Dirt to Dollars
Agriculture, farming, and rural issues in central Kentucky.
Dirt to Dollars
Episode 51 - Pro Farmer Crop Tour and Other Crop Observations
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Welcome to Dirt to Dollars, where we cover everything from the dirt on your land to the dollars in your hand.
SPEAKER_01We're talking all things agriculture and central can from the field to the farm office.
SPEAKER_00Join your hosts, Daniel Carpenter, Matt Adams, and Mark Thomas as we dig into current ag news, practices, and more. And now, coming to you from the Biotech Innovation Studios, here's Dirt to Dollars. Now let's get innovative. Welcome back to another week of Dirt to Dollars. Where just like the yields on the ProTour Pro Farmer Crop Tour, we hope we're not disappointing. I gotta get back in the groove. Daniel did it a couple weeks.
SPEAKER_01It just it threw everybody off, didn't it?
SPEAKER_00You right you got in there and you like started as soon as I hit record, so I couldn't get anything in. Yeah, that was by design. I had to think of something fast.
SPEAKER_01Gotta be thinking on your feet to fit in around here. Yeah. Speaking of disappointing, you know what's not disappointing?
SPEAKER_00What's that?
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SPEAKER_00I still say all we've got to come on and say is spray tech low use rate. Mike drop and roll on.
SPEAKER_01It works.
SPEAKER_00Yaw.
SPEAKER_01Using using ounces to replace gallons.
SPEAKER_00Ounces to replace pounds.
SPEAKER_01Ounces to replace pounds, right. Depending on depending on what uh you're going after. If you're replacing it at AMS, you're replacing uh essentially what, two to three pounds of the acre with two ounces of full tech adjunct. So more results this winter. So stay tuned.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Might get a little more sponsorship out of them, but we've got to endure Daniel's openings if we do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. We might can we negotiate on that, son? They say everything has a price. So I'm not sure if that has a price, but we might have to negotiate on that one. But we'll see. But back to your opening and disappointments. Pro Farmer Crop Tour is this week. And typically when that happens, us as farmers, uh we get tied up in I think I guess they call it backyard itis. We look at our backyard and and we think, oh, well, our crop's not there, and they come up with big numbers all across the the states they go, or or we look at we don't have a crop here, we have a crop here, and they don't. Well, this year, for the first time in several years, they're coming back with some fairly disappointing numbers.
SPEAKER_00Man, it's uh Mark, I know you follow the grain market discussion page on Facebook. Some probably one of the biggest grain marketing outlets out there. Daniel, I don't know if you've ever taken a look at that or not, but usually this time of year it's nothing but people complaining about pro farmer crop tour, pro farmer trespass tour, I've heard it called. And uh we will. If they were in my field, I'd run them off and all this kind of stuff. It's been crickets this week. I hadn't heard a single person complain about it.
SPEAKER_01I actually saw a tweet the other day that said it's funny how quiet the anti-pro farmer tour people are when they're getting results they want to hear.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So yeah, Daniel, back to your point there. If you don't know, aren't familiar with the Pro Farmer Crop Tour, I think this is, I heard the other day this is their 30th year that they've done this. Uh it's headed up by Chip Florey that works for Farm Journal Media, uh, has a radio show there. And uh, you know, farm journal is a big farm publication magazine and radio media, and I think tied in with uh RFD TV as well. Uh so one of the bigger ag media companies out there. Uh but basically they sponsor and have quote unquote scouts, which are people that are involved in agriculture somehow. Some of them are agronomists, some of them are ag media people, some of them are farmers and uh some are market consultants, marketing commodity traders, brokers, that kind of stuff. Uh and they start an eastern leg and a western leg and meet together in is it Minnesota? Somewhere in Minnesota is where they meet and then have their big grand finale. Uh so yeah, they kind of divide and conquer, start in Ohio and I think South Dakota and work their way towards the the center of the corn belt there, basically just covering those major corn and soybean growing areas. Uh South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Minnesota. Should I get them all?
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm. I think you got them all.
SPEAKER_00Uh and basically what their purpose is this time of year, you know, you go out, we're going out as farmers and making yield estimates, and you can get a pretty good idea of what's out there for a crop. And uh they're going out there and and giving their best estimates. Uh usually they're kind of right in line with USDA. Although I saw uh watch their results one night this week, and they made the point that typically they come in yield-wise a little bit lower than USDA. Uh, but another thing that they show is the percentage difference between what they found in a state this year and what they found in a state last year. Uh, and then they'll compare the uh percentage difference between what they're seeing in a state this year and what the five-year average is. So you really get a good idea of it's how it's stacking up against other years. Uh this year, everything that I've seen that they're putting out, they're saying USDA is way off on these states that they've been in so far. Uh now on a national average, there could be a few outliers that might pull it up a little bit or something, but uh, you know, like the state of Kentucky, state of Tennessee, our crops aren't big enough generally to have much pull on that national average. So they're hitting all those states that pretty well set the national average so they can peg it pretty close. But uh yeah. Seeing a lot of surprises. I always like to uh keep up with it on social media. Used to, that was the only reason I had a Twitter account, and I don't even have one anymore. So uh there used to be that was about the only place you could go and and see it. Uh a lot of these scouts would post pictures throughout the day on there. Most of them are posting them on Facebook or something now, anyway, so you can can see them places like that. But uh a lot of surprisingly poor looking ears of corn have been posted.
SPEAKER_01They're saying Nebraska is the the got the lowest pod counts on soybeans since 2013. Wow. So that tells you how far back they've had to go to to get a crop this bad, I guess is the way to put it.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, if you look at those numbers, they'll give a yield estimate on corn. They're not giving a yield estimate on soybeans, they give the number of pods in a three by three square.
SPEAKER_01Three by three, yep.
SPEAKER_00And there is some formula there, I think, that I've heard some of them show that they've come up with where they can correlate that to yield if conditions are normal from this point forward. But you know, usually this time of year, uh the corn crop's pretty well set, but that soybean crop still has some uh some finishing to do, so you could go one way or the other.
SPEAKER_01So so I'll say this, and over the years, you know, I've I've run down the the Pro Farmer tour and you know questions it questioned its integrity. Um I know some people that have actually done that over the years and the the protocols they go through to do it. But can you imagine laying in a soybean field counting pods in a three by three square? So do they not pull a degree? I don't think I don't well, I don't know. Maybe they do. But still, can you imagine walking out in a field and pulling up beans out of a three by three square and then standing on the edge of the field and counting? I mean, this one, you know, the average in Ohio was eleven hundred and ninety-seven pods. Yeah. In a three by three square.
SPEAKER_03One three.
SPEAKER_02Like how many were coming in the background around six, eight, twelve, fourteen.
SPEAKER_00Oh I'd assume you'd count one plant and then write that down. And then count another plant and write that down.
SPEAKER_01I would guess.
SPEAKER_00I don't know, but there's gotta be a way to take it to the plant.
SPEAKER_01But still still, you gotta count every pod.
SPEAKER_00So some of the day one and day two pictures that I saw out of Ohio and Indiana, uh, they were talking about walking through ankle and a little bit deeper water all morning long, just where they have been just had torrential rain there the last week. Uh, and we're noting a lot of crop damage. You know, there was a derecho. Is that Daniel? What's what's the Derecho? Duracio. Derecho. Doratio, isn't it? See, I said Doratio one time, and Daniel told me it was Derecho. I think it's Derecho 20 when that went through Iowa. I got corrected. So But yeah, there was I think they noted quite a bit of damage from that. Um and a lot of water damage. And just a lot of so I think they were showing that uh you know it had potential to to go downhill from what they were even estimating there. Yeah, I think they were in Illinois here on Wednesday, and a lot of the pictures I saw out of there were showing a lot of poor pollination and tit back and some small ears. Just not what you would expect from a big corn state like Illinois.
SPEAKER_01No, you wouldn't, but but their crops kind of struggled all year and uh you know, seeing a lot of Twitter and Facebook comments from some people over that over the last week and a half that there's a lot of crop that was completely lost. You know, there was there was guys complaining about you know, well, I'm in a drought and can't get this, and and I've seen other farmers comment and say, well, you know, I'll I'll take a drought any day over a flood because it was all gone. And I disagree with either one of them. So I mean everybody would. Everybody would, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00I've always kind of had I don't know, I've had mixed feelings. I've tried to give them the benefit of the doubt on that tour because was it 2020 that the Derecho went through Iowa and laid all that corn flat?
SPEAKER_01I think so.
SPEAKER_00And I think it was downplay, it was kind of this same time of year, it was close to uh crop tour time, and it was kind of downplayed until the crop tour went through and got some boots on the ground, and really we rallied going forward from that news. So maybe that's what we've got this year too. But uh if we've got a good crop, it's hard to argue that there's not a good crop, but years like this where there's problems, you've got to have people in that field to uh to discover that and kind of disclose that. I've always kind of wanted to go be a scout.
SPEAKER_03Just one C. I just I like I like that they do this because it it kind of keeps, you know, it's it's not like a you're not judging the government by these numbers, but you're kind of kind of keeping the government like, hey, we're we're we're watching these numbers too, right? So like, you know, it makes to make sure they spend a little more attention, like don't just throw out a number, even though some reports are.
SPEAKER_00You know, they're way too high in some of these states. And I think everybody knew they were too high, but it's good to to get some validation there that they are. But and maybe like you said, that kind of holds their feet to the fire and going forward in some of these reports, they lower those states a little bit more. But uh so yeah, it's giving us a nice rally this week. I know that. And I don't know. See how we made the comment about the pro-trespassers tour or whatever before. I've always wanted to see an explanation of how they pick fields and if it's and I don't know if they reach out to these farmers and they know that they're coming, or if they really do just randomly stop on the side of the road, they're really not doing any damage.
SPEAKER_01I mean, they're pulling a few ears and uh walking out in the field and measuring some things, but I mean they were probably doing less damage than the Harden LaRue crop tour was doing a couple years ago that was traveling through the area doing a crop tour.
SPEAKER_00So although they were they were good at getting rid of army worms, they helped the army worm population.
SPEAKER_01They did do that.
SPEAKER_00But maybe next year the three of us should go on a pro farmer crop tour.
SPEAKER_03We should just do one in Kentucky.
SPEAKER_01That would actually that would actually be kind of fun to do one in Kentucky. We could go down and a couple of we'll have to get another person. I wish there's not a lot of corn in in uh the eastern part of the state. We could couple some of them just go west, some of us go east, and meet back up at home.
SPEAKER_03Um I'm I'm gonna call Dibbs on the corn. You all can count pots. No, we'll what rock paper scissors for?
SPEAKER_00Dang it. I've just I've got a few people in mind. We're gonna go visit some fields if we do that.
SPEAKER_01Yes, absolutely. Not if they get to you first.
SPEAKER_00So we uh had a busy week last week with our guest we had on, didn't have a whole lot of time to talk about other things and missed a couple things. Uh one thing that we want to uh make sure we don't leave out this week. We did have another loss in the ag community, especially locally here. Uh kind of another local legend that's several that we've lost with uh one of my neighbors, actually, Ronnie Ryder down here, who was a legend in the dairy industry uh nationwide. Uh kind of a legendary jersey breeder with his brother Mike down here in Upton. Uh bred a lot of high dollar jersey cows and have a lot of genetics in that uh in the top of that breed today, and very successful in the show ring over the years, uh, very successful as a judge, uh, and also worked as a uh consultant with uh several of the milk companies and uh being the guy that comes out to the farm and consults with the farmers. Uh and I actually was still employed by DFA Dairy Farmers of America there uh when he passed away here a week or two ago. So just want to make sure we mention that. Hopefully that's the last one of those we have to do for a while.
SPEAKER_01Sure hope so.
SPEAKER_03Well, we were talking about the crop tour earlier and about observations that people have have made across the country. I've I've I've made an observation locally.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And uh and I've I've you know it's I don't know if it I think it's obvious, and but it's just something that's really stood out to me. But there are so many soybean fields now that have no tracks in them. And it is very pleasing to my eyes, and because I'm like kind of OCD about stuff. And it's like when I see tracks and then there's a track that's like too close to the edge or it's not spaced outright, it just it bugs me. But like there are so many fields that have no tracks at all. See, and they look really good and clean, like I mean, and both you know, most of the time you think, well, if it didn't have tracks in it, it didn't get sprayed or uh it's full of weeds, but like everything really actually looks pretty good, nice green, dark green color in a lot of these fields, and just just solid almost just looks like it's just a a hay field, right? Like just uh solid field of green that's that's just looks nice and uniform. And now that like I've noticed it, I just keep noticing it.
SPEAKER_00So personally, I think a soybean field looks better if it has a set of tracks in it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well.
SPEAKER_01So a couple things on that. One, I think uh times have gotten better over the years. One, we've gotten better GPS corrections, and we've got different herbicide programs now, you know, with the resistant weeds that have come in, farmers have had to get better about what they apply, when they apply it, etc., with you know putting down some residuals and and things. So if you get in that field, you usually we would go in that field early and run over those beans and you know have a track or have somewhat of a track and then go back and spray fungicide and probably run in a different track with with GPS. Well, now we're going through that with a little bit later and putting down our residual so we're not having the weeds, but we also have that same track and the beans bush out more and are filling that track in some. Plus, we have drones too that are spraying.
SPEAKER_03I think I think the biggest part of this is because of driving things that are on water.
SPEAKER_01Or people are tight and aren't spending money on fungicides.
SPEAKER_00That's probably part of it. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01But I can also say for my farm, if my beans don't have tracks in it, they're usually I'm usually not sharing pictures of the yield monitor.
SPEAKER_03So well, we'll we will see. But I I do, I just I don't know. I just noticed it and now I just think, oh, another field, no tracks. And they look, I mean, they look good, right? Now, a good-looking soybean field does not always equal a high-yielding soybean field. Sometimes it's almost sometimes it's almost the opposite, but uh more likely than not. But if uh yeah, I just I've really noticed that this time. And I think there's some fields that may have got some touch-up spraying with drones for her, you know, the herbicide pass rather than going over the you know with a ground rig just touching up in some spots with a with the drone too. I think that's been going on a little bit uh more. Uh typically we just think of fungicides, but I think we have uh some farmers that are doing a little herbicide spot spray with it too in places. Um, but anyway, that was that was just one of my little weird things that I've noticed in all my driving around.
SPEAKER_01Well, speaking of spraying and uh crazy stories, there's a story come out um out of Illinois that a farmer is facing a potential two hundred and fifty thousand dollar fine by the Illinois Department of Agriculture for allegedly spraying pesticides on a farm near the Bethel Lutheran school while a school hosted an outdoor event.
SPEAKER_00It's I wasn't it's I don't know all the story on it. It was exposed is how they came up with that.
SPEAKER_01If five or more humans are exposed, the penalty shall be twelve hundred and fifty dollars for each human exposed.
SPEAKER_00This is Illinois. There's a Kentucky thing. That's an Illinois thing. I think that's a state statute.
SPEAKER_03So we obviously don't know all the details around this either. Is so and I have not read this. Was uh was so he was he was supposedly sprayed while kids were outside, and that's a fact.
SPEAKER_01Like he it was a um It was an outdoor event. I don't even think it was during school. But what I believe got him in trouble, um, and if you've ever attended a pesticide training, which everyone who's spraying pesticides should have attended one, they will tell you to read the label, and the label is the law, just like state statutes or laws when it comes to spraying. He was applying in winds that were over ten miles an hour.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and the label was a mile an hour.
SPEAKER_01It needed to be sprayed between two and ten mile an hour, and he was spraying uh he was spraying Metrobusin. And he was he was off label.
SPEAKER_00So But that's kind of the scary part is you know, Metrobusin's not one that you think of of people worried about drift.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And people worried about being around because it's not one of the buzzword herbicides out there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well at the time of spraying, at least 200 individ individuals were in the area, and wind speeds reached gust of 19 mile an hour at the field adjacent to the school where it was crazy.
SPEAKER_03That's not ideal. So but I will say uh the only thing that I will say is that I've Matt, you've no you probably know what I'm gonna say. You've been an extension agent before. And this is what kind of one of them like the boy who cried wolf things for me because I hear it so many times. They were, you know, you the there was such and such spraying, they were in the field next to me and it blew and I can taste it on my lips, and I got it all over money. That's just like somebody's words that they say. And I'm not saying that because they they may they may be telling the truth, but a lot of times they're not. And and it's just they know that somebody's spraying, and then they know that the wind's blowing, so they know they'll they'll say these things because because of that. This sounds like this guy probably did this wrong. Like he shouldn't have been spraying. That's school in session or not. He he broke, you know, he went against the rules and needs to get in trouble for that. But sometimes I still I'm just so I'm so burned out from all that that every time when I hear those complaints, I think I just go automatically go to I wonder how much they're trying to stretch the truth on this.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, but it's a very good but if it's got documented 19 mile an hour wind speeds, if they pulled that from somewhere, there's a weather station somewhere close by or somewhere that the wind was blowing 19 mile an hour, he didn't have any business being out there with wind speeds anywhere close to that.
SPEAKER_01And um and that's exactly right, and that's the thing to remember is that yes, you can have the the boy who cried wolf, and you know, if if you're doing everything right and there's you know a a yard or a garden or or people or whatever next to you, and and everything's to the T correct, your s your wind's not blowing, you know, you have nothing to worry about when it comes to a drift claim. But if you're doing something a little bit off label, a little bit sketchy, then yeah, you probably deserve to get in a little trouble.
SPEAKER_00Does it say how close he was to the school?
SPEAKER_01I don't see anything that shows how close he was to the school.
SPEAKER_03That's another one sometimes when people consider a field or consider being close, you know, it really it'd be like that's not close. Like he's right, my you know, he's he's in the field, you know, completely uh up there. But it's I mean, it's this doesn't sound like one of those situations, but it's just some of those generalizations that I'm just used to hearing.
SPEAKER_00It's uh yeah. And it's I I don't know. I'd almost feel better about it if the fine was for dinging up the landscape plants or something around the school, but because you could technically prove that that happened something. Right. Prove that you exposed those people and you can't prove that even if you did expose them that it was harmful.
SPEAKER_03Uh I mean technically, technically, the way the way you read that when it said pesticides, like technically, if he was just spraying water on his on his soybeans to wash off dust or something, like I don't know, whatever. But if you were if you were using water to wash off aphids, water becomes a pesticide. So would you know if the if he just had water in there? But water doesn't have a label.
SPEAKER_00You're you're correct. So you wouldn't have winds. I know. I'm just trying to I'm trying to write it. I know. I get it. I get it.
SPEAKER_01You're stretching, you're stretching, but it's okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't know. It's uh just gotta be careful because I'm trying to think metrop what's does metrobusin have much of a smell to it? It does when you mix it. Yeah. It kind of smells like rotten eggs.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. To be honest, that's probably they probably got more of a smell than they got the liquid on them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, and the funny thing is, is that the janitor was probably out spraying dandelions in the trash the day before or something. Nobody said anything about that. Anyway, I kind of the point to drive home on that is they didn't find this guy over one offense here. It kind of sounds something like that doesn't happen if it wasn't something that's happened before, or somebody's had a reputation of, or people in the area have had a reputation of some somebody was watching and knew what they needed to do to get him. Uh yeah. And spraying with 19 mile an hour winds around is kind of irresponsible. Yeah. It's a lot of irresponsible.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Next to a school.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean. While there was something going on. Yeah. Let's let's go back to that.
SPEAKER_00Did you say was the school downwind?
SPEAKER_01Uh it doesn't say there was, it just said there was a fundraising activity going on at the school. So you know it was if it was a fundraising activity, it was probably all the town's uh high rollers out there. Do they get the fine money?
SPEAKER_03Maybe that was their fundraiser.
SPEAKER_00So that was my thought. If it's so much per person, then where's that money going?
SPEAKER_01That's a good question. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00All right, don't be getting an idea of local schools.
SPEAKER_03Let's all stand outside.
SPEAKER_00So but have you all seen, you know, we talked about drones earlier and then talk about drift. Have you all had a bunch of videos and pictures and stuff pop up and it's just random people? And I hate that Facebook is like this now because it's like just some random person's post will come across that lives next to a cornfield, and they take a picture of this drone spraying the corn and make this big post about being drifted on, or their dog got sprayed, or uh they're out here spraying poison and all this kind of stuff, or asking what they're spraying. Yeah. Uh yeah, I've just I've seen a lot of that this summer. I don't know if it's just happens to come across more often now.
SPEAKER_03Well, you probably watched one on accident and probably now you're just stuck in that algorithm. But yeah. Yeah, I think I mean I I think there may be more of that just with with you know, as I already said it, you can kind of tell the fields that have been sp drone sprayed, and I think that's just different. You know, we don't it it's still new to farmers, really. I mean, relatively, but and but you know, just with the the more of the general public that are living in the middle of of farm country now, um in farmland, they're just uh they don't always see them. And here's another thing, most of the time those sprayers would work during the day uh when they're probably at work. And then now uh these sprayers are kind of running all times of the day and uh maybe at home more often when they're running um.
SPEAKER_00And here's another thing that I just thought of. Uh you know, the general public, we forget how disconnected they are from agriculture. Uh, and if any of you all have been to an ag day or anything at a school, you really pick up on this. But most people, if they see a sp they don't know the difference between a sprayer and just a tractor. A ground rig sprayer and a tractor. You look at a lot of these, I mean they look the same. And they don't know what it's doing unless they see the spray coming out of the boom. But uh a drone gets everybody's attention.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_01So something else popped up on Facebook this week that uh is happening, ironically, in Illinois, that the Illinois Democrats have proposed a new thousand dollar fine on Illinois farmers. Uh, they're proposing a thousand dollar fine on Illinois farmers who use pesticides without properly notifying authorities twenty-four to seventy-two hours before application.
SPEAKER_03What authorities? Like a place?
SPEAKER_01It just says we'll mandate farmers and other pesticide applicators notify authorities 24 to 72 hours uh before spraying begins. So I would assume I don't know if that if you're supposed to alert your neighbors, if you're supposed to alert the the local sheriff's office. Um it's it's saying it's gonna add another layer of red tape and make it harder to respond to rapidly changing weather and and field conditions. And and can you imagine saying, yeah, I'm I'm gonna spray that field, you know, uh day after tomorrow. Well now we're 48 hours out. Well, the wind changes and you can't spray it. So you say, Well, I'm gonna get to it, I gotta get to it tonight. Well, I didn't notify them on that field, so spray that. Yeah, I'm gonna be in trouble. You say I'm gonna spray everything every day.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm gonna spray every field I have every day, and you just send it out every day for 48 hours down the road until you get that sprayed, and then you leave it off the list.
SPEAKER_01So the the proposed bill is House Bill 1596. It remains in committee in Springfield and could be voted on after the November election. So we'll have to keep an eye on that. Uh supporters are calling it the good neighbor bill. Uh many farmers, it it could look like more of an example of Springfield making it harder to do business and farm in Illinois. So we'll have to keep an eye on that.
SPEAKER_00So that brings up a good point. Uh I attended a meeting this week uh and had a legislative update from our resident state representative here, Mr. Ryan Bivens. And uh that was one of the big things he talked about in his update was how they're working to try and pass legislation to get ahead of legislation like that uh to where some of these states that maybe aren't as ag friendly, uh some of their policies and laws don't get adopted here in Kentucky and to make sure we stay ag friendly and protect farmers uh and let farmers decide how they're supposed to farm. On the other side of that, getting back to the guy that was spraying with 19 mile-an-hour wind towards the school, we've got to be careful as farmers too to not give them a reason to think they need to pass laws like this. So that's exactly right.
SPEAKER_03For every hundred that do it right, that one that does it wrong will ruin it for everybody. And generally, that's probably an accurate statement. There's probably a hundred that do it right, but then there's just one that do that wrong. And that's and that happens in any profession, in anything that anybody does.
SPEAKER_00That's a good statement for most things in life. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01The laws weren't written to keep the honest people out of jail.
SPEAKER_00Daniel, you mentioned algorithms and stuff earlier. Have y'all noticed all of our advertising lately?
SPEAKER_01Everything looks the same. Every single business, every single event, every everything look there's there's no difference in it. It's kind of like schools using the same mascot from kindergarten all the way to twelfth grade. Oh, don't get me started. Don't look at our grants or something. And it's I get it, it's easy. But when you use AI to make something, it's gonna make the same exact chart as for everybody else. For your whatever event, for your third grader's birthday party, as the same as I don't know, the business down the street that's selling 20% off whatever.
SPEAKER_03And you would think you when you do this, you would tell your AI bot or whatever, don't make mine look like everybody else's. Right.
SPEAKER_00That would be more because it's like they've just got their own little template and they but I think if they're doing it through Facebook, I think it's like that's just you got what they have.
SPEAKER_03But they all it's like the same fonts, and it's like you can see it. And as soon as I see it, I just stopped reading it.
SPEAKER_01And they break it out into the same boxes, you know, into the into the poster or whatever you want to call it. You know, it's all broke out the same way.
SPEAKER_03And I'll tell you another one that I've seen here lately. So I I messed up and I bought something from uh Vivor.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I bought all kinds of stuff from Vivor. Well, but Vivor's got some good stuff. They do.
SPEAKER_03They do. I and I I'll say that. And it was cheap and it worked cheap. But but the amount of ads that I'm seeing from them, I mean, it's just every other thing. And they have AI videos of that are like fake videos of people using their products.
SPEAKER_00And if you ever watch them, you can catch it, but it's it's really weird. That's like straight up knockoff Chinese Communist Party kind of stuff. Yep.
SPEAKER_03And even just the fact that I said it out loud now, I'm gonna have another five straight days of ads on my definitely on my Facebook feed.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, the the AI flyer deal. And we've even it burns me up even more. I see AG organizations. There's ag organizations that the three of us are a part of that have been using AI to promote things and it it kind of gets under my skin a little bit. Yeah, I mean it's like, is it that hard to make a so here's the deal pay some college girl ag student that has a Canva account, 50 bucks to make your flyer.
SPEAKER_03But say you go on to Canva and you can do Canva will AI it for you too.
SPEAKER_01And that's the thing, is is you can say that yeah, pay such and such to do it. Well, they're probably gonna, you know, they could use AI to just print it and then charge you 50 bucks. You could have done it for free.
SPEAKER_03But yeah, like how did we ever live without somebody being able to make a uh uh a flyer for us?
SPEAKER_01Like, I don't just don't know how we made it. We had this thing called paint on our computers, Microsoft Paint.
SPEAKER_03It just kills me. And then and you know, it just the fact that they'll make a flyer out of AI or use AI to make it to complain about AI or about data centers and and and that bugs me, and I'll say something about it and be like, well, it doesn't matter, it's still true. I'm like, no, it's not like you're you're you're literally come on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the the best one going around is the the anti-data center save you know Kentucky farmland or any state's farmland with a AI picture of a barn and silos and whatever in the background, it's like every time you share that you a data center just used and it's it and and and we can talk a little bit about data centers. Let me back up. We need uh data centers on some scale. And let's be honest, if if you're listening to this podcast on a smartphone, uh that smartphone is tied to a data center somewhere. Where we don't need data centers and where all of these are coming from right now, they're all AI data centers. And it's to to make the stupid pictures and the stupid videos, that's where all this technology's going. We can exist with a smaller amount of data centers if we take the ridiculousness of AI out of it.
SPEAKER_00So here's what's more ridiculous than that. And uh being a loyal listener, we're just talking about this the other day, and he'll know who he is when he hears this. But so at least the things you're talking about, Mark, you had a choice, and you were going to take a part of that. That's right. They have integrated this into so much stuff that you don't know you're using it, but you have to use it in everyday life. So the conversation we had was, and I run into this all the time. If you ever Google something or try and search something, uh his daughter had asked him a question about something, he pulled his phone out, typed it into Google, and all that he could get to pull up were all these AI overviews. And he said he had to search for 10 minutes to finally find a credible article and read and dig down into it and find the answer himself instead of relying on AI. Because you know what AI does when it does these overviews and things, it just pulls from anywhere on the internet, it doesn't know if it's correct or not. It's having to pull it from somewhere, and it can jumble up so many answers, it can give you a completely wrong answer. Uh all because you didn't want to take 30 seconds if you could have found the article to have done it yourself, but you can't find the article anymore because it's all jumbled up with all those AI crazy.
SPEAKER_01That's right. That's right.
SPEAKER_00So I think there should be something when you get a law passed or something where you have to give consent to participate in AI.
SPEAKER_03I agree. So even so we were even sharing pictures of ring cameras and how it's already like it's like figuring out saying like a UPS driver is in your driveway. Like that took that took AI to figure to put all that together to identify.
SPEAKER_00I didn't send you all the latest and greatest one. My wife was out in the front yard and was picking some weeds out of flower beds the other night, and my phone pops up and says, a person is bending over in your driveway. I bet you went to that camera real quick, didn't you?
SPEAKER_03I wish it wouldn't have whenever we were on vacation, my uh my neighbor's cattle were in our yard. And uh it I was I was it would have been nice if we could have got an AI description for that, but it didn't, it didn't give me one.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I guess it didn't know how to compute that yet. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, and here's yeah, here's one thing. So, you know, I've seen a lot of people making arguments on social media and stuff about not don't use social media to complain about AI or complain about data centers. And that just gets back to my original point there about you don't have a choice in some of these programs. Like you there's not a setting on Facebook you can go in and say turn off AI to where it's not gonna use it. It just they just automatically pushed it on us. And if we don't want it, we should have a choice that we should be able to turn it off if we're gonna use uh some of these apps like the rest of the world, because face it, that's kind of if you're gonna have a platform to talk about something, it has to have deal with some sort of technology that's probably utilizing AI.
SPEAKER_03Also, you shouldn't complain about AI on your social media because AI is listening to you. It's making a list. You don't want to be on the you don't want to be on the back.
SPEAKER_01Have you seen where high school and college professors are putting um AI prompts in their syllabuses and they're uh like when you got to write a paper and it tells you what the paper's gotta be out, they're going in and they're writing a sentence and saying, uh, if AI is used to generate this paper, put some random word in five times in this paper, and then they're whitening it out, making it the same color as the background. So the kids copy, set that in set that prompt into AI, it spits out the paper. The teacher instantly knows that they used AI to do that.
SPEAKER_00Not all heroes wear capes.
SPEAKER_01Not all heroes wear capes. So with that, I think we're about out of time. But if you're a college or high school student and you're listening to this, pay attention when you're if you're gonna use AI to write papers.
SPEAKER_00And this has been a good last show because now the AI bots are gonna pick up. We've been talking bad about them and they're gonna shut us down.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, probably. They got offended by my pronoun joke, too. Who's our sponsor again, Mark?
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SPEAKER_00Admin at low rate. We'll see you again next week. Remember, life is good, and you are appreciated.
SPEAKER_03See y'all next week.
SPEAKER_01See you next week.