Johnathon Swanson (00:00.364) And you appreciate a farmer that's trying to diversify and bring in like multiple streams of income, but then they're just like, they're not their animals and they're just stuck in an illegal agreement that dictates what they're allowed to do and how they're going to do it. All right, that's recording. This is recording. go. Do you know anything when I started yet? Do know anything about us? I don't expect you to. Cool, my dad, we're so but we're near. We're past Newton about 20 minutes from here is where the farm is. When we sell the area at my I went to that school district, my dad started Prairie Farm in the 80s. He died of cancer a little nine months ago. Yeah. And so we grow prairie. Johnathon Swanson (00:24.034) No, nothing. Kent Boucher (00:33.71) Will Sawyer. Nicolas Lirio (00:48.396) Kent is the production manager. actually grows it. And so we sell for like buffer strip, CRP backyard pollinator, like all that. yeah, exactly. So, actually pull kind of like we do a lot of Polk County, you know, seed harvest and then selling the Johnathon Swanson (01:02.958) Yeah. Oh yeah, we know. Oh yeah, we're Dan. You know, probably talked to Angela. Yeah. I do a lot more with the plants. So Kelly's have been one we've usually always worked with. Don't they call her Kelly Jo? Yeah, I've only talked to her twice. So I usually talk with Angela, her sister. But she's not like out and about as much. met Kelly. Johnathon Swanson (01:24.064) Yeah, she's not Those are the ones like propping up the plant, the plug game of like gameplay. then for all of our urban programs, were like building up a lot of plugs and we liked the ones that they had. They do the job Alan Dan is a great company. have no complaints about them as a company. Everybody in the native seed industry is holding their breath wondering what will happen when Dan passes. Because he is kind of a classic, like he's in charge, even though he's like 87 or whatever. He is in charge. And I'm not here to say whether that's right or wrong. It would not be like even as competitors, it would be a terrible, terrible thing for us. if Alan Dan closed down and stopped doing natives. over the next 10 years, I'm honestly, I'm a little nervous about it. Yeah, because they produce about half of the wildflowers sold, maybe the US, but definitely the Midwest. Johnathon Swanson (02:16.972) And then I don't work with those but John Jetson. I know John. Yeah, I think he's getting close to retirement age too. You were good buds with John Judson. If you ever won a Prairie done well, he's probably my first pick. There's some of our conservation, but the true Blue Blood Prairie people, they're they they they name drop him all the time. Yeah, yep. He's got so much knowledge. He is the guy. He would have been he's a little younger than my dad. They then Dan Allen's a tiny bit older guy named John Ozenbaugh. Yeah, and he's he's out of it now he sold. Who else Carl Kurtz and Bill Bowman are kind of human first guard. Johnathon Swanson (02:46.146) Yeah, I've heard his name too. Kent Boucher (02:56.408) Buman? Buman. Man. B-U-M-A-N. always called a b- I got his contact from John Jetson. John Byte. I've heard lots of people say Buman. I've heard more. I think it's just this thing you inherited from your dad. But what did he have? Nicolas Lirio (03:11.63) I Nicolas Lirio (03:19.758) Okay, but they were kind of this early guard and I'm curious to see how transition goes. Yeah, because the companies so far that have transitioned successfully got bought. So they're either owned by private equity or there's a really big seed company that's buying other companies. I'd say Agracol did a nice job transitioning. yeah, you're right. Outta Wisconsin. Yeah, they did a really good job. Anyway. don't know enough about shooting star. So they did transition well, too. You're right there. So it was the guy mark his father-in-law was the was the guy who started it. Johnathon Swanson (03:58.638) But we've been dabbling in a prairie sod. Yeah. Minnesota native landscape. Oh And we brought down a couple of truckloads last year and like pretty impressed. Like we're to do some more, uh, some urban bioretention within this year, but like some, there's some sweet new stuff coming out. I'd love to see an Iowa, somebody in Iowa to get into that. Yeah. I bet Alan Dan will. Isn't it like unreal expensive per square foot? Johnathon Swanson (04:24.105) the same. but the trucking is what kills us. So, we were trying to, if you bring down like a semi load, it's like worth it. But, really wasn't terrible price. was shockingly. Yeah. That is interesting. Yeah, we we aren't in the greenhouse game just enough to do our own plugs. We would like to be. Yeah, we really would. I'm gonna do in our own greenhouse even because our plug demand between Polk County Conservation and Public Works and my team have grown so much. Yeah, we have horticulturists on staff. We do all of our own seed harvesting and things. So yeah, yeah, okay. Off off the record. I really like like Mahaska County, they reached out, hey, we grew a bunch of plugs and we sold them and we have a bunch of extra. Do you want to help us sell them? I feel very conflicted about public organizations doing that. Yeah, it's totally different. I mean, for you guys. Well, I mean, even for you guys, but you have you have public area that you're trying to manage, and that's where these plugs are going and stuff like that. But then. Nicolas Lirio (05:21.838) you know, the greenhouse down the street then can't sell them to you guys. And now you become kind of a closed circle. What are your thoughts on that? And I think it's a very legitimate concern and especially like we're getting really into the private lands game. We're helping urban residents and our cultural folks get plants, get seed. I think there's that need to empower like the private businesses to be a part of it. But at certain points like. we know that we're buying thousands of plants a year and we have the ability to do it ourselves. And like, to be honest, like, I think we're to need a little bit of both to just keep up, like, because we're also being forced to be more fiscally conservative and like we a lot of times are being told to do more with less. And so that's what's kind of pushing us to think about like, well, if we do this in five years, well, actually it'll pay for itself. And so I think there's merit to both sides. And the key is I think we just have to have those conversations to make sure we fully understand like these decisions before we make them and before we like jump in. Well, we should. should not steal your whole day. We should actually jump in a couple of housekeeping things. We'll have you do an intro here in a sec. You will need to be real close to the mic. You can move it towards you. yeah, when you're this, if you're like this, I'm going to say, Hey, could you lean in? You'll really want to. a little bit. Kent Boucher (06:30.414) trying not to touch this chord. And then the top has a touch screen. So we were interviewing Zach Lane and he had accidentally touched it 15 or 20 minutes in and it muted it. I was like, oh man, that was, that was a bummer. We had to restart that. The obviously you've got to be careful with your job, but we do love perspective. So if you're saying, Hey, I've got a lot of expertise. This is just my personal opinion. This is I think is going on. We'd love to hear that. I like don't touch it Nicolas Lirio (06:58.862) We're not here to gotcha. So if you, ask a question you don't want to answer or if you want something scratched out of the pot, just say it. Could I have you move that to that side? The reason is, is it's between you the camera and the camera might auto focus on it. And then we've got a really shiny, beautiful cup and your face is like blurry as can be. Anything I'm missing for the intro? Kent Boucher (07:23.564) Yeah, if we need to pause or something like that, just, you know, if you need a bathroom break or whatever. Yes, think one thing to share with you guys about me. So I don't want you guys know about me, but. My job has specialized in getting people to do stuff, right? And we specialize in going out, we build things, we put projects on the ground. But my personal upbringing, I'm from the East side of Des Moines, I'm from the city, I'm not a farm kid. I hunt, I fish, I recreate, and that's what got me into this world. And I've always drawn that line that when it comes to working with agriculture, I know more than enough to be dangerous, but where we have specialized in just how do we work with these people? How do we get people to partake in programs? How do we ramp stuff up? you might see when I get to questions where like when you get really deep, nitty gritty, I sometimes draw a line, like, Hey, I'm not, don't talk about like fertilizer application rates because that's not my area of expertise. But if you're like, want to build such a buffer, I know I've sat at everyone's table and talk about it, but like really important to know about me as a person. I've kind of drawn a line because I think it's real with farmers too. Like I don't pretend that I'm a farm. No, that's great. Kent Boucher (08:19.906) Yeah, you don't want to start talking shop and then find out that... Yeah, that corn head on there, I don't even know what that is. That's cool. She's not afraid to talk shop on stuff that they don't know a lot about. Excellent. It's all about confidence, know. It's got to sound good. Nicolas Lirio (08:34.913) Literally There's been some of the funniest moments I got it Our first ever podcast this is when Nick finally realized he needed to trust me We were going up there and it was Bob St. Pierre of pheasants forever. So the voice of pheasants forever has been for a long time, right? so it's kind of a you know, he was probably our first like big deal interview that we did and You're actually like... I've got a story. Kent Boucher (09:05.542) And Nick's like, tell me something about Bob, because Nick loves anime. He doesn't know anything about hunting, doesn't know. And he's got a degree in Bible and counseling. So this is like all foreign territory to him, right? So he's like, tell me about Bob. And I'm like, well, he's nice guy, obviously big into hunting, and he cares about conservation in the outdoors. He's a big Detroit. . Kent Boucher (09:34.84) Tigers fan. Nick's like, Troy Tigers. And he's like, yeah. And he's like, let me talk to Peyton. He was a guy working in our office. Peyton, tell me something about the Detroit Tigers. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to talk about the Tigers with Bob St. Pierre. Yeah. And by this point, you know, Nick's probably called them like the Detroit lions and everything else. Right. And, and so I'm like, Nick, don't do that. It's going to lose them. Yeah. You're going to heat. Peace. Kent Boucher (10:02.498) You're going to ask one question. You won't even know how to respond to his answer to your question. He's like, no, I'm trusting Peyton on this one. And so he gets in there and sure enough, he shoots it off on the podcast. Whatever Peyton told me wasn't true my, you're like, like the best start to it, you know, discussion. Yes, and so he four minutes into the vlog. Like it was pretty quick. We were kinda doing that like slow intro thing. Kent Boucher (10:28.686) Yeah. And Nick and I had not been working together for long, like a few weeks. Yeah. And so I was just like, and, and it just bombed and Nick goes, so Bob, tell me about the trade with so-and-so. And Bob's just like, That disturbed Ken. am I doing here? yeah. Kent Boucher (10:50.368) Yeah, you can see like, boy, I've spent seven hours every day reading about the Detroit Tigers and I just don't know what you're talking about. I really There's been a couple others too. Western mountains He started talking about this this hunting select well Ryan Callahan for meat eater. yeah, so we know Ryan and It nicks on the phone with a customer. He's like, yeah, you should do to our podcast. We had Ryan Callahan on there He loves to hunt, you know Well way out there in the the Western mountains out there What actually happened was I had a brain, I know that the two mountain ranges are smoky and rocky, right? But I was like, I brain farted and I was like, wait, is it the smoke or the rock mountains? And I was like, Oh, and then the Western mountain, you know, I'm talking about, the dude just roll. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The great divide. Johnathon Swanson (11:41.804) Mountain. Johnathon Swanson (11:49.198) The big ones man, I happen to be in the office. Like riding good bus staff. You was losing it. You know, he's down there in the Western Mountains. Johnathon Swanson (12:02.944) Okay. and just come in strong, kill this credibility, and dwell. I think they got tigers out there in the western mountains. People like hunting tigers. All right, all right, we got to respect this man's time. I have I'll have you do an intro. So what you'll do is you'll look at that camera, give it a beat. You'll say your name, your title. And this is the Prairie Farm podcast. And then give it a beat a minute as well. And you'll look in the camera and then we'll we can start. Awesome. My name is John Swanson, water resource supervisor with Polk County and this is the Prairie... I got it wrong. are not... ...Podcast. Yes. I should have prepped before the meeting. My name is John Swanson. I'm a water resources supervisor with Polk County, Iowa and this is the Prairie Farm Podcast. Nicolas Lirio (12:40.514) You Very good. Nicolas Lirio (12:53.912) That was perfect. okay. Perfect. I got our icebreaker question. Let's this thing going. Alright John, how? So first of all, we walked in. I'm a little offended you thought I was Nicholas. I know that's how shocked were you to find out that Nicholas was this super tall Filipino guy? Johnathon Swanson (13:14.988) Yet incredibly shocked, like not the Iowa norm. There's, there's too many old white guys around and I was like, look at this, some diversity in the office. like it. I'm from Des Moines. So like I was comfortable though. Yeah, well, I mean you didn't skip a beat but yeah can't walk through the door first Nicholas I was ready. I prepped the front desk. I was like some folks coming in. They probably have some cameras. I don't really know. Yeah, I'm doing a podcast or like you're doing what Mike don't worry about it. We'll be in the conference room. I hear good things. I don't really know what we're talking about. I heard Prairie was in the name. I like, like Prairie. We're cool, cool people do podcasts. Yep. Nicolas Lirio (13:46.369) my goodness, dude, we're going to be friends. I've we were talking about this off camera, but I was like, man, this guy has got the vibe of an entrepreneur, but he looks like. He also has the vibe of a fun hang so I'm excited I'm excited for this concert or this conservation this conversation about conservation You hang out with friends anymore now that you have you have three kids Uh, not as much. I don't know. find ways that I'm thinking like doing stuff with the kids. I got three daughters. We like to, I still like to hunt fish. I love canoeing rivers. That's like my thing. Oh yeah. So I got a close group and the thing is we were, I believe like getting some adventure in your life. so I still find ways to go out. Now the kids are all trying to get into it I'm like loving it. So it's been, that's cool. Loving to do stuff outside, but when your kids love it too, and they get, I mean, it's like a whole new realm. So friends and the kids are marrying together and I'm like, I'm loving it right now. That's great. That's Along the lines of being a fun hang, there was a time when we had a podcast with a guy who's pretty serious minded. But I just had this vibe before we went into it. And I think we actually made a bet about this. I said, I won't mention their name, but I said, I bet you so-and-so has an opinion on fried pickles versus french fries. And Nick's like, no, he doesn't. He's not going to care about that. Nicolas Lirio (15:04.332) Very intelligent, very serious. Yeah, you're we have to break the ice. Yeah Nicolas Lirio (15:12.851) He like slid it in real smooth, did. Yeah. He had a strong opinion on it. And so, and so then we knew like this guy would be a fun hangout. Very professional question. Nicolas Lirio (15:21.998) Yeah, well look there's in some of our interviews incredible interviews and you leave and you're like That was a good two-hour interaction and I'm glad it was a two-hour interaction You know what mean? And a lot of them we text we call we hang out with them Some of them it's like you're professional you do what you do. I'm grateful for you over there This was a good decision after all. Johnathon Swanson (15:43.086) I'm on a mission to have real meetings in life. And I tell you, there's a lot of different folks that like, just want to show up, do their business, maybe not even do that much business. And then like, go back to office. And I'm like, we're feeling the vibes one second into the meeting. Like, all right, we're going to have real talks today. like, those of you might be a little uncomfortable, but there's like the, I call it the uncomfortable is like, that's, we're growing together. We're going to, we're going to, we're going have some real talk and like people tend to appreciate it. And just like, let's have some real conversations. Yeah. Well, shout out to Katie Hartman at the great outdoors foundation for connecting us. That was really cool. I won't lie. I just, the way she described you, my, she did not say old. My brain immediately went cause she's like, he's the guy, he's got all the experience, he knows this stuff. And I was like, this dude's 72. He's been here for 40 years. And I was not, I was not ready for you. I got the gray hair, which I like, I'm like bringing the wisdom. Yeah. You talk to me like this guy's not that, is he really the professional that I hear? that's 2009. So I'm even younger than I bet you guys thought I was. What year did you graduate high school? Kent Boucher (16:42.894) Man, he is so young. That is just so young. I graduated in 08. That is just very easy. He's the prime of his life. That's a Nicolas Lirio (16:59.392) We're about to ask this man what the steel will fly Yeah, that's what was like. We better get this out early. I'm not kidding I was hiding my age whenever I hire people because I finally hired someone younger than me because I was like I need to like gain the respect right when you get cuz all my staff I'm like and finally they're like we're literally all older than you John I was like I know but I got the wisdom in the gray hair All right, we got a good we got a good wisdom question for you and it's actually Kent's but Kent came up with this question and I think it's brilliant if the governor race talking a lot about water quality and let's say best case scenario they want to do something about it the governor Well, even let's fully paint it out because there's hope right now, right? have not not only is there a governor there's a gubernatorial election coming up, but it's the first time in a long time that there's not an incumbent candidate and so it feels like it's more open than ever and it feels like we have the pull of public opinion behind this issue water quality and it's it's sistered with And I think the latest report that came out shows that that's a fair, it's a fair pairing. It's sistered with our cancer rates and Iowans for the first time since I've been paying attention, which is not that long because I'm not that old, seems like the, the populace is willing to push for that change. Johnathon Swanson (18:23.758) Yeah, right. Kent Boucher (18:32.302) and accept that change and we also have our highest elected office in our state open for election. But it seems almost too just so. I mean. I don't want to talk people out of being optimistic. I don't want to talk myself out of being optimistic. But what really has to happen if we're going to have meaningful, noticeable change? Let's assume that whoever gets elected in the office wants the change and is willing to act on it. So the governor administration will go along with it. What else has to change? It's such a meaningful question and it's a hard question because it's a hard fix. And the reality when I talk to folks about conservation and water quality, you have to face the reality that there's no silver bullet. And I can tell you there, cause I've done every practice you can do. There's no thing you can build. There's no change in farming technique that will single-handedly fix our issues in Iowa. It's going to take a mixed bag and it's going to take a lot of everything to be real and also tell people. what it would take it is it will take a lot of thinking outside the box. it would take more than just money because there's actually a lot of money being pumped into water quality right now. And it's going to take new techniques and new methods for delivering conservation. And an example of this is we can, we can learn from our history. And if you rewind a hundred years ago, think you're, you're here in Iowa, it's 1930 and there is massive amounts of wind erosion. The dust bowl was happening and literally our treasure topsoil is just blowing away and it's filling houses with a foot of soil. Johnathon Swanson (20:05.856) And the government for the first time was like, wow, we got to work with farmers to fix this issue. And the first ever government programs to put conservation on the ground, to work on reduced tillage, to work on putting windrows in, to work on not tearing out all the trees. And it took us 60, 70, 80 years of using those techniques. And we've really, really fixed and made the dust was not happening nearly to the extent it was. Well, then you fast forward to now that the topics of now are bacteria, nitrates. A lot these things, they're really, like we've really understand these just in the last 10, 20 years. And now we cannot use the same techniques we were using a hundred years ago for the dust bowl. They do not apply to these new things. So that's where it's like everything we've learned the last decade, my team about how do we actually make a difference is you can't be a government bureaucrat that just sets programmatic or you have to go out and really talk to people and ask questions. And I tell the most, and I call it like, it's the big question and you can only ask this question in like a safe space. you sit down with the landowner farmer and you say, what would it take to get you to do these conservation practices? And if you can get people to give you real answers, those are what you have to do to set your program requirements. And now what you need now is government support to change programs. The governments don't tend to change quickly. But what's exciting right now is all these, everyone's talking about water quality from the Polk County Board of Supervisor race to the governor race. That's very promising because it's going to take flexibility. It's going to take governments being willing to try. different and new things and then putting money behind it and like we're gonna fail but we gotta keep pushing the envelope. What did the farmer say? Johnathon Swanson (21:40.154) That's what that's what probably gives me the most hope right now is when you do it right and you figure out what it actually takes and a lot of times it's it's just a route of how do you make conservation work with their farm with their like they're all real people they're trying to get their kids to soccer practice at night they probably have another job how do you make conservation work for their life and their farm and we have some big successes under us now or we sit at a kitchen table and time and time again we presented our option they're like I would love to do this let's do it let's do it right now and then next thing you know people start coming to us and that's like the biggest indicator for success is a good program. It's like, yeah, you've been working with all my neighbors. What's your deal? Then they actually call us and we don't like the government, not the days of the government knocking on your door and like, hi, I'm John. I'm with the government. I'm here to help you farm better. Like that is not a rescue success because success. So breaking through that, like you start seeing these indicators and like in Polk County and some of our neighboring areas, we are starting to see some amazing indicators. But now it's like for me, it's like, all right. We gotta do it 50 times more, because we still got a big issue. Why are the farmers reaching out to you? What change? Yeah, well changes so to be honest we have program called the Batch and Build and the Batch and Build it's changed every way that I think about doing private lands conservation right so putting conservation on private lands because Johnathon Swanson (22:54.86) first 10 years of my career, we were like, we're doing the same dust bowl era way where Nick, we'd come to your farm. We're like, Nick, we want to, we want to treat all your tile outlets to reduce your nitrates. They're carrying nitrates downstream. And you'd be like, all right, well, what do we do? We're going to install these saturated buffers and by-ratchets. They are their underground filter systems, kind of like a septic system filtration. And it's going to naturally remove those, those nitrates and it's, it's underground. You don't have to do really no maintenance to it. It's just going to sit there. And like, if you just have 30 foot of buffer space, we don't hit it. Yeah. careful your mic make sure you. Well I was thinking more just leave it yeah. And so I go to you and I'm like, all right. And you're like, all right, that sounds pretty good. And in fact, Nick, we're going to cover all the costs. And you're like, oh, that's a pretty good deal. And like, awesome. Well, these are kind of new practices. going to take us about a year to design one. And you're like, oh, that kind of sucks. And you're like, oh. And then you're like, what is it going to fix anything on my farm? I'm like, no, it's just going to make the water cleaner for folks downstream. All right. Well, I guess I'm still down to help people. You're like, awesome. So year goes by, we come back with your design. like, all right, Nick, I need you to go find a contractor because we're going to cover all the costs. But I need you to hire the contractor. you front the money and then in three to six months, we'll reimburse you the money. And you're like, all right. So if you can find a contractor and if you confront the money and then you oversee construction and we come out and check on it, if you make it through all those steps and then, at the end of the year, we gave you five grand to install this. We're also going to 10 99. You actually have to pay taxes on all that. What that equates to is people weren't making it to the finish line. And that conversation is different. If you're, if your soil is eroding away and we're going to help you and maybe even just split the cost. . Johnathon Swanson (24:23.906) So then what changed was we're the technical experts. So we're like, Nick, listen, we've targeted your farm. We know what'll work and we're gonna work with you and all your neighbors at the same time. We're gonna come in and if you just give us permission, we just like to come out and survey, see what works. We'll install all these at the same time. We'll hire the contractor. We're the professional. We'll make sure it gets in and to be honest, we're gonna tear your field up a little bit, but when we leave, we're gonna walk with you and make sure we get it all back to functional and working again. And we're going to move on and we're going to go on to the next farm. And it's just easy. And it's an easy button for conservation. I love this. want to play a little devil's advocate here because I do agree with this. I won't be able to know personally. I think that's a good program, a good way to do it. If you went to 3M and 3M was poisoning, let's say 3M was poisoning our water. Crazy idea. Specific. Well, cause 3M is in my town, Knoxville. And so you go to 3M and they are dumping stuff into the water and you say, Hey, 3M. Why you gotta name a company? Nicolas Lirio (25:24.57) We don't like this. We don't like the water. So here's what we're going to do as a public. We're going to clean the water coming out of your factory going into the river and we're all going to pay for it together. You don't have to worry about it. We'll take care of the contractors. You just keep making your money, right? Yep. Doesn't that feel kind of like the same thing? So think about it this way. you're a farm and maybe I go to, I go to your farm again, Nick, and you're like, Hey, I, I'm, I'm a no-tiller. I have buffers in place. I've worked with my local NRCS office. I've done all this conservation and like you've done what you've been taught and you've, you've changed the rhetoric of your family and like you've brought, you've worked with your dad to change your farming techniques. Yeah. Which is a tough thing to do. you're like, that's how I've drink out of that tile at my whole, that's crystal clear water. There is an education aspect of it that It's different than when you see soil washing off your field or you see soil that you've applied manure and you see it washing off your field. That's different than nitrates. For decades, everyone thought that crystal clear water was clean. doesn't not, there's an educational aspect of it and you're in a lot of it is also natural processes. So those tile is really in many cases required to get our productivity in our fields. And with that, we see a naturally, what we call like a naturally leaky system. So it's not only like, In many cases, not even what you're putting on your field, but it's natural leaching of nitrates out of your dark, rich Iowa soils in North central Iowa. So many cases, a lot of these guys they've done, they've put, they've ponied the buck. They've done lots of stuff. They admit their career, but they're missing this piece and that's where this stuff's new to them. So one, you can say there's an education aspect and then there is like natural processes too. So it just makes the conversation really complicated. And then if you layer onto like, How do you even like, do they even know what a saturated buffer is? And that's where like, I don't know that it's the end all game, but for now it is if nobody's installing these. So in like the first six years of my career, we only installed five. And one of my watersheds, our goal was to do a hundred. Like we're not getting it. the, didn't even know how to install them. didn't, we can't take a year to design one. We got to design one in six weeks and be done with it move on. We got to end if we build 20, like there's efficiencies to government. So it's just like, if we build a road in front of someone's house, like we don't generally like go to every person on that road and be like, Hey, Johnathon Swanson (27:32.782) Homeowner, your section of road, like our mind says, how do we treat water quality like a public improvement? And my job as a conservationist is like, I don't set the rules. And so right now, all I know is we got to treat every tile line. So my job as a conservationist is treat every tile in my county. Now, when the rules change, then we will change what the rules, but right now the rules we're given is it's a voluntary system and the only way we're going to make a difference. And I know from sitting across the table with me, these folks like, well, they were doing great stuff. but they're missing some pieces of it. And usually it's tied right to those nitrates. Like they need to understand more and they need to understand also too about there are things that they are doing with their, how they farm that also impacts it. And so that's where it's like buried in this education. And it's just the government again saying, Hey, we're here to teach you. I'm going to, I'm going to have you come to this field day. Like nobody comes to the field day. So it's just, how do you keep that conversation going? And for me, like at the end of the day, we have to treat the water and it's not my job to change the rules. So if the rules get changed, then it'll be. Say the world does get changed and they're required to treat every tile. Who's going to design that? Who's going to, are there enough contractors, do contractors even know how to install that? So if nothing else, we are setting the stage for mass production of conservation practices, which will like, there has to be that technical assistance side of it. If you could snap your finger and put one conservation practice into place anywhere on farmers on their tile, saturated buffers, more money somewhere. If you could snap your fingers and change one thing, what would you change? So on the ag landscape, I would snap my fingers and I would put buffers on every stream and I would put saturated buffers or birectors underneath those. Because a buffer itself is going to tackle a lot of the surface runoff. A buffer by itself is not going to tackle the subsurface, the tile drainage. It's a two-part system. And that's why if a farm already has buffers, we're like 75 % of the way there. We just got to finish the functionality of that buffer. you can't do a saturated buffer if you don't have 30 foot of grass. then later on, don't forget about habitat. So we've really degraded the Iowa system. Johnathon Swanson (29:26.114) We're like, enjoy wildlife. And so buffers with a practice of Teresa Talas, I should have buffered together, is probably my number one. And if we just had that on every stream, I guarantee we would make a big jump in the right direction. We haven't got to wetlands are probably my favorite single practice, but there's pros and cons of those. But wetlands are like probably my number two. Yeah, but I mean, wetlands, it feels less doable to have a huge, you know, huge mosaic of wetlands across Iowa in terms of changing the public's mind and taking. wetlands to me the the wetland practice is almost a different mind shift it's where you're almost waving the white flag I'm like look we all know that ground shouldn't be farmed and let's restore it to what it's natural function is But aren't wetlands like really productive for farming? Well, they can be if you drain them. But some of that anaerobic matter that's lining the bottom of a pond or the bottom of a wet area is also not very productive, Nicolas Lirio (30:21.88) That's the **** I'm saying. Nicolas Lirio (30:35.062) And I'm not I'm not saying we should do it. I'm just saying you were saying everyone thinks, we definitely shouldn't farm this. But I think some farmers are like, well, this used to be a wetland and it's like 230 bushel an acre corn. So yeah, I mean that mindset. I mean, yes, but there's also wetlands where they flood out every year, you know what I mean? So you can have two good years of farming off it and then year three it's a total. Well, it's not that big of a deal because other people pay the crop insurance. Yeah. Those are all... So let me give you the pitch of my wetland. So the thing about... So you have... So when I say we're building a wetland. Now imagine we're building a pond dam. Nicolas Lirio (31:06.648) Yeah, yeah, sell me. Johnathon Swanson (31:14.54) that just has shallow water above it. So it's like a construction. We're not finding wet spots and putting water back on it. We're saying we're finding concentrations of the right amount of water, the most polluted water, and we're plopping a built wetland that is manmade to treat the water. So when I, any given county, they only have so many of sites, but my ideal site, right, we have one to 5,000 acres draining to a corner of a field. That corner of the field is our it happens also be the wet corner of field and they probably quit farming years ago. So it's just overgrown in willows and we have this water just rushing. And so there's thousands of acres on this one point and all those tile outlets, all like dozens and dozens of tile. In fact, this one well and could equate to 50 saturated buffers, one well and. And so we come in and we target that spot and that wetland has to be half to 2 % of the drainage area. So if it's a hundred acres, a half acre wetland can treat a hundred acres. And so you scale that up. So we built a 50 acre wetland and that can treat your thousands of acres. And it's on the corner of the school. And now we come and we build that dam and now we've treated that entire watershed. We've also created a micro chasm of everything Iowa used to be. You build and all the birds come back, all the things come back. It's in that corner of the field that is not competing with row crop. Because if you want to have a losing battle with Iowa farmers, try and take their good row crop and put it in the wetland. So if you can find, maximize your drainage area, minimize your fight with good crop land, and then you can layer on all those habitat stuff and water quality. And then we can do a multi-stage outlet that also reduces flooding impacts downstream. So we can tackle habitat, water quality, and flood control all in one spot. And now I don't have to worry about working with all those 20 farmers because we tackled it all in this one spot. Now again, that's a tool. And they don't work everywhere. is if you find the right spot. Kent Boucher (32:52.558) That works with our Iowa Wetland Mitigation Bank or whatever, So that's a whole nother world of, and in fact, they're usually like, so, yeah, I know. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And so, Paul, yeah, I've known Kevin for, since day one, he was a commissioner in Boone County when I was working on the big creek. And, and he's a great consultant. So he works in the private sector and we bring, I've had him help us do watershed plans. He's big in the ag mitigation banking now. And, the negative of wetlands is red tape. And so does like, Yeah, do you know Kevin Griggs? the pod here in a couple weeks I think. Johnathon Swanson (33:26.998) We tell every like two years of us working through design and permitting. It's like the government at its weakest is all this. But mitigation. It's crazy. like the difficulties of us just trying to. You are the government at its strongest. mean, I really enjoyed listening. I would tell you, love Orofobo County. It's like the perfect level of government for me. Cause like literally my board of supervisors, they have told me like, John, go make a difference. Here's money, freedom. We know that there's going be failures, but find successes and then double down. And then we keep doing that. And it's again, we're in this nice spot. It's unique. How do you engage county governments? Cause we're like, it's this nice, you're not so big, but you're big enough to make a difference. And so, So mitigation, like I think this is like a little bit of urban analogy, but you're a Walmart and you want to build a parking lot. Okay. Not to name drop one organization, but we all, yeah. Big parking lots. Yeah. Right. Yeah. This is not, they're not going to like this story, but they built a, a two acre parking lot and there was a half acre of wetland there. Now that's bad. They destroyed that wetland. So they are now required to compensate the land for that wetland loss. So they have to go to a Walmart a bunch. Johnathon Swanson (34:35.585) purchase a mitigation credit. And so they hurt one wetland, they have to go pay for a one eight, like double the amount of wetland to be built somewhere else to compensate. And so the same thing goes for agriculture. If you go like tile an area that's never been tiled, even if it's very degraded, that is a wetland. So it has wetland signatures. You now have to go pay to compensate because if you want to hurt that well, and you're going to have to help a wetland somewhere else. And we used to be like, well, Walmart can build a little wetland right here. And so Walmart's own and maintain wetlands. That answer is no. Instead, like so now it's just like counting like poll counting. We have the biggest mitigation bank in the state. So we have 200 acres of wetlands that we have built and then folks pay into us and it basically recoups our costs for restoring those wetlands. It's really complicated. But the problem is reality too here. So I want to build a wetland. If I'm building a wetland, this manmade wetland on top of a degraded farm wetland. Are we destroying that wetland? Well, in some government's eyes, you are. And so I could have to pay mitigation for a wetland by building a wetland. That's the most circular thing I've ever said. So again, that's red tape. that's, again, change that has to happen from the top down. We need to look for avenues to simplify and make conservation easier when we talk about those big things we can do. So wetlands technical here. What percentage of nitrates are you hoping to pull out of the water from when it enters the wetlands when it leaves? Yeah, please don't quote me this, but I know again, I know enough to be, I'm not a scientist. I'm a guy, I'm a, I'm a social, I'm over here to get, how do I get people to do something? Nicolas Lirio (36:01.134) You know, Dr. Larry Weber. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's a friend of ours and he is a scientist. So what do we have about that? Yeah, we're supposed to go see him in like a month. Larry will be like, John's a guy. I like that guy. And he'll probably be like, those numbers are wrong. He's got some wild stories too. Have you heard about his, Elkhans out in Idaho? No, I have not. took his two children over a waterfall. Dude, that's what I'm talking about. That's why I try to friend over on social media, because I love seeing people in my... I hate... You just see the professional side of them, and to understand... You gotta see the other side of them. Kent Boucher (36:32.936) he's a ton of fun. So I'd like, so we do a well and I'd say we should expect for that several thousand acres coming out, 60 % reduction. And like if I do a saturated buffer, the number they say is 55. Well, with all the monitoring we've done, we've seen up to a 90 % reduction for saturated buffers, like buyer actor, about the same native of a buyer actor, you got to dig up the wood chips in 10 to 15 years, that sucks because the wood chips all together. Saturated buffer, were. about that, surely there's long-term maintenance on. Yeah, so we've actually recharged our first ones. We've done it. It turns out it was easier than I thought it would be and we already have relations, but it's just a... put like a septic lid up on the surface where you just pop the edge Nicolas Lirio (37:08.462) and dig it all up. So we have to scrape off like two foot of soil you got to dig out the real new which is Yeah, but for A person with an excavator is like, that's like a half days of work. That's the truth like some of the stuff it just seems like it ain't that big a deal though. Yeah, but The thing that I was very anti-bio-rect as a person who's maybe installed more barators than anybody in the world like they've grown on me though because they can filter the water about twice the speed of a saturated buffer so they can handle bigger drainage areas so they shorter life but they can they have the right application that's Nicolas Lirio (37:37.302) and like flooding. imagine they help more with like really quick rains or something like They do. They provide that pulse control and they push the water through it. the expired wood chips in there? Are those babies just like hot with nitrate when you pull them out? Like you take one look at them and you get eye cancer or something? So what's interesting is Can't you said anaerobic? was impressed with that. I'll point for you. So like the wetlands, it's actually the muck in the bottom of the shallow. That's provided an anaerobic environment where bacteria grows. The bacteria again, getting too sciency for me, my limits, the bacteria eats the nitrates or releases nitrogen gas boom, wind, saturated buffers. They use black out topsoil where that same bacteria lives. Boom. It's doing this thing. You're pushing the water through the bacteria, wood chips, high in carbon, just like IOTOPSOIL, just like the pond muck. Kent Boucher (37:56.974) I used to be a biology teacher. Johnathon Swanson (38:22.658) The wood chips is now the media that the bacteria grows in. The bacteria is literally eating up those nitrates since releasing is a harmless. Yeah. So you're all about putting nitrate water into the proper environment where bacteria can do what it naturally does. So the problem is just those chips are so broken down by the bacteria and decay. Correct. So we just spread them in the field. They're like just nice organic matter and we just got to put in fresh carbon for the bacteria to grow. That makes sense. That's interesting because you know, we talk about carbon. we don't want carbon in the ground. We don't want it in the air. But the nitrates, we want it to be, we want nitrates to turn into nitrogen, which we want. We want it in the air. Kent Boucher (38:57.934) the main element in our atmosphere. And it took me a long time to make this connection, but so I'd always heard and I love using like wetlands or like the nature's natural kidney provides natural filtration and all these like even like cover crops, saturated forest, bioreactors, they're all mimicking what wetlands do by providing anaerobic environment for bacteria to grow in. They're all using the same scientific technique. And it's just about how can you apply them, put dirty water into this environment, clean it, let it pass through, be clean, go downstream. I, you talk very fast, so I might've missed it and that's not a problem. Please keep talking fast. do you know like a percentage roughly of wetland? Like what nitrates that it pulls out? Yes, I think in the Iodine reduction strategy, the safe number is like 60%. It's in the 50 to 60 % range. But bigger drainage areas, it's like, you have other practices that have higher percentage, but they can hand away less water. again, that's where, so none of these practices say 100%, there is not one. And a lot of times, was, sometimes like, Part of the problem is we just gotta quit putting so much nitrogen down in our soil. Johnathon Swanson (40:01.198) Or putting the appropriate amount down and knowing that we're also, if you think from Des Moines North, wet, heavy black soils, a lot of natural high nitrate loads come out of that. We've become very dependent on tile because corn sorbians don't like wet feet and you lower the water table, your yields go up. And so with this tile is going in. Now we have a natural leaky system that now has a way to go right into that tile and go downstream. And it can be exactly. That nitrate would already naturally be existing there in elevated levels because the prairie that would have once stood on all that soil 200 years ago handled that handled that nitrogen better, sequestered it better, used it better than Well, and the water wasn't leaving as fast, If you if you could get rid of laying nitrogen down for fertilizer or get rid of the level of tiling that we have, which one would you get rid of? 100 % all those things. Johnathon Swanson (40:55.586) I probably, in my personal opinion, I probably get rid of the tiling, because the tiling's providing the avenue for it to move faster and not have to work its way through all those natural processes and soils. That can do the work for us. Are you familiar with barn talk? It's probably the biggest Iowa podcast and they're, they're great. They, I really enjoy them. They, they, the dad said recently on a podcast that there's only two ways for farmers to, improve their, efficiency and make more profit these days. It's storage. So you're getting better at marketing and you can choose when you sell it and, tiling. Everything else, better machinery, all this stuff doesn't actually ROI, but those do. And so when farmers have extra money, they have two options and one of them is tiling. And he's like, I think that's part of the reason we see so much tile going in. But I am concerned and Kenton has brought up really good points. Like we're breaking the water cycle. You ship all your water out of here. And then, and now Dr. Larry Weber, I think it was him who said we actually get most of our water from like an updraft from the Gulf, which was very interesting to me. And so that, yep, that quelled my worries, but I'm still a little worried about how much we just ship water out of here as quickly as possible. Our precipitation. Yeah. Johnathon Swanson (42:10.926) And you think about it. I was in my incremental improvements like we have to be seen making change that makes and so one of things I want like I'm on a mission to do it is so I know all these Tyler's because we're the same guys I hired in soft 50 saturated buffers and they're good and they're their businessmen there they're on they're very good at what they do and They know how to install these and they know how to design them on a napkin and they will work And so I'm like every time we put in tile what a better time to just put in the filtration system So just like you put in a septic like you build a house your water system your poop doesn't dump around the street. The septic is installed with the house. We have to get to a point where every foot of tile that goes in is also being installed with a practice. And now I've failed the last two years to do that and partialize because, the contractor actually calls us. They're hey, I talked to this landowner and they'd be down. Like what a perfect way to interact. And I'm like, sweet. And they're like, well, we're going to do it in two months. And I'm like, Well, man, how can we design faster than that? then if you install a practice, it has to go through proper design review approvals through more government processes. And I'm like, I can't get it designed fast enough, even though I know, because we've installed hundreds of these, we could just do a napkin and it will work. So that's, again, we have to figure out, because that's how it should be. If you're going to put it in, you have to mitigate it. Just like you heard it well, you've got to mitigate it or avoid it completely. If you would put in tile, you should mitigate at the same time. And again, that's not a cure-all, but that's certainly a good incremental improvement. Well, and you think it would almost be better for the tile, the guys laying the tile to have one more product to sell part of their kit, you know, that they're that you're buying when you you have it put in. I wonder how much rogue tile there is functional rogue tile in in Iowa. I invented that term as like an industry standard. Yeah, just because like when I live on my family farm, it's been in the family since 1927. And I know there's old. Bro Kent Boucher (43:53.038) clay tile. There's a lot of that's the answer. And, you know, right now my grandfather's 89. If I had to say, hey, grandpa, where are the tile lines on this farm? He would probably know where most of them were. Yeah. But once he's gone, I'm the next person to know the most about the farm. I have no idea. And so you got to think that that's happened. Well, first of all, it's unusual to have an 89 year old grandfather, right? Yeah, and so you got to figure there's a lot of families that are already one two generations away from knowing where this tile was put so even if we wanted to put a a bioreactor at the end of every tile line, I Mean, are we still gonna have great job? We got 50 % of the tile. I have no idea where the other stuff That's like a great point. And I'd say we're already there. Cause I can tell you from talking with dozens of farmers, maybe 10 % have a good idea of where all their tile is. Like some of that generational knowledge is already gone. And we also, Joe is a joke. It's a painful joke, but we spend a year getting all these projects on it. We go out every time we're digging a hole in a field, expect to find tile you didn't know were there. Even like we walk every stream and we flag every tile and we still miss tile. And so like even if say right now, we're like, everyone has to treat every tile. we have no idea where they are. like you're gonna have to someone goes out and they find every tile. Like that's a real workload. We spend dozens of hours every spring walking streams and finding tile that's after we get permission from landowners. And so again, it's just not simple. And like you gotta be ready for those changes or like right now we can get people to wanna work with us, but now it's like, okay. First step is we're gonna go, we're gonna walk the field, we're gonna find every tile, we're have trained professionals who know how to find tile. And then we're gonna survey the tile. And it used to take us four hours to survey a tile, we have it down to 45 minutes. And so again, now how do you train more people to be able to do that? Maximize efficiencies. If people are willing to or they have to work with you, are you ready to help them? Kent Boucher (45:47.436) I think what we're identifying here is a potential industry if somebody wanted to develop that skill for, you know, I know there's technology too that people use like LIDAR and stuff to be able to, you know, you can an X-ray around? Yeah, some kind of. for the ground. it were to it should be pretty easy because you should be able to figure out where the water's streaming quickly. Unless the stream comes up and then they're all under water. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, I mean it's amazing. I do a lot of shed hunting and I get on all kinds of you know permission on all kinds of farms to go walking It's amazing the old tile you see just sticking up Yeah, it's like I wonder if this guy even knows this is Johnathon Swanson (46:23.34) it's everywhere. Hand dug a hundred years ago. That's insane. They're really hand digging them. That's what Ted Corrigan was saying. So we interviewed him a couple of years ago and he was like, we weren't asking people to not tile in Northwest Iowa. We were just asking for some sort of permit system where, they were having these 48 inch giant tile lines that basically yeah. They had those are you talking about the ones that went straight to the aquifer where those well that was a drainage Nicolas Lirio (46:49.666) That was another thing, but these were like, would tie, they would put all these farmers tiles together. And then they had this mega 48 inch tile that was dumped into the river. And he's like, it looks clean, but then you measure it for nitrates and it's like 40 parts per million. And, and he's like, I just wanted to permit on those things. You know. And so, okay. I, I'm going to shift a little bit and let's Kent, you had something on this. You might not know anything, but I want to, I want to poke you on this in case you do. You guys have some data centers going. And there is, um, I obviously the public narrative is that it will use all your water and it will destroy the water industry in the area. And then I've also heard people on a podcast that are, Yep. And, I've heard people who are very understand the technology technically very well. Like they've designed these things on podcasts say, no, it's all, uh, cycled water. It's not actually an issue. Right. Do you even, do you know enough to actually explain? up your lecture. Nicolas Lirio (47:48.824) You don't, not necessarily the details, will, would it affect Polk County's water? that, it going to affect it greatly? So I've been on the sidelines a little bit learning like many other folks. And I've also been in some negotiations with some of these data centers who are looking, similarly to mitigation, trying to offset their negative impacts, which has made me feel better. Because I think the recycling of water is a real thing. So it's not as simple as they cool their stuff and then they put it back in. No, that's going offsite and getting treated now. So from my interactions with them, they're trying to identify projects that they can find water and like, put it back down into the ground that otherwise would just be running off. And so I've been feeling better about the more like, and to work with them, you have to go through rather intensive negotiations and calculations about proposed projects. So they're like, we have funding, we'll invest in projects, but we have to really do our due diligence to make sure like we're getting out what we're telling people we're getting out. And what I've seen is some of the bigger data centers, like they're very formalized. And they're really trying to set the industry standard. Like, listen, we want to make sure everyone's playing on the same level playing field. So on that front, I've been, I've been getting all good vibes, but like everything I hear in the news and things like kind of scary, bad vibe. So we're kind and it's all new, like no, none of the conservation I would know about, like they use the term replenishment, replenishment two years ago. Nobody like that word wasn't a conservation term. And now that's like the term they're bringing to Iowa. So, so these bigger companies and for your sake, we don't have to name drop, but these bigger companies are saying we'll actually take water from the river and we'll put it back into the ground for us to use later for the public to use later. What's the. Johnathon Swanson (49:21.998) So an example would be like, okay, I want to build one those big wetlands, right? And we're going to catch 2000 acres of drainage. And in that wetland, a certain amount of that will infiltrate and go into like the groundwater and replenish it. And so we have had an opportunity to present some of those projects and we're doing very different calculations. It's not about how many nitrates we're filtering. It's not about how much floodwater we're retaining. It's truly about how much of this water that's going into this wetland that maybe costs a million dollars to build, how much of that helps them accomplish their mission. And if it accomplishes their mission, then they're like, we'll actually provide some investments to help build that wetland. But we've been actively learning about, what are the boxes? And again, there's like 50 types of wetlands. What wetlands do the best for replenishment? Because if I actually care about Iowa and I'm a conservationist, I want to make sure that what I'm actually working with them on is actually a good thing. And so that's kind of where I'm at right now. I'm loving hearing this, because I think that's a part of this conversation that has not been talked about. And to me, it's the greatest golden opportunity any business can ask for, right? I have somebody with bottomless wallets showing up saying, hey, I want to buy something from you. And we're going, no. You can't. And it's like, OK. We do, but fears are, but are reasonable. Yeah, right, right. And instead, it's an opportunity to say, great, I'm glad, you know, we have these concerns. And by the way, it's going to cost you infinity dollars. And they say, all right. Infinity dollars. instead, we're just stiff arming them. And we're not. And let's be honest. You know how this is. We can fight this tooth and nail for a generation. Once all those people are dead and gone and, you know, demented in a nursing home somewhere, it's going to happen. Kent Boucher (51:05.558) And so to me, need to take it, we need to seize the opportunity. We have a huge problem here in Iowa with our water quality, and it's gonna be extremely expensive to fix it. And here we got this truckload of money coming in saying, hey, we wanna do business with you. Then we just need to very carefully set our terms and make it so that we can help chip away at this. Like, hey, you can be here, but you have to invest $120 million into Des Moines Waterworks for their build out of cleaning the water. Or something like that where they could actually help solve the problem. So just point blank, do you believe the data centers being here, knocking on the door, negotiating with us and what they offer and what they expect to take away from our communities? Because there's net negative or net positive. think on the waterfront, which is where my expertise lies, and the many conversations I've had, net positive. I think what Kent just described is really where my mind's at. I think they can be a part of our solution. The key is knowing Iowa is different than California. Iowa's different than Colorado. If you're coming into Iowa, we need to figure out how do we best work with you in Iowa to benefit Iowa, and we're having those conversations right now. And I'll say today, I feel really good about it. Wow. Wow. Thank you. Yeah. Everyone. People are complaining and yelling on social media, but they aren't sitting in the room with them and you are. And I would argue that most of them don't. It's a great PR opportunity for these companies as well. Nicolas Lirio (52:32.366) To say we solved Iowa's water quality issue. That'd be amazing. Yeah. And you can Google Polk County and data center and you will find projects that we've co-invested on that where they've truly, I can say have helped protect and install. And then a part of it, they now require 10 years of monitoring after installation to actually quantify what benefits did they actually get? And again, again, I feel even better. So we're going to continue those conversations and hopefully we can figure out a way to mutually everybody wins. Yeah. Kent Boucher (52:58.51) That's a good optimistic take and I think it's fair too to say, know, reiterate what Nicholas said. The concerns are valid, that people that are resistant to this, but it just seems to me too much of a golden opportunity to get big, much needed change. percent. Nicolas Lirio (53:16.526) So you, I want to talk about this, the specifics of you, not you, but Polk County is going to pay, is it $200,000? I believe I read for Iowa water quality monitors and it, I assume you're just shipping it over to I H I R. Yep. they're taking care of it. Larry Webber's crew? call it. Yeah, that's too hard to remember. I know you're the government. Yeah I'm kidding. Nicolas Lirio (53:44.142) Some of the it's actually becoming quite a big deal to entrepreneurs. They don't allow acronyms and their companies because it creates an us and them and it makes it harder for people to integrate anyway. But but so what actually happens with those water monitors? Where do they get placed and what are they like? Tell us something technical about them. Are they just beeping every 20 minutes where they're? more of a KFC. Nicolas Lirio (54:12.002) where they're measuring, it's like constant flow. That's a hard thing to measure. Yeah. So again, I specialize in getting people to do stuff and everyone give me their money and trying to save the world. Right. But I know it's my job to like know all this stuff. And people like Larry Weber, they're like, they're very intense and they're very like, and they are really like the monitoring side, which it's hand in hand. If we're going to try and make a difference and we invest money and we build hundreds of things, we work really, really hard, man, I hope it works. And so to me, this monitoring system that IIHR has been going for over a decade, they're real time sensors, they provide real data, and it's really a very good data network that's existing and in place, and they have sensors all over the state. And so that investment of $200,000 came from, because their funding has been jeopardized, and they had some budget cuts. so, and again, if Polk County, our motto is leading the way, if we actually, and I throw that at myself all the time, we actually wanna try and lead the way. We gotta be open to new partnerships and funding those things. so IIHR came to Polk County and they said, listen, we believe this information is vital to Polk County because there's this many sensors already in place with 10 years of continuous data upstream of Polk County. And if you guys are trying to keep making a difference, you gotta know if your stuff's working and that's how I wanna use it. And so they're like, we're still negotiating. We're trying to figure out our long-term funding strategy, but today we need $200,000 from Polk County to keep your sensors up and running and give us time to keep working on the state level funding need. And again, credit to that's above me, but our board of supervisors was like, yes, this is a real thing. We see the benefits of Polk County. We see the benefits of the Boyne Waterworks and all of our central communities. Keep it going. Don't have a break in the data because without data, we will never know if we're really making a difference. Kent Boucher (55:50.039) Yeah. Maybe you can't say, but so if you want to, know, no comment or something like that, you're welcome to. It seemed to have been kind of more or less pitched as a doge type of cut, that funding. Is that accurate or is it likely that a private interest group that benefits from Iowans staying in the dark on water quality, their levers they can pull and their shoulders they can tap? Logan's beard. Kent Boucher (56:32.75) We have a water quality problem. It seems very illogical to say, yeah, we got a terrible water quality problem, but you know what, this stupid monitoring, you know, it's just, it's not doing anything. Yeah, that, yeah, I mean, truly. And so is it, is it more of a inactive? Inactive attempt to derail monitoring. drop in the bucket 500,000. Kent Boucher (57:01.678) because the people that benefit from less monitoring would push for that? Or is it truly, nope, we just gotta save where we can. You're right, Ken, I definitely can't answer that question fully. what I will say, there's lot of different perspectives. in Iowa. There's a lot of people with different powers, with different motives. And there's a lot of people that are really goodwill that are working really hard to try and tackle this water quality stuff. There's a lot of legislators that are part of SF-512 that invested a lot of money over the next decade into water quality. And there's a lot of stuff happening in Iowa that, so some folks believe, I think we can have checked that box. We're investing money. We're seeing upticks in conservation. And for some of those folks that really believe it, it's also hard to see some of that data that shows like, man, things, things aren't getting much better. As a conservationist, that's hard for me to say, because I've invested a lot of time and effort and money. We have into this. And so I think it's all those things wrapped up in one. I think you have personal powers at play. But I think for me as a conservationist, and Polk County believes this, and IIHR believes this, data is an integral part of knowing what changes need to happen. And sometimes the reality is we invest and we work really hard on something and it didn't work. And we got to change up and do something else. Can we have as many acres in corn and beans and get water quality to the level that we need it to? Kent Boucher (58:23.414) Ooh man, going straight for the jugular. I think. This guy sees the numbers. I think the folks, so like while I focus on how do you get people to work and do conservation, how do we improve speed, how do we improve design, how do get more stuff going and diversify, blah, blah, blah. Other folks spend equally as much time and effort on what we're growing and how we're growing and the economy behind it and the two crop rotation we're in. And I think everyone points to we're growing too many of two crops in Iowa for a sustainable like ecosystem, healthy water. And so we have, I don't even, it's not even going on a limb. We have to look at diversifying what we're growing and even just different crops that are different, have different growth zones, different applications of nutrients, different root systems, just changing what we grow. There's lifelong conservation that says that's the number one thing we need to do. it's not, I a hundred percent agree we're growing too much. It's very important and folks do work really hard. Iowa farmers work really hard to try and do it the right way. Johnathon Swanson (59:23.416) but there is a lot of benefits of bringing more diversification to our land. There's a lot of benefits to bringing cattle back on the landscape, to bringing hogs back on the land, and doing it in the right way, there's diversity breeds critical thinking. It breeds not being stuck in a corner. It breeds freedom to do things different. And so all those things happen if we grow more different things. Well, my first thought Vermeer should definitely just drop that 500,000 bucks for the water quality monitors because if they, if it pans out how they want it to, there'd be way more pasture in Iowa and with all their dealers and all the place they'd make a bunch of money. But, Well, that's the next part of this. The thing that, and I think we're guilty of this too, Nicholas, that we don't talk, we've definitely addressed it to some degree, but it's easy to just look at it as corn and beans because from a surface area of Iowa, that's the thing. But confined animal feeding operations, Is that what CAFO stands for? Kent Boucher (01:00:25.41) hundreds if not thousands of animals into a building. And Chris Jones had in his book, The Swine Republic, got into some of the, I guess you'd say biometrics of how much fecal matter is produced each day by hogs, poultry, cattle feedlots, I guess you could probably factor in there as well. And that's a huge That's a huge source of nitrate. And then the pushback from the industry is, yeah, but we have these strict guidelines for putting pits under these buildings. And then as the king of common sense, Luke Fritch says, yeah, but then don't you like pump that out and spray it all over the ground after it's full? And so we have this huge aspect of the livestock side of it too. How does that compare into just, and obviously it's linked, I just talked about the link, you're using it for fertilizer, but how does that all factor into that too? Absolutely. Johnathon Swanson (01:01:37.998) I think it's the next frontier of what I want my team to get into. And to be honest, we have to get out of Polk County and we have to look upstream because upstream from us, it's a major contributor. So we had our central Iowa source water research assessment, big sister report that came out. And one of my personal big takeaways was like a lot of it was like, yeah, this is stuff I don't know. But it really did emphasize some of the flaws in that system. And I'm like, that makes me as I want to get in and figure out those flaws. I want to go sit at their kitchen tables and be like, where are we applying this manure? Because I've also heard from soil health experts that applying manure on the landscape is one of the best things we can do. And it's so much better in many ways than applying different types of fertilizer. It's a natural process. But then I've also like, and as I've been taking a crash course and again, we all learn as we go and like, I was hearing about how tilling in that manure in a corporation that's soil better and makes it less mobile. Yeah. Johnathon Swanson (01:02:28.782) and how, if you apply manure with a no-till system and it can cause like mobilization to happen. So the, can wash off the lane. And I was like, well, stink, we've been pushing no-till. And so I'm like, that just blew my mind. And I'm again, not my like major area of focus, but I'm like, these are great conversations we need to have. And like, there's just no denying there's literal tons of manure of all types being produced in Iowa and those things have impacts. like we have to make a legitimate focus on Knowing those impacts getting out there and for me it's work with those people understand the flaws fix the flaws Do it better move on do it ten times better with 50 more people and so And we look so that that it brings something Ken and I wrestle with is what is better. So everyone can be like, well, those are the problems. Great. How do you fix it? And something I want to bring up before you address it is because you're so front facing and you're connecting with people is something we don't talk about very much when we talk about. problems is the pain that's going to come with the solution. The biggest I think actually farmers, if we moved away from it to more rotational, more diversity, like you were talking, they would net more per acre, but their net worth in land would plummet because the East and West Coast people that are investing in our land that are helping drive up the prices, not the only factor, but a big part of it. they're doing it because of what they can make with corn and beans because they don't have to pay for ecological services. If you pay for ecological services, it makes a lot less sense to be dumping money into it. Well, and so those people are actually going to fight against ecological taxes or restrictions and red tape. Well, the pain. So for the farmers who own the land, the pain is going to come through instead of their land being worth $16,000. It's going to plummet to 8,000, 9,000 bucks per acre. And so Nicolas Lirio (01:04:20.51) in when you're conveying a future, when you're thinking about it, when you're by yourself, and we all do this, we go, what needs to happen? What does Iowa need to look like? What are the solutions? How do you see us getting over that economic pain, which I don't, economic should not be the altar we worship at, but how do we get over that pain? And it's a hard for me to wrap around because like there's just so many areas of focus and the pain I keep thinking about is all the aisle farmers that I know personally, and they're like legit, they're like good people. They're normal folks. They're like, they're doing the same way that like they think about things the same way I do as like a family person. And they're really trying to make decisions. with the environment, the economy they're working in and it's a struggle for them. It really is. And I just know when you present options, they really do care. And it's just, if you can figure out ways to make it work, but the big changes we need, does that conflict with like the Iowa farmer, the traditional folks that like their family relies on the land? When I know not like there's a huge spectrum, just like all people. And they're like a lot of them, like they're doing what they know. And so I think the pain is real and we have to think about, we like, I'm like water. Like I'm wholly focused here. We cannot have blinders on. can't just be like, whether it's government just staying in our lane. We can't be businesses that just stay in our lane. We have to think about like the whole spectrum of things. Cause it's going to impact everybody and like the Iowa lifestyle that we've had for a long time and like folks living in like empowering small communities like Knoxville, like that rely on our culture. These things have to be hand in hand and they're big questions and it's going to be painful. Everything's painful. That's real. Like real talk. Yeah. 2026. Everything's really hard and there's trade-offs for everything. Kent Boucher (01:06:03.342) Yeah, there's there's a couple ways you can deal with pain, you know My dad's my my dad's dad. So my grandpa's no longer living he had to have all 32 of his teeth pulled and he chose to do it on a Friday afternoon and All in one shot my dad is when my dad was a kid and he he was like man just thinking back on that my dad had to really be hurting that weekend and that's intense. Kent Boucher (01:06:31.574) So you can do with pain that way, or you can be like, you know what, maybe I'll go like 10 trips. I'll do 3.2 teeth each trip, right? And I kind of almost wonder if that, sometimes it is the best to do it all up front, right? Think of people that get knee replacements a lot of times. People are like, I'm just doing both in one go and I'll learn how to walk again and do it all one time around instead of two times. And so sometimes it does make sense to go with that. quick, intense version of the pain. But other times, it makes sense to kind of draw it out and then as generations shift. And honestly, ecology works that way, right? One of my biggest criticisms for the deer hunting community. Ken cannot stand deer hunters. We should talk about that. That is not true. But one of things that drives me nuts is is when new research comes out and then it's everyone's like, all right, yeah, I'm here to listen. How do we how do we help? This is a new thing we got to worry about. But then, you know, and I've been hunting for 10 years and this hasn't done a thing. And it's like, well, yeah, because it's 10 years and you're on a planet that is ancient. Nicolas Lirio (01:07:26.72) That's a big deer. Kent Boucher (01:07:55.214) And 10 years in Earth time is nothing, dude. And in an ecosystem, it takes a very long time for progress to happen, for data to really take shape and take meaning. And so I think the same thing is true for our water quality issues where there is a, like, our cancer rate is out of control. And if that gets. much worse, we're starting to talk about is this a place that's even safe to live in or are we just some toxic, you know, wasteland? So there is that reality that yeah, we need to get this turned around quickly. But there's also a reality of like, we can't just be so focused on this is my 75 years here and it's all got to be rainbows and unicorns sometime during my 75 years, we got to be making decisions that are like, I want to make it better now, but I want it to be great 200 years from now. And I think that that's where we can ease some of that pain. So it's not an overnight, wow, my land was worth $20,000 an acre yesterday, now it's worth five. And I think if we can spread some of that pain out, then I think these things become more realistic for all the stakeholders. I think it's a great analogy. And for me, the other part of that story that's like incredibly important is think about how many people just ignore the tooth pain for the rest of their life. No matter how bad it gets. They ignore the knee replacement and they just, because they're not scared of the knee, they're scared of the rehab. Or they do the knee replacement, they don't go to the rehab and they don't get, change is hard and we can't hide the long or short term fixes because change is hard. Change is hard for everybody. But when you get people to buy into change, that's when you start seeing some of the fixes. So like, I think it's true and we got to weigh the benefits of short and long-term, but what we can't do is ignore the change that's needed. Kent Boucher (01:09:52.448) Yeah, yeah. And I think that a piece that we're missing in conservation right now and conservation advocacy is vision. think the Bible, I think the quote is without vision, the people perish. And the point is like, we can say, hey, this is a problem. This is a problem. This is a problem. It's going to be very painful to fix it. But if they don't have something to look forward to, you know, so for instance, a child who's raised an abusive household, they'll yeah. Nicolas Lirio (01:10:22.71) just stay unless they actually know there's a better option and they won't go through the pain of like separating from family because they don't know there's a better option. This is their world is what they know. And if we could see or experience a better world, the problem was Iowa was the frog boiled, you slowly boiled and none of us remember none of us. And so actually one of the biggest drivers for older farmers that call us and want habitat on the land, you know what it was? It's they miss quail. They've missed the sounds of quail because they remember when they were, they were a kid. And I don't even think they always consciously go, you know, and there used to be set aside acres that I could run on as I don't even think they do all that. I think just subconsciously their brain knows when I heard those quail, my farm was healthier. You know, I think there's something there. And so creating a vision and I think, I mean, Teddy Roosevelt for Teddy Roosevelt, I have very strong mixed feelings about, I do not want a president hammering his will. 100%. Nicolas Lirio (01:11:21.08) through, even if it's something that I really like, like national parks. But what he did with national parks and John F Lacey beside him, what they did with national parks and what was the other guy's name that was with them? That was instrumental in the national. Anyway, they created a vision. It created a vision for people to say, you know, maybe my landscape in our area is worth fighting for, because look how cool that is. Nature is cool. And Chad Gravy would would have something to say about me even calling it nature. Cause it feels like it's something other than us, even though it's like that water that has nitrates in it also makes up most of our body. anyway, I know that we're on a time constraint today. So I want to give you a platform. Is there anything else you want the public to know about, about water quality? Yeah, I love these opportunities for platforms just talk about stuff. Because I get in the grind, right? We're just grinding every day, just out there working really hard. And with that, the idea of vision, there's a need for vision. you can spout all the progress we're making, or you can spout the progress we're not making. But when we all do fight each other, and it's really unfortunate that sometimes my biggest naysayers are environmental groups. And again, like for us, many of us kind of like we're trying to do the best with what we got and the other folks it's their job to make the rules. But in the meantime, we all should be working really hard to make a difference. And that's where it's like, if we could all just understand the other side a little bit more and understand like I get it's not perfect, but I know that every practice, every person who installs conservation on their land, we made that much more of a difference. And the same goes for the ag and urban. Polk County is unique. We're truly like, we're the biggest urban metropolitan in the state. And then you leave. 30 minutes out of town and you're in the heart of agriculture and you might as well be it from the morning, you're from the moon. And that opportunity to work with both populations and like for our urban residents in our cities, they have their own issues they're dealing with too. And I love that discord between the two, because I know both and I can tell you the urban folks, there's stuff we didn't talk about today that the urban folks are working just as hard to try and tackle insane amounts of stream erosion, degradating streams, fertilizer applications, storm sewer networks, et cetera. Johnathon Swanson (01:13:31.212) combined with sewers that when it rains too much, it combines with the poop and flows into our streams. And I know, and then we've seen today talking all about our culture and they all say the farmers are causing all these problems. And I'm like, well, we work with the farmers. There are two sides to that coin like there always is. And both sides are working really hard. Now we're doing enough TBD. I think we need to do more. We need to do it faster. I want to pull all those teeth out like right now. But the thing is both sides, they have their, folks are working really hard. side and urban side and the ag and urban. The environmental groups are working really hard. The traditional ad groups are working really hard. And the thing is everyone's talking about it now. So that's what's changed now today versus 10, 15 years ago. Everybody's talking about it. Whether we like it not, when everybody's talking about it, I think that's a good indicator that people want change. so... And there's more thought, there's more thought power behind it because that's an energy commodity is people taking time to sit down and think about a thing or even complain about it on Facebook. There's more. Well, I'd argue maybe some of that Facebook stuff's not that thoughtful, but you know, yeah. But man, that is a really great point. Thank you. Thank you so much for what you do in the public sector. And I mean, It's negative real quick. Yeah Nicolas Lirio (01:14:42.382) I'm glad that tax dollars go to jobs like yours. You really encourage me just meeting you and hanging out with you. I appreciate you. Awesome, thanks guys, appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, we got to come back and talk about PFAS and micropostics and all. Yeah. Yeah. That's of scary. was just in a conference where one of the guys presented on it and I'm supposed to reach out to get him on the pod here soon, but it is fascinating because everyone's talking about the nitrates. PFAS are talked about but not combined with water nearly as much. Johnathon Swanson (01:15:09.76) Yeah, and there's a DNR expert where they they they checked over the last couple years every drinking water source in the state of Iowa and they have spectrums of what's in it and what it means and again, I've been on a crash course learning about that two years ago. I heard their term PFAS, but if you ask me and I was like, I have no idea. Let's go find out. Man, that's super cool. Well, I mean, Jonathan, you're just one guy, but you're getting a lot done. You're what I hope every government employee is like. And we really appreciate you and people just like Jonathan. You guys know the conservation. It doesn't it doesn't start in on the ground. It doesn't even start in legislation. Conservation happens one mind at a time. You were freaking awesome.