From battlefield to farm field: Independence Day special

Narrator: And it all comes down to this. 2 on, 2 out, bottom of the 9th. The Farmers lead by 1.

Chris: Full count.

Narrator: Here comes the play at the plate.

Grant

Barron: And it's the Ag View Pitch!

Chris: Hey everybody, welcome today to the Ag View Pitch. You've got Chris Barron here today. We've got a couple of special guests with us. We've got Shay Foulk, who you've all listened to several times in some of the podcasts along the way. And we've also got Grant Barron. Happens to be related to me as well. So we want to talk a little bit today about, as we get to the Fourth of July, some of the things that we're having go on in our operation. We're really fortunate to have a couple of the boys back to the farm from the military. And so want to just have a little conversation, you know, because when these guys come back to the farm, things are a little different than it, than it was in military. And Um, let's start out. Grant, why don't you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about where you've been and what you're experiencing as you come back to farm.

Give us a little intro to start. All right.

Grant

Barron: Uh, hey everyone, happy Fourth! So just introducing myself, I left the farm. I enlisted at, uh, 17. Had to get both my parents in there to the recruiter's office and sign off. I left, uh, Iowa at 18 and was in the Marine Corps for 5 years. I was enlisted as an intelligence analyst and I was stationed out in Hawaii. I did 2 UDPs to Japan and South Korea. Um, just, I decided to get out of the Marine Corps because I missed the family aspect a lot and I wasn't really getting out of the But it did bring back a lot of things that I think we're going to get to dive into and talk about in the rest of this podcast.

Chris: Great. Uh, we'll get, we'll, we'll dig into you a little more here, Grant. Uh, go ahead, Shay, give us a little background as a, as the Army Ranger and kind of where, where you're at and what you went through so far.

Narrator: Yeah, thanks for having me on today. And we're from Northeast Iowa around the Waterloo area. I went to Iowa State University, graduated with a degree in agronomy in 2015, and then 9 days later I enlisted, went active duty, and, uh, went through a few different rounds of training—basic, airborne, and then the Ranger Assessment Selection Program—where I became a member of the, the 75th Ranger Regiment. So for those of you that don't know, what an Army Ranger is or who the 75th Ranger Regiment is. It's what you think of when you think of a soldier, people in the Army shooting guns, blowing stuff up, and getting to do a lot of the cool guy stuff on helicopters. But it's a really excellent experience within the special operations community.

I served there for the last 4 years, and I'm currently transitioning out back into agriculture and Kind of how Grant segued that is one of the reasons that I'm getting out is agriculture's my calling. It's something that I'm really interested in doing. I grew up around it and just looking forward to the opportunity to get back in and do, do some of the things that I really enjoyed and spend more time around family. Awesome.

Chris: So you guys have had obviously a kind of a unique experience because You know, Shay, you've already been to college. Grant, you got— you're back and you're gonna— you got 2 years of college yet to go. And, um, I mean, you guys talk to us a little bit about, um, this aspect. And I'll lead you into it by saying, you know, we work with a lot of clients that have had military experience, and we see an operational style that a lot of those and how they organize, how they structure things. Maybe just a little bit more structure in how they do things is a different way to, to put it. So I'll pick on you, Grant, first. You know, what, what do you think you're bringing back to the farm operation that's going to be different? And what are some of the things that, that you guys think that you can bring back and that you got out of the military that's is going to be a positive.

Grant

Barron: And any other comments? Yeah, uh, thanks for the question. Uh, so basically what I brought back from the military, I think, is organization. Definitely. I'm able to now take a task and not get, um, lose my train of thought and, you know, get ping pong in my brain going back and forth. I can, you know, lay everything out in front of me that I need to do in order to accomplish a task. And so that organization leading into discipline, being able to get that task accomplished in a timely fashion, and then also being able to take initiative while doing that task. Like, you know, someone tells me to get something done and I notice while I'm, you know, doing that task, something else needs to get accomplished, then I'll go over there and do that.

And then dependability, I think, is the biggest thing I'm bringing back, is if someone needs me to get something done, you know, they don't have to look over my shoulder the whole time I'm doing it. I'll just go ahead and complete the task all the way through. So I think those are the 4 big things I'm bringing back and I took out from the military is organization, discipline, initiative, and dependability. Cool.

Chris: And then what was your job, Grant, to touch on that for a second?

Grant

Barron: All right. So basically my job was an intelligence analyst. I did a lot of reading, focusing on— You didn't like reading in school. No, I didn't like reading in school one bit. So it was kind of a shock to me. I didn't really know what I was getting myself into when I chose this job, but I ended up taking a lot out of it, being able to now— Hopefully this will help me out, but So my job was to focus on the weather, enemy, and terrain, and I'm sure Shay got briefs from nerds like me, you know, before he went out at night to go do goon stuff with his goon friends. But guys like me would deal with the maps and deal with understanding what the— how the weather is going to affect the operation, how the enemy is going to affect the operation, and how the terrain is going to affect the operation. And I think out here nowadays we got the weather is the enemy, isn't it?

Chris: Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. And you were in, uh, where you were in Korea, right?

Grant

Barron: So I, uh, I did 2 deployments to Korea. I worked in the Joint Intelligence Operations Center in South Korea focusing on the, um, North Korean threat where we kind of just studied Kim Jong-un and his missile program and everything that he was doing up there, uh, almost at the height of, uh, when he was— this is when Trump was calling him Rocket Man, when he was tossing everything. Yeah, when he was throwing missiles over Japan. Remember that? Um, so we were keeping ourselves pretty busy over there, and it was a really good experience. Uh, definitely got over my fear of reading.

Chris: And if you tell us any more than that, you'd have to kill us, right?

Grant

Barron: There's, there's— I mean, Shay can attest, there's a lot of it goes up to, um, that top secret stuff. So definitely, uh, Just keeping it unclassified here. Gotcha, gotcha.

Chris: Okay, Shay, your turn. Give us your pitch.

Narrator: This is really good with Grant going first. It gives me a lot of time to think here. So I guess to answer the original question of what do I find myself bringing back or utilizing day to day in agriculture, and Chris, you said it really well. With a conversation that we had early on. And something I've been able to do is create structure in an unstructured environment. And I really took that to heart. You don't realize, as Grant alluded to, how, how disciplined and organized and task-oriented you get through your time in the military. And it's a natural development and a natural progression. And bringing that back into the world of agriculture when there's a different task every 27 minutes, you know, you, you have a plan for the day and then you get punched in the mouth with 3 things that need to go on.

And it's how do you create structure in that unstructured environment to ensure that you accomplish the mission? And that's the first thing that I found that I've brought back. The second thing is time is relevant. And I say that for 2 reasons. The first reason is we don't work on 12-hour shifts or 8-hour shifts. We work on 24-hour days or 36 or 48-hour days or whatever it is necessary to accomplish that mission. And a lot of operations this spring had to deal with some of that that they may not be accustomed to. But I found that I, I was able to thrive in that environment because I love sitting there in the planner at 3:00 AM and just going and, you know, accomplishing the mission and filling in where I need to. And then when it comes time in the morning for someone else to take over or to move on to the next task, that's what you do. So time is relevant in that aspect.

And then the other thing and the other reason that I say time is relevant is we all have the same amount of time. And one thing that I found is I don't use time as an excuse anymore because we've all been given the same amount of time. So when people says, oh, I don't have time for that. No, you have the time. You just haven't made the time to do it. And I don't mean that to be cynical. It's just allowed me a good opportunity to really task-orient and say, Okay, what is the one thing that I need to accomplish right now in order to achieve my mission and my goal for the day or the week or the month or whatever it is that your trajectory is? So that's the second thing that I found myself bringing back to the farm. And the third thing is just working with people. And, and people are everywhere. It's, it's no different from job to job.

But what you come to realize is that there's people that you enjoy working with, there's people that you tolerate, and then there's people that you really don't like working with. And that's no different from any job, whether it's the military, or if you're a cashier, or working in agriculture. People are people. And not only on the consulting side of things, but actually working in agriculture, once you come to realize that and learn to work with people and how you interact with them, I, I've gotten a lot out of that from the, the last 4 years of experience. So, and then there's just 2 or 3 other things that I want to tap on real quick. Like Grant said, the task organization and reliability, I found that that's something that stands out with the military experience.

Chris: You're cutting out there. Second out on your task orientation.

Narrator: Yep. So with the task organization and reliability, that's something that I found really stands out to people with the military experience. They recognize that right away. And then I think Grant so eloquently put it, uh, goon friends doing goon things. But with those cool guy things that we were doing is we did it with safety. And so one of the focuses that I've had coming back is, you know, taking agriculture and the inherent risk that we associate with that and saying, okay, it doesn't need to be this way. How can we do this safer and still perform? So a long-winded answer to the question, but those are the 3 or 4 things that I found myself coming back to.

Chris: Great. Anything you want to add now that you get to listen to Shay?

Grant

Barron: Well, no, I just thought that Shay, you brought up some really good points with not only the organization, but being able to prioritize after you organize, right? If I have 3 or 4 tasks I got to accomplish in the day and then 4 or 5 tasks that also have to be accomplished over the week, you know, I have to be able to prioritize what, you know, takes precedence if I can't get it all accomplished in my 24-hour day. And then also, I thought you hit it on the head with the people. It's just everywhere.

Chris: You were sitting here laughing when you said that.

Grant

Barron: Yeah, I had to hold back. But you know, you, you hit it on the head. You learn to deal with all sorts of people, I think, and that's a great thing to be able to bring back. You know, like, if I dealt with some people that I thought shouldn't even be in the Marine Corps because of X, Y, or Z, um, I had to deal with them and I had to, you know, accomplish the mission with them either way. And I think that's important to be able to bring back to an environment where You know, you don't always get to choose who you work with, so just being able to accomplish the mission with anyone is extremely important.

Narrator: Yeah, great point.

Chris: We got a lot going on in agriculture right now. Technology is, is a huge impact to our business. We've talked about people, the organizational side of things, but what do you guys think? I mean, you know, Shay, before we even started the conversation, you're like, I'm 25 and I feel like I'm 35. And, you know, you guys have, have matured. Um, not that, you know, you don't mature in college, but— and you do, um, you mature a lot every year. But you guys, you know, come back and, and firsthand experience, I'm sitting here watching you guys both take initiative and do some pretty, um, crazy things. I mean, just on your own and, and not really need anybody to tell you what to do anymore, almost. You guys can see the big picture now.

So between seeing the big picture and understanding technology, what do you guys, you know, what do you guys see as you move forward into agriculture from a technical perspective that, that is a big deal, or some things that we can use? I'm going to pick on you first, Shay, um, on the, on the technical side of things. Um, what are you bringing back? What do you think Where do you think we can go with, with, you know, the internet, all of the, the stuff that we're doing on the Ag View Solutions side of things? You know, talk a little bit about that.

Narrator: Yeah, so the first thing that I'll talk about there, I guess, is attitude that you take towards technology and growth and development. And there's a lot of different ways to say it, but I think the first thing is if you're not growing, you're dying. And that applies not only to business principles, but with the information and technology that you're using. And I'm sure Grant can, you know, attest to this, but with technology advancements, if the enemy has the same technology as you do, you need to be looking for the next best thing. You need to understand their capabilities and, and know how you can improve and capitalize on that. And the same comes back to farming. How are you going to make a progressive operation, make, you know, with it making economical sense, in order to make better yield and improve your marketing. So, so those are two things involved with technology.

Now, as far as the technology application itself, one of the things that I am really intrigued by that I think will have a huge impact on the future of agriculture is 5G. And so if there's people out there that don't understand, I'll give you the, the Army Ranger version of what it is. But basically, there's no latency or there's no lag in your communication when it bounces from you back to the tower and then wherever it needs to go. And so that will allow people— for the classic, um, example, a surgeon in Tokyo can walk into his little VR room and perform a surgery on someone that's in Cincinnati if he or she is the best doctor in the world to do that.

Now, that might be the first applications, but let's look 10, 15, 20 years down the road, when you have tractors that are driving themselves in fields, and you have fleets of drones that deploy to give daily crop updates and to do micro spraying for pests and, you know, any other herbicide control or whatever, that, that is going to be a phenomenal development in technology to the point where We might be running the combine from the office in 15 or 20 years. And if you're not ready to, to comprehend that, I don't care how old you are. I don't care if you're 17 or 87. If you want to be part of the operation, if you want to succeed in the next 20 to 30 years, I truly believe that you need to stop looking at it from an age or whatever your comfort level is and just dive headfirst into the technology. Stay current with what's out there.

And kind of invest in the next infrastructure as, as you're capable to. You bet, Grant.

Grant

Barron: All right, so kind of what Shay said a little bit, uh, the attitude is extremely important, right? Everyone must be willing to grow, and you're going to grow through technology, I believe. So, um, I think he also hit it on the head with the tractors driving themselves, but I'm going to take it a step further and say in the next 20, 15, 20 years, trucks are going to be driving themselves on the road, right? Once they can— I mean, Tesla drove across country from California to, um, to New York with no one touched the wheel or the pedals or anything. That's already happened. So, um, the next thing that's going to come is going to be those tractors driving themselves in the field. That's, you know, easy for coders to do nowadays. And then, um, after that, it's going to be semi-trucks driving themselves, I think, the next 15 to 20 years.

Other than that, what I've seen firsthand that our farm already has and is employing is these new drones that just go up, go around the field, they do your scouting for you. You pull up to the field, you plug in the coordinates, and they do everything and give you that whole report. So I think, you know, as farmers are generally older, they still need to be willing and have good attitude, be willing to grow and adapt to these new technologies.

Narrator: You bet. Here, and I want to caveat off that. That's an awesome point, Grant. You mentioned growing older there at the end, and people think that you're crazy when you say this, but if you're 50, 60, 70 listening to this podcast right now, you better be prepared to live to 110 or 115. It's, it's going to be a whole different ballgame. And if you're less than 40, you don't need to be thinking about 40 growing seasons. You need to be thinking about 80 growing seasons. Because as the technology develops, not only in agriculture, but in the medical capabilities that we have and what we have, what we will have access to, stop being of the mindset that if you're enjoying what you're doing, you don't need to retire when you're, you know, 65, 67, 70. You're going to be able to continue to do these things that you love.

So be prepared for that, not only financially, but when it comes to the point of what is the legacy in your farm look like? You know, how does that look with collaboration and even more importantly, multi-generation operations where you might have 3 or 4 generations working side by side? And I don't know if that conversation's being had or if a lot of people are prepared for that right now.

Chris: You bet. We've also worked with a lot of growers over the last few years in transition, and that kind of is a segue into the transition piece here a bit. But, um, what are you guys' thoughts? You know, you guys are, are fresh back on the farm. What, Grant, you're what, 3, 4 weeks now back is all? And Shea, you've been back for a couple months now. Shea's been a little bit more on the consulting side and, and the midnight planter operator side. Today Grant and I got the fun of, we got the grain bins all empty, we got all the old crop gone. So we were having fun cleaning rotten corn out from underneath the grain legs and underneath the scale and stuff. So we've been doing fun stuff like that. But as you guys transition back, you know, what, what are your thoughts? I mean, what, what things, you know, Shay, you can touch on the, on the Ag View and the service side of things.

I'm gonna pick on you again first. So Grant, think about this question here. But, uh, you know, where do you, what do you, um, in the next couple of years, what, what you're going to be up to? And, and, you know, you guys have just spent both of you, you know, 5 years of your life in service. Um, and you're getting into a career, um, in agriculture that, that is really service-oriented, whether it's, you know, on the consulting side, on the farming side or whatever, you know, where do you, where do you see yourselves going here as you move forward, Shea?

Narrator: Yeah, so 3 things came to mind as you're asking that question. And the first thing, working on the transition process of not only myself working back into it, but looking at operations on the consulting side, working through transition pieces. The first item is overcommunication. And that might be a term that not many people are familiar with because you think, oh, you know, communication, effective communication. But I'm an advocate of overcommunication. Now that doesn't mean micromanaging. It means, hey, is this exactly what's happening? Is this, you know, load of corn going to Cedar Rapids? Who's taking it? When is it going? And what does it contain? Overcommunicating that piece so that there's no chance of there being a mess up. And that's from the daily decisions of hauling corn to the, you know, long-term transition and legacy planning.

Of what exactly do we want the future of the farm to look like? What exactly do we want the future of the operation to look like? And with working in consulting, you, you all need to be on the same page within your team. So, you know, first thing there, I think overcommunication is key. Second thing with transitioning back in, and you mentioned Grant and I have only been back for just a little while now. Seems a lot longer than that, I guess. But those are the long days. Time takes, time takes time, right? And if that's scooping out the bin, or sitting down and looking at an Excel sheet for 4 or 5 hours and trying to make sense of what's going on, or, you know, just sitting in a tractor and seeing, hey, this is what it feels like to plant 150 acres with a 12-row planter.

In 24 hours or whatever your time period is, realizing the process and the time that goes back into that, I think has been one of the, the most awesome pieces of the transition for me. Just changing pace with the environment. And then I think the last point that kind of came to mind there quickly was looking at the consulting and service side of things and saying, okay, is this a business decision or is this an emotional decision? And that's, that's day to day. You know, you need to constantly be doing that assessment of dealing with situations, making phone calls, even just watching, watching your tone that you send in emails and ensuring that you're conveying the message appropriately. So transitioning back for me, that's been a big point of I won't say contention.

Contention isn't the right word, but just monitoring, okay, is this a business decision or am I thinking about this emotionally? And when you get the opportunity to take emotion out of it and make those business decisions, it makes a big difference. You bet, Grant. All right.

Grant

Barron: So for my 3-year plan, we'll do my 3-year transition plan. I'm still in the The organization and prioritization that we talked about earlier for my 5 to 10 year plan, you know, you mentioned I've only been out for a couple weeks now. I haven't really got those completely in line yet, but for the next 3 years I plan to graduate college and work on the farm as much as possible. I got my CDL, or I got my permit, so I can hopefully get my full-blown CDL and help drive trucks this fall and continue that for the next 3 years. And then One thing I'm really, really excited for and hope I get more opportunities to do is help you out with the consulting side of things in this Ag View, whether it be with more of these podcasts or just, you know, shadowing and consulting and whatever you need help with there.

Chris: So yeah, and I think, you know, the cool thing for me, and I think for all of the growers out there that we work with and that we will work with in the future, is just you know, having the capacity to understand that, that, you know, there's a care in other people's success. And, uh, you know, the cool part for me is to see you guys serve, you know, serve your country for 5 years each, and then, you know, come back and, and be interested in the farm and interested in, in not just the farms, but agriculture and the people. And the people is the important part. So I think that's, that's what's exciting to me is to watch the opportunities that you guys are going to have to really help growers with perspective and with opportunities.

And as you said, Shea, too, you know, thinking through these decisions, which are critical decisions, you know, for the business, to be based on the numbers and a lot of times to try to remove the emotion because it is an emotional business. I mean, you look at how difficult this spring was and it started last fall being so wet and everybody just being under stress. And it's, you know, it's been a battle this year on the farm field, a lot like, you know, the battles that you guys have experienced. Now it's just a different battle. And if we can utilize a lot of the processes and structure that you guys have learned to help other people, that's truly what we want to do and why we do what we do. And I think probably that echoes you guys. So having said all that, Shay, we'll go with you first.

Any last comments or anything you want to bring home to the people or for the podcast here as we wrap up?

Narrator: Yeah, so talking about the battles there, and I think it's interesting that you brought this up. I've had several people, so outside of working with Ag View and the consulting and being involved in lots of parts of the operation over there, I've also been spending about 30 to 35% of my time working with my father-in-law on that side of the family with a seed business. And that's a, that's a whole different aspect to the people side of things. But I've had more than one person mention to me, boy, what a year to come back to the farm. What a bad year to get back into agriculture. You know, prices are high and markets are low and you got crazy season. And, you know, I have the conversation and, you know, talk with them and kind of laugh or whatever. But when I take the time to really think about it, I don't think there's ever been a more exciting time to get into agriculture.

And I think that with farming and the battles that we're going through now, there's no good time necessarily to get into agriculture. And people relate it to the same thing, right? Sometimes you don't think there's ever a good time to have kids, but you do it and you look back and you're like, oh yeah, no, that's all right. That was a good time to do that. So, you know, with that conversation and for any, any veterans that are out there that may have experienced the same thing. I'd be interested to hear their stories on that. But also for anybody else that's thinking about transitioning back to the farm or whatever that looks like in their operation. Times are tough, but you work through it. And I think it helps make you better producers and better people by working through those hard times. And so when I hear that conversation, it's nothing that scares me.

It's motivating to say, hey, how am I going to make this work? How am I going to make this succeed? Not only to provide the best value and capabilities to the businesses that I'm working with, but also to provide for my family. I guess that would be one of my lasting thoughts there as we wrap up here, Chris.

Grant

Barron: Great. Yeah. So wrapping up for me, I think, Shay, you put it pretty nicely. There's no real perfect time to transition, like there's no real perfect time to have kids. But in the end, you kind of just got to pull the trigger and you got to do it. So trying to transition out of the military back to the farm, consider that there's no perfect time to do it. You know, it took me 3 months of making pros and cons list to make my decision to get out. And I just want to take my closing remarks to say one more thing. Just Shay and I, we have two other brothers that are continuing to serve. So Sloan's in North Carolina right now in the Marines, and Carson has duty. He's a Cedar Falls police officer. He has duty, you know, today on the Fourth of July. So thanks. Thank you to them for continuing to serve and keeping us safe. And happy Fourth, everyone. Awesome.

Chris: Well, I guess this is going to kind of wrap things up, but I want to, on behalf of Ag View Solutions, wish everybody a happy Fourth of July. Thank you to all of you who have served and who are currently serving, and we hope you all have a wonderful rest of the week. And if there's anything we can do to help you, bring information to you, we're interested in doing that. And again, thanks everybody for joining us on, on the Ag View Pitch, and we will catch you next time.

Narrator: Podcast, thanks for listening to our special edition podcast here for the Fourth of July. We're honored to have served and honored to continue to serve you through the podcast and Ag View Solutions. Thanks to those of you listening who are veterans and those who currently have family and friends in the service. Stay safe, and we'll catch you soon on the Ag View Pitch.