, we varieties. We, for the past probably what, 10 plus years we have been, but we’ve kind of swapped. Come back and Yeah, we’ve, uh, we’re starting to, uh, grow some Donna Grove varieties.

Okay. Yeah. Um, and we’ve got a couple university varieties Ozark. Okay. A couple fields of that this year,

Terry Dabbs: you know, roec had turned with Seed Supply this year. Mm-hmm. So it forced us to go to some other varieties.

Todd Kuethe: And then, and then at Harvest you take it, and then do you mark it like through a co-op or how does that work?

Trent Dabbs: Yeah, most of our rice we do, we, there’s the two, I don’t know if they are the largest, but they are two of the largest rice mill in the world are about 10 miles from us in Stuttgart. You got producers, rice mill and Riceland foods. Uh, and we deliver to both those. And, uh, every now and then we will store some rice in our bins.

Just depends on the year and what’s going on, but. Mainly we put corn and, and some soybeans in our bins if we have to. Um, because we have a, a poultry plant that’s about 45 minutes from us that, uh, they take a large portion of the corn that’s grown around here.

Chad Fiechter: Is there a difference? Okay, so because there’s not a commodity in exchange for rice. So is it, how do you think about it for

Terry Dabbs: Mark is on the Chicago?

Aaron Shew: There is,

Chad Fiechter: it is. Okay. But it’s very small trade. Probably traded. Okay.

Terry Dabbs: There’s only like two companies that trade on the board, but it is listed on the board.

Chad Fiechter: So how do you do it, how do you market rice relative to your corn and soybeans? Like what are the different steps?

Is it the same or what do you do?

Trent Dabbs: No, the, the co-ops that we use have uh, two marketing options. One of ’em is called the pool option, which you just haul your, your rice, say, I wanna put it in the pool. They market it for you during the entire year. Mm-hmm. So about every two to three months they’ll mail you, mail you a check. Okay. And, uh, they do all the marketing.

They also have an option that if you want to sell it yourself, then you can call anytime you want to and say how I want, sell the rice today. Or you can, or you can call ’em and set a price on it and if it reaches that price, it sells. Uh, but that’s their two main marketing options.

Chad Fiechter: And what, what’s the, what’s the fundamental price they’re looking at like. The day to day changes are just what they’re seeing other people paying. What’s, how do they set that price?

Terry Dabbs: It’s a lot on what they call the world price. So things going on in India and Asia and Vietnam affect the rice price a lot more, uh, than say another crowd.

Todd Kuethe: Okay.

Terry Dabbs: So they’re, they’re having to watch things all over the world and, and they’re trying to sell rice from here all over the world.

Chad Fiechter: Gotcha.

Trent Dabbs: Really a on the global scale us Is Rice really a small player? Yeah. Uh, you know, you got China and India probably the two largest. Yeah. Rice growers in the world. A lot of Southeast Asian rice.

Uh, so yeah, we’re kind of a small player when it comes to it, but, uh,

Terry Dabbs: there’s only six states that rice. In the us. In the us yeah.

Todd Kuethe: And half of that comes from Arkansas. Over half. Over half. Oh, over. Man, come on. It’s, it’s grown over the course of a day. Don’t sell a short, I’m not gonna sell you short. No, I’m here.

I’m here to, yeah. Okay.

Chad Fiechter: Okay.

So Todd asked a really good question about what is the most underrated way to eat rice?

Trent Dabbs: Underrated.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Trent Dabbs: I mean,

Chad Fiechter: or how should we be eating it? Yeah. How should our listener eat rice?

Trent Dabbs: Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, well, you gotta put it with some gumbo. I mean, that’s okay. Here we go. Yeah. Cement, gumbo. I mean, I just like it plain with butter, but that’s just me. That’s,

Terry Dabbs: people eat it like potatoes. Yeah. Okay. Like you said, just put some butter,

Chad Fiechter: put some butter on it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Terry Dabbs: So people eat it for breakfast, put milk on it. Oh. So whatever you prefer.

Todd Kuethe: Okay. So, uh, this, I mean,

Terry Dabbs: it’s used in a lot in cooking in a lot of, you can make casserole with it, green bean rice casserole, hamburger, rice casserole. Uh, it can be used in that way.

Todd Kuethe: So this might be, uh, I might get in trouble back home for this one, but it seems like in Indiana. Farmers grow soybeans because of like economic or, or, uh, agronomic reasons, but they really want to grow corn, right? Mm-hmm. It’s like corn is what they really wanna do. So if, if you,

Chad Fiechter: I will confirm that’s true. Yeah. It was true for Chad and, well, I think like, its like the right, like it’s, it’s the, it’s the main event, right?

The

Todd Kuethe: combine’s

Chad Fiechter: more fun. Everything’s more fun. Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: So if you didn’t have to worry about the prices or costs because you grow several commodities, what would you grow? Would you grow rice? Or do you?

Trent Dabbs: No.

Todd Kuethe: Okay. So what would you grow if you, would you grow, if you didn’t have to worry about costs? Probably.

Trent Dabbs: It’s just like broke corner beans and be like, you guys go to the lake the rest of the year.

Todd Kuethe: Okay.

Chad Fiechter: Now we will get in trouble. Okay.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. All right.

Terry Dabbs: Like he said earlier, rice is very labor intensive. It is also very hard on your equipment. Yeah. It’s a very, very abrasive crop to grow. I mean, we can take a brand new combine and wear it out in three years.

Chad Fiechter: Oh, seriously?

Trent Dabbs: Yeah.

Terry Dabbs: Yes. I’m serious.

Trent Dabbs: Completely wore out. Completely wore out in three.

Chad Fiechter: So I look, that was one of the things I was interested in is like, what’s the machinery bottleneck? Where, where do you get hung up in the rice production system?

Trent Dabbs: Hmm. I mean, I probably combines because as far as planning and, and equipment like that, everything’s the same.

You know, we use an air drill John Deere air drill. Um, same thing. We, we plant soybeans with it too. So really not a hang up there. It’s just the, the wear and tear on the combines is our. Our toughest thing, like I said, I mean, it’s, it’s hard to spend. You gotta make that decision. Are you gonna spend 60, $70,000 every couple years on the combine or are you gonna trade it in, or, well, what’s your, everybody’s got a different idea and plan on that and situation.

So, and then do you need, we’re kind of in the, in the situation where, hey, if we get any bigger, we’re gonna have to have another combine, another grain cart, more trucks, more people. So do we want to expand? Do we. Want to just try to stay where we’re at and be, try to be as efficient and as good as we can where we’re at or, so it’s, it’s, it’s tough, tough decisions.

Aaron Shew: You like pulling levies?

Trent Dabbs: No,

Terry Dabbs: in, in rice you gotta, uh, be in the field every day. ’cause you got a constant flood on it. And you gotta check that water. Things happen, uh, to your levees. Muskrat cuts a hole in it, and that levee’s dry and you get there in the morning, you gotta fix that, get water back on that levee.

So it’s nothing like growing corn, soybeans. I mean, we hear you guys plant corn and soybeans and then you go play softball all summer or something, and you come back and harvest it. We don’t get to do that.

Chad Fiechter: No, no comment.

Trent Dabbs: Yeah, he’s, he’s right.

You know, sometimes people. When we say you flood rice, it’s not flood like a lot of people think we’re trying to hold like a four inch depth of water.

Yeah. So, but you know, I mean, we’re standing here today, it’s probably 90 plus degrees and about, feels like about 80% humidity and that water doesn’t allow, you know, three, four or five days you’re back pumping across it, trying to get it pumped back up. Yeah. And, and we, we keep that flood, that, that is our weed control and dry once it, once we get it sprayed and it gets established.

That’s our weed control. Uh, that flood keeps any other weeds from coming up. So we let the water go down, which we do. There’s, there’s some new, um, studies and things that we do, a process called alternate wetting and drying. So we will flood it, let it get muddy, not completely dry, and then pump it back up.

Yeah. So it’s, and it’s working. Um, and that’s all for water conservation, just Sure. Trying to do everything we do to, since our groundwater situation to conserve.

Aaron Shew: I was gonna ask ’cause. You’re not pumping 400 feet down. Right. So you’re using all surface water. So where do you have a reservoir?

Trent Dabbs: We do. Okay.

You got a reservoir? They’re back, back to the west here. We’ve got, and it is probably, we probably got total about 350, 400 acres worth of reservoirs. Wow. And they’re not super deep. I mean, they’re, uh, like the one back here is probably what the,

Terry Dabbs: probably eight to 10 foot on one side.

Trent Dabbs: But it was originally built what, in the forties and fifties?

Terry Dabbs: Thirties and forties.

Trent Dabbs: Wow. So it’s been there long time. And there’s a bow. It runs right behind it. So during the winter you can fill it up. We fill it up and then during the summer we pump it down. So we, uh, that was one of the things when, and he mentioned we’ve got our family’s side farm about seven, eight miles west of here, water table’s 35 feet.

Whoa. We’re 400 here. Yeah. Wow. So when we came out here and started farming, we had to almost totally reset our whole mindset. Yeah, yeah. Because it was different. It was like an alien planet. I mean, it was totally different. The first year or two, we farmed, we ran outta water. Um, because we were, I mean, well, what happened?

The soybeans suffered because rice was our cash crop, and we already had all our inputs in it. We had to finish it. Right? So we made the decision, Hey, we’re gonna pump water under. Rice and keep it flooded. The beans are just going to, we’re just going to pray for rain. And there for a couple years we made some 25, 30 bushel beans.

And, uh, yeah. So we, we had to totally change our mindset and become better conservationists, better farmers to mm-hmm. Manage this farm.

Todd Kuethe: So Chad, uh. As we mentioned earlier, uh, used to farm before he became a professor. Uh, and he sort of misses it sometimes. Uh, and so we’ve been here the whole time. He is been talking about like, oh, I miss, miss about farming.

Uh, but the one thing is he seems to be afraid of a lot of things you have here, like ticks and snakes and alligators, mosquitoes and mosquito.

Chad Fiechter: I, I will, I will affirm all those things.

Todd Kuethe: Do you have a good, uh, like, uh, thing about nature that was scary, that to scare Chad? That’s all. I just want. Chad to be, I want Chad.

Dad, what is your most scar uh, terrifying experience with one of the animals he’s just commented on.

Trent Dabbs: So, uh, I was gonna say which one you wanna talk about. Yeah, just this other one will scare Chad the most. So when you’re, we were out outputting, uh, in, in the rice field you have a levee where you cut a hole in it and you put especially like a little piece of tarp to let the water flow through.

And then we put a, um, we call ’em mage. It’s basic piece of rebar with two legs on it. And that’s how we set the level of the water in the field.

Todd Kuethe: Okay.

Trent Dabbs: Well. Little critters like to live under those levy gates. And when you go out there to pull that gate back and stick that rod under, there’s usually a cotton mouth or something like that under, and you had to fight it.

And, and uh,

Chad Fiechter: can you, can you explain, ’cause like Aaron was saying, cotton mouths are, uh, they’re not passive. They are aggressive.

Todd Kuethe: Like they come after you.

Trent Dabbs: They come after you. Yes. They, uh. Yeah, so usually you don’t ever stick your hand down and pull that gate back. Use your shovel. That’s my key for the day.

Use the shovel. Use the shovel first. ’cause he’s sitting there waiting on you. Yep. Yeah, I like short disease or something. We, uh, we’ve also, recently we had, uh, what was it, about a 12 foot gator in the reservoir. Well, foot. Oh man. I got pictures of him. He’s pretty good size. Yeah. During the gator season. So we, we have a gator season here and they got a permit.

Chad Fiechter: No way. Yeah, he was large. 12 feet is a That’s huge. That’s cost. I mean, that’s like people,

Trent Dabbs: people used to come bring their dogs to train for duck season and uh, I told ’em, I said, Hey guys, y’all might not wanna do that. Yeah, sure enough. Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: Okay. So then, uh, Aaron Olson have been saying that that duck hunting’s a thing.

So do you, can you use any of the fields you guys have to make money off of duck hunting?

Trent Dabbs: Yeah, we, we flood, I’d say probably 75 plus percent of our rice acres back up. Uh, and rent it all that way. Have a. Guy, local guy that guides and takes people hunting and he, he rents it for the year. And, uh, so yeah, it’s, it’s a big deal.

That’s, that’s a big money maker around here during, uh, yeah. This, we don’t even go out to eat in Stuttgart during duck season. ’cause it’s just, just crazy. Yeah. It’s, it is. Yeah.

Aaron Shew: Where is the place to go?

Trent Dabbs: Do you want, what do you want? Burger. You gotta go to Sportsman’s. Get a burger.

Todd Kuethe: Okay. Yeah,

Chad Fiechter: I think that’s their plan.

Right? I feel like outside of talking to farmers, uh, our, our goal has been. Food oriented thought.

Terry Dabbs: So one new restaurant, I say new, it’s what, three years old? Yeah, open season’s. The name of it. Okay. That’s pretty nice. Okay. Yeah, I think a lot of, A lot Mexican.

Todd Kuethe: So a lot of hunting themed restaurants here. I know.

I like it. Open season, the sportsman.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah. I have, I have, my last serious question is, so if I, if I wanted to assimilate into the culture and walk onto your farm and you think that guy’s from the Delta, what do I need to be, what do I need to change about my current outfit to fit in? And or haircut. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Trent Dabbs: Yeah. No, black black’s bad. Okay. Alright. All wear black shirt. Okay. Yeah, it’s hot. Uh, you gotta get some hip boots, man. Yeah. Some what? Some hip boots. Hip boots? Yeah. They little hip boots arm. No. So if you’re gonna walker a rice field, you gotta have hip boots. So I, I, I bought ’em some rubber boots from Walmart.

Uh, but yeah, hip boot, same thing. But, so basically it’s a all, it’s a knee boot, but then they pull, come up here and hook to your belt. So then you got full coverage in case that cotton mouth gets after you. Oh yeah.

Chad Fiechter: See? That’s what I was thinking, that it was, it was wildlife related. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So that’s it.

I need hip boots and just a, a light colored shirt.

Trent Dabbs: You a light colored shirt and you gotta get a wide broom hat and shovel. Yeah. And a shovel and a, a shovel pair. Shovel on the shovel. Yeah. And is the shovel Okay. The shovels for the gates plus snakes, plus the fights. So how much is the, okay. All right.

It’s 50 50. Is it 50 50?

Todd Kuethe: So I, I, I can’t comment whether or not. Farmers in Indiana are playing softball, summer, or playing basketball. Yeah. Or water skiing. Uh, but I can say with pretty strong confidence, not a lot of snake fighting happen.

Chad Fiechter: No, we don’t fight snakes. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, competition from me for farmland, I can promise you I’m not coming.

Yeah.

Trent Dabbs: Not many are, see, unless you’re a doctor or lawyer, then, then they want it for duck hunting. But, uh, yeah. Yeah. So.

Chad Fiechter: All right. Thanks guys.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. Thank you so much.

Chad Fiechter: If you’re finding value in this series – we had a lot of fun making it, but hopefully it’s good for you – make sure you subscribe to the Purdue Commercial AgCast so you don’t miss out on what’s coming next, including our regular Ag Economy Barometer insights and future conversations like this one.

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