Episode 27 ADM Deforestation Policy Discussion
In this episode we sit down with Dr. Jordan Shockley and discuss crops, ADM's new deforestation policy, and how it could affect farmers in Kentucky.
Contact Dr Jordan Shockley
Central Kentucky Ag Credit
- Transcript
[00:00:01.280] - Caleb Sadler
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.
[00:00:27.600] - Braden Porter
Welcome back to the Beyond Agriculture podcast. My name is Braden Porter and today we're joined by doctor Jordan Shockley. But before we get to you, let's start with our new podcaster, Olivia Randolph. Olivia, how are you?
[00:00:39.260] - Olivia Randolph
I'm good. Brayden, how are you?
[00:00:40.770] - Braden Porter
So Olivia is our new loan officer trainee. So tell us a little bit about yourself.
[00:00:46.840] - Olivia Randolph
So I'm originally from west central Indiana and I grew up on my family's grain and hog operation. And then in 2018 I came down here to Lexington and went to UK, graduated in 2021, and then spent the last couple of years working for the Kentucky Department of Ag in the office of Ag Policy. And so I just started here at Ag Credit.
[00:01:13.670] - Braden Porter
So you're almost, you're basically a Kentuckian at this point, not a hoosier anymore, basically.
[00:01:18.030] - Olivia Randolph
I think I've been here long enough that it, it's probably switched.
[00:01:21.390] - Braden Porter
Well, good deal. So now you're a podcaster with us?
[00:01:23.920] - Olivia Randolph
I reckon so.
[00:01:24.830] - Braden Porter
so let's get into you, Dr. Shockley, how are you today?
[00:01:28.770] - Dr. Shockley
Oh, hanging in there, hanging in there. Another warm day in Lexington.
[00:01:33.730] - Braden Porter
Well, tell us a little bit about yourself. I know you because I was one of your students, but for those who don't know you, tell us a little bit about yourself.
[00:01:41.090] - Dr. Shockley
Yeah, you know, I grew up not in Kentucky, so I grew up on the eastern shore of Maryland, worked on all types of operations from grains to watermelons to buffalo, and so diverse background hogs as well. And my first job was picking up dead chickens in chicken houses, so a little bit of everything. And I came to UK as an undergrad and then decided not to leave. And so I stayed at UK for ten years, getting all my degrees here at UK, and then went out and worked in industry for about five years, so worked at BP Oil and Gas Company and their biofuels division, doing business development work globally in Brazil and mainly South America, but worked a lot in the southern United States and then had the opportunity to come back to UK as a faculty member here. And so been faculty now going on, it's my 9th year as faculty, which time flies. So my current role now is an associate extension professor in farm management. And so I cover a little bit of everything across the state and across the US, so it's been fun. And I do teach one class, as you mentioned, ag finance and so this may or may not be my last year of teaching that class, really.
[00:03:11.230] - Dr. Shockley
So we'll see how that goes and transpires. But.
[00:03:16.000] - Braden Porter
Well, I bet when you think back on your class, you think of one particularly fond student that was just, you know, above and beyond. Right?
[00:03:22.440] - Dr. Shockley
Yeah, I'm looking over in this. So it's, it's been fun. It's always something new. And so I get to travel around the country talking to farmers and various podcasts, too. So it's been fun. So I'm glad to be here.
[00:03:39.930] - Braden Porter
Well, good deal. Good deal. Well, we brought you on because I knew how involved you are in grain, and that is going to be the topic of discussion today. We also brought Olivia here, a lot of grain expert here as well. So talk about economic projections. That's something that you do with UK with the research and the extension side kind of forecasting now. So kind of what are some initial thoughts right now? We're getting kind of close to harvest time.
[00:04:03.130] - Dr. Shockley
We are. And unfortunately, it's a bearer of bad news. Right. It's one of those years where you don't like talking about this topic. I guess the optimal, the positive thing, what I'm hearing across the state is there are good yields. However, there are very bad yields across the state, so it varies. And, and it's all on rain. If you've got that timely rainfall, it's, it's been great. It's been a great year. And there are pockets of that in the western part of the state. Did get, did get ample part of the rain. If you're here in the central Kentucky region, and I don't know what you all are hearing, that this is the same thing, but it's, it's not going to be a good, good crop yield year. So. And couple that with prices. Actually, I just looked right before I came here and prices have dropped another 2% on both corn and soybeans. That's just not a very good economic situation. And so I'm hoping that some of our farmers marketed corn and beans early on as we try to convince them to do, and educate them on how to do that appropriately with my colleague.
[00:05:23.050] - Dr. Shockley
And so hopefully there's some opportunities for some storage across the state if you do have yield and try to hang on to some high prices later on, early next year. But it's been a tough going crop year this year, depending on where you are. Wheats or small grains in general have been hit pretty hard. We had disease, pressure, wind issues. A lot of wheat was on the ground. Western part of the state quality issues and couple that with price. You know, luckily, most of our wheat farmers are aggressive marketers, unlike on the corner soybean side. So there's probably more promise on the price side than that. But there is a quality concern across the state that I've heard. So it's not very pleasant. But hopefully we have some pockets of good economic returns across the state still to be determined. If we can get some little bit more rainfall on the soybeans right now, hopefully we'll make that. Okay. Corn is just being stressed.
[00:06:35.960] - Braden Porter
Yeah, well, you mentioned soybeans there. I was kind of leading into my next topic perfectly.
[00:06:42.290] - Dr. Shockley
Yes.
[00:06:43.550] - Braden Porter
You and Grant Gardner have looked into this about ADM and the new soybean producers and regulation with the EU. For somebody who has no clue what you're talking about, what is it?
[00:06:57.790] - Dr. Shockley
So from a let's to talk about it, kind of a higher level. You know, a lot of most every company out there in the agriculture space is in pursuit of, let's just call it sustainability, net zero carbon emissions. I mean, there's just a global push for these companies to reduce their greenhouse gas footprint of some sort. And which ways to do that. You know, when we think about agriculture, it is global issue. Right. And so in particular, what has happened in the last couple months that will impact soybean producers here in Kentucky is what ADM has done or implemented for soybean producers here in the state. And it's actually two programs, one that is in that document and another one that they launched, I want to say, two weeks ago. So the first one is kind of the, the main one, because it's a mandatory requirement, and that is that you, you as a farmer, to be able to deliver soybeans to an ADM facility, you have to prove that those soybeans were produced under what they're defining as deforestation free soybeans. So what does that even mean? Right. So that means if you're a farmer in Kentucky, you have to, as part of this program, to sell soybeans, you have to enroll in their program and sell, submit field boundary shapefiles of your farm.
[00:08:53.990] - Dr. Shockley
ADM is partnered with another organization to analyze your farm through satellite imagery to determine if you have cut any trees down on your property. Okay. There's a threshold. So if you are. If you've cut down more than I believe it's, I can't remember, 1.24 acres, equivalent acres of trees on your property that you grew those soybeans on, if it's above that. So think about a fence row. If you've cleared out a fence row more than that, you are not eligible to sell. They will not take your soybeans at an ADM facility in Kentucky. So that is a mandatory requirement. And that is going across quite a few states, not just Kentucky. Almost all ADM facilities are. It's either voluntary or mandatory, depending on which ADM facility it is. Is most of them in the state are mandatory in Kentucky. That you have to sign up and you had to sign up by a certain date and now sign up for that program does not mean that you are on the hook or required to actually sell your soybeans to ADm. It's just part of the process. As if you are going to, you have needed to sign up for that program and enrolled your maps into their software.
[00:10:36.020] - Cassie Johnson
So I'm going to inject with some questions because please go for it. I'm going with a bunch of questions. So is there like, are they looking over the past year, the past two years, how long?
[00:10:44.790] - Dr. Shockley
I believe it's 2021.
[00:10:46.830] - Cassie Johnson
Okay.
[00:10:47.880] - Dr. Shockley
They will look back. So if you've cleared out a fence row, more than 1.24 acres, or any trees for that matter, you cannot sell your soybeans to ADM.
[00:11:00.350] - Olivia Randolph
Will it always be like a three year threshold from like the time span of 2021 till now? Will it always be three years and different every year? Or will 2021 be like the standstill year going forward?
[00:11:14.790] - Dr. Shockley
That is a good question. I have no clue. If I were to guess, it may be a rolling three years. I don't know how they came up with three years. So that's still to be determined. I guess we'll find out because those that don't enroll or didn't roll didn't know about it this year, next year when they do sign up, is it going to be 2021 or 2022? It's a very good question. That's still to be determined. And I guess it's going to be determined by how much soybeans actually get delivered to ADM this year.
[00:11:58.050] - Cassie Johnson
That is a good point. Is that going to include then, you know, like, you have involuntary trees that grow occasionally and you might not tend to those, you know, as yearly or whatever, how are they going to determine what you actually do take out or what you maybe are mowing along the fence line and maybe a couple of those younger trees might get mowed over? Is it going to be like that in depth or are we just talking established trees?
[00:12:27.650] - Dr. Shockley
That I believe if they can, they, meaning the program that they're using, if you can see it via satellite imagery makes sense and it can be measured. I mean, I don't think it's going to be as accurate as, you know, some saplings. But I mean, if they're full fledged trees, we're going to voluntary, involuntary, doesn't matter.
[00:12:59.000] - Cassie Johnson
So what the. So they're doing this to. Obviously, it's not as big of an issue in the United States, correct as it may be in some other countries. So are they doing this in the US just to make it the same everywhere? Because like, in the US. Just out of curiosity, you know, for the amount of. This was actually a conversation that came up yesterday when we mentioned that you were going to be here. Shane Turner, he asked, he wanted to know, have there been any studies done to show the amount of carbon that corn or soybeans not produce, but how they, the effect of how it is digested versus like the rainforest or the trees. Has there been studies?
[00:13:52.320] - Dr. Shockley
Oh yeah, there's been studies and there's, you know, it varies across the country.
[00:13:57.680] - Cassie Johnson
So what do they do? They take that into consideration, the fact that maybe the farmers are not destroying the land, quite like what maybe other countries are.
[00:14:10.560] - Dr. Shockley
Short answer no. This is completely driven by the European Union and because they are major importers of soybeans. And you can imagine if you're the EU, what are your two major markets for importing soybeans? It's United States and it's Brazil. And so it's an attempt for the EU to limit the overall impact of the importing soybeans. And obviously that's coming a lot from the deforestation of the Amazon we're seeing in Brazil. So it's a blanket regulation and it's not, you would think it would be as specific as, okay, if you're grow. No, it's so high level because that's the only way you can evaluate it and prove it. There's no, let's call it hot button. There's no carbon intensity. Score to us corn, us soybeans versus Brazil. Like that just. That's not part of this evaluation at all. It's just a. It's many levels above that.
[00:15:30.500] - Braden Porter
I would hate for a tree to fall down. You gotta have to put that guy back up.
[00:15:34.430] - Dr. Shockley
Yeah, I mean it's, it's truly. It's. And again, this wasn't announced to the masses that this. So I have a feeling that a lot of farmers out there didn't know about this in time to sign up for the program. There's gonna be a lot of interesting questions. I was with the Soybean Board yesterday or not? Soybean Board. I was with Farm Bureau yesterday and the Soybean Board two days ago. And anecdotally, people are hearing it's about half and half the farmers that are actually signed up. Now, that doesn't mean they're even going to deliver to ADM, but half of them are saying, no, we're not going to do this, which will impact local markets. And I think that's going to be an interesting dynamic when we see, come harvest time, what does ADM and the surrounding elevators do in terms of local bases? Right. They are. ADM is offering premiums. If you did sign up for this program, the deforestation free program, in a timely manner, says hereby May 1. Yes.
[00:16:59.810] - Braden Porter
Fifteen cents a bushel and an additional five cents a bushel if enrolled by May 1.
[00:17:03.470] - Dr. Shockley
So, yeah, so twenty cents a bushel premium. Now the question is, is it going to be truly a premium? Because there are mechanisms to negate that premium pretty easy. And I think the concern that the farmers that I'm hearing is, oh, they're offering a 20 cent premium up to, well, what if they lower their basis, $0.20, then is it really a premium? And then what are local, other local elevators nearby going to be doing to compete? Right. Are they going to have to increase their local basis to compete or just below that $0.20? Right. So that farmers don't want to deal with the paperwork and sharing data. How's that going to play out? And luckily, we've got a good grain marketer that's going to keep tabs on this because I think that's going to be the biggest question come harvest time. And we start looking at ADM facilities in nearby, what happens with prices?
[00:18:05.880] - Cassie Johnson
So I apologize, because I'm actually from northwest Iowa, and I know I've been in Kentucky for seven years, but I still have a very hard time of like, well, everything's in circles, in Iowa everything is in a square. You can make three left turns and end up about where you're going to be or where you started. But. So for the listeners that aren't crop farmers, where are the facilities? Where are the ADM facilities in the state of Kentucky? And how much more difficulty will the farmers have to go to other facilities than ADM?
[00:18:42.770] - Dr. Shockley
I think it depends on where you are. Most of the ADM facilities are on the river or nearby. I can't remember. There's Silver Grove, and I don't know if it was Henderson. I can't remember all the, there's like three or four in the state that are implementing this most in the western part of Kentucky. Luckily, we've got extra, we've got other grain elevators like Gavilon and Owensboro Grain that we could, which, well, sorry, not Owensboro Grain any more, Cargill, now that they can deliver to. But from an economist standpoint. Right. If ADM was your closest facility, what's the financial implications of trucking cost and wait times or whatever you have that? Why weren't you going to that facility before this and going to ADM instead?
[00:19:40.590] - Dr. Shockley
Right.
[00:19:40.840] - Dr. Shockley
Right. What's that additional cost going to be on a per bushel of soybeans? It's going to be, it could be significant depending exactly on where you are and how you deliver to those facilities.
[00:19:55.990] - Braden Porter
zA lot of this is done in the name of sustainability.
[00:20:00.070] - Dr. Shockley
Right.
[00:20:00.760] - Braden Porter
And stuff like this may distress farmers when this is titled under the blanket terms of. But Cassie and I were talking about it. I think a lot of farmers in Kentucky practice sustainability, whether they know it or not, whether that's safe water management, treatment and making sure their soils are good livestock management. Can you talk a little bit about sustainability within Kentucky and what you see among farmers, especially with the farm management side that you do?
[00:20:29.340] - Dr. Shockley
You know, I always say, you know, I mean, Kentucky's the home of no till. That's the number one sustainable, quote, sustainable thing, unquote, thing that you can do. As far as, you know, when we look at a lot of these programs that are out there, whether it's carbon markets or net zero programs, and we're doing cover crops, maybe not as widely as some other states, but there's financial incentives in other states to do that practice more so than there is in Kentucky. You look at on the livestock side, we do rotational grazing. So there water management. We do a lot of the things that, and have been doing these sustainable practices for a very long time, which is great. But farmers didn't do that for an ADM program or carbon market program. You know, they did it because it was right for their certain practice. Right. Most of those were erosion control practices in the state. And so, you know, kudos for us for doing this. Now, I was talking to Farm Bureau yesterday about this because there's, it's not just admits this is happening in every single agriculture company. They're having these conversations about sustainably produced grains, livestock, what have you.
[00:22:06.180] - Dr. Shockley
Name any Fortune 500 company and it's coming down the pipe. ADM Deforestation Free Soybean Program is the first, not the first, the first mandatory program. It's definitely not going to be the last. And so if I was, you know, we had a lot of talk yesterday about sustainable aviation fuel and all this other topics, right? If I was an agribusiness or an energy company, and I was looking for a sustainably produced raw product, as defined today, on how crops and livestock should qualify as sustainability, sustainably produced, where would I locate across the United States without too much disruption at the farm level? You mentioned you're from Iowa. Corn on corn on corn on corn on corn. Cover crops.
[00:23:12.670] - Cassie Johnson
They're starting to get a little bit because of the incentives.
[00:23:15.670] - Dr. Shockley
No, till getting a little bit, but.
[00:23:20.410] - Cassie Johnson
Again, but not like Kentucky.
[00:23:21.900] - Caleb Sadler
But that's been my, my point now in the past six to eight months, once I've seen this shift in behavioral behaviors from these companies, is if I was looking to locate a new facility, I would locate right here in the state, because it. We've been doing those practices, it's not going to be a huge disruption at all. Right. You're not going to have to go through three to five years of transition to no till or tackle the hurdles of COVID crops. We've already done it, been through that, and so I'm excited, even though it's. There's some hurdles we have to do from a data management standpoint, that farmers are going to have to get on board with and willing to submit data.
[00:24:13.010] - Cassie Johnson
That's going to be hard.
[00:24:16.130] - Dr. Shockley
So that's just one challenge right across the country, there's the others of actually implementing. But I've been telling farmers, from a risk management standpoint, you better have the data management and ability to capture and prove that you're doing the things that you're doing. Now, luckily, with technology that we have in agriculture, especially on the grain side, livestock, it's gonna be a whole different ballgame. But on the grain side, we're recording all that. The tractor's recording it. We've got it. It's just, how do we assist the farmers in putting it in a form that will meet the needs of whoever this end buyer is going to be, whether it's Adm. Bungee, CGB, yum. Tyson, seamer milling. You keep. Keep on down the line. And unfortunately, we're at a stage right now where every company is, seems like they're moving in a different direction, different requirements, and there's no standardization, which is going to be extremely detrimental at the farm level. And it could cost farmers in a lot of money because it's. It's turning into decommoditizing agriculture, and it could be very that when it's all said and done.
[00:25:54.550] - Cassie Johnson
So a lot of our customers at Ag Cpart-timepart-timeredit are part time farmers. So you mentioned that our tractors are collecting the data and all that. Maybe not necessarily for those part time farmers. Is it collecting. So what advice would you give to them to be able to start working on having the data and having the information available?
[00:26:21.320] - Dr. Shockley
I would. I would start data collecting. If you haven't. I mean, that's the bad part. If. If you're oper, if you're operating a, you know, 1970s tractor, right. Cost savings, what have you, there are technologies that bolt onto that to start recording, or just, you can. You can record your practices by hand. I mean, that's the horrible way to do it. But, you know, they may say, oh, you have to submit as applied maps, you know, or you can just put in, I mean, there's publicly available data that you could buy. Satellite imagery is included. Same imagery they're using on the deforestation free program. You can buy snapshots of your farm that proves that you have cover crops in. You just got to buy the. Or it's free satellite imagery. That time of the year is a snapshot. Is there crop in the ground or not?
[00:27:20.910] - Cassie Johnson
Mm hmm.
[00:27:22.250] - Dr. Shockley
And so I think there's ways, but getting it digitized and be able to submit. I have a feeling that a lot of these companies will maybe, hopefully have some assistance that will support part time farmers like this that you're talking about, but they may not, and they may be left in the dust. So I would encourage farmers that be on the forefront of this, because it's. It's coming, and you don't want to be in a situation where you're left out just because you either didn't think it was gonna happen. You know, that's not gonna happen. Like, this is crazy talk, right? So, you know, we are, luckily, me and my colleague are, who is an ag lawyer at Texas A and M. We've gotten some grant money here recently to do, I think we're going to do two webinars coming up for producers, both grain and livestock, across the southeast United States. Basically, it's a risk management workshop for farmers to talk about these very things and strategies and what to do moving forward in an environment where data is going to be so critical. So both from a legal standpoint, production risks, marketing risk, you name it.
[00:28:59.810] - Dr. Shockley
Legal risk, because you better bet there's gonna be a lot of lawsuits. So the ag lawyers out there in this world are gonna. We don't have enough. And I'm telling you right now, there's not enough ag lawyers out in this, not only in our state, but across the US, that is going to be able to deal with this issue.
[00:29:20.520] - Cassie Johnson
So you mentioned the livestock side. What are some of the things that you're seeing from the livestock side on the sustainability that maybe those producers are going to have to. Is it from a land management side or stocking rate or.
[00:29:37.890] - Dr. Shockley
It's on a land management side. A lot of it's around rotational grazing, unlike the row crop side, where row crops have been pretty prescriptive about. Okay, you do x, y and z cover crops, no till, reduce your nitrogen application. That's pretty straightforward. Like it or not, on the livestock, it's been very holistic and just being like, well, you're going to have to adopt rotational grazing or regenerative ag practices. What is that really mean on the farm? So you talk about rotational grazing. Is that two days, five days, 20 days a day? We don't know yet. That is not written in stone. And so there's going to be a component of rotational grazing. They are doing some, what do they call it, the technical word? Silvo pasture, which is planting trees in a pasture, waterway management to reduce runoff. So those are kind of the topics that are being discussed from the management on the farm. The big thing. Well, and there's also methane issues. Can we do some feed additives to reduce the methane production? But a lot of the discussions aren't on programs out there on the livestock side, aren't necessarily here in Kentucky yet.
[00:31:27.650] - Dr. Shockley
Most of those are being implemented at the feedlot side of things. However, it's all about traceability. This is where it's going to go. And so that Ribeye, that sustainably produced ribeye on the grocery store shelf, where was it produced? And trace it all the way back to the cow calf operation. And so they're trying to quantify the greenhouse gas emissions of livestock production right now.
[00:32:10.460] - Cassie Johnson
So are they going to do that across the world? And they're going to trace all the beef that is imported in
[00:32:18.670] - Dr. Shockley
Baby steps.
[00:32:20.950] - Dr. Shockley
Because it's such a difficult, difficult thing to do. This is all being confined at the feedlot area as a kind of pilot program. Can we do it? And what's required from a data management standpoint on what that cow eats? You know, so it's a feed deal, and then once that gets established, they're moving down to the cow calf side of things. And so transportation of our livestock is where most of me, we don't have process capacity in the state. And so what does that look like? But it's all interconnected, right? Because what do you know on these feedlots where they eating, right? So all the grains got to be produced under regenerative ag practices to reduce that feed score that goes into it. I mean, this is not segmented by ag industries, right. You know, livestock and grains are very interconnected. Same thing with the poultry side of things. It's happening there, too.
[00:33:32.220] - Cassie Johnson
So how you track an egg? I mean, you could track a animal with RFID. How you track an egg, I don't know yet. That's really interesting.
[00:33:43.370] - Dr. Shockley
But I do know that the goal of, one of the goals of purdue chicken is to provide a completely greenhouse gas neutral chicken breast on the shelf to consumers. And the biggest input or biggest carbonous intensive portion of raising a chicken is the feed. Because in the grand scheme of things, we look at all the meat supply. Chickens are very low on greenhouse gas emissions, but the biggest portion of that is the feed that goes into it. So you got all these companies partnering up to enroll grain farmers in programs that provide the feed through the feed mills and try to reduce that greenhouse gas footprint of that chicken.
[00:34:35.560] - Olivia Randolph
Well, even ADM themselves has feed mill portions of their company that is making livestock feeds. So they're just trying see it as it could be a way. They're trying to keep that all in for them. And then you're going to see Tyson feeds mills.
[00:34:54.690] - Dr. Shockley
Tyson's already doing it.
[00:34:55.850] - Olivia Randolph
Own farmers to do it and such. It's just gonna be a ripple effect.
[00:35:00.130] - Dr. Shockley
This is. I mean, it's not, you said, like you mentioned, it's not. Oh, this is just ADM. Everyone's doing it. Everyone's rolling out programs. You know, ADM just rolled out their program two weeks ago that mentioned. That's not the deforestation free program, it's, you enroll in the same kind of software, but if your soybeans have a carbon intensity score, I think it's like less than 20, you get a five cent premium or seven cent premium. That's voluntary program. But I argue that this CI score that we've been. CI scores that we've been hearing, I don't know if you all have heard about carbon intensity scoring or not. This is kind of a new quantifying way to put a number on the carbon intensity of producing something. Well, that all started from my knowledge on for corn. And that method of developing a carbon intensity score on corn was developed by the Department of Energy because of ethanol, to put it as compared to petroleum based fuels. You're hearing a lot of CI scores for soybeans, CI scores for wheat, CI scores for x, y, z. I don't know what they're using to quantify these. And if it's a proven method for evaluating the true CI score and it's, or it's not, it's definitely not standardized as an accepted method.
[00:36:42.940] - Braden Porter
From the work we did together with the Kentucky corn growers, it doesn't really seem like there's a standard. And if you look at any single food company corporation, they all kind of are playing by their own rules.
[00:36:53.020] - Dr. Shockley
And that's what we discussed with Farm Bureau yesterday in this working group that we have on environmental stewardship, is how do we, who sets that standard and how can we promote their policies or lobby against for a method of standardization? Because if we don't, my concern is it's really going to hinder Kentucky production. Our farmers are going to be, be hurt by it, and that's what we don't want. So how can we get a true standard for how we measure this? If we measure it, if we proceed this way, what do we do? And how do we get all the companies on board to accept the standardization? And it's got to be approved globally, too, because, I mean, everyone's exporting stuff. I mean, that's so you. We're not sitting here in a silo, no segmentation.
[00:37:55.080] - Braden Porter
It's all connected. It is like you said.
[00:37:57.290] - Cassie Johnson
So I'm going to kind of step to the side then, and ask your opinion or what you've experienced, maybe out in the field with farmers, when they hear you start talking about sustainability, are they pro, are they saying a few words that they shouldn't probably say?
[00:38:16.690] - Dr. Shockley
We're not supposed to say those words on the podcast. You know, it's interesting. I've had the privilege to talk to thousands and thousands of farmers about this topic. And I don't normally just use the word sustainability because that's a negative buzzword. And, I mean, there's always buzzwords out there now, regenerative agriculture. And it's not about that. It's, you know, they're like, yeah, we've been doing this. What do you like to, and how can we benefit financially for doing the right things that we've always been doing? When I first started talking about this three years ago, the way the rules regulations were set up, they were only paying farmers to adopt new practices, and only paying farmers to that were killing up the ground like crazy to do something new and not paying. The farmers have been doing it for 50 years. Which obviously had a lot of them angry, and I was angry there with them too. And my goal has been to try to change the narrative as much as I can in the rooms that I'm with the people that I'm with to say we cannot let that happen. Luckily the shift has happened and there's been a because now, like I mentioned, if I was an agribusiness wanting to put a new facility in, this is where it's at.
[00:39:51.180] - Dr. Shockley
It turned from a negative to a positive over a roughly three year time frame. And so it's how do we set up our farmers to capitalize on the movement in the industry? And I think there's some positive movement behind that. Before I. I've been cussed out and not even said a word yet in my presentation. My title slide was just up on my PowerPoint now. Stand up for not said one word yet and got cussed out for no reason. They had no clue what I had to say. But all in that it is protecting the farmer from not signing up for something that could hinder them in the future. It's been a lot of my work, so there's a lot of this risk management. Understand the risk. If you are going to get involved with some of these carbon projects that have been floating around for years now, it's a different dialog now. So it's been good.
[00:40:51.120] - Cassie Johnson
Good. I feel like farmers, I mean, they're going to be sustainable because that's how they're efficient and making sure that they get the most bang for their buck in whatever they produce, crops or livestock. But I don't know. Did you guys have any other questions for Dr. Shockley?
[00:41:11.960] - Braden Porter
I think just how can people get in contact with you if they have any questions? This has been a really interesting topic and I think a lot of people might have some questions.
[00:41:19.550] - Dr. Shockley
Oh, I feld questions all the time. Don't you worry. The easiest way to get to me is shoot me an email. I travel a lot, so I'm always, I have my email on my phone. So the easiest way to do that is just email me at jordan dot shockley.edu. or you can just google my name and go to ag econ department to get the email address as well. I'm usually pretty quick at responding. And again, I field a lot of these calls. This is about 90% of my job right now is dealing in the space and so, but given that I do travel a lot, so it's my phone. My phone is not necessarily, I'm not sitting by the phone very often. My office phone anyway, so.
[00:42:02.840] - Braden Porter
Well, this might have been the saddest Beyond Agricultural podcast, but it's important stuff to talk about. I think our listeners want to know this stuff so that they can prepare and like you said, get out ahead of it.
[00:42:16.660] - Dr. Shockley
Yep. And stay tuned for this webinar. We will shooting out and we'll put links for that. Once we get a date set up, we will be sending that out. We've got a couple months left to try to organize the webinars and so there'll be two of them and it should be good, well attended, hopefully, and provide some good resources for farmers to actually sit down and think about how this is going to impact my operation. Rather than kind of us talking generally about things, we can walk through some specific examples and there will be opportunities not just from the webinar, but if farmers want to learn more, there's going to be one on one opportunities where we sit down and walk farmers through a risk management plan in a scenario like this. Right? It doesn't take long. It's going to not cost them a lot of time, but could prepare them on truly how to handle how we move forward in this carbon intensity sustainable environment. Because what we don't want to happen is they be unprepared and not get information or not meet deadlines like they may have just happened with ADM. And not being it costs them money because of it.
[00:43:29.590] - Dr. Shockley
So that's the goal.
[00:43:31.310] - Braden Porter
Doctor Shockley, thank you so much for coming.
[00:43:32.900] - Dr. Shockley
Hey, thank you. And sorry for being the Debbie Downer in the grave on a Friday glad it's the weekend. But again, there's opportunity, so I'm optimistic.
[00:43:43.890] - Braden Porter
Thank you.
[00:43:45.350]
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