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There is an additional benefit to planting soybeans in this environment. Not only do soybean NOT need nitrogen fertilizer (I don't know about potash or potassium) but soybeans, like most legumes and beans, actually "fix" nitrogen in the soil they are planted in. This is why so many Midwestern farmers rotate between corn, which uses a ton of N, and soybeans which put N into the soil.

Pays to marry a farmgirl from Nebraska. Plus, her dad had 3500 acres of prime pheasant habitat. Love comes in many forms:).

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True!

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A couple additional highlights (of which I'm sure you are aware but, hey, it's 4:30 AM and I have to get the brain cells firing efficiently somehow): Re: oil exploration I don't think it's just the current policies of the administration that are holding drillers back. Listen to the rhetoric of the administration about their goals. Look at the ESG drive at managers like BlackRock and at the SEC. Look at the board takeovers at companies like Exxon. In surveying the landscape, would you, as the CFO, conclude that a good long-term bet for your capital was to take advantage of one of those 9,000 leases Jen Psaki keeps ranting about or would you be hedging your considerable carbon bets right now? Exploration is down not just because of what Biden has done but also because of what's anticipated yet to come. of those 9,000 leases, how many are actually going to contain oil? Nobody knows for sure. Exploration is expensive. Nobody in the current environment is going to make a long-term capital bet on a short-term change of rhetoric from these economic simpletons.

As for Hunter and Burisma, my understanding of that situation was that Burisma had made a significant bet on its relationships with the Yanukovych regime. With the Maiden revolution and the West's new influence likely to play a bigger role in 2014 the board and leadership was scrambling and how better to ensure you can make the deals you need to than to hire the son of the guy in the West's most powerful nation who was tasked by his boss to handle the "Ukraine Portfolio" (these people and their "portfolios")?

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I believe Ehrlich did pay up.

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You might be right, but it took years and Simon might have been dead!

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