As more and more companies promote anti-meat products, many consumers have been left with misconceptions about the relationship between livestock and climate change. Dr. Frank Mitloehner, professor in the department of animal science at the University of California, Davis, joins us to discuss the myths about livestock’s impact on the environment and why agriculture is not to blame for climate change, but how it is key for a more sustainable future.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dr. Frank Mitloehner hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio.

Tom:                          Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us as we explore the challenges and opportunities facing the global food supply chain and speak with experts working to support a Planet of Plenty^TM.

                                    As the scale and impacts of climate change become increasingly alarming, meat is a popular target for action. Many climate activists urge the public to eat less meat to save the environment, and some have called for taxing meat to reduce consumption. Their key claim is that, globally, meat production generates more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector. However, this claim is demonstrably wrong, and its persistence has misled people about the links between meat and climate change. These words begin an article by Dr. Frank Mitloehner, a professor in the department of animal science at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Mitloehner specializes in the measurement and mitigation of airborne pollutants from livestock production, including greenhouse gases, such as the methane produced by cattle. Thanks for joining us, Dr. Mitloehner.

Dr. Mitloehner:         Well, thanks for having me.

Tom:                          So, we’ve turned to you to talk about confusion among consumers about the climate impact of the methane produced by cattle. And much of the confusion is due to marketing strategies and tactics by corporations such as Burger King, touting that it's adding lemongrass to cows’ diets to try to cut down on methane emissions, or Starbucks’ decision to stop using dairy products. And I like to begin by asking you to tell us about messaging that has resulted in these misperceptions about the relationship between livestock and climate change.

Dr. Mitloehner:         Well, a lot of this originated in a 2006 publication by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and they made the claim that livestock produces more greenhouse gases than transportation. And that is very unfortunate because when such an authority makes such a claim, then it has a lot of credibility. However, I proved to that this assertion was wrong and that they used different methodologies when they looked at the impact of livestock on climate versus those of transportation. And they actually corrected that and said, “Whoops, yeah, we were wrong, and we have gone back to the drawing board, and we now use the same methodology when comparing things.” But the horse had left the barn, and all those critics of animal agriculture glued on to this and gloomed on to this, and damage has been done. And so, now, many corporations are using the climate impact angle to either promote their own products or disparage the use of animal-source foods.

Tom:                          Advertising and marketing can be very pervasive and very persuasive. How have these messages been damaging for agriculture?

Dr. Mitloehner:         Well, when you repeat falsehoods over and over again, then, after a while, it becomes truth, at least in the eyes of many of the consumers, and that’s really unfortunate. And one of the reasons, one of the ingredients in this disaster is that agriculture has responded too late or, if so, with some PR (public relations) campaigns as opposed to a real educational effort in infusing truth into this discussion, because it is just propaganda and nothing more than that.

Tom:                          Let’s back up just a bit and talk to that consumer, who most likely has heard that cows produce methane, that methane is a significant greenhouse gas, and that beef production contributes to global warming and climate change. And first, if we could ask you, Dr. Mitloehner, to give us a bit of a primer on the chemistry that’s involved here.

Dr. Mitloehner:         Yeah. So, methane is CH₄, and it’s a gas that is indeed very potent as a greenhouse gas. However, when looking at methane, we have to think about where does the carbon in the methane that we’re also concerned about — where does it come from, and where is it going?

                                    Where it comes from is atmospheric CO₂, atmospheric carbon dioxide, which, during photosynthesis, makes it into plants. The plants suck it in, and then those plants convert some of that carbon from atmospheric CO₂ into carbohydrates, such as cellulose or starch. Sooner or later, a bovine comes along and eats, and then a portion of that carbohydrate it ingests will become methane. That methane, however, stays in the atmosphere for a relatively short period of time — 10 years — and is then converted back into CO₂, which then goes back into the cycle as plant food and so forth. So, it is a cycle called (the) biogenic carbon cycle, which is very different from fossil carbon, let's say, from fossil fuel extraction and use, which is carbon that was in the ground for a very long time (that) has been extracted, burned and, therefore, is now a new additive to our atmosphere.

                                    So, biogenic carbon from livestock versus fossil carbon from fossil fuel use are very different with respect to how they contribute to actual warming. Just to give you one idea here — because people are exaggerating the impact of livestock — in the United States, all beef production contributes to about 3% of all greenhouse gases (and) all dairy production to about 2% of all greenhouse gases. Okay? So, this is in the United States. Globally, all beef contributes to 6% of all global greenhouse gases and the dairy industry to 3% of all global greenhouse gases, just to give you a general idea. And one last thing: I just told you beef contributes to 3% in the United States. Contrast that to the fossil fuel sector contributing to 80% of all greenhouse gases. I view this campaign against animal agriculture as a smokescreen by those who are really mega-producers of pollution.

Tom:                          Okay. Let's dig into some of the discrepancies. You published a white paper; it’s titled, “Livestock's Contributions to Climate Change: Facts and Fiction.” And in this paper, you cite a claim that U.S. livestock greenhouse emissions from cows, pigs, sheep and chickens are comparable to all transportation sources. You found a very different picture. Tell us about that.

Dr. Mitloehner:         Yes. So, the different picture is that those people who painted that picture comparing livestock to transportation used one methodology to look at the impact of livestock on climate and a different methodology to look at the impact of transportation on climate. Let me explain. For livestock, they use what's called a lifecycle assessment, in which you look at all components of producing, let’s say, a pound of beef or a gallon of milk on climate, including the soil where the plants grow. The plants themselves that are then ingested by animals, the animals then produce some greenhouse gases themselves during enteric fermentation, meaning they are belching it out or their manure produces some. And then, sooner or later, the product makes it from the farm to the distribution center, from the distribution center to the processing center, and so on. Eventually, it ends up in a commercial restaurant or in your kitchen at home. A lifecycle assessment looks at the impact all the way from cradle to grave, meaning from the field to the fork. And that's the way it should be done. And the organization that made this comparison did that for livestock and they did it well. But when they compared livestock to transportation, they made a big mistake: namely that, on the transportation side, they didn't do a lifecycle assessment, but they only looked at direct emissions coming out of the tailpipe of vehicles — not the production of cars, trucks, trains, planes, ships, streets, harbors, airports and so forth. By doing so, they truly compared apples to oranges, using one methodology for the one and another methodology for the other. And as I said, they later corrected that comparison.

Tom:                          So, when we’re talking about climate change, why is it important to actually avoid comparing livestock emissions with those from other main sources of greenhouse gases?

Dr. Mitloehner:         Well, first of all, I think agriculture appreciates its contribution to a warming climate. We are contributing greenhouse gases, and we are actively involved in reducing those. So, that's just a little prelude. But comparing livestock to, let’s say, transportation, or power production and use, or the cement industry or so on is a dangerous exercise. And the reason is that the main greenhouse gas from livestock is methane, and methane undergoes cyclical conversion into CO₂. So, it is atmospheric CO₂ going into plants, going into the animal, and then that goes back into the atmosphere as CO₂ again. So, this is a relatively short life cycle. As long as you don't increase livestock herds, as long as you keep them constant, you're not adding new additional carbon to the atmosphere. Okay? This is really important. As long as you do not increase livestock herds, you're not adding new additional carbon to the atmosphere.

                                    But every time you use fossil fuel, you extract carbon from the ground in the form of oil, coal and gas. You are burning it, and you're converting that into CO₂, and that CO₂ has a lifespan of 1,000 years. Meaning every time you use fossil fuel, let's say, by driving a car, you are adding new greenhouse gases to the existing stock that's already there. So, livestock is cyclical and its impact is relatively short-lived versus fossil fuels, (which) are not cyclical. That's a one-way street, from the ground into the air, and its impacts are long-lived.

Tom:                          You argue that, in fact, the U.S. livestock sector has shown considerable progress during the last half-century in reducing its environmental footprint. Tell us about that.

Dr. Mitloehner:         Well, yeah. There's no doubt about that. So, for example, on the dairy side, back mid-last century, 1950, we had 25 million dairy cows in the United States. Twenty-five. Today, we have 9 million dairy cows. So, a large reduction of cows. But with this much smaller herd today, we are producing 60% more milk. Sixty. Sixty percent more milk with much fewer cows. And that equates to a two-thirds reduction of greenhouse gases from the dairy sector. On the beef side, we had 100 and — so, in 1970, we had 140 million beef cattle. Today, we have a little over 90. So, much fewer beef cattle. Fifty million fewer. But even though we have 50 million fewer cattle, we're producing the same amount of beef. The progress we have seen in this country is remarkable. We are producing 18% of all beef globally with 8% percent of all cattle. That is remarkable.

Tom:                          It is truly a model of efficiency. And is that, indeed, what has brought this about: science-driven efficiency?

Dr. Mitloehner:         Partly. I think there are four main tools that the animal agriculture industries have used. One is research and development in the area of genetics, using better genetic material for both plants and animals. The second one is that we have improved reproductive efficiencies in livestock. The third one is that we have installed a veterinary system that can both prevent and/or treat diseases. And last, but not least, we have developed a feed system, a nutrition system, that optimizes nutrient use for livestock and poultry. And the combination of these four — of genetics, of reproduction efficiencies, and improvements to the veterinary system and the nutrition system — the combination of those four has allowed us to shrink our herds to historic lows (while) producing more than we ever have before.

Tom:                          What would you say needs to be improved right now? How can we get accurate and fair emissions assessments so that we're on the right path to solutions?

Dr. Mitloehner:         Well, that’s a really important question, and if you ask a scientist what needs to be done, a scientist will tell you, “Listen, you know, there is not enough funding in this field.” And I'm not different. I’ll tell you it is dismally small, what the public sector pays to get information on the impact of our food supply chain. There hardly is any funding, and there's very little funding in the private industry sector as well. And the reason why that matters is because of the lack of funding, most scientists just keep the fingers on their hands off that type of research when, indeed, it's urgently needed and constantly in the media. I would hope that particularly the public sector, federal and state agencies, would support investigation into the true impacts of livestock and into, also, research that further reduces those impacts.

Tom:                          Earlier, you mentioned the FAO, the U.N.'s food and agricultural organization. The FAO has formed an international partnership project to develop and adopt a gold standard of lifecycle assessment methodology for each livestock species in the feed sector, and that’s been a few years now. Where does that stand today, and is it, in your opinion, making a difference in the public's understanding of the role of livestock in the production of greenhouse gases?

Dr. Mitloehner:         Yeah. So, this project is referred to as LEAPP, and that stands for Livestock Environmental Assessment Performance Partnership. And this partnership is comprised of three sectors: governments, on the one hand, and then NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and the industry sector. So, that’s all livestock, poultry, feed and so on. And that’s under the auspices of the FAO, and I was actually the first chairman of this committee. And we developed many guidelines on how to do a proper lifecycle assessment for livestock, for feed — not just for greenhouse gases, but also for nutrients, for biodiversity, for water use and so forth. In this context, we have developed, I would say, at least one dozen guidelines that are now considered the global gold standard for LCA, for lifecycle assessment. And I think that, as a result of that, accurate quantification has really taken off.

                                    It's really important that the public understands that nobody is sitting on their hands — that there are active measures (being) taken to find ways to accurately quantify and further mitigate emissions from animal agriculture, from agricultural overall. The agricultural sector is very involved but, unfortunately, (is) oftentimes behind the curve in communicating this.

Tom:                          In your white paper, you make note that all regions have unique demands and abilities and, thus, require regional solutions. So, taking the United States as a as a model, as a microcosm of the globe, is U.S. agriculture presently structured in a way that would accommodate a more regional approach, or does this imply the need for a restructuring and better coordination?

Dr. Mitloehner:         Yeah. So, the United States is indeed the most efficient of all agricultural systems in the world. I don't think there's much debate about that, but that's not to say that what we do here and how we produce, for example, animal-source foods in the United States could be a model for all of the rest of the world. We could be a model for much of the developed world, but not for much of the developing world, where efficiencies, first of all, (in) livestock production are much lower, but that's largely a result of a lack in infrastructure. So, for example, I told you already that we have 9 million dairy cows here in the United States. In India, they have 300 million dairy animals, both cows and buffalo. And it is a religious belief that eating bovines is a sin. So, they don't eat cattle, but they have a lot of them. So, we're not proposing or suggesting that they should change their religious belief system, but we are suggesting that if they want to meet their nutritional needs and use cattle to do so — for example, (via) dairy products from cattle — then they could do the same that they do currently with one-quarter of the current cattle population, because having such massive number of animals does have a considerable environmental footprint, one that can be strongly reduced. And we here in the United States — scientists, practitioners and so on — can assist other people throughout the world, other nations throughout the world, (to) become more efficient. For example, we can assist them in building a veterinary system, or we can assist them in building a nutrition sector or a genetics sector that's really called for, and it needs to be done in a very sensitive way, where we work with these different places to develop what's right for their respective region.

Tom:                          The challenge, Dr. Mitloehner, of supplying food to a drastically growing human population is foremost on the minds of researchers and organizations concerned with nutrition. A Planet of Plenty, (for) example, is the aspirational goal of Alltech. Do you believe such a goal can be achieved — and, if so, sustained?

Dr. Mitloehner:         Yeah. That is a very important question. You know, I just turned 50. And when I was a little boy, we had about 3 billion people in the world. Three billion. Today, we have 7.6 (billion). By the time I'm an old man, we’ll have 9.5 billion people. In other words, we will triple human population throughout our lifetimes. And at the same time, we don't really triple natural resources to feed those people. In other words, we have to. It is imperative that we do drastically increase production of food for a wildly growing human population, because if we don't, we'll have some big problems on our hands.

                                    Can it be done? Can we produce more with similar inputs as we do today? The answer, in my mind, is yes. We have shown it, for example, here in the United States over the last 60 years. We have kept the inputs for animal agriculture constant, but we have tripled the outputs. Tripled the outputs. I mean, that is just an unbelievable success story. And, (as) I told you, we cannot transfer the U.S. model to the rest of the world, but we can assist others in drastically improving. For example, a country like China, which produces half of the world's pigs — 1 billion pigs per year — has a pre-weaning mortality (rate) of 40%. They are losing 400 million pigs every year (during) pre-weaning, and that is just a travesty and something that's totally unnecessary. We can help the Chinese. We can help the rest of the world do much better without really sucking up a lot (of) additional resources. We can do more with less, and that's at the core of sustainability.

Tom:                          Dr. Frank Mitloehner, professor in the department of animal science at the University of California, Davis. And we thank you so much for joining us.

Dr. Mitloehner:         Well, thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.

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

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Rob Saik, CEO of AGvisorPRO, believes that the next thirty years could be the most important in the history of agriculture, and he claims that in order to support the global population in 2050, agriculture will have to become infinitely sustainable. Listen in as he explains his vision of farming technology and how innovation is the key to sustainable agriculture.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Rob Saik hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio.

Tom:                      Rob Saik is a professional agrologist and a certified agricultural consultant. He is CEO of AGvisorPRO, an agricultural connectivity platform, and CEO of Saik Management Group, which provides advisory services to farmers in the agricultural sector.

                               Rob is the author of two books, “The Agriculture Manifesto” and his latest, “Food 5.0: How We Feed the Future.” And Rob joins us from Olds, Alberta, north of Calgary.

                               Greetings, Rob.

Rob:                        Good to be on your show, Tom. Thanks for having me.

Tom:                      And Rob, so, as we all know — we’re here on the phone as proof of it — we’re in the midst of a pandemic at the moment, and its effects are rolling over (into) just about every aspect of life. But you argue that we may have lost historical perspective where outbreaks of infectious diseases are concerned. Can you elaborate on that?

Rob:                        Well, the opening line of my book, “Food 5.0,” is, “This morning, when you woke up, did you worry about a pandemic?” And that book was released in August of last year, so it’s highly prophetic. But when you put our world into context, Tom, and you just look back a hundred years, the Spanish flu took out over 50 million people off the planet Earth a hundred years ago.

                               Simultaneously, World War I had just ended, and somewhere north of 15 million people had lost their lives in the World War I. And also, at this time a hundred years ago, the Persian famine had taken out 2 million and climbing people, and this was just ahead of the Stalin-imposed famines in Ukraine that took out somewhere between 12 and 16 million people.

                               So, when you put what we’re dealing with today into context of where we were a hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago, even though we’re faced with a great deal of challenge today, we live in a much, much better place than we did even fifty or a hundred years ago. And I think that we should pause and reflect on how good we actually have it.

Tom:                      Okay. Let’s turn to farming. In your book, you proposed that the next thirty years could be the most important in the history of agriculture, which is quite a statement. Why do you believe this?

Rob:                        Well, I was born in 1960, and you know, we experienced, in my lifetime, a dramatic increase in the population of the planet, and we fed everybody. (The ideas of) people like Norman Borlaug and science and agriculture was adopted around the planet, and you know, we don’t have that much more land base in agriculture than we did twenty or thirty years ago, and yet, we’re feeding everybody.

                               But if you stare into the future, as the population grows from 7.6 to 9 or 9.5 billion on the planet by 2050, these are some of the facts: We have to grow 10,000 years worth of food in the next thirty years. We have to increase food production everywhere on the planet by 60–70%. That’s everywhere on the planet, and that puts extreme pressure on exporting nations like the United States and Canada and Australia and so on and so forth. And we have to do so in the face of a public that is extremely disconnected from agriculture, and a public that’s being fed misinformation on a daily basis, leading to panic, leading to policies by politicians that are stripping tools out of agriculture’s hands.

So, the reason that I am so concerned about the next thirty years — and the reason I believe it’s going to be so challenging — is because we’re not connected to agriculture as a society like we used to (be), and so, a lot of people are out advocating the stripping away of tools from agriculture. And if we did that, then I’m fearful for our ability to feed the planet.

On the other hand, with the glass half full, if we’re allowed to adopt the technologies that we’re seeing implemented all around us, then I’m quite optimistic that we can have a world of abundance to 2050 and beyond.

Tom:                      Okay. I want to get back to that disconnect that you mentioned between the public’s understanding of what goes into farming in just a few minutes. But you just made an eye-opening observation: that to support a population close to 10 billion by 2050, agriculture is going to have to become infinitely sustainable. What do you mean by that?

Rob:                        Well, in the book, I talk about, you know, food as a religion — and it has turned into a religion. Veganism, vegetarianism, whether it’s paleo or meat-atarians, or organic and non-GMO — and you can get into an argument with everybody about the truth, the light and the way. But if you put up your hands and say, “Can we all agree (that), so long as there are human beings on the planet, agriculture must be infinitely sustainable?” Well, that stops people from talking, and they start nodding their head, and then they agree.

                               Well, what would make agriculture infinitely sustainable? What are the factors? And then they really scratch their head, because they have to do something they haven’t done for quite a while: they have to think, and eventually, things like soil health come up, because the epidermis of the earth is soil that feeds us all.

                               Water. Yeah, water use efficiency is important. Eventually, (the) greenhouse gas balance comes out. So, being able to mitigate, remove, reduce greenhouse gasses from agriculture. And then they forget one, and the one they forget the most, it is the most important, and that’s farm viability. Because without viable farms, without farms that are making a profit, without farmers that are advancing themselves year after year business-wise, you have zero sustainability.

                               So, the first step in sustainability, infinite sustainability, is farm viability and then we look at soil, water and greenhouse gas balance.

Tom:                      History has shown us that these pandemics tend to come in waves of three, typically, with the second wave (being) the most serious (and) the third decreasingly so, as herd immunity finally begins to catch on. How do we feed a soaring world population with an unchecked virus on the loose?

Rob:                        Well, I think this is going to put tremendous pressure on our food — not necessarily food production, but food distribution channels. People react to seeing dairy farmers dump milk. Well, the reality is that there’s no food bank out there that can take a 6,000-gallon tanker full of raw milk; (a) it’s illegal, and (b) it’s unsafe. So we have to find a way to be able to manage, and we’ve done that. We’ve developed food supply systems that could take large amounts of agricultural produce, turning them into safe, abundant and inexpensive food for the populace.

So, I think one of the things that we’re really going to be challenged with as we consider what might happen with a second round of infection will be how we deal with the supply sector, the logistics, the processing sector. I think this will be a challenge for us. I think that it will open up opportunities for people to become more closely connected to agriculture; maybe people will plant gardens, maybe people will start to connect with local producers. I don’t believe that’s the answer to feeding New York City or Los Angeles, but at the same time, I do think that there’s an opportunity (with) COVID to have a greater conversation about the importance of agriculture and, perhaps, with a greater population, to connect (with it) more closely.

But I do scratch my head a little bit as to the challenge we’re going to face. If the second wave gets worse, how are we going to deal with, you know, meat packing plants and milk processing facilities, distribution and transportation, and grocery stores? All of those things are questions in my mind.

Tom:                      It’s a little bit difficult for us to wrap our minds around now, but eventually, COVID-19 will be in the rearview mirror. We all have faith in that, I think. So I’m wondering: What do you see out there? What do you foresee for agriculture in a post-COVID world?

Rob:                        Well, the first thing is that, you know, you alluded to it in your question, and that is that we anticipate there will be a cure for COVID. Now, that cure for COVID will likely come in the form of a vaccine. I don’t think anybody’s arguing that, that it’s likely to come in a vaccine. So, how will the vaccine have been built? How will it have been invented? Well, that vaccine will have been invented through genetic engineering. GMOs? Oh my God! We’re talking about genetic engineering, manipulation of genome — something that’s “not natural”. Well, if you realized that the likely cure for COVID will be a vaccine, then genetic engineering will be at the heart of that whole process. That genetic engineering science is exactly the same science being implemented in agriculture.

                               So, in a post-COVID world, I’m hoping that the population will begin to wake up and realize that the science involved in human genomics, in medicine, in vaccine invention, is the same science being employed by agriculture. And in the face of climate change, in the face of greater salinity, in the face of rapidly increased food production, in the face of trying to decrease the environmental footprint by farming to feed the planet, then genetic engineering is one of the technologies that we absolutely must embrace.

                               The other thing that I see is a way, a new way, for agriculture to communicate. And so, we’ve started a firm called AGvisorPRO, which is a platform, a connectivity platform. It can be downloaded in iOS and Android and desktop, and that platform, effectively, can put experts on the farm without having to be on the farm. So, we found a way to basically shrink time and space and provide seekers who need answers to questions (with) instantaneous connectivity to experts in the agricultural industry who can provide some solutions to their problems.

                               I think we’re going to see quite a few innovations — everything from increased sensor technology, call it the Internet of Things, on the farm, all the way through the connectivity devices that will be kind of a legacy through this COVID experience.

Tom:                      Would you agree that the farmer of the 21^st century must be a scientist, must be a technologist, to compete and to stay in business? And I wonder if — you mentioned the disconnect between what the general public understands about farming today and what the reality of farming really is. Why should we be concerned about such a disconnect?

Rob:                        Well, we should be concerned about the disconnect because we live in a democracy, and theoretically, everybody has a vote. And if you put the issues of GMO, yes or no, to a vote of the public right now, the public, through ignorance, would vote “down with GMOs.” If you put pesticides, yes or no, to a vote, the public, through ignorance, would vote “down with pesticides.” Same thing with fertilizers. So, the danger is that, when you have a public that’s so disconnected from the realities of agriculture today, you have policies that are generated out of panic and ignorance rather than out of knowledge and wisdom and an understanding of science.

                               Today’s farms — I just completed a yearlong stint as CEO with DOT autonomous robotic company. So, DOT Technology Corporation, out of Regina, Saskatchewan, is a 100% autonomous robotic platform to broad-acre agriculture. It’s utilizing all of this technology that you would find in a Tesla car. We’re using radar, LiDar, we’re using motion sensors, we’re using massive computing power to basically run machines across land without any operator, 100% guided by GIS or satellite guidance, doing things such as variable rate application of fertilizer as they move across the field 100% autonomously.

                               I mean, when you think about that, you think that that’s sci-fi world; it’s not. You can go online right now and see all sorts of developments with robotic technology. That will be another outcome of COVID, is where we can utilize robots to reduce human interaction regarding repetitive work. Robots are very well-suited for dull, dangerous and dirty work. A lot of agriculture (is) dull, dangerous and dirty work, so we’re going to see that rise.

                               And so, when you think about genetic engineering and you think about internet sensor technology, massive computing power, data systems, robotics, satellite integration — most people that are in the city think of farmers as bib overall-wearing, straw hat-wearing, you know, little red barns and round-fendered pickup trucks. Well, those two images don’t match. There’s a disconnect there between what’s going on in the farm today and what people have in their head as their great-grandfather’s or grandfather’s farm. It is not the same thing. That’s, like, History channel-made.

Tom:                      That’s a lot to wrap one’s head around, and it’s fascinating. And I just wonder: What are the cultural implications of that sort of technology, and especially the autonomous aspect of it? How does that change a farmer’s life in terms of what it frees them up to do?

Rob:                        Well, we have a problem in agriculture — and your listeners are, probably, if they’re from the rural landscape, they would understand this; city listeners won’t understand this — but we have an acute labor shortage in agriculture today. It’s estimated that, in the next few years, in Canada, we’ll have 125,000 job vacancies at the farm level that simply can’t be filled. And the problem is finding qualified operators. Every piece of equipment today on the farm is north of $500,000, and many of them are over $1 million. And so, you have to have trained operators.

                               And because farmers live in remote areas, there are a number of sociological things going on. Number one is (that) the average age of farmers is like 60 years old. Sooner or later, Mother Nature takes care of things, and these people have to sell their farming operations to attrition, so whosever is left is getting bigger. So farms, because of economy scale, will continue to get larger. That’s a fact. The equipment costs go up. That’s a fact.

                               Trying to get young people attracted back into agriculture, back onto the farm — the thought of spending sixteen hours a day in a glass cage in a self-guided tractor is cool for the first couple of days, but after about three weeks of that, you’re going insane. So, why can’t we utilize robots and sophisticated sensory technology to allow us to scale our knowledge and wisdom? Why can’t we use aerial imagery or satellite imagery to do field scouting for us? Do we have to really be walking corn and soybean fields, every acre, to find out what’s going on? Or a company like IntelinAir, for example, is doing a wonderful job of using algorithms and analytics to provide alerts to farmers about what’s going on in fields in Illinois right now.

So, this is — this is where we’re headed, and it creates tremendous opportunity for young people to enter agriculture as systems integrators. We need these various systems integrated together so that we can take advantage of the technology and move farmers forward. But, again, everything that I’m talking about is quite a disconnect from what the average person thinks is actually going on in today’s agriculture

Tom:                      We’ve touched on convergence throughout this conversation, and the one that really captures my attention is biodigital technology. How does this example of convergence become an important tool in farming?

Rob:                        Well, as I wrote the book “Food 5.0,” I said (that) I think there’s five iterations of agriculture. There’s the age of muscle, the age of machine, the age of chemistry, the age of biotechnology or genetic engineering, and the age of convergence.

                               And as I think about that, there’s two kinds of things that, really, we’ve been living through in the past two, three, four decades. And one of them is Moore’s Law, which most people are familiar with, which is the doubling of computing power and the decrease of computing cost by half every, you know, six to eighteen months. Moore’s Law.

                               That has been predicated upon something called binary code — 1s and 0s. Again, most people would have an understanding of binary code. What about genetic code? And what happens when we combine binary code with genetic code? What happens when the new language of programming really moves from binary code over to As, Ts, Cs and Gs, which are the four proteins that make up genetic complex? So, what happens when the new programming really becomes one of As, Ts, Cs and Gs? How do we intersect bio with digital? So, bio-digital technology is going to result in the generation of brand-new crops, brand new food types.

For example, a company out of Minnesota right now, called Calyxt, is using a TALEN technology that’s creating soybeans that have high oleic oil content in the soybeans, over 80% high oleic oil. Now, you may be wondering what that means. Well, everybody buys olive oil because they think it’s Mediterranean, it’s healthy, while olive oil is 69% high oleic oil, but soybeans through Calyxt are 80%. So, all of a sudden,  we have a brand-new food coming from a conventional crop that’s been derived through bio-digital technology. 

I can go on with all sorts of examples of new crops. But one of the things that I think your listeners will be fascinated by is the burgeoning or the emerging science of nutrigenomics. And nutrigenomics is where you take your human genome — and I’ve had my genome sequenced — and through the course of time, you start to identify food attributes that are important in my genome. So, you, Tom, would have your genome sequenced, and there’d be foods that would be more and others that would be less beneficial to your specific genome.

                               So, when the cost of genomic mapping starts dropping, where every human being has their genome sequenced, we can start to map out and match food to the human being, and that’s going to open up, I think, some really interesting opportunities for agriculture based on attribute-based tracking.

                               In other words, if we could grow a wheat crop high in selenium, and (if) you were predisposed to prostate cancer, then maybe the bread that you eat should be a high-selenium-derived bread. So, these are things that are going on inside of my head, and I think it paints a pretty exciting future of how we’re going to create this bio-digital technology convergence.

Tom:                      Yes, nutrigenomics is quite a focus of Alltech, as a matter of fact. It was a favorite focus of the late Dr. Pearse Lyons and is being carried on today.

                               Let’s get back to AGvisorPRO for just a second. I want to ask you about that app. And let’s say I’ve got it on my phone. What’s it going to do for me?

Rob:                        I built a company called Agri-Trend and Agri-Data that was acquired by Trimble. That was a twenty-year journey for me, and Agri-Trend was acquired by Trimble, and I began to think about, “If I was going to build the consulting firm all over again, how would I do it?” And the answer is: I wouldn’t. What I would do is build a connectivity platform.

                               And so, AGvisorPRO, (if you) think about it, is as a mash-up of eHarmony together with Uber and FaceTime and Twitter. If you mash all of those things together, I think you have the idea. AGvisorPRO         is the Uberization of knowledge and wisdom. We are creating a connectivity matrix between seekers, people who want answers and experts, people who can provide answers now. And so, this interconnectivity matrix involves farmers and independent advisors and industry and government and the public.

                               And so, you would download AGvisorPRO on iOS or Android or desktop, and you would fill out a profile of your agricultural expertise or your farming operation — and it’s free. So you download (it), and we have several ways that you can connect. The first is we have an industry offer called TechDirect. So, industry partners would list their company, their proprietary products or services and their graphs, and a farmer can type in a company like Taurus Ag and instantaneously be connected to the technical representatives of Taurus. So, no 1-800 number, and it’s all free for the user.

                               Additionally, a farmer might want to talk to a sprayer expert. We have a renowned sprayer expert in Canada. His name is Tom Wolf. He’s an independent advisor. He doesn’t need his brain picked; he needs his brain paid for. So, you would say, “I’ve got a question about spraying,” and you would find Tom, the algorithm would match you up to Tom. And you would say, “Okay, so it’s going to be $60 for the session.” You say yes, just like you do with Uber, and you’re instantaneously connected with Tom. You have your conversation; he answers your questions. The session is archived for your future reference. You’re allowed to rate the session, just like you do with Uber, and then you can connect that session to social media, if you like.

So, we built all of that. All of that has been built. And Tom, this was built starting in 2019. So, we’ve been working on this for over a year. And, lo and behold, COVID hits in March, and we knew the winds of change were blowing, so we had set our sails to capture that changing wind and how we’re going to communicate in agriculture.

But AGvisorPRO is set for this COVID and this post-COVID world. We’re effectively stretching brains and not bodies, and we’re helping people monetize knowledge and wisdom. And so, that’s, in a nutshell, what we’ve been able to do with AGvisorPRO.

Tom:                      Well, that is absolutely fascinating.

Rob:                        It’s cool, yeah.

Tom:                      Rob Saik, author of “Food 5.0: How We Feed the Future.” Rob, maybe we’ll get to meet next year in Lexington at ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference.

Rob:                        Well, you know, I was thrilled to be involved in the ONE Virtual Experience by Alltech. Alltech has got a great reputation as a leader in the agriculture sector, and the virtual experience was a blast. And I’m still dealing with questions from the session that was online. However, I think I’m looking forward to getting to Kentucky and being part of the live event, where you rub shoulders with — literally rub shoulders with — some of the greater thinkers in agriculture.

                               So, thank you for having me on your podcast, Tom.

Tom:                      Well, thank you so much. We appreciate it.

                               I’m Tom Martin, and this has been AgFuture, presented by Alltech. And thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to AgFuture wherever you listen to podcasts.

As a futurist, Jack Bobo works to stay ahead of consumer trends by detecting the disruptors that trigger them. We spoke with him about the rapidly changing global food supply chain, what will impact future trends in agriculture and what he believes is in store for the future of food production and consumer habits.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Jack Bobo hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio.

Tom:            The agricultural landscape was rapidly changing even before the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the global food supply chain. The way we produce, distribute, and consume food will soon look very different. What lessons can we take away from this to guide how we feed the planet in the future?

                     As the CEO of Futurity, Jack Bobo makes it his business to stay ahead of the trends and detect the disruptors that trigger them. He joins us to share his insights on the challenges and opportunities awaiting us in the next era of agriculture. Welcome, Jack.

Jack:             Thank you for having me.

Tom:            First, if you would just help us calibrate our expectations. What is the role of a futurist?

Jack:             Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. Well, a lot of us think about the future, but we're not necessarily thinking about what's going to happen 10 or 20 years from now and what that's going to mean for our children and future generations. Part of what I try to do is to help people not just look ahead for next year, but how do you look around the corner of what's happening.

                     Sometimes, I describe it this way. Imagine you're in a car and you look in the rearview mirror. Well, that's what hindsight is, and then you look through the windshield. Well, that's foresight. You can see a certain distance down the road, but insight comes from the GPS because that's what tells us what's around the corners. For a futurist, that's what we try to do. We try to not just look at the trends that everybody else are talking about, but what are the forces that shape the trends. That's how you get ahead of a trend so you don't get run over by them.

Tom:            How do you identify those forces?

Jack:             Well, what we do is we look for signals. There's a science fiction writer named William Gibson and he would say, "The future is already here. It's just not widely distributed." So what we're doing is we're looking around at what are those innovations that have the opportunity to scale and have a broader impact. Once you do that then you want to try to figure out how do those signals connect to each other. Let me give you an example. Today, people think about robotics all the time and they think about things like AI, artificial intelligence. Well, when you take artificial intelligence and you put it together with a physical embodiment, well, that's what a robot is. You're putting together two ideas and forming something new.

                     Another way of thinking about it is people often worry about robotics taking away jobs and that's one order of magnitude separation, but what about the fact that we manufacture a lot of things in China because labor is cheap? Well, if robotics comes along and reduces the cost of labor, why are we even producing things in China anymore? Because then transportation becomes a much bigger part of the challenge. So why not bring all that production back to the United States or Ireland or other parts of the world?

                     What we're really trying to do is we're looking for those little things that other people are talking about and then we connect them in interesting ways and it gives us insights that we wouldn't have otherwise had if we try to follow that trend directly at the single line.

Tom:            This is fascinating, so you crunch data, you watch trends, you have all sorts of resources. Can you tell us what the trendscape, if you will, what it looked like as the world -- we're just beginning to come to grips with the meaning of the term "pandemic". What sorts of behaviors peculiar to such a crisis have you observed?

Jack:             Yeah. What I'm seeing is some trends are accelerating, some trends are decelerating, and some trends are being disrupted. An example of a trend that's being accelerated, well, we were already moving to online purchases of foods and other goods, but if you look at the month before the pandemic hit, only about 5% of Americans were purchasing their food online. A month or two later, 40% of people had tried purchasing food online. When it comes to things like online purchases, it's a huge barrier to get people to try that for the very first time. It's pretty easy to get them to try it again if they have a good experience. And so we actually just compressed five to ten years of growth in online food purchases into two months and that's something that's going to have a long-term impact. It changes the dynamics of where people purchase food. Of those purchases, nearly 50% of those people were purchasing online for the first time, and of those, Walmart captured about 60% of that opportunity. There are really interesting dynamics that are happening because of that and it's shifting the landscape.

                     If we look at food purchases before the pandemic, most people were beginning to eat food outside of the home, more than half of food purchases, but of course, after the pandemic, almost everybody's eating their food at home. This is a trend that has a potential of staying power and it shifts the direction that things were going and has moved them backwards to a different place. This is a trend that's going to have a long-term staying power because of the economic implications of the pandemic as well. Coming out of this, people aren't going to have as much disposable income, they're more likely to go back to basics, and this is going to have ripple effects through production, how we consume food, nutrition, and how we engage with food and culture as well.

Tom:            Let me pick up on that term "long-term consequences" because they're so fascinating to try to contemplate right now not only economic, not only social, but also mental and psychological. They're all linked to the myriad of changes that are being forced upon us by this outbreak. Do you see anything there of consequence?

Jack:             Yes. Well, it seems like every two weeks, there's a new sort of psychological aspect to this conversation. During the first couple of weeks, I was talking to people about panic buying and retail therapy, and then I started talking about are there food shortages happening, and then we were talking about food production squeezes. Now, we're beginning to look forward and say what are the longer term implications to our food supply and how we produce food that are going to come out of this, and so there are definitely consequences.

                     How people think about food, well, when you look at what people are purchasing, there's this trend back to basics. People are looking for foods that create comfort. Before the pandemic, big brands, big food was considered a bad thing. People were looking for small niche startups, things like that that were interesting and cool. Now, all of a sudden, the fact that you're buying brands that you were buying 20 years ago or when you were a child is bringing comfort to people, and so that's changing how they're thinking about the food brands that they buy.

Tom:            It's still very early in this crisis to be able to make definitive statements about what I'm about to ask, Jack, but I wonder if at this stage, you are already able to see what sorts of consequences are in store for Generation Z.

Jack:             I think people haven't quite wrapped their minds around the fact that this is the biggest economic impact since the Great Depression. Obviously, the Great Depression marked an entire generation of people who even today, their purchases and spending patterns are influenced by what happened to them back in the 1930s and early '40s. I don’t think most people grasp the fact that many young people today are going to have just as much of an impact on how they view the world.

                     For students who are at universities and are graduating this fall, but also for the next five or ten years, they're going to be entering the worst economic climate since the Depression in trying to find jobs. People were already struggling a little bit -- younger individuals -- to find jobs who've just been out of college, and so that's going to be dramatically more challenging for them. You have to remember that the income that you have in your first five or so years out of college really determines how much income you're going to have when you're retiring, so the impact on their financial well-being will reverberate through their entire lives.

Tom:            Okay. Let's turn to how COVID-19 is revealing some issues in the ways we get the right food to the right people at the right price. What have these disruptions shown us about our food systems?

Jack:             Well, I think they've definitely shown that there are some vulnerabilities in the way that we've been producing food. Historically, there has been an emphasis on the efficiency of our food supply and for really good reasons. If you go back 50 years, about a third of all the people in the world went to bed hungry every night. By 2020, only about 12% of the people on the planet were going to bed hungry, so efficiency has done an amazing job of raising people out of poverty and improving health and nutrition. On the other hand, that consolidation of our food supply system has an impact when there's a disruption to it.

                     If you have only a handful of companies that are producing the livestock products in the country and one facility is shut down, that can impact 5% of all production and then that becomes a bottleneck for the entire food system. A repercussion of that is that with that shortage then consumers end up paying more for their food, so just a 5% disruption can raise prices for the consumer.

                     On the other side of that equation though, livestock producers have fewer places to send their animals, and so all of a sudden, they're getting paid less money for each head of cattle. Think about that. Consumers are paying more and the people producing the food are getting paid less, and so that sends terrible signals to our market. It encourages people who produce food to produce less just at a time when we actually need more. So we're going to have to figure out how to maintain the efficiency of our system, which we need, but to add to it a resilience that's currently lacking.

Tom:            Is this what you're talking about when you described friction in our food systems or is that something else?

Jack:             Yes, that's one example of friction in our food system. Another would be when workers get sick, that's one example, but also drivers for transportation. If they're sick and they're not able to move the food from one place to another, the people that are working in the retail space are also a risk point or pressure point for this food system. Ports are also a place where there could be pressure, export markets, import markets. Each of these, if there's just a little bit of impact of the pandemic on them, just 1% or 2% then that has a ripple effect because it creates a friction that disrupts that entire chain from the farmer in Indonesia to your dinner plate.

Tom:            You touched on this just a few minutes ago, but I'm wondering if you could elaborate on it, how the consumer mindset has been changed and where you think it's going in regards to food trends.

Jack:             Well, one important outcome from this is that consumers are paying far more attention to our food systems than they ever had. Something that I often talk about is how consumers have never cared more nor known less how their food is produced. Well, that was true before the pandemic. Now, all of a sudden, people do have a better sense of how their food is produced, and because they're paying attention to that, that means that they're likely to ask for changes in that food system, so the relationship of the consumer to the food supply has been forever changed.

Tom:            Well, as a result of the stay-at-home imperative of the pandemic, farmers have been forced to euthanize millions of hogs and chickens, give away tons of unwanted potatoes or even plow them under, pour out enough milk to fill a small lake. Restaurants have closed of course all over the country that's thrown the food industry into chaos. It has convulsed the very specialized supply chains that are struggling to adjust. In light of all that, what does the future of farming and food production hold?

Jack:             Well, a lot of that goes to the question of the resilience and having diversified food systems so that if you're a farmer, you can sell not only to the retail market, but you can go to grocery stores or directly to the consumer. One outcome from this is that there are likely to be more direct consumer opportunities for farmers. That's a good thing because that gives farmers more opportunity to make a little bit more money when they're doing it, but it also helps them to explain to the consumer so that they can better understand how that food is produced. That's going to be a good connection that's coming out of all of this, but part of it is just the complexity of our food supply.

                     When we talk about having to euthanize animals, and pork industry is a good example of that, what people forget is that the animals that are going to slaughter this week, well, those sows were impregnated 300 days ago, and so the decisions that are being made today are decisions that really were being made 300 days ago. We need to keep that in mind because producers today have to decide, "Do I start to have the sows have a new litter today? Will there be a market for them a year from now?" People have to really think far into the future and that's just part of the complexity of our food supply, is people were thinking about this a year ago and now, we're seeing the benefits of their preparation, and what changes will they make though in this uncertain environment.

Tom:            Jack, at this early stage, who do you see coming out of this thing as winners and as losers?

Jack:             Well, I think that certainly online purchases are going to be big winners in all of this. The big food brands are coming out of this in a better position. Restaurants and small businesses are going to be hammered and that's going to be really unfortunate, and so I think we need to figure out ways of helping to maintain those smaller businesses because in many ways, small businesses are the engine of growth and it's going to be really impacted by all of this. I think the largest impact though still comes back to the financial implications for people that are going through such a massive financial challenge and that's going to again reverberate for a long time to come.

Tom:            Well, Jack, this is all so fascinating. I'd like to suggest that we revisit in about six months. Six months seems like another time zone for all of us. It's just incredible to think about what could happen in six months given all that's happened in only a few.

Jack:             Yes. Thank you. I really appreciate the conversation.

Tom:            Also, I have to imagine that going through life as a futurist must be pretty fascinating.

Jack:             Well, it's been a lot of fun because I get to work with a variety of organizations, associations, startups, big food brands, and I like to tell people that my personal mission is to de-escalate the tension in our food system so that we can all go about our business of saving the planet in our own way. I'm always excited to see what different organizations are doing in terms of their part of making the system better.

Tom:            Futurist and Futurity CEO, Jack Bobo. Thank you so much, Jack.

Jack:             Thank you.

Click here to register for the Alltech ONE Virtual Experience

Cady Coleman has spent more than 170 days in outer space on various missions and truly knows what it means to be isolated. Despite our differences, she says we are all on a mission together during these times of change and uncertainty. In this episode, Cady explains the importance of diversity within teams and how seeing other people’s perspectives can help us work better together and get through difficult times.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Cady Coleman, hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio.

Tom:                          This is Tom Martin. Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us as we explore the challenges and opportunities facing the global food supply chain and speak with experts working to support a Planet of Plenty.

Mark:                          Hello and welcome to the Alltech ONE Virtual Experience. My name is Dr. Mark Lyons and I’m the president and CEO of Alltech. It's my great pleasure to welcome you to the first session of this event. For 35 years, ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference has been encouraging our attendees to think differently, to innovate in the face of disruption, and that's what we've done with our program this year: creating, for the first time, a virtual offering — something that we've been hoping to do for a number of years. At this time more than any other, these world-changing ideas, big-picture thinking and, more importantly, inspiration are perhaps what we all need a little bit of. So, we hope that these sessions are very useful for you, and we look forward to the interaction that we're going to have in our Q&A sessions. Fitting that this is our launch day, it seems most appropriate that our first keynote (speaker) has been to space and back.

Tom:                          Cady Coleman, chemist, two-time space shuttle astronaut and a pretty good flute player — we'll have more on that later — was aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule as part of a crew of three headed for the orbiting International Space Station on December 15, 2010.

Cady:                          It's an amazing ride. It's 8 and a half minutes to get to space. To me, as a person that just believes there's always more to define and explore in terms of ideas, in terms of horizons, in some ways, you know, even though I loved this ride, it's actually like the taxi to the place that we're really exploring, which was space.

Tom:                          In a virtual conversation with Alltech president and CEO Mark Lyons, Cady Coleman lifts us, in a time of so much turmoil, illness and uncertainty on our planet, to the unique and profound perspective of a perch looking down on Earth from 220 miles above.

Cady:                          To me, I used to think that space was someplace different — like, “I'm on Earth. I'm gonna go to space.” But actually arriving up there, it just made me realize that Earth and the place that we live is just bigger than we thought, and yet, it's home.

Tom:                          This is Cady’s story about experiencing half a year of living in weightlessness with five other people from very different countries and cultures.

Cady:                          People always feel kind of bad for us that it's small and terrible up in space. And I think they have this kind of image in mind. This is what the taxi ride looks like on the way up to space in the Russian Soyuz. So, I launched in and actually came back home to Russia for my stint up on the Space Station. And it is actually quite, quite tight. And even though it's only physically 8 and a half minutes to get there, to get to orbit, we actually spent, you know, hours and hours and hours practicing and getting ready and making sure we understand how to operate all the equipment in the Soyuz. So, it is small, but the Space Station itself is giant and huge.

Tom:                          How huge?

Cady:                          It's like 10 train cars all put together, but not just in a row; some are up, and then some are down, and some are sideways. And so, we have, really, these 10 train cars without the seats in them to be living in in that Space Station. We have really just a lot of room up there — privacy. And actually, we need all that room to keep all the equipment, to keep the experiments. I mean, storage is actually the biggest problem up there.

Tom:                          Okay. Let's back up just a bit. Cady mentioned practice. You don't just one day drop what you're doing and you board a rocket ship and escape Earth's gravity for almost a half-year aboard the Space Station.

Cady:                          So, I had some pretty exciting practice missions, so to speak. I got to live for 11 days underwater off the coast of Florida in the Aquarius Habitat. It's usually used for research, and it's also lent out to NASA for us to practice. Well, the other place that I got to do that is Antarctica, where I had a last-minute opportunity. I was the backup for this mission, and I had a last-minute opportunity to spend two and a half months in Antarctica. Six weeks of that was in a tent. There were four of us, two in each tent. And we were 200 miles from the South Pole. And I am not a camping girl. But where I wasn't camping girl, I sure am now. And that's the nice thing about these kind of jobs is they actually teach you all these things and how to stay safe — although I'm actually reminded of some of my lessons from Antarctica in terms of, you know, equipment and safety and, you know, for us to take your gloves off when you're outside as much as you want to.

                                    I mean, you’re wearing, you know, three layers of everything, and let’s say you have to go to the bathroom during the day, which is going to happen. You know, you’re just so tempted to take those gloves off, because it’d be so much easier — your zipper is Velcro, all those things — and (it was all about) learning that patience of just, “Slow is fast and I have more time than I think.”

Tom:                          Learning to survive in such unusual and uncomfortable conditions may have been the immediate goal, but for Cady, there was another benefit that would serve her well aboard the Space Station.

Cady:                          I’d say most of the lessons I learned were about people, about being a crew.

Tom:                          And that perspective about people learning to get along and cooperate, collaborate.

Cady:                          Forty different nations (are) working all together every day — it's an International Space Station — on work that can't be done anywhere else.

Tom:                          So, what's it like, day to day, living and working in zero gravity, where just the touch of a finger can send you literally flying across the entire Space Station?

Cady:                          It's like living the life of Peter Pan, and everything is different, and everything is a discovery, but we're still human. You know, we bring our own, you know, things that we love to do. We each have our own way of bringing that experience back home. And we each, as humans, look out at the Earth and get to think about what it means that we're in space and people are down on the Earth.

Tom:                          And Cady, displaying a photo of herself with her Space Station crewmates, tells us that this situation — six people from the U.S., Russia and Italy together in this fragile habitat, circling Earth — offers a lesson that can be lost in the demands, the routines and the realities of life.

Cady:                          Every single person in this picture, I guarantee you, feels like there's something about them that is theirs that they bring that other people either don't know, don't understand or aren't open to. And so, I think it's really important to think about that — especially now that we don't get to connect with each other as much as we used to, now that we're isolated to phone calls and Zoom meetings and things like that.

Tom:                          And here's where Cady’s story gets really interesting, bringing together the experience of a long-duration space mission with present-day conditions down below — a pandemic, racial injustice and the challenges of overcoming differences to work in collaboration.

Cady:                          (Here’s) a little bit about getting along as a crew, and I say this because I think all of us are, you know, in unusual circumstances right now in terms of isolation and it being, you know, smart to stay separated from friends and family sometimes, but also at work, at school. I mean, I think that all of us work in groups where we don't get to pick who we are working with.

Tom:                          During her presentation, Cady mentions a recent hit movie.

[Movie clip]

Tom:                          An important eye-opener for many, an affirmation of injustice for many others.

Cady:                          I show you this picture from the movie “Hidden Figures” because I think, first of all, if I was talking to you in person, I would ask who's seen this movie, and then I would implore those of you that didn't raise your hands to go and see it. I mean, first of all, it's a fabulous movie. It's fun; it's interesting. I think it's just really charming. And at the same time, it makes this really big point. I mean, this is Katherine Johnson. She has a doctorate in mathematics, and she did the calculations that figured out how we get people from the Earth to space and safely back home again to their families, and (she) did this for Gemini, for Mercury, for Apollo and for the space shuttle, and yet her work was not celebrated until very late in her life. I mean, look at this picture. Our movie is called “Hidden Figures”. And in every picture that I've seen of her in in real life, Katherine is wearing — she’s a woman of color wearing a dress of color and (is) typically in a work picture in a sea of white guys in skinny black ties. And so, there's — I mean, you can't miss her. Right? But we didn't see her. And it comes back to my point that all of us bring something that needs to come out on the table if we're going to solve the problems that are in front of us today as a nation, as a world, as a planet.

Tom:                          Cady herself has encountered discrimination as an obstacle to realizing her dream of space walking. The women of “Hidden Figures” encountered (this) and persevered despite the dual blows of racism and misogyny. Cady, who is white, never experienced the pain of being underestimated because of the color of her skin. For her, it had to do with stature and gender.

Cady:                          Myself, I was the smallest person to be part of the space-walking team up on the Space Station. And it was kind of a big thing because, for the space shuttle, we had small space suits and mediums and larges and extra larges. But for the Space Station, they couldn't afford to have all those sizes, for various reasons. And what that meant was the smaller people, like me — actually, all of them women — then did not fit into the suits that we had on the Space Station. And I was on that edge. I mean, I looked at the space suit and I knew that I had a job that I could do in that space suit. I knew that I brought things to that team that others didn't. And I cheerfully showed up to meetings that I wasn't invited to, not because people said, “Oh, I don't think we're going to ask Cady, we don’t like her,” or anything else. It was just that they looked at me and they just couldn't imagine that I should be part of that team — but I knew. And when it’s something as important as exploring space, it gives you that extra, like, you know, that extra courage to just say, “I know. I am showing up.”

Tom:                          Cady, now herself a role model for many young women, had one of her own: the first American woman to fly in space, astronaut Sally Ride.

Cady:                          She actually made all the difference in the world in that — my dad was an explorer. He lived under the ocean. He was in charge of the building one of those capsules where men lived under the ocean. He was a deep-sea diver, and exploration was really real to me growing up. I was born in 1960, and yet the fact that I could be one of those explorers never occurred to me until Sally Ride came to my college and gave a talk. And I just thought — you know, you see somebody that you can relate to — and I just thought, “Wow. Maybe I could try to do that.”

Tom:                          And try, she did. More than try. Cady Coleman has logged more than 4,300 hours in space. The mission to the International Space Station, where she supervised more than 100 experiments, was her last before retiring from the Astronaut Corps in 2016. She has since been an advocate of expanding the role of private companies within NASA. And the recent SpaceX Dragon launch, carrying a crew of two to the Space Station, is the most dramatic example yet of the success of those efforts.

[SpaceX launch]

Tom:                          After her own 159 days in Earth orbit, Cady Coleman returned from the Space Station with fresh perspectives on the human condition, gained from weeks on end cooped up with five other human beings. The only thing between them and the deadly vacuum of space? A one-tenth of 1-inch aluminum pressure hull of the orbiting Space Station. Under these conditions, you really gain a more complex understanding of your crewmates.

Cady:                          And so, realizing that everyone has those different perspectives, it’s another way to think about, you know, how we relate to each other. The fact that when we look down at the Earth — I mean, our Space Station is pretty close there. Because we’re upside down and right side up, we learned to think about things and see things differently.

Tom:                          Cady Coleman’s advice has particular resonance in these times of division and increasing difficulty to communicate with people who view life differently.

Cady:                          Try to bring that to the conversations that you have at work, at home. When you're trying to convince someone of something new that is unfamiliar to them, try to look at them from a different direction, and find out something for yourself about them that allows you to work more closely together.

Tom:                          Recently, as the spread of the coronavirus mushroomed into a pandemic, Cady reached back to her experiences as a member of a team on a mission to suggest that we're now all on a mission.

Cady:                          We have this advantage as space explorers that, you know, we're part of a mission. I mean, we have jackets, you know; we’re wearing space suits. And it's really clear to you that, you know, you've got a job to do, and a lot of people are helping you do it. And so, it's easy to think, “It's important for me to be ready, and all these actions, they're important.” But I think with COVID-19, the mission can be less tangible. And just the fact that you can stay in your house with your family and stay safe and not do some of the things you'd like to do, it doesn't feel like this like step forward, mastering the engine systems — and yet it is. It's a step toward the mission. I think what can help people is just identifying. Give it a name. You know, this is the mission: staying safe. And these are the things we're doing today. And by focusing on that mission — I mean, to me, it’s interesting that I think the whole world understands this word “mission” in a different way because of this pandemic.

Tom:                          There was a Q&A portion during Cady’s virtual presentation, and COVID-19 was on the mind of Alltech’s Mark Lyons.

Mark:                          I think, through COVID-19, we're all hoping that there's some positive, there's some kind of silver lining, something that we're going to gain in terms of perspective. But I think there's also a sense that maybe we picked things up, we learned something, but then we maybe lose it. So, I wonder, you know, through your experiences, you know, having that new perspective, how do you make sure that what you learn, you can retain, and what do you think you did learn from that time in space?

Cady:                          Wow. You know, I was going to say that, you know, I see a lot positive happening. You know, there's sort of this, I call it, “activation energy” or some barrier to change, to doing something differently, and yet, you know, something helps you over that barrier, and in this case, the need during COVID-19 for people to solve all sorts of problems together, it's just there — and I see this. I see it on the internet. I see it in the news. Different people coming together, seeing something that they can do together and doing it. You know, asking each other, helping each other. Competitors making things together. I mean, it's so hopeful. You know, in the case of Alltech, I know you think so much about the planet and how your work is, you know, good for sustainability, for the planet, and people realize that's even more imperative now that, suddenly, the food chain is more real to all of us.

Tom:                          Now, about that flute…

[Music playing]

Tom:                          Cady is a member of the astronaut group, Bandella, performing here at the Folk Alliance Conference in 2015. At one event, the band had been invited onstage with Ireland's legendary Chieftains.

Cady:                          When I was at NASA, Paddy Moloney, who's the leader of the Chieftains, his son was an intern at NASA. And he actually stayed with a family that was kind of just a — they were just the people that were so good at gathering. I mean, (they) gathered people like me: all these people that love to play (music) but don't really play together. And it was a group of like 18 of us that would play some form of Celtic music, and then we ended up in small groups. And so, I knew Padraig, Paddy’s son, from my days there playing music. And when it came to going to the Space Station, one of the things I thought about was, you know, how do I bring people with me, and what's important to me, if I get to bring a few things, what's important to bring? And I really loved the spirit of Irish music. And I actually had decided I would learn how to play the Irish flute. Now, this doesn't mean that I knew how to play the Irish flute or that I, even though I carried it around with me on the road, that I learned enough. But I was inspired to go through Padraig to Paddy and to ask if I could bring some flutes with me to space. And by that time, actually, I knew the whole band. When they would come to town, we would go. And our astronaut band would get to be their guests, coming out on stage at the end, or they would kindly play along quite a bit.

                                    Anyway. So, I knew them, and Matt Malloy sent this flute that is like, I think, a treasure of Ireland. It’s an E flat Irish flute and just this beautiful instrument. A little bit smaller, for somebody like me, with small hands. And Paddy sent a tin whistle, and I brought them up to space. I brought a couple flutes. Every flute has its own little T-shirt that it was wrapped in so the pieces wouldn’t float away. And it just gave me really great pleasure to be up in that cupula looking out over the world and playing music. It kind of brings me into a little place that’s just mine. And it’s the same place where I come when I’m down here on the Earth, but then I got to go that place in space and look out at the world and just kind of, I don’t know, just feel a little more settled.

Tom:                          It would not be Cady’s only orbit-to-Earth performance with a legendary artist; there was another duet with the flute of the legendary Jethro Tull.

Cady:                          Tonight, Ian Anderson and I would like to honor Yuri Gagarin for his brave journey 50 years ago, and we would like to celebrate the role that humans play in the exploration of our universe, past, present and future, by sharing some music between Earth and space.

[Music playing]

Tom:                          Again, Mark Lyons.

Mark:                          You know, one of the questions we keep getting, obviously, given your background and our present time of social distancing and isolation is: Given the experience you had, of course, in the tent in Antarctica, under the ocean and in the Space Station, how do people respond? You know, what ways should we think about this isolation? You had, you know, professional, obviously, the best training in the world preparing for that. For a lot of us, we've been shutting doors all of a sudden. So, are there any tips that you might share with the audience?

Cady:                          You know, some of them are, you know, kind of like family tips where, you know, I look at — and you say, “Well, you got professional help.” It's surprisingly not as much as you might think, you know. We kind of have to put those things together for ourselves. But you know, when there's some behavior that is causing strife or some situation, (the best thing to do) is to think, sort of, further than the situation. It's almost like — I think back to when our kid was little and there'd be some, you know, bad behavior after picking up from school in the first few weeks of school. And you know, what I learned about — and I actually had somebody, you know, to help me talk through some of these things, because we commuted, but anyways. But you know, picking him up from school — I mean, this is a kid that’s, like, worked really hard all day long to hold it together, and then there he is with the people that he loves and you just lose it, right? And don't behave as well. And so, do you deal with the behavior, or do you think about what the reason is? And I think it has some applications to our time now.

                                    You know, I found, in our family, we're all kind of a little grumpy when it got to, like, dinner. First of all, we're hungry. And second, you know, we have three adults who are all working full-time from the same house, and suddenly it’s 6 o’clock, and who was in charge of figuring out what to eat? And so, you know, we ended up, you know, coming up with a little bit more of a system and actually acknowledging like, “Hey, everybody, you know, I thought I —” You just feel like you're the only one working, when actually, all of us are working really hard. So, recognizing the behaviors and then realizing that there's probably some, you know, there's some things behind them.

                                    And the hardest thing that we don't actually have to wrestle with much in space, I don't think, is that we know (that), eventually, we're coming home. I mean, it's pretty finite. I mean, I was up there for 6 months, and you know, the mission was extended by 2 weeks, which I was incredibly thrilled about, but I mean, it's still finite. Whereas with COVID-19, there's a lot of uncertainties — and uncertainties about finances, about dreams, about what you're going to be able to do next. And I guess really just owning that uncertainty, I think, is really helpful — realizing that it's hard, and don't expect it to be easy, and just acknowledge you're working through hard things.

[Music playing]

Tom:                          Astronaut Cady Coleman with Alltech president and CEO Mark Lyons, launching the 2020 Alltech ONE Virtual Experience. If you're interested in seeing Cady’s view from space, and to watch more video content from other thought leaders from around the world, register at one.alltech.com. I'm Tom Martin, and this has been Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Thank you for joining us, and be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts — and leave a review if you’ve enjoyed this episode.

Click here to register for the Alltech ONE Virtual Experience

Italy was one of the first countries hit by COVID-19, and after an eight-week lockdown, the next phase of reopening businesses has begun. Massimo Zanin of Veronesi, a major Italian animal feed company, details how Veronesi was able to safely help maintain the food supply chain throughout the lockdown and what he is hoping will happen for his country and the agriculture sector in general beyond the pandemic.

This episode is part of a special AgFuture series on the impact of COVID-19 on the food supply chain. Join us to hear how those on the frontlines of the global pandemic are working to overcome adversity and feed the world.

The following is an edited transcript of Michelle Michael's interview with Massimo Zanin. Click below to hear the full audio.

Michelle:       Hello! I'm Michelle Michael. In this special series of AgFuture, we're talking with those working along the food supply chain about the impact of COVID-19. My guest today is Mr. Massimo Zanin. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Massimo:       Good morning! Thank you for inviting me.

Michelle:       And I guess it would be good afternoon to you; you're in the northeast part of Italy, right? Near to Venice?

Massimo:       Yes, close to Venice, about one hour by car from Venice. Verona is the name of the city where we are based.

Michelle:       Italy was hit quite hard by the coronavirus pandemic, but you're starting to see a glimmer of hope, I think, right? What's life like for you right now?

Massimo:       Well, personally, let's say that, now — we had these eight weeks (of) lockdown. That means that in the last eight weeks, the only things we were able to do was come from home to the office and from the office going home. The other thing was shopping, but not so often. That's all. The rest of the things were not allowed, really. I think what the Italians in general demonstrated in these last eight weeks was (that) they were able to follow the rules given by the government, so really, they stayed home for eight weeks, (which is) incredible for the Italians.

Michelle:       It is incredible. Are things now starting to open back up slowly, though?

Massimo:       Yes, we are starting to go out. Today, after eight weeks, we begin the so-called phase two. That means that more industries are going to start, to restart, to produce, so that means that around four and a half million people are going out every day from today. I think that we (will) begin to see a sort of light at the end of the tunnel and we hope, really, to see a better time in the next (few) weeks, and “a better time” means more freedom to go out — and also from an economic point of view, because we cannot forget that not only the industry but all the shops, all the small activities (that) are here now, (were) shut down, so really, we hope to see all these activities starting again, because it's important for our people and for the economy of Italy to start again.

Michelle:       Speaking of business, Massimo, you're with Veronesi, one of the biggest poultry, swine and rabbit integrators, and you have a feed mill there as well. On a very basic level, can you explain what that means? What does a poultry, swine and rabbit integrator do?

Massimo:       Well, as an integrator, we are involved in all the activities along the supply chain. That means producing feed. We are in the market of raw materials. We breed many, many different kinds of animals — chicken, poultry, but also cattle, pigs, rabbits and so on, and then we slaughter and we transform these meats into products that we sell in the supermarkets. That means that we are involved in the whole supply chain.

                        At Veronesi, I imagine that Veronesi is, nowadays, a company that employs directly almost 9,000 people, but if we go also to the people working for us, even if not directly employed (by us), we are talking around 15,000 people working for the group. It's one of the most important agribusiness groups in Italy, one of the biggest in Europe, (with) a consolidated turnover of over €3 billion, or US$3.3 billion. And because Veronesi was founded 62 years ago in 1958, I have to say that it started on the first of May, and a few (weeks) ago, we celebrated our 62nd anniversary.

It was founded by Apollinare Veronesi, our founder, but in 1958, he was already 47, so not exactly a young guy starting this new adventure after the Second World War. He was already married and was the father of five children when he saw that animal feed was a new, important sector for the growth of the country at that time. At that time, we have to imagine that, in Italy, animal breeding was not exactly what we see today. Every family had, at that time, a couple of pigs or ten chickens to feed, but what did the people give to the animals at that time? Probably the waste of their meals, their family meals, so Apollinare Veronesi saw how important it could be to improve the quality of the feed given to the animals, so he started in 1958 with the feed production, and ten years later, in 1968, he began his involvement in the poultry sector, breeding first chickens and then turkeys, importing the turkeys from the U.S., because turkeys were not present at all in Italy. Then, later on, in the '80s, he expanded his activity to pig breeding and slaughtering.

                        Over the years, I'd have to say that this remained as the main sector, but the activity has been integrated or completed via internal growth and also acquisitions. Nowadays, we are involved in many activities, but we can, let's say, organize all the activities in three large areas. We call them the three Fs: feed, farming and food. We farm thousands and thousands of animals, and we go down after slaughtering, after processing the meat, to the market with two main brands, which are AIA and Negroni. AIA is the brand we use for fresh — even if processed, but still fresh — meat products. AIA is a product sold mainly in Europe, North Africa and Europe. Negroni is our brand for salami, ham, these great, typical Italian products. Negroni products, you can find all over the world, from Japan to the U.S., so everywhere. Now, our consolidated turnover is €3 billion, and almost 15% of our turnover is export.

Michelle:       Being one of the largest and most important agricultural companies, what are you facing today because of COVID-19 in your business?

Massimo:       Well, I have to say that we have (had) to change completely our way of work. We were, let's say, lucky because agribusiness has been considered, personally (in Italy) but also in other counties, as an essential business. That means that we choose and we're in the position to continue to work, but obviously — you remember that Italy was the first country outside China to be hit by the COVID-19 epidemic. It's true that the first stages were in a small area south of Milan. This area is really small, but it's a high-intensity area for our sector. In this area, there are a lot of farms, mainly dairy farmers, also pigs, and many feed mills. One of our feed mills — we have seven feed mills around Italy, but one of them is close to this area, so our involvement, I have to say, was immediate.

                        I remember the first time they came (with news of) the so-called patient zero. The first case of (COVID-19) positivity found in Italy was on February 21. It was Friday evening, and the day after, we had our first talk. They called up the board of the executive committee to decide how to manage the situation. It was really a new situation for everyone, and it was really unexpected, a new situation for everybody. We were afraid about the health of our people because we knew that we could go on with the production, but on the other side, we wanted to be sure to let our people work in a safe and healthy position.

                        So, really, we worked a lot that week to define protocols together with the workers, together with the unions, because the unions were afraid about this new situation, so we worked together in order to be able to continue to work without any risks, and so far, we have done it, I have to say.

Michelle:       That's great news. What does that mean specifically? What precautions did workers have to take on the job so that they remain safe? What did that look like?

Massimo:       Of course, there are different situations in different factories. If we look to the slaughterhouse, we can imagine how many people are working in the slaughtering line, and so the first concern was to give more distance between one (person) to the other. So, we intervened in the number of people working at the same time in that slaughtering line. That means that we have to slow down the rate of the slaughtering. That means that we try to reduce the number of the people involved in every single shift in the slaughterhouse. On the other side, we built a special track to go in and to come out (of the building on). Of course, every one of the people working in this situation was equipped with masks, gloves and all the equipment needed in those situations. I have to say that after two months of work in this situation, we are really — I don't want to say it out loud, but everything went really well.

                        On the other side, if we look to the feed mills, the situation is completely different because, thanks to high investments in the last years in automation, in the feed mills, we have limited staff presence, so it's easier to manage them, to make them operate in a condition of safety. Also, the people working in the feed mills were equipped with masks and gloves. Also, in the feed mills, we try to reduce the number of people per shift because the big concern was, from the beginning, to avoid the risk to have a stock shortage, because in the event of (COVID-19) positivity, of course, we should put in quarantine all the people working together, so we reduced the number of people per shift in the feed mills. Also, in the feed mills, I have to say there's (been) no problem until today.

                        Also, the truck drivers, looking to the truck drivers, they were the first figures involved in the program because in Italy, there was the so-called red area, the first area, the small area south of Milan, and they had to go there to deliver the feed, so they were the first people involved in the emergency. Also, to them, we gave our procedures. We gave them masks and gloves needed to get in contact with the farmers. They were invited to follow all the safety rules of the group. I have to say that in the last eight weeks, it's (been) really difficult to enter a donation factory, but really, it was necessary.

Michelle:       We know the workers were dramatically impacted. What about the customers? Were the customers of the company affected as well?

Massimo:       Of course, our customers, which are the farmers, they were involved also in the confusion of the market, but first, in our behavior to the customers, the farmers, we tried to find different ways to maintain this kind of comfort. Really, we invented different ways (to stay connected), like more frequent calls to them.

                        Our first concern, also there, was to say to the sellers, to the consultants that would usually have contact with the farmers, to be more frequently than normal getting in contact with them. We invented many ways to make it under a hashtag. The hashtag is #veronesiconvoy, #veronesiwithyou. Under this hashtag, we prepared more frequent newsletters, personalized WhatsApp messages, corporate videos explaining to them what we were doing in order to maintain the same level of service, of quality of the product and of services. We were giving them video messages. Of course, our experts, our technicians, (since they were) not in the position to ever have physical or personal contact, they began to use these platforms — like WhatsApp video calls — to give, in a remote way, their suggestions, the advice that the farmers needed. So I have to say that our breeders, we know that our customers are really our greatest asset, so they cannot think that they've been left alone for even one minute, so Veronesi has to be always there together with the customers, the farmers.

Michelle:       As much as it seems impossible to prepare for a pandemic, do you think the agriculture sector could have done things differently? And on that note, what lessons can we learn from this in the way our food supply chain works?

Massimo:       To be prepared, to be really prepared for such a pandemic, I think, was impossible. The question is, probably, “What can we do to improve in order to be better prepared for it?” There is not only one answer, of course. If I look to the Italian market, we are, for example, a net importer of raw materials. So, even if we think (we should try) to be more prepared, we cannot change our way of (importing) the crops in Italy. We are trying to increase the quantity of raw materials to grow in Italy, but it's impossible. We are a small garden. We cannot be competitive with the production in many other countries, so we still remain a net importer. I have to say that even if we were not prepared for the pandemic, after the first few days, where we were all afraid about the risks of shortages of raw materials — both macro raw materials, grains and so on, but on the other side, also, of micro ingredients — after the first day, we had to say that everything has come in the right time.

                        What we need is a better dialogue between the producer of the products like milk, like animals, and the final market, the consumer market, because the problem, for example, for some sectors was where to sell the product that usually went to export, went to foreign countries. When the flights were stopped, of course — for example, the wonderful mozzarella di bufala, the buffalo-milk mozzarella, had no more market, or the part of the market (where it sold the most), which was the export market, was stopped, so we had a surplus of production. We probably need a better dialogue between the first part of the production and the transformation, processing and distribution. This is what we need. For the future, what I see is a better dialogue along the supply chain.

Michelle:       That certainly could hold a lot of positives. How long do you think the agricultural sector could feel the impact from COVID-19?

Massimo:       When we talk of the agriculture sector, we are talking of so many different products. Look to the wine. Look to the vegetables. Look to the tourists and so on. Look into our sector, the sector we are involved in, the meat sector and the dairy sector — meat because we process and sell meat products, and on the other side, the dairy sector, because we sell feed to the dairy farmers. Probably the impact will be, for Italy, relatively long.

                        I'm positive about the future. I'm for sure positive about the future, but I have to say that remember that the tourism, for Italy, represents 13% of our GDP. Imagine that only in the last two and a half months — that means the beginning of spring, Eastern time — we have, usually, in Italy, 80 million tourists present. If we consider that they eat usually twice a day, that means that we lost, in the last weeks, around 160 million meals. This means, of course, meat, cheese. It means processed products like ham. It means wine, too. What we lose with tourists, we cannot recover with the consumption of the Italians. That's why I think that we need time to go back to the normal situation, to the situation before the pandemic.

Michelle:       As every economy has struggled around the globe, when things are safe again, I'm sure you want those tourists back.

Massimo:       Well, sure. That's for sure. This new experience, the experience of the pandemic — which is a first for everyone, I think, in the world — tells us that we can't wait to do things. As Latins say, "Carpe diem." So, the message for all the people listening to us today is: don't wait. For the next year, plan to visit Italy. We need everyone's support, really. Here in Italy, you'll find culture, history, nature, people who know how to work with you and push you, and the best food in the world, so we'll wait for you.

Michelle:       What do you want consumers to know about you, about the food supply chain?

Massimo:       As I said before, our business, our activity, has been considered as essential. I think that, really, they gave us the awareness of how important we are for the entire supply chain. We are important because we are preparing the food for the Italians. I say Italians because we are based in Italy, but it's the same for the industry working in the same sector in other countries. We were allowed to work because it was important to bring the food to the people staying home.

                        I remember, I served in the U.S. a few years ago on a farm, on a big farm, and we had shirts, and it was written on this shirt, "Our family is proud to feed your family." It is really important that our work or our job is to feed people. We are open to the people. We want to be transparent with people so that they know what we do and how we do it. It's really important. We invested, in the last year, a lot of money in animal welfare because we believe that better welfare breeds better animals and shows better results. As I said before, to work together with the supply chain, with all the players of our supply chain, is the only way, I think, we can really face the worst.

Michelle:       I want to go back to talk about empathy and a sense of family, a sense of community. Is there a stronger feeling now that we are all in this together, the agricultural supply chain, the consumers? Is there more of a connection now?

Massimo:       Well, a sense of family, I think, is, for us as Italians, at the top of our thoughts. We have seen in the last few weeks that everyone is facing the same problem, and probably the mistake we did (make) was to think, at the beginning, that the coronavirus was the Chinese (people's) problem; then we found it in Italy. Still, everyone thought to close Italy. Then, in a few days, we found it all over Europe, the U.S., South America, and all over the world, so we probably need to share more information. Sharing more information probably could have (been correlated to) less victims, so the method is, when we have difficulties like this, we need to face the difficulties together.

                        What we have seen in Italy is that we have a lot of volunteers helping families, helping other people living alone without having the possibility to go out or to go shopping. Really, what we noticed in the last few weeks is this kind of mutual help to other people, so at different levels — family level, private level, or at the highest level, between different countries. I think that we have to see all these things more in a community way.

Michelle:       Veronesi is a family company. Is that correct?

Massimo:       Yes, it is. It is. Still now, after 62 years, it's still a family company and was founded by Apollinare Veronesi, managed by the five sons after his death, and now we have the third generation in charge. Actually, the president is one representative of the third generation of Veronesis, but they're still now a family company. Yes, it is.

Michelle:       Alltech is also a family company, so we certainly have that in common. Mr. Massimo Zanin, thank you so much for joining us today. Stay safe. Stay well.

Massimo:       Thank you. Thank you so much, too.

Michelle:       For additional resources on COVID-19, visit alltech.com.

Click here for additional COVID-19 resources.

As businesses and schools began closing due to the spread of COVID-19, the market for liquid eggs dropped while the demand for shell eggs in grocery stores increased. Dr. Kristi Scott, veterinarian for ISE in Maryland, discusses this shift in the sales of various egg products and how it has affected the industry in North America.

This episode is part of a special AgFuture series on the impact of COVID-19 on the food supply chain. Join us to hear how those on the frontlines of the global pandemic are working to overcome adversity and feed the world.

The following is an edited transcript of Michelle Michael's interview with Dr. Kristi Scott. Click below to hear the full audio.

Michelle:       Hello! I'm Michelle Michael. In this special series of AgFuture, we're talking with those working along the food supply chain about the impact of COVID-19. My guest today is Dr. Kristi Scott, a veterinarian for ISE in Maryland. ISE is an integrated egg-laying and production facility. Kristi, thank you so much for joining us.

Kristi:              Thank you for having me.

Michelle:       Can you tell us a little about your role in the industry?

Kristi:              Yeah. I am the staff veterinarian for ISE America, and I'm in charge of the health and welfare for about six million birds located in South Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey. I also take care of the food-safety plants for six shell egg plants, as well as one liquid egg plant.

Michelle:       Can you elaborate for me a little bit on what that means? Explain your role in food safety.

Kristi:              Well, basically, I make sure that our plants are following the protocol that I've put in place for our safe quality food programs that we have for our customers to make sure that we have a good product that's going out, that's safe for consumers. We have different audits that we go through, not only from our customers but as well as third parties that come in and make sure that we are doing what we're supposed to be doing according to the Global Food Safety Standard that's out there for any kind of food product that is being produced, and I do that for all of our different plants.

Michelle:       Boy, in the middle of a pandemic, I can only imagine how your role has changed with COVID-19. How is your day-to-day job changing? What's the current state of things where you're located?

Kristi:              Well, I'm based out of South Carolina. At the beginning of this, we basically put a stop to all travel. Normally, I'd travel to all the different locations. I haven't been able to travel to the different locations and be there to help and see and do what needs to be done, so I've been working via email and text and phone calls and trying to help out where I can that way. The biggest difference has been that people turn to the veterinarian for more expertise in the science side of this and are asking questions that healthcare providers are trying to answer.

Michelle:       What are some of those specific questions that they're coming to you with at this time?

Kristi:              Well, how this coronavirus is different than the coronavirus that we see in the chicken houses that we vaccinate for, how this coronavirus is going to be spread from people to people, how can we keep our people safe, how are we going to be able to keep our plants running if we do get people sick, and how are we going to be able to disinfect our plants so that we can keep running, because the chickens don't care if we have sick people and don't have anybody to pack the eggs. They're still going to lay eggs.

Michelle:       Now, speaking of some of those plants, the layer industry in the U.S. has had to switch from breaker eggs to shell eggs to help adjust to restaurants closing and grocery stores booming. Before I ask you what that really means, I want to give our listeners just a little bit of basic bird information. When you go to the supermarket, most eggs are large eggs. There are medium eggs; those are the shell eggs. Also, you see cartons of eggs, egg whites, mixed eggs, etc. Those are from the breaker egg market. Is that a correct understanding of the two things?

Kristi:              Well, shell eggs — basically, breaker eggs come from shell eggs. We take shell eggs and take them to a specialized plant, where we break them open, take the juice out of the inside of the egg, and then plants will then take those eggs and put them in muffins or they'll put them in waffle mixes. What the biggest shift is, the places that utilize the liquid eggs are not running because people are not going to restaurants. People are not going to buy the convenience items as much. They're baking at home, so they're needing shell eggs. They're not needing liquid eggs that are already processed in a product.

                        Also, kids aren't in school and people aren't at work, so the liquid eggs that would have gone into those programs aren't being used. That whole market just stopped completely, and it's very hard to shift from taking eggs that were going into a liquid egg and then putting it into a shell, because some of those plants, the eggs come right out of the chicken house and go into an operation that cracks open the egg right away. There's no packing it in a carton. There's no putting it on a flat. There's nothing. It's right out of the chicken house into a liquid egg plant. That liquid egg now has no home, so that's one problem.

                        The other problem is that, sometimes, these plants were set up so that they were packing on flats that go into Denny's or IHOP or some of these other restaurants, and those restaurants are no longer serving, or if they are serving, there's very, very limited service and at a very reduced rate, so they don't have the packaging or the customer base or the ability to just take those eggs out of that flat and just go ahead and say, “Okay, now we're going to just go right into the grocery store.” It's a logistics nightmare to be able to get those eggs out of that direction and into the grocery store. It's not just flipping the switch and (saying), “Okay, here we go.”

Michelle:       Are breaker eggs and shell eggs processed the same? You talked about how you have this market for eggs, but restaurants are closed. Those breaker eggs can't simply just go to a store. Talk about that processing plant situation and why that's the case.

Kristi:              Well, breaker eggs and shell eggs are processed the same up to a point. They're all washed. They're all graded. Now, with shell eggs, they're graded based on external factors, like the shell has to be smooth and it has to be clean, to a certain extent. It has to not be cracked and it has to be a certain size. That's the kind of grading we do for shell eggs to go into a carton for the final consumer.

                        On a liquid egg plant, the eggs, after they're washed, we have people that are looking for the broken shells. They're looking to see if they're leaking outside of the shell, and then they're also looking to see if there are any internal problems that they want to pull out the egg, because we're just taking the juice out of those eggs. The process is similar in that they're washed, but from that point on, it's very different.

Michelle:       I wonder if you can talk to us about the effect on the actual birds. Do they have shorter life spans? Does this all change the amount of eggs they lay if you're trying to go from breaker eggs to shell eggs, for example?

Kristi:              No. The only difference might be the type of bird that we use. Some breaker markets, they're going to use a bird that lays a very big egg because they want the most juice out of the egg that they can get, especially if they're going right from the chicken house into the breaking plant, because they don't handle the eggs, so they're not going to be broken in any way. They're just going to go right in, be washed, be opened up and get all that juice out, whereas, when you have a shell egg market, eggs that are going into a grocery store, you want a certain percentage of large eggs and a small percentage of extra-large and maybe even a little tiny percentage of jumbo eggs and even a smaller percentage of medium eggs, because we still do have that market. We need a variety in there, and the shell has to be such that it needs to hold up to being packed into a carton and then handled again and taken into a grocery store, to where it'll be put on the shelf. People will open up that carton and see that the shells are still intact, and they want to take it home to their house.

Michelle:       Speaking of eggs in the stores, at supermarkets and grocery stores around the globe, I wonder if — and I know the panic-buying has died down somewhat at this point — but are grocery stores requesting more eggs now due to a higher demand because of this pandemic?

Kristi:              Yes, there's still higher demand, and depending on when you hit the grocery store, it's interesting. When they normally get their egg shipment, some companies are getting their same shipment that they've always been getting just because that's the amount they get, and so that's what they're getting. Some companies are set up that when they hit a certain level, that's when it orders automatically in their system, so they're having more and more ordered. It has to do with the different stores and how their ordering system is. It's more of a logistics matter.

                        I think that people are still buying a lot more eggs just because they're cooking at home. Kids are not back in school, so it's something easy somebody can make for breakfast. They are baking comfort foods at home, so they need eggs for baking. People are realizing how many things that they cook that they put eggs in and not even realizing, "Oh yeah, when we make this, we actually put eggs in this," so they're having to buy more eggs than they were in the past, when they were eating out more.

Michelle:       With that large demand for eggs right now, how does that impact producers in North America?

Kristi:              Well, it's interesting. The liquid egg market is basically zero. It's gone. With the shell egg market, it is starting to drop off just because the liquid egg producers and the producers that can change from packing eggs that went to the restaurants to go to the grocery stores are now starting to flood the market that way, so it's starting to come back down. There was a small jump in prices, but now, it's starting to come back down because it's starting to flood the market again.

Michelle:       I'm curious if you can explain how easy or how difficult it would be to change the bird to lay eggs for the table egg market, for example.

Kristi:              That's not something that you just go in there and say, "Hey, girls, we need to now just lay large eggs." You have to really plan that ahead of time. You have to feed her and set her up so that that's what you want to do. If you want all extra-large and jumbo eggs, because either that's what your market is or that's what you're doing for liquid egg, then you go in there and you give them light to stimulate lay or you go in there and you feed them based on that's what you're looking for.

                        When you want to change to just getting more of a large market — which is usually what people buy in the grocery store in our area, at least, is large — you have to think ahead and think about what kind of protein you want to feed her, when you want to give her light, how much light you want to give her, and changing that late in the lay is not something that you can just go in there and flip a switch. It's a lot harder than that.

Michelle:       It sounds like it's quite a process. This increased demand, does that impact pricing?

Kristi:              Yeah, and like I said, it was very short-lived. It was very short where there was a small jump in prices, but it wasn't a lot. We're very good (in the sense that) everybody rallies and gets eggs where they need to be. Eventually, it will really quickly level out, and there'll be plenty of eggs in the market. It'll be a flood again and the prices will be back down to a level that eggs are selling below what it costs us to make.

Michelle:       Is there a difference in nutritional value with a shell egg versus a breaker egg for humans?

Kristi:              No, ma'am.

Michelle:       I'm curious if you can talk about what you see as the potential long-term impact on the poultry industry because of this pandemic.

Kristi:              It's going to make people more aware of where their food comes, at least in the short-term. Unfortunately, people, I think, they forget very easily. They will forget that our teachers should be paid a million dollars and that our farmers are some of the most important people out there because we all need to be fed and that the truck drivers that get the food and the supplies to the grocery stores are very important.

                        They'll forget that sooner rather than later, but on the poultry industry, I think people will realize that, ultimately, we can't do this without the people that are working and are considered essential.

Michelle:       We so appreciate all of their efforts. Kristi, are there consumer trends in the midst of this pandemic that you find interesting or relevant?

Kristi:              I think it's interesting that people are baking and cooking comfort foods because it gives them a sense of normalcy.

Michelle:       We all like comfort foods. Kristi, you've been doing this for almost two decades. Have you ever seen anything like this in the industry? People talk about this pandemic, and the word we keep hearing over and over again is “unprecedented”. Is the impact in the industry also unprecedented and something that you've never really seen or felt before?

Kristi:              Never. I thought that the flu, the AI, that hit the industry in 2015 could never be topped, and this has definitely topped it, by far.

Michelle:       You talk about AI. That's avian influenza. Can you describe how that was different than what we're experiencing today in the industry?

Kristi:              I think (it was different) because people were more aware of what flu does to people, so people were more willing to accept that we needed to control it and we needed to get this tamped down; we needed to get this under control. It devastated the industry in the Midwest, definitely, and was an eye-opener for a lot of people on how to handle our biosecurity and how to keep things in check, how to monitor and how to look for things, but I think people were more willing to accept it and more willing to go with it because they understand flu and they understand, “We need to control this.”

                        When this coronavirus hit, I think it was so novel and so unique that it just was hard for everybody to wrap their head around. It was hard for everybody to figure out how to make this happen and how to make a normal life out of this and why we needed to do the things that we're doing. There are still people out there that are like, "Oh no, this isn't real. This is a hoax." Well, maybe not. We might need to keep figuring this out and getting this under control.

Michelle:       You mentioned biosecurity. Has it changed once again with COVID-19 as it did, as you mentioned, with avian influenza?

Kristi:              I think it made people realize that you can only control what is happening at the facility, and that's all biosecurity really is, is you can only control what is happening right there. I've had a lot of people say, "Well, I can't ask people to wear a mask even though they're standing shoulder to shoulder in this plant because they ride to work together." I said, “You've got to control what's happening at your facility. You can't control what happens outside your facility.” That's what biosecurity is about. That's what all this biosecurity, even with people, is about, is controlling what's happening at the facility and making sure that we keep animals safe as well as people safe.

Michelle:       A lot of people, you said, have been turning to you to ask you questions specifically about COVID-19. What are people feeling? What are their emotions? What's on their mind right now?

Kristi:              It's a very wide array. It's interesting to see how different people are reacting to this. I've gotten everything from "Oh my God, I've got the corona and I'm dying" to panic to sorrow to "This is a hoax and we all just need to get it and get over with it."

Michelle:       Well, we certainly hope that, around the globe, we return to whatever our new normal is going to be sooner rather than later. Kristi, take care of yourself. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Kristi:              Thank you for having me.

Michelle:       For additional resources on COVID-19, visit alltech.com.

Click here for additional COVID-19 resources.

While some pork processing plants have shut down temporarily, swine farmers are being forced into difficult circumstances. Dan Bussieres, swine nutritionist in Quebec, explains the challenges that come with farmers not being able to move their pigs to processing plants and shares what trends he is seeing within the industry.

This episode is part of a special AgFuture series on the impact of COVID -19 on the food supply chain. Join us to hear how those on the frontlines of the global pandemic are working to overcome adversity and feed the world.

The following is an edited transcript of Michelle Michael's interview with Dan Bussieres. Click below to hear the full audio.

Michelle:       Hello! I'm Michelle Michael. In this special series of AgFuture, we're talking with those working along the food supply chain about the impact of COVID-19. My guest today is Dan Bussieres from Quebec. Dan is a swine nutritionist who works with producers all over Canada. Dan, thanks so much for joining us today.

Dan:               You're welcome.

Michelle:       Can you tell us a little bit about your role in the industry? What does your day-to-day look like?

Dan:               I have been in the swine industry for 25 years now. I (have) run my own business, with some partners, since 2005. My role has been mostly swine nutrition support to producers in the swine industry in Canada. I'm also involved a lot in research with our customers and some of the research barns we look after in Canada. I'm also doing some consulting with a group in China for about three years now and (am) also doing some work with some groups in Japan over the last year.

                        My day-to-day is reformulating diets for customers, evaluating new feed programs, making sure we are on top of our nutrition program in terms of new research that we are doing and, also, with other people in the industry. We are involved a lot with the suppliers in conducting research programs with them, to be in contact with them as well, to understand the new technology available for us on the market.

                        Our focus has always been on cost as well, so we've been doing a lot of research, but at the end of the day, our focus has been to be cost-effective in our production with our customer. We also have a production company that raises pigs in Quebec. We produce about 250,000 or 200,000 pigs a year in Quebec. This is not a huge number based on the U.S. standard, but for Quebec production, it's a nice number. Like I said, we have some skin in the game, so we're not just consulting with our customers. We also raise pigs ourselves, which helps us to understand better the needs of our customers.

Michelle:       When it comes to consulting — particularly right now — on the nutrition side of things, how crucial is your role, especially right now, in the midst of this pandemic?

Dan:               I think things have been different over the last month and a half, with less traveling and more web meetings. Our role is to make sure our customers get served the way they were (being served) before (the pandemic). I think technology help us a lot to be effective on that side. On the nutrition side, I don't think there has been a lot of change — although, recently, we've had some issues with some supplies of ingredients, like DDGs, wheat, so some ingredient suppliers have been short due to some reduction in internal production, so we have to do a lot of reformation lately, and we'll talk about that a bit later, all the strategies around slowing down pigs, some of the packing plant issues that we have in Quebec and also in other parts of North Canada. I think it's more effective in answering your customer, which we'll always try to be because, sometimes, you need to introduce requests pretty quick, so that's our goal: to be effective, to answer our customers.

                        In terms of research, there's a bit of a challenge now to conduct research due to the fact that we may be short of labor, in some form, (and) access to feed meal for manufacturing diets. Also, our research diet has been a bit limited now, so we have to juggle around with some of the research projects that we have on the go, but so far, it's been not too bad.

Michelle:       I want to go back just a moment to what you just talked about. We've heard that some meat processing plants in Canada — especially a swine processing plant — needed to shut down for some time because workers contracted coronavirus. There are similar stories in the U.S. How is this impacting the industry in Canada right now?

Dan:               Well, in Quebec, that's probably our biggest concern right now: the fact that we have some packing capacity that has been reduced. The plant that shut down three weeks ago reopened last week, but with a much slower pace, which is about 4,000 pigs they killed last week versus 28,000 they normally kill. Two weeks prior to that, they were at zero. Today in Quebec, at the end of last week, we had about 90,000 to 100,000 pigs that were not killed over the last two to three weeks, which is about 20% to 25% of the normal killing that we have as a backup, so that's a bit of a concern for now.

                        For the next two to three weeks, we still can probably keep some pigs in the barn with doing different strategies, but we are very concerned about the fact that if we cannot ramp up killing production, that's going to become an issue. There's talk about humane euthanasia on pigs. Nobody wants to do that, but I know there's some government talks about that, that we should do it if we have to do it.

                        In the northern part of Canada, Ontario has been really good. The two plants in Ontario have been pretty much full-speed. They took the strategy to do some Saturday kills as well to keep up on production. Out west, if I look at Manitoba, Alberta, where there's a major plant, so far, it's been good. The COVID-19 situation over there is less of an issue versus Quebec. Quebec has been hit pretty bad with COVID-19 over the last couple of weeks, so that's a concern.

                        The other plants are also slowing down a bit. There are two plants that are accessed from workers from the Montreal area. Montreal is in bad shape for the COVID, so those workers cannot come to the plant anymore, so short labor means they cannot kill as much pigs as they used to. Overall, it's okay right now. It's under control, even though there are some pigs backing up, but we have to find a solution within the next two to three weeks. If not, there's going to be some problems here.

Michelle:       Dan, I want to break this down for a minute because, when you're confronted with a situation like this, what happens? Normally, a producer would feed for efficiency. How do you manage pigs when they are the right size to go to the processing plant but COVID delays that from happening? Do you have to slow the growth? If so, how do you do that? Is that safe?

Dan:               First of all, when we first heard about that plant closure three weeks ago, that's what we did right away. We set up a diet, what we call a “low energy maintenance” diet, which is a bulky diet that we can feed to our pigs that are ready to go to market. There are different ways you can do it. Do you want to slow down the pigs that are ready to go to market or do you want to slow down all the pigs in your system to avoid more pigs being ready to go to market within the next two to three weeks?

                        The first strategy for us was to slow down the pigs and late finishers so we don't get pigs that are too big, although the packing plants have opened the grid to ship heavier pigs, because that's what we have been doing over the last two to three weeks. We always ship the heavier pigs, so pigs that are heavier than normal. Feeding a bulky diet has been the first thing we put in place to try to limit the growth of those pigs without compromising health and welfare, because that's the other concern. If you limit growth by feed restriction or other means, you can impact the welfare of the pigs and have other issues, so our goal was to feed a lot of fiber, high-NDF and soluble fiber, in our diet to try to maintain the pigs' well-being without aiming to grow too fast.

                        There are a lot of strategies that can be put in place to slow down the pigs. This is probably the best one — although, over the last two to three weeks, like I mentioned, we have lower access to some of the high-fiber ingredients that we used to have, either from a cost perspective or just a supply perspective. It's okay, on paper, to set up those diets, but at the end of the day, you need to be able to access the ingredients that you want to get those diets going and also do it in a cost-effective manner. There's a little bit of a challenge around that right now. Like I said, we've been okay so far, but there's a limit to slow down the growth of the pigs. Also, there's a limit to adding more pigs to a barn. You need to empty the barn at (some) point because crowding and other things can become an issue.

Michelle:       Dan, when you talk about slowing the growth of pigs, are there things not to do?

Dan:               Yes. Like I said, we always have to keep in mind the well-being of the pigs and make sure that we do the right things with the pigs, even though we want to slow the growth of the pigs. One thing that we don't want to do is restrict water intake. Make sure that pigs still have access to water. Although we know that if we drop water intake, pigs' slow growth will happen, we don't want to do that. We don't want to create a situation where we get issues with the pigs' welfare, so no water restriction. You can get into salt poisoning as well if you lower water intake, so that's an issue. That's something we don't want to see.

                        Overcrowding to an extreme point — like I said, at (some) point, you have to realize that crowding is not a good thing and that (it) will affect not just the growth of the pigs but also the welfare of the pigs. We don't want that to happen. We want our industry to be well-seen by the public people, so although we have to take some action, we want to make it in the way that we treat our pigs okay as well, so overcrowding to the extreme point is not recommended. Also, people will say, “Drop the salt and it will reduce water intake and it will reduce the growth of the pigs,” but if you drop the chlorine level when you bring down salt in the diet, you can reduce also the feed intake and you can get some issues with the welfare of the pigs.

                        Increasing temperature and lowering ventilation — in Quebec right now, it's still a bit of winter. It's still cold, so doing those things is not that bad, but once you go to summertime, you don't want to create some issues with ventilation, air quality and, again, creating some issues with the well-being of the pigs.

                        Those couple of points should not be thought about. Look at the diet first. Talk with the nutritionist. Talk with your production people and try to find a way to achieve your goal without compromising the welfare of the pigs.

Michelle:       It seems producers are facing so much uncertainty at this time. How long can producers sustain operating this way? Is there an expiration date, so to speak, to where they won't be able to continue slowing the growth?

Dan:               Like I said, the first two to three weeks or four weeks, we're okay to manage it, but we are close to the end of that period. I was mentioning that if, in the next two to three weeks, we are not able to go back to a higher speed of killing pigs in Quebec, we're going to face a problem. That's why there's been talk about humane euthanasia of pigs. Nobody wants to go there, but there's a point where we're going to have to think about that. We already thought about it, but there's a point where we may have to go at it. The issue with the swine industry is that the time before you make a decision for those pigs go to market, we can slaughter sows, reduce breeding, reduce farrowing rates, but those things will have an impact in four to six months. People don't want to make a decision now that would impact throughput in four to six months, when, we think, things would be back to normal.

                        The chicken industry in Canada has cut down by 15%, but the chicken turnover is pretty quick. It's 30 to 35 days to produce a chicken, so by reducing hatching by 15% within the next four or five weeks, you're going to see some impact. Pigs are different, so it's tough to make a decision that will have an impact in four to six months, thinking that the situation would be back to normal — if we know what is normal at that time. That's another issue. People are just crossing their fingers, hoping for things to turn around quick and then just living with this situation for three to four weeks without having to kill pigs on the farm or doing some humane euthanasia at the plant.

Michelle:       Certainly, we all hope this is resolved and much, much better four to six months from now, but what's the worst-case scenario in four to six months? You talked about there being problems down the line, potentially. What are your thoughts?

Dan:               Well, if there's a problem, that's a tough situation, because we need to have a crystal ball to see what will happen in four to six months. If we knew, we can make the decision right now that will get some impact at that time and make us able to go through that situation, but we don't know what will be the situation in four to six months. That's our biggest challenge. That's a bit different than when you get hit by a disease like ASF, which we have some plants in Canada to act against that. We know that if ASF comes to Canada, there's going to probably be four to six months or a year when we won't be able to export pigs, something like that, so then we can make decisions based on those terms.

                        Today, with the COVID, it's much tougher to make decisions, because we hope and we all expect the situation to be back to normal within a couple of months from now. If that's not the case and we don't make a decision now, we're going to face some problems down the road. We've had some discussions last week with some producers in Canada and in the U.S. as well, and I think everybody's on the same page on that: they just wait and see. I know, in U.S., there's more sow liquidation happening right now, and I don't think it's only a matter of COVID; it's a matter of price, which is related to COVID, but the price is so bad that some people are making decisions to take down some sow numbers.

                        In Canada, we haven't seen that yet — although some smaller producers, we think, will take opportunity of the situation right now to quit the market. We have a lot of small farrow-to-finish independent farms in Quebec that don't have any people to take over. When the price is good, they keep going, because they certainly can make some money, but with the situation right now, (with) the price and the uncertainty about COVID and the future, we're going to see some liquidation of smaller farms in Quebec.

Michelle:       Dan, I want to go back to something you just said for our listeners who may not fully understand. You said ASF. That is African swine fever that you're referring to, I assume.

Dan:               Yeah.

Michelle:       Now, prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, there were other viruses, like African swine fever and others. Are producers still dealing with those issues and, now, COVID-19, on top of all of this?

Dan:               Well, like I said, we don't have African swine fever. In North America, it's not an issue. The one thing that is probably good about the situation right now is (that) the risk of getting African swine fever in the North American industry was coming, probably, from people traveling from Asia, bringing back some food products that could get into food chain or production chain. With the closure of the border and much less traveling, I think that's a safer world right now for us, in terms of protecting our industry from ASF.

                        With that being said, the risk is always there, but there's a difference. The ASF is the worst thing, because we have to shut down our exports in Canada, which is 70% of our big production. COVID, we think it's a temporary situation that will resolve. The only thing we don't know is how long it's going to take to go back to normal.

Michelle:       I want to talk about biosecurity. That's always been extremely important in swine production, but have you noticed any changes or extra precautions that you and your clients are taking during this pandemic?

Dan:               There are a couple of things that we are doing differently. It's mostly (related to) the protection of the people we work with in our business. As an essential lead business, we're still doing business on a daily basis. In terms of office staff, we try to reduce the traffic at the office, but at the production plants where we produce feed micro-premix, our staff is at full capacity. We try to minimize the contact between people.

The paperwork has been changed as well. The delivery on the farm has been done in order to reduce human contact and exchange of paper, so we put in place those extra safety procedures to make sure that we protect our people.

                        In some of the farms, we know that COVID is not — so far, we have no proof that COVID could be transmitted to livestock, so things didn't change that much on the farm virus committee to protect their pigs from the disease. We are more scared about PRRS and other diseases on the farm side. COVID doesn't affect pigs, but at the same time, we think the workers on farms have (taken) extra steps in protecting themselves between the workers — so washing their hands, wearing masks, things like that. Again, it's the same for everybody. If some people have some signs of COVID or things like that, they won't go to work.

                        The problem on the farm is, when you have a small farm with yourself and your wife and no employees, the risk of transmitting disease to other people is less, but at the same time, if you get sick, you still have to go on the farm and feed your pigs. For larger farms, it's less of an issue because there are more people, but at the same time, if you lose half of your working staff on the farm, it's tough to replace that.

                        So far, it's been okay. The countryside is more remote than the big city. In Quebec — Montreal has been, like I said, the biggest place for the COVID, but if you look at the backyard or the countryside, it's been not too bad so far. I haven't heard of any cases in terms of farm people, working people on farms, that have been affected. So far, it's been okay.

Michelle:       That's good news. When you talk about changing the way you feed pigs because you can't move the pigs, you do that through nutrition modification used to slow the growth. Are there behavioral issues or other issues in the barn that you, then, also have to manage?

Dan:               So far, it's been okay. Like I said, feeding the high-fiber, bulky diet will get the pigs satisfied and won't create, so far, any tail-biting or behavioral issues with the pigs. The issue we may face is when we start to crowd the pigs. If we have a barn where we do double stock and we cannot reduce crowding after a certain period of time, then the crowding may become an issue — (especially with) access to feed, access to water. The nutrition side, I'm not too worried about what we have done or what we are doing, unless we add some crowding and water issues in terms of access for the pigs.

                        There are other people that have looked at some other ways to reduce the growth of their pigs, like increasing the temperature in the barn. If you increase the temperature, feed intake will go down and you may slow down the growth of the pigs, but those types of strategies have to be really well-done because you can create some issues with the welfare of the pigs. Those things have to be done with some thought behind it. Like I said, the other thing that people can do to reduce feed intake is to add some calcium chloride to your feed. There's a good dataset that shows that calcium chloride will reduce feed intake, but you need to have between 2% and 4% of the product in the feed, which can reduce the feed intake of the pigs, but at the same time, because you are adding a lot of calcium along with the chloride, you need to adjust your calcium-to-phosphorus ratio.

                        All those strategies are short-term strategies. If we think about long-term strategies to slow down the growth of the pigs, none of those strategies are good over time. We're talking about the two-to-four-week strategy, and after that, like I said, if we have to keep slowing down the growth of the pigs, there's going to be some other stuff that needs to be done, which is reducing the throughput of the pigs in the farm. This means euthanasia of pigs or reducing the number of pigs by farrowing number, things like that, which takes time to be done.

Michelle:       Dan, as a nutritionist, have you ever faced anything like this in all the years you've been doing this job?

Dan:               Never. Never, for sure. We have, sometimes, some pigs that cannot be shipped to the plant because of holidays, short weeks, those types of things, but when we talk about a situation like this, today, where we don't know how long it's going to take, (no). The other thing is that we're starting to have some more cases in some of the plants that are still running. Those plants will be shut down or (will have to) reduce throughput by a lot. The one that reopened last week, it's good. There are still four, five, six other plants in Quebec that haven't been too much affected so far, but if there's an increase of COVID cases in those plants, they're going to be shut down or they're going to be reduced by more than half of the throughput.

                        There's a lot of uncertainty. Honestly, we go day by day and then we can bring something different, so we need to be able to adapt. Our pig producers are pretty resilient, but it's tough, and the price on top of that — everybody knows that the live price of the pigs was the lowest we've ever seen for a long time (before the pandemic), so we are losing money right now when we ship pigs to the plants. We keep those pigs for extra time in the barn, and we have to feed those pigs, so even though we feed them the low-energy diet, there's added cost to feed those pigs. When you put that all together, that's tough on the cash flow.

                        The biggest issue for producers is cash flow right now, because you don't ship your pigs or you get paid for the ones you ship like crap, so you lose money on every pig you ship. You don't ship all the pigs you have, and the pigs you keep in the barn, you have to feed those pigs, so there's cost added to those pigs. It's really not a fun situation. Cash-flow-wise, it's really tough for the producer. The government can come back with some programs to support that, which we don't have. We have some programs that can help on that aspect, but not to the extent of what we're living right now. A compensation program based on cost of production is one thing, but now, it's beyond that. Yeah, that's going to be tough for some people, and some people won't make it and will use that time to exit the production.

Michelle:       Producers, as you've mentioned, they're extremely hardworking individuals, very passionate about what they do. As you continue to consult, describe the emotion you're hearing from producers firsthand, if you could. What's the main thing you're hearing during this truly unprecedented, challenging time?

Dan:               Like I said, it's a bit different, because Quebec is in a different situation than the rest of our customers in Canada and even in China. I can come back (to discuss) China after, but if I talk about Quebec, like I said, other people are asking what will happen within the next two to three weeks. Everybody is pretty comfortable with where they are today, even though they know it's not easy, but if things don't go back to normal within the next two to three weeks, that's going to be tough. We're going to see, like I said, some people quitting production. We'll see some bankruptcy.

                        I think, on mental health, it's pretty hard as well, for some people. In Quebec, I think the situation is a bit different than the rest of Canada. (In) the rest of Canada, people are not seeing (the effects of the pandemic) except the price, which is not good — but the throughput of pigs to the plant, except (for) some people in Ontario that were shipping to Quebec, has not been too bad. Things are okay in that sense, although the price is something that's (affected) probably, well, everybody in Canada.

                        In China, COVID has been there before, so January and February were tough for them, but because of the ASF that has been going on in China for two years now, the price of pigs are really, really good, so everybody that still produces pigs makes a lot of money in China. Even though you lost 20% to 25% of your production, with the profit per pig that the market has been showing recently, they still make money. In China, the mindset is a bit different. Although they've been affected by ASF and then COVID, in terms of issues with labor and things like that — and there's an issue with moving pigs between provinces and things like that — the price has been so good that all of that has been compensated (for) by good prices and making some profit, which is a bit like the PED (virus) in 2013 in the U.S. The PED brought the price to a record level in 2014. I know some people lost money because they were affected by PED, but overall, the industry had a very good year because of the short supply of pigs at that time.

Michelle:       Dan, you mentioned some of the consulting and research that you do there in China. Can you tell us, are there lessons from China that we can use here?

Dan:               We can talk about ASF as a lesson — that we have to keep it away from us. The problem in Canada is that we are an export market, so ASF — to go to a country where you don't export versus (a country that does) export, I think the impact is much different. For us, it's a no-no. We don't want to get ASF in North America, that's for sure.

                        I think the Chinese — we want to keep working with that market. It's a very good export market for the meat packers in North America. We want China to go back where they were before. We hope not, but we like them to have short supplies of meat so we can export meats to those places. In terms of COVID, the other situation that happened with COVID in China is that the price of vitamins and amino acids has been raised since February to March due to the closure of some plants, due to short labor, due to the Chinese New Year that spanned for four weeks instead of two, so there was a lot of delay in production and shipping of goods from China to North America, so the price of amino acids and vitamins has been up. That's another side impact of the COVID from Asia that affects our cost of production.

                        When I looked at it last time, there was about two or three bucks per pig's increase in cost of production in terms of feed cost, due to the amino acid and vitamin price from January to March. So, within two months, you're adding $2 or $3 per pig on the feed cost because of that situation, (which) is out of your control. We rely on China. We hope they control their stuff to make sure that they don't create issues on our end, but we would like to think that China should have a short supply of meat so we can still export meat over there, because that's probably our biggest opportunity for the industry to keep making some money on the meat side.

                        The problem we have right now in the industry is that people don't have access to packing, don't have interest in the packing business or meat retail, just producer stuff for them, because the price of the live meat is really low — although the price of sending meat to Asia, Japan, China, for a packer is still pretty good.

Michelle:       As you mentioned, the next few weeks will determine so much. Our fingers are crossed for all of those resilient producers out there. Dan Bussieres from Quebec, stay safe and well. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Dan:               Thanks for your time.

Michelle:       For additional resources on COVID-19, visit alltech.com.

Click here for additional COVID-19 resources.

While the spread of COVID-19 continues to affect the food supply chain and consumer demands, how has aquaculture handled all the changes? Nick Lykiardopulo of Philosofish, located in Greece, shares challenges that are currently impacting the aquaculture industry and what he expects for the future of fish farming.

This episode is part of a special AgFuture series on the impact of COVID-19 on the food supply chain. Join us to hear how those on the frontlines of the global pandemic are working to overcome adversity and feed the world.

The following is an edited transcript of Michelle Michael's interview with Nick Lykiardopulo. Click below to hear the full audio.

Michelle:       Hello! I'm Michelle Michael. In this special series of AgFuture, we're talking with those working along the food supply chain about the impact of COVID-19. My guest today is Mr. Nick Lykiardopulo. His company, Philosofish, is a Greek business producing sea bass and bream. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Nick:               Hi! Thank you for having me in this interview.

Michelle:       We're going to talk about fish farming today. Where are you located, and what is your role in the aquaculture industry?

Nick:               I'm currently in Greece, but I actually live in Switzerland. I chose to sit out the lockdown in Greece partially to be closer to some elderly relatives and partially because of business interests, particularly aquaculture in Greece, which has been going through some challenging times during the crisis, and I wanted to be nearby. I'm an investor in a large aquaculture business in Greece.

Michelle:       From a personal standpoint — we'll get to the impact of COVID-19 on aquaculture in a minute — but from a personal standpoint, what's going on outside your door right now? What's life like for you?

Nick:               Well, specifically in Greece, Greece has been one of the success stories in terms of control of coronavirus. The government took very draconian and early steps to control social contract. As a result, even though Greece has a similar population to the state of New York, it's had less than 150 fatalities and less than 2,500 infected, confirmed infections.

                        In terms of the local society, everyone's been experiencing the same lockdown as everybody else in the world, but the sad headlines we've seen elsewhere have been absent from Greece. From my own point of view, I'm a man who catches ten-hour plane flights a week, and so it's had a big effect on my lifestyle — one which I've actually quite enjoyed, being in one place for a month and a half.

Michelle:       Let's go now to the impact of COVID-19 on your actual business. You talked about aquaculture being impacted greatly. Can you just give us the basics of what's going on in that world?

Nick:               Well, I think the two significant effects are, first of all, on demand, on our sales, largely because of the closure of restaurants, hotels, the cruise line industry, the disappearance of people traveling for holidays or on business. A big part of the demand for aquaculture is now closed, which has had an effect on the sales of a lot of aquaculture businesses who directed their product towards those channels. Obviously, there has been an increase in those that sell largely to supermarkets.

                        The second effect — and immediate effect, at any rate — has been on the logistics chains. Shipping movements have been difficult and complicated. Road transport and ferry transport has been affected. Drivers and products are subject to greater delays at borders and periods, sometimes, of quarantine. This has made distribution more difficult. On top of that, air freight has substantially reduced in terms of its capacity to carry seafood because there are so many less passenger flights, which also carry freight at the same time as the passengers.

Michelle:       From a fairly basic point of view, when we talk about the aquaculture industry, the types of fish farming that you're talking about, is there a certain type of fish that we're speaking of?

Nick:               Yes. The Mediterranean fish market is predominantly made up of sea bass and sea bream — or in the States, (they’re) usually referred to as branzino for sea bass and dorade for sea bream, branzino being more well-known to U.S. consumers, but there are other species which are being produced and developed in the Mediterranean.

                        It's a white fish, relatively small in terms of its volume compared to salmon — around 300,000 annual production, compared to slightly over two million tons of salmon.

Michelle:       But across the board, all those species are impacted at this time.

Nick:               Yes. From what I read and learn by joining webinars, a very similar experience has been had by the salmon industry, and I believe (it’s) the same with shellfish and other forms of aquaculture.

Michelle:       Without the ability to move fish at this time, can we discuss some of the global stresses and strains, some of the challenges facing fish farmers right now?

Nick:               Well, short-term, the challenges are that if you don't sell your fish, there are several knock-on effects in our business, in our business model. Mediterranean fish production is a two-year growth cycle, and so if, for a period — especially one that is about to go through the high-growth period of the year, the summer — we don't sell all of our fish, we are presented with a series of problems. First of all, we continue to feed our fish, which means that we have greater feed costs, (which puts) quite a lot of stress on our businesses' cash flows. As a result, probably most businesses reduce the level of their feeding to a non-optimal level, so they're not making the best use of their resources. At the same time, the fish grow to, in many cases, above the best ideal size for the market. At the same time, the cages become more crowded, increasing the risk of disease. Often, the licensing, regulatory and just physical restrictions mean that the fish can't be spread out more widely to alleviate those problems.

                        The next effect is that in not selling mature fish, new fry is not being stocked, which cannibalizes our ability to produce fish during the next two years, so for 2021 and 2022. Further on, that creates a logjam in our hatcheries, where the fry, which were waiting to be stocked, start to become too large and too overcrowded to remain in the hatcheries, so it has quite a considerable effect on our business model.

Michelle:       It sounds like a snowball effect, really. From the consumer point of view, should we be concerned that, down the line, there could be a shortage of fish in supermarkets?

Nick:               Well, I think there will be less production in the next year, but by necessity, fish farmers will stock less fish in their cages. They will seek, as best as they can, to sell cheaply their fish currently, but investment in future biomass will be reduced. I don't know if there'll be a shortage on the ground, but it's quite difficult to define what a shortage is in a protein market, because none of the fish that is produced is thrown away and all of it gets eaten, so demand pretty much equals supply. It's just that consumers may have to eat different products to the ones that they prefer in order to satisfy their dietary requirements.

Michelle:       When we talk about these disruptions, will that affect fish pricing in the future?

Nick:               Yes, I think it will reduce fish pricing in the short-term but increase it in the longer term, for a variety of reasons — firstly, because of less supply; secondly, because the cost of operating all businesses, not just aquaculture businesses, will become higher. Supermarkets, restaurants, hotels, cruise ships, transportation businesses will all have to live with a degree of social distancing for many years to come. This is not a problem which is going to be solved in the next two to three months, so the cost model for all aspects of society, public transport, the way we operate in our office spaces is going to become more expensive across the board.

                        That, inevitably, will filter through to the prices of whatever is being produced — in this case, fish. On the positive side, it seems likely that energy prices will go through a period of considerable reduction over supply of energy, and that will counteract some of the effects that I described.

Michelle:       Another potential positive, I suppose you could say, (is that) fish is known as a healthy diet option. Do you think, in the long-term, this crisis will make consumers more aware of the benefits of seafood?

Nick:               Very much so. We're seeing this as a very positive development for the industry. Firstly, there have been a number of academic and governmental comments about how vitamin D- and omega-3-rich diets improve the immune system and how it is one of the ways that people can prepare themselves better to fight off this or any future virus. Also, I believe that there is an increasing focus on healthy diet, partially because of an imposed more sedentary lifestyle, but partially because it is clear that obesity has been a major increased risk factor in terms of mortality and serious repercussions of the virus. These are not problems that can be solved in one or two months of changing one's diet, but actually, one's immune reaction can be improved in the very short term.

                        One's general well-being and the quality of one's diet takes longer to improve, but we believe that there'll be more focus on that as time moves on — and more focus on the traceability and the animal health aspects of producing food. I think it's fairly widely accepted that whatever the immediate causes of the current pandemic, elements of poor animal health have contributed to the start of the virus, and I believe that both governments and consumers will become increasingly focused on this.

Michelle:       Certainly, so many changes from this pandemic. I'm curious, from your point of view, if you think the aquaculture industry has ever faced a challenge as serious as the coronavirus, or is this unprecedented, just like the pandemic itself?

Nick:               Well, I'm not sure that the pandemic is unprecedented. It's certainly unprecedented in our lifetime, but I think if we look back in history, there have been many pandemics. If we take Spanish flu, which was only a hundred years ago, at that time, between 3% and 6% of the population is estimated to have died as a result of Spanish flu. The economic effects were very, very strongly felt — actually, particularly in the United States, and very differently from one city to another, depending on its reaction to the epidemic. Going back further, in the 14th century, there was a great famine which killed 30% to 50% of Europe's population, and the Black Death is estimated to have killed around 25% of the world's population, so it's not unprecedented in human history, just in our lifetime.

                        I think that as far as the aquaculture industry is concerned, it has faced some very big challenges from animal disease, from outbreaks of disease amongst the animals that we farm and, indeed, the effects of El Nino on the cost of feed and the availability of feed inputs, but it's certainly, in my understanding, the worst crisis that we've faced in terms of reduction of demand because, apart from the period of closure of restaurants, as I've said, we can expect a very substantial decline in world GDP, in the spending power of consumers and the ability of governments to fund projects because of lower taxation receipts.

                        The overall effect on the world economy and, therefore, the buying power of our customers is, I believe, unprecedented.

Michelle:       Restaurants are closed. Farmers now have to hold onto their fish longer. Does that change the way they operate — feeding, stocking, things like that?

Nick:               Yes. It means reduction in feed rates, reduction in stocking rates. It means a greater focus on new forms of sales. Quite a lot of home delivery is now taking place. Supermarkets are increasing their proportion of the food market in the absence of restaurants. Consumers are favoring products which have longer shelf life and greater ease of handling, not just canned and frozen foods, for reasons of easy cooking at home but also preferring to avoid the risk of fresh meat or fish or other products having been recently handled on the fish counter or the meat counter in the supermarket.

                        People's purchasing habits are changing, and the focus of the industry will be increasingly on easy-to-cook, ready-to-eat products and elements of food safety. In the very short-term, though, people tend to reach for cheap staples: dry foods, rice, pasta, and those are the things — tinned tomatoes — which are sold out first in the supermarkets, but over a longer term, I think people will want protein with easy-to-eat and easy-to-store characteristics.

Michelle:       It's been said that crisis, at times, drives innovation. Do you see any positives coming from what's happening right now in the world?

Nick:               Yes. I think we will see, in our industry, a less fragmented industry, because it will be generally easier for the larger and better-capitalized businesses to survive. I think we will see a greater emphasis on production being close to consumers in the market and not being reliant on very long supply chains, which may be interrupted for one reason or another.

                        I think a focus on food safety will be a great opportunity for the industry. Countries will also focus on food security at times when imports, for one reason or another, become difficult. We have seen that China, for example, has had to dramatically eat into its strategic food reserves in order to avoid food shortages during this period and is now actively replacing that food, but I think it's unlikely that other countries will not learn the lesson of the potential of food shortages when supply chains are interrupted. I think all of that is an opportunity for the aquaculture industry to direct investment with considerable government support throughout the world and to develop new markets.

Michelle:       Nick, you're a recent investor in the Mediterranean industry, is that correct?

Nick:               Yes, that's correct, in the last five years.

Michelle:       How do you see your business developing in the next five years?

Nick:               Well, I think we see quite considerable opportunities for growth. We have a strong investor group who are committed to the food sector generally — and particularly to aquaculture.

                        We believe that the opportunity is there for aquaculture producers to follow — certainly the Mediterranean ones — to follow the model pursued by salmon and shrimp and other sectors of our industry and produce less and less round fish and more and more processed and ready-to-eat products, all of which requires considerable amounts of investment and a great deal more employment to items which will be much in need in much of Europe — and particularly in Greece — over the next few years.

Michelle:       And nobody knows, day to day, nobody knows a timeline. The pandemic really is driving the time, but how long might we expect the effects of the coronavirus pandemic to influence the aquaculture industry?

Nick:               Well, I think, because of the long growth period for fish, undoubtedly, for the next two to three years. The economic effects on GDP, disposable income, different travel habits, the way people take the holidays — I think we'll have a longer effect of at least five years. Restaurants will not be able to operate, for a long period of time, in the way that they have done in the past. Table density will be reduced. Health requirements will be much greater. Hotels will have to operate in a completely different way to the way they do now, which will increase costs, reduce the number of available bedrooms (and), therefore, the number of people eating meals. Cruise ships, for example, will have to operate, if they do, in a completely different way. All of those will have very long-term effects on the way we live our lives. I can see five years as being the minimum period that we will see the effect.

Michelle:       I'm curious if, in your eyes, you think this pandemic will impact the way consumers look at farmers. Are farmers more appreciated as the world's food supply is threatened at this time?

Nick:               Yes, I think they are. I'm not so sure how long consumers' memories last, but certainly at the moment, the lack of mobility for cheap labor, pickers, seasonal workers in many parts of the world — either mobility within the country or mobility across borders — has focused on the need for sustainable local farmers. I think that people appreciate those in the food supply chain, even down to those stocking shelves in supermarkets, as being key workers. A number of politicians I think quite rightly said that we will all look at the people who collect our trash and the people who stock our supermarket shelves in a different way following this crisis.

                        I just think that society has a relatively short memory. Ten years from now, people will be increasingly less careful about passing disease one from another, but in the short-term, I think this crisis will drive a great deal of change in the way we live our lives and the way people think about life. I'm in my 60s. I'm one of the first generations that has not faced the likelihood of imminent death at all during my working life, but my parents and grandparents all lived through very significant wars, outbreaks of disease, persecution on a global scale. We've lived a kind of charmed lifetime in which we haven't faced those risks. We're very saddened, certainly, in the developed world when people die at a young age or in accidents, whereas for many, many centuries — and, indeed, it is still in some parts of the world — the fragility of one's life is a daily worry for people. I think this will change people's psychology, certainly, for the next few years.

Michelle:       This virus certainly has changed all of us. Mr. Lykiardopulo, stay safe, stay well. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Nick:               Thank you for having me. Thanks a lot.

Michelle:       For additional resources on COVID-19, visit alltech.com.

Click here for additional COVID-19 resources.

Recently, there have been many stories of those extending compassion and stepping up to help those in need. Bill Gray shares how Gray Ridge Egg Farms donated 108,000 eggs to food banks, churches and other institutions in small communities and why they felt compelled to go the extra mile to give back.

This episode is part of a special AgFuture series on the impact of COVID-19 on the food supply chain. Join us to hear how those on the frontlines of the global pandemic are working to overcome adversity and feed the world.

Hosted by Michelle Michael

As lead video producer at Alltech, Michelle travels the globe for the company’s award-winning Planet of Plenty™ documentary series. Michelle spent a decade as a video producer/reporter in Germany, reporting from military hotspots at the height of the war on terrorism. The National Press Photographer's Association (NPPA) has twice recognized Michelle as their solo video journalist of the year. 

Co-produced by Brandon Whitworth

As the senior media production specialist at Alltech, Brandon co-produces the company’s award-winning Planet of Plenty™ documentary series. Brandon is a two-time Emmy Award winning television news photojournalist and three-time nominee. He has received several regional awards from the National Press Photographers Association for excellence in visual storytelling.

The following is an edited transcript of Michelle Michael's interview with Bill Gray. Click below to hear the full audio.

Michelle:       Hello! I'm Michelle Michael. In this special series of AgFuture, we're talking with those working along the food supply chain about the impact of COVID-19. My guest today is Bill Gray, a major player in Canada's egg industry. Bill, thank you so much for joining us today from Ontario — is that right?

Bill:                 That's right.

Michelle:       Your operation is one of the largest processors of farm-fresh eggs in Ontario. Tell us a little about yourself and Gray Ridge Egg Farms.

Bill:                 We started in the early '30s. It was started by my mother and father, (with) very small beginnings — from a local farm, then moving into Ridgetown — again, small beginnings, and we grew a little bit at the time. We were actually located with the egg-grading operation in Ridgetown for some 58 years, closing that in 1992.

Michelle:       A lot of family history then.

Bill:                 Definitely a family business, and I'm very proud to be a part of it.

Michelle:       How does your company work with egg farmers to provide eggs for Canadians?

Bill:                 We buy eggs from the farmers that are at arm's length. That's not through the Egg Farmers of Ontario or Egg Farmers of Canada. We've had many long-term suppliers — Mr. McKinley, who started with my father. The McKinley family, not the original Mr. McKinley, is an 84-year supplier. He started with that at that time, and we've had many, many more long-term suppliers, and we have new people as well.

                        In terms of working with Egg Farmers of Ontario, Egg Farmers of Canada, their position is to control the production and supply what we need in terms of weekly demand. They're doing a pretty good job. Sometimes, they run a little bit short, and in those cases, we do have some traditional import quota that we use to bring eggs in from the U.S., if and when needed, and only if and when needed. So, all in all, the mandate — and I was on the e-Commerce of Canada for 12 years, and their mandate is to supply Canadian eggs for the Canadian public.

Michelle:       Mr. Gray, times are tough in every industry right now. There's nothing "normal" about what's presently going on in the world, except that people will always need to eat, and now, more than ever, people have turned to eggs. Do you see or feel that increase, a higher demand, in this pandemic?

Bill:                 Oh, no question. In fact, our retail stores, in some cases, have been rationing — and that is not only in Ontario, but across Canada and, indeed, into the United States. We are, in fact, in the last week or so post-Easter, we are catching up to demand. On the other side, we also are in the further processing business, and that end of the business has slowed down considerably, as has our wholesale business that supplies restaurants, healthcare systems, hospitals, nursing homes, et cetera — but no, the demand is all on the retail side.

Michelle:       When we talk about that increase in demand, how much are we talking? What was the demand before COVID, and how has that changed numbers-wise?

Bill:                 Well, we're primarily retail, so we're finding it larger than some, perhaps, but we see growth on the retail side. Quite frankly, when we have been unable to fill orders, we probably were running (at) about 90% fill rate, which is actually pretty good compared to (others) across this country and our friends to the south.

Michelle:       So, then, how would you describe that in terms of consumer trends when it comes to buying eggs at this time?

Bill:                 Consumer trends, of course, with people staying at home, I think (they are making) more breakfasts, just simply more baking. I know my wife is doing an awful lot of baking. I understand the grocery stores are out of flour, so that does tell you something. Of course, with baking, eggs are one of the primary ingredients.

Michelle:       Mr. Gray, what message do you want to convey to people eating and buying eggs?

Bill:                 I may be a bit prejudiced, but eggs are a nutritious food, high in protein, with multiple uses and (are) one of the few foods that have achieved, year over year, per-capita growth. That's a privilege today, by the way, in the food industry.

Last but not least, (they are) reasonably priced and no surprise during difficult times, such as now. Over the years, when we're experiencing dips in the economy, the actual egg consumption goes up — and that's historic, by the way. Every dozen counts. When I see people on the street and they recognize me and they say, "Oh, I bought a dozen of your eggs," I say, "Thank you very much." We market a dozen at a time, and we're very appreciative of all those that have patronized our brand over these many, many years. That's why we're still here.

Michelle:       As a producer in the poultry industry, it's unique in the fact that you really can't get large eggs or extra-large eggs without the small and medium eggs that come at the beginning of the flock. Is that right?

Bill:                 That's correct.

Michelle:       What does that mean for you, the egg farmer — or the processing plants, for that matter?

Bill:                 Well, prior to the pandemic, we were actually marketing our large (and) extra-large eggs. The medium, we're going to the further processed market. With the smalls, we have a huge market in and around the GTA for three-egg breakfasts, thus (there is) a market for the smalls. Right now, we are marketing the medium eggs at retail, mainly in a 30-egg tray over-wrap, and that has been going over very well. We do market some in one-dozen cartons, but in the main, it's the 30-egg pack.

Michelle:       In the midst of this crisis, there are so many stories of good, of human compassion during this pandemic, and you're one of those great stories. Gray Ridge Egg Farms donated 108,000 eggs to small communities in need. Tell us more about this incredible act of kindness.

Bill:                 Well, we were happy to do that. We had eggs packaged for, as I mentioned, the three-egg breakfast trade, so the orders slowed, and those eggs were still well beneath the best-before date. In fact, they were only a few days old, so we decided, rather than switch gears, that we would simply donate those eggs not only to food banks (but) to churches, to institutions, to a variety of sources. We were able to solicit volunteer people to load a few cases of eggs in their cars or pickup trucks and drive them around. I think one particular chap went out as far as 50 kilometers. We were also very pleased to have our local MPP as one of the volunteers who was delivering. He went out quite a bit farther, and he said he was going up close to 50 miles, so it just all worked out very well. At the end of the day, it was very gratifying for us. Those smiles and those few little "thank-yous" certainly was a bit heartwarming, particularly in the condition or the situation that we're in now.

Michelle:       What inspired you to make that donation?

Bill:                 Well, the slowdown in the demand for the smalls was what inspired us, so we thought, rather than repackage that product, that we would simply send it out to people in need — and believe me, there are plenty of people in need, and we're happy to help out. We've been quite blessed ourselves, so we're happy to help others.

Michelle:       Mr. Gray, I want to go back just for a moment. You talked about there being plenty of people in need. Can you talk a little about that need?

Bill:                 Well, I'm not an expert on that. I just go by what you see on the streets, and there's certainly a lot of sadness, not only in the big cities, but also in the city where I live, which is London. So, we think it's our duty to help, to a certain extent, people who have fallen on hard times, and that's been our philosophy over the years. As I said, we do have other charities that we do throughout the year.

Michelle:       Can you talk about the response that you're getting from those communities in need, those that received the egg donations? How are they feeling?

Bill:                 I think they're doing okay. We don't have first-hand knowledge, but we think that it's working pretty well. People are now, after a few weeks of isolation — some voluntarily, some compulsory — are getting into a routine. Again, you don't see many cars on the streets, which lead back to people eating at homes, in their homes, and also, you see lineups at the grocery stores.

Michelle:       It's funny, during this time of social distancing, to feel this closeness in communities. Why is it so important to you to make this kind of donation at this particular time?

Bill:                 Well, it's something that we do not only at this time, but throughout the year. We have charities that we support, and we're happy to do this as a company that's been around Southwestern Ontario for a long period of time. In fact, we've been around here for 84 years, to be exact.

Michelle:       I assume it took some flexibility. What kind of flexibility did this require for folks in the supply chain to repackage and send these eggs to those in need?

Bill:                 None at all. They were packaged in 15-dozen boxes with six 30-egg trays, so none at all. The case is one cubic foot, so they would fit in a trunk or the backseat of somebody's car or in a pickup truck. People took four or five or some took ten cases and just simply spread them around, as they say, probably a 25-k or 30-k radius.

Michelle:       This story has reached many Canadians, and we hope to reach others globally. What advice or thoughts do you have for other groups wanting to donate in a similar fashion?

Bill:                 Well, donating, I feel, is a very personal situation. I don't tend to advise anyone on how or why they should donate. In our particular case, we believe that that was the right thing to do rather than repackage the eggs, as I mentioned, and this is not the end. We will be doing more.

Michelle:       Now, your company philosophy, your personal philosophy, of “keep growing, keep building and operate as if you'll go on forever” is a guiding principle. What does it mean to you, and how does it connect you, your family and the company with your community?

Bill:                 Well, our company has had the same philosophy all my lifetime, and before me. It was drilled into me. There's the old saying, “If you're standing still, you're going behind,” so we've been very active in not only upgrading to the latest of equipment but, also, in the last 40-plus years, we've been doing a lot of acquisitions, which has worked out very well for us, so we're not stopping. We have people of all ages in senior positions, and it's important to keep the people at all levels with a growing company. It's contagious.

Michelle:       Mr. Gray, do you feel also closer to the consumer during this pandemic?

Bill:                 I would say, even though there is no personal contact, per se, but we're certainly much closer to our customers, as they're requesting special deliveries to accommodate their increased demand. Our sales team has been working very closely with our customers, and we do have a lot of retail stores in Ontario, in Alberta and BC. We're involved in three provinces. All are doing well, and we've had actually some nice compliments from our customers.

Michelle:       Do you think, Mr. Gray, there will be any long-term concerns in the poultry industry because of this pandemic?

Bill:                 I can't foresee anything at the moment, no. Nothing we can't handle, I'll put it that way.

Michelle:       You don't see any long-term concerns at this point. What does that say about the resiliency of farmers?

Bill:                 Farmers are very resilient. They depend on the weather. They depend on market prices. You know the old saying: “If you didn't do it this year, well, look forward to next year.”

                        I think that's the case in the whole agriculture industry. It's a very sophisticated industry today, with tractors that run without people on them. I was just reading an article this morning, and technology has certainly worked its way into agriculture, and it will only continue.

Michelle:       We talk a lot about crisis driving innovation. How might there be a positive from this crisis?

Bill:                 Oh, I think there will always be a positive from a crisis of this sort. One thing, I believe, (is) that it gives good recognition to eggs. I noticed one — only one — of the ads on television, they were comparing eggs to toilet paper, (which is) not something we want to promote, but it was interesting that eggs were front and center, so I think that we will get very good press from what's transpired in the recent weeks. Farmers like their way of life, and farmers are happy people, and they like to please their consumers.

Michelle:       Biosecurity has always been important on the farm and in the egg-processing facility. How have those protocols changed?

Bill:                 Not much, actually. On our laying farms, we have a "shower in, shower out" rule for the four barns. That's the cage-free. For the caged barns, we have a complete change of clothes, plus handwashing on the way in and again on the way out. In the plants, we have washing when you go from one section of the plant to the other, handwashing. We have implemented — and have been for many years in the breaking plant — hairnets, uniforms, again, handwashing. We also have mats on the floor, disinfecting mats where you walk through, and we do provide special clothing, special shoes as well.

Michelle:       Yeah. I'm curious how this donation to those in need, how you describe your emotions.

Bill:                 Well, I think my emotions came from the "thank-yous" and just to see people; it was a pleasant get-together, and there were actually some videos taken. Frankly, it's just a heartwarming experience. We like to give back to our community. The community has been good to us, so why not?

Michelle:       Do you think, long-term, stories like this will change the way the consumer perceives agriculture — in a more positive light, in most cases?

Bill:                 I think so. We'll have to see what the future holds, but definitely, when people have the time, and many are not working in their office or working from home. I think that it takes a broader look. I know that we're looking at other aspects of the world as well. I find it an interesting time, albeit not the most pleasurable time, but there's always something good that comes from something not so good.

Michelle:       Bill Gray, a good neighbor and a stellar story of giving in the world of agriculture during this tough, tough time. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Bill:                 You're very welcome, and please stay well and keep safe.

Michelle:       For additional resources on COVID-19, visit alltech.com.

Click here for additional COVID-19 resources.

“It's impressive to watch how agriculture is responding and how resilient we are. I don't know of any farmer that has any type of giving-up mentality right now.”

Just as the U.S. dairy industry was beginning to find its stride, COVID-19 presented yet another threat to farmers. Yet, those on the frontlines of agriculture remain dedicated to sustaining the food supply. From his family farm in Modesto, California, fourth-generation dairy farmer Brian Fiscalini shares the realities of farming amid a pandemic and the optimism that drives him forward.

This episode is part of a special AgFuture series on the impact of COVID-19 on the food supply chain. Join us to hear how those on the frontlines of the global pandemic are working to overcome adversity and feed the world.

Hosted by Michelle Michael

As lead video producer at Alltech, Michelle travels the globe for the company’s award-winning Planet of Plenty™ documentary series. Michelle spent a decade as a video producer/reporter in Germany, reporting from military hotspots at the height of the war on terrorism. The National Press Photographer's Association (NPPA) has twice recognized Michelle as their solo video journalist of the year. 

Co-produced by Brandon Whitworth

As the senior media production specialist at Alltech, Brandon co-produces the company’s award-winning Planet of Plenty™ documentary series. Brandon is a two-time Emmy Award winning television news photojournalist and three-time nominee. He has received several regional awards from the National Press Photographers Association for excellence in visual storytelling.

The following is an edited transcript of Michelle Michael's interview with Brian Fiscalini. Click below to hear the full audio.

Michelle:       Hello! I'm Michelle Michael. In this special series of AgFuture, we're talking with those working along the food supply chain about the impact of COVID-19. My guest today is Brian Fiscalini, a fourth-generation dairy farmer in Modesto, California. Brian, thanks so much for joining us.

Brian:             You're welcome. Thanks for inviting me on.

Michelle:       Brian, we've met in person, and you have about a 540-acre farm, 2,800 dairy cows, a cheese plant on the farm itself. Give us just a brief description of your operation.

Brian:             Yeah, our dairy farm was started in 1914 by my great-grandfather. He started our farm with 12 Holstein cows, and we've continued to grow the operation over the years. We've attempted, with our best efforts, at trying some innovative technologies within the dairy industry. Today, our property spreads over about 540 acres. We milk 1,500 cows three times a day, and then we've got an additional 1,300 replacement heifers. Like you mentioned, we have our own on-site cheese business. It's a small, artisan, Kraft-style cheese company. Then, in the year 2009, we adopted the technology of a methane digester to convert our animal waste into electricity.

Michelle:       Now, I've been to your farm, and I know firsthand that you have a strong focus on sustainability, and that's the methane digester you just mentioned — but now we have a new topic to discuss, a not-so-happy topic: COVID-19. In California, Brian, what's happening in dairy and to you specifically?

Brian:             Yeah. As many people know, in the food industry, the landscape is comprised of two sectors: the retail business and the food-service business. As many of us know, the food-service (business), meaning the restaurants, catering companies, corporate lunchrooms and all of that — all that business has disappeared. While I think most consumers would be led to believe that we're making up all of that ground on the retail side, we're really not. There is a hole in consumption right now, and that is affecting the markets. The future milk prices are looking pretty poor right now. The beef price — which, when you're a dairy farmer, you're also exposed to the beef price for the animals that you sell or that you take to market — the beef price has also been dramatically reduced in the last two to three weeks, so our revenue stream is definitely going to be affected by this.

                        It's very frustrating. I take the pandemic that's going on right now very seriously, but it is frustrating — especially, I think, for dairy farmers, because we were starting to have a pretty good run after having four or five years of not such a great run. No one expected the timing of this. It's not great for a lot of industries.

Michelle:       Yeah. Brian, just a couple of months ago, the price of milk was actually heading toward a peak. Now, prices have really plunged. Describe why that's happening.

Brian:             I will do my best to describe why that's happening, not being a professional dairy economist. You know what? It's very interesting. I do get a lot of dairy newsletters and I try to stay on top of what's happening in the industry, and we don't have a supply problem. There's plenty of milk out there, so when you go into the grocery stores right now and you see that the shelves are not full of milk, I think that's also troubling. It's troubling to dairy farmers. It's troubling to grocery store owners and workers who want to be able to provide food to people that are trying to get it right now.

                        I think the price is fluctuating so much right now, mostly out of speculation. I have heard — and I'm not 100% sure how valid this is — but I have heard that where the supply chain is struggling right now are the other raw ingredients that go into the product: the cardboard boxes, the labels, the plastic bottles, all of those things that the supply chain wasn't ready for an increased demand of, and that appears to be more so why we're not able to keep the grocery store shelves stocked at the moment, versus having the most important raw ingredient, milk. That's not the problem right now. It appears to be all the other things.

Michelle:       If the demand isn't there, Brian, as a dairy farmer, you can't just turn off the cows. In short, is the dairy industry built to quickly deal with large changes in supply and demand? Is that what I'm hearing?

Brian:             I think that is an area right now where dairy farmers (are) — I don't want to use the word "scared," but concerned. We are concerned that if the supply is so much greater than the demand right now, we are not well-equipped to reduce the supply other than (by taking) extreme measures, meaning sending perfectly good dairy cows into the beef market. That's something that's heartbreaking for most dairy farmers; we've invested time and feed and care into all of these animals for many years, and to think that we may have to send those animals into a different market, that's devastating to our industry. It's something that I really hope and pray does not happen, but aside from that, if you have a really high-producing dairy cow right in the peak of her lactation, there are not a whole lot of ways you can turn that off. You can feed a different diet to slow the production of milk down, but then what I think a lot of farmers are worried about is if this is a 30 or 60-day problem, or a 90-day problem even, and the world does go back to some sort of new normal in 30, 60 or 90 days, that demand will come back, and if we have reduced or, in some cases, eliminated the supply, it's going to be a very interesting way to navigate how we were used to (doing) dairy farming.

Michelle:       Certainly, agriculture is trying to understand and react to what's happening in the world. We're seeing images of milk being dumped at farms across the United States. I wonder if you can explain a little bit about why that's happening, how the supply chain actually works, for people who may not fully understand that.

Brian:             Yeah. One thing to remember is we're in the middle of spring. There's a term that's been used in the dairy industry from even when my grandfather was dairy farming, and it's called the spring flush. What the spring flush means is that this is generally the time of the year where dairy farms are operating in their most efficient manner. Our milk production is higher at this point in the year than it generally is in any other time of the year. We're used to seeing a minor, maybe, oversupply right now, but with the other side of the economics equation being demand taking a hit, we're not ready for what's happening right now.

                        I also have seen images or videos of milk being dumped. I truly believe and I really do hope that this is a short-term problem and that the dairy industry can unite and come together. If we need to divert our product that we put our heart and soul into away from human consumption or into something else, I think that this is a time for dairy farmers to come together and get creative and do something there, because the last thing that we want to see are those images of perfectly good, healthy, nutritious milk going down the drain (so) that nobody can enjoy it.

                        We would much rather, as an industry, be able to donate that to people that are in need right now. Export markets are very tight right now, with a lot of borders being overly cautious — and with the right reasons to be cautious — but we don't have a lot of options right now. Normally, we could export products to countries that may have nutritional challenges or issues, and right now, it's very, very tight.

Michelle:       Can you explain why maybe it's not as simple as donating that milk to something like a food shelter?

Brian:             Yeah. All of these different industries, whether it's a food shelter or a community organization that helps people in need, they all have rules and they all have regulations. We've got our milk plants that make a variety of different products, like butter, yogurt, ice cream, and they're geared toward a specific retail customer — the packaging, the size, the shelf life. All of these things are geared toward those customers. In some cases, food banks aren't able — whether it be their rules, whatever it may be — they're not able to accept that product, and the rules for everything are changing right now. I don't even know if people have access to a food bank right now or if their access is limited because of what's going on right now. It's just a very, very interesting, very unique time that none of us will ever forget.

                        My children are out of school right now, and they're young enough that they're not completely understanding what's going on, but when this thing is over and we do go back to the new normal, I think it's going to be really interesting to see how we interact with each other and how we remember, during this time, what things were most important, and hopefully, we don't lose sight of that.

Michelle:       Yeah. Certainly, so much is changing right now and everybody's just trying to figure out a new way forward. I'm curious how your day-to-day on the farm has changed. Of course, you've mentioned your children are home. That's something that's probably entirely new. What are you doing differently on your farm?

Brian:             From an operational standpoint, not a whole lot has changed. We spoke a bit earlier about the need to milk our cows every day and feed them every day and care for them and do the normal care that we have to do for our cows. I think the thing that's changed the most in my day is — the word that I just used is "care". I like to believe that we've always cared really deeply about our people and our cows, but the face-to-face interactions with our employees right now, it feels really, really special. When I look into our employees' eyes right now, you can tell that there's a little bit of uncertainty there. I think that we're having conversations that you normally wouldn't have with your employees every single day.

                        I'm asking them how their family members are doing, which we do in passing maybe once a week or so, but now it's almost a daily routine, and I think that's really, really important because I'm connecting with my employees in a different way than I have in the past, and I think that that's a two-way street. I think they're also feeling that they're connecting with me in a way that maybe we haven't been able to do. We're still doing our jobs. We're still getting up at the same time. Our schedule hasn't changed, but I think that this is uniting the Fiscalini family — and when I say that, that extends to all the people that are responsible for making the products that we make and doing the farming activities that we're doing.

                        Yeah, it is a very wild time, and like I said, I really do hope that when we do find some sort of normal, that we don't forget the things that were able to get us through this time and the things that are the most important, like our family and our people.

                        In our case, our cows have always been important, but they have no clue what's going on right now. They're doing what they do 365 days a year. It's impressive to watch how agriculture is responding and how resilient we are. I don't know of any farmer that has got any type of giving-up mentality right now. If anything, it's, "Hey, we've got a job to do." I think people realize right now (that) the job that we are doing is one of the most important ones. Doctors and nurses are doing everything they can. Farmers are doing everything they can. I just think, while it is a wild time, I think it is somewhat sobering to see how people are coming together.

Michelle:       It's really interesting to think about social distancing bringing us closer together, but I think you're absolutely right. Being a dairyman, it's not easy. It seems the challenges of COVID-19, in some ways, farmers are prepared to deal with it. We're responding, but without the experience to do so. This is unprecedented. Is this what you would consider a crisis mode, or are we not there yet?

Brian:             I'm probably not the right person to speak to that. I don't like using the word "crisis". I think the dairy industry is very challenged, at a point. I think we're also optimistic that we know we can produce healthy food during any time period. I'd say we're definitely challenged, but I don't think we're alone. Many, many industries are challenged, and some are being affected even worse than we are, so I think what my hope and my true belief is that we are near the peak of this and that once it begins to level off and become a little bit more controllable, that I think people will get their confidence back into doing some of their regular activities. I don't think anyone's going to go back to "normal," but I think that if we can at least get people back to their regular work and healthy lifestyle and day-to-day routine, that we'll all be better off.

Michelle:       We can call it a new normal, I guess. Brian, you've mentioned that you have milk, you make milk, and you also use some of that milk for cheese. Does that put you in a different position, a better position, when you compare yourself to other dairies at this time?

Brian:             It potentially could. The demand for our cheese has also taken a pretty big hit because about half of our business, typically, is food service. We've seen our food service customers, and they haven't placed orders in a few weeks. Normally, we'd have 10 to 15 orders a week from our food service customers, so we've definitely seen the hit. The interesting part about our cheese business is that we do make aged cheeses, so if we did have to reduce the supply of milk that we send outside of our farm, not to our cheese company, we would be able to divert some of that back to our cheese business and maybe make some aged cheeses, let them sit there, and then put ourselves in a position to where, once those cheeses have been aged for a year or so, we have an opportunity to sell more product than we normally have.

                        I don't know. We're in a more flexible position. There's risk in that decision as well because the cheeses that I'm making today, it's kind of hard to find a customer that will commit to it a year from now right now, so we have to go out and we have to get those sales. I think we can do it. We're definitely ready for the challenge, if that's what we need to do, but I don't know too many dairy farmers that would say, "I feel like I'm in a really good position right now" — even ourselves, seeing that we do have a little bit more flexibility than the average dairy farmer.

Michelle:       We've talked a little bit about some of the short-term problems that could come from this pandemic in the industry. What do you see as potential long-term problems in the dairy industry because of this pandemic?

Brian:             I think that there will be long-term consequences or things that come of this. I think, in the dairy industry, we really need to work on our supply-and-demand management. I think that's something that the industry has needed to work on for a long time. Once milk prices get to a profitable place for most dairy farmers, it's inevitable. We oversupply the market, and if the demand isn't there, then we inevitably drop our prices. I think what will come of this is more product innovation and, hopefully, creating products that are more available during something like this. I don't know what those are. I can't really speak to what those products would be, but we've put ourselves in a position where we make four or five commodity products really, really well and very, very efficiently. However, there's a lot more market out there that we're not trying to tap into right now, so I do believe that innovation will come out of this.

                        I think the dairy industry will have challenges in the long-term if we decide that we're going to keep making 40-pound commodity blocks of cheese and the same old fluid milk in a plastic jug and unsalted butter. I think there are so many more opportunities, so many more products that we can make, even if it's an ingredient in another product. There are so many meals that you see where there are probably three or four dairy products that are ingredients in that. I think we need to continue to do that type of work so that we can protect our farms, our future and our overall sustainability. When I say sustainability, I don't just mean environmental; I mean just the ability to stay in business.

Michelle:       It's interesting to hear from you that you're looking at opportunity in this time. When you talk about innovation, I certainly see that as opportunity. From a consumer perspective, is there anything that we can do to support (the industry) at this time — drink milk, buy cheese, or is the solution that easy?

Brian:             I think that consumers can always help. I don't think that the solution is necessarily an easy one. I think we're already seeing — and we should be very grateful and thankful for what consumers are doing right now. By purchasing local dairy products, supporting your local farmers — if you've got a farmer in your neighborhood that bottles milk or that makes cheese on their farm, or ice cream or butter or yogurt, I think they would be very appreciative of your support, and there are so many options out there. I know I can speak for our company. I don't expect that people are only going to buy Fiscalini cheese for the rest of their life. There are so many great products that are made in this country.

                        I think people should open up their horizon a little bit, maybe try something that you haven't tried before, realize that there are some very nutritionally dense products that the dairy industry creates — and right now, that appears to be something that people are very focused on, is, "I may be laid off of work right now" or "I may not be able to go into my office, so I need to stretch my dollar a little more. I need to get as much nutritional value as I can," so instead of having a Gatorade, try a glass of milk. My family, we go through milk pretty quickly, but there are a lot of options out there. There's lactose-free. The dairy industry has products out there that I think can fit in every diet, but what I would say is definitely don't give up on your local farmers right now, who employ people in your community. Chances are, your kids go to school with the kids of somebody that is directly related to the dairy industry, whether they're a truck driver or a grocery store clerk. The dairy industry covers so many different areas of the economy. I think it's important to support farmers right now.

Michelle:       Absolutely. We appreciate what you do, Brian. Farmers in general really take a hit, and they're blamed a lot for pollution, et cetera. Do you think this pandemic will change the way consumers perceive the world of agriculture?

Brian:             Yeah. I think pollution is one of the things that is being talked about a lot right now, with so many cars not on the road and delivery trucks to restaurants not on the road. Maybe they're just going to grocery stores right now, but you're seeing a lot less traffic. You're seeing a lot less air pollution. I see, every now and then, people saying, "Oh, I haven't been able to see the mountains this clear in however long" or "I'm able to breathe a little more clearly now." I think what people should remember is that farming hasn't stopped, so all of the activities that we're doing that may have been incorrectly blamed for a large portion of air pollution or something like that, I think it's time for people maybe to look in the mirror a little bit and realize that farming is extremely important and vital to our existence, and maybe I can drive my car two or three times less in a week, because people are doing whatever they need to do right now in order to make ends meet.

Michelle:       Do you personally feel more appreciated now as a farmer than you did before all of this began?

Brian:             Yeah. We've gotten a lot of support, whether it be on our cheese company Instagram or Facebook page, whether it just be friends that I went to college with or people that I've crossed paths with who send you a text, and you haven't gotten a text from them in two or three years, and (they) just say, "Keep your head up. We appreciate what you're doing." It is nice to know that people do care, and I think we're learning that. (In) our lives previously, we were really, really good at filling up our schedules. We could fill up our schedules with all kinds of activities. We could have meetings, we could have food shows, we could have trade shows, all these different things. I think what we're coming to realize is that while those things are important, they're not as important as maybe we once believed that they were, so we're finding that we're receiving more comfort just from our friends, our friends and our family, than we thought we needed to do with all those other activities that we were doing.

Michelle:       Speaking of importance, you've mentioned your children. I know, in past conversations, you've expressed that you eventually want to pass the farm down to them one day. Will this pandemic change that, or do you still want them to be in the dairy business and take over the family farm? Is that still extremely important to you?

Brian:             Yes, that has not changed. It is extremely important to my wife and I that we create an opportunity for our children to be in the dairy business or in the agricultural business someday. The upbringing that I had, you can't replicate it. I think I got to work at a fairly young age. I was able to operate pretty large equipment at a young age. I was able to care for calves and cows at a younger age than most people are able to. While it instills a good work ethic, it also keeps you close to agriculture. I don't ever want to be so far removed, or for my children or their children to be so far removed, that we forget the importance of growing crops in the ground, converting those crops into really high-quality feed for our cows to eat, and then making excellent dairy products out of that milk. That goal and dream has not changed. I'm committed to dairy farming. I think, while there are challenges, I'm still optimistic that this is a long-term — this business has been in my family for over 105 years, so not only can we not turn the cows off, but it's near impossible to turn the passion off and the legacy for what we've been able to do.

Michelle:       We so appreciate your love for agriculture and what you do, and also, for the hard work that you put in every single day. Brian Fiscalini from Fiscalini Dairy, take care of yourself. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Brian:             Thanks, Michelle. Take care of you and your family as well.

Michelle:       For additional resources on COVID-19, visit alltech.com.

Click here for additional COVID-19 resources.