Join the conversation with Andy Juris on his Diamond J Farm, in Bickleton, WA as he discusses
his trials with herbicide resistance, transitions in tillage systems, diversifying the cropping
system in the face of changing conditions, why innovation is critical, and talking crop insurance
and ag transportation issues with policy makers in DC and Olympia.
Carol McFarland
I wanted to go back. You were talking a little bit about, you know, how some years are really great and some years you get nothing from, especially from your alfalfa. Right. Um, do you want to talk a little bit more about that? And if there are things that you’re able to do within your farm management, you don’t have to go into like super books, details or anything like that. But, you know, especially for me as a soil scientist, I’m like, the answer is organic matter. That’s what my grandpa always said, too, but, um, you know, what, what is your perspective on buffering some of those highs and lows that the weather does throw at us at this point?
Andy Juris
You got to know your numbers. As you bring up a new concept, uh, it seems like in farming, we have kind of like probably like everybody, we tend to gravitate towards our polar, uh, extremes. It just tends to be how things go sometimes. And you get the guys that just, you know what, it’s too much trouble or I don’t want you to want to think about it. And then we have some of the real innovators that are great, but what can happen is we dive in just head first and, and almost talk about it like it’s a noble thing. And I don’t know, maybe, but, uh, could, could be foolish. Uh, and so as we, we try to bring some of this stuff up over time is looking at those long-term numbers.Â
If you know that you’re probably not going to get a crop in a bad year off of alfalfa, but I know over years, we’ve had four to five years of really bad drought that have yielded essentially no alfalfa or very little, but in 10 years, I’m still ahead of wheat. The other years make up for it. It’s kind of like the cherry growers that, you know, they have how many disasters in that one crop every handful of years.
Yeah. Makes it all worthwhile.
And so knowing your numbers is a big, is a big part of that. Having obviously a diversity of…in your operation, whether it be income streams, crops, whatever, it’s just like having a mutual fund. Uh, you’re trying to capture the average across some years you’re going to have- I’ve had incredible wheat years where the alfalfa did very poor and it had everything to do with what year, uh, 2015 was a very poor wheat year for us, not due to lack of rainfall, but due to the fact that it turned off to be like 123 for three weeks. You know, that terminates your crop in June when that happens. And, uh, we had an agronomist asking, well, is those crops senesce? And I said, they don’t senesce here. They just die. And that’s…
Carol McFarland
They just stop existing.
Andy Juris
They stop existing.
Carol McFarland
I feel like a lot, they’re not the only things that would probably stop existing if it was 123 for three weeks.
Andy Juris
Yeah. It was, it was rough. I mean, you know, we don’t often at this altitude get evenings that are, you know, that are warm. And when you go out at midnight and it’s 87, you know, I got a bad feeling about this. So that particular year we had alfalfa that, that, uh, and our alfalfa and forage grains that had already been taken off and we had a really good crop. That was a good year on the hay side. Wheat really took it on the nose. And we’ve had vice 2017 was a very, very, very wet year up here. Wettest year we’ve had in a hundred years. And you have this opportunity where wheat really seems to benefit from that. It was so cold and wet that the alfalfa just pooped along and did not seem to, it was too wet. It was unhappy and probably under fertilized. And, and we, I mean, we took a crop off, but it wasn’t what I was expecting.
Carol McFarland
Thanks for sharing all of that. And your thoughts on resilience and, um, that just diversification, right? I like the comparison to a mutual fund when you’re talking about diversification in the cropping system. That was a really good analogy. Um, when you’re, as you’re trying different things on your farm, do you have things that you’ve tried in the recent past that you’re trying again this year to see if it has a similar outcome?
Andy Juris
We, we are, we’re putting on, it’s, uh, essentially biochar extract on the seed. We tried that last year. It really seemed to respond well with, I put it on just because it was something that was given to me and I thought this is ridiculous. It’s just black gunk. It’s what again, biochar extract.
Okay. What’s that? Well, that’s burned wood that they extracts with stuff out of. Okay. Well, that sounds weird. So, I put it on.
Carol McFarland
Weird enough to be interesting.
Andy Juris
Weird enough to be interesting. And, you know, I kind of put it in the seed treat almost just waiting for it to glob up and, you know, do something horrible. I just knew this wasn’t going to work and dock on if, if there’s enough there that where we put that on and the wheat seemed to respond better, it seemed to grow better roots. It seemed to grow faster that I’m not saying it worked, but I am saying I’m doing it again. we’re putting it on again and we’re going to see if this, uh, if there’s something to this or not.
Carol McFarland
You know, that really gets to the core of a lot of the questions we’re asking, right? How do we explore that and, and whether or not it works on a different farm, does it work on this farm?
Andy Juris
Right. Right.
Carol McFarland
And because we are in such a heterogeneous agro-eco region.
Andy Juris
Yes. Yes. There you go.
Carol McFarland
There’s so much variability, just across your farm, right. Let alone across the region and saying this is the solution is not going to be a thing. And how do we explore what works on each farm?
Andy Juris
Right.
Carol McFarland
How do we, separate what might actually be something that would give a solid boost consistently? How, how are we exploring those innovations? You’ll have to let me know how that repeat experiment goes.
Andy Juris
Yeah, we’ll see. You know, my grandpa is always, I really appreciate what his wisdom is on, on, on just in farming in general. There are no free rides, he always is telling me. And I think so many times now, whether we exist in the age of the internet or where we have information that never would have been available in previous generations, just one click away, one Google search away. We have this, all these tools are phenomenal. They’re great. They’re going to change agriculture going into the future. But with that comes that I think we forget sometimes, there are no free rides in agriculture. There’s a consequence to everything that we do. And as we approach these attitudes of what’s working and what’s going on out there, trying to keep that in the back of our mind, some people kind of take a negative connotation of that. For me, it helps me kind of balance expectations. I think mentally, the game of innovation is just as important as the actual innovation that you’re doing. And when you don’t see the result that you anticipated or the result that your neighbor got on his field with different soil type, sometimes that can really derail your whole process that you’re going through just by the fact that your mental, emotional mind space wasn’t maybe where it needed to be.
Carol McFarland
So those unintended consequences, but the ones that are less visible.
Andy Juris
Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. Well, and you had shared a few thoughts in some of our previous conversations about innovation in general and why you were motivated to do that and why it’s essential, especially out here in Bickleton. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that?
Andy Juris
I think for a lot of us, innovation is about survival. I think for most of us at the base level, it’s about survival. It’s about dealing with problems. And you can define survival however you want, whether it be the continuance of the farm for future generations, whether it is just getting through the next couple of years, we have a wide variety of opinions on climate change and how that is all affected and what’s going on. But I don’t think anybody will argue with the fact that my grandfather used to talk about snow up here in Bickleton that he would ride his horse across the snow drifts. They would get hard enough, he could ride his horse across the snow drifts, they would get hard enough, he could ride over fences. And when he would go to school, it really cut a lot of miles off of his trip. And that was normal. That was the norm for this area. We have not seen that now in the last 50 years.
So there is this change and how are you dealing with that change? How are you surviving with this environment that is changing for whatever reason? And so as you look at that innovation pushing that other areas where perhaps you’re not tied directly so much to the climate where it’s more stable, you get reliable rain, although even in the Midwest, they’re grappling with a couple of years of pretty bad drought. Innovation might be more about trying to either trim the bottom line, might be where you’re really looking to enhance the diversity of your soils or your cropping systems. Maybe where you say I’m really concerned about the environment and I’m trying to orient my farming practices around what I believe is going to be most beneficial for the environment as a whole. And…
Carol McFarland
Or even like that stewardship of the capital investment and that the legacy and maintaining that is something that I’ve heard as well.
Andy Juris
Right. Yeah. No, all of these things kind of play into this attitude of innovation and its purpose. And you’re going to get a different answer from every single. For some farmers, this is what gets them up in the morning. This is what makes them happy. This is what is interesting to them. And for some of us, it’s something that we get drug into kicking and screaming. Where you realize that all your preconceived notions of what is going to work for ever are wrong and you’re going to have to change if you want to be here in the next 10 or 20 years. Whatever reason that gets you there, I guess good, you know.
Carol McFarland
Maybe it’s just the right podcast episode.
Andy Juris
Yeah, maybe, maybe. There you go.
Carol McFarland
Give us all something to think about. Well, thanks for sharing your thoughts. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on that. Like what are your, what’s your biggest barrier to trying new things on the farm?
Andy Juris
Probably cost and return. We are in a low input, low return area here. That’s just where we’re at. And so many times you will see something within, you will get 6-8% more crop. Okay. 20 bushel wheat, does that remotely pay for itself? It may work fantastic.
Carol McFarland
Sorry. It’s not actually funny. It’s like sad funny.
Andy Juris
Yeah, it is. We smile with the same kind of ironic just, oh, you know, I’m sure. And this poor guy is just trying to get you to try this stuff. And he says it works. It’s good for your soil. It increases biology. It does this. And at the end of the day, you just cannot, or you might try it and you say, yes, it works. I got half a bushel better by weight. It cost me three to pay for it. And I just, I can’t do it.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. 6% of 20 is not a large number. Especially with the way wheat prices have been of late. Exactly.
Andy Juris
It’s one of these. Yeah. Yeah. If you’re in 100 bushel country, I don’t know. This old guy that used to deliver chemical here said, well, when you’re farming like a rockstar, the checks you write just get bigger and bigger. Well, maybe that’s how it is in 100 bushel country too. Their inputs are much higher than ours. Their risk on those inputs is much higher than ours at the same time. Maybe some six to 8% is a significant thing to them. But on the other hand, they might say the same thing. So, but for us here, I’m always looking at return. It’s got to have a return. That doesn’t say I won’t try it once on a small scale. That’s not going to cut your throat this year. We’re going to try an additional humic acid product in this fertilizer. Neighbor seems to have gotten some pretty good results. We’re going to try it. We’ll see if it pays for itself. But it’s not something that you’re going to be able to sell me on or probably anyone around here on because this kind of climate, it’s got to be bottom dollar back. I guess if you’re worried about sustainability. That’s a word that gets thrown around a lot. Yes, there’s the long-term sustainability of the soil. I mean, there are things that you can do today. Tillage, maybe being one of them, that may make you sustainable in the sense that you’ll get to the next crop year. Are you going to get to the next crop year 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now? You kind of got to balance that. As one guy said around here, well, maybe the best thing for our soil is for us to all just quit this farming and go somewhere else. So I don’t know.
Carol McFarland
Hey, there’s that smile again. That’s funny, sad. Yes, that’s what I get for chatting with The Bard of Bickleton.
Andy Juris
Man. There’s all six of us left up here.
Carol McFarland
Oh, man…but as you say though, if you’re not here next year, you’re certainly not going to be here in 20 years.
Andy Juris
Right. Yeah. Like Grandpa said, there’s no free rides. So it’s making sure that what is sustainable in the short term is not unsustainable in the long term and trying to keep more of a global look to it. And then realizing that there’s really, at the end of the day with some things, there’s really no way to tell. I do tend to lean probably a little bit towards looking back as part of innovation, not always taking the assumption that what was done was all bad and that it was something we need to throw away and move forward from like with the tillage thing, maybe we don’t pull out a bottom plow and harrow it into powder like they used to do it. But tillage is what allowed farming to occur here in this tough area for 150 years. Maybe when you have a problem you’re grappling with, it’s time to go back and take another look.
Carol McFarland
We were talking a little bit about the new weed chipper rumored to be at the Lend Research Station. it sounds like you were maybe had a role in getting that in place. What makes you so excited about that technology or what are you hoping for from some of that work?
Andy Juris
Well, it’s another, it’s another tool in the toolbox.
Carol McFarland
Maybe we should actually make sure that all the listeners know what a weed chipper is.
Andy Juris
Right, right. It is essentially a tillage tool that is pulled along that has a sensor on it that detects the weed, the chlorophyll, or in some cases it’s a camera that recognizes it and it will trip that point, that tillage point down and root out the weed. So rather than pulling like we would with a disc across an entire field, you’re only tilling where the weeds are.
Carol McFarland
So it’s kind of like a physical control Weed-it.
Andy Juris
Yes, yes. And it’s, yeah, essentially just applying that same technology to a tillage tool. I think it’s exciting. It’s coming, I believe, out of Australia and the Australians have been grappling with herbicide resistance down there much longer than we have here. The weeds they have and the environment they have just accelerated that process for them and they are, I would say, at least a decade or two ahead of us in terms of innovating to deal with that problem because they had to. It was going to be the end of agriculture in Australia if they didn’t.
Carol McFarland
That innovation for survival you were just talking about.
Andy Juris
Yep, exactly.
Carol McFarland
I’m excited for the weed chipper too.
Andy Juris
I am, I am. It was an interesting conversation to be a part of and I have to really appreciate the Wheat Commission for deciding to fund that. But, you know, it was one of those hard conversations where guys are going, well, in rocks on my farm it’s just not going to work. And so it’s going to be interesting. That’s why we need the research. That’s why we value WSU and its Extension services as they are trying to figure out what’s going to work on a broad range of ground around here.
Carol McFarland
Excellent. I think in full transparency you not only have a regular town hat but you’ve got like a full DC town hat because of your role with the Washington Association of Wheat Growers in the leadership capacity. Would you talk a little bit more about your trials in that space?
Andy Juris
Trials in that space?
Carol McFarland
Trials is in that. Because I feel like going to DC might be a bit of a trial.
Andy Juris
Yeah, so I’ll say your trials or trials. But, yeah, so I am the current president of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers and have been on the board for about years with them. And, you know, Michelle does not let me wear a hat in DC though. So I don’t have a DC hat.
Carol McFarland
Yeah. We need to work on this because I feel like that really takes away some of the authenticity of the representation.
Andy Juris
Yeah, I say you wear a suit and you’re like, well, I got married in one and now I try not to wear one the rest of the time. But here we are. But it is a privilege to go back and advocate for Washington wheat in DC. It is years and years ago with the Airline Pilots Association, I was involved, I was chairman of safety and we were involved in advocacy on that front. So years later it was a little more natural for me to go do. For a lot of farmers, it’s a tough thing when you work all year by yourself and then you go back to DC and then we’re trying to describe this to somebody that has very little experience with farming. Yeah, we were back there this September working on the farm bill.
Carol McFarland
I saw pictures of that, evidence of you wearing a suit.
Andy Juris
Yeah.
Carol McFarland
You’re wearing a very different suit today.
Andy Juris
Yeah, a little bit dirtier.
Carol McFarland
And it sounds like maybe this is part of a family legacy for you too to be part of the Association of Wheat Growers.
Andy Juris
Yeah, my great grandfather was involved in the founding of the wheat growers. He was involved in the founding of the Wheat Commission. He was a commissioner on the very first Wheat Commission. I think somewhere I’ve got a letter from Secretary of State congratulating him on the founding of the Wheat Commission. It was kind of fun to look back through some of that stuff. It was stuff that I wasn’t necessarily aware of until I got more involved here. And my grandfather was active locally in the local wheat growers group. And then my dad was on the board for a while and then chose to go the Conservation District route and has been involved with that for years now, maybe longer. So it has been a bit of a family thing. Great grandpa’s Studebaker is still in the shed and he had his Washington Wheat grower sticker in the window every day he drove it. So it was something that they saw was important, that they saw was needed. I guess I came by it honest.
Carol McFarland
It sounds like it. It sounds really full circle that you’re back doing this work. That is really important and the advocacy for this region of agriculture that I think is different than a lot of and looks very different and faces a whole different suite of challenges and opportunities compared to the rest of the country’s agriculture. I don’t know if you, I don’t you know again kind of I don’t want to get in your books and I don’t want to get super political but when you go talk to the folks there who are less familiar with the important issues that Washington agriculture is facing what sort of things come up?
Andy Juris
Well, first off, I will say when you go back there for the first time most of us have our own personal politics and we have our own opinions as to how people or how different political parties or politicians might view agriculture and farming and I would say that the biggest eye opener there is the people that are your friend and the people that are open to having a friendly conversation there are is going to surprise you, and so you need to go in with a bit of an open mind and and what you’re going to find is that there’s a lot of people back there that…what comes up is the fact that maybe personally on on a variety of different issues I don’t know as I share a lot of agreement with but they’re very intelligent people that ask really good questions and they’re very friendly, they’re very polite, they’re happy to see us, they’re glad, they thank us for coming by and I really appreciate that. I really appreciate that. Things that come up sometimes are hard questions. I was discussing crop insurance with Maria Cantwell here back in September and one of the issues we were discussing was how expensive it is and how it’s continuing to be expensive and as the subsidies for crop insurance always seem to be a target during farm bill season and I was discussing this entire thing and she just asked me well is there a better program out there? What other countries utilize crop insurance? And I was fortunate that I had at least looked it up just accidentally but I mean these questions they ask you is there another system what would you like in a perfect world? You know these are the things that they’re wanting to know, maybe it’s something that isn’t going to happen or at least not right away. The other things that they will discuss is if you are talking about our transportation systems. I have had them be very honest with me when they talk about our Snake River dams and some of the efforts to remove those and they will tell us, well I will be honest with you I have people constituents in my district that they have signs in the front of the yard [to] remove the Snake River dams and and I appreciate that transparency. It gives us an opportunity to know what they’re working from.
We understand that they are responsible for the safety of the dams and we understand that they are responsible to their constituents, that they’re elected by these people but that, on the other hand, there is an opportunity for education there and and we’ve done a lot of educating recently in talking about you know explaining especially when you’re talking about legislators from Washington state how dams can be a green extremely green source of energy along with a transportation infrastructure advantage.
Carol McFarland
Yeah, well, it seems like there is a lot of common interest and so finding where that common ground is definitely seems like a productive way forward.
Andy Juris
Almost at no point- I mean there’s a couple exceptions, but almost at no point have I ever encountered whether it be back in the airline days in DC or or now in agriculture have I encountered a legislator that was just diametrically opposed to everything that I did and stood for and was almost an outspoken, I guess, enemy for a bit lack of a better term but in direct opposition, just uninterested in the conversation, uninterested in finding common ground, and I’ve spoken with some ones that it would surprise people who they were and how open they were in the conversation.
Carol McFarland
That’s great, it’s good that that’s hopeful. When you are representing the interests of Washington wheat growers you know it…I know that crop insurance is a very big deal right as is the transportation infrastructure, are there are some other themes that have come up as well?
Andy Juris
Well, I mean, we have I guess you know it depends on the trip that we’re going there for whether we’re looking at problems with federal legislation or, you know, waters of the U.S. legislation. Right now farm bill being expired now and another crucial deadline is the end of the year that is something that that is coming up extensively in a lot of our discussions and probably will be in January whether it’s extended or not will be when we’re back in D.C. there we’ll be talking about as we you know one of the aspects of of transportation infrastructure that does come up now is that geopolitically, the world is much less stable than it was a few years ago, and whether it be the war in Ukraine or current disruptions in the Middle East this is a time to advocate for and appreciate the level of food stability that occurs in the United States due to the stability in agriculture the fact that geographically the U.S. has the ability to get products out of the interior unlike almost any nation on earth.
Carol McFarland
It sounds like you put a lot of thought about meeting the needs of the Washington wheat growers right through the farm bill and what a really great farm bill would look like for Washington wheat growers, and what have you heard, and what are your thoughts on that?
Andy Juris
Well if I had- if I could pick the perfect farm bill without you know consequence of budget or anything like that we would like to expand crop insurance, increase government participation in the premiums decrease the cost of the producer whether that be directly or through better programs, we’ve had conversations about margin insurance in wheat which is available in a couple areas in the country but not widely and not in here in Washington state at all.
Carol McFarland
Sounds like this might be a good time for some of that.
Andy Juris
Yeah, that’s kind of that was one of the discussions that say, well okay is there a product we can offer as opposed to just you know dealing with the current offering that we have here with revenue protection margin insurance sounds like a potential you know it all depends on cost, I guess. We’re looking at disaster programs we’ve just been through several rounds of ERP phase one phase two some of them were easy to sign up for, some of them required an accountant and a team of lawyers to figure out how to sign up for.
Carol McFarland
Now maybe I’m just ignorant but does everyone else know what ERP is?
Andy Juris
I would guess because most farmers have probably participated in Washington state in it. I’d have to look at what exactly- it’s the old WIP program, which dealt with flood and drought disaster and I’m going to get the ERP. It’s a government acronym for something…emergency something program. Okay. I’ll get it wrong if I say it off top my head, but ,yeah ERP phase one, phase two ,they’re trying to get these different programs out the door and we appreciate that, but every time it’s an ad hoc disaster program, we have a disaster, the government reacts to it they appropriate funding in a perfect farm bill, do we have- is it incorporated into your crop insurance?
Ideally you would say, well, if crop insurance was adequate we wouldn’t need disaster programs, the fact that we do indicates that crop insurance maybe is not adequate. So that’s one other thing to look at as we peer into this. The other side would be, the you know, whether you’re an ARC or a PLC person particularly with the price loss coverage part of of the farm bill we have a current reference price of a bushel, which isn’t remotely close to cost of production when you look at the other commodities corn, cotton, soybean, some of these other things their PLC price is I think closer to 90 percent cost of production and and we just don’t have that parity in wheat. We would like to see, you know, if we were closer to that seven, 750 range in an ideal world, that’s what we do the big challenges that costs tens of billions of dollars and add it to the farm bill in a year where our government is running deficit spending, and they are trying to…you know the word in DC is “no new funds, no new funds”. We’re just maybe going to tweak some programs. So yeah, but in a perfect world, we would have a more robust crop insurance, we would have ad hoc disaster either formalized in the farm bill or part of the insurance process and we would have a price loss coverage that was more accurate in its reflection of our cost of production.
Carol McFarland
How about the peer-to-peer network support?
Andy Juris
There you go! There you go, I mean, and then and that’s where you do fold in all the other aspects whether it be peer-to-peer network support research all these other things that as farmers you know I mean when you’re talking to farmers you’re going to look at those couple big big programs out there, but then everything else that’s coming behind, you know, you can see what goes in your wallet but the research the communication the the university programs all of that that’s funded through there is longer term investments that if we don’t make them today we’re going to regret it in the future, and it’s harder for all of us on the farm in the dirt to see that sometimes.
Carol McFarland
I think that’s a really great segue into: if you could change one thing about ag right now, what would it be?
Andy Juris
If I could change one thing about ag right now, well, I would say that so I spent a number of years outside of agriculture and you know, they all- that a lot of people say your most formative years as an adult are are those early years where you leave home and you really have to decide what kind of person you are and what kind of belief system you’re going to have and you have these impressions that that really get made on you at the time, so I think that’s the kind of thing that I was interested in at the time. So I came from- I was in the airline industry, and I was a pilot, and pilots across airlines kind of share this common bond, it’s a very small industry just like agriculture. Agriculture is much bigger than the airline industry in terms of pilots, but even though I had really good friends that worked at United, and I had really good friends that worked at Delta, when pilots at our company experienced a particular problem, the first question was: what can we do to help? What can we do to help? Now you see a lot of that in the agriculture community as well, you know, there’s the the real community focused aspects of ag that are…I really appreciate where somebody gets sick. and they are out harvesting in the field and all of that. and this is not an indictment of farmers. but I I fear and if I could change one thing in ag. it would be the hardest thing to change. and that is some of the attitude within agriculture, and that is where so many times, and this is not anybody doing anything wrong, we are home, on the home, on the farm, and our focus becomes very, very inward, and what you tend to see is this inward focus kind of makes us blind to what’s going on in the world around us, and when we have whether it be dangerous legislation that like some of the earlier legislation coming out of Olympia, the buffer bill, the infamous buffer bill that could have directly jeopardized almost all agriculture in the state of Washington so many times, ag speaks with a few voices, these are the few of us that are able to go to Olympia, these are the few of us that go to the WAWG meetings and so many times when you’re out trying to talk to the farmers in various communities around here, I’m not necessarily talking about Bickleton, I’m just- Washington state the attitude is, “well I’ve just got a lot going on”…
Carol McFarland
Which is also true!
Andy Juris
Which is also true, of course, it’s true for the people that are every day or every month coming to the board meetings, and I- and we this idea that there are problems out there that require ag to speak with one voice.
I think we’ve somehow lost that. I look back to my great grandfather’s generation and these were guys that uh came together across the state because they recognized that we needed a wheat commission, we needed a grow organization, that the future of ag depended on our voice being heard even though America was a much more agrarian society back then than we see today and and now it’s more important than ever that this less than one percent that’s in agriculture today be able to do that. When we have bad legislation in Olympia and we only get a few comments on it, if I was a legislator this is not them necessarily being vindictive when they ignore that, if you had three thousand for, and you had 20 against and everybody goes you know it it what would you do? What would you do?
If I could change one thing in ag it would be more of an awareness that we do have a pretty strong voice when we all speak together still, even though there’s not nearly as many of us as there used to be, the fact that we do an incredibly important, we feel an important role in society that needs to be held up in a way that needs to be held up, and it needs to be held up by more than just a few, it needs to be held up by all of us and we all need to communicate. That would probably be the thing I would change the most. Ag is unique in the sense that we all maybe are in this together but we all compete against each other. It’s similar to the airlines. We were- we competed our companies competed against each other, but pilots we were kind of all in this in this space together, and I missed that aspect when it was dealing with legislation or safety or anything else, I could call my colleague at another company and the first question was: “How can I help?” Here if you- it’s a sad testament sometimes, when you call and you hear: “I’m busy and I don’t have time to deal with this.” But if that legislation gets passed, I’m upset.
I think we need to do a little better. I think we need to do better as a collective group sometimes, and that is my concern for agriculture. I don’t see it necessarily again as I’m pointing out people, I’m calling out people, or anything like that, I think it’s just a product of how we kind of come about this solitary lifestyle doing something that not a lot of people understand.
Carol McFarland
Well thank you for your service to the Washington Wheat Grower community, right? And because you are putting in the time to to follow that, and thanks for making the time for being on this podcast and sharing your thoughts. It’s really powerful.
Andy Juris
You bet, happy to do it, thank you for the opportunity.