Me: Check out this video about a barn that has shit everywhere People: Did you say there's POOP in a BARN? I don't understand

Fun fact, the Dunning-Krueger effect & the vagaries of chance render this common-sense advice useless in real life 🥲 Most people will walk through a janky substandard dairy & have no idea there's anything wrong with it. That's... what this video is about? youtu.be/piB_DdO2D6I?...

I remember having an epiphany at a Census Bureau stakeholder meeting that united business and academics: Scientists use jargon to condense complicated concepts; business people use jargon to inflate simple ones.

For anyone curious about this, I did a video about how this guy's farm is nasty almost a year ago. Plus a little bonus- he might have done an arson? Details herein! youtu.be/piB_DdO2D6I?...

There's a lot to not love about AI but it sure is giving a lot of vapid people the chance to fully expose themselves for fools, and that's kinda fun

Do AI Chatbots Dream of Sad Trombones

Yep! An awful lot of the white "family farmers" who told their kids woeful stories about "losing the farm" turn out to have been tenants & sharecroppers. You know, if you go back & look at the actual records. Your ggma was a real one for telling the truth about it.

So uh… about half the sharecroppers & tenants in the Jim Crow South were white. Don't get me wrong, racism was key. It's Jim Crow. But the fact that we hear "sharecropper" & think that MUST mean a Black person is, in itself, worth unpacking. www.nass.usda.gov/AgCensus/arc...

Truth I used to drive LA-Stockton at night, so you couldn't see the farms. But you could still tell where you were on the route by the Sequence of Smells

Yeahhhh so Jim Crow-era farming wasn't about maximizing revenue. (From crops, anyway.) It was about keeping sharecroppers in debt so they had to keep working. Best way for landlords to do that was make sure croppers always had to buy food, on credit. So they didn't let sharecroppers grow food.

we did it team 🦅

sorry all I saw was "I just purchased two bags of weed" and thought Ok we get it you have plans tonight 💀❤️

I mean honestly though. Can you imagine if cities still ran on transport that turns hay into poop

facts

We're starting with a fertilizer fact in honor of SINNERS, which is getting shut out of the Oscars so far & that's a tragedy You know CAFOs? Those "factory farms" that keep animals indoors & make tons of poop? Once upon a time, they were the sustainable farm solution that was gonna save the South.

It has come to my attention that folks are really confused about fertilizer so uhhhh is anyone down for FERTILIZER FACTS

Jolene hasn’t done anything my god you people are so mean to her just because she’s pretty and stalks Dolly’s man in his dreams with an enormous broadsword and two slavering hellhounds with fiery teeth.

look say what you will about the United States, but we are NOT running out of bullshit any time soon

....central California is livestock central though? Here's a map of large livestock operations. These are CAFOs. You know, the kinds of farms that folks are always mad about bc of how much poop they make. www.ewg.org/research/mos...

Yeah what concerns me is price volatility is pretty normal for fertilizers, especially N. And yet US farmers seem 100% unprepared for it. We've got a lot of farmers that keep complaining fertilizer costs too much, & still don't have a good manure or cover crop plan. That bears discussion!

Did a quick video on how the "oh no fertilizer" headlines are clickbait.

It’s not a plot hole that Elmo has been 3 years old for 50 years. He was bitten by The Count, willingly. Elmo asked for the Dark Gift

Aside: Nevada's state engineer (head water manager, basically) actually managed to win a victory in state court that let him manage groundwater along with surface water in 2024. He started telling people No because groundwater levels have been falling for decades. He was fired in January.

THIS. Charging for water isn't anti-agriculture. It's a basic guardrail that keeps lowest-common denominator bulk goods, that can be grown just about anywhere, from crowding out more financially rewarding types of farming. That brings MORE MONEY to farms & rural areas.

Someone at the NYT asked me a couple years ago for an opinion piece on "how to solve the Colorado River water crisis." So I made a nice little writeup on the most obvious answer: charging for water. Once the editorial board saw it, they freaked out & cancelled the piece.

You've got to see it to bereave it

my glass coffin company “remains to be seen” is not doing as well as i thought it would.

North Carolina's bravest senator

Nah this tracks I'm working real hard over on YouTube to get people to click on real farm news that isn't panic bait, and lemme tell ya. It's rough out there

One of my pettiest conspiracy theories is the farm lobby got the US public trained Pavlov-style to lose our damn minds anytime the headlines say "Farm thing? 👉👈 is bad?" And not gonna lie folks, the replies to this thread are not disproving that hypothesis 💀

Panic! At The Fertilizer Desk, US Edition Americans: this is your regular reminder that maybe 0.01% of people who write for the news actually understand how fertilizer works. But their editors all found out that scary headlines about "GLOBAL SHORTAGE??" get clicks.

Yes, in USDA data "farmer" means "farm operator" (a business owner) not "farm laborer" (a hired worker). There is a sleight of hand used in advocacy: when writers want farmers to sound poor and in need of support, they quote income statistics for all farmers (many of which are small),... (1/2)

... but when they want to justify the large fraction of subsidies that go to large rich farmers instead of small poor farmers, they emphasize that large farmers produce most of the food, which is true (never mind that their mean annual household income > $500k and they don't need the support). (2/2)

The job title "farmer" has always been intentionally slippery in how most Americans use it. But in the occupational stats, it's people who own the farm. (They may own all the land, rent some, or event rent all of it, but the farm is still their business that they own & operate.)

There is no farm suicide epidemic. If you line up rural & blue collar occupations by suicide rate, farmers are way (WAY) down the list. It's a good talking point for shaking money out of the gov't though, so the farm lobby keeps talking about it. Debunk video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rvi...

was getting irrigation equipment for the year & just came across this absolute beaut www.dripdepot.com/drain-blaste...

US media outlets are FINALLY having the "Do we actually need to do farm subsidies?" talk and I am extremely here for it. (yep it's clickbait thumbnail for the YT crowd, but dw it's a very nerd-centric video) youtu.be/-YJ-ZhDG7Jo

I do ONE DAY of field prep work on the farm and Kristi Noem gets fired great news, I got a bunch more to do for the coming week+

This is what Rumsfeld would call an Unnoem Unnoem

Here's the fun part, it's not gambling! A) Federal crop insurance covers "Awww, prices were really low. Here's some $ to make it up to you." B) The taxpayers pay for most of that insurance, not farmers. C) The White House likes to give extra bailouts on top of the subsidized insurance.

Currently in the middle of field prep/planting, by the time I got a video done it would be out of date 🥹 This quote is wild though. They ALMOST made it to "This could be solved by the US cutting back on the bulk crops that it doesn't have a market for anymore anyway." But then they didn't. 🤷‍♀️

the visionary needed in these times 🙏 ty for this

so here's the wrinkle with that, the title has "GETTING OLDER" in it & my understanding is the title generally ranks higher in the search than text in the thumbnails what if it was the MILF* crowd all along *Melons I'd Like to Farm

something weird is going on with this video 16% of the views are from Google searches. That's a lot? Normally it's under 1%. Adding to the mystery, I have no idea WHAT people are googling that sends them.... here. if anyone has any idea what's going on y'all let me know

"Working with the seasons must be amazing, what's it like being a farmer in spring?" had a dream last night that a lion & her 4 cubs moved into my house. at first it was fine because they were hungry & tired & just slept all the time but then they started getting better & that was a Problem

It's liiiive youtu.be/-DF_Qn9St7M

Yeah that's the thing about YouTubing in established topics that people already care about, like physics. There's already a fan base to speak to. Whereas people are generally convinced that caring about money in agriculture is a BAD thing, so I have to sneak attack 'em with it

It's honestly not a bad mental exercise. If I want people to gaf about my stuff, it behooves me to find out what they already care about & connect it to that. Ain't nobody got time to click on Lady Drones On About Random Stuff, Episode #385 and I respect that

New video goes public on YT tomorrow at 10am! For Patreon followers, it's already up over there.