A Farm Reporter Who Discovered Half Her Interview Subjects Were Struggling With Depression

Natalina Sents [00:00:02] As the crow flies on the Vans Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:06] Nata Sense. Welcome to the podcast.

Natalina Sents [00:00:10] Thanks for having me on.

Vance Crowe [00:00:12] So you have a wonderful background. This is like Americana central of the country. Where are you located? Right now

Natalina Sents [00:00:20] I'm in my home office where I'm working most days. The Americana banner, I guess is my preparations for 4th of July. My grandma always did a big 4th of July and I'm hoping to carry on her tradition.

Vance Crowe [00:00:33] It's interesting because you look at something as simple as triangle flags that have stars and stripes on them and it immediately makes me feel like it's summertime in your space. And I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how people construct their backgrounds and something just as tiny as that little element in the background makes you be like, oh, it's summertime where Natalie is at.

Natalina Sents [00:00:55] Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Vance Crowe [00:00:58] So I was watching your Twitter feed the other day. You are one of the most interesting journalists that's out there for me. I find you to be credible, interesting and interested in the parts of agriculture that are probably the most important, but oftentimes the least flashy. So I, I saw you on Twitter and I was like, oh, I had to have Lina on and hear what she thinks about what's going on in the wider world of agriculture right now.

Natalina Sents [00:01:25] Well, thanks. I'm flattered. I, I am interested in what I'm writing about and I think that's important and makes my job easy to show up to every day.

Vance Crowe [00:01:35] So you work for Successful Farming magazine, but before you got there, the way that I heard about you was, I was out visiting a guy named Matt Schlager, who is a rice farmer out in California. He has a, a YouTube channel called Rice Farming tv. It's incredibly clever. It's very funny. It's got a bunch of kids elements in it. He's just a cool guy. He's a friend of mine and I went up there to visit him and he was like, Hey man, you just missed Na. She was just through here like the day before you got here because you had gone on some kind of a tour around the country to meet farmers. What was that all about?

Natalina Sents [00:02:11] Yeah, so right after college I took a little less traditional career path and I lived outta my car, my lime green Ford Fiesta for a year. And Matt was one of the great farmers that hosted me. He and his wife and his daughter were great hosts. They fed me, they let me catch on up on laundry there and they, they shared their farm story with me. So it was a wonderful experience and Matt and his family are great people.

Vance Crowe [00:02:37] You know, as I heard what the way Matt described your visit, it reminded me of like my experiences that had been mitigated through Peace Corps. Right? So I went to Africa and traveled around and they kind of set up the scenario for you and they're like, Hey, your village is over there. Go travel over there and get there. And people have this conception that if you go far away, those are the most interesting, exciting adventures. But when I heard about your adventure just sleeping outta your car, being a woman that just finished college, what in the world prompted you to do this? Like I I, I hate to use the word twice, Americana kind of road trip traveling around to see farmers.

Natalina Sents [00:03:17] Yeah, I, it was kind of a snowball of a lot of different experiences, you know, and with plenty of windshield time on the road trip to think about it, I had plenty time to kind of answer that question. But I think it starts with, I grew up with parents that encouraged me to think outside the box. You know, when I wanted to have a lemonade stand, I had a lemonade stand when I wanted to be a part of a fundraiser for a building in the community that my dad was a part of, they let me contribute my ideas and you know, pitch a, a carnival. I think I was in fifth grade and we like hosted a carnival to fundraise, you know, I don't even know how much it contributed to like the overall cause, but they believed in my crazy ideas and let a fifth grader believe they could have a carnival. So why can't a 20-year-old travel across the country and visit all 50 states and interview farmers? And then through college I was really active in the ag entrepreneurship initiative, which continued to kind of cultivate that way of thinking for me and thinking outside the box. I was supported by lots of other people who successfully thought out the box and been profitable or achieved their goals in their entrepreneurial pursuits. And they put me in touch with other people that thought outside that like, okay, you have to go get three internships and then your last one, you know, they should really love you and offer you a full-time job and if you don't get a full-time offer from your last internship, you're a failure.

Natalina Sents [00:04:49] You know, like that was kind of like the mainstream path. And then there was this group of people that were like willing to think about that a little bit differently. And I really kind of surrounded myself with that group of people. And so I felt really empowered by that group. And if I'm really honest with myself, I think it was also terrified to like sign on the dotted line for some corporate career. You know, all my friends were getting like company issued trucks and like, how are they gonna start contributing to their 401k and decorate their cubicle? And I'm like, oh, that's just like kind of made me cringe. Like, you just go there and then you're stuck for how long and like what's the next step after that? What if you have a dream and you know, do you just say goodbye to all of that if you, you know, have a corporate job? And now I understand a little bit more, you know, there's some give and take to them that like, joining corporate America doesn't necessarily mean you like sign your soul away to do nothing but like work on widgets all day. But I also,

Vance Crowe [00:05:55] There's definitely a cost. There's definitely

Natalina Sents [00:05:57] A cost

Vance Crowe [00:05:57] And it's a cost that you don't understand when you're getting involved in college. You're going through school and you're having these experiences and you're like, oh my gosh, I gotta get a job and I gotta make money and I gotta do this. And then when you do cross that chasm and you get into corporate America, you realize, hey, there are a lot of people that if they knew what this looked like when they got here, they might have made different choices before they funneled their way to this path.

Natalina Sents [00:06:22] Right, right. And I think you learned some things in college that you may be living, willing to live with for a while. Like, you know, many of us learned to live like we're broke because we are in college and you know, I knew I would be willing to live like that for another year or two, but like, if I was to go sign on the corporate dotted line for a contracted position and get a company car, there's no way I'd want to go back and like eat my dinner out of a sack and live outta my car every night. And I had a goal of getting to all 50 states by the time I was 25 and I knew none of that was gonna happen unless I did something crazy. So that was my crazy. And so

Vance Crowe [00:07:01] What, what were, what were your thoughts like now looking back and knowing what skills you have to use to, to be in your current role and where you're headed? Are you thinking like, Hey, I should have just, you know, headed for the hills and not gone to college and done this earlier, or, oh, thank God I went to college and I learned the skills I needed that made it possible for me to be on this road trip.

Natalina Sents [00:07:26] I think, I think college, college really prepared me, maybe not in the way that like people go to college to be prepared for like to sit in class and like that I learned these great things in class. I did have some wonderful professors and I feel like I learned how to learn more about what interested me that I knew. I liked asking the question why my, my mom and dad talk about like, when all of us kids were little, we spent a lot of time in the car. You know, we're from rural America, you have to drive everywhere. And I would literally sit in the car with a notebook and like colored pens and pencils and take notes on questions that I would ask my mom, like, mom, why do fire start Mom, why do people get arrested? Mom, why are people adopted? They're just like, take notes. And now I understand, like I was curious about how the world works and you know, some training in econ helped me understand how I can learn more. So I think college was valuable in that sense. And then also seeing the wide spectrum of people who believe different things and understanding who believes things similar to you and who believes things very different from you and en and encouraging yourself to be surrounded by both so you can have a well-rounded perspective and, and kind of choose what direction you want your head, your life to head from there.

Vance Crowe [00:08:49] It feels like whatever college was for me that doesn't feel that long ago. I mean, I guess it was like, now it probably was a long time ago, I guess 20 years, but I would not want to go back to a college campus right now. And not just because I don't wanna be like in that impoverished situation where I, you know, I, I basically avoided scurvy because there were tomatoes on Jimmy John's subs. Like I, I had no, I was very poor and ate very terribly, but like I think college is something different now. Do you get that same sense? Would you be willing to go back? Do you think the college campus is approximately what it was when you were there?

Natalina Sents [00:09:26] You know, I haven't been back to visit as much as I should and especially right now with all that's going on with the Global Pandemic. I mean, my brother is living with me right now because classes were cut off at spring break, most of his classes transition to online. And so he's living with me because I basically have a better internet connection than mom and dad and there's better like part-time side gig opportunities here in Des Moines than rural Iowa. So like, given that I, I don't know that the same like social interactions that I really benefited from or the extracurricular activities that were there, that really challenged me to think differently and, and encouraged kind of my entrepreneurial pursuits would be there in the same way. So it'd be a little harder now.

Vance Crowe [00:10:16] So what is it like in Des Moines, Iowa? Because Des Moines, for people that haven't been there, that's a bustling city, right? But it is right smack in the middle of the entire nation, right? There's just land on all directions. What, what is going, what's the, what's the society like right now in Des Moines, Iowa?

Natalina Sents [00:10:34] Yeah, so it's funny how your perspective changes. I grew up in southeast rural Iowa and coming to Des Moines was a regular thing 'cause my mom has a lot of extended family here, but this was the big city. I mean, they had Walmart and Target and Farm and Fleet and you know, like a mall, multiple malls. You could get confused when you're trying to meet someone because they were at a different mall than you were.

Vance Crowe [00:10:59] Like

Natalina Sents [00:11:00] That was just so crazy to me as a kid. But now, you know, I've traveled to cities much farther than Des Moines and it doesn't seem so, so crazy huge. I didn't really expect to end up here, but I'm enjoying it. And it's also interesting that people behave so much differently here than back home, especially in, in relationship to this pandemic or reaction to the pandemic. I have a part-time job at Target, so I see a lot of just like the public and I would say quite a few people were wearing masks. A lot of people didn't want to be approached or greeted as you would normally be ex expected to be greeted, you know, at a retailer.

Vance Crowe [00:11:46] Are you expected to wear a mask at work?

Natalina Sents [00:11:48] Yeah. Yep. Right now it's mandatory to, to wear a mask. I picked up some extra hours like as the cart wiper, so I like sanitize all the carts, offer clean carts to people as they walk in the store, that sort of thing. And

Vance Crowe [00:12:04] So I think for people that don't know who you are, it's, it is shocking and I wanna find out more behind the second job because you are perhaps the most important digital contributor to an agriculture magazine in the United States right now. I dunno, like there is nobody that I know that has a wider spectrum of various viewpoints that knows as many farmers as you. When I see stuff that comes out on, on the website, like I'm like, oh, na wrote that. So there's something motivating you deep inside to go on and finish your job and to, and to care for it so much. And then go on to a, a part-time job at Target. What, what's going on there? What, what makes you have that drive?

Natalina Sents [00:12:47] Oh, I don't know. That's kind of a complicated question. I don't know if I'm just a little bit crazy probably, but I guess like I've always, I, I remember like being so disappointed that I had to wait till I was 14 to like legally have a job. So I've just always enjoyed working. I've always enjoyed trying different jobs. I think if you could like sign up for a lifetime of just like having internships everywhere, kind of going back to like, I just always find myself asking the question why and wondering how things work. I love working at Target because I love understanding, you know, many of the products in Target are agricultural products and I feel like I'm seeing the other side or the continuation of the supply chain of things that I write about all day long. And then I go to Target and I have to explain to people like, no, we have one package of hot dogs left in the entire store. Like, sorry, there's no beef, there's no pork, there's no chicken. And so it really helps me like kind of connect the dots. I also,

Vance Crowe [00:13:51] Is that going on right now that you guys are out of meat on that level?

Natalina Sents [00:13:54] Not, not right now, but a couple weeks ago. Yeah. I feel like in the past

Vance Crowe [00:13:59] That would give you an inside view in the world because you'd be watching it from the commerce side as well. Like Yeah,

Natalina Sents [00:14:05] Nobody

Vance Crowe [00:14:05] Ever sees both sides. Those are the ends of the chain.

Natalina Sents [00:14:09] Yeah. Yeah. That I'm like literally interviewing a farmer who's like trying to figure out what he's gonna do with 10,000 hogs that don't have anywhere to go to market. And then I show up at six o'clock at Target and I have kind of the bouncer job that I never wanted telling people like, sorry, there's no meat here and you know, you're gonna have to like, we're closing early, you know, please stay six feet away from people. You know, it's, it's kind of, I mean it's really, that situation is really sad, but it's really interesting to experience that whole spectrum all in like 12 hours.

Vance Crowe [00:14:48] What has surprised you that you didn't think you would, you would see or observe

Natalina Sents [00:14:53] From working at Target?

Vance Crowe [00:14:54] Yeah. Hmm.

Natalina Sents [00:15:00] I think May, and this probably goes back to the road trip, but just watching people engage with other people. You know, I'm mindlessly folding t-shirts most of the time, so like I have a lot of time to think or just watch people engage with one another. And it's a lot of like repeated scenarios. You know, there's a lot of like mom with a cart full of kids or a lot of people in a hurry or not in a hurry. And it's kind of like a lot of people aren't super aware that, you know, you're there as a target worker. Like they just see you as a mindless machine, like folding t-shirts. They're not really altering their interactions with one another because you're there. And so it's kind of like being a fly on the wall and it, it's really made me think twice about like, wow, if someone heard me talk to like my brother or sister or my mom, you know, it was like, we're trying to pick out a shirt for an event. Like, do I sound like that? Like that's awful. Or like, wow, this girl's like 10 years old and so appreciative of like getting to pick out school clothes. I could tell stories for like this whole podcast long of like things overheard in the fitting room. I don't know if that would

Vance Crowe [00:16:20] Fire. I mean, I think that that's what I, I I'm finding myself relating with what you're saying and, and realizing that your path is is really impressive because I find myself in every situation that I can socially almost to the point of being a detriment where if I'm at a, a dinner, if I observe that there are people around me and I'm like, I wonder what they're doing, I wonder what they're talking about. I wonder how they're interacting. I wonder how they're treating their waiter. You know, like it's all of these thoughts and I, I love it. So, but to hear another soul be like, I, I figured out you can watch them while you're folding clothes seems amazing to me.

Natalina Sents [00:16:59] Maybe it some makes me sound like a super creep, but also I, I never, you know, I've heard a lot of people say like, everybody should have a job in the service industry or retail industry, you know, and I'm a big believer in that, that like, in my full-time job, I spend a lot of times in and out of hotels, you know, getting food from caterers or restaurants and it's really easy to think like, I'm on deadline. I'm really important right now. I gotta crank out this story. Like there are thousands of farmers waiting for this to hit their inbox to make business decisions and like, hype yourself up. Like this is, you know, the end of the world if this doesn't get done. And then you just kind of like treat the people around you like less than people. And I mean, it doesn't really upset me that people treat me that way at Target, but it just makes you stop and think. And it makes me really wanna go above and beyond for someone who like, acknowledge it's you or thinks you for your work. Like yesterday there was the sweetest grandpa in looking for pinwheels. I work in apparel and clean carts. Sometimes I have zero clue where pinwheels are, but I spent probably 20 minutes helping this grandpa find pinwheels that were gonna make her his grandson's day because he was appreciative and patient

Vance Crowe [00:18:18] And, and Target would be so happy to find out you, you did it right that, that you made that person have that good experience.

Natalina Sents [00:18:23] I was squawking on the radio to like five different people who, you know, like the, the people who belong in that area. So I don't know if the people that worked with me were really like, just tell the grandpa we don't have pen wheels. Like, we're out. But I don't know, those sort of interactions really make me, I feel like more mindful in the interactions I have with the server that I encounter or the person at the airline counter or the checker. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:18:51] It's, it's interesting you were talking about like the feeling of being rushed and how that can make you feel important because it's like, hey, I, my priority here that I have focused on number one supersedes all these other things. And you think about how repeated interactions where another human being is only seen as an impediment to completing a task, you really would feel isolated away from the rest of the world. Like there's some amount of your innate personality, you would do this anyway, but you also know, hey, if you don't treat me well, I'm gonna wake up tomorrow and I'm gonna write articles that are gonna be read by thousands and thousands of people all over the, all over the United States. All over the world. But it does make you stop and think about the people that their entire experience with other people is being an impediment.

Natalina Sents [00:19:41] Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I don't know, even in the news, you know, you hear of like different categories of, or different categories isn't the right word, but like industries and different types of workers, like restaurant industry workers were affected by the pandemic in a different way that then people like you and me who have the ability to work from a home office and can connect via technology like this. And you know, it's one thing to just like read those headlines and then another to be like, oh yeah, that's like all the people that I used to bartend with. Like they don't know where dinner's coming from tonight. And not that I like have any aspirations of being a bartender for life or, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:20:26] You were a bartender

Natalina Sents [00:20:27] Swimming pizza. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:20:28] I mean you seem so sweet to be a bartender. I think of bartenders as having to have this like hardened edge. Did it harden you up? Did it, like did you, did you see the rougher sides of life? And, and

Natalina Sents [00:20:40] I mean, yeah, there's, you see some really sad things, you know, like when you repeatedly are, are kicking the same guy out at close or like calling a cab for the same guy, you know, Friday night after Friday night, you're like, you know, maybe, maybe you shouldn't be coming to see me as your bartender. Like maybe there's somebody else you should be seeking this sort of interaction from. And it also, I don't know, I feel like this is maybe not the rabbit hole you, we were going down, but I feel like I'm, I'm passionate about mental health and agriculture and I feel like that's something that we're slowly breaking the stigma about, you know, it's okay to, for farmers to talk about they're struggling and I think by being a part of the food chain in a different way as a server and bartender, mental health is a huge problem in the surface industry too. You know, like your people who are especially the back of house, like they don't get tips when it's a hundred degrees in their rushing your pizza because their server screwed up. And I was like, oh yeah, I had a pepperoni pizza that was supposed to be ready. And they're like, you didn't submit the ticket. I'm like, well my table's been waiting for 20 minutes. Can you make that on the fly? Like, you know, the guys in the back of the house don't get anything besides like,

Vance Crowe [00:21:59] More pressure purple

Natalina Sents [00:22:00] Work. Yeah. More pressure for me and you know, then they're messing up somebody else's order. So when,

Vance Crowe [00:22:08] When you, when you say you're passionate about mental health, what, what prompted this is, this is a subject that I think is, you're right, it's being, it's having attention called to it, but I often wonder how, how much dimension there is to the conversation that's going on about mental health. And so I'm, I'm always afraid to, to step into this because somebody's mental anguish is none of mine to judge. I have no interest in telling somebody whether they are or are not depressed or what they do or don't need to do. But when we start talking about mental health as a function that, that corporations should take on or industry groups, I start getting nervous. So, so help me understand, how did you get involved in this? Why is this an important issue to you?

Natalina Sents [00:22:53] I think it starts from a place of having people in my family who've had their own struggles with mental health. And I think before I saw it in other people, I didn't understand that that's what was going on in my family or understand kind of what that meant for the relationships with my family. I just saw those people as like, oh, that's how they are. Or like, this, this is how I engage with this person just because that's who they are, not, not so much understanding like mental health is a piece of that. And then I hit the road as I think I was 21, I left on this road trip. I was like randomly calling, you know, farmers across the country and then I'd like go sit in the cab with them for six hours and basically ask them to tell me their life story. And I set out thinking I'd get a lot of great happy stories. And there were, there are, but there's a lot of heartache and tension and family dynamics and pressures from all different angles on farmers and farmers. You know, I, I'll never forget asking the first time I asked a farmer that was, I don't know if he was like eight or ninth generation farmer. And I said like, what does it mean to you to be, you know, carrying on the tradition of so many people in your family? Like expecting a really like positive, enthusiastic, excited answer.

Natalina Sents [00:24:27] And he's like, I'm terrified in more colorful words. And I, it like really stopped me in my tracks and, and made me think. And then there were, you know, lots of people that I talk to, you know, you talk to somebody for six hours and you get tired of talking about the weather and they don't want to hear any more of your crazy encounters from the road and they start opening up about like what they're really upset about and like what really is bothering them or you know, they're farming with family members that they have like deep hurts with, you know, that have been going on since they started farming. Which for some of these people, it's like five and six years old that they like have legitimate responsibilities on the farm. And it was, it was overwhelming sometimes as like a young 20 very naive 20 something

Vance Crowe [00:25:32] Person. Yeah. You're hearing about people experience pain in their life that, that you've just never, you don't have the wisdom or the, the enough life experience to be like, oh, okay, this is how I would respond to that. You're, you're hearing somebody disclose things to you that's vastly beyond your experience and that has to be an eyeopening experience.

Natalina Sents [00:25:50] They, like, I didn't even know what to say to comfort them, let alone like, and now I'm realizing like just listening to them was probably, maybe they opened up to me because they knew there was nothing I could offer them there. I didn't have any wisdom or advice or experience to, to pass down to them that I was just there as an ear to listen and I was in the cab for six hours so I wasn't going anywhere. And I think farmers work alone often and don't have that necessarily

Vance Crowe [00:26:20] To me. There's like, when, when I'm hearing this, I'm like, yes, I completely agree with this. And, and oftentimes the depression that at least that I have felt in my life when I've been depressed, it's because there's some relationship where there's a problem and I don't know how to fix it or things are not looking good on their horizons financially. If I keep doing the thing that I've been doing, so I've gotta make some tough choices or I've gotta go have a conversation with my wife or my family member that I don't want to have. And that depression is actually a signal, Hey, there's a dragon that you're supposed to face and you know, you're like waiting around outside of the cave, just pacing back and forth. And so when I hear about these efforts to talk about mental illness in, in agriculture or in any industry, I often wonder if, if we're providing the wrong level of empathy, right? Like the, I understand that you're in pain. I I do, I I feel for anyone that's in pain, but I often think that most of the time the person needs somebody to be like, alright, you got your sword and your shield and that's the problem you're going after. Go get him because you gotta tackle the problem in order to transcend the, the mental illness in most cases there are some people that have chemical imbalances that aren't the same. And so I often wonder if this push towards constant empathy or constant thinking about it def defray from getting people to, to go conquer their dragons.

Natalina Sents [00:27:53] I, I'm like definitely not a mental health expert. I'm certainly learning, I think there's some great resources and people to learn from. So I, I don't feel like I'm an expert to be like giving advice on like how to help somebody with depression or anxiety. But I think just realizing that like easily 50% of the a hundred farm families, a hundred plus farm families that I talked to in that year and spent one day with, opened up to me about some level of depression or anxiety or like real struggle more than like, oh, my tractor won't start today. And that's not something that I understood was happening until I was like literally in the cab with farmers. And I feel like that's not something until more recently that I'm hearing people talk about. And I think to be able to like get your shield and your, and you're sword ready, whatever that looks like for people, you have to know that like there's a dragon outside. Like some people aren't even, were just kinda like word vomiting to me and just realizing for themselves like, oh, like you've been asking about my, you know, relationship with my dad, like what it means to be able to farm with my family. Like, I guess I never really put it into words that like, I felt this pressure for 28, 42 years, like my whole lifetime that I think there's a lot of people that are still in like just the acknowledgement stage.

Vance Crowe [00:29:39] That is something I can appreciate. Like that is, I I I'm, I'm a full believer that you don't know what you think until you say something out loud. It's why like, running this podcast can be a little bit hard because if I actually want it to be something that's valuable, I have to be searching the edges for things that I don't know. But the problem is when you are searching on those edges, sometimes you say things and you're like, I didn't know that I thought that, or I thought that would sound better when I said it. Yeah.

Natalina Sents [00:30:08] But

Vance Crowe [00:30:08] When I said it, I realized that's not actually what I think. And it's so amazing how many different voices that we have going on that when you finally put something to words that can be just the half of the battle in and of itself.

Natalina Sents [00:30:22] Yeah. I I find myself in the same way, I'm definitely an external processor and have to talk about things to kind of really like form my ideas and make them concrete.

Vance Crowe [00:30:33] It's, I've, I've found that I think one of the reasons why AG Twitter took off and the way that it did as a tribe is because people were longing for the sort of community that comes with the agrarian lifestyle. Yeah. So we mechanized the indu, the agrarian lifestyle and we took people that normally used to rub shoulders. 'cause you could only go so much land, you had to have other people around you. And we put them in tractors and we basically made them go out and be solitary. And people talk about ag, you know, these are people that wanna be solitary, but that, that's actually more complicated than that, right? There's something to sitting on people's porches for hours on end where things come up. And since we've taken that away, I think maybe that's why people would come up to a a 21-year-old eager eyed person that's asking 'em questions and probably open up a lot to you. You're probably right. You probably hit on the thing that's naturally there.

Natalina Sents [00:31:28] Well, I mean I think you're right that like farmers long, you know, they're just like everybody else. They long for this sense of community and understanding with other people. I mean like, why do people hang out at the local coffee shop or like their local John Deere dealership? Like, it's not because of the popcorn tastes so good, like there's somebody else there to talk to that understands what they're going through and can relate.

Vance Crowe [00:31:52] Yeah, I I have a group of friends, there's a couple different groups of friends that they're, hey, keep going. Hey, what are you working on? Hey, I just got done with this run or I just got done with this exercise and what are you doing that, that like really invigorates you? And I think all human beings need to be a part of groups and if you don't, then you form together with weird amalgamations of groups and you probably end up at bars talking to bartenders. Right? Like, because, because human beings need that, that connection with other people.

Natalina Sents [00:32:23] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:32:24] So what are you, what are you looking around at the world of agriculture and seeing is, is worth paying attention to right now?

Natalina Sents [00:32:34] Wow. I think there's a lot of interesting ways that farmers are finding the way to tell their own story rather than, you know, like there's the traditional like columnist in your local paper or something like that. Or like the really gung-ho maybe minority of farmers who are serving on more public facing boards or organizations that, you know, have formed to say like, we are the voice of agriculture. We are representing farmers. But there's a lot of farmers that I'm seeing that aren't necessarily members of those groups. They aren't necessarily like advocating for a specific commodity or a specific tractor manufacturer, but they found their own voice, whether it be podcasting or blogs or vlogs or,

Vance Crowe [00:33:30] Or like the corn star on YouTube. Have you seen that guy? Yeah.

Natalina Sents [00:33:34] Yeah. There there's a number of YouTubers and I think it's really cool to see people kind of breaking outside the box and figuring out like what fits best with my interests. Like, yes, I love growing corn or yes, I love working on machinery, but like vlogging is kind of cool. Or like I can get into camera angles and lighting and how audio works and like where I can stick this camera and get like the weirdest view of like the planter working or how high I can fly my drone and see like all my family working together and in their, these huge pieces of machinery in the same field. And I think it's fun to see farmers kind of branch out in creative ways that people don't think of as like traditional agriculture side gigs. You know, for a long time people have like sold seed on the side or maybe had a custom spraying business or something as a way to supplement their farm income from like the crops that they're growing. But now people are being creative in, I don't wanna say that like vlogging is more artistic than, than growing corn or something. 'cause I I I really think there's like an art to nurturing life of, of crops or livestock, but in, in a way that is a little different than a lot of people have done in the past.

Vance Crowe [00:34:56] So speaking of art, of growing crops, are you familiar with Jason Mock?

Natalina Sents [00:35:01] Yeah, I listen to your podcast with him.

Vance Crowe [00:35:03] So he is holding this field days in Muncie, Indiana on Friday and it's like, it is art the event he's putting together. Yeah. Like he's got a golf thing that it goes through his different fields and his different farms. He's showing how he's running soybeans in between, or I'm sorry, wheat in between his soybean rows. And so I'm Are you going out to that this weekend?

Natalina Sents [00:35:29] I'm not, I'm not. I think it's, it sounds like a great event.

Vance Crowe [00:35:32] It's, it's so neat and I think that it's like one of these weird points in history where this art of that that he is creating with his farming has collided with people realizing like, hey, even farming is going to go through a cultural change because of coronavirus and changes to society. So it, to me it seems like what an exciting moment to happen th this Friday. I'm, I'm really looking forward to it.

Natalina Sents [00:35:57] That's so cool. And I love that like, I mean, we talk in agriculture all the time, like all the different fa hats farmers wear, whether it's marketing or, you know, mechanic or machine operator or agronomist. But then like you see farmers throwing in these awesome hats like event planner and like, you know, landscape architect, like with how they're laying out their field days or I don't know if that's the right term for it, but you know, like all these things that are just so, like, I think of event planner and I think of like somebody who figures out weddings for people that have enough money to hire a planner for their wedding. Like, and you know, you probably don't expect an event planner like Applied shirt and a John Deere cap, but,

Vance Crowe [00:36:44] Well, I mean, speaking of that, the thing that's been surprising is I, you know, have you used a VR headset yet? Like, or

Natalina Sents [00:36:52] I have, yeah. And

Vance Crowe [00:36:53] So what has been your experience with that?

Natalina Sents [00:36:58] Well, it was like,

Vance Crowe [00:37:02] How long ago did you do it?

Natalina Sents [00:37:04] It was probably three or four months ago.

Vance Crowe [00:37:06] Oh, so recently And, okay. Yeah,

Natalina Sents [00:37:08] Yeah. I have a friend's little brother who's like super into VR and basically he like put me on top of a Minecraft tower, pushed me off and like, tried to get me to like scream or fall like his mom did. But I am also like stubborn enough that I was like, this isn't gonna get me. So I don't know if I gave it a fair shot, but, and then we played like some like band game in vr. So there,

Vance Crowe [00:37:35] When I first got it, i i, it took me a long time where I was like, all right, this is a little bit like that hokey second life game where you used to be able to have these avatars and you could have meetings and it didn't make any sense. And I've talked to people on the podcast about how one of the cool things about virtual reality is if you meet in a room with another person, when you get your avatar close up to them, you can hear them really clearly, but if you separate away, they, you can hear them less and less. And if you put this person above this person, like on a stage, their sound is louder than the person that's below them. So you can add in that sound proximity that you can't do on a zoom call. You know, everybody's equal on that. But I've started playing this Oculus Tetris game that I think is one of the most profound experiences I've ever had. And I, I, I want to describe it to somebody like you and I want you to go out and do it to see if my description matches it. But have you heard of this game, this, this Tetris effect? So you play this game, so it's Tetris and the screen comes down in front of you and it's just like the blocks falling. And at first you're like, oh, there's just a giant Tetris board in front of me. 'cause it's the screen. But as you get lines, you start noticing that the music that is playing is going along with the lines. And then as it goes along a little further, you realize every time I spin the little square piece or the straight piece or whatever, it actually creates a, a note and that note is correlated with the melody that's playing.

Vance Crowe [00:39:07] And so no matter what I do, no matter how many times I spin, I spin that piece, it makes it sound like there's music playing and I'm conducting it. Then as you land more and more pieces and they start falling, all of the background around the Tetris starts glowing different things. Like the other day, I, there were these people that look like they're tongues of flames and they're around you in a circle. And as you get, as you land a piece, they go and they, and they all move forward like this. So then as you do it more, they start going faster, boom, boom. And then as the pieces come faster, faster, faster, all of a sudden everything you do, they are cheering and going nuts and there's drums and fire sparking everywhere. And so you, it's like you are the head of an Aztec tribe in the middle of the craziest frenzy you've ever heard. And then you go onto the next Tetris board. And so like I'm telling you, there is nothing on earth like this and everybody should be like, I don't, it's maybe not for me. Maybe I don't need to play these games now. But it is coming

Natalina Sents [00:40:15] That, that's like a really intense experience. I, I played Tetris the other night, like on my phone as I was like to fall asleep, but I don't think I could fall asleep to that version of Tetris.

Vance Crowe [00:40:27] Well, and you know how like when you play Tetris right before you go to bed, you dream about the pieces. Do you have that?

Natalina Sents [00:40:33] I don't, no.

Vance Crowe [00:40:34] So I'm like a Tetris

Natalina Sents [00:40:35] Junky,

Vance Crowe [00:40:36] This is like, this is like the perfect thing for me because all the pieces can fit together and it's just like, so for me, I just love it, you know, da lines, lines, lines, lines. I love it. But the, the, so I dream about it if I play Tetris at night, but now to dream about Tetris effect where there's whales swimming at you as you're trying to lay these pieces down. I'm telling you it's, it's you as the digital media person for the probably most important ag magazine in the country. You need one.

Natalina Sents [00:41:07] I'll, I'll pitch that at our next editorial planning meeting.

Vance Crowe [00:41:12] So what else are you paying attention to? What is, are you gonna stay at your target job for a while? Are you gonna move around to a different, like part-time job to try something new? What do you think?

Natalina Sents [00:41:21] I don't know. I've kind of, Target's been really great about being flexible with my full-time job, traveling. I mean, there's not a lot of that right now. And they did just bump up the, the national starting starting pay rate. So everybody's at $15 an hour

Vance Crowe [00:41:41] And all of Target.

Natalina Sents [00:41:42] Yeah, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:41:43] Wow.

Natalina Sents [00:41:44] So we, we got like a $2 bump up for like hazard pay during Coronavirus, and then, then we're all at $15 an hour. So, you know, that just started kicking in. I was starting to kind of think like, what, what else do I wanna try? Last year, last year, this time of year, I had three jobs. And so it started the farmer's market, which is a really cool experience. Like you just get to wake up with the city. I had to be downtown Des Moines at 5:00 AM and you know, there's all these trucks, like people moving these massive bins of like cantaloupe and cucumber and sweet corn and these delicious like homemade things. I was just working for a coffee shop. So our, our setup was pretty simple, but we're like setting up in the street when it's totally dark and then like the city just like starts waking up and coming alive. People are out on a Saturday morning because it's beautiful out. You know, they've got their kids and their stroller and their dog. Like everybody wants to be there, you know, like people go to Target because they need something. Like they have to be there. People go to the farmer mar farmer's market to like enjoy their Saturday soak in the life music.

Vance Crowe [00:42:58] That's a good point. Yeah.

Natalina Sents [00:42:59] Not too many people are in a big rush. It's okay if their coffee takes two more minutes or if like, yeah, you accidentally gave them almond milk, like maybe they'll try something new. They're gonna buy flowers anyways. You know, like, like people show up to the farmer's market because they're expecting a good experience. They're there to like soak it in and enjoy the experience. And it was like a really positive way to start every Saturday, other than like, my alarm going off at four in the morning. So that was really cool. And then I'm responsible for sending the newsletter on Saturday. So sometimes I did a little bit of work for Successful Farming on Saturday and it was like, oh, back to the world. Like forget about, you know, like loaded hot dogs and lemonade and live music. Like, you know, soybeans just dropped 15 cents and you get to go tell, you know, a bunch thousands of farmers like the bad news. And then I would go to Target and like that's, I was working longer shifts then, and it was, it's really interesting to like see people in the morning who are like happy to be there, there just to relax. And then like people at Target, like I have a three year old's birthday party in 20 minutes and I need ice and Kool-Aid and like the party noisemakers. Like I need all of those right now. If like I'm coming up, they come up to me and I'm like folding my t-shirt. I'm like, well that's that way, that's that way.

Natalina Sents [00:44:31] Like, you know, you know, a

Vance Crowe [00:44:35] Whole different mentality. Yeah, totally different culture. Yeah. It's

Natalina Sents [00:44:38] Just like totally different experience. And I, I don't, I'm realizing as I'm talking to you, like, I guess I love having like complete opposite experiences, like all in a short period of time, whether that's like, you know, working my full-time job at successful farming and then I like go bartend and I'm like pairing wine with a pork dinner or, you know, it's like telling people at Target like, hey, there is no pork or the farmer's market where you're like seeing people who clearly fed their pigs this morning.

Vance Crowe [00:45:16] So you have this very interesting view, and I think one of the paradigms that we're not seeing very many people talk about the current conflict in the United States is in a lot of ways it is rural and urban not understanding one another, right? Like you look at the way that the rural world, and I'm talking about people living in towns of 10,000 people or less, which is a third of the population. People forget that a th 33% of the population lives in towns 10,000 or less. And the people living in the cities, they almost come from different countries like the, the, the way that they view how things should be, how they ought to be, where they're going, what is good, they're different. What's your view on this since you see both sides of the spectrum?

Natalina Sents [00:46:04] I feel like I, I kind of understand both sides too. I mean the, the road trip that I went on right after college, I would say I legitimately experienced culture shock in my own country regularly. And that was, you know, if I had to write a list of expectations for my trip before I left, that's not something I would've even crossed my mind to, to have experienced.

Vance Crowe [00:46:29] You wouldn't even think to write it down, right? Yeah. You wouldn't even think like, oh, this is gonna be something that would happen. Right.

Natalina Sents [00:46:34] I I, I always tell the story. I remember showing up on a farm, I believe it was in North Carolina, and this man that I, you know, only knew from the internet was like, I'm fixing to carry you over there, but something, something, something fixing to carry. I'm like, what's broken? And like, my legs work fine, I

Vance Crowe [00:46:56] Can walk there

Natalina Sents [00:46:59] Like that. Really. Like, I just had to use context and just, I, I don't think I even said anything. I just waited.

Vance Crowe [00:47:06] Did you let him carry you across the river? No, nothing was broken. We

Natalina Sents [00:47:11] Just walked around his farm. But yeah, he, and, and we got in the truck and like drove around, but like that's what fix and to carry meant. But I didn't know when I

Vance Crowe [00:47:22] Showed, I didn't know what that meant. Yeah. I was imagining you being picked up and carried across the stream or something.

Natalina Sents [00:47:27] Yeah, yeah. Like a lot of times in the south they'll say like, oh, I'll carry over to Walmart rather than like, come along with me or ride with me. It's like, I'll carry you to Walmart or I carried you to school today. So that, that sort of thing. But you were asking about the urban rural divide and I feel like that's something I, we talked a lot about in college and I feel like it's painted more black and white than maybe it is. I mean, I even think of myself as like, would I fit in the rural camp or the urban camp? Like I grew up in a community of about 2000 people. My parents didn't farm, but my neighbors were like corn, sheep, cattle and a cemetery. So like the closest to growing up on a farm as you can in town. Many of the people I interacted were with where, where farmers or like the more traditional picture of a, of an ag producer. I, you know, we had crappy internet and all the, the great things that people associate with rural America. Now I live in Des Moines, the biggest, like you said, the biggest city in, in Iowa. But I feel like, I don't know, I guess I'm just processing out loud here, but

Vance Crowe [00:48:53] There's a fascinating book called Coming Apart by a guy named Charles Murray who's out of the a EI, the American Enterprise Institute. And the first two chapters of that book coming Apart just ripped my mind in shreds are, are you familiar with this book? Do you know what this is about? So hes talking about how much the GI bill in effect changed the demographics of the United States, such that you started having people clustering in cities and then marrying only people that also went to college. So you started having college people marrying college people and then you started separating those people just by fact of if you have a hedge fund manager and a doctor that are now highly educated and can make a lot of money, they continue to concentrate their wealth and their social structures and everything, they just keep moving into a more centralized location. But most people don't realize that a third of the US population is living in towns of 10,000 people or less. But even more than that, most of the people in the upper 50% have never been on a factory floor. They've never actually been to a farm. They've never petted a farm animal. Like they, the experience that we have is mitigated through probably the English language and mainstream television of which mainstream television is going off. So like our cultural influences that bind us together seem to be fracturing out quite a

Natalina Sents [00:50:21] Quite bit. Yeah, I would agree with that in some ways. Maybe I'm just like a weird creepy people person. I'm realizing this as I'm like talking out loud. But after I got done with the road trip I liked to it, it seems like impersonal to call it a game. But I liked to kind of play this game with like anybody that I was interacting with. Like whether it be like the bartender, my cashier at Walmart, my Uber driver, Uber drivers were my favorite. Or like people, the person at the desk when you're like checking into your hotel people that you normally are like, I'm here for this. Like your role is to serve me information.

Vance Crowe [00:50:58] Yeah, you're interrupting me getting things done. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Natalina Sents [00:51:01] Or like, you know, their job is to get you on your way. But I love trying to see how much I can get that person to tell them about me and like you would be, so I would, I was always surprised, like there could be an, an Uber driver in DC and in a five block drive we could always find something we had in common. And I think, I don't know, maybe it's just a weird game, but no, I'm totally it a really powerful experience that you, you know, you jump in this car with somebody who looks totally different than you, speaks different than you, is a totally different age than you obviously lives in a bustling city. And I'm like, you know, it's a lot for me to cross four lanes and I can't even see across this, this road. And you're like, I don't have anything in common with this person. But you start talking to them and asking questions in sincerely listening for their, their answers rather than like, something to respond to or like, like one up. I feel like so many people when they're listening, it was a really powerful going off on a rabbit trail here, but it was a really powerful experience to do like a hundred farm interviews and then had to hand transcribe them all on this road trip that I went on. And so I got to spend a lot of time with myself and a lot of it was really cringe worthy.

Natalina Sents [00:52:36] And I was like, wow, like am I really listening to this guy's life story that I just like drove across the country to ask him for? Or am I like in the moment I was like, oh yeah man, I'm on the same page. Like I experienced something like that. I can relate, but really it was just sitting there and one-upping everything he was telling me,

Vance Crowe [00:52:55] Oh, oh that's a, that is so hard to watch or listen to. Oh my God, you just wanna put your head down on the table and be like, what do you think he was thinking when I said that?

Natalina Sents [00:53:06] Yeah, like, who is this know-it-all 20 something.

Vance Crowe [00:53:11] I doubt that. I doubt that happened.

Natalina Sents [00:53:13] Jellybean car, like to tell me that she's bottle fed lambs too and she used to bail hay and you know, she likes screen tractors and they're like, what does she for? You know, and I I I feel like when you have the opportunity to spend that much time with yourself and hear how you interact with people, I, and I think that coupled with my like fly on the wall experience at like Target or all these like weird side jobs I have, I don't know. I, I think

Vance Crowe [00:53:44] There's something about the recording in the candid moments that makes you like be like, woo, I didn't realize that. Like my wife has come down here and I've been busy working on something and she'll have brought me dinner and you know, the engagement will go fine, but she'll leave and I'll play it back and I'll be like, I, I really didn't even look up there, I didn't like, I didn't give her the normal acknowledgements that if she wasn't giving me I'd be really hurt. But we don't have very many experiences where you observe it, but when you do you're like, I don't know that I would like that guy if I knew him. Right,

Natalina Sents [00:54:18] Right. Okay, this is really weird. But after like for, I mean a year of my life was basically recorded on this road trip. Like, anytime I was with someone, my recorder was rolling. Do you ever, now you're like, I I really was embarrassed at myself when I was like, oh let me play back with the recording. 'cause I didn't hear what they said and like, normal engagement, like I'm at Target, I'm like, oh, I didn't hear what that person asked me. Like, let me listen back on the recording. I'm like, I don't have a recording. Like I need to be a better listener. That in some ways like recording everything. I just like didn't ask questions that I was like, oh, I'll catch that. Like I'll, I'll understand when I slow it down on the recording or that sort of thing. Do you ever catch yourself?

Vance Crowe [00:55:07] Well I think like my, so doing this podcast has been really good for me because I realize that at least for me and this conversation, conversation is more like grappling or jujitsu than it is like dancing. 'cause in dancing, you and I both know what steps we're supposed to take. You have your role, I have my role, we play them, right, doesn't matter, we can interchange the person and maybe the dance like, you know, the way it looks or the way that somebody patterns their body changes. But in grappling it is all call and response, you know, this person's gonna grab you here, how are you going to respond to that. And it doesn't mean that you're trying to fight the other person to the ground, but in order to have a conversation that people wanna watch, it has to be unexpected. And I find myself, when I'm not doing the podcast, if I'm talking to other people, focusing on them with the level of intensity that I have right now, and making them be like, whoa,

Natalina Sents [00:56:03] What is

Vance Crowe [00:56:04] Going on here? Like, why, why is he just pounding me with questions and I have to realize like, Hey Vance, hey, hey, you're not recording this. You gotta go in the other direction.

Natalina Sents [00:56:14] Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's interesting that, I don't know, before I was in the communication field at all, I was like, whoa, these people are experts. Like they know everything about communication and really, I think I just like look at myself more and like cringe more at what I do. And like, I know a lot of stuff not to do. I don't know that I'm an expert in like, what to do, but I'm like, what did

Vance Crowe [00:56:38] You study in college

Natalina Sents [00:56:40] Ag business? So I, I'm not really qualified to be a journalist either, but I, I think it was a good stretch.

Vance Crowe [00:56:51] So I, I, my college experience, I'm ambivalent about because the social part of it, how, who I became as a person, transformative, absolutely monumental. The people I met, I still have relationships with them. It was really good for me. I learned, and some of the, the, the liberal arts aspect of it were deeply helpful to me. I learned philosophy, I learned logic, I learned kinda general classics of, of history. But like, when I think of my communications classes, I don't think there's anything that I use now. I think I'm more likely to use the pre-calculus that I learned in high school than I am to learn about the Venn diagrams I did about communications in college. And so I find myself being a little bit torn when people are like, Hey, will you talk to our communications person? You know, they're, they're two years into school and they want to know what else they should study. And I'm usually like, maybe something that's not communications.

Natalina Sents [00:57:49] Yeah. I literally took like English 1 0 1 or like whatever's required for my major, but like never set foot in a journalism class. So I don't know, I, I feel like that both helps me sometimes in my role and doesn't help me. I feel like catching onto the editorial process, like that's used in our business and the back and forth between the editor and like, whose role is what, and you know, when this needs copy edited and blah, blah blah is something that took me longer. I'm still not great with, to catch onto than like my peers who like worked for the school newspaper. And like, that's something that's ingrained in them now. But on the other hand, I feel like, because nobody told me how to do an interview, I just did it a hundred times with farmers and like listened to myself really screw up or really embarrassed myself. I learned what worked for me and like, what worked for me is, I'm a millennial so I can type a lot faster on my phone and I take pictures and like, it's gonna hold me accountable to write a story if I throw it up on Twitter and people are like, oh, you're like live tweeting this boring USDA meeting. Like somehow it's interesting and I'm, I'm getting the highlights without the like, droning on and on and coffee breath. Like,

Vance Crowe [00:59:19] I mean that's, I think that's one of the ways that you made a name for yourself. That's right. Because there are so many people that in the past were going to live events and what they were doing was taking photos saying, I am at this live event. Look at me, I'm at this live event. And no one cares about that. Right? Like, maybe you do for one tweet, but like the rest of them, what you really wanna know is, are the people that were up on the stage saying things that I should have heard? Is there a way for me to get that information now? Is there a way for me to understand what is occurring and slamming together there? And that's what I, I really do admire that about the way that you are at these different events because you never get the sense that it's like, oh, Natalie's doing her noon tweet now it's her one 15 tweet. Like, it's never like that.

Natalina Sents [01:00:07] I don't think I even understood what I was doing when I started doing it. And I, so a lot of my peers at like competitive magazines, like are like my parents' age are older and like have their flip book and they're really great at asking questions and like writing notes in that skinny little notebook that like you see in the movies. And if I tried to do that, a, I wouldn't be able to read my handwriting and b it would just be a disaster. Like my notebook would fall in the mud. I don't know, it would just be bad. But I know, I remember like I'd show up, you know, you show up to cover a new piece of machinery at Farm Progress Show or some big event and you're there with all your competitors. You kind of like line up and swarm the per the important person that's talking. And I have like this exact set of headphones and like one is on, one is off and I've got like my audio recorder, I've got two phones. So like, usually I'm like on my one phone's on my knee like this and I'm tweeting with the other one. Like sometimes I'll like snap a quick photo of you or like, what's behind you? I look like the most disengaged millennial, like everything that people complain about, you know, millennials. And then like, I, I remember the first time the person I was speaking to that was speaking to us, like his Apple Watch started dinging because I was tagging him on Twitter and like, it was, it was distracting in that moment. But then people realized like, oh, she's not just like chatting with her boyfriend or like FaceTiming her mom.

Natalina Sents [01:01:43] She's like, she's worried the story's out there. It's like somebody already posted a photo like, like this is gonna go to Pritt for them three weeks from now. And I'm like, I mean I was just doing my job, but like my story was up like that. So it was just something I stumbled across. It's not something that was great.

Vance Crowe [01:02:04] So if you're telling stories and you're such a positive, optimistic, like enthusiastic person, certainly you've written a story that somebody thinks, no, you got that really wrong. How are you at handling feedback or criticism?

Natalina Sents [01:02:22] I think that story is happening right now. It's scattered all over my dining room table in like note cards. And, and I think that's why I'm partly having a challenge in writing it is, it's a story about farmer's complicated relationship with the USDA and there's lots of opinions there. Wide range of spectrum. I mean even farmers' engagement with the USDA, there's 19 USDA agencies. So like not every farmer has engaged with USDA in the same way anyway. And there's like county offices. Have you ever

Vance Crowe [01:02:56] Been the SDA building in dc?

Natalina Sents [01:02:58] Yeah, so two Septembers ago I was really fortunate and got to spend a whole day with Sunny Purdue, like just shadowing him, just like hanging out, watching what he does, talking to him about his grandkids, watching him inter interact with his staff, you know, like Zippy Duval dropped in on him, couple other people from Georgia, from his time as governor and just kind of see him in his element. It was really interesting. So in some ways this story is a follow up on that, but I'm, I'm sure I'm gonna get some letters.

Vance Crowe [01:03:32] Yeah, I mean like it is a polarizing organization. I remember when I lived in DC and I was like, that's the USDA. I mean it's as big as the Pentagon. It's, it's enormous. And like you think of the USD as like the little extension office that you see in your county, in your county, small town. You don't realize like this is as big as the IRS. I don't, it's huge.

Natalina Sents [01:03:58] It's, it's been really interesting. I think I've talked to 14 farmers for this story and some of them, like, they're like picture Sonny Purdue as USDA and some people picture Carol, the lady behind the counter in their local FSA office who's like always there to help them straighten out their paperwork and get them applied for the programs that they qualify for. But even just like what comes to mind for farmers when you say USDA are totally different things, which is what part, part of what will make this story interesting but also really difficult to write.

Vance Crowe [01:04:33] And so when does that publish?

Natalina Sents [01:04:35] That'll be in the August issue and since I'm a terrible writer for print, there will also be components online there. I'm so thankful. We just adopted this like QR code that you can put in the magazine, which is basically for editors like me who are like terrible at scrunching things down to four pages. And I also like to include, like, I wanna see pictures of the people that I'm talking about and I wanna see, you know, the environments that they're working in and that sort of thing. And so having that, those components of the story online is much more doable than, than on a four page insert in a magazine. So it'll, it'll be up in August.

Vance Crowe [01:05:15] And if people wanted to follow along with you on Twitter, so when you finally start getting back to these conferences and they wanted to, to watch what you're doing, how would they find you?

Natalina Sents [01:05:24] My Twitter handle is Roots journey on, on Twitter. I'm also on Instagram. I'm not very good about posting on Instagram. I

Vance Crowe [01:05:33] Deleted my Instagram. I realized like

Natalina Sents [01:05:36] Really?

Vance Crowe [01:05:36] Yeah. 'cause I looked at that little magnifying glass that says like, Hey, what are you searching for? And it shows you essentially it shows you what you've been looking at. And I, I like, I didn't really like what it, what it showed me, right? Where I was like, this cannot be a good use of time. Like how many choke holds can a person do to another person? And how often do I need to see this in a day? Probably not as many as, so I, I dumped it and I'm just Twitter. And then the Articulate Ventures network.

Natalina Sents [01:06:06] Nice, nice. I still have all my social media. I have a blog that I haven't touched and like since the road trip I probably need to determine the fate of that. But yeah, most of my, most of my work is on agriculture.com. You can find my byline there and everything from mental health to like summer safety tips to, I wrote about the CFA P program a lot. New machinery.

Vance Crowe [01:06:37] What's that?

Natalina Sents [01:06:38] The Coronavirus Food Assistance Program.

Vance Crowe [01:06:41] Oh.

Natalina Sents [01:06:41] So it's 3 billion I believe in, in like product that USDA was gonna buy and distribute to like food pantries and, and nonprofits and then $16 billion in direct payments to farmers.

Vance Crowe [01:06:57] And how did that go?

Natalina Sents [01:06:59] So applications are open now. I spoke with a livestock farmer, a green farmer, and a dairy producer. All, all three of those groups have like a different payment structure who all applied like within the first week of, of applications opening. And I followed up with two of them. The, the application process they said was, was pretty easy. They were able to do it online. A couple of them made quick phone calls to their local office and they all praised their local FSA people for like, those people had to digest a lot of information really quickly and then had farmers that were like, Hey, how do I get this money? So I, I heard good things there about how the local FSA office handled it. And two of the three that I followed up with have received their checks. Farmers will receive 80% of their total maximum payment right now. And then after applications close in August, it's expected if funds are still available, they'll get the remaining 20%. So one farmer did go ahead and get her 80% check, then the other farmer looked at the math and was like, oh, this check's actually only 50% of what I was expecting. So she followed up with her FSA office and it was just a, an error and they're in the process of getting that corrected. So all things considered for how quickly it was put together and how, how wide of a scope. I've heard pretty good things in the countryside about it.

Vance Crowe [01:08:33] I'll be very interested to see. My guess is that as we head closer to the election, there's going to be more money given out and my sense is that the student loan crisis is going to be brought to the forefront. And for the first time in my life I've started saying like, well if we're gonna give billions of dollars to airline companies and business owners and farmers, it's pretty hard to look at the debt that somebody else had and say, no, you're gonna have to hang on to that. So I think that that could become a very contentious issue. And I think that it's good for rural America to be thinking about it and come to some conclusions about how is it that we can run a population where there's $1.5 trillion of nondischargeable debt out there. Like that is, to me, the, it makes it ripe for a populist uprising. 'cause it just takes one person saying, come with me and I'll free you from your debts. All you gotta do is X. And so I, I want as a country for us to figure out how can we lower debt in this country? 'cause that is really gonna cause problems. And and you're talking to a person, well I'm talking to a person that works three jobs like I, you know, that's working all the time. So it's, it's, it's very difficult to imagine that we should be doing this as a moral quandary, but I'm also very afraid of a nation that's indebted.

Natalina Sents [01:10:01] Yeah, I was listening to, I'm not sure if it was your most recent podcast, but the last one that I listened to touched on, on student debt and really got me thinking about it. I mean, and I mean, I'll, I'll be honest, I work three jobs more for like the, 'cause I'm a nerd, like what, what I can learn, and I guess that's what I do for fun is I just work a different job, but, and, and I'm, you know, trying to be responsible for, so one day I can maybe not work three jobs and enjoy time with a family or something like that. I, but I work alongside, you know, a lot of college kids at Target who are like, I lost my employment with the school when, when spring break ended and like, that's how I pay my mortgage. Or well they don't have a mortgage but like rent their rent and everything. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:10:58] Their

Natalina Sents [01:10:58] Food, like my car insurance and are like literally like I, I'm airing up my tire to get to Target. It's, it's flat, but like I need to air it up because I, I can't afford to buy a new one until like Friday, Friday, you know, that I, I'm really thankful to like beyond be not in that position anymore that, you know, now I work three jobs and, and don't have to live crisis by crisis like financially, but I, I never wanna like forget what that feels like or think of people who, who are in that position. I, I wanna be like sensitive to that I guess. It's like, yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:11:49] I, I, I agree with that. Like, I, I worked a lot, I worked paving to pay for school. I worked, I did all kinds of extra jobs. I found, I took risks and I, and I got help to pay off my debts. And I, I, I just know that the pressure that people feel like the, the cold wall or ceiling that presses down on them when they have debt is one that you shouldn't forget because it makes them vulnerable to somebody that can come along and, and, and take their problems that are real and give them a solution that's fast. And you can, you can resent the person for that or you can try and find a way to solve their problem in a way that that is, that transcends the current state. But I, I get the very strong sense that we are in a dangerous time right now, particularly with regards to debt. You know, you talk about, we talked earlier about mental health and farmers losing the farm and the pressure of keeping that legacy, same thing, right? So we've gotta figure out how to solve these problems because otherwise you have populations that are vulnerable to, to getting behind people that we wouldn't want them to get behind.

Natalina Sents [01:12:55] Yeah. Yeah. And I think being, working with people that like, I mean we, and I don't want to downplay how devastating it would be to lose part of the farm or something like that, but in agriculture we have so many assets that like it, it's really heartbreaking. But there, we have 40 acres that, you know, you're like, grandpa's gonna turn over in his grave and you know, my wife's gonna divorce me for selling this 40 acres. But like to put food on the table, that's what needs to happen. Like a, I don't wanna say a lot, but some people have that option that there's like a liquidity there that, you know, there's a lot of people that like this, this target paycheck is like rent

Vance Crowe [01:13:44] It's or the street's best option. That's right. That's right.

Natalina Sents [01:13:47] They don't, they don't have a home to sell. They don't, their, their car is, you know, not something that's gonna get them ahead to sell that they're in, in such a, a different position. And, and that's not to minimize anybody's position, but even, even what trouble with debt looks like for different people.

Vance Crowe [01:14:17] Just the, just the amount of brain space it takes up when you're in debt. I mean, I remember being worried whether or not I was gonna be able to pay my bills or if I should get my brakes replaced or if I should try and replace it myself and side note, I should not have been replacing my brakes myself. I I I, I think that right now you don't have to go out on social media and pound on the desk about how empathetic you are, but it will never hurt you to try and understand and relate your experiences to the pain of other people so that that way you can come away from a different thing. Well na this has been a wild ride. I'm so glad you posted that Twitter of the sunset after your target job. That was the one that that prompted me to be like, whoa, she's out there working and hustling. I'm gonna give her a call and see what motivates her. So this has been a great conversation.

Natalina Sents [01:15:05] Well thank you. Thanks for having me on. It's been fun to chat.

Vance Crowe [01:15:09] Thank you to Natalie Sense for joining me for the call. You can find her on Twitter at Roots Journey. So the Articulate Ventures network is growing and growing. We just had the first round of invitations go out about being in that next wave of participants. It's fun, an exciting time. People are starting to put up videos saying, Hey, give me some feedback about the speech I'm gonna give. I wanna know how I can make it better. There are other people going through the classes and giving us feedback on how to make those better. And we're having lots and lots of interesting interactions between people that are living in totally different parts of the country talking about how should I think about this and what are you guys doing to solve this problem? It's a neat group. If you're interested, go to the show notes below and I will have a link that you can click on to sign up to be invited to the next wave. Thanks so much for joining me. I'm glad you're here.