August 20, 2025 • 13 mins
On this edition of ACF 411, Russ talks to Garth from the OSU Extension about what they do during the fair and year round!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, and a welcome back to another edition of
ACF four one one, the official podcast of the Allen
County Fair powered by Nutrient. I'm your host, Russ Decker
and joining me in the podcast parlor here in the
old milking parlor at the Allen County Fair from the
Ohio State University Extension Service here in Allen County, Garth McDorman, Garth, welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Yeah, thanks for having me us appreciate.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I always called you extension agent, that's how old I am,
but you actually have a much sexier title now.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Yeah, yep, So I'm the ag in Natural Resources Extension
Educator for Allen County.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Those two extension.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Wow, so that probably takes like two business cards to
get all of that.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Pretty much, Yeah, front and back.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Actually, yeah, okay, Hey, So obviously you know this is
the nine day Fair, is the showcase of agriculture and
all that's good about agriculture here in Allen County, where
it is our number one industry. So, as the ag
and Natural Resource educator for the county, what's your role
(01:01):
during fair week?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I don't really have.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I guess set duties here and there, but you know,
be sitting in the same office as a four EAH educator.
I definitely told her that I want to, you know,
commit some of my time throughout the week, you know,
for the youth, of course, while tackling other responsibilities that
my day to day job has, right answering some phone
calls that come in from the public. But yeah, during
(01:24):
the fair here, yeah, I want to you know, sit
down with some of the youth, go to each show,
I guess, support them in any way possible. And I've
been able to do that so far, and it's been
really fun. We've got really great youth here now in
County and I love it.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, we do. I think we had Kelly on here
yesterday and I think she was telling us fourteen hundred
or so, Oh, you've got a fan club outside the
window here at the podcast studio. Well that's that's pretty nice.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Some of our junior fair board kids, yeah, great kids.
I've gotten to know them really well. Connor, Kara, Vivian
and Ava. Yeah, they're really great kids. Like I said,
just a testament who they are and our board.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Well, you know that's not what they said about earlier
in the week, but that's a whole another story that
what's they got car All they want you to pick a.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Card there, they said, I'm there. Our favorite intern is
what it says. They keep calling me the intern because
I've only been here for around seven eight months, so
I'm still kind of getting my feet wet and they
call me the intern.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Well, you know, they look like they could probably teach
you how to do this.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Oh very much.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
So yeah, we've got some well versed children out here,
and then, like I said, really good kids.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
You know in A good place to start is helping
clean up barns. That's a good place to get your
feet wet.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
You know I did that for you know, nine years
as a youth. I showed beef.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
You're at this same fair for nine years as a kid,
and I've done plenty of barn clean and I do
it at home still today. So I think I'll leave
it to them this week. But if I guess, if
they really needed me, I could jump in if need
be Well, you.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Know, I was actually gonna that we were headed there anyway,
because this is your first fair as our official, you know,
our ag guy for the county, but this is not
your first Dowllen County for tell me a little about
about your family, history of farming here in the in
the Allen County area and your role here.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Yeah, yep, So my great great grandfather settled in eastern
Allen County in the early nineteen hundreds. My grandfather was
born on the farm that I live at now, actually
in the same house that I was born and raised
that as well, right there at our home farm. We
have two houses back to back on the same driveway
at her home farm. Kind of unique, just south of
(03:22):
Herod over there on the eastern part. So yeah, And
then growing up, my dad went showed livestock at the
fair here. My older brother, he was two years older
than me, so he started showing beef steers when he
was nine. And then so I started hanging out here
when I was you know, seven, and he was nine.
And then after that when I turned nine, I started
showing fat steers as well, and all nine years showed
(03:42):
beef steers, showed chickens for two. But yeah, so I've
been here a lot and I love it, like I
said that, And then now in the capacity I am,
I get to spend more time at the fair. My
family and I are camping here for the first time
since I was eighteen years old. So it's kind of
like full circle if you will.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
It's got to make you feel good. I mean, because
you're you're a hometown guy. You get what it means
to be at the Allen County Fair. It's a big
deal for these kids.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Very much.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
So yeah, And like I said, we've got a lot
of great families that I've gotten to know, you know,
personally and professionally now working in the private industry here
in this county for a few years before I started
this role. So yeah, it's great to see some familiar
faces out and about. And like I said, great kids
from great families in our barns, And like I said,
it's a testament who they are and whether what they're
doing out there.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
As a part of your role, do you do any
judging during the fair?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Not during the fair? I did some.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
I did judge the FFA projects prior to the fair
for some of their projects like woodworking, welding and other things,
but they have not called me up yet to do
any actual judging during the fair.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
So some prior to but not right now, because.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
I was gonna think, I think that's got to be
the toughest job on the fair, and nobody ever talks
about them. But the judges, I mean, what a thankless
job that they do in every area. And you've got
another fan outside. Man, you bring more fans with you
guard than anybody we've had, good or bad.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
They're here, that's right. Yeah, but no, I agree with
your Russ. You know, the judging. My wife, she she
was raised in livestock industry. Excuse me, she she went
to Ohio State and was on the High State Livestock
and team judge all over the country doing that.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
And I've learned to appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Even more just from hearing her experiences and seeing what
she's been through, and you know where she's judged, She's
judged several county fairs across across Ohio. Doesn't do it anymore,
you know, with family and kids growing. But yeah, I've
learned to appreciate what they do. And I think it's,
like you said, a very thankless job. But it takes
one man or one woman's opinion, and that's where we're in.
That's where we end up at at the end of
(05:40):
the day.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
So one of the things I want to since I
saw we had you coming up on the schedule, I
thought let's talk a little bit about the extension service,
because I think a lot of people, I mean, I
think people would be surprised because they think of you
only as maybe farming and you know, hey, help me,
help me increase my fields on my corn field or
my bean field. But you've you field phone calls about hey,
(06:07):
what's this bug I found on my evergreen tree? Or
how come my grass isn't growing like it used to
in my yard? Talk about like what your job is
and what you do day to day to help the
people of Island County.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, yeah, and then very diverse. And that's what I
love about it.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
That's what kind of that's what I'm becoming compassionate about
in the job. I mean, I've got I've fielded phone
calls in this short seven months about you know, like
you said, grass problems, are their yard trees dying.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
We've seen a.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Rather large increase in disease pressure across you know, not
only in the fields or the agricultural fields this year,
but like I stated, the yards of the trees, the
ponds actually even as well, mostly due to the drought
that we had the year prior, right that really warm
and hot and dry late July August we had last year.
We can kind of remember that during the fair, I'm sure.
(06:56):
And yeah, we've seen a lot of problems stem from
that drought, and we're still seeing a little bit here
even this this summer too. But yeah, so diversity of things,
I'm still learning a little bit of that. I'll be
the first one to admit, right, my background is an
agriculture more in the actually private sector of farm business.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Side of things. So I got to learn a lot
to learn.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
And you know, I guess the natural resources and even
plant pathology or even the agronomy side of things on
the agriculture. So but as I go, the High State
is a good place to learn, and we continually teach
people and ourselves as well.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
It's what we thrive on.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Well, it's all part of the Land Land College, the
whole the land Mission.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yes, And and you know the thing is, yeah, every
county has a garth. But the thing is you're tying
into the Ohio State University Extension Service. So if you
don't know about a particular bug that's in that's in
all of a sudden in your flower beds, chances are
there's somebody at Ohio state that's very familiar with.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
That bug exactly, and even more local than you think,
you know. I mean, we've got a bug guy, we
call them our local entomologist over in Vanwork County, Curtis Young,
who actually was the extension agent here for a long time,
well until two thousand and nine. So, like I said,
a great resource. We've got a really wide, vast array
of people that know a lot of different things. And
then we've also got colleagues across the country, right, that's
what we call. We call them colleagues at Iowa State
(08:19):
and you know Purdue. You know, we lean on them
quite a bit too, and they lean on us for
certain things. So some people are better at things than others,
and we definitely find them.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
So when we're out here at the Allen County Fair,
we think about a lot about the Junior Fair. We've
been talking a lot about it on the podcast, and
we've been interviewing some very uh some some pretty impressive
young people. What do you let's talk about the future
of agriculture, because it's you know, you talk to kids.
There aren't a lot of kids that say, well, I
want to be a farmer now they you know, it's technology.
(08:49):
It's flashy stuff, but that technology is intermingled with agriculture,
and so how how does the future of agriculture look?
Speaker 3 (08:57):
You know, a week like this, it's hard not to
be you know, I guess optimistic about what we see, right,
but as the agriculture's industry, I mean as a whole
excuse me, you know, it's I think there's some challenges ahead,
right and that's any industry, of course, there's some growing
pains right now. I think in agriculture in Ohio, especially
(09:17):
in our part of Ohio, there's a lot of I'm
gonna call it industry money or outside agriculture money looking
to invest in agricultural ground because there we're not making
any more of it, right, So that's one thing.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
That that does worry.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Me at the end of the day, because we want
to continue some of these family farms or some of
these local farms. But there is, like I said, some
of that outside pressure, outside money pushing up against that
and definitely coming into this even now in County area,
right I mean, we've just seen three hundred acres here
north of Lina sold for a data center, which I'm
not combating a data center by any means. But it's
outside money coming into our industry and taking away some
(09:53):
of our production acres. So it's like I said, that's
one thing that I kind of look at that could be,
you know, a challenge. But challenges aren't always bad things, right.
We just got to find a way around them and
continue to thrive and what we do and be good
at what we do. But you know, there's a lot
of bright young minds out here at this fair and
I think that's one thing we need to keep looking at.
I think one day there's gonna be a lot smarter
(10:14):
than people than us, right, and they're gonna lead. They're
gonna lead agriculture the right way.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
You know, we talk about this, you know, of course
from the nutrient perspective, but we talk about it all
the time that it's projected that there are gonna be
another two and a half billion people in the world
by the year twenty fifty, and every day it seems
like we lose farm ground productive farm ground. And so
you try to figure out, how do we feed another
two and a half billion people in twenty fifty with
(10:41):
less farmland, And the only way we do it is
to get better, to figure out.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
A way to grow the yields.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Maybe maybe we can get two crop seasons out of
something that in the past we only got one. But
I would think that certainly keeps your office pretty busy.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
It does.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Yeah, and you know, it'll just look at this here
for instance, right, Yeah, I agree with it. We're having
an increase in population across the world and especially the
United States. And yeah, this year especially, we're gonna grow
record corn crop here in the United States as a whole. Right,
ninety four some million acres that had a record yield
of one eighty eight almost one eighty nine, which that
blows the previous actual record out by seven or eight
(11:18):
bushel So, yeah, we're gonna have record yields here. So,
like I said, we're getting pretty good at what we're doing, right,
But sometimes that can be a good thing, and sometimes
that can be a bad thing. And we're feeling a
little bit of that pressure right now.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
And you know, and I think the big other change
in agriculture is that it's a global issue.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
All of a sudden, you have.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
The Russia Ukraine war pop up, and it impacted prices
in Allen County for fertilizers for yields that the farmers
were earning because all of a sudden, it's not a
local supply in demand issue. It's a global supply in
demand issue. And so something that's on the other side
of the world, it impacts agriculture, impacts of agriculture.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Across the entire world very much. So, yeah, and that
and that whole altercation or war started. How long going,
we're still seeing repercussions from it. So, like I said,
I think you're exactly right when you say that things
like that can are go and affect us for quite
some time for sure.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
All right, So let's let's end on on a fun note.
So your office is here on the fair grounds. You're
walking through the fair every day, right, So there's a
lot of fair food out here, Darth. There's a lot
of fair food out here. Oh yeah, you've got to
have a favorite.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
I'm not gonna be very fun, right. So I was
born and I was born and raised in that that
cattle barn right over there, right. My family still works
a shift in this food stand every year. It's the cattlemans.
And I love me and I'm probably gonna go against
the grain here, but I like the burger better than
the Ribbi. I'm a burger guy, a cheeseburger guy.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
I love him.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
I think when they're cooked right here, they're even better. Uh,
that's gonna be my favorite. I do like some ice cream, though,
so for a sweet tooth guy, Jay and m ice
cream over here. The homemade ice cream is very good.
I hit them up. Every favorite flavor. I like the
cinnamon flavor. Yep, cinnamon very good.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
All right, Garth mcdormant, thanks for coming in and being
in our podcast today.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
No, I really really appreciate the time and having me here.
Thanks a lot, Russ, and.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
We want to thank our engineer Alex Will for making
us sound good, and our videographer and Decker for making
us look good. We'll see you next time at the
Allen County Fair
All right, and a welcome back to another edition of
ACF four one one, the official podcast of the Allen
County Fair powered by Nutrient. I'm your host, Russ Decker
and joining me in the podcast parlor here in the
old milking parlor at the Allen County Fair from the
Ohio State University Extension Service here in Allen County, Garth McDorman, Garth, welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Yeah, thanks for having me us appreciate.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I always called you extension agent, that's how old I am,
but you actually have a much sexier title now.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Yeah, yep, So I'm the ag in Natural Resources Extension
Educator for Allen County.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Those two extension.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Wow, so that probably takes like two business cards to
get all of that.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Pretty much, Yeah, front and back.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Actually, yeah, okay, Hey, So obviously you know this is
the nine day Fair, is the showcase of agriculture and
all that's good about agriculture here in Allen County, where
it is our number one industry. So, as the ag
and Natural Resource educator for the county, what's your role
(01:01):
during fair week?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I don't really have.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I guess set duties here and there, but you know,
be sitting in the same office as a four EAH educator.
I definitely told her that I want to, you know,
commit some of my time throughout the week, you know,
for the youth, of course, while tackling other responsibilities that
my day to day job has, right answering some phone
calls that come in from the public. But yeah, during
(01:24):
the fair here, yeah, I want to you know, sit
down with some of the youth, go to each show,
I guess, support them in any way possible. And I've
been able to do that so far, and it's been
really fun. We've got really great youth here now in
County and I love it.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, we do. I think we had Kelly on here
yesterday and I think she was telling us fourteen hundred
or so, Oh, you've got a fan club outside the
window here at the podcast studio. Well that's that's pretty nice.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Some of our junior fair board kids, yeah, great kids.
I've gotten to know them really well. Connor, Kara, Vivian
and Ava. Yeah, they're really great kids. Like I said,
just a testament who they are and our board.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Well, you know that's not what they said about earlier
in the week, but that's a whole another story that
what's they got car All they want you to pick a.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Card there, they said, I'm there. Our favorite intern is
what it says. They keep calling me the intern because
I've only been here for around seven eight months, so
I'm still kind of getting my feet wet and they
call me the intern.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Well, you know, they look like they could probably teach
you how to do this.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Oh very much.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
So yeah, we've got some well versed children out here,
and then, like I said, really good kids.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
You know in A good place to start is helping
clean up barns. That's a good place to get your
feet wet.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
You know I did that for you know, nine years
as a youth. I showed beef.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
You're at this same fair for nine years as a kid,
and I've done plenty of barn clean and I do
it at home still today. So I think I'll leave
it to them this week. But if I guess, if
they really needed me, I could jump in if need
be Well, you.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Know, I was actually gonna that we were headed there anyway,
because this is your first fair as our official, you know,
our ag guy for the county, but this is not
your first Dowllen County for tell me a little about
about your family, history of farming here in the in
the Allen County area and your role here.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Yeah, yep, So my great great grandfather settled in eastern
Allen County in the early nineteen hundreds. My grandfather was
born on the farm that I live at now, actually
in the same house that I was born and raised
that as well, right there at our home farm. We
have two houses back to back on the same driveway
at her home farm. Kind of unique, just south of
(03:22):
Herod over there on the eastern part. So yeah, And
then growing up, my dad went showed livestock at the
fair here. My older brother, he was two years older
than me, so he started showing beef steers when he
was nine. And then so I started hanging out here
when I was you know, seven, and he was nine.
And then after that when I turned nine, I started
showing fat steers as well, and all nine years showed
(03:42):
beef steers, showed chickens for two. But yeah, so I've
been here a lot and I love it, like I
said that, And then now in the capacity I am,
I get to spend more time at the fair. My
family and I are camping here for the first time
since I was eighteen years old. So it's kind of
like full circle if you will.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
It's got to make you feel good. I mean, because
you're you're a hometown guy. You get what it means
to be at the Allen County Fair. It's a big
deal for these kids.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Very much.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
So yeah, And like I said, we've got a lot
of great families that I've gotten to know, you know,
personally and professionally now working in the private industry here
in this county for a few years before I started
this role. So yeah, it's great to see some familiar
faces out and about. And like I said, great kids
from great families in our barns, And like I said,
it's a testament who they are and whether what they're
doing out there.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
As a part of your role, do you do any
judging during the fair?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Not during the fair? I did some.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
I did judge the FFA projects prior to the fair
for some of their projects like woodworking, welding and other things,
but they have not called me up yet to do
any actual judging during the fair.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
So some prior to but not right now, because.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
I was gonna think, I think that's got to be
the toughest job on the fair, and nobody ever talks
about them. But the judges, I mean, what a thankless
job that they do in every area. And you've got
another fan outside. Man, you bring more fans with you
guard than anybody we've had, good or bad.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
They're here, that's right. Yeah, but no, I agree with
your Russ. You know, the judging. My wife, she she
was raised in livestock industry. Excuse me, she she went
to Ohio State and was on the High State Livestock
and team judge all over the country doing that.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
And I've learned to appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Even more just from hearing her experiences and seeing what
she's been through, and you know where she's judged, She's
judged several county fairs across across Ohio. Doesn't do it anymore,
you know, with family and kids growing. But yeah, I've
learned to appreciate what they do. And I think it's,
like you said, a very thankless job. But it takes
one man or one woman's opinion, and that's where we're in.
That's where we end up at at the end of
(05:40):
the day.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
So one of the things I want to since I
saw we had you coming up on the schedule, I
thought let's talk a little bit about the extension service,
because I think a lot of people, I mean, I
think people would be surprised because they think of you
only as maybe farming and you know, hey, help me,
help me increase my fields on my corn field or
my bean field. But you've you field phone calls about hey,
(06:07):
what's this bug I found on my evergreen tree? Or
how come my grass isn't growing like it used to
in my yard? Talk about like what your job is
and what you do day to day to help the
people of Island County.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, yeah, and then very diverse. And that's what I
love about it.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
That's what kind of that's what I'm becoming compassionate about
in the job. I mean, I've got I've fielded phone
calls in this short seven months about you know, like
you said, grass problems, are their yard trees dying.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
We've seen a.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Rather large increase in disease pressure across you know, not
only in the fields or the agricultural fields this year,
but like I stated, the yards of the trees, the
ponds actually even as well, mostly due to the drought
that we had the year prior, right that really warm
and hot and dry late July August we had last year.
We can kind of remember that during the fair, I'm sure.
(06:56):
And yeah, we've seen a lot of problems stem from
that drought, and we're still seeing a little bit here
even this this summer too. But yeah, so diversity of things,
I'm still learning a little bit of that. I'll be
the first one to admit, right, my background is an
agriculture more in the actually private sector of farm business.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Side of things. So I got to learn a lot
to learn.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
And you know, I guess the natural resources and even
plant pathology or even the agronomy side of things on
the agriculture. So but as I go, the High State
is a good place to learn, and we continually teach
people and ourselves as well.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
It's what we thrive on.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Well, it's all part of the Land Land College, the
whole the land Mission.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yes, And and you know the thing is, yeah, every
county has a garth. But the thing is you're tying
into the Ohio State University Extension Service. So if you
don't know about a particular bug that's in that's in
all of a sudden in your flower beds, chances are
there's somebody at Ohio state that's very familiar with.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
That bug exactly, and even more local than you think,
you know. I mean, we've got a bug guy, we
call them our local entomologist over in Vanwork County, Curtis Young,
who actually was the extension agent here for a long time,
well until two thousand and nine. So, like I said,
a great resource. We've got a really wide, vast array
of people that know a lot of different things. And
then we've also got colleagues across the country, right, that's
what we call. We call them colleagues at Iowa State
(08:19):
and you know Purdue. You know, we lean on them
quite a bit too, and they lean on us for
certain things. So some people are better at things than others,
and we definitely find them.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
So when we're out here at the Allen County Fair,
we think about a lot about the Junior Fair. We've
been talking a lot about it on the podcast, and
we've been interviewing some very uh some some pretty impressive
young people. What do you let's talk about the future
of agriculture, because it's you know, you talk to kids.
There aren't a lot of kids that say, well, I
want to be a farmer now they you know, it's technology.
(08:49):
It's flashy stuff, but that technology is intermingled with agriculture,
and so how how does the future of agriculture look?
Speaker 3 (08:57):
You know, a week like this, it's hard not to
be you know, I guess optimistic about what we see, right,
but as the agriculture's industry, I mean as a whole
excuse me, you know, it's I think there's some challenges ahead,
right and that's any industry, of course, there's some growing
pains right now. I think in agriculture in Ohio, especially
(09:17):
in our part of Ohio, there's a lot of I'm
gonna call it industry money or outside agriculture money looking
to invest in agricultural ground because there we're not making
any more of it, right, So that's one thing.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
That that does worry.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Me at the end of the day, because we want
to continue some of these family farms or some of
these local farms. But there is, like I said, some
of that outside pressure, outside money pushing up against that
and definitely coming into this even now in County area,
right I mean, we've just seen three hundred acres here
north of Lina sold for a data center, which I'm
not combating a data center by any means. But it's
outside money coming into our industry and taking away some
(09:53):
of our production acres. So it's like I said, that's
one thing that I kind of look at that could be,
you know, a challenge. But challenges aren't always bad things, right.
We just got to find a way around them and
continue to thrive and what we do and be good
at what we do. But you know, there's a lot
of bright young minds out here at this fair and
I think that's one thing we need to keep looking at.
I think one day there's gonna be a lot smarter
(10:14):
than people than us, right, and they're gonna lead. They're
gonna lead agriculture the right way.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
You know, we talk about this, you know, of course
from the nutrient perspective, but we talk about it all
the time that it's projected that there are gonna be
another two and a half billion people in the world
by the year twenty fifty, and every day it seems
like we lose farm ground productive farm ground. And so
you try to figure out, how do we feed another
two and a half billion people in twenty fifty with
(10:41):
less farmland, And the only way we do it is
to get better, to figure out.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
A way to grow the yields.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Maybe maybe we can get two crop seasons out of
something that in the past we only got one. But
I would think that certainly keeps your office pretty busy.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
It does.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Yeah, and you know, it'll just look at this here
for instance, right, Yeah, I agree with it. We're having
an increase in population across the world and especially the
United States. And yeah, this year especially, we're gonna grow
record corn crop here in the United States as a whole. Right,
ninety four some million acres that had a record yield
of one eighty eight almost one eighty nine, which that
blows the previous actual record out by seven or eight
(11:18):
bushel So, yeah, we're gonna have record yields here. So,
like I said, we're getting pretty good at what we're doing, right,
But sometimes that can be a good thing, and sometimes
that can be a bad thing. And we're feeling a
little bit of that pressure right now.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
And you know, and I think the big other change
in agriculture is that it's a global issue.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
All of a sudden, you have.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
The Russia Ukraine war pop up, and it impacted prices
in Allen County for fertilizers for yields that the farmers
were earning because all of a sudden, it's not a
local supply in demand issue. It's a global supply in
demand issue. And so something that's on the other side
of the world, it impacts agriculture, impacts of agriculture.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Across the entire world very much. So, yeah, and that
and that whole altercation or war started. How long going,
we're still seeing repercussions from it. So, like I said,
I think you're exactly right when you say that things
like that can are go and affect us for quite
some time for sure.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
All right, So let's let's end on on a fun note.
So your office is here on the fair grounds. You're
walking through the fair every day, right, So there's a
lot of fair food out here, Darth. There's a lot
of fair food out here. Oh yeah, you've got to
have a favorite.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
I'm not gonna be very fun, right. So I was
born and I was born and raised in that that
cattle barn right over there, right. My family still works
a shift in this food stand every year. It's the cattlemans.
And I love me and I'm probably gonna go against
the grain here, but I like the burger better than
the Ribbi. I'm a burger guy, a cheeseburger guy.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
I love him.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
I think when they're cooked right here, they're even better. Uh,
that's gonna be my favorite. I do like some ice cream, though,
so for a sweet tooth guy, Jay and m ice
cream over here. The homemade ice cream is very good.
I hit them up. Every favorite flavor. I like the
cinnamon flavor. Yep, cinnamon very good.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
All right, Garth mcdormant, thanks for coming in and being
in our podcast today.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
No, I really really appreciate the time and having me here.
Thanks a lot, Russ, and.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
We want to thank our engineer Alex Will for making
us sound good, and our videographer and Decker for making
us look good. We'll see you next time at the
Allen County Fair
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