Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: What sets Bayer apart is that we deliver on our promise to advance regenerative agriculture. I just. I don't see how you can say I'm regenerative and be the people who make Roundup. I don't want to be associated with Roundup.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Nope.
[00:00:21] Speaker A: Because I use the same term that Bayer uses.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Right?
No. Oh, you farm like Bear does.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: Whoa. No. Oh.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Welcome to the Duster Mud Podcast. I'm Shelley.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: I'm rich.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: After 25 years of rich being in the Air Force, we retired to southwest Missouri and started a regenerative farm. That was about three years ago. And we started this podcast because we like to talk about food freedom and farming. So farming regenerative style is what we do.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And you said three years. It's been a full three and a half now.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Whoa.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: I know.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Are you a toddler?
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Well, when you're less than 10, don't you have to count?
[00:01:01] Speaker B: You have to count the half whenever you're young and when you're old.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Right.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: I think when you're like, 80 and a half, you start counting the half again.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: We saw something in the News. She was 103 and three months.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I would count that too, if I was 103.
All right, so three and a half years we've been doing regenerative farming, which includes things like moving animals and making our land better, creating biology in our soil and not using chemicals.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess that's probably one of the hard things about regenerative agriculture or regenerative farming is that there is no real defined or no agreed upon definition of what it actually means for us.
In our mind, we are making our pastures better. We are regenerating what has been not necessarily destroyed, but, you know, not degrad.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Degradated.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Yeah. It has been degraded.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Degraded.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: And we're making it better through farming practices that regenerate the soil. And so to us, that is regenerative farming. And there are different definitions. And because there are different definitions, what that allows for is companies like Bayer, who, if you didn't know, bought Monsanto, who are the makers of Roundup. This is truly a historic day for Bayer and for Monsanto. We are one of the most respected and trusted companies in the world, and I'm convinced that Monsanto will flourish as part of Bayer. It allows Bayer to say that they are practicing regenerative farming. Our vision of regenerative agriculture checks many boxes.
We are uniquely positioned to provide farmers with an entire system of solutions and.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: Encouraging it across their. All of their platforms whenever they came into the agriculture Sector of things that practicing, quote, regenerative farming has become quite a buzzword. And they are, they are, quote, encouraging all of their farmers to do this. But what does that really look like?
[00:03:29] Speaker A: Yeah, for them, they're the world's largest seed producer, the world's largest pesticide producer. And what that allows, because, again, because the definition is strange, they can say things like, we are offering carbon offset funding to farmers, which would mean that we could, because we practice regeneration, regenerative farming. We could, I think, at least I haven't looked into it, but the way that it works is they could pay us for regenerative farming because we're sequestering carbon into our soil.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: So they call it carbon farming. Yeah, like literally that you're, in doing the farming that you're doing, you're, as you sequester it, you're, you're farming the carbon.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: Yeah, it's almost like a reverse farming. Right. Because normally things grow up out of the soil. In this, you're putting carbon down into the soil. And they could, they, you know, we could calculate up how much carbon we're putting back into the soil and then a company could pay us because we sequester carbon. And that gives that company now carbon offsets. So the carbon that they produce is being offset by the carbon that we sequester. And Bayer is putting all of that together to allow for that type of transaction, I guess, to take place. So that that makes them regenerative.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: Oh, sorry.
Oh, okay.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: So there are, there are some other things that, you know, you could define as regenerative. And a big one is no till drills or they don't till the land before the big row crops are planted. And what that allows is that the soil is never uncovered. Uncovered soil is a bad thing, for one. It just blows away, it erodes. And by taking away the tilling, the big row crop farmers are being able to hang on to their soil.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: The question is when they use no till drill now, you have not tilled away any of the, the unwanted vegetation. And what now are they going to do and use in order to alleviate the weeds or that unwanted vegetation problem? So are they going to then turn to. So we know we don't till it and we plant our GMO free seed into the ground, we drill it in. But in order to fight that weed predation coming in on those, on those crops that they're wanting, what on earth would that farmer possibly use to eliminate the rest of the weeds?
[00:06:47] Speaker A: If you plant GMO free, it's hard.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: Oh, did I Say GMO free.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: Oh, I meant gmo.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: And that's where Monsanto came in. Was they the makers of Roundup was in this practice and in other practices like even if even the, in tilling the genetically modified seeds are modified so that they can live through Roundup, which kills basically everything else that's green, they modify the seeds so that the whole area can be sprayed with Roundup and everything else that's green dies. And the genetically modified seeds don't die, they just keep on living.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: So it's a double edged sword. It seems like if the Bayer as a company is going to embrace regenerative ag. Okay, cool. That's awesome. We're not going to till, that's great. But now we're going to spray chemicals all over. It just seems like they're, they're going to be using a buzzword that farmers and consumers. Kind of like we did with the organics. They, we, they are using a term very, very loosely.
And whenever they use a term really loosely and they kind of co opt it and they take that on for that corporation and for themselves and then they're essentially greenwashing the entire concept and they're making themselves look better by using these words. And now the farmers or the consumers, but who do you trust? And what's really happening with this quote, regenerative thing?
[00:08:37] Speaker A: Oh, it looks good. And consumers say, oh look, they're regenerative. That's good, that's a good thing. And which it is. Right. But what you're saying is by co opting it, they're taking practices that are not necessarily what everyone would think of as regenerative and taking credit for being regenerative. And consumers like right now there is a push for regenerative farming because it's, there's been quite a bit of talk over the past few years about hey, we're losing our topsoil. Yeah, we only have a few more harvests left before the topsoil is gone. You need to quit this tilling stuff.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: And people have, have, you know, gotten on board with that, gotten on board with that.
[00:09:25] Speaker B: Like great idea.
[00:09:26] Speaker A: This isn't a good thing. Let's, let's knock this off. And so that, you know, regenerative is great. It's a, it's a good thing. And the, the greenwashing happens when maybe not necessarily great things that companies are doing take over that the terminology and they get credit or they look good when in reality maybe it's not quite as good as it seems.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: So you mentioned also the Carbon farming, and we could be a part of that and other farms could be a part of that. But then you're going to lease yourself to what the corporation says that you can and cannot do at that point on your farm. So now you're going to be essentially farming for someone, farming for someone else, something that you might not even actually be a farmer for. Like, now all of your decisions are made by a multinational corporation whose interests are. Might not align with yours, actually.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: Yeah, potentially.
Yeah.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: So I don't think that these companies are. I think that the people probably, like, essentially maybe mean well. But I don't know if the conflict of interest is too great.
I mean, it just seems like really, really huge conflict of interest. So Bayer also creates pharmaceutical drugs, treat cancers.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: And treat other chronic illnesses from our society, our environment, our life, whatever.
So if on the one hand, you're creating pharmaceuticals that treat chronic illnesses, and on the other hand, you've just purchased a company back in 2018. It was a number of years ago, but you purchased a company who is riddled with litigation and billions in to problems with being.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Lawsuits over Roundup glyphosate causing cancer.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: And they've paid out millions, and there have been billions, I think, worth of suits.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: So if a company like you're literally talking out of both sides of your mouth, over here we treat cancer, and over here we essentially cause it.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. It's.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: Holy bejambers.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: Good work if you can get it. I guess.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: I guess. I mean, here have spray some Roundup on your. On your food. I believe that food is where health starts.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: So it, like, is it also where sickness starts?
[00:12:16] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I think we're seeing that right now in the. Even a lot of the political discourse that's been happening over the past few months with Make America Healthy Again. And some of the things that Casey and Kelly means. Talk about where it. It all boils down to the food that we're eating and. Yeah. So health. Health starts there. And if health starts there, so does sickness.
[00:12:46] Speaker B: So the question remains, can you trust a company who touts.
[00:12:57] Speaker A: Yeah. I think it's just a great example of greenwashing. I really do. I think it's a great example of saying great words and maybe even meaning it. Yeah, maybe. Certainly look sincere.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: But the actual practices, at least across the entirety of the company, I would say, are not actually regenerative. Like, I don't. I don't know. I just. I don't see how you can say I'm regenerative. And be the people who make Roundup.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Yeah, like that.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: This just doesn't even make sense.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think we just get back to the point of whenever you get into the large corporations, really big agriculture, corporate agriculture, things can go awry. And we push yet again, authentic local regenerative farms near you. Go see what they're doing, see what they're spraying on their pastures. What, what practices are they using? And keep it, keep it small and keep it local.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: Yeah, we've seen, we've seen greenwashing before. Yeah.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: And organics.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: And now we have a situation where a large percentage of the organic produce that is available for purchase in the United States is imported.
And of that imported produce, only 2% of it is inspected by the USDA. So the USDA allows the imported organic produce to be called organic, but they don't actually inspect it, which is like a perfect definition of greenwashing. And because of that, what that opens up is that actually non organic products, which means that they cost way less to produce, are being sold as organic. And the people that are actually producing organics, it costs considerably more to do that. And they can't compete with the products that are coming in. Right. Like these cheap imports that are not organic, that are being touted as organic.
You just, you can't, you can't compete with the, with the prices.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: And so my guess, I guess or opinion would be that the, the terminology of regenerative farming is going to be greenwashed as well. And authentic clean farming, real authentic farming. What do you call it? If all of the things get all of the words and the buzzwords and sustainability and those types of things are being co opted by corporations and government.
What is the person who is trying to farm clean food the best they can supposed to even do? We keep, they keep coming up with words and corporations take them or government takes them. So finding a farmer that you can just go and see. Transparency is huge. An authentic humans are huge, Right?
[00:16:44] Speaker A: Yeah. For the time being, we're continuing to call ourselves regenerative farmers. Because I haven't heard anybody come up with anything better, a better terminology or a better term for what we're doing.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: The word is true. It's just if the word doesn't, if the word in the coming months and years means something else. Yeah, I don't mean anything. Then you have no word to use.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: I don't, I don't want to be associated with Roundup.
[00:17:12] Speaker B: Nope.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: Because I use the same term that Bayer uses, right?
[00:17:17] Speaker B: No. Oh, you farm like Bear does? Well, no, oh, no, we don't.
So, you know, what is a farmer to do?
[00:17:30] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you could try to get in on the carbon farming like we've talked about in the past. There are really tight margins in farming, and anywhere you can make some money is a help for the farm. I mean, maybe you could say, I understand that there are some strings attached, but I'm interested in being paid for my regenerative practices, even if I don't love what's going on.
Maybe I could get a little bit of extra cash for what I'm already doing by becoming a partner and carbon farmer.
Maybe.
I mean, I'm not. I'm not interested.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: Somebody might be interested, but yeah, I mean, like, it. It's there, right there. There's a potential to make some money. Yeah, maybe.
You don't seem convinced.
[00:18:41] Speaker B: No, I'm not.
No.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: You're not going to farm carbon?
[00:18:46] Speaker B: No, I'm not. I don't plan on it.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: How do we support what we might call authentication, regenerative agriculture? Like, how do you find authentic regenerative agriculture? It's. I don't know. If you search regenerative agriculture on YouTube, you end up finding things like Bayer.
So, I mean, how. What do we. Where does that leave us?
[00:19:11] Speaker B: I think it leaves us with.
We like to talk to people. We talk, we talk, we talk. And there are people out there talking. Casey and Callie Means are talking. Joel Salatin, he's been talking. Will Harris is talking. A lot of people who have sort of moved into this space years ago. Gabe Brown is talking. People are talking. RFK Jr. Is talking. We are talking. So at the farmer's market, we love to talk to people. Talk to the farmer that's standing at the farmer's market in front of you. Go to a farmer's market because that's the only place that you're going to be able to talk to the farmer. Because if you go to the grocery store that you can't talk to the farmer because they probably live in another country. So if you go to the farmer's market or a local market of some sort in your area, talk to the farmer. If you found one online that you are like, wow, I like this, call them, email them, ask them questions. Do you use chemicals? We get questions asked to us all the time. What are your practices? Do you, you know, do you vaccinate your animals? Where do you. All the things and people want to know? And if you want to know what, how that food is being grown, try to find the farmer and ask them Questions?
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:38] Speaker B: I think that's how we, as consumers begin to trust our food supply again, is to talk to the people who are actually growing it.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And we throw out videos all the time about what we're doing. I mean, and people have asked us, are you organic? And we say no. And then they don't buy from us because it. That is important to them. They want organic.
[00:21:00] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: But we, we just. We don't want to go through all of the government rigmarole for organic. And we just talked about the greenwashing that goes on in organic, and we just aren't interested in that. So we don't. We're not certified organic. And I think that's important to actually say, as a farmer, actually say what it is that you're doing. Now, we don't use chemicals.
Like, we could be organic. Like, there's nothing that we're doing that would disqualify us from being organic. We, we just don't want to go through all of the government certifications that are required to do so.
So I think just being as a farmer, being open and honest and upfront, and here's what I do, and what we've found is the practices which we're following are enough like people like that. And we're getting a great response from the way that we're doing business. And so I think to encourage the farmers out there, just be open with what you're doing. And what we've found is a great response from our local consumers that are looking for another option rather than the mystery products that you get from the grocery store.
[00:22:30] Speaker B: Yeah. At least you know that it was grown in your local area. It didn't have to go very far. The carbon footprint is pretty low because it literally was. It was there and then it kind of went to you. And so you are participating in a.
Just a better situation. It didn't get on a boat and go across the. Across the pond and then come back across, you know, the whole ocean, really. And I find the local farmer, talk to them, get to know them. You have a hairdresser.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: Right.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: You probably might even have a house cleaner. You probably have a doctor and you have maybe a yard guy.
If you're in Florida, you have a pool guy.
Why don't we have farmers? That's my farmer. And if we get to know them, like you know your hairdresser, because you're you. You talk to them. And if you get to know them on that personal level, you can trust them. And there is not a more important thing to do than to grow somebody's food that they're going to feed through their kids and to themselves and to actually ingest it becomes part of them, it grows their body. And it's the most, I think it's probably the most important job that there is, is to grow someone else's food.
And you want to trust those people. And for me, I don't trust Bear to grow my food right. Like, I just don't. And maybe, probably the people watching this and listening to this don't either, you know, and, but find that, find someone near you or even if they're not near you, if they can get it to you. But find them if. Just talk to them. Talk to them.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: What are you doing?
[00:24:23] Speaker A: I think that's a great way to move forward. And you know, some people push back and say, well, you can't feed everybody that way. But the more this, the more this happens, the more that people will start doing this, right? Like if, if we can be successful and others like us can be successful, then that means that others might want to try also. And then if they're successful, then more people will want to try. And that's the way this can grow. You know, it doesn't, I don't know, it would be great if the government says this is how things should be done, could be done, whatever, but I think it's better for the consumers to say I want to buy that product.
And if the consumers are buying that product, then more people will start making that product.
[00:25:16] Speaker B: Right?
[00:25:17] Speaker A: And I think that a bottom up approach to this effort is probably going to lead to the most success. A consumer led vote with your dollars effort for local, sustainable, regenerative, authentically regenerative, I don't know, whatever you want to call it, but practices that you can get behind and agree with. Supporting that with your dollars, I believe is where real change happens.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: So we're going to keep talking about this. Thank you guys for hanging out with us. If you enjoyed this podcast, check out the next one.
