Inside A Fourth-Generation Kentucky Farm’s High-Stakes Harvest

[00:00:00.000] - Chris Griffin
Welcome to Back to your Roots, a podcast that provides insight into all things farming, financing, and farm life, guiding you Back to your Roots. Thanks for joining us today on Back to your Roots. I'm your host, Chris Griffin, and we have a really special guest today. I'm glad to have him. We're actually in the Kevil office today, of all places, so normally, we typically do it in Paducah. But on today's episode, we've We got long time Ballard County farmer, Mr. Allen Pace with us. We're right in the middle of harvest seasons. We thought we had a little bit of rain finally, so I asked him yesterday, and he gladly obliged and came in. We're going to ask him some questions about harvest and some of the struggles and some of the things he goes through during that season. Alan, we're glad to have you and glad you could make it out here today.

[00:00:52.100] - Allen Pace
Well, thanks, Chris. I appreciate you letting me come on and be part of this today. Thank you very much.

[00:00:56.940] - Chris Griffin
We know I met your son, Jarrett, and he's out of school, and I know he helps you out a lot. I'm assuming at some point, his dream and goal is probably take over the operation in the future. I'm sure, hopefully, that'll be way, way down the road, I think, is the goal. Unless you decide to retire and move to Florida.

[00:01:14.840] - Allen Pace
That is a good idea. But right now, Jarrett is coming on strong with me, and I'm so proud to have my son working with me. We go by JAP Farms. JAP Farms is the initials of my granddad, My dad, it's my initials, and it's also Jarrett's initials, Jarrett Allen Pace. That is the reason we go by J-A-P Farms. Yes, when Jarrett was born, I told my wife we had to have a name that went with the initials to stay with the farm name. But I was able to work with my granddad and my dad, and my dad's passed now. But Jarrett was able to work with his granddad and me. Anyway, yes, we are strictly a family operation. I know there's days that Jarrett would probably like to strangle me right now. Wanting me to retire right now. Him go ahead and take it over. But I thought we both get along and work pretty good together. It's great to be able to work with your son and been able to work with my dad and my granddad.

[00:02:14.260] - Allen Pace
Well, and The few times I've been out there, I always like it because you guys are both there and we can sit down and chat and you got a good one, and I enjoy chatting with him and he's got his head on straight. That's always a positive.

[00:02:26.900] - Chris Griffin
I appreciate you saying that, and thank you very much for saying about my son. But it's nice to have that younger generation coming along and coming up with different ideas that for some of us might get stuck in our ways after doing this for so many years and coming up with a different way. There's all different types of ways of doing stuff or getting a task done. I've come to realize that, Hey, his ways will work just as good as my way would and maybe even better. So yeah, it's pretty neat.

[00:02:54.760] - Chris Griffin
Well, and I skipped ahead here, but I actually missed a question here on the front-end, but you went into it a little bit, but go in a little bit more detail about the history of your farming operation, your family, some other things there that would help the listeners learn about you.

[00:03:09.960] - Allen Pace
Like I said, we're a family farm, and Jarrett will be the fourth generation right now. We were in the livestock. We did have hogs. We had a faring and finishing hog operation that we sold close to 3,000 head of hogs off of at one time. But now, the way the hog industry got integrated and stuff that we finally had to drop out of We're strictly a row crop farming right now. We have corn, soybeans, and wheat is what we're farming with right now.

[00:03:36.950] - Chris Griffin
How many acres you guys farm currently?

[00:03:38.900] - Allen Pace
We're farming close to 2,700 acres at the moment. We have it pretty well split up between half and half with corn and soybeans, and then we'll have anywhere from 800 to 1,000 acres of wheat every year.

[00:03:52.360] - Chris Griffin
I've always joked, and we had this conversation, is I grew up in Paducah, didn't really know much about ag. Somehow I ended up River Valley Ag. Now when I speak about ag and stuff that comes out of my mouth, I'm not really sure that I'm like, Where did that come from? Even my boss, Sheri jokes about it now. But I have so much more appreciation now about... I was actually talking to CJ Ross the other day, and people just don't know. People who don't know ag, they don't know the amount of hours you guys put in, the amount that you put on the line every year. That leads into my next question. During harvest, how many hours are you guys typically putting in on a daily basis and on a weekly basis when you're running wide open? Because we see it because we're here in Ballard and I see it. I see how many acres have been harvested, and I'm like, I know they're going from sun up to sundown and maybe later than that.

[00:04:40.800] - Allen Pace
We're no different than any other farmer in the county or in the United States, bro. When it comes to harvest time, I always say it's Katie Barr to the door. We're running wide open. My typical day, I'll start about 6: 00 in the office and trying to get everything situated on the paperwork that we did the day before or what we're fixing can get done today. I've always tried to tell the people that are working for us, Hey, this is what we're going to be doing tomorrow before we leave that night. Yes, we'd like to quit at 7: 30 at night when we're running wide open. But if a rain's coming in, there's nothing to be going later in that. But that's typical with every farmer out there. We'll have a rainy day like it's going to be today, and we'll be done by three or four o'clock. It varies, but when it's time to run, the people that we're working with, we have one full-time hard hand that works with me. He's been with me now for about 25 years. Then I have another part-time lady that comes in and drives a semi for me.

[00:05:43.100] - Allen Pace
She's real good about knowing. She used to farm with her daddy, so she's good about knowing, Hey, if it's raining, not needing to come in. But yeah, we'll take off when we can. But right now, it's sun up to sundown and sometimes past that.

[00:05:56.680] - Chris Griffin
I always joke, patient spouses and girlfriends and everything else during harvest season.

[00:06:02.880] - Chris Griffin
My wife is very good about having supper for me every night. A lot of nights it's being put in the microwave because she's had it fixed for several hours. But I will give her credit, and I think all of us will give our wives a lot of credit for putting up with us during harvest and planting season. It's the acres that we're trying to run. It seems like we're trying to do it in a shorter window all the time right now. That's just part of farming right now. I always joke around and say, Man, I really love what I do, but it's not fun anymore. But I think a lot of farmers might have that mind of thinking right now just because of the way our prices are and what we're getting for our products right now. It's a little bit cheaper. I won't say what we're getting for our products that much cheaper is because our inputs have gone up so much that it's not matching up.

[00:06:47.320] - Chris Griffin
Well, and that leads into my next question a little bit is, as far as average yields of crops and what they've been so far during this harvest and on the different ones that you could give Give me a decent idea on there.

[00:07:01.430] - Allen Pace
I think here in Ballard County, every area is different. It can be different from field to field. But I think most of the corn ground in Ballard County is going to be around 200 or 200 plus. You're hearing some 250s, and then you'll hear some 170 and 80s also. On our farm right now, what we've got cut, we're around a 215 bushel average. The soy beans that we have cut in the early soy beans are looking really good. I'm hearing a lot of 60s and 70 bushels in them. But the beans after wheat, and that's going to be a different story. I know the rain that we're getting this week is it's still going to be able to help the soybeans after wheat. We'll see where that's at, but it's not going to be no one in the east yields we're talking about here.

[00:07:44.800] - Chris Griffin
Did you plant any canola this year? No, I didn't.

[00:07:48.680] - Chris Griffin
But I know several farmers did, and several farmers are going back into it and doing it again this year. We're still holding off on it this year. At first, we were going to plant it. I like the idea of it. I love having another crop to come in here and another oil seed crop, especially come in here and we can plant over the winter months. But right now, it's just not fit in our rotation and with our workforce that we got going on because it needs to be planting right now. But yes, the farmers that raised it last year did really good with it. We've got better places to sell it every year. Chevron is with Bungy now, and that's just one of the places that you sell it to me. Of course, you got your ADMs and CGBs. I'm not trying to promote a certain grainery anywhere, but the oil seeds are starting to come a big thing. I would like to think part of that was caused by a lot of the research that we've done on the Kentucky Soybean Board and me being a member of that. We put in a lot of research on the oils and come in.

[00:08:51.780] - Allen Pace
It used to be me was the number one thing from the soy being in oil, the soy of an afterthought. Now the oil with renewable fuels coming on is starting to be our number one thing we're processing out of the soy beans, and now we're having more trouble getting ready to meal than we are though. Things have swapped around there, which I think that's a good thing. Aviation fuel is fixing to become a big thing with the soil oil and the canola oil. But I'm really proud of the research that we've done on the Soybean board and the promotion that we've done on pushing renewable fuels.

[00:09:26.580] - Chris Griffin
When we initially met, when I moved into this role, a little bit different role back in May. It leads into this next question that we talked about, how you market your grain and different things. Everybody has a little bit different approach to that. I think when we talked, you work with somebody who helps you with that. You said, Hey, I took a step back because it gets to be too much and it's a lot of work. I let somebody else handle that. Can you go into that, what that means, and explain that to the listeners?

[00:09:53.680] - Allen Pace
I have a group of guys that work for me on the marketing, and they're in it every day, and they're watching it every day. They're watching it every day, and they're coming up with different ways to market my grain. That's the reason I got them hired. I taught them when they came on the farm and wanted to do this for me. I said, I told Alex, I said, Alex, if you can make enough money to pay your way, you can stay. They're doing it. I have been graded on the different things that I do on the farm, I guess you can say, in marketing is where I have, okay, a C minus, okay? Instead of a A, maybe. So if you're not good at some, find somebody that is good at it to help you out with it. Then another thing that we do a lot on marketing and our grain is on the strawberries. We raise seed beans for two different companies. If you can't find more acres, find a way to make more money off the acres you got. We're in seed production and on raising soy beans with two different companies, and they're very good to work with and doing that, too.

[00:11:02.580] - Chris Griffin
Well, and I think when you're explaining that to the listeners, I don't think they realize, can you explain even just a few cents here and there, how it can make such a big difference on your bottom line for the year? It doesn't seem like a lot, but it's a big deal.

[00:11:16.350] - Allen Pace
Anything I can do to make 10 cents or 20 cents. All of a sudden, I guess I consider myself a mid-size farmer instead of a large farmer. But if all of a sudden you got 200,000 bushels of corn and you figure out a way to make an extra 20 cents. Just do the math there. That turns into a pretty good chunk of change. Anyway, we work on pennies a lot more than we do dollars in this business. The reason for it is we deal with so many bushels. And we get paid by the bushel. Then again, I'll get back being on the Soybean Association, Soybean Board. I've gone and talked to a lot of grade schools and a lot of kids and stuff, and a lot of people don't even understand what a bushel is. I go in, I tell them, Hey, a A bushel of soy beans is 60 pounds. A bushel of corn is 56 pounds. And the same way on acres, a lot of people, Well, you say you got 2700 acres. I just told you. How big is that? Well, the best way that I can describe an acre to anybody is a football field.

[00:12:15.080] - Allen Pace
You go out and look at a football field, you've got an acre. Don't look at the stands and all that, but just the football field itself. That's basically an acre right there. When you hear a guy that's farming 100 acres or 10,000 acres, think of it as in football fields. You don't know how much you got going there.

[00:12:32.540] - Chris Griffin
That's great for the listeners, especially the ones who aren't super familiar. That's great.

[00:12:36.800] - Allen Pace
I've been around even adults, and you're talking a foreign language. It's just the basic stuff that we don't even think about that people don't even understand anymore. I'll get back to talking with kids, and the first question outside of their mouth wouldn't even be a question. My granddaddy lives on a farm, but we're getting a generation. Now we're getting up to two generations that are moving agriculture. Everybody used to be involved with ag, raising their own food. Everybody's involved with ag because everybody eats. But everybody used to be involved with that because you had to raise your own food, and you didn't get to go to Chick-fil-A or different places and get a meal and it be there right out of the window. You raise your own food. You didn't go to the restaurant every day or something like that. We do now. But yes, it don't take long. You start talking to young kids, to realize how many generations we've gotten to move from the actual ones farming.

[00:13:34.340] - Chris Griffin
Well, before we started recording, that was something we talked about is people just don't understand. A lot of times, the convenience is there. They go to the grocery store. There's your meats and your vegetables and your corn and everything else and your bread. Then it's like, well, yeah, but you got to realize where that came from.

[00:13:56.680] - Allen Pace
Part of that, you're saying people don't understand. Part of that are fault. And that's one reason a podcast like this works. We can explain to them and show them where their food's coming from. Well, you're raising soy beans. I'm not eating soybeans. No, but that chicken that you just had for lunch or the steak you just had or the hogs you just... Or the pork chop you just had, had soybeans meal in it or corn in it to feed it. And that loaf of bread that you just ate, it's got wheat or the bowl of cereal you had this morning was made from the wheat that some farmer raised. And I'm just talking about the crops that I raise. I'm glad there's so many farmers that want to raise all different types of crops and stuff. Then again, I'm going to get back to being on the Soybean board. I've gotten to travel all over the United States. I've been in Canada, I've been in Mexico, I've been in Panama Canal, just representing a little bean called Soy beans. But it's amazing of all the different farmers and the different ways we do stuff and all the different people I've gotten to meet all across the United States that raise our food for us.

[00:15:00.000] - Allen Pace
It's really cool to talk to people out of your own area.

[00:15:03.480] - Chris Griffin
I think that's a great segue to the next question is, we talk about, I don't think people realize how much you guys put on the line each year and how many things are out of your control. I had somebody tell me one time, it's like, man, those guys, they've got a lot of guts and faith, obviously, because every year, they lay it all out. They come in, they pull off their operating line or whatever it is, but you don't know what the weather is going to be. You don't know what... Are there going to be trade wars? Are there going to be tariffs, or somebody going to quit buying something? When you're looking at that, right now, as far as market prices and how the economy is and all those conditions, how is that affecting you and what is that looking like for you guys? I would say for the rest of this year and on in the next year. I know that's a loaded question.

[00:15:52.740] - Allen Pace
That's a loaded question.

[00:15:53.680] - Chris Griffin
I know it is. I know it is. But if there's a man to ask, it's you.

[00:15:57.420] - Allen Pace
The kicker is there's no correct answer the question you just asked. But are tariffs affecting us? Yes. Has other countries been abusing us in the past on marketing and stuff? You bet. I realized we got to stand up. The tariff is something that is probably affecting the farmer right now worse than anything that's going on. But I'm hoping in the long run, it might be one of the best things that's ever happened.

[00:16:26.900] - Chris Griffin
Maybe a short term.

[00:16:27.960] - Allen Pace
I hope it's a short pain We're paying for a long term pain, hopefully. And I'll get back to our export market. A lot of people will get, Oh, I'm just going to take my beans from my corner to the grainery, and that's it. And they don't realize where it's going afterwards. Right now, China, who is one of our biggest buyers of soybeans, so far this year, they have bought zero bushels of soybeans.

[00:16:52.920] - Chris Griffin
I heard that yesterday.

[00:16:54.420] - Allen Pace
And we've already gone down to where last year, only one row a while, every four I was going to China, the soybeans that we planted. It used to be one row out of three going to China. The tariffs are playing a big factor in that right now. I probably step on toes here right now, but China is not our friend. I didn't really want to get into politics too much on this.

[00:17:19.300] - Chris Griffin
It's hard not to, almost.

[00:17:21.060] - Allen Pace
China is not our friend. Where they want to punish our administration we got most now is where you got the most folks, and that is from the rule, not just commerce, but from the rural community. But every administration is different. The one thing I will say about politics, I don't care who our president is, who our governor is, whoever it is, let's get behind them and support them and go from there because every one of them, and that's one of the thing on politics right now, if you're Republican, you're against whatever a Democrat wants. If you're a Democrat, you're against whatever a Republican wants. I just wish we all could meet back in the middle. Maybe some of this stuff that we're having trouble with right now, it's affecting our markets. We could have an answer for it and get on through and process it. But we don't want government subsidies of being a farmer. I want a free market because I can compete with anybody in the world.

[00:18:14.660] - Chris Griffin
Well, and I think this is where I get. Three or four years ago, if you'd asked me, I would have really had an opinion on it. I'm probably getting more frustrated now because obviously I know you guys personally, and when people, well, they're just waiting for their government panned out or whatever. I'm like, You guys don't understand. There's a lot more to it than that.

[00:18:36.780] - Allen Pace
We've got a country, and I'm so proud of our country. I'm glad to be from the United States. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. But we got a cheap food supply here. Our country is used to only spending less than 10% of their income on food. You'll go to a lot of other different countries, and they're spending 60, 70% of it just on food just to be able to survive. I love that in our country, that we're not having to do that, that we can go out and spend on other things, our kids or that car you wanted or a piece of furniture or whatever it is you want in your house instead of just worrying about where's my food coming from. We got one of the safest food suppliers there is. We have the EPA, we have the USDA, Food and Drug Administration. All these people that are policing us and making sure we're doing the right thing on our farm. I don't want to raise anything on my farm. I don't want to feed my family. I'm proud of that. Sometimes the regulations can be overbearing, and some of them are, we would say, totally useless.

[00:19:38.660] - Allen Pace
But then again, I realized how safe of a product we're producing. I think that's really awesome to be a part of that. Having safe food.

[00:19:46.400] - Chris Griffin
That's a great answer. Then another thing, I think it's a million-dollar question. Can you discuss where you take your crops? Can you sell them, or do you decide to store them and wait? Because I know some people hold them, wait later dates and wait. I think that's where your marketing comes in, too, and the right time to sell and hold.

[00:20:07.360] - Allen Pace
On our particular farm, we have a little over 200,000 bushels of storage. So yes, we are using storage. Typically during harvest is when your lowest prices will be. Right now, that's a balancing act. In this particular area here, most of the grains that are being produced in this area is going to hit the export market. Why is it going to hit the export market? It's because we got the rivers here. The rivers is the cheapest way to move a product from here to New Orleans to get on a bigger ship. A Panamax ship, and be moved further down the line. There is no locks and downs in the Mississippi River all the way from New Orleans to where we're at now, here in West Kentucky. So that makes the freight cheaper moving it down on the rivers. And I say a lot of it's export. We do have our chicken plants in the region. And then we're also starting to get certain areas around your Fulton and Hickman area for bourbon. It's even become in a bigger aspect. And you get up in central Kentucky, there's a lot of corn that is being moved to the bourbon factories.

[00:21:14.110] - Allen Pace
And bourbon is, believe it or not, one of the biggest ag industries there is in the state of Kentucky right now. Even though it's not maybe that much down here in West Kentucky.

[00:21:24.500] - Chris Griffin
We were talking earlier about weather and how that's out of your control. So this year, we had a ton of rainfall early, and then we were like, We don't need as much rain. And then we went to basically no rain. And there's a lot of different discussions on what corn was going to look like, what beans were going to look like, all these different things. What are you seeing and how has it affected the harvest this year?

[00:21:49.920] - Allen Pace
We went through one of the wettest springs I think I've ever been through. And then we went through one of the driest August periods we've ever gone through.

[00:21:59.560] - Chris Griffin
From one extreme to the other, basically.

[00:22:01.000] - Allen Pace
From one extreme to the other. Wow, whenever we control the weather, it'll be messed up more than what it is right now. You'll be wanting to play golf, and I'll be wanting a rain, or I'll be wanting to go to the light when you're wanting a rain. But anyway, yes, weather plays an important factor. All this other stuff that we do, if we don't have water, none of it works. What I'm seeing out in the field now, a lot of the spots normally with the yield monitors and the stuff that we got where we can record every spot in the fields right now, how it's yield and how the moisture is. Normally, the spots where we're seeing the most bushels now are in the lower spots is where we're seeing a lesser yield because they drowned it out. The yield monitors are almost backwards of what we're normally seeing going across the field. But anyway, there was probably more preventive planning taken in this area than I've ever seen before.

[00:22:59.460] - Chris Griffin
I saw that this year.

[00:23:00.380] - Allen Pace
Before. I think if you talk to your crop insurance guys, they'll tell you the same thing I'm saying right now. You'll have some farmers are going to have some of the best yields they ever had. Then they're going to have a farm that they couldn't even plant because it was so wet. It's bouncing all over the place. It's really wild listening, talking to different people about their yields and how it's yielding and almost the opposite to what it was in certain fields. Every farmer out there that's been across the field so many times, they know where the good spots are and the bad spots is. With the technology we got now and being able to map our fields and stuff, now we got the proof. We can say, Hey, I told you this was the good spot or that was the bad spot in the field. But then we take them yield maps and we'll use them for next year. The harvest right now, I'm already thinking about planting. We'll take the good spots in the field. That's where we'll up our population on planting our seed corn. The bad spots is where we'll lower our population planting seed corn.

[00:23:58.500] - Allen Pace
So planning for 26 is already started right now. We're going by different varieties, what's working this year, them varieties we'll use for next year. The seed companies are coming out with so much new stuff all the time. It's hard to use the same variety more over one or two years before there's something out there that's better. The research they're doing is really helping us out. A lot of the research they're doing is helping us out to fight this drought or wet conditions and stuff. Even though seed costs turned into be astronomical cost per acre, the research that they're putting into the seed, I'm telling you, we're having 200 plus bushel corn. I can tell you back in the '70s, when I was in FFA, I won a corn-corn contest for the 124 bushel corn and thought that was just awesome. That's how much it's changed in the last 50 years. To be able to see that change is unbelievable. I can't imagine what my grandad and my dad thought from the changes they saw in their time frame to what I'm seeing.

[00:25:03.400] - Chris Griffin
Well, I think that's where sometimes people who aren't around it, they don't realize, I think, how quickly. I mean, just technology has changed just in a short period of time. Things just move a lot quicker now. I mean, technology changes a lot faster. Even for you guys, you're talking about your seed that is either more heat-tolerant or whatever that is, drought-tolerant. So, yes, you pay more it, but hopefully it withstands some things and that yield is higher. Hopefully, you hope it is, but we'll see.

[00:25:36.980] - Allen Pace
We get through it and we see the yields, the equipment's gone up, but all the stuff that we're doing-

[00:25:42.540] - Chris Griffin
The equipment's like a darn. It's like a supercomputer now, so basically. Oh, yeah.

[00:25:45.980] - Allen Pace
But we're doing more with a cell phone now than what we used to do 50 years ago with any piece of equipment that was on the farm. It's unbelievable. In this podcast we're doing today, somebody asked me the other day, What's the most important piece of equipment on your farm? I had to think there a minute, and I said, it's communication. I said, we depend on our phones to talk the buyer inputs, to talk to my guys. We were talking about in marketing, to talk with the people that are working for me, the safety factor of having it, being in touch with my family and stuff. But anyway, it's hard to believe a little cell phone came so important to everybody's life, not just the farmers. But anyway, so sometimes I like to throw it in the creek, too.

[00:26:33.220] - Chris Griffin
I'm there with you sometimes.

[00:26:34.220] - Allen Pace
I think everybody would agree with me unless you're a 16-year-old.

[00:26:38.380] - Chris Griffin
I know.

[00:26:39.080] - Chris Griffin
You want to get rid of it, then if you don't have it for a day, you're like, man, I really need my phone back. I It did it.

[00:26:45.900] - Allen Pace
More likely, the people listening to this podcast are probably listening to it on their cell phone. Anyway, it's just amazing how the technology has changed and some of the stuff that we're using, and some of the stuff that we take for granted now. It's unbelievable.

[00:27:00.380] - Chris Griffin
Well, that actually led into this question. Shea wrote this one, and it was basically, as you're looking 5, 10 years down the road, what do you see on the horizon, I think, for your operation, do you see any new technology? What are you thinking is going to happen here in the next 5 to 10 years?

[00:27:23.840] - Allen Pace
Oh, wow. That's another loaded question. I like the way you all load these questions.

[00:27:27.580] - Chris Griffin
Hey, listen, Shea. Shea comes up with these. These aren't my questions.

[00:27:30.170] - Allen Pace
Shea, maybe we need to have a one-on-one with Shea here after we get done. I know. Wow. I don't know if I know the answer to that, but I know if you sit still, you'll get left behind. I think we all need to be aware of what's coming down the pipeline and figuring out what's the next best thing that works. We'll get back to technology. If it doesn't have a way that it pays for itself on my farm, it's nothing more than a toy then. Is there going to be stuff like drones coming on? Yes, I can see that being a big part. I can see planner technology even changing more than what it has now. Whether we like it or not, electric is coming on more stuff than I don't see having an electric tractor in 5 to 10 years at all, but I can see maybe having a hybrid tractor. But 20 years down the road or 50 years down the road, I can see, well, it's already here. Probably be that long. The tractors out in the field won't have drivers on them.

[00:28:32.240] - Chris Griffin
I've seen some videos of that.

[00:28:35.880] - Allen Pace
That technology is already here, but I think the only thing that's holding it back right now is the liability issues. What happens if it runs off in the ditch or runs in the road or something? Who's responsible there. I think a lot of this technology, I think, will be one of the big things, and I think it's going to have to come along because labor is getting so hard to find people that want to get out and do what we do right now and that can come out and help us. But anyway, we need to learn to brace it, but also realize that some of the stuff we've been doing for the last few years still might be the best way of doing it, too.

[00:29:12.080] - Chris Griffin
Would you, as an operation, do you consider expanding in a more acreage and possibly different crops than what you have now, or are you going to stick with that, you think?

[00:29:22.660] - Allen Pace
I've been asked before. Then again, I'm going to go with this Soybean board. What's the perfect size farm? How How many acres you need to have to be a perfect size farm? This is the answer I get. The perfect size farm is a profitable one. That's a perfect answer. The one that's making a profit. It could be 10 acres and raising tomatoes and making a profit. It could be 10,000 acres and making a good profit. I'm going to say if you're comfortable, you like what you're doing, you can make a profit and make a living off of it, that's the perfect size farm.

[00:29:53.160] - Chris Griffin
Well, that was actually my very last question for you was the best advice you could give somebody who's wanting to get in a farming, and what are some things you've learned in the past that you still hang on to now? One of them, you just said, you sit still, you get left behind. My dad used to say something very similar to that.

[00:30:09.080] - Allen Pace
I think if you're wanting to get in the farming, which I think is very tough to get you a mentor or somebody that is in the farming, somebody that's willing to talk to you, somebody that'll put you under the wing and show you the ropes and show you, hey, I learned this. Don't do this. That's the wrong way of doing it. Like I said, there's a thousand right ways, and most of them, there's only one wrong way. People might disagree with me there. But anyway, find you a mentor, get involved with them, let them show you and see if you'd like doing what we're doing. I want young people to be involved. I want people to come out and ride the combine with me and see what it's like, see what the fun part of it. I also want to tell them, hey, I just spent $850 an acre to produce this corn crop. We were talking about faith and gambling. I'm going to lean more on my faith in combining or in combining and farming. I'm going to lean more on my faith, but we are pretty big gamblers also. That might be a way to end this.

[00:31:18.480] - Chris Griffin
But anyway, I'm just telling you. It's pretty wild. You go home and pray at night thinking, Hey, I hope please don't let it rain or please don't let it rain. Sometimes I think farmers are the hardest person to satisfy, too, at times, too. That's when my wife might agree with me on that statement, too.

[00:31:40.100] - Chris Griffin
I appreciate when I switched roles here. Obviously, we've talked my mom worked with your wife in the back of schools, but we didn't know each other personally. The very first time I ever came out there, you said, hey, when you're going to come hop in the combine with me? I've never been in one. That's the plan next is after this podcast at some point in the next couple of weeks to do that. I think just you offering people that opportunity, I think it opens their eyes up to certain things. You're always very open and welcome and wanting to teach people, and we appreciate that.

[00:32:11.660] - Allen Pace
When you can see it visually, it means a whole lot more than just you and me talking about it. When somebody comes out there and they get to see what we're actually doing, I think that's the best way to help spread the word of agriculture around and see what we're actually doing.

[00:32:24.340] - Chris Griffin
Well, I think that's a perfect way to end it right there. Alan, we really, really appreciate you coming. I know you're busy, and it's a busy time of the year, but I think it's valuable and it's important for people to listen to our podcast and listen to people like you and your input and insight. We appreciate having you on to the show today. As always, we'll be back. Thanks for joining us on Back to your Roots.

[00:32:44.980] - Allen Pace
Well, thank you.

[00:32:45.840] - Chris Griffin
Thanks for tuning in to Back to your Roots, where we dish the dirt on all things AG. Be sure to never miss an episode by following and subscribing. While there, leave us a review about what you want to hear next. Stay in the know between episodes by following us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok. For more resources, go to our website at rivervalleyagcredit.com.