Why is produce rotting in Florida? Dr Kevin Folta Horticulture University of Florida

Vance Crowe [00:00:02] As the crow flies on the Vance Crow podcast, Dr. Kevin Fulta, welcome to the podcast.

Kevin Folta [00:00:10] Hey, Vance. Nice to be with you again.

Vance Crowe [00:00:13] So you are down in Florida, you are the former head of horticultural studies at the University of Florida, and your university is suspended and you are working on your own farm operation right now. How are things going down in Florida?

Kevin Folta [00:00:29] Well, still doing all my university work from home, which is turning out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be. I mean, I'm, I sit in front of a computer most of the day, writing grants, papers, that kind of thing, just, you know, zoom meetings. And so we're making it work, but spending a lot of time working with, with my wife, who was a small farmer and really having a, having a lot of fun, taking care of some big projects I wanted to knock out. So That's good.

Vance Crowe [00:00:54] So when did you start taking Coronavirus seriously? And when you started taking it seriously, what did that prompt you to do?

Kevin Folta [00:01:01] Yeah, it, at first, you know, it was kind of a, a, a problem over there and, you know, and, and much of what I said about it publicly was even taken out of context because we saw these numbers starting to come in and I was always comparing it against seasonal flu and, you know, which, which is a major problem for me that people still get flu despite having a, a vaccine that they opt not to take and endanger others. So I really started thinking about coronavirus probably in late January, very seriously when I had an opportunity to see a talk by Dr. Aria Ka Capua, who is a, a virologist at the University of Florida, who has been there on SARS and Ebola. She's studied all of these things and in influenza, and she said, this will be a massive problem. And at that time, we were pretty very serious about this, maybe in late January, early February.

Vance Crowe [00:02:03] I think one of the biggest challenges with people saying this is gonna be a big problem, is I'm certain if we go back and look at Mers and sars, you'll find academics who have said like, oh man, hold the, hold the phone, we gotta stop. And then it was contained and everything went back to normal. And so we, as at least Americans or westerners e every time there was some kind of alarm, it, it didn't really pay to panic.

Kevin Folta [00:02:29] Yeah, yeah. And I think that was probably the big difference was the level of containment on Mers and sars. There were some strange circumstances around them, such as really the big breakouts happening in extremely localized areas, or maybe even in localized buildings like hotels, where they were able to contain a lot of the, the, the issue early. So that was the saving grace. The other big issue is the how contagious is it factor? And SARS cov to two, the one that's causing the problem with COVID-19 is not only highly communicable, but also has, has all of its symptom spectrum, you know, of the other two. So it's that potent combination of being able to jump from person to person that differentiates this from others.

Vance Crowe [00:03:19] So the big reason that I wanted to talk with you is that I have seen articles, things on Facebook about people plowing under crops because they can't harvest them. So just set the stage because my understanding has been that's just been a blip, and compared to the meat packing plant shutting down, it has not really risen to the top of the list of things for me to be concerned about.

Kevin Folta [00:03:41] Well, you have to look at where we are here in the state of Florida, it's April, and our, our production, we're the number two horticultural crop state. So all the things like green beans, sweet corn, peppers, tomatoes, strawberries, blueberries, we are counter seasonal. So in other words, whereas California and the northern states can produce during the summer and, and even into the fall, Florida picks up the slack through the winter and into the spring. And right now our producers are producing full throttle with ideas that were established back in, you know, January and February they started planting and now it's being harvested. Well, now it would be harvested, right? Only problem is the fields are full and it's being plowed under because there's no demand at the grocery stores.

Vance Crowe [00:04:33] Oh, it's that there's no demand.

Kevin Folta [00:04:35] Well, it is a demand issue. It's a total demand issue. It's grocery stores, but 80% of Florida crops are going into food service. So restaurants, cruise ships, schools, because we can produce, like, you know, tomatoes a great example. The tomatoes are uniform, they're large seven slices on every single one. Those are the ones that go in through the Cisco and all these big, big food service distributors that is a major, major part of the Florida market. So that demand is completely gone. And just to give you an idea, they're, they're, we're losing something like 50 to 75 million pounds of tomatoes per day that are being plow under,

Vance Crowe [00:05:20] Wait, say that again? 50 million pounds of tomatoes a day.

Kevin Folta [00:05:24] 50 to 75 million pounds per day. And this is why you, you can't just say, well give it to local markets or food bank, who's got room for, do you have a refrigerator for 75 million pounds of tomatoes? I mean, it, it shows how, how strong the, the market consumption of fresh produce is when you start looking at, you know, across all the places that buy Florida produce in the winter.

Vance Crowe [00:05:52] Man, I, I, I really thought this was a labor issue. I did not realize that it was a demand issue. And this makes a ton of sense to me in that if you go look at the modern grocery store, it's probably less than one 10th of the, of the flare space is for fresh produce. But you are getting fresh every time you go to a restaurant, you're getting salads, you're getting things that where you want that produce that's right there. And just like milk, 30% of milk is consumed in restaurants through creams, cheese, butter, whatever. It did not dawn on me that the demand wasn't there for fresh produce.

Kevin Folta [00:06:27] Yeah. And then when you mention milk, you know, schools, you know, when you have schools out, every kid gets milk with their, with their meals at schools. So it, the fresh produce demand is amazing. And especially when you start looking in across the state of Florida where we have huge numbers of small producers who may be in a great example, Cahaba clubs, herbal outposts, okay. Just to name alone tells you the scope of this place. But this is run by a guy named Marvin Wilhite, who's a genius, who he sells herbs to restaurants, and he has a small operation. He also is moving into larger food service too. But here's a guy that in a couple of acres of small greenhouses, produces all the microgreens for places like Disney and the garnishes for restaurants and has a huge, huge number of places that overnight said were closed. And he has a small number of, well, he has a number of employees, probably a dozen employees, that all of a sudden find themselves out of work because you can't just, you can't store that stuff. It's good for a few days. Right. And so Marvin has had to close up his operation. It's so sad. But, but you know, I talked to him the other day and well, we can talk about this later maybe, but he's thinking of how do you, how do you move laterally in a time of change?

Vance Crowe [00:07:47] So what happens when a farmer starts plowing, you know, 50 million pounds of tomatoes back into the ground? Do we have to worry about an environmental danger or now this is something we can handle? How does all this work?

Kevin Folta [00:08:00] It turns into green manure. I mean, it essentially just goes back to where it came from, right? It breaks down into the minerals that made it. And, you know, if anything adds organic matter to the soil that allows it to hold water better in the next season, you know, Florida, our soil is sand and a lot of places where they grow tomatoes, it's almost like crushed limestone. I mean, it's just, it's almost not, it's not soil like Midwest soil, essentially. Florida works their production on what is in essence a hydroponic system. We grow plants, growers will mound the sand into mounds, long rows of mounds covered with plastic, with a drip tape down the center, and then plants are planted at, you know, so at whatever interval and tomatoes, for instance, are planted at, you know, maybe 18 inches and staked, and then they're fed and watered through that tube. So it's a really weird kind of IV hydroponic, you know, artificial environment to begin with. So to be able to add that back to the soil, not the worst thing in the world, but, but certainly devastating economically for the farmers.

Vance Crowe [00:09:06] So I was speaking with my friend Kate Crosby, who's deep in the plant biology world, and she made the point that meat markets contain a lot more calories. So if you shut down 65,000 head of cattle being not being slaughtered anymore, that's a huge problem because you're not, those calories aren't entering the food system. That's not necessarily true with fruits and vegetables because we aren't deriving that, that huge percentage of our calories from fresh fruits and vegetables. In your opinion, why is this something we should be paying attention to now if it's not immediate with calories?

Kevin Folta [00:09:44] Well, the problem is that you're, you're seeing a large part of the North American food supply, like the chain that will supply North America. So Florida supplies North America, you know, I'm talking about even into Canada, but New York, Washington, DC, Chicago, Minneapolis, in the winter, your vegetables are coming from us, coming from the state of Florida, and especially the eastern half of the, of the country. If our farmers disappear tomorrow, now the only place you'll be able to get your vegetables from are from Mexico and South America, maybe even China. So the question is, once you displace the American farmer in this fragile situation, where do your calories, where, where do your, where do your fruits and vegetables, especially like these important, you know, the, the stuff with high nutrient dense, you know, lettuce and tomatoes. If, if you're not getting it domestically, where are you going to be getting it from? And, and that's the big question.

Vance Crowe [00:10:44] And my impression is that you can't just convert this into storable vegetables. Like, it's not like you can turn on the frozen fruit in, or frozen fruit and vegetable industry in Florida to capture all that capacity.

Kevin Folta [00:11:00] Yeah, and that's true on two fronts. First of all, the, the, the varieties that are grown are not grown for freezing. So they're made for fresh market. And what you grow for going into a grocery store and through that supply chain is very different frequently than what is cut up and goes into frozen storage or into processing. Processing. Tomatoes are different than fresh market tomatoes. And even though it sounds like a nuance, it's really important when you look at the specifics of the processing industry and what they need in terms of the percent sugar and percent acid and you know, the difference, you can have ugly fruit that are uniform that go into that process, whereas our fresh market produce is perfect fruit that maybe have a little variability. So that's really, that's one big thing. The other question is, you just don't have the infrastructure who's going to pick that stuff, load it on the trucks and send it off to be shipped or be processed wherever that would happen, you know, far away. It's logistically impossible.

Vance Crowe [00:12:07] So what are, what are you thinking, man? Is this like total catastrophe for the state of Florida, or is that blowing it outta proportion? Like where, where should people's terror threat level be?

Kevin Folta [00:12:19] It, it's funny that you say that because when you think about threats to national security, rattling the food chain is probably the way to do it. And I think that, you know, and, and not to diminish other things that terrorists have done over the years, but really an, an existential threat would be something that really endangered food supply. And right now, you know, when you talk about beef for cattle, cattle production or milk production, all that's a big problem too. Our farmers in, we have a dairy industry in Florida that's dumping thousands and thousands of gallons of milk a day, and just, there's no demand for, and the rules, the regulations make it impossible for them to store it or use it alternatively, or sell directly to the consumer. So the rules are, are impossible to live with, and you just have to dump the product. But, but it, to me, I think if this happened during, what, what if all this happened during the time of year when corn and soybeans were coming through, you know, when all that stuff was maturing and markets were drying up for that, you know, that maybe, you know, cattle markets weren't as I, I don't know exactly how that worked. I'm not an economist, but you can see how this is happening with specialty crops when so many other crops are growing around our nation. Florida's the focus right now because of the timing, but if this happened in the fall, it could be very different.

Vance Crowe [00:13:46] So one of the things that this series has focused on is the fact that there's been so much change in our society that the Overton window is wide open. So the ideas that were once considered either radical or even unthinkable, can now be introduced to society for better or for worse. As you look around and you're hearing people talk about things, what are some ideas that you're like, Hey, we should keep those out. That is not the direction we should be heading in.

Kevin Folta [00:14:15] Yeah, it's ideas to keep out. Gosh, you know, this, that's a real tough one for me to, to, to think about at this point because I've kind of thought of widening my window and saying all, all things on deck, and now's the time for us to test every hypothesis. And I've said a lot of things over the last few weeks that have really ticked people off because I, I mean, I'm saying, you know, now's the time that we make our monumental changes as a, as a society, not just in the area of agriculture, but like, let's, let's get internet for everybody. Let's figure out how to do that. Let's change to the metric system. Let's get rid of the post office. You know, I said things like this and people went ballistic, and it's like, let's analyze everything we do with a fine tooth economic comb, and let's use this opportunity to streamline the system and do things in a way that gets us faster and better and more agile as a nation, but at the same time allows us to take on some of these long overdue practices that we've neglected to do. Like, you know, getting on board with the metric system. It, it would, it would help us with commerce, it would help us with international trade. It would help our students be a little bit smarter and wiser. You know, those kinds of things I've been excited about. But you know, there hasn't been a whole lot. I've said, let's not go this direction. That's

Vance Crowe [00:15:33] Very interesting. I had not thought about the metric system. I can only imagine what kind of craziness would ensue if all of a sudden we're buying gasoline and liters instead of gallons and people not knowing if the price is going up or down or, so it

Kevin Folta [00:15:47] Would be like 25 cents a liter. I guess it's so cheap right now. I mean, it would be, it would be very strange to see it in the leaders.

Vance Crowe [00:15:56] So what, what do you, what do you think is coming, you know, do you think that or this is gonna level out? Do you think that, I mean, you, you guys are running a farm operation. How are things changing in in positive or negative ways?

Kevin Folta [00:16:10] Yeah, well, this has been an interesting shift across the state. And when I talked earlier about the crisis that's happening in terms of plowing under crops, there's a lot of other farmers that are, that are coming up with other ways to market their product, and they're still losing money hand over fist, but they're putting together boxes from local commodity groups and selling like a box of produce for 10 to $20 and getting some recovery. Others have, they have a website in the state of Florida that you can go to to buy produce if you wanna buy produce. And what's hilarious about it is, I think they set it up where a consumer might go buy, you know, I'm gonna buy 10 pounds of blueberries and make some jam. And you know, the blueberry grower saying, well, I got 2 million pounds to sell you. You know, I mean, it, it really is like, I mean, it, it really is like that. I mean, just the massive amount that is out there. What you do see is a little bit of migration to this more localized distribution and, and trying to do this. I know for us, my wife switched from farmer's markets to, and you know, we, so we would sell at farmer's markets, we would sell out of a stand here at home, and that was the same every week. She had to switch to an online system because we had so many people coming here to buy that. It was kind of in violation of the spirit of distancing. You had people coming over and coming to our, you know, farm stand and, you know, handling produce.

Kevin Folta [00:17:41] Oh, we want this one, we want this one. We're, ah, maybe not this one. You know, it, it was opening up levels of, of, of risk that we were uncomfortable with. So switching to that online system was turning on a dime. I mean, she was able to build the website and populate it and get it going literally overnight. And it has been very successful. When we go to the farmer's markets in town, the, our markets at first were closed, and I'm on the board of one of them. And we really pushed to ensure that these are the same thing as grocery stores in terms of an essential service that you need to have access to fresh produce. Because the people who shop at farmer's markets, a substantial number of them are the same people every week, and that's where they go for their fresh fruits and vegetables. So, and it's

Vance Crowe [00:18:35] An open air market, I'm assuming.

Kevin Folta [00:18:36] Yes. It's open air market and we, and we had to make some adjustments. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:18:41] You know, it's an interesting thing. I, I had on a guy named Spencer Wells, a population geneticist and a National Geographic explorer, and he made the point that I had never considered before, which is one of the big reasons that colds and flus spread in the wintertime is because you're spending so much more time indoors and you're sharing air with people, and that one of the things that you can do to lower transmission is if you are having interactions with people to do them outside so that the diffusion of the disease is, is much higher because you're having fresh air. So I I good for you for talking about farmer's markets, because people have to get their, their groceries somehow they have to get their calories and their nutrition.

Kevin Folta [00:19:23] Yeah, well when you go to the grocery store, you're, you have, and this is what we were seeing, especially before they started to instate these rules where you can only let in one person per thousand square feet of retail space. At first you had people going to grocery stores in droves, going and hoarding as much as they could, you know, shopping for a month, getting as much in their cart as they could, people on top of people. Whereas the farmer's markets were a little different. We had people who, and this has been really cool to see this vendors as well as customers were more conscientious. They were more sensitive to the space between each other. You're in the open air, you're in the temperature, your higher temperature here in Florida, you know, it's warm. Then you have UV light, which destroys the virus. So all the things kind of stack up to the open air market having an advantage. And then the thing that we did at my market, I actually made a number of hand wash stations. So just out of, you know, 20 bucks a parts and a car battery was able to put a hand, a foot operated hand wash station outta two five gallon buckets. And it was a really, really nice touch that gave people more confidence in being there because they had access to, you know, washing their hands and drying their hands and nobody touching produce except for vendors. It really is a much safer place to be able to do your shopping.

Vance Crowe [00:20:48] Well, that's amazing. You should send me the plans for how to do that and I will throw it up in the show notes because Sure. That'd be very interesting to share with people. I'm sure there are a lot of people, particularly running farm stands. I have a good friend that's up in New York state trying to sell the eggs that they can no longer deliver to restaurants. And then they were saying, but we've got a real danger here. We can't be inviting people to a bios secure facility where we're producing eggs, and yet if we don't find a way to distribute these, we're just going to dump eggs. So it was a real problem. So I think anybody that can come up with answers for how do we have more hand washing stations, how do we, that, that's all really important stuff.

Kevin Folta [00:21:27] Yeah, yeah. Let me, I'll actually send you a link for a YouTube video I'm putting together on that because we have a opportunity. So when at the market, the president of the market reached out to the board and said, one of you go out and find some hand washing stations that we can rent or, or, or buy, and you couldn't buy or rent a hand washing station, but you can build one pretty easy. So that it is a really good solution and I think it's something that, that I would love to have more people have access to. So I'll get that taken care of.

Vance Crowe [00:22:00] What is your sense for how dangerous a contracting coronavirus is?

Kevin Folta [00:22:07] Well, I think it's dangerous in that it that there are people who have vulnerabilities, right? You have people who have other comorbidities, whether it's diabetes or other types of re resistance issues because they're immune compromised. There's obviously by the epidemiological data, good evidence that says that some people are more vulnerable, especially the elderly. The other big issue is, so the issue with this is we have to think about ourselves in the chain of transmission and break that chain. And anybody who contracts this thing and we're seeing more and more evidence, maybe it's good, maybe it's not that people, that a substantial number of people are asymptomatic, but carrying and spreading. And the population in Iceland was a great example that very few people showed, presented with symptoms, yet lots of people tested positive. And this may be the kind of thing where we are leading to harm the people who are most vulnerable, and that's the people we should be protecting.

Vance Crowe [00:23:15] And have you seen these reports this morning? I was flipping through Twitter before I did my workout, and I see tobacco smokers celebrating because it turns out that there was one study that shows that nicotine reduces the uptake on some particular part of the coronavirus and it stops transmission or it makes it much less. What do you, what do you think about these types of papers coming out?

Kevin Folta [00:23:40] Th this has been a real problem for me is that, you know, you know, we have these preprint servers that allow you to put research into pre-publication space. So why it's in review, you can still put the story out there. And that's important for lots of reasons. The problem is, is it puts unvetted research into a space where the public can consume and interpret and misinterpret what it really means. And there have been a number of in vitro studies, a number of very small studies, you know, like I, that I've seen like, you know, doing the test on four monkeys to test if you can get reinfection, you know, but those data are important because there's something, and a lot of times what you see are populations that are being studied for an epidemiological study or, or maybe even a clinical trial that's already underway. And now you throw in coronavirus and you find that a certain number of people in that study came down with the virus. How did they respond with this treatment? You know, these are things that happen and are unfolding as they're occurring, and scientists feel compelled to share that information. So you have to be extremely careful that, you know, as, as Fauci says, we're building the airplane as we're flying it. And a lot of the data that are coming out from small and inconclusive studies ultimately will not pan out yet are being taken very seriously by many people who are adjusting their lives and maybe hoarding chemicals or whatever, you know, drugs based on very thin studies.

Vance Crowe [00:25:18] So you're a professor, you have guided a lot of people through to their PhDs and they go on to be professors. Coronavirus has shown that the world may be changing. If you were a guiding a grad student that was said, Hey, I really wanna go into plants and plant biology right now, how would your advice to them be different today than it was in January of 2020?

Kevin Folta [00:25:45] Yeah, you know, it, I'm, I'm a bad person to ask that question to because I would give the same advice because even back in January of 2020, the future of science in this nation is something that is hard to understand, especially university science. It's very difficult to understand where we're going, what's our trajectory. And what I advise people to do is, you know, how do you pack a bag for a trip you're going to take, but you don't know where you're going. And what it means is that you need to have the most versatile, the most, you know, the, the Swiss Army knife of training. You need to be able to do everything well, and that includes speaking and writing and communicating your research. And so I put my emphasis on those areas. What you ultimately will be studying is something that, and this is because also not just because of a dire situation in terms of the research environment, but everything changes so fast. What you think you're going to be studying in five years, it, it may not even be invented yet. We haven't even gotten to that level of research yet. That area of research hasn't even opened. You know, gene editing was, was a, was a tiny thought five years ago, and now is everywhere. So the next level of research is something that we don't know what it is. So how do we prepare it to be able to tackle it? And that's where getting in and understanding fundamentals, understanding, you know, all of these other, what people call soft skills, which I hate that, but reinforcing those skills, that's stuff you can control that will enhance your dissemination of the research you eventually do take on.

Kevin Folta [00:27:23] So it's, it's, that's where I always tell people to invest their time in training.

Vance Crowe [00:27:27] So you and I have done a lot of science communication, you from the science side of it and me from emotion and, and why is it that people disagree? One of the things I'm observing is that there are a lot of scientists that are very, very confident about how dangerous this disease is and what we need to do to stop the spread and that stay in your houses. And one of the things that I've observed is that the people in the hard sciences, even people not in the hard sciences, are pushing that their way should just be accepted. And if not, we should use force not, not only does that piss me off, because I don't want anyone to force me to do anything. I also believe that it is completely ineffective. And I'm watching people that thought that they were advocating for GMOs that never really converted very many people now alienating whatever few people they had around them that think differently because they're saying, if you don't agree with me, the police are on my side or the government forces on my side. What advice do you have for people that are in science communication at a time when tensions are way higher than they were over GMOs or climate change?

Kevin Folta [00:28:41] No, absolutely. And I think that we have to apply all of the things that we learned back then, and that really we have to start with what is our overarching goal of mitigating the impacts of a, of a, in this case a pandemic virus. And we have to start out with what is the goal here? And for me, it's nothing more than protecting the most vulnerable. And all of us have to have some sacrifice to do that. And when you start out by talking about it in that context that this is about helping the people who, who desperately need to be protected, then it starts to make everybody kind of buys into that more or less. I mean, you know, I think that's the kind is, you know, in the parlance of communication, the, the shared value, right? That's the thing that we all can agree on. And then from there we can start talking about how we do that. But then, you know, you have folks who say, yeah, but the economy is so important, and so that's gonna, you know, think about all the people out of work that'll have their lives changed and go bankrupt, are they also vulnerable? And I think think that's important to keep that in mind too. So what it says is that we need to be that communicators who are in this area need to be thinking about the values we share amongst all of us and prioritizing them among life and death, economic realities and hardships that people will face. And accepting those and acknowledging them and, and not belittling them. And then talking more about solutions and thinking about the solution side.

Vance Crowe [00:30:09] I see people saying, yeah, I understand that you wanna get the economy going, but I am more pure or more right because I wanna protect other people. And this is a hard pill for a lot of people that are working and that are essential services to swallow because they're saying, look, if I don't keep my HVAC business running, then when summer hits and people are stuck in their homes, these old people that you're trying to protect, they will have no heating and air conditioning and you'll have enormous problems. And so I see it as like a fake lip service. I I am very concerned about what I've seen science communicators doing because I think they're actually making the rift much, much worse by not recognizing the very true feelings and observations that people that are on the open the economy side are, are looking at and trying to get people to pay attention to.

Kevin Folta [00:31:05] No, you're exactly right. And I, and I think that what this, what we're sitting in right now is how do we, how do we deal with the failure of there to be some sort of, as I mentioned on my podcast, you know, epidemiological, economic epidemiological economics, you know, how do you deal with, how do, how do you have this intricate balance? And I think there are ways to do it. And I'm, I'm, and I think we've learned a lot from this as a, you know, not we like you and me, but I think like the economists and epidemiologists will think about these things very differently going forward. And the question of when to close a nation and how to close a nation. And I think that, well, you know, and, and you know, we could go into this all day, but really if, if right away, if we, what we could have done is when we saw this thing starting to fester in China, ramped up the testing kits, got it to a point where everybody could be tested as fast as we could once this thing started showing up here and isolating the, the populations that were vulnerable, keep the people who were te and, and have frequent testing, keep the people who are not test testing positive in business and moving their parts of the economy, keeping those wheels turning because now you've had the mothball this thing for a month, and will you, it's gonna be very different when it comes out. We have to be able to respond to this kind of thing in a much more agile way because this is not the last one that'll happen.

Kevin Folta [00:32:37] And I'm a little bit surprised that it happened the way it was because you could manufacture viruses and it seemed like this was something that DARPA or somebody would've had in their quiver that they would've said, here's how we're going to respond to a viral threat that a pathogen that's extremely communicable. I was a little bit taken back that this was not already in the playbook.

Vance Crowe [00:32:59] Yeah, I mean I think that there were people thinking about bio-terrorism 'cause I took classes in graduate school about how to handle that. But the, there was really not the same level of emphasis on what happens when it becomes endemic in society, right? It was much more about like, there's a biological weapon that's broken out in dc, how are we going to to contain it in DC we had not thought about, and then it shows up in Oklahoma and then South Dakota, like we just really hadn't planned, at least as far as I had seen the plans for that.

Kevin Folta [00:33:30] Yeah, sure. No, same thing though. You know, it shows that this, although not, not, not all evidence shows that this was a naturally occurring event. It shows how something that could be manufactured could be paralyzed, an economy and a paralyze a nation. And this is something that, that I was surprised there wasn't a more articulated and fluid response to it. You know, as, as I mentioned before, flying the plane as we're building it, it seems like this should have already been at least partially built.

Vance Crowe [00:34:03] Yeah. And I think the fact that it wasn't is something everybody just has to accept and now say, alright, what is the reality that we're dealing with now? And so much of what I see is people saying, I know the right answer and I know how we should handle this. And then you watch it change on a dime. And I think people should be, I, I mean, for example, I really, really believed when they were telling me, you don't need to wear masks. They didn't need to wear masks. And it wasn't until I had a guy named Yosha Bach on that was like, what are you nuts? Of course you should wear a mask in this. And so I think that one of the things that the people on the side of, of academic science, the people that are normally scientists, they are much more accustomed to things changing, Hey, we had one idea and now we've got a new one and let's change that. But the general public is being told, listen to the science, and they're being told, you know, we have this answer. And then if it changes a week or two later and you exerted it as though it were the truth and the one and, and not a zero, now you can't go back and ask them to trust the next thing that you say. So it seems to me that there needs to be a level of humility brought to the scientific communications community that's just not there right now.

Kevin Folta [00:35:21] No, and I, I agree. And then, and I'd like to see that also kind of move into politics too, that, you know, that I think that if leadership in the country were to say, look, you know, we, we misunderstood this, we, you know, but we're adjusting and here's how we're adjusting science should be doing the same thing too, as saying, this is the natural process of how we find the best outcome. We make mistakes, we overshoot, we undershoot, we revise as we get more data. And that's the thing that, that drives me nuts. And we think back to like the 2004 election with John Kerry, where they would say, you know, always a flip flopper, he changes his mind on things. It's the idea that changing your mind when presented with new evidence is actually a very evolved, very advanced skill. And I think this is something that if somebody proves me wrong or shows that I have, there's data that con or contrary to what I think I love being able to say, man, I really under thought that thanks for straightening me out. And when really our human tendency is to dig in our heels and reinforce the point that we really believe. And I think that that maybe is the take home lesson here, is that in a dynamic and changing threat like this virus, we all need to be able to think about who do we trust and understand that things change and that situations are fluid.

Vance Crowe [00:36:42] Yeah. I think that one of the most important things that I've picked up through this pandemic is I should really be seeking out information that changes my behavior. And if what I'm doing is finding a bunch of information that confirms what I was already doing that's not actually helping me in some tangible way, and that in fact changing my behavior to be more in line with the, the new reality that is constantly changing now because so many things are changing. That's the spot that you wanna be in. You don't get points for being right first. You get points for making sure your behavior is in line with what is happening next.

Kevin Folta [00:37:20] That's right. Yeah. You, you get points for being right last.

Vance Crowe [00:37:24] Yeah, that's right. Right.

Kevin Folta [00:37:25] I mean, you, you're, you're the one that at the, at the, you know, in the, in the game of, of musical chairs. Right. You know, and I think that this is the idea is that we need to be thinking about and constantly monitoring how will things be different, what predictions can we make? And being ready for those changes as they occur. And I think it's like, you know, for a good example for me is I have a class to teach in the fall. Will will we have students coming in in the fall? You know, will we still be in a situation where universities are all being taught online? And how do I do that more effectively? How do I not just put information out there with a PowerPoint like I always would have, or, you know, use in core in a classroom. How do I change this, the experience so that it doesn't just give the same delivery so that I can use the modern tools of media to give an exceptional experience? How do I take this to a new level and, and is there room to change the way we educate students, especially with distance delivery, you know, is this crisis an opportunity for re us to retool? And I think about that every single day.

Vance Crowe [00:38:35] Well, I think our, our, I think you have met him, chubby imu, the medical doctor, I think he's the one that told me the, the chin in the Chinese language crisis and opportunity are very closely aligned symbols. And they are the meaning that in crisis there are great opportunities. I am right now searching for someone that can help me understand, I have a VR headset and I believe I am holding on to something that is very important for the future. And I want somebody to help me wake up and realize it's possibilities. So I'm just saying this now, in case any of our listeners are, have any idea on, on how to do that, because my sense is exactly like you said, the people that adapt first to make their lesson plans the correct way. The they're gonna be public speaking, they're gonna be interacting in meetings. You may look goofy at first trying out these new methods, but the one that when you find one that hits, you're gonna win all the marbles, you're gonna get 'em all. Yeah,

Kevin Folta [00:39:35] No, I agree a thousand percent. It's going to be about who, who comes out of this, who took this opportunity and this pause to reevaluate, to rethink and to change in a way that, that accelerates what we do in the right direction. I, and I, I'm, I'm plotting and scheming all the time,

Vance Crowe [00:39:54] So let's wrap up. But I have a question that I have been asking everybody. It's, it's one that, just for the record, it is April 15th, 2020. It is a Wednesday morning. What do you think the world will look like in two weeks?

Kevin Folta [00:40:10] In two weeks? Yeah, that's, that's a great question. You know, I think that there will be tremendous pressure on state and regional economies to be back to normal. And I think it's going to, there's going to be a lot of conflict about is this premature? And I think, you know, if I had to use my crystal ball, I think you're going to see a huge amount of consternation around this. I also think you're going to see a lot of calls to disrupt normal pop practices. Like, you know, the, what's happening in the political cycle, you know, postponing important events, postponing elections. I think you're gonna see a lot of discussion around that kind of thing. It, it's, there's, will

Vance Crowe [00:40:53] We see violence in the next two weeks in the United States over, over lockdown?

Kevin Folta [00:40:58] No. I, I, well, you know what, I, I wouldn't be surprised if you see a lot of, I don't think you're gonna see like civil unrest, but I think you're going to see a lot of examples of, of people in desperation taking desperate steps because you're going, people are running outta em. People have already run outta money. You know what's going to happen next. And you know, the, the trillions that have been allocated, when you look at how they've really been allocated, it's, especially for small business, it's all on a first come, first serve basis. And it's, and there's I think $350 billion earmarked and a small business can get up to $10 million. And they don't have to show need. They just have to have, you know, this is what we claim that our expenses are and what our need is. That pool of money is not enough. And so you're going to see a huge number of people who will never reopen again. And you know, that'll cause a lot of problems too. A lot of distress in small local economies and a lot of mom and pop businesses never reopening. And I think there could be fallout from that.

Vance Crowe [00:42:03] Yeah, I think in particular, the most vulnerable, well, not the most vulnerable, but among very vulnerable populations are business owners that don't have employees. And there are a lot of those. Oh yeah. And because the way that's a lot of the money that's being distributed, it's based on do you have employees? Because we're trying to get the money to the business owner that then gets the money to people living in society that aren't working. But there's a huge percentage of businesses that run just, just like your wife's business. It's basically her as the employee and not others. And so I think that if that doesn't get changed, you're gonna watch a whole bunch of sole proprietor businesses really get hit hard. And I think that the civil unrest, and I keep talking about this, and the other day, a a good friend of mine on Twitter said that I was a pot stir, that I was, you know, causing problems. But I'm trying to bring up the idea of civil unrest and understanding what would prompt someone to join a mass movement at this point. And it is the feeling of not being understood and being isolated and being yelled at that will drive them into the arms of somebody that says, we are with you. We're united together and we're gonna push back against this tyranny. So the people that are shoving their opinions down the throats of people that feel like they want the economy out, you are, you are making a dangerous choice to push people into the arms of people that you may be, that may, may drive their actions to be more ostentatious and direct than you might, than, than they would do on their own.

Kevin Folta [00:43:38] I think history agrees with you. And, and it certainly, you know, I know, you know, I live in a rural area and I've had people talk about, well, good thing we've got, you know, so and so over here who, you know, he, he, you know, talking about, you know, the local militia, you know, it's like, it's like I, you know, I don't, those conversations have been happening and it's strange to hear that. And you know, these are just, you know, neighbors of mine and people who are talking about, well, he knows how to do this and you guys are producing food. And it's, it's, you know, it's, it's strange to hear

Vance Crowe [00:44:10] It. It really is. It's, it's an unusual time. And people I think that think that the world is going back to the way it was pre coronavirus virus, that what I call the traditionalists. If you try and hold the rest of the world into your view, that, that if we just hold out long enough and that things will go back to normal, you are going to drive a stake between you and people that don't know what to do. So anyway, that's my own, that's my own private personal thought. But Dr. Fulta, thank you so much for jumping on here. I know you have a very busy life. I hope that things go well for you and your wife and keep your produce going, man. Thank you so much.

Kevin Folta [00:44:52] Yeah, thanks for having me aboard. Thank you very much. It was really nice.