D.O.G.E. v USDA (WHAT CHANGES WILL THEY RECOMMEND AND HOW WILL IT IMPACT FARMERS)

I've watched Elon Musk for years and how he thinks about efficiencies in business.  These are some of my thoughts on how DOGE (The Department Of Government Efficiency) might recommend changing the USDA and how these changes might impact those of us who farm.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Just Say hey, the podcast podcast where
we talk about the things thatmatter to small farms.
Have you been paying attentionto the DOJ, the Department of
Government Efficiency?
Well, you know you read a lotabout and you're reading good
and bad from both sides of theaisle.
No matter which way you align,left or right, I don't think it
matters.
I'm not sure there's a lot tobe against in its concept.

(00:24):
Now, you might disagree withsome of their decisions and some
of what they're going torelease.
Now that should be open andthere should be a healthy public
debate on this.
But from its concept, it's notfunded by taxpayer dollars.
It has a definitive expirationdate.
They have said that this willexpire.
This Department of GovernmentEfficiency will expire on July

(00:46):
4th 2026.
Oddly enough or oddly enough,coincidentally or not
coincidentally 250th anniversaryof our country waste, fraud and
abuse.
It's not the first of its kind.
There have been several ofthese commissions or panels or

(01:07):
advisory organizations over theyears.
There are several nonprofitorganizations that do the same
thing.
I think they're just putting avery public face on it and, from
what I understand, all they aredoing, all they can do.
They have no governmental power.
They can just makerecommendations to the executive
and legislative branches ofgovernment, as well as making it

(01:29):
public the waste and fraud andabuse that they see in their
investigations.
So, with that said, they aregoing to take big swings at
releasing information, trying tolook for inefficiencies.
And I want to talk about whatthis is going to mean, or what
this could potentially mean, forguys like us out in the field
farming.
What does this mean for theUnited States Department of

(01:51):
Agriculture?
And I think what we're going tosee, at least in my opinion.
I think you're going to see atleast attempts to realign
certain agencies within the USDA.
I think you're going to seesome budgetary shifts.
I also think that there's goingto be some big changes for the

(02:12):
agricultural community, some ofthem good, some of them not so
much.
Let's get into it.
Welcome to Just Say hey thepodcast where we talk about what
matters to small farms, whetherit's business, marketing,
agronomy, equipment, livestockhealth.
If it matters to small farms,we'll probably talk about it
here.
So let's get into it, All right.
So I think when you look at theUnited States, when the USDA's

(02:35):
budget I think that's a goodplace to start here I mean when
you look at their budget for thefiscal year of 2024 was $228
billion.
Well, you know, that soundslike a whole heck of a lot of
money and it is.
But of that $228 billion andthis is coming from the USDA's

(02:57):
website, this is not, you know,not, this comes right from them
that 71% of that budgetno-transcript.
So 71%.

(03:27):
So of that $228 billion, $162billion is spent on SNAP, the
supplemental nutrition.
I think that when the firstrecommendations regarding the
USDA come out, that one of thethings they'll do is they'll try
to realign this agency.
They'll make the recommendation.
This agency doesn't need to beunder agriculture.
This is probably a health andhuman services, because it feeds
SNAP.
If you're not familiar withwhat it is, it's basically the

(03:48):
old food stamps program.
You get a, I guess I mean, Idon't know but you get a card
and they put money on this cardthat you can go buy approved
foods and supplies with, anyway.
So 162 billion gets spent onthis program and that's an
approximate number.
That's 71% of $228 billion.
So, of that $228 billion, only$66 billion gets spent on all

(04:15):
the other programs inagriculture.
So you know, I think they'regoing to say this is better.
You know, we've got a wholeadministration for making sure
this stuff gets put out.
We already have this in severalof the health and human
services departments, so Iwouldn't be surprised if they
try to realign that agency,which, for the farmer, you know,
I think that my personalopinion, that's a good thing

(04:38):
because it allows the USDA tofocus on, you know, what it's
supposed to, which isagriculture.
Now, part of that budget isforestry.
5% of the USDA budget is spenton forestry, 13% is on
conservation and commodity, sothat's $29 billion, almost $30

(05:00):
billion, and then other expensesare 12%, so there's $12.7
billion or $27.4 billion spenton other things like rural
development, research.
I mean, I can read some of them.
I guess you can guess at whatthey do, but I'm not even sure

(05:35):
what they do.
So here's a list of theagencies You've got the
Agricultural Marketing Service,the Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service service, theanimal and plant health
inspection service, theagricultural research service,
economic research service,foreign agricultural service,

(05:55):
food and nutrition service,which is probably I would assume
that the SNAP program is underthat food and nutrition service.
Fpac business center no idea.
The forest service, the FarmService Agency we deal with them
.
Now most communities andcounties and agricultural places
have an FSA office.
The National Institute of Foodand Agriculture, the National
Resources Conservation Service,the Rural Business Cooperative

(06:34):
Service, the Rural Development,rural Housing Service, risk
Management Agency and the RuralUtility Service.
That's an awful lot to putunder.
You know one agency and I wouldthink that when you see these
guys and these people goingthrough Doge and looking for
inefficiencies, I think you'regoing to find where they're
going to see, and I'm talkingspecifically about the USDA, one

(06:55):
department in the governmentand all these agencies fall
under there.
Part of the conversation thathas been being that has been had
is about the bloat in thebureaucracy and if you farm and
you have to report your acreageto the FSA, you probably see it.

(07:18):
And when you go into thatoffice, I mean our local office.
Great people, I mean reallygood people.
I like dealing with them.
They're nice, they're friendly,but at the end of the day I'm
not their customer.
The bureaucracy has become sobloated that I am not their
customer.
Their customer is their bossand the bureaucracy.
When I ask them questions,they're really trying to answer

(07:43):
their problem, which is fillingout the paperwork properly to
keep the bureaucracy cranking,not solve real world problems.
And that is no fault of thelocal guys in the office.
That is the fault of poorleadership, poor management at
the higher levels of the FSA, ofthe FSA.
And they can like that I saythis or they can not like what

(08:05):
I'm saying, but it's absolutetruth.
When you walk into that officeyou are not the customer.
I mean that's just poorleadership.
But we deal with them andthey're good folks.
I mean they really are.
The guys in our local officeanyway have dealt with two
counties office.
We farm in two differentcounties.
Fantastic people, I mean justgood, good, family people.

(08:25):
They, they're part of thecommunity, you know.
But when you deal with theother agencies, if you ever have
to and I've only had of thiswhole list of agencies, I've
never had to the only two I'vedealt with are the food, uh, the
farm service agency and, uh, wehad a couple of meetings with
the NRCS guys and and everybodygets all up in arms about

(08:46):
conservation.
If you're a farmer, we want tobe conservationists, we really
do.
I mean I want this ground to beproductive and healthy and, you
know, grow crops for decades tocome.
I don't want to damage ourwater supply, I don't want to
damage the ground.
Now, you know an NRCS is.
I mean, they're the.

(09:07):
You know, if you read off,they're the National Natural
Resources Conservation Service.
You want to talk about a bloatedbureaucracy that really does
not care about the local farmer?
Go talk to those guys once.
And I'm the local people, goodpeople, good people.
The bureaucracy is sooverburdensome that you can't

(09:28):
get anything done.
I mean, we talked to them aboutbuilding a building, a storage
building, and to get a buildingbuilt, which you know in the
commercial market, if I walkedout and got a contractor, you're
talking about three weeks toget it.
You know, get a site prep andmaybe another, oh, couple of

(09:49):
months to do construction andfinish work and everything like
that.
So you know, let's say, on theoutside, you're six months on
the outside to deal with them.
You're talking about amulti-year project to build a
simple hay storage barn.
I mean, or you know, we hadtalked to them once about, I
think we had had initialdiscussions about a hay storage

(10:11):
barn and another one about, oh,cattle, we had talked about
doing a covered cattle barn andit was, I mean, insane

(10:44):
regulations.
Some of them, and I'm sure someof those regulations are good.
I really am.
I mean, I'm not completelyagainst regulations because
people will take advantage anddo stupid things, things and we
want it, we do.
If you've read the history ofthe dust bowl, the market and
farmers, through bad farmingtechniques and things like that,
created the dust bowl.
I mean it was a horrible event,felt all across the country.
But there's a fine line betweenprotecting ourselves and making
the bureaucracy so cumbersomethat nothing gets done and

(11:05):
nothing gets done at a hugeexpense, not only the expense to
the benefits to the economythat small farms could provide,
but the fact that nothing gotdone and we, the people, paid a
ton of money for nothing to getdone.
So you know, I think you'regoing to see, I would think that

(11:31):
natural places to look would bethings like streamlining and
again, fsa tiny portion dealingwith farmers, less than 1% of
the USDA budget.
I mean the Rural UtilityService don't we have a
Department of Energy?
Rural Housing Service don't wehave a Department of Housing?
Rural Development?
A lot of these things that I'mseeing here are duplicated other

(11:57):
places within departments.
So when you have an agency, youhave the staff of somebody has
to be the head of the agency andthen you have to have
management all the way down towhere you get to the people that
actually do the work.
I've been involved inbusinesses before where we have

(12:17):
bloated management structures,you know, and not enough people
actually doing the work, andthat's a bad place to be,
because the salaries, theoverhead, all of those things
become almost unmanageable.
So what do you do in business?
Well, you cut down themanagement structure and focus
on the people doing the work,because they're the people that
are making the company money Inthe government.

(12:42):
What do you do?
Well, we need more people toput more money at it.
I mean, you know I think Italked about it a couple of
weeks ago on a podcast was theUSDA office has enough room for
7,500 employees to be there on adaily basis, but there's only

(13:04):
four to 500 that actually workthere.
So what do we do with all thatreal estate?
What do we do with the buildingmaintenance, with the heating
and cooling and all of thesethings that happen?
And I know that in the grandscope of having a $36.5 trillion
debt and a budget that we haveto borrow money to pay for stuff

(13:27):
, I know running the airconditioner in a building is
small potatoes big sweepingchanges we do, but actually
being able to get big, sweepingchanges done when everybody's
infighting and the politicianscan't agree on anything.
Add your pennies up.

(13:51):
They eventually get to dollars.
New dollars get to.
You know, we have to startsomewhere.
We have to start cutting thisbudget and we have to make.
In my opinion, having lessregulations for businesses to
follow makes it easier.
I mean, if I talked to a guythe other day who is looking to
start a small food business andyou know and I'll say we have,

(14:15):
we have.
The regulations on starting afood business are insane.
They are so far out of therealm of most people's ability
to start that they don't eventry.
Yet we have a very I mean, yousee people talking about it all

(14:36):
the time.
The food products in thiscountry are not good for us, but
our bureaucracy has made it soonly the big guys can get into
the food business.
Now you're going to say, ohwell, you can start a cottage
industry.
Okay, well, when you start acottage industry, at some point
you move beyond.
Hopefully, your business growsand you move beyond the cottage

(14:58):
size, at which point you havenot made enough money to pay to
overcome the regulatory state.
So we need to do something tochange the regulations and the
rules to allow small business togrow, to encourage competition,
to encourage people to producefood that's good for us and

(15:22):
tastes good and is economicallyand ecologically friendly.
The market will do that.
Let small businesses loose andtry to do that when you have.
You know this guy I was talkingto a good friend of mine.
He wants to start this and it'sa good thing and you know his
products are really good.
I mean, realistically, he'sgoing to fight so much red tape

(15:46):
if he ever wants to take thisbeyond just being, you know, a
hobby that makes a little bit ofmoney for him to grow that into
a business.
The regulatory state has justbecome.
I mean, you can't tackle it asan individual guy.
Then you have to go getinvestors and then you have, you
know, by the time you getthrough you can't do it and I

(16:08):
feel for those people becauseI've been one of them.
You know you can't get past theregulations to get anything
done, you know.
So we get back into this, intothat regulatory state.
And we talked about when I'm, inthe beginning, talked about the
Supreme Court decisions that Ithink are impactful In the sense

(16:28):
that so there was.
One was Virginia versus the EPAand the other was the Chevron
deference ruling.
And the Chevron deferenceruling got I think it it was
June of this year and Virginiaversus the EPA.
What it basically said was, inmy understanding, that

(16:50):
bureaucratic rules, so rules tosupport the bureaucracy of an
agency don't get treated as law.
You can't assume that they arelaw and the bureaucracy can't
enforce them as law.
I mean, I think, the actual youknow the way that they talk

(17:11):
about it if you look at theChevron deferences and this is a
summary the Chevron doctrine orChevron deference was a legal
precedent that required courtsto defer to federal agency
interpretations of vaguestatutes.
So the Supreme Court overturnedthe Chevron Deference rule and
said that now the judge in anygiven case can make the

(17:35):
interpretation of the statute,that the EPA doesn't get to
determine the law just becauseof the way they interpret it.
And I think it provides a forsmall business.
It opens up a lot ofopportunities and I'm not
talking about, you know, let'sgo kill the environment, that is

(17:57):
not it and have even a chanceof success because they can't
out out regulate or, you know,out form it.
They can't fill out all theforms to deal with the
regulations.
So regulations are supposed tobe there to protect we the

(18:21):
people, protect the environment,protect all of these, you know,
protect us as a society.
What they end up doing isregulating out, making it
impossible for the small guy tocompete with the large
megacorporations, which then youstart to have monopolies or

(18:44):
companies coming close tomonopoly status, to monopoly
status.
Go look at the food industryand look at the brands, look at
whatever brand of food you wantto, and you can probably trace
it back to four or maybe fivemajor food conglomerates.
And what I think these rulingswill hopefully do is open the

(19:08):
playing field up, let the littleguy compete with these big guys
and hopefully we end up withbetter products, better for us
products.
So, as farmers, what is thisgoing to mean?
So you know, I'm always a bigfan of, you know, people ask me
my stance on government and I ama liberty guy.
I don't mean I'm a wacko hidingout in the woods with, you know

(19:31):
, a bunch of pinto beans.
I think the government shouldbe absolutely as small as
possible and that we should havemore liberty.
And it's always the tradeoffsafety versus freedom, versus
freedom, and I will almostalways come down on the side of
freedom.
You know, should we be safe asa people or should we be free?

(19:58):
And I will almost always comedown on being free and my
responsibility to provide safetythrough good decisions, through
, you know, those type of youknow, through good decisions and
being aware and being up, youknow, trying to keep you know,
make sure my information iscoming from good places and all
of these things.
But you know, when we look atthe regulatory state, it has

(20:19):
become problematic and I thinkwe as farmers, those of us who
raise a crop, who that is not acommodity crop.
Now, I want to be clear aboutthat.
You know there is, there arecommodity crops corn, soybeans,
wheat, you know any of thegrains like that.
There are commodities, whichmeans they're.

(20:40):
The market sets a price forthem.
You want to go sell corn?
You call there's a, there's aChicago board of trade, you can.
You know, you look up, youmight get a little bit more here
or there, depending ontransportation and other things
like that, but it's a commodity.
The market goes up and goesdown.
For those of us in the farmingcommunity who produce a crop

(21:04):
that is not a commodity, we haveto go out and sell it.
There's not a guaranteed market.
There is not, and a commodityisn't 100% guaranteed market,
but it's.
You know, if you have corn, youcan sell it.
If you are selling a productthat is not a commodity crop,
you have much more impetus.
You've got to be a salesman,you have to be able to market,

(21:26):
you have to be able to do thesethings and I think, looking at
the regulatory changes, or thepotential for regulatory changes
, and between now and the timewe actually start seeing this
stuff happen, I think you'regoing to hear me say the word
potential, because we don't know.
We don't know what's coming.

(21:46):
We can just look at what we seein the news and look at what we
see at different media sourcesand look at the.
You know the things that arebeing said by these people who
are going to be, you know,putting forth their ideas for
reduction.
Elon Musk change companies, buycompanies and change their

(22:12):
operating.
So you know you get a feel forthe types of things that he's
going to set forth.
He's going to say look, we'vegot a lot of duplicate overhead
here.
We've got a lot of duplicatedcosts.
We've got duplicated jobs.
A lot of this can be refined.
Move, agencies merge and youhave to deal within what's legal

(22:35):
.
So you can't just shut anagency down because agency was
created by Congress.
It probably has to be removedby an act of Congress and that
will be tough.
But the idea of getting rid ofa lot of unnecessary regulations
will decrease the power ofthese regulatory agencies and

(22:58):
the biggest part is decrease thecomplexity and the I'm looking
for the word the cumbersomeness,the, you know, unencumber
people to follow the guidelines.
Hey, we don't want to pourpoison into the water stream.
That's pretty obvious.
We all want to drink water.
So if we do that, that's bad,you know.

(23:19):
Allow people to use some goodjudgment, but also allow people
and small businesses to makestrides in competition against
major food conglomerates.
I think if you look at, you knowwho knows whether he gets
approved or not RFK Jr.
If you know if he gets approvedas the secretary of HHS, the,

(23:42):
you know, I think he's going tolook at a lot of these things,
trying to get healthier foods inthe hands of the average
American.
You know, can we buy lessprocessed foods?
Less processed, you know, lessprocessed foods is going to be
better for us.
I mean, I think you look at thenew secretary of agriculture,

(24:03):
the woman.
I think her name is Brooke.
I should have her name on thetop of my head Brooke Rollins,
that's what I thought it wasFrom what I've read about her.
She does not have a strongagricultural background.
What she does have is a strongfinancial and organizational

(24:25):
background, and I think thereason he's asked for her to be
put in place and I say he,president-elect Trump, the
reason I believe he's putsomebody like that in the USDA
is to root out some of the largefood conglomerates from having
power in that organization,having power in that

(24:47):
organization.
Look at some of the largecompanies from having as much
power and look at, you know,have somebody who's going to be
receptive to big, sweepingchanges in the agencies.
So, you know, I think that's whywe're seeing all of these moves
and there's a, there is a sensein the people I talk to on a

(25:10):
daily basis that we need change.
I think that goes across partylines.
I don't know anybody that sayswe need more government and you
know I haven't met anybody thatsays, you know, I think the
federal government should bebigger.
I just don't see that.
I don't see that.

(25:31):
Maybe I just run in the wrongcircles.
But I think keeping an eye onthis is really important for us
as farmers, because we are in avery regulated industry and it's
one of the rare regulatedindustries where small guys
still have to work a lot.
You know, we farm, we havethings we have to do.

(25:52):
We have to certify our acresevery year, we have to go in,
and you know there's hoops wehave to jump through.
And keeping an eye on what'sgoing on with these potential
changes is important becausethey have the opportunity to, or
they have.
You know, there's the chancethat these changes could provide

(26:15):
big opportunity to smallfarmers.
Or what's worse is that they'regoing to provide big changes
that we're not prepared to dealwith.
So we have to stay vigilant inmaking sure we're reading a lot,
we're talking to people.
We're, you know, figuring outwhat the truth is coming out,
which is getting harder andharder to do.

(26:37):
So anyway, I hope you enjoyedthis podcast.
There's a lot to unpack hereand it is a very complicated
subject, and staying focused onwhat's important to the small
farmers is well, it's important.
So with that that, I'll let yougo.
Y'all have a wonderful rest ofyour week.
I apologize for not getting thepodcast up last week, um got a
bunch of a bunch of peopleasking why I didn't do it.

(26:58):
It was thank, it was a longthanksgiving day, thanksgiving
weekend, and I just got lazyafter a hard season.
I just took the day off.
So anyway, y'all have a blessedday.