Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Paul, Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3: You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
Speaker 3: don't want you to know. Congratulations Matt, Congratulations, NOL, congratulations,
Speaker 3: Mission Control code name Doc Holliday, and all our fellow
Speaker 3: conspiracy realists playing along at home. Tonight will be our
Speaker 3: most corny episode.
Speaker 4: Literally, de boom, Jonathan Davis, as long as you don't rap.
Speaker 3: I have heard Noel freestyle, and Nola is way better
Speaker 3: than Jonathan Davis.
Speaker 4: You said it before, and I was like, you mean scat.
Speaker 4: I think the term we're looking for is scat. And
Speaker 4: then Ben pointed out that apparently there are some deep,
Speaker 4: deep interior cuts what one should never hear of corn
Speaker 4: where Jonathan Davis does in fact rap, He just stick
Speaker 4: to scatting and bagpipes.
Speaker 3: Hmmm, who are we to judge?
Speaker 4: You know, we are we We are exactly who we
Speaker 4: are to judge.
Speaker 2: You know, guys, I was never really a big fan
Speaker 2: of that band Corn until I tried it with some
Speaker 2: butter and then changed my life.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you that McDonald's dad with a buttered corn.
Speaker 4: That sweet corn is what I will say this guys,
Speaker 4: and can move on from Corn band. I think their
Speaker 4: first couple of records are very unique. I don't think
Speaker 4: there were any other bands that sounded like that. I
Speaker 4: think there were a bunch of bands that copied them,
Speaker 4: and then they kind of had to sort of stay
Speaker 4: with the times and they became more kind of rap, rocky, limbisky.
Speaker 4: But I think their first two records hold up as
Speaker 4: pretty interesting records and then a unique sound from a
Speaker 4: band that hadn't really been done before.
Speaker 3: I will diell That's fine. That's a fine hill to
Speaker 3: die on. You could say something similar about Walt Whitman
Speaker 3: and Blank Verse with Pards of Grass.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Excellent excellent work, created a lot of inspired a lot
Speaker 3: of work that is not necessarily for me. I get you,
Speaker 3: I hear you, and the baselines on those early Corn
Speaker 3: albums absolutely nasty, utter poetry.
Speaker 4: All the stuff that were saying about corn the band.
Speaker 4: You could technically say about corn the crop.
Speaker 3: It's bold. It's a mold statement. I don't agree, but
Speaker 3: I love it, so it's yeah. We are diving into,
Speaker 3: as you said, Noel, we are diving into a conspirac
Speaker 3: A lot of folks have maybe wondered about occasionally in
Speaker 3: the grocery store or maybe your gas pump, but never
Speaker 3: really solved. Why does the United States have so much corn?
Speaker 3: Why did corn take over America? How did that happen?
Speaker 3: Here are the facts. It doesn't matter what sort of
Speaker 3: propaganda you read, it doesn't matter whom you're speaking with.
Speaker 3: Everyone knows, by any measure, these United States are a
Speaker 3: corn superpower. As of just last year, ninety million acres
Speaker 3: of the entire country were committed to corn. Some folks
Speaker 3: in the industry and some folks outside of the industry.
Speaker 3: Economist in fact, call this stuff yellow gold. Not a
Speaker 3: super creative.
Speaker 4: Name of yellow.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know how you know in depth they
Speaker 3: went with workshopping on that, but uh, but they do
Speaker 3: call it gold because it is a generative business. It
Speaker 3: is a billion dollar business. You could actually, if we
Speaker 3: traveled back in time and talk to those alchemists who
Speaker 3: were trying to turn lead into gold. Then we could
Speaker 3: realistically tell them about corn. They wouldn't have known about corn,
Speaker 3: and they would have said, why don't I just become
Speaker 3: a farmer?
Speaker 4: What do you think would have happened if in their
Speaker 4: pursuit of turning lead to gold they had accidentally turned
Speaker 4: it to corn. You think they would have been pleased
Speaker 4: or disappointed?
Speaker 3: They would have been super hype. They would have been
Speaker 3: they would have gone so they would.
Speaker 4: Have been like devil, What is this substance before.
Speaker 3: Me, shout out angry alchemists. Yeah, it's like this industry,
Speaker 3: corn as an agricultural product, touches on all sorts of
Speaker 3: other parts of the day to day experience in the
Speaker 3: United States. I think it was we were looking into
Speaker 3: this off air in preparation for this episode. As of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, probably the most recent reliable numbers, the
Speaker 3: USDA US Department of Agriculture estimates the corn industry and
Speaker 3: this country alone is worth well over eighty six billion dollars.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that is not just the raw product of corn, right.
Speaker 2: That is, as Ben said, the corn industry because there
Speaker 2: is so much that has been built out of that
Speaker 2: crop for reasons we're going to get into because you
Speaker 2: can't just make corn. You got to do stuff with it.
Speaker 2: And there's a reason for that, because we got so
Speaker 2: much of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Have you ever seen the corn Palace? That's huge, that's
Speaker 4: built entirely out of corn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's other stuff you can do with the
Speaker 2: crop too, and it's actually kind of astounding what you
Speaker 2: can do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's amazing, so versatile. Also, I want to give
Speaker 3: a wholesome shout out. We don't always get the opportunity
Speaker 3: to do this. I would like to give a wholesome
Speaker 3: shout out to that little American kid who was like
Speaker 3: what four five? Very corn kid, Yeah, very very young kid.
Speaker 3: The corn kid. Very young kid did a good fun. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's fun. Let's play just a little.
Speaker 4: Please, Yeah, because I don't think any of us are
Speaker 4: doing it right. He has his own kind of way
Speaker 4: about him.
Speaker 1: I love.
Speaker 3: All right, perfect we all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, see now you get my reference with I tried
Speaker 2: it with butter.
Speaker 3: And it can happen to you too. That's what I love.
Speaker 3: This kid is Promethean. He's like, I will bring I
Speaker 3: won't bring the idea of corn and butter to you.
Speaker 3: Uh so, why why did this happen? If you look
Speaker 3: at the experts across the world, not just in agriculture,
Speaker 3: but in the world of economics, you'll find very interesting comments.
Speaker 3: The chief economist that the USDA was asked about why
Speaker 3: corn was such a big deal, and this guy explained
Speaker 3: it simply. He said, we're really good at it. His
Speaker 3: name's Seth Meyer, and he is right. He's not the
Speaker 3: famous Seth Meyer. He's the chief economist Seth Meyer circles. Sure,
Speaker 3: I hope so it does good work. He's unrelated to
Speaker 3: Saturday Night Live. The US has the land, the climate,
Speaker 3: we're in the cap bird seat as a country to
Speaker 3: grow corn. Most importantly, the US has a very well
Speaker 3: established infrastructure entirely meant to push corn out from the
Speaker 3: ground and to consumers across the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly. And by the time, you know, of course,
Speaker 4: early the early days of corn, I don't think we
Speaker 4: even had a US government. Wasn't corn one of those
Speaker 4: things that we basically like stole from the Native Americans?
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly. So there was certainly a time where corn
Speaker 4: was less governed. Let's say, we were all less governed
Speaker 4: before the US government was actually a thing. Corn was
Speaker 4: already a very well established crop. According to writings in
Speaker 4: an Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxane
Speaker 4: Dunbar Ortiz, to quote, Indigenous American agriculture was based on corn.
Speaker 4: Since there is no evidence of corn on any other
Speaker 4: continent prior to its post Columbus dispersal, its development is
Speaker 4: a unique invention of the original American agricultures. For Ben,
Speaker 4: we were going to talk about monsanto and bioengineering and
Speaker 4: all of that stuff, But how does one invent a
Speaker 4: crop in these our early days of the history of
Speaker 4: this land. Yeah, good question.
Speaker 3: Also, the way that you do it is you find
Speaker 3: a cereal, a grain of some sort, and you overtime
Speaker 3: over different harvest cycles select for the traits that you desire.
Speaker 3: So the original thing, the original grain that leads to corn,
Speaker 3: is not what you would find in a can today.
Speaker 3: It's way less cool. In its original form, corn as
Speaker 3: a story dates back ten thousand years ago to people
Speaker 3: in southern Mexico, and they've figured out a way to
Speaker 3: reproduce for the traits that they were seeking. And I
Speaker 3: really appreciate that you bring up post Columbus dispersal here
Speaker 3: because there's a great there's a great, somewhat snarky, high
Speaker 3: level history of corn in the US, which is automatically
Speaker 3: history of corn in North America's history of corn in
Speaker 3: the world. In fourteen ninety three, Crystal bal Cologne, or
Speaker 3: Christopher Columbus as he's known here, returned to Europe with
Speaker 3: all kinds of trash to talk. He also had a
Speaker 3: pocket full of corn seeds. He had seen native people
Speaker 3: growing and eating and using corn in his travels, and
Speaker 3: he knew this thing would be fire, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. If he could convince the regimes of Europe
Speaker 3: at the time that they could invest in it, he
Speaker 3: knew he could change Western Europe. Unfortunately, he fumbled the
Speaker 3: ball pretty hard. He brought some corn seeds, not popcorn.
Speaker 3: He brought some corn seeds, but he did not know
Speaker 3: how to grow it. He did not know how to
Speaker 3: propagate it, how to treat the soil and the harvest correctly.
Speaker 2: He just got in the ground, right, Well, yeah, that's it,
Speaker 2: you just put it in the ground.
Speaker 3: Well, that's why, that's why Europe is still very much
Speaker 3: wheat based. When you talk about grains. To those folks,
Speaker 3: that's why they like musley and stuff.
Speaker 4: Like that.
Speaker 3: Am I saying that right? Museally?
Speaker 2: I think so?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Was it musically like a dry cereal that makes
Speaker 4: you poop?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's that corn.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like human dog food. It's like grape nuts,
Speaker 4: but like worse.
Speaker 3: All human food is human dog food.
Speaker 4: Fair enough, fair chocolate. It's like processed kind of kibble
Speaker 4: looking stuff. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the Europeans they're not with it. They hear about
Speaker 3: the gold and silver, and of course they love the slavery,
Speaker 3: but they don't get on board with the corn, and
Speaker 3: an interesting division occurs in those two societies. Across the
Speaker 3: Atlantic Ocean, corn thrives. It is today an integral part
Speaker 3: of the economy and culture of all people living in
Speaker 3: the United States. Full stop, folks. It does not matter
Speaker 3: if you think you don't eat corn, you kind of do. Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you eat anything that's processed, basically, you're probably
Speaker 2: eating corn. If you open your mouth while you're outside,
Speaker 2: you're probably taking in a little bit of corn residue,
Speaker 2: just a little bit via ethanol in some way, especially
Speaker 2: if you're near cars.
Speaker 3: Which leads us to the other question, how did this
Speaker 3: get so big? Is there a conspiracy a foot? It's
Speaker 3: a good question. It might seem strange, might seem a
Speaker 3: little weird at first. The thing is, like you were saying, Matt,
Speaker 3: corn is ubiquitous in this country. Yeah, all right. You
Speaker 3: might go to a barbecue place, you might get a
Speaker 3: side of corn on the cob. You might go to
Speaker 3: the movies, you might eat popcorn. You might get other
Speaker 3: products that are visibly corn and based. But some version
Speaker 3: of corn is a sweetener. High fructose corn syrup is
Speaker 3: in so many things, potato, chips, sodas, sauces, salad, dressing,
Speaker 3: baked good, cereal. It feeds poultry, It feeds cattle, it
Speaker 3: feeds fish. It would actually take longer to figure out
Speaker 3: what food products don't have corn somewhere in their process.
Speaker 3: Michael Polland, author of a fantastic book called The Omnivores Dilemma,
Speaker 3: he said this way in an interview with NPR in
Speaker 3: two thousand and three. He said, our entire diet has
Speaker 3: been colonized by this one plant. But our question tonight,
Speaker 3: how how did that happen? Is there some stuff they
Speaker 3: don't want you to know behind the meteoric rise of corn? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean spoiler, But we're gonna take an a break.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. Yes, the answer is absolutely yes.
Speaker 3: There is a lot of stuff they don't want you
Speaker 3: to know, and we want you to know it. To
Speaker 3: take a line from another aspect of agribusiness, the idea
Speaker 3: of the corn conspiracy, while universally acknowledged, has become sort
Speaker 3: of a way for it chicken and egg situation. Ah,
Speaker 3: we did.
Speaker 4: It so the economists that we referenced earlier wasn't just
Speaker 4: blowing smoke. Corn has a lot of the traits that
Speaker 4: might make what would be considered an agricultural superhero, a
Speaker 4: sort of champion of the agricultural Olympics. It is incredibly versatile,
Speaker 4: it can grow in a number of different climates. It's resilient,
Speaker 4: very hearty term that I love. And it also benefits
Speaker 4: from a great deal of advancements that we've seen in technology,
Speaker 4: not to mention financial technology or innovation. Let's just say
Speaker 4: some financial trickery at play here. And it might surprise you,
Speaker 4: but a little less than ten percent of the absolutely
Speaker 4: astronomical amounts of corn that are grown in this country
Speaker 4: every year are actually eaten by humans. There's so many
Speaker 4: other uses for it, as you mentioned, ben ethanol, for fuel,
Speaker 4: feed for livestock, you know, to the point where I
Speaker 4: was gonna mention this earlier, the term corn fed kind
Speaker 4: of becomes like a thing where we're talking about, you know,
Speaker 4: corn fed beef, you know, or even like it's almost,
Speaker 4: I think, kind of like a term of derision for
Speaker 4: like people from certain parts of the country, like you know,
Speaker 4: corn fed, good old boy or whatever. Like, the stuff
Speaker 4: is just so ubiquitous that it really has kind of
Speaker 4: created this place in the culture of this country. Cows,
Speaker 4: for example, pigs, even some fish are fed this ground
Speaker 4: up food that is largely consisting of corn, and they
Speaker 4: eat several times the amount of corn that are consumed
Speaker 4: by folks like you or I every single year.
Speaker 2: Well, it seems kind of crazy, it's a little wild.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a lot to take in, right, because we
Speaker 3: just named several industries that would seem ostensibly unrelated. Oh,
Speaker 3: what's your favorite salmon doing eating corn?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: I like the idea of corn fed to your right. Now,
Speaker 3: it's on the level of a real meat and potatoes person, right,
Speaker 3: So we know that this thing is huge. We just
Speaker 3: learned that humans eat a very small percentage of the
Speaker 3: pie here, and that's because Not all corn is created equally.
Speaker 3: There are many many different varieties. Technically speaking, maze street
Speaker 3: named corn is a cultagen. Cultagen means that you need
Speaker 3: to have human intervention for the thing to propagate. It's
Speaker 3: kind of like how some species of dogs don't reproduce
Speaker 3: well on their own, you know, and it's really sad, right, like,
Speaker 3: what is it bulldogs? Dog's gonna have trouble reproducing on
Speaker 3: their own. Maze corn, it's got the human touch on it.
Speaker 3: It needs to have active human intervention in different key
Speaker 3: stages of the growth to harvest process. And usually while
Speaker 3: there are many many men and many many types of corn,
Speaker 3: usually when we're talking about corn from the United States,
Speaker 3: we're talking about three rough varieties. The little Olden boy
Speaker 3: is sweet corn. That's what you eat when you know
Speaker 3: you're eating corn. It's the stuff in the cats, it's
Speaker 3: the stuff on the cop It is at best one
Speaker 3: percent of the total amount of corn grown in America,
Speaker 3: very very.
Speaker 2: Small, but that's what you think of when you think corn. Like,
Speaker 2: that's what you see in your brain, right, that corn.
Speaker 3: That's what that kid's eating with it, you know. It's
Speaker 3: it's a yellow cob. It's got like a nice little
Speaker 3: pat of equally yellow butter thanks to food colory.
Speaker 4: So maybe it's got little little things that are poked
Speaker 4: into either end that are also themselves shaped like corn,
Speaker 4: creating a meta situation that would boggle the minds of
Speaker 4: any you know, visitors from another planet.
Speaker 3: We like, we heard you like corn dog, so we
Speaker 3: put some corn outside of your corn, and.
Speaker 4: One off those little things had then sticks within them
Speaker 4: that were also tinier pieces of corn. I could just
Speaker 4: go on forever like that, And that, my friends, is relativity.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and then there's another slightly larger percentage of corn
Speaker 2: that you may also think about. It comes in bags
Speaker 2: that you can toss in the microwave. It comes in
Speaker 2: little tin things that you could toss on the stove,
Speaker 2: and you can. It's also used in other things, not
Speaker 2: just for popcorn. But it's basically popcorn, right, m.
Speaker 3: Hmm, Yeah, yeah, it was a it's called flintcorn. Back
Speaker 3: in the nineteen sixties, Jiffy Pop comes out, and Jiffy
Speaker 3: Pop has exactly what you're referring to, Matt, the idea
Speaker 3: that you could take a little a pie ten essentially
Speaker 3: with aluminum foil over the top, and then you could rotate.
Speaker 3: There's an art to it. You could rotate it over
Speaker 3: a stove at like medium to high heat, and you
Speaker 3: could make popcorn just like in your favorite movie theater.
Speaker 3: Then the microwave comes out, and so, of course in
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties and even now, more
Speaker 3: and more people are buying my microwavable popcorn. Shout out
Speaker 3: to shout out to our previous episodes about dangerous chemicals
Speaker 3: in food. Lining in microwave popcorn is double plus on good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not great for you. Keep in mind of that
Speaker 2: date range there in the nineteen sixties and forward. Keep
Speaker 2: that in mind as we move into the next section
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about, because there's a reason that
Speaker 2: type of corn became more and more popular as a
Speaker 2: thing to sell.
Speaker 3: And still Okay, so we had sweet corn, that's the
Speaker 3: special golden boy. We have flint corn, which is now
Speaker 3: freely available, but it is also still a very small
Speaker 3: percentage of total corn. The bulk of the corn game,
Speaker 3: the stuff you see by the interstate when you're driving
Speaker 3: through Iowa, that is overwhelmingly going to be what's called
Speaker 3: field corn or dent corn. It is in most of
Speaker 3: the animals that you eat if you buy meat in America,
Speaker 3: it's fed to them. It's a huge part of the
Speaker 3: livestock process because it is so affordable, it is so
Speaker 3: cost effective. And then also it's what makes high fructose
Speaker 3: corn syrup.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's shot directly into your veins via your mouth,
Speaker 2: via the Coca Cola company.
Speaker 4: Well, when you put it like that, it sounds kind
Speaker 4: of scary.
Speaker 2: You guys. I just found out one of my best
Speaker 2: friends growing up who was in theater with me, was
Speaker 2: Ali corn no Is. I literally found out today and
Speaker 2: I just saw it on LinkedIn because I had a
Speaker 2: weird dream with them in it. This person won't name anybody,
Speaker 2: but this person is one of the top legal people,
Speaker 2: like literally the top I think legal person at Coca Cola.
Speaker 2: Oh good wow.
Speaker 4: Can you get us some free samples of that weird
Speaker 4: European soda?
Speaker 2: No, but I think it's time to investigate further this
Speaker 2: whole corn syrup thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I think we can solve it pretty easily.
Speaker 3: It's a function of economy of scale, right, It's much
Speaker 3: more expensive to have an alternate version of this because
Speaker 3: the US makes corn stupid cheap for everybody. The US
Speaker 3: is very very much a bad example of a drug
Speaker 3: dealer when it comes to the world of corn. So
Speaker 3: I will expand this analogy. I promise it will work
Speaker 3: before we do that. Here's why the US makes corn
Speaker 3: amazing through the use of things called subsidies, corporate welfare,
Speaker 3: farm subsidies, or agricultural subsidies, if we want to put
Speaker 3: a little bow tie on it. They are payments and
Speaker 3: other forms of support extended by Uncle Sam to farmers
Speaker 3: and agribusiness, and corn is by far the biggest recipient
Speaker 3: of those concessions. When we say payments and other kinds
Speaker 3: of support, what I mean here is things like very
Speaker 3: advantageous loans, things like insurance. You know, like if you're
Speaker 3: a farmer, very stressful occupation, you've got to try and
Speaker 3: build a house every year, and you got to hope
Speaker 3: that the house doesn't get blown down, and it can happen.
Speaker 3: There are variables beyond your control.
Speaker 4: But ben corporate welfare, that sounds like the kind of
Speaker 4: thing that certain individuals in business don't care for. Welfare
Speaker 4: is bad. People should be pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
Speaker 4: Why should we be getting welfare help from the government.
Speaker 2: Well, exactly, because ultimately, a subsidy is a tax on everybody,
Speaker 2: right that then goes to certain individuals or certain corporations,
Speaker 2: which is why there was there were no farm subsidies
Speaker 2: of any kind up until all of a sudden there
Speaker 2: were in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 3: I love it. I love it. Subsidy is a tax, That's.
Speaker 2: That's all it is.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, it's just a reallocating of funds. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: and then we're paying ends going somewhere. But I guess
Speaker 4: is the term corporate welfare is that sort of a
Speaker 4: loaded term that people who are like against this practice
Speaker 4: might use to sort of draw the similarities, like how
Speaker 4: it's sort of like a double standard where so many
Speaker 4: people are against welfare for individuals, but yet welfare for
Speaker 4: corporations is okay.
Speaker 2: It can be weaponized for sure, right all language?
Speaker 3: Can you know any technology? Can I love the I
Speaker 3: love the point of farm subsidies previous to preceding the
Speaker 3: Great Depression not really a thing. You would get some
Speaker 3: sweetheart deals if you're a big time rancher or farmer,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, And you would say, oh,
Speaker 3: I agree with blobbody blaws claws or there your bigger aims,
Speaker 3: So why don't you cut me a deal on these taxes,
Speaker 3: you know, or all least tariffs.
Speaker 2: Especially in times of war. Right if you think about
Speaker 2: World War One prior to nineteen thirty, like, there were
Speaker 2: reasons to produce a whole bunch of food. You make
Speaker 2: as much food as we possibly can. There's an article
Speaker 2: here called the Origin of American farm Subsidies from the
Speaker 2: Foundation of Economic Education. And there's just a tiny little
Speaker 2: story in here that the author, Burton Folsom points out,
Speaker 2: and it's from the Secretary of Agriculture in and around
Speaker 2: the mid eighteen nineties, a guy named Jay Sterling Morton.
Speaker 2: And when he was approached by specifically in this story,
Speaker 2: by beat sugar producers, they came to Washington. They were like, hey,
Speaker 2: we need some help. We need some kind of government
Speaker 2: loan or you know, some kind of money from the government,
Speaker 2: which at the time would have been taxes. The response
Speaker 2: from the Secretary of Agriculture at the time said, quote,
Speaker 2: those who raise corn should not be taxed to encourage
Speaker 2: those who desire to raise beats. The power to tax
Speaker 2: was never vested in a government for the purpose of
Speaker 2: building up one class. At the expense of other classes,
Speaker 2: which is fascinating that he used corn producers in the example.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because, as we will see, those are
Speaker 3: two industries that continue beefing today. And I'm choosing the
Speaker 3: word beefing on purpose anyway, shout out Celeste Headley's shout
Speaker 3: up Big Sugar. In nineteen thirty, the US did a
Speaker 3: census and they found that about one out of every
Speaker 3: four people in the country around that time, that was
Speaker 3: about thirty million people. One out of four of those
Speaker 3: people lived on farms and ranches, and they estimated that
Speaker 3: there were about six point five million different farms and ranches.
Speaker 3: That is no longer the case. The number has drastically,
Speaker 3: dramatically decreased. Most people, not just in the US but
Speaker 3: in the world overall live in what we would call
Speaker 3: urban metropolitan areas conurbations. Big big cities just keep growing
Speaker 3: and then they become one big city themselves, right, and
Speaker 3: this trend will continue. There are fewer and fewer people
Speaker 3: living on a mom and pop farm. But even while
Speaker 3: those mom and pop farms disappeared, farm subsidies from Uncle
Speaker 3: Sam remained, and they overwhelmingly assist not actual people. Now,
Speaker 3: huge corporations very powerful entities. Those mom and pop farmers
Speaker 3: still get brought up every single election year in political rhetoric.
Speaker 3: But if you are hearing this now in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: actually if you're hearing this anytime past twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: you need to understand those mom and pop farmers. They
Speaker 3: are at best and endangered species. Corporations are wearing sheep clothing,
Speaker 3: and they are pretending to be something you can relate
Speaker 3: to so they can take more of your money and
Speaker 3: put more corn in your stuff.
Speaker 4: Well, it's sort of like the you know, a lot
Speaker 4: of the craft breweries quote unquote that have basically just
Speaker 4: been bought up by Bush Mills or Anniser Bush Rather
Speaker 4: and like these large, you know, mega corporations that now
Speaker 4: are kind of masquerading as like these small little operations
Speaker 4: that they once were, but now they're not. They've bought
Speaker 4: them up and everything that goes along with it. I
Speaker 4: guess some of them continue doing business in a smaller way,
Speaker 4: but they are still, you know, a wing of a
Speaker 4: large corporate entity. And I apologize to guys if I
Speaker 4: was being weird earlier when I was talking about like
Speaker 4: the corporate wel for thing. I guess in my mind
Speaker 4: to your point, Ben, I guess I just think of
Speaker 4: farming now in the modern day as being largely these
Speaker 4: big corporations to what you were just saying. But Matt,
Speaker 4: you said, not not the case.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm only shaking my head. I had I had
Speaker 2: an opportunity to drive from like the coast just north
Speaker 2: of Georgia down through a bunch of farmland back to
Speaker 2: Atlanta not long ago. And if you make that drive,
Speaker 2: if you take like state roads and not a major interstate,
Speaker 2: you will see that it is almost all farmland, all farmland,
Speaker 2: and it's it is small farmers. It was like, you know,
Speaker 2: a couple of acres you can you can see the
Speaker 2: clear DeLine. You know. It's not like they don't have
Speaker 2: a ton of huge equipment. They've got the equipment necessary
Speaker 2: to farm that small amount of land.
Speaker 3: Well, John Deer is screwing them over, by.
Speaker 2: The way, exactly. Farmers are getting hit left and right
Speaker 2: with the amount of money they have to put in
Speaker 2: just to get one crop out for one year, right,
Speaker 2: And one of the only ways they can successfully do
Speaker 2: that is if they get paid extra or a little
Speaker 2: bit more by the government through these subsidies to plant
Speaker 2: something like corn, one of the fly crops that they
Speaker 2: will pay for. There's other ones like you can get
Speaker 2: some money for peanuts and a couple other sauce. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but it's mostly those primary ones that we've talked about, right, Corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, rice,
Speaker 2: those are the big five. But it is still small farmers.
Speaker 2: They're just they have to play the game or else
Speaker 2: they can't make enough money to survive.
Speaker 3: And these folks are at any given year they are
Speaker 3: getting pushed by large corporations. The octopuses we're talking about
Speaker 3: want to buy their land often for a song, right,
Speaker 3: because they're private corporations so they don't have to practice
Speaker 3: imminent domain, so they.
Speaker 2: Well and even you can still work the land, it's
Speaker 2: still your farm, sure, but we own it and you
Speaker 2: got a you know, a certain percentage or whatever goes
Speaker 2: to us. We've seen it. We've we've talked about that
Speaker 2: before because it's just so it's it's pretty infuriating. There's
Speaker 2: at some point, only to give you another quote from
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties, right before this era, we hit here
Speaker 2: where we're talking about subsidies and as they arise because
Speaker 2: of a perceived need and actually an actual need. I
Speaker 2: think we're about to hit the Great Depression, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we've been going toward that yet. But what
Speaker 3: you're saying is the to put it in a pithy line,
Speaker 3: these corporations are saying, surf the bottom line with US peasant,
Speaker 3: you know, right the wave hashtag no pun left behind.
Speaker 3: The original intent of the US farm subsidies was to
Speaker 3: provide economic stability to farmers to a largely agrarian population
Speaker 3: during the Great Depression, and importantly to ensure a steady
Speaker 3: domestic food supply. However, they really not necessarily the US
Speaker 3: government Hoover kind of shut the bag. But overall, I
Speaker 3: think it was the corporate interest of the US who
Speaker 3: created the Great Depression. And if that sounds like a
Speaker 3: hot take, please write in, because we are correct. The
Speaker 3: issue here was that the issue here was that it
Speaker 3: didn't work. It was a dollar short, a day late.
Speaker 3: You know, there were farmers who were purposely destroying their
Speaker 3: crops or their livestock or products thereof so that they
Speaker 3: could ensure higher prices because they needed those prices to
Speaker 3: be hired to survive. So at the same time people
Speaker 3: are slaughtering hogs, people are pouring milk into creeks out
Speaker 3: Middle America. There are folks in large urban centers Chicago,
Speaker 3: New York, you know, name it, any of the good ones.
Speaker 3: Those people are starving. They can't get the milk, they
Speaker 3: can't get the food. This idea made sense over time.
Speaker 3: The US agrees to farm subsidies due to a sort
Speaker 3: of nationwide PTSD, a traumatic event. It's absolutely mission critical
Speaker 3: that these things exist. It might be surprising to hear
Speaker 3: us say this, but think about it. One bad gear. Honestly,
Speaker 3: one evil month can spell doom for a single farm,
Speaker 3: and one bad year for multiple farms can spell doom
Speaker 3: for an entire piece of agriculture. In the grand calculation
Speaker 3: of events, in the slippery slope of the greater good,
Speaker 3: farm subsidies are a money saving effort. You keep those
Speaker 3: folks in business, You help them survive for one bad year.
Speaker 3: You are saving money in terms of what you will
Speaker 3: need to spend later if the food is not there.
Speaker 3: So that's it's kind of like you get a pizza
Speaker 3: every week. One week the pizza doesn't come through, you
Speaker 3: still pay for the pizza because you're going to be
Speaker 3: hungry later.
Speaker 2: I've got to do this, guys, we got to jump
Speaker 2: really quickly to the nineteen twenties before, right before Hoover
Speaker 2: and all of this that you're talking about, Ben, because
Speaker 2: there's a guy in office named Calvin Coolidge. He was
Speaker 2: in there from twenty three to nineteen twenty nine, and
Speaker 2: there was a bill that was pretty similar to what
Speaker 2: became the Farms the original farm subsidies bills that Hoover
Speaker 2: and then Roosevelt passed as the Great Depression was hitting.
Speaker 2: And it feels a lot like that Titanic moment that
Speaker 2: we've talked about before, some great disaster that occurs so
Speaker 2: that the change can come through, right, so that the
Speaker 2: populace is willing for some change. Because in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 2: when Coolidge was president, there was this bill, it's called
Speaker 2: the McNairy Hougen Bill hau ge n and it was
Speaker 2: a bill that Congress passed and it had to do
Speaker 2: with price fixing on crops, right. But the conspiratorial part
Speaker 2: of it was that there was going to be a
Speaker 2: system of human beings in Washington, d C. Essentially bureaucrats
Speaker 2: who would decide the prices of things, right, So then
Speaker 2: the farmers, each individual farmer would be beholden to whatever
Speaker 2: the bureaucrats in Washington were going to say. And when
Speaker 2: that bill, which was again passed by Congress, got to
Speaker 2: Coolidge's desk, he vetoed the thing and he said, no,
Speaker 2: the American people don't actually want this. Basically, this is
Speaker 2: business coming in trying to dictate how farmers are going
Speaker 2: to act and what they're going to have to do.
Speaker 2: I want to give you just a super short quote here,
Speaker 2: Coolidge said, quote, I do not believe that, upon serious consideration,
Speaker 2: the farmers of America would tolerate the precedent of a
Speaker 2: body of men chosen solely by one industry, who, acting
Speaker 2: in the name of government, shall arrange for contracts which
Speaker 2: determine prices, secure the buying and selling of commodities, the
Speaker 2: levying of taxes on that industry, and to pay for
Speaker 2: losses on foreign dumping of any surplus. There is no
Speaker 2: reason why other industries copper, coal, lumber, textiles, and others,
Speaker 2: in every occasional difficulty, should not receive the same treatment
Speaker 2: by the government. Such action would establish bureaucracy on such
Speaker 2: a scale as to dominate not only the economic life,
Speaker 2: but the moral, social, and political future of our people.
Speaker 2: He went a little hard on the paint there at
Speaker 2: the end.
Speaker 3: But I agree though, like that's like you got two
Speaker 3: big ooh moments there, because as anyone knows, like the
Speaker 3: one of the issues with that predecessor bill is that
Speaker 3: it was framed as a price dictated non negotiable. Who
Speaker 3: was not phrased as a minimum price. You can build
Speaker 3: a floor. America loves it when you build a floor,
Speaker 3: hates it when you build a ceiling, but will do
Speaker 3: it if you know, depending out of their back room
Speaker 3: finances work out. But the second thing was the idea
Speaker 3: of foreign dumping. Could you describe foreign dumping for US? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, basically, if you've got way too much much
Speaker 2: of a product, you try and sell it abroad four
Speaker 2: pennies on the dollar, you don't you get rid of it. Basically,
Speaker 2: if possible, which is a thing that occurs when there
Speaker 2: are surpluses, it's still something that happens.
Speaker 3: So if there is, for instance, if there is a
Speaker 3: way just make it an argument here for fun disease.
Speaker 3: If there is a way to grow wheat and say
Speaker 3: a good part of India and it is much cheaper
Speaker 3: to produce it there, and there's no tariff. There's no
Speaker 3: international mukety muck. If you can sell that wheat to
Speaker 3: people who live in Western Europe, where it is very
Speaker 3: expensive to make wheat, would that be foreign dumping?
Speaker 2: I don't think so. That sounds like good business to me.
Speaker 3: Oh good, oh god, someone called Calvin all right, he
Speaker 3: figured it out? Okay, yeah, he was I think the
Speaker 3: original rhythm guitarist for Korn. Also an American president for
Speaker 3: a minute. But yeah, his nickname was Monkey.
Speaker 2: Well, honestly, I haven't thought about that guy until I've
Speaker 2: read that article, Like I don't. When's the last time
Speaker 2: you thought about Calvin Coolidge?
Speaker 4: Pretty often, I think he's got one of the best names,
Speaker 4: best presidential names. It sticks with me. I'm not joking,
Speaker 4: and I think of whenever I hear the name Calvin.
Speaker 4: I think of Calvin Coolidge before I even think of
Speaker 4: that little kid pissing on the swastika.
Speaker 3: The precedents, the precedents of the presidents leading up to
Speaker 3: the American Depression, the first one at least, are of
Speaker 3: intense interest to me, and they should be of intense interest.
Speaker 4: To you in the immediate future.
Speaker 3: Folks, Matt, you're talking about something that more people need
Speaker 3: to understand our farm subsidies. Stuff can sound a little
Speaker 3: bureaucratic and dry. Here's the real thing. Let's peak behind
Speaker 3: the curtain. Why do countries really like farm industry supplements
Speaker 3: and subsidies? Why do they really want this stuff to happen?
Speaker 3: It goes down to her boy, Henry Kissinger's real politic reasoning.
Speaker 3: And it's much older than Kissinger. In the United States
Speaker 3: and in the it.
Speaker 4: Was still living last we checked, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he just dropped by Chessinger Watch John Kerry.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, Now I get alerts.
Speaker 4: So there's a widget. There's a dashboard widget on men's
Speaker 4: phone connected up to Kissinger's pacemaker.
Speaker 3: So the US and in the no comment, the US
Speaker 3: and the European Union to a large degree. Yeah, you
Speaker 3: could say they're practicing corporate welfare. There's a big old,
Speaker 3: sloppy financial kiss on the quarterly bottom line, right, or
Speaker 3: annual at least. But the brutal open secret about this
Speaker 3: is that at all times, since since the day you
Speaker 3: emerged your entire life, anyone in charge of any nation
Speaker 3: you have ever heard of is continually low key planning
Speaker 3: for war, open conflict, and if international trade breaks down,
Speaker 3: a lot of countries are immediately going into disaster mode.
Speaker 3: So that means even in times of ostensible peace, if
Speaker 3: you are a leader, you make sure your country, to
Speaker 3: the absolute highest degree possible will not be reliant on
Speaker 3: potential enemy forces for basic things food, shelter, water. And
Speaker 3: the tricky part about this human history teaches you one
Speaker 3: constant truth. Every single nation is a potential enemy. There
Speaker 3: are no friends. And you know, you might have you
Speaker 3: might have a good couple decades getting your avocado right,
Speaker 3: you might have, you might have a good one hundred
Speaker 3: years with uh great rice supplies, and maybe you've had
Speaker 3: your differences with another country, but that doesn't stop the
Speaker 3: flow of rice when the bridges break down, can you
Speaker 3: feed the people who follow you? That is why these
Speaker 3: subsidies exist. So, yes, the US is good at growing corn.
Speaker 3: It will not stop. It should not stop. This is
Speaker 3: a cycle of money and path dependence. And the problem
Speaker 3: is that truth creates a feedback loop and that loop
Speaker 3: is very, very dangerous, not just to the US but
Speaker 3: to the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially when you can't eat the corn right, you
Speaker 2: can't eat most of it?
Speaker 3: You like, I mean, you could have you guys ever
Speaker 3: eaten non sweet corn like regular cornporn just like the
Speaker 3: field corn.
Speaker 4: What about blue corn, the kind they make like the
Speaker 4: good tortillas with and stuff, and like, I mean, there's
Speaker 4: probably various types of corn that I've eaten that have
Speaker 4: been made into other products, but probably wouldn't be that
Speaker 4: great right on the cob. Is that what we're getting at.
Speaker 3: Like heirloom corn?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, maybe so. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think what we're saying here is the majority of
Speaker 3: corn that you will not eat. It's not super delicious.
Speaker 3: I My heart goes out to the corn kid. He's
Speaker 3: gonna learn about this, He's gonna have to learn about
Speaker 3: it on the on the streets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've ben right just before we get to that
Speaker 2: feedback loop, because this is one of the most important
Speaker 2: things we're going to talk about this episode. I just
Speaker 2: want to go back to that USDA survey from the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties that found one in four Americans lived on
Speaker 2: a farm, worked on a farm. Farming was a part
Speaker 2: of their life, right. Think about that as a voting
Speaker 2: block in the nineteen thirties, if you're a politician, you
Speaker 2: need to get the farmers on your side, especially if
Speaker 2: you're anywhere near the center of the United states like Texas,
Speaker 2: you know, whatever, the let's just go through the states,
Speaker 2: the biggest society states. Well, yeah, it's Iowa, Texas, Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota,
Speaker 2: and just shout out to Paul Michigan, control deck in
Speaker 2: a little Kansas in there too, and a bunch of
Speaker 2: other states. But you need those folks to vote for you,
Speaker 2: especially if it's in the nineteen thirties all the way
Speaker 2: up to the nineteen twenty threes. It's not the farmers
Speaker 2: that went to Washington, DC with that bill because they
Speaker 2: wanted to have safety in knowing that they grew their
Speaker 2: crop the government could help them out if things didn't
Speaker 2: go well. Right at the top of this episode, we
Speaker 2: talked about all the factors that a farmer has to
Speaker 2: deal with. That means they're going to have a great
Speaker 2: year or a terrible year. Right, you want to have
Speaker 2: some kind of some kind of thing to fall back on.
Speaker 2: I know, I'm still going to get money and the
Speaker 2: government will help me even if stuff goes sideways. But
Speaker 2: it's not them. It's not the farmers, the individual farmers
Speaker 2: going to Washington to put these things in place, to
Speaker 2: have bureaucrats and make these things. It's industry that comes
Speaker 2: together and says, hey, guys, we have a common goal here.
Speaker 2: We just want to make sure y'all are gonna be okay, right,
Speaker 2: everything's gonna be fine, and then bring in in your mind,
Speaker 2: bringing all the stuff that Ben just outlined there with
Speaker 2: like the reason why a government, why a country needs
Speaker 2: to do these things. When you put them together, you
Speaker 2: get this icky thing that on the surface, politicians will
Speaker 2: say it's for the farmer right, but that's they're a.
Speaker 4: Chess piece, you know there. It's an optical thing. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's an optical illusion, is what it is. I mean,
Speaker 4: they're they're basically like parading these you know, salt of
Speaker 4: the earth individuals who have been making their you know, families,
Speaker 4: lived multi generations perhaps on this land, and they're using
Speaker 4: them as a way to kind of like wave this
Speaker 4: flag of like the am dream and see see you
Speaker 4: got to help these people. But it's really just a subterfuge, right.
Speaker 3: Well, at the heart of it, there's the greater good
Speaker 3: argument as ever. The feedback loop is this. You know,
Speaker 3: right now, the US government subsidizes the production of corn
Speaker 3: alone to the tune of billions of dollars a year.
Speaker 3: More than two billion world more than three. Probably. The
Speaker 3: result is a perpetuation of growing goals. If you've ever
Speaker 3: worked for a corporation, you might have found yourself in
Speaker 3: that weird Larry David Kafka esque moment where they say, hey, yeah,
Speaker 3: you did a great job this year. You met these
Speaker 3: insane goals we gave you. But we have these things
Speaker 3: called shareholders, which means that as a reward for meeting
Speaker 3: our crazy goals, you have to meet even crazier goals
Speaker 3: the next year. That's kind of what's happening with the
Speaker 3: US and with the corn industry. The farming industry realized
Speaker 3: that the more corn they grow, the more money they
Speaker 3: will generate for themselves. And again I'm not talking about people.
Speaker 3: We're not talking about people here. We're talking about institutions,
Speaker 3: and they are thus incentivized to grow more and more corn.
Speaker 3: Next step of the feedback loop. The more corn that's
Speaker 3: out there, you've increased the supply. Right, We've increased the supply,
Speaker 3: so we lower the demand. I mean we lower the price,
Speaker 3: meaning that if there is a possible application for an
Speaker 3: ever cheaper commodity in any industry, you will go with
Speaker 3: that because that lowers the overall price of your weird grift.
Speaker 3: So if you are if you are selling gasoline and
Speaker 3: you realize there is a heavy financial incentive for you
Speaker 3: to you know, not try to make corn gas, which
Speaker 3: is kind of a dumb it's not a feasible idea.
Speaker 3: But if you if you get enough money to put
Speaker 3: ten percent ethanol in your gasoline, then of course you'll
Speaker 3: do it. Then it's like the oh, what's that game theory.
Speaker 3: It's like the prisoner problem in game theory. If you
Speaker 3: don't do it and everyone else is doing it, then
Speaker 3: you are taking a hit, a ten percent hit that
Speaker 3: will be magnified and compounded throughout your supply chain. The
Speaker 3: more corn there is, the lower the price, the more
Speaker 3: you want to use it. That is why the United States,
Speaker 3: despite all the other stuff it says, that's why they
Speaker 3: will always seek a way to substitute corn products into
Speaker 3: any industry. I know, we've got to go to an
Speaker 3: app break poll, but like everybody think about it, to
Speaker 3: huge oil producers in the world, Norway, Saudi Arabia, they're
Speaker 3: not about to go full into corn. Why the would they.
Speaker 3: They would have to buy that corn from somewhere else.
Speaker 3: They can't grow it. Uncle Sam has a cheat code.
Speaker 3: It would be foolish not to exploit that cheat code.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean, maybe I sound crazy, but
Speaker 3: I think that feedback loop, that convenience can lead to
Speaker 3: an addiction.
Speaker 2: What do you guys think, uh dependence, Yeah, certainlyence hath
Speaker 2: dependence greed.
Speaker 4: I said agreed, but I basically just said agreed, and
Speaker 4: I think both of us say hold holds true.
Speaker 2: Well, but let's take a quick break and let's come
Speaker 2: back and let's talk numbers, like real numbers, not just
Speaker 2: on corn, on farm subsidies in general in this country.
Speaker 2: Because it's uh nuts, No, it's corn it's corny.
Speaker 3: No, it's corn nuts.
Speaker 2: It's corn nuts, guys.
Speaker 3: And we have returned, Matt, I'm gonna give you an
Speaker 3: alley oop for the dunk here. Can an industry be
Speaker 3: dependent upon subsidies? Absolutely? In twenty nineteen, so still pretty
Speaker 3: reliable numbers. As we record a few years later, in
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen, the US subsidized two point two billion dollars
Speaker 3: of your money. By the way, if you're listening to
Speaker 3: this in the United States, it doesn't matter whether you
Speaker 3: are a citizen of the United States. Every time you
Speaker 3: had to pay sales tax every time, you know, every
Speaker 3: time old Uncle Sam came looking for his big a
Speaker 3: little bit of that went to corn.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry you just said that in such a matter
Speaker 4: of fact way.
Speaker 3: I love it. It's weird. Like if you imagine when
Speaker 3: you imagine paying tax, you know, think of think of
Speaker 3: it as okay. So we're okay with paying taxes at
Speaker 3: a gas station, right, you get your gas, you have
Speaker 3: a you have a tax paid for every gallon of
Speaker 3: gas here in the US still use gallons. So imagine
Speaker 3: it a little bit differently. What if there was a
Speaker 3: guy in the garish Uncle Sam costume, you know, top
Speaker 3: hat stripes and stars or whatever, and as you're pumping gas,
Speaker 3: old boy walks up to you and he's like, hey,
Speaker 3: can I get a little bit of that for like
Speaker 3: I'm doing a corn thing?
Speaker 4: Mm hmm. Yeah, it's odd. It's odd. Look, it's also
Speaker 4: odd considering that just you know, it's another one of
Speaker 4: these kind of antiquated bits of infrastructure that like we
Speaker 4: should have figured out a way around, but we've spent
Speaker 4: all this time figuring out how to kind of build
Speaker 4: tax payers out of their you know, money for these subsidies.
Speaker 4: That were sort of, like you said, been dependent or
Speaker 4: addicted to some degree on it, even though really there
Speaker 4: are so many better ways of using that that could
Speaker 4: be maybe for R and D, for more efficient fuel sources,
Speaker 4: or for like, you know, more efficient electric vehicles and
Speaker 4: things like that. It just it just seems like it's
Speaker 4: feeding into a system that is totally past its prime.
Speaker 4: But yet somehow there's so many stakeholders that need it
Speaker 4: to be the system.
Speaker 2: Well it's crazy. Okay. Imagine if houses cost the same
Speaker 2: as our grandparents paid for houses right now?
Speaker 3: Oh cool, that'd be great, it would you guys have grandparents.
Speaker 4: I don't not anymore, but yes we did, yes at
Speaker 4: one point.
Speaker 2: Or how about just our parents the price that our
Speaker 2: parents paid for homes, if they were able to buy
Speaker 2: a home, if that stayed the same, Think about all
Speaker 2: of the money generated over time for the huge amount
Speaker 2: of people that grew their incomes basically that went this
Speaker 2: way because of the real estate business and accruing, you know,
Speaker 2: the amount of money that they did for those homes
Speaker 2: that they didn't pay for. Now, imagine if coorn costs
Speaker 2: the exact same as it did in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 2: right at the time that these things were put in place.
Speaker 2: Imagine if it costs the same how would any farm
Speaker 2: make any money. It's got to go up, it has to, right.
Speaker 4: It has to expand that's just the nature of business
Speaker 4: and capitalism. Those Ye. The same thing is that we
Speaker 4: see with publicly traded companies they have to show year
Speaker 4: over year growth or else they've failed. And sometimes to
Speaker 4: even show that year over year growth, it requires a
Speaker 4: lot of creative accounting and you know, perhaps things that
Speaker 4: aren't entirely above board. Not you know, naming names or
Speaker 4: any any accusations, but I think we all understand that
Speaker 4: there's some trickery at play and these kinds of things.
Speaker 4: It's not possible. Infinite growth forever is cancer.
Speaker 3: You're being really anti Coolidge right now, and I just thought,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't appreciate it.
Speaker 2: It's not very uncooliage of.
Speaker 3: You, dude, It's very it's a very good point. Let's
Speaker 3: go to Joseph Glauber. Joseph Glauber is a senior research
Speaker 3: fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. They've got
Speaker 3: some horses and corn cobs in the game, but they
Speaker 3: do some good research.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: This guy was also once upon a time, the chief
Speaker 3: economist of the USDA, just like her boy Seth Meyer,
Speaker 3: who regrettably has not yet made it onto SNL. But Seth,
Speaker 3: if you're hearing this, I think you'd be a bang
Speaker 3: up host man's jokes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're all agriculture based, but I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: it's a niche kind of operation.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's time, you know what I mean, I like it.
Speaker 3: So anyway, this guy, Joseph Glauber, he says, quote, a
Speaker 3: lot of these subsidies get embedded into the cost of farmland,
Speaker 3: and they essentially bid up the price of farmland marginally
Speaker 3: over time, So the benefits accrue largely to those who
Speaker 3: own land. To your point, Matt, if you got in
Speaker 3: the game early, you're always going to have a compounding advantage.
Speaker 3: And that is the history of the United States. So yeah,
Speaker 3: as of last year, twenty twenty two, as we record this,
Speaker 3: the CBO Congressional Budget Office, some of my favorite nerds
Speaker 3: in the game. They looked at the insurance program that
Speaker 3: the US government gives to large agribusiness and the remaining
Speaker 3: mom and pop farmers, and they said, spending on this program,
Speaker 3: this one facet of the subsidies alone is going to
Speaker 3: increase from twenty twenty one to nearly forty billion through
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five. It's a big, big business. And yet
Speaker 3: we have to understand that the folks in charge of
Speaker 3: this country, private and public or state representatives alike, they
Speaker 3: are playing the long game. They know that the US
Speaker 3: needs to have a domestic supply of things. But corn
Speaker 3: is no longer just a domestic supply of food. It's
Speaker 3: never been just that. So why why are they providing
Speaker 3: all this support. Is it because they're saying, hey, we're good,
Speaker 3: we care about our voters, we want corn to remain
Speaker 3: as it is a very helpful thing. Or is corn only?
Speaker 3: Is corn only in the conversation because it has such
Speaker 3: a financial grift around it? Is it because of the
Speaker 3: political corruption? We got to say, there are a lot
Speaker 3: of lobbying interests, and those interests have an existential concern
Speaker 3: with the subsidy checks, like they're very powerful agricultural interests
Speaker 3: that are entirely positioned toward corn and past a certain
Speaker 3: point to your idea earlier, Matt, past a certain point,
Speaker 3: the actual corn doesn't matter as much as the money
Speaker 3: supply in the corn. The futures you know, the betting,
Speaker 3: the speculation, the guaranteed income at the end of the year,
Speaker 3: no matter what happens to the soil.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, oh yeah, there's so many vested interests and
Speaker 2: I've been I just I want to blow it out
Speaker 2: one more time, just to include those the five crops
Speaker 2: that are subsidized most heavily by.
Speaker 3: The US rice, wheat, soy.
Speaker 2: Cotton, corn, corn. Those are them, and then just the
Speaker 2: other the honorable mentions. I've got to list those two.
Speaker 2: These are these are fun peanuts, yeah, sogram, you said.
Speaker 2: And mohair.
Speaker 4: Mohair like the suits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the stuff that comes off of specific goats
Speaker 2: that's like really luxurious.
Speaker 4: And I always thought it was mole hair for the
Speaker 4: longest time, like in that it's in the lyric in
Speaker 4: that Benny and the Jets got electric boots a mohair suit,
Speaker 4: you know, I read it in a magazine. I thought
Speaker 4: it was mole hair for the longest time. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 4: the mole hair must be the finest and the softest
Speaker 4: of hairs to be made into the finest of suits
Speaker 4: that a man like Elton John would wear.
Speaker 2: Yes, I want to give you two. I want to
Speaker 2: give you two quick stats before we keep going, because
Speaker 2: I see exactly where we're headed here. Ben. This is
Speaker 2: from an article titled how farm subsidies affect the US Economy.
Speaker 2: It was written for The Balance by Kimberly Amadeo in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. Just a couple of quick quotes from this.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty, the combined agriculture and food industry made
Speaker 2: up five percent of the US economy. That's a pretty
Speaker 2: big chunk. It's not crazy. It's like, not one of
Speaker 2: the only things we do, but five percent of the
Speaker 2: entire US economy. It employed nineteen point seven million full
Speaker 2: time and part time workers, which is about ten point
Speaker 2: three percent of all US employment. Think about that, over
Speaker 2: ten percent of all US employment is tied in with
Speaker 2: these businesses, most of them making you know, these staple crops.
Speaker 2: And in that time, corn is the nation's biggest crop.
Speaker 2: More than fifteen point one billion bushels of corn were
Speaker 2: grown just in the year twenty twenty one, which is
Speaker 2: the second highest amount on record. That's twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: when you know, coming out of the pan, which is
Speaker 2: so crazy to think about. So that's all of farming, right,
Speaker 2: big numbers, A lot of statistics kind of boring. But
Speaker 2: here's where it gets nuts. There's another article titled total
Speaker 2: subsidies in the United States from nineteen ninety five to
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one. It was created by the Environmental Working Group.
Speaker 2: You can look this up. There were over four million,
Speaker 2: three hundred and eighty thousand recipients of subsidies for you know, farmland, right,
Speaker 2: that's a ton like those are individuals right in the
Speaker 2: top five. I just want to I just want to
Speaker 2: give you a couple of these. I'll give you the
Speaker 2: top two and they're rice based. Oh, can you do
Speaker 2: the top three? I'll do the top three. Yeah, let's
Speaker 2: let's keep it in rule of threes. First one is
Speaker 2: Riceland Foods Incorporated. They're based in Arkansas. They received over
Speaker 2: five hundred and fifty four million dollars in subsidies subsidies
Speaker 2: from ninety five to twenty twenty one. Farm Services Agency
Speaker 2: in They're based in Washington, d C. At least they
Speaker 2: received over three hundred and forty six million dollars in subsidies.
Speaker 2: And Producer's Rice Mill received over three hundred and fourteen
Speaker 2: million dollars in that time period, which is just to
Speaker 2: show you those are only the top three of millions
Speaker 2: of farm subsidies recipients. And these are massive businesses. Think
Speaker 2: about that amount of money going in to a company, right.
Speaker 3: Oh, I was going to say, uh, literacy, healthcare, food security.
Speaker 3: Oh but yeah, yeah, it is kind of food security
Speaker 3: though like this, you're you're right man. This is an
Speaker 3: absolutely astounding amount of cash right in a very capitalism
Speaker 3: driven world.
Speaker 2: And this cash turns into potential political influence.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent it does, right, yeah, it is. Let's
Speaker 3: get to that part. You know. Look what we're saying
Speaker 3: to be clear. Right now, there's a thing coming out
Speaker 3: called the Farm Bill. Like our palse Lest mentioned, you,
Speaker 3: as a resident of the US, you don't get to
Speaker 3: vote on the farm Bill. It's a thing that comes
Speaker 3: up every five years. Your elected representatives can weigh in
Speaker 3: on it. And as our palse Lest Headley creator A
Speaker 3: Big Sugar, said, you owe it to yourself and the
Speaker 3: people who come after you and the people who live
Speaker 3: around the world with you. You owe it to yourself
Speaker 3: to push your elected representatives to make some changes on
Speaker 3: the farm Bill. Now, we're not saying that all the
Speaker 3: politicians voting to continue the egregious mistakes of the Farm
Speaker 3: Bill are somehow illuminati, but they're not like crazed tolls
Speaker 3: or anything. But what it does mean is they have
Speaker 3: acknowledged an ironclad truth about governance in this country. It
Speaker 3: is very popular to create a subsidy for the powerful.
Speaker 3: It is from that point very easy to continue growing
Speaker 3: that subsidy. Mission creep is a real thing in every industry,
Speaker 3: but at the same time it becomes increasingly difficult and
Speaker 3: dangerous to rule that benefit. Back to your example, Matt,
Speaker 3: what if of those top three subsidies you just named,
Speaker 3: what if there were a lone politician saying pull those
Speaker 3: subsidies entirely, I think they would not get reelected. And
Speaker 3: I am very confident in that thought.
Speaker 4: Well, the heartland is always such a big political talking
Speaker 4: point in general, you know, I mean, for good or bad.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's just the idea of like protecting the
Speaker 4: good men and women of America that you know, built
Speaker 4: this country into what it is today, you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: And it's like, maybe they don't have as much political
Speaker 4: capital as like the big cities, but they represent something,
Speaker 4: you know, and because of the nature of I guess
Speaker 4: elect elections, you know that they do matter and those
Speaker 4: you know. That's why. Why do you think Iowa is
Speaker 4: such an important political stop, Like it sort of kicks
Speaker 4: off the whole season, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a big thing American politicians. US politicians in particular,
Speaker 3: typically play toward a romanticized version of the US that
Speaker 3: does not actually exist. It's a rose colored glasses thing.
Speaker 3: As a colorblind person, I find that hilarious. I know
Speaker 3: we're going long. There are a couple of things want
Speaker 3: to hit real quick points of interest in your journey.
Speaker 3: We invite you to take the journey on your own, folks,
Speaker 3: and contact us about it one eighty three to three
Speaker 3: STDWYTK Conspiracydiheartradio dot com. You can find us on your
Speaker 3: favorite weegea board. We mentioned earlier. The sugar or sucrose
Speaker 3: industry is beefed up with the corn or fructose industry.
Speaker 3: Back in twenty eleven, trade associations representing growers of sugarcane
Speaker 3: and sugar beets or sucrose went to court arguing that
Speaker 3: a lobbying group for a high fructose corn syrup, the
Speaker 3: Corn Refiners Association, was behind a conspiracy to deceive the
Speaker 3: public because they wanted to change the name of high
Speaker 3: fructose corn syrup to corn sugar on all your ingredient labels.
Speaker 3: Technically accurate, technically accurate.
Speaker 2: But you gotta process the living hell out of that
Speaker 2: corn in order to make high fructose corn sertum. That's
Speaker 2: one of the things. Listen to the episode we did
Speaker 2: one where we talk about high fructose corn syrup in particular.
Speaker 2: It's like, it's an awful thing that you got to
Speaker 2: break that corn way down. Yeah, using nasty stuff you
Speaker 2: don't want to put in your body.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, that is true. It takes some poison to
Speaker 3: make the antidote, does it not. Uh. The The thing is,
Speaker 3: these forces are further incentivized to normalize the presence of
Speaker 3: corn at the heart of American consumption. It does not
Speaker 3: stop at your local soda can. It does not stop
Speaker 3: at your local gas station or at your local case
Speaker 3: of do a plate, Oh god, case is probably a
Speaker 3: high frot dose corn syrup lost.
Speaker 4: You don't need a plate for a case. That's sort
Speaker 4: of the beauty of a making a case built in plate.
Speaker 3: Man, Thank you, thank you for saying that that does matter.
Speaker 4: So you need a play, however, for a chimmy chanka,
Speaker 4: because that's a real saucy affair, and things can get
Speaker 4: really messy, real quickly.
Speaker 3: And speaking of things get messy, there is some trouble
Speaker 3: on the horizon. As we in tonight's episode, the United
Speaker 3: States currently sports about thirteen percent of its corn products
Speaker 3: abroad in some form. Simply put, going back to the
Speaker 3: drug dealer analogy we said we'd explain earlier, this is
Speaker 3: a dealer who consumes most of their own supply. This
Speaker 3: is like your buddy in college who smoked so much
Speaker 3: weed that they started selling a little bit of weed
Speaker 3: so they could get a discount on all the weed
Speaker 3: they smoke. Other players want in on the game, and
Speaker 3: this gives us an opportunity to talk about one of
Speaker 3: the funniest related conspiracies. Kid, you not, there are real
Speaker 3: life corn spies right now, cor In, not just some
Speaker 3: folks talking Jonathan Davis. In twenty sixteen, a guy named
Speaker 3: Mao Halung got popcorned for a five year conspiracy.
Speaker 4: To still picture these guys as like just blending in
Speaker 4: with the stalks, you know, like dressed in some sort
Speaker 4: of corn accoutrement. I don't know, I guess scarecrow, yeah,
Speaker 4: maybe so, or literally just dressed. They gotta be really
Speaker 4: skinny to apply, just literally, you know, dressed as like
Speaker 4: a piece of corn, a corn on the cob. That's
Speaker 4: a popular costume for holiday times.
Speaker 2: Right, well yeah, yeah, oh for sure. Uh but this
Speaker 2: guy was this guy was literally trying to steal corn seeds,
Speaker 2: right like going out like Johnny Apple seeding reverse Johnny
Speaker 2: Apple seeding corn.
Speaker 4: Much less interesting, but much more nefarious than my whole concept.
Speaker 3: Well or from his his perspective, he was being very
Speaker 3: much Johnny Apple seed. Ah, he was spreading, he was propagating.
Speaker 3: Why do you get to own this improvement? Why why
Speaker 3: is it for your country's benefit rather than my own?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? It's a good because bump
Speaker 3: bump bum. Oh that's farmers. So this guy is employed
Speaker 3: by a Chinese corn seed company and US companies du Pont,
Speaker 3: Pioneer and Monsanto. They own the patent to a lot
Speaker 3: of hybrid what are called non terminating seeds. This is
Speaker 3: a very big deal because for a while there were
Speaker 3: these hybrid seeds put out that would grow very well
Speaker 3: in all sorts of conditions, but they would not reproduce
Speaker 3: on their own. They would not You would have to
Speaker 3: buy new seeds even though they are a cultagen. Even
Speaker 3: if you try to farm them, you would not make
Speaker 3: a new crop unless you bought another batch of seeds.
Speaker 3: So being able to make something that can just boom
Speaker 3: boom boom you through multiple harvest seasons, that's a big deal.
Speaker 3: The FBI popped this guy Fbipoptom in twenty sixteen. He's
Speaker 3: sentenced to three years in prison, and then he also
Speaker 3: has to give up two separate farms he owns, one
Speaker 3: in Iowa, one in Illinois because they were purchased as
Speaker 3: a cover for his weird corn spy activities. That's how
Speaker 3: deep it gets. The US government and its corporate masters
Speaker 3: are in a corn cold war right now. Brazil, Argentina, Canada.
Speaker 3: They're making inroads. Just four days ago, Brazil made a
Speaker 3: pretty big legal move and will probably take too long
Speaker 3: to explain, to increase their stake in the global corn game.
Speaker 3: They want to be the next US for corn, and
Speaker 3: they want to do the same things that the US
Speaker 3: has done with this power. We mentioned ethanol, we didn't
Speaker 3: even get to it. I guess we should say before
Speaker 3: we end the corn itself is not the problem. Corn
Speaker 3: is a solid crop. It's awesome. It grows phenomenally well
Speaker 3: in the US. It played a huge role in the
Speaker 3: current American experiment. The farmers themselves were never the problem.
Speaker 3: People were farming this way before the United States ever existed.
Speaker 3: People who actively create stuff in these kind of situations,
Speaker 3: they are almost never going.
Speaker 4: To be the problem.
Speaker 3: But the people who take advantage of those people, they
Speaker 3: have some different aims. You know. Logically, the US has
Speaker 3: to take corn to the highest most extreme degree of
Speaker 3: usability right of utilization, but given that feedback loop of profit,
Speaker 3: the US may encounter diminishing returns. And as corny as
Speaker 3: it sounds, thank you, thank you, tip your server. The
Speaker 3: corn game is rife with conspiracy. No one wants to
Speaker 3: stop it. It is in no one's best interest right
Speaker 3: now to be the voice of opposition to this.
Speaker 2: I don't know, well, everybody knows it's a problem. And
Speaker 2: right before we started talking like doing this episode, we
Speaker 2: were talking about the New York Times and other major
Speaker 2: outlets reporting in two thousand and four, two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: two thousand and two about how horrible it is that
Speaker 2: all of us have to pay all these taxes in
Speaker 2: order to support all of these subsidies. Because it's just
Speaker 2: this growing, ballooning thing that's gotten out of control in
Speaker 2: two thousand and five, and nothing's changed. It's all the same.
Speaker 2: Nobody's gonna stop it. The farm bill's coming up. What
Speaker 2: are we gonna do? Hey, this seems wrong, too bad? Click?
Speaker 2: I mean sorry, I don't mean to be a downer, but.
Speaker 3: Absolutely you're absolutely correct, and I still get I gotta
Speaker 3: tell you guys this evening, I am in love with
Speaker 3: the idea that every time I pay taxes on anything,
Speaker 3: this old white guy in stars and stripes comes up
Speaker 3: and ask me for extra money and tells me something
Speaker 3: very weird that he's going to do with it, you know, like,
Speaker 3: oh that you know that ninety nine cent pack of
Speaker 3: gum or whatever that's actually that's actually a dollar o nine.
Speaker 3: And all of a sudden, this guy comes up and
Speaker 3: is like, I need ten cents for plutonium.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we need more cluster munitions for Ukraine.
Speaker 3: Then what am I gonna do?
Speaker 4: Tell him?
Speaker 3: No, it's a dime anyway. This is the stories it
Speaker 3: stands now. We hope you enjoyed this episode. We cannot
Speaker 3: wait to hear from you, especially if you are affiliated
Speaker 3: to any degree with any of the industries we mentioned.
Speaker 3: In tonight's show, we hope that you reach out and
Speaker 3: let us know what you think. Is there a way
Speaker 3: from the path dependence upon corn? Is there a way
Speaker 3: to reimagine this industry to the advantage of current and
Speaker 3: later generations. Tell us you.
Speaker 4: Can tell us, and we hope you will by reaching
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