Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 471 - Trent Loos

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

Trent Loos is a 6th generation farmer from Nebraska and the founder of the Rural Route radio show. Rural Route is a one-hour radio show aimed at bridging rural and urban America. Each weekday they take a look at the key issues affecting our nation and explore what they mean for those involved in agriculture and those that derive the benefits of products produced by America's farmers and ranchers. Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢LMNT Electrolytes FREE SAMPLE PACK until Jan. 31, 2021: http://bit.ly/3bxyMND ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Hey everybody, welcome back to Mark Bales Power Project Podcast. Today's episode of the podcast is brought to you by Element Electrolytes. Electrolytes have so many benefits. Too many damn benefits. All right, so for a lot of you guys, this is World Carnivore Month. A lot of you guys are getting carbs out of your diet and you're feeling kind of tired and you're like, how can I perform? Electrolytes are one of your keys.

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but we also hear people say like oh i would like to try that but x y and z it's like all your excuses are now gone all you have to do is hit the link down in the description uh whether you're listening to this or uh watching this on youtube um yeah the link is drink lmnt.com slash power project again it's just five dollar shipping charge that's all they're saying they're like hey we're not going to charge you anything let's just break even here you guys pay for the shipping we're going to give you eight samples okay so that that's again the best freaking electrolytes on the planet you get to try them for free drink lNT comm slash power project to go there right now Yeah, you kind of get what we're putting down over here Andrew. Yeah Conga

Kind of like a plunger effect Well, I remember somebody saying that it's shaped that way to help like plunge anyone else's stuff. Hmm Yeah, so yours can get in yeah yeah it's like a it's like a the mushroom thing it's just like true come out yep you know it's a great way to talk about mushrooms today again man no evolution's crazy huh like just like even even the shape is just meant to stop you from getting cooked i mean quite literally that's what it's yeah right oh my god oh lord jesus we're not recording it are we uh well yeah we are now but good that doesn't have to you know be on yeah i won't say it again

maybe we'll release that part for the newsletter. The good part is you only have to say it once. It's recorded forever. That's right. They're recorded forever. The amazing benefits of hitting record early. Oh, God. Yeah.

Yeah, man, you're sneaky with that shit. So, like, what I really want, and this is actually something I want to do for, like, the, I just also don't want to freak out, like, guests when they come in. But, like, I would like a light that says recording, you know, when I hit record at the new studio. But I also don't want, you know, like, a normal, casual conversation. And then all of a sudden, that big old recording light turns on. Yeah, exactly. The guest tenses up. Yeah, everyone freezes I remember we would like tell like we were a lot better at this before but we would tell guests like hey as soon as

You get in the room just know that we're recording like it's not gonna seem like it, but that's what happens Yeah, and now we kind of just You better know just know like yeah, I don't know then that's your fault. The best ever was Mike Ryan. Oh, my gosh. He's in the middle of telling some horrible story. And then I think we're like, and he stopped for a minute, and then we're like, we're on. And he just went right. Kept going.

Yeah, he just kept going. And skip a beat. Yeah, that was PowerCast days. If you guys want to look that up, that was when we filmed in your brother's house for a couple episodes. Right. That was a fun trip. Mike just doesn't care, though.

That's the awesome part about it. Doesn't care. But, yo, today's going to be interesting. Yeah. It's going to be hard following up this conversation, but. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Today we got a sixth generation farmer on the show. We gotrent loose on the show and uh i don't know it should be cool just to talk to him about like um you know the big agricultural uh companies you know you got um some uh you know practices that like you know i don't know i don't know what happens at a lot of these places i know a little bit because we've been informed by other guests uh but you know how bad is it and you know, I don't know. I don't know what happens at a lot of these places. I know a little bit because we've been informed by other guests. But, you know, how bad is it? And, you know, where should people put their money? If they can afford to put their money towards regenerative agriculture or towards other suggestions that he might have today. And you have the opportunity to do that.

You have the ability to do that. and you have the opportunity to do that, you have the ability to do that, whenever you can, as much as you can, why not lean towards some of those things rather than participating, I guess, in what these big farms tend to do. Cool thing about Trent, though, is because when you look him up and you see some of his videos, there are multiple videos that pop up where he's debating vegans or debating individuals that have these views that like, um, animal agriculture or, you know, farming is hurting the environment is cruelty, et cetera. Trent is like the guy that you go to, to, uh, try to flesh out all of your arguments. If you're on the side of agriculture, like he knows all the the statistics i saw this one interview with the with him versus a some some other vegan guy who who knew a lot of

stuff but when the guy was throwing out statistics trent was like no that's actually not from that's not from the center of disease control that's from this you need to look that up if you're getting that statistic that's actually wrong he was correcting him on a lot of his own statistics that he looked up so this man knows his stuff he knows his stuff well yeah and we're just trying to get jacked off of uh eating some meat over here but we want to try to do so in a responsible way so uh why not go to somebody who knows what's up and you know learn yeah how's uh carnivore month going for you mark i know you're getting even leaner yeah i've seen the videos but i want to hear it straight from you yeah it's going good feeling good eating lots of meat um had some uh

had some flying dutchman yesterday yeah uh real quick i didn't know you i mean i knew you could do this but like i never did it but you can get a flying dutchman with a whole grilled onion yeah it's so good it is it's better it's so good. It is. It's better. It's so good. I like it. Sorry. Yeah, you can get it with anything on it. Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, it's been great.

I've been feeling good. Cooking up some meat even here at the office since we got that Ninja Foodie. Oh, it's here? Yeah, yeah. That's been convenient. That thing cooks it like perfect, man. Really? Hit that air fry button and bam.

I haven't really had a steak from an air fryer before. After all the time we've talked yeah you guys have been talking about it a lot i've never uh i've never come down to that level but i knew it i was ready oh it's fantastic it comes out comes out freaking perfect wow so normal people this is how normal people live they can cook good food too this is just this is disgusting how normal people live get me out of here oh man are we is he here yeah he's coming in he's walking around perfect wow love it goddamn that mustache is glorious. It is unbelievable. Can't quite hear him yet, but we'll get him. He's muted right now. Got to unmute the man.

Okay. There we go. There we go. Great to have you on the show today, Trent. I'm not the kind of guy you want to just see and not hear. You'd rather hear me and not see me. Appreciate your time. Appreciate you coming on the show today.

Kicking things off, you know, a lot of people have a lot of questions in terms of agriculture, and I think a lot of people think that farming in general is a major danger to our environment and things like that. And so it'd be great to get some of your perspective and with some of your background, sixth generation farmer, it'd be great to get some of your background and to kind of hear what you have to say from your side of things. That'd be awesome. Thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, great to have you today. We start at 10?

We can get going right now. We're live now? We're live now, sir, yes. Well, how about that? I should turn it on then, huh? That's right. Thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity. You are right. There are a lot of people that really just don't understand what's going on and fall prey to a lot of misinformation. And quite frankly, we've never been more environmentally sound. We've never done a better job producing a high quality, safe, healthy supply of food at a low cost. So there's a lot of questions that need to be answered. I appreciate the opportunity.

at a low cost. So there's a lot of questions that need to be answered. I appreciate the opportunity. Are cattle, are they hurting the environment? You know, we hear about, you know, cows farting and cows burping and so forth. And is this having a real negative impact on our environment? No. In fact, cattle are essential to a healthy environment. And to substantiate that, I'm going to go back in history a little bit. In 1800, Lewis and Clark go, obviously, from St. Louis to somewhere about where you're at right now, the Pacific Ocean. And it's estimated that the number of bison scientists, they argue maybe from 65 million, some say as high as 120 million bison roamed the North American continent at one point in time. Today in the United States, we have just short of 90 million head of cattle. And I find it ironic that we have about the same number of cattle as we had bison yesteryear, and those bison were perfect for the environment, and somehow today the cattle are destroying the environment.

It doesn't have a sound science behind the overall assumption. So let's break it down. A cow has a stomach that has four chambers, and that cow and that rumen can actually consume cellulose material. And that cow and that rumen can actually consume cellulose material. Not can, it does consume cellulose material that humans cannot eat and have no value whatsoever. The only value for the cellulose material, if it were not for a rumen, is that to be fuel for a fire. And when you take into consideration that equally 75% of the United States landmass, along with 75% of the landmass in the world, is not suitable for growing crops, but it does grow cellulose material that a rumen animal can get to and

consume and convert into the highest density food item on the planet. That gives you the idea of how important a ruminant animal and a cow is to convert this land into not only food, fiber, pharmaceuticals, and fuel. People tend to forget that 130 life-saving pharmaceuticals come from animal agriculture. So aside from all of that, if you look at the plant itself, and there's a tremendous study out of Mongolia about five years ago, There's a tremendous study out of Mongolia about five years ago that documents the more animals you have and the more rotational and proper grazing that you do generates more growth. It's kind of like people, they feel inclined to have a healthy lawn. And what do they do to keep a healthy lawn? They mow it on a regular basis. And so just think about the cow as a lawnmower for 75% of the Earth's landmass.

It cannot grow a crop that humans can live on. And as you keep a healthier lawn or a healthier grass, you actually absorb more nutrients from the atmosphere. What are the nutrients in the atmosphere that feed plants? Well, we call them greenhouse gases. CO2 is plant food. And so it's just a cycle of life. And in fact, it's pretty well documented. And Alan Sabry did this in South Africa. The more animals that you have, the more plants you require, the healthier the planet is. And so somehow we've allowed

individuals with an agenda, whatever that agenda may be, to hijack the sentiment that the cow is somehow dangerous for the planet, when in fact the science clearly states it is vital for the planet. For no other reason in my world, I ask myself, well, why did God put this cow here if she wasn't necessary to keep a healthy planet? We got some friends that are vegan, vegetarian, that make that choice because they believe that they're harming the environment. What are your thoughts on that?

Like, are they making a good decision or is that a decision that might be based off of some false information? It's a decision that's based off a lot of false information. If you want to maintain a healthy planet, you must consume animal products. Let me back up, though, because I want to say that I'm not against somebody choosing to be a vegan, vegetarian, keto, carnivore, whatever your choice is. We should celebrate the fact that we have those choices. What I want to make sure is that you make those choices based upon the facts. And if you can listen to what I just described in terms of

the importance, particularly of the cow, and for the most part, most animal proteins come from animals consuming a resource that was not fit for human consumption. So we feed it to an animal and they upcycle it into a tremendously healthy, safe supply of protein, amino acids, and fat. From the standpoint of nutrition, the one thing that bothers me more than anything is how fat has been demonized. And I've had some great conversations with some of the leading psychologists in this country. And they clearly document that if you're not consuming animal products, you have a challenge when it comes to mental health with the balance of omega-3s and omega-6s. And because we've demonized fat, we do not maintain the proper balance of omega-3 and omega-6. Omega-3 gets a lot of attention, omega-6 does not. And so I just

want everybody to look at the real facts, celebrate the fact that we have choices, but based upon health and the science, make those choices which are best for you. I have interviewed, in fact, several vegans, and over a period of time, their health deteriorates. And, in fact, one young lady I interviewed from California, she was talking about she kept every year that she would feel less and less healthy. And so the peers around

her would tell her, well, you're just not vegan enough. And she was almost not vegan enough until she killed herself. And then she finally recovered and started looking at the real science and what healthy living is all about. Make no mistake. I think that healthy, healthy living is eating a moderate amount of all food groups and exercising more than you eat. Kind of like grandpa and grandma did. They were born in 1918. Along with that were a lot of individuals talk about the, you know, they're going vegan because the environmental effects.

A lot of individuals that are vegan will send me from time to time, you know, videos of cattle and animals, just disgusting things that happen sometimes or, you know, disgusting ways in which they're butchered or packed in, et cetera. And you see that. And even though I eat meat, you kind of get this feeling like, oh, God, that kind of just, you know, you don't want to see it. Right. So my question to you is, as far as those individuals, they obviously have the ethical

claim that it's it's it's harmful towards animals, et cetera. And I mean, yeah, you're killing animals. But is that practice the stuff that you see sent? Is that the majority of the way farmers deal with those animals? Or is that a minority? Or is that just how things have to get done so you can get food on your plate? So we do butcher at our house from time to time. And I would invite you to come and help do that.

It would be a great educational piece. And I think that everybody should be a part of that. I think that the fact that you're a part of the butchering process, rendering an animal unconscious immediately is something that everybody should be a part of. So that you have a better respect for what that animal has done to improve not only our life, but the planet. Everybody serves a purpose and nobody gets out of here with a live forever card, nor do I want one, by the way. But the honest true story is that we the majority of the food that we consume. And in this case, we're talking about animals are run through USDA inspected facilities.

And we have had questions. This question has come up. And so we have had scientists, non auditors who are third party, non-involved in the situation come in. And the science clearly indicates that 99.9999% of the time, the animal is rendered unconscious immediately and the process begins. If you've ever been in one of these modern state-of-the-art packing plants, we'll call them, you would be so impressed. Number one, the cleanliness. Number two, the care that's given

to the animals and how streamlined this process is to eliminate that ugliness that you want to talk about. You know, I bring that back to the basic premise and the thing that I live by and try to explain to people on a daily basis. Everything lives, everything dies, and death with a purpose gives full meaning to life. You see, I think what we tend to forget is that nothing lives without something else dying. There has to be a death in order for another life to continue. And when you put it into that context, it just gives a different meaning. I take the life of an animal with respect and understand that this is necessary for us to continue the cycle of life. Are there some practices by some of the big farms that you would like to see changed or stricter laws? Or do you feel like they're pretty tight and we do a pretty good job with it?

I don't believe that there are any laws that would help us. You see, here's what, and that's a great question because everybody thinks we need some law to make sure this animal is treated better. As you mentioned at the beginning, I, my family's been in this country since 1832 taking care of livestock. And we have learned that in order for us to continue to be sustainable, the buzzword of the day, which includes profitable, my job as a stockman is first and foremost to maintain the lowest stress level possible of the animals that I'm caring for. And with COVID in 2020 and 2021, it's a great example. If your immune system is stressed in any way, shape, or form, you're more susceptible to a virus. We have the same situation that's forever taken place on farms and ranches.

If I do anything to elevate the stress of any animal on a daily basis, then I'm going to put my animals at a greater risk for disease. So my job ultimately is to maintain the lowest level of stress with these food animals that I possibly can. And the greatest stressor in life is not the farmer. It's Mother Nature. nature. We today are sitting here in central Nebraska on the second day in a row of 60 plus mile an hour wind gusts. And my job as a stockman is to make sure that those animals are protected from that impact of mother nature, because the minute they're stressed, everything else is going to start falling apart. So we don't need laws to continue to help improve animal welfare. We just need incentives to continue to produce the high quality, low disease prevalence animals

that lead to the quality of proteins that we're talking about here and all of the essentials of life. It comes back to stockmanship and the people who are involved in agriculture today, big or small, if they're not good stockmen, the market is going to take them out of the business. You don't need to worry about a new regulation or a law. What do you do with the cows when it's that cold and windy outside? You bring them inside your house or what do you do? That's actually a great question because that's the worst thing that we could do. We give them in Nebraska where it snows a lot and the northern Great Plains is a tremendous cow-calf country. We give them protection with shelter

through trees. And so one of my favorite things, and just yesterday I told my wife, we had this 60 mile an hour northwest wind coming and the cows are behind a shelter belt, just protecting them from the wind in the far northwest corner of that pasture. I've often told people that I can do more weather prediction by looking at my cows and telling me what the weather is going to do in the next 24 hours than a weatherman can with $2 million worth of meteorological equipment, because they have learned to adapt and survive. If, in fact, you bring your cows in, and this happens with horses quite often, actually. They think they want to put a horse in a barn or a stall and protect them,

bring them in the house. The worst thing for an animal is when you have temperature fluctuations. So if you had a group of cows, or even a couple of cows, that came into the barn at night on a really cold night, there's going to be some level of condensation. There's going to be some level of getting warmer, and it's going to be a moist warm. And then you have to go back outside.

And when they go back outside, it's that temperature variation that really induces stress. Just across the board, it's tough to ask somebody in California where the weather is 80 degrees every day. But if you look at other parts of the world, the real parts of the world, do people get sick more often in the summer or in the winter? They get sick more often in the winter because they go inside. And it's that temperature fluctuation that challenges your immune system. And so we bring that same type of mentality to the cows.

The most important thing is shelter, not in the form of a barn, but particularly a row of cedar trees where those cows can get in. They'll stand in out of the wind and the snow, and then they can get right back out and forage. And that's the best way. But along those lines, I think it's important that you allow each farmer to determine what's best because maybe what works best in central Nebraska might not be the best thing in the Everglades of Florida, which is a great cow state, by the way. So each farmer should be able to determine how to minimize the level of stress, taking care of Mother Nature the best way possible.

As a side note, many of my friends who ranch along the Rocky Mountains, mostly in Montana and now Colorado, has just passed a reintroduction of the wolf law, a rule that they're going to reintroduce the wolves. The biggest cow stress in Montana for those ranchers, aside from the weather and trying to minimize that level of stress, is that cows, even the cows that are not eaten by predators, the wolf, they have a higher level of stress because the cows are always on edge. They've got something lurking there all the time

now. So it keeps coming back to the same story that I've shared since we started. And that is, what can I do as a stockman to minimize my stress? And I should say minimize my cattle stress, but that's kind of my case too. How do I minimize my stress so I'm not susceptible to these disease challenges and other issues? You know, on the note of what Mark asked earlier in terms of potential practices that maybe should be changed, her name's escaping me. Maybe Andrew or Mark, maybe you guys know, we had a regenerative agriculture individual who owns some farms here in Davis. She came on and she was talking to us about how like chickens and some cattle,

like with bigger companies, they feed them in a way to have them grow very, very, very quickly. I forgot the rate of which like chickens used to get to adulthood, but like now it's like two weeks. It's about half of what it was. It's 47 days. There you go. 47 days.

And she's explaining us uh some of the i guess potential health risks of you know eating a chicken like that but i know like you were mentioning farmers need to be profitable and companies need to be profitable and that obviously increases profits do you think though that that is something that um is good for uh consumers is that something i, obviously it's profitable, but is that something that should be changed to become like to, to go back, I guess, to normal for those animals? Or is that a beneficial thing for the consumer and obviously for farmers? I guess I don't know what normal is in that situation, but I understand your question.

Like reaching adulthood at a normal rate, I mean. But what is a normal rate? Because all that's happening is that farmers are feeding and minimizing stress so that the chicken grows at its best genetic potential. That's all that's happened. It's really no different than people. How tall were people in 1860 in the United States?

How tall are people today? We've grown because we don't have those limiting factors. You know, the most amazing thing, and I had a nutritionist, an animal nutritionist that I now rely on for human nutrition, who taught me at an early age. I was 18 years old, and I was very involved in animal agriculture, and we were continuing to grow my father's son operation with my father. And he said, you know, Trent, the most important time in the animal's life is during gestation. And you have to really capture the womb effect.

And like the and by the way, I'm talking about this. Dr. Fred Mattson taught me about this in 1985. And he said, how you feed that pregnant animal is determining the metabolism, the health and everything of that unborn child. And so what we did was we learned how to feed the mother, even if it's a chicken nesting on eggs, how to feed them so that they would put a better level of nutrition and everything possible to build the immune system to minimize stress, to allow the genetics to take over. And then we learn how to feed them the ideal protein diets and we feed them in a feeding manner that they just, again, minimize the stress. And if you accomplish all of the things that I talked about,

you're going to have animals expressing their fullest genetic potential. Another thing that we do in the chicken industry is way ahead of, I'm involved in beef, cattle, and pork and horses at our place, but the chicken industry has been looking at the genomics. So they take a tissue sample, just a very small tissue sample, send it in, look at the genomics of an individual animal, and they can see whether these alleles are present for rapid growth, or maybe this chicken doesn't have the rapid growth. They're also looking, by the way, at alleles, the genetic DNA fingerprint is what it is, that may have a resistance to certain diseases. So we're looking at animal agriculture in a totally different light than we were in 1900, which, by the way, brings me to the greatest success story of American

agriculture is in 1900, it required 10 acres of land to produce enough food to feed one person for a year. And you fast forward to 2021, you can look at 2020 that we just completed. You can look at 2020 that we just completed. It required less than a third of an acre. And that we accomplished that is that we implement so much of the science and the technology to maximize performance and minimize stress. And once you minimize stress, your genetic potential will take over and you'll be able to utilize all of the nutrition that is present. So while we have accomplished it at the end result of what you were talking about, we've done it through natural selection and eliminating the mistakes along the way by looking at DNA

fingerprints and doing womb effect and just animal husbandry across the board. Thinking along the same lines of like produce, you know, like fruits and vegetables are like now, you know, 10 times bigger than they used to be and they're a lot sweeter now. But you had said that cows are kind of almost always on edge. Have they always been big and slow, essentially making them a huge target for prey? big and slow, essentially making them a huge target for prey? Yes, what I said was that cows along the Rocky Mountains who have those wolves as predators are always on edge. My cows, if they're on edge, there's something going on.

And I go out there to try to figure out what it is. Yeah, you look at the world. Everything is based upon a predator and a prey relationship. And we have programs in place. And quite frankly, we don't have much for predators. I did have some meat goats about 10 years ago. And there was a three-week period of time where I lost 25 goats to a mountain lion. And I didn't kill the mountain lion i tried to but those goats were just different for those three weeks you could just tell they were they were nervous they were never just grazing contently and i want to bring up something that i think is a great point

and a friend of mine taught me this in Chicago, actually. An animal that is low stress is one that has its head down, is grazing, maybe lying or whatever the case may be, always just more of a melancholy kind of an approach. And I was in Chicago with a young lady who's become a really good friend. And we were driving on State Street, actually. And there's a horse and carriage going by. And we were talking about driving down I-5 in California and talking about the Harris feed lots and things like that. And she said, you can't tell me that that horse hanging its head is happy.

I said, absolutely. is happy. I said, absolutely. You see, because a horse or any animal that has no risk or no stress or no threat will have its head hanging completely content in the situation. If the horse or an animal was nervous, their head would be up, they would be on alert and they'd be looking where the herd needs to go. And so I think that was just a real awakening for me that people use human characteristics and emotions to gauge whether the animal is happy or depressed or whatever the case may be. The fancy scientific term for that is anthropomorphism. And animals are just completely different than humans. And we have to, people often say when I interact with animal rights groups or even some of the vegans you're mentioning earlier. They say, well, the animals can't speak for themselves.

We need to speak for them. I have cared for in my lifetime more than one million head of animals, and every one of them can speak to me. Every day in my pig barns where I keep my pigs, I walk through and I can take a look at the eye. I can take a look at the eye. I can take a look at the general demeanor and I can tell you whether they're stressed or whether they have some concern, whether they're potentially getting sick, whatever the case may be. Animals speak loudly to those that truly understand animal husbandry and stockmanship. Some people have

a sentiment of, I don't want to kill anything, so I'm going to eat vegetables. I'm going to eat, you know, avocados. I'm going to eat nuts. I'm going to eat, you know, greens and so forth. But, like, this takes up resources as well, right? To farm avocados or to farm some of these things is going to take up not only land, but could be potentially driving some animals out of that land that would otherwise be there. And then I would imagine that you sometimes have these kind of critters, you know, snacking on your crops and you probably need to kill them sometimes as well. So

can you speak upon, you know, coming from that side as well? Avocados is an interesting story because other than a few isolated regions in California, avocados being so water intense, we don't grow many avocados in the United States anymore. The avocado consumption is through the roof. It's never been higher. And about 85% of all avocados consumed in the United States come from Mexico. That in itself is a bit concerning, but it wasn't really your question. I just bring that up. As a side note, 80% of all vegetables grown in the United States are grown in and and you know, interesting idea, Nebraska. I can go in my grocery store here in central Nebraska population of our town, by the way, is 850

people. And I have the most beautiful produce. It's January 15th and I've got wonderful produce in central Nebraska. You know, that brings up what you're really getting at, which is food miles. And how many miles did that wonderful produce travel? It probably traveled 2,000 miles to get to my house. It wasn't that long ago that we didn't have access to that type of produce, 52 weeks a year. And so that's cause for us to celebrate what the American food system has brought to the plate, which is a healthy supply of food 52 weeks a year. I was in the shadows of Los Angeles one day on a strawberry field right

outside of Chino. And I was in the strawberry field visiting with the guy, the farmer that owned those strawberries. They were in the field harvesting them, slicing the tops off, putting them in a package and wrapping them right in the field. Those strawberries were going to LAX and New York City the next day at noon. Now, nobody in their right mind considers L.A. to New York City local food. But instead of talking about being local food, what we're doing is that we're growing foods that are best suited for the climate where they are most efficiently

produced. And we're not taking a plane from L.A. to New York just hauling strawberries. Those strawberries are in the belly of a plane that's hauling people. And so when you look at the overall carbon footprint and how green this food production is, because we're able to combine all of these efforts, which is driven by price, it allows us to have an efficient food system, which truly feeds people with a lower cost and a lower carbon footprint, more sustainability than any time in history. And quite frankly, the reason we're having this conversation is that the people don't know enough about how successful that food system is. And that's why I jump at every opportunity to have a conversation with people that truly have questions about how efficient

today's food system is. So I'm do you do you think that re like regenerative agriculture and what my understanding of it which is again very minimal but we had a guest on is like some of these individuals have grout cows grazing from plot to plot to plot to plot kind of right um and in essence their take is that that has we call that rotational grazing rotation okay yeah so rotational grazing and the goal of what they're trying to do is reduce environmental impact but do you think that that is something necessary on the broader spectrum do you think it has it will have that big of an effect and it's a change that we should make or is it just a choice that certain farmers can make?

But what we are doing currently is OK in the long run. I don't think what we're doing currently is ever OK in the long run. We continue to find ways to be more efficient. I think you would actually be shocked if you learned that how many people are already doing what it is that you described, which is a good program and it needs to fit in everybody's management strategies. But it really comes back to one thing that we have not talked about, which we need to. And that is soil health. The reason that that rotational grazing project works is because you come into an area and you like mow the whole lawn at one time. And while the cows are mowing the lawn, they're also fertilizing the lawn.

So it's a win-win for everybody. And when you keep them in a smaller area, you have a more uniform grazing or mowing effect along with a more uniform distribution of the nutrients that continue the cycle of life. You do this area, you move to that area. But that's all about soil health. And soil health is the key to healthy living for people. People may not think they're tied to the dirt whatsoever, but soil health is the key.

And whatever it takes to improve soil health. This week I saw a story. I'm not an NBA fan, and I mean no disrespect, but there's an individual that just got traded, and one of the big things that made a deal about him, I think his name's Adams, is that his hobby was a worm farm, and he had a bathtub in his house, and he would take his leftover vegetables and things

and put them in the bathtub, and he was cultivating this worm farm. That's fantastic. But that's exactly what farmers and ranchers do, is theyating this worm farm. That's fantastic. But that's exactly what farmers and ranchers do, is they manage their worm farm. It's just not in their bathtub. It's outside. And so, regenerative agriculture is the next wave. It's actually what we've been doing, only we're now giving it a new term and putting more specifics to it. But it all comes back to the same premise. How can we build better soil health? Because just like the health of a human being, if the health of the soil is not right, the plants aren't going

to be as healthy and whatever the plants are that are feeding are not going to be as healthy. So what can we do to improve soil health? And I think that the whole concept behind American agriculture has been a leader in innovation and improving soil health. And when you have animals that are grazing those plants, you improve soil health because you need more plants in order for them to capture the nutrients from the atmosphere and return them to the soil. It's just a wonderful system when it's allowed to work the way that it is. But it's a great question because we're never satisfied with where we're at. We need to find the way that it is. But it's a great question because we're never satisfied with where we're at. We need to find a way to be better. You know, I'm sixth generation and my wife and I have three daughters. I think about, I'm kind of long in the tooth, to be honest, I'm

56. We got to start thinking about the seventh generation. And it's more important that I leave something for them here that's better than what we found it. I think that's kind of like the old Boy Scout motto, Boy Scout motto, but we have to find a way each and every year and each and every generation to be better. Do your kids want to take that over? I don't know that question. I have one that's 22 and she's a registered dietitian. I have one that's 18. That's thinking about where she's going to go to college later this year. And I have a 15 year old that's a sophomore. So have you always wanted to have you always wanted to be part of this business? Were there ever times where you were like, I just want to get the hell out of here and go experience, like go to college and, you know, go do other shit that other

kids do? Or did you, were you always into the family business, I guess? So I was always into it, but there was a time when I had a role model. His name was Bob Gibson. Any of you know Bob Gibson? Absolutely. I see Mark shaking his head. Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Bob Gibson was a fierce competitor on the mound pitch for the St. Louis Cardinals. And I was pursuing I thought I was pursuing a career in baseball. And I went I had a baseball scholarship, actually, in the day I went to register for classes, I recognized that I didn't want to spend four years doing this when I was going to be a farmer the rest of my life. So, yeah, to answer your question, there was a period in time when I thought that I had a future in baseball. And I might mention the Reds and the Cubs thought so, too. They invited me to a couple of camps. Oh, awesome.

Gibson lost. Dad won. Bob Gibson died this past year, by the way, in Omaha, Nebraska. Oh, wow. You mentioned importing avocados. Are there other foods that we're importing, and is this a major concern for the United States? Do we import meat from other countries? We do.

We're the largest beef importer in the world. And that's a big statement, seeing as how we have so many cattle and we produce so much beef. The interesting part of that story is that we're also the cattle and we produce so much beef. The interesting part of that story is that we're also the world's largest exporter of beef in the world. And in a nutshell, what we do is we bring in our number one supplier of beef that we bring in as Australia. We are a huge ground beef consuming nation. So about 53% of the total beef that we consume in the United States is in the form of ground beef or a hamburger. Our number one customer by dollar value is Japan. Japan is not a hamburger consuming nation. Japan is a high end, high dollar ribeye,

big primal cuts, whatever the case may be. So basically, instead of taking the high dollar ribeye, big primal cuts, whatever the case may be. So basically, instead of taking the high dollar value cuts in the United States and grinding them up and selling them as hamburger, we import beef from primarily Australia. We grind that into our hamburger, mixing it with the trim that we produce in this country, and then we sell our high-end products to places like Japan. Mexico is our number one beef customer by volume. Mexico and Canada is good as well, but Japan's our number one beef customer by dollar value. Across the board, we import just about every food component possible, and that is a concern. And I think

that we need to constantly monitor that. What I'm more concerned about, frankly, is the investment in American agriculture and the infrastructure. In the past 10 years, all of the investment in beef infrastructure on a large scale has come from foreign investors in primarily Brazil. We do have China. China owns one third of all U.S. pork production in the United States. That's greatly concerning to me, to be quite frank. From a chicken standpoint, it's mostly domestically owned. We do import chickens. We have some chickens that we send. We harvest the chicken. We send chicken products to countries, they process them and send them back because labor is cheaper in those countries than it is here at home. That's a large concern to me. So as long as it's a country that we have a proper trade and we have a fair trade taking place and we're all on an even playing field, I'm good with that.

I don't believe in protectionism. with that. I don't believe in protectionism. I believe that we need to find a way to be better, but we need to implement those safeguards to protect our American investment and to make sure that our number one, our consumers are safe from the way that they handle and process that food in other countries. So that's a complex issue. And I don't think you can just throw up a wall because you wouldn't get avocados. You wouldn't get bananas. You wouldn't get coffee. Guys, I can't live without coffee. So we have to have some importation taking place. Now we're importing all of our pineapples too because Hawaii stopped making pineapples

because we built condos instead of growing pineapples on them. So we do have to continue to pursue free trade agreements with countries that we can be partners with. But we need to, again, make sure that those safety protocols are put into place. They're equal to ours. I think we're getting closer to be able to make food in laboratories and stuff like that. What are some of your thoughts on, you know, I guess I don't even know what you'd call that, but it's my belief that we're getting close to being able to make meat, like to be able to generate it in a lab.

And what are some of your thoughts on things like that? So that's a great discussion that we have within meat production circles a lot. And there are people that just throw up a red flag and say, no, you can't do that. We got to have cattle grazing. Sounds crazy. Yeah, it is crazy, but it's coming. I will not deny that. So it's coming in a way that it will be like I think we would call it a niche. There will be people that will do that. There will be people that will be content with that manner. What will never be replaced is the need for where this conversation started.

Animals grazing, animals consuming things that make the planet healthier. Because when plants are grazed or when plants are consumed, let's take the corn crop, for instance. This is a tremendous statistic, and everybody's concerned about the Amazon rainforest that is continually harvested and depleted and put into soybean fields.

I would share concern about that as well, because the Amazon is important for converting carbon dioxide and oxygen. Did you know that the United States corn crop that farmers grow produces four times as much oxygen as the Amazon rainforest in Brazil? That never gets any attention. There were some wonderful maps this past summer that came out and showed the amount of infrared technology that was over the Amazon rainforest in Brazil compared to this glowing beam coming from the United States,

which is the corn crop. Who would ever think about driving by a cornfield that that cornfield was essential for producing oxygen? So if we go to 100%, let's just theorize that we went to 100% lab-grown foods, where's the planet health going to be maintained? And so it's important that as we charge down these paths, and I support, because everything I've talked to you since we started talking was about science and technology paving the way. And this is a scientific breakthrough that will allow us to produce more with less. There's no doubt about it. But we cannot eliminate the importance and forget about the importance of animals and consuming those growing forages that contribute to a healthy planet.

On the opposite side of what you guys are just talking about in terms of lab-grown meat, because I don't know the intricate aspects of that, but I would still assume that lab-grown meat still has the genetic structure of a cattle to some extent. Excuse me for interrupting, but they're derived from aborted fetuses and then cultured in a lab and multiplied it. You're exactly right. Got it. So now on the opposite side of that, we have things like the Impossible Burger.

And I saw the story yesterday. I've never seen this before, but it's like an egg product that doesn't have any egg. It's just a bunch of ingredients, but you can fry it up like an egg, right? And they're supposed to taste like their real animal counterparts. What are your thoughts on that as far as potentially like the health? Because like, you know, these individuals that don't want to eat meat or don't want to eat eggs still want something that kind of tastes like it. But what are your thoughts on that whole process?

My thought is they don't have enough information because the reason we eat isn't simply for taste. It's for nutrition. We like to eat the nutrition that tastes good. But what's the nutrient availability of those foods? And I'm one of those weird people that go now I'm really bad in that way because I've got a daughter that's a registered dietitian. So she'll be calling saying, Dad, what's the carbohydrates versus the fat and how much sugar is in that way because I've got a daughter that's a registered dietitian. So she'll be calling saying, Dad, what's the carbohydrates versus the fat and how much

sugar is in that? So we have moved away from reading nutrition labels. And really, it's how much taste do we get in the nutrition that we like? And that's at the end of the day, the ultimate question. You answered or you kind of talked about this earlier but in regards to the impossible foods and these genetically modified or grown meats

and stuff but a statement that I've been hearing a lot lately and this is this came from you know some more of the celebrity type of person but the saying is nothing should have to die in order for me to live. What are your thoughts on people saying that?

I'll just repeat myself. Everything lives. Everything dies. Death with a purpose gives full meaning to life. There is nothing that lives without something else dying. So the whole premise is flawed and absolutely wrong. It is kind of weird, though. Like, even if you're a vegan, I mean, we don't put, I guess, the same emphasis on plant life,

but you are killing something that used to be somewhat alive in a different way so you can continue living somehow. So it kind of doesn't even make sense. Just, I guess, you're putting more breath on a life of a cow versus the life of whatever weird plant you're about to eat. And then if you take that to the next step, there are many people that say, well, but the plant doesn't have a central nervous system. Oh, are you sure? Because I can find for you a University of Minnesota or Michigan study where they spent taxpayer dollars to determine whether or not plants feel pain. And guess what? That they, through science,

determine that not only do plants feel pain and react to them, they react to you when you come at them with a knife or whatever the case may be. They know whether they're related to the neighboring plant and they more aggressively or less aggressively seek nutrients in the soil based upon whether they're related to the neighboring plant. So we've had these thoughts and we've funded studies to try to prove what we've all been talking about. If you eat, you are killing something. But that's not a bad thing. That should be a celebration and that everything has a purpose. Not one of us, not one of the four of us want to leave this earth and think that we didn't accomplish something.

Everything has a purpose. Yeah. And haven't they been able to prove that some plants, when they see that or they sense that their neighbor plant is getting eaten by a bug or something, they start putting out a certain chemical to kind of like defend themselves or something like that. Absolutely. They secrete. Spot on. Exactly right. Oh, and by the way, those secretions are what they capture and make pesticides out of.

And then people are afraid of pesticides, even though that's what the plant produces naturally. You know what my favorite pesticide is that I consume on a copious amount on a daily basis? Yeah, what? Coffee. Caffeine. Caffeine is a pesticide that the coffee plant produces. It's the very component that you were just talking about. So people talk about wanting to avoid chemicals.

This caffeine is a pesticide, and I love it. On that note of pesticides, real quick. So obviously there are pesticides that are safe, but when people hear that, they're like, oh my God, I don't want to eat food with pesticides. Are there any that you know of that maybe we shouldn't be using? Or do you think in general, they're fine? In general, they're fine. think in general they're fine in general they're fine there are some chemicals that you know dihydrogen monoxide kill that chemical kills more than any other chemical in the world

dihydrogen monoxide two parts hydrogen one part oxygen four million people in the world die each year from some water related incident yeah so all chemicals can kill the real question is what is the the rate that you consume this chemical that it's dangerous you can't live without water your brain's 78 water the day i learned that i started drinking a gallon a day i thought i I'm going to feed that sucker. But to your real question is, are there some out there that, you know, the DDT question is the one I think is my favorite because it was the start of emotion deciding what was going to happen rather than science. When they banned DDT in 1973, it was after every single scientist who had testified in front of Nixon's newly formed EPA had demonstrated that DDT posed no danger to living organisms or humans.

There were some bird studies that said there's some thinning of the shell in the birds if they have exposure to DDT, but we cannot assess that there is an increased risk of that harm to that bird. But we banned DDT in 1973 because there was this global movement to want to tell people that DDT is dangerous and it's going to kill you. DDT saved 6 million lives during World War II because that's what we used to help our soldiers with ticks. And ticks and malaria was the number one killer of our World War II Army in 1942. We brought DDT on the scene, and it saved six million lives. And we banned it in 1973 because people developed this concern and fear over chemicals.

We just need to get the facts. And I do this a lot on my blog. I've got a list of all of the approved chemicals for organic food production. Yes, there are chemicals. In fact, I'm letting a cat out of the bag, which my friends in California that are ag aviators, i.e. crop dusters, they spray organic crops with three times more chemicals in California than they do conventional crops. And that's complete shock to people. But I was speaking to a group of ag aviators and they came up to me and say, hey, don't tell anybody that organic farmers keep up,

keep us in business. Again, I celebrate the choices. I just want to make sure that people have all of the facts before they get all wound up in these fear based notions. Trent, how else are you getting the information out there? We know that you have a podcast. Do you have any political aspirations or have you invited politicians to have discussions with you or even over to your ranch to kind of see how you handle things? So I have no political aspirations other than being a vocal citizen of the representative republic. I am very much a believer in the Constitution.

I'm a citizen of the Nebraska First. I try to do things locally. I ran for my county commissioner and probably will run again because the most important government body is our county commission. I just so happen to keep this book pretty handy with me in my pocket every single day. It's called Pocket Constitution, I just so happen to keep this book pretty handy with me in my pocket every single day. It's called Pocket Constitution, and it says that the most important political entity is your county government. We've lost sight of that.

The state government has tried to tell people in the county what to do, and the federal government has tried to tell the states what to do. We need to turn that around. To take your question to the next step, I have a great relationship with the county officials. I have an even better relationship with my governor of the state of Nebraska. I have invited on my radio programs at different times, elected officials. The last one I had was Congressman Devin Nunes from California. But to be honest, I don't bring a lot of elected officials on my broadcast because I truly believe in the representative republic and the elected officials need to hear from the people they work for. And so overwhelmingly, 99% of the people that I interview and talk to are people that have an opinion that the elected officials who they work for should be listening to.

And I think listening is an art that seems to have been lost and we need to get it back. Is it as hard to protect your farm as they and your land as they make it out to be on Yellowstone? I've never watched Yellowstone, so I don't know. I will tell you that there's a movie on Netflix right now that probably is more similar to Yellowstone than I want to admit that I'm in and helped write that illustrates the challenges in animal ownership. It's called The Stand at Paxton County. It's been on Netflix since May. You helped write it? It's been on Netflix since May. You helped write it? It's been going very well.

David O'Neill wrote the screenplay, and if Dave is watching, I'm not trying to take your thunder at all. It is inspired by a true story that I was involved with in Stark County, North Dakota. And so my involvement in writing was, this is how it actually happened.

This is how that happened. This sheriff was a real idiot. And here's why. And so, yeah, I did help. But it's the masterful writing is all David O'Neill. And I helped write it and shape it and was involved in the situation so that I could be the sheriff in the movie. And I thought I was in pretty good shape until some guy named Christopher McDonald, who, you know, just because you're in Happy Gilmore and you shoot him a Gavin once in your life,

you get whatever part you want for the rest of your life. I don't understand that, but it worked. And he did a fantastic job as the sheriff. It was a great experience for me to be a part of that, which, by the way, we filmed. And don't don't tell anybody we filmed that in Petaluma, not in North Dakota. Did you get a cameo in there? Did you get to sneak in there with that mustache at all or no? When you watch the movie, you'll you'll see.

Oh, there you go. I was really curious. I have a profile now on IMDB, if that means. Oh, sick. That's awesome. Before you came on, we were talking about how there are YouTube videos where you're talking to vegan individuals. And when they're spitting out certain quote-unquote facts like you correct them on their facts like you correct them on their statistic and literally tell them that's not right this is actually what it is and you do that consistently and it's it's really

awesome to watch but i was curious um if there are any broad myths that you continue to hear from either uh vegans or individuals opposed to animal farming that like you hear all the time. You're like, too many people believe this. I'm just curious, are there any big ones that we should know of? Like, for example, we were talking about pesticides and DDT. And for the longest time I learned in high school that DDT was bad and unhealthy, but you literally just help us understand why that myth came about. What other things do you hear often that probably people should just understand that's not true? To support my DDT claim, I've got a friend in

Washington, D.C. who is an attorney. He was the very first attorney hired by the EPA. And his goal before he retires from being an attorney is to fix the screw up that they started when he was a part of the EPA in 1973. To be honest, you guys are on top of it. I mean, the myth about chemicals and the right now the growing myth about the fact that cows are healthy for the environment is the one that I hear most often. And I spent a lot of time really working on because that's the looming question, not just in the United States. I don't know if you found or not, but I traveled to the United Kingdom the last week of February, first week of March. I traveled to the United Kingdom the last week of February, first week of March. And since that point in time, every morning at 630 Central Time, I do a live video broadcast with a friend of mine in the UK.

And we talk about these sustainability issues. We talk about what the EU is going to have a food systems summit this year in September. And their whole premise is net zero carbon impact. Carbon is essential. You have to have carbon in order to have a healthy planet. And we're to the point where we're trying to eliminate greenhouse gases, not recognizing that they have a purpose. They're not pollutants.

They have a purpose. They're not pollutants. They have a purpose. Our job is to make sure that they are not too plentiful or abundant in our atmosphere or we have a problem. But we're trying to, I'll give you another one, nitrates in water. You know, the FDA says that if you have 11 parts per million of nitrate in your local drinking water, there's a boil order. And you have to boil that water until you get it below 10 parts per billion or you're going to be in danger. Mother's breast milk has 80 parts per million of nitrate at day one. We've demonized one of the most essential nutrients of healthy living, nitrates. essential nutrients of healthy living, nitrates. And when all the Olympic athletes that have succeeded in the past six years have been taking a nitrate supplement, beet juice is a nitrate supplement. The power of beet juice comes from the nitrate that's in there. And so we're now

moving into an era where people are starting to talk about our food is enhanced with nitrates. But think about all the demonization that was taking place about nitrates. So I just come back to the same thing. Ask questions, be a better listener and go to a source of information that's truly credible and that you can trust. Is our food supply here in the United States compromised? supply here in the United States compromised a little while back, you know, when COVID started, they were, you know, scaring us with saying some of these plants were shut down and some of these facilities were shut down. And is there any truth to that? Do you think there's any reason to be concerned about a food supply shortage here in the United States? There was a tremendous amount

of justification to that concern. There was what we termed a bottleneck in the United States? There was a tremendous amount of justification to that concern. There was what we termed a bottleneck in the animal business and in milk production. There was milk dumped. It's just shameful that people are calcium deficient and we're dumping milk because we didn't have a means of getting it from the farm to the table. It did cause people to take a real serious look at the infrastructure. Hopefully we've learned some things. And the main thing that we need to learn is that we have too much concentration

and that we need to expand the processing opportunities. And farmers have aggressively pursued that and looked for opportunities to be a part of getting closer to the consumer. You know, the real challenge comes when there's too many middlemen. And if I could just sell you the pork and the beef that we produce, and you buy it from, you buy your milk from somebody, your eggs from somebody, your broccoli from somebody, that would be an ideal world. We've moved into buying our food where it's most convenient. And the reason that the super center on the edge of town controls 33% of the groceries that are

sold in this country is because people were lured into buying where it's convenient. Because of that convenience, we have increased consolidation. And I think 2020 was a little bit of an alarm going off wake-up call saying, you know, let's make sure that we diversify this infrastructure so that we don't have too much concentration in one spot. And the concentration, quite frankly, has not happened as much on the farm side or even the first processing side as it has on the distribution side. And there's five retail grocery outlets that control 80% of the food distribution in this country. That should be alarming to everybody. And I'd rather not give them a commercial and name them,

but just think about where you're buying your food is the moral of the story you know kind of within that as far as like thinking about where you're buying your food um i mentioned how like you know we've had some regenerative or yeah regenerative agriculture farmers on this podcast and um in in one of the interviews uh the company tyson continued to come up as far as being negative in certain ways. And when we've been talking to you, you know, you've been talking about the good practices on from big farmers and like big companies and small ones. Would you say are there any like big brands that we should maybe be a little bit wary of? Or is there really is there nothing really to worry about there? There's nothing to worry about other than consolidation.

2013, Tyson, I was selling a few pigs to Tyson. They made a stupid announcement. They indicated that they were going to control how farmers did this or that on their farm. And I make a public statement saying, I'm no longer going to sell you any of my animals. And I suggest other farmers do the same thing. Tyson's still a very viable, by the way, Tyson is domestically owned, which is the good news of this story. There are challenges with each one of those larger entities producing food, but I'm not going to tell you that there's one to stay away from as a consumer. They cannot continue to operate and produce something that's harmful. They cannot continue to operate and produce something that's harmful.

If you care about consolidation and you care about making sure that we have a diverse portfolio and food production from farm to fork, then you may want to alter your purchasing habits. Does that really get at the core of what you're asking me? No, that makes that makes perfect sense. I get what you're saying. What does a typical day look like for you um you know we kind of always hear that that's farmers start their day out super early what's a normal day look like for you should i make up a really good story or tell you the truth uh i think you should make up a really good story yeah the rooster starts with the rooster, right?

Well, I get up at 420 and I go milk Bessie after I've had a cup of coffee. So my life has evolved into, first of all, did I mention that I married very well? Oh, congratulations. Thank you. And it's relevant because my typical day, to be honest, is sitting here looking at this computer, talking to somebody in the world about the food system and life in rural America. While my wife, by the way, is outside fighting the elements, being the stockman that I bragged about being earlier in the program. So I'm really just a rancher's husband is the moral of the story. So I'm really just a rancher's husband is the moral of the story.

Usually by 11 o'clock, I have all of that stuff like this done. And the days are short this time of year. And it's really just a matter of getting done what you need to each day to keep the animals cared for first and foremost. And I was in the pig barns last night at 10 o'clock doing chores. So it's frequent that we will have late night activities. But I will tell you honestly, too, I don't sacrifice anything for my daughters. My daughters had a basketball game last night. So we were basketball until 730. And then I came home and finished up chores.

But no two days are alike. I spend a lot of time traveling. We happen to produce pigs that are based around genetics. We built a line of pigs that are in demand. I have personally delivered pigs in the 26 states since May 1st at a time when everybody's supposedly staying home. And these are pigs that people are using to put into these smaller food system networks. I've got a family in Pennsylvania that buys our genetics and run them through their local butcher shop. Several families in Pennsylvania actually that do that.

I've taken pigs to Georgia. I've sent a lot of pigs to California and everywhere in between. A gentleman called me from New Mexico this morning that bought a pig from me a month ago. So that's kind of what we do. And our cattle business is a little different. And, Mark, I think you're familiar with Lone Creek Cattle Company and the certified Piedmontese system. That's been a wonderful system for us.

It's a Nebraska-owned family that's really captured on the myostatin gene presence in the beef, and that means that, in a nutshell, that means the beef is going to be more tender. And so we're proud to be a part of that production system with our beef cattle. And those calves are leaving tomorrow, by the way. So I have a load of steers that are going to get off of my feed bill, which is always a great day in the life of a rancher to get paid and have something eating less feed. Today's episode of the podcast is brought to you by Piedmontese Beef. And Seema, how good is Piedmontese Beef?

Dude, first thing, aren't you tired of like just steak tasting like just absolute crap? Well, the awesome thing is I haven't had like crappy steak because all I eat is Piedmontese now. Because once you go Piedmontese, you really can't go back. Hey, no, no, that's real talk though. Because the other day I went to a buddy's house and he had some Costco steak, which I used to think was pretty damn good. I'm going through it, cutting through with this ribeye and I'm like, Ooh, okay. Decent, not comparable. But then I get to like this chunk and I'm like, Oh wait, what is this? Oh, this is what steak used to be like when I used to cook it when it wasn't from Piedmontese.

Cause you know, when you'd get those nasty like steak chunks in there, it's not, it's not good. It's, it gets stuck in your teeth. Usually you have to spit it out or leave it on the side and he's usually pretty good at cooking steaks both piedmontese first off the steak is tender it tastes amazing you never really you you never get a bad steak from them and it's great on the macros yeah macros are insane and the thing is like i would always get so frustrated i would spend a lot of money on like a ribeye like i would go over to costco too and then i'd look down at my plate and be like, dude, I just threw away like, you know, 10 bucks on all the stuff that I couldn't eat. I never, ever get that with Piedmontese.

So, you know, when it comes to like, you know, the higher value or higher, just better quality, like it's second to none. And you guys seriously need to check this stuff out. You guys got to head over to piedmontese.com. That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com. Make sure you pick up one of the Power Project bundles. There's the Deluxe bundle, and then there's the Jacked in 10 pack. Either one of those, you're not going to be upset.

Again, that's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com at checkout. Enter promo code POWERPROJECT for 25% off your order. And if your order is $99 or more, you get free two-day shipping. With the pigs that you mentioned that you raise uh what's the difference with them you mentioned they have they're maybe slightly different genetically what's the difference in that particular breed so we raise five breeds actually but we are most known for our spotted hogs. Spotted is a breed that was developed here in the United States about 1900. And they originate from the Gloucester Old Spot in England.

But we tap into the show pig market, which kids are using those pigs as junior livestock projects and compete all across the country. But I've really focused on the maternal aspect. all across the country. But I really focused on the maternal aspect. And at the same time, we also test every boar for eating quality to make sure that we have the marbling, the tenderness, the pH that is going to, excuse me, generate a tender, great eating experience every time. In addition, we raised some Berkshires, which Berkshires go back to the Queen of England and how she had a demand for this fattier, better tasting pork. We raised those and we run a lot of those through our through our branded B or branded pork program that we have ourself. Purple Ribbon Pork is what we call that. And we sell direct to the consumer through a USDA plant. And then we have a few other breeds that I just kind of play with.

But spots are the primary breed followed by Berkshires. These animals, is it really tough to care for them? Like, do you need a lot of people to help you guys? One really good wife. Yeah, it doesn't take a lot, right? Because the cows and stuff, I mean, I don't want to say they take care of themselves, but they kind of do take care of themselves, right? In a way.

Yeah. The cows, the cows are the lowest labor input. Well, my horses, we have 25 horses. They're just kind of on their own. And on a good day, I'd be spending some time training a horse in a round pen every afternoon, but that never seems to happen. The cows are grazing. We do have these calves that we've been feeding every day that we've been doing that for six weeks after we weaned them, and now they're going to go on into the food system. But the daily labor challenge

comes from the pigs. Again, I mentioned I married well, and we're losing our slave labor force. I don't mind saying that. Those are daughters, and they're harder to get out there and get corralled than they used to be because they're involved in there. By the way, they're involved in every school project so that they don't have time to help that other projects. That's I mean, they're typical kids, you know. You know, I was curious because, um, like your father and maybe generations before, but has the Luce family always been fairly vocal as far as farmers?

Or are you like the, I mean, obviously technology makes a big difference in how many people you can reach, but are you like the first one to be so vocal as far as like your community and around like the U.S.? Well, you'd win the prize for the question that I've never been asked before. That's a good one. My father, who, by the way, we lost three years ago to Alzheimer's, was very involved with school board, very involved at the community level. And I would call him vocal.

But obviously, he did not do anything on the national or the global stage like I pursued. But he was a great role model. And I closed my radio programs every day with the saying, be gentle, stay firm. And that's because I think that summarizes how my father raised myself and my brother and sister. And it was really life growing up in conjunction with the farm and the chores and the animals to take care of on a daily basis. He did not ride herd over us and tell us how to do things. He gave us the liberty to make those mistakes and learn from them. And I think that applies beyond just the barnyard, to be honest.

It's like the greatest classroom of life, raising kids on a farm where they learn work ethic and responsibility. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today. It's been outstanding. And we had no idea that you were part of a movie. So we got a movie. We got a movie that we got to go check out.

There's a guy named Chrisris bell i told him about that movie but maybe you don't know him i'll introduce you that would be great if you could maybe maybe you have his email or something like that i think i got his phone number i'll have to look it up but it was very interesting to be a part of the movie business and and honestly um the cast i really got along well with, and I maintain communication with just about every one of them since we finished. Although Christopher McDonald never did show up on his Harley

as he said he would this past summer. Oh, man. It's odd. I think he's too busy doing... Shooter McGavin was filmed in 1983, and he's still running around the country living his youth. I don't know what's wrong with that. Where can people find you where can they find out more about your podcast uh i think the best thing is go to loose tails dot blog spot dot com and that's l-o-o-s-t-a-l-e-s

dot com r-t-l-e there's a dot com also but loose tails dot blog spot dot com or T-L-E there's a dot com also but loosetales.blogspot.com and Mark don't spell loosetales incorrectly or you may get banned just political sites

I love it thank you so much for your time have a great rest of your day my pleasure I can't wait till we can sit and drink some

pesticide together yeah that'd be great. Thanks again. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, sir. My pleasure. Man, that was awesome, man.

God, drink some pesticide. That guy's a character and a half. He is. And it makes you, that whole thing really makes you think because, you know, we have a lot lot of we've had a lot of individuals on who who talked like even though they were in meat they've talked about all these negative aspects of the meat industry and he comes and he kind of just kind of flips that on its head and talks about why this negative that we've been hearing and we're like oh that needs to change is an absolute positive well i think you know people do similar stuff when it comes to fruit we mentioned

fruit earlier how it's like sweeter like it's sweeter and it's bigger. And it's like, what's wrong with that? Like, that's kind of cool. Like we, we did kind of turn it into like a candy bar maybe. And yes, maybe we should pay attention to portion sizes and, you know, but you know, fruit's not going to really make fruit is not a problem for us in terms of it. Like quote unquote, making us fat and overeating. Yeah.

Yeah. Overeat. Overeating is our main issue. And we don't necessarily overeat on fruit and vegetables. We're overeating on other crap. But my point there is like when he was talking about like kind of naturally allowing these animals to grow. I mean, we didn't really get into like the growth hormone thing and things like that

and different things that they might give uh these cattle to make them bigger but again if we go back to the principle that he kept harping on the entire time was he doesn't want them to be uh overstressed and so if you were giving them harmful chemicals if you were doing if you were giving them things that would damage them uh they more more than likely wouldn't be heading in the direction of growth, the way he's talking about. I also find it really interesting with ourselves, our own training, like us trying to be bigger and stronger and things like that, how we so quickly forget that we can be doing more harm than good.

How we so quickly forget. It's a lot of stress. Jiu-jitsu practice at this point probably doesn't feel like much, but seven days a week of it. Or if you're like, all right, I'm getting ready for worlds. I'm going to do, you know, I'm going to pick up an extra session here and there. All of a sudden you start doing nine, 10 sessions. All of a sudden elbows and knees are feeling like, you know, you're just like, oh man, like maybe you're coming in here and trying to train a little harder and stuff like that. And it's, you're maybe causing a little extra stress.

It's not necessary. That's going to actually push you backwards a little bit rather than help you move forward. No, absolutely. Like, yeah. When you think of powerlifting at a high level, think about, you know, it can definitely hurt you. I'd not hurt you, but you can wear yourself down at a certain point. So that makes total sense. But to be perfectly honest, like even it was kind of shocking when we were talking about,

you know, the chickens, right? And Anya Fernald, that's her name. That's the individual we had on. And, you know, she was talking about how, you know, the rate of growth is so much faster now. When you hear that, you do feel kind of wary about it. But, you know, when he was talking about it, he mentioned at least that it's just, um, it's, it makes things actually more sustainable. It speeds up the process and these chickens are still okay.

So at the end of the day, it's just like, I guess you have to hear that. You have to hear her side and then you need to go in and look at it for yourself and come to your own opinion on it. I think our, we can be blocked sometimes to being able to really think something through all the way because of like compassion or empathy sometimes some of those things uh they kind of sneak in there and you're like oh poor little chicken like i don't want to see that i don't want to see that you know happen to that animal or i don't want to see that happen. But like maybe it's just part of like a process, you know, maybe we are speeding things up. And, you know, there are definitely situations where we've sped stuff up to a point where we're not sure how unhealthy it is, like the Internet and things like that. I mean, we don't really know the implications.

It seems like there's some negative side effects and it seems like we've unfortunately lost some people and it does appear that people are even like going as far as killing themselves off of like cyber bullying and things like that. And these are things that no one really saw coming though. Like it was, I don't, no one was designed, no one's like specifically designing something like this is going to be great because a lot of people are going to kill themselves from this. You know, no one's really thinking in those terms. And I think the same thing when it comes to meat, I think they're just simply thinking, Hey, this makes us more sustainable. This makes this more, this gives us more opportunity like this farm. You

know, if we can make all our hogs 30% bigger or, or cattle 30% bigger, we're going to have more profit. We're going to be able to move faster, make more money. And then maybe in those steps, maybe somewhere along the way, we go south. But according to some of the stuff that he was saying, it doesn't necessarily seem like it's all bad. It's not all bad all the time. How is it bad for farmers to make more money and to have more resources. Like, I don't consider that to be bad unless they're trying to like do something to destroy

the world or something that we don't know about. They got some secret mission going on. Yeah. I think, you know, when he was talking about, uh, like, uh, cattle grazing with their head down and how we have our human emotion, I was like, wow, that's, that's, I think that's really important for people to hear i mean again hopefully it's true but he i mean he's like he said he's been around i don't know how many you know animals and stuff so he's like yeah they talk to me every day it's like wow but what do you think it it makes sense like when you actually like okay because like i used like

when he was mentioning that i was like huh I kind of thought that same thing too. Not that I wasn't, my thinking was incorrect. And I thought, oh, it looks so sad, but no, it's actually relaxed, chilling and eating and it's heading up because it's not scared. It's got nothing to worry about. It's got it pretty easy. You guys ever see that image of Phelps, Michael Phelps touching the wall and the other guys looking at him. You ever see that?

It kind of reminds me of that. Like Phelps is like, I'm concentrating on this. And the other guy's like, I'm concentrating on him. And he lost. You know, he lost by a fraction of a second. Yeah. And then have you guys ever heard when he was explaining the like corn farms or whatever? Yeah.

Like how it produces more oxygen than the rainforest. So like, whoa there. That was, yeah, that was crazy. Okay. So like I was, I mean, mean not so that's nuts yeah i'm not i'm not really like against like corn feeding animals and stuff i just know it's not natural them and you know grass-fed meat costs more but um now it's like wow okay maybe it's not all bad or it isn't you know shit i kind of need oxygen you know to breathe so yeah that's a that's a huge win

and man ddt i like when you mentioned ddt i remember like we did a high school report like we learned about how dangerous that was and like it was in high school you're like oh god that's these pesticides that's that's demonic but like he literally just like he obviously you should probably look into it more potentially but there are all these reasons why it's actually not bad. And you would never think that from what you've learned literally through the school system. Right. So there's so many people out there to be like so grateful for and thankful for. Like it comes like farming.

You know, it's like these are things you just don't really think about it. I mean, I drive past a lot of farms on my way here, living in Dixon. I don't really ever think about it. I do sit there sometimes and I'll look at the cows and stuff. And I'm like, this is like, this is awesome. And there's a lot of more recently, there's more, there's a lot of goats because they, I don't know what they're doing with the land, but they're, the goats are like, you know, eating up the grass.

Kind of like he's saying, like they're chewing it up, they're mowing the lawn and they're chitting on it as well, fertilizing it, uh, kind of at the same time. And so like, I do marvel at some of that stuff and I do admire it, but I'm not really thinking about like the work that goes into it. Or what about when you get stuck behind a big, a big truck, you know, you get stuck behind a big semi truck, but like, if it's not for these trucks, it's not for these farmers. Like we don't have that food, uh, you know, coming to us at a, at a good price.

And we don't have that food coming to us, uh, frequently and convenient. I mean, it's a joke, you know, it's like, it's laughable.

Like it's so silly. Like we have such abundance. I don't mean to laugh at people that don't have it or countries that don't have it, but it is just absolutely like ridiculous. You can go, you can drive anywhere. You can go, you can drive anywhere. You can drive down the street to there.

I mean, right down the street, there's Starbucks right down the street. There's all these places utilize farms for something. I mean, the coffee beans are harvested from somewhere. You know, I mean, the list of stuff goes, it goes on and on and on how much stuff that we have at our fingertips in this country. You don't really think about it. And it's just great to communicate with someone like that, especially, and we've done this before on the show where we talk to police officers and we talk to, you know, government officials and we talk to different people that are getting a lot of heat kind of thrown

their way, you know? And when you, when you hear these real life stories and you hear about these people, you're like, God damn, I actually, I really appreciate that we have police officers. I really appreciate like that. Somebody even wants that job. Like I'm not going to do, I'm not going to do that job. I'm way too scared to do that job. You know, same thing with our military and things like that. And a farmer like, fuck that. I'm not doing all that work. It seems like way, it seems work seems like way seems like way too much to get yourself involved in so i'm glad that somebody else does it yeah my sister just they

they just got their like dream ranch house you know and so like they got a bunch of farm animals and i'm like dude no thanks like they are like they have their regular jobs, but now they have like a little farm on top of that. And it is nonstop. Wait, does her like. I do want to get some chickens. Yeah. I want to get some some eggs. Yeah.

Don't you have a coop or something? I do. I do. I need to get chickens to fill that coop up, you know. Yeah. Oh, man. They learned a lot about chickens, too. As soon as I didn't know this this as soon as they start laying eggs

like you can no longer eat them because like the meat is just like terrible like it just becomes super uh opposite of tender oh but if you do it earlier they're they're a lot more tender but then because they don't have like i guess maybe the right type of chicken they're just like these little little things you know they're like oh we're not gonna kill that so we'll do it for the eggs and then of course the eggs don't come because these damn chickens don't want to produce like because they're just still learning everything yeah but i mean they got pigs now and like those fucking things don't stop eating and they got goats and shit and i'm just like you guys are crazy because it is non-stop my brother-in-law will work in the day and then he just works on the

farm all night a pig seems like it'd be a lot of work man they have multiple yeah a pig seems like it'd be a big deal they did slaughter the shit out of one of them already cows cows like just they really just chill and just eat grass all day i think they're still working on getting a cow i think they're learn again learning the whole process but just like getting the cow to their ranch is like a hard uh thing to overcome that's crazy dude like they have a full they have full-time jobs and they come i have a one i have a dog and i'm just like how the fuck you take care of all these animals with your job yeah what we can uh we can go locally and i don't know if you guys would be interested it all sounds like satanic worship or something. We like to go and see like a animal butchered or something like we could go

and we should, we can go, we can go do that pretty easily. I mean, it'd be great to go to Trent's place in Nebraska, but that's just fucking far away. Really cool. Um,

yeah, I got some friends that we would be able to go and just, I've always been really interested in it. I'm like, yeah. Like what? I just sit there and like be so sad or like, what just be like okay well that's you know that seemed quick and didn't seem that bad you know like i don't know i don't know how i'd feel you see like i've seen

images and i've seen things before but that's way different than actually like being there yeah media will definitely portray it to be like terrifying yeah right with the music i'm like mesmerized by cows. I think they're amazing. Like we didn't really get into it with him, but they're bred, you know, like they're not they're not like normal. Like there's I don't think there was cows, you know, like 50,000 years ago. I forget, you know, if you go down the rabbit hole and start to look it up, I think they

were bred from other species, maybe bison and things like that. Oh, yeah. I wonder like. And that's kind of where my question was coming from too like were they always meant to be just huge targets for other you know carnivores to eat as if if that's the case then you know you kind of feel a little bit better that's a great question but i think they are kind of bred that way i mean they don't have any they don't have any defense no right you know nope i mean at least the zebra's got stripes you know like a zebra can fucking run away and it can kick right it's fast as hell yeah it's fast as shit yeah and i think i think i've heard like turkeys are like kind of big and slow on purpose because they're just big ass targets also maybe you made that up but i thought that's i mean what you're saying makes a lot of sense there's probably like they they say there's someone for everybody right there's probably something to eat

for everything that's here yeah like there's something that's you know and maybe it's not always so obvious because maybe like you know when we're born we don't have you know we don't have like text that says like hey here's what you're supposed to do or whatever. That's from some definitive thing or whatever. But it seems obvious to me that cows are, you know, like they're meant for us to consume, you know? Yeah. Nutritious, slow, easy to capture. I wonder how smart they are, though. I don't know.

Yeah, that's always. I know. So I know there was the other day when I was driving home, there was a goat that got out, you know, from the fence and it like was like crossing the street. And I'm driving and I'm like, oh, there's there's the goats, you know, and I'm kind of I'm kind of looking off to the side a little bit. And and then I'm and I kind of look ahead and i'm like oh they oh shit there's a goat and the goat kind of looked at me and then like trotted across the street like kind of knowing like i should get out of the way like that thing's coming for me you know so i don't know how smart like a goat or a cow is but like at least it seemed like it knew

like whatever's coming at me it's probably not a good idea to mess with that thing you know you ever look at goats eyes yes okay so you have the same feeling i didn't know this again my sister's farm they have goats and i'm like what's wrong with that one's eyes and that's just how they are it's fucking terrifying same with horses well horses i yeah that's more majestic you think it's majestic yeah i think horses are majestic as as things they scare me into their eyes i don't like it yeah it's creepy and their eyeballs massive yeah that's gigantic yeah a goat is like uh maybe it's this type of goat it might be the reason why but it like it makes my stomach i saw a cow the other day getting up off the ground that reminded me of myself it kept like using a lot of momentum and it was like rocking back and i was like is that

cow like scratching it's i'm like driving down the street and i'm like is that cow scratching its back like a dog like if you put a collar on a dog or something it goes on the ground and starts trying to you know scratch its own back or whatever it was doing that and then i was like oh shit it's trying to get up i'm sorry man that just reminds me of uh when i think you said you fell in the airport uh the baggage thing oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah when you sent me that video yeah yeah that guy couldn't get up yeah that's great man with all the traveling we used to do, I used to see people get wrecked on that baggage carousel thing. People get killed on it.

Like, they would just pick up, you know, this, like, hundred pound suitcase and here's this, like, you know, whatever. The best is they get totally crushed and then they realize they grabbed the wrong bag. Oh, man. That's the worst. Like, oh, shit. Yeah. Game over over and we've been having some good guests on lately i thought 2021 was going to be just in the tank i thought we were going to come out and just go it's our year 2020 is over damn i mean we keep trying with some of these conversations we have

to just like totally our own private conversations are pretty good at like deterring people from listening i'm gonna do my best to not start podcasts off with dick jokes i'm gonna do my best because i noticed that's i get it we get a we get a lot of comments yeah andrew and i get a lot of you don't see him yeah you get a lot of negative stuff i need like dude why isn't seamus so foul we're like we don't know man he just we gotta have one it's because of you two you know like, we don't know, man. He just. We got to have one. It's because of you two. You know that, right? I don't know what you. Before coming on this whole thing, I used to be just like.

Going to church every week. Yeah. That's true. And by being around you guys, I've turned into a deviant. We all need to go to church. That's true. I went like about a week ago. It was actually cool.

Sick. Is it because Ice Cube said if you're scared, go to church? It is. No, my dad totally screwed me. He's like, we're on a walk. And he's like, you know, your mother's 70th birthday is coming up. And I was like, oh, yeah. I was like, we should get together for that.

That'd be great. I said, maybe on Sunday we can get together. We can come over to my place place we can cook up some food or or i come over your place and we can you know share some good memories pick out take out some good pictures of mom and talk about her a little bit and he's like yeah yeah he's like that'd be great and he goes hey you know what he's like your mother would love it if you went to church uh that morning and i was like i'll see you there okay you know but it was actually great it was actually really good uh we have a good uh my dad's church that he goes to he's got a

good pastor the guy went up there and talked for like 45 minutes and it was cool that's awesome so they're still they're they're congregating right now they're not oh that's great yeah ours is doing all this online stuff and i don't like it i'd rather be there they have like an online presence too but yeah they have a decent gathering and it was it was cool yeah it was it was great he's just um he's a guy that like shares you know stories that are uh similar to stuff that we've heard on the show a million times it's just uh you, you'll hear God and you'll hear faith, you know, you'll hear those words in there. But, um, other than that,

I mean, it's just straight up like, you know, how to try to like live a better life. You know, that's the message that I see in it. So it was fun. It was actually pretty cool.

That's cool. Yeah. And that's in, in Woodland. That's in Woodland. Yeah. Woodland. Yeah.

My old hometown. Take us on out of here, Andrew. I will. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode sincerely appreciate it definitely hit that like button for that mustache because that was incredible oh my god

that was really good that was glorious it was amazing absolutely yes please make sure you guys take advantage of the element recharge pack again that's that's just for January so if you're listening to this in february you missed out but you can hit the link down in the description below

there you go yes that's eight eight whoa three packs they don't even fit on the table that's how many there are that's too many yeah all you have to do is pay for shipping and it's only five bucks so you guys can try lemonade. Lemonade. Yeah. Raspberry. Raspberry. Who knows? Hopefully they. Chocolate. They do all the flavors.

That'd be sick. But yeah, again, that's just in the bio. Well, it is in our bio too, but a link down in the description. Make sure you take advantage of that. Please make sure you're following the podcast at Mark Biles Power Project on Instagram. At MB Power Project on Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at I am Andrew Z. And SEMA, where you be? At SEMA Inyang on Instagram and YouTube. And SEMA Yin Yang on Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at I am Andrew Z and Seema where you be.

And Seema Inyang on Instagram and YouTube and Seema Inyang on Twitter, Mark. At Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later.