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Episode 1 | About this Podcast
57 Plays1 year ago
Welcome to The Ag Show Podcast! I am your host, Dr. Johann Buck. In this episode, I describe my background in agriculture, why I am producing this podcast, and what you can expect in future episodes.
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Transcript
00:00:03
Speaker
Oh.
Introduction to Ag Show with Dr. Johan Buck
00:00:40
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Well, hello and welcome to the Ag Show podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Johan Buck. I wanted to take a moment, introduce myself and lay the foundation for what to expect from this podcast.
First Agriculture Job: A Greenhouse Adventure
00:00:54
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I began working in agriculture when I was 16 years old. It was North Central Kansas and I was a sophomore in high school and I needed an afterschool job.
00:01:07
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And I didn't want to bag groceries or work at the local lumber yard. And I recall sitting in biology class and a friend of mine said, well, you should go pick tomatoes at the tomato factory. To which I replied, what's the tomato factory?
00:01:26
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My classmate explained to me what it was. It was a hydroponic tomato greenhouse. It actually turned out to be not too far from my home. So I applied for an after school job picking tomatoes. Filled out the application. It was my very first interview. Happy to say I nailed it. Got the job. Although I don't think I had a lot of competition. So day one, February 1st, 1996.
00:01:56
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I show up for work, and I get the orientation. It was very brief. It was freezing cold outside, fallow wheat fields on one side of the road, and the other side is this family-owned hydroponic tomato greenhouse. And we approached the door. The door opens across the threshold. And it was very much like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. The Gene Wilder version, when
00:02:23
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Willy Wonka and all his guests walk into what I believe is the inventing room. It was like that. That's how I felt. These towering green tomato plants with red ripe tomatoes, bumblebees flying around, horizontal airflow fans overhead, creating that nice breeze, you know, 68 degrees or so, much, much nicer than the outdoor environments.
00:02:53
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And within four weeks I was hooked.
Educational Journey: University Decisions
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And I approached the owner after about one month of employment and then asked, could one go to school to learn about hydroponics? To which he replied, yes.
00:03:13
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and began to list out several universities and colleges, including Kansas State amongst others, being from Kansas, obviously Kansas State would be a good choice for agriculture and horticulture. But he said to me, he said, if you really want the best, then you need to go to the University of Arizona.
00:03:38
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And of course, he was a little biased. And at the time, the University of Arizona was one of the few universities that really had a strong controlled environment program. That really resonated with me because I was born in Arizona. I grew up in Kansas, but I was born in Arizona and always wanted to move back to Arizona. I don't know, I just always wanted to live in Arizona. So when I heard this, I thought, okay, now I have my mission.
00:04:06
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attend the University of Arizona, pursue controlled environment agriculture as a career. And that really set me on the path to study and pursue agriculture as a career. So fast forward a couple of years, I attend a local university, in part because it was really the only place I could go where I was able to get scholarships. And I initially started
00:04:34
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I applied for the biology department because they had a botany course. Didn't even really think about agriculture. But I received a phone call and at the time, the chair, Dr. Great House was his name. And I received a phone call and he says, he introduces himself and says, oh, I understand you've applied to attend school here at Fort Hayes State University. Go Tigers.
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Twitch replied, yes. Said, well, have you considered, I see you've applied for the biology department. That's correct. Well, have you considered the agriculture department? No, no, I have not.
00:05:17
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Well, he proceeded to sell me on the Department of Agriculture, primarily because they had plenty of scholarship money and encouraged me to apply. And I did. I got scholarships, which was awesome. And for the next four and a half years, I studied agriculture at Fort Hays State University.
00:05:40
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That first semester, I reached out to a good friend of mine. His name is Dr.
Pursuing Higher Education in Agriculture
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Merle Jensen. He will be a guest on our first episode of the Ag Show podcast. And I reached out to Dr. Jensen, who's really the only person at the University of Arizona that I knew because when I was picking tomatoes at the greenhouse, the owner said, yeah, University of Arizona, Dr. Merle Jensen, use them as a consultant. That's where you need to go.
00:06:10
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When I received a reply back from Dr. Jensen and said, yeah, happy to have you. Here's what you need to do. And it was not an easy list to accomplish. I had learned, oh, I got to take this thing called the GRE exam and got to make sure my grades are up because going from the small liberal arts college to a big university, 5,000 student body to 25,000 student body, it's kind of like going from
00:06:40
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you know, the minor leagues to the big leagues. But I thought to myself, okay, I can do this. Fast forward a few years and check off all the items on the list. And drove down to Tucson, Arizona, met who would become my major advisor, Dr. Cherry Kubota, now out of the Ohio State University.
00:07:04
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And I was enamored. I thought, this is the place. I've got to go here. Got the assistantship. Finished up my master's at the University of Arizona. Wasn't quite sure what to do going from there. And I think it was Dr. Jensen said, hey, as long as you can keep going, go all the way. Get your doctorate, which I had not planned on doing. I had planned on getting
00:07:34
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finishing with my master's and then moving on to be a grower. Maybe at a greenhouse tomato operation or something. So I started applying for doctoral programs and
00:07:49
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I applied for a few and in each one of them I got denied. Maybe my GPA wasn't strong enough or I wasn't the best fit amongst the candidates because I've always kind of struggled even though I was able to get into graduate school. I don't ever consider myself one of the top students. Always kind of struggled in that way but I had the drive to finish
00:08:13
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Then I ended up meeting a professor who at the time was at the University of Arkansas, Dr. Mike Evans. They had an assistantship and I applied. Then before I knew it, shortly after my wife and I got married, we were headed from Tucson, Arizona to Fayetteville, Arkansas. Go Razorbacks.
00:08:36
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And I went from studying hydroponic food production to greenhouse ornamental production.
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Now my goal was to get my doctorate degree and then go on and be a professor, teach some classes, conduct research, and be this liaison between business and academia, because at the time it seemed like there was a pretty big disconnect between what was going on in industry and academic research. And I really gravitated towards applied research versus basic research. So I graduate in 2008.
00:09:14
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And when we have the great recession, all the universities either wanted postdocs and I had a week, my wife and I, we had a young son at the time. So I was, I was done. I did not want to continue on doing that. And so a postdoc was out of the question universities that did have full time opportunities. Many of them began to freeze those positions because of the recession. So I started thinking, well,
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Okay, well maybe the public sector isn't for me, maybe I need to go to private sector and start looking for jobs in industry. So I did.
Career Shift Post-Recession
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And for the last 14 years, I've worked in industry for many great companies, many of them startups, and I've done everything from sales to technical service, product development, in outdoor agriculture, indoor agriculture,
00:10:16
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all over the United States, almost all of the United States, still have a few states to check off the old list. But one of the things that I've loved along the way is that breadth, being kind of a jack of all trades, master of none, and being exposed to all the different types of agriculture, not only here in the US, but in a few countries abroad.
00:10:44
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but high tech greenhouse, the highest tech, the most technologically advanced greenhouses available to get old fashioned soil based agriculture. And I love it all. I'm not one to say one is better than the other. I think they all have their place. I respect
00:11:11
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All of it doesn't matter where in the world or whether it's indoor, outdoor, doesn't matter.
Podcast Goals: Topics and Experience Sharing
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I think when we say we have so many billions of people to feed by 2050, what is the solution? My answer is always all of the above. It's not A, B, C, or D. It's E. It's everything. And so with that exposure and experience over the last
00:11:42
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going back to the teenager picking tomatoes. I've seen quite a few things and I want to share that with not only the experts,
00:11:52
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but also the lay person. So this podcast is, it's going to be eclectic and it's for everyone. It's not gonna lean heavy on any one type of agricultural topic. I plan to interview or have conversations with people from all over. And I don't mean just geographically, I mean all over the agricultural spectrum.
00:12:22
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could be golf course superintendents, could be dairy farmers.
Focus on Innovation and Sustainability
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I will probably lean more towards regenerative agriculture and controlled environment ag with an emphasis on innovation and sustainability because I think that's where agriculture is heading and needs to head with resource management, et cetera.
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But like myself, I have a broad interest in agriculture and I think from my experience, what I've noticed is there are things that we can all learn from each other regardless of what, how we contribute to agriculture. Field farmers can learn from controlled environment agriculture producers and vice versa. Sports turf.
00:13:17
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doesn't matter, animal production, grazers, the list goes on. And I think there's some exciting things going on in all of those sectors. And so I want to learn about it and I want to share what I'm learning with you. So thank you again for listening to this podcast.
Business Insights: Leadership and Succession
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I may chime in every now and again as I reflect on what I'm seeing or maybe an experience I had, but most of the time it will be an interview-based podcast. I also plan to, every three or four episodes,
00:14:04
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maybe shift away from an agriculture focus, because it's called agribusiness. So the other half of that is business. So I also plan to interview people that may be experts in leadership or succession planning, human resources, labor, those topics that maybe we don't think about, but every business owner deals with.
00:14:33
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and how it relates to take it for what it's worth and see how it fits into your business or even just your daily life. So thank you. And I look forward to sharing this journey with you. Take care.