 Okay. All right, so I'm Trisha and I work here at the Jackson County UW Extension Office. Jesse asked me to help out with this first one a little bit and just getting us started and talking about sustainability and culture. So when I went to, when I did my undergraduate and graduate, this topic was big. I mean that was 10 plus years ago, but I was at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, where I was able to, you get to, you get to design your own master's degree. So I was in the Department of Agronomy and in the Department of Rural Sociology and sustainability was a big topic then. And now I feel like it's, it's kind of a buzzword. It's kind of a popular term and I think that you've probably all heard of it. Anyone? Have you heard the word sustainability? And so where have you heard it? Or where, what do you think of when you, when Jesse said, come to this workshop on sustainability and agriculture. What do you mean, what was your immediate thought? What changed your mind? What did you end up there? Um, like steady, like even. So for sustainable feed, should you be in swine production, or be like having a steady production of each? Not one. Anybody else? You see it in newspapers or on TV or, you know, social media? Any other things that come to mind at the top of your head? You don't want to share? Well, I didn't think you would want to share too much, but so what we'll do is work in pairs. We'll have a group of three there, that's okay. And then two, two, two, two. And I'm going to give you just a pack of sticky notes. And so you'll work together in your pair, but you'll each be writing on your own sticky note there. And, um, give me some ideas that come to mind with regard to sustainable, the term sustainable when it comes to agriculture. If the three of you want to work together, if you want to work, if you just want to jot down stuff on your own, no problem. But, um, give me kind of your initial thought, or maybe you have an idea of what a definition of sustainable might be. We'll just jot that down. We'll just take a few minutes here to do that. We had to hide the markers because on Monday night, somebody got creative and wrote all over the wall and it was creepy. So we had to hide them all. We tried everything. We didn't try to imagine it. We tried, you know, the spray and we tried some bleach wipes. Bring one back to see. So you got a couple minutes there to talk with each other. You shy? No, I'll ask you to share with the groups that I'm there to. Best year. Maybe we should use the projector. Looks good to me. Got them all written down? Got anything written down? Yes. No ideas? I'll put some terms on the board here, and maybe that'll jog some ideas that might help a little bit. Take another minute. Maybe this will help you. Three terms here that you have a three-legged camp stool like this. You should take camping or have that home. I know I have one somewhere. Somewhere in a family. One of us hasn't. I mean, you have one, but you can't do one. It's going to bring you in. Well, what do you know about a three-legged stool? First of all, if you lose one leg at top, it falls apart, right? It's not going to last. So often, sustainability is described as a three-legged stool that requires equal support from three areas. These are three words that are often used in describing sustainability. In order for any action that we do to be sustainable in a long-term sense, it has to be sustainably in terms of economics or the economy, environment in terms of natural resources used, or we'll get into more of these, or community in terms of the people involved. So each of you has something written down, and you can talk about this with each other, or if you already kind of have a feeling. With what you wrote down, I want you to come up and just stick it on the board where you kind of think it fits in. If you can pick an area, one of these three, if you had to guess, or maybe you already kind of really feel strongly, just come on up and stick it up here. If you're not quite sure, you can put it on the side. You don't have to have your name on it. I don't have to know who wrote what, but come on up and put it on the board where you think it might fit. I'll read it, and then we'll add it to the name. So that we've got a little bit there. Thanks, everybody. What we'll do is I'm going to read what you wrote, and we'll write them on the board so that everybody can see what was written to, so that you'll have them up there for the rest of the session, and then you can, you don't have to try and remember everyone that I wrote. So that will be our recorder here, Secretary Knight. So we have these kind of three concepts that are used often to define sustainability, economy, or economic environment, and communities. So we have terms of economy. I'll read the first one here. Sustainability means steady control and production of material. Another comment on here is able to control also under economy. This one was all under economy. Sustaining or self-sufficient, okay? Abilities to maintain production and availability of a resource. Management of a resource so it fulfills the needs of the economy and the environment. Management of a resource so it fulfills the needs of the economy and the environment. Okay, yep. So those are all the ones that are pretty close onto economy. So this one was kind of in between economy and environment, which is good because we'll talk about the environmental ones. So I think these are all really good. I just want to kind of summarize here under economy. So a lot of things on production and I like the one on self-sufficient a lot and maintaining production of a resource availability. Think about your projects. Many of you probably do the cost of production worksheets. How many of you come out in the black every year? Meaning you make money. You make money. Well, we're talking about sustained production, right? So sustained production repeated or steady every year in the black? No, it's not uncommon, right? Most of our fair projects are probably in the red, right? And we talk about that a little bit when we do the cost of production worksheets. But if we're talking about economic sustainability, we probably don't have it in a lot of our fair projects, right? But if we were producing livestock as a living, that would be very important that we weren't able to have a sustained economic project, right? We'll be in the black a little bit more. So a little bit there on economics. What about environment? I only have one, although the last one was a little bit on. We got a little bit into resource management and meaning the needs of the environment. This one says something that an animal can live in that is good for them. Okay? Any other thoughts on environment? Justi said you guys are going to go visit Organic Valley. Anybody have any thoughts on organic? Is that sustainable or not? Not really. Not really? Do you want to elaborate? Well, like, if the farm is organic, they produce less than if they were. Like, because pesticides help plants grow and keep the things you don't want on the farm. And then, if you're producing less organic vegetation, then you can't feed as much to your animals as you want. So it might result that you'll end up with less feed produced and you might need more acres to produce the same amount of feed that you might have otherwise. Okay? Good points. I think you'll be exploring that in particular, especially on that visit. And big topic there, yeah. So we'll get into this a little bit more, but in terms of environment, things that come into mind would be things like water, air, what else do we use in agriculture in terms of natural resources, yeah. Trimmer. Okay. Anybody else? Soil. Yeah. Those are probably the big three. And in order to be, like we mentioned earlier, a steady production, you need to have those resources available, right? Some of those things might fall under the environment version of the three-legged stool, natural resources that we use. Of course we use a lot of other things too for livestock production and we'll get into more details of those over the next few visits and field trips. Okay. So community, I have a few that are kind of like out here. Maybe they weren't exactly sure if they fell on the community three-legged stool or you just put them over to the side, weren't quite sure. Long lasting ability to conserve a resource. Okay. And so maybe that one could fall under a minute of all three, really. But in terms of community, if I were to think about this one, I might say if you're working on a farm, as an employee, and you say, you know, I'm just not getting a fair pay here. Are you going to stay working on the farm? No. Yeah. So like, in terms of sustainability for our community, things like, you know, fair wages for workers that come into play there, what about, why are we producing livestock in the long run? What's the end game? What's the whole point of, you know, brewing it in your animals? Who is the, in the end, we have a person who buys them and does what with them. Yeah, we have consumers, right? And so, thinking about consumers and that they have access to the food that we're growing and that it is nutritious and affordable for them. So maybe we can kind of elaborate on that one there that way for our community. Okay, this one says the election of governor of states, election of our governor of states. Okay, so that one's probably on the edge, because I weren't quite sure what I've been in. Anybody want to elaborate on that one? A little bit of politics there, maybe. So this one, I think it was meant to go on the community, so it says it has something to do with ourselves. Yes, I would agree. Say, you know, we're all consumers and producers and we are all connected through the chain of our production and consumption. What is expected for livestock? Okay, maybe that one goes under community. And that could be, you know, what are consumers expected of the products that they're wanting to use? Yeah, for that last one, what is expected for livestock? For consumers? Would that be like at the fair, not like hitting your animal? Like for pigs, not like hitting them too hard in front of the public? Sure, I mean, yeah, for our consumers' view, what we're doing could have an impact on our ability to continue producing livestock. And we've seen some of that being played out in the world today. I mean, we're seeing consumers being probably more and more interested in how we are freezing livestock. And, you know, they may not necessarily know why a producer does what they do, but if they perceive something and they don't like it and they choose not to buy the product based on that perception, that can impact your ability to continue producing livestock, right? Thanks. Okay, so on this last one says, sustainable, it doesn't harm the environment. Self-sustaining, under control and balanced. All of them, they're all of them as well. Well, it's good to get your, it's good for us to get an idea of what your concept is of sustainability so that we kind of know where we're starting and, you know, where we should kind of go from here. So, thanks everybody for sharing your thoughts and ideas with us. And hopefully this starts to give you at least a little bit of a picture of what goes into defining the term sustainability. Like many of you wrote in here the idea of being able to continue with a particular action. We're going to focus on livestock production in this group and so agricultural sustainability or sustainable livestock production and how things like economics, environment and community come into play that in particular how we're going to talk about sustainability for the rest of this evening and you'll hear these things coming up throughout the rest of the programs that you have. Any other comments or contributions? Anybody? Thank you. Alright, next on the list I'll get you all in touch with your artistic side. Okay. Take a marker or two. Or two. Probably all wondering why you have a paper plate. Pass the markers down after you choose your colors. Please. What I would like you to do on your paper plate, you have a paper plate and and you have a placemat. We're getting fancy tonight. So, first of all on the plate I would like you to draw a meal that you've had within the last 48 hours. 48 hours. A meal that you've had in the last two days. And then I want you to take your placemat and see if you can figure out where each of those ingredients came from. You'll see that you've got the United States on one side and you've got a world map of where each of those ingredients came from. So, I don't want you to tell me your food came from a restaurant or the grocery store because we all know better than that by now, right? To help you along the way I have some food ingredients that might kind of surprise you when you start looking at the labels. And you can come up here and look at these and see if you can figure out where they're from. But draw your own meal first and then you can come and look at mine. I know you all have eaten the meal within the last 48 hours. Don't forget to put your placemat underneath your plate. It can be any color you want it to be, Jack. If you want a pink potato, have a pink potato. This doesn't have to be fancy artwork. Just draw something and then see if you can figure out take five minutes, draw your meal and see if you can figure out where all of those ingredients came from. And then come up and look at my meal and see if there's anything shocking there. I thought you all were better cooks than this. Tell me where did you have a burger? Where did that come from? I'm sure. Move on. I said it doesn't have to be burger. Austin? What did you have? I labeled it. Okay. So where did it come from? You have no idea. Okay. Okay. So where did it come from? You have no idea. Taylor? Where's your food coming from? I don't know where it's coming from. Okay. You must have potatoes? No. Okay. Start passing these around and see if you can figure out where they came from. Read the label. It'll tell you. Alright. Call. That's where you get milk. I'm sure we already did that. Put an X. Put an X if you know where your food came from. Put an X on the map. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Look at it. Look at that. Look at that. There, there. Where did the bananas come from? Look. It's on the sticker. It's got spanish on it. Okay. Where? Where? Illinois. Illinois. Where's that from? Yes. This is Illinois. Cassie's down. I'll be the runner. Oh, my gosh. Oh my gosh. I'll be the runner. Thank you. I'll be the runner. I'll be the runner. I'll be the runner. I'll be the runner. I'll be the runner. That's the banana salad. Keep this. Keep the food for me. Okay. That's the banana salad. I'm not my favorite. Where are they? From Brazil. Brazil. Wild wonders. I think that they are. At it? Yes. We're on. Not much. What's your meal? The things are on. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Their income relies on bananas and carmel. This is... No, that's for sure. Oh. Yeah. Brazil is the biggest country in South America. The wide eye. I don't think so. I don't think that kind of thing. The wide eye. Where are you from? I don't know. Oh, it's from San Diego. They're like... They've been in trouble before. Ow. They're great. They come from... Mexico. You never know where great people come from. I know. It's a great thing. Okay, let's wrap this up. You all have done a really nice job of drawing your meal. It's from Walmart. Yeah. Oh, God. Hey, I just looked up my name. Yeah, I'm afraid. Grace, give us a thank you. This was a list of these boys. Thank you. We're already... She said she... Okay. You got it? All right. Beans. Beans. Okay, I'll take all the food back, please. No, not yours. Not yours. Okay, could you all tell where your food came from? Kind of. Kind of. What do you mean, kind of? Half an ass. What could you choose? Trace back. My metallic potato. Where did your metallic potato come from? My grandpa's farm. All right. So that's what we call eating local, huh? Yes. All right. Anybody else able to tell where any part of their meal came from? Franny? My pork rolls come from my... Hey, a pig. That's in my freezer. Okay. All right, good. Does it bother anybody that you don't know where your food came from? Yes, it does. Of course, Jack could say, nope. Why? Why does it bother you? Because what if it's from, like, China or India? I don't know. It'd be, like, shipped over the ocean. Okay, what's it find out on the corned beef? I bought this for a reason. It's in Brazil. And it wasn't to eat it. Of course it wasn't. That's a good idea, Jesse. What does it say? It's from Brazil. Product of Brazil passed under Brazilian government inspection. It was probably made by slaves from Brazil. Where to think? Where to think? Do we have any idea what the inspection standards are in Brazil? No, they could be nothing. They could just be standing there playing their phone, playing cat and crush. Okay, thanks, Trent. All right. So, Franny, your pork that's in your freezer, you know, if that was inspected? It could have been. If it was inspected, it probably was inspected. Okay. Do we have a little bit better idea of inspection in Wisconsin versus Brazil? How many of you want to come and eat this when you fix it? No. All right. tuna fish, how many of you eat tuna fish? Where'd this come from? California. What do we know about tuna production in Thailand? Darrell. We don't know, do we? Is there a message here? Tomatoes, where were they? Mexico. In a greenhouse in Mexico. What are wild wonders? Tomatoes. How about the bananas? Trisha told me a story about bananas and I might never eat them again. Where, Carter? One, I want to hear the story and two, Guatemala pretty much lives off of bananas. Yeah. You can probably hear the term the banana belt. My banana came from Ecuador where I ate this morning and I lived in Ecuador as a volunteer and got to see banana production up close and personal and they use a lot of pesticides which, you know, like Trent said, pesticides are a tool that we use here and I think the point Jesse's making is here, today in this room we had 20 farmers go through the pesticide applicator training certification. It's a certification that farmers in Wisconsin and all across our country have to go through every five years, they have to get the certification and re-certify. So they take a class, they have to pass an exam and that allows them to purchase chemicals and to apply chemicals. So there's some pretty strict standards here that require a strong understanding of how to use pesticides. In Ecuador there's nothing like that. And here we learn a lot about personal protective equipment when you're using pesticides for example. Employees, they're wearing t-shirts and they put a bag over the bunch as they're growing and then they connect to holes and they spray a bunch of chemicals in the bag. The bag stays on until the bunch gets about mature size then the crew comes in and they yank the bags off and they throw them on the ground and they go into the rivers and the creeks and the rainforest and there's no regulations. So to me since we can't grow bananas here in the United States and if you want and we love to eat bananas right this country I did get to work with some farmers who were selling them organically and if you can get organic bananas you might avoid some of those problems but again, you need to make sure that they're inspected by the USDA because if it's an organic organization of Ecuador you know what the standards are. So a lot of people say well who cares if it's organic if you don't eat the flesh but we talk about sustainability in terms of the environment and the community the employees who have to work on those farms for about ten cents an hour and the environment the water that they're going to drink that has chemical bags floating around so it's one of the things that we talked about there how many of your meals were sustainable sustainable is can be conventional production or it can be organic or it can be your meals were sustainable anything shock you here? yes y'all going to go home and read labels now and only eat from the garden in the freezer? no alright this little exercise was to just kind of open your eyes to see where your food might come from because any of you do any direct marketing to consumers of anything you produce on your farms alright why do those consumers buy from you Blake? it's convenient okay, Trent why do the consumers buy from you? they know you you don't have to go to some stranger's house to tell them what they want to buy do they trust you and trust your production practices? Doyle, you sell right to consumers? you sell some pork to consumers? okay, and why do they buy from you? Franny, you sell direct to the consumer? and why do they buy from you? okay good, so anybody else have any comments or questions? you can all pass the marker somewhere and take your plates home for a souvenir post it on the ceiling the last thing that we're going to do tonight, or maybe I should say the next thing is I have a little powerpoint to share with you that I think will kind of give you a better idea of what sustainability might look like because can you tell us from the discussion that Tricia left that sustainability means different things to different people and there really isn't a cut and dried definition it should be that will work can anybody see this? a short and sweet powerpoint it's going to show us a little bit about a farm called Full Circle Farm and by the time we get through the powerpoint maybe you'll figure out why they call it Full Circle Farm they are a sustainable farm this farm is an actual farm in Iowa that has been going for many many years is it self-sustaining use? self-sustaining use is sustainable self-sustaining to me that means that you produce everything that you need in life and I think that as consumers we're always maybe going to have to buy something I am anyway, I can be partially sustainable but self-sufficient not being trained are there people that are self-sufficient in the world? self-sufficient farmers so everything they grow they're growing for their own consumption maybe they trade some so these farmers depend a lot on solar energy versus fossil fuels who knows what the difference is Brandi fossil fuels are like air and stuff who else wants to try fossil fuels fossil fuels are they're refined refined oils left over from dead animals and organisms or maybe it's gas or diesel they retain and recycle nutrients on their farms they don't use a lot of inputs and the environment is very important they preserve it and they restore it and that's to protect water and support wildlife this is a farm that's economically profitable they make money, this is how they make their living and they support their community so as livestock producers how does your enterprise support your community? do you buy anything downtown? yes and we've already talked about some of you direct marketing do you support your local locker plants and feed stores that sort of thing? okay this is a grass based farm but they also feed some grain as you will see this farm has Angus cattle and some sheep they raise one forest sheep who's heard of those? okay the sheep people have like I said they use as much pasture as they can because grass captures solar energy and the cattle consume the grass and they fertilize the pasture with their manure so they are really recycling those plant nutrients aren't they? they're eating grass do humans eat much grass? no so they are consuming a resource that we don't eat directly do we? they also grow corn and sorghum together and they feed their cattle this mix sorghum is what would I call it? it's a grain they're probably harvesting they're like a forage yeah so they grow these two together they chop some and feed it as a green chop and the next slide or two you'll see that they also fence these fields and let the cattle what they call strip grazing so they grow these together kind of in a combination this is an organic farm they don't use chemical fertilizers or pesticides but when they grow more than one crop together that helps keep the pests away there's their electric fence so they use strip graze to crop so if they make the cattle do the work and graze the cattle are walking around harvesting the grain aren't they? so then they are not using as much gas to diesel the fossil fuels to get that harvested and they're also saving labor because does it take somebody to drive the tractor and open the gates even in the winter when grass isn't growing they're still feeding hay at that time but the cattle stay out on the pastures so they're still depositing manure and still fertilizing aren't they? and then as we have talked about with some of you selling direct to consumers their cattle are processed at a local market so they're supporting someone local in their community and they're direct marketing to consumers so that's two ways that they are supporting their community you see that community is on our board there are those clump horse sheep and they're a breed of sheep that do really well in a grass based kind of diet they do the same thing with them they're processed locally and sold locally do you think that they can demand a premium price for their beef and lamb demand it? not necessarily demand do you think that consumers are willing to pay more if they know where if they know where these animals are coming from and how they've been raised and fed and they like the quality of the product they're buying so that might be one way to set off offset Trent you talked about organic crops not yielding as much so you can command price on the other end where you're selling you might be able to get more money for it yes you might be able to sell chicken they also have chickens they sell eggs and they even take food scraps I'm assuming all vegetable scraps from a local camp and compost it they do a lot of composting because what does compost do to fields and gardens okay is that also something that's benefiting their community and their environment and the garbage from a camp that they would throw away and turning it into food for their soil they grow vegetables and they sell them through a CSA anybody know what a CSA is community supported agriculture where the consumer buys a share for a year and then they are guaranteed so many weeks of fresh produce it can't be just vegetables and fruits some of them include eggs some include dairy some include meat they're set up in many different ways they also sell to grocery stores and restaurants and they have some woods and some prairies they have people come out they're doing some agritourism anybody do agritourism on their farms I think we did it we brought in some people so look around at okay we do a cut amount of small scale people like to come out and see the lambs I don't charge them anything I probably could make money but I don't I just do it because it's fun but they get people to come out and ride around on a wagon and look at their animals and the grass they harvest wood from their wood and they're cutting down trees that are probably dead or blown down by the wind so they're cleaning up their wood lots at the same time they have a pond they use their pond in many ways for recreation, for fishing to water their vegetable crops and to water their livestock they do educational field tours and community picnics and that's the end of the slide show now why in the world would they want to name their farm full circle farm what do you think they produce a lot of their own and like recycle so is it a circle mostly in their community they produce and sell in their community how about environmentally are they doing a circle there how they're growing the crops and then they're distributing it and eating it and then they're used as composting and how about spreading manure how are they doing that organically they have their cattle out on pasture year around and then they so and how about the full circle with the economic portion of sustainability are they making enough to support their family questions, comments all right do you have one more handout I think does this give you an idea of what sustainable might be I told you parents can't talk what are they advertising as gas fed no they do not because they feed grain and in the notes I'll let you read my notes because it said most people in Iowa like feed that has some grain fed so that's why they feed that corn because there are strict standards for all the crops thank you all right you have a worksheet so this will be next time be due next time on March 21st well you need to turn it in you can't turn it in now no so you need to you're old enough to be responsible Franny yes turn it on the next put your name on it can you all think of three production practices that you do on your farm with your livestock if you do some crops you could do that I want you to go home and talk about this you don't have to come up with this all on your own have a discussion at home and see if you can come up with three practices that you do that are sustainable then we also want you to interview two people could be family members try to get some differences in age even differences in generations like interview somebody old like me and see what they think sustainable is and maybe interview your parents or an aunt or an uncle or whoever you choose and see if those definitions are different does that sound too hard but it's due next time and you know that I'm kind of a stickler on requirements I have to put a couple of requirements in so that you'll you do have to earn your trip that's right sure alright