The Moos Room™

[music]
[cow moos]
Emily: Welcome to the Moos Room, everybody, it is the OG three and we are joined by a guest this week. A guest that I'm very excited about. We have with us from Riverview LLP, Natasha Mortensen.
Natasha Mortensen: Hello. Thanks for having me.
Emily: Yes, we're excited you're with us. Before we get into more about you, we need to get to the most important thing about you, and that is your stance on these two very important questions. Question-- oh, I don't know which one to ask first, Joe.
Joe: It's pretty tough, honestly, but I would go with the matter day job.
Emily: Okay, got it. All right. What is your favorite breed of beef cattle?
Natasha: Oh, beef cattle. I would say my favorite breed of beef cattle, even though that's very difficult, is Simmental, because that is what we have at home for our herd.
Emily: Very nice choice.
Joe: That's really amazing. That is the first Simmental.
Emily: I'll represent--
Natasha: It is?
Joe: Yes, isn't that weird? We had almost the Simmental but then we allowed Amy to go with Stabilizer.
Emily: Oh, that's right.
Natasha: It's real hard not to do Limousin, of course.
Joe: Of course.
Natasha: I must use my family's, it's my kids herd, but that's their thing.
Joe: There you go, well, that puts the total and Bradley still happy because Herefords are out front with six, Black Angus at four, Black Baldy at two, Brahman at one, Stabilizer one, Gelbvieh one, Scottish Highlander one, Chianina one, Charolais one, and now Simmental with one as well.
Natasha: Wow, Herefords are my least favorite, so does that take one out?
Joe: Wow.
Bradley: That does not count.
Emily: I think it's crazy that Black Baldies are in third.
Natasha: Yes, that is very interesting. It's very interesting.
Emily: Anyways, so moving on to question two. What is your favorite breed of dairy cattle?
Natasha: This will surprise you because I'm sure you're expecting me to say Jersey but I am going to say Montb�liarde, because it is my Ode to Dennis Johnson who I loved very, very dearly. I loved listening to Dennis talk about all his wild stuff he did at the Research Station. I'm going to go with that. I'm channeling my inner Dennis.
Joe: It's very disappointing for both--
Natasha: I know.
Bradley: We'll give you credit for it.
Joe: Well, Bradley and I both--
Natasha: Jersey second, number two.
Joe: We understand, we understand. It doesn't help us.
Emily: That's a very nice homage to Dennis.
Joe: Agreed. Agreed.
Natasha: Dennis was my fav.
Joe: With that, that's Holsteins at seven, Jerseys at six, Brown Swiss at four, Dutch belted at two, Montb�liarde now at two, and Normandy at one.
Emily: Nice.
Natasha: Very interesting.
Joe: I understand that. We were hoping for a Jersey vote because that would have put us back in the lead, the Holsteins, and when I say we, I mean Bradley and I but not Emily, she's-
Emily: I like to be different.
Natasha: My kind of woman, that's like Natasha thing.
Joe: I think today, well, the first thing to bring up is that the first time-
Emily: Are you running this episode or am I?
Joe: No, I have a story and it's story time.
Emily: Oh, okay, fine. Carry on then.
Joe: One of the reasons I was so excited that Natasha was coming on today is that before I was in my current job, I went to a summer tour. I got on one of 50 buses for the day or whatever, how many were there. I happened to get on Natasha's bus that she was giving the tour. It quickly became named the fun bus and we did have a lot of fun. That was my first introduction to Natasha. It was excellent day. That's part of why I'm so excited for today. It was a great time that time and I had no idea what I was in for but it was a blast.
Natasha: I'm glad I could entertain you. It's my goal always.
Emily: Okay, so now I have to tell my fun Natasha story.
Joe: Perfect.
Emily: Because everybody has a fun Natasha story.
Natasha: Oh, I hope so. [giggles]
Emily: Do you know which one I'm going to tell Natasha?
Natasha: No, I don't. I hope it's more than one.
Emily: One year at the Women's AG Leadership Conference, Natasha was up on stage speaking, doing a lovely job as always, and suddenly a mouse started to run across the stage. What does Natasha do? She just goes over, stomps on it, and then just carries on with her presentation.
Natasha: Don't forget, I shoved it under the door.
Emily: Oh, yes. She shoved it under the door.
Natasha: I don't know where that [unintelligible 00:04:44] [crosstalk] but the dead mouse went underneath.
Emily: Yes.
Joe: That is amazing. I love that.
Natasha: I think Joe totally thought that was going to go in a different direction. Like I ran screaming or something. No.
Joe: I have faith in you.
Natasha: Thank you. I appreciate that.
Bradley: I also have lots of stories about Natasha but we'll leave that, we were in college together as under grads, so we'll just leave all those.
Natasha: We'll leave those back there.
Joe: That's a good choice, Bradley.
Emily: Natasha, we are so excited you are here. Obviously, we all are friends with her, and so it's always fun when we can bring a friend of the Moos Room onto the Moos Room. I mentioned you work for Riverview LLP. Natasha, why don't you just give us the thirty-second rundown on who you work for and what you do there?
Natasha: Absolutely. Riverview is LLP, so it's actually owned majority by employees. I'm one of them. I started here about five years ago, I taught high school agriculture for 14 years prior to that in Morris. I came here to do more work with getting as many students on the sites and in classrooms as much as I could, spreading the good word of agriculture. Not just dairy and beef and crops but everything.
Riverview is a dairy beef crops. We do our own construction as well farm, and we focus mostly in dairy in Minnesota. We also have beef in Nebraska, our genetic herd of Limousin cattle. We raise our beef dairy cross down in New Mexico and then our dairy Heifers are raised in Arizona and then we dairy in Arizona, South Dakota, and of course Minnesota as well. That's the beef and dairy background.
We have a genetic herd so we sell bulls, which our sales coming up soon. We also then grow crops, but we really rely mostly on local farmers to grow all of our crops, and my husband is one of them. He is a crop farmer in [unintelligible 00:06:38] Swift county and he grows for some of the farms down there. That's kind of the bird's eye view, but it's a great company, great culture, great place to work, and we're all really definitely a team.
Emily: That's awesome.
Joe: That's a lot going on, a lot going on. Your job specifically is to communicate with the public about everything that's happening and facilitate that, right?
Natasha: Yes. When I came here, five years ago, from teaching, it was just me working, really focusing just on what we call community relations. Finding ways to be involved in our community. We have these buckets that we talk about here, and those buckets include animal care, care for our environments, care for our people and care for our communities.
With that, that focus on communities, that's really where I came in to a blank slate, traveled to all the states, all the sites, all the communities, and met all the Ag teachers, the breach coordinators, the police department, like whoever, and just tried to figure out how do we best serve each community that we're in because they're all so different across all the states. Just got to build lots of relationships and build such a cool network of giving back.
We now have four of us that focus in community relations, two in Minnesota, one South Dakota and one Arizona, and then we take care of Nebraska and New Mexico between the four of us. It's become something that has been really integral, I think, in our success as a company because we look at our success as partially how are we providing for the people we're around and that's our communities. It includes a lot of things, social media, video work on trying to share our story. Lots of tours, we all give a lot of tours.
We love to have people on the farm. Also spending time in classrooms, that's from kindergarten all the way to post secondary schools, and having kids or college students on the farm as well. We provide opportunities for laboratory experiences with the livestock, which is what I'm very passionate about, is getting kids with livestock. Whether that's feeding calves all the way to palpating cows, or learning about nutrition and be really hands-on in the barn practicing vaccinations, just things like that, just giving kids an opportunity.
We have less and less kids growing up on farms. It's going to be hard to get them excited about a future in agriculture if we don't give them opportunities. That's really what drew me to this job, and this opportunity with Riverview, was the chance to do that for young people.
Emily: I think it just seems like such a natural fit going from being an Ag teacher into doing this work, it's still a lot of education. It just looks a lot different, and your classroom is the barn and the facilities there, and I think that's really, really cool.
Natasha: The best classroom is the barn.
Emily: Yes, absolutely.
Joe: I can learn in the classroom a little bit, but I don't really pick it up until I'm on farm, or I'm doing it in person hands-on. I love that there's an opportunity for them. I think right now we have this kind of conception, I think, that in these small towns that everyone grows up on a farm or that there's all these small towns where people are very much in tune with agricultural all the time. That's not necessarily true. These small towns have a lot of people that don't spend time on farms. I think it's just as important as trying to educate people in more urban areas as well. I'm happy that there's some place for people to go to do that.
Natasha: I think one of the biggest mistakes we can make in agriculture is assuming these kids in towns of population 50 know about agriculture. I can tell you they don't. I go into schools in Campbell, Minnesota, which is tiny. I don't know what the population is, but it's real small. Those kids also, they don't really know a lot about it. We need to go into all those situations assuming that everyone knows nothing.
Even the kids that know some things because they grew up on a farm, they're very singular. Usually what they know, because most farms these days are pretty singular, they're growing just crops or just having one species of livestock. There's so much to learn. I'm learning all the time about things that I don't know about still and I'm 42. I'm a lifelong learner and I think it's good we treat everyone with the respect that they don't have to know everything and that we're willing to share our story.
Emily: I love that. We love lifelong learners here at the Moos Room. [laughs]
Natasha: That's good. That's a lovely one.
Emily: To be an extension, you have to be a lifelong learner, we love education and I know you're so passionate about it as well, so it's so great to hear you say that.
Joe: I am sensing a little bit of a trend with our guests now that I think about it. Basically, we just are finding people that aren't an extension that basically do a lot of the same things.
Emily: That are us.
[laughter]
Joe: That's basically it--
Natasha: For an extension of extension.
Joe: Yes, exactly.
Emily: Yes. Is there a problem with that, Joe? Or, we're okay.
Joe: No, that's fine. I just got to keep it in the back of my head just in case.
Natasha: I'm partially a product of Extension for sure. I was a huge 4-H, FFA too but big and 4-H. Also been through some really cool programs run by Extension, like the [unintelligible 00:11:59] program. I just have had such great experiences working with Extension. It's just, you guys are just breeding more extensions, that's what you're doing.
Bradley: It has been good to, we've done 4-H programs with Riverview before with 4-H Youth, and you've been a very good partner to help bring that world to kids. I've participated in some of those activities where we've gone out into the barns and palpated cows and looked at TMR. It's a great learning experience there. It provides an avenue to do that for us.
Joe: We can't get a whole lot done without some of that partnership in private industry. It's a great thing that we have that chance.
Natasha: I think it's important too that everyone listening, it doesn't matter how big or small or anything, it doesn't matter anything. You want to reach out to young people, it is as easy as calling up your 4-H office in your county or calling up your local ag teacher and asking how you can help. It's that easy. They'll tell you how you can help.
Emily: Oh yes, there's always something for you to do. Yes, I love that as a big volunteer myself in 4-H and FFA. Natasha, a thing that you're known for in our circles is you do a lot of speaking with communities and the public in your role, but also speaking to Ag groups about how we can do a better job of being an advocate or an agvocate as we like to say. First I want to know a little bit about your journey to being that person, the person that we asked to teach us how to do this stuff.
Natasha: I'm not even sure when it first started, I guess, but as a teacher, I really found really great opportunity in having my kids teach the elementary students in our community in Morris about agriculture. We had a program called Pals, which was actually a national FFA program where the older students would mentor elementary students, and teach them about agriculture and just be a good role model.
We did that for a long time and a past graduate from Morris had actually come in on behalf of the pork producers here in Stevens County and said, "Hey, you guys should take your show to the cities" and like, "We'll help fund it." I talked to Joel Larson, who at the time was the Minnesota State FFA advisor. I think he thought we were completely insane but I worked with Earl Withers who was at the Minnesota Ag in the classroom at the time for the Department of Agriculture.
We planned our first urban Ag Day. We went into St. Paul's schools and we brought a trailer with livestock and pens and a bunch of FFA kids. We had lessons ready and we stormed that school with lessons in the classroom and the livestock outside. The kids taught them about the livestock and what the ate and what products, byproducts and food products we got from them. That really opened my eyes to the opportunity in reaching people who don't have experience in agriculture.
Why would they? I often want to remind people that there's no reason people in the city should know about food production. Why would they know they don't see it? We have kids that live in our communities that don't know about it. That's an unrealistic expectation that people should know. Plus, we just already talked about the fact that we don't even all know about food and fiber production, everything about everything, so there's no reason.
When I hear people say, well, you eat so you should know. I will have a nice discussion with them about how that is really unrealistic. That's really how I got really interested in it and then we started really teaching our students how to reach young people. The Miracle of Birth Center was built at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, and I really enjoyed being involved in that as well. Just saw this huge opportunity to help people know how to have that conversation. Not only with people that are angry about agricultural things, but people that are passive.
They see articles, they share articles and maybe it's something that isn't true. How do we have those conversations with those people? Because they're not mad about it, they just don't know. It's just a really big opportunity to reach people. Then I just started getting asked to help people learn how to do that. With Riverview, and my job and having to deal with the community, took a lot of opportunities working with the Center for Food Integrity, attending some of their conferences and learning how to best talk about agriculture some more.
Then actually we here with Riverview, we actually have had yearly classes and have made infographics to help all of our 1,300 employees in all the states, know how to talk about agriculture with people in our communities, because that's a really important piece of agricultural communications within our own communities as well. Then it's just stemmed into people asking me to come help, which I love to do. It's very worthwhile for me to spend my time doing that and helping people know how to talk about it.
If we don't talk about it, no one's going to talk about it. If we don't tell our story, somebody else certainly is going to, and we probably need to think about who that is and what they're saying.
Emily: Wow, that's great. I agree with so much that you said. I'm like, I don't even know where to start. I think you're so right that we need to be telling our story and because if somebody else does, it's not going to be our actual narrative and I know that. I've been to your presentations before. I still have one of your infographics on the four things to know, to agvocate or whatever it was. Still have it, it's in one of my office boxes.
Natasha: You know what it is.
Emily: Oh, I do.
Natasha: It's easy. It's not anything mind-blowing. That's what's so great about it, it's easy stuff. It's just that we realize that people are there to learn from us. I do think one of the most important things that we need to remember always, and I often like to talk about my personal life and my work life. I'm owner here with Riverview and also an owner of our family farm.
My husband and I and our kids we have a small cow-calf herd, which is really just a show cattle problem gone wrong, [laughs] because that just is what happens when you just keep showing heifers. You just eventually have this herd of beef cattle. My husband is super uber passionate about crop production. We both grew up on crop farms, no livestock background, really other than 4-H animals, not him, just me. It's been definitely a learning curve for us.
I represent both the small farm and very small crop farm. Barely can be a full-time gig and the only reason it can be is because he has Riverview Farms [laughs] go through him to grow corn and Alfalfa and to work silage crew and all that stuff. He's a small farm. We have small beef cattle and then all the way to the Riverview model, which is definitely built on a larger efficient model. That is more, a little bit in tune with the Southwest and West coast for sure.
We don't necessarily fit in the north always with how dairy is set up here in the smaller dairy size, but they're all good. I think that's what's most important for people to know is farming is farming. It doesn't matter if you have 50 cows or you have 10,000 cows. The same things are happening for the cow care, in my opinion for those cows. There are people that are caring for the everyday needs and the nutritional needs, and working together to do that on both size farms. You know what, all the people that eat food and drink milk, they want choices. America's great, we have so many choices, and if people want to drink organic milk, great. I more power to, yes, like that's great. If you don't, then super. You have options at the grocery store. The biggest mistake we make in agriculture is that we beat each other up so much that, the people that don't know about agriculture, they are so confused.
If we can't even get along within the farming industry, then we can't expect people to look in and be comfortable with it either because they just see this internal struggle that we're having with ourselves and who's better and who's worse and who's big, who's small, it doesn't matter. We're all part of the food system and we're all really important.
Joe: One of the big questions I had coming into this, and I think you've danced around it a little bit, Natasha was, you're clearly very open with having people come to the farm and doing that. How do you continue to stay upbeat and positive and keep yourself from getting jaded when some of the feedback that we get from the public can be pretty harsh? How do you stay so upbeat?
Natasha: I stay upbeat because I know that in all the situations that I have ever been on at any farm, including my small farm and this large farm, people are doing the right things. The fact that there's so many forces out there trying to make that a reality to people that is not the way it is, that we want to make this everyday picture of especially livestock production, but even crop production with the environmental things. They're getting dragged down too.
We have so much out there working against us and people and money and media and whatever it may be that that's, it's just hope. It's faith in what we have. It's faith in a system in the United States of America that is nowhere else. I'm going to get all worked up. There's nowhere else I've been to other countries. I know what we have here. I want people to understand what we have and that we don't want to lose it.
As you guys know, there's initiatives currently in the United States and some states where they're literally trying to do some things legally that they don't make sense. They don't represent the truth of agriculture and they don't represent the truth of animal care and environmental care, that farmers are taking very seriously and have forever. That's what keeps me upbeat is, I have faith in all of us. I have faith in every farmer.
I have faith in all the food we have in the United States because it is the safest, most wholesome, most affordable food supply in the world, comparative. That's what keeps me upbeat. I'm a little bit passionate about it.
Joe: Just a tiny bit.
Natasha: You can tell.
Emily: I had no idea.
Joe: No, it's not coming through at all.
Natasha: Oh, my boy. It's taking everything I have not to get really close to my screen.
Joe: Well, it's good to hear that you really are seeing that on a wide scale, that you have faith in that, because that's the thing that I try to convince the public a lot of times is the farmer wants to have happy cows. Not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes them more successful. You want happy, comfortable cows for as long as possible. That's what you want. I think that it's weird that it's so hard to convince someone of that message. It just blows my mind that that's such a weird concept to convince someone of.
Natasha: Joe. That's why tours are the most important. I know people are maybe thinking, "I can't do that. I can't give tours." Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Let me give you the rundown. This is all you need to know to give a tour. Right now with COVID, we do virtual tours. We literally took a video camera and went on the farm. We would be on a tour and we'd show it on a Zoom and we explain our farm. COVID doesn't have to stop you. If you have a farm and you want to show somebody, remember a few things.
Number one, it needs to be clean. We all have these areas that we think no one sees. Don't go to those places if you don't want people to see it. Where you are going to take people, you need to make sure it's clean because that is a representation of food safety. It's also a representation of the animal care, the safety for your employees and your family, and also just a representation of all of agriculture. You are literally representing everybody when you have somebody to your farm.
I don't want that to scare you because sometimes it's good just to look at something from another person's point of view. If you're not sure if your farm is tour ready, invite somebody to come look, send me pictures, I will tell you. You can send people in Extension your pictures, or have your local FFA advisor for each personnel and just say, "Hey, what do you think? Where should I fix this up a little bit?" Plus that's good for everybody, just cleaning up a little bit. Clean is important. Also, get ready to talk about practices.
Most people that have a problem or a question about agriculture, it's all about the practices that we're using. We want to make sure we address those as we are showing people our farm. When you show, like, if Brad were giving a tour, which he does a lot of, and then he brings them up to Riverview, and I love that. I love getting the organic folks out here. It's so much fun. I'm just waiting to be invited on the tours to their farms, Brad. You want to make sure that you are talking practices in a way that, these are my cows.
This is how I care for these cows. What is your vaccinations that you're giving and why? Why do you give vaccinations? If you use antibiotics, talk about that. How do you give the antibiotics? Why do you choose when you are going to give the antibiotic? Why would you choose when not to give the antibiotic? What do you do to make sure you're following a withdrawal period? What is a withdrawal period?
Just explain everything like that, because as much as you think that's over people's head, it isn't, because all the food at the grocery store is labeled with all of these things, and people don't-- they just think it's bad because it's on a label. We need to start talking about all those practices so they understand what that is. Things like hoof trimming, and what do you do from winter to summer? Brad has a great story to tell with his pasture cows and Riverview. Our cows don't go on a pasture. Why don't we do that? We explain those things.
Every little detail matters. That's what people really want to know. They don't want to just know, "These are my cows. We milk them twice a day, three times a day. We get milk." That can be your tour. They're Holsteins or Jersey or Montb�liarde. They don't need to know all that. They want to know all the facts. They want to know the practices and the why's behind every single one of those. Get ready for those types of conversations and be ready with it and know what you're going to say.
Then your questions will go off of those things because people do want to know. They don't know how to ask. They don't know what to ask. If you just talk about it and give the facts, they'll know more questions to ask if they have them. That's just a little bit of feedback, but just be really open to people, provide things like boot covers. Just have some on your farm because most people that come don't want to have poop all over themselves. I'm happiest when I'm covered in poop, honestly.
Most people are not. Keep those things in mind. The more you can have any hands-on experience, or have them witness something that's happening on the farm that day, that's great. It doesn't have to be perfect because nothing's perfect. Farms aren't perfect. No business is perfect. If you do have a cow that's looking a little sick, you point it out. Don't wait for them to ask you. If you go by the mastitis pen in the dairy, I talk about it.
If you talk about it before they ask, it's always better. Just bring all those things up that are challenges on the farm as well, because it's not easy. We want people to know that too.
Bradley: One thing that I think of is for farmers to go to other farms and go on tours of other farms, we might think that, "Oh, well, it's just cows and we know how they do it and we know how cows are fed. We don't. We don't know how each other's farms have done it. Frankly, every tour that I go on or go to other farms, I always learn something new.
Go to other farms and experience what those are and learn how they're giving the tours and what people are, how the public or other people are interacting with them on their tours. You actually might learn something good. I think the running joke is, Natasha, that I could give the tour at Riverview because I've been out there so many times. [crosstalk] It's going to learn about other farms as well and seeing what's happening because I would bet that you will learn something new.
Joe: That's my favorite thing about the cow industry. Beef, dairy doesn't matter. It's not cookie-cutter. There's so many different ways to make it work for all these different lifestyles, your family life, whatever you got going. There's so many different ways to make it work. That's my favorite part because it isn't like walking. When I go to Brad's farm, I know that I'm going to learn something new and something's going to be completely different than any farm I've been on before.
I'm always looking for those little pieces that are just a little bit different, and the different practices that are happening. I love what you said Natasha, about getting out there and being ready for the practices and really saying, all right, upfront, here's what I do, not just what I do, but why. I think when we definitely relate that back to doing it for the cows, it's because I want the cows to be healthy and happy and comfortable. Being able to relate it back to that, pretty hard to argue with when that's your goal.
Natasha: Yes. Being able to talk to you about your animal care. Here with Riverview, we have a Be Kind program. It's our own internal animal care program. We have our Be Safe program, which is our employee, how we stay safe because no one should get hurt at work ever. We talk about those on every tour. We have signs up. It's part of the conversation. Also, for those of you that are worried about liability, it's really important that you know that the state of Minnesota has a statute that protects farmers. All you have to do is have that, you have to say that in your tour. We actually have a poster up in our tour areas that I just bring up right away, this is a working farm. You need to follow directions as we move around. Everyone on the farm has the right of way. Know that there are dangerous things that happen on farms. Beware and be on the lookout.
There is protection for people in Minnesota, which is nice because that's not the fact in all states. Some people are scared of liability but there is protection there as long as you make sure people know it can be dangerous.
Joe: I'll find that and find the exact statute. I'll put it in the show notes so that if you want to read it, it's the, I think I want to call it the agritourism. I think that's the word that you use, right?
Natasha: Yes.
Joe: It's a great thing that we have in Minnesota and it allows us to continue to be open and not have to worry about that liability as much. It's just amazing.
Natasha: Also, if you're in the farm, via the farm program through the dairy industry, or you are involved with BQA in the beef industry, those are really good things to talk about on your tours. If you haven't looked into those types of things, you should, because they're really good. The dairy industry, through your checkoff, offers free classes to learn how to advocate for dairy through the beef industry.
There's something called the Masters of Beef Advocacy, which is an online advocacy class you can take to get a certification, be part of a Facebook group. It's awesome. I so enjoy being part of those groups because you learn from everyone else and questions they get and how to best represent your industry that you're trying to represent. If you're more on the crop side, of course, there's checkoff groups for everything. Lean on those groups, Farm Bureau, Farmers Union, there's a lot of opportunities to become more involved if you want to.
Joe: Yes. Those groups are there for a reason. They want to help. I haven't reached out to any of those checkoff groups yet and had someone be unpleasant to work with at all. Just reach out and get ahold of them. They're great resource.
Emily: I know you were talking about this before Natasha too, that some people are just angry. When people are angry or hateful, we can do our best to just ignore it and not engage or let it get inflammatory. Sometimes it happens. I'm just curious what are your tips for keeping your cool or dealing with people that are just, like I said, angry, hateful, very aggressive, not really giving it up, name-calling, all of that?
Natasha: That is a great question, Emily. There's a couple of different situations you could be in. First of all, it could be a person that's really mad, but they are never going to agree with you. That's okay. You can agree to disagree. That is still an acceptable thing to do, even though it seems like it's not sometimes. Be willing to have the conversation though. My tips are, if you have somebody who's asked a question that you think is a little bit aggressive or they are just being very aggressive, is to stop what you're doing.
First of all, you need to control your emotions, because we in agriculture are very passionate about what we do, and emotions are not going to help you at this time. You just got to keep cool because we don't know why they think that and we don't know where they hurt it. We need to find that out first. First of all, if you haven't introduced yourself yet, do that first. Shake hands or bump elbows or whatever you're comfortable with in this world. At that point, ask them where they heard that or where they found that information.
They're going to tell you they saw it on Facebook or maybe they heard it on the news, or maybe they're an animal rights activist. That can happen too. At that point, it gives you a little bit of an idea. Then you can tell them from your perspective what you do know, and relate it to something that would make sense to them. What you're going to do in all these situations, even if it's a person, the other side of this is, somebody who just heard something, but they're not mad about it. They just heard it and they took it as truth.
No matter what, you're trying to match a value. We have the exact same values as the people, honestly, hopefully, then the people that are thinking these things are wondering about these things. They're either valuing the safety of food, the care of livestock, the care of our environment, the care of the people working in agriculture, including immigrants. We all have the same values. They don't look necessarily the same, but the value connection is what keeps people having a conversation.
Emily, if you were to say to me, "Well, you have pretty big dairy farms, I've seen the videos of what you do to those cows on those dairy farms." Then I would say, "Oh, well where did you see that? Or where did you hear that?" I'd get that information. I automatically know from Emily's comment right off the bat that Emily is very much values animal care. She values that. I also value animal care a lot because I am a farmer.
Because of that, I have a connection with Emily, no matter if she is an animal rights activist and the highest 1% of aggressive against agriculture, and I am the total opposite. We can have a conversation. She does not have to agree with me, but I'm going to be sure that I talk about some of those things we do to take care of our livestock, zero tolerance for mistreatment. I'm going to cover those things with her if she's willing to listen. Maybe she's not, and you know what? That's okay.
You can just say, "We're just going to agree to disagree, but if you ever want to come visit my farm, I would love to have you and I will show you everything you want to see. Then you can see what you think after that." I think that basically at the end of that is, that's it. You have taken a situation that could have really got out of control if we don't let our emotions take over and have a conversation because that's what we want to do. We want to share our story, and that's how you can do that.
People online, you always want to go to a message, don't ever-- you're going to do the same concept, but over messaging and not on a wall of anywhere. You do not ever want to do that. Take it to a message and then send them articles, invite them to your farm, send them some videos that are helpful, and open up that dialogue. One of the relationships that I have built was with Paul Shapiro. He used to work for HSUS as their VP of Livestock Affairs.
I heard him speak at McDonald's University at a Center for Food Integrity event. Vegan since he was very young. Very much against livestock production. I still call upon him to throw things past them sometimes. He now is really in the laboratory meat and meat filler business. He's his own company in California, but he'll zoom in with our advocate scholarship kids from Riverview and talk about veganism and why he does what he does. It's great because those relationships are important.
I could dislike him, he could dislike me because we let emotions get in the way, but instead, we had a conversation once and we just keep an open mind with each other and agree to disagree.
Joe: That's great advice. I think especially with the internet, these confrontations are happening more and more and more frequently. I think that's the key, to be polite. Keep your head about you, your emotions under control. Be okay with the conclusion being that you're not going to agree, you're not going to convince this person. I think that alone, knowing that that's one of the possibilities and that's okay, is a big help, at least for me, because sometimes the person's just angry and there's nothing you can do about it.
I think we covered this way back in the single digits episodes. I'm not going to tell you how to eat. I'd prefer if you didn't tell me how to eat as well, but either way is fine. Whatever value you find in whatever you're doing, I think Natasha's point, is the most important. We're both doing it for probably some of the same reasons, right? Animal care, environmental care, however we're going to do it.
There's some shared value there. I think it's really difficult for me to find that sometimes. It does help when you do realize where that person's coming from. It could be our common ground.
Natasha: Don't forget that organic milk, natural beef, plant-based proteins, they all come from farmers. If we're telling people that those are not good things, we are tearing down another segment of agriculture. If people want to eat plant-based protein, more power to them. It's a very small part of the protein world right now. It's okay. It's their choice. I like how you said that, Joe. I think it is. It's about what people want to do as long as they are willing to hear the truth.
It doesn't mean they have to change your mind. You got the whole foods and people get worked up about some of that stuff in agriculture and they're all farmers that provided all of that food.
Joe: I think it took me a long time to realize that within agriculture there's enough to go around. We don't have to have someone fail so that another segment of the industry can succeed. That's what you got to keep in the back of your mind. I give Bradley a hard time about loving organic stuff every once in a while, but it doesn't mean that I'm down on organic farmers. I want them to succeed just like I want conventional farmers to succeed because there's enough room for everybody. [crosstalk]
Natasha: One thing I love about Brad is, he brings organic farmers to Riverview cause he wants to see that perspective. Brad will drink non-organic milk. [giggles]
Joe: Secret salad, Brad. Secret salad.
Natasha: Right, Brad? You will.
Bradley: Oh, of course, yes.
Natasha: Exactly.
Bradley: Of course. Of course. Of course Yes.
Emily: Yes. Sounds like a man exposed.
Natasha: He doesn't want to but he will. [laughs]
Joe: It's okay. It's okay.
Emily: But no, and I say that, and in Extension and I feel like you feel the same way too, Natasha, I am for every farmer and every farm. Yes, we do need everybody. I tell people, I'm like, "We all eat what we eat for different reasons." It usually comes down to our values and our beliefs. For a while, not anymore, but for a while, my 13-year-old niece was a vegetarian.
When my sister first told me, she was like, "Emily, be nice. "I was like, "I will be, you have to worry about her uncles, my brothers, you don't have to worry about me." I just asked her, I'm like, "Why do you want to be a vegetarian? She goes, "I just really think it's wrong to eat animals." I was like, "Great. Perfect. No problem."
Natasha: I think a good point to make there, Emily, is that that's a fine reason, right?
Emily: Yes.
Natasha: Some people will just say, "I just don't like the texture." My son cannot eat eggs, never, from when he was a baby baby, like when you can give babies eggs to now being 14, he will not, he just hates them in his mouth. It's not like he hates chicken. Well, he does hate chickens but it's not like he hates the whole poultry industry. He just literally can't stand the texture of it. A lot of people just don't like that. They have nothing against farming but we might assume they do when they say they're a vegetarian.
Emily: Yes. If we start to engage in an aggressive way, what do people do automatically? They get defensive and then you've created a mess that really wasn't there to begin with.
Natasha: That's why the question of where did you hear that or why do you think that, number one.
Emily: Yes.
Joe: Good point.
Emily: Good news for my niece, she's eating meat again but she's only eating red meat, not poultry.
Natasha: Well, whatever. That sounds good to me.
Emily: She's my kind of girl.
Joe: That's fine. I think we got time for one more question. One of the things I was thinking about beforehand was I'm in the city right now. I'm probably going to raise a son in the city. I'll have opportunities to get to a farm, but if I'm in the city or I'm in a small town and I don't feel like I have as many opportunities to get on a farm, are there any activities that kids can do in a more suburban or urban area that could connect them to agriculture? My first thought is gardening. That growing your own food in some way, is there anything else besides that?
Natasha: Oh, absolutely. You can have bees in the city. You can have chicken in the city. Give them those experiences but get them on farm pages, watching YouTube videos of farms, even that kind of stuff. Doing that as a family and then just talking about it or having an activity. The Farm Bureau Foundation has the Egg in the Classroom materials that you can order from them. Many of them are free from your state Egg in the Classroom.
You can order free things like activities to do. You can also go on the National Egg in the Classroom matrix and find lessons from every age that you can do with your family and they're super fun. Do those things but urban agriculture is huge. There's a number of places. There's a very large Hmong population that grows just insane amounts of vegetables and they do lots of farm-to-school in the cities. I'm not going to think of the name of it. Maybe one of you will. Is it The Good Earth?
It's by the U of M right on [unintelligible 00:43:40]. That place is amazing. You can go there and get a tour. You can go there and rent their kitchen out. You should look into it because I would love to-- I've been there with Marle and I've taken my advocate scholarship group there to learn about urban agriculture. There's a lot of opportunities. There's also a really cool thing called the Green Garden Bakery, which would be a great place to take kids in the city. It is high school students in the North Minneapolis school district.
You can look them up on YouTube even because they have a bakery and they use all their vegetables they grow in their garden. It's a student-run, young-person-run bakery. They do everything and they'll do even outreach activities. Look them up, they're on Facebook. You can order food but bringing even your family to somewhere like that just to get bakery deliciousness, and meet some of the kids that are doing that and learning about what they're learning about, that is the best.
Also providing your teachers and your students go to school with the links to Minnesota Egg in the Classroom, send them to them and say, these are great activities. They meet standards. Please, take a look at them. I would love to come in because I know about agriculture and health. There's so many ways to give kids in urban areas. There's lots of people that do virtual tours.
I do virtual tours with urban students and even tours on the farm for some of them that come all the way out but it's a long way. You need to be that resource for those teachers because they may not know either. They don't know how to find that information sometimes.
Emily: You can also request to have Princess Kay of the Milky Way come visit your classroom.
Natasha: Yes.
Emily: Just saying.
Natasha: The Minnesota Beef Ambassadors, there's Pork Ambassadors. You need to be that person to connect your teacher though, because I don't know how else they would really get that information without some kind of a connection.
Joe: I think this might be a correction. You said Good Earth. Is it the Good Acre? Is that the--
Natasha: Yes is the Good Acre. Yes.
Joe: Just wanted to make sure.
Natasha: The Good Earth is a kind of tea, I think.
Joe: It might be a restaurant as well but the place--
Emily: Yes. I think that's a restaurant in Roseville. Yes.
Natasha: Yes, it is. I bring my students there, which you should bring your kids out too, or your friends and try the burgers they have. Go there and get one of everything and try it because it's important that we know what things taste like. I've tried The Impossible Burger. I've tried it all. I think we have to. I've tried all the milks. I want to know what they taste like because how can I say they're bad? I can't and I don't even think they're all bad. [unintelligible 00:46:05]
Joe: I agree. I've tried them all too and it's good. Good Earth is the restaurant. The Good Acre is what we're talking about with--
Natasha: Yes. That's right by the UofM.
Joe: Right by the UofM.
Natasha: You can find by looking that up.
Joe: I wanted to make sure because I was like, I think I've eaten at Good Earth. I know that's a restaurant for sure. I think that's it, right?
Emily: All right.
Joe: Let's call it there.
Emily: Well, I think that is a wrap. Thank you so much, Natasha, for joining us again. We were so happy to have you with us.
Natasha: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. Brad and I see each other quite a bit at our boys' basketball games, he asked me and I think I said yes in a millisecond because I was so excited.
Bradley: That's right.
Natasha: Thank you for having me.
Emily: Good. Yes, of course. That's it for this week. If you have questions, comments, scathing rebuttal, you can email us at themoosroom@umn.edu.
Joe: That's, t-h-e-m-o-o-s-r-o-o-m@umn.edu.
Emily: You can find us on Facebook at UMN Dairy at UMN Beef. You can find us on Twitter @UMNFarmSafety, @UMNmoosroom, and on YouTube search for University of Minnesota Extension Farm Safety and Health and UofM Extension Dairy and Beef. Also, you can find Riverview on social media at where, Natasha?
[music]
Natasha: At Riverview, LLP, at Wulf Cattle, and that's on Instagram and Facebook. We have websites for both as well. You can go to our websites and we have a YouTube channel as well for each, so with lots of videos. Go check us out.
Emily: Riverview's social media is excellent. I love following them.
Natasha: Oh, great. Thanks.
Emily: Check them out.
Natasha: Personal, family stuff, we do on keeping it rural on Facebook.
Joe: Perfect. I will have all sorts of stuff in the show notes, so check those out. Yes, you'll be able to connect to whatever you want to do.
Emily: All right. With that, again, thank you, Natasha. We will see you all, or you'll hear from us next week.
Joe: Bye.
Emily: I could decide what joke I wanted to make there, Natasha.
Natasha: It would fell flat.
[laughter]
Emily: You guys are fun.
Natasha: I got really nervous.
[00:48:26] [END OF AUDIO]

1