Ep. 036 - Farming Without Apologies: Jonathan Lawler on Bulls, Bullsh*t, and Being Real
VP at SR2
Most people talk about farming. This time, we talk with someone living it.
Kristin Demoranville sits down with Jonathan Lawler—also known as the Punk Rock Farmer. He’s a full-time American farmer based in Indiana, a food security advocate, and an agricultural filmmaker who doesn’t pull punches.
Jonathan doesn’t speak in soundbites—he tells stories. About what happens when operational tech fails. About the emotional toll of farming through crisis. About how activism, algorithms, and food marketing have warped our view of modern agriculture.
This isn’t a polished farm-to-table fantasy. It’s real, raw, and exactly the kind of conversation we should be having—because how can we protect something if we don’t understand it?
🎙 You’ll hear:
What cyber-physical failure actually looks like when animals are on the line
Why food insecurity isn’t about food—it’s about broken systems
How social media distorts the public's understanding of farming
The unseen toll of disease outbreaks, disruption, and public pressure
Why storytelling—not slogans—is agriculture’s most underused tool
If you care about food systems, or just want to hear what it’s like to farm without all the BS… start here.
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🔗 Follow Jonathan Lawler, The Punk Rock Farmer
Website: punkfarmermedia.com
LinkedIn: Jonathan Lawler
Instagram: @thepunkrockfarmer
YouTube: Punk Farmer Media
Farm: Brandy Wine Creek Farms
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Episode Key Highlights
00:04:32 – How Feeding the Hungry Became a Mission
00:13:28 – Farmers and the Public Narrative
00:18:15 – Animal Welfare Meets Cyber Risk
00:22:40 – Avian Flu and the Reality of Culling
00:26:18 – The Cost of Activist Misinformation
00:32:40 – The Myth of the "Natural" Label
00:38:55 – Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, and Power
00:46:55 – Behind the Scenes of Ag-Focused Film
00:49:10 – How Media Shapes Public Perception of Farmers
00:54:10 – Why Farmers Don’t Speak Up
01:00:38 – Final Thoughts and What Needs to Change
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Socials: TikTok; Instagram; LinkedIn; BlueSky
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🛡️ About AnzenSage & AnzenOT
AnzenSage is a women-owned cybersecurity advisory firm specializing in security resilience for the food, agriculture, zoo, and aquarium industries. AnzenSage offers practical, strategic guidance to help organizations anticipate risks and build resilience. Learn more about their offerings at anzensage.com.
AnzenOT: Industrial Cyber Risk — Simple. Smart. Swift.
AnzenOT is the SaaS risk management platform built to bring clarity and control to Operational Technology (OT) cybersecurity. Designed for critical infrastructure sectors, AnzenOT translates technical risk into clear, actionable insight for decision-makers. Explore the platform at anzenot.com For demo requests or inquiries, email stuart@anzenot.com or kristin@anzenot.com
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Listen to full episode :
Episode Guide:
00:00:00 – Introduction
00:01:42 – Meet the Punk Rock Farmer
00:04:32 – How Feeding the Hungry Became a Mission
00:09:57 – From PR Guy to Full-Time Farmer
00:13:28 – Farmers and the Public Narrative
00:18:15 – Animal Welfare Meets Cyber Risk
00:22:40 – Avian Flu and the Reality of Culling
00:26:18 – The Cost of Activist Misinformation
00:32:40 – The Myth of the "Natural" Label
00:38:55 – Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, and Power
00:42:23 – "Backyard Chicken" Culture and Farm Trends
00:46:55 – Behind the Scenes of Ag-Focused Film
00:49:10 – How Media Shapes Public Perception of Farmers
00:54:10 – Why Farmers Don’t Speak Up
01:00:38 – Final Thoughts and What Needs to Change
01:04:44 – Outro
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00:00:26 Kristin Demoranville
Welcome to the Bytes and Bites Podcast. We talk about critical infrastructure that feeds us fuels us. And let's be honest, doesn't get nearly enough attention. Food and Agriculture. This episode is.
00:00:38 Kristin Demoranville
It's different because today you get to hear directly from the farmer and not just any farmer, Jonathan Lauer, better known as the punk rock farmer. He's a full time American farmer based in Indiana, a passionate food security advocate and an agricultural filmmaker, telling the stories most people never heard of. And that's what matters. Because when was the last time you.
00:00:59 Kristin Demoranville
I actually spoke to a farmer, or ever most people haven't were surrounded by commentary and clickbait, but the voices of people who grow the food don't always make it to the mic. Jonathan doesn't lead with stats. He leads with stories.
00:01:13 Kristin Demoranville
About food insecurity, about broken systems, and what happens when tech fails and animals suffer about everything we romanticize about farming and everything conveniently ignore. Oh yes, we talk about cybersecurity, cyber, physical risk, and operational technology. Those spreads are still there, but this episode is really about listening, listening to someone who's lived it.
00:01:34 Kristin Demoranville
Lost it, fought back and kept farming. Anyways. Jonathan doesn't pull any punches. He's not here to make you comfortable. He's here to make you think. And in a world full of filters that kind of honesty is something we don't hear nearly enough. Let's.
00:01:48 Kristin Demoranville
Get into it.
00:01:50 Kristin Demoranville
Well, I am absolutely thrilled this is going to be a really fun episode, so I hope everybody has a snack and a drink as we do with everybody else. Let's start with favorite food and favorite food memory. They do not need to be the same.
00:02:02 Kristin Demoranville
Thing, go ahead John.
00:02:02 Jonathan Lawler
OK, so mine happened to be the same thing. My favorite food is the Golgi Korean begolli or barbecue, and my aunt, my uncle married a Korean lady by the name of Keisha, and I remember being like 7 years old and having the Goldie for the first time. And the more hate the more she made and she just.
00:02:23 Jonathan Lawler
You know, but yeah, that to this day that is my favorite food is beef for gold.
00:02:26 Jonathan Lawler
So.
00:02:27 Kristin Demoranville
That's awesome. That's really.
00:02:28 Kristin Demoranville
Just I had the privilege of having dinner with some Korean friends at the time, and when I was working in California and I went to the Koreatown in LA and I had it for the first time there, I also had soju which put me on my ****. Later on that night, big time because, you know, it's just like sake, you just kind of don't know what you're getting into until you stand up. So I'm glad to introduce yourself to the listeners.
00:02:50 Kristin Demoranville
Whenever you are and what you're about.
00:02:52 Jonathan Lawler
So my name is Jonathan Waller and I I'm a farmer. I own a media company that specializes.
00:02:59 Jonathan Lawler
In telling the story.
00:03:00 Jonathan Lawler
Of agriculture, we also do marketing for animal enterprise. For the most part, every once in a while we just do it random. You know, business likes what we do and then contact us and ask us to help them out. But we mostly specialize in video, video storytelling, and we do a lot of social media management right now. We manage about 147 social media.
00:03:20 Jonathan Lawler
Wow.
00:03:21 Jonathan Lawler
I have no idea. I mean, people have no idea that they're being managed, but we manage them.
00:03:26 Kristin Demoranville
And when you?
00:03:26 Kristin Demoranville
Grow on your farm. I know you told me.
00:03:28 Kristin Demoranville
This, but they don't know.
00:03:29 Jonathan Lawler
So.
00:03:29 Jonathan Lawler
In the past, we specialize in five crops will grow around 20 to 30 acres of watermelons have about 15 acres of cantaloupes. We always drew lots of tomatoes and Peppers and cheese Peppers, but we would always like we'd get contracts and we've grown jalapenos on contract. We've grown. They'd let us on contract, we've grown.
00:03:49 Jonathan Lawler
We grow with the scorpion Peppers on contract, which those you have to wear gloves when you pick them. Yeah, that. But my favorite crap by far is tomatoes. And this year where we have a.
00:04:00 Jonathan Lawler
At large crop, I think as we can do a genetically engineered tomato and it's purple and it's purple. You cut it open, it's purple all the way through. There's no other tomato like this in the world.
00:04:11 Kristin Demoranville
Anything special about it like nutrition wise or?
00:04:13 Jonathan Lawler
It was. It was cross with US, Snapdragon, which is an edible flower. So I mean people here genetically engineering they can, you know, it's cross with a fish or something or bacteria. This one was actually just crossed with another plant but it's very healthy. It tastes pretty good and visually.
00:04:27 Kristin Demoranville
Sounds.
00:04:29 Jonathan Lawler
It's very appealing, so it looks good in salads.
00:04:32 Kristin Demoranville
I don't know if I've had a purple tomato. I think I've had a Black 1 though, so and I do like those. I feel like they are less, I don't know, stressful on my stomach.
00:04:35 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah.
00:04:41 Jonathan Lawler
And some have higher acid levels than others. You know, I I will say this the the most tomatoes like there you have the Cherokee purple and you cut it open. It's still gonna be red on the inside.
00:04:52 Jonathan Lawler
Those tomatoes are gonna be red or yellow.
00:04:54 Jonathan Lawler
On the inside.
00:04:55 Kristin Demoranville
Wow. I mean now I know more about tomatoes and it's so funny. You said that because the only good thing I like about some.
00:05:00 Kristin Demoranville
And for the most part, because I don't really care for heat tomato sandwiches and since where?
00:05:03 Kristin Demoranville
It's at. It's gonna be good, sour.
00:05:04 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah. That's like one of my. That's my favorite cross Rd.
00:05:07 Kristin Demoranville
Tomatoes are fun. I I like it because anybody can grow tomatoes. Really. They're not not that difficult in comparison to other.
00:05:12 Jonathan Lawler
That's what I tracked. I try to tell people that people will come to my farm and they'll they'll like. They'll see 3 acres of tomatoes. But there's 15,000 plants per acre to them, so they might as well be 20 acres tomatoes and they're very.
00:05:24
Yeah.
00:05:25 Jonathan Lawler
Various.
00:05:26 Jonathan Lawler
The difference between like what we do in the home, we, we treat our, we treat every role like it's one tomato plant basically and you know I go into these gardening groups and to hear people talk about growing tomatoes is if you need like a degree in botany. And the tomatoes, one of the the ultimately easy plants to grow. But there there's so much.
00:05:46 Jonathan Lawler
Like always tell people. Be careful those burning pages because there's a lot of non good information.
00:05:51 Kristin Demoranville
Like, yeah, I remember my grandfather used to have a huge tomato guard.
00:05:55 Kristin Demoranville
And he just sit on one side of the cached, so it was very small area. But the way he did it, he strung them up kind of vertically. So they had plenty of places to climb. And I would just walk through and eat them when I was a kid. There's nothing better than that smell of a tomato vine. Like, they make candles with that smell. And yes, I own them because I just really like that smell. It's just something, really.
00:06:15 Kristin Demoranville
Fresh and anyways, you know what I mean. It's something about tomato plants. They they stand out kind of like the ocean does when we drive by the sea.
00:06:23 Kristin Demoranville
Sure.
00:06:23 Jonathan Lawler
Usually the smell you're smelling is the. I mean, they're toxic. I mean, they're a nightshade, so you can't eat that plant itself. And if you, we have to be careful with our workers, that they're picking their handed. So you'll get, you know, gardeners will say, oh, I got a little bit of stuff on. Our guys will come out of the field in their hands and their their forms.
00:06:28 Kristin Demoranville
Yes, they are.
00:06:43 Jonathan Lawler
Black and it's just everything coming off of those tomatoes. I have one guy actually have an allergic reaction to them.
00:06:50 Jonathan Lawler
Awful. You know, while he was in the field. Yeah, it's it's definitely different when you have lots.
00:06:55 Kristin Demoranville
Of them? Yes, of course. Absolutely. And it's kind of weird that I like the smell of a plant that.
00:07:00 Kristin Demoranville
To kill you.
00:07:00 Speaker 3
Take that for what?
00:07:01 Jonathan Lawler
A lot of it to kill you, but yeah.
00:07:01 Kristin Demoranville
It is.
00:07:03 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah, it is topped.
00:07:04 Speaker 3
So.
00:07:05 Kristin Demoranville
Jonathan actually goes by the punk rock farmer Jonathan. You wanna talk about how you got there to that name?
00:07:10 Kristin Demoranville
Because it's a good story, yeah.
00:07:11 Jonathan Lawler
Out so I didn't even give myself that name. It was an inner city Community Center and we had started our nonprofit farm where we were donating clothes. Basically. I went there and talked to them and they they were working with a university and the university was having them do study upon study.
00:07:29 Jonathan Lawler
Whether or not to put an urban farm in her, and so he talked to me about and I was like, well, do you have the soil test? What's the soil like? And so he gave me the soil test and the lead was under the parts per million that was we were OK to plant. I said, well, well, don't just get some pressure here and plowed up and start planting this spring. And you can tell that you university to take their feasibility studies.
00:07:51 Jonathan Lawler
Putting more the sun milk and he he was all about that. We actually brought a couple of tractors up because there were a lot of kids there. So we had two of our big F-350 pull them out, Kubota in and massive.
00:08:04 Jonathan Lawler
And and we were running the tractors and at the time my hair was a lot longer than it is now. And but it was shaved completely like on the sides. And I think I was wearing this sweatshirt and we had punk music playing in one of the trucks while we were working. And I remember it really clearly. One of the kids started calling me the punk rock farmer. And the report there was.
00:08:25 Jonathan Lawler
More than one reporter there, but one of the reporters picked up on that. And then?
00:08:28
Uh-huh.
00:08:29 Jonathan Lawler
Young woman who followed what our nonprofit form did actually created a page called Punk Rock Farm. It was kind of interesting because she had made like a spray painted wall that had, like, a big anarchy symbol on it. It got up to like 5000 followers, and she contacted us and was like, you should probably be doing this.
00:08:50 Jonathan Lawler
Why is the executive director of the Farm and I was always getting in trouble for something that, I mean all the time and.
00:08:52
MHM.
00:08:56 Kristin Demoranville
I don't see that for you at all, Jonathan I.
00:08:58 Kristin Demoranville
Don't see you being disruptor.
00:09:00 Jonathan Lawler
My trouble at all. So my wife was like, you know, if you're the punk rock farmer, you can kind of say whatever you want. Just don't include the the farm. I I kind of took it over and I let it sit for a little while. And then, like, right before, I think COVID hit, I started utilizing it more because I was getting really pisssed off with things.
00:09:20 Jonathan Lawler
We'll see of the amount of waste there is in the nonprofit sector and stuff like that, so.
00:09:26 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah, yeah. But from there, I mean, my nonprofit work has taken me places where farmers shouldn't go, is how I could put it. It's just it's one of those things where I'm just kind of like, wow, I was just like, wow, this is so I got invited by Liberty University. They they had, they had a stock car they sponsored.
00:09:46 Jonathan Lawler
NASCAR race, the 400 it was. It was just very interesting because that's where.
00:09:52 Jonathan Lawler
Team, I mean, he he's actually the team owner, so, but I didn't realize it was also a kindred, so that it had invited us. I'm just thinking, I gotta go watch NASCAR race and we get there. And they're like, do you wanna watch from the pits or like hell? Yeah. And we went up into the pit and sure enough, with Hendrickson right there, and he introduces himself.
00:10:12 Jonathan Lawler
We just started talking and Jeff?
00:10:15 Jonathan Lawler
He comes up because he's there.
00:10:17 Jonathan Lawler
But he's not crying.
00:10:17 Kristin Demoranville
Casual.
00:10:18 Jonathan Lawler
And and I I realize like here's a guy watched 1000 times, things like that. I mean, I I was. I've been lucky enough to work with micro. I've worked with RTD, some doing interviews with about food insecurity. Small town.
00:10:35 Jonathan Lawler
I think that the name of the show it was on CMT when when they when when we did that show with them but it was small town, Big deal but it was kind of likes people that we we really got to know some of the producers and the behind the scenes folks and talking to one of them they're like you're really.
00:10:52 Jonathan Lawler
Good at talking about agriculture and you make it exciting and you make me want to know more about agriculture. So maybe there's something you want to pursue. So I took some online film classes, but what really helped is I got hooked up with some more like just film guys that they. They're not the, they approach it more from our artistic standpoint, they're not.
00:11:12 Jonathan Lawler
You know, we have like, yeah, we have like 2 very expensive cinema cameras that we use that we utilize.
00:11:12 Speaker 3
Love Hollywood.
00:11:19 Jonathan Lawler
But we also have a couple of cameras that are more like for just jump out of the car and start filming. We actually use those more and I feel like they, I mean we can do a better job, you know, versus having to set up the cinema cameras and get them ready. And I'm not technical enough to know about them. But I know what needs to be something hit the phone. I know the questions we need to ask the farmer.
00:11:40 Jonathan Lawler
There's questions that people never asked them, and and America's view a farmer is a 63 year old man in overalls standing next to their cornfield or soybeans.
00:11:50 Jonathan Lawler
In a combine, there's there's nothing else to the American farmers they don't realize they're ranchers, the dairy folks, you know that the the produce growers, the beekeepers, all the different aspects. I mean, there's a bunch of people that raise rabbits, you know, commercial people who raise ducks commercially.
00:12:07 Kristin Demoranville
There's people that raise llamas and emus.
00:12:10 Jonathan Lawler
I mean if if it's one of those things that we just, we I see it and it's just like man, there, there's there's so much to agriculture people out of nursing.
00:12:25 Kristin Demoranville
Thanks for hanging out with me and Jonathan on the White Spice podcast. If you're enjoying the conversation or it's making you think a little bit differently about food farming or infrastructure, take a second to like share and send this episode to someone who needs to hear it. We all have a role to play in critical infrastructure, especially when it comes to Food and Agriculture.
00:12:40
Alright.
00:12:45 Kristin Demoranville
I'm seriously. I'm so glad you're here. Quick reminder. I have a book coming out.
00:12:50 Kristin Demoranville
If you want the inside scoop, early updates, giveaways, or event news, you can sign up at antonsage.com, and that's where everything will be happening 1st, and if you're the type who likes a bit of commentary with your cybersecurity, I'm also writing regularly over on sub stack. You'll find that link in the show notes. One of my recent pieces about the USDA.
00:13:10 Kristin Demoranville
Farm security plan stirred up some really great conversation and a few side eyes, of course, so check that out too. Now back to the.
00:13:17 Kristin Demoranville
Show.
00:13:22 Jonathan Lawler
I toured an alligator farm like I wanted. I wanted to know how did these guys make their money? Well, it's not from the knee. I can promise you that. It's from their skin. Their skin's worth a lot of money. And you can think the alligator farming industry for the fact that alligators were on the brink of extinction. And now there's more.
00:13:23 Kristin Demoranville
Sometimes.
00:13:40 Jonathan Lawler
Alligators in the United States than there ever has been before. You know where North America pre Columbus didn't have as many alligators we have now.
00:13:50 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, fun fact. I've been to one of those farms, actually.
00:13:52 Kristin Demoranville
I was a kid. There's a picture of me holding a baby alligator. Yeah, but I remember not being afraid of storm thinking this thing's weird because I was 7. I mean, what are you gonna do? Seven. You don't think everything's cool or weird? Yeah, it it's interesting how the dynamics you write about how we define agriculture. Is it big? Is that how we see it? Is it small family farm? You know, kind of vibes.
00:14:13 Kristin Demoranville
Sure, but nobody.
00:14:14 Kristin Demoranville
Actually thinks about the subtleties as a different aspects of agriculture.
00:14:18 Jonathan Lawler
I know you're heavily.
00:14:19 Jonathan Lawler
Involved Wilmington. Don't let. Don't let this let observations of LinkedIn when it comes. But to me, people will see a farm or telling a story on Facebook or on Instagram.
00:14:23 Kristin Demoranville
No, it's fine, I got it.
00:14:30 Jonathan Lawler
And he's in a big tractor and he's in a big field and people realize that's terrible. That's big. And like, that's not worried. You don't find big ads on Facebook, you find big mean. That's true. Where, where I, I actually listen to a woman. She wrote out this. I'm connected with her. I don't know her. I don't remember her name, but I'd say this to her face. She had these four people.
00:14:41 Speaker 3
That's true.
00:14:50 Jonathan Lawler
On the stage and she said the amount of agriculture these people are leaders in the agricultural world and they, they, they are so they know so much about this is so important that.
00:15:03 Jonathan Lawler
Here and they were all three bankers. They weren't farms. They were bankers in the ag industry, which is probably a problem with the ag industry suffers from is I. I've suffered from working with an AG bank that just ripped me over the Kohl's and I just thought how, how disconnected you are. And here you are.
00:15:08 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah.
00:15:23 Jonathan Lawler
Front and center, the place you work at has far in its title, and you're that disconnect.
00:15:29 Kristin Demoranville
That's.
00:15:29 Kristin Demoranville
It's it's not indicative of just the agriculture industry. We all have misunderstanding and misinformation about every industry we're in. But I do find that for agriculture specifically, it's because it's a critical infrastructure and which everybody needs it for various reasons, not just to eat. That is dangerous. That is really dangerous and I will put my hand up and be the.
00:15:49 Kristin Demoranville
First one to say.
00:15:50 Kristin Demoranville
I don't know everything about agriculture. I know enough to help.
00:15:54 Kristin Demoranville
People be secure and.
00:15:55 Kristin Demoranville
Resilient, but I learned something every day from everyone I talk to when it comes to act and I love it because first of all, it's keeping the Alzheimer's off. Let's be honest, Jonathan. And secondly, it's fun cultures, fun. It's supposed to be fun. You're working with the land, you're working with the animals, you're dealing with climate, you're dealing with other people, you're dealing with bugs, you're dealing with all these different.
00:16:16 Kristin Demoranville
Interesting things that aren't just like I'm in a cubicle and I'm talking to whoever next to me. It's so much different and I think it's an honor to be in the industry and myself in the small little corner I sit in. But you're right, it is. It's definitely misleading in a lot.
00:16:30 Kristin Demoranville
Places I do find that LinkedIn has a great presence with ranchers. They're there and they're saying some stuff, and they're definitely saying some stuff that needs to be said. It's difficult to watch sometimes because I watch my community in the cyber security space be completely misinformed and misunderstand what agriculture is because I bought into what we see.
00:16:50 Kristin Demoranville
As with traditional American farm looks like and it's not that, and it's not entirely that, that there are sectors that are like that, but it's not entirely like that and.
00:16:53 Jonathan Lawler
Oh yeah.
00:17:00 Kristin Demoranville
Hard in fact.
00:17:00 Jonathan Lawler
Well, I mean, that's what the the things that I have to deal with every day that the things that I have to listen to people say you know.
00:17:07 Kristin Demoranville
Do you have a personal you have a personal least favorite right now that you've been listening to?
00:17:11 Jonathan Lawler
I like Joel Salatin. I like him as the fact that he gets people excited about agriculture. What I don't like is, like, nicknamed him the sound bite farmer. Somebody takes his sound bite, and that's what he does. I mean, he likes to throw out like these wild sound bites without any of the nuance conversation.
00:17:29 Jonathan Lawler
That needs to be had.
00:17:30 Jonathan Lawler
There.
00:17:30 Kristin Demoranville
The bumper sticker conversation basically.
00:17:32 Jonathan Lawler
The whole chicken, you know, killing of chickens calling.
00:17:35 Jonathan Lawler
I disagree with the USDA going out several miles and killing chickens, but they'll sell. Looking does this thing out there that said that the basis of animal husbandry of sound animal has has always been breeding the chickens together, that that survive, or breeding animals that survive the disease.
00:17:54 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, I mean that that makes sense.
00:17:54 Jonathan Lawler
Won't.
00:17:55 Jonathan Lawler
Yes, well it does until you like. Look at the newer ones around the highly pathogenic bird food. You were lucky if any of your flock lift. And if they did live is around 10%. So if you start breeding at 10%, you run into something called genetic bottle milk. Ohh, maybe the, I mean, I'm not saying don't do.
00:18:10
Yes.
00:18:14 Jonathan Lawler
That, but I'm saying there needs to be an all of the above approach, not just one way, you know, not let's just not blame the USDA, you know, let let let's let's look at the real like solutions especially when the USDA was doing what was known as best practices. It is just hard and I have.
00:18:31 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, and it's hard.
00:18:34 Jonathan Lawler
I had a friend that lost his entire his entire target for for me that was just nobody. Nobody took into account how bad that was for him, what you know, and he he's not. He didn't want to call, but he literally told me. He said he went out and found like 6 dead turkeys. And then within 12 hours it was.
00:18:43 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah.
00:18:53 Jonathan Lawler
30 and then he said half his flock was dying, and so they made the choice to call the the entire flock. And I mean, he agreed with it. He's not some, you know, conspiracy guy. He's just.
00:19:04 Jonathan Lawler
A guy trying to raise.
00:19:06 Jonathan Lawler
Turkeys, you know? And I mean, he had them on contract. And the other thing is people like all these farmers and whoever's getting rich off.
00:19:13 Jonathan Lawler
Insurance does not cover the full amount of the bird. It's probably better for him to take that bird to market for the full price than it is to do what?
00:19:21 Jonathan Lawler
What happened there?
00:19:22 Kristin Demoranville
It doesn't take into account either the you know the the mental.
00:19:25 Kristin Demoranville
People's health toll it takes on a farmer they don't wanna. Yeah, they don't wanna. I know. They raising the animals to eventually become food on someone's plate. But that doesn't mean they don't care. They those animals live a good life and they invest emotionally into them as well. I mean, sure, they might name them or they might have a favorite. That's fine to nature, but.
00:19:29 Jonathan Lawler
Oh well.
00:19:45 Kristin Demoranville
The fact that you have to take out an entire flock.
00:19:49 Kristin Demoranville
It's it's hurtful. It it, it's financially, it's stressful emotionally, it's stressful if there's children involved, you have to explain what's going on to them. That's a whole other set of emotional distress. Like, there's so many factors into this. And this is where I highly frustrated as a cybersecurity professional, just to take it to a different angle, if this happens because of tampering.
00:20:09 Kristin Demoranville
Of IoT sensors for chicken monitoring or Turkey monitoring, something like.
00:20:14 Kristin Demoranville
And animals start getting sick because their feet is disrupted or something happens with it, or chemicals are introduced. This is happening in real time like this is the stage 1 like granted this is the avian flu and it's being spread by wild birds and other things as well. But like we've already got examples of how we we need to stop stuff and here we are getting stressed about the.
00:20:20
Yeah.
00:20:34 Kristin Demoranville
The political nature of it.
00:20:36 Kristin Demoranville
When in reality, we need to talk about what's going on with the farmers because they're the backbones. Who else is going to raise turkeys or chickens? You know who else nobody's going to do that in their backyard. And now people are like, I'll go get chickens.
00:20:49 Jonathan Lawler
Oh, what's up? It's. And that's the thing. Like I was at Walmart the other day and somebody recognized I didn't know who this person was. They're like, oh, I watch your videos and I follow you. You're really.
00:21:00 Jonathan Lawler
They went way out of the way to tell me how how they love, how I go after certain things, and then he was like, why are what do you have to buy from here? And I'm like, yeah, a grocery store. And, you know, he's like, I just assumed you wouldn't buy meat or anything here. I'm like, well, I don't have any cattle right now. And.
00:21:20 Jonathan Lawler
Even when I do, I mean we probably keep 1/2 / a aside and then everything else we sell, I can't grow pineapples, I can't grow oranges here. I mean the the thought that you can become completely self-sufficient. I mean, there's people that can do it. Don't get me wrong. But that is not an easy one, that is.
00:21:38 Kristin Demoranville
Have that hole.
00:21:39 Kristin Demoranville
Hi.
00:21:39 Jonathan Lawler
That is rough to try to be self-sufficient.
00:21:42 Kristin Demoranville
I'm all for the people who want to make their own butter and want to milk.
00:21:45 Kristin Demoranville
Their own cows.
00:21:46 Kristin Demoranville
And do all the things that's great. And that's where you want your life to be but that.
00:21:51 Kristin Demoranville
Is a lifestyle.
00:21:53 Jonathan Lawler
Absolutely.
00:21:53 Kristin Demoranville
As a lifestyle, you know, and I've talked to other farmers too, Jonathan, they're like, yeah, totally go by me to.
00:22:00 Kristin Demoranville
Storing I'm a beef farmer. They're like I am supporting the industry and I I I thought about it for a minute. I was like, yeah, that's true. You are supporting the industry. Who knows if it's your your particular account, we don't know. But I thought it was really interesting to think about. And I had never really thought about because I just assumed you went to the grocery store as a farmer. Like, I just assumed that was the thing. Cause why do you have time to slaughter anything?
00:22:20 Kristin Demoranville
Or, you know, make your own bread, or do all those.
00:22:22 Jonathan Lawler
Things or why would I slaughter my own? I mean, so I I have a friend of mine who was a sheriff's deputy in the next county over and he wanted to buy one of my hogs and he wanted to slaughter on the farm. I was like, ohh.
00:22:35 Jonathan Lawler
Let's go for. Let's do that. Well, that did not go the way I thought it was going to go. It was quite a good it's just loading them up. You know, you load them up and and that's the thing I've never gotten attached to a pic anyhow. I mean, we usually have enough of them that they're kind of, but I've never had one where I was just like, oh, I really like this.
00:22:55 Jonathan Lawler
Or or, you know, I mean, there's been a couple, I guess that like tolerated, but more often than not, there's nothing better than when the truck comes to load them up.
00:23:04 Jonathan Lawler
Versus cattle for a long time. For me, I had to with cattle when it was time for them to go, I'd leave and my son would help. But I didn't want to. I didn't wanna watch him. My wife is always kept a lot of chickens. We've never done chickens. We tried doing chickens on pasture because they're a local butcher. Shop said that they would.
00:23:24 Jonathan Lawler
Mammal we started with like 800 and.
00:23:28 Jonathan Lawler
And by the time we're ready for processing, they were down to like 300 because of all the creditors and, you know, and everybody's like, well, you get this get get an LGD, a large livestock guardian dogs and all this stuff. And it was OK. It just it just didn't work. You know I I kept my phone very natural on purpose because I.
00:23:47 Jonathan Lawler
Want it to be?
00:23:48 Jonathan Lawler
Natural. So we have, we have a very large Woods Creek that runs right through the middle of the woods. And I just couldn't keep predators away from the chickens. It didn't matter if it was Hawks, owls, foxes.
00:24:00 Jonathan Lawler
You name that we had.
00:24:01 Jonathan Lawler
On yourself?
00:24:01 Kristin Demoranville
Whatever. Yeah, whatever could get at him. And I I think that's interesting because you just made me think about how I've read some posts recently about people are, I don't know what particular part activist wise is upset, but how farmers don't care about the natural world and how they they tear down their farm land and they destroy all the forests that are around them and stuff like that. And I thought to myself.
00:24:23 Kristin Demoranville
I don't have these people have lived in the country, you know, have they lived in parts of the country.
00:24:28 Kristin Demoranville
That have farms there.
00:24:29 Kristin Demoranville
So much woodland.
00:24:30 Jonathan Lawler
I don't know. I mean, I don't know if they're being. I mean, if they're talking about North American farmers, I have yet to be a North American farmer that's glued to woods in my generation. I mean, generations before. Yeah. I mean, that happened in places, but I tend to try to make my farm as natural as possible. Like, you know, snakes.
00:24:48
Yeah.
00:24:50 Jonathan Lawler
We have, we have a lot of snakes here. They're particularly helpful because we right now on our farm, we we have about 27 miles of drip irrigation in the ground. So when it gets kind of droughty, mice will chew on that drip irrigation. Well, if the snakes are there, I mean, we notice that that the.
00:25:08 Jonathan Lawler
You know, we want the snakes. They're.
00:25:09 Jonathan Lawler
Eating rice? Yeah.
00:25:11 Jonathan Lawler
As far as, but as far as like, I mean, I know in South America there's a lot of deforestation and they claim it's for cattle. But I also know what's being done for.
00:25:19 Jonathan Lawler
Soybean production too.
00:25:20 Kristin Demoranville
It is. It's big, big farms, you know.
00:25:23 Jonathan Lawler
So you know, I mean, there's books happening and I mean that just gives me more of a reason to support the American beef industry so that they don't have to clear cut a rainforest to raise cattle. Yeah. The the vegan arguments, though, are often they're they're they're so poorly put together.
00:25:41 Jonathan Lawler
Like like they sit there and they the their favorite thing is they're like no other animal on the planet drinks the milk of another piece. That's like the biggest argument. Well to me also the big thing is is anytime that you talk about eating meat as natural or look what a lion does, look what what a bear does or whatever they always say.
00:26:01 Jonathan Lawler
So that's an appeal to Nature Palace. Well, so is their their their milk garden.
00:26:06 Jonathan Lawler
Because we're the only animal that flies in airplanes, and we're the only animal that drives around, and we're the only animal that that creates, things that we create. I don't know what the exception of like, an Ant species. We're the only ones that actually keep and. And they only keep basements. They keep basements around basically milk their nectar.
00:26:25 Jonathan Lawler
We have what I like to say is like.
00:26:27 Jonathan Lawler
I say we.
00:26:28 Jonathan Lawler
Have turned into polite. We have taken our place species and we have domesticated them. We give them the best lives we.
00:26:29
Yeah.
00:26:36 Jonathan Lawler
And to where they they're only gonna have one bad day and we make sure that that bad day is as quick and as painless as possible. Nature never guarantees anything like that for anything.
00:26:46 Kristin Demoranville
No. Nature is violent.
00:26:48 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah, I mean, my dogs and I have German shepherds, so and what people are used to people, especially in the dog culture that we seem to have in.
00:26:56 Jonathan Lawler
This country where?
00:26:57 Jonathan Lawler
They're looked at more as kids than they are, as as pets, and that's fine. You know, I look at mine as tools I.
00:27:03 Jonathan Lawler
Problem, but they still have a job.
00:27:05 Jonathan Lawler
To do on.
00:27:05 Jonathan Lawler
The farm I've.
00:27:06 Jonathan Lawler
Had people here when they've seen my dogs react to deer or react to to animals that aren't supposed to be here, like whoa, your dogs dishes like like, no, my dogs being a dog, that's actually that's being dog, you know, putting them in a sweater and pushing him around in the stroller.
00:27:16 Kristin Demoranville
Your dog's a working dog, yeah.
00:27:19
Yes.
00:27:23 Jonathan Lawler
That is not a dog. I don't know what that is, but that's not what a dog was ever had.
00:27:28 Kristin Demoranville
Maybe it's maybe it's more of a modern dog take, I guess instead of a working, I mean we separate them by working.
00:27:33 Kristin Demoranville
Dogs and modern dogs.
00:27:35 Speaker 3
I don't know. There's going to.
00:27:35 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah.
00:27:36 Kristin Demoranville
Be a line there, not to.
00:27:37 Speaker 3
Label it, but you know to label it.
00:27:39 Jonathan Lawler
There there's often time. I was talking to a welfare scientist from Purdue University and she's talked about a lady who she kept telling her your Siberian Husky does not need a swimmer. And she said she put a sweater on this dog and she was always concerned because the news media would say, hey, you need to bring your pets in or they need.
00:27:50 Kristin Demoranville
Now.
00:27:58 Jonathan Lawler
To have shelter.
00:27:59 Jonathan Lawler
No sure your your you know cockapoo or your you know your your Chihuahua.
00:28:04 Jonathan Lawler
Well, isn't going to do well even when it's 30°, but 30° to A to A to a Husky is. That's still probably warm to them, you know, like my dogs. My county has a thing that says once they get to a certain my my German shepherds, half of them are long coated and half of them were the ones that are long coated. You can't get them to go.
00:28:25 Jonathan Lawler
They don't. They they like to go and find like a snow bank and they think go to sleep and and it's just like.
00:28:30 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah, that's that's that's not, you know, somebody could call him be like, hey, he's torturing his poor dogs. And I've had people call and say, you know, call animal control and say that I have dead cows laying in my front pasture and it's just the cows laying down, you know, or dairy cows.
00:28:47 Speaker 3
Why would they do that? Why are people like that?
00:28:48 Jonathan Lawler
Because the cows aren't because the cows aren't moving. I had a FedEx guy that actually like she got out of the van and he's like, man, I don't know how to talk to animal control because I had. I had two jerseys.
00:29:01 Jonathan Lawler
And he was like, I can see like they're back ribs. That's like, good. That means they're not like I.
00:29:06 Jonathan Lawler
Mean a heart condition.
00:29:07 Jonathan Lawler
Or anything cause the shrimp. I mean, you're supposed to be able to see that. And I told him. I said next year, those two jersey cows, there's 2 white cows. They are. They don't look underfed at all, but they're also.
00:29:20 Jonathan Lawler
You know, different rug, I said. Do you think I'm starting those 2 cows and letting those 2 cows eat all they want? I said you just don't understand. The different breeds have different.
00:29:29 Jonathan Lawler
They have different things.
00:29:30 Jonathan Lawler
That that they need.
00:29:31 Kristin Demoranville
Making assumptions is so dangerous, and especially if you don't know, you can't. You don't know the situation that's happening. I I think a lot of people think that when they drive by farms.
00:29:41 Kristin Demoranville
Because they're only.
00:29:41 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah, there's.
00:29:42 Kristin Demoranville
They're just driving by. They don't see what's actually going on. The other day I was coming home and I just recently moved to the country. A couple months ago and I have lived in the country.
00:29:50 Kristin Demoranville
Virus this is not my first go around and you know I saw, like, 80 chickens descend into a yard and like, they look like they were gonna run into the into the road. And of course they weren't they.
00:29:59 Kristin Demoranville
Were fine and then right next to it was.
00:30:02 Kristin Demoranville
Some young horses, some newer folds, were there, probably like, you know, 1-2 years old. They must have been just weaned off. And but they looked really teeny. They were really skinny compared to this. The horses are right on the other side. And I thought, wow, somebody's going to say that these horses look malnutrition, but they're just young. They're just, they have put their weight on, yet they're not for riding as a moment. And I thought.
00:30:21 Kristin Demoranville
This is ridiculous. Like people are gonna say weird stuff and then sure enough, I saw an article in the paper that says something about malnutrition. Horses at this particular farm, da da, da and I was like, what the hell? If you don't, if you don't know, don't make a fuss, just ask questions. Why can't people just turn their whatever this inner rage is into curiosity?
00:30:32 Jonathan Lawler
Happens all the time, yeah.
00:30:42 Kristin Demoranville
I think that would get a lot more traction in the agricultural community if you came out with a curious nature rather than.
00:30:48 Kristin Demoranville
You're wrong and animal abusing and and crazy. And you're just. Yeah, whatever. I don't. I don't even know.
00:30:55 Jonathan Lawler
Oh, we, we.
00:30:56 Jonathan Lawler
We worked with municipality, we did a joint farm park type thing and we had we had cattle there and there was a neighborhood that was next to it. And cows make noises, they just do.
00:31:11 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah.
00:31:12 Jonathan Lawler
And when they see people, they'll that they, you know, when they see people, especially when they associate people with feed, they start making noises, whether they're hungry or. And we were really careful to. We were basically feed these animals twice a day. They got hay and grain rations, they got their hay and then they got.
00:31:32 Jonathan Lawler
Train and we came in one morning and this guy was standing there. And I mean he was. Yes. He was passed. He was your cows were blowing all night. They looked starved to death. And I had a young old calf in there and wife, a young. He was like 2 months old. And I look over.
00:31:51 Jonathan Lawler
And I was like, yeah, dude, excuse me for something. He has a piece of bailing, trying, hanging out of his mouth, figure out where I got it from. But I jumped the fence and ran up and basically yanked out of his mouth. And I look over and there's a Bale of straw broke open, and he's like, he's like, well, I'm not going to say he goes, but I want.
00:32:11 Jonathan Lawler
Ace Hardware and I bought a Bale of straw so they could eat something.
00:32:14 Kristin Demoranville
Stop. No, he did not.
00:32:15 Jonathan Lawler
I'd like, well, number one man that you had, you know, mean straw. Straw's batting, I said. #2, you just don't throw hay bell into with any animals you need to, I said. I said if you need it, then to come out here and talk to you, or do we ended up?
00:32:29 Jonathan Lawler
About that come and talk to the entire neighborhood of concerned people and they were questioning the that they were like, yeah. Well, I grew up on my uncle's phone and blah blah, blah. Or I would go visit my uncles farm. And his cows never did that, you know. And we had a mix of beef and dairy in there. And again, it was the question of, I mean.
00:32:33 Kristin Demoranville
My God.
00:32:49 Jonathan Lawler
The point to where Humane Society came out and the life was like, I'm sorry, like I come out because it's a complaint. I mean, the second I got here and they were fine, I was like, yeah, well.
00:32:58 Kristin Demoranville
And you you wonder why the agriculture community distrusts everybody and everything. It's because of stuff like this.
00:33:06 Kristin Demoranville
How the audacity to toss food what regardless of those wrong or not, into a paddock is beyond why would you? Why?
00:33:15 Jonathan Lawler
Well, we had a bowl in there. We we build our fence to where we knew that that's the hold this bowl. And I mean he was gentle, I guess for a bowl. I mean he he didn't like me, but we had signs up.
00:33:26 Jonathan Lawler
Everywhere said no dogs, no dogs, no #1. I don't want the dog. There were crops running into. I don't want the dogs flowing into the.
00:33:33 Jonathan Lawler
Field and death camp.
00:33:34 Kristin Demoranville
And do whatever they do, yeah.
00:33:35 Jonathan Lawler
But on top of it, I didn't want the cattle getting spooked by.
00:33:38 Jonathan Lawler
Strange dog, I look over.
00:33:40 Jonathan Lawler
And this couple was standing there. They're Great Dane and just barking.
00:33:44 Jonathan Lawler
And and use.
00:33:45 Jonathan Lawler
The boys on the other side of the fence and shaking his head and he's walking up and down and shaking his head. I walked up to him and said, you guys, you can't have the dogs here. They're like, well, we came over from this way. We didn't.
00:33:56 Jonathan Lawler
See the signs.
00:33:56 Jonathan Lawler
As like she is like, you know he's never seen it. And we kept telling him.
00:34:00 Jonathan Lawler
Not working. It's like, well, no one has that been one of my dogs. Yeah. Your pass is going up right now. You don't get to be around.
00:34:07 Jonathan Lawler
I looked at him. I said, hey, just so you know, with the with the animal, like this expense as a suggestion. Yes. I said so. Had you irritated him enough? Whether you've seen the agritourism sign or not. But he came across that fence and killed your dog and killed one of you. It had been on you because in the state of the.
00:34:27 Jonathan Lawler
This farmer protected from you know, you basically trespassed to get to where you're at. They're they're not even supposed to be people over here, so.
00:34:35 Kristin Demoranville
I don't understand why people do this and how it's.
00:34:38 Kristin Demoranville
Like I spent a lot of, I spent a lot of time in the UK because my fiance is British and they walk through fields. They have signs up to say there's a bull, just shut the gate, you know you're saying enter at your own risk, that kind of stuff and their foot.
00:34:48 Kristin Demoranville
Paths they have.
00:34:49 Kristin Demoranville
The right of way to be able to go through these areas, but nobody gets attacked by anything because they're not stupid, you know, they pay attention to what's going on around them around.
00:34:57 Jonathan Lawler
There was actually just a guy killed there in the UK like a bull went after his dog and he tried to stop him.
00:35:00 Kristin Demoranville
Was there?
00:35:03 Kristin Demoranville
OK. Well then.
00:35:05 Kristin Demoranville
That's different, yeah.
00:35:06 Kristin Demoranville
But that doesn't.
00:35:07 Jonathan Lawler
Hi.
00:35:07 Kristin Demoranville
Happen that often doesn't, Jonathan. I mean, honestly, I feel like they've got a kind of a working relationship with the land.
00:35:12 Kristin Demoranville
Rather than, I'm just.
00:35:13 Kristin Demoranville
Going to stand here and let my dogs **** *** a.
00:35:15 Kristin Demoranville
Bull, you know.
00:35:16 Jonathan Lawler
Probably. I mean in America we have a I I guess if I saw a random stranger walking through one of my fields, I'd be out there pretty quick to begin with just because that's we don't do.
00:35:26 Jonathan Lawler
That here but it's.
00:35:27 Kristin Demoranville
Not right away. They don't have right away. That's private property. That's different, right? That's that's entirely different.
00:35:31 Jonathan Lawler
And.
00:35:33 Jonathan Lawler
And The thing is, you still we still we have people come and they just they still don't understand anything about you know how many people think that if a cow has horns or head of head of cattle they have horns they're boys and if they don't.
00:35:47 Kristin Demoranville
Yes, I know many people who think that actually.
00:35:50 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah, I mean they they don't understand that like shoes. I mean, I actually had, I mean this is 2000 lbs and I mean.
00:35:51
Yeah.
00:35:57 Jonathan Lawler
They're looking at.
00:35:58 Jonathan Lawler
Him and like how? How is he a boy? And he doesn't have any horns.
00:36:02 Jonathan Lawler
You know this?
00:36:03 Jonathan Lawler
Particular species just doesn't have words, you know, it's just the.
00:36:06 Jonathan Lawler
Way it is.
00:36:07 Kristin Demoranville
Also, his name is Zeus. Maybe you should take right there from the name right away from it.
00:36:12 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah, his registered name was actually kings or so I mean.
00:36:15 Jonathan Lawler
He was a he was a.
00:36:16 Jonathan Lawler
Group. I mean, he likes my wife, but man, he when he walked into the anytime I walked into his passion he I couldn't take my eyes off him because he wanted a piece of me.
00:36:26 Kristin Demoranville
No, you don't mess.
00:36:27 Kristin Demoranville
With the balls.
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00:38:19 Jonathan Lawler
Like when when you talked about AI on dairy farms and I know a lot of your listeners are into the digital AI is not artificial intelligence on the farm. It's artificial insemination. Yeah. And that has saved the lives of so many dairy farmers not replying because there is nothing worse than the dairy breeds.
00:38:39 Jonathan Lawler
When it comes to the bowels of the dairy breeds, they might not be the biggest or the strongest that they are by far the meanest, and they have no problem going after people. Their stories. I've talked to water farmers he I mean I had well one farm where he said that had had he not had rotten wood on the side of his barn when the bowl put him.
00:38:58 Jonathan Lawler
Through it, you know the all came through it with him, he said. It probably would have crushed it, but he was able to go all the way through and kind of get flown to the side. But yeah, I mean that they had they, according to the animal rights folks, that's sexual assault. I mean, yeah, yeah, that's that. That's where we're at now. So.
00:39:12 Kristin Demoranville
My God.
00:39:16 Kristin Demoranville
My God, but I you know. And as you're talking, I'm thinking about people who just don't know and think that they're just safe because.
00:39:24 Kristin Demoranville
Of the fence.
00:39:24 Kristin Demoranville
It's kind of like when people go up to the enclosure and the glass, the glass enclosed.
00:39:29 Kristin Demoranville
The zoo and start banging on it and think it's not going to disturb the animal, you know, on the other side it's.
00:39:34 Kristin Demoranville
So frustrating to me that.
00:39:35 Kristin Demoranville
People, just people, are crazy like they are really crazy. They don't think before they they do something or say something instead of, like I said, we have to have a healthy curiosity about things around us. Otherwise we could stuck in the.
00:39:49 Kristin Demoranville
The cesspool that is normal. Silic acid, right?
00:39:52 Jonathan Lawler
I mean that I had a food writer actually flew out from California and but he was from.
00:39:59 Jonathan Lawler
Indiana he's from Indianapolis and he's like, I want to go to the old places that I used to go to and it was like a breakfast and lunch place, but also a bar. It was weird. OK, so, you know, I think he doesn't realize, like, I'm in Greenfield, I'm not in Indianapolis, so I have to drive into the city to meet him. But I get there he was.
00:40:19 Jonathan Lawler
Really didn't do any background on me as far as like what my beliefs are as far as methodologies and stuff and he was First off, he started telling me about he was getting a slight of bourbons and it was like 9:00 in the morning.
00:40:33 Speaker 3
Oh.
00:40:34 Jonathan Lawler
Come on. I'm like, I'm good. I can't go back the words. But he was telling me about all these different things and everything like that. And he's like a bourbon connoisseur. Like, which company does this and that. And I was like, that's OK. And then he starts talking about monoculture. And he said the single.
00:40:53 Jonathan Lawler
Most devastating crop that we're going, I'm going OK and he's like corn and the corn that's going on. And I finally was like, dude, I'm not a bird that's bird. But my understanding of it for it to be called bourbon is it's gonna be Kentucky.
00:41:09 Jonathan Lawler
Spring water and.
00:41:10 Jonathan Lawler
You know, basically Midwestern dent corn is, which makes that bourbon, I mean, I mean corn is is made and green and he's like, oh, yeah, but the corn with a lot of these distillers, you know, they use their it's I'm like OK, I don't think that's true. Like Jim Beam isn't isn't doing that. I mean, Jim Beam's looking for the.
00:41:25 Speaker 3
This guy is not educated, no.
00:41:30 Jonathan Lawler
Still, they can get.
00:41:31 Jonathan Lawler
On on corn.
00:41:33 Jonathan Lawler
But I'm just shocked that and then all unlike a lot of people that are on like social media, I've done.
00:41:38 Jonathan Lawler
A lot of like just regular media run media and like I had a reporter that came out and they wanted to get a shot that they talked this, like, survive your tractor into the bar and it's got a cap on it and it's a good sign.
00:41:58 Jonathan Lawler
Like. No, no, no. That one. And they pointed to the 56 international, 506 that I had. I was like, OK, I can. Yeah.
00:42:05 Kristin Demoranville
Was it red? Was it Reds?
00:42:07 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, that's why they wanted it.
00:42:09 Jonathan Lawler
And.
00:42:10 Jonathan Lawler
You know, open station. So I fire it up and it's it's running. And so I drive it in it's gas. So it's like a diesel. It's. Yeah. So I drive it in and as soon as I drive it in, I put it in part. I turn it off and the camera guy climbs up on the front tire has this camera like this takes his hand and.
00:42:29 Jonathan Lawler
Cleans it right against the smoke stop. And I was like jumped off and then he worked out crap out of his hand. It reminded me of the bilingual sketch where he talks about people needing to wear their wear a sign. So you know they're stupid, you know. And he's because he said he talked about, like, you know, this guy test drove his wife many man around.
00:42:36 Speaker 3
No.
00:42:49 Jonathan Lawler
They were gonna sell and he got out of the car, reached down and grabbed the tail pipe and he said, see if he would have a sign that could have kept him. I could have said, yeah, I know. You're not gonna understand this, but that's gonna be odd.
00:43:00 Jonathan Lawler
I remember thinking, my gosh there.
00:43:01 Jonathan Lawler
Really. Are people like this so?
00:43:03 Kristin Demoranville
Kind of like the the signs in American hotels cause this doesn't happen over anywhere else and that's to put clothes hangers on the sprinklers that are sticking out of the wall for the the room.
00:43:13 Jonathan Lawler
One of my favorite things where we had a we had gotten a contract that summer with a company out of rule and they just wanted. I mean they wanted and I mean they were buying all the zucchini. We were we were going. So we had like.
00:43:27 Jonathan Lawler
12900 foot roses and cleaning growing in plasticulture. So really clean and lots of it. And we had a reporter that had come out and he was like so besides food you guys also do ornamental plants. That's like no, because when you guys have a ton of hostas growing over there as like.
00:43:42 Kristin Demoranville
OK.
00:43:47 Jonathan Lawler
Monsters. I don't know what you're talking about. There was zucchini. You thought it was they? He thought they were hosters. I just. Yeah, I know those. That's zucchini.
00:43:54 Kristin Demoranville
Wow.
00:43:55 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah, that's what it's so there's a lot of misinformation out there and we have a lot of work to to.
00:44:00 Jonathan Lawler
Try to right the ship to get people.
00:44:02 Kristin Demoranville
Isn't it so funny though, Jonathan like this wouldn't have been a conversation probably 50-60 years ago, really. People understood like what the plants look like that created their particular vegetables or fruit, and now people are.
00:44:12 Jonathan Lawler
Right.
00:44:15 Kristin Demoranville
Just oblivious or they're buying whatever they see on the Internet for the most part and.
00:44:21 Kristin Demoranville
It's so discouraging, which is great. It's just great because you have a media company, so you have the ability to re educate people in a in your own unique style, I'll say, maybe not delicately or gently, you're just going to tell them what's up. I think that that's super important to do. That's part of the reason why I started the podcast. Sure, I'm a podcast, but cybersecurity and technology.
00:44:41 Kristin Demoranville
And again, food right. But I talk about food and I talk about egg because we need to talk about it in a way that's, you know, transparent and real. Like we're talking about.
00:44:49 Kristin Demoranville
Here, and I think punk rock framework for you is perfect because you're disruptor, ultimately.
00:44:54 Jonathan Lawler
I mean, maybe the one thing I always hated about that moniker is I was like, man, that that has a lot of a lot of.
00:45:00 Kristin Demoranville
Baggage with it like it does because punks are viewed as one or the other right? But.
00:45:03 Jonathan Lawler
Sure.
00:45:06 Jonathan Lawler
Well, it's what's in the what's in the punk subculture, you know, you know, I mean, you know, how many times? I mean, I get a message at least once a day, sometimes two or three times.
00:45:16 Jonathan Lawler
Today that the most punk rock saying is being beat, you know punks are profounded being isn't punk being punk rock is being.
00:45:23 Kristin Demoranville
I don't think that's true. Come on, people.
00:45:25 Jonathan Lawler
Well, there was a subset of them that were, and I'm like, yeah, there was also a subset of the punks.
00:45:31 Jonathan Lawler
That were Nazis, so.
00:45:32 Speaker 3
Exactly.
00:45:33 Jonathan Lawler
Should we? I mean, you know.
00:45:35 Kristin Demoranville
The definition of.
00:45:36 Kristin Demoranville
Punk is anything that's against the norm, right?
00:45:41 Jonathan Lawler
Individualism comes, you know, rugged individualism from like the late 1800s turned into punk rock in the early 80s, you know.
00:45:43 Kristin Demoranville
Exactly.
00:45:50 Kristin Demoranville
I mean, technically, Mozart was a punk, you know, Beethoven was a punk. They those are the original punks. You're right. And I I don't think that you're dissuading the norm. You're challenging the norm because you're like, no, no, no. That's what you think. That's not what.
00:45:52 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
00:46:04 Kristin Demoranville
What it is, and here's 10 examples why. Please don't touch my.
00:46:08 Kristin Demoranville
Bowl like it?
00:46:10 Speaker 3
Will eat you and you.
00:46:11 Jonathan Lawler
Know like the fact that the fact that like people will be like oh, I can't believe that you grow genetically engineered crops. You know, you're holding water for these big corporations that make them just like.
00:46:21 Kristin Demoranville
Well, don't know what a GMO is though. That's the problem. You don't understand it.
00:46:24 Jonathan Lawler
Well, it's not. It's not just that it's just like, well, so you showed me.
00:46:28 Jonathan Lawler
A punk band.
00:46:29 Jonathan Lawler
They like created their own speakers, their own guitars that they they crafted their own instruments, I mean.
00:46:35 Kristin Demoranville
That's an excellent way to say it, yes.
00:46:37 Jonathan Lawler
You know, because I can promise you Marshall and Gibson and all those companies, they there, they could sell these companies, you know it. It's just a weird thing because I come from from the aspect of the injustice I see is people being hungry. That's my. That's where I focus my injustice. And in America people are hungry.
00:46:57 Jonathan Lawler
Not because there's a lack of food.
00:46:59 Jonathan Lawler
They're hungry because.
00:47:00 Jonathan Lawler
There's there's a logistics issue where there's an addiction issue. Yeah, it's a mental health issue, and there's a lot of children who suffer because their parents are are are dealing with decent. And to me, I'm just like, you know.
00:47:02 Kristin Demoranville
For food insecurity.
00:47:13 Kristin Demoranville
It's so villainous, right that we just have to paint things so negatively rather than again meeting it. A curiosity and trying to understand what's going on and what's fact and what's not. I think that critical thinking lens has kind of been removed in a lot of.
00:47:26 Kristin Demoranville
Ways. Because we're just spoon fed.
00:47:28 Jonathan Lawler
Well.
00:47:29 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, we're here for all the puns.
00:47:31 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah. Well, what, what will you try? What? I tried to explain to you like an animal rights activist is that even if the farmer doesn't give a **** about things and I'll be, I'll be brutally honest with you, my cattle. Oh my gosh. I would do whatever. I mean, they were. I love them. I mean, I love my cow. I hate Hawks. The Hogs have always been the most.
00:47:51 Jonathan Lawler
Profitable animal for me, but one of the reasons why they always been profitable.
00:47:56 Jonathan Lawler
For me is because I made sure they wanted for nothing and made sure that they were in touch health. Mistreating your farm animals? We know we know through practice that good welfare equals good market up. Yeah. So even if the farmers like heartless and all, he cares about profitability. Well, then in order to be.
00:48:16 Jonathan Lawler
Comfortable you have to have good sound animal welfare because if you don't, you're not going.
00:48:21 Jonathan Lawler
Just the bills, sick animals, underweight animals, any of that stuff. You animals will taste that. I mean, that's actually been proven. They will taste bad. It's yeah. You know you want. You want your animals to have the best.
00:48:22
Yeah.
00:48:31 Kristin Demoranville
Stressed out means.
00:48:37 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah. And I think that's what people don't understand, right? Especially the extreme radical ones. They don't. They get blinded, they don't see.
00:48:45 Kristin Demoranville
On that, when it comes to dealing with various aspects in agriculture with the more technology we check out and the more agtech that comes in is, people need to make stop making assumptions that farmers don't know what's going on. They're very included on their farm. It's their property, it's their lifestyle. It's everything. Right. Of course they're going to treat their animals well because they want them to have the highest market.
00:49:06 Kristin Demoranville
So they can continue to keep the house and the roof over their head for their family. Like these are common things, right? But because we've painted this picture of what we think of farm looks like, yeah.
00:49:16 Kristin Demoranville
Not it's always happy land, right? Farm could be really sad place. Sometimes it could be really hard place sometimes. But it's called life. You literally see life from birth to death all the way through the spectrum in your cycle of your seasons. I don't think there's really any other professions. Maybe if you work in a hospital that have similar vibes.
00:49:36 Jonathan Lawler
Well, I mean, it's not just that.
00:49:38 Jonathan Lawler
Like people you know.
00:49:39 Jonathan Lawler
I can honestly say as I mean my main my main farm occupation is in the vegetable producer. Animals are like a, you know, they just kind of help on the side. And I think if any anybody who was like my wife, my wife, her one of her, her best friend, she's the has it was never.
00:49:45 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah.
00:50:00 Jonathan Lawler
Never about you, Sir.
00:50:01 Jonathan Lawler
She just didn't. Just didn't. And she got to the point to where I think she kind of just became a vegetarian. But being vegan had nothing to do with with the ethical stance. And I say vegan bushier. I mean, she wore leather shoes and stuff like that. So.
00:50:16 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, I know. I still use honey, right, because technically that doesn't make you pure and it's unless you completely cut out.
00:50:21 Kristin Demoranville
All animal products.
00:50:22 Jonathan Lawler
But if they would come to my pharmacy so like as a vegetable producer, I can't go tell. I have to. I actually have to plow. And then after I plow, you know, we we run rototillers used the disk, but now we just run. They rototiller across it, and then we shave our beds. And, you know, we do.
00:50:40 Jonathan Lawler
Melissa they have no idea how much death that creates right there. Then from there, my entire season is spent battling insects. Now whether somebody agains they don't care about insects, some do them. But it's not just insects. That's rabbits. My dogs are trained. You see a rabbit there, they'll kill it right in there. They're running.
00:51:01 Jonathan Lawler
Here, you know we we used to kill deer. We just shoot them all and we got to the point to where we train the dogs to go after deer. But at the same time, you still always have that occasional problem and needs to be depopulated. So we take that year.
00:51:16 Jonathan Lawler
But not just that the fertilizer use and I'm talking about conventional fertilizer. I'm not talking about organic organic fertilizer. #1 is almost all as I say, blood, bones and guts, but a lot of my fertilizer, you know, it utilizes animal products without the animal industry. And I'm not growing component. So I'm doing the stuff that should go.
00:51:36 Jonathan Lawler
Into the grocery store and you walk out in the field with 90% of it. You can pick it and start eating it right there. It's ready to go.
00:51:44 Jonathan Lawler
So that that is something that, that and then I have, I mean I've had those debates where they're like, well, you should you, you know, there is veganic agriculture. Well, I've looked in there really is not. If you're talking about feeding the population or not because there's no yields also that stuff there, there's no system setup in place for it.
00:51:58 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah.
00:52:04 Jonathan Lawler
It's just it's a really, it's a poor methodology that it is just insufficient. I I just, I just think it's odd because I don't need you to like I'm only organic food. Well, if it's organic and to you, you're just, you're consuming the same blood. You're just doing it further.
00:52:20 Jonathan Lawler
Strength because without that, we can't. We can't grow these crops.
00:52:23 Kristin Demoranville
Another drinking a glass of wine. You can look at them sideways too, because that also involves animal production, so you know it's it's really strange. Where do you we could go on about this for a long time. It's very frustrating. You got me thinking that when you were talking that the systems that are set up around our culture are really suppressing the farmer from really doing their job. It's becoming.
00:52:28 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah, yeah.
00:52:43 Kristin Demoranville
Complicated. Whether it's policy or regulations or anything. And then on top of that, you have to deal with, you know, radical, whoever activists causing havoc, doing really awful things. And then you've got this disinformation, misinformation that the general public thinks that you do. If you say you're.
00:52:53 Jonathan Lawler
Hello.
00:53:00 Kristin Demoranville
A farmer. They're.
00:53:01 Kristin Demoranville
Like cool, they don't really get it.
00:53:03 Kristin Demoranville
I have no idea. Not that that's fine. You just really need.
00:53:04 Jonathan Lawler
Or they think you're trying to.
00:53:05 Jonathan Lawler
Poison them. I mean that, you know, because it wants the documentary.
00:53:06 Speaker 3
Correct. Yeah. There's they think you're actively in your fields at night. You know, putting chemicals in Cotton Bowl.
00:53:14 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah, I mean, you know, I had somebody come to me and say you should really change and you know agriculture, I'm like, OK, I was like.
00:53:21 Speaker 3
Cool.
00:53:22 Jonathan Lawler
Well, like, well, you can let your your like the cattle could like eat the grass that's growing between your rows. You don't have and I'm like.
00:53:28 Kristin Demoranville
And then move your animals. Yeah, yeah.
00:53:31 Jonathan Lawler
Number one, I don't want my cattle doing what they do, where there's crops that people are going to eat, you know. But I mean, I've heard, I've heard, I guess I approach everything. As a realist, you know, I I I think there's a place for all these different types of agriculture.
00:53:47
Yeah.
00:53:48 Jonathan Lawler
But telling when, when, when you start telling people that this is the only way to do it and this is the healthy way of doing it and this is and they start basically bullying people. You know, there's a farm that I followed on Facebook for a long time. I thought they were the coolest farm and then they just they went down like this weird trail. But, you know, if you're not doing this.
00:54:08 Jonathan Lawler
This and this. You're bad. You're poisoning land this. And I'm just like, OK, but there's a lot. I mean, they they don't understand the complexities if you take like Indianapolis 930,000.
00:54:19 Jonathan Lawler
Do they know how much farmland it takes to feed those people? They're they're they're 25 tomato plants. And I mean, they're mostly like a homestead.
00:54:26 Jonathan Lawler
That's really what?
00:54:27 Jonathan Lawler
They are and they're like 5 cows that barely feeds them. So they're. And they're saying that's how everybody should do it. Well, not everybody can do that. Not everybody has access to that.
00:54:38 Jonathan Lawler
And they know, I mean, look at how many people live in apartment complexes where they lived in government subsidized housing.
00:54:44 Jonathan Lawler
You know, ohh, I don't participate. That's why I grow my own. You grow your own because you're.
00:54:48 Speaker 3
Able to, yeah.
00:54:49 Jonathan Lawler
You don't grow your own because you have to. You don't grow your own because you grow your own because you were able.
00:54:55 Jonathan Lawler
To and just because you were able to do that doesn't.
00:54:58 Jonathan Lawler
Even mean that you're getting.
00:55:00 Jonathan Lawler
The best, like I hate the word clean food. I hate that versus what's not clean, I guess whatever your definition happens to me, that is a tweet. Is Twinkies, clean food? Probably not. I mean, it's probably not good for you, but I'm not gonna label them as a dirty food. I mean dirty food.
00:55:14 Speaker 3
That's a. That's a weird label.
00:55:15 Jonathan Lawler
Kale. I mean, kale is the nastiest food on the plane. I would say that that's not the clean food because it's so gross.
00:55:21 Kristin Demoranville
I always say I look at leafy greens with a healthy suspicion.
00:55:24 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah. I mean, these people that have, especially in the last like 2 years that have kind of come out of the woodwork.
00:55:30 Jonathan Lawler
Like you do it my way. Or if it's not my way, then it's bad and it's just like you. You don't understand the complexities of the food system. You don't understand how many people have have to be fat.
00:55:35 Jonathan Lawler
Hmm.
00:55:40 Kristin Demoranville
Black and white? Yeah, it's not like and white. It's a very Gray area, right? Because it's different regions are going to do different things transportation wise and wise warehousing rather different aspects of how you raise cattle is different in the the western part of the country versus, you know, the eastern part of country. It's just it's different I I think.
00:55:59 Kristin Demoranville
I think everybody needs to calm.
00:56:01 Kristin Demoranville
I think that's a good start and I also think the people you start listening to each other rather than listening to respond or listening again, listening with curiosity, I feel like this is the end of the show is listening curiosity. You've taught me some stuff and you've also validated me that I'm not an idiot. So that makes me feel really good thing for that child. And like, I'm like, yes, I know I used to.
00:56:18 Kristin Demoranville
Live in a cattle ranch. I live my house was like into the cattle.
00:56:21 Kristin Demoranville
Ranch was like a mile into it, and the cows hated my guts. Every time I got near the fence, they took off and I didn't have a problem with that, but I saw more of the like, the natural world represented in that small little like acreage that I was.
00:56:34 Kristin Demoranville
For that cut, like years that taught me so much that I didn't know, and I was speaking to a rancher recently, and she was telling me that people want to move to the country because they want a different lifestyle because they're it's too over populated over, too, over saturated in the city now just fine. Like, whenever, if you like city living, I'm not picking.
00:56:53 Kristin Demoranville
On you I like city living too.
00:56:54 Kristin Demoranville
This convenience is great, right? It's great to have conveniences, but you can't move to the.
00:56:58 Kristin Demoranville
Country and then tell people what to do, who have been there for 150 years worth of generations of farming, or that their farm smells bad or something like that. Like what this is, this is what I I have trouble with is you have to switch your mindset and be open to things. And I'm worried about what's going to happen to the just the to the farms.
00:57:18 Kristin Demoranville
In general, I mean we need farmers.
00:57:20 Kristin Demoranville
Mostly because we need to eat. But what is farming lifestyle look like if you constantly have people, whether it's governmental regulation, state regulations, international regulations, whatever's happening, and then, you know, you have to deal with people hacking your farm or activists using hackers to hack your farm like, oh, my, the stress level. So first of all.
00:57:41 Kristin Demoranville
And thank you for farming. I'm going to say this, thank you for farming. Thank you for providing vegetables. I think it's cooler growing purple tomatoes and, you know, thank you for sticking with it because it's one of those industries are sort of like, why am I? Do I bother if everybody just gonna tell me what to do? You know, I'll just go. I'll just sell my farm off and go sit on an island. You know what I mean?
00:58:00 Kristin Demoranville
Like or something like.
00:58:01 Kristin Demoranville
That, but thank you for sticking with it. And then on top of it, you're an activist for your community, I should say. Activist in quotations. You're not an activist, you're a.
00:58:08 Jonathan Lawler
Actually, I called myself that everybody calls themselves an advocate. I called myself an Adventist. I I will happily, I guess I look at it like my my Molotov cocktails are metaphorical, but I'm still willing to throw, you know? I mean, I'm still willing to go after what needs to go after I'm not.
00:58:15 Speaker 3
Like that.
00:58:24 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah. No, I got.
00:58:28 Jonathan Lawler
Not willing to when I see somebody talk about an ad later and I see a guy in a suit and tie.
00:58:33 Jonathan Lawler
I'm not saying a farmer can't be us.
00:58:35 Kristin Demoranville
Hmm.
00:58:36 Jonathan Lawler
But I'm sick and tired of that being represented as. I mean, because that's why people think it's the bat and that that that right there, you know, when you when you have, you know or politician, any politician you know, they they come out of the woodwork to get their picture with you come election time. I mean farmers are like it like another minority group I look I support the farmers.
00:58:43 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, that's true.
00:58:56 Jonathan Lawler
Do you really? I don't know. I mean.
00:58:58 Kristin Demoranville
These people are so displaced from it because they just go into a grocery store and get whatever they want without thinking about where it came from. We're so far removed from our food system that we.
00:59:06 Kristin Demoranville
Don't even know.
00:59:06 Kristin Demoranville
How to protect it anymore?
00:59:08 Kristin Demoranville
And it's frustrating.
00:59:08 Jonathan Lawler
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01:00:28 Jonathan Lawler
I tell people like they talk about around here, friends of mine who are farmers. They don't like the amount of suburban folks that are moving in and you know, they take, they buy like 3 acres and they build a house on it. We had somebody do that close to us and I got to know the guy. I mean he he's a software engineer. I mean, he's a smart guy and he's likable.
01:00:37 Kristin Demoranville
Personable.
01:00:48 Jonathan Lawler
This is weird because I hear engineering and I think you have that much of A personality. Like, come over. Yeah. I mean. But like, for the first three months, you like, come over and just, like, fascinating, not a single. Hey, I don't like this. It was all. This is so freaky.
01:00:52 Kristin Demoranville
Stick noise, yes.
01:01:03 Jonathan Lawler
Awesome. You know, he brought his kids over a couple of times, but they've been there for about 3 months and came over, and he's like, I can't find my dog. I didn't even know the guy had a dog. He said. Yeah, I mean, what amount? They don't have a fenced in yard. I mean, they got like, 3 acres. He let him out. Well, it was a you'll shut your tear.
01:01:20 Kristin Demoranville
Oh, no, no.
01:01:21 Jonathan Lawler
And he can't find, he says. He says he's been gone for like 3 days and called Animal control. And I I was like, man, I'm gonna have to be, like, really honest with you. The likelihood of that dog being eaten by, like, an owl or coyote. I mean, my dogs wouldn't hurt. And if he came over, but if they went to another place, you know, they're those farmers around here, and they got some mean.
01:01:41 Jonathan Lawler
For a reason.
01:01:43 Jonathan Lawler
I'm now we lock our gate now, which I don't like. You know, that's something I mean. We are 30 miles from Indianapolis, but I woke up 1 morning and my cameras going off 1 hat was I drove down my driveway and they backed there. There was a minivan with a wagon.
01:02:02 Jonathan Lawler
Back up, they backed it up to our bar. Now our barn is kind of a waste from our house, but I was like, well, they're probably not supposed to be here. I'm not sure what's going on. And so I thought, I'm gonna walk out and see what's going on. I looked on the cameras and I could see.
01:02:17 Jonathan Lawler
What wondered? I mean, he's looking around.
01:02:20 Jonathan Lawler
I'm looking around.
01:02:21 Jonathan Lawler
So all I simply did was I walked over to my garage and I went five German shepherds out and they've seen a strange car and they immediately went to it and I watched the camera. He heard him barking and got in his van and he drove off. And then another car is coming down my driveway at one point. Or it was like, a a van coming down my driveway so.
01:02:41 Jonathan Lawler
My driveway is 1/4 mile.
01:02:43 Jonathan Lawler
I get in my truck and drive out to meet them because I don't know who they are and want to know what they're doing at my farm at 6:30 morning as I as my truck moves, I look. They stopped. They put it over so actually drove into a field and went back the other way and went straight and and and and left. We put up the gate.
01:03:02 Jonathan Lawler
So that people would stop doing that one morning, I looked in the car. It was a white minivan. And remember, this drove around my gate and was coming back to to my barn. And I was just. I called the Sheriff's Department. And, you know, we we have had we had an incident where we didn't have an animal rights activist.
01:03:12 Kristin Demoranville
Hi.
01:03:18 Jonathan Lawler
Up here at one point, but I was in the middle of the day and they came like they were. They were wanting to sort something they didn't. As soon as they were met by, you know, it was 2 of my sons who were both over £200 and they they look like the typical kid. You'd find another farm and then some guys were working here and.
01:03:37 Jonathan Lawler
MHM.
01:03:38 Jonathan Lawler
You know, they left that that's. I mean we have to put, we did put cameras up at one point. It's kind of died down a little bit but at one point we had like 3 months where we had.
01:03:39
OK.
01:03:49 Jonathan Lawler
Had 800 death threats. I had 800 death threats.
01:03:53 Jonathan Lawler
From animals.
01:03:53 Kristin Demoranville
For what reason? Because you were raising animals.
01:03:55 Jonathan Lawler
Animal rights that well cause I write about it. You know, I was very vocal, you know, I was, you know, I was talking about it on the radio stations. I thought, you know, I talked about it.
01:04:03 Kristin Demoranville
Why? Why Jonathan, why would I'm sorry to interrupt? And this is because I'm just like, whoa, why would someone who is pro animal life make a death threat on a human being who is also an animal? Make that makes sense to.
01:04:18 Kristin Demoranville
Me please.
01:04:18 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah, I don't under.
01:04:20 Jonathan Lawler
Understand that. But what I tried to explain to.
01:04:22 Jonathan Lawler
People is this?
01:04:24 Jonathan Lawler
No, because it's the I. I look at it, I think vegan veganism, when you take a vegan like an actual vegan, I'm not talking about somebody that's, you know, I'm gonna try this cause I've tried everything else. I wanna try this. I'm talking about somebody that says I live the vegan lifestyle. They buy the shoes.
01:04:40 Jonathan Lawler
Just say vegan all that those those kind of.
01:04:43 Kristin Demoranville
The radical vegan.
01:04:44 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah, to me it's a religion. If you look at everything, they do, everything they say, they they have, you know, veganism has rules. Veganism has this. It's no different than a religion. They just don't have an organized leader like. And then people say well, and these are like crazy extremists. Well, are they though? Because Oregon's getting ready to fight another battle.
01:04:47 Speaker 3
Yeah, it's cold.
01:05:05
Actually.
01:05:05 Jonathan Lawler
And they've gotten over 70,000 signatures. Colorado almost fell. If it wouldn't have been for Colorado Farm Bureau and some other folks, they would have been in trouble. You know, even like, even here, we had something happen. Almost. I want to say it was 8 years ago with humans. So he tried to sneak something in. And luckily the hunters.
01:05:25 Jonathan Lawler
We got together and we were able to figure out, but yeah, it's it's awful. And and they're in the halls of Congress lobbying our representative.
01:05:33 Jonathan Lawler
So we need we need to take him with a serious threat.
01:05:34 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, there's lobbyists for everything. I'm surprised to hear about.
01:05:38 Jonathan Lawler
Except they have combined. I think. I think the last thing we read, they have about 3 billion to be able to do this. I don't think Farm Bureau has that.
01:05:45 Kristin Demoranville
No. Well, I mean, I don't know for a fact, but who knows, right? I guess I'm concerned with the fact of they think that if they eliminate animals and consumption.
01:05:55 Kristin Demoranville
Nobody eats animals any longer that we're going to sustain on for vegetables. Who's going to do that work if you've just just, I mean, that's, I guess that's, I guess I can we have. Is there a plan? It doesn't sound just a plan. It just sounds like you're being disruptive to be disruptive is your ideology.
01:06:10 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah, I mean.
01:06:12 Jonathan Lawler
I know from the from what I grow standpoint, it's brutal. I mean it's not there are like I look at dairy farming, I could never be a dairy farmer, I am not committing to waking up 4:00 AM and being tied to my farm 365 I I think dairy farmers probably have the they probably have the most.
01:06:30 Jonathan Lawler
Like that. That to me would be the hardest type of agriculture. Just because you're tied.
01:06:35 Jonathan Lawler
But like from basically mid June, when our crops start coming in until first frost, I mean we we we're not gardeners. I mean we have to go out, we have to strip plants we have to we have to meet our contracts we have to you know if it's 98° we still have to go pick in an open.
01:06:55 Jonathan Lawler
And there's almost everything that grows Fresh Market. So there are machines that there were.
01:07:00 Jonathan Lawler
But there are machines that will pick these things. I wish there were, but there's just not.
01:07:04 Kristin Demoranville
Maybe someday, but not an unforeseeable future. I'm sure think Big Tech is such a a baby industry. It still hasn't. I think it's going over after the low hanging fruit to use a pun, but it's not going to come up with, like full functional stuff like that for a while. I don't think. And.
01:07:20 Kristin Demoranville
We'll see if it's adopted anyways. Right? Like who?
01:07:22 Kristin Demoranville
Knows.
01:07:22 Jonathan Lawler
Alright. Well, I mean, it's just it's one of those things. Like if you talk to, if you talk to a police for they might be growing you know they might have 20 acres of strollers and somebody goes well is that.
01:07:35 Jonathan Lawler
A farmer he's only doing.
01:07:37 Jonathan Lawler
28 Yeah, it's a farmer because 28 have strawberries. It's not.
01:07:40 Speaker 3
That's a lot.
01:07:42 Jonathan Lawler
If it was 20 acres of soybeans, no, that would not be that. That would not be worth the diesel like it's 20 acres of strawberries. You know, I went on to, I am turned on the tomato farm that supplies to Publix and Meyers in Florida.
01:07:56 Jonathan Lawler
It was only 72 acres. I mean that was it and it was one of the larger Fresh Market tomato Bowers. There are in the country. I mean, it was huge, had a ton of laborers, but you know, people don't realize that when we're when you're talking about like I do 46 acres right now the most I've ever find the purpose was 113.
01:08:16 Jonathan Lawler
And you talk to the average person and they're like 100.
01:08:18 Jonathan Lawler
And 13 acres so.
01:08:20 Jonathan Lawler
That's my uncle had, you know, 2000 acres in Illinois. They you talked to another farm girl, your corner soybean. So yeah, I do 113 acres, of course.
01:08:29 Jonathan Lawler
So like oh.
01:08:30 Jonathan Lawler
My gosh, I couldn't imagine doing that. You know, sometimes 5 acres, you know, that's a market that's USD market card. I mean that that's not a small operation.
01:08:40 Jonathan Lawler
7 acres are bigger than produce is considered a large scale.
01:08:44 Jonathan Lawler
The operation so people don't understand that, or the fact that there's orchards that are part of agriculture vineyards, are part of agriculture. You know, beekeeping is part of agriculture, you know, it's.
01:08:51 Kristin Demoranville
Yes, they are.
01:08:55 Kristin Demoranville
Which they need to their national treasure now BT big. We have to protect beekeeper.
01:09:00 Jonathan Lawler
Well, and that's the thing like we had.
01:09:02 Jonathan Lawler
These at the front.
01:09:03 Jonathan Lawler
And our beekeeper, I'm not a beekeeper, nor do I want to be a beekeeper. As a matter of fact, that was the first.
01:09:09 Jonathan Lawler
During we we filmed the whole thing and it was literally put on the bee suits and everything. If you have not done that, if you're not actually put on the bee suit and you have 36 hives in front of you and they're cracking them all open basically at the same time, the amount of bees like you can feel the heat when they're, you know, I eventually.
01:09:29 Jonathan Lawler
Learn to other gay people. So like I can't see and he's like, use your wine.
01:09:33 Jonathan Lawler
Just wipe them, clear them away. Just real gentle. Clean them away. But they're all ****** and they're all like, right there. Cause normally they're not. I mean, they're normally they're, you know, we can work right up against the hives. They don't, they don't care. And just seeing how hard that was. And then we we followed them from here to taking them and put them in the hot room and from the hot room.
01:09:53 Jonathan Lawler
That we're, you know, I'm in. I'm in like a cut off shirt and people are like, you know, I was like, I hope people don't think. I'm just like wearing the kind of shirt wearing cut off shirts because it's like 112° while we're doing this honey to keep it flowing.
01:10:08 Jonathan Lawler
And it was, it was not easy work. Now do those guys work as hard as a produce farmer or a dairy farmer? I think they do. The problem is it's it's condensed. It's condensed. When they sit their hives when it's condensed, when they collect the home, they're not having to do it year round, of course. And that's that's.
01:10:23 Kristin Demoranville
And only that they're getting stung. And occasionally and yeah.
01:10:25 Jonathan Lawler
Right, right. I can actually say that I had they they told me the amount, I think it was.
01:10:31 Jonathan Lawler
18,000,000 bees.
01:10:32 Jonathan Lawler
Were on my phone and that entire summer I did not get stung by.
01:10:36 Jonathan Lawler
A bee one time.
01:10:37 Jonathan Lawler
1.
01:10:38 Jonathan Lawler
Well, they're busy. I got. I got stung by Hornets and Wasps. Yeah, but I never got stung by a bee. So yeah, that's that's the thing.
01:10:41 Kristin Demoranville
Well, those guys are just nasty.
01:10:47 Jonathan Lawler
That people don't understand.
01:10:49 Jonathan Lawler
You know, like people that you know, if you're in hog production, I'm I don't have, like, a big hog house the way I've always done hogs is I have them inside and outside.
01:10:58 Kristin Demoranville
Then.
01:10:58 Jonathan Lawler
I I guess my I was still considered the combined. I mean they're they're confined to they they have an outside.
01:11:04 Jonathan Lawler
And Patty, to where it's big enough for them to go and do their thing. But they also 90% of the time they were inside like they they have the choice to be out in the sunshine like people say ohh hogs wouldn't be out in the sunshine 90% of the time. They were inside. The barn was cooler. That's where I mean, there was food, water outside, but there was food and water inside, so they always.
01:11:25 Jonathan Lawler
There's the inside, just like we would and during the winter time when I've had hogs. They don't wanna go outside at all. You know that now. And I'll be honest, I see like some of these homesteads that have. I'll see homesteads that have hogs that are accumulated to that environment. It's.
01:11:41 Jonathan Lawler
Hold that hogs you know, with their hairy and whatever else. Yeah, but I've also seen hogs that their production hogs that somebody went and bought at a livestock auction. It has no business being outside. I mean, it really doesn't. So there there's all kinds of things that, that that are out there for information. People have these homesteads.
01:12:01 Jonathan Lawler
And that they're seeing them and they're thinking at home settings, right? Like Joel sounds the way he does hogs is how her great grandfathers did it because they didn't really have a choice. So he didn't have.
01:12:12 Jonathan Lawler
People, we've just become more efficient at and when people say, well, those hogs have to be happier. You know why? Because in your mind, as a human being, you wanna be able to free room. But if you like, actually look at the cortisol level test, they're almost or the fact that when you're pasturing chickens, the stress level of chickens.
01:12:33 Jonathan Lawler
That are inside a house are lower than they are pastured chickens. Because pastured chickens are jungle fowl, so they're used to having a canopy over their head.
01:12:43 Jonathan Lawler
And when you put them on the pasture, they're constantly they'll they're constantly looking up for Raptors. So yeah, that, that's that's one of those things that I want everybody to do it however they want. But I also want them to don't want down another producer. That's what I see all the time. Yeah, that that is like, this key thing I see now constantly.
01:12:57 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, don't save anybody.
01:13:02 Jonathan Lawler
Social media is our cows don't have this, this or this, or our our chickens don't have this, this or this and they're better and the other guy does this, this and this to this.
01:13:12 Jonathan Lawler
And then like if you have to run down another producer, you're not selling a better product, you're selling feeder here. Yeah. I mean, that's just the.
01:13:19 Kristin Demoranville
Way it is. Yeah. And that's why I think you and I both have a similar philosophy. If we don't, we're going to speak truth, but we're not going to be on a a bumper sticker shock value aspect to it because the truth is what it is.
01:13:32 Kristin Demoranville
And there's been some issues in the food industry there was.
01:13:35 Kristin Demoranville
Two breaches that almost happened because of insider threat, and one of them was chemicals under chicken processing facility was added and thankfully it was caught before it became a problem and the other one was Disney. Somebody manipulated the allergens database essentially and changed it so it looked like things were not allergen induced, but they were and I have had interactions online about this already where people.
01:13:55 Kristin Demoranville
Kept saying, oh, we've raised alarms and we've done these things, but nobody took it seriously. My response back was British. You raised those alarms. Don't give somebody said to me, but they don't give us checklists. We hate checklists. OK, I will give you a checklist. What do you want to know? I think it's just a matter of meeting people where they are rather than expecting people to be on your knowledge set.
01:14:13 Kristin Demoranville
Or treating them like they're oblivious. I don't want to live in a world where people can't eat. Jonathan, I think you're the same way as I am. I want people to be able to have fresh, healthy food wherever they need it, wherever I don't want children to go hungry. I don't want anyone to go hungry. But I do not like this capitalism kind of thing we've done to our food system on top of already complicating it another way.
01:14:34 Kristin Demoranville
Where people can't afford apples, but they can afford.
01:14:37 Kristin Demoranville
A hamburger? I just, I don't.
01:14:39 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah. Well, I mean waiting a can of coke cost more than a.
01:14:39 Kristin Demoranville
It's that's right.
01:14:42 Jonathan Lawler
Red bell pepper. Exactly.
01:14:43 Jonathan Lawler
Because I can.
01:14:44 Jonathan Lawler
Tell you what, I'm what I'm getting for red.
01:14:46 Jonathan Lawler
Bell Pepper, I mean.
01:14:47 Jonathan Lawler
When we're going, I'm just, you know, I mean we're.
01:14:48 Jonathan Lawler
Getting 12 to $0.15 per red belt up.
01:14:51 Kristin Demoranville
Well, people don't understand that. It's the groceries to set the price, right? So the whole egg crisis is not necessarily what people think it is. And I've tried to explain.
01:15:00 Kristin Demoranville
Into people. And then of course, it gets a little complicated because the breeding situation and how that happens and who controls the breeding and I don't need to say that. I think you understand what I'm saying. I think people are misinformed and that bothers me a lot because that's going to hurt the farming community and the agricultural side more than it's going to hurt the consumer because the consumer is just going to move.
01:15:19 Kristin Demoranville
On and go to whatever they go to and.
01:15:21 Kristin Demoranville
Is fine, but the the agricultural community has to pick up the pieces of people's misunderstanding and mild distrust where you're already a distrusting sector anyways, because look at people just drive on your property and do weird things to your house and your farm and your animals.
01:15:35 Kristin Demoranville
Or tell you you're doing weird things to your barn or house or animals. So there's this complete disregard for the food system as a whole, and we've.
01:15:43 Kristin Demoranville
Overcomplicated it and.
01:15:44 Kristin Demoranville
It's the distribution of is overcomplicated and it stands on pillars that are easily broken down. JBS showed us that that incident, various other things, have showed us this incident. What do you hope for in the future?
01:15:55 Kristin Demoranville
We're going to wrap up here because we.
01:15:57 Kristin Demoranville
Definitely have a.
01:15:58 Jonathan Lawler
Very conversation. See, I would like to see a. So I want to call it like a semi local. I would like to see like semi local processors, food company.
01:16:09 Jonathan Lawler
That basically mimic our national food system. I'm not saying take away the national food system. I'm saying keep it and then also having these as secondary. These food systems are the secondary that can do things that have the logistics, that have the, the, the warehousing ability and that way we can.
01:16:28 Jonathan Lawler
Something like COVID happen again. You know, it would be that much more resilient or like what happened with JBS. I mean that the whole point of you know the fact that we have how many is again not being.
01:16:31
So.
01:16:41 Jonathan Lawler
A meat, but not like.
01:16:42 Jonathan Lawler
Thank you, John. Like meat production, what is it, 33 meat producers or three processors basically control 80% of the market. That should be you know.
01:16:51
And then the.
01:16:51 Kristin Demoranville
Chickens, chickens, egg houses are the same.
01:16:54 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah. And like I will say this like with with the tariffs, I would I I know the tariffs are bad. I would love nothing better though than to see tariffs put into place on countries that are putting produce farmers like myself out of business. Because I can't. I can't hire people to work for, you know, $2.00 a day.
01:17:14 Kristin Demoranville
MHM.
01:17:15 Jonathan Lawler
My diesel fuel is not subsidized.
01:17:18 Jonathan Lawler
You know, I've lost contracts to Mexico and I've told people whether it's Mexico, you know, wherever it might be, where they're growing these things. I had the opportunity to see one of those farms and I was just, I was shocked at, you know, no wonder they're coming.
01:17:35 Jonathan Lawler
Here to work on our.
01:17:36 Jonathan Lawler
Farms because it's.
01:17:38 Jonathan Lawler
Practically, slave labor, it really is. It's almost slave labor. You know, I actually learned from 1A young woman. I I read it and then we gotta meet her in a mocking Florida. But she talked about her uncle had died in the.
01:17:51 Jonathan Lawler
And the company that was an American company, but it was not. He had traveled to another country, wasn't in the United States, that he had died in the field and before they agreed to ship his body back home, they said, well, we get his last paycheck to cover our expenses, shipping his body back. And I was like, you know, that that's. But that's who we're having.
01:18:11 Jonathan Lawler
To compete against and I just, I can't give up. You know, anybody that works on my phone if I'm audited through gaps, they've got to know all of our procedures and everything. Yeah, that's the.
01:18:22 Jonathan Lawler
Other thing people.
01:18:22
OK.
01:18:22 Jonathan Lawler
Think that that like the gaps that you have to the gaps in the pre gate, the Postgate inspections, they think that those are put into place by the.
01:18:30 Jonathan Lawler
Government and they blame the government polls. Those are not put in place. Where to go? That is the grocery industry and the grocery industry, I believe has done that. And and my belief is so that they can get cheaper, they rely on very large scale farm operations or I mean large scale that are corporate owned, not all of them because I'm not corporate owned.
01:18:50 Jonathan Lawler
I'm against certified farm like we do.
01:18:52 Jonathan Lawler
Pre gate abstractions.
01:18:54 Jonathan Lawler
But those were put into place to make it hard because there's no reason why, you know a guy knowing the next.
01:18:59 Jonathan Lawler
County has a very awesome rehouse operation. You know, he just he just thinks it's too complicated to get involved in it. But he could be selling his produce regional, you know, I mean, that's how I look at it. We sell our products regionally. I mean, you know, we have with the exception of one time, we sell watermelons to Walmart.
01:19:19 Jonathan Lawler
They went all the way down to Texas, but two of the skids came all the way back to Indiana. I only found out that out from the broker, but.
01:19:27 Jonathan Lawler
You know, people were like they were labeled by local watermelons. Yeah, they're local. After they took a round trip to Texas.
01:19:33 Jonathan Lawler
And came back.
01:19:33 Kristin Demoranville
Wow.
01:19:34 Jonathan Lawler
So you know, that's just crazy stuff like.
01:19:36 Kristin Demoranville
From a consumer side, just briefly, we can talk about this. This is why it's so important to buy local, like actually local or regional as best as you can. I know if the labeling is confusing sometimes and how you.
01:19:47 Kristin Demoranville
Get it is confusing and people complain that it's more expensive, but that money is going directly back to the the farmer or the farming community. And I think people need to start voting with their currency rather than giving corporations who already have billions more money and that's.
01:19:54 Jonathan Lawler
Right.
01:20:03 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah, I mean, that's what I mean by like the semi local or the regional local if we have something like that where the farmer was getting a larger share of the food dollar, if they were getting the larger share of the food dollar, that would make a huge difference.
01:20:17
OK.
01:20:18 Jonathan Lawler
You know, because you know the grocery marks the way up. But you know, with me, I mean, with the exception of sweet corn and watermelon, anytime I still directly to the grocery store that that's not something I've done anything else that goes to the grocery store for my farm is going via.
01:20:33 Kristin Demoranville
I think again it it, it's the perception of the public that either you are a very poor farmer or you are a very rich farmer and in the media has portrayed that for a so great and the Yellowstone series, right.
01:20:48 Speaker 3
Cattle ranching. This look.
01:20:48 Jonathan Lawler
Yellowstones Yellowstones made it so much easier. I can't think of how many guys I've killed.
01:20:51 Kristin Demoranville
You know, making it look.
01:20:53 Jonathan Lawler
On my farm.
01:20:54 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, it's a lot of murder. There's a lot of murder there, but the fact that, like, you know, they had helicopters and all these things. I'm not saying that some of those operations don't have that, but there's people don't realize those are not necessarily family owned. And that's it's different.
01:20:54 Jonathan Lawler
This.
01:21:08 Jonathan Lawler
Right.
01:21:08 Kristin Demoranville
And then if you want to think about it from a different perspective, like Australian farms, they have to use helicopters, they're about arch. So like, there's there's such a perception issue. I just wish people would take time to get educated and not believe everything they saw right away, you know, like, oh, hey, answer the question.
01:21:22 Jonathan Lawler
Or or even. That's when they see a farmer with a very expensive piece of equipment instead of just going up less than nice. They need to ask why are they like we were using drones? So like we have a drone that we use that it doesn't spray. That'll be our next purchase, but it's whole purpose is to inspect.
01:21:23 Kristin Demoranville
That.
01:21:27 Kristin Demoranville
Mm-hmm.
01:21:40 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah.
01:21:42 Jonathan Lawler
Ups and the time it took to walk the crops was unbelievable versus my son. Daniel can even fly a drone and he can start looking for telltale signs of either disease or whatever because he's flying the drone pretty low. We utilize that and that like that saved us lots of money and that's when.
01:21:43 Speaker 3
Hmm.
01:21:58 Speaker 3
Yeah.
01:22:02 Jonathan Lawler
Drones are still kind of expensive. Our next I mean our next drone on me. I think it's gonna cost like, 34 grand, but it'll be a strainer because.
01:22:09 Kristin Demoranville
The return on investment on that would be it's huge for you, you know.
01:22:13 Jonathan Lawler
Like right now, if I have to spray every, I mean the old way used to be just to spray.
01:22:17 Jonathan Lawler
Everything but now using like a drone to inspect. OK, we found we found a section that that needs fungicide applied. We do that and then you know that's for you know you can spray the fungicide. You know that actually saves us labor. Labor is our most expensive cost.
01:22:29 Speaker 3
I mean.
01:22:32 Kristin Demoranville
And that's also. Yeah, of course it is. And also that's precision farming. Yeah, really, I mean.
01:22:36 Jonathan Lawler
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's been around for a while, and I mean it's something that that, you know, I don't know, it's just I think about somebody who looks at how much a tractor cost well. But think about this, that thing that that tractor does for.
01:22:49 Jonathan Lawler
The farm, yeah.
01:22:50 Jonathan Lawler
Can you use an old piece of equipment? I mean some and some guys prefer that, you know, I mean.
01:22:55 Jonathan Lawler
But not everybody.
01:22:56 Kristin Demoranville
And you're not going to tell someone what's right or wrong in that regard anyways. If they want to use the fancy new tractor, cool. If they want to use what they've been using, cool, like it doesn't matter because it doesn't affect you at the end of the.
01:23:06 Kristin Demoranville
Day it's whatever they want to do.
01:23:08 Jonathan Lawler
My neighbor, he. I can always tell when he's planting or if his son's planting cause when he's planting. He's got his markers up and that's what he's using. But his son uses the GPS. So I mean, for myself, if you have any like, I don't, I don't trust GPS and that's fine.
01:23:19 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah.
01:23:25 Jonathan Lawler
I mean, I don't know that he's getting that much less of a yield he might be, but that's the way.
01:23:30 Jonathan Lawler
He wants to do it.
01:23:31 Kristin Demoranville
And also it's good to you know, know how to do it the old school way. If you because the GPS can't get knocked out by things like solar flares, which we've already found out last year. So I think that that's good to have kind of a discipline to go back. But also I understand you know wanting to get the most out of you you can the GPS obviously superior in that regard Jonathan. Thanks so much for this this has been.
01:23:51 Kristin Demoranville
Super enlightening for me. I I hope our listeners also find to be super enlightening. I'll put all of your information in the show notes. Is there anything you want to say before we sign off?
01:24:00 Jonathan Lawler
This is this has been a lot of fun.
01:24:01 Kristin Demoranville
Awesome. Thank you.
01:24:02 Jonathan Lawler
Thank.
01:24:09 Kristin Demoranville
That's a wrap on today's episode. Huge thanks to Jonathan for taking the time out of his very busy, very real and very demanding.
01:24:16 Kristin Demoranville
Schedule to talk to us.
01:24:17 Kristin Demoranville
He definitely made me think differently about a few things, and I hope you walked away with something to chew on to.
01:24:23 Kristin Demoranville
You'll find all of Jonathan's links and information in the show notes. If you want to follow his work or learn more about the topics that we've covered.
01:24:30 Kristin Demoranville
As always, if you liked what you heard, share it. Send it to a friend, post it, leave a comment, hit the stars, whatever works for you and helps more people find this conversation and also show support for the show. And if long form is more your thing, or you just want the uncensored version of my thoughts, head over to sub stack. That's where I talk through.
01:24:50 Kristin Demoranville
It doesn't fit into audio. Unpack what's going on in Food and Agriculture and share updates on the book and beyond. As always, stay safe, stay curious, and we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.
