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Living the Grant Life
67 Plays15 days ago
Join Brett and Alexis to hear about how the CCD thinks about grant opportunities and their recent SERME project and its potential impacts for farmers of KY.
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@l.uky.edu
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Transcript
Dynamic Duo Banter
00:00:16
Plant People
I'm used to saying what up friends, but I only have one friend here today. What's up, Brett?
00:00:20
Brett
When are they showing up?
00:00:22
Plant People
They're gallivanting or something. I don't know.
00:00:25
Brett
No, you said you had one friend here.
00:00:25
Plant People
Just kidding.
00:00:26
Brett
I was wondering when your friend was going to show up because it's just me and you.
00:00:28
Plant People
Oh. You're
00:00:30
Brett
Just kidding, bud.
00:00:32
Plant People
so mean to me.
00:00:33
Brett
um Yeah, it's just the two of us. Dynamic duo. CCD direction squad.
00:00:37
Plant People
What up? CPD. I know.
00:00:40
Brett
um
00:00:40
Plant People
We had the agents last week.
Weather and Well-being
00:00:42
Brett
Well, I have a question. I have a question for you.
00:00:44
Plant People
Mm-hmm.
00:00:44
Brett
Do you feel and this may be sound like a stupid question, but do you feel like you are?
00:00:45
Plant People
Mm-hmm.
00:00:51
Brett
your mental, physical, et cetera, status, state is very strongly linked to like the weather.
00:01:02
Plant People
Oh, um.
00:01:04
Brett
And, and it could be like weather in the seasonal broad sense, it could be more like in the day to day sense. Do you feel like you're, and as you think about like compared to people that you, maybe, you know, like there's some, what do you, where do you think you fall in that?
00:01:19
Plant People
I'm probably just over, like, you know, if you've got midline between not affected at all and extremely affected, right? I'm a little bit closer, little past the midline of more affected. Because I definitely think if you've, you know, cloudy day and you're not, you know, I'm just kind of tired. And then suddenly the sun comes out, there's kind of a little bit of life brought back to you. um I do feel that I have changed a little bit of my mindset on seasonality because winter, you know, used to be of dreary and, bob you know, that kind of thing. But now it's like time for rest and to see that a little bit differently. But overall, it does feel more restful. but So, yeah. And I think that's like farming sometimes in general, because there's also like a.
00:02:03
Plant People
you know, pragmatic way to think about it of like, okay, if it's raining, I can't get down the things I needed to get done or if it's too hot you know, the sun is out, it's not a great time to plant, you know, those sort of things also play in fact, but like emotionally, I do think I'm leaning towards it. Yeah, what about you?
00:02:20
Brett
Well, I think I'm very, very sensitive to it, unfortunately. um Yeah, the...
00:02:26
Plant People
least you don't live in like Portland, Oregon then, right?
00:02:28
Brett
Well, but it's not in the way that... So the on the seasonal on the seasonal side, it really truly is the opposite.
00:02:31
Plant People
You're opposite.
00:02:35
Brett
in that Not so much... The heat is not... I used to hate the heat. I really like a lot of the heat now in some ways. But it's the the really bright, intense...
00:02:46
Brett
I've talked about this, I think, in the past, but the really bright, intense period that we're basically in right now, like plus or minus 30 days on the solstice period,
00:02:47
Plant People
and
00:02:52
Plant People
Yeah.
00:02:56
Plant People
Yeah.
00:02:58
Brett
Ooh, it takes it out of me big time. And then like recently we've had these, like, so you know, it'd be super hot and then a line of storms blows through and then it's humid and then it's chill for a minute and then it's super hot.
00:03:09
Brett
Like this, these cycles that have been like riding an emotional rollercoaster for me.
00:03:12
Plant People
Yeah.
00:03:14
Brett
And I just am feeling, feeling tuckered out from it.
00:03:16
Plant People
um been I've been taking a lot more naps. I'm not a huge napper necessarily. Like, usually have to be pretty exhausted.
00:03:22
Brett
Hmm.
00:03:24
Plant People
And i don't know if it's the heat or, like you said, the change and, like, the pressure that's in my head is changing a lot. And just taking it out of me. Like, I can fall asleep anywhere.
00:03:35
Brett
It's a very, it's a strange thing. Cause it's like every, like a lot of living creatures are like humming, you know, they're like, this is the perfect thing. I'm not having to like, you're like, there's bugs everywhere that I can eat or there's, you know, sunlight everywhere that I can capture and photosynthesize.
00:03:47
Plant People
ground for food yeah
00:03:52
Brett
It's just like, not me though. I'm,
00:03:55
Plant People
I guess it depends because you're definitely not seeing a ton of I guess mammals out and about it's you know hot they're sleeping during the day too so we're all just we all just mammals up in here we're forced to be there it's not by nature
00:04:05
Brett
That's true. Shout out my man. Shout out to my mammal, my mammal friends. Yeah, I mean, I do see a lot of mammals at work, but we're all kind of hanging out. Yeah, see some mammals on Zoom calls and things like that.
00:04:19
Brett
Well, yeah, that I mean, the fact that we have to work, you know, that also sometimes makes me tired.
Introduction to CCD Grants
00:04:25
Brett
Sometimes it makes me excited. ah But one of the ways that we tend to do some of our work like a lot of our colleagues and friends across wide variety of places is through through these grant funded projects.
00:04:34
Plant People
at the CCD.
00:04:39
Brett
And some people would be surprised to find out that I, in my role here for 11 years, have been what's called what we call in the biz soft funded.
00:04:50
Brett
i'm I'm paid off of grants, not through a hard item, budget item through the university ah for that entire period. Still am. um I am a, what would you call a soft funded position working on grants.
00:05:02
Brett
And this is not going to be all about grants and how good or bad or whatever they are.
00:05:06
Plant People
The wild, wild west of France.
00:05:09
Brett
um But I thought we could maybe talk about one grant that Alexis is leading that we currently have that's at the beginning of its in progress phase ah and just give you a sense of how we think about and approach doing the kind of work that we're doing. And it'll also give you a little bit of a sneak peek at some of the stuff that's coming down the pike.
00:05:28
Brett
as well as listen in for some opportunities that you may have either as a TA a person, a technical assistance person, or as a grower or somebody who grows flowers in particular to participate in helping us build some data sets that growers can use for their
00:05:36
Plant People
Yeah.
00:05:42
Brett
ah improving their business and improving their decision making and everything else. um So I thought maybe we would start.
00:05:47
Plant People
yeah
00:05:49
Brett
so So I want to start with the, like the problem.
Specialty Crops and Insurance Issues
00:05:53
Brett
And I don't mean the problem in the sense of like how we framed it for the grant, but like, what is the issue that you Alexis and and I, to a secondary degree saw that prompted this whole thing to happen?
00:06:08
Plant People
Yeah, I think this was, yeah Brett, you've been doing grants for a long time. This is my first grant. So coming at this sort of from a fresh perspective on that, but in extension, and this I think, especially in the CCD, what we do well is we listen to problems that people have. We try to be proactive and responsive right at the same time. And so ah when we thought about this grant, it was sort of,
00:06:36
Plant People
you know, a little bit of mix of both of those. And so what we were looking at was specialty crops and issues that they have surrounding, you know, risk management, this grant is a risk management, but more specifically sort of this idea of crop insurance and how pricing goes into that and understanding crop insurance, how lenders understand the the crop, the farm, you know, production to then give crop insurance or lend money or any of something along those lines. And there being just sort of this lack of understanding all the way around, whether it was like growers not knowing what they needed to provide
00:07:17
Plant People
or you know your um lenders and these insurance folks not understanding the crop and just everything in between. And so you know we do a specialty crops, but we kind of specifically for this grant, we're looking a little bit more of cut flowers, at least in the lines of price collection. Because those of you who know the CCD, we've been doing price collection for farmers markets for a wide variety of stuff, but it's of course at farmers markets, predominantly veg and fruit, you know, focus, um, edible crops. And so we don't have a lot of information on how much do marigolds or lisianthus or sunflower sell for. And so when we had lenders who legitimately email or call us saying, can you help me help this farmer? I don't know how much, ah you know, a, uh,
00:08:05
Plant People
hundred foot row of dahlias should you know give throughout the season right like how many how many flowers how much is are those worth what are the markets you know we didn't have actual data to back that up and so we were like how do we find that how do we figure that out
Importance of Price Data
00:08:22
Brett
Yeah. And I think that we spend so much time in this space that sometimes it's even, we don't necessarily realize even the level of description that might be helpful. so So in the world of crop insurance, for example, the predominant way that crop insurance is used is to ensure commodity, large commodity products that are sold and bought and sold through commodity marketplaces.
00:08:46
Brett
And there's ah there's just a different way that those markets work and there's an easier way to evaluate the value of them. and And also there's an established process where people report their acreages and those types of things. People are just used to it. It's like normal part of the system. It's like sort of like if you grew up going to the dentist and the doctor – You just keep going because it's like, that's just a normal thing.
00:09:08
Plant People
Right, every six months.
00:09:09
Brett
But if you didn't, if you didn't or that wasn't something that was available to you or whatever, then you don't really necessarily do that. And the other piece of the puzzle that you kind of mentioned, which I think is really interesting, is there are these folks who are working in the world of crop insurance.
00:09:25
Brett
um and And just to be clear, so crop insurance, generally speaking, is money you pay in to have a policy in place just in case something bad happens to your crop. that you don't lose the entire amount of its value.
00:09:39
Plant People
Right, right.
00:09:40
Brett
It's different from liability insurance for your farm. Like for instance, if you ah either if a product you have makes somebody sick or if they come on your farm and hurt themselves or whatever, any number of different liabilities that can happen. But, but the thing with the crop insurance in particular is the, in addition to farmers from commodity systems are used to doing it and we aren't necessarily as used to it.
00:10:02
Brett
It also presents this really quirky farming system that people aren't as used to working in agents aren't as used to working in, and also our resources aren't as up, you know, that there's not a FSA crop report for zinnias in the same way that there is for
00:10:15
Plant People
Right. Yeah. And there's some language barrier from I'm starting to learn about what what we call one thing. and you know, even the state of Kentucky, what we you know view as and I'll get way too deep into this. So Brett will pull me back. But it's, you know, thinking about what is drip irrigation look like? Well, what FSA considers drip irrigation is not what the standard Kentucky farmer or even like us technical professionals think of that. And so it's like there's this language barrier even to getting to that point.
00:10:45
Brett
Yeah, irrigated acres versus not, that all that kind of fun stuff.
00:10:47
Plant People
Great.
00:10:48
Brett
And we'll, at some point down the pike, we'll we'll pull in some people who work more directly in this world and we're you know as we're figuring stuff out. but so So that to me starts with like, okay, this is a problem, which if I had to state it really succinctly, it would be that specialty crops and specialty cut flower producers often have a hard time in one way or another getting access to insurance products and sometimes to fund it to, to, to loans.
00:11:17
Plant People
Right.
00:11:21
Brett
One of the main reasons for that is a lack of good information. another good, another reason for that is sometimes they're not prepared in one way or another. ah sometimes the agent isn't prepared and sometimes the producer isn't prepared.
00:11:29
Plant People
again
00:11:33
Plant People
Yeah.
00:11:34
Brett
So that's not, you know, that's my job. i sort of show up and tell everybody what the problem is. Then I leave.
00:11:38
Plant People
and then And then he gets out.
00:11:40
Brett
ah just go and play pool for the rest of the day. um No. so So that's our problem. So we what Alexis and the rest of the team working with her has done is to prepare a proposal for a grant that aims to figure this out. And so who did you apply to?
00:11:59
Brett
And maybe we can just jump into some of the pieces that we're trying to put together for this.
00:12:03
Plant People
Yeah, we we applied for the Southern Extension Risk Management Education Grant and the CIRMI, as we fondly call it, um around the CCD grant.
00:12:17
Plant People
And so that one is a grant that is, it's a federal grant that goes through the University of Arkansas. So shout out to them and all their, answering all of my emails. And we'll have some of those folks on actually here in another month or so, but answering all my emails about a first-time grant writer and not knowing what the heck I am doing other than I'm going to try my best.
00:12:27
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:12:40
Plant People
So we received that grant funding and that's cycle started in April and it's an 18 month grant. So we will finish it up September of 2027. So um yeah, but that was, it was an interesting process as your first time.
00:12:55
Plant People
And we were kind of coming off some, some crazy times at the CCD with field days and events. And we were like, Oh, we gotta, we gotta write this grant. We're gonna, we're gonna write this grant.
00:13:03
Brett
Yeah. Well, that and that that's that before we jump into the specifics of the kind of what we're hoping to deliver, I think the other thing just for people who aren't as familiar with this and haven't heard of it, you know, they heard of these things.
00:13:04
Plant People
We thought it was important.
00:13:15
Brett
There's this weird lag time that happens where you're you're preparing ideas last fall for.
00:13:18
Plant People
Yeah.
00:13:22
Brett
And this is actually a pretty short period. this is a pretty good short timeline of between applying and getting the money, but you apply for this money and then six months down the road, even a year down the road, then you're going to actually do the thing.
00:13:25
Plant People
Yeah, sure. Mm-hmm.
00:13:35
Brett
And so if you have an idea that you want to implement and it's going to require a grant, then you're probably at least six months to a year away from even being able to implement it. Even you even get the grant in the first place. So anyway, you all don't, you all didn't come here to listen about grant logistics.
00:13:44
Plant People
Yeah.
00:13:48
Brett
What we do want to tell you about though, is some of the stuff that we're going be doing with the grant.
00:13:54
Plant People
Yeah, well, ah so yeah, we, a big part of this is sort of investigation into the problem, right? Because you don't know what you don't know. so investigation and collection of of data so that we have information to then give back to these people who are trying, like we said, trying to make loans and stuff like that. So one big piece of it that I'm really excited about that I think is going to has a lot of um potential for a lot of different things is the
00:14:24
Plant People
um price collection info. So like we've said, we at the CCD, we collect farmers market and auction prices. The University of Kentucky also has helped facilitate ah starting many, i don't know how many years ago, 20 at least years ago, i started collecting pricing information from commercial orchards.
00:14:45
Plant People
and And the reason behind that and and why I think this is important to bring up is because The USDA, and and Brett, correct me, he's a lot more knowledgeable in a lot of these areas, but, you know, I can look up general pricing for apples that are coming out of Michigan, right? And Michigan can produce apples at a much lower cost, and they can sell them for a much lower cost. than we can in Kentucky, and they're also selling to different markets, right? so Michigan might be selling to predominantly wholesale markets, you're buying their apples at Kroger, and you can buy them at a low cost versus a lot of our Kentucky growers, right? They're doing agritourism, and they may be doing direct to consumer, going to the farmer's market, higher value on those apples.
00:15:29
Plant People
So what UK has been doing with them for many years is collecting that price data for Kentucky people and having that available available to lenders and crop insurers to say, no, no, that gala apple that is being grown in Kentucky is actually worth, and we have reports saying and saying,
00:15:46
Plant People
um You know, grower information saying, no, it's actually worth this much. And this is why, you know, if their apples get destroyed by a frost ah for the year, this is what they they would have had an income versus Michigan, which could be half or, you know, a third of the price in comparison because the markets are different.
00:16:05
Plant People
So what we wanted to do is something similar with Kentucky. So we're growing maybe different things, first of all, that aren't huge in the floral trade. So that's one aspect of this is that not everything Kentucky grows is even price data is even available for it. But also, again, we're mostly selling direct to consumer, maybe direct to florists, but there's no middleman. There's no usually big middleman.
00:16:30
Plant People
a wholesaler in between that's dealing with this and we're you know bouquets and there's mark different market values there so what we wanted to do was sort of think of the 10 most popular crops across the state ah throughout the seasons and collect this price data to have it available so that one i'm
00:16:48
Brett
Yeah.
Utilizing Price Data for Business Decisions
00:16:49
Plant People
really excited about
00:16:49
Brett
And, and we're, you know, we're, we applied to and receive funding for the, the Southern extension risk management education center. And so really aggregate, I mean, the one of the defining core to me themes within agriculture is risk.
00:17:06
Brett
Cause you know, you put seeds out and you don't know if they're going to germinate or grow well, you don't know if the weather's going to be good.
00:17:08
Plant People
business
00:17:10
Brett
You don't know sometimes if where the market's going to go, you don't know if your employees are going to show up to work.
00:17:11
Plant People
Yeah.
00:17:15
Brett
You don't know if you're going to be sick or, you know, get hurt.
00:17:18
Plant People
Right?
00:17:18
Brett
You don't know if yada, yada. I mean, there's so many things that you don't know.
00:17:20
Plant People
Mm-hmm. Yeah. so
00:17:22
Brett
It's like, it's ironic that so many farmers I come across are, can have control freak tendencies when there is so little that's, I mean, maybe it's, they just are trying to control anything that they can because everything is literally out of their control.
00:17:35
Brett
So it's all risk. and It's all risk, baby.
00:17:38
Plant People
yeah
00:17:39
Brett
And so that's that's kind of how we're framing some of the price stuff. But it's it's also, what we we did some research last year ah and yeah last year and and found that people are using these local price data sources for a whole bunch of different reasons.
00:17:56
Brett
So they use them, yes, for potentially having conversations about insurance or about loans.
00:17:56
Plant People
it
00:18:02
Brett
They use them obviously for setting their prices. They use it as a, I would never recommend that someone look at it and say, this is going to be my price, but it does give you a sense of what the going rate is in the in the state.
00:18:08
Plant People
Right, right.
00:18:12
Brett
um And I think also people use it for broader business decisions, which crops to grow, which crops not to grow. i mean, there's a whole bunch of multiplier effects that come from that pricing information being available. One of them is It gives a lender or a insurer some picture of, okay, this is kind of from a validated university source that's going to take take care to make it right.
00:18:36
Plant People
yes
00:18:38
Brett
This is kind of the ballpark of what we're looking at. Because if you're talking about a product that the wholesale rate for it is 10 cents a stem and you sell it for $1.50 a stem, being reimbursed at the wholesale rate isn't really necessarily going to help you a whole lot relative to what you're doing.
00:18:55
Plant People
Right.
00:18:55
Brett
So it's's it's this, there's going to be this really interesting conversation that's going to have to happen between us, producers, the insurers. I think that's kind of at the core of this project.
00:19:05
Plant People
Mm hmm.
00:19:06
Brett
But I think that the price data, USDA does a really good job at the national level. you know They're the US Department of Agriculture.
00:19:13
Plant People
Mm hmm. it
00:19:14
Brett
And they're good at monitoring those larger systems. And to me, it's up to people, land grants and others in in the States to be part of their, part of their job is to help support those local.
00:19:26
Plant People
Yeah, so there's that whole aspect of it, then we're well aware
00:19:26
Brett
all I call, we, I call them in, in nerd terms, market intelligence systems, which is to say information about markets, market reports, that kind of thing.
00:19:37
Brett
a And so that's, yeah, that's, that's part of it. um What we're going to do some other stuff for two, right?
00:19:41
Plant People
that we deal in
00:19:47
Plant People
we're well aware that we deal in especially crops and a lot of what we would be dealing with for cut flowers as far as how do we train growers to keep the correct records? How do we train the lenders to understand what questions to ask?
00:20:02
Plant People
You know, how do we train the agents to guide, um you know, our our people towards the the right lenders or people who are interested? And so, ah we are We are developing training. It'll be like ah applicable to pretty much all specialty crops because they're in a lot of ways, someone growing cut flowers is going to face the same challenges and confusing questions that someone who's growing cherry tomatoes will. Because in Kentucky, we're dealing with, most farmers are dealing with row spacing that's
00:20:35
Plant People
different than a commodity crop, right? I might have one row of lisianthus or one row of cherry tomatoes. I'm not doing an acre of each of those. It's a little bit more difficult.
00:20:45
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:20:46
Plant People
So a lot of this sort of, I talked about this language barrier. I'm actually really excited to write, kind of like a fact sheet on just, you know, this is what they call it. This is what they mean sort of information, uh, just to kind of break down some of those.
00:20:59
Plant People
So those will be available and and applicable to all of our specialty, uh, crop farmers. and And my goal here is also to guide people towards what is best for them. So there is sort of this idea of like private, um, what I refer to as sort of private insurance. And so there, um,
00:21:16
Plant People
these insurance companies that some of them do some types of crop insurance and maybe they only cover things in your high tunnel or only things in that are in containers or raised beds. So if you're doing mum production, you know, or something along those lines or have a greenhouse, tulips and crates would count. versus ah traditional through, you know, farm service service agency, lender insurance might only cover stuff outside of the tunnel, which is something very different, right? And if you're not growing a bunch of stuff outside of the tunnel, then that's not a route for you. But also looking at the economics
Understanding Crop Insurance Options
00:21:54
Plant People
of of that. So it is insurance, you are paying for it. And so if you're doing this through,
00:22:01
Plant People
you know, federal insurance ways, it's not that expensive in the grand scheme of things that is, it's not that expensive, but that doesn't mean you really need to pay that $300. So just sort of guiding people towards, does this make sense for me? And if yes, I definitely want to insure my crop in some way, um which which route is right? And so there's a bunch of different federal um programs. I say a bunch, there's three, but they're all confusing. I'm still confused. And they gave me money to figure out how to not make it confusing. um And so I'm, my hope is almost like to just have this guiding questions that'll say, okay,
00:22:39
Plant People
If you answered a for this question, move on here. And then by the end, you'll know which one is most likely going to be the best option for you before you ever leave your house and go somewhere. And and then the next step would be, okay you got to this point, you know which lender or which place you want to get your insurance through. What are the questions that need to be asked? What do you need to be prepared to bring with you? You know, what type of reports are you doing? So that's kind of the big thing. And all of that sounds like scary. And i know it sounds scary to me, again, as somebody who's going to do it a little bit scary every time I think about it. but
00:23:15
Plant People
ah Our goal is to make it as relaxed and chill and that you feel confident when you walk in or that you're talking to someone about what you need for your farm um and that you're speaking the same language is going to is I'm finding more and more as we do sort of these interviews with people um within this world that we're trying to understand that there is a there is a language barrier and it's it's wild to me and I keep bringing that up but because it's it was not something I expected for sure.
00:23:29
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:23:47
Brett
Yeah, and I think one of the things I've perceived in this, it's not just in insurance, but insurance is a good example, is that it is a, with with the the public ones, the ones that are available through FSA and that are available basically through the, there's federal programs that support this.
00:23:59
Plant People
yeah
00:24:04
Brett
you have this federal thing and then you have the state level and then you have this local level you know spread throughout the state. It's the same way with extension, same with any a number of things where the way that things play out sometimes at the local level can feel kind of variable or you'll have somebody at the local level with a variable amount of experience.
00:24:23
Brett
And they don't really sure. And it's, you know, imagine you you work at the store and, ah you know, somebody comes in and they ask for a really obscure item that you don't, you know, nobody ever asks for.
00:24:34
Brett
Well, if you haven't worked there for a while or you haven't looked into it or received training, you aren't even going to know where that product is. And that's kind of what some of these crop insurance programs are for these, you know, the people who are writing the policies is they're they're ah at as of right now, they feel like an obscure, ah an obscure product.
00:24:40
Plant People
Yes.
00:24:54
Brett
But the reality, I think part of that is, is that that the fact that it's treated like an obscure product that people don't know about creates this assumption that there isn't a product there that specialty crop growers can't use.
00:25:05
Brett
And so fewer clients of that type come in to ask for the product.
00:25:06
Plant People
yes
00:25:09
Brett
And so it feels like a really and, you know, you talk about specialty cut flowers. Somebody who maybe has more of ah ah what I would call, what what other people would call, quote, traditional agriculture.
00:25:19
Brett
I personally think traditional agriculture is a shattered mosaic of a lot of different practices, most of which and don't require large ah pieces of equipment.
00:25:26
Plant People
Yeah.
00:25:29
Brett
But um i' somebody from a commodity system of agriculture might hear cut flowers and think, oh, you know, precious, cute, whatever.
00:25:41
Plant People
no
00:25:41
Brett
Like, oh, that's kind of a fringe thing.
00:25:42
Plant People
and me
00:25:43
Brett
But i I'll go back to Alexis with some of the stats about the growth of that industry in Kentucky and how it's impactful. But the thing that I always come back with is the the idea of like returns per acre and the actual money that you're getting back and also the amount that you're not having to shell out in terms of borrowing on the front hand on the front front end of it.
00:26:01
Plant People
Mm-hm.
00:26:02
Brett
because of how intensive those systems are. um my My point with this is Kentucky cut flowers, for instance, the specialty crop industry has grown. If you've heard all kinds of things about how challenging agriculture is right now, it is.
00:26:18
Brett
For a lot of people, it's very, very challenging. I mean, it's a hard, hard time. But I think I've heard Warren warren Beeler and others say that horticulture really is a bright spot.
00:26:29
Brett
in Kentucky agriculture right now. There's a lot of good things that are happening with horticulture. And part of that is the growth of these groups. And if we want to see things continue to grow, we need these systems to support them. So Alexis, can you, I know you this is a stat you probably have tattooed on your eyelids at this point, but like we, we the the tremendous growth we've seen in specialty cut flowers in Kentucky from the 2017 to 2022, hopefully we'll have more census data coming up.
00:26:40
Plant People
Right.
00:26:55
Brett
What was that?
00:26:55
Plant People
Yeah.
00:26:55
Brett
What's the deal with that?
00:26:56
Plant People
um the The difference was we doubled the amount of farms or more than doubled the amount of farms. can't remember exactly off the top of my head. Maybe we 30 to 60, 30, 60 ish range to over then we went from Basically, basically they the census didn't even report the cash receipts because they were so low to $2 million, dollars which we we are pretty confident is in it even close to kind of hitting the mark just because a lot of those people were not reporting because they didn't consider themselves commercial farms, even even even though they are.
00:27:31
Plant People
um
00:27:32
Brett
yeah
00:27:32
Plant People
They didn't necessarily know that it applied to them. So, yeah, I mean, seeing seeing that growth from known reportable numbers because they're so small to $2 million across the state is It's huge and it's, you know, depends what you're comparing it to, but I think that that's, I think it speaks for itself.
00:27:48
Brett
And that's why when I made my my seemingly maybe a little bit prickly comment about traditional agriculture and the way that sometimes horticulture is viewed as ah a second or also ran kind of commodity is that I think...
00:27:58
Plant People
Mm-hmm.
00:28:03
Brett
if you're not necessarily feeling like you're receiving support and you don't conceptualize yourself as being part of agriculture, and then you don't participate in the systems of data collection, whether that be a census, whether that be our project, whether be any of these, you don't get counted.
00:28:15
Plant People
Yeah.
00:28:18
Brett
And then when it comes time to reestablish what the priorities are for the next round of a farm bill or the next round of a funding cycle for whatever,
00:28:23
Plant People
Yeah.
00:28:27
Brett
you weren't counted. And since you weren't counted, you don't get represented. And since you don't get represented, you don't get resources. Then you don't consider yourself a farmer. So you don't report. It's this vicious cycle that we've been in for like 30 or 40 years now
00:28:34
Plant People
this yeah
00:28:38
Plant People
yes
00:28:39
Brett
um In Kentucky and ah and elsewhere, too, where we're we're trying to, I don't know, bring back a little swag in the horticulture industry.
00:28:46
Plant People
which
00:28:47
Brett
You know, like you're you may not have a lot of acreages, but your a a lot of acreage. But, you know, it's not about the number of acreage. It's what you do with it.
00:28:55
Plant People
what you do with it.
00:28:56
Brett
Right. It's not the it's not the motion of the wheat in the fields. It's or no way.
00:29:00
Plant People
Yeah.
00:29:00
Brett
I've lost. the I've lost the plot on that.
00:29:01
Plant People
You've lost it. It's okay. It's okay. But it is something that I think a lot of people didn't know. And I, I really didn't know until fairly recently that there was, there's no longer, and we've said this before, but just a reminder, like there's no longer this 10 acre minimum, which I think used to be like, you consider yourself a farm and you can have a farm number, which meant you could then report these, a lot of these numbers we're talking about.
00:29:21
Plant People
And report to the census, but only if you had 10 acres. That is no longer the case. It's not even an acreage. I was talking to one of the state FSA folks, Angela Watson, who's wonderful. And she was saying, I think in Louisville, they've got, they've got like a farm number for I want to say it was like a 10th of an acre. If, if, it if that, I mean, it's just, you know, a backyard basically, but they have a farm number because they have cash receipts and they have, you know, proven that they're selling at least a thousand dollars worth of product. And, and so then they can get counted in those numbers, whatever that they're, they're growing. And they have an opportunity to sort of, you know,
00:30:02
Plant People
in ways show up for the the Kentucky community. And that's what you do when you report those numbers is not only are you helping yourself down the line, but, you know, thinking thinking of it as the agriculture community and the horticulture community is more more than just you. Yeah.
00:30:19
Brett
Yeah. And just just to give you a sense, and this is, again, a lot of this, I think we're you know we're at the university, a lot of what we're supposed to be doing is about good information, good conversations, linking people, and also doing research just to be able to figure this stuff out.
00:30:32
Plant People
Yeah.
00:30:33
Brett
So this is a really cool project for that, but not to just to get off my high horse or stay on my high horse for just one more minute. Like, but for example, filling out the ag census that is requested, the way that those things are filled out, the data that are in there determine farm bill programs. It determines things like um how and where AFRI, this is the Agriculture Food and Research Initiative, which is one of the major research initiatives, is prioritized.
00:31:02
Brett
Rural development, ah for us, the specialty crop block grant, for us in the horticulture community, ah many producers have applied for those if for to you know get a piece of equipment or whatever.
00:31:06
Plant People
Yeah,
00:31:10
Plant People
yeah it's not just university money, it's direct farm money.
00:31:13
Brett
And I just think that sometimes it's like, oh, we want a good picture of the data so that the nerds can put it in their spreadsheets and crunch it.
00:31:19
Plant People
The nerds can nerd. The
00:31:21
Brett
And that is cool. Don't get me wrong. I do enjoy that. But it really like there is a... It's not the only political activity that is important for you to do as a producer, but it is a very important, boring, but also easy activity.
00:31:27
Plant People
and a tangible thing connected.
00:31:37
Brett
So as as you see things come and you see people asking for data, especially if it's coming from USDA, think of it as an opportunity or the CCD.
00:31:43
Plant People
Or the CCD.
00:31:45
Plant People
Right.
00:31:45
Brett
Think of it as an opportunity for you to be saying like, we we want a piece of the public support that goes to agriculture.
00:31:51
Brett
um Again, it's not a perfect solution. People who are familiar with this will know there's lots of other layers that I'm not getting it going to get into. But back to the project, though.
00:32:00
Plant People
yes
00:32:00
Brett
ah So.
Exploring Insurance Accessibility Issues
00:32:04
Brett
it seems to me that a big piece of this would be getting perspectives from people about how these programs do or don't work for them, things that they're missing, things that have based on the previous conversations. Is that part of like what's going on with this?
00:32:20
Plant People
yeah um and and brett's you know asking these leading questions as if he's not all on this grant that's exactly what they are uh so bless him for that and leading me into this but yes we thought we can bless him so you know we talked about we are collecting this price data how that you know we're kind of going to use that and help help people with that but from a Back to this idea of talking the same language.
00:32:28
Brett
Bless me. Bless me.
00:32:41
Plant People
What are the issues that need to be brought up? How do we direct people? We're doing interviews with lenders, with you know private insurance, as well as with growers. So we have a grower survey just asking basic questions like, have you ever had crop insurance?
00:32:56
Plant People
If so, you know what kind? Was it through these sort of public federal ones or was it private?
00:32:59
Brett
Thank you.
00:33:01
Plant People
Yeah. you know, a little bit more description on crop insurance. Cause again, when I hear that, I tend to think commodity crops and something not applicable to me, but it is.
00:33:12
Plant People
And so, you know, we've got some grower surveys. Again, we're kind of focusing a little bit more in the flowers from that actual survey info, but we will, and but what we learn from that will be applicable to all of our specialty crop growers. But it's, you know, we kind of, we'd we'd get we get, there's not enough money or time to do do all of it in one grant. So we kind of had to pick one one route and that' ah that was one that was ah easy to show growth and need. And so one of the reasons we went there, um but yeah, so doing some info and just asking these lenders, like,
00:33:44
Plant People
What info, number one, do you need that we can hopefully you know provide, but also what do you want the growers or the applicants coming in to know? And then you know vice versa, what do these growers really need these lenders to understand? you know Maybe it's just something like...
00:34:01
Plant People
My row spacing, I'm going to, I'm spacing things four inches apart. Like that's very different than even tomatoes or cucumbers. Right. And and how many plants when, when I say I'm going to fit 400 plants in, you know, 10 rows feet of row space, that is mind boggling to somebody, somebody who works at acres um versus, you know, 10 feet of row space and how much, how much money I can make off of 10 feet of row space as an example.
00:34:22
Brett
Mm-hmm.
00:34:27
Plant People
So just sort of understanding that number one, that is possible. um And ah but also, again, talking the same language and having everybody feel like they're prepared if that conversation arises.
00:34:40
Brett
Yeah, I think that for me, because I i kind of perceive personally, a lot of the people who are involved in this actually have really good intentions, ah which is good.
00:34:55
Brett
Because sometimes you get into situations where you're like, i think that maybe maybe somebody here is a bad person.
00:34:55
Plant People
Yeah. yes People like, I don't care. i don't want to fix it. Mm-hmm.
00:35:01
Brett
um But I think that there is there's some... lack of of clarity and standardization on these more niche, particular, peculiar things like what we're doing.
00:35:17
Brett
But the reality is there's a lot of people, lot of people who are maybe coming from non-traditional ag backgrounds, first time farmers, maybe they're taking over land that was in a different system and they're trying to explore something new. We have a lot of producers like that, whether maybe they did beef cattle or they did row crops for a long time and they're trying to diversify into something else.
00:35:36
Brett
And they're used to being able to go for that commodity thing and get the get this ah insurance and they go and it's kind of like, a what do you mean?
00:35:39
Plant People
Yeah. If the answer is easy, it's right there. Yeah.
00:35:44
Brett
um And so these are human systems. They are flawed. There's problems with them. There's politics. Everything is, you know, there's a reality to it. But I do think there is a good opportunity for some clarification so that if there are policy level things that need to change in the future, we can at least know that we've had a, we have a good sense of what the situation is and how and where the confusion is causing the problem rather than the policy itself.
00:36:12
Plant People
Yeah. I really feel like a lot of this grant is just the investigating, you know, of just figuring out where, what we don't know, like what, and not necessarily just us, but like what the lenders don't know, what the growers don't know, what, you know, what all these different groups that have to work together in some way don't know. And, you know, we're doing this specifically for Kentucky, but again, in theory, a lot of this is applicable, at least from like a federal um or public standpoint. So if you're outside of Kentucky, hopefully this will also help you, but um yeah, just really trying to use, know,
00:36:46
Plant People
our knowledge and our resources and our platform through extension, through CCD to really share that out a little bit more widely than it is. So there are, i will say like, there are resources. Like if you go look up micro farm USDA program, like they have a fact sheet on it, but I found it confusing and a little bit hard to understand from with my grower hat on even even that. And you know, what is applicable? How is that different from Kentucky? Again, just the the differences on what they consider irrigated versus non-irrigated, very different for our Kentucky folks on a lot of our small farms. So we're just, I think we're just invest doing a lot of investigating, collecting of that info so that we have it available to share with folks. Um,
00:37:32
Plant People
i am I am learning a lot. um I said to Brett when they when they told us they were giving us this grant, I was like, honestly, i'm so I'm surprised because I felt like it was very obvious I don't know anything. But maybe that was the point. was They were like, she wants to know things, so we'll give her money to figure it out and share what she learned.
00:37:49
Brett
i was a little I was a little unnerved because ah Alexa stopped being cocky for a minute. you know Normally it's...
00:37:57
Plant People
I'm so this is so out of my realm of, but to the point of that, we thought it was very important that really to kind of set, this was definitely outside of my normal box of comfort and where I can think I can help, but I knew it was needed because no one knows what's going on.
00:37:59
Brett
Yeah.
00:38:13
Plant People
So let's try and fix that.
00:38:14
Brett
Yeah. Well, I mean, I think i think that the the name of the... The proposal is something like real problems in crop insurance for specialty crops and cut flowers.
00:38:21
Plant People
Mm-hmm.
00:38:24
Brett
And was pretty close, pretty close.
00:38:24
Plant People
Yeah, let me see. It's right here. It's real problems in risk management for specialty crops and cut flowers. Yeah.
00:38:33
Brett
And I think that like starting from a place of like, what's the real problem?
00:38:33
Plant People
I mean, you are on the ground.
00:38:38
Brett
What's the actual issue here is, is that's something we've tried to do in a lot of the programs we offer.
00:38:42
Plant People
Yeah.
00:38:42
Brett
And I mean, other people do it too. It's not unique to us, but it always helps me It always helps me to like reground on like, oh yeah, this is the thing that we're doing that's going to help.
00:38:45
Plant People
Like, we're the best at it. think
00:38:54
Brett
It's not, I'm going to force this program and it's going to exist and maybe be useful.
00:38:54
Plant People
yeah
00:38:58
Brett
and
00:38:58
Plant People
I'm just doing it because there's money and I can get it like that's well when you're soft when we have fully soft funded positions yeah that's part of sometimes the name of the game but um okay bring it uh-huh
00:39:01
Brett
Yeah, sometimes you have to do that and it's you know that's the reality. It is what it is.
00:39:07
Brett
Yeah.
00:39:10
Brett
Well, so I just want to briefly make a joke that I wasn't able to shoehorn in during back when it was happening. But when you said micro, talking about micro farms, I was going to say, what is this a farm for ants?
00:39:21
Brett
Um, which is really Zoolander for those born, you know, in the two thousands, uh,
00:39:27
Plant People
Millennials out there gotta laugh. Thank you for that.
00:39:29
Brett
Thank you.
00:39:29
Plant People
I guess I hope that we get
00:39:30
Brett
ah But the I guess if if you were looking forward, maybe this project is done. it's gone according to plan. What are like to you? What are some of the good, simple or complex outcomes that might come out of this?
Hopes for Improved Insurance Access
00:39:50
Plant People
i hope that we get Less lenders, um you know, whether it's lendering lenders for a loan or lenders for insurance and, you know,
00:40:02
Plant People
confused. Like they know where to find that info and that info is useful for them. And so I don't want to say like we hear from them less, but I mean, in a way, if we hear from them less, then that means we might've done our job. And then I hope that there are more growers around the state reporting their numbers because you've got to report those numbers to be eligible for these federal programs, but then taking advantage of these programs. And it's easy. Like I'm hoping that that word spreads and that you know, you have a farmer that goes in and was like, actually, had this checklist, which I hope to provide, that said I needed to bring this, and I brought it in, and I told them this is what I wanted, and I gave them the stuff, and then I left within, you know, 30 minutes or whatever, you know, that short amount of time is, and then it's done and completed, and so that we have more people taking advantage of these programs, and then our numbers are going to go up because they're reporting more and using the programs, oh and, you know, then
00:40:58
Plant People
long term, we get more money to focus on those things. And, you know, whether it's for cut flowers or just our specialty crops, because I've heard a farmer say before, you know, this isn't cut flowers, but for an example,
00:41:11
Plant People
reported, I think it's lettuce, I wonder if it's lettuce or no, it might be cabbage. According to the census, what the federal government thinks is that Kentucky only grows like two acres of cabbage. It's either cabbage or lettuce, which is 100% untrue.
00:41:24
Plant People
And Brett and I could probably both name multiple farms that grow in, say, of Kentucky more than two acres just on that one farm, right? And it's
00:41:32
Brett
Yeah.
00:41:33
Plant People
And so it's like, well, there's all this great money that could be available for rural development or maybe for some SNAP funding if they thought Kentucky grew vegetables.
00:41:42
Plant People
But they don't think Kentucky grows a bunch of leafy vegetables. And so that's the type of thing that I'm hoping we can overcome and make things easier for folks.
00:41:42
Brett
Right.
00:41:52
Brett
Sounds awesome.
00:41:53
Plant People
Yeah, I mean, listen, shoot for the moon, right? And just land among the stars. Isn't that the same story?
00:41:58
Brett
those all sound Those all sounded like, you know, I mean, if you had said universal achievement of, ah
00:42:04
Plant People
Every single farmer will have crop insurance.
00:42:06
Brett
we'll have viable crop insurance that they feel good about. And that'd be one thing. But I do think, ah again, and it it could very well be we get to the bottom of this and we realize that there are some major policy-based things.
00:42:20
Brett
And those policy-based things might be accidental. They may be intentional. there's ah like That's the thing about...
00:42:25
Plant People
Yeah. But we'll know.
00:42:26
Brett
like paul politics and and power and all those things, the lowercase p, lowercase politics, lowercase power, it's –
00:42:27
Plant People
We'll at least know. Oof.
00:42:34
Plant People
And to share. Yeah. Yeah.
00:42:35
Brett
it's part of the system and it's part of what we deal with in agriculture. And so being able to have some good information to to act on, i just, I have this feeling like there's a lot of the, lot of the problems are caused by just me well-meaning people who aren't able to focus on learning a thing and it's not been presented to them really simply and straightforwardly that maybe that could cure a lot of ills, but I guess we'll see.
00:42:42
Plant People
and the sheriff
00:42:54
Plant People
yeah yeah
00:42:59
Plant People
I'm a positive thinker in that line, Brett, too. It's like, if I can just give you the information in a way you can digest, then we'll all be on the same page, right? Like, that's how we'll all agree, right? That's what that means. Yeah,
00:43:11
Brett
Probably not, but we'll at least be closer to clarity and people who, you know,
00:43:16
Plant People
yeah. And I hope, like, one of my big ones is that, so not every, what I have learned so far in this first quarter of the grant, because we're just April through now, getting through it is,
00:43:27
Plant People
that there it's not even often available. So even if I had all the right things, I did all the right reporting that I needed to do, I still might not be able to find someone willing to lend me the the insurance, to give me the insurance policy.
00:43:43
Brett
Yeah.
00:43:44
Plant People
Like I can do everything right in them and then still have to go across the state via phone or in person to find someone who might be willing to work with me. So i'm I'm hoping one of my other objectives here is that there will be more people comfortable, more lenders comfortable to give those policies across the state. And there's more options for folks because there's like,
00:44:08
Plant People
three right now who are known for doing things for specialty crops. And even then sometimes they want to do it. And the underwriter says no, because they don't have enough data to back it up.
00:44:17
Brett
Yeah.
00:44:18
Plant People
And I'm like, what is happening? What is happening?
00:44:21
Brett
Yeah.
00:44:23
Plant People
It's like rage bait for me. I'm like, what do you mean this is a federal program?
00:44:27
Brett
But if we got the data, if we got the data and we are able to, you know,
00:44:28
Plant People
But they need more info. So that's what we're here for.
00:44:31
Brett
Yeah. Yeah. Well, cool. I just, I, this is a little bit different type of episode, but I wanted to talk through the program because, and two for two reasons. One, there will be some data collection efforts coming out to collect prices, to collect feedback about,
00:44:51
Brett
ah your experiences with you know crop insurance or lack thereof.
00:44:51
Plant People
Your experience.
00:44:55
Brett
ah If you're an insurer, you know an insurer, ah I'll be conducting some interviews with folks just to kind of get their perspectives on that this this situation. And so that's one thing.
00:45:06
Brett
Look out for those those pings.
00:45:07
Plant People
Yes.
00:45:09
Brett
But also, we'll have some ah more episodes coming up with some other people.
00:45:09
Plant People
Please answer them.
00:45:14
Brett
um for people for who is ah angela
00:45:18
Plant People
We've got, uh, Esten Williams is in a program called The Navigators. So he focuses on Kentucky, Tennessee, maybe one other state in this area. He's with the University of Arkansas, but focuses on our area. And his whole job is to help small farmers to take advantage of these public, these federal programs. So he is an expert in understanding the difference between them. And I am so excited to learn more from him. He seems like quite a character. I met him.
00:45:49
Plant People
at a conference, but ah he we have him scheduled for some an August episode. So if you've been interested in those, but you don't know anything about them, that will be the one to definitely listen to.
00:45:59
Brett
Cool. And think i think we might have one or two others, but TBD on who or when.
00:46:02
Plant People
Maybe some farmer. I'm trying to get some farmers. So if you are a farmer, whether it's cut flowers or just a specialty crop, even who has done some of these insurance programs, we would love to hear from you and just sort of your struggles, just your experience with it. If it's been valuable to you, we'd love to have you on the pod. Or if you don't want be on the pod and you just want to chat with us,
00:46:26
Plant People
that's great too. But yes. So, and if you're, if you have specific questions, this ah this is, you know, as we sort of wrap up here, I would say if you as a grower or a lender or someone out there who maybe has specific questions, you'd like to know, um send those into us, either send them via our email, which is in the description, or you can, when you, when you leave us a good review, you can put it in there, or you can send it to us on Instagram at Hort Culture Podcasts,
00:46:53
Plant People
Send us your questions and we will try to ask them of these people specifically on the episode. I think would be really fun to to do some of those. So if you've got them, please send them in and we will make sure ah we get them answered.
Audience Engagement and Feedback
00:47:08
Plant People
Hopefully will say live but on a recording so you you can hear your question if you'd like. But I think that would be fun.
00:47:16
Plant People
Anything else?
00:47:16
Brett
Yeah.
00:47:18
Plant People
No? Cool. Well, hopefully you all are are excited. You know, we're excited. Like I said, it's a different episode.
00:47:25
Brett
As excited as one can be about grants and crop insurance.
00:47:27
Plant People
about if Yeah, about insurance. About the positive things that come out of it.
00:47:31
Brett
I feel like if anybody breath could breathe a spark into it, it's us.
00:47:37
Plant People
Yes, well, and and listen to that episode with Esten, because like I said, hes he seems really fun, so I think he's going to be a great guest, but Yeah, and shoot us an email if you've got questions or thoughts on ah episodes you like to hear about in the plant-esque world. You know, let us know what you want to know because we're we're just coming up with this as we see.
00:47:58
Plant People
it sounds good. But we appreciate you guys being here with us today and we hope you'll join us next time. See ya.