FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Alabama Department of Agriculture & Industries Commissioner Rick Pate - Jeff Poor Show - Tuesday 8-27-24
(upbeat music) ♪ Spend my dollar ♪ ♪ Barking a holler ♪ ♪ Need the mountain moonlight ♪ ♪ Hold her up tight ♪ ♪ Make a little of it ♪ ♪ A little turn of love in on a mason dixon night ♪ ♪ Bitch my life ♪ ♪ Gold soul life ♪ - Welcome back to the Jeff Pore Show. What if we talk, what if it was six five? Thanks for staying with us. On this Tuesday morning. Text slide still, if you wanna talk. Two, five, one, three, four, three, zero, one, zero, six. That's the best place to let your voice be heard. Still come on to program this morning in about an hour from now. US Senator Katie Britt will make our guest. I did it two hours from now. Outman Republican Party Chairman John Wall will join us. So please make sure that you stay tuned for that. But joining us now on the line, calling from the Birmingham suburbs, I guess, will say about the speak to a group of bankers, is our good friend. We try to get them at once a quarter or so, but Rick Pate, our Ag Commissioner, is on the line with us. Commissioner, good morning, how are you? - Hey, Jeff, I'm doing really well. Yeah. - Hey, thanks. - Been in the last couple days in Huntsville and Culver County, so yeah, working my way back to Montgomery after I get done here. Thanks for making time for us. We do appreciate it. I know you're busy and traveling. Well, I mean, I try to keep up with these things and understand what's going on out there in the Ag economy. But I mean, so much of it is, I guess it's just acts of God, weather, et cetera, but how do things look from top to bottom? - Yeah, I'm really optimistic about nature, but things are really bad. Money prices are probably as low as I've been in. And a long time, you know, a lot of input calls that we talked about before continue to go up. Yeah, I was up in Orange County yesterday doing a farm visit, and a guy farming 7,000 acres there said he's done. You know, he just, he can't make it work on a piece of paper how to make money with corn and soybeans and wheat. So I don't know, you know, I've been in the weather way. It looked like we were going to have a day to be here and got to drive this ball. - What is, what is causing these prices to, I mean, everything else is so expensive, Commissioner. The commodity prices to go up like they are. I mean, one would think there'd be some kind of inflationary pressure, but it doesn't look like it at all. - Well, one of the things I thought used to say this, and I've had to quit saying it, that you know, agriculture really contributed to bringing down our trade imbalance, but in the last three years, and I'm not sure all the policies that have been taken by the Democratic administration and what specifically they did. But yeah, now we've got a negative trade imbalance, even in agriculture. And so a lot of the problems with China, they're buying so much less and Brazil, things will be stepping up. And so yeah, just on the world market, you know, farmers plant their crops, and I don't know what they're going to get paid at the end, and you're pretty much stuck with taking, you know, whatever the market of bear. And so, yeah, you know, and the thing is, we've got so many people that need food, still got people starving, the malnutrition in the world. And yeah, it's frustrating. One of the articles I read, he talks about how we trade wholesale. Like we send their short bean and corn and cotton overseas, and then what we buy back is a lot of kind of finished products that obviously, California, we grow cotton and send it as cotton, and then we buy it back as shirts and pants and different things. So yeah, I hope there's smarter people out there trying to do something, 'cause they certainly can't lose a bunch of farmers. - Well, the prices at the market, so I know, you know, my listeners probably are experiencing this and seem to be, I mean, even if you just go buy the produce, everything's more expensive. There's a disconnect there. - Well, it's all the middle people, it's the processors and, you know, well, I mean, but there's, I mean, I'm not even gonna blame them on a percent, you know, some of the policies that we've taken as far as the energy, I mean, there's energy costs in every step of the process, whether it's the trucking process and everything, refrigeration, and so lots of things, you know, the cost of fuels, just really handicapped, and it just seemed like some of the, a lot of our seed and chemical companies now are American. We've sort of sold that technology to foreign countries, kind of owns, I think, Congenent, it's in Jensen now. I think, well, Bayer's a Switzerland-based company. Yeah, a lot of those things with our seed technology that we developed now aren't, and so it's, they charge the thing, but charge as much as the market stands sometimes, and, you know, cost of round up and pesticides and everything just keep going up. I don't know. Well, I keep hearing these anecdotes that some of our farmers are saying to hell with it and they're walking away from it. Is that a widespread thing? Does it, does it become a concern, or is it just sort of still very anecdotal? Well, no, I think it's across the board where you commodity people now, so if you think to do an okay, you cattle prices are still relatively good, of course, you know, there's people that benefit when corn seeds, soybeans are cheap. You can't piece people, you're poultry people, you're cattle people benefit from that, but yeah, if we keep losing the people that are growing it, it's gonna get more offensive at some point, but no, it's not just one or two people who are telling me that. I was up in Lauderdale County last week, and a guy, he pulled out a spreadsheet and said, look at the math on this. This is what I'm getting for my commodity. This is what my college producer is, and these are really smart, good farmers. I mean, I'm not talking about somebody's farming 400 acres, 500 acres that didn't know what they're doing, so yeah, those smarter ones can look ahead and see, well, how do I continue to do this? And so I think there's some real concern. - What are labor costs look like? I mean, and so much of it is, let me talk to Caroline Dobson and getting even migrant workers, legal migrant workers, they're being crowded out by just sort of a weird, Biden immigration policy, but in general, labor costs for everything beyond just the migrants is, migrant workers has gone up, and this has been a problem. I understand going back to COVID. - Well, you know, your big grow crop farmers aren't using a lot of migrant farmers as much as migrant workers, as much as some of your fruits and vegetables and those people. I mean, a lot of their equipment are so expensive, like this one farm, I'm talking about this video, a family, a man and two sons and a brother, and they do have a couple other workers, but one guy, I guess it was yesterday, yes, they did work for them for 35 years. But yeah, obviously, across the board, labor is an issue, but that's not just a farming issue, that's everything, you just saw them held, you can go anywhere down in Choctaw County, we're good paying jobs, we're working that timber processing facilities and yeah, it's just, I mean, yeah, I feel like I could go in a room in about four hours and fix that, but anyway, they never gonna have to do that. - No real supply chain issues that you're aware of. We've sort of tackled that beast, or at least, are you aware of anything like that? - No, no, I don't want to think since COVID, you know, after a huge issue, that's a sort of tailman of COVID with truckers and truck drivers and trucks, but yeah, I don't hear that as much. Of course, the cost of fuel, all this move to electric, you know, I go to a speaking at the truckers association, maybe a month or so ago, 'cause they helped us, I think I mentioned on the show, we sent 27 loads of hay out to Texas, but anyway, they had, so they invited me to come speak to their convention and yeah, all the issues, I mean, they're things, they're proposing aren't even realistic, I mean, electric trucks, I mean, the truck weighs so much more than a diesel power truck. Yeah, it'll be a pea so much less, the distance it can travel, it'll be so much less. I mean, some of the stuff just like high in the sky, you just surely, surely some of this stuff's not gonna happen. - I think I hear, and you hear it every now and then, there's a threat of bird flu out there, and they're warning that the price of eggs will go up. Is that something, it's on your radar? - No, not really, it's the price of eggs, you know. No, I mean, you had a little bit of that aging influenza in Alabama, we kind of taken care of that and things have been pretty quiet on that front, of course, you know, Alabama's the second, well, almost first, we'll be first the next 10 years in poultry, brawler production, and so, yeah, we're processing 23 million chickens a week in the state of Alabama, it's a huge integrated system of packing eggs, moving chickens, processing chickens, yeah, but no, I hadn't heard anything about table eggs recently. - The, you mentioned the poultry farmers, I mean, that seems like the one sector of the ag economy that's always sort of on the move, at least in this state, and that's my perception, they're always adding on or building or whatnot. Is that sort of, you know, I guess timbers up there as well, but poultry seems to be kind of flourishing. - Yeah, I would say so, people, of course, they eat in a lot more poultry chicken than, you know, it's just sort of the amount of it you gotta take on to really, to make that living, you know, it's, you know, but yeah, it seems to be the still of waiting lines, people who wanna get new chicken houses, and yeah, those people are doing okay, it's not really a easy path to a wealth, I mean, but yeah, you can pay your bills and make a living with chicken houses, for sure. - Something I'd like you to address, and this is in the presidential politics realm, but talking about anti-price gouging laws, which appear to be nothing more than just price controls, but like the margins are so thin at market, especially at your grocery store or whatever, that it's not really, it's not, I mean, maybe some of it's in the middle with the cost, but it's not really like, I don't know, where else's or public's or when Dixie or whatever, like putting their foot on the gas pedal, making those prices go up is, that's my perception. Well, what do you think of that? - Oh, actually, 100%. Yeah, I spoke to the grocery association not long ago. Yeah, you know, of course everybody thinks about the Walmart and public, but there's lots or smaller grocery store chains in the state of Alabama. You know, and yeah, I don't have that perception at all, but they're just trying to get that same margin they've traditionally gotten. Yeah, but I mean, there's too much competition among grocery stores, but there's one of them that just aren't pretty tough going up, and yeah, I think they'd lose markets here if they did that. - Well, and then talk about that. I mean, if the federal government came in and imposed some kind of price controls, that would be terrible. - Yeah, what does that look like for our state? - Well, I don't know what point you put those price controls, I can use, I mean, to maybe it had to prove that somebody really was charging, but I mean, in America, the whole thing about competition, we've got people competing with everybody. There's hardly any industry where somebody else is not competing with them. And so obviously people are trying to make a living and draw a fair way, but yeah, somebody would come in and like I said earlier, take market share for them and say they were just arbitrarily going up and gouging people out. Yeah, I don't, as what I know about the economy, I don't even know how that's just a political statement. I mean, I just can't even imagine you would go in and start saying, you know, you're going to make people maintain this price, no matter what their input calls to change now, yeah, you know, yeah, I think that's just political talk. Surely they're not going to do that. - All right, class question here, we'll get you out of here on this. Your terms up 26, if you are in 27, I guess technically, but what do you think you're going to do beyond that? Have you given that any thought? - We have not in actual intentional about not giving any thought. We got the presidential election and Thanksgiving and Christmas New Year's, and actually got my older sons get married and Poland about basically married a Polish girl, so I guess it makes sense. But in Warsaw, Poland, New Year's Eve, and so there'll be opportunities in January, February, but usually you know how to talk about that really impact them with two boys, it's a really a damn decision, but we really have intentionally not even discussed it. - Well, we'll keep an eye out. What do you do make a decision, let us know? - I will, yeah. - Commissioner, it's always good to get you on, and I think this is a good insightful discussion, but let's keep a touch. - Okay, Jeff, thanks, man. - That was Alabama Ag Commissioner of Agriculture Industries, I think, is his technical title there on the program, two, five, one, three, four, three, zero, one, zero, six, you wanna be in touch with the show, hit me up there on the text line, and just, it's interesting what he said, imagine if they put in place these price gouging, oh, the guidelines or walls or whatever, price controls, and such the disaster that would ensue. ♪ I did my life away ♪ - Text line, once again, two, five, one, three, four, three, zero, one, zero, six, silicone, Katie Britt, and John Wall, stay tuned, this is the Jeff Borschow on Up in Dog, one, zero, six, five. ♪ Oh, more than I could choose ♪ ♪ But through it all ♪ ♪ When there was doubt ♪