(upbeat music) - Welcome to A Shot of AG, my name is Rob Sharkey.

I'm a fifth generation farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

I started a podcast which led to an XM radio show, which led to a national television show, which led to me being right here today.

But today is not about me.

Today is about Alan Dale.

How are you doing Alan?

- I'm well, thank you.

And you?

- I'm doing pretty good.

How many times do people call you Dale?

- It happens at least three times a day.

- Does it?

- So, I'm not offended if it happens here.

- I think I'm pretty good about it.

I don't know if I've ever done it, but you know, when you always catch someone with two first names, you do, for a split second, have to think about it.

- It happens all the time.

- Yeah, but you've had the name of your whole life.

- Well.

- All right, you are a farmer.

Now on the way down here, my wife and I have known your family for forever, but we weren't exactly sure what the hometown was.

- Okay.

Manliest is where I went to school.

[Rob] Okay - And we live out by New Bedford.

- Okay, so is that what you call the hometown is New Bedford?

- My wife doesn't, she just call it Manliest.

New Bedford is 50 people, but it had the world softball tournament there in the 50's, believe it or not.

- New Bedford softball tournament ?

- No, the world softball tournament, softball converse.

- It's the same thing, New Bedford, new world.

Okay.

So I still don't know where you're from.

- My address is Walnut, but Manliest says no mail route.

So, we're at the Southwest end of the Walnut mail route.

- Okay, but when I think of your compost farms, why Walnut ?

- That is the address.

- Well, yeah!

- Again, there's no mail route out there.

I'm north of interstate 80, with the compost operation and east of route 40 about a mile.

- Okay.

So you're from Illinois.

- I am.

You got it.

- Yes, farmed all your life ?

- All my life, got on my first combine with my grandpa at 10 years old.

So, this will be my 60th harvest.

- Okay, fantastic.

So, where was the home farm where you grew up?

- It was around New Bedford again.

- Okay, we're not going down that rabbit hole.

- Northwest bureau county.

- Okay, so, you're farming the family ground?

- Some of it.

- Some of it, Yeah ?

Okay.

I mean you've done it all your life?

I mean is that good with you?

Are you happy?

- I put my operation together with my son-in-law now four years ago, the economics dictated it.

- Yeah.

- He had newer machinery and I did, so we probably sold 70%, 80% of what we had and made that a nice economic unit.

So he makes the decisions now.

I get the luxury of running one of the combines in the fall.

- Yeah.

The corn and soybeans, we're going to get into the compost in a bit there, but is that mainly what you're going for is the old staples corn and soybeans?

- We've got that, but I sold my small cow calf operation.

His is still growing.

I think he's up to around 600 cow calf now.

- Wow.

- That's probably the largest in the county.

And so we've got alfalfa and pasture and usually some small grains too.

- Oh, so you like to work for a living?

- I do And I don't intend to ever retire.

I want to slow down a little bit maybe in four or five years, but I've watched too many people sit down in a chair.

I don't want to do that.

- That is not an unfamiliar attitude, maybe with everybody, but I know especially with farmers that there is a feeling like if you retire, then it's going to go downhill quickly.

- Yep.

I like to work with wood, rough stuff.

And I've got a couple of things on my bucket list yet that I want to accomplish.

One, I want to get my pilot's license.

I got a few hours in the air.

And the other one, I want to jump out of a plane at some point.

- A perfectly good airplane.

- Yep.

- Okay.

You and I have something in common.

We were both presidents of the bureau county farm bureau.

That was, that was a fun.

You went on, you had a lot bigger career in farm bureau.

You were a state president.

Tell me about that.

Why get involved in you know, like a farm organization like that?

- We both know that somebody's got to shoulder the loads and do the things off the farm while we're out busy tilling the soil or, or feeding the livestock, whatever the case is.

And if you remember, there was a third president in bureau county, Herald Steel who went on to be president.

And I mentioned him because he was always a role model for me and I always thought, I wonder if I could do that, but, give you an instance right now.

we're going to fight another battle as farm bureau again on waters of the US.

We thought we had that all done three and a half years ago, and now they've repealed that in EPA and the Corp of engineers is going to rewrite that.

So, we're going to fight that one all over again.

Those are the kinds of things that are being done while the rest of us are out here doing our daily jobs.

So that's a big part of it.

That's why we do it.

- You know, here's a compliment You probably didn't even realize.

Yes you probably were influenced by Harold Steel.

And he was a great man.

Great communicator.

I mean, but he was older from me.

- A generation ahead.

- Yeah.

So I grew up watching you.

I grew up remembering watching you speak in that and thinking "Hey, this, this cat ain't half bad".

You know, you were always very good, very polished speaker and you just had, there are people that can speak and the crowd doesn't look down.

the crowd is focused the whole time.

I don't think you can teach it.

I think it's just what it is, but you've always had that ability.

- Not quite always.

You and I both know about the ALOT program.

that changed my life.

- Agriculture Leaders of tomorrow.

That's a farm bureau program.

- That's a farm bureau program created by all these same people we just talked about.

And that literally changed my life, and put me on a different path.

And not that it was encouraging me to do it, but it helped me recognize some things in myself and work on them.

Set some goals.

And I managed to attain them.

- Okay.

Yeah.

To be clear, I was a county president.

I never went any higher than it.

actually kind of got kicked out.

- But, For your audience, I want you to know.

And I say this as a compliment, had your choice has been different, you and Emily would have impacted that organization at much higher levels.

I'm confident of that.

- Okay.

All right.

We're not going to get inside politics and all that.

But, as I look back now, I am a huge fan of farm bureau.

I think as me, as a farmer needs it, but for me personally, it would have been probably the worst thing for me to do to continue it.

But that was just my mindset, personally.

My own hubris, my own arrogance, if that would have been fed by that machine, things would have, I would have not liked the person that I would have become.

You handled it very, very well.

What's the secret to that?

- First of all, you look at it as a "we" organization, not a "me" organization, and that may sound trite.

I don't mean it that way.

You have to do that.

You need to tell people what they need to hear and not what they want to hear.

And not everybody is comfortable doing that.

And that probably costs me an election.

It sounds grandiose but part of that is feeding the world and having a seat at the table on the discussions that are important to agriculture and those things whetted my appetite.

And the last part of it is, well, I'm not, name-dropping here.

As a young farmer, I was at a conference watching Raleigh Moore as a state young farmer chairman, And again wondering, I wonder if I can do that?

And I've told him that story and he said, "you know, Alan, you never know who's watching."

And so that's part of the demeanor part of it.

You never know who's watching.

So, I tried to polish my language skills, my communicative skills and talk farmer to farmer.

- The fact that you were able to say the word communicative Okay, there is two things.

And I know this is get a little off track, but as someone that has had the success that you did, sometimes I cringe a little bit.

When people look at the success of a farmer outside of their farm as just, like how many boards they sat on.

I mean, you reached the top and then you you've got into this.

You've started businesses that've been incredibly successful which we're gonna talk about in a bit.

So you've kind of done both.

So, what's your opinion on the whole is just sitting on boards enough or is there other things you need to venture out to?

- I think everybody's got to judge what their own definition of goals is.

You've got to set your own and it doesn't matter what level they are.

It's are they attainable?

Do you accomplish something from them?

Does it impact other people's lives?

And can I do some good things?

You mentioned the video that I was in a little bit ago, and without going into that, one of the comments that I heard on that is yeah that Alan is trying to change the world again.

And I don't mean that pompously, but I thought if I could have an impact that improved agriculture, that I would do it.

As far as sitting on boards, other than the ones you've mentioned, I've not sat on a lot.

I think those are all training grounds.

One of the things that I think is a downfall on a board is for those who don't have tenure and you know, we got it.

We had it.

it ought to be in churches and school boards and you name it.

- Washington, DC, - Every place, every place.

And so, that's one of those things that to hear the comments that I can't find anybody to do this, it doesn't settle with me.

You need to go looking and we need more people involved as leaders, not less.

And that's why I brought that subject up.

- All right.

Well, I'm not going to ignore what you just brought up, because what you talked about is an issue that it's still a taboo.

It's getting better, but it's still very much a taboo.

It is a mental health in agriculture, which has been basically.

As you and I grew up in the attitude of something's bothering you, you know suck it up, buttercup.

you know tough guys don't complain or anything like that.

- Men don't cry.

- Men don't cry.

You spoke very openly about it.

- I did.

I did.

- Why?

- First of all, It is another case of somebody had to step up and say something.

They were having trouble.

I think, you know, scrape the bottom of the barrel when they got to me, but was Trying to find somebody that was willing to talk about it.

And when I was asked, I said, sure, I'm willing to talk about it.

But I said, again, I don't want this to be a me subject.

I want this to be an agriculture subject.

And so the things I talked about on there while some of them were personal, more of them were things that I've observed that came in this last year.

And I'm not blaming everything on the pandemic, but that changed a lot of lives.

And people that, one of those things was when they farrowed that little pig, they were expecting it was going to go to market in six months.

And that harvest industry was curtailed in a lot of sense.

And then they had to make a decision.

Do we euthanize that?

Do we euthanize the next crop?

I can't imagine what they were going through.

And I know you raise hogs.

So you know the subject.

- Yeah.

- That species was a little more impacted.

Just a lot of things with that.

I think they need to be brought out and all the comments I've heard since we've done that from people who live on the farms even, but those that are what we call rural urban.

Gosh, I didn't know That was the case.

I didn't even know it was an issue.

Yeah.

So that's part of the reason I did it.

- Well, thank you for doing it.

Let's pivot because they don't give me an hour show.

It's a half hour.

- No I get it.

I get it.

- Maybe you could talk to them about- anyway.

- I'm would be glad to, or we do a monthly thing.

- That's leadership.

Tell me about the compost business.

How did you get started in this?

- And you know the old saying when one door closes, another one opens.

I came back for My life in farm bureau in Bloomington, and happened to be sitting in a restaurant in Tampico, Illinois and unbeknown.

- You live there too?

Part-time in that restaurant.

Dutch diners is what it was called right underneath where Reagan was born.

Oh yeah.

So that's the connection there.

And I happen to be sitting there and off in the other room, I didn't know it , but my former chief of staff, Jeff Idleman, was in there talking to an Amish man named Edmund Blosser, who is the world's expert on humus composting.

- Okay.

What is that?

- Humans composting is taking what everybody else breaks down and calls it compost.

And it's just broken down organic matter.

And then I build it back up into something that resembles somewhere between dirt coffee grounds.

and the market value of it is here compared to the other market value.

And from that, we make extracts to go into biological products.

Jeff is sitting back there on the other side of that restaurant.

Edwin gentleman's name was looking for somebody to help grow his business.

And it's unusual to come outside the Amish community, looking for help.

- Yeah.

And Jeff says, well, Dale sitting over there and he's not doing anything.

And that's how it happened.

And so I started with him.

saw this void in north central Illinois of this process product.

- Yeah.

- One thing led to another, and here we are today producing maybe next year a thousand tons.

Which is quite an accomplishment.

Although it doesn't say much, I gravitated away from having manure as part of that recipe.

It's like baking a cake because of something that happened in California 13 years ago, you may remember the first case of E-coli in lettuce out there, And they trace that back up the hill to a stable and blamed it on manure.

And while I didn't do that, I could see public perception changing.

- Okay.

- And so I tried to find a plant-based nitrogen and I've been there for seven years now.

And I think I'm the only one in the United States.

That's a hundred percent plant-based.

- Okay.

All right, well, let's break this down.

All right.

Are you taking yard waste?

- We used to, we had to stop doing that because too many people were throwing their garbage in it.

I won't tell you the town.

- Ah.

It's probably one that you lived in.

Well.

- I know another neighbor and the object of the whole thing is take other people's waste and turn them into assets.

And I teach that all over the world.

- So, what is the original Base product?

- Now We've dumbed it down for me.

- Okay.

- We're starting with basically cornstalks and straw for the carbon.

Gotcha.

- And alfalfa for the nitrogen.

Then we have some inoculant We put with it as we go, but we've got it simply down to that.

And we do it by a strict recipe.

Takes me about 10 to 12 weeks.

And it looks like dirt when we're done.

- Okay.

Used to, I know last time I was up there, you had this big machine that went and stirred it all up.

You Still doing that?

- Still doing that.

That's an integral part.

It's very aerobic.

We're out there every day morning taking measurements.

And then from those measurements, we decide what the work will be or the action taken on any given row during the day.

- So Is this fertilizer?

- let's call it a soil amendment.

- I don't know what that means.

there is fertility value to it, but that's the bonus.

The, the value of it is the biology and the microbes that we produce, whether we take an extract from it or go right to the field with it as a fertility amendment, but it's to change the health of the soil.

And you know, that's a hot topic.

We've just been doing it for 20 years.

- It sounds, sounds confusing.

- Yeah, it does.

And it's one of those things that I didn't learn this overnight.

It's hard to teach.

Although I do that a lot.

You have to live it.

- Yeah.

- You have to experience on a day-to-day basis and then you file it away up here.

And oh yeah.

I remember that happened one other time.

So a problem arises.

We know how to correct it.

It's not that there's never any problems.

You just know how to correct It.

I'm the only site in the state of Illinois, I'm told that's never had an odor complaint.

- Wow.

- Not bragging about the fact, but what that points out is, if you smell something, ammonia.

- Yeah.

- That's not only an odor, a vapor.

Those are dollars going up in the air.

So as long as I capture that and don't have odors, that's why I don't have odor complaints.

And I've retained value.

- Is this what you're using on your farm?

- I wish.

The story behind this is that's my mother's ancestors Wallis, W A L L I S, that built these tractors maybe about a hundred years ago.

I think out in Pennsylvania.

And it evolved into you know, other tractor lines consolidated, but this is kind of a rare breed.

I've I happened to have the only one that I've ever seen of the toy.

- I've never even heard of it.

but that's my mother's family name.

And I've got it as part of a toy collection.

I was out in John Deere's museum, out in Iowa, where they have all brands of toys and just tens of thousands of them.

And I couldn't find one out there.

I went to the curator and asked her if she had one, she says, oh, I've heard of it.

Let me see if we've got something.

They don't have one.

So it must be kind of rare.

- I'm guessing, yeah.

- Must be.

- I'm kind of into it.

I mean, every farmer loves this stuff.

I've never heard of it either.

So that is your mother's side mother's side.

Okay.

You've been married for 50 years.

- 50 years Just a week ago.

- Congratulations.

- Well Thank you.

- What's a secret?

- The secret.

Try not to go to bed having had an argument.

- What if you're right?

- What if you're right?

Sometimes you got to acquiesce and that's just the way it goes.

I don't know that I've got a secret.

I've got a very tolerant wife.

She let me do all those farm bureau things and stayed home.

You know, that subject.

I was gone a lot.

Yeah.

The downside to the being gone a lot was I missed a lot of my kids growing up.

That's a painful one to admit.

- Yeah.

- But it happened and she took care of things and kept going and here we made it.

I can remember my grandfathers, my parents, and thinking that's so far away.

That'll never happen And here it did last week.

- Yeah.

one Great granddaughter.

- Yep.

- And that's really cool.

- That's pretty cool for my age too.

- Yeah.

You're still a young guy.

- I'm still pretty young.

I like to say I'm maturing.

I'm not getting old.

I'm trying to mature.

- I was trying to think of a reference between compost and that, but there's.

- yeah there's no where to go with that.

I didn't leave you anything.

- Okay you were a fan of Star trek.

- That's one that a lot of people might have trouble grasping.

- Aright, we're going to get serious.

- Okay.

Kirk or Picard?

- Kirk.

I remember as seven years old in a two room school house in new Bedford, where the first Apollo flight was going up and our teacher lived about 500 feet away.

So we walked there so we could watch this little 12 inch black and white diagonal screen and watch that for 18 minutes go up and come down.

And I was hooked.

- Yeah.

- And so every time one of those came up, we went over.

well, we got to the sixties and along came this show and it was just a natural evolution for me.

I collect a little bit of those things.

I've got many, many, many, many episodes of it, including all the originals.

- The whole Apollo thing though.

Is that connected back to you wanting to fly now?

- Oh, that's part of it.

As a child, I set a goal, not a goal and ambition let's call it that.

And I still retain it that I wanted to be the first farmer on the moon.

Now, we're getting really way off the subject.

But those things.

- Obviously, you've never watched this show before.

- And that's just kinda how it happened.

I still watch them every night.

- There's still time.

- Still time that right now the seats are too expensive for me to get on the flights, but it would be neat to still do it.

- You see the price of corn, you're fine.

- I'd do it at the drop of a hat if I had the chance.

- Yeah.

- If people want to find out more about like the composting, where do they go?

- I don't have a website, but I would encourage them to go to www Midwestbiosystems.com.

That's essentially what I do.

That's the people who taught me, that's who I teach on behalf of.

And they could learn a lot from that, from the best on that website.

- As we're finishing up here, you have a farmer and today it's a men or women come up to you.

So let's say they just got out of school or they're an early twenties.

Mr. Dale, what advice do you give me.

- From a farmer, I would tell them to read as much as they can.

I did not do enough of that.

To not be afraid, to try to experiment.

Don't be afraid to fail.

Once, twice, three times, look for mentors in your area that you can learn from and set some goals and work to achieve them.

Write them down.

Don't just think of miss goals, write them down and then measure yourself as you go on.

Whether it's the farming or the leadership, or simply how you want to raise your family.

That's the advice I would give.

- Okay.

That's what a lot of people say.

It's actually write it down and that's a step that kind of gets forgotten.

Sometimes.

- It's tough to do.

It's tough to discipline to do it and then go back and look.

- Yeah, it's good advice.

It really is.

It it's a simple, which you know, is generally the best kind.

- It is.

- Okay.

- Live long and prosper.

- I'm more of the Picard generation, I must say.

- And when it first came out, I was a little put off by it, but I watch it every night now - Oh, the next generation?

Okay.

Do you suppose they're going to have you done the movies, the new movies.

- All of them.

- Yeah.

Well, you're really into it.

- I collect a lot.

I got well, a lot.

- What was the favorite character?

Is it Curt?

- It's still is probably second to that was data.

- Oh, really?

So you switched over.

- Well not switched, added to.

- okay.

- I said next to.

- Alan Dale from somewhere in Illinois.

- Somewhere 60 Miles north here.

- Thank you so much for being on the show and everybody else.

We hope you catch us next time.