Pod Insights The Moneywise Guys 3/10/26 Bees, Bitcoin & the Business of Farming About this episode The Moneywise Radio Show and Podcast Tuesday, March 10th BE MONEYWISE. Moneywise Wealth Management I "The Moneywise Radio Show & Podcast" call: 661-847-1000 text in anytime: 661-396-1000 website: www. MoneywiseGuys.com facebook: Moneywise_Wealth_Management LinkedIn: Moneywise_Wealth_Management Guest: Steve Murray, Owner of Murray Family Farms website: https://www.murrayfamilyfarms.org/ The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a decision. Steve Murray and his business are not affiliated with nor endorsed by LPL Financial or Moneywise Wealth Management].
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Live from the basement inside the historic Woolworths Building in downtown Bakersfield. Call or text in at 661-396-1000.
0:09 Speaker 01 I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. Hey, hey, well, I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. Hey, hey, said I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. And if I share with you my story, would you share your dollar with me? Securities offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through LPL Financial. LPL Financial and MoneyWise Wealth Management are independently owned and operated.
0:37 Speaker 00 Now, let's start the MoneyWise Show.
0:40 Speaker 02 And welcome to the MoneyWise Show. We are live from the basement of the historic Woolworths Building in downtown Bakersfield. For the next hour, you are on KGO Money Talk, 1230 a.m., 101.1 FM, and always streaming at MoneyWiseGuys.com. You can call or text into the show 24 hours a day at 661-396-1000. We're your hosts, I'm Sharad Waite and... Dustin Weaver. D-Dub. Yes, sir. Hey, there is a, you know, there's a war happening. I heard a thing or two about that. You saw the news? Saw that. Not to make light of the war, but yesterday, which was Monday, you know, stock market
1:21 Speaker 02 opens up down, no shocker, but yesterday, the stock market ended up, the S&P and the, I believe both S&P and the Dow ended up yesterday. And this is a continual head scratcher, I think, for, for a lot of us. The average person is going to think, well, you know, the Strait of Hormuz is shut, that's a fifth of the world's oil is not flowing right now through, through that part of the world. Oil, as you know, is a huge catalyst for economic activity. Right. Generally, the price of oil will, can affect global GDP. When, when global GDP is up, generally, you can see oil prices go up, but we're not really seeing huge global growth.
2:05 Speaker 02 Instead, what we're seeing is a limited supply of a product that runs the world. I mean, it fuel, it literally fuels the world. Yeah, everything. And, and so, you know, today, you know, looking at the, at markets, we did end down. All major indices were down today, but barely.
2:27 Speaker 03 Just, just a hair.
2:28 Speaker 02 Right.
2:29 Speaker 03 The Dow was down point zero seven, S and P 500 down point two. And then the volatility index, which we look at too, actually went down a little bit, meaning things were a little bit less volatile.
2:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, this is all, I think can be a little confounding. I was on channel 29 last night asking about, being interviewed about the impact that oil was going to have on the economy and what that, what that meant for, you know, our pocketbooks. I always struggled in these interviews because, you know, they're going to, they're going to show 15 seconds max, you know, whatever happens. So I'm always thinking, how can I make this really concise? But not to put you on the spot, but I'm going to put you on the spot. How would you, how would you answer that? How would you, how would you talk to a client, for example, about the nervousness that they have or they feel about the war and how it might impact them?
3:25 Speaker 03 Well, this is where we get the crystal ball out.
3:28 Speaker 02 Right.
3:28 Speaker 03 No, no, but we talk about history, right? Because if I were to pick a random day in history and say, Sherid, what was going on on March 7th, 1997?
3:40 Speaker 02 Hmm.
3:40 Speaker 03 Right? Chances are, if you looked at the news, pulled out the newspaper, there's probably some bad news there.
3:45 Speaker 02 Right.
3:46 Speaker 03 Right?
3:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:47 Speaker 03 And if we look back in history, yes, there's, you know, small, you know, there's things that are more disastrous than others, like war. But in the grand scheme of things, when you're building a portfolio, because you said, talking with clients, right? You're, you're often keeping the long time horizon in mind. You're building a portfolio not for a month or a week or, you know, even a year. It's usually a longer timeframe, right? We talked to a lot of folks about their retirement portfolio, you know, retirement. If you're going into retirement at age 65, let's say, you're talking hopefully 20 plus, maybe 30 plus year time horizon.
4:29 Speaker 02 Right.
4:30 Speaker 03 Right? And so over that timeframe. You know, we get peace of mind when we have this professionally managed diversified portfolio that does not react in the short run, regardless of the headline, a war or anything else.
4:44 Speaker 02 Right. Yeah. Having the perspective, I think, is huge. I was just looking up the historically, how the US stock market has performed during war times. So, World War I, which was 1914 to 1918, had strong gains. There was some early volatility, just in the beginning of World War I, but pretty much pretty solid gains over that four-year period. World War II, we saw about a 50% increase from Pearl Harbor until the end of World War II. Pretty shocking.
5:23 Speaker 03 50%?
5:24 Speaker 02 50% gain.
5:25 Speaker 03 Pretty significant.
5:26 Speaker 02 Pretty significant. So, that's over roughly about a four-year period. And so, you know, basically, above-market kind of returns during World War II, when, you know, I was not alive when Pearl Harbor was bombed, but I can imagine, and I know the fear that was across the country. I mean, this-
5:47 Speaker 03 A lot of angst.
5:48 Speaker 02 A lot of angst, and I mean, to the point that hundreds of thousands of our, of our parents and grandparents at that time, young men and young women, were risking their lives. Oh, both my grand, my grandfathers risked their lives in, in effort to save the world, really, to save the country. And yet, the stock market just sort of shrugged off the, the biggest apocalyptic event that the country, that the world had seen, you know?
6:18 Speaker 03 So, people that were invested at that time were probably wondering the same thing they're wondering today, right? What do I do?
6:25 Speaker 02 Yeah. And, and people at that time were also invested in AT&T and, you know, these Edison and these, these major companies, GE, these major companies that are still around today, you know, still providing dividends and growth and, and so on. We also saw during the Korean War, the markets were up during the- Vietnam War, it was, it was volatile, certainly during that period, which was a pretty long period there. But between 1964 and 1975, it was also positive overall during that
7:03 Speaker 02 period. The, during the Gulf War, the first Gulf War, markets rose after the, after the invasion. And then the Iraq War in 2003, we saw initial drop, but then markets quickly rallied and, and were up during that. So, I mean, basically, all of the major conflicts that we've experienced, or our parents have experienced, have, I'm not saying they haven't impacted the stock market, but the stock market has continued on.
7:38 Speaker 03 It's been resilient.
7:39 Speaker 02 It's been so resilient.
7:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, if you look at year to year, regardless of which headlines it is that it is potentially causing it, you know, the market, when we say the markets, US markets drop on average at, at least 10% at, at one point throughout the year.
7:54 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
7:55 Speaker 03 You know, where it ends is a different story.
7:58 Speaker 02 Right.
7:58 Speaker 03 Right? You look at each year, there's going to be volatility. When we use that word volatility, it's the up and down swings in the short run.
8:06 Speaker 02 Yes.
8:07 Speaker 03 But keeping that long-term perspective, right? 10, 15, 20-year periods, it usually pans out to where, you know, you're better off and, and higher chances of beating inflation than, say, putting it under the mattress or cash.
8:22 Speaker 02 Yeah. It, it, it almost makes you think about the power of the free market capitalistic system that we have, and the resiliency that it has despite these major events, despite these major geopolitical events and wars. Like, we still have, people still have to buy things. Things still need to be produced, services still need to be had. And, and so like you, and you could not have a war if there weren't things that were being produced
9:03 Speaker 02 and services were there and there was an exchange of money for those goods and services.
9:08 Speaker 03 So in that exchange, that turns to profits for these companies that we're buying, right?
9:13 Speaker 02 That's right.
9:13 Speaker 03 That's what we're saying.
9:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, nobody, they're not, nobody's doing it for, at a loss, you know? And when I say nobody, I mean that the companies that are producing these products that we use every single day aren't in the business of just like doing it for the good of the world. Because they know too, that they've got to pay their energy bills, they've got to pay their water, they've got to pay their people for their time. And so they certainly are trying to eke out a profit. And they're held, publicly traded companies are held to a standard that they have to answer to every quarter, every three months. It's like, here we go.
9:49 Speaker 03 Reports are out.
9:50 Speaker 02 Reports are out and you're going to compare us to other people and other, other companies and other countries and, and so on. You know, with war, there sadly, it can boost certain sectors of the economy. Obviously defense contracts, but also manufacturing and technology development. Industrial production generally increases during a wartime. So think about like making cars or metals or electronics, fuel. You also generally see an acceleration in innovation. We have a lot of technologies that come during these periods of time. Think radar or jet engines, GPS, the internet.
10:33 Speaker 02 These are all things that kind of came about as a, as in, as an effort for national security.
10:40 Speaker 03 And you think of 2026, right? The big one's AI.
10:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:45 Speaker 03 Right? Talk about a technology shift.
10:48 Speaker 02 Game changer.
10:48 Speaker 03 Yeah.
10:49 Speaker 02 And, and you're seeing also that the drone technologies that are being used in Ukraine and how much that's shifting the battlefield, but also technologies of how drones are used, essentially flying robots and not just flying robots, like. All kinds of robots that are sent out into the battlefield. That's terrible, right? It's terrifying to think about, think about the, the human loss of it. But there's, there is a, uh, there it's, there are some silver linings. I guess I hate, I hate to say that because I'm thinking it sound like, well, it's worth having a war. It's, I don't think it's ever worth, worth having a war, you know, lives, lives lost.
11:34 Speaker 03 Certainly.
11:34 Speaker 02 We, we want to avoid that at all costs. Like how much do you put, you know, a value on a human life? Like there's no stock that's makes that worth it. But I'm just saying for our listeners out there, you know, take, take a deep breath. Understand a little bit of history. Keep this in perspective. Don't make any rash decisions. We had a listener yesterday that asked about whether or not this was a good time to buy a house. Considering the war and the impact that it could have on interest rates. And our answer was that it doesn't matter essentially. Like it doesn't really matter what's going on in the world.
12:15 Speaker 03 In the short run.
12:16 Speaker 02 In the short run. Yeah. It, and also in making that decision of whether to buy a house. You buy a house when you, when it's appropriate for you. You don't buy a house when things are just like you're, you're not trying to tie. Don't try to time the market to buy a house. Cause you're, you're, it's similar to the stock market. You're better off the sooner you get into that house when you can afford it, the better. Because now you're, now you're, you're not just throwing it all away to rent. You're, you're putting some away to equity. You've got the stability. You've got the asset. And so it's, um, and so you want to, um, you, you want to kind of keep this perspective. You as an investor, keep the long-term perspective.
12:56 Speaker 02 Don't get too caught up in, in headlines and nervous, uh, emotions.
13:03 Speaker 03 Yeah. I think that's, that's good advice. And the key word there, I think was affordability, right? Looking at is, is it affordable for you to purchase that house? You're not making the decision based on what's going on in the world. Right?
13:17 Speaker 02 Yeah. Right.
13:19 Speaker 02 Let's answer this listener question, the second listener question. Do you have it there, Dustin?
13:26 Speaker 03 This is the new listener?
13:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:27 Speaker 03 So the new listener wanted to say, thank you. I know it's a bit late, but I hope this makes sense. I bought a little crypto and watched it swing all over the place. It's crazy, but how do I keep that from distracting me from the rest of my long-term financial plan? Friends told me to invest heavier, but I wanted to run it by the pros.
13:45 Speaker 02 That's you.
13:46 Speaker 03 Eddie.
13:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, thank you, Eddie. And you're the pro. You're the pro, Dustin.
13:52 Speaker 03 I'm the pro.
13:52 Speaker 02 We're the pros. So I'll answer this. I'd like to get what your thoughts are, but you're not alone, Eddie. You know, crypto is famous for doing exactly what you're describing, which is crypto has big swings. It grabs your attention. There's a lot of marketing and buzz that's out there. Kind of makes everything else feel boring. But the key is putting it in the right place within your overall financial plan. And I think Eddie alluded to that in his question. So a practical way to think about this is to treat cryptocurrency like a speculation. Don't treat it like an investment. There's a big difference between speculative and an
14:34 Speaker 02 investment. Crypto doesn't produce earnings. It doesn't have dividends or cash flow like stocks and bonds or real estate does. And because of that, most professional financial plans treat it more like a speculative asset, not a foundational one. And that means you want to keep it to a small slice of the pie. A common rule of thumb would be keep it less than 5%.
15:02 Speaker 03 Of your overall.
15:03 Speaker 02 Of your overall portfolio, right?
15:05 Speaker 03 I've seen the same.
15:05 Speaker 02 I would say with crypto, I'd keep it below, I'd keep it like 1% if it were me. That means, you know, you've got, you've got like one foot in that game, but you're not, you're not overexposing yourself in case it does go to zero, which it could go to zero. And, and so it keeps your plan intact. But if things take off, well, great. Okay, it's going to add a little bit of upside, you know, because you've got that exposure to it.
15:34 Speaker 03 And then if it doesn't, well, then it was just a small slice of the pie. It wasn't the whole pie.
15:38 Speaker 02 Yeah. Think of it like, it was just a gamble. A little gamble and you lost. You don't want to let necessarily volatility dictate what your strategy is that the constant price swings are designed to pull you in emotionally. But long-term wealth building usually comes from boring, disciplined investing, like we talk about diversified portfolios, regular contributions, or dollar-cost averaging, just staying the course, like, you know, so don't, you know, don't get too caught up in the volatility. And then be careful of FOMO, because he mentioned his friends, you know, kind of mentioning, you know, saying, hey, you know, you should get in, you should get in. It's classic FOMO,
16:23 Speaker 02 fear of missing out. The problem is that you usually hear about the wins, but you don't hear about the people who bought law, bought high and sold low.
16:31 Speaker 03 A hundred percent. That's right.
16:33 Speaker 02 And that happens all the time, especially with the volatility that you see in Bitcoin, for example.
16:38 Speaker 03 There's a winner and a loser to every trade, right?
16:41 Speaker 02 Yes. Yeah. And you hear the winners way more than the losers.
16:45 Speaker 03 For sure.
16:46 Speaker 02 The time that you hear the losers is when it's such, it's such a broad loss, like there's a recession or a major asset bubble that burst, then they're like, oh, yeah, I got caught up in the dot com, dot com bubble, blah, blah, blah. And then you hear people come out, talk about how upset they are about how much they lost. But you don't hear about it when it's just like, oh, I went into crypto, or I went into AI, I went into whatever. Another famous, real common mistake is people will get caught up in an individual stock that is pharmaceutical related.
17:18 Speaker 03 Right.
17:18 Speaker 02 Like, they're about to announce the results of the third trial FDA approval is potentially going to happen, and this will cure cancer, and then it will, you know, revolutionize healthcare, and it's trading at 50 cents a share right now. So, you know, it only has to go up 50 cents to cure cancer, and you've doubled your money. Like, and then people go, whoa, I don't want to miss out on this. And, you know.
17:45 Speaker 03 It's a reminder that hindsight's always 2020, right? We know, once we have the information on what already happened, and those That feel like a genius because they made the right move are definitely willing to shout from the rooftops, right? Look how great we did.
18:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
18:01 Speaker 03 But there's, like you said, equally as many people on the other end that when it doesn't work out, they're usually not shouting from the rooftop about how great things are because they lost, right?
18:11 Speaker 02 That's right. That's right. Anything else there, Dustin?
18:14 Speaker 03 I think you hit the nail on the head with, you know, it doesn't create dividends. It's not creating a product. At the end of the day, I personally get more peace of mind, you know, in a broadly diversified portfolio, not trying to lean too much into any one category, crypto included.
18:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. Good advice and great question, Eddie J. Appreciate it and appreciate all of our listeners out there. Keep your questions and comments coming our way, 661-396-1000. We're going to take a very quick break. We come back, one of our favorite guests, regular guest, Steve Murray from Murray Family Farms. He's our resident farm expert and ag expert. Got a lot to talk to Steve about, so don't go anywhere. We're Money Wise.
18:58 Speaker 00 Have you been putting off your finances? Seize the day. Call the Money Wise office at 661-847-1000 or email [email protected] for more information.
19:14 Speaker 02 Thanks for tuning in. We're Money Wise. We're your hosts today. I'm Sharad here with Dustin, joined now by our guest, Steve Murray from Murray Family Farms.
19:21 Speaker 03 And this music.
19:25 Speaker 02 This is the theme song for, is it the Beverly Hillbillies?
19:29 Speaker 04 Green Acres.
19:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, there you go.
19:32 Speaker 04 We had a friend come out and he described our place as halfway between Dallas and Green Acres.
19:39 Speaker 02 Oh, Steve, thanks so much for coming on the show again. How are things out there at Murray Family Farms?
19:44 Speaker 04 You know, the things are hopping that we We've had, we had a cool winter. We've had some warm weather now. We had best weather we've ever seen as far as our cherry, all of our bloom, everything bloomed after almonds kind of got foggy and rainy and after that, everything turned really nice. So
20:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:02 Speaker 04 We're very bullish on, I hope it's not too good.
20:05 Speaker 02 Yeah. When is cherries, when are cherries, cherry season?
20:10 Speaker 04 I would say this year, maybe around April 20th, April 25th.
20:14 Speaker 02 Oh, not far.
20:15 Speaker 04 Not far. Yeah. We're talking, you know, six weeks.
20:18 Speaker 02 Cherries are always interesting. They're, they're a product that is known, like the farmers that I know, it's like, they're special. There's a special group of farmers that are, at least in California, that are farming cherries because there's so many factors that can just like destroy it.
20:36 Speaker 04 Yeah. Up in Washington, they say at least we used to make money once every five years. It's like potatoes used to be where you'd have one big year and then four bad years, but it was the one good year that got you, you know, through the four bad years.
20:48 Speaker 02 Yep.
20:49 Speaker 04 But, uh,
20:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:51 Speaker 04 You know, everything in agriculture right now kind of, you know, is struggling and that I think the 2026 is going to be a particularly tough year.
20:59 Speaker 03 Can we go back to the fog for a minute?
21:00 Speaker 04 Yeah.
21:00 Speaker 03 So what kind of impact does the fog have? Cause we definitely had a lot of fog delays for the kids this year. And so we all know we had it. What, what does that do?
21:08 Speaker 04 Well, it used to be that there was more than a million acres of cotton and with all the water in the mountains, they would pre irrigate all the fields and that created humidity. And so the whole valley was filled with fog and we got our chilling requirements here. The trees just love it, the deciduous trees when it's 45 degrees and that's kind of just stays right there. This year we had those November rains and it just put a lot of humidity in the air. And then we ended up getting another good soaking in February. And so we had a lot of, a lot of temperatures around 45 degrees, which are not great for people, but it's really great for causing the, the dormancy to set in. So the trees have a strong bloom and we saw just a boom, you know,
21:53 Speaker 04 three or four days and everything came on all at once and the bees worked hard and. Hopefully we'll see productive, uh, everything.
22:00 Speaker 02 That's always a fascinating aspect of certain crops of how it needs to be cold for a certain number of days during their dormancy or during, you know, during the winter. Like, how is that like, I know they're not sentient, like plants are, but, but like they've got these amazing like mechanisms that are very in tune with the weather and with the time of year, sunlight, all that stuff. It's fascinating.
22:28 Speaker 04 University has four programs on determining how your chilling is and none of them are any good.
22:34 Speaker 02 Oh, really?
22:35 Speaker 04 Last year was supposed to be a great year in that the state of California had a half a crop. So what looked like great chilling, we had four million boxes of cherries and the year before we had 10. So, and what looked like, you know, a lot of times, uh, the formulas we use, uh, trying to think like a plant.
22:51 Speaker 02 That, that makes me feel better about my own backyard garden. You know, like, why is this so different this year? You know, like I did it just like I did last year. Why did my, you know, why do my peppers look like that or whatever? You mentioned bees. What's the latest on the, on bees? It seems like they're just, it's constantly in the news that there's this, you know, colony collapse or issue with the number of bees. Is that still the case?
23:17 Speaker 04 What has happened over the years is about 21 viruses that are in beehives. And then on top of that, there's two different kinds of mites. And a mite is like a relative of a spider. And they're like, the external ones are the varroa mites and they're about the size of a pinhead and they crawl on the bees and they get into the hive and crawl all through the combs and weaken and spread viruses. And then there's the tracheal mite, which gets in their breathing tubes and causes them to be anemic. But between the two, that last year, about seven out of 10 beehives died in the, in the world, in the United States.
23:50 Speaker 02 Seven out of 10?
23:51 Speaker 04 Seven out of 10.
23:52 Speaker 02 That's like 70% of the bees gone.
23:55 Speaker 04 And so in the state, we've got about 800,000 hives native in California, native beekeepers. And then there's about 2.2 million that are brought in on trains and everything but planes and buses. They go on, uh, trains, on trucks. From everywhere as far away as the east coast or the Canadian border. And they get $200 a hive. And then they stay and maybe get some citrus honey and then go up for the sagebrush or the, you know, the clover, wherever they're from. That sets their finances for the year. But they need more money for honey. And right now, there's dumping coming from Turkey. And so Turkey's dumping honey in the United States for 90 cents a pound.
24:38 Speaker 04 And the beekeepers need more than two bucks. With the $200 for the hive, they need, if you get a can of honey per hive, they need at least $2 a pound and the market's going for 90 cents.
24:50 Speaker 02 I didn't even think about the economic forces that would be on bees in the form of the honey.
24:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, the honey, that historically was the moneymaker.
25:00 Speaker 02 Not the pollinators.
25:01 Speaker 04 Not the pollination. Now they count on the pollination. And then China, you know, every China farmer has a hive, but there's, you know, 1.6 million of them. And so, or billion.
25:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:13 Speaker 04 And so they were dumping honey into the United States for suppressed prices. And so they said, we'll just look for the pollen and not allow, you know, Chinese honey. So they routed it through Mexico and other places. So we could identify Chinese honey. And so they ran it through diatomaceous earth. And that would take out all the pollen and all the nutrients that make honey honey.
25:37 Speaker 02 Oh, wow.
25:38 Speaker 04 And so it was really just basically keros syrup that bees produced. And that, but you couldn't tell it came from China.
25:44 Speaker 02 Oh, interesting.
25:45 Speaker 04 They just found a way to cheat around it so you could sell it, you know, go to a secondary market and then into the United States.
25:50 Speaker 02 So how did, how did the ag, how did ag get through this? It seems like you're losing 70% of the bees and like, how did they make it?
26:00 Speaker 04 Well, mites have multiple generations a year. And so they've got medications that you put into the beehives that they go resistant. And so after a few years, it stops working and then they've got to come up with another miticide, which makes it hard to grow organic honey because you're putting synthetic miticides like you would on a citrus crop. And you're killing a bug on a bug.
26:22 Speaker 02 Right.
26:23 Speaker 04 So.
26:24 Speaker 02 So it's a problem.
26:26 Speaker 04 It's a problem. We, this year, we had good hives. They were strong and they were available. Last year, they were short.
26:32 Speaker 02 And so there was just, there was still enough across the country to be able to bus in, you know, the bees to, that were needed during the spring bloom.
26:43 Speaker 04 2.2 million. And the problem is, is that you, then you bring in these diseases and pathogens. And then if your hives die, the robber bees come in and get sick. And then everybody takes them around. It's just a perfect storm for spreading it nationally. There's no place protected from coming from California.
27:01 Speaker 02 Ignorant to one of the things you just said, uh, did you say robber bees? What's a robber bee? What's that?
27:07 Speaker 04 Well, with these diseases, the bees die, but the honey's still there. And so other bees will come in and steal the honey. And while they're there, these hitchhikers jump on them, these mites. And then they bring them back to their hive and they're resistant to the medications.
27:24 Speaker 02 Fascinating. Bees are crazy, by the way. They're, the, the world of bees is always astounding.
27:31 Speaker 03 Well, and it's another example of being thankful for people that are passionate about this and knowledgeable about the science behind how to make it better.
27:38 Speaker 02 Right.
27:40 Speaker 04 I tried to be a beekeeper and I got up to about 300 hives, but every time I got stung, it felt like the first time.
27:47 Speaker 02 Hard to be a beekeeper if you just keep getting stung. 300 hives, that's no, that's, that's not a small amount.
27:54 Speaker 04 It was a side, I was, I would thought maybe I'd make it as I go at it. And then, uh, like I said, is you go at the meetings and everybody's got frowns on their faces and all trucks.
28:03 Speaker 02 Right, right.
28:05 Speaker 04 On paper, it looks great.
28:06 Speaker 02 Is there a lot of beekeepers in our region here?
28:08 Speaker 04 Yeah, there's, yeah, there, there, this is a good place to be a beekeeper because they can feed themselves in the wintertime with the eucalyptus and, and, uh, some of the, the, the winter weeds that bloom. If we get a good early rain and you get the clovers and the, and the fiddle neck and different things, there's, you don't have to feed them in the winter or not very much.
28:30 Speaker 02 Right. Again, we're joined by Steve Murray. He's our, our resident expert here, uh, ag and farming expert. Steve, can you, you mentioned that 2026 is gearing up to be another challenging year. Maybe give us kind of a summary of what the challenges are that are being faced right now.
28:52 Speaker 04 Most people don't realize how energy-dependent agriculture is. But virtually everything that you do, from tractors running on diesel to transporting your goods, but the biggest one really is the nutrients that you put on your crops.
29:06 Speaker 02 Fertilizers.
29:07 Speaker 04 Fertilizers, and the biggest fertilizer you use is nitrogen.
29:10 Speaker 02 Right.
29:11 Speaker 04 And nitrogen, there simply is not enough cows in the world to put down manure. And so it is made from, um, natural gas is converted into urea that is then converted into the various nitrogen sources, which is the dominant of all the nutrients you put on. And we don't produce it in the United States. It comes primarily from Europe.
29:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:35 Speaker 04 And Europe has historically been relying on Russian natural gas to convert that into nitrogen fertilizers. But between transportation, fertilizers, uh, your equipment that, uh, if we did not have an incident in Iran, we were projected with the closure of these, um, these processing facilities, a significant portion of California's processed gasoline and diesel has been taken, is taken out of production. And we would have been at eight dollars a gallon without Iran by the end of this year.
30:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:09 Speaker 04 For gasoline and diesel's more expensive than gasoline.
30:11 Speaker 02 Right, yeah. Our refining capacity just continues to shrink and our demand is not going down at all.
30:18 Speaker 04 And there's no, no really good electric tractors and there's no good electric diesels. And if you look at like I-5 and 99, that we will see a doubling or tripling of the amount of loads carried over the next 10 to 15 years, a tripling at the same time as we were in the process of taking diesel trucks off the road.
30:39 Speaker 02 You seeing tripling because of our population growth?
30:42 Speaker 04 Because of continued agricultural and industrial production, that we are a byway north and south that, you know, 40% of all of the goods come in LA, uh, in the United States, you know, through, um, what is it, through, um, Long Beach and San Pedro is 40% of all the product coming into the United States. So it goes right up the 5 and the 99 and, um, That there was just without anything else happening that would have been a doubling or tripling where the numbers are like 450 million. So I don't know what they're measuring them in. It's going to go double or triple of that over the next 10 years. I five and 58 have bright futures as far as corridors of transportation.
31:26 Speaker 02 And hence Bakersfield.
31:27 Speaker 04 And hence Bakersfield.
31:29 Speaker 02 I believe Bakersfield definitely has a bright future. This leads me to a listener question and I we saved this for you. This just came in this morning, but I'd like to get your take on it. It says, thanks for covering my AI question yesterday, but following up for clarification, since we are in oil and ag county, do you think we are more at risk than other areas when it comes to automation? Or could AI actually create more jobs here instead of taking them away? I'll give you my take, Steve, and then I'd love to hear your take, especially on the ag part of this. But my take is that that one of the advantages
32:07 Speaker 02 that we have in Kern County is that so much of our, our industry, ag and oil in particular, are so are labor intensive that is much less exposed to an AI overtake than say, office work. Like, most studies that I read show that those kind of physical labor jobs are farther down the road from being taken over by AI because it's not just an AI, it's not just an AI obstacle. It's also, there's other technological obstacles to create for say, robots or drones or things that can do a lot of the farm labor and certainly oil and
32:50 Speaker 02 gas labor. And so Kern County is remarkably resilient. We saw it during COVID. It's actually a much more diverse. Economic community than other, some other major cities that don't have these exporting goods, you know, like oil and ag. And so it seems like from my perspective, Kern County is in a good position for continued long-term growth and, or at least continued resilience against AI overtaking jobs. Instead, what I see is AI actually creating jobs in the form of more autonomous tractors,
33:33 Speaker 02 for example, or crop monitoring drones, or robotic harvesters, or AI irrigation systems, and go on and on. All of those are going to require people to work in that. Yeah, that's going to require humans that are monitoring and implementing those technologies.
33:50 Speaker 04 Well, ag is a big topic and it's, the United States is the world leader in all of the production of food, but if you're in the Midwest, that you can be a husband and wife and go, go, both go to Purdue and, you know, you're harvesting, you know, with GPS and with intelligent equipment on your tractor and your wife is in the tender truck measuring spot on all the micro climates and portions of your field to where two people with the right equipment can run 3,000 acres of agronomic crops that are in the Midwest. When you come to California, we have specialty crops that are much more labor intensive
34:30 Speaker 04 and everybody is trying to eliminate labor because it is so doggone expensive and so much liability and so little of it available. And so we have a, you know, the reason why we are awash in almonds and pistachios is that you can have 500 acres and six employees.
34:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:50 Speaker 04 You know, and I've got 90 on 300 acres because everything that we do requires somebody to hand pick it, hand plant it, hand groom it, that we have, you know, great tractors that, you know, the, the problem is in California is that a lot of the farmers are in the coffee shop and the people that are operating this high-tech Equipment, you know, tractors that cost way more than a Mercedes Benz with sophisticated equipment on it is that you've got a guy that's got at most a ninth grade education in Mexico and does not have the technol- you know, there's a ceiling on what the people that are driving the equipment. And so as you come in with these new driverless tractors that will run all night long and all the, once you set it up, you know, it just can keep going.
35:34 Speaker 02 Like a Roomba.
35:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, exactly.
35:36 Speaker 02 Tractor Roomba.
35:37 Speaker 03 Yeah, it'll be interesting to see all the places that AI shows up. I had an opportunity to walk through an almond facility that did like cracking and sorting and the computers were looking for nine different variations of quality and could sort it.
35:53 Speaker 04 Computer vision is a big thing.
35:55 Speaker 02 Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. We have another listener question here for you, Steve. It says,
36:03 Speaker 02 Steve, people drive by farms every day, but it may not realize the cost. What are some of the biggest expenses you're facing farming here in Kern County right now? It seems oil and ag always takes the hits for our community as lawmakers continue to go after us.
36:20 Speaker 04 The big hits, the toughest ones, the first one is the cost of everything. It's not just the cost of the fertilizer and the fuel and the equipment and the transportation, but that it's the cost of everything and that it's all going up, that we're, we're selling wholesale and we're buying retail and that, you know, water, that we built a system in the 60s, 50s, that it was the wonders of the world in water efficiency. And we've got the ability to share water with the environment and still provide water for the farmers. And we've had, as, if you really follow
37:04 Speaker 04 the logic on fuel, on transportation, on energy and say, we're going to replace all of this with electricity, the electricity is made with fossil fuels.
37:13 Speaker 02 Right.
37:14 Speaker 04 You know, so if you look at the other side of that, the water, if you don't have the energy, we don't have the energy for AI in California. It's going to go to places, Texas, where they've got energy that is being made into electricity that you can use AI for. You, when you go to look at AI, artificial intelligence, that- The farmers that don't adopt it rapidly are gonna not be here. So it is gonna come in here and make the differences of incremental differences of the people that survive and don't survive. But that the water that we are literally washing the water into the ocean at the detriment of the now extinct Delta smelt. That the intention was to flush fresh water through the Delta.
37:56 Speaker 04 And in the process, they have a food desert where these little fish are starving to death. And they've got mollusks on the bottom of the ocean, of the, of the Delta that are eating all of the nutrients. And what little nutrients are coming through are getting flushed into the ocean. And that in the last five years, they have not caught a Delta smelt. It is literally extinct. And yet we're running millions of acre feet of water into the ocean. And the fear is rising sea levels. And California is bent on running water into the ocean at the detriment that just, just last year. You know, there was enough to fill Kern County a foot deep of water that was unnecessarily run to the ocean. Even the, if you follow the science, the science says, this is stupid.
38:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:40 Speaker 04 You know, and they still do.
38:42 Speaker 02 And there, and there, and science also says there are solutions.
38:45 Speaker 04 There's solutions.
38:45 Speaker 02 There are solutions that are, are environmentally friendly and economically friendly. Like it seems like there are multiple solutions to this. And yet it's just, it seems like there's not the political will to correct it, to make it happen.
39:02 Speaker 04 But I would say that the surprise that I have that keeps me up at night is something you'd never even imagine. And that is when you drive down the freeway and you look at how many lawyers there are on the billboards.
39:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:14 Speaker 04 And that, the guy says, I'm the biggest in the world, you know? And that, that we have had frivolous litigations too last year. Frivolous, absolutely no merit to it, but to take it to trials a hundred grand.
39:28 Speaker 02 Right.
39:29 Speaker 04 You know, so you, so you settle for 70. And the twit gets a hundred, gets a thousand dollars on a $70,000 settlement. Cause you did wanna go to a hundred win.
39:40 Speaker 02 Right.
39:41 Speaker 04 I mean, you clearly have a winning case, costs a hundred thousand dollars.
39:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, just to defend yourself.
39:46 Speaker 04 Just to defend yourself. If they win a dollar, then you owe their lawyers fees.
39:51 Speaker 02 Right.
39:52 Speaker 04 If I win a dollar, they don't pay my lawyers fees. They only pay the lawyers on the persecutor, the person that was damaged. That we pay their lawyer's fees. So not only would I pay a hundred thousand to go to trial, but I'd also pay a hundred thousand dollars for their lawyers. So now it's two hundred thousand dollars to settle for seventy and the, and the, the, the, the, the person is claiming injury at a seventy thousand dollar lawsuit got one thousand six hundred dollars. A person got fifteen thousand dollars. They got one thousand six hundred dollars too. And so they don't even realize it. They think, boy, this is going to set me up.
40:31 Speaker 02 Right.
40:31 Speaker 04 You know, and when it's done, they don't even have enough to make a car payment.
40:34 Speaker 02 Right. And then the attorneys obviously are incentivized not to let their client know about that or to string their client along because they're getting paid.
40:41 Speaker 04 Yeah. In fact, when you're in the negotiate, it goes into a, a, a.
40:45 Speaker 02 Mediation.
40:45 Speaker 04 A mediation.
40:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
40:46 Speaker 04 And they start a hundred and fifty thousand. I start at two.
40:49 Speaker 02 Right.
40:50 Speaker 04 We got to seventy. That was halfway. And that is exactly the game you play. And even though you have a winning case.
40:57 Speaker 02 Yeah. And now you're, you're essentially held hostage by the fact that it's going to, what it's going to cost you to go to, go to trial, that you know you'll win.
41:05 Speaker 04 Or do they absolutely know you'll win for no good reason. And everybody who has a business is vulnerable to it.
41:11 Speaker 02 Yes. Yes.
41:12 Speaker 04 Everybody.
41:13 Speaker 03 And those are the real losers here, the owner operator.
41:15 Speaker 04 Yeah. Gosh, you know.
41:16 Speaker 02 It's a total waste. It's a total waste of money.
41:18 Speaker 04 When you see people leaving California, businesses leaving California, it's not just that they're talking about not just eight dollars a gallon, but now they're talking about two and a half cents a mile.
41:29 Speaker 02 Right. Right. Yeah.
41:31 Speaker 04 Where does the, you know, dollar sixty that you're paying in taxes go for roads?
41:36 Speaker 02 Right.
41:36 Speaker 04 That is pilfered to go to the general fund. I mean, got the, my son's been to a hundred and twenty-six countries and he says, I live on the worst road in the world.
41:43 Speaker 02 The worst road?
41:44 Speaker 04 Right.
41:46 Speaker 02 With the highest taxes in the country.
41:48 Speaker 04 With the highest taxes and dirt.
41:49 Speaker 02 Yeah. Yeah. Um, it, lastly, this is, this is the last thing. I appreciate you had taken the time to, to be here, Steve, again, Steve Murray from Murray Family Farms. Can you give, if, if I were a, let's call me a senior in college, I'm a twenty-
42:09 Speaker 02 Twenty one year old kid, passionate about ag, wanting my life dream to be a farmer and to be in into ag. I want to grow food and sell it. Getting my degree, let's say I'm getting my degree in agriculture, maintenance or management or whatever. What would, what advice would you give to me? What would you say, honestly, what would you say to me?
42:32 Speaker 04 I would say that when I graduated with an ag degree and my family had a brother that was a dentist, a brother that was a lawyer, a sister that's a nurse that was married to a doctor. And my first job, I went to work for the county for eight hundred dollars a month in Santa Barbara and I'd never owned a home.
42:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:46 Speaker 04 And that, but that from there I got perspective and then I went to work as a pest control advisor and went to Washington and Idaho and then came to California and then started a farm on the side, kept my day job. Had car payments that were made for me because I was traveling. And that it, it led me into the ability to become a farmer. And so if you're into pain and perseverance, that you will eventually, these beekeepers we're talking about.
43:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
43:12 Speaker 04 When they retire, they're going to have a home in Montana, they're going to have a home in California, they're going to have with acreage because they got to handle these bees in open spaces.
43:20 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
43:21 Speaker 04 When they retire, it's because they've got five different pieces of real estate in choice places.
43:25 Speaker 02 Right.
43:26 Speaker 04 Not because they're going to make money selling their beehives.
43:28 Speaker 02 Right.
43:28 Speaker 04 And in farming, that, that, that, the, the, the whole game is to create equity.
43:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
43:34 Speaker 04 To, to, to, to land, they don't make any more of it. Right now, when I got into agriculture and bought land, it was in eighty, eighty nine. Today is exactly like eighty nine. It is a time to buy land because the land is now back to where you can actually buy land. And the prices are going to come back up, people are going to have to eat. We have some tough demographics where populations are shrinking and people during their prime spending.
44:01 Speaker 04 You know, the United States is the greatest place on earth because the boomers had babies. And those babies are millennials and they're having babies. And you go by Bakersfield High School in the morning and you see job security where we're all these babies that are gonna come to Murray Family Farms.
44:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's right, eating an oaky pie.
44:20 Speaker 04 Eating oaky pies. And so I just think agriculture is red hot, it's always gonna be. If you love it, then that's what you're gonna love to do. I'd meet farmers that were born into it, said, I've never seen a good year, I want out of here. When my parents die, this is gone.
44:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
44:35 Speaker 04 You know, so we've seen a big exodus of multi-generational farmers because times are tough. But that's when you buy.
44:41 Speaker 02 Yeah. And if, and like you said, it's, I mean, we have different challenges, different but similar challenges than 1989. And yet, you know, if I would think about getting into the business and the farming in 1989, I'd be like, heck yeah, let's go.
44:56 Speaker 03 Yeah. Well, we were talking about AI earlier, and I was thinking exactly that. If that could spark an interest from the generation that's grown up with technology, right? If there's a lot more technology involved, perhaps the interest will come up.
45:09 Speaker 04 And what you have to do is identify the low hanging fruit. That there is AI right now that makes you smarter because you have to be efficient. And that find those, that AI area. And you know, the thing about AI is that there's no real great schools teaching you AI. There's people that work in their, in their room and just, just go, go, go, go. Try to learn more and more about AI. When you go out and look for a job, you'd like what colors by balloon or what parachute?
45:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
45:37 Speaker 04 You go, who's the big AI companies? Cause they don't have college graduates that are smart at that. You just say, gosh, I use it every day. I, you know, some people like to play video games. I like to learn more about AI.
45:48 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
45:49 Speaker 04 That's like, and finding agricultural applications for that. I think I've said before, there was a guy that came from Mexico, didn't hardly speak English, didn't have a degree, but he really knew how to do organics. And he was at Greenway and Greenway was paying him 60,000. I offered him 70, Greenway said 80.
46:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, it's hot commodity there.
46:09 Speaker 04 Yeah, and that. You know, the land of opportunity here. You want to be a mechanic, then you learn how to be a mechanic, make a shop, go to the high school over there on Mount Vernon and learn how to work on tractors. And you've got Grimway, Boldhouse, all the big guys are coming out there and saying, who's the good mechanics in this class?
46:33 Speaker 02 Yep.
46:34 Speaker 04 And they're hired before they get out of high school.
46:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:36 Speaker 04 If you want to be, you know, if you want to be a labor contractor, get your labor contract and license and they've got a cut, get 40%, 42% of what people are paying you for the labor and that pretty soon you gunnysack and then you buy your own farm. And some of these three and four and five, six thousand acre farmers started off picking grapes.
46:57 Speaker 02 Right.
46:57 Speaker 04 Without a degree, it was English as a second language. It is the land of opportunity.
47:04 Speaker 04 Less than 15% of the people in this county have gone to college. But there are great jobs and pathways to wealth if you have gumption.
47:13 Speaker 02 Yep.
47:13 Speaker 04 If you have a fire in your belly.
47:14 Speaker 02 Yep.
47:14 Speaker 04 If you're willing to buy 20 acres, put a double white on it, plant it to grapes, and then you don't have to pay for the farm and you don't have to pay for the house. And the three years you and your wife do all the work and you're all of a sudden pulling in, you know, more gross income than almost anybody in the county.
47:31 Speaker 02 Yeah. Yeah. This is music to my ears. This is the American dream. I'm hearing it's still alive.
47:35 Speaker 04 That's why this seems so successful here. And if you're a doctor and then be a farmer, then it used to be you could write off your day job.
47:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:44 Speaker 04 Your losses carried forward. They changed that in 89 when I got in and I got declared to be a farmer because my 20 acres of grapes made more money than my job. So I was a farmer, so I was able to take advantage of the, you know, offsetting my paycheck.
48:01 Speaker 02 Yep.
48:01 Speaker 04 And so you need to be declared a farmer and then look at government assistance through the Farm Service Agency. I got my first $30,000 operating line because three banks declined me. You know, that was the requirement.
48:14 Speaker 03 The word grit, grit was coming to mind, but I like the way he said it. If you have a hankering for pain and perseverance.
48:19 Speaker 04 Yeah, and the people that don't make it don't have it.
48:22 Speaker 02 Well, I don't know what you can't be successful. I mean, you can be lucky, I guess, but it's very difficult to be successful without going through some pain and without persevering. It's nothing is really handed to you. You know, it's not like you, I think there is a misconception. People think, oh, you just got to be, you know, you just got to be at the right place at the right time. And then that's how you, that's how you win. That's how you, those are the successful business people. It's like, no, it's not. Those are very few people that I know that have been successful in business that just sort of like fell into their lap. The ones I know like did went through the pain, they're still going through pain, but they're persevering.
48:56 Speaker 04 And not be fear based.
48:58 Speaker 02 Yes.
48:58 Speaker 04 You know, that you think this was all falling apart. I mean, you just can't think like that.
49:02 Speaker 02 Right.
49:02 Speaker 04 If we had a bad year last year and I'm planting $50,000 worth of cherries today.
49:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, right. It would be terrifying if you start thinking about it.
49:11 Speaker 04 And I don't have enough money to make it to picking.
49:13 Speaker 02 Right.
49:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, there has to be, there's the other thing I've seen successful people is a little bit of naivete, or at least a willingness to not be fearful, understanding those things, but not letting that fear take your eye off the prize.
49:31 Speaker 03 That's right. And when you were saying be lucky, I don't remember who to give credit to, but I've heard that luck is when preparation meets opportunity.
49:38 Speaker 02 Yes.
49:39 Speaker 04 The harder I work, the luckier I get.
49:40 Speaker 02 That's it. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, like farming is just that classic example of, I love to hear, this is the, this is the most positive interview I think we've had. It's mostly because I'm always asking about, you know, CQ and, you know, all these other crazy things that are going on in the state, which are.
49:58 Speaker 04 It is crazy.
49:59 Speaker 02 It is. Yeah. And it does seem insurmountable, but there's always opportunity somewhere. There's always opportunity in any industry like that, depending on where it is in the cycle, it's natural cycle that, that, that these industries go through.
50:13 Speaker 02 Is there any, any technology out there that you are excited about? Or is like super cutting edge?
50:22 Speaker 04 I think that everywhere in agriculture in California, the efficiency of irrigation is really, really cool. That we have didrometers on our trees that tell you when the shrunk, if the shrunk, if the trunk shrinks a millimeter, that you can tell what the tree, not only are we measuring what's in the, in the ground, we're also measuring how the trees reacting to it. So you could be on a hot day and it'll tell you, instead of running water for eight hours, why don't you run it two hours four times? To try to keep that tree fat like a saguaro.
50:54 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
50:55 Speaker 04 The, the, the technology in irrigation is really great that I think. So again, I, I think that that's just, just water alone because it's gotten so expensive. Nutrients, being able to have soil stimulants and, and you know, when you, when if you're taking, you know, probiotics, we're putting probiotics on the ground and we're putting stimulants on there and that, uh, there's so much neat technology available. And, uh, and that we're starting to see more young people coming into the industry. And they're also very, very, the young farmers and ranchers. If you wanted to do what you said, go to, go to Farm Bureau, join young farmers and ranchers and you'll just meet the most wholesome group of people.
51:33 Speaker 02 I agree.
51:34 Speaker 03 Well, your, your passion is so infectious and you're always such a great guest. We're so grateful to have you in today.
51:39 Speaker 02 I agree.
51:40 Speaker 04 I really appreciate you having this program and allowing me on it.
51:43 Speaker 02 Oh, thank you, Steve. That's Steve Murray again. Go visit Murray Family Farms out there off of 58. Again, want to remind all our listeners of these three things. Be smart, be safe and be money wise.
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