3/7/26 - OUTDOOR LIVING HOUR! Fresh Farming and #FoodSupplyChain with Arizona Farm Bureau

Rosy, rosy on the house, every air is on the home on its best friend.

Come on, we're on back Arizona, Saturday morning, 8 o'clock, the outdoor living hour of

rosy on the house.

First Saturday of the month, so we're talking farm fresh commodities to your

family's end studio, spokeswoman for the Arizona Farm Bureau.

If you're following along and you're rosy on the house homeowner handbook or you get our weekly email newsletter,

it gives a preview for Saturday's lineup.

You know, the talking point for today is food supply chain.

Generally speaking, you have a guest that joins us in studio, but we're taking this one head on.

We are.

Everyone pray for us.

I had a couple ranchers unable to attend and I reached out to two ASU supply chain professors.

They couldn't do it.

I couldn't or wouldn't.

And then one of my U of A professors who dabbles in the supply chain, the food supply chain said no to.

So more you have me, but I used to actually work for the institute for supply management, which was.

And still as I believe a national organization and they specialized in supply chain management.

And I used to write about it all the time.

So we'll refresh some of those things I learned and we'll talk about it.

It'll be fun.

We talked a lot about different commodities that were coming out of our local farms and ranches and.

Some of them are direct, some of them, but you know, it has to get from the farm to the consumer.

Right.

And.

I got to share the story.

I know I sent it to you and we talked off air, but.

I spoke to a gentleman this week, grew up in Arizona, but his family was from Minnesota.

Okay.

And at about, you know, mid 20s went back to help and ended up staying there because he felt.

It was a safer place to live.

Because of the food source.

I realized we have here in Arizona.

Yeah.

A total disconnect.

Right.

You're going to go live someplace that's under snow and can't grow for five, six months out of the year as opposed to living in a.

A place that produces every single day of every single month, every single.

We don't have an off season.

No.

And you're going to isolate yourself up in snow country because you think it's a better food security.

He didn't get to talk to us at the Arizona Farm Bureau.

No.

We have an amazing food supply system here and it's even getting more significant robust even in the local food supply chain.

We have, I think, the last number from the USDA was about 700 farms here in Arizona that are direct market.

And of those 700, about 300 also serve kind of what you'd call food hubs like sun produce, where they will ship their food hostel to them and then it gets distributed.

But then on the larger scale, when you look at our leafy greens and produce and what we're doing today in Yuma and some of our other counties, we have anywhere from 1500 to 2000 refrigerated.

That's a qualifying word, refrigerated semi truckloads that are shipping out all across the United States because my family in the Midwest and some of my friends on the East Coast, they still want to have their salad.

And then also into Canada.

So we, you know, the food supply chain is complex is what I always like to say.

It's very important.

It's critical.

Why it's critical we certainly learned that during COVID when everything just stopped and backed up and we realized how delicate our food supply chain is.

And then I always like to remind people if they're curious about this very kind of complex topic, farming and ranching falls in the upstream, upstream part of the supply, the food supply chain.

Basically, it's the beginning.

So that's why our farms and ranches, farmers and ranchers are such a treasure because they're starting things.

And then it's got to get to you and me and that's what makes this so special.

And the interesting observation is every year the population grows in the number of farmers decreases.

It's like when is how long that that's not a sustainable.

It doesn't fill that way does it.

We always used to say that less than 2% feed the rest of the 100% and now they say that numbers even less.

According to the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture.

They say that the United States approximately has 1.8 million farms and there was a decline of about 15,000 farms from the previous census.

That census has taken every five years.

And again, that's the national number in Arizona.

I think our number falls after that census at about 17,000 farms.

And we feel like, okay, that's quite a bit of farms, but about 55% of those farms come off the tribal lands.

All of the tribal lands we have the most tribes in any state in the nation.

And they're mostly self-sustaining or subsistence farms.

They farm for their family or for the neighborhood, our Navajo and Hopi families are raising ceremonial corn.

So that number then of farms that grow to feed you and me can significantly decrease.

But the one consolation to some of this that I always like to highlight is that yes, we have fewer farms in terms of numbers.

But there's also a lot of consolidation taking place.

Yes, the farmers farms are getting bigger.

But there's a lot of factors to that.

If the next generation wants to farm, the biggest reason why they have to consolidate, get bigger is so that they can scale and still kind of maintain those thin profit margins.

So it's important to know that because of efficiencies, because of scaling the family farm, yes, we do have some corporate farms, but the majority of our farms here in Arizona, 94% of our family, our farms in Arizona, our family farms.

And nationally, it's a little higher. I think it's 96%.

You have a portion of corporate farms, but that's not the most dominant.

What's dominant is our family farms and ranches.

And that's very significant and very important today.

And you're right, Romi.

It seems like that's decreasing, but because of the efficiencies of our farmers and ranchers, that's what's making it still more significant.

And we're still able to feed, not only ourselves, the world, and then as they say, even have carryover for the next year, especially our grains that we can store, stuff like that.

Pretty interesting.

And some of the stats you put here, the average farm size is about 470 acres.

Yes.

Which I have to tell you, and I'll tell you our farm family story.

For me, that's kind of small acreage. We had about a 1200 acre farm.

Now granted, it was cotton wheat and alfalfa, and you're thinking, oh, well, that's not food to feed people.

Well, it is actually our alfalfa. It fed the cattle.

And then the dairy cows feed you, dairy, and or if it's beef, feed you steak.

So we were only one chain or one link removed from actually feeding people.

But it was a cotton wheat and alfalfa, and it was pretty big, and mom and dad ran it.

And why aren't we running it anymore?

The four kids looked at mom and dad said, you guys work too hard. We're going to try to find something else to do.

So that's, but in Arizona, it's not unusual for that smaller portion of the big farms to be bigger than this average size in especially the Midwest that 469.

And again, that's an average. It's going to vary all over the place.

But we have some pretty significant sized farms here in the state of Arizona that are the top producers.

But they're still again. I repeat that a lot because most people think if it's a big farm, it must be corporate.

Most of them, that 94% are family farms.

Well, and a lot of the crops that you're talking about, cotton, alfalfa, you can't farm those on a 20, 30, 40.

The equipment cost to harvest, bail, gather, move, cotton.

There's no way your economy of scale would ever work without having larger acres like that.

Right. My extended family are a lot of them are rice farmers in Louisiana.

My uncle, Johnny, this was 30 years ago.

How does son grew up farming went into selling something to do with getting self-tower started when they first came along.

And that was his youngest son, Johnny.

So after like four or five years in that industry, he came back into farming and his dad, Uncle Johnny is what we called him, made a joke.

He's like, you know, here we, he's like, we're like running out of the ocean yelling shark.

And here comes Johnny with his floaty running into the water.

Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a lot of work.

It's special though.

Are you still farming today?

Awesome. Yeah.

So you have relations in Louisiana that are rice farmers.

Yes.

And most rice farmers are also crawfish farmers.

So when you alternate your crop, you know, you got this thousand acres is rice this year, this thousand acres is your crawfish pond next year.

They flip.

Okay.

So there's multiple purposes that come out of the same.

Yes.

And pretty much the same with our farms today too, even though our profit margins are thin.

One of the things that we typically do to try to maintain that is we'll scale to move our bottom line in the right direction.

We'll also diversify.

I can even explain that in our own family.

Like I told you our main crops are cotton wheat and alpha, but we also did pistachios.

We did the traditional crops, obviously, but we invested in pistachio trees.

So mom and dad had a pistachio nursery.

And then dad and my older brother would contract themselves out to those farmers that were growing pistachios, had an orchard and needed.

They planted the root stock, but they needed the fruit stock.

So Brent and my dad, Pat Murphy would go out and tea bud the fruit stock onto the tree.

We were always hunting for different ways to have different revenue streams on the farm.

And one of the most important things that our farmers today do is diversify that definitely have more than one crop.

And you know, it's just real critical to hunt for those different revenue streams.

And that's one of the reasons.

And then also, we always have, on the farm, we always have a spouse that works off farm, partly for the health insurance.

But also just the reality of trying to generate other revenue streams, just because of how challenging the farm can be.

But we make it work.

Three acres is the place to be.

Farm living is the life for me.

Land spread now to far and wide.

Keep man hat and just give me that countryside.

I'm going to cut it short because I don't want Lisa to sing about it.

We need, we need the urban areas so people will buy our food and we need the farmers to supply it.

Very good point.

And that's what we're talking about today.

And the five pages of notes you sent me, the one that just I cannot comprehend.

In the 70s, farmers got about $0.40 per dollar.

Now it's $0.15.

$0.15 to $0.16 I know.

That's according to the USDA.

And that doesn't take into, you know, $0.40 in the 70s was a lot more than $0.40 today.

So I mean, if they're only getting $0.15 on the dollar, you know, compared to the 70s, that's probably like six or seven cents.

Yeah.

So it's crazy.

But Rosie, I liked your idea.

Well, I mean, I'm going the safe way and I'm buying a head of lettuce for about a buck and a quarter, a buck and a half.

Depending.

I mean, I'm an iceberg lettuce.

I'm a simple man.

I like my wedges.

And there's how many trucks of that leaving Yuma every day?

Well, according to the peak season, according to my farmers that tell me this, anywhere from $1,500 to $2,000, refrigerated semi-truck loads of your iceberg lettuce leave all points.

And each one of those trucks is carrying about a thousand heads.

Yeah, you did some calculations.

I know.

No wonder Romeo is your son.

So we're talking 200,000 head of lettuce leaving Yuma daily.

Yes.

Yes.

There's the traffic congestion in the world.

It's not the snowbirds.

It's the lettuce trucks all over the road.

Holy cow.

You brought the logistics and transportation down to its total reality.

Yeah.

And I can buy that head of lettuce for about a buck and a quarter.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

I wonder what they pay for it in Louisville.

Unless you buy from a certified organic farmer direct.

Yeah, then it might be a little bit more.

True.

Amazing.

Well, given, Romeo, your math on the current value of a dollar and what the farmers are getting, I am going to take a five gallon bucket.

And I'm going to bolt it to the produce island of my Safeway store.

And I'm a pain on it.

Farmers tips.

Tips.

Yeah.

If I have to tip fast food clerks to hand me a burger over the counter, then I'm going to start tipping my farmers.

And it's going to be a big bucket.

Amen.

I love that, Rosie.

We got to get a farmer's tip bucket at every produce island in the grocery store.

We do.

And make sure that it gets back to the farmer.

Yeah.

They would take it.

It would be another cash flow revenue.

So stream.

So it would be well worth it.

Yeah.

We have, it gets, there are moments when it gets pretty scary on the farm when you're thinking about the increase in input costs.

And when we say input costs in farming, basically what it takes the cost to produce and to distribute and to provide for our consumers.

The efficiency of the industry is absolutely awe inspiring.

It is.

And what they're doing in logistics and supply, which is what we're talking about, which in and of itself might not be that exciting.

But when you think about the sophistication of just the delivery, delivery, the distribution, those 1500 to 2000 truckloads that are leaving Yuma during the peak of our harvest season.

So it can get all over the United States and into Canada.

It's like, whoa.

And that's hopefully some of the things we get to talk to about today.

I mean, and it's one of the reasons why that middle mile or that middle integration of what comes off of the farm, why it starts getting so expensive.

And yes, it's also why we're trying to balance with a lot more of our local foods because you don't have the distance issues, but there's still transportation points to it.

And in the face of these rising costs, you've got all of this distribution and some of the things that are kind of cool that are going on with a supply chain is there's digital transportation through AI driven routing algorithms.

Now ask me to explain the detail and I wouldn't be able to.

No, I'll take notes.

I'll sit right here and I'll take note. You go ahead.

There's also blockchain that's being utilized with some of these logistic companies for the traceability issue.

We've got alongside is a push for carbon neutral logistics via electronic delivery.

Think that we're a little bit more keen on that because we see some of the technology companies today that are producing electrical cars.

And then always, always optimize refrigerated warehousing, which is real critical in transportation, especially for perishable items.

That's why the minute those leafy greens and those Yuma fields are picked, there is an immediate process to get those in cooled, you know, refrigerated trucks, that whole process.

The cooling only increases your costs.

Yes.

You've got to generate the electricity and the machinery and the equipment for cooling.

And the interesting thing about those trucks that you're talking about that are leaving Yuma.

And I don't remember which one of your farm guests it was, but it was one of the ones that covered leafy greens.

Those semi trucks are only three quarters full because of the water weight and lettuce.

Wow.

Max is out.

They can't fill them.

They can only go so.

I don't know that.

They can only fill them about three quarters.

I drive your truck.

I roll every window down in my bird house.

Especially now, right?

Yes.

Yes.

Is it out there?

Yes.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

I'm sorry, but I got nerded out here during the break.

So this traffic congestion, the lettuce trucks are causing out of Yuma.

And I'm celebrating that.

And I would say that I could buy my head of lettuce right here in Scottsdale for about a buck and a quarter or a buck and a half.

So I reached out to my daughter in Louisville.

I said, what do you pay for a head of lettuce in Louisville?

She says $2.15.

So you can get a truck load of lettuce from Yuma, Arizona to Louisville, Kentucky.

At $4 plus a gallon of diesel gas.

Yes.

And that's an average.

And only drive the price up about 50 cents ahead.

What my comment was earlier is the efficiency of your industry is truly.

Y'all are doing it on less acreage.

You're doing it with less water, with less chemical supplies, with less airing, including less margin.

And you're continuing to feed the world.

And we all know how horrible it is when the toilet paper is empty at the drugstore.

We learned that very clearly in 2020.

You can overcome that.

But boy, when the vegetable is empty, that's a different story.

Well, when the vegetable is empty, you don't need the toilet paper roll.

Oh my gosh.

But what the price of gas that you can distribute that kind of product from one county in America to all four corners is amazing.

And that's why it's critical that we maintain every size farm, small, medium and large.

If we don't have the large farms, we can't scale to the level of feeding we the people and then feeding internationally.

And you know, you were talking about that gallon of gas in the case of our tractors.

It's diesel and the big trucks.

So if I have a 50 gallon tank tractor on my farm, just to fill that thing up is 200 bucks.

And you know, they're going up and down the rows doing all sorts of things.

That engine's running all day long.

And whether that's planting or just taking care of the soil or harvesting.

So these costs add up and that's what our farmers and ranchers daily are kind of penciling out.

So it's kind of can be a little bit of intimidating.

And again, that's one of the reasons why they diversify so much.

Grow other crops, get into other things.

I've got farm families that are not only doing big things in the major commodity markets like cotton,

but one of the next and up and coming generations, the younger generations,

have a tendency to do this.

There's a portion of the farm that they're doing the direct market for.

So go.

Yeah.

And talk about diversity in farming.

That's one of the things that saving people plus the spouse that has a job off the farm.

On the break too, you guys were asking me like, you know,

are we using truck, train, you know, planes and automobiles?

We have a pig farm up in Snowflake.

It's one of the larger and it's actually the only quote unquote commercial farm here.

It's own.

Yes, it's owned by Smithville.

No, it used to be, but they sold it to a family in California.

They haul the corn for their pig production and from a train.

And so that's coming from the Midwest to here to Arizona to feed our pigs.

When we grew cotton and our cotton farmers today on the cotton,

and then of course they're selling it on the commodity market nearly all of that cotton

is being shipped outside.

You said, well, we should keep all our agriculture internal.

No, we need those exports because they that brings dollars in Arizona.

Well, they use ocean freight.

So the whole complexity issue of our transportation system is an amazing thing.

And pretty exciting.

And there's shifts taking place because we've got a lot of people that are experts,

quote unquote, in the logistics and supply chain management field.

And they continue to improve the efficiencies of it.

And we always see it on the farm.

We're certainly seeing it in the logistics and transportation.

One fun thing I wanted to mention because in my research for this,

yes, my four or five note pages of notes.

But the U.S. Department of Transportation has also marked progress

through its freight logistics optimization works called flow.

It's this program now covers 75% of ocean container imports enabling better data

and sharing among carriers.

Ports and retailers to ease congestion and lower costs for consumers.

And again, for the cotton farmers, they like to hear that because if they're shipping

their cotton via ocean freighter, that's important stuff.

And that's for the Department of Transportation.

So there is a constant commitment to try to be more efficient.

We're certainly trying to be efficient on the farm.

And it makes a difference.

One of the stories I like to compare in this, to bring it back to the farm.

I don't want to get too geeky.

Too technical.

But when I was a kid and I worked on the farm and we were paid,

I started, I think I opened my first checking account when I was about 12 or 13,

went in with mom.

Valley National Bank.

Valley National Bank.

It was that long ago.

I just remember my time period when the cotton picker would unload the cotton in the cotton trailer.

One of our jobs was to stomp it down so you could get more cotton in the cotton trailer.

And you know, in the very beginning, it's kind of fun because it's all that cotton it's soft.

You a cotton stomper?

I'm a cotton stomper.

This is after the seeds are removed.

Yeah, this is no actually pre.

No.

Cotton right out of the field.

And then you haul it to the gin and it's the gin that separates the fiber from the seeds.

Those seeds weren't sticking yet.

No, it's soft cotton.

Yeah, very soft cotton.

It was like a big fluffy pillow.

So that was our job.

So keep that in mind.

Well, today you do not, there may be a few out there.

My cotton farmers will correct me.

But today it's cotton modules.

It's very mechanized.

This big press thing will shove the cotton down.

So it's mechanized.

So they did.

I lost a job, basically, thanks to them.

And then even more sophisticated, again, on this transportation and logistics, keeping that same cotton picker.

Now it's these six and 12 row cotton pickers and out pops from its back, a round bell that they just drop at the end of the field.

When you think about the logistics improvements for that, the efficiencies, on farm commitment to always trying to figure out that way to do something better.

And so I'm out of a job, even if I wanted to get back into stomping cotton in the cotton trailer, I would, you know, I'd be out of a job.

So, and those kind of things are a constant, just on farm, upstream the supply chain when the food supply chain first begins.

So if we're doing that on the farm, can you imagine some of the commitments from some of our other supply chain and logistics professionals to try to continue to keep this efficient?

When you carry inventory, you carry costs.

So can we make our inventory more sophisticated?

When you, like you were mentioning earlier, refrigerated tractor trailers, that's an added cost.

How can we make more efficiencies in that?

And some of the guests you invited for today that couldn't make it.

There's actually a college program to teach you how to distribute all this.

My alma mater Arizona State University is considered one of the top 10 schools in supply chain management.

Kids that get a degree in supply chain management from Arizona State University are guaranteed a job right away, usually before they graduate.

Because there's a real need in the logistics and supply chain management arena.

So your kids are growing up, you know, if they're technical and they really like that kind of stuff, because it is kind of very brainiac.

They should pursue supply chain management.

A degree at Arizona State University.

I don't get to promote Arizona State University that much.

It's not one of those degrees that you just read about all the time, but it's so critical.

I always say this, Sun Devil, loves her Wildcat.

And actually, one of the professors that I asked to come on the show that was tied up.

He was probably tied up with the logistics and supply chain management.

He was unable to come, but he's from the University of Arizona.

And then I had pursued two ASU professors as well.

So this farmer that's filling up his gas tank for $200 a tank.

What does he do with a flat tire?

I mean, can you use it from E-Loy?

Can you get a tractor tire at the discount tire store in E-Loy?

So it's funny you asked that.

This is kind of an unsolicited shout out.

My tractor tires, I blew ribbon tire company right down opposite side of 17 from the fairgrounds.

They'll come out, change your tire on site, get you back on going, and they've done both of my tractors so far.

And no, they're not car tire prices.

Oh, baby.

Man, oh man.

Well, I had even texted one of my farmers during the break to get some pricing from him on some of the things.

When you have to change a tractor tire and stuff, he hasn't responded yet.

I think he's out on the farm too busy to tolerate me.

But yeah, there's a lot of very impressive and interesting things going on in the supply chain.

You know, we've got logistics firms that are promoting that integrated cold storage, not just in the semi, but in the warehousing.

And the transportation solutions to minimize handoffs between vendors.

Because think about it every time you have to ship from this supplier to do whatever they have to do.

The more hands that are on it, the more costs that are going to be involved.

So they're trying to get real sophisticated and streamlining it to the point where your hands off.

You've got fewer people that have to touch that product before it gets to you and me and customer.

And when you say that people, the number of people, that was one thing that kind of stuck out as I was going through the notes was all the different organizations that were mentioned.

Foods connected.

The program you mentioned earlier flow, freight logistics, optimization works, manifest 26, the Super Bowl of supply chain logistics, food logistics magazine,

Logicson magazine, the University of Wisconsin Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems.

It's like, you know, that kind of explains a little bit why the farmers are only getting 15 cents now instead of 40.

So many more hands in the pot.

Yeah, there are.

And we're doing, we've been able to scale, so we've scaled on the farm, our farmers are larger.

But we're scaling in logistics for that same reason, that same purpose.

We forget we've got about 330 million Americans, we have to feed daily and not just daily three times a day.

Then you think about the population in the world and just eruptions can happen in a minute overnight.

You guys know this, the straight of her moth because of the conflict right now with Iran and United States and Israel.

So there's been kind of a shutdown for a time period.

Hopefully it doesn't last too long because 20% of our oil and fertilizer comes through that straight.

It's already popped oil prices up by about eight to 12%.

And that's just in this short time frame, this conflict has occurred.

And those kind of things will make an impact on everything that's taking place.

And if a farmer can't get the fertilizer that he needs, then he's got to pivot to some other options.

And maybe it would be, you know, organic like compost, cow poop.

But we only have, you know, so many cows that are producing that cow poop.

And that's one of the reasons why it's so important for us also to have not only the crop farming but the livestock farming.

For those people that might not be as advocacy supportive of livestock agriculture.

Well, if we get rid of them, it's actually, it would impact our crops because we do take that and we compost it.

So there's the whole integrated chain within agriculture is so complex.

We could just spend time trying to identify one of those every link in the chain.

And a follow up to what you were saying about a farmer can get fertilizer.

Then maybe he's looking at other alternatives like a manure source.

And we do have a lot of dairy farms and a lot of feed plots.

But you can't just go take a shovel and stand there at the dairy and then scoop it.

I mean, it's got to be composted and processed and heated up for a certain amount of time.

And not done right, you know, you're adding a risk to E. coli being introduced to your crop plant.

So it's a lot of people don't even want to take just for go that.

So it's not like you just say, oh, I don't have this option today.

I can go use that one. Well, that one still takes, you know, everything in farming.

It's nothing is instant in a world where that's all that everyone seems to want.

As instant now, instant now, instant now, you can't instantly grow a cow.

You can't instantly grow the alfalfa to feed the cow.

You can't instantly grow your vegetable or your lettuce.

All these things take time to produce.

Right.

And you were talking about events that concur.

You know, this one on the on the shipping container saying, you know, that.

I don't know whatever you want to call it, a man made problem.

But there's plenty of other things that happen.

Yeah.

Someone ran into from Dallas was asking, you know, why is Arizona building all these data centers that require all this water that you don't have?

And I said, I don't know the answer to the water question.

And I ate one or the same thing.

But the reason a lot of industry look here is the same reason they put.

Palavari nuclear power plant where it is.

Yep.

It's the farthest away geographically that you can be from any threat of hurricane, tornado, earthquake, flood, hail, tornado.

For this disaster.

Yeah.

For the same reason we are so efficient and amazing with our agriculture here in Arizona, one of the five C's climate.

A lot of people are coming out here because of our climate.

We just don't have those crazy weather events that occur in the Midwest and the South.

So yeah, it's crazy.

Other things in nature that can come up.

Talking a little bit of the lighter side of farming and innovation is.

There are vineyards and Napa that have been at risk of getting just, you know, the rodents eating the.

The white rice stock to the vineyards producing.

Well, instead of, you know, a bunch of harsh chemicals and different treatments that might alternately affect it, they introduced owls.

So I can tell you, my ears on a wine growers might on that instance be ahead of them because I've actually talked to some of my wine growers that used falcons or other birds of prey for the same reason.

Yeah, they'll try anything innovatively to protect that harvest, to protect that product in this case, the wine grapes.

And then, you know, glyphosate's been in the news a lot this week with.

I'm not exactly, I didn't read deep enough in the headlines, but it's something with the farm bill and RFK junior and, you know, his push to make America healthy again and, you know, get rid of a lot of these things.

Well, you're never going to legislate glyphosate out.

You know, it's because of what it does.

You've got to find something that's more efficient.

And this carbon robotics could be a solution to chemical weed treatment where it can drive at 20 miles an hour or tractor through a crop forage crop and identify what's alfalfa and what's a weed and zap that weed.

And so we have been in beta test in Yuma for at least two, if not three years with those laser weed zappers and they are showing a lot of promise and potential.

We, I've seen one of them operated. It looked like an oversized black refrigerator or just this big box going down the field and zapping the weeds.

So we're always working on what is the next technology innovation to number one reduce cost to maybe help us even with some of our labor issues when labor is not available.

Farming is hard and most of our labor is out in the field, especially if they're harvesting our leafy greens. It's a very high skilled.

I know I would cut my hand off eventually by using some of the knives they have to use and how quickly they use them.

So, but if labor availability keeps being a challenge, then we've got to look for other ways to harvest those crops. Right now the technology availability versus the cost to implement.

It's not at an even scale yet, but you know we keep working on those things computers today what they cost today versus what they cost yesterday.

So we're hoping some of those costs will come down and we might be more automated on the farm than you ever imagined.

And yes, with lasers zapping weed eaters.

And that's not the only application for lasers. They have laser scarecrows now that they use to deter birds.

Interesting thing, the cattle population, America is only 6% of the cattle population, but we produce 18% of the beef because of how healthy we're able to feed those animals versus other parts of the world where they can't feed them.

So they have more animals outside, but they don't grow to the weight or the health that we can grow them here in America.

Because we are so amazing with our agriculture in the United States of America.

Julie, look forward to seeing you back first week of April talking about forage crops. What's a forage crop?