Ag Tribes Report: John Deere focus of Anti-DEI campaign, Corn headed to zero? Corey Hillebo 7/11/24

About this episode

Vance co-hosts the Ag Tribes Report with Corey Hillebo of the Farm for Profit podcast, opening with the week's biggest ag story: Robby Starbuck's viral campaign exposing John Deere's DEI programs, which followed on the heels of Deere's botched "Chief Tractor Officer" hire (a recent grad with no real tractor experience) and a 6,000-person layoff tied partly to Mexico production moves. Hillebo is personally angry about DEI content reaching his young kids; Vance is more measured, appreciating the pushback on corporate DEI but explicitly flagging the danger of mob dynamics — "this mob will eventually turn on me" — even when the mob currently agrees with him. They pivot to grain markets: corn prices hitting 2020-era lows while input costs remain far above 2020 levels, driven partly by farmers who held 2023 crop hoping for higher prices and are now stuck holding both years' grain in storage as 2024 comes in strong. Equipment sales (combines down 31%, two-wheel-drive tractors down 16.5%) are falling as farmers shed liquid assets first, while land values stay stubbornly high, propped up by 1031 exchanges, private equity, and hedge fund demand for land as an inflation hedge (Vance plugs Bitcoin as the "only other" comparably scarce asset). In the Peter Thiel paradox segment, Hillebo argues ag culture overly romanticizes the traditional farm family (wife in the kitchen, kids showing pigs) and should normalize non-traditional arrangements like his own (wife is a town nurse, kids don't live on the farm) — Vance scores it a modest 5.5/10, noting Hillebo backed off his originally planned, riskier John Deere-focused paradox. The episode closes with a Legacy Interviews-style nostalgia question about parents' social lives, a Follow Friday shoutout to comedic ag creator "Randy the Farmer" (Field Rows), and a plug for the Fountain app's Bitcoin micro-tipping for podcasts.

“I'm also very, very wary of people generating mobs... this mob will eventually turn on me. So I have mixed feelings about this. I'm glad to see companies being forced to reconcile with the public... but I'm also very, very wary of people generating mobs.”

“AG did feel like they kind of got their back turned on them by John Deere. I think John Deere just kind of bait and switched and didn't deliver.”

“Buy land and wait, it'll always go up. Land is a store of wealth... it's a great hard asset that you can own... but it's not a commodity. They're not making any more of that.”

Key moments

• early ~5-15%: Robby Starbuck's viral campaign forces John Deere to reckon publicly with its DEI spending and training programs, layered onto Deere's botched Chief Tractor Officer hire and 6,000-person layoffs tied to Mexico production moves.
• Vance explicitly names mob dynamics as dangerous even when currently aligned with his own views — "this mob will eventually turn on me."
• middle ~45-55%: Grain price collapse to 2020-era lows amid elevated input costs; farmers holding both 2023 and 2024 crop in storage, creating a supply glut.
• middle ~58-65%: Equipment sales crash (combines -31%, 2WD tractors -16.5%) as the most liquid farm asset gets shed first, while land prices stay high — driven by 1031 exchange tax deferrals, private equity, and hedge fund inflation-hedge demand.
• Hillebo's Peter Thiel paradox — ag culture over-romanticizes the traditional farm family and should normalize non-traditional household arrangements; scored 5.5/10 by Vance.