Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
I'm Joe Wisenthal.
And I'm Tracy Alloway.
Tracy, do you remember the episode we did with Chase Emerson.
I do about land development in Arizona.
Right, So that was we're talking to a land broker, someone who helped facilitate the sale of sort of unused or agricultural land to homeowners or to sort of home builders. But there's been a lot of talk, and we touched on it a bit in that episode about like the sustainability of water usage in Arizona.
Yes. In fact, there was a pretty big headline that came out quite recently saying that Arizona was going to halt new home approvals in parts of Phoenix because of concerns over water availability.
Right, and so there's this question about like, Okay, Arizona is like this boomstae right, tons of population growth, tons of land, people moving there has been booming for years. It's booming from a industrial standpoint too. There's all these new semiconductor conductors.
Yeah.
Yeah, Arizona touches everything.
For us, it does. And also Arizona water seems to touch everything. And I mean this came up in the Chase Emerson episode, but I remember I asked someone from the Biden administration about it as well. But you know, why are we building these big factories, semiconductor factories that use a lot of water in the desert. Why are we developing lots of land in the desert. Why are we farming a bunch of water intensive stuff in the desert?
Yeah?
Right, this is how it goes in people's head. They're booming in Arizona, there's water scarcity, and then they discover that Arizona, despite being the desert, seventy five percent of the water used in Arizona is agriculture. And they go, what, that's crazy.
Why are we built?
Why are we growing food or growing grains or crops in the desert. And people say, oh, well that's the problem. We just need to stop growing in the desert. And the conversation ends there. But obviously all of these things are like way more complicated than like the five seconds it takes you to reach that conclusion.
I'm very curious how this became a thing, Like how did agriculture become a big part of the Arizona economy, and why, in particular does it seem like we are farming water intensive crops in an area where water nowadays seems to be a concern, And maybe that's the key. It didn't used to be as much of a concern and now it is. But I am very interested in hearing this side of the story.
I think they've always sort of wondered, like, what's the deal with agriculture in the middle of the desert. Anyway, we literally have the perfect guest, because as you mentioned, it's been going on for a long time. We have the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with Trevor Bales. He is a six generation farmer in Arizona. He runs bales Hay Farm and Ranch, which grows elfelf like. He's based in Buckeye, Arizona, in the southwest part of the state.
We're going to talk all about the history, the operations, the water usage, all of these things about growing el felfa in the desert. So, Trevor, thank you so much for coming on.
Odd lots, Hi guy, it's great to be here.
Can I ask you a really obnoxious question? Yeah, to start, Bales like, so people are gonna like this their guest is made up.
The nominative determined the farmer.
In Arizona's last name is Bales. Like you might you cannot be real.
No, we did not change her name. It's been bales before. It was bales of alfalfa, was bales of cotton, so still a bail.
That is a very incredible So sixth generation from an Arizona talk to us about like the beginning of your family's history. I guess as a farming family in Alzona.
My family that homestead in Arizona. Their last name was actually BLOATD. B. E. L. O At the Bloat family, Okay, And they came out here as cattle ranchers, and the cattle ranching turned into farming and cattle, and then it turned into a feed lot and farming. The farm supplied the feed lot, and then it transitioned into only farming. Now that's over a span of one hundred twenty plus years, but that's in a nutshell. So they came over here. Man, my great great great great grandpa, I think you had
fourteen kids or something. So we currently farm one thousand acres, which, if you think about it, we're very lucky to have that many acres when it's been split so many different times between children and family. We're lucky to have that. But they came in eighteen twenties, but the homestead in eighteen ninety one, so before Arizona was even a state. My great great great grandpa was integral in building the canal district that we currently use for irrigating our crops.
So we have an extremely long history. One of our cattle brands is actually in the top one of the first I think it's like a four hundred and fiftieth or four hundred and forty something with cattle brand. So we've been here a very long time, have a deep history wow in the state. And then along the way, my great grandpa Wallace Bales married Alberta Belote. Him and his son, my grandpa Steve, purchased the farm from the in laws and became the Bales Farm.
Let me ask a super basic question, which is, you know a lot of people I think they hear alfalfa and if they're not out in the country, they're thinking about those little alfalfa sprouts that you might get on your salads or is it garnish or something like that. But talk to us about what alfalfa actually is and the role that it plays. In agriculture.
So, alfalfa is a very very unique plant. It's a forage. It has great relative feed value properties or protein properties. It's very good for making high quality milk. It's very good for making high quality beef. What makes it so unique is its heartiness, especially for what we do. Now this changes across the country because Arizona is much like a greenhouse effect I've kind of compared it to. Because of our temperature, we are in the field eight to
twelve times a year. We're in there cutting that alfalfa. Now, there is no other crop other than grass, and even grass does not have the feed qualities that of alfalfa has that you can go in there and cut multiple times in a year and then for several years after that. We can keep an alfalfa stand in for four to five years, where other states where they're only in there cutting their crop two or three times, they can leave
it in six, seven, eight years. But because of that, because that alfalfa stays in for so long, it gets a bad reputation as to what you were talking about earlier, as water people call it a very high intensive water use crop. Well, a lot is being left out. That crop stays in. It's a very efficient crop when you look at all the work that goes into it. We plant it and we leave it in for four to five years, so it is producing great feed quality for cattle, horses,
milk cows, beef cows for years. No other crop can do that. Corn you plant it once, it takes a massive amount of water, and then you harvest it once. That's so silage.
It's basically a perennial, right, like it keeps coming back.
Yes, yes, absolutely correct, yes, but it does go down in value. Where we do take it out, the yields aren't as good. So after about the fourth fifth year, we'll see the yields will go down and we will take the field out. We'll apply manure to it for the fertilizer and go through the whole process, and usually we'll try to have a rotation crop in between it as well.
But just this gets to the key question, and I feel like I sort of jumped right to it, so.
People look, no, no, I did jump to it quick, No.
No, no, But this is really I think, sort of the key of the argument, which is that you can grow elf elfa elsewhere outside of Arizona. But the point that you're trying to make is that there's something about the uniqueness of the Arizona climate. So, setting aside the water issue, Yeah, there's something about the Arizona climate specifically that gets you several turns in a year.
Do you know the five seas of Arizona.
No, but I can't wait to learn them.
So right, So, and that back to like the history of why are they farming in Arizona. Water and agriculture was were never a hot topic in Arizona until Phoenix got to be fourth, fifth, sixth largest city in the country. Right, We've been farming here for for like I just said, my head foumb was here in the eighteen twenties doing it. So the water was never a problem until humans came in. Cities came in, manufacturing came in. Farming actually paid for a lot of the water that is here in Phoenix
Salt River SRP. The city couldn't afford it, so the farmers came in and they paid for the water system and now the city is using it. But anyways, back to the five seeds. Yeah, one of the climate. Because our climate copper, cattle, citrus, and cotton, Arizona makes some of the best cotton in the world. We make the best outfoufro in the world. We make some of the best wheat and barley, and we make some of the best corn in the world. It's because of our climate.
And so, like you said, alfalfa can be grown other places, but the quality is nowhere near the same and it can't be grown everywhere. That not all the climates can grow alf alfa.
So one thing I read, and again I'm not a farmer, so I'm just reading trying to read various things on this topic. But one thing I read was that farmers in Arizona like alfalfa because it's reliable and because it grows well in that environment, provided there's enough water around. Is that the right way of thinking about it?
Yeah, But that's I mean, that's any crop, right, We're just like the industry of farming is industry and what is supplying? What is demand? Right? Well, cotton used to be the demand. Citrus used to be the demand, and unfortunately the demand with the mills in China and China's
rules about importing cotton, Cotton's no longer demand. So they go to was the big demand, which right now there are a lot of dairies around, and the dairies need a lot of protein to make high quality milk, which we actually ship all over the world from this area, and alfalfa is the most efficient way to make high quality milk. If they think water is a problem, now, if every farmer grew corn for the dairies, holy smokes, there wouldn't cotton corn corn man corny uses a lot
of water. So yes, yes and no what you said? Yes and no. Yes we like it, but for those same reasons, any other crop is the same thing.
So in the end, whether we're growing alfalfa, whether we're growing corn, I guess whether we're growing soy other things Like there's like a certain math, right, there's a certain amount of water, there's a certain amount of human labor, you get a certain amount of feed. At the end, those go to feed cows and then the cows either become beef before they become for milk. Can you talk a little bit further about like, okay, you say like corn.
That would be much worse if we switched to replacing elfelfa with corn, Like how does the math work out? What are we talking about?
Well?
Lost with that repas.
And I've never grown corn myself, but my dad used to grow quite a bit. My grandfather would for our own feed lot. By the time I came along, we don't grow as much. But the corn crop in a short like one hundred and twenty day corn uses approximately the same amount of water as my whole year, my whole year of the crop about falca, which is around seven seven acre foot as we like committed with by
acre feet six to seven acre feet. But now where I don't know, because you would have to get a nutritionist, is in that same acre of ground of soil that one harvest of corn. What energy does it produce versus alfalfa? And that I don't know that part. Just man, I'm just not not in the dairy market at all. I'm not well. Let me ask mart Let.
Me ask you another question. Let me ask you another question. Then that's sort of related. So you say, like Arizona elfelfa is better than elfelfa elsewhere?
How much you talk us through that a little bit more?
What is better about growing it in Arizona versus other parts of this country because it has grown elsewhere in this country? So is it the quality of the product, or is it the yield or the amount of turns that you can get in a year from the same amount of land.
And then like we have to talk us through.
The differences, it's most of the quality. So a lot of other states, so we average, we average about nine tons per acre for the year. Depending on the soil type, we can get nine to ten tons per year. Now, but with that's with ten to twelve cuttings. A lot of other states they can get seven to eight tons per year, but that's on half the cuttings, and so each cutting is making a massive amount of Hey. Each time, the bigger the stand gets, the lower the quality gets.
It gets real big, it gets real kind of tough, the stems get real big. And with that size. What's extremely important about alfalfa for a few reasons. One, if you bail it with too much moisture, the bail will
it will start to mold, it will go bad. It can also I don't know if you've ever heard of a hay fire, but if it has too much moisture and all the pressure in that baler when they're packing the bail and you store it creates heat from the moisture inside and whatever is inside the bail, and it'll catch on fire. So the dry down process, the curing process is extremely important. And a lot of the country they don't have the climate we have, so they're fighting
a lot more weather when we fight. And so the fact that we're able to get it dried down and to cure and then also not have these massive two or three ton cuttings, Like when you cut alfalfa that's two tons or more, it's so big and thick, and it's hard to get it to cure out. Well, we go in there every thirty days or less, twenty five to thirty days we cut it. It's nice, it's small, and it's thinned out, and it dries and it cures very pretty, and it keeps a lot of color, and
it keeps the leaf. The leaf is the important part of that plant. That's where all the nutrition is. And a lot of these other places have to flip it two or three times. Oh it's not dried enough. Let's flip it over. You just got to get the bottom to dry out, because when you cut it, it's laying there on the ground. Well, the part that's up against the ground of the of the alfalfa stand. It's not seeing the sun ever, it's down there underneath the super
thick alfalfa. So then they flip it over all right, now you dried out that side, well, darn it. And then a rainstorm came, we got to flip it back over again because now that side's wet. And so they just don't produce the quality that we produce or the connage too. And with the rest of the country, a lot of the country does rely on we call it dry land farming, where they do rely on rain. When there's a drought across the country, Arizona fills that gap.
And when there's too much, like there's been years where Idaho or Texas and Texas a huge market, they have so much rain they cannot get in their fields and they cannot harvest it. So guess what, it's almost the same problem as having the drought, right, you still can't you don't get anything out of your fields, and so Arizona fills in that gap.
So I take the point about you know, it's easier to cure given the dry or weather, and you know, maybe it's producing more higher quality alfalfa, But how much does the quality actually matter? Because doesn't most of this go to cows for feeds like do the cows care about the color of the alfalfa hey that they're eating.
My specific market is the horse market, so people with horses that have anywhere from I mean, we've fed horses that are been in the Kentucky Derby. We sent a hay to Florida where there's soup, where there's horses that fly on private jets back and forth from other countries for breeding purposes and racing. I don't know what they don't. I'm not much of a horse person, but yes, to
them it is extremely important. And even back to the cattle side, yes, it's important because that feed value changes, and that feed value is extremely important. The older the hay gets, the lower the feed value goes down. That feed value is in direct connection to the quality of milk that the cow produces. So visual quality for horse people is extremely important. Then test quality for cattle, for milk cows is extremely important, and beef not so much.
For beef, I mean, you can think lower quality hay is fine, but once it's laying in the field and it gets rained on, that does take the quality away for both milk cows and or horses. And back to the even that feed quality for specifically horses that are race horses, ropers, barrel racing horses that they need that high protein to be able to compete with whether they're doing so. Equality is very important. And there's a lot of people that have horses just as pets and they
never ride them. They just like having a horse. In that situation, it's just not important.
Let me ask another basic how it works question, which is how do you actually water the alfalfa? So we talked about harvesting and curing, but what does the watering process actually look like? And you mentioned that I think one of your grandparents had built canals on your farm that you presumably use for irrigation. Is that what you're doing?
So that's crazy. With all this water stuff, Arizona has less acres than it's ever had and we're more efficient than we've ever been. But so the Healer River we farm right off the Healer River, now the Healer River. They used to call it the Grand or the Mighty Fruit. They called it something Healer River, and there was always water.
So they started this canal that was upriver and then the water would come in on this canal and it would and they kind of followed the man it's amazing the way they did it back then and how they were able to find without GPS the high points of this little valley we're in, and they kind of followed the spine of this little valley. And so there's that main canal that feeds water to all the farmers that are within the district. So we're very closely measured on
how much water we use. People like to imagine we're just using it as much water as we can. We are not at all. We get cut off if we use too much. You can't just do whatever you want, so the district manages that water. That water goes along farmers like myself. I will order water a specific amount for a time, and then we'll go down a lateral ditch that feeds off the canal, and that lateral ditch will then will then carry water to the ditch that
connects to my fields. Now, all of our fields are laser leveled, so they're flat side to side with a end fall. So there's a little bit of geometry involved with the farming. So when you open the water in that designated area of the field, which might be one hundred and twenty foot wide quarter mile long, very evenly from side to side, so you're covering the whole thing and that makes it very efficient work versus if you didn't have it flat, the water would just go all
different areas. Like I said, it's section. You know, one hundred acre field is sectioned off in one hundred and twenty foot sections. So we're using a gradual decline in the land or fall to measure that specific area efficiently. And that's specifically how I irrigate. But what has become a very efficient way of irrigation is subsurface drip, which is becoming pretty popular in Arizona. Sistic I'd like to do it, It's just expensive.
What is that do it?
That's where everything is underground, and so you were you're saving on evaporation, but you were getting that water directly to the root. I mean you were just hitting that root with water, so there's no evaporation. It's which evaporation is not as much as people like to argue all evaporation. We've done studies. It's like two percent or less. It's it's very very low.
This is this is my dream for my garden. Is a sister a system of underwater irrigation.
Instead of Yeah, amateur gardeners do that. Yeah, yeah you can't.
I mean, like it would take a lot. But for instance, we at the moment we have a bunch of underground like hoses and pipelines going through two and a half acres and they're all leaking. So that's fun. So maybe I actually already have subterranean irrigation in a way.
Yeah, you anticipated, Trevor a question I was going to ask, which is about advances in water use technology over time, and I have to imagine maybe there are some similarities, but as you mentioned, it's gotten more efficient probably relative to when you know your ancestors were on the same land.
How does it look differently?
What are some of the advances that have been made since some of your ancestors were farming on the same land to get better output with less water.
That laser system has been huge. What they what they used to do is everything was in furrows, which a furrow is it's like a washboard, like an old washboard. Washboard is, yes, but then it runs the water would run down there by having all those furrows. I mean, if you can imagine if you've got like a relatively
flat area and you just open the water up. The water is gonna follow the way of least resistance, so you're just gonna have this water go right down that one area and then all that everything else is dry. So what they did back then is they would do these furrows and then and then that then see you have all these these low like a washboard. The water would stay in the low spots and then but then everything would get watered. But it was just not very efficient.
It was rough, It was hard on equipment, and the planter or the furrow maker. Man, they're they're heavy, they're just how they're there. And then before GPS, so you still weren't very straight man. And the fact that they thought of that was it was great right like man back then that they that they saw that insight, like hey, let's make these washboards if you will, and the water is hitting all areas, which is impressive. And then they came up with the laser system and now they use
the GPS system. But what we have what is very foreign to pretty much every state except California and Arizona, there's a few other places, is we call them borders. It's a dirt ridge that runs from the top of the field to the bottom of the field. And that's earlier I was talking about sectioning off your field to irrigate.
You run a border from top to bottom and it's two about two feet tall, and then you go over and it depends because every field does have natural sidefall, but the goal is to between those two borders get rid of that because you want that water to flow evenly. You know, two inches deep across that whole one hundred or however many feet you know, one hundred and or ninth sixty feet. If it's a steep field, then you
have a bunch of sixty feet borders. If it's a steep field, you have a fewer one hundred and twenty plus borders. But that laser leveling has been an amazing
tool for running irrigation extremely efficient. Like I said, we open up the area on that little section one hundred and twenty foot by quarter mile, and that water runs, like I said, two inches deep or less just the length of that and I mean you imagine it looks like it's like one hundred and twenty foot That water is just going just even with itself all the way it gets down to the bottom of the field. You shut it off and it just kind of drains itself
right there. It just kind of stops right there. I mean, if you have irrigators that aren't paying attention and they'll fall asleep, then they'll mess up. But when everything's going correctly, man, it's just so efficient and so smooth, so that that laser system has been probably the best most efficient way. Okay, I should say the best, probably the most efficient way just because what it costs to do versus the subsurface
drip is definitely the most efficient way. But oh it costs depending on like with oil prices where they are, and yeah, and like PBC, everything is, everything is petroleum based. So right now it's probably three thousand or more dollars per acre to put all that in. When petroleum based things are cheaper, you can two thousand dollars an acre used to be the kind of the number. Well, when you're looking at bigger farms, four thous an acre farm. Oh my gosh, that's real quick.
So let me ask a question that kind of like cuts to the heart of a lot of this discussion, But how real or salient our concerns over water for you right now? Like, have you witnessed water shortages during your time as a farmer, has it affected your business? Are you getting perhaps more pressures from you know, external sources to reduce your water use? How is it actually playing out for you?
So, for us, it's kind of unique. Right where we farm where the area they call a water logged area with extremely extremely salty water, and a lot of the water that we specifically use for the past one hundred years has come from Phoenix water treatment plant. Where I farm, we're not allowed to grow produced because it comes from water treatment. We don't get water from the Colorado River,
I don't get water from the Salt River Project. Water comes from eastern Arizona as the rains come down and it trickles down the Salt River and it comes into the Hila River and it keeps our aquifer very full of water rather but our water is so salty. And then then taking the water from the paying the city for their water back before Phoenix was a big city. They loved that we took their water. And so we've
never really had a right where eye farm specifically. Anyways, we've never had a fear of losing our water until with technology, the water treatment plants have gotten really good at cleaning water and desalinization plants. They look our no one ever wanted our water. They're like, no, no, we don't want your water. It's disgusting, it's super salty. We
can't use it for anything. Like we're glad you guys are actually using it, because if you weren't, this place would be almost like a swamp down here, Like there are areas if you can drive with the ground is always slightly muddy, and that's because that water's like three or four feet underground. It's just right down there. And so they love that we're farming it, pumping it up the ground and using it because they don't want to deal with with the swamp. I guess I'm not not
a literal swamp. But what's also changed a lot years ago they brought in a tree called a salt cedar tree, and it's from I think it's from Africa, the Middle East. I don't rember where it's from, but it's not native to Arizona. And this tree uses a lot of water and it has overgrown the Heala River or the river I just told you I farmed on and it uses a lot of water. And since that tree has been brought in and it's infested the river and even the desert.
The water doesn't flow down the Hala River very much anymore, it rarely does it. Senator seen a cur she's been pushing and other people then pushing. Let's clean out this non native invasive tree that uses a lot of water. But the animal rights are like, oh there's owls and stuff living in there, and butterflies or something so big picture.
Okay, maybe your firm specifically is in a position where it's not for historically a lot of the water that used no one else wanted it. Do you feel like at some point, like for your industry, and I'm sure you talk to other farmers like this is coming to a head, like, okay, there is this much water that can be used for agriculture. There's household demand, there's industrial demand. Like is someone gonna have to give.
Here, Yes, somewhere it is gonna have to get I guess I didn't finish my other thoughts your question. With desalinization plants, people are now looking at our water thinking, oh huh, there's a bunch of water right there that these farmer farmers have that we can have. And now that the city is good at cleaning the water, they're looking at it thinking, oh, maybe we'll just go buy this water from the farmers. Once they're they're one hundred
year deal pop ends with the city. So that is a fear of ours, yes, and so then yes, to your point, we do realize that there's something's gonna have to give. And there used to be good laws in place about where you could build because it is a desert. The idea back and you'd have to go back and look at the history and judgments and stuff, but they
said you you had to build where you could have water. Well, then it got real fishy because the thought was as home builders and manufacturing bought property from farmers, that water would then go from a farmer to a house. So you're you just traded from one this industry to another. Well then the water laws up, and you know, over my pay grade in the city started, Oh, well, technically we could send water up to this real pretty area over here where in the mountains where they want to
build some houses. Then all of a sudden water gets sent another way. Oh there's a freeway up here. It sure would be nice to have buildings and stuff next to the freeway. Well, so then they started buying buying property in the desert and building in the desert, and they kind of skipped around the farm ground and then there, and now everyone's wondering like, oh, now we're low on water. Well, eighty years ago, when they kind of looked ahead to the future, they said, well, if we trade farm ground
for housing and development, the water just changes traded hands. Well, then I said, I don't know, it happened before my time, but some water rules were changed, and that's where it gets pretty fishy. And that, to me, that's the real story. Who changes water rules? I mean, if I said the farmers didn't change a rule. We've been here farming for
over one hundred we're farming less acres than ever. But so there are some things that kind of change that'd be interesting to get the full story on that, because like, yeah, there's big housing developments up in these areas that are very arid. There's no water, there's no farming that ever happened there. They just boom, let's throw in these several thousand homes and neighborhoods and use a whole bunch of water.
So let me ask you, maybe a tough question, but is there anything that would make you reconsider or maybe rethink growing alfalfa, like what would be the conditions under which that is no longer either desirable or profitable for you.
It's just like any other industry, right, I mean a car manufacturer, what would make them want to stop manufacturing cars? It's all market based. As long as we have water and soil, you know, I can grow whatever the market is asking. We don't. I don't grow alfalfa because that's what I want to grow. It's that's what the market asks for.
Yeah, it makes sense.
Let me ask you. I mean it's all it's all based on, you know, paying my bills? What what what pays my bills? And right now it's alfalfa. Do you have if cotton came back and cotton was was back to being king bays that you say, cotton is king all of a sudden, cotton was what what the mills wanted, what the markets we're calling for? Man would grow cotton.
I just realized your road is on below road.
So that's the family. That's the family name.
Have any homebuilders because when we talked to when we talked about Arizona Land, they're talking about well a lot of the what is you know, where home builders build was formerly agricultural land. Is your area an area in which at some point our home builders potentially trying to bid on your land? Or is there ever a point where the economics in your area could be such that a home builder would find more value from it and writing you a big check than growing at alfalfa?
Yeah, it's yeah. Right now, we're about ten miles from the freeway, and so that's what kind of keeps that from happening. But there's a bunch of plans of a of a like a reliever freeway coming through our area. And I mean it's all about transportation. Right any anywhere, it generally relates directly to transportation, and when you're far away from a freeway or whatever something that's around you,
it's all related to that. That's why all of the growth has happened around the freeway I Interstate ten, I seventeen, I seventeen, or I say two oh two over here. It's all based around the one on one the freeways, and we're about eight to ten miles off the freeway. So if we were right on the freeway, yeah, they'd be knocking on the door. But it's all based on transportation.
So I just have one last question, and I guess it's sort of open ended, But we started this about all these debates that happened about water use in Arizona. Well, it's sort of like the one thing that you think people are missing big picture when they discuss this, and like, what's sort of like the one thing you would like more people to understand about the distribution of water in Arizona.
I guess I said it earlier. Water was never an issue until the city got as big as it was. We're farming in the state less acres than we've ever farmed, We're using less water than we've ever used, and we're more efficient than we've ever been. And so as the city gets bigger, now water is an issue. As you guys talked about earlier, why they're building these chip manufacturing plants in Arizona want to build them somewhere, They don't
have to build them here. We farm here. We farm here because this is the only place in the United States you can farm like this this in parts of central California. That's it. You can't farm like this.
When you saywhere else, when you say like.
This year round and produce the quality of crops that we produce. I mean, there's things we can't grow here but that they grow all over the Midwest, which is why they grow them there. I could go farm somewhere else by farming a different crop, I guess without Arizona. And really the scary one is California. If you ever look up how much milk or produce the Central Valley
California produces. Oh my gosh, if they lose their water, everything we eat, vegetable or produce related is going to come from another country and it's going to be sprayed with every nasty chemical to kill every single bug that ever lived so they can sell it to the United States because we got rid of all the water or the farming in California. That's what scares me. Yeah, I love Arizona, it's where I farm, but for the sake of our country, California scares me the most. Holy if
we lose Central Valley farming. But anyways, we've been doing this for over one hundred years here and it was it never been an issue until the city got really big.
Trevor Bales of bells Hay Farm really appreciate you coming on a really good perspective.
I thought we're going to talk about alfalfa markets. That's what's interesting to me.
What did we miss on alfalfa markets?
So most other markets are trackable and have the cotton market, the wheat market, the farley market, there's the corn market. Alfalfa is like you talk about I want to talk about like the wild West of markets. It's I mean, it's so similar.
To the stock market, futures or anything.
No, there aren't and so like every other like like beef, but like everything like alfalfa. So like right now, actually we are in a crazy I mean, it's just falling like a rock.
There is an alfalfa producer price in yeah, and so.
What's going on there?
The United States has exported its agriculture things for as long as once boats were. Once we started shipping stuff out of the country, we've been exporting so forever. So we export a lot of hay out of the country. Those exporters last year and the year before that, for some reason, came in swinging real hard, wanting to buy a lot of alfalfa. This is all over the country too. They buy out like all of the West Coast, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona.
They buy a lot. So they came in swinging and it they raised the price up. I remember three hundred used to be the high number, and this is per Ton. Well, I always think of things per Ton. I think, wow, wow, that hay was sold for two hundred and eighty five dollars a ton. Wow, maybe one day we'll hit three hundred. Wow. Well, in less than a year it went from three hundred to four hundred dollars a ton, and then it went upwards of like three sixty ton or four sixty a ton.
So it went way up there, which is very high. But then this year they came back in and they're not buying. Well, everyone got this start off the year again with this false thinking it was going to be high again. And so I have to buy a lot of hay because of the luck we've run a successful business and we sell a lot of hay to all over the country. All my hay stays local. It doesn't get exported. It stays here in the US, and so we harvest all our stuff. Then I harvest other people's
hey and I buy it from them. Well, they are looking at what they think the market is the beginning of the year, and they're well we think that, you know,
it's still three three thirty three forty. Okay, So here we are in March and April harvesting hay and paying three forty for it, three three thirty three forty, and then as it's been going, it's just this crazy, uneasy nobody knows and you're all these weird numbers, and the exporters aren't buying, and all of a sudden, now so I purchased Hey two months go for three hundred and
forty dollars a ton. I think I'm going to purchase Hey this month for one hundred and ninety five dollars a ton, which I guess if you don't understand, that's a huge swing, yeah, in our industry, from one to the other. And it's just such an interesting market, I mean, especially in the stock market and all the movies you watch, like it's it's all about what how, what do you? What do you think? What does this guy think? You know?
Where it doesn't necessarily matter what's really happening, it's what is your perception and what does what do people think is going to happen? And so everyone starts making decisions on what they think is going to happen, and everyone thought the market was going to stay high. And I mean to see it fall over one hundred dollars a ton in a couple of months, I mean, that's that's crazy.
We needed a nail self futures market. Trevor, thank you so much. I'm glad we got that context in the sort of the current day of market swing.
But really appreciate you coming on online.
Yeah, thanks guys.
Yeah, that was great. Thank you so much, Tracy. I really like that conversation.
I mean there was a lot in there, but just to start, you know, I like hearing about like the technological advantages in irrigation and farming, like now how they use lasers to make sure it's like perfectly flat and stuff like that.
Got My husband got one of those to like measure hanging pictures on the walls and like terrace slopes and things like that, and he will not stop using it.
It looks very cool measuring the flatness of things.
A couple things stood out for me. So number one, I think people here, oh, why are we farming alfalfa in the desert? It makes no sense. But Trevor's point about how it's actually easier to cure the alfalfa. Hey, that makes a lot of sense to me. It doesn't necessarily mean it's efficient from a water perspective, but you could see why that would be beneficial if you're making these giant rolls of dried grass essentially. And then the other thing that struck me was, you know this idea
that a lot of the alfalfa is going to fancy horses. Yeah, it does seem like horses kind of escape a lot of climate change contribution scrutiny. Right, everyone always talks about cows horses.
Someone is going to some horse person out there is going to get really angry.
That's fine.
I think horses are an easier target.
I don't think there's many of them.
I don't think there is many of them. I don't think there I mean, no offense to Trevor. I don't
think that and market is as crucial. But you know what I think was interesting in a point that he made that sort of like helped things click or does he point out, you know, like in some places you'll get drought, in some places you'll get sometimes you get flooding, right, And so really, one thing about one thing that's nice about that, it's consistent, it's consistent, it's predictable, right, and so it's like, Okay, there are obviously drawbacks, such as
the fact that there is like you know, the water is ambiguous, but you know what you're gonna get, and so once you start from that standpoint, like you can like get every on every other metric, Arizona is very efficient for these crops.
Totally, And that was a perspective that we hadn't really heard before. But again it's one of those things like, Okay, it made sense for a long time, but as the cities developed, to Trevor's point, as we build these semiconductor factories, it does feel like decisions, tough decisions might need to be made.
But on the other hand, like maybe the answer is to keep Arizona an agricultural powerhouse and not continue to spread Phoenix as far as I can see, like we sort of like, oh, everyone's moving to Phoenix, therefore we need less agriculture. But it is good to get the perspective of the people in the agriculture and say, yeah, but why does Phoenix need to just keep growing in all directions.
Or move the fabs elsewhere.
Or move the fabs elsewhere?
Yeah, yeah, all right. Shall we leave it there?
Let's leave it there.
This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway.
And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart.
Check out the instagram of our guests Tres. Check out at bails.
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