# Mike Stamp Indicted.



## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

Indicted on 14 Federal charges.....ongoing since 2012 bankruptcy filing.

Regards, Mike

https://www.agweb.com/article/michigan-farmer-mike-stamp-indicted-on-14-federal-charges-naa-us-farm-report/


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

I wonder if this guy and his wife have kids. A nice example when both parents will have spent time in jail when this is done.


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## hillside hay (Feb 4, 2013)

To think a couple years ago Successful Farmer said that's who we were supposed to emulate


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

hillside hay said:


> To think a couple years ago Successful Farmer said that's who we were supposed to emulate


i think a previous SF farmer o the yr also went belly up.


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

And to think of all those Farm accountants who told their clients this is what you have to do to survive.


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## Uphayman (Oct 31, 2014)

I'll never have to worry about making SF's "do what this guy does" list. That should increase my chances of survival by about 1000%. While I skim the publication, most of it is way behond this old codgers ( is that a word?), world. My light bar is the tree, post, rock pile, 2 forties away.

I'm O K with being meek........." blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.


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## hillside hay (Feb 4, 2013)

swmnhay said:


> i think a previous SF farmer o the yr also went belly up.


I'm still a kid so I hear others talking about video games and whatnot. Plus, my own kids have a few. This whole SF feature reminds of the Madden Curse. Seemed every player that was pictured on the case of the game had either a severe injury or just simply lost their mojo the following year.


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

hillside hay said:


> I'm still a kid so I hear others talking about video games and whatnot. Plus, my own kids have a few. This whole SF feature reminds of the Madden Curse. Seemed every player that was pictured on the case of the game had either a severe injury or just simply lost their mojo the following year.


This is the one I was thinking of.

https://www.agweb.com/article/high-profile_crash_of_a_titan/


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## PaMike (Dec 7, 2013)

swmnhay said:


> This is the one I was thinking of.
> 
> https://www.agweb.com/article/high-profile_crash_of_a_titan/


 Wow, look at the assets vs liabilities. That blows me away that a bank would loan that far. I mean farming isnt high margins even with the big guys...

It was interesting what the article says about high rent tearing the moral fabric apart. We have seen that here. Farmers dont help farmers anymore. They are all trying to rent ground away from each other and get the upper hand. Truly a sad transition.



swmnhay said:


> i think a previous SF farmer o the yr also went belly up.


No one wants to read about the farmer just like you (and me) that has average equipment,average yields and average acres. We always want to hear about the big time success story. In farming that is either generations or hard work and good decision making, or tons or risks and gambles...


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

PaMike said:


> Wow, look at the assets vs liabilities. That blows me away that a bank would loan that far. I mean farming isnt high margins even with the big guys...
> It was interesting what the article says about high rent tearing the moral fabric apart. We have seen that here. Farmers dont help farmers anymore. They are all trying to rent ground away from each other and get the upper hand. Truly a sad transition.
> 
> No one wants to read about the farmer just like you (and me) that has average equipment,average yields and average acres. We always want to hear about the big time success story. In farming that is either generations or hard work and good decision making, or tons or risks and gambles...


It reminds me of FFA back when I was in high school.The American Farmer degree went to the students with the biggest class projects.There was a board in class with 12 names on it that had received the award.10 of them went broke a few yrs later in the 80's.The award was termed the Kiss of Death.Get the award good chance you are going broke.


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## paoutdoorsman (Apr 23, 2016)

Teslan said:


> I wonder if this guy and his wife have kids. A nice example when both parents will have spent time in jail when this is done.


They do... https://www.agweb.com/mobile/article/top_producer_of_the_year_finalist_mike_stamp-naa-ben-potter/


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## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

It does seem like a kiss of death to be named a "Top Farmer".....just how many of these "winners" have we seen get into some kind of trouble in just the last 10 years?

Regards, Mike


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## Hayjosh (Mar 24, 2016)

Maybe need to run a piece called 'bottom feeder Farmers' with the hope that it has the opposite effect?

If this is the case, may I be the first to toss their hat in the ring as you don't get anymore bottom feeder than me.


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

Hayjosh said:


> Maybe need to run a piece called 'bottom feeder Farmers' with the hope that it has the opposite effect?
> 
> If this is the case, may I be the first to toss their hat in the ring as you don't get anymore bottom feeder than me.


I'm not totally sure the title America's Lowest Bottom Feeder Farmer would sell magazines.


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## Teslan (Aug 20, 2011)

paoutdoorsman said:


> They do... https://www.agweb.com/mobile/article/top_producer_of_the_year_finalist_mike_stamp-naa-ben-potter/


I like the family photo where they are wishing to have a farm to pass down to their children. Now aged 9 and 7. I wonder if they think it is the big mean banks and government taking mommy and daddy to jail.


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## Farmineer95 (Aug 11, 2014)

Uphayman said:


> I'll never have to worry about making SF's "do what this guy does" list. That should increase my chances of survival by about 1000%. While I skim the publication, most of it is way behond this old codgers ( is that a word?), world. My light bar is the tree, post, rock pile, 2 forties away.
> I'm O K with being meek........." blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
> 
> 
> ...


Meek = Power under control,as in a meeked horse. 
I'm sure I too can go to a loan officer to get a new want,but I'm satisfied to chip away at the needs first.

Doesn't it seem like pride is taking over common sense and causing bad decisions?


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

Yeah, I know the type... been burned by them in the past, and sooner or later they always get their come-uppance... one way or the other.

One guy was actually an elder in the church we went to when I was a kid... Dad and Grandpa trusted him. Dad was starting out (late 60's early 70's) and had bought a rusted out old Case 600 combine and fixed it up... the grain pans were SO rusted out on it he riveted in sheets of tin over them to make sure it wasn't losing grain, and did the same in the header floor as well. He started doing custom combining for this BTO, because he NEVER did his own combining, despite being a corn and grain sorghum farmer. He always hired it done-- back then there were few combines with cabs and less with air conditioning, and in our 100 degree July heat harvest is pretty miserable, especially with dusty, itchy grain like grain sorghum. Dad was glad for the extra work and did his best-- to the point that he had a heat stroke in the guy's front yard when the unload auger on the combine broke and he had to dip out a load of sorghum by hand with a five gallon bucket... the guy wouldn't even lift a finger to help-- just stood there and watched. Dad spent the night in the hospital but was okay. The next year the guy was like "it'd really speed up harvest if we had an auger cart" so he went and bought a brand new "Big 12" auger cart, which back then was nearly as much as a good used combine, and he ran it with his Deere tractor from the air conditioned cab. Still hired all his combining done.

The following year he told Dad and Grandpa, "Ya know, if yall bought a new combine, I'd hire yall to do my combining EVERY year." Dad and Grandpa thought it over and that winter bought a Ford 640 combine, built by Claas in Germany (Claas "Senator"). At the time it was one of the largest combines in the US, but a lot cheaper then Deere or IH or Gleaners or Masseys. That summer they went over and started cutting for him. Grandpa had a friend, a black guy named Grant, who had bought an old IH Loadstar truck with a 15 foot grain bed on it-- back then a LOT of guys bought old straight trucks and put a grain bed on it or sideboards on the existing flatbed and hauled grain during the summer for extra cash-- til the truckers raised h3ll with the DOT and got the laws changed so that you could only haul your OWN grain, not haul for anybody else without commercial plates, insurance, and inspections, which made it unprofitable for the local guys to do anymore. Grant was getting 25 cents a hundred to haul grain sorghum, which was about the going rate. The BTO just up and turned him away one day, saying he found someone to haul it cheaper. That was a warning sign but nobody realized it. Dad and Grandpa got it next...

THe BTO came down to the field one day and told them to pack it in and head out... they were no longer required. Turns out some other bigshot neighbor ended up contracting WAY more grain than he could deliver, and was going to lose his shirt if he had to buy back the contracts (or buy-out or whatever they call it) and offered to harvest his entire crop FOR FREE and pay him the going price across the scale just to fill his contracts. Despite having a prior agreement with my Dad and Grandpa, he just cut them off at the knees and sent them packing. Dad and Grandpa were REALLY worried because they had to pay off the loan on the new combine... BUT, as it was, there was another new bigshot that rented a bunch of river bottom ground just the other side of Rosenberg and planted a couple thousand acres of sorghum, and it got very hot and wet in June and it was covered with morningglory vines, and he put out the word that whoever wanted to combine it, come on, and they could have all the custom cutting they wanted at the going rate. They pulled in with the Claas combine alongside a slew of other guys with comparable Deere, IH, Massey, Gleaner, and even an old Oliver I heard, and by lunchtime everybody else had quit... they would just hopelessly plug up trying to cut through all those morningglory vines, where the Claas had a lever where you could open the concave clearance right from under the seat, which allowed them to feed slugs straight through and onto the walkers, preventing it from clogging up the machine. When they did clog up, Claas had put a big cast-iron block on an extended cylinder shaft that stuck out over the tire, so you could stick a big iron bar in there and turn the whole machine backwards (this was LONG before "reversers" had been invented or put on combines) and roll the slug right back down the feederhouse under the auger and pull it off the platform, and go back to work. They ended up having the whole job to themselves and made enough money to pay off the combine that year.

They never trusted or had much to do with that joker after that, despite going to church with him for awhile (til we went to a different church and the one he was at folded up). He had a BAD reputation though... I was sitting in the cafe one day over in the neighboring town (where he lived) and some farmers from the area were talking about him, mentioned him by name... another guy talking with them said, "Yeah, I know that guy... he'd cut his own mother's throat for another hundred acres!" and one guy was telling how that joker even tried to rent his own family's ground he was renting from his uncles away from him, til they told him to take a hike..."

This guy was on the draft board and the ag county committee, yet he did stuff that would just make you shake your head. An older lady living next to one of the fields he rented called him one time-- she was chemically sensitive and said, "I know you have to spray your crops, and I don't want to stand in the way of that and I don't expect you NOT to spray because of me, but would you *please*, just let me know the day before you're going to spray, just give me a quick call, or even just a few hours before you come spray-- I'll get dressed and go into the next town over that day and get my hair done or eat out or go shopping or whatever-- you can spray your fields and I'll come home later that evening after the spray smell has dissipated so it doesn't bother me??" "Sure!" he said... then like 2 days later he went over there and sprayed the field anyway. When she asked him about it, he said, "Oh, I don't have to do that! There's no law says I have to do that." and basically told her to p!ss up a rope...

That guy had a reputation lower than alligator p!ss...

His son (who was a few years older than I) went to A&M and got his big ag degree... came home and was an "expert". They bought a big huge ultra-narrow-row planter and started planting corn in 15 inch rows, defying all common wisdom... Now, I've read about UNR corn, and it has it's place, but that's FAR NORTH of here, way up in the UPPER Midwest-- my BIL farms in north-central Indiana and even there it's kinda dicey as to whether UNR corn will outproduce 30 inch row corn most years... kinda 50-50 proposition. Get up into central Michigan and further north, then UNR corn has some advantages... the longer daylight length the further north you go plays a HUGE role in how well UNR does over 'conventional corn". Down here, "narrow rows" is 30 inch, because nearly everything else is grown on 36-40 inch rows, particularly if someone is growing cotton (it's only been in the last 20 years that pickers capable of picking 30 inch rows were invented). We also farm on raised beds so the crop doesn't drown out in heavy rain events, and to store up water in the soil for dry periods... which you cannot do with UNR--- it's flat-planted like drilled crops.

Anyway, junior lost his shirt and went belly-up, and became an ag teacher (LOL-- those who can, do; those who can't, teach...) Anyway he's since moved up the country somewhere... His old man managed to keep farming for a few years before he finally retired... He DID *finally* start LEASING a new combine to harvest his own crops, now that they have those big new comfy sealed air conditioned cabs... he never would buy a combine because he was the "lease it, don't grease it" type that wouldn't do any maintenance and just turn the thing back in at the end of the year. He finally hung it up and now he's a pariah, a nobody, because NOBODY will have anything to do with him anymore.

Dad and Grandpa had hard feelings for a while, but it worked out in the end and they really felt sorry for the guy more than anything-- his mantra was "it's only business" and if he could make a buck by slitting your throat, well, he didn't see a problem doing that. Most of those types of guys don't. Dad and Grandpa both agreed that everything he had didn't belong to him-- it was all the banks and FSA/FCIC's... and that's true. When he retired he had a house and two acres of his own... Everything else went back to the gubmint and banks...

Later! OL J R


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

Teslan said:


> I'm not totally sure the title America's Lowest Bottom Feeder Farmer would sell magazines.


Meh... I used to laugh more than anything at those magazines... always "get big or get out!" kinda nonsense... Course they always run that sort of story right next to a full two-page spread from the Big M or some other huge agribiz wanting to sell you high dollar seed, chemicals, or equipment...

Back when I was row cropping I used to get Successful Farming, Progressive Farmer, and a few others... when I was farming cotton, I got both "Cotton Farming" and "Cotton Grower" as well... I never paid a dime for any of them. They used to send me cards with the "tell us about yourself or we'll have to stop our complimentary subscription" and I was like "so what?" and never filled any of them out, and miracle of miracles the magazines never quit coming... I was talking with my seed/chemical/fertilizer dealer one time about that, and he told me, "yeah, the ag-mags buy the customer lists from the big seed, chemical, and fertilizer companies, and then mail them free magazines to keep the advertising right in front of your eyes all the time-- THEY pay for you to get all those magazines... " Which makes sense, but personally I'd rather just have a lower cost on the product and they can keep the bird-cage liners themselves...

Most ag-mags are just the very poster child of "yellow journalism"... most all the stories they write are just tripe and hype to push the "big ag agenda" of the big multinational agribiz giants like Monsanto, Dow, ADM, etc, in collusion with the fatcats and bigshots on the various 'promotion boards" and in the commodities markets, traders, and various land grant university and company researchers and, of course, ag-state politicians...

I got SO disgusted with Cotton Farming and Cotton Grower magazines... I derisively called them the "Kenneth Hood report" since UNFAILINGLY every month there was either a story about that guy or they called him for his "opinion" or a "quote" about something in a story they were running... he was some mega-bigshot farmer running 20,000 + acres of cotton over in the Delta somewhere that they just acted like he was the friggin Messiah or something... I used to leaf through it on the way from the mailbox to the house, and usually tossed it straight into the trash can as I walked through the kitchen-- there was NOTHING of ANY value in there for any farmer with less than 5,000 acres... What really finally put me off was, when we were fighting the excesses of the Texas Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation and their crooked nonsense, and FARMERS had formed a grass-roots group and took the fight all the way to the Texas Supreme Court and managed to fight them off from their continual attempts to rape us all, these "grower magazines" just ran the most insulting and slanted, misrepresented stories about how "a handful of Luddite nuts" were holding "the entire industry" hostage in Texas...

I finally wrote them and told them they were nothing but a bunch of yellow journalist industry propaganda artists and that I wouldn't line a birdcage with their garbage, and to quit sending it to me... which they finally did a few months later LOL

I had to laugh at their "master marketer" contest they had one time. I read that story twice before I really got the gist of it... they were tooting their horn about some joker that had basically bought and sold his own crop SIX TIMES between planting and harvest in the form of contracts, puts, calls, and options... and they went through it step by step-- got a contract, bought a put for 5 cents a pound, waiting for a market move and sold it 7 cents higher (cleared 2 cents a pound), bought an call, waited for a market move, sold it 6 cents lower, paid 5 cents a pound for the put, cleared a penny a pound, etc. until he FINALLY delivered the crop under the original contract... Grand total for all these trades?? A whopping SIX CENTS A POUND over market price! LOL Yet this is the kind of nonsense *everybody* is supposed to be doing to "make it big farming!" LOL

Yup... I always laughed at that, because h3ll, if I was a marketing guru and could make a sh!t-ton of money on the commodities markets, WHY IN H3LL WOULD I EVER ACTUALLY WANT TO FARM?? Why borrow huge sums of money,  buy equipment and have to maintain it, rent land and have to deal with landlords and other issues, work in the dust and heat and cold and sweat and filth, to actually GROW something, the whole time being at the mercy of wind, weather, storms, bad gubmint and economic policy, and market downturns, at risk from bugs and hail and banksters and traders and salesmen, when I COULD be just sitting on a beach in Acapulco, making trades on a laptop and making the money OFF THE MARKETS while sipping on a mai-tai and watching girls in bikinis??

Later! OL J R


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