- PNC is proud to support Business Forward, where community leaders discuss the issues confronting business in Central Illinois.

(bright music) (bright music continues) - Welcome to Business Forward.

I'm your host, Matt George.

Joining me tonight, Patrick Kirchhofer.

Patrick is the manager of the Peoria County Farm Bureau.

Welcome back again.

Because I had you right when I started the show, I had you on.

And I think I could have you on about every three or four months, because this is a topic that there are just so many different tentacles to farming, and different people, and personalities, and different weather, and everything that's involved with it, so welcome.

- Thank you.

Good to be here.

- Yeah.

So let's get right down to it.

So you have so many different initiatives and roles at the Farm Bureau.

What does a typical day look like for you?

- Well, everyday is different.

I mean, that's why I enjoy the job.

But most of it is related to agriculture, but if anybody has a question that's farm related, ag related, it seems like they go to the Farm Bureau to get it, and I may not have all the answers, but as long as I know who to contact, then I can get an answer to them later on, in the day, or the next day.

But it varies.

We had a lot of programs this past winter, and that's why I love the job so much, because it just, you don't know what the next day is gonna bring, and I love to learn, and it's a great opportunity to learn everyday, too.

- I bet you do learn a lot, just trying to, how do you keep up with everything?

Just from the people that are around you?

The people that are, I guess, boots on the ground, farmers?

- Yeah, whenever we have meetings, there's a lot of farmers there, so I listen to them conversing with one another.

Just talking to people, of course I'm reading farm magazines, and trying to keep up to date, and online, and podcasts, just trying to stay in touch.

And then I also farm with my family, so that gives me a great opportunity to get boots on the ground experience as to what farming involves, and it's changing all the time.

It's changed a lot, just in the last 10 or 20 years.

- So talk to me about that, because I know, I remember you saying that last time that you have a family farm.

What does a typical family farm, small farm, look like these days?

- Well, I mean- - Does it depend?

- It can vary.

- Okay.

- I mean, you can have very small family farms, maybe five acres if it's a specialty crop, or a value added crop.

Or else you can have 2000, 3000, 5000 acre farms.

Typically those are row crop farmers.

But 50 years ago, the farms were typically diversified a little bit more than what they are now.

Whenever I was growing up, we had beef cows on the farm, sheep, chickens.

And we grew hay, wheat, corn and soybeans.

But a lot of times now, the farmers are more specialized in what they're growing.

- Do they do that by just the feel of the year, and how the weather is going, or do they do that, is a lot of that usually cash flow related?

Or does it vary?

- Well, I mean it just depends on what the interest of the farmer is, and the opportunities that come up for them, and maybe the experiences they had growing up.

If they grew up in a livestock operation, maybe they're gonna continue that hog or beef cattle operation.

And you know, you see anymore a lot of times people with a little bit of farm background, or maybe their grandparents farmed, and they wanna get into it, or they went to visit the farm whenever they was a kid, and maybe some small acreage, but they found something that they enjoyed doing, and so yeah, it's interesting.

- So the Farm Bureau's been around a while.

Is it 111, 112 years?

- Well, last year we celebrated our 110th year.

- [Matt] Okay.

- So yeah, it was formed in 1912.

- [Matt] Wow.

- Yeah, doesn't seem that long ago that we celebrated our 100th anniversary in 2012, it's already been 11 years ago.

- So if I was a farmer, and I'm part of the Farm Bureau, what is the advantage, besides networking, I guess, but what is the advantage of being part of the Farm Bureau?

- Well, we're one unified voice for agriculture.

- [Matt] Okay.

- And it's hard to have an impact, just you yourself, trying to make changes, so if we can get a group of farmers together, a group of like-minded people, related to agriculture, they can have some influence.

And Farm Bureau, a lot of our responsibilities is lobbying for agriculture, for farmers.

We bring farmers out to Washington, DC, down to Springfield, we have opportunities for them to connect with local legislators, and legislators, I mean, they don't know.

A lot of them mostly haven't grown up on a farm.

So there needs to be communication between us and them, and hopefully they'll have an ear open, and they can listen to what we have to say, and issues can be resolved.

- This may sound like a very simple question, and I think I know the answer, but when people talk about having the Midwest have the best soil, what does that mean, to have the best soil?

Like what is it, depth of the soil?

Is it the richness of the soil?

All of the above?

I don't know that.

- Well, we do have some of the best soil in the world, and it's topsoil.

It's the darker soil, maybe the top eight to 10 inches of the soil profile.

It has a lot of organic matter in it, especially in the Central Illinois area.

So organic matter is just decayed residue and plants, and it's accumulated over the years.

And that's high in nutrients.

It's high in water holding capacity.

And if you experience a drought, say you go two to three weeks without water, a lot of our darker soils, it can hold the moisture, and you may not suffer that much from a lack of rainfall.

But if you get into the lighter soils, and maybe it's eroded off of hillsides, and you don't have a lot of topsoil, it's not gonna be as forgiving if you experience a dry period.

So just in this area, we're blessed with some great soils, of course out in Iowa, southern Minnesota, Indiana, here in the Corn Belt, yeah, I mean it's similar to the Ukraine over in Europe, our soil types.

- Wow, I didn't know that.

So when I look at your board, they're all part of different townships.

Is that correct?

- Yeah, that's right.

There's 19 townships in Peoria County, and we've got a director from each of the 19 townships.

And there's 23 members on our board.

And so 19 board directors, and then we've got four officers elected at large.

And they meet once a month, and just discuss issues.

We've got a variety of committees, ag in the classroom, young leaders, marketing, local affairs, legislative, and of course those chairs give reports at the board committee meetings.

So yeah, I mean, it's been great to work with them, and we're trying to make an impact for farmers.

- Yeah, yeah.

And so it's obvious by design that there are different part of townships, but is the reason, do they cover every piece of farmland, I guess, in all of Peoria County?

- Yeah, yeah they do.

Of course, in the city, Peoria township, there's not a lot of farmland.

- (laughing) True.

- In the city.

But there are farmland owners, so they can serve on the board, as long as they have some farm income, or are involved in an agricultural occupation, they can serve on our board of directors.

- [Matt] Okay.

- But we don't have nearly as many in the more urban settings as we would out in the rural areas, the rural townships, such as Akron and Princeville, and those types of townships.

- So I know you have a young leaders committee, and I hear from just talking to a lot of different people that the farm business is just like any other business.

It's cyclical times, you're trying to get new people involved into the business, you're trying to, there's obviously the family business, but those can go astray sometimes.

You may have kids that don't wanna get into the business, then what do you do with it?

Like what is the goal with a committee like this?

Just to teach and learn and crave being?

- Yeah, well our young leaders group is for members 18 to 35 years old, so once they're out of high school, they can join our young leaders group.

And they've been meeting the second Monday of the month.

It's either at the Farm Bureau building, or else, I don't know, Farm Bureau Park, around Kickapoo.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- And yeah, it's just an opportunity for them to network together, bounce ideas off of each other.

And they do a lot of goodwill in the community, they've grown sweet corn and donated to the Midwest Food Bank, and they've volunteered out at the Midwest Food Bank, put up the farm country stay alert signs that you may see occasionally out in rural areas.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- And so yeah, it's just an opportunity for them to work together, and to learn about agriculture and what other young leaders are doing in their enterprises, and you know, that's the gist of a lot of Farm Bureau activities is learning from each other.

80 or 90 years ago, whenever 25 or 30 percent of the population was growing up on a farm, or did farm, it was easy to learn from each other, but now with so few growing up on a farm and learning the basics of it, there's a lot of information that needs to be shared.

- I guess that was my point in all that, because I think over time, that information gets depleted, and that's interesting.

So you recently had a farmer's share of the food dollar breakfast at Expo.

So you served, I wanna say, over 1000 people, I think 1100.

- Mm-hmm.

- And so what is the purpose of that?

Because I was reading into this, and I thought it was a really great idea.

- Sure.

Yeah, well we held our 20th farmer's share of the food dollar breakfast.

It was March the 11th.

And yeah, we did serve over 1100 people.

The purpose is to educate and give people an opportunity to meet other farmers.

And we did that out at the Expo Gardens, and it was in the exhibit hall, and there's a cafeteria area where we, the people went through that area, and we had pictures from a photo contest that we had for Farm Bureau members last fall.

And a lot of those were wildlife, or farm activities, farm animals, so people were learning as they was waiting in line.

And we had little farm toy exhibits set up, asking questions like a little farm toy combine, what is this, and then people, if they didn't know, they could just open it up and see it was a combine, or what type of gravity, what type of wagons, there's gravity wagons, there was box wagons, use barge wagons.

And so they would learn while they was waiting in line.

And then we had a silent auction at it, and once they went through and got their meal, they could stop by our equine committees exhibit.

We've got it, we had an ag in the classroom exhibit.

We had a farm store where we were selling farm toys and farm caps.

So yeah, it was a great day, and people really enjoyed coming to it.

And then we sold the sausage, we served pancake, sausage, eggs, orange juice, and milk.

And we based the price on the farm value of those items- - Oh!

- The menu items in the breakfast.

- That's cool.

- So it was value of the wheat in the pancakes, or what a farmer received for the pigs to make the whole hog sausage, what a farmer received for the milk.

And it was $1.25.

That was the farm value of those menu items.

Now, it would be typically probably about a $12 breakfast, if you went to a restaurant.

So there's a lot of other expenses.

There's labor, there's packaging, processing, advertising, transportation.

So the actual farm value, what the farmer receives, is just a very small portion of the breakfast menu items that we served.

- Well I'm gonna have to go next year, because I, obviously, this is one topic just by the questions I'm asking you, that I'm learning every time I talk to a farmer, or somebody like you, that it's just an interesting business, but it is the core of what we are in the Midwest.

- Yeah, it sure is.

I mean, food is sort of a basic commodity that we need.

And I wish that more people would know how their food is grown.

Other than just taking it for granted, and going to a grocery store, and purchasing the items.

I wish that there was more basic knowledge that people had where there food does come from.

- Well this is gonna transition to my next point here, because you have ag in the classroom.

- We sure do.

And ag in the classroom, through the Farm Bureau, it's been around for decades.

But we've really expanded it in the last probably 10 to 15 years, and we've got an ag coordinator and an ag literacy coordinator, and she works with about eight or nine other volunteers that go into the schools, into the classrooms, in Peoria County, and they will teach about an ag topic.

It's a 30 minute presentation.

Over the summer, we hire an ag literacy intern, and she'll put together a PowerPoint presentation- - [Matt] Curriculum, or whatever.

- Yeah, of maybe 10 to 12 slides about the ag topic.

And then we'll do an ag activity, or experiment, the last 15 minutes of the presentation.

And we're in the third through sixth grade classrooms in Peoria County.

You know, it's voluntary if a school wants to be in it.

They can, if they don't, then they don't, and we'll have that in a lot of situations, but we're in about 50 schools.

- [Matt] Oh wow.

- In Peoria County.

We're reaching around 5000 students each month with our ag topic.

So I think it's having a really positive impact on children, and they're getting that basic understanding of our food and fiber system, and just where their food comes from, and how to take care of the environment.

- Yeah, so is wheat on of the?

- Yes.

- Topics?

- Yeah, wheat is one of the topics that we did cover last November.

And each student received a wheat head.

This is winter wheat.

And it's planted in the fall, and then harvested around July.

So our ag literacy coordinator, we have local farmers that grow wheat.

She went out and harvested around 5000 heads, her and her husband did, last summer.

And so we gave one of these wheat heads to each student.

And we just showed them.

It was November, if you take this.

And you kind of thrash it in your hand.

And then you can see the wheat grains here.

- [Matt] Oh wow.

- [Patrick] So the students were fascinated- - Oh, I'm fascinated.

- With how that works.

But yeah, that's what a combine does.

It thrashes this wheat, and then the stem of the wheat, that's straw.

So a lot of farmers will bale that, and then use it as bedding for their livestock.

Or else mulch, if you're gonna, a landscape, you'll put down some straw, just to keep the soil in place while the grass is getting established.

But this here is called bearded wheat, and you can see that the little beards coming out here.

But yeah, it's just- - [Matt] You know what's crazy, is I just realized I have a third to sixth grade mentality on wheat.

(laughing) - [Patrick] Okay.

- [Matt] Because I did not know that was straw.

- [Patrick] Sure.

- That makes total sense.

Okay, that's pretty cool.

So the topics vary, but if you think about it again, it gives kids a chance to dream.

- Exactly.

- And if you can grab one of these future farmers, potentially, you've done your job.

And so to me, it doesn't make any sense why a school wouldn't want to do this.

- Right, yeah.

And whenever you have actual demonstrations like this, and there's always an activity in the classroom, I think it really gives students that creative juice that they're looking for, like well, what do I want to do?

There's so many opportunities in agriculture.

And I know that we've brought baby pigs into the classrooms before, we're talking about bringing maybe a lamb into the classroom next year.

We brought in baby calves before.

Now, that was more of a challenge to that.

That's been a few years ago.

(Matt laughing) But you know, those lessons that you can give where students can actually see something being done, or a farm animal, it makes a greater impact on them.

- Well that's pretty cool stuff.

So let's switch gears and talk about, you've had meetings on cover crops.

What does that even mean, a cover crop?

- Well, a cover crop is planted in the fall, and it's usually sowed later on in the maturity of the corn or soybean crop, late August or early September, or else it can be sowed after the corn and soybeans are harvested.

And the typical go-to cover crop is cereal rye.

And it's fairly easy to establish in the fall.

It has good winter survivability, and it'll continue to grow then next spring as it comes out of dormancy.

And it protects the soil over the winter.

It adds nutrients through its roots that are growing over the winter, and then you're culling in the spring, and you can plant corn or soybeans into it.

So as a farmer, in order to, soil health, that's a big topic these days.

Keeping your soil healthy.

And that's a good way to do it.

Have something growing on the soil year round.

- [Matt] I gotcha.

- It is an extra expense, and extra job for the farmer to do, but it's a learning opportunity.

It takes probably a little bit more management, because you have to learn how to handle it because a cover crop, it will keep the soil a little bit cooler.

It can work to your advantage, though.

It can take some of the moisture out of the ground in the spring whenever you're planning to put the corn and soybean crop in.

So it's just a learning opportunity, and it's really been more popular in the last 10 years, and farmers are continuing to learn about it.

You know, 50 years ago, 60 years ago, farmers grew hay because it had lifestyle.

There was growing red clover, or timothy, or feskue, so we had basically cover crops back then.

But as we've become more specialized in just corn or soybeans, a lot of times we won't have a diversified crop on the fields.

- You know, I was just thinking about, and this wasn't even one of my questions, but I was just thinking about even these kids back to the third and sixth graders for a second, technology's a big thing for a lot of kids.

They like these games, they like all this, and a lot of farmers now are using technology even if they have property and farmland in other states, they have technology to be able to fly drones and look at their crops, and be able to tell where there's some spots, and maybe there's some problem areas or something.

That's a job within itself.

- It is.

And that just reminds me, we had a teacher at summer ag institute several years ago.

And probably it's been 15 years ago.

And we had a week long summer ag institute for teachers over at ICC, but during the week, we would go out in the county and tour different farms.

And we went to one farm in Tazewell County.

There's more sandy type ground and fields in Tazewell County, so they have irrigation systems over there.

And 15 years ago, this farmer was demonstrating that he could be out in California, and he could turn the irrigation system on and off through his phone- - (laughing) That's crazy.

- While several states away.

So that's just, that's been 15 years ago, so think of the technology that we have now.

There's auto steer, where a farmer doesn't even have to turn the steering wheel.

And that can be more precise, especially if you're doing tillage work, planting, combining.

It just creates efficiencies in a farm operation.

- And it also is probably good on your body too, if you think about it.

Because there are a lot of farmers that, they farm into their 80s and 90s.

And it's tougher to do those long hours.

It's hard on you and your family.

- Right.

Yeah, it does reduce some fatigue if you're not constantly trying to focus on where to steer the tractor.

Yeah, it definitely reduces fatigue.

- Interesting.

So we've got a couple minutes left.

I want to talk, I was flying in last week, and I see all these turbines, these wind turbines.

And it seems like there's even more.

So when we see, let's say we're driving from Peoria to Bloomington, and we see all these turbines.

What do they do?

They just collect energy and they use that?

I mean, what exactly do those do?

- Well, I mean, we're being diversified in our energy processes, and that is one form of energy.

You've got wind power, you got the solar panels.

Of course we've got coal, nuclear.

There's all kinds of energy that we can use.

But our economy is shifting more towards renewable energy.

- [Matt] Renewable.

That's the word.

- So.

- [Matt] Yup.

- Those wind turbines and solar panels, they're generating energy.

And you know, that's why you see a lot of wind farms, 20 years ago, you would have seen hardly any wind farms or solar panels.

But it's an opportunity for us to diversify our energy sources.

- Well, that is an opportunity too for the farmers if they put it on their land to actually diversify their businesses too.

- It is, yes.

They get paid.

On solar panels, it's primarily on a per acre basis.

Where the solar panels are installed.

The contracts and leases can get a little more complicated.

- [Matt] I gotcha.

- On the wind side of it, whether you've got the transmission lines going through, or the road that goes to the actual wind turbine, whether you have the wind turbine on your acreage.

So it can be more of a pool based revenue source.

- Well again, Patrick, I appreciate you coming on.

I mean, there's so much going on at the Farm Bureau.

You do a great job, so keep up the good work.

I learned a lot today, as I do every time I talk to you.

So I appreciate it.

I'm Matt George, and this is another episode of Business Forward.

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