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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.

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Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Allbots podcast.

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Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway.

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Speaker 3: And I'm Joe Whysenthal.

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Speaker 2: Joe, one of the big topics of discussion. There are

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Speaker 2: a lot of topics of discussion nowadays, but when it

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Speaker 2: comes to the recent takeover of Venezuela, the Trump administration's

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Speaker 2: takeover of Venezuela, I don't know how physician acquisition, I

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Speaker 2: don't know how to describe it, but the action in Venezuela.

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Speaker 2: One of the themes or things that you saw people

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Speaker 2: talking about was this idea that well, even if the

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Speaker 2: goal is to get more oil, Venezuela's oil industry is

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Speaker 2: a mess.

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Speaker 3: It's in shambles.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So you hear things about, you know, ships that

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Speaker 2: are rusting in the dock and pumps that don't work

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Speaker 2: and whatever. People talking about really creaky infrastructure and also

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Speaker 2: just a bad environment for doing business.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, this is the thing. And so in

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Speaker 4: the Venezuela specific context, we know that the oil infrastructure

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Speaker 4: has been degraded for years, which is why there's all

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Speaker 4: these numbers about the massive amounts of upfront investment that

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Speaker 4: would be required to get the oil started.

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Speaker 3: But then there's this other phenomenon that's global, which.

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Speaker 4: Is that there's really not much of a connection per

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Speaker 4: se between the existence of natural resources in the ground

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Speaker 4: and some way to get them out commercially anywhere. This

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Speaker 4: also happens to be the case in Greenland, it happens

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Speaker 4: to be the case in Western Australia, which is a

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Speaker 4: very well run country, which is that assets in the

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Speaker 4: ground are anywhere mean nothing without the sort of rule

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Speaker 4: of law, refining, processing, shipping, infrastructure.

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Speaker 3: Et cetera.

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Speaker 4: So all these places of various different degrees, the actual

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Speaker 4: existence of some asset, in Venezuela's case, oil, that's part

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Speaker 4: of the story absolutely.

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Speaker 2: So this got me thinking, what is it like to

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Speaker 2: actually do some sort of industrial business, Yeah, in a

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Speaker 2: place like Venezuela, And I always wanted to do more

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Speaker 2: on the Venezuelan economy. I think it's pretty interesting and

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Speaker 2: more interesting now. So that is exactly what we're going

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Speaker 2: to do today. We're also going to talk about doing

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Speaker 2: business in another hotspot hot spot hotspot is a good

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Speaker 2: way of putting it, which is Ukraine.

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Speaker 5: Right.

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Speaker 4: We did a number of episodes immediately after Russia's invasion

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Speaker 4: of Ukraine talk about the effects on the grain business.

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Speaker 4: But the important thing, which we didn't get into that much,

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Speaker 4: although I think we did a little bit, is like, well,

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Speaker 4: the grain business, the weed export business, it still exists,

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Speaker 4: was impaired, but that the day to day business of

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Speaker 4: running a commercial operation in that intense environment, how that

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Speaker 4: changes and so forth and so forth? How does that

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Speaker 4: change under the new competitive strains? And I just want

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Speaker 4: to say one more thing, which is you know when

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Speaker 4: you talked about, well, what is the right word now

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Speaker 4: to describe our relationship with Venezuela, it's I've been thinking

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Speaker 4: about a lot of this too, because I have a word. No,

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Speaker 4: I don't, because it's very contact dependent. Right, if you

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Speaker 4: were to listen to the administration, it's like Maduro was arrested,

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Speaker 4: right if you believe this was a flagrant violation of

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Speaker 4: international law, you'd say he was kidnapped, etc. There's almost

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Speaker 4: no words to describe it. You saw the president talking

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Speaker 4: about or already selling Venezuelan oil.

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Speaker 3: So whose oil is this already? It's just a it's

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Speaker 3: a very odd situation to say they'll leave definitely.

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Speaker 6: Okay.

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Speaker 2: So speaking of odd situations, we have the perfect guests

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Speaker 2: to talk about them, and.

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Speaker 4: I just got to say I got a headline US

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Speaker 4: seek's immediate talks on a Claire in Greenland. Trump says,

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Speaker 4: So at some point we will have another conversation about

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Speaker 4: weird relationships with parts of the world that we didn't

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Speaker 4: think about as much.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the Greenland economy episode is to come, inevitably going

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Speaker 2: to arrive. Okay, So we're going to be speaking with

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Speaker 2: Jeff Kazen. He is the co founder of Agris Academy

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Speaker 2: and also the other co founder, Mike Rolfson. So, Jeff

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Speaker 2: and Mike, thank you so much for coming on all thoughts,

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Speaker 2: really appreciate it.

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Speaker 7: Thanks for having us.

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Speaker 8: Yeah, thanks for having us.

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Speaker 2: So first of all, why don't you give us a

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Speaker 2: sort of nutshell summary of your career history, because this

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Speaker 2: is why we're talking to you. Both of you had

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Speaker 2: very long, interesting careers at Cargill, which is, you know,

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Speaker 2: one of the massive, massive agricultural conglomerates, among other things.

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Speaker 2: So talk to us about why why we're talking to you.

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Speaker 8: I guess, yeah, I guess I'll start out. This is

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Speaker 8: Jeff Kason. I did a full career in Cargio thirty

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Speaker 8: years and you know, started at the ground up, you know,

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Speaker 8: at the bat and Ruge Louisiana Port's buying grain to

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Speaker 8: go to export, was ahead of wheat trading to a

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Speaker 8: lot of wheat trading. At some point, spent some time

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Speaker 8: in their Murders acquisition shop around the world looking at

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Speaker 8: various businesses. Ended up as a CEO of a joint

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Speaker 8: venture between Cargio and Monsanto at the time, switched over

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Speaker 8: into the vegetable oil, particularly the refined vegetable oils. Was

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Speaker 8: the head of trading for what we call the West,

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Speaker 8: so the Western hemisphere on the refined oils side, and

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Speaker 8: that's actually where my time with Venezuela was connected. Cargo

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Speaker 8: had a very large oils business there, actually packaged oils business,

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Speaker 8: and I finished up my career in the feed side.

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Speaker 8: A lot of the aquaculture, very large salmon feeders around

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Speaker 8: the world, shrimp, all kinds of various aquaculture. And then

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Speaker 8: really the western side, south Latin America on the feedside

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Speaker 8: all the way to Argentina. So a typical, highly varied

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Speaker 8: cargo career.

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Speaker 9: Similar story with me back then when Jeff and I started,

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Speaker 9: you know, cargo intentionally threw you around to many different places. So, yeah,

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Speaker 9: I had three different domestic roles in the early to

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Speaker 9: mid nineties that got your feet wet in different markets

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Speaker 9: in the United States. And I also was involved in

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Speaker 9: the export side out of Houston, you know, similar to

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Speaker 9: what Jeff did. And then about five years in I

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Speaker 9: got tapped on the shoulder to go to Ukraine.

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Speaker 7: There was no real commercial presence for cargile.

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Speaker 3: Then was what year we talking about?

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Speaker 7: This would have been.

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Speaker 9: April of nineteen ninety five. Okay, Yeah, so I was

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Speaker 9: I was young, I was single, I spoke Russian, I

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Speaker 9: was perhaps tongue in cheeks.

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Speaker 2: You ticked all the boxes.

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Speaker 9: Expendable and you know, with a with a blank slite

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Speaker 9: that that not really knowing what was going on at

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Speaker 9: the time, and probably rather difficult to find people to

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Speaker 9: come there.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, I had raised my hand already to.

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Speaker 9: Go and and and fortunately they circled back to me

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Speaker 9: and gave me the opportunity. And it was five wonderful

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Speaker 9: years there, taking it basically from a from a theoretical

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Speaker 9: representative office to I think I think we had seven

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Speaker 9: or eight business units and a couple hundred million dollars invested,

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Speaker 9: So it was a wonderful experience over those five years.

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Speaker 9: And I also was with Jeff in the merger and

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Speaker 9: acquisition shop shortly after returning, and went into corporate ventures

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Speaker 9: for a while after that, and left CARGI a little

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Speaker 9: earlier than Jeff did and went through agtech and at

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Speaker 9: tech oriented venture Capital. Then about three years ago we

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Speaker 9: kicked us off.

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Speaker 4: I hope you guys are cool with us turning this

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Speaker 4: into a five hour conversation now, because I imagine there's

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Speaker 4: an incredible number of stories and I already have a billion.

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Speaker 3: Question, so we're going to be doing a little bit

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Speaker 3: of that on the fly.

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Speaker 4: Jeff, talk to us about the years you did business

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Speaker 4: with Venezuela and maybe the difference in what years those were,

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Speaker 4: and then the sort of different conditions from like the

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Speaker 4: beginning to the end as you saw them.

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Speaker 5: Yeah.

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Speaker 8: So because of the oil's business, I was attached to that,

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Speaker 8: and I'd like to say that it was a varied

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Speaker 8: business and I ended up and I had a lot

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Speaker 8: of grain experience too, so I ended up kind of

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Speaker 8: the head of overseeing training for all of it. And

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Speaker 8: probably the biggest statement is I think when I started

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Speaker 8: the boulevard at the currency was like one to eight

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Speaker 8: hundred and this is and I get my years right,

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Speaker 8: and I think, you know, three years later it was

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Speaker 8: like one to twelve thousand or something like that. You

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Speaker 8: ended up, We ended up in that period of super

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Speaker 8: hyper inflation where the economy basically seizes up. And you know,

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Speaker 8: you watch from the capability. If you don't have a

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Speaker 8: functioning currency and the government makes you sell in local

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Speaker 8: currency in order to go you have to have some

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Speaker 8: way to exchange it, and we effectively became dependent on

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Speaker 8: the government to do the exchange to go out and

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Speaker 8: buy dollarized raw materials. Right now, eighty percent of global

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Speaker 8: trade is still in dollars, and a lot of the

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Speaker 8: grain trade is and that probably is the most single

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Speaker 8: telling thing.

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Speaker 5: The currency ceased to.

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Speaker 8: Function, and that really changed the game on the ground

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Speaker 8: in Venezuela.

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Speaker 2: I want to get into some of the currency complications

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Speaker 2: in a little bit, but I was surprised that Cargol

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Speaker 2: had any business at all in Venezuela. Can you just

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Speaker 2: tell us what exactly Cargol was doing over there?

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Speaker 8: Yeah, and mine, I'm currently a former employee and Cardio

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Speaker 8: does not own the business there anymore. Was reached out

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Speaker 8: to by Cargio basically This is very typical of Cargil.

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Speaker 8: They'll have females, they'll go in, they go out, They'll

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Speaker 8: start with feedmales. They'll they had the long term salt.

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Speaker 8: Salt was a big play there. Caril is a large

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Speaker 8: producer globally of salt, a lot of things. Quietly, I

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Speaker 8: think there was a lot of industrial use salt there.

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Speaker 9: They had.

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Speaker 8: The petrochemical business was using salt. I don't actually amount

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Speaker 8: an expert on the petrochemical side. And then there are

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Speaker 8: lots of food processing businesses around the world. In this case,

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Speaker 8: you know, they were natural flour millers, oil refineries, oil bottlers.

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Speaker 5: The rice I had not.

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Speaker 8: Seen anywhere else in the world. It was actually gone

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Speaker 8: by the time I got there, pasta plants. So in

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Speaker 8: this case, probably the more unique thing was that not

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Speaker 8: only were we doing primary processing, but we were going

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Speaker 8: all the way to consumer. They actually had a very

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Speaker 8: I think the number one brand that they had bought

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Speaker 8: over time. I think there was an acquisition from Bunky

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Speaker 8: pre dates me in They're also so they were you know,

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Speaker 8: this was a very wealthy country and a place where

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Speaker 8: you could do some very good business and then repeat

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Speaker 8: that model in multiple countries. All over the world, and

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Speaker 8: so yeah, that's how they got there. It was a

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Speaker 8: very natural flow and they had a very large investment there.

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Speaker 4: Mike on Ukraine, you know, nineteen ninety five is stilled

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Speaker 4: the early days of post Soviet optimism, right, and people

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Speaker 4: hadn't become jaded yet, and they probably hadn't woken up

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Speaker 4: to sort of all the various pathologies and stuff that

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Speaker 4: would occur in the wake of the dissolution of the

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Speaker 4: Soviet Union, et cetera. Talk a little bit about the

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Speaker 4: calculation and the hopes for Ukraine and the degree to which,

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Speaker 4: you know, over the many years that you've paid attention

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Speaker 4: to this market and worked in it, how they unfolded

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Speaker 4: relative to say expectations.

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Speaker 9: Well, I almost would say you underestimated the optimism at

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Speaker 9: the time. You know, in ninety five, there was a

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Speaker 9: tremendous amount of optimism there. We had a very dynamic team.

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Speaker 9: Quite frankly, even the older folks that we would find

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Speaker 9: to help be a part of what we were doing commercially,

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Speaker 9: even though they all they had known is the system.

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Speaker 9: There were folks that were experienced and hard working and

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Speaker 9: very excited to jump into the sort of things that

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Speaker 9: we were doing in a very differentiated way. So we

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Speaker 9: had rock stars in our group that were twenty two

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Speaker 9: and out of school, and we had rock stars that

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Speaker 9: were sixty years old that were probably had had some

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Speaker 9: sort of legacy experience in agriculture in the Soviet Union,

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Speaker 9: but was able to translate that to us. It was

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Speaker 9: an absolutely fantastic experience. Back then it was more than

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Speaker 9: just a job. It was you felt it was transformational.

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Speaker 9: It was you were changing the way business got done.

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Speaker 5: There.

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Speaker 9: There was there was an insane amount of chaos, but

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Speaker 9: working in a regimented ethical way got you business by

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Speaker 9: by you know, in another route. So, yeah, we made

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Speaker 9: it work. It was it was classic Cargile at the time,

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Speaker 9: sort of being sort of pioneering and entrepreneurial, and you know,

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Speaker 9: we made it work and started with the trading side

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Speaker 9: and slowly but surely put assets on the ground and

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Speaker 9: a lot of other more formal things that made it

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Speaker 9: look more and more like a regular geography by the time,

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Speaker 9: you know, the year two thousand rolled around and when

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Speaker 9: I left, so.

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Speaker 2: Mike you were on the ground in Ukraine and Jeff

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Speaker 2: you were managing the venezuela business. Remotely, what was that

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Speaker 2: actually like, because I imagine, you know, we're talking about

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Speaker 2: a couple of decades back now, communication must have been

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Speaker 2: more difficult than it is even nowadays.

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Speaker 5: It was very typical.

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Speaker 8: I wouldn't say, you know, there was we had leading

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Speaker 8: edge as four hundreds back in the day, and so

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Speaker 8: communication has always been a priority of a trading firm,

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Speaker 8: and so there was a lot of investment in that, right,

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Speaker 8: you know, that was very typical that you would have one.

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Speaker 8: And then remember I'm a trading manager, not the overall

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Speaker 8: business manager, but I would have you know, we would

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Speaker 8: have local merchants and at each country, and you've got

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Speaker 8: to connect and coordinate that. You know, think about if

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Speaker 8: you're buying, say you're buying a multi grocery boat cargo,

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Speaker 8: You're going to load that cargo in New Orleans with

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Speaker 8: all kinds of different commodities and it's going to you know,

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Speaker 8: you're going to leverage that out to get your freat

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Speaker 8: costs down and create competitive advantage. And so you're coordinating

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Speaker 8: all your different trading groups in the region, and then

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Speaker 8: that actually goes out on a global basis, so you're

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Speaker 8: constantly looking for that edge. So I played the coordination

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Speaker 8: role and then at the local level, like you have

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Speaker 8: to have local expertise on the ground, particularly in the

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Speaker 8: cases Venezuela started to become unstable. You need people to

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Speaker 8: understand how to navigate the government, how to navigate the

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Speaker 8: various you know, channels to get things can continue to

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Speaker 8: get things done, and that takes local nohow. So that

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Speaker 8: was kind of that big picture role that I would

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Speaker 8: be filling, and of course the risk management side and

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Speaker 8: then you have that very local execution side to make

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Speaker 8: things happen.

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Speaker 5: And you got to have both.

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Speaker 9: Yeah, and the same proxy existed for us at least

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Speaker 9: in our external communication and how we linked up. So

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Speaker 9: my usual routes of communication went through our Geneva office

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Speaker 9: and then you know outward throughout the throughout the rest

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Speaker 9: of Cargil. So the external communication was world class. We

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Speaker 9: had satellite phones through which we ran our modems and

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Speaker 9: that kind of thing.

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Speaker 7: Early on, at.

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Speaker 9: Least internal whole different story. I could probably waste forty

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Speaker 9: five minutes explaining just simple setting a fact type story

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Speaker 9: and things like that in nineteen ninety five, in nineteen

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Speaker 9: ninety six, but before things got a little bit better integrated.

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Speaker 9: But yeah, it was a dichotomy between internal and external,

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Speaker 9: but manageable.

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Speaker 7: Nonetheless, one of my.

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Speaker 2: First journalism jobs was literally monitoring the facts machine and

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Speaker 2: making sure if a fax came in that the newsroom

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Speaker 2: would be aware of it. Thrilling times.

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Speaker 4: We could easily do an hour on internal communications and

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Speaker 4: the sort of like pre email, pre slack, pre ib

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Speaker 4: the pre ib era. It's very long ago, but pre

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Speaker 4: you know, pre digital document management in general, and how that.

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Speaker 3: Must have been.

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Speaker 4: And maybe we'll have you back just to talk one

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Speaker 4: day about that. Jeff, I remember I had a It's

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Speaker 4: interesting enough. I forgot about this, but when my first

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Speaker 4: year of college I had a roommate who I think

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Speaker 4: had done some mission work for his church in Venezuela,

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Speaker 4: and he was there when he by the time he

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Speaker 4: was roommates, he was talking about this guy, Hugo Chavez

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Speaker 4: looks like he's going to win. This is going to

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Speaker 4: be bad news, et cetera. And so should have taken

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Speaker 4: that more seriously and paid more attention. What was though,

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Speaker 4: the point a lot of people were concerned about Java

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Speaker 4: is obviously, what was the point though, in which you

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Speaker 4: sort of saw like, okay, this is this is turning

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Speaker 4: down and what was it? What was the process by

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Speaker 4: which like, oh, we're starting to get serious inflation, We're

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Speaker 4: starting to have a more difficult time doing business or

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Speaker 4: importing dollar denominated machinery.

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Speaker 3: When did that sort of sink in for the business?

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Speaker 8: Yeah, so I arrived, we were already to Maduro, so

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Speaker 8: we were already So Java is the time there had

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Speaker 8: already passed. And you know, it's the it's the frog

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Speaker 8: in the boiling pot, right. It starts small, and then

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Speaker 8: it starts to you know, and then you get all

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Speaker 8: these unintended consequences, and you're you're trying to and then

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Speaker 8: you know, there's a socialist regime. You're trying to plug holes, right,

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Speaker 8: and all these things that start to go on. And

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Speaker 8: plus you know that you also have a government that

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Speaker 8: is healthfully paranoid about being overthrown. Right, there's a power

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Speaker 8: aspect that's going on. All all this at the same time,

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Speaker 8: I think it really really took a plunge. I mean,

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Speaker 8: it wasn't good at Chavez, but when the currency and

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Speaker 8: you know, as you said, the oil industry starts to deteriorate,

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Speaker 8: so that spickett of dollars is drop drying off, it

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Speaker 8: takes ever more dollars to pay off everybody in the system. Right,

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Speaker 8: it's a constant payoff system. And then you just don't

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Speaker 8: have enough money, so you just run the printing press, right.

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Speaker 8: And I remember this, there was a point it got

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Speaker 8: it happened so fast. A couple of stories. One is

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Speaker 8: the BTU of a paper boulevar. The BTU value is

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Speaker 8: worth more than it could buy it.

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Speaker 5: You literally you can burn it for fuel.

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Speaker 3: That's crazy.

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Speaker 8: And and there was a time where they were they

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Speaker 8: were having the boulevards printed, but they didn't pay their

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Speaker 8: printing bill and they were flying it and the printing

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Speaker 8: was being done in dollars outside the country. They didn't

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Speaker 8: have enough money to buy the boulevards to fly them in.

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Speaker 8: So he really started running out of currency on the ground,

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Speaker 8: like just even if you wanted to work on it.

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Speaker 8: There's all kinds of these kind of stories, but it

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Speaker 8: was right in that probably two years in the Maduro

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Speaker 8: space when when the currency stopped functioning, that was really

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Speaker 8: when we knew we were in trouble.

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Speaker 4: Just to go back to something you said, so, an

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Speaker 4: American company working in any foreign country has to abide

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Speaker 4: by American laws, particularly related to things like bribery and corruption,

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Speaker 4: and maybe for both of you, and I imagine you

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Speaker 4: know that this is a very prominent issue in both

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Speaker 4: these countries, maybe more in Venezuela than Ukraine, et cetera,

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Speaker 4: but we know that there's significant corruption in Ukraine et cetera.

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Speaker 4: Can you talk a little bit about essentially how you

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Speaker 4: function in these environments where probably lots of people are

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Speaker 4: getting paid off literally or in the bribery sense, and

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Speaker 4: how you have to navigate that from the perspective of

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Speaker 4: a multinational all start sure.

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Speaker 9: And going back again within the perspective of the mid nineties,

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Speaker 9: there were two impediments, and I use the word impediment.

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Speaker 9: You know, not that it impeded us, but it did

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Speaker 9: create a headwind for should we sayd the ease of

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Speaker 9: doing business and the scale of doing business. Yeah, So

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Speaker 9: the two parts that created impediments for us is there

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Speaker 9: still was a fair amount of governmental influence in the

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Speaker 9: grain business in nineteen ninety five, and it really was

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Speaker 9: from a county perspective in a state, or what they

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Speaker 9: referred to as obelist perspective, all the way up to

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Speaker 9: the central government. So there were plenty of ways to

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Speaker 9: keep those people happy and quietly by grain at scale

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Speaker 9: that would also go through a state owned railroad system

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Speaker 9: and a state owned port system. So most of the infrastructure,

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Speaker 9: and there were gatekeepers is at various stages that could

382
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Speaker 9: easily be catalyzed, shall we say, to get grain out

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Speaker 9: the door at very reasonable numbers and trade at large scale,

384
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Speaker 9: and I would I could name names, but you know

385
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Speaker 9: there's plenty of some of the global traders that don't

386
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Speaker 9: have to apply to the US rules based system. So

387
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Speaker 9: what we basically did is did at old school. We

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Speaker 9: went straight to the farms in smaller quantities, in reasonable amounts,

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Speaker 9: with people we could trust, and just gutted it out

390
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Speaker 9: through atypical ways of getting the grain out of the country,

391
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Speaker 9: which ironically is some of the infrastructure that we built

392
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Speaker 9: on the Danube River system that it's very lumpy. It's

393
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Speaker 9: transhipment through cranes and evacuation systems and things like that

394
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Speaker 9: as opposed to a big, you know, high scale elevator.

395
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Speaker 9: Those are some of the things today that are getting

396
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Speaker 9: grain out of the country because some of the main

397
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Speaker 9: elevators have been destroyed or damaged in some way.

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Speaker 7: So that was our biggest problem.

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Speaker 9: You know, you could get around it, and quite frankly,

400
00:20:59,920 --> 00:21:02,160
Speaker 9: was more rewarding doing it that way because we saw

401
00:21:02,800 --> 00:21:06,360
Speaker 9: our impact on the AC sector. But that was sort

402
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Speaker 9: of the big picture reality at the time when I

403
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Speaker 9: first got there.

404
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Speaker 8: I think in my case, it is comforting as operating

405
00:21:13,560 --> 00:21:16,080
Speaker 8: is to know you don't have to pay those type

406
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Speaker 8: of bribes or facilitated payments. The company did a very

407
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Speaker 8: good job of instilling that. Everybody who joined trained on

408
00:21:23,440 --> 00:21:27,040
Speaker 8: it yearly and quite friendly backed it up. Right, if

409
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Speaker 8: you didn't make your numbers because you would have had

410
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Speaker 8: to pay the bribe to get there, it didn't hurt

411
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Speaker 8: you career wise. They knew you talk about it. You

412
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Speaker 8: tell them I'm not going to do this, and it happened,

413
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Speaker 8: and we had these stories that happened. But so on

414
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Speaker 8: that side, it made it very clear for your employees

415
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Speaker 8: to know how to operate. The other thing I want

416
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Speaker 8: you to think about in the global food space, right

417
00:21:48,320 --> 00:21:51,680
Speaker 8: is if you're a nest Slay or a freedom lay

418
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Speaker 8: or one of that, and you're buying raw materials, so

419
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Speaker 8: you have a plant in Venezuela, Okay, you want to

420
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Speaker 8: make sure that you have food safe product US grade

421
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Speaker 8: and you know the standards, right, food safety. You want

422
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Speaker 8: to actually it actually draws business to you right.

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Speaker 2: Right, the brand value of American food, right, and.

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Speaker 8: That you're going to act honestly and they don't have

425
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Speaker 8: to pay a bribe to get a truck you know,

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Speaker 8: to the plant on that day. Right, the things like that,

427
00:22:17,840 --> 00:22:20,840
Speaker 8: that the way you can do business. So, uh, at

428
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Speaker 8: that time, let's call them Western company. They're listen now today,

429
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Speaker 8: more modern companies they like to go to some of

430
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Speaker 8: these early markets together. And because they knew that they

431
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Speaker 8: had a supplier that you know, if you were making

432
00:22:32,440 --> 00:22:34,920
Speaker 8: malt barley for the brewery and it's a you know,

433
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Speaker 8: South African brewery, they knew that you were actually going

434
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Speaker 8: to you know, make a contract and stick to the contract.

435
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Speaker 5: No matter what.

436
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Speaker 8: If we had to work it out there was crop failure,

437
00:22:44,320 --> 00:22:46,600
Speaker 8: you would, you know, hold your word was your bond.

438
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Speaker 8: And you know, I'm going to tip a hat off

439
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Speaker 8: to my former employee. They were very good about how

440
00:22:52,359 --> 00:22:55,640
Speaker 8: that operated. And I work with them in places basically

441
00:22:55,680 --> 00:22:58,280
Speaker 8: in any all the corners of the world and everything

442
00:22:58,320 --> 00:23:02,000
Speaker 8: from you know, fish meal to licening to wheat. That

443
00:23:02,480 --> 00:23:07,840
Speaker 8: brand helps out in these environments because you know, you

444
00:23:07,920 --> 00:23:11,280
Speaker 8: were the customers can count on you and in food

445
00:23:11,880 --> 00:23:14,199
Speaker 8: super important, right, because if you screw that up, you

446
00:23:14,200 --> 00:23:18,840
Speaker 8: can kill somebody and or tarnish the customer's brand.

447
00:23:19,160 --> 00:23:20,600
Speaker 5: Right, if something gets.

448
00:23:20,440 --> 00:23:23,199
Speaker 8: Through this that's the same way it is in the US, actually,

449
00:23:23,200 --> 00:23:26,040
Speaker 8: but not with the maybe the same criticality when you're

450
00:23:26,080 --> 00:23:28,200
Speaker 8: working in a remote location around the world.

451
00:23:29,200 --> 00:23:31,920
Speaker 2: So this actually leads into something I'm really curious about,

452
00:23:31,920 --> 00:23:36,400
Speaker 2: which is, obviously Cargil is a private company operating at

453
00:23:36,400 --> 00:23:40,760
Speaker 2: that time under a socialist regime under Majiro. What was

454
00:23:40,800 --> 00:23:45,600
Speaker 2: the relationship like just between a private commercial enterprise and

455
00:23:45,640 --> 00:23:50,640
Speaker 2: a socialist government, especially for something as critical as food, Right,

456
00:23:50,680 --> 00:23:54,159
Speaker 2: I imagine the government cared about the food supply.

457
00:23:54,720 --> 00:23:57,240
Speaker 8: We we had to follow both sets of laws.

458
00:23:57,320 --> 00:23:57,480
Speaker 7: Right.

459
00:23:57,520 --> 00:23:59,560
Speaker 8: You have to follow the local law too, right, So

460
00:23:59,600 --> 00:24:02,720
Speaker 8: if they say you must transact in boulevards, you have

461
00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:06,320
Speaker 8: to transact in boulevards. Now, we didn't have teather or

462
00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:09,359
Speaker 8: pitcoin at this point, right, So the world's changing in

463
00:24:09,400 --> 00:24:10,560
Speaker 8: an interesting way.

464
00:24:11,560 --> 00:24:12,600
Speaker 5: You have to follow that.

465
00:24:12,680 --> 00:24:15,200
Speaker 8: I mean you you know you don't want to, I

466
00:24:15,240 --> 00:24:17,600
Speaker 8: don't know, poke the bear, right, And then you have

467
00:24:17,680 --> 00:24:20,639
Speaker 8: to have people to become experts and how whatever government

468
00:24:20,720 --> 00:24:23,920
Speaker 8: you're working with runs and we do and that's how

469
00:24:23,920 --> 00:24:26,639
Speaker 8: we But this was a very common still is common

470
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:30,119
Speaker 8: to operate in some of these places where you know,

471
00:24:30,720 --> 00:24:33,159
Speaker 8: you know places that have cocoa, right, you know some

472
00:24:33,200 --> 00:24:38,000
Speaker 8: of the African countries there, Zimbabwe, right South Africa. You

473
00:24:38,119 --> 00:24:41,280
Speaker 8: still have this situation you have to become there is

474
00:24:41,359 --> 00:24:46,760
Speaker 8: a competitive advantage of becoming experts at working in difficult places.

475
00:24:47,200 --> 00:24:51,360
Speaker 2: Were you ever pressured though, for instance, to lower grocery prices?

476
00:24:52,720 --> 00:24:55,119
Speaker 8: Oh, absolutely all the time, right, And there were laws

477
00:24:55,119 --> 00:24:57,600
Speaker 8: on theoretically how much you could make and how the

478
00:24:57,720 --> 00:25:00,280
Speaker 8: counting was done on that. And you know, if we

479
00:25:00,320 --> 00:25:03,560
Speaker 8: had a global rice shortage, it was not the fact

480
00:25:03,600 --> 00:25:05,640
Speaker 8: that we had a global rice shortage and prices rising.

481
00:25:05,720 --> 00:25:07,960
Speaker 8: It was Cargil that was doing it too. You know,

482
00:25:08,040 --> 00:25:11,160
Speaker 8: to the people. You had to have an escapegoat effectively.

483
00:25:11,200 --> 00:25:13,919
Speaker 8: And you know, at some point you just know that

484
00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:16,840
Speaker 8: you can't import at price X and sell it for

485
00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:20,560
Speaker 8: X minus, you know, a bunch and you'll just bleed

486
00:25:20,600 --> 00:25:25,560
Speaker 8: out and quite frankly, at some point and several geographies,

487
00:25:25,600 --> 00:25:28,440
Speaker 8: we'd get a situation where corporation says.

488
00:25:28,200 --> 00:25:30,120
Speaker 5: We will put no more dollars in the country.

489
00:25:31,080 --> 00:25:33,679
Speaker 8: And we were there and I can still remember that.

490
00:25:33,840 --> 00:25:37,199
Speaker 8: So if we wanted to import something, we had to

491
00:25:37,200 --> 00:25:40,320
Speaker 8: get dollars either from the government or figure out how

492
00:25:40,359 --> 00:25:44,879
Speaker 8: to export something. They created dollars. So that's where you

493
00:25:44,960 --> 00:25:47,320
Speaker 8: really start to struggle because you're basically relying on the

494
00:25:47,359 --> 00:25:51,399
Speaker 8: government to exchange boulevards for dollars. And that's where we

495
00:25:51,480 --> 00:25:53,959
Speaker 8: tried all kinds of things to try to export. I mean,

496
00:25:53,960 --> 00:25:57,760
Speaker 8: there was salt there, we tried palletts, but every time

497
00:25:57,800 --> 00:26:00,159
Speaker 8: you tried to do something, somebody in the accounty it

498
00:26:00,240 --> 00:26:03,440
Speaker 8: was like grabbing that. Oh no, if you really want

499
00:26:03,480 --> 00:26:05,199
Speaker 8: to move that, you know, to the port, that's going

500
00:26:05,280 --> 00:26:09,399
Speaker 8: to require some facilitation payment or something like that. It

501
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:12,639
Speaker 8: just and the team down there was desperately trying it

502
00:26:12,600 --> 00:26:15,280
Speaker 8: because the other thing we needed beyond just the raw

503
00:26:15,359 --> 00:26:18,440
Speaker 8: materials that we needed spare parts. And this maybe lies

504
00:26:18,480 --> 00:26:21,520
Speaker 8: to your question about what's the situation there. You know,

505
00:26:21,600 --> 00:26:24,320
Speaker 8: if you need to buy some electrical equipment from Semens,

506
00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:27,480
Speaker 8: they're not going to want bulevards and they want euros

507
00:26:27,560 --> 00:26:29,359
Speaker 8: or dollars. So we were having to try to figure

508
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:33,000
Speaker 8: out how to generate enough dollars just to get spare parts.

509
00:26:33,359 --> 00:26:36,560
Speaker 8: And you know, I'm not sure how I can only

510
00:26:36,600 --> 00:26:39,000
Speaker 8: speak for my situation is now the team is really

511
00:26:39,040 --> 00:26:41,399
Speaker 8: focused instead of kind of on their day to day

512
00:26:41,520 --> 00:26:44,800
Speaker 8: job of running logistics and parts you on getting things

513
00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:48,440
Speaker 8: in their jobs, switched to how do we originate dollars?

514
00:26:48,520 --> 00:26:50,080
Speaker 8: So you have you know, a couple of people that

515
00:26:50,119 --> 00:26:53,560
Speaker 8: are just expert in government and maybe like camp out

516
00:26:53,560 --> 00:26:57,119
Speaker 8: of government offices for long periods of time trying to

517
00:26:57,160 --> 00:27:00,280
Speaker 8: figure out winding through the red tape. And then you

518
00:27:00,320 --> 00:27:02,880
Speaker 8: have people trying to figure out, you know, hey, can

519
00:27:02,920 --> 00:27:06,800
Speaker 8: we put one ton, one kilo bag or one metric

520
00:27:06,840 --> 00:27:09,320
Speaker 8: ton bags together of salt that's sitting in this pile

521
00:27:09,359 --> 00:27:11,760
Speaker 8: and get them out of the country and sell them

522
00:27:11,800 --> 00:27:15,160
Speaker 8: to generate dollars. So now you have a dollar generation

523
00:27:15,359 --> 00:27:19,040
Speaker 8: team and that can play out all over Argentina. Before Mala,

524
00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:22,200
Speaker 8: I don't know what the situation is now, was like that. Also,

525
00:27:22,560 --> 00:27:26,000
Speaker 8: when you have hyper inflation, you get into the situation

526
00:27:26,119 --> 00:27:28,720
Speaker 8: where you have to have a team it's just hunting dollars.

527
00:27:29,560 --> 00:27:31,960
Speaker 4: I wasn't expecting the conversation to go in this but

528
00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:35,199
Speaker 4: for either one of you and Jeff, you mentioned the

529
00:27:35,359 --> 00:27:38,879
Speaker 4: non I wasn't expecting to talk about tether in this episode,

530
00:27:39,080 --> 00:27:43,639
Speaker 4: but in today twenty twenty six, when you think about

531
00:27:43,840 --> 00:27:49,119
Speaker 4: sort of these currency bottlenecks that exist, do cryptocurrencies or

532
00:27:49,160 --> 00:27:52,960
Speaker 4: whether it's stable coins or something truly decentralized like bitcoin,

533
00:27:53,400 --> 00:27:58,320
Speaker 4: are people seriously either implementing or thinking about how some

534
00:27:58,359 --> 00:28:02,840
Speaker 4: of these new financial technologies can solve pain points within

535
00:28:03,040 --> 00:28:04,520
Speaker 4: the global egg trade.

536
00:28:04,280 --> 00:28:05,600
Speaker 5: Like this is your specialty?

537
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:10,040
Speaker 9: Yeah, well, again, I can't speak to the specificity maybe

538
00:28:10,320 --> 00:28:13,919
Speaker 9: country by country, but certainly if you look maybe in

539
00:28:13,960 --> 00:28:17,679
Speaker 9: the big picture, the average producer somewhere in the world

540
00:28:17,680 --> 00:28:20,960
Speaker 9: that has a currency issue where it impedes them and

541
00:28:21,840 --> 00:28:25,440
Speaker 9: maybe the quality of their bank, their access to capital,

542
00:28:26,480 --> 00:28:28,760
Speaker 9: their access to foreign currency to.

543
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:31,480
Speaker 7: Upgrade whatever it is.

544
00:28:32,160 --> 00:28:34,359
Speaker 9: Absolutely, the tethers of the world and things like that

545
00:28:34,400 --> 00:28:38,240
Speaker 9: are going to fundamentally change and the access to that.

546
00:28:38,120 --> 00:28:41,080
Speaker 7: Sort of thing where when you compare it to the.

547
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:44,320
Speaker 9: Way it was before, for sure, and I will maybe

548
00:28:44,360 --> 00:28:47,640
Speaker 9: add a little half answer to what you through out

549
00:28:47,680 --> 00:28:50,480
Speaker 9: there too. There's a lot of great stories for folks

550
00:28:50,520 --> 00:28:55,880
Speaker 9: looking for something to entertain themselves around bitcoin, especially the

551
00:28:55,920 --> 00:28:59,280
Speaker 9: early bitcoin mining that was going on in Venezuela, for

552
00:28:59,360 --> 00:29:01,960
Speaker 9: people that were concerned about where the country was going,

553
00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:05,280
Speaker 9: where they would you know, tap into a small hydro plant.

554
00:29:05,320 --> 00:29:08,840
Speaker 9: It maybe a family's place out in the woods somewhere,

555
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:11,680
Speaker 9: and mind bitcoin put it on a wallet and had

556
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:13,880
Speaker 9: it as their escape valve in case they needed it.

557
00:29:13,920 --> 00:29:15,920
Speaker 7: And sure enough there.

558
00:29:15,800 --> 00:29:18,360
Speaker 9: Was a night where they traped through the jungle and

559
00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:20,560
Speaker 9: went to another country and had it on their wallet

560
00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:24,440
Speaker 9: and started another life. So yeah, there was some very

561
00:29:24,440 --> 00:29:28,240
Speaker 9: interesting early pioneering bitcoin stories around with.

562
00:29:28,280 --> 00:29:30,120
Speaker 7: The ball of our force folks to.

563
00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:31,400
Speaker 5: Move early on.

564
00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:50,920
Speaker 2: Talk to us about people actually leaving Venezuela, because this

565
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:53,280
Speaker 2: is also something that you hear a lot about, which is,

566
00:29:53,800 --> 00:29:57,880
Speaker 2: you know, if you were a Venezuelan with some amount

567
00:29:58,000 --> 00:30:02,240
Speaker 2: of means in the past, you were very incentivized to leave,

568
00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:06,080
Speaker 2: especially if you're working in certain businesses that the government

569
00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:09,480
Speaker 2: was targeting. Did you experience that at Cargill as well?

570
00:30:09,520 --> 00:30:12,320
Speaker 2: This sort of brain drain happened.

571
00:30:11,960 --> 00:30:12,520
Speaker 5: All the time.

572
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:14,680
Speaker 8: First, I want to set the scene, right, we have

573
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:18,400
Speaker 8: a at the time, we had an office in Caracas,

574
00:30:18,600 --> 00:30:20,920
Speaker 8: very nice, right, A lot of employees there, not just

575
00:30:21,000 --> 00:30:23,560
Speaker 8: kind of because we haven't a brand business, right, we

576
00:30:23,640 --> 00:30:27,400
Speaker 8: had people that were label designers, and I mean it

577
00:30:27,440 --> 00:30:30,680
Speaker 8: was the full on think of it. I don't know more,

578
00:30:30,880 --> 00:30:33,400
Speaker 8: maybe the Proctor and Gain all the retail side of things.

579
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:39,320
Speaker 8: So big office nice. We had a satellite communications there.

580
00:30:39,600 --> 00:30:43,360
Speaker 8: There was no star link yet, and so the office

581
00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:45,240
Speaker 8: was a nice place, right, And people actually, you know,

582
00:30:45,280 --> 00:30:46,960
Speaker 8: they're like, oh, yeah, I was there on Saturday, and

583
00:30:46,960 --> 00:30:49,320
Speaker 8: I'm like, you know, and the problem is when you

584
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:53,920
Speaker 8: left that office, you zipped to your dated community, more

585
00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:57,680
Speaker 8: likely an apartment complex. You just had to go from

586
00:30:57,800 --> 00:31:02,360
Speaker 8: secured compound to secure concound. And then it became you know,

587
00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:04,480
Speaker 8: you didn't know if you were having water that week

588
00:31:04,920 --> 00:31:08,959
Speaker 8: or hot water. You might not have electricity for several days,

589
00:31:10,520 --> 00:31:13,080
Speaker 8: you might not have access, there might not be anything

590
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:16,560
Speaker 8: to buy in a grocery store. Now, our employees were

591
00:31:16,560 --> 00:31:20,440
Speaker 8: getting some food from us because we made some basics, right,

592
00:31:20,560 --> 00:31:22,600
Speaker 8: you know, every week we would make sure that we

593
00:31:22,720 --> 00:31:25,400
Speaker 8: got something transferred from the plants and and put this

594
00:31:25,440 --> 00:31:30,640
Speaker 8: stuff together. So the life style that people lived was

595
00:31:30,920 --> 00:31:33,560
Speaker 8: not easy, even for those who theoretically had you know,

596
00:31:33,600 --> 00:31:39,040
Speaker 8: we're well educated, had good jobs. And eventually even our

597
00:31:39,040 --> 00:31:42,840
Speaker 8: business course, the business is slowing down and they leave.

598
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:46,200
Speaker 8: And then of course, in our case, we had a

599
00:31:46,240 --> 00:31:51,400
Speaker 8: plant that got nationalized at gunpoint. Well, if you're you know,

600
00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:55,280
Speaker 8: a highly skilled manager operator. You don't want to stick

601
00:31:55,320 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 8: around and start to have to do your job at gunpoint, right,

602
00:31:59,320 --> 00:32:01,200
Speaker 8: because they don't have any expertise and how to run

603
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:03,960
Speaker 8: the planet. So the big wave, the first wave, the

604
00:32:04,040 --> 00:32:09,040
Speaker 8: first so we said several million Venezuelans were the most educated,

605
00:32:09,080 --> 00:32:12,479
Speaker 8: the most skilled, and it compounded itself, right because you know,

606
00:32:12,520 --> 00:32:16,000
Speaker 8: now nobody knows how to run the electric generation station, right,

607
00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:19,520
Speaker 8: that nobody knows, you know, obviously the petrochemical industry, right,

608
00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:22,640
Speaker 8: you can go get re employed around the world. You know,

609
00:32:22,640 --> 00:32:27,160
Speaker 8: if you're a you know, petro engineer, no problem. And

610
00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:30,040
Speaker 8: so those people went all over the place. And the

611
00:32:30,080 --> 00:32:32,680
Speaker 8: beauty of working for a multinational as we picked up

612
00:32:32,720 --> 00:32:35,440
Speaker 8: as many as we could, and that is you know,

613
00:32:35,840 --> 00:32:39,320
Speaker 8: in that conversation to bring you. You have an employee

614
00:32:39,360 --> 00:32:42,840
Speaker 8: they call, they're very nationalistic, they know they're doing important work.

615
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:46,240
Speaker 8: They've had enough and you get that call and they go,

616
00:32:46,320 --> 00:32:49,280
Speaker 8: you know, they're they're they it's kind of sheepish. They're

617
00:32:49,320 --> 00:32:52,719
Speaker 8: like they feel like they're abandoning you, and you know,

618
00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:56,640
Speaker 8: we go and find them. My story was, you know, employee,

619
00:32:56,720 --> 00:32:59,160
Speaker 8: one of my last employees just says, I'm going to

620
00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:03,160
Speaker 8: Mexico City. I think his wife had was working for

621
00:33:03,400 --> 00:33:05,920
Speaker 8: Sony at the time and had some type of employment.

622
00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:08,040
Speaker 8: And I said, what are you going to do? And

623
00:33:08,080 --> 00:33:09,800
Speaker 8: he goes, I don't know, but I'm not going to

624
00:33:09,840 --> 00:33:13,040
Speaker 8: be here anymore, you know. I mailed my I mailed

625
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:16,120
Speaker 8: my big screen TV and a couple of things DHL

626
00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:18,600
Speaker 8: and I'm going to take my guitars on the plane

627
00:33:18,640 --> 00:33:21,280
Speaker 8: and I'm done. And I said, well, I know what

628
00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:22,560
Speaker 8: you're going to do. You're going to go to this

629
00:33:22,680 --> 00:33:25,400
Speaker 8: address and you're going to work for me in Mexico.

630
00:33:26,200 --> 00:33:30,160
Speaker 8: And that played out hundreds of times inside my employer.

631
00:33:30,960 --> 00:33:33,720
Speaker 8: You'd go to a meeting in Mexico City. I still

632
00:33:33,720 --> 00:33:36,840
Speaker 8: remember a management meeting. They run a very large crush

633
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:40,720
Speaker 8: refine facility north of Mexico City, and half the people

634
00:33:40,760 --> 00:33:45,840
Speaker 8: in the room are Venezuelan's talented, smart educated, and that

635
00:33:46,040 --> 00:33:48,240
Speaker 8: you know that played out. I know you know if

636
00:33:48,480 --> 00:33:50,720
Speaker 8: from my social media, you know that happened in lots

637
00:33:50,760 --> 00:33:54,240
Speaker 8: of Western companies. They were very My experience working with

638
00:33:54,320 --> 00:33:58,520
Speaker 8: Venezuelans was it was fantastic. They had a good education system,

639
00:33:59,040 --> 00:34:04,000
Speaker 8: smart business abby and we gladly re employed them around.

640
00:34:03,760 --> 00:34:07,440
Speaker 4: The world, sticking with Venezuela for a moment. And we've

641
00:34:07,440 --> 00:34:10,120
Speaker 4: heard all the numbers about the oil industry and the

642
00:34:10,120 --> 00:34:13,040
Speaker 4: amount of upfront capital it would take to sort of

643
00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:18,440
Speaker 4: profitably begin shipping oil at scale or selling oil at scale.

644
00:34:18,560 --> 00:34:21,560
Speaker 4: What is your understanding like right now of the equivalent

645
00:34:21,920 --> 00:34:24,799
Speaker 4: within the realms that you're working in grains like, is

646
00:34:24,800 --> 00:34:28,840
Speaker 4: they're the same sort of view that all the infrastructure

647
00:34:28,840 --> 00:34:30,759
Speaker 4: that was being used during the days when it was

648
00:34:30,800 --> 00:34:35,239
Speaker 4: working profitably would need a significant amount of capital for

649
00:34:35,320 --> 00:34:38,160
Speaker 4: an entity like Cargill or the sort of family of

650
00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:42,040
Speaker 4: global food companies to want to re enter that business.

651
00:34:43,160 --> 00:34:45,600
Speaker 8: Look, I am not a Venezuela and expert. Our business

652
00:34:45,600 --> 00:34:48,680
Speaker 8: as actually an education and risk management around supply chains,

653
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:50,800
Speaker 8: and we do a lot of work with US growers.

654
00:34:50,840 --> 00:34:53,640
Speaker 8: So this was a bit of an accidental experience to

655
00:34:55,040 --> 00:34:58,640
Speaker 8: from what happened to bring me here today. We do

656
00:34:58,760 --> 00:35:01,080
Speaker 8: know we were struggling to keep them plants maintained. These

657
00:35:01,080 --> 00:35:03,759
Speaker 8: are but there, and I'm sure there's a lot of

658
00:35:03,800 --> 00:35:05,439
Speaker 8: work that has to be done. I think the number

659
00:35:05,440 --> 00:35:08,000
Speaker 8: one thing you have to have is security, right, you

660
00:35:08,120 --> 00:35:10,680
Speaker 8: have to be able. You're going to need some promises.

661
00:35:10,760 --> 00:35:13,000
Speaker 8: There's a lot of companies that lost a lot of

662
00:35:13,040 --> 00:35:17,200
Speaker 8: money in Venezuela right with the assets they had, because

663
00:35:17,200 --> 00:35:19,960
Speaker 8: a second you walk away from an asset there, try

664
00:35:19,960 --> 00:35:24,359
Speaker 8: to even say, mothball it. Everything gets stolen, okay, that

665
00:35:24,400 --> 00:35:26,520
Speaker 8: you don't expect there's you walk into a plant that

666
00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:29,600
Speaker 8: you shut down five years ago, that there'll be anything there.

667
00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:34,080
Speaker 8: You have to defend it couple times. Otherwise if somebody's

668
00:35:34,080 --> 00:35:35,400
Speaker 8: going to go in there and you know, sell the

669
00:35:35,400 --> 00:35:37,879
Speaker 8: parts in the black market and scrap the rest because

670
00:35:37,920 --> 00:35:42,120
Speaker 8: scrap byron trades and dollars and so you can't expect

671
00:35:42,160 --> 00:35:46,759
Speaker 8: that there's unless the whatever it is is running, you

672
00:35:46,760 --> 00:35:49,040
Speaker 8: can't expect much. And I know that there they were

673
00:35:49,040 --> 00:35:52,880
Speaker 8: started as strange again, strange things that happen as the

674
00:35:52,920 --> 00:35:56,560
Speaker 8: domestic situation got worse. They actually had to increase imports

675
00:35:56,840 --> 00:35:59,319
Speaker 8: of finished goods because you couldn't finish them in the

676
00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:03,160
Speaker 8: country anymore. But there was still demand and you had remittances. Right,

677
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:06,640
Speaker 8: SAME's like Mexico, right, so there is some dollars floating

678
00:36:06,640 --> 00:36:08,920
Speaker 8: even into people that stay. I know, you know, we

679
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:11,239
Speaker 8: had some employees that talk about sending money to their

680
00:36:11,280 --> 00:36:15,040
Speaker 8: families in Venezuela and easier to do now probably, but

681
00:36:15,120 --> 00:36:17,880
Speaker 8: that was you know, the Miami banking connection and some

682
00:36:18,000 --> 00:36:22,120
Speaker 8: things like that. So I best suspect that there's a

683
00:36:22,120 --> 00:36:24,240
Speaker 8: tremendous amount of work, but I am not an expert

684
00:36:24,360 --> 00:36:27,359
Speaker 8: on the current situation. I think it can be done

685
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:31,560
Speaker 8: in the basic staples. Those plants are not that hard.

686
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:35,759
Speaker 8: Flour mills, oil refineries. Yeah, you know, there's no doubt

687
00:36:35,800 --> 00:36:38,440
Speaker 8: if the world put their mind to it. And I

688
00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:41,440
Speaker 8: just saw we sold three hundred million dollars worth of

689
00:36:41,480 --> 00:36:44,960
Speaker 8: oil here this morning. They went apparently to buy the currency,

690
00:36:44,960 --> 00:36:48,160
Speaker 8: and then we talked about currency stabilization. Apparently they must

691
00:36:48,160 --> 00:36:49,520
Speaker 8: have used a lot of that to buy boll of

692
00:36:49,520 --> 00:36:52,600
Speaker 8: ours and create a more stable exchange so you can

693
00:36:52,640 --> 00:36:55,880
Speaker 8: get the economy floating. So, you know, hats off to

694
00:36:55,920 --> 00:36:59,480
Speaker 8: the current administration for somebody's obviously paying attention. But yeah,

695
00:36:59,520 --> 00:37:02,160
Speaker 8: it's going to take security, it's going to take some

696
00:37:02,239 --> 00:37:06,120
Speaker 8: promises stability, because you know, you're talking about putting hundreds

697
00:37:06,120 --> 00:37:08,560
Speaker 8: of millions of dollars on the ground into a place

698
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:12,000
Speaker 8: where effectively those those type.

699
00:37:11,800 --> 00:37:13,080
Speaker 5: Of investments were lost.

700
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:16,120
Speaker 8: And I don't think that's going to be an easy

701
00:37:16,640 --> 00:37:18,840
Speaker 8: sell to the multinational world.

702
00:37:20,239 --> 00:37:24,600
Speaker 2: What was it like just moving stuff within Venezuela. Because

703
00:37:24,680 --> 00:37:28,760
Speaker 2: you describe how an empty plant wou would be gutted

704
00:37:28,880 --> 00:37:32,680
Speaker 2: fairly quickly. I imagine if people saw an opportunity, you know,

705
00:37:32,719 --> 00:37:36,040
Speaker 2: a truckload of something that could be valuable on the road,

706
00:37:36,200 --> 00:37:39,359
Speaker 2: they probably seized on that as well.

707
00:37:39,760 --> 00:37:42,759
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean it doesn't matter what you know. Venezuela was.

708
00:37:43,520 --> 00:37:47,200
Speaker 8: You know, we had security experts that work for us,

709
00:37:47,239 --> 00:37:49,200
Speaker 8: that understood what they had to ground, you know, do

710
00:37:49,280 --> 00:37:51,640
Speaker 8: on the ground to get shipments like safe from the

711
00:37:51,680 --> 00:37:54,640
Speaker 8: port to the plant, or from the plant to a

712
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:58,279
Speaker 8: grocery store right or something like that, or some kind

713
00:37:58,280 --> 00:38:02,640
Speaker 8: of distribution. Very it's very difficult. My more recently, you

714
00:38:02,719 --> 00:38:05,960
Speaker 8: think this doesn't go on in Mexico. You know, we

715
00:38:05,960 --> 00:38:10,840
Speaker 8: were losing a lot of trucks. Sometimes we'd get the

716
00:38:10,880 --> 00:38:14,360
Speaker 8: trucks back, sometimes we lost the cargo in the trucks.

717
00:38:15,760 --> 00:38:19,319
Speaker 8: That still goes on right today. And you sit there

718
00:38:19,360 --> 00:38:21,359
Speaker 8: and try to understand what is the cost of doing

719
00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:24,200
Speaker 8: business right, and you will lose some along the way,

720
00:38:24,800 --> 00:38:30,800
Speaker 8: and sometimes you hire local companies that are more able

721
00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:33,920
Speaker 8: to navigate how to get things moved from point A

722
00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:36,719
Speaker 8: to point B, and you effectively have to work from

723
00:38:36,719 --> 00:38:41,280
Speaker 8: inside your compound. You also have to secure from theft

724
00:38:41,360 --> 00:38:45,640
Speaker 8: right at the compound. Right, It's just all these drags

725
00:38:45,680 --> 00:38:48,640
Speaker 8: on the economy when you get into these situations, right,

726
00:38:48,640 --> 00:38:52,320
Speaker 8: it's just dragging the entire country down in hyper inflation.

727
00:38:52,440 --> 00:38:54,399
Speaker 8: I think if you studied in it. You know, Mike

728
00:38:54,400 --> 00:38:57,879
Speaker 8: and I both have some economics theories. There's all these

729
00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:02,800
Speaker 8: dragging taxes on people. You know, your employee gets paid

730
00:39:02,800 --> 00:39:04,640
Speaker 8: today and they just as soon as they get paid,

731
00:39:04,640 --> 00:39:07,000
Speaker 8: they run out and spend it like they're done for

732
00:39:07,040 --> 00:39:11,200
Speaker 8: the rest of the day. Right, they shoe leather tacks, right,

733
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:14,319
Speaker 8: and you know, now everything has to be secured with

734
00:39:14,800 --> 00:39:18,400
Speaker 8: you know, multi fences and barbed wire and constant guards

735
00:39:18,440 --> 00:39:21,719
Speaker 8: and guards and trucks and all that stuff. And if

736
00:39:21,760 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 8: you can remove that burden from the economy, it's just

737
00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:29,480
Speaker 8: a huge you know, you know, in boost the economy.

738
00:39:29,600 --> 00:39:32,120
Speaker 8: Mike and I are you know, watching things in Argentina.

739
00:39:32,520 --> 00:39:35,280
Speaker 8: I love going there. It's a beautiful place and highly

740
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:38,719
Speaker 8: recommend but you know, let's see how that goes, because

741
00:39:38,719 --> 00:39:41,080
Speaker 8: it feels like the country is starting to lose some

742
00:39:41,120 --> 00:39:42,440
Speaker 8: of those shackles.

743
00:39:42,480 --> 00:39:45,320
Speaker 3: Tracy, I just have a warning to by the way,

744
00:39:45,520 --> 00:39:47,960
Speaker 3: to me specifically, Okay, Yeah, you're not gonna like it.

745
00:39:48,200 --> 00:39:52,359
Speaker 4: I've been watching the show Landman CBS, and so when

746
00:39:52,400 --> 00:39:54,279
Speaker 4: we do commodity episodes, I'm going to make a start

747
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 4: referencing a lot of things that I observe. But one

748
00:39:56,560 --> 00:39:59,040
Speaker 4: of the themes is one of the plot lines very

749
00:39:59,080 --> 00:40:02,560
Speaker 4: early on the is the phenomenon of both trucks that

750
00:40:02,640 --> 00:40:05,759
Speaker 4: disappear because the cartail is still them and then magically

751
00:40:05,800 --> 00:40:09,200
Speaker 4: reappear a month later. And it's not worth asking any

752
00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:11,800
Speaker 4: questions because then you have to get the FBI involved.

753
00:40:11,400 --> 00:40:12,320
Speaker 3: And yeah, et cetera.

754
00:40:12,480 --> 00:40:16,000
Speaker 4: So that the idea, what what Jeff was saying about

755
00:40:16,000 --> 00:40:19,520
Speaker 4: the truck suddenly coming back is something that I'm I'm

756
00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:21,799
Speaker 4: familiar with because I'm a viewer of TV.

757
00:40:22,120 --> 00:40:24,760
Speaker 2: Stood up by the television. I'm going to steal myself

758
00:40:24,800 --> 00:40:25,480
Speaker 2: for all the land Man.

759
00:40:25,520 --> 00:40:27,360
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're gonna get a lot, especially when we do

760
00:40:27,400 --> 00:40:32,000
Speaker 4: oil episodes. Yeah, Mike, talk to us the give us

761
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:35,480
Speaker 4: a sort of your sense of Ukraine now and versus

762
00:40:35,520 --> 00:40:38,200
Speaker 4: before the war. And obviously there's still weave flowing out,

763
00:40:38,239 --> 00:40:40,360
Speaker 4: but we talked about the impairments, et cetera.

764
00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:43,359
Speaker 3: What is the sort of scale of.

765
00:40:43,280 --> 00:40:46,319
Speaker 4: The impairment and the damage, et cetera, and what sort

766
00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:48,600
Speaker 4: of levels are coming out of Ukraine and sort of

767
00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:50,680
Speaker 4: give us your sense of where things so these days

768
00:40:50,760 --> 00:40:53,000
Speaker 4: versus at the end of twenty twenty one.

769
00:40:53,239 --> 00:40:58,000
Speaker 9: Sure, and again I'm gonna say something fairly similar to

770
00:40:58,040 --> 00:41:00,640
Speaker 9: what Jeff is. I'm not as on the around there, though,

771
00:41:00,680 --> 00:41:02,960
Speaker 9: I'm very close with a lot of friends that are

772
00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:06,479
Speaker 9: still farming at scale and UH and trying to make

773
00:41:06,680 --> 00:41:08,920
Speaker 9: whatever it is they're doing work.

774
00:41:09,520 --> 00:41:12,839
Speaker 7: I would I would sort of start off with a theme.

775
00:41:12,880 --> 00:41:16,120
Speaker 9: I'm sure you've heard that. You know, they're incredibly resilient people.

776
00:41:16,360 --> 00:41:19,760
Speaker 9: They've been through similar things like this before, and perhaps

777
00:41:19,800 --> 00:41:22,560
Speaker 9: not this generation, but certainly in the not too distant past,

778
00:41:24,360 --> 00:41:27,480
Speaker 9: whether it be the Helota more and you know, post

779
00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:32,160
Speaker 9: Soviet UH situation and in some of the starvation that

780
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:34,359
Speaker 9: came out of that, and then the World Wars one

781
00:41:34,360 --> 00:41:37,719
Speaker 9: and two, and so it isn't like it's that distant

782
00:41:37,560 --> 00:41:41,360
Speaker 9: in their past, and they're figuring it out in a

783
00:41:41,480 --> 00:41:45,560
Speaker 9: in a relatively simplified way. And I think that the

784
00:41:45,920 --> 00:41:49,719
Speaker 9: the two biggest changes as it pertains to the grain

785
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:54,680
Speaker 9: side is a simplification. So instead of some of the

786
00:41:54,719 --> 00:41:58,520
Speaker 9: more complex to grow or expensive to grow crops like

787
00:41:58,560 --> 00:41:59,840
Speaker 9: sunflowers and corn.

788
00:42:00,560 --> 00:42:02,120
Speaker 7: They're pivoting more.

789
00:42:02,200 --> 00:42:06,000
Speaker 9: Back to the basics of of wheat and barley and

790
00:42:06,239 --> 00:42:07,439
Speaker 9: and things like that.

791
00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:09,120
Speaker 7: That just went in doubt.

792
00:42:09,520 --> 00:42:11,480
Speaker 9: Put that out there and and and see if we

793
00:42:11,520 --> 00:42:14,080
Speaker 9: can get at it in the spring. The human the

794
00:42:14,120 --> 00:42:17,719
Speaker 9: human capital pieces is an enormous problem right now. They

795
00:42:17,920 --> 00:42:21,279
Speaker 9: you know, just to find people that can can be

796
00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:23,279
Speaker 9: part of your work teams, whether it be driving the

797
00:42:23,320 --> 00:42:26,719
Speaker 9: trucks or driving the combines and tractors and are overseeing

798
00:42:26,719 --> 00:42:30,919
Speaker 9: the grain elevator operations is really really hard. And then,

799
00:42:31,080 --> 00:42:34,359
Speaker 9: as I alluded to earlier, the some of the main

800
00:42:34,440 --> 00:42:39,240
Speaker 9: horsepower export points have either been damaged or eliminated entirely

801
00:42:39,360 --> 00:42:41,720
Speaker 9: or disrupted in terms of them being kind of graysed

802
00:42:41,760 --> 00:42:44,960
Speaker 9: to where they're located relative to this this current you know,

803
00:42:45,440 --> 00:42:48,920
Speaker 9: fighting front sort of where it's located. But they're limping along,

804
00:42:49,040 --> 00:42:51,560
Speaker 9: and you know, I've been kind of surprised, to be

805
00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:53,520
Speaker 9: honest with you, as a total amount of grain that's

806
00:42:53,560 --> 00:42:57,400
Speaker 9: been grown. It's just the mix has changed the directions

807
00:42:57,440 --> 00:43:00,040
Speaker 9: through which they're exported or changed, and certainly that that

808
00:43:00,680 --> 00:43:03,240
Speaker 9: ultimately changes the price that comes back to the producer.

809
00:43:03,280 --> 00:43:06,640
Speaker 9: There So I'm sure they're not doing particularly well, but

810
00:43:06,680 --> 00:43:09,520
Speaker 9: they're you know, to their credit, they're still they're still

811
00:43:09,560 --> 00:43:11,160
Speaker 9: giving it a hard swing.

812
00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:14,560
Speaker 4: Just real quickly. So that a thing I would like

813
00:43:14,640 --> 00:43:16,960
Speaker 4: to learn today. What is it about wheat that makes

814
00:43:17,000 --> 00:43:20,960
Speaker 4: it a sort of simpler crop to process and export

815
00:43:21,160 --> 00:43:22,360
Speaker 4: than corn.

816
00:43:22,560 --> 00:43:29,440
Speaker 9: Well, the seed is materially less expensive, the fertility required

817
00:43:29,520 --> 00:43:33,200
Speaker 9: is materially less expensive, you know, per acre in their

818
00:43:33,239 --> 00:43:34,480
Speaker 9: world world per hectare.

819
00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:36,239
Speaker 7: The other thing that's just.

820
00:43:36,239 --> 00:43:39,520
Speaker 9: Circumstantially supportive in that part of the world is the

821
00:43:40,239 --> 00:43:44,879
Speaker 9: organic matter and the richness of the soil there is incredible.

822
00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:48,560
Speaker 9: You can kind of get away with it with lesser

823
00:43:48,680 --> 00:43:52,759
Speaker 9: intensive agronomic crops like wheat to still eke out a

824
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:57,239
Speaker 9: pretty darn good crop. So that's the circumstance there. It's

825
00:43:57,239 --> 00:44:00,520
Speaker 9: also fairly easy to recycle your wheat and youtize it

826
00:44:00,520 --> 00:44:04,960
Speaker 9: as seed, where that's not a straightforward with with other crops.

827
00:44:06,960 --> 00:44:09,120
Speaker 2: I have one last question, and this is to both

828
00:44:09,120 --> 00:44:13,319
Speaker 2: of you, but what would be your major piece of

829
00:44:13,400 --> 00:44:18,960
Speaker 2: advice or message to a multinational company that's considering either

830
00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:21,960
Speaker 2: you know, maybe they're looking at Venezuela and going there's

831
00:44:21,960 --> 00:44:25,080
Speaker 2: an opportunity there. I want in or maybe they're thinking

832
00:44:25,120 --> 00:44:29,200
Speaker 2: about post war Ukraine and expansion there. What would you

833
00:44:29,360 --> 00:44:31,400
Speaker 2: tell those companies.

834
00:44:31,760 --> 00:44:35,120
Speaker 8: Well, I mean you have to have some expertise if

835
00:44:35,120 --> 00:44:37,080
Speaker 8: you're going to go into these places. So if you

836
00:44:37,120 --> 00:44:39,920
Speaker 8: don't have it with you, you need to find it and

837
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:42,640
Speaker 8: find people you trust. Security is going to be your

838
00:44:42,719 --> 00:44:46,439
Speaker 8: number one part of it, and start, you know, start

839
00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:50,239
Speaker 8: with a small business right to learn how things actually work.

840
00:44:50,520 --> 00:44:51,840
Speaker 8: We used to start with feed mills.

841
00:44:51,880 --> 00:44:52,279
Speaker 5: They're relet.

842
00:44:52,360 --> 00:44:55,520
Speaker 8: You can put up a caistmeill relatively small portable feed

843
00:44:55,520 --> 00:44:58,279
Speaker 8: mills and start to learn how things actually work on

844
00:44:58,320 --> 00:45:00,520
Speaker 8: the ground. We have hundreds of stores is where we

845
00:45:00,560 --> 00:45:03,680
Speaker 8: bought businesses, thought we knew what was going on even

846
00:45:03,719 --> 00:45:06,120
Speaker 8: after we'd been there, only to find up on first

847
00:45:06,239 --> 00:45:09,640
Speaker 8: day that, oh, you know, you weren't. You're supposed to

848
00:45:09,640 --> 00:45:12,680
Speaker 8: pay a bride to the meat inspector or something like that.

849
00:45:12,719 --> 00:45:15,279
Speaker 8: So my advice is find a small business that you

850
00:45:15,320 --> 00:45:17,960
Speaker 8: can run there with a reasonable investment and treat that

851
00:45:18,040 --> 00:45:21,000
Speaker 8: as a learning curve or learn, you know, paying tuition

852
00:45:21,600 --> 00:45:25,360
Speaker 8: before you jump in and make it make those big

853
00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:28,200
Speaker 8: hard capital asset investments.

854
00:45:28,600 --> 00:45:30,920
Speaker 7: Yeah, and Ukraine has slightly different context.

855
00:45:31,280 --> 00:45:33,719
Speaker 9: I think the blueprint is there is if you look

856
00:45:33,719 --> 00:45:37,320
Speaker 9: at the I would kind of describe the glory days

857
00:45:37,360 --> 00:45:41,799
Speaker 9: of the grain business in the late nineties when the

858
00:45:41,880 --> 00:45:46,560
Speaker 9: infrastructure really got built back back up in a way

859
00:45:46,560 --> 00:45:48,720
Speaker 9: that served the global markets with a lot of value

860
00:45:48,719 --> 00:45:53,440
Speaker 9: added processing, tremendous amount of investment that went through the oughts,

861
00:45:53,520 --> 00:45:57,200
Speaker 9: you know, probably five or six eight right around there.

862
00:45:57,480 --> 00:46:00,440
Speaker 9: So the blueprint is there. I just think it's going

863
00:46:00,520 --> 00:46:07,040
Speaker 9: to take resilient people, patients attempting to maintain your teams

864
00:46:07,760 --> 00:46:11,480
Speaker 9: there within the reality of the things that are going

865
00:46:11,520 --> 00:46:13,480
Speaker 9: to be personal decisions for them, for their safety, for

866
00:46:13,520 --> 00:46:17,400
Speaker 9: their family, for whatever. You're just going to have to

867
00:46:17,440 --> 00:46:19,759
Speaker 9: go with that flow for the foreseeable future and see

868
00:46:19,760 --> 00:46:20,759
Speaker 9: how this all plays out.

869
00:46:22,560 --> 00:46:24,960
Speaker 2: All right, Mike and Jeff, thank you so much for

870
00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:27,719
Speaker 2: coming on add thoughts. That was fascinating. We could go

871
00:46:27,800 --> 00:46:30,600
Speaker 2: on for another hour or two or three and listen

872
00:46:30,640 --> 00:46:33,440
Speaker 2: to all your stories of doing business in these places,

873
00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:34,840
Speaker 2: but we're going to have to leave it there, so

874
00:46:34,960 --> 00:46:35,719
Speaker 2: thank you so much.

875
00:46:36,480 --> 00:46:37,279
Speaker 8: Thanks for having us on.

876
00:46:37,719 --> 00:46:50,960
Speaker 6: Thank you, Joe.

877
00:46:51,200 --> 00:46:54,080
Speaker 2: That was super interesting, super interesting both from an agricultural

878
00:46:54,120 --> 00:46:58,200
Speaker 2: perspective and then obviously Venezuela and Ukrainian perspective. One thing

879
00:46:58,200 --> 00:47:01,400
Speaker 2: that stood out to me was this idea of large

880
00:47:01,400 --> 00:47:05,920
Speaker 2: companies multinationals coming together they enter a new market like

881
00:47:05,960 --> 00:47:09,520
Speaker 2: that because it becomes easier to operate I guess at

882
00:47:09,520 --> 00:47:13,080
Speaker 2: the legal and cultural level that they're used to. That

883
00:47:13,200 --> 00:47:13,960
Speaker 2: was really interesting.

884
00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:15,839
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hadn't thought about that at all.

885
00:47:15,960 --> 00:47:19,640
Speaker 4: Right, So it's like global multinationals, even setting aside law,

886
00:47:20,040 --> 00:47:22,360
Speaker 4: you know, they have certain norms you just sort of expect,

887
00:47:22,400 --> 00:47:27,760
Speaker 4: and so someone from Nessley talks to someone from whatever,

888
00:47:27,840 --> 00:47:30,560
Speaker 4: and they're like, oh, have a shipment here at this time,

889
00:47:30,600 --> 00:47:33,040
Speaker 4: and they can more or less expect that that entity

890
00:47:33,239 --> 00:47:38,080
Speaker 4: will do that and without too much translation or whatever.

891
00:47:38,160 --> 00:47:40,680
Speaker 4: And so the idea that that is really important is

892
00:47:40,680 --> 00:47:41,680
Speaker 4: something I hadn't thought.

893
00:47:41,480 --> 00:47:44,200
Speaker 3: Of also on this, and it's something I've.

894
00:47:44,040 --> 00:47:49,000
Speaker 4: Thought about even working at a large multinational ourselves. Is

895
00:47:49,040 --> 00:47:52,560
Speaker 4: this way that like large companies are sort of we

896
00:47:52,680 --> 00:47:56,239
Speaker 4: call them multinationals, but they're also like nations unto themselves

897
00:47:56,280 --> 00:47:58,799
Speaker 4: in this sense. Like think about the fact that when

898
00:47:58,840 --> 00:48:01,839
Speaker 4: you move from New York to Abu Dhabi to Hong

899
00:48:01,960 --> 00:48:04,400
Speaker 4: Kong and back to New York, that there is a

900
00:48:04,480 --> 00:48:09,080
Speaker 4: team that facilitates all of these processes of like visas

901
00:48:09,120 --> 00:48:12,959
Speaker 4: and stuff like that and so forth. And I thought

902
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:16,240
Speaker 4: about that when he described the phenomenon of the workers

903
00:48:16,239 --> 00:48:19,359
Speaker 4: being more comfortable in the office than back home, that like,

904
00:48:20,239 --> 00:48:23,719
Speaker 4: the corporate office in this environment is like this like

905
00:48:24,080 --> 00:48:27,640
Speaker 4: pocket of sort of I guess you would say developed

906
00:48:27,760 --> 00:48:30,880
Speaker 4: world ease and comfort, right, and that the moment you

907
00:48:31,000 --> 00:48:33,719
Speaker 4: leave that office, you are out of that then you

908
00:48:33,760 --> 00:48:35,440
Speaker 4: suddenly have to worry about electricity.

909
00:48:35,480 --> 00:48:37,280
Speaker 3: Then you sort of have to worry about maybe.

910
00:48:37,080 --> 00:48:40,440
Speaker 4: Running water and security and how big companies sort of

911
00:48:40,680 --> 00:48:44,879
Speaker 4: create these security and legal environments within themselves that are

912
00:48:44,880 --> 00:48:47,719
Speaker 4: these like cross border pockets, but that will be the

913
00:48:47,800 --> 00:48:50,680
Speaker 4: same from one office to another, regardless of what country

914
00:48:50,680 --> 00:48:51,440
Speaker 4: they're operating in.

915
00:48:51,640 --> 00:48:51,879
Speaker 9: Yeah.

916
00:48:51,920 --> 00:48:54,400
Speaker 2: Absolutely. The other thing that I was thinking about was

917
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:57,239
Speaker 2: the currency question. Yeahen it comes to Venezuela. I mean

918
00:48:57,280 --> 00:49:01,480
Speaker 2: you would assume with maybe this new relationship with the US,

919
00:49:01,520 --> 00:49:05,080
Speaker 2: access to dollars, maybe we'll get a little bit easier.

920
00:49:05,080 --> 00:49:07,799
Speaker 2: But it was fascinating to hear from Jeff just how

921
00:49:07,920 --> 00:49:11,520
Speaker 2: creative they got when it came to securing dollars. So

922
00:49:11,560 --> 00:49:15,000
Speaker 2: for instance, you know, trying to export wooden palettes in

923
00:49:15,040 --> 00:49:18,960
Speaker 2: exchange for US currency and things like that. Basically bartering, right.

924
00:49:19,080 --> 00:49:21,640
Speaker 4: Yeah, it does sound like it basically comes down to

925
00:49:21,680 --> 00:49:24,000
Speaker 4: bartering or like here some sacks of.

926
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:25,680
Speaker 3: Salt that can be used.

927
00:49:25,680 --> 00:49:28,040
Speaker 4: And then you have this issue, which is that you

928
00:49:28,080 --> 00:49:30,960
Speaker 4: can have all of the talents in the country, although

929
00:49:31,040 --> 00:49:33,200
Speaker 4: much of it's left in many of these cases. But

930
00:49:33,200 --> 00:49:34,799
Speaker 4: you have all this talent and you have all those

931
00:49:34,880 --> 00:49:37,640
Speaker 4: raw commodities, but you need a part, and you need

932
00:49:37,640 --> 00:49:41,279
Speaker 4: it from some advanced specialty maker of an industrial part

933
00:49:41,320 --> 00:49:45,959
Speaker 4: for refinery or whatever, and that's sold by European multinational

934
00:49:45,960 --> 00:49:48,560
Speaker 4: and you need a hard currency for that. And so

935
00:49:48,600 --> 00:49:52,280
Speaker 4: there is no getting around this fact that like true

936
00:49:52,280 --> 00:49:56,080
Speaker 4: self sufficiency is very rare. It almost doesn't exist anywhere

937
00:49:56,080 --> 00:49:59,279
Speaker 4: in the world so long as any one component. And

938
00:49:59,320 --> 00:50:01,520
Speaker 4: of course we know the what China shot all for.

939
00:50:01,640 --> 00:50:05,160
Speaker 4: They want to have every aspect of the entire supply

940
00:50:05,360 --> 00:50:09,360
Speaker 4: chain in house such that there is no possibility of

941
00:50:09,400 --> 00:50:11,960
Speaker 4: them not being able to access one part and grinding

942
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:13,160
Speaker 4: a whole industry to a hall.

943
00:50:13,360 --> 00:50:15,960
Speaker 6: Yeah, all right, we could go on.

944
00:50:16,160 --> 00:50:17,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, shall we leave it there?

945
00:50:17,200 --> 00:50:17,879
Speaker 3: Let's see it there.

946
00:50:18,080 --> 00:50:20,799
Speaker 2: This has been another episode of the Authoughts podcast. I'm

947
00:50:20,840 --> 00:50:23,920
Speaker 2: Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy alloway.

948
00:50:23,680 --> 00:50:24,920
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe Wisenthal.

949
00:50:24,960 --> 00:50:27,399
Speaker 4: You can follow me at The Stalwart, follow our guests

950
00:50:27,440 --> 00:50:30,279
Speaker 4: Jeff and Mike and their work at Agris Academy at

951
00:50:30,360 --> 00:50:34,359
Speaker 4: Agris Academy, follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman,

952
00:50:34,440 --> 00:50:37,400
Speaker 4: dash A Bennett at Dashbot, and Kelbrooks at Keil Brooks.

953
00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:39,879
Speaker 4: And for more odd Laws content, go to Bloomberg dot

954
00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:42,480
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955
00:50:42,520 --> 00:50:44,640
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956
00:50:44,680 --> 00:50:47,800
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957
00:50:48,160 --> 00:50:49,440
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958
00:50:49,680 --> 00:50:51,839
Speaker 2: And if you enjoy ad thoughts, if you like it

959
00:50:51,960 --> 00:50:54,319
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960
00:50:54,360 --> 00:50:57,920
Speaker 2: do business in places like Venezuela and Ukraine, then please

961
00:50:58,000 --> 00:51:01,319
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962
00:51:01,440 --> 00:51:04,200
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963
00:51:04,239 --> 00:51:07,600
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964
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965
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