Jesse Allen | Broadcaster's Report from Washington DC

We get a ground-level read on Washington, DC as Jesse Allen returns from the NAFB Washington Watch fly-in after meeting with USDA leaders and a long list of senators and House ag lawmakers. We talk through the farm bill chaos, the fertilizer and diesel cost squeeze, and why farmers feel pressure from both policy delays and public backlash.
• what the NAFB Washington Watch fly-in looks like and why it matters
• who Jesse meets across USDA and Capitol Hill, including one-on-one conversations
• why the House farm bill vote turns chaotic around E15 and amendments
• talk of more farmer aid and the reality of high input costs
• consumers losing touch with food production and vilifying farmers
• diesel shock and war-driven supply chain strain hitting rural America
• long-term fertilizer production plans versus the short-term cash crunch
• the simple goal most farmers share, fair markets and stable livelihoods

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Transcript

Meet Jesse Allen In DC

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Happy Friday, everyone. I'm Tommy Grossofi, Agbow Media, Ag Bull Trading. Well, we're gonna head out to DC. The first picture you might have seen in that flash was the Capitol. I got a guy who was just out at the Capitol, Mr. Jesse Allen. He's the host of AOA. And of course, you can catch him every afternoon on Market Talk. That's on YouTube. He has different people on, like myself and a whole bunch of great guests. With that, Jesse, let's talk DC. I did see the pictures on Facebook and everything. And you met uh hats off to you, you met with the bigwigs of the bigwigs, the bigwigs. I mean, do start name-dropping. Who did you meet and what did you talk about?

USDA Roundtables And Key Meetings

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Tommy, thanks for having me on, brother. Appreciate it. Always a always a fun week in DC. And I'll give you the context. Every year, the National Association of Farm Broadcasting, the NAFB, hosts a spring fly-in event, so to speak. It's called Washington Watch. And it'll be you usually 25 to 35 broadcasters and then members of our industry and et cetera, et cetera, all converge on DC. And we set up a lot of different interviews, meetings, et cetera. I know we had time at USDA. We had time in front of senators and congressmen and women on Capitol Hill and different newsmaker sessions with a lot of the ag organizations that have people based in DC. And so it's about three days worth of just one thing after another. But then, you know, folks too can kind of set up some of their own side meetings here and there with connections they have on Capitol Hill. And, you know, something that after almost three years now of hosting AOA, I've been lucky enough to cultivate some good relationships. So, you know, on the group side, we met with Secretary Rollins, Under Secretary Fordyce, you know, other members of the USDA and sitting around roundtables and asking them questions. I was at the Rollins and Administration fertilizer presser, and we can get into that a little bit too. But then on the congressional side, we had you know kind of the the ran the gauntlet Wednesday of talking to lawmakers as they were trying to vote in the House on this farm bill, which was extremely chaotic, and we can touch on that too.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Absolutely.

Farm Bill Floor Fight Explained

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Chairman GT Thompson from the House side, ranking member Angie Craig from Minnesota, Congressman Dusty Johnson from South Dakota was there. And then on the Senate side, you know, our Wednesday group meetings was Senator Roger Marshall, Senator John Bozeman, the chairman of the Senate Ag Committee, Senator Deb Fisher was there, Senator John Holvin, Senator Mike Round. So the list, you know, really went on and on. I myself, again, back to relationships, I've been lucky enough to cultivate, was able to sit down for one-on-ones of Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa. That was a really cool experience. I've talked to Senator Grassley so many times on the phone on AOA now and never actually met him in person. And that's wild to me being a you know native Iowan and whatnot. That was a really cool experience. I went over to his capital office and sat down and had a conversation with him. Senator Marshall was able to sit down with him in his office, Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, Senator Hovind from North Dakota, Senator Rounds from South Dakota. So a lot of great one-on-one time. Sat down with Under Secretaries Fordyce and Luke Lindbergh at USDA. And so a lot of things that I was able to do and talk to folks about some of these issues that are at hand. And no shortage of issues at hand, Tommy. I will just put it that way. It was a chaotic week in DC between a state visit from King Charles that threw everybody's schedule for a loop in that town. I mean, schedules are always fluid there anyway. But then, you know, this fertilizer announcement that USDA made, that was a last-minute kind of deal in terms of, hey, we're doing a press conference to announce this stuff. And they told us at 8 a.m. and said, be back here at four. So that was that. And then the house, too, with all this optimism, we're going to pass a farm bill. And then things got derailed with the E-15 legislation and the pesticide amendments from Representative Luna in Florida. And then it was, well, we're going to table it. And then by the time I had gotten to my plane, gotten on the plane to head home from Reagan National, well, we're bringing the farm bill back to the floor and we're going to start voting on amendments, and we have a carve out for E-15 and this and that. And they work through the night and then come around Thursday late morning and pass the farm bill out of the House, which probably dead on arrival in the Senate. Is that right? They still, I mean, this is you know the farthest they've gotten on farm bill legislation and passing a new farm bill since 2018. So definitely a good step forward. But now, you know, Tommy, we'll we'll see where things go here. But just a busy week, a wild week. I'm not much for wearing suits, as most people can tell when they see me on camera here on YouTube or on the radio side if they see me out at events. So wearing a suit for three or four days, I'm definitely happy to be home and away from the chaos in in Washington, D.C., the legislative chaos, I guess I should say, Tommy.

Farm Aid And Rural Anxiety

SPEAKER_00 6:03

Yeah. Let's flip it around. Like, how was I did see the pictures of all the other farm broadcasters? What were the conversations amongst yourselves? Um, just you know, networking and I guess the overall attitude of what's going on in agriculture, whether it be obviously high fertilizers would be something, but the SDRP top-up had been brought out. As you know, I did an interview with Paul Nefer yesterday. The United States government's given the American farmer a lot of money. I mean, someone may jump through the screen and say, screw you, but I don't see anyone getting rid in checks like that unless you're the uh politician's son or something. So they uh for as shitty as things looked when times were bad, and they were bad. I do have clients who are struggling. When you look if you looked at harvest and prices and money, things were bad. You look now, things are getting better because the market's rallying and the money's showing up. Thoughts on that, Jess?

Consumers Turning On Farmers

Diesel Prices And War Fallout

SPEAKER_01 7:03

I would say it's I I had this conversation with and I had this conversation with plenty of lawmakers as well. And and I guess I I agree with you, Tommy. I mean, you know, you're seeing all this influx of money and and what's happening, and there's talk of more potential farmer aid out of Congress. I heard that from a number of centers in in my one-on-ones this week, that they're looking at this to the two to ten to fifteen to twenty billion dollars. But here's the conversation that I threw at folks this week, or or the the question I prompted them with. And I I said, and I believe this to be true, farmers right now are catching this from all sides. You're facing high input costs, seed, chemical, fertilizer, equipment, you name it. And then on the other side, you have consumers who have really lost touch with where their food comes from, and they don't understand where their food comes from. And anytime they hear, you know, farmers are getting more money, or they're trying to pass the E15 just so the option is there for E15 or this or that. The old E15 I got a graphic for that. Old E15. What is it? They deal with it. It's consumers are vilifying farmers in many ways right now. And basically, you know, it it the the feeling I see in social media and I hear from talking to people is they're like, let farmers go under, you know, let them let them go bankrupt and blah blah blah. But do people really understand that if we had mass farming failure in the US, they try to go into the the Kroger, the the hive, the the pig we pigly, wiggly, you know, whatever, then they're not gonna have food there. I I mean that that's that's part of what I try to tell folks is I'm going, if we don't take care of farmers and help them get through a tough time, then we're gonna be in severe trouble. So stop vilifying farmers over here. One, but then farmers are over here trying to educate lawmakers and and trying to say, well, hey, we need more competition in many of these marketplaces. And it just feels like farmers are getting squeezed from all sides right now. And it's it's a tough time in in rural America. And I asked, you know, thoughts on that from lawmakers and more, and and a few, you know, offered candid thoughts on just you know, hopefully, you know, farmers were working to get them through and this and that. And the administration says, well, we're gonna onshore a bunch of fertilizer production. That's great. It's long term though, so right, no quick fix. Yeah, no quick fix. And and you mentioned, you know, the top-up to SDRP and and things like that. And I so I don't where we're at right now in the conversations I've had on Capitol Hill, it just feels like it's more of hurry up and wait, which is something that we seem to be pretty good at in a lot of American politics at times, Tommy.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's interesting. I've never I have been to DC once, a couple times, and we did it. I didn't understand how the city works, but a friend of mine who loves politics took me there, and we did go see our local, what would it be, our local congressman, right? Yep, and it was really neat. They're like, hey, how are you doing? And they're their aides sitting there, like, I guess you go there and tell them what you want because we didn't want anything, we just wanted to visit the Capitol. And they're like, What do you guys want to talk about? We're like, we just wanted to visit the Capitol, and he said, Well, let's go visit it, and took us to the Rotunda. And I mean, he was awesome, but it's a really special place. I know America seems mixed up right now, but talk about a little shell shock. I Gina picked me up at the airport. I'm in Valparaiso today, and I looked up the sign on the highway when we're going for the Flying J. crude oil is gonna be diesel's gonna be six dollars this weekend, road diesel, and road diesel is going to be six dollars, and gas is approaching maybe 475. And Gina goes, Oh yeah, honey, it's it's$90 to fill up the truck. Now that's becoming real if you drive a lot. If you have a business that is on the road, which if it's at your house, it came in a truck, you know, just like the the head of the uh Teamsters said, right? You know, if you're touching it, it showed up on a truck. And that's really expensive, like to to anyone. Walmart, I have a friend who uh runs 30 trucks, and sure everyone says we just had a surcharge, but we're paying for this war, correct? I mean, it's not this one's not free when oil goes up to the world.

Long Term Fixes And Short Term Pain

SPEAKER_01 12:06

No, no, we're absolutely paying for it, and this is just adding to that strain for for farmers. I mean, it's and nothing is going to fix this immediately, especially in the case of diesel prices. I mean, even even if the the war ended today, Tommy, I I've I've had this conversation with many folks. I think you and I have had this conversation. The amount of infrastructure of the Middle East that has been bombed that's gonna have to be rebuilt, whether it's fertilizer, whether it's oil pipelines, whatever, it's gonna take time to get that back online, rebuild that, you know, change shipping routes, whatever the case is. There seems to be this kind of emphasis of moving away from the petrodollar now. I mean, UAE is leaving OPEC, you know. I saw that news this week. So it's gonna take time. I don't know if this is something that, you know, is gonna are you know, farm diesel prices or on-road diesel prices, things like that, they're gonna come down anytime soon. I I don't think they will. And that's I just feel like this is gonna continue to exacerbate the problem. And that's really, you know, at the crux of what we're at is that we're talking about all of these things now, uh, you know, this fertilizer initiative from the Trump administration and more, and talking long-term investments, and okay, that's that's good. Long-term investment is great. You're not gonna find potash mines in Kansas, though. No, I mean, it's it's you know, the short term is the problem, and getting us to some of this long term is going to be the problem. So the next six, nine, ten months, next year, I'm nervous. And I know farmers are nervous, and at the end of the day, I've never met a farmer who doesn't just want to be able to go get their seed, buy their chem, etc., etc., put a crop in the ground, grow the crop, harvest it, sell it at a fair price, and raise their family on their little slice of ground that God gave them. Yeah, I've never met a farmer who doesn't just want to do that. And unfortunately, with the way things have spiraled and where we've gotten to, and you can blame whoever you want to blame on this. I I have my opinions on on that. I think it's a combination effect. But at the end of the day, farmers are just sitting here going, you're squeezing us from every side right now. When is enough enough? I just want to farm my land. That's it. Period. Full stop.

Market Snapshot And Where To Listen

SPEAKER_00 14:55

Yeah, and make a profit fairly in the marketplace, right? As you've said, right. Well, I was gonna ask you to wrap it up, but I think I think you couldn't have said it better than that. So in review, Jesse was in DC. He met with the who's who of who's who this week grain prices hit twelve dollar beans, five dollar corn, seven dollar wheat. Historically, those are prices to sell and protect. We're in an unhistoric pattern here with energy prices and fertilizer prices. And with that, our farmers, our clients are getting ready to plant, and that looks like this. And we wish you all a uh safe spring. All right, just tell people how to catch you on your shows. There's a few ways to do it. How many radio stations are you on?

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Agriculture of America itself's on about 70 a.m. FM radio stations across the country and Sirius XM Rural Radio Channel 147. You can hear us on there every morning, 6 a.m. Eastern, 5 a.m. Central. And then, of course, all your great local uh radio affiliates. You can find all the details or the podcast links. You could do it that way too. Agriculture of America.com. Market Talk Wise, of course, you can find us uh YouTube.com slash at Market TalkAg. A few radio affiliates there as well, which you can uh find the details at markettalkag.com. And then we also have a really cool mobile app with our company, Farm and Ranch Media. And uh you can download that in the App Lab Store or the Google Play Store today. I'll show just a little picture of that on the screen. And you know, we cover a lot of our ag news there and markets and links to videos and programs and more, and that's tied in with our other leg of the stools, we like to say, with farm ranch media, the American Ag Network. So long answer to a a short question, Tommy, but a lot of ways to uh to find us and uh everything that me and our entire team is covering day to day for agriculture.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Well, congrats to you and the team, and congrats for meeting Chuck Grassley in person. That was that you you taking that picture made me really happy.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

That that was that was a moment that I definitely will not will not forget, Tommy. It was a that was a great moment.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

All right, I'll be watching you rest aid, Mr. Jesse Allen, everyone. Thanks for coming on the show, Jess. Thanks, Tommy. Appreciate it.