AG Squawk with Davis Michaelsen | Kip Tom | Modernizing USDA Crop Data

We run the market closes and export sales, then dig into why USDA NASS data has become a flashpoint for farmers and traders. Kip Tom joins us to lay out what modernization could look like, from satellites to machine data, and why rebuilding trust is the real mission.
• Market settlements across corn, soybeans, wheat, cattle, and hogs
• Export demand signals and what they suggest for near-term tone
• Why USDA NASS survey participation drops from the 80s to the 30s
• How satellite imagery and radar can improve planted acres and yield estimates
• Where farm machine data fits and why it must be anonymous and optional
• Who uses NASS data across the ag supply chain and why county data matters
• Listening sessions, producer trust, and the risk of private paywalled data
• One farm one file, digital certification pilots, and reducing farmer burden
• Automation parallels with the National Weather Service and staffing concerns
• Congressional approvals, project partners, and next steps
• Weather rundown plus a few lighter notes to close


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Transcript

Markets And Export Demand

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Looks like we made it, everybody. Corn held a five handle through the close. Soybeans and wheat were mostly mixed, as were the livestocks. I'll run down the closes and then we'll turn our attention to modernizing NAS. From behind the big blue, bodacious microphone of Ag Bull, your pal Davis Michelson for AgSquawk in the afternoon. Glad to have all of you along. Today's going to be a good one. If you've ever complained about USDA or NAS data or anything like that, you can't complain if you don't watch this show because there are modernizing efforts underway. The discussions are underway. And uh I've got I've got former ambassador to the UN Agencies for Food and Agriculture and Indiana farmer Kip Tom today about efforts to modernize USDA's NAS. I've got some some specific questions. I want to hear what they're doing. I want to hear what's behind it. I want to talk about the tipping point. At what point do you decide, gosh, something's gotta be done? What was that moment like? Curious how Ambassador Tom got the gig and where he sees us going from here. Lots to discuss on that. We've we've also got some markets going, gang. I don't know if you noticed or not. We'll run down the settlements in just a moment, but we do have some exports to talk about. Private exporters report sales of 150,000 metric tons of soybeans for delivery to unknown destinations for the 26-27 marketing year, and then over to the weekly export sales. You know, sales were were decent for corn, soybeans, and wheat with each within but near the high range of pre-report expectations. Export demand appears to be fairly healthy. Just all of a sudden, we've had a decent string of soybean sales. It reaches clear into last week, and here it continues even today with that daily sale announced, and then the weekly sales have been really good as well. So let's talk about the tail of the tape in the markets. Corn and beans and wheat were higher in early session trade, with the main feature being December corn's move above five bucks. Soybeans added a nickel as winter wheat futures were fractionally to five cents higher in early trade. Not to be outdone, the cattle market was mostly higher as well, with fat cattle leading gains. Hogs took on a more mixed tone, with nearby under pressure and deferred contracts only mildly higher. Rounding into the lunch hour, corn and soybeans backed off early session highs, but remained in positive territory along with winter wheat futures. Meanwhile, livestock futures were little changed from their earlier positions. As

Settlements And Software Shoutout

SPEAKER_01 3:11

I turn my attention to the settlements, let me mention plus 500 software because that's what my crew and I use every single day. Plus 500 T4 software to keep track of futures and options pricing with a host of features at our fingertips. If you're looking for the best in real-time quotes, look no further than T4 from plus 500. That's plus 500. Let's look over at December corn. It makes me feel good to say this. And I did promise a song. Ted Hamer, if you're if you're watching, today just doesn't feel like the day. We're gonna see if we hold five overnight. And then uh and then maybe we can talk about uh a little bit of Barry Manilo tomorrow. But December corn hit right here settled out 503 and a half, up five and one half cents. Beans were mixed, as I said. The November contract down three quarters at twelve thirty-six and a half. If we look out to the May, we're up two and a half, however. So mixed higher and lower. And speaking of mixed action, I've got meal lower. Soybean oil was higher on the day. And then the winter weed contracts, the December Chicago wheat, two and a half higher on the day at seven bucks on the nose. Mostly higher on the KC wheat, although the December contract was a quarter cent lower on the day, settled out at 776 and one half, and then over to the livestocks, feeder cattle were mixed in the front end, a little bit lower. By the time we get out to the October, we're 65 higher with 322.70. Your fat cattle October 218 even. And once again, a little lower on the front end of the market, although it's the August contract, so you know what are you gonna do? 77 and one half lower on your October fat cattle at 218 on the snout. And here's the lean hogs, mostly lower. You got to get clear out to the May 27 to get a seven and a half cent rise there. But the spread here seems to be taking effect. I've got October lean hog futures down a buck 27 and one half, working hard to narrow the spread at 80, 22, and one half. Thanks once again to plus 500 software.

Guest Joins And Field Conditions

SPEAKER_01 5:20

And with that, it gives me great joy to bring in former ambassador to the UN Agencies for Food and Agriculture and Indiana farmer Kip Tom today. We're gonna talk about modernizing NAS. Mr. Tom, Ambassador Tom, thank you so much for being with us. I really appreciate you spending some time with us. There's a lot here that I don't understand. And so, as I understand, you're kind of the kind of the big kahuna of this effort here. Is that fair?

SPEAKER_02 5:50

No, I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that at all. I'm uh just trying to serve a role to do what we can to make sure that uh American agriculture and everybody in our supply chain has good information, and that's the role I'm gonna play, and I plan on working hard at it. So, Davis is an honor, honor to be on your show this afternoon. Never been on it before, but uh I sure like your intro. When I can see five corn above five dollars, that makes a farmer this year feel a little bit better. But I tell you what, there's some tough areas around. You go south of us 60 miles, and you got some people starting getting eight, 10 inches of rain over the past 10 days, some upwards of 15, 16 inches. So uh it's gonna be a tough year down there. People thought they had the best crop ever, and now probably the worst crop they've had in 20, 25 years.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Well, and they may have had the the best crop ever up until about what a week or two ago, right? Is that is that fair?

SPEAKER_02 6:43

That's fair. That's fair. I talked to people down there yesterday, they still had beans uh on flat level ground that's pattern tile drain. The creeks and streams can't get it down the river fast enough. Some of it's going into reservoirs, but uh some people had beans that were almost waist high that water sell waist high. Shoot, shoot, that's no good.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Well, you're st you're still farming, aren't you, sir? Let's talk to us. Yes, I am. Yes, I am. I have farms. Put on your backyard itis hat and just uh what's the tail of your crop this year? How how how you looking?

SPEAKER_02 7:13

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. You know, if I'm talking to my banker, I would I'm just saying in general, farmers always, when they're talking to their banker, it's gonna be a bumper crop again. But if you're talking to the to the trade and everybody, I believe, you know, our own crop, I would say if I ranked it over the next last five years, we're probably gonna be trend line or probably somewhere in the middle of the last five years of yield. So respectable. I think that's on the corn side of beans. I I think we could be off a little bit. We had some troubles with some beans in this area, but nonetheless, still gonna be a good crop.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Yeah, good.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Well, I'm I'm sure glad to hear that. Let's start. And I sort of jokingly said that you're the big kahuna and you you gave a terrific answer. You want to just do what you can to help out the American farmer, the American ag industry get its hands on good information. Specifically, what is your role in this modernization effort? And just give us a couple of bullet points on how you got there.

Trust Crisis Behind NASS Modernization

SPEAKER_02 8:11

Well, before I tell you that, I'm gonna tell you why it's happening. I think we all sense talking to producers across the country, talking to people of elevator operators, food processors, any one of the big uh grain merchandisers. You know, we need reliable, accurate, timely information. And I think if you look at survey results that come into USGA from the enumerators across the countryside, that I think nearly 2,000 of them go out and collect this information from farmers that, you know, it used to be about 20 years ago we had a participation rate over 80%, 87% actually. This most recent survey came in, it was in around 37%. So people have had less of an interest of really filling out these surveys. They don't have the time, they're busy. So we're really looking at this in a way to try to prove the cadence, the frequency of the reports. Maybe we won't have the shocks in a market if we can do that. We can, I think USDA is looking at their current suppliers of imagery and satellite imagery, that uh that geospatial information that we have that we can use to understand what's going on in our crops, but also the surveys. So I think there's there's a combination of things we need to do. But as we analyze these companies that we're working with today, we need to say where are our gaps and where can we fill those gaps at to bring up more reliable data. As far as how I got here, that's a good question. I I was with the secretary, asked me to come in one day and wanted to talk a little bit, and uh she's she'd been willing to do this for some time. I mean, I think it started over a year ago when she had a group of farmers that showed up for I think it was the July 15th report that came out, and they were all in dismay that the numbers were what they were. And at that time, I think they were telling her then that they really didn't didn't believe NASA any longer. And so I think this has been something that's been on the on her burner, but now she moved to the front. She wants to get something done, and I can tell you, she is passionate about making sure that uh we do this in the right manner. This has got to be something that spans administrations. Obviously, there's components of it, it's got to have congressional approval, but the technologies are there today where we can really amplify the innovations that's been developed over the past uh five, 10 years to make sure we have the latest and greatest and have information at our fingertips so we can make good decisions.

Satellites Plus Machine Data Blueprint

SPEAKER_02 10:36

You know, think about this. What if we could have, we would know by satellite imagery, and it's very possible, in fact, it can happen on July 1. We know exactly how many acres planted corn, how many planted beans. We can start getting yield estimates in in that first day of July, measuring biomass and everything. But every week we update that and give something to the marketplace. And like I said, try to take out some of those big shocks when we go in one month for an entire report on a crop that only takes four to five months to grow, that creates a lot of havoc. And you know, farmers listen, they deal with enough variance in weather and everything else they have to deal with. Let's try to make sure we take some of the shocks out of the marketplace and give them good information.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Now, if if you would talk to a broker or a trader, they would say, leave the volatility in the markets. That's how we get paid.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

Well, I'm not saying the volatility is going to go completely away. Uh you know, it nonetheless, it's it's gonna stabilize it a little bit if we do go on a more frequent uh reporting cadence. At the same time, some people bring up the comment about, well, why don't we uh instead of releasing it during the trade, why don't we release it at the prior to the opening of the trade, between the night trade and a day trade? You know, I that discussion really hasn't surfaced much at USDA yet, uh, what what that's gonna look like in the future. But I think the biggest thing is is we look at the amount of data that farmers produce today on their equipment, and it's up to them if they want to share it or not. You know, some will make the choice not to, some will make the choice to do it, but that machine data could be powerful for USDA to have that to really understand what's going on and yields, what's going on, how much is planted. I mean, it's all coming into our systems, and there's ways to measure this all the time. But if we don't do this, this is what my fear is. If we don't make USDA NAS the gold standard, all of a sudden there's gonna be some company that comes out here with let's say a data co-op that says, you know, farmers, bring me your data. I will sell it to different companies, whether it's, you know, a trading house, a hedge firm, whatever it may be. Now you'll get access to some of this data, but we're gonna pay you X for this information. So if we don't get the best information coming out of NAS, we're gonna have individual companies owning this data. Well, probably going on today, I would have to guess. But we're not gonna be able to make good decisions. We're not the gold standard any longer. So now is the time for US Day to act. That's what Secretary Rollins says, and we're gonna deliver on that promise.

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Yeah, very good.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

You say you say now is the time, and I tend to agree wholeheartedly. I've been a farm broadcaster for going on what 13 or so odd years now, maybe a little longer. I don't know. I'm not much for math. It's it's been a long time, long enough that I've heard enough farmers give the side eye to USDA reports, NAS numbers, you know, data collection methods, all these sorts of things all along the way. This is going on more than 10 years. So when you say now is is the time, I'm I'm curious. You mentioned July. Was was there a tipping point? What what lever was pulled that yes, now is the time we're gonna do this?

SPEAKER_02 13:56

Well, I think Secretary Rollins has got a lot on her plate. Let's face it. She's done a lot to change USDA, she's done a lot to uh clean up some of the inefficiencies, and let's say, for instance, our food system, the NAS in particular, not at NAS, excuse me, but SNAP programs and things like that. But, you know, this was always been on her radar, but I think it got amplified when those farmers were at the White House back in July of 2025. And, you know, that's when we started to see the massive increase in corn acres. And they're saying, how can we have this happening? I mean, we were poorer acres earlier in the year, you know, we've everything's been filed 578s and everything. So why don't we have better information quicker? You know, the other thing on this, too, and is just statistically, you'll find out that typically after a port, half the time it trades higher, half the time it trades lower. But where it really comes into play is the the amount it trades higher or the amount it trades lower. And typically it's it's usually trades lower at a more significant amount in the data that's been searched on so far than it does higher. And let's face it, most farmers are they're long their corn, they're long their soybeans, they're optimistic that the markets are moving higher. So I think that creates some issues with farmers when they find out that their crop isn't worth as much as they thought it was going to be, but it is what it is. But I think when we get to these digital systems, I think we're gonna have the ability to really drive home the value of this data. For instance, there's been discussions had earlier on, and this is prior to going into this role, where there's a company that actually circles the earth every day, they monitor every acre every day, and they do it on five-meter resolution. Wow. They and so their their ability to update this information is quite substantial. Now, for instance, we just had these floods as you and I discussed in central Indiana. I'm getting some data on that now. They're putting the yield models to it to really figure out what's what's going on. What are the yield losses in that that block of Indiana that's been impacted? So I think it's it's bringing in those tools early on. I mean, it could be a disease, it could be southern rust in Iowa, it could be anything. So our ability now to collect this satellite data is so much better because we have radar we're using now. Uh, there's been a couple companies acquired it or can see through the clouds. So it's gonna be one layer, but it's still gonna take some people on the ground to authenticate, to ground through some of this. And again, I think the machine data can do a part of that. But it's if a farmer sends in machine data, as far as I'm concerned, and whether our operation does it, we will probably, it's gotta be aggregated and it's got to be anonymous. I don't think anyone wants their particular data to be standing alone. I think it needs to be blended with other producers to give an idea of what's going on. And again, it's got to be their choice, whether they do it or not. They own it, they control it. We can't make it mandatory of any means. It's this is about farmer choice, and I think that's what this administration is about is making sure we lift up farmers and correcting NAS and getting it headed in the right direction and modernizing it is probably the key word we want to use here. That's the direction we want to go.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Yeah, it's it's interesting that you bring up machine data. Do you have a sense or or does NAS or USDA is there a sense out there for what percentage of farmers do have that data available to to upload to something like this? I mean, uh I guess it could be argued as long as it's better than say what 35, 37 percent, it's it's a better way of going about it. But uh, do you know what that number might be?

SPEAKER_02 17:42

Yeah, so I'm sure if you went to uh John Deere, you could probably get an idea. They're probably the predominant John Deere climate uh probably has more data, more sense of what that number looks like. But let's say we got 65,000, 70,000 farmers in the United States that produce 80% of the corn. That being the case, I would have to believe a lot of those people have that data. We know that the digital solutions on our farms has driven increases in productivity. It helps us select hybrids, it helps us apply the right amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, tells us when to apply crop care products, measures our yields, tells us a lot about what's going on our farm. So everybody's kind of gone this way because there's a cost saving advantage, but then there's a productivity saving also that goes with that that really increases yields. So I think the number's bigger than we think, but we got to make sure it's quality data. You know, we all know that you know you may have the latest and greatest of a John Deere or CaseIH or AgCo combine out here, but if you don't calibrate that on a frequent basis across the scale somewhere, your numbers may be off a little bit. So it's all about uh calibration, making sure you get it right. And when we're talking about calibration, let's take a moment and talk about what we're doing with satellites. So you look at satellites, how they're they've been circling the earth for a long time here, but really and using them in agriculture in this space and measuring how many acres of corn, how many acres of beans has really got refined. But now we take that information, we can start coming up with some really good satellite data early on in the year and start taking that uh combine data that comes in behind it, and that delta in between the satellite imagery and what really went on the farm comes together. And every year, every crop cycle, this improves. So I think there's a lot of potential here. And but again, we want it to be passive. We want the farmer to have control. We want to make sure that we're providing reliable information.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Here's

How NASS Data Guides Supply Chains

SPEAKER_01 19:48

a strange question, maybe, and I I think you've already sort of touched on this somewhat, but as a reporter, I can get an awful narrow view. I've kind of got tunnel vision. Well, you know, NAS needs this data so that they can put it in the reports and and put it out there. Help me understand who who's using this data, who does it help, what is it designed to do? Maybe it's an elementary question, and I feel like we've sort of touched on it from a few different angles here, but who is who is ultimately the this data for and what are they using it for?

SPEAKER_02 20:22

Yeah, so the the next NASDAQ, I mean, let's face it, it uh people look at it all the way, and when we look at crops in particular, and I'm looking just saying corn soybeans, because when we talk about NAS, we've got to realize they turn out 500 plus reports a year. Right. It could be everything from cranberries to grapes to oranges, grapefruit, apples, whatever. And that is getting reviewed at the same time here or a little bit later. But when we when we say who looks at this data, it's gonna be all the way from the company producing the genetics on the seed all the way to the person delivering the food to the dinner table at consumers' homes. So, you know, grocery chains will can monitor it, or their suppliers, or their people that are involved in supply management. You could have fertilizer people looking at this and saying, yeah, look, they produced a big crop, they're gonna have to replace more fertilizer this year than they did last year because they had a bigger crop this year than they had last year. The seed industry could use it to try to understand how much seed to produce or how much to make available in certain markets. At the same time, if you're a grain elevator operator, or even if you're, let's say, somebody, a poultry integrator or an ethanol plant, you're trying to determine where you build that next plant. Well, the county level data is what we got to have too. We've got to have that county level data so they can have that information so they know where to build that new chicken feed mill grinding plant at, or that ethanol plant. And so there's a lot of different people in the supply chain of agriculture that need this information. Again, that's why we've got to be the cold standard, and we got to make sure that we don't leave this up to somebody else to do, which I'm afraid is going on today, but let's get in front of this and fix it now.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

Yeah. Well, and we you started out mentioning transparency. And making sure that there's good information out there for the folks that need it. And I I agree. It's 100% vital. Let's talk about the incoming data just a little bit. To

Listening Sessions And Farmer Privacy

SPEAKER_01 22:24

what degree does your quest focus on building trust among producers?

SPEAKER_02 22:34

That's the biggest focus of this. The biggest focus is rebuilding that trust with the farmer. We've been in listing sessions. There was one yesterday in Indianapolis. There's one today in Springfield, Missouri. There was one in Pennsylvania a week or so ago. Minneapolis, or excuse me, uh Minnesota had one just about a week and a half ago. Tomorrow I'll be in Des Moines, Iowa. We're going to be at the state for theirs a listing session. And I think that's the biggest, or that's the single biggest theme that we hear all the time is we've lost trust in the data coming out of NAS. Now, I want to say this before we go any further: there's a lot of good people in NAS. It's led by some really great people too. Dr. Hutchins, the leads it, the under-secretary, he he knows what he's doing. He's passionate about that. He is trying to do everything in his power to make sure that we are successful in accomplishing this goal for the secretary and administration. So I think it's uh I think trust is the biggest issue as you bring up. So it's interesting. You you see it, you probably hear it from farmers, but we've got to get there. And I think if if we prove ourselves, it's, you know, it's not gonna be perfect in year one. This isn't gonna happen overnight. We're gonna do some things that could be pretty massive changes, I hope, within the next few months here. But I think as we get further out, you're gonna see continual refinement. And remember this the innovations are gonna continue to evolve. And who we may be partnering with maybe somebody different next year if they got a better innovation to really understand what's going on in in our fields across the Midwest or in the Southwest or in this Delta. I think it's it all comes down to making sure we stay relevant, and that's making sure we have access to the latest technologies.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

I I want to circle back to that, but but let me move to survey fatigue. This is something something that I've experienced through the course of the career, both as a survey uh giver and a survey respondent. There that certainly we've talked about the decline in the number of responses, the percentage of responses that have come in. But Ambassador, that's that's not unique to USDA surveys. In fact, I've I've seen reports that when it comes to response rates to all government surveys, USDA response rates are actually higher than most government agencies.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

Have you seen this? No, I haven't seen that report, but I I guess I wouldn't be surprised. But uh again, it's uh it comes down to the quality of that survey as well. Yeah, and I think as we you know, we're shrinking the size of the amount of farmers we have in the country. So it makes those those reports very, very relevant to really understand what's going on within NASA and the data here, but I'm unaware of you know the other surveys that are out there and and the participation rate. But I think you know, people look at these surveys and they start opening the pages. I filled them out myself for years. I've had the enumerator sitting across the desk from me with a clipboard and a pencil, and and where we just verbalized what we thought we planted to this crop and how much we thought it was going to yield, and how much we had in the bin, and what did we use for chemistries and things like that. So I think there's just people are, I would say they're wanting to guard their information more when it comes to this. But when I look at the world we live in today, you know, if anyone's buying something off Amazon, they know your buying habits, they keep tracking you, following you, they know what you're gonna buy. Yeah, that's fair. If you buy an iPhone, it's listening to you all the time and knows your behaviors, it's tracking you. A lot of our information is already, I guess you could say, compromised. We're not going to be compromising information for this. This is gonna drive value back to U.S. agriculture and give us the ability to be more competitive in the global landscape. I think, you know, you don't have to travel very much. I've been to Brazil a couple of times lately and other places in the world, but our competitors have better information than we do. They're moving at a much faster pace. And if we don't get a grasp on what's going on here, it's gonna be hard for us to make the decisions to make sure that we have the economic opportunities in agriculture. We need to make sure that we have national security is being taken care of, and we need to make sure our food security is being addressed. And NASA's so circular to all of that.

One Farm One File And Pilot Tools

SPEAKER_01 27:03

How deep does this modernization effort need to reach? I mean, does it need to get down to the level of the county offices and redo how things are done from there on up, or does it go even deeper than that?

SPEAKER_02 27:17

Well, I think when you look at one farm or one file that we've gone to now, there's some people at USGA's worked very hard on that. They had to clean up nearly 2,000 different contracts and over 500 different platforms that they were operating on the past and contract it down to one. I think that's that's the starting point. And I think the one farm or one file is gonna be good. But I think as we continue to feed this information into USDA at our local county office or what we do electronically, uh I think it's gonna continue to improve the level of data that we have to us. As an example, I I know there's a pilot program coming out next year where a farmer can go when he's done planning, he's got all his information stored on his computer that came in from the tractors, the planters, the sprayers. He can basically go through and certify his acres from his computer at home. I know there's some other systems that have done it, but this is probably one of the more broader used software platforms in agriculture, at least in the machinery side, and submit that right to USD at that moment. So we're trying to make it easier for the farmer and trying to take some burden off their table. They got enough to do. Yeah. I I know, I know firsthand.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

Sure, absolutely you do. And I and I know that the farmers would would certainly appreciate that. I I think you've already answered my next question. It's been suggested to move, you know, things like move the June Anchorage report to September. But if I'm hearing you, in your perfect world, there might be updates that come out maybe each week or maybe a couple times a month. Does that sound about right?

SPEAKER_02 28:57

You know, you have that's the goal, but I think if you you look at the technologies that's available today, we could do a lot of plant condition reports starting probably in May across the Midwest. Uh when you can take a satellite and you can look at a field and do a stand count on a cornfield and understand whether you have an adequate population in that field or not, you know you have pretty good resolution, you have pretty good data out there. So you can you can go out here now and those models are pretty effective across fixed-wing aircraft drones. I mean I'm talking about full-scale drones and also satellites. So there's no reason why we couldn't do that on a weekly basis with the satellites. I think we can move into yield models probably starting in July. I I saw some of those already where people were predicting yields on corn soybeans in certain regions of the country on July 1. So I think there's a lot of potential to make

Automating Data Without More Staff

SPEAKER_02 29:57

that happen.

unknown 29:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

I don't I don't mean to get uh too far into the nuts and bolts here, but uh I guess, and maybe this will be a controversial question. I don't I don't know if you have the answer or not. So if this is completely unfair and misguided of me to ask, you know, please let me know. But I'm I'm curious, it feels like you're moving some of the work off of the farmer's desk and back over to desks at NAS. And I wonder if there's a staffing component here that needs to be considered. If we're you know, if we're looking at satellite data and farm machine data and information collected by other USDA agencies, somebody's got to put all that together. Have we got the people to do that?

SPEAKER_02 30:45

There are providers out there right now that are collecting this data with satellites that could all they gotta do is send a file off to USDA and no know exactly in Grundy County how many acres of corn are planted, how many acres of soybeans are planted, but they can they can list every every county in Iowa, every county in Illinois, Indiana, you name the state, they can do it. So it it will take workload at the same time off the people at NAS. So we're really not moving more work to NAS, we're moving more work to digital solutions and technology and innovation to overcome this. I mean, I I bring the the comparison up oftentimes. I mean, look at our National Weather Service. It used to be, you know, we had people out, they would call in, they would look at their rain gauge. I had 1.1 inches of rain, and they would call in the temperature and the town they live in. They would look at the barometric pressure, or they may have been gauging a storm that's coming at them over the horizon. So that was an analog day. That was a day when you picked up the phone, they called it in, and then it got reported. Today it's all automated, and there is no reason why we can't do this in agriculture. Automate this, make sure that we're delivering accurate, timely information for people to make good choices.

What Needs Congress And Who’s Involved

SPEAKER_01 32:09

Does this require some sort of does this need to be codified through some sort of legislation once once the plan is in place? I don't I guess I don't understand how that works. Or is do you just put it into the operations manual over at NASA and work out you know all of that? How how does this go? Is it gonna take an act of Congress to get this done, sir?

SPEAKER_02 32:30

There's gonna be some congressional approvals that be uh that will be needed here along the way. I've already had some conversations uh offline, uh casual conversations, uh, people that are interested in this and in the members of Congress, and they too want to make sure that we modernize NAS to the point that does what we say it's gonna do.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

Yeah, yeah, very good. You're uh you're working with a team, as I understand. Mr. Ben Renchi, I think, is is on that team. I I can't imagine it's easy working with Mr. Renchi, sir.

SPEAKER_02 33:01

Ben's a good sounding board, he's he's got boots on the ground and uh good family operation. Been friends with Ben for probably 30 years and always been good to be around Ben. But yeah, he's playing a role in this. But there's there's a lot of other farmers involved. Uh, yesterday there was a farmer that flew up, D Von flew up from Texas to Dakota Fest to sit on one of those panels with farmers and and listen to them. So we've got a lot of good people that are getting involved with this. We had one yesterday, Sam Halterman, he's from Illinois. He he drove to Indiana yesterday. He was earlier, I think he was in Minnesota. He might have gone to one or two others as well. So people are passionate about this. The farmers they want to see this change happen. And you know, for someone to fly from Texas, walk away from his operation for two days, just to sit on a panel and have a conversation with different members of USTA and other farmers, tells you we want to get this done. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

You've mentioned a few upcoming panel discussions, some listening sessions, etc. What are next steps here? And what does it look like a couple of months down the road if it's if it's going the way that you want it to?

SPEAKER_02 34:16

Well, I'm just getting onboarded on Monday as a special government employee, senior advisor to the secretary. And so work starts for me right then, but it's actually started uh kind of casually over the past month here since this initiative was announced. But I plan on working with Dr. Scott Hutchinson, the the under-secretary over at REE. And there's a number of people in IoT there that are going to do part of this and a lot of other individuals, the deputy secretary's office. There's gonna be a lot of people involved in getting this in the right pathway.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

There's an awful lot at stake here. I'm sure that you would agree, Ambassador. And uh it's more important now than ever, especially with the technological advances that we had. I feel like we've kind of gone through the all right, we've got early adopters, and now we've got you know pretty pretty decent adoption of new technologies on the farm. Now, here's something that we can do to use it toward toward the good of agriculture and the overarching industries that also rely on agriculture. Am I right?

SPEAKER_02 35:28

You're right. I mean, uh it's like I said, uh all we have to do is start looking at other industries, how they've they've taken the workload away from an analog world of paper and pencil to now are things collected by a sensor or by digitization and on into a computer file and then on to somebody else.

Moneyball Lesson And Staying Engaged

SPEAKER_02 35:45

I always encourage people that think about this and have this discussion. It's a movie, I don't know how old it is, maybe 15 years old now, called Moneyball. I always encourage people to read the book, Moneyball, or watch the movie. It's easy to watch, but it really shows how the baseball industry or baseball sport field sporting field went from collecting the information they did by guys setting up in the stands and monitoring players of how they played and everything to where they could actually take the data of what they were doing during a game and put it all together and try to figure out who's the best player to recruit. So I think moneyball is a good example of what we're trying to do with with NAS.

SPEAKER_01 36:26

Oh, that's a that's a terrific example. And uh I want to thank you for that. My evening just filled up, thanks to you, sir. See if I can find that. I wonder if you have any more closing thoughts on this before we move on. We're gonna talk about the weather next, and then I'm then I'm gonna cut you loose, but I want to make sure that we get it all in here. What am I missing, sir?

SPEAKER_02 36:45

Yeah, just watch. Watch as we go along this pathway. We want to continue to engage farmers, whether it's tomorrow or whether it's six months from now. We want to know what they think of the direction we're going and if the what we're turning out is going to meet the need of the information that they need to make good decisions. But again, it's not just farmers, it's it's our input suppliers, it's people on our on our off-take side, uh, ABCD, it's it's everybody in the supply chain. So I encourage farmers to watch us. Remember that the Rollins administration at USDA is all about building trust and making sure we are doing things the right way. So I encourage people to watch what's going on at USDA and hopefully they see some good results from this.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Well, I I certainly appreciate your candor. I I love your attitude and your enthusiasm for this. It's a uh it's a much needed upgrade. I would I would definitely agree to to a service that's that's doing its darndest with what it's got, but I I do believe that there's more to be gleaned here in a in a more transparent and more successful fashion.

Weather Check And Closing Plugs

SPEAKER_01 37:55

Hey, let me ask you, uh, you're in I've I put you somewhere in north central Indiana. Is that about right?

SPEAKER_02 38:02

That's pretty close. Warsaw, Indiana, about halfway between South Bend and Fort Wayne, or about 80 miles uh east of Chicago.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

I'm sitting at 84 degrees and and sunny here in Kansas City. We've had some storms roll through the last couple days. How's how's the weather over there?

SPEAKER_02 38:18

Yeah, we got sunny. It's it's probably, I don't know, somewhere in the low 80s right now. So nice, nice August day here. But yeah, I think there's some light chances of rain this weekend, maybe, but we're sitting good on moisture. I think we're probably done irrigating any corn that we have to irrigate. We're probably more focused on finishing up some soybeans if it does turn off dry for us. But again, it's it's good, you know. It's we always talk about the weather, don't we? We do. Farmers always walk up how kind of what's the weather like in your area. So glad you bring it up.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

But well, and nobody seems to mind using satellite data to talk about the weather.

SPEAKER_02 38:53

Yeah, can you imagine doing this with somebody calling it in? Yeah, yeah. They're looking at the barometric pressure, and how many people would that take? You know, it'd be a mess. It'd be a mess. Well, we can do the same thing at a much greater resolution than what that is, even.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

Yeah, yeah. Well, let me get to the National Weather Service short-term forecast here. Scattered severe thunderstorms and excessive rainfall possible today in the mid-Atlantic, posing a risk for damaging winds and isolated flash flooding. Extreme heat warnings are in effect today for northeast Texas into southern Oklahoma and Arkansas. Heat hasn't quite broke down there just yet. Extreme heat warnings also in effect for the desert southwest today into Sunday. Ambassador Tom, before we disperse here, I would like to I'd like to offer up some items of mild interest. If I can garner your mild interest, are you are you into it? I'm in. All right. This day, August 20, 2026, and it seems appropriate for us to be talking about things going on in space. NASA's Viking Project found a place in history on this date when it became the first U.S. mission to land a spacecraft safely on the surface of Mars and return images of the surface. The craft launched on this date in 1975 and touched down on the surface of Mars 11 months later. Only takes 11 months to get to uh get to Mars. I bet because that was 1975, I bet we could get there much quicker in in the modern day. 11 months is still not bad. In uh 1948, I don't know if you're a Led Zeppel fan at all. It's the birthday of Robert Plant, lead singer from Led Zeppelin, 1954. Al Roker was born, American news anchor, weatherman of certainly some note. And uh just just a silly thought for the day. Because telescopes work using mirrors, we may never know if there are any space vampires. And I would argue if there are no space vampires, there may not be Count Chocula in space either, which I don't know if that's a world I want to live in. But Ambassador Tom, former ambassador to UN Agencies for Food and Ag, and Indiana farmer Kip Tom, you've been extremely generous with your time and done an excellent job of getting the word out on this, why it's important, who should care, and and what we need to be watching for. We certainly appreciate you taking this task on. It's uh no small quest indeed, sir. We appreciate you.

SPEAKER_02 41:24

Davis, I would say if anything, let's get let's meet up again in a few months and get a progress report.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

I'll put that down in my book and my people will be in touch. In the meantime, thanks to Trade the News for keeping my squad updated on the news that moves the markets. Get useful news from Trade the News. That's trade the news. And finally, I would uh selfishly, shameless plug inbound, direct you to agbol.com where you can dig deeper with Ag Bull Intel. Take the markets by the horns with AgBull.com 855 737 Farm. Jed said well, back first thing in the morning to get you set up with the taste of that Ag Bull Intel. And then I've got the man himself, Tommy Grasophi, the 17th Sexiest Man Alive, and I will dig deep into the week's market action tomorrow afternoon. Ambassador Tom, thank you so much for being with us. Come back, y'all, tomorrow for another edition of Ag Squawk.