Episode 151: People, Purpose, and Pasture with Clay Conry

Hi friends, this is John. Welcome back to the Regenerative Agriculture podcast. You know, I started this podcast years ago out of a sense of, I don't know, I don't want to say duty or obligation because it was certainly something that I felt was very important and that we needed to capture stories and to make sure that some of the knowledge, the information that the elderly generation held wasn't lost. And as time has gone by and as, as I've become more comfortable behind the microphone, it's become a lot of fun. I really look forward to having conversations and today I'm joined by a fellow podcaster, Clay Conray from the Working Kyle's podcast. Clay, thanks for being here and let's talk a little bit. There's many questions I'd like to ask you. I think of all. There's now a number of podcasts in the Regenerative Agriculture space, which is quite different from when you and I started half a dozen years ago. But what got you into it and how, what has the experience been like?

Well, it's an honor to be here, John. I really appreciate the opportunity. The experience has been like drinking from a fire hose. So I, I started with, kind of grew up, didn't have a whole lot of interest in agriculture. Right. You know, we see the idyllic picture of, of, you know, the kids on the floor, carpet farming, as they call it, you know, playing with their tractors.

And grain bins and elevators and everything else.

Right. That wasn't me. I had very little to, to zero interest in agriculture growing up. You know, my parents deserve all the credit. They were heroes. They started a ranch in western South Dakota in the 80s from nothing. And when everybody else is growing, going broke, they're so starting. And so that was a difficult time. You know, it took a lot of effort and, and all those things and. But it was my dad's passion, it was my dad's vacation. It was all of our nights and weekends. And so I didn't enjoy it that much. And I've always been open about the fact that it probably had something to do with the fact that I had a, a bit of a lazy streak growing up. And so I went away to Bible school for a couple of years, lived in Milwaukee. I don't know if it was just the fact that the inside of a teenage boy's car doesn't smell very good on a 13 hour road trip or what, but I got out of the car in western South Dakota one time and I'm like, oh, fresh air. And I noticed the difference between what I'd been smelling and in Milwaukee, the inside of my car and western South Dakota's fresh air. And I thought, you know, this maybe isn't so bad. And I kind of point to that as the seed of what got me interested in agriculture in my own right. You know, it wasn't something my parents ever forced. I had to be there to help and work, but it wasn't something they forced. And so I that just that western South Dakota fresh air seed grew. And I always say I got selectively involved on my dad's operation. I helped him calve heifers, slept on his couch while we went and checked, or while I would go out and check heifers at night. And then I'd help him at brandings and some of those things and started to enjoy some of that part of the work. And then I needed to supplement my income at the church. I'd been a youth pastor for about 10 years probably at that point, and I needed to supplement my income at the church. And my dad was ready for some more help on the, on the ranch. And he'd retired from the phone company by that time, and my mom had retired from teaching by that time, so they were both working full time on the ranch and, and needed some, some help. And so I started working for them full or part time. And my dad said, you know, you should go get some ranching related education. And we saw an advertisement in a local agricultural paper, the Tri State Livestock News, and it was an advertisement for the High Plains Ranch Practicum, which was put on by fellow ag podcaster Aaron Berger from the University of Nebraska and Dallas Mount from the University of Wyoming and Blake Hopman from the University of Wyoming. And Dallas has since gone on to purchase the Ranch Management Consultants and the Ranching for Profit School. And, and so those were the three instructors of that course, all of them systems thinkers, holistic managers, you know, and during the course of that course, Dallas said multiple times, somebody in this room should start a podcast for ranchers. Well, I had experience with, with the recording side of it. My dad always told me that I should be a baseball announcer because I like to talk. And so, you know, had had the experience, could talk, grew up on a ranch, I could ask a reasonably intelligent question about cows, loved podcasts, had been listening to podcasts for a long time by that point and just never really knew what my podcast would be about if I ever started one until that moment. And so November, first week in November, in 2017, launched the Working Cows podcast with three episodes and have been releasing at least an episode a week since then for the last seven years.

So. Wow, you've actually, I think you've actually been. For some reason, I was thinking we said it about the same time, but if you've been at it for seven years, you've been at it longer than I have.

We weren't very far apart. I think you were guest number 28 or episode number 28.

Yeah.

On my, on my podcast. And I don't know how many you had done by that point, but it was, I saw, I, I actually can remember where I was sitting when I saw your post about your podcast. I'm like, hey, somebody else is doing this too. I should talk to him. And so I sent you a DM and, and we got it set up. That was back in the telephone days. I think I probably interviewed you via the telephone.

So.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think so. So that was what got you started. You've been doing it for seven years. What are some of the highlights? What are some of the memorable moments that you remember that really stick out for you?

Yeah, lots of them. You know, I think probably the thing I've quoted more than anything else, there's a few quotes that I've said many, many times where I've quoted people things they've said on the podcast. We'll, we'll. The top three that I've quoted more than anything else. And we'll start from the pro ones I've quoted the least to the ones I've quoted the most. Maybe. So the first one that I've said, you know, something that was said on the podcast that I've repeated over and over again. Another fellow podcaster, he's on a bit of a hiatus right now, but Ryan Alexander from the Ranching Reboot podcast said on my podcast, normal, when you're talking about normal years, they don't exist because normal is just a setting on a dryer. And so there's no such thing as normal.

Well, when you think about it, normal is just an aggregated average when there truly is no such thing as an average year.

Right, exactly. So. And that, I mean, that changes the way we manage. Right. We have to understand no two years are alike and we have to be adaptive in our management. We have to be holistic systems thinkers able to integrate as much of the information as we can into our decision making process and all those things. So that's probably one of the, that's, that's a highlight. Another one that I've quoted maybe the next most is Jeff Ramseyer, who's actually an Ohio guy. I don't know if you know Jeff. Yeah, I know Jeff well. Yeah, yeah. So he said on the podcast, corn, soybeans, Florida is a really hard rotation to compete with and which is true. When. When you can do corn and soybeans and then go to Florida for however many months of the year and still have all of your basic necessities met, it's going to be hard to say, you know, I should make a radical shift in how I approach my agricultural.

And let me sign up for beef cow so I can never take a vacation again.

Exactly, exactly. Oh, I. One of my missing pieces for the soil health is livestock integration. You know, well, if I do that, I can't do X, so the only.

Thing that I would. Yeah, I mean, Jeff's sentiment is a commonly heard and expressed sentiment, or at least one that I think of quite a bit. But there's. It needs some refinement and I'm not sure exactly how to refine. Refine it quite. But there's one word that's misplaced in that sentence, and that's the word rotation, because that doesn't qualify as a rotation.

I have a. I have a friend who he. He said. He said this at an agricultural conference and it was fairly conventional, so he said, I'm probably not getting invited back, but he said corn, and he said, corn and soybeans is not a rotation. That's a mindset.

So.

Yeah. And then the next quote that I've repeated more than any other, I'm sure is all the way back on episode two, Dallas Mount. When I asked him the question, what's the biggest barrier to success in ranching? He said, without a doubt, it's the people. Our ability to manage people is going to hamper our ability to succeed more than any of the other pillars, land, animals or money. Our. Our inability to manage people well is going to be the thing that has the greatest impact on us succeeding in this business of agriculture.

Was he having a conversation or making his comment relative to managing employees and managing a team or to managing self?

It was managing a team, but more specifically managing to managing a family business. And, you know, he quoted Jolene Brown in that moment and said, jolene will tell you or ask you the question, ask you to think about how do you think about your business? Are you a. Are you a family first family or are you a business first family? And all of us want to say, well, I'm a family first. Well, if you're going to be family first, then the business comes second. And it only gets dealt with in, in emergency situations. And if that emergency situation happens to be during the course of Thanksgiving dinner, then we're going to have potential for conflict and, and friction and a fight and all these other things. And so we have to manage the business first in the, when it's business time so that we're free to be a family when it's family time. And I think that's what he's talking about. And you know, I mean, just look at how many, how many families are agriculture families. Can't, can't farm together anymore, can't ranch together anymore because of frictions and because.

Of stresses and because of misalignment.

Yep, that's what he's talking about. And yeah, I think it is. And I think it goes back to this issue of do we look at these operations, do we look at these things that we've been entrusted with? Do we look at them as a business or do we look at them as a lifestyle? Is this a lifestyle that I'm, I have where I get to be outside, I get to have my hands in the soil, I get to think about how, and I mean, even on the holistic side of it, you know, we're, I think ahead of conventional agriculture when we think about, you know, the relationships under the soil and managing all of our underground livestock in addition to our above ground livestock, and we start to think about letting all of those things work for us. You know, we can, I mean, you can go down and enjoy that side of it so much that whether or not you make money, whether or not you're profitable, becomes an ancillary piece. Well, no successful business profit is not ancillary to any successful business. Profit is what sustains successful businesses. And profit is not just we brought in more money than we spent this year. That's cash flow. That's, that's, that's the issue of cash flow. Profit is a return on the asset, a prop, positive return on the asset. Now that's tough because we've all heard people say we're asset rich and cash poor in ranch, in ranching. To think about the fact that we want one of our goals in agriculture, in farming and ranching would be to generate a positive return on the asset is, that's tough. That, that's a high bar, but it's doable. You know, I, I, I think it's Dave Ramsey that always says if somebody's doing it must be possible. There's people all over the world that are, that are doing it, they're generating a positive return on the asset from an agricultural business that is not subsidized by government or anything else. Free labor, anything genuine profit. So it's possible, but we might have to think differently about how we're going to approach it.

Well, without question, in the case of ranching, what I've observed, we have no choice except to think very differently from the mainstream in about half a dozen different ways, most likely, maybe more. I want to come back to your discussion about managing people because I think that there's a reason you quote that more often. That's your most. One of your most popular quotes. And, you know, when I think about how frequently do I encounter conversations and hear people talk about the, the people component of managing people, being a good leadership to a team, providing good leadership to a team, that conversation, it certainly happens, but it's at least in the circles that I spend time in, it's a tiny fraction of the time. We spend a lot more time talking about all the other aspects of farm management than we do about talking about people. In fact, the only person I can think of just off the top of my head who openly spoke about people first, and he does this in many of the conversations that I've had, but also in my podcast conversation with him, was Vern Peterson from California, who, when I asked him to describe himself, he described himself as an encourager. And that I'm going to remember that moment for quite some time because I saw like half a dozen images flash in front of my eyes all at one, all at one moment. But from. I'd like to get. This is obviously something you spend a lot of time thinking about. If you're quoting this this frequently, what are some of the aspects of managing people that you think are not considered frequently enough or thoroughly enough?

You know, I think that we oftentimes. And I don't really have anything to add to this conversation outside of what the Bible's already said about it. You know, that's. That's where all my people management wisdom comes from. And I, I hear other people say things about managing people, and I'm just like, well, yeah, that lines up with what Jesus said or what Solomon said in Proverbs or whatever, you know, and so I, I'm gonna lean on that. But I think that one of the things that we don't do well as humans is we don't deal with conflict with the person with whom we're having conflict.

Oh, boy, we're gonna go literally, Clay, as you were talking, I was thinking about questions I wanted to ask you, and I wrote down a note about Matthew 18, because I think this would solve so many problems in human relationships.

Yep. Yep. And what did Jesus say? What did Jesus say in Matthew 18?

If you have a conflict with someone, you go address it with him and him alone first. Exactly.

And I think the most important word in that verse is alone.

Yeah.

And I've, I've said this. I, I, I. You can, you can talk to somebody else maybe about this issue before you talk to the other person. If you're seeking wise counsel.

Right.

But if you're doing anything other than seeking wise counsel, that's another thing the Bible talks a lot about, which is gossip, and we shouldn't do that. So we go directly to the person, address it between you and him alone. If they won't hear you, then you can talk to somebody else, say, hey, is this an issue issue, or am I being petty or narrow or whatever? And if they agree, yeah, that's an issue. Then you can go together and say, we, we agree this is an issue and take it from there. But I really think that. Go directly to that person and speak to them. And I also think a big part of this is seeking to understand before you seek to be understood. Ask questions. Can you help me understand this? Can you help me understand. I was just having a conversation yesterday, and before you go and say, hey, I disagree with you on this strategy, go and ask, say, can you tell me why you think that's the right course of action in this specific instance? Before you say, I disagree with you on this strategy. Seek to understand before you seek to be understood. I think that's a big part of it. Yeah.

Well, you know, Clay, it's, It makes me. Yeah. I find it intriguing that our thoughts both went in the same direction, the same place at the same time. But I've, you know, I think anytime, once you have some life experience, I, I've been through. I'm still quite a young man, but I've been through some really tough situations already in community and neighborhood and family. And everyone, I think, at points in their lives, has conflict that needs to be resolved. And this, this framework that is given to us in Matthew 18 of going to people and addressing it directly with them is the framework that would resolve so much human conflict. It would resolve and streamline so many conversations, and it creates such a vibrantly, such a healthy environment for human relationships to flourish. Because if you know that someone, when someone is offended with you about something or they are holding something against You. And they don't bring it up. We sense that we can all pick that up. We know it intuitively. We may not know what the issue is, but we know that there's an issue. And by the very fact that they don't bring it up, does that breed. It breeds mistrust. All of a sudden you don't trust them. You don't trust them to be transparent. You don't trust them to. And on that very tiny kernel of not bringing something up, facilitating mistrust, that begins to erode a relationship. It will erode a family environment. If you have people that have known each other for 20 years, they all gather around the fireplace. But one person is not transparent about the things that are bothering them. It can destroy that entire dynamic over a period of time.

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think it. There's lots of other places, right? Don't let the sun go down on your anger. Keep short accounts, you know, deal with things quickly, go to be. Be reconciled soon, quickly, fast. Before you go to the altar, go, go, be reconciled, then come back and worship. You know, I mean, the Bible places a high degree of, of priority on being reconciled to one another. And God is not necessarily interested in our worship if we're going. If we're not reconciled to our brother, you know, and so we want to take that seriously. Like, God thinks this is important enough for me to delay worship in order to go and be reconciled to that person. So, yeah, it's. It, it is an incredibly important piece of this. I think it is the, the thing that we need to be intentional about, create space for. And it's always going to be uncomfortable. It's never going to be easy.

It's.

I don't, I don't know. I think you can, you can practice it and get better at it, but there's always going to be that apprehension. But we have to learn, and I think it'll make us better in a lot of other places. We have to learn to push through that apprehension and have those hard conversations, have the small, hard conversations so that we don't have a big hard conversation later.

Yeah, I actually, I'm not sure I agree with you on that, because I've been in those situations where those easy, smaller conversations weren't had earlier and they led to, you know, the. The only thing that's required for a mountain to turn into a molehill is to give it time, just let it fester, and a mountain will turn into a molehill, will turn it into a mountain all on its own. And at least when people are involved. And the. So my personal experience, I've grown a lot in the last decade in this way because there was a period in my life not that long ago where I would avoid these difficult conversations.

And now.

I lean into them and it's like I want to get them out of the way as rapidly as possible. So I'm actually, I don't look forward to the conversation, but I look forward to getting past it so much that it's within. We have an. And we have this incredible culture within our team here at AEA that things don't even. It's very seldom we have a conversation about a conversation. We have the conversation right then and there spontaneously when it comes up because of. Of the leadership culture that we have within the organization. And that's so much fun. It's so rewarding. It creates so much freedom, creates so much freedom for people to be free, to express themselves and to be themselves wholly, 100%. Because, you know, if there are differences of perspective and opinion, they will be resolved right then and there. And everyone's going to be happy when you walk away.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I agree. I. I think it's. It's something you can practice, it's something you can get better at, and you can, like you said, look forward to the fruit. You know, the fruit. And so you are willing to endure the awkwardness or whatever it is because, you know, the fruit that can come from it. And so I think it is, yeah, worth worth doing.

You know, if we, if we find ourselves faced with fear of a conversation or fear of a situation. I'm reminded of this story. I wish I could remember this young man's name. I'm sure we can search the Internet and find it. But there was this young man who aspired to start a business. And as he set out to start a business, he found himself paralyzed by fear. He was afraid of doing this thing and afraid of doing that thing, afraid of upsetting people, whatever it was. And he was. He struggled to get momentum, to get things going. And he recognized his constraints. He set out, he created a list of a hundred things that he was afraid of doing and then ranked them from, in order from least amount of fear to the greatest amount of fear. And he set a task of doing one thing that he was afraid of every day for a hundred days. And at the, at the very bottom of the list, the things that he was most afraid of included skydiving and bungee jumping and those types of things at the end of that 100 days. He became fearless. He. He had such incredible momentum in his business because nothing stopped him. He wasn't afraid of anything anymore. And I think we should think similarly about when we are afraid of these difficult conversations. The way to, to get past that is just to exercise through that, Go through it and do it repeatedly. It'll become easier every time you do it.

I've counseled people almost exactly that. When you feel, and I always describe it as a tightness in the chest. When you feel that tightness in your chest and that nervousness about, ooh, this is going to be awkward, this is going to be difficult. I think that's almost a. Can be an indicator. You need to lean into that, you need to do that, you need to approach that. And again, emphasizing, seeking to be understood, seeking to understand before you seek to be understood. Because there is a wrong way to do. Do this too, right? You can, you can approach this and just enjoy the conflict and just try to, you know, try to get people as riled up as possible. That's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to create peace. You know, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. You know, we want to be those kind of people, people that create peace, that create order out of chaos, rather than just exponentially increasing the chaos. You know, there's.

There's one other thought that I have around this conversation as well, a piece I think we're missing, and I'm. I'm not quite sure how to put it into words or how to express it, but we know that people respond to our hearts. They respond to what. Not just what we say, but also what we. The hidden meaning behind it. They sense it in our body language and just in the way that we show up in a conversation. And so there is an element of if you expect this is going to be a hard conversation, you kind of show up in that way and people respond to that. Whereas if you expect this is going to be an easy conversation and you expect that we're going to both be happy we had this discussion and come to a great resolution. You approach it in that way and they respond similarly. Something that I've observed in several friends of mine who just, they, they. They have this fantastic skill of, of being able to navigate challenging conversations. And I realized that I thought they were going to have a challenging conversation, but they didn't think that they. They weren't approaching it as a challenging conversation. They were approaching it just, this is going to be a good discussion for Us to come to a resolution. And because of the way they showed up, it changed the way people responded.

Yeah, I think that it's very analogous to stockmanship, actually, how we manage livestock and the way that we approach livestock. And if we approach livestock gently and not aggressively, they will respond in kind and be much more easy to work with. And so I think that a lot of times we can get those pieces of stockmanship right where we're approaching livestock in a way that isn't aggressive, in a way that isn't predatory. They can tell we're predators because we have eyes in the front of our head. Right. Just like every other predator. Bear, wolf, coyote. Call the role of predators. They all have their eyes in the front of their head. And the. The cow or the sheep knows that's a predator. It's got its eyes in the front of its head. But if we approach them in a way that doesn't accentuate what our physical form tells them we are, then we get a much better response. And people are the same way. I don't think people. I think people's ability to know what it is about that person that they don't like is muted by living in a world like ours. And I mean technologically invaded world. And. And other things. I think other things have been dumbing us down in our ability to sense or. Or know why we don't like something about the way a person approaches us. Animals, I think, are. You know, they're very. They're way better at that than we are as humans. But I think that we still know that there's something we don't like about it. And if we'll approach with the right. I hesitate to use the word energy because I think it's been corrupted in our culture. But if we. If we'll approach with the right energy, we can get a right spirit from the right place. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's better.

That's a better word. Yeah. So this is good. I think we. We touched on the foundational piece first and kind of dug into it and turned those rocks over a little bit. But I want to come back to managing, the managing people aspect where we started this conversation. So we've obviously, we've talked about this from a couple of dimensions now, but we've really only talked about one foundational piece. What are the other other components of managing people? Well, where there is a great opportunity for improvement in agriculture generally, I think.

Mission and vision, getting people on the same page about what we're here to do and where we're headed where we're going, what we're attempting to accomplish as a unit. Again, if I may be so bold to go back to the Bible. Matthew 28:18 20 is a mission and vision statement. We call it the Great Commission, but it is a mission and vision statement. Go into all the world, make disciples of all nations. That's the mission. Baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. That's the vision. The mission is what we're doing. We're making disciples of all nations. The vision is how we're going to do it by baptizing them and teaching them to do everything that I've commanded you. So that's just my example of, of a mission and vision statement. So I think that one of one thing that I've realized about mission and vision statements is that the value, the real brass tacks value of a mission and vision statement is that it frees us up to say no to good ideas. Because if it's doesn't fit, if this good idea doesn't fit into the mission and vision statement that we have right now, then we're not going to do could be a good idea. But do we have time? Do we have the bandwidth? Do we have the energy? Do we have the manpower? Do we have the infrastructure? All those questions. And if we don't and we're willing and we don't have a clear mission and vision statement and we just say yes to every good idea and we run out and we develop the infrastructure and, and put the systems and the polic procedures in place to accomplish every good idea, we're going to have a really confused business with a lot of unnecessary systems and infrastructures and we'll be, you know, more will be more likely to fulfill the Pareto principle where 80% of our revenue is coming from 20% of our effort and we spend 80% of our time doing things that are only producing 20% of our revenue. And so the more honed and lean and focused our mission and vision statements are, the more everybody on the team knows what they are, had a hand in developing them, the more likely we are to be able to say no to good ideas and continue on the path that we are seeking to go down.

You know, in the context of managing people, just thinking about what you've been saying, if we bring that back to getting people aligned, the reality is that when you have an organization that is doing many different things, almost invariably you'll end up with misalignment with people, particularly with a larger team, because each of those team members will tend to prioritize something that is particularly important to them, and you end up. You can so easily create a lot of noise on a team or within an organization where people think they are working on what the mission and the vision is, and yet to be focused on very different things. And that is perfect evidence of a lack of alignment, is a perfect evidence of not having a clear vision, not having a clear mission.

And I think that a big part of it is, did everybody on the team have a hand in developing it? You know, I mean, I think as many people maybe, maybe not the guy that sweeps the floor, but even that guy should know that he's part of what's making this whole thing work, you know, and on top of all that, the guy signing the pain check paycheck shouldn't be above some of those tasks too. The guy signing the paycheck shouldn't be above sweeping the floor and cleaning the toilet, if that's what needs done, you know, but we can talk more about that and, and nuance that a little later if you want. But I think as much as possible, even stakeholders in the business, even maybe the families of the people who are core to the business's success, should have some input. You know, what do we want to be true about the people who work here? Do they, do they have to work 70, 80, 90 hours a week to make. To make the vision go, or do we want some ability for them to take a vacation, to go somewhere else and see another part of the country? You know, we. We need to give as many people as is feasible and reasonable the opportunity to be involved in creating those mission and vision statements.

As we think about developing mission and vision statements, which is something I know some people tend to have a bit of a reaction to, a cringe reaction to. Is like this, is this really necessary? What are some exercises that you found valuable for developing those within an organization?

I really like the ACA process, and I don't remember what it stands for, but basically you get kind of those core decision makers in the room and make that as big of a circle as is reasonable and say, I just want you to write down one to two words or one to three words on a note card or a sticky note of these are the things that matter to us. These are the things that are important to us. These are the things that we'd like to be true about the business. And there are a series of prompts for those kind of statements. That we're looking for, put them all up on the wall, group them into kind of like themes, and start to build sentences that capture the ideas from each of those themes into a statement that can communicate kind of where everybody is coming from. And I think that's. That's a really helpful process. And it's even more helpful if somebody from outside the team can come in and facilitate it. Where you don't have just the. The leader, you know, you don't have the person who everybody looks to up front guiding that process, because then that process might just be the leader's vision and might not represent the team. And you might not get as much buy in if it's not something that everybody had a real. Feels like they had a real important hand in, in guiding and directing.

In order for people to be able to show up well in this exercise or similar exercises, it seems to me that it's important for people to know where they land in their own life first, or it certainly is valuable for them to do that. And one of the, one of the exercises that I've really enjoyed and I've participated in with quite a number of people at this point is.

First heard.

About it from Vishen Lakhiani at Mindvalley. And you can do a search for it and find it. It's called the Three Goals exercise, and it's pretty simple and straightforward. You have three questions and you use a stopwatch and you get 90 seconds per question. And by using a stopwatch and limiting yourself to 90 seconds, you completely bypass the conscious brain. Like, you don't have time to think, you just have to start writing. And so you go straight into the subconscious. And the three questions are.

What do.

I desire to experience? How do I desire to grow? And what do I desire to contribute? And you think about those questions from a spiritual perspective. They capture a lot from a spiritual perspective as well. And there have been many occasions where I walk someone through that exercise and I see them at the end of the exercise looking at the piece of paper and they get emotional because they see their innermost desires on a piece of paper in a way that they never have before. And they look at their life sometimes and say, why am I doing what I'm doing? I have no business here. And so it can be very valuable to just have people have that reality check for themselves personally, before they participate in a. In a group exercise.

Yeah, I think, you know, I've interviewed Alan Savory twice, I think, on the podcast, and every time talk to him, he starts with the question you need to ask is, what life, what kind of life do you want? What kind of life do you want? That's where you start. It's your holistic context. What kind of life do you want? And then he'll. The next question he tells you to ask is, what kind of life do you want to be true? Or what do. What do you want to be true for the people who are on this land 500 years from now? You know, and how many of us have this 500 year vision that we're thinking about, you know, but that's, that's what you're talking about with those three questions is what do I want to experience? You know, how do I want to grow? That's your context. What kind of life do I want? And it's not just about the, the business. It's not just about the way we're going to graze or the way what cover crops we're going to use or any of those things. It's about life. It's about the kind of what we want to be true about our community, our neighborhood, our resources. And that's where we start.

All right, I've loved this conversation. We've talked about people and the way we show up in life a lot. But I want to come back to ranching and livestock. Otherwise people are going to wonder why. Is this conversation on a podcast called the Region of Agriculture podcast?

But, well, as I think. Let me. And I love it too, my guilty pleasure is, is grazing and genetics. Those are the things that I love to talk about. Those are the things that get the best traffic on the podcast. But regenerative, we can't narrow it down to just our, our land and our livestock. We need regenerative relationships, too. We need relationships that get stronger and better over time and more resilient and more able to stand up to droughts and more able. And I'm talking about relational droughts, more able to stand up to withdrawals being taken out of that relational bank. So I'm with you. I'm with you. I love to go wherever you want to go, but I do want to emphasize the importance of regenerative relationships, too.

Yeah, great point, Clay. You're absolutely correct. The question I want to ask you, as you've talked to hundreds of people on the podcast, what have you learned about wrenching that really surprised you that was unexpected and that you think a lot of people would benefit from knowing?

I think the most surprising thing I've learned recently is that the less engineered a set of genetics is whether that's plant or animal, the more it's able to uptake nutrients from soil in the case of plants or plants in the case of livestock. So the less it's been engineered by mankind, the more it's able to make use of the resources around it. That's probably been one of the more recent aha moments for me.

So expand a bit on the, on your use of the word engineered. When you say engineered, do you mean selected, refined? What does that mean exactly?

Yeah, as we've selected for specific traits, as we've been reductionistic in our thinking and said we want bigger carcass, we want a larger ribeye, we want more milk, we want, you know, call the role of the traits selected for. And I'm more familiar with the traits we've selected for in the livestock side. Corn doesn't grow in western South Dakota very well. We're really happy if we can get over 100 bushels to the acre in this neighborhood. And so consequently, not a lot of corn gets grown in western South Dakota. And so I don't, I don't know that side of the agricultural context as well as I do the livestock side, but it's similar. Right. We've selected for traits we've selected for even silly things, honestly. Like are the corn rows, are the, are the kernels in a nice neat row? Why? What, like, why does red or white. Right. What, why does that matter? You know, I mean, you do, you.

Can do yield checks better that way, don't you know?

Okay, yeah, you're, you're the, you get a plaque you can hang up in your mud room if you. For that yield, yield award. Right. But, you know, as we selected the, selected for whatever traits we're selecting for and for probably genuine good motivations for those things, the more we've tampered with, selected for those traits, the less those plants and animals have been able to uptake nutrients and, and survive on what the landscape provides. They require more inputs, they require more attention. We have to baby them, we have to, we have to give them everything they need for them to be able to thrive.

So I want to make sure I'm understanding because I have a slightly different perspective than the one you're communicating. And so I want to try to suss this out a little bit. Is the problem that we have been making selections or is it that we have been making selections too narrowly and not looking at things from a broad based, holistic perspective?

I think the problem is that we think that we're smart enough to make the selection in the first place. I think we need to let nature select. I think we need to take away the crutches, kick out the inputs. As much as, you know, Burke Tykert, one of the best minds in ranching, says you can't starve profit into a business. I agree. Totally agree.

I love that I've used the phrase, you can't save yourself profitable, you can't save yourself successful.

Right. Yeah.

So we're actually, we're talking about the same thing, I think, from a slightly different perspective in that the, the argument I'm. You're more familiar with, the livestock perspective. I'm more familiar with plants. So I'll talk about plants here for just a moment. But when we talk about, there's this, this concept that older varieties, heirloom varieties or whatever, or none, hybrid varieties, whatever designation you want to use, have the capacity for greater nutrient density. And so that, that's a very common argument. But when you actually look at the data in detail, you start looking at it on a variety by variety basis and a context by context basis, it turns out to not be true. Instead, as nearly as I can tell, it depends on the selection criteria and the context in which those selection criteria were made and the environment that they were made. So, for example, if you selected a wheat variety in a production system that was not using large amounts of inputs, that wasn't using lots of nitrogen and potassium fertilization, then the variety that thrived in that type of ecosystem is exceptionally good at absorbing nutrients and will tend to have higher nutrient concentrations. Oh, but here's where it gets interesting. Unless you take that variety and you soak it with fertilizer, and then it will have a low nutrient concentration. So it's, it's putting plants into the ecosystem that they're adapted for, but foundationally, the reason a lot of more modern genetic selections have, Are less. Are doing more poorly at absorbing nutrients is because they were selected to produce large yields in environments where they were loaded up with nutrients.

Yep. Yeah. And it's the same in cattle, by the way. Livestock is the same. And I think it's what I'm talking about with selection is find the ones that can produce without the inputs. Those ones are the ones that have higher degree of nutrient density. Same in the plants. It sounds like that's what you're saying. Right.

And so selected in that type of environment.

Right. And then if you, if you don't, if you don't give them inputs, they will be more nutrient dense. If you do give them inputs they're going to be. They'll just take the subsidy. Yeah. Can I say that out loud? They'll just take the subsidy.

And you weren't talking about people now, were you?

Oh, no, of course not.

There's not, there's no selection environment there, is there?

Of course not. They will, they will take it and not uptake the nutrients from their environment. Yeah, we, we, we have. That's where the, that's where the name of the podcast came from. It's not as good as regenerative agriculture. I, I get that Your, your podcast is way more findable in a search than mine for sure.

That was just, that was just luck.

Happenstance, right? Providence and the chance of the, the.

The, the luck of being first.

Yep, exactly.

You know, I have a really great story around this. When I was just starting out on this pathway 20 some years ago, I did a little bit of work with Gary Zimmerman, Midwestern Bioag, and they persuaded, they were selling a lot of alfalfa seed and they persuaded Cal west to try to select alfalfa that would thrive in a biological ecosystem. They said, look, you're making these alfalfa selections and they're getting fertilized with Maria to potash and potassium. So let's get some of these fields, let's put some dairy manure on it, let's put some calcium on it, let's get a biologically healthy soil and then see which alfalfa varieties and selections do well. Out of that breeding program came a variety of alfalfa called Winter King and several others. But Winter King was a standout winner. I think last I heard, they're now on Winter King 3, kind of the third iteration of that. The interesting piece is that Winter King 3 outperformed in that biological ecosystem by a significant distance. But not just in that ecosystem. Also in the mainstream ecosystems. Winter King 3 and the various iterations of Winter King went on to become a top selling alfalfa variety because of its remarkable success in all types of ecosystems. Because it was selected and it had this robust, vigorous root system that was quite unlike a lot of the other selections.

Yep. And I think that's. I was just talking to a guy the other day that harvests alfalfa seed in my neighborhood. And I was thinking, well, if there's a place to buy alfalfa seed, it's probably from a neighbor who's been selecting for alfalfa that lasts a long time in our environment, you know, and, and the cattle, it's the same thing. Keep your replacement heifers from cows who have calved in the first cycle every year for six, seven, eight years, never missing. Keep those replacement heifers, build your herd around that and whatever the plant analog to that is, find those plants and build, build your crops around them. And then you get not just yield because we know yield doesn't equal profit. It's the same in livestock. You can, you can't starve profit into a business, but you can sure spend profit out of a business by trying to have the heaviest calves at the sale barn that wean the highest same right with bushels to the acre. You can the yield monitor. You can peg the yield monitor to the right side and still not make money, you know. And so we want to select for those animals that can do it on less and that do it without help. And those ones are going to be the ones that produce food that is medicine. I, I've listened to the podcast a few times. Yeah. So.

My goodness, there's different questions that I could ask, but I'm just going to ask the question. What are the important topics to talk about that we haven't touched on yet?

Well, yeah, I think the, I think that food as medicine piece is a big part of it. Something that I think the future of agriculture. I hope the future of agriculture depends on us looking at producing food that can be considered medicine. I hope that the future of agriculture depends on us producing things for our neighborhood, not for the globe. I'm all for feeding the world, but maybe we should go and teach the world how to feed itself rather than looking at it as our responsibility to produce food like substances here that we ship to the rest of the world. You know, I think it's, I think World War II drastically changed the world, changed agriculture and changed food because a lot of our shelf stable foods were developed to feed GIs in World War II. And so now we have a whole, you know, we have aisles upon aisles of shelf stable food like substances that we need to figure out how to raise food locally that is consumed locally and re. Rekindle that relationship between farmer and food consumer. They keep getting called eaters. And I, I don't really like that word. For the people buying the food, we call them eaters. I'm like, that sounds like a bad zombie movie, but I think we should just come up with a different way.

It's just one step up from the word consumers. That one particular also doesn't have a particularly good resonance.

Exactly, Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. I think the point that you raise is a good one.

How it.

There's A few questions that could be asked. We could ask the question, does your family eat the food that you grow on your farm? If you're a rancher, the answer is more likely to be yes. If you have livestock, the answer is more likely to be yes. But then the next question that follows from that is, how much of your own family's food do you grow or do you source from your neighborhood or community? And it's, it's quite intriguing to me how many farmers have thousands of acres of land and they don't have a vegetable garden, they don't have a small orchard. Like, it's the world that we live in today. We have made so much progress and momentum with, with fruit tree varieties and variety selections on vegetables that it is, if you're growing on a small scale, it's not that difficult anymore. From a, from a disease resistance perspective, there's not the same need for pesticide intensity and so forth as if you have a monoculture on a large scale. And do we prioritize that? Do we make time for it? Do we support the people in our local neighborhood who do? And it becomes particularly interesting when you talk to commercial scale fruit and vegetable growers who are growing edible food, but they don't want to feed that food to their family. What does that say? What about if you have children? What about your future sons in law and daughters in law? What about your grandchildren? What impact are you having on them by selling food to other people that you wouldn't willingly feed to your own family? Are we really being our brother's keeper? I think we have to, we have to dig into some of those questions.

Yeah, Yeah. I, I have wondered how much of the, how much of our stewardship of the resources entrusted to us will be addressed on Judgment Day. I'm sorry to take it that direction, but I've wondered, like, is that really.

There's, there's Judgment Day, but there's also the judgment that we live with every day.

Yeah.

It's like when we look at the epidemic of degenerative illnesses that are across society as a whole and also within our farming communities, how much of that is self inflicted?

That's how the world God made works. When he takes his hand off and lets you have what you want, that's when the real trouble starts. And so we want to not, we want to, we want to pursue good things, go pursue things that leave people more healthy. I mean, it's, this is what holistic management is the con. The conversations are all connected. We, we want to have relationships with our people that are stronger because of our interactions with them, not weaker. We want to have relationships with our livestock that are stronger because of our interactions with them, not weaker. We want to produce food that leaves the people who consume it, the people who eat it, whatever we're going to call them, we want to produce food that leaves them healthier as a result of eating it, not less healthy. These, all these. This is why it's called holistic management, because they're all connected and that's what we want to be. That's how we want to be known.

Thank you, Clay. That was awesome. I don't think we could possibly end on a better note than that.

Well, thank you, John, for the time. It was an honor.

Yeah. Thank you for being here, for sharing your wisdom and experience, and I look forward to chatting with you more.

The team at AEA and I are dedicated to bringing this show to you because we believe that knowledge and information is the foundation of successful regenerative systems. At aea, we believe that growing better quality food and making more money from your crops is possible. And since 2006, we've worked with leading professional growers to help them do just that. At aea, we don't guess. We test, we analyze, and we provide recommendations based on scientific data, knowledge and experience. We've developed products that are uniquely positioned to help growers make more money with regenerative agriculture. If you are a professional grower who believes in testing instead of guessing, someone who believes in a better, more regenerative way to grow, visit advancingecoag.com and contact us to see if AEA is right for you.