(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.

And today we're gonna be talking with Matt Kellogg from Yorkville.

How you doing, Matt?

- Yep, I am doing good.

How are you?

- Tell all the good people of the Peoria region where Yorkville is?

- So, Yorkville is not a suburb of Chicago, but we get accused of that often.

We're about 45 miles or minutes from O'Hare.

We're right on the cusp of suburbia, so.

- And you're farming up there?

- Yeah, so we farm, we call it farming the suburbs.

We've got fields where we travel that there might be 75, 80,000 cars a day on the roads.

(Rob laughs) Yes.

- I bet they love you.

- They do not appreciate what I do for a living.

- You're number one a lot?

- Especially on Friday afternoons or holidays.

(Rob laughs) We're not well loved in the area for that, but we do get a lot of people that stop along the road and just watch what we're doing and park.

And they may sit there for an hour or two with kids, climb out the windows and look at us.

- Just when you're, I don't know, cutting corn or whatever, they just watch, huh?

- Yeah, whatever we're doing with the equipment, they'll just pull up, you know?

- Do you have to worry about 'em, like getting too close?

- No, we haven't had anybody get out of the car and come into the fields, but we've had, you know, people show up at our farms, you know, at the home place and ask questions and look around.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- That would drive me nuts.

- It's interesting.

You never know when a vehicle's pulling in, you know, is somebody curious looking?

Is somebody looking to sell me something?

Like those types of things.

Do I hide, do I go out and say hello?

(both laughing) - You walk out there with the old shotgun.

- Yeah, yeah.

- What was the movie with the two grumpy old guys?

"Secondhand Lions."

- Oh, yes, yes.

- That's gonna be you in about 10 years.

- That is me with all my daughters and the boys coming in (Rob laughs) and strangers, so, yep.

- So you're a multi-generational farmer?

- Yeah, I'm the seventh generation to live on the farm.

- Wow.

- So my daughter, I have one of 'em with me today, will be the eighth generation to live on the farm.

- Okay, so, you know, back when we were growing up, the boys came back to farm.

That's pretty much a way that it was.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong, it's just the way it was.

- It's the way it is, was.

- Not so much anymore.

- No, and my dad told me, you know, when I was young that he could tell that I wanted to farm and was involved.

Maya, who's our almost seven-year-old, is probably the one that she's gonna come back and take care of business.

She already was out in the combine with me, gets out and digs in the soil, tells me when my hair is all white, that she's gonna be in charge of me.

So it's starting to get that way.

- You can take care, five minutes.

- I know, I know.

(both laughing) - I guess the point is, you're a girl dad.

- Yeah, I have five daughters.

- Five daughters?

- Yep.

- My dad had five daughters until he had me.

- Yeah, he should have stopped when he was ahead, is that what your sisters tell me?

(both laughing) - So, I mean, what are your thoughts?

Do you hope, do you foresee?

- Yeah.

- That one of your daughters will come back, - Yeah.

- take over the farm?

- No, I look forward to it.

Just a different perspective from the girls.

Like I was to my dad that, you know, go to school and technology, I can't keep up already.

I already feel like I'm falling behind, but my five and seven-year-old are on their tablets and can navigate through things that I can't even comprehend.

So that technology jump.

Things like drones and stuff that we're playing with now that Maya wants to fly the drone and I'm going, okay, you're seven, not yet, but she probably could.

- Okay, you're talking drones.

Most people think the little ones that take pictures and that, - No.

- But you're on a next level.

- We have a drone that is about eight foot in diameter.

We spray the crops with it.

It's about how many cycles you can do, because it only does two acres at a time.

But we can go out there, rain, shine, whatever, you know, a ground rig can't do it, so yeah, we're playing with some new stuff.

- I used to think those were a novelty, just because of like how much they could do in that.

But we've had people on this show that have like three of 'em, and they just trade 'em out, and I don't know, at the time they were like 30 grand a piece.

So, you got like 100 grand in three of these drones that spray, but what's a new sprayer cost?

- You look at three, $400,000 for a sprayer and we've got 30,000 in a drone.

The sport trailer is just a, a mini bulk with hoses and chargers for batteries.

I mean, all in, we probably have 40,000 in it.

Whereas traditional sprayer, you've got tankers coming back and forth hauling liquid.

And I mean, you've got a lot of labor.

We paid for it in one year.

- Well it's only gonna get more efficient.

They always do.

- Yep.

- So that's kind of cool.

You, I mean, living right by a big city like Chicago, - Yeah.

- Right?

Obviously everybody, like you talked about, the traffic would stink.

Do you have fields that people like use as a dump, 'cause I've heard that too?

- (laughs) We get all kinds of things in the field.

This year we didn't, last year we found an ATM machine in one of the fields.

- My next question, (both laughing) was it empty?

- They haven't told us, but you know, I didn't touch it.

- What do you mean?

- Well, I did not touch it.

It had GPS tracking stuff on it.

It had all kinds of security on it.

I called the Sheriff's.

- You didn't have to move it to run it over with your tractor.

- I called the sheriff's department and they sent three deputies out.

It took three big men to load it in a truck.

- Did it look like it had been opened?

- Yeah, somebody had messed with it and broke into it.

They didn't dump it there because they just didn't want it anymore.

(laughs) - For people that don't farm, having something thrown in your field is remarkably frustrating, because I mean, you have to remove it, but that's the easy part.

The hard part is if you don't see it right, and then it gets brought into a machine.

I mean, you're talking, it could easily cause 10,000-plus in damage just like that.

- Just instantly, yeah.

Somebody left a car in one of our fields this year too.

- That would be hard to run through a combine.

- Yeah, and it was beyond the right of way, so it was my responsibility.

- Huh?

- If they dump it and it's beyond the right of way, it's just like they parked it in your driveway and it's, nobody- - How is that your responsibility though?

- That's the law with vehicles is if it's not in the right of way, it's not a danger to traffic or- - [Rob] So did you have to pay to get it towed?

- Yeah, I mean, have to get a tow truck and come and take care of it.

- And that's on you?

- Yeah.

- Huh, you ever just light 'em on fire?

- I asked the sheriff, I said, "What if I picked it up with my skid steerer and it accidentally moved back in the right of way?"

And he just kind of smiled and said, "No, no, no, no."

- Did he really say no or was it implied?

- I did not, I did not try and read into it too far.

(laughs) - One of the benefits I think of being so close to Chicago though, is using the poo.

- Yes.

- Tell me about that.

- So for approximately 15 years we've been getting biosolids, which is the- - Sludge.

- The refined product from sludge is called biosolid.

- It's human poo.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- And we've been using that to fertilize the fields.

It's free to us.

So when we talk about nitrogen, phosphorus, potash prices today, I've got guys in the field right now spreading that for no cost to us.

There's a little bit with compaction and some of the issues of timing that do cost us, but in the long run it's very good.

- Believe me, as a farmer that can't get it for free, I would put up with those issues - Yes, yes, yes.

- in a heartbeat.

- Yeah, it must work out pretty good for you.

- Yeah, it works really well.

- The side effect, tell me about the tomatoes.

- (laughs) So I don't know the human digestive system well enough to tell you why, but tomato seeds live through your system.

And when they're deposited, they grow again.

So if we miss, with herbicides or things in the field, there'll be a strip of tomatoes that come up in the field.

And it's not my cup of tea, but my dad will stop the tractor in the middle of the field and pick some tomatoes and eat 'em while we're driving.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- What's that coffee where they, has to go through the digestive system - The monkey.

- With the macaque, or whatever it is.

- Yes.

- You could do that, you could- - That's some serious coin for that, right?

- But you've never eaten one?

- No, I have not.

- I mean, does your dad say they taste different, better?

- He said that just tastes like a tomato.

- I think you're missing a market here.

- Well, I'm thinking the next holiday event we come to at your house, maybe we'll have one of those trays with vegetables and I can let you decide where I got them from.

- The seed went through, but I mean, the rest of it it should be fine.

- It's fine, yeah.

- Do you just get the little ones.

- No, I mean all the different sizes.

- Beef Eaters?

- Yeah.

I mean big, big tomatoes, little tomatoes, green ones, yellow ones.

(Rob laughs) Anything anybody's eaten.

Replanted.

I've thought of a business plan where it's like that natural cycle and that you promote it that way.

- Oh, you've got it, you've got the natural cycle.

- I don't know that people would buy into it like they do the organic.

- You don't know until you try.

- It's true.

- I don't know, I'm trying to think of a good name for it.

You know, secondhand tomatoes or.

(both laughing) - There's a lot that could go the wrong way real quick.

(Rob laughs) - Okay, we talked about like you changing the laws for your cars.

You're in a position to kind of do that, right?

- Yeah.

- Tell me what you are currently doing.

- So I just got reelected to the Kendall County Board.

I think I'm gonna be chairman of the board starting next week.

- Really?

Do they like fix votes?

I mean, do you like, - No.

- fix machines?

- Because there's really no way that you would ever get elected legally.

- I'm a really nice guy to other people, just not you.

- He's fixing votes, yeah.

How do you do that, just with hackers or?

- (laughs) Well, we had some Russians that rent a house from us, so.

- Exactly.

- They're circus people, of all things.

- What?

- That's how they met was in the Barnum Bailey Circus.

So the gentleman that rents the house was the chef on the circus for Barnum Bailey.

- [Rob] Is he cooking zebras and stuff like that?

- I don't know.

But then she was a friend of one of the Russians that was on the circus tour with them.

- Oh, sounds, - And now they- - we should go back to talking about tomatoes.

(both laughing) All right.

Okay.

So chairman of the board.

Maybe potentially.

- Yep.

- That's a lot of responsibility.

- Yeah, it's different.

I enjoy it.

It's just on the farm, I work with my dad and one or two employees all day.

And then with the politics side of it, I'm working with some of the smartest people in, whether it's accounting or legislative things, you know, we have some really, really brilliant people that work for us.

So I get to interact with them and just a different dynamic.

- Everybody hates politics.

- Yeah.

- They hate what you do.

- Yep.

- They think you're just up there doing nothing.

To people that have never been involved in let's say county politics, what would you tell 'em?

- It's absolutely nothing like you see on TV.

There is no anger, hate, between left and right.

I mean, 80, 90% of us live in the middle where we want to get to work, we wanna have good roads, we want a good police force.

So after the election, you know, democrat, republican, the votes are never party lines and local stuff, you know, it's just not anger and hate and all this stuff that people think it is.

- All right.

I'm gonna ask you this.

How do you get that mindset to the next level, at the state level?

- I don't know.

With the two party system and all the money and, you know, there's so much money in media and stuff, where a race comes in close and millions of dollars flow in from all over the country.

Unless you had a third or fourth party system, you're not gonna get rid of it.

It's unfortunate, but until you have a third or fourth party that's called the middle where all of us live.

- You could start it, call it the tomato party.

(both laughing) Do you feel like you're doing good?

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah?

- We've done some really good projects, some bridges.

We also serve on the forest preserve side.

The really cool part is to go out to a new facility and walk around with my kids and, you know, my wife and I take 'em out and walk in the trails and the things that we've been able to vote on or find funding for that you can go out and use every day, so yeah.

- Do do you find yourself being a farmer on a board like that as a good thing?

Because it seems like it sometimes we're the punching bag because we just don't have the representation.

What do you see up there?

- So our county has about 130,000 people.

Most of that is in Oswego and Yorkville, in the two communities.

So I'm the only farmer on the board.

Now there's another gentleman who's in ag a little bit, but they start talking about noise restrictions, and you go, okay, that works for the unincorporated where people have lots of houses.

But I always have to point out, okay, that same rule is gonna apply to the whole county.

So you get down to the small communities and it doesn't work, you know?

So you have to get that thought through to them that just because it works over here and you're gonna make a rule, you gotta think about how it's gonna affect everybody else.

- And with you having so many generations there, tell me about this.

- So my great-great-great grandfather, George Washington Kellogg, settled in the area.

- [Rob] I love his cereal, by the way.

- That's about three generations before that, (Rob laughs) and then spread out to Michigan.

So he was one of the first settlers in the area.

He was the first school teacher in Kendall County.

And he was a justice of the peace for a long time.

- Is this him?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- Yes.

And you can see he didn't dye his beard either.

- He looks very stoic, very serious.

- Yes, I think he would have to be to be a first school teacher in the area.

- Is it a half Windsor knot he's got there?

- I really don't know my knots.

- Huh.

- Yeah.

- But it's a trench coat.

I'm guessing there's probably a pistol in there somewhere.

- I actually see a resemblance.

- Yeah?

- Do you?

- A little bit maybe.

I don't know.

- [Rob] Okay, anyway, the book.

- So the book is his legal pad from when he was Justice of the Peace.

So what it has in there is a lot of mortgages and things in the community that would happen because there wasn't a bank in the area where you would go and borrow money for your farm.

So if you were buying a piece of land, you might have a written document that said, okay, you're giving me 20 acres, I'm giving you $10, plus some collateral.

So there's pages in there where it says this amount of land was, you know, Rob Sharkey had this much land.

He's giving Matt Kellogg this much land.

Matt gave him $10 and the right to his gray mare, his brown Morgan horse.

I mean, it goes through there and says the saddle and the halter.

- It's beautiful.

I'm not gonna open it, here, maybe you can open it and kind of show, just because the writing in there, it's like something out of a movie.

- Yeah, and it's a cursive and then with the pen, it's kinda hard to see.

But so like this side over here talks about the property and then this side here says, you know, two grays, which would be two gray mares.

And then it says, you know, he is got two hoes, two sides, three half bushels.

I mean, this was the collateral list for what he purchased from his neighbor.

And if things fell apart, they'd go to the justice of the peace and he would say, okay, you didn't pay up.

Somebody's gonna come and collect these items.

- Ah.

You know, that old gray mare.

- (laughs) She ain't what she used to be.

Booch!

(both laughing) - That's gotta make you kind of proud though, to know that your past generations were successful, hardworking, also put some pressure on you too, doesn't it?

- Yeah, yeah, no, having, as you know, with generational farming, you get that old adage of, it was all given to you or you didn't really earn it.

So there's a lot of pressure though on continuing that next generation and not messing up.

So I had a friend ask me once, well, you know, "Do people work harder to, to get the fortune they have or the money they have, or do they work harder to protect it?"

And it's kind of a balance of the two because there's a lot of pressure when you've got ancestry in the area or those things that, not only the reputation you have in the area, but also making sure you make enough money to keep it going.

- Especially because we're in an industry that is.

contracting harsh, so I mean, people have to go because the farmers are getting bigger and to be still in business every year is a struggle.

You've also spent a lot of time learning how to be a better person, a leader.

- Networking.

- Networking.

You were in the Illinois Ag Leadership - Yes.

- Partnership Foundation.

- Yes sir.

- Why?

Why would you do that?

- So my father was in the program 30 years before I was, he was in the second class.

And he has friends that he still talks to that he never would've met through that group.

So that's why I'm here today.

I met you there.

We've become friends mostly because our wives make us play nice with each other.

- That's pretty much it, yeah.

- Hi, Lindsay.

Yeah, so.

- She's not in this room, by the way.

- No, she's not, she's somewhere watching me.

(both laughing) - On that trip, gotta do some international travel.

- Yep.

- I'm not sure how to describe the decision making behind this, but you went to Japan and Panama?

- We, yes, we did.

- Mm-hm.

Those are not close together.

Yeah, exactly.

- And then way over here.

- Well let's do them separate.

What'd you take away from Japan?

- I had actually been to Japan when I was a teenager and spent a month there learning the culture and an exchange program through 4-H.

So I was excited to go back and see it as an adult because when I was there I was a goofy teenage boy that, you know what you think about when you're that age.

- [Rob] What?

- Rice and chopsticks.

- Okay, you and I had different teenage years.

(both laughing) - No, but to go in and get some of the tours and see the pride that everyone has in the country of what they produce.

You know, we were at a place where they had strawberries that were, I mean the strawberries were this big.

And then two days later we're at a market where there's probably a million people live within two or three miles of that market.

And they show us the strawberries that that gentleman was raising.

You turn it over and there's a picture of him with his farm story on the back of it.

So it's a totally different dynamic there where we have Walmart.

You walk in, grab the cheapest thing you can to feed your family and you know, there they're really paying attention to where it came from and, and how it got to them.

- The Japanese culture, the smaller living spaces where they don't have a lot of room for stuff, right?

- Yeah, yep.

- So when you give a present, you come over to somebody's house, a lot of times that's food.

And the more unique, like the guy that was growing watermelons in a glass box, so you would give a square watermelon too.

- Yep, and it fits right in the tiny refrigerator.

- Yeah, exactly.

Your takeaway from Panama.

- The Panama Canal was really interesting to see the trade going on.

And I don't know if you got to any of the malls to shop while we were there.

I forgot to bring a belt with me, so I had to go buy a belt while I was in Panama.

But you walk into the mall and the first thing you notice is the guys with the assault rifles greeting you.

The security in there is a little different.

And there's actually stores where you could buy weapons right in the mall.

But then when you go in, because- - It's like Texas.

(both laughing) - But when you go in, since it's a port country with all this commodity going back and forth, instead of 20 pairs of shoes, there's probably 300 pairs of men's shoes on the wall that you could pick from, because they're taking things off the shipping containers as they cross through the canal.

And you could get something from all over the world.

- A finder's fee.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

I will say it's pretty obvious when we were there, maybe it's changed, but it was a fairly corrupt country.

(laughs) - Yes, some of our tours were interesting.

The interesting thing I thought of, you know, riding on a bus through this area that you and I would think is desolate and poor and just run down, and we're pointing out that, you know, they're hooking water off the fire hydrants and taking it up into the houses through open air.

They're clamping onto the main electric line with a drop board.

- Literally, yeah.

- And the bus driver said, "Well that's how we live here.

Why are you putting your values on the way we are fine living?"

And that kind of hit home, you know, you come back and whatever town you drive through, or area you drive through, people are happy there.

It's not that, coming from the suburbs where there's some big houses and big developments that everybody thinks we should all live that way.

It's a different way of thinking.

- Yeah, it does.

You know, we all like to make fun of the government, and everything that controls what we do.

But I mean, I felt bad because people should not live like that for not, you know, just because of the standard living for health.

I mean, like you said, the open water, and I couldn't imagine how many people got zapped trying to steal electricity off that line.

- They're probably good at what they do though, I mean.

- I guess.

- Darwin weeds out.

(both laughing) - Are you on social media?

- Ah, sort of.

- Okay.

(laughs) - I don't do it a lot anymore, 'cause with all the girls and all the things, you know.

Why didn't you post a picture of me?

Why did you post a picture of them?

- Oh, drive me nuts.

- It just, I don't know, it's not worth- - Is there any way people, I think you have an email, people can find you?

- I have a fax machine.

- They'll have questions, they'll want tomato recipes.

- No, we have a Kellogg Farm's Facebook page.

It's facebook.com, I think /Kelloggfarms.

- Are you 90 years old?

It's Facebook dot slash, no, just look up Kellogg Farms.

- (laughs) And Twitter.

- Two l's and two g's.

- Elon hasn't kicked me off of Twitter.

But I don't do much there.

- Okay.

- I just laugh at your stuff.

- Kellogg has two l's and two g's.

- Two g's, yes.

- You are not the cereal people.

- Unfortunately no.

- Any relation?

- Yeah, back sometime in the 1600's, Kellogg's came across into the East Coast, and there's a Joseph, I believe, that had seven sons and so that kind of propagated out to all the Kelloggs.

- The seven Kellogg sons.

- Seven sons.

(Rob laughs) Yes.

- Out of all the Kellogg cereals, which ones do you like the least?

- Frosted Flakes.

- [Rob] Oh, they're not bad.

- It's more of growing up and everybody would call me that and hurt my heart.

- We're gonna have to leave that for another day.

Matt Kellogg, thank you very much.

Everybody else, we'll catch you next week.

(upbeat music)