Cost of Production

Trump Warns Fertilizer Giants Against "Price Gouging" as Costs Soar 40%

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:46:54 GMT

Fertilizer market volatility is once again taking center stage as geopolitical tensions disrupt global supply lines and push input costs sharply higher. New analysis shows the increase in fertilizer prices may not be over, even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens soon.

Even with the situation in Iran pushing prices even higher, the sharp increase in fertilizer prices from 2020 to now is catching attention in Washington. Not only did President Donald Trump take to social media to warn of ‘price gouging,’ but Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins also posted on X Monday, specifically expressing frustration over Mosaic’s response to farmers.

While Rollins and USDA Under Secretary Stephen Vaden have raised concerns over fertilizer prices this year, the president posted on Truth Social over the weekend that he is closely monitoring fertilizer prices and pledged support for American farmers.

Trump said Saturday on his Truth Social platform he is “watching fertilizer prices CLOSELY” during what he described as the US “FIGHT FOR FREEDOM in Iran”, adding that the administration “will not accept PRICE GOUGING from the fertilizer monopoly”.

On Monday, Rollins posted on X, saying she was “So disappointed in this response” from Mosaic, “especially as you decide to idle two fertilizer production facilities, removing 1 MMT of supply from the world market.”

So disappointed in this response, @MosaicCompany, especially as you decide to idle two fertilizer production facilities, removing 1 MMT of supply from the world market. 🚨

Our Great President and this Administration have our farmers' backs. 💪🌾

Any sleight of hand will not be… https://t.co/GTCxcBQNgi
— Secretary Brooke Rollins (@SecRollins) April 13, 2026

Mosaic announced last week the decision to shut down major phosphate operations in Brazil, a move the that will cut production, reduce jobs, and signal a *strategic shift in how the fertilizer giant deploys its capital.

Mosaic Company announced Thursday it will idle two phosphate facilities in Brazil as part of a broader effort to cut costs and shift capital. Mosaic expects idling of the facilities to reduce annual phosphate production by approximately 1 million tonnes. CEO Bruce Bodine says the decision reflects what he calls a disciplined focus on long-term returns.

.@MosaicCompany, you’re right that U.S. farmers are facing a difficult economic situation, only made worse by the extra $6.9 BILLION they have had to spend on fertilizer since you petitioned the government to place duties on imported phosphorus. This has played a major role in… https://t.co/UuOqjE0jBu
— National Corn (NCGA) (@NationalCorn) April 13, 2026

Mosaic and Simplot have also been in the cross hairs of the push to remove countervailing duties on Moroccan phosphate . Groups like the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) claim the CVDs are costing U.S. agriculture $1 billion each year.

The CVDs on Moroccan phosphate were put into place by the International Trade Commission (ITC) in 2021. As the sunset review begins, more than 50 state grower groups including the Texas Corn Producers Association, sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Commerce and the ITC to revoke the countervailing duties on imported phosphate fertilizers from Morocco and Russia.

In separate filings by Mosaic and Simplot to the ITC and the Department of Commerce, both companies said the continuation is necessary to maintain a “level playing field.”

In a written response to Farm Journal, Mosaic said:

“American farmers depend on a strong domestic fertilizer industry, which in turn depends on strong enforcement of U.S. trade laws that ensure a level playing field. Mosaic is proud to support U.S. agriculture with high-quality, reliable products produced here at home.”

Iran War’s Current Impact on Fertilizer Prices

The message from the Trump adminstration comes as tensions escalate in the Strait of Hormuz, where the United States is weighing a potential full naval blockade. Ship traffic through the critical waterway has already dropped from roughly 135 vessels per day to the single digits. A complete shutdown could halt flows entirely, further increasing fertilizer prices.

The stakes are high as roughly one-third of global fertilizer shipments move through the strait, and the disruption is already sending prices higher, up more than 40% compared to a year ago.

It is the 6-week anniversary of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Fert price comparisons:

NOLA urea - +$230 or 49%
NOLA UAN - +$145 or 38%
Midwest NH3 - +$245 or 32%
NOLA DAP - +$130 or 21%
NOLA potash - +$10 or 3%

...corn - 2-cents or 0.5% higher#sickeningforfarmers
— Josh Linville (@JLinvilleFert) April 10, 2026

Market data shows the impact Iran is having on already high fertilizer prices. According to StoneX analyst Josh Linville says in the six weeks since the war started:

Urea prices have surged by $230 per ton, a 49% increase
UAN is up $145 per ton, or 38%
Anhydrous ammonia has climbed $245 per ton, a 32% jump.
In contrast, corn prices have barely responded, rising just two cents, or about half a percent. The divergence is putting additional pressure on farm margins.

DOJ Probe Into Fertilizer Costs Seeks Input From Farmers

The Trump administration is asking farmers to help provide information as part of an ongoing U.S. Department of Justice investigation into elevated costs for fertilizer, machinery and other key agricultural inputs, according to reporting from Bloomberg.

Bloomberg reported the effort is aimed at gathering more on-the-ground data as regulators examine whether fertilizer producers may have coordinated to raise prices. The DOJ investigation was first reported in early March, when Bloomberg said federal officials had begun looking into whether fertilizer companies engaged in price coordination.

According to the Bloomberg report, Vaden said he has already met with officials at both the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to discuss potential lines of inquiry. He also noted that farmers could play a key role in the process.

Vaden said farmers “have a lot of information that might be relevant to these investigations.”

Bloomberg previously reported in early March that the Department of Justice is investigating whether fertilizer producers colluded to increase prices.

Speaking at the North American Agricultural Journalists’ annual conference in Washington on Monday, Vaden encouraged farmer participation in the probe, emphasizing confidentiality protections.

“We need farmers to help provide us with that information on a confidential basis, so that that can help inform the investigations that are ongoing,” Vaden said, according to Bloomberg. “I think we will have a mechanism in order to help encourage that exchange of information.”

NCGA Surveys Show Not All Farmers Have Fertilizer Secured for 2026

Against that backdrop, along with fertilizer prices climbing even higher in the six weeks after the conflict started with Iran, new surveys results from NCGA highlight how those market pressures are translating to on-farm realities.

Krista Swanson, chief economist for NCGA, says the organization conducted the survey to better understand fertilizer availability from the farmer perspective. Ag Secretary Rollins has told mainstream media that 80% of farmers have fertilizer locked in for 2026, but NCGA data contradicts that figure.

“We’re hearing that number being thrown around too, which is why we really wanted to find out directly from farmers what the status is for them,” Swanson says.

NCGA Grower Survey

(National Corn Growers Association (NCGA))

A Significant Gap in Fertilizer Readiness

The surveys show that only 60% of farmers report having their nitrogen fully purchased or secured for the 2026 growing season, while 64% say the same for phosphate. That leaves a sizable portion of producers still working to lock in supplies.

“When you think about over 500,000 corn farmers in the U.S., this isn’t a small number,” Swanson says. “Our survey results indicate that over 200,000 farmers still need at least some fertilizer for this year.”

Nitrogen remains a critical input for corn production and is closely tied to yield potential. Any shortfall, whether driven by availability or cost, can directly affect productivity and profitability.

NCGA Grower Surveys

(National Corn Growers Association (NCGA))

Younger Farmers Feeling the Pressure Most

The survey also points to uneven impacts across the farm sector, with younger farmers facing greater challenges in securing fertilizer.

Swanson says younger producers reported having more nitrogen left to purchase compared to older farmers.

“You think about younger farmers that have less capital already built up in their business, maybe tighter cash flow needs because of their equity position,” she says. “This does seem to have a disproportional impact on younger farmers.”

That dynamic raises concerns about financial strain among newer operations in a high-cost environment.

Corn Acres Likely Stable, But With Reduced Inputs

Despite the challenges, most farmers are not planning to reduce corn acreage. The survey found that 80% of respondents expect to maintain their planned acres.

NCGA Grower Survey

(National Corn Growers Association (NCGA))

At the same time, fertilizer application rates may fall short. Half of the farmers surveyed say they do not expect to apply their full amount of fertilizer.

“Pairing these two together, it seems to me like we are still going to see a lot of corn acres get planted,” Swanson says. “But those corn acres will have less fertilizer than maybe what they would have otherwise had.”

That combination could limit yield potential if input reductions become widespread.

Growing Concern Shifts to 2027

While fertilizer availability remains a concern for 2026, attention is already turning to the next crop year. Fertilizer purchasing follows a rolling cycle, and planning for 2027 will begin soon.

Survey responses show that for every one farmer more concerned about fertilizer price and availability for 2026, nearly two are more concerned about 2027.

NCGA Grower Survey

(National Corn Growers Association (NCGA))

“So farmers are concerned as we look ahead to next year,” Swanson says.

The shift reflects uncertainty about how long supply disruptions and elevated prices will persist.

Supply Chain Recovery May Take Time

Even if geopolitical tensions ease, relief may not come quickly. Swanson notes that the fertilizer market is still dealing with production disruptions and supply chain backlogs.

“A short-term ceasefire has limited immediate impact on this ongoing fertilizer crisis for farmers,” she says. “Even when a permanent end to the situation is reached, we’re still looking at recovery from supply chain backlogs and halted production that could take a long time to recover from.”

Damage to key inputs such as liquid natural gas and sulfur production could take years to repair, keeping pressure on supply.

A Tightening Outlook

The NCGA survey underscores a challenging environment for corn producers. Most acres are expected to be planted this year, but not all will receive optimal fertilizer applications. At the same time, concern is building for 2027 as farmers look ahead to the next purchasing cycle.

For many producers, the issue is no longer just securing fertilizer for this season. It is navigating a period of sustained uncertainty that could shape production decisions, costs, and risk management strategies across the U.S. corn sector.

Longstanding Concerns Over Market Concentration

In September 2025, USDA and the U.S. Department of Justice signed a Memorandum of Understanding, committing both agencies to jointly examine high and volatile input costs, which included fertilizer, by scrutinizing competitive conditions in agricultural markets and enforcing antitrust laws, particularly around price setting and market concentration.

While geopolitical tensions are the latest driver of volatility, many farm groups argue the root of the problem runs deeper. Matt Perdue, president of the North Dakota Farmers Union, says ongoing federal investigations into fertilizer pricing must lead to meaningful action.

“We appreciate the administration’s investigations into input costs,” Perdue says. “But investigations don’t do anything if they’re not followed by enforcement, and they don’t do anything if we don’t learn what came out of those investigations.”

Groups like the Texas Corn Producers Association have been raising concerns about fertilizer market concentration for years. Texas farmer Dee Vaughan says the organization began studying the issue in 2020, working with the Agricultural and Food Policy Center at Texas A&M to examine pricing trends.

“We’ve been very concerned about all of our input costs, but specifically fertilizer, because it’s the one that just keeps going up almost exponentially,” Vaughan says.

He adds those studies found a shift in how fertilizer prices are determined . Historically tied closely to natural gas costs, the study found nitrogen fertilizer pricing began tracking corn prices more closely after 2010, a change Vaughan says reflects deeper structural issues.

According to Vaughan, the small number of firms controlling the market have the data and market awareness to price inputs based on farmers’ revenue potential, rather than production costs.

“They all have economists on staff,” Vaughan says. “They know exactly what our costs are, what our income is, and they’re able to extract value based on what they see as the gross income of a farmer. It’s not based on cost of production any longer.”

The New Ag Economy: Why This Downturn is a Structural Shift, Not Just a Cycle

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 21:22:18 GMT

What You Need to Know:

Structural Evolution: This downturn is a permanent market shift, not just a temporary cycle.
Friend-Shoring: Trade is moving toward geopolitical allies to ensure supply chain resilience.
Aggressive Cost-Cutting: Farmers are doubling generic input use and delaying machinery purchases to protect margins.
Financial Resilience: Better management and working capital make today far more stable than the 1980s.
Premium Protein Demand: GLP-1 medications are driving consumers toward smaller, higher-quality meat portions

As the industry enters the third year of this downturn, farmers and agribusinesses are questioning if a recovery is on the two-year horizon. While cyclical behavior is normal, two economists suggest the structural evolution within crop protection, machinery, technology, livestock and other individual sectors is creating a different kind of staying power for those who survive the recovery.

The Evolution of the Cycle

When characterizing the current economic cycle in agriculture, historical patterns provide a necessary baseline, yet the present landscape is defined by unique pressures. Typical agricultural cycles consist of roughly six years of expansion followed by four years of decline. Currently, the market is navigating a “corrective period,” returning to long-run averages.

The drivers of growth are typically demand shocks — export surges, fuel demand or policy shifts such as the Renewable Fuel Standard. However, Wes Davis, ag economist at Meridian Ag Advisors, notes the current environment is an intersection of traditional contraction and sector-specific evolution.

“What I think we’re experiencing right now is that typical cycle behavior where we see growth in some business firms, and then some contraction and pullback to adjust to the cycle going back to more of the long-run average,” Davis explains. “I think we’re also seeing evolution of individual sectors within the market where there’s adjustments happening because of the industry itself.”

In other words, this isn’t just a cycle — it’s also a structural shift.

Change Fatigue and Modern Volatility

Farmers aren’t strangers to volatility, but global trade disruptions, policy shifts and rising competition, especially from Brazil, are layering uncertainty onto already volatile markets.
Farmers are grappling with “change fatigue,” a byproduct of the high velocity of information and extreme price swings that dwarf the relative stability of the early 2000s.

“When I go talk to any industry group right now, the phrase that I hear is ‘change fatigue’, and I feel that. Every couple minutes, something shifts,” says Trey Malone, Purdue University ag econ professor. “But to be clear, it’s not that the farm economy isn’t used to volatility, it’s just the uncertainty and the volatility now is, like, ‘hold my beer relative’ to the old volatility.”

Malone attributes this to layers of uncertainty created by global trade and policy. The rise of Brazilian production, coinciding with the disruption of U.S.-China trade relations, has created a permanent state of flux. This sentiment is reflected in the Purdue Ag Economy Barometer, which shares a higher correlation with the Small Business Index (.5) than with actual commodity prices. This suggests farmers view themselves primarily as small business owners facing broad economic pressures rather than just price-takers.

“We don’t see very strong correlations even with lagged soybean prices and corn prices,” Malone notes. “The world is more complicated than just looking at what happened in the market yesterday and gauging how farmers feel.”

Global Competitiveness and the Trade Reallocation

A primary concern for U.S. producers is their position as low-cost providers. While the U.S. maintains an infrastructure advantage that lowers the cost of getting products to export ports, Brazil continues to close the gap.

“It’s a fair question farmers ask a lot: Are we actually the ones who are the low-cost producers, and do we still have a place in the global market if Brazil continues to lower the cost of production and transport their grain to export terminals?” Davis asks.

However, Davis points out that global trade hasn’t shut off; it has reallocated. Only three global regions — North America, Latin America and parts of Southeastern Europe/Central Asia — are net exporters. The rest of the world remains net importers.

“While our trade has kind of shifted around ... that shift has really reallocated stuff in different places. Those calories and products end up going somewhere. It’s just a question of where,” he says.

The Shift to “Friend-Shoring” and Resilient Supply Chains

The industry is moving from “just-in-time” (hyper-lean) procurement to “just-in-case” (inventory-heavy) strategies, a lesson reinforced by the pandemic. This shift is accompanied by “friend-shoring,” where the U.S. prioritizes trade with geopolitical allies.

“We’ve gone from offshoring to onshoring to nearshoring to friendshoring,” Malone explains. “We’ve got a paper that’ll be coming out ... where we document friend-shoring in ag and food supply chains. Over the last 10 years, there’s been a shift where we mostly in the U.S. trade with other people who vote like us in the WTO. That’s kind of one way to measure friends.”

This resilience is also visible in crop protection. In 2019, 80% of active ingredients were sourced from China. Today, that is closer to 60%, with manufacturing shifting to India and domestic sites. Davis calls these “geopolitically resilient” supply chains.

The Rise of Generics and Decision Paralysis

The economic downturn is fundamentally changing the business model for input providers. Farmers are aggressively cutting costs, leading to a massive surge in generic usage.

“The latest survey I saw shows about 60% of farmers use generics today. That was about 30% to 40% just 5 years ago,” Davis says. This forces companies to pivot from differentiation to operational volume.

In the machinery sector, high costs and economic uncertainty have led to “decision paralysis.” Farmers are extending the life of their equipment, treating machinery replacement as the most controllable variable in managing annual ROI. Davis notes the U.S. ag equipment cycle is currently 15 to 20 percentage points lower than typical low points, driven by this hesitation. Furthermore, there is significant skepticism toward subscription-based technology models.

“Farmers don’t terribly love this idea, and I think the other interesting thought here is I’m not sure that retailers like selling them either,” Malone adds.

AI: The “Undergraduate Intern”

While artificial intelligence (AI) is a major talking point, its current role in agriculture is more supportive than transformative. Malone views AI as a “highly capable undergraduate intern” — useful for processing information but incapable of replacing the trust and risk management provided by human advisors.

“I don’t think you need to be replacing your agronomist. I think your mediocre agronomist just got OK,” Malone says, noting while LLMs can pass CCA exams, they cannot manage the risk of a wrong decision. “The risk management value proposition of an in-person Claude, or whoever, is probably going to win out because there’s still a risk.”

Currently, the adoption gap is wide: While 75% of agribusiness managers see potential in AI, only 4% have implemented it, according to a Purdue University survey in 2025.

Livestock and the GLP-1 Impact

The livestock sector is facing a unique demand shift driven by weight-loss medications (GLP-1s). This is leading to “premiumization.” As consumers eat smaller portions, they are opting for higher-quality cuts.

“The explosion in demand for protein is just shocking,” Malone says. “What GLP-1s do to that calorie count is they are all shifting toward premium cuts. You don’t care how much it costs because you’re only going to have seven bites of it. But you’re going to have a steak. That premiumization is going to really, really take off in the next 10 years.”

Conversely, the hype surrounding “fake meat” has largely faded, proving to be more of an investor-led phenomenon than a market-driven one.

Financial Stability: Not the 1980s

Despite the downturn, the financial health of the American farmer remains more stable than during the crisis of the 1980s. Currently, 10% to 12% of farmers are in a “tight” financial position , compared to 20% to 30% in the 80s.

“We do have a completely different, more professional ag workforce than we did back then,” Malone says. “The farm policy we have right now does not necessarily match what we need for the future, but all of these things make me think we’re in a much more stable position.”

Farmers have built-in “shock absorbers,” Davis adds, including off-farm income and working capital built up during the expansion years. However, in his research Davis has seen how alternative financing is becoming a major tool for the 50% of farmers who use it — either to manage stress or, for larger operations, to leverage relationships with retailers.

Strategic Reassessment: Winning at the Bottom

The experts agree the “bottom of the cycle” is the time for professionalization and upskilling. Surviving — and thriving — will require sharper management. It is an opportunity to reassess farm transitions and management disciplines, such as financial management, accounting and planning, which become critical in tight margins.

“Farmers are going to have to get smarter and get more creative with how they manage,” Malone says. “This is a good opportunity to take a step back and think about what the strategy needs to be moving forward.”

Davis emphasizes relationships are solidified during these periods: “Farmers are going to remember the folks who were around when they were in the bottom of the cycle, and who were there to support them. The best farmers will continue to get better ... I get excited about what we can look like as we come out of this cycle.”

So Is This Ag Cycle Different?

These experts say yes as every cycle presents its own unique reshaping of future opportunities.

To download the full report on why this ag cycle is different and what it means for your operation, click here .

What's Happening In The Land Market? Your Regional Breakdown

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 18:41:34 GMT

A new report from Farmers National Company (FNC) shows land values have remained relatively stable in the Midwest, with two types of buyers largely driving demand.

“There are many factors for buyer motivation, but much of it can be explained by mindset translating to demand,” said Paul Schadegg, senior vice president of real estate operations at Farmers National Company. “Farm operators continue to be the primary buyers of ag land. Their mindset or motivation revolves around reinvesting in their farm enterprise, expanding operations, and utilizing today’s farm equipment fully. Location of land offered for sale also plays a large role in their decision making, as often this land has not changed hands for generations and once sold, may not be sold again.”

FNC predicts farmers will remain the primary land buyer in 2025. The second largest buyer is investors, who Schadegg says are driven by a completely different motivation.

“There is virtually no emotional motivation, as buying decisions are based on return on investment or anticipated appreciation of land value,” Schadegg says. “Many land investors have not experienced the rise and fall of agriculture cycles but fully appreciate the long-term value of land. As pressures on the ag economy increase, investors stand ready to bid on land that fits their investment criteria.”

With farmland’s long-term appreciation and annual return on investment, there are currently more buyers than sellers out there. The company reports land listings are down across the industry, on average, 25% from the active and accelerating value market experienced between 2020-2023.

Regionally, this looks like:

Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky:
Sales have decreased in this area compared to the previous three years. Jay VanGorden, area sales manager for the east region, says land values have seen minimal price drops for highly tillable and quality soil-type farms in most areas, but farms with lower-quality soils, lower tillable percentages, and poorer drainage have dropped off more significantly.
Illinois and Wisconsin:
Land sale values have increased in some parts of this region. Nate Zimmer, area sales manager for the east-central region, says record-breaking sales aren’t as common as they were though, and no-sales are popping up more - a sign seller and buyer expectations are not in alignment. Zimmer adds the method of listing is shifting more toward private treaty as well.
Iowa and Southern Minnesota:
Average land values have dropped 5% to 10% in the past year in Iowa and southern Minnesota. Thomas Schutter, area sales manager for this region, says alternative sale methods have become more common here, particularly for lower-quality farms. While higher-quality farms are still predominantly sold through auctions, there has been an increase in the use of traditional listings and sealed bids for marketing farmland in some areas.
Kansas, Eastern Colorado, Western Missouri:
Values have fallen in some areas of the south-central region, such as in southwest Kansas due to water availability. But other areas are still fetching top dollar for high-quality cropland and recreation properties, according to area sales manager Steve Morgan.
Western Nebraska, Northwest Kansas, Northeastern Colorado:
Cole Nickerson, area sales manager for the western region, says neighborhood demand and land quality are the primary drivers in the western region. Land values have remained high in regions with strong cattle production, high-quality irrigated and productive dryland farms and quality grassland. He adds economic challenges in the corn and soybean markets have made farmland more difficult to sell in areas dominated by row crop production.
Eastern Nebraska and Western Iowa:
Chanda Scheuring, area sales manager for the west-central region, has seen the buyer-pool in this area shrinking. She shares buyers, both local farmers and investors, are still interested in making farm purchases. However, they’ve become more selective with properties and the price they are willing to pay.
Dakotas and Western Minnesota:
The land market in the northern regions is best described as chaotic, according to area sales manager Troy Swee.

“Land values remain very strong in areas where not much land has sold, and the producers had an above-average crop in 2024,” Swee explains. “However, in areas with less investor interest and where several farms have already been sold, land values appear to be down 10% to 15%.”

Your Next Read: New Trends Are Emerging In The Farmland Market

7 Ways To Be A Lifeline For Farmers

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 14:15:04 GMT

When times are tough is when farmers need their trusted advisers the most, says Greg Martinelli. For the past eight years, he’s coached ag sales professionals specifically in the retail/inputs category.

“When I worked in corporate ag, there was a moment when this idea hit me like a ton of bricks,” Martinelli says. “I was visiting a Midwest row crop farmer in 2011, when corn was $6 and breakeven costs were close to $3.50. He told me, ‘I don’t need you now, I needed you when corn was $3.50.’”

Martinelli says there are opportunities to bring value in this current economic environment. To help refocus your efforts in sales and marketing, he offers seven steps to find success with customers despite the tough economic times of the cycle.

1. Don’t jump into the quick sand with them.
“Farmers love to complain and commiserate about how hard it is. And as sales people we love to commiserate with them on how you understand the farmer’s business,” Martinelli says. “But if you do that, you aren’t doing anything different than what they hear at the coffee shop.”

He equates reiterating the negativity as not throwing them a lifeline but rather jumping into the quicksand with them.

“Farmers are looking for someone with a solution. You show up on the farm with all of your company tools and resources and instead of using them to help, you jump into the quicksand with them. This is where a trusted advisor can set themselves apart,” he says.

2. Keep them moving.
With the magnitude and quantity of factors farmers consider, they can fall victim to analysis paralysis.

“Farmers are seeking ideas but more so clear answers,” Martinelli says “This is where you can—not in a gossipy way—share your insights from other farms. Every day all day you’re on farms. You can share in a professional way what you are seeing and what you are learning.”

This combination of experience and credibility can serve the purpose to keep farmers considering new ideas as well as help prevent someone from going too far or all-in on a risky choice.

3. Provide perspective.
“If you’re lucky enough to be in the middle or late in your career, you’ve gone through downturns before,” Martinelli says. “That means you know things change, and there will be an upturn.”

He cautions sales people from encouraging negativity and rather engaging in a positive way.

“You have to acknowledge what is going on, because the financial pain is real,” he says. “Often as salespeople we can seem like we’re acting like a psychiatrist, and the opportunity is to not let the negativity persist any more in the conversation than it needs to.”

4. Shed light.
“There are places farmers aren’t looking where there are opportunities for you to help them uncover,” Martinelli says.

As an illustrative example, he talks about crop marketing.

“This is a weak area across crop production because there are no right or wrong answers, and the skills required usually mean the oldest person on the farm does the work,” he says. “The thing to do is admit you don’t have the answers, but ask what they are doing with their marketing plan.”

He says many of those conversations unveiled farmers with even 30 years of experience didn’t understand crop insurance, which provided another valuable exploration of additional services.

5. Show them a path.
“Instead of selling an idea, explain why a change of approach is an asset to their business,” he says.

One common trap is to talk broadly about precision agriculture and not detail exactly what product and service fit an individual field.

6. Put your customer on your org chart.
While this may sound a bit off the wall, Martinelli advocates identifying where the customer fits into your business by the simple task of putting them on your company’s organizational chart.

“We all need an org chart to know who manages who, but if you really want to start the engines of the thought process, ask where on your org chart is your customer. Where would you put them.”

This helps illustrate how marketing, accounting and other teams are taking into account what customers are trying to accomplish.

“If things are changing, and times get tough for the customer, it’ll get tough on your agribusiness. How are we organizing around the customer?” he says.

7. Let them know they aren’t completely alone.
“At first, it may not be well received or completely understood that everyone is experiencing this downturn,” Martinelli says. “Farming and making decisions can be a lonely business for our customers. As their trusted adviser, this can be your chance to provide support. Let them know they are not alone in their struggles.”

He says when customers are venting, don’t interrupt them, but rather when they are done ask them with all of the negatively for how things are, what are they going to do different.

With the seven steps, Martinelli coaches advisers to take their three biggest customers, and list the steps they will do in 30, 60 and 90 days.

“Having a plan is certainly better than just showing up on the farm and kicking tires,” he says.

Your Next Read: New Study Looks At The Relationship Between Farmers And Their Advisors

The 3 Biggest Updates to USDA's Farm Loan Programs You Need to Know

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 15:40:27 GMT

With commodity prices down and farm returns expected to significantly decline , USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) has released three major changes to its farm loan programs in an effort to increase the opportunities farmers and ranchers have to be financially viable.

“The analysis of what has gone into these rule changes is nothing short of tremendous,” says Zach Ducheneaux, FSA administrator. “Our team has poured over hundreds of thousands of loans in our portfolio and really identified some things that FSA can, should, and with this rule, will be doing better to support our producers and their economic viability in the countryside.”

The three most notable policy changes, which will go into effect on Sept. 25, include:

1. A new, low-interest installment set-aside program for financially distressed borrowers
According to Ducheneaux, this program was modeled after the Disaster Set-Aside program, but the difference is a borrower doesn’t have to be affected by a declared natural disaster in order to qualify. However, it’s important to note producers must be in FSA’s portfolio by the time these updates go into effect in order to be eligible.

“Oftentimes, what the producer needs is just a little breathing room,” Ducheneaux says. “We have the ability to do that for producers that are in our portfolio as of Sept. 25.”

The program essentially allows eligible, financially distressed borrowers to defer up to one annual loan installment per qualified loan at a reduced rate.

“When we set that payment aside, instead of accruing interest at the already established rate, it’s going to accrue interest at 1/8 of a percent,” Ducheneaux explains. “We’re really setting aside a payment, and it’s not going to balloon on you in a way it jeopardizes your operation as you’re coming to the end of that term.”

2. Access to flexible repayment terms
Some of these more flexible terms include smaller interest-only payments and longer loan terms. The idea behind this change is to allow producers to increase their working capital and give them the ability to save for education and retirement.

“Having a retirement fund built into this can help ease that generational transfer and help enable us to recruit young farmers and ranchers back to the farm,” Ducheneaux says. “Because FSA can make adjustments to our terms, it might help them step out of that job they’ve got in the town 40 miles away for health insurance and pay for that for their family on their own terms.”

He adds that the concern this could add more interest to the loan over time is valid, the point is to increase available cash flow for the operation.

3. Reduced additional loan security requirements
This update reduces the collateral requirements for direct loans from requiring available security equal to 150% of the loan amount down to 125%. One of FSA’s main goals with this change is to reduce the frequency borrowers need to use their personal residence as additional collateral for a farm loan.

“If you think back to 40 years ago, some of the most heart-wrenching stories you hear are when you’re losing the family home,” Ducheneaux says. “With this rule, if we do not need it to get to a one-to-one security position, we will not take the primary residence as additional security.”

In addition, FSA will release liens on collateral the borrower initially provided as additional security after establishing a history of on-time payments.

Additional improvements include streamlining and automating the Farm Loan Program process with a loan assistance tool, online loan application, online repayment feature and a simplified direct loan paper application.

“We think these changes to the terms are really transformative,” Ducheneaux says. “Any of these three provisions on their own would be a great transformation, but taken as a collective, this really signals a new day in ag finance, where FSA is going to position itself as the leader and the example for how our friends in the lending community might consider doing this.”

Ducheneaux explains a robust training process on the changes is underway for FSA employees and asks for patience and grace as the team comes to understand the new tools they have.

Here Are The Notable Changes In The House Farm Bill

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 19:04:11 GMT

The House Ag Committee recently released and approved their initial version of the long-awaited 2024 Farm Bill, which included changes to several areas important to production agriculture – such as reference prices, base acres and federal programs. During an episode of the Top Producer podcast, Farm CPA Paul Neiffer explained how farmers could expect those changes to affect them.

Reference Prices
According to Neiffer, the proposed farm bill would increase reference prices across the board, with the smallest increases in barley, oats and corn and the largest in rice. The changes for other crops include:

• Legumes: ~19%
• Peanuts: 17.8%
• Cotton: 14.4%
• Wheat: 15.5%
• Soybeans: 18.5%

It’s important to note, however, these likely won’t be the final numbers in the farm bill.

“I think this is going to increase the cost of the farm bill by – over a 10-year period – maybe $15 billion to $20 billion,” Neiffer says. “If they need to cut some, they can cut it out of here.”

Base Acres
Another update includes base acres. In the new House-approved language, if you have planted more acres than you have base acres, the excess acres will now qualify to be increased to reflect what your plantings were over the average of 2019 to 2023 crop years.

“This is a pretty good deal. It’s a one-time opportunity – not a reallocation of your current base,” Neiffer says. “Let’s say you have corn and soybeans, but the last five years you only planted corn. This base acre update will be based on what you planted. So, if you only planted corn, you’ll get an increase in corn base acres.”

In addition, non-covered commodities, such as potatoes or onions, can now be used on up to 15% of total farm acres.

The House proposal does not restrict who qualifies for the program.

Agriculture Risk Coverage Program
Like reference prices, the Agriculture Risk Coverage program (ARC) also sees an increase in this proposal.

The guarantee of benchmark revenue jumps from 86% to 90% and the maximum payment also rises from 10% of benchmark revenue to 12.5%.

Marketing Loans
Neiffer says that while some may go up slightly more than others, almost all marketing loans increase by about 10%.

“There are a couple of situations where that helps. If you want to get a loan, you can get more of a loan,” he says. “But it could also hurt you in a way.”

He goes on to explain price loss coverage (PLC) payments are calculated as the difference between the effective reference price and market year average (MYA) price and the MYA price cannot drop below the loan rate. So, with the increase in the market loan rate, PLC payments could be smaller.

Livestock Programs
On the animal side, changes have been made to the dairy margin program and livestock indemnity payments.
“The big one [for the dairy margin program] is the tier one coverage gets more of a subsidy from 5 million lb. up to 6 million lb. That’s a 20% increase,” Neiffer says.

The payment rate for livestock indemnity payments is also increased to up to 100%. Neiffer says that increase is for animals that have been killed by a federally protected species, such as wolves.

He adds if a pregnant animal is killed in this situation, the owner could be paid up to 85% of the unborn animal’s lowest weight class.

Partnership Tax Payments
Another payment change to watch involves how operations are classified. In the past, Neiffer says, operations taxed as partnerships – such as an LLC or S corporation – were limited to one payment. The new proposal does not have a payment limit for qualified pass-through entities, which could be any LLC not electing to be a C corporation, any S corporation or any general partnership or joint venture. The one-payment limit would still apply to C corporations.

“I don’t know if this will happen,” Neiffer says. “The 2018 Farm Bill had certain provisions similar to this in the House bill but didn’t happen.”

Farm Income Definition
The House proposal also broadens the definition of what counts as farm income.

“Under the current definition of farming, gains from trading in farm equipment typically is not considered to be farm income. This farm bill specifically states that is farming, as well as agritourism and direct-to-consumer marketing,” Neiffer says. “That’s good news.”

Conservation Reserve Program
The maximum Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) payment more than doubles in this draft – jumping from $50,000 to $125,000.

“For farmers who maybe have acres that really shouldn’t be farmed, this is allowing more of those acres to get enrolled,” Neiffer says.

Crop Insurance
The final area Neiffer highlights with notable changes is supplemental crop insurance.

He shares the 85% cap on revenue protection policies is increased to 90% for individual yield or revenue coverage, but it’s aggregated across multiple commodities. The supplemental coverage option (SCO) is also increased from 86% to 90%.

“This is really welcome news for farmers in North Dakota, Texas, Oklahoma or southern Missouri where the cost of crop insurance is so high,” Neiffer says. “By increasing the subsidy, this is probably going to allow a lot of those farmers to buy revenue protection at 60% or 65% and then use SCO to go up to 90%.”

There’s also a 10-percentage point subsidy increase for those who qualify as beginning or veteran farmers. This has been expanded from five years to 10 years as well.

Top 5 Takeaways From the Latest Census of Agriculture

Fri, 16 Feb 2024 14:49:17 GMT

USDA NASS has released its report from the 2022 Census of Agriculture . When compared to the last census in 2017, the new data provided insights to the direction of the agriculture industry.

Here are the five biggest takeaways:

1. Decline in the total number of farms, acreage and operators

(Farm Journal)

The total number of farms and ranches currently sits at 1.9 million, which is a decrease of 7% from 2017. Those farms are operating a total of 880 million acres - down 2%. The overall number of operators declined by just under 26,000.

2. Increased product value generates overall higher farm income, despite higher farm expenses

(Farm Journal)

It’s no secret things are more expensive than they were in 2017. USDA’s data showed the total farm production expenses for the average farm was $223,175 in 2022, compared to $159,821 in 2017. However, the census also showed the increased value of products led to overall higher farm income despite those expenses.

(Farm Journal)

The average net farm income per operation was nearly $80,000 in 2022 - almost double 2017’s $43,053.

3. More off-farm decision makers

While the majority of farms are still family owned, the number of farms in an LLC increased by just over 50,000, while those that have corporations involved in day-to-day decisions increased by a little under 10,000.

The number of farms listing three or more producers as decision makers increased as those naming between one to two producers as decision makers declined.

Not only was there an increase in the number of decision makers, but also the number of off-farm operators: 996,739 from 869,392 in 2017.

4. Newer and younger farm operators

(Farm Journal)

Despite a slight increase in the average age of the U.S. farmer from 57.5 to 58.1 years old, the new census data showed more new and young operators on the farm. Just over 1 million of the total 3.4 million operators have been in the business for 10 years or less.

There was also an increase in the number of operators aged 44 and younger who are involved in day-to-day decision making.

5. Uptick in conservation efforts on the farm

The data shows producers have spent the past five years ramping up their conservation practices.

Over 10,000 more farms are using conservation or reduced tillage in their fields. And while slightly fewer operations are using cover crops, the total number of acres they are planted on has increased.

A total of 153,101 farms and ranches also used renewable energy producing systems, compared to 133,176 farms in 2017 - a 15% increase. Of those operations, 76% reported using solar panels.

New Legislation Looks To Connect Farmland And Ranchland To Broadband

Fri, 10 Nov 2023 15:39:11 GMT

U.S. growers and livestock producers increasingly rely on the internet across the farm and ranch, yet many still don’t have access to it. A report USDA released this past August, “ Technology Use, Farm Computer Usage and Ownership, ” found that 15 percent of farms and ranches have no access to the internet today.

New legislation announced Nov. 1 looks to change that by expanding high-speed broadband internet access across rural America.

Two members of the House Agriculture Committee, Congressman Brad Finstad (MN-R) and Congresswoman Yadira Caraveo (CO-D), introduced the legislation called “Linking Access to Spur Technology for Agriculture Connectivity in Rural Environments (Last Acre) Act,” within the

USDA’s Office of Rural Development.
The Last Acre Act would create a new competitive grant and loan program at USDA to expand high-speed broadband internet access across eligible farmland, ranchland, and farm sites.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) currently defines minimum broadband internet service as internet access with a minimum of 25 megabits per second (Mbps) download speed and upload speeds of 3 Mbps or more.

One generally accepted rule of thumb is that anything above 100 Mbps is considered “fast” internet because it can connect multiple devices at once.

How Farmers Connect
In its Technology Use research, USDA found 51 percent of internet-connected farms utilize a broadband connection while 75 percent of internet-connected farms have access through a cellular data plan. Additionally, 69 percent of farms have a desktop or laptop computer while 82 percent of farms had a smart phone.

(Farm Journal)

The Last Acre Act is among the latest moves by legislators to address the digital divide between urban and rural America.

“As a farmer, I understand the important role precision ag technology plays in increasing production and maximizing efficiency. Yet, many rural areas of southern Minnesota and across the country don’t have reliable access to the wireless connectivity needed in order to utilize these techniques,” said Rep. Finstad, in a news release.

“The Last Acre Act will help drive agricultural innovation into the 21st century by bringing the latest farming technology and tools to every corner of farm country, giving farmers and ranchers – in even the most remote areas – greater ability to adopt precision ag applications and ensure optimal efficiency in their operations,” added Finstad.

The USDA Technology Use report released in August shows that 32 percent of farms used the internet to purchase agricultural inputs this year, which was an increase of 3 percent from 2021.

“Additionally, 23 percent of farms used the internet to market agricultural activities, which was an increase of 2 percent from 2021,” the USDA said. “Farms which conducted business with non-agricultural websites in 2023 increased by 2 percent to 49 percent.”

Precision Agriculture Needs
Increasingly, legislators and broadband providers have fine-tuned how they look at the internet needs of rural America, according to Mitchell Bailey, CEO for GRM Networks, a member-owned cooperative that supplies broadband and other communication services to residents in parts of northern Missouri and southern Iowa.

“The terminology used has changed from ‘fiber to the premise,’ which focused on connecting homes to more of a focus on ‘fiber to the acre,’ because we understand the need to make sure we’re connecting every acre of farmland to advanced technology,” Bailey told Farm Journal.

“In an ever-changing marketplace, it is imperative that corn farmers use the latest in precision agriculture technology to remain competitive and sustainable, and this is only possible through access to high-speed broadband,” added Harold Wolle, National Corn Growers Association president.

The Last Acre Act is endorsed by the American Farm Bureau Federation, Association of Equipment Manufacturers, Competitive Carriers Association, National Corn Growers Association, National Milk Producers Federation, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, National Farmers Union, John Deere, Ethos Connected, and Wireless Internet Service Providers Association.

Monthly Average Costs
As part of its Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2021, the Biden administration committed $65 billion to help ensure that every American has access to affordable internet service.

The price of internet service ranges widely across the U.S., from $20 to well over $100 a month.

The price consumers pay depends on a range of factors, including internet speed, the type of connection, and what’s available in a specific area.

A Forbes survey of 37 internet service provides (ISPs) across the U.S. earlier this year found consumers paid an average cost of $65 a month. That’s in line with recent findings by Consumer Reports , which found in 2022 the median monthly internet cost was $74.99.

How States Stack Up
A February report from BroadbandNow Research , a firm that conducts comparisons on internet companies using data from the FCC and internet providers, identified what it calls the “best and worst states” for broadband internet service in the U.S. Its considerations were based on two factors – overall coverage and quality of connections.

The report ranked Maryland as the best overall state for broadband internet, followed by New Jersey, New York, Delaware and Washington. The rankings considered overall access to broadband, access to low-cost broadband, download and upload speeds, and access to fiber-optic service.

At the other end of the spectrum, in the worst category, West Virginia came in last.

West Virginia was followed in the report by Alaska, Mississippi, Arkansas and Vermont. All five states at the bottom scored a zero on internet quality, or latency, which is the time it takes information to go from one source to another.

There were 16 states in the report that scored a zero in the quality category, including North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Michigan, Iowa, Ohio and Wisconsin.

The state with the slowest average download speed was Kansas, followed by Alaska and South Carolina.

John Phipps: Is Broadband the Secret to Reviving Rural America?

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Look Out Iowa! Cropland Auction Sets Fresh Record in North Dakota

Fri, 03 Nov 2023 21:36:43 GMT

As mortgage rates climb to 20-year highs, near 8%, current high-interest rates are eating away at the housing market. This year is currently on pace to see the fewest home sales since 2008. However, farmland sales aren’t witnessing the same sticker shock. In North Dakota, Pifer’s Auctioneers says it just set a new land sale record in the state.

According to a post on Facebook, on November 1, Pifer’s Auctioneers hosted a live and online land auction. The farm featured 320 acres of highly-productive land in Pembina County, N.D. That’s the very northeastern corner of the state in the Red River Valley. The auction house says the land sold for $17,500 per deeded acre to a family farm operation. It says that shattered the all-time high for North Dakota cropland. Roughly 30 bidders were on hand for the auction.

The Pifer team says that area is known to be tight where very few farms ever get exposed to the market. Another of the enticements comes from the crop rotations in that region. Farms typically grow potatoes, sugar beets, wheat, corn, barley and soybeans. The ability to produce sugar beets and potatoes on medium to heavier loam soil, without irrigation, was a strong draw.

Pifer says at $5.6 million, or $2.8 million per quarter, it breaks down to:

Parcel 1: $18,571 per FSA cropland acre
Parcel 2: $18,393 per FSA cropland acre

Jim Rothermich, vice president of Iowa Appraisal, calls this a bell ringer for the state of North Dakota. Looking at Iowa, he says land market conditions remain steady and strong, but aren’t as hot as they were a year ago.

“Since peaking around May 2022, the market has declined a small percentage and is now pretty much in equilibrium, or flat,” Rothermich explains. “Sales north of $20,000 per acre still happen but nothing like they did in 2022.”

(Farm Journal)

While rising interest rates, higher input costs, drought and corn prices below $5 per bushel have put the brakes on the large increases between 2020 and 2022, cash rent auctions still yield solid numbers, he adds.

“I think market conditions will be stable for the next six months to a year,” Rothermich says. “After that, lower farm income and rising interest rates will whittle down land prices. I do not think we’ll see a double-digit decrease, but there is potential for a single-digit decline. Good quality cropland is still in demand.”

When comparing 2023 to the hot markets of 2022, he says it’s clear land values have cooled off.

Best Buys for July 4th Cookouts Due to Food Inflation

Tue, 27 Jun 2023 18:01:05 GMT

The team at Wells Fargo has assembled its Fourth of July Food Report to detail what to fill the grill with and what to put a little less on the picnic table with food inflation in mind.

“Food inflation has definitely started to slow down, and this is good news for consumers. However, it still won’t be cheaper to celebrate the Fourth of July this year,” says Dr. Michael Swanson, Wells Fargo Chief Agricultural Economist. “The reason stems from the current pricing for some of the key menu ingredients.”

Swanson highlights four key takeaways from the meat sector:

The current average is $5.36 per pound for ground beef, which is up less than 1% from a year ago. Last year’s inflation rate on ground beef was 16%.
Chicken breasts are 2% lower than last year (average $4.24 per pound)
Pork chops are up 1% from a year ago
Sirloin steak is up 2.9% from a year ago

To top the hamburgers, processed cheese has gone up 10% compared with last year.

Bread and bun prices are elevated due to the increase in wheat prices attributed to the war in Ukraine. Bread is up 22% compared to last year.

Potato chip prices are up 15% last year, attributed to drought in the key potato growing areas in Idaho and the Dakotas.

Swanson says to complement chips, he expects to see a 9% increase in various dip prices as well.

A segment showing relief from its notable high levels is eggs, Swanson says this is good news for potato salads, deviled eggs and other sides.

“The Avian Influenza shock has just about left the stage. A dozen eggs currently costs $2.67, 7% lower than a year ago. While down from $4.82 a dozen at the start of the year, disease risk and inflation remain big issues,” he says.

For dessert, ice cream is up 9% compared to 2022. And chocolate chip cookies are up 14% higher.

In the cooler, Swanson reports inflationary effects on soft drinks were slow to rise, but due to higher labor and packaging costs, the category is now up 14% compared to last year.

Beer prices are up 8%. Wine prices are flat.

However, he remains optimistic for celebrations.

“Food retailers and consumers should expect a busy and robust celebration for this year’s Fourth of July, even with higher prices,” Swanson says.

Food Inflation Makes Your Super Bowl Party Cost More

Fri, 23 Sep 2022 21:14:16 GMT

The economists at Wells Fargo, led by Dr. Michael Swanson, have some insights on how this year’s snacks for the Super Bowl are reflecting the trend of food inflation.

“Food inflation is a hot topic,” Swanson says noting that overall prices in the category are running at 6% higher than a year ago, whereas typically year-to-year food inflation is 1%.

The economists pulled data from USDA, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Nielsen data at the supermarkets, and insights from the bigger team at Wells Fargo.

Broadly, the categories more dependent on packaging and general logistical resources show the highest increases comparing at-store prices this year to last year.

By category here are some key takeaways from their findings:

Chips are only up 1%.

“We’re a great potato growing country, and so we have a good supply of potatoes this year. The chip manufacturers are very efficient at turning them into potato chips. And so even though they’ve had challenges with their packaging and their labor and their freight, they’ve kind of kept a lid on the potato chip and chip prices,” Swanson says.

Two popular dips, two different stories.

Guacamole is only up 1%.

“Avocados and guacamole have become really popular. Most people should know but maybe they don’t that most of our avocado is coming from Mexico and Peru. And we’ve seen a lot of expansion down there. They’ve found it profitable to grow avocados and turn them into guacamole,” he says. Salsa is up 6%.

“It wasn’t so much in the tomato and chilies, but it’s the packaging and labor and transportation that caught up with salsa prices,” Swanson says.

Go for bulk packaged vegetables

Swanson shares as a category you can evaluate vegetables as either bulk goods or the pre-package convenience options. He shares to save a bit on the inflationary costs, go with bulk carrots and celery and wash and chop them yourself so you are only exposed to 2 to 3% higher prices. He says the packaged salads and other such products are seeing higher cost increases.

Proteins are more expensive—some showing double digit higher prices

“We’ve seen almost every protein jump up,” Swanson says. “This is where we’re starting to see some double digit, you know, between 15 and 25% type increases depending on what protein and cut you’re talking about. So far pork has really been the bargain, in terms of increases. You can still find some really good values in the pork category,” he says.

And popularity has propelled one poultry product very high.

Wells Fargo economists quote USDA data showing prepared chicken wings are up 14% to 26% (bone-in and boneless respectively). The IQF (individually quick frozen) chickens are up 26%. So IQF wings are $3.57 per pound, and $7.24 per pound is the average for prepared wings.

Double dip on cheese, perhaps

“The American dairy complex and American dairy producers have really stepped up,” Swanson says. “We’re actually seeing about a 7% decline as a cheddar cheese from a year ago. Dairy is a category where it’s actually helping control the budget, without any runaway inflation.”

Some beverage categories quench your thirst with less inflation

(Farm Journal)

Swanson’s team evaluated the costs of soft drinks, beer and wine. The report shows how packaging and logistics have swelled soft drink prices by 14%. However, market dynamics have kept beer and wine inflation more in check. He says beer prices have only increased 4%--mostly due to diversification in the market with more craft breweries in production. Wine prices are up only 3% thanks to a global market supply of products from Australia, Chile, South Africa and Europe.

Meet the Rat Buster, YouTube Sensation and Grim Reaper of Farm Rodents

Thu, 15 Sep 2022 15:36:28 GMT

The Rat Buster cometh. In the pitch-black of a barn at midnight, surrounded by hundreds of tiny pairs of glowing orbs—rat eyes illuminated by the wonder of a thermal scope, Jeff Pybus squeezes a rifle trigger and fires a .22 pellet 25 yards through the head of a 1-lb. rat. With the soft click of a sidelever, he stays on the scope, zeroes on a second rat, and sends another pellet into its brain. Simple math and steady rhythm: one shot per kill, for a tally of 200 rats within hours.

Against the scratching and chattering of a rodent horde reaching biblical numbers, Pybus is an invisible reaper, racking up prey in the dark as he cocks, shoots—and films. His role as a one-man pest control service has exploded into a first-person-shooter YouTube channel, featuring addictive, no-frills footage of rat hunts on farming operations. Fish in a barrel; rats in a barn.

“My adrenaline starts to pump hard when the thermal turns the night into day and I see countless rats all around me that sometimes run up my leg, jump on my shoulder, or move across my feet,” Pybus describes. “It’s a hunt from another world.”

Down the Rat Hole

A lifelong small game hunter in northeast England, Pybus was unexpectedly pulled into the rat realm by the cancer-related death of a close friend and brother-in-arms, Colin Mann. From a hospital bed two weeks prior to his death in 2015, Mann gave Pybus a parting gift.

“Colin was a very, very good mate for my entire life,” Pybus explains, his voice coated in a thick north Yorkshire accent. “Right before he died, Colin told me, ‘Go to my house and get something I want you to have. It’s in the cupboard behind the refrigerator. It’s a rifle and it’s yours now.’”

(Farm Journal)

Pybus declined the gift of a BSA Supersport: “No mate, I can’t take it. I’ll sell it for you, but I can’t take it.”

Mann insisted: “You take it. You use it.”

Treasured by Pybus today, the BSA became the doorway to a wild chapter in his life. He went down a rat hole and never emerged.

Body Count 480

Roughly twice a week at dusk, Pybus arrives at a given farm to set up for a shoot. Wearing cargo pants, lightweight mud boots, and a dark, collared shirt emblazoned with a “Rat Buster” logo, Pybus, 54, conducts a quick recon, checking for equipment or livestock impediments. “You’ve got to take a look around every time, even if it’s a familiar barn, because if it’s been loaded with equipment and you’re dealing with hundreds of rats, there won’t be enough room to make kills in high numbers,” he notes.

His current weapon of choice is a Weihrauch HW100 rifle set at 11.7 foot pounds of pressure—German engineering at its best. The gun slings a .22 pellet clean through a rat—the rough equivalence of a fist-sized cannonball blasting through the human body. “Each magazine holds 14 pellets and sometimes I shoot six magazines in 10 minutes. My recharge bottle is converted for 300 shots per fill, and that way I don’t have to go back to my vehicle for extras except on an extremely heavy night.”

(Farm Journal)

On most evenings, Pybus enters a barn, turns on the thermal, and waits a full 10 minutes in a standing position, rifle resting on a shooting stick. When he pulls the trigger, the streak of a pellet flashes onscreen and a rat drops. “The most consistent question I get is whether I’m shooting bb’s,” he says with a chuckle. “People see the tiny flash and are convinced it’s a bb, but I’m most definitely shooting .22 pellets, plenty powerful to kill two rats in one shot.”

“I’m very quiet, waiting in the dark,” Pybus continues. “If the rats see you right at the beginning, they’ll move along. But once the shooting starts, I’m looking first for a headshot, with a body shot as second choice, but either way, they’ll drop whether they run or not because the pellet causes decimating trauma to the rat’s body.”

The majority of Pybus’ kill shots range between 15-20 yards, sometimes extending to 40 yards, depending on the size of the farm building. “I’d say 15-20 yards is optimal for the camera focus for YouTube viewers. Closer is difficult to capture and further is not clear enough.”

Once the shooting gets hot, Pybus loses sense of time—a genuine problem he remedies by setting an alarm several hours into a hunt. “I literally don’t notice the clock because everything happens so fast, especially on a new farm where there’s a serious infestation and I can go five or six hours,” he laughs. “If I don’t put on the alarm, sometimes the whole evening rolls by and I’ve forgotten to go home.”

What is Pybus’ biggest one-night tally? 480 rats on the nose, killed at a recycling plant. “I’ll never forget that night,” he says, “where I was surrounded by thousands of rats. I started with a 500-pellet tin that I’d used exactly 20 from the previous night. Therefore, I knew I had 480 pellets going in. I never missed, right down to the last pellet.”

Game of Trust

Rats have a penchant for survival and proliferation, and agriculture provides easy pickings. Rat presence is near-ubiquitous at some level on agriculture operations of all types, and the creatures possess a stunning capacity for reproduction, with a single female potentially capable of setting off a chain of 15,000 offspring in a single year, dependent on food resources.

(Farm Journal)

Females can copulate hours after giving birth, ovulate once every four days, and produce litters throughout their entire lives. (Life span in the wild is roughly 7-10 months.) Brown rats can start breeding at 8 weeks of age (roughly 12 weeks with limited food)—10-12 pups with plenty of food, and 4-5 pups with less food.

The rat math is alarming and highlights a vital service provided by Pybus. “The public thinks you can toss out poison on a farm and kill all the rats. No way. Some farmers pay big money for poisons and bait stations on the farm, but over the years, I’ve learned so much about the intelligence of rats—incredibly clever animals. If you put something new where they’ve been walking and running, they don’t touch the bait stations, because they have natural food sources inside the farm buildings. You can certainly kill some of the rats, but the big majority already have plenty of food to keep them busy.”

“The younger farmers think they have no rat problems because the bait stations are relatively untouched,” Pybus explains. “But when you go around at night with a thermal, you’ll see rats like you never imagined in the smallest of places. Rats certainly move in daytime as well, but not in numbers. The big mistake farmers make is by judging according to what they see during the day.”

On farms with high rat infestations, Pybus needs roughly 10 visits stretched over five to six weeks to decimate a population. After every shooting, he bags the kills for deposit at an incinerator. “For some of these farmers, they’ve no other reliable means to tackle their rat problem and it’s a privilege to help.”

Pybus operates on a 40-plus farm circuit—a mix of hog and dairy operations—along with two waste recycling centers. His popularity with farmers is massive—and growing. “I don’t get paid and this is just a hobby, but people need to realize these farmers put their trust in me on their properties to clean out their rats as fast as I can.”

“The game I’m in is a game of trust. If you earn a farmer’s trust then you’ll have a fantastic relationship, and farmers are my genuine friends, far beyond pest control. They are wonderful mates and I never have to buy beef, pork, lamb, or eggs.”

Nightmare

When Pybus first began rat hunting in 2015, he targeted infestations on the farms of several friends. Hoping to maximize hunting access to a nocturnal rodent, he built a night vision kit. “I took a 5” reversing camera, the same as you’d use on a vehicle. I had a tube running over my scope with a camera fitted inside. Basically, I wired the camera and screen together, and put a battery on it. That was my start.”

Two years later, Pybus performed a DIY overhaul with a better camera and bigger screen, and started filming videos and posting the content to Facebook. “One day, this random guy asked me if he could put one of my videos on YouTube. Sure; I sent him the clip and it got 3.5 million views. A few weeks later, I was driving with my daughter and the guy called again, asking for more footage. My daughter asked me the question that started me on YouTube: ‘Why are you sending him videos instead of making your own channel?’”

The Rat Buster was born. Twenty million views later, Pybus is a rat’s worst nightmare.

Call the Rat Buster

Pybus’ controlled chaos is filmed with an ATN X-Sight 4K Pro, drawing in millions of YouTube views. (By itself, a 13-minute shooting clip Pybus posted in December 2021 has 7.7 million clicks.)

His video uploads are big meat on the bone with little fat—heavy on shooting footage and lean on narration. “I don’t waste anyone’s time by needless introductions, and I get straight to the point. I had no clue people would go crazy and I never dreamed people would be fascinated by my videos. My subscribers sometimes jump by 1,000 in a single week.”

With 100,000-plus subscribers and counting, who are the watchers? “From the emails and comments, there are loads of farmers from around the world following my channel, but there are also people from all walks of life who want to see into a hunt. I suppose that in the way the hunt is filmed, the viewer feels like they are in the barn with me.”

Pybus sometimes tacks Rat Buster advertisement flyers at key locations around his farm circuit, always on the lookout to expand his network. Recently, placing a flyer while wearing a hunting jacket stamped with a Rat Buster logo, Pybus was approached by a fan: “This man walked up and said, ‘My God, you’re famous.’”

(Farm Journal)

“The man told me he’d been pheasant hunting with a group of farmers the day before, and that one of the farmers was complaining about his rat problem and wasting money on pest control. Another farmer spoke up and told him, ‘Call the Rat Buster.’ It was surreal, but it was one of those moments where I realized the Rat Buster is far more well-known than I’ll ever be.”

Rat Buster videos once were strictly hunting footage, but after heavy demand from subscribers, Pybus stepped from behind the lens and now appears briefly on camera in some episodes. “The subscribers are fascinated, and they want to know more than my voice. They want to see who the Rat Buster is.”

After passing the 100,000-subscriber benchmark, Pybus is quick to credit his family. “I want to thank my wife, Sue, for putting up with me talking shooting and guns all the time, and letting me go shooting. I want to thank my daughter, Megan, and my granddaughter, LailaSue, for picking the channel’s name and for making the channel for me.”

Genuinely appreciative and humbled by his channel’s explosion, Pybus places emphasis on two pillars of his success: Colin Mann and a host of farmers.

“One, even in the middle of a hunt, my mind goes back to Colin. He was a lovely lad that got me into shooting full-time.”

“Two, I can’t operate my channel without a fantastic group of farmers,” Pybus adds. “I’m truly grateful for their help and I want to help them in return.”

To read more stories from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com — 662-592-1106), see:

Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market

Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.

Bagging the Tomato King: The Insane Hunt for Agriculture’s Wildest Con Man

How a Texas Farmer Killed Agriculture’s Debt Dragon

While America Slept, China Stole the Farm

Bizarre Mystery of Mummified Coon Dog Solved After 40 Years

The Arrowhead whisperer: Stunning Indian Artifact Collection Found on Farmland

Where’s the Beef: Con Artist Turns Texas Cattle Industry Into $100M Playground

Fleecing the Farm: How a Fake Crop Fueled a Bizarre $25 Million Ag Scam

Skeleton In the Walls: Mysterious Arkansas Farmhouse Hides Civil War History

US Farming Loses the King of Combines

Ghost in the House: A Forgotten American Farming Tragedy

Rat Hunting with the Dogs of War, Farming’s Greatest Show on Legs

Misfit Tractors a Money Saver for Arkansas Farmer

Government Cameras Hidden on Private Property? Welcome to Open Fields

Farmland Detective Finds Youngest Civil War Soldier’s Grave?

Descent Into Hell: Farmer Escapes Corn Tomb Death

Evil Grain: The Wild Tale of History’s Biggest Crop Insurance Scam

Grizzly Hell: USDA Worker Survives Epic Bear Attack

Farmer Refuses to Roll, Rips Lid Off IRS Behavior

Killing Hogzilla: Hunting a Monster Wild Pig

Shattered Taboo: Death of a Farm and Resurrection of a Farmer

Frozen Dinosaur: Farmer Finds Huge Alligator Snapping Turtle Under Ice

Breaking Bad: Chasing the Wildest Con Artist in Farming History

In the Blood: Hunting Deer Antlers with a Legendary Shed Whisperer

Corn Maverick: Cracking the Mystery of 60-Inch Rows

Against All Odds: Farmer Survives Epic Ordeal

Agriculture’s Darkest Fraud Hidden Under Dirt and Lies

The Heretic Farmer: Jon Stevens’ Big Adios to Mainstream Ag

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 15:06:02 GMT

Sacred cows have no place on Jon and Carin Stevens’ farm. Brutally honest, warm-hearted, politically incorrect, and refreshingly blunt, Jon Stevens subscribes to none of the maxims of farming—except those borne out in his own rows. “I care about nothing, but what works best,” he says. “No agendas, no bandwagons, no mainstream, no so-called experts in ag media, no reliance on soil tests or retail prescriptions, and no crazy, self-congratulatory talk about feeding the world.”

Since 2011, the Minnesota grower has transformed the farmland of his childhood through on-farm trials, input slashes, cattle introduction, tillage changes, direct marketing, and a leap into the world of YouTube. Stevens, 46, is an agriculture heretic and a comfortable contrarian: “Question. Question. Question. That’s just how I’m made. Don’t argue with me about the awesome changes I’ve seen on my ground,” he says. “You can argue with my logic and how I arrived there, but not the results.”

Faith No More

Technically, Stevens is a fifth-generation farmer, but in many ways, he started from scratch. The economic hazards of the 1980s wiped out his parents’ farming operation, including equipment and cattle, but the family held tight to the land. Stevens trained as a John Deere mechanic, and initially went into highway and bridge construction. In 2010, he got a farming toehold with a few rental acres, and by 2014, bought the family ground from his parents, Skip and Nancy. Today, Stevens keeps one foot in the rows, and one foot in Skip’s repair shop. “Except for a few oddballs, I’d say 99% of guys in my area follow mainstream agricultural practices. They work the ground in the fall, work it a few more times in the spring, broadcast their fertilizer, and do it all again. We’re too far north, too cold, and too wet to do anything else—except I’m the weirdo that knows that isn’t true and I don’t believe that crap.”

(Farm Journal)

The Stevens’ home farm, just outside Rock Creek, in east central Minnesota, can catch a frost even in July or August, and sits on slightly rolling ground bounded by tree lines dating back to the mid-1800s. His main chunk of Pine County farmland runs a half-mile north and half-mile south, split by a sand ridge running through the middle of the property—roughly 10’ in elevation, as if nature tucked a roll of carpet beneath the middle of the fields. Stevens works a total of 700 acres and grows corn and soybeans in 9” of sandy loam atop an infinite supply of yellow clay. (His 9” of topsoil ranges from .5% to 3.5% in organic matter, with significantly low CEC in the tens and elevens.) “Other than the fact that we have no organic matter, no CEC, only a few inches of topsoil, no infiltration rate, and dirt that moves with water or wind, we have beautiful soil,” he says, wearing a grin while unleashing an infectious chuckle.

In 2021, as with every year, Stevens’ operation is a hive of unconventional activity: broadcasting phosphorus and potassium across corn and soybean acreage for only the first time in six years; growing 50 acres of peas for direct marketing into feed mixes for beef, pork, and poultry; strip tilling corn into alfalfa while testing 15” and 60” rows; adding more cattle grazing education; developing hay and pasture for a cattle retail section; starting nitrogen reduction trials; and continuing to build a YouTube audience. “I’ve lost faith in the modern farming template,” he says. “The whole goal of what I’m doing is to improve finances and quality of life on the farm because pennies fill the well. In my own way, I want to make farming great again and that means adding forgotten farming practices with modern practices, and connecting my farm with the community around me.”

(Farm Journal)

Stevens believes core farming lessons 75 years in the past have been lost, particularly in regard to nutrient acquisition. Essentially, he wants to emulate parts of yesteryear that might remain effective today, such as nitrogen sourcing. “Alfalfa and spreading manure meant a lot of guys never had to write a fertilizer check. There’s a lesson about how we approach the problem today, and don’t come at me about how 60-bu. yields from back then won’t feed the world of today. I got news for you: 200-bu. corn ain’t feeding the world either. It’s a commodity, not a food source, and I don’t care how unpopular I am for saying it or who gets offended.”

“If this is about feeding the world, why don’t we subsidize rice, wheat and oats? Why not mandate beef like we mandate ethanol? These are great questions for farmers and whether you agree or disagree, these questions need to be out there.”

First Liar Loses

In 2013, still in the initial years of his farming return, curiosity got the best of Stevens: He tried a few fields of no till, hoping to save money and prevent erosion. No grand soil health schemes, just an attempt to bring in more dollars. “My banker even told me the cash flow wasn’t there for a beginning farmer to buy equipment, land, and be conventional. I needed to find different things to work.”

(Farm Journal)

In the fall of 2013, Stevens maintained yield on the no till ground, but took in the benefit of time, fuel and labor savings. “I did it again in 2014, and thought no till was the greatest thing since sliced bread. All I did was drive around with a planter, but maintained yield again.”

In the third year, 2015, Stevens slammed into the no till wall—his ground turned to a dense brick and served up a big piece of humble pie. “Holy hell, what the crap happened to my soil? There was no core space and zero water infiltration, and winter annuals everywhere.”

However, the year held some major lessons. Prior to 2015, Stevens had utilized cover crops in several fields, and built a strip till machine to manage nutrient application. Further, during the season (and in 2016) he ran 39 side-by-side trials of no till, strip till, and conventional till, and a mix of fertility rates. “Even with all the no till problems that year, I could see that where we’d strip tilled, everything was so, so nice, and where we had covers things were nice. My brain started figuring things out.”

Essentially, Stevens’ 39 trials tested which system required the most fertilizer. And the results? The best cash flow showed up in no till soybeans with no applied fertilizer, according to Stevens. “The beans didn’t respond to broadcast NPK. Topdressing with AMS was hit-and-miss where one field might have zero response, and the other jump 10 bushels. End of the day, no till beans were best because we saw no response to the fertilizer inputs and no real yield difference compared to tillage.”

In corn, strip till and banded fertilizer was king, Steven explains: “Stupendous results with strip till, awesome stands, and cut P, K, and sulfur in half and never looked back, plus a lot of mechanical and labor savings in tractor hours.”

Granted, Stevens expected corn improvement by placing fertilizer in the root zone, rather than broadcasting, but he wasn’t anticipating a dramatically improved stand. Strip till fostered a tremendously better crop stand, he contends. Yellow dips departed and overall field averages showed strong consistency. Also, by banding sulfur preplant with strip till, he no longer needed a second pass of sulfur, and nitrogen responded to banding: “Conventional till broadcasting of urea produced much more firing and tip-back on the ears in the fall, but using the exact same amount in strip till, we got a much more green plant, less firing and less tip-back.”

By 2017, Stevens was banding nitrogen on the topdress side, and jumping on the results, with “seriously phenomenal” green corn heading into fall. He still ran the exact same amount of nitrogen, but produced 20 to 40 more bushels.

(Farm Journal)

Generally, Stevens has reduced chemical inputs of all stripes. “I still do pesticides as an emergency, and we scout and use as needed. I’m not at Gabe Brown and Dave Brandt levels yet. While I’m transitioning, I still might have pest issues; no problem. It’s been several years since I used a fungicide, and I no longer need to use insecticide in furrow, but the next field I get, maybe I’ll use some.”

And yields? Since integrating nutrient reduction and tillage changes, grain yields are up across Stevens’ farm, he says. “Our yields just keep trending up, and there’s no need to talk numbers, because the first liar loses,” says Stevens, punctuating his claim with a wide grin and a belly of laughter. “Let’s just say David Hula better look out.”

Apostate

The majority of Stevens’ ground has been without phosphorus and potassium since 2015, but he applied both fertilizers in 2021, as a “maintenance application,” he explains. “It’s been a crazy time watching all of these cutbacks and seeing no deficiencies—so cool. For the first time in six years, I’m gonna broadcast P and K on some hay and small grain fields. On corn and beans, we’ll put P and K out with a sprayer, but only as maintenance, not to feed the crop. I’m not ready to zero out on purchased P and K, but the reduction has sure helped the cash flow.”

(Farm Journal)

Stevens has no faith in soil tests. “That’s just a tool and I’m not gonna go broke trying to make pretty soil test numbers. In 2011, 2012, and 2013, I carried around a boatload of quotes from all the big experts in ag retail and media and I dreamed about the next plow I could buy. I was grid sampling my fields, always keeping up on soil samples. But now, after seeing the truth about fertility? I don’t care about a piece of paper that is just a snapshot in time.”

Even pH is drawing an apostate’s scrutiny from Stevens: “Retailers give you that cute chart with nutrients to the left and pH across the top. I just don’t have faith anymore and I wonder what is and isn’t a farce in agriculture.”

Jeremy Schultz, a long-time friend since grade school, who grew up on a farm and is currently a machinist in Morrison County, says Stevens marches to a maverick tune: “Innovator. Builder. Inventor. Jon is a great guy, and he’s a farmer comfortable in his own skin, and doesn’t care to be in the mainstream in any part of life; he’s just cut like that.”

“He’s never cared about what others think,” Schultz continues. “If he wants to know if something works, then his fields are the only place that counts, not opinions of other people. In the future, I guarantee Jon will continue changing his farm step by step, toward whatever it takes to make it work better. For sure, he’ll never sit still.”

“Hey, Fat Boy”

Farm savings across Stevens’ operation are substantial, he contends, extending to fertilizer amounts and efficiency, general chemical inputs, fuel, labor and mechanical investment per acre, timeliness across the farm, and consistency of activity behind rain.

The savings, he explains, triggered a deeper look into the soil. “We even fixed our water problem on the farm without tile, and that’s one of the places we were originally going. Mainstream agriculture told us to use tile, but we ended up with the water in our profile and not running off. In so many ways, the savings led me to soil health and not the other way around. I guess we didn’t find soil health, it found us. I started getting ideas from Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota , Minnesota Soil Health Coalition , and Soil Health Partnership , and these are such good groups with great farmers that will help you or share.”

(Farm Journal)

However, Stevens is a dollar-and-cents farmer, and keeps ideological absolutes off the table. His approach is a “gradual weaning” of farmland: “In the meantime, when my ground needs synthetics, I’ll provide all that are needed, but that is not a long-term solution. Just like my body: If I have high blood pressure, I get a pill, but it’s not a cure. If my doctor really wants to cure my high blood pressure, he’d say, ‘Hey fat boy, start exercising and quit going to the drive-through. That’s how I am with my land; I want a long-term cure.”

In 2017, Stevens’ efforts toward strip till, no till, cover crops and fertility management began to snowball and grew into a unique system of success, with room for greater diversity. Stevens added cattle in 2018, starting with 10 cows and a bull, and has a five-year plan to have every field around the home place in fencing and water (enabling cattle rotation). “I’m taking Greg Judy’s advice and not spend money on registering—only on genetics to give me nice animals.”

In a nutshell, Stevens wants to use livestock as variable rate fertilizer. Projecting numbers, he believes approximately 200 head would be an ideal herd to move across his operation, providing nutrient-rich manure and making ground viable for row crops. “I’d also like to supply my own butcher and retail store to sell my own meat, then work with other farmers to sell their products, and work with local businesses and restaurants. I want to do more with my ground than just grow corn and beans, sell my P and K to China, and then buy all my P and K from Russia again. I want out of the cycle.”

No till hasn’t affected Stevens’ planting populations for corn or soybeans. Each year, he has trial plots dotted with soybeans at 50,000 to 100,000, and has recorded positive results, but until more data is collected, he’s sticking with a go-to rate of 130,000. In 30” corn, his sweet spot is 32,000-36,000.

Strip tilling corn into alfalfa, and adding nitrogen, but no herbicide, is a big goal in 2021. One side of the same field will include 60” rows, and the opposing side will feature 15” rows. “I’m gonna push the limit of population on 15” corn, feed N a little early, but then have it feeding off the alfalfa for the rest of the year.” Pared down, Stevens will total the revenue from the first cutting of alfalfa, corn harvest, and cattle grazing—trialing the economics of the setup. (Another of Stevens’ major 2021 goals is a first run at biological use to begin a long-term record of the effect on yield and soil.)

(Farm Journal)

Ultimately, Stevens hopes to cut out applied nitrogen and only grow corn where nitrogen is already present—a gargantuan task, but one which he believes is possible through the previous presence of a legume, green fallow, and manure. “Maybe some guys see me a lunatic—so what? Life is too short to worry what others think. I’d like to be the first guy to hit 300-bushel corn in no till and cover crops, and I’m not afraid to try. We all need our pipe dreams.”

YouTube Farmer

Prior to working off-farm in his father’s shop, Stevens worked in city areas, and consistently rubbed elbows with urbanites who knew almost nothing of farming basics. Stevens responded by filming his fields with a smartphone and taking the footage to town to answer simple questions about soybean planting or corn harvest. His efforts became a YouTube channel, initially intended to show consumers alternatives to mainstream farming. Instead, his channel gathered a consistent audience of fellow farmers. “I shared my story and farmers started watching across the globe, and all I was doing was showing what had been done in the past and how I hadn’t invented a thing.”

Stevens has high hopes that his YouTube channel will eventually help other farmers. “I’d love for the channel to get big for one reason: create a grant program for beginning farmers, or pump scholarship money toward someone. Imagine if there was a farmer in genuine need, and every subscriber contributed $10, and we could impact someone for the good. I’m just telling my story and I don’t care about subscribers except in one future regard—maybe we can help a struggling farmer.”

Quality of Opinion

Less than 10 years after changing the direction of his farmland, Stevens says his ground is thriving. “I love my soil now, because water infiltrates so well, and carries equipment great, even a day after heavy rains. Every farm is unique, and that’s why convention must be questioned all the time. Farmers don’t need more popular ideas that don’t challenge, and they don’t need more mainstream opinion; they need quality of opinion.”

Convinced he’s on the road toward a farm in harmony with the past and present, Stevens is stoked to continue down a maverick’s path. “My long-term goal is to be here farming and learning, paying off debt, being successful with a traditional family farm with everything from row crops to specialty items to cattle, and providing food to my community.”

No matter what comes down the pike, expect the plainspoken Stevens to keep questioning every facet of farming. “Oh, yeah. I’ll never stop poking around to find out how things really work, no matter how crazy it sounds at first. I don’t mind being a farming heretic.”

For questions or to read more stories from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com), see:

While America Slept, China Stole the Farm

Where’s the Beef: Con Artist Turns Texas Cattle Industry Into $100M Playground

The Arrowhead whisperer: Stunning Indian Artifact Collection Found on Farmland

Fleecing the Farm: How a Fake Crop Fueled a Bizarre $25 Million Ag Scam

Truth, Lies, and Wild Pigs: Missouri Hunter Prosecuted on Presumption of Guilt?

US Farming Loses the King of Combines

Ghost in the House: A Forgotten American Farming Tragedy

Rat Hunting with the Dogs of War, Farming’s Greatest Show on Legs

Misfit Tractors a Money Saver for Arkansas Farmer

Predator Tractor Unleashed on Farmland by Ag’s True Maverick

Government Cameras Hidden on Private Property? Welcome to Open Fields

Farmland Detective Finds Youngest Civil War Soldier’s Grave?

Descent Into Hell: Farmer Escapes Corn Tomb Death

Evil Grain: The Wild Tale of History’s Biggest Crop Insurance Scam

Grizzly Hell: USDA Worker Survives Epic Bear Attack

A Skeptical Farmer’s Monster Message on Profitability

Farmer Refuses to Roll, Rips Lid Off IRS Behavior

Killing Hogzilla: Hunting a Monster Wild Pig

Shattered Taboo: Death of a Farm and Resurrection of a Farmer

Frozen Dinosaur: Farmer Finds Huge Alligator Snapping Turtle Under Ice

Breaking Bad: Chasing the Wildest Con Artist in Farming History

In the Blood: Hunting Deer Antlers with a Legendary Shed Whisperer

Corn Maverick: Cracking the Mystery of 60-Inch Rows

Against All Odds: Farmer Survives Epic Ordeal

Agriculture’s Darkest Fraud Hidden Under Dirt and Lies

Truth, Lies and Wild Pigs: Missouri Hunter Prosecuted on Presumption of Guilt?

Tue, 27 Apr 2021 19:27:02 GMT

When Michael Bennett loaded eight squealing pigs into the back of a Ford pickup truck, eased off sale barn gravel and onto highway blacktop heading north, the wheels began turning on one of the most bizarre feral hog stories on record, and a legal fiasco that unleashed a litany of questions over guilt, innocence, and state power.

After buying multiple pigs at a Missouri sale barn in 2017, Bennett began a surreal journey to the cusp of state prosecution for alleged violations of law—specifically related to charges stemming from the intentional release of pigs into the wild. Less a whodunit, Bennett’s account is an uncomfortable clash between the bounds of reasonable doubt and the certainty of governmental authority.

“Common sense should tell people something is off with the way the government tried to make me look,” Bennett says. “I ain’t no choirboy, but I never did nothing they said. I believe they wanted to make an example out of me, and all they needed was suspicion, instead of facts, but they sent the facts to hell.”

An Empty Pen

On Aug. 11, 2017, Bennett, 25, and a friend, Nathan Wolfe, split the costs of eight pigs at Texas County’s Summersville Stockyard in Summersville, Mo., in the southeast corner of the Show-Me State, roughly 20 miles north of the Arkansas line.

Swine in his truck bed, Bennett departed from Texas County, passed through Shannon County, and arrived at his Jadwin community home in extreme southern Dent County. That night, according to Bennett, he put one pig to immediate slaughter and deposited seven of the animals, earmarked with USDA Brite Tags, in a dilapidated pen adjacent to his trailer. The pen’s fencing, made from 2”x4” wire, formed a pie-shaped enclosure connected to three trees serving as posts, creating a triangle approximately 12’ long and 7’ wide at the base.

The following morning, Bennett insists, he awoke to an empty pen. Every pig was gone. “I was upset because the pigs escaped and I lost a lot of money,” he says, “but I didn’t have no idea I was fixing to be the No. 1 example of illegal hunting for the whole damn state.”

The Pig Bomb

Wild pigs are a rapacious species, costing the United States as much as $1.5 billion in damage each year, according to the National Feral Swine Damage Management Program ( NFSDMP ). Nationwide population estimates vary, but Jack Mayer, manager of the Environmental Sciences and Biotechnology Group at the Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken, S.C., places the approximate U.S. wild pig tally at 6.3 million, with an overall estimate ranging between 4.4 million to 11.3 million.

(Farm Journal)

Over the past decade, the increased presence of wild pigs has become a significant political and wildlife issue in Missouri. Hunting wild pigs is legal in Missouri, but only on private land. Wild pigs reproduce at an outrageously high rate, with sows capable of delivering two litters (average of six piglets per litter) in 15 months. Females are reproductively capable at five to six months, fueling the multiplier effect. Generally, wild pig biologists place the “control” bar at roughly 66% to 75%. In theory, if a given area has a wild pig population of 100,000, then 66,000 to 75,000 must be killed each year—just to keep the population at a floor of 100,000. Simply, sustained wild pig control is a herculean task.

The heaviest populations of wild pigs in the U.S. range in the Southeast, ravaging ground between Florida and Texas, but population numbers have recently climbed in Missouri. According to the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC), the number of wild pigs in Missouri is a mathematical blank—an unknown.

However, a Mark Twain National Forest publication ( Forest Reflections 2017 , page 10) released in June 2018, contradicts the absence of a wild pig approximation, and projects numbers at “an estimated 20,000 – 30,000 feral hogs in the State of Missouri.”

Additionally, during testimony before the Missouri Legislature in February 2020, Dale Nolte, program manager for the USDA APHIS National Feral Swine Damage Management Program, pegged the wild pig population in Missouri at up to 100,000.

By calendar year, wild pig totals removed through trapping in Missouri are on the rise, and the statistics are touted by MDC as indicative of an increasingly successful eradication program: 5,358 in 2016; 6,567 in 2017; 9,365 in 2018; 10,945 in 2019; and 12,635 in 2020. Yet, with no MDC overall wild pig population estimate as a measuring tape, the trapping statistics lack context. Simply, the trapping numbers can be viewed as proof of effective control, or as evidence of an increase in wild pig presence.

Why? Because if the Mark Twain tally of 20,000-30,000 wild pigs is ballpark accurate, or if Nolte’s estimate of a range up to 100,000 wild pigs is correct, MDC’s wild pig trapping numbers are remarkably far below conventional control rates (66% to 75% control bar).

Regardless of present numbers, MDC officials (as well as wildlife officials in other wild pig-afflicted states) place heavy attribution for the expansion in wild pig geography and increase in wild pig populations to illegal releases; i.e., human transport of individual or small groups of wild pigs in order to purposefully boost hunting potential. Boiled down, MDC believes the sound of wild pig expansion is often the crunch of truck and trailer tires on gravel.

(Farm Journal)

Whether the numbers are right or wrong, such were the tangled background threads of Missouri’s wild pig tapestry when MDC placed its legal eye on Bennett, convinced he bought pigs at the Summersville Stockyard and released them with the intent to boost feral hog numbers and augment hunting. Bennett contends he was the victim of overzealous game wardens, but from MDC’s perspective, Bennett was a proven outlaw.

Guilty? Innocent? A battered adage is fitting, no matter the vantage point: The devil is in the details.

Mulefoot Conspiracy

On Sept. 2, 2017, less than 2 miles from Bennett’s mobile home, a nearby property owner in Shannon County shot and killed two pigs, each marked with an ear tag, denoted by the USDA identification numbers: 43AT9565 and 43AT9567.

Several weeks later, on Sept. 29, after tracing the pigs’ identification numbers, Conservation Agent Brad Hadley, MDC’s representative in Shannon County, called Todd Hornback, then-owner of Summersville Stockyard, seeking processing paperwork on the two pigs in question.

(Farm Journal)

Cutting hay an hour from the sale barn, Hornback answered his cell and listened to a series of requests from Hadley. “He (Hadley) said he was at my business place and had a search warrant on his console that he was ready to use,” Hornback remembers. “He was direct and said I’d come to him, or he’d come to me. Either way, Hadley said I was going to talk to him.”

At a minimum, Hornback notes, Hadley wanted information—backtags and paperwork—on everyone involved in Bennett’s pig transaction. “I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about,” Hornback says. “We were moving a lot of livestock and it was impossible for me to recall specific details on a handful of hogs.”

Gathering the corresponding paperwork, Hornback then drove to a designated grocery store parking lot to meet with Hadley and another wildlife officer. Hornback contends that prior to the parking lot meeting, Hadley and MDC had already reached a two-pronged conclusion: First, the two pigs were definitive proof of an illegal release into the wild by Bennett, in order to boost feral hog numbers. Second, the two pigs were evidence of a wider conspiracy between multiple players—including Hornback—within the hog hunting community to transport, sell, purchase, and release pigs into the wild.

“They were there from the get-go assuming I was involved in a wild pig scheme; I know it,” Hornback says. “I got out of my vehicle, and Hadley stood in front of me, and the other guy got behind. I know exactly what was happening because they assumed I was a criminal, and was part of some crazy gang buying wild pigs from other criminals, then selling the wild pigs in my barn to people who were secretly releasing them. Kinda like a network.”

According to Hornback, Hadley displayed smartphone pictures of the two dead pigs in question, and handed Hornback the cell for a closer look. Hornback couldn’t contain his disbelief: “Something was funny about the pictures right off the bat; just didn’t look right. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Thank the Lord above, I zoomed in and saw mulefeet. I told them in black-and-white: ‘Those are not even wild pigs, they’re mulefoot hogs.’”

Hadley’s reaction, according to Hornback, was of shock. “Both Hadley’s and the other fella’s jaws hit the ground, and they didn’t have a clue what I was talking about with mulefoots. I knew right then these guys may have been wildlife officers, but they sure as hell couldn’t even identify what was or wasn’t a wild pig.”

(MDC was contacted by Farm Journal through telephone and email, but declined to answer any questions about the Michael Bennett case or Brad Hadley’s involvement.)

The two pigs, as with all the pigs purchased by Bennett, were mulefoot hogs , among the most distinct porcine breeds in the United States, likely dating back to Spain’s North American arrival in the 1500’s, and possessing a unique calling card—an unmistakable, non-cloven hoof.

“Hadley and the other guy were lost. I told them, ‘Mulefoots are special and sometimes have their own paperwork and it’s their own breed.’ Hadley seemed confused, but he shook my hand, left me alone, and drove away,” Hornback recalls. “That was it. They didn’t want to hear anything else from me.”

(Farm Journal)

Hadley departed with sale barn tagging records, incoming consignment and outgoing sales invoices, and the identities of consignor and buyer: Duane Smotherman and Michael Bennett.

“They fingered me as the middleman selling wild game between Smotherman and Bennett,” Hornback adds, his voice rising with exclamation. “Craziest s*** I’ve seen in my life. Who in the hell sneaks around to pay extra for mulefoots out of a sale barn and then releases them into the woods to go feral? And who in the hell releases hogs into the woods and leaves the ear tags in place?”

Enter the Kingpin

Several days later, Bennett was at home preparing for an evening hunt at approximately 5 p.m., loading coyote hounds into a dog box attached to his truck bed, when Hadley pulled onto his property in an MDC vehicle. Escaping the barking din of the dogs, Bennett entered Hadley’s cab to answer questions regarding purchase of the mulefoot hogs. “I already had heard about the two hogs getting shot,” Bennett says, “and when Hadley pulled up and asked me to talk in his cab, I had no problem because I hadn’t done nothing.”

Bennett was no stranger to game wardens. As described in MDC citations 286249 and 286736, on Nov. 16, 2012, Bennett fled the scene after being seen spotlighting deer by two Reynolds County conservation agents. The following day, he was located by the two agents (Eric Long and Matthew Bryant) and admitted to the illegal harvest of an 8-point deer. Bennett pled guilty to “take, attempt to take, or pursue wildlife from or with a motor driven air, land or water conveyance.” In addition, he pled guilty to “take, attempt to take, or pursue wildlife with aid of artificial light.” He paid roughly $700 in fines and court costs.

In discussing the 2012 spotlighting incident, Bennett says his conviction was justified. “Those game wardens got me because I done it and I was guilty. I was 19 years old and made a bad mistake, but that shouldn’t make people automatically think I’m guilty of everything in the future. I think the conservation people figured I had to be guilty again over the pigs and jumped the gun.”

According to Hadley’s official report from his visit to Bennett’s residence: “I asked Bennett to tell me what happened and he said, ‘I bought ‘em at Summersville, brought ‘em home, put ‘ern in my pen, they got out.’ I asked what kind of pen Bennett has and he said, ‘It’s just an old pen.’ I asked Bennett what kind of hogs they were and he said, ‘Mulefooted.’ I asked Bennett if he knew where they came from and he said, ‘I just bought ‘ern at the sale barn, is all I know.’ I asked Bennett if he had any left and he said, ‘No, they all got out.’”

Following the initial conversation, Hadley and Bennett exited the truck and walked around the trailer to the makeshift pen. Again, from Hadley’s report: “As we looked at the pen Bennett told me he had put the hogs in there when they got back that night, "...'cause it was midnight when we got in, and I was gonna build ‘ern a new pen the next morning.’ I did not ask and Bennett did not say whether, at the time he bought the hogs, he already had the supplies bought to build this pen or the feed that would have been necessary for them. Bennett did volunteer that, ‘...they was about twenty-five pound pigs when I bought ‘ern.’ I asked Bennett how much he’d paid for the hogs and he said, ‘...twenty or thirty dollars.’ I asked Bennett if all seven had come here, to this pen, and if all seven of them had got away from here and he said, ‘Yeah. I was gonna fatten’ em up and butcher ‘em.’”

(Farm Journal)

According to Bennett, the presence of ear tags in both mulefoots killed on nearby land was of no interest to Hadley. “I told him (Hadley) taking out the ear tags would make it so the pigs could never be traced, but he said tags fall out and I would have known they’d drop out in a few weeks.”

The proposition that a seasoned hog hunter (Bennett) would leave ear tags on the pigs is unreasonable, Hornback insists. Additionally, Hornback says any belief the tags would fall out rapidly from the pigs’ ears is incorrect: “No way the metal tags are coming out on their own unless ripped out. An owner, whether experienced or not, can get the tags out in seconds by easy cutting, and all evidence of ownership is gone. I guarantee you Michael Bennett knew that.”

Hadley next asked for a written statement reiterating the conversation—and then read Bennett a Miranda warning, and told Bennett citations would probably be issued. After the written statement was completed several minutes later, Hadley declared he would meet with Dent County Prosecutor Andrew Curley for further action.

(The Dent County Prosecutor’s office was contacted by Farm Journal through telephone and email, but declined to answer any questions about the Michael Bennett case.)

In total, the interview, walk-through, recitation of Miranda rights, and written statement lasted 45 minutes. Hadley drove away from the alleged scene of the crime, about to compile a “Conservation Agent’s Statement to the Prosecuting Attorney” in order to set the legal wheels in motion toward the prosecution of Bennett over the accusations of pig release.

Hadley’s report, issued on Oct. 24, 2017, was roughly 2,700 words, and contained speculation and hog hunting conspiracy allusions, and concluded with a hazy final paragraph: “This investigation has documented that a known feral hog hunter sold through the Summersville Stockyard, LLC seven hogs that were ear-tagged with US Department of Agriculture (USDA) “Brite Tags” by sale barn employees, and those hogs were bought by another known feral hog hunter. That buyer, Michael L. Bennett, had made no provisions to control and contain the movement of those hogs and all seven subsequently became free-roaming. Two of those free-roaming ear-tagged hogs were subsequently shot and killed by the neighbor of the buyer of the hogs, while the remaining five are apparently still free-roaming at the time of this report.”

Bottom line: Bennett, whether guilty or innocent, was set to face charges that appeared to rely on conjecture.

Further, according to inference within Hadley’s report, there was an origin source for the conspiracy: Enter Duane Smotherman, the alleged kingpin, and his herd of mulefoots.

A “Known Hog Hunter”

“It’s a big, fat, total lie,” says Smotherman. “I never met Michael Bennett before he bought the hogs. I’d never seen him before this or knew of him, and anybody who says I gave him or anyone else a tipoff to come buy hogs at the barn is a damn liar too. It’s the biggest bunch of mess I’ve ever heard, but that is exactly what Hadley is getting at between the lines.”

Hadley specifically labeled Smotherman as a “known hog hunter” and a landowner with acreage adjoining a conservation-controlled area where MDC had trapped 38 feral hogs from May to October 2017, on land within 4 miles of Smotherman’s home. Further, Hadley states: “I told Bennett that the person (Smotherman) who brought the hogs to the sale barn was known to us to be a hog hunter and that it was a bad connection when we have one hog hunter selling hogs through a sale barn to another hog hunter who subsequently allowed those hogs to get loose.”

Smotherman, 70, raises cow-calf pairs in Shannon County and owns 787 acres alongside Birch Creek. Mulefoot hogs, more as a hobby instead of livelihood or side-stream income, have maintained a long-time presence on his farm, and Smotherman has sold the breed to multiple sale barns over several decades. “Hadley talks about 38 feral hogs being trapped by MDC close to my house, and what he means is that I’m the one who released them on purpose. It’s not a word true and I’ll say all of this under oath in a heartbeat.”

Despite being mentioned in Hadley’s report as the possible point source for Bennett’s hogs, Smotherman claims he was never approached for an interview or testimony. Again, according to Smotherman, neither Hadley nor the Dent County prosecutor called him for comment. “It’s not a tricky question,” Smotherman says. “If they really believed that I was the behind all this, why in the hell wouldn’t they question me? No, it was much easier to throw my name in there and muddy up everything to make Bennett look even worse. Didn’t nobody at the Conservation Department or at the prosecutor’s office think maybe, just maybe, this ain’t true?”

“The whole deal makes no sense,” he continues. “It’s almost like somebody was waiting to throw my name as a hog hunter out there just to see what might stick with the prosecutors, no matter how crazy.”

Smotherman’s words poke at a peculiar facet of Bennett’s prosecution: The existence of a “Hog Hunter Contact” database compiled by Hadley. Again, wild pig hunting in Missouri is legal on private land with the landowner’s permission, yet Hadley, and by proxy MDC, maintained an unofficial file for the purposes of keeping tabs on individual wild pig hunters—legal or not. Smotherman was in the file—along with 70 to 80 other Missouri citizens.

Recklessly? Knowingly?

After Hadley turned his report over to Dent County Prosecutor Curley, pig release charges were levied against Bennett. (Missouri Statute 270.260 makes it a crime for a person to recklessly or knowingly release any swine to live in a wild or feral state. The statute also indicates the accidental escape of domestic swine is not a crime.)

(Farm Journal)

Bennett faced seven misdemeanor charges of releasing swine into the wild, with each count carrying a potential sentence of one year in jail and a $2,000 fine.

When the Missouri Hunting & Working Dog Alliance ( MHWDA ), spurred by communications director Missi Ferguson, caught wind of the state’s actions, MHWDA began raising money for Bennett’s legal defense. Enter a bulldog attorney: Jason Coatney.

Coatney grew up on a farm in Greene County in southwest Missouri, and was highly familiar with the nuances of livestock production. The government’s position was “outrageous,” according to Coatney’s conclusions. “It was a misdemeanor charge, but Michael was facing $14,000 in fines. No way. We wanted people to hear the facts of this case and we wanted a jury trial.”

“MDC wanted to stomp the hell out of a backwoods guy who likes to hunt hogs and fits the profile of a poster child because he has past deer violations,” Coatney continues. “Would anyone on a jury believe he’s going to pay $235 for eight pigs and then let them go, when he can easily get pigs for free and let those go instead? Or that he’s part of this crazy hog hunter network with Smotherman? Or that he left in the ear tags so they basically broadcast: This is Michael Bennett’s pig? Bennett is country and can find pigs anywhere, and he damn sure doesn’t need to buy them in a sale barn.”

On Sept. 26, 2018, three weeks before Bennett’s trial, Hadley was deposed by Coatney. Taken under oath, Hadley’s responses during the 50-minute deposition are seemingly contradictory and uncertain. Under Coatney’s prodding, whatever case the prosecution had built against Bennett likely was destroyed by the end of Hadley’s on-the-record testimony.

COATNEY QUESTION (Q): What is it you’re going to tell the jury?

HADLEY ANSWER (A): As far as what?

Q: Whether he (Bennett) knowingly or recklessly released these swine?

A: I don’t know that it makes any difference.

Q: It makes a huge difference, sir. So what is it you’re going to tell them?

A: I don’t know that it makes any difference, knowingly or recklessly, either one.

Q: Okay. So do you believe he knowingly released the swine?

A: Again, I couldn’t speak to that to say specifically that he did this on purpose to release swine.

Q: Do you believe he recklessly released the swine?

A: I believe anyone should have known that that pen would not hold swine.

Q: Okay. So then you believe he was negligent in putting the swine into the pen?

A: Yes.

Later in the Coatney-Hadley exchange:

Q: ...you agree that you’re saying to him that he wasn’t going to say he brought the hogs home knowing they would get out in hopes of having hogs to hunt closer to home in Council Bluff? Is that what you’re going to tell the jury that that’s what he was doing?

A: No

Q: You don’t believe that that’s what he was doing?

A: I don’t know.

Q: Okay. You say here that you don’t think it, right? You weren’t going to say it. What does that mean to you?

A: It means I’m not going to come out and say that you did this because I don’t know what you did.

Q: Okay. Well, you charged him with a crime based upon—I mean, the State has charged him, but you’re the person who provided this information.

A: Yes

Q: You came over and met with the prosecuting attorney, did you not?

A: Yes, I did.

Q: Do you think that you lobbied him (Prosecutor Curley) to bring charges?

A: I presented material, I would like charges brought.

Q: Did you communicate to the prosecuting attorney that there’s a major problem and that you need to prosecute somebody for releasing swine into the wild?

A: Yes, I probably said we would like to do something with this.

Q: So you were looking for a poster child for the problem that you had of swine in the public, correct?

A: I was looking for a case that we could make in the public. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to find somebody releasing hogs.

Continuing in the Coatney-Hadley exchange:

Q: So do you believe that he purchased these animals to take them home to release them so he could hunt?

A: I believe he purchased those home—those animals, took them to his house, put them in the pen and they escaped, they got out…they—whatever, however it happened, I don’t know.

Further in the Coatney-Hadley exchange:

Q: My question is: Do you believe he purchased these pigs and brought them home for the purposes of allowing them to escape to go out into the woods so he would have something to hunt?

A: I don’t know whether he did that or not.

Q: And you’re not going to tell the jury that he did that?

A: No, I’m not going to tell the jury he did that. I can’t say exactly what he did—what his purpose for doing any of this was.

More, from the Coatney-Hadley exchange:

Q: Okay. So what is it that you’re going to say to the jury that says that he either recklessly or he knowingly released these swine into the wild?

A: He bought the hogs, they got to his place, they left his place.

Stunningly, over a year after obtaining search warrants, conducting an investigation, and presenting the government with an official report that was the trigger for the prosecution of Bennett, Hadley stated in on-the-record testimony that he did not know motive, intent or purpose related to Bennett and the wild pigs. Piling on the irony, Hadley explicitly stated he would not offer the jury any definitive conclusion on what occurred.

Hadley’s deposition was a genuine head-scratcher. Weeks prior to the official kickoff of the court proceedings, Hadley, the prosecution’s main witness and spearhead in the pursuit of Bennett, was stuck at: “...they (Bennett’s pigs) escaped, they got out…they—whatever, however it happened, I don’t know.”

According to the deposition, Hadley had personal belief of Bennett’s guilt—and nothing else. Yet, personal belief and prosecution are separated by a legal mile. Bottom line, Hadley’s deposition served as a sledgehammer to the ankles of the prosecution’s case.

“Hadley first said Michael did it on purpose so he could go hunt the pigs, but when that sounded like horses***, he said the pen wouldn’t hold them anyhow and that was illegal,” Coatney explains. “It was unreal, because when Hadley, the guy who represented MDC and had been the champion of trying to get Bennett, was put under oath, it was easy to see there was no evidence—just speculation.”

“People need to pay attention to these kinds of cases,” Coatney adds. “This one involved Michael Bennett, a country guy with little sophistication, but the State could have been going after anybody.”

Hog Hunter Database

A sidecar of Bennett’s case, yet an alarming facet, remains the database on Missouri hunters compiled by Hadley.

COATNEY QUESTION (Q): Why are you collecting data on people that if they’re not doing anything illegal?

HADLEY ANSWER (A): I collect intelligence information from every contact I make. Things that you learn during in this contact may be of assistance to you in the next contact.

Q: You have other contact information sheets for when you encounter somebody who’s maybe spotlight a deer?

A: No, not necessarily.

(Farm Journal)

Further in Coatney’s questioning:

Q: Do you—you don’t disseminate these reports to other agents?

A: I don’t believe I have.

Q: What is the objective in inputting this data and keeping these records? What are you trying to accomplish?

A: Just to know the hog-hunting community.

Q: Okay. And so that’s the hog-hunting community for what counties?

A: Wherever they might occur.

Q: Okay. And what’s their reaction to what it is that you’re doing here with these two documents?

A: I’ve been encouraged, as far as I know. Everybody thought it was a good idea, so...

Q: So is it fair to say then, that in reviewing all of the contact reports, were they all generated by you or did you have others that were generated by other agents?

A: I had other agents that sent me information.

Q: But you generated those reports?

A: Yes. I entered it in the database.

Q: Okay. And is this -- as you sit here today, do you have a present recollection as to how many of these contact sheets that you have in your possession?

A: I’d say 80, 90.

Further...

Q: And for each one of those contacts, you’ve created this type of a sheet, and you hold that database in your own computer?

A: Correct.

Q: And you don’t disseminate it to anybody else in the department?

A: No.

“It’s no wonder Hadley jumps to conclusions about a ‘known hog hunter,’ who was Smotherman, supposedly passing along hogs to another hog hunter, who was Bennett,” Coatney says. “He gets these information forms that he’s filled out, for a database that he’s prepared, and he’s also the repository for the database. However you want to describe it, it’s a government employee keeping under-the-table files on private citizens that he admits may be completely innocent.”

“When you have state officials keeping hidden databases on hunters that are behaving in an entirely legal matter, and the database may or may not be disseminated to other officials, it makes private citizens a little leery.”

Pulling the Handbrake

With Hadley’s deposition in hand, Coatney was convinced the prosecution lacked a submissible case, and pressed hard for a jury trial, demanding the whole ball of wax be rolled before the public. On Oct. 1, Curley asked the presiding judge (Dent County Associate Court Judge Brandi Baird) for a continuance—a delay—and was denied: Trial the following week.

However, on Oct. 11, Curley pulled the handbrake on the case, dismissing the charges against Bennett. According to the The Salem News , Curley stated the following via press release: “I originally filed the charge because the probable cause statement indicated there wasn’t any evidence to believe the pigs were ever placed in the pen. This led me to believe the agent had fully inspected the pen and had sufficient evidence to believe the hogs were never placed in the pen but released directly into the wild by Michael Bennett.”

(Farm Journal)

“Following the (Sept. 26, 2018) deposition, my understanding of the case changed drastically, and I believe it would be impossible to convince 12 jurors the defendant was guilty of this crime,” Curley continued. “A jury would likely see this as an accidental escape.”

Coatney contends finding 12 impartial jurors would have been an extremely difficult task. “It was over. When Curley wasn’t allowed a continuance, he dropped the case. Finished. The judge was about to call in 100 prospective jurors just to find 12 people, and that’s the kind of jury pool number called in for pedophile cases. Why? I believe they knew it was going to be tough to find 12 jurors out of the gate that weren’t alarmed by the Conservation Department’s behavior.”

Significantly, despite Hadley’s admissions during the deposition, and after Curley abandoned the case, MDC continues to champion the performance of Hadley in the pursuit of Bennett, describing his actions as “a thorough investigation.”

From a March 2020 MDC statement sent to Farm Journal: “The Department appreciates the efforts of Agent Hadley and Prosecuting Attorney Curley to conduct a thorough investigation and file charges for the unlawful release of swine back in 2017. While disappointed, we understand the prosecutor’s decision to ultimately dismiss the charges, and the inherent difficulty in proving the culpable mental state of Mr. Bennett. The law requires proving beyond a reasonable doubt that hogs were knowingly or recklessly released.”

Bennett’s case is highly troubling to Coatney, and the Missouri attorney believes a political issue became the spur for overreach by a government agency. “Hogs are breeding like rabbits here and some people blame hog hunters. Whatever position you take, there is no denying feral hogs are a hot political issue in Missouri. You’d think that somebody at some level in MDC would have seen the total lack of evidence against Michael and said something before it got right to the edge of trial, but as far as I know, nobody said a word. MDC believed they had an easy target in Michael, but the facts said otherwise.”

“I’ve seen a lot of things in my career,” Coatney concludes, “but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a stretch like what MDC tried to pull against Michael Bennett.”

Unanswered Questions

Fair question: What would have happened to Bennett without the intervention of Missi Ferguson, MHWDA, and Jason Coatney? Also, was Smotherman next in line to be prosecuted?

“How could the Conservation Department do all this with no evidence?” Smotherman asks. “I’m not even asking for reasonable doubt, just give me some common sense. Nobody moves hogs, especially mulefoots, to sale barns and then secretly hollers at hog hunters to go buy them. Nobody pays money for mulefoots, and then lets them go, and then leaves in the ear tags. Only a bureaucracy person could believe the government’s story without at least raising some questions.”

Smotherman’s contention is echoed by Hornback. “MDC was gonna try to claim I was selling wild pigs through my barn. That kind of government power, based on suspicion, is scary to me and ought to be to everyone, because they were moving forward without any evidence, which is exactly what happened to Bennett, and might have happened later to Duane Smotherman. People need to pay attention to this case because these kinds of things should matter to everybody who cares about what’s right.”

Three years after dismissal of all charges, Bennett reflects back on his near prosecution. “I’m innocent and I never released them hogs. I’m thankful for Missi Ferguson believing that something was not right about my case, and raising money to hire Jason Coatney. Otherwise, I don’t know what I’d have done. How do you fight back against people who can push you anywhere they want based on what they guess happened?”

As one of the oddest feral hog stories on record, the question of how Bennett came within days of a trial procedure due to allegations highlighted by an apparent lack of incriminating evidence, still remains unanswered. In the Dent County prosecutor’s press release issued after the dismissal of all charges against Bennett are 10 key words. The 10 words, tacked on as a caboose to the whole affair, might better have served as the lead sentence of the initial MDC report a year earlier: “A jury would likely see this as an accidental escape.”

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Shattered Taboo: Death of a Farm and Resurrection of a Farmer

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Wayne Springer is Tired of Paying $300 for Traited Corn Seed

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 20:11:15 GMT

Wayne Springer is tired of paying $300 for a bag of traited corn seed. Unafraid to change horses in midstream, the 60-year-old producer is transitioning from a row crop farm to a ranching operation.

Springer farms in south-central South Dakota on slightly elevated land perched just above the Nebraska border. The Gregory County producer is throwing in the towel on input costs and dancing to a tune he says is dictated by the profit line. After over 40 years at the helm, Springer is pushing his operation toward open-pollinating corn and direct-to-consumer beef .

Five miles as the crow flies from the Missouri River, against of backdrop of rolling hills, buttes and bluffs seemingly pulled straight from the film reel of Dances With Wolves, Springer and wife, DenaMarie, and brother, Terry, grow corn, soybeans, alfalfa and sudangrass across 1,200 acres of farmland and pasture. “Normal, regular farming just doesn’t cover my input costs. We’re not scared to try something new and that’s what we have to do,” Springer says.

Springer’s frustration isn’t with technology or hybrid improvements. In a summer of historic drought in the Dakotas, he says corn hung on during blistering months that once would have roasted the same fields. And soybeans ? Just a decade back, soybeans were a rarity in Springer’s farming area, yet now they are standard in every rotation. “The genetic changes have been incredible and they’re proven by the way corn and soybeans bounced back this year,” he acknowledges.

Despite the technological muscle of new hybrids and varieties, Springer says market realities are all the more powerful. “At $3 corn where is the profit? At $4 corn where is the profit?” he asks.

With 100 head of stock cows and 1,200 acres of land, Springer’s holdings made for a sizeable operation when he was a child. No more. “We all know the trend in agriculture is to get larger and larger. Reality says I have to supplement with outside income because a small farm doesn’t necessarily pay for itself,” he says.

Starting in 2018, Springer plans to replace substantial traited corn acreage with forage crops, roll the dice on 30 acres of open-pollinating corn, and potentially begin cutting seed costs. Ultimately, he intends to market cattle directly to consumers. In the rural surroundings of Gregory County, Springer says few people will pay a high premium for organic beef, but he’s aiming to fill the “in between” gap. “There’s so much meat coming into the country from all over the world right now, and nobody is sure where it’s coming from. People want born, bred, and raised in U.S. by our health standards. We can provide farm fresh meat between high-priced organic and the unknowns at the grocery store.”

It will be heavy-lifting to establish clientele. Despite Sioux Falls located three hours east and Rapid City four hours west, Springer knows he must look to the scattered urban crowd in a state with only 850,000 people. “People want beef without steroids or growth hormones, and they want cattle raised on open-pollinating corn that’s packed with nutrition,” Springer adds. “We want to utilize more of our on-farm products to feed our cattle out and minimize our deficits as far as what we put in.”

Terry, left, and Wayne grow corn, soybeans, alfalfa and sudangrass across 1,200 acres of farmland and pasture.

© Lura Roti, South Dakota Farmers Union

Terry, 65, says direct-to-consumer beef is a great opportunity brought on by the harsh realities of grain production on a small farm: “For us, less row crops means big savings on seed and chemical sprays. Even in years with good luck and great weather, the profit margin has gotten tight.”

Springer wishes he had begun the transition a decade ago, but he isn’t intimidated by the prospect and has always sought opportunity in side-stream income. A decade back, watching television on a below-zero winter night, he saw an advertisement for a corn-burning stove. With bins of corn only a stone’s throw away, Springer realized he was sitting on fuel. His 1,900 sq. ft. house is now heated by a single corn stove (125. bu per year) and he is a dealer with Dakota Corn Stove Company: “Every farmer in the country should consider a corn stove because you can heat some houses literally for a few dollars per day.”

In a converted farrowing shed, DenaMarie works her own side-stream angle, reworking old barn wood and farming implements into crosses and a wide variety of hand-made crafts. “She loves it, brings in some extra dollars and makes people very happy,” Springer says.

Springer is a man of hope and despite a tough market, he relishes every day in agriculture, and insists Providence is responsible for his farming success. “I’ll always do what I have to do, but this is my life. I’m so fortunate because I’m here on this farm by the blessing of God. I’ve been across this great country and seen true beauty, but farming here is especially beautiful to me.”

Springer admits change on a farming operation is unusual at his age, but he’s ready and filled with expectation. “I’d tell any farmer: Don’t be afraid to give anything a shot because you’re only here once,” he adds. “We are blessed to have options in this country. Just living here is proof I’ve already won the lottery.”

Meet Del Ficke, the Apostle of Regenerative Agriculture

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 02:24:03 GMT

Camera in hand and a thousand miles from home, a Nebraska farm boy stepped off a tour bus and already knew the drill, whether in an expanse of wheat in Montana or a row of cotton in Mississippi. The 10-year-old clicked his Polaroid, flapped the photo in the wind, and added it to an ever-growing collection of agriculture pictures. Under the watchful eye of a patient father, the boy was a sponge and soaked in facets of farming from virtually every state in the lower 48. Ever the visionary, the father taught the boy an invaluable lesson: how the other half farms. Forty years later, the father is gone and the son remains, thriving by surrendering his soil to the past.

Who slashes farmland acreage by three-quarters, jettisons a machinery fleet, and upends field practices, yet watches profits rise by 70 percent? Meet Del Ficke and a less-is-more farming approach. When Ficke shrunk a traditional row crop and livestock operation to 700 acres and implemented regenerative agriculture across his ground, the southeast Nebraska producer flipped convention on its head and used the past to unlock the future. Adios to inputs.

Fourteen miles west of Lincoln, outside of Pleasant Dale, Ficke dryland farms in rolling, heavy clay hills. He grows a mix of corn, covers, grain sorghum, soybeans, and small grains, relying on roughly 30” of rainfall each year. Just four miles west of Ficke’s property sits some of the most picturesque farmland in Nebraska—manicured fields, center pivots, massive shining bins, and huge tracts of land. Only half in jest, Ficke describes his own ground as “hills and rocks in the sticks.” Yet, there is nowhere else the Seward County producer would rather farm. “I’ve been across this entire country and my land is the best damned place I could be. Love it.”

A fifth-generation producer, Ficke, 51, works 700 acres and maintains an elite nucleus herd ranging from 70 to 100 cows. Net profit per acre and net profit per head are dual kings at Ficke Cattle Company , their rule undergirded by absolute devotion to soil health. A quick glance over Ficke’s shoulder and a short walk through time reveal the radical transformation from convention to conservation.

No Heart, No Plan

Thirty years back, working alongside his father, Kenneth, and cousin, Greg Eggerling, Ficke’s operation was large-scale and reached across three counties. “We were hustling our asses off, thinking we were making great strides for agriculture. I had no idea all we were doing was wearing out soil and equipment.”

Constantly pressed for time, Ficke placed 100 percent of his acreage in no till in 1986, just prior to a major drought. “I tried no till for one reason—saving hours. Maybe save on passes and fuel too, but I was just trying to cut time.”

Ficke’s no till investment paid major dividends. In the grip of extremely dry conditions, surrounding farms produced 12 bu. corn , while his ground averaged 77 bu. per acre. In 1987, all of his neighbors followed suit and went no till. Despite initial no till and cover crop success, Ficke missed the big picture and says his “heart” was a major roadblock. “I didn’t factor in soil benefits. We were still farming several thousand acres, but I didn’t have change in my heart and I didn’t have a plan.”

Unsure of direction, he didn’t stray further from the conventional path. But just a few years over the farming horizon, seismic change was on a collision course with Ficke and his world was about to flip. The Nebraska grower was on the cusp of losing everything he loved.

Bare Bones

In 1999, a series of back injuries (two crushed vertebrate) resulted in debilitating pain for Ficke—made all the worse by tractors and combines. “I’d always assumed I’d run cows and farm my whole life. I was depressed because I didn’t know how to do anything else.”

Spurred by necessity, Ficke went to college, earning degrees in radiology and hospital administration before managing a medical clinic in Lincoln for five years. Kenneth and Greg continued to farm several thousand acres and Ficke worked on the operation when possible. “Mentally, these were rough years trying to figure out where my place was going to be. God had it under control and it all worked for the best.”

Despite multiple back surgeries and an incessant chain of pain, Ficke was gaining invaluable daily exposure to the public’s view of agriculture. As his back condition slowly improved, Ficke consistently fielded questions from clinic patients about the cloistered nature of agriculture. “The whole direction of my life began to change regarding the farming culture around me. People were curious about why things seemed so secret on farms.”

Ficke expressed his concerns to Kenneth. “I said, ‘Dad, there’s a lot of people that don’t think much of agriculture and in some ways I don’t necessarily disagree.’ Dad didn’t hesitate and said, ‘Yes, those are the same people we’ve got to get in touch with.”

“My dad was forward-thinking. Change resonated with him. We decided to be totally open to questions or tours to the public; no more protectionism.”

Ficke slowly transitioned to full-time farm work, left behind the security of the well-paying clinic job and geared up for the change of his life. His plan was layered with a host of moving pieces, but centered on radical reduction of inputs and long-term soil health. Ficke cut the cord on rented ground and made a strategic retreat to 700 family acres and 100 cows, set on a carousel of row crops, cover crops, pasture and livestock. In the view of many outsiders, he had taken a figurative hammer to the operation’s ankles, but the farm ledger told a counterintuitive story, according to Ficke: Profits jumped over 70 percent higher despite diminished acreage and a smaller herd.

Where did the 70% jump originate? It hinged entirely on savings.

“You name the input and we made serious cuts. We cut out the middleman as much as possible. Bankers, chemical dealers, equipment lots and seed dealers, I just felt everyone was making money but us. I think farmers suffer from Stockholm syndrome and sometimes they are friends with their captors. You have to get costs per acre down to bare bones.”

Cow be a Cow

Grazing, grazing and more grazing; no more jams in a feedlot. Basically, Ficke put his cows on a diet of grass, bale grazing and cover crops, with a miniscule amount of extra protein ($250) for the entire herd. With closed pens eliminated, annual veterinarian bills dropped from $10,000 to $1,200. Ficke’s average cow deposits 75 lb. of manure and urine across the operation. Extrapolated by 100 head across 365 days a year, the math isn’t difficult to tally, Ficke explains. “No more contaminated pens. We just let the cow be a cow. Savings and soil health are building up and this is the same thing our grandfathers did until someone came along and unfortunately said, ‘You’re not efficient. Buy an upright silo and a confinement building.’”

Money-sucking Machinery

Ficke rolled away his machinery and whittled roughly $250 per acre in equipment payments down to $26-$30 per acre. He kept a tractor for hay and bales, dumped the rest of the fleet, and contracted with custom operators.

“We already weren’t doing tillage. Then we got rid of about $1 million in equipment payments. I see a lot of farms with six tractors and too many tills to count, and guys wonder why they’re not making money.”

Ficke admits custom work does not provide equity on the balance sheet, but he emphasizes the elimination of depreciation and breakdowns. “You write a custom guy a check and it’s way less time than all you fool with on equipment payments. People in agriculture never apply actual costs because they don’t think their time is worth anything. It blows people away to tally time, equipment and foolishness. In fact, foolishness is probably the biggest money-sucking machine of all.”

With reliance on custom operators, Ficke’s most important piece of equipment is a utility vehicle. He does not run pickups except to haul cattle. The difference in overall fuel consumption is remarkable and requires a single annual purchase of 250 gallons of diesel per year. Basically, the fuel truck only visits once a year. Previously, Ficke chopped silage throughout the fall, fed silage all winter and spread manure the rest of the year. No more. Manure hauling has been virtually eliminated, as has the need for multiple tractors to feed silage or grind hay. “It shocks your mind to see all the time and money savings.”

Chemical Cuts

With cattle contributing to soil health and cover crops boosting soil and weed suppression, Ficke estimates a 50% reduction in row crop fertilizer and a 25% reduction in herbicide, with incremental improvements each year. On pastures, he has eliminated 95% of chemical use, relying on a hand pump unit to spot-spray thistles. “We’ve also gotten rid of 95% of fertilizer use on pastures due to condensed manure and urine. The savings just keep piling up from so many areas like this.”

Banker Blues?

Ficke’s transition from one agricultural system to another would have jolted many bankers, but despite the lack of a baseline, Joe Carey, vice president and senior ag loan officer at Arbor Bank in Nebraska City, listened and learned. “Certainly there was risk because we didn’t have trend analysis or industry data to fall back on. But we clicked immediately because Del didn’t shoot from the hip. He was a calculated risk-taker and he’d already done the math.”

“Starting off, it’s a tough deal for a bank to understand. How does he produce such quality grain with such minimal input expense? But you don’t have to understand Del’s practices as long as you understand his numbers. Today, he’s got traction and a baseline, and we can show you the results.”

Till Kill

In addition to his ag operation, the plainspoken Ficke also runs a consulting service , maintains an open farm, and invites curious, eager or skeptical producers to educational seminars.

Tillage is the biggest error Ficke encounters, he contends. “I’ll drive up to a farm and see four new tractors, each with its own tillage equipment. I’ll tell the farmer all he needs is two tractors, two grain carts, a planter, and a drill. The rest? Send’em back and don’t look back.”

“Nothing kills soil like tillage. You’re just making everyone in the business chain happy but yourself.”

Graham Christensen , 38, grows conventional corn and soybeans an hour north of Omaha in Oakland. He also has non-GMO corn in the crop roster, and is starting to mix in small grains. Influenced by Ficke’s success, Christensen is preparing to plant covers, and hopes to bring in livestock, as well as tree-range poultry—a system similar to free range with the addition of a perennial canopy that provides extra income from nut and fruit trees. Christensen is already heavily reliant on solar power and he’s trialing a permaculture project.

“Del has inspired me and I was blown away the first time I was on his farm. He’s done simple things with grass, crops and pasture, and let the cattle out of the cage. It’s all done with no new equipment purchases.”

Most impressive, according to Christensen, is Ficke’s no-cost transition. “This is a massive change with virtually no transition costs. I want to do the same without putting my farm at risk. Simple and low-cost—that’s the model I want to copy.”

Ficke’s system has parallels with other growers across the Midwest, Christensen insists. “I see more young people farming like Del and it leads me to believe I’ve been misled by some agribusiness companies. My family has always been told we need all this stuff and more. I don’t believe that now because I see young people like Del cutting inputs by using livestock and soil health. This really, really makes sense for an independent operation.”

Christensen is adamant: Young farmers are taking an interest in regenerative agriculture. “Young people have to keep the business open and they want to have these conversations. The interest is percolating and that’s why we started Regenerate Nebraska , to help try to move the needle more aggressively.”

Maximizing Acres

Ficke should never have to rent or buy more ground, he contends, because only 4.5 of his acres are maximized. He defines maximized acreage as ground requiring no inputs. “Last spring, our soil tests showed a piece of ground that had gone from 2.6 organic matter to 6.9 in a decade. Nitrogen and phosphorus were maximized and it was nearly back to a prairie state. Production goes through the roof and inputs drop to nothing.”

Ficke has two goals. One, create the finest soil in the world. Two, craft the most accountable cowherd in the world. He estimates his operation is 50 percent regenerative. “I admit regenerative is not a cool-sounding name. It just means using things on the farm that have already been done. The small regenerative practice as a first step will blow a person’s mind.”

“We have to study the past, even in agriculture. Ten years ago I had to go to another state to see regenerative agriculture, but now I can go every five miles and see some of these practices.”

What is Ficke’s hope for overall agricultural change in the U.S.? “Just change 10 percent of your operation. I can walk in a bank with anyone and get their banker on board to change an operation just 10 percent. I can’t show cash in hand, but I can show the savings very quickly.”

As a rule, he refuses to discount any new farming practice. (Ficke has an upright silo and is considering converting it to aquaponics production.) “Somebody throw an idea out and I’m the guy that won’t laugh. I’ll at least give it genuine consideration.”

A Father’s Hand

Ficke’s willingness to step far beyond convention stems from a father’s guiding hand. Kenneth either accompanied his young son or sent him on farm tours across the United States, insisting Ficke keep records of every farming practice encountered. “My dad believed we couldn’t do the best job on our farm unless we knew what others were doing far away. He was the greatest mentor. He knew where agriculture was headed and he prepared me.”

“All farmers are in this together and what I do now is a calling. I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel, but instead balance it out. I have every confidence in the world we’re making real changes in agriculture. We just have to start not only using our heads, but also using our hearts.”

For more, see:

Killing Hogzilla: Hunting a Monster Wild Pig

Agriculture’s Darkest Fraud Hidden Under Dirt and Lies

Blood And Dirt: A Farmer’s 30-Year Fight With The Feds

Seeds of Discord: Crossing the Great Cover Crop Divide

Bald Eagles a Farmer’s Nightmare

Living the Dream: Honoring A Fallen Farmer

Cover Crop Bandwagon Frustrates Farmers

Frog or Foul: SCOTUS Weighs Historic ESA Case

Corn’s Carbon Cowboy Busts Outstanding Yields

Pigs Don’t Fly: Feral Hog Spread Is A Man-Made Mess

Jimmy Frederick Booms 163 Bu. Soybeans