Agriculture Career Opportunities: Why Gen Z Should Consider Jobs in Agriculture

[Paul Yeager] Well, how about this? Two old friends get together and start talking. Maybe trying to solve some of the world's problems. Specifically, when it comes to agriculture, I'm not saying that's what we're going to do today, and we're going to fix all of the problems. But we are going to talk about a couple of things for you to do and I to do, to make us better and understand multiple sides of stories that are impacting the way we grow food, the way we consume it, the way we regulate it, and have that conversation with our friends, neighbors and loved ones. Janice Person is back with us. We've chatted a couple of times before, but her role is a little bit more now. On the communication side of having that conversation, she's going to pose a couple of things here for us to think about in ways to help better understand, find some common ground to solve some issues. We're going to hit a whole lot of, bigger picture things. I'm going to zing her with a couple. The tough questions and get her to say, wow, which is tough to do. This is the MToM podcast. I'm Paul Yeager. Thanks for watching. Thanks for joining. And you know, we've come to like our little corner of agriculture, but we're trying to get a few more people in this corner and have the conversation about the way we grow, raise and consume food. That's at this week's MToM podcast episode is. So let's get to it. The last time we saw each other in person was right before Covid in the world. A little different since then, in 2020.

[Janice Person] It's gotten a lot different. A lot, a lot different.

[Yeager] Both of our industries.

[Person] Yeah. Yeah. When I last saw you, I was traveling because I was doing a lot of public speaking, and Covid came and shut that down really fast for over a year before it started coming back.

[Yeager] Just a year was all it really was for you.

[Person] A solid year without any meetings right now. You know, speaking on zoom is not nearly as engaging. And the conferences that we were going to were, I just loved going out like I'm an extrovert, right. Extrovert all over everybody. And then suddenly for well over a year and then I would say beyond that, there was probably another year because contracts had been put in place for different folks. Right? So if you didn't have the contract when everything started opening back up, they were honoring contracts from a year or so before. So it was is a wild time. And I had started my business like for five months before that.

[Yeager] It's all those timed businesses that you just don't know, right? I'm going to be. So now you do these things, you're like, okay, are my screens rolling? Is this thing, on? I'm going to make sure that we're in the right spot. Now, you do that constantly.

[Person] Constantly, constantly.

[Yeager] What? Was there anything good, though about the digital computer presentation world?

[Person] You know, for me, I ended up thinking a lot more about what I could do that could live on the internet. And then at a Did final product right training that I could do that way. That was, well.

[Yeager] Like you've never done. Yeah, you've touched the mic. We might have to stop this and do it again.

[Person] But it was, it was very different. Right. And so it gave me some thoughts and, and I think it's part of what led me to what I'm doing on a large format today. But I still love doing it in person, like I love in-person meetings.

[Yeager] Your background is, I mean, your X name still has cotton in it. Is cotton still have a soft spot in your heart?

[Person] I'm still JPlovescotton on Instagram.

[Yeager] And are you? You are, you are, aren't you?

[Person] I didn't give up the name.

[Yeager] But do you still have a soft spot for it?

[Person] I do, I do, it's my favorite fiber, right? Like, I love natural fibers, but I mean, I wear a good bit of wool in the winter months. A lot of wool.

[Yeager] What is the main, what do you what's your elevator pitch now to people of what you do?

[Person] Who what I do. Yeah, I do a lot of training and public speaking, but the training I do is really in that space of helping people, not in agriculture, really get agriculture. And I've done that for a long time. But the spin on it now is people who want to stay in ag. They want to learn enough so that they can do a career in ag. I'm trying to help them because it's weirdly hard to learn agriculture, and I, I don't think anybody really got that for a long time. If you're in it, you learn basic things as you grow up, like life cycles of animals.

[Yeager] And markets.

[Person] And markets and seasonality and all kinds of stuff that just doesn't hit with the rest of us in the world.

[Yeager] I don't know what it's, I mean, I've been to Saint Louis enough. I know how that town is structured. Very ag heavy, but it's also there's a lot of places that have no idea of the multi billion dollar world corporations that are in the town. I was kind of the same way. We just think, oh, everybody's everybody farms in Iowa. There's so many people who are who don't know.

[Person] And they don't know farmers.

[Yeager] And they don't know a farmer. They wouldn't know how...

[Person] they wouldn't go to the farmers market. And they'll make a small number of farmers that are in a certain niche, but they probably don't understand some of the other areas. And here's the thing, Paul, that really drove me doing this. We need so many more people to come into agriculture. The technology is insanely cool, but we need people who are just great at information technology, great at data. We can't only hire farm kids like that used to be a thing where, like, every farm kid knew they had a job. Well, there aren't that many farm kids, and there's still a lot of things to be done in agriculture. So how are you going to help those people understand this business? Well, I want science, not all that.

[Yeager] Stuff, and I want to go to the community thing first. This is what I always like to talk about, like at the state.

[Person] Oh, I love it.

[Yeager] At the fair. It's always, you know, I asked the secretary of ag. I always say, is this a blank canvas for you? Because you have urban people, rural people together. And I say...

[Person] What is it you talk about? What does Mike say?

[Yeager] He says that this is a good opportunity for us to talk to that farmer, to find out, to stop. I encourage people to ask the kid who's showing the hog, tell me about your animal and go to.

[Person] The learning center.

[Yeager] Do enough people do it. And he says, no, no, why not? Why are people doing it?

[Person] I think there's a few different things going on. One, some people don't know they need it. Right? Like you think about it though, in Covid, more people started caring about how food was sourced. I think they've gotten a little bit more comfortable again, but now that prices are going up and all these other things are happening, I'm hearing more people beginning to be more interested. They're really interested in why beef prices are up. Right? Like, I mean, those kind of things because they see it in the grocery store and they don't understand it. And that problem stick for somebody who's trying to feed their kids and want to be able to buy, you know, various things, right? My mom didn't give a steak every night, but, you know, now and then and ground beef and chicken.

[Yeager] Well, what's the phrase? We don't celebrate milestones with chicken. We celebrate with beef. I mean, that's the beef.

[Person] That's what the people do.

[Yeager] That would mean we're not going to have any celebrations right now because it is high. But as I said to Mike, go, I guess if let's complete the conversation cycle, I go, Mike, you've got high prices for those who are producing it, which got high prices for those who are trying to buy it. At some point that is going to not mesh and you're going to have this disconnect.

[Yeager] Do we, do you think the consumer has, thanks to Covid, understands the food cycle a little bit more. And that's why they can understand the beef prices.

[Person] I hear I think they understand that a little bit more. But I think they understood a few more links in that supply chain. Right. They still don't understand why farmers are getting paid really well for their beef. And it's complicated I mean, like I ask people in ag and a lot of them are like, go ahead.

[Person] And I don't know, I'm just selling the steers that I have happily. Right. Like I'm selling my beef happily right now. But the idea of how do we get to a better place? Each individual farmer tries to figure out what they can do to get to a better place for their farm and their family. Invest a little bit if they're bringing in beef money right now, but pigs and poultry and ag if dairy is now growing beef.

[Yeager] Yes, dairy. Dairy has actually benefited. But some of their animals that aren't that they would normally sell off or maybe keep, but now they're selling them for, they're actually making money on some of those.

[Person] I've talked to a lot of dairy farmers over the last couple of years, and more and more. Some are putting some beef breeds in their breeding program, so they have a little more of the meat quality that people want with beef. Still, they're still looking for dairy calves and heifers. Right. But those steers, more of them are raising them out. And they go into our Wendy's burgers or whatever it is. Right. To help. Dairy has been challenged economically. So, so much longer than a lot of the other parts of the business. I, I remember when we first connected back on Twitter, I can remember multiple dairy farmers closing down, right, and selling their cows.

[Yeager] And there's still stories.

[Person] And, and that's still happening. Right. And I would say, sadly, people probably ought to pay attention this year because it may happen across different kinds of farms. Do more equipment being auctioned more, you know, like it's, it's a tough time. I entered Ag in the 80s, and I can remember.

[Yeager] Something significant happened in the 80s?.

[Person] I think there was some kind of, like, farm crisis thing. Right? But it feels like we're sort of maybe going to enter that kind of thing again. When I talk to a lot of people and ag people have been stretched a while and they're being stretched more and China's not buying.

[Yeager] And so does that mean this is, in every crisis is an opportunity? What's the opportunity now?

[Person] I wow, gosh, that's a big one. I think it's time for people in AG to remember that people who voted differently or whatever really are your enemies. I see the polarization coming back in such weird ways, and so many people are picking teams without understanding. We need those people in the gray areas, right? Like people between us. You know, the political space is gotten that way pretty hard. And I know a lot of farmers are looking for help because I love having food that's grown and made in the USA. Right. Like I love having knowledge how it was produced so that I know maybe kids weren't taken out of school for months to pick this crop and that. And I absolutely happens in some places in the world. And those might be some of the places where people would be growing things for us if we don't produce it locally. I think if we don't figure out a way to talk about that in a way that gets other people interested at the table, oh, it's going to be uglier, right? Like it really is a common ground kind of issue for most people who eat food or produce food. Right now, the pricing is out of control for everybody. What can we do together to try and figure out a system that will work better for us?

[Yeager] If you'd like to see the three most commented stories that we've done on market in the last six months and probably the last ten years, you want to guess the topics.

[Person] Oh gosh, I hate to.

[Yeager] We've already talked about two of them. Labor. Yeah. and 2 is, the meat prices and the screw worm. Yeah. That's become a thing. And just, and there's conspiracies of I'm sorry, there's theories of it's JBS or the big Meatpacker is at the center of this not wanting imports from another country, which ties back into the first one when it comes.

[Person] Yeah.

[Yeager] And the third one is about swamp busting. Yeah. Taking land out of government support and trying to put it back in. And who owns the land. Those three topics I have not seen in a long time. I have comments about that. So there are strong opinions about.

[Person] Their very strong opinions.

[Yeager] So how do we land those opinions? There's not good space where we can talk about this openly.

[Person] I think that's one of the things we have. We have to have venues like this where people might not totally agree on everything, but they can discuss them and they can talk about what we might need. Right. And you're not going to find that really common on Twitter anymore. It used to be that way, right? Like but it's been ten years. It started eroding and it wasn't as good a public conversation. We need more public forums that can be done in a productive way. It's not going to be a political rally or a political. I mean, we've seen I've seen Missouri. I've seen what happened in Iowa. Right? It's just it's not productive for anybody. And right now it seems only productive for people in power parties.

[Yeager] Well, that's what I'm saying. Yes, price and power are getting in power because they're the loudest. Yeah. And and so then they would say, why would I change what allowed me to win to get here?

[Person] They won't. That's what I'm saying I know, I know they will won't. But people like us have to be more involved before the primaries and then really involved in the primaries. Right.

[Yeager] So I think people are I think people are I mean, in Iowa, we always have this history of being involved with the caucus and ahead of the game. And we we stew and students do and we can't decide. And Iowa waits until the very last minute decide. Well, Iowa doesn't have the caucus anymore for first in the nation for the Democrats. Republicans are still here. Yeah. So then all of a sudden you have one party who's getting the attention and the other one's not. And so and other states didn't like Iowa's position or seat at the table.

[Person] Oh yeah. Iowa’s unique.

[Yeager] I mean, Iowa took it very seriously, that role.

[Person] I understand that.

[Yeager] And now I don't know how much there's a lot of the trying to put my shoulders up and down as best I can. But I get the camera shot.

[Person] It's a tough one. I don't think there's easy answers for any of it, but there aren't very many places where people are willing to have uncomfortable conversations, right? Like, how many people do you know that have written off members of their family? I mean, I never had that in my life. Like I didn't, I didn't even know that was a thing. Like, you would just not talk to family members because you voted differently and you want to argue your votes. My parents voted differently all the time.

[Yeager] So mine were they cancel out, right? The cancel out. 

[Person] Mom used to tell us she canceled out my dad's vote on a regular basis, and we were. Yeah, we just kind of thought, well, okay, like, dad was in the room when she'd say it, right? Like, it's not like, you know, it's not like she was hiding it, only telling the kids. But it's a strange thing that, people have gotten so fervent in what they think that it feels absolute and that it allows no room for anybody else to have different experiences, opinions, knowledge. Right. And I think that's where we've gotten to problem is that things aren't absolute. Things that work for me don't work for you. Maybe. Maybe they do. But we probably ought to see them before we assume.

[Yeager] But I must. I like sports, I talk about it a lot. Sports has made it so there's winners and losers. Yeah. That's how, stories in time and Newsweek and the paper winners and losers of this debate, that's how we view things. We don't view gray anymore. Okay, I want to get back to your main thing. I mean, we can talk about this, but it ties perfectly. It is its technology. Because technology is one of those things that, we can have the comments of people we don't necessarily agree with filtered out of our timeline. Yeah. Or we can have insight, but we also have this theory about big information, whether it's AI in chat or. Oh, gosh, in agriculture, where is the technology going to help us most in agriculture?

[Person] Where is technology going to help us the most? So I think we're finally getting to where technology is helping a range of sizes of operations. Whereas early on it seemed to only benefit the biggest farms. And that to me feels great. I love the idea of having different size farms. I have friends who really want to keep scaling up. They want to be able to bring their grandkids back, right? Not just their kids anymore. Right? And for some of them, that means they have to scale differently. For others. I mean, I met a guy who, like, found dairy cows in high school showing he thought the jerseys were kind of neat. And next thing you know, he's figured out how to get a loan, how to get a robot. He still has a regular day job, but he's got a small dairy started and he couldn't have done that without technology. Right. So maybe there are going to be some things that can help on smaller farms as well. And that is what most people in the US feel more comfortable with, right? They like the idea of small farms.

[Yeager] Like they always have, always have.

[Person] You know, there's one block of land and it's got a house on it and a pretty barn. Hopefully. Right. I like that. I also like the big farms. Right. Like, I have friends with big farms. I know what I get out of those farms right? Pistachios, for instance. Right. Like some amazing crops or lots of corn or lots of beef. Right. I think technology being able to work at different points of the scale is it feels more equitable, that kind of thing. I love that.

[Yeager] Do you like what the information can give us in? So I'm sorry, is the information that you're talking about helping us decide what to plant or how to just be more efficient?

[Person] It can help us decide what to plant. Things like the robot can actually help you figure out a cow is getting ill before the cow is ill, right? There's like there's things that are indicators, right? Like, you know, with kids at your house, if one of them is suddenly not bouncing off the walls, right, with little kids, then, maybe they're getting sick. They don't have a temperature yet. Right? You could go ahead and take that cow out of the milking herd before they're actually ill. Make sure you're going to get that cow where they need to be. Is it something serious, or is it just today they're feeling off, right?

[Yeager] And we've long, and I'm sure there are operations that can tell to the ounce how much.

[Person] Yeah.

[Yeager] Cow number 52 5050.

[Person] Oh absolutely.

[Yeager] They know all those things that technology.

[Person] And it's all digital and digital pens. And the cow has a tag in their ear. And, and.

[Yeager] We know if they've not been taking enough steps or eating properly. So yeah. But that to me feels though it's unattainable for that small farmer.

[Person] Also the examples I'm using is that guy bought a robot. The smaller is really a farm.

[Yeager] And way to break that notion.

[Person] The thing is, I think at one point we thought big farms and they'd have numbers of cows and their names. Right? And some people thought, oh, I wish, I wish they had that Betsy, Sue or Elsie or whatever as the lead cow. Right. So those farmers care about their cattle just as much as the ones that only have a few. That column, Lou Mae and stuff. Right. Like it's it really isn't about the size of the herd, but the amount of data that you can get and the useful tools that you can use to generate things into what's really useful for you is it's mind blowing. And it's not just on the animal side, you know. Now you can I've got I was talking to a company the other day that has a really effective sprayer that only sprays when there are weeds that are identified.  Right. That's the kind of stuff that sounds awesome, like don't spray the soil. Let's spray weeds like, that sounds perfect. And you can't do that without the technology on the sprayer that then is integrated in to make sure that that goes out at just the right moment.

[Yeager] Because the AI can tell what kind of weed it is or identified. That is a weed. I got to spray it. Yeah, that again sounds unattainable for some, but that is what the reality is of if we're going to have clean water or less chemical, because the farmer will tell you if you say, well, you're the problem, why am I drinking water, why I can't do you really think I'm going to spend all this money on fertilizer on this acre of land, when it is so expensive? Now I'm going to ranch farmers.

[Person] I never want to do it right. They'd never want to overspend. Yeah. All right. Like, I mean, they're.

[Yeager] Chronic under spenders.

[Person] They're running a business, right? And they're trying to protect their investment. They want to be able to provide it to the next generation. Right? They want to make it better not only in financial soundness but also environmentally, that all those things, they want to make it better for the next generation. That's part of your commitment.

[Yeager] Well, we have a part. Let's, now we're again, combine some of our past conversations into this part, okay. Is the environment because you have some that think there's not an environmental problem. That's something is made up or is not the real cause of it. Then you have op ed after op ed about why is water not clean? Why can't I swim at this lake? Then you've got others who are like, we are creating jobs and helping the economy. Whatever happens, happens. How do you center all of those in a conversation that you have you are trying to lead?

[Person] Yeah. So I actually did that not too long ago with, people from several different areas of the country that grow different crops, different livestock, and to talk about sustainability and talk about what water means in their area. First off, some people assume that the way you talk about water is the same from one place to another. So helping people understand where there are differences really makes the conversation change. In a place like Iowa. Are you guys getting enough rain this year? Last year? You know it's variable, right? Like there will be years here where it is absolute drought stricken. This year was pretty good year. Get rains at the right time for most people. Not going to find that in some parts of the country. More years than not, right? Nebraska? Texas. There are areas where that. So you can't have one conversation about water. Also, whether the water's dirty or clean or whether it's been contaminated, you can't just you can't just assume it's farming because there's also things like battery plants, right? Like there's so much more than farming. You may see farming when you're driving around an area because it's out in the open, a lot of it, but you may not see other things that are going on in the same watersheds. Right. And, and people, sometimes people don't understand all the complexities.

[Yeager] And it goes back to we need a winner and a loser. We need to pin it on farmers or the battery plant or the golf course or the.

[Person] Headlines or headlines or whines and tweets. Right. Or what people get. But what I find more and more is more and more people love going in depth, whether it's audio, books, podcast, whatever, right? They love going in-depth on things. I am blown away by the number. So I've been working on all these videos of different things, right. And one was on a course about we'd like to help, you know, most of the stuff you need to know about wheat to work in a wheat business. And one of the things we did was talk to a guy who's the wheat specialist in Kansas. He probably knows a lot about wheat. And then we went downstairs and we talked to the Milling and baking lab. My niece helps me in my business. She's busy helping me with things. Her boyfriend is coming and going, wait, what's what's happening in a video? What are they doing? Wait. That's why our biscuits are fluffier or not? Because there are people there and explain it right. And so part of what I'm trying to do is help people see there is a lot of complexity. There's not one farmer. There's stereotypes of Iowa farmers. Iowa farmers are not the same. There may be a stereotype, but you know, they are not all the same. So let's look at some of the differences. Let's look at how they're running their business. Let's look at how they decided to set up their business. Some of them set them up as corporations. Some of them did. Right. Like there's all these different things. And to really understand agriculture, you have to start thinking about gray. You can't do it in black and white and actually be able to run a business.

[Yeager] I cannot always get through to people about the importance of understanding how their food is grown. Yeah, but when I only have half an hour, which is in-depth in today's media world.

For what we do, I can't always get people interested in the show. Yeah, because, ‘that doesn't apply to me,’ but it does.

[Person] I think. I think people can be and we all do it right. Like, we can be so narrowly focused on what we know impacts us that it's probably a good idea to every quarter or so to pull your head up out of the cube farm and see what else is around you and see what else is going on. But I think that happens to all of us. It doesn't matter if you're in farming or not, right? And a lot of farmers don't always have perspective. Why people in a city like Des Moines, which they think is all surrounded by corn and soybeans. So why don't they understand corn and soybeans? But they that's not that's not their reality. If you're living in Des Moines, you're focused on whatever it is. That's your day to day. That little drive out in the country on the weekends, that's like a totally different thing. So it becomes complicated.

[Yeager] But,

[Person] It's an individual responsibility to learn.

[Yeager] It is. But the individual has been fed an algorithm before. Algorithms were a thing. Yeah. They were in if they lived in Garner, Iowa, they only knew what happened in Garner and they didn't necessarily know what happened in Des Moines. Des Moines is so far away. They're making terrible decisions for me. I can't believe it. For a city. Don't even get me started. Whereas that we just we went to the same coffee shop or the co-op and we had the same conversation with the same people, and you heard the same thing all the time. Yeah. The new radical person came into town and told you about, you know, they're planting this thing called soybeans. And then that change.

[Yeager] We've long been in our silos, no matter who it is.

[Person] Yeah, yeah.

[Yeager] It's like the same who likes the NFL. They don't know anything about the college game or the high school game, or they don't understand hockey or they don't, you know, or music. I mean, you pick the topic. Yeah. We're just don't spread the information. Do you suspect the fewer people living in rural spots as these towns get smaller in Missouri and Illinois and Iowa and Kansas and Texas? Yeah, Oklahoma. We're going to have a harder time in agriculture, convincing people the importance of agriculture.

[Person] We've had a harder time as every percentage has left the ag world right. Each change has been a significant disadvantage to ag. The it's becoming more and more a minority. Right. And now we have a lot of people who work in AG who don't really understand AG, even. Right. Because I, I mean, I didn't grow up with it. How did I learn it? I ended up staying in AG long enough to learn it. Right. And I I've learned enough to know, I don't know a lot of things.

[Yeager] That's the first step right there that you don't.

[Person] Know something, right? I know, I don't know a lot of things. I've, I've had lots of, you know, baths by fire kind of moments. Right. I think one, most people need to take a little more responsibility for themselves. And that comes back to farmers, too, right? Like, if you say that you have an opinion that is diametrically opposed to other people, what makes their opinion go that direction so much further away from you? Can you have a conversation with somebody about it? Maybe not somebody who's all in on that perception, but is there somebody else you could find that you could find their podcast and just push yourself to listen? Because I've made myself listen to some podcasts that I tell people I will never listen to that podcast.

[Yeager] This one, including.

[Person] And I've made myself listen to a few of those because I realize you're the problem. If you're not being part of the solution, then you're part of the problem, right? And so I've read books that other friends were raving about and then read them and said, you know, this perspective is a little different. Here's why it's different for me. And so finding some trusted people, it may not be a large number of people, but finding some trusted people. And I think libraries do a good job of trying to put people together for public forums. They bring in authors, they bring in speakers, universities. You may not agree with them on other things, but when they bring in speakers and things, some of them do an okay job.

[Yeager] But we struggle with everybody's motivation. Trust is something that is not. We've been those that we've put all this trust in. Yeah. Been found to that's been torn down. But that's also biblical too. We're not supposed to put all this trust in false things. We don't think it's false at the time.

[Person] We all take the effort to try and see other like how did that come about for you? You become the trusted person because they realize, okay, wait, you're not so entrenched in where you are. You're willing to like, try and see what my ideas are shaped into. You're reading a book that I recommended that I know doesn't agree with what you're doing right? Like I've done that with friends. Let's all read a book we don't agree with. Let's figure out where we might find some things that, you know, I could agree on these parts, could you? Right. And have those kind of conversations, I think it's easy to stay in the algorithm.

[Yeager] It's hard to.

[Person] Take personal choice. It takes not hiding the people you disagree with when they make you mad or snooze them for 30 days. Don't snooze them forever. If you need to take a break. Right?

[Yeager] We're all talking about that one cousin.

[Person] Well, I have the one uncle.

[Yeager] So if anything I'm learning here is it? And that, to me, is what I've long felt about the public media side of things. And when we've just gone through. Yeah, I have not talked much in this podcast about the cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and I've long felt, in the public sector that we work for all taxpayers.

[Yeager] That's what we've long since done, not for one advertised.

[Person] There's going to be shows I don't like. There's going to be shows I love.

[Yeager] And it's okay. I enjoy talking to people. Well, period. End of sentence. I enjoy talking to people, but I enjoy people of talking. I do, I really do, because I do embrace someone that I'm kind of like, not really sure we can connect, but we can connect this way and fine, I think. Isn't there more we're together on than we're apart on? Yeah.

[Person] Absolutely, absolutely. And I think right now a lot more people are learning that by saying, wait a minute, this isn't what I expected or this isn't what I thought was going to happen. And being able to say, I'm maybe I'll take a little different look at things for a few minutes. It's vulnerable. It doesn't feel good. It feels good to go out, the we don't like, we don't like to do things right.

[Yeager] We don't like to do that. We stick to our silo in our algorithm. It's hard for us to step out of it.

[Person] I like to challenge people. I like to challenge myself. I mean, seriously, I mean, otherwise, why would you have people like me? I mean, like, I'm a city girl, like a city. My parents went to the farmers market because we were poor, not because it was like the farmers markets are now, because we had to put up food for the rest of the year. We had a garden for the same reason. Right. And I think now when you look at it, there's no reason people like me would come into agriculture unless somebody is saying, hey, we're reaching out. We think there's a lot more in common. Water is a perfectly good example. I'm not ever met a farmer who didn't care about water. And they might not want everybody else making rules about how it's used and things like that. I get it, maybe we don't lead with that. As the conversation. Maybe we lead with the fact I really want clean water for my family. I, I take that as a personal responsibility because we live on our well, that is something I invest a lot of time and effort in. Do you do you know how much time and effort it takes when you know it's you're well and you're responsible for the water? We're not going to Des Moines Water Works to see how my water is going to get filtered. It's all done right here on my land. That changes the whole conversation. If you started out that way, rather than saying, I don't want you to take my water from me, I don't want you to say what's going to happen with the water on my land. If you can start with that common ground and then eventually go, well, here's something that really concerns me about water and I know cities need water, I need water. We all need clean water, right? So we agree on that. Okay. So then then come back and you know, it really is conversational. And I think if more people are having the conversation with their elected officials, whether they voted for them or not, don't just only call the people you didn't vote for or the people you did vote for.

[Person] Call both right and help them understand.

[Yeager] Who needs to have that lead. That conversation because the elected person is not to.

[Person] Oh, they're never going to do.

[Yeager] It. So but if you're that one citizen who always goes to, Janice is always at these meetings, she's always complaining, I'm not going to listen to her.

[Person] No, I don't go and complain, but I'm...

[Yeager] But that's what I'm saying. That's how some people discuss. That's how. That's how some people are. You might be viewed whether you choose that way or not. So how do you have that open dialog? Just be the better person. Right?

[Person] And it's hard, right? Like be the person your grandparents wanted you to be or your parents. Right? Like you have to think about making others like, okay, is this something I should be proud of? Right. Like our grandparents did not teach us to act this way. And yelling and screaming and pointing fingers and cursing people out online or in person or whatever it please. My grandmother would snatch me up. That's a southern thing. You can tell me this is really my home town.

[Yeager] You slipped it in. Match me up. Okay. As we close, give me a there's no easy pill for any of this now, so I'm hearing. Let me see if I. Let me see if I can summarize the points. Try a different viewpoint to see where they're coming from and that viewpoint in any situation to ponder, understand, find common ground with someone we who might be critical of us and just see if there's something we can agree on and build trust that way. Give me lastly, let's do one more job pitch, because I've got one in college who I don't know what is. I kind of think I know what he's going to do, but what? But his friends who might not.

[Person] Yeah.

[Yeager] Why should they think agriculture for a job?

[Person] I think agriculture is a place where you can create real meaning. What I see with Gen Z is they don't want to spend their time building something that doesn't matter. So if you want to do something that really matters, feeding people and taking care of the planet, tell me there's somewhere better to be, right? Like, I just don't get it. Like there's nowhere better to be. And then what I've committed to doing is trying to help people who come into AG understand it. I've got online programs that help. I'm working with, you know, HR departments and stuff to try and get that available to new people coming into AG, because they need to be able to understand how to talk to others, understand the diversity of what's happening, not call all cattle cows. Some are steers or bulls. And if you're talking in a beef world, that really matters, right? Help them, help them avoid some of those things. And then those people in AG need to stop rolling. Quite so much. When people make mistakes, if they're not from the farm.

[Yeager] Here's your opportunity.

[Person] This is it.

[Yeager] Yeah. I appreciate you making time for me. Thank you.

[Person] I love being in the studio. This is a lot of fun.

[Yeager] You could. We could do this for a long time.

[Person] I'm going to get a bobblehead.

[Yeager] All right. We'll get you a bobblehead. Thanks. Jan. It's great to see you. Thanks. Thank you. New episodes come out each and every Tuesday. We will see you on the other side. My thanks to the production crew led by Sean Ingrassia, Neal Kyer, Kevin Rivers, Reid Denker, David Feingold, Julie Knutson, and you and also our executive producer of the Market to Market TV show is David Miller. Thanks for watching. See you next time.