Why does a conservation practice that's standard in other parts of the world still feel like a hard sell in Iowa? Nicolas and Riley sit down with Ruth McCabe, Conservation Manager at Heartland Cooperative, to dig into that question. The answer isn't as simple as "farmers don't care."
Ruth pulls back the curtain on the real economics behind cover crop adoption, why water quality problems get blamed on the wrong people, and what it actually takes to make conservation pencil out for a working farm. It's a grounded, no-scapegoat conversation that'll change how you think about the tradeoffs Midwest farmers are navigating every season. Tune in for the full breakdown.
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Ruth McCabe (00:00.118) My name is Ruth McCabe. I'm the conservation manager at Heartland Cooperative, and this is the Prairie Farm Podcast. I'm Mark Kenyon. I'm Dr. Julie Mechan. I'm Steve Hanson. I'm Jill Bebout. Riley Rozendaal (00:11.256) Chad Gravy. My name is Jeremy French. Laura Walter. Nicolas Lirio (00:14.264) Carol Hawksburgen, owner of Hawkshee Native Seeds, this is the Prairie Farm Podcast. Ruth McCabe (00:20.834) This is Hal Herring, Back Country Hudders and Anglers Podcast. Nicolas Lirio (00:24.174) Yip sly, I will wait till ba- Riley Rozendaal (00:26.53) VanCotten State Historical Society of Iowa. Dr. Matt Helmers, Iowa State University. Nicolas Lirio (00:31.554) My name is Kyle Laubarger with the Native Habitat Project. I'm Judd McCullum. I appeared out of the wilderness and this is the Prairie Farm Podcast. Ruth McCabe (00:38.73) Welcome to the Prairie Farm Podcast. Nicolas Lirio (00:42.232) When I was in college, I worked for a marketing company and it was a small marketing company and my boss, he was a really cool guy. And I remember him taking me to lunch one day and telling me, Nicholas, the most important thing you'll do in business is name your company. I don't know if that's true or not, but you better believe I was blown away when I met the company, Iowa Cover Crop. I mean, it's a brilliant name, but it's a little misleading because you might think, okay, they do cover crops, but they actually do a lot more than cover crops. Basically, if it's not corn and beans, they probably have it. You're talking about grains, alfalfas, lawn mixes, cover crop mixes, forage mixes. They do all sorts of things. In fact, they even have CRP and native mixes. I really like the people who provide those for them. If you are looking for anything that's not corn and beans and seed and you're in Iowa or a state touching Iowa, I highly, highly recommend looking into Iowa Cover Crop. That's iowacovercrop.com. and they have a new podcast? I really enjoy it. They didn't ask me to put this in the ad. I just wanted to because I've really enjoyed their podcast. Super informational. If you're looking to learn more about cover crops for your farm and how they can apply for your specific situation, you're going to want to check it out. It's called Under the Covers. Again, that's iowacovercrop.com. Riley Rozendaal (01:53.964) Like a seasoned lesson. Nicolas Lirio (01:54.978) Yeah, yeah, like all nervous. I made Riley give an example that was half as good as that one. Ruth McCabe (02:02.254) I mean if you didn't like it I could do it again. Nicolas Lirio (02:04.59) No, no, it was perfect. The listeners know exactly who they're listening to. I we set parameters on Ruth for everyone who doesn't know her. The parameters are PG 13. So we'll jump in with that. But Ruth, you gave me really interesting information about why germination is supposed to stay. It needs to keep the heat and the humidity below 95. And you told me something and I interrupted you halfway through because I was like, I just want to Genuinely learn about this on the podcast. Ruth McCabe (02:37.07) Okay, all right, great. Yeah. So yeah, first of all, when I was taking when I'm in my undergraduate, I took a like a plant biology class. I don't even remember the instructor's name, but I just remember that in one of the classes he was talking about cell types and plants, and he had brought in a bunch of fruits and vegetables. And I'll never forget when he was explaining sclerenchyma and calenchyma and like all these plant cell types, and he was ripping apart this celery and he was just throwing it into the audience. And that yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't I like I remember leaving the classroom that day thinking, I feel really bad for the janitor that has to clean this room. Yeah. Because there's like food guts everywhere. But anyway, he was the the first professor who really instilled in me this love of plant physiology. And it was from him that I learned this definition of what a seed is. So if you didn't know what a seed is, I'm about to rock your world. Nicolas Lirio (03:27.487) I've never seen one. Ruth McCabe (03:28.192) If he if I right, you probably I know, like a lot of people don't realize that the like the green things that grow out of the ground actually come from these tiny little things called seeds. Anyway, the definition of a seed is, and I quote, and I hope he listens to this, a baby plant in a box with its lunch. I know, right? I know, right? Did I write a baby plant in a box with its lunch? Okay, so for those of you who are listening and rolling your eyes, that's fair, it's a dad joke. That professor was definitely a dad joke, but Nicolas Lirio (03:48.034) in a box with its Ruth McCabe (03:58.094) Plants are all inside of a container that holds the chemicals and the hormones that they need to grow, but there's a plant inside that seed ready to grow. And it's minuscule, it might be so small that you need a you know microscope to see it, right? But like they're ready to go, ready to grow, if only the conditions surrounding them are correct. And most seeds it's called imbibition. So there's your word for the day. most seeds passively imbibe water. they can't control how much water they take in. And so the more humidity you have in an environment around a seed, slowly it will take that moisture in. And every seed and every species is different. But once it hits a certain critical level of moisture, you just get this chain reaction of events inside that seed. There's all these chemicals that are triggered to start, you know, that there's a chain reaction of chemicals. Gibberellin is a big one for a lot of seeds. and this chain reaction happens and the baby plant will start to grow. And unfortunately, if that environment is not continually conducive for growth, i.e., if that plant isn't actually nestled into the soil and ready to send its roots down and actually grow, if say you're just keeping a bag of seed in the garage where it gets humid and then cold in the winter and dry and humid and dry and and all that, that seed's just gonna die. Because it can't it's not growing in the environment it needs to be in, which is why humidity is the killer. Temperature is also a concern for storing seed long term, but humidity is the real killer. And every species is different for how much moisture they need to take in. I mean you got rye seed like cereal rye or winter rye that can survive a nuclear holocaust, or like dandelions, which sweet baby sweet baby jeebus, those things can grow anywhere under any conditions. But like some plants are really sensitive. So that's that was what I was that's that's what I was trying to tell you. Nicolas Lirio (05:44.159) I mean, it's crazy that it's just like passive. They collect water and they're just a bucket. Once they fill up, they go, I will grow now. Ruth McCabe (05:52.706) Yeah, it's like a yep, it's like a chemical catalyst or activation energy, if you will, of a seed is like, I've gotten enough moisture, now I'm gonna go. Nicolas Lirio (06:00.172) Yeah, interesting. feel like humans are very similar. Like there's something there, but we'll we'll move on. The reason Ken isn't with us today is because as we are talking about this, Ken is swathing Ohio Spider War and then needs to harvest the remaining of our Bicknell sedge, which on a previous episode you would have heard his nightmare in our nightmare with what happened over the week of trying to get this big bill said Jarvis did. But if anybody needs some, us know. And so Riley is filling in and I also thought it would be interesting because you're from a co-op Riley grew up more actually dealing with co-ops, you know and his dad and grandpa did conventional ag do conventional ag and so that's kind of in his wheelhouse he knows what he's talking about. But what is I was told about you from Katie from First Foundation. Yes. Ruth McCabe (06:51.586) Great Outdoors Foundation. Great outdoors. Shout out to Katie. Shout out to Great Outdoors Foundation. Yeah. Good job. Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (06:56.276) They do they do they move they really move the needle and She told me and she's like you're gonna love this lady and then Jonathan Swanson I was talking to him and he's like Ruth McCabe (07:05.646) Shout out to John Swanson. Dude, he is Yeah We're BFFs. Except yeah, we're BFFs but only in like the professional sphere because anybody who knows John will tell you that like as soon as it hits five o'clock, he's done. Yeah, he's he's Nicolas Lirio (07:07.726) He's so cool. He's such a great hang. Nicolas Lirio (07:17.454) Hanging out with his kids on the water. Yeah. Yeah, I know. And, so I heard about them for, and they were like, yeah. Roots the best. you might have to bleep some stuff out, but like she's the best. Ruth McCabe (07:28.75) Yeah, I have a terrible swearing habit. Nicolas Lirio (07:30.958) Well, my cousin, he told me once he was in the military for a long time, like 20 years. He's like, women who joined the military, awesome group of humans, women who joined the Marines are also awesome, but a totally different set of humans. You were in the Marine. Ruth McCabe (07:47.15) My mom was in the Marines and my grandmother was in the Marines. I was my grandmother was in the first female MP platoon, my mother was the first female in a male squadron, and I was the first third generation female Marine. Wow. So I mean I didn't do much. I wanna be very clear that like my military service was unremarkable, but I'm just you know, it's just interesting history. Nicolas Lirio (07:51.575) Grandma, what if, I mean... Nicolas Lirio (08:07.928) You're just breaking the ceiling. breaking the glass ceiling. Ruth McCabe (08:10.67) We appreciate it. Nicolas Lirio (08:12.942) service the and just walking around the farm with you this morning was really interesting. And I can always tell like when people actually care what they're seeing. And you got out, took a lot of photos. So I imagine that it was like it was worth hanging out. But how does a co-op which in our sphere, we have a good relationship with our neighboring co-op. So I'm not here to poop on co-op, but they represent and engage in a lot of activity that can be monopolizing once upon a time, 70, 80, a hundred years ago, they truly were co-ops, but now more and more co-ops have consolidated agriculture. That doesn't seem to go with small farm conservation practices. How does that work? I don't understand that. So Harlem call that cause they're the biggest co-op in Iowa. I'm pretty sure. Ruth McCabe (09:06.016) Yeah, we battle with Landis in terms of like grain storage and and whatnot. So I feel like we kind of jostle a little little bit and new co-op is up there too in terms of territory and size. But we are one of the largest cooperative systems in the Midwest. Yes, that is correct. and depending on how you define size, we are number one. But if you're defining it in terms of like grain storage, maybe Landis beats us out or something. You know what I mean? Just like earlier when we were chatting and you were like Dollar or poundage in terms of like what you sell the most of? It's the same thing in the co op world in terms of how they define size, which we're gonna leave that alone. And move on. Nicolas Lirio (09:42.008) What do they say volume is vanity? Ruth McCabe (09:44.194) Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Or like, you know, it's not about the grain storage. Riley Rozendaal (09:47.694) laughter Nicolas Lirio (09:50.158) We're not comparing sizes of green story Ruth McCabe (09:52.46) Exactly, exactly. Well, Rachel really took out our pins. anyway, but so how does conservation work at a co-op? Great question. So in twenty twenty, I was hired by Heartland to help them build a conservation team. And it was initially it was sort of like, Well, we have this original grant dot you know, from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to hire a conservation agronomist. We're hiring you, you've got a few years to help us get something in the black. Riley Rozendaal (09:55.47) a lot of Ruth McCabe (10:20.1) because we don't want to have a a team that we're just gonna constantly be throwing money into. You need to have like as a small business new unit, you need to make money. But go go forth and prosper and build it. And I was given a lot of free reign in those early years. my manager, whose name was Thomas Fawcett, they have an amazing farm with his family now in eastern Iowa. I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about field days, but they're hosting a field day and it's gonna be really rad. So if you guys feel like driving to eastern Iowa, it is gonna, it's the whole thing. They have a pond and a big old prairie and like it's they're gonna be grilling food. So I don't know if I'm allowed to say anything about it, but sweet. July 28th, y'all. July 28th at the Fawcett Cold Spring Farm in eastern Iowa. Everybody should come. Pretty good chance. It is, it always is last year. Okay, side note, last year I got food poisoning and so I went to this event and I was supposed to camp and I was so sick that I ended up going home that night and I was in the hospital the next day. Nicolas Lirio (10:54.988) You can plug whatever you want here. Nicolas Lirio (11:02.69) That is the hottest day of the year. Ruth McCabe (11:15.966) It was so hot, it like made my food poisoning a thousand times worse. Anyway, back to the original story. So my manager at the time was Thomas and super forward-thinking guy, and he supported me in all of my wild, crazy ideas. And I had come from the university space, so I knew how to write grant proposals. I mean, I knew how to pursue money, and I brought a very novel approach to a company that had never considered doing anything like that. Their first grant was this National Fish and Wildlife grant, right? And that was really new to them. They didn't understand how that world worked, didn't understand how that whole Well, there wasn't that so their VP at the time was a fellow named Dave Kopis, also forward thinking fellow. He was on his way out and he wanted to leave a legacy in the form of beginning a conservation program at the company. And he felt pretty strongly about that. So he, yeah, exactly. Props to him. So he really encouraged them. And the board of directors are all farmers themselves and who use conservation practices in one way or another. So there was a lot of support at that level. So they brought me on and they were like, figure it out. Nicolas Lirio (11:46.126) would they even pursue it? Ruth McCabe (12:13.75) And so between Thomas and myself, my boss and me, we ran after all of these grants and partner and potential partnerships. And it took a couple of years to get it off the ground. But we land we we ended up our flagship partnership was our Hagee High Clearance Cover Crop Cedar partnership with Polk County. And John Swanson was an early advocate and Des Moines Waterworks. Nicolas Lirio (12:32.994) You said a lot of words there. What does that mean? I heard cover crop and a partner. Ruth McCabe (12:38.038) Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we our first flagship partnership, the one that was like our first public private partnership was this high clearance cover crop cedar. So it's a Hagee high clearance sprayer that's been retrofitted with a Montag fortifier cover crop cedar on the back. So it doesn't spray chemicals, it sprays cover crops. Kind of, yeah, and it's big, but it's up on a high boy. And so it drives through standing crops and seeds cover crops and standing crops. So we can extend the seeding window for the the cover crop window and Nicolas Lirio (12:54.99) Like an air seeder? Ruth McCabe (13:05.92) We seed in priority watersheds and then our partners are Des Moines Waterworks, City of Des Moines, Iowa Department of Ag and Land Stewardship and Post. Nicolas Lirio (13:14.274) So those companies give you money? No. Ruth McCabe (13:17.972) No, no. They bought the machine. We don't own the machine. So that's a common misconception. Everyone thinks that they just gave Heartland a machine. That definitely did not happen. The state and Polk County or Polk County owns the machine. And then we lease it for a nominal, like honorary fee, basically, but then we assume responsibility for the actual program. So we have to hit so many goals every year to seed so many acres of cover crops. And then we have to have all the insurance on the machine. We provide the operator who drives the machine and we have to run You know, we have to do all the maintenance on it and all that stuff. So Nicolas Lirio (13:47.758) So you said your partner was like Des Moines Waterworks. Yeah. Right. We're pretty familiar with them. What does that mean? They, they don't own land that you're cover cropping. Do they? Ruth McCabe (13:55.854) but they contributed funding to the purchasing of the machine. because it was a ridiculously expensive machine. Nicolas Lirio (14:01.208) Yeah, yeah, those things are wild Ruth McCabe (14:03.426) So anyway, I mean I guess where I'm going with this whole commentary is just that my company had no idea how to start in the conservation space, how to get involved in the conservation conservation space. So when they brought me on, I was like, we need to go after money, we need to go after public-private partnerships, we need to go after partners who want to sell something and can't sell it. We are salespeople, that's what we do. We can go sell it. So you give us a conservation practice and you give me a half fast, decent Cost share program, that's my product. I don't sell bags and jugs, I sell cost share programs or I sell practices. So you give that to me and I will sell it for you and you're gonna pay me to sell it. John Swanson calls my team the hired mercenaries of the conservation world and it is a hundred percent correct. So how do you sell how how Nicolas Lirio (14:46.326) How do you sell this stuff to farmers? Because really, more than anything, you're probably selling to money to bean counters. You're selling ROI or to forward thinkers. You're selling conservation as an idea and as a principle. How do you go about that? That's why we started this podcast was to hope, hopefully to change people's minds and educate them on that. And I tell you, it's hard. Ruth McCabe (15:04.493) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ruth McCabe (15:11.33) Yeah, and I don't want I don't want to fool anybody like I mean my company is they're about the bottom line like any other business. So don't I mean they're not they're not in this for altruistic like reasons, right? They believe like many people that lead at co at Heartland believe in conservation, but also believe in running a successful business. And that is an analogy or a microcosm of the macrocosm, which is farmers also run businesses. So many farmers, most farmers, sure, they they care about conservation, yes, but they also care about running a successful business. So like if I'm gonna convince a large scale farmer that owns maybe 300 acres but farms three thousand acres and their tenant, you know, they're on cash rent year to year leases on most of those acres and they have razor thin margins on those acres, and their landlords certainly aren't going to share in the cost of conservation adoption, those are the people that I'm going to and and working with and trying to figure out how can I fit this into your operation to the point where you're not just breaking even, you might be making a little bit money. By switching to this practice. So when I build cost share programs with partners, I am constantly giving partners feedback where I'm like, that's never gonna fly. And the reason why is X, it it doesn't fit in the bottom line, right? So I'm constantly giving that pushback. Sometimes partnerships launch and they listen to my advice and it's successful and sometimes they don't. Yeah. Yeah. But my goal is to figure out what that is and then drive it, drive that cost center for farmers. And so I We can do it and we're doing it quite successfully, but I'm not gonna lie to you and say, yeah, it's super easy and everybody just loves what we bring to them and you know, it's sunshine, roses and buttercups. Nicolas Lirio (16:41.3) Yeah, the where I struggle with this a lot. It bothers the heck out of me that Prairie and Prairie our industry, our business is built on government spending currently. That is the model because not the majority of our individual customers, because most of our customers are kind of online customers, but the majority of the dollars that flow through our company. Have some form of cost share. Yeah, whether it's a 25 50 90 100 % cost share and I hate that I don't I You can call me a fundamentalist. I don't think in the majority of instances Government, what do they call it? Not insertion or persuasion. It's um government something intervention on the market Ruth McCabe (17:37.278) With an eye. Riley Rozendaal (17:37.767) Yep. Nicolas Lirio (17:40.718) That's why I have you guys here. I just don't think it's better I don't think that's better, but I also understand the other side of argument that it's like well Water quality air quality the wildlife that is part of the commons, right? That's part of the common good. So it makes sense to pay I just Feel like there could be a better model. I just don't know what it is It'd be for someone smarter and I'm curious if you have thought of the overall agriculture conservation model And if you have any strong thoughts on Ruth McCabe (18:08.206) I have lots of thoughts on this. We're just gonna go we're gonna go hard for like six hours and you'll get all of it. Nicolas Lirio (18:10.168) What? Nicolas Lirio (18:15.33) Yeah, we'll split this into three podcasts. People have a great time. The best podcast I've ever listened to individual episode is six and a half hours. It's Lex Friedman interviewing the former FBI most wanted. And this guy was most wanted because he was a con man. And conmans are really good at telling stories. So Matthew Cox on Lex Friedman, best episode of any podcast I've ever listened to. Ruth McCabe (18:37.07) Download it and listen. yeah, lots of thoughts. I will so like CRP, for example, the way it's structured right now, I have many thoughts on that program. I think it's a misallocation of funding. I think we're not spending money in the way that we should. because I see, and I work with this a lot. I see landowners who have vast tracts of land that is perfectly good productive farmland that doesn't really have as many resource concerns on it, not next to any water body. It's just a 160 right or two hundred acre block of land. They're tired of renting it out, they're tired of dealing with tenant dynamics, family, you got poisonous family. And they just they just blanket and roll it in CRP. And I'm like, if I'm gonna throw that much money per acre. I want that money to be spent at a higher rate on putting in filter strips for these tenant farmers that are like, I'm just gonna farm right up to the edge of the stream that I go kayaking down and I see corn falling into the water in every year. Like I'm gonna go pay that person four hundred and fifty bucks an acre to put in a thirty foot buffer strip so that we don't have all that crap coming into the stream. I don't care as much about these blocks of land and whacking your microphone. That's fine. I don't care about these blocks but s I don't care about these giant blocks of land where we're not addressing the kinds of resource concerns that we need to be addressing in this state. So anyway, I'm digressing. My my what I was going to say is that and you you touched on this a little bit, common good. I wanna step back. I was having a really interesting conversation on LinkedIn with Anna Teeter, who is the agronomist for big company starts with a seat. Cargill, Anna, forgive me if I got that wrong. but she's working on their like camera. No, no, no. I'm pretty sure it's Cargill, but she's working on their oil seeds program. They're she's working on Camelina specifically, winter Camelina. Anyway, she and I had like a back and forth on LinkedIn about she was like, Well, when like how where do we draw the line? Like where where who do we ask to pay for conservation? And I was like, Well, at the end of the day, we're all, every one of us, the coffee you got from the coffee shop, the car you drive five miles to your office, the plane ride you take to your brother's wedding, the plastic wrapped Ruth McCabe (20:42.23) you know, tchotchke you got when you were on vacation or whatever, like that's all fueled by fossil fuels. Every one of us, when we flick on the air conditioning, we're burning coal to have that creature comfort. So we all enjoy ecosystem services that don't have a price tag attached to them, and we all use ecosystem services and nobody wants to pay for them. No one. Not even the people who live in the city, the lay people who claim that they're just innocent bystanders of the effect of agriculture. Everyone minds ecosystem services and nobody wants to pay for them. So my perspective on paying for cost share programming is this is us, everybody kicking in some amount of money to pay for ecosystem services that we all enjoy. Is it enough? Probably not. And as I just criticized CRP a minute ago, do I think that it's being allocated appropriately? No. But anyway, it's something and I feel like I feel like society should be proud. I I wish I could change people's minds who are driving down the highway in the spring. And in March they see some green field and the little kid, little Johnny, says to Dad, Daddy, what's that green plant there? And Daddy's like, Well, that's our tax tax dollars. Hard at work, little Johnny, paying for cover crop. That's cleaning our water. Like I wish people could take more pride in the fact that they're improving the environment through their tax dollars. So anyway, I'll get off that now. Nicolas Lirio (22:00.339) No, Riley can attest I've stood on that exact soapbox many times. Ruth McCabe (22:05.206) Yeah, I was gonna say, I was gonna say, I feel like I've heard you say this on like previous podcasts, so I just Nicolas Lirio (22:09.836) We're just, we're just spoiled. All of us. We want our cake. We want to eat it too. And then we want to blame big rich people for all of our issues, which I think big rich people, farmers, politicians, your neighbor all have a huge portion of the blame. But the truth is like business people that only care about money will, will they cut corners? Yes. Will they, will they do greedy things? Yes. Not all of them, but a bunch of them, but they'll just make what you buy. And so if we go, I just can't afford. Ruth McCabe (22:43.17) I just can't my favorite. can I talk about that? Yeah, please. I'd love for you to. My husband and I raise free range broilers, heritage turkey. we butcher ourselves, clean them ourselves. You won't you will never have if you guys want to buy one from me, by the way, we can talk after this. But you will never eat better meat. All right, that's all I'm saying. And huh. Where do you sell it? We sell just word of mouth. We just sell straight from our farm. Yeah, we don't have because we sell everything just by word of mouth. Yeah, yeah. So, like, you we can Nicolas Lirio (23:05.934) So there's no way to like, how would people find you if they- Nicolas Lirio (23:11.672) Can't get any. Sorry people. Ruth McCabe (23:12.97) No, you can. You just need to know somebody who knows me. I got a guide. I got a guide. But but but but but the point I'm trying to make with this is I've said this to a few audiences. Like when I tell you how much I charge for our meat, if you're somebody that's familiar with average USDA rates for grass fed heritage poultry, you'll gasp because you're gonna be like, that's half what you should be charging. And if you're somebody who buys your food from Aldi or Walmart or Dollar General, you're gonna gasp. 'Cause you're gonna be like, What? I can't afford that. And I cannot tell you how many drum banging environmentalists I've lost count at this point. I've been like, hey, you're mad about our meat production system in the state, as you should be. It's vertically integrated like crazy, and you know, the small hog farmer, for example, doesn't exist anymore really in Iowa, though they love to tout that story, which is heartbreaking. But I digress. Yeah, yeah, I know. There are some people who are doing a really good job of it, but you get my you get my point here. Nicolas Lirio (24:05.814) It exists kind of Matt tallest do Nicolas Lirio (24:11.192) Count them on two hands. Ruth McCabe (24:12.216) These giant, like vertically integrated producers where it's going straight to the meat plant, and they're like, blah, blah, blah, protect a small farmer. And it's like, wait, really? Anyway, but off that subject, I can't tell you how many drumbing environmentalists I've had this conversation with where they're like, I'm like, hey, I've got the solution for you. Have I got the solution for you? I have a bird that was raised by these lily white, well, they're nearly not lily white hands, but these kind of tanned, freckled hands from Too Many Sunburns. that I've loved from it from when it was just a whittle polt until it's a twenty five pound, thirty pound bird and I've butchered it myself and I will suck. Nicolas Lirio (24:44.622) I loved it from the moment it hatched to the moment that I slit its neck Ruth McCabe (24:50.368) And I will or I should say told the moment my husband sleds the snack. you know, until my husband butchers it. But we will we will sell that to you and they're like, that sounds amazing. I I know you guys would raise it really well and ethically, how much? And I'm like, it's about a hundred and twenty five dollars, hundred and thirty bucks, right? twenty five or thirty bucks at the grocery store. And here you go, folks. Here's your problem. So yeah, to the point of consumer demand, like I'm not saying that that's all of it. It's just that it's a systemic problem that doesn't stem it's so easy to just pick a scapegoat. And in and in general, right now the scapegoat is hashtag farmers, they are the scapegoat. And there's some fair criticism there. Let's be very clear. But it is an easy scapegoat when everyone milks the system and no one's actually willing to pay for conservation. Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (25:36.898) I think walking the people walking the grocery store collectively deserve at least 50 % of the responsibility for where we're at. because we do have an economically incentivized society, which people really hate. but I would also argue that people from, socialist communist countries are begging to be here, not the other way around. But I think there's tons of flaws with it. Don't get wrong. I think there's tons of flaws with it. And we love to complain that, you know, it's other people's problems. But also we want big houses and we want really big cars on our leases and we want a really new iPhone or just a smartphone. I don't believe the lie that you have to have a smartphone to get around in today's world. I know too many people that are just normal people that have a flip phone and they get around just fine and they make a living just fine and they connect with their family just fine. that I don't believe that lie. you start adding up all these conveniences in life and my dad, he's a CPA. He, just for fun was doing that math and he was like, I can't remember, but it basically all of our conveniences, if you took them away, the ones that we've had just in the last 60, 70 years, we've added to our monthly cashflow. If you took those out of our budget, we have more than enough to buy sustainable food. and have a, a house. and, his, you know, we're, there's a lot of talk about affordability on homes and we're going to get beat up. we're going to get a bunch of emails from me even talking about the affordability of homes, but yeah. So I I'm with you. I think we, I carry a lot of responsibility when I'm shopping. and my wife and I, we've made a habit of even if we don't really need anything, taking a loop around our locals, Ruth McCabe (27:19.34) Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (27:32.578) farmers market every Saturday just to buy a few things to incentivize the farmers who are actually doing it with their hands to grow and grow more and have healthier options. And yeah, and I do wonder, we just interviewed a CEO of a hospital who is who lobbies in DC for Medicare, Medicaid. And he's like, I don't know the exact math on it, but you know, eating healthier, it might be a net positive. or at least get close to breaking even on how much more health care we spend on health care. And it was just an interesting conversation. Ruth McCabe (28:05.171) yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean I definitely don't want to devolve like, god, I don't want I'm not ever I'm never gonna listen to this or read the comments on this. So anybody who leaves hateful comments about You're gonna have to hustle a little harder to find me. You need to buy chicken. You need to buy a bird from me. no Nicolas Lirio (28:17.262) We don't read and respond to your to hell. Nicolas Lirio (28:26.168) buy a f***ing from her if you wanna talk Ruth McCabe (28:31.82) Like I don't wanna devolve into the whole well, really it's just consumer demand that's causing the problems. We'll grow what they want. If they would only ask us for this, then we'll grow it. Cause you hear that a lot too, and that's there's just as many criticisms of that thought think, right, as there is of criticizing consumers for what they're purchasing. It's a component of it. It but the whole thing, there's no single scapegoat. And I will just my one thing about politics, it's so easy For a particular person running, you know, for an office this coming fall to blame one demographic for all of our pro environmental problems. And it's like it is so much more nuanced than that. And boiling it down that way insults the intelligence of everybody in Iowa. And it just drives me bonkers. Nicolas Lirio (29:13.331) Yeah, Riley you got any strong thoughts? Riley Rozendaal (29:16.31) I was, I had a strong thought circling back around to the whole farmer's market pricing. And once again, I will, I will not read the comments either. I'm sorry. as someone who's gone to farmer's markets and sold meat to people, one thing I think we need to do is conservationists is if you see a price tag and you don't like it, keep it to yourself. It's like the, it's the Ruth McCabe (29:26.712) Yeah. Riley Rozendaal (29:43.918) The golden rule kind of thing your mom would tell you when you were a kid, like if you don't have something nice to say, don't say it at all. The amount of people who will come up and say, well I could buy something cheaper at the grocery store than go do it. Like I love you for it, I love all my customers, it's just like. Ruth McCabe (29:53.12) And go to Ruth McCabe (29:58.034) And it's gonna taste like watered down crap, but go ahead and do it. Yeah. An animal that grew up in a square foot size metal c Anyway, go ahead, do that. Riley Rozendaal (30:07.212) Well, it's like it's a real grind on small meat producers just to put a person who's trying to do every step of the process or at least 70 % of the process and then put them up against Walmart, who's got, you know, 5,000 accountants who are crunching the numbers to get your margins just so and. Nicolas Lirio (30:28.334) I've got a question for both of you then. Uh, 42. I'm going to play. Well, yeah, that's everyone knows the universe. Um, the, I'm to play devil's advocate. Why would we have, why, why have small producers? Right? If it just means I have to pay more for it, why not just have one person in charge of growing all the chickens consolidated all the way or two people. they're competing on price, I guess, at least grow in all the chickens and having all of that economies of scale. And then the whole world could pay less for their chickens. Ruth McCabe (31:04.926) Mm, I love that. I love that question. I don't know, Riley, do you wanna go first? Do you want me to go? I'll Riley Rozendaal (31:08.974) I'll just give Maya off the cuff, is just resiliency. Look back six years ago, COVID, I worked at a small community locker at the time. Resiliency. The number of calls we received skyrocketed overnight the moment that larger processing facilities closed. the consistency and the benefit of going to Walmart every week and buying a $10 chicken. is only as great as long as it lasts. Yeah. And historically it lasts until it doesn't. Nicolas Lirio (31:43.886) 499 for rotisserie at Costco. so resiliency, that's a great answer. Riley Rozendaal (31:52.216) food in your community. mean, why? Isn't it nice to drive around the place you live and maybe like see the animals and the crops that you might consume? Ruth McCabe (32:03.106) Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (32:03.47) Maybe for some people, but what if people don't care about that quality? Ruth McCabe (32:06.688) they care when the zombie apocalypse hits. That's that's fair. Yeah. That's fair. Twenty twenty eighty rough year. I mean, resiliency is such a fantastic that I was gonna I was gonna say that, so Riley stole me, but that's okay because I have other thoughts too, right? Which is, I mean, touching on the resiliency, this is why we have diversity in nature, right? Diversity is more expensive, but it also means long term a greater survivability, right? So and you know this, you run a prairie farm, right? yeah. but you know, this is why diversity is so important. the other thing is that Nicolas Lirio (32:11.022) What do you think? Ruth McCabe (32:37.578) Sure. You can have I'm interestingly, I was at a talk a few years ago. So I'm a Nuffield International Farming Scholar, which means I travel around the world and I'm super glamorous. definitely not. more like arriving at an airport at one o'clock in the morning and feeling disgusting and then having to immediately hop into a meeting with some government person in in a country where I don't speak the language and I'm covered in filth. But anyway, so I do that and I'm still a Nuffield scholar. You you're a Nuffield scholar for life. And I was at a Tour here, I want to say last year. Nuffield. Upfield. That's okay. Good, good. It means I need to improve my pronunciation. Nuffi what a great question. Sidebreak. This was unplanned, I want everyone to know, but I'm gonna plug the Nuffield International Farming Scholarship Network. So Nuffield Scholars, Nuffi USA actually is its own country now. Nicolas Lirio (33:14.252) What is a Nuffield Scholar? Ruth McCabe (33:29.688) but the Nuffield program started in England, I want to say, in the 50s, by a Lord Nuffield, unsurprisingly. And if you go to England, you will see Nuffield Medical Centers, because Lord Nuffield didn't just pay for farm scholarships, he also created a medical like school network. Yeah. So that's like a whole hospital network in the UK. but anyway, Lord Nuffield thought that agriculturalists or farmers who didn't get a chance to go to school still deserve the opportunity to travel to other places in the world and learn about agricultural systems so that they could bring so that they could share knowledge in those places and then bring that knowledge back home to improve their own agricultural communities. That's how it started. It has since expanded to I think I wanna say there's twenty or thirty countries that are currently involved in the network. You it's a competitive process. You apply with a research project in mind. The the board of directors for your country selects you to represent your country for the next two years. You travel to a bunch of countries, you study your topic, you come back home and you write a report about it. So I wrote a report. I studied conservation farming adoption in other major grain producing nations. Very, very, very tangential, or I should say very prescient to my topic. And then I published a report called A Bird in the Hand, which is a play on the phrase a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. So leveraging short term profits for long term sustainability. and my basic bottom line was humans are very short sighted. We live for about eighty years. We have a very hard time thinking long term and it's not gonna sell to tell somebody this isn't gonna benefit you in your lifetime, but it's gonna benefit somebody three hundred years from now. So we need to figure out how to leverage short term profits. So that was my project. And how where I was going with all of this when I mentioned Nuffield was that I was at a Nuffield presentation at a integrated, it was like a beef farm or something. In Brazil, and the person who was talking to all of us was saying, look, from a climate perspective, this is better for the environment. These KAFOs, these concentrated animal operations are actually if if we're concerned about climate, grass fed operations release more methane. They're they're not they're they're worse for for greenhouse gas, you know, implications. Ruth McCabe (35:32.738) So I mean you ask the question like why? Like why why should people want these grass-fed systems? And I would argue that there is a subset of the environmentalist world that would agree with you that the most efficient thing to do would be to raise animals in these highly concentrated systems, because if they're perfectly controlled and nothing ever goes wrong, right, then they're they're better quote unquote for the environment. Except are they though? I mean that that that argument falls apart when we're looking at other environmental like Other environmental implications. Like, what do you do with the manure? Okay. So like does air quality matter more than soil or water quality? Cause like where all that poop goes, I mean, it's gonna go right into your water eventually. So like what matters more? The water that you drink or the air that you breathe. You can live a few days without water, you can live approximately twenty seconds without air. I don't know, take your pick. But like you get my point, right? I mean, which what what do you prefer? So the I don't know, it's a great question. I would argue resiliency and diversity are what helped humans become as successful a species as we have become over millions of years of evolution. And so to just throw that out the window and be like, we don't need it anymore now that we're top dog, I think that's actually going to be the end of humans when we lose all of our biodiversity. So anyway, I would argue resiliency is the key to that, is the key to that. But there is a segment of the environmental world that would say, no, no, no, the direction that we're going with these hypermechanized and industrialized systems, that's what we have to do. yeah. Nicolas Lirio (36:55.854) Yeah, I listen to most of what I listen to podcast wise because I get to listen to all of our podcasts while we're having them. mean, mediator is probably the only thing that comes close to conservation podcasts that I'm listening to. Otherwise, I'm mostly listening to business or family podcasts and the business ones. They're like, yeah, it's great. Ag is anytime Ag gets mentioned, which is not very often. Ruth McCabe (37:07.746) Love me data. Nicolas Lirio (37:24.012) Yeah, eggs really, I mean, it's way more efficient. We're able to feed way more humans, get way more calories out. And I'm like, yeah, but the byproducts, know, the byproducts of what that means. Ruth McCabe (37:34.786) Collateral. Nicolas Lirio (37:36.718) We're the Midwest is just getting mined. We're just getting mine. And as that's becoming more and more of the case, because when companies add companies get big enough, their CEOs and CFOs no longer live here. They're not connected to it. But I've got a question for both of you on what where is the line? And what I mean by that is civilization. I was taught in history. I know that there's this other argument that civilization started with the first broken femur or something. But I was taught in high school that civilization started with agriculture because one human could produce enough food for a bunch of other humans. So you guys believe, and I believe this as well, but just trying to present the argument, you guys believe that one or two people producing all the chickens or all the food or whatever, all the beef in the world is not good. I would argue. that you probably also think each person growing their own meat that they eat for the whole year. And I didn't say each family can would probably believe that every single family should have like a cow. I'm not saying that every person, right? So between every person growing and making all the food that they eat and producing all the food they eat every year and one person somewhere in there, there is a line. Any guesses as to where the, have no clue where that line is. Do you guys know? Yeah. Ruth McCabe (39:00.354) I I always think about the Buddha says moderation and all things. I think either extreme is where we run into problems, right? And I like I'll say again, I I criticize just as much the people that get up on a stage and they're like, We all need to go back to when we're homesteading and we have four acre four acre farms. Like, look, look, y'all, I've lived that life. I'm still living that life. It is early in the morning and you're up until late at night and you're exhausted and you probably have animal in your hair and you are tired, you never get to go on vacation. That life sucks and I don't blame a lot of people for not wanting that life. And I think that's healthy. Of course. Nicolas Lirio (39:38.074) I oddly believe Ruth McCabe (39:39.266) My husband, yeah, but my husband will tell you, my husband's gonna listen to this, I know, and he is gonna be like, that's absolute bulk. Because he's gonna be like, She can't stand those turkeys, she hates them. He's also not wrong. But yeah, like I would argue it's somewhere in the middle, right? Moderation and all things. So I think that having more medium-sized or small, small scale and medium scale farmers that the economy around them can support is adding to diversity, even if it is slightly more expensive to support those operations, because when you get a COVID Or I'm telling you, a zombie apocalypse. Nicolas Lirio (40:12.948) CWD is going to jump from deer to people. Ruth McCabe (40:15.508) Dude, I'm j I'm not saying I'm just saying you're gonna be real grateful that you had those. Your small locker analogy also, by the way, was friggin' perfect during COVID. Like my husband and I had so many friends who reached out to us because they were like, so I bought this animal from this farmer who couldn't bring their stuff to the locker, but they won't kill it for me. Can you tell me what to do? Because I don't know what to do. Business opportunity. Nicolas Lirio (40:38.412) Did you hold a class? You held a class? Ruth McCabe (40:42.24) Us. No, he did not. We did we did give you people some pointers. But I guess that's just my point is like, yeah, you there there's a line. I don't know where it is to answer your question. I don't know that there needs to necessarily be one, but I do think that going to either end of the extremes is not the answer. Riley. Riley has a number for us. Riley Rozendaal (40:59.342) Oh, 42. Yeah, 42. The meaning of everything. I would say as far as the number of people who should be producing food in the world, like as a percentage, would say 50-50. Ruth McCabe (41:13.62) What? Well I can I can get behind that. But Riley Rozendaal (41:17.386) The thing people don't realize is producing food doesn't mean I have one cow or I have 10,000. It means food production, where it makes sense, how it makes sense. Whether that be growing food in a community garden in a city or whether it be where you have grasslands, maybe you're raising cattle, something like that. I think- Nicolas Lirio (41:41.16) You would count your own little garden at someone's house. Riley Rozendaal (41:45.792) If you can provide food for more than yourself, you're in food production. Riley Rozendaal (41:52.488) You're feeding your community. Now, is it going to put a salad on a plate for somebody three months of the year? Probably not, but... Nicolas Lirio (41:58.722) Dude, okay, macro econ. Ruth McCabe (42:01.387) he's he's about to snatch. Riley Rozendaal (42:02.465) No, no, no, no, Nicolas Lirio (42:04.902) of humans spend their labor creating food that would mean that your salary or your salary 50 % of it would have to be spent on food. Like if you didn't work. Riley Rozendaal (42:19.82) I'm not, when I say 50 % of people, I'm not saying 50 % of people are gonna be full time. It's more of 50%, more than at or more than half of our society, people should understand how to produce food in some way, or form. Nicolas Lirio (42:25.473) Okay. Nicolas Lirio (42:35.454) I, I, I, I'm a hundred percent with, the idea of gardens, having animals, having worked on a garden, community garden and connecting that way. Riley Rozendaal (42:45.838) As far as like full-time agricultural farmers per se as a percentage of the population, I'd say, I don't know, what are we at now? It's like 1%, like point something percent. Probably ought to be at least like 10%. Ruth McCabe (42:58.05) Yeah, it's really fun. Nicolas Lirio (43:02.53) Yeah. Riley Rozendaal (43:04.066) I could see that. It needs to be higher than it is. Ruth McCabe (43:06.542) Also like that one percent figure you're looking at just like the United States, right? I mean you go to like other countries, you know what I mean? Like then it then then that percentage is a lot higher. But yeah, yeah. Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (43:15.242) Yeah, I agree. Except Luxembourg. I looked it up once. The farmer populations, nil because they're so wealthy with all the banks and they don't have that much air surface area. Yeah. Singapore. Yeah. Any, any of the Taiwan, any of those, am I allowed to say Taiwan's a country? I don't know. Ruth McCabe (43:24.31) Singapore imports like all their f Ruth McCabe (43:31.864) Which is ironic. Well, I mean China might disagree with you. Yeah. Riley Rozendaal (43:34.772) If they're listening to the podcast. I mean Ruth McCabe (43:39.292) yeah. Well, I mean, like that's you know, it's funny though, it's ironic. Iowa isn't that far away from that though. If you think about it, like when the Derecho hit, man, I'll never forget when the Derecho hit because it went right over my farm. there were entire communities that were out of food in a couple of days. And like, how do you get food when you don't have power and good gas station? Like it was so screwed up. The whole situation was so screwed up, and it was such a perfect example of stress testing Iowa's system. Which is to say we don't have one. And so like we're three days away. I think I learned that from Feed Iowa first a few years back. But we're like three days away from starvation in the state 'cause we don't actually have that much food here. Nicolas Lirio (44:15.46) yeah, yeah, that that's true. Well, the United States as a whole does pretty well with stored calories. but that's just stored calories and like a large percentage of those stored calories are zebra cakes. So, you know, if we ran out of food for three months, we'd be eating zebra cakes. Okay. Do you think about energy at all? I imagine it. I have this, I think the world should be moving towards individual houses, having individual power. Ruth McCabe (44:34.414) Yeah. Ruth McCabe (44:42.54) Yeah, I know. I was listening to the the Larry Weber podcast. Nicolas Lirio (44:46.99) Some people have a, you know, a lot more shade than others and it would have to be solar. There's no other for an individual place. I mean, maybe a farm could do wind, but, but an individual household being able to produce a large chunk of what they do. And then your grid, if the ratio hits and a two thirds of the house, they're out of power. Well, worse comes to worse. You go to your neighbor's house or you can charge something at your neighbor's house. So, you know, and I think I don't know. think that would be pretty awesome, but it's not just building the solar, the battery doubles your price of your solar to have a and not like just one that'll last a couple of days, you know? Ruth McCabe (45:23.062) yeah. Ruth McCabe (45:27.254) Well we l I mean during the Drake Show we had a generator and our neighbor didn't. So our neighbor kept coming over to borrow our generator, which I thought was really funny. I'm just gonna leave that there. But it's just if you knew our neighbor you'd you would find you would you would understand why it was so funny. But it's just it's ironic how people don't value stuff like that, the really practical crap until suddenly they need it. When I was in Australia, again for Nuffield International Farming Scholarship. Nicolas Lirio (45:49.312) Nice, nice. Ruth McCabe (45:51.28) when I was in Australia, I visited I mean it's super standard there that people have cisterns to collect. So like this Lar the Dr. Larry Weber was describing his system and I'm like, that's standard in rural Australia. Like you have a giant cistern system that collects all of your water and it cleans it, and most of those houses have solar systems and battery storage so that they can be completely off the grid. And they have to be because Australia is so isolated and their access to materials throughout the year isn't like it is here. You can't just jot down the road to the home depot. Right. And get what you need. so anyway, I it just I was listening to that segment of it and it's like, man, that is standard in other countries and it's wild that it's not standard here. Nicolas Lirio (46:28.32) Our infrastructure in the United States is, is amazing and unbelievable and very Ruth McCabe (46:36.878) So fragile. Very fragile. Super fragile. Nicolas Lirio (46:39.515) But that's kind of the diversity. we're going to rely on a couple points of major infrastructure, then if those couple points go down, then it could be. Ruth McCabe (46:48.844) Well, and then that comes back to the question you were asking earlier. Again, like, why not go towards these monoculture systems? Why not go to towards these highly integrated systems? Like, what's the bad part about that? well, until you get flu, until you get bird flu and you lose your whole hundred thousand bird flock, until you get some stupid disease that wipes out your entire field, until you get into an economic system where you're just growing a bunch of stuff that isn't actually feeding people anymore. I said it. right? Like that now we've gotten into this weird perverse system where we're not We're just propping up an an unequal economic system that is benefiting a few organizations or companies, right? Or conglomerates, and not really benefiting your average person on the ground. So I mean, again, I would argue like this is why we shouldn't be supporting those systems, or this is why rather go ahead and support those systems if economically you don't have any other choice but to purchase food at the Aldi or the Walmart. I get it. I totally get it. But if you have the expendable income. Go and support your local turkey farmer or your local hog grower. You know, go and buy that expensive meat, which is probably gonna taste better than any meat you've ever bought from a store ever, because then you're supporting a system that is gonna help you when the zombie apocalypse comes, and I'm telling you. Riley Rozendaal (48:01.902) It's an investment. That's what people need. Supporting your community and buying in your community is not just a one-off purchase. know, when people say, well, the chicken's more expensive there. Yeah, the chicken's more expensive there for a reason. And it will be there. If you support it, it will be there when you Ruth McCabe (48:05.966) You're in b yeah. Ruth McCabe (48:23.631) It'll be there and those neighbors will be there when you flip and need them, which you will need them as my neighbor can attest. Nicolas Lirio (48:29.716) Yeah, I like just and economics, the health, the tighter the circles of money, the healthier an economy. Right. And so if you have a small community that you love and cherish, you should support it. I do not like the argument of shopping local just to shop local. I hear a lot of people yell that I, my wife and I have a coffee shop. If Starbucks opened across the street and they had a better product and they're they had better customer service and they were cheaper. and they had a better place to hang out. We should go out of business. Why would we? I mean, the diversity piece I think is good and it's healthy, but if I have a terrible product, we don't want a terrible product and a great product. We want two good products or two great products, right? And so I do find that people go, you gotta shop local. There's lots of reasons to shop local, but I also know places that there are one argument. is that you should shop local and that to me that's it's not a good enough argument, but that's why I was bringing up like why even have it? Why? And I think you guys answered it really well. Riley Rozendaal (49:34.004) Well, and the more the more money, yeah, I feel brilliant. Might not be the word for me, but but I would say the more saying you have to shop local for the sake of shopping local doesn't just make sense. But if you shop local and you show that there's demand for a product, other people will also follow suit. Yeah. You the first person raising turkeys. Yeah, they might be a little expensive, but. Ruth McCabe (49:35.118) Brilliant. Riley Rozendaal (50:00.214) somebody else, their neighbor might go, wow, you can actually make money raising turkeys. Yeah, and then you start to see a little bit of like, well, we have a lot of turkeys this year and we could order our feed together and maybe our price stayed steady or came down. Ruth McCabe (50:15.414) mean forma cooperative? Riley Rozendaal (50:17.954) Yeah, yeah, it's like a it's a dirty word almost. Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (50:22.392) The, mean, we interviewed Megan McKay recently and she, they just launched theirs where it's kind of like a cooperative, but it's all online. And then all the orders come in and then she goes to the producer and say, this is how much was ordered of your stuff and the produce. And I think all that they take her organization takes off the top is like, it's like 5 % or so just to cover like her salary and the one of the person. And, and then you come and you pick it up. You don't like peruse around. just, she'll put it in your car or whatever. And then they got really an idea. That's like, that's great idea. It helps support a lot of local people while also being able to have some of the convenience that Walmart does. And, I think, I think that's a good way to do it. I don't want to, I don't know. I feel like we beat around. We beat on this dead horse over and over again, but I really want, I really want to go back to your paper that you wrote. You said, a bird in the hand is what it was called. And your idea was that you needed to actually have something that economically made sense today, not a hundred years. Did you come up with any ideas on what economically made sense today? Ruth McCabe (51:31.81) Yep. Ruth McCabe (51:35.982) Sure, yeah. I in my manuscript. And I wish now, like I wish I could go back 'cause I've How many years ago was that? Twenty twenty four. And I already want to rewrite it. Yeah. And I already want to rewrite it. Like there's already a component. 'Cause I've done I continue to travel, right, for Nuffield and like I continu I'm on the Nuffield USA Board of Directors. So like I continue to travel, I continue to do stuff for that organization and learning. And then as I learn, I'm like, man, I need to reassess my my stance on that issue in my manuscript. So like it's probably gonna be a treatise and I'll die clutching it in in my coffin or when I get burned. But like but like Well I I offered a lot of suggestions around like tax policy, especially if we're gonna get at like, for example, the whole I'm gonna take a step back 'cause I could talk about this for hours. I went to all these countries. I went to all of these grain producing countries that compete with the United States in terms of volume of grain produced. And they're using more Brazil, yep, Argentina, Australia, Canada. I went around Europe a little bit, was supposed to go to Ukraine, but the war broke out, so I avoided Nicolas Lirio (52:23.118) Argentina Ruth McCabe (52:32.736) I avoided going there. No. Yeah, decide I decided not to go to a war torn country. I'm sorry, Ukraine. but so I I went to places and I'm still going where they're producing large amounts of grain and I was specifically comparing like they're using no till, they're using cover crops, they're using them together. Why are they using these when we're not in central Iowa effectively? We are, we are, right? That and that the number of cover crop acres is growing every year in Iowa. We're at about four million now. That's fantastic. we are maybe thirty to forty percent truth like True no till is probably like twenty to thirty percent. No till every other year is probably forty to fifty percent if you're corn bean, you know. but we're using a heck of a lot more soil destroying practices here than they use in other countries. And I wanted to know why. Like what's going on? What's the secret, right? What are these other what's in the water, pun intended, in these other countries that i isn't necessarily not in ours? Like, why are they so conscious? I did. Nicolas Lirio (53:27.086) I want to wait. I want to guess. Um, my guess is that we're further along in our grain growing development that they will end up having to do this if they want to keep producing grain at their level two in 40 years. That's my guy. Ah, dang Riley. You guess. Ruth McCabe (53:37.948) Wrong. Riley Rozendaal (53:40.814) My guess is that they have more traditional farming soil practices that have stayed with them. Me! You're both! Ruth McCabe (53:50.478) No! You're so wrong. I did not pay them to get this wrong, by the way, audience members. no, the what's happening is that in other places, we have Iowa has the best. Now let me finish the story, because like it there's a bit of a punchline here, but we have some of the best soils in the world. No, we have the best soil in the world here in central Iowa. Side note, we're building houses on it, which makes me sick to my stomach. But anyway, we have some of the best soil in the world. We have heavy, wet soils that are Nicolas Lirio (53:51.311) They don't have monopoly. Ruth McCabe (54:20.726) relatively speaking high in organic matter and it stay cold longer because they hold on to water longer because water's amazing chemically speaking, right? And what does that mean? When you use a a conservation an infield conservation practice, an infield practice, like no tiller cover crops, statistically speaking, and the science proves this out, you're gonna lose yield for the first few years. Three, five, seven years, you're gonna lose yield. Okay. Hold that in the back of your mind. All right. So you're gonna lose money. adopting that practice in the short term in the form of lost yield. In these other places, Western Canada, where they have four inch to six inches of of topsoil and it's they get 10 inches of rain a year compared to our 35 inches of rain a year. switching to no-till was a farmer led movement in Western Canada in the eighties and nineties and it's universal now practically because if you use no-till, you are going to get to harvest a crop off of your fields every year. So every year you're gonna be harvesting a crop and you don't have to summer fallow. Now, just real quick, bear again, let me finish the story, but if you were a if you were a farmer just gave this poor fellow a side-eye. If you were a farmer and you could harvest a crop off of a field every year as opposed to having to skip and summer fallow so that you could conserve moisture, wouldn't you do it? If all it meant that you needed to do was switch to no-till, you'd absolutely do it, right? Okay, Australia. Nicolas Lirio (55:26.958) You're good. Keep going. Ruth McCabe (55:47.124) Same story. Farmer-led transition to zero till or no-till is what they call her zero till. farmer-led transition in the 90s. Why? Because by creating that small microclimate on their soils, they could now skip a summer fallow, they could skip a chemical fallow, they could skip having to burn, they could now grow a crop every year. Brazil, you go to central Brazil or or or southern Brazil by using cover crop and no-till. During their hot and dry season, they can get a crop during their hot and dry season. If as a farmer, you could grow two crops a year instead of one crop a year, wouldn't you do it? You'd absolutely do it. Here in Iowa, what happens when you adopt cover crop and no-till, for example? Losing yield. Now let's compound that. Let's say you're a tenant farmer, which sixty something percent of our land is farmed by somebody who doesn't own it, and your landlord, who's three generations removed from farming, and doesn't understand that soil is a static resource. Nicolas Lirio (56:27.202) five to six years of losing money. Ruth McCabe (56:42.322) wants to get their rent check every March and they're charging top dollar cash rent because the Iowa State Land Survey says that they should be charging that amount or their land manager says they should be charging that much. Your tenant farmer, your landlord is not gonna share in the loss of that yield with you for the first five to seven years and you don't own the land anyway. Why should you care? Your children are not going to be inheriting that land. Sure, there's research reports that say SAR reports that say, well, if you adopt cover crops in no-till This is gonna pay you back in about 50 years. You're gonna see it's just gonna be so great. You make that sales pitch to a 65-year-old farmer who like doesn't have kids or or his kids aren't interested in farming or whatever. There's zero reason to buy into adopting those practices. So when I go to these other countries, it's not I learned that farmers are more altruistic than our farmers. It's not that they have this heritage of caring for the land more than us. They don't give any more of a fig about their soils than our farmers do or don't, right? They're no more special than we are. It makes financial sense in the short term for them in a way that it does not for us. Nicolas Lirio (57:42.734) Financial sense in the short term and what year does it obviously their yield gets back five, six, seven years in for the Iowa farmer. But when do they ever make back the money they lost those first five years? How long does it take to make that money? Ruth McCabe (57:59.83) Back. And you're not going to because when you yeah, that that's the thing. So yeah, you're just gonna go back to the yield you were getting before. And this is really interesting because I have farmers I work with now who are diehard cover croppers, die hard no-tillers, right? And they will tell me, I don't make the kind of yield that I used to make before, and I've never gotten it back. Like I just can't. And they're good farmers, right? Good practices, good farmers. They do not make the kind of yield that they used to before when they were ripping up the soil and Nicolas Lirio (58:02.527) That first five years just Ruth McCabe (58:25.484) And if you think about it, it makes sense. You're liberating so many chemicals in the soil when you till. This is why when farmers people will say, like, man, that was the best yield I ever had the year I ripped up that CRP and planted corn again. Well, of course it was. You just liberated a bunch of nutrients and organic matter by ripping it up and exposing it to all of these decomposing bacteria that go in there and liberate all of it, and now your plants have access to all of that. Of course it was the best corn crop you've ever seen. you're banking long term in the soil future nutrients when you're using in field conservation practices and you're then depriving in the short term what you're growing of access to those things. And also when you first transition, there is a whole microbial turnover that needs to happen in the soil because whereas before you were incorporating those nutrients, now you're spreading them on the surface and hoping they get down. And that takes time for microbes to turn to turn stuff over and for the soil to switch over. And so that's why you have that like drag in the first five years or seven years. Nicolas Lirio (59:21.966) So what do we do about that five to seven year period? Ruth McCabe (59:26.936) We pay for it, and nobody wants to hear that. Riley Rozendaal (59:29.998) So with that in mind, we're in a gubernatorial year where the governorship is going to change over. Water quality is on everybody's minds, the subject of every article. Farmers are getting beat up on it. So my question is, from your point of view, you're seeing this day in and day out. These infield practices don't pay off for tenant farmers. but the push is for regulation now that cover crop, while being adopted is not being adopted at the quote speed, you know, we'd to see. Yeah, to see water quality improve faster. What do you think? Do you think it's gonna turn over to regulation? Ruth McCabe (01:00:14.702) I am a cyn I'm a cynicist is that a word? Cynical. Cynical. I'm cynical. So cynicist. Okay anyway, it matter. I'm a cynic. Thank you, cynicist. man, look at me making up words. Well, if Shakespeare can do it Nicolas Lirio (01:00:28.974) That's Okay. Ruth McCabe (01:00:31.21) Imbibition. That's a checking. Listen, I'm a cynicist. I'm a cynic about politics. Quote me now. quote me now. Your girl is so tired. I'm so tired. This is the soul of the nation speaking to you. I'm so tired of politics. And I'm so tired of politicians who say one thing. So that they can steal away the moderates from one party. And then as soon as they get into office, they go back on what they were saying. And then they'll say that they never actually said that, even though you have recordings of them, but that was a deep fake. I'm so tired of it. Quote me now what's gonna happen with both of these candidates that we've got running. they're all this, they're all this to try to get at those moderates and pull them to their side. And the minute they get into office, it's not gonna make any difference. Riley Rozendaal (01:01:20.334) you Ruth McCabe (01:01:21.066) I don't think it's gonna change. Yeah. Here's the deal, y'all. Nicolas Lirio (01:01:23.918) It may sound weird, but I actually ask my friends about their finances, but not only about how their finances are, but specifically things like how much money do you have in your bank account? Are you saving for your kids' future? Do you have a retirement plan that's in line? And the reason I ask these questions is because I know that finances put more stress on most people than anything else. And one of the biggest alleviators of stress from finances in my wife and I's life was when we switched to McKay Insurance. Now we did this way before they were a sponsor of the podcast, but once we did it, we got our life insurance lined up, we got our health insurance for a much better deal, and we were able to bundle everything that we had and we saved a bunch of money. We were actually able to connect with the people who are giving us. Ruth McCabe (01:02:07.566) I'm so burned. I'm so burned on politicians at this point, and I'm pretty sure a lot of your listeners are gonna be like nodding as they're driving or mowing their lawns or whatever, but I have a feeling nothing like that they're Nicolas Lirio (01:02:16.886) You don't think change is coming from policy. You think it needs to come from financial and social incentives. Ruth McCabe (01:02:23.83) Yeah, I yeah, I i if changed happened and it came from a regulatory standpoint, I have visited places, countries and parts of the United States where they have a regulatory framework in place. And I will tell you Nicolas Lirio (01:02:34.388) Like Minnesota has the the buffer strip. Ruth McCabe (01:02:36.864) And they also have a nitrogen restriction rule now. And then in the Chesapeake Bay, of course, you have various nutrient restriction, regulatory nutrient programs for what you can put on your soils and when. It's incredibly expensive and it has changed very little in the Chesapeake Bay. So that's fine. Sure. Go ahead. Make a regulatory framework if that makes your average layperson feel comfortable. I doubt very highly Zach Lane or Rob Sand are gonna have the the chutzpah to do it. I would be very surprised if it actually happened. I don't see it happening. I think there's Nicolas Lirio (01:03:04.184) Why? Like, because I imagine if either of them felt like it was good for Iowans and they could just snap their finger, they would. What roadblock would they run into? Ruth McCabe (01:03:12.118) Yeah, because humans I think are short sighted by nature and at the end of the day we're genetically programmed to go after the things that make us the most money in the short term. Path of least resistance. Yeah. Exactly. And I absolutely see the entrenched systems that we have in Iowa remaining in place. They are they are as wealthy as they are. And so So anyway, I don't see anything changing there as well. Nicolas Lirio (01:03:35.16) I to, I want to roll back, to the cover crop. If Iowa hundred did a hundred percent cover crop on corner beans mandated, got to do cover crop. We'll cost share it. You know, maybe I know some people even make a dollar or two or three per acre on cover crops, you know, based on what the cost share is and being able to do. Ruth McCabe (01:03:55.374) Yeah, and it depends on your soil types. If you go to some parts of the state where we don't have heavy wet soils, like you get to the corners of the state and there's gonna be farmers down in southwest or southeast Iowa who like, are you kidding? I have to use no till and cover crop and I'm like, Yes, you are like Brazil. Nicolas Lirio (01:04:08.37) so a hundred percent of Iowa gets covered in cover crop. You think that fixes our water quality issue? Nope. Okay. So, so cover crops isn't enough even at every single lake. Ruth McCabe (01:04:18.686) be great. We'd have fantastic soil quality. I mean, y'all, there's a good book you need to read. It's called Dirt, The Erosion of Civilizations by David Montgomery. Highly recommend. Nicolas Lirio (01:04:27.958) Yes, that's the one he talks about the Roman Empire. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Ruth McCabe (01:04:32.142) I was just there. I was just there for Nuffield and was studying that very subject. And I mean, it is mind blowing to think where we used to grow vast amounts of crops and we cannot grow crops anymore because we have no more topsoil in those places. So, like, look, we have one of the best places in the world for topsoil and we're rapidly plowing through it, pun intended, by letting it erode. So cover crops would do a whole lot of wonderful things for future human civilizations. I'm here for this. I don't think it would fix our water. there would have to be a lot Nicolas Lirio (01:04:55.01) Would it fix water quality? Ruth McCabe (01:05:01.026) That would have to happen in order to completely improve our water quality. But what's the standard that you want? Right? Like I I do just want to couch this in reality because again, I have this conversation with folks where they're like, We need to go back to the way it was. And I'm like, Really? What when is that? Tell me, tell me, tell me. I wanna know. You mean prior to the Clean Water Act when sewage could just be dumped into our rivers? Cars Cars could be used as riprap on the sides of the Cuyahoga River in Ohio. Burst into flames like thirteen or sixteen times because of how many chemicals were in it? Like how far back do you want to go? Like three hundred years ago when we when we No penicillin? Yeah, exactly. When like there was all kinds of that you couldn't go into the water because you'd get some kind of bacterial infection? Or do you mean like prior to human civilization? I know what needs to happen to solve our water quality problems. We just need to get rid of people. Well, which I don't agree with. Obviously. But like but like Nicolas Lirio (01:05:47.15) You know what, dick? Nicolas Lirio (01:05:51.182) know what declineism is? We were taught this by Iowa's Historical Society, historian director. Ruth McCabe (01:05:56.268) Yeah, so getting used to is it is this is it tell me if I'm right and I could be wrong. I don't know the term for it, but like is it getting used to the degraded state that something is and it happens so slowly that everybody thinks that like like the people's vision of what Nicolas Lirio (01:06:09.88) Yes, what was good is from when they grow. That is that is an adjacent. That is a thing. And I forget what that's called. No, decline ism is there was a study done that generations believe that the world was better roughly 40 to 50 years ago. Everybody everybody thinks that roughly 40 to 50 years ago rose tinted. Ruth McCabe (01:06:29.251) Yeah, okay. Ruth McCabe (01:06:33.964) You right now I will tell you right now that our water quality forty or fifty years ago was far worse than it is now. It had less nitrogen it, but it had a whole lot of other crap in it that I will say I grew up from LA, right? Well not from LA. I lived in California for a while. I love this. Us Californians, anyway. We get around. Nicolas Lirio (01:06:40.684) But it might have had less nitrates in it. Like. Nicolas Lirio (01:06:49.614) California for Ruth McCabe (01:06:54.416) but like grew up outside the Twin Cities, and when I was growing up, there were no fish in the Mississippi River, not where I lived. And you didn't go into the Mississippi River because you'd probably come out with some kind of bacterial and flesh eating disease, right? yeah, yeah, yeah. It is not like that anymore. There are fish in those streams and rivers. There's fish in the Mississippi, okay? And a lot of that is is left over, is holdover, is the i impact of the Clean Water Act, right? Nicolas Lirio (01:07:04.716) We call that Red Rock Lake here in Iowa. Ruth McCabe (01:07:20.576) So like we have the Clean Water Act to thank for that. And it took fifty or sixty years to get to a place where now we're seeing the positive impacts of that. So what's it gonna take to like make our water quality good? Well, first, what definition of good do we are we gonna operate on? That that's gonna be the first thing I'm gonna say. Do we just want animals to be able to live in the water again? We're there already. We're there already, and we were not there forty or fifty years ago. So we're there already. So then do you mean you wanna be able to go down and like scoop up a cup of that water and drink it? Good luck. There's too many humans on this planet. So you're gonna have to be somewhere in between. Nicolas Lirio (01:07:51.202) Yeah, absolutely. So, mean, OK, then here's a question for you. This has become part of the infrastructure of large scale agriculture. What do think about all the tile we're putting in? Ruth McCabe (01:08:04.892) yeah, drainage style. So this is something I mean, I'm an agronomist and I care about large scale production systems. I find them very interesting. I chose this as my career field and I did choose to live in the Midwest so that I could work on large scale production agricultural systems, right? so from my perspective, Agile is absolutely necessary. It's how we get production on otherwise quote unquote agriculturally unproductive acres. I won't just say unproductive land because it's very productive depending on the species we're talking about. But, you know, if you're trying to grow crops on it, agile is absolutely necessary for for agricultural production. there are a lot of arguments that go back and forth about, well, it's what's causing all of our water quality problems. Is it I mean, the Missouri River's pretty crappy and there's a whole lot of land in Nebraska that doesn't have agile in it and they still have similar levels of nitrates and chemic and and manure and everything in their water and they don't have as much agile as we have in Iowa. so I mean is Is that sure, yes, it shuttles nutrients into our water. Completely agree with that assessment. I just think we're putting on too much nutrients. I think we're putting down just too much nitrogen. I think we're putting down too much manure. We produce a lot of in this state. that's I was just gonna say, I'm not a fan of Chris Jones. I don't like his attitude, I don't like his demeanor, I don't like the way he treats people who work in conservation. I've said it to his face, I'm happy to say about him on a podcast. he tears down the very people who are in the trenches trying to do this work. Nicolas Lirio (01:09:14.158) Have you read the Swine Republic? Ruth McCabe (01:09:28.226) And that drives me nuts when you get people who are high up in their ivory towers and think it's okay to tear down the people, little people like me and my team, the people like John Swansons and Mary Beth Stevensons of the world, who are doing the good work, he likes to tear those people down. I digress. I have Red Swine Republic. And you know what? I agree with him on a lot of things. We produce way too much poop in this state. The Chesapeake Bay has a similar problem. They produce too much poultry manure. And for a while they were p just throwing it down on the land around the Chesapeake Bay, and lo and behold, it was causing all kinds of problems. So now they have really interesting cost share programs to shuttle manure further away from the manure source, the sink, or I'm sorry, from the from the from the source of it, and they're shuttling it away to places that are healthier sinks. So they're broadening that manure shed by creating a financial incentive to truck the manure further out so that they can not have it concentrated in one place. I think the Midwest and Iowa should launch a program like that. Mm. I think it would make a lot of sense for us to start getting our manure further out and a further away from Iowa. It's a really valuable resource, excellent fertilizer for the soil, and we're putting too much of it on in too concentrated of an area while also dumping on a ton of chemical nitrogen as well. Nicolas Lirio (01:10:34.03) I want to say two things. One, I'd consider Chris Jones a good acquaintance. I like him. and so he's listening to this, Chris, I like you. and, I understand that he is very angry about things and shows it. I would also say like people that know me, I'm pretty amiable. I'm get along to go along. So it's the exact opposite of my personality. and that can be a little abrasive when people are very angry about that stuff. So I understand. that can be kind of annoying as well. But, uh, the second thing I want to say is that, uh, um, what you're saying about too much manure. The argument I hear is that when people do the math on their pigs is that part of the math that makes it make sense is the byproduct of their poop on their, on their ground. And they say, and you would be able to say this as an agronomist for a co-op, the, that No, we do the math really carefully. We don't put extra manure on. Why would we do that? That's a lot of money. Why would we waste that money? And that's the argument for it. So what do think? Ruth McCabe (01:11:44.524) I think that as all things go it gets political in a hurry and there are forward facing, front-facing I know you're no no, I'm not afraid. I I it just it's exhausting. But like one of the things that I've I was gonna say this about Agtile is there's a lot of disingenuous arguments that are used on both sides of Actile. I think Agtile is both necessary and I think it causes problems. And what's frustrating is the people who hate it Nicolas Lirio (01:11:51.438) afraid to talk about politics. Ruth McCabe (01:12:07.914) only use the talking points about how awful it is and they don't look at how good it's been and the people who love it only use the talking points to talk about how good it is and how and they don't want to talk about how bad it is. And it is both things at the same time. And your question about remind me again real fast. Manure. Yeah. Manure's the same way. Manure's fantastic. It's also awful if used inappropriately. And there are Nicolas Lirio (01:12:29.538) But the argument is that people don't use it. Ruth McCabe (01:12:31.67) for every farmer and for every farmer who says, I'm calculating it, I'm getting my manure tested, and I'm making sure that what I'm putting down is the right rate. That's fantastic. But I guarantee you there's a farmer who's not, and I know them. I know these farmers. I have seen them. I know that they're not testing it, they're throwing it down, and they're still putting down chemical nutrient on top of it. And anybody who says that those people don't exist is just trying to sell you something. Just like anybody who tells you that hashtag all farmers are bad is also trying to sell you a story. So I guess my point here is for like you know, the Chris Joneses of the world who are just like hashtag regulation's the only thing that solves the problem, I would argue, bullcrap. there aren't many successful voluntary conservation programs right now that are working and working really well. It's just not the whole story. So not all farmers are bad, but not all farmers are good. And there are, I would argue, just as many farmers who are just going out liberally putting down manure, trying to get away with getting down as much as they can And yes, they're applying nitrogen as well. This happens, it absolutely happens. And to say that it doesn't happen is being disingenuous. But I will argue that there's also just as many farmers who are doing the right thing and farming appropriately. I work with many of them. It's ev it's happening on both sides, and it's at we're squarely in the middle. So anyway, I just anybody that tells you it's one way or the other is trying to sell you something. Nicolas Lirio (01:13:47.822) I don't think it made it into the podcast. It might've been off off air, but Kevin Kincaid is a hospital expert that we were chatting and I really like him because he understands that the world, every issue is like a weighted scale. Yes. And there are rocks, no matter what you think. The reason it exists. The issue is an issue is because there are rocks on both sides and people value those rocks differently, right? So they believe some rocks weigh more than others. But to not acknowledge that there's pros and cons on basically everything we do, there's a lot of humans that think through things. And so the decisions, whether wrong or right, are intentional. So there is a pro and con on every single side. And to not acknowledge that to me is so, when people can't acknowledge that, that is so frustrating, especially when we talk about politics. You can't say a single good thing that that politician did. You can't say a single bad thing that that politician did. You're crazy. If you can't of a single one, can't you, if you can't call balls and strikes. Ruth McCabe (01:14:54.124) I'm saying. Nicolas Lirio (01:15:06.19) This might be it for you. Ready to retire. You call us when you're ready for a career. Ruth McCabe (01:15:08.654) I'm ready. I'm ready for a career change. I be I have a good smile. I could be Riley Rozendaal (01:15:15.352) Your helpful smile in every aisle. Hit me up, hit me up. Nicolas Lirio (01:15:18.958) Some of my favorite people in Knoxville are the ones that work at Ivy. can't. I was sorry. Ruth McCabe (01:15:22.658) Me up, I'm on LinkedIn. that's why when you were asking about, you know, my thoughts on the batorial race, I just was saying, like, I just it drives me bonkers. Politicians in general, no matter what seat they're running for. I throw Chris Jones under the bus happily, but I'll, you know, same with all of these politicians. Like, when you listen to them talk, it's just so black and white. And I'm like, God, it's so easy to be black and white. What's tough is the gray, is the middle. Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (01:15:50.734) Absolutely. Riley, what do you think? Riley Rozendaal (01:15:53.914) I'm just gonna dogpile and say I'm gonna dogpile and say it's really really easy. mean until and As humans we like to group you like to form a group that says I am part of the farmers and as farmers they put in tile because tile is good Ruth McCabe (01:16:11.436) Right. You want to talk identity politics. Yes. The whole Farm Bureau and the hashtag, you know, America needs farmers and like you're the you during the Des Moines Waterworks lawsuit, they're going after farmers. Talk about identity politics. Sorry, please continue, Riley. Nicolas Lirio (01:16:24.172) Did you meet Ted? I'm sure you met Ted. I went in thinking, man, they just barely snuck me in for this meeting. I've met with other CEOs. They're kind of, they can be kind of difficult. I kind of aren't fun to be around, especially with municipal or, know, some of these, I'm like, I don't know. And I met it and he was so lovely. And he was like, look, we were backed into a corner. We had no choice. And he was like, we didn't even want money. We just wanted to bring to the attention that there was really an issue. Ruth McCabe (01:16:26.336) yeah. Nicolas Lirio (01:16:52.758) And he's like, we, we tried for 10 years to do something else about it and nothing was being done. So that was, and to be fair, when you're backed into a corner, that's what civil suits are for. That's why they, yeah, I, I like that guy as a human. he's, yeah, he's since retired and, but their situation, but then I also understand the farmers. I, I get it. And I get that it feels like an attack and with the identity of Ruth McCabe (01:17:03.959) Yeah. Ruth McCabe (01:17:08.098) Corrigan's great. Nicolas Lirio (01:17:20.3) You're attacking all of us together. How dare you? You know, you don't understand. just over there in Des Moines and Ruth McCabe (01:17:26.366) The problem with identity politics, no matter how it's being played, is that it shuts down any cohesive or like any sort of constructive, not cohesive, constructive discussion that can happen around a problem. When you pull the identity politics card, you're shutting down the other person. And it doesn't matter whether your liberal liberals have their identity politics, and conservatives do too. And when you use that, you're shutting down any kind of constructive Nicolas Lirio (01:17:49.486) Well, you're appealing, you're appealing to. Yeah, you're, appealing to basically the, the less developed part of a brain when you say us or them, us or them, us or them. It's the less developed part of the brain is the one that actually interprets the us or them. It then gets rid of the prefrontal cortex. It gets rid of the thinker. Ruth McCabe (01:17:52.004) That tribalism that Riley was Nicolas Lirio (01:18:11.31) the thing that goes through the conscious thought. you want to quote Socrates, Socrates had a really strong prefrontal cortex. As soon as you start saying us or them, you're not Socrates, you become kind of chimpanzee like, you know what I mean? And it's just not, can, it's powerful, super powerful because it's like a biohack. It's like straight into their nervous system, you know? Ruth McCabe (01:18:32.654) Well, but what's sad about it is it well, I guess what what Riley was saying earlier is like we need and and and what I was saying earlier when I was like, I want people to be really excited when they see acres of cover crops when they're driving down the highway. I want your average person who lives in the city when they see that to be like, Sweet, that's my tax money at work improving the environment. I feel really good about that. I want people to feel that connection because then it helps them feel connected to a community that they're a part of. And that's also Riley what you were talking about, when it's like, Yeah, buy local food, not for the sake of buying local, but because you're supporting your neighbor. In their lifestyle and you're choosing to support that, which then by def default supports you long term as well and supports your neighborhood and your community. So like that tribal identity politics argument shuts all of that down. It neatly avoids the in immediate pressing problem at hand and continues funneling money into the pockets of the, you know, agencies or organizations that want to make money. and it shuts down any sort of constructive thinking around the problem, how do we build a community around this? Well, communities don't make as much money. Riley Rozendaal (01:19:30.926) I I want to circle back around there was a question I'd kind of thought of So I know how long how long did you say your program has been running for it was it like 20? Ruth McCabe (01:19:42.326) I started at Heartland in twenty twenty and now we have so it's me and then I have an an engineer. I have a water resources engineer that helps design. We do wetlands, saturated buffers and bioreactors and some other edge of field stuff. And then I have three conservation agronomists who also work on the team and they help, you know, with all of our private public private partnerships. They help getting practices on the ground. Okay. Riley Rozendaal (01:20:01.644) So something I've noticed and the statistics don't lie. The number of people farming acres is going down. Tenant farmers, tenant ownership or ownership to tenant farmers is going to continue to rise in my opinion. How have you seen an impact like in less and less people owning land? Is it getting harder and harder? Ruth McCabe (01:20:08.72) yeah. Riley Rozendaal (01:20:29.358) to get to actual landowners, you know, from trying to sell that. Ruth McCabe (01:20:34.016) Such a great, such a great question, Riley. I love you for this question. Because in my man in in the paper that I wrote where I talk in my report for Nuffield, where I talk about this, I address the fact that we've actually figured out cost share for non-operating landowners or absentee landowners. we have figured that out and we're actually seeing rising adoption of edge of field perennial and permanent conservation. My criticism of CRP stands here. There's a lot of landowners who own land who are like, Why the hell wouldn't I do this? This makes perfect financial sense in the short term. The headache of having to deal with a tenant farmer is now out of concern. I'm gonna put this cool wetland in. I can hunt it for a bunch of years. I don't have to worry about farming that land. I get this sweet easement payment, or CRP gives me a payment for 15 years or whatever. We're actually seeing landowners I deal with over the last six years. I've seen a rise in interest in our programs from landowners. And that's great. That is fantastic. These are very conservation minded landowners, but also just as many landowners who are like, hmm, financially this makes more sense for me in the short term than tenanting this out. I think I want to go this route instead. And they care, they do not care about the environment anymore than you know, than anybody else who's just looking for the short term financial win. I'm not throwing them under the bus. It's great. They're participating in our programs and they're doing good work for the environment. And I'm any port in a storm. So you come to me and you want to do conservation, I'm gonna help you figure it out because my goal is to get conservation on the ground. But viewing from a 30,000 foot view, I would say that adoption of landowner among landowners and and is much is going up because we have figured out how to get at them. Offer them just enough, offer them just enough in the short term and they're gonna bite. They're gonna bite. We have not figured out tenants. And we have twenty seven Roughly twenty seven million real crop acres in Iowa. Of that sixty something percent is tenanted, meaning seventeen, sixteen, seventeen million acres are tenanted, farmed by somebody who doesn't own them. Eighty eight percent of those acres are on a cash rent year to year lease. So that's fourteen million acres that we have that are absolutely being mined for their nutrients by landowners and tenant farmers who do not have a financial incentive to treat them nicely. Nicolas Lirio (01:22:37.25) an interesting conversation with someone who bought seed and he's a tenant. And I asked him, why are you putting the CRP on your landlord's land? and it was a chunk. mean, it wasn't like 40 % of the land, but it was a chunk of the land. I was very happy to see it go in there. And, and he was like, well, these are kind of the less profitable acres. And if we put it in my name, it kind of attaches me. It makes it more of a headache for him to not rent it to me anymore. and I was like, dude, more power to you. That, That's a win, win, win for everybody. and his landlord loved to hunt. So if your landlord loves to hunt and you offer him good hunting ground and you do the work, you get the payments and now you're kind of intertwined there on whose names on the stuff. it, I thought that was a brilliant move. Ruth McCabe (01:23:23.82) And financially and look at that financially look at that from like a financial and a headache standpoint and everything else. I mean, my it my my hypothesis, right, of short term using leveraging short term profits for sh for long term sustainability, that absolutely bears that out, right? Nicolas Lirio (01:23:37.304) And it just with how unbelievably high tech John Deere equipment is, you know what acres you lose money on. just Ruth McCabe (01:23:46.638) I I would also argue too, like we don't have time to get into this, but like I would also argue that there's farmers who should be business people and then there's farmers who should not be farmers because they're very poor business people. And you get that in every industry. That is not unique to farming, right? And yeah. Nicolas Lirio (01:24:03.692) The consolidation of every industry goes to, except even musicians, like even artists, goes to the people who are the best business people. Now occasionally, I mean like there's, I have a whole spiel about this, how people have on the podcast for too many times. I don't have to explain it, but basically there's four skills and you can't have one of them. You need two out of the four, because you can't just make the product. You be also able to sell. Ruth McCabe (01:24:12.174) Not the best. Ruth McCabe (01:24:31.608) You gotta market it. Yeah. Gotta be able to tell a good story, but yeah. Please. So I was gonna say some other suggestions, like in my manuscript, you earlier you asked like what other suggestions do I make to change and make things more profitable in the short term in Iowa. I looked at like tax implications for landlords and tenants, specifically for landowners. In Ireland, they have a really interesting program where if you lease land to a non-farming farmer, I'm sorry, to a non-family farmer, so a farmer who is not a family member and you give them a longer term lease. whereby it benefits them to invest in conservation farming practices because they're going to have access to that land for thirty years or something like that. Then the income you get on that lease is not taxed. it has been a very successful program in Ireland. I just got back from Ireland about a month ago actually where I was looking at that program and s and I I originally in my manuscript that I published in twenty four, I was like, We need to try something like this in Iowa. This is brilliant. And I just went there and I learned that what one of the downsides to it is is it it has driven up Lease costs because access to land. We think it's hard to get access to land here in Iowa. We haven't seen. You do not get you if you're gonna be a farmer in the UK, you're gonna be a tenant. Like they have gone full circle right back to the medieval ages. yeah, lords and serfs. They've gone full circle. You're not owning land there, you're not buying land. Land is completely owned and it ain't up for sale. So if you want to become a farmer, you're gonna be a serf. You're gonna be a tenant. And so like It has driven up leases to where landowners, unsurprisingly, landowners are like, sure, I'll lease you this farm for a thousand bucks an acre 'cause they don't wanna get it they don't wanna get it taxed, right? And then that tenant farmer, that's probably a good choice for them. Yeah. So I mean it what? Nicolas Lirio (01:26:13.614) You'll own nothing and be happy. Ruth McCabe (01:26:15.724) Yeah, what say you? People are always trying to find short term profits. What? I don't say it ain't so. I I you know it's I know it's not a warm and fuzzy conclusion, but I'm just like we've gotta figure out, we have to figure out within that framework how to maximize that framework. And like what you were describing with that tenant farmer and his landowner, they figured it out, right? That's a short term, that's a win-win-win for everybody. And financially, slash the emotional and mental labor for the landowner. of dealing with the tenancy solved all those problems. we I we need more of that. Nicolas Lirio (01:26:49.742) Do you, is it possible to have conservation while thinking ROI in the longterm? Ruth McCabe (01:26:56.988) absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like go to Brazil or Canada or or Australia where they're using conser infield conservation practices at at scale at a hundred percent because financially it absolutely pencils out, right? Like that that's my point is when it pencils out, if a conservation practice, whatever it is, and so we can talk about this, an infield conservation practice specifically, let's just talk about infield practices, which are practices that are used in the farm field. to prevent the loss of soil and nutrients before they make it to the edge of the farm field, where then you would implement something like an edge of field practice. Nicolas Lirio (01:27:28.492) And that's what we talk about a lot with like field strips or saturated buffers. Ruth McCabe (01:27:32.256) Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. So in field practices like cover crops and no-till, they pencil out a hundred percent in places like Australia and Canada and Brazil, and they took off on their own with no cost share programs, and they took off farmer led, no less, in about a decade. Why? Because everybody saw, I can make money hand over fist doing that. Sure, I'm gonna switch to that practice. It's a no-brainer. It was a no-brainer, right? Edge of field practice. Conservation. We're seeing greater and greater landowner adoption of things like saturated buffers and bioreactors and wetlands in the last few years. Why? Because in the short term, it makes perfect sense. Those landowners are like cha ching. They also care about the environment, of course. They're also hunters. They also believe in cleaning our water quality. I'm not throwing these people under the bus, but believe me, financially it also makes sense in the short term. Okay. And I do not blame these people, but this is who I have dealt with. Now I know I'm gonna get hate for that. So like I said, I will not be reading the comments, y'all. So don't waste your effort. I said what I said. But but like at the end of the day, like that's what we're trying to do. In Iowa, it just so happens that we have figured out landowners. We figured out how to get to them, and that's great. I wanna see us continue to leverage that. But as sexy as wetlands are, as sexy as saturated buffers and bioreactors are. As sexy as riparian buffer strips are, etc. And they are super sexy. Your girl loves them. I'm a hunter too. They're not gonna solve our water quality problem. We also need to get at those 14, 15, 16, 17 million acres of tenanted farmland and the other, you know, millions of acres of owner-operated farmland that don't have practices on them. It's gonna take it all. It's gonna take it all. It's gonna take the whole toolbox. Nicolas Lirio (01:29:14.095) Wow John was right about He said you were very charming the word Ruth McCabe (01:29:18.986) Yeah. What did he say? Ruth McCabe (01:29:24.942) Which is why I'm like so quick to jump on this, like so quick to jump on these soapboxes when people talk about certain politicians or certain policies or whatever. And I'm and I'm like, it's ne it's either it's not either or, it's both. It's all the things. In the ag space, I know some of the stuff that I said with you guys today. I know I'm gonna get flack for this, and I and your girl doesn't care. But like I also know in the environmental space I'll be getting flack for some of how I defended, you know, the agricultural community's Nicolas Lirio (01:29:48.13) Yeah. Ruth McCabe (01:29:53.922) You know, and in in why farmers make the decisions that they do. And it's just like because actually the truth is in the middle. Nicolas Lirio (01:29:59.734) Yeah. That is, that is awesome. I'm excited thinking likely this is the last podcast anyone listens to of ours. We better have a banger that we released right after. But I had, I really had a great time and I think that, you know, a lot of people, they spiel the same things, including us, the same things over and over again about what would fix our water quality. And I appreciate that you are very nuanced. your team does really high quality work and that you're, willing to do what it takes for conservation without compromising. People think compromising going without compromise is kind of, you know, a Chris Jones feel where no, all or nothing. We need to regulate. We need to rip these things out, but not compromising to me is more what you have going on where you're like, I will. I will do whatever it takes and we need to use all the tools. know, crop isn't going to fix everything. Pulling out tile isn't going to fix everything. Like every single tool has to be used. And we've said this many times in the podcast, we might sound anti corn and bean. We are not. We are definitely for corn and bean. There's just too much of it. and so we don't need as much as we do. And yeah, and I think you summed it up really well. So thanks for hanging out with us. Ruth McCabe (01:31:16.75) Well, thanks for having me. And I do I do just want to say, like, man. I think productive production agriculture, I mean, it's a beautiful thing when I'm driving down the highways of Iowa in the summer and I'm looking at all these fields of corn and beans. I do love it. It's why I chose to come here and be an agronomist in Iowa. So when I usually when I give presentations, I will say like, what I'm about to say is gonna piss some of you off in the audience. Because I am gonna be critical of my industry that I chose for my life's career. I am so passionate about production agriculture. I have every right in the world to then also say, and it's leaky and it causes some environmental problems. And we as a community have to come together and fix it. And I don't care if that insults you. This will also, by the way, be the last podcast that I do. Nicolas Lirio (01:32:01.315) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we, super appreciate it. And I mean, you're a heavy hitter. You're a needle mover and Katie was right. John was right. We thank you for what you're doing. for everyone listening, we can't all be, you know, as passionate as Ruth is. Ruth McCabe (01:32:24.12) Just come hang out with me for a little bit and I'll like it'll rub off on you. You'll all Yeah, you'll go home all fired up. Nicolas Lirio (01:32:27.618) So good. man. Ruining Thanksgiving, talking to your family about it. That's kind of where I'm at these days. My friends and family are like, all right, here he goes again. He should have cost a hundred dollars and not there. Ruth McCabe (01:32:39.926) Here he goes again. Here we He's just like, there she goes on her soapbox. You better buckle up. It's gonna last about twenty minutes. Nicolas Lirio (01:32:50.126) And well, just like Ruth, conservation happens one mind at a time. Ruth McCabe (01:32:56.216) So
