Barn Talk - Why Iowa Has the Fastest Growing Cancer Rate in America

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

Welcome to Barn Talk, where what happens in the barn doesn’t always stay in the barn. In this episode, Tork and Sawyer sit down with Zach Lahn, a sixth-generation Iowa farmer, entrepreneur, community advocate, and current candidate for governor. Zach shares his perspective on the challenges facing rural America, including the struggles of modern family farming, rising input costs, consolidation across agriculture, and the need for more opportunities for young and beginning farmers. You'll hear Zach discuss his journey from rebuilding his family's homestead, to creating innovative schools, and now taking his passion for local communities and agriculture to the campaign trail. The conversation covers the importance of food sovereignty, local supply chains, land stewardship, and practical solutions to improve water quality and public health in Iowa. Zach also weighs in on hot-button issues like regenerative agriculture, corporate influence, and why investing in homegrown businesses and education is vital for the state's future. Get ready for a wide-ranging, honest, and personal discussion about what it will take to keep Iowa’s rural communities strong and thriving for generations to come. If you enjoy the show, share it, leave a review, and join the Barn Talk newsletter for more updates and conversations from rural America. JOIN THE BARN TALK NEWSLETTER & GET LIVE EVENT ACCESS: We're on a mission to get 10,000 subscribers, and once we do, we're hosting a live event at the barn! Sign up to get exclusive access to tickets and details.👇🏻 Help us get there: https://www.joinbarntalk.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  APPLE ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● Barn Talk Instagram ➱ https://www.instagram.com/barntalkshow  ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS    ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4    ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS ● Sawyer’s X ➱ https://x.com/SawyerWhisler  ● Tork’s X ➱ https://x.com/TorkWhisler       00:00 Challenges of Simplifying Political Ideas 11:32 Discussing America's biggest issue 30:51 Challenges in crop diversification 37:37 Discussion on states' rights and policies 46:32 Expanding small dairy operations 01:01:29 Discussing farming tax credits 01:07:28 Discussing water quality upgrades 01:21:08 Attracting young people to Iowa 01:31:01 Discussing plant-based medicine benefits 01:43:06 Discussing legal battles with Bayer 01:44:50 Discussing glyphosate and health concerns 02:00:48 Setting goals for young students 02:09:26 Encouraging servant leadership in schools 02:21:29 Learning from past relationships ------------------------------- ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠  The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional, professional broker or financial advisory. Understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this website at your own risk. RISK STATEMENT– The trading of Bitcoins, alternative cryptocurrencies, NFTs, individual stocks, etc. has potential rewards, and it also has potential risks involved. Trading may not be suitable for all people. Anyone wishing to invest should seek his or her own independent financial or professional advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. All of the food we eat in much of. the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays in the barn, but not today. We're going to let it all out for you guys. Today is going to be another great guest episode. We have just had back to back to back great episodes with some awesome people, and today is going to be no different. But before we get into it, you guys know the drill.

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You know, I just thought of something while I was sitting here. You can't do a live read to save your ass, but man, you do that intro, like, so good. You think my live reads are bad? No, I'm just messing with me. They're pretty good. I don't know. Sometimes I stumble, but it's pretty much, it's ingrained in my head now. People probably get tired of it.

Most people probably skip it. I couldn't do it. Like I can do a live read. Like I can do 30 seconds pretty well. But if I had to do that, it would take, we'd be shutting this off and restarting it. Yeah. It's a lot to get through. It's a lot to get through.

But hey, practice makes perfect. And this is only our 200 plus episode. Yeah. We've done it a few times. You're a hell of a unit. Thanks. Well, so are you. Plantin's done.

Got all the seed in the ground. Yeah. That's good. We finished up. and just really just as the weather is starting to turn so this week is the first week we've had that i think it's going to be the low was this morning i think it was 46 and the rest of the week low is going to be uh in the mid 50s and highs in the 70s pretty much every day uh close to 80 one day so i think this corn will get up out of the ground pretty good um there's a little of it out there

it wasn't perfect when we put it in. There were some places that were a little wet. There's a lot of moisture come up at night, so when you'd start in the morning, you would have a little mud on the closing wheels. But got it in. Depth seems to be good, and it doesn't seem to be any place

where we didn't get the trench closed. I mean, it'd be nice to get a warm rain, maybe. A nice warm, not a pounding rain, if I can order it up, and this corn ought to come up real good. And there's some corn up that was planted two weeks ago, you know, that's sat there. And man, this morning, looking really good. So, yeah, I think we're off to a great start.

And hopefully it's a good growing season. It's political season. And so, as many of you know, we are based out of the great state of Iowa, and we got a governor's race coming up. and our guest today, he is one of those guys that have thrown their hat in the race. This fall, we're going to have to hire a new governor, and we're going to interview one of those candidates that have applied for the job. We were supposed to have him on. We were actually supposed to have him on a few weeks ago, and it was that Friday that we got those really bad wins,

and they didn't really want the tour bus to get blown over, so we had to reschedule it. There is a lot going on. We got questions about the farm bill. We got some questions about field tile. And we really just want to know how Zach stacks up against his opponents and his thoughts on the political scene. And why the heck would anybody want to get into politics anyway? I don't know.

He's a brave soul. So without any further ado, let's get into it. Building prices went up 3% a year every year. and then there were a few times in there that they went up five or six and there was one year that they didn't go up at all and that's the only time.

I mean, everything just... Yeah, this is what I tell. I tell people about inflation too is like, prices don't go down. Like what, if you have deflation, it's actually an indicator of something very bad

it's about to happen in the economy. And because also people will just keep waiting out for a lower and lower price and just keeps plummeting and plummeting. It's like, so we've dug this very huge hole for ourselves and now the way out of it is we have to grow.

And especially in our real communities, it's a very difficult problem to solve. But you're right. Like what I've been telling people too is, you know, in the 1980s, Terry Brand said, talked a ton about value added agriculture. Like what can we do to bring more value

to what we're growing, what we're producing? And that gave rise, honestly, to the ethanol industry. And now we're at a new point where, I mean, we can start talking about this. point, but where we're having to find other things. And even so, I know people that are agreeing to things they don't even want to do, wind farms, whatever might be, solar, because it's like,

how else am I going to keep my ground? Or even people I've talked to that have been, you know, well, I'm going to sell this 40 to keep farming. I'm like, that doesn't work. That will not work. And there's, I get it, but you're not going to get that ground back. It'd be different if you like, you know, had to close down a branch of an operation, but then you can just reopen that branch of the operation. But when you got this family land, anyways, we can go into,

sorry. No, you're good. I mean, we're live, boy, so Zach Lane, welcome to Barn talk.

Hey, thanks for having me on this year. You like how we just sneak out of there. We just started her up and go. Yeah, this is good. Well, yeah,

I, I, I'm very happy to be on here. I've talked to you. I mean, I've been seeing you guys clips forever. You've made a tremendous impact in, like,

just getting out there. I need to learn from you on that. But now these farm issues are things I'm talking about all the time. It's why I got in the race. The whole reason I got the race when I was announcing my campaign on the front steps of our farmhouse in Bell Plain, which I can tell the story about that. But it was what I'm hearing from my neighbors, what I'm seeing myself, I'm watching like this disintegration of culture and economies in rural Iowa.

And it's not just Iowa. You guys know, this is around the Midwest. And I just tell people, this is not on accident. Like there has been consolidation after consolidation. And like, we have to start fighting back. 100% we do. And we're a big fan of you as well. I mean, I first, when you came on to the podcasting scene with Tucker Carlson, Sean Ryan,

I mean, those are heavy hitting podcasts, man. So you've been doing a hell of a job on the campaign trail. And it's just an honor to have you here. We really appreciate it. Yeah. You know, something I think about that is I think what something that Trump and Vance did well was it kind of end around the media, which by the way, that's where it's going because we know we can't trust them.

like we know we can't like they're still pushing things like COVID era narratives like this guys like we're so far past this this gaslighting has just got to stop yeah yeah and what I think is interesting in the political world is there is a whole there there there's like a chain and it's more I'd say it's more national than it is state or local politics but even there a little bit the traditional the traditional rise of people within a party social media

and private journalism and podcasts have totally upended that because there is a pile of people out there that would be candidates except now then you can't run on talking points

and you can't run on being able to say something and have the media put it out, you have to actually be able to sit down with people and articulate over a long period of time, like the long form. And there's a whole group of politicians that they can't do that. You're dead on. You know, when people talk to me about this, my biggest problem is like if I'm on a TV interview,

is getting it down to a 30 second answer. Because also, that's just like the deck is stacked against people that really want to think about these ideas. And I said, I read this quote once, long time ago that said something like a bumper sticker is a substitute for real thought. And that's all we've had in politics for how long. And now, you know, I tell me, I had this political consultant I heard once said that, hey, when you're at a event with all these people, you need to imagine every one of them is, you know, walking on with buttons on them and those are issues they care about. Yep.

And your job is to read those and push them so they like you. I'm like, you guys just don't get it. Yeah. But if you go to a political event right now, you can tell who's doing it. They'll walk in and every single, like, talking point will come out in like 35 seconds. Yep. I'm like, tell people, those are the people you cannot trust. 100%. Yeah, I think the term that somebody said to me that stuck with me is just citizen media. Citizen media is the new, it's the new wave because it's just people only want to listen to people that they trust. I think in the crater economy and just media in general, the people that

can get the trust are the ones that are going to win the longest in the longest runway to have a brand. I wanted to ask you this question later on, but since we're on the topic of politics, what do you think's one thing, if you could change one thing in the American, just how politics are, how it's run, how we go about it in this country, what would you change? What would you change about it? Well, you know, I think when I think about the biggest issue, let's talk about our country for a second, because I'm running for governor and there's a real reason for that because I look at Washington, D.C. I'm just like, this place is a disaster. Yeah. I mean, the good people are being ostracize, the people that are entrenched and want to get payouts or, you know, trade stocks or,

you know, get kickbacks. They're the ones that are rising. And it's, you know, somebody who's asked me these question like this, like, what is the biggest issue facing America today? And I thought about for a second. I'm like, you know, honestly, like, well, first of all, I think there's a spiritual issue facing our country. Like, we, we're, like, there's right and wrong. There's truth and lies. And long form content, by the way, is how you can dig into that. But I said this as a like, you know, I actually think it's that our country's run by unelected people and we actually don't know who they are. Yeah. I don't think there could be a bigger issue than that. So it's like, I don't know, you know, what's the solution to that other than like, you know, like cleaning house

and starting over. But our elected officials in Washington, D.C. have very little of consequence. I said, like, look, you look at any bill, these people aren't writing those bills. No, no, like, I've said, you know, how there's a track edits on Microsoft Word. I really, like, I really, like to have that retrospectively on some of these bills to see which lobbyists put whatever in there, because we know that's what they're doing. Yeah, 100%. We have no idea. I mean, the blockchain would probably solve that better. But that's my honest answer. If I could change something, it'd be that our elected officials actually are of consequence in Washington, D.C. Because it seems as if we're running towards like an authoritarian structure in government and there's just no stopping it. Yeah. You have kill switches

on cars. Yeah, like the National Endowment for Democracy gets 300 million. million dollars in funding after Elon exposed is basically a CIA front organization. And our Republican politicians vote yes on it? So are you guys getting me worked up already? No, that's, that's probably my honest answer. Like, we have to know who's in charge. Yeah. We say all the time on here, if we can find a way to get money out of politics, the law, I mean, the lobbying is just unbelievable. I mean, you got to have money to fund the system. But the amount of politicians that are getting greased to vote on a bill this way or that way is is insane and you can't trust them. That's the, that's the thing. And I think the everybody runs on all these things, all these

buttons that they want to press, but when they actually get in there, when the money starts, when a deal gets put across the table to them, will they stay true to what they ran on? I don't know. And that's the thing. And will, even if you, to your point, even things that get passed, the bureaucracy that actually implements that, those people that aren't elected, to your point, will it get implemented? Will it? How do they interpret it? Right. You know, I, I've, that's exactly right. You know, there's a, there's a Supreme Court ruling that it was under the Chevron doctrine, which is the idea that, you know, bureaucrats could make their own regulations. And the Supreme Court said, no, like, it basically has to come through the legislative process. They can't just

make things up and it's happening in every industry. Well, the Supreme Court overturned that saying that we could sue them to stop this and we're not even doing it on the state level. Like, you know, one of the things I talk about is the role of the Attorney General's office in our state, in other states. And we have antitrust violations that are going on, anti-competitive behavior that's going on. Companies, big companies have been running rampant that have been not checked.

I'd be very clear. like when I'm governor, Lord willing, if I get there, the attorney general's office is going to be very busy because I've never sued anybody in my life, but we have a lot of suits that need to happen because we're being extorted. And it's wrong. It goes back to the ideas.

It's just wrong. And monopolies are a failure of the free market. Do we believe in that or not? Yeah, 100%. Well, let's go into the man a little bit here because you're not, you're not just like a career politician, right? you, you've, you've, what, like, what gave you, what was the epiphany? What was the moment when you were just a regular guy doing what you were doing where you said, I need to get

involved and I need to do something about this. I need to, I need to get involved in this. You know, like backing up a little bit, um, right out of college in Colorado, I worked on some political campaigns. I did that for four years, I think of some like that. This is over 10 years ago now. And I was, I've always been interested in, in this. You know, I did get a little, little bit jaded being involved in it, seeing like, hey, like, we're trying to put these people in and, you know, things aren't changing, which I still get frustrated about that. And so I largely got out of it. I went into business. I started schools. And then 2014, you know, our family homestead had been in the family from 1900 to 2005, right up in Bell Plain. And it was sold

in 2005 when great grandma passed away. The same story for everybody, right? Three brothers. My grandpa has two brothers. None of them lived nearby. So they sold it. Grandma actually asked me if I wanted to buy it or wanted to use it. I said, no, I'm out in Colorado. And then when I came home, after having kids, I moved back home. And I was out there and I just, I went to it. And I said, have you everything about selling? Let me know. And they called me year later. And I was like, they said, we're going to sell this. Do you want to buy it? I'm like, yes, 100%. I was living in Ankeny at the time. And, and then over the past 12 years, I've spent literally rebuilding the farm board by board. I mean, I got thousands of old pictures from my dad's cousin in Grinnell,

marked out every piece of siding, counted all of it to put it back together how great-grandpa built it. And I did that because I wanted my kids understand their story where they came from. That's the whole idea. And this is, I was not even thinking about running for office. I'd been involved in the Bellplane community. You know, there's a 1930s theater in town, the King Theater. I've been this operation since 1930 by the same family. And they told me they were thinking about selling it, what I want to buy it.

Again, I was like, yes, like, we got to keep this going because they've been shut down about eight months. We've reopened it. Got movies playing Friday, Saturday nights. And the whole thing was, I want to my kids to want to be here. I wanted to like put a stake in the ground to defend rural communities and try to make something better myself. And then, you know, when I heard that Governor Reynolds was stepping down, I told my wife many times, if I ever ran for anything, the only thing I'd ever want to run for is governor.

I don't want to be in Washington, D.C., I don't want to be in the state legislature. Why is that? It's because I think you can affect real change. change on the issues I'm talking about. And, you know, for a long time, I believe both left and right. You know, I often say, you know, people like say, oh, Republicans have done this. And I say, guys, I'm fighting the uniparty. Both sides have been bought off in many ways. And oftentimes, they don't even know it. They don't even realize it. And so my wife actually kept pushing me about this, the seat being open. I was like, no, there's going to be something that runs for it.

You know, Trump's going to step in and endorse somebody and it's just going to, you know, be a to complete, be done. And then the attorney general said she wasn't running for it. And my wife's literally turn up the heat. I'm not joking. Like my wife was basically like, you need to put up or shut up because I talk about this stuff so much and about agriculture especially. And so that was it. It was sort of like this idea where I had ran out of excuses. And I actually made two, two promises myself. I had two things I wanted to have happen. One was on the business side. One was meeting somebody. And that person was Bobby Kennedy. And I had no connection to him whatsoever, but I said, hey, a lot of these Maha people are my natural base of support. I said, if this business deal gets done, which has been two years

hadn't been done, and I can meet him to talk to him about this, I'll do it. It's like, I made a promise to God. Well, those things happen in two weeks. And I was like, okay, I need more requirements here. What else? Yeah. Yep. But it was, it really was that. And I just said, you know what? Like, this seat hasn't been open in 20 years. And I mean this sincerely. When you, when you actually care about these issues, you know, in 20 years, am I going to be able to turn around and look at the state of Iowa

and recognize what I grew up with? Right. Because it's pretty hard right now. And so that was it. Like, you know, I've never been elected office. I've never ran for office. There's times I wake up,

well, most days I wake up and like, what am I doing? What have I got myself into? But the campaign is like, is actually going very well. We're getting a ton of interest. Our events are big. And the message is resonating.

Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, it's, it's on us. I mean, at the end of the day, like, everybody wants, like, they all, we got to, we got to set the standard. We're going to, citizens are going to have to step up and make the change. Like, we're going to have to get involved. And, like, it's kind of put up or shut up for all of us. But, I mean, you're going to a, you're going to a different level.

But that's, that's what we need to get back to. No, we don't need more career politicians. We need real people that have done real things. get involved in politics and do actually be for the American people. And so that's awesome. Tell us a little bit about the homestead. Like tell us about the farm and the history of it. Because I mean, we love, we love hearing about ag. You know, our audience loves it, loves the history, loves the legacy. That's what a lot of us are doing it for, you know, is carrying this on to the next generation. So how much time do we have?

I mean this, since you're like, these are the things I love to talk about. actually don't like talking about the political stuff. And, you know, like, I'm on social media every day and people are going to come after me for X or Y. And it's like, guys, like, I'm, like, if we can just get down to the actual issues that we're talking about, we agree on so much of it. And we probably agree on why it's happening. But there's powers that be that want us to be divided. But, you know, I love talking about the farm set in the, we call it the home place. This was always called, right? And so that's why actually we just call it. But, you know, Great, great grandpa started that.

He was in the civil war in Iowa. It's actually, Governor Kirkwood got a message from the president saying he needed to put together 750 troops in two weeks time. He was literally on his plow when he got the message. And he said, 750 troops in two weeks time, how can that be done? And two weeks later,

10,000 Iowans signed up to join this battle. And I tell people this when I'm talking about education, more Iowans fought in the Civil War than any other state per capita. I think it was like 50% of the military-aged men went to fight, something like that. And that goes back to why we came to Iowa in the first place. I mean, we had religious liberty in Europe. Most of our ancestors came here between 1840 and 1860, somewhere in there. And what they were running from was feudalism.

They could not own ground. They couldn't own the ground under their feet. And which meant they were in this perpetual cycle of servitude, which, by the way, like there's echoes of the past coming here right now and so they you know they wanted to come here for that reason they actually tried a revolution in 1848 they were defeated across Europe

many of them got exiled many of the people that led this revolution in Germany were exiled and they went to Davenport and Dubuque we have amazing stories of our history of my great great great grandfather was one of the second cavalry and that was called the Hawkeyes on horseback and that was John Wayne made a movie about the pony soldier And that was actually about the second Calvary division that went into these marshes and swamps

were in Gerson's raid, the battle in Nashville. They did some unbelievable things. In 1900, great-great-grandpa started our farm, and there were carpenters when they first came here, and they earned enough money to buy 160 acres, largely unimproved at the time. And, you know, that was the Iowa story. When I met events, I say, guys, I could go through this room. And I don't have to go back more than one or two generations. we have a shared story of what it means to be in Iowa.

And that's actually what's driving me in this whole thing. That's like what could give me goosebumps in this whole discussion is just thinking about these people that came before us to build something for us that would never meet us. And then my question is, are we stewarding it properly? Are we defending it properly? Some of my favorite stories out on the farm, you know, for my, you know, my grandpa's two brothers were like the ones, the last generation to live on the farm. dad was born out in Benton County.

But then they got off. But, you know, the fun story there is, you know, that was an aviation was starting to boom in 1930s and 40s. And my grandpa and his brother, grandpa was selling seeds for Funks. And great grandpa was a dealer for Funks back then. And he saved enough money. He saved $700. And he bought a 1942 Taylorcraft airplane.

And the story there, by the way, is, you know, it was supposed to be $750. And the guy pulled up in our driveway to make the deal. And my great grandma's on the front porch. And she's screaming at the top of her lungs. We live through the depression. You are not spending $750 in an airport. And the guy dropped it by 50 bucks. And so great grandpa mowed a runway in the bean field.

And grandpa and his brother learned to fly. And my grandpa was a career pilot. Both my grandpa's were. And his brother was, you know, flew off aircraft carriers in the Pacific in the 1940s. Wow. I mean, if I could write a book about Iowa, I'd go to like these century farms. And I'd just be like, tell me the story. Because there's so many.

Yeah, there are. And, and, you know, but that was, I think, you know, the path was that, you know, great grandpa's on the farm. Grandpa farmed until he got old enough to get off the farm. And then they went off and did these other things. And I think that was like the path that people thought you're supposed to take. And in what that led to was our, you know, our farm being. sold because there was nobody left to do it. Yeah. And that's sort of what I'm coming

full circle here to say, you know, we're bringing this back. You know, and today on our farm, we, you know, it's not big. I mean, it's much bigger than the original. It's just about 700 acres, but we've put that together contiguously. And I'm doing exactly what you said. Like, we're trying to find new ways to bring in money on the farm and also just trying to, like, build an example of how can we help farmers make more money? Yeah. Because when you have, a little bit of margin to work with, you're willing to experiment. But most farmers don't have margin to work with right now. I mean, they have off-farm income jobs. You can't support two generations on the farm like you used to be able to. It's getting much more difficult if you don't

have 10,000 plus acres that you're farming. And so right now, you know, we farm organic corn, soybeans, oats, and alfalfa. And I'm not here to tell anybody how to farm. I never have been. My hope is just find ways that we can make more money. But, you know, we're on a good rotation. We're transitioning more over to grass for beef to try rotational grazing, intense rotational grazing of beef. You know, we're doing cover crops and things like that, which, you know, I think there's pluses and minuses of that. But we're trying our best to see how can we just stay out from under the thumb of these input companies. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And I think a lot of farmers are trying to figure that out too. Yeah. So from the, if you put your political hat back on, as governor of, you know,

a very dominant agricultural state, we, you know, the comments, there's a lot of people that go to social media just for the comments and our stuff is no different. And every time that we talk about the markets and what's going on, you know, people throw out that, you know, it's kind of like it's our own fault because we grow corn and soybeans. And the problem is, if you look at the commodity market, and we just had a kid on here the last episode of this out, he actually raises a little tobacco down in Tennessee, but they also row crop.

And rice, market's terrible. Cotton, cotton's terrible. Yeah. Wheat's pretty good. It's moved up, but the reason it's moved up is because we got a drought. And the whole reason that the base of people growing corn and soy is because they have both been the best option of a bunch of poor options. And so we've grown this machine where input costs go up and we pay more every year. And, you know, Corteva just split up. And

they're going to, so they went together because we were going to get, the farmer was going to be the winner in that because you were going to be able to get your chemical and your seed and there was going to be all this innovation and it was going to save you money. Yeah. And that didn't exactly happen and it wasn't good for them either. So now then they've spun it off again, the chemicals going separate and the seed is going different. So now you have two groups of people that need to provide for, you know who the biggest shareholder of Corteva was, the three biggest shareholders, state street, Black Rock, and Vanguard. Own 80% of it.

Okay, if you're publicly traded, that's not uncommon. No, that's everybody on the S&P. It's to the point now where when I see a new business going up somewhere, I just don't even ask anymore. I just, I just, I said, I meant today. I was like, look, what's the one new store that's going in every rural community?

Dollar General, who's the largest shareholder, BlackRock? Yeah. We can go into that, but keep going, sorry. Well, so my point of that is, you know, corporate profits, what they need as a corporate profit, is a lot different than what the American farmer would ever dream of having as a profit. And we, we can, you know, people that say, well, why do you keep doing this? Well, the reason we keep doing it is because we really have lack of options. Yeah. And I don't know when this started, but, you know, your farm would have been

the same as, as our farm, Sawyer's the sixth generation here, when we, we, we started farming. It was a diversified farm. And a lot of people don't, you know, we throw that word around, but basically, you know, we had cattle, we raised some hogs, we, we grow some small grains, we grew corn, we grew soybeans. And none of them all made money at the same time, but every year something made money. And they all helped you get through. But the other result of that was you were a lot less dependent on your input costs because there was a relationship. between all those things you were doing. We've lost that. We specialize.

We haven't raised any cattle here in 100 years. And our hog business, we used to Farrow, now then we custom finish. And I'm thankful that we have it because if we didn't have it, we would never make it on 400 acres, real crop. But our options are limited. All that to say, what can,

like what do you feel like are some things that the state of Iowa can do on the political side to help with that to make these farms viable. Is there anything we can do? Yes, there is. And I always go back to what levers can the government pull because oftentimes people look to the government for answers

when they create more problems. I think we all recognize that. And that's not even a political statement. It's just that maybe they're trying to help but it's going the wrong direction. Like for instance, most farm programs right now go towards the big guys. They benefit in a tremendous way.

the people that are really needing help are the ones trying to make it on the smaller side and trying to find more ways to diversify like you're talking about on the state side you know but I think just backing up about corn and soybeans for a second the picture that you painted that you're describing is one that makes it easier and easier to extort somebody with if you are set if you've set everything you do up to do to grow two things and all your machinery that you now have giant notes on is set up that way. Your operating loan with your bank is set up that way. Meaning like you haven't been doing cattle so they're not going to finance you to do cattle or they're just going to start out really small. The diversification of the farms

that you're talking about was a very good thing. And you know, moving towards this, you know, I tell people this often about what's going on with corn and soybeans right now. And I think you've even talked about it. Only a couple people have I heard talk about this. But in the next 25 years, Brazil is going to be bringing on about 24 million acres of new ground with two growing seasons. By the way, our ethanol industry is subsidizing and helping to create that. When you talk about businesses, when you're talking about a production business, there are two ways to get higher profit in a production business. You charge your customer more or you get your inputs for less.

You can see what's happening here. I mean, we are approaching a cliff when it comes to this. and so you take that and you realize, okay, these commodity prices, yeah, you might have a temporary bump, which by the way, I tell this, I say this like, my entire life, every politician has been saying we have to support farmers, we have to support farmers and nothing's getting better. You get a temporary bump at the cattle market, which will probably import more to take care of that. But then you look at what's happening there and then you look at things like crop insurance that are just targeted at basically five commodities. the deck is stacked towards this direction and what we actually need

is to diversify and have off-ramps for farmers to try new things, especially younger farmers. You know, that's why I'm advocating for, well, number one, if you want to talk what the governor can do, we have to bring antitrust suits. We have to.

There is no competition in these markets anymore. The Iowa corn growers even, you know, you have their sign right there. They wrote the letter to the USDA about what's happening in the nitrogen markets. I mean, John Latham just two weeks ago filed antitrust suit, there of Latham seeds against Bayer. And we've been subsidizing Bayer.

Tens of millions of dollars we've been giving them. I think when I look at this as governor, it just comes back to me about this idea of putting Iowa first. And I mean that people think, say, well, isn't that what's already happening? It's not. You know, when we're giving Syngenta, $7.5 million refundable tax credits,

when John Deere has 100 million and 20 years and sitting on maybe 40 million, we still owe them, meanwhile they've been in lawsuits with Iowa companies trying to stop them from what they're doing we're subsidizing that we have to get smart of where we are using our dollars and what I'd like to aim them towards is off ramps for farmers to try new types of farming if they want to try regenerative farming that's great because we can get less nitrogen that's needed if they want to try building cattle herds I'd much rather support something like that you know you guys see

this you have the guests on there are people out there that have like glimmers of hope in this agriculture market, that if we took that and said, how do we help more people do this? But one of the bigger things that we could do, and this is just, I believe, smart business for Iowa is that 80% of the food served in Iowa's public school should be grown in Iowa. There's no reason it's not. And when you dig into the reasons that it's not, I was talking to farmer in Denison the other day. He heard me say this. He said, I've been trying to do this. I have to sell my beef, if he grows beef out near Denison, I have to sell it at market price

where all the beef that they get into the public schools is donated by the USDA buys it market price, but guess who they buy it all from? The big price. That's it. And he said for me to be able to get on that list, it might be a million dollars.

I have to be able to deliver 42,000 pounds of beef at a time. And that's something the federal government, I think Bobby Kennedy, Brooke Rawlins, I'm going to continue to bring these things up. If we can change that, we can open up a giant market for smaller producers to be able to provide our schools with healthy food. I don't have all the answers.

But directionally, where we need to go is supporting smaller farmers with diversified operations that can support their local community. That's my belief. Now, we'll still have tens of millions of acres in traditional production. This is not something that's going to say, oh, we need to, you know,

I fully understand it. not everybody's going to grow lettuce. I get it. Right. But directionally, we're moving the wrong way. And we have to start saying, how do we support more young people

to get onto farms and to be able to carry on what their parents and grandparents did? And even it's incremental to start with. But any farm program from the state of Iowa has to be aimed at the smaller producer. Yeah.

Yeah. We've got to have some balance there. And that's the thing, like, you know, the whole argument of localized food system. Like, I think everybody likes that idea. like that idea, the consumer likes that idea. It's a great idea because we want healthier food. We want healthier meat. We want to know where our food comes from. We want to trust the farmer.

We want to be in contact with our farmer. But actually making it happen and actually executing it is a whole other issue because you have big lobbying groups with the commodities, you know, and the input conglomerates. You have the big four. You have to have big. You have big. agriculture to feed all the people were feeding, but a lot of that, like you said, a lot of that corn is going to ethanol, right? You know, but how do you, how do you break it up? I mean, that's the thing. It's like, I love that idea of localized food system. I can support that. But how do you actually make it happen? I think first you have to decriminalize it. You know, like the stuff that my great grandpa did by grown hogs in the barn that I have, slaughtering them

and bringing in the market is illegal now. Yes. You know, I was talking to a farmer out by Atkins, and he came to me at an event, and his eyes are wide, he goes, there's so much opportunity in agriculture right now. I was like, what? What are you talking about? And he has, he's taken full advantage of the raw milk dairy bill, and he has a 10 cow herd, not big. And he supports him and his wife, and he has a kid that works on the farm, too, a grown son. And I said, he was telling me about how they've been able to develop this market around them. and he's outside of Cedar Rapids, and I said, you know, would you like to see that expanded? And he's like, no, no, no, no. I said, what do you mean? He said, the moment it's opened up, one big guy will come in and take the whole thing. And I think that's where we have to get back to this idea of states' rights in the 10th Amendment. You know, I'm often arguing with people about some of my proposals and they're like, oh, this is social, so that it's like, no, no, you're thinking of on the federal side.

I'm not talking about putting these. These are states issues. And the Constitution of United States says we get to determine how we live as a people. And since the beginning of our country, the founders have put in place policies in their own states to promote these types of things. They're there to defend the citizens of their state. But, you know, even if like looking at this and saying that we're going to decriminalize the growing of local meat and being able to sell it to somewhere that doesn't go through a USDA approved facility. If we sell within the borders of Iowa, we get to set the regulation on what the approval looks like for that. And there should be a much more streamlined approval process.

Because right now, what I've been told is about a million dollars to get a facility that would be approved on the USDA side. If you can get somebody to inspect it. Yeah, and get somebody to be in something near and dear to our heart because we've done it. We've done this when we were, well, you've done this when you were marking me. The difference between the state of Iowa and the USDA as far as their inspection, it's the same. Yeah, like state inspected facilities. facilities go through the same inspection process as USDA and state Iowa. In fact,

and that's why they came out the CIS program because it's basically a state facility that sometimes does USDA processing, but isn't a full-fledged USDA processing facility. And it's like, it doesn't have to be though. Yeah. Like we don't have to follow those same guidelines and regulations. And it's like,

you know, people, this is an easy one for people to try to like poke holes in. But we have more technology at play to be able to know who is a good producer of food than we ever had. And this is the same thing people say, why would you ever stay in a stranger? Nobody would ever stay in a stranger's house. Well, now Airbnb is beating out most hotel systems.

Nobody would get in a car with a stranger to drive around. Now, like, taxis are basically gone. Like, we have ways to be able to ensure quality. And also, by the way, you know, I say this, you send your meat off to one of these big four. Prove to me that you're getting your meat back. Like, actually prove it to me. where if you have something local, a local facility that you know that what you've grown

is coming right back to you, like you would with somebody's doing it. If you've just killed a deer or something like that, you have much more local feel to it. Like this consolidation creates bigger risks in the food, in the food economy. Like if something goes wrong locally, it's limited.

You're not going to fight. This is why like, you know, Tripoli had their, what is it, E. coli outbreak and lettuce, something like that. It was like in 15 different states. And that's what happens, because we actually don't know where all of this is going. Food sovereignty is very important to our communities.

And it can be a vibrant, you know, economic driver for local communities. It's not going to solve and replace all farming. That's not the idea. But if we decriminalize things like that, we give people a chance to get into more industries like the raw milk dairy. Yeah. Yeah. So the question I had was, do you think there's ever a moment?

in time where the localized food system could be the dominant, could come back and be the dominant system of American agriculture, or do you just feel like we're too far gone? And like the way that we are set up now is always going to be the dominant way we play. I mean, I'm an optimist on this. I mean, I mean it because it's like my campaign. You know, my campaign's being run. I have four key issues. Keep Iowa's kids in Iowa, save the family farm, make our public education in education number one in the nation again and stop the Kansas. or crisis. Those are populous issues. What you're talking about, the people just want it. You know, the amount of people that would rather know where their food comes from and understand that,

especially if it's still convenient for them to get is a lot. Now, the barriers to entry have been put in place, I believe, for protectionist purposes. It's just to protect the big guys. You know, the more I dig into any of these things, the more I do. I'll start with like, just asking chat GPT a question. I'm like, this can't be right. And I'm like, oh, it is right. But the more I dig into these things, the worst I realize it is it is. Whether it's agencies being captured in D.C. Or even associations in groups that just aren't thinking outside the box and they're watching this economy fall. And they're trying to do the same thing.

That's why I was happy when Iowa Corrin wrote that letter. I was like, thank you. Like we have to start fighting these people. So to answer your question, no, I do believe that we're like, especially in Iowa, Iowa can lead on this. You know, there are, there's a tremendous amount of people that are on the sidelines wanting to start small-scale farmsteads. Tremendous. Hard to afford land. There's ways we can help incentivize that, whether it's with financing or otherwise.

It's illegal to do some of the things they'd like to do. There's a lot of people that would like to do this. My question as governors, how do I put in place policies to support them to be able to do it? Yeah. Because the people want it. I really truly believe the people want it. Consumer definitely wants to know. Yeah. They want it. And so when you have like, when you have something that's that divided, where it's like the consumer wants this very badly, but there's something in the way, then it just comes on who's going to take the arrows to fight industry. And that's what, you know, Donald Trump did that. He took every arrow you could possibly imagine. And and people are just waiting for somebody to lead. Then you get people that come out of the woodwork like Mark or Rubio who's like, where this guy come from? He's like, he's, the memes about him are hilarious, by the way. But in the state side, like,

that's what I'm trying to do. I'm not asking these guys for money. I don't want their support. I mean, I don't, I don't not want that. I want them to be on the same wagon with us saying something's wrong. We have to fix it. And this is about the heritage and culture of our state. Yeah. If you really care, join in. Yeah. Well, I was going to say one thing and we won't go much longer on this one. But, you know, like I owned a meat business. And I shut it down at the end of last year just because I had so many things going. But, you know, something about the low. localized food system. I think people want it. But then there's also a certain amount of people that would come up to me and they'd go, so love the meat business. You're cheaper than the grocery store, right? And I would be like, nope. And I'd have to go down this whole spiel of why I'm not going to be as cheap as the grocery store. And it's all about the efficiencies of these packing plants. They can sell all the organs. They can sell all the awful to all these different places across the world and they can price their meat at a price point that is the cheapest it could possibly be because they make money on the rest of the carcass. I don't do that. I have to take it to a

local processing facility where they're hand cutting everything with labor and they have to take that awful and get rid of it. They don't have a market for it. And I'm literally all, all I'm doing is selling the meat. So therefore, I am never going to be able to price my beef, my pork, my chicken to where you're getting it at the grocery store. And that's something that I think the consumer wants this, right? I think everybody wants this, but they also have to be willing to pay for it as well because you're just not going to be as cheap as a grocery store. You're just not going to.

The way, I remember that there's three ways. It can be fast, cheap, or good or something like that. You can pick two. Yep. And I think that's, look, I have. empathy for people. Prices on everything are rising. And we can, look, we've talked about some of the reasons why that is. I mean, there's two main reasons. We have a crazy amount of inflation. And a lot of this is hangover from the COVID era. That's money still lingering out there. And we have a fiat currency,

but I don't go into that. And then we, but at the same time, consolidation in industry drives prices up. Because what they say is going to happen is we're going to create efficiencies. We're going to lower prices. They never pass it on to the consumer. Tell me the last time your grocery prices went down now that you're checking yourself out at a grocery store. Yeah. Yeah. It just doesn't. They will not pass these savings on to the consumer. And so, you know, there's economies of scale that, of course, makes something cheaper. But, you know, I look at this, I'm saying, but what's the quality of what you're getting? It's been too long, Cowboy.

From Disney and Pixar. So that's Lily Pat. Where are you? Some sort of old man toy? What? She thinks you're old because you're bald, Woody. Toys are for play. Tag is for everything. Toy Story is back. I want to talk to you, Dubai. The long toy. Turn it off.

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Disney and Pixar's Toy Story 5. Now playing only in theaters. Tickets available now. It's not near what it would be if you, like, understand your farmer. They know you. They care about you. They want your kids to be healthy. But part of this too is as you scale in something like this on a

local food system standpoint, you can bring costs down. There can be a market for all the stuff you talked about if people are, if, if there's enough that come together to create the market for it. Yeah. And you know, you look at what the guy in Atkins talked about, the raw milk dairy. Something like that, if there's a lot of opportunity around the state, it will create a lot of these. It just will. And it's incumbent upon us to not have our legislators like take that away. And I, I wouldn't. But the same thing would go here. If we can open up smaller production, like, meaning like smaller processing, and it opens up throughout the state. Like, that's when you have cooperatives that actually form to defend and promote the industry.

And that's how you start taking, you know, the big question is how do you make a change? It's like, how do you eat an elephant? I mean, if you would have went back 30 years and said, you know, and what we're going to do is we're going to grow all this corn and beans and we're going to create, you know, billions of gallons of gasoline with ethanol, it's like, you're Crazy. Yep. What? No, but then there's people that were dead set on doing it. They took one step after another to promote their industry. And now what we're talking about is, great, we're going to do the same thing for us. And then we're going to bring it back to like where we do have some of these smaller farmsteads. We are growing more local food. And it's not the detriment of these guys. Like, look, I think there's problems with ethanol. We've talked about already. But you can have both. And we should. Right now we have one. Yep. No, I don't. disagree with you on that at all. I mean, we've said it on here all the time. It's the realities of agriculture we find ourselves in is it's get bigger die. Yeah. Or create your own market. I mean, that's it. Yep. That's where you find ourselves. So, I mean, we, and we've said, we have no desire to farm 10,000 acres. Like, we're just not going to play that game. But we're open to exploring all in every way

that there is out there to bring value back to our operation. That doesn't mean by 5,000, 10,000. acres, but also we're not opposed. We're not opposed to either side, I guess. If it makes sense, it's good for our land. It's going to pass on to the next generation and it makes money. We're open to it. I think there's a lot more open-minded farmers in the world we find ourselves in of ag today than there ever has been because we're getting sick of not having any options. Yeah, they just want options. Yeah. That's the thing. Well, you just mentioned my campaign points. It's exactly what I say. Like, look, this is not, as I said, everybody needs farm like me. there's a lot, there's people out there that would know way more about the stuff than I do. You know,

I, I share crop with a good friend of mine, Ryan Wallace. He's a great farmer. And he's helped me get, back into this. Because I grew up, you know, my dad was involved in agriculture when I was growing up. He was a crop consultant. He was a district conservationist as well. Our family's been involved in agriculture for 130 years. But I didn't grow up like doing the things that you all did. Yeah. You know, I've got back into it. And so there's, there's like, I'm kind of a case study. And but part of what I want to do with Ryan, you know, he has six kids now. Amazing family. And all he wants to do is farm. And so as we bought land, I've, you know, share crop to the point where it's like, hey, what can I do to help him stay on the farm? So that's what he gets to. And we're doing cattle and there's chickens. And, you know,

we have a good synergy here. But, you know, when I look at what we're actually doing, though, and, you know, granted, I'm not, like, I haven't been doing this for 30 years. When I look at organic soybeans that we grew this last year, you know, we did 65 bushels an acre and we sold for $2.250 a bushel. Yep. Yeah. That's not bad. That ain't bad at all. That ain't bad. And so, look, I'm not telling you you need a farm like me, but hey, there are ways to make more money. And by the way, the NRC now has a program that pays for your transition to organic. Yeah. I think our contract is something like $300 an acre for three years. I think I searched, well, I actually talked to an organic road crop guy that came to the barn a couple of days ago and he's been doing it for 20 years

and he said that I think 70% of organic soybeans are imported into this country, something along those lines. And he's like, I got people calling me all the time. Yep. They'll, they'll pay the bid and then they'll bring the semi to come get the green. Yeah, this is what I tell it. It's like, we can elect pickup or we can, you know, we drop. a lot often, you know, Cherokee has a crusher, and then Des Moines International at the rail yard, we sell to sunrise. But we can always elect for that, too. There's a big demand for it. But I also think there's been this narrative that's been pushed, and I think big agriculture has been pushing it, where it's like go, go organic, go bankrupt. And now, granted, I understand some of that because

when a farm's not doing good business in the first place, and then things are getting really tough, and they say, oh, wow, $22 a bushel, we're going to do that. But then there's a three-year transition period. And like I said, now there's a program to help with that. But before, I mean, you're having your shirts being taken. Yeah. I think there's probably a fair amount of guys out there that tried the transition. You know, they, they were going the way they were going. Their operational set up for this. They heard that sexy number. And we're like, we're going to do this. And probably before that program rolled out and, you know, had a bad taste in their mouth, didn't go the right way. Because I put a video out on TikTok the other day talking about me meeting

that guy. And he threw out the raw real numbers of what he's getting for corn, what's he's getting for soybeans. And there was mixed opinions in there. There were some guys that were like, oh yeah, organics the best. It's been working really well for me. And then there was a lot of guys who are like, oh, yeah, but tell us what the real yield was. Oh, yeah. Well, it's going to take three years. And oh, yeah, try that out. Let me know how it goes. Yeah. And it's like, if you're going to be doing it for 30 years, three years is not much. Yeah. Yeah. And so I like, you know, our organic corn, I think we're 180, but you know, my last, I was just looking at my

sheet on selling, I think the highest bid we got was $10 a bushel. Yep. Now look, I'm not saying it's the answer for everything, but it's something that we've been doing because my goal is figure out how do we make this thing sustainable? Yeah, you're not farm a 10th out. You're not, you've got to make

every acre pay. You have to. And with that kind of return, you could probably go in there and pattern tile that whole thing. I had to get, I bet you've gotten a lot of free advice on tiling since your, since your podcast show. I was just sitting, I've been sitting here sharp in the knives waiting to jump on that. So what, what has been the, have you had anybody offering free advice on, on tiling since you're, you know, since you've gotten out there? I would say, well, first, you know, I talk about it this way, just saying like,

I understand why we do it. Yeah. I totally get it. It's one of the, like, in terms of yield, increase in farmability, it's one of the best technologies we've had. Yeah. It's probably better than the traits that have come out because like sometimes you don't even know what's happening there, really. And, but, you know, my point has largely been that like we have to solve some of these problems of runoff. And, you know, I think that we're talking about populist issues, issues that are underlying.

I cannot, I can't go anywhere without people bringing up cancer rates, water quality issues. it's to the point now where look this last week two of the most prominent republican politicians in the state brought it up themselves you can't ignore it anymore and so you know i've i've talked about these but i always try to talk about solutions look i get how i get how patterned tallying works i understand it i'm okay i'm not an expert on everything but i get the the physics of it and i have tallyling on my own farm i've taken some of it out you know some of the stuff we're trying to do something different with with native prairie out there like you know for instance i'm trying to see what's the rate of gain on native forages compared to other things. We're trying to do some experiments there. But my point on some of that has been like, look, in urban centers, we use far more product per square foot than we do in rural settings. But that is going to be equalized between Lincoln, Nebraska and, you know, Des Moines, Iowa. Suburbs are largely going to be using the same thing.

True Green has the same application in both places. But we are an outlier. I tell you, high nitrate load in water is one of the top causes of Coel erectal cancer, which is one of the fastest killing cancers there is right now. And we all drink the water. So my point has just been, hey, we do have a water quality issue.

And there are ways to solve this. I mean, even using saturated buffers so we're not daylighting tile directly into streams, Bear Creek did that experiment, removed 100% of the nitrate load because plants want the nitrogen. Yeah. And so heck, you're building good pheasant

habitat while you're also making sure the water quality is good. You know, I'm not, I've never called for, here, we need to rip out all the tiling. This is how I'm calling for it. Say, I get why we use it. I get why we need it. Yeah. But there's ways we can likely do it better to make sure we're protecting the resources we have. Yeah, I've gotten a lot of comments on that. I just wanted to pile on. I like to pile on. Well, and on that, kind of on that, though, one thing that I've heard and I need to look into this more is, and I did not realize this, but you know, you take like us, we've, we've been no telling now for over a decade. Probably 10 years, I suppose.

Really, it's been that long since you cut, you, yeah. Yeah. Wow. Ever since you kind of took over the operation. Yeah. I mean, it's got to be right around there. I get, I guess that's part of getting old is if I went back and actually looked, I could say, but it's pretty close to a decade. and an issue that somebody brought to me is that some people believe that part of the problem we have with nitrates running off is the fact that back when everybody plowed, you know, when I was a kid, if I can remember going to church and riding with my dad, and if somebody plowed and they didn't get all the stocks turned under, oh, they were a piss poor. farmer. I mean, oh my gosh, look at that guy. It's terrible. I mean, it had to be black. But one of the advantages of doing that is there's an awful lot of, there's an awful lot of nutrients in that,

in that trash that we live on the field that we used to bury. And so then when you do get runoff from that, that runoff is actually higher in nutrient in there than, you're going to, you. when we were plowing because you're not burying that anymore. Yeah, yeah. And so if you don't have a buffer, if you have no buffer at all, that's going right in. Right in, yeah. And it's not, that isn't even coming from the tile.

It's coming from actual runoff. But the other thing is, the comment was made that a lot of these buffer strips, they actually aren't big enough because they're not sized for the nutrient load that's coming off the fields. If you do get that rain with that much red, So it's kind of the idea that... Everybody wants you to no-till and then there might be more nutrients coming off the no-till ground because you're not...

You might actually be putting more nutrients off of your ground by doing a good thing than what we used to do when we plowed, which is why, you know, like this farm used to be flat as a table. And now it rolls off because we plowed for two generations or three generations. I don't know. Probably need to look into that more, but it doesn't... I mean, it makes sense. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think just from a, like, a physics standpoint, it's like, you could see how that would get trapped in there more easily if you are doing that. But, I mean, so what do we do? I feel there's a lot of, there's all these factions, right? You have, there's a whole faction out there that farm is bad and farmers are bad and we're, you know.

And then you have a group of in total, whatever you want to say, honesty, there's a group of farmers out there that absolutely 100% belief that this has nothing to do with us. And we're not doing anything to it. And then there's, you know, a whole group of people. Then there's the middle. Yeah, there's the middle. So how, what can we do? What can we do to like?

And I'll add to this as a young person. I mean, and I think every Iowa, every person in Iowa that's a young person, it is a little scary when the statistic comes out about the cancer rate because it's like, we're going to raise family here. I'm going to raise a family here. I'm going to stay here. I'm going to live here. And I'm kind of, on this issue, I'm in the middle.

If we need to take responsibility and figure out different practice, let's do it. Because I don't want to be drinking water that's going to give me a higher chance of getting cancer or my family. And I think that's a pretty reasonable thing to say. So, yeah, what have you been hearing? What do we do about this water issue? First of all, I think what you're saying is right. We should just own it.

Yeah. And we should look, right now, we have the governor's office. We have both state house and state senate. We have the secretary of agriculture. Let's own it and fix it. Yeah. Like, let's just do it. And meaning, meaning like, we have a group of people who are on the side of the farmer.

I don't want the left getting in here to be able to not on the side of the farmer and doing it on our backs. Like right now is the time to work to solve these. But I will say, just from like the standpoint of what's happening, we understand like, you know, how this is getting into the water supply. We get this. And even on, you know, no tell. It doesn't make sense because you're, you're, is it a greater chance for runoff?

Your buffer ships, you're right. They probably need to be pretty wide, 50 to 80 feet, something like that, maybe more. I'm not sure. I'm done, I've done the math on that. but also there's other practices that we can be doing. And this goes back to me, saying, like, no farmer wants to lose 30 to 50% of their nitrogen

into the stream as well. Nobody does. It's a complete waste. And to think they do is crazy. And so what I've said is like, look, if you look at knifing or deep banding nitrogen, that will help with some of what you're talking about here of just applying it lower into the soil

where it's more bioavailable to the root of the plant anyways. And nitrogen is water soluble. And so if it's on the surface, if you're top dressing it and you get a heavy rain, you're going to have, you're going to lose a lot. And okay, let's just talk about from a financial standpoint. That's not good. No, especially right now. Right now. It's exactly right. And this, I always says, no farmer wants to spend more money on inputs. Who would? And so let's just take it from that standpoint. And on the manure side, that's like gold for us. You know, we use the hog, we use the hog manure that we eat with the pigs.

It's like, we don't, we're not over applying that manure anywhere where we, where we, don't think it's if we're not over applying. We're trying to stretch it as far as we can because we want to cover as many acres as we can. Exactly right. And so I've had a farmer, a friend of mine I went to high school with. He called me the other day, he farms a couple thousand acres in western Iowa. And he said,

you know, if you just gave a refundable tax credit for doing this other type of application like knifing it in, more people do it. It'd cover the cost and we'd have to use way less. So I think just number one, understanding there is an issue and we can solve

it. But to your point, I'm just telling you, one of the things I hear the most, you know, I was at a town hall in Grimes. And I always say that, you know, I'll be the last person to leave. If you want to wait to talk to me, which my kids have said, why do they want to talk to you so long, dad? I'm like, I don't know either. But if you want to wait to talk to me, I'll say to talk to you. And I had probably 20 groups of people that were waiting to talk to me. All but one was about cancer. All of them. They had a story for me about somebody. I had, I, I, I, I had, I, I, You know, there's things that bring tears to your eyes, nine-year-old dying from cancer, not genetic,

like that got non-Hodgkin's lymphoma or whatever it might be. And we're an outlier. Look, if you choose, if you live, Palo Alto County has the highest rate of cancer in Iowa. If you move to Nevada, any given year, just by making that move, your chance of getting cancer drops by 70%. Yeah, and I heard you talk about this. And tell me if this is right. Does, is it in the state of Nevada or is it just Los Angeles?

like it has the highest per capita rate of smoking. Yes. But yet its cancer rate is lower than Des Moines, Iowa or something like that. It's one of the highest smoking rates and one of the lowest cancer rates. In Nevada. In Nevada. It's one of the lowest cancer rates in the country. Yeah.

One of the highest smoking rates also, they're not, they also alcohol. Few other. Yeah. Lifestyle issues are pretty high there. But you know, but this is why I say, you know, there's been talk about alcohol, you know, contribute this. It's like, guys, we just have to like tell the truth. can get down to solving the problem, and then let's move on. Because this is too serious of an issue.

West Conson has a way higher alcohol, bin drinking rate than Iowa. They have way lower cancer rates. Montana has a higher bin drinking rate. Way lower cancer rates. The Denver Metro, same thing. You know, we're an outlier here. Yeah. And, like, this is not a, like, this is what I've had to talk to you about.

Like, whether it comes to farm chemicals or things like, I'm not calling the ban farm chemicals, is that what I'm doing. You know, when it comes to tiling, I'm not saying we have to rip out the tiling. I'm saying that we have to address this elephant in the room, which is affecting every Iowa family. I guarantee if I go to an event, there's not one person that cancer hasn't touched their life. And that's not normal. We are like way higher than we should be. Yeah.

And it is so common. It's what's sad is that it has become commonplace. And I'll tell you this, just this story. My dad passed away when he was 99. and he got colorectal cancer when he was like 93. Whoa. And he went, and he, they did surgery, it was successful and he was fine and all that. But my dad's very, you know, military guy, very, you know, just tell me straight.

And he asked the doctor, he's like, well, I just don't understand. How did I get this? And the doctor looked at him, didn't even hesitate. And he goes, he said, well, Lawrence, he goes, you live too long. If you live long enough, you're going to get cancer. That's what he said. And that has always just stuck with me that we live in a society now and in a part of the country where is that really have to be the reality that people say that? I mean, I don't know.

That's kind of kind of. I say on the flip side of that right now, we are going to funerals of people who are living to be 65. Yeah, I know. Whose parents like yours live to be 90. Right. And what I look at that, because you guys can probably tell the politics of all this is like less interesting to me than the culture. in the heritage of who we are. When I look at that, I just say,

we're losing the wisdom of an entire generation of people. And it's unacceptable. When I told the story about the Civil War and how many people in Iowa stepped up to go do that, we do hard things. That's what we do. And when it comes to this, like we got to have all the associations,

all these groups on board, and just say, we're going to solve this in every stone, no stone's going to be left unturned. And we're going to, you know, incentivize these practices, you know, figure out, You know, gosh, get me worked up here. You know, I look at this from another standpoint when I talk about putting Iowa first.

We have maybe the best medical research university in the country, one of the best. We also have the best agricultural college in the country. You know, oftentimes you'll go to these universities and they have a global mission. I'm not concerned with global missions. Globalism is a complete lie. It doesn't work. It hasn't worked. The only thing it works is you as an individual,

doing your best in your community and letting your actions ripple outwards. That's what works. So when it comes to our universities, I'm not interested in solving these global problems. We have a cancer crisis in our state. The University of Iowa needs to be focused on how do we solve this? We have an impending farm crisis in our state. Iowa State University needs to be doing the same thing. No matter whose name is on the wall in there, no matter what company's name is on the wall, they need to be saying, how do we help young farmers get onto farms? How do we make more money? You guys ask me these questions, but my idea is, gosh, I'm not the best of all these idea generations. I have, I believe, the right lens to look through.

We need to promote our citizens and our people first ahead of corporate interests, lobbyists, entrenched special interest groups. And these institutions of our society, our universities especially, need to be focused on making life better for the people who live here. I'm not interested in what's going on in Sudan. I have empathy for these people. I love them, but we have the fastest rate of new cancer ever recorded in the history of human civilization. We got enough work to do here. Same thing when I'm talking about the federal level, sending money overseas. We don't have clean drinking water.

You know, and I'll give credit, you know, Governor Reynolds and the Secretary of Agriculture are talking about these issues. Just, you know, kind of at the end of the legislative session put forward a water quality package. $25 million of that was going to upgrade the nitrate removal facility in demolition. moin. And I'm hearing people say, we don't have a water quality problem when we're putting now $25 million into upgrading it because it used to be the world's largest, but the guy who met with me at one of my events who works there says, we need a bigger one. So success in my mind is governors that we never have to upgrade that thing again. And that we are just giving people something they can count on. Clean water, healthy food, locally grown, at least having options for it,

safe communities, good schools, especially public schools. Like, these are things we used to be able to count on as Iowans. And we can't, but we need to again. And that's what my entire campaign is about. Yeah, and that might be a good, uh, well, I was going to say just one more thing on the health thing. You know, as a young person, I'm, I'm in tune with a lot of like optimizing your health. I think health has just exploded across the country. Everybody wants to work out.

Everybody's listening to Andrew Huberman. Everybody's trying to optimize for longevity, right? And that excites me. And I'm one of those people that, like, you know, I don't know where the world of peptides is going to go. I don't know where the world stem cells are going to go. I know exercise is important. I know healthy nutrition is important.

I know getting my steps in it is important. And I want to live a long time and live a good quality life. I don't want to end up in the nursing home and be immobile and have to spend the rest of my, or the back half of my life in a nursing home, right? I don't want to do that. Sawyer is trying to send me to Panama to get me upgraded down there, get some stuff. I went down to Panama.

That was an interesting experience. I'm telling you there's so much that's going on in this stuff. Yeah. You should go. Get an upgrade. You know, here's a neat thing is that it's all over the U.S. now. Yeah. You know, I had a...

It is. I actually had a back surgery that went very bad. I end up losing, I ruptured disc, lost use of my left leg. And I was in the hospital for 15 days in the ICU, menigitis. Still, I don't have use of some of the muscle in my left leg, which is why I did the same thing. I was researching. What can I do? How can I rebuild this?

I've tried many, many things. I've had some improvement. But you're right. Like, you know, the idea isn't to live longer. The idea is to live healthier longer. That's the idea. Yeah, all that to say, I would just. I want to do this optimization stuff, but if I live in a state where I'm going to do all this

optimization stuff to live a longer and healthier life and better quality life, and then I'm going to get cancer at 55 and it's going to kill me off. I don't know a bad return on your investment. Yeah, exactly right. And you know, I'm just telling you, I'm, you guys read comments, you're interacting with a ton of people. Because I'm in this, I've been doing the same thing. By the way, reading comments, just so everybody knows, not a everybody who says they're your friend on Facebook is actually your friend. That's good to know. That's good. That's good information to get out there. So don't be surprised, guys. I'm talking to people all this stuff. And it is one of the top things on the mind of young people.

So like in businesses that I've run, I look at like, you know, I have key metrics I track. Maybe sales or new customers or whatever I be. Or when I was doing schools, there's enrollment and how many schools we're helping to start and all this. you know the top two things I'm looking at for the state of Iowa are very simple are Iowa's kids staying or leaving and are as our cancer rate rising or falling because it does not matter how low your taxes are and I'm all in favor of low taxes low regulation smart low regulation especially because you you cut all regulation and then the big guys come in and just take advantage of everything you need to have regulation that's in favor of the people of your state but I'm all for low taxes low regulation but if you're

people are dying and your kids are leaving. You're not winning. Right. Like, and this is something we forgot about. The market fundamentalism that took over after the 1980s, they came out of the Chicago School of Economics that says whatever the market says goes and is best, it's wrong. Like, our founders never believed it themselves. You know, the free market doesn't tell you how to increase church attendance in your country because it's dropping. There's many things that are cultural issues. How we use the land in Iowa is not just an economic decision. It's a cultural decision. I had this big debate with an AI CEO on X this week because I said we need a complete moratorium on data centers in Iowa. We need no more permits, period. And why? It's because they're being built

at breakneck speeds. The environmental concerns are not being addressed. You know, we have a tremendous amount of power that's being used by them. And we're giving them unbelievable tax breaks to $100 billion companies. It makes no sense. Yeah. And this is an Iowa first thing. Look, let them build them in every other state. And when they can't go anywhere else, come knock on our door and we'll make a deal. But it's going to benefit our people tremendously. You'll pay way more in property taxes.

Why wouldn't we want to do some smart negotiation like that? You know, I'll tell you something I just found out last week is that, you know, I fought eminent domain on my property. They're trying to build this really big power line across. I mean, huge. And I fought it. And we ended up getting, it was moved. And they found voluntary easements elsewhere.

But I just found out this week, that was going to power the data center in Cedar Rapids. And it's like, and they're allowing eminent domain for something like this. It's just wrong. And we're not asking for these things. I think that I, and I'm surprised that this more hasn't been done on this. I think that on these data centers, the idea, and I think Trump's the one that floated this is,

it's simple. They should provide their own power. they should that should be part of if they're going to build they need to figure that in the money they're spending and they build their own power behind the meter to power that and the individual retail customer doesn't pay that cost and I yeah it's it seems like they are moving at such a rapid rate on purpose because it's going to be here before anybody realizes the implications of what just happened yes well and I think I think that what you're seeing is and people are pissed about these these companies right or wrong they

have in their mind whoever whoever gets to the biggest amount of compute the fastest is the one that's going to win is what they think now i you know you're not going to know but because of that that's why they're moving so fast and to your point i agree 100% on the on the tax break side because these these tax credits were given them, tremendous, tremendous amount of jobs created on the build side. But on the operation side, once it's built, once it's bill and running, they don't employ very many people. And to give that tax break for that amount of time, to me it doesn't make sense. to me, you want to incentivize companies that employ a lot of people. Right.

On a per square foot basis, manufacturing employees 100x, 10x, whatever. Or maybe 100x. You know, the one south of Cedar Rapids I talk about quite often, and it's one example of many that the same thing has been done. You know, it's 1,400 acres of farmland. I'll never be farmed again. You have a giant campus that's going in. It looks like a military installation is being put in.

You never seen anything built so fast. There's more heavy equipment over there than I've seen on any road construction project ever. Yep. And you look at the tax breaks. You got $529 million is what QTS got. Google got their own deal. And QTS to get that $529 million has to create 30 long-term jobs. That's what their contract says.

They brag about all the short-term jobs. My big questions is where are these people actually coming from to work on this? Because I have these people coming to my town halls all the time to blow the whistle on this stuff. I think it was that one over there too. 40 unpermitted wells were dug because likely because they just did the calculation. Well, how much is the fine? Well, how much time do we have?

Okay, we'll just pay the fine. And they just did it. And so you look at $520 million in tax breaks, 30 long-term jobs, $17 million a job. It just doesn't make sense. Especially because we're talking about $100 billion multinational companies. I'm not against development.

You know, I think data centers have a long way to go to prove their value to a community. Elon's talking about putting them in space, massive compute power in space. To your point, it's like, we're moving so fast when these could just become, you know, obsolete. Roller skate rinks. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is possible. Yeah.

We don't know what the longevity of it is. And we don't need that many roller skate rinks. No. No. Let's get back to you. That is a great. You know this statistic because I know you, I've heard you throw it out. Let's talk about your generation leaving the state of Iowa.

Yeah. What's that? Where does Iowa rank? On a net out migration flow, Iowa's fourth highest in the country. So Iowa's kids are leaving faster than 46 other states. And that's in what age group? I think it's 25 to 27 or maybe 23 to 27, something like that. Yeah.

And so, by the way, this is just measuring the ones. I'm fighting back. Yeah, there you go. stay in, baby. No, no wonder you can't find a date. Yeah. Yeah, that's no shit on that. That's no shit on that. Yeah. We'll find you one. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I think, I think the primary part of that study was people with bachelor's degrees, which by the way are like, you know, in the same study, this was done last summer. And it was quite in depth. In the same study, they also mentioned that if you were, they picked an age of an Iowan. If you're in Iowa, I think it was 33.

years old. And you look at the wages across the country. Iowans that graduate from Iowa, high school, Iowa College are amongst the third highest earners in the country. So we are educating amazing people. They're becoming very high earners and they're leaving our state. And we know this because, look, if you graduate from Iowa, high school, Iowa college, and you're going to Nashville, Austin, Denver, one of these places and you're being interviewed and they see you're from Iowa, we know what they say. Like we love hiring Iowans. Good work ethic.

Not afraid to like stay late. You have good values. My whole case is let's bring them here. And I think the short term nature of kind of the economic development ideas in our state has been a hindrance to that. Kind of like what press release can we put out to like say that, you know, like we're making progress where I'm trying to take a long term view on this to say that Latham Seeds, Kenzie Manufacturing, these companies. who when the economy gets bad are going to go into their own pockets to keep their neighbors and friends employed are the ones we need to be helping. Meanwhile, we're actually helping their competitors who are suing them.

And we're subsidizing that with our tax dollars. I think that's crazy. So the levers we can pull on that are very simple. Like, you know, when you think about Iowans leaving, there's a certain extent of people that just want to adventure. And I empathize with that.

I was one of them. You know, I left. I wanted to come back home after. I was out of college and started having kids. It's like, man, I miss home. But then there's also a certain extent that maybe goes elsewhere college and would like to come back home. And the opportunity isn't there.

I think part of that's because of the short-term thinking that we have. And also, you know, I remember just going back to our previous discussion briefly, I had a mentor in Des Moines, who was a very, very well-known business guy there, really sweet guy, really big in building the entrepreneurial community of Iowa. and when I come in, he'd, you know, talked to me about what Iowa is becoming or what it could become. And during that same time, I hear a lot of people talking about how Iowa is going to be this Silicon Prairie, this tech hub. And I got to the point where I was saying, well, who's actually asking for this? You know, because from a comparative advantage standpoint, we have great kids and great soil.

We should be, like, diving far deeper into that. And what we actually got from that was data centers primarily. There's a couple of really good Iowa homegrown businesses that have come here. in state here. But it's sort of like jumping on this bandwagon of what's the, what's the sexy next thing instead of saying, how do we build with what we have? But, you know, and the other thing I'd say on this, you know, investing in Iowa's homegrown businesses is one key part of keeping out of those kids here.

But I also think if I'm governor, not I think, if I'm governor, what we're going to do in the Iowa Economic Development Authority is number one, we'll have a moratorium on the largest population centers in the state from receiving funds. those city centers can stand on their own. We have to prioritize our rural communities. We have to. Yeah. I've even went as far to say, look, for every single kid that leaves our state,

about $4.5 million of lifetime earnings, this is from the same study, and about $450,000 in tax revenue lost. I would love to give down payment assistance bonus to kids that would move back home if you've been trained in the trades or you have a remote work job. And if you'll move to a rural community, we should double that. Even if it was 100 grand, and it's not a handout. It's not like, here's a check for you. It has to be done either through, you know, income tax abatements or something like that

that goes into a savings account that can be used for a down payment or something along those lines. Even if we did 100 grand over 10 years or something, we're still 350,000 in the black. But the same would go to the kids that stay here. We need to find ways to entice and incentivize our kids to be here because we have what they really want, which is community, tradition, their families. now it's do we have the opportunity. So starting an Iowa entrepreneurial fund for young entrepreneurs in Iowa that heck want to have a crazy idea and there's mentorship along the way to build something new,

especially an egg. You know, you've seen these robots that are coming out to like get rid of pesticides and herbicides, things like that. Like, why wouldn't we be bringing those people here? Yeah. Well, yeah, I could tell you. I mean, that what you just said is I've, living here, I have seen the impact. of what being an entrepreneur

and a real community can have on a community and just the state. And it's always made an impact on me. You know, there's the big, we feed a lot of hogs out here in this county. And, you know, the biggest integrators that are family owned

have made a huge impact on our community. If they weren't in our community, you know, I don't know where our county would be. And, you know, Pell Windows, another example. Pell Windows is massive. What about, what's the Oski lighting company? Musco. Musco.

I mean, though, to me, I have so much respect for those, those, those guys that started those businesses and those businesses because it's just like, it's so impactful when you can do that in a rural community because you are like, like, you're a, in Austin, Texas, there's a, you know, there's how many businesses are keeping Austin, Texas going. But when you're a rural community, you stay, or you're a rural business and you stayed and you built something great. I mean, that's, I think that's so legacy. That's a legacy. You become a pillar of the community. You do. You're somebody that people depend on. Yeah. And also, Jordan Peterson talks a lot about this. He's been somebody I've respected

for a very long time. And he talks about the value of, you know, there's a lot of politicians that talk about trades as a buzzword, for instance. The reason trades matter is not so you can put it in a commercial or something like that. It's because you're training people to go deep in their community. Yeah. And then you become a plumber. And then you do it. I talk to these kids. And I just love talking to these kids, they'll come up to me in a rural community town hall, I'll say, what's next for you? What's exciting you right? And my favorite question is like, what are you really excited about right now? And they get caught off guard, but then I'll get into some really awesome stuff. And usually is not even related to what they're working on at the moment.

Like, oh, I'm starting this new thing. I'm starting my apprenticeship or, you know, and you become a plumber in a community like that, like some of these kids want to do. And what I tell them is, be the best. Yeah. Be the absolute best. And remember this. The lack of you being the best, hurts everything, hurts everyone around you. You need to be the best. Be the guy that's making the videos on Instagram about the beautiful welding beads that are coming out. It's like just artistry. Be the best and then grow. You will grow because of that. And they'll start to employ people. And eventually you'll turn around 25 years later and you've got a business that's

employing 15 people and you're a pillar of the community. And you're giving back to the local football team. And like, that's the type of thing we have to incentivize. By the way, a lot of this tech startup kind of culture has been a lie. Like the idea in life isn't that you build a $100 million company and exit and live on a beach. Yeah. That's not what you do. No. Like it's not.

And a lot of those guys will talk about that. We've talked about it. There's so many of those guys that they thought that they chased that carrot. They chased that carrot and they sold it. And once they sold it, they're miserable. Miserable. And they had to go try to start something else. Purposeless. That's exactly right. You lose purpose. You lose it. And look, if there's nothing wrong with going to build a big company, great. But hang on to it. Yeah. Don't sell it. Keep it in the family. When Black Rock comes knocking on your door, tell them to pound sand. Yeah. Yeah. When some private equity company comes to say no, like, because we know what they're going to do with it. Yeah. I think, go ahead. Go ahead. Sorry. No, I was going to say that that to me, I witnessed that. I saw that. And that's something that I want to aspire to.

try to do here, right? But I think the one thing that does suck about being an entrepreneur in Iowa that makes me a little jealous of like, you know, Austin, Texas or, you know, these hubs of entrepreneurs, young entrepreneurs doing great things is you just don't have those kind of, like Austin's a hub for that. Yeah. And you don't have that here necessarily. And like, like you said, if there was a fund or if there was a group of entrepreneurs that wanted to do exactly what we're talking about, man, that would be just, that'd be awesome. That would make, that would make the experience of building in Iowa, like, worth it, way worth it and, and help you along the journey, because it can get, you know, it's a lonely journey, you know.

For sure. And so, that's the idea. Yeah. Is that this is long-term thinking. It's not short-term political thinking. It's, you know, if you were setting out a trajectory for 30 years, what would you do? And that's what I'm, that's what I'm trying to bring forward in this political discussion, which is very difficult because remember bumper stickers rule. Yeah. Yeah. Like, but that idea of connecting,

because there are a lot of people like you out there. And you're, I bet you've connected with 10x more than you ever did before you, like, with just this platform. Yeah. And you see, oh,

that guy's doing something awesome. You guys are giving them a voice too. I want the, I want my office as governor to do the same thing. Yeah. I want to have that community in there that says, we're here to create the companies. They're going to compete with these people that have been extorting us.

Yeah. And we're going to put you out, we're going to put you out of our, state because you're going to realize our people are like growing amazing businesses here and we're going to take care of our own. This is not protectionist in the sense of like we we're we don't like people from out of state. I mean, Nebraska is one thing, but we don't like people from out of state. Nice. I like that. Nice dig. It's more so just that I want every state to do the same thing. I want Nebraska to like look after their people and their economy and their communities and their

rural communities, just like I want Iowa to and I want to compete with him. You know, I think that that's that's the direction we have to go because the rising tide's going to lift us all. And right now, we're like literally just stuck in this. And there's been reasons for that. And I believe many of them are on purpose. And my campaign is a repudiation of these things. Like, look, they're just going to know if they're a big multinational corporation coming into the state of Iowa, they're going to have to make a really good case for, you know,

why they should deserve anything from the state. Yeah. Because we're going to be so busy building our own companies with our own people. and if you want to move, and by the way, that will make more people want to come to Iowa. Yeah. And the right types that you're talking about. It's like, wow, imagine, yeah, I haven't really socialized this idea very much, but there's a lot of like food restaurants that are popping up that have really healthy ingredients and all this stuff. What if we were a hub for that?

Yeah, we're a hub of food entrepreneurship. Yes. And it's like you could grow, you literally grow whatever you want here, either like in the growing season or in greenhouse hoop houses, whatever you want to do. You can do it. And like, if you had that place where everything you wanted to serve could be grown within a couple miles, and we could have that sort of innovation that they're doing in other places with tech. Yeah. And then every CPG brand that, you know, is making a vegan protein bar, you know, they're trying to go to a market, all the CPG products out there that need to rely on agriculture to make their product. I mean, they might collaborate, you know.

Yeah. So. And they've got, by the way, a lot of those brands, it's not like, they're looking for high, quality ingredients. And they understand that comes with the price. And so that's another thing. How do we incentivize that type of entrepreneurship here where we can, you know, have a great value add in our agriculture and get paid good, good margins for this? But last thing I'm going to say about this is that, you know, well, I talked a little about what's happening in our schools and food. And I think that flipping those things on their head to say, like, we will utilize

these programs in our favor for our people is a really important part of this process too. You're going to ask him the question that you've been wanting to ask him? Is it time to start slinging mud yet? Are we ready to get down in the belly of politics? Sure. You can go ahead and do that. Okay. So we would be amiss if we didn't drag you through some of that. So Rob, Rob San just rolled out his plan to legalize tax and regulate recreational marijuana, claiming it'll create 7,000 jobs, help farmers with a new cash crop, and fix the $1.4 billion budget hole. So is that the answer? Every other state around, is, is every other state around us now got legal? Nebraska, Missouri, Michigan. Sorrier just gave up. He's like,

I don't want to talk about this. But there's a good slug around here. And that, is that the answer? You think that's the answer? I think we can, I personally think we can do way better. I mean, you know, people ask me this quite often. And I've, I've been very clear. And I've, I've looked into this quite, quite deeply. I've tried to. Because as I've talked about, most of my campaigns about culture. And, you know, I've, I've lived in states where this has been the reality. Yep. It's not what they say it is. Yep. And I'll just say this, that I am fully in favor of alternative types of medicine. 100%. We know that there is benefit to a lot of this. Plant-based medicine. does have a role to play, especially in upending some of these pharmaceutical monopolies that are

entrenched. And we can see even the state of Texas is doing new work with things like Ibogaine and stuff like that that help with PTSD. This episode is brought to you by L'Oreal Group. Beauty is a powerful force that moves us. That's why Loreal Group has built a business that is inclusive at its heart with 100% of its brands championing diversity. With 25,000 professional opportunities for people under 30 worldwide and 54% of it. of leading positions held by women. Diversity is a strength that helps L'Oreal group create the best beauty products for all people. Visit Loreal.com to learn more.

So I fully understand the benefits that some of this can have. I get it. And my big question to people that have been pushing this is, what's wrong with the current legislation? Because if you go to some of these states in every single corner now, it's a place to buy marijuana. And I would say that what Rob Sand is talking about, about is not true. And I would argue this with them because, look, even there's a Federal Reserve

study that came out about this. It's weighing the impact about this. And what's very clear is that the economic benefits aren't what they say they are. And the societal issues that have been caused. I mean, I don't have the statistics on the top of my head, but any of your listeners can go research some of these things. It's actually quite high on the negative side. So my position is very simple. You know, I want to make sure people who need this, this type of thing have access to it. But I also don't want to give another avenue for people to check out. Yep. It's the opposite of what I'm working towards. Yeah. And this again, it goes back to this idea of market fundamentalism. Well, the market fundamentalism here would say, well, yeah, just legalize

everything. And there are people who actually advocate for that. I'm not one of them. You know, I think we get to decide the type of culturally one in our state. And I, I, I think what's happening here with my opponent is that this is a stretch to try to pull a group in, which, by the way, again, I understand the benefits that these, I know people who have PTSD that use medical marijuana and it has a tremendous impact for the positive. I've also known people, personal friends of mine, who have other issues who have used it, and it's created a lot of negative consequences, like very negative consequences. But that being said, I want the people who would benefit from this on the medical side.

I mean, there's people who on cancer patients, there's PTSD, there's a lot of these things. And it's not just medical marijuana. I mean, Texas is leading in some of these. Rick Perry's becoming a voice for a lot of this stuff. He's as traditional as you could get. And he's pushing for a lot of Ibogaine research, which I have friends that have been digging into this and tell me it's quite unbelievable for basically curing it. It's like a curative treatment for PTSD. I want to make sure that we have access to things that will really help our citizens and our people.

Yeah. Because they are suffering. That being said, when it comes to just legalizing something blanketly, I'm not in favor of that. I think if there's ways we can improve the current policies we have right now, I'd be all open to it. Well, I think that there's no better example of an issue that. that a, well, I'll just say this, I think there's a lot of very low information voters and a lot of people that wouldn't otherwise vote

that this issue sounds really good to them. They'll vote for it because they like it. And the other thing I'll say is, I have no problem with it. This is my position, I guess, maybe this is a libertarian position to a point, But my position on all of this is, I don't really care. If you want to get high all day, every day, if you want that, go for it.

I just don't want to have to pay for it. And that's where a state like Colorado, who has had this long enough now, I will guarantee you there is a lot of people that were involved in the legislature when that got passed that probably have a different opinion of it today. Because they've had it long enough now that the month, the initial, oh, we're going to use this for this and this is going to fill this gap. That's all done. And now you've got to live with it. And what they've gotten out of it versus what they gained, what they've lost from it versus what they've gained. I think it's a good case study for

the rest of the country, I think. Well, it's been used as a case study. There's papers written a specific honest. You know, my dad used to say this to me, you know, Zach, just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done. Right. And we have to, we just have to get back to remember that. You know, I talked about the quote that was written in that article about the Amish, and it said, you know, the big question they asked before they make a change is, what will this change do to my community? I think that's, that's the big question. What's the long-term change that this will have? Because, you know, if we're going to put effort in to creating new markets for things, you know, I want to, I have other things I'd rather create markets for. Yeah. That I think

long term are net additive to our society and community. And again, because I do know this is an issue people care about, I fully understand there are benefits to this. And I'm not calling to restrict it in that way. I want people that are suffering to be able to have access to it. But I also have looked at what you're talking about. And the benefits that are being listed there, by the way, this has been widely debunked for a long time. This is not something new. Like we we've understood, look at Spencer Pratt's campaign in California. You guys have been paying attention to this? Now, granted, I'm not comparing medical marijuana to what's happening in California with super meth and fentanyl. I get that. But there are people out there that also advocate

just legalizing all that. That's where I stand on the issue is just that, you know, I'm in favor of the current law that we have. I want people to have access to it. I'm even in favor to expanding it because I've heard people say, hey, it's, you know, difficult to get or, you know, there's not enough places. Okay, well, let's, let's have a discussion within there. But another thing my dad used to tell me is, you know, he used to say this to me is what, what adults do in moderation, children often will do in excess. And I think there is a case to be made there that, you know, we have a role to play to set the values for what we want to create as a culture in our state. Gosh, it's a large part of my campaign is that. And so it's a big issue. I think that this is another one.

And by the way, if I was just going out pushing the buttons, I'd have answered that question very differently. So I hope even if you disagree with me, you can see at least I'm being honest about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a bunch of fluff.

What other issues or topics or things he's running on that you think, I don't know. I guess I should have a specific example. But like what are some other things that are polar opposites of how you both see things that you think? You know, this is really interesting. because I think that what's happening with this campaign is, you know, I came out and I've, I announced, here's why I'm running. I want to break up these ag cartels. I want to, you know, make our education

better. I want to stop the cancer crisis. And those in November. And now, as I mentioned, a lot of the narrative has shifted in our state. And, you know, somebody said to me the other day, you know, that's largely a result of having this voice heard on Tucker Carlson and Sean Ryan. And I, had never thought about it in that regard. And I'm not saying it's all me. I'm just saying people are talking about these issues. But like, for instance, I've been very clear from the very beginning that when it comes to, you know, right now Bayer is pushing in 22 states.

They're pushing in the farm bill, the Supreme Court and through the executive order to get immunity from liability in lawsuit. And I just say, look, a core function of the free market is liability. If your product harms somebody, you should be held liable. And I've talked in depth about this. issue with a lot of people, but I just believe that no product deserves immunity from liability. The Vaccine Immunity Act, 1986, has likely caused more harm, health harm for our people than any other policy we've had in modern time. Yeah, and I want to say one thing about that. I don't think

Bear deserves any cover on that, because it's one thing, I don't know whether people have forgotten this or not, but Bear didn't invent Roundup. Monsanto, well, or was it DuPont and then became Monsanto? I don't remember, but it was Monsanto. And Bear came and they had a number and they bought the company. And they knew. They knew what they were buying. They knew that there was litigation.

They knew what they were buying. And they made the decision. They calculated the numbers. And they said, okay. this is what we think the exposure is going to cost us. This is what the product pipeline is worth. And at the end of the day, they said, yep, it's worth it.

So I don't have any, I don't think they're entitled to any cover on this whatsoever because if they weren't smart enough to make the decision and say, then maybe they shouldn't have bought it. But they did. And they doubled down on it. And now then it is what it is.

And I'll also say that when it comes to, I guess you'd call it tort reform, the United States needs it badly because the amount of exposure that companies have. I mean, a lot of the decisions that are made at a corporate level are entirely based off of liability. And there should be some protection that way, I do believe. needs to be reformed, but you're never going to get it as long as the lawyer lobby is the second most powerful or the most powerful lobby in Washington, D.C., which goes back to your point of, I don't know whether we can fix anything in Washington, D.C. But yeah, I just, I don't think that they deserve, I don't think they deserve any cover on it because they made that decision and they should have to live with it. Well, likely what will happen from that is that if they don't get major cover, which, you know, the Maha organization,

two weeks ago pulled that pesticide immunity out of the farm bill, which was a huge win. I was actually, I didn't know if it could happen, it did happen. The Supreme Court case is being argued right now. But if it does start to get that they have these shields from liability, if they don't get a shield, I think what they'll do

is end up just spinning it off. They'll make an agreement with the judge, put this many billions into an account, spin it off, and then whoever buys it will just put a cancer warning on the label. Yep. And then these lawsuits are done. Yep. And so, and then that, by the way, that will get depleted down.

But, you know, even if even if you don't believe that Roundup is genotoxic and causes cancer, you still don't do something like this. Because in 10 years, maybe you will believe it and maybe you will be affected by it. And then the recourse that you have is gone, completely gone. I mean, it's estimated that the VAERS, the vaccine adverse effect system, which is a premier vaccine injury database that we have. it's estimated by their own, by the government's own internal audits that it captures less than 0.3% of actual injuries from vaccines. That's crazy.

But also, there's no, you know, there's no incentive to get the right data because there's no liability even if you get it. There's like a small amount of people that get some sort of, you know, recourse and they're fighting a government system. Yeah. Instead of going through the courts, which are supposed to adjudicate this. And I totally understand the courts. There's a lot of problems we have the courts. I get it. But the answer to the problems in the courts are the answer to the problem with FIFRA,

you know, the federal and sexicide, rodenticide, Fundicide Act, or the EPA, is not to take the recourse away from an American citizen. That's not the answer. The answer is go fix the problem. And if you got to put a cancer warning on the label and then you kind of have this retroactive issue, you have it. Or if you have to sell it off, you have it. But we have to protect the.

citizens to actually have recourse on that. But also the tort reform is a good, a good point. And now I've studied these cases myself. And there's many cases, a ton of cases that come up that are just completely, they don't, they don't have any legs and they're just dismissed. But then you have some of the bigger cases where, as I say, I mean, Bayer has the most powerful attorneys in the world, especially now. They have no shortage of cash. They get a participant in the jury selection process. the jury's hearing at least 100 hours of testimony from both sides and they're losing on these big cases

because we know from their internal documents from Monsanto's internal documents what they knew. I mean, just the one just the one email from the EU representative of Monsanto when the EU basically said, we're not going to allow you to sell the agriculture version of Roundup anymore because the surfactant is too toxic,

the POEAs. And so they had to reformulate it. And by some estimations, it was 20x less toxic. And so they did reform it. And the internal email from the Monsanto representative in Europe to, I think of St. Louis, something like, why would we continue to make a harmful product when we know how to make a safer one? But they don't change the formulation. There's right and wrong things that you should be doing.

And it can't all be a bottom line decision because people are getting sick. Yeah. So one of the things that you want to do is, if I'm right, is independent third-party test of these chemicals. that to me doesn't sound like it should be a like a controversial idea. Only if you have something to hide. Yeah. So do you feel like you've gotten a lot of pushback on that? No, no, this is, you know, I think when I come to this idea, you know, a lot of people

have asked me to talk about glyphazate and roundup because I've done for years, I've just been digging into this because I've been so interested. My dad got non-Hodgkins lymphoma after spending his life in fields. And I just know far too many people that have got it. And we know glyphosate, what it's being implicated in and genotoxicity is directly in the creation of non-hontogenalovoma. And there's many reasons. I've read far too many studies in this, way too many, like that are, it can be mind-numbing at times. But the two things, the two primary things I'm calling for is, number one, no immunity from liability because we need that lever from the free market to hold companies accountable.

And two, like Ron DeSantis is doing in Florida, we need to have independent research on the safety of products. So he's doing it in different areas and food and things like that. But for us, I believe we just deserve to know because the majority of studies that go into licensing a product with the EPA are done by the industry. Yes. Majority. I think it was 90% of the studies on the EU were done by industry. And we just know this. It's common sense.

It's a fox guarding the henna house. Like you can't trust it. Well, this is what your science has been so co-opted in this way that, you know, I've argued with these, there's some people from Bayer on. X that have came after me and then they realize I'm not going to stop coming back at you with like real data. And they just like overload with snippets of studies where they highlight something. They have a folder of this stuff on their computer that they just try to overload the average person to say, you're crazy. But I've read these studies and I understand where they're coming from and who paid for them. That's the big thing about studies that people do not think about.

Yes. Who's conducting the study and who is paying for the study? Yes. That is a huge deal when a study is being done. And, you know, with Roundup, with glyphosate, we know the primary toxicity comes from the surfactin in it. Glyphosate has a very hard time entering the bloodstream in the first place. And I'm not calling to ban it. I never have, and that's not my point. My point is that we deserve to have independent, truthful research on this.

Every ag industry group should be calling for the same thing. Like, we have a cancer crisis in our state, you know? And the same thing with Parkinson's. I mean, Paracquot is directly. implicated in Parkinson's directly. It's used to create Parkinson's in lab settings. And to be able to spray it, you need, what, a 30 minute to an hour class online that you can do to be able to just go and get this?

I mean, at some point, research the Japanese paracquot poisonings. There's somebody going around putting like just a teaspoon of it into bottles in vending machines and people would, they couldn't figure it was going on. There's many, many deaths. It would happen with 48 hours, 56 hours later. it is so toxic. And so my point is, independent research is necessary.

The state needs to be doing that. Now, I would actually like to have a third party doing it because whoever's in charge at the state level, it's politics. Yep. And we just,

we just need real science. And what does it even mean anymore? Like, there's, so anyways. Farm bill, you touched on it briefly, but, you know,

it's going to the Senate. What do you think about the farm bill overall? what are your thoughts on the farm bill? You know, because I've been so focused on the state, I have not, I mean, state level issues, I've not dug deep into what the actual provisions of the farm bill are. And part of that is, who knows what's going to come out of the Senate. Yeah, well, exactly right.

It'll be, because then it'll end up having to go back to the House because there'll have to be a reconciliation bill. Exactly. So until it makes it to the House, we really don't know what it's going to be. And my hope for it is that the programs, that I hope that Bobby Kennedy and Brooke Rollins are having an impact here, and programs are starting to be bent towards the small producer.

That's my hope. I don't know if, I mean, gosh, I'd love to see other things. I'd love to be able to have grazable CRP. Like, I'd be able to open that up so we can actually start building soil health and creating a value-added product versus just leaving land a lot. Which, by the way, I get it. We're using a ton of land. And there's a case we made that, like, recharging aquifers, you know, these things are good.

in the same regard, you can benefit land way more if you have a room and an animal on it, on it, like actively building soil health. So my hope in the farm bill is that those types of things happen. But again, I don't, I think it's difficult. I don't think the people voting on it know what's in it. Yeah. Exactly right. I don't even know how many pages it is, but I guarantee it's hundreds, if not thousands of pages.

And we know that there's an attempt to stuff as much stuff into these bills as you possibly could that have nothing to do with farming. Yeah. You know, I haven't seen this lately. How many people, though, do you think, how many congressman woman do you think will get a bill like that?

It's not their, it's not their focus. They don't think, they don't know shit about agriculture. And then they just are like, where do I need to, how do I need to vote on this one? You think they just go to their conspicuous?

But don't you think what they should be doing? What should they be doing? and Sawyer. What do you do with every contract you see? Putting it into AI and checking it and... Yeah. They could look at it over. How many of them do you think do that? How many of them do you think feed it into manis?

Not any of them. Because they are too old to use technology to know how to do it. Because it's amazing. You can take some ginormous... And feed it in there and then it'll just sprint. You had a nice little summary that says, you know, pork, pork, pork, pork. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that, you know, to answer your question, I would say the vast majority do not read any part of this.

They'll have a legislative raid or somebody that might, like, hear about something or might be doing some of the AI. But they have largely delegated the duty of being an elected representative away from themselves and onto other people. Got staff for that. Fundraising, meetings with industry, meetings with K Street lobbyists. That's really what it's become. And it's very sad. It's very sad that it's becoming. you know, as I say, I think on the state level, I bet you guys know where your local representative lives here.

Yeah. I bet you could probably just. I can throw a rock. I can throw a rock at her from here. Is that Heather? Heather. Yeah. She lives just.

She was at my event this morning. Yeah. And that's what I mean. So that's what elected representative democracy is supposed to be. And even if you knew where your senator or house member lived, he said, so many decisions are being made by other people. and especially by lobbyists. Having some sort of blockchain for legislation creation would be quite unbelievable and understanding the man hours that went in for an actual congressional office to create a bill,

which I bet it would just astound us on the low side because it's coming from elsewhere. So my whole vision is go deep in aisle. People ask, hey, if you win this race, which I am not a presumptuous human being at all. Like, if you win this race, are you going to go for something else? No, I have no interest in running for anything else. If I could be the governor of Iowa for the next two decades to turn the ship around, and I don't want to be a career politician, but I think that's one of the things about Iowa that we can do, like, is have a long-term impact.

That's what I want to do. And I think we have a great case to be made that that's worth it. Let's talk about the schools. You used to open up schools. Let's touch on that a little bit because I haven't heard a ton on that specific subject when I've listened to stuff. like what did what did that look like how did you go about doing that what was the the the mission behind doing what you were doing there you know it was my kids honestly i well actually it's me you know when i was a kid growing up in school i didn't fit in i had too much energy i don't i'd like to say

i was too enterprising but that might be a compliment to myself that i'm just trying to give myself you know my i said that because i remember my parents heard a parent teacher conference once and which i didn't like those because of what would happen so or didn't either i wasn't i wasn't I wasn't. I'm in the same way. I remember my principal said to my parents, you know, if I was ever on a desert island, I'd want to be with Zach because he'd find a way off. But that was like a problem to be fixed. Yeah. You know, I was legitimately what kind of spurred this is I had a bad experience with education in that regard. You know, whatever it might be, whatever there's ADHD or whatever it might be. I just had a bad experience of not fitting in to that model. I think a lot of people are in that same boat. And so I can remember I was living in Montana. I was working for then-Congressman Steve Daines because we just ran a race for him. And I was a state director for a short amount of time. And we had our first son, Hudson, was born.

And my uncle, Marv, called me just to say congratulations. And he said, well, now you need to start thinking about schools. And I just laughed. But I actually started thinking about it. And I thought, you know, if he's anything like I was, I'm going to find him something different. Because like you should spend those most formidable years of your life engaged in things that are going to help you on your next, as we call it, your next great adventure. And so that really opened up my eyes. And so I spent a number of years just thinking about school.

And then, you know, we started our first school in Kansas. The network of schools we're in is now 300 schools across the country. We actually partnered with three primary schools. One is called Acton Academy out of Austin, Texas. And I spent two years visiting schools. I'd be traveling for work and I just find innovative schools in places. And I would like go visit them, learn from them because I knew nothing about education at the time. And, you know, I found like it's like a lot of things.

You get into it a little bit and you realize, you know, there's a lot of innovation that could happen here. There are smart people doing things. But also if you bring like a beginner's mindset to something, it could really benefit. And so I went in to learn for these people. Acting Academy is our primary school partner, and they're an unbelievable hands-on Socratic learning by doing school versus memorizing. The unbelievable model. And then we partnered with a school called Newview, which on the campus of MIT,

middle school high school on the campus of MIT, hands-on advanced projects they're doing, really cool stuff. But the third partner school we had, this is a really fun one. And we were, as far as I know, their only partner school in the country, was a school called Ad Astra. And that was a school that Elon Musk started for his kids on the campus of SpaceX and Hawthorne. So we actually had a space on that campus for our kids. Now COVID hit, he ended up shutting the school down.

And so it was short-lived. But what I got to do with all that is learn from people who are doing amazing things. And by the way, this is the approach I bring, I would bring as governor too. And I mean the sense of like, I don't know all of what could be done. but I would go out and find the people who are doing it really well and how do we learn from them. And so started the first school. And so our schools are very,

very innovative, but I say they go ages 3 through 18. They're Socratic in nature. So once you're in elementary school, every day starts off with the Socratic discussion. And it's like an in-depth question in your circle with your classmates. And there's a guide leading it. And it could be on any topic.

I think one of the topics I talked about, about was this, but I'll say you kick off every day intentionally, you end every day intentionally. And then the morning is core skills. It's all self-driven. You're using some technology, but you're also reading physical books, writing on paper, things like that. We deliver challenges. And the kids actually take on their own learning starting at age seven. So they'll have a mentor from the high school that is assigned to them that they meet with once a week, twice a week actually, in the beginning of the week to set goals for what they want to accomplish. And then if they have any problem, that's who they go to. So part of the idea is that young people are capable of far more than we

challenge them with right now and that there's models out there that are that are doing this well. And so we say if they can plan it, build it, design it, create it or lead it on their own, let them until you've worked yourself out of a job. It's all about giving them more agency over what they're doing. And so the morning is Socratic launch. We go to course skills. We have a lot of outside and free time. And like, I guess you, you call recess time, but it's unstructured. And the afternoon is hands-on projects, problems, and simulation. So one of those might be, you know, you're talking about the future.

We did one years ago about the future of farming. So it's a four to six weeks sprint that you're working on a project every afternoon for four to six weeks. In the end of it, there's a public exhibition where parents, grandparents, community members will come in and you're at seven, eight years old, presenting on stage about this problem that you were faced with that we gave them and then how you chose to solve it. And we deliver challenges every day. Basically, it's a packet.

And we hand it off to them. And so the younger ones will have partners with older ones. So there's, you know, because sometimes there's, you know, reading challenges, things like that. And they'll work together. And they get new challenges every day. And so that could be like future farming. It was the game that we put them within was that they were located in some desolate part of the country. And they each had different climates in their group.

and they had to figure out the nearest grocery store is four hours away, and then to figure out how to feed themselves. So what technology would you bring in? Would it be greenhouses? Would it be hydroponics? Would you have a good climate like here where you can actually grow most of it and it's more canning and things like that? And then at the end of that session, they'll do an exhibition.

Parents, all these people come in, they'll present, they'll answer hard questions. They'll take a week break and they'll come back in and we have a full new game for them that they're placed within. Okay. And so the Socratic launch is like one of them that I referenced is this. And I gave this one years ago, and it was when this was happening. It starts with this. Imagine this.

You're a visionary entrepreneur dead set on being the first person to land a rocket on Mars. And I did this in elementary. It's really fun. But in order to do that, you have to learn to relan rockets. You have to develop the technology, which many people say cannot be done. Every time you lose a rocket, it's $62 million up in smoke. You launch your first one. it gets off the platform and explodes in the air. The second one goes much higher,

tips over, explodes. The third one comes back down, explodes when it's when it's landing. $62 million every time. You're the entrepreneur. You now have a decision to make. Are you going to keep raising money even though you might waste your investors harder in dollars? Or are you going to pack it up and give up on your dream? And then we'll leave them with that first question. and then you'll have both sides arguing this. And the job of the guide is not to give an opinion in any way. If the discussion gets too far in one way, we'll add a question in that will draw it back to the middle.

And I remember this exact launch I gave, there's an eight-year-old boy. He's actually, I think, graduating this year or next year from the first school we started. And he said, well, is it public information that these things are crashing and blowing up? As like, yes, it's public. It's very public.

I said, well, I keep raising money because they know what they're getting into. Perfect. Smart man. And so the idea, though, is that you're putting them into the shoes of a hero where you have to make a really tough decision. And as you get into middle school and high school, they get higher stakes. It might be around gun control. It might be around really big issues. We don't interject any of that stuff in elementary because I say, like right now, our job is to help them like appreciate the wonders of the world and like love coming to school every day.

So real quick about the schools, I'll end with this, but we have different studios. So basically we have lower elementary, upper elementary, middle school, high school. And what we say is that as an entrepreneur, I like to synthesize goals down and to like make it really simple. People understand. Up until middle school, we only have two goals. Elementary has two goals. Love learning and learn to get along with other people. Love coming to school every day.

Have the fire just blaze in your eyes for learning. and then learn how to work well and a tight-knit tribe with other people. So one of my favorite things we do about this in elementary, which we could use a lot of this in government right now, is when there's a conflict in a school, usually if there's a persistent conflict in a class, like they'll either, if it's a big school,

put you in a different classroom, or they might put you on different sides of the class, but the teacher's stepping into, like, say, this is what you need to do, stop this right now. At our school is it doesn't work that way. we actually, either student that's in the conflict can call a conflict resolution session. They're led by a high schooler that's been trained in how to be a peacemaker. And they go through like an actual conflict resolution session that anybody that's been involved in marriage counseling understands well.

And it starts with this. It starts with why are we here? And it's we're here because heroes solve problems. They don't run from problems. And then the first person who called it gets a chance to speak. have it repeated back to them. And the second person gets a chance to speak, have it repeated back to them. Then they go into why it's happening.

At the end of it, it's what's one concrete thing the other person can do moving forward to make this better. And that's a negotiation. Because you two might be in a conflict. And Sawyer says, well, he looks at me funny and I don't want him to ever look at me again. Well, that doesn't work. Like you're in school together. But the end of it, what happens, and what the beautiful part of this is that an adult is not doing this. It's a high school student that's learning these traits of conflict resolution.

And that applies to almost everything throughout the school. Our guides operate very Socratically. Like if you're asking them a question, they're responding with a set of options where you can find the answer on your own or with another question to help kind of catalyze your thought process. But the end of the conflict resolution sessions, they shake hands and they go back into the studio. And, you know, Jordan Peterson visits our school once. And our first school, he met with the high schoolers.

said, how do you guys handle bullying here? And literally, and I didn't, I didn't even prep them for him coming in. I said, there's a really important person coming in. You might want to make this place look nice. That's basically I said, that was just my way of getting free cleaning because they need to clean that place. And they just shook their head no. And he said, what do you mean? He said, we just don't have that here. And it's not because we select for students based on something like that. These kids start at three years old. Yeah. It's because what actually is actual bullying? because it's an overused term, tremendously overuse. It's a long-term persistent conflict with a power dynamic at play that somebody feels like

they're trapped or helpless in. Well, this conflict resolution process completely takes that away. I've seen elementary kids call them on high school kids for not using the school properly and how they promised to do it. And the elementary kid was right, but they're empowered to do that. Yeah. So that's the idea is that kids are capable of far more than what we challenge it with right now. when it comes to elementary, you know, on average, we're moving about two and a half grade levels a year.

And in middle school, they're testing out of high school. Almost every one of them is. We go deep into the deep books of history. You know, we don't have books you have to read at our school. You pitch your books that go towards what we call badge books. And I tell people all the time, reading is a foundational piece of all education. But the key about reading is as Naval, Ravikon, who's, you know, you've probably heard of him. read what you love until you love to read.

That's the key. So many of these kids are forced to read these things that are just boring to them. It's like nails on a chalkboard. Give them a comic book. That's what we literally do. Graphic novel or comic. I get it. They're not the best literature.

I totally get it. But you're trying to develop a habit of wanting to, of loving to read. So I remember we did this. I remember I walked into our middle school one time. Gosh, I could talk about this for a long time. But I walked in a middle school one time. and there's one boy and three girls sitting out reading, reading during what we call Drop Everything and Read.

It's a time every day or every other day that we have specific reading time. They get to pick their book. When you're in middle school, you pitch it to your tribe, to your classmates, on why it matters to your hero's journey in life, what you hope to learn from it, and is it harder than the last book you read? It's basically the requirements. In elementary, it's kind of way more loose.

But I walked in the middle school and it was, the four books I saw were the Da Vinci Code, the boys who challenge Hitler, Atlas shrugged, and one other, and unbroken. These are the books they were electing to read on their own. Wow. And it's like the idea of like, learn to love to read. I can't wait. And look, the type of schools we operate, I'm not saying it's the answer for all the public schools.

That's not what I'm trying to say. But there are so many innovative models out there that we could be serving students better. And just last thing I'll say about that is in getting away from this idea, a very simple idea that seven-year-old boys shouldn't be in a desk all day and then when they can't sit still be medicated. Yeah. It's like it is it is so wrong. It is so wrong because we have other methods. Like at our school,

if you need to use a restroom, you can just use a restroom. You don't have to ask permission. Oh, I hated that as a kid. If you want a snack, no, there's freedom levels.

Like they actually, as they're working through their work, they'll earn points. And then if they do a lot on the week before, it shows they're really focused and they'll have a higher freedom level, which says you can get a snack when you want to get a snack. You can, you know, collaborate with other people when you want to. So they all want to be on this high freedom level, which is the only way to get there is by working hard.

And so sounds like America. There you go. And that's, that's it. It's about systems, the proper systems. If you have a complicated organization, as I've built businesses, as things get more complicated, you have two choices. Build better systems for basically self-governance or you can hire more people, which costs a lot of money. Yep. And often will complicate the complexity of your business.

You need good systems first. That's where our school is built on is good systems. Yeah, that sounds like school I'd love to go to. I mean, honestly, yeah, because, you know, I feel like memorization is becoming less important as the world is moving the way that it's moving. I mean, yeah, AI, just being able to regurgitate. Yeah, it doesn't serve you anymore.

So being able to critically think, think for yourself, collaborate with others, work hard, learn to love to read, learn how to learn. I mean, that's huge. By the way, every kid is born without ability. Yeah. We actually work it out of them in traditional school. Yeah. As I say, you don't have to teach any kid curiosity. They're all curious.

Yep. It's like, my sister called me the other day. She's reading this book that my wife recommended to her. And she said in the book, it talks about how like don't play with your kids very much. Like get them with other kids. And the whole reason was adults have lost their imagination. And by the way, there's a lot of that's a product of the traditional education system. And it is true.

It's like young kids are just naturally curious. If you just let them run and ask every single question they could possibly ask and you just don't, I mean, it's exhausting. I have seven kids. It's exhausting. But if you entertain that, you're going to have the fire in their eyes just be bright to learn. So your mother would always feel guilty because Sawyer. There's five years between Soren his brother. So they both had their own thing.

But when you would be playing, doing what you were doing, she would go up to your room once in a while or if you were in the living room. And she would sit down and want to play with you. And you would play with her about so long. And then you would just look at her like, how long are you going to stay here? Because she wouldn't do it the way that you wanted it done. And so finally she'd just be like, all right, you want me to leave you alone? And you'd be like, yeah.

Because you had your way. Well, you know, that's the same thing with, you know, with this way our school operates with the high schoolers being the mentors. When they're teaching how to do something on math, it is so much more relatable to the younger kids. It's received better. To receive. I'm just telling you it really is. And look, I know we have some great teachers out there. I totally understand that.

But they're closer in age group. And they look up to these older kids as like heroes. And so it's a really fun thing to watch, you know, eight-year-old kid walk into the high school room that we have and be. fearless and just say, I need help. And they just have these great relationships. And then watch a high schooler, you know, stop what they're doing to just like serve. And we call, you know, in our high school and middle school, you have a certain amount of servant leadership hours you have to accomplish to be able to move out of each studio to graduate high school and move from middle school to high school. I can't remember how many hundreds of hours it is. But they serve a ton. And I tell them,

but guys, of all the things you're going to do, this is the thing that will be most meaningful to you in the long haul is these kids who when when there's a graduation and there's all these little kids and that's what's bringing tears of their eyes because they see all these kids that they've impacted and our teachers know that too like they impact these kids so no it's that that is the schools have been one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done and my hope is to just bring more options to kids that don't fit into the system because there's so many out there but I also love you know I'll summarize with this. I tell people this quite often, if you can write well, speak well, and think critically, you, I mean, you're deadly. You can do very well. I think Jordan Peterson said

something almost like that. But if you can do those things, think critically, write well and speak powerfully, holy cow. Gets you a long way. It gets you a long way. It does. For sure. You said you have seven kids. When you look at the way the world's moving or a state eye or just our nation's moving. What, how are you going about guiding them towards prosperity in the America that we, we hope to have? I mean, it's just, it's a very uncertain time as a young person. You know, every person my age or younger is thinking about AI displacing them.

Getting a house is really challenging. Paying for a family is really challenging. But there's also a lot of opportunity out there as well. And so I would just curious, you know, being a father, you know, what are you telling your kids or what are you hoping they, they go towards, you know, in this uncertain place we find ourselves in? You know, I think there's like underserved parts of the market that are out there they can see. I think tech is far over served right now. I think, you know, there's that saying that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated.

And I think there's been a lot of abdicated responsibility in our society right now. I think agriculture is a responsibility, but there's opportunity there if you're willing to look in other areas. But I'll tell you from a baseline of like how I'm talking to the kids, you know, You remember that football coach Nick Saban? Yeah. Alabama, right? I remember I was watching an interview he did once and they're like, how did you do this?

And by the way, those sports interviews are always just the worst. It's like, I always say the same. But Nick Saban actually said something. He was almost exhausted by the question. He said, look, there's just one way. There's only one way. And it's through tremendous hard work and discipline towards what you want to do. So my point to my kids as we look through like, you know, some of the schooling that we do,

from the unschooling that we do is understand where your gifts and abilities meet the world. Like, what are you good at? Like, where's the opportunity like? Even if you're not as passionate about it, I think this idea of following passion is wrong. Now, granted, over the long term, I think it can make sense.

But first, like, where does opportunity present itself because you have a certain talent? You know, in our schools, we say that we believe every child is a genius. And it's not that they all have a 140 IQ. It's Webster's Dictionary that they're specifically, could be specifically gifted in a certain area.

And my goal as a dad is to help guide them towards what I see in them. And so, you know, I have a son that really, like, he is really engineering analytical-minded. And so we're really purposeful on technology. I try to limit technology as much as possible. But now with him, I'm thinking about, okay, what can he build with AI? Like, how can he use this to help, to help him? And he's, you know, he asked me the other day, he said, dad, what's the biggest issue you're facing on your campaign with like that was causing the biggest headache. And I say, you know, it's really like unread messages that I haven't

responded to in emails. And so he literally went and built, built me a dashboard that ties into my Gmail, doesn't have text message yet. He's working on it that will like set reminders for me on messages and scan it to see what's important. I mean, he's 13. So like, like, it's fun. How really useful is it? I don't know yet. But the point more is he's learning to use these things as a tool. Now, that being said, I think going back to like, where did God give you gifts in this world, I think some people have that analytical engineering mind. Other people have like speaking and they're really good at that, casting vision and helping inspire people.

But when it comes to practicality, my hope is that some of them will work on some of things we're talking about. Like I would love the kids to, like, I would love to have a farm that's diversified in so many ways that there's like different things that each, not each because that's seven, but that the kids that want to be involved can be involved in and that we can pass some of these food freedom laws and things like that that help them like grow something and create an example for for the next generation. But ultimately my big message to the kids, whether it's me helping with their football or sports, is just that

there's only one way. Like look, one of my sons is a really gifted quarterback. He's a great thrower. I mean, just has a great arm. And he's practiced and practiced since he's like seven years old just because he loves doing it. And I've said to him, look, you have this natural talent that you've, I mean, you've built it, but you're really good at it. But that'll only get you so far. There's going to come a time very quickly where hard work is the thing that will beat out all of this. And so that's what I'm trying to get to them is like, number one, where's the opportunity presenting itself for you? And then just know, the work ethic is what's going to provide you. So like if you're doing something like this,

like what you're doing right now, that it's this compounding effect, which is a book that I've had my kids read as a compound effect. It's the one book I read every year just because it's so simple. Like this compounding effect of hard work that you might not see the payoff now, but you keep doing this,

and you guys are seeing the past, but you keep doing this for 10 years and you have no clue what your reach could be. But everybody's just given up. And this is where David Guggins. You know, David Guggins? The younger generation, they just quit. And like, look, I actually reject the idea that the younger generation doesn't work.

They're not coming to our communities. Like, there's a lot of kids that want to work hard. Oh, yeah. I have a couple of kids that help mow my lawn on the farm. I mean, some of these, one of the kids is 10. And he's out there. And he's like on time every week. They're working hard.

Him and his older brothers, they want to work hard. But it is true that if you can take criticism and you can take, you know, constructive feedback on how to do better, you are set you are leaps and bounds ahead of the average person because they just hear this oh and that's by the way probably a product of the school system that it there's only two grades anymore in school a and not a that's basically it because it's either you got an a or you didn't do well enough and what what would you do wrong it's like where life isn't like that it's like continuous improvement towards something and that's what i hope my kids can see yeah that's really great uh i was going to ask we were going to do a rapid fire round And one of the questions was, what's one book every American should read? Do you think it's the compound effect or do you have another one? Every American? Well, maybe person. Well, I mean, you know, the compound effect I've found is just, you know, fun because it's simple, it's short.

And it's like what we all know. It's like you just need to be reminded of every year. It's like, look, if you start eating a cookie every single day, that's going to compound of you gaining, you know, 10 pounds by the end of the year. Like, that all adds up. know, same thing as if you decide to walk, you know, five minutes every day. It's also going to compound and you, you know, cut out some of the sweets. But if I was going to recommend, you know, my favorite books that I've been reading lately that I, um, are books on Iowa's history. And I

mean this sincerely about heroes of our past. And the reason I read them and I read them and I read them and I read them to remind them that the same DNA that ran through this person that this heroic thing runs through you. And there is no difference. You can do these things. When John Johnson, who was a trapper in the 1850s, moved to Iowa in 1860 or somewhere around there, when he went to the convention,

Republican State Convention in one, he walked from Webster City to Des Moines to participate in it. Yeah. And then he was elected as a delegate to the Chicago Republican Convention, which made Abraham Lincoln the next president, and he walked from Webster City to Chicago. like he did that because he had something he believed in.

And I just, I firmly, and this is something I've done with my kids since they're very young. And is my dad did it well with me. I tell stories. I make up, I have this whole series of stories. I used to tell my young boys that are called the pocket watch stories.

And it was that they'd wake up on our farmhouse and they'd find this watch. And that, then when they'd find the watch, they'd pick it up, open up, and they'd be like, they walk out of the room and all of a sudden they're transport. I reported back to when my great-grandparents lived there,

and my grandpa was a young kid, and they'd get into some crazy adventure with them. And I'd end up telling them a story about our family history through that. But my kids loved those stories. And I just tell people like, kids love stories. And here's the beauty of some of our stories,

or about telling stories. We have true stories in our families and in our state history that will inspire them to know they're capable of extraordinary things. So if you go to the Thrift Bookstore in Cedar Rapids or somewhere, go to the Iowa history section

and find these awesome books written about Iowa's heroes and just tell them to your kids and be like, like ask difficult questions about it and like just inspire them to know that like this could, this is you.

This literally is you. And like think of what you're going to do. One of my favorite questions of the school and I still do this with my kids and they ask me a question of like, dad, I can't figure this out or that out. I said, you know what?

That sounds like a big problem, complicated problem. And I cannot. wait to hear how you figure out how to solve it. And it's just like in spite, you can solve this problem. Yeah. That's awesome. We have a segment on here. We like to call Tip of the Hat. And it's what, what is a person, who's a person in your life or what is a thing you use or what is a brand that you like or you represent that you want to tip your hat to and say, this is an amazing person, brand thing I use every day that are doing it right. That are doing it right. And I want to give my flowers to them. And every time

we ask us, people usually give out multiple tips multiple hats so you can do that. But what are some of those things for you? You know, in terms of, in context of me like running for office, I would like, I'd tip my hat to, you know, Kenzie manufacturing, Latham seeds to these guys who have been doing it

for three generations in our state, even when things get really hard and they keep going. Even when the deck seems stacked against them, they keep going. And there's many Iowa homegrown business. It's like, I, every time I talk to one of them, I'm just sort of an awe of keeping to the mission. And like, knowing that this is like way bigger than a financial return. They're like affecting the lives of people every day.

You know, and then personally, I've, you know, mentioned him, you know, I've watched as my farm partner, Ryan Wallace is like, went deep in like the community with us. and, you know, worked on our farm together, taught me so much. Like, I tipped my hat to him and people like that, for sure. You know, the obligatory answer, which is also very true, is my wife. Yes. It's very true. And I'm not saying it because I have to. I'm obliged.

I'm saying it because, you know, your marriage determines a lot of outcomes in your life. Yep. In many ways. I've been, you know, I've went through divorce. I've been remarried. And I, you know, I understand deeply how important their relationship is. In part, I understand it because I didn't do it right the first time. And I've had to, you know, work hard to rebuild those relationships.

And I have, you know, my former spouse is supporting my campaign. And we have a great relationship now. But it took time. And, you know, in the first 10 years when I was married, really, I've never talked about this anywhere publicly, but really I was just didn't maintain my marriage because I was so focused on like, what am I going to do to get myself out of this place I grew up in and I want to accomplish to succeed? And then you fast forward to, you know, I'm remarried now and my wife basically had to push me into this. Yeah, I'll just say, I haven't met your wife, but a woman who married

somebody and has seven kids and then says, you know, you really should run for governor. That is a woman that I need to meet because kudos to her. Yeah. No, she is pushing you to be the best you can be. She is. And I mean this sincerely. No, granted, it's not an easy marriage. No marriage is easy.

I just tell, I try to tell my friends, you know, why I've counseled people out of marital problems because I've went through them and I understand like, look, stick the course. Have like, you know, none of this is easy. It's not meant to be easy. Attention in everything is good. Attention in relationship. You don't want somebody that agrees with you.

every step of the way. You know somebody's going to challenge you to be better? And my wife definitely does not agree with me every step of the way. And she challenges me to be better in that way. And also, you know, we all get to the points where we're thinking about like, oh, you know, there's a million reasons not to do something like what I'm doing. And then she brings me back to the reality of like, look, this is it. This is your opportunity.

And by the way, there's more than one way to win this race. you know, we've single-handedly, I believe, not single-handedly, but we've in large part shifted a narrative in our state that I think could help people live healthier lives regardless of whether I'm elected or not. That alone is worth it for me to do what I'm doing. Yeah. And so all this stuff, the negative comments I read, all of those things, when you've been through the things I've been through, especially on the marriage side, there's not one

thing somebody could say about me that I haven't said 10 times over already myself. And I've pulled myself out of that with good Christian, others that have helped me really realize, God has more for your life. He has big plans for you. And my wife has been so big on that, too. So those be my hat tips. Amen to that. That's awesome. Amen to that. What can people do to get involved or see what you're up to or support you? How do people find you? Yeah. How do people find you? Well, we're doing, yeah, Zachlane.com is the easy answer. Z-A-C-L-H-L-H-N.com. We're doing town halls. I think we're 23 days left. Gosh, I mean, I've lost I'll just go. We're almost there.

June 2nd's the primary. I need support. I need people to go out and vote on June 2nd. Early voting starts in just a couple days. You can actually go in and vote. By the way, we have so many people who've said, you're the first Republican I'm ever going to vote for, because you're actually talking about the issues that matter. I'm changing my registration to vote for you. In Iowa, you can change your registration at the polling place to vote. So I'm a Republican. Join the Republican Party, even if it's just for a day, vote for us.

you know, for Republicans that are out there, please get out and vote. That's my big message. We have a huge opportunity to change the trajectory of our state for the long term. I really sincerely believe that. And the movement that's kind of come alongside this, which has been, you know, humbling and surprising to me, just how many people are saying, like, yes, this Iowa first message is the right way to go. That's been unbelievable.

And so I'm hoping that translates to going out to the poll on June 2nd and voting. And of course, if any of your listeners want to chip in some money, we'll never say no. Yeah. That's awesome. We really appreciate you making the trip. It's been an absolute pleasure and honor to have you on here. Guys, if you got any value from the show, share it out with the people that you know, leave a review on Spotify or Apple.

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