Managing people, plants, and urban markets

Shay

Foulk: Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. Today you have Shay Foulk and Carl Slagle. Carl, you are located in the infamous, beautiful, lovely Waldorf, Maryland. Is that correct?

Karl

Shlagel: That's a fair statement, I reckon. Yeah.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah. So out on the East Coast there and we, you know, we had actually gotten connected. I followed along with content that you post on X and you have a lot of really interesting things going on in your operation. I was hoping maybe you could just take a couple minutes to give the listeners an overview of where you're located, who your, you know, market, truly market audiences for the crops and vegetables that you grow there, and kind of what your farm operation is all about.

Karl

Shlagel: Yeah, I mean, we can get in the weeds on this real quick and do a whole episode, but we are a Maryland Century Farm. We're here in Waldorf, Maryland, which is It's a bedroom community for the federal government. We are quite literally 23 miles from Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Our people came here back in 1911. They were new immigrants to this country, and this was the direction that they came in, which is always an interesting story of why people go different places. But Southern Maryland has, has and was traditionally a tobacco-growing region, and tobacco was the main crop that was grown. When the buyout occurred back in— started in 1999, and that was the money from the Tobacco Restitution Fund from the federal government— Maryland made the decision, let's get our farmers out of growing tobacco. And it was all smaller size.

Don't think of like big fields that you see in North Carolina and Kentucky, uh, smaller acreage fields. We grew, I think, around 70,000 pounds, but we had transitioned away from tobacco back in '88. Like '88, '89 was the last crops because the market was going down. My father had recently decided he wanted to come home and farm full-time, and we transitioned. That was a big transition for us, and we started raising a few vegetables and then raising a few more. We got very fortunate that we started doing farmers markets. That was the late '80s, early '90s is when farmers markets really— you started to see a bigger approach for that local food.

You were starting to hear those words being used both by chefs, some of the local grocery stores, not national chains but local chains, because you still had a lot of, um, you still had a lot of local groups and not these big conglomerates that we see today. Um, we're at the point now, um, my father still is very much in charge and runs the day-to-day operations, even though he likes to say he's in a state of semi-retirement and consultancy. But I farm with myself and my two youngest brothers. Um, myself, I worked off the farm for the most of my 20s and into my early 30s, and the opportunity presented itself to come home full-time, and I took advantage of that. Which was ultimately the goal. You know, when I used to work off the farm, people used to joke, you know, Carl can't do this or Carl can't do that because he's too busy farming full-time to even do the job that he has right now.

Where we are right now, we grow about probably 150 acres of fresh market vegetables. None of that's cannery, that's all going to be hand-pick, sort-pack, the majority of which stays within 90 miles of the farm. So DC metro area, huge, huge population center, huge consumer base. It goes through grocery stores, brokerage houses, high-end restaurants, a little bit everything. And then we still do, I guess, about 5 farmers markets a week on average. And really, the farmers markets, it pays myself and my brothers. That's the cash flow that comes in that allows us to be here Monday through Friday and grind and, and drive the wholesale side of the business so that we can, um, cash flow ourselves. Yeah. Um, and they're a joy. I mean, we used to joke that, you know, you work all week, um, just so you can go see your customer Saturday morning. Yeah.

Um, so it's, it's really nice to be able to do that. And, uh, in addition to the farmers markets, you know, um, we have a couple crops that are primarily pick-your-own— strawberries, blackberries, pumpkins. So we do see a lot of on-farm customers. Um, I hate using agritourism for those because it's not— it is and it isn't. Um, and you get into— we get into the weird legal definitions when you say agritourism because, you know, the government's trying to regulate everything and put things into buckets. But I don't see it as tourism. I see it as people are paying me to harvest my crop, which is a beautiful thing. Um, and then my wife and I run an on-farm market, and that's kind of what helped bankroll me to be able to come home and farm full-time, you know. Anytime you're trying to bring the younger generation home, it's how do we, how do we give them a piece of the pie?

And I think the easiest answer to that is you need to grow the pie a little bit bigger. You can't cut the slices any thinner, you need to make the pie bigger.

Shay

Foulk: So on that note, how many other farm operations in your area do what you and your family does?

Karl

Shlagel: Realistically, if you look in in our county, which is Charles County, one or two maybe. I mean, you have to look at the whole state as a whole of Maryland. Maryland not known for being an ag state, although we are, um, but just different avenues. You know, the Eastern Shore of Maryland and the Delmarva Peninsula, it's, it's, it's all about the broiler industry and the chicken houses. And, you know, all that grain is, is raised to go into those houses. But you probably have less than 50 medium to larger scale vegetable or fruit and vegetable operations that are either going into wholesale channels, uh, have the wherewithal to go into wholesale channels. But then you've got a lot of your smaller scale market gardeners that do your farmers markets and different stuff like that.

And that's one of those things, for years we butted heads trying to get into new markets where, you know, we used to do a lot more markets back in the late '90s and early 2000s where it was the pushback was from the guy working a third of an acre. Well, they're too big, they're too big, they're too big. Um, you know, that, that's, that's a whole other conversation that can be had. And I mean, that's the definition of— and you guys out there in farm country, you know, um, you probably will look at what we do and be like, God, they're barely farming. But, um, the amount of equipment, the amount of, the amount of resource that it takes to do this, but The backside of that is what we can make per acre doing specialty crops versus commodity is, is totally different. It's just, it's a different language.

Shay

Foulk: So you mentioned 150 acres, and the number doesn't exactly matter. But is 150 acres, is that, is that too big in people's eyes today? Or, you know, when you go to the farmers markets, in addition to the wholesale sales that you're making out there, is 150 acres too big? Or what's the relative scale here for the listeners?

Karl

Shlagel: I don't think so at all. That is a manageable amount. And we're always trying to increase that a little bit. We have the benefit that not all of the land here on the home farm is in vegetable production. We've got probably 20 acres in alfalfa right now. And we've backed off the amount of grain that we raise. We still do raise a little bit of wheat, still raise a little bit of rye, but most of that goes into as cover crop. Maryland is a big cover crop state. Mm-hmm. But then we've got rented land that's got, like this year, um, mostly milo. Um, deer pressure is a son of a gun. And now you guys, oh, we got deer, we got— you don't have deer like we got deer out here.

Shay

Foulk: No, no. Anybody listening that hasn't been to Maryland, uh, you could go out there and shoot deer kind of like you swat flies in the Midwest, and you, you probably still want to make a dent.

Karl

Shlagel: We've been under crop damage permits since '89. I mean, it's just, even when you— if you think you have them under control, you don't. A farm that is in soybeans about, I don't know, 15 minutes from here. So wouldn't be— you wouldn't be out of line saying that those deer probably work that farm and work this farm. I drove by there, you know, right after they took the wheat off and had drilled beans in, and you could literally count 50 deer in the field working it already. I mean, it's just, it's crazy.

Shay

Foulk: So I— some of the, some of the farm operations that I work with out there in Maryland have seriously considered fencing around their larger tracts of land for corn and soybean production, like you said, on the Eastern Shore— corn, soybeans, malted barley. Um, do you have fenced-in fields on your vegetable production in order to combat that, or is it not as big of an issue with those types of products?

Karl

Shlagel: Unfortunately, it would not be feasible because of the way our farm lays and the way it's situated. The county road cuts it directly in half, so you'd be doubling, doubling your fence pricing just to do that. Now I say that to say this: we do— one of the big crops we start off the year with every year, strawberries. And this will be— we're getting ready to start working. Plastic's already up, we're starting to work land. Um, we'll lay the new plastic right around Labor Day weekend. That'll be the 26th strawberry crop that we've raised for pick your own. We do put a fence around those, um, and for that it's just single line, high tensile, as hot as we can get it, bait it with peanut butter, bait it with aluminum foil, and hope they learn a quick lesson real quick. Yeah. And if all else fails, lead poisoning seems to do the trick.

Shay

Foulk: Yep. Absolutely. I want to go back to something you said. Your family immigrated in 1911. Where's your family originally from?

Karl

Shlagel: Germany. So my great-grandfather came over and it was himself, his brother-in-law, and his sister. Um, and they bought this tract of land in Maryland. It was funny, they came in and they were in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and they were working the railroads up in Altoona. And at that time, Maryland, Maryland had had a decent population decline to the point where they have census coming up, and they were afraid that if they didn't get the population where it was supposed to be, they were going to lose a congressional seat. Wow. So they created a cabinet-level position to recolonize Maryland, basically. So they went after, in Southern Maryland specifically, Waldorf, Brandywine, Baden area, and it was the Bank of Brandywine held the notes.

They went after the German-speaking population because they knew they were hard-headed, they knew they were stubborn, they knew they'd pay their bills. And it's funny, you can see some of the old sale flyers online, but they would always advertise, you know, good farmland, cheap farmland, Um, and then they would always reference how close it was to the nearest Lutheran church or Catholic church. So where our farm situates, our, our family parish, you can at 6 PM hear the Angelus play if the leaves are off the trees. That's how close we are. Wow. Um, but that's, yeah, that's why we're here where we are.

Shay

Foulk: That's awesome. So my follow-up question that I had written down here before you mentioned that is, if you could farm anywhere else in the country, or in the world for that matter, where would it be? And would you continue to do the vegetable production that you're doing?

Karl

Shlagel: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I love raising vegetables. So there's two possible answers, and they're both going to be vegetable-centric, either South Jersey or South Georgia. Okay. On the East Coast, vegetable production, it's all based on South Jersey or South Georgia. Those are where, those are where the numbers are. When South Georgia's coming out and it's starting to come up the coast. South Jersey is kind of— they both make the market, so to say. Tifton has a lot of vegetables that come out of Tifton, Georgia. South Jersey is only 3 hours away from here, so we're not even that far out of our market. And when you're in South Jersey, you can impact D.C., Baltimore, Philly, and New York City all at the same time. Wow. And they've got beautiful soils up there.

Shay

Foulk: What kind of soils do you have then? That was another question I was going to ask.

Karl

Shlagel: Oh, good God, it changes from one field to the next. We've got a lot of sand. A lot of loamy sand, a lot of sand and gravel. Um, it was tobacco land, you know. It's not great. We've got some, we've got some clay. We've got, you know, farmers are not hard about the way they name fields, you know. That's the Clay Knoll over there, and oh yeah, that's the field next to your house, and the Sandy Field back there, you know. Yeah.

Shay

Foulk: Well, I want to shift gears a little bit. You, you've alluded to this, um, you said your two younger brothers are involved. Uh, I had done some looking. I think you have two sisters that are not involved in the farm operation, and Dad's still around? Is that kind of the family-centric part of the operation?

Karl

Shlagel: Oh, it's worse than that. I have one sister, she's right in the middle. So it's, uh, I'm the oldest, I'm the oldest of 43, and then Luke is the youngest. What is Luke, 36? My math is right. There's 9 years between the oldest and the youngest. Um, my brother Casey works off the farm, but he's here when you need him. Um, my sister is a registered nurse, works in the local ER. I mean, all of, all of our family is within a half hour of the farm, 45 minutes of the farm is a fair number. And then we've given my parents 16 grandchildren at this point.

Shay

Foulk: Congratulations. That's amazing. With that being said, outside of the family, then I imagine for that amount of vegetable production, you probably employ a number of other employees that are not involved in the family. What does that look like from a people management standpoint?

Karl

Shlagel: So we do. We have some American-born workers, and those are mostly going to be on the sales side. Farmers market help, sales barn help, things of that, customer-facing would be a better statement. But we do utilize and require a Hispanic workforce, and we utilize the H-2A program for that. We have used the H-2A program probably 26, 27 years at this point, since the late '90s. We could, back in the late '90s, early to mid-'90s, find some Hispanic workers that were resident aliens that were willing to work. But as, as the population center has grown, anybody that could be potentially a farm worker or do this sort of work, there's, there's so many other job areas that are calling them. So we require a reliable workforce. We need to know that they're here. So we have used the H-2A program for that time period.

In our crew, our crew of guys, the oldest, Roberto, has been with us 15 years now maybe. And his son's here, his brother's here, his cousin's here. I mean, they're all family. They're family and they're kind of part of our family. They're an important part of our operation.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah. How many employees then is that on a— I know the H-2A can operate in different ways and maybe if you could give an overview of how that program works for some listeners that aren't familiar. Is it— a certain number of months? Is it, you know, what's the kind of the time period that you have these workers? When do you need them? And then how many do you kind of rotate through throughout the year?

Karl

Shlagel: So with the H-2A program, you first have to show that there is a need, and that's all in the paperwork process. You have to have job advertisements, you have to be— and it used to be radio, TV, print. I don't know that it's that intrinsic, that enforced now. I think you can do a little bit different stuff. And like, you know, with, with online, you can have the job boards and everything, but it's, it's out there. So we, we do get a lot of people that respond to these different work ads from different countries around the world that want to fill these roles. Um, we do two different contracts with our guys. So it's seasonal workforce. They, you know, they're pretty much capped at about 9 months. I think you might be able to squeeze a 10-month in there if you have calls for it. But our first guys come in usually about March 15th. We bring in a crew that starts there.

They rotate out about November the 15th, and then the secondary crew comes in April the 15th, and they'll be gone usually December the 15th. Um, we really try to set these dates in advance, hard dates, because we fly them in, we fly them out. Part of that program is you are responsible for getting them in country, you are responsible for getting them to their home country. You can do the bus, you can do the, the Mexican shuttle bus that comes up out of Mexico. Our guys are Mexican. Um, a few years ago, we had our guys came to us and said, do you think you could see how much it would cost to fly home and we'll pay the difference? We're like, why do you want to fly home? And it was at that time we found out that there was a problem. Mexico being a corrupt country, our guys were going across the border on, you know, the, the Greyhound or the bus services that were going in there.

And about 2 hours from the border, they were getting pulled over and they were getting rolled for money because all these federales knew that these boys had good hard American cash in their pockets and been making money and they wanted their piece of the pie. So, now our guys will fly out of BWI or Reagan and they'll be home that night sitting at their kitchen table. You know, I'll get a Facebook message saying, "We're home. We're safe. We're good." So, it's one little thing that we can do and honestly, if you do it right, you can buy an airplane ticket for damn near the same price a bus ticket nowadays, especially if you, you know, shop it early enough. Um, so that's the two contracts. In addition to that, we are responsible for providing housing for them. So we don't have a house on the farm that we can put them in, so they live in town about 10 minutes away.

Um, so I'm responsible every morning. That's kind of my crew boss, and I go pick them up in the morning, I take them home in the evening. Tuesday night is grocery night, so we'll hit the, hit the Metro store so they can, you know, get more minutes for their phone and hit the Walmart if they need anything from Walmart, or go to the Food Lion and get whatever. Sometimes we go to the Mexican grocery store and they get their specialty stuff. It just depends on what they need. I spend a lot of time with them.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah, with the, um, you mentioned their crew boss. Are you the one managing all the H-2A paperwork and the process that goes into that? Because I know for some people it can be quite overwhelming, and then I know there's also firms that, that do that work. So is that you, or are you working with someone on that?

Karl

Shlagel: Thank God it's not me directly. Okay. I, you know, I help, I help do some of it, but Dad still handles that pretty much himself. There was a time where he did all of it and he even said, "It's awful pulling yourself out and pulling your hair out trying to do all this." So, we do use a law firm that specializes in this and you pay that extra money to have somebody do it, but you know it's legal, you know it's done right, you know it's not going to get kicked back on you. As well as it does afford you a certain level of protection if something were to go sideways.

Shay

Foulk: So, and maybe I missed it, is this 10, is this 15, 20 employees? How many are you working with here?

Karl

Shlagel: Currently we're at 8, and that's kind of where we're maxed out from a housing situation. You know, you can't pack them in there like chickens. When they come out and inspect housing, they'll tell you, you can put this many people in this house, you can have this many people. We've got a house here on the farm that we're in the process of remodeling that we hope to get through inspection this year. So that we can, one, give them a little bit more room in the house that they're in. But it's time. We probably should have been to 10 employees here 2 years ago. But that's the direction we're moving towards. Great.

Shay

Foulk: I appreciate the background on that. You know, the flip side then is there's a lot that you're managing and working with there. And then on top of that, family businesses are fun. You know, I'm involved in 2 of them here between the consulting work and then the seed business and the farm operation. And those dynamics are always interesting because it's not just what goes on at the farm, it's, it's what goes on in the family. And when do you get together and where do you spend your time and, and who does what? And I guess maybe, maybe just some perspective or kind of what you found to be a good balance within the family operation. You said it here before, is that nobody has all the answers. We're all just kind of working through this, doing the best that we can. But What are maybe some things that you found working with family that works well in your operation?

Karl

Shlagel: So it's funny coming from a large family. We have a different dynamics and I remember my wife, my wife is an only child and she came into this thunderdome when we were dating and she goes, I just, I don't understand how you people I just don't understand you. She goes, I've seen you tell your brother to go fuck himself, and then an hour later you're sitting at lunch going, can you pass this or pass that? She goes, I said, you know, you never, you never miss an opportunity to tell somebody they're messing up. You never tell them that— miss an opportunity to tell somebody that you love them. It's, um, it's that level of— I mean, let's be honest, anybody that's in a family relationship, if you say you get along all the time, you're a liar. It's personalities conflict, heads will butt.

You know, when I came into high school and went to college at first, I had no interest in coming home. I just— my old man and I, we butted heads so much. But, you know, see, going out and seeing the world and working for other people, and it's like, you know, I remember sitting working at a regular job and you know, you, you didn't do this right, or you didn't do that right. And like, they were going for an emotional response. And I'm like, no one can scream at me like my father can and cut to the quick. If you think you're gonna upset me, I'm sorry, that's just not gonna happen. Um, no, it's, it's, you know, maintaining a level of respect. And, and, you know, if you take care of the business, you take care of the family at the same time. And finding Finding that mix. And my mother, God love her, she is— she's the peacekeeper if there ever was one.

And she's the first one to say it, you know, at the end of the day where it's like we're trying to hash something out, she goes, it's time to go home. You need to go across the street, go home, go to your family. This, this will be fine in the morning. We can deal with this in the morning. We can figure this out in the morning. This is not the thing that needs to be dealt with now. Everybody needs to go to— go home, get dinner, go to sleep. We'll We'll figure it out in the morning. So that's important. You know, trying to have planning meetings and something we're always working on is, and I know everybody's like, oh, meetings are a waste of time. And it's like, no, you need to have strategic business meetings and planning meetings and kind of figure things out. But they just, they can't devolve into bitch sessions, which they do. They do a lot.

I know we did, uh, my brothers and I did before COVID Farm Credit had an ag business planner class, and I don't know if that's offered out in the Midwest at all, but it was a big deal out here. And they had Dr. David Cole out of Virginia Tech who kind of facilitated it, who's an ag economist, um, if you're not aware of him. Smart guy. And we went through and wrote a business plan and did this and did that. There's a lot of good classes out of it. And then we go down to Raleigh to to go over and kind of tie everything up in a bow. And they put a challenge out there. It's a really interesting challenge. And I encourage people to do it at every level of business, especially family businesses. But take everybody, take a hat, throw it on the table, piece of paper, write everybody's name on a piece of paper, throw it in the hat, stir them up, shake them up, pull a name out the hat.

That person just dropped dead. How are you going to run your business? And, you know, he was kind of relaying some of this in some of these drills that he's done. And they did it in one situation where it was the old man that died, and the sons kind of started, well, we should do this and we should do that. And the old man's like, no, that's— I don't want that done that way. And it's like, it doesn't really matter what you want, you're dead. Yeah. So, um, that's that interesting perspective of how are we going to run things and, um, how are we going to do things. And when I worked off the farm, um, I worked in retail management, which gave me a really good perspective for coming back because I did inventory management, I did loss prevention, I did merchandising, um, but I worked with a lot of people. I did some HR, did hiring, did firings, did a little bit of everything.

So it kind of rounded me out, um, with figuring these things out. But I remember as, uh, up and coming, and, you know, I was a farm kid who kept getting promoted and kept getting paid more because I knew how to work and I didn't mind working. But I was sitting there one night kind of full of myself. I was talking with the manager, um, that I really respect to this day, guy by the name of Eric. And I made a comment about, yeah, y'all wouldn't know what to do if I wasn't here. And Eric stopped and looked at me and goes, I want you to think of this. And he goes, this is important and you need to remember this. If you go out tonight and get in a car accident and get busted up, die, incapacitated, coma, You know what's going to happen tomorrow? Those doors are still going to open at 8 o'clock in the morning. The work still goes on, you know, no matter tragedy strikes.

You know, we see it all the time and we always revel in it when we look at Facebook Reels about, you know, the farmer who's in a car accident and all the neighbors get together to make sure his crop gets harvested for the family, or the GoFundMes that happen to make sure that the kids can still get school clothes to go to school. It's, you know, as a community we do a lot in this area. But we have to remember that, you know, nothing is guaranteed. Nothing's promised. The only promise we have in life is death. So it's what we do between now and then. Ah, you don't know. That's— that is a decision. You cannot pay taxes. Yeah, you can be like Wesley Snipes, you know, you just don't— you just don't like the circumstances that happen.

Shay

Foulk: We all make choices in life. I really appreciate your comment there about, uh, Dr. Cole's phenomenal. We've had him at our conference a couple of times and just really gets you thinking. And from— I was in the military for a number of years, still am, and we always called it the dead gunner drill. So if your machine gunner gets killed, you know, who's stepping up and taking that most casualty-producing weapon, that machine gun? Or when you're running through a shoot house or when you're conducting a planning training drill, you know, squad leader's dead, platoon sergeant's dead, you you know, how are you balancing equipment or whatever? And so it's a bit more natural for me to think through that process. But we see that a lot when we work with farms and the transition planning is unfortunately and tragically, it's not the senior partner that something happens to all the time.

We've had several situations where the junior partner dies in their sleep or is incapacitated or, you know, like you said, working with family is fun. What happens when the key player has had enough because of all the BS that's going on and they leave and quit? And some of those roles are not as easy to fill. Like you said, the show's going to go on, but to what extent or what capacity? And sometimes in family farms, uh, in small ag businesses, the impact of that person leaving can have and leave a much greater hole than it would in some of these other businesses. So, you know, I, I think that's pretty important. And I like your comment about the strategic planning, is you need to have structure.

A lot of times What we do on the consulting side is we just help facilitate those conversations to have a mediator in there, someone that is not emotionally tied to the family business that says, "Here's the topics we need to cover. Here's how we get through it. And then, let's move forward with the accountability, the action items. How are we going to implement?" That I think bringing in those types of the people, you know, it's the work that we do, but just have someone be part of that. Have a strategic partner, have someone that knows your family business, that knows the family inside and out, come in and be part of that decision-making process or sit on as a board of advisors in order to help make the farm operation better. So I don't know, any other comments on that, Carl?

Karl

Shlagel: You know, the thing that probably should be concerning most people in our age group or most people farming right now today is just the sheer volume of assets that are going to change hands in the next 10 to 15 years. And the crazy thing about it is all of the time and effort that has been spent by so many great partners on talking about transition plans, Farm Bureau nationwide, and I know all the things that you guys have out there, all of the startup guys like that you're doing it, um, Oh, what's that other guy from out west who does a really great job on Twitter, talks about it? I feel like an ass now, I can't remember his name. Um, Farm Journal had a huge exposé within the past 10 years where they followed through with families and were very upfront. There is no silver bullet approach to this. Transitions are hard. Yep.

And, and it's harder here because you've got some farmers that plan for it and do a great job. You've got some— and I heard an older Farm Bureau member recently say you know, made the comment about, well, he had a plan that was not to have no plan at all. And I'm gonna go, who's, who, who is that fair to? That's how farms get destroyed. That's how farms get sold for housing and solar panels and everything in between. And it's, it's having those hard, honest conversations, and they can't be forced. You know, you've seen the horror stories of people saying, I just kept asking, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? And then the old man had a tizzy fit about it. He goes, you can deal with it when I'm dead and gone. Yeah.

Um, seeing so many of these, these family farms that where there's plans of where you've got multiple siblings, where you've got one or two siblings, maybe they're making their living on the farm and then they're having to buy the farm back from other siblings. Um, yeah, it— there's no silver bullet approach to this and there's no one-size-fits-all. Um, it's, it's about having the honest conversations and, and having those hard conversations while people are still living and really trying to take the emotion out of it. And there's no answer for it. It's hard.

Shay

Foulk: It is hard. And it's the hardest thing you have to do once in your life. And very few people have it figured out. But I would encourage you that if you're facing that situation, reach out to someone, you know, start getting a plan in place, start having those hard conversations because, you know, it doesn't get easier with time. Carl, I want to wrap up here. I know you're actively involved on Farm Bureau. I think your proximity— or this is maybe more of a question— does your proximity to, to policy, to DC, to being on the East Coast where you have a higher population density, does that drive you to be involved in things around ag policy? Or is that something that you just have naturally enjoyed and pursued over the years?

Karl

Shlagel: It's not even over the years. This is more recent than anything. Okay. University of Maryland, and through the Ag Extension, has a, has a program called LEAD, L-E-A-D. And I know there's multiple states have it. And in Maryland, it's, it's, it's a big deal. And it's about getting around the state and understanding, you know, more of it. You see things that you don't normally get to see, you know, it's, you can't drive up to the Port of Baltimore and say, hey, I'd like a tour. It opens doors and opens up pathways. And it was the whole key key of the program was to create leaders for both in the agricultural community and the rural community and the organizations that support it. So I went through it. We were the COVID class. We literally took a 2-year program into 4 and a half because of COVID and the shutdowns.

But I kind of took away from it when it was done of, all right, I need to step up. I need to be more involved. So I remember I called my county Farm Bureau president and I said, hey, I want to get more involved. And I'm going to say something that I know a lot of people deal with across the country of, well, we'll see if one of the old people wants to step aside so you can be more involved. Yep. And I was like, okay, that's really, really, really invigorating. Quite interesting. And then literally, literally, I got a day— a day later I got a call from a good friend of mine and she said, I heard you want to be involved. And I said, I do wanna be involved. She goes, don't worry about the county. She goes, we, we need another board of director on the state level to represent Southern Maryland. How would you like to do that? I go, I said, I, you know, this isn't a popularity contest.

I don't feel like campaigning. She goes, oh no. She goes, once your name was floated out, everyone has already said yes. Right. So I was elected to, um, cover the Southern Maryland region. We have 2 representatives, um, for our 5 Southern Maryland counties, which is all the counties south South of DC, Southern Maryland. And then I've been on the board now coming up on 3 years now. Yeah, it'll be 3 years this year coming. And it's, it's been wonderful getting to understand more of what's going on and be more involved and help writing policy at the state level to, you know, maybe even feature in national policy. And then a year ago, I got involved with the PAL program through AFBF, which is Partners in Advocacy Leadership. That's 10 ag leaders from around the country. So it's a real great cross-section of the different things we touch.

You know, we've got dairymen, we've got crop farmers, we've got educational people, we've got, I mean, we've got a little bit of everything. And everybody, you know, is very involved and active and wants to be able to tell their story. And it's really hyper-focused on how do you advocate, how do you get out there. And I know part of the reason they love me is because they don't have to fly me into DC.

Shay

Foulk: You're already there.

Karl

Shlagel: I'm right here. So I have been asked to be involved and to talk about things. And part of the other thing is you can't always say yes. Sometimes you have to say no. Like they wanted me to come up and do something the first week of June. And I was like, guys, we are just way too busy getting plants in the ground right now. You know, I hate to say no, like there's this obligation you have to be involved. But like my father says, and it's important to remember, the first word in Farm Bureau is farm. It's not bureau, it's farm. You got to take care of your own business first before you can go out and try to help everyone else's business.

Shay

Foulk: That's some great advice.

Karl

Shlagel: Keeping that in mind.

Shay

Foulk: The closing comment here that I have, and then I need to run, is With your involvement here recently, and maybe some of the things that you've been exposed to through those experiences you mentioned, for farmers listening, and I would say particularly in that 30 to 45 or 50 age group, if they haven't historically been involved in ag policy or Farm Bureau or the decisions that are being made around them, either because of they don't like the political outlook, they don't like the popularity contest, they don't like the extra work that it takes to be involved there was one thing that you could tell them of why they should be involved or why it's important, or, you know, maybe the overarching theme that you found, uh, what would that be as we close out here?

Karl

Shlagel: This is a fun one. I love having this conversation. So I'm 43 years old. I'm not a young farmer anymore. What, young farmer cuts off at 35 years old now? So I'm not a young farmer, not an old farmer. I'm that in-between stage where we're expected to just kind of sit back and wait to have our voice. We don't have time. You do not have time to be told that you're old enough, that you're important enough to have a voice. You need to get involved. You need to speak up. We don't have time as a generation and as a group of people to wait till we're 65 to try to change the world. If there's things that we know that we need and there's things that we know that should be different, it is our responsibility, it is our duty to do things right. The greatest crop that I'll ever raise isn't out in the field, it's the next generation.

What kind of a world, what kind of an industry, what kind of a farm am I trying to leave my children? I'm trying to make things easier on them so that they can have a better life than I had. And that's, that's why I do this. It's not for me, it's not to, not to see my name up in lights. I don't care. I don't like seeing myself in pictures or on, on videos, or, or I hate the sound of my voice hearing it, listening back. I want to try to make a difference so that my children can have a better way of life, so that they can farm more productively than I am, so that they can farm more profitable— profitability— profitably. No, that's not even gonna work. What am I trying to say? Profitably. God, muttering. Um, But that's— those are the things we need to do. You know, all the other stuff is noise. Solar is noise. Um, carbon credits, it's noise. It's all, it's all out there.

You know, you want to keep farms and farms, make them profitable. That's the best thing you do. That's the best way to preserve a farm, is make it profitable. Amen.

Shay

Foulk: Amen, Carl. I think that's a great place to wrap up here. Uh, I'll leave you with this: if, if someone wants to check out, I know you have a great website, you're on X as well. Uh, what's the name of your website? Website for people to follow along with what you have going on there?

Karl

Shlagel: So I, yeah, I've had to create a website for this PAL program. So it's, um, for me personally, it's karlshlagel.com. Very easy to find. You'll forget how to spell my name, but, um, I prefer to be on Twitter or X or whatever you want to go, Elon's thing, whatever you want to call it nowadays. Um, and I'm not political. I'm, I'm not going to have those conversations with you. I'm just trying to highlight and focus and show you what I do. My little corner of the agricultural community and how I farm. So it's K_Schlagel, S-H-L-A-G-E-L. And then of course you can find our farm, last name, we're very unique, Schlagel Farms, LLC. And we're online and on Twitter and on Facebook and all those things.

Shay

Foulk: Carl, this has been a great conversation. I appreciate your perspective. I appreciate getting connected here. And I know the listeners are going to get a lot of value out of what you provided. So we With that, Carl, thank you so much, and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the Ag View Pitch, and we will catch you next time.