(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "Prairie Pulse."

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll learn about Viking-age textiles.

But first joining me now is the president of the North Dakota Farm Bureau, Daryl Lies.

Darrel, thanks for joining us today.

- Hey, happy to be here.

- Daryl as we get started, we always ask folks, tell us a little about yourself and maybe your background.

- So I grew up on a diversified crop and livestock farm at Douglas, North Dakota, which for people that are challenged by the map, that's about southwest of mine at 35 miles.

So we're not too far off the Northern Canadian border, but South central or MidCentral North Dakota is where we're from.

The thing about growing up on a diversified livestock and grain farm was obviously the work was never ended when the grain farming seemed to be done or should be done for the year.

The livestock were always there creating extra work, and that's where I focus now.

I had a passion for the livestock growing up.

We focus on the livestock thing and here a few years ago, my daughter and her husband and now three little granddaughters are back at the farm.

We have went into selling meat, both retail and wholesale.

We, along with five other producers, bought a little slaughter facility, transferred it over to a USDA licensed facility.

So we can sell package by the meat or we can sell it to restaurants or direct to people.

And so that's kind of been our focus on our farm along with a historical presence in the show animal world, selling show animals to 4H and FFA kids in about 6, 7, 8 different states.

- Yeah, well, you're here of course, obviously to talk about North Dakota Farm Bureau, but while you were telling me about yourself, how have you seen farming change over the years?

- Well, back when I was growing up in the eighties, my very formative years on the farm, we summer fallowed a third of everything, which left a lot of dirt to blow, and created issues there.

Then, you know, come along the age of no-till, minimum till, and you know, pretty much every farmer has a minimum or no-till implemented into their farming practice, which has helped with, you know, the soil erosions.

It's helped with soil health and that's probably the biggest dynamic on the farming side of it, on the livestock production side of it, you know, the knowledge that comes with, you know, balanced rations, getting the most production you can, getting the pounds of meat produced with less resources has probably been the biggest dynamic that I've seen in the livestock side of it.

- Yeah, well, as you said, what we're gonna turn to what you're here for partly, what is the North Dakota Farm Bureau and when was it founded?

- So, North Dakota Farm Bureau is a general ag organization founded back in the early forties.

A group of farmers got together and said, hey, we need some fixes to some things.

We need opportunity for insurance, we need an opportunity to protect farmers out there that wasn't readily available on the market.

And people came together and formed this general ag organization known as North Dakota Farm Bureau.

And so, you know, we've been around, you know, 80 some years and I think it's a unique thing.

We've got about 28,000 member families, which puts our overall membership, you know, much more than that because a family is our member, not individuals.

And you know, I get the opportunity have, for the last nine years, I'm on my 10th year as president of North Dakota Farm Bureau and two years prior to that I served on the board of directors.

So I'm in my 12th year of service at the state level for North Dakota Farm Bureau.

- Okay.

Well we're gonna talk today some about tariffs, if it's all right with you, let's talk about the hot button issue there, can be.

Can you update us on how the tariffs could affect farmers?

- Well, obviously farmers want trade.

We need trade.

We produce way more in this country than we consume.

There's no way we can consume everything we produce.

You know, trade is important and it varies.

You know, trade is really important if you're a soybean grower, you know, corn to some extent, pork producer, you know, some of our beef, it's very important for the very premium side of beef that we raise in this country.

You know, demands for that in countries like Japan play a role.

But I would say, you know, when it comes to how will farmers or could be affected, it's gonna really vary on how long these last.

And it's going to be a decision by those countries.

If they're gonna place a tariff on us for our products, you know, in retaliation or whatever you want to call it, back and forth, it's gonna go on here.

Will they still buy the product at that increased price?

Will we still be competitive or not with other world markets?

That's the question that's still out there.

Obviously, if it drags on, if it lasts a long time, the impact of that will be much greater.

You know, if we can move through this thing swiftly, which I hope that we can, I hope a lot of countries come together with, you know, the administration and says, hey, how can we fix this?

How can we, you know, negotiate a better deal here?

What do we have to do with our trade barriers to make you happy to remove your tariffs?

And then, you know, vice versa, China, everyone focuses on China, right?

And 'cause China has been a historical, pretty good sized buyer.

The Chinese population's dropping, China's actually gonna become less important player over the next 10 to 15 to 20 years.

There's places that are growing out there, India is growing, you know, has been growing leaps and bounds, I think shifting our trade focus on some of those markets will be important to lessen those impacts.

Obviously product moving to other countries, if their tariffs are too high that their people can't afford to buy the products coming in, that's what's gonna impact us.

- Yeah, so it sounds like you're hopeful that actually maybe these tariffs are just negotiating ploys that will help in the long term.

Is that what you were saying there?

- Yeah, I mean we've got a lot of years to make up for here.

You know, a lot of these tariffs, when you look at 'em historically were put in place after World War II for those countries to quote unquote rebuild themselves.

They needed an income stream, right?

But we're, you know, 80 some years removed, why are we still have these things in place?

Why haven't we been able to get some of these tariffs that other countries had put on?

Why are they still needed?

Why are they still in place?

And then there's the non tariff barriers out there.

Quota systems not accepting the way products are growing here in the United States.

We need to address those because the non tariff barriers are probably just as important as the tariff barriers we see in trade.

- Yeah, you said a little bit about it, but so how do tariffs work in relation to a farmer and them exporting their goods though?

- Well, so take China for example.

If they put a 10, 20, 30, 50, 80 some percent that they're talking about now, tariff on say soybeans, well that essentially is going to add 80% to the cost of what they can buy 'em here.

So if they're not willing to absorb that cost on the countryside that's placing them, they're obviously gonna wait for the market to go down, or they're gonna put pressure on the market by not buying until that levels out to what they can buy that product from, say, Brazil or some other country.

So the fact that we become less competitive in the world marketplace is what will affect it.

Some countries, if they throw a 10% tariff on, they're still gonna buy 'cause it's 10%.

You start getting over that.

They've gotta be able to have their people afford the products too.

And if they start putting these tariffs on and American products, let's just say something's at $10 has an 80% tariff, well it's $18 plus shipping, you know, you got costs.

So let's say it's $20 landed there, can their people afford to pay for it?

Is the next thing or are they better off bringing that product from another country where they can pay the $10, pay the shipping and it's, you know, six to $8 a bushel less?

That's the question.

Now, will some of them take off certain products?

I think we're gonna see 'em give exceptions because there's certain products, China we know, needs soybeans.

They try and grow as much as their corn there as they can because shipping the amount of corn that they need for their livestock and that isn't feasible, the amount of soybeans, they can ship them much more reasonable.

They can afford to, you know, pay that cost for it.

I think we might see some differing levels there.

Kinda like the initial talks where, you know, the initial talks were 15% in 10% categories.

Well, the soybeans were in the 10% category, corn was in the 15% category for the very thing I just said.

They ship less corn, they buy less corn, they buy more soybeans.

So of course they're gonna put a lower tariff on the product they need the worst.

- Yeah, so what are you hearing from your members as you say, 28,000 family members and farmers in the region regarding these tariffs now?

Are you starting to hear from 'em?

- You know, I've heard very little.

What I have heard, and I'm hearing the same thing as 2018 in those tariffs back then is we hope they're swift.

We hope they're used as a negotiating tool to get us in a better position long term because we need to fix some things.

Is there some angst in that statement with them?

Obviously, because uncertainty, you know, farmers and ranchers deal with uncertainty every day.

But to add another level of uncertainty is never comfortable, right.

But they understand, I mean, I'm hearing they understand we need the border secured.

Okay, we need those things to happen when we're talking Mexico and Canada, especially Mexico, they understand securing our border, getting that straightened out.

They use the mindset, we all have to take a stake in this.

And sometimes a little bit of pain is the stake to get things corrected.

You know, as far as, you know, with like the EU or India or Canada, you know, quotas, quotas or barriers, non tariff barriers.

We need to get those corrected.

Hopefully, you know, the take no prisoners approach that seems to be taken by our administration works to get those countries to come to the table and go, okay, we will back off here.

I mean, take India for example.

We import dairy from India, we have a plethora of production of dairy in the United States.

Why are we importing dairy from India?

But they have barriers on our products coming over there, doesn't make sense.

Same with Canada.

Yeah, they don't necessarily have initial tariffs on say, dairy and some other things, but they got quotas.

And the quotas are very low before those tariffs kick in, that are very high.

And so let's correct some of those things.

You know, we hear people say, why are we doing this to our friends?

Well, if they're our friends, why are they doing those restrictions to us?

I don't think people have asked that question enough.

Let's truly become friends and have that trade fair.

- Yeah, you said some things in there.

You talked about the 2018 trade war, I guess, how did that impact the farmers there, back in '18 and '19 - And ironically both situations, we were looking at a commodity price downturn outside of livestock.

So things were already on that level of being down, you know, moderated prices.

Did it take a little more off the price?

Undoubtedly it probably did.

Did it take as much as what people thought?

I don't know.

You know, that's hard to say.

It's hard to calculate that in there.

What came out of that was the phase one China deal that what was in there for provisions were very good, great provisions.

And sadly we hit an administration that didn't want to enforce those provisions, that let China basically do what they wanted.

Didn't enforce the phase one China trade deal.

Had we had four years of enforcing it after the signing in January of 2020, instead of four years of not enforcing it, I think we would've seen great strides.

I think our American farmer would've seen great things, but we had four years where it wasn't enforced.

And by the way, the tariffs were still left in place during those four years, but they didn't enforce the adherence to the phase one deal that China was signed.

- Okay, let's turn back to Canada.

You mentioned that a couple of times.

You know, what about the trade riff with Canada?

You know, how that gonna impact the farmers here in the United States?

- You know, I don't know, cost of some goods, you know, that's one thing we haven't talked about yet.

Some inputs may be affected there, you know, not just agriculture, but anyone that's doing some building, obviously, if lumber has a tariff coming in, that's gonna increase some costs there on the front end.

So, you know, on the shipping things to Canada probably isn't gonna be as big of an impact as the inputs that we probably buy or rely on coming outta Canada.

That being fertilizer, like I said, building materials, things like that, that we've become heavily reliant on, much because we've shut some of that industry down in this nation for really ridiculous environmental reasons.

So we need to fix that too.

So maybe that's our opportunity to fix some of our lumber issues and the use of our natural resources in this nation by placing those on Canada.

Maybe we'll realize that we need to get those natural resources that we used to be very highly productive in and useful of.

Maybe some of that needs to come back mainland here.

- Yeah, well, alright, couple of questions come out.

Let's go to, yeah, you mentioned a couple of the crops, but what are the primary and most popular crops grown in North Dakota?

- Well, you know, obviously wheat, corn, soybeans, I mean, we're the number one producer in just about a dozen, not quite a dozen products, you know, canola's very big in North Dakota.

You know, it's the, you know, we're the number one production in canola.

You know, our pulse crops, our edible beans are very important.

You know, we're lucky to have, you know, almost four dozen different varieties of crops growing in North Dakota and that's kind of a special place to be, you know, now there's some, like California has way more, but they've got vegetable production, right?

We don't have large scale vegetable production.

We got some here, we got some vegetable production, but it's pretty small.

You know, potatoes are significant obviously, but I think that when it comes down to it, you know, the corn, soybean, and wheat, still king, canola gives 'em a run for their money, especially in certain locations in the state.

But those big three are still kind of the main ones.

- So, how do you feel the current state of farming is in North Dakota?

- You know, North Dakota, Western North Dakota is loving life right now with the livestock cattle prices where they're at, Eastern North Dakota is probably figuring out how they're gonna, you know, cash flow and what they gotta do different.

They're probably having to put a little harder pencil to it or you know, obviously the grain farmers across the whole state are doing that.

But you take the Western ranchers out there, you know, they're smiling, cattle prices are good.

How long will they stay there?

That's their next trajectory.

They're like, okay, how long is this gonna stay here?

What can we do for improvements?

What should we spend money on?

And kind of where the corn and soybean guys were a few years ago, you know, hey, how long is this price gonna stay here?

What can we do?

Improvements on?

That table's kind of flipped now, there's different focuses from each of those sides, but I think overall agriculture's healthy in the state.

I'm not gonna say there's not challenges, but there's always challenges.

Weather might be our biggest challenge this year.

- Yeah, in fact, I was gonna ask you that.

How does it look for this year, the last couple of seasons not a lot of water, maybe drought.

They're never right amount of water for a farmer anyway.

It's too much or too little.

- Yeah, if you ask a farmer if things are good, he's gonna say, yeah, but you know, we've got too much or, but we could use a little more.

Right where we are, we're kind of on that line of where the drought monitor gets pretty serious, where our farm is and we need some moisture, a lot of places in the state needs some moisture.

That I think is kind of a focus on a good portion of the state this year of what that's gonna do.

- Yeah, you mentioned top soil earlier.

Can you talk about top soil issues out there?

- You know, obviously higher tillage crops you have a lot more of that issue, or the crops don't leave a lot of residue.

You know, soybean fields don't leave a lot of residue.

Pea fields don't leave a lot of residue.

More tillage and bare ground when you're growing potatoes and beets and things like that.

But for the most part, the farmers have figured out a good rotation to manage that.

There's still some, but some of that comes with the territory of what you're growing.

- Don't have a lot of time left couple of minutes here, but what's the current farm bill like?

And when's the next one coming up in Congress?

- The second part of your question is the question, the next one should have been coming up for a couple years now already, but the last farm bill compared to now, you know, reference prices, target prices is what I think is on the focus of the farmers out there.

Can then be adjusted to where current levels of costs are, you know, production costs because that fell behind very rapidly in the last three to five years.

- Yeah, with equipment costs, with everything going on.

Are you bullish on the future of farming for North Dakota?

- I am.

Of course farmers are eternal optimists, otherwise they wouldn't get up every day and do what they do, right?

I am, I think we've got great opportunity.

We've got opportunity for livestock expansion here because we've got so many open areas where there isn't a lot of livestock facilities.

We've got opportunity there, we've got great feed stuffs for that by the way, also, I mean our farmers, they grow great corn crop, great soybean crop, great barley crops, great wheat crops, all that can be used in livestock feed.

So the opportunity for expansion there and we've got companies coming in wanting to do processing facilities here.

I think North Dakota's in a good, good situation.

- Well, we are running short on time here, but Daryl, if people want more information about things, where can they go?

Who can they contact?

- They can go to ndfb.org and you can find everything on there about us that you wanna find and every contact you need.

- Well, we thank you for your time today and good luck with your organization.

- Well, thank you.

- Stay tuned for more.

(soft music) Viking era textiles spanning from the seven hundreds to the 11 hundreds are a rare study.

Stephanie Anderson of Fosston, Minnesota is one of the few people in the world who make historically accurate textiles, outfits, hats, and pockets from that era.

Her research turned into a full-time passion that she shares with museums, schools, and even TV shows and movies about the era.

(soft music) - I really like the research as much as I like creating at the end.

So that's why I call myself a historian artist.

My name is Stephanie Anderson and we're gonna talk about historical textiles, mostly from the Nordic countries.

I've really done a lot of research.

Everything I do is very historically accurate.

I study the original notes and they're in different languages, of course, and sometimes they're handwritten.

So it's a lot of work, but it's really worth it.

And I'm known kind of all over the Scandinavian world and all over Europe and the United States.

I'm a knitter, I learned how to knit from my grandmas and for me it's a connection to history.

I really love creating something that's exact historically accurate and then sharing what I learned.

I teach classes.

My pieces go to museums or TV shows or for educational purposes, and I really enjoy sharing what I've learned along the way.

The textiles that we're gonna talk about are mainly from the late seven hundreds to about the mid eight hundreds.

But the Viking age went from the late seven hundreds to about the 10 hundreds.

You have just little fragments you have to go from actually pieces of art that they had back then.

Their art back then were like little bronze statues that had a depiction of a woman and how her dress was and if it fell to her ankles or if it was longer.

So you can look at pieces of art and come up with a whole interpretation of an outfit.

I really like to look at things under a microscope and then try and recreate it.

One of my first pieces that I really, really enjoyed was a hat.

So I saw on Facebook a Viking age study group.

Somebody did a hat and they had their interpretation.

I thought the hat was pretty cool.

So I went back and read the original notes and the original notes said that the pieces of yarn were very short.

So I did my own interpretation.

I think my interpretation is much more accurate.

So it's looking at grapevines, looking at behind broaches, which are part of the pieces of art, and seeing how things were attached and how they pulled on the body to give an interpretation of how they could have worn it.

I took a class, it was advertised on Facebook.

I took a Facebook class, went by myself, and they asked me if I wanted to apply for a scholarship to go learn Viking age textiles.

And I did.

I got the scholarship.

I went to Norway and I studied Viking clothing, basically men's and women's clothing, and that's what got me into it.

And I just went down a rabbit hole.

I just could not stop after that.

A viking is somebody that travels.

It was actually a profession, not a person.

That era of people were in my history.

I went to Norway and that's where my family's from.

And I got to see the farm that we came from.

And there were actually two Viking graves on the farm, which I didn't know that 'til I got there.

And the Viking graves are big mounds.

They've never been excavated.

They're still there.

It's still intact.

A few of us, about 20 of us, were asked to do a challenge and we are going to recreate a grave from Sweden and we recreate the whole thing.

Everything found in the grave, but it has to be as historically accurate as possible.

The lead archeologist sent me a email back and said, I think you should book a trip over here to come look at some of this stuff.

So I did, I went in June and I met with the lead archeologist and the textile expert from the historic museum in Sweden.

And we studied the Birka grave.

Things that haven't been documented and still aren't documented as the biggest surprise for me.

Like we turned over a broach and there was textiles on the inside, or we took out a piece of a bucket and there was a big piece of wool wrapped in linen and there's so much stuff out there and it hasn't been recorded.

So the Vesterheim museum put out a call for people to submit something they'd like to study from their archives.

So I put in a submission to study women's pockets.

Pockets have really evolved from something you tie on.

Pockets were illegal for women for a long time.

So my study at the Vesterheim Museum will be pockets.

I do not sell anything.

I have a backlog of people who ask me to produce stuff for them.

And so I don't sell any of my work.

It's all for educational purposes.

I just did a talk over in Bemidji at the Sons of Norway and people are surprised that somebody here in Northern Minnesota does what I do.

I guess that's some of my biggest compliments.

Also, people just wanting my work for museums or asking me to be a part of challenges because they know I do it right.

I think it's really important to understand how life was.

We have an unbelievably cushy life, but we struggle to produce the quality of artwork that they had in the Viking era, the quality that they have, we cannot reproduce because we keep trying to do it with our modern era of things.

You can't do it.

To really understand that, you think our modern times is so much better, but they had skills and knowledge that is unbelievable.

- Well, that's all we have on "Prairie Pulse" this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(soft music) - [Narrator] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.

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