The first day of harvest arrived on The McBee Dynasty: Real American Cowboys, offering the family business a crucial opportunity to earn some much-needed income.

However, as depicted in Season 2, Episode 4, the day quickly took an unexpected turn when Cole McBee confessed in a confessional, “I hit another tractor,” while harvesting a cornfield.

“This is not good. This is a bad deal,” he said. “We need every single combine working because we have to get this grain out of the fields and sold.”

The reason? “We’ve got $6 million that’s due to get our debt paid off, or we might lose the farm.” 

RELATED: Steven McBee Jr. Threatens To Fire Galyna in Shocking Confrontation: “Business Is Going to Hell”

Steven McBee Jr., Cole’s older brother, who has been entrusted with managing the Missouri-based company by their father, Steven McBee Sr., witnessed the mishap firsthand. He pointed out that they now had “two dead combines in the field and a bunch of corn to cut.”

In a confessional, he added, “Cole is constantly complaining to me to let him have some more power and authority within the farm. And I love my brother; he’s a hard worker. But this is exactly why he’s not in charge of the farm.”

Inside the McBee family’s debt and financial drama

On The McBee Dynasty‘s Season 2 premiere, Steven Jr. previously confessed, “In the financial state of the farm, we’re leveraged out,” adding that they have “close to $70 million in debt.”

The expenses he listed included: payroll, a meat facility, seed and fertilizer, a fulfillment center, vehicles, fuel, equipment repair, cattle feed, utilities, insurance, cattle medicine, and attorneys.

“It keeps me up at night,” he said. “We could lose our entire company immediately.”

He and Cole disagreed on how to tackle the debt, however.

RELATED: McBee Brothers Almost Throw Down Over a Secret Lease & $6 Million Dues: “Just Went Rogue!” (WATCH)

Earlier in the season, Steven Jr. was livid that Cole “went rogue” and secretly signed a farm lease behind his back. Reminding him of the $6 million that was due in just over a month, he angrily asked, “You think you’re the f–king boss? You wanna start signing every single check and see how tight things are? You wanna start talking to the banks?”

Whereas Cole saw the “damn good lease” as an opportunity to pay down the McBee Farm & Cattle Co.’s debt via crop production, Steven Jr. believed that their ticket to financial freedom was in livestock. He even began working on a lucrative partnership with a popular Kansas City barbeque joint when CFO Galyna Saltkovska went AWOL.

After all, as he saw it, the reason the McBees were in financial trouble in the first place partially stemmed from Missouri’s unpredictable weather undercutting their crop-production revenue.

Nevertheless, Cole refused to “get screamed at” while “just doing what’s right for the farm,” telling producers, “Steven is just so convinced there’s no money in [crops] when I think our best years are yet to come.”

How Steven McBee Sr.’s legal issues impacted the family’s finances

Further complicating matter was that fact that their father, Steven Sr., was under FBI investigation at the time.

In November 2024, Steven Sr. pleaded guilty to one count of federal crop insurance fraud, thereby admitting “that he engaged in fraudulent activity from 2018 to 2020 that caused an economic loss to the U.S. Department of Agriculture,” according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Missouri.

Steven had reportedly submitted fraudulent documents underreporting his corn crop and soybean crop totals in 2018, resulting in him receiving more than a combined $3 million in federal crop insurance subsidies and federal crop insurance premium subsidies. 

In addition to facing up to 30 years in federal prison without parole, he has to pay back the government more than $3 million. Steven’s sentencing is currently scheduled for September 9, 2025, according to DTN.

Get more detail about the McBee family’s legal and financial issues here.