Maximizing Agribusiness Potential: Unveiling the Power of R&D Tax Credits with Tanya Donnelly

In Episode 110 of the Real P3 Podcast, co-host Casey Bradley  welcome Tanya Donnelly, managing partner at R&K Partners, to discuss the transformative power of R&D tax credits in the agribusiness sector. Tanya shares her extensive experience in the tax industry, including a decade-long stint at the IRS, and outlines how R&K Partners, a global tax credit firm, assists companies in securing substantial savings through diverse tax credits and incentives. The episode delves into the eligibility criteria for R&D tax credits, debunking the myth that they are reserved for traditional scientific research, and highlights the IRS's broad definition, making these credits accessible to a wide range of industries, including agriculture.

Casey and Tanya explore several real-world applications of R&D tax credits, from optimizing feed formulas to innovative farming techniques, emphasizing the significance of these credits for both large and small-scale operations. Tanya's insights into the specific challenges and opportunities within the agricultural sector underscore the firm's commitment to maximizing tax benefits for their clients. The conversation also touches on the legislative landscape affecting R&D credits, offering hope for more favorable conditions in the future.

Listeners are treated to an insider's perspective on the IRS, the tangible benefits of R&D tax credits for agribusinesses, and practical advice on compliance and documentation. Tanya's expert guidance demystifies claiming these credits, presenting them as a crucial tool for innovation and financial health in the agricultural industry.

This episode not only enlightens but inspires, encouraging businesses to explore R&D tax credits to foster growth, enhance sustainability, and secure a competitive edge. With Tanya's expertise and Casey's curiosity, the podcast becomes a bridge to untapped opportunities, making complex tax strategies accessible to entrepreneurs and veterans of agribusiness alike.

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Transcript

Casey Introduction
 0:00:00
 Welcome to the Real P3 podcast. Now co-hosted by myself, Casey Bradley, and my esteemed colleague, Philip Johan Oldendahl from Zimbabwe. As we reintroduce the global agribusiness dimension to the Real P3, we aim to connect you with extraordinary individuals who inspire inspire us to become unstoppable in both life and business. While I continue to shed light on the latest in animal nutrition and health, focusing on the US perspective, Johan will open the doors to his vast global network as a Neufeld scholar.
 
 

Embark with us on this enriched journey of discovery and practical insights. Our expanded view will navigate through the intricate world of agribusiness, powered by the collaborative efforts of Animistic and Swine Nutrition Management. This podcast is your bridge to groundbreaking ideas in animal nutrition, agriculture, and beyond, promising episodes that are not only enlightening but deeply inspiring. Tune in to grow and transform with us. Welcome to the Real P3 Podcast, where science and heart converge, empowering knowledge to spring into action.

Casey
 0:01:24
 Well, Tanya, welcome to the Real P3 Podcast. I'm glad to have you here. Would you mind introducing yourself and tell us a little bit about your background and what your company does? Of course. And thank you, Casey, for having me on today. I'm looking forward to having this discussion. So, a little bit about myself.

Tanya Donnelly
 0:01:43
 My name is Tanya Donnelly. I'm the managing partner at R&K Partners, and I have worked there. I've worked in the tax industry for 15 plus years. I actually spent over a decade working at the IRS and then transitioned out into public accounting, you know, and moving from that into more of the consulting field. My master's is in accounting from UNC, and my main priority is ensuring all of our claims meet the top-tier compliance expectations that we have.
 0:02:17
 And I've worked with clients ranging from a couple people's startup to Fortune 500 companies in order to help optimize things for them. And R&K Partners is a global tax credit firm. We specialize in securing funding for companies through diverse tax credits and incentives. We have over 500 successful claims ranging with $50 million in tax savings for over 800 plus clients. And we offer our expertise in international programs and local regulations.
 0:02:50
 So we are sector agnostic. We cater to a wide range of industries such as agriculture, AEC, cannabis, crypto, AI, FinTech. So R&K Partners was founded in 2022 in order to fill a gap in the US market. And our main priority is to offer US companies enhanced valued and top tier client management services. And in addition to those sectors, we are very proud to support the agricultural businesses, our experienced team. We understand the unique challenges and opportunities that are within that sector, and it allows us to make sure we're tailoring our strategies in order to maximize those tax benefits. We also have a sister company, RCK Partners, in the UK, and that is one of the fastest growing UK R&D providers as well, which complements our global expertise that we have.

Casey
 0:03:47
 Wow, I'm gonna go off script a little bit for a little fun. What was it like working for the IRS? 

Tanya

So, I actually really liked it. I know it's probably not what people would expect to hear, but I was always learning something new and learning different programs, meeting different people. I had a lot of different involvement levels from, you know, all the way from helping create actual systems to, you know, one point I helped with like a congressional committee.
 0:04:17
 Like there were so many different things that I did. I loved it. I honestly didn't leave because I didn't enjoy it. So, you know, I'm grateful I did it. There are days where I do miss it and I miss that environment, but yeah, I only have like positive things to talk about from working there. Well, I don't have any problems with the IRS either at the moment, but you never know. Yeah, you never know. But I'm grateful now to be on the outside. So, you know, people are like, aren't like, oh, can you take a look at this problem for me?
 I'm like, nope, I'm not there anymore.

Casey
 0:04:51
 Well, it is kind of awesome. And to give the audience a little bit of background, I fell into R&D tax credits working with Walk Stock Farms and found how valuable it was to their operation. And anybody I work with or talk to, I try to find the right partner for them to get advice because you think you can do it. And this is where a lot of CPAs and different people think they can find it and put it in there.

Casey
 0:05:21
 But I've found putting these different reports together and working in collaboration with firms like yours and the producer, there's huge value that they don't understand. And then part of my business is if producers are interested is I help you maximize your research, even if it's just field evaluations, to get the R&D tax credits because it's a win-win. We learn something for the operation that hopefully saves us money or improves performance, but ultimately then also tax credits are nice as I'm finding out as my own business owner. But for the audience who may not be familiar with R&D tax credits, can you kind of go over the definitions and, you know, eligibility and any changes and, you know, things like that, just to kind of fill the audience in on what they are and what does that mean for them? 

Tanya

Absolutely. So, the first thing I always say is when you hear of R&D tax credits, for most people, the immediate reaction is a scientist in a laboratory with beakers and putting everything into that. And the IRS actually has a much more expansive definition of what qualifies for the R&D tax credit. And it comes down to this four-part test. And that's where it is important to have a very specialized company working to look at this, because there are a lot of things that go into it.
 0:06:47
 The first thing is, it always has to be based in hard science. So, you know, engineering, biology, any type of hard science. And then you need to have some type of primitive purpose. So you are developing a new or improving upon, they call it business component, but that's a very broad term, meaning product, process, technique, formula, software.
 0:07:10
 It's a very, very broad term. And that you are doing it to either enhance performance, quality, reliability, things of that sense. And it doesn't need to be brand new to the world, right? It needs to be that it is new to your company and you're innovating it and you're doing the research on it. Those two areas are pretty easy to identify. The next two areas are where we really come into play with everything, and that's where you have technical uncertainties. So are you unsure of the final appropriate design? Are you unsure of the best methodology to do something?
 0:07:51
 Are you unsure of the actual capability of it being done? So we look at those uncertainties, and you need to have one of those three. Then it's your process of experimentation. So you have those uncertainties, what type of alternatives are you looking at in order to solve those uncertainties, right? Is it a matter of maybe you are trying to find ways to increase your yield on your crops, right? So, are you looking at the nutrients in the soil or are you looking at maybe potentially irrigation systems? Are you looking at whether or not you're going to do ground crops, things of that nature, right? And it's doing testing on what's going to work best. Is it you're doing trial and error testing? Maybe you're looking at different types of nutrients within the soil. is one nutrient at a certain level going to provide a better benefit than another nutrient at that level. So you're going through and you're doing all of these testings. So that is what the R&D credit is.
 0:09:00
 So it doesn't just pertain to scientists in the laboratory. It has to do with so much more than that. And that's where one of our biggest things is educating people to let them know that. And it is very lucrative. It's a dollar for dollar credit, so on your tax. So, and it's year over year, which means if you're doing R&D every year, you're able to take this credit every year. And there are different changes and things that go on. Currently, the thing that's most prominent in the news is the IRS Section 174 amortized now over a five-year period versus before you could deduct them right away.

 0:09:52
 But that obviously has somewhat of a negative impact, and there is legislation in the Senate right now to reverse that. It passed the House at the end of January, and it's in the Senate right now. There's a lot of bipartisan support. So we're expecting that to go through and change that it goes back to deductions versus having to be amortized. Oh yeah, that would be very helpful.

Casey
 0:10:14
 And that, let's vote positive. I'm gonna write my representatives here. So, but I was gonna say on the animal side of things, you gave a great crop example, but one of the most lucrative and hopefully nobody in the IRS is listening. But we do have to do research on alternative feedstuffs, for instance, because we could have a drought condition. We could have some master disaster in our world, as we can see lately in the news from Texas, the panhandle, right? They pasture graze all the fires. They have nothing to feed their cattle now.
 0:10:50
 So some of their research could be looking at alternatives for feedstuffs, and that's where you can write off a portion of your herd's feed by looking at different raw ingredients that have value. And so that is where you can get huge tax credits from, from my experience.

Tanya

No, absolutely. The feed costs generally are the biggest driver for the R&D tax credit. So we can look at wages and time captured for your people that are doing the activities. So, you know, if you have the nutritionist on staff, we can look at taking a percentage of their time, so a percentage of their wages to it. that, but the feed costs, they are significant. And there is a lot of different things that are done within that, you know, and it could be, you know, with chickens, like gut health, and trying to figure out what's going to be best for that. You know, there's a lot of different types of implications within the agricultural industry, because each breed, each animal has different things, right, and different requirements. And, you know, different nutrients and different ingredients are going to affect them differently.
 0:12:10
 So seeing how it is affecting growth or seeing how, you know, it is affecting, you know, different parts of that type of animal's production, like, that's huge. And that is one of the areas where we really dive into and really vet out to capture those costs. And we're talking on this a little bit. Do you have to have a traditional research barn to get these credits? No, so you don't. So it's a matter of if you're doing the research and development.
 0:12:40
 So it could be, you know, that you're doing it within your farming practices. There does not need to be a devoted space or location for it. If you're meeting that four-part test, that's what the IRS requires in order to capture the R&D credit. 

Casey

Really cool. Do you have any good case studies that you've seen in agriculture in your career?

Tanya
 0:13:02
 Absolutely. So we've had to talk specifically about two clients. I'm not gonna mention their names, but they did do, one of them actually did the R&D study previously with a different provider. And what happened was they only look at high level those feed costs, right?
 0:13:23
 They capture the really low hanging fruit with it. And the calculation they performed, they calculated that farm's credit at $500,000 for one year. So what happened was the client came to us and we did a optimization. We looked at the prior year studies and looked into those fee costs in more depth, because like I said, we have a lot of knowledge and background in this industry. And from our analysis from that one year where they claimed 500K, their credit was actually $2.5 million. So they got a $2 million uplift because we understand the industry, we take the time, we do the due diligence, and we evaluate everything further to ensure that we identify what should be captured for the farms. Another client that we worked with, as you know, farms can have a lot of entities, tax entities and things of that sense. So your provider needs to understand those implications and interactions as well. And that's something that we have a lot of experience with. So this one company, they had five different entities. And we took a look at those five different entities.
 0:14:38
 We looked at their study for three years. And for all five entities, the total R&D credit that all five got was 5.35 million. million and that ranged from 600k to 1.7 million dollars in credits for the entities. So you know, there is a lot associated within the agricultural industry that qualifies and it is very important to be with a provider that understands that sector. You know, there is a lot involved in it and you don't you do yourself a disservice just having another provider clip the low-hanging fruit. You know there's so many more things that are being done you know especially like this transition with like sustainability now you know that that's a whole separate thing to look at too. So you know we've definitely seen quite a few successful studies with our clients and in both looking at prior years that we didn't complete and doing initial studies for them. Well one of the challenges I've heard and especially this last year and we'll just use the pork market or the cattle or chicken, if I'm not making a profit it's really hard to claim the tax credits right? But they last for a while. Yes, no that and that's one of the things too. So you can look back and claim the credit from the prior three years and you can claim it for your current year.

 So let's say your current year, like you said, there's losses, there's been a lot going on, but maybe your last two years you were profitable. So you can look at going back and amending those years, claiming the credits for those years and carrying anything that's left over forward. The year that you're in the loss, no, you can't take the, utilize the credit that year, but it carries forward for 20 years. So it's not like, you know, if you don't use it this year, it's gone, you don't use it next year, it's gone.

1
 0:16:33
 You have access to it for up to 20 years to be able to apply that against your tax.

Casey

 20 years? Yes, 20 years. 

Casey

Wow. So I'm even learning something here because I wanted to dive into startups, because it's even different for startups. And I still think I'm in the window of what's considered a startup. So kind of dive a sit, you know, talk about that if you're a new company starting or you're looking at starting a new company, kind of what qualifies for R&D tax credits there? 

Tanya

So with startups it's the same criteria as far as the activities and projects that qualify. It still falls under the four-part test. However, most startups are in losses. You know, startups that are profitable right away, that is fantastic, that is wonderful. The majority of startups I have worked with are in losses the first couple of years, so they feel like, well, what's the point in taking advantage of the R&D credit? The IRS understood this, and they actually addressed it so that if you are within what's their startup period, which they call qualified small business, you can actually apply that R&D tax credit as a payroll offset to your payroll taxes. So you're still able to utilize it. The startup period is basically within your first five years of existence. You can look at it. You can't have gross receipts prior to that, and you can't have had gross receipts of more than $5 million in your current year. The one caveat with doing it as a payroll offset is you do have to do it on your original return, including the extension period. We can't go back and amend to do the payroll offset. We'd have to do it as a regular and carry it forward at that point. 

Casey

Oh, 2024, I'm going to take advantage of this.

Tanya
 0:18:20
 Absolutely.

Casey
 0:18:24
 It may just be a little for me right now, but still, any break I can get. 

Tanya

Absolutely. That money is on the table for businesses to take advantage of and should. That is money that needs to go back into our businesses' pockets to help continue the innovation and continue all of the wonderful things that are being done. It's there for the taking. It's just so many people don't know about it. And that's really where our biggest thing is, is making sure we educate so that way businesses can take advantage and utilize it. I was gonna say, all these small restaurants and things that don't make it, you know, that I don't know the exact numbers, but I've surpassed the three year mark of success and didn't fail, but imagine if they would've been aware of these tax credits, they may not have failed 
 and had to close down because they could have had the tax credits and not and applied it to that payroll. Yeah, as long as they're doing qualified R&D activities, they know, absolutely. And that's where we have seen that impact, especially with startups, because they are in losses in the beginning. But for them to be able to offset it against their payroll taxes, that's reducing a liability that they would have to pay out, that could enable them maybe to bring on additional staff to continue innovating on something. 

 0:19:45
 Or it could be the make or break with keeping the company open or not. Or maybe it's a startup that's looking for funding and they haven't gotten funding yet, but this helps them take care of some of those payroll expenses while they're working on their funding. It's a huge benefit for companies. 

Casey

So if I did R&D as a startup, obviously in the startup window, I have that ability to apply a lot of that to my payroll taxes. But since I was profitable, you can look back the last three years and say, I can have those tax credits I can use for 20 years. And it doesn't matter if I'm a sole proprietary LLC going on my personal taxes or an incorporated business, correct? 

Tanya

No, it doesn't matter. And even if you are a startup in that five-year period, if you are profitable, you could still choose to take the tax in that current year against your tax versus payroll offset. But yes, in the prior years, if you're profitable, you can amend and take the credit against those taxes. And what would happen is, because you already paid those taxes in, you would get that money back up till the tax you paid, and then anything over would get carried forward.
 0:20:56
 So, sometimes you look at it as, okay, so maybe a startup wasn't profitable, maybe they're in their fifth year, and we're doing it current year so they can do the offset to their payroll. Maybe the three years prior, they weren't profitable, but they know next year they're gonna be profitable. It's still worth it to go back and amend those prior years because that is all credits that know they can't be used for those years, but you're carrying them forward 20 years.
 0:21:15
 So you're actually going to be able to use it in the next year or two that you know is going to be profitable. So you are already up in an advantage having that. Cool. But you can look around my office and I hide a lot of it so people ever see me on camera. You don't see the mess and I mean I may have stuff everywhere from different projects. 

Casey

What do you a running companies not five years startups but even startups documentation and compliance what are some good practices or best practices to have for that to get these credits to make make it easier for you to find that information?

Tanya

Absolutely so Absolutely. So that is one of the key things is compliance. We are very compliance driven, especially with my background. That is something I am very passionate about. So it's keeping the documentation of what you're doing. So let's say you're trying new feed formulas. Are you keeping, you know, the the feed formulas that you're changing and the dates that you're doing it and the effects that are having, you know, a lot of times there's a nutritionist hire that is keeping track of all of that.
 0:22:31
 You know, are you doing soil testing to see how the nutrients or the pH level or the different things are going on there while you're doing your testing? So keeping those reports. Do you have your crop yield data, right? You know, you try these new processes for the crops. Do you have the yield data showing what it was prior to what it is now with the different alternatives that you tried. You know, do you have, you know, you can even have like project authorizations or project notes or things like in that nature. So it's basically keeping anything that in the agriculture industry because the feed is one of the largest drivers that you're keeping your documentation on the different things that you're working on for that. There's also with your wages, because you can capture that, keeping an idea of who is working on what development.
 0:23:26
 Do you have, maybe you have a farm laborer that normally isn't involved, but maybe they spend one day a week helping with doing things with the soil and supporting it. Maybe they're tilling it or doing different stuff in order to help the R&D process. Well, we can actually capture that. So keeping track of your employees and the activities they're doing on your different projects, is also something that is useful too, because you'll be able to better say, okay, you know what, this person, one day a week, every week, they're devoted to helping this part of the R&D process. Well, you know, 20% of their time in a year is spent to doing that. And we can look at allocating the costs associated to that. 

Casey

Yeah, I think that's kind of interesting. And, you know, working with Roger and hearing some of the changes he made, he put a majority of his staff, depending on the roles, obviously, not just general technicians, but a certain percentage towards research. Because when you look at the job functions and the different projects he's working on, they're part of it. Even if it's just helping weigh pigs, or like you said, it's taking soil samples to see, you know, if he changed his manure, because that's the great thing with his different entities.
 0:24:42
 He's got the pig operation and the crops. And so he's got a lot of components there that interact together to bring that the different costs associated with that and the credits. 

Tanya

Absolutely and the thing is it doesn't need to just be the person doing the actual R&D so it doesn't need to be just the person doing the formula the feed formulations or things of that nature we also can capture those that are supporting the process and those that are directly supervising it so you know it's looking at it in that broad sense of, there are more people that we can capture as long as they're doing true R&D activities. And that's where keeping a note of who's doing what, and you know, maybe it's a, you know, this person is supporting because they're pulling soil samples from these different fields where we have the different iterations going on. And, you know, that's how they're supporting the process.
 0:25:40
 Well, without them pulling those soil samples, you can't continue in the R&D process. So it is something that directly supports it. They may not be the one doing the analysis. They may not be the one putting together the formula of how the nutrients and things that need to be added into the soil. But without them actually getting the soil together and preparing it for it to be analyzed, those next steps couldn't happen. 

Well I do know, you know, after talking to your colleague that introduced me to you, Troy, that I, you know, for 2024 we're going to go back and look at, you know, my previous three years and then this year as well in my last year as a startup. But how do you work with clients? I mean, kind of walk us through the process, what that looks like working with R&K partners. 

Tanya

Absolutely. So, we start off with, you know, giving background on the R&D credit and understanding more in depth what are the activities being performed, right? What efficiencies, what different things were the focus of that year? Was there, you know, outbreak of disease where you had to look at vaccine protocols. Was there outbreak maybe a specific insect that you had to look at different pesticides and how they could be used in conjunction. So we get a high level of the different things that are going on and you get assigned to a specific consultant and you work with them the entire time. They'll meet with you, they'll go through all the data that they need from you, and then they will They will work with you on allocating the time and feed to the R&D process. They'll go into more depth about your projects. They'll collect that documentation in order to fully showcase. And then we prepare the calculation itself and at the federal level and depending on the state, there could be a state R&D credit as well. And we write up a 30-40 page technical memorandum that goes through how your activities and your projects fall under R&D.

Casey

 Do you help us amend our taxes from the previous years? 

Tanya

So we will work with your CPA on that. We complete all of the paperwork for your CPA, but the CPA would be amending any questions that they have on the paperwork. We have reviewed amended returns that a CPA has put together if they're not familiar with the R&D credit, but your CPA would be the one actually amending the returns.

Casey

And obviously there are some questions around costs and I'll let you discuss that a little bit, but also curious, can I double dip? So if I pay you for the credits you find me, can I write that off as a business expense as well? 

Tanya

So So, yes, there obviously is cost in different companies of different ways of approaching that. The way that we do it is we don't charge anything up front. So there is no risk to you. The way we look at it is we charge 25% of the identified credit. So this makes it very risk-free for our clients because if we don't identify any credits, you're not paying a fixed fee at any point. You're not paying anything. You don't have to worry about that. Where there are a lot of companies that will make you pay a certain amount up front regardless of whether or not anything is identified. So we wanna make sure that there isn't that type of risk to our companies. As far as offsetting it with business expenses, again, that's something you'd wanna talk to your CPA on, but I do know some clients that have done that. I know some other CPAs that are a little more conservative that may not want to do that. But I always recommend having conversation with your CPA. If your CPA is used to working with a provider and claiming the R&D credit, they're going to be more comfortable with things that someone that, you know, it's their first or second time working with a provider. But we always will assist, help, provide any feedback or guidance that they're looking for.

Casey
 0:29:38
 Yes, I have a conservative CPA and I think I'd rather be conservative, but at times I'm like, should I be so conservative? It would be more beneficial if I took a little risk.

Tanya
 0:29:51
 Yeah.
 0:29:52
 But one of those people that are very risk adverse clients. And because of my background, I am one of the most stringent on that compliance piece because I know how scrutinized it is. I know how it's looked at. And I understand that. So for me, I would much rather have my client in compliance and fully secure than try to claim more just because we could. I'm going to make sure that everything is the way that it should be so that there isn't any extenuating risk.
 0:30:33
 So that is definitely something that we pride ourselves on. 

Casey

Yeah, another quick question. I guess this would be going into the risk of this, right, in how you work. So if I'm audited for this, does R&K step up and help with the audit process or is it just my CPA? 

Tanya

Nope, we do have audit protection included in our engagement letters. So if someone is audited, they would send over the information to us, we'd get a pile of attorney and we would work on the audit. If the CPA wants to be involved with it, we would work in conjunction with them, absolutely, but we would handle the audit.

Casey
 0:31:11
 And how likely are companies to get audited if they file R&D tax credits compared to companies that are not? 

Tanya

I mean honestly there really isn't a significant difference. I mean if you look at historical data in general it's only like 2 or 3 percent of companies overall with anything get audited. So there really isn't a additional risk to it. You know it's if you are claiming it the right way and you're in compliance with it, it's not going to be something that has an exorbitant risk to it at all. Which again goes to my point of making sure you are working with a reputable provider that knows your sector because that's the only way to ensure that it really is compliant.

Casey
 0:31:57
 Well, getting in comfortable with R&D tax credits would not have been possible without working with Roger and hearing his success and working with different companies. Because like I said, my worst nightmare as a individual, let alone a business owner, is for the IRS to show up on my door and say, we're going to audit you and find a mistake I made and then I owe them money that I don't have. 

Tanya

Yeah, none of us want that. Well, I really appreciate this is such great information.

 Casey

But in tradition, I like to give my guests the opportunity to turn the table and ask me a question, or if you'd rather just leave with any last minute thoughts, we accept that as well. 

Tanya

So, I do have a question for you, especially given your knowledge and background in the agriculture industry, how would you envision bridging that gap between the traditional farming practices and these opportunities that are available in modern agricultural market, you know, in raising awareness and optimizing, you know, with operations and these aspects. 

Casey

Well, that's really interesting because once I've heard about it and learned more about it, it sounds like a lot of the big corporations are taking advantage of it. And there's different companies and how we got, I got connected with it was through niche requests and learning how they had a firm that works with their clients as well. And I learned, you know, just the general of how this works.
 0:33:23
 But then I work with a lot of niche producers, and I work with a lot of startups now in the animal nutrition space. So I handle, you know, today I was talking about dogs, turkeys, chickens, you name it, working on it, it's not just pigs anymore. And where I see coming in is even in product development or giving nutritional advice, I always ask, do you have a plan for R&D tax credits? And a lot of people getting started out when small, and I think the Walk Stock Farm's a great example, they invested in their own research facility with just 5,000 cells versus 500,000 cells or something like that, because a one trial could save him 50 cents to a dollar a pig, which is huge. And then he realized he can get tax credits with it. And so I've always just used him as like, you know, my top of the mountain, like, perspective person of really trying to take advantage of everything to survive and be competitive. But I see a lot of companies also that I work with that don't want to do research because of the cost of research. And there's ways to do research expensively and there's ways to do research in a more affordable option, but if I don't think you're not testing something, I mean if you don't have that in your plan for the year, you're not testing a new product, if I'm selling the feed additive, testing the market, developing a new product, if I'm not a producer, testing out a new feed component or genetics or something that goes in that process, then I'm doing myself justice to stay competitive and stay, you know, for the future. But, you know, and that, you know, the tax credit is just the added bonus. It's not to me, that's secondary, right? That's the cherry on the top. But I you know, I like to work with people who have the mindset is here we are today.
 0:35:19
 This is where we want to go. And then they utilize my expertise of saying, Casey, how do I get there? And I work with them to get there. Right. And that's where I come in. And then I put myself the professional network. If I don't have the expertise, I bring in our partners to help on the tax credit side, because, A, you want to improve your feed efficiency by 5% okay well as a nutritionist as a researcher I can design a plan to get you there but I don't know anything about accounting besides fancy Excel spreadsheets and taxes because I hire a CPA I'm trying not to be the jack-of-all-trades and I'm way beyond just being able to use Turbo tax and that's kind of where I look at it is to me, it's a cherry on the top. It's helping small businesses.
 0:36:09
 I don't care if you're in agriculture or not. It's something to be, like I said, sustainability, right? The tax credits go into sustainability. Everybody thinks, oh, carbon emissions or something like that. No, it's profitability and the ability to be in business in five years. And so are you harnessing things that are gonna put you in that spot to be that competitive 
 and be where you wanna be in five years? And sometimes we get so short-sighted and I'm hearing that right now, pig markets are awful, nobody's making money. I hear that we've been in a rut, red for 10 months. But my question is, if you've got that negative attitude, you might as well just close up now. But if you're a true farmer, you're going to stick it out and find a way to keep going. But like you said, up to 20 years to save that. You know, you are going to be profitable again, or you're not going to exist. So what are you doing to take advantage of that, those tax credits when you're profitable? Absolutely. Because we all know we don't like governments making us pay. Well, and your hard-earned money should not be left on the table with the government. It should be back in your pocket. Yeah, because here's the thing, and it's a win-win as well. Yeah, the government gets less taxes and our debt maybe would go down, but they'd find a way to spend it anyways, right? But, you know, we can take it back and invest.
 0:37:37
 You need a new hog barn, you need a new tractor, or you haven't been able to give your employees raises in 10 years because you haven't been making money. Well, now you can. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of benefits to it. I mean, that's why it's great for companies, because there's different ways you can use that money to help your operations. Well, I do have one more fun question, because this is an animal-focused ag podcast. What's your favorite animal? 

Tanya

And we're talking in the ag industry or in general?

Casey
 0:38:07
 In general.

Tanya
 0:38:08
 Okay. If we're going to go general, I'm going to say the tiger. 

Casey

Oh, I love big cats. That was my dream job. 

Tanya.

That is, it's actually my daughter's dream job. She is nine and obsessed with large cats and watches all different documentaries. And I get schooled quite a bit when I call a cat the wrong type of cat. 

Caseu

So, well you need to bring her to Eureka Springs and Turpentine Creek is there. You can rent a, I don't know if it's a cabin or what they call it, and sleep next to the lions and the tigers. Here are more out your window at night and it's a cat sanctuary. Love it to death, but yes, follow your dreams because I'm not working with the big cats, but I do my the rabbits I feed can feed the big cats too. So it's a win win and the chickens. So Tyson donates a lot of chicken to the big cats. And my other customer Pel-Freez donates, you know, rabbits to the big cats. So I do you know, in a direct way, I followed my dream with big cats, but I got little cats. 

Tanya

I've got little cats too. And then one day I expect to be visiting my daughter somewhere working with big cats. 

Casey

Oh, that's going to be fun. I'm going to have to keep an eye on her career and go visit as well.

Tanya
 0:39:31
 Yeah, absolutely.

Casey
 0:39:32
 Well, thank you so much, Tanya, for being on The Real P3. It was a pleasure. And instead of just hugging a pig today, hug a cat for me today. Well, I will hug all of my cats for you today. Well, great. Thank you. Well, great. Thank you.

Tanya
 0:39:48
 Thank you. Have a great day.