What It's Like to Do Big Ag Business in Venezuela and Ukraine

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

Tracy Alloway (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:22)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:24)

Joe, one of the big topics of discussion, there are a lot of topics of discussion nowadays, but when it comes to the recent takeover of Venezuela, the Trump administration's takeover of Venezuela, I don't know how-

Joe Weisenthal (0:36)

The acquisition.

Tracy Alloway (0:36)

Acquisition, I don't know how to describe it.

Joe Weisenthal (0:38)

Me neither.

Tracy Alloway (0:39)

But the action in Venezuela. One of the themes or things that you saw people talking about was this idea that, well, even if the goal is to get more oil, Venezuela's oil industry is a mess.

Joe Weisenthal (0:54)

It's in shambles.

Tracy Alloway (0:55)

Yeah. So you hear things about ships that are rusting in the dock and pumps that don't work and whatever. People talking about really creaky infrastructure and also just a bad environment for doing business.

Joe Weisenthal (1:08)

Yeah. I mean, this is the thing. And so in the Venezuela specific context, we know that the oil infrastructure has been degraded for years, which is why there is all these numbers about the massive amounts of upfront investment that would be required to get the oil started. But then there is this other phenomenon that's global, which is that there's really not much of a connection per se between the existence of natural resources in the ground and some way to get them out commercially anywhere. This also happens to be the case in Greenland. It happens to be the case in Western Australia, which is a very well-run country, which is that assets in the ground are anywhere mean nothing without the sort of rule of law, refining, processing, shipping, infrastructure, et cetera. So all these places of various different degrees, the actual existence of some asset, in Venezuela's case, oil, that's only part of the story.

Tracy Alloway (2:01)

Absolutely. So this got me thinking, what is it like to actually do some sort of industrial business in a place like Venezuela? And I always wanted to do more on the Venezuelan economy. I think it's pretty interesting and more interesting now. So that is exactly what we're going to do today. We're also going to talk about doing business in another... Hot spot. Hot spot is a good way of putting it, which is Ukraine.

Joe Weisenthal (2:26)

Right. We did a number of episodes immediately after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, talking about the effects on the grain business. But the important thing, which we didn't get into that much, although I think we did a little bit, is like, well, the grain business, the wheat export business, it still exists, it was impaired. But then the day to day business of running a commercial operation in that intense environment, how that changes and so forth, and so forth. How does that change under the new competitive strains? And I just want to say one more thing, which is, when you talked about, well, what is the right word now to describe our relationship with Venezuela? It's, I've been thinking about a lot of this too, because-

Tracy Alloway (3:05)

Do you have a word?

Joe Weisenthal (3:06)

No, I don't, because it's very context dependent, right? If you were to listen to the administration, it's like, oh, Maduro was arrested, right? If you believe this was a flagrant violation of international law, you'd say he was kidnapped, etc. There's almost no words to describe it. You saw the president talking about already selling Venezuela in oil. So whose oil is this already? It's just a very odd situation, to say the least.

Tracy Alloway (3:29)

Definitely. Okay, so speaking of odd situations, we have the perfect guests to talk about them.

Joe Weisenthal (3:35)

And I just got to say, I got a headline, US. Seeks Immediate Talks on Aquarium Greenland, Trump says. So at some point, we will have another conversation about weird relationships with parts of the world that we didn't think about as much.

Tracy Alloway (3:48)

Yeah, the Greenland economy episode is yet to come. inevitably going to arrive. Okay, so we're going to be speaking with Jeff Kazin. He is the co-founder of AgrisAcademy and also the other co-founder, Mike Rohlfsen. So Jeff and Mike, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots. Really appreciate it.

Mike Rohlfsen (4:07)

Thanks for having us.

Jeff Kazin (4:08)

Yeah, thanks for having us.

Tracy Alloway (4:10)

So first of all, why don't you give us a sort of nutshell summary of your career history? Because this is why we're talking to you. Both of you had very long, interesting careers at Cargill, which is one of the massive, massive agricultural conglomerates among other things. So talk to us about why we're talking to you, I guess.