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Hands in the Dirt, Data in the Cloud
38 Plays10 hours ago
In this reflective episode, Brett and Ray take a deep dive into how Kentucky agriculture—and Extension work—has transformed over the past few decades. Starting with a lighthearted chat about summer, fall cravings, and the buzz (and hype) around AI, the conversation shifts into a second chapter of Ray’s career story, following the earlier “Hands in the Dirt, Head in the Clouds” episode.
Ray shares first-hand memories from his early days in Extension in the mid-1990s, when answering a client’s question meant sifting through filing cabinets, making long phone calls, and sometimes hauling around a Motorola “bag phone.” The discussion traces how technology, from networked computers to AgDiscs and eventually the internet, changed how agents work and how clients access information.
A major focus is the seismic impact of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement and the 2004 end of the tobacco quota system—events that reshaped Kentucky farming and spurred a search for alternative crops and markets. Ray and Brett explore both the opportunities and challenges of this transition, from diversification efforts and Kentucky Proud branding to the hard realities of marketing perishable crops.
Throughout, they connect past changes to present questions about AI’s role in Extension—its potential as a tool, its limits, and the enduring importance of research-based information and human expertise. The episode blends history, personal experience, and forward-looking perspective on how agricultural outreach adapts to waves of technological and economic change.
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@gmail.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Banter
00:00:19
Brett
Greetings. Hello there, Ray.
00:00:19
Plant People
Is it really just us today? Just the Brett and Ray show?
00:00:22
Brett
Just the two of us. We can make it if we try.
00:00:25
Plant People
doneta I'm glad. The young people would not get that reference, but Brett being the music aficionado that he there he is.
00:00:30
Brett
That's the oldies.
00:00:31
Plant People
Yeah, that he is. I like it.
00:00:33
Brett
ah
Gardening and Seasonal Reflections
00:00:34
Plant People
Good stuff.
00:00:34
Brett
What have you been up to, ray
00:00:36
Plant People
ah Dealing with weeds in the garden and trying to figure out this excess. I know we alluded to it on the last show with ah Jason Vaughn. We talked about this very wet weather we've been having in Kentucky.
00:00:49
Plant People
But yeah, just enjoying garden bounty and also dealing with, you know, the lawn still growing at a time when my lawn dont normally doesn't grow. But yeah, enjoying the season in Kentucky.
00:00:58
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:01:00
Plant People
I try not to rush the seasons in Kentucky, but um I've got to admit, and I'm glad Alexis is not on here, but um pumpkin spice lattes and all things Halloween.
00:01:10
Plant People
I've said it time and time again. I love the fall, but I do not want to wish away time. I don't want to wish away these awesome long days of summer in Kentucky, but about a midpoint in, in summer around this time, my brain slowly starts to edge into, you know, the, the fall vibes. I'm trying not to do that this year. Trying not
Exploring AI: Benefits and Concerns
00:01:31
Plant People
to do it.
00:01:31
Brett
Yeah, it's it's easy to, I think when you know when you when more more hours of the day you're sweaty than are you not you're not, that to me is kind of the, yeah, that's the Rubicon that we have crossed for me into summer.
00:01:40
Plant People
Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking for a comfort. Yes. Maybe that's what it is. Yes.
00:01:45
Brett
I'm like, I'm ready for this to be over.
00:01:46
Plant People
It is a nexus that we have transversed. Yes, absolutely.
00:01:51
Brett
Well, just a casual question here. um What do you think about AI?
00:01:58
Plant People
Oh, it is everywhere.
00:01:59
Brett
Artificial intelligence, not not the ah artificial insemination.
00:02:00
Plant People
he Yeah. Not artificial. Yeah. Insemination. Two different things. Yeah.
00:02:04
Brett
This is hort culture. This isn't, you know...
00:02:06
Plant People
and Yeah, not not animal science breeding 101, even though that's good topic too.
00:02:07
Brett
what
00:02:11
Plant People
But I mean, that it's ah it's absolutely everywhere. And i when I see like a ah computer, if they want to sell more of it, they're like, oh, introducing the new AI PC. I'm still not for sure what that means, even though.
00:02:22
Brett
The AI integrations are driving me crazy. Like, let me use it.
00:02:26
Plant People
Well, at most, yes.
00:02:27
Brett
If I want to use it, don't integrate it into my thing. Like, I don't,
00:02:31
Plant People
Wow. It's and like on a computer, i'm like I'm torn. I love the tech stuff, but I'm like, that's mostly server side that's never going to be on the computer. So why does the computer need to? I realize that there's certain benefits. to But yeah, it's just everywhere. it's it's um It's a um ah huge buzzword, but it's also, you know to give it its credit, it is making ah some very real positive changes.
00:02:59
Plant People
But I think it's one of those things that's new.
00:03:00
Brett
So on ah on a scale of one to 10, like one is Sam Altman, open AI pushing it. He's into it.
00:03:07
Plant People
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:03:08
Brett
He's all about it. but Without, you know, it could just be a non, you know, none of the negative connotations, just pro, very pro that pro AI. 10 is the kind of the Luddite, ah you know, doesn't have a smartphone, has like a rotary phone.
00:03:25
Brett
And so that's how they feel about AI is even, you know, more strongly than didn AI is getting rid of the AI is not far enough. That's a 10. So scale of one to 10 pro AI versus anti, where do you think you fall on that scale?
00:03:40
Plant People
More probably towards the pro with reservations. i'm I'm trying to have my cake here and eat it too, Brett.
00:03:48
Brett
Like somewhere in the 234 range, somewhere in there?
00:03:50
Plant People
I am, yeah. I mean, because I've seen you know and used it in certain ways that I'm like, my goodness, ah that really helped me with workflow in general.
00:04:01
Plant People
Like ah somebody very smart, another agent I was talking to one day, she kind of framed it up nicely.
00:04:02
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:04:06
Plant People
She goes, It's not going to solve all of my problems. I'm not going to use it for something that on a topic that I don't understand because you still ah have to fact check AI very carefully. ah You know, I think that's well established at this point because it can get things wrong and does get things things wrong. But she said throughout the day, it helps with her general workflow. And there's a lot of different ways that that she found to integrate AI into her daily tasks.
00:04:32
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:04:33
Plant People
Uh, and I, and I believe that's where we're at right now. It's sort of the wild, wild West where things are sort of fast and loose with, uh, you know, the core understanding of AI and what it can and cannot do well and how you should and should not be using it. And further, you know, uh, in our profession, we're in educational professional field where, you know, you we're concerned with things like, um,
00:04:55
Plant People
You know, how do we use this and cite the document, you know, do documentation of using AI? We're struggling with those things. ah and as And to make it as factual as possible. But all that being said, I guess I'm pro-AI, but I know that there are limitations to what, you know, that is and is not.
00:05:13
Plant People
Yeah.
00:05:14
Brett
Yeah. I think you know one of the things that's easy, it's easy to talk to kind of conflate the AI technology and its promise or its downsides with like the way people are using it or in particular are talking about it, where there's just so much hype and so such that it's like that it's driven the company that manufactures the chips, NVIDIA, that make AI possible to be the largest company in the world.
00:05:29
Plant People
Yeah.
00:05:31
Plant People
Yeah. Yeah.
00:05:40
Plant People
Yes, absolutely.
00:05:41
Brett
I mean, it's that hype machine is very real. um It reminds me of some previous, you know, bubbles and new technologies and everybody's getting in on it.
00:05:52
Brett
And I've heard people, were you know, compare, we got AI to um the dot-com boom where it's like whatever whatever business you had, just add dot-com to it, register the domain. And now suddenly your company is somehow worth 10 times as much.
00:06:09
Brett
Well, it turns out that it's not. That that speculative value like that um has this this effect.
00:06:13
Plant People
Yeah.
00:06:15
Brett
But there's two reasons why I bring up the AI thing. One, I wanted to hear your thoughts on it. I would say if you're in the 2-3-4 range, I'm in the six seven eight range. I think i'm trying to I'm trying to be more open and ah less of just a...
00:06:23
Plant People
Mm-hmm.
00:06:29
Brett
hater on vibes alone and try to be a little more reasonable about it.
Ray's Journey in Agriculture and Extension Services
00:06:34
Brett
And so started using it some more, um particularly chat GPT. I'll go in and and just, you know, say I'll say chat GPT, say nice things about me and, you know, just do that for two hours.
00:06:38
Plant People
Mm-hmm.
00:06:45
Plant People
Yeah.
00:06:45
Brett
So that's the extent that I've used it for. And that that worked great. But ah For this episode, I yeah i used it. but ah That's that's one one reason why, and I'm going to get to that in a second. The other reason why is I think today this is going to be the second part episode covering um the the life and times in agriculture of Ray Tackett.
00:07:09
Brett
We did a previous episode on, we did a previous episode on released on June 22nd, I think it's called hands in the dirt, head in the clouds.
00:07:09
Plant People
It's a bit been here for a minute.
00:07:19
Brett
And it was a very ah cool for me, very cool experience to be able to talk with you. and you were very forthcoming about your life growing up in, in Eastern Kentucky on a several different farms ah in, in Johnson County and Lawrence County.
00:07:35
Plant People
Yes, that's correct.
00:07:37
Brett
Yeah. So um through that time period, you've seen some major changes. And I think some would say that maybe this AI thing with an extension is going to be the next big change that defines they know the beyond there.
00:07:51
Brett
So we're starting with today and kind of looking backward at some of the other changes you've been through in that time, we're going to reflect on those here in a few minutes. But here's one of the downsides of of AI. i feded I asked AI to to summarize that last episode for me, just to kind of see. And I was there. I was asking questions, so I kind of remember.
00:08:09
Brett
And as I said to you, or as I just verified with you, your primary stories from that episode were in Johnson County and Lawrence County. And Hort Culture says ah in the Hort Culture podcast episode, Hands in the Dirt, Head in the Clouds, Ray mentions that he grew up in Elliott and Carter counties in eastern Kentucky, which that neither of those was the case. They are not not super far away, a little further north up toward West Virginia, kind of toward the West Virginia border.
00:08:39
Brett
almost up to sort of toward an Ohio relative to where we were talking about. But um so there's some little bits and pieces here that maybe aren't aren't correct. And ah so on the AI side, we'll see we'll see how much that's going to
00:08:50
Plant People
Yeah. And truly the devil's in the details. ah And in our, in our line of work, the details are very important.
00:08:57
Brett
Yeah. But I think a couple of the other things, in case you didn't hear that episode, you go back and check it out because I think it was really it was really nice to hear Ray's perspective. But he focused on his personal story, um talking about working with crops, working with livestock, lessons he learned from his parents, ah and a lot of his formative experiences primarily through the 80s and 90s and then going to Berea.
00:09:21
Brett
um learning a lot there, ah opening up opportunities and thoughts about where he was going to go next. And then going out into the professional world, Ray's been, ah you you worked a couple of years before joining Extension, right?
00:09:35
Plant People
Yes. Uh, different jobs. Uh, um, the last position that I held significant position, ah before I entered extension was a commercial landscape position, you know working with landscape crews and I also working in the field, not a lot of design work, some design work, but mainly, you know, implementation of plans, a commercial drawing. So yeah, i had some experience before I came into extension, but it wasn't too long after I graduated from Berea that I, uh, entered the extension service. Um,
00:10:04
Brett
And what,
00:10:04
Plant People
And you never know you know if you're going to be at a job for a long time or not. And it just turns out with the extension, I've been here a long time. so
00:10:10
Brett
and so this is what what county?
00:10:14
Plant People
I came into extension in 96 in Grant County, which is towards the northern part of the central region of Kentucky. So north central of Kentucky. That's where I came in and was there.
00:10:27
Plant People
um You know, for over four years. And, you know, you mentioned we started this conversation with AI and it makes me reflect back, which I don't do a lot of sometimes, but it's pretty incredible.
00:10:39
Plant People
Here we are talking about the merits of algorithms and large language model engines, you know, this high level kind of stuff that we're trying to wrap our heads around.
00:10:45
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:10:49
Plant People
and make sense of huge amounts of data information. But when I first came into extension, it's almost like it's come somewhat full circle. When I first came into extension in 96, you know, when I was at school at Berea, 92 to 96 with my undergrad, ah about midway through that journey at Berea, we started getting everything was networked, you know, in the early days of networking computers. And we started getting homework assignments on,
00:11:14
Plant People
through the network and got her for, I got my first email at Berea, the first email address I'd ever had. So that became sort of familiar. I used that for a couple of years, but when I first came into extension, the, I walked in the office there and there was a computer sitting in the corner that was not networked.
00:11:31
Plant People
Okay. Okay. It was not networked, but what was encouraging was I looked around and I said, i know I'm entering the business of having to know lots of facts and lots of things in extension because that's what extension agents do. They know a lot about things.
00:11:46
Plant People
And I thought, well, my goodness, if I can't access the World Wide Web, what am I going to do? So that was the reality. When I first came in, I did not have a computer that was networked. Now that got remedied shortly after I started Grant County, but it's pretty incredible.
00:11:59
Plant People
To think that my reference for answering questions was ah was a large bank of filing cabinets with printed out publications, numbered publications, which I still fondly remember that.
00:12:12
Plant People
Because back then in the 90s, we maintained these, just everybody had tons of filing cabinets and meticulous files maintained by topics.
00:12:23
Plant People
ah maintain those very carefully because that's how we answered questions. When we got a question, if we did not know the answer to the question straight away, which often happened, we had to run over to a filing cabinet. We all had long phone cords.
00:12:37
Plant People
We'd run over to a filing cabinet, flip through there, and we were pretty familiar with thousands of files. And we would manually search through, find a number of publication, research-based publication, and answer the question.
00:12:48
Plant People
And now here we are, Brett, talking about AI. So, That's kind of the reality when I came into extension was ah a lot different world.
00:12:54
Brett
Yeah.
00:12:57
Plant People
Access to information was different. A lot was different then, but yeah, started out in Grant County. Thank
00:13:03
Brett
One of the, you know, we're in the middle of this search for our new extension dean in the College of Ag. And one of the candidates mentioned, you know all all these folks have been around for a little while um you know across this period of time that Ray's talking about. And one of the candidates mentioned working on an extension program and sending it out, mailing it out to agents as a CD.
00:13:27
Plant People
Yes.
00:13:27
Brett
a burned CD compact disc that they could then use. And that was at that time, like that was kind of like crazy forward thinking, you know, you could, you could send this little disc that was, you know, the size of a, like you could fit it in your, you put it in your car CD player if you, if you need to, and it could hold hundreds of publications or, you know, programs or videos or whatever.
00:13:33
Plant People
Pretty forward thinking. It was. and
00:13:48
Plant People
We loved it. we like And that could be updated more quickly because with paper files, I mean, when publications were updated, we had maybe 50 copies of an alfalfa publication. I started out as an ag and natural resources agent, and then halfway through my career switched over to horticulture. But when I was ag and natural resources, we covered plant and animal sciences, more generalized in nature. But let's let's say we had an alfalfa publication and it was a lot of waste and the process was slow. When you got an updated publication, it would come as hard copies in a packet, a bound packet, and then you had to throw away all the old copies.
00:14:22
Plant People
And it was a constant process of keeping hard copies up to date in these large filing cabinets. And so here comes the AgDisc, and that was like a a revolution because we could get those quicker, and publications where we were like, what's a PDF?
00:14:39
Plant People
Yes, I'm that old, folks. But we learned how to search PDFs and find answers more quickly on publications that were updated more regularly through these AgDisc. So about once a year, we got these AgDisc,
00:14:52
Plant People
with updated publications and that became like our first kind of quasi electronic filing system that, so as agents, I know we're talking in-house here, ah but as agents, it allowed us to answer questions, you know, more quickly, more efficiently. And a lot of times we could just find the information and just, it made us that much better as agents. So yeah, that was a, that was a big moment in extension with the way we did business.
00:15:17
Brett
Would you say, so I have several questions, but would you say that the amount of time at that point that agents spent you know out in the field was different? Was the number of programs offered different? like what are What are some other kind of differences about the way that that information about agriculture was being spread?
00:15:38
Plant People
the rate the The biggest way, and it's interesting to think about it that way, but there were differences back then in that ah annual updates of whatever commodity where you were talking about seemed to be more elevated, more important.
00:15:52
Plant People
And I'll give you an example, like um a row crop like corn. That annual corn meeting or annual commodity meeting, whatever you were doing, seemed to be far more important because Before the internet became widely accepted and widely available and everyone you know got had computers at home that had access to the internet. In the early days, even if you had access to the internet, not a lot of publications from all the universities were up there. okay Just frame that out right now. So how are you getting information?
00:16:23
Plant People
You had to call someone that had those paper files across the U.S. that had these big banks of filing cabinets. And to get the latest information, because in extension, that's one of the major things we do is we do research.
00:16:35
Plant People
We produce and generate information. um You know, we're the genesis of a lot of information, fresh and hot off the press, folks. So to get that information, folks had to come out to these meetings.
00:16:47
Plant People
And typically the format was you would have a big like rollout once a year of the latest, greatest information. You would have specialists there. And the meetings tended to be a little a little larger.
00:16:58
Plant People
attendance in person tend to be a little larger because if you wanted to or let's say tobacco meeting, those were the best example I have in the 90s, you would have an annual tobacco meeting. and It was not uncommon to have 150, 200 people at those meetings.
00:17:12
Plant People
ah That was the the rollout of all the latest, greatest varieties, the black st shank research, the blue mold research, ah disease control, soil management, all of that rolled out with the latest varieties.
00:17:24
Plant People
And everybody attended those. We had printouts of these large manuals, these production manuals, and it was a whole event. So that was really different. It's almost like you, well, they not almost, you had to attend those events to be, to have the most up-to-date information. You couldn't log on and do a general search through Google because guess what? Google didn't exist. There was no such thing as just Google that because it literally wasn't invented at that time.
00:17:52
Plant People
So that was significantly different, I guess, in the way that we did business on ah on a day-to-day basis was, ah seems like we had more meetings like that, that were thematic.
00:18:06
Plant People
And, ah you know, we had our educational programs then, just like we do now, that's one of our strengths and extension, is a community-based programming that's locally driven. But then it was even more critical because you didn't have this access, this incredible access to all the information from not only the University of Kentucky, but wherever you were at, wherever you're listening from, you probably have access to that information now.
00:18:30
Plant People
So ah you know we do these things a little different now.
00:18:32
Brett
what I think what's, what's, what's kind of interesting um ah this has me thinking, I wasn't really expecting to go down this technology interfacing of technology and the work that we do, but I think it is an
Technological Evolution in Communication
00:18:44
Brett
interesting one.
00:18:44
Brett
And and I know you and I are both kind of tech thinking people, uh, in, in different ways, which is really cool. Sometimes we talk about specs on computers and Alexis and Jessica sort of, uh, you know, start gagging and in response, but, um,
00:18:55
Plant People
they Roll their eyes at us a little Yeah Yeah
00:19:00
Brett
The extension service itself kind of developed alongside the spreading of the telephone in the United States.
00:19:08
Plant People
Yeah
00:19:09
Brett
And so in other words, you know your you you went into your office and you saw, oh, this computer didn't have the internet or it's not networked in any way.
00:19:17
Plant People
ah
00:19:18
Brett
There were agents who started, well, there wasn't there wasn't an office probably.
00:19:22
Plant People
yeah
00:19:22
Brett
And most of your clientele didn't even have a telephone.
00:19:26
Plant People
Yeah.
00:19:26
Brett
as far as being able to get ahold of somebody and be able to help them and talk to them. would Would you say for you all, the tech, the telephone was kind of the primary means of communication with your clientele?
00:19:38
Plant People
Yeah.
00:19:39
Brett
Like how, what's that kind of vibe like?
00:19:41
Plant People
We were on the phone a whole lot more. Um, and, uh, I guess it's not, it wasn't all bad then because you had a singular form of communication. a singular form.
00:19:52
Plant People
We were on the phone for longer periods of time. It was not uncommon for me to be on the phone four to five hours a day on a landline because once you went out into the field, you had to have all the details worked out because once you got there, you had what you had um to make the site visit with.
00:20:06
Brett
yeah
00:20:08
Plant People
And to go over details, we didn't have emails. We didn't have texts. We didn't have any of those other alternate forms of communication. So that's good and bad.
00:20:19
Plant People
ah you had one form of communication to focus on. That was a phone call or people would come into your office and visit you directly. and And that's still a common thing to do when people really want a high level of understanding or want to make sure they understand you completely. you know, it's not uncommon to get us, you know, in an office visit and that's great.
00:20:38
Plant People
But back then it was very much focused on that single form of communication. That was a telephone. That was the first point of contact. And it's the way we did business. And I remember the first, and I thought I was big time, Brett. I thought I had a arrived.
00:20:52
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:20:53
Plant People
I had a bag phone and only people of a certain generation, maybe born in the 1900s, will understand what I'm talking about. But it was a motorlar Motorola bag phone and it looked like I was some military guy carrying this big, chunky Velcro flappy,
00:21:09
Plant People
phone around that was in its own self-contained case, but I had the usage of that thing and you were charged by the minute. And I didn't get that to the late, very, very end of, uh, I don't know, 98, 99.
00:21:21
Plant People
I got a bag phone.
00:21:22
Brett
And this is ah this is a mobile phone.
00:21:22
Plant People
It was a mobile phone. Um, it was a bag phone.
00:21:25
Brett
Yeah.
00:21:26
Plant People
And so and there was one for the entire office. So we checked it out when we were out of the office, we were going to be out, you know, making visits or whatever.
00:21:29
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:21:34
Plant People
You maybe had 50% sale coverage if you were lucky. But, um, I mean, that changed the way we did business was just that phone.
00:21:38
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:21:43
Plant People
And it was one phone for the entire office. Mobile phone is very expensive. We would check it out and take it, you know, where we were going and then we'd check it back in when we got back. So we became a bit more mobile with that. You couldn't do anything on that thing besides make and receive phone calls, but still that started to change the way that we did business.
00:22:05
Plant People
Um, beyond people bringing in a plant or some kind of insect sample or whatever sample they had of the day, they had to bring that in or we had to go look at it, you know, full stop.
00:22:16
Plant People
That was the only way we could accomplish those things. Now it's just, I think sometimes we take for granted, we can take a perfectly crystal clear picture of an insect and do a lot of identification right over mobile phones or through email.
00:22:30
Brett
Send it instantaneously. Yeah.
00:22:32
Plant People
Yes. Yeah, it's pretty incredible when I think back on it. And reflect back on it. You know, the one thing that hasn't changed is we work with individuals, ah you know, but the way that we do that has really changed and the speed at which we do that has really changed ah over time.
00:22:51
Plant People
ah probably Brett more than any of that. And I think more and more about this. And I talked with a group of new agents and stumbled onto this just kind of ad hoc as I was talking to them.
00:23:02
Plant People
and it's a concept I think more and more about as being a field agent and working with communities, you know, with their issues and and questions. And I told this dude new, this group of new agents, this, I said, you know,
00:23:18
Plant People
I think that the questions have gotten tougher over time. And they they they said, well what do you mean? And I said, well, if you think about it, people already have the ability from their phone, these incredible mobile computers, they can look up the basic information for a thing, the seeding rate of fescue for their home lawns.
00:23:34
Plant People
They can find that pretty accurately in seconds by doing a general search, University of Kentucky, fescue seeding rate. They can get rate. Generally, when we get questions now, they're of the second order, not the first order. The first order is basic, general, baseline information.
00:23:48
Plant People
People have already found that out or they have a problem that's beyond them searching for a problem. So when we get questions now, they tend to be more in-depth that just information by itself is not going to solve the problem.
00:24:03
Plant People
So I think over time, if I really reflect back from the ninety s going into the early, you know, 2000s, questions started getting tougher.
00:24:15
Plant People
People come in, they they they would say, I've already looked at your website. I've already read the home lawn publication on diseases and nothing looked familiar. And I'm like, oh, so they've already done their base research. So whatever they're coming to me with is a little bit more novel or it's not the easy stuff.
00:24:30
Plant People
So we don't get as many softball questions as we used to.
00:24:34
Brett
I mean, that's awesome.
00:24:34
Plant People
Those are
00:24:35
Brett
to me To me, that means that through both extension activity, through websites, through everything else, people are are getting more advanced information.
00:24:43
Plant People
there
00:24:44
Brett
they're they're more
00:24:44
Plant People
they're still being supported but it's different it's ah yeah yeah it is
00:24:46
Brett
They have more access. And if they can come to you with a harder question that you can work through together, i mean, that that's pretty darn cool. In my opinion, as far as as far as thinking about what I understand, it makes the job harder because suddenly you don't have everybody like, I don't know anything about this at all.
00:25:02
Brett
And can you know, oh yeah I can show you this this basic thing. we We definitely see that in the on our side of things where where it's there's people who have kind of thought through a bunch of stuff and the whole all the basics are kind of exhausted already.
00:25:07
Plant People
do you
00:25:15
Plant People
and you And you guys deal with an interesting, a lot of and well, lots and lots of interesting topics ah on specialty crops and things. So I bet you guys have seen some changes over time.
00:25:25
Plant People
And you've been here for a while as well, right, Brett? I'm
00:25:29
Brett
That's right. So I started in 2015, and this isn't this isn't the Brett episode. This is the Ray episode, but started in 2015.
00:25:36
Plant People
going to pick your brain too.
00:25:37
Brett
i I started when when we were the only people that I knew who were in this world doing webinars.
00:25:45
Plant People
Yeah.
00:25:46
Brett
ah We did it on Adobe...
00:25:46
Plant People
That was really advanced back then. Yeah.
00:25:48
Brett
did on Adobe Connect at first and you had to like pre-upload your PowerPoint into it and then it would mess it up and reformat it.
00:25:55
Plant People
How scary was that?
00:25:55
Brett
And yeah, but we had been on Zoom since 2016.
00:25:56
Plant People
Yeah. Yeah.
00:25:59
Brett
So we were ready when the pandemic happened, we were ready to stream live and and we did stream live starting in March of 2020. But yeah,
00:26:07
Plant People
Yeah.
00:26:07
Brett
um but 2015, even till, yeah, even 2015 to now, I think thinking about the website, like website traffic and thinking about measuring that and understanding that and how you use online resources to supplement in-person resources versus virtual
00:26:23
Plant People
Yes.
00:26:25
Brett
A lot of that has shifted too. um Yeah, well, I have a million questions that I could ask you about this, but about that, the the this kind of
Agricultural Changes Post-Tobacco Era
00:26:33
Brett
first chapter. But so you were in Grant County starting in 96.
00:26:38
Brett
And then how long were you there?
00:26:38
Plant People
yes I was there until 2000 and 2000, transferred into an ag and natural resources position into the eastern part of the state.
00:26:49
Plant People
ah Completely different counties and a lot started, ah Floyd County, I'm sorry, ah Floyd County, that's in the eastern part of the state.
00:26:52
Brett
What was it? What county? Floyd County.
00:26:57
Plant People
It's about 80, 85% forested, which I was very interested in, small farm issues and natural resources issues. And that was more of a home area for me. So I wanted to get back
00:27:08
Brett
Yeah.
00:27:08
Plant People
home and I wanted to cover some of those topics that I enjoyed, but really enjoyed my time in Grant County. But a lot started happening ah while I was in Grant County. A farm bill came out, and then something called the Master Settlement for Tobacco came out.
00:27:26
Plant People
And then later, that came out in 98. I had to look back at my notes to see.
00:27:30
Brett
Yeah, yeah.
00:27:31
Plant People
The Master Settlement Agreement came out in 1998. It was agreement between tobacco companies to help fund some kind of offset some of the health issues that smoking led to smoking.
00:27:42
Brett
Yeah. So if in case anybody is is interested in this, this this t the too long did we we Ray and I are pushing, if you have any cachet with Dr. Will Snell in the Department of Agricultural Economics, we are pushing him to let us do a short run podcast on the tobacco settlement and it's you know lead up to it and its you know effects thereafter.
00:27:54
Plant People
Yes.
00:28:05
Brett
He has had a career that basically mirrored that entire period. And he has very, very interesting ah connections, but also perspective on it.
00:28:10
Plant People
Pretty incredible, Tom.
00:28:14
Brett
But anyway, there's this idea that like, okay, there's this product and the tobacco companies have claimed that it's not hurting people for a long time. Turns out that it was and they knew.
00:28:24
Brett
And so then the States banded together and sued the tobacco companies, the tobacco companies then settled. So money got kicked out to all the different States to be able to do whatever they wanted with it.
00:28:36
Plant People
Yeah, and in Kentucky, it just so happened. Every every state handled those monies. Different. And, and that money still being, uh, tobacco companies are still paying out that money. Um, but that happened in 98, uh, and in Kentucky, 50% of those funds, uh, went back to agriculture. Um, the balance of the fund went to other things in different States, once again, handled that differently, but a a large portion of those funds, 50%, uh, went back to agriculture. I think that founded the Kentucky ag development group, um, the fund there. So,
00:29:10
Plant People
We knew big changes were coming with that. And the really big changes came a little bit later in 2004 when the tobacco quota system went away. And that had that would that was that was formed through federal legislation 66 years before.
00:29:25
Plant People
There was this, ah that basically was a kind of a price control and production control um federal system. The quota system here in Kentucky, we're very familiar with it.
00:29:37
Plant People
the Yeah.
00:29:37
Brett
Well, some of us aren't. So ah what did that mean?
00:29:39
Plant People
ah Basically,
00:29:40
Brett
Like from the farmer's perspective, what did the quota mean?
00:29:42
Plant People
In a nutshell, that meant that tobacco income was very, very consistent and you could rely on tobacco income year in and year out in ah on a small scale or large scale because you had to quote a set amount that you could grow and it kept the price at a certain level.
00:29:57
Brett
So if I had a five-pound or sorry, five-pound, if I had a five-acre farm, I would be, i if I were part of the system, I would be allotted a certain number of pounds that I could produce and and have ah essentially a guaranteed market for.
00:30:05
Plant People
certain quota. Yes, you're...
00:30:10
Plant People
yes you're
00:30:13
Plant People
Yes, pretty much. As long as you kept the quality at a minimum standard, you would take that to market. The price could vary some based on your individual quality standards, but you were almost guaranteed a certain minimum price as long as you met minimum quality standards.
00:30:28
Plant People
And if you didn't decide to produce that year, you could sell other the people your quota for that year. So there's a lot of that going on in Kentucky. I guess to kind of, yeah, go ahead, Brent.
00:30:35
Brett
And if like, if you had a hundred acres and you could produce it more efficiently or you could produce it, whatever you couldn't go in. Like if you went and you couldn't go in and say, I'll sell it to you for cheaper and undercut me and push me out of the market.
00:30:49
Brett
Cause I already have my quota. Right.
00:30:50
Plant People
Yeah, it kept the price very controlled and it kept overproduction from being an issue the biggest thing. And that that came about as part of the Great Depression, some legislation that happened there. Real interesting story there. that its That's why I'd love to hear Dr. Snell.
00:31:07
Plant People
We're going to send him this episode.
00:31:07
Brett
Totally.
00:31:09
Plant People
And just so but that we're plugging this hard, I'd love to hear more of the history myself. It's very interesting, but it it kind of, that program from the 30s all the way up through 2004, when that program, um the buyout occurred in Kentucky, it kind of went away.
00:31:24
Plant People
But that program from the 30s to 2004 really established kind of the fabric and backbone to a large extent of kind of the small farms in Kentucky and the number of farms. I think in its heyday, there were 60,000 plus farms. It seems like I'm pulling that from Emory.
00:31:40
Plant People
that were growing tobacco. Now we're less than a thousand farms. ah
00:31:43
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:31:44
Plant People
That's growing tobacco and the farms tend to be larger. But that was probably the single biggest, as far as farming wise, not necessarily within the organization. We were talking about AI and how we handle phone calls, but this is in the field.
00:31:59
Plant People
That's the single biggest thing that happened. And I was kind of right on the edge of that. when the master settlement came out in 98. And then later on I was in Floyd County when the tobacco buyout program happened.
00:32:12
Plant People
Now we oftentimes say that the masters the master settlement kind of funded changes, but what 2004 did was really light a fire under the fact that that program was going away and payments were made, I think over bread, what a 10 year span.
00:32:28
Plant People
And then it was in that was done. the debate There was no more tobacco quota system in place. So that really, really got in people's heads that, man, my small farmers relied on tobacco to pay the bills year in and year out. And that's kind of going away.
00:32:44
Plant People
And it did go away for ah most of the small producers because it seemed like, you know, like many commodities that could be produced more efficiently and cheaply on large scales. So once the quota system went away, it seemed like the production went to larger operations, which that's kind of the course it went.
00:33:01
Brett
Yeah.
00:33:02
Plant People
but that was a huge, huge event.
00:33:02
Brett
And then you you also you also see a gradual or, you know, at first gradual and then more steep decline in consumption as well.
00:33:11
Plant People
ah Yeah, that kind of went along hand in hand.
00:33:11
Brett
So you have.
00:33:13
Plant People
That started in that, you know, we started feeling that a lot in 98 because there were some other things that went along with that legislation or that that that buyout package, not buyout. I'm confusing my words, but that settlement agreement, um you know, you can't advertise to youth.
00:33:25
Brett
settlement.
00:33:28
Plant People
You can't, you know, do smoking ad campaigns and cartoons and things like that. But even before that, before all of this in 98 happened, there was, you know, you could see the decline in the tobacco usage in the United States. So ah just one thing led to another and really, you know, that's the, once again, the biggest change that I've seen in agriculture in the state.
00:33:52
Plant People
And a lot of things happened during that time period. A lot of changes came out of that, you know,
00:33:57
Brett
Yeah. Well, I think I the and hate to keep hearkening back to origins, but like at that point, the extension service as a concept had not, had only been around for like 85, 86 years by the year 2000. So it's not like it's been, has this really long, you know, stretch of, of, um,
00:34:16
Brett
of existing. And it's already been through, it had been through two world wars. It had been through subsequent subsequent wars, economic booms, change in science, et cetera. And now you've talked about just within a five year period, essentially the the advent of using the internet in extension.
00:34:34
Brett
And then this huge seismic shift that you really, in order to understand late 20th century Kentucky agriculture and really US agriculture to some extent,
00:34:37
Plant People
Yeah.
00:34:45
Plant People
Yeah.
00:34:45
Brett
you have to understand this thing that happened.
00:34:45
Plant People
Other states.
00:34:47
Brett
um So what what was the, so you're in Grant County to start, big tobacco contingent and drinkn in Grant County?
00:34:57
Plant People
There's a lot of tobacco in Grant County. Um, you know, and I started hearing producers, um, You know, we'd have those big tobacco meetings for my time there, you know, the spring tobacco meeting, late winter, early spring tobacco meeting with that was very well attended. and Lots of folks, you know anybody that was raising tobacco attended those annual meetings.
00:35:16
Plant People
But we began to hear talk, you know, of things like this, the wheels starting to turn when some of this stuff happened in 1998. ah We started hearing people considering other things just in a sort of a passerby sort of conversation.
00:35:32
Plant People
You know, guys that were doing hay started saying things like, well, I think I will, I'll do more hay.
00:35:38
Brett
Yeah.
00:35:38
Plant People
Or if you were doing corn or soybeans or, you know, a lot of people had cattle in Grant County as well when I was there at that time. And they started considering their options, their diversification options in a passersby sort of way.
00:35:52
Plant People
But, you know, later on when the program officially ended in 2004, that ramped up that conversation, that elevated that conversation a great deal.
00:36:02
Brett
yeah
00:36:02
Plant People
A great, great deal. Really elevated it. So all that started happening while I was in Grant County, ah a county that had a lot of tobacco production. i mean, we would spend all spring, you know, with our, um you know, float beds, tobacco transplants out. This would spend the entire spring taking our dist four meters, conductivity meters, and just helping everybody make sure the fertility rates were just right. We would spend all day, every day doing lots of visits on that. And it dominated our time in the spring. Most agents that had a lot of tobacco and, you know, at a point that most of that went away and it was pretty incredible.
00:36:37
Brett
Yeah, it's a very intensive, very like pretty technical and challenging crop to produce as far as as far as labor goes, disease, fertility,
00:36:37
Plant People
What a change.
00:36:44
Plant People
the
00:36:47
Plant People
Oh, yes, yes, absolutely.
00:36:52
Brett
start in their Most of them starting their own transplants and these float floatat beds.
00:36:55
Plant People
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:36:57
Brett
I mean, it's a whole, and and it starts relatively early. You know, you got to get your your starts ready. You got to, and and then there's these stages throughout the year. I mean, it's to have a to have a system of technical assistance in place to support that.
00:37:11
Brett
And then for that to go away is a very challenging, like as far as the the farmers themselves, that was hard, but retooling that system to try to, what do we do next?
00:37:21
Brett
You know, we, we had this, this thing and and now we don't have that thing anymore.
00:37:26
Plant People
Yeah, that stability, that that high value crop that you could, you know, make it make sense on five acres or 300 acres, you know, with the quota system in place, you could make it make sense.
00:37:34
Brett
Yeah.
00:37:37
Plant People
And and that's rare in the agriculture world to have something that that worked across multiple scales.
00:37:44
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:37:44
Plant People
And, you know, in East Kentucky, you could have, you know, two or three acres in a bottom land and and that would provide X amount of money. And that was the backbone of the farm. And when that started going away, um it really changed our conversation and extension. And I know even the organization you're with, Brett, I think we mentioned it off the podcast in the beginning, um but several organizations, support organizations arose in Kentucky to support this concept of we need to diversify and look for alternatives.
00:38:16
Plant People
And that really was a conversation.
00:38:16
Brett
Well, yeah, it's it's it's no coincidence. So I saw earlier that the Kentucky Ag Development Board was celebrating its 25th anniversary this this year in 2025. The Center for Crop Diversification also celebrating our 25th anniversary in 2025.
00:38:32
Plant People
Yep.
00:38:32
Brett
It wasn't just ah fertile ground for good ideas in 2000 that were percolating. It was this response to this. i mean, exact this exact thing where it kind of
00:38:40
Plant People
Yes.
00:38:42
Brett
okay, the settlement happens, we need to figure out, we need to think about diversification as as these ah crops phase out essentially or are phased out.
00:38:53
Plant People
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:38:55
Brett
And I think one of the interesting things, there was a little bit of an assumption, which I follow the logic that that vegetables could replace tobacco because they're very similar growing systems. you know A lot of them are grown from transplant. just mentioned they're complex.
00:39:08
Brett
ah They have ah you know certain new nutrient needs, the production system itself with depending on how you want to irrigate. You're starting transplants, lots of disease that's kind of unique or different, very labor intensive. I mean, there's a lot of similarities between tobacco and and vegetable crops.
00:39:26
Brett
The one big difference is the markets.
00:39:29
Plant People
I was going to say the the marketing and ah infrastructure or lack of infrastructure, that that was a big thing that tripped us up a lot. um And there's some ah just amazing examples of tobacco farms that pivoted away from that crop. And even here locally where I'm at in Scott County, Kentucky, there's you know local orchards that they you know were tobacco operations in days gone by.
00:39:53
Plant People
And now there are these incredibly diverse, vibrant, you know ah production systems that they went into orchards and other facets of agricultural production away from tobacco. There's some good examples of those, but it was pretty incredible.
00:40:10
Plant People
I mean, really, um and how different vegetables was, because we talked about a lot on um on this, we talk a lot about on this podcast. um Producing is one thing, marketing is another.
00:40:23
Plant People
Well, once you got the tobacco up and ready for market. You took it to market and you watch the auctioneers go by and they did their auctioneer speak and you got this price per pound. Then you got your check went home.
00:40:35
Plant People
Vegetables were not that. um
00:40:37
Brett
Okay. Okay.
00:40:39
Plant People
And, you know, even before you got to the point of marketing, you had, you know, the the very fact that a tomato perishes very quickly once you let it go past a certain stage, you know, that's all part of marketing, I guess. But the marketing was different. You had to put a lot of effort into marketing because,
00:40:56
Plant People
At the time and to this very day, ah there are certain levels of markets that don't exist in Kentucky or don't exist widely, I guess. So it's not like you're just growing a crop and taking that to market and it's all sold and you're done with it.
00:41:11
Plant People
And that tripped a lot of people up.
00:41:14
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:41:14
Plant People
And also the labor required, I mean, crops set your mind to a certain scale and tobacco, let's say your scale, maybe 10 acres. And you had this this number of,
00:41:26
Plant People
ah this many people helping you get that crop in. So our minds were set around kind of tobacco in a way, farms that were involved with that. Well, that didn't translate really well to an acre of strawberries and the number of people that you needed to 10 acres of strawberries.
00:41:42
Plant People
That's incredibly different than 10 acres of tobacco. Even though we say tobacco is labor intensive, man, once you got into certain vegetable crops, they took way more labor to bring that crop in.
00:41:48
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:41:56
Plant People
ah So kind of we had to rewire our brains and the way we thought about things. So all of that was a very steep learning curve. And, but that's essentially what, you know, kind of we worked with folks through that process. It was an exciting time and words like, ah you know, value added, CSAs, direct to market, all of these things became buzzwords at first, and then they kind of became reality. You know, today we see,
00:42:26
Plant People
a lot of those things in just everyday communities. um And I think at tobacco, the the tobacco quota system going away kind of gave rise very quickly to those things, but there was just this period of just sort of helter skelter um growth of those things and kind of people trying different things. It's kind of the spaghetti approach, kind of throwing things against the wall and seeing what worked for for their family.
00:42:53
Plant People
It was kind of a terrifying time, but also a very exciting time because you're involved in and people that are trying to do new things. But yeah, all of that happened in those early 2000s once the program went away.
00:43:06
Plant People
ah It happened a little bit before then, but they kind of saw, I think a lot of these groups saw the writing on the wall with that 1998.
00:43:07
Brett
Yeah, 2002 was when the Kentucky PROUD program was started to kind of try to boost. Yeah.
00:43:17
Plant People
Yeah. Yeah.
00:43:18
Brett
Well, at the end, that money came out of that initial ag development you know decision that to like, okay, this is one, and it still is one of the big programs that they fund to this day has been the Kentucky Proud Program is this attempt to create a brand for Kentucky products that had cachet with customers.
00:43:21
Plant People
yeah
00:43:24
Plant People
yeah
00:43:35
Brett
And some of you all may remember the... the we used to have these things called television commercials um when people watched normal television. ah And there was one locally that featured a um some famous UK basketball players from the nineties, the unforgettables.
00:43:58
Brett
It was Richie Farmer and John Pelfrey and they're, they're standing at like a grocery store kind of like produce stand and they're pitching Kentucky proud. And it was a very like,
00:44:09
Brett
what a snapshot of that moment in time, you know, cause one of the things that's run through all all of this was Kentucky basketball. That was also like the heyday of, of that era of Kentucky basketball, the kind of Patino years.
00:44:20
Plant People
It was good times. Yeah.
00:44:22
Brett
Yeah, it was. And, and like those things, I think of like UK basketball, the state fair tobacco, but then also the exploration of things like sweet sorghum and emus.
00:44:35
Brett
And don't remember the emu.
00:44:37
Plant People
and Jerusalem. Yeah.
00:44:39
Brett
Yeah.
00:44:39
Plant People
Emus, boar goats, Jerusalem arctic chokes.
00:44:42
Brett
Yeah.
00:44:42
Plant People
There are so many things, bret I mean, they all fall under the heading, I guess. Would you put them under specialty crops? Yeah. I mean, i don't know how good.
00:44:49
Brett
Yeah. Like sort of alternative products.
00:44:52
Plant People
Yeah, we were all looking for, and I think it was a little naive in the beginning. We were all looking for something to replace one-to-one tobacco.
00:45:00
Brett
Yeah.
00:45:00
Plant People
And I don't think it's, I don't think its it hasn't been done yet.
00:45:00
Brett
I think that I would always, i always, i always said that that, I said that the story of a lot of ah Kentucky agriculture of the last 25 years,
00:45:02
Plant People
I don't.
00:45:10
Brett
has not been trying to find the silver bullet, to but to find the tobacco colored bullet. And we haven't done it yet.
00:45:17
Plant People
The burly bullet.
00:45:18
Brett
The thing, to birth the burly bullet. And I think you can point to the hemp craze as this thing that felt familiar in a way.
00:45:30
Brett
And that you some of the hopes and and dreams associated with that, that were put onto that, that ended up in some cases playing out a little bit, like they ended up working out a little bit and other cases ended up in a tragedy as far as marketing markets go and, and ability to buy and and all that kind of stuff.
00:45:43
Plant People
Yeah. Yeah.
00:45:48
Plant People
I think it's people were looking, always looking for the next big thing, right?
00:45:48
Brett
It's partially attributable to that, that imagination. Yeah.
00:45:52
Plant People
Yeah.
00:45:52
Brett
And, and, and that we had, that we once had the the neck, the big, we have once had the big thing here and we had like,
00:45:52
Plant People
Yeah.
00:45:58
Plant People
I'd had it for a long time.
00:45:59
Brett
the comparative advantage geographically, historically, we had the organization set up that ah that we could organize growers in a way that, as you said, it translated across scale.
00:46:13
Plant People
don't know.
00:46:14
Brett
The fact that the product that we were growing was addictive and often a lifelong use product and the customer base would sort of always be expanding. I mean, all of those things combined It's going to be, it will never, i don't I don't know, we'll never see the direct one-to-one replacement for that product. And I think that people have come to realize that across time, but it is still, it's still the the ghost of tobacco still hovers heavy on Kentucky agriculture to me.
00:46:46
Plant People
Yeah, i probably established the fabric of, like I said, the small farm network in Kentucky. So that's certainly still felt to this very day. um You know, we started out this conversation a little bit different in that we were looking at some of the the technology and
AI in Agriculture: Opportunities and Limitations
00:47:02
Plant People
tools and the way we handled questions.
00:47:02
Brett
That's right.
00:47:03
Plant People
But Brett, thank goodness that um the technology and access to information approved improved over time, because I think about as access to information did improve, it improved at a time when people were really looking into things like specialty crops, like your organization that, Oh, what's the title? I threw it out ah in the very beginning, but before it was the center for crop diversifications, it was the new crops opportunity center.
00:47:30
Plant People
And it was just that it's, it's, it's had a name change, but I mean, I guess the thought there was looking for alternatives and looking, and and it still is looking for, you know,
00:47:30
Brett
that's right
00:47:40
Brett
and
00:47:41
Plant People
ah crops that may not be mainstream that may have potential, whether or not it's related to replacing tobacco or not. But thank goodness the tools that we use to do our job have improved.
00:47:48
Brett
Yeah.
00:47:55
Plant People
And, you know, we started out the conversation also by saying, know, we're trying to figure out, hey, is it going to take our job? that's Everybody's asking that.
00:48:02
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:48:03
Plant People
Are you in an industry where it's going to take, you know, your job? and And everybody's nervous about that. I know programmers in different industries You know, there's been lots of job consolidation. In some cases, it's the people that coded the AI that now are without a job because of the AI.
00:48:19
Plant People
But in certain industries like our own, we also mentioned at the beginning of this conversation, we were in the business of, you know, looking at, you know, high rigor, refereed, research-based information, generating that. But don't you think, Brett, that that's still going to be a critical component of the jobs that we do? Because,
00:48:40
Plant People
I had this conversation with someone the other day. I'm like, well what if nobody's producing the information that the AI is using? Because doesn't the large language models, it has to crawl and catalog and index information.
00:48:54
Plant People
What if there's no research-based information anymore? And I had to stop and think about that. I said it and then I, that you know, I stood back. I was like, yeah, I guess ah that is true.
00:49:05
Plant People
You know, as a delivery, one of the delivery mechanisms that we're using to lay our hands on information. as it relates this conversation.
00:49:11
Brett
Yeah. I think it's one of the things that people don't don't understand about AI is that it is, it's not exactly, but it's it's essentially a more advanced version of a search engine where it's only as good as the information that it has access to, that it has digested, that it has crawled, et cetera.
00:49:31
Plant People
Yeah.
00:49:34
Brett
And so we are we've essentially done 100 plus years of research, much of which is online. And that is the basis on which a lot of the recommendations that AI would get for certain crops or whatever acting on.
00:49:53
Brett
acting on And so it's not, it's actually the information has been being established. The backlog of information has been being established all that time. And AI is just figuring out really cool, fast ways of accessing it, summarizing it, pulling it together.
The Evolution of Kentucky's Agricultural Identity
00:50:07
Brett
And I think some of those kinks will be worked out across time, but I think the actual generation of the information in the first place, as you're saying, I don't know that we're going to have a, we're going to lose our our role in that.
00:50:22
Brett
Because it's otherwise you you're going to have just basically an ability to really, really uniquely and i mean really thoroughly search meaningless stuff that other AI engines have generated and put out.
00:50:25
Plant People
that's
00:50:35
Brett
It's just this going to be this kind of slop tornado without actual substantive human products as the as the basis.
00:50:43
Plant People
And, you know, it's very relevant to the conversation, but, you know, we talked about all these incredible changes, you know, over my career. ah certainly, you know, tobacco and and protected agriculture, the rise of high tunnels in Kentucky. There's been so many things we could point to.
00:50:58
Plant People
And every time something comes up like that, a big change, you know, I feel pretty blessed to have been, you know, in a job where people look to you for answers or they look to you to frame out the information. And i used to say there the I used to say there's a lot of friction when I first entered the extension between information that was contained at the university and getting that in the hands of the end end consumer. There's lots of frictions. In the very beginning, people had to come to my office and get a copy. I'd make them a paper copy of a publication to give to them, you know, pre-widespread internet, lots of friction.
00:51:35
Plant People
Now there's a lot of push. AI has given this incredible frictionless push of information, but it doesn't always put the frame in perspective.
00:51:46
Plant People
And really, it's like drinking from a fire hydrant. you've got And AI tries to to bring that stream of information down and coalesce that into some answer, but it doesn't always do a great job at that.
00:52:03
Plant People
And that's still one of the core functions of our job is to take research-based information and make that make sense in local communities. That's sort of what we do, but is You know, ai is just another like grammar tool and a number crunching tool. It's just another tool ah to help us make sense of, you know, the a growing body of information ah to make sense of some of this research information.
00:52:29
Plant People
But, you know, we always look at those things critically and how that can support us and all of these changes. You know, we're kind of talking about almost two different things during this ah conversation, I guess, Brett. We're talking about the tools that we use to get information to communities,
00:52:43
Plant People
And we're talking about the changes that we support in communities. It's sort of all wrapped up in one from an extension perspective.
00:52:48
Brett
Yeah.
00:52:51
Brett
I think in either case, you're going to have to have your brain wrapped around how to use this technology, what's appropriate, what your values and what your orientation is to it and limitations of use, et cetera.
00:52:59
Plant People
who
00:53:04
Brett
If you're going to remain relevant relevant anyway, because people are going to use this.
00:53:09
Plant People
Oh, sure.
00:53:09
Brett
um It's
00:53:10
Plant People
They're using it right now.
00:53:11
Brett
it's a Yeah, it's it's too tempting of a thing um to use and and any you know scolding or moralizing that we do about it is going to just fall on deaf ears.
00:53:22
Brett
Well, I have two more questions and they're kind of mirror mirror images of the same question.
00:53:24
Plant People
Yeah.
00:53:27
Brett
So as you look back and you think back to your, i don't know, kind of that maybe late 90s, early 2000s period, both technologically, culturally, agriculturally,
00:53:39
Brett
What would you say is something that we have lost since then that you kind of regret or that you feel like m maybe I don't feel so good about that and something that we have gained since then that you think is a really good thing?
00:53:56
Plant People
And what's our time period for consideration?
00:53:58
Brett
i think I think from those early periods, maybe like a almost pre-internet, almost pre-tobacco
00:54:01
Plant People
Yeah.
00:54:07
Brett
settlement, like that that kind of era when you were first getting your start to now.
00:54:13
Plant People
ah kind of I'll pick on public radio. It's like um we've lost the public radio, the ag world, and that was a unifying factor, which to me was like tobacco. It was a crop. that people could, was almost universal.
00:54:26
Plant People
It was a language that we spoke. It's like you were in Kentucky. Most farms had tobacco and something, tobacco and cattle, tobacco and corn, tobacco and soybeans. But ah you've lost that unifying theme that brought people together ah that, you know, everybody could sit around and talk about.
00:54:44
Plant People
That's not a bad or good thing. It's not about tobacco.
00:54:46
Brett
Did you say public radio?
00:54:48
Plant People
It's almost like public radio when we
00:54:50
Brett
I see.
00:54:51
Plant People
When we had that in the past, when radio was the only form of common communication, I should further flesh that out a little bit.
00:54:54
Brett
I see.
00:54:58
Plant People
But it's like when you only had three radio stations and pre-TV, you had a form of communication.
00:55:02
Brett
I see.
00:55:05
Plant People
yeah you had something to unify people.
00:55:08
Brett
And maybe a sense of more in common within the agricultural community.
00:55:08
Plant People
So a sense of community around something. In this case, it it was tobacco that was on big and small farms. And so that's something we not, I guess, as we diversify, that's also a strength and a weakness.
00:55:26
Plant People
ah So the strength was we were, ah we all had a common language around a crop and that crop just happened to be tobacco in the past. But the weakness of that is that once that one crop went away, you were left scrambling.
00:55:41
Plant People
So, A good that came out of that is that farms really looked more critically at profitability. They looked at sustainability. They looked at revenue streams. They looked at what was appropriate beyond that one crop.
00:55:55
Plant People
And so we have a lot of awesome aspects of Kentucky agriculture that expanded from that point forward with that crop going away. Things like, I mentioned CSAs earlier, this direct-to-consumer products, but not only direct to consumer products, but value added products.
00:56:13
Plant People
And all of those are very positive things. And I think the landscape of Kentucky agriculture grew a lot more diverse, a lot more robust in certain ways. Now, granted, you don't have the direct one to one replacement for that high value crop that scaled across, you know, large and small operations.
00:56:33
Plant People
But at the same time, our fabric, our tapestry is a lot more diverse now than it was. So that weakness, hopefully we've flipped that a little bit and we've turned the corner on that and we've diversified in many different directions.
00:56:46
Plant People
um You know, some would say, well, you're more fragmented now. Well, that's not always a bad thing when you're trying to diversify revenue streams, to put that in economic terms, I guess, Brett. was Was that not a political answer or what?
00:56:58
Plant People
Yeah.
00:57:00
Brett
No, that's a good answer. I think i think especially the the notion of like the shared cultural frame that was also so rooted in agriculture.
00:57:01
Plant People
Yeah.
00:57:09
Plant People
Yeah.
00:57:11
Brett
Because i think I think you could also make an argument that with the loss of tobacco and tobacco farming,
00:57:11
Plant People
Yeah.
00:57:20
Brett
some of our broad cultural identity within Kentucky slipped out of agriculture and to other things.
00:57:29
Plant People
Yeah.
00:57:29
Brett
Because what it's not like, oh we're not, you know, now we're ah beef state, you know, culturally, though that we do have a lot of beef cattle and a lot of folks who are who are doing that on small and smaller and larger scales.
00:57:42
Plant People
Yeah.
00:57:43
Brett
It's not the same. It doesn't have that same kind of cache with a broader culture. And so, I mean, and I don't know if that's just a shifting away from agriculture in general, as we're seeing it happen across the, you know as we've seen happen over the United States in the last 30, 40 years.
00:58:00
Brett
But that definitely, it was, it was a, you it's like, like a corn in Iowa, you know, it had this, there's this, this identity association with a given crop.
00:58:09
Plant People
yeah
00:58:09
Brett
um And then on the flip side, yes, change, change can be painful. It can also be good to, to, to pick, guess it's sort of a matter of perspective there.
00:58:20
Brett
um
00:58:20
Plant People
Yeah, it was a tough times, you know, transitioning.
00:58:20
Brett
I think, you know, one of the, one of the things I'm, I was thinking about is like, compared to when I started or maybe even a couple of years before that, when I was starting to work around the UK world, and like the world of extension too,
00:58:38
Brett
it it feels like attention spans and or the amount of things competing for our attention, ah the attention spans have maybe gotten shorter and things ah competing for our attention have gotten stronger.
00:58:55
Plant People
Oh, definitely. Yeah. With the, with the, I mean, there's so many different ways, like we talked about, like how we deliver information at 81 day, you're getting information from 10 different types of sources, visually and audible sources and print sources.
00:58:57
Brett
And the way that...
00:59:06
Brett
Yeah.
00:59:10
Plant People
It's pretty incredible to, it's a juggling act. Yeah.
00:59:14
Brett
And like i I remember when I was a kid this was not that long ago, my my parents reading a physical newspaper and that's almost a rare sight now. And I'm not the boomer who's like everything's going away and everything's bad now. And I don't agree with that at all. But I do. I do wish sometimes that people would have a little more patience for nuanced or more difficult or yeah, they they want like a ah very straightforward answer, which things like chat GPT are often very willing to give you.
00:59:42
Plant People
her
00:59:46
Brett
Even if it's not <unk>s it's not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help me, ah AI. um And I think that that's something I feel like we've we've probably lost.
00:59:58
Brett
i so I do think though, at the same time, the amount of potential for connection that still exists within internet technologies is pretty crazy and pretty wild that you can find you know people who are in your same on your same wavelength.
01:00:09
Plant People
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
01:00:14
Plant People
Communities of interest, yeah.
01:00:14
Brett
and they're that it's actually It's absolutely essential for the way that we do extension that people are able to do that. They're able to find us because otherwise, you know maybe they think
01:00:21
Plant People
Yeah.
01:00:25
Brett
unfairly or fairly that their local office doesn't have you know interest in doing what they, that you know, their small scale, whatever, or they wouldn't do farmer's market or something like that. And then they find our stuff and then that might end up allowing for, like, I can't imagine doing my job without the internet.
01:00:43
Brett
um
01:00:44
Plant People
No, no, not now.
01:00:45
Brett
and Like the way that it plays to my strengths and um So that's, and that's something I think, you know, we've, we've gained people like to talk about the internet as a bad thing now, because there's so many toxic places and there have been toxic places in human culture, as long as humans have been in them.
01:00:52
Plant People
No, yeah.
01:01:01
Plant People
It's just now we're more connected with it.
01:01:02
Brett
So. Yeah. and and you can And you can voluntarily ah run into the thing that makes your eyes hurt and just spend all your time swiping videos of all these things that upset you and make you upset and make you mad and it just hooks you.
01:01:04
Plant People
Yeah. Save us from ourselves. Yeah.
01:01:12
Plant People
Yeah.
01:01:14
Brett
But and I think that I would say that's bad if I had to go out on a limb.
01:01:19
Plant People
Yeah, you could go, ah the algorithms will algorithm hard. If you're in a, whatever you look for now, all of a sudden your feeds will be filled with that thing. Whether it's ah you're wanting to grow asparagus or whatever you're looking for, it's like the world's trying to cater the information to you or, and you know, in some form or fashion.
01:01:34
Brett
Yeah.
01:01:37
Plant People
so yeah.
01:01:37
Brett
But as someone who has learned so much from the internet and via the internet, ultimately I've learned from other people through the internet. um I, yeah, I'm, I'm super grateful for it um despite all of its downsides.
01:01:48
Plant People
just hard to keep up, to meet people that, it's funny, we made a comment the other day, long form video, which they called YouTube. Well, we don't like long form videos. I was like, what does that mean?
01:01:59
Plant People
And they were like, YouTube videos. They just could not imagine ah being forced to watch a YouTube video. And I was thinking, oh, wow, they're, I mean, that's kind of serious. and And I know short form video, the rise of that where nothing's longer than two minutes mean, YouTube was cutting edge and now it's these a minute half, two minute videos. But I guess my point there being is it's hard to meet people where they're at because there's so many places they're at now.
01:02:23
Brett
Yeah.
01:02:24
Plant People
Some people are still YouTube. Some people are still email. Some people would rather get hit in the toe with a hammer than pick up a phone and make a, make a phone call or do either of those.
01:02:30
Brett
Do either of those. Yeah. ah
01:02:33
Plant People
So yeah, to call, I mean, so it's a constant struggle to, um and it's a balancing act ah to do the best you can and offer programs that are both, you know, online and in person and to make video content, to make audio content.
01:02:34
Brett
Oh, to call. Yeah.
01:02:50
Plant People
That's one of our goals with this podcast. We added, video content to go along with the audio to try to reach a broader audience. We're always looking for ways to meet people where they are. And with limited resources and limited time, that's tough, but it's something we're still going to work on.
01:03:05
Plant People
And I think universities are doing a better job than they've ever done cataloging their information and pushing that out as best they can with the resources that they have.
01:03:15
Brett
Yeah.
01:03:15
Plant People
And that's the biggest challenge, I think, you know, me and the job looking within the organization, is just, ah you know, if you've got great information, you have to have great development, deployment methods, great methods of pushing that information.
01:03:30
Brett
Yeah. Well, and to to go full meta, as you've already kind of alluded to, that's the point of this podcast for us is to try to do something different from what any of us had done before.
01:03:37
Plant People
the Another format. Yeah.
01:03:41
Brett
Not to say, you know, we we we talk to news, we talk to radio, we do these kinds of canned interviews and stuff like that. But this whole format of an informal conversation where we cover ai but we also cover tobacco and we also cover, you know, ah vegetable interest and co-ops and things ah in the wake of that, like that style, we're just trying something new here.
01:03:56
Plant People
and
01:04:03
Brett
And i I think we were ultimately looking at it as what would be something that we might want to listen to. um And so hopefully you like this. And if you do like this format, and we would love for you to go on Spotify or Apple Music or whatever platform you use to listen to this and leave us a review, ideally a five star review.
01:04:26
Brett
ah And if there's an opportunity or an option to to write some text and share what you like about it, we do read all of those and love to see them. Um, you can also follow us on Instagram at Hort culture podcast, uh, or you can email us at Hort culture podcast at gmail.com. If you have ideas about what types of episodes you'd like to see in the future.
01:04:49
Brett
um we, we do read though, all of those emails as well. So, uh, thank you to everybody who has been sending in emails and sharing their thoughts. We really, really appreciate the love. Uh, and with that, I think I'll leave it and we'll talk to you sometime down the line.