MSU Extension Animal Agriculture

So we're going to get into the management session here, which I believe will be the last session before we have the manure applicator panel. So, I'm Erica Rogers. I'm with the Right to Farm program, with the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. So MDARD, lot easier to say. Today we have Dale Rozeboom, Dr. Rozeboom, with Michigan State University. He'll be speaking specifically on odor management, which is a pretty, pretty big topic when we talk about manure. Dale is a professor and associate chair for farmer operations and stakeholder relations in the Department of Animal Science. Animal agriculture, the environment and enhancing profitability of work production have been Dale's focus areas of his tenure at MSU. The necessity to establish and maintain a sustainable balance of our animal agriculture, natural resources and social fabric has been and is a pressing challenge and opportunity for the future. In his extension efforts, he provides statewide and national leadership in applied nutrition and production management issues relevant to sustainable, intensive and extensive pork production. And then, whoops. Our next speaker then following Dale will be Phil Durst. Phil is with Michigan State University Extension. He'll be speaking on employee management. He spoke last year, and I know was a hit, so I'm excited you all get to hear from Phil. He has more than 30 years of experience working with farmers, focusing on dairy and beef cattle health and production. Durst and Stan Moore, who's another Extension educator, initiated a project to improve employee management on farms and have published two papers in the Journal of Dairy Science based on these results. Durst led the development of 20 articles focused on aspects of milker training for each issue in a year of Hoard's Dairyman magazine. And then compiled a book of these articles, called "People and parlors". He is a student of what works. Our last speaker for our management session will be Jon Adamy. Did I get that right? - Yep. - [Erica] Ooh. Okay. Jon is with Michigan Farm Bureau. He's going to speak specifically on media management. He is the Michigan Farm Bureau media relations specialist. Using his past experience in TV news, Jon helps connect reporters to farmers across the state to learn more about agriculture in Michigan and promotes ag-related stories for coverage. So without further ado. The clicker's yours. (speaks faintly) - [Dale Rozeboom] Okay, thank you, Erica. And thank you to the organizer of the meeting for having me come today. It's a pleasure to be here. Odor management. I get to talk about this topic and have done some research in the past, regarding odor management. Strictly that project was involved with mortality management and public compost animals in vessel and static piles. And so done a little bit of work. I did that work collaboratively with Dr. Wendy Powers, who is now the dean at Washington State University. Dr. Powers was at MSU for a number of years. And with that thought, I want to leave you with probably the hard truth. And that is that universities are doing far less research for odor management than they did two decades ago, even a decade ago. And the likes of Dwaine Bundy, who was at Iowa State and did all of the work with manure additives, he retired, and they didn't fill that position. Larry Jacobson, who did all of the work with the odor from Feedlot, Setback Estimation Tool, we call it OFFSET 218, is no longer at the University of Minnesota, and they did not fill that position. And so you've got major universities that are not investing much in the new technologies. Previous session was fantastic, the new technology. I'm not here to tell you about new technology with odors 'cause they're not there. I'm here to give you the bad news real quickly, and that is use what you know, as we go forward, 'cause there's not a lot of investment there. So odor characteristics that contribute to the impact on others. I appreciate what the (indistinct) crew said, that they're not having an impact on their neighbors with the current system they're using. They're using the knowledge that they have, but that impact varies. Odor is not a very quantifiable issue. It's very much qualitative. And so what is offensive, and what's a pleasure is different. We all buy different perfumes, or we all buy different colognes, and there's a market in that for a reason, 'cause we all like things differently. But intensity, frequency, duration, how often you're exposed to it, the character of those odors. There's hundreds of odorous compounds. And then what's the perception of those odors? Relative to the farm, we'll talk about the farm. We'll talk a little bit about land application. So you've got dispersion, in other words, release of these odors. Plumes is the language that's used in the literature. And they're moved by wind speed, air speed. What we desire is that we have little air speed over our open storages on the farm, so that we're not moving that odor very fast off the farm. But when we get it out in the field, we'd like some wind. So we'd like to have those odors dissipated, dispersed quickly. And so there aren't plumes that migrate and impact others. And so, but it's also impacted by sunlight. It's also impacted by temperature, and how those odors travel. So mitigating or minimizing farm odors. Odors, excuse me, become knowledgeable with tools, I'll mention a couple of those tools and resources here today. But siting, siting of farms, okay. Siting of manure application. You've got your fields, you're going to put manure on them, and that's a little bit different. But site selection, talk about that, sources, and then adopting management approaches that work the best. But again, it's qualitative. So modeling odors in their dispersion. This is called Dispersion Modeling. This was really popular again about 10 to 20 years ago. And this is just shows, try this pointer here, modeled and measured. And so let me explain it real quick. I don't want to dwell on it, but this is how we determine the impact on others. Okay? So modeling is just a guesstimate of how far away from the source, which is the yellow circle, you have to be before you get down to fewer odor units. An odor unit is what a person detects and what each of those little numbers means, that's a person standing out there sniffing. And this is how the work was done. They put a large enough number of people out there with all different olfactometry abilities, and then they determine the frequencies of when that's going to be offensive. And so this modeling just says that if we didn't get out 400 meters away, we've decreased it threefold, fourfold, okay? This is the science of odor detection on the farms, and this is how these models are developed. And so we've got two different types of approaches from your farms to modeling. This is an approach that's used in Iowa. It's called Receptor-Based. And what this says is how often, how frequently and at what intensity is this household impacted by everyone around them. So Iowa has been using this voluntarily for their swine systems for Steve Hoff, who's now retired, and they haven't filled his position. So I'm really a downer, aren't I? And I apologize. (audience laughing) But I'm old, and I can do that, 'cause they're good friends. Steve was a good friend. So he developed a modeling, this Receptor-Based Modeling, and they used it in, they're using it in Iowa. And it's a voluntary system. And so if a farmer goes in there and says, "I want to put up two quads on this location", and it's used only by the swine industry in Iowa at this point, that's all they got to use it. And the stable will determine if the addition of a new quad, let's just say, it's one closest to me, is going to then put the experience of this household over the top. Too frequent, too much. And so then the state of Iowa will say, "Nope, don't put it there. You already got too many neighbors in that vicinity. That place is going to be impacted". So this gets to be a little pile of the political situation. You're the last one. So you may not get able to do it. And it's worked effectively in Iowa, but they've been doing it for a while. This is what we do in Michigan with our site selection. We have what we call source base. In other words, so we're going to put in a new farm, we're going to determine who around that farm is going to be impacted by those odors. We want that impact to be less than 5% at the time. And so this is called Source-Based Modeling. And so we have our site selection Gantts that you can voluntarily go through. I don't know if Mike's in the audience, Mike, Right to Farm, Wozniak. And Jerry May now is chair of that committee. And that's been my history. I got to chair the site selection Gantts for a while. But we are following an approach that there's no better odor mitigation practice than proper site selection and creating a separation distance. And that's a fact. The further away you can get from other people, the less problems you'll have. Okay, so this is how Michigan OFFSET works. I mentioned the odor from Feedlots was developed by the University of Minnesota, modified in Michigan in 2008. Mike Cooper, Jeff Andreessen, both meteorologists in the Department of Geography. What you got here is a 5,000 cow dairy somewhere in Minnesota. I could tell you where it is. And this is the plume. And what this says, if you, what this plume says is a footprint. You can only have so many households within that footprint. If you're going to put that farm there. Same thing goes true in Michigan. All right? And these plumes or these footprints vary depending on where you're at. It's based on meteorological data. Okay? So if you're thinking about where to put a new farm, where to have a new site, this is what the technical service providers, the MID technicians who can help you and advise you in determining that. Okay? So then we've got other sources of odor. Sometimes called Emissions. And so we've got it coming off the surfaces of storage, we've got aeration taking place, and we've got it from land applications. The most common complaints about odor are from land application. Okay? I think Mike will back me up with like a farm data. And so it's fairly infrequent. It's seasonal. But it's pretty intense over that short-term duration. And that's where those complaints come from. And so there is a tool, and this is where you can get information on what to employ to make changes in odor on your farm. The NAQSAT, National Air Quality Site Assessment Tool, is developed by some of those names I mentioned, some of those universities. And it's an effective tool, but it's not a quantifying tool. What it's going to do is it's going to help you assess what you're currently doing, and how you can change that, okay? And maybe make improvements to decrease and diminish that odor. And it's relative to your farm site, it's relative to your roads, it's relative to your manure management. It's relative onsite, as well as field application. And so if you've never just sat down in evening, and it doesn't take that long, and explored it, it is an excellent tool to find some opportunities for odor management and reduction. So it focuses on those things I've already mentioned. I might not have mentioned public perception as a fact. And it has some information on diet feeding management, which can have a role in odor management. And so it'll give you solutions like these, the use of cover crops, use of trees, trap emissions, cover the source, anaerobic digestion, very effective in reducing odors. And it's going to have that not only what Dana said, it's got the benefit of order management with that. Biofiltration and scrubbers, wet scrubbers being used in some of these farms. You've got maintenance issues, you've got to maintain them, and, in order to make them effective all the time. So subsurface injection, land application. How quickly you incorporate, how, what type of implement. There's not great data to say that you're going to get 15% with this reduction. You're going to get 25%. It's going to almost be like Caleb's manure management plan where it says Some, More, and Great. It's really the reality of odor management. And here are the couple of resources. The NAQSAT, you can request them. And then the Livestock and Poultry Environmental Learning Community probably has the best references if you just type in, "How effective is a new vegetative buffer?", or "Cover crop". There are some great resources on finding that information. And I'll end there. - Good afternoon. Ooh, yes, good afternoon. (indistinct) Welcome. I know you've been here, I just got here. But welcome to me then. So welcome back this year. You know, we talked about employee management last year. How many of you were here last year? And in my session last year? Okay, this is not the same talk. It's just good to know, right? Yeah, so you don't have any excuse to go to sleep. So I don't like this title. I told you that last year. I don't think we manage employees. We can manage odor. I believe. We're going to find out if we can manage the media, right Jon? - [Jon Adamy] Yeah. - But I don't think we really manage employees. I think what we can do is we can lead employees. I think we can take the opportunity to build a team to work together. And I think that's a critical difference because if it's you versus them, we got a problem. If it's us together, we got solutions. So, you know, if we only talk about teams, we have to understand how it is that teams come together. And teams come together when everybody understands that there are different roles. You know what, a football team, when we just had some great football games here on Sunday, people have different roles, don't they? If everybody did the same thing, there would have been chaos out there. People have different roles on the team. And those roles are valuable roles. And no matter what your role is on the team that you're working on now, I'm going to tell you it's a valuable role. 'Cause if it wasn't a valuable role, they would eliminate it. You have a valuable role on the team you're playing on right now. And teams come together when everybody understands that there are different perspectives. We'll talk about perspectives in a minute, okay? And when everybody focuses on what is most important. When teams come together, when you work within, when everyone works within their role to achieve success. So let's go back to this perspective thing. So how many of you have people that work under you? All right, so there's a few people here that are in quote "Management", right? (chuckles) You're in management, you're leader, right? And so maybe this is the perspective that you have, right? That as a leader you think, "Well, I want employees, I want people who are going to come to work, work hard and be on time, for crying out loud." Boy, do I get that one? I work in (indistinct) by the way. (audience murmuring) And I want a lack of problems. I want people to be self-motivated. I want 'em to be a (indistinct), Boy, I want 'em happy whether they like it or not. I want 'em to be happy. And I want 'em respect the boss, right? So maybe that is your perspective as the management. It certainly seems to be some perspective of some management. But if for the rest of you here, that may be, you know the managee, I don't like that though, right? Maybe what you want is you want to work hard for a fair wage. I'm sure you do. Maybe you want a lack of problems. Maybe you want stability, and job security, and respect as well. So if we pair that management with this employee, is that a match made in heaven? Is that a recipe for success? Or frankly, it could be. But what I see is two individuals who want to have their needs met by the other. That doesn't work. And this lack of reality, a lack of problems get real. What universe are you in? Right? Problems are going to happen. Problems are going to be there, right? So, and we're going to actually look at the problems. So problems are going to be there. So without change in that management perspective, and without change in that employee perspective, I don't see it lasting. This is what I think is a better recipe. An employee and an employer who both work hard, and they enjoy working together and with others to accomplish common goals. You really have to look at what you're trying to accomplish, what you're trying to achieve, and what your role is in doing that, and how you can work together to achieve that. Handling problems with independence and commitment. Problems will arise. How do they get handled? Can the employee take the initiative to handle problems? Do they know enough to handle problems? Have you equipped them? Have you given the authority to handle problems as they arise? Do they know what to do? And respect and value one another even more recognizing that sometimes you just have to get through unpleasant things. So it's always about attitude. It's always about attitude, believe me. And if the job does not revolve around the employer. Sorry. The job does not revolve around the employee. Sorry. The job revolves around the goal set by the customer. And that's where the job revolves for them. Working together toward the goal to accomplish what you need to accomplish, okay? And everyone needs to refocus. They need to focus on that. What is the job? What is the goal? How are we going to reach it together? Focus on that and not on, "What helps me? What's best for me? What's my role?" You have a role, but what do I get out of it? And if you're in management, you need to build a foundation of trust. Trust is pretty important. When you see, when you trust each other, you work to understand. And when a problem happens, you shut your mouth, you open your ears, and listen. You try to understand what went wrong, how it went wrong, what could be done different. And you delay the words in actions when the problems happen until you fully understand or more fully understand, so that when you open your mouth, it's a reflection of your values. We'll talk about that. Little foundation of trust. You trust each other when you accept your responsibility for things, and you apologize when you need to. And you also accept the apologies of others because all of us will fail. How many of you here are perfect, by the way? Let me just see hand. A hand just raised. Oh, oh, I don't see any hands raised. Not, not even mine by the way, right? So none of us are perfect. We're all going to screw up, we're all going to make mistakes, we're all going to fail. Why do we jump out when somebody fails? Let's reduce it. Let's understand that there's times we just need to work through it and solve the problem and go beyond that too. And you work, you build trust with each other. When you ask for help, you ask for feedback, you ask for input. And your actions, need to match your words. And they should be outgrowth of your core values. So here's an example. All right? Your actions match your words. Now, this picture is not the picture from the situation, but I heard this news story probably several months ago. I don't know when it was, and I don't know where it was, and I don't know all these details, all right? But here's what I remember from it. I heard a story about a farm, a fire, excuse me. A fire in a factory. And the fire in a factory, and I think this is India by the way, so it wasn't the US. And the fire in a factory. There was employees who were killed in the fire, and they found out that escape doors were locked, and the aisles were cluttered. This is an obvious situation. This is a pretty bad situation. People lost their lives in the situation. And the statement from management, I heard on the radio, the statement from management was this, "Our top priority is the safety and health of our employees". And I thought, "That was not the top priority". The top priority should be something that you actually do. And yet they said, "That was our top priority". Well, employees have meters. BS-meters, right? (audience chuckling) That one was really in the red range. Employees can tell what is BS, what's not. And so what I want you to think about is identifying and communicating your core values. Now, core values sounds really squishy to a lot of you. All right? You know, like, "Uh, sorry. I deal with meat and potatoes, black and white, I don't deal with core values." Yes, you do. You deal with core values because core values are what you do, how you do it, and why you do it. And all of you have a way of doing things. All of you have things that are important to you. All of you, no matter how squishy you think this is, all of you have things that you value. Communicate those to your employees because when you do, they can make better decisions that match your needs. So your true colors show your values are tested. For those of you who can't tell, there's a manure tanker here. And some of the manure has actually come out of the tanker because it overturned. And that manure, and this was a video, and the video spanned that suburban area, this beautiful homestead, with a manure pool, clear across the landscape, right? So what do you say when you get that call? Well, "If you don't stick to your values, when they are being tested, then all they are is hobbies." This is Jon Stewart. Your core values have to come out. And when they're tested, that's what truly is a reflection of you. Oh, here's a bad situation. (clears throat) (audience member exclaiming) Yeah, I wouldn't want me in that. To stand in these shoes. When you uphold your values, in spite of what happens, employees learn from you. They respect you. They learn what to do in a tough situation. When you live up in a tough situation to your core values, your employees will come along and be better, more loyal teammates. So talk about your values or provide the proof. There is an old saying that says, "The proof is in the pudding", right? So it's important that we learn to use those things. The key is development. Employees need to develop into valuable teammates. All of you need to develop. If you're here as an employer, you need to develop into becoming a better leader. If you're here as an employee, you need to develop as a better teammate. We are all in development. All of us are in developments. We all need to learn to get along better, to work together better, to accomplish goals together. We all need this. So for leaders, be the leader your employees need and appreciate. Be the kind of leader you'd want to follow. And that's no tanker of manure. - Thank you. Thank you. - All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Let me start with a question. If you agree with this statement, raise your hand. "People need to know more about agriculture, where their food comes from, how manure works." Okay. Leave your hand up if you are ready and willing to go on TV tomorrow to talk about it. (audience laughing) Okay. That's better than I thought it'd be. For the rest of you, I got nine and a half minutes to change your mind, okay? So let's talk about media. Media breaks down into three types, okay? We got Paid Media, Earned Media, and Owned Media. I'm not up here to sell you on a pitch of why you need to pay for media. So we're just going to totally skip that one. Earned Media and Owned Media is what we're going to talk about today. They're pretty self-explanatory. Owned Media are the things that you control, right? The number one example, who's got a Facebook page for their business in here? Okay. Does anybody have a business but not have a Facebook page? Okay, a couple too. That's going to be probably your number one source of Owned Media, right? You control the Facebook page, right? You control the messaging that goes out there, and you really control the size and scope of what you want that reach to be. It's all about building trust, right? This media presentation could have been, "Okay, I'm going to prepare you for what to do if there's a spill, get you ready for the worst case scenario." But that's not as useful as being proactive, right? Let's flip the narrative on the tad about why we need to prepare for the worst, and let's plan for the best. Let's do that by starting with Owned Media, sharing the information about your operation. Many of you are probably already doing this. You're talking about the certifications, the training. You're talking about your employees. You're linking to your website. Maybe you're take part in MID or another environmental protection program. If you're not talking about that, that should be your number one goal, right? It's to build that trust, so that you're not the factory owner in India saying, "My number one priority is safety." You've already gotten established track record that you can point to and you go, "I've taken voluntary steps to be as proactive as I can." And while you're at it, if you're supporting the community, if you're sponsoring events, if you're speaking at meetings, make sure you showcase that, right? What you want is for if something were to happen, you want a baseline of trust already established with your community. Because ultimately the reality of it is, I worked in TV news for seven years. The the TV news cycle, the news cycle in general is lightning fast. That's good and bad, right? If it's bad coverage, here's the example I want you to think of, just happens to be spill-related. You see BP gas stations, right? You remember the BP oil spill? Remember when it was like in the aftermath? You're like, "This company's going to go under, nobody's going to get gas here again." This is the most unpopular company that's ever existed. We still get gas at BP stations, okay? This too shall pass. In the same vein, what you can do if you're harnessing good media coverage is you can take something that lasts forever, right? You can take a link from a positive story that somebody does about your operation or your business and put that on your Facebook page. You can take that video and use that. So you want to extend the good coverage and just know that if there's bad things, those go by quickly. So think about what you can maintain, a basic website if you have one. A Facebook page, talk about your accomplishments. Anybody in here have an Instagram, or Twitter, or TikTok for their business yet? Okay, couple people. You know, these are all things that are up to you, right? So your comfort level on what you want to engage with, but kind of the thoughts are the same here, as we go through these. Build your brand, right? You want to keep, you don't want posts from two years ago as your top posts. You want new pictures. Ask your friends and family to review you, right? Get those, get that positive messaging up ahead of time. Put your contact info down. And really, you know, just decide what you want your message to be and get that message out. The big thing for Facebook is you got to decide how to deal with comments, right? Leave 'em on, turn 'em off. Here's my professional advice. Just hide 'em. You get a bad comment, hide it. Turning comments off makes you look inherently sketchy, right? (audience laughing) If you went to a business, and you went to leave a review, and there was no options to leave a comment. You go, "Oh, they know what they're doing." (audience laughing) If you get a bad comment, hide it, okay? That Facebook gives you a really nice tool. And then promote that positive media coverage. And the biggest thing is to stay current and relevant, right? How do we do that, right? How do we get that positive coverage to run on our social media? We plug into this giant amplifier known as the media, right? I was not involved in agriculture before this job. And when people refer to the media, as this big scary monolithic thing, the media people feel the same way about that term, as probably everybody in this room feels about the term "Factory farm". You go, "Ah, this again", right? The media, the reality of it is, the media who you're probably going to be working with are 22 to 25 year old kids, who are living off ramen, okay? They're not, they do not come to your farm with a hardcore anti-agriculture agenda. Most of the reporters that I bring out to farms are psyched. They want to be out on farms, they want to get out of the office, they want to learn about this stuff. They just never had the chance to. And we want to talk about manure specifically. When manure is involved in something negative, it is pun central on TV, right? You know? It's no good. Okay. But if you get into that before it's a problem. It's interesting, right? Then it's funny. It's funny, and it's interesting, and this is the nutrients, you know, we can get that message out there. We talk about nutrient management, right? Changing kind of the narrative of letting people know why this is important, and how it impacts the food that they eat is really important. So you're plugging into this giant amplifier, but how do we get to be able to plug in, right? You're probably going, "I dunno what the media wants to talk to me about." You're an expert. By virtue of sitting in this room, by being involved in agriculture in any way, you are an expert. 2% of people are farmers. 90% of people trust farmers. I got to say this is one thing that I run into a lot is people go, "Damn, public's out to get us". They're not. I was the public. We're not out to get you. 90% of people trust farmers. That's from the American Farm Bureau Federation, and everybody's got to eat, right? So there's this inherent connection, and by being part of that 2%, look, there are tons of accountants out there. If I'm an accountant and I reach out to a newspaper, a radio station, a TV station, and I say, "Hey, I'm an accountant, and if you ever need to do a story, let me know." They're going to go, "Okay, great!" (audience laughing) If you called a reporter, or you reached out to a news station, you said, "I'm a farmer in your area", or "I'm involved in manure management and spreading. I think there's a lot of information out there that's probably not correct, and I'd love to have you out to show you in person kind of the day of the life of this". You know what they'd say, "Yeah, okay". "When?" "I'll be there tomorrow." Right? Media wants content. They want information, and they want to hear from experts. You're an expert. I want to give you one tool because I know that everybody's going to walk out of here and rush right to their local news source and want to be an expert. (audience laughing) Here's a tool I want to give you though. It's called The Interview Triangle. A triangle is the shape that your mind's eye can remember the most easily, right? If you write down a bulleted list, guys out there, if your wife gives you three things to buy from the store, put it on a triangle for the love of god. If you put that on a bulleted list, you're going to come home without one thing, right? You put milk, bread, eggs on a triangle bulleted list, you put milk, bread on a triangle, you're going to remember it. So let's say you go into an interview, what I want you to do is draw this triangle and think about the three main points that you want to make. We talked about being in control of an interview. If you're able to make the points that you want to make, you're inherently in control. And it doesn't matter the questions that you get, right? If you're able to make your points. So going into an interview, write down the three main points you want to make. If you're getting a question, and it's on topic, and it's relevant, it's related to one of these points, okay, I need a volunteer. What's a point that you would want to make if you were talking about what you do with the media? - [Audience Member] Manure isn't a waste, it's a nutrient. - Manure isn't a waste, it's a nutrient. Perfect point. So you plot that on here, and if you're getting a question that's related to that, if somebody said, you know, "Really, what is manure?" Right? You'd go- - [Audience Member] It's a nurture ground. - Yes, exactly. (audience murmuring) So you think about it right there. That's a hot topic question. Boom. That goes right to your point. If you're getting off-topic questions, that's okay too. Just pull 'em back to one of those answers, right? Just explain it to him, but end with that point. If you're ending with your main points, you're having a successful interview. Building relationships, this is what I'm talking about. We're getting in touch with media, right? Know your Why. Why am I reaching out? Why am I interested in being a source for you? Right? Because the answer, as somebody who was in the other side, the answer is not, "Because I want to promote my business". Don't do that. The answer is, "I want to help people understand where their food comes from, where their fiber comes from, where their fuel comes from", right? So know your Why, be available. The reality of it is that unless something has really gone wrong, agriculture stories are not going to be your front page story. They're not going to lead the six o'clock news. It's a great spot to be in because reporters are sitting there at two o'clock in the afternoon, going, "I'm on deadline in three hours, and I have no idea what to do." Agriculture, farming, manure management, right? You can be that fallback if you're available at a moment's notice. And if somebody calls you and says, "Hey, can I do an interview today?" You go, "Yeah, sure, head on out. I can do it on the phone. Whatever you need." Help connect reporters to other sources, right? Being an expert, being in this room, you have a network that reporters don't have, and then give feedback, right? If somebody's really off on something, reach out to 'em. Say, "You missed the mark on that one, but here's how I can help you get better information." Here's the questions to consider as you leave this room, what do you want to say? What do you want people, who do you want to know it? And how can you leverage the media to do it? Thanks for your time. - All right, so we have some time for questions. I'm actually going to hand this mic for you guys to kind of pass back and forth. All right. What? Oh, sorry, that one's louder. What questions do you guys have? Yes. - [Audience Member 1] Yeah, we've had 25 years of the (indistinct). Are there any significant changes or glaring mistakes we've found that it's made over the years, the things that need to be the next 20 years research forward? - Question was, we've had OFFSET, this footprint tool for a number of decades. Are there any changes, glaring major changes that are still needed? The 2018 effort by Jeff Andreessen and Mike Keeper was the best thing that's happened to it globally. That tool that they've derived using meteorological data from the last 30 years and from various sites, makes that tool applicable for the whole upper Midwest part of the United States. And the government of Ontario and other provinces are looking at it. So that has made that tool just very of wide interest and wide application. Are there other things that need to happen? What really needs to happen is, we need to continue to do work on specific odor reduction practices and try to get an emission reduction factor that we can enter into that process, so we can site these farms in places where they may not fit otherwise. - Yeah. Ernie. - [Ernie] Jon, not a question, but maybe from your explanation, if you would. And I know we worked together a lot at Farm Bureau, and can you take a minute and talk about the fact that these folks know more about the topic than the reporter does, and they're the true experts and the importance of keeping (indistinct)? - Yeah, you know, I think that's the thing, right? That's what makes us, why do we get nervous when we do, I'll stand up, why do we get nervous when we do interviews, right? Like, we're afraid we'll mess up, we're afraid we'll say the wrong thing. The reporters who you're talking to are not going to fact check you, right? They're not going to go, "Well, actually, (scoffs) in my experience", they don't have any, right? You are the expert. You're in control of that. So they're coming to you asking for your perspective on something, so you don't have to be nervous, when you're doing it. What you do have to do, you've heard, "Explain it to me like I'm a fifth grader." Let's go, let's go a little younger, right? Let's go like second grade, first grade, toddler. Because the reality of it is people who, they're college educated, smart people who maybe two years ago, before they started at Farm Bureau didn't know that all corn wasn't sweet corn, right? (audience laughing) They didn't know there was like different kinds of cherries. Okay? So look, the reality of it is, you know, you're really involved in a really specific industry. Again, 98% of people aren't, right? So there's not any time where I've ever had somebody do an interview, and I've come back and gone, "Hey, can you next time, can you, like, make sure that you really kind of like up the terminology and make it more complicated? That audience can handle it." Right? You know, you got to, you might have to explain what a nutrient is, you know. This helps crops grow. Those sorts of things. So yeah, good question. - Other questions? I think we have maybe another minute or two. Yeah. - [Audience Member 2] Which media, mass media outlets are even worth talking to nowadays? (audience murmuring) - Yeah. That's a good question. Look, the thing about media is that all media is interconnected now, right? So, and USA Today owns 20 newspapers in Michigan. If you do an interview with The Bedford sometimes, I think is their smallest paper, that can run in the Detroit Free Press, right? You get an article in the Detroit Free Press, the PR value of that article, if it's positive for you, is like $400,000 of advertising that you would have to do to reach that same level of audience, right? So my argument is that regardless of how small or local, really I like that as sort of a Trojan Horse in, you talk to the local reporter, the smaller reporter, who's maybe more familiar with your area, and they take that back, and they share that story, whether it's TV that also is owned by massive ownership groups, or the newspaper, and you've got a story that started local and is all of a sudden taking roots and sort of going viral because it's an interesting story. - Great, we might have time for one last question. - I'll ask you another one. - Go for it. - [Audience Member 2] So for reformed managers now thinking about being leaders, are, have people really changed from what they were, or are we just evolving how we manage people? Do you think people today are really different than 50 years ago? - So the question is, are people different than they were 50 years ago? And I don't believe the answer is. I think the answer is "No". They're not different than years ago. Their skills may be different, their attitudes may be different. Their backgrounds may be different, but they're still people. We've got to work with people on a human-to-human basis where we respect one another, where we treat each other with dignity. And I think that's what the bottom line is. If we treat one another with dignity and work together, doesn't matter whether it was 50 years ago, today or 20 years from now, it's going to be effective. - Awesome. Let's thank our speakers one more time. (gentle guitar music)