Impact of Changes on Small Farms

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to Just Say hey , the podcast the podcast where we talk about the things that matter to small farms . You know why ? Because we are a small farm . The other day I saw something on the news that just made me mad and I don't get mad about too many things that I see on TV or in print , on the web , on the internet news sites it just doesn't make me mad . I kind of look at it and figure out how it's going to impact my business and roll on with it . But this story got a little bit of national coverage . But it just made me mad and I'm going to vent about it because I hope you all will kind of stick with me for a few moments . But if you are an employee , an employer , if you are a young person getting ready to go to college , or if you're a parent paying for your kid's college , you need to be paying attention to this . Or if you're a parent paying for your kid's college , you need to be paying attention to this . So the other thing I want to talk about today is , with the election over and the potential for RFK Jr to have some sort of an impact on the FDA or the USDA . There are some things that , for farmers , could be a little scary . I get it . I'm watching it pretty closely too . But in change there's opportunity and we need to be looking at the things that he's talking about now and the things that they are saying about his ideas and looking for those opportunities . So let's get into it . Welcome to Just Say hey the podcast where we talk about what matters to small farms , whether it's business , marketing , agronomy , equipment , livestock health . If it matters to small farms , we'll probably talk about it here , so let's get into it . All right . So on the news the other day I saw a story about some students who are so despondent over the results of the election that the professors and teachers were giving them the day off that they were . One of the Ivy League schools set up a room for them to go to that had crayons and Legos , and in one case I heard about a therapy goat . You got to be kidding me . It's ridiculous . You know what ? If you didn't like the terms of the elections , you didn't like the way it came out , work harder next time , be more of an activist , but deal with loss , and the schools and professors that did this , in my opinion , should be fired because they failed in one of their crucial duties , which is to prepare our children for the real world . And if you live in the real world , you work , you own businesses you lose every once in a while and when you lose , you have to learn to lose with dignity and move forward . And when you win , you should win with humility . And the teachers and professors one of these was an Ivy League school , I think it was Harvard was one of them the students were so despondent that we needed to give them the day off and give them Legos and crayons . You know what ? If I'm a parent paying for my kid's school and the school did that , I'd say you know what ? They had ? Legos and crayons when they were five . These are young adults . They need to move on with life . Now I don't want to vent about that too much , but it just really man . It just fried my biscuits when I heard the story , because you know what . We talked about it on the podcast before . I've talked about it here Raising farm kids .

Speaker 1 3:37

You know how you get tough . You do tough things and sometimes you win and sometimes you don't . You do tough things and if you do tough things enough , you become tough when you get pampered . Over and over again you become the opposite of tough you become weak , you become I guess lazy is not the right word but you become soft . You can't handle criticism . You can't handle criticism . You can't handle rejection , you can't handle the things that the real world brings at you . And to see a school provide a place and coddle these kids like that , they have done these kids a disservice . Like that they have done these kids a disservice they really have because they've allowed these kids to become weak in a world where they need to be strong to succeed . And sometimes that's not physical strength , it's emotional , mental , spiritual strength to become strong . If you want to be tough , you do tough things and you do it over and over again and eventually you become tough .

Speaker 1 4:48

So enough about that . That was just me venting . It made me mad because I just thought these people are doing such a disservice to these kids and I don't want to . This is not me disagreeing with their politics . This is not me disagreeing with you know what they stand for and I may or I may not disagree or agree , I don't know . But what I do know is that when you don't get your way , you don't get a day off and you don't get crayons and Legos as an adult . So there you go . So let's move on .

Speaker 1 5:18

So the election's over . Now we have to see what changes are going to be made , because this election was there was a lot of sweeping , lot of sweeping . There was a lot of ideas that are about broad , sweeping changes . I think the stat I saw was 68% of the country was what was called a wrong track . So if 68% of the people surveyed or polled thought this country was on the wrong track , so the vote came in and the Republican Party won the presidency , they won the Senate and it looks like not official yet the votes are still being counted and it's close but the Republican Party won is . It looks like they're going to win the House , not only won the Electoral College for the presidency , but won the popular vote , and that is not always a resounding support of Trump . That is some of the country saying you know what ? We're not doing things completely right . We think the country's not headed in the direction that we , the people , think it should be . It it's happened and we need to look at what are the changes that are potentially going to be made .

Speaker 1 6:35

Rfk Jr he , he talked a lot about the chronic , chronic illness and chronic diseases that are plaguing the youth . I think somebody said 50 . I want to say it's like 56 percent of of Americans have have a weight problem in large part , and I don't know the science of it so I don't want to make statements of fact . But there's a lot of doctors that I have seen that talk about how the food industry is in many , many cases to blame out all the time is the Cheerios , I think . In the United States Cheerios has 19 or 20 chemicals in it . Canada there's three , and it's just a broad example there .

Speaker 1 7:18

But when we look at it from we're the farmers , what are these changes going to be ? What are these proposals going to be ? If you farm , you probably use some chemicals on your operation I know we do and when you look at Europe , a lot of those chemicals are they're not used in Europe or they're used much , much less and there's much more control . I think . If you look at the food industry , there are ingredients no-transcript . I think even China banned Paraquat , but we still use it . I don't know much about it . We don't use it here on our farm or haven't . Roundup's one , that's always . You know it makes a lot of press . We use Roundup from time to time , one that's always you know it makes a lot of press . We use Roundup from time to time .

Speaker 1 8:35

I think that when you look at this , there is the potential for a lot of massive , sweeping changes . With change comes opportunity , and that's the thing that you know . Again , I don't want to get into who you're for or who you're against . It's happened . We need to look at the potential changes and the potential things that are going to impact our operations and start making some decisions in the early days of this podcast , when I was talking about a lot about marketing . Um , it's called a SWOT analysis and it's a common thing in business strengths , weaknesses , opportunities and threats . S W O T . And break your farm down and take the , take each letter individually . Take your strengths , look at the things you do really well , then look at your weaknesses what don't you do well and then look at the potential , the opportunity . So in all of this change , there's going to be opportunities . Maybe you're the first mover to change crops or change farming practices or change whatever it is , and then the threats are going to be . That change is potentially a threat to your operation if you don't roll with it . So you know , it's a good idea to kind of kick back every once in a while and look at the things going on and try to stay ahead .

Speaker 1 10:02

I think it's more important now than it has ever been for agricultural news and people who are unbiased , and that's tough . You've got to look at these , at the media companies and where their advertising comes from , and determine are they an unbiased source for your agricultural news ? And I hate to say it but you know , if you look at a news source and you see that news source is sponsored in large part , if you see a lot of their advertising , well , they have some relationship to that advertiser and you have to make your own decision on whether they are an ethical company that is giving you the facts as you need them , or if their stories are swayed by advertiser dollars . I mean , that's just the reality of it . If Nike were to come to me and say , hey , you know we want to sponsor your podcast , you know what I'd probably do is I'd probably wear Nike shoes and I would probably , you know , I'd probably promote the brand . I wouldn't . I'm not , you know , I don't wear Nikes If you have a sponsorship . Some of them are good and they're helpful and they help us bring news and bring these things to you .

Speaker 1 11:10

But you need to make sure , as a consumer of information , that you are looking at that and cognizant of those things . For example I'll just use an example from my past there was a oh I believe it was a recall of Ford and Ford was getting I think it was Ford . It might not have been , but I'll just use Ford . There was a recall and it gave Ford some bad press . And I remember a conversation when I was working in some television stations . I was down there doing a consulting thing and the television station was determining how to cover the story because Ford was one of their big sponsors . Because Ford was one of their big sponsors . Well , just that conversation tells you that newscast is potentially biased , so maybe they choose not to cover it or maybe they put a positive slant on it . I think those are things to be concerned , as in the ag world as well . Look at who's sponsoring the newscasts that you're watching . You know where you're getting your news .

Speaker 1 12:24

You really , in this time , more now than I think ever , we have to be cognizant of where the money comes from , because potentially the money skews the coverage and we as farmers need solid information . Now , what's going on ? If there are going to be sweeping changes in the FDA , it potentially impacts food production . Well , hey , we're farmers . We need to be staying on top of this . If there are changes being made , we need to make sure that the coverage we get , where we get our news , is as unbiased as possible . I mean , it's hard to . I've worked with some , some great reporters in my in my time and it's hard to be completely non-biased . It's hard , it takes work because you , as a person , you have an opinion and trying to balance those opinions . So I've seen I've seen some guys writing stories that actually go too far in trying to be balanced and actually end up fighting against themselves and what they believe themselves and what they believe . So you know , we need to be careful about that and I think , as we look at these changes that are potentially going to happen I keep saying the word potentially , because the election is just over . There's been no changes so far . We're just . You know , we still have what two months to go , president takes office and when that happens , then you have these potential changes happening . But I think in these months coming up , we're going to get some clues through news and get some clues through the candidates and the social media channels and the videos that these people are releasing of what they're thinking , and we as farmers need to be looking at it .

Speaker 1 14:13

And again , I talked about the SWOT analysis . Do a SWOT analysis on your operation . You should be doing this on a regular basis anyway . If somebody asks you what are your biggest weaknesses , well , you might not talk about it in public , but you ought to be able to answer the question , and so we have to look at those and say how do we offset our weaknesses with our strengths ? How do we look at these changes and apply our strengths to become more successful ? Or is there one of our weaknesses that could become a strength ? I mean , I don't know until you start looking at what these changes are . Well , until you start looking at what these changes are , I think food ingredients , I think the potential for a more European like look at pesticides and herbicides , no-transcript .

Speaker 1 15:09

I think the GMO thing is going to start coming into play more . And if you raise corn , soybeans , heck , we raise alfalfa . Everything we plant pretty much is a GMO . Now , do I think GMOs are bad ? No , not , in the most part Not for the most part . I mean , was it the country of India I want to say it was back in the 70s Couldn't produce enough food to feed itself , so they were a net food importer . Guy Norman Borlaug I don't know why , I always remember his name , but Norman Borlaug comes along and crosses wheat together , makes a genetically modified wheat that is short called dwarf wheat . Now this wheat will stand up to the monsoon season . India is a net food exporter . I mean they produce enough food to feed their population . This is , you know , something we should be watching .

Alfalfa Farming and GMO Concerns

Speaker 1 16:11

We raise alfalfa . We have several hundred acres of alfalfa . We plant Harvextra . A genetic trait that reduces lignin content gives us a little bit more of a window in our harvest to get low lignin content in our alfalfa . We use a Roundup Ready so we can keep our fields clear because of the decades of weeds that have become resistant to some of the previous pesticides or herbicides . We use a Roundup Ready alfalfa so that from time to time we can go in and spray our alfalfa and kill the grasses off that get in there and are harmful to the alfalfa .

Speaker 1 16:53

Has to be done in our area . There's , you know it's very hard to farm . You know a non-GMO alfalfa in our area . I should say so . You know , these are things . If they and if it becomes a ban on GMOs , well , it's going to change . Now that means there , there's opportunity there too . So I try not to get too worked up and concerned about it , but it is definitely something that we need to be cognizant of , and with that I also say that we need to be cognizant of our friends and neighbors . Make sure that they are OK through all this . I mean having some conversations with them . It's good . I mean , helping everybody get through these changes is going to be a good thing for all of us . With that , I'll let you go . You have a blessed day . Help your neighbor . Good luck , god bless .