Ep. 338 Are Small Dairy Farms Actually Viable??
Derek Orth is a fourth-generation dairy farmer in southwest Wisconsin, and he doesn't sugarcoat a thing. In this episode, Nick sits down with Derek at his family's dairy operation — cows in the background and all — to talk about what it actually takes to keep a small dairy farm alive in 2025.
They get into the labor shortage hitting dairy farms hard, why immigrant workers have become the backbone of an industry that can't find local help, and what happens the day those workers decide to go home. Derek opens up about debt, robots, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange setting his milk price, and why he gives himself five years before the milking parlor goes fully automated.
The conversation doesn't stay on the farm either. Nick and Derek dig into food pricing, why dairy farmers debate buying a cup of coffee while feeding the country, the consolidation that took the U.S. from 640,000 dairy farms to around 25,000, and what universal basic income might actually mean for rural America when AI finishes the job.
Derek also breaks down the nutrition conversation around fats and cholesterol, calls out the low-fat fad for what it was, and shares why he thinks the four most subsidized crops in America are four things you probably shouldn't eat.
This one goes deep. Pull up a chair.
Check out this episode of the Prairie Farm Podcast to find out more!
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Derek Orth (00:00.224)
I am Derek Orth. I'm a fourth generation dairy farmer and this is the Prairie Farm Podcast.
speaker-1 (00:05.87)
Mark Canyon. I'm Dr. Julie Meachin. I'm Steve Hanson. I'm Jill Beane.
Derek Orth (00:10.078)
Chad gravy
Nicolas Lirio (00:11.277)
My name is Jeremy French. Laura Walter.
speaker-1 (00:13.486)
Carol, and this is the Prairie Farm podcast. This is Hal Herring, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers podcast. Skip Sly, Iowa Whitetail, Valerie VanCoten, State Historical Society of Iowa, Dr. Matt Helmers, Iowa State University.
Nicolas Lirio (00:30.958)
I'm Judd McCullum, I appeared out of the wilderness and this is the Prairie Farm Podcast.
Derek Orth (00:31.086)
Kyle Laubarger with the Native Habitat Project.
speaker-1 (00:37.986)
Welcome to the Prairie Farm Podcast.
Nicolas Lirio (00:42.24)
companies talk about conservation but I want to tell you about a company that actually puts their money where their mouth is. BirdHunterSupply.com is a great company. I know the owner Joe, he's a great dude. We've had the privilege of working with him and let's just say he really puts his money where his mouth is. A large percentage of his profits from Bird Hunter Supply go to a conservation organization of your choice at
So your purchase actually puts money towards conservation and it's not just a roundup, it's not just asking you to donate on top of your purchase. This is included with your purchase. This man is running his very own small business version of Pitman Robertson, except without all the government stuff. I'm a big fan of that. So whether you're buying hunting apparel, decoys, dog training gear, you are actually going to be giving back to conservation. That is my friend Joe at
BirdHunterSupply.com. We love that company. We love what they have going on. and they do a really great job with their website. Makes it very easy. BirdHunterSupply.com. Your neighbor got shot by a deer hunter. Yep. his car.
Derek Orth (01:52.468)
No, not in his car. He actually lives in Indiana now. Had come home to the family farm hunting on his parents land. Came in for lunch, was walking back out to the woods, I think with his daughter and a stray bullet came from came from the east and struck him in the buttocks like it didn't hit soft tissue. It didn't hit bone. It didn't hit intestines. So like full recovery. Everything should be fine.
Nicolas Lirio (02:18.382)
they ever find out who it was?
Derek Orth (02:20.654)
Of course everybody's looking at the map, you know, like yeah had to come from here or here but you know, you never know. Yeah I met I would assume a whole police report and everything had to be right there was police car a lot of police cars on our road and then the road to the east so that kind of thing just makes everyone in the area feel uneasy then right like know, among us is just then you know, so there's a somebody that
like puts everything on the scanner onto Facebook. there's so much speculation that goes on because it's fantastic because you hear sirens and you think I better check Facebook.
Nicolas Lirio (03:01.122)
Chasebook is made for it. That's the kind of stuff I love.
Derek Orth (03:04.014)
Well not just that, that's what rural Facebook is here for.
Nicolas Lirio (03:07.598)
All the rants and raves pages for every small town now Those are like it's like anybody who's a leader in that town is like yeah, that's the most embarrassing part of our town But it's like it I scroll on those
Derek Orth (03:19.342)
I get some sick enjoyment knowing that as screwed up as I am I'm not as screwed up as that lady.
Nicolas Lirio (03:26.798)
Oh man, that's funny. Well, we really, really appreciate you hanging out with us on the pod. if anybody's watching on YouTube, you'll see there are cows behind us. You can probably hear them a little bit in the background from our mics.
Derek Orth (03:38.99)
Yeah, if you're if you're just on the audio experience of a podcast, first of all, congratulations. That's what podcasts are meant for. They're meant to be listened to and not watched. I do not understand this new this new era of podcasts where people are like, oh, yeah, you know, I watched that podcast. The beauty of a podcast is being able to get stuff done while you're listening.
Nicolas Lirio (03:56.782)
I have a beautiful
Nicolas Lirio (04:01.402)
I have a friend that they do a podcast and they were going over their analytics to present it to sponsors and they found that Let's see it was they had a bunch of watches on YouTube Which is already kind of but a lot of those YouTube watch because I used to do that I used to just put it pull it up on YouTube and let same set my phone down in the car not watch it.
Derek Orth (04:23.852)
Terrible for your battery. YouTube is a battery.
Nicolas Lirio (04:26.51)
Well, you just have it plugged in the car the alternators doing what But here's what Here's what was interesting with this person with their podcast half of their Watches on YouTube were on a TV. So that person sat down Scrolled through their TV to find this. Yeah, they're just watching podcasts as I
Derek Orth (04:29.934)
Cooking is better.
Derek Orth (04:49.39)
I have never watched the Prairie Farm podcast. Me neither. Listen to it.
Nicolas Lirio (04:54.51)
You wouldn't believe how many people that I meet personally. That is not what I thought you looked like. It's pretty regular. I'm here for it. I'm here for all the mystery. Also, I'll have you pull your mic just a tad bit closer.
Derek Orth (05:08.782)
Hey Nick, this is set for 1.7, does that matter?
Nicolas Lirio (05:12.396)
does not matter that's just a replay thing where we're learning some settings
Derek Orth (05:16.814)
I'm boomer and over here. yeah, if you're listening in and you do hear some, you know, cow pee splattering against the ground or some banging around, there are cows behind us. This is probably the coolest setting. Mills was pretty awesome too. Dugs was awesome of course and the iconic, you know, Durin farmhouse.
Nicolas Lirio (05:35.094)
Mills' was awesome.
Nicolas Lirio (05:40.642)
Well, and anytime we get to go to like a local place like a food food hurry and like record there
Derek Orth (05:46.51)
That's just invented a new term.
Nicolas Lirio (05:51.022)
With those places are cool. It was kind of interesting before we got out of the car I had to I had to gently walk it for about 30 minutes I had to walk Kent through house cows aren't that scary and it's okay
Nicolas Lirio (06:04.459)
Just imagine.
Derek Orth (06:05.257)
I Think we need a picture of Nick giving a big old arm and brace around the neck That one will let you the one I pointed out before she will let you 14
Nicolas Lirio (06:11.165)
Dude, they would throw me around.
Nicolas Lirio (06:18.24)
All right, well, check Instagram to see if that actually.
Derek Orth (06:21.516)
Caz are just beautiful.
Nicolas Lirio (06:26.05)
Yeah. What is the most frustrating thing dealing with cow besides like sickness or anything, you know, their health. What is the most frustrating thing? Just like attitude or, know, dealing with a cow.
Derek Orth (06:35.694)
So like we have jerseys most like the little brown cows. They all have personality
Nicolas Lirio (06:40.494)
Is that why they're so small? Like compared to the big old beef ones? Okay, interesting.
Derek Orth (06:43.758)
So the bread to be smaller, they're more efficient, higher components, so like per pound of milk we get more cheese than like a Holstein. Okay. We do have some cross breads, I don't know what... Like there's a white-faced cow, that is not a Jersey. But most of the cows are Jerseys in the barn.
Nicolas Lirio (07:03.778)
I love it. Derek's like not insecure, but he's like, I just want you to know, I do know. And we're all like, it's just a cow.
Derek Orth (07:09.998)
Yeah, it's like going over to a boomer lady's house and she's worried about her precious moments being a little out of order on the shelf.
Nicolas Lirio (07:16.76)
Where she's like Derek this place is awesome. No this this really okay, so anyway
Derek Orth (07:26.274)
I don't know if this fits or not, but the cows are not hard to deal with. It's everything else. It's the frozen manure, which is great fertilizer, but it's gotta be handled every day. The milking twice a day is a lot. I can deal with cows day in and day out. Dealing with employees and people day in and out is...
A huge frustration. Sure. More and more people are going to robots. We built this barn. OK, this barn was built in 2008. So 17 years ago. Just I mean, that's just a very small amount of time ago. If you graduated in 2008, you're very young. You guys are young. But like so 17 years ago, there was there was people, you know, Hispanics.
Nicolas Lirio (08:08.386)
Yeah.
Derek Orth (08:23.822)
people south of the border come to America. We had people knocking on the door weekly looking for jobs. Wow. And I don't think anybody stopped looking for a job in the last two years. We used to have 10 or 12 people. There was always somebody here or available to work. And two weeks ago, I had to do five milkings in a row because the Hispanics we have took the weekend off and
really couldn't find help. I had to drag my wife and kids to milk the one afternoon because there was nobody else. So there's just, so what you're saying is there's less, there's less people available that are, are, that are looking for work or they're just not as many people around to work? I think some of both, or maybe just not willing to work. We used to get a lot of college students from like UW Platteville, which is less than 20 miles away. I don't remember the last time we had a Platteville student that
wanted to drive up here in Mount Cowes.
Nicolas Lirio (09:22.926)
What do think the reason is for that?
Derek Orth (09:25.486)
I think people are getting soft. It is hard work. I'm not quite 40, but my shoulders hurt from milking cows. And like when we milked in the old barn, it was a tie stall barn. My knees hurt all the time. say that. What type of barn? Tie stall. So where we're at now, the cows are all in a pen and they walk to a barn to be milked. And then they go back to the pen, eat, drink, lay down.
In a tie stall barn, the cows are tied into a stall and you carry the milker to her. she, like most of our, most of the time, unless it was like winter, the cows would come in, we'd tie them all up, we'd feed them, we'd milk them, and we'd put them back out in the pasture. In the wintertime, they would stay locked in 20 hours a day sometimes. If it was really cold, they'd be in the barn 24 hours. But like, so in a tie stall barn, you're carrying the milkers.
to the cows in a freestyle barn and parlor like we have now, are taking the cows to the milking parlor to be milked.
Nicolas Lirio (10:27.49)
So when did we stop using the tie stall?
Derek Orth (10:30.562)
Here 2008. Okay. Just a very short time ago.
Nicolas Lirio (10:34.606)
Would you guys still survive would you financially be able to make it with a tie stall version of the operation?
Derek Orth (10:41.774)
In some ways, yes. mean, and there are some still some tie-stall barns in the area. Wow. Like comparing 2008 to 2026, we were paying our employees eight to ten dollars an hour and now it's like 14 to 17. So if we hadn't expanded and hadn't grown to where we needed to hire labor. That's labor costs. Right.
there could be some things that would make it easier if we hadn't gone to the freestyle barn.
Nicolas Lirio (11:14.702)
Why do farm operations, including yours, this is not an accusation, this is just industry standard, and I believe produce operations are this way as well, why are they like 40 % less than people who don't work nearly as hard?
Derek Orth (11:35.95)
Wait, what do mean by that? I don't understand what you're question.
Nicolas Lirio (11:38.144)
Like if someone came here, you're saying if labor came here, they get hired at 16 bucks an hour versus like they could go sit in a, in an office and not work nearly as hard and make $23 an hour twiddling their thumbs. Like why is that? What's going on in our market that's causing that?
Derek Orth (11:56.992)
I think cost of production, mean, milk is sold in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. We get what we get. And today, like March. We were talking about it earlier. What's a gallon of milk? What's your...
Nicolas Lirio (12:11.468)
Well, yeah, what do you get? What do they haul it off at?
Derek Orth (12:15.006)
like With our Jersey so we get paid a little extra for for the higher component milk sure But like base price is $16 a hundred right now So per hundred pounds of per hundred pounds milk, so that's 12 gallons 11 12 gallons Dollar quarter man yeah, we do so we're
Nicolas Lirio (12:33.09)
Yeah. So a dollar, a dollar.
Derek Orth (12:43.512)
four to five to six dollars over base price with the high components so we're getting 22 ish per hundred which is maybe two dollars a gallon most of our milk is made into cheese jerseys are better at making cheese milk but like comparing 2001 to 2026 it's basically the same price there's been highs and lows
Nicolas Lirio (13:10.382)
Is that because technology is advanced so we can get more milk for less work?
Derek Orth (13:14.07)
What's some yes, I mean it's supply and demand somewhat and as you I don't know if you mentioned that Like cow herds have gotten bigger in in the last hundred just because of consolidation consolidation made primarily like Maybe like 200,000 more but like from 1950 through today there it's been right around nine million cows but in 1950 compared to today
Nicolas Lirio (13:31.032)
More cows? No, okay.
Derek Orth (13:43.63)
there's 99 % less dairy farms. There used to be like 30 million and now 30,000. So, I mean, the same thing has happened now by us in corn and bean country and hog.
Nicolas Lirio (13:58.76)
and most other kind of farming in the US.
Derek Orth (14:01.282)
Yeah, just this. And it's really been in our lifetime where we've seen the biggest, probably the biggest jump, right, in consolidation. It was happening before we were born. I mean, there were still, you know, like the road I live on, there's not a single owner operator farmer on that road. The fact I'm working on getting some production going on my grandpa's farm. So technically I'm renting those acres from from my grandpa.
That'll be the closest there is to an owner operator. Wow. And I mean, what, there's how many stretch, how many miles of road?
Nicolas Lirio (14:37.228)
Yeah, like seven miles.
Derek Orth (14:39.246)
Is it all investor ground? Some of it is that but a lot of it's just you know cash rented or they you know someone who lives several miles away bought that you know that 200 or that that 80 or whatever and and so actually no you know what I my one neighbor is they are they are working on they've been raising some alfalfa and stuff so I guess I guess there'd be them but but the point being that if you went back
30 years ago, there'd probably be like five, six farmers. So I mean, it's been that much of a decline in just 30 years. I don't think it's just agriculture either. It's the gas stations. We only have two options now and there used to be 10. I don't know.
Nicolas Lirio (15:25.388)
Yeah, you know, it's interesting in American history, we they've complained about consolidation. It's probably true, probably worth complaining about. There's definitely some negatives that go with it. It's it's not innate to to settlers from the US and the style. What it is, is just mankind consolidates power everywhere across the globe. And one form of power is economic power.
Derek Orth (15:38.742)
only negative but it's
Nicolas Lirio (15:54.222)
Another form of power is land resources, right? And so we consolidate it and it doesn't get unconsolidated. That's against the grain. That's very difficult to do. And so I'm sure the same thing's happening in the dairy industry. Now, here's a question for you. Is it trading on the Chicago trade board? that net negative or net positive?
for the industry because you guys have a set price and you gotta be able to work within that price. But at the same time, you don't have to become a salesman or a marketer.
Derek Orth (16:31.886)
Right, yeah. We get paid, the truck comes every day, the truck leaves every day, we get a check twice a month. It is very simple in that regards. And we've talked about or looked into what would it take to direct market milk. And I talked to a guy from Arizona and he's like, don't do it unless you're within 50 miles of five million people. And I was like, that's a weird. So I counted, you know, how many people are in southwest Wisconsin and close to six counties plus Dubuque, Iowa.
and it's still only like 200,000 people. I was like, really? Yeah, I think it was like far enough away from Madison. Right, right. So it's never happened. But yes, it's convenient. I don't know if it's positive or negative because there's positives, but there's a lot of negatives.
Nicolas Lirio (17:19.021)
And I think like people talk about being a farmer is owning a business. If you are a corn and bean farmer, they use terms like marketing, but it's a totally different thing. And so there's a business podcast I really like. And one of their things is that in order to have a business, you have to have two skills. You have to you have to have whatever skill you're doing, whether you're a dairy farmer or you, you know, you're you so close or whatever you do, you have to have that skill. But then you also have to have some sort of
what they call money making skill, which is either marketing or sales, or you have to be able to articulate what your product is really well, and good writing skills, something of that sort that gets people to your product. But when it's such a popular item that it's a commodity, you don't have to have that skill, but the trade off is like, you guys are stuck. You guys are stuck, so you either get better at what you grow.
or you either get better at what you do at producing, producing more, producing for more efficient, or you have to figure something else out and go market it to your own people like a co-op or something. Also, do you need to go and. Yeah. If you want to take a break, you can. It's up to you. Don't pause anything, Ken. It's gotta stay on. Yeah.
Derek Orth (18:37.838)
I don't know who it is.
Derek Orth (18:43.918)
Make a note, 21 minutes.
Nicolas Lirio (19:05.058)
Viciously unaware is pulling up in a truck and just sitting there while they're expecting someone to go out
Nicolas Lirio (19:16.174)
Who's that?
Nicolas Lirio (19:21.518)
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know lately how I can't work. How do we know working lately?
Derek Orth (19:27.512)
Well, I don't think that's true.
Nicolas Lirio (19:30.264)
But like a bunch of them, you know, it's becoming a powerhouse in the area. Well, Pella also has Pella Windows and Vermeer, which are both 10 billion or bigger dollar companies. And it's a tiny little town. So there's just unbelievable wealth in that town. Anyway. OK, so we were.
Derek Orth (19:44.076)
Let's do a big silent gap.
Derek Orth (19:57.102)
And continue. So dairy is our focus, but we also have like beef, sheep, swine, chickens, eggs that we are direct marketing. Wow. We're trying to like. I mean, so we just got licensed a retail license in thanks. Right before Thanksgiving. So thank you. Yeah, that's awesome.
Nicolas Lirio (20:08.674)
How does that go for you?
Nicolas Lirio (20:18.53)
Have you seen the little self-checkout sheds? People, they put a kiosk in and you have to have like a membership to swipe. Sheds? Shed. It's like a little shed. yeah, yeah, yeah.
Derek Orth (20:21.837)
No.
Derek Orth (20:25.72)
Say sh-
Derek Orth (20:30.862)
Throw these away.
Nicolas Lirio (20:35.745)
I had found like like a hundred inch shed like what half of it. It's just so it should be a 200 inch deer I found one like So so it's the shed that And it's a little thing and it's basically this farm you go in it's got a little kiosk and you just Self-check out the produce that they have and so you don't have to actually man it But the thing is like you have to have a membership
Derek Orth (20:44.962)
Silverware.
Nicolas Lirio (21:03.03)
so that they know people aren't just coming in and swiping stuff. But the deal is you basically need to be on the road to or from work or school.
Derek Orth (21:14.046)
Highway 61 is right here. We can see the power lines that are passing Highway 61. we do... The goal is to try to get some of those people that are driving back and forth between Fenmore and Lancaster. you know, 8 a.m. and then 4 to 5 p.m. There's so much traffic and it's like, even if we get 10 cars every day, you know? So it's a goal, but it's very preliminary.
We've been selling eggs for years, but we just got into the... Yeah, I wondered if that egg sign at the end of the road there was me. Yep, that was us. That is us. There's some cows jumping around behind me. Making milkshakes. So we're kind of going that route with, you know, we focus on the dairy, but then trying the new things. We've been doing more grazing. We started renting a new pasture, trying to do more.
passion pork, pastured beef.
Nicolas Lirio (22:13.427)
yeah, yeah. Have you messed with native pasture stuff at all?
Derek Orth (22:15.918)
I've done a lot of research not obviously a lot of show you a pamphlet here
Nicolas Lirio (22:20.974)
I'm curious because there's not that many people that have.
Derek Orth (22:23.928)
That's probably like, another salesman.
Nicolas Lirio (22:26.67)
One time we went to a place in Wisconsin and we showed up and it was like a whole family operation and one of the guys sits down he doesn't know us at all and he's an older guy sits down and he looks at us what do you guys salesman
Derek Orth (22:42.498)
Yeah, but not right now. mean, are you interested? I have been on your website. I have checked out the dairy, you know, dairy native pasture stuff or cow stuff, but.
Nicolas Lirio (22:58.646)
Yeah, I mean the research is like just so limited and most of it's anecdotal at this point that it's tough.
Derek Orth (23:04.014)
We have 60 acres on the end of the barn that I would love to rotationally graze. I just haven't convinced dad yet. So we'll see. Yeah, you know, we'd be a bad podcast if we didn't talk. You have to talk about the elephants in the room sometimes, right? And migrant labor right now, the whole migrant thing in our country is is being, I mean, looked over with a microscope right now. Right.
Surely that has to have affected the dairy industry. Absolutely. I mean, whatever level you're comfortable on or comfortable with, Nick, don't turn anything explosive into a reel for Derek. boy. But I mean, it's such a huge thing in our country right now. And we wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't talk about it, because I'm sure our listeners are wondering about it. And I'm wondering about it. How has that impacted that you've seen the dairy industry?
right, wrong or indifferent. not, you know, trying to, you know, can you, can you take the, this spin on it for us, please, Derek? Not, not, yeah. A lot of things are going on. Um, I think a lot of fear, but people, I think people don't know what to be afraid of or which part. Um, I mean, there's been immigrant labor in the U S for years, decades, you know, and other countries. Uh, my sister lived in Australia for
Nicolas Lirio (24:10.446)
What's going on?
Derek Orth (24:32.85)
Summer and there was immigrant labor from China that came to Australia to milk cows and work on farms in Australia So it's not just an American thing And the issue like there are laws regulations in America like the visa program H2a H2b That are all for like seasonal labor produce vegetables, etc But dairy cows need to be milked 365 days a year twice a day So when we built our barn
Nicolas Lirio (25:01.506)
We
Derek Orth (25:03.288)
We didn't have any immigrant laborer. And then we had one guy stop. And years ago, people stopped looking for jobs. You have worked for me? We would hear that, I would say weekly or more. And there was a guy that stopped. We gave him a chance. We needed somebody. And like Hispanic.
Nicolas Lirio (25:25.826)
What's the percentage that they do well? Yeah, job, whenever someone gives them a chance.
Derek Orth (25:29.24)
that they do well.
Derek Orth (25:33.826)
I'd probably say 75%. Especially repetitive, hard labor, like you train them once and they can do the same thing over and over again, they do fantastic. But the funny thing is, like some of them come from other countries and they have like PhDs, but like they can make more money milking cows in America than they could doing what they were trained for at university in another country. So it is crazy.
And the funny thing is, when you hire one Hispanic, they have friends, have brothers, they have families, they have ex-husbands, wives, whatever, and as soon as you need one person, I've got a friend, I've got a brother, I've got a sister. And so, honestly, we've only hired, I would say two people, and they've brought anybody else we needed. That's actually kind of awesome. We have a, we need...
We need, we're always like trying to find high school kids in the summer. Same here. Or maybe a college student who's only, you know, they.
Nicolas Lirio (26:40.982)
And I swear that high school kid will never get paid more than they pay so well.
Derek Orth (26:46.118)
It's very hard to find help for our fields in the summer. We have a high school guy that works for us now and he had told me he was going to Mississippi for a week or something and I hope he watches this. He texts me Sunday afternoon, the next time I can work is February 22nd. I was like wait what? That's like two weeks away.
Nicolas Lirio (27:08.664)
We're not good workers, us Gen Zers. I'm in that boat, I'm a Gen Zer. But what I think is a spin that isn't talked about enough is that rural America just doesn't have kids compared to how, you know, less houses, less kids, you know, they're just, they just aren't.
Derek Orth (27:31.982)
That would be the other thing like number of farmers on your block versus number of kids on your rural
Nicolas Lirio (27:38.382)
If 5 % of kids in a 10,000 acre area, 5 % of them are excited about farm work and willing to do it and that kind of stuff, which I don't know, that seems kind of a reasonable number. Well, that number's very different for 200 kids living in the area than it is for 40.
Derek Orth (28:01.144)
And have you read the book, The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry?
Nicolas Lirio (28:05.23)
I've read like eight articles that basically just copy and paste away like yeah, this was inspired by
Derek Orth (28:13.038)
Wendell Berry. Are you getting at the brain drain part of that? Well, some of it's brain drain. And I mentioned before, I was born in Iowa. All of my descendants are from Iowa. None of them live there anymore. The eight original siblings. Yeah, how the heck did you end up up here when you grew up in Iowa? On a dairy One second. I understand if you were selling insurance or something. My grandpa.
has seven siblings, one of them recently passed away. So the original eight spent their whole lives in Iowa, but my mom and her cousins, most of them have left Iowa. So you're right about the brain drain. Going back to my family history, I was born in Iowa. We farmed in Waverly, farmed in Gothenburg. My grandpa died in a tractor rollover in 1988.
man, sorry So you've heard about the drought of 88. They say the day of his funeral was the first time it rained in three months or something. So like, apparently God needed a sacrifice or something. He took my grandpa. man, that's tough. It's tough. But you know, it's one of those things, like you always wonder. And then, so we move back to the home farm, but the city of Waverly was on three sides of us. And like, the one subdivision,
Nicolas Lirio (29:26.84)
Yeah, yeah.
Derek Orth (29:37.678)
The neighbors would come play golf in the hayfield and dad's like, we got to get out of here. So they started looking at farms in Waverly-Shell Rock School District. Then it was in Bremer County. Then it was within an hour of family. And after I think it was 27 farms, mom and dad found this one. And we've been here since 1993. That's amazing. mean, the percentage of people that were like, you know, let's just pick up and move states and start a dairy farm. Oh, that's uncommon.
Yeah, but on the flip side, we would not be dairy farming today if we had stayed in Bremer County. Sure. It all kind of transitioned to corn, soybeans, chickens and hogs. There wasn't the dairy infrastructure. I hear of a guy who does dairy in Iowa, I just instantly think, infrastructure is there for you anymore? I I have, I could call four different veterinarians today.
Multiple feed companies drive by the farm so we could you know infrastructure is better. it's salesmen, but also gives us options So we can buy products we can help our sick cows we can sell our milk to multiple entities Which we wouldn't be able to do in Iowa sure So yeah, it's crazy that we we moved but also like for I don't think we would be daring if we hadn't moved
That's man, that is a really interesting part of your story. was was wondering there had to be some kind of big, big event on the way up here because I knew you had lived in Iowa. so yeah, that was that was that was really fascinating. You obviously care quite a bit about conservation, incorporating conservation principles into your operation here. A couple of great YouTube videos out there, which we should remember to put in.
The links. The links and the show notes for this. You talked in at least one of the videos at, you know, at length on what you guys do to help with having as good of water quality as you can have coming out of your farm. Can you, you know, just elaborate on that a little bit? All right. I would say some of the conservation things we do.
Derek Orth (31:58.606)
Everything's contour stripped around here. So if most of your lifts are from Iowa and they're used to 80 acre fields, that's not what we have. I think our biggest field is 14 acres. Oh wow. But we have lots of two and three acre fires. So there's contour strips and then in the low sub-bots in the fields we have buffer strips or grass waterways. There's a couple terraces around. then we do a lot of like minimal.
tillage or dad calls it stirring the dirt a little bit. Just to incorporate the manure. Add a little bit of weed suppression but mostly to get the manure into the top layer of the soil. What you use like a turbo tiller or something? soil finisher. Okay. We've looked at some other. Just like a disc. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Lightly disc. But we're only going down two inches maybe. Okay.
Nicolas Lirio (32:31.82)
What do you do that for?
Derek Orth (32:54.791)
We're not going in with moldboard plows or deep ripping chisels.
Nicolas Lirio (32:59.554)
Are you worried that then the manure doesn't mix in all the way, doesn't get itself down and you know the 18 inches or whatever that you... Okay, okay, yeah, yeah.
Derek Orth (33:09.602)
That's what worms are for. That's my favorite.
Nicolas Lirio (33:14.536)
Iowa doesn't really have worms anymore, so I mean maybe...
Derek Orth (33:17.422)
Maybe that's an issue. I wish we did more no-till and just run a drag across the fields or a harrow, whatever you want to call it, just to fluff up that dirt and then the worms can take it down. But dad likes to stir it in and it does make a nice seedbed. So there's things that are working.
Nicolas Lirio (33:21.229)
BLEH
Nicolas Lirio (33:41.934)
At Hoxie Native Seeds, our mission is to provide native seed and education for land owners and land managers that care about their ground. So the education, we're doing that through the podcast and interviewing experts and the stuff we put out through our website. But the native seed that we provide, whether we grew it or we work with other producers that grew it, we are here to provide that for you. It's what keeps the lights on for us and it's what we love to do. Most of our seeds grown right here on our farm.
hoxynativeseeds.com. and if you need a little help with consultation, not sure what's put on your ground, we would be happy to help you with that as well. Give us a call, hoxynativeseeds.com.
Derek Orth (34:20.462)
Well, and then you incorporate. that you're obviously doing that. Are you doing that before cover crops? You're doing that in the spring before seeding? Some of both, depending on. I would like to do like fall tillage, like zero fall tillage. I absolutely hate fall tillage. Yeah, but.
Nicolas Lirio (34:39.863)
Why?
Derek Orth (34:41.166)
Because I think it's pointless. I think it's a waste of diesel fuel. open soil.
Nicolas Lirio (34:47.757)
hundreds of acres near our farm that I don't I don't even I should just look up who owns it
Derek Orth (34:54.092)
As Chase Brown says, recreational tillage.
Nicolas Lirio (34:56.237)
What are they doing?
Derek Orth (34:58.51)
My uncle who lives in Western Iowa out by Spencer he He'll send me pictures of like the brown snow drifts Yeah, okay. He's like all of this dirt is coming off. yeah ending up in the ditches on top the of Thank a farmer
Nicolas Lirio (35:12.974)
If you're anywhere near those like 100 acre fields, it's way worse. Like they're lightly sprinkled brown everywhere else and then they're just black next to those still, you know, it just shows.
Derek Orth (35:28.046)
He'll send me pictures of like spring dust storms or and then he'll he'll come on to some you know hundreds of acres of cover crop ground No dust no dirt in the ditches like why can't everybody do that? But you guys do quite a bit of cover crop we do I think the spasher is 130 acres of mostly rye so the cover crops we do
We'll chop it in the spring and feed it to the cows. Okay, do you harvest some of the seed too for next year's planting? No, we've looked into it, but...
Nicolas Lirio (36:00.822)
How self-sustaining? Sorry. You have the manure that goes on the field, then you have the rye that comes up, and you don't have to worry about having fertilizer to keep producing that because then you take the manure that the cows put in. Interesting.
Derek Orth (36:13.486)
right back on the Let's just stop talking now because Nick is gonna be like, we just need cows. If you would just go out there and milk four or five times a day. Sorry, I lost my train of thought. We're talking about cover crops and closing the loops. One of the things we started a year ago,
I bought, we started renting this pasture. I was trying to figure out how to rotationally graze this pasture because it's like two miles long. It's just crick bottom. And I was looking at how to rotationally graze it and I signed up for this mentorship program through GrassWorks. Sign up for GrassWorks. I got a mentor and he's like, why don't you do virtual fencing? And I had never heard of virtual fencing. I had heard of it, I guess.
Nicolas Lirio (37:04.418)
Nope.
Derek Orth (37:09.87)
So what it is, you talked about this in one of your videos, each one of the cows wears a collar that has a solar panel on it, battery and GPS and basically we train them to when they hear noise they'll turn around or they'll stop and we can use that and adjust the boundary every day to rotationally graze the pasture. pull that mic a little bit closer to yourself? sorry. You can adjust it just pull the arm that's fine or if you need to spin that Is there a way to make it higher?
yeah. Just like whatever. this is that's cool. So every day we I can adjust the pasture on my phone. There's just an app on my phone. That's awesome. And we rotationally graze the heifers through the pasture. And I would like to do like some either aerial seeding of cover crops into the corn or start interseeding somehow. And then after we chop corn, use the collars to rotationally graze the cover crops after the corns come off. So.
Nicolas Lirio (38:07.534)
Have you tried them yet?
Derek Orth (38:08.75)
Yeah, they work. Oh, yeah. Yep. We used them. I guess summer of 2025 are They are expensive. Oh, yeah, like 300 300 something the collar if you won't they just it's the subscription that's expensive too, right? So yeah, it's like $250 for the collar and then $65 a year for the subscription per collar Um, so there's there's two ways to look at it
Nicolas Lirio (38:14.734)
Because aren't they like?
Nicolas Lirio (38:31.318)
And that ROIs?
Derek Orth (38:36.898)
Like if we were just continuous grazing the pasture, like you're going to get X number of tons of dry matter per acre, et cetera. But if you can increase the grass by rotationally grazing, you know, you could double your grass crop or your, know, your Forbes, your legumes, whatever. So you can double with proper grass management. But then comparing like if I was already rotationally grazing with
posts and reels and rolling the reels up every day and then moving the cows that way? I can move cows in a minute, minute and half. It would take me an hour a day and I'd have to walk through the creek twice if I wanted. That pasture specifically, if I wanted to rotationally graze that pasture, I'd be walking through the creek twice, probably spending an hour a day doing
Nicolas Lirio (39:25.294)
expensive than paying someone twice a day $25 an hour to do it.
Derek Orth (39:30.702)
I would say no. The collars, they have a five year warranty. They hope they last seven to 10 years, but nobody in America has had them for more than four years, I think. So it's a new technology. So do you outfit each animal with a Just in that pasture. So the biggest group I had, I think was 38. But each one of had a collar and they learn quick. You know what, you're going to cry someday, Derek, when
technology advances just like remember when we were kids like a know a TV like a giant tube TV you had someone in the family had to donate a kidney to like buy a new TV right like people just like throw them away and you and you you you spent all that money and you still had to get off the couch to go change the technology is gonna become
Nicolas Lirio (40:23.584)
So be a hundred bucks a piece and twenty dollars a year for the sub thing
Derek Orth (40:28.084)
There were these dairy farmers that
Nicolas Lirio (40:30.536)
They pine in with their own finances. They've up their retirement.
Derek Orth (40:32.686)
Uh-huh. So there's also some other grazing grass technology. One's like it sits on the front of a four-wheeler, you drive across your pasture and it'll measure the density of your grass and tell you how many tons of dry matter out there. But there's also satellites that can do that. Wow. It is, they're both expensive processes. But one, I was talking to a grazing specialist at UW Extension and he's like there will come a time
when the satellite tells your collars how much grass is out there and the satellites and AI will move your cows across the pasture for you. Yeah, probably. And the cows will just move across the pasture and you don't even have to do anything.
Nicolas Lirio (41:13.473)
years.
Nicolas Lirio (41:21.102)
So people are moving to robots. As we speak, they're moving to using robots to milk their cows. How long do you think you have, and everyone else who is using manual labor to milk the cows? Not that you're actually milking the cows with your hands, but how long do you have?
Derek Orth (41:43.726)
I don't know, I-
I would say five years.
Nicolas Lirio (41:48.78)
Wow. So you gearing up to have robots then?
Derek Orth (41:51.95)
The robot salesman just stopped while we were talking. There's a robot right there. Yeah, we do have robotic feed pushers.
Ah, kind of worst case scenario, if our two Hispanics quit tomorrow, either the cows would be gone or the robots would be ordered. Like, I would say that is, I would not try to find two new people. Like, it would be, it would be a huge challenge. So, they've told me,
We're not staying here forever. We're gonna go home once we have our house paid for. In Nicaragua. Which I hope I didn't... No, no, no, you're good.
Nicolas Lirio (42:41.934)
So, well then that begs the question because robots, software, AI, all subscription based baby. so then all of a sudden you could have a farm and you're just getting a little nominal fee on top of it to scrape home for you and your family and you're dishing out all the money to these other companies. Now to be fair,
Robots can do a lot of work. know, when skid loaders don't even have a seat for humans anymore. I mean, we're what, 10 years away from that? They're already making them, but from us being comfortable enough to use them to tell them, go pick up the, and they're gonna, you know, I'm just speculating, but this is not anywhere out of technology's reach as we speak. just has to build it. We have the meta glasses on. You look at a thing, select it with your eyes or your finger, say, pick this up, put it over there, you point somewhere else, and it'll do that.
You know what mean? We're not that far. So where does the dairy farmer, the farmer fit into dairy farms in 20 years?
Derek Orth (43:43.502)
I don't know. It's definitely a fear of mine. there are some Armageddon type podcasts that talk about AI. Like by 2050, people won't have a purpose. Like we'll have a 97 % unemployment rate. know, Nick and I have been talking about that lately. It seems so outrageous to people, the universal basic income idea. And to me, it did at first. But then I started thinking about it. The other day.
classic example. needed to squeeze the tractor down this back gravel road in the middle of nowhere. And there was a, there was a, like a, you know, electrical company doing some work on some poles out there. And here's one of the employees just sitting on his phone in the truck and I could, I nearly had to drive off like down and, you know, roll the tractor to get by the guy. And, you see that everywhere. Like, like so much.
So many people are on the clock actually not working. It's not because they suck as humans. It's it's because there's enough value available. There's enough value laying around on the ground, so to speak. Where companies can still function just fine and be profitable at end of the day when their employees are sitting on a back gravel road scrolling their phone.
Nicolas Lirio (44:52.437)
It's falling out our ears.
Nicolas Lirio (45:03.16)
Well, that was the whole, you gotta come back to work, you can't keep being virtual issue because it was getting, people were getting double jobs and you don't know how big of a movement it was where some savvy people in the East and West, I mean, thousands of people, they didn't do their $200,000 a year job. They paid someone in the Philippines for $15,000. And you know what? They could have two jobs. They could because they were able to do it. They were able to scrape out that value. And then here you are.
milking cows for our food. And that's why my argument stands that food doesn't cost enough. We don't pay enough for it. We're paying more for AI than we are for food.
Derek Orth (45:40.974)
Yeah, yeah, we are I'd like There's a guy named Mark Hyman I don't agree with everything he says but he says like if you if you drink a can of pop you pay for it four times like because you pay for it you paid for the Subsidies and your taxes to grow the corn. Yeah, then you paid for your health and then you played for the environment Environmental damage of whatever that corn, you know took off the land Whatever it cost to make that can of pop right so not that that's
comparing AI but food is food should cost more you're right about that and
Nicolas Lirio (46:18.51)
Yeah, I'm like looking around here at how hard and dirty this work is and I bet you get satisfaction you couldn't believe. Right. And so I don't want to take away from that and Ken and I preach there's more value than the dollar all the time we preach that but like the
Derek Orth (46:35.554)
Well, my message on the universal basic income isn't, guys, just hold on a little bit longer. That's not my point. My point is we need to find something that's worth doing here pretty quick and get good at it. Because it's going to, for multiple factors of each one of our health, it's going to be important that we get that feeling that you get when you.
are done working with cows at the end of the day. And, you know, I think...
you know, it's an unimaginable threat to us that robots really going to do all this. Yeah, there's a pretty good chance of will. And, and so there's still going to be there's still going to be ways that we can find meaning and purpose in what we do. And so it's, I it's important to start having the conversation and thinking about how can each one of us be proactive and, and contributing to that part of our well being that's not
Nicolas Lirio (47:35.342)
The world changes less in five years than everyone thinks it will and it will change more in 20 years way more in 20 years than everyone thinks it will and something that the Harvard Center for happiness
Derek Orth (47:53.326)
I should have opened or shut that door but it's not automatic. Judd taught me this trick. Put a hat on over your head. The belt for my belt for my belt.
Nicolas Lirio (47:57.582)
No! It is beautiful.
Dorky as could be.
Nicolas Lirio (48:10.318)
The Harvard Center of happiness, they said you need you cannot get happiness without these four things like it doesn't some sort of faith your connection with your family Work that serves. no, there was one more. It might have been friends and community It might have been and like the idea is is that you got to have something bigger than yourself to believe in and there's purpose in that but then work
It doesn't have to be with your hands, but work that serves other human beings more than just your bank account. If you don't have that, you don't have happiness. You can't have happiness, because it's innate to human beings. It's in our biology, as deep down as it can be. And it's interesting. I look at all of this, and I look at all the overwhelming amount of work there is to do. And then I'm like, yeah, but I bet they experience happy in a level that most of us humans can't experience.
Derek Orth (49:03.97)
There's a lot of stress and you know just thinking about the dad is crazy but then I I mentioned I had to do five milkings in a row and I had to drag my kids along but I got to drag my kids along to work you know so milking cows with kids can be a little stressful but it's it serves a purpose.
Nicolas Lirio (49:24.566)
Absolutely. Do you think about the debt every day? You think there's been a day that you've gone without thinking, even if you're not super stressed, but just thinking about it.
Derek Orth (49:27.149)
yeah,
Derek Orth (49:34.734)
Probably not. Okay. And maybe not debt specifically, but money. Yeah. I buy a cup of coffee and it's like, should I really be buying this cup of coffee? You know? Yeah.
Nicolas Lirio (49:47.714)
See, that's so stupid to me that someone like yourself who's providing an incredible fat for mankind that our nutrition is heavily affected by, you're debating back and forth in your mind whether you should buy a cup of coffee that, and yeah, maybe the coffee's outrageously priced like.
man, some people come in our coffee shop and they get the works and it's like $11. And I want to tell them like, you know, our normal coffee is like six, right? This is not the normal price. I'm almost like insecure. But that to me is ridiculous. So one of two things, either you're horrible with money, which I don't think is the case, or I just think you're not paid enough. And the sad thing is as a society, we've just determined what is worth the money. Right. Right. And
And I don't like how far that's been boxed in for you. Now, something I am curious about in, I have a lot of conversations with bankers about ag. Just because if I ever meet one, I want to pick their brand. I want to see what is the temperature in the room like with farmers right now. It's not.
Derek Orth (50:58.88)
That Nick is defaulted on all of his credit cards.
Nicolas Lirio (51:02.606)
Actually no credit cards and I'm gonna go a little tirade my wife and I started spending we never paid an ounce of interest on our credit cards We're like all the points we got all the points We spent over 10 % less money no longer having the credit cards when we went to the grocery store Yeah, so we were getting 2 % but spending over 10 % more And they do that youth if you think you haven't been trapped by your credit card psychologically
Derek Orth (51:17.957)
instead of trying to get all the rewards?
Nicolas Lirio (51:31.584)
You're fooling yourself because it's ingrained in a-
Derek Orth (51:33.656)
I just know I will never, I will never be responsible enough to keep up on that game of rewards.
Nicolas Lirio (51:42.958)
This card pays 5 % out and then it's not till you're like eight years in using it you find out it's only rewards for like Build-A-Bear workshop
Derek Orth (51:45.282)
I f***ed
Nicolas Lirio (51:59.662)
They're all expired.
Derek Orth (52:02.328)
Cabela's has been huge from a credit card standpoint. Yeah, I don't even know if Cabela's even exists but like my wife would buy things just Me too. Me too. Yeah, but like we can we can use the Cabela's points for Christmas and it's like We could buy Christmas presents and save money But it is psychological so
Nicolas Lirio (52:25.206)
So the temperature in the room is going up with bankers and farmers, especially if the farmers don't have well paid off lot of equity land, you know that kind of thing. What is the temperature in the room for dairy farmers? Like, is there a struggle? Do you guys feel like you're at a good place? Not just you personally, but kind of the, you know, the industry here.
Derek Orth (52:32.344)
Right?
Derek Orth (52:43.45)
I would say industry-wide there's stress, tension. There was a big... So I would say backing up for a while, and maybe it's still true today, USDA offered 90 % debt to equity ratio loans, or guaranteed loans. So we could go to the bank, say, want a million dollars to build a new barn.
get a parlor out of you cows.
Nicolas Lirio (53:13.572)
and you need just a hundred thousand.
Derek Orth (53:15.566)
Yes. And yeah, you would need $100,000 equity. Land prices since 1993 have what? 1000 %? I don't know. So like, like, I think I would say everybody in the industry did this or maybe not everybody, but a lot of people. Okay, I can, I can re...
What is it when you get the value of your land? So we can appraise our farm for...
Nicolas Lirio (53:48.991)
A praise.
Derek Orth (53:55.438)
50? No. 10 times more than it's worth, whatever. Or what we paid for it. That's equity. We've already got the cows. We've been paying off debt for how many years. We've got that equity. So this is how much we can spend. And then you build the barn to match that. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. mean, we did it. When we went to the bank in 2008, we wanted to milk 120 cows.
Nicolas Lirio (54:12.098)
dairy farmers have done
Derek Orth (54:24.974)
We had the banker come to the farm. If he had not come that day, where would we be? But we wanted to go from 60 cows to 120 cows. And he, I remember him sitting at the end of the table. You know you could have a brand new parlor if you milk 200 cows. I'm 22 years old, my knee's already hurt, and.
I can have a brand new parlor just by adding 80 extra cows. And we did it! Well. Horrible. Why? Because we've been in debt forever since. But then it also opened... He probably did!
Nicolas Lirio (54:59.811)
Good decision, bad decision.
Nicolas Lirio (55:09.026)
Yeah, but that banker made a lot of money. And to be fair, don't think bankers make commission off of... I think that's kind of industry taboo. I might be wrong.
Derek Orth (55:16.792)
I have no idea.
Derek Orth (55:21.262)
But I do wonder, maybe he didn't make a commission, but I know that bank made a lot of interest on us over last might have gotten a bonus at the end the year. Right, exactly.
Derek Orth (55:36.398)
If we had gone, if we had doubled our herd then, know, dad and I still did all the milking, all of the labor, we had the land base for 120 cows, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, now we have, they told us 200 initially, then it was 240, then it's like, you really should be milking 300 cows with that big a barn. And it's like, no, we built for 200, you told us 200, and that's what we built for. We're...
We're right around 240 now, 250. But we ended up renting an extra 100 acres of land and rent prices aren't cheap. We had to hire lots of people. Dad and I could have done all the labor ourselves. when you're paying $14 to $17 an hour, you're not just paying that. Then you're paying the taxes and the social security income and all of that that goes into unemployment stuff.
And another thing that's skyrocketed, our insurance, since we built this, like the first three years were X, but insurance has tripled in the last 15 years. Right, yeah, it should be a fixed cost. So actually, when I was getting the cheese curds for you guys, I ran into the insurance agent, and he's like, we should have a meeting next week. And it's like, yeah, OK.
Nicolas Lirio (57:03.15)
you
Derek Orth (57:04.038)
But we can't live without it either, you know? So...
Nicolas Lirio (57:07.886)
Yeah, I feel for you Derek. So what does it take to succeed in dairy besides 2,000 head of cattle?
Derek Orth (57:20.526)
Starting out with a lot of cash, I think is the biggest thing. Licensing is hard too, in Wisconsin specifically. Wisconsin has very strict laws about dairy. We are America's dairy land, but that makes it very hard for people to start out. Mom and dad started milking cows with 13 cows milking in buckets in a rented barn outside of Waverly, Iowa. You could not do that in Wisconsin today because
you would never have a market for your milk. If you don't have 100 cows, my uncle milked in Minnesota for years, he ran out of a milk market. He had to sell his cows, not because he wanted to sell his cows, but because he had nobody willing to pick up his milk. Wow. Wow. Just because everyone had gone to the more modern way of milk demand and what it takes for us to spend money sending it to trucks.
Nicolas Lirio (58:16.686)
Even if you sold your milk at the same price as a giant place, the brokers or the... We'll just pick up at one place. Why would we pick up at 38 different places? Yeah, interesting.
Derek Orth (58:22.862)
They don't want to drive out.
Derek Orth (58:29.454)
At one time our co-op had a volume premium if if you sold 500,000 pounds of milk a month you got an extra dime per hundred pounds Wow Which which is $500 a month? we're usually in like the 400 to 450 thousand dollar thousand pound range and I wanted to add on one day. I wanted 50 more cows and I had I had told the banker like you know if we do this where it will be a
$500,000 a month or 500 pounds per month That's that's an extra 500 bucks just volume premium. That's not doing anything in addition It's just adding more cows and they're like you can't use that number to you know to say it's I basically have $500 free to use towards this addition and I Still think I could have done it No, that's right
Nicolas Lirio (59:24.406)
Wow, the bankers didn't let that... crazy. That's crazy, yeah. Farming is really like just an Excel spreadsheet game. Yeah. And it's tough. That's super tough. What do you... what advice do you give out to people who are... who really, really want to farm? And they can't do it. Not necessarily want to own their own farm, but they just want to farm. They just want to...
Derek Orth (59:51.522)
find somebody that wants, that is getting older and needs help, I would say is the biggest thing. I mean, you might not make a lot of money, but if you can get an in, even, let's say a farmer has kids that don't want anything to do the farm, you might have to pay those kids off, but you might be able to get in and get a start and maybe there's some perks. But to just buy a farm,
I don't know. If my parents weren't farming, don't think I'd be farming. I don't think I could have ever gotten in.
Nicolas Lirio (01:00:30.958)
We're all hyped up about farming's, it's not the same, or being able to acquire the resources like land and such. like this, it's never been like this. America in 1700s, 1800s, and the first half of 1900s was not the same as the rest of the world was experiencing for the last thousand years before it, right? The land had been swallowed up in Europe.
long before that. didn't go out and make claims, right? So land was unbelievably expensive. Why did people even come to America? Because they thought, I think there's land over there I could have a part of. Is there an inch of this land that isn't staked by somebody, even if it's the federal government? Is there any that's just unclaimed? I doubt it. No. And so that's where we're at in American society. And right, wrong, or indifferent.
It seems like your your next best endeavors to learn how to farm on the moon We're headed next and we're gonna go get more land. We're not really gonna go to the moon if there's no oil there Man well
Derek Orth (01:01:28.01)
Yeah, that's right.
Derek Orth (01:01:34.638)
One other thing we need to chat about, you've done a lot on, I don't think you necessarily hold a degree in it, but you've done a ton of personal research and learning about nutrition. you sent me a paper you wrote about fat. And again, we're similar age, so we remember how
Nicolas Lirio (01:02:03.736)
Trans fat era
Derek Orth (01:02:04.856)
Yeah, you guys don't even know what a little Debbie was.
Nicolas Lirio (01:02:09.902)
You don't know what it is today. Let me just tell you. You don't know.
Derek Orth (01:02:13.582)
My grandmother used to keep like in her like the ironically in the vegetable drawer
Nicolas Lirio (01:02:23.758)
refrigerator. She'd load that drawer up with those babies and oh man. Oh well, that was used to have to be refrigerated. No, it just made
Derek Orth (01:02:30.92)
better. Go ahead. But you know, in when we were growing up, everything was, you know, a big food branding thing was low fat, non fat, or fat free. All those all those different there was there was another light. Remember when everything? Yeah.
Nicolas Lirio (01:02:50.936)
yeah, that was from Weight Watchers.
Derek Orth (01:02:55.342)
was big back then. I choice. I still think you can get sour. Yeah, sour cream light. The Jenny Craig diet, those fad diets, the slim fast. The anyways, the all that branding was around fat bad, right? And I'd say maybe over the last
five or six years, I don't know, maybe it's been longer. Well, I think that was a big part of it. People have kind of been reevaluating fats, cholesterol.
Nicolas Lirio (01:03:27.266)
I think it's the carnivore diet, dude. You start to hear people talk about...
Derek Orth (01:03:37.736)
and say, a minute, is, know, lipids are one of the building blocks of life and maybe they aren't all bad. And that's been reevaluated. Can you just talk a little bit about the importance of fats in our diet? I think so. In like 2014 or 2015, Butter was the cover of Time magazine. So I think it's kind of of 10 years that we've seen so old. Time flies, man.
Nicolas Lirio (01:04:05.244)
Man, if you graduated high school in 2008, how does it, you're a
Derek Orth (01:04:12.254)
But like you said it's it's the building blocks but like Cholesterol is a precursor to sex hormones or you know every every cell in our body has cholesterol in it so like Why would we consider it bad and even if if we eliminated a hundred percent of the cholesterol that we're eating our body is still gonna make 95 % of the cholesterol we need you you cut all of your cholesterol out. You're only gonna drop your
drop your cholesterol 5 % tops because your body knows it needs it's gonna make it. Like mental health, our brain is 70 % fat like without fat you know and sometimes I always wonder so there's guy named Ancel Keys that kind of started the the low fat fad he did a study in the 1950s and it was called the seven countries study
But really he had studied 22 countries and if you look at the graph like the scatter plots are just everywhere on the graph and he picked cherry pick seven points and he said you know the lowest people the people that eat the least fat live the longest and but it was cherry pick data. It doesn't matter. I always wonder like did it was he wrong or was he intentionally trying to ruin our health and you mentioned power before like
Everything's, I've started questioning a lot of things in the world and it all leads to power. Like did Ancel Keys start the low fat fad to make Americans weaker, to have more control, you know? And then, and we talked about land, like are all of these things being done to hurt farmers, to hurt Americans, to get more control? And so I always wonder those things.
But like, so when we bring nutrition, subsidies, government together, like, you know, we just had a new food pyramid come out, but the dietary recommendations are still the same. I hope my dad isn't gonna want in here. He has to dump a load of feed. But like, the dietary recommendations are pretty much still the same, even though the pyramid has changed. But if you look at like, the MyPlate, if you compare
Derek Orth (01:06:36.76)
how like food is recommended on my plate compared to how food is subsidized or farming is subsidized. Why is no like my plate says you should eat meat, vegetables and fruit and have a glass of milk. But the the top four thing and I don't know what updated data is, but in 2016 the four most subsidized crops were corn, soy, wheat and sugar.
Nicolas Lirio (01:06:44.334)
Interesting. Why not?
Derek Orth (01:07:06.754)
which in my opinion are four things you shouldn't put in your body. But we're getting corn syrup, we're getting soybean oil, we're
Nicolas Lirio (01:07:13.838)
I can't argue with you on the raw or the wheat just because they eat a lot of wheat in Europe. I've had a bunch of wheat in Europe and in Asia and I don't have the reaction to it that I do here. And so I don't I definitely agree with you on the corn and the soy with the to the extent that we put it in for sure the sugar poison. But I think the wheat I think it's how we grow it. I mean a lot of wheat gets just sprayed with glyphosate right before they harvest it just to dry it out.
Derek Orth (01:07:41.58)
I read, there was somebody arguing on Facebook like, that doesn't happen. And I was like, what? But then, why are they making roundup ready wheat? Like that will never make sense to me. If you're gonna spray it with glycephate to dissent it, to dry it out, like desiccate it, why are you gonna make roundup ready wheat? Like that one doesn't make any sense to me.
Nicolas Lirio (01:07:45.997)
You
Nicolas Lirio (01:08:07.692)
No, I agree with you on a bunch of that. I think that the way that we do nutrition, it's just about ease, just about path of least resistance as a society. And a lot of times what's easier is worse for us. know, think about it's just easier to sit on the couch than it is to work out. And then you get to 80 years old and here we are 80 years later as a society and we're like, we've all been sitting on the couch for this long. Why am I so overweight? Talking about myself.
And you know, and I just don't understand where we're gonna go with that, you know, so do we need to close down?
Derek Orth (01:08:45.271)
Do you need in here?
Nicolas Lirio (01:08:47.438)
You coming in, you dropping a load of feed? All right, we'll close her up.
Derek Orth (01:08:52.91)
They want to talk to you about your 185.
Nicolas Lirio (01:08:57.902)
We got one in Kent. What are we doing with the end of this podcast? How do you want to end it?
Derek Orth (01:09:02.124)
Now? Well, I mean, I think it's just always so important to go to the source, right? And see what the different aspects of America's ag land is, what life is like for them. You know, we hear we hear things in the news, you hear new ag policies roll out, subsidies get talked about and things get summed up and oversimplified. And even Nick and I am sure guilty of that many times. But it just is so valuable to come here and just see how.
speaker-1 (01:09:30.029)
on.
Derek Orth (01:09:30.35)
You know real people doing real work that's real important and thank you and It's just been a delight to talk to you and you know, I I Don't I have a little bit of dairy farming in my family background but I was way back in you know early to mid 1900s and and You know, it's it's changed so much since then
that I feel like I don't really deserve to care about it beyond, just hope they're doing all right. But I really do feel something for just Dairyland USA and how much it's been affected. We've seen how it's affected, know, corn, bean, and hog production by us, of course, and everything else that went along with those operations back in their heyday. But I do sense that, you know,
Dairies have really suffered especially bad in the recent era of farming. And so I hope that it's a part of our country and a part of our country's agriculture that can get back on its feet and keep thriving for generations to come. And so I guess my last question to you would be, what's it going to take for this farm to continue on past your era?
I think direct marketing, you know, I think it's going to be a big thing. Or finding ways to be more efficient. I don't.
Derek Orth (01:11:07.298)
I don't want the government to step in because I think they'll create more problems. There are people that really push for supply management like Canada has or a quota where if you produce more than X number of pounds, you have to dump it down the drain just to keep that market up. And I don't ever want to get to that. But I...
Nicolas Lirio (01:11:25.422)
agree with that.
Derek Orth (01:11:29.366)
I really don't know. I had a crystal ball, I'd ask it because... Well, I think those are some good open-ended, you know, or open-minded ideas. And I think that's really the key. A theme from interviewing so many farmers through the years is just being willing to look into new ideas, explore them. You guys are clearly doing that with some of the other things you're raising besides dairy. you know, I think it keeps... Open minds keep farming going. Open minds keep conservation going.
It all happens just one mind at a time.
