Taking Charge Of Your Farm’s Future With Jay Hill

Hi friends, this is John. Welcome back to the Regenerative Agriculture podcast where we talk about agronomic science and cultural management practices that regenerate plant health, that regenerate soil health, and ultimately that regenerate public health. My guest for this episode is Jay Hill, who farms in the American Southwest, has a significant following on social media, also hosts his own podcast and I'm sure many of you have heard of him and for those of you who haven't, you deserve to hear about him, which is why we have him on. So welcome Jay, thanks for being here. I'd love to hear a bit more about your story and background. Tell us about what you're doing and how you got to this point.

John, thanks for having me on the podcast. Yeah, so. So my world into agriculture has been what I would consider non conventional. I didn't grow up in a in a large family that farmed. I did grow up in a large family. I'm the youngest of five and grew up in southern New Mexico in the Mesilla Valley. My parents had 10 acres. My father was a sales rep for an education company that did technical school education. So H Vac diesel automotive repair. My mom worked as a secretary as well as she quit that and was a stay at home mom as I grew up and took care of the five of us. And I grew up in a tractor tire sandbox behind my parents house. Got to watch the world of agriculture just kind of go by and knew I wanted to do something in that. Talk about a wild ride. It's at the age of 15 I went to my dad and said hey, I'm really interested in doing something on the farm. And he said well what do you want to do? I said I think I want to be an onion farmer. I think I want to get into growing something that we can actually have a sustainable farm with. And so he said come up with a business plan. We linked forces with a family that grows packs and ships onions wild turn of events, first year of growing onions we hit a good market. I was able to lease the farm next door at the age of 17 and then have just kind of been on a tear since then. We've now since joined forces with my business partner Danny Hadetia in Del City, Texas. We cultivate about 13,000 acres all irrigated. We are a conventional farm. We've done a little bit of organic a couple years ago just trying to dip our toes into it, but it was a half hearted attempt at what we wanted to do. A lot of differences between the two Growing regions still have our farm in Las Cruces. It's irrigated through the Rio Grande river and the aquifer there. Sweet water is what we call it. It's good water, it's a clay based soil. Whereas in Del City, a lot of salt, a lot of calcium. We irrigate with pivot, drip and flood, and in our bread and butter is alfalfa. Animal feed is kind of what we specialized in. We own a company called Chaffee, which is a cultured feed that we sell all over the country, into Japan, Puerto Rico and starting into Colombia. Now we do wine, grapes, chili peppers, onions, cabbage, lettuce, pecans, cotton, wheat, barley, oats, sorghum, some teff. We're just trying now. It sounds funny, but as we've built this farm, my intent was not to ever get this big. I wanted to be a large scale agriculturalist at some, some point. But I didn't understand how fast that would happen and how slow that would happen. So this is my 20th season, this is my 20th crop that I've been able to plant. It's just been a wild ride. We are now facing not only drought challenges. I farmed for 20 years and every year has been a drought year. I've never had a wet year. So with our changing climate, the adaption to new technologies is there. But then two, I really want to make sure that whatever we're growing on our farm is marketable. I want to make sure that people that are buying our feed or buying our produce or buying the lint from our cotton, I want them to have a sense of connection with who I am, who our company is, and that we're making decisions based on what is best for the people that are the end consumer or the animal that's the end consumer. And there's a lot of farmers that say that. And now it's time for us to prove that we cannot farm the way that generations have formed in the past. With our deplenishing natural resources. We want to make a better impact on our, on our economy, on our soil, on our presence here. And so that's leading us down this natural approach. We were the first farm out here to start cover cropping. And not that cover cropping is just a complete game changer. Even though it has been. We're just starting to look at ways that we can put nutrient organically back into the soil or at least solidifying our soil structure out here. And I've been blessed with an unbelievable team of men and women, some of which are agronomists some of which don't come from agriculture, but they're willing to think outside of the box and solve this problem that we're having. Financially is not the issue. The issue is longevity and being able to make sure that we're making a play that when I'm dead and gone, that somebody can come onto this farm and say, man, this is the best soil in the desert southwest that we've seen. And so that's where we're at today. We're running down that mission right now.

When you consider developing your operation at the scale that it is right now, with the types of crops that you are growing, you express the need to develop an operation that is perhaps not as resource exhaustive. How do you see your operation evolving in the future? What are the changes? How would you like to see your operation improve in the future?

Well, I think that the first thing that we see out here with our climate is we want to make sure that we're utilizing water. We've got lots of neighbors over the mountain that's in the Ogallala Aquifer. And we're hearing all these stories of wells going dry and tying eight and 10 wells together to make one circle. And they're still doing the same practices that their grandfather did. And for us to be able to be viable and not lose that resource of water, we are going right now. Our mission is to how do we get the most, you know, crop, the biggest crop we can for each drop of water that we apply to the soil. And so what does the biomass look like? What does a micro colony look like inside of that soil structure to retain the water a little bit longer? And so crop rotation has been very key. I'm not a cotton farmer by trade. We started growing cotton three years ago just for rotation purpose. It's not really doing anything for the soil. But we looked at it because the fact that it was genetically modified that we would be able to clean up weed problems and pressures that we have in these fields. But now we're starting to see with the right style of COVID cropping, our wheat pressure is, is going away. And if we can map that ground a certain way, then we're not having to go in and apply a herbicide. A lot of people ask, you know, well, are you trying to transition organic, you know, to organics? And the answer to that is if I can viably move myself into a growing system that does not rely on something that is synthetic or man made, where nature can, can take care of itself, that is something that I'M interested in and willing to take a chance on getting myself into. And so that's kind of where we're.

At right now when we look at agriculture. One of the challenges that growers have in considering different types or adopting different types of growing practices, incorporating cover crops and so forth, for example, and shifting to a more regenerative farming style. One of the significant barriers to change is that farming is considered to be a very, very high risk endeavor and with very limited margins. Growers historically have been price takers rather than price makers for most crops, certainly for all the commodity crops. It's my understanding that this is something that you have personally sought to change on your operation. How do farmers need to think about pricing the products that they are growing and positioning themselves differently?

We positioned ourselves as farmers, not as marketers or not as businessmen or business women. There's this big riff in agriculture between an organic producer and a conventional producer. And the conventional producer is saying, hey, you know, why in the world are people putting all these labels on things that I'm selling? And they're fear mongering and marketing and doing all those kind of things. In all reality, that industry has figured out a way to market itself through transparency and through other options that have made them more viable. Therefore, they are able to demand a price for something that they're producing. And that's not overall. I mean, there's a fear I have in organics is the fact that people are going to get to a point where, yes, they're seeing a higher profit margin, but at the same time, they're still not allowing themselves to set the market for what they're doing. And I don't want to get myself into that. The one thing that has been a struggle for me is finding out how do I get rid of the person that is telling me what he's willing to pay, and how do I get in front of the person that I'm going to be able to say, this is what I have and this is what it's going to cost for you to do that. And so now I am linking myself with industry. We're going to be making our own shirts and our own pants in the near future. We are just like the chaffee. Yes, we still service large feedlots and dairies, and we want to continue to do so, but at the same time, we control our destiny with that. We can tell them what we want to be paid, and if they say no, then we have to go back to the negotiating table. But that's a lot better. Spot to be in than saying, you know, just pay me whatever you want to pay me for what I'm growing. I don't, I don't want to get myself stuck in that system. And I did that in the vegetable system. I just got to a point where you could give you a piece of paper with a pencil mark saying what they were paying you for it and you're like, oh, thank you so much. I would rather go out and find the bright minds to market our own stuff and let people be able to interact directly with who I am and who my company is and say we want to support you because you're doing the right thing. And so we've been doing that over the last couple of years and it's a struggle. But as a farmer that grows a commodity style crop, you've got to be able to take control of your own destiny by not only marketing what you're doing, but being able to have something that's got demand. I mean, if I sit here, obviously for us the easiest crop we can grow is cotton. And if I was going to sit here and just say I'm going to be a cotton farmer, I'm going to put my cotton just into the open market and when somebody decides to pay me for it, that'll be great. I would lose 90% of the employment that I have on this farm right now. Our diversity is something that gives us power and gives us employment and our team links behind us and saying yes, we believe in the fact that we want to stand behind whatever products we're growing. And so it is a very difficult conversation to have with your, with yourself. It'll drive a normal man to drinking, I think. But at the same time for us it's just been one of those things that if we can't control it, then we really don't want to grow it. And we're still, we're not there 100% yet. I mean, we're still priced acres with a lot of commodities that we grow. But my plan in the next five years is that we will have, we will have say so and what our future holds.

What have you done so far? You mentioned that you're developing your own jeans and your own T shirts as a pathway to sell your cotton. But what have you done up to this point to move from being price takers to price makers on some few items?

So one of the things that we're doing is we're differentiating ourselves in the market. We might be growing the same crops the neighbor grows, but we're Working with the marketing. You know, we have a full marketing team. We have eight people on our marketing team now that are just showing what we do and how we do it. Just letting people know that if we're growing alfalfa and you want to feed your horse, you know, alfalfa, these are the growing practices that we do. This is the guarantee that we give you. And we're going to stand behind our product. We're going to have all of the certifications and labels that we're allowed to put onto that product, and we're going to give it to them. The Chaffee company is one of those companies that is, that is allowing us to say, this is what we have, this is what it's worth, and this is what you get if you buy something from us. Just like in Chile, I've linked up with on our human consumptive chili that we're growing, we've linked up with a salsa company, and that salsa company has interest in what we're doing as well as if they're profitable, then we're able to share in some of that profit.

With the efforts that you've made so far with Chaff Hay and with the salsa company, obviously you're investing in marketing and there is significant investment costs there. What have the rewards been? How has the pricing changed for the alfalfa hay that you're selling versus the price that you would just be able to get on the open market?

I'm not necessarily going to equate it to more revenue. I'm going to equate it to sustainable revenue. We're not seeing by adding marketing, and we're 20, 21, we're entering an agreement where we're growing onions specifically for a company that they are going to retain ownership of that, that we are just going to be the grower. And those kind of things don't necessarily, you know, what if the market's, you know, $60 a bag next year? Well, we're not going to be able to participate in that. But at the same time, we know that we've got hard costs and hard numbers that are going to come back that are going to pay dividends into what we're doing. And so you don't necessarily make more money by selling your own thing, but you make sustainable money, which is, you know, how much product you have, you know what it's worth, and you know that you can sell that in times when the market is good or bad. And that's what we're looking for. You know, they talked about the the curve with the coronavirus and how you flatten the curve. We want to flatten our market where it's not. Next year I'm going to my dairyman and I'm saying, alfalfa is going to be 300 a ton. And they're saying, well, milk is only 14 a hundred. There's no way we can pay for that. We want to be able to come back to them and say, you know what? The market's showing 300 a ton. We're going to be able to come in at $250 a ton. And next year when the market drops out of sight because people gouged you, we're still going to be here and we're going to get a little bit more. And we've been doing that for the last four years with alfalfa. And we were at the top of the market this year. We got paid more than anybody else. But not one time did one of our bigger buyers say, hey, this is not a deal that's working. Because they understand that if this market flips and goes the other way, we're still going to be there with them.

I find it interesting that in the, the examples you provided of working with cotton and with the salsa with the chili peppers, both of the steps that you described include processing. How important do you believe is it in looking across diversity of different crops for growers to make the connections to processing and going directly to the consumer rather than just selling the original crop right out of the field?

With my mindset, it's a no brainer. If I can't control the processing end of it or at least have a part of the processing end of it, then I don't want to be associated with that company because it doesn't give me. I mean, they can say, hey, we just did a retooling at the plant and we're going to have to take another 25 cents off the top because we retooled. And I have no say so in that matter. Most farmers are at this point where you have to make a decision, are you a tractor driver or are you a business owner? And like I tell the guys, and the guys give me a hard time if they see me on a tractor, which this afternoon I'm going to get on a tractor, just for mental clarity. But if I'm on a tractor, we're not making money. My job as a farmer is to, to be able to grow the best crop that we can grow and be able to process and market that in a way that all of Those streams that we have to go through show revenue back to us and we go all the way into the trucking world. We're partners in a large trucking company. We want to be able to control our final destiny, vertical integration.

Within all of this context, we've been speaking about processing and price making. I'd like to bring it back. I guess I'll just leave it open for you to answer this question in any way that you would like. What do you believe to be true about agriculture that is different from the mainstream view of many others in the ag community?

I think one of the big perceptions is that, is that farmers are welfare dependent and that we have lost the ability to be creative and be sustainable. I hate the word sustainability. You know, everybody's talking about this farm so sustainable, or this farm is regenerative, or this farm is that, or this. The people that are, that are in agriculture that are going through 2020 like it's a normal year, the people that are going to be able to come out on the other side and smile about everything that's been going on are the people that have dedicated themselves to being a business type person. The perception that I should be in overalls and have a piece of straw hanging out of my mouth and I know I've got nicotine in my lip, but that's just a bad habit. But the perception that somebody sees of me, I want to be able to walk into a ballroom and sit down and have a conversation about nuclear energy and somebody later that night go home and be like, I just found Jay on Instagram, turns out he's a farmer. I had no idea that farmers could actually think or talk about something other than just we're all going broke and we're all dying and. And so that perception that we're just a bunch of hillbillies that don't really understand what's going on in the world is not true. Because there's some of the most, you know, innovative people I've ever met in my life are farmers or ranchers.

I would say that many of the farmers that I speak with are amongst the smartest people that I know. And in the way that you answered the question that I just asked or approached this from a perspective of taking responsibility. What have we done collectively as an agricultural industry? What behaviors have we engaged in that have created that perception?

Yeah. So we've done a really awful job, in my opinion, of showing the innovation that we truly have. And I'm not talking about equipment, company showing what we're doing, but actually Engaging with the people that are buying the products that we're producing. A lot of these big farm networks and farm bureaus and things like that are like, hey, we've got to tell our story. Yes, to a point. We've got to. But it's not so much that we're standing on a stage beating a drum about why we're good agriculturalists. It's more the fact that we can sit down with somebody that has a genuine concern and we're not radicalized about that. I've made mistakes in my professional speaking career that will always be with me. But those mistakes are good lessons learned. Where I've spoken on behalf of large chemical companies and I've spoken on behalf of large equipment companies, just because it gave me the platform to be able to highlight what I was doing as a. As a producer. Those reasons that I did that were for the wrong reason. Now, my attitude and my idea of how a farmer gets connected back into society is not just on social media, sitting here and when somebody attacks saying, well, you're killing the planet with a gmo, I'm saying, you know what? Is there a genuine concern there? Is there something that I'm doing that I need to change with my practice, and I need to be able to rectify that situation and acknowledging that I do make mistakes, that I am human. And I think a lot of farmers are very proud in the way that their grandfather farmed, and they have not come up with the idea that, you know what, that might not be the best way to do it. And. And so we've got to show a more human side without showing the hillbilly side.

Yeah, that's a great way of expressing it. We haven't had this conversation yet. I sense we may be at different places on the spectrum and different places in our journey and our perceptions of the use of pesticides and chemicals and GMOs. I can certainly express that I have significant reservations about the way that we are using them. And I think we cannot continue our pattern of the last six or seven decades or longer than that in the way that we have degraded our soils from where they were 400 years ago. And we also can't continue the pattern, I don't believe, of continuing to use significant quantities of endocrine disrupting pesticides in and on our food supply. We need to figure out how to solve those problems, and we need to embrace those challenges. And we also need to communicate. We need to acknowledge the challenges that exist, bridges that need to be built, and then also engage in Actually building those bridges. Not just have the conversation about it, but also do it. Yeah, love to hear your thoughts on that. Where do you think we are with consumer perception and how we really engage in that conversation?

Well, I think there's a lot of correlations with the statement that you said and it ties itself politically. I know last night there was a big conversation over fracking and oil production and energy and that ties itself back to where we are in agriculture as well. What are we doing that's actually building what we have? To answer the question, do I think that the rate that we in agriculture are going with the supplies that we have in front of us is sustainable? Absolutely not. I have been a proponent of Genified for a long time just because I was sold on the idea that, that it would be able to help me in a drought situation, that it would be able to be an instant cure. But what I'm starting to learn is regardless of GMO or conventional groan, if you put a band aid on a wound long enough, the wound eventually will just become you're not treating the situation. And if we do not look at this responsibly, that we are going to create a bigger issue than we already have today. Now how do we do that? This is like you were talking about. The rubber's got to meet the road. We've got to get to a spot where for me and the practices that I've built, I'm willing to step out on the ledge and say I am not the best farmer in the world. And I understand that the practices that I have put into my operation were band aids. We talk about the use of nitrogen and when, when we started to put nitrogen on fields, we started to look at this, this real increase in production. We're like, wow, yeah. I mean, you know, if some is good, then more is better. But we've now made our ecosystem dependent on that just to survive. And we're not seeing the yields that we saw before. It's because we're not looking at the core problem that we had in the beginning. What lies beneath the topsoil, it's what's underneath that. And so what I want to do is I want to figure out what is my five year plan to remove myself from using genetically modified, removing myself from having to use chemicals day in and day out to make sure that we are growing a sustainable style crop. And I want to do this where I know that I am building my soil structure. I am building a crop that is something that I am extremely proud of and I'm proud of what we're growing now, even as a genetically modified cotton crop. I look at the practices that we use and I look at what, what people around the country do. And yes, when you look at, when you look at the average, I would say that we do a very, very good job of growing that crop. At the same time, if I can grow that crop and not have to worry about something that was developed in a lab, or if I don't have to worry about something that was concocted that I have to run through the boom of a sprayer that is something that I would not want to eat or drink, then I need to make a hard look at that. It's not getting soft or it's not getting hippie or whatever you want to say. It's the fact that I want my kids to be able to grow up and say, hey, dad made a decision that he was going to help the environment instead of Band Aid an issue. And so now where the rubber meets the road is just how we roll this plan together. And is it sustainable to farm where we farm? Is it sustainable to do what we do? It is, but we have to make the right decision at the right time. We can't just flip the switch one night and say, hey, guess what, guys, we're organic today. You know? And everybody looks at us and like, what in the. What? We don't have the. We don't have the pavers in place. We don't have the groundwork. The Lego is laid out before we can build what we want to build. So now we have to get to the point where we are building that. And it's going to take some pain, it's going to take some. It's going to take some finances, but that's the direction that we're going to head.

A moment ago, earlier in our conversation, you expressed frustration with the word sustainable and you twice describe your, the future of your operation as possibly being more sustainable. So tell me more about that frustration you have with that word and what do you prefer?

Yeah, that's. It's funny that you say that and then I sit here and I use the word sustainable five times. Right. The biggest thing is the definition of sustainability is going to change in everybody's mind. My view of sustainability versus your view of sustainability could be complete opposites. For me, sustainability is making a move into a style of growing that is doing nothing but helping the situation that I have. So if it's reducing nitrogen use by 5%, then that's a sustainable approach. To me, that I am sustainably starting to move in a direction that I don't have to rely on nitrogen. That again, is why I hate the word. Because somebody could sit there and say, well, our practices are more sustainable this year than they've ever been, but they only decrease pesticide use by 0.5%. So for us, sustainability is being able to not only keep an employee and empower our employees, but to have them have a sense of fulfillment with the work that they do. And the same kind of fulfillment comes from the people that are going to use our end product while limiting use of our natural resources. That would be my definition of sustainable.

Jay, I'm going to shift gears and go back to where we had this conversation earlier about taking back control of our future and being price makers, being involved in the processing aspects. This is actually something that I believe is very important. I believe that if we look at the future of agriculture, we need to develop more decentralized and more regionalized localized food sheds across, not just North America, but around the globe for that matter. The question I'd have for you, you consider you've gone through this process with a couple of different crops, you're hoping to do so with more crops. What advice would you have for other producers in taking back control of processing or guiding the process of being price makers?

Yeah. So you have to, you have to find your, your threshold of pain that you're willing to accept that pain is going to be based on how much are you willing to sacrifice? Are you willing to sacrifice everything that you have to be able to make a switch? It's just like me transitioning towards, you know, a natural approach at growing crops. If we are going to be price setters, then we're going to have to break the chains of what the food supply looks like today. You can say it's radical, you can say it's anarchist, whatever you want to say about our food supply. But what we've done as a culture and a society is we have become. We've allowed our minds to be ingrained with Easy is better and the fact that I can go to a large value store and I can pick up everything I need in 15 minutes or they'll bring it out to my car. And that just makes it so much better for me. We've got to be able to find the people that are willing to say, hey, there is value in what you do and there is value in the fact that you are going to go against the norm to allow me to be a part of something that sustains my lifestyle. And so as somebody is trying to grow a crop and market it directly to the consumer, they are going to have to allow the consumer into their, into their life and into the ways that they are producing their crops. And I want to be able to get people to the fact that if I was going to plant, you know, let's just say I was going to plant 100 acres of carrots next year, I would love to be able to say that it was almost set up as a csa. But what we've done is we've taken the power away from the grower. We've allowed a person that's willing to do the smooth talking in the middle to take control of what that market's going to look like. And that person is able. And I've got good friends that are brokers, you know, and I love them to death, but they're not here at 4 o' clock in the morning when the power goes out. They're not here when the hailstorm rolls through. They're not here when the market crashes. They're there just to make sure that there's so much loaded on the truck and it's delivered to this place. I looked at when Walmart started doing this direct to consumer, we looked at that in the onion business. What ended up happening is a company was able to come in using ethnicity, sex and a market tactic to be able to say that yes, it's woman owned or woman run or female owned and ran and it comes from a Native American tribe and we're going to be able to source you onions year round. For us to watch that program take place, those people were on the, on the front of it, you know, and what they've done is they found brokerages all over the country and now all over the world that say, okay, we've got a group of growers that are going to farm, we're going to sell you these onions from these growers, they're going to turn around and they're going to sell those onions to Walmart. And we've lost complete control of our food supply. We've lost the fact that it's got to go from here to there. And we have no control over that. And so what we have to do is we have to look back to. This gets extremely political in my, in my view and I love politics. You have any scotch over there? We can get into this. It'll be a long day. The big thing is if we want to have an America that is healthier, then we're going to have to be able to work for that. It's just like when you start to work out and your body's hurts and that, you know, you're sore and all those kind of things. But for us, we've got to bring the power back to the person that's going to deliver the crop to the. To the grocery store. What grocery store are you comfortable with? Is it the guy that owns it that employs locals down the road, or is it the guy that just works for a large, massive company that throws, you know, cheap food out there? Where's the butcher? You know, we just went on an elk hunt and got into the butcher, and we were sitting there talking to him, and he's like, I. I can't keep up. He's like, I can't do this anymore. He said, you know, the money's good. It's all there. He said, but I can't keep up with that. And so that's where it all boils back down to. Do we as Americans get to a point? Do we as a world, as a society, as a human race, do we get back to the point where we take control of our destiny by opening the butcher shop or the bakery? Do we get to the point where we're delivering boxes of lettuce back? And can we do that on a large scale? Which I think the answer of that is yes, we definitely can. It's just going to take pivotal shifts in people's perceptions and mindsets to allow us to do that. And it's a radical way of thinking.

When you open the political can of worms. This reminds me of a conversation that at first glance, or my first response to it, was that it was perhaps rather insensitive. But I think we're having a good conversation here, so I'm going to open it up. Arden Anderson was one of my mentors, medical doctor or perhaps a do. And I have other colleagues who've expressed similar sentiments as well. Their perception, and I shouldn't just say their perception, but actually the data that they are putting together and the experiences they are having in dealing with people's health is very straightforward. They're willing to. And Arden actually has a degree in public health as well. They are saying that our modern food system is making people sick. And so Arden made the comment. He said, yes, farmers are not being paid well, and they are not making money in many cases. They're not being financially successful in the long term, and they are getting paid exactly for the quality that they produce. They are being paid for the quality of job that they are Doing, which seems like a rather harsh and perhaps insensitive perspective. And yet looking at it from his perspective, it is completely real that people are becoming sick because of the lack of quality in our food supply. Of course, we could have a big conversation about pricing mechanisms and government influence and the influence of policies on pricing and the cheap food policy that we have here in the United States. There's. This is a much bigger conversation. I absolutely understand that, but I think it is something for us to consider and to look at, to ask the question, okay, we're not comfortable with not controlling our destiny and with not getting the price for food that we believe that we are producing, that it is worth, but are we producing the quality that deserves to be compensated? And then of course, the flip side of that is once we do produce that quality, how can we ensure that we are compensated for producing that quality?

Yeah, I mean, it goes back to kind of what I was, I was getting at and the fact that we've, we've got to make a, we've got to make a, we got to draw a line in the sand somewhere, right? I mean, we've got to get to a point where we're willing to. Just like we do with it with a chaffee company. It is a naturally grown alfalfa, non gmo. We're not spraying and doing all those kind of things that, that a normal desert southwest alfalfa grower would do, but we've made the line in the sand. That said, we're different, the quality of what we do is different and we are going to demand that we are paid differently. The issue with the topic that we have, and again, you are correct, it is very sensitive because I have lots of good friends that are large scale and small scale commodity style growers. How do we get to a point where we can use one, what we produce, where we're not dependent on a foreign country to process what we need, and two, how do we get to a spot where we incentivize a grower to grow something that is more nutritious, that is safer, that is. And these are all words that I've, in my media training classes that I had back in the day. The people are saying, don't have this conversation. This is a wormhole that you don't want to get into. But in all reality, what we have to do is we've got to get to the point where we're willing to say, I will take steps back, ensuring that I will make more money. As long as it is something that is going to be viable for future generations. And in my mind, it makes complete and perfect sense. It's just we haven't found that mechanism that changes that topic, I guess, not to just get stuck in a, in a vortex of, of the conversation. My mind is that this starts with our federal government and the fact that we have got to get to a point with our federal government where we are not regulating, based on the monetary side, but our regulations turn themselves into an incentive. And I look at what happens, you know, and people say, well, look at the organic program. It's an incentive. It's an incentive for you to grow organically. The problem with just switching over and growing organically is we haven't done enough in our own, our own peer groups to go ahead and sit back and justify what was going on. Someone's saying, well, look at all the weed seed that you're putting out there. Look at corn's all chewed up with worms, or, you know, all of these kind of things. When in all reality we need to be sitting there looking and saying, okay, if we're transitioning, if we're. And this is not just about organic, but this is just about food production in general. If we knew that we were going to get more for what we were producing, how do we get our federal government to incentivize that and not regulate what we're doing? And I don't have that answer.

As you say, it is a big conversation, and it's not a conversation that I think we need to specifically unwrap in this discussion. But there is another conversation I would like to have with you. Many times the guests that I have here on the podcast are in a different place on the spectrum in terms of adopting what we refer to as regenerative agricultural practices. In many cases, they may have been using them for a decade or three or four decades in some cases. The question that I have for you is earlier in our conversation, we were talking about how innovative many farmers are. They're capable of coming up with many machinery innovations, different cropping systems, innovative solutions for difficult challenges. And yet, on the other hand, when the moment we begin having a conversation about considering different types of cultural management practices or different types of farming systems, many growers have a borderline allergic reaction. There is some level of opposition in many cases to considering different types of management practices from the exact same growers who can be very innovative in developing new machinery, for example. Why do you think that is?

Well, you remember the time that you stole the cookie and you were able to.

That cookie was really sweet, by the way.

Yeah, you stole that cookie and you ate it and you still had crumb on your lip. But your mom was going to sit there and say, I know you stole the cookie, why don't you just come out and tell me? And you're going to sit there and your first, your sinful, normal reaction is going to sit there and tell you, I am going to fight this with all my might. At least I did. I was going to sit here and I was going to fight because I was right. Even though I was wrong. I was going to prove the fact that I was right. And what's happened is we've been ingrained in agriculture that the way that past generations have done this and the new technologies that are offered to us are those of which make us better or sustainable or regenerative, whatever word you want to use. But we're willing to fight for that. The issue that we see is when a small scale grower finds success in what they're doing, the large scale guy goes, well, that man bun, hippie wearing, Subaru driving person has no idea of what it's like to farm this many acres and there's no way we could be sustainable in doing that. And the other conversation from the person that's growing small scale is saying, well, why in the world are you growing that many acres? To start off with like what? Why are you doing that? And so there's this great cat and dog fight that always happens and we always want to prove why we're wrong instead of sitting there and saying, and this is something that I believe and I always tag it on my Instagram as, you know, I want to be a better human. I want to be able to have the conversation with a person that thinks they're doing it right and I want to know why. And if they don't think that I'm doing it right, then I want to have the conversation of what their perception of my, my basis is. And it's a dangerous world to play in. But at the same time it's the most rewarding because there's things that we implement into our own practices that somebody might not think is the best idea or the best way to do it, but in all reality, if it's doing what makes us, and I hate to say it this way, feel better because we know we're doing something that's positive, it's good the fact that people in agriculture are going to lash out against somebody else. And I guarantee you when this airs, I'll have plenty of people that Will blow me up and say, jay, I can't believe you would talk about, you know, going away from everything you believe in. I'm not going away from everything I believe in. But what I am saying is I am. I am at a point in my life, I'm at a point in our company's life that we want to make sure that we're making changes to make us a better farm. And if that is having conversations with the Subaru driving man, bun farmer, I need to have those conversations. And if it's the same thing with, you know, Bubba Joe Gentry out there that farms 200,000 acres and figure out what the economies of scale did to make him more successful, let's get a hybrid of this thing together. And that's where I want to be.

I find it interesting that the way you framed your response in terms of stealing the cookie from the cookie jar and the reaction that we had to that is essentially a guilt reaction. That begs the question, do we feel, even subconsciously, some level of guilt about practices that we are engaged in? Is there some level of recognition that what we are doing is not well for the ecosystem?

But I think it works both ways because I think there's a lot of people that are in the natural environment of growing that will have the same reaction because of tactics used or because of circumventing around a system. In some ways, not all, but there's. There's the same level of reaction. So it's. It's a Republican versus a Democrat in. In. When it comes down to. To the way people are reacting with each other, instead of saying, hey, yes, I. I have made mistakes and being honest and saying, if there's ways that I can come out of what I've done and I've learned from those mistakes, those are the people that find success in farming.

Yeah.

You know, and so, yes, there's a level of guilt that will definitely subside, in my personal opinion, will be. And I've got some. Some great friends that are. That are surely organic and to listen to their side of the story and to get them fired up, you know, it's guilt. And on my side, if there's. If there's. Practices I'm doing that I'm not 100% proud of. Yes, absolutely, it's guilt.

I find this discussion really intriguing because there's this phenomena that I have observed that I've just referred to as the cognitive dissonance where some growers and I. I can include myself in this because I was there when we started out on this pathway, we express the desire of producing high quality food or high quality fiber. We say we want to produce really healthy food for people. And then on the other flip side, because we have a market that has zero tolerance for insect damage or for disease damage, we spray intense insecticide applications and fungicide applications so that we have marketable fruits to sell. I think where we do ourselves a disservice is we largely tend to just reject out of hand the perceived concerns that consumers have about pesticide applications. And we don't seek to understand the impact that those pesticides can actually have on the human organism and on the human body. There is this saying that I forget who it's originally attributed to, but seek first to understand and then to be understood. And I believe there is a challenge that we have had and that I have had in the past in the farming community to seek first to understand the consumer's point of view and the scientists point of view who are legitimately concerned about the impact that pesticides might have, for example, I'm just picking that out as one case in point. So we are immediately seeking to be defensive rather than seeking first to understand the other's point of view.

Yep, I agree 110% with that statement. I think it's one of those things too, that the society that we live in today look at, look at social media and the people that are doing well on social media. There's a couple of reasons that they're doing well. One, either they're showing every nitty gritty detail of why they, they fail and they succeed, which is what I want to do. Or there's the people that are wildly popular. Look at the Kardashians. I don't follow them, obviously, but at the same time, the reason that they are where they're at is because they paint a picture that life is perfect, life is beautiful, you can alter your body or buy the best clothes or do whatever you want to do, and it makes people wish that they were into that mindset. And so when we talk about food production, we want to make sure that the tomato, if we're buying it, the power that I have as a consumer to buy the perfectly ripe tomato that does not have, you know, any sun scald, or it's perfectly red and round, we've got that to where we demand that we've exalted ourselves as a society where we want that instead of just saying what is the best for us, what tastes the best, what's healthiest.

The challenge with the Kardashian approach to presenting ourselves to the world is that fundamentally, it is inauthentic.

Yes, absolutely.

And we live in a world today where when you are inauthentic, we all know it, we all sense it. We sense it when other people are inauthentic. We know that other people perceive it when we are inauthentic. And it's not a foundation to establish a strong dialogue. It's not a foundation that you can have a good conversation on.

John the most miserable times of my life is when I've tried to paint myself in somebody else's picture. To be completely honest, when I've tried to live to the standard of what somebody else portrays their life to look like is when I find the biggest failures in my life, when in all reality, that's not a failure. It's called being human. And the fact that we were created uniquely the way that we are, and that we are not ever going to be able to be. I'm not, I'm not gonna look like Kim Kardashian, thank God. But the mainstay of that whole concept or that whole analogy is we've got to be happy with who we are, and we've got to do what is best for us. And in doing so, and having that sense of security, the sense of I am making decisions based on what I know is true and right in my heart, is going to be able to be translated and then marketed that way as well. And that's, that's the journey that I find myself on. That's, you know, that's the quote, unquote, mule I'm riding at the moment. I think it'll be something that I will spend my whole life on that journey. And, and, and that's where I want to spend my life. I want to continue to work on what makes me a better farmer, a better husband, a better father, a better Instagrammer, whatever you want to say it, but it's just being real, genuine, authentic, and just saying, you know, what if somebody doesn't really like the way that I do something instead of just saying, well, the hell with them, I'm going to sit down and say, let's have a genuine talk about what their perception of what I do is. And if there's something there that actually hits a nerve or strikes a sense of guilt, then maybe I'm doing something that's not right. And maybe I need to start looking at a different way of that at the same time having the tenacity to say that if someone's just mindlessly, you know, attacking they always say that the loudest boos are from the the cheapest seats, that you still have enough heart that you get yourself propelled through the situation, understanding that you're on this journey, this is your journey and somebody's probably not going to understand it.

Jay this has been a fascinating conversation. I had no idea which direction the discussion was going to go. It's been a complete joy and I think we could have other quite interesting conversations as well. So thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom. I look forward to more discussions in the future.

Yeah, John man, I tell you what, I appreciate the opportunity and your open heartedness. Swinging tough questions. I like that.

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. Thank you for listening and we look forward to working with you.