Episode 13 Kentucky Agriculture with Warren Beeler

Don't miss hearing Warren Beeler talk about his experience with the 80s and the crash of the hog market in the 90s. Learn more about Kentucky Ag Finance, and why we need more people in Agriculture and not just farmers.

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Must Listen To Podcast! Mr. Warren Beeler sits down with Ag Credit to discuss all things agriculture. Youth, Hogs, 1980's, Agriculture and the life of Mr. Beeler! 

Caleb Sadler (00:01)
Welcome to Beyond Agriculture, the podcast that takes you beyond the scope of AG and into the real life stories, conversations, and events taking place in our community. Who we are and what we do is Beyond Agriculture. Hello, and welcome into Beyond Agriculture. Caleb Sadler with you today. I'm also joined in the Lebanon branch by Patrick and John Peek with me. How are you all doing today?

Warren (00:36)
Good.

Patick (00:36)
How are you?

Warren (00:37)
Good.

Caleb Sadler (00:38)
Finally got some pretty weather. Sun shining today, so it's been a little different than the dreary old rainy days the past couple of days, so that's good to see. So we're also joined today with Mr. Kentucky Agriculture himself, Mr. Warren Bealer. Warren, how are you?

Warren (00:54)
I am good. I've been called worse things than Mr. Agriculture. I'll take that.

Caleb Sadler (00:59)
That's exactly right. Well, the stuff that you've done for Kentucky Agriculture, it certainly speaks to itself. So we'll dive right in a little bit, I guess you could say. Some of the things that we're going to cover today. We'd like to get in a little bit about how the 80s kind of relate back to today and some of the similarities that we're going through with the economy right now and some of the history that you have and the roles that you've played over the course of time. So let's start off tell us a little bit about yourself and your family and where you reside and some of the things that you do.

Warren (01:32)
Well, I'm fromCaneyville, Kentucky, which is about 50 miles west of Elizabeth Town, right on the Western Kentucky Parkway and raised up on a dairy there. My dad and brother Mill for 41 years and then went to Western School and majored in animal science and then ended up come right out there and got a job with the American Yorkshire Club, starting in the Hulk business. Didn't know a thing about the hulk business. Wasn't the whole guy interesting? The guy that interviewed me, Mr. Connancer, never asked me a thing about hogs. He just asked me about family and people, and I had lots to talk about there, and so that was wonderful. Then about a year later, I switched back to Hampshires to get back in the Southeast, and then it sounded like I've had a million jobs. And then Dr. Brown at Western called me, and when they built the Expo Center at the college there, I was the first director of that. Most people don't know that.

Caleb Sadler (02:30)
Wow, I did not know that either.

Warren (02:31)
That started and then actually, Hampshire called me back about a year after that to start the very first junior association in the swine industry. I went and did that for about three or four years until the money ran out. Bought a farm in 1980 there in Caneyville. Not the home farm, but a farm of two or 3 miles away, and started hog farming a little bit there in 1980. And not the best time in the world to be starving. I was very lucky to get a farm loan from farmers home administration, which kept my interest rate low there. But operating money in the 80s, again, the 80s got to 18, 20%. I paid some of that, and there's no way to do things like that. So I I've been very lucky. Hog business got so good in December of 98 that my wife said, you got to get a real job. And I went to Frankfort and had a bunch of jobs in Frankfo rt, from great and CPH cattle in the beginning as a beef marketing specialist to being over shows and fairs and then being over the animal marketing, which is market news and and those and then I spent 16 years there and then and I went to the governor's office with with Governor Bevin and Governor Bashear.

Warren (03:46)
So I've been really lucky. You know, I tell people, you know, the I love the hog business. When when you have litter pigs, it's like opening Christmas presents. I wasn't in it like your family wasn't in it to just make calls. We were in try to make a good one.

Caleb Sadler (04:03)
Yeah, that's exactly right.

Warren (04:04)
And that was a passion and an obsession, and I missed that. I missed that every single day. But with the hog business the way it was, if I could have stayed in it, I'd probably absolutely have nothing now. As a result of starting over at 43 years old, I probably provided for my family better than I ever had. And I got to see things that's just absolutely I see agricultures from so many different views. It was really special. Yeah.

Caleb Sadler (04:36)
And I can go back I'm going to relate a little bit here, too, because, I mean, you've been a very instrumental role in my life. I'm trying to go back and remember, giving oral reasons, doing livestock judging and things like that, I think you are maybe one of the first people that ever made me put down my sheet of paper from reading off of it and just give it. And what that's done to me today is, I mean, it's fabulous.

Warren (04:56)
So no doubt I've told a million of you, of you all that you see them fine, you see them fine, and you get so much more confidence when you put down the sheet. You quit seeing your notes, and you start seeing the animals in your head, and then you can really describe them and get it right. I wouldn't take anything. I did the first livestock judging clinic right in the 80s when I started farming, and we had about three or four chapters there. In about three years, it got so big I couldn't get it in my shop. And then we moved it over to Bowling Green, and that's why we started the first expo. Expo, yeah. We only had a hog show. We took the hog show and a lamb show and put it in there. Then we added the others over time. Then we added more head than we added Murray. I'm proud of that.

Caleb Sadler (05:45)
Those are big events, too, and it draws a lot of kids to those expos across the state of Kentucky, no doubt on that end of it. So I did see that the other day where you had posted somebody had posted a picture, and it was one of the first livestock judging, I guess, practices you had had at your farm. That was pretty neat to see.

Warren (06:03)
The FFA kids it got so when they come to our clinic, they went to the FFA contest and they won. And so then everybody got to come in. And so all we had was a tarp up at the time. And that's even before Dee and I got married. And so it was wonderful times, you know. Wonderful times.

Patick (06:26)
I'll tell a little bit of my age. I remember going to one of those three well, I guess it went to all three of them from day one. And I remember getting a car and they said, we're going to Canyville this guy. Warren Bealer. He's the guy. And I was like, we're never going to get there. It was forever. In a way. I was like, Where are we going? But like Caleb said, those times and learning from you that steered me in the direction I am now. And I think you even made us at that time take away your notes and you just got to do it from inside. And that brought you out of your shell and taught you to talk. And things that we do now start it from there.

Warren (07:14)
I'm proud of you guys. I'm proud of all the things. The biggest need in agriculture, if you get out and really study it, is we need people. We need people more than anything else. More than anything. People make things going. People make things not go. And attracting people to agriculture is the biggest chore we've got in the next 10-15 years when it comes down to it. And that's not just farming. I'm talking Ag Credit. I'm talking in every aspect processing technology, geneticist. My son Ben has a PhD in nuclear engineering from Georgia Tech. Got his postdoctor UC Davis and UC Berkeley. He's a professor at NC State. What a waste. I love him, so I'm proud of him. He got all his mother's genetics, but I think about what he could have done for agriculture. The Jersey guy at the North American. The Jersey Secretary, he tells me he can pull hair now on a baby bull calf. Look at the DNA and have that calf 71% proven. That's the fifth year, Caleb, of seven years to prove a bull. Just need people to identify it all. Take all the guesswork out of make this farming thing where it's not so much plant it and hope or freedom and hope.

Warren (08:33)
It's calculated. And that takes people. And that's why it makes me feel good that maybe in some places we influence folks enough where they want to be part of this thing we call agriculture, which is exciting as it can be even though we have little trouble selling that.

John Peek (08:53)
I agree with you, Warren. My daughter is an FFA right now. And to see those kids that are in FFA and the potential in those kids but how many of them can we keep in agriculture? And I understand honestly, I don't know that I want her to go into agriculture at this point because, number one, farming is tough. I don't know that I want her going into farming. But hopefully somewhere in the AG industry we can make a place for these people because we have kids that are interested. And that leads me back. I had a question. You were talking about your history. There was a hog farming. Was that something you grew up with? Was that just an opportunity with the farm you were looking at or was that just happenstance?

Warren (09:36)
Had no background at all, hardly growing? I think dad had my dad was a typical farmer back in those early days. He had a little bit of everything and didn't do anything very well. Tobacco, dairy, a few hogs, grew crops to feed them. But the hog business to me came about as a result of being a field representative for Hampshires and Durocs. And I absolutely fell in love with it. Dr. Gordon Jones on the judging team at Western I loved that judging part of it and that built a passion for me. And then being around. And what I did for those three years I was a fieldman. I visited hog farmers five, six, seven a day, every single day. I got home 15 nights in a year, never over two nights in a row. Spent one Christmas on a holiday in Arkansas because the guy scheduled the sale on the 26 of December. But I got a real passion, and that's why I came home. I didn't have any facilities. I built all my own facilities. Facilities in the 80s were terrible. We were trying to move from the dirt and didn't know how to do it. Today's facilities are amazing.

Warren (10:42)
Just how much performance we've increased from the 80s to now we've increased hogs from 240 to 280. Same amount of time. We've gone from 20 pigs per sow a year to 30 pigs per sow per year. And we've gone from a pig, basically that was too fat. Had 1.2 inches of fat and a four and a half inch pork chop. Now to .075 fat on a 280 instead of a 240 with 6.8 pork chop. I think Gordon Jones being somewhat of a hog man like he is he's just a good livestock man and a great teacher. And being around all those I heard Philosophies one guy tell you all performance testing is a way to do it. And the next guy would tell you that's the biggest waste of time it ever was. So you had to sort a lot of it. But I came home and wanted to make good Hampshire hogs and I was doing really well, getting along good and selling. We got to 400 or 500 boars a year, 2000 gilts. And in December 98 when hogs got to $0.10, all the farmers were in their sixty's. And they say, I'm not going to pay for this farm again.

Warren (11:52)
And they got out of the hog business and dozed their buildings and we were done, right. And so I missed that. Back in those days in the 80s I could sell hogs at five or six different places. I'm talking about you had Armor and Fisher in Louisville, you had Boss in Nashville, you had Fields in Ornsborough, you had Cons in Cincinnati and you could get them to bid against each. We had buying stations in all the different facilities. And it was different. Had thousands of hog farmers. Then basically we had a whole new different business. We had feeder pig people. Try to find a feeder pig these days. You know, we, we went from a 40 to 60 pound pig Wigwam. Used to get 5000 of them on a Wednesday over there. And Glenn Massingale in Monticello get tons of feeder pigs. Guys just raising 40-60 pound pigs. Now we don't even hit that. We don't even have a nursery. We take pigs straight from the sow to the finishing floor with with heaters and stuff and nursery things all gone. So the in the technology and the innovation from the 80s to now it's just off the charts.

Warren (13:03)
But yeah, I love the hog business. I'm a Hogman. I call myself the Hog Man from Canyville, even though I'm a former Hog Man, but always be a Hog Man.

Caleb Sadler (13:11)
It's so interesting though, because there's parts of that that I didn't even know when you grew up. I didn't even know you had hogs. Like you all didn't have hogs when you grew up. So that's very interesting. And to see the technology evolve, I mean, $0.10 in 1998 for hogs? That's crazy. I can go back and look, there's a place that I rent right now. And you talk about the transition from dirt and how everybody used to have pigs. It's very similar to the farm that I have right now. Used to be a pig farm, some of it. So I've got some grated floors with slats in it and some of the barns. And I think Ben, that's on our tech today, same situation in his place too. So it's amazing to see Kentucky agriculture, how it's evolved over the time, no doubt.

Warren (13:55)
I think it hurts people's feelings because we've gone from small farmers that did a little bit of everything and very diversified, but not very big at any of it, to more consolidation. Now we've only got one buying station that's JBS. Swift in Louisville. They do 10,500 a day. And one person is supplying 25% of their hogs, Jimmy Tosh, out of Tennessee and Western Kentucky. So it's just different. Not that it's bad. And then what's happened to us, we see on the hog side, and then now with the chicken thing coming in and being huge, we see contract.

Caleb Sadler (14:33)
For me, that's what I was just about to get into myself. We were just talking about it here before we started recording, and we're talking about the chicken side of it and how it's more contract based right now. And it seems that the hogs have gone that way as well, too.

Warren (14:48)
What contracts have allowed us to do. So we get a loan for you guys with that contract. We can basically lock things in. The hog thing may be even better sometimes because we get paid by the pig space in most of those situations, rather than you only get paid in the chickens if they're in. But they're building those buildings. They can flat, grow and be healthy and do good in those buildings. My daughter Molly, and her husband Luke, have built two mega chicken houses for Tyson. They're doing a little bird, and in 32 days, they got a four pound bird. Wow. They run the thing from their cell phone. She teaches kindergarten and she gets a buzz, you know, alarm. She changes the humidity by changing the fans from her kindergarten room. It's amazing. Last group they sent, in 31 days, birds weighed almost four pounds with a feed conversion of 1.47. They eat a pound and a half of feed and they gain a pound. Now, you tell me that's not perfect genetics, perfect nutrition, perfect environment where you don't get that done right. And the thing about that contract is it's low risk farming.

Warren (16:01)
You don't worry about feed going up and down, market going up, down. You get paid for your work. And it's allowed tons of young farmers to get back into farming. And you were talking about your daughter. I'm telling you now, we need her in agriculture. 17% of the population works in agriculture. Only one or 2% farm, right? So John Sticka , who's the head of certified Angus beef, got his Masters at University of Kentucky. I asked him, what kind of people do you need? He said, Well, I need people trained in meats. But more importantly, he said, I need people trained in logistics, which we're not teaching. How do you track it from the farm to the meat case? Will we some way, some smart young person who's going to identify being able to DNA meat and track it right back. I mean, there's so much out here. The most interesting thing about agriculture is all the things we don't know yet. I mean, there's tons of stuff. A guy comes in the office when I was at the governor's office and he had this PhD from MIT, I wasn't for sure I was smart enough to talk to the guy, but he's a brilliant pharmaceutical guy and he had a product called artemisia.

Warren (17:09)
Artemisia is the only medication for malaria in the world. And they were raising it in Vietnam. Not controlled, just terrible. They came to Kentucky because you raised it like tobacco. Okay, but that wasn't the interesting part. The interesting part was they use artemisia in other countries like we use chemo to treat cancer and UK's on their 3rd, 4th year maybe, of studying. And it's very positive with this stuff. You don't lose all your hair, you don't have a side effects, you know, and I know there's a cure for cancer somewhere out here and it's in some agricultural plant or something. We just got to have the right people to figure this thing out. And I mean, that's so intriguing. It's all the things we don't know that make agriculture so exciting and should attract young people to it. We just got to let them know it's just not farming, it's everything. You're right.

Patick (18:10)
And it's difficult, Im raising teenage son that just graduated last year wanting to go into engineering, and he hasn't taken a lead role in the farm. But I said, listen, with engineering, remember what you've learned on the farm. Because that common sense, a lot of those ideas, one day you'll use them. And I think you hit a very valid point. It's hard for young kids to knock that door down into agriculture because it became so small they don't know where to go. But if you can find that door, knock it down, it'll open up the world for you.

Warren (18:49)
I mean, you talk about a place that needs engineers, it's agriculture. When you talk about precision farming and being able to soil test the ground, go over a poor piece of ground, put less seed, with more seed, what's the next step up all the genetic engineering that we need to do to feed the world? How do we do it? CRISPR gene editing. It's all there. It's just opening the door. And that takes really smart young people attracted to agriculture.

Caleb Sadler (19:23)
You brought up a good point there. I was with somebody last week and they were looking about grid fertilizing on pasture. You see that on row crop. But from a pasture standpoint, you don't hardly ever see anybody grid sampling on fertilize. And that just goes to show you that agriculture is coming full circle. I mean, there's no doubt. So one thing I will I'm going to get back a little bit on track a little bit too. No, you're good because it's all good conversations, all good content. So we were talking about the 80s little bit and going through that. How would you see that that relates to today inflation rates and the rates that you were talking about? Obviously, we're not back at 18%, but we are in a market where interest rates are climbing right now. And get your take on that.

Warren (20:11)
It's a little bit scary. It's very similar because it seems like every time we had market prices get just good, then that's in the hog and this grain would get high and the feed cost was a major input and fuel and the whole deal. It's tough and, I mean, we in agriculture live on hope and with the weather changing and getting crazy and we were burned up for the first half of the summer and then we've had two inches a week ever since. It's very similar. I mean, it's difficult on the farm, I think, to know I bought 72 rolls of hay, thinking we're not ever going to make any hay and then it rains every day.

Caleb Sadler (20:53)
After I bought the hay, got an abundance of hay.

Warren (20:55)
So it's, I think, so similar. We have to, in agriculture, really have to study and limit risk to the degree we can. I mean, we're living on something falling out of the sky, but at the same time there have been opportunities for us to contract.

Caleb Sadler (21:14)
That's exactly right.

Warren (21:15)
Both livestock and grain. We've got to be smart about what we're doing. When I was at Governor's office, we did a feasibility study over in Russell County about how to they're taking soybeans all the way to Owensboro is there enough beans over there? And there wasn't enough beans, but what they did, they went to white corn, they went to more of a niche marketing type deal and adjustment so they didn't have to make that trip. Now you start hauling beans these days with these fuel prices, you're taking all the fun out of it. It's terribly similar and I don't like it. I do think the one thing that's come out of COVID that is interesting for agriculture is, I think, people when the shelves got a little empty, people figured out just how essential agriculture is, got to paying attention a little bit, and that was good for us. Did we take advantage of it? Not a bit. We have got to do a better job of telling our side of the story and that we've done agriculture better and it's ever been done and we learned something every day. It's going to get better and better.

Warren (22:26)
We've got to sell it at the same time.

Caleb Sadler (22:29)
You know, you were talking there a while ago, too, and one good point to bring up that's difference between now versus what it was maybe like in the 80s is the fact of future contracting. I mean, whether you're a row crop operation or you're selling loads of cattle or whatnot, we've got the internet is one of the best tools that we've got right now to be able to mitigate those risks from a farming standpoint. If you've got an opportunity to lock in a break even or a profit, we need to be taking advantage of that in these markets.

Warren (23:00)
We got to have Internet to farm.

Caleb Sadler (23:02)
That's exactly right.

Warren (23:03)
Do GPS all our stuff. In the 80s when when I was running the roads as a feeling. I had to stop at a payphone and call people. Now zip it's on everybody's hip, and the whole scope of technology is just off the charts. You wouldn't even think about it. You try to find you a phone on the side of the road now you're just going to be looking pretty hard. They're gone.

Caleb Sadler (23:31)
Yeah, there ain't any payphones left.

Warren (23:34)
That's the thing. I think we have to really embrace technology and agriculture in terms of really figuring out what the next step is, how do we make it better. Whether it be apps on the phone for record keeping or financial records or dealing, I think that's in the 80s, we did it the hard way. I mean, back then, I remember going into fields and disk and a 20 acre field with a seven foot disc and staying all day next day and whatever, and now they couldn't turn around something them in a 20 acre feet.

Caleb Sadler (24:11)
Exactly right.

Warren (24:12)
So it's just a different ball game. And the economies of scale have dictated a little bit. You can buy a load of bean meal is cheaper than a semi. Load of bean meal is cheaper per unit than a bag of bean meal. You can argue whether that's good or bad or not, but that's just the nature of the beast. And now, where we used to back up with a pickup load of hogs in 1980, now you better have a semi. What I think you see is now our small farmers, we need to market like we're big guys. We need to network together more. We need to get people where when we sell a load of cattle, we got 50,000 lbs. That's exactly right. And then we basically can take advantage because Kenny Burdine, University of Kentucky, says selling load of cattle versus selling one at a times $20+ a 100 weight, and that's coming off market news. When that load comes in, they pay attention.

Patick (25:13)
The livestock deal, spending the last 15-20 years in that market, the cattle deal is probably the slowest one to come about. But like you said, selling the load lot, cph sales, yellow tag sales, different stockyards have different programs, people pay attention to those. Those are ways to get into those markets where if you have smaller numbers, you can get in on the bigger load lots and capture those prices. But like you say, things are changing. Even that industry is changing rapidly right now, going more direct. And whatnot what happened us in the.

Warren (25:56)
Hog biz in the early 90s is hog were too fat. We were losing 4% of demand a year. Doctors say, don't eat that stuff and plug your arteries into fat. 1.2 inches of fat and a four and a half inch pork chop. It was not good. So what do we do? We start buying on the grade yield system with a fat a meter, basically measuring fat, measuring loin depth. And we increased that decreased the fat, increase the muscle. And as a result, we made those hogs where they were even marketable from an export standpoint. So consistent. And how long till we get to the cattle business? How long till we got to go and you couldn't sell just to the buying station. They were going to buy your hogs based on how they cut out, not based on pounds like we did for years. How long do we do that in the cattle business? Until you go and say, well, this calf is a yield grade two low choice, so you get an extra $50 ahead and let that filter all the way down. We're a feeder cattle state. We in agriculture are bad about doing all the work and doing it really well and getting the end of the trailer gate, let somebody else decide what it's worth.

Warren (27:13)
And I'd like to see that change. I think a lot of them that have gone to marketing their own beef when COVID hit and all our processing got backed up and you couldn't sell anything, or if you did, took a beating on it. I was on three dairies one day and they were selling their Holstein cows and started going through the processors and selling the hamburger and said, we'll never, ever sell a cull cow again. And so the idea of value beef solutions, the new program where we're taking the cull cows here and run through the processor, buying those cows on a grade and yield system, increases value for the farmer. We got lots to learn, lots to evolve in time, and we watch each other's species. Yep. You can see what's going to happen.

Caleb Sadler (28:05)
That's exactly right. And to see that change, like you were talking, this is in the see that to what it has evolved to now, see what 40 more years will do to it. The technology and the drive behind it will be substantial.

John Peek (28:18)
Well, that's another thing that you were involved with was through the Governor's Office of Ag Policy, the bull program. Look at cattle when I was a kid, which was, I'm not going to say but a long time ago, but they were ever color, size and shape. Now we've got a lot more consistent cow herd. We've got the bull program. The genetics on the cattle are better, the marble and genetics are better. The growth is better on these cattle and our cow herd, but a lot of farmers aren't getting paid for it. Like you said, there's still work needs to be done.

Warren (28:49)
I think you do. You can't sell them one at a time anymore. You got to get them in groups, and groups have value. That's what it comes to. But the bull program, I was involved in putting together the epds even before I got to governor's office. And genetically, what we've done is we made farmers look understand epds number one, and then basically figure out kind of how that fits. And deal. Used to be they come to your place to buy a bull and they bought the biggest bull. Now, that's not the case. They go to sheet, they look they got to have heifer bull. They got to have a balanced trait bull, or are we going to use this bull as a terminal sire? We need growth and muscle. And so we have done a really good job of teaching that part. The one thing probably we didn't do enough at the time that bugs me to this day is that we probably didn't teach enough visual the part of it where based on right now, if you're selling your feeder cattle based on what looks they get priced on what they look like.

Warren (29:49)
So we should have been teaching with the EPDS. We should have been teaching the visual. And we did. We had feeder cattle programs. I did a ton of them. What they need to look like and medium frame number one or high two is exactly where you need to be. It's not the bigger the better. You get them too big, they'll discount you.

John Peek (30:09)
Right.

Warren (30:09)
And you get them too little and discount you. So there's a window. But teaching muscle shape, teaching soundness, teaching body volume, teaching what they need to look like to go in there and get the top price to market.

Caleb Sadler (30:22)
Yeah. And when you talk about that, I can just go back and look like the early 90s, what the cow herd used to look like, big, tall, lanky frame things with no body. And now looking at what data is actually done and we don't look at phenotype enough. You're exactly right. I mean, the visual side of it, we can sit and look at the piece of paper until it's blue in the face. But until we actually put lay eyes on them and see what they look like, that's the phenotype really matters, too.

Warren (30:48)
Those figures don't tell you how sound they are.

Caleb Sadler (30:50)
That's right.

Warren (30:51)
When it comes down to it, don't tell you everything. It's terribly important. When you look at reproduction, for example, low inheritability, those that do, do, and those that don't, won't. So we deal with those that do. And then we go and start looking at other things which have been amazing, though the progress we've made. I'll never forget I was grading CPH. Can I tell nuanotherrse story?

Caleb Sadler (31:13)
No, go right ahead.

Warren (31:13)
I was grading CPH and we were going on the farm and grading them. And I was up in Breckenridge County and nicest gentleman in the world had 17 cows and they were black, baldies, little bug eyed things, about 900 lbs with a big rock in her pocket. And he had bred them to a limousin bull.

Patick (31:30)


Warren (31:30)
And he had 17 of the prettiest calves you've ever seen. Medium number ones. Next year he bought his his heifer bull with his tobacco money. I go back and grade them and they're so little I can only get seven of the 17 to be big enough to be small. So the rest of them are outs. Oh, wow. And he said, you know what's bad, Beeler? They're bred back. But we learned. We learned so much. I mean, every time experience is the greatest teacher in the world, you mess up and you don't do that again and it comes down. So it was really intriguing. I mean, there's nothing worse standing there and you're going along grading those cattle. One gentleman, I'll not mention his name, but he's a real leader in this state and a wonderful man I was an Owensboro and grading cattle. And he brings in this little short, fat one. And if you put a dot in the middle of her back, that means it's short, which was a 20-30-40 cent dock. And I popped him right in the back, and he'd stand on the catwalk over the top of me. He says, Beeler, I knew you were going to do that.

Warren (32:41)
And I said, Gosh, we're making progress. Go home and sell that cow. That was what it was all about, is teaching. And the greatest thing we did with the debacle money is get people in the classroom, get people not what they learn from speakers, but what they learn from each other. If you're doing it, you're doing it, and you're putting the whipping on me. I'm going to do what he's doing. And that's how we just got him better. We got them so much better.

Caleb Sadler (33:09)
That leads straight into the next topic, because that's what we were going to talk about next, was the AG Development Fund and the vital role that you played into that because Kentucky is very unique in that standpoint, that we actually took our tobacco settlement funds and we've reinvested those in the state of Kentucky. And tell us a little bit about your time at KDA and with that program, the governor's office AG policy.

Warren (33:30)
Well, at KDA, when we started, Kentucky Proud, and we're proud of that program. I mean, it is recognized almost all over the state now. We got 170 farmers market. Most people seem to deal with the small producers at the farmers market produce kind of thing, but it's in everything. It's in everything. And so it's funded by the Ag Development Fund and then administered through the Department of Ag. Well, I get the governor's office. I was just paralyzed just to watch and see what walked in the door every day, you know, in terms of of how much this money and I traveled all over the state looking and I mean, it has it's made a difference. We took half the money, half put it in health care, and half of it in agriculture. Now, in 20 years, I mean, it's millions and millions of dollars. 35% of that money goes to the counties based on how much tobacco burly tobacco you had in 1997 or whatever, whenever it came in several counties. Two counties didn't get any money and some didn't get hardly any money. I changed that and I asked the board if they would give those counties at least $30,000.

Warren (34:40)
So they did that for several years. And we touched farmers we didn't get to touch. But the county money is sacred. It encouraged you to invest. You want to build that little cattle working facility here we got here we got 2000, 2500, $3,000. You're going to spend that much? Yep. So we improve facilities. We don't have to tie the bumper the pickup anymore to, to give them a shot. We've got facilities. That was the, the bull program on the county level. The cattle people have benefited probably greatly from it. But now when you look at the other side, when COVID hit and we figured out, oh gosh, we can't get them processed. Process went from two months backed up to a year backed up. So we come up with a program in three weeks. We came up with a program of incentivizing expansion. But you had to prove that you're going to kill more Kentucky animals. And they put $7 million in that now expanded processing by $25,000 in state. And it's not even close to being enough of what we really need to do in terms of that part of it. Ag Finance is a Cadillac.

Warren (35:46)
Ag Finance is the legacy of the tobacco settlement money. When in fact we deal with you, we deal with the lenders, bankers. And what we do is we take the pressure off you. Particularly we like the one that is a little higher risk. We like the one, the young guy doesn't have anything and he's got no collateral, no nothing. We're willing to stick our neck out there and put our money in the deal to get him. As long as it's safe and smart. You're not going to bring us a loan. That's not smart. But the idea is we keep that interest. They said to me one day our interest rate is 2% and then the lender gets three quarters of a percent for doing the work, administer the loan we need to raise our interest. I said that's not the business we're in. I said if anything we need to lower ours. Now we're a 100 million dollar little bank there in Frankfort. We got the only money in Frankfort making money, helping people. Everything else, once it goes out, it's gone.

John Peek (36:50)
And that program is invaluable for getting these young farmers started.

Warren (36:54)
Oh yeah.

John Peek (36:54)
Because like you said, somebody who doesn't have enough collateral doesn't have enough down payment. Ag Credit has used that program over and over and over to help these people get started in contract poultry, especially in other areas. It's one of the greatest programs.

Warren (37:07)
And see people don't understand Ag Finance doesn't go to the farmer basically they go to the lender. And that's how this thing works. And it's a great relationship. It's been so positive and it will be the legacy when they may come any day. The Frankfort folks can come in, sweep the money and take it, but not Ag finance. Ag finance is there for in perpetuity in terms of being able to help farmers, and particularly 68% of the loans, typically when I was there, were what we as far as beginning farmers, young beginning and small farmers. We were so proud of that.

Caleb Sadler (37:47)
It is a great program. It is a great program.

Warren (37:50)
We're lucky Caleb. I mean, it's tobacco settlement money. I mean, I asked people in other states, they don't even know they even got it. 46 states got it. See, they put it in the general fund, they just threw it away. And we're the only state that really took it and made genuine investments. When the money showed up, we were probably 3.5 billion in terms of gross, you know, farm gate receipts. Now we're six, six and a half billion. And you know, that wasn't always all tobacco money, but, you know, we, we sure have helped. We've sure helped. We do it, we've helped farmers do it better.

Caleb Sadler (38:27)
Well, and to think about that, how much we've grown over that time, how much of those tobacco settlement funds have actually helped us grow that amount? Oh, yeah, I mean, a lot of it.

Patick (38:36)
It's definitely a lot.

Warren (38:37)
You said stockyards watch them come through compared to bare 1980. Absolutely. You'd be paralyzed.

Patick (38:46)
I can vouch for that. Like you said, the bull program, the ability for those farmers get cattle up, give them at least a round of shots. They may not give them everything, but they might give them at least one or two. The health of cattle, the ability for them to get them up, the genetics, everything. And even to that, the stockyards being able across the state, being able to expand, do things better, cattle handling facilities there, handle the cattle with less stress. And that's a two fold too, because it was passed back down to the farmers because a lot of those places didn't have to raise their cost of sales in order to offset those costs. It worked out great, I think.

Warren (39:37)
Good cattle are easier than selling bad catttle. It makes it easier for the stockyard system and the whole deal. And I mean, we do see a real growth in networking between small producers to get to the size where you can capture some extra value. And that's the thing. If you load a semi load of anything, you're going to increase by milk. It doesn't matter. I mean, you're talking about the dairy business. My dad milked back there. Our herd average in Kentucky at the time probably was 10,000 or 12,000. Now we're at 20 and we've lost going from over 2000 dairies down to 375. But the ones we've got, Ken Platt put it in the bucket.

Caleb Sadler (40:17)
Yeah, they're efficient.

Warren (40:18)
And now what we got to do is we got the biggest issue we've got, other than needing people second, I think, is how do we convert technology to fixing our labor issue? And, I mean, we got problems trying to find help. Nobody wants to do the hard work anymore. I hauled Hay the other day, and I didn't want to do it either, but I did. Finding people, so robotic milkers.

Caleb Sadler (40:46)
That's what I was getting ready to go to. I mean, if you go to California and you tour are one of those big dairies out there, or Wisconsin, I mean, it's all robotic, every bit of it.

Warren (40:54)
And I mean, it's just it's everything we do. How do we need to get these young people get your daughter involved in building and engineering the stuff that will go in and gleen these vegetables out of the fields and do all the things that basically we're having so much trouble finding anybody that wants to do it that we're so dependent on H2A, and that's getting more expensive and tougher all the time. To do so, we need people. I can't tell you in agriculture, we need people, not just farmers. And I think the biggest one the biggest one is just what you brought up. We need great Ag teachers. Ag teachers are the recruiters. I mean, they're the ones that put the passion and to start with, all of us sitting here probably had one of them. It was great. And I did. I think teachers are the most important people in the world because everybody starts over, learns that we all start ABC, One, two, three. We don't start where Grandpa ended. So having teachers and having AG teachers who have just the passion and the next thing you know, dealing. I told Mayor Fisher I fussed him in Louisville.

Warren (42:03)
He's a big cheerleader for Urban Ag and for the whole local food movement. I said, you can preach all you that want to about it, but you've got to have FFA, Chapter. You've got to grow people in agriculture. And Seneca has got a great program up there, and they just flock to it. We need a bunch more of them, right? In the city of Louisville, I mean, we've got Ag people.

Caleb Sadler (42:25)
It's not necessarily Louisville, but I can relate to that in Paris. So in Bourbon County. You've got Bourbon County schools. Great FFA department. Well, Paris school system now has founded an FFA chapter, and they have the most kids of any other extracurricular activity or anything like that that are in the FFA chapter of that school system. And that is a place that needs that.

Warren (42:48)
What we are becoming agriculture is a novelty to the public. I mean, we're down to just a handful of people, Grandpa and Grandma is the only one's that got contact anymore. And so when you bring it in, it's new and it's different. It's interesting, particularly when you sell it. Right. We can attract a lot of people. I love FFA. I think the most profitable talent you can have is to be able to get up in front of people and be persuasive and convincing. And the more people we have like that in agriculture, the more leaders we're going to have down the road. Ag Teachers and FFA. I'm a big cheerleader. All in. All in.

Caleb Sadler (43:29)
So as we kind of wrap up a little bit, there's one thing on the agenda that we talked about. And I don't know if you're still doing it or not, but it had to do. And I got this topic from Shelby Wade, who helps co host the show sometimes, too. But the zonkey business, are we still involved in that?

Warren (43:49)
I got a bad spot where that rascal bit me right now through a Carhart coat. Well, I'm telling you, we brought him in. I had the most fun. I mean, people there would drive back my road and you know how far it is back in the weeds? They drive back my road, rubber neck and looking around and the neighbors would say, my husband said that was a zebra. We bought this zebra, me and Darren Benton. Darren Benton out of out of Mulenburg County. We partnered up on him. He came out of a petting zoo and was just as friendly as he could be when he got there. But then once we put him in with the donkeys and then he absolutely figured out he was a boy, then he got mean. And I mean got meaner and meaner, bit me over the gate. Oh, man, just grained to hide. And so I told Benton, I said, listen, now that thing gets much meaner, I'm going to make a rug out of him. The donkeys hated him. Every day he was there, they hated him. And he buddied up with one of them. And I thought, maybe I'm getting something done here, but we got nothing done.

Warren (44:59)
And finally the zebra hurt himself and the vet come and they passed away in a mild way. I could tell you the story, but it probably wouldn't be good for the podcast. But I had the most fun. I was playing. Honestly, I was playing. I thought I was going to get rich crossing donkeys and zebras and calling them zonkeys, but it did not happen. And I hate it because I'd love to be rich.

Caleb Sadler (45:29)
Oh, man, that's a great story. Well, Warren, we really appreciate you coming on today and joining us for the podcast. Really always good to have you on and hopefully maybe have you on Back in the Future again. So with that being said, we really appreciate you all for tuning in to Beyond Agriculture. And be sure to go out and like, share and subscribe to the podcast. Thank you very much.

Warren (45:54)
This episode of Beyond Agriculture is brought to you by Central Kentucky Ag Credit. Thanks for listening to the podcast. Be sure to visit Agcreditonline.com/ Beyond Agriculture, access the show notes, and discover our fantastic bonus content. Also, don't forget to hit the subscribe button so you can. And join us next time for Beyond Agriculture.

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