Ep. 031 - Tracy Brunet on the Realities of Modern Ranching: From Land to Legacy to Tech
In this compelling episode of the Bites and Bytes Podcast, host Kristin Demoranville sits down with Tracy Brunet, cattle rancher, Canadian Ag media powerhouse, and host of The Impact Farming Show. Broadcasting from her family farm in Southeast Manitoba, Tracy opens up about the realities of modern agriculture land pressures, succession planning, tech adoption, and how family farms are quietly being squeezed out.
Together, Kristin and Tracy explore how smart farming and digital innovation reshape the industry, for better or worse. They also unpack the rising threat of agroterrorism and cyber-physical attacks, and what happens when farm automation goes wrong. This isn’t your typical farm chat; it's real talk about the challenges and resilience of today’s producers.
Whether you're in ag, food, or tech, this conversation is packed with insights on business, legacy, and safeguarding our food system. Tracy’s passion for farming is contagious, and her straight-shooting perspective on the future of agriculture will leave you thinking long after the episode ends.
🎧 This is a sister episode to Tracy’s show, The Impact Farming Show—you can also watch our whole conversation on her YouTube channel: Watch here.
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🎙️ Guest Information: Tracy Brunet
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracy-brunet-53a204b/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracymbrunet/
Farm Marketer: https://www.farmmarketer.com/
🎙️ The Impact Farming Show:
The Impact Farming Show is a podcast produced by Farm Marketer, created specifically for Canadian farmers who want to thrive in the business of farming. Hosted by Tracy Brunet, a cattle rancher and the CEO of Farm Marketer, the show features conversations with leading farm advisors and industry experts. Each episode offers practical advice on topics like succession planning, financial management, mental health, and the latest in ag innovation. Designed for busy farmers on the move, the show aims to provide insights that help them build successful, resilient farms and pass them on to the next generation.
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@farmmarketer3270
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/impact-farming/id1409740089
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0UwMzcGCuFKkvlzJgOmhRl?si=00dacd734e1840c3
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🎯 Episode Key Highlights
(00:14:05) – Land Developers, Pressure, and Displacement of Family Farms
(00:19:17) – Succession Planning & Inheritance Struggles in Ag
(00:24:48) – What Happens When Cyber Risk Hits the Ranch
(00:35:55) – Real Incidents: Cyber Attacks on Dairy & Meat Industries
(00:42:59) – The Risk of Connected Equipment & Smart Tech on the Farm
(00:47:34) – Agroterrorism & Espionage: The Physical-Digital Crossover
(00:55:12) – When Cyber Attacks Lead to Loss of Life on Farms
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Show Notes:
🔗 Resources and Further Reading
Farm Succession Planning
Passing Down The Family Farm with Clint Fischer | Episode 240
Tracy discusses the intricacies of farm transition planning with Clint Fischer, emphasizing the importance of early and strategic planning.
Watch the episodeTOP 10 Farm Transition Planning Mistakes with Tracy Brunet
An insightful episode where Tracy outlines common pitfalls in farm succession planning and offers practical advice to avoid them.
Watch the episode
Precision Agriculture
Benefits and Evolution of Precision Agriculture
An overview by USDA ARS on how precision agriculture tools enhance farming efficiency and sustainability.
Read the articlePrecision Agriculture in the Digital Era
A report detailing recent trends in the adoption of precision technologies on U.S. farms.
Access the report
Cybersecurity in Agriculture
Ransomware Attack Paralyzes Milking Robots—Cow Dead
An incident highlighting the real-world consequences of cybersecurity breaches in agriculture.
Read the articleWhy the Food & Agriculture Industry Needs Cyber Insurance
An overview of how cyber insurance can safeguard farming operations against digital threats.
Download the PDF
Agroterrorism and Food Security
Agroterrorism: Threats to America's Economy and Food Supply
An exploration by the FBI of the threats posed by agroterrorism to the agricultural sector.
Read the articleAgroterrorism & Cyber Threats: How Farms Are Under Attack
In this episode of the Bites and Bytes Podcast, we discuss deliberately targeting farms, livestock, and food supply chains to incite fear, economic damage, or ideological change.
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen on Spotify
JBS Ransomware Attack (2021)
· One of the largest cyberattacks in the meat industry, used to illustrate how digital risks can halt real-world production.
BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy)
· Also known as "mad cow disease." Tracy mentions how the outbreak stalled their early plans to start beef ranching.
Canadian Food Inspection Agency: BSE Overview
Lab-Grown Meat and Food Technology
Foods Produced Using Animal Cell Culture Technology
Information from the FDA on the development and regulation of lab-grown meat products.
Download the PDF
Solar Flare & GPS Disruption in Precision Ag
· Tractor GPS knocked out by Solar Flares during Harvest 2024
Cutting Horses
The term "cutting horses" refers to agile saddle horses trained to separate individual animals from a cattle herd. They possess an innate ability called "cow sense," allowing them to anticipate and respond to a cow's movements without direct guidance from the rider. This skill is essential in cutting competitions, where the horse must prevent a separated cow from returning to the herd. Wikipedia
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💡 Animal Agriculture Alliance’s 2025 Stakeholders Summit
If you enjoyed our episode on agroterrorism and cyber threats to farms, featuring the Animal Agriculture Alliance, here’s another opportunity to explore critical conversations about our food system. And if you haven’t listened yet, check it out here:
🎙 Episode Link: Agroterrorism & Cyber Threats – How Farms Are Under Attack
📢 Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify
The 2025 Stakeholders Summit, happening April 30 – May 2 in Arlington, VA, will bring together industry leaders from farms, food processing, retail, and more to discuss sustainability and the future of animal agriculture. This year’s theme, “Food for Thought: Dishing on Sustainability,” focuses on collaboration and innovation to shape the future of food production.
Reserve your seat at the table—register by April 25!
🔗 Learn more and register: 2025 Stakeholders Summit
🔗 About the Animal Agriculture Alliance: AnimalAgAlliance.org
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🎤 Bites and Bytes Podcast Info:
Website: Explore all our episodes, articles, and more on our official Website. Visit Now
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Audience Survey: We value your feedback! Help us make the podcast even better. Take the Survey
Schedule a Call with Kristin: Want to share your thoughts? Schedule a meeting with Kristin! Schedule Now
Socials: TikTok; Instagram; LinkedIn
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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. Their services include:
Security Resilience Advisory
Security Resilience Assessments
Security Awareness & Training
Exercise, Drill & Scenario Workshops
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.
Key features include:
AI-powered analytics
Quantified risk scoring & impact zones
Compliance & regulatory alignment
ESG integration for sector-specific reporting
Explore the platform at anzenot.com
For demo requests or inquiries, email stuart@anzenot.com or kristin@anzenot.com
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🎤 Book Kristin Demoranville to Speak
Looking to bring a fresh, engaging perspective on cybersecurity to your next event? Kristin Demoranville, CEO of AnzenSage, co-founder of AnzenOT, and host of the award-winning Bites and Bytes Podcast, is a dynamic speaker who bridges the gap between technology and the industries that feed, sustain, and inspire us.
With over 25 years of experience in IT and cybersecurity, Kristin has captivated audiences at prestigious conferences such as the American Zoo Association, RSA Conference, S4X24, the Food Safety Consortium, and many more. Her talks are known for their compelling storytelling, practical insights, and ability to make complex topics accessible and relevant.
Whether addressing the nuances of cybersecurity in the food industry or the broader implications for critical infrastructure, Kristin's presentations are tailored to resonate with diverse audiences, encouraging discussion and fostering an inclusive environment.
To invite Kristin to speak at your conference, corporate event, or workshop, visit anzensage.com/speaking and submit a request.
Listen to full episode :
Episode Guide:
(00:00:08) – Favorite Food & Wedding Meal Memory
(00:02:43) – Tracy's Introduction: Ranching & Media Work
(00:06:41) – How Tracy Got Into Ranching
(00:08:59) – Building the Ranch from Scratch
(00:11:18) – The Yellowstone Effect and Ranching Misconceptions
(00:14:05) – Land Developers, Pressure, and Displacement of Family Farms
(00:19:17) – Succession Planning & Inheritance Struggles in Ag
(00:24:48) – What Happens When Cyber Risk Hits the Ranch
(00:35:55) – Real Incidents: Cyber Attacks on Dairy & Meat Industries
(00:38:53) – Mental Health, Financial Stress, and Ag Risk
(00:42:59) – The Risk of Connected Equipment & Smart Tech on the Farm
(00:47:34) – Agroterrorism & Espionage: The Physical-Digital Crossover
(00:55:12) – When Cyber Attacks Lead to Loss of Life on Farms
(00:58:08) – Why Conversations Like This Matter in Agriculture
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00:00:12 Kristin Demoranville
Hi everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Bites and Bytes Podcast. I'm your host, Kristin Demoranville, and today's conversation is a special one. It's also airing on the Impact farm show with my guest Tracy. So if you're just joining us from her audience, welcome. We're also glad you're here. Tracy is a cattle rancher.
00:00:32 Kristin Demoranville
Leader and the host of the impact farming show in this episode, we're going to talk about what it really takes to run a ranch today. Everything from land pressure and succession planning to the rise of smart tech, digital risk, and what happens when ranchers are left out of those conversations. This is a sister episode between our shows and it's one I hope sparks more of these kind of cross.
00:00:52 Kristin Demoranville
Sector conversations. If you care about food systems resilience or just want to hear what's really going on behind the ranch gate, this episode is for you. Let's jump in.
00:01:07 Kristin Demoranville
Awesome. I absolutely love the fact that I have Tracy on today. But before we jump into all introductions and all the fun things, favorite food and favorite food memory, please favorite food, steak and baked potato? Asparagus. That's my favorite food.
00:01:23 Tracy Brunet
Favorite food memory. If you want that right away goes right in line. Was actually my wedding.
00:01:29 Tracy Brunet
Had a very small wedding tent wedding on my farm here in Canada. Beautiful. It was gorgeous. Hot day. I had a gentleman come in and cater it and it was beef tenderloin and we had some potatoes and some vegetables. The most amazing appetizers before and then cheesecake after. But literally and not because it was my wedding.
00:01:51 Tracy Brunet
I was on some kind of like wedding high that that beef tenderloin that he cooked. He's a chef. It was the most amazing meal of my life on my wedding. I didn't even know how good of a chef he was. So that's my best food memory.
00:02:06 Kristin Demoranville
Ever was it. Was it local beef?
00:02:08 Kristin Demoranville
Well, I don't.
00:02:09 Kristin Demoranville
Know I didn't even ask. Good beef farmer. I am right beef and it tastes great. I don't care. Yep. That's great. I've never had someone say steak and potatoes and asparagus. I've never had someone say that they always are listing crazy dishes from all over the place. But you know you.
00:02:25 Kristin Demoranville
Can't really beat a good steak.
00:02:26 Kristin Demoranville
You know no, but yeah, steak is great and I actually.
00:02:29 Kristin Demoranville
Find a local butcher shop recently where I'm at, so I'm stoked. Yes, and the food has been fantastic, so maybe hopefully I can get a steak. Maybe this week we'll see. I will think of you when I have it. I am very fortunate. A beef farmer. So we have our own beef. Actually, to be honest, we do buy from the store a lot, but beef is.
00:02:48 Tracy Brunet
Life I tell you.
00:02:49 Tracy Brunet
Promote my product. That's great. Since you already told us your beef farmer, but let's go through introduction. So go ahead, Tracy. OK, so I am the owner, CEO of Farm Market.
00:03:00 Tracy Brunet
They're one of the largest independent egg media companies in Canada and hosts of the impact farming Show Video podcast show for farmers North American wide, actually worldwide listeners and we are video podcast weekly and we cover slogan the people and ideas that will impact your farming operation.
00:03:20 Tracy Brunet
But really, when it comes down to it is business. I focus in on business a lot. I love that. That's my jam where agriculture and the business subjects meet and kind of just to give those farmers the gold Nuggets of ideas or.
00:03:32 Tracy Brunet
People that are important to their farming operation, so that's me and I'm a bee farmer, SE Manitoba, Canada with my husband and I, absolutely.
00:03:43 Kristin Demoranville
Love it and Tracy and I have actually done a couple episodes on her show, so that's how we met. And for those that are listening on her side of the house, I'm Kristin Embarazo. I am the host of bytes and bytes.
00:03:53 Kristin Demoranville
OK.
00:03:54 Kristin Demoranville
I'm also the CEO of Anzin OT and Anson Sage, psychical security firm that's focused on Food and Agriculture, zoos and aquariums, and also an operational technology management SaaS tool. So that's kind of me. We kind of meet in this great place because she talks about business and I talk about, you know, cybersecurity. So obviously we're part of that world.
00:04:13 Kristin Demoranville
And that's what happens. So, and Tracy's a love. So if you haven't seen her show, I'll be honest. Like, go see it because she's got such great information. I learn a lot by watching the show. And I am. I'm a listener and I'm a.
00:04:23 Kristin Demoranville
So it sounds creepy. I'm not a watcher, but.
00:04:24 Tracy Brunet
Oh.
00:04:25 Kristin Demoranville
You know what?
00:04:28 Tracy Brunet
I'm a fan. I'll take that. You know, it's a video person. It's so neat when you hear people meet people that watch your show, right? So it's so amazing, actually. Yeah. Yeah. It's weird because you just see the numbers and the metrics, and they're not real people.
00:04:43 Tracy Brunet
And then when you go out.
00:04:44 Tracy Brunet
And they're like, hey, that episode. I'm.
00:04:46 Kristin Demoranville
Real people do watch this, right? It's just a. Yeah, a little weird. Not that I'm something celebrity or anything, but it's just it's kind of weird, right? How that happened? It's weird. And then also to hear people talking about your show or talking about your show on social media that you're not necessarily attached to, or that's been weird or like having, like, fan people.
00:05:06 Kristin Demoranville
Moments and like conferences, people.
00:05:08 Kristin Demoranville
Like and you're like, hey.
00:05:10 Kristin Demoranville
And then I'm just like.
00:05:12
How to respond?
00:05:13 Tracy Brunet
To you, that's great. And I've done that well. You think of that, Chris, and sorry to jump in there real quick, but do you think of any podcast that you listen to you almost develop A1 sided relationship with that person? Because if you love their podcast, you listen to them. And I mean, I'm more business, not as much personal, but some of the people.
00:05:32 Tracy Brunet
I listen to, I just love and then I would probably go up to them and be like, hey, thinking like they know me, but they don't.
00:05:41 Kristin Demoranville
Right. As a listener, you just know your podcaster, your YouTuber. So well, it's kind of it's a neat world we live in, it really is, and it's I've I've met some of the podcasting teams that are in cyber security world have been on their shows and it's been an absolute honor to continue to promote and help their shows grow as much as they do for mine. And it's such a.
00:06:01 Kristin Demoranville
An interesting world.
00:06:02 Kristin Demoranville
Podcasting world it's really a really strange niche area. And then on top of niches with everybody's stuff. And I, I've, I've actually really been enjoying it after the year or whatever I've been doing this. And you're right though. It's funny because when you see the numbers, you're just like, wait a minute. But then I think to myself, awesome, because this is the conversations we want to be having with people around the world because you're global just as much as I am.
00:06:23 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, it's really amazing. I I couldn't.
00:06:25 Kristin Demoranville
For a better platform or community to work with at.
00:06:28 Kristin Demoranville
This point but anyways.
00:06:29 Tracy Brunet
Beef farming, how did we get there, Tracy? I've actually always wanted to ask you this. How did you get into this world? Funny. So my parents both grew up on farms, and then my dad's family farm kind of split when he was younger. So it wasn't there. But I grew up going to my grandparents.
00:06:46 Tracy Brunet
My dad was a trucker, so he was often on the road. My mom would pack us up Fridays. We'd go out to the farm for the weekend and hang out with my grandparents.
00:06:54 Tracy Brunet
The farm and Little Tracy, she's like when I grow up, I'm gonna be a farmer cause I love the farm so much, right. So Needless to say, life goes on. I didn't grow up on a farm. I grew up on an acreage. Unfortunately, fortunately, good life. But I was always trying to like map out like horse pens and like, fences on my parents yard.
00:07:14 Tracy Brunet
Because we had an acre or two and I was going to get a horse and a cow when I was a kid, I'm like, I'm doing this. So I like paying out their yard and they're like, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm seeing where my horse, but I've never talked about this. I'm seeing where my friends can go and they're like.
00:07:29 Tracy Brunet
No, no, they both came from a farm. They didn't want that, right, like in one acre. They're lawn. I'm a persistent child. I not persistent enough. I didn't get it. But Needless to say, that was kind of the tone that was set for my life and.
00:07:43 Tracy Brunet
I loved it.
00:07:44 Tracy Brunet
That was a a big part of growing up and I, in my mind, I said I'm going to be.
00:07:48 Tracy Brunet
A bee farmer with a horse.
00:07:49 Tracy Brunet
When I grow up and of all things, random ended up beating my husband young. I was 16. We ended up meeting through my best friend, blah blah, blah. And then we've been together ever since. And he came from a beef farm, actually just down the road from where we are. He grew up on a beef farm and.
00:08:07 Tracy Brunet
We didn't actually start deforming until probably about 17 years ago, right when DSC hit, Oh my gosh. Kristin talked about farming dreams crushed. We were just working up like you're young, right? And you're working and doing your and you're excited and you're.
00:08:23 Tracy Brunet
Like, yeah, we're doing.
00:08:24 Tracy Brunet
This we're about to buy some cattle.
00:08:27 Tracy Brunet
USC hit and we're like, well, there goes our farming drinks and then.
00:08:32 Tracy Brunet
I think it.
00:08:32 Tracy Brunet
Took quite a few years after for that to kind of.
00:08:35 Tracy Brunet
Sort out. I mean that took a long time, but once things actually started opening up, we bought our first eight Black Angus cows and have them at his parents farm.
00:08:45 Tracy Brunet
And then we.
00:08:46 Tracy Brunet
Just grew our farm from there and very quick then Anthony went full time. We bought our own land, all our own tractors. So we we farm with his parents but not really like we have.
00:08:55 Tracy Brunet
All our own, but we make hay with his parents and kind of help out that way. So yeah, that's my farming story that I've never actually told anybody. And you got your horse. And I got my horse while I didn't want to bring that up, unfortunately passed away.
00:09:10 Tracy Brunet
That's OK, that's OK. He I just had one horse. He was such a gentleman. Such a beautiful guy. And he was old already. So he lived a good long life and he passed away. And I haven't bought a new one because one, he's amazing and you don't want to try try and top that horses are a ton of work. They look glorious.
00:09:29 Tracy Brunet
The idea sounds nice. A ton of work, I said. If I ever lived in California with.
00:09:35 Tracy Brunet
Run predictable weather, no bugs. I would buy a horse again, but up here, sneezing short bugs are bad weather's all over and I'm busy, right? I'm too busy for that. So anyways, I had a beautiful horse. I still have many cows and enjoy the farming life.
00:09:52 Kristin Demoranville
So you ranch with tractors then, right? So like 4 Wheelers and things like that or yeah, totally my husband.
00:09:58 Tracy Brunet
There, there's some diehards that they're horse people. They'll do the going out to rope the cattle. But Anthony's like we have quads. That's faster. You hop on a yes. Like no way. And we also to be fair, we don't live in a terrain like a mountain or hilly valley where you need a horse.
00:10:19 Tracy Brunet
Like some different areas when you start getting into dangerous terrain like your quad will slip, right? Yeah. It's you're going down.
00:10:26
I see.
00:10:27 Kristin Demoranville
And some places you can't reach, so there you need horses here. Where I can watch my dog run away for miles. So anyway, yeah, that's crazy. I didn't know that about that area. So that thank you. I I feel educated for that moment. So I want to be forthcoming. I actually finally just finished Yellowstone. No spoilers for everybody on back end. I I have a love hate of that show. Like, I love the cinematography.
00:10:48 Kristin Demoranville
Of the wide angled shots and I love the.
00:10:51 Kristin Demoranville
And they're bringing, you know, ranching into like a public light and how hard it can be rented. It's extreme, and there's lots of murder and bad stuff, right? But it's such just it's creating this, like lifestyle fantasy of what ranching is and what it isn't. And I kind of I'm a little frustrated with it because they make it look like it just happens and it it's it's so much more than that.
00:11:12 Kristin Demoranville
Especially if you are doing it with horses, even if you are doing with quads, it's you still have to fuel them and service them and do all these things right. And people don't understand that it's not a multibillion dollar ranch, it might be, but you're not going to necessarily make that money. It's about breaking even and hopefully bringing in a little revenue. It's not.
00:11:30 Kristin Demoranville
It's more of the love of what you do rather than like the I don't know, whatever they were doing, like the yuppie richness of it.
00:11:36 Kristin Demoranville
Or whatever and.
00:11:37 Kristin Demoranville
It's. I've talked to other farmers and they're like, catch those socks.
00:11:40 Tracy Brunet
Like I'm like.
00:11:41 Kristin Demoranville
It's pretty it's a pretty show. I can appreciate it for that. Expect, but watching it, it definitely made me shake my head too many times. Like, Oh no, that would not happen.
00:11:50 Kristin Demoranville
Nope, that's definitely not how that goes down. Is there anything like that that you feel like you're constantly combating? And even with when you're talking to your guests about just the the, like, the disinformation and misinformation of what it means to be a farmer? Well, totally. Oh, my gosh, all the time, like Yellowstone. I liked it, too. There was good drama.
00:12:08 Tracy Brunet
Nice scenery, like good plot line, right? A lot of drama. We don't have a train station, Needless to say, but I'm glad. Yeah, not that clear the range. But you know it is good. There's pros and cons to anything, right? Some shows I've watched are so unrealistic I'd be yelling at the TV. I mean, there was a few times they did a fairly good job.
00:12:29 Tracy Brunet
Of portraying a lot of stuff, like quite accurate, the the one thing I really like about that is they focus on some of the challenges, but from my aspect is how much pressure farmers are under for the land grab wise, how people are coming in and taking up land and then they're moving right beside.
00:12:49 Tracy Brunet
Arms and say your farm stinks. Get out of here. It's like, yeah, no, we've been here for hundreds of years.
00:12:55 Tracy Brunet
Like that's a.
00:12:56 Tracy Brunet
Huge pressure and then people moving out of the city. Great. Love it. Enjoy your country.
00:13:01 Tracy Brunet
Life. But you're moving to the country. We didn't move to the city, right? So to me, I like that it's showing a lot of the big developers and what's happening and farmers are getting pushed out just for the land base aspect. We're also the largest farm real estate website in Canada. Just as a side note, so the land portion interests me.
00:13:22 Tracy Brunet
But also the fact that not only are they pushing us out, they're pushing us out financially. When you look at a lot of the resort areas or just outside of cities, a lot of those developers come in and they see a quarter land and they know what they can do to that quarter land. And that quarter land is worth.
00:13:40 Tracy Brunet
10 million or 20 million to them? Well, there ain't no farmer paying 20 million because that quarter is worth 800,000 pencil. That in is just like tight. And it's like if it's a bad grain year, we can't afford that payment. So for me, I like that they were kind of shining a light on the counties and.
00:14:00 Tracy Brunet
Them moving in on farmers, I think they did a good job that way, but yeah, and just generally I mean so much in the world that we live in.
00:14:09 Tracy Brunet
And again, both sides, you can't help but get controversial, but so many people thinking that our food system isn't safe like I'm in a health store and randomly talking to a lady and somehow we get into the fact that I'm a bee farmer. She's like, ohh well, that's good. You know where your food's from and you get that typical like.
00:14:29 Tracy Brunet
The store isn't safe and I don't like that, and I actually looked at her because we were out of farm beef, like we don't have our own beef, a lot of.
00:14:37 Tracy Brunet
The times and I.
00:14:38 Tracy Brunet
Said I buy from Superstore just the same as.
00:14:41 Tracy Brunet
You it's like you eat and it's.
00:14:43 Tracy Brunet
Safe. I'm like, absolutely. We have such a robust and. But I said our food.
00:14:49 Kristin Demoranville
By and large, is so safe, effective, affordable. We eat there too. I'm not a I don't snub the store well before there. We're good. So anyways, you would know that you're also supporting other cattle operators as well by buying beef in the store. I think people don't understand how distribution works.
00:15:02
Really.
00:15:08 Kristin Demoranville
And where all this this meat is coming from and which directions in which countries. And it's just one big supply chain it's it's a lot of little chains ending up into one big grocery store. It just all depends on the grocer and then the grocer is the one that sets the price not not the ranch then and of those people set that that's it's the.
00:15:26 Kristin Demoranville
Groceries. That's the price. So that's what.
00:15:28 Kristin Demoranville
Becomes frustrating when people start complaining about price. It's you don't have control over that Tracy. So I mean, you'd be happy to, like, feed everybody. I'm sure you would cause you're just such a great person, but ultimately you're trying to make money, but you don't set that price. And that's what bothers me is when people start complaining about all the price of meat these days, you know, and you're kind of like, well, yeah, because.
00:15:49 Kristin Demoranville
Look at all the stuff we have to do and look how far the meat has to travel and where it has to be housed and all these other things, I mean. And then, heaven forbid, a cyber attack hits and then you got a whole, the whole meat system like it did with JBS. People go without because they.
00:16:01 Kristin Demoranville
Get meat to the grocer because there is no warehouse storage or they can't slaughter fast enough and then it's human life issues because now you got cattle that's stressed out, and we're gonna put it, what's happening? And then you have to slaughter faster. And we all know that slaughterhouses and factories that produce are really difficult to work in anyways, because it's the safety issues.
00:16:22 Kristin Demoranville
So now you're gonna speed up production of people.
00:16:23 Kristin Demoranville
Gonna lose digits, I I.
00:16:25 Kristin Demoranville
When I pick up a pack of meat in the in the grocery store I there's a bit there's gratitude that happens now for meat differently than when I was younger. Obviously cause I'm I'm in this industry so heavily now that it's almost like a silent thank you like thank.
00:16:37 Kristin Demoranville
Like thank a farmer, but just think a farmer. I mean, don't be weird about it, but like, think for her, you know. But yeah, I I I think the thing on that show that bothered me was the fact that they always.
00:16:47 Kristin Demoranville
Had a cell phone.
00:16:48 Kristin Demoranville
Signal and I was.
00:16:49 Kristin Demoranville
Like there's no way. There's no.
00:16:51 Kristin Demoranville
Way and also also there was always a helicopter or plane available at all times and I was like no, no no.
00:16:57 Kristin Demoranville
That's not how this works. Or you know other silly things that are kind of along that line. But generally speaking, I I do love that there are.
00:17:04 Kristin Demoranville
Their dramas that are out there, they're showing a different side of life to people who probably have never stepped foot into the country or if they have, they've only flown over it or driven through it without much acknowledgement of what it is and something you said. And it hurts my heart because we were talking about this before we hit record is that these land developers, it's much more effective to sell your farmland these days than it is to keep your farm.
00:17:25 Kristin Demoranville
On it and that makes my heart hurt so much because we need a lot more first Gen. farmers. We need people to come in and start doing this for the first time because we're running.
00:17:33 Kristin Demoranville
Of farmers, literally in all countries, this isn't just a US problem or Canadian problems. The global issue, and it bothers me that we can just buy it out and the development could get put up and grant that I'm most people that bought a house on the development that we used to be cattle land. That's OK do I have? I mean, do I feel some type of way? Yeah, a little bit. But the same time as I know that family is probably fine, you know, that makes me feel OK.
00:17:54 Kristin Demoranville
But this is happening more and more and more. How much land can we possibly give up until we can't feed our populations where we need to raise well, I mean, this is where lab meat starts to become questionable. You're like, well, then, we'd have to have lab grown meat because we're not gonna have enough cattle out there. But then and of course, everybody. Yeah, I know that. Everybody gets a little weird.
00:18:11 Kristin Demoranville
Not by that. I also get weirded out by that.
00:18:13 Kristin Demoranville
It's a strange.
00:18:14 Kristin Demoranville
Thing. No, no, no, but it's it is. It's so disheartening, right? Like the fact that we've reached this, this part. And I'm hoping that we'll reach a stability with it. And I don't know though, because of all the things that are happening in the world right now, farmers have their backs against the wall in so many ways differently than.
00:18:31 Kristin Demoranville
They did 10 years.
00:18:32 Kristin Demoranville
Ago.
00:18:41 Kristin Demoranville
Hey there, just taking a quick moment to thank you for tuning into the.
00:18:45 Kristin Demoranville
Bytes and bytes.
00:18:45 Kristin Demoranville
Podcast if you're enjoying this episode, don't forget to like, comment and share the show with others. It really helps us reach more people who want smart conversations without all the fluff.
00:18:55 Kristin Demoranville
This conversation is also part of a special sister episode, Tracy Burnett, host of the Impact farming show. If you're not already subscribed to her podcast, GO check it out. She brings a powerful conversation with the community week after week, you'll find the link in our show notes.
00:19:09 Kristin Demoranville
And if you've got a topic you want me to cover, a guest you'd love to hear from, or questions about something you've already discussed on the show. I'd love to hear from you. Feedback drives the show, and your ideas are always welcome. Just drop me an e-mail at Kristin@anzensage.com. Now, back to the episode.
00:19:32 Tracy Brunet
Farmers need this. They're.
00:19:33 Kristin Demoranville
So fascinating. I think it's fascinating.
00:19:35 Tracy Brunet
Yeah.
00:19:36 Tracy Brunet
There's 100 reasons, but the real reason I started if you get down to the heart of Tracey's heart is transition planning and lack of has negatively affected me personally. Times 2 and I see it with not like my own lives. We did our own thing, but in my family I've lost aunts, uncles.
00:19:56 Tracy Brunet
Has since so many people because of it. So that's my wife. But looking around to what we're seeing here and the pressure.
00:20:04 Tracy Brunet
And the cost of farmland it is well, can I just name it impossible to start a farm at land price is the way it is. Unless you're coming in through an existing family operation. And then even at that, here is where I'm concerned. I am very much for the farm.
00:20:25 Tracy Brunet
Life. It's a beautiful way of life. Independent farmers are options.
00:20:30 Tracy Brunet
In the food system.
00:20:31
Mm-hmm.
00:20:32 Tracy Brunet
Not that I'm against big corporations because we need it to work right, but the more and more pressure.
00:20:38 Tracy Brunet
That's put on farmers, the less and less profitable it is for people to get in. Nobody wants to stress. Nobody wants the chaotic market when you could just go get a job and live a comfortable life, right without the like. Ohh wow, we lost 300,000 this year. What are we gonna do? Like it's insane.
00:20:58 Tracy Brunet
And I don't even want to talk.
00:21:00 Tracy Brunet
But what's going on? Well, we will figure speech about what's going on right now. So where I'm looping around to and this pressure, especially because of the pandemic and people moving out, we now have a whole new pressure of everybody that wants to live the Country Life. That may work from home, may commute into the city, have big wages.
00:21:20 Tracy Brunet
Afford big mortgages, and now we're competing for land with those people adds more pressure to our area and what I'm very concerned about for multiple reasons is we're losing the family farm very.
00:21:35 Tracy Brunet
Quickly, very quickly and the cost of land is a big one and there's many, many other factors, but that is near and dear to my heart because how do you transition plan? That's one angle, but within the whole family farm operation, we now have a situation where family farms had multiple children, one would say.
00:21:55 Tracy Brunet
And farm. That was their passion. They stayed, the others would go get careers. They don't care about the farm or there wasn't enough opportunity.
00:22:02 Tracy Brunet
They go do their thing. The kid that stays, that is what they're invested in and they need the land. They need all the production to make it happen. But here's the thing. Land is so expensive. It's a huge inheritance and now and I don't like the subject of inheritance because I'm not a give me parent kind of gal.
00:22:22 Tracy Brunet
Like I hate it like I'm building my way in life, but when it comes down to the practicality, the farm child needs all of that to make the farm go and make the farm live. But here is a double edged sword. Lamb values are so high.
00:22:36 Tracy Brunet
Why the non farming children are saying wait a minute, why does farming Bobby or brother get the whole farm when mom and Dad pass away and we get what nothing like pittance? I'm not saying that's wrong because fair it's fair, but you can't split a farming pie for ways and keep the farm.
00:22:57 Tracy Brunet
So to me it breaks my heart.
00:23:00 Tracy Brunet
Because from the external, the land pressure from the economics and from within the family farm, Oh my goodness. If we can keep family farms going another decade, Holy Dinah, it's a bit of a magic, and that's why I'm trying so hard to work on on our show. And that's why I'm kind of really focusing in anyways, long tangent. But I think that's.
00:23:19 Kristin Demoranville
No, it's it's real and I think everybody who's listening needs to understand that if they don't already, that part of that world, what what it means to you because it would be really easy to sell the the family farm off and split it by 4, right? That would be that would be your. But the idea of keeping it in the family and understanding that that was the wishes of your family for general.
00:23:32 Tracy Brunet
There you go. Yep.
00:23:39 Kristin Demoranville
Just like Yellowstone, an example, wherever it was 170 years, that to me is that's important if that's something that wants to continue on and there is a family member who's going to stand up and do it. But I can also understand people wanting their piece of the pie. But there needs to be a different way about it. And so I hope that I hope that it's not messy. I've experienced some really bad succession planning.
00:24:00 Kristin Demoranville
External family members and watching it just tear people up and it's it's so avoidable. It feels avoidable. Like, you know, just planning and pre thinking ahead and all that stuff and then to combat the land issue. And then you have your family succession planning issues and then you have global climate change, which is clearly messing farm.
00:24:18 Kristin Demoranville
Not big time. And then you've got all of, like, the various governments doing a various other weird things all of the time and changing every 5 seconds somebody sneezes. And it seems like.
00:24:26 Kristin Demoranville
It's changed and.
00:24:27 Kristin Demoranville
Then and then you have, uh, cyber security and your farm gets hit with an attack. And now what?
00:24:33
What are you gonna?
00:24:34 Tracy Brunet
Do so. Let me jump in there and be Co hosts here and ask you so.
00:24:38 Tracy Brunet
For the benefit of our audience, in case they haven't caught the previous episodes with.
00:24:42 Tracy Brunet
You what do?
00:24:43 Tracy Brunet
You do and how in the world did you get into this? Because like most of us, even farmers, you don't we, I guess just like the consumer takes for granted. The farmer we take for granted the food system and how it all just works and cyber security.
00:24:57 Kristin Demoranville
Who thinks of this? So tell them so. I actually originally had gotten my college degree in environmental management, so I was always really Privy to the natural world in general. It was kind of always something that was in me. And then I became a bit of a busy junkie. I volunteered a bunch of zoos and things like that. So like, I worked at the commissary, and then I worked with gorillas and a few other things. So like.
00:25:18 Kristin Demoranville
I have I have this like natural cycle looking systems thinking already in me and as I was going through my technology and cyber security side.
00:25:25 Kristin Demoranville
My career I ended up at a food manufacturer. Both finish ingredients and and and I'm sorry both finished product and ingredients and I really got to know first hand operational technology and what it meant to work in production and what production was and understand food safety and quality in a different way. Because when you're working enterprise cybersecurity in other places, you don't necessary.
00:25:46 Kristin Demoranville
Only touch the operational side, but at that place it was pretty much everybody did everything. So I was working in this operational space while I was still doing cybersecurity. So for me it just became really organic. I just saw it as one big system and how we need to work together. But I started to see where cyber security because all of that technology that flowed over the product was part of food.
00:26:06 Kristin Demoranville
Safety culture really, because any of the technology that touches the food automatically to me meant it needed to be viewed differently in in terms of food safety and quality. Because if something happened on with the equipment, whether it was a cyber event or just human tampering or whatever, that potentially could lead to a foodborne illness. So it got me thinking and I kind of kept it in the back of my head and I didn't say anything at the time.
00:26:26 Kristin Demoranville
Because I didn't. Maybe because I just was in that part of my career. I left the the food company and I actually went to work for a large electronics manufacturer and I got to tour around the world and experience different cultures inside of these different types of factories. Read they were electronics and semiconductor. But a factory is a factory for the most part. Stuff comes in. Something happens to me and it goes out.
00:26:46 Kristin Demoranville
You know, and I ended up going through the consulting world of cybersecurity and that's kind of what you do after get out of industry in general. And I started really seeing different consumer product goods, CPG's and some other things from an insiders lens and started to realize.
00:27:00 Kristin Demoranville
That we still.
00:27:00 Kristin Demoranville
Have this like disconnect with food safety and goods. You know, whether it's in our body or pets are eating it or whatever, or it's it's feed for animals on the farm and I'd always been connected to farms in some way. I was really lucky where I grew up. We still had a lot of family farms around where I grew up in Massachusetts was just saying a lot because Massachusetts is like this big. And I was riding horses.
00:27:21 Kristin Demoranville
When I was younger, so you and.
00:27:22 Kristin Demoranville
I share the horse.
00:27:22 Kristin Demoranville
Thing, right? Yeah, I'm really grateful that I know how to ride a horse, and I think it's a life skill.
00:27:27 Kristin Demoranville
Everybody needs actually.
00:27:29 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, but because teachers are a lot about respect in general and coordination and working with others in teamwork, because animals gonna do whatever it wants anyways. But so I was in the consulting side of the house.
00:27:40 Kristin Demoranville
But and I really started to see this disconnect and connection with food and the whole global food system and how nobody was talking about it and nobody was talking about agriculture and everybody is trying to save agriculture with smart farming and precision farming, which is great. But you can't do any of that without technology because it's technology driven. It's all.
00:27:59 Kristin Demoranville
About data, so I.
00:28:00 Kristin Demoranville
Thought, what are we doing?
00:28:01 Kristin Demoranville
And then I met a few people that we got chatting about it on the food safety side and all of a sudden it was like, I'll tell you truth, it was like a lightning bolt, like, hit me in the head. And I was like, wait a minute.
00:28:10 Kristin Demoranville
Why is nobody doing anything about this? And also why isn't Food and Agriculture part of the critical sector in the United States, which they didn't add until 2020? And I was like, what is happening? And I and it was sort of like I lifted the curtain, if you will, and all of a sudden, like all these creepy things fell out and it came at me. And I was like, oh, no, we got to do something. So I left the consulting world and I was like, I'm just going to start my own.
00:28:30 Kristin Demoranville
Firm. I'm gonna start talking about this. I'm gonna start being loud about it. Started the podcast. You know, I started my security.
00:28:36 Kristin Demoranville
Firm I have the security product that works alongside this, so it was one of those I organically let it happen and I just trusted my gut and did it and I and I really love it. And now I'm in different positions where I can help bring awareness to things like aggro, terrorism and ecoterrorism and what that means for the farming communities. What does cybersecurity mean for a farmer?
00:28:57 Kristin Demoranville
What do they actually need to know and what can they kind of like? Not really pay too much attention to at present. What does it mean?
00:29:03 Kristin Demoranville
To put more.
00:29:04 Kristin Demoranville
Smart technology on your farm for yourself, for your family. What kind of exposure do you have? What's your responsibility for it? Who do you call when something happens? How do you report?
00:29:13 Kristin Demoranville
Or if something happens, you know it will affect. If it affects you, maybe will affect your parent company. If you're selling to you know, one of the big conglomerates like chickens for example, or moderate or beyond monitor when it comes to IT tech, they are. Everybody knows everything about a chicken in 3 seconds just from the day that's coming from them. And that could be exploited or something.
00:29:33 Kristin Demoranville
Happens. So what happens when that happens?
00:29:35 Kristin Demoranville
Is there protocols in place? Are you responsible as the parent company responsible? So there's all these questions and then how do farmers deal with insurance for cyber? Do they have it or not? I mean can they get it? Should they not get it? I don't know. It's all these personal questions. So I really started having like these deeper dive conversations. I started writing a lot of just the podcasts, you know, those things like that.
00:29:55 Kristin Demoranville
And I just it's become this real passion for me on top of the fact that it's sort of I kind of tipped I kind of was going that way. Anyways, at some point in my career, I was leading back to the roots of food and egg in a way that I didn't expect. I grew up, like I said, in a small town that still had family farms.
00:30:12 Kristin Demoranville
But I can't come from a long line of firefighters, including my great uncle, built fire trucks. So the civil service type betterment of humanity has always been in in me, and it would have been bred into our family line. So I feel like this is my way of giving back because I never wanted to do firefighting. That was not. That was not my journey. But. But I think that that's that's how I really got into it.
00:30:14
Yeah.
00:30:32 Kristin Demoranville
And in terms of working in, in technology and cybersecurity, honestly, a crash landed sideways. So I think that's how a lot of us did pre Internet and then just kept going and to the point where I'm.
00:30:42 Kristin Demoranville
Now, and I'm really grateful because I work in the operational technology side of the House and industrial control systems. So we're thinking, you know, combines and production lines and any equipment like that, anything that touches a human and it's Internet based. So cyber physical is my favorite place to be. I'm also fine with doing like people's personal computers. That's that's fine. But my jam is, you know, really dealing with.
00:31:03 Kristin Demoranville
Actual technology that's helping to feed, sustain, or even entertain us with zooms. So that is my story and a small little bit.
00:31:10 Kristin Demoranville
Of time. That's yeah.
00:31:12 Tracy Brunet
That is so interesting, and I'm going to keep on asking you a few questions now in our previous episodes and for our show, I'll link them in the show notes so that you guys can go back and listen.
00:31:23 Tracy Brunet
It's fascinating and.
00:31:24 Tracy Brunet
I guess we are. We are guilty of doing that. Just like farmers, we're frustrated about the consumer and they don't get it. Literally. When I spoke to you in those two episodes, I like to think I'm an intelligent, well read person. At least I try to be. I'm like, what are we even talking about? I didn't even think about half of these things. And funny enough, I think when we released, was it our first or second?
00:31:47 Tracy Brunet
Episode literally the week later, one or two big cyber things happened in Canadian agriculture.
00:31:54 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, the dairies, yeah.
00:31:56 Tracy Brunet
Yeah, the dairies, I think the.
00:31:58 Kristin Demoranville
Top fuel. And was it the solar system? Solar the the solar flares and knocked out the GPS during harvest? Yes. So that wasn't a cyber incident. It's still an indicator of what could happen. It it still shows what technology can what can happen with tech. It was funny too, because even when we were talking for me, it was still a little bit.
00:32:02 Tracy Brunet
Our 4th.
00:32:18 Tracy Brunet
Wait, like out of my mind and still a little like voodoo cyber. And then when we when we and then when we released that episode the week later it hit I'm like dear and then I'm like, Oh my gosh, our.
00:32:30 Tracy Brunet
Time looks suspicious here with this episode.
00:32:33 Tracy Brunet
But for farmers in our audience, I mean, your world's gonna know your world.
00:32:38 Tracy Brunet
But can you?
00:32:39 Tracy Brunet
List some of the things that have happened or are happening that we actually don't even hear about, cause there's a lot that goes on that just goes on and it's fixed and we all carry on the beauty of our system, right? Yeah. I think the one that, that and I'll tell you about one that's kind of like caught me recently because I didn't even know about it. I mean, I know the dairy industry has been getting hit.
00:33:00 Kristin Demoranville
Really hard all over the world, but I have been in Switzerland and cyber attack hit. It was a ransomware attack and the the farmer decided not to pay the ransom, which is fine. You can decide to do that or not. Either way your data is still going to be a mess and what happened was they got into the system, the industrial control system that was for for milking the cows and what ended up happening was.
00:33:18
House.
00:33:20 Kristin Demoranville
The data was actually so corrupted that they were not able to find and be able to tell data on a particular cow that was pregnant and because of that.
00:33:30 Kristin Demoranville
They they lost that only that cow. And they also lost the calf because she went into labor early and they didn't know because the systems were not alerting them. And obviously that's devastating. What happens cause not only have you lost the cow, you've lost a calf and there's so much money that goes into just that alone, you know, not only the vet bills but like the raising and the food and all these things.
00:33:50 Kristin Demoranville
So the cow itself, I mean.
00:33:51 Kristin Demoranville
Having snakes and it's cheap.
00:33:52
This little light.
00:33:53 Kristin Demoranville
Yes. And also the life, because that's devastating because you don't want to see animals die. Like, that's not, I mean, yeah, you are raising them to become food, but ultimately you care about the well-being so. So we have the mental health issues. We have the cyber attack that happened.
00:34:07 Kristin Demoranville
And then it didn't just happen on that one farm. It actually happened in that whole like Co-op area like like that whole region got hit. And I was like, why are we talking about this? And it was like one of those ones gonna pull your hair out and just be like, this is serious. These are small farmers in the middle of Switzerland, of all places, right. You wouldn't think that would be a center of attack area vector area and.
00:34:27 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, it's happening.
00:34:29 Kristin Demoranville
Because people are trying to hit places that are vulnerable. And I had someone tell me recently, let me correct myself. I read an article recently and I wasn't going to talk about this, but I'll talk about it now, Tracy, because it's you where they said that the.
00:34:40 Kristin Demoranville
The.
00:34:40 Kristin Demoranville
Food industry is weak. What they really mean to say is the food industry is vulnerable because they are fragile and there's they're cyber security posture.
00:34:49 Kristin Demoranville
It's it's not there or it's really fragile in general, but to say that something is weak like that means you don't have an understanding of the industry at all, let alone thinking about it from the whole perspective of the whole supply chain, right? This what some happens over here, whether it's the dairy industry or not, it's going to affect other things in the places.
00:35:08 Kristin Demoranville
Because that hacker now knows that the Terry industry is vulnerable, they're gonna have to beef industry beef industry's already been hit hard. We already talked about GBS. Yeah, that already proves that. That's a a vulnerable situation. So what are we gonna do about it? So of course, farmers and everybody else are gonna be like, oh, my God, what's happening? How do we deal with this? And then nobody knows because nobody's put their hand up to say this is how I.
00:35:29 Kristin Demoranville
This is something I do or I can help you. It's more of these, you know, big consulting firms coming in. They say for some astronomical amount of money. We'll fix it for you. OK. Like, if that's what you want to do. Great. But ultimately, I think it comes down to community and and This is why This is why I love the industry in general. Tracy, she'll talk.
00:35:47 Kristin Demoranville
Each other. You all talk to each other and there's a community built and the trust there, right? And you gotta earn your way into it. And I think that the fact that people are starting to talk about, I heard about this happening, this breached the situation, this cyber security thing. Like, what do you think about it that fills me up because that means that people are starting to recognize, oh, this is something I need to start paying attention to. Among the 50 million other things I got to worry about.
00:36:08 Kristin Demoranville
Every day, and I did just mention it briefly, but I think a lot of people don't realize between like the land, the inheritance, the cyber attacks, the other issues, environmental market prices, the whole thing, just the raising of animals in general is a very hard.
00:36:22 Kristin Demoranville
Life brings fulfilling life, but the mental toll it takes on you to deal with all these crises at once to know that you're $300,000 in the hole and the only way to continue on farming is to mortgage the house for the third time or whatever it was. And I don't think people realize how amazing it is that we can just walk into the grocery store and get whatever we want.
00:36:42 Kristin Demoranville
Without any fuss, without.
00:36:44 Kristin Demoranville
Realizing the amount of anguish and hard work that goes into what we do. So for me as a cybersecurity professional in this space, I feel a sense of privilege of just being allowed in to make sure that we can continue to have the oblivious lifestyle that we have around us, right? This is ignorance is bliss, right? And and also make sure some of the pressure comes off the farmers.
00:37:04 Kristin Demoranville
Because why? Why should you have to worry about cyber attacks? Is this like this is like the last thing you should be worrying about, right? Yeah. But because we keep throwing more tech and AG tech has become quite popular. And I know you've had a few people on your show talking about a tech as well as mine. What are you doing? Just to care that? That's my first question. Well, you know, we whatever said or when do your updates happen? Are they happening via satellite?
00:37:25 Kristin Demoranville
Do people really need to have autonomous tractors? I mean, is your farm working? Do you really need to have XYZ with a wheelbarrow be OK? Like, can you still do it manually? Can you roll back if you need to? Like all these questions?
00:37:37 Kristin Demoranville
Right. And I think that's for me was when you talk about business, I think about business continuity, how can we keep your farm operating and keep your workers safe while in the middle of some kind of crisis whether it's cyber or cyber, physical or whatever is going on? Yeah. And if if people cannot answer those questions and not, we've got to have a deeper conversation and it's not about the shame you're not doing enough.
00:37:58 Kristin Demoranville
It's not about the shame of not knowing. It's not about any of that crap. I don't care.
00:38:01 Kristin Demoranville
The hackers will exploit those feelings anyways. I'm here to make sure that you can actually continue to feed your family, not have to work at your house.
00:38:08 Kristin Demoranville
Again and make.
00:38:09 Kristin Demoranville
Sure that you can push through it. I always say we're kind of like insurance. You don't necessarily want to pay for us, but you're happy when you did. Yeah. So it's those kind of feelings that I have around it. But yeah, that.
00:38:18 Kristin Demoranville
Dairy one in Switzerland really threw me off. Tracy. I was like, what the heck?
00:38:22 Kristin Demoranville
That was like, now we have cows dying like.
00:38:24 Kristin Demoranville
No, I'm not OK.
00:38:25 Kristin Demoranville
Hey, like this is not OK. None of this is OK because that was avoidable. That was an avoidable situation. And I'm not mad at this. I'm not mad at the dairy farmer. They don't know what they don't know. What I mean. How are you going to know when you buy something? It's not like you're going to necessarily read the and fine print of, you know, make sure you secure your Internet connection. Why would they know that?
00:38:44 Tracy Brunet
Why would they know that you know?
00:38:45 Tracy Brunet
Person is funny as a farmer myself, and knowing a lot of farmer.
00:38:49 Tracy Brunet
Everything on our mind, you're not gonna like this, but I still don't think cybersecurity has even hit our radar. And if it did, it hit it very quick during those again solar flares and then not getting gas and one or two things. And then it goes away and we take it for granted. We're not. Like, I would say, if we're in manufacturing.
00:39:10 Tracy Brunet
And it would be on our mind. I mean, it's standard operating its processes here. Here's the thing too. The beauty and maybe the fall back of farming, so many of us are still independent. We're not part of Co-op chains. And all of that stuff.
00:39:28 Tracy Brunet
Right here's the bad part with that, Christian is we're independent. So we don't think of that. We're not part of a corporation that has processes. I mean, I'm going to assume the chicken barns, the hog barns, the dairy barns might be working on this. By and large, we don't think of this right.
00:39:57 Kristin Demoranville
We found our episode on Agroterrorism featuring the Animal Agricultural Alliance insightful. Here's another opportunity to explore more important conversations about our food system, and if you haven't already listened to that episode.
00:40:10 Kristin Demoranville
But I would highly recommend it. Speaking of important conversations, inspiration comes in countless forms. It's a thought, a conversation, a connection, a chain reaction.
00:40:21 Kristin Demoranville
Action. We never know exactly how inspiration will hit, but we do know this when ideas and perspectives are shared across the table. They don't just add, they multiply.
00:40:33 Kristin Demoranville
At the animal.
00:40:33 Kristin Demoranville
Ag Alliance 2025 stakeholder summit happening April 30th through May 2nd in Arlington, VA.
00:40:41 Kristin Demoranville
Hundreds of food chain partners will come together to tackle one of the biggest topics in the industry. Sustainability. This year's theme food for thought, dishing on.
00:40:53 Kristin Demoranville
Quality. It's all about bringing together a diverse group of decision makers from farms and ranches to restaurants and retailers to discuss the future of how we raise and distribute animal protein with a dash of innovation and a heaping serving of collaboration, the summit is where meaningful conversations.
00:41:13 Kristin Demoranville
Happen shaping the future of our flu system for generations to come. Registered by April 25th to reserve your seat at the table. For more details visit animalagalliance.org or check out the link in.
00:41:27 Kristin Demoranville
The show notes.
00:41:32 Kristin Demoranville
The product security people listen to me get a little irritated I and I'm not picking on them. That's not the problem. I was giving a talk not that long ago at an operational technology conference, and I was actually talking about soybeans and I was relating how soybeans are important to all of the industries because they touch all critical infrastructure. Actually, it's fascinating. I've soybeans.
00:41:51 Kristin Demoranville
Really cool. And some gentleman at the end of the QA was like, yeah, no, I'm never gonna put security into my product because I'm not regulated to everybody started booing him. And I said no, no, no.
00:42:01 Kristin Demoranville
Thank you for your candor. I appreciate the fact that you're being real about this right now and it really struck me as we need to have that conversation with farmers like yourselves because the products you're buying and putting into your farm, whether that's a smart tractor, autonomous tractor or whatever, whatever their smart tech, you feel like putting in was not built with cybersecurity. It has no protection to help you, in fact the.
00:42:22 Kristin Demoranville
Manufacture will not help you if you get hit. I mean, they might recommend somebody for you, but they won't necessarily help you or they'll charge.
00:42:28 Kristin Demoranville
You know, they'll charge you a service fee, whatever that might be, to come out. This is why it was so important for those tractors to get the right to repair is because otherwise it was going to be really ridiculous. They have to hack into the tractor essentially. Really. What's going to happen? Let's get we'll be just totally honest about it. Reality. The reality of something on your farm. Tracy getting hit is probably slim to marginal.
00:42:49 Kristin Demoranville
In terms of the equipment you use for your product, which would be the House cattle in general, but your house, your mobile phones, any of your e-mail accounts, any of those, those are more susceptible to getting hit. The other part of this too is we can we all have a general idea what phishing is and what ransomware is because the news in the media.
00:43:07 Kristin Demoranville
Thankfully, the the generations and pass enough that we all kind of.
00:43:10 Kristin Demoranville
Get what that?
00:43:10 Kristin Demoranville
Is, but what does it actually mean when it happens? Would you even know what's happening now? They're starting out with the text message phishing, which is just brutal. I get hit with the two, and my parents actually send me screenshots when they get theirs, and make sure that they're like so I respond to this right.
00:43:25 Kristin Demoranville
Now just delete it.
00:43:25 Kristin Demoranville
Just delete it. It's it's really something.
00:43:27 Kristin Demoranville
That's important. They'll get back to you.
00:43:29 Kristin Demoranville
People just need to have a bit of a change of mindset of a healthy distrust for things, and I think farmers kind of already have that anyways. Tracy, I'm not picking on anybody. We do have a healthy distrust of things around you because not everything that's happening is.
00:43:43 Kristin Demoranville
The reality of.
00:43:44 Kristin Demoranville
Happening, you know, and that's I think that's the fairness of what farming is a lot of times where it might look like one thing, but it's totally not that thing. Or you might see an animal in distress. And I would see it as animals. Fine. You know, it's all about perception and perspective. Right. And I think having a healthy distrust of the tech and your and your world is a is.
00:43:57 Tracy Brunet
Hey.
00:44:04 Kristin Demoranville
A good thing to have.
00:44:05 Kristin Demoranville
The other portion of besides just your personal tech for business and things like that, if you were on the same network as the equipment that's out, say in the field and you got hit in the house, it would affect the equipment in the field because now that person is accessed to all of your stuff.
00:44:21 Kristin Demoranville
Right, not just your smart devices, not just your laptop. They now can get to other things because most people have a flat network and when I'm and I don't necessarily need you to, like, put up another network for your industrial equipment. I mean that would be preferable, but I'm not going to, like, make people do that. I understand that it's easier to just do it this way, but to me, who is that bad?
00:44:40 Kristin Demoranville
After the specifically going after your farm, why so is it? Is it someone who is a competitor of yours that wants to take you down? Possibly. Is it just someone who's trying to make money off of you? Probably. But maybe is it a nation state trying to test out whether our infrastructure is secure and they can start messing with it?
00:44:59 Kristin Demoranville
Maybe that's already been proven as a yes, but yes. Is it some radical extremist who doesn't like that you raise animals because they're radical vegans who want to come after your farm because they don't believe that we should be eating meat wherever your belief is structure, I'm not picking on vegans at all. I was vegan for three years, so I'm not gonna stand here and tell you it's right or wrong. It's personal choice. But.
00:45:19 Kristin Demoranville
You don't have the right to tell anybody else what to do.
00:45:20 Kristin Demoranville
You can. People should be able to eat meat. Are those people hiring hackers to come in and do what I just described and then bullying and harassing the people that you love to give over credentials or to open gates or to give them dimensions of certain areas, or how the layout of your systems work?
00:45:36 Kristin Demoranville
Yes, that is happening in real time and it's it's scary and this is where like you have to have your government agencies come in and start really going after it, FICA type vibes because these are organized and they're training people and how to do this, how to how to physically break into your places, how to work cameras, how to take control of cameras.
00:45:57 Kristin Demoranville
Farm tours. I love farm tours. OK, I really do. I think that they're some of the best ways to educate people and show them a place and kids love them, obviously. And it's just a good way to show your brand off too.
00:46:08 Kristin Demoranville
Right, but the problem is, is that people who want to do harm and do stuff, espionage and all this hacking and whatnot, physical entrance into physical security issues and things like that are coming in and using the farm tours as reason, and they're taking pictures of where your cameras are. If you have your Wi-Fi password exposed anywhere, they're getting on your guest network, which is probably connected to another network. There's all these things that they're taking the system down.
00:46:30 Kristin Demoranville
It's because they're praying on the good nature and the ability for the farmer to make a little extra money by charging for a farm tour, right? So what are you supposed to do? You're supposed to have farm tours. No. You can have a farm tour. You just need to do it.
00:46:41 Kristin Demoranville
In a way that don't make it obvious when you have things around healthy distrust of your your technology, right? So tuck things aside, don't have serial numbers out. Cover them up with tape. You know, if anybody is acting suspicious, train your employees to understand if someone's like, hey, what's behind door number one? You make sure that someone's there to make sure door number one is locked and also don't let anybody go into it. You know those kind of things.
00:47:01 Kristin Demoranville
Also, making sure that your chemicals are locked up because that's one of the first things.
00:47:04 Kristin Demoranville
They go for.
00:47:05
Earth.
00:47:06 Kristin Demoranville
It's because think about all the different chemicals you have on a property, Tracy. I mean, you have enough to probably like a pretty good fire. You know what I mean? Like, or an explosion. And they know this too. So these people not only do you have to worry about the mysterious hackers in the world, but now you have to worry about these people physically coming onto your property. And trust me, Tracy, I've heard.
00:47:26 Kristin Demoranville
Like stories that still haunt me to this day, I will spare our listeners because some of my listeners have definitely heard this.
00:47:32 Kristin Demoranville
But Aggro terrorism is a terrifying thing. It is so messed up, and I hate the fact that they're hiring hackers to do this hacking as a service. They're also, and they're being backed by nation states that want to do harm to our countries like it's like movie stuff like it sounds movie, like, when you talk about it, but it's really happening and.
00:47:52 Kristin Demoranville
You're sitting in the mental toll that it takes, that you're being harassed.
00:47:55 Kristin Demoranville
It's like that, like you already got enough problems as a farmer. Like, let's add this layer like you know, this is messed up. So again, I'm not picking on vegans. I'm just saying these are the extreme radicalized ones that cult like behaviors and as well as people who just are animal activist groups. Again, fine. You can love animals all you want. Just don't release minks into the wild. They're not.
00:48:15 Kristin Demoranville
Meant to be there.
00:48:16 Kristin Demoranville
Or you know those?
00:48:17 Kristin Demoranville
Kind of things or don't release cattle.
00:48:18 Kristin Demoranville
You're going to get killed.
00:48:20 Tracy Brunet
That's the thing. Well, Kristin, can I jump in there really quick when I talk to you again? I like to think of well read and intelligent, but when I sit here and listen to you talk about this, I feel like this innocent, naive, like 13 year old little girl going. What people do this like?
00:48:38 Tracy Brunet
I was laughing in my head when you were talking about farm tours and making sure you're covering things. I'm like, for Pete's sake. If I was giving farm tours and somebody asked me for my Wi-Fi password, I'd probably give it to them or you think of how many of these places.
00:48:55 Tracy Brunet
I'm not even naive, but you're like, OK, you're providing a service like a coffee shop. Would any of these farm tour places just put the Wi-Fi password, thinking that people could log in and now have bandwidth to take videos for good? Oh my goodness. I'm not even naive. I'd like to say I lean towards skeptical, and I'm saying you're listening to you.
00:49:16 Tracy Brunet
When are we for real like?
00:49:18 Tracy Brunet
Honestly, and I remember in our last episode with Andrew and yourself, you talked about even just putting smart fridges or the Roomba, like robots or coffee pots that are connected to the Internet, those can be hacked. That's what you said, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kettles. Yeah. All the things. Anything that can.
00:49:38 Kristin Demoranville
Have a a signal on a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi or otherwise it's hackable and I think that's how we probably need to start looking at things. If it connects to the Internet at any capacity, it is you can hack it. I feel like that's a good way to talk about.
00:49:50 Kristin Demoranville
So to me, if you're going to put a giant Internet of Things or IoT device in your field, OK, your tractor. Do you understand all the implications that come from that? Where is it getting its updates from? Is it connecting to a satellite? Does it have automatic updates? Are you allowed to opt in out of certain things? What about your privacy for your data? Because we all know data for farmers is super critical.
00:50:12 Kristin Demoranville
You know yields.
00:50:13 Kristin Demoranville
I'm sure all the cattle you know, I'm sure you need to know about weights and all these other things and how many you have at a time and things like that. Some of that stuff isn't necessarily meant for the public and especially when it comes to seeds, where is all that data going? I mean, don't tell me it's air gapped because I don't want to hear that, but how do you how are you protecting it? What are you doing to ensure that you can continue to keep?
00:50:33 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, because you.
00:50:34 Kristin Demoranville
Don't. This is one of those things, it's.
00:50:35 Kristin Demoranville
One of those things where I can't guarantee you're never going to have a cyber attack, right? It could happen. It happen to me right now. You know, it did happen to my product. We actually we had an attack last year and I laughed. And I was like, yes, I'm legit. People want to hack me. But but it also reminded me that doesn't matter how small you are, who you are, if you.
00:50:53 Kristin Demoranville
Have a vulnerability. It will be exploited and it's it was a nice reminder of maybe we need to all just start thinking about how it's going to happen. How do we want to survive it? Do we want to pay millions of dollars in ransom and crypto?
00:51:06 Kristin Demoranville
Currency. Do you know how to get cryptocurrency? I don't know how to get cryptocurrency. No idea. Do you have to hire a ransomware negotiator? That's expensive. I mean, that's a new job that's come.
00:51:16 Kristin Demoranville
Up through this.
00:51:17 Kristin Demoranville
Too. So the idea is to keep you resilience. That means you can keep your farm moving even if you roll back to analog and you have to, like, get on a horse. Tracy, you know it's you can't ride your quads.
00:51:27 Kristin Demoranville
Because they're Internet connected for some reason, which I wouldn't be surprised if we're there yet and all those other things like, can you continue to farm and keep your employees safe and keep yourself?
00:51:36 Kristin Demoranville
Safe. Keep your family safe when something like this is happening. What happens because you have no access to your bank? If you change all your banks, you know if all these things happen when you cause, you can't trust any data that's touched your network at that point. So if you've done banking on your computer that was attacked, you're gonna have to go to your bank and talk to your bank about getting a new bank card. Maybe a new checks. If people still write checks.
00:51:56 Kristin Demoranville
You know, maybe you have to change your account number completely and then you're going to have to update all your subscriptions or all of your, you know, anything you've got going on at the feed store or all of the other fun things that have to come in just automatically.
00:52:08 Kristin Demoranville
Your farm. What a pain in the ***. Who has time for that either? So the idea again is to understand all the ways that it could hurt you. And then let's talk about safeguards around that. And it's like I always tell people. It's like having a fire X out of your house. I know that kind of takes me back to the firefighter thing, but I always know how I'm getting out of my house wherever I am in my house, I have fire routes.
00:52:28 Kristin Demoranville
Well planned the moment I step in and I won't, you know, I've I'm grateful. I'm only in a two-story home because you can still jump out of a two-story and probably hobble away. You know it's gonna hurt, but it it would happen. But it's those things, right? Like do you have a?
00:52:41 Kristin Demoranville
Fire extinction in your house? Yes.
00:52:43 Kristin Demoranville
You know, do you know, you know, use it? Yes, of course I do. You know, we probably should have another one for the garage too. You know. How do you plan, you know, spray.
00:52:50 Kristin Demoranville
For.
00:52:50 Kristin Demoranville
Bugs, those kind of things you trap for bugs, those like rat traps or IoT as well. Tracy, I don't know if you know.
00:52:57 Kristin Demoranville
That the ones you put around the farm.
00:52:58 Tracy Brunet
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Can I jump?
00:53:01 Tracy Brunet
In because I want to do.
00:53:03 Tracy Brunet
Real like bring it right home. An example you gave last time was and I'm thinking of every farm.
00:53:11 Tracy Brunet
Across the country doing this so you have your home Internet because that's what we do and the tractors are hooked up, the barns hooked up and the kids have a PlayStation and they're hooked up. You said that's one of the biggest ways and making it real, OK, whatever. On your computer, they shut down the.
00:53:31 Tracy Brunet
GPS tracker, but here's.
00:53:32 Tracy Brunet
Either way, if your barn is automated like a chicken barn, hog, barn, dairy barn with fans, all that kind of stuff, and they hack it, they can shut down the power and kill all your barns. I'm just trying to make it real, because even talking about it, we're like, yeah, OK, whatever. We're not like factory line, but this is real. Like, if any kind of.
00:53:53 Tracy Brunet
Automation and animals involved. They'll hack your bar.
00:53:57 Tracy Brunet
And say here's the goal, right? They'll say if you don't give us this amount of money, we're shutting your power off and then all your animals die because they're not, right, this is.
00:54:07 Tracy Brunet
The real stuff.
00:54:07 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah. And they'll take all your data and they'll throw it up on the dark web. So then, like I said, your bank account might be put.
00:54:13 Kristin Demoranville
Out into the dark web so.
00:54:15 Kristin Demoranville
Or more, you know, personal information.
00:54:17 Kristin Demoranville
Things like that stuff you don't may not necessarily want in the in the Internet. You know what I mean? The other thing too is you're right. Many of the barns in general that are hooked up, yeah, you'll you will lose. You'll lose all of that. And I don't want him because they vary in size. The idea of the amount of money you're losing, let alone the fact that you've now have an environmental issue because you have to get all those.
00:54:38 Kristin Demoranville
Marcus is out and you've got to move them. It's terrifying, right? Like. And that's a night that's a nightmare. Like that's a nightmare to think about. And I think that's the part that bothers me the most. Is is when.
00:54:42
It's.
00:54:49 Kristin Demoranville
Cyber attack hits a farm. It's about loss of life like generally speaking, and that's something that we don't necessarily deal with on security enterprise side. This is why the operational technology people that are listening to this right now are not in their heads because it's not about the data for us, it's about safeguarding lives. We can figure out the data part right. Just want to make sure everybody is safe and healthy.
00:55:09 Kristin Demoranville
And we can continue living our lives and can still manage to function after it's so it's it's also, it's such a personal, intimate attack on a farm because you're going after the basis of our lives, like our actual human existence. And you kind of shoot.
00:55:24 Kristin Demoranville
Yourself in the foot in a way, cuz.
00:55:25 Kristin Demoranville
It's like you're affecting the food system, *******. Like, that's what I think. Like, well, why would you do that? You're already you're hurting yourself too. So it's one of those things. But yes, anything. It's connected. And please don't hook your Playstations up to your farm network because they swaddle at weird times. We actually were just updating ours the other day for one of the teenage boys, and it completely killed the Internet for like 15 minutes. And I was like.
00:55:46 Kristin Demoranville
Telling you these things, throttle and you don't want a 15 minute lapse on your fans or your environmental control of self feeding, or I don't know any of your milking process or anything like that. That would be miserable. I mean sure, things would probably.
00:55:59 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, right. But would they be alright? So it's a lot. It's a lot to consider. And again I think when shortages happen and and people get confused and upset, they place their blame on things. They just don't understand and it frustrates me because even even people who in my world that know that what I do and I'll be like, I know that sort of surge was totally due to a cyber attack.
00:56:20 Kristin Demoranville
That happened a couple of months back or whatever it was, and they were like, well, I'm just gonna be upset at the grocery store. OK, that makes sense.
00:56:26 Kristin Demoranville
To make sure the upset.
00:56:27 Kristin Demoranville
At the grocery.
00:56:28 Kristin Demoranville
Store and I think I think people I know this sounds really daunting and it's it's really stressful and but the serious nature of it is is it is manageable. I'm not gonna say it's preventable, it's manageable. It's going to happen. It's just when and how are you going to deal with it if you have cyber insurance that helps. I'm not telling you to buy it or get it.
00:56:46 Kristin Demoranville
It's a personal thing. I don't know your situation. I will never tell anybody to do something because I don't understand their situation completely, but it could help you in the long run and I think I think making sure you stay educated and talk about things, even if it feels weird being like hey.
00:56:59 Kristin Demoranville
What are you guys doing for your cyber security? Do you have a separate network for your farm or are you just using an off of the house? Like what are you doing because you can't? You can't set up an additional router, you can do things that help create at least a little bit of a separation or segmentation if you will to Createspace. So when something happens, it may not take on everything. You can isolate it quickly.
00:57:19 Kristin Demoranville
Do you need to hire a cyber person for your farm? I don't know. Maybe if you're a huge farm and you are a huge farm, maybe. But I don't think so. I think you could just have someone come in. I'm sure you have people that help you out with your IT systems. Same thing the long run is. It's just keeping up to date as much as you can. And the problem is, Tracy, there's not a lot of documentation out there. Nobody's really talking about this.
00:57:39 Kristin Demoranville
I think.
00:57:40 Kristin Demoranville
But again, if more people talk about it, if it happens, or if they're concerned about it, that's going to help continue to raise the buzz and the noise around it, because we're just going to keep adding more tech. It's going to get more efficient and simpler, and they're going to try people like, oh, that AI is going to take my job. Probably, yes. But it will also free up for you to do something else.
00:58:00 Kristin Demoranville
Would it be great if, like little mundane things could be run by AI on a farm? I mean, whatever that would means for you, whether that's watering or fertilizer or feed or any of that stuff knows when the animals need this, that and the other thing super great. That means you can go do what you need to do, repair that fence you finally or need to get done or.
00:58:16 Kristin Demoranville
Or I don't know. Maybe take a vacation if you ever.
00:58:19 Kristin Demoranville
Get a chance.
00:58:19 Kristin Demoranville
So that's the kind of stuff that I think will be interesting coming up. So the other part is obviously how we're going to keep people keep their farms. So let's make sure that they can get through that cyber attack because that's a good way to sell your land real fast because you're not gonna.
00:58:32 Kristin Demoranville
Be able to come.
00:58:32 Kristin Demoranville
Up from the damage.
00:58:33 Kristin Demoranville
Of that, yes, yes, it's not just $100,000 here. There, it's millions they want.
00:58:39 Kristin Demoranville
And it's it's ridiculous. It's truly ridiculous.
00:58:41 Tracy Brunet
I'm glad we're having this conversation again, because again, I'm gonna say guilty as charge. I didn't know we've chatted 3 Times Now and even Chris and you're gonna be so mad. We're gonna hang up. I'll publish it. I'll carry on my merry way and forget about it. So we gotta talk often. Because you're right. Nobody in the industry's talking about this.
00:59:02 Kristin Demoranville
I see. And I mean I am a big part of the media in Canadian agriculture and I don't see a lot of this being talked about, right? Yeah. And I feel it's true. I really. I really want to put pressure on the farm bureaus because they should really be having more of these conversations and real.
00:59:19 Kristin Demoranville
To be helping with resource because right now nobody knows what to do and it we are clearly seeing it happening more and more. You know I have, I talk about the big ones cause those make more of an impact but like the little farms in Switzerland, I had no idea how did they get through that. You know those are these the questions I have and I'm not going to like call up the farm.
00:59:39 Kristin Demoranville
And like, hey, I just survived that because that would be a.
00:59:41 Kristin Demoranville
Really wild conversation I.
00:59:43 Kristin Demoranville
Should I'm sure they'd probably want to talk about it and vent about it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's just. It's interesting. And even within the cyber community, food and egg is not really looked at.
00:59:54 Kristin Demoranville
Unless it's connected, unless it's like a producer in general. So if it is like a production line like you said, but we're not, we're not protecting the whole supply chain cause we've got to deal with logistics. We've gotta deal with cold. We've gotta deal cold storage. We're gonna deal with warehousing. We have to deal with all the different types of transportation. We don't even touch on the seafood industry. Talk about a wild, Wild West of agriculture.
01:00:16 Kristin Demoranville
That everything on those boats is IO T connected or GPS connected it.
01:00:20 Kristin Demoranville
Mild, like literally, and I'm, no pun intended, pun intended, I suppose, and hearing the stuff that happens there. I mean, the amount of data loss that they've had is what? What are we doing? And then you know, of course, so I go to apply to speak at these conferences and they're like.
01:00:34 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah. No, we don't want talk about cyber.
01:00:36 Kristin Demoranville
Security. OK. OK, that's cool. I don't mind. Well, I mean, it's also scary. And part of me.
01:00:41 Tracy Brunet
I think I feel this way and it's not you, Kristin.
01:00:43 Tracy Brunet
It's just a subject.
01:00:44 Tracy Brunet
Because we know it's so near and dear to our hearts, but at the end it's a little bit like overwhelming and very scary because you know exactly what you just said and people aren't in farmers shoes. I mean, yes, it's our livelihood. And yes, it's the weird dichotomy of agriculture. Yes, our animals are being raised to be slaughtered.
01:01:05 Tracy Brunet
For meat, but the thing people don't understand is we deeply care about those.
01:01:09 Tracy Brunet
Animals. Yes, it's a conversation that isn't had and I don't think can even be understood by somebody that's not in the agriculture just because they're going to be slaughtered and go for meat and pass away over here doesn't mean we are OK with them dying tragically over here. It's me that goes without saying.
01:01:30 Tracy Brunet
But it it's a weird conversation that's not had. So if I think of the dairy barns I worked in or I think of all my cows that I go out and look at every single day. If I showed up and they were all drop dead, the first thought would not.
01:01:46 Tracy Brunet
Need money? Just so you know. And I'm not saying that I'm a very smart savvy business person. I would be like my cows and literally be like you'd want to puke, and then you'd be like, oh, my God, what do we do? We're financially devastated. And then it would go back to my God, my cows, they're all dead.
01:01:54
Yeah.
01:02:06 Tracy Brunet
And I don't even think.
01:02:08 Tracy Brunet
Everybody could understand like death. Sorry, this is going deep, but for your audience and our audience gets us for producers. I mean, we deal like hospitals, you deal with birth and death here on the animal side, we deal with birth and death. Even when we have one cow die, it's like and I feel a heaviness. I don't think people could understand.
01:02:30 Tracy Brunet
How much? A burn full of dead animals would affect us mentally long before financially and the mental health that that would impact us.
01:02:41 Tracy Brunet
Right. I just wanted to say.
01:02:42 Tracy Brunet
Because that's a weird conversation to try and even broach, and I keep on going back when.
01:02:48 Tracy Brunet
You're talking about.
01:02:48 Tracy Brunet
Data. We're not data heavy and that automated, but we're not that kind of farm. So when you keep on talking about data, not to be mean, but I'm like Christian, I don't care about data. I care about my barn of animals that die that or whatever.
01:03:02 Tracy Brunet
Dairy barns, chicken barns they need that.
01:03:05 Tracy Brunet
But at the end of the day, I think to every producer that actually works with the animal, the data isn't even concerned. I mean, bank accounts and hacking. Yeah, but the animals. Anyway, sorry for my tangent there. No. And I think I think that's such a valid point because the the data still is important because if they can access the data and it affects the life of the animals, then yeah, that's the problem.
01:03:26 Kristin Demoranville
Right then that becomes an issue. I also think that the general public is so far removed from the the the food that.
01:03:32 Kristin Demoranville
They eat that they only see the birth and the death, right? They don't understand what it takes to raise these animals and how long I am. I was recently sitting on a call, a couple, like a month or so ago with our rancher out in Colorado. And she was explaining to me like the life of the cow and what kind of what the whole life cycle looks like. And for some reason.
01:03:52 Kristin Demoranville
My head in my head suck my entirely.
01:03:54 Kristin Demoranville
Different like longer lifespan or something? No, it's fast, it's fast and not like so fast that it's ridiculous, but it's definitely was a lot quicker than I expected it to be. And I was like and how many are you moving and you know it's it's a large operation and just listening to the story of that was just like, Oh my goodness, even me, who's on the personal on this?
01:04:12 Kristin Demoranville
Anyways, and and it a little bit.
01:04:14 Kristin Demoranville
Like wow, I was like, I'm dumb too. Like, there's a lot of things. Tracy. I'm still learning. Like, I didn't know other things, but one thing I did laugh about, though, and I this is sort of off subject on subject and said I got really excited.
01:04:25 Kristin Demoranville
When I because I rode horses when I was younger, so I understand some of the whole horse culture. I'm not like epic and riding. I'm OK, but at least I knew what a cutter horse was and we were on a call and someone was talking about like, hey, you keep talking about cutters. What's a cutter? And I was like, I thought it was a normal common thing. Everybody knew what a cutter horse was. And I was like, really, you don't know what that is.
01:04:45 Kristin Demoranville
And I'm not gonna tell everybody here. Here. I will put in the show notes. You can look it up. But I that to me is such a whole other.
01:04:52 Kristin Demoranville
Side of the.
01:04:52 Kristin Demoranville
Industry that you're you have these, this equestrian side that's helping raise these cattles to the cattle too. And I understand, you know, obviously you guys are on quads but like I know you respect that.
01:05:01 Kristin Demoranville
Because, damn, that's an insane amount of work and.
01:05:04 Kristin Demoranville
Also those horses.
01:05:05 Kristin Demoranville
Are so expensive.
01:05:08 Kristin Demoranville
But yeah, so I mean, if anything ever happened to these animals because of a cyber attack, I can't imagine the outrage. Like I said, the Switzerland one because they lost a pregnant cow and the calf. Both of them passed because they had this hack. I mean, I.
01:05:21 Kristin Demoranville
That's ridiculous. And granted it was 1 and well 1 1/2 really.
01:05:25 Kristin Demoranville
But that's enough. That's still.
01:05:27 Kristin Demoranville
Enough and I think the mental toll and the fact that the hackers are already such good, it's so such good. I'm sorry. Good. I shouldn't say good. They're so bad at being bad actors. I should say I'm good at being bad actors, that they prey on the social engineering aspect and they prey on our feelings and our emotions to stress us out, to make us do the wrong thing, make us select.
01:05:46 Kristin Demoranville
Something to do these other things, but what if they start really working even more diligently with these activists? And what if they really start pouring into these farms and really start getting into the situations and make it?
01:05:57 Kristin Demoranville
It's really a questionable safety issue on top of hurting these animals once they start releasing cattle. Oh my God. Not only that, as a safety hazard obviously, but it's a pain. Like that's a pain I would assume to have to move a certain amount of animals back into where they need to be. It doesn't take, it takes a lot of people and it takes time. People don't realize how big these animals are because.
01:06:17 Kristin Demoranville
Again, they're so far removed from their food.
01:06:19 Kristin Demoranville
They don't understand. I was having a conversation with someone recently asking me the difference between a bull and a Heffer, and I was like, you don't know what that is. And again, I was like, I I thought this was common. I maybe I'm just oblivious to what's common and what's not because I didn't realize people didn't know what that was. And it was.
01:06:36 Kristin Demoranville
Really funny because.
01:06:38 Kristin Demoranville
I I was like, how do you not know?
01:06:40 Kristin Demoranville
Where your food comes from, OK. OK, OK.
01:06:42 Tracy Brunet
People think.
01:06:43 Tracy Brunet
The word cow is describes everything within a cattle farming operation and why should they know? Really? I mean, you're in it. You were introduced it. But when you're taught in school, you see.
01:06:51 Tracy Brunet
We are.
01:06:58 Tracy Brunet
How you see?
01:07:00 Tracy Brunet
You see, she, so you don't know that there's a bull. I have her steer A calf, and then you do the horse versions of that. They don't know. But you know when we're talking, I'm like, I I always hate when somebody's like. Yeah, but the positive. But I'll do that. I'll be like Sally. Little sunshine here for a second. I don't love when people do that.
01:07:20 Tracy Brunet
But isn't it beautiful that people can be so well fed, so cheaply fed, so ignorant of how everything magically appears on those grocery stores? What a testament to actually how amazing our food industry.
01:07:37 Tracy Brunet
It really is Sally Sunshine. But when we're talking about that, I'm like, what a beautiful world that we we get frustrated by how ignorant people are. But it's actually on the flip side, a beautiful thing that they can just eat their food, be happy for the most part, and we're all good except for in all situations.
01:07:57 Kristin Demoranville
You know about? Yeah, I I think the blissful ignorance is a privilege. It's a privilege, right? Because we don't. We don't have to slaughter our own food, necessarily, unless we choose to. We don't have to hunt unless we choose to. Survival is different. I think it's. That's the beauty of the modern world. And I think I think people forget.
01:08:15 Kristin Demoranville
How convenient it is and how the things that power our modern world are very much vulnerable and at risk and fragile. And they need to be protected. That includes farms that includes farming, lifestyle that includes everything to do with that. And that's where my frustration lies, is I'm trying to make sure you continue to be blissfully ignorant and live your best life.
01:08:36 Kristin Demoranville
This modern world that we live in because you know of whatever reason, we deserve to be here. Whatever. It's the work of your family prior or just your life. Why are we doing more to protect?
01:08:47 Kristin Demoranville
We're just kind of like basics or not even paying attention to it. And then we just move on and that that upsets me that and I'm not, I'm not picking on anybody in, in the farming community in general for not securing Wi-Fi or whatever. I'm not, that's not my journey with you right now, but it is. It's more of the fact that the the security communities and the people who are in critical infrastructure and those who are making laws.
01:09:09 Kristin Demoranville
And policies and all these other fun things that go alongside all this. It's just like crickets. Nobody's doing really anything that's upsetting to me because we all eat, we all eat. I mean, that's that's the. That's what it is. And that's actually what connects us as human beings.
01:09:23 Kristin Demoranville
We all eat and we all celebrate and have culture and and do the same things. And in that regard and you think that would bring us together more as a a common world citizen vibe. But I realize that we have a lot of differences and things and such, but again, I that's where my frustration lies in not to crush your sunshine, but you're totally right but also.
01:09:43 Tracy Brunet
There's responsibility in that. Please, can we, like, pay attention? I totally get it and crush my sunshine cause I absolutely in the conversation hate when somebody's sharing something serious. And then Sally, they try and, like, demean it and like it just kills the tone. And I find it disrespectful.
01:10:00 Tracy Brunet
Ohh and I did it, but I told I'll come back to being tampered down. Tracy here. Like realistic. I mean, we share all the same concerns. And can I share one last story with you? I'm I've seen at social media. We're farmers. We have created an amazing food front end of the food production.
01:10:21 Tracy Brunet
It's fast, it's cheap, it's affordable. Sally on the farm, or Sally in the city doesn't have to go and kill a chicken to eat fried chicken. Tonight we take this for granted. One prime example. Your end of the frustration. What you said we're producers creating very clean, nutritious food.
01:10:39 Tracy Brunet
Cheap, efficient. I was. The homesteading movement has been a big thing. People are moving out and don't get me wrong. It's a beautiful life. I get why they're doing it, but I'm listening to this girl. No disrespect, a big *** post about how hard homesteading is, and I'm going to sound a little condescending.
01:10:58 Tracy Brunet
I'll be like.
01:10:58 Kristin Demoranville
Ohh boy.
01:10:59 Tracy Brunet
OK, well Hun, there's a reason we don't homestead anymore. My grandpa and grandma lived like you're trying to live. They lived in poverty. They had to milk a cow. They had to kill their pet chickens. We went through that and we have progressed. So.
01:11:16 Tracy Brunet
Far that you don't need to do that, and you're complaining about about milking your cow. We're farmers. We have cows. We don't milk them. We go to the grocery store and buy it because it's safe, nutritious, cheap, inspected, clean. And I'm not saying farm milk is bad. Not my argument won't go great people.
01:11:36 Tracy Brunet
I I just about commented and said why don't you make your life easier and go to the store and buy your milk. Do yourself a favor, Hun. I'm a farmer. We do it. Why don't you just buy?
01:11:49 Tracy Brunet
Some of the privileges of the world that we live in, and I get it, and I'll probably get hated on, but that's another one of our frustrations as farmers. We've come so far to make it easy and safe for you guys, but you want to milk your own cow and do a million other things. Holy Dinah, my grandma would be yelling at you.
01:12:10 Tracy Brunet
From the grave? Yeah.
01:12:11 Kristin Demoranville
It's it's such a weird.
01:12:14 Kristin Demoranville
Well, it's kind of going back to the idea of it's extremes, right? There's you don't need to go to 1 extreme or to the other. You can have a middle ground, right? And you can still have like, a a gentlemen's garden if you will, or a victory garden, whatever you want to call it in your backyard and and grow your tomatoes. Cool. Like, if you know that, go ahead. If you want to have.
01:12:32 Kristin Demoranville
Chickens go have chickens. Nobody's telling you not to have chickens. If you want to have a cow, go for it. I don't necessarily like the idea of having, like, a small pet cow in your house, but if you want to do that too, go for it. If you want to be a, you know, a person who makes all their own bread, cool, like I'm happy for you. I might even come over and.
01:12:51 Kristin Demoranville
The slice, but I don't want is people to go to the extreme where they start to like have mental health issues because they have to go milk.
01:12:58 Kristin Demoranville
The cow at two in the.
01:12:59 Kristin Demoranville
Morning, wherever they have to get up and do it and and honestly, cows aren't milked by hand mainly at all, like not really at all. I mean, unless you have like a small farm and.
01:13:08 Kristin Demoranville
That's just your.
01:13:08 Kristin Demoranville
Thing, that's what's happening, but.
01:13:10 Kristin Demoranville
All they're all milked by machines.
01:13:11 Kristin Demoranville
In a very big circle, it's it's, you know, one of.
01:13:14 Kristin Demoranville
Those things? Yeah, I.
01:13:15 Tracy Brunet
Yeah.
01:13:15 Kristin Demoranville
I just really frustrated with this like it this whole social movement around the agricultural community.
01:13:21 Kristin Demoranville
A lot of it's a lie. You know this too. But I will tell you and I, somebody was making pointing out they're like ohh farmers and like ranchers aren't on like LinkedIn and social media said yes they are. It's some of the best content out there. Hello. Yeah. I mean, I love reading about whatever is going on in a farm because to me it it helps me like relax.
01:13:42 Kristin Demoranville
And it's, you know, really one of those things where you know it, it reminds me to be grateful for the food that's in my life and what's happening. And I think that's that's the best part, is being reminded of where food comes from and how how lucky we are. Like you said, to be in a place that's, you know, we don't have to think about it. There's no season to go.
01:14:00 Kristin Demoranville
Restored and sure we can have an argument that like we're destroying the entire planet and all these.
01:14:04 Kristin Demoranville
Other things but.
01:14:05 Kristin Demoranville
It is the most complicated system on the planet. Is the food system, the distribution and everything. And now hackers are exploiting it. And that's something that I'm intolerant of and that's I think everybody should be upset about that because we all should be able to eat. And that's that's the thing that's your passion for it.
01:14:21 Tracy Brunet
Thanks, Tracy. Write out what they do and what their passion and they care. You and I have talked about this. I have the same mission for farmers and mental health and business and transition. And you have your mission in your world too, right?
01:14:33 Kristin Demoranville
Yeah, it's it's true. And I I hope and I hope that you know my contribution in some way will make a difference in the long run. I would like to be able to say that we can continue to have this lifestyle and have a healthy respect for it and that's what I would really like to see for sure. But Tracy, that we've been talking for quite a while, so we probably should wrap this up.
01:14:53 Tracy Brunet
Conversation. Thank you.
01:14:54 Kristin Demoranville
Chris, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much. As always. Hello to your audience again, love Canada. Everybody knows that you guys are the best. And if I ever can be of help to anyone, please reach out. And obviously, if anyone wants to talk more about farming and and all kinds of succession planning and what it means to.
01:15:11 Kristin Demoranville
Have a raise, a bunch of cows.
01:15:12 Kristin Demoranville
I'm sorry, cattle. You know, Tracy's available. And please do check out her stuff. Everything's gonna be the shows. We will link all the things. But anyways, thank.
01:15:19 Kristin Demoranville
You so much for.
01:15:20 Tracy Brunet
Your time. Thank you, Kristin. Your Jim. Thanks guys.
01:15:25
That.
01:15:26 Kristin Demoranville
Tip for today's episode a huge thank you to Tracy for sharing her time, insight and voice with us and for hosting this conversation as a sister episode on the Impact farming show. You haven't checked out her podcast yet, make sure you do. There's a link waiting for you in the show notes and to all of you listening, thank you for being here. If this episode sparks something for you.
01:15:44 Kristin Demoranville
Go ahead, like, comment and share it with someone else who needs to hear it. Stay safe, stay curious and we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.
