The Opportunities That Come From Regenerative Agriculture with Steve Tucker

Hi, friends. This is John. And this is the Regenerative Agriculture podcast where we talk about fun agronomy stuff and cultural management practices, farming management practices.

That can regenerate soil health and plant.

Health and public health and hopefully regenerate farm economics and economical viability and financial viability as well. My guest for this episode is Steve Tucker, a friend of mine, a farmer from dry land, western plains, who enjoys thinking and trying to stimulate other people.

To think as well.

So, Steve, thank you for being here. I've been looking forward to our conversation.

Well, thank you, John. It's an honor to be a part of this and greatly appreciate your friendship and your mentorship and just helping me think outside the box. What box exactly? Get out of the box and find different ways to do things.

Yeah.

So, Steve, I think for the context of our listeners, tell us a little bit about your, your background and story, the context of your operation, what crops you're growing, what scale, what type of environment, and help us understand a little bit of your journey and your pathway.

Okay. Well, I, I grew up as a son of an Air Force recruiter and we moved all over the country. So the only avenue to agriculture that I had was coming back to my grandfather's farm in southwest Nebraska. And we were a wheat summer fallow operation. And I would spend hours on a tractor doing tillage and thought that was the life. And it was just good to be able to spend time alone and do these things. And then you'd come back to the world and see how the world operates. And that was farming for us for, for a long time. And went to college, University of Nebraska, got out with a degree in agronomy and came back to the farm.

Oh, dear.

I sympathize.

Well, it was an interesting experience, you know, and we, and I tell people, and this is quite common back in those days, they taught us all the chemical properties of soil, they taught us the physical properties of soil, but nobody ever mentioned the biological aspect to it. And that part kind of intrigued me. And I always had that in the back of my mind there was something else out there that we could do things differently. And so when I got back to the farm back in the early 90s, we started putting more crops into the rotation and that kind of started changing the game a little bit. But it wasn't until my grandfather passed away, I inherited the farm, or I shouldn't say inherited, but I just basically took over the family farm operation. He didn't have any sons, but he had two daughters. And it's worked out Fabulously, you know, putting this whole operation together. It was about 4,000 acres when we started and it's still about 4,000 acres. I haven't grown any. And part of that is because I don't need to and I don't have the desire to. Sometimes I wonder why I'm even farming this much, because can you be effective farming huge amounts of acreage in southwest Nebraska or. You did mention it has been dry, and that has presented some challenges. And it also has opened up doors of opportunities that maybe we can get into and look through and examine.

What does your current, what does your current cropping mix look like? And what is your. You mentioned that you've been dry recently.

What is your historical average rainfall, if there is such a thing?

Yeah, it's probably been historically between 14 sometimes. We've hit up into even close to 18 inches of precipitation a year. Most of that comes in the springtime. So over the course of those last 20 years, we've went from a wheat summer fallow to adding corn millets to now. I mean, we've gotten yellow peas into the operation, chickpeas. Chickpeas and flax together, mung beans, a little bit of soybeans that are non gmo, five different kinds of millet, oats, barley, rye, triticale, a lot of COVID crop seed things. And it just opens up the door to a whole lot of other markets, including Milo, which is kind of one of my favorite ones.

When, when you start talking about having that diversity of crops in it, I.

Mean, I, I expected you to say four or five or half a dozen, but you listed off, I don't know how many, close to a dozen.

Doesn't that become quite complex from a management perspective?

And what was attractive for you to go to such a large number?

Yes, it took us, it was a journey to get to that many crops. But when someone has a request for a specific item, I found that the way to become rich is to become a wanter, neater finder. Find someone with a want or a need and find a way to fill it. And so if you think about that type of philosophy, and we're in agriculture, and last I checked, everybody eats and there's animals that need food. So find a way to provide what the customer needs.

Oh, no, we don't do that in farming, Steve. If California says we don't want your pork, then we sue them in the Supreme Court to provide, force them to take our pork and consumer says we.

Don'T want GMOs, then we just refuse.

To put Them on the label and all kinds of shady stuff. Consumers have no choice except to produce what we accept, to consume what we produce.

Well, that's the kind of thinking that's led us into this mess. But there are people who do have desires.

This isn't a satirical podcast, is it?

Okay, I'll remember.

Well, we could do a little satire. I'm fine with that. But, yeah, it's just finding out what the customers want and realizing that I'm not going to supply everything to everybody. But it's the few select people that have certain wants or needs. Find a way to fill that up. I can't be all things to all people.

So what was your approach when you say you are a. I forget the phrase that you used, but Wonder finder.

What? Yeah.

What was your process?

What was your pathway? How did you go down this road? And how did that get you to the spot you're at today?

Well, I'll give you a perfect example. This is kind of what really opened the doors here a few years ago to even thinking like this was the fact that I got invited to a meeting with Quinn Snacks. And I walked into the room, and they were already in there, and they were already in the middle of the meeting. I got invited late for some reason, but I walked in and they said, oh, here's our producer. That might be somebody that'd be great for growing white Milo for their pretzels. And I remember him saying, well, can you grow white Milo? And I said, tell me exactly what it is you need. What are the specs? What. But is there a certain type of white Milo? Does it have to be a certain test weight? Is the moisture? I mean, what are the. What are the ramifications and the specifications and all the things that you need? And I will find a way to make it happen. At least I will attempt. Now, if they wanted rice, that isn't going to be feasible, but they wanted white Milo. Well, guess what? White Milo grows in my region. People have done it. And how much do you need? They needed about 3,000 bushels, which is, you know, we can do that on one field, easy. And from that, it has grown. And I was a. It was a way to provide them what they need. Now that has grown into. Now they need 13,000 bushels. So that ups the game a little bit more. But it's having that direct contact with the end user and trying to give them what it is that they need.

How did you go about getting that.

Meeting in the first place?

What is. I mean, there. There's I constantly hear this conversation from farmers. One of the things that I really.

Suggested to farmers and growers is that.

If we want to be successful in the future, we need to find a.

Way to decommoditize ourselves.

And there's a thousand and one pathways to achieving that. But it strikes me that what you're.

Describing is essentially a way that on your farm, you've successfully decommoditized your farming operation and the crops that you're producing.

So let's, let's back up just a step before the meeting with Quinn Foods. Like, how did that meeting come about? And how have you gone about developing.

The connections that have resulted in the diversity of crops that you're growing now?

That is an interesting question. And I thought about this. There's two ways to answer that. There's two things that happened. And I caution people because it doesn't always work this way. But I went to a food show and I walked through and this guy said, here, try my snack food. And I said, okay. I said, that's pretty good. And he said, you'll never guess what it is. And he was right. I had no clue what this was that I was eating. He said, it's mung bean. I said, mung bean. That's interesting. I said, where do you get your mung bean from? He said, well, right now we get it from India and China. I said, well, why don't you get it from the United States? He said, I didn't know anybody United States grew it. I said, well, what if they. What if we could? And he said, well, I'd be interested in. So I went back and I did some research, and the next day I went back to him and I said, guess what? Mung beans like it in a dry climate. Guess what? That's where I live. So I came back, I planted a field of mung beans. I didn't even know what mung beans were. Never even heard of them before, but I planted them. We got hail on it three times, but I still harvested among bean crop. And I contacted this guy back and I said, I have your mung beans. And he said, you know, I saw the way you farm. I did some research behind you. You know, I'm. I'm interested. It was really just because he. I had a way to market myself and, and it's very poor, but I mean, if I'm out there, you can, you can find me. And he ended up not taking any mung beans. So here I was sitting with a bunch of mung beans, but Once you have mung beans and you tell people you have mung beans, then people want your mung beans. And so they went into cover crop C. They went into another food project that was just a small run of it. But, you know, if you have it, the opportunities somehow present themselves. Now, I caution people, it doesn't always work that way. The other part of it is this. The way this Quinn Snacks came about was I made connections selling myself to other people that you make those connections, and then they find the Quinn Snacks of the world and said, hey, I know a guy who does what you're looking for. Let's put these two together and see if there's something that can happen. And so it's just through, you know, the relationships that you build outside and off the farm that leads to those opportunities.

Steve, it strikes me that, you know, many, many farmers. I mean, I'm hesitant to use broad brushstrokes in this case because obviously we're all individuals.

We all have our own individual strengths.

But I think, generally speaking, it's safe to say that most farmers are in.

Farming because they enjoy working with the land, with livestock and crops, and to varying degrees, they don't really consider themselves people persons. And when you start talking about marketing and putting yourself out, there is something.

That, again, this is not true of.

Everyone across the board, but many find ourselves uncomfortable with.

And even myself, I've never really talked.

About this publicly before, that I recall. But by nature, I'm very introverted by choice. I'm usually the quiet guy back in the corner at an event or at a conference. If I can get away with that, that is. I find public events really tiring.

So even, even for myself, I learned.

I've adapted, but my nature is to be quite introverted. So when you talk about marketing yourself and putting yourself out there, what has your pathway been? How have you been doing that?

Believe it or not, I tested out as an introvert. I'm not sure that it was an accurate test because I have my moments of introvert, and I have my moments where I'm not. But what has changed is, and like you say, this is not for everyone. And not everyone has to be a salesman of all their products individually, because that's just the nature of the way agriculture is. But at the same time, we're all salespeople. We're all salespeople whether we like it or not. And I always like asking people, you know, why are you not a salesperson? People always give me the, you know, the list of I don't like talking to people. I don't like, don't like being pushy, you know, and they go through about a minute of trying to describe them not being a salesperson. And then I can just stop for a second to say, you almost sold me on the fact that you're not a salesperson. So we're all in sales. And then, you know, when someone's like that, I always stop for a second and I say, are you married? You know, we all have to sell ourselves in some form or fashion. And the only reason people feel pressure in a sales is because you want that. When you go to a used car dealership and you want that car and the guy's pressuring you into it's because you want it. Go to a used car dealership when you don't want to buy anything and just feel how relaxing it is when they get pushy and you just like, I really don't care, I don't want this. Pressure comes from within. Like a tire, it comes from within. So we're not pushy salespeople if people want our product and don't devalue your product. That's another thing I've learned is the best way to sell these types of products is by a guy told me one time, the most profitable farms are ones that sell things by the pound, not by the bushel.

Yeah. And if I were a conventional farmer, I would come right back at you and say, well, all bushels are measured by the pound. So you're always selling things by the pound.

Just try selling it by the pound once. See how that goes.

Yeah.

So clarify, when you say describe selling by the pound instead of selling by.

The bushel, what does that mean?

That might mean that I have to put things in tote bags or 50 pound bags. That might mean that it's in smaller quantities to more people versus taking it to the elevator. If I can go directly to my customer, will it be a more profitable operation? More profitable? Can I value add to it in some form or fashion? A lot of things. I mean, I'm being very generic here, but you know, speaking to your vast audience, look for the opportunities that are around you. And that's all I've done is just I look for opportunities because the fortunes in the follow up and where do I find those opportunities? How do I follow up and provide them what they need?

Yeah, I do want to dig deeper and go a bit beyond the generalities. But before we go there, let's back up on sales and talk about sales a bit more. You Know, you're absolutely right that we are constantly selling ourselves and selling our ideas. Anytime we try to persuade someone to change their mind about something, whether I want to change my 3 year old's.

Mind about which boots she's supposed to wear outdoors when it's muddy and wet, that's a sales job. We're constantly selling ourselves and selling our ideas to the people around us.

I really like your analogy of pressure comes from within.

Like a tire that caught my attention.

Because, you know, there are people who shouldn't say people. There's this skill set of selling and.

Presenting ourselves well and presenting our ideas.

Well that you can you change an.

Audience'S perception of you based on how you present. One of my favorite books. Well, shouldn't say it's a favorite because I've got a very long list, but one of the books that I really appreciated was a book titled Pitch Anything by Oren Kloff on how to present well. And the reality is it's appropriate for every aspect of your life and all your relationships.

Absolutely. I learned really quick it wasn't about what I was saying. It's really not necessarily all about the product that I have, but it's about who you are, who you be when it. When you have that inside. That what I have is going to benefit you in some way or you know, what I have is of great value and it's perfectly suited for what you need or how do I feel what you want or need refiner. How do I feel what you need? Then it increases the value of what you have and it makes that more valuable. But people are going to buy from you because of who you are.

Well, you know, that reminds me the way that you just said that people will buy from you because of who you are, but they will also buy from you or not based on what.

You believe about yourself.

And this is something that I've observed is that people who believe they're not.

Good salespeople and they say things like verbally like I'm not a good salesperson. And.

And you combine that with the belief that I'll use the phrase salespeople are sleazy. Like we have this slick Persona in.

Our mind of the used car salesman and.

We project that on everyone who tries to sell us something and farmers.

Are trying to get sold stuff constantly, all the time. There's people knocking on our doors and calling the phone.

It's a bit nuts, but so we project this negative Persona onto salespeople and.

We have this negative perception of salespeople.

And that as long as we hold that in our heads and we believe that to be true subconsciously, we will.

Believe it to be true of ourselves when we try to sell other people.

And this was a powerful realization for me, was just realizing that the world needs salespeople, we need everyone to be more effective at communicating their ideas and.

Communicating the value that they can bring to the world.

Because the more clearly you can communicate.

The easier it is to come to a decision of yes or no, we're a right fit for each other or we're not and you move on.

But as long as you have this, this negative view of people selling ideas.

Concepts, products, whatever the case might be, that's going to limit your ability to sell your ideas to other people. Yeah.

And how do you invoke change? Is helping persuade one way or the other just, you know, to help people see your side of the argument or to see your side of what you have to offer those types of things? Absolutely, yeah.

It's the negative, the, the internalized beliefs.

That create our reality.

So coming back to your farming operation, all of your different crops, of the.

4,000 acres of diverse different crops you grow at this point, what proportion of.

Them are sold by the pound instead.

Of by the bushel?

Probably 80%, I would say, because I do a lot of COVID crop seed and have the ability to just blend those things and that value adds to it. I do have a seed cleaner obviously that has increased the value of what I have and gives you, you know, through the first process that needs to take place for, even into food production and those types of things. And I want to caution people to a little bit, if you want to get into the direct to the food companies is you got to also be aware that there's, there's a lot of critical things that need to go into it for food safety. And you got to be aware of those types of things. When a broker or somebody buys those products off of the farm, they're the ones taking that responsibility. But you do have a responsibility to provide a safe product to the end user. It can't have fertilizer in and it can't have, you know, if it's a non gmo, you can't have GMO into it. Gluten free is another thing. It's just all those things you've got to be very aware of to make sure that you're providing the product that you say you're going to provide. And so I just want people to realize that food safety is another factor into this that don't need people to be surprised when those things come.

Well, I think this speaks to another aspect of marketing and selling by the pound rather than by the bushel is there's not just the marketing and the sales component. There is also to some degree the.

Value add component that you described, which.

Is something that many farmers either feel they don't have the bandwidth to accomplish or they lack the skill set, the.

Resources, the time, whatever it is. There's also this internal story that we tell ourselves that, oh, I'm not able to do this because of X, Y and Z. How have you. How has your operation evolved over the years to add these value added components to all the different crops you're growing?

Yeah, it's. It's been a challenge because you look at all the different aspects and ways you can do things. It takes a lot of equipment to deal with this many crops that you've got to be specialized in. You know, bin storage space was something that we didn't have a lot of. And we've put up a lot of different bins to deal with things like this and a bagging machine. And, you know, not everybody has to do things like I do it, but just find a way to do it the way you can do it and it doesn't have to be great scale. What I mean, if you could grow mung beans and sell them for two bucks a pound, I mean, do you need 4,000 acres? You know, if you can provide. If you're one of the only farmers that grow mung beans in the country that, you know, granted you got to have a market that will buy it at that price, but you know it. There's a tons of ways to do different things to provide opportunity for your operation. Just step back and look at what's out there, what's available, who's looking for something? I run into food companies all the time that are looking for producers, but they don't know any. And I look for producers who look for food companies, but they don't know any. And so the hard part is marrying those two together that are out there.

You know, it's really interesting to me when I attend conferences on investing in.

Regenerative agriculture or regen Ag summits where there's lots of CPG companies. There's almost no farmers in the room going to Expo west or Expo East. There's very few farmers in the room and yet there is a rich concentration of buyers.

And you know, just flipping this on.

Its head for us as a company at advancing eco agriculture. All right, our Customers are farmers.

And we've found the best place to go to talk to farmers and to.

Decision makers if we want to start working with someone is to go to the conferences and events where farmers are selling themselves.

So one of those, I want to.

Say it's the pma and I might be wrong about the acronym, but the thing is, Produce Marketers association is an event in California where a lot of the large orchards and fruit and vegetable growers come together and they are selling their fruit and vegetable products and brands and the packaging and the stuff that they're doing to retail to retailers. So all kinds of retailers and retail store outlets are there. So the farmers are there selling themselves. And as a result, guess who's there? The top people in the company are there, the top buyers, the top. The CEOs are the, are the presidents, the owners. And so we get to sit down and have a conversation with growers.

And they're in now in the mental.

Space, in the mental frame of mind.

That they came to this event to.

Have conversations with people. We've made many amazing and productive, valuable relationships for everyone at those types of events. And that's exactly the process that you went through when you went to Expo West. You went to Expo west where all you CPG companies are now, they are putting themselves out there. They're saying, okay, we are here at this event to meet people, talk to people, and to make and to develop productive and valuable relationships.

And all of a sudden you show.

Up, you're not on the buying side, you're on the supply side, but they're in a different frame of mind and they're much more open to having conversations, which is, I think, a place where you've excelled is going out there, putting yourself out there and having those conversations.

That'S been very critical is just putting yourself where those buyers are at and finding out what it is that they need and finding a way to fill it. And I can't tell you how many countless conversations I've had where I've talked to them and they don't have, they don't need what I have. And that's fine. I don't have to supply everybody. And you know what? I may know somebody who can provide what they need. You know, I look at this as, we have to make this a win win for everybody. You know, if you and I were arm wrestling, I would win and you would lose. And that's just the way it is. But that's not the way a functioning, healthy society works. If we can make it a Win. Win for both of us.

Steve, I'm not, I'm not sure I'm.

Okay with how automatically you made that assumption.

For those of you who don't know.

Who'Ve never met us, I weigh about 180 pounds and Steve is probably 250, 240, and there's not.

Great day. Yeah.

There'S nothing, there's not much extra.

But because we arm wrestle doesn't mean that you have to lose. I love doing it where both of us can win. That's the way it is with farming. That's the way it is with our relationships, even with our spouses, you know, even on the farm. Why is it that I have to kill everything? Why does it all have to die? You know, why can't I help it survive and make it a win win? I mean, that's kind of what you promote is life, right?

With aea, the most valuable relationships. Well, I shouldn't say the most valuable relationships, but the only relationships that truly survive and thrive in a long term.

In an ecosystem dynamic are those that are collaborative, that are not inherently competitive.

And that's the same way it is on marketing your products on your farm. If you don't want it to be just a general commodity to go into the food system, then find a way to make both parties win. I mean, we're talking deep philosophy things here in agriculture and I love that aspect to it. But you take that philosophy and apply it into something simple on an operation, it could change the whole entire operation.

Let's talk a bit about how your operation has changed. Steve, to get back to the farming and the practical application aspects of this, you now, over the last 20 years, you have a diversity of different crop species. I can only imagine what your crop rotation looks like, or even if it's still justifiable to call it a rotation because you probably are bouncing and hopscotching things all over the place to make.

I love it when people ask me, what's your rotation? I said, I don't have one. Yeah, it's off the charts.

Well, with that kind of complexity, with that number of different crops to some.

Degree, you can look at a field and say, okay, this field, based on how the last couple of crops have responded, it now needs to go to this and you can do what's best for the field.

Right.

Which is so much fun.

Oh, absolutely. When, when I have wheat on a field and it's been grass 20, 30 years ago, my next option was to go back to grass. But now I've got so many different plants and different things, and then even throwing cover crops into it. And now we have livestock into it. I mean, last year we had a drought. Somebody asked me, how was your harvest? I ran the combine for one hour to harvest fall crops. Okay, but that wasn't that. The combine ran one hour, but that wasn't all that I harvested because I had milo that drought it out. And because I manage it in a way that I always, you know, plan for a plan B approach that when the milo was not able to be harvested because nothing was produced, I used livestock to harvest it, which worked very well because people were running out of places for animals to eat. And I had some areas that we could go that we could graze.

So you were still able to get.

Some off the field. Even though you weren't able to harvest a grain crop, you were able to get the plants that were there.

Trying to give us a bit of.

A visual of what your farming operation looks like. Now you have. How many different crops are you running exactly? You listed several.

I've had up to 14. I backed it off a little bit this year, but, you know, I've got 14 to 10. Some of that's different types of millets that we raise. And I'll tell you a story. One day my wife and I were sitting in the evening and she just. She was reading something and she just stopped and she looked at me and she says, it says here that the average millionaire has seven streams of income. And I thought, huh, how can that play to the farm? And, you know, when I started looking at it, we have a seed business with agrofore seed where we do pulse crop seeds. I have a cover crop seed. I have general commodities. Not very much, but I have general commodities. But when we clean that seed, we had leftover broken pieces of peas and different things, and we turn that into some of the best chicken feed in the area. People go to the store and then they buy our feed and they put it on it. And if they run out and they just make a quick trip back to the store if their chickens won't eat it. Because ours is a freshly made product that the chickens just crave because it has everything that they need in it. And so, I mean, just look at these enterprises that just build on top of each other. And I saw that chicken feed by the pound, by the way. And so all those things add to each other. And, you know, there's never a day that we don't have something to do here.

There's.

It's you know, there's always something that project that needs to be done that just we find ways to fill needs all the way around and to utilize everything from start to finish, from, you know, every. Everything that we can use.

So as your farm has shifted and.

Brought on this diversity of different crops, how has your agronomy and agronomic management shifted? I know this is one of the things that we focus on here in this podcast and that our audience really cares about and wants to learn more about. You've mentioned that you've been incorporating cover crops more. Are you still doing summer fallow and what, what does your fertility management practices look like now compared to 20 years ago?

Yeah, it's. So I am no till. And that helps to manage that for, you know, a lot of acres. I do use some herbicide, granted, that has pared back quite extensively. The fertilizer has pared back quite a bit also. And we're still looking for ways that how do we incorporate more biology to, you know, making our own compost, to using all kinds of biological products that we're still experimenting with, trying to find ways that we can keep continue to reduce the inputs into it. Having that diverse rotation, you've got to be, I mean, it is a management challenge because use the wrong herbicide, you may not have a pea crop the next year if you put something back. And I always try and leave my options open to grow anything at any time. And so, you know, it's very basic, easy herbicides at the most, if we use those and doing those cover crops and planting into a heavy residue now, Mother nature will dictate, you know, I find that I have the weed pressure when I don't have the COVID If I have the COVID weed pressures is greatly reduced. And so if we can keep that management, if Mother Nature helps us out, then things keep going in the right direction.

Can you speak to any practices that you've observed as being particularly beneficial?

You're no till. Obviously you're in a very low moisture environment. I think you are all also susceptible quite a bit to wind erosion. So no till makes a lot of sense for you. What have been some of the practices or things that really have stood out to you that really caught your attention and made a significant difference for you during your transitionary period over the last 20 years?

Oh, just the rotation effect has been extremely helpful and beneficial and just it's fun to watch life come back. We did a study with COVID crops. Colorado State did a study and they came back and found, you know, hundreds of Species of bees that I didn't even know we had bees, you know, that many species, and they found one that they hadn't seen since 1978 in a field of COVID crop. And I, I was just blown away that, you know, who knows how much life you actually have and you can produce out there. That, you know, I heard Gabe Brown say one time at a conference early in my years of getting into this regenerative agriculture movement that used to wake up every morning thinking, what is it I'm going to kill? And I sat there and listened to that and thought, huh, that's exactly how I think that hit me right between the eyes is how do I, how can I change that to how do I promote more life? And by promoting more life, guess what it did. It promoted more opportunities. More opportunities for markets, more opportunity for crops, more opportunities for just a regenerative lifestyle.

When you think about, or yeah, you.

Look back on the way your thinking has evolved and changed, you're obviously guessing a type of person who is stimulated by new ideas and likes trying new things. How has, how have these changes in your farming operation translated into your personal life?

Well, I think most people would tell you I'm not normal. I love planting chickpeas right next to the highway. And people say, what is that? You know, and I tell them it's Kochi or it's a puncture vine. You know, just, it just looks like something very odd. You know, I got into chickpeas and planted those and I harvested them. And the guy who coaxed me into planting chickpeas, when it came time to harvest, he said, well, I don't want them. I was like, oh, well, this is a great deal. This is a great venture. So I put him in the bin and a guy calls me out of the blue. And this is weird because this, this happens to me a ton. But this guy called me out of the blue and he said, I am looking for some chickpeas. Can you bag them? I said, like what, in 50 pound bags? And he said, yeah, yeah, if you can put them in 50 pound bags, that'd be great. So I bought a bagger and had a couple of hired guys that were excellent welders. And we built this bagging machine and we bagged a container full of chickpeas and shipped them to Sri Lanka. And I did get paid and I made more money by doing that than any other thing on the farm. And when the guy asked me what it is I wanted for price, I gave him a price that was higher than what I could do it because I knew I was going to have some expenses into it and he didn't even balk at it. And I thought I should have asked for more, you know, but I don't want to be greedy. But you know, he would have paid more. I think he took the price because I filled his need. And it's just things like that that once, you know, I planted it, the opportunity died. But another opportunity presented itself. And if that one wouldn't have, there probably would have been something else that could have, that could have come out of that. You know, chickpeas are a growing thing. Our need for protein in this world is changing and how we utilize protein and so who knows what's, what's coming. It's exciting times.

One of the things I'd like to get your perspective on, Steve, I have.

My own observations here as well, but I'd like to get your perspective on how much opportunity is actually out there. You've grown your operation to a dozen some odd crops and you mentioned you get phone calls all the time from people looking for different stuff. I do that. I do as well. I know that I have friends and colleagues who are connected to lots of smaller scale, up and coming food companies, food brands, who would love to get high quality source material or products, grains and so forth, that they don't know who to call, they don't know where to go and how to find them.

And there are a group of people.

Who would detract from this conversation, say, well, yeah, but we've got tens of millions of acres of corn and soybeans and you're never going to replace all those acres with these, with these specialty crops.

And while I think some of that.

May be true, and certainly is true, I also think that the opportunity out there is a lot bigger and can utilize a lot more acres than most people realize and are aware of. Love to get your reaction, your response to that, what are you seeing?

No, I agree. I, I think there's, there are a lot of companies out there that are looking to make that connection with the farmer. And I think that's where Quinn Snacks came into play, is they actually came to the farm. There's a video on YouTube, you just look up Quinn Snacks and they, they do the interview, they come to the farm, you get to see the operation. They wanted to know where it is their products come from and they asked the question, why isn't. We don't know that. And it's hard to trace those things. And if, if those companies want to work directly with producers, the problem is they can't find them. And so producers maybe need to go and find them and ask them, what is it you need? And you. They may or may not want what you have, but guess what? There's another company right next door that's trying to do it. And I went and visited some hummus companies once because I had chickpeas and was trying to find avenues to. To provide chickpeas to hummus companies. Walked in the door and one of them said, we have to be organic. Went into another one and they said, well, we're shifting to organic, you know, but. And I'm not organic. I just. I hate the paperwork. I just don't have the time for that. But if people can come to the farm like Quinn Snacks did, and see how I do things and see that I'm not spraying glyphosate on everything, and, you know, whatever it is that they are, you know, people are afraid of and don't want to use. And however they want to do it, I'm fine with that because I want to give them what they need, and I want to show them that I have the same thoughts that they have, you know, and I'm on the same page with them, and we can work together to give them what they need because that's what they need to make their product. So, yeah, there's tons of opportunities out there. It's. I think it's just so untapped. We don't know, because it's. How do we do it? And I think that's the question is how do we put those two together? That's the hard part.

You know, I have my own personal.

Kind of microcosm experience of this recently. My sideliner hobby is honeybees. I find them very relaxing. And so that's the reason I have honeybees, is to help me relax. And I have some over 100 colonies that I'm running. And recently I realized that there appears to be quite a shortage in the local area for liquid honey. And I personally produce mostly comb honey.

But I'm seeing this mismatch where there's.

Quite a few beekeepers in the area who don't have a place for their honey to go. And there doesn't seem to be a lot of local honey on the store shelves. So I spent a couple hours one day. It was a very tiny amount of work. I spent a couple hours, made a couple dozen phone calls, and as of right now, I've got honey carrying our brand on the store shelf of over a Dozen stores in the local area moving at a pretty rapid pace, a lot more volume than I expected. And the amount of work to make that happen was minimal. It didn't take a whole lot of effort. It just took picking up the phone and making the calls. And that's the piece that I'm also intrigued about. From your story or just kind of the way you're presenting itself, you make it sound as if though it's not all that difficult.

Well, how difficult was that for you? You say it was easy and sometimes it is that easy, but sometimes it may be difficult. And even if it is difficult, it's probably worth it. You know, even the harder things are worth pursuing. And once you get it, you may be the only one that can provide that. You fill that niche. And, and you may look at it and go, I don't want to do that. And that's fine too. Somebody else will. And you may look back with regrets, but at least explore the opportunities other than because what happens, I heard a very wise guy say one time with all this movement to electric vehicles, that we're going to not need ethanol at some point. I believe that was. You made that comment. And so what happens when we don't need so much corn? What's going to happen? What's our plan B?

Ethanol is purely a political game at this point. I mean, we don't need for 40 million acres of alternative fuels and ethanol just, it doesn't, doesn't make sense from a, from a carbon perspective. It's purely a political game at this point. It's just a question of how much red ink are the politicians Willow to keep signing up for. So, yeah, there is going to be a need to shift a lot of acres to crops other than corn at some point in the future. I don't know if it'll be electrical vehicles or if we'll ever develop the collective political willpower to produce that shift, but it's a shift that needs to happen for sure.

I was at a conference a couple of months ago that was focused on the primary. Most of the folks in the room.

Were large corporations, CPG companies and investors and all types of stakeholders who were.

Interested in facilitating more adoption of regenerative agriculture.

There's probably less than a dozen farmers in the room of about 300 people.

And one of the presentations that I was kind of taken aback by and.

Surprised by was a presentation on.

How.

Much yield loss we should expect and we should account for and be prepared to invest in during the transition to regenerative agriculture and I had my hand as high in the air as it would go to share some comments and questions at the end of the session, but wasn't called upon.

But that has been the Having a yield loss during a transition has been.

The opposite of our experience. In our consulting work at aea, we expect to see yield gains, not yield losses. And that is from the get go from year one. Like there's a few exceptions.

It doesn't always happen. Is it 5%, 7% of the time that we don't that we get a yield loss? I don't know exactly what the number.

Is, but it's a very small number. It's in single digits for sure.

I'd love to hear from your experience, what have you, what was your transition.

Process and story like? Did you observe a yield loss in any case? Oh.

I would, I would contribute yield loss on my side of it to mainly being ignorance on fire, growing stuff that I had never grown before and not doing the due diligence that it probably took because I knew that if I, if I had yield loss I could make it up in a marketing part of it. Now I'm not proud to say that, but that's, that's been my experience and that hasn't been, you know, across the board.

But that's, that's yield loss associated with.

Gaining experience from growing a new crop.

That's not yield loss associated with necessarily.

With changes in agronomy management.

You know, in some regards weather plays into that. So I don't know. That's a hard question. Just because my environment is so brutal out here at times and so to contribute the management part of that. There was probably some of that because I just cut back on stuff maybe a little bit too much or. But I've just got so many enterprises that management for me is a difficult part of that. Now if my whole livelihood was just on raising that commodity crop, yeah, I couldn't stand to have much of that loss. But you know, I've shifted into different categories and made it up in other areas. So I'm not a fair one to ask that question to. But and I've seen some, it goes around, it's hard to quantify that. 1.

If a millionaire has an average of seven different income streams and you now have multiple enterprises and a dozen different crops that I'm assuming that means you're a millionaire a couple times over at least in the way that you operate and navigate the world.

Well, I gave up on my first million. I'm working on my second right now.

Good One, coming back to agronomy management, you mentioned that you've, you may have.

Cut down a bit too quickly and too aggressively.

What. And you mentioned earlier that your pesticide.

Your herbicide and fertilizer use is just a fraction of what it was historically. What do those numbers look like? What did you used to use historically? And where are you today?

Yeah, you know, I've heard many of your guests on here talk about how they completely eliminate insecticide. And I don't, I haven't used insecticide for. I couldn't even tell you the last time. So that's, that's definitely one that I don't use. And I think the biggest factor of that is rotation. You know, mother Nature loves rotation, and that's what I tried to implement. I never put a crop that I raised back on that same field. It's being rotated into something different every time. And so that has aided a lot of my pest problems. The only thing really I fight today is weeds. And weeds is an interesting thing. I heard a guy ask the question one time, what makes a weed a weed? Well, we make it a weed. The weeds out there doing what it's supposed to do. It's a plant growing where it's supposed to. But we're the ones that make weeds weeds. And so that's been my big, you know, if you're in seed production, that changes the game a little bit on how you do it, because if you do get inspected, you know, they don't like to see weeds in the weed seed in the, you know, the seed at the end of the day. And so I have cut back fertilizers use, I want to say, at least 50%. I have increased the biological aspect and part of that fertilizer decreases because of the rotations in using legumes and cover crops. And you know, organic matter was, I mean, I. When we took soil samples when we were wheat summer fallow, the organic matter was 0.8, 0.9. I was excited when I had a 1.0. And today, you know, we're at in the threes. The drought has backed it down a little bit. So I'm working on ways to get the organic matters back up. And. And then we've also cut back on herbicides drastically. And that's probably in the 50% range too, I would estimate. And it's just because of the rotations and different ways we do things.

As you've reduced fertilizers, you've mentioned that part of the reduction was accounted for.

Changes in rotation and putting Legumes into the rotation and so forth. And earlier you described how you've been adding in biologicals as well. What biological products, compost teas, practices, so forth. Have you been using that. You contribute a lot of the success to that are replacing the rest of that fertilizer reduction.

Yeah, we. One of the products that I absolutely champion is Biokoat Gold. That part but that is a. That has. I can just see drastic changes with the use of that product. I have made my own compost and compost teas. We have put it on there. Nebraska came and did a study on a wheat field that I seeded versus the one right beside and we inoculated the seed with our compost tea mix. And he was just blown away at the biology that was around that wheat plant and the roots compared to the one right across the road that didn't use anything, just, you know, just the standard fertilizer program. And so that right there tells you that things are working in your favor. Now do we have enough to keep those microbes going and you know that plant interactions going? I think that's where we drop off a little bit. And so how. What's the next layer that needs to go on and top dressing that with biology. That's my question is what else do I add to it to keep that on fire, to keep that process churning.

Now I'm really curious.

I have to ask the obvious follow up question. How did the Biocoat Gold compare with the compost tea?

I have not run those side by side. I. That's a good question.

I want to see that arm wrestling match because I think I know who's going to win. Just like you know who's going to win.

I will put it to the test. I've got some stuff to seed yet this year. We'll put it out there and try that. We'll look into it.

Yeah.

Biokoat Gold is a favorite product of many growers and it's pretty impressive the results that folks are reporting with that. Particularly when they're planting into challenging situations with cold soil or wet soil or even dry environments. You have a different environment that a lot of growers.

What have you been seeing?

I remember the first time I used it, we put it on peas and we had planted a couple of fields and I got the product. It was a matter of just timing. When it showed up and we got it, we put it on and that field that we put it on was about 20% better than all the ones that we had planted right before that. I mean the Day before. And that's the only difference of what we used was the biocode Gold. And our experience ever since then has been just, you can just see a difference. It gets out of the ground faster, it's got more roots, it's just everything is a benefit.

20, 20% is pretty significant. But 20% better in what way? As in higher yield or protein content.

Or faster growth yield the plant, plant health. Yeah, every, just every aspect of plant growth you could just see that it was, I mean and that's really the only thing we could contribute it to was that's the only difference in the field was just that using biocode Gold. That's what sold me on it right off the bat was when you can see results like that.

Yeah, it's pretty remarkable.

So really anxious to putting it to work this year even more.

How, how many different crops have you.

Tried it on at this point?

We put it on the peas, we put it on chickpeas, we've put it on millet. I didn't see so much in the grass species as much. But the problem is once you get started on it, you just go to it. It's just a go to. It's just automatic because you just know it's gonna work. So that's what I love about it. It doesn't take a lot and easy to apply and it just, you know, there's just tons of things that just make it a no brainer.

I'm really curious what it's going to look like. I mean of course it depends on.

Soil management and farm management practices, but.

I'm really curious whether soil biology reaches.

A threshold of activity where that product is no longer effective. I'd like to think that's a possibility and a probability. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see how that evolves over time.

Well, and what it's going to take though is keeping roots going in there. And in our environment, if you got, you know, a short stint where you don't have the weather to keep things progressing like they should, then, you know, it's always nice to have at least something to rely back onto. Is using biocode Gold to, you know, boost it back up into where it needs to be headed.

Yeah.

And I think it's mostly to jumpstart it because I suspect that like if.

You take mycorrhizal fungi for example, or these various bacteria that need a living root system, there's, there's quite a number of organisms that are only present in the living root.

So when you don't have that they go dormant.

I'm not convinced that they entirely disappear and don't come back. They go dormant. And they can and do come back. But sometimes that process of coming back and re establishing a population may take some time. And the benefit of putting on bio Coca Cola is you can plant again and it's right there by the seed and it takes off and goes. You don't have that time window of regeneration.

Exactly, yes.

When I started the Kind Harvest social networking platform, one of the foundational ideas.

That really motivated me was the belief.

That everyone, everyone knows something that I.

Don'T know that I would probably benefit from knowing.

And we all have our own unique experiences.

We all have our own perspectives on farming and agriculture and life in general as a result of our collective life experience.

And so I'd like to pose the question to you.

What is, what is a perspective or an opinion that you have on agriculture or farming in general? What is a point of view that you have that is different from the mainstream view or for most of the people you get to have conversations with?

That's a great question. And I remember another wise man who was you. One of the first conversations we had when we first met was I remember you distinctly telling me that your parents put inside of you this ability to ask questions. So when you ask that type of question, it's, you know, so many times we want to spew our information, but if we live in the question, we glean so much more out of it. And you're a champion of saying something along the lines of we need to ask a different question. And you asking that question just made me think of that as living the question. And what do I see that is different is the markets. Where do we sell our product? Who is our end user? One epiphany I had sitting in a conference in Salina, Kansas, was they brought in a market research firm that gave this presentation. And I remember watching, I mean, 90% of the crowd, it seemed like 90% of the crowd got up and walked out of the room while this person was laying out all these market research facts. And one of the statements that he made was the end user. The soccer moms of the world. This is what they desire. These are the things that they want, you know, and these are the producers that were walking out were the guys that were growing corn and beans. And they were stuck in the typical agricultural, you know, mindset. And I'm thinking, the elevator is not my end customer. And so that really opened up to what's out there, what else is out There I'm a farmer that grows food. What else can I do? Where else can I go to find end users to give them a higher valued product? And I think there are a lot of guys in this regenerative movement, a lot of producers that are looking for something to grow that gives them more purpose and more meaning with what they're doing beyond being just a commodity producer like everybody else.

Yep, there is. And I think the point that you're making is it's kind of twofold. One is there's a tremendous desire on.

The, on the part of farmers to grow food or to grow crops with more meaning. And the point that you're making is that there is a parallel desire on the place of food brands and CPG companies to, to access higher quality grains and raw materials to make their food products with. And that there is a mismatch between the two. The two of them are, they're not on the same dating website as of quite yet.

Sure, yeah, that's. And one thing we really haven't talked about is it's one thing for me to go find a CPG brand, somebody that's looking for what I have, that they can use it as, you know, to be made into their product. The missing kernel in all this is the processing in the middle. Finding those companies that make that into, marrying those two things together to make it work. Because it, unless they're using raw mung beans, we have a little issue here.

Yeah, you know, that's a good point, Steve.

And this is such a critical issue. It's one of the, I believe this is one of the major choke points of preventing more large scale adoption of these types of crops and getting them and supplying them to the marketplace and the people who want to buy them.

And I just, I just generically refer.

To this process as facilitating market access. Processing can mean a hundred different things to as many different crops. It could be slaughtering, in the case of livestock butchering facilities, it can, it can be milling, cleaning, etc.

There's, there's a tremendous need and you.

Know, we've, we've lost a lot of mid scale processing for many of these crops. You have, like if you take grain milling for example, you have flour mills, you have a lot of small scale artisanal mills that can do, I don't know, a few tons a day at most. And then you have the mills that can take unit trains. And there is very little in between those two. Very, very little in between those two. And that's just in the case of flour.

So I see a tremendous, again.

There'S a tremendous business opportunity here for farmers or farmer cooperatives to get together and to provide processing and facilitate market access. But how have you been managing this and what, what do you see happening in the landscape with your own operation and other similar operations?

Well, I'd love to move into that processing leg. I'd love to marry producers who want to, to grow these things for a regenerative. What frustrates me is growing a regenerative product and then having to put it right in with the rest of the regular produced commodity market because I know I'm doing something different and something that's improving and regenerating. And that's the most frustrating aspect I see producers just, I have to dump it into the regular commodity market when I know it should have some more value to it. And so going to what I've done is, and just take the fact the case of Quinn Snacks is we've, we're working with a Miller company that will take the Milo and process it into the form that they need it to turn it into an ingredient that goes into their products, that goes to their manufacturer that makes the product. So that's one way it's not easy. There's some more phone calls that have to be made. And so knowing what the specifications are, how do you meet those types of things? You know, you got to keep it segregated. All those types of issues present themselves, but they're not, you know, burdensome that they're not challenges that aren't worth overcoming. And so just got to keep those things in mind as you manage through things like that and look for those opportunities.

There's a lot of opportunity to connect the dots.

Just as in my personal microcosm experience with Honey, I see farmers doing this all the time as setting up small scale processing facilities and making an initial investment, but then inviting other local farmers to collaborate and contribute product as well and making connections to the marketplace. And the reality is, look, when you.

Look at history in recent past, the.

Last 50 to 70 years or so, I've used the phrase that the farmers are the ones being farmed. And that has kind of caught on. I've seen lots of people repeat that in the last year or two. But.

We really like to complain about.

The small amount of the small percentage of the food dollar that we capture. And we think that all the middlemen are capturing too large a piece of the pie. They don't share in the farmer's risk. They have compared to the farmer, they have minimal or no risk and yet they still have a, you could almost say a guaranteed upside or a reliable upside margin.

And if we, we know that that's.

Often true and we want to participate in that, then it's relatively easy for us to do so. We just have to stick our hand in the air, step up to the plate and say, hey, I want to participate in the processing aspect. Just as the comments that you made just a couple minutes ago. There's a lot of opportunity for us to get into processing and to sell product by the pound instead of by the bushel, as you said, and to produce a higher value product. But it takes effort.

It does. And you bring up a point that, think about this. Farmers are the only ones that buy everything retail and sell everything wholesale by choice. Well, how do we change that narrative? And when you do the processing, you do the value adding. Think of a market where farmers produce something and then they get to name their price. Wouldn't that be exciting for agriculture? That would be a novel idea, wouldn't it? And that's. And when you sell things by the pound, people say, well, what does it cost? What's my cost? And then you can say, this is what it is per pound. And so that changes that down to where I get to do the marketing on my terms. That gives me freedom. I mean, that gives me control to change the narrative of how we operate here.

Yeah, I think the. As I'm hearing you, Steve, and as I'm understanding you, the nucleus, the essence.

Of what you're trying to communicate is that the opportunity to take ownership over what we are selling and to not be forced to sell at wholesale, but to name our price and sell by the pound is colossally bigger than what people think it is because few people are actually trying to do it right.

And we're stuck in this is the way it's done. That type of mentality will leave you stuck in that. That framework. But if you can get out and ask the right questions, make the right connections, grow into who you need to be that people want to do business with you, being honest up front, transparent, that that word comes up quite often, transparent, then you will build the trust in that relationship and it will be far more rewarding than just going to the elevator and dumping it as a commodity.

Indeed.

Indeed. Well, Steve, thank you for sharing your.

Wisdom and your experience. Do you have any final thoughts you'd like to share with our audience? Where can people find you and connect with you?

I am on a few social networks. I don't participate as often as I should. But I am on Twitter as tikerman1.

Well, thanks Steve. Thanks for being here and for sharing all of your information. I'm sure that many of our listeners will enjoy connecting with you, and I look forward to having more conversations with you in the future.

Well, I appreciate it and go do something different. I tell the story that Noah built the ark and he didn't know what was coming, so that's what you got to do is just go build it. You don't know what's back there, but feel the fear and do it anyway.

Or feel the love and do it anyway.

Exactly.

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.