(upbeat music) - Welcome to "A Shot Of Ag."

My name is Rob Sharkey, I'm your host.

I'm a farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

I started a podcast which led into an XM radio show, which led into a national television show, which led to me being right here today.

But today, today's not about me.

Today, it's about Jim Campion.

How are you doing Jim?

- I'm good, Rob.

I'm good.

- Yeah.

- I'm from just outside of Bradford, Illinois too.

- You are?

- That's weird.

- Yeah, it is very weird.

That's a local privilege or something.

- I guess, only the lucky few man.

- Do you know it's better than being from Bradford, right?

- Well, yeah, it could be worse.

(laughs softly) - We can say that.

- We can.

- Yeah, we can make fun.

All right.

Your lifelong from there though, right?

- Yeah, yep.

Born and raised, yep.

- Just south?

- Just south.

Yep.

- Okay.

- I'm about as far south as you are east.

- Okay.

That makes sense.

- Yeah.

- Farm kid?

- Yeah, farm kid.

But it was a little different.

There was a stretch in my life where I wasn't really a farm kid.

'Cause, like up until I was 18, I mean, I went to school in Peoria, so.

So I was a farm kid and it was kind of like, I was a farm kid in the summer.

But then, you know, from August to May, I was a city kid.

- [Rob] So where'd you go to school down here?

- Notre Dame.

- [Rob] Notre Dame.

- Yeah.

- You, that's not too long of a drive from Camp Grove though.

- Not then, no, no.

It's a lot little longer now.

- Do you say you're from Bradford or Camp Grove?

- I'm from Camp Grove.

Yeah.

- Okay.

- Is that a pride thing?

- Yeah, a little bit.

A little bit, 'cause you're in between Wyoming and Bradford.

- Did they still have a restaurant?

- Not anymore.

No, unfortunately.

- [Rob] So no church?

- No church.

- No.

- [Rob] Yeah, we got a new, you got a new church.

- Yeah, that's true.

There's a new church there, yeah.

Yep.

- Okay.

Oh, that's progress.

- Yeah, but no restaurant.

Still a bank.

- The bank still open in Camp Grove?

- It's still open.

- In fact, I think my mom banks there, right.

Okay.

We'll move on from, two local guys just talking.

- Yeah.

We can get away from the coffee shop.

- All right.

So you growing up, you were the, that stereotype as a farm kid, just kind of helping.

- Yeah, I mean, I really didn't become the stereotype until I went to college.

And I was home on from college on breaks and stuff like that.

'Cause I was never around it that much.

And I don't know if you remember this, but the late '90s, it was kind of tough.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- Early 2000s, things were tough.

- [Rob] Where'd you go to college?

- Illinois.

- [Rob] The UVA.

- Yeah, yep.

- You know, I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but Illinois actually has more than one university.

- Well, they have, yeah, there's more than one.

But only one good one.

- Okay.

- We can end it that way.

- No, no, we're gonna leave that little bit of heaven in there.

(laughs softly) What'd you go to school for?

- My degree is actually in Ag Policy.

- What you wanna become like a-- - I was gonna go work for USDA, man.

Yeah.

When I was 18 years old that's, I was gonna go be a Capitol Hill staffer, wonky guy.

Yeah.

- So what, you enter politics?

- Yeah, a little bit back then.

It was, wasn't as bad as it is now.

- [Rob] Well, politics are your desire?

- Yeah, politics.

- [Rob] Okay.

So you went to school for that, then what'd you do after college?

- I was a grain buyer.

I ended up in the grain business.

- Okay.

A lot of people don't know what that is, because they're like, whoa.

- So I ran, I was an assistant manager of a commercial grain elevator in just north of the Quad Cities.

- [Rob] Okay.

Explain what a green elevator is.

- Okay.

So what we did was, we loaded grain on barges for export, barges for export and we'd dump trucks from farmers.

- [Rob] Okay.

- That's in a nutshell.

- So my grain, I pick it from the field, we either store or we send it right to an elevator.

- Right.

- I'm selling it to you guys.

And then you guys are in charge of it from there.

Like you said, it goes on barges, barges hold how many semi-trucks, do you remember?

- 50 or 60.

- Did they really?

- Yeah.

- I'm impressed, you know that.

- Yeah.

- Of course you should.

- Still, it's not like riding a bike.

Some things you don't forget.

- So at that point it's going anywhere in the world.

- More, yeah, more than likely a transload in New Orleans, right?

I mean.

So yeah, they would unload the barges in New Orleans and put them on a vessel.

And then yeah, anywhere in the world.

- [Rob] Was this before the ethanol boom?

- Yeah.

Just as the ethanol boom was really cranking up is when I got in the grain business.

So I started in '03.

And I don't know, when do you want to call the boom start?

Five, six, seven, somewhere in there?

- [Rob] Sure.

- Yeah.

- [Rob] I don't know.

(indistinct) - When they were gonna build an ethanol plant in every town in Illinois.

- Yeah.

They were gonna be right behind all the Casey's.

- Right next to the Casey's, we were gonna have ethanol plants.

That's right.

- So how long were you there?

- I was with that company for three years.

And then I went to work for Cargill, basically in a similar role, in Hennepin I did that for 10.

- So tell people why it's so hard to buy corn.

- It's a skill set.

I mean, you've got, it's, you know, you've got the futures market, you've got basis trading.

You've got to know where to get it bought.

So basis is just the difference between the border and the local market, right?

So we'll just use Bradford, Illinois.

Might be worth 50 cents less than the border trade, which is just freight to get it to a bigger market.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- Okay.

- That is a concept that I think a lot of people in, not in agriculture don't understand.

Because the price of corn should be the price of corn, but it's, it never is.

- It never truly is, no.

- Yeah.

- Nope.

- Is it manipulated?

- It can be, but.

- [Rob] Is that what you used to do?

- Yeah.

I mean, I was nicknamed the Lee green stealer for awhile.

Yeah.

- [Rob] Yeah.

I don't know if he's joking.

- No, yeah, I'm joking.

(laughs softly) But, no.

So the basis, all the basis really is is the cost of freight to a bigger market, so.

- [Rob] That's what you say, but to a farmer, it's a way that you're-- - So think about, so think about New Orleans as the main market.

We'll just use that.

- [Rob] Okay.

- And then, your up river market is the Illinois River.

- [Rob] St. Louis?

- St. Louis.

Sure, St. Louis, Peoria, anywhere on the Illinois River.

And then your inland market would be Bradford.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- So there you got to get on a truck from Bradford to the Illinois River.

That costs money.

You gotta get on a barge, that costs money.

- But I don't wanna pay the basis.

That's a whole thing.

- I don't either.

I'm a farmer too.

I don't either.

But you're not really paying it.

- Because a farmer in Peoria is gonna get a little more for his corn because it's going right on a barge.

- True.

- That's not fair.

- That's not fair?

- Yeah.

- You know how to fix that?

Keep building Benz.

- [Rob] That's dumb.

(both laugh heartily) - Benz are expensive.

- Benz are expensive but then that's the way to take advantage of the basis, Rob.

And don't ship it at harvest time.

- So Hennepin, where'd you go after that?

- Then, my dad's health started to fail in 2016, '17.

And so then I went back to farming full-time.

I was always kind of around the farm when I was in Hennepin.

But I didn't really start farming full-time till 2016.

- I, it was a surprise locally, when your dad passed away.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, did it happen quick?

- Yeah.

Fortunately, fortunately, it was pretty quick.

Yeah.

- [Rob] You say fortunately.

- Yeah, fortunately, I mean, you, you don't wanna watch your dad, you don't want to watch your family linger.

I guess, it's in my mind, I wouldn't, I'm glad he didn't linger.

- [Rob] I would agree.

You know, my dad died with Alzheimer's dementia and that is very tough.

It was very tough.

So here you are.

You're a green bar.

You're like an Ag professional.

- Correct.

You can say that, you can say that.

Yeah.

- Well, what, I'm trying to think of what your mindset, now, did you look at going back to being a farmer as a step down or parallel?

- Step up.

- [Rob] Really?

- Yep.

A step up.

Corporate America is corporate America, right?

- [Rob] Yeah.

- As a farmer, you deal with corporate America, but you're not part of it, I don't think.

And the way that you are as an employee of a corporation.

- [Rob] Okay.

- So for me, it was, for me, it was a step up.

I can call my own shots.

- So you moved back, or I don't know if you moved, but now you're back on the farm.

- Yeah.

- Right?

- Right.

- And then, who all is your farm consist of?

- At that time it was my dad, my uncle and me.

- [Rob] Okay.

- And I had a little bit of rented ground.

They had rented ground.

And some ground we owned and some family ground that we own, but, yeah.

- [Rob] Okay.

But you say you're 40 now and you're doing it all yourself.

- Right.

'Cause when my dad passed away, my uncle retired.

And so here you go.

- That's good and bad.

- Yep.

- Okay.

Because you do, the hardest thing about starting farming, I think, is getting that initial, it's hard to pick up ground, very hard.

- Oh, yeah, it's very hard.

- I mean, either you got to buy it, which you got to have Elon Musk type of stuff.

Or you've got to rent it, which you can't just do that.

You can't just go, oh, I'm gonna farm a thousand acres and go out and rent it.

It takes time.

- Yeah.

It doesn't happen.

- But, so you did start off with this chunk of ground, that allowed you to farm.

- Right.

- But, you lost an entire generation of experience to call on.

- Yeah, basically.

- That had to be tough.

- Yeah, it was.

It was a tough winter that winter, yeah.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- It was a tough winter.

- [Rob] How was it, that first year?

- Well, 2018 was a really good year.

I mean, we planted everything.

You know, everything.

And we had a really good crop in 2018.

So 2018 was a pretty good year.

I was fortunate to start off with a good season.

- You probably didn't market it very well though.

- I could have done better.

- You need to build green better.

- Oh, you know the other fun thing that happened in 2018?

- What?

- Was the trade war.

- [Rob] Oh, yeah, yeah.

- We were selling beans in December for, you know, 60, 70 cents under.

Yeah.

- [Rob] Yeah.

I'm trying to think of when the, I don't know what they were called, The Trump payments.

- Yeah.

- Came in though.

- Did that start then too?

- I think it was the next year, was it?

- Yeah.

I think that started, but, I think, yeah, right in there.

- Yeah, it was a very odd year.

- Yeah, it was a strange year.

That was a strange year.

- Okay.

So you're back to farming.

Are you true?

I mean, could you even like call your uncle?

And just like get advice?

Because I remember that first year that my dad died.

And I had been farming with him for years.

But it's like all of a sudden I'm like, I don't have anybody to ask this, that or the other too.

- Well, and in fairness, he moved away.

He just pulled the cord and moved away.

- [Rob] Okay.

- So he wasn't, so I'm basically calling on his memories and he's 1500 miles away.

So then you're like, okay, well I know there's a tile here, but, you're not here to show me where it was.

- [Rob] It's stuff like that, yeah.

- So it's little stuff like that.

And I can, I know it's here, and it needs fixed.

And you knew exactly where it was, but you can't, you're not here to show me exactly where it was, right?

- Yeah.

- Little things like that.

- Tell me about this.

- So in 2016.

- It's a golf club.

- It's a golf club.

- I don't know if you could quite see that.

- [Jim] So my dad and I, that was what we did together, right?

We would, on Sundays, especially in the summer or when we were on a trip somewhere, we would go play golf together.

- [Rob] Okay.

- That's what we did.

And so in the fall of 2016, he won this golf club at a golf outing, right before we went to the field and he never used it.

He just never got the chance.

By 2017, he wasn't in good enough shape to go golf.

And so that's why I carry this golf club 'cause it's one of those things that kind of reminds me of him.

- Or in a profession then, like growing up to where a lot of it is, you don't spend time on yourself.

- Right.

- You don't do the fun stuff.

You put your nose to the grindstone and you just get it done, and that's it.

- You can always find, you can always find another job to do, right?

- Exactly.

- This needs done, that needs done.

Well, I don't.

Yeah.

- Losing your dad at such a young age, has that changed your philosophy?

Is that why you now think this way?

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

There's always gonna be time.

There's a few jobs that are time sensitive, right?

I mean, beans can only be cut on certain days.

Things like that.

You can only plant on certain days.

But, there's other jobs that'll always, they'll wait.

There's jobs that'll be there.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- So go to the concert.

Go to the ball game.

You know, especially with your, you know, I have a four-year-old son.

I mean, go to his stuff.

'Cause that's definitely happens once.

- I do think it's a bit of a generational thing.

Because I think we watched our parents beat themselves up their entire life.

One of the main things, like during harvest, right?

You do not leave.

That is you put your nose to the grindstone.

But, it was this past year, one of my good friends who was turning 50 and they were going to Saskatchewan for like a five day hunt.

I said, yes.

It was during harvest.

It didn't happen 'cause of COVID.

But I was, I sat back I was kind of happy with myself.

- Yeah.

- That I was able to go, you know, all right, this, my dad would have never done that.

- Oh, no.

- Never done that.

- No, no.

Did you do any good?

Did you kill something?

- COVID canceled.

Yeah.

- Oh, gotcha.

- Yeah, so.

- They wouldn't let you into Canada.

- I'm sure I would've done really, really well.

- What were you going after?

- Ducks and geese.

- Oh, yeah.

- It wasn't about, I don't care about shooting ducks and geese.

But it was more about the whole.

- Right.

- He's only going to turn 50 once, right?

- That's right.

- Okay.

So are you doing more golfing?

Doing more fun stuff?

- I mentioned the four-year-old son, that kind of put the brakes on golfing for me.

But, there's other things, that man I'm doing more with him.

Yeah, I'm doing a lot more with him than playing golf.

- Yeah.

- And that's more important.

- Your wife's-- - I still enjoy playing golf.

- Your wife's a States Attorney.

- My wife is a county prosecutor, yeah.

- Okay.

So that's in what county?

- Stark.

- Okay.

I mean, does much happen in Stark?

- No.

We had arson this morning.

- You had an arson this morning, in Star County?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

I don't know when this is gonna air, but they're probably going to remember 'cause I don't know if I've ever remember an arson in Stark County before.

(both laugh heartily) Not much happens in there.

I mean, a little stuff.

- No, it is a pretty, I mean, it is a pretty quiet county, luckily.

- Yeah.

- It's pretty quiet.

- (indistinct) Stark County.

Most people probably don't know where it is.

- No.

Most people, no.

- It's not Peoria.

Is it right next to Peoria?

- Yeah, it's right next.

Yes, straight north.

- [Rob] It's the one north.

- Yeah.

- [Rob] Yeah, that's the one nobody talks.

- It's pretty small.

- It's funny because more people like Putnam County then Stark County.

- Putnam County is more famous, or infamous whichever way you want to look at it.

- Yeah, Putnam county is not right.

- No.

(chuckles softly) - So she must be, was she a lawyer?

- Yeah.

She was a lawyer when we met.

Yeah.

And once, yeah, she was a lawyer when we met.

She was in civil law and then went to be a prosecutor.

- [Rob] Okay, so she must be smart.

- Well, yeah.

- She's pretty smart.

- What did she see in you?

- That's a good question.

I'm still working on that, every day.

- Okay.

I mean, she can see all right.

- Right.

- Her eyes work?

- Yeah.

Well, yeah, she's, her eyes are fine.

Yeah, I think.

- Oh, hey.

Congrats.

- Yeah.

Yeah, I guess.

Yeah, I guess.

- Just the one kid?

- Just one.

Yep, just one.

- So are you, once you get a kid, right?

Are you already thinking about the farm and the transition and all that stuff?

- That's when, I don't think, our dad's generation started that.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- When that happened, but, I sorta, I've kind of been thinking about that.

Yeah, a lot more as he gets older.

Everything was a blur when the, you know, right after they're born everything's a blur but the older they get you think about.

- Yeah.

It's always kind of a tight rope, right?

Because you and I, I'm sure, we have friends growing up, that their parents worked them to death on the farm.

They were the first one to leave.

- Right.

- So you want them to, you want to establish a good work ethic, but you don't want to over power it.

- Right.

- I know he's only four, but he walking that tight rope yet?

- Not yet, not yet, no.

No, not yet.

But, no, I mean, he's going to learn.

I mean, well, if you think about it, Rob, I mean like our grandfathers farmed with horses.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- Right?

- [Rob] It wasn't that long ago.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

And look what we farm with now.

What's this kid, what's my son gonna get the farm with, if he wants to.

I mean.

- It must be really tough, farming with red equipment.

- You think so?

- That's what I've heard.

- Well, it never breaks down.

Unlike Deere, I mean, you see all this Deere stuff breaking down, you see the two posts on Twitter and that of broken Deere equipment.

- Yeah, it's honestly because.

- You never see broken Red stuff.

- If you kept taking pictures of the broken Red stuff, you'd really never have time to do anything.

- Well, it's true.

You got to fix it eventually.

- Yeah.

- You can't take pictures all the stuff that breaks.

- Did you grow pumpkins?

- No, we've never grown pumpkin.

- You've never, have you ever wanted to?

- I would look at raising pumpkins.

Yes, I would, yeah.

- Because, what do you do?

Just corn and soybeans?

- Yeah, just corn and soybeans.

But, I would look at raising pumpkins.

Those contracts are difficult.

They're kind of like seed contracts.

- [Rob] Is it?

- Yeah, they're difficult to get.

- A lot of people outside of Ag will say, why do you just raise corn and soybeans?

You know, look how much you can make growing, I don't know, mustard.

Or something random.

Can you explain why we don't.

- Specialty stuff, like mustard, like what you is, it's difficult to raise that when you're in such a wide open area.

Where everybody's raising genetically modified corn and soybeans.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- It's really difficult to carve out a two acre niche somewhere.

At least where my land is.

And say, all right, this stuff is, I mean, we can't spray it.

We can't do anything to it.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- That's what stopped me from going into that sort of thing.

- [Rob] Yeah.

Even if you can like find a market, it is hard to do that.

- Right.

Even, yeah, and then you got to find a market for it, right?

I mean, I would, I mean, I'd mess around with popcorn.

But, I mean, that's all south of us and under irrigation.

- You dislike traditional Ag media.

- I just dislike traditional media.

- Okay, why?

- I just think it's gotten to where everything's got an agenda.

- [Rob] It's more of one side or the other.

- Yeah.

- [Rob] Like Fox versus MSNBC, right?

- Correct, correct.

And you can even see it in on the Ag side how it's sponsored-driven content.

It's, you know, we aren't really reporting on news.

We just run, they just run, we just run the same stuff over and over again.

- Yeah, I gotta say, I don't mind the sponsors.

- No, sponsors are good.

Sponsors are good.

(chuckles softly) - Traditional Ag media, it's typically been this, you talk about weather.

- Yep.

- You talk about-- - Weather, markets.

- Markets.

- And then, every winter you got to do the thing on, are we gonna make any money in the next year?

- Yeah, which is always no.

- Which they always say no.

Yeah.

Like the whole fertilizer deal that's going on.

- Yeah.

- I mean, that's classic example.

- Unless it's the last three year, three days in a year.

And then all of a sudden we have to spend a bunch of money.

- Oh, right, then it's deduction season.

- We don't want to pay taxes.

- Then it's deduction season.

- But it's kind of been that trap.

And it just seems like it's crazy, that we can't get out of it.

- We can't get out of it.

It's just everything just seems to be recycled every year.

- [Rob] You should start a new-- - I'm gonna leave that to you.

- [Rob] A new network.

- No, no.

- It can't be a news network.

- No.

CNN already, that's already taken.

- Oh, that's true.

Yeah, you might have to cop something else.

(both laugh heartily) It is funny though that, if you talk to most farmers, that is definitely what they want in, when they're doing this, so.

- Right.

- But, you're -- - I don't understand it, I just don't.

- Is it because you did something besides farming?

- Maybe, might be a little bit of it.

- You can read a bid sheet.

- Comes back to bring a grain buyer, yeah.

- [Rob] What is a bid sheet?

- A bid sheet was your Bible.

When you were buying grain, the bid, you knew you had a, this is how far back.

- This is not helping.

- This is how far back I go, Rob.

- [Rob] What?

- And I don't, and I'm only 40, but.

We had reams of paper.

That were, okay, the bid, we got a bid over here at this.

We've got this and this, we had just paper scattered out everywhere.

And we knew where every market was.

- Why don't you just look on your phone?

- We didn't have, we barely had cell phones in 2003.

- That was part of the joke.

(both laugh heartily) - Yeah, we, yeah, we barely had phones.

- That wasn't that long ago.

- No, it wasn't.

- It's amazing how far it comes.

Are you glad-- - That's why I kind of have a permanent crick in my neck from holding the landline, holding the phone like this.

- Oh, yeah, I remember those.

They actually, the phones that had a cord on.

- Phones had a cord.

- You could stretch it.

- Yeah.

You could stretch them, wrapped them around, knock stuff off your desk.

- Do you ever put anybody on hold?

Do you remember that?

- Oh, yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, you could push the little red button.

- That would just hang up on them.

(chuckles softly) So wife and kids, farm.

- Yep.

- Is that the plan for the future?

- That is, that is.

- Just keep growing and building the farm, try and leave it better.

- Try and leave it a little better.

Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

- That's mainly what farmers kind of look at, right?

- Yeah.

- Leaving it better than we found it.

- Yeah.

And better's got different definitions, right?

I mean, it could be the same acres, maybe, maybe a newer grain handling facility.

Or it could be a better situation for them, have a more of a plan for the next generation so that they aren't drinking from a fire hose for the first year.

- [Rob] It could be just how we farm.

- It could be.

- I mean, our dads used a plow.

- Yep.

- And they didn't know any better.

They thought that was literally the best for the farm.

So imagine what we're doing now that we'll find out in the future is probably stupid to do.

- I had my son riding with me this fall in a tractor with a chisel plow.

And yeah, just reach down and push the button.

And then I'm sitting there playing games with him.

You know.

It was, yeah, he could-- - I know not many people are watching, but there's some people watching.

And they think we work hard for a living.

- I could never be doing that.

- Yeah.

Well, we do.

We do.

- We don't.

(Rob laughs heartily) It's gotta be hard because you have the Red Tractors.

- Yeah, Red tractors.

So yeah, I was having a hard time holding my line.

- The green is just so simple.

A lot of people don't realize that we don't steer anymore.

- No, we don't.

- [Both Speakers] For the most part.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- For the most part.

Some things you do, I mean.

But, yeah.

- I think that's one of the biggest changes, biggest positives.

Because once I got auto-steer, all of a sudden, a long days work didn't wear me out as much.

- That's right.

- It was so much nicer.

- That's right.

- Yeah.

- So what's it gonna be like when we go to autonomy and you can just watch it run from the side of the field.

- So awesome.

(both laugh heartily) I mean, it won't be long before you're planting while you're on the golf course.

- I hope not, but.

- All right.

Are you on social media?

- Sorta.

- Okay, do you wanna give that?

- No.

I like being quiet.

- Okay.

(both laugh heartily) You won't be giving bitch.

You should be giving out market advice.

Somebody else does.

- I used to.

I used to.

I did that for Cargill for three years.

Within the 10, three or four years I did that.

- [Rob] then someone brought up the fact that you were never right.

- Yeah.

And I got tired of being wrong all the time.

- Yeah.

I do like market guys they could, they'll never talk about when they're wrong, when they're right.

- That stuff hasn't changed either, in the, what now?

Four years since I've been out of it, five.

- No.

- It's still the same.

It's the exact same game that it was.

- And you talked about traditional Ag media, the media and you always have the same weatherman, same market guys have been run for 20 years, but, hey, they tell a good joke.

- Yeah, they tell a good joke.

And they keep bringing up the exact same stuff.

- Jim Campion, from Camp Grove.

- Camp Grove, that's right.

- Which is Knoxville turns into 40.

So you're-- - That's right, you can't miss it.

- You're straight north, fourth generation farmer.

Congratulations on the kid and the family.

And I can't wait to see what happens in the future.

- Me neither.

- Just don't be renting any ground up north around me.

- You stay on your side of the road and I'll stay on mine.

Fair enough?

- That does not happen.

(both laugh heartily) Jim, thank you so very much.

Thanks for bringing in and telling the story about the golf club.

Jim campion, thank you.

Everybody else, we'll catch you next week.

(country music)