- Well Farm Connections, viewers.

We wanted to take a moment at the top of the show to thank you for your continued support of Farm Connections.

Especially during this difficult time.

As you may have noticed, we are staying close to home and filming our interviews through Zoom.

We've taken this cautionary approach to make sure we were being respectful for the concerns of health of our guests, as well as ourselves.

Please know that once we feel it's appropriate, we'll get back out in the field.

Thank you again for watching and enjoy the show.

Now onto Farm Connections.

Hello, and welcome to Farm Connections.

I'm your host Dan Hoffman.

On today's program we have a special treat, as we sit down with storyteller and show contributor, JoAnne Lower, to learn more about her history and how she comes up with the stories that she shares.

We'll discuss the future of small business and the options available to them with Chris Hahn of CEDA and the university of Minnesota provides us with a new Best Practices segment.

All here today on Farm Connections.

(upbeat music) - [Male Announcer] Welcome to Farm Connections with your host, Dan Hoffman.

- [Female Announcer] Farm Connections made possible in part by - [Male Announcer] Absolute Energy, a locally owned facility produces 125 million gallons of ethanol annually, proudly supporting local economies in Iowa and Minnesota.

Absolute energy, adding value to the neighborhood.

The Agricultural Utilization Research Institute, collaborating with businesses and entrepreneurs to foster longterm economic benefit for Minnesota through value added agricultural products.

You can learn more at auri.org.

- Welcome to Farm Connections, we're so honored today to have JoAnne Lower.

JoAnne's no stranger to our audience.

She's a poet and author and a storyteller.

She's been on many episodes and really well received by our audience.

Welcome JoAnne.

- Thank you, Dan.

I am so honored to be with you today.

- Your stories are so authentic and you grab the attention of people everywhere you tell them, including here on Farm Connections.

Can you take us back to how you started this passion and this really good thing you do of telling stories?

- I was just a little girl when every Tuesday night, my dad liked to go to the sale barn.

Mom didn't want to stay home so my two brothers and I went along, we all sat in the backseat and when I wanted to go into the sale barn dad would say, no, JoAnne, there are too many bad smells, too many bad words, you can't come in with me.

So mom, in order to keep us entertained would start the story.

Then have me continue and my brothers after that.

So it's been a long time.

- So mother was a storyteller as well?

- She was, she was a teacher and she really encouraged me in speaking - well, she did a great job.

And what attribute to your family and your upbringing and your rural roots?

What else do you remember about those early storytelling times?

- I guess when I first started being serious about writing, my stories was when I moved to Mayo clinic, Rochester, had a job there, but a small town girl from the Midwest has quite a hard time in a big city and at Mayo clinic and I was lost everywhere.

So I would come home, sit on my kitchen floor with a tablet and a pencil and I would just move into a story growing up on the farm and then I could find myself and then I felt comfortable.

- JoAnne, how do you take a story from a concept to a finished product?

Tell us about that.

- Someone will say something to me, I particularly remember a woman asking me what she could buy for her kids for Christmas that they would always remember.

And I thought there's nothing you can wrap up and put a bow around that they're always going to remember.

So I went home that day, sat on my kitchen floor with my tablet and my pencil and I wrote the story called "Just An Old Cardboard Angel".

That was a story about my dad coming home on Christmas Eve after his corn picker accident.

That's how I start with a story, you might say something to me that would trigger a story in me.

I will come home and write it.

So I write it on a tablet, I type it into my computer and when I am asked to speak for a particular group, I will go through the stories that I have and decide what would fit for that group of people and then go over the story.

And the funny thing is the more I tell the story, just like any of us, the more it takes on a life of its own.

- Well, JoAnne, I've mentioned how our audience really appreciates your stories.

What's your favorite, favorite interaction with your audience?

- I think it was one time when I was speaking out of the fairgrounds in (mumbles) city and there were about 400 people there.

And I guess I was afraid to do one of the stories that I did, it was a story about my brother Jim and I going back to the farm four miles south of town to just see the farm again, go through the barn, go through the house, see the pigeons in the haymow.

It was so much fun, but at the end of that story, it's a very sad story that took me about 12 years to write, Dan because it was so painful.

In the beginning of it is so fun, such a great time, but that was the last day I ever saw my brother.

He died a couple of years after and of a brain aneurysm.

He was my best friend and so I was afraid to tell that story because I didn't think anyone would want something sad at the end of the story.

And after I was finished, there was a man came up to me and said, JoAnne, thank you so much for telling us that story about your brother.

I lost my brother too.

Now I can tell people about him.

- Are you taking your storytelling to elementary schools, of course in normal times when you can do that or other young people's groups?

- All kinds of groups, I get the furthest.

My storytelling has taken me, was to Hong Kong.

And I was there for a week telling stories to all the kids at the school, one class at a time and one night all the teachers too.

And that was quite an experience.

- That's an amazing experience.

And what an opportunity, what did you learn from that experience of traveling to Hong Kong and, unique culture to us and of different geographic place?

What did you take away from that?

- Well, first of all, the kids could speak several languages.

I think it's kindergartners and so smart and so educated.

And I remember particularly, and I can send you pictures of this one little boy, who I had told a story to the whole class and he sat there with tears running down his cheeks and he said, I had to move away from my best friend and I miss him so much.

The story that I told them had nothing to do with that.

But for some reason, that's what triggered the story in this beautiful little boy.

It was such an honor to be there with them.

- Well, there's a thread that ties all of humanity together.

- Hmh How about their educational system and their reaction to your stories and you as a storyteller.

- The kids and the kids were kids and they were so attentive.

They were so much fun.

What surprised me was the teachers in that I maybe it was a mandatory thing for them to have to come hear me that night, I don't know, but what was shocking and incredible for me was because I had told my stories, then they wanted to tell theirs.

And I guess Dan, that's why I tell them not just to change people's hearts, but to give people permission to tell their story, to give people courage, to tell their own.

- Well you model it well, what a great example.

Do you have anything else you'd like to tell the audience on Farm Connections today?

- I am just so honored to be a part of Farm Connections.

I had watched it several times before I contacted you, Dan and you were so generous, so wonderful to allow me to be on your show.

And now it's just fun and I love it.

Thank you.

- You're welcome.

We love you too and so does the audience.

And that's really what public broadcasting and the KSMQ is about.

It is the people's television, it is the people's media and you really help us show that.

Thank you so much JoAnne Lower.

- Thank you, Dan.

- Stay tuned for more on Farm Connections.

- [Male Announcer] Farm Connections, Best Practices brought to you by (upbeat music) - This is Brad Carlson, Extension Educator, University of Minnesota Extension, in water resources and crops and I work out of our regional office in Mankato and I work statewide, and this is today's Best Practices segment.

Today We're going to talk about Variable Rate Nitrogen and it's a subject that I've been working a lot with over the last several years.

There's been an explosion in the availability of technologies, both to give nitrogen rate advisement for farmers in corn, but also for making prescriptions for variable rate nitrogen.

And there's three broad categories of these technologies.

One of them is Sensing technologies which you either measure the color of the crop, the growing, or are they analyze an image of the crops.

This technology has not been shown to be particularly promising because typically when the crop turns yellow, which we're, that's kind of what we're analyzing for is the greenest the crop we've already lost yield.

And so the, that type of technology may be useful when it comes to making a rescue treatment.

If we've had some severe weather or extreme conditions where we know we've lost a lot of nitrogen and we have to come back and try and rescue the crop, but as far as makes you making upfront management decisions, it appears to not be timely enough.

So the other two types of technologies one you use a sample based approach, which would be two, either take a soil sample or a tissue sample from the plant, analyze it for sufficiency, and then make a rate recommendation or the other would be to simply use a computer model to predict whether the nitrogen status is on the site and on the crop as well as what the weather's been like and what it is that probably is going to be like through the end of the growing season and I'm making a great recommendation from that.

So if we look at the performance of the variable rate nitrogen technologies, what we discover is that a large percentage of the time they make a rate recommendation, that's actually below university guidelines.

And that's exactly what we would expect based on our experience doing rate studies.

And so if we think about this, the lower rate that's being recommended is what is necessary to achieve optimum yield or an essence you wouldn't get any higher yield with more nitrogen and so therefore you've already achieved maximum yield.

What that means is the only way you're going to pay for this technology and there is a per acre cost is through fertilizer cost savings.

And so really it's only under the small number of times that we see a yield increase, that we actually see more grain being produced in order to pay for the technology and that's actually what we've observe in using the rate recommendation technologies, particularly the Computer Models.

What I would suggest to farmers is if you want to use the variable rate nitrogen technologies, they're certainly very interesting to try.

I would suggest doing field trials with them, where you compare the, a recommended rate from the technology versus simply using a flat rate, make sure that you put in random strips, don't just simply split the field, and make sure you do appropriate analysis of the yield.

We're always willing to help you at the university to do that.

Just simply contact us and we'll give you some advice and some pointers on how to accomplish that.

This is Brad Carlson, and this has been our Best Practices segment.

(upbeat music) - Today we have Chris Hahn from CEDA, to talked a little bit about economic development in Southern Minnesota.

Chris welcome to Farm Connections.

- Thanks for having me Dan (mumbles).

- Well, what does the acronym CEDA stand for?

- So CEDA stands for Community and Economic Development Associates.

And what we do is we are contracted out to communities.

For example, in my case, I'm contracted to the city of Grand Meadow, (mumbles), spring Valley as well as Fillmore County.

What we do is we work with the EDS and those talents, and really try to connect people with people and businesses with resources to help that community grow.

- Chris Why is that important?

- Well, the small business is really the driving factor of our communities, especially really you look at our rural communities and the local grocers, the flower shops, the small business auto repair, those types of things that really is the economic driver of these small communities.

In Southern Minnesota, agriculture is the biggest of the drivers for all of our communities across the (mumbles) - Well, on Farm Connections, we do an awful lot of work with farm families and agriculture.

Why should they care about CEDA and our smaller communities?

- Well, the one thing you can bring to the table is we have a really diverse team of over 30 people.

And what I mean by that is, for example, I have a business degree and a master's in education.

We have people on our team that are expert grant writers.

We have people on our team that have degrees in economic development.

We have people on our team that come out of the corporate world.

So the nice thing about working with CEDA is when you work with one of us, you really work with over 30 of us.

So on any given day, you may send emails to our teams and say, hey, I have this situation and all of those 30 people, five might respond and say, I've dealt with this before, have you tried this, have you checked this resource (mumbles)?

So what it is, it's an effective way for smaller communities to leverage those resources that they may not have readily available in their community and move forward from there.

- Well, farm families and agriculture is no stranger to using resources wisely and also sometimes having resources that aren't as abundant as, perhaps larger populated areas, but there's enough advantages to offset that.

So how do you use the resources wisely inside of that context?

- Well, I think again for us it's, the resources are there and they may not always be aware of each other.

So they may have a great partnership that needs to be facilitated, but they may not be aware of it.

And I'll use the example of my background.

I have an undergraduate degree in business, I have a master's in education.

So when we talk about workforce development, I can understand it from the corporate mindset of this is what it's going to cost me, this is my investment in my employees, but I also understand it from the facilitation of the education side of it.

And I've often said, education may be right here and business maybe right here and they never get a chance to reach across.

So as it relates to the farm community, some of the work that we do, is exactly that.

So we were going to have an agriculture summit this year in Fillmore County.

And what that was is we had speakers come in on the topics of succession planning, sustainability, alternative crops, emotional wellness for ag families, those types of topics.

And what it's about this awareness and accessibility to these farm families is that these resources are there, there is an abundance of them, here's how you access them.

So that's really what we try to do.

- How are small businesses and agriculture and rural communities connected?

- Well, I think the first thing to remember is that farms are a business.

And I say that because it sounds like everybody knows that.

And when you get into larger population centers, they don't necessarily look at it that way.

So, if I look at the economy as a whole, you see the farmers, and then you see the implement dealers and you see the service shops, you see all these other things, the feeds, the co-ops everything else.

And, our role there is again, to look at it and say, hey, some of you are already collaborating, some of you have a great opportunity to collaborate and how do we maximize the value of partnership, and, to pull something from education, partnerships create value in an organization or in a community.

So value is created when partners come together and combine their efforts, resources, and passions.

- You've can be working on business after hours.

Can you elaborate just a bit on that as well?

- Yeah, business after hours is not a new concept but it's just as important if not more so important in smaller communities as larger communities.

And really what it's about is networking.

We get people there, we learn about our different skillsets and oftentimes it might not even be what you do for your nine to five job or your daily job.

It might be something that you're passionate about on the side.

I look at my job now is like is, really work for education.

I'm sorry, my job now is actually economic development, but my passion is really more workforce development education.

So that helps inform me as to how to relate to different organizations.

This is after hours, it's the same thing.

You may have a small business owner who owns, a flower shop or a mechanics shop or something like that, but they may be passionate about something else.

So that person can often form a relationship, maybe do some mentoring or some consulting or those types of things, and really utilize the collective skillset of the community and that's what it's really about.

- [Dan] Well, recently we've had lots of changes economically and a bit of disruption to supply demand chains with COVID-19.

What have been your observations working in economic development during this time?

- It's been a challenge, but I will say the resiliency of the small business owners has really been impressive.

And I say that because you'll call, you'll reach out your contact people, hey, how's it going, we know there's challenges.

Some businesses are doing well right now, I mean, agriculture as a whole is doing okay because they're in the fields.

It's that time of year seasonally, it may impact them less than it might impact a small gift shop or something like that.

It's challenging for them, but I do appreciate the resiliency of the small business owner.

They don't want to loan, they don't want to hand out, they want to find out what the resources are to work through this.

And our job really in the last month and a half is to make sure that we do a good job of telling everybody and communicating to these business owners and outreach and saying, here's some situations or some opportunities that might help you with this situation.

And honestly, a lot of that is just to reach out and say, hey, how you doing, are you okay?

We get so tied up sometimes I think in the top line, bottom line profitability sales that it's okay to just reach out as a person and say, hey, how are you, how are you doing?

So that's really, that's what we're seeing, I mean, it's challenging, the requirements seem to change daily or get modified, but, we're just staying on top of it and trying to let everybody know that they're not alone, we'll get through this and we'll get through it together, but no, we're here, - Chris, every job has good days, bad days.

If we could take one of your greatest challenges and then follow up with one of your greatest rewards in your work.

- Oh, asked a good question.

I think one of my greatest challenges, my greatest challenge really in the last year is trying to get out and meet people.

I'm trying to have that face to face conversation but it was a challenge because there's just not enough (mumbles).

In promoting the agriculture summit, which again, subsequently was canceled.

I got to go into the communities and hand out flyers and learn about your business and learn about people in the community that are doing this or, and there's always that part of the conversation, you should talk to this person, absolutely love to talk to them.

So that's probably the biggest challenge.

And honestly it's probably one of the biggest rewards too, because once you start doing that and you start making these connections, you put that person's, either passion or their business or what they like to do or what they're good at, or they're experienced, you kind of find a way.

And then you may be talking to another business owner and say, hey, you know what, I know someone who's had experience.

I know someone that might be a good person (mumbles).

I had that the other day we had someone looking at, starting a small business and the person happened to be from my hometown and said, hey, have you talked to so and so because they did that in my hometown for 30 years, he said, no, I haven't, but that's a really good idea.

Because again, we both knew the person that we just hadn't had that conversation and kind of turned up the ideas as to how to best approach it.

- Chris, thank you for work you do and I hope that you find good connections in our communities and you reach out continually.

You're doing great work, thank you.

- Well, thank you for having me, I love speaking with you this morning and, like I said, if we can help anybody, let me know.

- Thanks again, Chris Hahn from CEDA.

This is Dan Hoffman, Farm Connections, stay tuned for more (upbeat music) - [Lynn] With ethanol usage down due to fewer people on the road and hand sanitizer in greater demand because of the COVID-19 outbreak, it only made sense for ethanol plants to sell their product for additional sanitizers.

That is what the Al-Corn ethanol plant in Claremont, Minnesota has been doing and doing successfully.

Randy Doyal is the CEO of the company.

- We are choosing a spot in our in our production line where we've got the high security and we've got that pipe separately to separate tanks and separate loadout and everything so yes, we can do that, and we are.

- [Lynn] How does alcohol from an ethanol plant work for sanitizers?

Doyal says it works very well and it has opened up a temporary market for some plants.

- Yeah, it's a market for now.

Understand that FDA gave that guidance that allowed ethanol producers like ourselves to do this, but it's for a limited time.

It's only while the emergency orders are odd and at the very latest that expires the end of this year.

- [Lynn] While numerous ethanol plants across the country shut down or reduce their production, Al-Corn kept running and buying corn, but producing ethanol at a lower rate.

As more States begin to resume normal activities, Doyal says production is ramping up.

- We just kicked our production up to full rate because that's what the market is telling us right now.

Market's come back (mumbles) and I think people have gotten stir-crazy being boxed up and they're starting to drive more.

So we're hearing more from our normal fuel ethanol customers and there's demand out there that we're trying to meet.

- In the short term there's no question using alcohol for hand sanitizer is a boost for the ethanol industry.

However, in the longterm, it's not the market they really need.

They need people in their cars driving, using ethanol.

This is Lynn Ketelsen reporting.

(upbeat music) - We are all part of a greater Tapestry of Stories, each generation sharing traditions down through the years.

When we think about the legacy of those who've come before us, it puts into perspective our place in that Tapestry and how future generations will remember us.

I'm Dan Hoffman, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music)