42: Oklahoma Farm Kid to NC Pork Leader with Roy Lee Lindsey

We talk with Roy Lee Lindsey, CEO of the North Carolina Pork Council, about the winding path from an Oklahoma farm equipment shop to the front lines of pork public policy. We dig into what it takes to defend hog farms, build trust with lawmakers, and keep improving how we produce food. 
• growing up in western Oklahoma around farming, equipment, and custom wheat harvest 
• learning leadership through 4-H, Extension, and early career pivots 
• taking the Oklahoma Pork Council job without a production background, focusing on association management and policy 
• navigating environmental regulation fights and building an industry image campaign 
• moving to North Carolina during COVID, adjusting to scale and nonstop opposition 
• strengthening partnerships across NC agriculture to advocate as one voice 
• developing leaders through Pork Leadership Carolina and Emerging Pork Leaders 
• explaining National Pork Board checkoff work versus National Pork Producers Council advocacy 
• on-farm improvements like digesters, lagoon covers, renewable natural gas, precision nutrient use, and efficiency gains 
• farm bill delays, Proposition 12, and why federal policy still affects every barn 
• NC swine general permit status, DEQ rulemaking steps, and the road to 2028 
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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Marisa 0:01

Hi, and welcome back to another episode of Raise on the Farm Podcast where everything is on the table.

Chad 0:09

Okay, welcome everybody to Raise on the Farm Podcast. We got a guest with us today, Mr. Roy Lee Lindsay, uh the CEO of the North Carolina Fort Council. Welcome Roy Lee.

Roy Lee 0:22

Howdy, thank you for having me. This is uh kind of exciting. I don't know that I've done a podcast like this before, so a little bit little bit anxious here.

Marisa 0:31

Don't be anxious.

Chad 0:33

Don't be anxious. That's right. That's right.

Marisa 0:35

We have fun on the hair.

Chad 0:37

I I'm all for fun. We really do. We really do have a lot of fun here. Uh Roy Lee, you were born and raised in Oklahoma. Uh tell us a little bit about your childhood and growing up and just who you are.

Roy Lee 0:51

Sure. Um I grew up in in western Oklahoma, small town called Cordell. Uh actually New Cordell is the official name of the town. The old old Cordell burnt and New Cordell rose from the ashes. So it's New Cordell on all the maps and things. But um small, small rural community, uh predominantly farming. Uh that part of Western Oklahoma, when I was growing up in the in the 70s and 80s, was oil and gas and agriculture. That was the the economy,

Growing Up In Farm Country Oklahoma

Roy Lee 1:20

and that still today is the economy of Oklahoma. Uh when oil and gas is going good, Oklahoma does good. When agriculture's doing well, Oklahoma's in pretty good shape. But if either one of those is in a bad spot, it's really bad for the the state's economy. Um, my father owned a farm equipment dealership, and he had uh uh when I was uh when I was born, he was actually working for Alice Chalmers as a regional sales rep for them. And and then a year later he bought into a dealership in Cordell and uh bought the dealership outright in 72 or 73, something like that. Um and uh he ran that dealership until he retired, oh, 10 years ago, roughly. Uh my brother's still there. He still runs, works out of the business, if you will. He does farm equipment repair, etc. Um, but my first real my first job was working in a farm equipment dealership. I mean, we had a small farm. Uh, we didn't live on the farm, we lived in town, but we we had a small farm, we had about a hundred head of mama cows, raising predominantly club calves. We were selling show calves for the most part, but uh had some registered Angus in there, some crossbred cows, uh, some wheat, and alfalfa. And I contend that we raised wheat as a place to run the cattle on wheat in the winter, and a place for dad to sell combines in during harvest, because it was a whole lot easier to sell a combine when it was running in the field than it was sitting on the lot. And so if you were trying to harvest, and we only had 160 acres of wheat, you know, we didn't have a lot, but you're trying to harvest 160 acres of wheat, you go to the store, dad says use this combine, you get it out, you get it, you get it all greased up, you get it running, everything's right, you get it in the field, you get it, if you will, all slicked up is what we used to call it. You get the rust kind of washed out of the pans and the rest of it. And then he'd bring somebody out and they'd jump in and drive it, and he'd sell it to them, and we'd have to start all over again. And so it always took us longer than you would expect to harvest our our little crop of wheat because we were constantly changing equipment as he was selling it. And so I think it was always kind of by design. We yes, we've yes, we fed cattle on the wheat pasture in the winter, but um and and my job really as as I grew up, you know, we would get up in the morning and dad would take us to um, dad would take us to work with him every morning before school. And we swept floors, we dumped the trash. Uh, if we got that all done quick and we had time, we put parts away and put them in the bins. And then it was time you walked up the hill to the school. Or you walked up the hill and you caught the bus, and the bus took you to whatever school you were going to in town. And so it was about two blocks up to the junior high in the high school, and that's where the bus, that was the big bus interchange for the for the city school system. And so um that's really where we grew up. I I, you know, my earliest memories in the in the business were uh, you remember the little round, we could get little round kick-a-step stools, you know, that had wheels on them that you could push around, and then when you stepped up on them and pushed that, set flat on the floor. Yeah, um, I had one of those behind the parts counter, and I'd push it up to the counter and jump up on the counter and tell the guy sitting across the counter, if he would tell me what he was working on, I could get him the book. And if he could find the part in the book, I could go get it out of the bin. And and that's that's where we started, and I did that for for really for years, uh, you know, more than a decade. I I worked in the business um and I did everything there from selling some equipment, um, lawn mowers, especially, but also some some larger farm equipment. I drove a truck and delivered equipment, so you know, load a combine up on the back of the semi and haul it where it needs to go. Uh, I spent a summer working in the in the service department because I thought that was going to be more fun than being at the parts counter and it was hot and miserable, and it really wasn't more fun. Um I spent a summer on wheat harvest with a custom combine crew from Oklahoma up into Colorado, but everything in my life has always evolved around agriculture. It's just been the foundation of who I am and and where I come from.

Marisa 5:37

Now, did your dad, how did he get into agriculture? Was that a generational thing?

Roy Lee 5:43

Yeah, he he had grown up on a dairy farm uh in southwest Oklahoma, uh just southwest of Oklahoma City. Uh his father, my grandfather Lindsay, was instrumental in bringing some of the best dairy genetics out of the upper Midwest. So going up into Wisconsin, going up into Minnesota, and buying dairy cows and bringing those genetics into Grady County, which is just southwest of Oklahoma City. And when I would meet, uh, it was really entertaining, one of the gentlemen that was early on a president at the Oklahoma Pork Council, and I know we'll talk about that in a minute, but he was from Grady County and had gone to school with my dad's family. And when I would see uh the Richardsons, they would all tell me about my grandfather's influence on the dairy industry in their county, as his ability to go pick out livestock, look at cows, and say, yep, she makes sense into our herd. This bull makes sense into this herd, and to start putting them into the herd and then selling that genetics throughout the county and the impact that had on the dairy industry in that space. So my dad grew up on the farm. Um, and when he went to college, he went to college for a little while and then enrolled in the army, and then enrolled, uh, joined the army, enlisted in the army, uh, did his stint in the army and then back to college. And when he graduated, he went to work uh for Alice Chalmers, uh selling uh selling

Life Lessons From Wheat Harvest

Roy Lee 7:10

equipment, basically working between the company and the dealers that were out selling equipment.

Chad 7:15

Man, that the custom harvesting crew, I've kind of that's kind of been on my buggy. I've always dreamed of going and doing that. I think it would be a lot of work, but it'd be some good scenery.

Roy Lee 7:25

You know, as a as a 16-year-old kid, that that was to to uh we got out of school the middle of May, and I jumped in the car and I drove down to Snyder's about an hour south of where I grew up and uh started work. And we started servicing the equipment, we were servicing the trucks, we were servicing the the trailer we lived in that we were gonna that was gonna follow us on harvest all summer, that we were gonna live in all summer, uh, get ourselves ready to go to the field. And as soon as we could start cutting wheat, man, we cut wheat every day the weather allowed. And uh we ran uh there in southwest Oklahoma, really till about uh early June, early to mid-June, and we moved to West Texas. That was the first time I really saw irrigated crops. We were doing irrigated wheat out there, as well as they were starting their corn was just starting to grow, and it was irrigated corn. Uh we moved into southwest Kansas again, more irrigated cropland, more wheat, and then into Colorado. And Colorado was fascinating. It was dry land, wheat production. And in order to maximize rainfall, they would put about half the land in production this year, and then it would be out of production next year, and they'd all alternate. They call it putting it in fallow. And falla for us was uh we cut a field that was like 5,000 acres in one field. Wow. And about 2,500 of it was in wheat this year, and the other 2,500 still had stubble from last year on it. And it just one open field. And so when you think about the fields we see here in North Carolina, you just don't see anything of that scale. You know, everything's smaller, etc. But that was that was an eye-opening experience. And again, a 16-year-old kid, I left home and I was gone for the better part of 75 to 90 days. Um, I think I got to see mom and dad one time, might have seen dad twice. I might have got to go to town and get parts one time while we were still in Oklahoma. Um, but that would have been the extent of it. And and you were just gone, and and it was before cell phones, clearly, before pagers, before any of that. So a phone call was you had to stop at the payphone, and then you were just hoping somebody was available at home when you called. I mean, it was just a very different, different world, a great experience for a young kid that it to get away from home and work for somebody else and and learn from them. You know, what are those lessons? Where can you go? Um, but long days, lots of work, not a lot of downtime. Um, your job was to run a combine or drive a wheat truck, and we did it seven days a week. We we just never stopped because it's so critical to get a wheat crop out of the field when it's ready.

Chad 10:12

Well, Lee, are you are you uh sure your dad didn't say if you buy this combine, I'm gonna send my son out to work with you for well it is entirely possible.

Roy Lee 10:23

And it may have been it may have been if you don't pay enough for this combine, I'm gonna send my son out to work with you for the summer. Or you've got a I'm gonna make you take him and work with him for the summer. But um Mr. Mr. Brown and his son, uh it was Bill Brown and his son Doyle, and and it was a whole family affair. Mrs. Brown went with us and she took care of feeding us, uh, she took care of doing our laundry, and um, it was my first real experience of of how you got paid for things, right? Dad had always paid us. We punched a clock and I got a check from working for dad. But when I was on wheat harvest, I didn't have any money, and they only paid us at the end of the summer. So they were accumulating dollars. And if I wanted money to buy a coke when I went into the elevator, right, I had to go to Mr. Brown and ask him for money. And the question was always, what do you need money for? And and it didn't matter that it was my money. I had to go ask for it and I had to justify why I wanted it. And um, and they kept a rolling record. Uh, you got $20 for this, and you got $20, or I bought you batteries for your radio when I went to town, and that cost $6. Uh when she went and did our laundry, she kept track of what it cost to do our laundry, and she took laundry off the bill. And so when we got back to Snyder, Oklahoma at the end of the summer, you sat down and they got out the record and showed you in the logbook all the money they had spent. Here's what you had earned, and here's your check for the balance. And uh that was kind of an opening experience because when they told me what, and I don't even remember what they paid me. I'm gonna tell you it was $800 a month, right? Which sounded like a fortune to a 16-year-old kid. And then when they got done taking out the the Coca-Cola money and the and the the laundry money and whatever else it may have been, that $800 a month didn't go very far. Um and so, but it was a great experience. I I am thankful I did it. I I never I've never had a a day of regret about what that experience was. Um and I would still, when I would come back home in the summers and work for dad, I'd still see Mr. Brown and his son. And it was always it was always uh a great experience to just get to say hello and and and visit with them again and to watch them as as they grew, as their kids grew up, all of that. It was it was always a wonderful

From College To Extension Work

Roy Lee 12:45

time.

Chad 12:46

Yep. Well, take us from the floor of the tractor dealership or equipment dealership to the Oklahoma Port Council. How did you get there?

Roy Lee 12:55

Well, there's a stop in between. Uh-huh. I took a job after I'd gone to college for four years and decided that I wasn't a very good student and I wasn't very fond of college. So actually that's not true. I loved being in college. I didn't like going to school. I think it's probably the right way to say that. And uh Ditto. Um I left and I went to work for at the time it was Deutsche Allis, so the successor company of Alice Chalmers. Today that's AgCo. And while I was with Deutsche Alice, they became AgCo. Um and I worked for their parts division in in uh their North American headquarters just outside of Chicago, Batavia, Illinois. I spent two and a half years up there and realized real quick that I really needed to go back to school and finish my degree. I was in an entry-level position. I was not likely to move up from where I was. I'd tried to move up several times and had really never been able to. So I made the decision to go back home, go back to school, and it was amazing how much easier it got to go to class three hours a day after you'd been going to work for eight and a half hours a day. That three hours in class every day got a whole lot easier. And um, in that window, I was still trying to figure out what did I really want to do. And I'm a product of the 4-H program. I grew up in 4-H. Our partner in our farming operation was the county ag agent in Extension. And so I just lived Extension. That had been my my life as a young person. And um, so why don't I be an ag agent? Why don't I be a 4-H agent, if you will? And at the time, uh the Extension Service in Oklahoma wasn't hiring. But if you were going to work for Extension, they required you to get a master's degree. And so I graduated with my bachelor's degree in ag communications and immediately started work on a master's degree in agricultural education. So the kid that quit school because he didn't like going to school comes back to school two and a half years later and doesn't just finish, he decides he's going to stay and go to graduate school. And by the time I finished my master's degree, they still had a hiring freeze on and they weren't hiring anybody in Oklahoma. So I began working on my PhD while I finished up my thesis and I end up uh at the end of my educational career, if you will, I got about half of a PhD in agricultural education that will never get finished, but I I got it started somewhere along the way. Um, and I spent three years as a county 4-H youth educator, two years in Oklahoma uh working in Norman, Oklahoma, and a year and a half in Kansas working for K-State Research and Extension again as a 4-H youth educator. And that's where I was when the opportunity presented itself to go to the Oklahoma Port Council. Um, I ran into a guy that I had graduated high school with. I'd known him all of my life. And I met him up, met up with him at a football game in Stillwater. We were back at Oklahoma State for homecoming, and he said, Hey, are you ready to move home? And I thought he wanted me to move back to my home county and beat a 4-H agent. I knew they needed a 4-H agent. I was 31 years old, and I had no single, no desire to be living in the same hometown and county as my parents and everybody else that I had known all my life. I just, I didn't want all of those people, you know, it's small enough town. You you live in small communities. Everybody knows everybody else's business. And I just didn't want that. That was more attention than I wanted to live with. So uh I said, thanks, but I really am not ready to move back to to Cordell yet. And he said, No, no, that's not what I got in mind. Uh, we're looking for a new director for the Oklahoma Pork Council. And I said, Shane, I I I've never raised a pig in my life. I don't know anything about raising pigs. And he said, uh, I don't need you to raise pigs. We need you to run the organization. We need you to help us manage issues off the farm. We need you to manage our budget. We need you to do those kinds of things, and I think you'd be really good at it. And so I said, Well, that's that's interesting. And I visited with him a little bit more that evening. I I called him on that was Saturday, that was Friday night. I visited with him a little bit more Saturday morning. Um, I called him on Sunday when I got back home to Kansas and talked to him some more. And and by Monday afternoon, I'd send in a resume and said, here's where we go. Um, I interviewed for the job with the Oklahoma Pork Council in excuse me, in mid-November of 1998. Hogs that day at the Oklahoma National Stockyards were trading for 17 cents a pound live. Uh 1998-99 was a horrible time in the pork industry. Uh, up to that point was the worst years in history. Um up to that point in time in terms of the economics of the industry. And I was fortunate to be selected and hired, and I started working with Oklahoma Pork Council December 1 of 1998. Um that was uh Oklahoma, the industry, the pork industry as it was, was growing, um, had been growing rapidly. The legislature in 1998 had really shut it down with a moratorium, sound familiar, a moratorium in 97 and new environmental regs that passed in 98, that coincidentally were really patterned after the environmental regs that we have here in North Carolina. So very, very similar. I remember arguing with people that we didn't need to build lagoons to the same standard and the same freeboard that you had in North Carolina because we didn't have hurricanes. Um and and they just looked at me like I don't understand. Um, but um I started December 1 there in '98 and and spent 22 years there before I came to North Carolina, essentially January 1 of 2021.

Marisa 18:42

How did you feel about going to pigs? Like you'd been a cattle and crop guy, and then now you're in the pig world. What was that? Was that a sharp learning curve? Like what was that like?

Roy Lee 18:54

It

Joining The Oklahoma Pork Council

Roy Lee 18:55

was a learning about the animals and and and I obviously I'd worked with some of my 4-H kids in their show projects. So that had been I I'd had a little exposure to it in that regard. But what really appealed to me was the association management part of the work. Right. Um, it was a it was an opportunity to get involved in politics and in and in legislative work, public policy, which I've always been fascinated with. Uh that goes uh I you know, as a as a kid in high school, I did speech and debate, and so we were always, you know, extemporaneous speaking on domestic issues. So we were always talking about public policy. Um obviously broader than than just agriculture, but always talking about policy, doing extemporaneous speaking in the FFA chapter, you know, that was ag policy, and what's it doing, and how do you do that? So they'd always been of interest to me, but I just never really found a way to get into that space. And I honestly thought that I would go do that job for four or five years and I would use it to transition to something else, and and that's where we'd go. And here I sit now, we're we're in year 28 of doing pork industry work, pork association work, and I I absolutely love it. Um, I love the challenges that come with it, I love the rewards that come with it. Um, I love the people. And again, Chad, if you called me and told me you were having a problem with your pigs on the farm, I'm gonna tell you to call Mary Betrail or call somebody else and ask her because I can't really help you with that. If you've got an issue around your permit or an environmental issue or how you need to do something different in managing issues on the farm, now that we can help you with. And that I enjoy doing, that I find uh to be rewarding. And so that's how I've that's how we've managed to stay in this for 20, working on 28 years now, is um, and so I never really thought about it about leaving the the cattle business and and going into and going into hogs, if you will. Um, but we used to have, you know, Oklahoma is is very much cow calf country. They're the second or third largest cow calf state in the country. And so we we had a great relationship with the folks at the Oklahoma Cattlemen, um, and just the back and forth bickering when we would go to uh a meeting at Oklahoma State University and talking with the animal science department, you know, the former head of the cattlemen's association would be telling me we ain't a pig state boy. You you just need to stay in your place. And it was all in good fun. It was never, it was never harsh, it was all in in good fun and and um really learned. I I saw tremendous leadership from the different ag commissioners that we worked with, Secretaries of Agriculture in in Oklahoma. How did they manage the the ag groups? How did they bring us together? What did they do? And all of them different. Yeah, very different. Worked with uh four different commissioners. In my time there. I had some great mentors in my time there to help me understand how to do the job and how to avoid the pitfalls of being an executive director in an association and how do you manage that. But just great people and and a learning curve that was that was steep. Great mentors at the at the at the state legislature to teach me how the legislative process works and how to work in that building. I was a registered lobbyist in in Oklahoma for the pork industry as well as some other clients that I had there. And fortunately, here I've got a great team of lobbyists at the General Assembly, so I don't have to be the registered lobbyist for North Carolina pork, but I'm still very actively involved in public policy at the federal level. I make four or six trips a year to DC to talk to them about issues that are important to our industry. I was at the General Assembly earlier today for an ag committee uh hearing, and and so once in a while Angie lets me run down there and be a part of what's going on. But um that's really what I enjoy most is that policy space, that that dealing with the issues that come up, and and that's where I think associations like North Carolina Port Council are absolutely invaluable.

Chad 23:25

Oh, yeah. Well, 22 years at Oklahoma, I mean, before we jump on into North Carolina, I do want to find out of those 22 years, was there a

Learning Public Policy And Lobbying

Chad 23:35

moment that was in particular challenging or maybe a success that you had there that that stands out in that time?

Roy Lee 23:42

I think there I think there are several things, and and sometimes you don't appreciate those while you're there. You kind of got to get past them to get to them. Yeah. Um when we when I arrived, I told you they had just adopted their new environmental regulations in in spring of 98. I started December of 98, and the Department of Agriculture, who who is the regulatory body in Oklahoma, was writing all the rules to go with the new statutes. And so here's what the rules are. And one of the things that they had written into the law was that you could not build a hog farm, you could not build a hog farm and you could not get a water permit for a hog farm if you were within a certain amount, a certain distance of a recreation site that was owned by a nonprofit. So they didn't want you locate and buy a campsite or buy whatever. And in uh the panhandle of Oklahoma and Northwest Oklahoma, which by the way are not the same thing. If anybody ever asks you, Northwestern Oklahoma and the panhandle are two different parts of the state. Um, we had folks that went out that didn't want port, didn't want hog farms anywhere near them, didn't want water issued for them, and they just started sticking a picnic table out in the middle of a field and and go down to the registrar and call it a uh recreation site, and they would use that as a way to not let us uh get water permits as a way to get the water board to deny our access to water. She couldn't raise hogs if you don't have water. And uh in 2000 uh two, yeah, in uh 2001, we finally brought a piece of legislation that uh changed the law and allowed it to uh basically we put some parameters as to what constituted a recreation site so that most of our farms could go ahead and get their water permits and we could move that process on through. And uh the governor vetoed it. And so we went from the high of navigating this through the House and the Senate and getting it through and getting the language all agreed to, and then the governor vetoed the language, and that was really, really disappointing. Um, so we we went from the highs, the ecstatic of look what we've done to we now we lost. Um we came back the next year, we passed the legislation again, same governor this time, and this time he signed it. We didn't change a thing in it. Um, I don't really know what what he was thinking in that regard. But you know, that was the first real step for us to to kind of push back on what the regulations had been. And then you fast forward another four years, and in and in 2006, we had identified a number of things in the law that just didn't make any sense. Um so uh, for example, we had to drill monitoring wells under all of our lagoons, um and even if they didn't hit water. So groundwater in a lot of places out there was 300 feet below the bottom of the lagoon, and you had to drill the well 50 feet below the bottom of the lagoon, so you you never hit water, right? It's just dry. But we had to pay somebody to go out there and test those wells every year to make sure they weren't leaking. And after five years, we finally got the law changed where you know what, we only have to test those every third year now. And as long and now, if they ever become wet, if water ever gets in them, then we got to test them every year again. But as long as they remain dry, we don't have to test them every year. And and that was a cost-saving measure, right? They they weren't providing any information to anybody because there was no water there. Um, we did the same with several other, there were several other small provisions that really were not, they didn't make any sense. You know, the wind blows in Oklahoma all the time. We get foam blown up. You've seen it, it blows up on the top of a lagoon and and the wind would blow and it would blow the foam out of the lagoon. And then the agency would cite us for a discharge because the foam had left the lagoon. Well, there wasn't enough material in that foam to do anything. Um, if I unhooked the irrigation line in the middle of my irrigation field and up and a gallon of water ran out, a gallon of effluent ran out. Well, that was a discharge because it didn't come out the end of the irrigation system, it came out in the coupler. And so we would have to report that. And if we didn't report it, we were in violation. So we made some changes to the law to deal with some of those, just put some common sense in it. And we were able to get those passed in in 06 and signed into law. Um, that was those were real victories for our for our people. Um we we uh we began a true industry image campaign in Oklahoma to talk about uh put a face on the industry, who we are, what we are. We're not just some nameless, faceless company. Um we're we're the men and women that live right here in Oklahoma, that you're a neighbor, then you go to church with them, their kids go to school with your kids. You know, same things we try to do here in North Carolina, right? But we got started in that process. And I had a state legislator one time tell me, you know, that that campaign being on television, that effort of being on the radio, that effort of being in the newspaper, that effort of putting a face on the industry, meant more to him and it gave him the ability to be an advocate for us at the at the state legislature. And and that to me is that's the that's the pat on the back you're looking for because it allowed us to be a more effective representative of uh of the pork industry in in Oklahoma. And we were we were transitioning really from kind of the old breed association model of association management into a trade association and becoming a professional trade association and how do you manage things? And they're very different, you know, though those two things are not the same. And so it was uh it was a time of great growth. I I learned more personally and professionally in that window of time, and that really positioned me, I think, to be in a spot to have an opportunity

Oklahoma Wins On Regulations And Image

Roy Lee 29:50

to come to North Carolina 15 years later.

Chad 29:54

Yeah. Well, let's talk about that time you come to North Carolina. I mean, this is um this is in late 2020. Uh we had the the nuisance uh settlement or nuisance lawsuits had just been settled. Uh actually they hadn't.

Roy Lee 30:07

They hadn't they were still they were still pending. They didn't settle till December of 20. So I'd already accepted the job to come out here before those settled.

Chad 30:15

Right. And um COVID impacts were were starting up. Um I think you had a daughter that was maybe just during high school. Uh it had to have been a uh big uh Hey Melissa, uh we're moving to North Carolina. You know, how did that go?

Roy Lee 30:33

Well, it's it's funny. My my wife is uh my wife is a criminal defense attorney. She works in a public defender's office in Chatham County and and absolutely loves her work. And she works with people that she reminds me at times, you know, she when I say something about I see something on TV about some stupid criminal somewhere, and and she'll ask me, she said, How do you want to be judged for the worst decision you made on the worst day of your life? Is that how you want to be judged for the rest of your life? And I and she puts it in a way that makes me step back a little bit and maybe get off my high horse sometimes as to what those things mean. But she's always joked that she just has no ambition. She doesn't want to be in charge of the office, she doesn't want to be wherever. So she, when we got married, she moved from Kansas to to Oklahoma and changed jobs. Um, she decided her job was far more mobile than my job was. You know, there are only a handful of states you can go and be a full-time association executive within the pork industry. Yeah. I think there's 16 of us or something across the country. And so she just kind of always accepted that at some point we were likely to move on from Oklahoma into uh into another opportunity. And it took a long time, I think, for that opportunity to really present itself at the right time. Um it was a it was an interesting conversation with my daughter. Uh, she was a freshman in high school. Now, you know, her freshman year was COVID. So she would go to school for a day. And in the fall of in the fall of 20, she might go to school for three days, and then they'd tell her she had been exposed to COVID and she had to stay home for a week. And so it was just a it was a it was a horrible, it was a horrible time for anybody to be in in school. Um, Chad, your kids were in school at that time. I I know you you saw it with yours. Um and uh but but I Elizabeth and Melissa stayed back in Oklahoma the first five months I was here so that Elizabeth could finish out school. And then they moved out here at the end of May uh of 21. And so that five months was hard. That was uh of I I don't ever regret the decision of moving to North Carolina for what we did. I regret the decision of leaving them behind for five months um just because of the stress and strain it put on all of us. Um teenage girls and their moms are not always the best of roommates, and they were living in a in a really small space together and there was no dad there to be a buffer. Um I was uh I mean, Chad, you you experienced the first hand. Um and and I, you know, I'm not making light of it. It just is the nature of it. And and then for dad not to be around and and yeah, I went back several times, but it's still not the same. Right. Um because Elizabeth was doing a lot of her school virtually and she could do school virtually, there were times she'd come out here and stay for two weeks so that she could and she'd come to the office with me, or she'd stay home and do her schoolwork, and you know, but it just wasn't the same as when I got the whole family out here that summer. Um so that was that was a challenge, and then finding new friends and whatever for Elizabeth was was what's she gonna do? Um, we went to the Green Level FFA Banquet last night, and and that's where Elizabeth graduated high school here in North Carolina, and uh she joined that FFA chapter. They had organization day or something right there before school started in fall of 21. And and when I got home that day, she was so excited. She's like, Dad, I found my people. And she had found the FFA chapter and talked to the advisor, and she was gonna get she had been in FFA in in Oklahoma, and so it gave her it gave her an in. And she goes on, you know, new kid moving into this school, and in two years, she's the president of the chapter. Um and and we we we were so thankful for what that chapter gave her that my wife and I have set up a small scholarship that we fund annually for the president of the of the chapter. And we got to go last night and present that scholarship to uh the outgoing the outgoing uh president, uh young lady that's going to school been accepted to college at Cornell, going to study environmental science at Cornell. You know, just you look at what those kids are doing, and yeah, it's not well, this isn't about the money, but it's about trying to help those kids out and give back a little bit. I told them, you all gave, you gave a lifeline to my daughter, and this is a little bit of a way we can we can give back to you all. So that was really where where that went. She got on the golf team at the high school. That gave her a little core group of girls to be friends with, and and so that kind of let her build. But you know, for me, getting here, you couldn't go visit anybody. You know, the first thing you want to do when you take over a job like that, the first thing you want to do is you will go see the people that are writing the checks, the people that are paying the bills, right? You won't go sit down and have and nobody wanted you coming in the door because it was COVID and they couldn't afford to have people sick, they didn't want them exposed to anything. And so we were six or seven months with most places before anybody opened doors. We didn't have a port conference that spring because the state still wasn't allowing big meetings. And when I got to the office, the staff hadn't been in the office since March. You know, they'd been in for a day or two here and there, but they hadn't spent any time together in nine months. So it was a it was a very it was a very challenging atmosphere to walk into. And then you add just the issues of of uh the lawsuits, the nuisance suits, and and the way the industry was reacting to those. You know, I was fortunate in that those got settled before I got here. So I didn't have to live those like you all did. But I had kept up with them. Andy Curlis had kept me informed as to what was going on and and both to help me prepare for it in case it came to Oklahoma so we could be prepared to deal with it. But then once I had accepted the position, he was very helpful uh in in helping with that transition. And and the one thing that did make that job easier, that transition easier, is I knew a lot of the people already, right? Um, Smithfield had farms in Oklahoma, so I knew the folks at Smithfield. I I knew the prestiges, right? And and I'd been involved at the national level on committees with National Pork Producers Council and the National Pork Board. And so I knew I knew Ray Summerlin here. I knew uh I knew folks that were here, I knew the herrings at Hogs Lat. I I had some connections to people that allowed me to say hello. I knew Deborah Johnson, right? I I knew folks that could help me connect as I was learning what to do in North Carolina. And then the other thing that really was helpful is the farms are identical in Oklahoma and here. I mean, it's the same barns, it's barns there may be a little bit bigger, the average south farm may be a little bit bigger, but the slatted floors, it's lagoons and spray fields, it's it's all of that was the same. And so I didn't have to learn a new technology. Like if I had gone to Iowa or you'd gone to Minnesota and you were suddenly talking about deep-pitted barns and a different kind of manure application and all of that, that would have been a learning curve that I didn't have when I got here. Um, and then we had a really good team when we got here, and and that made

Moving To North Carolina During COVID

Roy Lee 38:05

it easier as well.

Marisa 38:07

So those are a lot of similarities. What was a striking difference for you between Oklahoma and North Carolina, specifically within the pork industry?

Roy Lee 38:17

Yeah, I I think there were two things that that really stood out to me. One is just the size of the industry here in North Carolina. You know it's bigger and you look at the numbers, but you don't know it's bigger. I I I I don't care how much you look at the numbers, I don't care how much you study the animals, I it doesn't equate. Um we had roughly 300 farms that were licensed by the state in Oklahoma, and there's 2100 of them here. You can't, you can look at that number, and I can see it on paper, but you you don't equate that to what that really means in terms of the industry. Um you go from being the second or third or even fourth largest segment of agriculture in the state of Oklahoma to being essentially the second largest segment of agriculture here. And uh and a lot is expected of you in that role. You are to be the spokesperson at the General Assembly, and you're always fighting issues at the General Assembly, you're always advocating for things on behalf of the industry. Very different dynamic. We really were kind of in prevention and protection mode all the time in Oklahoma. How do we keep them from doing things? We don't need, we don't need anything done, we're happy where we are, just leave us be and on we'll go. And so those those things in terms of size and the scope and then the expectations that went with it, that would be one of those things that you really didn't, you you couldn't prepare yourself for. And then the second is just the constant drumbeat of opposition that exists out here. Um there was all there was always somebody who didn't like what the pork industry was doing in Oklahoma, but they were, it was a limited number of folks. For the most part, we had dealt with those issues, we had addressed them legislatively, we had great relationships in the in the state legislature, and so those didn't create problems for us for the most part, right? Um a very small group of folks owned most of the farms, or there were contract growers for those entities, again, very similar to what you have here in in North Carolina, but you didn't have that funding for the opposition, you didn't have the constant attacks that came. You didn't have a media that was that that there are parts of the media that actually are paid to write stories about you and to point out all of your flaws and and all of the so-called evils of the industry. Um that was very different. Um you had, I think you've had Jan Archer on the on the podcast sometime in the back. And and Jan asked me one day, I'd been here for I've probably been here for three years, and and we were at an event somewhere, and she said, I've been meaning to ask you. I know you think you knew, you thought you knew what you were getting when you got here. Did you really know? And I said, No, you there's no way to prepare yourself for the challenge that comes from that constant opposition and that constant need to be defending the industry uh where you go. Now, there are several things that I use to drive me as we deal with that. And uh in the early 2000s, I was driving across the Oklahoma panhandle with the guy that was the president of the Oklahoma Port Council and a reporter for the Daily Oklahoma. So the largest newspaper in the state. So think News and Observer, think Charlotte Observer, and I've got the reporter in the front seat, and I'm sitting in the backseat of the pickup. We're driving across the panhandle, and and the president looks at him and he says, you know, uh, this used to be a noble profession. We're just out here feeding the world, and that used to be a noble profession. And I piped up from the back seat and I said, Joe, it's still a noble profession, and it will remain that as long as we have a world to feed. And for me, if I could print it on the wall and hang it on the wall, I would have that saying up there as this is a noble profession. And we're out here doing good work, we're we're feeding the world, and that's important work because I I think as long as I can keep myself grounded in that thought, it it's really good. And the other is uh the gentleman that was our lobbyist at the Oklahoma Pork Council um was a former state senator, former U.S. Congressman, pro rodeo Hall of Fame announcer, um, one of the most beloved native sons of Oklahoma, a nephew of Will Rogers. I mean, this guy is Oklahoma. And he took on the pork industry at a time that it was not popular and it was it was ugly at the state legislature. You all saw that at the General Assembly at times when you were trying to fix right to farm, kind of what what all that looked like. And and folks asked him all the time, Clem, you don't need to do this work. You don't need to have them for a client. Why don't you just let them go and we'll and find somebody else for a client? And his answer to him always was these are good people and they're doing things the right way, and I'm not gonna abandon them. And and that so those two, those two thoughts, those two visions, they drive me in everything I do. Because when I think about the average hog farmer here in North Carolina, they're good people. They're out here trying to do things the right way. They're trying to put food on your table, they're trying to put food on their table, they're trying to raise their families in rural North Carolina. And if I can help them do that by managing some of their issues off the farm, then that's my reward for the work that we do every day.

Marisa 44:00

Yeah. And we all say Amen.

Chad 44:03

Amen. I'll pass the collection plate in a little bit, all right? Oh, for sure. Well, Roy Lee, one of the things, and and now and since we've been talking, uh, I've kind of I kind of I've kind of got an answer to my question uh because you're good at networking. But one of the things I think you've been great at in North Carolina is networking with our allied partners. Um you know, with the Farm Bureau, the North Carolina Partnership, we got sweet potato corn, soybeans, peanuts, all these groups uh you've created relationships with. Um and I've told people, uh several people recently how how I feel like agriculture in North Carolina is more unified than it's ever been. Uh, and I think some of those relationships you're responsible for uh building. So tell us a little bit about just that partnering and us working together and moving forward uh as um several industries together.

Bigger Industry And Constant Opposition

Roy Lee 44:55

Yeah, you know, it's uh what's the old adage from the from Benjamin Franklin? The old adage from the Benjamin Franklin. We we can all hang together or we'll or we'll or surely all hang individually, something like that. Um uh but you know, I one of the things, one of the other things I didn't realize when I came to North Carolina is just the sheer size and scope of agriculture in this state. Right? I knew it was a big hog state, I know it was a big poultry state. Um I did not appreciate that it was the number one state in the country for sweet potato, sweet potatoes, or tobacco, or all of the other crops and things that are grown here, the amount of corn and soybeans that are grown here, I did not appreciate what what's here. Um and so when you think about the fact that agriculture is the largest industry in this state, if you ask folks from outside North Carolina, what are you known for, they're gonna talk about Research Triangle Parkway and RTP, you know, they're gonna talk about RTP and the research triangle in here and technology, and they're gonna think about technology growth, they're gonna think about pharmaceuticals, but they're not gonna think about agriculture across the country. That's not gonna be the thing that comes to mind. Uh, if you're in the ag world, obviously hog production comes to mind. Folks know that it's one of the largest hog producing states in the country, and that comes to mind. So when that's the case, and it's a 110 or 112 billion dollar industry in the state, again, still the state's largest industry, and yet we represent such a small fraction of the population. There's 11 million people in North Carolina today. Um, and that is fundamentally different than most other significant ag states, and certainly different than most than other livestock producing states, right? California is the largest ag producing state in the country, and we wouldn't argue that we've got more people than California, but um, their people all live in LA and they live in San Diego and they live in San Francisco, and they don't live out in the farm country. Now, does that sound familiar to kind of what North Carolina is doing? I mean, we live in Raleigh and we live in Greensboro, and we live in Charlotte, and we live in Wilmington, and we're growing out of those areas into our ag production land. And so if we're gonna be effective uh in preserving some of that farmland, you all have done a number of podcasts and talked about farmland preservation. If we're gonna be effective in having a regulatory environment that allows us to be successful raising hogs here in North Carolina or sweet potatoes or tobacco, whatever it may be, we're gonna have to figure out how we as agriculture work together because there are not enough of us to do this individually. And so if we can find those places where we can work together, where we can band together, where we can advocate together for things, then we're stronger as a group. We are far better able to be successful in defending agriculture and being a voice for agriculture. And that to me is why those partnerships are so valuable. Um, whether you're working with NC State and you're talking to the dean about what do we need in research or what do we need in terms of uh ag communications and sharing the science that's going on at the university? Same goes for AT, same goes to talk to the folks at Mount Olive. You know, how do we extrapolate the work that's being done in agricultural research across the state and share it back out with a with a greater public? Um, how do we let the folks in the mountains know that, you know what, if we weren't out here raising hogs, you don't have any bacon, you don't have any barbecue. You know, how do we do that? And uh the partnerships that you can strike. You mentioned Farm Bureau and and man, I absolutely adore the partnership we have with Farm Bureau. It's incredible. Thrilled with how well that's gone and and what that is and and what that means. Uh we had a great relationship amongst the ag groups in Oklahoma, and and I kind of brought that mentality with me. We have a commissioner here that is a is an outspoken advocate for agriculture and for all the things we provide across this state. And so if we don't, again, if we don't work together, and yep, there's always gonna be things that divide us, right? We're not always gonna have the same goals or the same priorities in mind. But if we'll think about those things that we do have in common, the need for a workforce, how do we identify where the workers are gonna come from that we all have to have on our farms? Whether you're growing sweet potatoes, you're growing hogs, you're growing chickens, whatever it is, turkeys. We all need a workforce. Where's that workforce going to come from? And that's how you find us all in Washington talking about uh needing immigration reform so that we can have a workforce that's out there somewhere. Um we're we're talking about taking a group of uh my peers amongst the other commodity groups to go sit down with our congressional delegation in Washington and say this is important. And the other groups embrace that idea. So don't this is not a Roy Lee done thing. I didn't do this, but I'm a huge advocate for it because I believe it's the way that we are successful in the General Assembly. It's how we pass an annual farm act that includes all of the farm-related legislation that's going on at the General Assembly. If we're all working together in support of that, it gets a whole lot harder because we're spread out all over the state. We're not all in hog country east of I-95, right? Um, poultry's all over the state, cattle's all over the state, the Christmas tree folks are up in the mountains, whatever it may be, there are things in a farm act that that benefit all of us. And if we work together on it, then we're far more successful than if we're each trying to push our own little our own little ideas. So that will always be something that's very, very important to me is that is how do we build that partnership and how do we work together in that way.

Marisa 51:05

Yeah. Well, I mean, and it also goes back to what you said drives you, and it's just remembering that, you know, we're all trying to do this noble profession of feeding others or producing, you know, a product for others. Um, and good people just doing the best that they can, right? The right way.

Roy Lee 51:24

Yeah, it it's you know, we're I think of the pork industry, we're in the food business, right? Folks in the poultry industry in the food business. Um, and I like fried chicken as much as the next guy does, right? I let's not kid ourselves. But um, the simple fact is folks don't want to eat pork for every meal, they want to have a burger somewhere. Now we expect them to put bacon on that burger. Let's not get carried away. Don't get it tested. But um, you know, we we want to remind them that barbecue is pork. Don't ever get confused. But um it is uh it it we all are in the same boat and we're all kind of rowing in the same direction. And when we row together, man, that boat goes a whole lot faster and we get to where we're going a lot quicker. We're not always going to agree on everything, and and I don't anticipate that we would agree on everything. But if we'll focus on the things we agree on, then we're all better off for that. And that's kind of my, if you will, that'd be my mantra for why teamwork is so critically important and why it's successful is because we stay out of those lanes where we're fighting or we're bickering amongst ourselves, kind of like siblings, right? You argue with your brother. Well, we're kind of siblings here in in agriculture, and at times you get to to fussing and fighting with your family. Um, and that fussing and fighting's okay at home where only the family sees it, but we don't want people seeing it

Building Alliances Across North Carolina Agriculture

Roy Lee 52:50

out in public. And I think that's that's critically important. Yep.

Chad 52:55

Well, looking at the next generation of pork producers, I know that the pork council in North Carolina values um that because they've got two programs, the leadership program, pork leadership, uh, as well as the emerging leaders program. Talk to me a little bit about the hope you see in that younger generation and coming to pork.

Roy Lee 53:15

You know, I I'm I'm gonna back up just a little bit for you, Chad. One of the questions that I got asked when I was talking to folks about coming to North Carolina, and I get asked regularly, what why why North Carolina? What's the draw? And one of those draws is that North Carolina has been a leader within the pork industry in in North America. And if you go back and you look and you think about the folks that have been national presidents of the National Pork Board or the National Pork Producers Council, and and you think about Jan Archer and Gene Nemichek over at Pork Board and Don Butler and R. C. Hunt and David Herring at the National Pork Producers Council, and the number of folks that have served on those boards, we've given leadership to an industry. And and that's attractive. If you want to go where the you want to go where the action is, you want to go where you're making a difference for people, you want to go where the leaders are. And so that's a draw to North Carolina. And one of the responsibilities I have is where do we get the next generation of leaders for the North Carolina Port Council? Where do we get that next generation of leaders for agriculture in this state for our national associations as well? How can you move up through the chain from North Carolina through our board of directors into committees and ultimately onto national boards? And um so how do we develop that? And when I got here, I realized that the membership on our board, our elected board of directors, was getting significantly older. And we needed to bring in new people. And we needed them to have an idea and some knowledge of who we are as an organization, who we are as an industry, so that they would be better prepared to step into a board role, that they would be better prepared to be the elder in the church and serve on the church board, to be the PTA president, or to serve on the school board, or the volunteer fire chief, or whatever else they may be doing out in their communities. And so we sat down and we took some of the money that we weren't able to spend during COVID, right? Because we didn't do any activities in 20 and 21, really. We took some of that money and we built this pork leadership Carolina program as a way to take a small group of folks and expose them to some leadership development, expose them to what we do at the General Assembly, what we do in Congress in terms of public policy, and expose them to the role that the pork council plays on behalf of the industry. And uh the idea was we hope to identify some folks that will go on to serve on national committees, that will be on our committees here locally, and ultimately will become board members for the North Carolina Pork Council. And so we did the first class in 22, uh, the second class in 24, we're doing them about every other year. We're now in in class three. Uh they've had one session, their next session's coming up uh next week sometime. And uh the way that I measure, I get asked all the time by other states, other places, how do you measure success? In the 2024 elections for our board, we had uh 13 candidates running for the different board seats, and we had six seats open. I had 13 candidates running, seven of the 13 had been through our leadership, our Pork Carolinas, Pork Leadership Carolina program. Um we then picked from that those graduates. Usually, that's where we start when we start picking uh folks to be in the National Pork Leadership Institute program. Again, to send our folks that have been through our development program into a further national development program. And I I really like that idea. Again, in 25 when we did the elections for the 26 board, over half of the candidates for the board had been through our PLC program. That to me is success. That's the epitome of folks that took what we offered to them. They embraced it, they said, I want to be involved, and they now go out and they run for the board. And unfortunately, I don't have enough board seats for all of them, right? I can't elect them all every year. And so some of them have run two or three times now trying to get to the board because they're that committed to give back to the industry that's providing for them, providing for their families. And and I think that's that's huge. When we think about workforce, we mentioned workforce a minute ago. How do we tap into those kids that are high school seniors, that are college freshmen, and get them thinking about a career in the pork industry? Could that career could be anything, right? It could be um it could be anything under the sun. And uh what we really want there is we want them to see us as uh here's a career opportunity. So we created the Emerging Pork Leaders Carolina program. We tap into high school, typically seniors, juniors, seniors. We tap into college freshmen and we kind of give them exposure to the industry a little bit. We get them, we get folks to come in and talk to them about the career opportunities that exist. We talk to them a little bit, a little bit of exposure to production. Many of these kids are show pig kids or or they've been raised on a farm somewhere and they want to know more about it. But the goal is to get them to recognize what the value is for us uh on down the road. And so I'm I'm so excited about what both those programs have for us as as we go forward. And so I'm I'm thrilled with with what that offers us.

Chad 58:57

Yeah, well, I always say there's uh there's a lot of farming to be done in Raleigh too. And as a pig farmer, uh you you gotta be involved um in a leadership role, and you gotta farm at home and farm in Raleigh or in DC if that's the case.

Roy Lee 59:10

You gotta cultivate relationships. That's right. This is this is your work around the General Assembly, your work in Washington is a relationship business. And you you've got to be a trusted source of information. Yeah, that means when I talk to a legislator, I've got to tell them the truth. I have to tell them exactly what's happening on the farm. I have to tell them exactly how their discussions will impact us. And the only thing you have to offer in that setting is your integrity. And so you've got to be upfront. You got to tell them the hard answer when they ask you the question and the question is not what they want to hear. You got to figure out how to tell them that without making them angry. Um, but you got to be honest because you can't get that back. Once you compromise that integrity, you don't get that back. And so that's kind of the that's kind of the notion of what what I how I approach work in in the public policy space. And I know our team does that as well.

Marisa 1:00:07

Yeah. Well, and I know that those programs have made an impact in those who have gone through it, you know, and even if someone decides that they're not going to be a leader or have a career in pork, I still think it it has that impact because they they are then an advocate and they have that truth and they are they have the skills then to talk to others and network um to public speak, to have a good resume, uh, whatever it may be. And they are also able to talk about the pork industry in a positive light.

Roy Lee 1:00:40

Yeah, I I just I don't think you can put a value in that. And you need those folks. And that's why our program, our PLC program is not just pork producers, it includes folks that work in Allied industry. So we've got folks from Farm Credit that have been in each of the classes, uh, and again in this class. We got folks from genetics companies that have been a part of it. We got folks in equipment sales, uh, we've had folks from extension. Um we we want folks from a broad cross-section of the pork industry because the pork industry is bigger than just the folks like Chad on the farm raising pigs every day. Those folks are important, they're critical. We can't do it without them, but we we we're so much bigger than that. And that's the thing we've been able to embrace, I think, with our pork leadership Carolina program is to really tap into those folks that are in in kind of those allied industry pieces, is where I think of them, and and help them with leadership development as well. And then what do they invest back in our organization, back in our in our industry? And and that's uh it's been tremendous so far.

Chad 1:01:47

Yeah. Well, I gotta uh there's

Developing The Next Generation Of Leaders

Chad 1:01:50

I want to talk to you about some challenges in the pork industry, but before I do, I do want to take the time to hit on our two national organizations and and I want you to maybe describe how the State Association, North Carolina Pork Council, works in conjunction with the National Pork Board and the National Pork Producers Council, and maybe just real briefly what um each of those organizations' roles is within the pork industry.

Roy Lee 1:02:13

Sure. So let's look at the national associations first because I think it gets it's the way to set this up. Sure. Um we'll start with the National Pork Board. So the National Pork Board is funded by the National Pork Checkoff. So every time a farmer sells a pig, they pay the national checkoff. It is a mandatory uh assessment. Uh, it's mandatorily collected, and that assessment is 35 cents for every $100 value of animal sold. So if you sell a pig and he's worth $200, you you pay 70 cents into the federal checkoff program. Those dollars are what I like to call restricted dollars. Those are the checkoff, uh the checkoff money is restricted in that we can only use it for research, consumer information, and promotion. They cannot be used for lobbying, they cannot be used for public policy. So we can't use them to advocate for passage of legislation at the General Assembly or passage of an issue in Congress. We can use them to do research that supports a position that we might use in public policy, but we can't use them to, I can't, when I was at the General Assembly earlier today, my time, uh, we keep timesheets to keep our time separate, but my time will be coded public policy because I can't, I can't charge that to the checkoff part of what we do. Um, and so when you think about research, some of that's scientific around uh, some of it will be around production practices. So, how do we be better on the farm? The pork quality assurance plus program, transport quality assurance programs, those programs are funded by the checkoff. They are the outgrowth of research that was done on the checkoff side. If you've seen the new uh pork industry, uh, the pork product promotion, taste what pork can do, uh, that's funded by the pork checkoff. So when you see the little the little blue pork pick on a on a grocery store shelf or you see it on a package of pork at the store, that's the checkoff promoting pork and pork products. If you see us uh trying to teach consumers how to cook pork, how to do a better job with pork, if you see us uh talking about the industry and the impact our industry has on the state. So when we think about our economic impact on the state, you think about our impact as uh investing in our communities, those things are all things that can be funded with a checkout. On the flip side, the National Pork Producers Council is the public policy, public advocacy arm of the pork industry at a national scale. And so they did they uh they hold themselves out to be the global voice, the global voice of the U.S. pork industry. And I think they do a tremendous job doing that. Um they will uh they're funded voluntarily. So again, they ask folks to invest uh 15 cents per $100 value of every pig sold. Um and those dollars are collected at the national level, and they use those for lobbying in Washington, they use those for public policy, they use those for opening new markets in terms of global trade, litigation to defend the industry uh if necessary. And uh in both the checkoff and the the non-checkoff funds, so what goes to the National Port Board as well as what goes to the National Port Producers Council, a percentage of those dollars flow back to us in North Carolina. And we here at the North Carolina Port Council, we do all of that work. So we do both checkoff funded work, we do non-checkoff funded work, and we have to, I mean, we keep timesheets to show you how we're gonna divide up the cost of the Event, what's happening, etc. Um, and uh so we balance, we balance our time between those two entities. And sometimes it's real easy to balance, and sometimes it's it's uh it's a challenge to keep straight who's going where. But that's really the the overview. One is is really think of as product promotion and research and industry promotion, and the other is public policy and advocacy uh at a national and

Checkoff Versus Advocacy At National Level

Roy Lee 1:06:30

international scale.

Marisa 1:06:31

Um so Roiley, in parts of what you've talked about, you've discussed a lot about improvements uh that our that our industry makes in the pork industry. Um what are some examples of our pig farmers just really trying to be better each day? Um what are some examples of that?

Roy Lee 1:06:51

So I think one of the things that I've seen in in just a short time here in North Carolina that I really am impressed with is this idea of uh putting in digesters and covering lagoons to create renewable natural gas. And um you've asked earlier about, you know, what was one of the things that I was I wasn't prepared for, and I talked about just that constant opposition to what we're trying to do. You know, if I can cover a lagoon and it reduces odor, which it does, and it uh reduces emissions, which it does, and it generates uh captures methane, so that's a positive, and we can generate renewable natural gas out of it. That's a positive. Now, is that a is that a cure-all? Is that the end all be all? No. But is it better than we were yesterday? Absolutely. And and I think back to what my I think back to what my high school basketball coaches would say, or my junior high wrestling coach would say, well, I want you to be better tomorrow than you are today. Right? And most people, if you talk to them in that, in that capacity, you talk to anybody in any profession, and you can be a little bit better tomorrow than you were today, they would think that was success. Right? That was the epitome of success. An incremental growth from day to day today means that in a year, you're a long way from where you were 365 days ago. And we as an industry are constantly looking for where's the next piece of growth. Now we talk about it internally as efficiencies. How do we capture efficiency? Because we're thinking in terms of the bottom line, we're thinking in terms of sustainability, and for us, sustainability begins with being profitable. But every farmer I know wants Chad's constantly walking through his barns looking for what's one little thing I could do in here today that will save me five minutes tomorrow, that will give me five minutes back, or that will keep me that my pigs grow one day faster. I can move my pigs out one day faster because that's efficiency, right? That's less grain consumed, that's less electricity, it's less water. It's all of those pieces that make us better today than we were yesterday. And so I think about renewable natural gas and digesters is one of those places. We've seen we're seeing folks that are converting from uh in places they're putting in center pivots for irrigation, right? And those center pivots allow us to even be greater precision in terms of how much uh effluent we apply, how much nutrient we're putting down for those crops as they grow. Uh that's an improvement. Now, did we eliminate lagoons and spray fields? No. Are we managing them better? Absolutely. You you've had the folks from uh some of the uh companies on that are taking manure and turning them into fertilizer, right? Yeah. That's an improvement. That's taking a product that we're looking for a home for, we turn it into a fertilizer, and then we can move it out of the watershed. And yet, if you listen to our critics, every one of those things is horrible because it's not a substantive, it's not a hugely significant change in the industry. And it in any setting, in anything you ever try to do in your life, your coaches, your counselors have all told you the journey of a thousand miles begins with a step. I mean, I know it's cliche, but you don't leap forward in things. You take little steps, you learn. Our producers do annual education to make sure they know the latest technology, they know the latest science as to how they do land application, how their crops are using the nutrients. Is there a new variety of crop that will take up more nutrient out of the soil? And you do that. We do soil tests annually. Yes, they're required by law, but we do soil tests before we do any land application. We test the material that's in the lagoons before we do land application so we know what we're putting down. And then we rotate our crops to accommodate that. All right. If we weren't learning, if we weren't trying to be better, you'd just keep growing the exact same crop and you'd never change it. But yet we change the crops regularly. We change the amount of nutrient that we put down based on um what's in the field already, what's in our lagoons. What do we need to do in that regard? And I think too often those get dismissed because those are small incremental challenges and they're hard to see. Um you think about you think about that person that you know that uh I use this as an example because it's just one of those that they've been losing weight over time, and you don't recognize it until you go back and you look at a picture of them from six months ago, and then you go, holy smokes, or you don't see them for a while, and then you go, wow, you look great. It it's that same kind of incremental growth that we have as an industry. Look, we haven't added a new hog farm in in close to 30 years now, right? Um, we've not added new hogs. We we may have replaced some of our genetics. We think about genetic growth, right? We we've changed the genetics on our farm, and so now we're getting more pigs per litter than we were getting two years ago, three years ago. That means I need fewer sows to produce the same number of pigs, to produce the same amount of pork. That's an efficiency, that's growth, if you will, as an industry in terms of sustainability. And yet for the folks that are our critics, well, it ain't enough. And that's the one thing I have heard repeatedly here is it's never enough. And it doesn't really matter what we do, is it's never enough. And I argue and I believe 100% that if I'm just a little bit better today than I was yesterday, and I'm a little bit better tomorrow than I was today, then by the end of the year, by the end of five years, by the end of 10 years, I am significantly better than I was. And I didn't have to try to upset the Apple cart to get there. I did it piece by piece. And that's what we've done. That's what industry's done forever. Occasionally you get something that's a leap forward. The iPhone was a leap forward in communication. But since then, what you get when you get a new iPhone each year is you get an incremental improvement in technology. Some would call it an improvement, but you get an incremental increase in what the technology can do for you. Um, that's vastly different than every year we gotta have the the we got to have a new invention to replace the iPhone every year. That's kind of the noise that I hear out here is well, we need to be doing things fundamentally different on farms. We've been raising livestock um for centuries, thousands of years we've been raising livestock. And we do it better today in this country than anywhere else in the world. Um we we feed not only our folks, I mean there's 2,100 hog farms in in North Carolina, and man, that sounds like a lot. There's 11 million people in North Carolina. Where are they gonna eat? Where are they gonna get their food? If we don't get better at what we do every day, we can't feed them. And now think about New York City and think about Los Angeles and think about Dallas, Texas, and Houston. Where do those folks find food? Well, they find it in the grocery store. So who puts it at the grocery store? Chad does. Um, our members do. Without that, and without that growth, and without us becoming more efficient at everything we do on the farm, we uh we mentioned already, we've talked about we need we need help with our workforce. If we don't get more efficient on the farm, we run out of labor, we run out of the ability to do everything that needs doing. So we have to get more efficient every day. That's how we get by with fewer people, right? How do we feed more people with fewer pigs? We have to get more efficient, we have to get more productive. And using the nutrients that our pigs produce, there's nothing more sustainable than using the nutrients our pigs produce to put on crops that we're then going to harvest and we're gonna feed back to our pigs, and we're gonna do the cycle all over again. I mentioned renewable natural gas. I I love the I you kind of have to admire folks that just they'll keep saying the same thing over and over again and hope somebody finally believes them. And they want to tell me that renewable natural gas from hog manure and methane is not really renewable. And my answer to that is as long as people eat bacon and barbecue, it's pretty dang renewable. Forever. Um because as long as as long as you're gonna enjoy a pork chop, as long as you're gonna enjoy that barbecue sandwich, as long as you're gonna put bacon with your breakfast, uh slice of country ham with breakfast on your biscuit, then we're gonna need pigs, and that makes that energy source renewable. And and I think that that's if you want to dismiss that, I think you're just kind of that's kind of ostrich head in the sand, not really looking at what the big picture is.

Chad 1:16:19

I totally agree. The uh the the iPhone analogy is really good. Um, and I totally agree with you. Pig farmers are resilient folks, uh, and we are getting better every day.

Marisa 1:16:29

Let me ask you

Getting Better Daily With Farm Technology

Marisa 1:16:30

this. You have been an ag your whole life, you've worked in this specific pork industry for over two decades. Do you find that uh agriculture farmers are open-minded about being better, about adopting new technology? Um, I think that a lot of times we hear they're just gonna do it like they've always done. Like if it's if it's works, don't, you know, and it's not broken, don't fix it, right? But is is that true?

Roy Lee 1:16:59

Yes and no, and I'm and predominantly no, but there are folks out there that they're not gonna change anything. They're always gonna do things the way they've always done it because it's what's comfortable. When I was a kid, every year we got out the mobile plow and went across the tops of the terraces and we re-moboeded the the ground. Okay, and this idea of no-till crop growth where we sow the wheat right into last year's stubble and we don't spend a bunch of time. And the number of times we would go over a piece of ground with a disc to get it tilled and ready to go for collect rain over the winter and over the summer and hard, you know, replant in September. We don't do that anymore. Why not? Because we've learned that we can conserve water, we can conserve fuel, we can reduce our cost by using no-till, right? Um, you all you all were promoting the the uh port forward vendor expo down at down in Clinton the other day, and they had a drone out back where they were demonstrating how you can use a drone now to spray your field. And I was I I went back to watch them fly that little drone around and they were just spraying water on stuff, but it was fascinating to me. And just yesterday, and and I'd never thought about this, we got a note that they were gonna wash the windows in our building. And I was expecting the little dude to come with his scaffold or to shimmy down from the top of the building and his squeegee and he's gonna wash the windows. They brought a drone out here and flew a drone outside our building and washed the windows.

Marisa 1:18:27

That's awesome.

Roy Lee 1:18:28

Now, as I watched, I thought that's great. That is fabulous. But if I talked about using a drone to spray my field, how many folks would go, oh, uh that I'm not sure that's a good idea, right? So we we embrace technology in places and then we resist technology in others. Um we want the we want the car that's got all the bells and whistles, right? How many cars today do you see that still have hand crank windows? Can you even buy a car with a hand crank window? I don't even know if you can buy one today, right? Power door locks, the key that goes in your pocket. You don't even have to put it in the ignition, right? It just goes in your pocket. And we go, oh, that's great. We love that technology. And yet we resist when it comes to technology when we talk about covering lagoons and putting in digesters and capturing the methane. We heard for years that we needed to reduce methane emissions. Now we come up with a way to do that, and oh, we don't like that technology. I I see that as there's lots of things we've done over the years that have allowed us to be better. Um, Chad, if you go back and think about how many times have you changed the water, the water nipples in your farm from what they were when you built the farm, right? I don't remember when you built your farm. But you're not using the same water nipple in that farm you did when you built it, are you? You've changed it.

Chad 1:19:52

Yeah, we were swinging.

Roy Lee 1:19:54

You've changed it. Why have you changed it? Because it uses less water. Because the pigs can get more to drink. You've reduced cost, you made an investment in a technology that reduced your water usage and gave the pigs a better feed, and it reduced how much material you have to apply, how much was going into your lagoon. Now, was that a big change? Was that some fundamental earth shot? No. But if you went back and looked at, if that was 10 years ago and you managed to save a gallon of water a day, and I bet it saved more than a gallon of water a day, but let's just do it. If it's a gallon of water a day, that's 365 gallons over 10 years. You say 3,600 gallons of water, right? That's water that can be used for something else. And we still produce the same number of pigs, we still got you the same amount of pork. You don't feed as much feed as you did 10 years ago either. We've got better with rations, we manage that better. All of those things make us more efficient, and that makes us better environmentally, it makes us more sustainable, and that's that incremental growth. Um, occasionally, like this these genetics that we've got today that are more productive, are letting us see a sizable growth in terms of pigs per litter, right? That that that's been um, but those changes are very rare. They they don't come along very often. And so um we gotta we we gotta keep looking for those things. And I think that um as an industry, agriculture in general, uh, we're always looking for ways to reduce our cost so that we can manage our pennies, right? We're not the the average farmer is not making you know a margin of 10 to 20 percent returned on his investment. He's making two or three percent on a good year, he makes four. And so anything that he can do that just adds half a percent of return is significant to his bottom line. And I think that that gets lost sometimes. And because most folks are not familiar with farming, they don't live on a farm today. All they see is what they see when they drive down the interstate and look out to the side and see a building or see a crop or whatever. Um, that that's a challenge for us. And and you asked earlier, why do I advocate for all of us to work together? I want to hear what the sweet potato folks are doing to reduce water and to get more potatoes per acre, right? I want to hear what the peanut folks are doing. I want to hear what the cattlemen are doing and what the poultry folks are doing. Because I think that's a story that it's miraculous that one and a half, two percent of our population in the United States feeds almost 400 million people.

Farm Bill Stakes And Proposition 12

Chad 1:22:41

Yeah, absolutely. I want to I want to shift a little bit, Roy Lee, and let's talk about some challenges that the North Carolina Pork Council or pork producers across the United States are facing. Um specifically, I guess, the farm bill for the entire country, and then maybe let's talk a little bit about general permit here in North Carolina. Um farm bill. I know it's I know it's time specific. I know we're talking about this in late April, and changes could happen any minute now or any hour. Um, but let's just take a look at it. I know it's a five-year farm bill. We're still on our two uh 2018 version. Um, so what are we gonna do? There's things we need to fix. Let's talk about it.

Roy Lee 1:23:20

Historically, um, historically, we do farm bills every five years, and in 2023, we didn't get a farm bill, and in 24, we didn't get a farm bill, and in 25, we didn't get a farm bill. And so we're now working on farm policy that was based on the costs and the situation on the ground, if you will, from 2017-2018. Does the world look the same today as it did in 2018? And I don't say that I don't say that to be facetious. I mean, literally, how much did the world change when we went through the pandemic? Right? What's different about what you do today, how you do it? Everything. Um, our costs in terms of production in swine production, our costs today are up more than 50%, uh, aside from feed. Now, feed's the single largest part of our cost, uh, makes up about 70% of the cost of raising pigs. But all the other costs we have, the other 30%, those costs have increased more than 50% from pre-COVID levels, right? And our farm bill and the policies and the support that the farm bill provides for farmers has not changed. Now, last summer in the one big beautiful bill, the reconciliation package, we did adjust the uh payment rates, the the target prices, some of those things in terms of the funding mechanisms for um agriculture, right? And livestock producers as a whole really don't get any money from those programs. Maybe we get some support from some of the environmental programs that help us invest in new technologies, like we want to convert from a big reel or a big gun irrigation system into center pivots. We might be able to get some cost share to help us with some of those programs. But in general, um, while we got changes in the prices, what they couldn't update in that bill because of congressional rules, and this is really down the weeds, Chad, but they couldn't update the programs and the policy that went with that. So we're still operating on policy that's eight years old, but we've changed the prices that we're paying, and we still haven't recovered and reset. So we need agriculture, not the pork industry specifically, but agriculture as a whole needs a new farm bill to reset all of those policies and get us on a current footing, right? There are things that we need from uh a pork industry perspective, right? Um, we need continued support for foreign animal disease preparedness and prevention. We need a fix congressionally for Proposition 12 out of California that doesn't allow any one state to tell other states how they should raise animals or livestock within those states. Um, those are things that are critically important for us in terms of a farm bill. Now, the House, we hope the week we're talking, the House we hope is gonna vote on a farm bill this week. Uh we're optimistic they can pass one and send it on to the Senate. But the Senate hasn't even started work on a farm bill yet. So we don't know what they're gonna write, we don't know what they're gonna do. Um, and so we could be, if we were talking again in November, we could still be saying we need a farm bill. We've been saying, and all of agriculture has been saying we need a farm bill, and we've been saying it since 2022, and we will continue to pound on that drum until Congress actually passes a farm bill. And is it gonna have everything in it that everybody wants? Absolutely not. Um, will it have some of the things that we think most people want? Yes, and we're gonna continue to advocate for a farm bill. Is it gonna include things we don't want? Absolutely. But sometimes that's the give and take we make to get to uh if you're trying to help the peanut folks and you're trying to help the sweet potato folks and you're trying to help the wheat and the corn and the soybean and the livestock producers and the conservation programs and Christmas trees and whatever else it may be, there's gonna be things in there that not everybody's happy with, and there's gonna be things in there that you really like and you really don't like, and you kind of got to find that art of compromise. And I'm hopeful we can see this thing move because agriculture across this country needs a farm bill. Now, for sure, you also asked about general permit, and um, again, you gotta kind of go back a little bit and and do some history. You know, we

General Permit Timeline And DEQ Rulemaking

Roy Lee 1:27:57

our general permit was last issued in 2019. This is a permit that all of our swine farms operate under. The uh if you've got a uh a digester making renewable natural gas capturing methane, that general permit was issued in 2022, but both those permits were set to expire in 24. Um, and a new permit should have been issued in 2024. As you recall, in 2019, DEQ included some new conditions in the permit that the pork industry and our friends at Farm Bureau challenged as we didn't believe they had the statutory authority to implement them as part of the permit. Those conditions were uh phosphorus loss assessment tool, monitoring wells in the floodplain, and uh annual record keeping. And we challenged those conditions. Um the initial court ruling, the administrative law judge said, Yep, you're right, and they can't be enforced. DEQ appealed that decision to Superior Court here in uh Wake County. That judge ruled in the favor of DEQ and said, Oh, yeah, you can do that, no problem. The Court of Appeals then ruled and said, No, you can't. Those are special and you should have adopted them as a formal rule, not just as part of a permit. And then last fall in October, November, the state Supreme Court uh agreed with the Court of Appeals and said, right, those three conditions cannot be enforced until they're either adopted as statute by the General Assembly or DEQ goes through permanent rulemaking process to get them authorization that way. That's where we've been. And so since that ruling came out, DEQ's been studying the existing permit, trying to figure out what they're going to do next, and how do they satisfy what the Supreme Court's told them they have to do in terms of a permit. We had a meeting with them earlier this month that said, hey, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take the 2019 general permit as it was written, and we intend to put that into a rule. We're gonna make that into a permanent rule, and uh that has to go through the rulemaking process, which means they've got to put it together, they've got to send it to the Environmental Management Commission, the EMC's got to review it, they've got to make whatever changes or amendments to it they want made, they've got to bless it and say it can go forward. Um, it's got to go through the Rules Review Commission to make sure they've followed all the procedural steps to adopt it correctly. And then ultimately, when all of those things are done and it goes out to uh then it goes to out and says, here's what we've got for a final rule. Uh folks can challenge that and ask the General Assembly to weigh in on should this rule be approved or not. And uh we anticipate that this summer DEQ will present a set of rules to or a rule to the Environmental Management Commission and they'll start review of that process with the goal being for them to uh get that process complete uh late this year, early next year, and then once the rule is written, then DEQ can write a permit to replace the 2019 general permit. Now, we've been successful and we partnered with DEQ in this space to go back to the General Assembly and extend the life of the 2019 general permits and the 2022 digester permits. Um those are now extended through September 30, 2028. And I know that sounds like it's forever away, but if they can't finish the rule until early next year, and then they have to turn around and write a permit, and then the per and in all in all parts of this, there's going to be an opportunity for public stakeholder meetings, there'll be an opportunity for public, written public comment, for oral public comment, and then DEQ has to incorporate those comments into the rule or into the permit, and they have to respond to comments. And I, yes, Chad, you told me you wanted every pig to have a pillow or something, and we've decided that's not appropriate, and here's why. Um but they have to tell you that, right? And so the goal ultimately is to have a new permit issued. Uh, our producers will have to apply for coverage under the new permit, uh, essentially April 1 of 28. And the goal here is to get us to a place that we have a new general permit prior to April 1 of 28, so that our farmers know what they've applied for before they apply. Because we're required by law to apply for coverage under the general permit or to apply for an individual permit 180 days before the effective date of that permit. So DEQ has the opportunity to review our applications. And we think it's reasonable that we should get to see the permit we're applying for coverage under before we apply. I can't imagine we've applied before. No, we have and I can't, I mean, I can't see any average person thinking, yep, I'm gonna tell the government I want you to regulate me, but I don't want to know how you're gonna do it when I tell you I want to be regulated. And yeah, but I'm gonna sign up anyway. So uh are we gonna get a new permit? Yes, we're gonna get a new permit. Are we gonna have a new permit sometime soon? I guess that depends on your definition of soon. My guess is that it's late 27 uh before we get a general permit. And right now it won't be effective until October 1 of 28. That's the way it's written up today, unless something comes along and they go back, you know, if they were to move it faster, you can go back to the General Assembly and you could change the effective date of the current permit, and you could start sooner with a new one. But I suspect it's gonna be April 1 will be application deadline for coverage under a new permit, April 1 of 28. So two years from now. Uh, and then the effective date of that'll be uh fall of 28. But I just I don't see us getting being able to get there much quicker than that, just given what all the steps are and how all of those things could be delayed. Yeah.

Chad 1:34:12

Wow. Well, it's been a I've learned a lot about Roy Lee today, Marissa. How about you?

Speaker 2 1:34:17

Yes.

Chad 1:34:18

You probably won't sleep at night now, but it is. I mean, you do you really do. I mean, when you sit down and talk to somebody uh for in a in a setting like this, uh you really do. I I pick up on a lot of things. I I see why you're so good at networking now from your from your early years, but um I want to kind of wrap up the podcast and let's have a little talk about uh bourbon.

Bacon And Bourbon As Community Building

Chad 1:34:38

I know we both uh enjoy some good bourbon and uh maybe Marissa too. I hadn't heard Marissa talk about bourbon much, but um I know you do the Baking and Bourbon event, which I attend uh routinely because I love bourbon. But um what's going on right now with bourbon? I'll I'll just start it off. I'm kind of on a basilhayden uh kick right now. That's kind of my go-to, has been for maybe a bottle or two. Yeah. Um but where are you at?

Roy Lee 1:35:03

Um I I guess it depends. It depends on the day and and uh if we're celebrating or not. You know, I I that's fair. That's fair. Um I keep a bottle of the old forester statesman around for when I want to reward myself for a job well done or or we've accomplished something that I think is important, and I'll I'll pour myself a little of the statesman if it's a everyday kind of place. I'm in the the Woodford Reserve is really I I just find that to be a pretty good bourbon. And um, you know, it's kind of a it's kind of an acquired taste. I it's not something I did 25 years ago. It's something that I've developed over time, and um, but it's a it's a great way to sit down and share time with friends. And and our bacon and bourbon dinner was created it with that spirit in mind. And so let's showcase our our product, our pork product, and and what our our farmers are doing every day to put food on the table and just share the camaraderie that goes with that. Um eventually we will add a couple more dinners. We will add a wine dinner that uh pork and cork or something to that effect, and uh and a Swein and Stein bill dinner, I mean uh beer dinner. Um but we haven't got there yet. Those are yet to come. But the idea is to come and enjoy our product. Um, and when we partner with a chef somewhere to do those, the chefs love them because I don't really give them any instructions, right? You know, if if uh a lot of those we've done at a country club or we've done it in a restaurant that has a very set menu and they don't get to experiment very much. And so the rules that I give them when we think about bacon and bourbon is every course needs to have pork in it, preferably some bacon in it somewhere, and every course is paired with a different bourbon. That's the rule. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, there is no other rule. And maybe I picked out the bourbons, maybe I worked with somebody else to help pick out the bourbons, and we tell the chef, and then the chef will sample those bourbons, and then he'll prepare a meal that matches with those bourbons. And so you know that this one goes with dessert. You know, several years ago we did a bourbon cream, and they made that bourbon cream into a drizzle that went on some bread pudding that was just to die for, right? Um and and so the chefs get to do things that are fun. Um, we did one of those in Oklahoma, and the chef took a, he gave us for a like a crouton on a salad, he gave us a pig's ear, a crispy pig's ear. So he took the cartilage out of the ear, he dehydrated the ear, and then he fried them, and they puffed up just like pork rinds and and served them to us, and it was, I'm telling you, it was this big laid right on top of your salad. It was spectacular. And I went back in the kitchen, he just got trays of of crispy pig's ears that he's gonna put out for dinner. And he just loved that because it was something he had always wanted to try to do that he had never had a real chance to do. And because it was a dinner for us, and we gave him carte blanche to kind of put the menu together, he got to do new things, and then you get to eat new things. So we get some pork cheek, maybe you got some sweetbreads, maybe you got something that you had never had before. And in all of those cases, I got a we got a uh I got a sweet potato chowder or a pumpkin chowder one time where they they made like you know, I think of clam chowder, but they made a chowder with pumpkin and and put some pork belly in that chowder. And oh my gosh, was that good? And I would have never thought to put that together. Um, and so it's just been it's been a wonderful experience for folks to come together. There's no program at that event. I say there's no program. The program at that event is we try to get somebody in that knows something about the bourbon to tell you about what you're tasting, what what the tasting notes are, what are they, why did we pair it with this course? And we try to get the chef to tell you what he's cooked and why he's cooked it. That's the program. So um we will be putting one of those together later this year. I can't tell you exactly when because we don't have a date yet, but we will put one of those together again this fall. And we hope everybody will buy a ticket and come join us. It's a small group. We limit the number of tickets that are sold because we can't accommodate everybody that wants to come. But we'd love to see it's open to the general public. All you gotta do is buy a ticket and come join us.

Chad 1:39:21

Well, I I want to give everybody the uh the key to going to Baking a Bourbon event, and that is you gotta buy two tickets. Uh, and then you take your designated driver with you, and whenever they serve her some bourbon, you're gonna do it. You drink both of them. Yep. Uh, there is I tell you, those events are really cool. Um, I know it's kind of you know it's kind of quiet at the beginning, and you're you're with your table mates, most of the time you know them, and and by about the third round, uh, you know, everybody it's loud in there.

Roy Lee 1:39:48

And but you learn from each other what'd you like, what didn't you like? I didn't like this one. And as you set at a table with eight people with five different bourbons throughout the course of the night, um, you're not all eight gonna say this one's my favorite. And I always think that's very, very telling because I got some friends that just love a certain bourbon, and I just don't think very much of it. And I tell them what I like, and they don't think very much of it. And it just varies from everybody's taste, it's kind of like drinking wine, right? Um, I had a chef one time tell me I was asking him about do we drink red wine or white wine or is it chilled? Is it not? And basically he told me to drink the wine you like and drink it the way you like it. Um and and I I think bourbon's kind of the same way, right? Uh drink the bourbon you like and drink it the way you like it, and you know, do so responsibly. I'm not encouraging bad behavior, but um it goes awful good with a it goes awful good with a with a piece of pork. And we think that bacon and bourbon dinner is just a huge hit. Was a huge hit when we started it in Oklahoma, and it's been uh tremendous success here in North Carolina as well.

Marisa 1:40:57

Well, and just another example of you so uh you know creating networking opportunities.

Final Thanks And How To Connect

Roy Lee 1:41:04

Yep, yep, very much so.

Chad 1:41:07

Roy Lee, thank you for coming on uh Raised on the Farm Podcast. It's been a great time, and uh we appreciate you. I appreciate all the work you're doing uh at Deport Council. Um I know it's not an easy job, um, but I appreciate your efforts and um look forward to working with you over the next couple years and however long you'll stay with us.

Roy Lee 1:41:26

The good times the good times make up for the hard times. And that's right. It may not be as many sometimes, but they always make up for the hard times, and and that's what keeps me going. Yep.

Chad 1:41:37

Appreciate you.

Roy Lee 1:41:38

All right, thank you all.

Chad 1:41:40

Thanks for joining us on another episode of Braze on the Farm Podcast. Remember to subscribe and follow us on Instagram. Have a question or a topic idea? Let us know and join the conversation. We'll see you next time.