Known online as the New Mexico Milkmaid, Tara van der Dussen shatters sterotypes as easily as she recites agricultural . She's a Mother, a Millenial, a Dairy Farmer, an Agricultural Scientist and the co-host of the Discover Ag Podcast. Quite the combination.
In our latest episode, Tara, a 5th-generation dairy farmer, offers a unique perspective on an industry often misunderstood by those of us it nourishes. She helps explain the intricate connection between taking care of the farm and taking care of the environment.
We talk agricultural technology, consumer trust, and the unwritten stories behind your food labels. Tara explains the dairy supply chain and the true nature of grass-fed products.
If you've ever wondered about the journey of milk from cow to Subway cheese slice, Tara's got the answers for you.
Tara tells a multi-generational story that weaves our common past with our present, debunking s few of the marketing myths that often guide our food choices.
We round out the conversation with an inspiring vision of challenges shaping the future of farming.
Connect with Tara Vander Dussen:
Website: https://taravanderdussen.com/
Website: https://www.thehandsthatfeedus.com/
Podcast: https://www.thehandsthatfeedus.com/podcast-1
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/discoverag_/
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Chances are, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't need to change your life and get healthier.
So take action right now. Book a call with Dr. Ovadia's team.
One small step in the right direction is all it takes to get started.
How to connect with Stay Off My Operating Table:
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Theme Song : Rage Against
Written & Performed by Logan Gritton & Colin Gailey
(c) 2016 Mercury Retro Recordings
Known online as the New Mexico Milkmaid, Tara van der Dussen shatters sterotypes as easily as she recites agricultural . She's a Mother, a Millenial, a Dairy Farmer, an Agricultural Scientist and the co-host of the Discover Ag Podcast. Quite the combination.
In our latest episode, Tara, a 5th-generation dairy farmer, offers a unique perspective on an industry often misunderstood by those of us it nourishes. She helps explain the intricate connection between taking care of the farm and taking care of the environment.
We talk agricultural technology, consumer trust, and the unwritten stories behind your food labels. Tara explains the dairy supply chain and the true nature of grass-fed products.
If you've ever wondered about the journey of milk from cow to Subway cheese slice, Tara's got the answers for you.
Tara tells a multi-generational story that weaves our common past with our present, debunking s few of the marketing myths that often guide our food choices.
We round out the conversation with an inspiring vision of challenges shaping the future of farming.
Connect with Tara Vander Dussen:
Website: https://taravanderdussen.com/
Website: https://www.thehandsthatfeedus.com/
Podcast: https://www.thehandsthatfeedus.com/podcast-1
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/discoverag_/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chances are, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't need to change your life and get healthier.
So take action right now. Book a call with Dr. Ovadia's team.
One small step in the right direction is all it takes to get started.
How to connect with Stay Off My Operating Table:
Twitter:
Learn more:
Theme Song : Rage Against
Written & Performed by Logan Gritton & Colin Gailey
(c) 2016 Mercury Retro Recordings
And we're live folks. It's the stay off my operating table podcast, dr Phillip Ovedia. I'm the talking hairdo Jack Heald, who's here for a make sure that it doesn't get too weird with with the medical world, and I feel like today we've got somebody that maybe I have a little bit more in common with than our normal range of hosts, because I grew up in cattle country Not that I know anymore, but I think I think she's might be more my people than all these medical and nerdy guys that we have on. Phil, introduce our guest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, really excited for this one and, like you said, we're getting getting back to the roots as it is with this one, so really excited to have Tara van der Dussen on. And Tara is also known as the New Mexico milkmaid and is one half of the powerhouse force behind discover ag, the podcast, the docuseries, and discover ag is kind of making ranching and farming cool again. So really can't wait to hear about this and discuss some of what they're doing. So with that. Tara, why don't you give a little bit of your background and introduce yourself to our audience?
Speaker 3:Yeah, hi guys, thank you so much for having me on. So a little bit about myself. I actually am a fifth generation dairy farmer, so I grew up very much with dairy farming as a part of my family history and a part of my legacy. I ultimately went away to college. I feel like it's classic like rural kids stories where you think you're going to move away from the small town and never come back to the farm. And that's what I did.
Speaker 3:I got my degree in environmental science and along the way, I ended up dating and ultimately marrying my husband and after I got my degree, I moved back to his family farm. And so here I am, dairy farming again and raising the sixth generation of dairy farmers here on our farm. And, as you mentioned, I am the co-host of a podcast called Discover Ag. So while I work in the environmental sustainability space within dairy, I ultimately started sharing online and wanting to bring these conversations around food and farming to people outside of the agriculture community, and that's what we really try to do with Discover Ag. You mentioned our tagline is kind of like try to make Ag cool again, make food and farming fun again and just bring kind of a female millennial twist to the conversations about food and farming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's awesome. One of the, I think, central issues that we're struggling with as a society is we've become so disconnected from our food and don't understand where it comes from, and I think when most people picture ranchers and farmers, it's old men. So here you are, both you and Natalie, young women kind of showing what Ag is really about. So why don't we start with what do you think some of the most common misconceptions are about agriculture and where our food comes from?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you mentioned kind of the agriculture trope of like the older man as being the farmer and it's funny, I was preparing my keynote speech a few years back and I just Googled farmer and the number one picture that came up was, you know, an older man standing in a field with overalls on, you know, the hay in the mouth, like the piece of straw in his mouth. And while there is absolutely nothing wrong with that photo and like the farmers that represents, I think the agriculture I see is so much more diverse than that and there's just a lot more to it than I think people realize. We do a lot of on farm tours at our dairy and I think that's one of the biggest things we hear is like I didn't realize how much went into dairy farming and you know dairy farming is just one small single piece of you know agriculture. Actually, my co-host always makes the analogy about doctors. Right, like there are so many different types of doctors. You can go to a cardiologist and maybe they'd have some answers for you about you know endocrinology, but like you need to go to an endocrinologist for that specialty and it's kind of similar with agriculture is, you know, my specialty is dairy farming.
Speaker 3:Natalie, my co-host is cattle ranching. We both have cattle and yet they are immensely different. Pretty much the only thing that's similar about them we joke is that they both eat and they move, and so besides that you know. Then you get into all of the different types of products, from you know vegetables to fruit to tree nuts, and you just have a very diverse group of you know specialties within agriculture.
Speaker 1:I want to, I want to gosh. I have so many questions I want to ask, so I'm going to just take them one at a time, I guess. First of all, how in the world did you did this idea of starting this podcast Discover Ag? Where did that come from? And no, no, let's just stick there. What, what was the genesis of that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I, before we started the podcast, I actually started sharing on social media first and for me, you know, whenever I started sharing online, I had my first child, a young daughter, and I was joining so many of the mom Facebook groups that were kind of focused on like what you should feed your kids. And what I realized in those groups is a lot of the conversation was around like milk and dairy, which is not a surprise when you have that transition, you know, at one year old, to what are you going to feed your kids and move them to solid foods and those kinds of things. But what surprised me was that so many of those conversations ended up being about, like, agriculture's impact on the environment. And with my degree and my work and my practice in, you know, environmental consulting around agriculture, I found myself, you know, answering questions, putting out resources and kind of realized this was, you know, several years ago and in this space of people opening up more of their lives on social media, I decided to kind of give it a try and just start sharing about our farm, you know, what we were doing with our water use, what we were doing with our cows, I mean just everything I could think of, kind of putting it out there, and ultimately, it led me to meeting Natalie online.
Speaker 3:So I'm based in New Mexico, natalie's in Nebraska. So, like most great millennial friendships, we met in an Instagram DM message and then became, you know, friends in real life, and both of us just had a lot of synergies in what we were sharing about online. And one of the things we started noticing about a year ago, though, is the conversations on social media were getting shorter and shorter and shorter. You know, it was a nine second reel, and so, for us, we wanted to be able to have a platform where we could delve into these topics a little more, and so the podcasting space is kind of an extension of that, that social media world for us, except for a place where we could actually have genuine conversations.
Speaker 1:Well, that segues very naturally to my second question and I didn't realize it was going to be related, but I'm glad it was you talk about. I'm looking at your website. You wanted to set the record straight about dairy farm life and on farm sustainability. Understanding that the podcast got started partly because of that makes a lot of sense. I'd love you to unpack that two word nuclear bomb of farm sustainability. Just yeah, what? What does that really mean and why is that important to you and why should it be important to us?
Speaker 3:You know it's so crazy when you talk about, you know, cows in the climate or agriculture and climate. There is a lot of conversation online about that and there are numbers. You know. There are global numbers. Then there are the United States numbers of what exactly is like our greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaker 3:And something that I share online often and it seems like it surprises people every time is, you know, dairy accounts for less than 2% of greenhouse gases produced here in the United States. Now, that is not nothing. That is still something. But when you factor in the amount of protein and calcium and like nutrients that a product like dairy provides for us, I feel like it's actually pretty substantial. And then, on the flip side of the coin, you know dairy and olive ag addresses like the impact we are having on our climate, and for dairy, we have set some pretty ambitious goals to actually be carbon neutral or better, by 2050. And if you look at our track records and historical data of what we've done and changed, I think we're going to be able to hit that goal.
Speaker 3:All agriculture as a whole is actually here in the United States, a carbon sink. So agriculture accounts for about 10 to 11% of carbon emissions, but agriculture and forestry together. Those are too. Second, like those are overarching sectors, they actually remove about 12% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaker 3:And so I just feel like sometimes in these conversations around like the impact on the climate, we can get very much like wanting things to be black and white, right To want a decision like if we eat this, it is better for the environment, if we don't eat this, it's better for the environment, and like what I come to realize when having these conversations is there is so much more nuanced in that climate conversation and how much of agriculture is all interwoven together as a part of a greater food system and so you can think about it. You can just take out one piece and think like the system will continue to work and be effective, when in reality, I think, instead of taking a piece out, we should be thinking about how we can make each piece a little bit better and build the strength of our overall food system and so trying to get away from that like carbon tunnel vision that, like you know, x is this and this is bad and instead get into the very much nuance of the conversation.
Speaker 1:Is that what you're?
Speaker 2:very well said yeah, very well said, you know. And of course it's easy to say that cow farts are killing the planet. But, like you said, you know, a lot of times as in many areas in life the data gets manipulated to support the kind of agenda and preconceived notion. And you know there's a lot of things that go into this and we see the interplay between health and agriculture and environment and ethical concerns around animals. But, as you said, you know, well done ranching can certainly be a net positive to the environment and I've been fortunate now to talk to a number of ranchers that are doing exactly that, but that that's not the story that gets told. So you know, given your background in environmental science, I guess what's the reception of your fellow ranchers to this information? How open are they to looking at that and saying, yeah, maybe there are some ways that we can do things better, and then trying to implement those changes?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I feel like if you asked a farmer rancher like the general farmer rancher are they? What sustainability practices are they using? Or whatever buzzword you wanna throw out there I would guess some of them may not have an instant answer or may think they're not really doing anything. I actually found that to be very true even of my own husband.
Speaker 3:When I decided to start sharing online. I was like I wanna share about the really cool things we're doing, and he was like I don't think we're doing anything very cool. That was literally his response. And I was like well, on our dairy we recycle a single gallon of water up to five times. And his response was yeah, but so does all like most of the other dairies we know do that same thing. And I was like, just because everybody does something doesn't mean it's not cool and it doesn't mean that people know about it.
Speaker 3:And so that is something that I feel like does get lost in the messaging with farmers and ranchers is that sometimes they're doing something to make their business more efficient, to make something run better, to make on the dairy, make the cows more comfortable. They don't ever sit there and say, oh, this is more sustainable or this is more environmentally friendly. That necessarily isn't their goal, but a lot of times that is the outcome. So for dairy cows, for example, cow genetics has never been better, and a dairy farmer may be really excited about talking with you about their cows genetics, but what they don't realize is that a healthier, stronger cow also means a more sustainable cow, and that is something that, like if you ask the rancher point blank, they may not like extrapolate that out of it. That may not have been their goal, but in reality it is a major outcome of that, and so I feel like sometimes that's just what gets lost in this translation of actually farmers communicating what they're doing on farm and how it plays into again that greater food system.
Speaker 1:What's the biggest threat to this way of life?
Speaker 3:Ooh, such a good question. I would say what I think is probably one of the biggest threats is that lack of like trust between consumers and farmers and like open communication, and it goes both ways. I feel like consumers you mentioned are like more removed from agriculture, but I think at the same time, especially in this post COVID world that we're living in, they are more interested in where their foods come from than ever before. They're more food curious, they want to get back to the roots and so they wanna be a part of the conversation. And at the same time, I think that then, on the other side, consumers have to have some level of trust in farmers to know that, like we are absolutely experts in our field we've studied this, we have practiced farming for years and years and so it's that back and forth of like trust and communication, and I think that would go a long way.
Speaker 3:I feel like that is something that's really lacking from right now, and I think we need to get to a point where we do understand each other better. If we make a decision on our farm that we can communicate that effectively to the consumer and that they then trust, that is the best decision for our farm, because if we don't, I think the big threat there is losing farms that are right here in our country, losing them to more and more like importing, and importing plays an important role. I'm not saying it's something bad, but I also believe in food sovereignty within our own country, and so I think it has to be that trust and communication piece and really getting that nailed down.
Speaker 1:What's an example of a lack of trust between the consumer and the farmer?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say that maybe a lack of trust.
Speaker 3:I always my mind always goes to technology. I heard a quote once that people love innovation but they hate change, and I think that's a big one with an agriculture. I think when agriculture progresses and adds more technology or maybe implements a new practice, it can leave consumers like unsure, especially if that farm a lot of consumers still have what I like to call kind of the red barn syndrome, that they want the farm to look like it did 100 years ago. They want it to be that picturesque red barn, and when it looks different than that we can definitely lose trust. Even though I think if a consumer came onto our farm, saw how we were doing things, how we had changed things, how we had progressed from when my grandfather was milking cows 100 years ago, they'd be really impressed and honestly feel really confident in the decisions we're making. And so I think that that's where that trust piece sometimes is missing. Is them, is consumers maybe not always understanding some of the changes that agriculture has made over the last 10 years, 20 years, 30 years and beyond?
Speaker 2:So one of the threats you mentioned was or maybe not even a threat, but importation and an increasing amount of our food coming from further and further away. I also would like to hear your perspective on kind of the consolidation within the industry. I know, certainly on the beef side of things we've seen kind of the small rancher get squeezed out in favor of these larger and larger conglomerates. Is the same thing happening on the dairy side, and how much of a struggle is that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, really good questions. This is a complicated issue because there absolutely is consolidation happening. The dairy industry is seeing it, but I think that it would surprise people to know like the average herd size for beef cattle, for example, is between 50 and 100 beef cattle. So it is still a very like grassroots. The very beginning of your beef stages what we call those cow cap operations, are still very much family farms.
Speaker 3:Now, as you move through the process in the beef, a lot of people think about the beef industry as the big four, the big four packers, when you think about, like the JBSs, the cargills of the world, and think about those large companies that do end up producing a lot of our beef. But at the very beginning stages of our beef industry the cow cap it is very much a family operation. And then dairy is similar. We are definitely seeing consolidation, but the average herd size for dairy I think is about I wanna say it's between 200 and 300 cows. So over 98% of dairy farms in the United States are still family owned and operated. So I do think that's another like misconception that while there is consolidation, there has been changes in agriculture across the board, it is still very much like family farms and ranches across our country producing our food.
Speaker 1:And how you wanna ask the cow go ahead Bill.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just gonna ask, following up on the dairy side of things, maybe go through the steps of getting the dairy from the farm to the consumer and what's kind of involved in that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, such a good question. So for us on our dairy it'll change depending on where you're located. Dairies that are closer to major metropolitan cities, chances are their milk is going into fluid milk. I am not near a metropolitan city here in New Mexico so all of my milk actually gets turned into cheese. Obviously cheese is easier to transport long distances as you pulled out some of that liquid, whereas the fluid milk, when you think of your gallon of milk on the grocery store shelf, you don't wanna have that traveling long distances. You want it to be as close to the metropolitan area as possible.
Speaker 3:So a fun fact actually about dairy that really like surprises a lot of people is most dairy on the shelves. That whole gallon of milk. It travels from farm to the grocery store in less than 48 hours. So it is a very local product and it is a very like quick from farm to grocery store because obviously the nature of it having an expiration date For us and our cheese. We actually are a part of a co-op. Our co-op sells our milk to the cheese plant and it leaves the cheese plant in 600 pound blocks of cheese where it goes on to another processing plant to be shredded, sliced, packaged and then distributed out to grocery stores and fast food restaurants. Actually, if you have had Subway Pepperjack, you've probably had cheese from our cheese plant made with our milk. So just kind of a fun fact I love to share with people.
Speaker 1:How long does it take to get from one of your cows to a Subway sandwich?
Speaker 3:Ooh, that's a good question. I am not sure about that. I know it takes about less than one mile to get from my farm to the cheese plant. But good question. I'll have to follow up and ask that with our cheese plant of how long it takes to get packaged and go out from there. Obviously, cheese has a longer shelf life, so it gives us a little more time to get it across the country and to where it needs to go.
Speaker 2:And then um you get the kinds of?
Speaker 1:Do different kinds of cows give different quality of milk, and does that affect the types of products milk products that can be made from it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so there is a few different breeds of dairy cows. Specifically, I think the one that comes to most people's mind when they think of a dairy cow is the black and white spotted cow, the Holstein. That's what we have on our dairy. They're a little bit larger cow. And then there is the second most popular I would say, is the Jersey. So it is the brown cow. It kind of has a little bit of a deer-like quality to it. It's a little smaller. It has the doe eyes.
Speaker 3:So one of the fun facts about Jersey cows is they have a higher butterfat content. So it's not the quality is not different. We have national standards for milk quality. That milk has to pass, but the ratio of the butterfat is higher in Jersey. So it can make a really great ice cream. You think, about those higher fat contents that you would want really great cheese from Jersey cows. So it just depends on what you're looking for, I guess, in the product. And then there's a few other. There's about, like I said, five dominant breeds in the United States, but Holstein and Jerseys are definitely top two.
Speaker 2:Now I want to follow up. Then I got a series of three milk terms that I guess let's really go through and help our audience understand. So the first one is going to be pasteurization and comparing that to raw milk. Talk about what that is and maybe what the advantages and disadvantages might be.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I actually have been a consumer of both raw and pasteurized milk in my lifetime, I feel like when I was a kid. We consume raw milk because that's just what you did when you lived on a dairy farm. Nowadays, my family consumes pasteurized milk. That's a choice that we have made. So the difference there is when the milk leaves our farm. Obviously we milk the cow, it goes through a filter and then it is instantly cooled. It cools from 100 degrees to about 36 degrees in a matter of seconds, and that actually is what it leaves our farm at. It has to be 36 degrees or lower or the milk truck will not pick it up. That's one of those quality standards that's required. And then when it would go to the processing plant whether it'd be going to cheese or to a bottling plant or yogurt or any of the other things when it gets to that processing plant, it is heated up to a really high temperature for a couple of seconds and the goal of that is obviously to kill any of the bad bacteria that could possibly be in the milk and it helps obviously improve shelf life.
Speaker 3:So there is a lot of benefits to pasteurization. It's a really important feature in our modern world. For a lot of different products, including milk, we have now multiple different types of pasteurization, from ultrapasterized and ultrapasterized. It's going to be heated up even higher for a very short again a couple of seconds, but that might be where you see some of your shelf stable milk. So if you've ever seen a milk product that doesn't need to be refrigerated, chances are it might be ultrapasterization. And so, yeah, there is a range there. But that is that difference between that raw and that pasteurized milk. And then I'm going to guess your next question is going to be about homogenization, but I could be wrong.
Speaker 2:You got it. And then I wanted to kind of follow up on the pasteurization and this probably plays into the homogenization as well. Should we be concerned about how this might be changing some of the characteristics, like denaturing some of the proteins and stuff in the milk?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the homogenization? I'll answer that part first. So milk if you were to get raw milk from a dairy farm and set it in your fridge, the cream is going to rise to the top. And so for milk at the grocery store, we it's like a standard. You see 2% of the grocery store, 1%. You see whole milk. Whole milk is actually at about just over 3% fat. So when people see whole milk sometimes they think it means like 100% versus 2%, and it's actually in that 3% range. And so what homogenization does is it breaks up that cream particle so that it stays in a single consistency throughout the gallon. So if you, when I was a kid, when you drank raw milk, you had to open up the fridge, grab the gallon of milk and you had to shake it to break up those milk fats back into the entire milk product. So you can buy pasteurized, non-homogenized milk and a lot of times you'll see that written as like cream on top milk. That's usually how it's described on the bottle, and so that is that process.
Speaker 3:There is some changes to milk when you pasteurize it. I personally don't fall into the camp of thinking that it, like you know, destroys all of the great benefits of milk. There is still a ton of amazing benefits in pasteurized milk, but there is a growing camp of people I think we're currently in like a really interesting food movement of moving back towards that raw milk that has not been pasteurized. Obviously, there comes with some risk when you consume raw milk. I would say it's a similar risk if you're eating raw fish at a sushi restaurant, right Like there is going to be some risk there that you are taking on when you choose to consume raw milk. So I feel like I'd probably fall somewhere though in the middle of. I'm not an extremist against raw milk and I'm not extremely for it. Just understanding kind of those differences, I think, is probably the most important part.
Speaker 2:And then one other. I guess milk sort of terminology that I think has become more popular in the last few years is the A2 versus A1 milk. So talk a little bit about what that is and why it might matter.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I actually did not know what your third term was going to be. I kept thinking. I was like is it going to ask about RBST? Is it going to? What are you going to ask about? The A2, though, has become very trendy in the last few years, so it is different types of protein. Typically, jersey cows are, you know, a2 primarily. Holsteins can also have the A2 protein versus the A1 protein, or they can be. You can strategically breed for that A2. But the idea is that people are not lactose intolerant, as some people believe, and instead maybe have a sensitivity to the A1 protein versus the A2 protein, and so there isn't a ton of research yet around this. I think it'll be something that we may see play out more in the next five to 10 years and see research behind it, I'm all for it. You know, if you try A2 milk and you have better digestive with it, I'm all for it. So I think people finding what works for them in their bodies is really important.
Speaker 2:Great. Yeah, I think that will help a lot of people better understand their food. And again, you know, we see just an increase in complexity of terms that are on our food. And even you know, the message here, you know on this podcast, is largely you know, eat whole real food and it really shouldn't need to be much on the labels. But Dairy is an interesting area where you know it's all whole real food but we start to see all these terms that can really confuse things. And yeah, I didn't even think about the RBST and the antibiotic issue. So since you brought it up, let's cover that one as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so RBST is an easy one to cover. All milk on the shelf in the United States home like fluid milk, is RBST free, or the correct terminology is from cows not treated with RBST. And it's funny because this label persists and it's a label people look for on their milk without realizing it it's no longer an on-farm practice. It was a product that has been used in the past.
Speaker 3:I know my dad used it very briefly in the 80s. Ultimately, my dad actually didn't like using it and voluntarily just decided to stop using it, I think within a year of starting to use it. And yet it was a term that really took off, you know, for consumers having a lot of questions and we're very unsure of what it was, and so ultimately, within the industry, while it is a product that is approved by the FDA for use on cows, it is a product we are no longer using on dairy farms because of consumer, you know, pressures of not wanting, not liking that on-farm practice and so, honestly, it's not something that consumers really have to worry about anymore because, again, it's almost like a non-issue.
Speaker 3:It's like a kind of like an absentee label that no product on the shelf has it, so you don't necessarily have to look for it on your product and then, as sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 1:Oh no, I'm just giggling about you know, my real job is I'm a marketing consultant and it's so. So what you're saying is the contains no RBST, is just sheer marketing fluff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my soapbox is labels. I think labels started out in a good place of educating people and ended up very quickly becoming marketing, and that is a lot of what they are used for. I actually saw a gallon of milk that said gluten-free recently and I actually called the co-op and said please tell me, this is not the point of life that we're at. And they said unfortunately, people have questions and they're unsure and it's one of the most asked questions we get, so we put it on the label.
Speaker 1:Wait, wait, wait, wait. People ask is this milk gluten-free?
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, it's like sent into frequently asked questions section, and so you can understand why that it's there, but at the same time, it's not really telling you what is or isn't in the product. Right Like it's a confusing world we live in.
Speaker 3:But your question about antibiotics. I actually think that's a great T-up for that. That is another one. You know people concerned about quote unquote antibiotics in their milk and that is one of those things that I also wish I could tell people is like a non-issue. So on farm, let me tell you what it looks like, because maybe that will help people understand it. So on farm, if a cow is sick, she can be treated with antibiotics. It is prescribed by a vet. We actually have a vet come out to our dairy every single week and she actually goes into a pen, what we call our hospital pen if she's on antibiotics and her milk is milked completely separate of all of the other herds milks.
Speaker 3:That milk never enters the human food supply system. It is obviously sent down the drain and not used for human consumption. Now there are so many checks and balances in place to ensure that that milk would never enter the food supply system, the first being every single tank of milk that leaves our farm is tested to the parts per billion, highest level of testing there is for antibiotic residue. If it comes back confirmed, we have to dump the milk and we have to pay for it. We have to pay for the truck driver's time, the co-op's time, all of these things. If it were to continue to happen, I would guess our co-op would probably drop us and not pick up our milk anymore.
Speaker 3:So that is just on farm. So every truck that leaves our farm is tested. Then it's tested again at the plant before it leaves the truck. It's tested again when it gets into the silo, the container that's gonna hold all of the milk. It's gonna be tested again and then there is randomized sampling and testing throughout the food supply system for milk.
Speaker 3:As far as if there's antibiotic residue, it is actually pretty similar on the beef side, as far as once a beef cattle is processed at the plant, they are checking for antibiotic residue as well, and if a ranch were to have antibiotic residue come back in their beef sample, that sample is pulled from the shelf. It's traced directly back to the ranch. If it happens more than once, we actually interviewed someone that does this on our podcast on Discover Ag, and what could happen is the rancher could be essentially like black ball, that they that processing plant, would no longer pick up cattle from that ranch if it was an ongoing problem. And so there's a lot of financial at stake for making sure that there is no antibiotics entering the food supply system at any point along the way. For beef and dairy.
Speaker 2:So, to summarize it, it's another meaningless label, because if you're buying that milk in the US, it's guaranteed to be antibiotic free.
Speaker 3:Yes, there is some difference, you know, when you get into the word organic. Obviously organic is a USDA regulated term and that could mean that it's never. The cattle is never treated with antibiotics for non-organic farms. The way it works, as I said, that our milk, that milk from that cow, is separate. There's also a withdrawal period. So from the time she stops taking antibiotics we continue milking her into the hospital pen until it is completely out of her system. So there is a set amount of FDA, USDA regulated amount of time that she still cannot enter, like the food supply. Her milk cannot enter the food supply system while during that period.
Speaker 1:That's fascinating. Okay, I'm going to ask cattle country questions. How much land does it take to have this average dairy farm with 300 cattle?
Speaker 3:So that is really dependent on where you're at, and that goes for the beef world too. So in the beef world it would be called like a stocking rate. So, depending on where you're at, depends on how much land needed to support like a beef cow, say, for example. So if you are somewhere in, say, georgia or somewhere in the south where you think of really warm temperatures, a lot of moisture that they receive and a lot of grass that are growing, you can have a lot more cattle on a smaller amount of land because there is more feed. Now, if you are where my co-host, natalie is, in Nebraska, you need a lot more acres of land because there is not as much you know lush green grass in Nebraska on the you know the sandhills in Nebraska as there might be in other parts of the country. So you're going to need more land to support a single cow.
Speaker 3:Now in the dairy world, this also depends. If you are someplace that is a very cold climate, you may have your cows more indoors to protect against those winter weather months. Here in New Mexico we have what's called open lots, so our cows are actually outdoors in like large corrals all year around. They have sunshades, they have wind blocks and those kind of things, but we have pretty mild climate where we're at, and so our dairy may actually have a little bit bigger footprint just because of land availability in New Mexico as well, as you know, being an outdoor facility, whereas a dairy farm may be in the Midwest with very harsh winters. Again, they may have those cows more in barns, so you may think of a little bit smaller footprint. So it really just depends on where you're at and what's most comfortable for the cows. You want the cows to be so comfortable and relaxed, because the more relaxed, healthy and comfortable a cow is, obviously the more milk she's going to produce.
Speaker 3:Well, that was, I was going to ask that question.
Speaker 1:I remember I used to live in Texas and back before they were shipping all over the country. Bluebell ice cream was kind of a 10, a Texas phenomenon, absolutely. I think their tagline was something like happy cows make better ice cream, or something like that. So the way you know your cow is happy is by the amount of milk they give. I want to know how you know. How do they know their cows were happy? That's really what I'm wanting to know, yeah.
Speaker 3:So I would say the way we know our cows are healthy is probably a better example of what we're looking for. So one of the things is we want the cows relaxed, you know, up eating and then moving to the back of the pen where they are chewing their cut. A cow that is chewing her cut, relaxed and comfortable, is a really good indicator. And so you can see a lot about, you know, the pen dynamics. A lot of times it's really fascinating getting into where you put which, which cows and which.
Speaker 3:Pen cows are very herd animals, so they do have like an alpha cow and then less dominant cows, and so you don't want to move them around very much. You want them to stay kind of with their herd within their pens, and so you want them to be more comfortable to be able to. You know it'd be like you going into a new school and you walking into the cafeteria line. You're probably not going to be the first in line, you might be a little nervous, you might be hanging back, and so with a cow, you want her to be very comfortable. Where she feels comfortable to go up and get feed, go up and get water and then go back and chew her cut. So those are kind of some of the things that we look for. And then, yes, milk production is actually an indicator of health. If she is healthier and more comfortable, we'll produce more milk. Has a if she has a higher quality diet, she'll also produce more milk.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So how big a difference on the diet side from the cow, you know. Obviously, again, on the beef side of things, there's a lot of discussion. You know the on the grass fed versus green, you know. Or grass finished versus green finished. So when, when we're talking about dairy cows, is there that same distinction? Does it matter and what you know what? What should your dairy cow be eating?
Speaker 3:Yes, so fun fact most dairy cows, including ours, actually have a nutritionist. Our nutritionist here on the dairy has a PhD in ruminant nutrition and they plan all of our cows diets based on what phase of life they're in. So if they are a milking cow, they need a certain diet. If they are a younger cow, they're going to need a different diet, and then their diet is what we call a TMR, so it's a total mixed ration and it does have some grains in it, but it also has grasses as well. So we're a conventional dairy, we're not an organic dairy, and so it is actually a wide variety of things.
Speaker 3:The cows diet is truly fascinating. If you go into what we call a commodity area, it's basically the pantry where all of the different ingredients for our cows diet, and it's a number of different things. So one of the cool things, getting back to the sustainability side actually is what cows eat can be a ton of quote, unquote byproducts. I kind of hate the word byproducts because it makes it sound terrible, but they actually can eat byproducts from things that humans you know, that we do every day. So when you make a cotton, when you manufacture cotton and turn it into a cotton t-shirt, there is a leftover product, the cotton seed, and our cows can actually eat it as a really great source of protein for their diets.
Speaker 3:When you make ethanol and some of these different like biofuels, there is the distillers grains that are leftover and that's another great feed additive for our cows.
Speaker 3:And so depending on where you're located out in the country, it's going to vary. I know farmers in Florida feed a lot of citrus pulp, so the leftovers from making orange juice to their cattle in California they might be, you know, feeding almond holes, leftover making almonds, you know, and almond milk. And that's actually where I got kind of said that, like all these different parts of agriculture play into each other. So by our cows consuming the cottonseed, that's actually an added value for a cotton farmer down the road from us, and so it's cool how they can all play into each other. So there's a number of different ingredients, I guess to get back to your question that go into our cows diets and our nutritionist is constantly looking at, you know, the protein, the fats, the vitamins, the minerals, the nutrients and all of those taking samples of them, taking samples of our silage and things and figuring out exactly what you know optimal diet for our cows is.
Speaker 2:So, but you do see dairy in the supermarket, that's, you know, labeled from. You know grass fed cows. So I guess you know what does that mean and what difference might it make in the characteristics of that. You know that dairy, whether it's milk or butter, you know, I think butter is where you more commonly see this. But you even do see brands of milk that are labeled, you know, grass fed.
Speaker 3:Yep, so there is fully grass fed dairy as well. You know the butter, the carry gold, I think butter is what people think of which is imported usually from Ireland, with grass fed. I mean you can kind of picture, I feel like when you think of Ireland, you know the rolling hills, the green hills of Ireland and cows out there grazing, so they are their diet that is 100% grass based and it can. You know that's that's essentially what it's telling you is just the cows diet is grass fed. Some of the there is some minor changes into the nutritional quality of the milk gets a little higher and some nutrients, and just there's some differences there. There's not a ton of significant difference on like the macro levels, like the protein ratios are going to be very similar, the fat content it's going to be very similar. You know cows are a rumina animal so they obviously have multiple stomach compartments, so there's a lot of digestion that happens Whenever they consume a product, any product. So there is there are some differences there.
Speaker 3:On the beef side of things, I feel like something that's really fascinating for people is no matter what the beef cow ultimately like, if it is grass fed or grain finished, the majority of our beef cows in the United States actually spend two thirds of their life out on pasture. So again, those, you know those, those ranches that we were talking about, those what are called cow calf operations A lot of those are primarily pasture based, so it's going to be cows out on pasture. Then, as they move into that that next phase of their life, they may then be sent to a feedlot where grain is going to be incorporated. But, like I said, the majority starts out on grass and then it may diverge in the last about one third of their life whether they stay on grass and you see those grass fed labels or if they have grain introduced into their diets.
Speaker 1:I've got a question that I've been wanting to ask somebody who knows, and I just haven't had the opportunity to do this.
Speaker 3:Oh boss now. I hope I know it.
Speaker 1:Well, between my son lives about 30 minutes from me, and between me and him there is a cattle operation right off the freeway. I think it's a dairy farm, but I, or a dairy operation, but I don't know. It doesn't happen all the time, but not unaccasionally. As I am driving past this operation, even if I had my eyes closed, I would know exactly where I was. You know what I mean. Yeah it has a lovely smell.
Speaker 1:And the question that I have is is it healthy for that many cows to be packed that tightly together, producing that much noxious fumes? Are they affected by it? I just I mean you know what I mean. It's bad. It's not always bad, but when it's bad it's I just. I many times thought God, I wonder what this is doing to the cows.
Speaker 3:You know it's so funny you say that because I'm going to tell you the opposite story that when I go to a city I think, oh my gosh, how do people live here with the smells and the fumes and the cars and how does it not bother people? And I have so many urban friends that go. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't smell anything, I don't notice any of that and I will notice when I'm in the city my eyes are a little more watery and like it is definitely an adjustment period for me. And obviously the exact same thing happens when you know it is flip flopped and we have urban. You know our urban counterparts are coming out from the farm and they're like, oh my goodness, the smell, I can't take it. And so it's always funny to me that kind of like dichotomy between the two things. But it is a really good question and a question a lot of people have. Is the manure management side of the dairy operation? So that is actually a huge piece of our farm is we actually collect all of the manure on our farm, all of the corral manure? We collect it and we actually turn it into compost and then from our farm it leaves our farm and goes out to local area like row crop farmers, and it's actually, you know, a really great source of nutrients for soil. So using cow manure in place of, like, say, a synthetic fertilizer, you can actually build organic matter in your soil really well. It can help, you know, grow your plants, you know fertilize your plants, and so it is something we have to be very conscientious of managing. Another thing that we do on our farm is we actually collect all the rainwater off our farm into our lagoon, and you know, the lagoon is just a fancy way of saying you know, a big pond that collects all of that runoff, whether you know it's going to be nutrient rich runoff, and so actually part of my job whenever I was environmental consulting was sampling the lagoon to see exactly how much nutrients were in it, and then ultimately, we actually take that recycled barn water, that recycled rainwater, and we water our crops with it. So it's actually a really important piece of, you know, our sustainability, you know process for us on the farm, because we actually need that water to grow our crops, to feed our cows, and so it is. It is an entire management process.
Speaker 3:There's really cool things happening on what I like to call the back end of the dairy we are doing.
Speaker 3:You know, you hear talk about digesters, so we are actually taking the manure from dairy farms and turning it into energy that is being, you know, sent into the grid to power homes and towns and communities. There's lots of other cool things. We're actually currently doing a research project on our farm with our land grant university where we are using worms so viticulture, to break down the cow manure and turn it into a product. Actually, if you go to your local, you know, gardening store, you probably have seen worm castings as a really great source of nutrients for your garden. So we are looking at actually being able to do that on our farm with some of our manure. So a lot of different things there that are. You know, I said we set that goal of being carbon neutral, or better, by 2050. So there is a lot of fascinating things happening in order to help us kind of reach that goal and to mitigate those greenhouse gas emissions coming from that cow manure.
Speaker 1:Again, I don't know if it's a dairy farm or a.
Speaker 3:You know what color the cows are.
Speaker 1:I think they're black and white.
Speaker 3:Okay, I think you're probably spot on. Then it's probably a dairy farm.
Speaker 1:So there are these, what I can only refer to as you know, those big giant round hay bales. There are these giant round bales of something that are covered in white plastic. They're probably 12 feet high and, I would guess, 30 feet long. They're not there all the time.
Speaker 3:What are those?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what are those?
Speaker 3:Yes, I love talking about this, so I couldn't know exactly what it is. But essentially for dairy farms and even beef operations, one of the things that we do is we do feed corn. So we've talked about grain. But something people don't realize is that when we harvest the corn, we actually chop the entire plant leaves, stems, all of it. I always joke that it looks like what you might think of if you ordered like a Southwest salad, that it's greens and there's. It might be some corn on the cob in there, but it is definitely not a corn on the cob. So it's called silage and we chop it when the plant is green and really like fresh still. So what we do is we actually store that silage in giant bags. They're called ag bag. It is white, as you said. It's black on the inside and we ferment that product. So it's like a giant. It's fermented.
Speaker 3:We ferment it and there is different types. So you you said it bails is what you're looking at. Silage is just like you know, all chopped up, but you could bail different types of products. It might be like halage wheat. There's tons of different, you know, obviously, crops that are being grown in different areas depending on your climate, but a lot of it, yeah, it's fermented in those giant bags so you want it to be completely airtight. If any air gets in it would grow mold and you'd have to remove that part of the product before feeding it to the cows, and so it ferments for up to two years, and so then, if we have a really great harvest, we can store that crop and then, ultimately, if we had a not great harvest the next year, hopefully we'd have enough feed to hold us over, and so it's stored in giant ag bags. So sometimes it's not there because if they fed it out it's gone until the next harvest.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad I asked you this question, because my fear was that it was giant piles of manure.
Speaker 3:It is not giant piles of manure.
Speaker 1:Okay, I have one more question I want to ask you that's more personal. You and Natalie talk about being millennial ranchers, and I'm interested. What is your perception? What is it? What is being a millennial rancher or millennial farmer? How does that? How do you see the world differently because you're millennials?
Speaker 3:So the average age of a farmer right now is over 60 years old. If that doesn't concern you a little bit, I feel like maybe it should. I was thinking about the next generation of who's growing our food and raising our cattle and our products here in the United States. So I feel like for us, millennial is that we do offer a little bit different take. A lot of agriculture is of an older generation and so bringing in those younger voices, making people excited about agriculture. Again, we talked about the consolidation. Some of the consolidation is the fact that we have people, that younger people, who no longer want to live on the farm, that want to move away. They want to live in the urban settings and be more involved in those types of communities where there might be more to do, might be more for their families.
Speaker 3:Both Natalie and I always live in very rural settings Natalie even more so than I and so I think for us it is kind of like thinking about that next generation and even the generation beyond us. Both Natalie and I have kids. Natalie actually has a son who's 18, so coming up very soon into like figuring out what he wants to do with his life, and so it's just offering, I think, a little bit different perspective. We're just like our urban counterparts. We've grown up with technology and social media and all these things that are fingertips, and so it's kind of fascinating to see how we can bring that back to the farm and maybe change things.
Speaker 3:I think that is a lot of what you see online on social media of people you know sharing about farming on social media is that next generation wanting to be more connected with people, and so I think it for us it's just bringing that a little bit different perspective and hopefully being able to connect better with you know, a lot of the people doing the grocery shopping is, you know, millennial moms, and that is something obviously Natalie and I connect to very well is being millennial moms ourselves and so being able to highlight kind of that difference that, if you come to our podcast, it's probably not going to be to averaged age to farmers, you know, talking about corn and crops. It's going to be, you know, younger women talking about how food and agriculture impact our lives, and that's going to be a different experience than maybe some of the different generations that are involved in farming.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I would think so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and following up on that, besides the podcast you also have a docuseries that I think is going right in the midst of it, or talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we've been recording this kind of behind the scenes and we are still working on, you know, obviously, launching it. It is a lot of work going in on the back end, it seems like, but we want to take people off the beaten path of agriculture. So a lot of times when you do think of agriculture, you think of those cows and tractors and corn, and we're guilty of that too. I mean, I'm a dairy farmer and she's a cattle rancher, and so there's so many parts of agriculture like unknown, and so actually last summer, we filmed our pilot episode and it was an incredible experience. We went and we spent three days camping in the Montana wilderness and our goal was we were helping a sheep herder family of sheep ranch move 10,000 sheep from their winter pasture to their summer pasture high up in the mountains, and it was an absolutely incredible experience, and we brought our online communities along with us, but we'd love to be able to bring that to even more people across the country of you know, what does it take to make wool? That was what we were, you know, learning on that experience of exactly what it takes to, obviously, you know, raise these sheep and then share the sheep for the wool and then, you know, continue that cycle of taking them from winter pasture to summer pasture.
Speaker 3:And fascinating to see, you know, they have Peruvian herders that have been herding sheep for generations and seeing how knowledgeable and like immersed the men were with their sheep herds and their, their dogs and horses as well. So there was about five, I think, peruvian herders. They each had two horses and then a handful of dogs each. Some of the dogs were cattle dogs that you think of like sheep dogs, and some were livestock guardian dogs to help protect, obviously, against bears, and, you know, mountain lions and all the things you see in the Montana wilderness. But we want to bring more of that. You know how, how are bison raised in Colorado? How are lobsters harvested in Maine, like things that you don't always think of, how they're produced. How could we bring that to people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it, bringing us closer to our food once again. So you mentioned your fifth generation dairy farmer and in your family, what changes have you seen? Obviously, like every facet of life, there's been introduction of technology. What are some of those changes and maybe what are some of the future directions that you see within the dairy farming industry?
Speaker 3:Yes, my husband and I are both fifth generation dairy farmers. For both of us this is a family legacy and we actually have a wall in our house that is all black and white photos of the history of our family farming. I have two photos on the wall that I love to reflect on. One is of my grandfather harvesting hay in the Netherlands with a horse-drawn wagon two huge horses pulling just a wagon filled with hay. Another one is my grandfather milking a cow by hand, also in the Netherlands they came over to the United States in about the 1950s Milking a cow by hand, sitting on a three-pegged stool in a milking barn with his cows. Fun fact, that farm in the Netherlands is still operational by some of my cousins.
Speaker 3:Just looking at those two photos, you know the big changes, like you know tractors and cars and milking machines and things. But I feel like one of the craziest things as well. Those are some massive changes and there's so many changes we could get into. Our cows now wear collars around their necks that tell us how much they're getting up, how much they're breathing. I mean it's like a smartwatch, it's like an Apple Watch for Fitbit or whatever you want to call it for your cows, but at the root of it, not a lot has changed. Right Like it's. That's my grandfather milking cows. The cow pretty much looks pretty similar. You know I said you know genetics gotten better and all those things, but it's still a dairy farmer, a dairy farm family, milking a cow and bringing that product to market. And so at the root of it there's still so much the same and so much history and legacy, while there is still the technology and the changes.
Speaker 1:What's the single biggest challenge to your dairy farming?
Speaker 3:Ooh, probably markets. We talked a little bit about imports and exports, but we are a part of a global market at this point. I remember when I was a kid, new Zealand came online with a lot of milk and it crashed milk prices worldwide. And I will tell you, I think I was in seventh grade and I didn't know where New Zealand was before that year, but I definitely knew where it was after that year and from then to now, you know, fast forward 30 years or so like we are even more a part of a global market and it's.
Speaker 3:It is wild to think that what has happening halfway across the world is absolutely having a direct impact on. You know our farm prices, and so I think you know that is one of the hard things about farming is we have a lot of things outside of our control. You know it goes to the mental health. Mental health and farming is not great. In our country we have a lot of farmers that struggle with mental health, and I think it's because, you know, mother nature is outside of our control. The global markets are outside of our control. Consumer pressure of changes wanting to be seen on our farms is kind of out of our control, and so that is tough. It's tough having those external forces, and I think right now, though, I would say, markets probably weighs, weighs heavy, with mother nature being second, but mother nature has always been a force that farmers have had to reckon with, so nothing has changed there, whereas I would say the markets has definitely become more volatile for us in recent years.
Speaker 1:I'd love to go down the financial management aspect of this conversation, but we're we're an hour into this now.
Speaker 3:I know I'm sorry. I feel like I've talked to you guys at the ears off.
Speaker 1:Oh, I've got a million different questions I could ask, but we're probably. We're probably at a good stopping point, Phil.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so. I think this has been a great master class. Maybe, and a lot of people will know a lot more about where they're, where they're food and specifically where their dairy is coming from, and hopefully, maybe sometime we can get Tara back on, maybe along with Natalie, and talk some more about it.
Speaker 1:I bet we wouldn't have to say a word.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. With the two of us you know, you two maybe should start a podcast sometime.
Speaker 3:I did see a joke online that said, if you tell me if you were a girl, you know in the 1990s that got told you talk too much in school. What are you doing now and how's your podcast? And I was like, yep, I can relate to that.
Speaker 2:Very much so.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God.
Speaker 2:Great. So yeah, tell people where they can find the podcast, where they can find out more about you and all that you're doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if you are listening to this, you are probably a podcast person, so we would love it if you would jump over after you finish this episode and give us a listen. And we're a discover ag where food meets pop culture, and every week we cover the top three trending news articles in the ag and food space and we try to go beyond the headline, not necessarily to dissuade anyone's opinion. But we believe, like, knowledge is power, and the more you know about your food, the more connected you are to it. You know the less you fear it, the more you enjoy it, the more you know those whole foods, like you said at the beginning of this, like that you want to incorporate into your diet. So I hope you give it a listen. We like to have a lot of fun with our conversations around food and farming.
Speaker 1:I've listened. They do have fun. All right, so that's the discover ag podcast. Tara. Tara's got a website where you can track all this stuff down. Tara van der doosencom. We'll make sure that shows up in the show notes as well. All right?
Speaker 1:Well, I want to have you back so I can ask all the other questions that are coming to mind that have to do with the financial management side of a dairy farm and the the, the, what it means to be a, a woman on a dairy farm with, with all that lineage leading that way. But we'll, we'll set that up for the next time and I do want to have you back. I really do.
Speaker 3:Awesome, anytime Reach out.
Speaker 1:All right. Well for Dr Phillip Ovedia and Tara van der Hoosen. This has bond, bond, or God you know she is. Hey, you know what's interesting? We just had Sandra van Stee, who was also a, a farmer, on the show here in the last couple of weeks. There must be something about you folks with a, a a Netherland. Dutch last name A Dutch last name? Yeah, all right For all of us here at the staff. My operating table web podcast. Thanks for joining us. We'll talk to you next time. Oh my God.