How a Vibecoded Newsletter Is Making the Hay Market More Transparent

22:11So that can easily average to be more valuable than hay. So it's kind of weird. So yeah, I guess. So if I'm in a location, one of the drought-stricken states, drought-stricken states, that's hard to say. I'm reading one of the USDA reports right now, and it says, hay prices continue to increase as ranchers search for hay. Are you seeing people who are trying to bulk buy or secure supply ahead of more price increases? I mean, yeah, I'm seeing right now and just talking with farmers, kind of networking across the country, I'm seeing people are trying to get their stockpile for summer. I'm hearing that first cut is being extremely light.

22:55The yields are not really producing at a volume and carryover from 2025 is essentially gone.

23:02Tracy Alloway:Sorry. I actually did find if you search on the terminal, Tracy, if you search USDA hay prices by state, then you can find some fairly regularly updated price indices. So I have to say, like, I mean, I understand you have a great business going, but if any listeners just want to spend tens of thousands of dollars on the Bloomberg terminal, they can also any farmers out there. Yeah. So Bloomberg actually, offers a haywire competitor, you just get a bunch of other stuff. You're probably not interested. But this gets to my, so like, this is another important business question. Anyone can collect data and produce it.

23:42Tracy Alloway:Then you have to find people who will purchase it from you. And this is the other half of business. Some people in the house produce and some people sell. How did you, how do you go about finding farmers or growers or anyone in the business, anyone in the chain how do you get them to discover haywire i guess just networking obviously discovery a big part of that has been on the homestead reddit where tracy kind of found everything but you know just actively reaching out to them i guess kind of just showing them okay this is what we're trying to do trying to trying to be that transparency layer just to kind of make your guys's local markets a little easier for you and not kind of guessing and buying blind and selling blind.

24:26So we're basically going to them and we're like, okay, this has no cost for you. Just like kind of tell us what you're seeing so we can provide that clarity and transparency for hay prices. We're not going to fix the whole transparency issue. We're going to try, but we probably won't. But we just at least want to make it a little more transparent for your local region. These farmers know their regional market like the back of their hand. And especially these old gen farmers, they're not really going to adapt to technology like that. So it's been kind of difficult trying to get them to adapt to be like, okay, like this is technology nowadays, like this can actually really help your business.

25:05So honestly, just networking with them, providing, you know, kind of the data we're seeing and kind of the value and telling them that there's no really cost to just kind of sharing me your data.

25:16Tracy Alloway:So Tracy mentioned the sort of timing of purchases or people trying to accumulate or stockpile. At times of high stress, when prices are really high, again, maybe due to a drought or whatnot, do you see farmers essentially expanding their geographical search such that they start buying hay from an auction house or a hay farm or whatever that wouldn't normally be under typical conditions economical for them to purchase from? yeah you know i i actually had this question the other day and i was on a call with rock valley my my main go-to guy and i was like are you guys seeing any shipping or any transactions coming from more west of you yeah i just kind of i was kind of testing the hypothesis of okay so the drought is very tight over in these western states are buyers coming over to these eastern states and producing it because we did see a spike kind of in auction data we kind of covered it a little bit maybe on the reddit but it we called it kind of the missouri pattern it was kind of hypothesis we were text testing so it basically is so after we figured out that the drought and you know supply is very very tight there in the western states we started watching those western midwest states so we we saw demand in or prices in missouri go up and they're like okay well we'll keep an eye on it and then the next week we saw um rock valley's prices kind of spike a little bit and they're We're like, okay, so maybe there is some demand coming over from there.

26:45And then the next week we saw it go up a little bit again. So it's kind of what we're seeing right now. I can't confirm fully if it's true because Auction House, we track in Missouri, posts their data monthly. And then Rock Valley is weekly. So it's just kind of cool. I guess it's like a Lego set. I'm kind of just building piece by piece. And it's like a puzzle, trying to solve the puzzle. Okay, so talk to us. I know you're not in agriculture directly, but I'm sure you've heard some things about this. Talk to us about the second order effects of higher hay prices. And here, I got to shout out our fellow Bloomberg podcaster, Katie Greifeld, who has a horse.

27:28Oh, yeah. And so I asked her if she had noticed any changes in hay prices. And she said the cost of boarding had gone up because of hay prices. Boarding. Oh, yeah, yeah. Board the horse. And then I saw another headline just before we recorded this podcast about a horse sanctuary in Texas on the brink of closure because of rising hay prices and also gas. So are people feeling the effects of these higher prices? Yeah, absolutely. Just talking with farmers and even horse owners across the country. I personally, my family owns horses, so I can kind of see this firsthand. but yeah i've been talking to a lot of farmer our horse owners and they're basically saying we love our horse so much but the return on investment on horses right now is just like it's too it's too expensive no i'm paying so much to maintain a horse and we don't know like exactly what what we're gonna do because it's so expensive but and then on the other side of things some dairy houses these these dairies are going to be the ones buying the higher quality rfv alfalfa to um you you know, feed these cows that are producing 80 pounds of milk a day.

28:34And they're actually taking that high, higher quality RFV and then mixing it with lower quality RFV to, you know, control their rations and, you know, maybe create a little more volume. So especially with these crazy high prices, they can kind of control their, their volume a little more. And then on top of that, I was talking to a farmer the other day and he said, so he went to go put his hay up, up in the auction, but he actually pulled it back because the demand for hay was getting so increasingly like it was getting really tight and he needed the hay so he's kind of predicting it to get even tighter so yeah as i can tell a lot of people are kind of feeling the out out outcomes of these high

29:17Tracy Alloway:high hay prices just to back up for example uh so you mentioned horses cows also eat hay right yes yes so cows cows will eat there's different types of qualities i guess you could say walk throws these quality did you say something like rfd what was the term used like higher what was it rfv uh relative feed value okay which basically is which could i think i'm pretty sure it it controls or it it gets the protein contents and the fiber in the the hay and it's it's a base of 100 so anything like 150 i think is pretty good below that you can see the lower quality hay so So like I said, the dairies are going to be using that higher quality alfalfa and supreme hay, higher RFV to have their cows on the best.

30:09And then you're going to have the the ecline people, the horses also using this higher quality stuff because they love their horses and they only want what's best for their horses. And then you have the lower quality type of stuff, which is going to go to like the utility and fair, which is going to go to your beef, which are it's just a cheap way to, you know, beef up your cow for a cheaper price instead of paying the premium alfalfa. And then, yeah, there's so many different qualities.

30:33Tracy Alloway:Yeah, yeah. Just real quickly. So hay made out of alfalfa is high quality. What is low quality hay made out of? Yeah. So low quality hay, which will be lower RFV, I'm pretty sure, you know, I'm not a farm kid, but I'm pretty sure it's the amount of dryness and the protein contents. So when it rains, rain affects a lot. You have to have a dry week or forecast to produce or cut hay. And if it rains, rain can decrease the protein and nutritional value in the hay. I think the lower quality stuff is drier and doesn't have the leaf content that the higher quality stuff does because that's where the protein is in the leaf.

31:15And then the fiber comes from the stem.

31:33Get the news you need in just 15 minutes. Start your day with Bloomberg Daybreak, the podcast with a global view on the stories that matter. I'm Nathan Hager. And I'm Karen Moscow. Join us each morning for curated stories on current events, politics, business and foreign relations. Plus one conversation on the day's biggest developments, all in just 15 minutes. Subscribe to Bloomberg Daybreak for a precise, thoughtful take on the stories that matter. Listen to Bloomberg Daybreak each morning on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you listen. Are you seeing anyone devote more acreage to growing hay as a result of these high prices?

32:09Because I'm kind of thinking, I got two fields. Yeah, you could be a hay farmer. They're not doing anything except growing invasive weeds at the moment. maybe I could rent them out for hay production. Yeah, you know, I'm not I'm not really seeing that. But I'm not really sure on that one if I'm seeing people do that. But I actually was thinking about this other day, kind of driving past 20 minutes south of me, I was driving on the highway. And I realized that Google was actually going to build a 482 acre data center 20 minutes south of me. And I was like thinking, how will this affect the agricultural land?

32:41I mean, you know, it's already not a lot of people are alfalfa is kind of in a weird spot and hey because they're already competing against the other crops um you know the more stable crops like corn and soybean so how are these data centers gonna you know they're gonna go in agricultural land so oh yeah kind of vice versa you were saying how are they going to take away this agricultural land and you know i was kind of thinking too the 482 acre data center google's building here is going to be cooled by air, but what if you put those kind of in the Western states and where the drought conditions are and alfalfa is already a very water intrusive plant.

33:18So then alfalfa is going to have to be competing with these big data centers for water. I really, I really, I'm really seeing kind of the flip side of it, kind of, kind of just what I'm seeing personally. So, but yeah, you did mention you had 25 acres and I think you do have four different options from what I know. That's kind of the next niche I kind of want to get into because once again, it's kind of like the hay. My dad's kind of going through the same process. He just closed on 164 acre farm here and he had the question of I don't really know what to do with it. But I don't know. I'm not an expert on it yet.

33:53But I do know there's a couple options. You can rent it out to your farm or to farmers, basically like rent per acre. And then you can the USDA will basically pay you to conserve it. And then the downside of that is you probably lose your land or access to your land for 25 to 35 years. And then the third choice is kind of the money crop right now, I guess. These solar panel companies are coming in to maybe place solar panels on your fields for a huge chunk of change. But also, are you OK with putting solar panel on appreciating farmland? So, I mean, there's a couple options. And like you said, you can also start growing hay or grow whatever crop is producing the most money, I guess.

34:37So there's some options that that's as much as I know right now. But, yeah, it's pretty interesting.

34:42Tracy Alloway:Tracy, have you considered putting a data center on your land? You know, is that something? You know, you could put maybe half the land solar panels and then they could power a data center on the other. That's right. So many is like a jackpot episode of like things that we're interested in. Well, the solar panel thing is true because in the Northeast where I'm based some of the time, I see a lot of farms that are now like just solar panels. Huge fields of solar panels. Wow. They're so big. In fact, whenever I drive past one, it's so big. It looks like a body of water off in the distance. That's kind of beautiful.

35:20Tracy Alloway:I don't know. I mean, it's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting. How big is the hay market? Just generally. Like, what do we like again? I don't know. Like, yeah. How big is it volume wise, dollar wise, all that stuff? Yeah. So the hay market is actually pretty, pretty dang big. I mean, you you have hay acreage covering forty nine to fifty million acres across the U.S. And itself, alfalfa itself is producing eight billion dollars per year, which is the fourth most valuable crop. And that kind of brings my question back to, so it's pretty big market commodity and there's not really a firm transparency layer.

36:03So yeah, it's really big. Are you still in college? Yep. I just finished my first two years at the University of Jamestown. I'm going into my third. Oh, wow. Okay. So you're juggling a business as well as college. What's next for Haywire? You mentioned like maybe evaluating different options for land owners, but where do you want to take this? Yeah. So I guess, like I said, the main goal is kind of be on top of, you know, the kind of hay chain. You know, you got your producers, your farmers, and then you got your brokers. We kind of want to be at the top, you know, being the benchmark data for these prices regionally.

36:41So we just want to be that information layer on the top and, you know, just providing this information to these farmers So they can kind of make better decisions based off of timing and then based off of what the market is actually seeing in their region. You know, I would I like the newsletter. I kind of like hearing people connect, connecting to people. I love answering my emails and kind of picking people's brains. And then we would we would eventually like to also be, you know, just kind of more of the business side of things, you know, give someone maybe our API database and they can use it for their website.

37:13you know that's kind of a business plan not necessarily what we want out of the hay market but yeah that's kind of what we want to do just build that transparency layer a little better

37:22Tracy Alloway:you know we work for a company that sort of stuff i mean really this i started under like the same premise so like that you literally you know you could you could want this could one day be a fortune 500 company for you i mean this is the idea of like agricultural database find some data niche make it built layer on top i have a confession yeah um so when i started first planning this business our motto was the bloomberg for hay there we go there we go you know we've had so can i say something we've had people come on i've seen the bloomberg of x bloomberg of what people always say this this i find to be legitimate you know what i'm saying everyone wants to be the bloomberg of something but when i think about how you're like building this from the ground up etc etc.

38:07Tracy Alloway:Like, you didn't even have to say it. It was like you're building the potentially the Bloomberg of, hey, one day you may have a TV network. Could we have pay futures based on if we have benchmark prices? Yeah, well, like, so that's a question. I mean, this is, that's clearly a theoretical way, which is like, you can't have a hedgeable, tradable, financialized market until you first have that index, right? Something that everyone agrees on as a reference price at night when you dream about the future like could you see have you thought about the possibility of essentially okay this could be something that financial exchanges could now benchmark something against you know i have thought about it but it's also very tricky because you have to have mother nature on your side to kind of standardize the or like make it more stable i guess it's very unstable i mean too much drought uh too much rain you know too much heat like all these different inputs can really have effects on outputs that just makes it so unpredictable yeah you know but this is why this is why we need a this is why we need a hedgeable instrument precisely because of this volatility so i think um i think there's yeah there's something there yeah there's something there for sure i i would i would love to be the guy that does that then So from your perspective, let's say like, you know, opacity is a friend to some people in any business, right?

39:34Tracy Alloway:There are a lot of businesses that sort of, you know, they can have higher margins because their customers aren't aware of the prices available. Like the, you know, obviously the consumer wants more transparency, but some people benefit from the opacity. Is there anyone in the supply chain of hay, et cetera, or in the market for hay that theoretically stands to lose out if customers and farmers are more informed about prices? Yeah, absolutely. So this kind of ties back to my dad working for a private brokerage here in my hometown. And I was actually talking about this with him. I said, who kind of loses out on this?

40:14And he says, typically in business, especially commodities, the middleman will always feel the outcomes of more transparency because they're the ones making deals, especially in the hay market, kind of blindly and kind of just guessing. I mean, I called I witnessed firsthand my I sat there and someone called the owner and was just like, can I do one hundred fifty seven? This is an example. Can I just do one hundred fifty seven dollars per ton for, you know, X amount of bales or tons? And he was like, yeah, yeah, that works. So we're not going off anything here. There's no transparency. And that can either work for the broker or that can, you know, maybe make margins a little slimmer.

40:55So I do think that the middleman will always, you know, have something to lose with more transparency. All right. Aiden Johnson of Haywire. Thank you so much for coming on OddLogs. That was really fun. Yeah, I appreciate you guys having me on.

41:21So, Joe, that was a really fun conversation. I mean, it is fascinating to see someone like vibe code this kind of database. Right. And it does seem like low hanging fruit for a bunch of other different markets. What I will say, though, is whenever we do these like agricultural or food episodes, there seems to be this overriding theme in recent years, which is volatility. Volatility. Right. We're getting these big spikes. Sometimes we're getting big drops down, although often the drops are not as big as the initial spikes. And so you can see like there is a need here, not just for price transparency, but also potentially for some sort of hedging instrument.

41:58Tracy Alloway:Totally. Absolutely. I do think there's a lot of probably a lot more data out there. I also just think this is like a very interesting AI story specifically because it's a very clear example of here is a new type of business that might not have been economical to run. Like, you know, maybe there's not tons of subscribers willing to pay up. For sure you wouldn't have been doing it while you're in college. No. So the pro version, so he has a free version of his newsletter, which I'm going to subscribe to. And there's a pro version. And you know what? I'll subscribe to that too. It's just$14 a month.

42:33Tracy Alloway:But OK,$14 a month is like not a ton of money. Even if you had like, you know, a thousand, you know, it's like it's not a ton. But if you could do it with two people and if you can automate a really big chunk of it. Yeah. And automated only because AI makes it really easy to do things like ingest the data, turn them into pretty charts and so forth, keep a database, give people AI access. Suddenly, there's all these new markets that theoretically could become unlocked simply because here is data out there and you could put it in a usable form in a way that would have just been too laborious prior to it.

43:12Yeah, labellious. Too labellious. No, that was a bit forced. I'm sorry.

43:17Tracy Alloway:But it is a clear example of like, okay, this is a productivity unlock. Yeah. And I've no doubt that it works. Some things with AI don't work as well, but I'm pretty sure. Pure scraping to us today. But automated, you can feel pretty confident that that's something that you can build, etc. I'm very, I think it's really cool. Oh, the price of being a founding member is going to rise to$17 a month after June 30th. Oh. So get it. Rising along with the hay prices. Yeah. All right. Shall we leave it there? Let's leave it there. This has been another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

43:52You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.

43:54Tracy Alloway:And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at The Stalwart. Follow Aiden Johnson. He's at AidenJohnson underscore. And check out Haywire, haywireag.com. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Armand, Dashiell Bennett at Dashbot, Kale Brooks at Kale Brooks, and Kevin Lozano at Kevin Lloyd Lozano. And for more Odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg.com slash Odd Lots. We have a daily newsletter and all of our episodes. And you can chat about all these topics 24-7 in our Discord, discord.gg slash Odd Lots. And if you enjoy Odd Lots, if you like it when we talk about hay prices, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform.

44:31And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad-free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.

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