Why Agriculture's Political Coalition Just Flipped: RFK Jr, Glyphosate, and What's Next

Natalie Kovarik [00:00:00] But I think this is actually one of the most important, you know, fights that agriculture really needs to be paying attention to right now for agriculture. There is a difference between farmers and big ag

Vance Crowe [00:00:13] Is that people will gladly gleefully say, we need to get rid of this glyphosate. And the politicians aren't going to to stop this. They're gonna say, oh, if this is what it takes for me to get elected, then I'll get rid of glyphosate too. And suddenly we'll be using all sorts of other herbicides that like, are way worse. And then they'll just start targeting those. Like, if you can get rid of glyphosate, you can get rid of anything.

Natalie Kovarik [00:00:36] We're in a world of extremes. We're in a world of extremes when it comes politically. We're in a world of streams, like online, like everything seems to be in the extremes. And I'm like, we're never going to be able to find the answer that actually moves us forward. A, a moderate approach, a logical approach is missing to the conversation.

Vance Crowe [00:00:50] I, I'm gonna disagree with you 'cause I actually do think we need a massive reduction in, in regulations almost to the point of them being no regulations. And I'm sure my audience is rolling their eyes and flipping out, but

Natalie Kovarik [00:01:02] It's not about getting people to understand what glyphosate is or isn't, or you know, all of these details that sometimes we argue or, you know, educating our consumer, which you'll hear all the time. For me, it's like about none of that. That that is not what will get us to come out on the right side of this and be seen as the people that are doing the right thing every single day out for their animals and out on the land. It is trust. That is what we have to focus on when it comes to consumer.

Vance Crowe [00:01:27] I'm Brian Mos, a farmer living in Florence, South Dakota, and you're listening to the Vance Crowe podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today's guest is Natalie Kovarik, but before I get to describing why I brought her on the show, I should probably explain what am I doing in my truck? Well, we have been incredibly busy at Legacy Interviews. In fact, I had to run out and grab some more stuff. And the reason we're so busy is because people are trying to get their Legacy Interviews in in time that we can get it back to them before Thanksgiving. This is when they can sit around with their whole family and watch these interviews. And one of the things that I often describe about Legacy Interviews is it's not just the experience that your loved one will get telling their stories, but the experience of watching it with your family is a profound one, one that people write us about and say, I had no idea how amazing this experience would be. So I'm running around, I'm super busy and I forgot to do the intro to the conversation with Natalie. I found Natalie because I was going through one of those things on X where they say, Hey, what's a good Ag podcast to listen to? I clicked on Discover ag, of which Natalie is the co-host. And at first I thought, this isn't really an ag podcast. They're talking about Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift and some Instagram person that posts about their farm. And then all of a sudden I realize, no wait, this is ag. This is a huge portion of the culture of ag. And Natalie knows a huge amount about how ag and consumers fit together.

Vance Crowe [00:03:03] So when the RFK hearings came out about the food system and all the changes that need to happen, I invited Natalie on to talk about it. We have an amazing conversation about the incredible tension going on in ag right now and how the political foundations that held them up when GMOs and pesticides were being questioned is now shifted underneath their feet. And many of the political homes that they had before are now gone. Natalie has a detailed understanding of how consumers think, and she also works on her family's first generation cattle ranch. This is a great conversation. I was bowled over by just how much Natalie knew and I'm excited to bring this to you. Now let's go back to Legacy Interviews for a second. If you're interested in having me record your loved one's life stories so that future generations have the opportunity to know their history, then go to Legacy Interviews dot com and you still have time to get it scheduled and put on the calendar so that that way we can record the interview and have it back to you by Thanksgiving so you can watch it with your whole family. All right, I gotta run. I'm already late. People are probably wondering where I'm at. Enjoy this interview with Natalie Kovarik. Natalie Kovarik, welcome to the podcast.

Natalie Kovarik [00:04:19] I am so excited to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Vance Crowe [00:04:21] So you have the only women's podcast that I listened to on a fairly regular basis. It's Discover Ag. Why did you start that podcast? Well,

Natalie Kovarik [00:04:31] I am honored. Thank you very much for including us in your lineup. And like a lot of things I do, I have found in my life, it's a common narrative that it is kind of serendipitous. It just happened organically and that was very much so how Discover ag started. I had been sharing online for a handful of years on different social media platforms and I had made a very close friend with a dairy farmer down in New Mexico who also was sharing online. And about a year and a half ago we came together and started discover ag.

Vance Crowe [00:05:07] And when I catcher stuff, it's the stuff that I would never like naturally find. But I remember listening to one where you guys were talking about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce and cereal and how they were mixing together cereal and what are, you know, moms thinking about this, this is athletes that are trying to get you to your kids to eat unhealthy foods. How do you choose the topics that you cover?

Natalie Kovarik [00:05:30] Yeah, so when we started started discover Ag, we knew it was pretty important to us that if we were gonna do an a podcast on agriculture, we didn't want it to be through the conventional lens. That culture can be talked about or showcased a lot, even stereotyped a lot about. And so, you know, through again, a process of figuring out what we wanted to show up and talk about every week, you know, what was important to us and what our community enjoyed listening to us talk about, we realized it was kind of somehow us talking about events going on in agriculture, like getting our opinions of things that were happening. And you know, one way we found our way to that was, I think Tara and I, that's my co-host named Tara, we're kind of tired, I guess for lack of, you know, fancier word of seeing, you know, these sound bites across social media, these reels going viral, these headlines in, you know, New York Times and Washington Post that were talking about food and agriculture, but were never interviewing a farmer or were written by someone who lived in, you know, upper East Side. Like that was the lens that our industry was getting, you know, talked about showcased through, highlighted. And so as I mentioned, we ended up kind of deciding to start the podcast and we knew that it was gonna be important to us to take these, like you said, kind of unconventional topics that really are at the heart of them, food and agriculture and farming, but either weren't being showcased properly in that way or people didn't connect them that way.

Natalie Kovarik [00:07:00] They didn't get to that root source. And so, yeah, like you said, we kind of cover these ag you know, to us they, they scream agriculture, but to other people they would maybe be adjacent. So like you said, Taylor Swift owning, you know, a Christmas tree farm or Jason Kelce, you know, and Travis Kelce doing, you know, ultra processed foods and campaigning for that. And so yeah, it's, it, it's really, it's my favorite place honestly, to show up every single week.

Vance Crowe [00:07:25] It, is it difficult for you to find time to do this because podcasting in inside of you're a pharmacist, you're farmer, you rancher like raising kids?

Natalie Kovarik [00:07:34] Yeah, no, you know, we're in, I think when we started actually we were kind of like, well, we'll see how this goes. Maybe we'll do seasons, you know, we're not sure what this will be like. And then I think we both realized very quickly that that's really where we love to show up. And so we've made time for it. I mean, it's like that angel saying, if you love something you'll make time for it. And so yeah, we record every single Monday and then we release every single Thursday.

Vance Crowe [00:07:59] So this morning as I was listening to your podcast on the hearings that went on about ag, this is where there was like four hour round table kicked off by RFK when he joined Trump's campaign. He said, I'm gonna make the rest of my time and energy to focus on the food system. And there was this big thing made rounds in social media and all these clips going on, including Representative Thomas Massie, the libertarian god king coming out and, and posting on that everyone should follow Vani Hari the food babe. And this i, this prompted me to send that out to all my friends and say, all our gods are dead because, you know, like this, this king of libertarian thinking is now propping up this where do, where do you think all this came from? What is going on right now in the world of people pushing back against big ag and ultra processed food?

Natalie Kovarik [00:08:50] Yeah, this was something I think I had felt a shift in for a while. So when Tara and I started our podcast about a year and a half ago, the kind of cool thing like exactly like we're doing now, when you start a podcast you kind of start noticing other podcasts. You're aware, you know, you enter this like little podcasting world and bubble. And when we first entered podcasting, somehow we got on the radar of radar of a lot of people in like nutrition kind of podcasts. Like not wellness, I would say they were very much so like either doctors, dieticians or like, I don't know, again, maybe like nutrition. Like that was kind of this little bubble we happened to stumble upon. And so we were doing a lot of guest interviews on different podcasts in, you know, that category. And through those conversations I could feel like this shift of happening behind the scenes of people's with this rhetoric of, you know, where we were so far, you know, plant-based, you know, and wellness kind of, I think everyone can kind of like imagine that stereotype we're coming outta the last 10, 15 years of like how that was, you know, the green smoothies and all, you know, this world that we were living in when it came to food and, and what was healthy to feed our bodies. And I could feel that pendulum swinging, you know, with, you know, just carnivore like as a broad example, like we were just going to a very different extreme with food. And I had seen and been having a lot of conversations also around like processed foods, food additives, you know, some of those questions we were getting on the podcast like led me to think that this was maybe happening as a shift. But you know, Tara and I, before we covered the round, before our round table in our podcast last week, we actually covered RF K's speech, his resignation speech he gave as one of our articles because the premise of our podcast or the outline of it is like the top three trending topics each week.

Natalie Kovarik [00:10:34] So we always look for like three glaring things that are going on. And for us that week, you know, hearing a presidential candidate devote his resignation speech two food essentially, which we think of as farming, you know, not everyone, the other 98% doesn't, they say food as food. But when I hear food, I think of production agriculture. And it was just so alarming to Tara and I that again, someone at that status who had a platform to speak where everyone would be tuning in, chose to talk about food, that's when I was like, oh, okay, this is going to be the start of something really, really big. And then, yeah, he followed up with the four hour round table.

Vance Crowe [00:11:15] Yeah, I mean I think you're, you're exactly right about it, growing into something big. And so I used to be the director of millennial engagement, so my job was to work for Monsanto to help people have a different way of understanding is the, what's the value of GMOs, why is it that farmers use pesticides? And when, when I was there, the people that needed to be their minds changed on it was the left, it was the left being like, oh, you know, GMOs are unsafe and like we eat all these healthy foods. It was, it was very much of what was going on. Then the GMO fight rapidly went away. And I think in large part because the activists, they figured out that the money was not in anti GMO, it was in the glyphosate giant lawsuits, the class action lawsuits. And then it all just kind of calmed down. We had COVID and all kinds of cultural change and during that time there was this giant flippant that occurred where the people that were on the right that used to be like, ah, all this stuff we're doing in ag, you know, it's okay, we gotta trust what's out there. They now are the conspiracy theorists. They're the ones saying like, I don't trust anything. And the left is the one that's like, no trust the science and big pharma is, is just great. And so this I think is gonna catch ag way off guard because farmers that normally used to have a political home with the right that also supported their, their use of technology that right, I think is eroding and they're not going to have that. And I think the, the strategies that worked five, 10 years ago to try and protect technologies that's gone now and that there, this is a whole new kind of fight.

Natalie Kovarik [00:12:52] Yeah, I do think it's a whole new fight and I said on our podcast episode that I think this is actually one of the most important, you know, fights that agriculture really needs to be paying attention to. You know, there's a lot of different things I wanna touch on what you brought up, but going off of, you know, that train of thought, I do think that right now for agriculture there is a difference between farmers and big ag in general. I think this conversation, as you said, with this sway of the amount of people, right, left, or you know, in different moderate, I think the majority is going to fall in camp with not saying RFK politically, but I'm saying this thought process that ultra processed foods is bad, big food is bad, big pharma is bad. I think the percentage of people that will align with that is going to be very, very large. And I think for agriculture, as you pointed out, I don't think, you know, you brought this up to me 'cause I actually reached out to you to, to get your, you know, pick your brain kind of on the glyphosate conversation. And you mentioned that to me that this is might be the first time that, you know, the agriculture industry, rural America is maybe at war with or not aligned typically with who we would politically. And I think that's really, really important with this conversation, knowing how important I personally think how agriculture responds to this big food, big pharma conversation dictate how the consumer and our relationship with them moves forward.

Natalie Kovarik [00:14:24] Because I really think, as I said right now, farmers are the good guy. I still think that we get that poll of percentage trust. You know, I, I do think there's obviously misinformation and activists and I think there's this, you know, loud conversation of people that try to, you know, sway the general population on a farmer's role. But how we respond to this, I think will either lump us in with big food and big pharma or distinguish us out of it. It, and I think that is something that, as you said, maybe agriculture isn't properly prepared for it to have a conversation about.

Vance Crowe [00:14:56] Yeah, and I'm totally like with you, the, the, this is a much larger like package where people are like, I can look around and I see there are obese people, there's all these mental health problems, you know, all the things that get thrown in it, girls go maturing faster than they normally would. And they're saying not only is it ultra processed foods, but by the way there's glyphosate in your food and oh by the way there's GMOs in there. And if you're just a person that's like, what is going on? Somebody give me an answer that I can understand, all of that package is going to be delivered into your mind and and inside of your little meme plex that, that describes how you see the world. It is going to be, it's going to include things like we're being poisoned by the farmers and like it's going to be indistinguishable and, and frankly there's gonna be a whole lot of people that are married to a farmer or who's, you know, like are connected to farming that are gonna get really, really suspicious of what's going on at the farm. And so this like cultural allies that have been there are, are disintegrating and like the question is who are you going to go find that wants to be on your team that you can figure out a way to explain and outcompete the memes that are being dropped in by vanni harri because that is who wins the, the cultural war. It's who gets their memes into the minds of the people.

Natalie Kovarik [00:16:15] Yeah, there is actually to one of the discussion points Tara and I had when we talked about this is that the, the round table that, you know, Calley Means and Casey Means an RFK, which I would say are probably the three that really headed that round table. You know, there were doctors on it, but there was also just a lot of like influencers, food, food activists, you know, people that like Vani Hari food babe, I think her degree was in like, I don't even know science something I think I remember reading like political science or I, I can't quite remember but you know, nothing to do with, you know, the realm she talks in now. Which, you know, I, I can't really point the finger at because I'm coming from a pharmacist background, you know, and I, I'm on online talking about food and farming, but I, I am a rancher. I do grow up in agriculture, right? So I don't necessarily think your education has to base, you know, what you talk about online. But I, but I think a lot of people had an issue with the, there was a lot of, you know, Alex Clark, like a, just a political, you know now food wellness podcast host right? That is on this panel. Like what is their expertise? Why are they there, what are they contributing? And in my mind I was like, that makes absolute sense because as you said, they want this round table to go to the next step. They're gonna want the loudest voice, the person who has the most influence online and that can sway people politically with their words online, with images, with memes, like with the short real caption, like whatever it is that is the world we live in. Good or bad, you know, indifferent. So I thought it was, you know, interesting to dissect who they had on the panel too

Vance Crowe [00:17:39] Well and who they had on there. Like those people are way more effective and they have an opportunity that had not been there before because the nutritionists and the the dieticians what whatever the one is that you have to be registered, right? Those groups did get co-opted by big food and big ag and like I watched it happen. I was there when when what happens is you have registered dieticians that are the people that go through all the college and all the accreditation and they wanna have conferences and in order to have those conferences, the membership either needs to pay as individuals or somebody can sponsor it. And if somebody sponsors it, well then they're the ones that get to put on the luncheon and they're the ones that get to stand up and, and pay for awards and pay for keynote speakers and pay for these things to all come together. And so you have these registered dieticians that start off by being like, I know that big food isn't doing things that are right, but you know what, I am gonna give 'em a chance 'cause I'm open-minded. And then before you know it, they are so dependent on that money that it becomes ubiquitous. It's, it's like water flowing through there. And so these people that went to school to study this and to come up with their, I want to help people are now being so heavily influenced by the, by the food companies and the big ag companies that when it comes time for them to say something, they say things like, ah, lucky Charms are as healthy for your breakfast as whatever else. And and like that does not pass the smell test with anyone. So then they start looking for people like Vani Hari that'll tell the truth compared to what these dieticians are doing.

Natalie Kovarik [00:19:14] Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if you're aware of this, but even, gosh, maybe six months ago, yeah, six to nine months ago probably there was a huge like kerfuffle online with registered dieticians who were paid by, you know, quote unquote big sugar to say that aspartame was safe and okay and it made volumes online because they were obviously taking money. This was like a paid social post for the registered dietician to say that like aspart right now, you know, science says it's okay, you can have it, everything's fine. And people were very upset that they took money for that. So I feel like there's a lot of things that social media has kind of like tarnished for people when it comes to that, as you mentioned, like being paid, like where does the profits, the money come from and yeah, I think it's even just like the general, I would say lay person is even starting to like catch onto that with like food studies and science too and it, they're always like, well the funding is within, you know, agriculture funding is by big ag, you know, and it's like made this whole kind of bigger conversation and I think made people even more leery to like quote unquote trust the science. I think COVID played a role in that. I think that that was probably the biggest time in history where you had everyone maybe starting to say like, well do we trust the science? You know, before that I feel like it was like trust the science and that was pretty well understood for people who aligned with that belief. And then I feel like everything that happened in 2020, there was just this huge movement of people that were like, I don't necessarily know if I trust science anymore. Like I necessarily don't know if I trust our governing bodies anymore.

Natalie Kovarik [00:20:46] Which I think, I think plays a huge role because when we come, you know, as farmers and ranchers and say, well the EPA says this, or the FDA says this or the USDA says this, it almost makes us less credible to like say that we have a governing body supporting us. And so yeah, I feel like there's just, you know, 15, 20, like it's this medley of storm of all these different things that has got us to this point where people are, you know, concerned about their food, curious about their food, worried about their food. Like they, I just feel like we're at like this huge, as I said, tipping point that is like going to be a really rigged deal for agriculture moving forward.

Vance Crowe [00:21:22] Yeah. And like the, the strategy that happened last time was that all of big ag waited forever to wade into the GMO fight. And then when Monsanto started and then started getting other people involved, social media was still really in its infancy. So there was a ton of room to like gain ground and figure out how to get influencers out there. But that's all now well established. So now in order to raise above the fray, you're gonna have to have people that are putting out extraordinary content against people that, and this is what I used to talk about all the time when I was working at Monsano, is the people like vni Hari, they're putting out content that they are monetized to do. They, they derive value from being able to grab attention and turn that into money. And so if you're just competing by like, ah, we wanna defend this technology and it feels good and it's the right thing to do, well you're competing against people that can spend all day every day on this because that's how they make their money. They aren't spending 99% of their time growing food and then spending 1% trying to talk about it.

Natalie Kovarik [00:22:26] Yeah. So Tara and I actually spoke at South by Southwest this past March and our topic was food influencing and social media and just kind of like the whole food online route, like that was what we were talking about. And a lot of it was having to do with fearmongering. 'cause as you said, statistics show that if you can do emotion-based content online, it's like, I don't even remember the statistic now, but like well over 50%, probably 60%, 70% of your, the chances for that content to go viral. So now you are finding people will intentionally create emotion-based content in order for it to be seen. So, and, and the best it usually does is like negative emotion. So yes, like very inspiring positive emotion, you know, content does well too, but for a lot of people to prove point, they will lend to fear, they'll lend to negativity like scare tactics, like all those things that can, you know, evoke that emotion in the viewer, you know, is seen more. And Vani Hari, I mean this is like, not to be like a food bay bashing, you know, session here, but you know, we used her as an example in our south by west, south by Southwest speech as someone that does this one to, to point that out to people like they are, you know, conscientiously trying to find the most triggering point for you to be afraid of you, let's say cows being fed candy, cows being fed garbage, whatever it is, so that that content will be seen. And two, like you said, you know, they may not be getting money directly from the FDA or the USDA or big sugar like the dieticians were, but she, that is her job. Sh her job is to influence, like we get paid by these apps when we get, whether it's directly by the app, if TikTok is paying her for that piece of content to be seen or if she's selling something else to her community or you know, getting numbers to go speak or whatever.

Natalie Kovarik [00:24:04] It's like she is directly tied to how much content could be seen, how big follower her count is, of how much she wants to weigh that piece of content out there. And so I do think we see a lot of twisted right content out there for people's advantage of the point they want to get across.

Vance Crowe [00:24:20] Yeah, this is why I, I was like very hesitant about this guy, Robbie Starbuck, the guy that's gone out and and pointed out like, Hey, tractor Supply, hey Harley Davidson, you guys are propagating all these things that you don't want. His strategy, what he did to get corporations to change is precisely what Vni Harri was doing seven, eight years ago where she was saying, Hey Subway, we found out that your bread has a chemical in it that's the same as yoga mats. We are gonna go out and put this negative ad campaign and Subway is like whatever we have to do to make this stop we're gonna do. And as that energy grows, that mob grows behind these people and they get more and more emotion then they can target it at these companies. And what will get like washed away in this is that people will gladly gleefully say, we need to get rid of this glyphosate, and the politicians aren't going to to stop this. They're gonna say, oh, if this is what it takes for me to get elected, then I'll get rid of glyphosate too. And suddenly we'll be using all sorts of other herbicides that like are way worse. And then they'll just start targeting those. Like, if you can get rid of glyphosate, you can get rid of anything.

Natalie Kovarik [00:25:29] Yeah, and I think this is the really interesting thing about all of this and just the way we are with, you know, as you mentioned like social media dictating consumer perception, consumer perception dictating like laws and regulation and this circle like chicken before the egg, right? Like who knows where it starts, but it's this revolving component of something affecting something. And when you have activists, I guess let's just, let's just label 'em under that. I, this is where I kind of have an issue with it. It was people who are like, and I talked about this on the podcast with glyphosate, you know, if you wanna stake your claim and glyphosate is bad, you can rally a whole lot of people behind you that you can rally people within agriculture, conventional mod. Like you can get people who are like, yeah, like we should be, you know, looking at something different. Whatever you can get all the consumers, all the people behind you. But the bigger question is then what's next? Right? And I feel like activists in these platforms, they just care about the one mission. It's like checking the box of I need to get rid of glyphosate, right? Like there was one speaker on the panel that was her talking point, get rid of glyphosate, get rid of glyphosate, it's everywhere. It's killing us, it's spreading the millions, like talking point after talking point after talking point, my point is like, okay, well then what's next? Because now are we gonna have to like bring in, you know, like a workforce to do all the, the the weeding and tilling that the glyphosate, you know, was doing for us before? Like we got there for a reason. That's one of the things I say on the podcast all the time is like, we got somewhere for a reason. It's because we didn't have the man forced labor or crops were being decimated or whatever it is. Like glyphosate was created for a reason, it solved a problem, right? You take that away. Do people wanna get into like labor force conversation? I mean sure it'll be migrant workers out there, you know, like is that the next stepping point? Like where does it end?

Natalie Kovarik [00:27:00] Like when you have these conversations of like what you are advocating for and advocating against. And I feel like so many people in today's, especially when you get outta the lane and are talking about things that you maybe don't have one a the background classroom expertise in or two with a practical, so case in point, someone on, you know, a four hour round table that lives in Colorado that just cares about food necessarily doesn't understand what's going on like on the farm practice level. Sure you take away glyphosate, but like what's your solution? What comes next? Like a lot of the rippling effects aren't that much better. Like we'll probably see greenhouse gas emissions increase, we'd have a, we already have a labor force in agriculture problem, like how do we solve that? Like i I I think that's my big issue with these activist points. It's like you don't, you stay so narrow focused, it's like you've lost sight of what the entire big picture is. And I think that's really scary when you said it could dictate what happens on our actual farms and ranches.

Vance Crowe [00:27:56] So I have like, I you could probably call it a philosophy or just a way of thinking about this problem that I'd like to try out on you and see maybe we can kind of explore it, which is I think that so many of the problems that we have both in agriculture and in the highly processed foods and people being obese as a result or having all the, is that our time is becoming less valuable. And so we have to constantly find things to save time. And the reason our time is becoming less valuable is because the value of our money keeps going down. And so whereas two generations ago a dad could have had a factory job and he could have provided enough money and enough stability for his family to have his wife at at home and raising children. And they might not have had a lot of luxuries, but it was still possible. Well now we've doubled the workforce, which means there's more people competing after the same jobs, which depresses wages and the government keeps printing money. And so the value of that money goes down. So people are like, I have to get things done faster. I can't use labor. If we try to use labor, this will never work. So we've gotta use chemistry. I can't make food because I don't have time, so I'm gonna get processed food because I need to not go to the grocery store as much. And like all of these things are being stacked on and we're looking around being like, how do we fix this? Let's knock out glyphosate when in reality until you stop our money from degrading in value, none of these problems will be solved. How does that strike you?

Vance Crowe [00:29:26] No,

Natalie Kovarik [00:29:27] I actually align with that pretty, I mean for just learning about it. I feel like I align with that thought process, you know, pretty well. And I think that's actually something I brought up too about this round table is that, you know, they were focused so much on food and I was like, okay, so take away ultra processed foods or take away glyphosate. Let's stay on the glyphosate conversation because I do think actually like taking away processed foods would probably have a pretty big impact on the health of like our nation, right? So let's take away glyphosate, does that actually like fix the health of America? Like, you know, that little thing does that that fix solve all of our problems? And it's like, no, it's like this much bigger picture. You have to have people who actually want to go out and shop locally to eat better. You have to actually have people who want to, as you said, make the food in the home. They have to have the time to do it. Like it's this bigger part. It's just a little puzzle piece in the bigger part of the picture that I, that I like as negative as it sounds, I always say like when people are like, well let's go back to eating locally or we need to change our food system. I'm like, I have a pretty pessimistic view that I just don't think that will happen because you have to change the absolute basis of how we function as, you know, humans in our society today. And whether the system is rigged against us to not make those changes, as you said, we don't have the time, there's too much money, like all these different things. Or inherently we become like, I don't wanna spend, you know, maybe the the the wife or the spouse, whoever it is, the the husband doesn't wanna spend the day at home, you know, making the food and and doing the preparations. Like whatever that shift has happened from 60, 70 years ago, we're not there as a society anymore.

Natalie Kovarik [00:31:00] We like food GrubHub, we like postcards or notes or whatever it is where you get your food delivered, you know, directly to, to your house. Like these are the conveniences we like. And yeah, I think there's a small percentage of an upper echelon that would love to go back to how things were in the sixties, fifties when it came to the food system and, and what that looked like within our homes and like where you shop from and sourced and how you prepared it. But the vast majority of Americans I do not think want that change. And so I'm like, when people are out here advocating to, you know, take away processed food and shut down fast foods and all these different changes, you know, eat locally, shop locally, all these different things. I'm like, does America really want that? Or do, do we just think we want that or are we supposed to feel like we want that? Like, do you know what I'm saying? Like, are tho will those changes actually happen and, and get us back to where we want to go? And, and do we want to go back to there?

Vance Crowe [00:31:50] I I mean I think like the, the thing you're describing is would these changes actually get us there and no, we're gonna have another bigger problem behind us to be able to try and fix. And this is why it drove me insane that Thomas Massie was out there promoting that, that round table on food. And it's because Thomas Massie was saying, Hey look, I think the way that we can make our food system better is cut down the amount of rules that the USDA and the EPA and the FDA, how, how many rules they have, how many bureaucrats they have. Because the reality is they continue these giant bureaucracies say, Hey, we're here to help by creating more rules and more hoops for you to jump through. And I always used to say this when I would talk with activist groups, you did the work of Monsanto becoming huge for them, and the way that you did that was that you made it. So every time you went out and protested and you got people to feel like there were millions of people against Monsanto, then Monsanto went to the regulators and they said, you know what, if people are scared, let's just add three more years of testing onto that, it'll cost us $10 million more per year, but we'll just have $30 million more now they would do that because they knew that that just made a bigger moat between their competitors and what they have to get through. So, so in effect they just, you know, took a little bit off of their bottom line but made it so if anybody else ever came up with a new pesticide that worked a new GMO, they would say, that's a really nice product, but there's no chance you're gonna be able to bring that all the way to market. So why don't you sell it to us for a fraction of the price? And so Thomas Massie was the guy that I thought, hey, maybe you can break through and start breaking up the, these bureaucracies, but if what we do instead is put people that are from that way of thinking in, in charge, they're gonna be taking out products that are, maybe they're good, maybe they're bad, I don't know, but they don't have a replacement strategy to figure out how to, how to move us forward.

Natalie Kovarik [00:33:42] Well, and as you even said, I think like it's a great question is less regulation. Like I, so I am never like usually voting for more regulation for governing bodies, right? Like that's generally like not something I'd be like, yes, yes. Like let the government come to, you know, to our ranch especially like, you know, talking agriculture and like dictate more of like what the practices that need to happen on our operation as a, you know, a rancher. But like, again, going back to before things were regulated, we created regulation because they weren't, because we were having illnesses. Like I always talk about this with milk, it's like process. We, we got to processing, you know, our milk pasteurizing it because we were having illnesses, you know, with unpasteurized, right? Like, so they had to do some sort of regulation and control over it. And so all these people that wanna strip it away, it's like, okay, we're just gonna do a big circle again like these, the extremist view, whichever side it is, take away all the governing body, only listen to the governing body. I'm like, we're missing the point. The answer is in the middle until we realize that we need some sort of governing body. We have to figure out how to, you know, make it them, it, whatever, work better for us. Like that's the answer. It's always gonna be a middle ground. And right now, I feel like with social media, as we alluded to before, we're in a world of extremes. We're in a world of extremes when it comes politically. We're in a world of extremes, like online, like everything seems to be in the extremes. And I'm like, we're never going to be able to find the answer that actually moves us forward again with our food system. Going back to how things were in the thirties and forties is not the answer. Maybe, you know, spraying glyphosate on our food isn't the answer either, but it's like, it's not one or the other. It's like a meld of somewhere in between. And I feel like that conversation somehow is missing like a, a moderate approach, a logical approach is missing to the conversation.

Vance Crowe [00:35:21] Well, and I think that I, I'm gonna disagree with you 'cause I actually do think we need a massive reduction in, in regulations almost to the point of them being no regulations. And I'm sure my audience is rolling their eyes and flipping out, but I, I'll take your example of, of raw milk. Now I say this knowing people will throw pitchforks at me when I go back out to do speaking. I, I know the people that get really angry about this, but like, it's a conversation that's not happening. And it's when those regulations were put into place to make sure that we had pasteurization and that we, you know, had cleanly conditions, farm conditions were different, farms were different themselves. And we have learned so much more about like the healthcare, we have more technology that makes it easier to, you know, cool milk or to, to keep it safe. But we are still using the regulations that we invented in the fifties, sixties, seventies. And it's not keeping up with, well maybe we could have milk that doesn't have to be super heat treated and that people are allowed to drink this. And as long as they know what they're buying, they get to make these choices on their own. But now if you go talk with any big ag group, any checkoff group, they are not allowed to spend any time talking about that because the, the structure of the checkoff itself says you're not allowed to say these things. And so there's a whole big side of the conversation that ag is not allowed to talk about. And certainly the the groups that ag is putting their money and faith into to go out and fight the good fight for them, their, their hands are tied behind their back.

Natalie Kovarik [00:36:54] No, I'm glad you brought this up because I do think it's an important conversation to have and tying it back to glyphosate, we'll we'll stick on the same train of thought. I talked about this a little bit about how like science is, is meant to challenge itself. Like that's the basis of science, right? Like science doesn't arrive at an end point and then you're like, oh, okay, well we figured it out, the science is done. Like it's al it should always be challenging itself, right? And I do think that that, as you alluded to with, with milk, that you know, we are basing a lot of some of these regulations off of, you know, decades of that it's been time lapse, right? And so for me, like I brought up recently, we had a conversation about Tyson because there was a, not Minnesota I'm lacking where he is from, maybe it was Minnesota. There was a farmer that sued, is suing Tyson right now, you know, not not crazy news, right? Like Tyson probably gets sued all the time. But anyway, I brought up the whole, you know, basically structurally integrated system that the poultry industry is set up. And I was like, just a question, like I don't, I don't have a background in chicken and I grew up on a cattle ranch. I'm on a cattle ranch now at, you know, very minimal poultry exposure. I've actually never even been in a poultry farm. So during that podcast episode, I posed a lot of questions to anyone tuning in in our disco community that was a poultry farmer. And I said like, just, just message us and let us know, do you like vertical integration? Is this set up like for the farmer to succeed? Like is this farmer who sued Tyson, his experience and accurate representation across the fold of farmers in the poultry industry?

Natalie Kovarik [00:38:31] Or is he an isolated event where other poultry farmers are like, Hey man, I don't know why you're making this in the news. Like, I've got a really good thing going here. We really like how this is set up, you know, in the poultry industry. Like you're kind of ruining it for us. You're tarnishing this perception, right? I was like, genuinely care. Like, because as farmers if we don't like the way the system's set up, we have to challenge that status quo, even if it means challenging agriculture. So like you said, when it comes to raw milk or processed, if we could get to a point where we could have it, you know, 'cause I, I'd be curious to get into your opinions of like federal mandate versus state mandate and like what that like where, where you think it should lie with food. Like the state make it more messier, like should it be, you know, federal. But I'm like that like sometimes I feel like, and going back to the glyphosate, sometimes I feel like in agriculture talk about pitchforks coming for me after I say this, probably we're afraid to challenge our own industry in a healthy cons, you know, constructive way because we don't wanna go against our industry. And it's like if you are a conventional farmer and you don't like glyphosate as much as it probably, you don't wanna be on the side of, you know, not saying you would be on the side of you know, the food babe. But if that's the side you align on, then you have to come to qualms that that's the side you align on to make the changes that you want. And the industry, whatever it is, raw milk, pasteurized milk, glyphosate, organic, you know, like wherever it is. Like you, we have to be able within the agriculture industry to be able to challenge these practices, tools, guidelines we've had for decades in order to, to move forward in the mo most robust way to continue the agriculture industry.

Vance Crowe [00:40:10] Yeah. And I like to, to the conversations that are not allowed to be had. It's so funny 'cause when you're in ag they just become so commonplace that you can't have them, that you oftentimes don't even realize like, oh we stopped talking about this years ago because we were told we weren't allowed to. And then to bring it back up, it just doesn't happen. And I think there's, so raw milk is an easy one. I mean I've seen like all out brawls break out with like a mom yelling, you know, my child died from botulism 7 1 6 3 and the other people being like, but it's my right. And like nobody wants those fights. But if you don't have those discussions then, then it's just, oh we'll just put in a rule and nobody can do this and we've made up the choice for you and that's not good.

Natalie Kovarik [00:40:53] No. So I actually, after our episode aired, I had one of my good friends who they conventionally farm, you know, about an hour and a half away from us here in Nebraska and she messaged me and her family, she's very, very, very particular about their family. Wow. What they eat. She, her oldest child actually has, I can't think of his diagnosis, but they can't, they have to have gluten-free household, they also have to have a dye-free household. And just through that she has gotten obviously very into, you know, preservatives, all, all additives, like all the different things when it comes to the food system. And she messaged me after our episode aired and was like, thank you so much for just posing the question of like, do conventional farmers actually like the way like, you know, because, sorry, this is jumping around a little bit for the listener, but in the round table, one of the spokesperson talked about how her quote was like, 85% of the seeds come from chemists in farming. And she's like, we have che you know, chemists out in the field, not farmers like talking about the way that buying seed is set up like, you know, big seed corporations. And so I was, I brought that conversation back to the podcast and said like, do do farmers like that, do they like having to buy, you know, the seeds the way that, for lack of a better word, like seed infrastructure is like set up in agriculture right now? If not, we need to say something about it. And so I was bringing up this conversation about like, you know, how we're buying our seeds, like how that is structured, you know, spraying glyphosate and all of this. And she messaged me and was like, thank you so much for bringing that up. She's like, as a conventional farmer, I feel guilty, you know, talking about that. Like with my husband bringing that conversation up to it, you know, she's like, I care so much about what comes into our household that obviously I've had questions about, like should we be allowing glyphosate in our household?

Natalie Kovarik [00:42:29] Should we be sharing glyphosate in our fields? You know, just like, and to what you said at the very start of this, you're going to have people that like, you know, historically align with certain sides politically or certain beliefs politically start to feel a little challenged and question different things eternally about this. And she is a perfect example of that. Who someone would, who probably totally leans right votes right, has always been supportive of big ad or you know, like there isn't a big ad, there isn't factory farms, you know, like all that conversation like so anti all of it to now kind of being like, I don't know, should we be saying glyphosate? Like what does that mean? Like posing and raising those questions when she feel like she doesn't really, maybe not even doesn't have a space to, but like feels guilty as a conventional farmer even thinking that or questioning that.

Vance Crowe [00:43:16] Well one of the conversa parts of the conversation that people aren't allowed to have, and it wasn't talked about at the round table, I only saw clips of that, so I don't really know. But one of the big things that shapes our agricultural system is the mandates that you have to have ethanol in gasoline. So that makes it, so if you're in the state of Illinois and you want to buy a gallon of gasoline, a percentage of that is regular gasoline made from petroleum mixed with the, the gas made from corn. Well, if you didn't have that mandate in, you wouldn't have that demand for corn and if you didn't have that demand for the corn, the price of corn would drop down. And so farmers don't want this because the value of their land is dependent in part on how much can you produce on this land. And so all the farmers are like, no, no, no, we wanna keep the ethanol. That's that's a good mandate. It's good for us, it's good for Americans. But is it because if if you're using that really fertile, beautiful ground to grow corn that people aren't using for they have to use, they don't have a choice, then, then you're that much further away from creating a system where it's cheaper to produce food more locally for that somebody could buy that acreage up and and be creating farms that produce food just straight for farmer's market or for more for local for groceries. But I mean, try and bring up the ethanol conversation with most farmers in the Midwest and it's dead on arrival. Maybe dead with you. I don't know.

Natalie Kovarik [00:44:40] No, I feel like that's a little, I'm like the type of person that gets overwhelmed at the gas station trying to pick like between the different like mouths of gases. I like ethanol is like way over my head. But no, I think it, I mean I think it alludes to like, one of the reasons why we honestly started our podcast is because, and it, it's, it's a scary thing I think to make a change in the food system because it affects so many other things within food fiber that, you know, you're almost hesitancy to, right? Like if it's not broke, don't fix it, but you're like, I'm not sure we're going along and like, you know, I'm not sure. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:45:18] Maybe it is broken.

Natalie Kovarik [00:45:18] Yeah, yeah. Like I, we don't really know, but it's like we don't, we don't also know what, what taking out this one little hay would do to the entire haystack, you know, because it's like you have to think about x, Y and Z. Which back to why we started the podcast, no one I feel like is having those conversations of like, okay, well do you know that if you take away this from afar actually means X, Y, and z and do you know if you know you ask us to start doing this instead of what we're doing now, this could be a potential repercussion. Like the all those ripple things that like we've been talking about for the last 40 minutes. I feel like no one when it comes to these articles about food and farming or food online, they don't talk about them. They don't understand them, right? It's like there's a much, much bigger picture than just like, should we be Spain oc and cops or not? Should we allow raw milk or not?

Vance Crowe [00:46:01] Well, and to your point, don't even understand them. I remember when I had like a deeply humbling moment where I was hanging out with a scientist and we had gone to some college to speak at and, and we had gotten asked some questions and I remember turning to him being like, Doug, it's so funny that these people don't believe the science on glyphosate. You know, like it's just so obvious. And he was like, well the reality is you don't actually understand the science behind glyphosate. You maybe have like looked through one paper but you don't actually understand it. I do and you trust me and so therefore you go out and talk about this with other people. But if I were to ask you what is the mechanism that works and how do you know how quickly it degrades and you know, all of the principles that you would have to know to feel really good about this, you Vance have faith. And I was like, damn it. You know, like I had really fully come to the belief that I had arrived that on the idea that glyphosate was safe and that I knew it, but it was totally a delusional thing because he was right. I had read a couple of papers, I'd kind of read papers about those papers, but that like most of the people around me were so pro glyphosate that I was like, look, when you talk to the people that know, we all know this. And I think that's true of almost everything that we know, that we know almost nothing at all. And most of what we believe and what we preach is based on what our tribe around us believes in.

Natalie Kovarik [00:47:25] Okay. And so you brought me full back. You brought me back full circle to like, you know what I started this conversation out with saying is that like, this is why this is the most important time for agriculture with the shift in the food system because we have to be on the side where they trust the farmers and ranchers on, you know, out in the field to that they are doing the best thing for their farm, their ranch, their family, and thus the entire nation of families. Right. And like for me, that is the big picture. It's not about education. It's not about getting people to understand what glyphosate is or isn't or you know, all of these details that sometimes we argue or, you know, educating our consumer, which you'll hear all the time. For me it's like about none of that. That that is not what will get us to come out on the right side of this and be seen as the people that are doing the right thing every single day out for their animals and out on the land. It is trust. That is what we have to focus on when it comes to consumer. And that's why, because they so heavily distrust big, big food and big pharma. If agriculture does not figure out, you know, where we align with this conversation and this movement of food, we're either gonna be seen as trusted or not trusted. And that's my big like aha moment and take away from the whole four hour round table is like, we have to come out of this being the trusted farmer and rancher that's making the healthy potato, that big food is turning into the potato chip. And that's the problem. Not the farmer, not the potato, not the soil, et cetera.

Vance Crowe [00:48:49] Yeah. And ag to your point, has like a very interesting two part thing. There's no like big pharma plus all the pharmacists, like people believe that the pharmacists are in on big pharma, but with ag you do have big ag like the Monsantos now bear and, and Corteva. And then you have their customers and they're not the same thing. And it is in the interest of the farmers, not to be the same thing, but there is a huge vulnerability that farmers have right now. And it's going to become more and more important if the economy continues to struggle, which is because of our ags large ability to influence politicians, even though they haven't been able to get the farm bill passed, they're going to eventually push through like, well what we need to do is because farmers aren't doing very well, we need to give them farm aid. So we need to send people checks that allow them to stay in business. Because if we don't during these bad years, farmers might go outta business. Well every single consumer that is sitting at home watching their bank accounts go down, down, down and their credits go up, up, up. Like they're gonna say like, wait a second, why did those farmers get money from taxpayers for this? Like they're in on this game that has nothing to do with me. And this is one of those things that like if you don't hand out those payments, there's gonna be a lot of land that changes hands and there are gonna be farms that go outta business. I don't know if that's a good thing, but I can tell you that this is a vulnerability that the people that are at that round table, if they aren't already pitching, throwing at that they are going to.

Natalie Kovarik [00:50:25] Yeah. So I did watch the entire four hour round table, well, multiple times I probably spent like six hours watching it. 'cause I had to like rewind, you know, listen, got distracted, whatever. I went into it thinking, I would hear the word big ag repeatedly and GMOs repeatedly. And then I knew there would be the glyphosate conversation. I also thought I would hear organic quite a bit, which I did. There was one speaker who her, I think maybe her talking points were organic, but other than that, you know, no one else really mentioned organic. But those were kind of, you know, the, the buzz words. I thought I'd hear big Ag GMOs, organic and glyphosate. The amount of times they said Big Ag was shocking to me. I bet it was less than five. I wish I would've counted it. It was very small. Like I was so pleasantly surprised the amount of times they said the word farm bill. I was shocked. I didn't even know these people knew what the farm bill was. I mean, half of farmers and ranchers don't know what is actually in the farm Bill, you know, and for that round table, I think probably almost every single one of the speakers referenced the farm bill. I could not believe how much it was referenced. I was in shock. And to what you said, they're referencing it because right now, as you said, GMOs are out and the things that our consumers are talking about are not that anymore. I am surprised. But what the consumers are talking about right now, I'm hearing over and over again is subsidies, the next attack on consumers is subsidies. They are very, very angry of their perception of what subsidies is. And it's another tool that will, if we let it get out of hand or let you know the food babe dictate what should be, you know, subsidized and isn't, or if they should exist or not, we'll have very, very real implications for agriculture.

Natalie Kovarik [00:52:07] And, and so who steps up for that? Is it the food ba Like, you know, how are we as an industry, again, this is so important for us to, to pay into this conversation. How are we gonna figure out how to address our, our concerns, you know, what we want out of that moving forward so that when we can come to the table when, you know, the food vape says, I don't want subsidies, I don't want, I mean there was a direct quote from someone who said, our our government, our money is going to the government to spray the, the farms with billions of dollars of pesticides. That in turn then, you know, distraught our gut biome, like that was the essential thing. Like they are on the subsidy conversation and they do not like it.

Vance Crowe [00:52:48] Yeah. And the subsidies is a wild thing because as I understand it, it used to be that the government literally subsidize things more directly and now the subsidies are much more like insurance subsidies. So we're gonna make it really inexpensive for you to be able to make sure that you have insurance and that insurance is like, if your crops don't yield at the, like this is your base layer of, of yield that you're supposed to get. And if you don't get all the way up to that, then we will cover you. And so you pay insurance and we'll bring you up to that level, which essentially means as long as you're buying insurance, it's very difficult for you to go outta business. And that's why they, the ethanol is tied into the farm bill is tied into these subsidies because the value of that, that they're gonna cover you is not to like show up with corn and dump it in your farm. It's gonna, they're gonna give you the money that you could have produced and how many, how many bushels you used to produce per acre. And like, I don't know, is that fair? Maybe I'm on the side of, of, of Vani Hari about that. Like maybe that's not right because my business doesn't have like an insurance that if I don't make the money that I made over the last five years that you're gonna cover me. I don't know that, that's certainly not equitable. No.

Natalie Kovarik [00:53:58] And but again, this is like another trigger point for agriculture, right? Because you're gonna have people listening that are very much so pro subsidies and are like, don't change that. And then you, it's like a very division point for agriculture. I was listening to a really interesting conversation that was talking about like specialty crops. Like they're like historically, you know, if you're going on like the insurance conversation, like, you know, the way they're, so to put it broad speaking I guess, like they're not as subsidized as, you know, corn and soybeans are like, is that fair within agriculture? Like do we need to shift it? You know, like it it raises all these questions that I don't think farmers are sometimes comfortable raising and then stating their opinion on, quite frankly.

Vance Crowe [00:54:40] Yeah. I think the thing that is going to be interesting is to find out who are going to be the allies of the, the farmers that want to preserve the technology that they have. Because I know that you've said it a couple of times, you know, you're not into ultra pasture or ultra processed food in my house. We eat almost nothing ultra processed, but it's because we have time or that's what we've decided to dedicate all of our time to is, is cooking and entertaining our children when we're not at work. But like, you know, I made some changes in my life in the last six months to to switch to way less carbs, like virtually zero carbs. And my life has been transformed by that. So like all of a sudden I'm like, wait a second, you guys told me about the food pyramid and about how this is supposed to work and I'm supposed to have this many servings of grains and now I'm discovering like one who created that food pyramid and that doesn't seem right. And then two, like maybe we should be producing a lot more proteins and fats and a lot less carbohydrates. And so all of a sudden I start being like, yeah, I don't like what they're saying about glyphosate and GMOs, but they are the team that's gonna lower the amount of, of ultra processed foods in our diet.

Natalie Kovarik [00:55:54] Yeah, no, I don't, I know. I mean I agree. I agree quite frankly with that, like our, our household is, is very, very similar. I mean I've, I've had Mike qualms with the, the food pyramid for a, for a long time like the, you know, the demonization of saturated fats. I mean I think there were so many points historically that again got us to where we are. And I think, I'm not surprised that we're in the storm that brewed, you know, it brewed for decades with all these different mandates, all these different things. And I'm not surprised we are where we are now with this conversation. I just think it's gonna be interesting to see where we come out of it, honestly, as an industry.

Vance Crowe [00:56:32] Well, Natalie, I had all these questions about the inner workings of your mind and who you turn to for advice and what it's like to have faith in things, but this has been a far more interesting and engaging conversation, so I'll have to have you on another time to talk about the inner workings of, of your mind.

Natalie Kovarik [00:56:49] I would be happy to sit down and, and you know, have a crow conversation anytime.

Vance Crowe [00:56:55] Well thanks so much for coming on. If people wanted to check out what you're doing, where should they go for that?

Natalie Kovarik [00:57:00] Yep. If you're tuning into this, you're probably a podcast person. So the best place to find me would be our podcast, which is Discover Ag. We are a Thursday episode and we, you can listen to us anywhere. Podcasts are available. So wherever you tune in you can find us. And then I am on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. And that's just under my name, Natalie Kovarik.

Vance Crowe [00:57:21] Well Natalie, this has been quite enjoyable. You are a difficult person to nail down 'cause you have so much going on, but I, I loved it. I'm so glad we were able to find time to do this.

Natalie Kovarik [00:57:30] That was just an illusion, I swear.

Vance Crowe [00:57:34] Well, thanks for coming on.