The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Discover Sorghum: The Ancient Grain Revolutionizing Health and Sustainability

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

Discover Sorghum: The Ancient Grain Revolutionizing Health and Sustainability Sorghumunited.com Sorghosquad.com About the Guest(s): Nate Blum is the Chief Executive Officer of Blue Milo and Sorghum United, an international NGO dedicated to advancing education and market development for sorghum and adjacent small grains. With an extensive background in agriculture and a passion for food security, nutrition, environmental sustainability, and rural economic disparity, Nate is recognized as an expert in grain sorghum production and marketing. He has a policy background and previously served as the Director of Agricultural Policy and Outreach for a Congress member, informing his comprehensive approach to agricultural systems and sustainability. Episode Summary: Join host Chris Voss on this exciting episode of The Chris Voss Show as he interviews Nate Blum, the visionary CEO of Sorghum United. Together, they dive into the world of sorghum and millets, exploring their powerful potential to revolutionize our food systems. This episode is packed with energizing discussions on the nutritional, environmental, and economic benefits of these ancient grains. Discover how sorghum, known by various names across the globe, can contribute to food security, battle environmental challenges, and provide health benefits that align with modern-day needs. Nate Blum provides insights into sorghum’s diverse applications, from food to industrial uses. The conversation highlights sorghum's adaptability in harsh climates, making it a viable crop option worldwide, especially in areas struggling with drought. Moreover, Nate shares how Sorghum United is working towards educating people about these grains through initiatives like the Sogo Squad. He explains the role of millets and sorghum in combating global challenges such as climate change, human trafficking, and economic disparities. Key Takeaways: Sorghum and millets are ancient grains with significant potential to transform global food systems regarding nutrition, environmental sustainability, and economic development. Despite their historical significance and benefits, these grains have been overlooked in modern diets, calling for increased awareness and inclusion. Sorghum United is committed to empowering farmers through education, mechanization, and market development, aiming to restore these grains to their essential role in food and economic systems. The Sogo Squad initiative aims to educate young audiences about the benefits of sorghum and millets through engaging, multi-channel content, promoting awareness and sustainability. Nate Bloom emphasizes the importance of understanding local contexts and providing adaptable agricultural solutions to ensure sustainable development in various regions worldwide. Notable Quotes: "What we're working in is not agriculture. Actually, what we're working in is in those basic human systems that allow for the flourishing and thriving of human civilization." "Sorghum is one of those grains that's high in protein… really good in so many places around the world." "No wonder 66% of all diseases in the world are dietary related. Look at what we're eating." "If you eat, guess what? You're adjacent to agriculture." "We want to really empower people by using the value systems that these grains can provide… they can grow in some of the worst environments on the planet."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, the early season that makes it official. Welcome to the big show. As always, the Chris Voss Show is a family that loves you,

but doesn't judge you as least on as harshly as the rest of your family, but we don't loan you money either, so quit asking, damn it. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Voss Show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Anyway, guys, we at Amazing Man, we're going to be talking about on the show, we're going to be talking about diet and some of the things you can be eating to improve the quality of your health, et cetera, et cetera, and maybe improve the environment as well. Today, we're going to be talking with Nate Bloom, who serves as the chief executive offer officer of blue milo and sorghum united sorghum united is

an international ngo serving to advance education and market development for sorghum and adjacent small grains mr bloom is passionate about the mission of sorghum united due to the solutions for food security nutrition environmental, and rural economic disparity that these ancient grains represent. He's an expert on grain sorghum production and marketing with a focus on value-added agriculture and processing for sorghum-based products. Welcome to the show, Nate. How are you?

I'm good. Chris, do you ever have any guests that don't start the show smiling after that intro? They do. It really jacks them up. It jacks up everybody it even just gives me a little bit of a kick nudge high adrenaline man i love that that's what we love energy cells energy cells so give us your dot coms where do you want people to look you up on the interwebs yeah so we've got two websites you can check us out at w.sorghumunited.com. And then we also have www.sorghosquad.com.

So give us a 30,000 overview of what's inside your, what you do there. Yeah, really what I tell people is that we might be preaching on sorghum and millets, these grains that people would say, oh, you work in agriculture. But really, actually, what I tell our team all the time is nobody cares about sorghum and millets. And I get that. What they really care about, though, they care about food security. They care about health and nutrition, issues around stunting, social issues around economic disparity, crime, human trafficking, all the things that lack of access to healthy food and prosperity bring to cultures around the world, as well as the environmental impacts of what's going on in our planet, right? How do we save more water? How do we sequester

more carbon in the soil? How do we provide more habitat for pollinators and birds and things like that? And sorghum and millet check all those boxes. So really what we're working in is not agriculture. Actually, what we're working in is not agriculture. Actually, what we're working in is in those basic human systems that allow for the flourishing and thriving of human civilization. Wow. So what is sorghum? Is this where you get your jaws sore because you chew gum for too long? Like an NFL coach or something? No, sorghum is an ancient grain. It's kind of like, we use it like rice at home in that way, but it's gluten-free. It's non-GMO. And frankly, wherever you go in the world, it's called something different.

So a lot of your viewers here in North America would know it as Milo. In India, they know it as Jowar. In Ethiopia, it's Bashila. Kenya, it's Mbatsu. Orgo in Europe. You know, so this is an ancient grain that's been around for, God, like 8,000 years is what's been traced back to. So pre-Mesopotamia even, I mean, you're talking about the Harappan civilization in India that then spread it to North Egypt and everything else. And consequently, it's been part of so many cultures for so many millennia that every culture has a bit of a different name for it but in modern times we've

forgotten it our job is to help people bring that back so you guys are trying to bring awareness get people familiar with the sorghum and what it is what is it what does the consumer need to know about some of this stuff and why it's important for them I mean I can I order a sorghum steak or how do I tap into utilizing this as a diet resource? Well, it's funny you said sorghum steak because, I mean, if you wanted to do like an impossible burger or something like that, sorghum is one of those grains that's high in protein that I think is being used for some of that. Now, I'm a farm kid. Listen, I'm not judging anybody else Now, I'm a farm kid. Listen,

I'm not judging anybody else, but I like a good steak. So maybe my steak could be fed by sorghum, which is just fine too. But sorghum's a grain. Millets are a whole other conversation that we work in as well. They're also small, ancient grains. All members, primarily members, I should say, of the Pocaeae grass family, by the way. So they're small grain, like grass. If there's a drought, they go dormant, but they don't die. When you have your front lawn, you get into a drought, you're not watering it, it turns brown.

You get a little bit of water and a little bit of rain, and it perks back up. It's the same thing for these plants, whereas other grains would just burn up and die. So they're really drought tolerant, which is why they're really good in so many places around the world. It's one of the things that makes them really important. Probably why they survived so long too, huh?

Yeah, I mean, it's just a basic, you know, this is where they evolved from. They evolved from these hot, arid regions in the Sahel and East Africa and Mesopotamia and in India, of course. evolved from they evolved from these hot arid regions in the sahel and east africa and mesopotamia and in india of course all those places where it was hard to grow stuff but yeah you need food last time i checked as a human being food's kind of important although some people seem to be eating more than others hey come on my camera doesn't go that low chris come on i've done my fair share trust me you can hear the fatness in my voice, so it gurgles every now and then.

How did you get into this business? How did you get in discovery, and why and when did this become important to you? Yeah, so it's really interesting. So I grew up on a farm in Nebraska, but I grow crops as well as I grow a full head of hair. Yeah, okay, you're going to laugh. It's all right. Or don't. It's a bad joke.

I'm not going to laugh. Okay, fine, fine, fine. Do you, do you. But no, but the reality is I grew up in the 1980s, and the farm crisis was a real thing, and so my cousins and I, we were all told, go off the farm, go find something else. There's nothing for you. So actually, fast forward, I ended up working for a member of Congress for about five years as director of ag policy and outreach.

Oh, wow. And through that, I realized, hey, man, I really kind of miss the farm. I want to be closer to it. And so an opportunity came up a few years later for me to be the executive director of the Nebraska Grain Sorghum Board. And I took it. Now, I didn't know anything really about sorghum at the time, other than the fact that we grew it on our farm in rotation when I was growing up. But the more I learned about it, the more I learned about the nutrition and health benefits that sorghum provides, the more I learned about the qualities of the grain as a C4 plant, sequestering carbon,

soil health, water conservation, biodiversity, all that stuff. And having a policy background, looking at things from a 30,000 foot view view, I became really passionate because I was like, okay, there's a lot of problems in the world right now that we're facing in our food systems and in our ecological systems that these grains could be solutions for. Not the only solutions, but definitely a big part of the solution. And frankly, our food systems undervalue these grains. As a result, a lot of farmers don't grow them.

Why would you grow something you can't sell? That's true. You've got to be able to sell it. And then from your other standpoint, the creating awareness. Consumers can't request a grain if they don't know it exists. That's true. That's true. So we try to do all those things.

We try to support farmers. We try to support the creation of value chains at a local level around the world, working with governments, universities, private sector, small-scale mechanization fabricators, and the farmers. But then also creating the market's awareness so that the people understand this is why they should walk these cranes and why they should care. So it's also called Milo. Here's Anthony's organic pulled millet. Millet? Is that the same thing? Yep.

So millet's the same thing. Now, I'm looking on Amazon, so I'm seeing spaghetti that's made from it. I should quantify it. So millets aren't exactly the same thing. They're in the same camp. What I like to tell people is we work in sorghum and millets, but there's no such thing as millets. Okay.

So I'm seeing sorghum you can order from Amazon in several different forms. There's the famous Bob's Red Mill that has them. There's some spaghetti that's made from sorghum here. That's kind of interesting. What are some of the benefits? Should I be ordering some of this to sprinkle on things or cook up or use as a cereal? What's the mode that I can use to utilize some of this stuff? So you can use it as a gluten-free flour. So you can bake with it. A lot of people, when they use it as a flour, they'll buy an all-purpose mix that already has like xanthan gum in it because that gluten is the binder, right?

So without gluten, you have to have something to hold things together. So xanthan gum is commonly used for that. But at home, when we do that, we use it just like we would any other regular wheat flour as far as recipes go. You can flake it. You can pop it. You can extrude it just like a Cheeto. You can cook it. You can cook it just like rice.

I mean, anything you do with a grain, you can do. And it's not just like rice i mean anything you do with a grain you can do and it's not just food i mean it's food fuel and fiber right so from the from the stocks in the south from the stocks people make syrup they make sorghum syrup which is probably what a lot of your viewers know about but you can also extract that sugar just like you would sugar cane and to your point to your point of why you should be looking at it, so from a health benefit, there are hundreds now of peer-reviewed public research papers that have been published around the world that all show the same things, right?

Anti-diabetes, anti-diabetic management. It's lower on the glycemic index. You stay fuller for longer, and it makes it easier to manage your blood sugars. And a lot of folks in India actually control their diabetes entirely through a diet with millets. Dr. Really? Dr. Absolutely they do. Dr. Wow. Dr. And then, like carcinogenic benefits, heart health benefits.

A couple years ago here in Nebraska where I live, the Food for Health Center, which is one of six organizations in the world that exclusively studies the human gut microbiome. They published two papers in the journal Nature that showed that sorghum helps to rebalance the human gut microbiome. And why wouldn't it? Because that biology in our gut evolved alongside us. And these were some of the first grains grown by humans. I mean, doesn't it make sense that that microbiology would be happier when we ate these? And not to mention the anti-inflammatory benefits, right? So inflammatory bowel disease in particular is on the research

that have shown that these grains help to combat that. Oh, wow. Yeah, I'm seeing like you can buy pop, it's like popcorn, but it's pop sorghum. You can buy it on Amazon. I might try some of that just for... Yeah, there's a, you know, I tell you what, even at home, we sorghum. I don't know. I don't know. I tried some of that just for. Yeah, there's a, you know, I tell you what, even at home, we'll pop it.

I just use a popper that blows. Yeah, I buy like a $20 popper on Amazon that blows the air horizontally instead of vertically. The grains are small, so you blow them vertically, they blow out. But if you blow them horizontally, you can pop them really easily. And then what I do is I just, I drizzle olive oil on there just to get the whatever seasoning I want to stick and then I make it taste whatever I want to taste like oh wow for easy yeah I'm seeing all sorts of different variations or even some books and stuff that you can take and utilize and yeah I mean the green the the gut health your second brain as

it were is one of those things that is really important for people. It looks like you can buy it in so many different variations and stuff. And you could probably replace quinoa with it, maybe. I don't know. Yeah, we want another one of those grains that's really, really good. So we don't really want to replace that. And frankly, we don't want to replace, Chris, this is really important. I want to make this distinction. We don't want want to replace that. And frankly, we don't want to replace, Chris, this is really important. I want to make this distinction.

We don't want to replace any grain. What we like to say, though, is that there's room on the plate for everybody. And what has happened in our global food systems, which are largely driven out of Europe and North America, think about your really large companies producing food, right? Those systems are set up to really favor a handful of grains, you know, your corn, your rice, your wheat, your soybean. And those are all fine by themselves. But what's happened is the entire diet has become those, right? And when we look at nutrition comparisons, even for unprocessed grains, right, like whole grain, sorghum and millets, you know, calcium,

iron, vitamin, fiber, all that stuff. I mean, these other grains, they? Like whole grain, sorghum and millets, you know, calcium, iron, vitamin, fiber, all that stuff. I mean, these other grains, they beat those grains that we're used to hands down. And then you get into the over-processed issue with food. So like what I like to tell people, listen, I mean, no wonder 66% of all diseases in the world are dietary related. Look at what we're eating. We're eating things that look like food, but they're not really food, right? And who does that affect most? Who is it most expensive for and out of reach to purchase healthy, fresh food?

The people who are economically disparaged. So they're the ones who are left with the bad things, you know. So trying to make a difference within those food systems, I mean, it's not just the work that we're doing in africa or asia or south america or latin america i mean it's it matters here too yeah it definitely does so tell us about this sorgo squad am i pronouncing that right yeah sorgo squad remember i said sorgo is what they call sorghum in Europe, right? Yeah. So listen, I'm a big fan of what we call edutainment, right? I love to learn, but I like to be entertained while I learn. And I think that a lot of young people are the same way. Not that I'm a young person anymore, but I used to be.

Thanks, you're laughing at that one. You know, so we wanted people to understand what these grains were and why they should matter, right? From a health and nutrition standpoint, from a, you know, how can their grains be used in an industrial application standpoint? And then what does it mean for environment, biodiversity, etc.? And so we came up with these characters and we gave them these different names from around the world so people would recognize that they're all the same. So Professor Sorgho, obviously Europe, right? Joar, who represents the industrial applications for sorghum, that fuel and fiber piece. That's the name in India. Mashila, she represents the health and nutrition, and find her in Ethiopia, where Mashila is the nomenclature. And of course, Ilo here in North America presents the environmental part of it.

And they're kind of, because of my love for history and my love for comic books, they take a graphic novel-type form of the big Spider-Man nerd. Happy to say it. I don't shy away from that. And so the covers are actually homages, by the way, to different Spider-Man covers. I'll let you decide which ones they are. But they're like Indiana Jones meets Captain Planet, right? And they've been really well received. Now we've got a merchandise store as well. We've got a video game in development, should be out here in the next couple months. And I'm actually here right now. I'm at Sundance

Film Festival in Park City, Utah, because we're trying to rub elbows with people who can help us with some animation and attribution. All the proceeds from Sorgho's squad, by the way, go into the Sorghum United Foundation. And the Sorghum United Foundation, that's what I consider to be doing the real work as far as helping empower and uplift people. But again, those people can't be empowered and uplifted in these grains if the consumers don't know what they are and why they should want them. So we've got to do both at the same time. So the video games and the other features are to help people get educated, get familiar

with what's going on, yada, yada, yada. Yeah, but to have fun while they're at it. You know, one thing that's interesting with the books, you know, originally we set out really just to educate about sorghum and millet, but also that, you know, in a palatable way, how do we take these very complex issues around our food systems globally? How do we make those into a, no pun intended, digestible nugget that young people can understand even? But some of the reviews we've gotten have gone beyond that because we are a global, and the books reflect that. We've gotten reviews from educational outlets that have said things like, oh, we love the diversity within the characters.

Oh, we love the showcasing of the different cultures. Oh, we love the history that's rooted in these historical sites and things like that. You know, and as well as, of course, the ecology and the topics around our changing climate. So, yeah, it's actually been really well received. I noticed you guys have a marketplace on your website, and I guess a different place you can go to buy this stuff? We're revamping the website, actually. Okay.

We've got about 4,000 stakeholders all over the world on every continent except for Antarctica, and they represent all points within the value chain. So there are necessarily several of our members who are small and medium enterprises selling products and things like this. The marketplace you see up there was a bit of an experiment. We were always trying to find more ways to bring value to our stakeholders. But now, just in the last month, Sorghum United has transitioned from a membership-type organization to an actual 501c3, an actual foundation.

Oh, wow. So just this morning, we had a team energy call to figure out how do we want to revamp the website so it's more reflective of that. And we're now becoming more project-based and doing projects around the world, which I think I'm really excited about this project here. Well, it seems pretty interesting. Is there anything we haven't discussed about Sorghum that you want people to know about? I really would like to take a moment and talk about those projects that I mentioned and why they matter. So we're undertaking here in 2025 what I call field-to-market trials. And we're doing this.

We've got three in the Philippines, one in India, three in Kenya, two in Zimbabwe, one in Malawi, one in South Africa. And we're talking about doing one in Brazil, as well as Colombia. And this is reflective, again, of the fact that we have staff all over the world. We have offices in India, offices in Kenya, offices in the Caribbean, and of course, here in North North America as well as the Philippines. And what we're wanting to do and what we're doing is we're working with those academic institutions locally, those input providers locally, those fabricators locally, because a lot of places in the world, they're still, listen, man, they're harvesting, they're cultivating, they're threshing by hand for these.

And so rather than going and being an organization that goes in and gives them machinery, for example, instead we license the schematics for the machinery and then we teach their local fabricators how to make it. And that's important because for a couple of reasons, you know, one, just to pick on the mechanization for a minute. One, when that mechanization breaks, mechanization breaks, they know how to fix it because they're the ones who built it. That's not the case right now in a lot of places. A lot of places that equipment comes from China, it's sometimes poorly made. And when it breaks, no one knows how to fix it. The other side of that is different environments require maybe different tweaks to those

schematics. And so this allows those local populations to find local solutions that match where they're at while also creating jobs, not just in agriculture, but adjacent to agriculture. And then we also work with them from teaching them how to be entrepreneurs, how to create products, but then also to run businesses. Because what happens a lot in agriculture, whether it's here in the USA or in Zimbabwe, is farmers are really good at growing a raw grain, and then they sell it as a commodity, and there's no way to capture value. The market determines the price. I talked to one farmer in Zimbabwe recently in Binga, whose only market is the local brewer, okay? The local brewer knows that he's whose only market is the local brewer. Okay. The local brewer knows that he's the only market. And guess what? He hasn't paid the farmer in eight years, but the farmer still goes there because he

doesn't have anywhere else to go. What's he going to do? Not grow grain, you know, teaching them, well, maybe you can make a flour out of it. Maybe you can make a bread. Maybe you can go and sell that into your own market, make your own market. Or in the Philippines where rice is such a big part of the diet. And the Philippine government asks me, they said, how do we eat it? How do we sell it?

And I said, what are you making with rice? Okay, we're making this and that. Okay, make that, but change the formulation to include this. You know, it's really that simple. So what we're trying to do, what I think is different, sets us apart from other organizations that are doing good work also, by the way, not to pick on them.

But we don't want to go into an area or a culture or a country and try to give a solution to a problem we may not fully understand within that context. And not only that, we don't want to propagate multi-generational learned helplessness. We want to really empower people. And we only that, we don't want to propagate multi-generational learned helplessness. We want to really empower people. And we want to empower people by using the value systems that

these grains can provide because of the health benefits, but also because of the fact they are so hardy and they can grow in some of the worst environments on the planet. So this is what makes a lot of sense. People who support us at the Sorghum United Foundation, that's where your money is going. Your money is going to those educational pieces. Your money is going to those partnerships. Your money is going to help these people on the ground, smallholder farmers, you know, set up local processing, modernize their operations, get access to good seed. Something as simple as that is a challenge sometimes. And again, all over the world. Definitely. So how can people take advantage of your systems?

So they can go there and contribute or donate, they can buy resources. How can people get involved? Yeah, so there's a few different ways. Of course, if you go to sorghumunited.com, there's a donate button at the top that does link to a PayPal account. That's the easiest way. We are going to be setting it up. So if you want to make monthly donations, you can do that. And as we revamp the website, you're going to be able to actually see those projects and the people, most importantly, the people that we're working for on the ground. That's one way to do it. Another way to do it is, you know, talk to your local school systems. Those SORGO Squad books

are really intended for school systems. And they meet a lot of curricular demand around, again, sustainability, health and nutrition, and, you know, multiculturalism. You know, talk to your school system. Go to your school board and say, hey, maybe we should buy these. Because, again, the proceeds from those go back into the SORGO United Foundation mission. Watch for the video game that's coming out. And, heck, by the way, don't stop there. If you want to buy books for the grandson or granddaughter for a birthday,

you can do that too at sorghosquad.com. There's also merchandise. We have shirts, hats, water bottles, that sort of a thing. And sneak peek, my team in the Philippines tells me we're going to be expanding into plushies and action figures soon, too. Oh, wow. Yeah. That should be a lot of fun.

All of those things, all of those things go back into doing the good work that we're trying to do. And, you know, I just gave a presentation on this the other day. This is ultimately why this matters, Chris. If you were to take, and I'm sure you're familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? That pyramid you get in psychology 101 at the university. And the foundational piece of that pyramid are those physiological needs. And do you remember what those physiological needs are? I don't remember exactly. Go ahead and fill us in. Food, water, shelter, those types of things, the basic things we need to be successful. When we don't have those,

and I've been in a lot of places in the world that are not very nice, that don't have those things, okay? That's when you have issues with crime. That's when you have issues of human trafficking, sometimes even self-trafficking, right? That's when you have the issues over lack of education because people can't afford to go to school.

That's when you have the issues around radicalization, you know, or political instability. You know, when those basic foundational pieces of society are not present, the rest of society cannot progress. And, you know, I've got a lot of people who come to me and they, well, you know, I don't work in agriculture, so I don't need to worry about this or whatever. I remind people, listen, two things. One, we all share the same planet, right? So whether you work in agriculture or not, you have a vested interest in making sure the person next to you is doing well. But two, if you eat, guess what? You're adjacent to agriculture.

The FFA here in North America, they do a really good job. They've got a saying. They tell their kids, you know, there's 435 careers in agriculture, and only two of those are farmer and rancher. So you think about all the adjacent industries, everything from banking to manufacturing to marketing to shipping to all these things, right, food processing. That's all dependent upon agriculture. And what happens in societies,

if they can't grow grain because of the climate that they're in, they're trying to grow maybe maize in the desert, which doesn't work, but they can grow sorghum instead. You know, if they can't grow those things, then all that adjacent industry, all those adjacent economic opportunities,

they fall too. Without that basic fundamental structure, foundation of society, the entire society tends to collapse unless it's heavily supportive, which becomes a whole other challenge. Yeah. Well, as we've seen climate change and some of the fallout, you know, we've seen recently the fires in California. It definitely is a big deal. So as we go go out give people a final pitch in the dot com so people can find you on the interwebs

yeah follow us on the socials of course we're on you know all the big ones you know linkedin book instagram etc etc etc everything your your kids and grandkids are on except maybe snapchat we don't do that i don't i'm not sure if if we're on TikTok. I've got to ask my team that. But then also, of course, the website, sorgosquad.com. Those books are also on Amazon as well. And then, of course, sorghumunited.com. I think we post some really interesting things right now. We're starting to post some more content from a group of fellows that are nutritionist graduate students, nutrition and health students out of India. So there's a lot of really unique perspectives that our stakeholders bring sometimes to those

posts too. It's been very insightful. I learned some new things. I'm going to order some of that popcorn and try it. I really like popcorn, but the problem is popcorn is not popcorn, right? Remember, there's room on the plate for everybody. And frankly, the fastest growing market for sorghum in the United States is pet food. So if it's good enough for your pet, it's good enough for you.

Really? I don't know. I've seen some of the things my pets eat in the backyard. Did you know, Chris, did you know this stat that during the pandemic, for the first time in history, kids spent more money on their pets than they did their children. Oh, yeah, because your pets still love you at the end of the day. I don't know about your children. So if you're willing to spend that kind of money,

more money on your pets than your kids, maybe you should be thinking about what it is you're feeding them and thinking, hey, maybe if it's good for them, it's good for me. You do, and your pets aren't going to throw you into a housing center. They're not going to throw you under the bus when you get old. No, they'll just eat your nose when you die. It's fine. That's true.

I heard cats will eat you first before dogs will. Dogs will wait a while. Cats are just assholes by general nature. Hey, man. It's like the circle of life. It's like Elton John right there. It's fantastic. Circle of life in Elton John right there. Circle

life in Elton John and cats eating your face. I don't know. It's a good conversation. I mean, I love Elton John's music, but there's some people that probably think listening to it is like cats eating your face. I know it's for that way with me and modern music. Anyway, it's been very

insightful, Nathaniel, to have you on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you for coming on. Yeah, Chris, my pleasure. Thanks for what you do. Oh, and thanks to our audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss, linkedin.com, Fortress Chris Foss,

Chris Foss, one of the TikTok, and all those crazy places on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that should have us out. Great show.