This is what it's all about... Couldn't have said it better!

Your competitor can copy your product. They can match your price. They can probably copy your technology. What’s much harder to copy is how it feels to do business with you. That’s one of the reasons I wanted Horst Schulze at #FARMCON. Horst helped build The Ritz-Carlton around the idea that exceptional service shouldn’t depend on whether you happened to get a great employee that day. It should be trained, expected and built into the culture of the company. I think agriculture has a huge opportunity here. What if doing business with your farm, dealership, lender, ag retailer or company was noticeably easier than doing business with anyone else? Faster answers. Fewer headaches. Better follow-through. People who actually know the customer. Problems handled without five phone calls. Products will keep getting copied. Technology will keep changing. Price will always be competitive. But becoming the company customers never want to leave is a very different kind of moat. That’s the type of thinking I want us bringing back into agriculture at FARMCON. farmcon.com/

Every cost increase creates a loser. It can also create a winner. Higher #diesel prices hurt trucking economics. That can push freight toward #rail. The better question isn’t only: Who gets squeezed? It’s: Who gains volume because somebody else got squeezed? Capital follows the new advantage.

#Agriculture has become incredibly good at producing more. Maybe the next opportunity is figuring out how to make what we already produce worth more. That is one of the reasons I wanted Mike Cessario, founder of Liquid Death, at #FARMCON. He took one of the most commoditized products on earth — water — and built a company valued at more than $1 billion around it. He didn’t invent better water. He changed the story. The packaging. The customer experience. The identity around the product. People willingly pay a premium for something they could essentially get almost anywhere. I think there’s a huge lesson there for agriculture. For generations, our default answer has been: Grow another five bushels. Farm another 500 acres. Buy another machine. Become more efficient. All important. But there’s another side of the equation. Can we find a better customer? Create a differentiated product? Build a brand? Change the packaging? Own more of the relationship? Capture more of the value between the farm gate and the consumer? If somebody can differentiate water, I have a hard time believing every bushel, pound or acre coming out of agriculture has to remain anonymous. That is exactly why #FARMCON isn’t built only around agricultural speakers. Sometimes the idea that changes your business comes from someone who has never farmed an acre. farmcon.com/

Take away #farm subsidies, and the problem probably doesn’t stop with the farmer... More credit, more last-minute buying, and more working-capital risk mean financial stress can move quickly through the entire ag supply chain. David Elser of UPL explains what they’re seeing from the supplier side. Listen to the entire FARMCON Podcast --->>> vantrumpreport.com/2026/10/2…

I’ve become more and more convinced through the years that “just farming more acres” is no longer a complete business plan. The farm can still be the core asset. But if the entire family’s income depends on "production #agriculture" being profitable every year, the business may simply be too exposed. I think the stronger model is a farm surrounded by additional cash-flow engines — businesses, services, livestock, energy, specialty production, trucking, direct-to-consumer, whatever fits the family’s skills and assets. The goal isn’t to get distracted from farming. The goal is to make sure one bad cycle in farming doesn’t dictate every decision the family has to make. The question may no longer be, “How do we farm more?” Instead, it should be... “What else can we build around the farm that helps generate more cash-flow?”

Our "cost-of-production" doesn't obligate the market to pay us more. We're competing in global commodity markets against operations with different land costs, labor expenses, regulations, and production efficiencies. Just because producing something costs us more doesn't mean the market owes us a higher price. That reality is another reason I believe farm families need to consider additional sources of revenue—and why we bring perspectives from outside traditional agriculture into #FARMCON. You can listen to the entire FARMCON Podcast -->> vantrumpreport.com/2026/10/1…

Somebody in your family made a decision that changed everything! Maybe they left another country. Maybe they moved west. Maybe they sold everything and started farming somewhere new. Keep in mind, every family's history includes someone who made an incredibly difficult decision because the future required something different. Maybe that decision to make a "CHANGE" in our farm is now on our doorstep? We shouldn't assume our generation will simply be exempt from making those decisions. "Pick change before change picks you." That's part of the thinking we want to encourage at #FARMCON: recognizing change and opportunity before circumstances force your hand. You can listen to the entire FARMCON Podcast -->> vantrumpreport.com/2026/10/1…

$170 million in sales. Only $615,000 of outside equity. That’s the number from the JonnyPops story that caught my attention. Plenty of companies know how to grow when somebody keeps handing them capital. Far fewer learn how to make the business finance itself. #JonnyPops started with about $4,000, tested the product cheaply, rented production space, learned what customers wanted, and only then began committing serious capital. Later, they did something most food startups are told not to do. They bought manufacturing. The reason wasn’t ego. Contract manufacturers had become the constraint. Outsourcing limited quality, product differentiation and production capacity, so the company decided to own the bottleneck. Today the company reportedly generates more than $170 million in annual sales after raising only $615,000 of outside equity, relying largely on reinvested cash flow to fund the business. There are two lessons in that. Don’t own everything just because you can. And: Own the thing that becomes strategically necessary when it starts limiting your growth. That’s capital allocation!

“You don’t want to allow yourself to become comfortable being a big fish in a small pond.” Local success can become its own trap. If everyone around you tells you what you want to hear, your standards can quietly stop moving. I call it the "ass-kissing echo chamber" — being surrounded by people who validate you instead of challenging you. You can have world-class talent, but if you are swimming in the wrong pool, your opportunities and perspectives can become severely capped. That’s why I keep telling my kids to push themselves into rooms where they are the least successful ones in there. Those are the rooms that change what you see, what you think is possible, and what you do next. Big fish don’t keep growing in small ponds. That’s one of the reasons I started #FARMCON; I wanted to be around people who are much more successful than myself, people who will push me and challenge my thoughts... #grinding, #networking, #perspective

A lot of #founders and #farmers don’t have a succession problem. They have an identity problem. The business becomes who they are. That’s why stepping back feels so hard. But #legacy is not staying in the chair forever. Legacy is building something strong enough to run without you.

70% equity in your operation—and still struggling to finance the next crop. Jake Espenmiller joined me on today’s #FARMCON podcast and described that exact situation: producers with substantial equity, depleted cash reserves, and increasingly limited financing options. What concerns me is how easily rising land values can obscure that pressure. The balance sheet still looks strong, but the business has less room to maneuver. As Jake explains, that pressure can also travel. When producers depend on seed, fertilizer, and chemical suppliers to finance the crop, those suppliers take on more credit exposure. One question I think deserves more attention: How much financial flexibility does your operation actually have? Listen to the full FARMCON Podcast -->> vantrumpreport.com/2026/10/0…

#Renewable diesel may matter more for energy security than for emissions right now. Why? It can use: existing engines existing pipelines existing tanks existing fueling systems That matters in a diesel shortage. The bigger agricultural question: Does energy security become the next major source of crop demand?

My biggest concern for #agriculture isn’t a shortage of investment opportunities. It’s the upcoming competition for investment dollars. Treasuries yield ~5%. AI needs enormous capital. Energy and infrastructure are expanding. Capital has choices. The next question for ag isn’t simply: “Does this investment make money?” It’s: “Does it earn enough to beat the alternatives?” Capital has no loyalty!

If you sell into #agriculture, the most valuable thing you can know is not what your best customers bought last year. It’s what they’re getting ready to do next. Where are they putting capital? What are they worried about? What technology are they actually considering? What will change their next major purchase? That is one of the reasons we built #FARMCON. Get closer to the people making the decisions before the decisions are made. farmcon.com/

Cybersecurity on the #farm is no longer just about protecting data. It’s about protecting operations. The same types of connected controllers targeted in recent U.S. water-system attacks are also used across #agriculture to run pivots, pumps, grain dryers, ventilation, feed systems, and water delivery. If one of those systems is compromised, the result can be physical: >irrigation interrupted during heat stress >false moisture or flow readings >ventilation or feed systems disrupted >grain handling or drying shut down at the wrong time Connected equipment is making farms more efficient. It is also creating a new operating risk. If a device can control a physical process, it needs to be treated like critical farm infrastructure. Read the story behind this post... vantrumpreport.com/2026/09/2…