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Conference Keynote: Quality with Paul Dorrance
211 Plays5 years ago
We listen to and break down Paul Dorrance's Keynote from the 2020 DIRECT Farm Conference. Hear why Quality must be the foundational Lever, through Values, Stewardship, Soil Health and Products.
Show Notes:
Watch more here: https://directfarmconference.com/quality-paul-dorrance
Read more here: https://www.barn2door.com/blog/direct-farm-conference-speaker-paul-dorrance-of-pastured-providence?__hstc=222833540.27d14b09b2dd22de361d173a26cb9b0e.1633454048048.1634057568637.1634070995079.5&__hssc=222833540.12.1634070995079&__hsfp=122364210
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Purpose
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm podcast, the weekly listen for farm selling direct. We're going to talk about the four lovers for farm success, quality, brand, price, and convenience. We're going to hear from outside industry experts and producers like you in order to delight customers to save time and to grow your direct sales and business. We're glad you're here.
Meet the Host: Emma
00:00:26
Speaker
All right, welcome back everybody. My name is Emma.
Focus on Quality: Keynote Insights
00:00:29
Speaker
This week we're going to kick off the next four episodes by talking about each of the keynotes that happened at the 2020 Direct Farm Conference. And that was our virtual free event that happened on August 4th. We recapped the whole thing last week, but over the next four episodes, we're going to really dig in on each of the keynotes.
00:00:48
Speaker
And they were on each of the four levers for farm success, which you heard in the intro. But again, those are quality, brand, price, and convenience. And we're going to start with quality today. We do this on purpose and you are going to hear from the speaker Paul Dorrance why, but the gist is that we know that quality has to be the foundation of any farm business.
00:01:11
Speaker
So Paul joined us. He is a farmer himself at Pastured Providence. He's now transitioning to consultant work and working with Acres USA to put together a course called proven methods for success in the business of farming. So this is Paul's session. We are going to listen back and break it down a little bit. It is called quality, the foundation for your farm practices and business.
00:01:34
Speaker
Hello everyone from beautiful Southern Ohio. My name is Paul Dorrance and it's my distinct pleasure to present this keynote address on the topic of quality. I know I might be somewhat biased, but when you consider barn doors four levers of success, I think it's clear that quality is by far the most important. You can build an amazing brand, but without quality your sales will fall short.
00:01:56
Speaker
Your price can vary greatly, but as long as you have quality there to support it. And convenience is indeed king in this world today, but only quality truly underpins, supports, and enables your success in the world of food and agriculture.
00:02:10
Speaker
Before I jump too far ahead, let me introduce myself.
From Air Force to Farm: Paul's Journey
00:02:13
Speaker
I was not a farmer from the beginning, although I definitely grew up country in the hills of upstate New York. Actually spent the first 12 years of my post college career as an active duty Air Force pilot flying 3 different types of aircraft over that 12 years fan.
00:02:28
Speaker
During most of this time, I considered myself, quote unquote, normal as far as food consumers go. And normal for nine means that I didn't care where the food came from. I made fun of the term organic. And in general, I trusted the system to provide the food at my convenience. It was only when my ex-wife got pregnant with our first born child that my views on food started to change. I mean, I was scared of death.
00:02:51
Speaker
I wanted to do what was right for that baby growing in cider. And so I began to read and explore and research all sorts of things, but most critical to our conversation today, food. What I found through that research scared me even more than becoming a first time dad. I looked back at my life from that point and wondered, how could I have been so blind? And then I turned 180 degrees opposite and became one of those weird folks who chose differently.
00:03:16
Speaker
I began to seek out organic and local foods, support the farmers in my surrounding communities, and I found myself now deeply valuing what I had previously taken for granted. Fast forward four years, and it was very clear to me that my active duty lifestyle and I were done with each other. It was time to put my money where my mouth was literally and begin producing this type of food for others that I had begun to seek out for myself.
Farm Transition and New Directions
00:03:43
Speaker
So in 2013, I found 111 acres for sale by owner.com, and I started my pasture-based livestock operation from scratch. For the next seven years, pastured Providence Farmstead raised and sold grass-fed and finished beef and lamb, as well as pastured non-GMO pork, poultry, including turkey for Thanksgiving, and eggs.
00:04:04
Speaker
Almost all of my products were sold directly to consumers via on-farm sales or various farmers markets or custom cut by the half and whole animal. When my divorce was finalized earlier this year, I found myself at a crossroads. I was running a one man show that needed at least two people's efforts to thrive. And so I made the heartbreaking decision to sell my livestock.
00:04:25
Speaker
I now envision a future for myself where I'm able to educate, encourage, and equip others for even greater success than my operation enjoyed as a consultant, author, speaker, and good food advocate.
Quality Values in Farming
00:04:37
Speaker
When I have the opportunity to teach business planning to young and beginning farmers, one of the first things that I emphasize is the concept that values should always come first. It's the aspect of quality in our values that keeps us from falling into the trap of cutting corners.
00:04:53
Speaker
Without quality values, all human beings are prone to cheat or take shortcuts. But I think this is especially true within the world of agriculture. Agriculture, more than any other occupation that I'm aware of, has the ability to test our metal and challenge our perceptions. In short, this lifestyle is tough. Generally speaking, our values become critical in the heartache, in the trauma, and in the emergency. And it's important to recognize that farming has way more of those than other occupants.
00:05:23
Speaker
I used to joke with friends that I would wake up in the morning on this gorgeous day, stretch long and hard and wonder to myself, what emergency the farm was going to throw at me that day? But one of the unique and enjoyable things about farming compared to other occupations is that we generally get to call the shots and make decisions. Not always. Mother Nature and the good Lord always have the final say. But more than other jobs, we often get to chart our own path.
00:05:48
Speaker
The trap here is that there is usually no one watching when we're tempted to cut corners, take the easy way out and cheat the system. Without or sometimes in spite of our values, this represents a real struggle. Paul makes a great point here and it seems so intuitive but is ultimately so difficult as well. And he understood that. It's one thing to define your values. It's another thing to adhere to them in times of crisis. Here's the example he offered.
00:06:16
Speaker
Early one spring as I wrestled with the reality that my cattle were dealing with mites, which are little critters that cause inirritations, hair loss, and stress. The cattle were patchy, ugly, and ornery, and I suppose I would have been too if I were them. The normal or easy way to combat mites is to use a chemical poron that kills pretty much everything, fleas, ticks, lice, internal worms, and yes mites.
00:06:40
Speaker
It is also extremely harmful to the environment. Gets excreted in the manure and kills earthworms, dung beetles, and a multitude of beneficial creatures in your pasture. Even knowing that, I succumbed to the lie that it was too much trouble to dust the cattle with diatomaceous earth, or too expensive to run out and buy a scratching post to allow the animals to remove the mites themselves.
00:07:01
Speaker
Instead, I went against my values, I treated with ivermectin, and in that one moment of weakness, I single-handedly wiped out every dung beetle on my property for the next three years. After that, my values formally included that I would never use a product that isn't specifically authorized by USDA organic standards, even though I'm not certified organic. This was an easy way for me to draw a line on the sand, communicate value to my customers, and elevate my values above the temptation of taking the easy way out.
00:07:32
Speaker
Knowing your values, and equally as important, writing them down gives your business strength, vision, and power. The only way we farmers can stand in the face of isolation, risk, and tragedy that's part of our day-to-day life is to cling to our values. And they have to be identified and codified before they are needed. In the middle of the difficulty, it's the wrong time to determine what we stand for. We're too weak and fallible for that.
00:07:57
Speaker
When the cattle were in the chute that spring day, that was the wrong time for me to decide whether chemical treatments were right for me or not. We have to realize that our goals and our plans must be built on a foundation of quality values. Only then can we farm to our full potential, communicate accurately with our customer base, and mitigate the troubling times that farming will certainly bring our way. And with our foundations, value foundation specifically firmly in place, we are best equipped to care for our ground.
Soil Health as the Foundation of Quality
00:08:26
Speaker
After speaking on defining one's values and adhering to them, especially in times of question or crisis like the example he just provided, Paul turned to talk about quality in stewardship and soil health. And I'll let him explain where his inspiration for stewardship and his understanding of soil health comes from as well. But I think as you are thinking about this for your farm,
00:08:49
Speaker
Remember too that the conscious consumer, the person who is going online and searching local sustainable food as keywords, also cares about your stewardship. And not only is it an important aspect of your quality, but it is also an important aspect of your brand.
00:09:06
Speaker
And so we saw with the AcresUSA data that we were lucky to collect as part of the conference as well, that more farms were very deliberately defining their practices as sustainable, or if they were organic certified advertising that. Just keep in mind that these stewardship practices are not only significant to your farm, but really significant to your buyers as well.
00:09:30
Speaker
Normally, we think that quality starts with products, but I think we need to think bigger than that. In fact, I actually think we need to think smaller than that. Before customer interactions come or products get listed for sale, quality starts beneath our feet.
00:09:45
Speaker
As farmers, we follow a high calling. When I describe this concept to myself and others, the words that I seem to gravitate towards are feel ancient or old world, words like caretaker, steward, and partner. My tagline for the farmstead was that I partner with creation to produce healthy food.
00:10:06
Speaker
And I love that. So let's go back to the stewardship and concentrate on that. By definition, the word stewardship means to be responsible for, maintain order, to look after and to care for. Doesn't that sound like the force that drives us? Doesn't that sound like a concept that should be grounded on a foundation of quality? Quality stewardship practices result in good soil and imply an intimate relationship with our ground.
00:10:35
Speaker
And I know that might seem ephemeral, so let's take a look at what that looks like in practice. Obviously, there's lots of sources for this kind of guidance, but today I'm going to go to the good book and read from Mark 4 versus 3 through 8, which is the parable of the sower. The parable of the sower goes like this. Listen, a farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.
00:11:00
Speaker
Some fell on rocky places where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched and they were withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up, excuse me, and choked the plants so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on, and here it is, good soil. It came up, grew, and produced a crop, some multiplying 30, some 60, some 100 times.
00:11:29
Speaker
Noah Sanders in his book, Corn Again Dirt, which I highly recommend, answers the question, what does good soil look like? His answer directly from the book says that, and he comes up with four attributes for good soil, loose, deep, weed free and living.
00:11:48
Speaker
Noah writes, in the parable of the sower, we saw that the compacted soil of the path was not suitable for growing. We also see in creation that plants grow better in soil that is loose, not hard. This allows space for water and air in the soil that is necessary for drainage, roots and soil life. Therefore, good soil should not be compacted and should be loose.
00:12:11
Speaker
We also see in the parable of the sower that the shallow soil was not good because it didn't allow the plant's roots to go deep and they died from lack of water. Deep soil allows the roots of the plants to reach down and access water in the soil below the drier surface. Deep soil also allows for more water to be stored in the soil rather than running off. Therefore, good soil should be deep. The third place the seed in the parable was sown was among the thorns.
00:12:37
Speaker
These weeds competed for water and nutrients and choked the plants. Many times weeds don't kill the plants that were growing, but their competition causes them to be unfruitful. Therefore, good soil should be relatively weed free. And contrary to what most of us would think, good soil isn't just a sterile growing medium that is dark in color. No, if you go and look at the rich soil in the woods, you'll see that it's crawling with life.
00:13:03
Speaker
These microorganisms break down raw materials in the soil and make them available to the plants. Without the life in the soil, plants will not be as healthy as they might be because they can't access very many nutrients. In scripture, we see that life is good and death is bad. So I, and this is Noah speaking, believe that good soil would indicate soil with life in it. Therefore, good soil should be living.
00:13:27
Speaker
By ensuring quality in our stewardship practices, we can ensure that we are working with good soil, healthy soil, living soil. Have you ever stopped to think about soil as healthy or living or even as an organism in general? Well cared for soil is teeming with life. A single handful contains millions of living organisms, everything from fungi and bacteria and nematodes that we can't see to earthworms and beetles and centipedes that we can.
00:13:56
Speaker
If this is true and we have accepted the calling to steward the life on our farm, then the obvious question becomes, how do we care for these millions of organisms beneath our feet? Well, my answer to the question is to go back what any living animal needs to survive, food, water, shelter, and I will add rest. So let's think about that for a minute. Food,
00:14:21
Speaker
For the soil food web beneath our feet, the basis of food is organic matter, decomposing carbon. So we kind of have this issue where we have a choice to make. We can either feed those organisms naturally with what they normally get, or what do we take an artificial approach and attempt to simulate that food in some sort of nature through a chemical approach.
00:14:42
Speaker
and water. As Noah mentioned in the book, the way that we avoid water issues and we provide water for those living organisms is by avoiding compaction. That allows not only the water to sink in instead of flowing across a field or pasture or ground, but it allows the actual roots and the structure of the soil itself to capture that water, release it slowly and use it in times of need and shelter.
00:15:08
Speaker
We should strive to always have something growing at all times in our ground and avoid at all costs, fair soil, whether that's perennial pasture, whether that's a cover crop or mulch. There are a multitude of ways that we can do that, but we need to provide shelter for the living organisms beneath our feet. And then finally, rest. We know rest is good for humans. I don't function very well without it, but it's also good for the land.
00:15:36
Speaker
We need to work in within a normal crop rotation, a period of being fallow, whether that's a season or a year. And that fallow, that rest allows natural processes to take place at which we rejuvenate and energize the microorganisms in the soil. I believe ultimately resting our land counterintuitively allows land to be more productive than if we continue to push it in production.
Grass and Grazing: Key to Soil Health?
00:16:04
Speaker
Ensuring quality soil allows us to produce, excuse me, allows us to pursue production of a quality product. On my farm, I ensure food, water, shelter, and rest for my soil using rotationally grazing perennial pasture. I like to call grass the original cover crop. Before cover crops were sexy, before no-till was a thing, there was grass. In fact, the grassland biome covers 30 to 40% of Earth's surface.
00:16:32
Speaker
Quality grass management offers a multitude of benefits. First and foremost, perennial pasture maintains and ensures constant roots in the soil at all times. I may harvest the top of the above surface, whether it's mechanical harvest via hay or harvest with the animals.
00:16:51
Speaker
But the root structure below ground, constant all the time, adjusting and correcting and growing, which, as we've already mentioned, captures and slows water across it. And it also provides a constant shelter for those organisms beneath the soil.
00:17:10
Speaker
Animal impact has a huge piece on my farm which honestly kind of has a bad rap these days and it's because normal animal impact when viewed adds to compaction, adds to
00:17:25
Speaker
negative disturbance, but animal impact in a rotational grazing scenario, not only do they manure and feed the animals directly, but they also smash down and crush what they don't eat, which increases carbon soil contact and accelerates the process of feeding the microbiome in the soil.
00:17:45
Speaker
And there is such a thing as beneficial disturbance, hoof pressure in action almost in some sense tills and activates the soil beneath it, as long as it's not done over a long period of time, which comes to the third thing that I wanted to talk about, which rotational grazing.
00:18:00
Speaker
Rotational grazing takes that beneficial animal impact and moves it across a certain piece of land, but does not allow the negative aspects of animal impact to take place. So I don't have the compaction associated with animals coming to the same tree every single day to shelter from the sun and compacting the area around it.
00:18:20
Speaker
I don't have the pathways through the fields where the animals select where they go. And so you end up with this severe compaction routes across a continuously grazed pasture. Instead, my land is allowed to have the beneficial impact of animals and then the rest that comes after it.
00:18:37
Speaker
And it also mitigates things like parasites. All of the manure gets left behind and you move animals onto a clean set of pasture every single day in my case. And so we don't have that issue that I mentioned before where I had to fall prey to using chemical adjustments for parasites. The rotational grazing does that for me.
00:18:58
Speaker
After talking about stewardship and soil health, Paul turned his attention to talk about quality and products.
Diverse Forages and Livestock Benefits
00:19:04
Speaker
And he talks both about the livestock he's raising, his end product being grass-fed beef, for example, but also in the forage that they're grazing on and how that directly impacts the quality of the end product. He gives a very cool example about a multi-species synergy that I want you to be listening for. We'll jump in there too.
00:19:25
Speaker
Next, I want to talk about diversity. Diversity is recognized as beneficial in all sorts of different areas, including finances and investing. Why not agriculture? My friend Will Harris said it best when he said, nature abhors a monoculture. And this has multiple different iterations on my farm, both forage and livestock.
00:19:46
Speaker
By having a diversity of forage species, I better utilize the grass by use by different animals. So my cattle will eat certain things. The sheep will eat something totally different. And so I'm able to better utilize my forage overall because of the diversity of species and
00:20:03
Speaker
The diversity addresses a seasonal slump that I have to deal with. For example, if I had all cool season perennials right now, as we approach the end of July and into August with 90 degree days, that forage is going to go dormant. But because I have a wide diversity of forage types, I have warm season perennials that are coming up as well. So as the
00:20:25
Speaker
Some plants go dormant, the others are just coming into their own. And so you have this concept of addressing seasonality and temperature differences and climatic issues with diversity of forage species.
00:20:39
Speaker
And then I also have a multi-species livestock operation. And those synergies are so cool to think about. I have a flurd where cattle and sheep, as you can see in this picture, are run together. And cattle, if they ingest a sheep parasite internally, that parasite dies inside them. If a sheep ingest a parasite that would typically bother the cattle, that parasite dies inside the sheep. They are end hosts for each other's parasites. How cool is that?
00:21:06
Speaker
And in general, you get better forage utilization. In fact, listen up cattle people who don't have sheep. You can add one ewe for every cow on your operation for free. No adjustment in operation, no change in paddock size, and that is solely because the animals select and utilize different forage species within your existing pasture.
00:21:30
Speaker
So you get better overall utilization of your pasture and more livestock pressure and more livestock per acre.
00:21:37
Speaker
I use poultry to follow my flirt and so I not only do they have their own manure, but they also spread the manure of the large ruminants that went ahead of them. So I don't have to worry about mechanical spraying manure. I don't have to harrow. I don't have to run equipment to clean up those pastures. And those chickens are eating fly larva, which reduces pest pressure and disease potential within my herd.
00:22:00
Speaker
These are just some of the things that I take advantage of through multi-species synergies because of this overall concept of diversity.
00:22:09
Speaker
All right, right there. So whether or not you knew that to be the case, I can guarantee you that your customers probably did not. And so this is a great example of a really cool post, a story on Instagram, a piece of educational content that really gets your customers invested in your quality practices and begets them thinking about the intention and really the science that's behind the stewardship and the quality in product that you are raising.
Why Quality Impacts Taste and Nutrition?
00:22:39
Speaker
And then finally, one of the last benefit that I wanted to talk about from a grass perspective is the seasonality. So for me in Southern Ohio, April, May and June are just this gorgeous, lush pasture full of clovers and high energy forages. And that's what I finish my grass finished animals, beef and lamb together on in that sort of rush of amazing forage.
00:23:04
Speaker
So I'll finish those animals on what I call the cow candy. And then when they all get processed towards the end of July or August timeframe, as that forage begins to decrease in value, it's okay because I'm now only breeding, excuse me, maintaining my breeding herd at that point. So I'm able to work within the seasonality of the structure because of that.
00:23:26
Speaker
So grass for me is the foundation of my products quality that my customers are seeking. They're seeking non-chemical. They're seeking grass finished. They're seeking humanely raised products. So grass is my answer, but it's not the only one.
00:23:40
Speaker
you need to find what answers is available to you, whether that's cover cropping, especially if you're using mechanical termination instead of a chemical termination of that cover crop, or maybe you're pursuing or transitioning to organic in terms of grains and fruits and vegetables. Whatever your product, ultimately quality must be foundational to our farm businesses.
00:24:05
Speaker
It provides an alternative to fast and cheap. Our food tastes better and is way more nutritious. Our customers are demanding it. And that allows us to take advantage of and provide a market differentiation. But more importantly, I believe we must demand it of ourselves and strive for quality on principle alone. Because quality impacts, affects, and is intertwined with all aspects of our farming efforts.
Quality in Stewardship and Product Excellence
00:24:34
Speaker
Our values need to be rooted in quality. Our stewardship should be driven by quality. Our soil health is cared for with quality. And our products will be recognizable because of the quality that was in them. No matter whether we've been farming for five years, five months, or 50 years, we can all make quality the foundation for our business.
00:24:59
Speaker
We need to keep our value strong, firm, and front and center in both our strategic and operational decisions. Out of the power of our values, we'll be better able to steward our land, to love and care for it, along with the millions of organisms that call our soil home. And it will be because of that love and care that we show our soil, that our farm products will be recognized by consumers across the globe for their ecological production methods, amazing taste, and superior nutritional value.
Conclusion: Prioritizing Quality
00:25:28
Speaker
Thank you so much to the attendees of the Direct 2020 Conference for your attention and for making the time to attend this conference virtually. Thank you to Barn to Door for all of their work putting this conference together and for asking me to keynote on this very important topic. And thank you to Yank Acres USA for connecting me with Barn to Door and for allowing this opportunity to take hold.
00:25:48
Speaker
That reminds me, Acres USA is developing online courses which are available on a multitude of topics. The one that I'm writing is called Proven Lessons for Success in the Business of Farming.
00:25:59
Speaker
If you're looking to dig in more to the chemistry and the biology and geology of soil health, I would recommend going to acresusa.com. They have online courses like the one Paul is offering, as well as a library of books and other resources on soil health. They know what they're talking about. And so if that's something you're interested in learning more on, they are a great place to start.
00:26:24
Speaker
As I mentioned at the beginning, my new vision for Pasture Province is to encourage and educate and equip both new and seasoned farmers for success in pasture-based livestock. I have consulting options available, and if that's anything that would be beneficial to you and your future operations, please visit my website, pastureprovidence.com for more details. Again, thank you so much for your time. Let's all strive to make quality the foundation of our business, providing our success in the world of food and agriculture.
00:26:54
Speaker
Paul ties it up so beautifully at the end that quality moves through your values, to your stewardship, into soil health, and ultimately into the quality of your products, which is the reason that customers recognize local farms that their food simply tastes better and is produced more carefully and more responsibly.
00:27:14
Speaker
So we were thrilled that Paul kicked off the conference and we do this on purpose. Like we've said, like he said, quality is the foundation, but we're going to begin to build on that over the next three weeks. Next week, we're going to talk about brand. We're going to hear from Nona Jones. She is the head of faith-based partnerships at Facebook.
00:27:32
Speaker
and has some very cool insights on how to use digital channels, which is where your customers are six hours a day, at least nowadays. And she's gonna tell you how to bring those really authentic, close connections that you make with customers in person, and how to bring those online and make them work for your farm. So stay tuned, have a good week, and we'll talk to you soon.