In 2021, HELM Agro and Alltech Crop Science announced an exciting partnership that aims to bridge the gap between traditional and biological crop input solutions in the U.S. Dave Schumacher, president of HELM Agro, joins the Ag Future podcast to give an update and share his tips on cultivating a successful partnership.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dave Schumacher hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     I'm Tom Martin with an Alltech Ag Future podcast. We're joined by Dave Schumacher, president of the family-owned, more-than-a-century-old crop protection company HELM, to talk about the value of forming partnerships. Welcome, Dave.

Dave:            Thank you, Tom.

Tom:            In an Ag Future podcast last year, you brought us up to speed on what sorts of services HELM provides. But if you wouldn't mind, give us a refresher.

Dave:            Yeah, thanks. HELM has several businesses. In the U.S., we're based in Tampa, Florida. I'm in the crop protection business, so we supply herbicides, insecticides and fungicides to our retail partners, and then they sell to growers. Then we recently got in the relationship with Alltech, (and through) that we're offering a biological portfolio along with it.

                     HELM is also in the crop nutrition business. We have 21 river terminals in the U.S. where we supply retailers with N, P and K (or nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) for the farmers' needs. And then we also have an industrial chemicals business as well.

Tom:            When we did talk in August of 2021, HELM had just entered into a partnership with Alltech Crop Science. What attracted HELM to Alltech, and how has that partnership performed in the year since?

Dave:            Yeah. Thanks, Tom. The partnership is going really well. What attracted HELM to Alltech was the science that they had and the research and long-term vision. Alltech is a family-owned company that is in it for the long run. HELM is a family-owned company that's in it for the long run. So, our cultures were very similar in that we're committing to this partnership for the long term. We kicked off this partnership in October of last year, and it's gone really well.

Tom:            Is it fair to say that the aim of this partnership is to bridge the gap between traditional and biological crop input solutions? And I'm wondering: Are you seeing progress in that effort? 

Dave:            Yeah, absolutely. I think the biological products group, as a segment of portfolio, is growing significantly. It's probably in that 15–17% growth rate annually. That was a market that we wanted to be in. We were mostly in traditional crop protection — so herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. The biological part is still kind of a niche out there in the market. We see a great space for us to bring the traditional crop protection products and the biologicals together to give farmers more options to control their pest issues that they have and also reduce the amount of traditional crop protection used on crops.

Tom:            How can that combination of traditional and biological support sustainable practices? 

Dave:            You know, I think there are two things. One (is) the area of soil health. Soil health is kind of a buzzword that's thrown around in the industry right now, but there are products that we're going to be able to bring to market — hopefully in broad scale — to help growers address some of the soil health challenges that they have. So, that's one area. We also think that there's an opportunity to incorporate biologicals into a cropping solution, which would potentially reduce the amount of traditional crop protection used. In some crops, there's fungicides that have been used almost on a weekly basis. And if we can rotate some of those applications, traditional chemistry applications, with a biological that would give you the same or better output, that — it's going to be better for long-term sustainability.

Tom:            Does this provide growers with easier access to full-spectrum integrated crop solutions?

Dave:            Yes, I think it does. One of the things that we bring to market is our connectivity to the customer base. So, we work with all the large retail channels in the U.S. on our fertilizer side and also on our crop protection side. As we're able to bring those portfolios to the market through those channels, I think it gives growers broader access. And we want to be able to solve the grower’s problem, whether it's (through) a traditional chemistry or biological. This gives us the opportunity to bring both of those solutions and give growers options.

Tom:            We talked about the mutual benefits of the partnership between HELM and Alltech, and I just would like to focus on partnerships in general for a moment, if we could. Are business partnerships inspired by discovering mutually beneficial assets that each partner might not possess on their own?

Dave:            Yeah. I think, as we looked at this relationship, we have a very good development program, but we're not into the basic research of creating those new products, which — that's what Alltech is really good at. We're good at our go-to-market and bringing those products to customers. In this relationship, we feel we can reduce any overlap. There's kind of a clear handoff of what Alltech brings to the party and what HELM brings to the party.

Tom:            Partnerships or collaborations are all about give and take. But when it comes down to negotiating that arrangement, do the parties necessarily seem to become more protective of their brands and their assets, and do those matters have to be laid out on the table, understood and agreed upon before moving forward to a final agreement? 

Dave:            Yeah, I think so. And I think the key to partnerships is doing a lot of due diligence and really understanding the culture and being able to understand the long-term vision if you have to have an agreement to work out all the details. But something always comes up. You want to have that win-win mentality so that you can keep doing positive things together.

                     With our relationship with Alltech, we do a lot of collaboration. One of them — we have an S&OP process, sales and operation planning, where we meet on a monthly basis and provide rolling forecasts. They're looking at inventory levels. We're looking at inventory levels. So, that minimizes the risk that either of our companies could be in from an inventory standpoint. But those relationships need to be as transparent as possible and need to be (present) throughout the whole organization.

                     So, the owner of HELM is the Schnabel family. Our CEO is Stephan Schnabel, and he's about 47 years old. And (president and CEO of Alltech) Mark Lyons (is a) similar age, probably a little younger. They've created a good relationship, a good working relationship, that — we're able to take what we've started in the U.S. and multiply that in some other countries.

Tom:            You mentioned being as transparent as possible, and I take it — does that mean there are going to be certain proprietary matters that can't be laid out on the table, and that's understood? 

Dave:            Absolutely. I think, from a technology standpoint, Alltech owns the technology and the registrations associated with that technology. We're working on a product right now that — we're going to premix a synthetic crop protection product and an Alltech biofungicide together in the same jug. And that will be one opportunity for us to work out the IP associated with that and have some joint IP over new product introductions like that.

Tom:            That's actually a working example of that bridge we were talking about.

Dave:            Absolutely.

Tom:            All right. Is there a risk in a partnership of too many cooks stirring the stew? Do roles need to be clearly defined, clearly clarified?

Dave:            Yes, yes, absolutely. Because when you announced the partnership, everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon and enjoy the fun. But we needed to make sure people knew what role they had in the organization.

                     So, we're a global business. Alltech is a global business. So, making those connections between our leadership in Germany and local leadership now is critical. We have an account plan. We have “who contacts who” (plan). It's just making sure we're as clear as possible.

Tom:            Have you gotten far enough into a negotiation with a potential partner only to discover that, in the end, the proposed partnership is really not right for you or your company?

Dave:            Yeah. I think, as you explore different options, you get a sense, and as you go through the due diligence, you get a sense of the culture and you get a sense of how that relationship feels. It's kind of like dating or getting married. As you're doing due diligence in scouting that relationship out and wanting to see that there's a clear win-win in for both parties — and when you get to the end, if it just doesn't feel right, (you) probably need to go with your gut on that one.

Tom:            I've heard it described as something of a dance.

Dave:            Yes.

Tom:            Do you encourage ag businesses to be open to forming partnerships inside and outside of the industry?

Dave:            Absolutely. I don't believe that one company can do it all, so they’ve got to find their area and be really good at it and augment that route to market or business with other partnerships that can bring strong expertise into a certain area. So, I think partnerships are going to be a big part of growing our future.

Tom:            Are there new HELM partnerships that you can tell us about? 

Dave:            Yeah. We're excited about a new joint venture that we formed with Cargill about last week, actually. We had a groundbreaking ceremony in Eddyville, Iowa. And HELM and Cargill are joining together. They're building a $300-million plant in Eddyville, Iowa. That plant will consume corn and produce BDO, which — BDO is an input that goes into biodegradable plastics. So, we're launching a company and a brand called QIRA, and it's going to be sustainable, made-from-corn products.

Tom:            Biodegradable plastics. That is definitely something needed on this planet today, isn't it?

Dave:            Absolutely.

Tom:            What's been the most important thing, Dave, that you've learned so far from this partnership with Alltech?

Dave:            I think communication is key. So, we communicate very frequently. As we see opportunities and challenges come up, we have those dialogues so that nobody is surprised by either upsides or downsides. So, I think communication is key — and trust. Trust and communication.

Tom:            That's Dave Schumacher, president of the crop protection company HELM. Thank you for joining us, Dave.

Dave:            Thank you, Tom.

Tom:            I'm Tom Martin for the Alltech Ag Future podcast series. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

How can pet owners optimize their pets' brain health from a young age? Dr. Joli Jarboe, a veterinary neurologist and neurosurgeon, joins the Ag Future podcast to discuss the importance of building and maintaining cognitive health at all stages of your pet's life.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dr. Joli Jarboe hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     From brain development in puppies and kittens to staying sharp and maintaining cognitive function in senior pets, a healthy brain is key for a healthy pet. How do we help our pets build and maintain optimal brain health?

                     I'm Tom Martin for the Alltech Ag Future podcast series. I have those questions and a lot more for Dr. Joli Jarboe, a veterinary neurologist and neurosurgeon based in Central Kentucky and serving patients across the United States. Welcome, Dr. Jarboe.

Joli:               Thank you so much for having me.

Tom:            We're here in Kentucky at the annual Alltech ONE Conference. I understand that this is your home state and that you are an Eastern Kentucky University graduate?

Joli:               I am. I had an animal science degree (that I received in), let's see, 1987, I believe, and a minor in biology.

Tom:            You caught the veterinarian bug at an early age. 

Joli:               Oh, yeah, absolutely. Some jobs are more professional; veterinary medicine was really a calling. There wasn't a time in my life I can recall not having a pet or not tending to strays or wounded animals outside (and) dragging it home. My dad always jokes — I nursed a litter of mice, field mice I found in our utility room. I raised those up and then turned them loose in our barn. He was like, "I'm putting out mouse bait, and here you are raising them."

                     But I started to work for a vet when I was 11. There was a general practitioner in my hometown who just graduated, opened up a practice, and he had put himself through school or supplemented his income by raising canaries. So, I ended up cleaning cages for something like 110 canaries. I weaseled my way in and, (in) short order, was going on farm calls with him in the middle of the night, delivering baby pigs, helping with calf exams and things like that, because I had tiny hands at 11 and worked for him forever. There was no going back.

Tom:            It just went from there.

Joli:               Yeah. There was nothing I could have been — nothing else I could be but this.

Tom:            Well, turning to what you do, is brain development and health even on the radar of most pet owners? And why should it be?

Joli:               I think there's a small percentage of people that are more aware of it. The pet owner or pet parent is becoming more and more educated through the internet and Google searches and becoming more informed. I think it should be more on the radar, though. As I've said in my lecture (at the Alltech ONE Conference) earlier today, the medical field — human medicine and veterinary medicine were taught to treat disease states. I think that we need to have a revamping of our education system and (should be) trying to learn how to promote improved cellular function so that we prevent the disease state.

                     There's a lot of things that we can do early on in our core development, from the time mom meets dad, and you have fetal development to the weaning process to (the) growth process in our animals that can delay neurodegeneration. It happens. Then, when we're born, we (can) starve to death. That's a gloom-and-doom mindset, but it's true. If we can do things to be proactive and slowing down those neurodegenerative processes, decreasing just natural inflammation, we'll go a long way in promoting prolonged, improved brain health and cognition.

Tom:            What are the practical benefits of maintaining healthy cognitive function in our pets?

Joli:               Well, I think, to have a happy, stimulated, engaged pet — these pets are, in many instances, (like) a spouse, their spouse spot-holder or a child to owners, to the pet parent. I think, to keep them engaged, I think promoting brain health allows them to be the most interactive (and) have the best effect that they can. So, promoting play, teaching — we know (the benefits of) owning pets. The pet-owning population has less triglycerides and (lower) cholesterol and have less heart disease than non-pet-owning people. They help our health as well and help us be more rounded, balanced people. I think it's a yin-and-yang relationship.

Tom:            What about downsides to that? What if we don't pay attention to our cats’ or our dogs’ brain health?

Joli:               Well, I think you're just going to have someone taking up space.

Tom:            Eating food.

Joli:               Eating food, just having a less of a fulfilled life.

Tom:            What are some typical neurological issues that you encounter and treat? (Let’s look at the case of) the cocker spaniel Casper, for example.

Joli:               Well, Casper came to see me on — we had a blizzard situation in one of the hospitals that I worked at. He came, and it was a race to try to perform surgery on him for a ruptured disc. He was paralyzed, so he needed surgery. The cannabinoids or supplements that I advocate a lot (for), they help to promote mood-stabilizing effects. When these animals that come to me for spinal cord injury, whether it's in the neck or their back or they have nerve injury, a big portion of their rehabilitation is exercise restrictions. We've got to let the body heal and recover. The minute they start feeling better, they're going to jump off the couch, fall off the stairs and do something silly to reinjure themselves.

                     Unfortunately, a lot of these pets aren't crate-trained or aren't trained to be in a confined area. Giving them something like a hemp supplement helps to promote that mood-stabilizing effect, helps them deal with those internal anxieties. They will be a little calmer between their ears, a little happier between their ears. They also are potent — the cannabinoids are also potent pain-modulating systems, so they help affect decreasing pain in our body or our body's perception of it. Following a spinal surgery or inflammation with a disc rupture, those things can be quite beneficial. In addition to traditional anti-pain medicine and muscle relaxants, we can often use less of those with providing cannabinoid support.

Tom:            How did you arrive at that?

Joli:               Probably — gosh, it's probably been about 15 years ago. The general pet-owning population were bringing these supplements to me, and like everyone else in the medical profession, (I thought that) I know more than anyone else. I was very skeptical and poo-pooed this thing. But the great benefit — well, there are two things to touch upon.

                     Being a veterinary neurologist, a neurosurgeon, my pets, my patients can't speak. I'm basically a very skilled voyeur. I have to be very good at observational skills. That's number one in this equation. Number two, my patients don't have a placebo effect. I can tell you if an owner is giving a quality hemp oil or a quality supplement, regardless of what it is — say, CoQ10, B complex, L-carnitine, those kinds of things. I have an animal that I saw and examined that's doing X, Y and Z. (The) owner gives a supplement, or maybe I'm recommending it, and we see it back in two to four weeks. I see a difference in my hands, in my exam room. There's, again, no placebo effects. Animals are so true and pure. They may not be vocal by using words, but their body and how they move and interact is screaming to us if we're just quiet and listen and watch.

                     I think those are the two components: my ability to observe, being open-minded, and my pets showing me that, “Hey, these things are working. They’re beneficial.”

Tom:            We tend to consider our pets members of our families. When they die, we grieve as though we lost a person. We feel like we've lost a family member. How do you help people face end-of-life decisions for their pets?

Joli:               I have a different mindset, I think, than most of my peers. Because I have been in veterinary medicine for so long, I have a keen sense — and I'll try not to get teary-eyed on this, because I do feel so passionately about end-of-life decisions. I talk to owners a lot about this. Whether you have any religious beliefs or not, I think that these animals are the closest thing we have to divine presence on this world. It is our job and our responsibility to be their stewards. When we can't make them better, we can give them the most peaceful, dignified passing. I think that veterinary medicine is so much more humane — and (I) might spark some controversy in this next statement — but I think we are so much more humane in those end-of-life decisions than we are for our fellow (human) brother and sister. I've got several older aunts and uncles (and) friends that are going through some end-of-life diseases that are not having a quality of life and are having to suffer when they would want peace, but (the message from) society is, “We can’t do that.”

                     I think that what I'm talking about — this end-of-life decision for incurable diseases, diseases that aren't responding to pain management — the animals not having an acceptable quality of life is far different than anyone who is just tired of their pet. It's a far different situation, but I think we are so much kinder in veterinary medicine on that aspect. Again, I hold that as an honor, and it's a privilege.

Tom:            Well, personally, I'd have to say that some of the finest individuals I've ever met just happen to be dogs.

Joli:               I believe that. I agree with you.

Tom:            Well, I have to imagine that, just like human neurology, that veterinary neurology is very complex. What does it take to become a veterinary neurologist and a surgeon?

Joli:               Well, how is that? (This) may be a little self-deprecating, I guess. I think it mainly takes perseverance and showing up. That’s what I'm trying to tell my young-adult son going to college: Show up. Show up and do the work. That's 95% of it. Just make an effort.

                     I think the true aspect of what does it take to be a veterinary neurologist or a veterinarian — a veterinarian is usually three to four years of undergrad, some (undergraduate) degree, (taking) prerequisites that had to be fulfilled, and then veterinary school itself. Veterinary college is usually a four-year track. There are some that are three. Then, to be a specialist — in veterinary medicine, a lot of people are unaware of (the fact) that we have specialists, just like humans. We have oncologists. We have dermatologists. We have internists. We have surgeons. We have neurologists. A lot of veterinarians can go on to become specialized. That training usually involves a one-to-two-year internship and then a three-to-four-year residency. You're looking anywhere from 11 to 13 years of instruction and schooling.

Tom:            Are veterinary neurologists in demand?

Joli:               Yeah, they are. The specialists are in demand. Thankfully, there's about 400 of us in the world of veterinary neurology. I'm not worried about my job. I'm in a unique situation, having 25 years of experience, so I'm not straight out of a residency. I’ve still got some more years until retirement, and (I have) a skill set that is hard to match. I think that, yes, that we are in demand. There is a place for us. Usually, (the demand) requires (the population) to have a specialist for a city population of about a million, but it's — yes, I'm in demand.

Tom:            Well, I have a personal pet-owner's question for you, but I'm sure that this is on behalf of legions of cat owners. Can you help me persuade my cat Millie to stop waking me up before the crack of dawn? What is it with cats waking us up?

Joli:               You know what it is? And I'm going to give you a hard time here, Tom. Cats need to be stimulated. (Cat expert) Jackson Galaxy, he always says, “(Cats need to) hunt, catch, kill and eat.” It does revolve around that. If you stimulate these cats, playing with them with the fishing pole toy — cats have a short play duration. It's like five to ten minutes. That doesn’t take much effort of yours, but especially playing with them, probably, (in the) early evening to right before you go to bed, I bet you you're going to get a better sleep at night.

Tom:            I will remember that tonight.

Joli:               Exactly. Exactly.

Tom:            Dr. Joli Jarboe, a veterinary neurologist and neurosurgeon based in Central Kentucky, serving patients across the USA. Thank you so much.

Joli:               Thank you, Tom.

Tom:            For the Alltech Ag Future podcast, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts

Is it true that training horses too early can hurt their chances on race day? Brian Nielsen, professor of equine exercise physiology in the department of animal science at Michigan State University, joins the Ag Future podcast to dispel the myth that waiting to train horses improves their odds of winning.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dr. Brian D. Nielsen hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore our opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     It seems safe to say that the world did a double-take as three-year-old Rich Strike came from far behind to shoot across the finish line and won the 148th running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. According to his owner, all of that restlessness and even biting that happened immediately following the race was just the behavior of an antsy horse that wanted to keep on going. You might wonder how this very spirited stallion takes to being saddled.

                     I'm Tom Martin for the Alltech Ag Future podcast series, and that's one of the many questions in the debate about training young horses addressed by the research conducted by Dr. Brian Nielsen, professor of equine exercise physiology at Michigan State University. He is here with us to share his findings on the benefits of training young horses. Thanks for being with us, Dr. Nielsen.

Brian:            Tom, thank you for having me with you today. This is a topic I'm passionate about.

Tom:            I'm sure, and it's a fun time to be passionate about it, thanks to Rich Strike. While some of the pros start training racehorses at a very young age, many wait until a horse is four or five years old. The argument has been that two years old is too early in a horse's development to begin their training. You have evaluated epidemiological studies as well as physiological data on equine bone, articular cartilage and tendons to better determine the impact of training and racing two-year-old horses. What does your research tell you?

Brian:            There is a lot of information out there on this topic, and yes, in 2021, we published a review article where we went through dozens and dozens and dozens of published research findings. Pretty much unanimously, researchers across the whole entire world have come to the conclusion that training young is a good thing. That does fly in the face of what most people generally believe. It's often been thought that good trainers wait until the horse is skeletally mature. But from the standpoint of bone — and that's the area that I tend to work tremendously in — we have the greatest ability to make changes in bone, making it stronger when these horses are young and growing.

                     I'm going to just briefly describe two different bone phenomena. One is called bone remodeling, and that's what people who know a little bit about bone talk about, and then there's bone modeling. Actually, only the bone purists tend to discuss bone modeling. I'm from Michigan. We have potholes in our roads. And the comparison I would use is, with bone remodeling, it's like taking a pothole and fixing it. You're not making the road stronger; you're just fixing damage that's there. That can happen throughout the life of the road, kind of like with bone remodeling with horses, where you take out old or damaged bone and replace it with new. You're not making it stronger. You're not, you know, making it so it can withstand racing, that much stronger.

                     But let's talk about bone modeling, and that's what people tend to ignore. This primarily happens when that horse is young and growing. It's the process by which you make bone bigger or change the shape (of) it. Effectively, it's kind of like when you build a road. You can decide whether you want to have this just little country backroad, gravel road, two-lane road, four-lane road or a superhighway. It's so much easier to do that as you're developing it. That bone modeling only occurs while that animal is growing. Once it’s stopped, you lose the ability to make that bone stronger.

                     Just briefly, (you see some of the) same things with things like tendons. I was attending the International Conference on Equine Exercise Physiology in the late '90s in Japan. Researchers from the UK — not the University of Kentucky, where we're near — doing research over in Europe, they showed that the only way to make tendons stronger is to train horses when they're young. That was 20-some years ago, and the research is still backing it up. So, with all of our tissues, you have the better chance to make it strong by training while young.

                     I'll do a comparison to human athletes. We don't look at our Olympic athletes and say, “You need to be skeletally mature before you start to train or compete. You need to wait until your early 20s to do that.” No. If you want to be successful in the Olympics, the odds are really good that you started when you were young. Now, as we'll talk about, of course, there's injury risk, but there's injury risk to all athletes, regardless of their age.

Tom:            I mentioned three-year-old Rich Strike in the introduction, but you cite Justify, the winner of the 2018 Triple Crown, as an example of the controversy around running a horse that had not raced as a two-year-old. Research published in 2003 determined that musculoskeletal injuries are the greatest cause of racehorse turnover. Is it more beneficial to the horse to allow more time for it to become skeletally mature?

Brian:            Well, a couple of things. You bring up Justify. Let's talk about him first. The thing is, when he won the Triple Crown without ever having raced as a two-year-old, on social media, people went wild saying, "See? If you don't race them as a two-year-old, they can win the Triple Crown." Now, these people were missing the fact that there's not been a horse that had won the Derby having not raced as a two-year-old since Apollo in the late 1800s. So, we went a-hundred-and-some years without having a horse that didn't race as a two-year-old win the Derby. You have to win the Derby to win the Triple Crown, so there's that huge flaw with that argument, but don't let flaws with arguments get in the way of comments on social media. But it is what inspired our research paper.

                     The thing is, we do have concerns with injuries, again, regardless of what age these animals are being trained at. The thing is, allowing time to let that horse get skeletally mature without training it makes that bone less strong. That seems contradictory compared to what most people tend to believe, but it is that training while young that does make it stronger. People can really mess up young horses, and they certainly can mess up old horses. One of the problems that we get with young horses is, oftentimes, people train by the calendar. I'll use the example of the Kentucky Derby. Every year, except for 2020, the Kentucky Derby is run on the first Saturday in May. So, three years earlier, (if you have) a horse being born, if you want them in the Kentucky Derby, you know what day that horse is going to be racing. That's fine, but how do you know how that horse is going to be doing on that day?

                     I often say that we need to be very cautious about training by the calendar. The idea is, oftentimes, you'll see people — if a horse isn't ready, they'll do things to force that horse to be ready. This could be a show horse, where you're doing things in your training process to make this horse perform better, (or) with our racehorses. The idea is you don't want to hide injuries. You need to give a horse time off if you have an injury develop. But the research epidemiological data has shown that horses that race and train when they're two-year-olds, they actually have less injuries than horses that you hold off until they're older, because they got adapted to the stresses that are being placed on them. Again, I look at a human. It's fun to go back to that comparison. Without having played sports when you were in middle school and in high school, you're probably not going to be as ready for the college level or the pro level (as you might have been) if you would be one of those people with enough talent to last that long.

Tom:            A racehorse carries nearly a half ton of weight on those spindly legs at breakneck speed. What are some concerns about the effects of starting training at a younger age in that context?

Brian:            You're right. They have very small legs, but it is amazing the forces that (they) can withstand. The thing where we mess horses up — and I'll admit, we often manage our horses incorrectly.

The very first study that I did when I arrived at Michigan State University in 1996 was to look at whether or not sticking horses in the stalls resulted in bone loss. We did a study. We had long-yearlings that became two-year-olds, but we took half of them and put them in stalls (and) kept the other half out on pasture. The ones in stalls, we even walked them an hour per day on mechanical walkers so they're getting some exercise. After three months, we started them under saddle and had two months of just your normal race training, walking, trotting, some galloping, but nothing super fast. What was interesting is those horses that we put in stalls, within the first month, they had a noticeable loss of bone mass, and it stayed low, regardless of even having these horses in training for two months towards the end of that study.

                     Let’s compare it to what we often see with our racehorses. We have horses that are worth six figures, seven figures, and they’re so valuable that people treat them with kid gloves. They’ll often go ahead and, as they're getting them ready for sales, they have two to three months of being hand-walked. They aren't allowed to be horses. They aren't allowed to be outside roughhousing with other horses. They're put in stalls, and they never have access to speed. Speed is what makes bones stronger. Now, people get scared of speed, and then you end up in this scenario where the thing that's going to make the bone stronger, you don't allow that horse to do because you're so scared of it getting injured. By doing so, you actually make that horse more prone to injury.

                     So, if you have two to three months of sale-prepping your horse, making it look good — and boy, when they go through the sale ring here at Keeneland or Fasig Tipton, they're gorgeous. But that horse that's been out on pasture, playing, getting sunburned, all the things that a normal horse would (do), is probably better equipped. Then you take that horse, you put them into race training. The first couple of months are slow. That whole time, that horse's bone mass has gone down, and you've made that horse susceptible to injury. We've been trying to get the word out, and a lot of people are catching on to that, that you do need speed in order to make that bone strong.

Tom:            We've been talking about thoroughbreds up until now. I'm wondering about other breeds. What about early training with other breeds, like Standardbreds and others?

Brian:            Early training works for all. At Michigan State, we have an Arabian herd. When I got started there in doing this first project, the farm manager was very much of the opinion that you can't do this with Arabians. I'm like, “Why?” The response is, “Because they're Arabians.” I was like, “They're a horse.” Actually, their bones adapt just like any other. Now, there are different growth rates, and especially (for) some of these horses that aren't pushed for growth. They aren't as big.

I'm a little guy. I've always been an exercise rider, since 1989, and eventually got my trainer's license, but I'm a guy who can ride pretty much all horses. This is why I like racing. It's the one sport I feel kind of big. You're laughing at me because you're seeing I'm of small stature.

Tom:            I'm understanding what you're saying.

Brian:            The point is, if you're small, you can ride a horse without doing any damage. If you are a normal-sized adult, if you're six foot tall and 250 pounds, riding this young, let's say, an Arabian that might be 700 pounds, that's probably not a good idea. With everything we do, we need common sense. You limit the amount of force you're putting on them, but that training is good. Actually, even more so than just training, it's the management that we do with these animals. The fact (is) that, if you treat them with kid gloves and you never expose them to stressors, they become wimps. They become weak as opposed to being something that can handle that type of training. The same thing is going to apply for all the different breeds, but I do recognize that there are differences in growth rates.

Tom:            What are the findings about risk or injury for thoroughbreds and Standardbreds that are older than four years of age compared to those younger horses?

Brian:            Surprisingly, the research is really clear, and it kind of surprised the individuals who first did the research, because they were hoping or expecting to find that horses that started training later on in life would have less injuries. Actually, the results were the opposite. It was an animal rights group that initially funded some of this, and they were probably very disappointed with their results because they were hoping to show, “Wow, it's bad to race or train young.” So, no, you do decrease the injury rates.

                     But the one thing that I, going back to this training by the calendar, if we have — and I mentioned the Kentucky Derby, (which is held on the) first Saturday of May. If you have something on the calendar that you're targeting that horse for, you have to be very willing to say, “Hey, we have a setback. We're just going to cross this off the list.” The horse that won the Preakness, Early Voting, they opted to skip the Derby because the horse wasn't ready, and the result was he won the Preakness Stakes. But it's often hard for trainers to say, “You know what? It's in the best interest of the horse. Let's just skip it. Let's take some time. We've hit a bump in the road.”

                     If we're willing to do that, then we can avoid a lot of those problems. But you do have more bumps in the road if you wait until they're skeletally mature. I'll give you, actually, an example. I bought a four-year-old racing quarter horse. I planned to race up in Michigan. Actually, the ironic part about it is my biggest concern with him is he hadn't been in training yet. Instead of being somebody who is thankful that here's a horse that had not been raced or anything like that until he was four, that was actually a concern, because I understand the research. Three weeks after I bought him, the track I was going to race in had closed, so it didn't make a difference anyway.

Tom:            Is it known how much exercise is too much for a young horse?

Brian:            Well, what I will do is I will compare it to a paperclip. Bone works similarly. If you take a paper clip (and) bend it back and forth, you get stress hardening, and eventually, it will break. Bone can work that same way — except, unlike metal, bone has the capacity to heal itself. Where we get into trouble is, if you're beginning to get those micro fractures, that damage — there is a problem in racehorses that's called dorsal metacarpal disease, (which is also known as) bucked shins. A very similar ailment occurs in humans. It's called shin splints in people who have run. That's what it is. It's little micro fractures. With humans, that happens, and you tell your coach, you say, "Hey, coach, my shins are sore." The coach says, “Okay.” Hopefully, the coach says, “Okay, take some time off to allow it to heal.”

                     If we do that with the horses, that's great. A lot of people will ignore what the horse is telling them, though. There are the clues. There are the signs. The problem is, if we give anything to hide the pain — pain is there for a reason. It's a good thing. It says, “Don't do that.” So, the deal is, it's going to vary. If you have bone that has adapted to high rates of speed, you have this iron-legged horse that can withstand anything. If you have a horse where you've managed it incorrectly, you've kept it in a stall (and) allowed no access to speed, then what you end up with is a horse that has really weak legs, and you're going to get that damage much quicker.

                     There isn't an easy answer as to how much is too much. You need to pay attention to your horse, and you need to go ahead and prevent yourself from getting your horse in a setting where it's going to be losing bone mass because of inactivity.

Tom:            What about the role of nutrition at a young age? How does it figure or factor in?

Brian:            Nutrition is, of course, absolutely important. As everybody understands, we have calcium requirements and everything else that goes along with it. Here's what's really interesting. I think it was around 2005 when I was invited to speak over in Germany at an equine nutrition conference. Some of the researchers there had been using these markers of bone formation and resorption in various nutrition studies. They kept finding that there were no treatment differences. So, they asked me to come speak on that, and I analyzed a lot of our nutrition studies from my laboratory, and I was seeing the same thing. There were no treatment differences, hardly at all. Now, keep in mind, what this was was a case of where we were looking at horses that were fed a balanced diet and then tweaking it a little bit more.

                     Now, I also looked at all these various studies where we altered exercise, and in almost all the cases, we're finding treatment differences. The big take-home message is (that) these markers of bone formation and resorption, they actually work. They tell you when differences are happening, but the influence that — exercise or the lack thereof plays a huge role.

Now, I want to throw (out there that) this doesn't mean nutrition isn't important. It absolutely is. You need to have the absolute correct one, because if you don't have those building blocks in there, good luck. But if you're having problems, blaming it on nutrition may not be the right place to place the blame from the standpoint of (the fact that) you cannot make bones strong without the right exercise. You also need the right nutrition. You need them both. They have to work together. But just feeding them right isn't going to do it. As a result, sometimes you have to quit blaming the nutritionist when the actual person to blame is you and the way you're handling the horse.

Tom:            Well, Brian, I know that you were actually there — you were in the stands at Churchill Downs when Rich Strike blew minds and caused literally jaws to drop around the globe. If TV ratings are an indicator, the viewing audience for the NBC Sports telecast of the Triple Crown races fell 47% between 2019 and 2020. The racing industry has been concerned about a declining audience. As one who follows the sport, do you think this Rich Strike Derby victory might provide some sort of a shot in the arm (or) a fresh draw to the sport?

Brian:            It was so fun when he won. I'm sitting there, and we’re like six rows off the rail, and I didn't hear a single person upset with the horse that won. Normally, you'd have (some people reacting) like, “Ah, my horse lost.” Everybody was so amazed that this horse that wasn't in the race on Thursday ends up winning it on Saturday. It was fantastic. I was visiting with people in my hometown here just on Sunday, and so many of them were coming up to me — this was after church — and they were talking about the race. One of the ladies actually mentioned that when she found out he wasn't running in the Preakness, then she didn't have interest in watching the race. It generated so much excitement.

                     Now, of course, he didn't run in the Preakness, and that was disappointing, but in a way, it was good. It's wonderful when a trainer and the horse handler opt to do what's in the best interest of horses, and that's what I tend to preach. The beautiful part is, now, we have the Belmont to look forward to. When you have Early Voting versus Rich Strike, and now you have this thing — who knows what's going to turn out? But I guarantee you, we as a society, we love an underdog. We love a great story. I think it was the second-longest shot in the history of the Derby that actually won. That's great. That's what dreams are made out of. I guarantee you, the viewership for the Belmont, it's going to be up there. I'm going to be tuned in.

Tom:            Well, you're right. I was, as a layperson, listening to the radio when the word came that Rich Strike was not going to run in the Preakness. My initial response was, “That's pretty thoughtful. They could go for it, but they're thinking of the horse.” It's important stuff.

Brian:            Definitely.

Tom:            Dr. Brian Nielsen, professor of equine exercise physiology at Michigan State University. Thank you so much.

Brian:            Thanks for having me here.

Tom:            For the Alltech Ag Future podcast, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

As a result of the pandemic, the homemade meal is seeing a long-overdue resurgence. Kiersten Hafer, vice president of strategy and domestic market development for the National Pork Board, joins Ag Future to discuss how consumer demand for pork has expanded beyond bacon as people seek to refine their culinary skills.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Kiersten Hafer hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     The COVID-19 pandemic radically changed consumer trends and protein preferences, but is the swine industry ready to meet new demands from consumers? That's a question for Kiersten Hafer, vice president of strategy and domestic market development for the National Pork Board. In her 25 years in the industry, she's worked with retailers, agencies, brokers, food service operators, market researchers and consumer goods manufacturers.

                     I'm Tom Martin, and Kiersten is with us for this episode of the Alltech Ag Future podcast. Welcome, Kiersten.

Kiersten:       Thank you.

Tom:            Let's begin with that question. Has the coronavirus pandemic changed the way consumers grocery shop, cook and eat? Is the pork industry ready to meet new consumer demands that have grown out of the pandemic experience?

Kiersten:       Yeah, absolutely. Consumers have evolved. They've not only had to change the way they shop, but they've changed how they interact with products. For the pork industry in particular, and as they think about shopping meat cases, we saw a lot of consumption. They moved further into the meat case. They became more knowledgeable. They tried more cuts. They became more educated about what we offer. That was really exciting for us. Not only that, but they gain more confidence purchasing our products online. A lot of people weren't going into stores. They weren't shopping in six different channels or outlets, and they really became more comfortable with shopping online. It's opened up a whole new consumer group to us.

Tom:            Have sales aligned with that? Sales have increased?

Kiersten:       They have. The meat department grew — everything grew, as you can imagine, over the last two and a half years, but pork in particular has done very, very well. People are looking for variety and versatility. With that new confidence and knowledge, they’ve gone deeper into the pork portfolio of products. They’ve gotten beyond bacon to a lot of our fresh products. They are coming back. They’re staying with us. They see the value of different cuts. They’ve made it a priority now to incorporate that variety into their diet.

Tom:            It’s hard to imagine getting past bacon, but we’ve done it, haven’t we? One of the things that’s come out of this pandemic is home cooking. A lot of people are doing it. One big trend has been meal kits. Air fryers have been flying off the shelves, (as have) Instant Pots. How has that whole trend affected demand and sales?

Kiersten:       It's really helped. Again, people want to cook, and they want to serve their families or put good things into their bodies, so they're looking for better ways, faster ways to do that. A lot of those appliances that you mentioned are certainly helping them to make cooking a lot more easy and manageable on a daily basis, especially because they're coming and cooking three meals a day at home now, right? They went from maybe eating out two out of the three meals a day, or if they're eating five or six times a day, you know, more than half was away from home. Now, a lot of the food consumption is at home.

                     Seventy-nine percent of consumers are still cooking at home as of April of this year. In the height of the pandemic, that was 85%. Prior to the pandemic, it was about 53% of dollars going to at-home consumption. So, those increased rates have stayed with us. They found ways to stretch dollars and budgets. And, you know, they found some enjoyment in it.

                     I think, as you continue to manage mealtime at home, you're going to be looking for easy ways to do that. Air fryers are great. I have a 14-year-old daughter who uses the air fryer every single day. You find younger folks in the household learning how to cook as well, in a safe way. I think it's really been a good trend that has brought a lot of opportunity to the meat case.

Tom:            It sounds like it reached a peak and then leveled off a little bit below that. Do you anticipate that that level is going to be sustained over time? Are you all actively making sure that it does?

Kiersten:       Yeah. There's a couple of components. There are certainly some uncontrollables, right? Inflation right now is forcing people to stay more centered at home. And for the foreseeable future, we believe that to be the case. There is still a desire to get out and go back to some of the pre-pandemic ways. There are things people can't replicate at home that they love eating out-of-home. So, there will be some tradeoffs, but overall, you know, folks have determined that they can do it. They're willing to do it. They found, maybe, more economical ways. You know, there might be some dayparts that recover slower than others. That's what we're really watching and trying to understand. Really, it depends on the generational cohort group.

                     As we think about business and industry staying-at-home and hybrid models, less return to work means less work lunches. The lunch occasion is one that may not rebound as fast as others and food service and far-away-from-home consumption. But essentially, we think that we have the ability to hold on to a lot of this momentum, and we know that because we are looking at how we're performing versus 2019, before the pandemic started. Pork is still more elevated in terms of sales and volume than it was pre-pandemic. It means that people are staying with us. They're continuing to cook at home. They're continuing that strong repeat rate.

Tom:            You mentioned generations. I'm wondering: What are you seeing in sales trends among various generations?

Kiersten:       We have a lot of data. We track a lot of information around what people are keeping on hand, what they're using. We'd like to understand: Are they buying to fulfill a specific need, or are they just pantry-loading? Essentially, it really does differ by cohort. But we see younger generations definitely getting deeper into our portfolio of products. They're using a lot of fresh product, which is really good. The processed side does very well. They love it. Who doesn't love bacon or sausage or ham? But they're really moving deeper into the pork set. I think that that will continue. They're getting into different cuts. They're using chops. They're using ribs, shoulders. We see some strong momentum there. With that comes the opportunity to serve them in a different way.

                     We're looking at how households are engaged and what sizes they're buying. Over the last couple of holidays, we saw smaller hams, for example. Smaller gatherings meant smaller portions. I think that really comes down to, as an industry — and retail, in particular — doing it with a lot of what they offer in terms of customizing for consumers what they buy within the butcher counters. You know, it could be that we see them stay more engaged with pork if they can get to some of those smaller pack sizes.

Tom:            Has there always been something of a gap between consumers and pork producers? And if there has been, how can that be bridged?

Kiersten:       I would say that, you know, it really comes down to (the fact that) the consumer’s a moving target, and it's an evolving target. We've learned a lot over the last two and a half years about consumer behavior. Everyone's trying to determine how much of what we saw is going to stick. You just asked me that question. You know, I wish I had a crystal ball. The reality is that sometimes it's hard to understand where the consumer is and what they want, and it's hard to be everything to all people. So, I think the real opportunity is to just deliver on quality and consistency in the marketplace so that the consumer has a great eating experience.

                     If we can bring that high-quality pork to market and tell our story and really help them understand where it comes from — because that younger generation does prioritize sustainability and animal welfare and understanding what goes into the products that they're buying. They want to believe; they want to get behind those causes. I think the biggest opportunity is to really bridge that gap and have producers help tell that story, from farm to product, and let consumers really understand the value of the product that they're buying.

Tom:            Kiersten, you have a background in the retail and food service segments. I'm thinking of your years as vice president for marketing at Clemens Food Group. What sorts of insights from that experience do you now find useful in your work for the pork industry?

Kiersten:       I wouldn't say it's “insights” as much as how to apply everything that we do at the National Pork Board. Having been on the other side of the table, and knowing how much comes at you in a day, you know, it's really important to prioritize the right things. And there are days that you don't have time to work ahead of the business. So, that's really, I think, the biggest opportunity, is for the National Pork Board to be working on things that perhaps the industry doesn't have a chance to think about day in and day out, to get ahead of it. How do we think about holding on to the e-commerce growth that we've accumulated during the last two and a half years? How do we think about unlocking growth potential for some cuts that were traditionally underdeveloped but grew during the pandemic?

                     So, I would say my experience and time leading that marketing organization is really leveraged into (asking questions like) what do we go focus on, and how do we do it in a way that doesn't duplicate what they're doing but, you know, adds some value to the way that they're going to be able to integrate it into their business? And then, (we have to) take it to them to act as that catalyst to getting them to market faster. You know, we're really trying to do risk for the industry, for retailers, for packer processors and producers. So, we're trying to build our base and bring more stability and get rid of a lot of the seasonality. I think that's really what I bring to the table, having sat on the other side of the desk.

Tom:            Well, you're known, Kiersten, for this ability to sniff out potential. What kind of criteria do you look for?

Kiersten:       I really depend on the data. I say that knowing that this business is about data. Data is an art and a science. I think, really, it comes down to the end user, which is the consumer. We look to them for opportunity. We look to them for patterns, and then we try to validate those multiple times to really understand: Is it something they're saying, but they're acting differently? Or is it something that, truly, they are voting with their voice and their dollars? If that's the case, then we follow that path. We continue to validate as we go. That gives us the strength and confidence to go further.

                     Not everything's a win. Not everything's a great opportunity. But I think it really comes down to the consumer as the ultimate decision-maker and the ultimate determination of whether or not we're successful as an industry. I really lean on understanding the consumer and figuring out how to relate to them in a way that they (can then) make that connection with our product and with our industry and with our farmers.

Tom:            Are you able to take a raw data set and create a narrative out of the information?

Kiersten:       Yeah, absolutely.

Tom:            I think that that's key, isn't it? I mean, numbers are one thing, but telling the story with them is the whole purpose.

Kiersten:       Absolutely. Yeah. Sometimes it's what the numbers don't tell you — it's what you don't see in the numbers that becomes the big opportunity.

Tom:            Right. What important industry and market trends are you keeping an eye on right now?

Kiersten:       We're watching everything. I mean, as you think about protein consumption and consumers wanting to eat to fulfill certain diets and routines, it really comes down to who we're competing against — any product that is a source of protein. How do we think about where they're sourcing? How they're sourcing? How many times a day they're sourcing? We want everything. We watch everything in the grocery store. We watch everything in food service, across the menu. We really want to understand how they're interacting and where the opportunity (lies) for us to meet them in their time of need. Really, it boils down to: How do we intersect (with them) when they're in their health and wellness journey? How do we intersect with them when they're thinking about sustainability and buying products that they believe in? As they think about just making mealtime happen today, where and how does pork show up in their life?

                     Really, it comes down to us not leading with what we have to tell them and the features and the benefits of pork. It comes down to us really understanding where they are and meeting the consumer where they are in their time of need. It's those natural intersections and opportunities to introduce pork as that protein.

Tom:            All right, that's Kiersten Hafer, vice president of strategy and domestic market development for the National Pork Board. Thank you, Kiersten.

Kiersten:       Thank you, Tom.

Tom:            For the Alltech Ag Future series, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

What role does diet play in the performance of highly active sporting, military and other working canines? Ian Donovan, former Green Beret and national channel manager for Kinetic Performance Dog Food, joins Ag Future to discuss the importance of supporting both the physical and mental readiness of these high-energy dogs.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Ian Donovan hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:                      I’m Tom Martin for Ag Future.

                               Question: How does diet affect the capabilities, the recovery and energy of a working dog?

                               Kinetic Dog Food, working in partnership with Alltech, is addressing that question and responding with a food formulated to deliver optimal nutritional benefits to military and other working canines.

                               Joining us from Kinetic Performance Dog Food, where he is national channel manager, is Ian Donovan, a former Green Beret and multi-purpose canine handler and kennel master. Ian has invested years in raising, training and hunting with high-drive, highly intelligent and highly athletic gun dogs.

                               Welcome to Ag Future, Ian.

Ian:                         Hey, thanks, Tom. It’s good to be with you.

Tom:                      So, I just offered the briefest of sketches of your background. If you could, tell us more about the experience that you bring to the development of Kinetic Performance Dog Food and your role as national channel manager.

Ian:                         Yes. So, as a dog handler for U.S. Special Operations, we were — we were kind of bound to one certain food, and that was a contract that, you know, we really had nothing to do with on our level.

                               But eventually, we kind of convinced the higher powers that, you know, performance actually does begin with nutrition; you know, we preach that to ourselves on the team. We’re only as good as our bodies are. Making a living on how well your body performs under stress, you know, could be the difference between life and death, and it was no different (for) our canine counterparts.

                               So, we went out and searched for a better fuel for those dogs — something that would help their mental stimulation, you know, their physical endurance, their physical drive and energy, and we found that in Kinetic Dog Food.

                               After making the switch, as a handler, I was able to move into the kennel master position and work closer, hand-in-hand, with those guys over at Kinetic and kind of tweaking a few things and helping them understand exactly what we needed on our side of the fence when it came — when it came to the fuel that we were using to fuel these animals.

                               So, after I was done with my time in the military and left, I jumped on board with those guys, because working with dogs is something, you know, that I’m always doing. It’s something — it’s a different passion of mine. And, you know, I was fortunate enough and blessed enough to do it.

                               That’s probably the highest level that I could think of, you know — if your dog fails (in combat), then you don’t come home to your family, right? So, I really enjoyed working with dogs in that aspect: you know, the pressure of it all, but also, seeing the benefits of when you really fuel that dog properly — what it can do for you, what it can do for your team, what it can do for your country.

                               So, it’s kind of a short synopsis of how I came to the Kinetic family. And now that I’m here, we’re just going to continue benefitting all these working dogs — all these dogs that, you know, you’ve got to fuel that are under extreme amounts of stress.

                               And I think I’m just fortunate enough to have a background that allowed me bring some experience to that aspect of things and really be able to communicate well with military and police departments, SWAT teams and things of that nature (for) all (of the) dogs that we feed.      

Tom:                      Well, Ian, I know that you’ve attended many training, decoy (and) behavior-focused events, as well as a lot of police and military working dog competitions.

                               What were some important lessons that you took away from those events?

Ian:                         Yeah. So, competition breeds excellence, right? It breeds confidence. One thing that I really took away from it was, as good as I try to be, as much as I try to work on myself, you know, I’ve really got to work on my canine counterpart, because he doesn’t have the cognitive reasoning skills that human beings do, right? So, he doesn’t know how important this competition is to me.

                               Part of being a good trainer and good handler is being able to manipulate an animal into thinking that what he’s doing at that time is the most fun thing on the planet for him to do but, at the same time, having him accomplish your goals and objectives.

                               So, that was probably the biggest thing that I could take away from these events and competitions, is having the ability to kind of manipulate the dog into thinking that what he’s doing at that time is the most fun thing on the planet for him while, at the same time, accomplishing my goals and objectives.

                               And that’s been very beneficial for me in the past and will continue to be in the future when it comes to training these high-drive, highly, highly intelligent dogs that are really just trying to outsmart you to do the least amount of work to get paid. So, it’s a challenge every day, but it’s a fun challenge.

                               These decoy seminars, you know, a lot of people don’t understand that when you decoy for a dog — meaning you put bite suit on and you allow the dog to bite you — the guy in the suit is the one training the dog. In my line of work, we have to have exceptional bite dogs, because when it came down to it, there are a lot of times we can’t just pull the trigger and kill someone.

                               We do (need to) capture that guy; he’s got very valuable intelligence, so we need to use the dog as a less-than-lethal means of enemy acquisition. And having a dog that’s a really, really sound bite dog — so a dog that knows how to use his mouth along with his brain and then the rest of his body and grappling and really, you know, imposing himself with a force on who you’re trying to capture — is huge, and being able to train that as a decoy is everything in creating that for these dogs.

                               So, (I’m) having a good a time, and it’s, you know — I’m only 35, so fortunately for me, I get to have a lot more fun with it in the future.

Tom:                      That’s great.

                               And you said something there that really strikes me as so true: that dogs really — well, to play on the old song, dogs just want to have fun.

Ian:                         [laughs] That’s it. That’s it. And I mean, you know, you and I, we’ve got a lot of things in our daily lives that take up our time and our attention. But a dog, you know — a dog is just a portion of your life. You are his entire life. So, everything that he does all day is focused around, centered around you.

                               And these really intelligent dogs, you know, they get a bad rap for being misbehavers, or yeah, they kind of — they cause a lot of ruckus. But any working dog has got to have a job. And primarily, you know, the dog is going to be happiest when he’s doing the job that he was actually bred to do, because he is genetically predisposed to do that certain act.

                               You know, it’s common across the working dog world that you get these high-drive working dogs and people take them in as a family pets, and it’s just, you know, a debacle. But these dogs — these dogs are made to work, and that’s when they’re happiest, because they’re actually doing what they were bred to do.

Tom:                      It may seem like splitting hairs, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me it’s not. I’m wondering: How did military dogs that you encountered compare with the canine athletes that you’ve worked with for pleasure?

Ian:                         Well, they’re the same beast, in a way. I do a lot of work with upland hunting dogs — so pointers and setters — and then even waterfowl dogs and labs.

And I took a lot of my knowledge of those dogs and my experience working with them and training them to the military side of things. So, one thing that we like to do with our dogs — and our dogs do three things in the military: they find bombs, they track enemy personnel, and then they can apprehend them, and they obviously bite them whenever they do find them.

                               So, one thing that we really like to do is have enough stand-off when they do tell us that there’s (an) explosive odor present (so we can) not be anywhere near around it if it actually does go off, right? If the bomb detonates.

                               So, I was able to take my experience with these retrievers — and then directionals and stopping a dog on a whistle, even hand signals to cast them left, right, back, come to me. To put the dog, you know, the military working dog in a productive area of the battlefield — you know, maybe downwind is an objective, or look at the topography the same way you do in a field trial, right? You need to direct this lab towards the downed bird, (just like you need to know) how to direct this bomb dog towards a potential explosive device that, you know, either our partner forces found or, you know, one of my teammates would come up and told me that he thinks there’s something out there. So, just, you know, intelligence from the area.

                               Another thing that really helps us and is very similar between all of these dogs is just the endurance that they have to have, both mentally — the mental stamina — and the physical stamina that they’ve got to have.

A lot of people just think it’s all physical, but anytime a dog is using his nose, he’s using his brain as well. A lot of these herding dogs, you know, (that) a lot of these farmers and ranchers use — that (requires), you know, an incredible amount of mental aptitude and stamina to be able to, you know, outsmart a lot more animals than just him, right? So, it’s just one against maybe 30 or 40 cows or sheep or goats or whatever they’re trying to herd.

So, the mental stamina and the (love of the) game is true on both sides of the aisle — (for) both, you know, the sporting dogs and the military working dogs. It’s just, at the end of the day, some of us do it for sports and it’s fun. Some of us do it for a living and it’s a little more serious. But both dogs are very, very similar in those ways, in those aspects.

Tom:                      You mentioned earlier that you and your colleagues lobbied for improved fuel or better food for the performance dogs that you were working with in the military.

                               And I know that Kinetic offers a line of foods and supplements formulated for performance dogs. What’s required? What are the optimal requirements for hard-working dogs — in particular, those military and police dogs who are working under stress?

Ian:                         Well, the biggest thing is you’ve got to have an extremely digestible food. A lot of these foods have a ton of fillers on them and, you know, it really just doesn’t do well for the composition of the makeup of the body. You need to have a very nutrient-dense food; that’s what we’re looking for.

                               Nutrient density is key, because we feed a lot less of it that way. Working dogs have got to — they’ve got to have fuel, but they can’t have a stomach that’s full with a bunch of fillers, right? Because they’re moving constantly by perpetual motion.

                               So, having a very nutrient-dense food allows us to feed a lot less of that food. At the same time, the digestibility rate of that food is astronomical, right? And that — that’s really where Alltech has helped Kinetics in a big way.

                               The mineral profiles in the food, the chelated minerals that allow the absorption of all of the nutrients of the dog food, because of Alltech’s mineral profiles, has been a game changer for that food and for the animals that it feeds.

                               So, you can have all the nutrients in the food that you want, but if there’s a really poor absorption rate of these nutrients, then, you know, it’s just going in one end and out of the other.

                               And that was something that we experienced with some dog foods. Another thing, like I said, was the massive amounts of fillers that a lot of those dogs’ food had. Kinetic has none of that. It’s really a nutrient-dense food with very namable protein and fat sources.

That’s another big thing: They don’t try to play the market and put the cheapest ingredients in the food. They are feeding dogs that would often get me back home, get my buddies back home to our families.

It’s pretty personal for these guys and for the company, and that’s why I, you know — it’s really a no-brainer; I want to jump on board with them. But you really want to — you know, at the end of the day, (with) a nutrient-dense food, (you will) feed a lot of less of it. The absorption rate of all those nutrients, you know, it’s extremely highly digestible.

So, those are the big things that we’re looking for when we’re feeding the performance animal a performance food.

Tom:  That’s really something to think about as a consumer, isn’t it? When you’re in the store and you’re trying to choose the best possible food for your animal, be it a dog or a cat or whatever — and while the pricing on the high-performance food may be higher, you feed much less of it.

Ian:                         Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it really works out to be the same price or sometimes even cheaper than what you’re getting with some of these other feeds that are just full of fillers (in) larger bags. We’re feeding much, much less of it.

                               And, again, let’s take — for instance, prior to a mission. Say I’m going on a three-day mission with a dog. Overseas, I’m carrying all his food and my food and all my ammunition and everything else that I need on my back, right? So, there’s no way that I (could) take a bag of dog food with me, you know.

                               We feed minimal amounts, and that’s why it’s got to be so nutrient-dense. We (soldiers) feed ourselves the same way. So, it’s pretty simple. When you think about what we’re doing to ourselves, (we) really need to do the same things to the dogs that, you know, are fighting right there next to us.

                               We want nutrient density. We want high absorption rates. We want a ton of energy and fuel from our food. The dogs need the same exact things.

Tom:                      Well, Ian, among the dogs that you’ve worked with, do any stand out in your mind as really special in some way?

Ian:                         Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s a ton of stories about, you know, the incredible things that they’ve done overseas that you really wouldn’t believe until you — unless you’ve seen it.

                               But there are dogs here as well. The dogs overseas that I’ve worked with have gotten me back home to enjoy, you know, the dogs that I work with here. So, it’s kind of unfair to say that they don’t mean a little more to me or that they haven’t done a little more for me.

                               But yeah, on the military side of things, I’ve worked with some exceptional dogs that have done some incredible things — and, you know, they do it because it’s their job, just like we do it because it’s our job. And you know, because they’ve done those things and save a ton of lives, it really — it helps myself and the guys that I’m working with to know that the dogs are at our disposal, right?

We’re going to feel a lot more confident going on an objective, going in that target, knowing that that dog has gone before us and cleared the way, you know. He allowed us to understand, you know, there’s no explosive threat on this particular objective, because he would have identified that threat prior to going in.

                               So, if you can put that to rest in the corner of your brain or your mind and just make it about the humans at that point, you know, it takes a lot of weight off your shoulders and clears your mind to look for other things.

                               So, they do some exceptional things for us over there. Like I said, (they) allowed me to get back here and have fun with all the other dogs that I get to train and play with on this side of the pond.

Tom:                      I think some of the finest individuals I’ve ever met just happen to be dogs.

Ian:                         Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, (they are) the most selfless beings on the planet, I think.

Tom:                      Yeah.

                               That’s Ian Donovan, national channel manager at Kinetic Performance Dog Food.

                               Thank you so much, Ian.

Ian:                         Absolutely, Tom. Great to be with you.

Tom:                      And for Ag Future, I’m Tom Martin.

                               This has been Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

Peter & Paula Hynes are dairy farmers from County Cork, Ireland. In 2020, the couple founded #AgMentalHealthWeek to raise awareness of mental health issues prevalent in agriculture. Peter and Paula join the Ag Future podcast to discuss this year's theme of intentionally disconnecting from our devices and the farm.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Peter and Paula Hynes hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:                      I'm Tom Martin with another Ag Future Podcast. And joining us from County Cork, Ireland are Pete and Paula Hynes, full-time dairy farmers and founders of Ag Mental Health Week, set this year for October 10-16. And of course, the mental health of farmers is a year-round concern, but it does help to stop, take a deep breath and focus on taking an honest-to-goodness vacation from it all, including from those devices that we carry around with us. Good to have you back, Pete and Paula. 

Pete:                       Wonderful—

Paula:                     Thanks for having us.

Pete:                       …to chat to you, Tom.

Tom:                      You bet.

Pete:                       Thanks for having us on the podcast. 

Tom:                      You bet. And if you could just a brief bit of background on Ag Health Week, if you would, what inspired you all to establish this special week? 

Pete:                       So, Ag Mental Health Week is a global awareness campaign to bring the ag sector together as one and create awareness around mental health across the agricultural sector through ag companies to farm level, and vet research and beyond – and, I suppose, highlight the support services that are there. We founded it in 2020 after a conversation between myself and Paula. We were having conversation just after Farm Safety Week in Ireland, and the thought occurred us that tragically we lose more farmers to suicide than we do farm accidents, and there's no specific global awareness campaign for mental health. We decided to start Ag Mental Health Week in 2020, and we're into our third year now.

Tom:                      Would you say that the ag community is beginning to kind of come around to recognition that this is a pretty pervasive problem?

Pete:                       Yeah, I think 100%. There's a lot more awareness there. And people are very proactive in, I guess, supporting mental health and mental health awareness and suicide awareness in agriculture. And just taking Ireland into context there, there are two huge research studies going on at the moment. One in UCD Ag and one in DCU in Dublin, and both looking at, I guess, the challenges that face farmers. But also, ultimately, those research studies have to come up with solutions as to how we can improve awareness, how we can ask farmers to seek support, etc.

Tom:                      Well, we'll really look forward to seeing those and talking about them. I know that your focus this year is a really challenging one, and that is disconnecting from social media. To take the time to just relax to, heaven forbid, enjoy the company of others. To take a true vacation. What inspired this theme? 

Paula:                     We were at the stage that even when we were sitting down at the kitchen table having our dinner, me, Pete, and the kids would be on the phones flicking through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. And you know, it actually takes an awful amount of time. And I just felt at home especially that there was no more conversation. We were actually at the stage where I could be in the sunroom and the kids could be in the sitting room and they'd send me a text instead of coming out to have an actual conversation or to ask me the question.

Tom:                      That's so familiar. And you definitely take your work with you. I can hear it in the background. It's really great.

Paula:                     Yeah. Always.

Tom:                      So you guys took a vacation, went to France as I understand it.

Paula:                     We did. It was a very quick short break, a three-day break, but it was, it was better than nothing. 

Tom:                      Well, were you able to unplug?

Paula:                     Not 100% because the kids were at home, so we would have just checked in with them daily. That's it really. We might have Googled if we needed to find a particular spot, we would have put it into Google Maps to find our way, but other than that, we didn't post, you know, we weren't posting much about what we were doing or where we were going. We just kind of decided that it was time for ourselves, just the two of us to spend some quality time together. Because even though we work together, we were constantly passing each other all day on the farm. You know, we wouldn't spend quality time together as much.

Tom:                      I just got back from about a four-day trip away, and we couldn't help noticing as we pass through the airports that just about everybody we saw had their heads bent, focused on that device. It was almost surreal. And this conversation that we're having is kind of an opportunity to stop that for at least a moment and think about what we're doing to ourselves.

                               First, what are the effects, do you think, to mental well-being of being so glued to social media and those devices?

Pete:                       I think ultimately social media can be -- it  can be an amazing place, but it can also be, you know – I guess I've already fast forwarded and in some places a very negative space as well. And when you spend so much time on social media, you forget to actually look at what's happening around you and I guess forget to chat to the people that are around you.  I think it can also cloud your judgment at times. And it's kind of ironic that we're talking about not spending time on social media when we're running a global awareness campaign that is on social media.

                               But I think something that myself and Paula really, really learned in the last 12 months is: life is so hectic. And like we were away last in November, 2021. And again, we went away for a brief sun holiday. And again, we were in Paris in April and in late August. And I think we really realized that, you know, when we go away, it's about enjoying time together and not having to share that with the whole world. I think it's about taking space for ourselves. For everyone, life is so busy that it's about just stopping and enjoying the space that you have. 

Tom:                      So, for those of us who do find ourselves constantly checking that smartphone — and again, on that trip that we took, whale watching, in between whales, everybody in the boat went back to their smartphones. And so, I'm just wondering now, in the context of what we're talking about, (if) you have a vacation coming up, you know it's coming the end of the week. How do you start disconnecting or weaning yourself from that device and tell yourself, ‘OK, it's time to unplug’? It takes a lot of discipline, doesn't it?

Paula:                     For me, it's just a very conscious decision that it's something that has to be done. Like, we would have a big following on social media and we use it a lot for promoting things for companies and stuff we'd be working with. But you know, on the run up to or even the day we're going, I'd put out something, say “out of the office” for a few days, because on the other side of it, you know, you have people following andif you do vanish all of a sudden as well, people would be messages going, "God, are you OK?" There is the advantage of it, but you know, so that's why I'd always put up saying “Oh, we’re going out of the office or taking a few days.”

                               But for me, it's just a conscious decision because, for me personally, when I'm at home, I'm constantly watching my clock between doing the cows in the morning (and)one of our daughters never got a bus ticket this year for the school bus, so now, I have to drive her to school and then I have to come back and be organized to get my younger daughter to school.

                               So I'm constantly watching the clock every day all day because then the two girls have to be picked up and then our other daughter has to be dropped and collected from work. So for me, it's so lovely – even if it's only three days – just to go and do nothing and not watch the clock, and have just “me” time. And if I want to sit down and have a coffee for two hours, I can do it, whereas I can't do that at home. And it's nice to just forget about the phone. For me, it's easy to switch off from it.

Pete:                       I think for me, I find at times I have to structure my time ormy week. And just take this week, for example, now like we're busy on the farm all day. We're preparing animals for a big dairy show here in a couple of weeks. Then in the evening, I have a lot of articles to write for the paper. I have a lot of emails to catch up on for Ag Mental Health Week and a few other bits. And I made a conscious decision at the start of the week that I would work Monday evening, Tuesday evening, and Wednesday evening, but I needed to clear my desk because Thursday evening was space for me and space trying to have time with Paula and sit down and watch a movie or whatever.

                               So, it's about just adding a bit of planning on a daily basis there. Like when I go home in the evening, I won't answer the phone unless it's really, really important. And when we sit down to watch a film, I'm not going to check emails or check to see what's happening on Twitter, etc., and try and take space from it. But it does take discipline, I do agree.

Tom:                      Well, we know that owning and managing a farm is a 24/7 laundry list of responsibilities.

                               So how long can you be away from your operation and feel comfortable about that? Would you say one week, even two, or is that just really stretching it?

Paula:                     Definitely for me, one week is enough. After a week, I'd start panicking about my ladies – my cows. I'm comfortable with a week, but after that, then I really do start panicking that things would be going wrong or, you know, if the person that's here didn't pick up the phone and tell me there was something wrong.

Tom:                      And how about that person who's there? How do you make sure the farm is fully managed while you're away so that you can try to truly enjoy the brief respite from all those demands?

Paula:                     When myself and Pete go away together, just the two of us, we're very, very lucky. We have our middle daughter, Becky. She's 15. She's a phenomenal farmer. She can actually run the farm on her own. She's brilliant. She knows everything inside and out, but we just have someone in to give her a hand. When we go away as a family, the person that would be left in charge,I'd have to know them really, really well and they would have had to been here numerous times with me milking in the parlor and getting to know the cows and everything, and the way things are done.

                               I couldn't ring up the Farm Relief Services and say, "Oh, I want someone for the week,” because I wouldn’t be able to relax. So, I'd have to know the person inside out and know that they'd respect the cows the way we respect them. Like the cows are, you know, at the end of the day, they're our work colleagues, so they're family. So that's the biggest challenge.

Tom:                      Well, you mentioned something there I wonder about. Is there actually a service that you can turn to or are we talking here about the possibility of a budding industry of being a farm manager on call?

Paula:                     There is a service available, but it's still extremely difficult to get somebody. Like even relief milkers for the weekends, it's getting harder and harder to get people. I suppose the younger generation doesn't seem to be that many of them wanting to go into ag because of the hours and the seven days a week. You know, I suppose some farmers paint a picture that you have to be there seven days a week, 24 hours a day. But at the end of the day, it's down to the individual and down to management. You know, it's vital that everyone gets time off the farm. So for us, we make it a priority regardless. You take a chance when you do leave a stranger in to run your farm, but like, I mean, it's vital that you do it.

Tom:                      Well, I've read that taking a vacation does increase your mindfulness. It makes you feel more present and stimulated. And how does this act of unplugging help you rest your mind? 

Paula:                     Well, for me, it just totally recharges my batteries. Calving season is extremely busy from the end of January, February, March. We have a lot of cows calving and there's no time for anything. You're just here 24 hours a day. You're on-call at nighttime in case the cows need you. But for me, I'd have to have something to look forward to. Like we'd always take a break in April for our wedding anniversary. You just discipline yourself that you just have to take the time to recharge because you'll wear yourself out and you'll burn yourself out. And I'd get to the stage that I wouldn't be able to sleep and then, sure, I'm no good to anyone if I can't eat and sleep.

Tom:                      Well, you know, it seems as though I was mentioning before how as we pass through the airport, everybody seemed to be on their phones. And even in between events, as we did things on vacation, people turn back to their phones. Our devices have become integrated into the vacation experience. We use them to get information about things we wanna see and do, to get directions, make reservations. Did you forego all of those things or did you allow yourself to use them within limits when you were on vacation?

Pete:                       I think we obviously used them within limits. If I wanted to find something interesting to do, I Google it and — we just really found it interesting this year that when you limit yourself to maybe checking in at home or Googling something, then you can post all the photos of places you've been when you come home. And you actually meet really, really interesting people when you take the time away from the phone and have a conversation with somebody that's actually in front of you. We've met some amazing people this year, so it's been fun.

                               I think everyone needs their phone for something, whether it's the alarm clock or just checking where they want to go, or checking what time they have a reservation for something. So it's quite easy to do that. And I think likewise with Ag Mental Health Week this year, we do a lot of live streams on Facebook or we have an amazing panel of guests right through the week and right from across the sector that we'd be chatting to.

                               And even though they're live streamed, those videos will be there after. One of the big things we do in the week is Mile for Mental Well-Being where we encourage people to go out and run or walk a mile, and just get out in the fresh air, get a little bit of exercise. And I think a mile is — it's a nice distance for someone maybe that hasn't gone walking or running before that's quite easily achievable and we can fit it into any time of our day.

                               And you know, I’d actually much rather that somebody would go out and take that 10 minutes and go for a run or do Mile for Mental Well-Being than posting something on social media for Ag Mental Health Week, because they can tell us next week or the week after that they went and did the mile and the difference that it made to their day. And that's fine by me, but I think we really, really need to get the message across to people that we have to prioritize our mental well-being,especially in agriculture. Farming is a time-consuming job. It can be a highly stressful job.

                               And if we prioritize our mental well-being, it puts us in a stronger and a better position job when times are tough and times are busy. And like Paula was saying, when we're calving, it's such a demanding time of the year, in the spring, but we always have something planned for April so that we have something to look forward to and we know there's a break coming and a space for us again. When you can fit that into your life, it gives you something to work towards as opposed to just feeling that it's an endless daunting task of work after work after work.

 Tom:                     I think that is really important to have something anchored out there in the near future that you're pulling yourself toward, . and you know, when you get there, you're going to get a break.  

Pete:                       Going back to Mile for Mental Well-Being, whether you're a tillage farmer or a vet or even working inside in an office or on the road as a sales manager or a sales rep for an ag company, we can all do that mile. And it's possibly something that we should be doing more, doing a few times a week that you can pull up at lunchtime and you might have had a really stressful, stressful morning. And you can walk a lap in the field or find a nice place if you're on the road. Find a nice place just to stop for a quick cup of coffee and go for a quick walk. It just allows us space outside the work environment where we can clear our heads and think a lot fresher and come back with a fresh opinion on something after taking that time for ourselves. 

Tom:                      Well, let's just say that that wonderful week away from it all has now come to an end. It's time to head back home, back to the 24/7. Have you learned to do anything to try to prolong the benefits of that breather even as you plunge back into work? 

Pete:                       I think we realize the importance of having time together in the evenings and where we can at the weekends. We've been to a lot of agricultural shows this year with our daughters because they're showing livestock and Paula has been showing heifers as well, and [it’s] something we really enjoy as a family. And I guess, you know, doing things like that too takes us away from social media, the phones a bit as well, and gives us time to go out and enjoy life with the animals that we work with every day as well. Like myself and Paula go on date night regularly, and it's just the time to step out of the wellies and put on clean clothes, and go out into a different side of the world to what we walk in every day. 

Tom:                      So important. What do you think about that, Paula? 

Paula:                     I love date nights because like as I said earlier, even though we work together and we sleep together, we live together, it's rare that we'd actually have a full conversation. So for me, the date nights are great because I do some of my best thinking inside of the parlor, so I might have an idea for something. I just think when we're out having dinner together, I can kind of — when the phone is put away, it's then I can sit down and have the conversation with Pete. He can either say, "Yeah, we can try that," or "No, that's not a good idea," or whatever. But like at home, I forget about it because I'm always running and racing. For me, that's a great opportunity for us just to sit down and actually have a conversation and make a plan for the coming months.

Tom:                      Well, before I let you two go, I was wondering, are there certain resources that you can point our listeners to that they can go to for tips and pointers on how to navigate their way through some time off, away from those devices?

Pete:                       I think there's a phenomenal amount of resources across the world. Myself and Paula are ambassadors for Tackle Your Feelings. And if anyone Googles Tackle Your Feelings, there's a lot of tips and resources on their website that are, you know, no matter where you are in the world, they're going be relevant to you. During Ag Mental Health Week, we'll be posting mental well-being tips on all the social media platforms on a daily basis. And if anyone just uses the hashtag #AgMentalHealthWeek, they'll find a lot of stuff there on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. 

Tom:                      Yes, I did that. And that's exactly what happened. Pete and Paula Hynes, dairy farmers in County Cork, Ireland, founders of Ag Mental Health Week, set this year for October 10-26. Thank you both.

Paula:                     Thank you.

Pete:                       Thanks for having us on, Tom.

Tom:                     You bet. And for Ag Future, I'm Tom Martin. This has been Ag Future presented by Alltech. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

Is work-life balance obtainable? Cheya Thousand, founder and CEO of CT. Wellness Co., joins the Ag Future podcast to discuss how burnout impacts leaders, employees and parents and to share her strategies for hitting the reset button to mitigate stress, feel better and move on productively.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Cheya Thousand hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     Burnout, as it is defined, is not a medical condition. It's a manifestation of chronic unmitigated stress. Well, however we define it, those who suffer (from) it know that it's very real and very troubling. As an author and stress and self-care consultant, Cheya Thousand offers guidance on how to pull out of the burnout that creeps up on and overwhelms so many of us.

                     I'm Tom Martin with the Alltech Ag Future podcast series, (and I’m) here with Cheya to get her insights on how to reset, feel better and move on productively. Thanks for joining us, Cheya.

Cheya:          Thank you for having me.

Tom:            Burnout seems to be more common than ever these days. I think it was a 2021 survey of 1,500 U.S. workers (that) found more than half feeling burned out as a result of their job demands. Does that finding seem about right?

Cheya:          Yes, and I would even add to that and say about 75%, because what the WHO defines as burnout only relates to work. What people don't realize is that you can have parental burnout. A lot of people are defining their work burnout, but it's really the combination of their lives that have been burned out. The parental burnout on top of their work burnout is really the burnout people are experiencing, because it's not always our jobs. It's always something deeper, and it's usually a combination of things.

Tom:            I'm glad you pointed that out, because each on its own is stressful and can lead to burnout, (but) the two combined? Wow. It has been an eye-opening trend of Americans leaving jobs, especially those that typically involve long, exhausting hours of difficult, stressful work for lower pay than they could demand in some other field. What are you seeing in that area?

Cheya:          I think that this is a very unique time in our history, because what people have learned as the confines of work do not look the same anymore — so the landscape has changed. The Great Resignation is also, I feel, like a great freedom for some, because now, you have an opportunity to leverage your lifestyle the way that you want to and build habits around a better lifestyle. “Work from home” sounds great, but there still needs to be boundaries there. A lot of people who are not always comfortable being in the office and wish they had a work-from-home job, and now they have access to those opportunities due to remote work. Well then, how do we build into that lifestyle the same boundaries of our work when we were going into the office — into our now work-from-home lifestyles?

Tom:            It's been interesting to me that prior to the pandemic, employers were — this is a generalization — but generally opposed to remote work. They wanted everybody onboard on the premises, being a team, and that made sense. But the pandemic made something else make sense: staying home, and it's gone on long enough now that many of us have adapted to it and have decided, “You know what? This really works well.” What are you finding? Are people actually — or some people — more productive in a remote situation?

Cheya:          I do find people can be more productive. I would say in the studies — and even the last couple of quarters have shown, as companies have been more profitable since we have been in the more remote work environment than they have in previous years. I think it's really something to be said about micromanaging and even microaggressions in the office. Depending on your background and racial makeup, some people have found that being in office leads to more microaggressions, where they don't have that at home, because they're not in the office. Then some managers who are not leaders, they need to micromanage teams in the office. I think that's one of the clear distinctions between a leader and a manager: when you can lead a team remotely versus managing a team remotely. I think that's what leads to people being more productive.

                     But again, you do have to have a set of boundaries there because, with us working remotely, people have worked longer hours and they don't have hard stop and beginning times. I think that's the part that people have to learn how to manage now, because you knew you had to be at work at nine o'clock and you got to off at five o'clock, then you had your 30-minute or hour commute home. There was time to de-stress and there was also hard starting-in times. Now, we don't have that.

Tom:            With the choice to work remotely comes the obligation to self-manage.

Cheya:          Absolutely — self-control.

Tom:            When we think about burnout, mental and emotional symptoms such as feelings of helplessness and cynicism even come to mind. What are some common symptoms and ailments?

Cheya:          I would say anxiety, insomnia, lack of productivity, as well as physical pain. I know, growing up, I thought about this a lot. Sometimes, when kids don't want to go to school, they're being bullied and things of that nature. That can be them experiencing stress, high levels of stress — and burnout is just a stage of chronic stress. With that being the case, you ever noticed that kids get sick? The physical manifestation of that fear or that chronic stress, it becomes a real thing. That time, it shows up for us as adults as well. When we are feeling overwhelmed at our workplaces and we don't want to go into work, that's when you wake up with that dread, or you have now a headache, or you're just like, “Oh, my stomach is hurting.” There's nothing really wrong, because as soon as you make the call and say you're not going in, do you ever find how quickly you feel better?

Tom:            I personally can testify that stress can lead to back problems.

Cheya:          Absolutely.

Tom:            I guess it depends on the individual. What are the signs, and what steps should a person take when they notice this, when they put the two and two together? “Oh, this must be connected to what I'm going through.”

Cheya:          First, I would say, define a couple of things for yourself. Define what stress is for you. How does that physically manifest in your body? Then, also, knowing what your triggers are. Those are the first steps, I would say.

                     Then, I would recognize value alignment. I begin all of my programs with value alignment, because I think once you know what you value — if you stand for nothing, you will fall for everything. You have to know what you value. A lot of the times, the work that we do does not align with our values. When you're interviewing with an organization, you're interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. It's not the best thing to just leave a job and say, like, “Oh, let me just go get another job. My job is so stressful.” Does the value alignment align with the lifestyle that you have chosen for yourself and the career path that you have chosen for yourself? For a lot of us, it doesn't. We've picked these careers because they either came easy to us or you went to school for it.

                     That's the biggest thing, people — but I went to school for this, and I have to work in this field. But you don't have to. If you do a study — many studies have shown, most people are not even working in their fields of choice that they have their degrees in. It's really finding what works for you, what brings you joy and fulfillment, and then going from there, but it all starts with value alignment.

Tom:            In your work, Cheya, do you find that people in our culture, where we are taught to work hard, tend to brush off suggestions that they get help for stress and exhaustion for burnout?

Cheya:          Absolutely, absolutely. This work that I do is, it's a passion of mine, because I experienced burnout on three different occasions. Yet most of the time, people feel guilty, and they are made to feel guilty, as a society, for resting and self-caring. There's no guilt that should be around that. It's your birthright. Asking for help is actually a sign of strength. It's not a sign of weakness, be it therapy, or be it telling your boss or your supervisor, “Hey, my workload is getting pretty heavy right now. Is there any way I can get support?” Be it with someone partnering with you on a project or you getting an assistant. But it does not speak to the fact that you cannot do the work. There is a time where people may just put too much on your plate, and you have to be the one that says, “This is too much.” I had an old supervisor telling me, “When someone steps on your foot, you have to tell them it hurts, or they'll keep stepping on your foot.” It works the same way.

Tom:            When you work with individuals and corporate teams to help them manage stress and come up with their own strategies to thrive at work, at school or in their everyday lives, how do you help them overcome this sense of being overwhelmed, and how can we prioritize our own self-care and health?

Cheya:          I call it holding space for self, which is also the name of my book, and it's a matter of how you build in daily habits of self-caring into your everyday. It's living with intention, and with that being the case, how I begin the program is value alignment. Once you look at your values, you can say, “How does my lifestyle align with my values? How do my decisions align with my values? How do my relationships align with my values?” A lot of times, especially as young people, we think we have to have friendships because we’ve been friends with them for so long. Well, time is not a qualifier for quality either, because there are certain people in our lives that we can speak to (but), very often, we don’t feel anything there, and it’s like you’re just doing it to do it, to have something to do. Then there’s other people that you may not speak to all the time, but when you speak to them, it’s the most fulfilling relationship and the most fulfilling conversation over the course of two hours. You may not speak to them for another three months.

                     So, it's really about getting people to see clearly what their values are (and) define those things for yourself — define stress for yourself, define success for yourself. Do not allow society's definition to dampen or hinder how you develop and you pursue the things that are important to you in your life.

Tom:            Some experts in this field say self-care can be a double-edged sword. Obviously, we need to take good care of ourselves, but hearing that we need this can only worsen the problem, implying that the blame and the responsibility for the condition is on the person experiencing the burnout instead of external influences. What's your take on that view?

Cheya:          I don't wholeheartedly agree, and the reason is because our lives are composed of our choices. Yes, it is our responsibility. If we just go with anything, then people will be able to define you, people will be able to pull you in every direction. You have to be the one that says, “Hey, this is a boundary.” And then, on top of that, you have to honor your own boundaries, and you have to teach people how to treat you. Yes, it is your boss's job to figure out a way to get the work done but also support you, but your boss is aligned with the organization. So, if something doesn't work for you, you have to communicate that, because the organization knows, “Hey, this person's here to do this job. This is how we need the job done. This person can get it done.” If they keep giving you stuff and you never say, “It’s too much,” then it is partly you.

                     But I think, when it comes to self-care, we have to look at also Swarbrick's “Eight Dimensions of Wellness,” and that talks about occupational wellness, financial wellness, intellectual wellness, social wellness. These are all of the areas in which self-care should align. It's not necessarily about being selfish, nor is it necessarily about blame being placed on one individual, but on anything in our society. Usually, it is on the one person, because our lives are composed of our choices. It's funny how, when it comes to self-care, it's like, “Ooh, that's blameful.” But if you cross the street in front of a bus, no one's going to say, “That bus should’ve known you were coming.” No, it doesn't work that way.

Tom:            Burnout can happen when you feel that your workload is out of control. I think of Lucille Ball here and then the famous conveyor belt (scene) and that you just can't get ahead of that curve. Is this a condition that should be directly discussed with your employer, or does that only bring on more stress over how you'll be perceived as an employee?

Cheya:          I think that it is the corporation's responsibility to layer in tools and resources into your organizational structure that support wellness across the board. It cannot be a one-time event. It cannot be just a workshop. It needs to be layered into the fabric of your organization. Our leaders need to exhibit the behaviors that they want the team to actually then follow. So, if you're an always-accessible leader, you're not teaching your team about boundaries. That needs to be layered in there. You also need to have programming in there that allows people to tap into resources when they need support. So, if that's logging on to a portal and watching a class on breathing, or if that's logging into a portal and watching the class on budgeting, that's what you need to do. Also, having access to therapy.

                     These things need to be layered into the fabric of organizational structure. It's not okay to just say, “We'll bring in a speaker every now and then.” We are way past that, and most of the time, when people are burnt out, they don't recognize it until it's too late. So, how do you layer preventative measures in there so that they don't get to that place? We need to be more responsive and proactive versus reactive to any given situation.

Tom:            Do you work with employers who are actually proactively looking for ways to keep their workforces healthy and happy?

Cheya:          Absolutely. I most recently did a program for an organization who actually advocates for their team speaking up. The leaders speak up. The leaders are a top-down organization, where they communicate the needs, and they also exhibit those needs, and they also have a very open-door policy. So, in the middle of my programming, everyone kept saying, “They do a great job of that here. They do a great job of that here.” I had to commend them. That was the first time I did a program in an organization (where) all the individuals participating said, "Oh no, here, they do that really well." That's not normally the case.

Tom:            You mentioned earlier the Great Resignation, that period we're going through, and that seems to be one of the things that people are looking for. They're looking for that kind of concern on the part of the employer. I know that you recently got more than 500 students who (discussed) the mental ups and downs of the COVID-19 pandemic. I wondered if you could share with us any lasting impressions from that experience.

Cheya:          I think, when it comes to students, it is our responsibility as the older generation to help them navigate this. This is their first time experiencing anything of this magnitude. Many of us have lived through many versions of this, be it Enron, be it 9/11. It's our responsibility to help them navigate (this).

                     Some of the things that have been really encouraging in those presentations with the students is that they're listening more than we think they are. We always say that this generation is not listening, but once I've left campus, I've had admins reach out and say, “They're using the lingo from your book. They're helping each other.” So, they want to know that information. They are, like, hungry for the information. It's just a matter of putting it in front of them and then giving them the language. Everything that we do is around language, right? People go to therapy so they can learn the language to their feelings. Giving students that language is actually helping them better learn how to care for themselves. I think it's important to do that before they hit the workforce. So, if they understand what they value instead of just getting money, then they can choose better careers for themselves and not work a job for 40 years that they hate.

Tom:            How many times do we hear somebody say — often wistfully — that they took piano lessons, art, or got into competitive sports for a while, but work and life forced them to set those things aside? Should they still find a bit of time to regularly do something that they truly love?

Cheya:          Absolutely. One of my frameworks is the SPC. I call it the spiritual, physical and creative outlet, and that is the framework. You need to focus on those three areas, and if you create healthy habits in those three areas, you will be able to prioritize your self-care. Is that praying? Is that meditating? Whatever that looks like for you in that spiritual bucket. Then physical. How are you moving your body? What are you doing to maybe get out in nature? Then creative. What's that thing you did as a kid that people told you you'd never make money from, so you gave it up, but you find so much joy and fulfillment in it? If you can put those things together in your lifestyle and dedicate a minimum of 20 minutes a day to each of those three buckets — “the rule of three 20s” is what I call it — (for) that one hour, just dedicate it to something for yourself. You will have a greater and more richer sense of fulfillment. It just automatically will start to happen.

Tom:            What about taking time off and doing it without feeling like you're abandoning your team and/or feeling that the work is just going to keep piling up while you're away and be worse when you get back?

Cheya:          You need it. You need time off. I call it mental health days. I tell people to pre-schedule them. I think, at the beginning of the year, when you know how much PTO you have, just start off in January. Pre-schedule your mental health days, random days, throughout the (next) couple of months. I try and do at least one weekend a quarter. I do at least two days every couple of weeks where I just have it on my calendar, and I take time off. I let my work team know, “Hey, I'm off this weekend.” People begin to respect it, and they actually expect it of you that you're going to rest. Rest builds resilience. If we are constantly going, then we will break down. It's burning the candle at both ends. Our phones can't constantly stay plugged in, because it'll drain the battery, right? When they don't work anymore, you shut them down. When your TV's acting up, you kind of reset it.

                     Everything in life needs a reset. We do as well, and it comes from resting. But society makes us feel guilty for resting. I am the queen of “no”. I say rest is important. I prioritize rest, probably, over everything. I do. Everyone (who knows me) knows, on the weekends, I only let myself do two things per weekend day. Because when you're over-committed, then you're exhausted, and then you get to Mondays, and you don't want to go to work because you didn't experience your rest on the weekend.

Tom:            We have real trouble saying no, don't we?

Cheya:          Oh, yeah.

Tom:            Speaking of time off, and speaking of those devices, how do we really do that? How do we disconnect? Because they're so integrated with who we are now and how we function. I mean, here we're being driven by what comes up on social media and on our schedules, on our laptops and so forth. But when we take time off, the goal is to really disconnect from that. Do you have any thoughts around this and advice for those who still find themselves thinking about work when they're trying to disconnect?

Cheya:          Absolutely. First, I would tell you to take an inventory of your time. How are you spending your time? Then, once you do that, when you recognize either you're spending too much time on social media or too much time working and not enough time with your family or just catering to your own needs, then try and scale it back. Start small.

                     I have someone that I worked with over 10 years ago, and I had him start with 10 minutes a day, with 10 minutes of day where he didn't do anything. He didn't answer the phone. During his lunch, he would eat, he would answer the phone and he'd be on a computer. Well, that's not lunch. That's what most of us do. So, for 10 minutes a day, just step away. Start there and then, gradually, if you can do that for maybe two weeks, add another 10 minutes. Then you keep doing that. I started working with him a year before his retirement. I saw him a year later, and his wife couldn't believe it. She said, "Oh, my gosh, you're the girl. You're the girl that helped him. Now he knows how to relax." It took him a year, but we started at 10 minutes a day.

                     I think it's overwhelming when you're like, “I have to do all of this now.” No. They say, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” You have to break these things down and put them in smaller tidbits for yourself. We all know our own responses and our energy and how they work in our lives. I think that's the same way when you are looking to accomplish a goal. If, for you, that is creating more opportunities for rest, start small. If it's 10 minutes and you just put your phone on Do Not Disturb or you limit the amount of time you spend on social media using the apps in our phones, well, you create focus time. In my phone right now, I only have an hour and a half that I'm allowed to use (on) my social media apps a day. I used to have 100 minutes. Then I realized, at the end of the day, I had a minute left over. I kind of want it to run out in the middle of the day; then I'm not going to be encouraged to go back on there.

Tom:            What will we find in your book, “Holding Space for Self,” that would be helpful in guiding us to a more centered, less stressful and maybe even stress-free — I don't know if I can go that far, but maybe that — maybe a stress-free life?

Cheya:          In my book, I talk about 25 tips for creating a weekly self-care routine. In there, we go through the inventory of your time. We go through setting healthy boundaries, as well as different ways for you to practice self-care. I have tips in there if you're a mom and you need to learn how to practice self-care (or) if you're living a very busy lifestyle (and) you need to practice self-care. There's also a self-care commitment that I have you sign that you're going to spend time caring for yourself. And you will make mistakes. It's okay. It's okay to not feel good. It's okay to make mistakes, but you won't guilt trip yourself every time you make a mistake, and you sign that agreement. Then you get into the ways of creating those moments for yourself.

                     Again, it can be something as small as just having a hot cup of tea before you start work, because so often, we'll go into our email and give our attention to everything else but ourselves and our feet haven't even touched the ground before we've gotten out of bed. So, I talk about that in the book as well.

Tom:            That's author and stress and self-care consultant Cheya Thousand. Thank you so much, Cheya.

Cheya:          Thank you for having me.

Tom:           For the Alltech Ag Future podcast, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure                     to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts

How can dairy producers overcome labor shortages? Dr. Luke Miller, dairy technical support specialist at Alltech, joins the Ag Future podcast to discuss how dairy farms can attract, train and retain labor, as well as his thoughts on the future of hiring as dairies adopt more automation in their operations.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dr. Luke Miller hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     I'm Tom Martin for the Alltech Ag Future podcast series. We hear about this from every segment of the economy: Labor — most acute in industries that call on workers to perform especially hard work — is a big concern these days. That definitely goes for the dairy industry. How do we properly manage and train employees so our farms can be successful for years to come?

                     That question brings Dr. Luke Miller to Ag Future. A veterinarian, Dr. Miller is a dairy technical support specialist at Alltech with expertise in every level of the dairy operation. Before joining Alltech, Miller was the general manager of a 6,000-head multisite dairy in central California, managing operations and a team of 45 employees and designing and building a state-of-the-art, 80-stall rotary milking barn. He's worked with local and national government agencies on grants and permitting. For eight years, he served as a large-animal veterinarian and eventually became the owner of a practice that addresses all facets of large-animal medicine. Dr. Miller also aided in the design and implementation of dairy protocols and standard operating procedures. Thanks for joining us, Dr. Miller.

Luke:            Good morning, and thank you very much for having me on. I really appreciate the invitation.

Tom:            As I said, labor has been and is a major concern for the dairy industry. The prospects of that changing anytime soon are pretty bleak.

Luke:            Slim to none.

Tom:            How should we educate dairymen in the ag community about what the labor force really looks like now, and how we might go about retaining teammates that we want to keep?

Luke:            The basics to begin with are to start understanding who we're trying to hire and understanding where they came from and their basic levels of both education and interest in the group, in the dairy. We know that many of our laborers are not loyal to a particular place or particular farm, so we try to invest in them as much as we can and get them to want to be with us, (since they) want to be wanted. That's kind of one of those deals. Everybody appreciates it when you're a good employee. How do we keep those people once they're good? Losing good employees is never, never a positive. We want to retain the good ones and sort the proverbial wheat from the chaff as much as we can when we're getting new employees running through the dairy on almost a daily to weekly basis.

Tom:            Let's say you're somebody with an operation that's experiencing this and you want to do that — you want to figure out how to retain people. What are some ways to do that?

Luke:            I think one of the basics is knowing and having an organizational chart. I preach this every place I go, that — understanding employees want to have a box. They know where the top is and know where the bottom is. They want to be put in that box, and they want to understand the basics of their job so that they can fulfill what you want them to do, and they feel like that’s gratifying to them. When they do a good job and you tell them they do a good job, that’s the thing. But I think a basic organizational chart is one of those keys that every dairy, no matter the size, should really have — especially small family farms that we deal with a lot, where an uncle or a dad or a mom or a cousin or a brother is on the dairy. Having them understand where they fit into the organization, how they move throughout the organization, up and down that organizational chart — it’s very important. So, I think that's one of those keys.

Tom:            If we want to meet expectations, we need to know where they are.

Luke:            Exactly. Right. That's the other part of it, is the job description. Very many of these dairies do not have any job descriptions for their employees. They are simply hired because you showed up that day. Yes, it's important to get the cows milked, to get the harvest in, to do many of the things that are daily emergencies on a dairy, but at the same time, we don't want to hire the wrong person to come in. Job descriptions and some early vetting of who we're actually bringing into the dairy is important.

Tom:            Making that investment to attract, retain (and) educate employees can often be seen as a secondary priority in the grand scheme of things, but why is it so crucial that employers make it an operational priority?

Luke:            I've had a couple of dairymen tell me, and I've kind of come to this one on my own, that if a car full of employees pulls up and we say — there's four or five people that are new to your dairy that pull up, and they say, "I want a job," very few of us dairymen at the time would say, "Nope, I don't have room for you." But in reality, at least 20%, at least one of those guys in that car, or girls in that car — (I) try not to do that anymore; we have a lot of new females in the dairy business — but someone in that car is going to hurt you, and it might be through OSHA. It might be through morale. You might turn around and six months later, your entire workforce has flipped over and it's a negative experience, and that is not what we want to do. We need to understand who we're bringing in.

                     So that first understanding of the damage that an employee can do to your operation may not be immediate. It may not be that day. You may not really see them. Obviously, the animal rights or animal welfare — somebody's trying to take advantage of your operation with film or with video, with audio recording — is also very damaging, and we want to limit that access as much as possible.

Tom:            Does this involve some sort of an intake process where you can kind of tease out these issues?

Luke:            An onboarding process is extremely important for dairies. I think that having the 10 questions, right? And they don't have to be my 10 or your 10 or anybody else's 10, but having the 10 for our dairy — you can sort a lot of things out if you just ask basics. The second step of that is (to) train the trainer. We have to have somebody on the dairy who knows how to train people, and we put them in charge of — not the hiring but the actual onboarding of the person when they start. We find a guy we like. We find someone we want to put on the dairy. We send them out with a trainer. You have an hour, two hours a day — whatever it takes to appreciate their skill level.

                     It's very obvious when somebody comes to us and says, "I can do this," and then you put them in that position and they can't do this. But you need to have trust in your trainer, a manager, even, or a lead or a foreman who can sort them out and say, “They have no idea what they're doing.” That puts flare one up in their file. They've already lied to us once. What else (in terms of) damage could they be doing?

Tom:            Why is it important to make sure that employees are educated in stockmanship?

Luke:            Stockmanship has come about in the last, probably, 20 years, and stockmanship has really been infinitely old(-fashioned) about how to handle an animal and how to deal with them. Thirty years ago, it wasn't a problem, because facilities were small, dairies were smaller. It was more mainly family-oriented — so a new stockmanship was going to happen because you were raised in it. But stockmanship is the basics of understanding animal husbandry. How do we move them? How do we speak to them? How do we work with them?

                     So many of our new employees now have absolutely no appreciation for stockmanship and have no appreciation for what it takes to just do the basics with an animal. That's one of those things we need to work with. Stockmanship training is very important. It's also not really that hard to teach. We go back to “train the trainer”. Follow somebody who knows how to do stockmanship and the basics: moving animals from one pen to another, giving medications to an animal. There are ways to do that where it's non-confrontational to the animal. It's easy. Everybody's calm. I go on dairies a lot where I know the stockmanship is good, and I can walk right in front of all the cows and nobody jumps, nobody moves, nobody runs. I go on to dairies where stockmanship is not good, and it's like a stampede every time somebody new comes into the pen. It's very obvious when stockmanship is a priority on dairies.

Tom:            Have emerging technologies helped improve the dairy-farm work environment in some way?

Luke:            That's a really plus/minus question. I think there are — technologies have made it really beneficial to know who you need to go work with as an employee with an animal. But at the same time, when you do a lot of emerging technologies, that tends to turn the animal back into a machine, and that's what we don't want to do. We do not want to have, “That's just a machine that makes milk.” Nope, that's a cow. She's an individual, and she might be individual 1,473, but she's still an individual, and appreciating her for what she does every day is different than making her a machine.

                     I do love emerging technologies. I think there are great things to be done with pedometers and necklaces and rumination collars and robots in the milking industry. But at the same time, you also have to have an appreciation that it's still a cow. It's still an individual, and we still do need stockmanship, and we still need to have that human-animal interaction.

Tom:            Let's talk about that interaction between human and animal on a dairy operation and how critical that is for both the dairy and for peace of mind.

Luke:            Yeah, it's something I just started learning more about. Having had one for a long time, you take it as just for granted that you know what a human-animal interaction is, and how it works is very similar with children. Their first interaction can often be, once they learn it, “It's bad” or “It's good,” and it takes a long time to train them out of (that thought process). So, if you think about doing something poor — you were shouting, you were loud, cows were scared — you have to have repeated interactions for that to go away, for them to be retrained.

                     (We need to be) teaching our employees who may have worked in a peach orchard or maybe have done seasonal labor and now they want to go into a full-time type of agricultural job that there's a difference between a peach tree and a cow. We need to have them understand that there's interaction. If you form that interaction good, the cows will appreciate you, they'll interact well with you, and they'll do what you want them to do. (This is) not highly researched, but it is out there, and it's getting better. Because of the human/animal welfare kind of exhibit, we see that actually trending in both ways, right? That's one of the big breakthroughs, is that, if you're good to cows, it can be enriching to your life. We've seen this in the service-animal industry for years. Everybody knows the commercial where the dog comes into the hospital and makes the kids feel better. It's the same kind of thing. Your job can be way more enriching if you like what you do, if you like the animals you work with. If you fight them all the time to get your work done, it becomes very unpleasant. That's why we lose a lot of our employees. They just don't understand that it can be enriching in reverse.

Tom:            Does that become kind of a loop, a feedback loop? If you're uncomfortable with them, they sense that?

Luke:            Yes. Oh, for sure. It's not just one worker. If you're doing the right thing during the day shift, the night-shift guy can be doing the wrong thing or the not-as-good thing, and the animals, when you come back, will feed on that as well. There's a positive and a negative feedback loop. The negative feedback loop is production. If we're rough, if we're tough, if we're too loud, if we cause some releases of pheromones that say, “We're scared,” we get decreased production. If we're good and we're happy and we move nicely, the cows just remain calm and everybody's good. That leads back to you as the employee, and you feel good about doing your job, and your boss doesn't yell at you. It is definitely a feedback loop, both positive and negative.

Tom:            I'm imagining the (Gary) Larson cartoon here, and all the cattle are saying, "Oh, here comes a good one."

Luke:            Oh, Gary was spot-on. I would say that if I was going to ever pick out a true advocate for agriculture and how it really is, Gary Larson is one of those guys. I think every vet's clinic in the universe has one of his calendars still on permanent repeat because so many of his things were so true. I don't know how he went from horses to cows to every facet of agriculture and nailed it.

Tom:            It's fascinating. By the way, in the introduction, I mentioned that you had designed and built that state-of-the-art, 80-stall rotary milking barn. I wondered if that design has worked, in some way, to improve these interactions between human and animal.

Luke:            It's a funny thing of rotary, and we see it with the robot barns that are coming now and the usage of more technology. But the robot (barns), they go to (them) on their own, and that was the design with the rotary, is we didn't want to bring them — we didn't want to force them into the milking barn. When you see cows ride a rotary, it's one of the funniest things. They walk on it of their own volition, and they go off of their own volition. It's the only time they move — aside from that one time at the end of their lifespan — for free. They don't have to walk, they're not to do anything, they get on, and they ride. You watch these cows come up. You never have to push them into the barn. That's a common thing with all new barns, is we need to get them into the milk barn to be milked. With rotaries, they line up and they get on and they ride. It's truly funny and exceptionally efficient when you don't have to have somebody do that. But it's one of those loops that we talked about. It's enriching for the guys, because I don't have to force them to get on. They want to get on. They get on that rotary and ride. Yes, that technology, that thought process, was in my brain when we decided to build that barn, was — what can I do to make it easier for them, also make it easier for my guys, and still get the efficiency and the production we need to be a viable dairy facility?

Tom:            Sounds like another one for Larson.

Luke:            Right. Yeah, you'll put the wings on when they fly around in a circle. It's right there.

Tom:            Well, ultimately, the ultimate goal here is to produce. So why is a good human-animal bond good for production?

Luke:            I don't know that it's any better for production when you have a good one. We do definitely know that it's bad when we have a bad one. This is one of those “do no harm, first” kind of deals, is — no matter what, we want to let them produce to their expectations. Given the genetics that we've bred into these cows over the last 30 years and the leaps and bounds that we've made there, we don't want to hinder that. To not hinder that, we want a good human-animal relationship. We don't have any research stating that if it's good, it's better (for production). We would have to go, probably, back to little, more companion animals to pull that out a little bit — dogs and cats and horses. In fact, that — we're going to see progress with that. We do know that any negative interaction does cause a negative consequence in production. Just be good. We're not expecting more. We just need “good”.

Tom:            How about the human side of this equation? How does this bond affect human welfare and job performance and satisfaction, the things we were talking about earlier?

Luke:            Yeah, I think retention is that key, right? If you work in a place where this is valued, you know that you're at a place that values you. This has been one of those recently formed ideas. Jorge Delgado was one of my compatriots here at Alltech. He brought this to me and said, “I think you need to talk about this.” We need to speak of it this way, is — we've educated and we've pushed dairymen and bosses across the country to teach employees to treat their animals like they want them treated, right? “Be good to my animals, because they're important to me, and I want you to be good to them.” I think we need to flip that a little bit — and it's worked in the cases that we've done it, which is “I don't want to treat the animals the way I want. I want to treat the employees the way that I want — to treat them well — and they will take care of my things.” It's the inverse, a little bit, of what we've been taught, and what we've worked on is getting job satisfaction, but we do that through treating the human well, and then the human will take care of our assets. And we've seen this work.

                     That is the opposite rule of, typically, “I want you to be good to my animals. I want you to take care of them. Don't hit them. Be nice to them and do these things. Don't break the tractor and go that way.” No, you know what? We're going to say, “I've fixed your house. I give you good bonuses. I'm treating you well. I say hi to you. I know your name. We interact with you. I treat you well. Because of the respect you will give me for treating you well, you will then treat my things well, which is important to me.”

                     To get back to your original one, retention is still the key. We want to keep the good ones there. We want to sort out the bad ones. But to do that, we need to get past a couple of weeks, we need to get past a couple of months, and show them that they're important to us — and that's really the key, is they are important to us. They are the basic cog in our industrial dairy. Without the people, we simply cannot do what we need to do. For too long, we have said, “Just bring another one in. Just get another person. Just revolve the door.” That's so expensive, and it's so damaging to morale. We need to be good with the ones we have. Train them. Train, train, train, train again, and then look at, “How do we make them happy so that they want to stay with us?”

Tom:            Now, one thing I'm really curious about is — and we're talking about the environment now. (What I’m curious about is) whether or not music can play a role — certain genres of music, certain types of music — in calming cows as well as the people working.

Luke:            I had this argument when I was running the dairy, and I walked into milk barns for 20 years that have had blaring music of various sorts. Obviously, in California, it's usually a little more Hispanic in flavor, but you can certainly go to the middle of Michigan, where I grew up, and hear (dairies) blaring classic rock. Cows are exceptionally adaptive to whatever we put in front of them. Once they're used to it, it becomes the norm. Yes, there is work out there that — saying calm, basic, smooth jazz or smooth classical music does relax the cows when they come in.

                     But if you've walked into most modern barns right now, I really don't want to hear anything. I don't want to hear humans yelling. I want to hear the machinery. The new machinery is quiet. The fans, you'll hear the buzz from the air, and you'll hear ambient noise in the background. But to me, that's how I know I'm on a place that's really well-run, is when I walk in and I don't have the blaring boombox in my ear when I walk in. Because it is about the cow, not about the human. I understand we need to be entertained.

                     And then, secondly, all I hear is cow, right? It's just breathing, chewing, hanging around, and a little bit of mooing. That's how I know cows are exceptionally calm, and that's one of those things — and calm before anything else. If they're calm with mariachi music, then they're calm with mariachi music. I don't have a problem with music, per se, in the milk barn. It's about the cows’ reaction to it. If everybody's tense and the workers are fast and they're moving and this and that, that's bad. We want everybody to be calm.

Tom:            Well, to bring our conversation full-circle — this has been fascinating — would you come back around to the labor question and what it's like out there? Is it even possible, at this point, to think a decade ahead about what the labor market is going to look like? What do the next 10 years look like for dairy?

Luke:            Yeah, that's a good question. I think the last 10 years have been really fun. I go to dairies now, and everybody, with the recent COVID pandemic, and everybody — not everybody — and people's lack of desire to work in the office and not come in, the dairymen are laughing, because they've been living this life for 30 years. If I don't want to come in there — so there’s the popular meme where the dude’s in the noose and looks over and goes, “Your first time?” And they're going to go, “No, it's not my first time at all.” They laugh and they think it's funny, because they've been dealing with this forever. This is nothing new to them. They've always been scrambling for workers and trying to get there.

                     I don't think that changes. I had a dairyman this week that we met with. We were on a tour this week with some visitors from out of the country that were, in fact, coming to the (Alltech ONE) Conference, that — he asked them, “Would you do it like this?” It was a new robot facility. “If you had a new place, would you build it like this?” He was pretty flat-out, and he said, “In California, no, I would build it just like this. If I was in another state, I'd probably build a rotary, because I think I could get people.”

                     It's not going to stop. Part of my talk that we go through is I want people to appreciate the fact that they're not a “milker”. They're a technician. We're asking them to do a very specific technical job, to remove a product from an animal and make it work for us for a profit. They're no longer “milkers”. We need to call them “teammates,” we need to call them “technicians,” and we need to value their position on the dairy. I think that we're never going to stop arguing about labor. It's an entry-level job. People are going to come to it, they're either going to like it or not like it, and they're going to leave.

                     The problem we're going to face is probably the rising wage issue of who we have to hire and how much we have to pay them to get (them) to do the job. California is going to go a lot more robots, because we are typically ahead of the curve when it comes to minimum wage, but in the next 10 years, I would expect to see a lot more automation. Unfortunately, that means that you’re going to have to pay your guys more, because they have to operate a really good computer to work with the automation you've put in front of them.

                     But I don't see it changing much, honestly. I think we'll see the same migrant labor force. People in the United States do not want to do this job. We've tried, right? We see it through the Midwest a little more. But on the West Coast, on the South coast, it's a migrant labor force. We're forced to deal with, “How do we train, educate and make them appreciate the job they have?” And we need to appreciate their labors. But, yeah, the answer is like, in this specific one question, it'll be the same problem (in) another 10 years. We'll just have more automation. We'll have more robots. We'll have removed, maybe, a few of those basic-level guys, but we'll have more mid-level guys. Maybe that's what we want, are some thinkers on the dairy.

Tom:            Well, maybe we'll talk again in 10 years and see if it's the same or not, but it's certainly fascinating to think about. Dr. Luke Miller, dairy technical support specialist at Alltech. Thanks so much for joining us, Dr. Miller.

Luke:            Thank you very much for having me.

Tom:            For the Ag Future podcast, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

Beta Bugs Ltd. is an insect genetics company developing and distributing black soldier fly breeds to the insect farming sector. Dr. Thomas Farrugia, CEO of Beta Bugs Ltd., joins the Ag Future podcast to discuss how this ag-tech startup is using genetics to increase the size and survivability of black soldier flies in order to meet the growing demand for insect protein in aqua, pig and poultry feed.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dr. Thomas Farrugia hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     Dr. Thomas Farrugia is the CEO of Beta Bugs Limited, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He founded Beta Bugs after identifying an opportunity for improved genetics in the rapidly developing insect farming industry. I'm Tom Martin. I'd like to welcome you, Dr. Farrugia, to this episode of the Alltech Ag Future podcast series.

Thomas:       Thank you, Tom. Happy to be here.

Tom:            I have so many questions for you. First, where do you find yourself in this tension between the human aversion to insects versus the potential of insect protein production in the food chain?

Thomas:       With humans, there's going to be a “yuck” factor. I think that's perfectly okay. We will see insect protein in human food. I think you just might not be eating crickets straight off a plate. It will be ground down, milled and included in as a protein ingredient in your foods. But what we also see is — and that's what we'd call the “insects as food” industry, or you also see (it) as the “insects as feed” industry, which, I say, makes the larger component of the insect farming sector. That's where the insects still get milled and ground down, but they get used as a protein source in pig, fish and chicken feed. When you think about this, it's quite natural for fish to eat bugs. When you look at the trouts, they'll go and eat bugs. Similarly with chickens, (which are) are grubbing around on-farm. That's a very good place to be putting insect protein.

Tom:            What are the nutritional benefits?

Thomas:       In terms of nutritional, you've got a very high protein content. It's comparable — depending on how you process it and what you grow the bugs on, it can be comparable to soy and fish meal, sometimes outstripping (them) in terms of performance there. You're looking at around a 40% dry protein content in the bugs once you've ground them down. You also have the fat, which has some benefits as well.

Tom:            Is it a highly sustainable industry?

Thomas:       It's very sustainable in terms of when you think about how the bugs are being grown and the process of production. What you've got is — the main insects, for example, is black soldier fly. There are also mealworms for the insects in the feed industry. They can be grown on, say, food, or you could call it food waste. It's also agricultural co-products. That means you've got something which might not have had a use, which might have had to go to landfill and would generate carbon dioxide, and you're just using that up. There are no emissions there. The other bit about this, which makes it really sustainable, is no transport. You can basically produce locally. That means you're reinforcing your agri-food supply chain.

Tom:            What kinds of insects do you use in this industry?

Thomas:       Insects as feed is characterized primarily by black soldier fly and the black soldier fly larvae. The larvae are basically really big grubs which eat anything. Then you've got mealworms, which become beetles. The mealworm, again, is the stage which eats a range of things and then gets ground down into the protein. When you look at food, it's a bit broader. I tell you, mealworms, there's crickets, and then there's a whole bunch which are still on the, I'd say, scaling-up journey or being developed. I'd say black soldier fly would probably also cross over into human food in a given time.

Tom:            Is the black soldier fly like the Angus beef of the beef world? 

Thomas:       Yeah. It's the main component of the insects feed industry. I think the reason for that is it's a bit more versatile in terms of what (it) can be grown on. It's formed internationally. You can go to — I mean, we're from the U.K. It's being farmed there. It's being farmed in Europe. You’ve got South America, same; Africa; Asia. The difference is it's grown on different things. In some cases, in Asia, it's grown on tofu waste. In Europe, it's being grown on brewers’ grains. It just adapts really well and (still) performs.

Tom:            On a scale of one to five, with five representing a world that widely relies on insect protein for sustenance, where do you place the insect farming industry right now?

Thomas:       If I could go (to) decimal points, I think I'd err towards three and a half to four. The reason is insect farming is happening. It's no longer something where people just talk about it. It's happening. It's happening at scale. We just need more scale for it to really become a player in the agri-food industry. When I say “scale,” it means thousands, if not — well, it needs to be hundreds of thousands of tons a year of insect protein. That's the scale where agri-food will use it.

Tom:            Where do Beta Bugs and genetics fit into the industry's supply chain?

Thomas:       We're the developer and distributor of black soldier fly breeds. We're a genetics company. That means we're further upstream in the supply chain. What we're all about is making a better insect. We make a better black soldier fly, which grows bigger, faster, lays more eggs, (has) better survivability. That means the farmer can do more with the bugs. Basically, it's upstream. It's classical genetics play, when you look at it. Every other industry has a genetics company — at least one; usually two. They all create a massive impact in their supply chain.

Tom:            I take it you're in business. You have clients. How are they using your insect products?

Thomas:       Effectively, what we're saying, our clients who are wanting to diversify — and this is really interesting, actually, Tom. You've got the insect farms already, which is great. You know, these are the guys who've been trailblazing and setting up the scale. But now we're seeing other players in the agri-food industry looking at this and saying, “I can get in and I can be part of this.” What we're seeing is customers who are taking those steps into becoming commercial producers of black soldier fly.

Tom:            What has to happen in the marketplace if the insect industry is to reach its full potential?

Thomas:       What we need to see there is scale. We need to see larger amounts being produced. We need to see, I'd say, professionalizing in terms of being able to work to standards for the feed industry. Apart from scaling, it needs to be consistent outputs. We can’t just have a flux. This is one of the things in our industry, as the operators or waste processor, where you receive everything in and you try and make a consistent product, or do you co-locate next to a really big substrate stream and just use that and have a very consistent product? That's one of the tensions, I'd say, as to what you do. Consistency, scale, and I'm a bit biased about genetics, because genetics is what allows you to get even further.

Tom:            Let's talk about genetics. How are genetics improving? What difference comes as a result of progress?

Thomas:       What we do at Beta Bugs is run a breeding program for black soldier fly. We're selecting the top performers for things like larval mass, how big do they get, how fast do they grow, development time, survivability, and then, also, just how many eggs do they lay. What that means is a producer will be able to produce more protein per unit time out of a facility. We've been running that for a period of time now. We are seeing gains. The really interesting bit about black soldier fly is it's a short life cycle. You can squeeze a lot of gain in a short amount of time. I mean, plant breeders must be envious, because they do what, a crop cycle a year? We're doing in the range of eight to ten.

Tom:            Wow. Tell us about your relationship with the Roslin Institute.

Thomas:       (Our relationship with the) Roslin Institute goes back a bit now. I moved the company up back to Scotland because the Roslin Institute is basically a world leader in animal genetics. They were the guys behind Dolly the sheep. We just had to be on that campus to be able to work with them. What we did was we set up a relationship and developed a collaboration where we worked up the breeding program work collaboratively. We basically brought them along with us on the journey into a new frontier for them, which is insect protein. We've been able to progress our relationship even further through a number of mechanisms. Basically, it's just been able — allowed us to build up that breeding program further and really leverage the expertise (on their team).

Tom:            Well, this has really been fascinating, Thomas. We look forward to following your progress. Just one question. If I eat bug protein, if I involve that in my diet, what am I? I'm not a vegetarian. I'm not a carnivore. What am I?

Thomas:       An entovore?

Tom:            Okay.

Thomas:       Yeah. I think — well, that was “ento”. “Ento” is bugs. But I — classically, I’d frame it into, still, this would be a carnivore approach. But bugs are eaten already. I think it is something that we do eat. There are no issues there, per se. It will be an alternative source of protein. I really like to think — maybe just something to close off with — when you watch “Blade Runner 2049,” and the opening scene is just an insect farm, and it just is, it's part of the day-to-day. In the same way we have a crop of barley, a chicken farm or a pig farm, whatever, there's just going to be an insect farm. I think that's where we're going to be.

Tom:            You know, it's kind of funny, isn't it, that we think nothing of shrimp or lobsters, and that's basically what we're considering.

Thomas:       Yeah. It's crustaceans, arthropods. They're all very similar. One thing we should keep in mind as well, you know, (is) sushi. There was a period where sushi — people were like, “Whoa, what's sushi?” Now, it's just something you just pick up. You can pick it up from the supermarket. And I think bugs is going to be the same way. That kind of comes full-circle there, Tom, where that's how I got in, because I'd see shrimps in the shop. I think shrimp, in the U.K., (is) ten pounds, twelve pounds a kilo. I look at the bugs, and the bugs will be going for 40, 50 pounds a kilo. We can't have that. We need to have it cheaper to be able to access it in the same way we access shrimp. Again, genetics enables you to bring the price down.

Tom:            Brilliant. Dr. Thomas Farrugia, CEO of Beta Bugs Limited. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thomas:       Thank you, Tom.

Tom:            I'm Tom Martin for the Alltech Ag Future podcast series. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

Why should beef and dairy producers consider organic trace minerals? Laurentia Van Rensburg, technical mineral manager at Alltech, joins the Ag Future podcast to discuss how including organic trace minerals in maternal diets affects female cattle and their progeny.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Laurentia van Rensburg hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore our opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     I'm Tom Martin for the Alltech Ag Future podcast series, and here with us is Laurentia Van Rensburg, technical mineral manager at Alltech. With a master's degree in animal science from the University of Kentucky, Laurentia has more than 15 years of experience in livestock and animal science, serving the industry in South Africa, the Netherlands, Latin America and the North American market. She joins us to talk about the impact of organic trace minerals on cow-calf nutrition or fetal programming. Welcome, Laurentia.

Laurentia:      Thank you, Tom.

Tom:            What are the roles of organic trace minerals in maternal diets?

Laurentia:      Trace minerals are essential nutrients, so even though they're required in very small amounts, they have, actually, a wide range of functions involved in many metabolical and physiological processes that can influence growth. It can influence reproductive efficiency. Therefore, maternal nutrition is especially important because it can have a direct impact on the fetus or the developing calf in utero as well.

Tom:            What factors influence livestock nutrition?

Laurentia:      Well, Tom, that's a really interesting question, because we know that nutritional requirements can differ among breeds, among different gestational phases, and even growth requirements can be different, too, from regular maintenance requirements. Then we have much different requirements for optimized immunity, health and reproductive efficiency as well, so definitely, life stage plays a very important role in nutrition — especially trace mineral requirements.

Tom:            Under what conditions do you most often find a nutrient deficiency in cows?

Laurentia:      Nutrient deficiencies can actually be due to a couple of factors. First of all, it's when the animals don't have access to the nutrient. But for the most cases, when we see nutrient deficiencies in cattle, most of the time, it's actually due to mineral-to-mineral antagonisms that can actually have a negative effect on (the) absorption of certain essential nutrients. I think, with today's modern cattle production, we see a lot of people (who) do supplement their cattle, and we still see suboptimal performance due to marginal deficiencies. In this case, it's definitely due to mineral-to-mineral (interactions) or interactions between (the) mineral and other essential nutrients, including vitamins.

Tom:            Thinking about the various stages of gestation, what are the roles of maternal nutrition in those stages?

Laurentia:      There has been a lot of work that looks at the negative impact of nutrient restriction, especially focusing on that last trimester of gestation. The reason being is we know that during the last 90 to 60 days is when the calf really grows very rapidly and, therefore, (can) put a drain on the cow's mineral or nutritional status. However, it's also very important to keep in mind that maternal nutrition is important from conception and (the) early developmental stages during gestation, because nutrient status can have a direct impact on the developing placenta and the development of the fetus as well.

Tom:            How can (the) proper management of cow nutrition during gestation make a difference in progeny, performance and health?

Laurentia:      There has been a lot of research that shows trace mineral supplementation during gestation can have a positive impact not just on short-term outcomes such as (the) birth weight and weaning weight of the calf, but we can also see that maternal nutrition can have a significant impact on, for example, reproductive efficiency of the calf later on in life. Yes, there is a big impact (of) maternal nutrition on future performance, not just in terms of reproductive efficiency but even carcass weight as well.

Tom:            What kind of changes in the dairy heifers can a producer expect to see after they make the switch from inorganic to organic trace minerals?

Laurentia:      When it comes to dairy heifers, we've actually seen a study done by Dr. Heinrichs out of Penn State where maternal nutrition has not only impacted (the) reproductive efficiency of the heifer calves, but we've also seen milk response as well.

Tom:            Is there a carryover effect when you improve trace mineral status in cows? Does it carry over?

Laurentia:      Oh, absolutely. We have seen several studies that show that calves from cows that were subjected to organic trace minerals, and specifically Bioplex and Sel-Plex, have actually had — they reached estrus earlier. They cycled earlier. They got bred earlier and had higher pregnancy rates as well, so there is definitely a carryover effect.

Tom:            What are the long-term effects of organic trace minerals on growth and reproductive performance and first lactation in dairy heifers?

Laurentia:      Tom, with the work done in dairy, we have actually seen that trace mineral supplementation — specifically with Bioplex and Sel-Plex — can have a profound impact on these heifer calves reaching puberty earlier. Also, this resulted in them getting bred earlier. They calved earlier compared to their inorganic counterparts, and actually, that can have a direct impact on lifetime performance as well.

Tom:            Okay. We're talking about dairy cattle there. What about beef?

Laurentia:      We have seen very consistent and similar responses in beef animals as well. For example, (in) a study that was done at the University of Florida, not only have we seen that maternal supplementation increased weaning and birth weight, but we've also seen that heifers from cows supplemented with Bioplex and Sel-Plex once again had better pelvic measurements. They had better reproductive track scores. That did result in them getting bred. They reached puberty earlier and they got bred earlier as well.

Tom:            What are the consequences of an unbalanced nutrient supply during gestation?

Laurentia:      When we're talking about “unbalanced,” it's very important to realize that oversupply can be just as detrimental as undersupply of certain nutrients as well. There is a lot of research showing us that nutrient restrictions can actually have a negative impact on pre-wean mortalities. It can also have a negative impact on birth and weaning weights as well.

Tom:            Has there been an increase in the bioavailability of organic trace minerals? If so, is this increased availability having a positive effect on reproductive efficiency?

Laurentia:      Absolutely. One of the main differences we see between inorganic and organic trace minerals is that organic trace minerals have higher relative bioavailability values. This means that the animal is not only going to be better able to absorb it but also utilize it in a much more efficient way. However, just as there are differences between inorganic and organic trace minerals, there's also going to be very much (of a) difference in relative bioavailability between different categories of organic trace minerals as well.

Tom:            Should we be sure to know where our trace minerals are coming from and (their) form and source?

Laurentia:      Absolutely. I think it is very important to educate ourselves not only on the form of trace minerals. For example, if you look at your feed tag, inorganic trace minerals will typically include sulfates, oxides, chlorides or even hydroxy minerals, where organic trace minerals — for example, Bioplex — will be denoted as proteinate. That answers the first question.

                     Now, where do your minerals come from? We have to keep in mind that inorganic trace minerals are typically byproducts from other industrial processes. This means that they're relatively inexpensive, but there is not a lot of quality control associated with this type of product. They also have very low bioavailability, which just means our animals really are not equipped to maximize (the) utilization of trace minerals in this specific form.

Tom:            Everybody's concerned about sustainability in whatever endeavor they're involved in. It's a huge concern these days. I'm wondering: How do the benefits of organic trace minerals — using them in a nutrition program for our livestock — how does that contribute to sustainability?

Laurentia:      I think trace minerals — and, specifically, organic trace minerals, such as Bioplex and Sel-Plex — can contribute to sustainability in a few different ways. For example, we know if you can improve production efficiency, then, ultimately, that will mean you are a more sustainable producer as well. Secondly, trace minerals in the inorganic form — since they are not as bioavailable — typically, they get excreted at high concentrations back into soil and water sources. In Europe, for example, that is why certain trace minerals in certain species are being regulated. With organic trace minerals, such as Bioplex and Sel-Plex, we know we can actually feed much lower inclusion rates and get the same or even better performance and, at the same time, have less excretion of these trace minerals into soil and water as well.

Tom:            All right. That's Laurentia Van Rensburg, technical mineral manager at Alltech. Thank you, Laurentia.

Laurentia:      Thank you, Tom.

Tom:            For the Alltech Ag Future podcast, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.