Agriculture isn’t always as simple as planting crops and harvesting them. Sometimes, it’s about resilience, reinvention, and even a little humor. In a recent episode of the Spilled Salt podcast, host Maureen Ballatori sat down with Damian Mason—a farm owner, entrepreneur, speaker, author, podcaster, and even a former comedian—to talk about his life in agriculture and the thrills and spills of the industry.
The Value of Hard Work and the Realities of Rural Life
Damian Mason didn’t always plan on entering the agriculture industry. As a young boy growing up on a dairy farm in Northeastern Indiana, he dreamed of doing something different. At around eight or nine years old, he was already fascinated by sheep. He recalled his first visit to the Indiana State Fair, where he learned about different sheep breeds and decided that sheep were “cool” and a fun way to stand out from the family tradition of dairy farming.
By the time he was 12 in ‘80s, Damian was hard at work on the farm. It was a challenging time in agriculture, with tough economic conditions that made life on the farm a real struggle. He remembers the hard work of breaking ice for water troughs, feeding calves, and running farm machinery. These early experiences taught him the value of a strong work ethic—a lesson that many farm kids know well.
Shifting Gears: From Corporate Life to Comedy
After college, Damian earned a degree in agricultural economics from Purdue University. Despite his deep roots in farming, he tried to leave the industry. His first job was in corporate sales, where he worked with big companies like DuPont and Cooper Industries. But after only a short time, Damian realized that working in a big corporation was not for him.
In 1994, he made a bold decision. He quit his corporate job to pursue a career in comedy and entertainment. A turning point came when he won a costume contest dressed as former President Bill Clinton at a corporate event. This unexpected success led him to start doing comedy shows, using his talent for impersonation and humor to connect with audiences. He built a reputation as a performer who could mix comedy with insights into agriculture and business.
Blending Ag with Humor and Business Savvy
Over time, Damian found a way to combine his deep knowledge of agriculture with his talent for making people laugh. His presentations now focus on topics such as immigration, population growth, regulation, and inflation in the agricultural industry—all wrapped up in a humorous style that makes complex issues easier to understand.
Damian explains that the hard work learned on the farm helped him when he moved into the world of business. Whether he was selling a $300 gig or negotiating corporate contracts, he always put in the extra effort. “There’s eight letters in the word business,” he says, “so you have to put twice as much effort into it as in your show.” His advice is clear: never stop working hard, and always be ready to adapt to new challenges.
Getting Serious about International Agriculture and Global Politics
Damian is also known for his insights on international agriculture and politics. He talks about how global events, like changes in trade and government policies, affect American farms. For example, he shared stories about the hard times in the early 1980s and how countries like Brazil and China have shaped the world of agriculture.
Looking ahead, Damian is excited about the role of technology and the possibility of value-added agriculture. He believes that farms will not just produce commodities like corn for feed or fuel, but will also start making products that add more value for consumers. This could mean more diverse food options in stores, better traceability of food products, and even new government programs that support sustainable practices.
Overcoming Challenges in Agriculture with Laughter and Resilience
Damian Mason’s journey shows that the agriculture industry is full of surprises. From his early days as a farm kid to his time as a corporate salesman and then a comedian, Damian has always found ways to adapt and grow. His story reminds us that hard work, creativity, and the willingness to change course can lead to success—even in the toughest times.
To learn more about Damian Mason or to follow his work, visit DamianMason.com.
Transcript
This transcript has been edited from its original form to support readability.
Maureen Ballatori: I’m Maureen Ballatori and this is Spilled Salt, a podcast on the thrills and spills from the food, beverage and agriculture industry.
Today’s guest is a real firecracker. Damian Mason is a multifaceted professional in the agriculture and business sectors. He’s an entrepreneur, a speaker, farm owner, author, podcaster and former comedian.
He, as a young kid thought that he would never end up in the agriculture industry. Similar to me, actually, growing up on a farm that I would be working in the industry years later, but here we are.
Damian’s presentations as a speaker focus on the “-ations” of agriculture addressing topics such as immigration, population, regulation, and inflation in the agricultural sector.
I’m in a group that Damian hosts called the Business of Agriculture Success group. And what has come to my attention is the knowledge that Damian has about the international landscape as it relates to agriculture, which is wildly fascinating. He talks a little bit about that today, as well as sharing his story and the work that he’s doing now. Enjoy the conversation.
Maureen: Damian Mason, how the heck are ya?
Damian Mason: I’m doing very well. Thanks for having me, Maureen.
Maureen: My pleasure. Thanks for joining me today. I always like to start these in the beginning as one should. So take us back to the early days of young Damian Mason. What were your interests that led to the start of your career?
Damian: I mean, depending how far we go back, I just explained to somebody I was in Nebraska for a speaking engagement last week. And then he was talking about his sheep business. And I said when I was about nine years old, or even a couple years younger than that, maybe I used to tell everybody that when I grow up, I’m going to be a successful sweeper salesman and a sheep rancher. And everybody said, Oh, that’s interesting.
So I had a lot of, I had a lot of different ideas, but I was going to be a sheep guy. And I remember I went to the Indiana State Fair with my father and I walked around the sheep barn and I talked to all those show sheep people. And I was too little back then to understand the difference between commercial versus show people and business cards from people and I learned all the sheep breeds and I just decided I was going to raise Shropshire’s, I don’t know why. I was eight or nine years old. I was raised on a dairy farm.
Maureen: Why sheep? You just thought they were cool?
Damian: I was raised on a dairy farm and maybe I decided I was going to rebel against my upbringing. So I decided sheep was the thing to do. And then there’s always the idea of what Australia must look like or the West must look like. So raised in Northeastern Indiana.
So somehow sheep just worked for me because it was different. So there was that and that was a 10 year 4-H member. I was in FFA. It started doing man labor, I guess, by the time I was about 12, the farm expanded and that was during the 1980s.
I was 12 years old in 1981, which if your listeners know anything about the history of agriculture and agricultural economics, the absolute proverbial, you know what hit the fan in 1981. so I was a 12 year old kid and that’s when I’m in sixth grade. I was a bigger kid. I was, I was able to do a lot of the work.
I went from bottle feeding the calves at age eight to then by the time I was 12, I was operating a lot of machinery and utility man around the dairy, move the heifers, go down to the other farm and check the steers, make sure the feeder’s good, break the ice into water, whatever that thing was.
So all hell broke loose. Things got terrible in 1981. And that was really my coming of age from age 12 to graduate from high school was the depths of hell in agriculture to stay in this business.
By the time I got out of college, I had no interest at all in being in agriculture. I mean, I absolutely said this thing is this ship is about sunk unless you inherited land and you’re like, in a real good family farming situation with a ton of held capital. This is not the place for any young aspiring person because there’s just no opportunity or ag companies.
Maureen: Well, and what happened? What happened in 1981? Because I grew up on a dairy farm as well, and I was born in 1986. And so my dad sold, had to get out of dairy and sold all the cows when I was like five, five or six.
Damian: 1981. So we came off the 70s. The 70s were amazing for agriculture. You know, we had an expanding economy here, we had an expanding economy in the world, an expanding population.
The United States, you’re talking about going back 50 years ago, 1975, for instance, it’s just a real different world. You know, there was Brazil, but like you could go and buy an acre in Brazil for $1. And there were speculator buyers that did that.
Brazil is not Brazil 50 years ago. They had some farce, but it was pretty primitive. So the United States really was the place and Russia and back then Russia included the Ukraine.
There was the United States, Canada had agriculture, we were amazing. And we just produced the heck out of stuff. And then we had this stagflation climbing interest and stagnant economy and persistent inflation much due to overspending by the government, which is what usually creates inflation as we’ve just seen.
So everybody wants to say what caused the 80s for agriculture? And some people say, well, it was Jimmy Carter and the grain embargo that he created in 1980 because he was going to teach Russia a lesson, which what that really did was we decided we were going to not sell grain. Well, then the rest of the country amped up production and ramped up production. That’s what usually happens.
Maureen: The rest of the world, you mean? You said the rest of the country.
Damian: Sorry, the rest of the world, the rest of the world, the rest of the world ramped up production because when there’s this demand, Hey, my God, we can get $9 bushel wheat or whatever it was back then.
You know, these other countries just started learning how to produce. So that’s really part of it. We had 18 % inflation. Then on the home front, there was this situation where because high interest just became so pervasive, it became accepted.
Yes, I’m going to expand my operation, whether you’re a warehouse or a factory or a farm, whatever it is, you’re using 18 % leverage, 18 % money, I’m sorry, and leveraging your assets.
So a lot of farms were completely over leveraged and obligating 18 % money. So when you see a downturn in demand and then commodity prices hit the skids, and then we’re also overproduced.
And this is what a lot of folks don’t want to admit, but we were really generally overproduced through the 80s through the 90s. And then that changed with the China miracle about 25 years ago, beginning in 2000.
2005 is when the China miracle just just China became ascendant. And when 1.4 billion people literally double their caloric consumption, and not just double their caloric consumption, move from some rice to pork chops.
It changed the entire global demand structure. But the eighties were a real difficult time. One of my stories, I explained, Maureen, that, and I don’t do that “walking uphill to school both ways in a blizzard”. I’m just telling you that I was there when the shit hit the fan in 1981, there were farms that were so underwater.
Let’s just say you were like the dairy farm your father had, or that my family had milked 50, 60, 100 cows, farmed 500 acres, very normal. That’s how farming looked like in the 1980s. Maybe you had a confinement hog of a furrowing barn, and then you also fed out pigs and you farmed 800 acres.
That was a very normal farming situation from where you are in upstate New York all the way to through Nebraska, right? A lot of those farming operations, and again, I’m from Northeastern Indiana, they would get 8% loan to value. And so you would be buying land and then maybe you stuck a hog barn on it and you did that in 1980.
And literally one year later, the land value dropped by more than 50% in many cases. The land value within a year dropped by 50%. Well, the bank sitting there had an 80% loan.
There were assets that were so underwater, the bank wouldn’t even repossess them. It was better for them to let them, to just think about that. When I want to explain stuff to somebody younger, I’m like, I’m not doing walking uphill to the blizzard, but I’m just telling you there were assets that were so bad in agriculture, the bank didn’t even want them back because they’re taking back something they got 80 % loan on and it’s worth 30 % less than that. So it was smarter for them in many cases to say, Hey, you keep chugging along and, and, and make some payments.
Maureen: Fascinating. I did not realize that. No one’s ever told me that story and hasn’t come up in my research. So I appreciate that. So, all right, so college, you said screw egg, not for me. This has been terrible. Anything else but that and that won’t happen.
Damian: And that is a real story.
I went to Purdue University, the land grant school in Indiana and pursued a degree in agricultural economics. I was going to be an agronomist because I was in FFA soil judging and I loved soils. There was a thing in Indiana called T by 2000. Maybe it wasn’t even Indiana, it was by USDA. It was all about making tolerable levels of soil erosion by the year 2000. And I remember reading books about this and I was on the soil judging team and I was going to be an agronomist.
And then I picked up a biochemistry book.
I’m like, holy crap, this is going to be really hard. So I switched and became an agricultural economics major. So my degree is in agricultural economics.
I worked in a ceiling tile factory. There was still a lot of manufacturing in Indiana. There’s a touch less than there was back then. Worked in a ceiling tile factory for three summers to pay for Purdue. Landscaped, baled hay, did all that kind of thing to pay for school, bartended.
But my first corporate job was with DuPont. I was a sales intern for DuPont after my junior year at Purdue. And, I thought, man, I don’t know if this is going to work out because also DuPont wasn’t hiring anyone full time. There was a real glut still, I graduated from Purdue in 92.
There was still not much hiring that went on. So I did another internship for industrial sales in Erie, Pennsylvania. And I thought, man, you know what? I’m going to get into some sort of industrial sales, some sort of thing that’s away from ag.
So my first job out of college, I sold lighting products for Cooper industries, which is now part of Ethan corporation. And I’m like, Hey, I’m in corporate. I remember thinking to myself, I’ve skinned a fat hog here, man. I’m out of ag. I’m in Las Vegas three weeks into my new sales job. We’re at a corporate dinner. I’m drinking a 22 ounce fosters. I’ve got a lobster tail. I’m staying at a nice hotel in Las Vegas.
And you know what? Three years ago, I’m out there in charge of the freestyle barn, literally out there scraping shit on the dairy farm. And I’m thinking, man, I’m out of ag. This is the way to go. And I lasted a year and a half in corporate. I decided, wait a minute, your advancement in a large corporation is more dependent on your ability to laugh at the boss’s bad jokes and nod your head and not be contrarian, a word that you’ve used to describe me, Maureen.
I didn’t last very long in corporate. It’s not because I got fired. I was actually selling. They couldn’t believe it when I turned in my resignation, but I quit my job a year and a half into it.
Maureen: You didn’t want to play that game, which I totally get. So then how did you decide to become a speaker?
Damian: So in 1994, I submitted my resignation a year and a half into working for the big company, selling lighting products, and I was doing fine. Like I said, they gave me a raise in promotion.
They were quite surprised when I said, hey, I’m out of here. I quit my job in July of 94, August, August 1st, 1994, kind of an anniversary. I still celebrate every August 1st to become a professional Bill Clinton impersonator.
And so there’s probably somebody listening to your show like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this guy’s making stuff up. That’s kind of how that was the way things worked.
Maureen: You’re joking. Is that a joke?
Damian: While I was working for Cooper, they sent me to San Diego. I was covering Indiana. I was supposed to b
e in charge of Indiana. They called and said, hey, we’ve got a problem in San Diego. Turns out they use manufacturers, for the most part, to go to market. They had to fire our guy because he had some criminal charges.
So they grabbed me and another young guy and said, just go out there and be in charge of San Diego for a few weeks until we can get this covered. Because we didn’t have wives.
You know, we have kids. That’s why they didn’t say that’s why they grabbed us. But they grabbed us. So I’m like a 23, 24 year old guy. I’m out there in San Diego.
So on Halloween of 93, I dressed up as Bill Clinton and went to nightclubs and I won a costume contest dressed up as Bill Clinton. I had my hair dyed and I was wearing a suit and some fat padding. I put on makeup to age myself and I could talk like Bill Clinton. I can say, how y’all doing? Hey, Maureen, how would you like to be an intern? Oh, baby. You know, and I could talk like that. It’d be funny.
So I won this costume contest and I took the mic. The way I won it was I took the mic and you know, played like Bill Clinton and everybody laughed and then that’s what cemented it for me.
And I won cash in a costume contest. Cooper Industries sees the pictures that my buddy sends them and they’re like, hey, you want to come to again, you want to come to this trade show? You want to come? I would get flown around then for the company and be the humor relief at these boring lighting events.
Because think about it, you’ve got a bunch of people gathered to talk about recessed lighting fixtures. Nobody gives a damn about that. So they would put me on stage and I could be funny for five minutes and then stand around and take some pictures and look like Bill Clinton.
So when they sent me from San Diego back to Indiana, it was a day much like the day you just described. We were recording this in February, about negative six. And I said, wait a minute, I was just out there in the palm trees looking at the Pacific Ocean.
Now you got me back in Indiana, it’s negative six and I’m not sure this is this is and plus I’m not sure I’m digging on this corporate thing because again, I’m not in charge of my own destiny.
So I started working up the act and started I printed out I to Kinko’s for you young people Google that I went to Kinko’s and I had this girl at Kinko’s draw a caricature of Bill Clinton and said perfect and we put it on a business.
Maureen: Just someone like behind the counter, like you just walked in there and said, hey, can you draw? my God.
Damian: She drew a caricature of Bill Clinton. I said, that’s perfect. And I printed up business cards that said executive entertainment, obviously a spoof on the executive branch.
And my company for 31 years has been called Executive Entertainment. It started by me going into Kinko’s and saying, can you draw? And she drew a caricature of Bill Clinton. And that was my business card with my phone number on. No cell phones, no email back then, no internet back then. was 1994.
And then I started selling this act. The act was really rough. I would walk into a room and look like Bill Clinton and come up with some funnies to say for five minutes and then gladhand around and shake pictures.
Then it dawned on me that to get paid well, you’ve got to have an act. And so I worked diligently at creating an act and I was a funny kid. I was the youngest of nine children. I was the funny kid in school and I was a class president. I could be on stage doing all that kind of thing. So that’s the deal. That’s why I quit my job in 94 to become a professional Bill Clinton impersonator comedian.
Maureen: Fascinating. I knew I was going to be excited for this discussion with you to learn more about your background. I didn’t anticipate that. That wasn’t on my bingo card, as they say.
Damian: You’re a member of our business of ag success group. You’ve been on my business of agriculture podcast, and we roughly know each other. We’re going to see each other next week. And you didn’t know, and you didn’t know all of that.
So the Bill Clinton thing was the, that was the stepping stone.
Maureen: That was the impetus, love it. So now your whole shtick is you’re a speaker, you also own a farm. So tell me about those two things. How did Bill Clinton impersonation turn into speaking on the topics of agriculture and then also tell me about the farm.
Damian: Right. So I was out there busting it to do Bill Clinton. And that was my only income. That was it. I had quit corporate. And so I quit my thirty three thousand dollar a year job in 1994 and it was sink or swim. I lived in the upstairs of my buddy’s condo and I had one of those glued together desks that you like buying a box and bolt together. And I had a phone and a fax machine.
I grabbed some milk crates and made my shelves and my shelves had then VHS tapes of me doing my Bill Clinton show and promotional packets which used to back then put together packages and mail them out and postcards and brochures.
This is again pre-internet. So I would send out all, Al Gore hadn’t invented it yet. You can look that up also when you’re looking up all this other stuff. Anyway, I just sold and because I had a sales background and always understood the business, I would sit there and call people and then if I did a gig for $300 and people go say, Hey, that’s really funny. You know what? I’m having a cocktail party for $300.
A lot of people could afford a $300 act even 31 years ago. So you do so the $300 act becomes a $500 show. And so every gig I said my role my goal was every gig that I did, I wanted to get another gig because that kept the bills paid, right?
And I was still paying off my college debt to Purdue and my Chevy Lumina payment. It was my company car that I had to buy. So I looked at it as every gig you do get another gig. And I also looked at it as I don’t turn any gig down because that’s like getting paid to go to the gym.
And I think that the business lessons, I mean, I knew more about the business side, but my friend that I’ve known since childhood lived with me. And he said something a year or two later and he’s like, Hey, man, I’ve been your pretend secret service man at 100 gigs because I did every gig you could imagine.
He said, I’ve been on stage with you at least a hundred times and I watch Comedy Central. And he’s like, I know, I watch shows and I watch comedy. I said, let me tell you, you’re a B to B plus on stage, but you’re an A at that desk and running it at a minimum. And so one thing that I’ve always told people when they say, hey, you used to be a comedy guy, you used to be in and I’ve been in movies and TV shows and whatnot.
So I’ve told people, and this is true about everything. When people think being successful means being really good at being an agronomist or a feed nutritionist or you name anything that’s listening to our show, a food and beverage consultant.
One thing that I’ve said my whole career and I mean, I cut my teeth, I didn’t come from nothing. I’m paying off my debt. I didn’t have any inheritance. I’m the youngest of nine from a very shoestring background farming operation. How there wasn’t enough money for my parents to have money, let alone give it to their kids.
that I said there’s four letters in the word show. There’s eight letters in the word business. Put twice as much. And so think about what that means. Put twice as much effort into the business as in the show. And also it becomes a given. You better have the show.
Nobody’s going to put you on stage if you completely suck. I mean, although there are people that completely suck, know, Amy Schumer comes to mind. But anyway, I always looked at it as making it a business. So that was the thing is that I sold it and I sold it and I sold it and that was an important role to to get there was make the money, do the gig and every gig try and turn that one into at least one more and turn it into one and what you always then you start ascending and your act gets better and you say I want this show to not only get me one more I want to get me one more instead of a $500 gig I want the next to be $750. You’re creating demand and you’re building the act.
So then the act goes from five minutes of funnies to 10 to 20. By the time I’m charging a thousand or $1,500 to do an act, I’ve got a solid 20 minute set and I can walk in and then you start telling the client, yes, I’m not just going to come in and do what you tell me to do. Here’s the show. Yes, we’ll make it about you. We’ll personalize it, but we’re not going to come riding in on a donkey and let you throw pies at me. No, that’s not what the show is, you do everything you can early on. So I’ve always understood that part of it and then
Maureen: You know, I think that that’s a common thing for farm kids is the work ethic that just gets instilled in you from the beginning. No one works harder because it’s just you, like you said, you’re 12 years old and you’re the one that’s out there breaking the ice cap on the trough so the cows can drink, right? You know, no one works harder than a farm kid and that’s a really great key takeaway from this too, and the idea of more effort in the business side of it.
You really have to be tight on that side of the house, regardless of what the other part of it is, right? What the business is in.
Damian: Okay, well, Agency 29, and I don’t know a lot about it. I know a little bit about it. You probably have really good ideas and you’re creative and you can help companies reposition themselves and you can show a client really brilliant work.
And God knows in this era of computer graphics and artificial intelligence and all those tools that we have at our disposal, you can wow. I’m sure you could sit down with any food and beverage company and say, I’m going to wow the heck out of you.
That becomes the given. You better be able to get on stage and be funny. Now, how do you also then manage accounts receivable? you, you got some, hey, I’m really creative. I don’t even like to deal with money. I’m a creative.
You hear, you and I both know people like that. I’m an artist. I don’t want to fool with money. I’m like, well, good. You want to be an artist? Go down to the park and sit on the park bench and be entertaining and be creative. And all the other vagrants will love it because that’s where you’re going to be.
You have to make this a business and it has to have positive cash flow. You’ve got to pay your bills. You’ve got to invest tomorrow. You’ve got to cultivate a client base. It is the business and the
Maureen: I totally agree. I went to school for graphic design and illustration. I went to school to be an artist. I always loved the business side of it. So I never wanted to be fine art.
I loved advertising. I loved marketing. I wanted to apply creativity to those industries. But where we really started to get traction as the agency and grow and scale was when I stopped doing that. And I grew the business.
That’s my whole job is growing the business. And then pass off the fish we catch to the team who’s going to, like you said, do the given, which is knock the work out of the park. And when we can leverage a reputation for knocking it out of the park, like you said, you need to be able to go on stage and deliver, right?
But it’s the, how do you build the snowball that’s rolling down the hill, right? To continue to get bigger over time.
Damian: It’s the business side of it. And by the way, you get knocked. mean, there’s creative types. Remember Norman Rockwell? I’ve been to his museum in Vermont and I I’ve I’ve heard the the art community. He is not an artist. He was an illustrator for a magazine. Oh, so somehow he has to suffer great indignity for his career, even long after he’s dead because he made money. He made money drawing and illustrating.
What the hell? I mean, there’s something wrong with that. So I’ve never had that problem. You know, they applaud Picasso selling a painting that I can’t even understand. I can’t see half the colors. I’m colorblind for a million dollars. Somehow you’re, you’re degraded if you’re Norman Rockwell. So I’ve never bought into that.
Maureen: I hear you. So take me back to my question. How did you go from the funnies to the more serious business of agriculture?
Damian: I was a Bill Clinton impersonator. We knew that that was going to have a ride. I again, you talk about farm kid work ethic. I was in my 20s and early 30s. I never turned down work if I could I mean, unless it was really cheap, but I obviously, hey, can you be in Sacramento and then 12 hours later be in Jacksonville? Absolutely.
I busted it because I wanted to build, I wanted to build, put some hay in the barn because I never had any hay in the barn. So I worked and worked and worked. I knew that after the inauguration of 2001, whoever came after Clinton, that things were going to slow down.
But I knew that I still had enough comedy chops that I could tilt it. So we changed it then to he’s still the ex-president, he’s still funny. And so then it was, and then we were changing the approach that it’s like, if you’re a corporation say, here’s our new board of directors member.
And so then I’d come in as Bill Clinton and still be funny. And then I’d make it about them. Hey, XYZ Corporation, here’s what we’re going to do when I’m on the board of directors: we’re going to hire more interns. Of course that’s fine. And whatever the thing was.
So the problem is 9-11 happened in the year 2001. And so when you’re a corporation and I did associations and corporations, I didn’t do club work. I had done some club work, but you don’t get money working at comedy clubs. You get dumber audiences in comedy clubs. I very quickly learned that political comedy worked back then for that crowd.
No corporate or association meeting really wanted political comedy after 9-11. They didn’t want comedy at all. Well, hell, there weren’t any meetings for several months.
People were terrified to get on airplanes. If I go on an airplane, they’re going to fly it into a building and kill me. So things got really bad fast.
I had just bought my first farm property in Indiana and was building a pull barn with an apartment in it. It was the very time my wife and I were way ahead of the barn dominion movement. were one of the first barn dominions and it was going to be my summer and fall getaway.
I was a little overextended and then 9-11 happened. So then we lost all sorts of business meetings and I was transitioning into my next career and then trying to reinvent myself and then also any investment money we had went south for a long stretch.
So things got really tight. In ‘02, we started liquidating assets and ‘03 and ‘04. I was throwing all kinds of stuff against the wall and trying to get it stuck. I tried to buy car washes using a friend of mine’s money and my salesmanship and business skills.
I got into landscaping again and did that a couple days a week. A friend of mine was so overwhelmed with his own landscaping business, would toss me, essentially he would toss me his side work.
The good news is that it forced me to be gone for two 12 hour days per week on average, working physically to where I was exhausted. And what that meant was the other days when I was then at my desk, I had to focus.
I was still doing some Bill Clinton shows and I was speaking as Damian, but I didn’t really find my niche. I thought I was going to be this business guy. I was all over the place. Then all of sudden it kind of hit me. Like, wait a minute, you know ag and you know funny.
Why in the hell are you not being the ag funny guy who also has commentary? And so when I started putting that together about oh, four or five, oh man.
So then after three years of twisting the wind and struggling and things were rough. I mean, it was a really difficult time. I felt like a failure because I had been in movies and I’d been, I’d been on stage a hundred days a year doing my comedy show. And all of a sudden a year later, you’re sitting there and you’re twisting in the wind.
And I didn’t want to be, oh God you Jimmy Buffett in one of his books talked about what always drove him. He said I was ascending as a music act. And he said, I’m at the Holodome and Lebanon, Indiana or whatever. And there is a guy that had been a huge act and was on the way down. And he’s now working at the Holodome as a B act.
I felt that way when things were declining and I’m still grabbing some Bill Clinton shows for a meager amount of money because I got to pay some bills. And I’m like, you know what, this is not this is not satisfying and I’m better than this. And not that I wasn’t willing to do the work. And again, that farm kid works, I think I’m not going to become a welfare recipient for crying out loud. I got over my skis. I lost a bunch of net worth. I’ve struggled here.
So I would do the work, but I’m like, no, the next thing. So we invented really over a couple of years, the Damian Mason product. And I’m not in any way being arrogant, but there’s the Damian Mason that you and I are going to have a drink and talk about stuff. But then there’s this show, this product, this personality, this thing. And we really invented that.
I invented that with the ag and the funny. And then through the years, I came up with all my stuff where then I became a stage act again that was hugely in demand at ag meetings doing a lot of humor and a few points.
I had my t-shirts that said agriculture because starvation sucks. And that was kind of edgy. And it was funny. I trademarked that and I would fling out t-shirts and sell them. And I have given away bumper stickers that said that and I was the smart, funny comedic guy about Ag who also had a few big points about the industry.
After doing that for a long while, some clients called him and said, hey, we know you’re funny. We know you know Ag. Can you do some more points on this business topic? I read the Wall Street Journal; my degree is in agricultural economics. I own farms. I travel all over the world, literally all over North America. And every meeting I go to, I sit in on other sessions and like, yes, I can do all so I kept getting on stage and doing this stuff. And like, we didn’t know that you actually could talk about the demand structure on exports to Europe.
Maureen: Right, but it was of course, I love that realization, because it was of course to you, but it’s not common. Yes. Yes, I love that. So as you mentioned, I’m in your Business of Agriculture support group, which is just a bunch of ag nerds like you and I, who all get together a couple times a month and sort of talk about what’s happening.
I’ve noticed that you are full of knowledge on politics and agriculture and especially the international landscape, which just like you said for you was, you start getting asked about this sort of thing and it’s, well, of course I know that because it was an interest, right?
That you were just curious about and nurturing, but what, have you always had an interest in international politics and like, what has that been like for you and meant for you in your career?
Damian: Probably so. I think it’s the old thing about being curious and paying attention. What comedy is, and I tell my audience is this, comedy is tremendously difficult to make into a business.
You know, there’s all kinds of people that are funny and they’re sleeping on their buddy’s couch in Los Angeles hoping they get a break, whatever. It’s hard to turn into a business. It’s hard to even do and be good at, but it’s easy to explain.
Comedy is observation with point of view and perspective delivered with a punchline, an observation, point of view and perspective. That’s what makes it good. That’s what makes it like you’ve you and I have had the same observation. Probably the comedian starts with the observation like, crap. Yes, I did see that puts her perspective on it and then delivers a punchline.
I’ve been an observer for a long time and that’s the thing. It starts with observation, paying attention and then always taking a little deeper. You know, I was just thinking on my hike this morning, Marine with my dogs.
I’m like if the American taxpayer was a little bit shocked over where USAID money was going. Wait until they find out where the aid to Ukraine money went. And I’m like, what are you talking about? Do you really think that hundreds of billions of dollars ended up in some soldiers’ ammunition out on the front line? Where did it go? So I’ve always looked to follow the money.
One of my big observations is to follow the money and look at what incentivizes.
And so economics a long time ago and econ 415, I learned economics, you can talk about guns and butter and supply and demand charts and all that economics is about human decision making. And so I always begin with what’s driving these decisions. What’s really happening over here?
You talked about some of the international stuff and we say international politics, people probably assume you’re going to get into a conflict or a debate. No, no, no, no, no. Let’s just look at some realities. Like I’ve talked about the Brazil thing.
And right now, the former president of Brazil is being charged. And the current president was a criminal and actually came from a career political family, fairly criminal, senile, and got installed in to be the new president. And when it happened, there were a lot of calls for this election that actually looked rigged. And there was a storming of the presidential palace.
Does any of it sound familiar at all? And there’s also tremendous amounts of evidence that there were overtures and influence from outside countries like China.
So when I point out to my ag crowds, like, most people just don’t pay attention, they don’t observe. I read voraciously. I’m a voracious reader, but I pay attention to many different things I can.
And when I demonstrated this to my audience, I said, look it up. All this is true. Wait a minute, why would this matter? I said, because China is making Brazil their satellite country. They are going to try and they can’t thumb us. We’re too big of an economy. We’re 27 % of the global economy. Brazil’s a few percent of the global economy.
So they can put their thumb on it. So I like to pay attention again, what’s the economics of it and who benefits from it if you start asking those questions and then look into things enough, it makes sense.
Maureen: It’s like you said follow the money. I personally have a lot of interest in learning all aspects of agriculture too, similar to you, right? I go to these, I’m engaged to speak at a conference and I really enjoy sitting in the other sessions and learning about different niches of the industry that I may not have known.
Damian: Is it a “nitch” or a “neesh”? I think it’s niche.
Maureen: Niche.
Well, tomato tomato, I also don’t say voracious the same as you. Voracious, voracious reader.
Damian: You don’t say what? I said Veracius. Alright, I’ll call Veracius. I will concede Veracius. I will never concede Niche.
Maureen: Okay. I can’t wait to read this on the transcript. So what are your thoughts with your knowledge and your perspective and your opinion? What are your thoughts on the future of the ag industry? Where’s it going?
Damian: I just recorded the business of agriculture, my show yesterday, for March release. And it’s about this guy right here, RFK junior. And I’ve covered this from a few different angles and there’s people that think you’re obsessed. Like, no, I’m not obsessed at all. I’m intrigued.
For instance, I put out there on my social media and said, what if RFK junior pushes for a hard push for a switch to organic agriculture? And of course I got all kinds of interesting. You know how it is. I got hate mail. I got people because yes, of course.
So I had people calling me a liberal that have no idea how I am politically. I had people telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about, whatever. Here’s the thing. He is not in charge of the United States Department of Agriculture. You say he’s not in charge of agricultural policy.
The United States Department of Agriculture recently announced a new food policy for SNAP recipients, SNAP Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as Food Stamps, serving, depending on the week, 41 to 43 million, that’s about 11 to 13 % of the United States of America. We don’t know exactly how many people we even have in this country at this point, but are on these programs.
There are big changes coming to SNAP about the type of food that you can eat and it looks like they’re going to incentivize buying healthy food. Maybe you can get more food for less money if it’s deemed healthy but less food looks like this is the way it’s going to go less.
Maureen: Less if you buy Twinkies, more if you buy tomatoes. I love it.
Damian: There you go. So now here’s the thing. Where do you think that morbidly obese welfare recipient holding on to their sixty-four sixty-four ounce slurpee coming out of seven eleven with their Twinkies and their lottery tickets?
Do you think that person pushed for that new change? Do you think they’re the ones that lobbied USDA or do you think it was RFK Junior? Who do you think had the so when I when I have people tell me that I’m barking up a tree.
RFK is not really going to influence ag policy. I’m like, what the hell are you not watching? I just explained this whole snap proposal two days ago. It’s absolutely because of him. Where do you think the red dye being taken out of children’s cereal came from before he was even that was his.
I’m saying he is an activist and he is having an impact on agriculture. And actually some of it’s not bad. but I proposed what if he wants to push for organic?
I am not an organic zealot nor am I wacky against organic. I think any way you can make a living. Your father had to get out of the dairy. I know people that were farmers that went broke. know, what if you whatever you can do to make a living.
Maureen: In some industries, it’s just not possible, right? Like we work with wineries, vineyards. Organic is not possible for them or there will not be a crop, right? Powdery mildew in the finger lakes, right, is something that’s constantly discussed. They must spray for powdery mildew or they will lose the crop, guaranteed.
Damian: It shouldn’t be required. It should be obviously the marketplace that dictates. But I know that he’s an organic zealot. He is on the record in an interview with Dr. Phil, another credible source, of course, stating that we could cure the epidemic of diabetes if we switched everybody over to our organic diet. Well, that’s not true at all. Diabetes is not caused because you didn’t eat conventionally raised grapes or whatever.
You asked me the question, where do I see agriculture going? I think that in the next four years, he’s going to have an outsized influence on things. You know what? I posed a question. What if there were incentives? He’s quoted as saying we need to incentivize more regenerative. He didn’t use the word organic because it’s such a lightning rod or incentivize more regenerative and no till, et cetera.
I don’t disagree. It kind of is being incentivized. What if, what if, what if he, what if USD policy starts not only incentivizing healthier food consumption through the welfare programs? What if it also incentivizes a style of production?
Hey, you can’t make money in your first two years trying to switch over to organic. We’re going to subsidize that. What if that happens?
Maureen: Maybe this is where I’m naive, but I like to think that people come from a good place and are well-intentioned, right? And when politics come in, like you said, follow the money, that it’s not, there are ulterior motives, right, to consider and everything like that.
But to me, I mean, the idea of incentivizing healthy eating for SNAP recipients sounds like a great program. Incentivizing regenerative I think is problematic because regenerative is still yet to be defined and what does it mean? You know, what are the practices?
But if we’re talking about incentivizing sustainable practices, absolutely, that’s an easy one that USDA has already backed with Climate Smart Commodities Grant and so on, which I think is a remarkable program.
Damian: By the way, it’s remarkable, but there’s a lot of money and again, there’s a lot of froth. There was a lot of froth equaling almost fraud, but yes, go ahead.
Maureen: I hear you on that and I’m sure you’re right, right? Based on how it was distributed and managed and everything like that. But I talked to a winery in the Finger Lakes yesterday who bought 40 acres of vineyard in the region and is working on converting it to organic.
And she is going through exactly what you just explained, right? She’s going to have some years where she has either no production or very low production while she’s converting that vineyard from conventional to organic.
Again it’s very ambitious to consider going organic as opposed to regenerative or sustainable or something like that, but to actually seek the certification is challenging. So I like to think that people are coming from a good place. But again, you make a good point that there’s financials, financial incentives, which is compelling.
Damian: You know, and I pointed out again, I’m not I was I’m the person that’s creating the thought and I just said even though I think RFK junior’s kind of wacky on a lot of things.
You know, if there was a thing that said we’re going to incentivize and we would like 20 % of America’s crop land acres to be organic in the next five years. And there again, I’m not lobbying for this. I’m just saying what if it works?
You know we do, it would actually serve as a supply management tool. Since we are over supplied right now. Generally commodity production is decreased by about 20 % when you switch to organic and sometimes more depending on the crop.
You said you almost can’t do organic grapes. Whereas organic alfalfa isn’t so you know, mean, there’s certain stuff that really lends itself well to an organic model. And there’s certain stuff that’s like, god, we can’t do it at all.
So it would actually serve to decrease supply. The one thing is, is the marketplace even demanding it? And that’s the tough part. In other words, the push for cage free eggs. Well, right now more eggs are being produced cage free than are actually even being demanded and paid a premium for so a bunch of producers made a switch, and they’re not getting any premium for it.
That’s the tough part when you say, Oh, 25 % is going to be organic, only 10 % of the marketplace cares about organic. That’s the tough part. It’s a distortion.
Maureen: Some of it’s that the cost justifications aren’t there, right? For the consumer, the reason that they’re not switching is because they can’t pay the premium or they choose not to pay the premium. want to, you again, follow the money, right? It connects to that as well. All right.
Last question for you. What’s next for you?
Damian: I appreciate you being you. Are all your Spilled Salt guests this much fun stuff to talk about? Yes, you called me a contrarian. I’ve been nothing but concise, comedic, I’m going to use as many c words as possible here. Complimentary.
Maureen: I appreciate it. What’s next for you? What are you excited about for the future? What’s coming down the pike that you’re excited about?
Damian: I’m excited about this industry in general, think that the technology thing is good, but also overwhelming. So it’s sometimes exciting, sometimes overwhelming. I think that we do have a marketplace that is more accepting than it has ever been to diversity of offerings.
You know, I remember going to the grocery store as a little kid in Farmingtown, Huntington, Indiana. It wasn’t like, but there was no whole food. I mean, there really wasn’t.
And there’s still no Whole Foods in Huntington, Indiana, but there is not too far away. So the offering for the consumer should be an exciting thing for Ag.
I know that the coffee shop, they ain’t going to tell me how to farm, type of a farmer crowd. Well, they’re getting quickly bypassed and they can sit there and fold their arms and put their head in sand, whatever statement you want to call or you want to compare, but I would say what we have is a marketplace that is very diverse for a lot of offerings that gives a lot of opportunity.
We are absolutely probably moving into huge, large scale commodity production on the farm. And then there’s going to be everything else. And that’s fine because once you say, actually, I actually believe that what we might move into is
There’s going to be corn for ethanol and livestock. And then there’s going to be corn for human consumption. I really think that we’re going to start making that divergent switch. And that way, hey, you don’t even need to complain anymore, consumer, about GMOs, because guess what? That’s all going in either your gas tank or into cow feed. The stuff that you’re eating in your Doritos or in your corn meal, that’s here.
I think that’s what we’re going to start doing because traceability Maureen is getting so much easier through technology. So I would think that those are things we should be excited about because I think there’s an opportunity for value add. And again, you went into your business to add value, to create brands and create opportunity. And that’s where Ag has so often gravitated toward.
You just go out there and produce commodities. You go ahead and just make us number two yellow corn, make us your basic milk and we’ll make the money off of it in the value added stream. You just go ahead and be a good little peasant. And so I think we should be excited throughout the industry of the ability to value add.
Maureen: Well, that couldn’t connect better to the first episode in this season of the podcast. I interviewed Greg Jaffe, who is a former senior advisor with USDA, and talked a lot about the bioeconomy.
And so that ties in so well to what you’re talking about here in terms of what’s being produced, for what purpose, that sort of stuff. So anybody who may not have listened to that, go back and listen to that one on the heels of this.
Thank you for your spirit. As always, Damian Mason, I appreciate you joining me today on the podcast. Let everybody know where they can find you.
Damian: Damian Mason dot com. You can find all of my socials. can find how to get a hold of me. Damian, D-A-M-I-A-N, Mason like a bricklayer dot com. And I do enjoy being here.
I was coming up with some more words between congenial and comedic and conspiratorial. You know, I don’t know. What did you say it was? Not confrontational.
Maureen: No, not confrontational, contrarian.
Damian: Sometimes. Anyway, you’re the bomb and I really appreciate you having me on here.
Maureen: Thank you, thanks for joining me.