The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 260: Sue & Mike McCloskey—There's No Nipples on that Almond

Episode Date: July 19, 2022

Dairy Farmer Dirty Jobbers Sue and Mike McCloskey school Mike and Chuck on the finer points of animal husbandry, the science of better milk, and how no-till and eutrophication is bringing them ever closer to becoming an environmentally net zero farm.

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Breaking news, everybody. Big news. There's no nipples on that almond. It's episode number 260 of the way I heard it. And yep, that's the title. And Chuck, I went with this title because after a lot of research and eating a lot of almonds, I've never seen a nipple. And I'm pretty sure they just don't exist at this point. On almonds, that is.

I thought your research was going to conclude that titles with the word nipple in them do better than titles without the word nipple. Well, we'll see. In the last 260 episodes, I'm fairly sure that nipple hasn't wormed its way out of the lexicon and into any of our titles thus far. but totally nipple-free thus far. We've been nipple-free on the way I heard it, but now the nipples are out in force, my friends, and you could cut glass with them. But you won't find one on an almond.

I stress this because you can't get milk from an almond, and yet almond milk is a thing. It's a thing. They sell it. Somehow or other milk has become the back half of a lot of hyphenated words. Almond is just one example of a thing you can't get milk from, but is nevertheless being sold as milk. Why do we care about this?

Because our guests today are two of my favorite farmers in the whole wide world, Mike and Sue McCloskey, who I've known for years now, met him on dirty jobs early back in the day. They own a modest little dairy farm up in northwest Indiana. Modest little dairy farm. It's one of the biggest dairy farms in the country at this point, and they are on the cutting edge of a great many things. All kinds of science, all kinds of technology, kinds of environmental breakthroughs that are allowing people to plant crops without actually

tilling. They have 42 18 wheelers in their fleet of trucks that deliver their delicious milk, real milk from actual cows all over the country. And those trucks are remarkable because they run on cow crap. Cow crap. Yep. Bio, diesel. Their entire operation is basically powered by the poop from their cows. A lot of people are doing this on a smaller scale, Chuck, but I've never seen it done at this level before. Look, a big part of MicroWorks has been agriculture, a big part of dirty jobs, has been modern agriculture. Farmers, in my estimation, are the last great generalists among us. They have to be really good at a whole lot of different things, and Mike and Sue are really good at a lot. Mike in particular, he's a scientist, he's a

veterinarian. He's a generalist. He's a fixer. He's a visionary. And I wanted these two on, because I wanted to hear from farmers about the environment, about the climate, about this crazy world we're living in, where almonds and milk can show up not just in the same sentence, but in the same word. He's got a lot of thoughts on that as well. Their company, Fair Life, makes unbelievably delicious milk. The kind of milk you used to get straight from the cow and a cold jar brought to your porch. It tastes great.

It's high, high protein, low in sugar. And it's such a huge hit. I think Coca-Cola bought them a couple years ago. Yeah. Yep. Anyway, this is a fascinating conversation because it's a success story, uniquely American, utterly agricultural, but also something comes up in our conversation that I didn't think we were going to talk about, but I'm really glad we did.

There was a controversy over at Fair Oaks a couple of years ago in June of 2019, and it was the kind of controversy that could have cost them their entire business, because animal rights activists got onto the farm and surreptitiously filmed some farm workers. mishandling some animals. Abusing. Yeah. I mean, it's just call it what it is. It was hard for me to watch. It was hard for, I think, anyone to watch, but it was devastating for Mike and Sue to watch.

Because these two love their animals. They take their animal welfare very, very seriously. All of the employees at Fair Oaks need to sign, essentially a pledge, vowing to report any kind of abuse. They have all sorts of systems in place, but they're a big operation, and of their many, many employees, four or five of them turned out to be bad actors. And they were caught, and the footage got out there. And what Mike did in response, I thought was kind of brilliant. We wind up not only talking about it, but talking

about it in detail, because these two farmers put together what I think was a master class in crisis management. They handled the situation. They got it behind them. and I think there's a lot to be learned from it. I mean, were you surprised by some of what you heard? Yeah, I was. I mean, I saw the video that Mike did right in the wake on the heels of it, less than 24 hours later. And he took full responsibility for everything and said, you know, geez, we didn't think we needed to have, you know, cameras watching our employees. We felt like we could trust them more and apparently we couldn't.

So that's all changing. It's a very instructive lesson on a whole lot of different. levels, but in the end, it's a story that very nearly killed the business that wound up making it much stronger. So we talk about that, and we talk about some breakthroughs in modern agriculture, and you're going to love them. They're the real deal. Mike and Sue, they made a better glass of milk, a better bottle of milk, and confirmed something that I've long suspected, which you may have heard, too. There's no nipples on that almond. Oh my goodness. As I live and reads, Hey, please tell me I'm not going to be drinking alone.

Well, I have my Brickhouse Nutrition container that's supposed to be full of some sort of healthy green thing. But I'd be happy to put some noble Tennessee whiskey in there instead. Oh, my God. So disappointing. Hey, guys. Hey, Mike. Hey, Mike. How are you?

Fantastic. Thank God we have Gus here because we would have. been completely lost. Thank God for Gus. Is he still playing the guitar? Gus is still playing the guitar. In fact, Gus just wrote, you know, Jack got married

two weekends ago, and Gus wrote the most beautiful father-daughter dance song. He tore it up, Mike. Did he really? Oh, he tore it up. It's an amazing song. It really is something.

Everyone just was in tears and in laughter and enjoy. It was just something, something to see. Well, I love it. If he's still around when we wrap this up and there's a guitar handy, bring it in here and play a few bars. As long as it's an original. Yeah, I know it's original. When we wrap this up, we're going to close with your song to bring a guitar there.

No pressure, Gus, but, you know, three million people listen to this thing, so I'm just saying. Could be one of those opportunities. You never know. You guys can negotiate the pay on that. All right. Okay. Oh, my God. Now Gus needs an agent.

Tell him to call Mary. There you go. Yeah, I don't know about that. Sue, I have to compliment you on your sartorial splendor. That really does look like every country picnic table cloth I've ever seen turned into a really beautiful shirt. Thank you, Mike. All right. First things first, I miss you both terribly with the white, hot intensity of a thousand sons.

Is there any chance you're going to be in Texas in a couple of weeks for the Big FFA thing? No. No, no. We weren't planning on that. It didn't work out this year. I'm there. I'm impersonating a keynote speaker at the Big FAA thing. Oh, yay.

Great. Great. I remember when you did that in Indianapolis. Yes. Was it Indianapolis where you did it? I did. I think that was 2008, maybe even 2006. When did we meet?

Was it 2006? Yeah, I think it was right after you did that is when we met. But I want to say that what is our friend from the chicken industry? Chad. Chad set that up with you at the FFA or he was at the FFA and met you there. and I don't know if we had met before or not. I can't remember what came first, but they were very close to each other.

The chicken or the egg. Chuck, what was happening back then, basically, was Dirty Jobs was just kind of getting started. Yeah, I think it was your third or fourth season of Dirty Jobs. Because I know you were out. Yeah. Yeah, it had been on long enough for you guys to have seen it and for your kids to have liked it and for you to...

Oh, all right, let's get it straight. For Sue, to sit there Saturdays all day long watching dirty jobs. And then everyone else had us sit with her and watch. It was Troy and I who like, Troy and you are the ones that really, really. We found it and then we just started, yeah, we went back on all the seasons. Yeah.

So you helped program the early years? We set the bar for all the shows afterwards. I believe that. But that was, we set the bar off camera. They set the bar. Oh, believe me. Off camera. A literal bar, I believe.

A little bar off camera. Well, if I didn't mention this in the intro or even if I did, I'll repeat it. This was a precarious time for Dirty Jobs because even though the show was a hit, farmers were having a difficult time inviting a show called Dirty Jobs. You know, a crew with cameras on a farm is not a thing that most farmers relish. But the show had been on long enough for Sue to form a favorable opinion of me. our show. And so too did Chad Gregory, a guy that was in the chicken part of the business. So in that same year, Dirty Jobs got a chance to visit two really incredible operations. And the feedback on those

shows was great. And the FFA saw it. And then they invited me into their world. And I began to get a much better understanding of just, first of all, how disconnected so many people are from their food. And secondly, how misunderstood and how difficult it is to be a farmer in the 21st century. And so dirty jobs at that point, suddenly the floodgates opened and we were on farms all over the place. But Mike, honestly, I don't even know how much of this you remember, but the night I met you, one of the first things you did was, you handed me a scalpel and let me assist in a cesarian section on one of your cows. I mean, people should know you're a doctor, you're a veterinarian.

But that level of trust with cameras around was one of the most amazing things that I'd ever seen. And to this day, people ask me about it. So thanks. No, that was a great experience. I still remember when our veterinarian, we had asked him to do the C-section, and you and I were standing there.

And he said, you know, I'm not going to do a C-section on camera. I don't dare. And it's not going to do it. said, okay, well, then I'll do it. And you turned to me and said, well, do you know how? I didn't know. I didn't know you were a vet. You didn't know at that time that I've never introduced myself as a vet. So you said, do you know how? I said, I think so. I was still trying to get up the speed with the fact that you both were like, wait a second, you guys aren't staying in town. You're staying here at the house. This is a crew.

with like seven people in it. Like, oh, no, no, no, no. You'll stay with us. You'll stay in the house. You'll go do the C-section. Then you'll deliver a cow. Like, you had this whole thing. I just thought, this is a, such a weird mix of hospitality and enthusiasm.

It opened the door for many more visits to your farm. It had a huge impact on me and our show. And so that's what I wanted to do today for an hour or so, is just really talk to you both about what's new in the wide world. of agriculture, what's happened to your farm. It was never a small farm, but it was not what it is today. You guys are like the freaking Disneyland of agriculture, Sue. How in the world did that happen? You know, just like everything, it doesn't happen overnight. It was a long time building. When Mike and I met in California, Mike was a dairy vet. I was an art student who got

drafted into the world of dairy and just fell in love with it. And we ran Mike's vet practice for a while in California and then decided that we kind of wanted to practice what we were preaching. And so sold the practice, kind of sold everything, moved out to New Mexico. And that's where we started our first dairy in partnership with some great friends. and because I didn't come from an agricultural background. I mean, I grew up in the suburbs of New York City in New Jersey. Mike had a little bit more of an agricultural background,

but it was very interesting to me when you would talk to other people where we were living and, you know, people wanted to know, my God, that's a big farm you got and that's a lot of animals you got and how do you take care of all of them. And so you start talking. to people, you start inviting people out, you start having your kids' kindergarten class come out. And that was evolution. And that's, by the way, that's no different than any other farmer in the country does. I mean, they host a church group or a rotary club. But we, when we had the

opportunity, when we moved up to Indiana, and we knew we were, we had 40, 60,000 cars passing us every day on the major highway, we thought, okay, we're 70 miles outside of Chicago, we're, you know, 80 miles north of Indianapolis, within a radius of a few hundred miles, there's a significant population. Forty-two million. And we had an opportunity that we could open the gates and, you know, let a lot more people in and have those conversations about what it took to feed our neighbors. our families, our town, our country, the world.

You know, what does it take today to really sustainably produce food for the rest of us so that you guys can sit there and podcast? And you don't have to go out and forage every morning for your breakfast. That is something that's good to have off the list of things to do, foraging for food. It's also Dirty Jobs 101, right? we were just trying to early on make the point that one and a half percent of the country you're feeding 330 million people three times a day and a good bit of the world as well. And the fact that most people aren't properly gobsmacked by that was something that always

troubled me. But the question to you, Mike, is why you? I mean, there are plenty of farmers out there who just put their head down and try and build their business and don't even. wander into this minefield of media and PR and cameras. You always seemed interested in making a case for the farmer while at the same time building one hell of a farm. And I'm just wondering, when did it occur to you that that was going to be part of the mission? I feel that disconnect, It's been around since the 80s and probably 70s.

We started our first farms in the mid-80s. So to know that back then two or three percent of the population was feeding everyone and to start hearing stories that weren't true about what we were doing really woke up in me the desire to communicate. I could see the need even back then that as we continued to evolve, there were people that are against what we did. and they would use those weapons to be able to discredit us. So understanding that, I thought it was very important that we start sharing the real story.

And I do have a science background through my veterinary career, and I'm a big believer in science. So I felt that it was important to do it from a science 101 basic way of communicating the truth, the transparency, and the concept of constant. improvement to me was incredibly important. One of the areas that I've always believed in, if we cannot justify our practices in the public arena, if we can't explain them properly, then we better consider changing our practices. And you need to test that. You need to go out there and really, you know, because unfortunately in the farming community and other professions

or businesses, you end up speaking a lot to yourselves. And that conversation becomes very circular. And it's a non-challenged conversation. I felt, you know, early on, very early on, I saw the importance that we were up against, you know, a challenge coming down. You know, when you're so few people that truly understand what you're doing and why you're doing it,

and there's so many out there that they may be a might, minority, but they're a very loud minority that are against what you're doing for various reasons. We could go through all those reasons, but... Well, let's not go through all of them, but let's touch on a couple, right? I mean, it just seems like such a self-defeating thing to be so firmly opposed to the people who make our food, grow our food, deliver our food. I said this to you years ago, but you're surrounded by an army of angry, acronyms. There's the EPA and there's OSHA and there's PETA and there's HSUS and a lot of well-intended

organizations that when you put them all together, I don't think most people truly understand the hoops that you guys have to jump through. But I'm curious to hear from you, what are the big impediments that most often surprise the average Joe, who like me is addicted to chewing and swallowing things? things. You know, I think that the different style of diets is probably the one that I would bring up first. And, you know, I obviously have nothing against a vegan diet. I think there's people that physically may feel better on a vegan diet or at least believe they do. And therefore, you know, I'm all for that. The issue is that for them, it becomes, if I may use this word, a religion against anyone who doesn't believe in what they believe in. And

And therefore, they go out of their way to create stories that are just not real, and there's very little truth to them, to be able to get their point across. So it becomes, you know, a true battle of creating stories because they know that there is no exposure. And people will believe anything if it sounds kind of logical, and you can make up a lot of logical stories if you're left alone. So the lack of that challenge is what I saw initially is something that, you know, we need to be aware of. And we need to start getting our story out there to make sure that these type of people don't, you know, don't achieve their goal. If it was up to them,

they truly would like to see every animal protein that's being produced wiped out. So then you get these other groups you mentioned that get incredible support, financial support from a very few, and then they have influence actually on governmental groups that are making decisions. And so unless we really get out of our own shell and open up our doors and be totally transparent and understand, again, I think it's very important that if we as farmers in front of the public arena in an open, honest discussion, can't convince people that our practices are for these reasons,

we have to reconsider how do we adapt our practices to be able to continue doing what we do. I've found it because we have hundreds of thousands of people every year visit our farms, I'm not afraid of that. I believe that we can explain our practices and the majority of reasonable people understand them very well and are grateful for them, grateful for the care to the animals, grateful for the care to the environment, and grateful for the nutrition that we produce every day and the hard work that it takes to do it. So I think it's been a very successful venture for many, many dairy farmers and other animal

producer farmers to, you know, take on this challenge. And it's, you know, more and more, every day, Mike, thanks to, I think, the efforts that Sue and I did initially and other farmers that followed our practices of opening up and understand that we've got to get out there and tell our story. And to do that, Sue, you've got to assume risk, right? I mean, there's risk in everything. Nobody ever built the kind of business you guys have today. But the challenges are one thing. but what are the real risks, Sue, that come with this kind of growth? I mean, you basically launched a new brand, Fair Life, right? Bought by Coke?

I mean, it's, you did it. You actually made a better milk, and you knocked it out of the park. You did it. So, I mean, where does the risk lie now? D-Dood-Dood-D-D-D-Dum. I love stories like this. Seven years ago, a guy named Ben Still was a musician. He had zero interest in running a food company,

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40 bucks off your first order. Good Ranchers. American Meat delivered. If you could eat a stare, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a foreign ranch, get good ranchers now. The risk is your reputation. That's the biggest thing that, and, you know, and we had an incident a few years ago that was incredibly hurtful to Fair Oaks Farms and even to Fair Life, where we had some,

abuse it was captured on video on one of our farms. And what we did was, you know, Mike did, if you haven't seen it, Mike did an incredible video explaining and apologizing and really taking ownership of what happened. Within 24 hours. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I remember. No, no, look, just to help the listeners who might not be up to speed, this was in June of 19, right? 2019? I saw the press. I called you immediately and you weren't around. Apparently you were busy taking other calls. But by the time we spoke, just a few. By the time we spoke, a couple days later, I said, look, Sue, I can't imagine what you and Mike are feeling because I know that footage probably made you as sick as could be. But I said, look, I've already started to write something for

Facebook. I'd like to say a few things about my experience on the phone. arm and you said, don't. Don't get near this. Don't touch this. This has the potential to end us, and it could end you. And I hadn't thought of it in those terms, but you guys came face to face with what could have been the end of the whole thing. That had to be an extraordinary, extraordinarily difficult day, week, month, year. I mean. Yeah. It was, and first of all, you know, we thanked you for your very, very generous offer.

But again, you know, we realized how divided and divisive and how much, you know, how much anger was out there. We just appreciated support. That was the best thing. Sure. Because we needed to own it, which we did. there were an incredible amount of people who supported us through that time. A lot of CEOs within the industry, you know, came to Mike and gave them their moral support. But it was interesting because as hurt as we were, as hurt as our family was,

what got us through that was what gets you through any crisis, right? The first thing, it's like being in a car accident. The first thing you do is you look around at all the people you care about and you say, are you okay? And that was our family, that was the workers at the farm, that was everybody involved with Fair Oaks Farms. Are you guys okay? And from there, then, we started to, you know, implement all of, just all of the same values that we've always had. Okay, like, how do we make this better?

This happened. It's ours. It happened on our watch. But how do we stop this or never happening again? And not only just to us, but to anybody in the industry. And it was through that time that it was a good couple of years, that it really took to get people's trust back. It was answering phone calls.

It was, you know, writing back emails. It was just being as honest as we could with anybody who cared, who cared, whether it meant sitting on a phone call with somebody describing the ways that they wanted to, you know, take care of your children for you, or whether it was someone who is genuinely interested in knowing, well, what are you going to do about it? That was what got us through was actually really connecting with people, being transparent about it, and then strategizing, how do we move forward out of this with making the industry better? Yeah. I think, Mike, that I was very proud of everyone close to us at the moment. I think our response was

truly a natural response of who we are. The first thing that we immediately did was take full responsibility. I mean, those animals did suffer without a doubt that truly just broke our heart to see those animals suffer that way. And it happened, as Sue said under our watch. How exactly that it happened, like I shared before, and I continue to share with anyone who asks, it doesn't matter. I'm not ever going to get into that because there's a lot of things that happen when you are big and you put a target on your back and you represent an industry that people that don't want you to succeed. But it doesn't matter. What matters is that it happened. And it proved to us that we needed a lot better training,

a lot better education, a lot better monitoring, and a lot better surveillance. I want to come back to the surveillance in a second, but I want to tell you, too, that I watched the video you put out the next day, and I immediately breathed a huge sigh of relief. I don't have a crystal ball, but I knew that you guys were going to be okay, because Mike, I'm not just blowing sunshine. That was a masterful six and a half minutes of owning responsibility. not making a single excuse, putting forth a series of protocols that you had resisted prior to that. You didn't want to put cameras any more than a cop wants a, you know, a body camera.

It goes to trust between employer and employee. And I know you guys didn't want that. But the footage was undeniable. Your response was not only blazingly fast. It was humble and it was real and it was authentic. and I thought, you know what, there's so much reasonableness in humanity in this and transparency, you guys are going to be fine. The world's going to have to spin because the footage is what it is. And isn't it ironic going all the way back to the day we met? Really, the very first thing we did

was conduct a cesarean on international television on camera. When your own vet wouldn't even do it. We did it. And the trust and the friendship that came from that in some weird way, I think, informs what we're talking about now. Because it doesn't matter what's in your heart, right? Your employees, I've seen what they have to sign. It's a document pledging to report any kind of abuse. You employ thousands of people. But to your point, none of that matters. And you immediately said, that's it. We're putting in cameras. on our watch again. So smart move, good move. I don't know if there was some PR whisperer in your ear, but if you followed your gut, man, that was a good thing to follow. You know, that's such an interesting comment because, yes, you bring in the PR people like you know. And the initial

suggestions were kind of like don't make that video. Yeah, it was Sue and Jackie and Gus and myself, and I kicked everyone out of the room, and I said, I know what we're going to do, and I had a chance to bounce it off of them, and said, hey, this is what is the reality. You know, the support was overwhelming within our group, so there was no doubt that that's why I say it was truly natural, it was truly who we were, right? We've always believed in honesty and transparency, and that's what the people deserved after watching that video, honesty and transparency. And like you said, I mean, not only taking full responsibility, but how are we going to fix this? What are we going to do to make sure it never happens again?

Our animals deserve our protection. And that's our responsibility. And that's what we believed in all our life. And we had built a trust amongst our employees. And we believed that that existed. But, you know, unfortunately, when you get hundreds and hundreds of employees and that gets diluted down, and you have to put in other systems to make sure that that never happens. Right.

And the employees in that video were terminated immediately, right? Yes. Matter of fact, there were three and two were terminated before that video ever came out because we had suspected that some of this was going on. The people taking the video had been on our property for over six months. And they found that one area of the farm where those employees were our weak link, right, in that area. So, yeah. But two of those individuals were gone about two months before the video.

ever came out before we even knew that they were on that video. Here's a question I didn't think I would ask, but now that the earth has had a chance to spin for a bit, do you think it was for the best that it happened? And to be clear, we're talking about people who infiltrated your farm, trespassed, basically, with hidden cameras and got the footage they got. Now that the dust has settled, is your farm better for it? And if so, what do you say to those people? What do you say to those groups out there who are doing what they're doing? You know, that's a really complex question, as you know, and I appreciate you asking it, because it's something that I've probably asked myself a thousand times. And I have to say yes.

For me as an individual, as a person, it was life-changing for me. It made me a lot better person, for sure, without a doubt. But more importantly, again, my responsibility is to protect those animals and it created systems within our farms that I have a high degree of confidence. Now, I can't sit here and promise that someone will not abuse an animal. But what I can promise is that the systems I have in place will detect that immediately and it will be dealt with immediately. But I also can promise you that there's not a person on our farm that doesn't go today through an understanding of amazing training program. And the documentation that you referred to a little while ago, which we did have in place of the employees that were working at that time of the video, the documentation

today is so robust compared to that. So can something happen again? We all know. People are people and people will do things for different reasons. But yes, it's made our farm a lot better. and it's an experience that I think has made myself and I believe my family a lot stronger and a lot better and a lot more understanding of what it takes to take on a responsibility like the one we had defined that we're taking on and to really do it right. Look, I could talk to you about this for hours because honestly, I think somewhere down the road somebody's going to write a master thesis on crisis management and it's not going to involve PR. It's not going to involve focus groups. Sue, I've said this to you. Focus groups are really great at eliminating terrible ideas and brilliant ideas, right? What they leave you with is that squishy crap in the middle, these mealy-mouthed apologies,

these half-hearted attempts at writing the ship. How many CEOs have we seen just fall all over themselves trying to check every single box that just leaves the viewer and the listener going? Oh, bullshit. I mean, honestly, you're just shining me on. You didn't do that. And as a result, you've... Well, you are where you are.

So if there's anything else you want to say about it, say it now because I've got to get some other questions answered. Like, how do you get milk from an almond? And what the hell is that all about? Very tiny nipples on almonds. I would say we're not there yet, but I'm very proud. Sue and I, we decided to kind of create something special that could come out of this for, you know, a broader audience and ourselves. And that was to try to create with our cameras, machine learning and artificial intelligence, to be able to detect anything like this.

We have video watchers now, constantly every contact place on the farm where there's an employee and an animal is, there's cameras that are watching that. and then there's video watchers who watch those. So you could imagine what that's taking in an operation like ours. But I'm very excited about where we are with the technology, with artificial intelligence, and it's going to go beyond that, Mike. Once you have this type of investment in your farm, you can take it beyond animal welfare into nutrition management and other efficiencies that you're looking for in the farm

to add on to your automation of where we're headed in the future with technology. So that's been kind of rewarding. We're not there yet. I can't say that I have something that I can roll out totally. Our goal is that we have a phase that should roll out on November 1st of this year. Yeah. In about 20 farms outside of ours. So that's a goal.

So sooner or later, we'll meet that goal. And what's really interesting, because I think it kind of goes back a little bit to your, one of your questions before Mike was, you know, when we were talking about, what do people not know about, like, what? What you do on a farm? Who encounters AI in their daily lives, right? And yet here our cows are being watched by AI every day. The amount of science, the amount of technology that occurs in farms throughout the country day after day is astounding. And I think that's one of the things that people who have no connection, you know, no jet, generational connection to agriculture are amazed by.

And it's one of the funnest things that we've done is when you take, like, you take teenage kids to the farm. And they look at, you know, besides the AI, we've also got, and you need to come back and come see the robotic dairy. So where cows basically are milking themselves, there's no human interaction. So the cows walk up to a machine, they walk into like a little shoot. They get a little grain and they just stand there and a machine milks them. A robot milks them. It's like the freaking coolest thing. And when teenagers see that, when teenagers start to understand, holy crap, there's more than just like throwing seed from your little hip bucket out onto the fields.

You know, wow, this could be like, this is really interesting. I mean, I could be an engineer and work in agriculture. So it's one of the most rewarding. things that we've had as an experience at Fair Oaks Farms. He-Haul was a great show, but part of the unintended consequence of that and a gajillion other tropes is that you ask the average person to describe the average farmer, and it's still Buck Owen sitting out there with a hay seed, waiting to clear the South 40, and it's all, somehow those tropes are still with us. And it's funny you mention AI, Mike,

because I don't know if I ever told you this story, but there was a confusion between me and one of my early producers around my desire. Discovery wanted a show on AI. And I'm like, great, because I got a big idea for AI. And they're talking about artificial intelligence. And I'm talking about artificial intimidation. Yes.

So now we've come to the point where I have to ask, Sue, is it possible that AI is watching as humans, conduct AI on the cows? The AI is watching the AI. Unbelievable. It's very meta. We finally come full circle. The whole meta thing, Mike and I kind of crack up about it.

He's still yet to see Wally, the movie. I keep telling him we're going there. That's exactly where we're going. If you got robots, milk and cows, look, I don't know what the next show is going to be. Dirty Jobs is back. I'd love to come back, really just to see up close. You know, I've really closed the circle once and for all on all of that. It sounds pretty great.

But fundamentally, you're in the milk business. I mean, it's a dairy. You've got an ice cream thing. You've got exhibits. You got all that other stuff. But it comes down to milk. What did you do to make Fair Life milk so damn tasty? Less sugar, more protein.

why does it taste better than the other stuff? What did you do? What did you do, Mike? What did you do? Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Before you answer, put it through this filter. Sue sent some notes to Chuck. I'm not sure why.

I guess she thought we might need talking points. And I'm just looking through these now. And somewhere buried toward the bottom, she wrote, Mike McCluskey has been an incredible pain in the ass to the dairy industry. as visionaries typically are to raise the bar. So whatever you did to make milk taste better, how did it annoy everybody else in your world? Shameless plug!

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we'll take a drink and go. It really goes back to, I've been a milk believer since I have any memory at all, milk was always my favorite drink growing up. Back then, in the late 50s, early 60s, you got milk delivered to your home every single day. And that milk was milk that night delivered in a glass bottle. You drank it that day. And the next morning you had a fresh new bottle sitting there. So milk didn't have a chance to spoil whatsoever. So its desirability factor of flavor was amazing.

when we were kids and over time we went to the gallon jug which was a kind of you know a move that allows light and now we went to better pasteurization longer shelf life that allowed that milk to sit there under light causing oxidation changing its flavor allowing some of the natural bacteria no not pathogenic but there's natural bacteria in milk allowing it to slowly cause some flavor changes within the milk and And these combination of the things is what I designated back in my younger age as a dairy farmer or as a dairy veterinarian as the desirability factor that no one hears of. And to me, the desirability factor is a connection between your taste buds and your physiology of your intestines that is sending a message subliminally to you.

And, you know, it's not something that you drank and said, ah, I didn't like this. But it's something that you drank that reached a lower level and the desirability level, which is subliminal and moving then into a decision-making process of just a reaction, open your refrigerator, and you see, if you don't grab that milk like we did when we were kids. Because we allowed through the changing times to not keep that incredible wholesomeness freshness of milk that came in a 24-hour period because there was no time that milk had just been made by that cow, And there was no time for anything to cause any damage to it, because that takes several days to occur. So that was my first challenge that I really was focused on, needed to understand how could I bring back that flavor while still dealing with the longer shelf life and everything.

So the other side that occurred to me in the early 90s, I do have studies in nutrition through my veterinarian practice. I've always enjoyed nutrition, and I enjoy human nutrition very much as well. So I became a big student of this whole revolution of sugars and eliminating fats and increasing sugars in the 90s and what that was doing to all of us and the importance of protein that we totally overlooked in that whole process in the 90s. So I became a big believer in protein, a big believer in low sugar, a big believer that fats were good. So when I looked at nutrition in general, what better nutrition than milk when every mammal that's born, creates every cell in their body from only one thing for whatever time period and human, be it a year or two, they don't consume anything else but milk, and every cell develops from that. So how do I want to replenish my cells later on in life as we're constantly replenishing our

cells? I want to use the same vitamin mineral combination and naturally than milk, other many microcompounds that are in milk that have, you know, tremendous positive influence. and I want to use that protein because the amino acid profile that protein is just an amazing amino acid profile that has been specifically made for mammals. But at the same time, milk had lactose in it, which lactose is the sugar of milk. And, you know, it's not high, high, but there's more lactose than protein. So I wanted to figure out how do I reduce the lactose. And then there's an issue of lactose intolerance for a lot of people.

And lactose intolerance is not a light switch. It's not either you have it or you don't. There could be different levels and progression of that. So with that philosophy as well, then I tried to put all that together and say, okay, how do I change milk and meet all of these different attributes that I want to meet? Obviously, I needed a better type of packaging that would not allow any degradation because of oxidation and light. I needed to have a highest quality of milk at the farm level that you can possibly do, and you experience that with us of all the work we do to have very high quality,

like many dairy farmers do in this country today. So very focused on quality to start out with. And then I had been exposed to membrane filtration in the 80s, in the late 80s, because of some well water issues that I had. And I got an education. I educated myself really well in membranes back then. And it just happened to be that through those studies, I learned the different molecular sizes of these membranes and that there was a membrane that fit in between every one of these ingredients. So the water and milk, the mineral vitamin and milk, the lactose in milk, the protein in milk, and the fat in milk.

And I went from smaller molecular size to larger on that description there. And there was a membrane that fits in between each one. So I thought, ha-ha, if I can separate out the lactose, if I can separate out the protein, keep the vitamins and minerals and concentrate them up, concentrate the protein up, reduce the lactose. I'm in good shape. But I'm going to take a little bit of the sweetness away from milk, which is that great flavor. So what do I do? Well, it happens to be that lactose, although the same amount of carbons as fructose or glucose or galactose sugar, has only 25% of the sweetness. So if I could convert the lactose into glucose and galactose, because it's just a bond that keeps them there, if I could break

that bond and convert that with a lot less lactose, I could bring back all the sweetness. So I reduced the lactose by about, you know, 70%, and then I added the lactase enzyme. And what I left there, I turned into glucose, and that brings back the full sweetness of milk. While at the same time, we doubled the amount of protein and vitamins and minerals and calcium, magnesium, everything. So we were able to keep the sweetness, improve the body, because protein brings a lot of body. So your mouth fill is just fantastic. Protein has a great flavor in milk, so it increases the flavor even more. And I've always loved whole milk. We sell 2% in skim, as you know, but fats are good for you. There is just no doubt. I mean, every year we're learning

what I believe back in the 90s, you know, that the mistake was trying to eliminate good fat, fats and milk, fat is a good fat. So by having that full combination and protecting the product and the right type of packaging and starting with the highest quality of milk by making sure that our cows were in environments that were very safe to them and that they were extremely clean and milked in a very clean process, we ended up with Fair Life milk. And that ain't something you're going to hear on He-Haul. No, that ain't Buck Owens, that ain't Roy Clark.

There's a lot of science going on. Actually, the thing I really take from it, Mike, two things. First of all, whatever, your milk tastes better than any milk I've ever had. And two, have I been saying intestines wrong my whole life? Intestines? Intestines? No, no, intestines. Good.

Sue says that this is my husband. He has two second languages. That's my Spanish coming through. I like it. Intestines. It makes it all sound rather continental. you have. Sue, what the hell?

Almond milk. Why does my partner, Mary, always order almond milk now? I tell her that's... Oh, what's the matter with that girl? Look, I told you. She's not... I mean, she's very, very, very smart.

But when it comes to food, I tell her, you can't get milk out of an almond. But she's like, no, I'm not so sure about that. I'm like, I'm sure. So anyway, she's in Greece right now. but if she were here, I'm sure she would appreciate a cogent explanation. Are we seeing all these bizarre milk alternatives because, to Mike's point, the milk that we remembered is not so easy to get anymore. And we're concerned about fat, maybe unjustifiably so.

And is it just a bunch of marketing hoo-ha? You know, first of all, I agree with you about Mary. She's a brilliant lady. I'm going to have to have a sit down with her and kind of go through all of this. Please. An intervention, an almond intervention. Yes. Oh, my God, it's another AI.

One more. One more. And we can do that while a cow's being AIed while the AI is watching. And we can watch it. This will be great. All at one time. All at one time. And almond intervention.

That's a T-shirt, if I ever heard one. I think there's a lot of things at work, which, you know, even, And as Mike was explaining about the reinvention of milk and how we just were so dogged in our attempts at trying to bring good milk back, bring the best of milk back. Because there were attempts starting from the 80s, right, about, well, just look at the food pyramid, the old food pyramid that we used to have. I mean, my lord, you know, what a disaster that created for our country today. Well, it was perfect.

It was just upside down. Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, eat butter, people. So there was that, right? So don't drink whole fat milk. You can only drink skim milk. Who the hell likes to drink skin milk? No one. Chuck, no one. No one like skim milk. Except Fair Life skin milk because of the amount of protein in there. It actually like Mike was talking about that mouth feel, Fair Life skin milk is pretty good, but I still won't drink it. Just, no. So what's the point if the fat is good for you? You know what I mean? It is. That's why that whole food pyramid is now, you know, now it's a plate. It's not a pyramid.

We've moved to the plate concept and hopefully we'll evolve to just something else. I don't know, a glass. Parallelogram, a rumbus. Trapezoid. I'm always fond of those. So it left the fact that milk just was oxidizing fast, the fact that milk just did not. taste like it used to taste when we were kids and got delivered milk fresh from the farm from last night to your doorstep. The fact that there was this whole, you know, anti-animal protein

crusade going on, you know, the fact that there's a lot of money thrown behind alternative milks being thrown behind alternative meats. There's a lot of people trying to get rich by that. And add on the environmental side, I hope we get a chance to talk about it. Yeah, the whole fallacy of, you know, that it's just not sustainable and blah, blah, blah. All of those things pushed people into thinking, okay, by drinking almond milk, I'm doing better for my body, I'm doing better for the planet. Well, no, that was true. Yeah. Wake up, I'm sorry, but you're not.

The worst thing is, you know, when you see, hey, you're an adult, make your own choices. we feel like there's a potential of happening is that we're going to see a generation of kids being raised without the amount of calcium that they need, without that protein building blocks for their bodies that's going to be an issue. Just like the food pyramid issue of the 60s and 70s became an issue of obesity in the 90s and 2000s.

The same thing I think could potentially happen with children who, are not getting the amount of complete proteins that they need to be able to grow to be healthy adults. I mean, just think about real quick, the children in the world today who live in poverty levels, what are they not getting? They're not getting nutrition. What's happening to those kids that's just a crying shame and just a sin is that those

kids are not able to grow up to their potential. You look at the amount of stunting that happens in a lot of the third world countries today. And it's all because of nutrition. And here's something that's so readily available that a family in Ethiopia can have a goat, can have a cow, and to be able to feed their children and maybe sell enough milk to bring some income into their family. There's a whole elitist attitude that we have in our country that we think we know we're the best, what we think is the best for the world. Well, go have a conversation with a farmer in Africa who could have crops if he used GMO seats. Go talk to a family in India who are dependent upon their livestock. To me, that's like the bigger overall argument that we need to

in this country about bashing animal proteins because it's so relevant to the rest of the world. It's so relevant to how we evolved as humans to where we are today that how can we do a 180 today when that's the way civilization evolved. Mike, people have written books. There's so many books out there about food, about nutrition, about the environment. Five authors come to mind right now. I'm not going to mention any of them, but I'm sure you're. familiar with them. I'd like to hear from you guys in no particular order, but Norman Borloff saved

what, a billion lives. Billion lives with GMOs. If you don't know who Norman Borloff is, Google him. Nobody has saved more lives ever than the guy who created the thing that is now basically public enemy number one in many circles around food production, around modern agriculture. So if you would, things like free range, things like organic, talk a little bit about the words we always see on the packages that sell stuff and whether or not there's any actual utility in that, and whether or not the climate or the environment are actually benefiting in some way. Let's take organic, for example, and it's a known fact that nutrition of organic milk, if I can just stick with milk for this example.

The nutrition of organic milk and the nutrition of, what let's call it, conventional milk, there's absolutely no difference. I mean, this is a known scientific fact. No one can dispute. And we're involved in organic dairy's because we have people that we sell a lot of milk to large chains of supermarket that have asked us because they trust us if we would do their organic milk as well because they have a clientele that does organic. And so we have two comparisons, side by side.

And resource-wise, Mike, it takes twice as much resource to produce the same product. So if you put the world today, we have a serious problem to be able to meet these growing needs over the next 30 years. And we could be at a tremendous deficit under the best practices that we know we may be under a deficit. If we were to say that we're going to go to organic on everything, we need to go find another planet to be able to reduce that type of food, which is just not going to happen.

So if someone wants to eat organic, you know, again, I'm just like I said, I don't have a problem with a vegan diet. But don't tell me that the convention was wrong just because you believe in organic. That is not true. Absolutely not true at all. And Mike, if I may, don't lecture farmers who, well, in your case, I think your entire fleet of trucks at this point. Yeah, this is what I want to hear about. I mean, last time I talked to you seriously about this, it was over a decade ago, and you were this close to converting all of your trucks to the point where they could run on cow crap.

That's conservation. That's environmentalism. Real environmentalism. Where are you in that process? And yeah. So that was a very successful process. You know, we started that in 2012. We actually partnered with Cummings engines to create these engines.

There was only a nine-liter natural gas engine. And we needed a 12-liter to carry an 80,000 pound load of milk. All of our milk leaves our farms on tanker loads that are 6,000 gallons. So the total weight truck and milk is about 80,000. You need a 12-liter to 14-liter engine. And we created those engines in a partnership with them. But we created it not with just regular natural gas. We created it with renewable natural gas.

So all of our manure goes into digesters, and we collect that biogas that is produced in a digester. So that's an anaerobic situation where the metogenic bacteria consume whatever starches and emicellulose that's left in the manure and convert it into methane. over a very fast period instead of being outside in our pits like we used to do, and that methane slowly would move up to atmosphere. And, you know, that's one of the potent greenhouse gases, methane. So instead of allowing that to happen, we created digesters.

Initially, we just flared that so it wouldn't go to atmosphere, and you destroyed the methane that way. And then we looked for ways to better use that. We went to gen sets, so we produced electricity for our farm with that, and we used the bio gas could burn in these special engines, and they would run a generator that would create electricity for the farm. And then we moved into the idea of these trucks. And we were able to create the trucks, 42 trucks, took all of our milk to market,

100% of our milk went to market with this gas. But we had to also figure out a technology to be able to take this bio gas at 60% methane and convert it to 99% methane, which is what natural gas is when it comes out of a well. And we brought in the technology. We were the first to do it in the United States as well. We brought in that technology from New Zealand, and it was very successful. And the trucks were a very successful venture as well. So we had 42 trucks, put over a million miles on each of those trucks very successfully.

So for many, many, many years, we have been doing that. Today, we are now selling that gas into what's called the low-carbon fuel standards. All of it ends up in trucks, but not necessarily in our trucks only. So it goes beyond that now. So we've grown that quite a bit. And that's a California project. But right now there's legislation in about... Thank you, California.

Don't mention it. There's legislation of about nine other states that also are moving that route to be able to use these renewable natural gases and they're running these type of engines that we developed here at Fair Oaks on all these trucks. So, you know, it's a really cool story because it went beyond Fair Oaks. And now there's thousands of these trucks running up and down the road that it can carry these large loads. So that was a great environmental success story for us as well. But when you look at this whole environmental deal and you look at a carbon footprint of the dairy,

we've committed as a dairy industry, not Fair Oaks Farm, but the entire dairy industry. And I'm the chairman of the environmental effort of the U.S. dairy industry. We've committed to a net zero by 2050 on our farms. It's a tremendous commitment. I personally believe, and this is only Mike McCloskey's belief, I'm not specifically. speaking for the dairy industry, I personally believe we can hit this by 2040. And quickly, I'll share with you that when you look at a dairy farm and you look at the carbon footprint, and as you said, always, Mike, I quote you often, is that everything in life

comes from two places, right? Either we're farming it or we're mining it. And when you look at a life cycle assessment of any product, you find that 70% give or take 10% is at the source. Where did it start? It's either you're producing that carbon footprint at the mines or you're producing that carbon footprint at the farm. So 70% of the carbon footprint of a gallon of milk from cradle to grave happens at the farm level. And it divides into four major areas. One is the farming. The farming practices

itself, produces about a third. The other one is manure, which we shared about the digesters, and we eliminate 100% of that one-third. And the other one is this belching. A lot of people say farts. 90% is belching. Only 10% is farts. It's the other end, people. It's the other end. Let's get that straight. It's not the farting. But it is a belching, and that methane is going to atmosphere, and that's about 30%. And then there's 10% left, which is the fourth part on the dairy,

which is the energy side. You would think the energy side would be huge, you know, the electricity side and the fuels that we use and everything, diesel and gasoline and others, and the natural gas that some farms would use. But it's very small compared to the heavy load, the manure, the methane, the belching, and the farming practice,

which has nitrous oxide, releases, which is a very potent greenhouse gas as well. You know, there's very little CO2, a lot of methane, and some nitrous oxide in our farming practices. We have initiatives that we're working on on every one of these. To take it to net zero and beyond, we will sequester through practices such as no-till and cover crops, never open the ground. And we will be not only eliminating that 30% that comes from farming, but sequestering carbon.

Sorry, Mike. How do you never open the ground? What does that mean, no-till? In our normal practices, we go with big old disc into the farm, you know, after every crop and open it up and move the dirt around. And that's a practice that, interestingly enough, the University of Purdue and South Dakota years ago in the late 60s and 70s and continued the work through that,

they are the ones that drove the concept of no-till. There was a really known reason to be doing all of this. And we in America did not adapt that because, you know, we love our big equipment. We love our fertilizers. We love all this. Any reason to get that big green tractor out there on the field? But I've been in farms.

People love to drive tractors. You know, the people that really adapted it well, for example, is Argentina. I've been in farms one after another, hundreds of thousands of acres. The ground hasn't been open in 30 years, Mike, with continuous crop production. And it's called a no-till practice. And you drill into the ground and you're opening up a very small and you're covering up a very small. and you're covering it immediately as you go in there. And you use a combination of crop rotation

with cover crops during the winter and the different root structures continue the aeration in the ground so you're breaking up that way. It's just the proper way of farming. And you bring back the biological life within soil in a way that is impressive. So you start decreasing your inputs.

You drop your fertilizer needs by 30, 40% after four or five years of no-till. And by the way, Mike, How bad, because I don't want to understate or overstated, but, you know, headline news, price of gas, price of diesel, I get all that. The price of fertilizer, the availability of fertilizer, most people don't quite comprehend the impact that those two things can have on the cost of their food or the existence of it. Fertilizer tripled this year for us. The federal government is not going to close America's skills gap. They have an important role to play for sure,

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You can start a chapter in your own town. Or you can just go to their website and see the impact for yourself. And see, too, how easy it is to get involved. Thousands of kids are being introduced to the trades in a way that's absolutely positively moving the needle. The goal is a million members by 2030. I think it's doable. I'm doing what I can to help them.

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So, you know, impressive. And to know that there's practices out there that could over time, you start no till, it doesn't happen. in the first year, it's a process. You've got to build the soil back up. So at times, you may be starving it a little bit from the way your older practices. But once you get that biological life back in there in full force, it is amazing what starts happening. And then you

decrease. So you've got to have that little staying power and be willing to, you know, put up with that to be able to get over the hump. But the hump is three or four years. And from then on, the no-till practices. And farmers will tell you, and I'm sure people will hear this and say this immediately that there's all these different reasons why they can't do it or I can't do it and they can't do it, you can do it. It's a practice that you'll see grow tremendously here in the United States over the next 15 years and it will sequester carbon. It will eliminate the emissions we're having now and it will sequester carbon. And carbon is going to have a tremendous value. And this is a source of income for all farmers. You know, it's going to be an added source of

income for doing the right things and the societal benefit of these proper farming practices, it's not only the greenhouse gas emissions, it's a eutrophication of our waterways, right, creating the black, the dead zones in the Chesapeake Bay, the Gulf of Mexico. And that's done by nitrogen and phosphorus that is in our fertilizers. It runs off into our waterways and creates a algae bloom that sucks up all the oxygen causes this hypoxia or takes it all, and everything dies and you end up, you know, and this is a serious, serious, serious as global warming, in my opinion, and plus it is an additive to global warming because the ocean is a big sucker bringing out CO2 out of the atmosphere.

If you have a dead zone, that's not occurring. So it even affects us that way. So these practices will reduce that in an amazing way. You know, talking about fertilizers, another technology that Fair Oaks Farm has been intimately involved in developing together with a small group that's who, and you know, and a lot of and I are part of two other owners. It's called a bar core. And this product takes our manure coming out of the digester

after we created all this energy and eliminated the methane that was going to atmosphere from the manure. And we create three products. Pottable water, a 90% dry fertilizer that's not a slop of manure anymore, that we can pelletize and drill into the land, like we talked about a little while ago for the no-tail, and aqueous ammonia. which is a substitute to anhydrous,

which is an ammonia fertilizer produced from natural gas. So you can imagine the impact that has. So now for the first time, an ammonia has been going to atmosphere since the dinosaurs and forming particle batter they call them PM25, PM5, PM10, which weigh more than atmosphere, and then they fall back down to the ground,

end up in our waterways, and that's part of the eutrophication I just talked about. A big, big part of the utrification is that. So now we can capture... Sorry, Mike. Utrification is the term. And in your estimation, it's a problem on par with global warming. You know, I'll get a lot of pushback on that. But, you know, it kills aquatic life. It kills water. I mean, it kills the ocean. So absolutely. I put it both global warming and it, we have to attack them both in a serious, serious way. It's a, you know, a problem that if we get serious about it, it's easily attacked as well.

But in the case of this VARCOR technology, we take the manure coming out of the digester, potable water. 90% of what's coming out or 95 and a half percent of what's coming out is water. And you've seen it. We end up with potable water. We end up with a dry 90% fertilizer dirt that has no pathogens in it, no seeds because we've done that through evaporation to be able to get the water. So we have a sterile great fertilizer with a 333 nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertilizer with an incredible micronutrient and aqueos ammonia that substitutes for anhydrous, as I was saying. And they're all natural fertilizers. And they have never been available before.

And this is new technology that we've been able to do here at Fair Oaks and several other dairies now. And we're rolling this out as we speak. It's going to be revolutionary in the pig industry and the dairy industry and the beef industry to be able to really attack all these problems. So, you know, we haven't even got into the technologies that we're developing now to decrease belching in these cows. We have products called 3NOP or Bovare that reduces the belching by no less than 30%, and on the average research, it's 50. And it's a matter how you combine it in the feed, and I believe we'll increase above 50 here over the next couple of years. It's not approved by FDA yet, but it's approved in Europe. It's improved in South America.

It's approved in New Zealand. It's just a matter of time. We're working with FDA. They just have some antiquated pathways. You need to modernize those, and we're working very well with them. And with the USDA and the administration, everyone is supporting to relook at how do we accelerate the process because it decreases tremendously. But other products like red algae, I don't know if you've read about that or seen that.

There's a lot of truth to it. The science is behind. I mean seaweed, not algae. The science is a little bit behind. They kind of make more out of it than where exactly it's at. It is real science and it's being developed. And that will decrease as well. So the combination of some of these feed additives in the next four or five years,

I believe we'll see somewhere between a 60 to a 70% decrease in that belching as well. So when you start adding all these things up, it's not hard to get to net zero. And that's why, you know, I'm very comfortable that even those who attack agriculture because environmentally we're not correct. All the contrary, we're a solution through sequestration of carbon through our farming practices that never existed before.

We're a solution to the problem, not the problem. Well, then, with that in mind, I've got to tell you, there are farmers who listen to this who are probably super interested in following your lead, but really don't know how to. So what do they do? How can they get into no-till? How can they get into these kinds of sequestration?

equesteration. Where do they go? Look, as your wife says here, Mike McCluskey has been an incredible pain in the ass to the dairy industry. And part of that, when you raise the bar this high, right? Once you know, once you know there's a better way, then what do you do about it? That's the kind of pain in the ass you are. You show people, look, you can do this, but you're not going to create the kind of engine we discussed earlier without picking up the phone. How many conversations did you have with Cummins before you finally got to the place? How many rocks have you pushed up the hill? You've been doing this for every time I talk to you, you're just back from China, you're just back from Argentina, you're just back from Africa. You're flying around the world. You're talking about

all of this science, all of these advancements. And right here in this country, we still have, I think, pretty big chunk of the population growing our food who aren't where you are. So how do they get there? You know, our grand Latin universities are still the best institutions in agriculture in the world, without a doubt. Unfortunately, they've been strapped for cash. It's not like in the 80s and the 70s where we had probably the best extension system that you could dream of. I mean, it was phenomenal, right? But the knowledge is still there and we as farmers need to reach out to them and do a better effort because unfortunately, like I just said, the extension isn't what it used to be, but it still does a great job with the limited resources, unfortunately, that these universities have today. But your industries, so the dairy

industry, the beef industry, we have great institutions within our industry that represent this for us. And we just got to join in to, in our case, it's DMI. The beef industry has three great organizations that do the same. So the poultry industry is the same. So within your, own organizations, that's where I would start looking, you know, the corn growers, the soybean. I mean, these guys have tremendous educational programs on all of this. So, yeah, so between those two areas, the information is sitting there waiting for farmers to be able to access. But I would also say that, you know, it kind of goes back to this whole concept, the he-haw concept, the kind of like the anti-agriculture, anti-farmer sentiment.

that we kind of have in this country. And the more exposure that we can give to kids who are in that period of life where they're kind of trying to think about, right, where do I, either I have skills, where do I go, or I'm about to enter some higher level of education, where do I go? This industry is just incredibly ripe for the picking. And that's what we need. It is. That's so true.

That's so exciting what we're going to be doing in the future. And anyone who cares about climate change, anyone who has. On our waters. What wants to, it's concerned about, you know, how do we ensure that everybody on this planet can maximize their potential through nutrition? Like, there's a job for you, man. That's where, you know, whether you're going to go to a welding school, whether you're going to go to an engineering school, whether you're going to go to an engineering school. whether you're going to be a research scientist. Agriculture is, it's kind of interesting because we've been the basis of evolution,

but it's also the next great frontier. You know, our leading partners in the Cedron technology, which is the people that I went to, their aerospace engineers, and they are having more fun with their introduction into agriculture, they just can't believe. And these are companies that have 250 engineers and 20 of those are dedicated to this technology on agriculture. They just can't get enough of it. They're fascinated with where it's headed.

Yeah. That's why I wanted you guys on. Fundamentally, the stigmas and stereotypes and myths and misperceptions that surround your industry are manifold. And there's no way anybody could have listened to the last hour and a half of this conversation. Oh, God. Are you kidding? Yeah. Time flies with me, Sue. I've been telling you that for years. There's just no way. A little sambuca helps too. A little sambuca would burn, by the way.

It kind of tempers it a little bit. Sue and I and Mike all met one evening after shooting on their farm. We wound up in a hot tub out back. And somebody brought a bottle of black sambuca. Somebody. And Sue armed with these giant brandy sniffters, poured some in, and pushed it across the surface of the hot tub, Chuck, and the waves created by the jets ever so gently

coaxed the Sambuca toward my crew and I, cooling it on its journey, or maybe heating it. No, it's warming it up. That's what I would think, yeah. Yeah, it was warming it up. It was a tepid jacuzzi, as I recall. Anyway, the black Sambuca was really, really good, and just the thing to wash down a couple of bottles of Opus 1,

which was also on hand, as I recall. Yes, it was. So, sorry to derail it, but this was your point, Sue. We just got like five hours of science distilled real quick. I know there's no way we can cover at all, but the headline is, I'm just going to repeat it. Anybody interested in the health of the planet, the health of our water systems, the future of nutrition, and the future of the species. this is the industry to be in

and it's evolving so fast and I hope you both know I'm at your disposal. Yeah, I'll be back later and we'll have cameras. Hey, maybe some group will sneak in with cameras and film some of this amazing no-till technology, right? But if that doesn't happen, I'll be back with some show at some point to try and shine a light on this.

But look, if I can help specifically around this whole cow belching thing, you know, I'm standing by, Chuck does some great V-O-2 if, you know, if I'm priced out of the market at this point. I'm a lot cheaper. That's for sure. Chuck's a lot cheaper. But look, we both love cows. Cheap is good, Chuck.

I believe in cheap. Very good. Very good. Frugal. I like to consider myself frugal. Parsimonious. There you go. But look, is there anything you guys didn't say that you want to before I officially

thank you and let you get on with feeding a hungry nation? I just think it's been a great conversation. because we hit the care for our animals, the amazing environmental quest that we're on, that net zero is a reality and beyond with eutrification and others. You know, the nutrition we hit very well. I think the impact that farming has, and dairy is probably one of the bigger ones,

in rural America is incredibly important. We didn't touch on that. I just think that rural America is such a backbone of this country always has been. And we'll be. And we'll continue to be, right? farming is a driving force behind that. So, you know, the demographics don't lie.

People aren't flocking from the heartland to run into the cities. That's not happening, you know? I'm not a futurist, but when I look at the technology that allows us to have this conversation right now and when I look at the way people are working more and more from home, suddenly you don't have to be in the big city to land the big job. I read somewhere Sue the other day. I think Kansas City, Missouri was just rated one of the greatest places to live and work because most of the people moving there aren't working there. They're just living there. Right.

I think there's going to be an enormous reversion to some kind of mean. And I think that mean is going to involve growing food in a more responsible way and doing it in parts of the country that some of our fearless leaders have been busy flying over. It's nice to live in a place where you can look out your back door and see for a long ways. It's a good feeling. And Indiana is just on fire right now. It's so cool to see because we're a state that's as invested in agriculture

as any agricultural state, but also we've embraced the whole tech sector as well. It's a really such a cool balance and an awesome, really one of those leading states now in the nation. But Mike, just to put a final cap on things, I just want to say, first of all, thank you for always being a friend. You know, your loyalty to Fair Oaks Farms,

to the McCloskey family is so appreciated and heartfelt. You know, we've had some awesome times with you. You've been so generous and always talking about, you know, the McCloskey household as being one of your favorite experiences of your dirty jobs career. I have no doubt that's because of the copious amounts of Opus One and Silver Oaks and Black Samboca and Hot Towns. Didn't hurt. You know, it's just a good thing. wasn't reality TV around during those days. Because we...

Hey, there was a show that we didn't shoot that happened. There was a show he didn't shoot. And Chuck has some wonderful pictures, by the way, that I went through my archives for... Yeah, she sent me some good ones, actually. Very good ones. Oh, good. But we can't thank you enough

for always being a fan of us and of Fair Oaks forums. And farming in general, Mike. I mean, you've just been such an important figure for all of farming. Farming and just... all of the industries that are out there now that we're so lacking in employment for. All the trades. All the trades.

My goodness. How many could you guys hire right now in your operation? How many could you hire if they showed up and just said, look, I'm trainable. I'll show up early. I'll stay late. Just give me a chance to prosper. How many? I bet we have 40 or 50 openings right now that we can't fill between, you know,

the visiting center areas and the farm areas and the type of expertise that Sue's mentioning. I mean, it's just really difficult. Very difficult. How can you advance? How can you advance within your operation specifically? Because I'm telling you, people are going to call you. They're listening right now and they're saying, why not Indiana? Why not Fair Oaks?

I like milk. Mike's right. There are no nipples on an almond. What the hell? I want to be a part of getting the cows to stop burping. Where do I go? Would that be F-O-Farms. That's exactly where we got to go.

I think it's probably info at F-O-Farms.com. And reach out to us. Yeah. Sue, I got to go. We're not allowed to do this more than an hour and a half. Studies show that doesn't matter how interesting we are after 90 minutes. People don't give a damn. But look, I have an agenda.

And you're welcome is the short answer. But I know where my bread's buttered. I've said it to you before. My addiction for chewing and swallowing. is rivaled only by Chucks. And we're grateful. And I know a lot of people are grateful, too, who you never get to hear from.

And that's what my show attempted to magnify. But look, what I've stumbled into is a mad scientist, Mike. That's what you are. It's like your hobby. Your vocation and your avocation are intrinsically connected. Both are out of control. And you are on Mr. Toe's. wild ride. I mean, this is a billion dollar operation. You're in business with the biggest people

in the world, and you're doing it in a little corner of Indiana. You're going to change the way people think every time they chew and swallow. That is a hell of a legacy. Your family's amazing as well. And God, I almost forgot. Is Gus still around? Oh, the song. Can you come in with his guitar and play us out of here? Let me try to catch him. Give me one second. Go get Gus. Gus, Chuck, is a piece of work, man. and his friends are so funny every time I've been over there, a perfectly reasonable day winds up turning into some kind of bacchanalia with just beautiful people walking around the farm. All right, Gus. How are you, man? Good. How are you doing, Mike? I'm doing fine. Nice shirt.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Did you tie that yourself? I did, yeah. It took me in about two weeks. Probably did it out in the hot tub, right? Yeah. skivvy's turned yellow only for some reason but the rest worked. You had to make it weird, didn't you? All right, play me a song. This is what you played at the wedding? This is what I play at the wedding. I'm just going to play the chorus, I think.

Sure. I don't think you remember, and I know you're short on time. Can you hold that? Got it. Thank you. Got all the time in the world. Play the first. Yeah, okay.

We'll do a short version. Yeah, okay. We'll do a short version. Rondereux riding her horse through spiroles. She wears a pen. now in her home. We watched her in the corn grow. Find a good man she caused her wrong.

But there's one thing that we know. She's her daddy's daughter. Everything he taught her is right there in a white dress with a smile across her face. I'll tell you there's no other that he'd hold above her. He can't believe that she's so strong with her mama's great.

These daughter, he's daughter. Are you kidding me? Do you imagine dancing with your dad and your big brother is singing that song? Mike, you must have cried like a 10-pound baby girl. I'm almost crying now. I almost remember the lyrics. Thank you, Mike.

Appreciate it. That's really great. There's got to be a recording of that somewhere, right, from start to finish, Sue? There is, yeah. I told him, like, get all your legal shit done because this will be, like, one of the two or three most popular, like, father-daughter dances. Oh, my God. All right? Well, look, that's totally original, right?

I mean, I can play it. I'm not going to get food. Okay, great. All right, fine. Consider it done. All right. Don't hang up because it's got to be fully uploaded, but this was one of my favorite convert. What's that word?

Conversations. That's it. Yeah. See, after an hour and a half, I live my only skill. And you all goes to crap. You had nothing in your coffee cup. And I was like down a third of this freaking sambuca bottle already. I had plenty.

Look, it's nearly empty now. There's just a little bit. There's a little bit there. By the way, have you tried these things? They're called embers. Oh, my God. Again with the embers. I figure if I keep doing it, I'm going to get a deep.

There's going to be no need to get a deal. You're giving me an advertisement for free. I want to try a bottle of your whiskey, bourbon? Noble. Yeah. Noble Tennessee whiskey. I'll get you a bottle. It's 95 proof. It's Tennessee whiskey.

It's smooth. It's named after my pop. That's so cool. Yeah. Very simple. Good. I'll get a bottle out there, Toot's sweet. I'll trade you a bottle of that for some of that fair life again.

There you go. Anytime, buddy. I love it. Nice to meet. you both. Appreciate it guys. Chuck, it was. Thank you for making the time. Thank you. Chuck, pleasure.

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