You can just talk to me, don't worry
about him.
I guess, give me a
summary of the state of,
I mean, how many farmers decide
they want to go into international
politics at the same time?
Well, I mean, I do this
because I was raised up on
a farm. My dad was very involved
in organizations and
advocating for the farmers.
So I watched my dad do that.
And I just said, you know
what, I like this.
I enjoy doing this and
someone has to do it.
Um, and on our farm,
you don't, not every farmer has the
capability to take
the time to do because it does take
a lot of time and here on
our farm, I farm with two brothers
and two nephews.
So. I have that capability
to get away and go talk
to legislators or
go talk to, or, you know,
go out to Washington, DC and
our host tours.
We've hosted trade tours here.
We've posted government officials
here and stuff.
And so, like I said, I'm,
I just want to be able to tell our
story.
So what is the story that's being
told right now?
The story that's being told right
now is farmers
are
fearful.
You know, we just don't know what's
going on because there's no
certainty in anything.
I mean, we haven't,
uh, for out in Washington,
DC, they haven't finished the
farm bill yet, which is
two, three years past when it should
have been done.
Uh, so there are programs through
that, that.
Okay. Are we going to have these?
Are we not going to.
And then with everything going on
with trade,
um, especially soybeans being
impacted, I mean, all agriculture
is being impacted on it.
Things be taken the biggest hit.
Um, and so we're watching our
markets kind of collapse,
but yet what we're paying for
things, all those prices are
increasing, you know, our
fertilizer, all of our inputs for
our crops, our equipment,
if we want to put up a new bin, all
Those prices are going up,
but we're getting paid less for the,
you know, for the products that
we're growing.
So when, when does that come to a
head? Are people going to play it
less next year or farms going to go
on?
Far, some farms are going to go
under there are some farms that,
uh, you know,
are not going to be able to make,
and that's very sad.
Um, you know, no matter what size
farm you are, if you have 160
acres or you have
6,000 acres.
Um, every farm is kind
of in the same situation.
Um, that, you know,
the bigger farm you are, the more
debt you have generally.
And so you're sitting there going, I
got these bills to pay.
I got employees to pay, you
know, to smaller farmer going, okay.
I'm, I'm on my own.
And, but I need to furnish
for my family and I
can't do this.
And yeah, so there's going to be
some farms going under,
um, banks going well without some of
these guarantees, without some of
these prices, we're not going to be
able to guarantee you loans.
And that's going to push them out.
So what, what is the, the
economy of it right now?
Because are most people,
um, planting already have
it sold for the next year already,
or are they going a year ahead or
is it waiting and getting the market
price at the time of harvest?
Well, historically what farmers
have done is
like, okay, right now we're
September of 25 and
some farmers will start selling
their 26 crop
right now.
And, you know, up to a portion.
What, what a lot of farmers do is,
okay. I should get so many
bushels and so
I'll sell 50% because you don't
want to sell too much because if
something happens, you don't get a
crop, you don't wanna be on the hook
for that.
So they're generally looking ahead
and, you know, selling ahead a year,
year and a half.
Um, and you know,
once we know what we have for like
the 25 year, we start
selling more well with prices.
We're not selling,
we're not marketing that right now.
So, because we're like, wow, our
price is going to go up and
sadly prices seem to be going down
right now and so we're just sitting
here.
Going, what do we
do? Well, you know,
we've always done kind
of, here's been our marketing plan.
And I mean, every year is a little
different, but you have to
have a plan.
And like I said, with that
uncertainty, all those plans
are just kind of getting shot in
the air.
So when people drive by and they
see the soybeans in the field still,
are most of those sold already?
Do the farmers already have the
cash?
You, you don't, you, don't get cash
until they're delivered.
Um, they're, they sold
the soybeans
or corn that's sold.
It's sold on contract.
And once you deliver it to the
elevators, then that's
when they pay you once they
have that, you know, you sell it
5,000 bushel contracts or 10,000,
bushel contracts.
And once that contract is full.
Then they will give you the money.
So right now it's just sitting here
until we get it
delivered.
So there, most of it's
contracted though. But what
percentage would you say that's.
On a typical
year.
At this point, I would
say usually about 70,
75%, uh,
that it's going to be held to the
elevator is sold.
Um, now some farmers have storage
that like here on our farm, we have
about 260,000
bushel of storage that we store
corn in and
that we'll have a little
bit of that sold, but that we can
hold throughout this next year
and sell at different points when,
you know.
Right, right now prices are
generally lower because all
this corn or soybeans are coming
into market.
So, okay, we'll wait till next
spring or summer when
there isn't the supply and
a little bit more demand prices are
genuinely higher.
Um, so the corn that
people don't have storage for,
they have usually about
75% of it's, uh,
sold or contracted.
And this year, I mean, I
haven't talked to other farmers.
We're way below that because
are the prices that we're being
offered right now,
aren't covering the
costs that it costs us to put it in
the ground.
So what do you, what will you do
with the harvest?
Well, I mean, we still have to haul
it to the elevators because, you
know, like I said, we can only store
so much here.
Um, but once we haul it to the
elevator, then.
On top of not having a good price,
we get, we have to pay them to store
it for us.
And so that costs so much.
Every, every, every elevator is
different, but so we're
already down below
our input costs and now
we're paying more to, or
you just sell it and say, okay, I'm
going to take a loss on this.
Yeah. Your choice is at that point.
You can't hold it yourself.
You basically rent space or pay them
to hold it for you and hope that the
price goes up or you sell it at a
loss.
Right.
And I mean, there's not a lot of
stuff because it's not something
that, you know, you can just say,
I'll just put it in a pile out
back and wait and see what happens,
you know, you can't do that with
these products.
What, what are we dealing with with
China? Because China is typically
the largest market for soybeans.
They've said they're not buying
anything right now because they're
in a trade dispute over tariffs.
Is there hope that that's going to
be resolved in a few months?
There's always hope.
I mean, as farmers, we have to have
hope that something's going to
happen.
Um, with China,
historically, China has
bought more soybeans
from the U S than the rest of the
world combined.
And so when China doesn't buy
from us, that's
a huge impact to us.
And so, yes, they have not
bought any soybeans from us here in
September. Um,
and people are going, oh, they'll
run out of them.
Well, no, they're getting them from
South America right now.
So they've got, you know, you build
up these relationships and you
build up, you, you
the transportation and, you
know, all the infrastructure.
And so, okay, we've lost
a lot of that now to
South America, Argentina and Brazil,
and they're
growing more and more soybeans every
year, they're clearing rainforests
and they're able to provide that
to China.
Even in my opinion, right
now, if all of a sudden you
said, okay,
you know, we're no tariffs and,
you know, we can do this,
where's the incentive for China to
say, oh yeah, we'll switch from
South America and we'll come back to
you.
Um, so it's going to,
I think it's something that
can get built back up, but it's
gonna take 20, 30, 40 years to
build that back up once.
You know, you never know what's
going to happen in the meantime with
that.
So you, you're not looking at this
as like a, a short-term disruption.
No, like they're, they're not
a jilted lover who's seeing some,
they, they've gone.
Yep, they're right now they're gone.
I mean, they'll, they will buy some
from us here and there, but
not the quantities that,
uh, they have in the past.
And so right
now is, you know, okay.
I'm president of Wisconsin Soybean
Association.
You know, I'm going out to
Washington DC, talking to
legislators and even
up in Madison, talking to
legislators.
We're going, okay, yeah, we still
need to work on trade.
We need to on other countries
and, but that's
not going to fill that market that
we're losing from China.
It'd be great to build that back
up from China, but like I said,
that's a long ways down the road.
So then another thing we have to do
is what can we do with these
soybeans domestically?
Um, you know, biodiesel
is, uh, you know, getting crushed
plants, getting that oil and,
you know, soybeans are in so many
products and what can we
do here domestically to
help relieve what we've
lost internationally?
So, yeah, you, you mentioned the
crusher and obviously there's the
facility in Evansville that's been
talked about.
What's, what's the latest and what
you know about that?
Uh, CHS that's, uh,
proposing building this.
I mean, they, they own the land and
I've had conversations with them.
They want to get it built,
but they're waiting
on different things from the federal
government, um, different programs,
different regulations,
uh one that they're
waiting on is the,
um renewable fuel
obligation.
Um, every year the federal
government sets how many billions
of gallons of renewable fuel,
you know, to be used here
in the U S and this
year they came out with a
high number for us and
we're very happy with
the number that they came out with
because it was higher than what
we expected.
Um, and right now they're going
through hearings and.
You know, going through the process
and on October 31st,
they're supposed to come out with,
okay, here is the numbers.
And so it's things like that, that
CHS is waiting for
going, okay.
Because they build this plant.
This plant is going to cost roughly
$800 million to build.
They want to be able to, or they
want to make sure that,
okay we invest
all this money into it.
We're going to be able to sell our
products and, you know, be able
to make money to pay this off.
So in the alternative,
so I guess the place, the, the
crusher in the sense of like we have
soybeans, you don't have a place to
put them. What would it mean if
that facility was open already?
Like how much would that change the
current situation?
It would increase our prices
here because right now
all of our soybeans,
I mean, like in Wisconsin right now,
two thirds of the soybeans grown in
Wisconsin are exported.
And so if we had a facility like
that, that would crush 70 million
bushel a year and the state
of Wisconsin last year grew 110
million bushel.
So, um, this
facility, I mean they'd be bringing
it from all over the Midwest.
It wouldn't just be Wisconsin
soybeans, but by
having a facility like this.
We, it would save us
money because the
transportation costs right now it's
costing us money.
You know, we're getting lower price
because it's costing the companies
that are buying the soybeans.
It's costing them money to ship it,
you know, get it on the river and
send it down to new
Orleans or, you on
trucks or trains to get it to
places with the market.
So if we had this market right here,
that would help our increases, you
know, our prices because we
don't, all those shipping or, you
know transportation costs are
well, a lot of them would be
eliminated.
Be a lot easier to send it 10 miles
down the road than down the river.
Exactly.
And so right there is where,
you know, it would really help
us by having that right
here.
And, and you know it's just one more
place to sell in the area too.
So I remember back in
like the 2006
or 2005, 2007
budget, Governor Doyle put money in
for a crushed facility and whatever
happened with that.
That one fell through.
They were, you know, local investors
in different markets and stuff.
And so that, that one fell true at
the time.
Obviously the state's known that
this is a necessary thing for us.
Right, because Wisconsin does
not have a crushed facility
in the state of Wisconsin right now.
There's a couple of different places
that are building maybe
smaller ones for, you know, for
their co-op, just for, you know
the soybean meal for the feedstock
to go back out to cattle and stuff
where this one's main goal
would be crushing for the
oil to, you
know sell the oil, whether it's
for fuel or cooking
oil or, you know.
All the, you know, food products and
stuff like that.
So there is not one of those
plants here in Wisconsin.
And so, like I said, that would be
huge for us.
So is there a federal money
that they're hoping to get or just
federal number guarantees?
Guarantees for the markets is what
they're looking for.
They're not, I mean,
I'm not on CHS
board, you know, where they're
getting their money that I'm, not
a part of,
but it's the federal
markets that,
you now to sell their product, the
federal and world markets to sell,
their products to, you get
the feedstock,
you know, after you crush and you
get, the oil out, you have that
feedstock.
And you know, that can be sold here
in Wisconsin to
our animal agriculture, whether
it's, you know the dairy, beef,
chickens, or we
also have the DeLong port in
Milwaukee now that just opened up a
couple of years ago, where it would
be easy access to take it from
there, take it to DeLongs
and put it, you now again,
you know, world markets and
ship it out to other countries.
So in terms of
looking at the politics of this all,
the farmers overwhelmingly voted
for Donald Trump.
And Donald Trump is the one that
created the tariff in the trade wars
that disrupted all of this.
Are farmers blaming him?
When you talk to other farmers, is
there, are they connecting those
dots? Are they keeping those
separate?
Hey, you know, just like
anything, you go talk
to farmers, there are some farmers
that love him, some farmers, that
hate him.
Some farmers that are a little less
optimistic now.
So I mean, that is so
such a wide ranging thing, you know,
it'd be hard to say, yes,
farmers are for this or farmers
are against this.
So right now that I, you know,
It'd be hard to say anything on
that.
So there's not like a, the
feeling isn't becoming, you know,
hegemonic, there is not one sense
going through of like, this is why
this has happened.
No, I mean, yeah, farmers
were not happy with the tariffs.
But you talk to some other farmers
and they're going,
this is
a small thing in the end,
you know, in the long run,
this will be good.
So there's all different opinions
on this.
So it really isn't impacting the
political sphere of how that's
playing out.
Well, anything that happens is going
to impact the political sphere of
what's going on.
So like I said,
you know, whether, you know,
Donald Trump would be losing support
gaining support.
That's that's politics in general,
no matter who's in no matter what's
going on, there's going to be people
happy with things, there is going be
people unhappy with things.
One of the other things that's been
talked about is whether there could
be federal bailouts for farmers that
are impacted by this.
I'm assuming that would have more
support universally.
That would have support.
Like I said, those, the farmers that
are in trouble right now.
Yeah, they're looking for
something going, hey, we're losing
these markets, or we're not
making this money.
But in general, we're going,
no, we want trade deals, we want,
you know, the domestic
infrastructure set up so we can,
we can sell our products and make
that money. We don't, we don't want
to rely on government
bailouts and stuff like that.
We will, we want to be able to make
our own money and sell our products
at a price that we can make
money.
So I know that there's
ethanol subsidies for corn.
Are there similar subsidies that
exist in the soybean market?
There really aren't.
It's just, you know,
when markets get bad enough,
the government's going, okay, here,
we'll, you'll give a program
here or there.
And so I mean, there are no real
set programs for any of that.
So as we're looking forward,
any time we see these massive farm
losses, whether it's the 80s or the
early 2000s or Donald Trump's
first term, it's typically
the small guys go under and then
some of the big guys take it.
Like the fields still get planted
the next year.
Well, fields will be planted and
it's not, you know, some of the
smaller guys sometimes are
better set because they're smaller
and their farms are paid off.
They don't have that debt.
So it's no, you know,
a big farm versus small farm thing.
It's where your farm is, how
your farm is set up.
You know, you may be a big firm and
you know.
Not have a lot of debt.
Luckily, we're able to, you
know, through the generations pay
off that debt.
You may be a small farm.
Same thing, or either one
going, hey, I got, you know,
I'm a beginning farmer.
I got high debt.
And so it's not a big farm
versus small farm, but yeah,
when any size farm goes out,
yeah, that land's not going to sit,
sit empty.
The farmers that are making it,
you know.
Philosophy is, hey, maybe
if I grow more, I can
either spread out that loss
a little bit more,
or I can, hey
if I farm more, prices are
better next year, I can make up for
that loss.
Give me a little bit of your
family's background.
How long has your dad
that started this and how
many acres do you have now?
How's it?
This farm here, my mom and
dad bought it in 1963,
shortly after they got married.
They both grew up farming, grew up
neighbors.
So I've many, many generations
of farming in my family.
But this farm here,
I'm a second generation farmer.
Mom and dad started it with
40 cows and 240 acres.
And like I said, that was in
1963.
Now my dad's passed away.
My mom's still around, but she's...
She's not a partner in the farm, but
she's the mom, she still runs the
farm.
But now it's me and two
brothers, our partners of the farm
and then we have two of my
nephews, each of my brothers have a
son that are on the farm,
that are going to be the next
generation taking over the farm
and we've grown from
that 40 cows, 240
acres.
We sold our dairy back in
2020.
We got out of the dairy business.
We're doing heifer raising for local
farms. We have about 500 head of
there. Heifers here on our farm.
We raise some steers
and then right now we're farming
about 4,200 acres of mostly
corn and soybeans.
So could you see a formula where
you increase corn next year or
is the corn market impacted in a
similar way to soybeans?
Did it caught that?
The corn market is
impacted some, not as
much as the soybean market.
There might be little changes,
but on our
farm here, we've
got a rotation where
we usually do two
years of corn and one year of
soybeans.
And so, you know,
that that's our rotation and
it's always worked and that's how
we're set up.
So I don't see a big plan and
a big plan to switch.
And it's one of those that,
okay, if we said instead
of 2,600 acres of corn and
1,300 acres of soybeans,
next year, we're only going to grow
600 acres of soybeans and
make it 3,600 acres of,
or 3,500
acres of corn.
Well, if everyone does that, well,
then you're going to really flood
the market in corn and
those prices are just going to
plummet. So I mean, you got to
kind of figure out, every farmers
got to figure out what to do.
Now, like here in Wisconsin,
this year alone, there was
250,000 less soybean
acres planted this year compared
to 2024.
So there are a lot of farmers that
saw the impacts that
was happening and
did make that change, but that's
a decision that every farm has
to make for what's best for them.
So how are you looking?
I mean, are you guys going to be
okay? Are you one of the big farmers
that are going to be impacted?
We're impacted, yes.
We're set.
So, you know, we can
ride the storm out for a while, but
I mean, every farm is the same.
You can only ride it out for so
long.
You can only borrow so much money.
But we're set right now where
we can ride out the storm.
And because with farming, the way we
look at it, you're going to,
in a 10 year span, you going to
have, you know, two,
maybe three really good years.
You're going to have three
really bad years.
And then those other four years
are kind of there.
So when you have those good years,
you invest back into your
farm, whether it's equipment or,
you know, buildings or whatever you
need on those good years, you do
that.
So those bad years, you go, okay,
we don't have the money.
We're not going to spend anything.
We're just going to sit back and,
you know, wait till next
year and see what happens.
And, you know, when we talk about
these prices, we
sit here and we go, okay,
yes, it's impacting us, but it's not
just impacting us.
You know, it impacting our local
communities because like I said,
when we have those bad years and
we're not spending that money.
The local businesses aren't getting
the money. They're getting impacted
too, because they
say every dollar that's made
on the farm, it gets turned around
seven times in the local economy.
So when we get hit,
the local economy gets hit.
You don't have to go too far in
Wisconsin to see small communities
that still centralize around the
farm.
Right.
And, you know, people go, oh,
farmers, you know, make up less than
2% of America's population.
But we have a huge
impact on, you
know, everything that goes on around
you. To me, I mean,
as a farmer and everything,
you know, I'm a little biased, but
basically American economy
still runs off of agriculture.
If agriculture is doing good.
The U.S.
Economy generally does good.
If agriculture is doing bad, the U.
S. Economy is generally doing,
going down.
Does that make it all the more
frustrating that this feels like a
self-inflicted wound?
Like, there are times where just the
weather's bad or just there's there
are crop issues or, but this
was something that the United States
did on its own, like tariffs
and severing these trade
relationships. That was a choice.
You know, we do sit here and
go, why are we stuck in
the middle?
And it's, you know, when
the federal government goes and
says, you know, does whatever,
whether it's tariffs or, you know,
every year can be something
different. Right now, yes, it's
tariffs that we're looking at and
the other
countries, when they
want to retaliate, they
know the best way to retaliated is
against U.S.
Agriculture.
And so, yeah, we sit here
and we're like, why are we
stuck in the middle?
But that also shows the importance
of what we're doing,
that we are stuck in the middle
because the other countries see the
importance of agriculture.
All right. Give me a little summary
of the soybean is
it soybean council, your answer?
The Wisconsin Soybean Association,
we're a member organization
that we go out and
we advocate for the farmers.
You know, we do lobbying.
We go out to, I generally go
out to Washington, D.C.
Three times a year to talk
to federal legislators.
I'm, you know, going up to Madison
testifying on bills and
we're working on different
rules, laws.
Funding anything that can impact
us. We're out there advocating for
the farmers because, like I said, I
mean, we have 14,000 soybean growers
in the state of Wisconsin
and there aren't many of them
that are, you know, a lot of them
can't go out.
You know, they're not able to get
off the farm.
A lot of don't want to.
They don't like talking publicly.
So our association is
there to advocate for all
these other farmers.
And try and get the best possible
products and results that we can.
Can I get you to say and spell your
name and gave your title?
Just so I have a crack.
Doug Rebout, D-O-U-G-R-E-B-O
U-T.
And I am president of the Wisconsin
Soybean Association.
All right. Thank you very much.
Keep the mic on for a bit.
If you want.