Gavin Spoor: first generation Missouri popcorn farmer

Narrator: We are grateful that you are joining us for another episode of the Ag View Pitch, as we know that your time is very valuable. Our team at Ag View Solutions is always here for you for any questions or comments that you may have. Please feel free to reach out to us at cbarron@agviewsolutions.com. And now, here is your host, Shay Foulk.

Shay

Foulk: Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. Today you have Shay Foulk with Gavin Spoor out of Missouri. How's it going, Gavin?

Gavin

Spoor: Doing good, doing good. How are you doing?

Shay

Foulk: I can't complain. I mean, we've had, uh, 50-degree temperatures here over the last 3, 4, 5 days, and the 10-day outlook looks pretty good, uh, here in Iowa and Illinois. How about down in your area?

Gavin

Spoor: It was right on the edge of being chilly today. Okay, it was nice if you're driving a pickup, and you were pretty cold if you were on an open station tractor.

Shay

Foulk: You know, we're talking here on March 1st though. A lot of people would say winter's, uh, just getting rolling in the Midwest. It kind of rears its ugly head after this.

Gavin

Spoor: I'm ready for it to be over after the past 2 weeks we've had around zero and negative temperature. I'm ready for some warm weather.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah, the optimism's there though. The farmer's the eternal optimist, and I think planting season's right around the corner. If you would, for viewers, those who are listening on the podcast, could you give a little background on like where you're located, you know, who you are, and just kind of what you do?

Gavin

Spoor: Yeah, so I'm Gavin Spoor, as you said. I am a first-generation farmer from northeast Missouri. Martinsburg is my hometown. It's a little bitty town. We're about an hour and a half northwest of St. Louis. And started farming from scratch when I was 19 years old. Started with 6 acres and just continued to expand the operation throughout college. Corn and soybeans and some wheat, and I've diversified into popcorn uh, which I'm taking into grocery stores and selling to kettle corn companies. And that's really what has helped my operation to grow since corn and soybean prices were, you know, kind of in the dumps there for the past few years. Uh, diversifying into a specialty crop has really helped me, uh, progress and grow my operation.

Shay

Foulk: So you say you're 19 years old. How old are you now?

Gavin

Spoor: Uh, 23 right now.

Shay

Foulk: So, you know, that 4-year time frame, a lot of people kind of have a little bit of a take back when you say you're a first-generation farmer. You know, there's a lot of pride out there and people saying, oh, I'm the fifth generation or sixth or seventh. So with the first-generation farming, how did that kind of look for you when you got rolling?

Gavin

Spoor: Start small and don't spend too much money. You know, I'm not buying brand new equipment, not driving a new pickup or anything. You kind of gotta watch your expenses. Um, instead of buying a new pickup, you know, I might, might spend some extra money on a, on a better tractor or a better, better planter or something. Uh, but yeah, just starting small, taking on what I could manage, and slowly growing it as the opportunities presented themselves.

Shay

Foulk: So with that 6 acres, is that something that you pursued, or, or how did you actually get into farming, and why were you interested in it?

Gavin

Spoor: Yeah, so, uh, I've had a passion for agriculture since I was 3 or 4, mom said that I used to get on my tippy toes and stare out the kitchen window or the dining room window because we live in a farming community. The house where my parents live is surrounded by farmland and I would watch all my neighbors driving equipment and I just loved, you know, every young boy loves big tractors and diesel smoke and dirt. I mean, what's better than that? And it was going on outside my kitchen window. And as I got older, I started riding with them after school, tagging along in the combine, asking questions. And these guys were really, you know, they were my superheroes. Some kids get into sports and know all the players. Some kids are into superheroes. Well, I was into farming. And I really looked up to all my neighbors and wanted to be just like them when I grew up.

And fortunately, the opportunity presented itself. It just took 19 years. And started with that 6 acres.

Shay

Foulk: Now that's awesome. So, you know, over the, over the last 4 years, as these opportunities have come along and you've taken advantage of those, I think a lot of people would probably be pretty impressed at the fact that you realized, you know, diversification and doing things different, still having a main focus on, on whatever it may be, your corn or soybeans or wheat. But I recently did a farm financial planning outlook that said Concentration is how you build wealth or how you build opportunity, but diversification is how you retain that and how you continuously think outside of the box and develop new areas and do something that you truly love. So it sounds like you kind of found a passion in doing something with the popcorn business. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Gavin

Spoor: Yeah. So popcorn started the second year I farmed. The first year I farmed that 6 acres, I just had just soybeans on it. And I realized pretty quick that corn prices were not the greatest. And once I was out of college, if I was only farming corn and soybeans, I would probably have to have a job in town or give up that dream of farming and go move to the city and get a corporate job or something. So it was almost an act of survival just trying 15 acres of popcorn out that first year and I thought, well, if I'm going to gamble on the corn market or the popcorn market, I'm going to gamble on myself and name my own price for a product and see if I can get it sold. And so just took a huge leap and kind of started.

I didn't really have a clue what I was doing, and I still might not, but I learned a little bit more every year and just keep researching it and trial and error, figuring out what what puzzle pieces fit in my puzzle. And, uh, when something fits, you can continue to chase the opportunities that come along with it.

Shay

Foulk: So how much popcorn is in the, the Martinsburg area, or kind of in that northeast Missouri area? What does that market look like?

Gavin

Spoor: Zero acres, actually. I wasn't even able to, uh, get crop insurance on it because there was no, uh, yield history for like the past decade. Uh, there, there's nothing in, in the area.

Shay

Foulk: That's interesting. And so why go down that path versus, you know, a lot of people look at, you know, diversified livestock or fruits and vegetables, you know, to find a niche and really capture value on those acres. What, you know, why popcorn? Why'd that stand out to you?

Gavin

Spoor: Yeah, great question. So I, at the time, you know, I was still a full-time college student at the University of Missouri, and Yeah, there's a lot of money to be made in vegetable crops and going directly to the consumer, but I was busy going to class every day. I didn't have time to sit by a roadside stand, or, you know, sweet corn, it's ready for a week and a half and then it's, it's bad. Well, popcorn, I can put it in a bag and it can sit on the shelf for 6 months or a year and still be good. So that it just kind of fit my schedule, and, and I could use similar equipment. I could use the same corn planter. I could use the same combine, you just change some of the internal settings, and it seemed to fit well.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah, that labor piece is huge. And with popcorn, I think one thing that's really interesting that you hit on there, you know, you can package it and it's still good for 6 months to a year. And I think what a lot of people maybe don't realize, and some experience that I guess I've just gained by working with some of the farmers that grow popcorn that we're doing consulting work with or helping with their farm operation, is a lot of the stuff that comes in the bags that you pop off of the grocery supermarket shelves actually has probably been harvested for at least a year or maybe even longer.

And so when you look at, you know, quality of pop and some of the stuff like that, the reason some of the brands and some of these products actually have unpopped kernels in them is because they are aged a pretty significant amount from the time that they're harvested until they're cleaned and processed, put in bags, and get into your microwave for you to enjoy with your family. So how has that looked a little different, I guess, with the product that you're providing? Sounds like you're maybe getting it to market a little bit quicker.

Gavin

Spoor: Right. So my goal, and I'll preface this by saying COVID has everything screwed up.

Shay

Foulk: Oh yeah.

Gavin

Spoor: But my goal is to never sell a popcorn kernel that's over a year old. COVID, I had some overstock that I'll carry into next spring, Or into this spring, I'm still selling the last bit of '19's crop because '20's is in the grain bin and it won't get cleaned until next week. So it won't be on the shelf till next week. But my goal to separate myself from, I guess, the competition, you would say, is just to offer the freshest product possible and get it to the customer as quickly as possible. And like you said, yeah, that stuff in a microwave bag, it could be up to 2 years old, which the taste is still fine. It's, it's still okay to eat. It's just the poppability goes down, how big it pops when it does pop can go down. So I try to alleviate those issues by just selling the freshest product that I can.

Shay

Foulk: That's awesome. Now you piqued my interest there when you're talking about cleaning. You and I were talking offline here. For those who don't know that listen to the podcast, about half my time is spent with, uh, with regional seed brand with my father-in-law and wife and family running that, and we, you know, clean soybeans and wheat and cover crops and all this other stuff. So what does that look like for you on the actual product, you know, that the end user, someone who wants to buy, you know, Spore Farms popcorn, you know, what does that cleaning process look like? Let's go from start to finish in the popcorn production process here real quick.

Gavin

Spoor: You bet. So would you like to start at planting season in the spring?

Narrator: Let's start at seed selection. Let's start before planting?

Gavin

Spoor: Seed selection, heck yeah. So the first year I planted popcorn, I didn't have a clue what I was doing, but I knew that there had to be popcorn companies out there that were selling seed stock. So I started networking with other popcorn farmers and just doing my own research online, and I found a few different companies scattered throughout the US, and I tried a little bit from all of them. I had them send me samples, and I popped it, and the stuff I liked the best, I bought a bag of. And popcorn seeds, popcorn seeds, crazy expensive. If you think corn seed is expensive, try buying popcorn. You know, $350 a bag is— there's a lot of that out there at that price, sometimes even more. And so I found the seed that I liked and I experiment every year with a few different hybrids just to see if I can find something better. But we purchased that seed.

I plant it in mid-May and the The growing process from planting to harvest is basically the same. You plant it with the same planter. You can spray it with similar herbicides. I fertilize it fairly similar. And then once you get to harvest is where the, where the, it starts to part ways from regular corn. So once that popcorn is harvested, we put it in the grain bin and I'm keeping it in condition throughout the winter. Every couple of weeks I'm going and pulling a sample and popping it. If the weather's good, I'll run some air on it just to help it breathe a little bit, and then about this time of the year, February, early March, we'll load it up on semis, and I send it out to Kansas. There's a seed cleaning company in Kansas, and they can clean a lot pretty quick. It's, it's like a multi-million dollar seed cleaning facility.

Lots of screens that it falls through, optical color sorters, gravity tables, I mean the whole nine yards. Because I don't want any bit of trash. Or if you're familiar with farming, you know, when you're combining, there's weed seeds, there's— it's nothing to have a grasshopper in the combine hopper. And I don't want any of that to end up in the bag that goes to the end consumer. So they clean it all and package it in 50-pound bags. A robot stacks it on a pallet, and then they put it in a van trailer and they ship it back to me. Now once that's in my warehouse, that's when I begin to break it down into 2-pound bags and label it and send it out to grocery stores.

Shay

Foulk: That's fascinating. And I think that cleaning process is so important on providing a high-quality end-user consumer product. And not that anybody wouldn't want to, you know, fry up a grasshopper and have that as a little bit of a protein, you know, that's not that out of the realm with the world that we live in today. I think that's really interesting. So you mentioned it varies a little bit at harvest as far as the actual harvesting process, or can you talk about that a little bit more?

Gavin

Spoor: Yeah, so popcorn's got a much skinnier stalk than regular corn. So on the combine itself, we're pulling the stripper plates in and the— so the ears aren't falling through. We're slowing the rotor way down, about as slow as that rotor can turn. Because if you just barely nick that kernel and scratch it, then all the water and pressure is going to release when you're trying to pop it and it's not going to explode. So you have to make sure that kernel skin stays completely intact. And then we turn the fan speed way up because popcorn is very heavy. Regular corn is about 56 pounds a bushel, I believe. Well, popcorn is like 68. I mean, it's, it's very dense. So we're blowing lots of air on it, hoping to get as much trash out the back of the combine as we can and put just clean popcorn in the combine tank.

Shay

Foulk: Oh, that's awesome. And I think that damage is so crucial. You know, if there is product that's in there, you know, you mentioned through the cleaning process they're doing color sorters, they're going through all these screens, or, you know, maybe looking at different weight testing as it goes over that gravity table. What kind of clean-out loss are you experiencing, just to give a reference, you know, to those who are listening in here?

Gavin

Spoor: Yeah, so I prefer to grade it pretty hard. I think we're losing about 10% through that cleaning process. That's tough. So yeah, so say I send them 1,000 pounds of popcorn out of the bin, I'll get about 900 pounds back because any broken kernels, any nicked kernels, trash— when I say trash, I mean like cornstalk residue, weed seeds, things of that nature, cob. We're losing 10 to 15% through the cleaning process, but I'd be fine losing 20% if it meant we got a clean crop for the customer because my name goes on the side of every single bag. I want to make sure the moisture content's perfect and that there's nothing in that bag except pure popcorn.

Shay

Foulk: And where do you want that moisture at?

Gavin

Spoor: So I kind of— every single hybrid is a little different. I play around with it. But I believe most of them pop best around 13%, 12.5, 13%, somewhere in there.

Shay

Foulk: So are you realizing most of that moisture content based on field conditions and trying to harvest at the right time? Because I know popcorn can be pretty fickle through the drying process, obviously.

Gavin

Spoor: Right. I would prefer for it to dry down in the field, air dry, because it can be spotty how it dries out in the bin. You know, the floor is going to get much more dry than the top just because of the way the air blowing on it, the way the drying process works. So I like for it to dry down in the field. I normally harvest around 15%. If it gets completely dry in the field, that's great too, but we take it out around 15 and put it in the grain bin. I'll let it sit, sit there and just take samples periodically and run errors I need to to get it dialed into that 13% range.

Narrator: This is Alyssa with the Ag View Solutions team. Here at Ag View Solutions, we work with farms and ag businesses all across the country on cost of production, business decision-making, collaboration opportunities, farm and ag business structuring, and transition planning. We work with operations of all sizes to help you with the important decisions that need to be made in your business. If you have questions or would like to learn more about how we can help your farm and business, please email us at cbarron@agviewsolutions.com. And thank you for listening.

Shay

Foulk: That's really interesting. And, and one thing I was curious on too, and, and the listeners might be as well, with these products that you're buying, the actual seed products, I mean, are these popcorn hybrids, as in, you know, with that cleanout loss, you might not necessarily be able to use it for popcorn But I mean, just so people understand, you're not taking that seed and then putting it back in the ground. I mean, you're buying new product every year because they're hybrids, correct?

Gavin

Spoor: That is correct. Yep, I buy new seed stock every single year.

Shay

Foulk: Now with that, you know, selection process that you went through on that, I guess there's different, there's different types of popcorn out there, and I'll let you talk through them. You're way more expert on that than I am. What's the difference in the different types of popcorns out there and how did you arrive at the products that you currently have?

Gavin

Spoor: Yeah, yeah. So for the listeners, if just imagine you're eating a bag of kettle corn. Have you ever noticed that some of those popped kernels, they almost look like a brain? They're perfectly round balls. So that is called mushroom popcorn. That's not an accident. That is bred specifically to be that shape. The way it explodes creates a perfect ball, which kettle corn companies, it's easier for that popcorn to hold coating better and it won't fall apart as it's rolling through the popper and getting all mixed together with the flavoring. So that's mushroom. I grow a lot of that for kettle corn companies specifically because that's what they want. Now what I'm sending into grocery stores is considered butterfly. Now with butterfly, you want it to pop as large as possible and be real flaky.

You know, that, that's the regular corn you're, you're used to in a movie theater or in a, in just a microwave bag. That's considered butterfly popcorn, and it's good, and usually there's less holes that get stuck in your teeth with the butterfly, whereas the mushroom It has more, and then, and then we're just talking about yellow. Then you've got white popcorn. Now the white popcorn, it's a smaller kernel. There's almost no holes that get stuck in your teeth. So the older generation really loves white popcorn. And then there's also red and blue, black popcorn. There's all different colors that have been bred, and those are kind of just fun. They all taste similar. But it's just kind of neat to see different colored popcorn. It's almost like Indian corn.

Shay

Foulk: So that mushroom popcorn is what you're producing. You know, I think you mentioned there maybe selling some to some kettle corn companies and stuff like that. What products are actually going out the door with, you know, with your farm's name on them?

Gavin

Spoor: Right. So going retail sale, going to grocery stores and through the online website, most of that is Butterfly. Or the colored kernels. And then my bulk customers, my kettle corn companies that are buying 50-pound bags at a time, that is mushroom. And mushroom kettle corn companies are much more specific on what they're looking for. So they want more, they want it to be like 90% mushroom kernels. They want the expansion to be big because they're selling a bag and if they can fill that bag up with fewer kernels, that's more money in their pocket. That's, that's good business. So it's trial and error picking out different hybrids every year, trying to find the perfect product for them. And I've got it dialed in pretty good. There's a few hybrids I like that grow well in the area and also pop good. But just a lot of experimenting.

And all of this, I've just learned this in the past 3 years. I am no expert. Don't, don't think I've I've done this my whole life. I just started trial and error and grown from there.

Shay

Foulk: No, you're more of an expert than me though, and I think that experiential part is just as important too. You know, farmers that listen to this podcast, I mean, we just like hearing what else is going on in the country and hearing about how you've kind of gotten to where you are. And you know, you mentioned there, Gavin, looking at the website that you have where people can go order. And before we get too far into the podcast, you know, I'd love for you to plug that. Where can we order your popcorn at?

Gavin

Spoor: You bet. So, uh, my website, I, I had a friend make it for me in college and he did a great job, and it is spoorfarms.com. My last name is spelled S-P-O-O-R farms.com, and you can order almost— you can order every product I've got through the website and it ships right to your front door.

Shay

Foulk: Oh, that's awesome. So spoorfarms.com, everybody go check it out. You know, he does some, some great stuff not only on the website. It looks awesome. You know, I saw pictures along the way, you kind of sketching out what you imagine what this looks like and having that dream come to reality. Can you talk about that process? Because so many of us, whether as farmers or entrepreneurs or people that are looking to diversify in our business, we have these visions in our head. And as you hit those benchmarks along the way, sometimes you maybe don't take enough time to give yourself credit and look at where you are because you know, you tend to reach for what's next. But how has that process been for you as you've seen some of these dreams come to reality over the last 4 years?

Gavin

Spoor: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I must say I'm guilty of the same. I had no idea that I would be where I'm at now, just starting, you know, basically completely from scratch 4 or 5 years ago. And I don't take enough time to stop and enjoy what I do have because like you said, we're always looking for the next thing, you know, the next piece of equipment, the next piece of ground that we'd like to add. But yeah, I'm just— I'm grateful for everything I've got and you've got to take the time to enjoy that. And I've had a lot of help from neighbors, you know, starting out if I needed to borrow a piece of equipment or a disc because I couldn't afford to buy one, they were more than willing to help out. Yeah, just, just being grateful for what you do have and working towards what you want. Because once you're a self-employed farmer, no one's going to go do the work for you.

If you want it, you have to go chase it. You know, you can't wake up and expect someone else to, to cook your food for you or do your paperwork. Like when you're growing up, you know, your parents, if they took you to school or something or made you breakfast. Once you're an adult, things change quite a bit.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we've talked a little bit about how you've gotten where you are and, and where you're at today, you know, as a 23-year-old and the, the whole future in front of you. You know, people that are listening to this podcast are thinking, you know, man, this, this guy, he has so much in front of him here. So, you know, what, what's the future hold for you? And, and I won't ask you much further beyond, you know, 5, 10 years. I think everybody has that kind of vision, but, but what does the next few years look for you like for you in your operation?

Gavin

Spoor: Yeah, well, I must say I had no clue I'd be where I'm at right now 5 years ago. So it's hard to say where I'll be at in another 5. I will say when I was going through college, the great thing about being young and, and especially being in my position where there's no family farm to come back to, that afforded me the ability to try different things out and pick stuff up and, and get a taste for it. And if I didn't like it, I could set it back down. Me and a great friend of mine, we had started a custom spraying business, and we worked our way up to spraying almost 5,000 acres for local farmers. And, you know, we, we realized about 3 years in that that wasn't quite what we were wanting to do. And I had started picking up more row crop ground, and I was busy taking care of my own ground.

But we were young, And that allowed us the ability to set that back down and try something else out. So, you know, I'd pick the popcorn up and it worked great, so I'm gonna keep it in my portfolio and keep running with it. The row crop ground's growing. This past year I was able to pick up a Pioneer dealership. Our local dealer, he gave his dealership up and started pumping dragline hog manure. There's quite a few hog barns in the area. And that gave me the ability to pick up his Pioneer dealership. And so I'm kind of— I figured out 3 things that I really like, which is farming and the popcorn operation and the selling the seed. So I'm not going to add anything else right now to my workload. I'm just going to focus on growing those 3 things because you can stretch yourself out too thin and do an awful job at 5 things. I would rather focus in on 3 things and do a better job at those.

So yeah, to answer your question, just growing those 3.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah, that's awesome. One thing we've really kind of focused on here over the last 4 or 5 months, um, a takeaway from one of the peer groups that we have with farm operations all over the country is, you know, every time you say yes to one thing, you're saying no to something else. And whether it's saying yes to, to do an extra custom spraying business or saying yes to, you know, a shiny, whatever the next shiny thing is, you know, that you're looking out to. Every time you say yes to that, you're saying no to family time, or you're saying no to focusing on seed sales, or no to growing your popcorn business. And so I think the people listening will realize, I think you have really good vision there, and I think that's awesome that you're looking to focus on those things.

You know, what I'll say too is With the support that you've had, I mean, that's had to have been a pretty incredible experience to see how this has blossomed over the last few years. Can you talk a little bit about how the support in your community has been and how that's helped you to get where you are today?

Gavin

Spoor: Yes, absolutely. Um, I will say I would not even be close to where I'm at right now without the support of others. Um, any first-generation farmer, for that matter, that says he did it completely from scratch with no help, I, I don't see how you could do it without help. I've got lots of neighbors that I lean on for advice, whether it's marketing advice or how to work on a piece of equipment, or, you know, getting the opportunity to rent a piece of equipment from them or borrow it if I can't afford to go buy it, uh, or using their shop to wrench on something that's broken in the middle of season. Uh, it would be so difficult to actually start completely from scratch with no help. And that's the great thing about small communities. Everyone is so willing. They're so happy to see other people succeed, it seems like. If someone's got a dream, they'll all chip in to help you chase it.

And I've grown up in a great community that's willing to help anybody out as long as they're willing to help themselves out too, you know. How big is that?

Shay

Foulk: How big is that Martinsburg, Missouri area?

Gavin

Spoor: Yeah, population of my little town is 304.

Shay

Foulk: That's awesome. That's awesome. You know, and small is different to some people. You know, we work with people that are closer to bigger cities, and small towns are maybe 10,000 or 15,000, 20,000. And, you know, I think communities like you and I grew up in is 300, 500. You know, 2,000 is a pretty happening place when you got more than one place to go eat, or you don't have to drive 20 miles to go eat.

Gavin

Spoor: So, yeah, we've got one stoplight. Yeah, one stoplight. I consider that a small town. There's no McDonald's. Uh, there's a gas station, a bar, and a church.

Shay

Foulk: Well, I think that's all you need, right?

Gavin

Spoor: That's— you kind of got it.

Shay

Foulk: You drive to get groceries or you grow them yourself, or—

Gavin

Spoor: yep, yep. Yeah, yeah, Walmart's 30 minutes away, so you know you're in a little town then.

Shay

Foulk: So, so I do have— I have two kind of last questions for you, and I'll give you an opportunity to just kind of open up at the end. But, um, you know, for someone else that is, is in a similar position to you, whether they're older than you or, or someone moving into college and looking to do something to their farm operation, haven't quite found their place yet, you know, I guess what's one thing, uh, or a couple things that, that you really think is important that you've kind of learned over the last few years here that you'd like to pass on to a young farmer or a first-generation farmer or someone just coming out of college with the experience that you've had?

Gavin

Spoor: Yeah, um, absolutely. So I'll, uh, give you a quote that I kind of live by. I don't remember where I found it or, uh, where I saw it first, but it's, "Dreams only work if you do." Uh, so if you've got a dream, anything's possible. We live in a great country where, where if you've got a dream, you can chase it and be very successful, but you have to be willing to put in the work, which at a young age, if you're not married and don't have children, that's going to mean a lot of late nights. You're not going to get to drive the newest vehicle. There's going to be nights where you worry about how you're going to make payments. But if you're working hard and taking the right steps, you can be pretty successful with it. So yeah, dreams only work if you do, is something that has really helped me throughout the past couple years. That's something I could—

Shay

Foulk: yeah, and I know that's something that lives on your, uh, on your Twitter page there. That's kind of how I got linked in with you is just following along in the ag community. And I think that, you know, whether it's Twitter or TikTok or YouTube or Facebook or whatever it is, sometimes those social media platforms can get a bad rap. But one thing that you hit on here was the networking that's involved and not only at your, the local level within your community that has that direct support, but, you know, from what you've learned maybe online or interacting with people or even, you know, I think you do a really good job of promoting sales and your product and doing demonstrations and helping people understand, you know, what the popcorn world looks like or what it looks like in the, in the life of a farmer.

And, you know, so I guess if people want to follow along with you on, on Twitter or social media aside from the website, how do they do that?

Gavin

Spoor: Yeah, um, if so, if they want to follow along with me, um, on social media, like you said, you know, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. I used to have a TikTok, but I had to get rid of it because I was watching much more content than I was creating, and it is an absolute black hole. And there was one day where I looked up and 3 hours had went by. I thought, nope, I got to get rid of this because I can't spend 3 hours on that. It's just— that's not going to work. So no longer have a TikTok. It's very addicting.

Shay

Foulk: But if they want to follow along, is that Spore Farms, or how do they find you?

Gavin

Spoor: Yeah, yeah. So, uh, um, like on Instagram, my username is Gavin_Spore. Uh, on Facebook, I've got my personal page, Gavin Spore, and then also Spore Farms. Um, and then Twitter, it's, uh, Gavin_Spore also.

Shay

Foulk: No, that sounds great. And I think, I think if you're on those platforms, go check it out. He's got some good stuff there. Again, sporefarms.com, that's where you can go on the website. Order some of this popcorn. We're gonna have to get some ordered here. My wife and I eat popcorn almost every night, eat popcorn and drink a glass of tea and just kind of hang out for a little while when we're able to, not in the busy season. But I think kind of the last question that I want to ask is, you know, I've asked you a little bit about the future, I've asked you where you come from, where you've been, you know, what's something that you want to learn more about?

Because I think that continuing to seek education, continuing to learn more and having that that eagerness and that drive and that hardworking optimism that I see in you, and I think so many people probably do see in you, is, you know, what are some of the things that you wish you could learn more about that you're looking forward to here over the next year or so?

Gavin

Spoor: Yeah, uh, so actually the thing I've been most interested in is probably one of the more mainstream things right now, but I find it so fascinating, and, uh, that's the use of cover— really the use of COVID crops, um, reducing the amount of tillage I do and and digging more deep into the soil and understanding the soil because that's where the crop is coming from. Yeah, you can just throw fertilizer out and spray it and come back and you've got a crop, but I, I'm very, very interested in how I can reduce my inputs and increase the amount of COVID crops I'm using in a, in a very specific way to create some fertility maybe and improve soil health. I'm kind of a nerd for that. And the more I read about it, the more I just fall into this pit of wanting to know more and more. And it's a bottomless pit because I'll never— there's guys out there that have forgotten more than I know.

But you can just learn your entire life. It's not something that you can ever become a master at.

Shay

Foulk: I think what's really cool though is we're, you know, we're not on the bleeding edge anymore. We're really on the leading edge of some of these technologies.— and figuring out how some of these things interact, looking at the biological level, soil management, fertility management, how we can create some more of these permaculture systems as opposed to the generic cropping systems. And not that you have to change every acre of the farm to make something like that work, but what can we learn? And there's enough people doing it and there's enough support behind it that I think the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years is going to be really interesting and how we see developments change and how we have some of the diversification. So, you know, you can call yourself nerd or whatever you want, but I think there's a lot of value in that.

And I think it's really important because if you're not, if you're not adopting some of those things or if you're not at least learning about them and understanding them, you're probably falling behind to a little extent.

Gavin

Spoor: So yeah, you're exactly right. And the people on social media You know, now you can learn from more than just your neighbor that tried something out. You could hop online and find a guy in Indiana or Idaho or, you know, North Carolina, wherever, and he's been experimenting for years and sharing a 1-minute clip, and you can learn from that. Social media, I think, has been huge in pushing new and fresh ideas in the farming community, and that's been one of the greatest benefits of being a first-generation farmer also. There's lots of things that aren't benefits to it, but one of the greatest benefits is I'm not stuck in a simple corn-soybean rotation. This is what my dad and grandpa and great-grandpa did.

I can kind of experiment, and if something works out, I can continue to do it without, you know, possibly a generation above me that's trying to figure out why I'm trying something new. That's been great that I can experiment and try new things and be able to learn as I do them.

Shay

Foulk: That's awesome, man. And I think that's a good note to kind of wrap up on. Anything else you'd like to add, you know, from having this conversation or just to tell anybody listening out there? Anything else you want to contribute here?

Gavin

Spoor: No, I'd say if anybody is listening and they've got a any books that they enjoy on soil health, send them my way. Send me a book on soil health and I'll send you some popcorn. That'd be great. That's awesome.

Shay

Foulk: I love that. And in order to find that popcorn again, they're going to go to spoorfarms.com. That's spoorfarms.com. Gavin, I've really enjoyed this conversation. I appreciate you taking the time on this and look forward to maybe having you on again down the road. I think that'd be awesome.

Gavin

Spoor: Absolutely. Heck yeah.

Shay

Foulk: All right, well, thanks a lot, Gavin. Appreciate the time. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the Ag View Pitch, and we will catch you next time.