Nicolas Lirio (00:00.305)

We need to show my dog

Riley Rozendaal (00:01.614)

I think that you're... I think that opens a door that I do not want to go through.

Kent Boucher (00:03.566)

you

Nicolas Lirio (00:09.548)

Well what if it pays for all of our debt? What if like all our debt was gone because people started buying my dog pics?

Kent Boucher (00:11.484)

that needs to remain

Riley Rozendaal (00:13.027)

Yeah.

Kent Boucher (00:17.934)

But hate to see what happens to your ego so

Riley Rozendaal (00:19.226)

i would be out

Nicolas Lirio (00:25.262)

Okay. Okay. If you could have your ego, like on a psychological level attached to anything in the world. like, let's say you attach it to corn prices. So when core prices are good, you're feeling good about yourself. And when corn prices are down, it would be a bad, terrible, terrible choice. But what would you guys choose?

Kent Boucher (00:47.502)

I'd probably somehow link it to the pilot political trade tracker thing Markets are up

Nicolas Lirio (00:52.526)

I don't

Nicolas Lirio (01:02.074)

They're always up on that bad boy. I'll tell you what. crazy. We're, we got a defense contract in that company that I bought shares in two days ago is triple price. That's awesome. We're going to war.

Kent Boucher (01:17.736)

I mean, ugh, we're going to war.

Nicolas Lirio (01:20.558)

I think, I just think that it's really remarkable that we as a country knew we were able to pick the spouses of the greatest stock pickers of all time as our LinkedIn official.

Kent Boucher (01:35.662)

It's like a prerequisite or something.

Nicolas Lirio (01:41.868)

Well, they became the best stock pickers after their spouse got off his, but that is totally unrelated.

Kent Boucher (01:50.316)

Nick, describe to our audio audience, which again, in my opinion, should be the only audience that exists when it comes to podcasts. Explain to them what you're eating right now.

Nicolas Lirio (02:02.38)

no idea. It's pink.

Kent Boucher (02:05.814)

It's a Pepto Bismol bar. Right. As a new stipulation for working in the office.

Riley Rozendaal (02:14.798)

Yeah, we gotta have at least one Pepto Abysmal bar a week to try and keep things moving.

Kent Boucher (02:20.642)

He's on gas, gas medication.

Nicolas Lirio (02:23.246)

It's not good. It's not good. My wife has spoken to me in weeks actually ever since I started taking it. all right, before we get started, I did a little thing. I sent an email out. I almost never get emails back from our elected officials. Taylor Reagan. Congratulations. Your email made it to my email inbox and well when you say things are urgent and we should email people, I do so and

Kent Boucher (02:30.99)

Hehehe

Nicolas Lirio (02:52.204)

That's kind of an interesting, I like trust Taylor so much on end his circle of people and their decision making that if he says like do a thing at the, at the office, at the Capitol, I do it. You know, and I'm not saying everyone should feel that way about Taylor. I mean, he's awesome, but it, to me it's relieving to not have to make all those decisions and stay educated.

Kent Boucher (03:12.174)

It's nice to have a trusted resource like that.

Nicolas Lirio (03:15.118)

he said to email and this was about the HF 2657, was the like non-resident.

Kent Boucher (03:26.152)

The landowners.

Nicolas Lirio (03:27.726)

Yep. Yep. Non resident landowners. Thank you. And the concern that he shared or that his team shared at the Iowa sportsman, um, was that this would become a pay to play system. Right. And he said, these are the people you need to email. Derek Wolf, Chad, Ben Bain, uh, Larry McBurney, Carter Nordman and Jane Bloomingdale. And I emailed them all and Jane very promptly got back to me and I told her because she did that, I would give her a shout out on the pod.

And,

Kent Boucher (03:58.434)

Wait, is it just an automatic reply? Sorry, I'm out of office.

Nicolas Lirio (04:04.966)

Wow, that was a 30 second response. She's amazing. No

Kent Boucher (04:08.526)

What you doing Nick? just talking with some of our legislators.

Nicolas Lirio (04:11.31)

Yeah, kind of a big deal. Sending emails to get the automatic. So that Gmail can scrape and be like you had 86 conversations with legislators. She said, I received a few emails about this and want to provide some clarification as I've worked with several groups on the bill. The goal is to support tourism and hunting in Iowa. And it's a long email. But she basically says the bill didn't reflect its intended purpose. Right.

Kent Boucher (04:15.502)

The automatic replay.

Nicolas Lirio (04:40.59)

And I think they just didn't think it all the way through, not in like shame on them way, but they like put something together that was a plan and it was a rough draft. And she said basically they ran out of time to get back and create another rough draft. So it won't like it's not going to go through in this session at all. And yeah. And they and they said she said we will this exact quote, we will not move this bill forward if we cannot get it right. Right. And so

Props to her to even getting back to me. We had a couple emails back and forth and I wanted to give her a shout out because that is a cool thing to do as a legislator. And I know that being a legislator, not all things are equal. Like Chuck Grassley and Bernie Sanders are a lot busier senators than people who just got in that aren't on as many committees or who don't have as many people pulling for their ear. Whether they're right or wrong in their stuff, that's not my point.

Kent Boucher (05:19.022)

Yeah.

Nicolas Lirio (05:39.692)

some legislators have more time to respond. And if you are a new legislator, it is totally to your advantage, I think, to respond often and thoroughly. And also brings us to a point, a lot of people are reaching out and we are trying really hard to get back to people. Sometimes I'm literally emailing people back like three weeks after they reach out to us about the podcast, not because I'm ignoring you or don't want to deal with it. We're just very busy. But thank you to everyone who's reached out.

That was super cool of you, but, man, I'm so tired of hearing myself talk already. Can we get started?

Kent Boucher (06:16.078)

Yeah.

Riley Rozendaal (06:16.707)

you

Nicolas Lirio (06:18.262)

Welcome back to the Prairie Farm podcast, Coffee Time Wednesday. I'm your favorite host, Nicholas Lirio, favorite co-host, Kent Boucher. Favorite co-host to the coast, Riley Rosendahl.

Riley Rozendaal (06:28.93)

Howdy, howdy.

Kent Boucher (06:29.858)

You were talking about pulling on Bernie Sanders and Chuck Grassley's ears. Those were your terms. Which then got me thinking, who do you think has more ear hair? Bernie Sanders or Chuck Grassley?

Nicolas Lirio (06:45.664)

I think Bernie seems hairier as a human. He's got kind of bushy hair. Yeah, he does.

Kent Boucher (06:51.022)

It just kind of goes with it, but EarHair is a true geezer quality and there's no one more geezerly than Chuck Grassley.

Nicolas Lirio (06:59.854)

That's fair. That's fair. Have you seen

Kent Boucher (07:05.292)

Riley, you're be the I'm gonna vote Chuck Grassley.

Riley Rozendaal (07:10.286)

I I Have never I'm gonna honestly say I have never thought about the inside of Chuck Grassley Bernie Sanders ears

Nicolas Lirio (07:20.782)

should be proud of that. man. A proud American moment for you.

Riley Rozendaal (07:24.302)

Feel like I feel like whoever's older I would guess Chuck Grassley. Yeah, I would say probably grassley done

Kent Boucher (07:28.556)

Yeah. I think so too. I believe so. think he's like well into his 90s.

Riley Rozendaal (07:33.516)

Yeah, I he's like 92 or something like that. don't know.

Nicolas Lirio (07:35.902)

like that is crazy

Kent Boucher (07:38.83)

I mean, I've always wondered because I'm old enough now where I gotta get the nose hair trimmer out every now and then. are. At what point do you just give up on stuff like that? You just let the little ear afros get going.

Nicolas Lirio (07:47.111)

I'm

Nicolas Lirio (07:55.704)

bank account can impress people so that your appearance doesn't have to. I'll tell you what, we're a long ways away.

Kent Boucher (08:01.55)

Dang it, I don't have either.

Nicolas Lirio (08:04.654)

You know what, you know what though, for, for, for males, for men who are married to a woman, you can use your wife's looks as a proxy for your own, for your own pride. I do all the time, man, look how great she looks. I look at the beer, man, my wife looks good. man.

Kent Boucher (08:26.206)

Well, what do you got for us today Nick?

Nicolas Lirio (08:30.518)

At two things and basically it's like mandatory. We talk about these things right first fires in Nebraska. 900,000 acres mostly of pasture and grassland. Vast majority like well over 90 % of it. Most of the cows escaped, which is good, but specific numbers of like loss of cattle is not reported yet. The win the fire.

traveled at their peak at over 60 mile an hour.

Kent Boucher (09:02.062)

Real quick, do you think, I mean, it's still feedlot time of year. Most guys aren't pasturing animals at this point in the year yet, right Riley?

Riley Rozendaal (09:15.854)

Yeah, it depends a lot of guys I list I guess at least in Iowa like to dry lot just so you don't tear things up in the freeze-thaw and wet wet dry

Kent Boucher (09:26.2)

So probably, my guess probably saved a lot of the cows. They weren't out in these wide open, not really pastures, truly prairie yet at this time of the year would be my guess. They would have been feeding hay still and relatively controlled pens that probably didn't have a lot of fuel on the ground around them.

Riley Rozendaal (09:51.874)

Yeah, you would assume so. You wouldn't be probably grazing nearly as much. The stuff that I saw that really would concern me is if there was a fire later in the year and you were in areas of range that have a lot of cedars in them. Because cedars burn hot. if you fall behind on your maintenance of them and they get really thick, mean, you're

Nicolas Lirio (10:18.166)

Cedars in the Sandhill Prairies and like short grass prairies are cedars just as bad?

Kent Boucher (10:24.031)

In anywhere you have like around water they're very thick. But yeah out in like the middle of the prairie you don't really see a ton of them.

Nicolas Lirio (10:36.483)

the

Kent Boucher (10:37.602)

fact, you see very few of them.

Nicolas Lirio (10:39.022)

Well, so I mean, props to Nebraska and small towns. Basically what happened is everybody rounded up every piece of machinery they had, whether you were part of the cattle or not. You called your nearest, they called their nearest rancher and said, how can I help? And that it worked. And I, that was cool. That was like, man, that's America. but, one rancher, his whole herd survived because he drove them into a field.

with a giant sprinkler and turn the sprinkler on.

Riley Rozendaal (11:10.185)

like an irrigation pit.

Kent Boucher (11:12.342)

Yeah, yeah, yeah big water wheel Yeah

Nicolas Lirio (11:13.518)

Yeah.

Riley Rozendaal (11:16.266)

That's one way to do it. Yeah

Nicolas Lirio (11:18.392)

So I mean that brilliant in my opinion. and there are a lot of issues with the fire. Now first thought I was, man, it's kind of cool that these prayers are getting burned, even though like destruction and it's going to cost a lot of money. There was just like more of a silver lining. Well, we, this fire is actually a problem for, for beef prices and, cattle prices and

It is a loss of acres and you would think, if it burned the parish and the prairie come roaring back this year, the problem is these are not tall grass or mixed grass prairies. For the most part, it's short grass and very sand hill prairies. And, Kent, your friend, what was his name? Nate, Nate, Nate actually sent us a video. It's on hoxie native seeds. YouTube. can check it

Kent Boucher (12:07.744)

And he's sent us an article too that's on our website, isn't it? yeah.

Nicolas Lirio (12:10.894)

I believe so. Yes, you're right. And, uh, he basically explains blowouts, blowouts were a problem for, have been a problem for a long time, still are, but he was able to heal one or a couple of them kind of in this area. And he shows it on the video. It's pretty cool. But the, and that's all fine and dandy, but these sandhills are very vulnerable and a fire sweeping through that's fine, but they're super, super vulnerable right now. So they need, they need rain.

They need things to go well and they'll come back really strong. What will not go well for them is letting a thousand pound cattle stomp all over it and rip all the blades of their solar panels of their leaves off right away. So 900,000 acres need months, if not a year or so to really get back to a place where it's going to healthily.

Kent Boucher (13:01.1)

Well, the sand hills truly are. I mean, that's a descriptive, very descriptive term. It's like you have prairie on top of sand dunes. Nate sent me a video that some rancher had taken driving across a highway and sand is just swirling across the ground, know, just totally covering the road. And that's, I mean, that's the soil that these grasses are growing in. so what concerns me is just the mechanical damage to the

prairie of you're losing your, if these roots are becoming untethered and, and, you know, having what they need to stay rooted and, and continue to start growing again, once the soil temps get up to where they should be for these warm season grasses to start growing it, it, to me, that is concerning for how, how do you heal that, that prairie?

Riley Rozendaal (13:56.748)

It takes an already vulnerable ecosystem and yeah.

Kent Boucher (14:00.856)

Now on the plus side, the Sandhills of Nebraska, the prairies there are from a vast, scale-wise, is the last great grasslands in our country, like the biggest version of that, right? Eastern Montana's got a lot still, parts of Wyoming and South Dakota and North Dakota for sure, but

as far as just being like untouched mixed grass prairie. Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's there. And so that gives me hope, you know, for millennia, those prairies were getting burned. Yeah. And I'm sure they burned at this time of the year then too, you know, even whether intentionally or unintentionally, right? Lightning strike or whatever. And they...

Nicolas Lirio (14:35.394)

Midwest.

Kent Boucher (14:55.51)

And here they, and yet they remain. so I'm confident that it'll bounce back, but yeah, the implications for the cattlemen out there and the ranchers out there, it seems like it could be really a tough year of being able to feed cows.

Nicolas Lirio (15:09.846)

Yes, and that is it's not that it burned. I have I think it's probably going to be great for the prairie long term. But now we've got this and I don't know how long it's going to be six month, 12 month, 18 month window where they can't put their cattle out where their their livelihood and the infrastructure of our Midwestern livestock system is built on those cows going out. And so the second the first thing was that the ground is very vulnerable. So the cattle can't go out there to graze.

Kent Boucher (15:31.149)

Right.

Nicolas Lirio (15:37.824)

but not just as the ground vulnerable. The fencing is gone. I mean, it just swept through a blue through these these fence posts, totally burned them to crisp. Did you notice that on the way into Knoxville, they burned they burned the ditches there every year, kind of right before you get to the windy part and they burned like six of their fed posts out and so the leg on the ground.

Kent Boucher (15:58.506)

I'll find out tomorrow morning when we head up to Des Moines for a couple podcasts.

Nicolas Lirio (16:04.75)

and so I, I mean, Riley, you would know better. I'm sure there's like a general number for how long it takes to set up how far a fence, but you're talking hundreds or thousands of miles.

Riley Rozendaal (16:17.294)

Well, when you when you're talking about fencing, fencing is not a most people don't buy 500 acres or 1000 acres or whatever and then put fence on it. Most people buy property with fence on it and then they go, here's a quarter mile. That's the worst and I'll fix it, you know, because fencing is a miserable job. I don't know anybody other than fencing contractors that like to fence. And if you're talking about

that level of destruction you're talking about, people having to replace miles and miles, entire paddocks in a year when the cost of goods on diesel and everything you need to build a fence is higher than ever.

Kent Boucher (16:48.844)

miles.

Kent Boucher (16:59.854)

Well, another thing that I fear of from an ecological standpoint is we got to keep cows fed and they grow hay in Nebraska, of course, but now with having such a demand for so many herds, I don't know how much of the hay is going to be able to come from in-state and where you have this awesome ecosystem that is largely untouched.

other than just being grazed. You start bringing in hay from other states, what weeds start showing up in the prairie, invasive species, and it just kind of almost seems like it's ripe for some of those problems too, which I'd hate to see.

Nicolas Lirio (17:44.834)

big bluestem wholesale is only going for like four bucks. Maybe we should just bail up our big bluestep fields this year. man, that is interesting.

Kent Boucher (17:50.274)

Yeah.

I mean, I'm sad about it because that is man. I got some. have a few. I've had the privilege of traveling around a lot of our natural wonders in our country, but. Man, I like the Sandhills as much as I like going to Glacier National Park or or going to see the Tetons or something like it's it's a special place. Yeah, and and so, you know, I I'm really hoping they.

they can bounce back. I'm actually planning to head out there in April to do some shed hunting and I'm very curious to see how that prairie looks and responds. Following this fire. Might be some good content I can get. Maybe we can feature on our Instagram page for people to see.

Nicolas Lirio (18:44.814)

I am curious, because I mean right now, hey, it's just in the dump, right? And it's because it was crazy four years ago and then-

Kent Boucher (18:52.024)

was crazy two years ago, but we had a wet, real wet, at least around here, real wet spring and early summer.

Nicolas Lirio (18:58.924)

And then, and so hay was, was going for really top dollar and then everyone sold all their cows and the herds really small. So there's not that much. So the cat, people who own the cows are making a bunch, but then the people who have the hay don't have, but now the hay is going to jump back up. And I, I just don't know how this is going to go that some fence contractors are going to make millions of dollars. but

Riley Rozendaal (19:21.824)

or those cattle collars that are AI controlled.

Nicolas Lirio (19:25.102)

That's what I was wondering. I was wondering if the callers will end up showing up and you know, I'm sure to some degree they will, especially if you have a smaller herd, you know, but then I wonder, does insurance pay for fences? Is that a thing? Do you get your fences insured?

Riley Rozendaal (19:40.234)

Depends on your insurance.

Nicolas Lirio (19:43.52)

Interesting.

Kent Boucher (19:44.462)

And those acres, or sorry, those ranches are nothing like what we have in Iowa. mean, a small ranch there is 3000 acres. Yeah. That's like a tiny ranch.

Nicolas Lirio (19:54.198)

Yeah, but their stocking rate so much lower just because there's so much less vegetation because they don't have nine feet of, you

Kent Boucher (20:00.046)

I'm just saying for the amount of fence that that's gonna require. You know, figured if a ranch is 20,000 acres.

Nicolas Lirio (20:07.054)

Yeah, that's true. Whether you got 10 cows on an acre or one cow on an acre, the fence is the same. Yeah, I didn't even think about that. It's a great point. Well, we'll keep that in mind. I'm sure this will affect beef prices for the time to come and it will slow down because that was an area where the stocking rate could be built up because there was a lot of infrastructure there. Right. Well, we just took out one of our biggest areas of infrastructure to rebuild the stocking rate of the United States cattle herd as a whole.

And so I died.

Kent Boucher (20:38.574)

Well, I think maybe another good news thing is, it sounds stupid to say this, but thankfully it was limited to 900,000 acres. know, like that. Iowa and Nebraska are pretty similar size state. That would be, that'd be 1 37th of Iowa. So I mean, hopefully there's still a lot of good grazing ground that was able to survive being burned and hopefully, you know, working together with other ranches that maybe they're able to.

Nicolas Lirio (21:07.01)

Yeah, somewhere between three and-

Kent Boucher (21:08.311)

blow a little bit.

Nicolas Lirio (21:10.542)

Well, yeah, and I bet Nebraska is a little bigger. So it probably is between two and 3%. But then not all of that is rangeland, right? So pasture. So could let's say it's 10 or 12 % of the pasture land in Nebraska. Could they stock the current acres 10 % higher? Probably. But I don't know. I don't know. We'll see how that goes. And we'll keep you updated if anything. Big deal comes up.

Kent Boucher (21:20.301)

Yeah, right, yeah.

Nicolas Lirio (21:39.278)

Second one we need to talk about was that two reports ish in March came out. One was a study and one was a report. First one from the University of University of Iowa. They're the biggest hospital system in Iowa. They're a nationally respected hospital system. They said Iowa officially second highest cancer rate, fastest growing cancer rate.

but they gave good news and that there are 13 % less kinds of cancer. And they attributed this to more active labor and Iowa, fun fact, very low in the rankings for smoking and drinking, right? So they're talking about cancer, but they're kind of, saying like, Hey, it's really bad, but we have less kinds of cancer. That's a good part of the narrative. I don't, I don't want to twist that.

I don't want to say like, University of Iowa is just, you know, they're just trying to help big ag stay the way it is. I don't think, I think they're just.

Kent Boucher (22:46.2)

was the data. It's part of the data.

Nicolas Lirio (22:48.142)

So then we've got the Iowa environmental council and the Harkin report. Just days later, this was not a study. This was a report based on other studies that have happened. And they said this last year and we talked about it in 2025. This report came out in March. But they said these things last year in 2025 that they believe based on their data, this is the most comprehensive

analysis of Iowa's water that's ever been happened, that's ever happened. 80 % Iowa and Ventura Mental Council. I want to get this really close to correct because it's such a big deal. told in Harkin said that 80 % set of nitrates in the water come from agricultural practices, right? It is very easy to talk about golf courses or lawns or any of that. I spoke with Ted Corrigan directly. He said,

Those are not nearly as big of a deal as agriculture. That was three years ago. And now there was an actual studied report that came out that said, yes, this is what it comes from. The two people who pushed that report are Michael Schmidt, who's the director, general counsel of Iowa environmental council director and Adam Shriver, who's the director of wellness and nutrition policy at the Harkin Institute. So those two groups joined up and they mostly said stuff that we know.

Like there's not a causation for nitrates to cancer right now, but that they believe it is a large part with it. And them coming back out and pushing on this publicly again in March, 2026 was good because, KCCI picked it up. The Des Moines register picked it up. know, all these organizations started talking about it. and it's been all over my Facebook feed. don't know about you guys at all, but.

Kent Boucher (24:44.654)

Yeah, I've seen I've seen it quite a bit and I've I've seen some other you know some other stuff. A friend of ours, a friend of the guy who was the podcast. He sent me a graphic. I don't know back in January. I think it showed that Iowa was not one of the top states for cancer deaths. And so.

If I remember, I think I verified the source on that, but I can't remember now. But I think I remember it seeming like, yeah, that's a legit study or something. So there are some good things to stay optimistic about. However, nobody wants to have to survive cancer. You know what I mean? And something that I've started to take note of,

both in myself and others around me is it affects your, what's the right word, your psyche on living in Iowa. Like, man, for the first time in my life, I kind of have to like double check this. Like, is this something that, I mean, when do I finally say maybe I shouldn't live here anymore?

I know it's not gonna, it can't be that I wait until one of my kids, my wife or I has cancer. You know what I mean? Like, that would be an irresponsible decision for me to wait that long. And so, what is it, what has it gotta be for people to, you I had a friend who lives in Michigan and he was mostly being facetious.

But he said, he's like, man, I'm done with Michigan. We have this text thread that there's four of us, we're all friends from college. I mean, almost daily we're talking to each other. And he's like, all right, each of you, we all live in a different state. me your top reason for why I should move to your state. I'm done with Michigan. It's gonna snow again tonight. It was 60 today and now we're getting six inches of snow tonight. I'm tired of this. And I was like, he's obviously joking around.

Kent Boucher (27:12.502)

But it was like the day after, literally the day after this study was published. And it's like, man, really couldn't in good conscience tell you, yeah, here's why you should move to Iowa. You know what I mean? And the fact that...

I know it's not just me. The fact that people are getting to that point where they're having to consider that about their state that they're living in, that alone is bad. That's very bad. whoever, you know, we have a big, you know, governor's race and it's bigger than normal because we don't have an incumbent that is running for the first time in a very long time.

So it truly is like an open race. I just am very hopeful that whoever, and that's why we're doing all these interviews with the people that we can get in contact with. I'm just very hopeful that whoever the next person is, not the politicians save our lives, but that some legislation can be.

can be, I'm not entirely, unlike Nicholas, I'm not entirely anti-regulation. I think there's a lot of regulation that is needed and keeps people safe, especially as the population expands in our country. But one of those ways would be just some regulation around what we allow going into our water and what we allow getting flown on to our landscape. 360 degrees around my house, have

Thousands of acres that are going to be sprayed here in the next few weeks for you know well next month for the first time and then a few few more times throughout the year and You know, I got a swing set where my kids like to play and I got you know They like riding their bikes around the yard and all that and we're in the middle of all of this this application

Nicolas Lirio (29:17.806)

Ken, I think you don't understand how little chemical goes on an acre.

Kent Boucher (29:22.546)

yeah, yeah. Let me just put that scale into your drinking water and then you tell me how little it matters to you, whoever makes that argument.

Nicolas Lirio (29:30.998)

No, so here's a question then for you. Who pays? Who pays for better water quality?

Kent Boucher (29:39.342)

everybody should that's drinking it. I mean, I think the best way to do that is supporting people that are doing things the right way, right? That's the classic vote with your dollar. And I think you can, the percentage of people that are willing to do the right thing, you can expand that number by providing education.

we're trying to do here and what a ton of other places are trying to do as well, other great resources out there. You expand the number of people who care when you educate. That's why education is important, right? Not just on water quality, but a whole bunch of different things.

But that still only gets you so far. if, let's say you have 10 guys that live along the raccoon, they farm along the Raccoon River, you know, the notoriously dirty Raccoon River, and you get nine of those 10 guys to put in buffer strips leading up to the stream, they're,

you know, very precise in what they're applying in the time of year that they're applying and the weather conditions around that. Same with, with, all the pesticides are using and they're being very conscientious about improving quality of water. But that's the 10th guy in line that's downstream of all those other nine guys. And he doesn't do any of that. You're not going to tell me what to do. And, and

It's going to be better because those other nine guys are doing it. But the problem is still going to be largely still there because by the time it gets to him, it's back to being polluted again. And so you need regulation to rein that stuff in.

Nicolas Lirio (31:38.606)

Yeah, but I'm not arguing on the regulation. I can argue about that later. I'm arguing about who pays for it. Because the regulation is going to say you got to put buffer strips in, you're going to have loss of acres, you're to have... And I'm mostly being devil's advocate.

Kent Boucher (31:50.207)

well i mean there's just

Right, right, but I mean, you could say that about all kinds of different things. When you choose to do something, you're paying to mitigate its effects to those around you, right? If you wanna shoot your gun in your yard and you don't have a reasonable backstop, you better pay to get one or you can't shoot your gun in your backyard because your bullet might end up in your neighbor's living room, right? And...

You know, it sounds terrible, but if you want to farm and you can't go around hurting people by doing what you want to do to make money and and so at some point, yeah, it does have to fall on the.

Nicolas Lirio (32:31.81)

But I you said that everyone who drinks the water is supposed to pay.

Kent Boucher (32:38.37)

Yeah, to an extent, yeah.

Nicolas Lirio (32:40.29)

But it's so what it what what extent I'm really digging hard because this is the question. This is what people, whether they're willing to admit it or not, this is what people are wrestling about when we're starting to talk about water quality. I'm watching it happen, right?

Kent Boucher (32:52.75)

Well, yeah, I mean, I think that's where the regulation comes in, right? The cost isn't necessarily you just force you just force the farmer to know you have to pay for Denitrification of the water. I don't I don't think that's that's ever gonna work that one. I don't you can't you can't you can't You know What is it? You can't get a blood out of a turnip or something like that Yeah, something like that. I mean you can say that to a guy who's got no money. You got to pay for all this nitrication Okay, I have no money

Riley Rozendaal (33:14.574)

can't squeeze blood from a stone.

Kent Boucher (33:22.542)

So that's not gonna work, but if there was a buffer law, that's gonna cost farmers, just for the seed, right, to plant the perennial cover there, but also in lost acres of production, right? And so that is a cost that is being put on the landowner. And I think that that's something that, yeah, maybe we can try and increase CRP subsidy.

Nicolas Lirio (33:38.647)

I think that

Kent Boucher (33:52.118)

allotments so that we can pay for we can help share the cost of that or maybe Expand equip or come up with our own state plans that are going to be a cost-sharing thing to help but at the end of the day it's still going to cost the landowner to Pull those vulnerable acres out of production. I think that's probably the most reasonable upfront one and then go from there, but I think I think

Kent Boucher (34:18.968)

people look at it as an on and off switch. And it's just not gonna be that. It's gonna be a gradient of improvement. And I think as we are able to start seeing the very obvious improvements that come from starting to protect our waterways more, and maybe we just start with our main ones, right? Maybe it's just our main rivers. But then we start protecting all the tributaries to all those major rivers.

And as that gradient kind of fills in over time, you'll see those benefits happening and people will want to be a part. They'll want participate into it.

Nicolas Lirio (34:56.767)

arguing with whether people should or shouldn't or want or will I'm just at the end of the day. That's what that's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. And I agree with you. I just I'm poking.

Kent Boucher (35:01.375)

Told you

Kent Boucher (35:07.854)

just don't know how much more you can ask me how we're paying for it and I keep telling you how we're going to pay for it.

Nicolas Lirio (35:12.398)

Yeah, Riley, who do you think should-

Riley Rozendaal (35:16.334)

What it boils down to is everybody's gonna end up bearing the cost. The people who drink the water and the people who are using the chemical who are farming along it. mean, when a denitrification plant runs in Des Moines, Des Moines Waterworks pays for it. And who pays Des Moines Waterworks? People in Des Moines. So the consumers of the water are already paying. The question is striking a balance between producers

Kent Boucher (35:36.43)

Yeah, their bill goes up.

Riley Rozendaal (35:46.346)

and between consumers.

Nicolas Lirio (35:48.654)

Do you think producers even have enough power over their own production to balance that checkbook? I'm not saying they can't make the choice to do it. I'm saying like they are closed in on inputs and then they're closed in on the price. They're told what their price is going to be. So wouldn't it make more sense for the government to go to Cargill bear a

Kent Boucher (36:09.934)

Well, they certainly benefit from clean water as well. So I think it's covered by what Riley just said that anyone who's using the water should be in. Yeah, roll that out for other companies, you know, and and, you know, going back to like the yard and golf course runoff thing. Yeah, it's way less. It's a fraction of what AG is, but it is still something and they should be they should be required to make some changes as well to help improve where where it can.

Right? Yeah. And and maybe that's just stricter enforcement of using pesticides. Right. Like it's pretty wide open as long as you get your your certificate for using like there's very little monitoring as to what people are using, when they're using it, how much they're using it until there's a problem. Right. And we even know from experience that when there is a problem, right, that nothing's really done about it anyways.

And so that's gonna have to step up. But I also think a true dollars and cents thing that could help is we have these data centers that are going up like crazy, right? Like it's a huge point of debate right now in the Midwest at least, but around other places. We should have talked about the lady in Kentucky, the farmer who refused to sell her farm for like $26 million or something.

Nicolas Lirio (37:34.372)

the farm's worth 2 point something 2.8

Kent Boucher (37:37.1)

Yeah, they gave her 10 times its assessed value. They offered and she turned it down. So that's a huge thing, right? Because people have, have, public opinion has already determined this is more of a net loss than a net gain for me and my community. But whether that's, I'm not saying they're right. I'm just saying that's what, that's what the big protests about this are right now. I you've got like Charlie Barron's who's going all over Wisconsin and speaking against,

these data centers going up. So I think we can all agree that we can, you can fight something like a data center getting put up, but eventually the data center's going up, right? Like the bottomless coffers behind these companies that wanna build these data centers, they're gonna get their data centers. So why can't we try and work with it and say, hey, okay, that's

That's great, but we need, there's something really expensive.

Nicolas Lirio (38:40.974)

We're gonna pay our whole electrical bill for as long as this building's foundation.

Kent Boucher (38:44.608)

Or not. Yeah, maybe. why can't we tie it to like our water?

Nicolas Lirio (38:48.43)

Yeah, but that's what I mean like something to that

Kent Boucher (38:50.572)

You're gonna you're gonna you know or or new you know new companies that start to get built to provide the Electricity for these data centers and stuff like that great we we want to have but you need water to cool your your reactors that water coming out going into your Your facility is gonna have this terrible amount of nitrates in it. We expect when it leaves your facility These nitrates are down

You know like why can't we do something like that where and I think the data companies would be like We can afford that easily for one and two Great PR we helped fix Iowa's water quality issue one of the most talked about ecological problems in our country You know I just think that there's ways like that too that we can that where it's not just the users as far as The little guy the farmer or the big corporation that are tied to the water quality issue

but also these other giant entities that have deep pockets to help solve a big problem.

Nicolas Lirio (39:55.522)

Totally. I totally agree with that. I answering the question who pays for it. My answer is who benefits. So if I benefit from cleaner drinking water, then I need to pay for it. But the farmer benefits from being able to grow a specific kind of crop that they want to grow and have the practice they want to Great. Your benefit.

Kent Boucher (40:17.59)

So you just wanted me to say this exact thing that you're wanting.

Riley Rozendaal (40:20.312)

Just

Nicolas Lirio (40:21.526)

No, no, I just, I just wanted, just wanted you to have an answer for people because this is becoming the thing. And I wanted people to hear what they, what you thought specifically, what Kent voucher, cause people care about what can voucher things. And so I wanted you to.

Kent Boucher (40:35.7)

You're just trying to pick on me there. No, I don't know many other ways I could say that I think everyone that participates in the consuming the water should have as part of

Nicolas Lirio (40:44.802)

You're just grumpy because you just had ice cream and everybody knows Ken gets real. It's bad guys. Every time he has ice cream, gets real grumpy. No, that's not true. I really, I just want to hear from Ken Boucher's mouth because a lot of people, I say so many more things that people are like, well, yeah, Nicholas is saying the thing, but, but I think that whoever benefits should pay. And that includes

large agricultural companies that are going to benefit off the backs of farmers doing the work, doing practices a specific way. If bears going to sell roundup and we have to pay to get roundup out of our water or whatever, you know, then we're going to, whoever benefits needs to pay. Now, what percentage do they pay? It gets very tricky and I'm not smart enough to know somebody should there's

Kent Boucher (41:25.416)

Maybe we should work at whoever benefits and whoever capitalizes on.

Nicolas Lirio (41:30.27)

and capitalizes on because then you're kind of pulling away from.

Kent Boucher (41:33.39)

Because that's what I consider like the example of pesticides going into the water because they're not necessarily benefiting from the water but they are capitalizing on the fact that yeah, our chemical ends up in the water. So whoever gets to influence the water and whoever consumes the water.

Nicolas Lirio (41:55.298)

Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, I think that people, farmers specifically get a little heated about the topic because I think it presses on a pain point that is now in the light. Now that Zach Lane went on Tucker and then Sean Ryan, which has kind of also been all over social media about Iowa's farmers, that farmers are squeezed from two sides.

Yeah. And we were adding another squeeze to them. We're adding another expense. The difference for them and us is they can't set their price. Now, to be fair, they put themselves in that boat, right? Every time farmers push really hard for E 15 or any sort of government distortion on the marketplace, then they're giving up their freedom in the long run. um, and, but I feel for them where they feel, especially young farmers that weren't

weren't voting for things in the eighties, nineties and two thousands. And now they're squeezed in a system and they don't know where to go with it. And then we say, and by the way, you need to give up some of your land for buffer strips and you need to do this. I think we should do that. But I also understand that that would be very scary and painful for them. And maybe not even consciously, it might be a subconscious thing where they go, Whoa, Hey, Whoa, why are you just blaming farmers for this thing? Well, look,

Do farmers have a share of the blame? Absolutely. The whole population of Iowa has a share of the blame because we've propped up a system that has allowed nitrates last summer at a level of 20 milligrams or 20 parts per million in our in our water system for the Des Moines Water Works, which provides water.

Kent Boucher (43:38.786)

twice what the EPA recommendation is.

Nicolas Lirio (43:40.854)

Which is twice, which the EPA system is twice, probably what it should be. And in 1970, right before we went get big or big, get out, the measurements there were two to three, three parts per million. So now 20 isn't the regular for us, but it's not an anomaly. It's not like out of this world crazy for us.

Kent Boucher (43:53.646)

That's surprising.

Nicolas Lirio (44:05.87)

Right? What's regular is 11 or 12 and spending $16,000 a day at Des Moines Waterworks on the machine that cuts it to nine. Right. Which is still well above five parts per million. And so anyway, it's a hot topic. I've actually had two people reach out. One of them local, one of them not like, Hey, I think, I don't know if they were newer listens to the pod. You're going to talk about water quality and that stuff. And one of them specifically asked, who do you think should pay for it? So that was part of the reason I really went after it. Yeah. wasn't picking on you. I promise.

Kent Boucher (44:35.192)

Well, I felt like I was saying the same thing twice. But, you know, it is encouraging to hear that number from, I just would not have expected that. But it does kind of give you a time stamp on when this really started to become a major problem. But I think...

something that is a silver lining possibly in all of this, especially if we go the, mean, if it just, whether it's a buffer program or it's just simply thou shalt not plant within 50 yards of open water or something like that, right? Or apply fertilizer within 50 yards of a water source or something. Whatever that is.

I am hopeful that the significant decrease in supply will help lead the way to better prices for farmers. Yeah. because it is, you know, I was talking with a guy just recently and he works for a large farm in the area. And I mean, large enough to where there's a lot of guys that are employed by this one corn and bean operation to work there.

And they were talking about not putting nitrogen on their corn acres this year just because like it literally will not math out. Yeah, know, yeah, I'm sorry. Prices are so low. So farmers are really pinched right now and they are because of the get big or get out model. They are really stuck. It's a global market. They don't have very little influence as an individual as to how much China is going to buy. Yeah, you know.

Nicolas Lirio (46:21.01)

One of the scariest things, I think, to stare in the face of that we have stared in the face of.

Kent Boucher (46:28.11)

It's diesel costs diesel costs are going to be astronomical.

Nicolas Lirio (46:31.566)

You double your diesel cost and you were hoping to make $80,000 net this year, but your diesel cost went from 22 to $40,000 and you just cut out $18,000 of the dollars you were gonna take home, because that's not changing how much cargo is making. It's not changing how much bear's making. It's only changing that tiny little squeeze amount of your farm that you are gonna take home. I do think farmers are starting to wake up to it, but one of the scariest things,

think people are just starting to get there, just now starting to get there. Maybe it's time to get off the hamster wheel. This hamster wheel that's generating so much, it is generating billions and billions and billions of dollars of economic value and none of it is going into our hamster bowl. Maybe it's time to get off the wheel, you know?

Riley Rozendaal (47:18.976)

I think something that we're missing too in this argument of who pays for it too is farmers are proud of a lot of things, of how they produce crops, how they do what they do. What if you offer farmers the chance to, know, people are going after farmers right now saying, well, you're the reason that our water is dirty. What if we were to give farmers the ability

to cheaply test their water, to put something on their tile outlet that runs into the river that says, hey, look at, here's my numbers. I put a monitor on there for the growing season and here's how I did.

Nicolas Lirio (48:02.542)

But what gets measured gets fixed. I bet you're right. I bet farmers would start to take a little personal pride in how low their nitrate level could be.

Riley Rozendaal (48:10.69)

Well, the nitrate that you send down the river is incredibly pricey and it's just a net loss. if farmers are able to prove their numbers and they're interested in it, I know some people would say, okay, well, I don't have to prove anything to anybody, but if you're interested in knowing and there's a way for you to test, why not give them that tool?

Kent Boucher (48:18.594)

Yeah.

Kent Boucher (48:35.72)

I think it's a point. You I think another you just maybe you were intending to do this. I don't know. But you kind of identified another another water stakeholder, right? This again would be somebody who's capitalizing on the water. Tiling field tiling, as best as I can tell, is a pretty wild west way of making money. You know what I mean? There's I don't know of much if any like laws that there are around installing field tile.

And maybe there, you it's now, yeah, you can still tile fields, but you have to put a bioreactor at the end of every line you run. you know, somehow that becomes a, because we have in the- the infamous debate that I lost.

Nicolas Lirio (49:28.334)

Yeah, that's fair.

Kent Boucher (49:30.528)

Even if you had those buffer strips, if they're all tiled under straight to the creek, then we're not going to see much of a difference in in our nitrate. Yeah, problem. And so this is and so that's one other thing that one other quote unquote payer. And again, that doesn't necessarily show up as someone cutting a check. It shows up just in the fact that they are expected to provide a better product, a cleaner product, and they're expected to do less damage, which costs them money.

to achieve.

Nicolas Lirio (50:03.214)

On the data center thing, Zuck, if you're listening, I know you're big listener of this pod, I would be happy to try and set up, but here are the terms for Knoxville, Iowa. can't speak for Knoxville, but I'm going to. Here are our terms. You can set up on the Des Moines River, right nearby Knoxville, because that is not where we get our water. You can pay half of our water bill and our electricity bill for each household, and then you can have a little data center out there by the Des Moines.

Kent Boucher (50:29.056)

You take you take lower lower grid bills than you would cleaner water

Nicolas Lirio (50:36.342)

No, rather not still get it from the Jordan Aquifer. The nitrates level is mostly an issue if you get it from rivers. And so it's not an issue for Knoxville as much.

Kent Boucher (50:37.262)

would just

Kent Boucher (50:46.708)

Sure, but I mean, it all is connected to some degree. And I think it would just be a bigger lift for the state in general if we could just clean up our surface water.

Nicolas Lirio (51:05.07)

I'd take the lower half half electricity and half water. That's what I would do. You can't eliminate all of one of those things because then people will just get gluttonous and just like use an obscene amount of, know, but yeah. What would you take over by Pella?

Kent Boucher (51:21.582)

Well, my water comes from an aquifer as well, but I still, I don't know how much, this would be a good Larry question, but I'm sure some of that nitrate pollution does make it into our aquifers. Now, if it's a deep enough aquifer, it takes literally a thousand years for water to make its way down to those to recharge, but that's definitely not the case for all aquifers.

So I just think that as far as if you wanted to make Iowa a safer place to live, I think it would just be cleaning up the water. So if you could get that service from a data center, I think that you'd be dealing with the number one problem. Maybe not the number one problem, but a top three problem.

in Iowa that makes it a place that makes you question its livability.

Nicolas Lirio (52:22.483)

Interesting. Well, we've gone for a long time.

Kent Boucher (52:25.742)

Well, the thing is there's a lot of great things about living in Iowa, right? Like there's a reason why we don't just say yeah, you know what high cancer rates Let's throw the old stick with the bandana over our shoulder and and head on out of here There's a lot of good things. It's a it's one of the lowest cost of living States in our country. Yes. It's um, don't have to worry about like all the poisonous

things that want to sting you and bite you like a lot of the southern states have to. You don't have to worry about getting eaten by a grizzly when you're out walking your dog. It's a safe place from that standpoint.

Nicolas Lirio (53:06.702)

I mean, it's just really a great place.

Kent Boucher (53:09.61)

Well, and you can get away you can have there's a lot of rural living opportunities here that you don't have as much of like on the East Coast and So there's there's a lot of things that make it a good place to live and I think if we could deal with those You know Like those really bad few problems that we do have then man people would be real happy to come and live here. Yeah

Nicolas Lirio (53:33.742)

I totally agree. Well, everyone, when you're listening to this, I think we are two days out from our forum being posted and up there and excited. And our good friend Tabitha Panis is already working. She's helping with moderation and, and, content creation in terms of content like

Kent Boucher (53:54.508)

Excited for Nick's first article on the forum.

Nicolas Lirio (53:57.02)

man, I could just reuse one.

Kent Boucher (53:59.278)

Here's how you make a seven-year-old hoe weeds all day. Step one, take away their video games.

Nicolas Lirio (54:07.758)

Honestly, step one was just like, tell them to do it. Now a 12 year old, that is much harder. was much harder to get, but yeah, I, I'm excited for it. we will have updates for you can see on social media, speaking of social media, man, social media over the winter just sucks. It just sucks. You got to look at Kent clean and golden Alexander. We

Kent Boucher (54:29.62)

shoot those videos anymore.

Nicolas Lirio (54:32.32)

The flowers are on their way and we will have much more exciting social media stuff, but it is cool to kind of keep track of plants and where they're at in their growing season and what the farm looks like throughout the summer. but all right, that's enough about us. Go about your week. Good luck. Make sure you're, make sure you're hanging out with your family. We'll talk to you again next time.

Kent Boucher (54:53.867)

The water.