Creating value and new markets with sorghum - Nate Blum

Hi, I'm Paul Yeager, welcome to the MtoM Show podcast, a production of Iowa PBS in the Market to Market TV show. Hey, we're in the studio. And I don't know how much you notice some of the stuff that's in the background. I don't know if you've ever looked. But I'm just curious if you have you have something you think that might be fun on the shelf, you can always mail it to me: PO Box 6450 Johnston, Iowa, 50131. Curious what somebody might send. I do have a couple of coffee mugs that need to be added that had been sent. So keep an eye out for those. And we are going to expand our horizons when it comes to grains, small grains, in particular, sorghum, and millets. We'll talk milo here this week, Nate Blum is the Executive Director of Sorghum United. That's a group that is aimed at promoting the use of sorghum not just in the United States, but around the world. We are going to be talking about products, the demand for those products who's growing, where are they growing? Who's using, what is being used? What's happening domestically? Maybe you're thinking about sorghum, but what's your impediments? We'll talk about those. And we'll also get into a global discussion about this product as well as agriculture in general. And we have the story of a comic book. It's all I'm going to do for a tease. New episodes come out each and every Tuesday. Subscribe, where you get your podcasts for the MToM Show podcast, or you can follow us or like us on YouTube. And then you get the updates sent to you each and every Tuesday when new episodes come out. But now, let's get into sorghum. 

[Yeager] This is kind of strange to actually get you in Nebraska. I mean, what do you do they recognize you in Lincoln or not?

[Nate Blum]  I tell you what, it's always great to be back after some travels, a lot of my time is spent overseas. And I gotta tell you, it's always nice to know that your family misses you while you're gone. God bless my wife for holding down the fort. But the nature of my work is just that that it's not always here.

[Yeager] If your passport had pages filled, how many are empty? Do you only have like five pages left in the book?

[Blum] You know, it's actually funny, you asked that I was just looking at my passport this morning. So I'm preparing for another trip. I'm at six, I've got six blanks left.

[Yeager] What are some of the places you've been to, we'll just say in 2023.

[Blum] Oh, all of 2023. Well, let's see. In June, I was at the Global Sorghum Conference in Montpelier, France. And that was an excellent meeting with a lot of research around sorghum and millets in particular, globally. That was very productive. And then I followed that up with a trip to Egypt just to go see some of the sights while he was in the area. Most recently, I just got back from was in Senegal for a week talking about Grains Research in West Africa, and how we can work with them as an organization. And then I went on to India for nearly a month, quite frankly, and I was all over the country of India, lots of great meetings with stakeholders there, that country is doing great work. And we can talk more about that later. I also during that time was in Singapore for about a week for a global FinTech conference. And then I followed that up with a personal visit, maybe a holiday, you could say to Cambodia to go see Angkor Wat and some of the archaeological sites there. And then a very brief visit in Taiwan before finally coming home. So a total of about six weeks. Earlier there, you know, honestly, I'm sorry, I traveled so much. There may have been somewhere else I went earlier in the spring. And I just off top my head, I don't recall

[Yeager] What are these missions and trips about? 

[Blum] Well, so Sorghum United is a global organization. So we have stakeholders on every continent. And those stakeholders represent all points within the value chain. Now we focus on food security, and economic and environmental sustainability through the lens of small grains like sorghum, and millets. But what that means is, in reality, our work is all over the planet as well. Right? So a lot of what we're doing right now as an organization is building relationships, building our global network, which were well over 100 stakeholders, like I said, everywhere around the world, and just finding ways to collaborate both with institutions and provide value to our farmers and our processors around the issues of food security, nutrition, and again, environmental and economic sustainability.

[Yeager] Sorghum keeps coming up on our show, often, that some farmers who may have planted wheat are saying, You know what, I'm going to try sorghum. But some of the growth comes in areas where there's corn and beans. Let's just talk in the United States. How widespread is sorghum use right now?

[Blum] Well, so that's the thing and that's what we're working on. So a lot of sorghum in fact, 93% of us sorghum goes to the export markets and nine and that's actually pretty merrily, China, that China actually buys 80% of the world's supply of sorghum. So you know, that's fantastic. That's great. But it also means there's some market price manipulation that can happen when they are buying those volumes. And when they're not buying, like we saw during the trade dispute, it's a big problem for our farmers because those prices tank, we're seeing more growth in the US around pet food, in particular, snack foods are really coming along. But there's, you know, there's a big issue and a lot of work to do around general consumer awareness for sorghums role in food, fuel and fiber applications. Let's talk about fuel just for a second. You know, Nebraska is a big ethanol state, right? And we're a corn state, you're a corn state there in Iowa. We don't use sorghum in any ethanol in Nebraska, and in the ethanol production, but down in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, they do. So there's no reason we can't. It's just a question of awareness and creating that demand. So you know, what we focus on sorghum United isn't so much those big commodity markets, not filling the boats. What we're more interested in whether it's here in the United States, or in East Africa, or in Southeast Asia, is creating value added local markets, so that farmers who are growing these grains, both sorghum and millets, maybe they can mitigate their commodity risk with their other crops, by direct contracting with local processing. For these grains, in particular, that's what we focus on to provide additional value, which then allows us to get a monoculture cropping systems, which has a lot of environmental benefits as well. And by the way, when we do that, we can also encourage entrepreneurialism, and create jobs and economic opportunities within that region as well.

[Yeager] You mentioned the large commodity. I mean, let's go back to the China part of that discussion of the answer you just said. I mean, even in corn and soybeans, there's always the accusations of China manipulation. So no matter how big you get with sorghum, there's always going to be that discussion with China. But let's go to, where are your producers? In terms of located? Are they closer to ports, then? Are they in the middle of the country? Where are the biggest US producers of sorghum right now?

[Blum] Kansas is the number one state and Texas is number two. Now you raise a really good point. This is actually one of the things that really shaped my vision towards these regional value chains. Because prior to my role in Sorghum United, I was a director with the Nebraska Grain Sorghum Board. And one thing I know and being a farm kid here, too, I already had an inkling of this. But the reality is the folks that are farmers that are in Iowa and Nebraska, you know, we're never going to get a premium for our grain, I don't care what you're growing, because you've got the transportation costs to the port. So when a country like China is paying a premium for sorghum, the farmers down in the Coastal Bend to Texas, they're the ones that are really capturing that and good for them, they should, okay. But here in the middle of the country, where we're landlocked, we're never going to get the premium. But we can use our geographic shortcoming as an asset, actually, because we're centrally located. Right. So locating processing proximate to the production of the grain and states like Iowa and Nebraska, means that the processors can decrease their supply lines, farmers have better access than to direct contracting and to the processors. And by the way, we're in Nebraska where two and a half days by truck from anywhere in the continental US with excellent road rail and air infrastructure. So this makes a lot of sense. Let's make our disadvantage our advantage and capture that value and create jobs and economic opportunities here.

[Yeager] Let's say we're gonna go to Grand Island and try to have a conversation with someone there, middle of, middle-ish of the state. How do you have a conversation with someone and to become or find a silo that you can then be thrown into with other grains? How do you get someone to expand their business to add sorghum?

[Blum] Well, it's funny you say Grand Island because they actually do have an item's pet food particles. There you go. So they take sorghum and take sorghum from Aurora cooperative based on contract already. So that's a really great example. You know the answer to your question has to be through infrastructure development. You know, one thing that we found in other countries that works really well is they have small business incubators usually set up by a government or a nonprofit agency and NGO. And they're, they're buying, allowing for the storage and then allowing entrepreneurs to come and use that grain, buy that grain and process it. We don't have that kind of a thing here in Nebraska, or even maybe in Iowa, as far as I know, for sorghum. And so that's actually been one of our priorities for a while and I'll be happy to talk to you in a few months because I think we're going to make some headway on something similar to this.

[Yeager] I think of a pork producing plant or a cow/animal producing plant, they go where the product is. So if there's a product grown in Kansas, I'm guessing that might be you've spent some time in Kansas having discussion whether it's in Topeka or Wichita, or I could name another random small town if you want that where you could have other items. Try to build a footprint? Is that the hope? Is that the dream?

[Blum] Well, you know, here's, here's one of the things that you mentioned the pork and the, I'd say the beef industry as well. They put the processing where they where the product is, so to speak. But in grains, we don't do that. And for example, we've got it out. There's an entrepreneur that her name is Joni Kindwall-Moore, she lives in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, which is way up in the north of Idaho. And she's got a company called Snacktivist Foods. She buys sorghum and millets, from Southwest Nebraska. And she has to have it shipped to I think, Ohio now to have it cleaned and bagged and processed, and then shipped back to get done grocery store shelves in the West Coast. That doesn't make sense. But the reality is, we don't have that infrastructure here. You know, so we do a good job with this in you know, again, I'd say poultry to poultry, beef, swine, but we don't do it in grains, we have a little bit of value added processing for things like some wheat, corn, but not very much even really, most of that gets processed somewhere else. We've got to do a better job of being intentional about how we approach the value added proposition for our farmers if we're going to be economically sustainable.

[Yeager] Well, I think ethanol plants to an extent have kind of become that value added I can think of, you know, several that are closer to where the grain has grown. So I mean, it can be done. It's not unheard of.

[Blum] Well, yeah, exactly. We're not reinventing the wheel. We're just putting some new tread on it. You know, ethanol plants are a great example in the sorghum and millets world. Look at birdseed producing companies, right, South Dakota actually produces most years more sorghum than Nebraska. Why? Because they have some really big bird seed production facilities and their direct contracting the farmers around them to grow those grains, we see the same thing out by Sidney, Nebraska, where Pennington Seeds is located. So again, we're not reinventing the wheel, we're just wanting to scale it up, put some more tread on it, and really use this as an opportunity not only to give our farmers, you know, another market proximate to where they're at, but to increase the awareness for consumers within the US market who are looking for healthier and more climate sustainable grains, like sorghum and millets.

[Yeager] You mentioned sorghum and millets. I do want you to define the two because I know there's a couple people who watch this on a regular basis like, ‘Okay, tell me what I get sorghum, tell me what millets are?’

[Blum] Well, so the funny thing is, most of the world considers sorghum, a major millet versus a minor millet. But the thing I like to tell people is there's no such thing as millets at all, actually, this is kind of a post European colonial hangover. And what happened was when European powers went into places like Africa, and like India, and Asia, and they saw these small grains, of which there are dozens of varieties, most of them within the Poaceae family, which sorghum is also an Poaceae family. They didn't know what they were. And so they lumped them all in one category and said these are millets. But the reality is that I mean, you've got like foxtail proso finger barnyard sorghum is a major millet, you know, so they're all related. But you know, the term millets is kind of a leftover term. But these are grains that are among the first that mankind ever cultivated. So they come out of Mesopotamia, they come out of Africa, the drought resistant, they're highly nutritive, and more and more research that we're seeing, I want to say like over 200 Now research papers that have been independently published by academic institutions around the world peer reviewed, you know, they're showing human health benefits to things like anti inflammatory disease, anti carcinogenic, heart, health, diabetic and more benefits for these grains. And so the world is kind of waking up to the importance of having these grains reintroduced into people's diets. And we're really careful to say, by the way, that there's room on the plate for everybody, so we're not anti corn, we're not anti wheat or soy. There's room on the plate for everybody. Why do we specifically advocate for these grains? Because nobody else is. And, you know, we feel like that's something that needs to be done.

[Yeager] You bring up a couple of points of interest that I that I want to revisit, because it sounds like you might be dealing with a little bit of a chicken egg because debate because if I'm a producer in western Iowa, and I'm thinking okay, you know what, we just had a lot of drought for the last four years, so we're always in a drought. So maybe I'm gonna go to sorghum but I need a place to sell it. So how do you have that conversation with the talking points you just gave me to the points of I need to have an out and I don't turn into the person in northern Idaho trying to get to Ohio and back.

[Blum] I'm smiling because this is a conversation that happens a lot. And I love to answer it. It's not a chicken and egg, or chicken or egg, it's chicken and egg. The reality is, and we've got to be myriad in our approaches to what's really a complex problem. If we increase supply without increasing demand, that farmers aren't going to get a price that's worth the time and they're not going to grow it again, maybe for another 30 years. And if we increase demand without having the supply, then processors that are making the formulations that can't get sorghum, then they're gonna move on to the next thing. So the reality is it has to be measured and done at the same time. So we don't just do, you know, consumer and markets, education and development. You know, we try also to bring our farmers along at the same time, so we don't get that out of balance. And that's the difficulty now. It's a fun challenge to address. But what I would tell farmers when you're making, I don't care what you're planting, okay, again, I'm a farm kid. So I mean, this when I say, I don't care what you're planting, think about the value over the volume, when what I mean by that is trying to be intentional with what you're planting. So instead of just buying hay, I'm going to grow, you know, this variety this year, because that's what my seed dealers got available, or that's where I get a higher, higher yield. Try to find that end user, what variety do they want, it's like any other business, talk to your customer, before we make a business decision. And in sorghum this is really important, because there's a lot of different varieties, and they have different applications commercially. Right. So if you've got somebody who is making sorghum flour, then you're going to want to plant a white sorghum, if you're planning to sell it to China as a premium, so they can distill it and make it into what they call Bijo, which is an alcoholic drink, you're going to want to have a waxy variety. So instead of just throwing a seed in the ground, let's have a conversation before planting season about what variety does our customer want? You know, that's really important.

[Yeager] It sounds like you might be able to have more success having this discussion, the the answer to that question, in wheat country where they do have those different varieties and understand the differences between hard and soft and white, and red. And all of these things because of the products or the makeup of all these products is where you see the biggest chance for growth.

[Blum] See the biggest chance for growth wherever you can get that value added processing, located proximate to the production of the grain. I mean, that's it. And it just depends on what the processing is. I mean, whether it's a food product, an ethanol product, a fuel product, or you know, maybe it's an industrial application, we've got a company in Texas that makes blowing insulation. There's a guy here in Lincoln, Nebraska, with a company called Pro Materials, he's scaling up, he's making carbon fiber with grain sorghum. So I mean, all of these different applications, they need different varieties. And so I mean, you're asking where's the largest potential for growth, where the potential for growth is having the processing, whatever it is close to the farm and then getting those contracts?

[Yeager] Yeah. And that's, again, back to the way I see it in the way I asked why I asked the question about, well, you gotta you gotta convince somebody to build a processing plant that or at least to have, you know, two months out of the year where they're going to process your your product, but you need Okay. You mentioned drought resistance. That's the discussion that is on a lot of farmers’ mind right now, why is sorghum one of those drought resistant, not resistant, but tolerable? Have drier conditions.

[Blum] Actually go back? I'd say it is drought resistant. So part of that it's part of the Poaceae family, which is a grass family. So what I always tell students when I'm talking to students, which I do a fair amount of, is, you know, if you've got I'm looking at my lawn right now, I'm on my back patio. And we just had that nice rain last night. You know, but earlier in the year when it was very dry in June, all that green grass was very brown, but it didn't die. When it got water again, we turn on the sprinklers, it greened up. Sorghum does the same thing. So it goes dormant rather than burning up and dying now that will affect your yield. The longer your drought is, the lower your yield will be okay, but it won't die. So you might at least get part of something rather than all of nothing out of planting it. Why is it so drought resistant? Well, it's not just because it's because of genetically the way it's made up. It also has a very large biomass. It goes more than six feet down into the soil breaks up the compaction layer which allows them to access more water and nutrients from deeper. And by the way, a lot of farmers who are concerned about carbon markets what that might mean is an opportunity on their farm. Texas A&M published a research paper just last year that showed that sorghum is actually an optimal crop for carbon sequestration because that larger root biomass captures more carbon sequester is deeper and for longer, and by the way, this is old research. This is from Kansas State in the early 2000s, who what they found was because that larger biomass breakdown for compaction layer leaving more organic material in the soil in your cropping systems, when you plant corn in particular following sorghum and rotation, you'll see an average increase of about 8% in your in your yield following sorghum in rotation. So, but again, farmers aren't going to grow if they don't have somewhere to sell it on the farm kid again, I understand that. And so part of our job is really to make those markets happen that are valuable and local.

[Yeager] You mentioned you had a You had us at 8%. Any chance we could drop right there. You had me right there. Nate. You mentioned the consumer trying to drive up the interest and the demand from the consumer side. Your whole job is not about that. But what is it that you've done with the consumer I understand you have let's see if I get this right. It's called the Sorgho Squad in that it's aimed at children. Where's that aimed? What is it?

[Blum] That's right. So let me back up just for a second. Sorghum United is a global nonprofit. And like I said earlier, and we work in the space of food security, environmental and economic sustainability, but how the group of originally started. This was back when I was the director of the Nebraska sorghum board. I had been at a conference in Montpelier, France with sorghum ID which is the European version of the checkoff. And I was listening to their director guiding Martin Gomez, who's become a friend now. He was talking about the challenges that European sorghum had. And I'm sitting back in the room and I'm like you said the same problems we've got these are the same challenges we've got, right? I mean, it's it's round awareness. People don't know what we are. It's around, you know, lack of markets, and one country playing most of everybody's product. It's all of these things. And so I pulled them aside and I said, Hey, let's we can be competitors in some areas. But let's find ways to work together in the industry is not that big, globally. And so Sorghum United started really just kind of as a loose coalition, and people said, Hey, we're stakeholders, we want to find ways to work together. Now with the International Year of millets, which 2023 is the International Year of millets. Our group did a couple things. One, we studied the International Year of quinoa, which was very successful back in 2013. And we wanted to understand what made them successful. And then the other thing we did was we recognize that wherever you go in the world, sorghum is called something different. So for example, most of your listeners know sorghum is Milo. In East Africa, they'll call it mashilla. In India, one of the main names for it is Jowar. and in Europe, it's sorgho. Sor-G-H-O, rather than sorghum. And so what we did was we created, it seems kind of silly, but again, we're thinking of consumers, we created a series of 10 posters that were educational, and put three characters on the same page that had these different names. So people could recognize that they're all the same thing. So Jowar is a character who represents the industrial applications for sorghum. Mashilia is a character that represents the health and nutrition benefits for humans and animals and sorghum. And then Milo represents the environmental benefits for sorghum. And then the name Sorgho Squad, again, is representative of what the Europeans call it. So we developed a series of 10 posters. Those posters are actually available on our websites, SorghumUnited.com and Sorghsquad.com. They're free for download. They're great for classrooms, lots of education there. And most importantly, they're on display in Rome at the United Nations Food and Agricultural office, I hand delivered them at the opening ceremony of the International Year of millets. From there, we developed, we wanted to take these characters further, flesh them out and make them not just educational, but even a little bit of fun. And so we started writing a series of children's books here in 2023 Sorgho Squad, they’re graphic novel style books, they're aimed at kids between ages of nine and 13. Most importantly, they're aimed at their parents, parents who are interested in things like environmental sustainability, doing their part, and are interested in understanding better the nutrition that they're giving to their children. And so they're kind of a serial, think of it like a comic book. The first two books are available at SorghoSquad.com. And on Amazon, the third book should be up any day now. Actually, it's it's our publisher is just processing the digital copy right now. And then we'll have a fourth one by the end of the year. And by the way, we're launching a huge advertising campaign around these we're launching not only in North America, but globally as well. We've gotten great response great reviews. I'm actually approving a draft for the New York Times later today. And, you know, I described the books as Indiana Jones meets Captain Planet, you know, it's educational, it's adventure. It's fun. I'm an archeology nut. So there's a lot of archaeology in there. I'm a comic book nerd. So there's the comic book stuff in there, and more importantly, as an organization Sorghum United, we are an NGO, we can technically, you know, as a non-profit, we can go and ask any of our international partners in the industry for donations to sustain us. But a lot of what we're preaching to people is economic prosperity through entrepreneurialism, and we feel like we need to put our money where our mouth is. So the Sorgho Squad books are one of the funding sources that will fund our work in the future. And our work in the future, by the way, is really around connectivity. You know, on my travels recently, it's a good example. You know, we saw people that are doing great work in West Africa, in Asia, around sorghum and millet, whether it's in research, or or the actual farming, cultivation, processing, and even entrepreneurial, small business hubs. But there's incredible disconnects within the industry. So what sorghum United has been able to do and continues to be able to do is provide that connectivity that can act as a force multiplier for the industry to grow even further and faster.

[Yeager] You have the opportunity, it sounds like a Super Bowl ad, circle squad, you know, fighting it out for 30 seconds on the Super Bowl?

[Blum] I may have the opportunity, but I don't have the budget. 

[Yeager] I know. But you think of the audiences. I mean, there's farm groups that have taken to that or I mean, that's what they use that platform to a whole different group of consumers that might not. Where do you see opportunities? Think big? What are you thinking there?

[Blum] You know, this is a funny question, because there's actually a conversation we have with our marketing team, okay. And don't take this the wrong way. Because I think in agriculture, we need to be telling our story and talking in agriculture. But the problem is, and I found this and other in other projects, is if you're coming from agriculture, and you're talking directly agriculture, then the people that you're trying to talk to will pigeonhole you in the agricultural silos so to speak, and your message never gets out. What happens then is you're stuck in an echo chamber. You're stuck preaching to the choir when the congregation is the one that fills the offering plate. So what I've actually told our marketing team is with the sword goes with Sorghum United, yes, we're talking to a lot of agriculturalists. Okay, that's our audience. But with the Sorgho Squad books, those aren't aimed. In fact, they wanted us to target the Midwest to launch these, they said, No, I said, this has to be launched in New York, in LA, and Seattle, Miami, places like this, that are outside of agriculture, because that's who we're trying to talk to. And frankly, when you're talking about knowing your audience, we're not those books aren't talking necessarily about agriculture. They're talking about food security, malnutrition, environmental sustainability, income disparity, the things that are hot topics, for the consumer markets that we need to be developing. And so you know, we love agriculture, we love talking agriculture. But we've got to be very careful how we put our message out there. And this is a challenge I would give to your listeners as well. If you're wanting to reach outside of agriculture, be very conscientious about the language that you're using, because those decision makers that are going to decide where your your message gets pushed out to, they can be very easily dismissive and say, Oh, this is agriculture, boom, over here, and nobody outside of Ag’s ever got to hear.

[Yeager] You've spent enough time I'm guessing in Washington, DC, DC to know the importance of the Food and Farm Bill. You know, the farm bill is mostly food, but I mean, they have to have the two coalition's on and off the farm to pass. I mean, it's that same concept, you can't pull one out and expect any advances in the industry. Is that a fair comparison?

[Blum] That's a fair comparison. As a matter of fact, by the way, I spent five years prior to being the director of the Nebraska sorghum board. I was director of ag policy and outreach for the first congressional district of Nebraska. So I have spent a fair amount of time in Washington talking ag policy, I'm still there two or three times a year. And in fact, you know, you talk about the snap portion of the Farm Bill. I was actually doing Farm Bill advocate advocacy this last spring, and the argument that I was making was, you know, we want our farmers to do these conservation practices, we want to pay them to plant climate smart grains. We're investing in quantifying, by the way, what climate smart is, which is fantastic. But you're telling our policymakers, it doesn't matter. We can pay them to grow whatever, right. But what they really want are markets. And I said if you want markets and by the way, you want to decrease maybe some of the health costs that are coming out through the SNAP program. What we really need to be funding is maybe a consumer awareness campaign for sorghum and millets in particular, because again, of the nutritive benefits that the research is showing us and those populations which are vulnerable, that are maybe more likely to be using Snap may also be more likely to be using some federal health dollars, right. If we can improve their health outcomes on the front end through better diet, better products, then we can decrease our health care costs on the back end. And this is Still an argument that I continue to make?

[Yeager] And many others are having that same argument. I mean, they're trying to benefit or talk about benefits that their ag product has. I want to talk about, well, I guess. Well, you left a couple things. So you run it for Speaker of the House. And now that that job is open, I mean, anybody can do?

[Blum] I don’t have that brain power. Okay. I don't have that. Okay, either way.

[Yeager] Well, we'll try. But in DC with the Farm Bill, with the expiration here at the end of September, do you see? Do you think your work is done on where sorghum and in small grains are going to be included in this legislation? Or do you still see it as an opportunity for some type of expansion that can benefit your industry?

[Blum] I don't think their work is ever done. You know, one thing that I know the industry has been working on for quite a while and I'd like to give kudos to the United sorghum Checkoff Program, you know, as I was the director of the Nebraska sorghum Board, who worked with him quite a bit, and they've got a strong presence in Washington as far as making sure that those policy priorities are out there. But what you know, sorghum has really been disparaged over the years in the Farm Bill in particular, as it pertains to crop insurance. You know, and so I know that's an industry or an area in which the industry is trying and working with RMS to find ways to improve the crop insurance situation. And that's, I'm happy to say within the last couple of years is finally getting some strides. But I think when we're talking ag policy and talking to folks who are making policy pertaining to agriculture, I don't think our work has ever done. You know, I think we need to be consistently vigilant and consistently telling our story. And doing so in such a way, by the way that's not argumentative, but complimentary. Having conversations to understand rather than to convince is a great way to bring policymakers and even the public along, and I use the non GMO conversation. Here's an example. Okay, sorghum is a non GMO crop. And for a long time, it was simply because we didn't have the research dollars, some sort of got left out of the GMO conversation. So it was a detriment, right? Well, now there are more and more people that want non GMO crops, there's more and more countries that want non GMO crops. Now, I always tell people, listen, the research has always shown that GMOs are safe to eat, they're safe for humans. And in fact, you've had GMOs since Gregory Mendel played with peas, or even longer, okay, it's just a difference of how we do it now. But the reality is, if you've got a customer that wants a non GMO product, and you have a non GMO product, then as a business, you should just sell it to me, you don't need to be dishonest, but you don't need to be argumentative either. If that's what they want. That's what they want. If I go to Pizza Hut and I order a pepperoni pizza, they don't start out by telling me why I should have sausage instead, they just send me the pizza. And we need to be doing that more in agriculture. We need to be listening to our consumers, rather than just arguing with them in correcting where we can but doing so in a way that brings them along.

[Yeager] I prefer conversation over arguments any day of the week. I also like sausage over pepperoni, but that will get me in trouble with and and a whole nother thing on Nate. I know we're kind of up against time here. But I'd be remiss if I didn't mentioned India was a place that you had been. Give me a high level understanding of India from an American Farmer standpoint and then tied into what you're doing and where you see opportunities there.

[Blum] Okay, well, high level overview of India. First of all, while I was there, while I was in India, which I was there for about a month, Prime Minister Modi actually visited the White House, and they had a meal at the White House that they served sorghum and millets by the way, while I was in the country, India landed a rover on the south pole of the moon. While I was in India, they hosted the G 20. Everywhere I went in India, I saw infrastructure, investment, roads, rail and more. And they have taken great strides under the Modi government to start curving back things like corruption and even just general trash on the streets. I would tell you that India is ascendant their economy is fantastically growing. I think they're going to be a great potential trade partner with the United States. Now they have some protectionist policies within agriculture. That will have to be hashed out. But that's why we have a US Trade Representative right. Now, at the same time, you know, they're dealing with drought issues and stuff too. In fact, they're limiting their rice and wheat exports. And at the same time, the government there recognizes that they need to be looking closer at sorghum and millets. And they're the whole reason why we have the International Year of millets, by the way, was because the Indian delegation pushed it I talked to some decision makers there that are talking about doing a decade of millets within the country, our organization. You know, it was really it was really a benefit for us to be there to meet with a lot of the stakeholders and the buyers and the traders and the processors that are really growing the industry and I think they're leading the way and frankly, the same messages are being followed on deaf ears in Europe, North America and South America, Africa gets it. He gets it. We need to be thinking about these things is where dealing with drought not just here in North America, but along the Mediterranean basin in Europe. I mean, it's terribly hit by drought. We have to do better about talking to our farmers in India and can provide us with a lot of lessons.

[Yeager] Well, we've had a lot of lessons today, Nate, I appreciate you taking time. Next time we've got it next time you're in India, maybe we'll do a follow up and we can put India in the background instead of the under the side of your house.

[Blum] It would be great I mean, I am always that will be most happy resource anyway, I can for sure. I appreciate

[Yeager] Thank you for carving out time, Nate. Thank you so much.

[Blum] Yeah, thank you.

[Yeager] If you have a tip for me, send it in an email Paul.Yeager@IowaPBS.ORG that's YEAGER or you can email, it's easy to remember this way. MarkettoMarket@IowaPBS.org. New episodes each and every Tuesday. We'll see you next time. Thank you so much for watching.