September 12, 2025 • 53 mins
In the seventh episode of Food, Flowers, & Fun: Visits with farm women from around the world, Toluwani Precious Ogunbiyi of Agridemy talks about:
- Empowering small-scale farmers
- Combining agriculture, creativity, and fun
- Balancing competing needs and expectations
- Staying connected to the Source
- Much, much more!
You will love this enthusiastic and purpose-driven farmer!
Connect with Precious at:
- Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toluwani-precious-ogunbiyi-215349168/
- Facebook: @Agridemy
- Instagram: @agridemy_
- YouTube: @Agridemyy
Connect with K at:
- Website: https://www.penlightfarmers.com
- YouTube: @k.castrataro3466
- Facebook and Instagram: @penlightfarmers
- Podcast (audio): https://www.penlightfarmers.com/podcast
- Podcast (video): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIVBn53rrIsTwS4ag6hH4DHnxG_Lxqt7x
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
How do you maintain thecreativity and fun in your farm
life? Get some ideas in thisepisode of Food, Flowers and Fun
with Nigerian grower andAgridemy founder, Toluwani
Precious Ogumbiyi. As always,our show is sponsored by Pen
Light for Farmers (00:16):
helping overworked farm women experience
more energy, time and abundancein their farm lives.
(00:37):
If you're the woman who does itall, farm work, housework, book
work, homework, getting up atthe break of dawn. This is the
podcast for you.
How do you find my
friend? Get away from the caresof the day, restock, rootstock,
feedstock, seed, stock. Chatwith women around the world to
(00:59):
raise food, flowers and fun withyour host, K Castrataro, that's
me.
Well, welcome back to foodflowers and fun with your host,
K Castrataro, and today, ourguest is Toluwani Precious
(01:20):
Ogumbiyi, and I'm sure that Ihave I did it. Okay, I did it.
She is joining us from Nigeria,which is so much fun for me,
because I've never been toAfrica, and have always wanted
to get over there and just checkout all of the cool scenery and
(01:41):
and also the different ways ofliving. So why don't we jump
right in? Because this is what Itend to do. I don't, I don't
waste a lot of time withintroductions, other than to say
that precious is the founder ofAgridemy, which is a platform to
help people learn how to growfood. And so tell us. Tell us
how you got into agriculture,because this was not something
(02:02):
that you were raised in,correct, correct. So thank you
very much, Kristen for havingme.
I'm so delighted to be here. SoI love telling the story about
how I got into agriculture,because it's quite a funny one.
Let me start from the fact thatI started off wanting to be a
medical doctor, not because Idid not have a passion for
(02:25):
agriculture, but because it didnot sound like something popular
to do. I once told my classmatesthat I wanted to be a farmer,
and they all bust out laughingat me. And since that day, since
that day, I changed. You know,my purpose so to say, I started
telling everybody I wanted tobecome a medical doctor. I did
(02:47):
everything to, you know, try tomake sure I became a medical
doctor. But it did not work, andI found myself in agriculture
again. And the way the Nigerianuniversity or schooling system
works is that sometimes youcould apply for a particular
course. I applied for medicine.In my case, well, I did not get
medicine. Now, guess where theythrew me to they threw me to
(03:11):
agriculture. And I was like, Oh,my God, I'm here again. So I
know you have a choice. God wasjust calling you into
agriculture. And I will tellyou, you are not the only, like,
medical person who has turnedinto to farming. I was speaking
with somebody not too long agowho was looking at being a
midwife, which is definitely,you know, doctor and and she
(03:35):
also, now she's, she callsherself a midwife to chickens.
So, you know, here you are. Soyou were going to be a medical
doctor, and now you're, you'restill supporting people's
health, just in a different way.So yeah, even the Nigerian
school system felt that youneeded to be in agriculture
Exactly. And one thing I love tosay that all things at the end
(03:57):
of day work together for ourgood, right? So at the end of
day, it brought me to where Ineeded to be, maybe not where I
wanted to be, but where I neededto be. So it was all divine, you
know, alignment, so to say, andI really love that I'm here
right now. I mean, would haveimagined that I would be
speaking to so many people aboutagriculture one day. I've had so
(04:17):
many talks talking aboutculture, and every single time,
I just look at myself and I'mlike, I never thought I'll be
here. I never, ever thought hereI am. So, yeah, I love it. So
tell us, tell us a little bitabout the the way that
agriculture works in Nigeria.And I'm sure that there is not
just one type of agriculture injust as like there isn't one
(04:40):
type of agriculture anywhere,um, but you have some some
interesting challenges inNigeria that that other people
don't like. Logistics are a bigissue. Correct? Yes, yeah,
correct. So talk to me aboutthat.
So you know when agriculturestarted in Nigeria? I mean, I
wouldn't say when a culture.
Started because Nigeria wasbuilt on agriculture. We
(05:03):
started, you know, with familiesgrowing their food, planting
things like cassava and just thebasic food stuff they needed to
thrive. But, you know, as theoil system was found in Nigeria,
and we found oil, you know, westarted to depend more on oil
and the money from oil, and wesort of left agriculture, and it
(05:24):
became like the thing for poorpeople to do right now that was
the subsistence part of farmingthat we started with. Now, as
agriculture progress, we now seethat although agriculture is not
being done in the subsistenceehm level now more big farms,
industrial farms, are coming up,you know, taking charge of their
(05:45):
cultural space. Now it seemslike agriculture is a game a
volume business. So if you arenot a big industry in their
cultural business, you might notreally thrive, or you might just
make enough money just for tosustain you and maybe your
family, but not to build wealth,right? So a lot of people do not
really see it as an opportunityin that sense. Now, in the big
(06:09):
part big industry of agriculturein Nigeria, there are lots of
challenges. It might not be soprevalent in the subsistence ehm
levels, because, you know, theyare just feeding themselves,
their families and maybe theirneighbors. But in the industrial
parts and in the industriallevel, we see that there are so
many challenges. And I know thisbecause I've personally worked
(06:31):
with farmers, you know, highlevel farmers who farm on large
scale. And one of the
issues, like you rightly saidthat I've come to notice is
logistics. You know, it's notreally talked about. It's like
one of those undercover issues,but that has great impact on how
prosperous a farm or a farmercan be, right? And it's such a
(06:54):
problem because
Nigerian roads are bad
and a lot of our food are beingtransported from really far
countries. Why is this? Isbecause some places in Nigeria
can't grow certain food due to,you know, different climates and
whatnot. So in some colder areasof Nigeria, we are able to grow
(07:15):
more food. For example, we haveplaces like just where we see
fresh vegetables. In fact, theyare really cheap, really fresh.
Now, what some farmers do isthat they have their farms
located in Jos, then they tryto, you know, sell to places
like Lagos, which is like one ofthe bustling cities in Nigeria,
right? But that Logistics is aproblem. You wanted to say
(07:38):
something. No, no, I was, I wasjust just saying, I totally
understand how that would be,and it really does connect with
a lot of what what we see here,too, because you tend to have
more agricultural areas, andthen it's very common to ship
that that product to other partsof the country. And you know, if
(07:59):
you don't have a good roadway orair transit, or, you know, all
the railroads, you know, allthose different ways of
transporting. That's really avery limiting factor. Yeah, very
limited. And it's especiallylimiting because we do not
really rely on airway totransport our food, we majorly
(08:21):
rely on the road system, right?And like I said earlier, the
roads are really bad. It's oneof the problems. Let me just say
that way that Nigeria has beentrying to solve for the longest
time. The roads can be reallybad, and they are really long
roads, you know, very bad, poornetwork, road network. And many
times, you know, sometimesfarmers encounter accidents on
(08:46):
this journey. I remember apersonal story of a farmer I was
working with at that time. Hewas trying to, not him
personally, but his driver, hisstaff, was transporting some
food produce from the northernpart of Nigeria to the western
part, and he encountered anaccident on the road, you know,
the unfortunately, the driverpassed and the food produce was
(09:10):
lost. So you can imagine thelevel of loss that and grief
that would have come with that,you know, occurrence. So there
are lots of challenges, not noteven talking about the policy
challenges. There are so manypolicy challenges. Some policies
do not favor, you know, farmers,and that's because, like I said
in the beginning, it's a volumegame. So if you are not playing
(09:32):
big, it's like you'reautomatically going to lose one
way or the other. So only thebig players, you know, the
billionaires that are intoagriculture. Really can say
that, Oh, I'm making big moneyin agriculture, but that
shouldn't be it. We shouldactually, and that's one thing
that would encourage more peopleto come into their culture
system, where they see thatthere is profits here. But
(09:52):
because, you know, this systemhas so discouraged people to
think that there will always bea loss. You know, it's really.
A it's a dwindling sort ofsystem. We are not seeing it
thrive as it should. In fact,someone I've worked with would
It's funny how he's into theirculture system, but he would
advise anyone that wants to gointo our culture, do not, do not
(10:15):
do it, except you're sure youknow what you want to get
yourself into. Because it can bedepressing. It can be it can be
a lot. Of course, there are twoparts to it. I mean, if you do
it, well, you make the money,but it can be a lot. Yeah, and,
and I gotta say, like, I wishthat that were something that
(10:36):
didn't happen everywhere, but Iknow that in the United States,
there are a lot of people whoare are torn between, you know,
they love farming, and so theywant their kids to stay in the
game, and on the other hand,they want their kids to have an
easier life and to make moremoney. And so they do encourage
(10:58):
them not to stay in farming,which I think is is very
reasonable, and I think it'salso disappointing, because I
think maybe it's time that westart readjusting our
understanding of agriculture andmaking it so that the farmers
themselves can be fulfilled onmultiple levels, like, it's not
(11:21):
okay for for us to be drivingfarmers out of business when
they really are the ones who,you know, I always use this
phrase feeding our bodies andsouls. They they are, you know,
they're creating beauty, andthey're creating food, and
they're taking care of us inways that we need to find a
better way to support them. Andit sounds like you're trying to
(11:41):
do that through agri Demi. Isthat right? Yeah, tell us about
agri Damian and what that is allabout. Okay, so I love talking
about agri Demi because I justlove what we do.
Agreed.
Yeah, you can tell I love what Ido. Like agri Demi is a platform
(12:01):
that, by the way, I never saw itcoming. It
just, I was just in my room oneday, and the thoughts, you know,
just crossed my mind, thatagriculture is fun. It can be
fun. We've made it so rigid.We've made it so structured.
We've made it so deep thatpeople can't really relate to
it. So I decided that, you knowwhat, I'm going to start
(12:22):
agritemi, and what we're goingto do in agritemi is that we're
going to make agriculture fun.We're going to make it
relatable, we're going to makeit powerful. We're going to
teach people how to grow theirown food with the resources they
have, with the space they have,and show them that it is
actually possible that you'repart of the solution if you can
grow your own food. When we growour food, yeah, when we grow
(12:43):
food, we are, you know, reducingour reliance on the corporate
food system, which is, is a bigsolution a lot of people
overlook. So that's whatalgorithm does in shorts. So, so
explain how that happens.Because I love that. I love that
idea and, and,
you know, one of the things II'm a multi generational farm
(13:06):
kid, so like, we've had fivegenerations of farmers and, and
that has been, like, basicallyour our whole living as farm.
And so what I've seen is thatthere is kind of a stigma
against farmers who are eitherpart time farmers, or, like you
were saying, subsistencefarmers, you know, in the
States, we call themhomesteaders, but people who are
(13:28):
growing their own food and mighthave a little bit to to sell at
a, you know, at the end of theroad to their neighbors or
something like that, but nothingreally huge. And you know, I
love what you're talking aboutwith agridemic, because I feel
like it's really time that westart changing that narrative,
yeah, because I think it doesn'tdo service to what agriculture
(13:50):
really is and who farmers reallyare. Like, I think, I think
farmers are more than just, youknow, the big industrial
farmers, like, there is a placefor the small family farm, and
it might look different thanwhat we expect. So, so talk to
me about how that works in agriDemi. Like, how are you, how are
(14:10):
you creating these small, thesesmall farmers? Like, I'm going
to call them small farmers,startup farmers. Yeah, I
actually love what you said,because it's very it's very
valid in the sense that I have avery personal story that even
just came up, you know, I didn'tthink about it in that way, but
when you mentioned that, I just,you know, actually was able to
(14:31):
put together that this is whathappened. So I was trying to
form a corporation with anagricultural company. They're an
agritech company. Actually, theyreached out to me to form a sort
of partnership or corporation,but by time, I started telling
them about, you know, moredetails about what academia
does, and fact that I grew smallfarmers. I help educate small
(14:52):
farmers. I myself. I do a littlebit of gardening. You know, I
grow food for myself and myfamily. They you.
Ruled me out as, Oh, you don'treally have the connection we
are looking for. You don'treally have, you know, the so
they're looking for the bigfarmers. They literally said
that, since I do not have youknow, that type of you know,
capacity as you know, anindustrial farmer, I might not
(15:15):
be able to help them, but I knewI was well able, in my capacity,
to help them establish theirfarm, because that was the goal
help them establish their adtech business here in Nigeria.
But they ruled me out. And Ifeel like it's a very, very
valid complaint that justbecause you're a home seller,
just because you're a gardener,just because, and funny thing is
(15:38):
that that is the solution, wethink until you grow in millions
or in billions of tons of food,then you're, you know, solving a
problem. But what, what shouldwhat we are doing in agudemi is
that we're empowering people indifferent parts of the world,
not just Nigeria, not justAfrica, different parts of the
world, to be able to see that itis very relatable to grow your
(16:02):
own food. You do not have todepend on the big industrial
farms and how we are doing it,which is the question we ask how
we are doing it, is that we aremixing creativity with
agriculture. So rather than andI will tell you how agridemic
came to be, I was in class oneday, my teacher was teaching me.
I studied at culture, like Imentioned. So my teacher was
(16:23):
teaching us something about, youknow, the farm. I can't remember
the particular topic, but Iremember I went back home that
day, and as I was preparing formy exam, I decided to watch a
YouTube video. As I was watchingthe YouTube video, it was so
boring, was so lifeless,something clicked in me that's
Wait, it doesn't have to be thisway. So I took up my notes, and
(16:45):
I started to, you know, jot Istarted to connect the lines,
because that's how I read. I tryto form an image in my mind and
connect it, make everything likea unified, unified concept. And
I was like, this is reallyinteresting. Why don't I make
it, make sure the world thatagriculture can be interesting.
And from there on, I started,you know, finding content,
(17:08):
developing content that it willshow the the the what, what word
will I use? How interestingagriculture is that it's not
just pen and paper, which isvery weird, because a culture is
one of the most practical thingsyou could do farming, right? You
are touching the soil, but we'vemade it so bland, so
(17:28):
uninteresting, and that was howagriculture came to be by mixing
creativity with farming. I lovethat. I love that. So you you
talk about it as a platform. Sois it mostly an online or if
you're doing a lot of hands onwork with farmers as well,
because you were talking aboutsome farmers that you've worked
with more closely. So I'mcurious as to how, how people
(17:52):
are getting the information, howyou're helping to make it
interesting to people who maybedidn't consider agriculture to
be a job before, okay, so thankyou for that question. Algorithm
is currently online, like we arecurrently maximizing our online
channels, but, you know, wesometimes go into schools. This
(18:12):
is not something we've recorded.The last time we went into a
school system to try to teach,you know, students, we realized
that there is a potential year,so we plan on, you know, making
that last skill really soon,which is something I'm excited
for, right? We do not work very,you know, one on hand or very
closely with farmers, yet, it'sdefinitely in the works. But by
(18:33):
the way, abdem started lastyear, and to see the progress
we've made so far is so is soI'm like, I'm mind blown by it,
and I just love that. You know,there's potential, because when
I started this, I was like,agriculture would buy into this
idea. I mean, why would anyonebe interested in our culture?
Now, tell me why I startedposting. I mean, we started
(18:55):
posting on social media, only tosee that a lot of people were
actually interested. And you seepeople will post on our social
media pages, and you'll seepeople, you know, comments like,
oh my god, this is reallyinsightful. Wow, I learned
something so I could do this.So, you know, this is that easy.
It's that straightforward. Imean, all I need is exceed and
now that you give me theinstructions, I know exactly
(19:17):
what to do. I have soil in mybackyard. So why? Why am I
wasting my time, right? Sobasically, that's what we've
been doing. And I hope thatanswered your question, yeah,
yeah, absolutely, um, and so youwere saying that agri Demi just
started, so it's kind of astartup business around last
year 20, okay, all right. Andyou also work on a nine to five
(19:41):
job, correct? Yeah, I actuallyworked two nine to five now.
229, to fives, yes, okay.
No, see, this is, this is whatalways, this is where we get to
my real, my point with farmersand farm support, where I'm
always like.
Like, how is it that we youmanaged to balance all of these
(20:03):
things? Not not me. I couldn'twork two nine to fives and a
startup.
I'm good just doing one startupthat's that's enough for me.
But, but tell so. Tell me whatyour nine to fives are, if you
don't mind, and then tell me howyou take care of yourself, so
that you don't burn out becauseyou are young and beautiful and
(20:27):
energetic, and we want to keepyour youth and beauty and energy
in this circle and not not useyou up. So, so what do you talk
talk to us about this. Okay, sothis is going to be me being
very open. Because, I mean, Iwish I didn't have to do 295, I
(20:47):
wish audeemy was enough to, youknow, just enough to sponsor my
life in that way. But I workcurrently in the tech industry,
not really tech, because I'm notreally into tech, but I work as
a social media manager, and youknow that even helped me, my
knowledge of tech helped mefuse, you know, my
(21:10):
love for agriculture and techinto AgTech, right? And at the
point in my life, I was allabout AgTech, but now I'm more
focused on algorithmic, which isnot necessarily, you know, ad
tech related, but I wouldactually say we are a tech
related because we are utilizingsocial media channels, which is
the technology aspect, right?And how do I balance that? I
(21:31):
really don't know.
If I say I know, I'll just beprobably telling something
false, because what I do is Ijust try to go with flow. And on
some days, it's harder than theother. Yes, so many times I've
tried to build a rigid structureto follow because, of course,
structure helps, but we do notrealize that life would always
(21:53):
life. You know, you might. Youcan't always control what
happens. So some days, theworkload is hectic, and I really
do not have time for, you know,to introspect as I would like. I
really do not have time to reachout to my friends or my family.
You know, on some things, islike that, but some on some
other days, you know, aftermaybe I've gone into that flow
(22:14):
and I'm, you know, steady orthat wave, I just, you know, do
my work quickly. I'm able to getthings out on time, I'm able to
be as productive as possible,and those things are better, but
it doesn't always remain thatway. So they are always in
highs. They always lows. It'sjust trying to flow with it. And
recently, I watched a TEDx
(22:37):
conversation about how we tendto see stress as the enemy. How?
You know, we are like, Oh mygod, I'm so stressed. And
sometimes stress is actuallyjust helping us become better,
helping us build our capacity,right? I know that this is still
the least I'll ever do, right? Iwould keep on building capacity
(22:58):
to do more. Probably I would endup having a big industrial farm
one day, and I would have tomanage it even with algorithmic
because, yes, algorithm isimportant. Teaching people to
grow their own food isimportant, as well as the
industrial car, right? I mightalso be running a multinational
one day. Who knows? So I seeeverything right now as a
(23:19):
learning period for me learningto build experience, and I've
realized that there's no one wayaround it. There's really no one
way. I just flow. Really, I justflew. I learned from the good
from the bad days. You know, Iintrospect on the good days and
try to find out how I canreplicate those good days. And,
(23:39):
yeah, that's basically it's noteasy, to be honest. It's one of
the hardest things, especiallybecause there are lots of
expectations on me as a person,as a friend, as a sister, as a
daughter, and a lot of people donot really understand the fact
that
as much as I might want to bethere for them as much as I
(24:03):
could. I might not be able tobecause of the, you know,
responsibilities on me. Ofcourse, I try to meet up. In
fact, I recently started thisthing where I try to catch up
with a friend every month atleast. We go out, we just hang
out and talk. That's if that'slittle I can do, I would do it
at least to to keep myself incheck. But it's just going with
(24:25):
flow, really, yeah, well, there,oh, wow, there's, there's so
much that that I heard in that.And
you know that the competingexpectations upon you is one
thing that I think all of us,especially, I think women, but
women, yeah, exactly, exactlysome of the things I was hearing
(24:49):
from you, yeah, that
the balancing other people'sdesires on us and our desire to
serve other people, you know, Ithink.
It's interesting, because wehave these two sides of
relationships, where we havepeople who are putting
expectations upon us, and thenwe have our own set of
(25:10):
expectations about what itmeans. So yeah, you know, your
mother has expectations, yourfather has expectations. Your
sister brother haveexpectations. Your employers
have expectations. Your agriDemi clients have expectations.
And then you have expectationsabout who you want to be towards
(25:30):
all of these people and
and I have found in my own lifethat being able to really set up
boundaries, and that that wordis is used so often and not
necessarily understood, but tobe able to understand where our
limits are. You know, what arethe things that are feeding us?
(25:52):
And because we need to do thatlike we need to take care of
ourselves, or we will havenothing left for anybody else,
and how much of that do we
how much of what we have do weexpend on others and business
and even just on taking sometime to ourselves? You know,
(26:13):
going going for a walk byyourself,
but I love that you're settingdates with your your friends,
because that's something I'vereally started to do because I
had some really great friends incollege, and I'm terrible at
keeping in touch with you. Like,Oh, terrible. You know, people
are so good at using socialmedia and like, reading what's
(26:35):
going on. I'm like, I go onsocial media, I post stuff that
I post for my business, for myclients, and then I'm off of
there, like, I It's like a blackhole that I like stay away from
as much as I can. And
so I have to be reallyintentional about making time
for the people that I reallycare about, otherwise they get
(26:55):
kind of pushed to the back.
So, yeah, I'm hearing a lot ofthat. So are there some things
that you're you think you can doto maybe help you align your
activities more to what youneed? Or or is that something
you really struggle to do? Or doyou feel like you're doing it
pretty well right now? Well, Iwas,
(27:18):
I would call it a struggle perse.
Well, it can be a struggle, butnot all the time, especially
because I realized that thisOkay, so we'll turn something a
struggle, but we do not realizethat it's a process. So I see it
as a process, not as a struggle.So the end goal is that I
(27:41):
learned to be more
accommodating of all areas of mylife need good balance. You know
that each thing needs so I willsay it as I don't see it as a
struggle. I really don't tend tosee things as struggle. I just
see them as opportunities tolearn, per se. But it's hard in
the moment, right, to see it asan opportunity to learn, because
(28:03):
sometimes you're like, What iseven going on? Well, I think one
thing that's really helped me isjournaling and introspecting a
lot. Oh, really, that's sointeresting. That's one of my
big things. I'm a journalinstructor, so Wow, yes, I tend
to journal, although, you know,my journaling has reduced the
past few months,
(28:26):
I don't really journal asfrequently as I used to, because
I lived in university about lastyear. Yeah, I left university.
So while I was in university, Ihad a lot of time on my hands to
journal. But now with work,work, work, it's hard, but when
I can, I journal, I try tofigure out, Okay, where am I at
in this moment of my life? Whatwhere, where do I need to be?
(28:49):
How am I, you know, settingboundaries, how am I meeting
expectations? Am I? Am Ifulfilled in myself? Am I
achieving what I Am I still oncourse, or am I just going
around with the wind? Becausethat can be. That can happen a
lot, especially when your son,who is younger, trying to build
wealth. In that sense, you tendto jump on every and anything
(29:12):
that seems to make you goodmoney, right? So it's like you
sort of lose your own vision andyour own mission. So I try to
journal to make sure I'm stillon track. Is what I'm doing
helping me in the long term, oris it just something I'm doing
for temporal validation or maybetemporal gain? So I would say
that's what's helping me rightnow. Oh, that's I'm so glad you
(29:36):
said that,
because I do. I try to work withfarmers to learn different
journaling techniques that theycan do, and even little small
pieces, like five minutes a day,because, because it is hard and,
you know, I'm a writer, that's,that's, you know, what my, my
real job used to be.
And so for me, journaling issomething that's just.
(30:00):
Fun. It's natural, like it'ssomething that I can lose hours
sitting there and writing aboutall kinds of stuff. And so I
know that a lot of farmers arenot like that at all. They would
much rather be out in the fieldthan sitting down with the paper
or in front of the computer orwhatever, and so And yet, these
(30:20):
are really valuable tools. So Idefinitely try to give them,
like, lots of little fiveminute, you know, journal
prompts or things that they cando, to do exactly what you're
saying, to just kind of take aninventory really quickly and be
like, Okay, how am I feelingtoday? Like, maybe I can't work
as hard today as I thought I wasgoing to, because I've got,
(30:42):
maybe I'm choking on pollen allday, and I
did something else, you justnever know. And so you want to
be able to have thatflexibility, and also to be
staying on target. And so Ijust, I love so much of of what
you're saying there. I thinkthat's that's just beautiful.
And the fact that you'rechecking in with yourself all
(31:03):
the time, because I think wesometimes believe that,
you know, we set our courseonce, and then we do it and,
like, that's it. Like you justhave to do your plan once, and
then just follow the plan. Andthe fact is that that doesn't
really work for most of us. Haveto keep checking in, because you
(31:25):
do get derailed. And I love whatyou said, you know, chasing
after the money or chasing afterthe thing that seems, you know,
it could be something that seemsreally great, but if it's going
to take you away from where youknow your heart is, then it's
actually a really bad thing,because you might make money at
it, but are you going to end upwhere you're going to, where you
(31:46):
want to be at the end? And Ithink that's and so for farmers,
I think that's a reallyinteresting thing too, to kind
of like drag it back to theagriculture stuff,
where we have such a tension, Ithink, in farming, about trying
to make money. And let's faceit, like most people farm
because they love it. I mean,why else? Why?
(32:10):
Why else would you work so hardfor so little money in a job
like I say this all the time,I'm like, farmers are like, the
biggest dreamers in the world,and they think, they think
they're not, like they I'm sopractical, and I'm like, no
practical person would ever getinto a job. Yeah, they have
virtually no control over theweather, the markets, like you
(32:35):
have so little control. And yet,and yet we do it, and we say,
No, we're gonna, we're gonna besuccessful in this, and we're
going to keep, keep doing this.And it's, it's really because we
love it and we have this senseof hope and this positivity. And
I think your mindset is actuallyso important for farmers,
(32:55):
because that of, you know, notseeing things as,
oh, I didn't use the wordchallenges, struggles, you know,
reframing that idea of strugglesas opportunities to learn,
opportunities to grow, thatreally is such a powerful
mindset, and it really can helpchange the way that that we live
(33:19):
in the world. So I think that'samazing. So tell me how you
develop that mindset, becausethat is not a mindset that
everybody has.
Okay? So I think it's notsomething I talk about or like
live sessions a lot, but it'svery important, and it's all can
be traced back to my faith. Youknow, my faith in God, my faith
(33:43):
in the Word, is something I tryto you know, beyond the
religious aspect of it, the wordof God can be really wholesome.
It helps you develop yourworldview. It helps you develop
your perspective to life, torealize that life was, you know,
it's very hard to think thatlife was made to favor you, and
(34:05):
with every single thing thathappens, you tend to feel like,
Why is everything going againstthat perspective? I mean,
to be honest, something happenedtoday that almost took me off
course, and I was just like, ohmy god, I can't deal with this
right now. But then I had toremind myself of the fact that
(34:26):
everything would eventually workout for my my good. Everything
will work out to fame for me atthe end of the day. So to be
honest, I owe it. I owe it allto God
for teaching me how to be sowise in my mindset and my
perspective to life, butteaching me how to be resilient.
(34:46):
I can be I can my natural selfwill tend to give up a lot and
tend to just know, oh, my god, Ican't do this again. I'm I'm
getting my hands off. But youknow, my resilience has come
from a place of realizing that.
If I keep on trying, because Ihave, you know, a bigger force
behind me, I'm going to win atthe end of the day. So that's
(35:07):
basically it.
I love that I can do all thingsthrough Christ who strengthens
me. Yes,
look at that. It's a sister. Imet a sister today.
That's so exciting. But, I mean,I agree with that as well. Like
(35:28):
I talk a lot to people about thespiritual side of life, because
people, I think I don't know,you'll have to, you'll have to
help me. If I'm making anovergeneralization here, I feel
like in the West, we tend to bea little bit more closed off to
spirituality than than inAfrica, and like Eastern,
(35:51):
Eastern cultures and yeah, and Ithink that, you know, some of it
comes from the theenlightenment, where everybody
learned all This science stuff
so cool. And it is I lovescience, and I love the way that
science and the Bible actuallyfit together, like
(36:13):
we're going off into all kindsof places. So much fun. This is
like the talk expected to havetoday. But, um, but I really do
think that
the spiritual part of us issomething that God did put
inside of us. And I thinkpeople, you know, obviously I
want everybody to love Jesus,because I think everybody should
(36:35):
love Jesus, everybody.
I also understand that there arepeople who are not going to love
Jesus, yeah, yet they still arespiritual beings. And so we
still need to have that, thatnurturing of our spiritual side.
And so, so let's talk aboutthat. So you're talking about,
(36:55):
you know, you obviously read theBible because you're using the
word as something that youreally hold on to.
And you know, so people who haveother religious traditions, you
know, spiritual texts aredefinitely, definitely a way of
taking care of their spiritualside. What else do you do to
feed that, that spiritual sideof you?
(37:19):
Okay, so I like to say this way.It's like,
how do I say it without standingto the Okay? It's like an apple
an apple tree, right? An appletree was
created to sort of live off thean apple was created to leave of
the apple tree for the first
(37:41):
part of his life until it growsand develops into a full matured
apple. And you see that onething that happens when the
Apple gets disconnected or fallsoff the apple tree is that it
begins a process ofdecomposition. Right? So we see
that for the Apple to be in itsfull vitality, it has to be
(38:02):
connected to the apple tree,because that's is, it sucks,
right? So I'll say that beingconnected to my source, where
divine inspiration comes from,being connected to my source,
where strength comes from, andstrength is very important,
because we are human beings thattend to paint a lot. We get
(38:23):
tired. We get weary in so many Imean, life was, life was
designed in such a way that, ifyou do not have a strong vacuum,
you keep on falling and falling,and eventually you get worn out
from falling so much, it mightjust quit, right? But having a
backing, having something tofall on, knowing that you don't
have to fall flat on the floor.Because it's sort of like a, um,
(38:45):
a,
how would I call it? Sort oflike, let's say, a spring, that
once you fall, it helps pushesyou back to stand right.
Sometimes it might take time foryou to get back up, because you
know you're you've fallen sohard, but he always pushes you
back, and I think that, as if,if I would say that if there's
any secret to my life to Youknow, being able to keep up with
(39:07):
work, with life generally, it'sthat being able to be connected
to my source, my
a source that sustains me, thatsustains my Life, that keeps me
on my feet, basically,
oh yeah. So so good. And, youknow, there's so many ways that
(39:29):
we can stay connected to thesource. You know, I find that
being outside in nature andspending just like just
breathing in the beauty of Yeah,is one of those ways where you
can just see the
you know, you can see the powerof God, and you can also see how
(39:49):
every everything manages towork. And I've got these birds
that live outside, and they'relike calling and talking and
doing all their things, andthey're not worried about you.
What the next day is going tobring. They're, they're just
doing their thing. They're goingout. They're feeding their
babies. They're making theirnests. They're, you know,
they're doing their thing. Andthey're, they're okay, like
(40:12):
they're, they're being, they'rebeing taken care of, and and I
love what you said about beingable to fall down and then get
back up and sometimes not falldown so far, because you're
supported.
I went hiking with a friend inthe Adirondacks last week, and
(40:33):
she took me on two 4000 footmountains. And I've never done
mountains before, and I didgreat, like I was, I did great
going up the first one comingdown, the first one going up,
the second one. Great. Westarted down the second one. I
felt like a million bucks, andall of a sudden I took a step,
(40:53):
and my legs literally just said,Nope, no more, no more. Landed
on the ground. And I was like,huh, we are, like, four and a
half five miles up a mountain. Igotta get down the mountain and
and I thought about rolling downthe mountain, but I was, there
were a lot of really big rocks.I
(41:14):
was like, Yeah, I don't thinkthat's gonna work. But she, she
is an experienced hiker, and shehad brought a pair a set of
poles. And when she brought thepolls, I was like, I'm not going
to need those polls. Well, thankthe Lord for those polls.
Because I literally, like, fortwo miles, I was basically,
like, one little step at a time,clutching onto these poles and
(41:36):
and when I'm thinking about whatyou were talking about, about
being resilient and keeping fromfalling or falling, and then
getting up. Like, there was atime when I did fall, and I
couldn't get up without, withoutCasey's help, and so she helped
me up, and then I was, like,leaning on these poles, and I
needed those poles to have thisuntil my legs came back enough
(41:58):
to be able to carry my ownweight and like, isn't that what
being connected to our source isall about that spirituality,
that having that support when wegive in, which we are going to
like we're human. We overdo, weget exhausted, we get buffeted,
(42:19):
and we all have times where wejust need more than we can give
ourselves. And sometimes we havea friend who comes along
sometimes, you know, sometimesit's a set of polls that you
didn't think you need. Didn'twant to need, like I didn't want
to have to use polls on the waydown that silly mountain.
But how thankful I was to havethem, because otherwise I'd like
(42:44):
been crawling out of my handsand knees and how, how horrible
would that be? So, yeah, so Ilove that. I absolutely love
what you're saying about that,
and I hope that the peoplelistening are are thinking of
ways that they can connect withtheir spiritual side. And for
some people, it tends to be moreart, or, you know, music or or
(43:08):
combinations of those. I mean, Iknow putting on Happy Music is
one of the quickest ways tochange my attitude, like,
happiest,
yeah, me too. Actually, I lovemusic. I love listening to
music. It just helps me calm mybrain. Yeah, yes, absolutely.
(43:29):
So, you know, I'm looking I'mlooking back at all of the stuff
that we've talked about here,and we've got about 10 minutes
left. Um,
I guess I'm wondering if youcould share a little bit about
where you see agri Demi movingand how you see your work
supporting the creation of morefarmers, and also maybe the
(43:52):
creativity, because I think thatcreativity worth helping farmers
think outside the box is reallyimportant. Can Can you speak to
that a little? Do you think,
sure? Sure. So I always say Lizthat our future is in our young
generation right now, our futureis in the children, right? And
I'm not trying to sound, youknow, all motivational, because
(44:16):
it's true. It's true, and that'sone reason why, in agreement, we
tend to target the youngchildren, because if we start
building that mindset from ayoung age, then there will be
more success rates in thefuture. So how do we plan on
doing this? Going to schools,you know, in graining, in them,
the fact that
(44:38):
this is a possibility, funny,how I was the only one in my
class at that point in time whosaw being a farmer as a
possibility, and when Imentioned it, my classmates
laughed about it, right? So wesee that there is a problem now,
children, I'm not saying tech isthere's anything wrong with
(44:58):
tech. I'm into tech too, but.
So children are growing upthinking tech is the only way to
make money, or tech is the onlyway to be impactful in life, and
we have to show them otherwise.One thing, one system that I'm
trying to replicate is thesystem that we've used in
pushing the SDGs. I'm also intothe SDG I'm an SDG advocate,
(45:21):
because I advocate forsustainable food systems. That's
SDG, two Zero Hunger, right? AndI love and for those, and for
those who are, for those whoaren't familiar, because
probably act shamefully a lot, alot of our American listeners
probably are not con conversantwith the sustainable development
(45:44):
goals. So those are the SDGs andand they've been
many, many countries around theworld have agreed that they want
to help support the sustainabledevelopment goals for the world,
not just for their country ortheir area. So so so one of
those sustainability goals isSDGs is Zero Hunger and so. So
(46:07):
talk about that, because I thinkthis is, this is a really
important place where, obviouslyfarming, farming matters. Like
if you don't have farms, youdon't have food, you have
hunger.
Thank you for clarifying that,because sometimes I tend to
forget that not everybody knowsabout the
I'm so ingrained in the systemthat I'm like, Who doesn't know
(46:28):
about the SDGs? But to behonest, a lot some people do not
know about the SDG so thank youfor clarifying that. Oh yeah,
no,
pushing SDG. Two Zero Hunger,because that is the goal at the
end of day. But one thing I'verealized over my my time as an
advocate for the SDGs, is thatall these goals are all
(46:49):
intertwined with the fulfillmentof one goal comes to fulfillment
of another goal. So we need tosee it as a as a goal, not as
goals, although they are goals,you know, to help us track our
progress, right? But at the endof the day, it's a goal, right?
And the as I've seen before, theway we push the SDGs is quite
(47:13):
interesting to me. I mean, thefact that many people see the
SDGs as an important factor tohelping us develop our world. I
want agridemic to be thatbridge, to be able to, you know,
show people the importance ofagriculture. And I'm not talking
about the
(47:34):
agriculture as we know it, butthe gardening, the farming,
building raise. I mean growingfresh food, raising livestock,
you know, that is not chemicallyinfused, right? That is good for
our systems, good for our body,right? And I love how we've
pushed that with the SDGs. And Ialso want to agree them, to be
(47:55):
able to push that, the fact thatwe can grow our own food, and
that is part of the solution,such that in secondary schools,
you know people, children knowabout agriculture. They know the
basics of growing food. Theyknow the basics of growing
tomato. They know basics ofgreen fabric. They know how to
cater for the soil, how tosteward the earth. Because, like
(48:17):
I love to say, we are not justhere to, you know, leave we are
yet toward the earth becauseit's has been given to us as our
body, as our own brother. So thesame way we take care of our
bodies, same way we should takecare of the earth. So, yeah,
it's very important. And I feellike that bridge has been
missing that gap. It's a widegap, and not enough people
(48:40):
really focus on that, right? Soas much as we are not yet there,
I really am hopeful that oneday, and it's a big passion in
my heart, that one day, we'llget to the point where people
see the importance ofsustainable agriculture. I'll
put it in that bracket,sustainable agriculture and how
(49:00):
it is important, not just fornow, but for our future. Yeah,
yeah. And that, that wordsustainable, because it gets
used in so many different ways,you know, the way, the way it's
defined in circles that I'vebeen in is that there, there
are, like, three pillars to thatsustainable agriculture. There's
taking care of the land, there'staking care of society and
(49:23):
there's taking care of thefinancial needs of the farmer,
and so like, as you were saying,with the Sustainable Development
Goals, those are all connectedlike you can't have you can't
just worry about feeding people.If you're not taking care of the
land and the water and the air,you're not going to have a good
(49:44):
resource to create good food. Ifyou don't have financial
stability, then people aren'tgoing to be able to grow things.
And so, you know, it's thatwhole interconnectedness, and I
really love how.
You how you
tied that together. That's just,it's, it's beautiful, and I
(50:05):
think it's really inspiring,because, you know, the farmers
that are currently farming havesuch power in so many ways, like
they really are so important toour entire system and and I
think it's good for them to hearthat, because I think sometimes
it's easy to forget it, when thewhen the money is not coming in
(50:27):
and the tariffs are beingraised, and the, you know,
everything else is falling topieces, to remember that the
work that they're doing reallyis important, yeah. Oh, so I
could talk to you for hours, butas we're coming to the end, I
always ask my guests if theyhave like, one word that they
(50:50):
would give to farmers, like, ifthere were one thing that they
felt every farmer should know,what would that be?
So what would you tell farmersif you had the opportunity to
give them that one piece of keyadvice,
I think it's actually related tothe last statement, or last
sentence you made before now,and that is fact that you
(51:10):
matter. And I know that you saida lot
that, oh, you matter, you musthave, but I really do mean it
when I say you matter the workyou're doing, especially if
you're a farmer that is not justfocused about gaining so you
don't just use chemicals andsynthetic ehm,
what fertilizers to grow yourfood? Job because you want the
(51:31):
money, but you're intentionalabout building a growing healthy
food that people can eat andhave a better well being. You
actually matter. What you'redoing matters. And if you're
someone like me, who you know,what you're doing is advocating,
what you're doing is creatingknowledge. What you're doing is
finding creative ways to pushout our culture. Matter and it
(51:51):
will count in the future. Youmight not be able to see it in
the little bits and pieces hereand there, but it counts and
matter.
Oh, Precious. Thank you so much.Like those, those are such
beautiful words. And I just wantto thank you and say that also,
if you're someone like Kristen,who is putting together this
(52:12):
awesome podcast, you matterbecause you're doing an amazing
job. I mean, we don't know theimpacts. We might be seeing it
in in time, like, oh, in thistime right now, probably a
number of people listen to it,but it's usually like a domino
effect. And I just want to thankyou for, you know, doing this
(52:32):
because you're making an impact,yeah, very
unexpected and very sweet ofyou.
So I just, I hope that inanother year or so, when
Agridemy has had more time togrow, we could have you back and
see how things are going. And,you know, talk about, talk about
(52:53):
current, hopefully currentevents will be a little bit less
traumatic than they are right
now. Because things are so funright now,
but I want to thank you so muchfor joining us, and I will see
all of you out there next timeon food, flowers and fun. Have a
(53:15):
great day. Bye.
How do
you farm? Farmwork's calling;our show is all done: goodbye,
farewell, so long adieu. See younext week, same time, same place
for food, flowers and fun. Go inpeace.
Visit us@www.penlightfarmers.com
How do you maintain thecreativity and fun in your farm
life? Get some ideas in thisepisode of Food, Flowers and Fun
with Nigerian grower andAgridemy founder, Toluwani
Precious Ogumbiyi. As always,our show is sponsored by Pen
Light for Farmers (00:16):
helping overworked farm women experience
more energy, time and abundancein their farm lives.
(00:37):
If you're the woman who does itall, farm work, housework, book
work, homework, getting up atthe break of dawn. This is the
podcast for you.
How do you find my
friend? Get away from the caresof the day, restock, rootstock,
feedstock, seed, stock. Chatwith women around the world to
(00:59):
raise food, flowers and fun withyour host, K Castrataro, that's
me.
Well, welcome back to foodflowers and fun with your host,
K Castrataro, and today, ourguest is Toluwani Precious
(01:20):
Ogumbiyi, and I'm sure that Ihave I did it. Okay, I did it.
She is joining us from Nigeria,which is so much fun for me,
because I've never been toAfrica, and have always wanted
to get over there and just checkout all of the cool scenery and
(01:41):
and also the different ways ofliving. So why don't we jump
right in? Because this is what Itend to do. I don't, I don't
waste a lot of time withintroductions, other than to say
that precious is the founder ofAgridemy, which is a platform to
help people learn how to growfood. And so tell us. Tell us
how you got into agriculture,because this was not something
(02:02):
that you were raised in,correct, correct. So thank you
very much, Kristen for havingme.
I'm so delighted to be here. SoI love telling the story about
how I got into agriculture,because it's quite a funny one.
Let me start from the fact thatI started off wanting to be a
medical doctor, not because Idid not have a passion for
(02:25):
agriculture, but because it didnot sound like something popular
to do. I once told my classmatesthat I wanted to be a farmer,
and they all bust out laughingat me. And since that day, since
that day, I changed. You know,my purpose so to say, I started
telling everybody I wanted tobecome a medical doctor. I did
(02:47):
everything to, you know, try tomake sure I became a medical
doctor. But it did not work, andI found myself in agriculture
again. And the way the Nigerianuniversity or schooling system
works is that sometimes youcould apply for a particular
course. I applied for medicine.In my case, well, I did not get
medicine. Now, guess where theythrew me to they threw me to
(03:11):
agriculture. And I was like, Oh,my God, I'm here again. So I
know you have a choice. God wasjust calling you into
agriculture. And I will tellyou, you are not the only, like,
medical person who has turnedinto to farming. I was speaking
with somebody not too long agowho was looking at being a
midwife, which is definitely,you know, doctor and and she
(03:35):
also, now she's, she callsherself a midwife to chickens.
So, you know, here you are. Soyou were going to be a medical
doctor, and now you're, you'restill supporting people's
health, just in a different way.So yeah, even the Nigerian
school system felt that youneeded to be in agriculture
Exactly. And one thing I love tosay that all things at the end
(03:57):
of day work together for ourgood, right? So at the end of
day, it brought me to where Ineeded to be, maybe not where I
wanted to be, but where I neededto be. So it was all divine, you
know, alignment, so to say, andI really love that I'm here
right now. I mean, would haveimagined that I would be
speaking to so many people aboutagriculture one day. I've had so
(04:17):
many talks talking aboutculture, and every single time,
I just look at myself and I'mlike, I never thought I'll be
here. I never, ever thought hereI am. So, yeah, I love it. So
tell us, tell us a little bitabout the the way that
agriculture works in Nigeria.And I'm sure that there is not
just one type of agriculture injust as like there isn't one
(04:40):
type of agriculture anywhere,um, but you have some some
interesting challenges inNigeria that that other people
don't like. Logistics are a bigissue. Correct? Yes, yeah,
correct. So talk to me aboutthat.
So you know when agriculturestarted in Nigeria? I mean, I
wouldn't say when a culture.
Started because Nigeria wasbuilt on agriculture. We
(05:03):
started, you know, with familiesgrowing their food, planting
things like cassava and just thebasic food stuff they needed to
thrive. But, you know, as theoil system was found in Nigeria,
and we found oil, you know, westarted to depend more on oil
and the money from oil, and wesort of left agriculture, and it
(05:24):
became like the thing for poorpeople to do right now that was
the subsistence part of farmingthat we started with. Now, as
agriculture progress, we now seethat although agriculture is not
being done in the subsistenceehm level now more big farms,
industrial farms, are coming up,you know, taking charge of their
(05:45):
cultural space. Now it seemslike agriculture is a game a
volume business. So if you arenot a big industry in their
cultural business, you might notreally thrive, or you might just
make enough money just for tosustain you and maybe your
family, but not to build wealth,right? So a lot of people do not
really see it as an opportunityin that sense. Now, in the big
(06:09):
part big industry of agriculturein Nigeria, there are lots of
challenges. It might not be soprevalent in the subsistence ehm
levels, because, you know, theyare just feeding themselves,
their families and maybe theirneighbors. But in the industrial
parts and in the industriallevel, we see that there are so
many challenges. And I know thisbecause I've personally worked
(06:31):
with farmers, you know, highlevel farmers who farm on large
scale. And one of the
issues, like you rightly saidthat I've come to notice is
logistics. You know, it's notreally talked about. It's like
one of those undercover issues,but that has great impact on how
prosperous a farm or a farmercan be, right? And it's such a
(06:54):
problem because
Nigerian roads are bad
and a lot of our food are beingtransported from really far
countries. Why is this? Isbecause some places in Nigeria
can't grow certain food due to,you know, different climates and
whatnot. So in some colder areasof Nigeria, we are able to grow
(07:15):
more food. For example, we haveplaces like just where we see
fresh vegetables. In fact, theyare really cheap, really fresh.
Now, what some farmers do isthat they have their farms
located in Jos, then they tryto, you know, sell to places
like Lagos, which is like one ofthe bustling cities in Nigeria,
right? But that Logistics is aproblem. You wanted to say
(07:38):
something. No, no, I was, I wasjust just saying, I totally
understand how that would be,and it really does connect with
a lot of what what we see here,too, because you tend to have
more agricultural areas, andthen it's very common to ship
that that product to other partsof the country. And you know, if
(07:59):
you don't have a good roadway orair transit, or, you know, all
the railroads, you know, allthose different ways of
transporting. That's really avery limiting factor. Yeah, very
limited. And it's especiallylimiting because we do not
really rely on airway totransport our food, we majorly
(08:21):
rely on the road system, right?And like I said earlier, the
roads are really bad. It's oneof the problems. Let me just say
that way that Nigeria has beentrying to solve for the longest
time. The roads can be reallybad, and they are really long
roads, you know, very bad, poornetwork, road network. And many
times, you know, sometimesfarmers encounter accidents on
(08:46):
this journey. I remember apersonal story of a farmer I was
working with at that time. Hewas trying to, not him
personally, but his driver, hisstaff, was transporting some
food produce from the northernpart of Nigeria to the western
part, and he encountered anaccident on the road, you know,
the unfortunately, the driverpassed and the food produce was
(09:10):
lost. So you can imagine thelevel of loss that and grief
that would have come with that,you know, occurrence. So there
are lots of challenges, not noteven talking about the policy
challenges. There are so manypolicy challenges. Some policies
do not favor, you know, farmers,and that's because, like I said
in the beginning, it's a volumegame. So if you are not playing
(09:32):
big, it's like you'reautomatically going to lose one
way or the other. So only thebig players, you know, the
billionaires that are intoagriculture. Really can say
that, Oh, I'm making big moneyin agriculture, but that
shouldn't be it. We shouldactually, and that's one thing
that would encourage more peopleto come into their culture
system, where they see thatthere is profits here. But
(09:52):
because, you know, this systemhas so discouraged people to
think that there will always bea loss. You know, it's really.
A it's a dwindling sort ofsystem. We are not seeing it
thrive as it should. In fact,someone I've worked with would
It's funny how he's into theirculture system, but he would
advise anyone that wants to gointo our culture, do not, do not
(10:15):
do it, except you're sure youknow what you want to get
yourself into. Because it can bedepressing. It can be it can be
a lot. Of course, there are twoparts to it. I mean, if you do
it, well, you make the money,but it can be a lot. Yeah, and,
and I gotta say, like, I wishthat that were something that
(10:36):
didn't happen everywhere, but Iknow that in the United States,
there are a lot of people whoare are torn between, you know,
they love farming, and so theywant their kids to stay in the
game, and on the other hand,they want their kids to have an
easier life and to make moremoney. And so they do encourage
(10:58):
them not to stay in farming,which I think is is very
reasonable, and I think it'salso disappointing, because I
think maybe it's time that westart readjusting our
understanding of agriculture andmaking it so that the farmers
themselves can be fulfilled onmultiple levels, like, it's not
(11:21):
okay for for us to be drivingfarmers out of business when
they really are the ones who,you know, I always use this
phrase feeding our bodies andsouls. They they are, you know,
they're creating beauty, andthey're creating food, and
they're taking care of us inways that we need to find a
better way to support them. Andit sounds like you're trying to
(11:41):
do that through agri Demi. Isthat right? Yeah, tell us about
agri Damian and what that is allabout. Okay, so I love talking
about agri Demi because I justlove what we do.
Agreed.
Yeah, you can tell I love what Ido. Like agri Demi is a platform
(12:01):
that, by the way, I never saw itcoming. It
just, I was just in my room oneday, and the thoughts, you know,
just crossed my mind, thatagriculture is fun. It can be
fun. We've made it so rigid.We've made it so structured.
We've made it so deep thatpeople can't really relate to
it. So I decided that, you knowwhat, I'm going to start
(12:22):
agritemi, and what we're goingto do in agritemi is that we're
going to make agriculture fun.We're going to make it
relatable, we're going to makeit powerful. We're going to
teach people how to grow theirown food with the resources they
have, with the space they have,and show them that it is
actually possible that you'repart of the solution if you can
grow your own food. When we growour food, yeah, when we grow
(12:43):
food, we are, you know, reducingour reliance on the corporate
food system, which is, is a bigsolution a lot of people
overlook. So that's whatalgorithm does in shorts. So, so
explain how that happens.Because I love that. I love that
idea and, and,
you know, one of the things II'm a multi generational farm
(13:06):
kid, so like, we've had fivegenerations of farmers and, and
that has been, like, basicallyour our whole living as farm.
And so what I've seen is thatthere is kind of a stigma
against farmers who are eitherpart time farmers, or, like you
were saying, subsistencefarmers, you know, in the
States, we call themhomesteaders, but people who are
(13:28):
growing their own food and mighthave a little bit to to sell at
a, you know, at the end of theroad to their neighbors or
something like that, but nothingreally huge. And you know, I
love what you're talking aboutwith agridemic, because I feel
like it's really time that westart changing that narrative,
yeah, because I think it doesn'tdo service to what agriculture
(13:50):
really is and who farmers reallyare. Like, I think, I think
farmers are more than just, youknow, the big industrial
farmers, like, there is a placefor the small family farm, and
it might look different thanwhat we expect. So, so talk to
me about how that works in agriDemi. Like, how are you, how are
(14:10):
you creating these small, thesesmall farmers? Like, I'm going
to call them small farmers,startup farmers. Yeah, I
actually love what you said,because it's very it's very
valid in the sense that I have avery personal story that even
just came up, you know, I didn'tthink about it in that way, but
when you mentioned that, I just,you know, actually was able to
(14:31):
put together that this is whathappened. So I was trying to
form a corporation with anagricultural company. They're an
agritech company. Actually, theyreached out to me to form a sort
of partnership or corporation,but by time, I started telling
them about, you know, moredetails about what academia
does, and fact that I grew smallfarmers. I help educate small
(14:52):
farmers. I myself. I do a littlebit of gardening. You know, I
grow food for myself and myfamily. They you.
Ruled me out as, Oh, you don'treally have the connection we
are looking for. You don'treally have, you know, the so
they're looking for the bigfarmers. They literally said
that, since I do not have youknow, that type of you know,
capacity as you know, anindustrial farmer, I might not
(15:15):
be able to help them, but I knewI was well able, in my capacity,
to help them establish theirfarm, because that was the goal
help them establish their adtech business here in Nigeria.
But they ruled me out. And Ifeel like it's a very, very
valid complaint that justbecause you're a home seller,
just because you're a gardener,just because, and funny thing is
(15:38):
that that is the solution, wethink until you grow in millions
or in billions of tons of food,then you're, you know, solving a
problem. But what, what shouldwhat we are doing in agudemi is
that we're empowering people indifferent parts of the world,
not just Nigeria, not justAfrica, different parts of the
world, to be able to see that itis very relatable to grow your
(16:02):
own food. You do not have todepend on the big industrial
farms and how we are doing it,which is the question we ask how
we are doing it, is that we aremixing creativity with
agriculture. So rather than andI will tell you how agridemic
came to be, I was in class oneday, my teacher was teaching me.
I studied at culture, like Imentioned. So my teacher was
(16:23):
teaching us something about, youknow, the farm. I can't remember
the particular topic, but Iremember I went back home that
day, and as I was preparing formy exam, I decided to watch a
YouTube video. As I was watchingthe YouTube video, it was so
boring, was so lifeless,something clicked in me that's
Wait, it doesn't have to be thisway. So I took up my notes, and
(16:45):
I started to, you know, jot Istarted to connect the lines,
because that's how I read. I tryto form an image in my mind and
connect it, make everything likea unified, unified concept. And
I was like, this is reallyinteresting. Why don't I make
it, make sure the world thatagriculture can be interesting.
And from there on, I started,you know, finding content,
(17:08):
developing content that it willshow the the the what, what word
will I use? How interestingagriculture is that it's not
just pen and paper, which isvery weird, because a culture is
one of the most practical thingsyou could do farming, right? You
are touching the soil, but we'vemade it so bland, so
(17:28):
uninteresting, and that was howagriculture came to be by mixing
creativity with farming. I lovethat. I love that. So you you
talk about it as a platform. Sois it mostly an online or if
you're doing a lot of hands onwork with farmers as well,
because you were talking aboutsome farmers that you've worked
with more closely. So I'mcurious as to how, how people
(17:52):
are getting the information, howyou're helping to make it
interesting to people who maybedidn't consider agriculture to
be a job before, okay, so thankyou for that question. Algorithm
is currently online, like we arecurrently maximizing our online
channels, but, you know, wesometimes go into schools. This
(18:12):
is not something we've recorded.The last time we went into a
school system to try to teach,you know, students, we realized
that there is a potential year,so we plan on, you know, making
that last skill really soon,which is something I'm excited
for, right? We do not work very,you know, one on hand or very
closely with farmers, yet, it'sdefinitely in the works. But by
(18:33):
the way, abdem started lastyear, and to see the progress
we've made so far is so is soI'm like, I'm mind blown by it,
and I just love that. You know,there's potential, because when
I started this, I was like,agriculture would buy into this
idea. I mean, why would anyonebe interested in our culture?
Now, tell me why I startedposting. I mean, we started
(18:55):
posting on social media, only tosee that a lot of people were
actually interested. And you seepeople will post on our social
media pages, and you'll seepeople, you know, comments like,
oh my god, this is reallyinsightful. Wow, I learned
something so I could do this.So, you know, this is that easy.
It's that straightforward. Imean, all I need is exceed and
now that you give me theinstructions, I know exactly
(19:17):
what to do. I have soil in mybackyard. So why? Why am I
wasting my time, right? Sobasically, that's what we've
been doing. And I hope thatanswered your question, yeah,
yeah, absolutely, um, and so youwere saying that agri Demi just
started, so it's kind of astartup business around last
year 20, okay, all right. Andyou also work on a nine to five
(19:41):
job, correct? Yeah, I actuallyworked two nine to five now.
229, to fives, yes, okay.
No, see, this is, this is whatalways, this is where we get to
my real, my point with farmersand farm support, where I'm
always like.
Like, how is it that we youmanaged to balance all of these
(20:03):
things? Not not me. I couldn'twork two nine to fives and a
startup.
I'm good just doing one startupthat's that's enough for me.
But, but tell so. Tell me whatyour nine to fives are, if you
don't mind, and then tell me howyou take care of yourself, so
that you don't burn out becauseyou are young and beautiful and
(20:27):
energetic, and we want to keepyour youth and beauty and energy
in this circle and not not useyou up. So, so what do you talk
talk to us about this. Okay, sothis is going to be me being
very open. Because, I mean, Iwish I didn't have to do 295, I
(20:47):
wish audeemy was enough to, youknow, just enough to sponsor my
life in that way. But I workcurrently in the tech industry,
not really tech, because I'm notreally into tech, but I work as
a social media manager, and youknow that even helped me, my
knowledge of tech helped mefuse, you know, my
(21:10):
love for agriculture and techinto AgTech, right? And at the
point in my life, I was allabout AgTech, but now I'm more
focused on algorithmic, which isnot necessarily, you know, ad
tech related, but I wouldactually say we are a tech
related because we are utilizingsocial media channels, which is
the technology aspect, right?And how do I balance that? I
(21:31):
really don't know.
If I say I know, I'll just beprobably telling something
false, because what I do is Ijust try to go with flow. And on
some days, it's harder than theother. Yes, so many times I've
tried to build a rigid structureto follow because, of course,
structure helps, but we do notrealize that life would always
(21:53):
life. You know, you might. Youcan't always control what
happens. So some days, theworkload is hectic, and I really
do not have time for, you know,to introspect as I would like. I
really do not have time to reachout to my friends or my family.
You know, on some things, islike that, but some on some
other days, you know, aftermaybe I've gone into that flow
(22:14):
and I'm, you know, steady orthat wave, I just, you know, do
my work quickly. I'm able to getthings out on time, I'm able to
be as productive as possible,and those things are better, but
it doesn't always remain thatway. So they are always in
highs. They always lows. It'sjust trying to flow with it. And
recently, I watched a TEDx
(22:37):
conversation about how we tendto see stress as the enemy. How?
You know, we are like, Oh mygod, I'm so stressed. And
sometimes stress is actuallyjust helping us become better,
helping us build our capacity,right? I know that this is still
the least I'll ever do, right? Iwould keep on building capacity
(22:58):
to do more. Probably I would endup having a big industrial farm
one day, and I would have tomanage it even with algorithmic
because, yes, algorithm isimportant. Teaching people to
grow their own food isimportant, as well as the
industrial car, right? I mightalso be running a multinational
one day. Who knows? So I seeeverything right now as a
(23:19):
learning period for me learningto build experience, and I've
realized that there's no one wayaround it. There's really no one
way. I just flow. Really, I justflew. I learned from the good
from the bad days. You know, Iintrospect on the good days and
try to find out how I canreplicate those good days. And,
(23:39):
yeah, that's basically it's noteasy, to be honest. It's one of
the hardest things, especiallybecause there are lots of
expectations on me as a person,as a friend, as a sister, as a
daughter, and a lot of people donot really understand the fact
that
as much as I might want to bethere for them as much as I
(24:03):
could. I might not be able tobecause of the, you know,
responsibilities on me. Ofcourse, I try to meet up. In
fact, I recently started thisthing where I try to catch up
with a friend every month atleast. We go out, we just hang
out and talk. That's if that'slittle I can do, I would do it
at least to to keep myself incheck. But it's just going with
(24:25):
flow, really, yeah, well, there,oh, wow, there's, there's so
much that that I heard in that.And
you know that the competingexpectations upon you is one
thing that I think all of us,especially, I think women, but
women, yeah, exactly, exactlysome of the things I was hearing
(24:49):
from you, yeah, that
the balancing other people'sdesires on us and our desire to
serve other people, you know, Ithink.
It's interesting, because wehave these two sides of
relationships, where we havepeople who are putting
expectations upon us, and thenwe have our own set of
(25:10):
expectations about what itmeans. So yeah, you know, your
mother has expectations, yourfather has expectations. Your
sister brother haveexpectations. Your employers
have expectations. Your agriDemi clients have expectations.
And then you have expectationsabout who you want to be towards
(25:30):
all of these people and
and I have found in my own lifethat being able to really set up
boundaries, and that that wordis is used so often and not
necessarily understood, but tobe able to understand where our
limits are. You know, what arethe things that are feeding us?
(25:52):
And because we need to do thatlike we need to take care of
ourselves, or we will havenothing left for anybody else,
and how much of that do we
how much of what we have do weexpend on others and business
and even just on taking sometime to ourselves? You know,
(26:13):
going going for a walk byyourself,
but I love that you're settingdates with your your friends,
because that's something I'vereally started to do because I
had some really great friends incollege, and I'm terrible at
keeping in touch with you. Like,Oh, terrible. You know, people
are so good at using socialmedia and like, reading what's
(26:35):
going on. I'm like, I go onsocial media, I post stuff that
I post for my business, for myclients, and then I'm off of
there, like, I It's like a blackhole that I like stay away from
as much as I can. And
so I have to be reallyintentional about making time
for the people that I reallycare about, otherwise they get
(26:55):
kind of pushed to the back.
So, yeah, I'm hearing a lot ofthat. So are there some things
that you're you think you can doto maybe help you align your
activities more to what youneed? Or or is that something
you really struggle to do? Or doyou feel like you're doing it
pretty well right now? Well, Iwas,
(27:18):
I would call it a struggle perse.
Well, it can be a struggle, butnot all the time, especially
because I realized that thisOkay, so we'll turn something a
struggle, but we do not realizethat it's a process. So I see it
as a process, not as a struggle.So the end goal is that I
(27:41):
learned to be more
accommodating of all areas of mylife need good balance. You know
that each thing needs so I willsay it as I don't see it as a
struggle. I really don't tend tosee things as struggle. I just
see them as opportunities tolearn, per se. But it's hard in
the moment, right, to see it asan opportunity to learn, because
(28:03):
sometimes you're like, What iseven going on? Well, I think one
thing that's really helped me isjournaling and introspecting a
lot. Oh, really, that's sointeresting. That's one of my
big things. I'm a journalinstructor, so Wow, yes, I tend
to journal, although, you know,my journaling has reduced the
past few months,
(28:26):
I don't really journal asfrequently as I used to, because
I lived in university about lastyear. Yeah, I left university.
So while I was in university, Ihad a lot of time on my hands to
journal. But now with work,work, work, it's hard, but when
I can, I journal, I try tofigure out, Okay, where am I at
in this moment of my life? Whatwhere, where do I need to be?
(28:49):
How am I, you know, settingboundaries, how am I meeting
expectations? Am I? Am Ifulfilled in myself? Am I
achieving what I Am I still oncourse, or am I just going
around with the wind? Becausethat can be. That can happen a
lot, especially when your son,who is younger, trying to build
wealth. In that sense, you tendto jump on every and anything
(29:12):
that seems to make you goodmoney, right? So it's like you
sort of lose your own vision andyour own mission. So I try to
journal to make sure I'm stillon track. Is what I'm doing
helping me in the long term, oris it just something I'm doing
for temporal validation or maybetemporal gain? So I would say
that's what's helping me rightnow. Oh, that's I'm so glad you
(29:36):
said that,
because I do. I try to work withfarmers to learn different
journaling techniques that theycan do, and even little small
pieces, like five minutes a day,because, because it is hard and,
you know, I'm a writer, that's,that's, you know, what my, my
real job used to be.
And so for me, journaling issomething that's just.
(30:00):
Fun. It's natural, like it'ssomething that I can lose hours
sitting there and writing aboutall kinds of stuff. And so I
know that a lot of farmers arenot like that at all. They would
much rather be out in the fieldthan sitting down with the paper
or in front of the computer orwhatever, and so And yet, these
(30:20):
are really valuable tools. So Idefinitely try to give them,
like, lots of little fiveminute, you know, journal
prompts or things that they cando, to do exactly what you're
saying, to just kind of take aninventory really quickly and be
like, Okay, how am I feelingtoday? Like, maybe I can't work
as hard today as I thought I wasgoing to, because I've got,
(30:42):
maybe I'm choking on pollen allday, and I
did something else, you justnever know. And so you want to
be able to have thatflexibility, and also to be
staying on target. And so Ijust, I love so much of of what
you're saying there. I thinkthat's that's just beautiful.
And the fact that you'rechecking in with yourself all
(31:03):
the time, because I think wesometimes believe that,
you know, we set our courseonce, and then we do it and,
like, that's it. Like you justhave to do your plan once, and
then just follow the plan. Andthe fact is that that doesn't
really work for most of us. Haveto keep checking in, because you
(31:25):
do get derailed. And I love whatyou said, you know, chasing
after the money or chasing afterthe thing that seems, you know,
it could be something that seemsreally great, but if it's going
to take you away from where youknow your heart is, then it's
actually a really bad thing,because you might make money at
it, but are you going to end upwhere you're going to, where you
(31:46):
want to be at the end? And Ithink that's and so for farmers,
I think that's a reallyinteresting thing too, to kind
of like drag it back to theagriculture stuff,
where we have such a tension, Ithink, in farming, about trying
to make money. And let's faceit, like most people farm
because they love it. I mean,why else? Why?
(32:10):
Why else would you work so hardfor so little money in a job
like I say this all the time,I'm like, farmers are like, the
biggest dreamers in the world,and they think, they think
they're not, like they I'm sopractical, and I'm like, no
practical person would ever getinto a job. Yeah, they have
virtually no control over theweather, the markets, like you
(32:35):
have so little control. And yet,and yet we do it, and we say,
No, we're gonna, we're gonna besuccessful in this, and we're
going to keep, keep doing this.And it's, it's really because we
love it and we have this senseof hope and this positivity. And
I think your mindset is actuallyso important for farmers,
(32:55):
because that of, you know, notseeing things as,
oh, I didn't use the wordchallenges, struggles, you know,
reframing that idea of strugglesas opportunities to learn,
opportunities to grow, thatreally is such a powerful
mindset, and it really can helpchange the way that that we live
(33:19):
in the world. So I think that'samazing. So tell me how you
develop that mindset, becausethat is not a mindset that
everybody has.
Okay? So I think it's notsomething I talk about or like
live sessions a lot, but it'svery important, and it's all can
be traced back to my faith. Youknow, my faith in God, my faith
(33:43):
in the Word, is something I tryto you know, beyond the
religious aspect of it, the wordof God can be really wholesome.
It helps you develop yourworldview. It helps you develop
your perspective to life, torealize that life was, you know,
it's very hard to think thatlife was made to favor you, and
(34:05):
with every single thing thathappens, you tend to feel like,
Why is everything going againstthat perspective? I mean,
to be honest, something happenedtoday that almost took me off
course, and I was just like, ohmy god, I can't deal with this
right now. But then I had toremind myself of the fact that
(34:26):
everything would eventually workout for my my good. Everything
will work out to fame for me atthe end of the day. So to be
honest, I owe it. I owe it allto God
for teaching me how to be sowise in my mindset and my
perspective to life, butteaching me how to be resilient.
(34:46):
I can be I can my natural selfwill tend to give up a lot and
tend to just know, oh, my god, Ican't do this again. I'm I'm
getting my hands off. But youknow, my resilience has come
from a place of realizing that.
If I keep on trying, because Ihave, you know, a bigger force
behind me, I'm going to win atthe end of the day. So that's
(35:07):
basically it.
I love that I can do all thingsthrough Christ who strengthens
me. Yes,
look at that. It's a sister. Imet a sister today.
That's so exciting. But, I mean,I agree with that as well. Like
(35:28):
I talk a lot to people about thespiritual side of life, because
people, I think I don't know,you'll have to, you'll have to
help me. If I'm making anovergeneralization here, I feel
like in the West, we tend to bea little bit more closed off to
spirituality than than inAfrica, and like Eastern,
(35:51):
Eastern cultures and yeah, and Ithink that, you know, some of it
comes from the theenlightenment, where everybody
learned all This science stuff
so cool. And it is I lovescience, and I love the way that
science and the Bible actuallyfit together, like
(36:13):
we're going off into all kindsof places. So much fun. This is
like the talk expected to havetoday. But, um, but I really do
think that
the spiritual part of us issomething that God did put
inside of us. And I thinkpeople, you know, obviously I
want everybody to love Jesus,because I think everybody should
(36:35):
love Jesus, everybody.
I also understand that there arepeople who are not going to love
Jesus, yeah, yet they still arespiritual beings. And so we
still need to have that, thatnurturing of our spiritual side.
And so, so let's talk aboutthat. So you're talking about,
(36:55):
you know, you obviously read theBible because you're using the
word as something that youreally hold on to.
And you know, so people who haveother religious traditions, you
know, spiritual texts aredefinitely, definitely a way of
taking care of their spiritualside. What else do you do to
feed that, that spiritual sideof you?
(37:19):
Okay, so I like to say this way.It's like,
how do I say it without standingto the Okay? It's like an apple
an apple tree, right? An appletree was
created to sort of live off thean apple was created to leave of
the apple tree for the first
(37:41):
part of his life until it growsand develops into a full matured
apple. And you see that onething that happens when the
Apple gets disconnected or fallsoff the apple tree is that it
begins a process ofdecomposition. Right? So we see
that for the Apple to be in itsfull vitality, it has to be
(38:02):
connected to the apple tree,because that's is, it sucks,
right? So I'll say that beingconnected to my source, where
divine inspiration comes from,being connected to my source,
where strength comes from, andstrength is very important,
because we are human beings thattend to paint a lot. We get
(38:23):
tired. We get weary in so many Imean, life was, life was
designed in such a way that, ifyou do not have a strong vacuum,
you keep on falling and falling,and eventually you get worn out
from falling so much, it mightjust quit, right? But having a
backing, having something tofall on, knowing that you don't
have to fall flat on the floor.Because it's sort of like a, um,
(38:45):
a,
how would I call it? Sort oflike, let's say, a spring, that
once you fall, it helps pushesyou back to stand right.
Sometimes it might take time foryou to get back up, because you
know you're you've fallen sohard, but he always pushes you
back, and I think that, as if,if I would say that if there's
any secret to my life to Youknow, being able to keep up with
(39:07):
work, with life generally, it'sthat being able to be connected
to my source, my
a source that sustains me, thatsustains my Life, that keeps me
on my feet, basically,
oh yeah. So so good. And, youknow, there's so many ways that
(39:29):
we can stay connected to thesource. You know, I find that
being outside in nature andspending just like just
breathing in the beauty of Yeah,is one of those ways where you
can just see the
you know, you can see the powerof God, and you can also see how
(39:49):
every everything manages towork. And I've got these birds
that live outside, and they'relike calling and talking and
doing all their things, andthey're not worried about you.
What the next day is going tobring. They're, they're just
doing their thing. They're goingout. They're feeding their
babies. They're making theirnests. They're, you know,
they're doing their thing. Andthey're, they're okay, like
(40:12):
they're, they're being, they'rebeing taken care of, and and I
love what you said about beingable to fall down and then get
back up and sometimes not falldown so far, because you're
supported.
I went hiking with a friend inthe Adirondacks last week, and
(40:33):
she took me on two 4000 footmountains. And I've never done
mountains before, and I didgreat, like I was, I did great
going up the first one comingdown, the first one going up,
the second one. Great. Westarted down the second one. I
felt like a million bucks, andall of a sudden I took a step,
(40:53):
and my legs literally just said,Nope, no more, no more. Landed
on the ground. And I was like,huh, we are, like, four and a
half five miles up a mountain. Igotta get down the mountain and
and I thought about rolling downthe mountain, but I was, there
were a lot of really big rocks.I
(41:14):
was like, Yeah, I don't thinkthat's gonna work. But she, she
is an experienced hiker, and shehad brought a pair a set of
poles. And when she brought thepolls, I was like, I'm not going
to need those polls. Well, thankthe Lord for those polls.
Because I literally, like, fortwo miles, I was basically,
like, one little step at a time,clutching onto these poles and
(41:36):
and when I'm thinking about whatyou were talking about, about
being resilient and keeping fromfalling or falling, and then
getting up. Like, there was atime when I did fall, and I
couldn't get up without, withoutCasey's help, and so she helped
me up, and then I was, like,leaning on these poles, and I
needed those poles to have thisuntil my legs came back enough
(41:58):
to be able to carry my ownweight and like, isn't that what
being connected to our source isall about that spirituality,
that having that support when wegive in, which we are going to
like we're human. We overdo, weget exhausted, we get buffeted,
(42:19):
and we all have times where wejust need more than we can give
ourselves. And sometimes we havea friend who comes along
sometimes, you know, sometimesit's a set of polls that you
didn't think you need. Didn'twant to need, like I didn't want
to have to use polls on the waydown that silly mountain.
But how thankful I was to havethem, because otherwise I'd like
(42:44):
been crawling out of my handsand knees and how, how horrible
would that be? So, yeah, so Ilove that. I absolutely love
what you're saying about that,
and I hope that the peoplelistening are are thinking of
ways that they can connect withtheir spiritual side. And for
some people, it tends to be moreart, or, you know, music or or
(43:08):
combinations of those. I mean, Iknow putting on Happy Music is
one of the quickest ways tochange my attitude, like,
happiest,
yeah, me too. Actually, I lovemusic. I love listening to
music. It just helps me calm mybrain. Yeah, yes, absolutely.
(43:29):
So, you know, I'm looking I'mlooking back at all of the stuff
that we've talked about here,and we've got about 10 minutes
left. Um,
I guess I'm wondering if youcould share a little bit about
where you see agri Demi movingand how you see your work
supporting the creation of morefarmers, and also maybe the
(43:52):
creativity, because I think thatcreativity worth helping farmers
think outside the box is reallyimportant. Can Can you speak to
that a little? Do you think,
sure? Sure. So I always say Lizthat our future is in our young
generation right now, our futureis in the children, right? And
I'm not trying to sound, youknow, all motivational, because
(44:16):
it's true. It's true, and that'sone reason why, in agreement, we
tend to target the youngchildren, because if we start
building that mindset from ayoung age, then there will be
more success rates in thefuture. So how do we plan on
doing this? Going to schools,you know, in graining, in them,
the fact that
(44:38):
this is a possibility, funny,how I was the only one in my
class at that point in time whosaw being a farmer as a
possibility, and when Imentioned it, my classmates
laughed about it, right? So wesee that there is a problem now,
children, I'm not saying tech isthere's anything wrong with
(44:58):
tech. I'm into tech too, but.
So children are growing upthinking tech is the only way to
make money, or tech is the onlyway to be impactful in life, and
we have to show them otherwise.One thing, one system that I'm
trying to replicate is thesystem that we've used in
pushing the SDGs. I'm also intothe SDG I'm an SDG advocate,
(45:21):
because I advocate forsustainable food systems. That's
SDG, two Zero Hunger, right? AndI love and for those, and for
those who are, for those whoaren't familiar, because
probably act shamefully a lot, alot of our American listeners
probably are not con conversantwith the sustainable development
(45:44):
goals. So those are the SDGs andand they've been
many, many countries around theworld have agreed that they want
to help support the sustainabledevelopment goals for the world,
not just for their country ortheir area. So so so one of
those sustainability goals isSDGs is Zero Hunger and so. So
(46:07):
talk about that, because I thinkthis is, this is a really
important place where, obviouslyfarming, farming matters. Like
if you don't have farms, youdon't have food, you have
hunger.
Thank you for clarifying that,because sometimes I tend to
forget that not everybody knowsabout the
I'm so ingrained in the systemthat I'm like, Who doesn't know
(46:28):
about the SDGs? But to behonest, a lot some people do not
know about the SDG so thank youfor clarifying that. Oh yeah,
no,
pushing SDG. Two Zero Hunger,because that is the goal at the
end of day. But one thing I'verealized over my my time as an
advocate for the SDGs, is thatall these goals are all
(46:49):
intertwined with the fulfillmentof one goal comes to fulfillment
of another goal. So we need tosee it as a as a goal, not as
goals, although they are goals,you know, to help us track our
progress, right? But at the endof the day, it's a goal, right?
And the as I've seen before, theway we push the SDGs is quite
(47:13):
interesting to me. I mean, thefact that many people see the
SDGs as an important factor tohelping us develop our world. I
want agridemic to be thatbridge, to be able to, you know,
show people the importance ofagriculture. And I'm not talking
about the
(47:34):
agriculture as we know it, butthe gardening, the farming,
building raise. I mean growingfresh food, raising livestock,
you know, that is not chemicallyinfused, right? That is good for
our systems, good for our body,right? And I love how we've
pushed that with the SDGs. And Ialso want to agree them, to be
(47:55):
able to push that, the fact thatwe can grow our own food, and
that is part of the solution,such that in secondary schools,
you know people, children knowabout agriculture. They know the
basics of growing food. Theyknow the basics of growing
tomato. They know basics ofgreen fabric. They know how to
cater for the soil, how tosteward the earth. Because, like
(48:17):
I love to say, we are not justhere to, you know, leave we are
yet toward the earth becauseit's has been given to us as our
body, as our own brother. So thesame way we take care of our
bodies, same way we should takecare of the earth. So, yeah,
it's very important. And I feellike that bridge has been
missing that gap. It's a widegap, and not enough people
(48:40):
really focus on that, right? Soas much as we are not yet there,
I really am hopeful that oneday, and it's a big passion in
my heart, that one day, we'llget to the point where people
see the importance ofsustainable agriculture. I'll
put it in that bracket,sustainable agriculture and how
(49:00):
it is important, not just fornow, but for our future. Yeah,
yeah. And that, that wordsustainable, because it gets
used in so many different ways,you know, the way, the way it's
defined in circles that I'vebeen in is that there, there
are, like, three pillars to thatsustainable agriculture. There's
taking care of the land, there'staking care of society and
(49:23):
there's taking care of thefinancial needs of the farmer,
and so like, as you were saying,with the Sustainable Development
Goals, those are all connectedlike you can't have you can't
just worry about feeding people.If you're not taking care of the
land and the water and the air,you're not going to have a good
(49:44):
resource to create good food. Ifyou don't have financial
stability, then people aren'tgoing to be able to grow things.
And so, you know, it's thatwhole interconnectedness, and I
really love how.
You how you
tied that together. That's just,it's, it's beautiful, and I
(50:05):
think it's really inspiring,because, you know, the farmers
that are currently farming havesuch power in so many ways, like
they really are so important toour entire system and and I
think it's good for them to hearthat, because I think sometimes
it's easy to forget it, when thewhen the money is not coming in
(50:27):
and the tariffs are beingraised, and the, you know,
everything else is falling topieces, to remember that the
work that they're doing reallyis important, yeah. Oh, so I
could talk to you for hours, butas we're coming to the end, I
always ask my guests if theyhave like, one word that they
(50:50):
would give to farmers, like, ifthere were one thing that they
felt every farmer should know,what would that be?
So what would you tell farmersif you had the opportunity to
give them that one piece of keyadvice,
I think it's actually related tothe last statement, or last
sentence you made before now,and that is fact that you
(51:10):
matter. And I know that you saida lot
that, oh, you matter, you musthave, but I really do mean it
when I say you matter the workyou're doing, especially if
you're a farmer that is not justfocused about gaining so you
don't just use chemicals andsynthetic ehm,
what fertilizers to grow yourfood? Job because you want the
(51:31):
money, but you're intentionalabout building a growing healthy
food that people can eat andhave a better well being. You
actually matter. What you'redoing matters. And if you're
someone like me, who you know,what you're doing is advocating,
what you're doing is creatingknowledge. What you're doing is
finding creative ways to pushout our culture. Matter and it
(51:51):
will count in the future. Youmight not be able to see it in
the little bits and pieces hereand there, but it counts and
matter.
Oh, Precious. Thank you so much.Like those, those are such
beautiful words. And I just wantto thank you and say that also,
if you're someone like Kristen,who is putting together this
(52:12):
awesome podcast, you matterbecause you're doing an amazing
job. I mean, we don't know theimpacts. We might be seeing it
in in time, like, oh, in thistime right now, probably a
number of people listen to it,but it's usually like a domino
effect. And I just want to thankyou for, you know, doing this
(52:32):
because you're making an impact,yeah, very
unexpected and very sweet ofyou.
So I just, I hope that inanother year or so, when
Agridemy has had more time togrow, we could have you back and
see how things are going. And,you know, talk about, talk about
(52:53):
current, hopefully currentevents will be a little bit less
traumatic than they are right
now. Because things are so funright now,
but I want to thank you so muchfor joining us, and I will see
all of you out there next timeon food, flowers and fun. Have a
(53:15):
great day. Bye.
How do
you farm? Farmwork's calling;our show is all done: goodbye,
farewell, so long adieu. See younext week, same time, same place
for food, flowers and fun. Go inpeace.
Visit us@www.penlightfarmers.com
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