The Moos Room™

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Emily: Hello everybody and welcome to this very special episode of The Moos Room. You may be wondering where the charming deep melodious voice of Dr. Joe Armstrong is. It is our pleasure to let you know that we have a new member of The Moos Room family. Joe and his wife Alex, recently welcomed their first son, Locklin, so congratulations to them. Joe will hopefully be on for future episodes but for right now, we wish him and his family all the best. Today you're stuck with two-thirds of the OG3. Myself, Emily Krekelberg, my esteemed colleague, Dr. Bradley J. Heins.
Bradley: Yay.
Emily: We have a very special guest today. He is a very close friend of The Moos Room and an extension colleague of Bradley and myself. It is Michael J. Cruse, PhD. Welcome, Mike.
Mike: Hello. Thank you for having me.
Emily: Of course. I think before we get to the big question, why don't you first tell us a little bit about what you do for Extension, where you work, et cetera?
Mike: Sure. I am a local Extension educator down in the southeast corner of the state. I officially cover both Fillmore and Houston counties down here but tend to do stuff at the regional level as well. I cover everything from livestock and crops to zucchinis and master gardeners and everything in between. Take a lot of technical service calls, do a lot of farm safety work, cover quite a range of topics.
Emily: Wow. You should have said from alfalfa to zucchini then it could have been like, "Cover everything from A to Z," but oh, well.
Bradley: We can call you about anything we want, right?
Mike: Correct.
Emily: Mike is the man, the dude. All right. Before we get into our conversation for the day we have to start with now two very important questions because you'll remember we added the second one. First question for you, Mike, what is your favorite breed of dairy cattle?
Mike: Dutch Belted.
Emily: [laughs]
Bradley: Whoa. [crosstalk]
Emily: Yes. Love it. Dutch Belted. That's another one.
Bradley: Now we have two for Dutch Belted.
Emily: [crosstalk] Wow. I smell a comeback.
Bradley: I guess so.
Emily: [laughs] Amazing. All right. Now for our new question. The tally here is still pretty small. What is your favorite beef breed?
Mike: Here's a curve ball for you. Brahman.
Bradley: Ooh.
Emily: Ooh. I like that. Any particular reason?
Mike: They look cool.
Emily: They look cool. That's why I like those belted.
Bradley: Brahmans are cool. There's a lot of them down in the southern part of the US. It's nice and hot.
Emily: Now that's what, we're two for Angus, one for Hereford, one for Chianina, and one for Brahman.
Bradley: Wow. That's a lot more diverse than the dairy breeds.
Emily: Yes. Quite the spread here.
Bradley: Yes.
Emily: It'll be interesting as we move forward, with what we all get on that. All right. Now we'll get onto the real business here. We'll get into it. Mike, tell us a little more about what you do, either that's in work or some of your educational background. You are a little different from the rest of us here on The Moos Room and that you're much more of a generalist, which is really cool. You get to do everything from alfalfa to zucchini. [laughs] Tell us a little more about the things you do, what you work on, that kind of stuff. What's happening in Fillmore and Houston counties?
Mike: Crops are growing and it's raining, so that's basically it.
Emily: Okay.
Bradley: [crosstalk] That's unlike the rest of the Midwest.
Mike: Yes. It's actually been a strange year as far as living in the state of Minnesota. Western half of Minnesota has been very dry up until a couple last weeks here. The Southeast actually after our very early cold snap that we had, we've been pretty wet. We've actually had a decent amount of rain down here. We've had some varying issues. I get on crops calls and things like that and people are talking about things getting too dry and turning on irrigators and we're worried about standing water and whether or not we can get in and spray. It's variation and it plays into some of my background as well. I'm originally from Northeast Iowa, not too far away from where I'm at now.
Emily: We forgive you.
Bradley: Go Hawkeyes.
Emily: Oh, Bradley.
Mike: [laughs] I grew up on a crop farm. My dad got some farm of about 2200 acres. Got a couple of degrees from Iowa State. I've got another degree from University of Wisconsin and Madison. Came over here so I did a whole bunch of work in cropping systems, energy budgets, carbon cycling, things of that nature. The work down here that I do from day to day obviously varies. This year I've gotten a ton of calls from everything from farm programs to, again, what's killing my zucchini and what's growing on my raspberries to how can we turn in people for pesticide drift.
It varies from day to day, so it keeps you on your toes. At the same time, we do have some pretty standard programs. We support a lot of Extension work when it comes to say land rent meetings, private pesticide applicator trainings. We try to support 4-H, especially at our county fairs. One of the big programs that we do down here is we actually host a 4th Grade Farm Safety Day every year for all of the 4th graders in both Fillmore and Houston counties. We get anywhere between 4 and 600 students come down to the Mabel Steam Engine Grounds every year, and they cycle through a whole bunch of safety sessions. It's a really good diverse set of work. Keeps you on your toes and keeps you moving.
Bradley: What does a farm safety workshop look like with elementary students? How do you teach them about farm safety?
Mike: Right. Thankfully, I walked in on a pretty good situation. For a very long time, Extension's been putting on relatively small farm safety events, usually during the summer at their respective county fairgrounds. Might get 10, 12, 15 kids and they're going to range anywhere from 4th grade to high school and everywhere in between. It's a pretty wide group to try to teach and it's very difficult to get a lot of involvement. What my predecessor Jerry Tesmer did in this position before I came is he actually got the schools involved.
Now every year, every school in these two counties sets it up as, this is the 4th-grade field trip every year. They don't have to travel far. We provided lunch. It's a good schedule, it's a bunch of good education. We got the schools on board, which obviously increases our participation. Then, it's only 4th graders, so it's really easy for our presenters and then we usually have 13 different sessions to tailor their presentations directly to that age group, which obviously makes it a lot easier than trying to teach kids all the way from 4th to 12th grade.
During the day, the kids show up to school at normal time, drive down to Mabel. When they get out, we have 13 different sessions, about 15 minutes apiece. They just cycle through them on a set time. We provide lunch at the middle of the day. By the end of the day, they're gone. A couple schools have to leave early because they're at the outskirts of the two counties. Other than that, we get through 13 different things going on all at the same time.
Bradley: That sounds like a crazy day to me, but probably well worth it for those school-aged kids.
Mike: Yes, absolutely. It's always highly recommended people talk about it afterwards and we get a lot of local support. All of our presenters are volunteers and we usually raise anywhere from 4 to $5,000 every year to do this.
Bradley: Wow. That's good. Let's talk a little bit about Mike's background. You did a lot of soil health and soil work in all your lovely degrees that you have. What did you do?
Mike: Yes, it's funny. A lot of my work, especially my master's and my PhD stuff isn't overly applicable to what I'm doing today. I know, shocker. "He turns into a generalist and the stuff he does that's really specific doesn't really apply," but the general principles do. Undergrad, agronomy major, did some science minor work, masters, crop production and physiology, minor in sustainable agriculture, and then my PhD work was actually specifically in something called environmental biophysics. It was a lot of te-
Emily: Environmental biophysics, sounds like something I could never figure out how to do.
Bradley: Wow. What does that mean?
Mike: It's a lot of math. If you can record the heat, the wind speed, the radiation, the dew point, yada yada, yada, can you predict how much photosynthesis is actually happening in a given crop. Then if you can do that, can you actually combine that with how much is that crop respiring, both from above ground and below ground parts to say how much carbon is actually going into the ecosystem? That was the goal.
Emily: Brad, you know what I think he should do?
Bradley: What?
Emily: What do you always do? Put a sensor in it.
Bradley: Oh, that's right, exactly. Can't you measure all that stuff with sensors now?
Mike: Yes, we are. That's exactly what we did.
Emily: [laughs]
Bradley: Just use drones now. Drones are cool. You can measure lots of stuff with drones and [crosstalk] crops.
Mike: During my master's work, I actually worked with what were termed in that experiment, our low external input systems. We were trying to in general cycle those systems a lot more of taking it like say cattle manure and bringing it back in and trying to reduce the amount of fertilizer we were putting on and the amount of herbicides that were being used, just to try to close that cycle down. My part in that during my master's work was actually to do an energy budget on those systems. I spent a lot of time working on cropping systems and I've seen-- did a lot of work with small grains, alfalfa, corn, soybeans pretty typical Midwest mix on that one.
I've also spent quite a bit of time doing crop research, just general crop research, so looking at yield research across probably six or seven different Midwest states for both corn and soybeans. I was that guy for the USDA and another company here. It was right around my master's work. Then my PhD work was actually in bioenergy cropping systems. I was working on a continuous corn system switch grass and actually a fast-growing hybrid poplar system, so very, very different systems. Lots of variability in there. Had some very interesting work environments. Let's put it that way.
It's a good mix of different approaches to agriculture where I wasn't just pigeonholed into, "We only grow corn and soybeans." I have some experience not directly with livestock, but the integration of livestock in the cropping systems. I also have some experience of thinking about and talking about bioenergy cropping systems and how we're not just producing it for food but we're using stuff for maybe a forage approach or an energy approach. That range in my background, it gives me background, it gives me things to think about when I'm talking about general questions that come into our office.
Maybe not, "What's killing my zucchini?" but like, "Hey, how do I make recommendations on should I replant my alfalfa stand?"
Emily: Now you bring up farm safety and Mike is being a little bashful. He has been a real promoter of farm safety and farm safety programming for extension around the state since he joined Extension about four or five years ago. A lifetime ago basically at this point. One of those programs was a youth tractor safety program. Now I'm very fortunate to be the person who gets to lead that program, but leading it is basically emailing and calling Mike and going, "What about this? Tell me about this. What do you think I should do?" Mike, why don't you tell us a little bit about youth tractor safety as this is certainly something that our listeners who have kids will probably want to be aware of.
Mike: Again, when I first came in, this was a program that had been started by my predecessor, kind of not. It was one of those that was fizzling out. For those of you who had been involved in Extension for a number of years, you'll remember that usually, Extension educators ran something like this all across the state, all across the Midwest. I think by the time I started, we could only find maybe two or three of these, officially being run across the State of Minnesota. One of them happened to be down in my area. The first year I went to it, and what it is, it's a training that's designed for 14 and 15-year-olds.
The idea is that if a 14 or 15-year-old is going to work with a tractor that has over 20 horsepower off of their family farm, they have to go through this training otherwise it's illegal at the federal level. Obviously, they can work on their own farm, their own family farm and they're fine, but if they're off of their family farm, working with bigger equipment and frankly 20 horsepower, you're looking at a decent-sized lawnmower now. You are supposed to have this training if you're 14 and 15, and so you provide this training, it's usually going to be multiple days. They have to take written tests, they have to go over curriculum, and pass the driving course.
The first year I showed up and I went to, and I just observed really, and what I found was that the material was lacking. It really wasn't being that great. It wasn't a great educational experience, and the kids just weren't getting a whole lot of hands-on time with their equipment. What I did with a group of-- I think it started with three of us that first year. We sat down and we were like, "Okay, how can we not only redo this program?" But also started expanding it around the state, get it to some other local educators. Over the course of time and through a great team of educators and a bunch of people, the great thing about leading is when you can start going, "I didn't do anything."
I helped people direct them to where they were going but it was the team that really got this down is we ended up doing a hybrid model. The kids will spend some time doing stuff at home, just going through the basic curriculum, and then they'll end up taking a written test on their own time, but then they come in for a two-day program where we not only are you practicing with the equipment and taking a driving test, but the kids are also getting hands-on experience doing things like CPR, they're working with PTO safety. We've had demonstrations from former state patrol officers.
A lot of things we're bringing in community members, people who have had accidents, people who have survived rollover accidents will come in and actually talk to them. For example, we've got-- actually, he's a commissioner now down here in Houston County. He'll come down and he'll show the big scar from where he actually got rolled over on and he had acid dripping on him. It's these impactful stories that make a real impact on that 14 and 15-year-old age range.
Emily: Yes, absolutely. It's a really great program. I've had the opportunity to be a part of it now too. There is something to be said for farm safety at all ages I think is really important. Mike, would you say you got into this farm safety stuff just because it was already there when you got to your job or what else about farm safety makes you tick?
Mike: I think being raised on a farm and just being aware of some of those issues being taught that by my parents and by other people around the farm. It's always been something that's there. Farm safety for life, you learn it for life. You always learn those types of things. There rarely is a very real component of this where I came into a position, especially on the local level.
The local people are the one that are actually paying for your position and so this was something that was very important to them, that they still host this farm safety day and that they still do youth tractor safety training. Yes, I might have kicked it up a notch. I was interested in it before, obviously, but I kicked it up a notch when I started this position because that's what the local population values.
Emily: What do you think-- all right, this is like an around-the-horn question, so I want everybody to answer. What do you think is the biggest farm safety issue on farms? One thing, you can only pick one thing.
Mike: Do you want issue or the one thing that could improve farm safety?
Emily: Yes.
Bradley: In my mind, I think it's machinery. Those are the things that we always hear about as far as farm safety with either lost limbs or farm accidents, things like that. It seems to be machinery a lot, machinery related. Maybe not so much, there's been a lot of machinery from many years ago, from corn pickers to PTO chefs to all kinds of stuff. I think machinery is also one. I'm also passionate about another farm safety issue. I'll give you two and I--
Emily: All right.
Bradley: Okay.
Emily: Breaking the rules already, whatever.
Bradley: [laughs] Maybe it's one that we don't think about a lot when we think about farm safety and I think it's bulls on the farm. Dairy bulls on the farm, in my mind is a big farm safety issue. Every now and then you hear about somebody passing away because of a bull accident or something like that. I think bulls, we think they're nice and friendly, but then they can turn any minute and I think I am very leery about going onto a farm or getting into a pen of cows or anything like that, knowing that there's a bull in there. Especially a Jersey bull. They can be pretty nasty.
Emily: They're feisty. Yes.
Bradley: Bulls I think is one that we tend to forget about.
Emily: Yes, absolutely. I think that's a great point, Bradley, that we tend to let our guard down over time, probably, with any animals. I think that we always need to remember to be vigilant whenever we're working with animals, but bulls especially. We were talking about that a few episodes ago about cleanup bulls and that's pretty common practice in beef. Then talking about it for dairy and I'm not a proponent of it just because bulls are dangerous. Mike, what about you?
Mike: I'm with Brad on this one. As far as the machinery part, there's a lot of ranging issues. Anywhere from PTOs to general tractor rollover to how to use front loader and you're messing with your center of gravity. I think the one that I would pick on as something that is a bigger concern of mine is actually ATVs and smaller equipment like that.
Bradley: Yes, that's a good one.
Mike: It's a lot of those where we want to do something quick and we're taking corners fast or you're younger and I'm like, "Hey, I could go up on the road, but maybe I'll just ramp on the ditch here." Or, "I'm behind on this, I got to go do that." You maybe don't throw a helmet on or whatnot and whatever it might be. I just feel like those pieces of equipment can lead to some real issues. I've told people this when I talk about that new tractor safety training. I've only got the kids for a couple of days, so there's no way that I'm going to change all of their habits and I'm really going to get them going in the right direction.
One of the things I really try to stress, and I hope I get them to do this, is just slow down. You don't have to go to a stop. You don't just have to putter around, but if you take a corner, a mile or two an hour slower, or if you're on that ATV and you don't just whip a corner and you just ease into it, take it easy. Just slowing down a little bit, it prevents rollovers, it gives you more time to see. Then if young kids are on the farm, then they run out, you can actually stop in time. Those are my two big things. I'm always worried about ATVs, snowmobiles go in the same pain category and if I can get the kids to do anything, it's just slow down just a little bit.
Bradley: What about you, Emily?
Emily: Ooh.
Bradley: Yes. The farm safety expert.
Emily: I think the biggest issue on most farms as related to farm safety are the people. I wish everybody could have seen the faces these two made. It was the exact same reaction. I think the biggest farm safety risk on any farm is the people. What I mean by that is unlike machinery, we have brains. We are much more dynamic and that will change our minds and we might make decisions based on emotion rather than logic, all of those kinds of things.
Whereas machinery especially-- obviously livestock have brains, so that's a separate conversation, but machinery is static, meaning it doesn't change. It's always going to move the same way. Even if something's broke and not working, you still always know where the parts are and you always know the PTO shaft is going to be spinning. That doesn't change. Of course, if it's not spitting and that's what you're going after, people still need to remember that's what it's supposed to do. We forget to cut off the power to things. We try to cut corners. We don't want to put shields back on because they're annoying and it takes too much time.
When you look at farm safety accidents, I'm not here to say that, oh, everybody's doing everything wrong, but I know just from my own family. I have two family members that have been injured in ag accidents that have both lost limbs. Both of them will admit their own fault and what happened to them. "Oh, I wasn't paying attention." Or, "I didn't double-check this." Or whatever it may be. I know that's a heated opinion maybe, but I think people are the biggest issue. They are the first and last defense, I think when it comes to preventing accidents on the farm.
Mike: Brad, I feel like we just got one-upped by the farm safety expert.
Bradley: I think we did. That's her job now. That's what she-
Mike: That's right. Good point.
Bradley: She should one-up us. She should.
Emily: I usually sit and let the doctors, and I'm still joined by two doctors, do all the heavy intellectual lifting.
Bradley: Do you get any weird questions?
Mike: No.
Bradley: You don't get any weird questions?
Emily: Yes. What's the weirdest question you've ever gotten?
Mike: You know what? Oh gosh. That is a good question. Frankly, you guys go on because I'm going to look through some of my notes here just so I can find it easily for you.
Emily: Brad, what's the most interesting question you've ever gotten in your time with Extension?
Bradley: Oh, boy.
Emily: While you guys think, I'm actually going to tell other people's stories because I never got any-- The most interesting one I got was probably last winter when we had that really bad cold snap and it was the outside air temperature was -36 or something. I had a cattle producer from Florida call me and she was just generally interested to know how we keep cattle alive when it's that cold outside.
Bradley: Wow.
Emily: Because she just had no idea. That was a really interesting conversation. One of my favorites comes from a former colleague of ours and Bradley's former grad student, Mr. Mike Donnelley, when he had a [laughs] person call him one time and said that there were two geese fighting in her yard and what should she do about it? That one always holds a special place in my heart. Shout out to you, Mike Donnelley. Thank you for that excellent story.
Bradley: I don't know if I've had any weird off-the-wall questions. I get lots of other questions related to other species that I am not that familiar with, sheep or goats, things like that. I am not an expert in any of those. I try and work my way through it, but I can't remember any weird type questions that I've had.
Emily: Sounds boring.
Bradley: Yes. That's my life.
Emily: All right. Mike, what about you? You got one now?
Mike: The favorite type of question that is mind-boggling to me a little bit is when you get the, "I would like to grow X. Tell me everything I need to know to grow X." Whether it's cattle, whether it is pasture, whether it's apples, blueberries, and you're sitting there going, "Give me a starting spot. Have you read anything? Have you done any background work? What do you own for equipment?" You start going through these fun little conversations, but when they throw that at you right away, you're just like, "Whew, it's daunting. I don't really know what to do."
Emily: I remember I had one similar to that. I had a person call me and they said, "I want to have an apple orchard and also graze sheep in it. How do I do that?" That was a fun one too. That's what I like about this job too. We get to talk to all the producers and consumers and all of those people and figure out some of these things for ourselves too. Like you already said, Mike, lifelong learner. I have learned more in this job than in all my years of schooling.
Mike: Yes. The nice thing to touch on Brad's point too, when questions come in on sheep or something that we don't really have a strong background in, it's really fun to be able to connect with other educators that are in the area around the state, even some of them out of state. To figure out, "Hey, this is the question I got. I really don't know. Can you help?" Oftentimes, it's within a day, you can find somebody pretty quickly.
Bradley: In Minnesota, we're very lucky to have a joint position with Minnesota Extension and NDSU Extension to do some sheep stuff. There are lots of different people around there and even in different states that work for us and don't to find those answers. We're pretty diverse and we'll figure it out for you. We'll figure it out.
Emily: We don't know the answer. We can always find someone who does.
Mike: I'm curious. I got a couple of questions for you two, and then I'll-
Emily: Ooh.
Mike: -[crosstalk] as well. What do you think is the most pressing issue outside of finances? Outside of finances and just general market availability, what's the most pressing issue in your respective areas of agriculture, whether it's organic, dairy, livestock, whatever it might be? Then-
Emily: Let's answer the first question first.
Mike: Okay. Let's answer the first question.
Emily: [laughs] All right, I'll go first. Biggest issue, stress and overall well-being of farmers, which you both should have seen that coming. Everybody listening should seen that one coming.
Mike: How do you deal with that then? I guess that was the follow-up.
Emily: Yes. First I start with what we've really been working on in Extension and a lot of agricultural organizations that are talking about farm stress right now and farmer mental health is just getting out there and starting to have that conversation. What I really am starting to focus on is getting people to see how much their overall health ties into their ability to do their job. If you aren't feeling well mentally, physically, emotionally, you are not going to be able to perform at your best. What happens mentally impacts us emotionally and physically and what happens physically impacts us mentally and emotionally.
Do you sense the theme here? It's all interconnected and I think too when people are stressed and poor mental health, that's when we're more likely to see accidents as well. It's this overall farm safety and health piece which of course is my job title, so I have to promote that. As far as how do I deal with that, like I already said, Mike, part of it is just starting to have these conversations and helping people to understand if you just do a few little simple things in a day to take care of yourself and to make sure you're okay and even things like making sure you get yearly physicals and that kind of thing.
I think of people like my dad. He's my dad, so I can throw him under the bus here. He'll go 10 years without going to a doctor. [chuckles] A lot can happen in that time. For me, that's a really big issue that I see and I think that people don't give enough credit to the fact that that hugely impacts everything else that happens on your farm.
Bradley: I'm the livestock person so I'm going to give you some livestock stuff. It's animal welfare and well-being. I think that's a hot topic no matter what you talk, if you talk beef cattle, dairy cattle, swine, horse, you name it, it's at the forefront of a lot of discussions in the livestock world is animal welfare. The other one that it just keeps popping up all the time, it's in the news again, greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases related to a lot of different things. I don't want to go into that but reducing greenhouse gases in the livestock sector are probably the two biggest pressing issues right now that are at the consumer forefront in my mind.
Emily: Another one I would add, I'm very focused on the people aspect of it today. Labor management, I think that's a huge issue on farms with lack of labor or lack of organization of your labor. I think we run into that issue, especially on smaller farms where it's all family and so everybody's trying to do everything, which of course means everybody's doing nothing.
That I think really adds another layer of pressure to farms in a way that they might not even realize just like the health stuff. Because I know Bradley, you've dealt with a lot of labor issues and those types of things, and you've seen a lot of people that have dealt with them too in the farms you've been on. Mike, I don't know if you run into something similar, but I know that's always a really hot topic. Something that a lot of farmers think about and are worried about.
Mike: I would say one of the most pressing ones that comes across my desk in a lot of different ways is the miscommunication, lack of communication, misunderstanding between farmers, general population between different farmer groups, whether it's conventional, organic. It's a lot of clashing. A lot of headbutting and if you're on one side, you're fully on one side and not on the other side. There's a lot of misunderstanding of just how hard farmers work for animal welfare but at the same time, I'm just picking on animal welfare for an example here. I do think that farmers have room to grow.
There's a middle ground there, but we get a lot of groups that are so separate and so far apart. I'll get calls of, "How do I get X farmer to change what he's doing?" You're just sitting there going, "Well, not taking that approach." [chuckles] You probably want to start with a conversation maybe first and then an openness to listen and to learn because a lot of people do a lot of different things for different reasons, and if you don't actually talk to them and ask them why they're doing it, you might not actually understand the thought behind it and the reasons why they're doing it. I'm not saying it's right or wrong or otherwise, but you got to start with the conversation before you're trying to throw money at a deal and trying to change people in the way they live.
Emily: All right. Then I think that that is going to be a wrap on this episode since we don't have Joe to tell us if it's good enough or not or if he has enough usable stuff. Good luck to Joe who's still going to edit this. You're the best, Joe. We love you.
Mike: Love you, Joe.
Emily: [chuckles] Congratulations again, Joe, to you and Alex on the birth of Locklin. We're very excited to meet him. As always, questions, comments, scathing rebuttal. You can email us at themoosroom@umn.edu. That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu. Thanks so much for joining us, and thank you again to our special guest, Michael J. Cruse, PhD. Fun little potpourri episode where we just got to learn a little bit more about one of our colleagues. If you liked this, let us know. Send us an email. If you didn't, email Brad directly. Thanks, everyone. Yes, but you're a very close friend of The Moos Room, so I can ridicule you just the same.
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