- [Narrator] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by (upbeat music) The Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU Extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, The Gallatin Gardeners Club, and the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

(upbeat music continues) - You are watching "Montana AG Live," originating today from the studios at KUSM and coming to you over your Montana Public television system.

I'm Jack Riesselman, retired professor of plant pathology.

Happy to be your host this evening.

Tonight's kind of a special night.

Tonight we're kicking off to celebrate Ag Week here at Montana State University.

Darrin bought in these beautiful hats just to let people know that we are celebrating our number one industry here in the state of Montana.

You know, I've been out talking to a lot of different groups this year.

One of the things we've looked at is how ag has evolved in the state of Montana.

It started with the mining industry when Conrad Kohrs, Grant-Kohrs Ranch, had 50,000 head of cattle on 10 million acres in Eastern Montana.

And I just read an article last week where the little town of Ingomar shipped 2,000,000 pounds of wool in 1910.

We had 6,600,000 sheep back then.

We don't have quite that industry anymore, but we do have a very viable industry, and the Montana Department of Ag is a big part of that, along with Montana State University.

And we'll get to that this evening.

The panel.

Darrin Boss.

Darrin wears many hats, and he doesn't have his celebrated ag hat on yet.

He's actually associate director of the Ag Experiment Station here, also superintendent at the Northern Ag Research Center up in Havre.

Darrin, thanks for coming down tonight.

Special guest tonight, Jillien Streit.

Jillien is director of Montana Department of Ag.

Happy to have her down here.

She's new to the job, so don't let that worry you.

If you have tough questions, make sure to call them in tonight and Jillien will give you the best answer she can.

Nicole Karwowski.

Nicole is an ag economist.

She's been on as a guest before.

She's sitting on the panel tonight to add some economic influence.

Economic questions tonight, make them tough because Nicole likes them really hard.

Michelle Flenniken, you know Michelle, she wants to be known as a virologist, but she's a bee rancher by trade, and she knows an awful lot about pollinators and honey bees.

So if you want to learn anything about that tonight or have questions concerning pollinators, you'll take them tonight, correct?

- That's right.

- All right.

Answering the phones tonight, Nancy Blake and Aishida Isha.

And Aishida is back.

She had such a good time last week, she volunteered to answer the phones again tonight.

And Nancy, Nancy is kind of a regular here and we appreciate that.

Jillien, tell us about what you're doing, a little bit about where you came from up at Chester, what your family does, so forth and so on.

- Yeah, my family, we have the pleasure of running a fifth generation Montana family farm and turning into a little bit of a ranch as well.

My husband and I, we raise a lot of different crops.

Chickpeas, peas, lentils, wheat, durum, barley.

But my favorite crop to raise is that sixth generation Montana farmers and ranchers.

We've got three kids, they're all very interested in agriculture.

And so we've always been very passionate about continuing to increase opportunities in agriculture in the state of Montana.

My husband and I partnered with friends when we were very young and we started a pulse processing facility called Stricks Ag up there.

It was a value added processing facility where we shipped chickpeas, peas, and lentils to 35 different countries and also worked with domestic food companies here in the US to create a marketplace for the pulse crops that we were growing on our farm.

In January, I got a phone call from the governor who offered me this incredible opportunity to do what I love, and that's advocate for agriculture, advocate for farmers and ranchers, and really have an influence that hopefully we can be positive with and work with an amazing department, the Department of Agriculture at the State of Montana.

- It's a very diverse department.

And one of the things I've always appreciated are your trade missions.

And I know you probably get involved with those.

Have you been on any trade missions yet where you're promoting our products to different countries?

- Yes, I have had an awesome opportunity in this first year.

I have been in Panama, I've been in Peru, Colombia, back to Panama on a follow-up, and then also just got home from South Korea and Japan where we went on the trade mission with the governor.

- Okay, thank you.

We'll get back to you.

I've got some questions here and I have a few from email and we do take email questions and Facebook questions, and they come up on this little screen in front of me.

And as I've often said, if you don't like this program, if you find it boring, you can make it a lot livelier by phoning in your questions and we'll give it our best shot.

Michelle, one here.

This person is worried about honeybees, but she wants to know, and this is from Bozeman, are there more species of honeybees than just regular honeybees?

- So honeybees that you probably think of, that produce honey and pollinate many fruit, nuts, and other crops, they are Apis mellifera.

That's their genus and species name.

But there are hundreds of different bee and there are thousands in North America.

And so there's one species of honey bee that produces honey that she's probably thinking of that lives in the colony with 40,000 individuals, and that's Apis mellifera.

But we have hundreds of different bee species here and actually at MSU, Mike Ivie and Casey Delphia lead a group looking at Montana bee taxonomy and trying to understand those native and wild bees.

Many of them nest in the ground.

Of course, we have loads of native bumblebee pollinators as well.

Those are important for pollinating your tomatoes and things like that, but yeah.

- Michelle, can I ask a question?

What's the gross revenues from our beekeepers in Montana?

- So we provide over 200,000 colonies.

So Montana is a big beekeeping state for pollination services all over the US.

Montana typically ranks in the top five for honey production.

I think it's around $20 million.

But I'd have to double-check that number.

- Outstanding.

Thank you, sorry.

- No, that's a great question, but, Jillien, I didn't realize this, and you may not have worked with this, but Montana economically is one of the top 10 honey producing states in the United States.

I'll ask Darrin.

I like to pick on here.

Do you know what the number one honey producing state in the United States is?

I gotcha.

- I don't know it, but I'll take a stab.

How about California?

- Wrong.

North Dakota.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

38 million pounds a year is honey produced in North Dakota.

So it's a sweet state.

- I was gonna say, I didn't know polkas and bees went together.

(panelists laughing) Jillien, I've got a couple questions.

I have one for Nicole that's come in.

But Jillien, I'll hit you first.

What does the Montana Department of Agriculture do for the consumer?

- Yeah, so there's a lot of things that the Montana Department of Agriculture does for the consumer.

And one of those things is to make sure that the products in which our producers are using, like our pesticides and our fertilizers, meet the labels that are on those packaging.

So it helps us to be able to produce wholesome and good foods.

We also work with, we have a produce program, an organics program.

We do a lot of marketing development.

So when you're learning about food in the state of Montana, some of those educational things or those marketing things that are helping you to get closer to those Montana products, we help facilitate that.

I know our produce program works with the grocery stores here in the state to make sure that they are following the regulations set forth by the state of Montana.

And so we work a lot with the consumer through the producer and through the industry.

- I have a follow-up for that one.

Do you also provide food to the schools, too?

I think I've heard about something about that program or link producers with the schools.

- Yeah, so we have been working with that.

One of the things that we did this last year was called the Montana Marinara program, where we worked with the Office of Public Instruction to get marinara sauce, that is, the tomatoes and everything are processed here in the state of Montana and to get those into our school systems.

- Okay, thank you.

Nicole, this person remembers when you were on before, and they know that one of your passions is wetland conservation.

They want to know whether or not it pays to maintain wetlands.

And is there programs available that make it somewhat financially feasible?

- This is a good question.

So one of my recent papers actually looks at the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, which was formerly the Wetland Reserve Program.

And what we do is we look at the benefits of 1.7 million acres of wetland restorations that have been done in the Mississippi River Basin.

In the past 30 years, we've seen that these wetlands have done a really great job at reducing nutrient pollution.

And so what we do in this paper is we translate those nutrient benefits into cost savings for these public water systems.

So where do we get our water from?

A lot of these companies have to translate the nutrients, have to filter out the nutrients out of the water.

And we're finding that these lead to thousands of dollars of benefits each year.

So we find that these wetland easements actually break even after around 20 to 30 years, just through these water quality savings.

- So we've had federal cutbacks in NRCS conservation programs, and I assume some other federal programs that are geared toward conservation.

Does Montana have some conservation programs?

The Department of Ag?

- At the Department of Ag, we don't directly have conservation programs.

Those are ran through the DNRC at this point in time.

But what we've been able to help with for producers, especially at this point in time, where the FSA offices maybe aren't open at this point in time, and they need maybe a bridge loan because they can't get their cow calf check, or they can't get their commodities check because it has to be signed off with the FSA.

We were able to give out small loans to help producers with cash flow.

We also have loan and grant programs for first-time farmers, for beginning farmers, for people who would like to study more in farming.

And so, yeah, we try to help with a lot of different grant and loan programs, and we try to cover as large of a swath as we can, but we are limited in the funding.

- Okay, thank you.

Great answer.

We had a question, two questions here about value added, and I'll take those in a minute.

But I do want to promote something here at Montana State University.

I keep forgetting to do that, but Montana State University and the University of Montana both have a program called OLLI and it stands for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

And these are for people that are 55 and older.

You've talked to them.

It's a great group, and you can learn a lot from them.

I wish I had students when I was teaching that were as attentive as these groups are.

- [Jillien] I agree.

- Yeah, absolutely.

If you want to join this, just get online and you can find OLLI.

And it's a program that I really would suggest you enjoy.

Value added.

You mentioned value added on your pulse crops and so forth.

Darrin, you've talked about in the past, MSU has a value-added initiative.

Why don't you tell the viewers what some of these value-added things that we might be able to accomplish here in this state?

And how do you work with the Department of Ag and vice versa?

- Well, it's an interesting concept.

We've been talking about value added my entire career.

And in my actually research project that I started 30 some years ago was adding value to beef cattle.

And really we have been very difficult to find exactly what that might mean.

You know, we do add value through genetics, through AI, but really, how do we break down components in the state of Montana, whether it be in manufacturing, whether it be product things.

And let's just take a really simple example that a lot of people can understand.

If we increase our oilseed production, we fractionate that oilseed, we bring it in, we harvest it, we bring it in, we crush it.

Take the oil, fractionate the oil and get the omega 3 fatty acids, maybe the gamma tocopherols, move those to the makeup industry.

So we're moving a small fraction of the product out to somewhere else or out of Montana, right?

Then we take the rest of the oil and we collaborate with a company in Montana to do sustainable aviation fuel.

From there, we rail across the street, take all the meal over there and now we make beef cattle, beef cattle pellets out of leftover meal, that's 60% of the diet.

That's kind of a closed circle idea.

I jokingly say the most value added I've added to Montana recently is by tires.

I rail in fertilizer, I rail my crops out, I bring calf feed in, I send my calves out.

So I'm tired of buying tires.

Let's see how we can all get on the same side of the page with the Montana Department of Ag and push this forward.

And we're seeing us as the R&D component.

Once we get some ideas and some economically possible things, then we can partner with Jill and her crew and they could push it out and commercialize it and move it through the state of Montana is how I see it, anyways, Jill.

- Yeah, I absolutely agree.

And so for me, it's personal with the value add.

We had pulse crops that were being taken off of the field thresher ran, put into, like you said, trucks and shipped either to Canada or to North Dakota, or we had a couple of different pulse processing facilities in the state at the time.

And so we decided, hey, let's take these products, let's clean them up here.

Let's add jobs to our community.

Let's add value to these products by actually taking something away from them that is inhibiting it.

Let's separate the chickpeas into the six different size categories that they are, or the lentils into the different color categories that they are, put them in a package, and sell them for a lot more so that our producers here can get a larger margin, we can have those jobs that are here in the state.

And really that's what value added is.

It's taking the things that we have here in the state and turning them into the products that are used by the consumer on the other end.

And so at the Department of Agriculture, we're very excited about the Growth Through Agriculture grant and loan program is where we are able to have a lot of impact on this value add.

You can see that across the state, we have touched very, just in this last year, in 2024, if they have the graphic that they can show, you can see where we've touched across the state of Montana.

These projects hit a ton of little towns, they hit big towns.

They are from beef tallow turning into cosmetic, to pulse crops getting cleaned, to simple value add.

You know, tons of different value add concepts.

And so working with the university systems to help us with the science behind these things, the studies behind it, is amazing.

And then we also like to work with a lot of companies that want to come into our state and put boots on the ground is how I say it, come into our state and build infrastructure and build jobs.

- Okay, Nicole, anybody in the Department of Economics working on value added at MSU?

- We definitely have a few faculty.

I think Eric Belasco is the easiest one to name that's working on value added in agriculture.

- [Jack] So call Eric.

- Yes, I'm less familiar with it.

- Some of the successes, Jack, have been recently with the big push through the Department of Ag to increase our local harvesting facility for livestock.

And that now that we can direct market to these people, we can live off that Montana brand and ship it to LA, we can ship it to California, we can direct market.

And I think that's been a huge thing for some of our beef and lamb producers.

- On that note, and I've been to several livestock functions over the last three years.

It's impressive.

But there are more and more ranchers that are finishing beef on grass and sawing their own meat.

And is that market really viable in the state?

Can they process enough beef to make it economically feasible to sell beef off the ranch?

- They wouldn't be doing if they weren't making money, Jack.

I mean, ranchers and farmers are probably the most money-wise people I know in that they may try it, they may tip their foot in or dip their toe in, but if they're not going to make money and it's not going to be sustainable, they're not going to do it very long, right?

That's why we always tell, we jokingly, all our research is that it's got to be economically viable research and equally viable trends that we're pushing back out to our producers.

So yeah, I think so.

It's really about the niche.

I mean, if you're going to do grass fat beef, you got to get the right niche.

You got to hit the right white tablecloth thing.

And usually the steaks and the high-ends are not the problem.

It's the low-end cuts.

It's what are we going to do with the chuck, what are we going to do with the rind, what are we going to do with the burger?

So you have to get combined on Guy Fieri's grass fed hamburger meat, right?

You know, find that niche and you should be okay.

- Okay, thank you.

Quick question for Michelle, and that is can you raise beef, bees on federal or state land like BLM or forest service land?

- Yeah.

I think that with the proper permissions, then you can.

So the Montana Department of Ag, actually apiculture specialists, they have specific sites where you can place your bees.

So that's regulated by the state.

And so I think you can get in touch and do that when necessary.

I think in general and other places I know, not in Montana per se, but the east coast, southeast, where they have things like the rusty patch bumblebee that are endangered, then they avoid kind of that overlap.

But in general where they get to get a permit, they can do that.

- Can you have beehives in towns?

- You can have beehives in towns.

Here in Bozeman, for example, they recommend that you check with your neighbors and things like that.

And if you're going to have them in town, it's a good idea to have them like fly towards a wood fence so they fly up and over instead of like in everybody's direct line of traffic.

- [Darrin] My bees would be hitting all the fence.

It's not that bright.

- They go up and over.

- Okay, enough about bees for a second.

(panelists laughing) Question from Whitefish.

Interesting one.

It's for Jillien.

The caller mentioned a new restaurant in Chester, Montana that makes chickpea pizza crust and said it's the most amazing pizza crust they'd ever had.

He is wondering if Jillien knows anything about supplying pizza flour to restaurants and other places across Montana and outside.

Are you familiar with that place?

- You know, I'm really familiar with that place.

(panelists laughing) My husband and I actually, before I took the job as the director of agriculture, that was my thing that I was going to do.

We were done with our pulse processing facility.

We had sold our shares in that, and I wanted to run a restaurant in town and value added chains.

So yeah, we started 1st Street Mercantile there in Chester, Montana.

And what's really cool about that chickpea crust is it comes from Banza.

Banza is a chickpea manufacturing company that we worked with when I talk about the domestic marketplace.

So Banza creates all of their pasta and their pizza crusts and their rice from chickpeas.

And a majority of those chickpeas are grown in the state of Montana.

And so it is just a total value-add chain from the growers that are growing the in Chester to us being able to serve those gluten-free pizza crusts from Banza at our restaurant there.

- So I may have to take a road trip and try that.

It sounds pretty good up there.

- And so we're also utilizing Montana wheat in our dough flour, in our other flours.

And so yeah, it's just really cool.

We're trying to incorporate as many Montana products into that restaurant as we possibly can.

- [Michelle] Can do the Montana Marinara too.

- Yeah, exactly.

- [Michelle] There you have it.

- You can find that Banza in Montana grocery stores.

I've seen it plenty of times.

- It's sold all over the place.

Actually, when I was in Panama, I was at the grocery store because I love going to grocery stores in foreign countries.

- [Jack] So do I.

- You learn so much.

And yeah, there was Banza being sold in the Panamanian grocery store.

So I thought that was really cool.

- That is kind of neat.

Quick question for Darrin, and this may be a curve ball.

It's from Bonner.

And the caller has very dense clay soil on his property.

He's been told he needs to ameliorate it with gypsum.

Can he use liquid calcium?

- That is definitely not a question for Darrin.

If it was, no, I would say Clain Jones, our extension specialist, would be the best one.

And if you need his contact information, reach out to me, and I'd be happy to get it to him.

Tight clay soils are difficult, but I'm not an expert by any means.

Now if you wanted cow manure on it, I'm your guy.

- I thought I'd give you a shot.

Interesting email question.

With the federal office shut down, has the Department of Ag stepped in to help with producers' needs?

- Yeah, and so I kind of mentioned that earlier with when the FSA offices have been closed, we've been able to provide a couple of bridge loans for producers that need it.

You know, just the capital on that side of it.

I feel it on the daily, as a farmer, a farm wife, farm mom, we're doing our budgets, we're trying to get things, trying to get our crop insurance things in.

We're trying to get our maps so that we can seed.

So I mean, I definitely feel it.

But the Department of Agriculture at the state is set up to do what it has been doing and then to just overnight have to take on a lot of federal programs.

That's just not the way it's set up.

And so we feel you, we hear you, we're advocating for you every single week.

We're talking about to DC.

We're talking to FSA here in the state.

We know that getting people in the chairs at the FSA offices needs to be a top priority.

We understand it personally and at the department.

And so yeah, we are advocating for you, but we don't have the ability to just create programs overnight.

It has to go through legislature.

It has to have its parameters around it.

And so understanding our limitation, but we are here to help and to listen and to advocate in any way, shape, or form that we can.

- Okay, thank you.

Follow up question on the value-added pulse crops between Jillien and our economist Nicole.

This person would like to know, has the trade, a lot of our pulse crops go to Canada, has the tariffs impacted the profitability of our pulse producers shipping stuff to Canada?

- Absolutely.

Yeah, it absolutely has.

Tariffs affect the market prices, and our market prices across the entire board are down.

And so the profitability of it, yeah, is going to be impacted on the daily, and unfortunately we're price takers in the state of Montana with a lot of our commodities that we sell abroad or even domestically.

But what I will say is that there are opportunities for our producers, and as ourselves on our farm, we look at ROI instead of yield, and that's been a big change for us in our profitability.

We stopped chasing high-yielding crops and we started chasing ROI.

So return on investment on every acre.

So there's different things that we can do as producers and should be doing as producers to diversify our income streams, stack enterprise, and be able to be profitable even in times like this.

- Okay, Nicole, you have anything to add?

- I guess just to add is the trade war has definitely made it harder for exports for exporting to happen.

I saw a statistic the other day that export exports are down 40% since last year.

And a lot of that, as Jillien mentioned, is, well, if we have retaliatory tariffs in places like China and Canada, that's what's increasing the prices of our goods going there.

And we're also feeling squeezed on this side as producers are importing things like fertilizers, equipment, and seeds.

That's also hurting their profits.

- No doubt about that.

Folks, the phones are kind of quiet suddenly, so the phone number's up on the screen.

If you have questions tonight, good chance to get them answered.

Comments?

Absolutely.

We love comments, I do screen them, but other than that they're really not too bad.

And I do like comments from those of you who are watching the program.

We're on the economics.

This person says, "Wheat prices are in the tank," and we know that.

They're also concerned that we're going to lose our spring wheat market to Canadian markets.

Is there some concern about, number one, losing our markets to Canada for spring wheat?

And number two, I've been told a lot of people are not seeding winter wheat because the price is so low.

So have at it.

And Darrin, you can be kind of quiet for a minute, but then you can jump in.

Okay.

- Prices are bad.

We're down 7% this year.

The current futures price of wheat is about $5.20 per bushel.

That's a five-year minimum.

Our prices are low.

One of the reasons is because internationally supply is doing really well.

So the top eight exporters have all had record harvests.

And that has not been the case in Montana.

We had a pretty rough spring wheat season with some erratic weather.

And so that's been really tough on producers coupled with those low prices.

- Okay, what about losing the markets, do you think?

Yeah, I'll let Jillien jump on that one.

- Yeah, it's hard anytime that there's a tariff situation or these things that the chance of losing your market is something that's a top priority on top on our minds.

That's what why we were doing the trade missions to Tokyo and Japan.

It was very timely.

And going to those marketplaces and showing them that Montana is still here, going to Panama, going to Colombia, going to Peru.

We're working on creating new marketplaces.

And so while it is difficult, we really want to push the business-to-business because the government sometimes can get in the way.

But business-to-business and that long-term, long-lasting consistency matters.

It has always mattered to the millers in South Korea that they have a direct connection to Montana products, so much that they put infrastructure into our state.

They own parts of EGT, Columbia Grain, Gavilon.

All of these companies actually have South Korean or Japanese ownership.

So that tells you that they're here, but we need to keep them here by continuing to produce the high-quality products that we produce, continuing to foster those relationships.

And yeah, I know that this is the first time since 1912 that winter wheat is not being planted on our family's farm.

And that's a real thing because like I said, we look at ROI, we ran the numbers, and it didn't work for us to do it this year.

It's a hard reality, but we have to look at those things and adapt to it.

- Darrin, I'll throw this towards you.

I've heard several guys that are instead of winter wheat, stab moisture, they're putting in cover crops because they have cattle to use, and they feel they can make more money with cattle and cover crops.

Your experience with that?

- Yeah, we did an eight-year project at Northern Ag Research Center that we're just wrapping up.

And although we wanted to have amazing bacterial populations happen in the soil, a lot of infiltration, we just didn't see that after eight years, by putting cover crops in.

But the really good news is we didn't crash the system like we did in the early 90s when we intensified and took fallow out of the rotations, right?

And what really returned, what showed in our trial, our return on investments is putting livestock and specifically cattle.

So if I can graze that cover crop or I can fill in a forage niche, whether it be grazing or spring or fall, like right now in the Hi-Line, we got three to five inches of rain.

End of July and August, there's some tremendous warm season crops for cattle.

People are turning their cows on right now.

So if we can weather the storm, because our soils are so long to change, it takes time.

If we can weather the storm by having cattle or sheep grazing that to get you where a new regenerative type of soil where you're reducing your inputs, whatever it might be.

That's how I see us weathering the storm till we get those soils changed.

And I use the example that when we went from no till, from tilling to no till, it was 30 years where people finally picked up a half a percent, maybe 1% on rocky soils of organic matter.

So it's going to take time for Montana soils to change.

So we got to figure out how to make it profitable.

Return on investment.

We just can't lose money in our operations.

- You just talking about changing soil structures, and this again is not in your bailiwick, but are you seeing acidification of soils up in the Hi-Line?

- Throughout all over.

We started seeing it in the Highwood, Bench, and come all the way through the triangle, all the way to Havre.

And now we're seeing it various places in the state.

It's related to low yields and high commercial fertilizer application and not be able to mine that quick enough.

- [Jack] And no tillage.

- Yep.

- Okay, thank you.

Great answers.

Michelle.

This person is curious about pollinators, especially bees.

They would like to know what crops in Montana are bees pollinating?

- Yeah.

So of course you have the Montana cherries and the flathead, and then the alfalfa when they let it go to seed, so alfalfa seed, that's leaf-cutter bees.

And those are involved in pollinating those crops.

Any, like squash, other fruit plants.

But most of the bees in Montana are actually moved to the Central Valley of California, where they play a key role in pollinating the almond crop down there.

And that requires over 2 million colonies, around 2 million colonies of bees for that single crop alone.

And during late March and early February when almonds bloom, there are no native or wild bee pollinators there to pollinate that crop.

So commercial beekeepers all over the US use flatbed trucks, drive their bees to pollinate the almond crop, and then bring them back to Montana wildflowers and our crops here.

- Okay, thank you.

I do know that they used to just winter bees down there for basically no charge, but now it's about $150 per hive, and it takes two hives per acre of almonds to pollinate them.

So that's a little profit center for Montana bee producers.

- Right, I think most beekeepers make most of their profit from pollination services.

A few still rely on honey.

- Okay, thank you.

I'll get to this one in a minute.

- [Darrin] That's not good.

- Caller is interested in pork production in Montana.

Could Montana pork be used to produce high-end salami and things like that?

That's a tough question.

We really, you can always say, yes, but it's a tough, it's not like Virginia hams, but we don't grow many hogs in the state other than Hutterite colonies and a few specialty producers.

Is there a reason why you don't have a lot more hogs here other than we're worried about the wild hogs coming in?

- I think it was an industry that was built in the Midwest on low-priced corn.

And so when the swine got consolidated and industrialized into barns, it all was out throughout the Midwest.

Now, Jane Ann, I hear Bowles is going to be on next week, is it or two weeks from now?

She might be able to answer that and talk about some specialty products and some of that would be more appropriate.

- Good point, I'll save that and ask her.

I'm not going to warn her, because it's more fun if you don't warn somebody.

Helena, interesting comment, and this came in via email.

Caller thinks that more can be done to promote local processors, like, bring out the names, Feddes Meats out at Amsterdam or Montana Flour and Grains.

Would the panel comment on that?

I'll start with you, Nicole.

What do you think?

- Could more be done for, I think so.

And I actually, I'm going to pitch this question to Jillien.

- Okay, that's fair.

- I think she's the expert in marketing some of these wonderful assets that Montana has.

- Yeah, absolutely.

I think more can be done.

I think telling the story is extremely important.

I think local production and putting local foods on local plates is very important.

And so one of the things that we're looking at is in 2026, we're going to be hosting a Governor's Local Food and Ag Summit here in Montana.

And they do this about every 10 years.

And every time that they do this summit, they come up with different ideas and different ways that they can facilitate helping these local processors.

So from the last Food and Ag Summit, we developed the FADCs, which is the Food and Egg Development Centers that are across the state of Montana.

These food and ag development centers work with people in their local communities to do exactly what we're talking about.

Marketing, intel, feasibility studies, financing, working through federal grants, state grants, and help to really build and bolster Montana's food security.

- That's good.

Good answer.

Okay, I'm going to do another promotion.

I've been meaning to get this on for two or three weeks.

I keep forgetting to do it.

It's a publication called "Pest Problems and Identification of Ornamental Shrubs and Trees in Montana."

This is currently out of hard print, but you can get that online just by looking up that name of the publication or contacting extension stores.

I got a question here that came in via email, and we touched on this a little bit last week.

I'll let Nicole hit it again.

The government shutdown, is it impacting our producers very much?

- Definitely, and I think so, we've been shut down for 31, 32 days.

We're almost at this, we're at the second-longest shutdown in US history.

And for agricultural producers, I think the biggest hurdle is accessing those FSA offices, those NRCS offices.

And these are places that process disaster aid payments, things like crop insurance, conservation payments.

Of course, with having a rough season, it's especially hard on producers who aren't able to get that help.

Fortunately, I think 10 days into the shutdown there was partial reopening of some of these FSA office, and the Trump administration is planning to put $12 billion towards helping producers impacted by these trade wars.

And I believe that $3 billion of that is currently in circulation.

So I do think there's some hope of it getting better.

- You know, we talked about low prices on winter wheat, and the administration has brokered some deals to help the soybean producers.

Anything like that happening with wheat?

Do we have any programs, government administration programs that are going to be beneficial to wheat producers in this state?

- Yeah, I would say on not like acutely directed at wheat, but there are different things that are happening.

There is a trade deal that was just worked out with South Korea, and there's billions of dollars that South Korea has said that they are going to invest into US, into infrastructure and into the things that they, so those could end up working with us.

That when we were over there in South Korea, we met with these companies and said, "Hey, Montana's open for business.

We would love to help you help us.

Let's get you guys on the ground here.

Let's invest into wheat market here so that you guys can get the product that you so desire."

Japan, the president was just in Japan, so really looking forward to seeing what's happening there.

Any of those marketplaces that are important to Montana, as these trade deals happen, will have an impact on Montana ag products.

And we always say we want trade, not aid as producers, period.

And so anytime that we can get good trade deals done, it will have a positive impact on Montana agricultural products.

- [Jack] Okay, thank you.

- Maybe a shout out.

Jack, real quick is the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee works heavily on it, I think, I talked to Kent the other day and they've hosted 10 different millers, bakers, out of country people.

And so we work with them a great deal because of the grants and that we do.

But they sure work on that really hard for producers of Montana to develop those markets that Jill's talking about.

- Hopefully it'll bring the prices back up shortly.

- One last thing to add, building on that trade summit in South Korea.

So China has also agreed to take off some of those retaliatory tariffs, which include wheat and beef.

So I'm hoping that we'll see some exports there as well.

- Okay, good point.

Thank you.

Couple questions for bees.

Number one, are there any bad bees?

And that came from Bozeman.

- Wow, I can't think of a bad bee.

That's a fast one.

- Well, what about that?

- Okay, so that's a hornet.

It's a wasp.

But yeah, the hornet.

There's some, a couple invasive hornets.

I think it's a green or yellow hornet in the Southeast.

And then there's these hornets that have come into the Northwest as well, that they're really trying to continue and curtail those, because they come into honeybee colonies and decimate them.

But actually, that's another group.

I was just at a meeting in Virginia last week, and the people that monitor for those kind of invasive hornets are they work for the federal government or have some government funding, and so a lot of those surveillance programs are down now, too.

- But what about the African honey, the Apis?

- So there's different kind of subspecies of honeybees, and one of them is Apis mellifera scutellata, and that's what's referred to as the African honeybee.

But really, so that's some different genetics.

So far, it hasn't gone in this northern latitudes.

It's there in Mexico, South America, they're a bee that swarms more, more aggressive, and occasionally we get them here in Montana, but then they don't last the winter here.

So that's good news for us at least.

- All right, got that one.

And from Helena, what are the latest developments in combating mites in bees and improving bee health?

- Great.

So that's a very good question for all beekeepers.

Varroa destructor mites are the number one problem for bees.

They were introduced from Asia in the late 1980s and have decimated colonies in their own right.

But they also serve to transmit viruses as well.

There's some organic acids, formic acid, oxalic acid that are proving to be good.

We've seen some resistance with Amitraz, and unfortunately, the US experienced about 60% honeybee losses in February this year.

So that's a big deal.

They're seeing some Amitraz resistance.

So a miticide resistance.

I was just at a conference last weekend in Virginia, and there was an RNA interference-based treatment against mites, keeping that mite reproductive system at bay, when you have, when you have low enough mites.

If your mites are overrun, you got to go back to those acids or Amitraz.

But there are new things on the horizon.

But that's been a major push for the research efforts is new miticide.

- Okay, thank you.

We learned something there.

From Havre, your stomping grounds.

- [Darrin] Oh, no.

- But it isn't for you.

- [Darrin] Good.

Okay.

They'd like to find out a little bit more about the food and ag development centers in the Department of Agriculture.

Can you explain what they are?

- Yeah.

So they're located throughout the state.

I think that there's an infographic that so you can see the locations of them.

But in Havre, your food and ag development center is actually hosted through the Bear Paw Development Authority.

And so you would go into them and they will have a person that specializes in the different programs for food and ag development that can get you the resources and work with you through grants, loans, an FADC that I really, the system itself is set up to enhance agriculture, enhance these products, but it's also so that we don't duplicate.

So the FADC that we have over in Ravalli County has a test kitchen.

And so people from across the entire state go to Ravalli County to work through their test kitchen there for different products that they want to start.

So we have a group out in eastern Montana that does beef jerky that she does, she drives all the way over to Ravalli County because we have to utilize our assets as best as we can.

But it's been able to help her to develop the recipes that she needs, test out different things before she invests into the commercial-grade kitchen herself.

And so that's a good example of some of the ways that the FADCs work.

- Okay, thank you.

Interesting program.

Pretty popular, I assume.

- [Jillien] Yes.

- And it's becoming more popular as our commodity prices drop.

- Yeah, I think it's becoming more popular as people are more willing to look at value add and understand how they can bring different things into the marketplace here in Montana.

So I think, yeah, it's a great program.

We have a lot of exceptional things coming out of the food and ag development centers and wonderful people working there that absolutely are 100% professional, understand where they can help these producers.

Or if you're not, even if you're not a producer, you don't have to be an agricultural producer to go into a food and ag development center and get help to start a restaurant, utilize Montana flours and grains, figure out a new recipe.

There's tons of different applications for people to work with the food and ag development centers.

- Great program.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Darrin, from Simpson.

Where is Simpson, Montana?

- [Michelle] In Montana.

(chuckles) - Good point.

You know, I think people are trying to trick us, every week we get some.

- To stump your new ones, right?

- Yeah, some new ones.

But I know that's the first call we've had from Simpson.

This person would like to know.

They have a lot of low-quality hay, very low protein.

Can they still feed it?

And if they do feed it, how can they enhance the protein?

- No, that's a good question.

We quite often get this question in the fall of how do we get through winter as we start doing our hay budgets.

And so I have been hearing a lot of 6, 7, 8-protein hay out there.

And so when we talk about that, we first want to find the most limiting nutrient with that hay so we can maximize the hay they have on hand.

So some of the options are various types of protein cakes, natural protein cakes, or other supplements that may stimulate the digestibility of that forage.

So by using a high-protein supplement, a cake, whatever it can be, high-protein alfalfa, we actually stimulate the rumen to digest those low-quality forages better, makes through better passage, and then increases our intake.

And I always try to encourage people when you're comparing, if you have the same mineral package, pretty much the same and all-natural supplement to put it on a pound per protein basis.

So if you're feeding 4 pounds of a low protein, like a 14 or 15 protein cake, versus a 1 pound of a 28 protein cake, as long as it's all natural, compare it on a pound per protein basis so you know how much you're getting into the animal.

So again, I think the buzzword for today is return on investments, so.

- Okay, I've got another question, but we've had a couple of people ask and phone in about the name of this book.

It's "Pests, Problems, and Identification of Ornamental Shrubs and Trees in the State of Montana."

Extension would have copy, don't have copies anymore, but they can tell you how to get this online.

It's a great publication that has what I call easy to analyze pictures in it.

And pictures are sometimes worth a lot of words.

We touched on this last week when Eric Belasco was here and I'm going to throw it to Darrin because he was talking about alfalfa a moment ago.

We're seeing more alfalfa being produced in the state, probably in response to low prices for some of our more traditional commodities, but our cattle numbers are down.

And honestly, Darrin, I have seen alfalfa stocks or stacks here in Gallatin Valley that have been there for three years.

They're not moving.

Why are we producing more alfalfa for less cattle?

- Well, I think a lot of the people that I've known that have transitioned into an alfalfa are exporting that to the dairies in Idaho.

So as we saw larger expansions up through that I-90 corridor, we saw a lot of people trying to take advantage of that.

I think the current price of fertilizer, low wheat, are having people transition into a perennial.

Some of the philosophy when I've talked to people about that is put a perennial in, try and rebuild some organic matter, eventually take it back out, maybe mine those nutrients for a few years.

So they're to trying incorporate perennials into their rotations to try and take advantage of those rooting depths and all that stuff for a while.

- Price of alfalfa?

- I haven't looked this year, but it came down quite a bit from the past two years and what the drought is, we're actually sitting pretty good on haystacks.

I mean, it's funny to me seeing hay's going all over, but some people had a pretty good hay year, so.

- Okay, thank you.

Partnerships.

This person would like to know how MSU and the Department of Ag interact on, he says, a daily basis.

I doubt it's a daily basis, but there is a lot of interaction.

So have at it, guys.

- I would actually say that it is kind of close to a daily basis.

One of the biggest interactions that I know that I've experienced thus far is actually through our Specialty Crop Block Grant.

And we work with MSU and many of the researchers to fund vital programs and vital research that helps us to build out our specialty crops across the state.

So it's going to be like honey, it's going to be pulses, it's going to be potatoes.

So those are those value added things that are, sorry, those are those, I would say, diverse things that are helping us to add value to our state.

And it's almost on the daily that someone from the Department of Ag is visiting with one of those researchers on what they're doing, how they're doing it, and helping to facilitate that needed research.

- Yeah, so I would add to that, my lab studies viruses that infect both honeybees and seed potato crops.

And we've had several Montana Department of Ag Specialty Crop Block Grants that have supported student researchers, scientists, and they've been great.

And especially they're really important for seed money.

That gets us some pilot studies and some initial data that then we can take that data and then apply for a much larger federal grants from the USDA and the National Science Foundation.

And that's bringing, I would say, a value add to Montana.

We're bringing those dollars in, federal taxpayer dollars, to support science and research here in Montana.

That's important to Montana and important to the US and the world as well.

But those Specialty Crop Block Grants kind of give us a start.

Then we can apply for those larger funds.

- And we also operate through the Wheat and Barley Committee.

That's going to be grower checkoff dollars.

And those dollars are going towards research when it comes to new breeding programs, when it comes to sawfly and different things like that.

And so the Wheat and Barley Committee, which is part of the Montana Department of Agriculture, also works with MSU on the daily on those kinds of programming.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- Most of the commodity group things run through that type of work with the pulse crop.

Montana Fertilizer Assessment Committee, Jill talked about testing some of the fertilizer.

There's an assessment there that goes to research to drive economic and relevant work for the producer.

So it's all, I would say it is a daily basis.

Somebody within our university or somewhere is touching or talking to one of Jill's staff or something, whether it be herbicide, you name it, I think we're there.

It's a great synergy.

- We borrow a lot of Department of Ag staff to sit on here.

Entomologists, rodent control specialists, and they're great.

And you do have some really good staff, so I'll compliment you there.

Quick question, and this is a good one.

And we're getting down on time, so we're going to cut the answers pretty short.

Does chickpea flour have enough gluten, or stickability, I think is the term, to make a good crust?

- Absolutely.

Check it out.

Banza pasta.

They've done a fabulous job.

And what's really great about it is that there's only, in their pasta, there's only three ingredients, and so it's very pure.

- And that said, I think it lacks gluten.

So that's why people with celiacs and So stickability is the better word because no gluten in that chickpea pasta, I think.

- Okay.

Nicole, this person would like to know why fertilizer prices are so high right now.

And they said, "Other input costs," and I would say that's true.

You know, commodity prices are down, input prices are up, so the balance isn't there.

Is there a particular reason economically?

- I think the easiest answer is the tariffs that we've seen in this past year.

I think the fertilizer tariff rates are about 8, 9% higher this year than last year.

So, again, it's those tariffs that are leading to higher costs for producers.

- So in that respect, are producers not using as much fertilizer?

- Yes.

So you're seeing producers trying to adapt, as always, trying to focus on that ROI and trying to increase their profits.

So you've seen some producers trying to switch to split applications.

So instead of one dose of fertilizer in the beginning, they split it up throughout the growing season to try to increase yields.

And you've also seen some folks try to go towards things like pulse crops, which need less fertilizer as well.

- [Jack] All right.

- One quick thing about that.

The other people are doing precision agriculture and doing targeted rates for different parts of their fields, and that too.

So I think there's a real plus.

Everybody's dialing the notch up.

- We're even seeing drones applying the fertilizer, which are really cool.

One of my students in my farm and ranch management class actually pitched a drone company to apply fertilizer in Montana.

So we're seeing the students.

We've been talking about value added all day, and I'm seeing my students come up with ideas like exactly on these topics.

So it's really exciting.

- And I also think that there's an exciting realm that's developing and it's the biologicals.

And so we're learning more about biology.

Farmers for the longest time have been very reliant on chemistry, which is super important.

The chemistry is extremely important.

But now we're starting to understand the relationship with the biology, and that is creating tons of opportunities for increased, increasing your ROI, different things that we can do when it comes to rotational cropping practices and those types of things.

- Okay, we're about done.

We got a minute left.

I had a call in from Froid.

They say, "This Montana Appreciate Ag Week sounds like a big party.

How do people get involved?"

- Yeah, no, thanks for calling in from Froid.

Been a while since I've been up in that north northeast country.

But Celebrate Ag kicks off this week.

We have functions happening throughout the week, but some of the highlights is the Montana Ag Tech Summit with Montana Agribusiness Association, Department of Ag is Thursday.

Come find out.

We talk about technology, we talk about value add.

There's some of that happening.

We have a Young Ag Leaders panel Friday.

It's really always an exciting time as our AG economic conference.

Dr.

Cortney Cowley's coming from the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank to talk as a keynote speaker Friday.

That's Friday.

Then Saturday we have an ag tailgate where all the ag groups get together and have a tailgate.

- I hear the music, which says we're out of here in about 30 seconds.

(upbeat music) Darrin, thank you for coming.

Jillien, really enjoyed having on the program.

Appreciate you coming down, taking your weekend to be here.

Nicole, great as always.

And of course, Michelle, thank you.

Folks, next week we're going to be looking at some new meat products.

Jane Bowles will be with us.

So with that, enjoy the week, and good night.

(upbeat music continues) - [Narrator] For more information and resources, visit montanapbs.org/aglive.

- [Narrator] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU Extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, the Gallatin Gardeners Club, and the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

(upbeat music)