Ep. 316 Gubernatorial Candidate Zach Lahn

Written By Hoksey Native Seeds

Zach Lahn’s self proclaimed mission

We interviewed Zach Lahn on our farm.

Zach Lahn sat down with us to discuss Iowa's water quality, our public schools, vouchers, rural poverty, and a lot more. It was a great conversation. Whether you agree with him or not, we hope you will enjoy our conversation. And let the record show, we really enjoyed our time with him. He was very kind.

 Check out this episode of the Prairie Farm Podcast to find out more!

Listen now on Podbean!

You can also find this episode on other popular podcast networks:

  • Speaker 1 (00:00.661)

    I'm Mark.

    I'm Steve Hanson. I'm

    I'm Dr. Julie Mead.

    It'll be back, Chadgravy.

    name is Jeremy French. I'm Laura Walter.

    Kent Boucher (00:08.514)

    Carol Hochspurgeon, owner of Hochseat Native Seeds, and this is the Prairie Farm Podcast.

    This is Hal Herry back at the Hunter's Night with a podcast. Skip Sly, Iowa Whitetail, Valerie VanCoten, State Historical Society of Iowa.

    Helmers at Iowa State University.

    My name is the native habitat project. I'm Judd McCollum. I appeared out of the wilderness and this is the Prairie farm podcast. Welcome to the Prairie farm podcast. Zach, you are spending your own money renovating a theater in a small town, which is probably not the most impressive business venture I've ever heard of in terms of ROI. I have my own thoughts on it, but I am very curious what, what you ha what, what are you doing? Why are you? Yeah.

    Yeah, no, it's a good question. And you're right. It's the future ROI. And there's more ROI's than just financial and many projects you take on. we have a plan. You know, I guess that where the story started, my family came to Iowa in the 1850s, like so many families did here. 1900, great, great grandpa built our homestead in Belle Plaine. 2005, my great grandma passed away. And I can still remember when my grandma called me and said, hey, you wouldn't want anything to do with this old farm, would you?

    Speaker 1 (00:56.878)

    There's a

    Zach Lahn (01:21.878)

    And I was off in Colorado at college and I said, like so many kids, I'm not planning to come back. You know, I'm, I'm, I, there's something better out there is kind of the thought. always get life is now grandma. And, you know, in retrospect, that was a very bad call cause the price would have been much cheaper. But, so we sold the farm. and then, I was visiting my other great grandma who lived in Blair's town. and I drove by the old farm and I just,

    It's us back!

    Zach Lahn (01:52.174)

    drove up and I asked him, hey, can I look around? You know, this is our, this was built by my great, great grandpa when they came from Germany. And they said, yes, I could. And so we walked around and I said in passing, if you ever think about selling it, please let me know. Cause you know, I don't know how I do it, but I like a chance. And a couple of years later, they called me and said, Hey, we're going to sell the farm. And so I jumped on it. I think I went and scrap, scrap together enough money for a down payment for, I believe it was an FHA loan. And we bought the farm back in 2014. Wow.

    And I can still actually remember right after buying it, this is a true story. was in the basement and we just, I just closed on it in Cedar Rapids and I came out to the farm and I was in the basement leaning on this wooden post and it was like, like all farm basements, just like it was not in great shape. And I was like, what have I done? You know, this is a huge project. And then on this post I was leaning on, I turned and it wasn't looking for it. I just turned and I noticed something.

    And as my grandpa's initials carved in the post. And I just thought, okay, this is what I'm doing. This is why I'm doing this. So since then, we have fully restored the family homestead board by board. I can talk more about that later, but to the theater, I think my goal has been to help set an example and a model for how to restore rural communities. And this is not a quick project. It takes a long time to do this and it takes a lot of buy-in from community members.

    there's a couple of buildings in Belle Plaine that were just key gem buildings that are part of our history. Even more so than I thought. And I remember I would take, my wife and I take our kids, we have seven kids, we'd take them to the King Theater in Belle Plaine. And we loved it. It was like this old town feel, small town feel, kind of old time theater feel. And we'd go see movies for five bucks. That's what it was. And so then I got word that,

    The family that owned it, they'd owned it since 1930. Same family. World War II, Great Depression, all those things. had played movies through. I still have old documents from back then. They were gonna sell it. And he called me, because I'd talked to a number times, similar story to the farmhouse. said, hey, if you're gonna sell this place, we need to keep it going. And he called me one day and said, hey, I'm gonna sell the theater, we can't keep it going. It had been closed down for about eight months by that point. And so we bought it. And one thing I underestimated,

    Kent Boucher (03:55.86)

    that's cool.

    Zach Lahn (04:16.193)

    I remember when I put the post on Facebook about buying this old theater, just to let the community know, hey, we're going to reopen this because people had been asking about it. But I think there's like 400 comments on that post from the small town. And it was all people, cause you don't really think about this, but going back to when my grandma and grandpa used to go on dates there, it was the place for the community, you know, for, for 80, a hundred years almost. And so it was really, really sweet to see that. So we,

    Yeah.

    Zach Lahn (04:45.238)

    We run movies every Friday, Saturday. We do some matinees on Sundays. We also do like this holiday season, we're doing free shows of Christmas classics. think we just showed Elf last week. So we had some fun. And so we really use this as a way to keep the community engaged, to give young kids something to do on the weekends. It's productive and wholesome and fun. We try to play really wholesome movies. We like a lot of Angel Studios movies. And so.

    That's what we're doing. It's been, it's been a really great project.

    one that is really cool and, and, and fairly altruistic. I have, I have a lot of thoughts. My wife and I, and I'm bringing this up for a specific purpose. My wife and I started a coffee shop in Knoxville, Iowa and the whole like process through it. We did a lot of study on like, what does small towns need? What do they, what do they need and what do they want? What will they actually show up for? So there's all these things and we have a movie theater in town that

    Nobody goes to now it's an old historic theater and, it's a nonprofit and they run it because it's historic and it's beautiful and awesome, but nobody goes. And so, and, and several times it is needed very large bailouts and a significant amount of resources from the community went to these bailouts. Now there have, I believe been three. I'm not complaining about that. The community has said, we want that movie theater.

    Plains about it.

    Zach Lahn (06:15.244)

    Of course.

    That's not true. That's not true. That's not true. But the, um, the, the community has said, we want the theater there, but we don't want to go and we don't want to go to the movies. And you could tell cause they don't show up to the movies. And, and I read a really interesting study, but I didn't vet it. So who knows? But, um, and it was that there was actually a pretty high correlation with the decline in bowling alleys, movie theaters, um, uh, skate pits, things like that. And, uh, the rise of, uh,

    any sort of media that you can sit on your couch and do, whether it's on your phone or on your TV or through video games or whatever, you know, and some good, some much less than good products out there. And so when you're talking about revitalizing rule, Iowa or the rural Midwest, I love the ideas there. but to put it in the analogy of a person, my counselor says you cannot, that the moment, the time a person changes is when they want to.

    You can't fix someone if they don't want to be fixed. And what if rural Iowa says, we don't want those things. We don't want the way it used to be. And now I'm with you. I'm kind of playing devil's advocate. I'm with you. I love the old buildings. That's what my wife and I do is we restore old buildings in Knoxville. love it. but like what if the community and rural Midwest as a whole says, we don't want that.

    Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. I you know, I think though that in large part they do, they do, you know, we've seen this too. It's been kind of, it's been a bit of a science to figure out how to run this theater and how to get people there each weekend. And when we bought it or before we bought it, it was very similar to what you're talking about. There'd be maybe five to 10 people on any given night on the weekend. was not that highly trafficked. And I think that we were able to, you know,

    Zach Lahn (08:05.816)

    do new advertising, kind of bring things up to speed and up to date there, but also show the right types of movies that people are really looking for. And for us, it went through a period of eight months or so where it wasn't showing any movies and people in the community were like, we miss this. We really want this back. And so you don't want to have to go to that point. But I think there is a nostalgia for these things. And if you can keep your ticket prices low and you can have wholesome movies that families can come to, I really think that people

    desire these types of things. I will say also this, this touches on a bigger issue that we're having in Iowa as a state. Right now in Iowa, we are number four in the nation for net out migration of our kids with bachelor's degrees, 25 to 29. Number four. For every, every one of those people we lose, it's an average of $4.5 million in lifetime earnings that they'll have.

    Brain drain,

    Yeah.

    Zach Lahn (09:03.298)

    And that equates to about $400,000 in tax revenue to the state. more than that, those numbers are.

    How much how much money have we spent on them through education and other community resources?

    You're getting ahead of me here because this is these are things I love to talk about because it talked it shows the depth of the problem and how this is where we need to be focusing so much of our time but it's about $200,000 that we're set spending to educate and then the last thing I'll say because I'm not big on on stats but the last thing I'll say is if you take a 33 year old Iowan that graduated from Iowa High School Iowa College on average nationwide they're the third highest earners in the nation Wow it's an amazing stat so we're producing some of the highest earners

    and they're leaving our state. So this is where, when people talk about how do you revive rural communities, I think we have to go back. I often say, I'm not running for governor because of policy. I'm running because of our culture, our heritage and our traditions. And I want to help people remember about how important those things are. It's things I talk to my kids about literally every day. I've read stories of heroic people from our state and the history of our state. And I have many of those I could share, but you know, when you look at this, I was asked the other day,

    how are we gonna grow Iowa's economy? Well, here's the thing, government doesn't grow economy. Government can definitely get in the way of growing economy. People grow economies. And so how would we grow it? We keep our kids here. If we keep those kids that I just talked about here, where they can have grandma and grandpa babysit, they can be home for Christmas and Thanksgiving, they can have what I had growing up, which is both my grandparents living within 30 minutes and coming to all my sporting events and picking us up from school sometimes. These are the things that...

    Zach Lahn (10:42.57)

    I think we take for granted so often that if you talk to anybody that's moved out of the state, it's like there is a longing to have those things back. So I've even talked about going as far as I would like to give a bonus to graduates of Iowa high schools who have moved away to move back home. And if you'll move to a rural community, we should double that bonus. Because we will not restore the promise of Iowa without our rural communities and our family farms.

    the kids who moved away and were able to take the initiative to move away are probably the exact ones that would have initiative to do things here. It's interesting. I mean, they do it with doctors. have the like loan forgiveness if you're in a rural community and and whatnot. I think that's brilliant. The the keeping the people here. That's the best answer I've heard on revitalizing. What

    What do think the foundation is of that? And I'm suspicious that it has to do a lot with our podcast as far as our natural areas and having a something physical on the landscape that's not man-made that you can connect to. And I think a good example of that is I was just up in Driftless, Wisconsin yesterday and that drive starting right around Strawberry Point, Iowa and then

    work your way through drift. Yep, go across the river there at at a McGregor and a Prairie du Chien and and then on up through the state, you see all of these small thriving towns. wouldn't even say cities, right? They're just little towns. And up until you get to Strawberry Point, you have these like, you know, nothing, nothing, nothing. Boom, big, big area that's got a McDonald's and two cases, right?

    And then nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing for another 30 miles. Boom, another big, you know, and it's all developed within the last, you know, 50 years, probably even more, precisely 25 years, right? And, but then once you hit Strawberry Point and you get into Driftless, Iowa, the most naturally beautiful part of our state left, and then on into Driftless, Wisconsin, you see these just little

    Kent Boucher (12:55.938)

    Dells and towns that are just thriving and you can you know the the place that where I was invited up there to go hunting my friend from college and the road that I turned on was named after his family and Guess who lived next door his aunt guess who lived on the road his dad guess who had the job of plowing the the county road that went in front of his house exactly and so these are people that are anchored into a spot

    And they all have small little farmsteads, know, with just a little bit of livestock and they're raising a lot of what they consume themselves. They're producing what they consume. And I think so much of it is tied to the fact that there's something that they didn't put on the map that is still there. And so if we, I love the idea of trying to bring some of these people back to our state.

    But do we have something left to offer them is my biggest question throughout much of our state.

    Yeah, well, first off, I know exactly what you're talking about. And you know, my father was a 30 year conservationist. I mean, I grew up just believing because he told me every sunset was made for me. look at this, look what God made for you here. And I grew up walking through native prairie fields and crop consulting with my dad and doing these things. It's like what my childhood largely was, but I'm actually going to maybe take this a little bit different way. The reason that those places still,

    have those small farmsteads and have the life that you're talking about there is because the topography, large part, I'm not gonna say only, large part, the topography of the land makes it harder for big business to extract from. Meaning the farmland is not as high of a value in terms of CSR. So you take this and what I would say is this is what Iowa was. This is in large part what.

    Kent Boucher (14:49.666)

    Yep.

    Zach Lahn (14:57.634)

    what all of our, you we go back a couple generations, what they experienced. And we hear stories of it from our grandparents still. And I think, you know, this is a big part of why I'm running is that I have watched as our rural communities have been hollowed out. I've watched as 10,000 family farms have gone to the waste, have gone over 20 years. The suicide rate amongst our farmers is up 50 % in the same time. How many times you hear somebody talk about that? Never. They don't.

    So when I look at this, I tell people, this is not a natural progression. This is not how agriculture is supposed to go. I was talking to a farmer last night in Oskaloosa. And as we were talking, it came out that basically our farmers are now just being treated as low level employees of big agriculture. consolidation that's happened in the state. When I was growing up, 300 seed and input companies. When we were growing up, 300 seed and input companies in the state operating in the 80s.

    Now there's three that control 85%. And so what are they doing? Iowa's become a place to extract from. Our dollars, not only are our kids leaving, our dollars from our crops are leaving. 25 % of our land is now owned by out-of-state investors in fund that treat us like an annuity. So they don't come to our Friday night football games. They're not shopping on our main streets. They're not going to your coffee shop. They're getting a check sent to them in another state somewhere else. And then at the same time, we were talking about this before we got on, just about

    some of these houses in these areas in the cities. The trillion dollar hedge fund Blackstone is now buying single family homes in Des Moines and renting them back to Iowa's young people. Iowa's young families are now paying leases to a trillion dollar Wall Street hedge fund. We are being extracted from. And I know so many farmers that want to try and experiment with different methods. I have many farmers call me about this because we do it.

    Thanks.

    Zach Lahn (16:54.59)

    The is the margins are razor thin. And when you're just focused on, when you're actually looking at break even margins, maybe at best sometimes, your appetite to experiment is very low.

    Two things. One, I hear you defending the farmers against big ag. Totally agree with you. So I'm with you on that point. What do you do when you realize the solution isn't corn and beans and the farmers you're trying to defend aren't willing to change to help themselves? What do you do? I'm not saying that that's where they're at, but what would you do if they will? No, I, I just want it to get better with me doing how I've always been as opposed to, well, I'll change if

    I think.

    Speaker 1 (17:37.706)

    If you'll change, I'll change and we can kind of meet in the middle and create this change.

    No, it is great question. I'd say, you know, and what have we heard for a long time from some of the associations and other people? We need more markets. We need to expand our markets to the point where now we're kind of going head over heels to try to expand our market with a communist government that hates our way of life. Right. So I would just say this, that we just have to tell, tell the story because my mission in this is not to make everybody farm like I do or agree with everything I'm saying. My mission is to help

    Yeah.

    Zach Lahn (18:10.952)

    Iowa's farmers make more money, live healthier lives, have a way to have their children carry on what they're doing, where they don't have to have an off-farm income job. And I think what you're talking about largely is the solution to that. we need more, not only do we need to be able to diversify what we're growing, we need markets for that too. So like I've said, look, this is a big audacious thing to say, but by the end of my second term, if...

    Lord willing, I get a first term, and then I would get elected for second term. I would like to see 80 % of the food served in Iowa's public schools grown in the state of Iowa. Why not? It's one of the biggest markets we can create.

    I have a question for you. So I think there's kind of this bad view of what happens in California that a bunch of illegal immigrants come in and they they do the farming and then, you know, and that's why some of this food that is not accurate. What actually happens is there are agencies and there are government programs where mostly people from Mexico, they come in.

    They get paid $18 an hour happily for a season and look, they're comparing it to $20 a day that they were getting paid. So they're super excited. They come up, they make their $18 an hour for the season of cutting lettuce or broccoli or whatever they're doing. And then they go back and that's where the vegetation, a lot of our produce comes from, especially, you know, cause Walmart just distributes a third of all food in the United States. So, so here's my question then the backlash of what you're saying.

    is economically and unless I'm wrong, but we've spent quite a bit of time studying it. Food will be more expensive as a percentage of income on household. My argument, and it's not popular, is we actually don't spend enough money on food. So we're not connected to it. 50 % of all food in the United States gets thrown out at some point in the pipeline from when it was grown to when it gets put in front of someone. And if it got more expensive, just like your great grandma with the airplane.

    Speaker 1 (20:19.726)

    They would take a lot better care of the food and less would be thrown out. But here's where I see a huge hurdle is you start transitioning. You're going to have to pay people more than $18 an hour to put their life work into some sort of farming to be to be totally blunt. We as a society are more entitled than some of the people who are coming out from Mexico that are grateful to work for their 18 bucks an hour. What the backlash is food gets more expensive and then what do you do about

    And I do want to say I love everything you're saying. I'm just trying to speak from the other side of, I, I could see food getting going from 15 to 18 % of someone's income to 25. And that being a big deal to someone in their house.

    You know, I once had a pastor say to me, show me your calendar and your checkbook and I'll show you what you worship. Yes. And so, yes. Like I think if you look at, well, let me just, let me just challenge your premise a little bit here. Yeah, please. Is that this is a common argument that's made, but it's not taking into account the scale of what could be done over a long period of time. Meaning, and if you go back to why we don't have a lot of this in Iowa today,

    You look at the 80s farm crisis. All these parents are telling the kids what? Don't plan to come back to the farm. Don't plan to come back home. Go to college. Get a degree, which we've seen the result of that now. But they were rightfully scared because, and we could go into that at some point, but so what happens? You lose labor on your farm because the kids aren't there anymore. Labor is needed to take care of animals. And so what happens? Commodity agriculture booms. We farm fence row to fence row.

    And then now we're at a place where people often tell me like, you know, with this, with the crackdown immigration, things like that, is that affecting farm workers in Iowa? I'm like, I don't think you understand how farms operate in Iowa. Like we don't have that type of lettuce cutting labor that you're talking about here. Now I believe that working with the soil and with your hands is one of the ways we are most connected to God. that's a belief I've had with my father.

    Zach Lahn (22:34.87)

    And I believe that, you know, going back historically, that's what farming is about. Sovereignty for the family. And it's about service to your community and your neighbors and dignified work that connects us to God. Like that's what I believe about farming. That's why it's so important to me. And I think as we lose this, we are losing that connection. So I think as we scale and as we, look, technology can play a great role in a lot of this. I'm not somebody who's a technologist that thinks technology should be taking over everything. I believe that like right now we're looking

    down the barrel of AI probably producing very negative outcomes in the future that we're not thinking about or as a community we're not taking seriously. But when it comes to farming, mean, look, it used to be you're pulling carrots by hand. There's now machines that can harvest acres and acres of carrots, something we didn't think was possible. There's much that's happening in farm technology that could solve this. And also,

    If we had a market for it, if we had a demand for it, it would start to spur the type of innovation that's necessary to do these things, to build these different technologies. But right now it's just about how big of a combine can I get from John Deere? What's the next one? Is it going to be a million dollars, $750,000? All well. I tell people this. Our farmers are going through a crisis right now. And I'd love to talk about that. But you look at the margins that they're operating on, very low.

    And what do we hear from John Deere this year? Raising their prices by 5%. And I just say, guys, you have to understand something. The largest shareholders of John Deere are BlackRock, State Street, and Cascade Investments Bill Gates Company. This is not the same company that it once was. It's another point of extraction from our communities.

    I think, I think that's not good. I, and even worse to me is when bear with a roundup when corn was seven 50 or eight bucks, you know, in 2021, they were like, look, the COVID, the inputs got way more. So it's, it's double the price. And then as soon as, as soon as corn got, it was like $4 all of a sudden, they were like, well, you know, the inputs are down. So roundups cheaper now they, they know, they know how much farmers can pay and that's where they're going to charge. They're not charging what it costs. They're charging what the market can bear.

    Zach Lahn (24:43.394)

    Not by much,

    Speaker 1 (24:50.048)

    and it's a totally different game.

    Let me, to that exact point, there's a study out of, I believe, the University of Illinois, and it compared the cost of farming in Brazil to the cost of farming in Illinois, Iowa, right? And so basically the study was this, if you grow an acre of corn in Brazil, and you grow an acre of corn in Iowa, and you farm using identical inputs, because the three big companies in America are also the three big companies in Brazil.

    They're charging Brazilian farmers on average $150 less per acre for the same input and the same application rate. And why is that? Because what they're doing is they're basing their price on yield. Well, we don't base prices on, that's what we do when we share crop with somebody. They're treating our farmers like sharecroppers, but not taking the risk. So it's extract, it's just like what Bobby Kennedy and Donald Trump are fighting with this most favored nation pricing for pharmaceuticals. We are actively being extorted by these companies.

    And that's one of the reasons I'm running. I think they've long passed the point of monopolies and we have to break them apart. That's a big endeavor. But I believe that if Iowa can lead the way, these other states whose farmers are feeling the exact same pinch will jump on board and we can actually start to bring some competition and allow our farmers to get better prices.

    you're talking about a very painful route to success, not just for you, but in terms of like, I'm trying to think Knoxville.

    Kent Boucher (26:16.546)

    Well, it's appealing to, as we've had this conversation, I feel we get entrenched in the same problems for so long because, and I credit you for not doing this in this conversation, Zach, politicians appeal to a couple things, anger, fear, and victim mindset, right? Yeah. These things are happening to you. Groceries are so expensive, aren't they, Nicholas? Yeah.

    Instead of like, maybe you don't need Netflix.

    You're a little worried like what if something were to happen to your kid But you're spending all your money on groceries and look that guy he's getting rich because you're spending all your money on the those groceries and they can play all three of those things and in one hand of cards and None of none of that in there is anything about hey, what are we gonna do to make this better? It's it's this is happening to you. You should be afraid of it. Don't worry

    If you elect me, I'll fix your life for you.

    Right, and I think that to take on these painful roads like you just mentioned, Nicholas, which you're right, this is a complete reshaping of how we view agriculture in not just Iowa, but in America. then what happens in American agriculture ripples through to the globe. Yes. we as a people have to, I think, be coached.

    Kent Boucher (27:45.88)

    to accept that and we have to say, you know what, I'm not gonna be a victim anymore. Maybe I can't change everything that's happening around me, but I can change this one thing or these two things. And I think that's how we have to get there. But how do we, I guess how do we get people to start thinking that way?

    And I want to, I want to jump on that exact question. He's asking a guy that I listened to. listened to a podcast called all in top five podcast. I listened to a guy named David Friedberg is on there and he is very anti socialism, but not just like socialism as in giving away 60 % of your wealth. I mean, he's just like a very awkward nerd dude. like, but, um, and he, uh, talks about the steps to getting to socialism.

    Antisocial or anti-social?

    Speaker 1 (28:35.53)

    And obviously the biggest thing is hardwired into our psychology path of least resistance. It is like, it is a psychological principle. So if you start giving me money, I am going to fight so hard to make sure you keep giving me money. Or if you start, if you don't charge me for a thing, I'm going to be really upset if you start charging me for that thing. Right. And just as a society, we're used to things being handed out. It becomes very quickly an addiction.

    In terms of if we start going without a handout, we have addiction symptoms. Uh, I am not like an anti social security person. I think there truly are. And I know some of them, my wife worked in social work for a while. There truly are people, they just need a help. They need a bridge from where they're at to where they could be. And it's going to be great. And there's a ton of people who they don't, they don't want the bridge. They just want the help. They want the handout, right? How do you help a whole society?

    and flip a whole society that is used to the ease of where they're at. Because if you part of the reason giant ag conglomerates have gotten where they are, the reason, roundup is so popular is they said, look, your life's going to be way easier. We're to make your life way easier. And all we ask is all the profit from your farm that that combine the air conditioning is going to be so comfortable and the seat will be softest.

    Come on, come on. Air conditioning combines. I'm in favor of that.

    Actually, Kent didn't have it for a while because the mouse got in our air conditioning unit and Riley went and dug the mouse nest out of there so Kent could have AC.

    Kent Boucher (30:09.334)

    And then the condensation line started to, or got plugged in.

    You know like some of the comments are so nice they basically have bidets in them, you But you get what I'm saying like why why would we give up the ease of our life Why would we go your way when I could have it easier in my life, you know?

    No

    Zach Lahn (30:30.862)

    I think that's one of the foundational questions and I think this is it. Look, we have to call people to something higher. We have to remind them of their history. One of the stories I tell that I've told in this campaign is this, you know, when in 1861, the Civil War is just starting. And Governor Kirkwood, was the governor of the time, his plow in his field in the spring when a messenger from the War Department came riding up and he had a message from the president and the message said,

    that he needed Governor Kirkwood to put together a company of 750 troops to join the Civil War within two weeks. And the governor said, 750 troops in two weeks, how can that be done? Two weeks later, 10,000 Iowans had signed up for a war that wasn't on their ground for people that weren't in their state largely. But they saw what was happening to other states. Missouri Compromise has just made.

    you know, made Missouri slave state. you had the Kansas Nebraska act, which was flooding all these elite landowning elites out to these states to try to lobby for slavery, right? To like make these states slave states. And our ancestors who came here, I tell the story that, you know, in Germany, a large part of Iowa was found by Germans. think 35 to 40 % of Iowa was found by Germans.

    And many of them came over around 1850, right in that timeframe. And I always wondered why, because I just wonder like, what was it over there? Because you always hear these stories. And well, in 1848, there's a revolution that was being attempted to happen in Germany. And they're looking for freedom of speech. They didn't like slavery. They also didn't like how land was being consolidated, much of what we kind of see happening here. They attempted a revolution, they were beat.

    And many of them were put into exile and me and left. Well, what state had just come online in 1846? Yeah. I was Iowa. That's where a lot of our answers just came from. And so they had this fight in them about these ideals and values. And I think that's what it comes back to is that we have to remind Iowans of who we are. You know, if you look at other states around the country, Iowa still is a bit of a star, a shining star. There's like, we still have

    Zach Lahn (32:49.582)

    you know, more 30 year olds that are married and own homes in other States. We still like have the values that we hold dear in large part. And, but I say that thing, you know, the enemies at the gates, like there are people that seek the destruction of the way of life that we hold dear. And so when I look at this and I say, yes, I understand that, that like, when you start giving a handout, it's very difficult to take it back. But

    I think that we have to tell the story of who we are as Iowans. We have to remind people that we want to be called to something higher. We want to put our cross on our back, bear it and walk up the hill because that's what we do. That's what we're called to do. That's the whole story of Western civilization is that. And the ultimate story was the biblical one. It's like, that's what Jesus did. And so that's what we're called to do. so reminding people of that. But I think

    I was talking my wife about this today. I think for a long time, especially in our rural communities, we've just been taking it on the chin. Left and right, we've seen our options decrease, our income decrease, and there's something there that we're not the type of people that are going to be playing the victim card in that way. We're gonna keep doing the hard work and moving forward. And that's why I'm saying I'm running on this is because...

    There are powers at B that have consolidated so much that if you go in any cafe in a small town in small town Iowa, they're not talking about tariffs. They're talking about inputs. They're talking about what's happening with these companies taking more. Soybean prices were higher this year than they were last year before the tariffs are put in. What's changed? The cost, the cost of growing has changed. And why has that changed? Five years, nitrogen fertilizers went up 150%, corns down 2%. That's a path to bankruptcy.

    And then what happens when this, here's how the story, the end of the story happens. Then what are these big companies going to do? They go and lobby their politicians to get a giant bailout from Washington DC. That event will flow through the farmer to pay off their debts to the input provider. All the while, the life of the farmer is not getting any better. And so we have to, as you said, Kent, we have to start thinking about this differently.

    Kent Boucher (35:04.014)

    Yeah, we have to we have to be willing to have what's that old term have your metal tested or whatever. Yeah, see if you have any metal. I don't even spell that kind of metal. that two? Does it these? But yeah.

    M E D I don't know. So we're so far removed from having our.

    Where's the worst?

    Kent Boucher (35:21.792)

    anymore. but it's true. It's true. I think we do have to we do have to recall what people went through to be here historically.

    about you painted a beautiful picture of where we came from, which is very important. I believe the Bible says without the without vision, people perish. What's your vision? Where are we headed?

    Well, I think I'm a big comparative advantage person. Like, what do we do really well? And you know, I remember hearing for a long time, yeah, especially from friends I had in Des Moines that there's this vision for IO to become this tech hub. And I just, I kind of got to the point, I'm like, who's asking for that? technology is great. We can use it, especially when we can bring people back home to work remotely here to bring our kids back. But like, what is IO great at? We have great kids, we have great soil.

    insurance.

    And so I'm not trying to, I don't want Iowa to be anything it's not. I want to go back to the promise of Iowa. And you know, it's not just farming. We once had thriving, great manufacturing in our state, but like so many other states, it got shipped overseas. you know, I look at this, you know, I've talked a bit in spiritual terms here, and I often look at this in the sense of, I think that there's been this,

    Zach Lahn (36:43.05)

    religion of economic thinking that's taken over many people. And what I mean by this is our ancestors did not come here to be capitalists. They came here to own the land under their feet, build their churches and communities. They came here to pass something on to their kids, but they didn't come here to do that to the detriment of their neighbor. And so when I look at these small town communities, I look at these communities,

    See ya

    I'm looking at this hollowing out that's happening. And when people ask, what do mean hollowing out? I'm like, well, you can see the people even, also look at the businesses that are there. You had a country foods grocery store. Now what do you have? You have a dollar general. Who's dollar general I'm by? Largest shareholders. BlackRock? Vanguard. They're hollowing out our communities and that money's being sent to New York City, to wherever it's going. And so I just have this thinking now.

    interesting

    Kent Boucher (37:37.514)

    open pit mine.

    It's that's a that's that's a great analogy. That's that's how so many people see us as that I have this true belief That is not popular amongst people that are still in this religion of economic thinking that community values should trump shareholder values and the Amish asked this one deep question before they make a big decision and that question is What will this change do to our community?

    What were we just talking about this year? Dude, Zach, you have no idea how many of your sentences Kent and I have said, like, out, like, for

    That came from an essay I read by Wendell Berry in 1991. He wrote an essay in the Atlantic and he mentioned that question since then. I've looked into him like, well, yes, it's true. They do. And I don't think anybody would deny our politicians have not been asking that question when they decided that it was a good idea to have free trade with China and ship all of our manufacturing overseas. They didn't ask what to do in our communities. And this is the same thing that comes with tech. When we when we were moving manufacturer sees what were people saying? We're going to high tech jobs. It didn't happen. And look, when Elon Musk can buy Twitter.

    and cut 80 % of the workforce and it works better or just as good, we can see that this is not this, and I support that. Like, hey, you should operate efficiently. But the difference is tech consolidates upwards. That's how it works. I want Iowa to consolidate out and like build our rural communities, build our family farms, bring people back here. There is such a desire for homesteading and for small farming in our nation that if we could lead on this, we could have, I believe, a more prosperous Iowa than we've ever seen.

    Kent Boucher (39:10.862)

    How can we help those people that want a homestead? Because I mean, the cost of land has just gotten to be astronomical. Two weeks ago, had farmland over 32. Heard another sale recently over 25.

    break even for corn and beans is about 8,000. So if you're 8,000 an acre, you could make do on a 20 to 30 year mortgage and that is nowhere.

    And I agree with your assessment there and it might just be because of what the algorithm feeds me on social media Seemingly a lot of people out there who would love to and it's not like they want it mean, yeah, everybody wants a hundred acres but I think a lot of people be content with one acre and just the ability to Yeah, collect eggs in the morning and then a lot of people would love to do the whole nine yards, right but but

    Thanks, Zuck.

    Kent Boucher (40:06.58)

    What is there there a way that we as Iowa there there are some things from a federal standpoint, you know, first time farmer financing through USDA for buying land. But is there something we can do as Iowa to like you're saying, make it work for the people who want to grow Iowa outward instead of upward?

    Yeah. And I'm not going to talk about problems right now because I'm going to talk, just address what you just said, because it's the right question. Meaning, and it's not always about, you know, here's this big problem. Like, look, I think as Iowans, here's what we do. We find a way to make it happen even on a small scale. And then we grow it. I think for far too long, we've been being fed these stories on our algorithm about the entrepreneur that made a hundred million dollar exit or something like that. And I often tell people guys that like that vision,

    there's a time and a place for it, but it's also a lie. Meaning like, it's not what we all should be striving for. We should be striving to build our communities, to go into the Lions Club meeting, to go into church on Sunday. Like that's the vision that we are, that I am trying to help people grab onto again. And I think it connects deeply with people and it's not sterile, it's not corporate, it's very, very human. so, but I would say this on that.

    now going into what are some of the things we're facing? You know, like I said, 25 % of our land is now owned by out of state investors and funds. And so look, you mentioned the $8,000 an acre. When I saw that $32,000 acre sale, I was looking at current net income rates per acre. And even with good numbers, like the tweet I put out was something like that breaks even in 500 years. 500 years that breaks even. It doesn't make, now if it's you, but

    Wow

    Zach Lahn (41:57.814)

    If it's used for different purposes, of course, but I think this gets back to the point of the extraction that's happening. Let me say this, I would like to see a different track on some of these things. I don't want out of state investors buying our land, and if they do, I'd like to raise their property taxes so they're paying more. Iowa land belongs in Iowa hands. That's my firm belief. And I saw this, there's other states, Ron DeSantis is talking about things like this, the governor of Montana actually.

    Increased property taxes on second homes by almost 70 % Wow Why because Montana is being treated like a playground for the rich and the elite

    Hawaii did it years ago. They had to, because otherwise the locals were screwed.

    Yes, and so here's the thing. This is what states can do. Meaning like the 10th Amendment says we get to decide how we live as a state. I'm a total free market human being, but I also think we need to experiment with different things. We need to look at giving bonuses to young kids that come back home, raising property taxes on out of state landowners, and then I would love to be able to use those funds to delete property taxes on family farms.

    Man, I like, there's this building in Knoxville. I'm so bitter about it. It used to be a family video and the people who own it live in Chicago. You know what's in there? It's right in the middle of Knoxville. Beautiful big building. Nothing. You know, it's been in there for 15 years. Nothing. They won't sell the, they, if anybody ever approaches them, they ask for 10 or 12 times the, the, what it's worth. And, their whole point is it's a, it's depreciation on taxes or something like that. So it's worth more. And I'm like,

    Speaker 1 (43:32.494)

    It's frustrating. mean, just on a counseling psychological level, anytime something's out of your control, but it affects you. That makes people angry, right? So that makes me angry because it's out of my control, but it affects me and it's right across from my car. Yeah, and I, I tend to watch holes in walls. That's why.

    just love anchors.

    Kent Boucher (43:49.486)

    That's a lot of Thanksgiving.

    My counselor has me on some list. I don't know.

    Speaking of Nick, it's almost what is it three o'clock here? You need your pill

    But something we we've talked about before is out of state landowners pay higher taxes out of country landowners pay obscene taxes. Yeah. If you want to pay if you want to pay for all of our roads feel free to have 200 acres in here. You know if you're going to pay for that crazy of taxes. But but I do agree with you and we've talked about it. You can't. It is basically impossible to conserve something ecologically without feeling connected to it.

    And you're not going to feel connected to if you're out, if you're never here. You know what I mean?

    Zach Lahn (44:32.448)

    You just said how I've said many things that you guys have talked about. This is exactly something I talk about all the time. Stewardship is directly connected to you being on the land, to you seeing what's happening with the land. And what we just tell you is our farmers that farm their land know this. They know it. And you also, we just know, I mean, I've been involved in investing in real estate and things like that. When you're a renter on something, it's a very different feel than when you are responsible for.

    Stewarding that to pass it down to your children. And I think this is where I make a point that our land is not an asset class for Wall Street. And I think so many of these people that came, that had this religion of economic thinking, they think of, it's a great asset class. It's durable, the value's not going to zero. And I say, no, no, this is the inheritance of the sons and daughters of Iowa. This is how we're gonna grow our families, how we're gonna grow our communities. It is not something for you to buy and sell.

    and then just expect us to be tenant farmers on it. And so much so that yes, raising taxes is not the typical Republican thing to talk about. But no, no, this is about protecting our people and our culture. My whole campaign, the whole thing is about our culture. I wanna see Iowa's traditions passed on. I wanna see Iowa's kids stay here. And there's things we're gonna have to do like this that other states have led on. And also like,

    banning Blackstone from owning single family homes in Des Moines. Our neighborhoods aren't profit centers for Wall Street. You get how crazy that is that young Iowa families are paying rent to a trillion dollar hedge fund. That's insane.

    something else that I want to bring up and this goes back to the food thing as well is you are trying to paint a strong picture of the future and that is very important because part of the pathway through what you're painting, I'll just be very practical. If you de-incentivize all the outside investment on the land in here, land values will drop. What will that mean? That means that there are, there is some land out there that is worth something. So the bank will,

    Speaker 1 (46:45.974)

    loan them money won't be worth that anymore. The bank's going to call it. They're going to lose their farm. That will happen to people. If the, and with, with that being said, I agree with what you said. How do you steer a state through dealing with that pain in order to get to a better future?

    this is a really practical question. And let me just say, there's a number that will de-incentivize people from buying more land, but also maybe not divest all their land holdings right away and drop markets. Like I think that's practically what we need to be looking at to start, where it's like, we want Iowa to be a good investment for the residents that live here. Because I'll just say this, for Iowa farmers, you know, people talk to me about this with the proposal, you know, where the real pain

    could lie if somebody were to do something drastic, which I'm not talking about like something crazy drastic. I'm talking about being able to disincentivize enough to give our people a chance and a shot. where it lies is that so many of these operating loans are leveraged by farmland values. And so a correction in farmland values could affect that. But I think here's what we have to also take into account.

    I don't think we want farmers having to operate on operating notes every year. Like it's a symptom of the problem. And so it's like we have this problem of a debt bailout cycle that we wanna get away from. And yes, I think Trump is talking about this with the tariffs that like, yeah, like there are, we have like you said about, you know, maybe.

    Government handouts there is like some addiction that happens to that. Yeah, we're doing that and when you start taking some of these things away like there's a reaction to that and When you start trying to fix systemic problems, sometimes there's there's things that happen that are tough for a temporary period time But the question is is our long-term vision, correct? That's the question

    Speaker 1 (48:43.302)

    I mean, what you're talking about is on a grand scale, the hearts of man. And I would love to think that if you're elected as governor, that I would like to think that you would do a good job or anybody else who is elected. But like, no matter how good anyone is a governor, you're not going to be able to control the hearts of man, the wants, the greeds, the loves, the excitements, the cultural values that they hold.

    I admire you and I don't think it's hopeless. It is above my pay grade to see a future where I mean, what's that? People are gonna give me up for talking about this, but Dave Ramsey, his big thing is you can't, we couldn't get off of debt as a country this year, but we could over 50 years and be a much better place. But

    That's the idea. We're not gonna do this overnight. And it wouldn't be responsible to try to do it overnight. This is not some idealistic pie in the sky dream. Look, I'm not saying I'm gonna be the one that's gonna be doing this forever. There's no turbulence on the governor's office. I'm 39 years old. If I'm honored to be supported by the people of Iowa, this is what I will spend the rest of my life working on. It will be restoring Iowa's rural communities, Iowa's economy, Iowa's family farms. But here's the deal. My entire life,

    Politicians have been saying we have to support farmers. We have to support farmers and everything is getting worse I can't name one thing that's getting better outside of a temporary bump in the cattle market Very so we and we know why because the issues are not about Subsidies getting more subsidies the issues are systemic problems where we are being exploited and The government has a role in protecting us from that and they've failed at that role well

    That's a,

    Speaker 1 (50:30.784)

    So this brings up more a harder point, but you're registered Republican running as a Republican and we know, you know, we have a decent pulse on what people feel and are saying about farming just because our common sections are filled with pro and anti, you know, and yeah, and people.

    We're well connected too through a lot of our friends and people we have on the podcast.

    And there's a lot of anti people feel betrayed by the Republican party because there's been there quite a long hold of red in the, in the state. And just like you said, you, you said the government has been saying we need to protect the farmers, but, a lot of people here, Republicans have been saying we support the farmers, but it's not getting better. And so

    Well, that's what I'm saying. Yes. Okay. I'm saying both parties have been saying this for a long time. Yeah. And nothing's getting better. I, and I didn't say this to begin with, but I, you know, I would kick myself if I don't. I'm not a politician. I've never ran for office. I spent the past 10 years building businesses, building schools, building our family farm back. That's what I've done. And you know, this wasn't on my bingo card for this year. The seat hasn't been open in 20 years and I'm watching family members who are doing everything right.

    Interesting.

    Zach Lahn (51:46.476)

    Yes, I'm watching family members who are doing everything right in farming and still losing money. And we know what the problem is. And so I'm my own biggest donor. I'm not gonna be bought by these people. And I think that's the key. I'm not asking for their support. Matter of fact, I know they're not gonna like Lotus. And let me just be clear. I am not, like, I'm in favor of people farming largely the way that they would like to farm to make the money that they can make. My hope is to give them a vision and a path to see

    Here's how we can better support our family. Here's how we better support our communities. Here's how we can grow healthy food. Because look, something that Bobby Kennedy is doing, I believe he's fighting for the soul of our country right now when it comes to a lot of the things he's on. look, let's go back a little bit to consolidation. We've talked about three agriculture companies control 85 % of the market. Four packers control over 80 % of the market. Four grocers control 80 % of the groceries.

    How so?

    Zach Lahn (52:45.784)

    I think it's just a handful, three or four banks control about 50 % of the capital. I mean, we have been consolidated.

    It's way more than 50 % for banks, yeah.

    probably, I'm just talking about specific bank brands like JP Morgan, these people. But there has been a consolidation that's been occurring, that's been unchecked. And now we're to the point where we have the illusion of choice. We don't really have that much choice. And so when I see something that Bobby Kenny is doing by taking on, say big food, I mean, with

    the processed food that our kids are being fed with the dyes that are in the food that they're being fed, we're mass poisoning our kids. I mean, we can see that. We see the studies where if you change the diet of the child with ADHD, that it goes away. Like I ran schools for number of years. I've watched even just having kids come into our school whose parents would say, you know, the school system says I need to get my kid on medication. What do you think? I'm like, well, come on in for a week trial. I bring them in. It turns out if you don't train them to a desk for

    six hours a day, if you give them freedom and optionality in what they work on, a lot of outside play, free play, not structured play, the ability to work with others, most of these things literally go away. Now, there are kids who have, and I often identify this as significant trauma that shows up with symptoms like this that are very, they're off the charts. They need specific one-on-one help. But oftentimes, if you change the diet of a child,

    Zach Lahn (54:18.776)

    you'll solve so many of the behavioral issues.

    The, so my mom's an educational psychologist. My wife, we've become pretty good friends with her counselor, so you gotta get a new counselor actually after that, but she's awesome. And she was a professor for psychology for a long time. She's got her doc and she said that she was reading a study where the lady, super expensive. This other lady was really expensive to see her. And for six weeks you had to change her diet to what she said and you couldn't have

    any screens at all, not even not even a phone for work or computer. And if the whole family would do that, she would see the child and she said over 70 % of them, but the symptoms were gone. Yeah, they didn't even need to see her.

    It's gone. Yeah. No, she's exactly right. I've seen the same thing. I mean, you know, in our schools that we had started, we use technology for about 45 minutes a day. It's because, you know, it's we do it for things that are can be best delivered at computational math, for instance, just traditional math, not experiential math, experiential math. The math is very complex, meaning like we're going to do experiments to see how far this rocket will travel. We're to make predictions on it based on thrust and velocity and these things. That's very difficult. Like

    But computational math from one plus one equals two to calculus like technology solved that problem like And this isn't anything it's teachers But when you can rewind Sal Khan as many times as you want to get the question and then when you add in AI I mean, holy cow. So

    Speaker 1 (55:46.114)

    Is that helpful? The Khan Academy? Because I feel like public schools do that too. They'll just put people in front of Khan Academy and be like, all right, like learn the stuff, you know.

    It's helpful within a system. And here's what I mean by that. You know, our schools are largely based on the idea that, here's what we say is that young people are heroes on a journey to find their calling and change the world. That's why they come to school every day. And so when you give young people freedom and choice in their education, so at our schools, the morning is all spent in core skills. The afternoon is hands on projects, problems, and simulations. And so at the beginning of the year, the parents will meet with the

    With with their learner and they will set out a badge plan is what we call basically how many levels of math You know first second third grade you want to do this year How many badge books are you gonna read this year and we get their benchmarks? But they go over that with their parent and then with their guide and I will tell you part of the secret to to happiness in education is High expectations that sounds counterintuitive kids love to exceed and to like to thrive and grow

    But the way we have schools now where everybody's moving at the exact same pace. And if you, if you finish algebra one and you got a 70%, you're going to algebra two, even though the 30 % you don't understand could be most of what algebra two is about. It's like building a house and just saying, yeah, the foundation 70 % done. Let's put first floor on. It's like, that one's sick. And so we do this.

    about how I do my houses.

    Zach Lahn (57:19.136)

    And what we do is we give young people, we give learners, call them, choice and what they work on throughout the day. Our elementary kids have a mentor from the high school that will come down on Mondays and set goals with them. And they have this person that they can go to. So part of the thing we do is we say, if a young person can build it, plan it, create it, or lead it on their own, let them until you've worked yourself out of a job. And so, and that's for our guides. And so our young people lead.

    town hall meetings every Wednesday where they vote on decisions for their studio for the classroom. And there's now 300 of these schools across the world. And so they

    Yeah, I heard that interview you did with Peterson. Yeah. On a fascinating, fascinating interview.

    Well, my goal is to see these types of schools all over the state of Iowa. There's a couple of changes we need to do to some of the regulations, but that's my big hope.

    some superintendents, friends with a couple superintendents and I just texted them the interview and I said, Hey, what do you think? They both have the same concern and this is just, yeah, this is just me being selfish, asking this question. It was foundational reading. They say a lot of times these private schools are good, but the foundational reading, the like preschool to second or third grade just really struggles behind. And they admitted like they didn't know enough about your schools.

    Speaker 1 (58:37.762)

    you know, to actually give an evaluation. But that was their concern about it. I'm curious what your thoughts are to their,

    Well, that's the right concern to have for any child of that age because there's data on if you're not reading at this level by this time, things in the future are very difficult. so we actually have a narrowed focus during that period of time in these schools to where we focus very heavily on reading for that purpose. But here's the thing, though. A traditional school might give you worksheets or small books or something like that.

    we don't care if you start reading comic books, read what you love until you love to read. That's the idea. That's what Naval says, Naval Ravikhan, who's a brilliant mind. And that's what we do. And it's not because he said it, we were just doing that. So the idea is to let learners get sort of entranced by, by reading amazing work and reading things are very interested in. And so what that looks like, practically speaking, I would say of the things we thrive at as a school, reading and writing are at the top.

    And you know, you mentioned Jordan Peterson. One of the things he said was that if you can write well and speak well, you're lethal at what you'd like to do in the future. And I think this is largely true. mean, when we were first starting schools back in 2018, I was reading studies from McKinsey and company that were talking about that by 2030 AI was going to be doing basically all of the coding. What happened faster than that? And so I was telling parents at that time,

    Do not believe this idea that coding is the future for your kids. It is routine, it's mathematic, it can be done by a computer way better than it can be done by a human eventually. Now, when you're getting into deep learning AI systems, that's like something that PhD level people are working on.

    Speaker 1 (01:00:30.638)

    If you're, if you're a 1 % or on any topic, you're going to, yeah.

    But you guys remember this, it was being touted as like the next thing to be able to do. And every school was creating these STEM programs, focus on coding. was like, we can see the writing on the wall a long time ago that it wasn't that. And so.

    I my little sister electrical engineering because building out like many data data centers is going to be like the whole thing for the next 20, 30 years major data centers, but they're also going to put many data centers in cars and you know, and all these other places. So, but anyway,

    I think so for our school, the schools in our network, we do really well on reading. But it is the right, meaning like the right concern because of the data we see from around education. But what does this look like when you get to high school, middle school, high school? I can remember one day I walked into our middle school. And so the idea is when you're in elementary, you're all through your time at our schools, you're choosing the books you read. There's not somebody saying you have to read this. Now you're pitching the books you read in a Socratic circle.

    to say, why is this related to my hero's journey? Is it more difficult than the last book I've read? And what's the reason that I'm wanting to read this book? And so your peers are actually like giving feedback. And when you get into middle school, they can actually deny a book as a badge book. And you see you pitch it before you do it. The reason is like, we, they will, they will sniff out people looking to get an easy way out of just like reading a simple book. yeah, for sure.

    Speaker 1 (01:01:55.362)

    do it to themselves. man, it's like a sanctified version of Lord of the Flies.

    With systems and processes in place to allow them to control it. That's the idea. So our school, I say this, normal schools are run by adults. Our school is run by systems and the learners have control over many of those systems. Not all of them. If they want to play video games all day, they have to write a proposal and go to the head of the school. Head of school will say, Hey, here's the promise I made to parents that technology is used for learning. And so, but would you like a fun Friday that is a, you know, playing Minecraft or something like that, if you earn it. you pick the, pick the books you'd like to read.

    based on what your interests are. There is input from your community. However, when you get into middle school, you're going into what we call deep books. And those are books that have changed the world or won an award of some sort, won a major award. And so I remember one day I was walking into the middle school, this is six years ago or so, and there's some middle schoolers there and they were in this quiet time of reading and they control their schedule. middle school and above, largely adults aren't even needed.

    like meaning they're there to like help run Socratic discussions, but they know the system so well and they set their own goals. And these are not students that are handpicked from places. These are just students that started in this system and this is what they know. This is how they know to operate. And so the books they were reading were the Da Vinci Code, The Boys Who Challenged Hitler and Atlas Shrugged. Those are the three middle school books that were being read at the time. But it's really a beautiful thing to see when a child like gets sort of,

    just totally into the book that they're reading. And I love that.

    Kent Boucher (01:03:31.406)

    So I love this conversation. was a public school science educator for eight years. And so I have strong feelings on how education has played out. And I taught for seven of those years. taught in Illinois. One year I taught in Iowa. My year in Iowa was infinitely worse.

    By October, he came begging for a job.

    October and and not that things were hunky-dory and

    But to Kent's integrity, he stuck out the whole year.

    Yeah

    Kent Boucher (01:04:10.926)

    but not that things were great in Illinois. They started out pretty manageable. And by the end, especially, and I think a large part of that was I came in after, my year that I taught in Iowa was after COVID. And so many kids were just cut loose for an extended amount of time. was like perpetual summer vacation. right, right, yeah.

    without work on the farm.

    And I mean, it just became like, you know, a thing where you just had to survive each day, each minute even. So I like the idea of what you're describing. But I think of places like, you know, Davenport, Iowa, Cedar Rapids, you know,

    at Tamoa.

    Yeah, a tumble. Go to some of these bigger areas with a lot of really big problems at home. problems on a community scale, you know? When I was living in Davenport, I remember there was this huge, it's like for a couple years, and maybe it's still going on, maybe it just doesn't make the news anymore, but there were these kids that would just skip school every day and then go around stealing cars. And then they would,

    Kent Boucher (01:05:38.082)

    the cops start chasing them and they crash into a telephone pole and all the kids would hop out and they'd run. They'd arrest a few of them, you know, and then the next day they'd be catching them doing the same thing. these are kids that were enrolled in public school here in Iowa, right? the vast majority of people that are going to be voting in this next governor's race probably have kids in public school.

    I think I love the idea of the schools that you've set up and I'm sure we can take ideas from that and incorporate it into a public school setting. But even still, how do we reach all of these families throughout our state, not just the ones that have a loving mom or dad, let alone both, at home, which I think is a part of the problem.

    I think we could easily say that, or simply say, simplify it maybe, that the current way that public education works has made it easier to be a disconnected parent.

    I see it as one of the handouts.

    You get two out of three meals for your kid each day are provided by the school.

    Zach Lahn (01:07:03.502)

    And they're not healthy.

    and before and after school programs.

    It's like child support became part of social security. You know, we became entitled to not having to be with our kids for two thirds of the year.

    Well, this is what I was going to say to you is that I want to talk about this issue deeply. Yeah, right now.

    I have a suggestion too that I think we don't have to talk about on there. want to hear it. I want to give it you that I think would drastically improve things within five years.

    Speaker 1 (01:07:30.828)

    it's a great it is a great one.

    Here's, and I think to this, to the point, first thing I want to ask you a question. You talk about these people stealing cars and crashing them. Why didn't you do that as a kid?

    Yeah, because there'd be... I wouldn't have even come on my radar to...

    Because his parents loved him.

    What would have happened to you if you did that again?

    Kent Boucher (01:07:49.343)

    man, yeah, I wouldn't be walking today.

    I think that's part of the point. And let me just say this, like, government doesn't solve that problem that you're talking about right there. This is a cultural issue. And I say like, look, this is an issue that's like as local as it can be, but it does have to do with, you know, also dignity of work, dignity of being involved in the community and the family and these things. But government doesn't have

    think that his parents are very lovely.

    Zach Lahn (01:08:20.558)

    all the solutions and I don't think it is the answer to a lot of these things. The family is the core piece of this that we have to be promoting. And now there are things that government can do to incentivize that. And there are things that I would really like to do myself. We can talk about them later, but know that I think that point is right. Same reason I wouldn't have done it is because I would have had a very similar outcome from my parents is doing that. So public education. I think that, you know, we've, I think we,

    have not done a good job of talking about this issue. And here's why. You know, recently, you know, Iowa's passes the ESA laws and I'll just be very frank, like the vouchers, I'm somebody who's in favor of parents having more decisions over where their kids go to school, parents having more say over where their tax dollars go. So that's sort of a foundational freedom I believe in. That being said, I think it

    Is that the voucher law?

    Zach Lahn (01:09:19.775)

    It can't be glossed over that the governor has to be the number one advocate for public school kids. Has to be. When we were growing up in Iowa, we were number one in education in the nation. And we heard it all over the place. And rightfully so. I was proud of it too. And I didn't even like school, but I was like, hey, when I go see my friends in Minnesota or something, was like, we had the best schools in the country.

    was really proud of it.

    Speaker 1 (01:09:41.066)

    It was harder.

    State quarter.

    Yes, and we, you know, even the schools that I've been involved with, we do the Iowa Test of Basic Skills still, right? so...

    Other states used the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Yes. Yeah.

    And so now we're in the bottom half. Mississippi's above us.

    Speaker 1 (01:09:56.45)

    Well, but Mississippi's got like the Mississippi miracle thing going

    I know and that's amazing and like and there's reasons why that actually connect directly back to what you're talking about.

    That's a question. Yeah, that is a good question.

    So, so I look at this and to say, you know, when we were growing up, nobody cared about school choice. They weren't, they weren't asking for, for these things because we were good. And because we knew that we had something that parents could count on. They could send their kids to a good school in their community, get a good education. They didn't have to think about indoctrination or, or personal beliefs coming into the classroom. We had a culture that supported this and it was a big part. And you look at the quarters when they did those quarters of each state.

    because we were good.

    Zach Lahn (01:10:37.25)

    What was Iowa's? It was a one room schoolhouse. And my great grandma taught at a one room schoolhouse. My great aunt taught at one room schoolhouse. Both my great grandmas taught at these schoolhouses.

    Ken actually attended one.

    low hanging fruit

    So, so what does that look like? No, like the schools that I've started, you're exactly right. They're not, this is not what I'm saying. we, every public school needs to look like this. But I will tell you the most common common I get or question I get is from somebody teaching in a public school saying, Hey, how could I implement more of what you're doing in my classroom? How could I innovate more? But I think this comes to another problem is exactly what you said that so many of our young teachers are just opting out.

    They don't want to be a part of it because the culture is not good. And I will tell you this. When I talk to teachers that are very frank with me, what they tell me is 90 % of their time is spent on 10 % of the kids. Oh, Oh,

    Kent Boucher (01:11:36.319)

    I would say that might even be low.

    Yeah. And so, you know, when I look at that, you've talked about therapy a lot or therapists and things like that. And you have, you have that in your family too. When I look at this, say, many of these kids are crying out for help. They actually aren't best served in that classroom. They need help. And it's not kind and compassionate of us to ignore that. And it's not kind to the other set of students to ignore that. And it's not kind to the teacher to ignore that.

    What that solution exactly looks like I'm still really thinking about looking what other states are doing But we need to help the kids that are really struggling with many of the things that you're talking about and that could be Hacking being malnutrition. It could be trauma. It could be issues at home And we need to be able to recognize that because well, it's not the government's job to be the parents

    these teachers get an upfront view of, what's going on? What is somebody struggling with? And we need to be saying, how can we help these kids? And oftentimes that will mean maybe they need more one-on-one support or small group support. And that's what they should get. Well, the kids that are there and ready to learn and the teacher that's ready to teach can do the job that they came there for. And then we can keep more of Iowa's teachers in the game for longer, but they also want to innovate. And so it's not just about that statistic I just said.

    They also want to innovate. You know, I spent two years of my life traveling the world, just visiting schools. And that was when I wanted to start schools. was saying, Hey, I remember when I, my first son was born. My uncle called me and he said, as a joke, I'm walking through the halls of the hospital. says, well, Zach, now you need to start thinking about schools. And I just laughed because it's like, well, he's one day old. But then it really, this is what happened. It hit me. I was just saying, well, if he's anything like I was, I want to find a place that will allow him to thrive, even though he doesn't fit in the box exactly right.

    Zach Lahn (01:13:31.084)

    Because many of the things that don't fit into the education box today, because it hasn't changed in over 100 years in the format sense, are things the world really values and needs.

    Yeah. Yeah.

    We don't have that much more time together. Otherwise,

    I don't have that much more in my head.

    We need to talk about two issues that we brought up to all of the gubernatorial candidates so far And they're very it's national news now the conservation related Well, well for sure one is and I think is more research is being done both are being linked to it, but our poor water quality and are Probably even more scary. I'm actually one of the people I was born in Iowa. I lived in Iowa

    Kent Boucher (01:14:17.038)

    until I was four years old. Then my family moved from the Des Moines area to Northern Illinois and then to the Quad Cities. I grew up the rest of my upbringing on the Illinois side of the river. Then after my wife and I got married, we moved back to Iowa.

    won't hold that part against you.

    He's a big Bears fan.

    I love to be here. I'm very pro Iowa. But I have four children and I love them dearly. And my wife is from New Hampshire. And you compare the not that New Hampshire doesn't have its problems, right? They were a huge paper milling

    location for a long, long time. So they have PFAS everywhere in their soil, right? So they have their own environmental hazards. But we have the second highest cancer rate in the nation. I believe we're just behind Kentucky on that. And I think we're the only place, maybe even in the Western hemisphere, that has an increasing rate of cancer prevalence in the people that live.

    Kent Boucher (01:15:33.614)

    In our in our political location of Iowa, right? And I say it all time of the podcast if you have an increasing rate of cancer Mathematically given enough time everybody gets cancer. And so if we stay the course We should expect no no different outcome than then then Matt within what the data is is showing us and so I feel a a someone who loves Iowa who who

    fights for Iowa every day while I do my job. I feel this, this nagging in the back of my brain as a dad. Am I setting my kids up for non Hodgkin's lymphoma? Am I setting my kids up for leukemia or some kind of bone cancer or or some you know, some other childhood cancer by

    Insisting that I stay here because Because I love this place and I feel like it's worth fighting for but in the meantime are my are my kids as collateral damage is that is that a responsible decision as a dad yeah, and I don't think I'm the only one who feels that way I think I think a lot of Iowans Feel that way and in fact, I have a friend Who I need to text back about hedgerows. He texted me this morning. You know who you are

    When you hear this, he'll hear this. We've had that conversation. He's not he's in fact, this friend is from Wisconsin and he has chosen to move to Iowa grew up in Wisconsin and did his college in Iowa. Thank you here. And as a landowner who does a lot of conservation work on his land here here in Iowa, but he wonders that same thing. And we talk about that every now and then. And

    We know it's a problem. I think if we're gonna deal with that problem, just like we've talked about with a lot of these other problems, it's gonna be a painful process as far as what's causing all of this cancer. I think we probably have a pretty good idea when you have outlier data, the best place to look at are the outlier circumstances that happen in your state and the amount of agrochemicals that are

    Kent Boucher (01:17:56.532)

    almost the entire surface area of our state are exposed to multiple times a year. That's an outlier circumstance that's not going on in New Hampshire. so we could probably, correlation is not causation, but oftentimes it is.

    Causation is not proof of causation, but it could be causation.

    And so.

    I want to know, and the person who I end up voting for as governor is going to be the person that I feel, and I think a lot of other people listen to this podcast, same deal. The person I end up voting for is the person that I feel most confident is going to do something about this. And I do think that water quality is very tightly tied to this as well.

    And I think we can say the other, well, we have really unhealthy diets here in Iowa. Okay. Yeah. So you think they do don't in Tennessee, you know what I mean? And, and, and, you know what I mean? Like all these

    Speaker 1 (01:18:58.508)

    Tennessee, man

    I already started with Mississippi.

    But but so and then we got radon, know, and yeah, there's

    Radon came here from glaciers. Mitigation has only gotten better. Any politician that suggests radon is not telling you the truth.

    Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. That's that's what so we're to be brave enough to lift every stone, no matter how painful it is to find out this is the problem and we're going to do something about

    Zach Lahn (01:19:31.768)

    How much time we got for this?

    It's your time.

    To me as Nicholas has said before he thinks water quality and I you know I think the cancer issue tied to that is going to be the thing that determines this election

    It should be. It should be. Here, let me just like, look, I'm not a politician. So, you know, you might have people that come onto these podcasts or hear them talk and it's just dancing around something or talking about alcohol or talking about radon and, talking about smoking. Look, I'm not saying those things aren't important. They are important. But we're an outlier. There's more cancer in the state of Iowa than ever anywhere in the history of human civilization right now. If you're in one of the top 10 counties,

    of cancer incidents in our state. They're all rural counties. Your lifetime chance of getting cancer is one in two. So I think that answers some of your questions, but here's the deal. I was meeting with an old friend whose family owns a great company here in Iowa, very successful company. He's a second generation, maybe third. I was meeting with him for breakfast one day and he said, Zach, I'm seriously thinking about moving my family outside of Iowa because of this issue. And I don't know anybody that would blame him.

    Kent Boucher (01:20:18.104)

    That's right.

    Zach Lahn (01:20:41.75)

    He doesn't want to. It's just what you're saying. know, agriculture has been a part of our state since it was founded. think, you know, when General Lieutenant Albert Lee led the first dragoons through Iowa, he talked about how unbelievably beautiful. He actually said something along the lines of, have not in all of my travels seen a place as beautiful as this.

    That should be on our quarter,

    It should. you know, since then, I think what I would say is that there's no place on the face of the earth that went through a greater transformation than that.

    That's documented. I was the most terraformed place on Yeah, for its size.

    on earth. Yep. I mean, look, and so I grew up, I mentioned with my dad, he was a 28 year crop consultant. So we'd go out on the four wheeler to all these farms in Northwest Iowa, great people, great farmers love these people as a big part of my childhood. And we'd go out with the, with the net, the bug net check for bugs, we go check for weeds. And we would do this. My dad did this for 20 years. And then what would he do? He would

    Zach Lahn (01:21:51.446)

    check for those things, write a report. He's very detailed, very proud of his work, meaning he takes very seriously. And then he would submit a report to the farmer telling them what to apply. 28 years after doing this, he gets non Hodgkin's lymphoma, very aggressive type as well. Now he has it in remission.

    Did he get part of the lawsuit? Really? My friend's dad was and had quite a bit of money, but not worth the cancer.

    He has not been part of the lawsuit.

    Zach Lahn (01:22:21.374)

    No, no. And, you know, but at that point, I I'd always been sort of like looking to try to understand this better. But at that point, it was really an eye opening moment for me. It was my dad. But then, you know, look, you can't even go into a Casey's anymore without a jar for somebody asking for a dollar or some quarters to help this young kid with cancer. And sometimes there's two or three now. That's real. It is so real. And I just say this. Look,

    Yeah.

    Zach Lahn (01:22:50.722)

    When I look at this, I don't address it the same way other politicians do. I've read them in Monsanto papers. Do you guys know this story? So when Monsanto was going through their very first, their first big lawsuit out in California with a groundskeeper, this groundskeeper had a a hose break. was using glyphosate and it showered it into his suit and he ended up getting lesions all over his body. And he emailed Monsanto and he said, Hey,

    she's like a school or something.

    Zach Lahn (01:23:20.374)

    I'm getting sick. What could I do? They ignored the email. They read it. They didn't respond in the lawsuit. There was a Monsanto is able to get the judge to agree that a lot of the discovery was confidential. Couldn't be released. But there was a stipulation within that discovery that said if the plaintiff requested a meet and confer to discuss the discovery or the validity of it and Monsanto didn't respond within 30 days, it could be made public.

    On Santo I made a mistake. They forgot to respond. And you can go online and read these papers and you will see a lesson in corporate capture and in...

    Zach Lahn (01:24:05.472)

    not good dealings of companies in government and what we see all over the place. One of the emails actually says from the representative from the company to the representative from the EPA when they're evaluating whether or not it should have a cancer designation, the representative from the company emails EPA and says, I need you to kill this study. And the EPA representative responds back with, I better get a medal for this. We know what's going on in our state. Now here's what I would say. We've talked a lot.

    about how these large agriculture companies are extorting and exploiting our farmers. The open pit mine is a great example. They're also lying to our farmers. don't, this is, we have to solve this, but it's not gonna be on the backs of our farmers. They've been lied to, we've been lied to. And we have to confront that. We know exactly how glyphosate using surfactants enters the bloodstream.

    When it enters the bloodstream, about 10 % of cardiac output enters bone marrow. In bone marrow, it disrupts the replication of hematopoietic stem cells, which is where you differentiate between a white and a red blood cell. It's genotoxic. We know, 50 studies say that it's toxic to DNA. But many things are. Many, many things are. OK? So what happens then is that when DNA is damaged,

    it can sometimes lose its ability to self-destruct or repair. So then it replicates and replicates and replicates and we have cancer. And there's, there's many things to talk about this, look, the science is there and I'm not going to, I'll say this, gosh, should say this? we're talking about a company that created Agent Orange and DDT. It's not exactly the track record.

    Is that Monsanto or bear?

    Zach Lahn (01:26:04.962)

    Monsanto. Okay. Not exactly the track record of prioritizing human health. My whole point in talking about this is because I don't want to see any more of my neighbors get cancer. don't want to see any more of Iowa's kids get cancer. And the most common thing when I'm talking to you, farmers who I love, who talk about this is if it wasn't safe, they wouldn't let me use it. And I'm just here to say that's not true. They're lying to us.

    And just like they're taking from us, they're lying to us.

    About a month and a half ago, I was in Sioux City, back near where I grew up. And I was at the funeral for my best friend from high school's dad, who was just about 65 and died of cancer.

    And I look at this and I just say, I don't know how many more of those funerals I can go to, where their parents live to be 80, but they're living to be 65. We are losing the wisdom of a generation. This is a generational issue for the people of the state of Iowa. We have to confront it head on. Now I'm not saying this is the only source and I'm not actually singling out one company. That's not what I'm here to do. I'm saying that we need to understand the safety and the efficacy of these products. And I'm also not here to say,

    We need to have outright bans of anything. We need to have off-ramps that provide farmers other options, because I don't know any farmer that wants to spend more money on inputs. Yeah. Yeah. We all want to spend less.

    Speaker 1 (01:27:35.678)

    So they also don't want to start and not to their detriment. I don't want to do it either hoeing soybean fields

    No, I agree. And look, there are safe ways to apply, very safe ways. But when you see a commercial for a product and they're spraying it in their driveway wearing flip flops and shorts, when we know how it enters the bloodstream and damages DNA, that's negligence. We use many products in our daily life in the shop that can have negative consequences if not used properly. But until we can get these companies to own up

    that there are risks associated with using them. There's a time and place where they said some of these products were safe to drink.

    Yeah.

    I remember being told that middle school.

    Zach Lahn (01:28:18.99)

    Yes, right and so it's like the I the point here is that not that like hey we need to ban all of these things There's maybe some things that we shouldn't be using anymore and we need to confront that but it's how do we use How do we use products safely? How do we make sure that our farmers know they're getting fair science and being told the truth?

    How do you I like the idea of applying roundup or other chemicals safely But you're talking about trying to implement Spraying it safely on two-thirds of our state twice a year

    I-I-That-

    feels impossible. That feels like too big of a bottle of soda to put a cap on.

    You know, would say the practicality of that and what products we should be using versus shouldn't be using. haven't got into all of that yet. I mean, I understand directionally what's happening here. I've actually probably went way too deep on this subject because I care about it so much. And I think Iowans care about it. Same with water quality. I mean, look, we know what's happening with our water quality too. When farmers are operating on razor thin margins,

    Zach Lahn (01:29:29.474)

    Look, if you talk to any farmer about what technology over the past 20 years has increased their yield the most, likely they'll mention tiling. Woo! And so, but when you're daylighting tile directly into streams, we end up having the most polluted tributary in the United States of America, which is the Raccoon River. Okay, so what's the solution to that? Well, one solution was done at Bear Creek near Ames, where we use saturated buffers.

    You're the first person who's brought it.

    Speaker 1 (01:29:50.498)

    Yeah.

    Zach Lahn (01:29:59.022)

    And when they, the water that was, uh, drained using saturated buffers, the amount of nitrates are able to remove from that was a small number is just 100%. Because nature, yes, nature has a way to filter this through. And I think people don't understand tiling often. It's that, you know, not that the rain comes down and ends up in the tile. That's not actually how it works. The rain, you have a really wet season. The water table rises.

    Yeah. Sure. How the peri strips.

    Zach Lahn (01:30:28.674)

    When the water table rises, tile is there to direct some of that out. So you can still run your machinery on the ground and things like that. When you have a really wet season and you're applying and then more rain comes down, well, you're getting a lot of, a lot of your product is ending up in the tiling. like, again, I'm like, I get it. Like I'm a farmer myself. I mean, I've had to deal with, with the things that are on our farm and

    I understand what it's like to operate on very, very thin margins and not be able to experiment with different practices. But right now, the USDA will pay $9.50 per foot on saturated buffer. The average cost is somewhere between $7 and $9. Now it's competitive, but okay, so what do we do as a state? Actually, I actually don't know how, well, the saturated buffers are just aligned down, you know.

    How wide are those?

    Zach Lahn (01:31:21.294)

    horizontally, right? So they'd tie in with each line that comes off of your waterway. So when I look at this from the agricultural standpoint and the farming standpoint, we know how to solve these problems. We have a rainy day fund as a state. It's raining pretty hard right now when it comes to the health of our people. And let me just tell you, I think Iowa's farmers care about this deeply.

    okay, okay, yeah, yeah.

    Zach Lahn (01:31:48.088)

    Like they're drinking the water too. They're seeing their family members and community members have health issues.

    But are they willing to admit because there's

    there's i say is a company willing to admit that's why i'm

    I I totally agree that I think the company is totally incentivized to not admit it, but not all farmers. I, I know many farmers that are willing to admit things got to change many, but there, there are some that I have experience with that are like, can't be.

    Well, we all know that. Look, farmers are rightfully, they take pride in their work. They love what they do. Many that I know in my own family can be stubborn sometimes. It's part of, but you have to understand, we've like, in large part from a cultural standpoint, these communities have fended off these,

    Zach Lahn (01:32:43.072)

    attacks on our culture and they've stayed true in large part on the cultural side and so

    can't be a farmer and not be stubborn. Like it's just too hard to form, you know, or be an old farmer.

    And there's too many things coming at you. There's too many people telling you this is the next thing that's going to save you a dollar or whatever it might be. They're coming in every day. And so look, one of the reasons I'm running is to help make Iowa health again. I was the first candidate ever endorsed by the maha pack, which is, the, group that is really advocating for RFK junior's agenda. were the first campaign ever in the history of, the organization to get endorsed and why, because we see what's going on in Iowa, but I'm here to say,

    I'm not here to do this on the backs of farmers. There's companies that need to be held accountable, truly accountable. And we've seen that happen throughout history with companies that have lied to people. I would venture to say I'm the only person that will sit at this table and tell you that they're lying to us and that we don't actually know the extent by which they're lying to us. But if I'm governor, I'm going to look at this and say, look, you want to sell these products in our state? Hand over your research.

    prove to us that it's safe and how to use it safely.

    Speaker 1 (01:33:58.072)

    where they could pay for the bailouts every year. $15 billion bailouts. I, I, I love what you're saying. I, something I really appreciate. I hope people heard this when you were talking is that you in so many words said, systems and policies aren't going to save us. people in good decision making will. And, I really, really appreciate that, that, that you have a

    You have a lot of hope in the people of Iowa and our culture.

    That's my entire campaign is Hope for the People of Iowa. my favorite part of being on this campaign is going to meet people. I love hearing their stories. When I talk to them about my family farm and restoring it, and I hear their stories about their farms, I'm like, gosh, there could be an amazing book written about all of these stories of what's happened on these farms. And that is like this culture to be so proud of. the story I told you about the Civil War, when was the last time that was taught in schools? Probably it's been.

    100 years maybe, or maybe not 100, but you know what mean? It's been a long time and we need to be reminded of who we are. And here's what I'd say, biblically it's summarized in two things, love the Lord God with all your heart, mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. And so the big question when Jesus is challenged on that, well, who's your neighbor? Well, the answer is no, no, to whom are you being neighborly? And that's what I think we need to do as Iowans. You say, how do we help each other?

    How do we confront the real issues? Look, the Civil War and slavery was not happening on our soil. Matter of fact, we were a respite from it. We didn't have to go and fight. By the end of the Civil War, more Iowans fought per capita than any other state in the nation.

    Kent Boucher (01:35:42.85)

    Wow. I think Val Van Koten said that.

    Yeah, that does bring up.

    Something

    The Appella right here had a huge number of...

    Yep.

    Speaker 1 (01:35:50.562)

    Yeah, the Dutch people 10 years after they had immigrated here, they migrated here.

    In fact, Wyatt Earp, most famous Palladian. Really? Yeah, yeah. largely grew up.

    That was Pelican.

    Speaker 1 (01:36:07.31)

    Yeah, got into a bunch of bar fights and Pella

    There's also him and Dave Cooning who does not get enough credit. He's part of my it's like a little sub thing I want to raise awareness that Dave Cooning the guitarist from the killer. Yeah

    It's from Pella.

    And nobody talks about it. Let me just add one in that I read today. CW Recall, who wrote Convoy, from Iowa. I was like, I didn't know that. I looked at this, was like, that says CW Recall's from Iowa. I'm like, sure enough, he is. I listen that song a lot.

    Yeah, the biggest song of like the 70s and 80s, but

    Zach Lahn (01:36:36.332)

    And I just want to say thank you guys for letting me on here, come on here and talk about these things, but you're dead on. Like this is, I'm here because I want to see the promise of Iowa restored. And that starts with its people telling the stories of why we should be proud, having somebody to protect our culture and our heritage and confront the big issues, which I cannot tell you how many people have told me, don't say the things I just said. Don't say it. These companies are going to attack you incessantly. And I just say,

    Do you worry about that?

    I mean Look, I think that I'm here to tell the truth that's like what I want to do and I believe the people I were gonna see that and hear that I I have a good life. I don't need to run for governor I'm here because I want my children truly to stay For their lives in this state. Mm-hmm. And I think I asked the same question that you're asking is if things don't change or god forbid they get worse

    Do I want them to stay?

    Yeah, what's the threshold?

    Speaker 1 (01:37:39.852)

    You want to be able to want them to say, yeah.

    Yes, and so they're watching us restore our land. They're watching us restore the creek that we're working on right now.

    That Prairie mix. Wow. Guys, Zach, don't know how Zach got a, got a hold of Tom Rossberg. I know like half the people that listen in this podcast know of or have heard or know Tom Rossberg. Please help them get on the pod. We've had them on email so many times. Just so hard to pin down.

    And this

    He said yes, but we just can't get a time.

    Speaker 1 (01:38:07.79)

    Well, and when Tom gives someone a mix I know boy I'm in for it because tracking down the amount of species that are on Tom Rosberg's mix So Zach comes in swinging hard with this like hundred species mix from Tom Rosberg and I was like, this guy's a real Conservationist this guy really actually cares trying to get like bastard toe flax as a species in his prairie mix. I'm like

    Watch your mouth!

    That's what I'm

    I think Tom Rossberg does it as a joke because it's on every single mix that is so tough or quite what but yeah

    I asked him, said, he said, how far do you want? said, I want to know as close to my piece of my land as possible, what would have been here? Yeah. And I want to put as much of that in as possible.

    Speaker 1 (01:38:53.038)

    $80,000 an acre

    That'll be fun. If that's the case, that'll be something fun to look at. Could you imagine?

    Yeah. man. Well, we really appreciate having you as always with all the other kids. We wish you the blessings and best of luck on, your.

    Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, man. Guys, Zach, he did a great job describing it, but look, there's no, no change that's going to happen at all. If we don't start making a difference because conservation change in our communities, in our culture and fighting for what we believe in, it all happens one mind at a time.

    Thank you guys for what you do. cow.

Hoksey Native Seeds
Previous

Ep. 324 The Raw and Unfiltered Story of Inheriting a Prairie Farm Overnight
Next

Ep. 314 What Do Prairie Strips Accomplish? And Practical Incremental Changes for COnservation On Your Farm