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- [00:00]
A
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B
Hey, everyone. On today's Devil's Cut, we're taking you to Henry County, Kentucky, to talk to farm leader David Neville. We had a great conversation about his work, the everyday struggles of farmers, how the Trump administration is making it harder for farmers just to survive. We even snuck in a little bit about Iran. Enjoy. So we're here with David here in Henry County, Kentucky, and I want to start out and just ask you a little bit about your farm. We just walked around. You told us all about the innovation that you have done here on the farm. But in general, what are some of the challenges that farmers are facing here in Kentucky right now?
- [01:15]
C
So farmers face any of the traditional obstacles any other business. And we really want to look at farming as a business. You know, some people treat it as a hobby, and that's okay. But if you're farming for a living, it's a business. And those business constraints are the same as some other sectors of the economy, even more so with with farming. So, for instance, the trucking industry relies on diesel fuel. The farming industry relies on diesel fuel. So if diesel is really high, it's going to make a challenge. It's going to be very challenging to make a profit. Also, with farming, unlike some other industries, we rely on synthetic fertilizers, right? So the cost of NP&K goes up, doubles up. Then that eats out of our profit margin. Right. The cost of seed going up. The issue right now and has been for just a little bit is if I got a piece of equipment and I have a part that breaks and I need to get that part. Well, parts now for equipment, two, three, four times the cost. And even that is not the worst part of it. The worst part is if I ordered a part for my combine and it took two weeks to get here when harvest season is going on, that's a pretty tough challenge. Now guess what? It takes two or three months.
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B
Oh, my gosh.
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C
So you might well say you're not even going to use that combine for harvest season.
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B
Is that because of the tariffs, a
- [02:46]
C
lot of it has to do with both sides, and I separate those two into tariff issues and trade issues. Right. But yes, it definitely has to do with tariffs, especially the cost part of it. The trade issues have to do with the delay in getting equipment and shipments and stuff like that.
- [03:05]
B
And there's things that you have been able to do here on this farm that really make it more efficient, like the solar panels and that sort of thing. Can you talk a little bit about that?
- [03:15]
C
Yeah. So we went into it. I was in corporate America for a long time, and so I learned stuff from there that I can carry forward, particularly around marketing issues and what customers want and how to solve customer problems and that sort of thing. But as I was doing some work with school systems as an example with some products, they said, well, we need produce, we need produce, we need produce. How can we make that work? So I did farmer math, back of the napkin kind of stuff and said, what is it going to cost? What's the energy cost going to be to do this hydroponic, aquaponics stuff? And if I had stopped there, I wouldn't be doing any of this. Right. It was just too much. But we were able to work out some solar issues with some grant monies which are no longer there. Right. With some tax rebates, which are no longer there. Right. To help pay for the solar, which then provides the electricity to do this thing. So I was going to be north of $2,000 a month, $2,600 a month for just electric. I couldn't make that work. And we've had electric bills of recent BE$26 with no zeros.
- [04:25]
B
So solar, as one example, helps make your farm profitable. And so the government policies that take away some of the grants to be able to for farms to innovate, it really hurts because you're not able to make a profit if you don't kind of change some of these things.
- [04:48]
C
Absolutely. And you gotta be profitable. You know, folks talk about sustainability all the time, and there could be 10 different descriptions of sustainability. One of the ways that I define it is if you're working with a farm enterprise and you ain't profitable, you ain't sustainable, you're gonna have to go do something else. Either get a job in town to pay for the farm, sell the farm, or whatever. And as my wife put it in 2007, this doesn't have to specifically do with solar, but it's sort of the same thing. 2007, we had a late hard frost past Derby Day, killed our Hay crop killed our pasture. Later that year we had drought and so we couldn't grow any pasture and hay. So starting early in the year, in the fall, I started buying hay and hauling hay and all that stuff. And my wife says, this is really tough on you. You look haggard and not male. Should we just sell the farm and move to town? But most farmers, almost without exception, do it for reasons other than profitability. Now they got to be profitable or they can't farm or they can't live. Yeah. And I told her, I said it'd be nice. I just went home for two weeks and sat in an easy chair and watched football. But after two weeks you could not stand me, Right? Right. The other flip side of that is if I ain't doing it, where's the lettuce coming from? Right? Is it coming from overseas? Is the produce coming from overseas? Is it very costly because of trade issues and all that sort of thing? So that's a roundabout way to say if you're not making money, if you're not making net money off of farming, then you kind of go do something else.
- [06:29]
B
Yeah, it's very hard to stay in it. Now you, I know are a very high tech guy and because you use technology, you just took us around, you use technology in ways that maybe you don't expect from many farmers. How are you using AI and are you using AI?
- [06:49]
C
We are using AI as a matter of fact. So when you call me a high tech guy, I'm not going to argue with you. But I don't have to be high tech, I just have to know smart people, right? So as an example, we saw up some IBC totes where we're doing fish affluent, putting in gallon jugs and then selling it for a profit, right? Not a whole lot of profit. I ain't gonna get rich by selling fish poop, but we are selling it. Well, I needed a label for that, right? And normally I could go to vistaprint or a company and work and six or eight weeks later I might get a label and stuff. A friend who dabbles in AI, he printed me up some labels. It took him an hour to do 100 labels with AI and they will knock your socks off. I mean they're just gorgeous and they just look professional and stuff. So transition from just that label making. I'm also working with a fellow who is, he has a set of twins, seven years old and he's been working in training folks about around agriculture, especially urban ag for a long time. And so he asked me to Help him with connections, really. He's doing a program called Ag Stars that goes into elementary schools and teaches kids where their food comes from. Where, you know, if y' all are familiar with Paw Patrol, it's sort of based on that.
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B
Yeah.
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C
Except crime Dog fights crime. These folks. His characters fight food issues, food insecurity issues. And so he produced A set of eight characters with songs, a set of 812 books to emphasize that. And those books that will be in elementary school kids hands with characters. You know how kids like characters, right?
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B
Yeah.
- [08:31]
C
And he did this in a week. That's amazing. Which would have taken him a team of how many people a long time. Now also we're getting ready to do a project for Cool storage. We're going to do a one here on the farm to make sure it works and then take those to take that knowledge to Senegal. Right, right. Working with, with Kentucky State University. They're using AI to do predictive analysis. And what, what we mean by that is you can put a sensor, you can put a thermostat in your house. Right. Or you can put a thermometer on your back porch. Okay. It's 90 degrees. Right. And that's important. But for growing hydroponic lettuce, we need stuff or doing a cool room, we need stuff like what's the humidity, what is the temperature, what's the ambient temperature, meaning outside temperature, what's the inside temperature, how does that affect growth and all that stuff? The predictive part of that is, okay, we can input stuff via technology, say from forecast. So we know it's going to be a 95 degree day with 80% humidity here in Kentucky. And we have them a bunch.
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B
Right.
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C
How can we set our systems up to be prepared for that? So that's another way that we're using AI.
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B
It's interesting because you have this technology, you're utilizing it, but there's still good old fashioned, I guess, you know, government programs like SNAP and things like that that we forget. Our programs that our farmers help feed our kids.
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C
Yes. There's two in particular I'd like to talk about, if you'll let me, is the LFPA program and the LFS program. Neither one of those in force right now. The LFPA was local food purchase assistance and it primarily funded resources for food banks and it funded those at retail prices so farmers can make a living not just giving their food away. Right. So a lot of farmers got engaged in that and got engaged in new enterprises because of that. Right. And it fed hungry people. The other One, LFS was local food for Schools. So school budgets are so tight.
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B
Yeah.
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C
I mean, they ain't got no money for nothing. Right? Right. So this LFS program allowed local schools to engage with local farmers like they never had before. They just couldn't afford it. The local farmers had an outlet, a larger market outlet than say, a farmer's market, to sell into schools. Those two programs were really beneficial in a lot of different ways. Not just getting rich folks richer, but actually helping small farms, helping kids eat better, more local foods, getting the notion of where your food comes from. All of those programs were really beneficial. And then you tack on those things like SNAP and EBT and all that. And it's just. It's just a really good. I think it's just a really good way to spend your time.
- [11:36]
B
And it's a way for us as a society to come together and kind of utilize the talent of everybody to help, to help each other. And this is where, you know, I get so frustrated with these cuts. I mean, the latest cut that just came down or the latest budget from our current president cuts not only these programs, but also cuts, the grants that go to farmers to help innovate. You know, so we're. We're just. It's like a double whammy.
- [12:09]
C
Our solar system that we put, that we put in was help funded through the USDA, through an alternative energy grant. Right. Without that grant, I wouldn't have done solar without. I mean, you could just follow the path. Without the grant, I wouldn't have done solar. Didn't pay for it all, but it really helped. Wouldn't have done solar without. Solar wouldn't do this. Without this, I wouldn't be feeding fresh lettuce to healthy lettuce to local school kids. I mean, you just follow the path all the way along. And without all that, it's not sustainable for a farmer to be. Not profitable. So if you just follow the math backwards, it tells you the story.
- [12:49]
B
And your experience in sustainability is really leading the world because you're involved in a international program that I'd like for you to talk about. But my understanding is it's folks, international farmers who come here to learn about how to do things better. And a lot of times they take the information back and sometimes they ask you to come to their country. Can you talk about that?
- [13:16]
C
I can. So I'm involved with the World Affairs Council, a local nonprofit out of Louisville, Kentucky. Right. And. And they in turn work to bring in international visitors. In over 30 years, I really don't think about this a lot because it just kind of happens organically. But over 30 years, we've had more than 450 international visitors here. And every one of them, the first thing I learned was people is people, if there's a problem, there's a problem. Right? Can we solve it? Do we have the knowledge? And so we've had a good run at it and really enjoyed it. And, and I enjoy as much as anything, folks come in and say, oh, Mr. David, how do you do that? Can you help us with that? And so we have a project that we're working on for Senegal and some folks came here, did a TikTok, did a. No, I've never been on TikTok. Maybe you and I should do TikTok together.
- [14:08]
B
I'm still new to TikTok. I gotta tell you, that's a challenge.
- [14:11]
C
And so they said, can you come to Senegal and train our farmers on post harvest school storage? And I said, you know, David Neville can go over and he can talk a lot, make new friends, but really to get at that problem, we need some folks, we need a team. And so later in the summer, we're going to look at doing 10 pilot projects in Senegal to save the mangoes.
- [14:32]
B
Yeah.
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C
And part of that story is my grandmother raised me. She took really good care of me. A grandmother in Senegal was raising tomatoes. She wanted to sell those tomatoes, sent her grandson to school. The broker didn't show up to collect the tomatoes. She lost her whole crops. So why shouldn't we be helping a granny in Senegal send her son to school?
- [15:00]
B
Yeah, it makes sense. And I mean, I feel like it's what you do and how you help people, not just here in the United States, but in the world is pretty incredible. I want to shift gears a little bit about some more public policy things that I feel that I've heard from farmers. One is health care. You know, I've heard from folks in farming communities. The cuts to Medicaid really hurt. And also the Affordable Care act subsidies that go away really hurt. Because a lot of farmers, you know that, that's. They're small businesses. They don't, they don't have it, you know, health care insurance or health insurance through, you know, their corporation or whatever. So I want to sort of get an idea of your thoughts on our system right now.
- [15:53]
C
First, let me say I'm very lucky. I have a wife who's a nurse and she works for Norton Healthcare. They provided insurance.
- [16:01]
B
Gotcha.
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C
Till we got to be 65 and now we have Medicare. But the challenge this health insurance. Health insurance, not just the health needs, but the health insurance deal is such that a lot of farmers have to have a spouse working off farm, or they have to work off farm and piddle at farming. So that's the whole. Health insurance is one thing. The health itself, both physical and mental health. We need to take a better look. We need to take a better care of both our farmers and our veterans. Right. Because those two groups have some of the highest suicide rates in the whole country. Why is that? Well, if I'm a farmer and I'm, you know, work my whole life, my daddy did, my granddaddy did, and we're in the business and we can't make it, and I'm losing and it's my fault, and the whole mental health crisis in farming, not just in Kentucky overall, especially small farming, we need help. We need a lot of help there. And to get that help, we need resources. Right. Why shouldn't we have healthy people producing healthy food for healthy kids? It's a direct line to that deal. And there's as big a struggle with high price of diesel as there is with high price of or no insurance on the health care side with farmers.
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B
Yeah.
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C
People don't see that, though, because farmers don't talk about it. You know, I'm big, tough, and I ain't gonna say nothing. And it's, you know, it's affecting me internally, but I ain't gonna let nobody see it until it's too late.
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B
Yeah.
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C
And so we need to take a kind of look and say, okay, what do we need to do? How would that help? Not just help that individual, help all the society in the community at large.
- [17:50]
B
I think about here in Kentucky, the dozens upon dozens of hospitals that are at risk because of this bill that was just passed last summer. Those are rural hospitals. And if those hospitals go away, as somebody in rural Kentucky, you now have to travel twice as long, three times as long to get to a hospital in the case of an emergency or just for regular visits. I mean, that takes you away from this. It takes you away from your job.
- [18:20]
C
So I have friends in eastern Kentucky, and big swath of those rural hospitals are in eastern Kentucky that's gonna be shut down. And so I have friends that are very concerned. You know, they gotta drive from, you know, Hazard, which has an ARH hospital right now, to Lexington. Right. And if it's a routine exam, I'm scheduled next Tuesday and I can get there at 8. Yada, yada, yada, yada. I'm good. Right. Have Time to do that. But if I have an acute care issue and I have to drive two, three hours to get there, that ain't working. That is not working. And why would we punish rural folks? That's the deal right there. I mean, pardon me for getting on a little ramp, but why should we punish rural folks when rural nature, the communities are what, undergirds really the foundation of what America is and what Kentucky is.
- [19:15]
B
Yeah, that's so well said. I want to ask you about tariffs. How do they affect farming here? And what are you hearing from your fellow farmers?
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C
So I'm going to tell you about the farmers in a minute, but I had just this morning a conversation with a lady that was checking out me at the cash register and we were talking about different stuff. Somehow she got on the subject, it wasn't very big line, so she felt comfortable talking a little bit. And she was saying, talking about the terrorists, she said, I just don't understand them terrorists. I think it happens a lot with everybody, including farmers. What is them terrorists anyway? What are they really doing? I said, look, it's essentially an extra tax. You know, I know not, you know, I'm not an economist, but I know if somebody's selling something for $50 and you slap 100% tariff on it, it's now going to cost somebody a hundred dollars. And then foreign governments that, that ship the stuff, foreign organizations, non governments ship the stuff, they ain't paying that deal. You and I and the lady at the cash register, she said, you mean to tell me that when he puts a tariff on it, I'm gonna pay it? I said, either you are or your customers, because the price of produce is gonna go up if it's got a tariff on it. And so it was pretty easy to explain in a one on one kind of thing, but a lot of folks just don't understand it. A lot of folks say, hey, in the farming community, bless their hearts, they say they voted for a certain person. They say, slap them tariffs on them foreign corporations, we don't need them here anyway. And then they get an invoice that used to be $2,000 for a part of their tractor and now it is $3,000. And like where did extra thousand come from, right? And somebody says that's terrorists. No, it can't be. That's what it's for, that's what it is. And then the opposite flip side of that is the trade issues, right? So both of those compound to make it really tough for farming. So we've seen the national news and read about the tariffs and how they jack up prices, and really, it's just jacked up. There's no reason for that, I don't think. And then the trade issues. China was buying half of our soybean crop in the US no longer. And all of a sudden.
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B
Yeah.
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C
You got your biggest customer telling you, no, that's gonna be a bad, bad deal. Right. And so somebody says, well, we're gonna take care of the farmers with the tariff money. We can't. Well, that tariff money came from somebody, came from an American citizen. So you, you know, robbing Peter to pay Paul, that is never a good deal.
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B
Yeah.
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C
So the tariffs are. Are coupled with the trade issues are really hard economically. Not only economically, but emotionally as well.
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B
Yeah.
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C
If somebody has to Pay, you know, $6 for a gallon of diesel, that guy is pissed for a while and should be. It should be.
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B
So you're also a cattle farmer?
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C
We raise cattle.
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B
Yeah. And I'm curious as your take on the administration's buying of the cattle, the beef from Argentina, and sort of bailing out Argentina whenever they, you know, Amy,
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C
I wish I could be more articulate about this subject, but all I'm gonna say. That's the dumbest damn thing I've ever heard. If you're gonna support American farmers, American cattlemen, and you're buying beef from Argentina, and you're sending them bunches money on top of that. Yeah.
- [22:53]
B
To bail out Argentina.
- [22:54]
C
To bail out Argentina. That's the dumbest damn thing I've ever heard. It don't make no sense at all. And so as cattle producers, we ought to be standing up and say, wait a minute, wait a minute. This don't make no sense here. And I'm not a strict. What's the word I'm looking for? Isolationist, you know, I'm saying we should trade with anybody that's going to treat us fair and all that. So fair trade. I'm all for that. But if you automatically say, hey, Argentina, come on, send us some of your beef, hey, Argentina, here's some money to help you out. Uh, that ain't working. That math ain't mathing.
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B
Yeah. What do you want to see from that? You're not seeing currently from, you know, your member of Congress or senators, government right now. I mean, I feel like there's a lot of policies just in the last year, year and a half that have come down that really are kind of just stupid. And I also see that. And this is just my opinion, and maybe I'd be interested in yours. That we have representatives and senators here in Kentucky who know, I mean, know that these policies aren't good, but are unwilling to kind of say so. And I'm just curious as to your. What are your thoughts on all that?
- [24:19]
C
Well, a couple of things, right. I think we should take care of our people, right? I'm not saying a healthy, able bodied man that's laying home, drinking beer on the couch, watching football needs to get SNAP benefits, but that's not who's getting SNAP benefits. I am saying if you're a single mom, through no fault of your own, you're a single mom and you have a tough time finding employment, you need a little help. We ought to be helping those kind of folks. I am saying if 10 out of the top 25 counties in the whole US are the worst off counties and our current senators and representatives have been there for a long time and they ain't done nothing, they probably ain't gonna do nothing. Why is that so all over eastern Kentucky? And not just eastern Kentucky as well, but we need to take a look at our citizens and say, how can we help in a reasonable manner? I ain't talking about just giving money to give money in a reasonable manner, but there's been billions of dollars spent over the last bunches of years in eastern Kentucky, for instance. But we don't see improvement. Let's take a common sense, bipartisan approach to figuring out problems here, not manufacturing problems in Greenland. I'm with you.
- [25:35]
B
Tell me your thoughts at the end here because we do have to wrap up. I want to know your thoughts on this war that was just started a month ago.
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C
So I already said the dumbest damn thing I've ever heard of. Can I do that twice?
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B
Yeah.
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C
Well, I'm going to do it twice.
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B
Yeah.
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C
There's no reasonable explanation that we know of. And obviously I'm not in the room with military advisors and stuff, but as it happens, our current Secretary of War crimes is also not in the room because he done fire. How do you fire the people that know about this stuff while you're in a war? Right. First we say Iran's a nuclear threat and then we say they don't have nuclear weapons. And then we say this and we say that back and forth and back and forth. There's no, you know, as a veteran, I wasn't high up on the, on the chain of command. You know, I was here working and just as a, as a sergeant. But even at that level, it just don't make sense. Why do we need to send Our boys and girls over to get killed in a war that makes absolute. Does not make sense. Right.
- [26:50]
B
It's interesting to hear that from you because I feel like I hear that from a lot of people, but, but sometimes in rural America and you know, you want, you want to get it straight from, from folks. The common sense piece.
- [27:05]
C
Right?
- [27:07]
B
Are we connecting the dots here? Is the, is the administration connecting the dots? And I don't think they are, because I don't think there is a clear reason for this.
- [27:16]
C
So I, you know, my wife and I talked about this the other day. She said, I don't understand this. What's the deal? And I said, I don't understand it either. But I have a notion that it's more about oil billionaires than it is about protecting the people of Iran. If you're bombing a school with kids in it, you ain't protecting the people of Iran. I happen to have friends from Iran here in the States, and we get their take on it, and their take is pretty closely aligned with what ours is. You know, there's bad stuff, stuff happening in Iran, in other countries as well. But do you go in and bomb a school? You don't do that. Right. So I think it's more about oil than it is any other thing. So if you look at the countries that we're that the current administration is targeting, Right. Greenland, with its high level of minerals. Right. Venezuela oil, Oil, Iran oil. And so I think it all goes back to that. Yeah. And I have the power to push a button and send rockets off to get my oil buddies what they need.
- [28:31]
B
Sad.
- [28:32]
C
Interesting. From what I understand, the oil people said, you can do what you want to in Venezuela, but we ain't going.
- [28:39]
B
They don't want to be involved. They don't, you know, it's too high risk. And anybody that studied that would have told the administration prior. And like, for me and being in the military for 24 years, if I were advising, I would have told them, hey, the 10 times that I've done war games that dealt with Iran, they're going to close the Strait of Hormuz and there ain't anything we can do about it. And this is why we haven't done this in the last 47 years. And, you know, I'm worried that we don't have people being able to at those levels, either not saying those things or we have a leader who doesn't listen.
- [29:21]
C
Right. So.
- [29:22]
B
Well, listen, I really appreciate you talking to the pod, the podcast today, our listeners about your farm, about the challenges of Farming right now in 2026 and what you're doing to innovate in showing real progress here, you know, so I appreciate your time.
- [29:44]
C
Can I share this with you, this statement? Certainly.
- [29:46]
B
Send it.
- [29:47]
C
My brother, that tough little Marine. Former Marine. Never ags Marine. Just win the damn election and bring some common sense to dc.
- [29:57]
B
Well, I always said you can't. You can't solve all the problems. And government isn't really designed to solve all the problems. But we need to get people in office who recognize that we can try to do things in society through government to help innovators like you help the rest of us. And that's why I am for programs that provide grants for farmers to innovate and use renewable energy because it's, you know, it's more efficient, it keeps people on the farm, it keeps people on their land and productive and profitable, and it helps the community. It's not rocket science, but we've got to get people back in office that listen to folks. I don't have all the answers, but I want to listen, look at what
- [30:52]
C
the real problems are. Not some made up, kind of theatrical, kind of Hollywood movie kind of thing. But what are the real deal? What is the real issue? How can we solve those real issues?
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B
Yeah, and programs like SNAP are fantastic programs that help people, help our communities, our farmers are involved. Even. Even. I've heard this from another farmer down the road who I've talked to, Mr. Wade, many times. USA ID was a program that we as Americans got together and helped fund our farmers to provide food for many parts of the world that didn't have it. Helping to alleviate, not solve, but alleviate instability in the world, which, you know, helping to solve and alleviate some mass migrations and stuff, keeping people where they are so they can have quality of life better than what they. That, you know, if we weren't there, all that's gone. All that's gone right now and we're causing more problems with the Strait of Hormuz being closed. So. Well, I appreciate your time.
- [32:05]
C
Thank you for coming out and visiting with us and actually sitting down to listen to somebody. And I agree, I don't have all the answers, but I have a saying. My friends and family get tired of it. I can't change the. But I can change the channel and then I can go do my little part. And if my little part is feeding local school kids with better nutrient level lettuce, or my part is helping to figure out how to save the mangoes in Senegal, you know, that's my deal.
- [32:33]
B
That's awesome. Well, thank you again.
- [32:36]
C
Thank you.
- [32:36]
B
Okay. All right. Truth in the barrel. Foreign
- [32:44]
D
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A
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