Family, faith, farmer. Macro, cover crops, soils. Just trying to navigate the chaos happening in the world, and what it's going to affect today and tomorrow.
Wisconsin, USA
Joined November 2018
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This is now my policy platform.
New energy is needed and youth is required to stave off the entropy of our sclerotic agriculture system.
Adam Lasch retweeted
Elders: your wisdom is entirely useless if it remains locked in your skull.
You complain that the next generation has no work ethic, but you never took the time to disciple a single apprentice.
You took your skills, your vendor contacts, and your financial acumen to your grave like a hoarder with gold coins.
Pour out what God taught you into three younger men before you step out of the seat.
Transfer the wisdom, the knowledge, the trade.
Adam Lasch retweeted
I bought a grain merchandising facility and feed mill 5 years ago. Just got rid of our license this year. As an owner operator the bar is so low to make any money every year cost go up and the largest coops are lowering the bar by hiring H2A and lobbying for more regulation increasing licensing requirements. $20,000 increase in fees for small operators is all the profits some years. These facilities are needed here but the prices are being held down by outfits that can just hire foreign workers rather than charge what they need to to pay living wages and easily wall out new entrants. We’re just renting the bins out now.
Adam Lasch retweeted
DC needs to stop with the presumption that America's farmers and ranchers should be in unfettered price competition with the rest of the planet for their own home market 👇
6 years ago, a group of sheep producers reached out after the closing of a major US packing plant. At that time I sent a letter to former Vice President Mike Pence outlining the situation and asking for intervention. Cheap meat from other countries caused the lost revenue...in turn the shuttering of the plant.
3 years ago, again a group of us producers got together to make another run at this cheap imported meat. Hundreds of calls and thousands of hours later.... Yesterday was a culmination of the last 6 years.
We spent all day in a hearing room at the International Trade Commission in Washington DC. Making our arguments. 13 countries plus the EU filed to oppose the US Sheep Producers in our plea to slow the flow of this cheap product that is damaging our food supply.
Sheep ranchers from across the country on one side of the room.... and dozens of high priced attorneys, forign officials, Ivy league economists and corporate CEOs on the other.....
In 1999, 30% of the lamb in the US came from imports. Today, 79% of the lamb consumed in the US comes from imports.
The argument was injury.... how much forign pressure on a market constitutes injury to an industry. 20%, 30%, 50%, 79%..... When does injury begin.
I will say the case went well we believe.... but that said. I had a stunning realization as we say there....
US farmers and Ranchers.... sitting in a room.... full of folks from other countries.... arguing over who gets access to OUR own market first! For far too long our trade policy has been.... make sure Americans get "a fair shake" at their own market. Instead of America First and forign imports can fill whats left. This is the trade policy we want to see and the only safe future for our country. A country that canot feed itself, can't stay a sovereign nation. Food security is national security and we had better start giving it the attention it deserves.
Adam Lasch retweeted
When older wisdom and younger vigor operate in lockstep, risk collapses.
The young man prevents the business from slipping into technical obsolescence and operational decay.
The old man prevents the business from over-leveraging into speculative traps and foolish partnerships.
Together, they form a perfect counterbalance of throttle and brake.
A train with only an engine derails; a train with only brakes rusts on the track.
You need both generations in the cab.
Think about this in regards to rural America of the last few decades.
It's paramount we restore our human capital.
Had a thought yesterday. "Resource poor" is the problem a country like Angola rich in resources ends up destitute because they don't focus on developing human capital. Reading a book extending that to the US with the idea of being "finance poor" where moving money distracts us from developing human capital to actually create wealth. The epiphany: "Digital poor" is developing the digital world (AI) at the expense of developing our human capital. Same outcome.
Adam Lasch retweeted
My biggest gripe about ethanol isn’t even the economics of it. It's that we keep millions of acres of marginal ground in corn to make fuel. The price is nitrates in our water, lost topsoil, and lost habitat. Those acres would do more good as grass, pasture, or wildlife habitat.
Adam Lasch retweeted
All the older successful farmers at the coffee shop who say “it was tough but buying that farm was the best thing I ever did” remind me of this diagram.
You only hear from the ones who made it. You don’t hear from the one who committed suicide in the barn after he couldn’t make a payment. Or the one who added so much stress to his life his marriage crumbled. Or the one who not only lost the newly purchased farm, but also dad’s original quarter.
Planning on future inflation, and more “good times ahead” is nothing but pure speculation.
Farmland prices have nothing to do with the lands actual production value. It’s all propped up by crop insurance, speculation, ethanolc etc. I think at some point this bubble pops. The board needs a reset
It just kinda hit me that I've owned this for 25 years.......whoa, where'd the time go!
I'm feeling like that guy with the roll of wire right now.
I bought this grinder for $1k as a 16 year old kid in 2001 from an old farmer who hadn't used it in decades.
I wish I had a penny for every pound of feed its ever mixed.
Everyone says own assets or be left behind.
Nobody talks about what happens when confidence craters month after month, & hope in the future falls away.
The top part of the K requires the lower part to survive. When hope is lost, a burn it down attitude of malaise takes root.
Inflation is RED hot in the US.
For anyone not keeping track, US CPI inflation is now nearly double the Fed's 2% target and US PPI Inflation is more than triple that target.
PPI inflation was expected to fall in August, but instead it surged to 6.3%, its second highest level in 4 years.
And, month-over-month Headline PPI inflation surged +1.3%, more than doubling the +0.6% expected and the second largest jump since March 2021.
Meanwhile, month-over-month Core PPI inflation came in +133% above expectations.
The prices Americans are seeing now will look cheap in 12 to 24 months.
All you can do is own assets.
Elder men who can gain the loyalty of the younger men, through true leadership, will be a dynamic driving force in the future.
To many make demands and offer little in return.
The individualistic nature of our culture has glorified "the self made man" and it cost us dearly.
Men need to become leaders, mentors, and patriarchs, not slave drivers.
Inspire them, teach them, show them how, pour into them and give them your ear, show an interest in their wellbeing, and build them up through regular time spent side by side pushing/building/fighting for a common objective and vision.
Adam Lasch retweeted
You saved six percent on your framing crew by hiring imported, off-the-books labor instead of the local young men in your county.
Congratulations on your gross margin.
In exchange, you ensured that the twenty-two-year-old boys sitting in the pews behind you can’t earn an honest wage, can’t afford to buy a modest starter home, and can’t afford to marry.
You literally sold out the next generation of American families so you could pocket a marginally larger distribution.
Hire the sons of your own soil. Pay them a living wage.
I bought this grinder for $1k as a 16 year old kid in 2001 from an old farmer who hadn't used it in decades.
I wish I had a penny for every pound of feed its ever mixed.
