Transcripts from the legal field podcast

 Speaker 01: 0:00

Welcome to the Legal Field Podcast. where we discuss legal and regulatory topics that are of critical importance to the agriculture industry. My name is Amanda Perry Carl, and I am an agricultural lawyer whose family has been farming in Florida since 1823, before Florida even became a state. I have spent almost 20 years as an attorney in the agricultural industry and have made it my mission to ensure that everyone in our incredible industry understands the legal and regulatory issues that we face so that we can keep feeding Florida, America, the world. So if you're a farmer, rancher, or grower, if you're involved in raising cattle, sheep, poultry, goats, hogs, horses, or other livestock, if you grow fruits, vegetables, or sod, if you are involved with the aquaculture, turfgrass, or horticulture industries, if you are fighting the good fight to help our citrus industry survive, or if you just like to eat and you appreciate our ag producers, this podcast is for you. If you are interested in protecting and preserving our agricultural heritage, lands, and way of life, then come join us in the legal field and see what's growing on. Hello and welcome to our first ever episode of the Legal Field Podcast. I am Amanda Perry Carl, and I am the host of the podcast. And today we are so excited that our very first guest of the Legal Field Podcast is a person who was very instrumental in even introducing me to the concept of being an agricultural lawyer and instrumental in the trajectory of my career, Dr. Michael Olexa. Dr. Olexa works at the University of Florida as a professor in both the College of Ag and an undergrad in the College of Ag and Life Sciences. And he also is the director of the UF IFAS Center for Ag and Natural Resources Law. So Dr. Olexa, thank you so much for being here with us today.

Speaker 00: 2:06

Well, my pleasure, Amanda. It's so good to see you again. It's always good to see a former student and looking forward to the podcast.

Speaker 01: 2:14

This is going to be awesome. Just as a little background on how I first got to know Dr. Olexa before we get into our questions. And our topics for today, I was a young undergrad student trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I had grown up in ag and knew I wanted to advocate for our amazing industry in some way, but had no clue what I was doing, what I wanted to do. And I was in the College of Ag and Life Sciences studying ag education and was introduced, I think it was at a tailgater in the O'Connell Center, the then O'Connell Center, And I came across the booth set up for the Ag Law minor, which at that time was really new. And I don't know how this many years have passed. You'll talk soon about how many years you've been doing the minor. I don't know how I'm that old and I've been practicing this long. But it was one of the first classes to go through. And in the first class I sat in, it was your Ag Law class on the backside of one of the McCarty buildings. I don't remember which one it was. And it was in that class that you inspired me to be an ag lawyer. So I want to thank you so much for that because it's been almost 20 years now of an incredible career because of your inspiration.

Speaker 00: 3:29

Well, thank you so much, Amanda.

Speaker 01: 3:32

And what McCarty building was that, that your ag law class was in for so many years?

Speaker 00: 3:36

That was McCarty A and McCarty B. For the past several years, most of my classes have been in McCarty A.

Speaker 01: 3:46

Okay. Yes, that class was just so wonderful, and I appreciate the trajectory of my career because of you. And it's been so satisfactory over these last almost two decades. I can't believe I've been practicing that long, but thank you for that. I want to chat first about your experiences in your career path, because everybody who ever has sat in any of your classes has enjoyed some awesome stories about your career and your about things that you've experienced. So can you tell all of our listeners and viewers a little bit about your career path and how you ended up at the University of Florida as a professor and director of this Ag Law program?

Speaker 00: 4:29

Well, you know, it's really a serendipitous type of a story. I was in the military, Navy at the time, and I had a friend of mine who since passed, Jack Saladini, who was getting his graduate degree here at the University of Florida in plant pathology. Jack and I grew up in the same town in West Virginia, and Jack said, look, why don't you come down and visit, which I did. Jack and I were about the same size. So Jack went ahead and let me his civvies, his civilian clothes. At that time, to be in uniform was, during the Vietnam War, it was a little different. So I walked around campus. I fell in love with the University of Florida. And I remember going up to the Plaza of the Americas and sitting, leaning up against a tree, sitting down, leaning up against a tree. And I said to myself, if everything works out, I want to come back here. So whenever I got out of the service, I took a job for a short period of time. I did save up some money. I had the GI Bill, and I applied and got accepted to graduate school here at the University of Florida. I put everything I had in the world into my sea bag in a stereo outfit and headed for Florida. And I got situated here. I went ahead and I got my master's degree in plant pathology and my doctorate degree in plant path with minors in mycology and entomology. While here, I was really excited to see Florida. I was in the fields down in South Florida, Immokalee, Belle Glade, as a plant pathologist, as a student, and also later on working on a postdoc. To make a long story short, I was linked up with a professor here in the Food and Resource Economics Department by the name of James Warshaw. He was just a phenomenal individual, and he was working on different issues that involved science and crops and what have you. I went ahead and I worked with him. I helped him. And I was still working in South Florida. My major professor in my graduate program was able to get me some work through the Army Corps of Engineers dealing with a study of biological control of water hyacinth and water hydrilla. One day, Jim Warshaw called me into his office and he says, you got to go to law school. And I said, look, I've got this PhD degree. I've, uh, I've got a career plan track. He says, look. He looked at me and he says, I'll pay for your law school education. And I said, look, I'm working. I'm working on this thing down in South Florida and all. So the long and short of it is I'm thinking to myself, I don't want to be beholden, but I still have the GI Bill. So I went ahead during that period of time and followed his advice. I was able to still work in the Everglades area. and attend a law school at Nova Southeastern University. I finished up there. I passed the bar. And then after passage of the bar, I was contacted again by Jim Warshaw and another individual by name of Grover Smart. And they had asked me if I could work on a grant because at the time I was planning on just getting involved in just sort of a general practice area. And I did a little bit of it. So to make a long story short, I went ahead and I says, what's the job? And he says, well, it's a job with the USDA. And that particular job is working with ag scientists and prepping them for cross-examination and what was then referred to as RPAR, Rebuttable Presumption Against Registration with Pesticide Assessment Reports. So that's how I got locked into the USDA and what was to be a one-year job. grant? Well, one year led into two years. Eventually, there was a new thing coming on board called biotechnology. And with the science degree and with the law degree, I was able to meld both careers together. And I was back in Washington, D.C. My boss was an Air Force colonel from the White House. And I got heavily involved. I was first serving as a national program leader in ag law in I was then sent to the Secretary of Agriculture's office as a policy advisor in biotechnology. Subsequently, for the next three years, that's what I was primarily engaged in. Then I met my wife up in Washington, D.C. I later found out she really didn't like cold weather. Sometimes I wondered whether or not that's why she married me, because she knew I was from Florida. But we've been married now. We got married in 1990, and my daughter, Hope, came along. And it's just been a wonderful career. But whenever I was in Washington, D.C., my mentor, unfortunately, Jim Warshaw, passed. And they had asked me if I could take his position in setting up in the Ag Law Center, which I did. And that went on for a few years. And then in 2008, I was contacted by the then vice president of IFAS. And I was asked if I could change the name of the center to reflect more of the natural resource issues, habitat protection in agriculture, And they went ahead and we opted. And with the provost blessings, we became the Center for Agricultural and Natural Resource Law. So to make a long story short, I never planned to go to law school, but things just sort of happened that way. And that's where I am today.

Speaker 01: 10:46

Sometimes God's plans are greater than our plans, and we just roll with it, and then we have no idea

Speaker 00: 10:51

why. That's exactly what I did. I rolled with it. I had a great deal of respect for Jim. As a matter of fact, a very close colleague and friend of mine was working for Jim at the time back in the 70s, and his name was Michael Minton. And I got to know Michael and we still, all of these individuals, I still keep in touch with. And I have so over the years, including former students.

Speaker 01: 11:19

Well, I'm glad that that's how your career path ended up, that you ended up going into law and going to law school, because otherwise I probably wouldn't have been introduced to the agricultural law program and doing what I do. So I am grateful that that's how your career path ended up. Are there any favorite parts of your career along that whole trajectory, whether it was in D.C.? And I know meeting your wife is probably one of your favorite parts of your whole career path that you'd like to share any particular stories or duties that you had that are your favorite.

Speaker 00: 11:53

Well, actually, there are several. Obviously, meeting my wife was paramount. In working at the federal level, I had the unique opportunity to work with a large number of different agricultural groups. The interesting thing about it was the background, the science, the STEM backgrounds in agriculture and the fact that I was a crop scout for a while. I really got... on my hands working out in the fields and whatnot. It really helped me. Being in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, talking with the sugar cane, or not the sugar cane, but the sugar beet people, the grain growers. all over the Midwest and the West, working with a lot of different agricultural commodity producers. Specifically, a lot of it had to do not only with pesticide assessment, but also this new and upcoming thing at the time was biotechnology. The position also took me for travel in the Western Pacific. where I worked on Guam with the Chamorros. We were dealing with endangered species protection and also a lot of the groundwater issues there because at that particular time, a lot of areas of Guam were being purchased for setting up golf courses, and there was concern about groundwater contamination there. So the position itself has connected me over the years with a large number of different agricultural groups and also 1862 and 1890 land-grant universities. So it's been a very, very blessed career for me because it's taken me to a lot of different venues around from the academic standpoint and also from the commercial standpoint.

Speaker 01: 14:05

It's also really neat to see how ag production is around the country and different crops. I think me being a native Floridian who has, you know, I've been here since I was born. My family's been here since 1823. We know our crops in Florida. We know how production goes in Florida, but it's really cool to travel the country. And as you've traveled the world, and see how things are so different. Water and water rights around the country and around the world are so different.

Speaker 00: 14:33

Oh yeah, there's no question about it. Florida, one thing that I love about working in Florida, we've got three temperate zones. You can go up into the panhandle and you're dealing with some of the Midwestern crops. You're dealing with peanuts. You're dealing with soybeans, grain crops. And then there's Central Florida as we're moving further and further south with citrus. Everything in the starfruit and other tropical plants as you get into the deep southern portions of the state of Florida. It's really, we are a minor crop state and there are so many challenges and issues in dealing with the number of these minor crops and also tremendous amounts of opportunities in different types of agricultural production and different types of agricultural production systems. And subsequently, that has just been a real, just a real fortunate thing for me to have experienced these different cropping systems here in the state of Florida.

Speaker 01: 15:39

Now, I want to, you used to always tell your classes about your story of meeting your wife while in D.C. Before we move on to talk about the Ag Law Center, can you share with our listeners and viewers how you guys met in D.C.??

Speaker 00: 15:50

Yes, I will. I have to go back to a dear friend of mine. He was here at the University of Florida getting a graduate degree in political science. He was also a veteran. He was a chopper pilot in NAM. He did two tours. Great guy. Well, he got accepted to the State Department. And he was going through State Department training in Washington, D.C. when I was about to travel up there. And he said, look, you're here. Let's go to an Irish pub. So we went to an Irish pub. And while in the Irish pub, there was a lady. She was there. They had an Irish dancing thing there. And I happened to look at her and You know, the word for female in Irish, if my memory is correct, is Colleen. So I looked at her and I says, well, tell me, Colleen, what do you think about the Irish dancing? A little bit of a broke there. Well, her name was Colleen. And it turns out the band that was playing, I'd requested a song, Black Velvet Band, and she had also requested the same song. So I told her I was from Florida. She told me she was interested in long-distance relationships. But one thing led to another, and we started seeing each other, and we eventually got married. And I owe it to my friend Bob, who decided to take me to Murphy's Pub in Alexandria, Virginia. That's where we met.

Speaker 01: 17:29

See, despite what everybody thinks, good things can happen in D.C., and good relationships can develop in D.C., right?

Speaker 00: 17:35

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 01: 17:39

Now let's transition a little bit. I want to spend a lot of time talking about the Ag Law Center or the Center for Natural Resources and Agricultural Law. I'm old, so I keep flipping back to the old name, but I want to talk a lot about the center and what happens at the center, what the future is, some of the things that you do in the center, because I think it's so important for the states to have this robust relationship Center for Ag and Natural Resources Law at our land-grant university at UF. I talk to a lot more high school kids and young college kids who are interested in agricultural law more than ever before. So I think... Oh, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 00: 18:21

Well, one of the real interesting things about the center, we really... My appointment here is 70% teaching, 30% extension plus research. The faculty that are appointed here in the College of Agriculture have their appointments broken down into specific areas. That's my specific area. And I utilize both of them. The focus of the center, based on my appointment, really addresses two key areas, naturally teaching and naturally extension. As far as the teaching component is concerned, What we've been able to do with teaching in the year 2000, we established the undergraduate minor in agriculture and natural resource law. Prior to its establishment, the prior 10 years, we taught a couple of different courses in agricultural law, primarily the agricultural natural resource law. With the establishment of the undergraduate minor in ag and natural resource law, I teach the core courses, which is ag law and risk management and also agricultural and natural resource law. Those are the core courses. This is a 15-credit minor course. Six of them are the core courses, which I teach, and the remaining nine credit hours are primarily focused on policy courses and law courses. And I've got a list of some of the, just a couple of the policy courses and law courses could also include government regulation and food, water resource sustainability, U.S. food and agricultural policy. The students that complete the minor, and we've had over 500 students now that have completed the minor, it's a job getter. It really has given them an opportunity to hedge up over time. other individuals that are looking for jobs that are ag or, and I want to stress this, ag related here in Florida and other areas. About 15 to 20% of our students will go on to law school. And I've had students that have been accepted to law schools all over the country, Yale, University of Virginia, naturally the University of Florida, FSU, other law schools here in the state of Florida. The degree itself, the students that take the course, this does appear on their transcripts. So it'll appear on their transcripts, and once again, it has really helped these students get jobs. I had one student notify me that when he went in for a job interview in Tampa, as an example, the Well, not the hearing officer, but the hiring professional really got tied up and asking him questions about the minor. What were some of the courses? What did they pick up? And it's been a real plus for the students. And we've had some really, really great students that have completed the course and have done exceptionally well in the agricultural area and also in the political area.

Speaker 01: 21:53

And I know you've had some pretty notable alumni out of the program. Do you want to give some of those names to our viewers and listeners? Because you've had some really awesome alumni come through the program.

Speaker 00: 22:06

Well, you know, one of the things that have really made my career for me is seeing what my students have done. I've done a lot of different things in my life, but I've thoroughly enjoyed teaching. And over the years, I've had some great students yourself. It's just a classic example of what the courses that we've done here through the Center for Ag and Natural Resource Law, the catalyst that it's been able to provide for students. Some of the students we have, I have one student who's currently in Congress, Greg Steube, and I still stay in touch with Representative Steube. As a matter of fact, I ran into him at a bar meeting here a couple of years ago, but we do stay in touch. A former student who I met during the 100th anniversary of Alpha Gamma Rho is Adam Putnam. We've had Chad Johnson, who's currently a legislative representative in Tallahassee with District 22. Steven Hall, former general counsel of the Florida Department of Ag and Consumer Services. Robert Angus Williams, he was former general counsel of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Then we have Noah Valenstein. He was a former secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Stacey Sims, uh, She's chief operating officer of the Florida Farm Bureau Federation. Then we have James Spratt, owner of Magnolia Strategies. Now, one thing that I do want to say, there's two real good stories I'd like to share with you, if I may.

Speaker 01: 23:49

Absolutely.

Speaker 00: 23:50

Number one, any of my students that have been deployed that were an active military and were deployed overseas, I always made it a point to keep in touch with them and to get them care packages. Greg Steube is a classic example of that. Jim Spratt, at one point, his father was in the Florida legislature. And there's a... There's a great hot sauce. I love hot sauces, one of which is called Gator Hammock Hot Sauce, manufactured in Felda, Florida. And I used to drive through Felda when I was working in the Florida Everglades. And I believe it was Buddy Taylor Gator Hammock Hot Sauce. And I happened to mention to Jim that I wanted to get some overseas. His father brought up a case of Gator Hammock Hot Sauce. I wrapped it up. got it up to Fort Benning, Georgia and got it out. So these are just the kind of things that I've enjoyed doing and working with my students over the years.

Speaker 01: 24:57

That's awesome. And you know, that goes to the kind of person you are and why your students have always respected you so much because you have always been there truly to help and support your students, to help us with our career paths, to help us figure out what we want to do and to help the ag industry. You've been such a huge, asset to the ag industry in general throughout your entire career. And what I think is super notable about your alumni that you listed is some of those went into the legal practice. Some of them went into making laws into the legislature. And then Jim Spratt has gone into lobbying the legislature and making of laws. So it's pretty cool to see the list of some of your most notable students that have come through in so many different aspects of legal, lawmaking, lobbying for lawmaking.

Speaker 00: 25:48

And you know, one of the real neat things for the 20 years that I've taught, and again, I'm phasing out at the law school, I am looking towards retirement, and I also want to make sure that before I retire, we have the Center for Ag and Natural Resource Law well set, not only in endowments and funding, but I want my successor to come in and really do a great job and have everything ready before I walk out. But I've had a number of law students that have been introduced to us. to agricultural law and the importance of agriculture to the state of Florida, not only from the standpoint of agricultural production, but a lot do not fully understand the significance of agricultural lands as far as habitat protection, endangered species protection, water retention. There are so many different aspects of it, and many of them do not understand that 3.8 million acres in the state of Florida are privately owned. This is extremely important. It's also extremely important for the preservation of agriculture and preservation of agricultural lands in the state of Florida. It is one of the few... areas that can, uh, that is in constant reproduction, reproducing itself in crop production, in habitat protection, in water recharge areas and whatnot. And as I tell a lot of my, I had one individual who, uh, whose son decided to be in a college of agriculture, called me up and he said, look, I, I, all you guys are nothing but cows and plows. So I spend, uh, 40 minutes educating him on some of the deep aspects of agriculture, that it's big, that it's broad, that it's basic. It reaches into all aspects of society and the significance and importance of it. And I think a lot of this really, really came true because I know whenever I taught at the law school, the first thing I would ask my students, do you consider yourself civilized? Let me see your show of hands. All hands went up. My next comment was, what do you think would happen if you were cut off from the food supply for two weeks, and especially those of you with children? And what really struck me was driving by a number of these large supermarkets in Florida during the COVID epidemic and seeing people in long lines, six feet apart, waiting to get into those supermarkets to buy basic food staples. Agriculture truly is our life support system in this country. It really is.

Speaker 01: 28:45

It's funny that you say that. During COVID, as I was usually out there in front of the Walmart at 645 on Saturday morning waiting to get in to get food for five boys who were hungry, I actually thought about your opening line in our ag law class at the law school and how many of those students at the law school in that class, to your point, had no background in ag. They had no idea what the agricultural industry looked like. And it was great at the end of that course, at the end of that semester, to see some of my classmates who knew nothing about agriculture come out of your ag law class with a much better understanding and appreciation. And I think that class at the law school is so important because you are reaching a very different group of students. Most of them don't have an ag background. And I think that's so important.

Speaker 00: 29:32

Right. And not only that, but many of them will, and many of them are right now, with sole and small firm sections. There was silk stocking for the larger firms here in the state of Florida. In addition to that, they're actively involved politically. And they understand that the big, broad, and basic nature of agriculture and exactly how important we are. Also, during times of difficult economic times with recessions, it's agriculture that literally keeps a lot of the lights on here in the state of Florida. Very, very important.

Speaker 01: 30:11

Those of us who had to go to work every day still and were lucky to still go to work every day were those working for ag companies, that we were deemed essential. And I think a lot of people saw that during COVID of what was deemed essential, and it's agriculture feeding America, feeding the state, feeding the world.

Speaker 00: 30:29

Well, you know, if I may just share one more story with you, I was raised, well, about eight years, well, actually, even before eight years, I was a small boy on my grandmother's subsistence farm. My grandmother survived World War I in Europe. She was cut off from her husband who had come to the States and later a war broke out. I saw my grandmother at one point when I was a small boy drop a slice of bread on the ground. She picked up that bread and she kissed it and then fed it to the birds. Years later, I asked my Aunt Helen, who was living in Tampa, I shared that story with her. My Aunt Helen and my Uncle John survived in Europe during World War I with my grandmother. And she told me at one point they were starving to death. And they were crying. She and my Uncle John were crying. They didn't have enough to eat. And my grandmother was crying. My grandmother held out her arms and said to them, this is all I have for you to eat. And what really struck me about that a few years later when I was watching an old movie rerun of The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, who, by the way, was a native West Virginian. I have to say that. But I do consider myself a Floridian. But the bottom line is the movie that was made in the 1930s, before my time, Paul Mooney was the actor. He received the Academy Award for that movie. And there's a scene in the movie, if my recollection is correct, where there are two men pulling a yoke because the Austin had been slain. There's famine in China. And one individual looks at the other individual and he says, I hear there's going to be a revolution. And the other individual looks at him and says, what is revolution? And the response is, I do not know, but it has something to do with food. You cannot have a constitutional republic. You cannot have a democratic form of government with a lot of hungry people. Agriculture is so significantly important to this country. That's who we are.

Speaker 01: 32:46

Absolutely. And it's it's a national security issue, too. You know, like to your point, I think a lot of people don't realize that it is so critical. It's critical to our state as we see so much development in the state of Florida. We need those lands. We need the wildlife corridor to be intact. We need our ranch lands, our farmlands and to feed our state. And I think that the College of Ag in general does a great job of helping this and promote this and educate people on this that comes through the College of Ag. And I think that the center does an absolutely amazing job. As we have a few minutes left here, I want to make sure that I give you enough time to talk about the future of the center, what your future plans look like. I want to talk a little bit about what you want to do in retirement before we end. So what do you need for the center? How can people help if they want to help to keep this continuing after your retirement?

Speaker 00: 33:43

Well, really, the key here is finding Naturally, it'd be funding and endowments just to keep the lights on and to keep things moving. Whenever Jim Warshaw established the center in 1981, it was established by the Florida Board of Regents as a type three non-funded center. So all the operations of the center are non-funded. Only what we can achieve through endowments like the Warshaw and the Mitten endowments and also fundraising contributes from individuals. And subsequently, through our teaching efforts and also through our extension efforts in publishing through the electronic data information source, we have a large number of agricultural law publications out there. They deal with a variety of issues, land use, farm and ranch property rights, etc., tree falls responsibilities for tree owners, etc., It's all out there, but that's what we really need to keep things going. And we've been able to keep things going for a very, very long time. And subsequently, there have been some great benefactors, one up in Live Oak, Ernest Sellers and others that have been such great such a key and they are so strongly focused on the importance and also the importance of our younger people and our teaching efforts and our extension efforts as well.

Speaker 01: 35:21

And we'll make sure to include at the end of this podcast links for that as well. So if people want to go to the website and go to those links, they can locate that information as well because this really is, it's critical for our state, for our industry to to educate folks as they come through. And like I said, the ag law class at the law school, I think, is always phenomenal because it reaches students outside the College of Ag as well. And I think it really educates a totally different group of students that then go out into the legal practice, into the state of Florida, other states, as they disperse and it spreads that information and that importance of our industry.

Speaker 00: 35:57

Yeah, and I will say that we're getting students now from colleges all over the University of Florida campus. Now, the website itself, if they can Google the Center for Agricultural and Natural Resource Law, and there's a little site there, Support Center. Just click on that. It'll take you to another screen, which is similar to the first screen, where it just says Center for Agricultural and Natural Resource Law, and the donation window is there. I will also say that we're in the process right now of updating the website, and they can also contact The UF IFAS Foundation, we're currently working with some wonderful people in the UF IFAS Foundation for fundraising. They can also contact them as well.

Speaker 01: 36:47

That is awesome. And I know you're looking to retire at some point in the near future so you can enjoy some time doing some other fun things. Can you talk to our listeners a little bit about what you plan to do in retirement after retirement? A long career, a very well-earned retirement.

Speaker 00: 37:04

Well, there's really two things. I now have two grandchildren, Grace and Michael. I want to spend a little bit of time with them. I want them to know who their grandfather is before I buy the farm. That's an expression that we used in the service. The other thing that I want to do, I want to fish. I spent my master's degree work. I lived in the lighthouse out on Seahorse Key. I got to know all the old conks out there. I've got my own cast nets. I love to fish. I want to get out and do a little more fishing. The other thing that I want to do is I want to volunteer. I mentioned to you earlier that I've always sent care packages to any of my students that were in active military overseas, especially in the combat zones. What I want to do, I'm a member of the American Legion and also a lifetime member of the Disabled American Veterans. We have a wonderful VA hospital here in Gainesville, Florida. I want to volunteer with Veterans Affairs and And I'll be traveling back and forth from Texas. I've got a lot of relatives in Texas. They settled there back in the 1800s. But I'd like to visit with my daughter and get involved out there as well. That, for me, is very, very important.

Speaker 01: 38:28

The time spent with grandkids is so worth it. You will not regret retiring and going and spending time with your grandkids. And they will be so lucky to have the time spent with you and the memories that they will have for their entire life.

Speaker 00: 38:43

Yeah, as a matter of fact, my daughter, my daughter Hope was always asking me to write up some stories and I've already written some up. I want to make sure that I'm going to put a little notebook together and give it to her as a gift.

Speaker 01: 38:59

My granny is now 96 and I'm actually taking the boys tomorrow to my dad's house over in Marion County. And we're going to go pick some peanuts in his garden. And my granny is so excited to come over and help. She's got her oxygen tank, but she's wanting to come over and help. So we're taking the boys over tomorrow to do that. And so time spent with their great grandmother at 96 is just so important and so critical. So they are excited to go and spend time with her and pick peanuts with her. And I know that time spent with your grandkids will be some of the most core memories they'll ever have.

Speaker 00: 39:39

Oh, yeah. And one thing that I have learned, and I'm sure those that will be watching this podcast would agree with me 100%, they grow up so fast. They do. Blink, and they're grown up. I cannot believe I'm a grandfather. It just seems like I just brought our daughter back from Shands when she was born. But here it is all these years later and it goes by so very, very quickly.

Speaker 01: 40:05

It does. It seems like we just adopted our boys and the oldest was seven and now he's almost 13 and a half and turning into a man. And I don't know when that happened to the little boys that we adopted five and a half years ago.

Speaker 00: 40:18

Yeah. And whenever they hit that teenage years, there's like a button that's pushed. Then they'll come back to you. I remember a quote by Mark Twain who said, when I was 18 years old, I thought my old man was the dumbest person on earth. And when I turned 21, I was amazed at how much he had learned in three years. That's it. But they'll come back around. They'll come back around. So

Speaker 01: 40:45

true. Well, do you have any last things you'd like to say to our listeners or viewers about the center, about the industry in general, about any of your experiences, any final words you'd like to give to our listeners?

Speaker 00: 40:59

Yeah, I really believe in my research, in my heart, that what we're really looking at here is some incredible, incredible days ahead as far as innovative sciences and what agriculture is doing in the way of environmental protection through such things as genetically modified organisms where you can extract, you can plant plants, plants in arid soils and still crop production, medicinal type of plants. It can be used as a nutrient supplements and whatnot. We are just, we are just, opening up a new vista in agriculture and what's available out there and what the future generations are going to be able to experience. And not only experience, but also develop. Develop new agricultural technologies, new means of production, even in the inner cities as far as... bringing communities together with urban gardens and what have you. The future of agriculture here in Florida and nationwide is just, in my belief, I just wish I could live to be 200 years old to see it, but it's there and it's going to open up more and more and more. And I know that UF IFAS is innovative. It's the things that we're doing through UF IFAS, the research and education centers around the state of Florida. And it's just going to open us up into an incredible future. We've got some challenges. Cleaning is a real problem, but we're going to overcome that. And in the end, we're going to have just a new vista in agriculture for the state of Florida. I just wish I could be live long enough to see it, but we all have our moment in time.

Speaker 01: 43:02

Well, I want to thank you so much for being here today on the podcast. I know I can speak for all of your students and former students at how grateful we are for all of your work at the Center for all of these years and at UF-IFAS. You have inspired so many students, generations of students, and I just want to thank you for all of your time investing in your students and for your time with us here today.

Speaker 00: 43:25

Well, I certainly appreciate it. And if I've missed any students with my earlier discussion, mea culpa and my apologies. There's just so many wonderful students that have been through the program. And that in our extension outreach through our publications is what we're really all about, especially focusing in on the future and the future of agriculture here in the state of Florida.

Speaker 01: 43:49

It's bright. It definitely is. Thank you so much.

Speaker 00: 43:54

And thank you, Amanda. It's good to see you again.

Speaker 01: 43:56

You too. It's always good to see you. Thank you for listening to the Legal Field Podcast. For more content, please visit the Facebook page of Florida Ag Law or go to floridaaglaw.com and join us next time on the Legal Field Podcast to see what's growing on.

  Speaker 00: 0:00

Welcome to the Legal Field Podcast, where we discuss legal and regulatory topics that are of critical importance to the agriculture industry. My name is Amanda Perry Carl, and I am an agricultural lawyer whose family has been farming in Florida since 1823, before Florida even became a state. I have spent almost 20 years as an attorney in the agricultural industry and have made it my mission to ensure that everyone in our incredible industry understands the legal and regulatory issues that we face so that we can keep feeding Florida, America, and the world. So if you're a farmer, rancher, or grower, if you are involved in raising cattle, sheep, poultry, goats, hogs, horses, or other livestock, if you grow fruits, vegetables, or sod, if you are involved with the aquaculture, turfgrass, or horticulture industries, if you are fighting the good fight to help our citrus industry survive, or if you just like to eat and you appreciate our ag producers, this podcast is for you. If you are interested in protecting and preserving our agricultural heritage, lands, and way of life, Well, welcome to another episode of the Legal Field Podcast. My name is Amanda Carl, and I am the host of the podcast, and we thank you for joining us here today. I'm so excited that our guest today is Steven Hall. Steven, thanks for joining us today. Hey,

Speaker 01: 1:31

great to be here.

Speaker 00: 1:32

So Steven is currently the Executive Director of CRAFT, which is the Citrus Research and Field Trial Foundation, and previously served as Deputy Commissioner and General Counsel for the Florida Department of Ag and Consumer Services. Steven, I think you served 18, 17, 18 years with the department?

Speaker 01: 1:50

Something like that, yeah.

Speaker 00: 1:51

Your entire legal career until last year. Also, on a personal note, we've known each other since high school, I think, FFA days. And we're in Professor Olexa's Ag Law program together. For anybody who listened to our episode last month, Professor Olexa was our guest last month, and Steven and I both had the honor to be in Professor Olexa's Ag Law program. I think I'm biased, but I think we were the best class to ever go through his program. We had a lot of awesome people in our class. I don't know if he would say the same thing. He wouldn't want to be that biased, but I think we were. So if you could, Steven, just give us a little bit of background on your upbringing, your ties to agriculture, how you got involved in agriculture.

Speaker 01: 2:34

Sure. First, thanks for having me, Amanda. This is really cool to be on and talk about things that I love, agriculture and the law. Well, and that's really kind of how I ended up in the roles that I did. So I grew up on a family farm outside of Malone, Florida, which, as I describe, is a mile from Alabama, seven miles from Georgia. We're up in the corner in the panhandle, and my family has been in that area for over 200 years. And so they were kind of founders of the town and have been farming there that entire time. We still are lucky enough to have the family home on the farm. And so I grew up on the farm. Growing up, it was cattle and hog and peanut operation mainly. I grew our corn and other cover crops and things like that and worked daily on the farm with my dad and grandfather and just grew up loving agriculture and the industry and the people. And the work was hard. Didn't always love it. I don't know that anybody always will say that. But in looking back, I... you know i missed i missed that piece do missed working on the farm every day um but uh it was one of those things where uh my family you know basically made the same problems my dad did to that my grandfather made my dad is hey um if you want to come back and farm we can find a way to make it work but you need to go try to find something else first and so i went to the University of Florida with Kind of had the law school in my mind. I had participated in teen court growing up and really kind of loved the idea of the law and what it could do and what it meant. And I also grew up with the idea of watching the water wars. The Apalachicola River was kind of in our backyard on the other side of town and That was really kind of the eye-opening to me of watching the impact that these big legal decisions and this government regulation of that impacted Florida and agriculture. And I thought that maybe if I worked hard, I could find a way to be part of that and be helpful. And so I went to the University of Florida, got my degree in Food and Resource Economics. free and easy, as Commissioner Putnam likes to call it. To me, it wasn't necessarily that. It was neither free nor easy, but made it through and was able to go to law school and from there.

Speaker 00: 5:09

And I think for our listeners who may not be familiar, there are native Floridians and some of us have been here for two, our families for 200 years. And to think about what our ancestors, our family came to Central Florida in 1823 and to think about what our ancestors dealt with in Florida with no air conditioning, windows open at night and everything wanting to kill you. They were some tough people.

Speaker 01: 5:32

Absolutely, they were. I have had a theory about the people that came here way back then that... Same kind of theory of the people went out west, right? They went looking for fame and fortune or for their own freedom. And you really had to be wanting to get away from something or strive out on your own to come south into Florida. And so our families that did that and had been here for that long were pretty amazing. Our family homestead house is still, my great-grandmother lived in it up until the 70s. And it has the windows that don't open and the slats in the floor are not air-conditioned. and all the things. It's basically a family museum at this point in time. So it's really cool, and it's a nice piece of heritage that I've got home very regularly, and where I am, and teaching my kids about it. We still have our old farm implements and everything in the barn for the farm, and it's a real treasure of history for the family.

Speaker 00: 6:30

That's awesome. They were tough in coming here and brave, Or I like to say sometimes maybe our family was running from something leaving South Carolina. I don't know. But they were tough. Yes. They were looking for a better life.

Speaker 01: 6:44

There are all sorts of family rumors about all that as well.

Speaker 00: 6:49

I'm sure. So I know probably what one of your highlights of college and law school were, but can you tell us maybe some of the highlights of your time in college at U.S. and then in law school as well?

Speaker 01: 7:03

Okay. Okay. So, yeah, so I'm proud to be a brother of the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity. My father is an AGR or was an AGR as well. Um, and, uh, really there was, they never really thought about doing anything else. I kind of moved into the AGR house before I was actually initiated into, into it and, and, and paid for that in some fun ways. But, uh, it was, it was, it was really a good home for me. And I had been going there with my dad since I was, I don't know, 12 or 13 years old to the house on game days and stuff. And it really felt like home and, uh, and easily worked that walk through there. I was, uh, I was also proud to be an ambassador for the college and IFAS and enjoyed that a lot, meeting people from all parts of the college and professors, universities. I worked on campus. I had two or three jobs for the college and was busy and was in a bunch of other different clubs and things that were all important. able to make me, you know, have openings and meet different people and be around people and just enjoyed my time on campus. It was about two and a half years, I think. I started, I went to my first two years at Chipola College, which is the junior college back home, and then transferred into UF and enjoyed my time there and was really thankful for all the experiences I had and then was ready to go to law school and I got my the best offer from Cumberland, which is at Samford University, and had several different offers, and some of the places were for better or worse and closer to home, but this one was closer to home. I was just so happened that my farm is halfway between Birmingham, which is where Samford is, and Gainesville. And it was basically the same distance either way. And so I went to Cumberland. And while I was at Cumberland, I was encouraged and had the opportunity to get a joint master's degree. So I have my master's in environmental management and my law degree there. And I did that, was really thinking about because by then, after taking Dr. Olexa's agricultural law minor, I was pretty set on coming back to Florida and doing agricultural law somewhere. I wasn't exactly sure where when I started that. But with food and resource economics, I had a good ag business background and an economic understanding of how the world worked. And being in law school, what I realized, what I was doing, what I was working for on behalf of farmers, I knew that I needed to get more of a science background. And so the master's in environmental management was a hard science. All the hard sciences that I would end up needing and use in my life and my career so far to help me get that understanding. So my master's degree while in law school was a little bit crazy. It was a law school load plus doing master's classes at night. But I didn't have anything else to do other than study and work. So it was a good opportunity and it paid off in the long run. So I was proud to be a Cumberland alum. I'm actually get to... They've started an advisory group for their joint, their master's and law degree program. The board's just been formed. They're going to be on, they asked me to serve on the boards. I'm excited to do that. And to me, and when I was hiring lawyers, it worked out for me, but when I was hiring lawyers, I was always looking for the attorneys who were well-branded and had that, especially when I was at the department, because understanding that the four-department agriculture is really a science-based agency. with all the different things we do and so having people that are well-rounded and well-read and have at least a working understanding of how to spell science is very helpful for those lawyers because the people we're working with are making scientific decisions and they need to know the law but also to be able to translate a scientist. As I say, sometimes I I'm lucky enough to be married to a veterinarian who is, so is the scientist every day. So I speak science very fluently because of that, but also working with our, our, our PhDs and our, our, you know, different people with that hard sciences background that, that, that speak that because scientists speak differently and think differently than lawyers do where we live in a world of grace. They are very much in the world of black and white, either it is or it isn't. And so being able to translate that a lot of times paid off over the course of my career several times.

Speaker 00: 11:41

And I think that's a lot of times hard to find is lawyers with that science background. I've had quite a few high school and college age students who are interested in being ag lawyers recently reach out and ask about some of the things they should do to prepare for that. And I think that's one thing that's really important and differentiates you as well and prepares you a little bit more. So I think that advice is really good for anybody who may be listening. Who's younger and thinking about that career path to help them figure out how to strategize and make the best moves in college. Absolutely.

Speaker 01: 12:11

And just being well-rounded and just being well-rounded to having that understanding is going to help you in your life. It's going to help you be a better attorney. It's going to, cause you're, cause you're not going to be, um, I'm not sure I've ever met somebody who's a political scientist. in the real world, right? I mean, there's probably a few out there and they probably live here in Tallahassee. They're lobbying or doing things like that. But the vast majority of people you're going to be working for, especially in the agriculture world, they're out there making decisions every day. As farmers, you know, us farmers wear, you know, lots of different hats. And they're weathermen, they're scientists, they're workers, they're doing all the different things, they're engineers. And being able to have some sort of understanding background if you're willing to stay in this, in that in that world and work for those people, helping to understand where they're coming from at least and having been exposed to it at least some point in time in your life, I think just makes you a better lawyer.

Speaker 00: 13:03

Absolutely. And the business side of it too, just really understanding the inner workings of the business. I think that's critical. Yep. So how did you then end up getting the job at the Department of Ag and deciding that that's what you want to then go do? Where you spent decades, which is great.

Speaker 01: 13:19

Yeah. So, uh, There were no agriculture lawyers when I was in law school. There was nobody to model after. You had people like Scotty Butler, who was a giant in the legal world, but he was the longtime general counsel of Florida Farm Bureau. and there was one or two others who if you did a rudimentary google search okay so guys this was 25 years ago now and uh well and there was just nobody to model and the people that had that there was nobody saying agricultural law on their website it was if they were doing it they were doing land use and they were doing wills and trusts and they were working for farmers but there was no such thing as an agricultural law you know practice um So I went looking for a place that I could get some exposure and find out to that. And my search really led me to the Department of Agriculture. And I had some connections at USDA. And I was thinking, do I want to try to work in D.C.? And kind of went down that route and realized that that was too far from home. Wanted to be close to my family. Tiffany and I were friends. very serious and knew she wanted it. Well, she was in vet school by then and was wanting to stay in Florida and practice. And I was like, no, that's not the, that's not the route I've had ever towards my career, several opportunities to go to DC. And I've just, I never took the, I never took the plunge to do that. It just, uh, the Tallahassee rat race was enough for me. And, um, and so anyway, back on, on track, I, uh, found the department. I figured out who the general counsel was and commissioner Bronson was the commissioner at the time. And I got my resume to a family friend in the commissioner's office. And it got to miss Rhodes, who was the chief of staff. And she sent it to the, uh, general counsel who, uh, called me cold, called me one day and basically said, who are you? And how did your resume end up on my desk? His name was Richard Trichler and who, who, uh, became a friend of mine and I worked, eventually worked for, and I told him that, you know, where I was and what I was doing. And I said, Hey, I think I want to do an internship at the department general, department general counsel's office. And he said, I don't have an intern. I don't have any interns and we don't have an internship program. And I said, well, I don't need to be paid. I have a friend that'll let me sleep on his couch until I say, I just want to come work here. I think I want to do agricultural law. And, uh, The conversation went on, and I remember him saying something to the effect of, I'm not going to be able to get rid of you, am I? And I said, I really would like to work at the department. And he said, I'll call you back. And so three days went by, and he called me back, and he said, okay, I'm not going to pay you anything, but if you show up by this date, we'll see what we can do. And so I did show up on the day. at the legal suite of the general counsel in the Mayo building at the department and was there for almost 20 years from that day. Your persistence. It did. You got rid of me. It did. And I proved my worth, I think, as an intern. And it was one of those deals where it was very clearly I was going to go back to law school at the end of the summer And uh, but they wanted me to they let me they let me work as much as I wanted to and I work five days a week Um, you know 10 10 hour days, you know 7 :30 to whenever whenever the general counsel or whoever one attorney I was working with went home. I stayed. One of those deals because again, I was sleeping on my buddy's couch. So I wasn't in a hurry to go home and uh, and then uh At the end of the summer they were like, hey, what are you doing for Christmas? and Um, I was like, well, I actually, I was just going to go to the farm and hang out. And they were like, well, would you like to work? And so I ended up, they offered me to come back. So I came out and what I quickly realized was, I think that year Christmas was in the middle of the work week. And all the attorneys wanted to be off for, and be on vacation for Christmas. So they needed somebody to man, be in the office and man the phones. Yeah. Yeah, I came back and worked over like a month over the holidays there, and they all left Christmas. And I only went home for Christmas Day that year, or maybe we had Christmas Eve and Christmas Eve, something like that. But I worked the rest of the week, and they kind of left me. And in charge of things that was his intern there to answer the phone and do whatever. And I remember they specifically said, if anything goes wrong, call John Costigan, who was the deputy general counsel at the time. And I don't know if for anybody who's ever worked at the department who may be listening to this, there's always some sort of equine emergency every year at Christmas because that's when all the horses are coming south. Well, sure enough, there was a, I forget what it was, there was some disease outbreak going on and the state veterinarian called the legal office at the time and said, hey, this thing is happening. What do I do? And I'm the legal intern and sitting there thinking oh my gosh what do you do and I said I don't know let me call you back and so i read the statute I looked at it and I said okay this is what I do and then I was like I was like I need to call somebody and get somebody to tell me that I'm right and so I called on and I was like hey this is what's going on this is what I think is right he said yeah that sounds good tell him that and so that's what I did and so I proved my worth there and I um so I started as an intern and I never left the payroll till the day I turned in my uh resignation uh last year when I left the department so

Speaker 00: 19:14

that's an awesome career story of perseverance getting your foot in the door and sometimes you don't take no for an answer and then you end up with nearly two decade career

Speaker 01: 19:24

And some really good people taking chances on me. And seeing that I had interest in some people that didn't know me or didn't know me or my family or anything. There was just this kid who came from a farming background that the department has historically taken care of and given opportunities to. And I just like to think I took advantage of that because the people gave me those opportunities.

Speaker 00: 19:50

And staying at the department for almost 20 years, is really for most people, if you know or don't know this, it's kind of unheard of to stay as an attorney in a government agency for that long. I shouldn't say unheard of, but it's not that common to stay that long. What would you say were the things that kept you there? Was it the people? Was it the work you were doing? Was it a combination of all of that? Because it's a thankless job a lot of times to be an attorney in a government agency. It's hard work. Public eyes are always on you. So what do you think it was that kept you there?

Speaker 01: 20:25

I loved the work first. So it was fulfilling. I was never somebody who I ever really thought I was going to go do private practice. It was just not what motivated me. You're at a state agency. Nobody that works there does it for that. My... family so it might come from a family of farmers and my mother was a school teacher and principal so public service runs throughout my family on both sides of it as well and so falling into the department was probably always kind of destined for me because that's just how I was also big in leadership development through FFA and through HOBE another organization I spent a lot of time volunteering and working with and work and just being committed to that. It is very rare to be at an agency that long, although if it happens often, it happens a lot at the department because you get an expertise or kind of grew up in the department, as some of us have said, who get there through the leadership and a lot of homegrown talent. It's very rare, though, for because most attorneys in Tallahassee are jumping either in and out of private practice or they're getting their feet wet and then go into private practice because, frankly, that's where student loans and funds and everything, that's where it drives people. Or in some instances, they get offers at another agency for a couple of thousand dollars more and they make the jump because that's where the salaries take you. But to me, I was never... I don't want this to sound arrogant or anything else, but I did not come to work for the state government. I guess, given my background, I was probably, I may have always been kind of be the deputy general counsel of the department, which thankful that I had the opportunity to do for almost six years for commissioners and which was. Very, very rare. Most general counsel is absolutely a senior political appointed position. And to do that for multiple commissioners is very rare. And I was lucky enough to do that. And I think that's because all the commissioners saw that I had the background and the ability to do that and provide them good guidance. And I'm thankful for that, your staff, and seeing that as well.

Speaker 00: 22:59

And so I want to talk a little bit about some of the things you did while you were at the department. One of those, the next guest we're going to have on the podcast next month is Ben Moore from The Ugly Company. And they do a lot of stuff in food waste and they're doing a lot of awesome work in taking food waste and making really cool food products. But we both know there's a lot of liability in a lot of states that scares people away or potential liability that scares companies away from getting into the food waste space. I know while you were at the department, You guys had done a lot of work in terms of food waste and food donations. Could you talk about that a little bit and some of the things that you did to help improve those circumstances in the state of Florida for people who were trying to help eliminate food waste?

Speaker 01: 23:45

So I take very little and was just part of the group that did this. And it was there were major corporations in the state who came to the department and said, hey, we we have food. all this food that is being prepared food that is going to waste. And it's one of those deals where we would like to be able to do something with it. We're just, we're just throwing this away and we'd like to see it. And so, uh, our division of food safety, who is overseas food safety and the preparation and sale, um, outside of restaurants and hotels, which are done by other agencies, really went to work and to try to figure out a way to do that. And it really necessarily wasn't a legal matter. It was a regulatory matter, and it was an opportunity to find a way to partner to try to get government out of the way and doing it in a safe way. And I don't think they're necessarily done with all the work they did. They were starting that when I was leaving the department, but they're continuing to work on that. And I think that was one of the things that I was proud of from my time at the department. And it was a history of things. The worst answer I would ever get was when I would ask, well, why do we do something this way? It was, well, we've always done it that way, right? Well, that's... That's not an acceptable answer. It was always, okay, well, either it's because it's convenient for us to do it that way, the law requires us to do it that way, or there's some reason that it was put in place that technology or time has changed and maybe we can do it better. And so that was always a driver of me. One of the things I did is started as an intern. They put me in charge of agency rulemaking. And so there was a time when, uh for many years uh where i was over i was in charge of all the agency's rules and I was the the the most agencies office general counsel oversees agencies rule making the commissioner or their agency head has to do final off but the lawyers are the ones who were working with staff to do that and i was able to build a um actually started that first summer I was at the department I was able to build the infrastructure in the department where all the rules flowed through the office general counsel for the attorneys and eventually the general counsel reviewed and signed off before it was presented to the commissioner's office and the commissioner for approval at the different stages that required that. And so I spent about 12 years of my time at the department as the agency that we call the agency rulemaking coordinator and overseeing that. And so working through, there was a time where every rule that was on the books for the department had my fingerprints on it. And whether it was from our division of licensing and concealed weapons permitting processes and things around that, or which that's mainly statutory, but thinking through the different licenses that They do all the way through our food safety divisions to our traditional ag divisions, office of ag water policy, consumer services. I either wrote or helped write or rewrite those rules. And so we did a lot of those questions, just like we did coming back to your question about the food waste of whenever these rules came before us, when my specific missions, what I wanted to do was, is it clear? Is it concise? And is it within the statutory constraints and authority given to the department? And then finally, doesn't make sense why are we doing it this way is it and do we have to do it and how burdensome is is it on the people that have to comply with it can they can can some farmer standing in his field or some business owner that has to comply with his rule read it understand by reading it exactly what they have to do and comply with it. And so that they don't have to go call somebody or ask somebody or hire a lawyer or anybody else to do, to help them read it and understand what they need to do. And so I was proud of that work that we did, um, working on that, cleaning that up. Agency rules get a, they get a bad rap sometime. And, um, my friends in the legislature will sometimes say that, you know, agencies over-regulate. I agree. A lot of agencies do that, but also no agency rule exists, uh, without there's some law in the book saying that the legislature wrote says, hey, agency, go write this rule. That's just not how that's how the law works in Florida. So there is a law out there that says the agency has the ability to go do this. And so I figured the thing we could do at the department for the people that we are working with on a daily basis was at least write it in a way that they could understand it and write it in a way that is as least burdensome to them as it could be. Sometimes they had some hoops that had jumped through because of the law and the statute that required that rule to be existing. But the least we could do was write it in a way that they could understand it. And so I'm proud of the work we did for there.

Speaker 00: 28:37

Which I think is so important. As much as my business thrives on some of that. It's important for people, for individuals, for farmers, for property owners, for residents, business owners, to be able to read clear and concise rules and understand them without having to hire attorneys. I know I would be out of business, but at the same time, it's important for our business owners, our property owners, our individuals, our residents of the state to have that. So it's very important when we have folks in government who are doing things the right way And it's very appreciated by the resident. Is there anything else you want to share about your time with the department before we move on to your current role? Any projects that you're the most proud of? Anything that happened during your tenure that you'd like to share? S

Speaker 01: 29:29

yeah. So I'd say a couple of things. I got to first, I want to say, because they're probably the most likely people to listen to this. I want to say how proud I am of the team I was able to assemble. at the team of attorneys that I got to work with, I was able to hire some really good people and work with them on a daily basis. They know who they are and were hardworking and dedicated. What I always told people in interviews was I think there are three types of lawyers. I think there are yes attorneys who say yes whenever the client asks because They get paid to do that and it keeps the client happy and that's good. And then there are the no attorneys who just say no to everything the client asks for because that keeps them safe and it's an easy answer. And the lawyer says no, most people take it as that and go on. But the client never grows or learns or has the opportunity to do anything. And so what I always tried to be in what I do the people I tried to hire, whatever, what I call the no, but attorneys, I wanted the attorneys that the, because they're sometimes in a lawyer's job or your, our job is to tell the client, no, that there, no, you can't do it the way, the way you've asked me to do it, but let's find a way to accomplish. What is your goal? And let's find a way to accomplish it. So being the no, but attorney is what I, I called myself and, and, and tried to, uh, And tried to pride myself on hiring people. And I think we were able to do that for quite a few years and put together a really good team of attorneys. I, if, if we had been a standalone law firm, I would have put us up against any law firm of any size with the people that I was able to, cause they were dedicated and they were good and they were smart and they worked hard. And, um, and so I was proud, I'm proud of that. I'm also on the program areas. I was thinking about your question on this, and I'd say there are a few that I kind of had the opportunity to be about. Talk about the agency rulemaking, and that's very in the weeds for lawyers and agency lawyers specifically. We only understand why I think that's a cool thing. But there were some programs I was able to be in and around on. I saw the growth and evolution of our Office of Agriculture Water Policy, which going back to where I started was one of the really big reasons why I wanted to be at the department. and learn about that and work in that area. And I was able to be their program attorney for a few years and really work on that and help them develop our best management practices and watch it evolve and grow and work in that area and just understanding the impact that that has today, even down to things like our agricultural statutes and the agritourism conferences and see that grow, work in that area and be in the rooms and help write some of those laws that are on the books and protecting those different parts of industry and why our agricultural BMPs have grown beyond just water quality and water quantity standards and why they're so important to pretty much everything that happens in agriculture in Florida these days. I also had a ground floor seat at the table working on our Rural and Family Lands Program. And it was until Commissioner Simpson came along, it was... underfunded and had all the potential and he has really put a lot of money into it and has grown and it is doing amazing things because i like everybody else native Florida and just weep for the days where We weren't growing houses on some of our most productive land and we could grow anything on them, but a lot of it's turned into those solar, those rooftops now or solar farms. And while I understand why that's inevitable, I miss those. And so keeping some of that rural and family lands, some of our agricultural lands in our production agriculture, I think is important because I think, again, like Commissioner Simpson says, agriculture in Florida is a national security issue. We have the ability here to feed not only everybody in our state, but the rest of the country with the production land that we have and do it in times of year where nobody else can do it. And so I think that's so important that we continue to preserve that. I had a very unique opportunity, and it's never quite turned into what I think some people had hoped it would be. But, uh, in, uh, I was commissioner Bronson hired me and I grew up under his chief of staff, his commissioner Rhodes and Richard Trichler, the general and John Costigan, the one I talked about. But then as they were leaving and transitioning out of the agency, uh, when commissioner Putnam came in, uh, who I had, uh, obviously as a fellow AGR and had known for many years, he kept me on board as an attorney. And I worked under our general counsel, Lorena Hawley. And then when John and Lorena were leaving the department in the last year or two of Commissioner Putnam's term for different reasons and other great opportunities, he took a chance on me. He and Mike Joyner, who I should absolutely... talk about as well, who was the commissioner, took a chance on me and hired me to be the general counsel. And I went from a senior attorney to a deputy commissioner, or excuse me, a deputy general counsel, and then general counsel in all about six months. And so it was after being around and being the same title for like 10 plus years, I was very quickly promoted up the ranks. And they took the chance on me and believed in me. And really, Commissioner Putnam and Mike did that for me and put me in a position. And so when they were leaving and Commissioner Fried was coming in, the 2018 farm bill had just passed and in that farm bill uh allowed for the cultivation of hemp by states and then the regulation of that and obviously seeing commissioner freed running for office and then seeing her being elected it was very clear to me what her first priorities was and so uh uh Mike and everything, we were able, allowed me to try to kind of pull the team together so that we could hit the ground running when she got in the door. And when she got there, uh, we basically had a framework of a plan in place about how we could, uh, build a regulatory program around hemp and what statutes we would need. And so we were able to present that to her team when they got on the ground and they liked it. And we were able to, um, build a program from scratch, which is at most agencies is very rare. And so, uh, whether it was whether it's hemp or not and it was never intended to be the the the thing that has turned into and the department has cracked down really hard on the on the abuse of the the attracted to children if the nuisances and stuff that have come along since that uh but the actual growing and the cultivation of hemp that we did uh the program we end up writing uh getting passed in the law and then adopting and rules in record time just to help that industry stand up and uh exist uh we were able to do and do in a way that everybody, I think generally around that industry that wanted to be a part of that industry thought was open and transparent and accessible to them and that there were nobody, there was no, we didn't pick winners and losers and we did it in a way. And then attorneys will also understand that building something from scratch like that is unusual. You don't get to build it. You don't get to build anything. And we were able to put together a a group of people from across the agency that touch, at one point in time, seven different parts of the agencies and have a set of rules and everything all come online at nearly the same time. And what ended up happening is our regulations and our framework that we adopted in Florida, USDA liked so much, they essentially copied and pasted and it became the national standards. And so that was because of a lot of hard work by a lot of people who really put... we had to do a lot of, uh, groundbreaking science and understanding and researching to understand what we're doing. Cause we were regulating entirely new crop and putting all that together. And so to be able to be a part of that and lead that effort, I think was, was really cool. And so, um, um, those would be the things that are top of my head that I think, and then, and then just being with the people at the department and make an impact and being friends with those people and just learning as much as I did. I think that was my main takeaways. So.

Speaker 00: 37:50

And that Hemp program is, was groundbreaking and it, kind of another interesting thing about ag and ag law. So I think so often, and I get asked this question a lot too, well, what is ag law and what do you do? And kind of at that point, it's a little bit of everything. And sometimes it's the unexpected and it's the new and it's the groundbreaking. And a lot of people don't often think about hemp as agriculture, but that's agriculture. And it covers so many different things that I think a lot of folks don't think about. It's expansive. So now you've moved into citrus. primarily doing citrus working for CRAFT. And I know for native Floridians, for people outside of Florida, everyone around the country and the world thinks of Florida and they think of citrus. They also think of Florida man, but we don't want them to think of Florida man. We want them to think of the good things, not Florida man. But we know our citrus industry has been in danger for a while between canker and greening and development. You've seen so many, especially to the north, you know, north central Florida, central Florida over my childhood, We slowly watched all of that. And then in adulthood, move farther south. So can you tell us a little bit about what CRAFT is doing? Because I think it's really important to a lot of people to try to save our citrus industry. And people want to smell the orange blossoms when they drive. That smell is intoxicating. People have never smelled it. It's like nothing you've ever smelled before.

  Speaker 01: 39:12

Yeah, So... The citrus industry is the iconic agriculture industry in the state. It is our heritage in a lot of ways. It was one of the first crops ever cultivated in the state. When the Spanish explorers got off the boat in St. Augustine, obviously they brought citrus with them for all the health benefits and everything. But one of the first things they did was they planted citrus right there off the shores. It has been here since the founding of Florida, modern Florida. And it is one of those are part of the industry that has moved and evolved. It started in North Florida and then the freezes in the early part of the 1900s sent it south. And then citrus diseases have really kind of taken over and impacted it, especially over my course of my career, starting in the early 2000s and into that, starting with citrus canker and then citrus greening. When I was at the department, one of my roles was working on our citrus canker litigation. As the newbie attorney and the new guy in low man on the totem pole, I did a lot of the grunt work and all the research and working with our in-house counsel and our outside counsel and managing them and doing depositions and trying that because the department was being defended for its actions trying to eradicate cankers. citrus canker and we went we had i think i was part of three different cases that went all the way to the state supreme court and we there was even some appeals the u.s supreme court that ever had actually got hurt and upheld but um being around that uh i didn't get to grow up i was to grow up on a cattle and peanut farm in the panhandle but we had satsuma trees and things like that but i was never part of production citrus But I grew up, especially at college, grew up with a lot of guys and girls who did grow up in that industry and knew their love and how they farmed was differently. So over my career, I've watched that industry, which was at its peak in the late 1990s, lose 95% of its production. over this year. And I think the good news is, according to the statistics that just released over the last couple of weeks, we've kind of hit a final plateau. I don't know how much lower we've been. Maybe we're finally at rock bottom. We had, there were some hope with last year that production would have picked up, but then we were hit by, the state was hit by three storms, two of which severely impacted the heart of the citrus producing area now. And so we kind of, I think there's a, we'll never know what it could have been If maybe we have potentially seen an increase this year, but for the storms, but we didn't. And so we're living with that reality. So Matt Joyner, who is the executive director of the Florida Citrus Mutual, and I worked together under Commissioner Putnam. And, uh, a couple in 2019, he came and was at a part of the meeting at the, at the commissioner's office where they were asking, Hey, we have this idea about, we want to do this, this research with the growers and they, I got pulled into the meeting and basically said, I would, and they said, this is what we want to do. And I said, well, what I would do is I'd create a direct support organization of the department. It's a standalone nonprofit. It's outside of the agency. So it's easier for contracting directly with the growers. And there's a lot of benefits of that. And you can follow your funding through that. And they said, that's a great idea. Go do that. And so I actually signed the creation documents as the department's general counsel to create the citrus research and field trial foundation, which is, Then five years later, Matt comes back to me on behalf of the board who was seeking a new executive director and came to me and said, hey, is there ever, are you interested? Commissioner Simpson and Kathy had, after almost six years of being general counsel and working 10, 12 hour days, I was exhausted. They had came to me and gave me the opportunity to serve as an assistant deputy commissioner. And I had a really enjoyed that, um, in a completely different role instead of working with, it's a colleague and the attorney for the division directors. I was now supervising some of these people and working with our DSOs and like the state, the fair board and doing some really cool, fun things with that. And, uh, Matt came along and it's like, Hey, would you ever be interested? And I had kind of really gotten to the point where I'd climbed as high as I was ever going to get at the, at the department as far as, you know, job wise. Yeah. And as the kids were getting older, I've got, uh, I have two kids, a boy and a girl who were both in elementary school and I had been to very few school events. And, uh, I was getting to the point where I was, I was kind of thinking around that maybe I should focus more on myself and my family a little bit more than my career. And, uh. there's one, I think it was one of those God things where he kind of opened the door for me that I needed. And, uh, Matt showed up and was like, why are you interested? And I'm like, you know what? Let's have a conversation. Next thing I know, I'm meeting with the chair of the board of the CRAFT program and they're offering me the job. And I said, yes. And so after almost 20 years at the department, I, as an intern all the way through all those adventures we talked about, I was able to, in full circle, come back and now lead the organization I signed the creation documents for about five years earlier, never understanding or having any conception that that was ever going to be a possibility. And so the mission of the CRAFT program is to take and do applied research. We have these brilliant scientists from especially University of Florida and IFAS and other parts of the country and USDA who are doing this amazing research to try to revitalize the citrus industry. It's been absolutely ravaged by the citrus greening diseases and the Asian psyllid that spreads it. And it's that which is a bacterium, which is a vascular disease of the citrus tree. Basically, when it gets infected, the citrus tree gets infected it cannot uptake the nutrients from its root to the rest of the tree and it slowly almost suffocates and dies uh unlike canker uh citrus greening will kill the tree canker will just make it was just a blight on the fruit and uh and so the idea behind the CRAFT program is to take that research that these brilliant scientists are doing in the public and private labs and put it in fields of commercial groves, figure out what actually works. So we're doing applied research. We're taking these ideas that work in a lab setting, and we're actually putting them in the groves, and we're finding out what works and what doesn't work under these real-world conditions that the growers are trying to grow citrus crops in on a daily basis. And so to be able to do that and to work with these growers again on a one-on-one basis and to kind of take all my elements of my career, my legal background, because we're doing contracts and we're having to make decisions about what works and what doesn't, to have my science background and my master's degree that we talked about earlier, to be able to understand and once again speak science and talk to these researchers and understanding what they're actually trying to accomplish and making sure that we're setting up project experimental designs, um, uh, with the growers that actually will give us good data to, and to understand the data that we're getting back and manage it and talk to our data scientists that we've hired to work with us to do this has kind of brought as kind of a culmination of all my career to do this. And so I was excited when I got the opportunity to do it. I've been in the job about a year now, and it has really has been a do, and we're starting to see some positive results. Again, the industry, uh, through CRAFT as a part of that has come a long way and we've got some treatments and some therapies that are working. We've got some exciting new varieties that are coming through the pipeline. There's a couple companies that have some gene edited trees that are close to getting final federal approval that I think the growers are going to be able to put in the ground soon. And so having to dive into what is CRISPR and how does it work and understand that so that we can bring it into the program. It's been a really exciting and a really neat opportunity and just another evolution of that and leading a board and working again directly with the growers has been really, really fun challenging, but in a good way.

Speaker 00: 47:38

You're telling our listeners there's hope. There's hope for the citrus industry and you guys are working hard on that. It's really cool to see all the time and energy and money and dedication that CRAFT is putting into this to revitalize this important and crucial industry that really is the backbone of Florida.

Speaker 01: 47:59

So absolutely there. So I had a, I love my time at the department. Again, I spent almost 20 years there and was not looking to leave. But when I was talking to the team and the board about what they were looking for and what they were as an executive director and really doing and doing the research and being growing up around the department and knowing our staff and everything, I absolutely believe in the future of the Florida citrus industry. It will be here. There will always be. Will it be what we were in the high time of the citrus barrens? Maybe never get back there, especially with some of the land that's gone to development already and into other crops. Yeah. But it absolutely will continue to be a backbone. The Florida citrus industry is still, even today with the production loss we have, a $7 billion economic impact to the state of Florida. There's so much infrastructure from the growers to the caretakers to the processors and the packing houses and all the people and the jobs and the economic engines and the support businesses that and are working through that. It still is for a large majority of the state. The economic backbone is so many towns in the center and southern parts of the state. And from over on the east coast, along the river, as they call it, and the grapefruit areas into the heart of the state and Imperial Polk County because they get upset if you don't use the word Imperial in front of it. They're in the heart of the citrus industry down in the southwest corner of the state and even up in pockets in the northeast and center of the state and the satsuma growers in the panhandle. It's everywhere and that economic engine that keeps growing and it's there and the growers that are in it are in it for the long haul. All the people who were trying to hold on or whatever else they they've gotten out through the hard times or whatever and they got and the guys and gals that are in it now those growers they're serious about it and it's their legacy and they're going to continue and you know what it does other than the economic benefit of it there where these citrus growers are they are in the areas that are being developed so quickly everybody talks about the ALICO uh decision that was announced early this year which was a fun and kind of scary for a lot of the industry. If, if ALECO, somebody that, that big can't do it, can't, how can anybody else stay in it? Well, that company has its own history and everybody can look at that and understand their history and what they were formed to do and why what they did was probably inevitable. But still, they still, even after what they've had announced that they're going to sell, they're still going to cape 30,000 acres of citrus and they're leasing out more of the land. So they're not getting out of the citrus industry. Their, their, their business is just evolving.

Unknown: 50:36

Yeah.

Speaker 01: 50:37

These acres are where these trees are, are our wildlife corridor. They are so important for what I love personally about Florida is in our history, our diversity, our demographic diversity, our ecological diversity, our agricultural diversity. We're unlike any other state in the map and almost any other place in the world in what we can do here in Florida. And, and, Thank you. Saving the citrus industry, I believe we're trying to save the heart of Florida. The orange is on this license plate. It is the iconic Florida agricultural crop. And that's why I'm thankful for Senate President Ben Albritton, who is a citrus grower himself, and his leadership and his vision, and Commissioner Wilton Simpson, and his leadership this time in the Senate now as Commissioner, to invest it. They have this year, and the Florida Legislature has invested $100 million in the CRAFT program, which to this point has had some significant funding over time, but that is... three times the greatest amount of funding our CRAFT program had received before. And we are planning to, in just a few days, before you came on, I was putting the finishing touches on our program guidelines. We're in a few days going to announce our funding guidelines to invest that money into the citrus industry. And if things go according to plan, the goal is to plant 2 million citrus trees or 10,000 acres of citrus with this funding. And it's going to do more than that, but that's the minimum goal. And we're going to find ways to continue to tree our existing trees with therapies that we know that are working. And we're going to invest in growing some of these emerging varieties crops that are coming through that are these gene edited trees and some of these varieties that they found that are just a beautiful tree that's a hybrid of different scions and everything that are just has appeared to be resistant completely to greening because nature always finds a way and how do we learn from and invest in that and so we're going to take that investment that the leadership and the legislature and the state of Florida and their tax dollars are investing in it in their CRAFT program we're going to put it to good work and we're going to find a way forward for this and we're going to give the growers the tools that they need to do to survive and protect our heritage in our state so

Speaker 00: 53:39

I think so many people are dealing with flooding issues and people are saddened about the ecological diversity we lose when we have so much development. And there are a lot of it just being our heritage, like you said, and our license plates. And that's Florida. For so many of us, our citrus industry really is the backbone. So the work that you guys are doing is incredible. I hate to wrap this up because we could talk all day long about all things related to ag, ag law, citrus. I really appreciate you coming on the podcast today and sharing all of your knowledge, your experience with us.

Speaker 01: 54:12

It's a pleasure to be here. Happy to do it. Good luck with the podcast. You're going to talk to some amazing folks. I'm just honored that you thought to include me.

Speaker 00: 54:21

Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the Legal Field Podcast. For more content, please visit the Facebook page of Florida Ag Law or go to floridaaglaw.com and join us next time on the Legal Field Podcast to see what's growing on.

 Speaker 01: 0:00

Welcome to the Legal Field Podcast, where we discuss legal and regulatory topics that are of critical importance to the agriculture industry. My name is Amanda Perry Carl, and I am an agricultural lawyer whose family has been farming in Florida since 1823, before Florida even became a state. I have spent almost 20 years as an attorney in the agricultural industry and have made it my mission to ensure that everyone in our incredible industry understands the legal and regulatory issues that we face so that we can keep feeding Florida, America, and the world. So if you're a farmer, rancher, or grower, if you are involved in raising cattle, sheep, poultry, goats, hogs, horses, or other livestock, if you grow fruits, vegetables, or sod, if you are involved with the aquaculture, turfgrass, or horticulture industries, if you are fighting the good fight to help our citrus industry survive, or if you just like to eat and you appreciate our ag produce This podcast is for you. If you are interested in protecting and preserving our agricultural heritage, lands and way of life, then come join us in the legal field and see what's growing on. Welcome to another episode of the Legal Field Podcast. My name is Amanda Carl, and I am an agricultural lawyer here in the state of Florida. I am so excited today to introduce our guest for this episode, Ben Moore of The Ugly Company. Ben, welcome, and thanks for being here with us.

Speaker 00: 1:34

Hey Amanda, I really appreciate you having me. This is a cool experience for me. I'm all the way out here in California and you're all the way out there in Florida. So we've got the two coasts that have united here, at least for a little bit, right?

Speaker 01: 1:43

Exactly. Two of the most beautiful coasts, I think, in the United States. And technology is a great thing sometimes.

Speaker 00: 1:50

Yeah, it's awesome. So yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 01: 1:54

Thank you so much for being on. You and your company are doing some amazing things. And I think our listeners are going to really enjoy hearing about the things that you guys are doing. And we're going to talk a whole lot deeper into this podcast about the details of what the Ugly Company is doing. Could you give our listeners kind of your elevator pitch of what the Ugly Company is before we dive in?

Speaker 00: 2:16

Yeah, absolutely. So we are the Ugly Company located here in Farmersville, California. Yes, indeed, Farmersville is a real place. A lot of people think it's a made-up town, but it is a real place. We're a vertically integrated processor of dried fruit. All of our products have no added sugars, no added ingredients. It's literally just the fruit itself. We make some pretty unique fruits. So peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots, cherries, and a few others. And one of the most unique things about our business is all of our fruit is 100% upcycled. It is all sourced from our local farms here in Central California. Originally, the fruit was purpose-grown to become a fresh piece of fruit eaten in the grocery store. But for us specifically, we use the unmarketable fruit that has, whether it's cosmetic issues, so hail damage, wind scars, or it has some sort of shelf stability issue like a split pit or some mechanical damage or soft shoulder, something like that. We basically take that fruit that otherwise would have gotten tossed out and we upcycle it and dry it here in our facility in Farmersville. And we're for sale in about 4,000 retail outlets nationwide to include Sam's Club, Walmart, Whole Foods, Sprouts, Giant Eagle, go down the list, CVS, there's a whole bunch of them. So we're very likely to be found in a grocery store near you.

Speaker 01: 3:30

It's so awesome what you guys are doing. I think that a lot of people this day and age are concerned with with food waste and making sure that we don't have issues with that. And so what you guys are doing is pretty awesome. For our listeners who can't see the video, you have a nickname on your shirt. And I want, can you tell us a little bit about your nickname and how you got your nickname here?

Speaker 00: 3:52

Yeah, yeah. So my nickname, if you can't see it on my shirt, it's Big Ugly. So when growing up, everybody used to call me Big Ben because I'm a pretty tall guy. I'm a pretty large guy. So my whole life, everybody kind of called me Big Ben. But then once I started the Ugly Company, people started just kind of referring to me as like, oh, there's the ugly guy or there's Mr. Ugly or whatever. And then it morphed. The basis morphed into being called Big Ugly. So, you know, so I've leaned into it. It's kind of my, it's kind of my, you know, I guess my alter ego here a little bit where, you know, normally I'm just a, I'm a very, you know, kind of private life living farmer in rural central California. But then, you know, I put on the, I put on the Big Ugly persona and I go out and I sell fruit across the nation now. So that's where all that came from.

Speaker 01: 4:34

I love this. And I love that you don't take yourself too seriously. And with a name like The Ugly Company, I love that you guys don't take yourself too seriously. So I know that your family has sort of an agricultural legacy there in that area. Can you talk to our listeners a little bit about that? We talked before the podcast started. My family's been farming here in Florida since 1823. And these long family farming legacies, I think, are so important. And it's so important. More and more people are seeing the how cool it is to have family farms and these farming legacies and know their farmer and know their grower. So can you talk to us a little bit about that history?

Speaker 00: 5:14

Yeah, no, definitely. I mean, it's pretty cool. Cause yeah, I mean, the small family farm is, it doesn't matter where you're at, um, you know, in the United States, that seems to be an increasingly kind of relic of the past, right. Um, where that's not so much the case these days, but yeah, so about half, um, half my family, uh, were moved from Sweden. They were Swedish farmers. Um, and then my, my grandma moved out here, met my grandpa who he, um, you know, kind of, I mean, really just like kind of true American lineage, but like at some point that part of the family came from, came from Ireland, had been farming all the way throughout the U.S. ever since. But on the plot of ground where we farm and live now, it's in Kingsburg. I'm the fourth generation in that specific farm. And then the other part of my family, it's kind of interesting that the most wanted criminal in California at one point was related to me. It was an accused train robber that never actually got convicted of the original crime. But yeah, you can look that one up. That's interesting. Chris Evans and John Sontag. It was quite the kind of like the Robin Hood tale of Central California. So that was my great, great, great, great uncle.

Speaker 01: 6:14

Yeah. That is awesome. I hope all of our listeners look that up because I know I will be looking that up. I like to joke that my family came to Florida in 1823 with no air conditioner, no refrigeration because they were running from something. I have no idea, but you have a family history as well of a train robbery. So I'll have to look that up. That's pretty

Speaker 00: 6:34

awesome. Maybe you guys are pirates or something.

Speaker 01: 6:38

Who knows? They came from South Carolina. Who knows what they were coming to Florida for, but I'm glad they did. Well, I spent a lot of time in California over the years as in-house counsel for a large ag company and working for some other ag companies. And as much as I love Florida and our agriculture, California does have some beautiful areas, some amazing agriculture, such a variety and diversity of crops up and down the state from Oxnard to Salinas, the Salad Bowl of America to Central Valley, which is what the breadbasket of America. I think is that the nickname that Central Valley gets?

Speaker 00: 7:14

Yeah, for people, yeah, sometimes people call it the bread basket. It's really more of the fruit basket, I would say, because it's, you know, where, like, the lion's share of peaches, nectarines, plums, things like that are grown domestically in the U.S. But, yeah, sometimes people call it the bread basket, but it's whatever title fits. I guess it's whatever you're eating, because probably something you ate this morning was grown somewhere within 100 miles of where I'm standing right now, so.

Speaker 01: 7:36

What are the primary crops that your family grew over the years?

Speaker 00: 7:40

Yes, I mean, you know, dating back, like, every family farm, it's just continue to evolve. Um, and, and something is, something has changed generationally, um, you know, every, every single time. Um, so my great grandpa, that was one of the original growers and packers of emperor table grapes, uh, that, that basically shipped table grapes by cold rail back through Chicago. Um, and as the legend goes, as far as I understand, um, table grapes were originally shipped via Chicago because they would mine ice out of the great lakes, uh, up North. Um, and that was how they would somehow refrigerate their train cars to someplace or another but um so my grandpa my great grandpa was one of the on the kind of leading edge of that back in the day since then our farm evolved then into mostly being raisin grapes and wine grapes and also stone fruit as well uh we had um some of the biggest plums i've ever seen my grandpa used to grow in this area that was kind of virgin ground that used to be the river bottom um where i live and then now um largely what we have um in production is almonds we have some alfalfa i also grow persimmons as well and we still do have a little bit of raisin grapes a little bit of wine grapes.

Speaker 01: 8:46

So you and your family, you understand this industry so well. And when you kind of, we'll talk in a minute how you got into the Ugly Company, how you founded that. You understand farming, you understand the challenges of farmers, and you understand this industry so well to be able to enter into this space that you've entered into in the food waste space. On Central Valley and families kind of changing over generation what they're growing, my husband is a diehard Buffalo Bills fan being from Buffalo. So our family's favorite corner back is from the central valley and their family it's from what i've read they've done a lot of morphing from cantaloupes cotton cantaloupes and pistachios i think is what they're now in as well josh allen's family

Speaker 00: 9:28

um yeah yeah they're from firebaugh and i i as far as i understand they grow quite a bit almonds uh now so yeah it's always pretty cool like central valley guy he he did his junior college ball at the same junior college that i went to for a semester uh as well so it's a pretty pretty cool have have him in nfl kind of representing the central valley

Speaker 01: 9:46

And MVP last year as well. So doing a great job of representing Central Valley and the farming industry. We watched Hard Knocks because they're on Hard Knocks this season. In the first episode, there was a kid getting an autograph asking how the farm was doing. So it's really cool to kind of see Central Valley. Little kids know that his family farms in Central Valley. So it's really cool to see that on the national scale and in the NFL.

Unknown: 10:13

Yeah.

Speaker 00: 10:13

Yeah. You know, and that's one thing with the city, like we, us being, you know, in, in California, like a lot of people just aren't, they don't think agriculture when they think California, but, um, it, you know, we do grow a huge portion of the fruits and vegetables and nuts that are consumed in the U S. So it's always pretty cool when people like, kind of like they break that misconception a little bit and they get a little bit plugged into what we're doing here.

Speaker 01: 10:34

It's not just Hollywood. It's not just LA. It's not just beaches. It's or San Francisco. It's, it's farming, it's agriculture. And that's such a huge part of the state. Like you said. So you've got this farming legacy, you're fourth generation. How did you come up with this concept of the ugly company? Can you walk us through how that came to be and where you got this idea?

Speaker 00: 10:58

Yeah. So like the quick version of it is, so I left the farm. I have two brothers. We all left the farm. We all went to the army. I was very much like in my life, I was planning on doing two things and two things only. One was making a career in the army and the other was coming home and farming. Um, so I left for the service. I ended up, uh, I got injured pretty bad. So I got medically retired, moved back, uh, but at a pretty young age. So that, you know, the military service door closed shut, um, came back here to central California and, and kind of have that conversation with my dad, like, Hey, you know, I'm, I'm back. I'm ready to start. Like, where do I, you know, where do I get work in here? And he's just kind of like, Hey, I'm, you know, I'm supporting and sustaining myself kind of, but there's really not much opportunity here for you. You're going to have to find something else to do. And hopefully, you know, hopefully we keep the farm in the family we can and you can enjoy it but it's it's just it's not really a career there's not really it's not enough to go around at this point right so um so what i did there is i i uh i had my truck driving license because you know us as farmers like it's at least back in the day it's pretty common that all of us would haul our own crops we all have our class a so i went and i drove um truck for a local company hauling oversized loads you know construction equipment basically bulldozers excavators things like that eventually i went out on my own bought my own truck and started um um doing many things but one of them was hauling fruit from um the fields to the packing houses and the farmers would also pay me to haul and dump uh the fruit that was unmarketable so i spent years doing that and then like you know like any truck driver right i mean you're you're you're especially if you work in ag you're eating what you're hauling and you know unless it's shit and even then if you're hungry enough you might consider it right so um i was basically just driving the truck all day long for you know 10 12 14 hours a day eating this fruit that i was dumping out and i'm just like god there's it's just gotta be something better to do with this than, than dump it out. And so I spent, spent a couple of years, like really looking into the, the kind of causal factors of, Hey, why is there all this good fruit? That's edible. That is just the, the, with farms, like all they can do is just dump it out. Like with our farm, I had been exposed to that, but it was on a much smaller scale. Um, and then my, my grandma being from Sweden, like the old school Swedes back then were really, really, um, creative with preserving fruits and vegetables because they didn't have, you know, it's, it's a northern very northern um latitudinal um country so at one point you know they back in the day they didn't have fresh fruits and vegetables year-round so um swedes were just are very well known for their ability to preserve um different types of things so my grandma on our farm she would go through and pick a lot of what was left over um and she would you know whether it was dropped on the ground or it was left in a tree she would she had all these recipes and things that she would make stuff with and one of my favorite things she would do is she would dry fruit on the but it's a nice warm place. It gets a good direct sun, but there's not rabbits and stuff running around, you know, eating on the fruit. So she would try fruit on the roof of the house. And so once I was looking at this, you know, as an adult, as a truck driver, like, well, hey, I know there's things you can make this fruit out of. Why is nobody doing it? Or, you know, why is it not being at least done at scale? And why is the fruit being thrown out? And what I determined was there was really two main factors. One was really on the consumer demand side. So there, if you think maybe in your personal life you've probably never had like a white nectarine juice or a dried white peach or something like that so the the items that you could use this fruit um to to produce a value-added product with just really aren't on the grocery list of any hardly any americans right so there's very little consumer demand for it but then on the other side of it there really hadn't been a generational investment in the production and the processing of of these types of fruits in a value-added sense right for dried fruit especially the specifically so you kind of had this like chicken before the egg problem hey there's nothing to do with the fruit it was grown to be sold fresh it's not sellable nobody's eating the value-added products you could make and then nobody's really producing and producing them at a fully you know commercial scale that could be sold to walmart per se so um i just started the business there and said hey i'm sitting out to solve those two problems i thought the name the ugly company was going to be a great a great marketable thing and then i worked little by little to scale the infrastructure of it

Speaker 01: 15:11

it's really awesome sometimes the old ways come back and are the best ways. Sometimes like you kind of look back to prior generations and see some of that to have the newer ways come to be, which is really cool. And to create that market and see that problem and come up with a creative way to fix it using your family's heritage and legacy and culture and coming up with a creative way to fix that problem.

Speaker 00: 15:38

Yeah, definitely. And, like, oftentimes, I mean, people working on the ground, like your blue-collar people, like, have the ideas, right? They see the problem firsthand, and so they can see how they can fix things. But, you know, truly making that jump to scale a full business out of it, it's a big leap, you know, from having the idea to being able to actually execute on the idea. So we've been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to do that.

Speaker 01: 16:00

And it takes a lot of courage. It really does take a lot of courage to jump into something like that, the unknown, and making that leap. So you guys do a really great job with this ugly company name. And I love it. I love all the puns. I love in your marketing, your website, on your packaging. Can you tell our listeners who haven't purchased your product what the front of your packaging says?

Speaker 00: 16:22

Yeah. So our packaging, it says, hello, I'm ugly. And so, you know, that's what just jumps out at you at the shelf. You're walking through the supermarket and you see something that says, hello, I'm ugly. And like your first instinct is like, what the hell is that? You know? So that was part of why I think I want to communicate from the shelf as clearly as possible. Like this has been made with Ugly fruit like there's you know there's upcycled product in this bag um and we have you know kind of bright pastel colors and things like that we got some of those puns like you know pit happens on the back because every so often there's a pit fragment trace or whatever so yeah we definitely try to lean into being a little bit quirky and living up to our name ugly

Speaker 01: 16:55

so i know you said you spent some time in the military and thank you for your service um and i know you spent some time in georgia and alabama so you are familiar with some of our southern sayings most people around the country know bless your heart is a condescending ending phrase or with all due respect but we do have one that's I'm not trying to be ugly but so you guys could look at that one too I'm not trying to be ugly but that's our you know other bless your heart or with all due respect because what comes next is really always interesting

Speaker 00: 17:25

oh yeah that's cool because we'll in that case we should if we ever start selling Publix or Piggly Wiggly or anything like that we'll do some marketing around that concept

Speaker 01: 17:37

yes I think that's why that hasn't made the national rounds we use it a lot in the south and it's you know a little more under the radar than bless your heart that's gotten a lot of notoriety yeah

Speaker 00: 17:47

that's awesome i i think i was telling you earlier when we were chatting i i think very fondly of my time living in alabama and in georgia because i i'm a rural guy um and i i love like i mean there's just nothing you know i mean in a lot of ways like there's just not a whole lot there's not a whole lot happening it's a slow pace of life and you get the nature and then i think it's like this one time i was at my for my friend, my roommate's car was broken. And so I had tied a rope to it and I was like pulling it to the mechanic from, you know, some, somewhere in Fort Mitchell. I don't remember where we were going to Columbus or something like that. And it's like, you know, it's like something I'd like do on the farm. It's pretty normal. But like if in California, a CHP would pull you over for doing that, you know? And I said, and the sheriff, like I just happened to be like the, the one time a week you see the sheriff, he's like driving by the other way. And I was like, Oh no, he's, he's definitely going to pop me. And like, he just waved. He just waved and gave me a thumbs up. And I was like, yes. You know? Yeah. Bye.

Speaker 01: 18:40

Well, I'm glad you enjoyed your time in the South because, uh, those of us in the South are very fond of our, our location.

Speaker 00: 18:48

Yeah. Yeah. No, I have a high level of respect for, for the place and I really think very fondly of it. So.

Speaker 01: 18:54

I know we talked a little bit about the mission of the company, but do you want to expand a little bit, um, on your mission and kind of what the ugly company is striving to be even moving forward? Um, you guys have made such great strides and it's so amazing what you're doing. What's your what's your mission if you could summarize that to people

Speaker 00: 19:14

yeah so i mean the big mission that's just you know drawn on the wall is we're working to prevent 100 million pounds of fruit from being discarded by the year 2035 so in the next 10 years like we're at a blistering pace to try and prevent that fruit from being thrown out and so everything you know every goal and every part of our mission is kind of a subset from that right like with the north star that hey we're trying to help farms get to zero waste right and so we're doing it here in my backyard to start and the industry i know very well stone fruit um but the goal is that hey every piece of fruit that that tree produces is ultimately consumed by a human being um and what that then results you know for the larger the larger um you know just ag economy is that hey farmers can do better because they're getting an actual full return like you know the concept of sell the whole tree that's great but then we're also more efficient with our resources too uh you know it takes a lot of water to grow a pound of peaches right and so um the more pounds you get uh you know the more consumption you get right like the more efficient it your water usage is and your, um, whether it's your diesel from your tractors and things like that. So, um, that's, that's the main goal here in the short term is to prevent a hundred million pounds of fruit being thrown out. Um, but then larger, the way, the way I look at this is with our branding, with some of our processing, you know, expertise and uniqueness, like we can take our model and then pick it up and put it really anywhere in the world because wherever food's grown, food's wasted. It doesn't matter if it's, you know, down in Mexico, we work with some Mexican farmers down there for our mango program. Um, you know, been to South Africa, been to Rwanda have been to some all these different places like there's always all of us farmers have like this these kind of shared experiences and one one thing is like hey we we need to you know be profitable stay in business um and so oftentimes farmers are faced this decision like ah you know what it's just more economical just to throw this out or or dump it versus trying to get it to market right so that's something we seek to help farmers with globally as we scale our business

Speaker 01: 21:05

and i i really admire business owners founders like your who kind of get in the you know get down and get dirty when you have to to help with the company you're not just in your office you know you're in the weeds helping as things need to be done um tell us a little bit about your day-to-day on things um you know you're not just sitting in your your office and barking orders at people like this is this is real work having to be done

Speaker 00: 21:30

yeah you know definitely i mean that's you know it's interesting right because you know as a family farmer like you do i mean you basically do everything right everything from your accounting your finance all the way down to you know servicing your tractors and and fixing things that are welding all that type of stuff um but you know the reality is like the small farmer in central california like that that business model is no longer really sustainable and so all these small farms have have gone out of business or they've sold out or they've really scaled and becoming much larger farms and so it's kind of interesting actually because you know that's that's really my tendency i'm much more of a uh much more of a worker than this is like this is the first ever office job i've ever had like sitting in the office and it drives me nets, you know, eight to 10 hours a day. Um, but then, you know, it's interesting to being, you know, being in the infantry, like, you know, one of the most common things is like, you know, to lead, to first lead, you must first be able to do right. You have to be able to functionally have the skill that you're, you're asking other people to do some of these things. So, um, you know, that really helps me in the sense that, Hey, I'm, I'm very well positioned to lead this type of business because I do have some version of all these skills that, that make up our business, even though I'm definitely not the best at lot of these tasks but i have the ability to get to get down there roll up my sleeves but for me specifically you know it's it's kind of like this evolutionary thing of like hey my tendency is to get to roll my sleeves at work but truly i i need to i need to be more managerial right i need to pull myself out of that because hey my time is ultimately most valuable spent you know interfacing with our customers working on the larger strategic things so that is uh something i've had to learn kind of the hard way of like hey you know it's not valuable for ben more to be the truck driver anymore and um You know, I could kind of give you some day-to-day examples of that, but I don't know how much you want to hear about things like that.

Speaker 01: 23:17

I think it's important, like you said, it's kind of that servant leadership that you can't expect others to do things that you wouldn't be willing to do yourself or you haven't done yourself. And so I think that's really important to have people respect you in that position. But on those stories, we do want to hear a few, maybe some of your most entertaining stories, maybe some of the high points anything you'd like to share about your time as you guys have scaled up and into this venture

Speaker 00: 23:45

yeah I'll give you a I'll give you kind of a traumatizing story from like way back way back then and I still have like these like so I still kind of had honestly this like enters my dreams in the form of almost nightmares right so going back to like when I started the business there was two big challenges right one of them was to try and get customers excited about putting really a dried peach on their grocery list like going to the store to intentionally want to buy our products um and that's you know it's it really is a huge accomplishment when somebody chooses to spend their dollar you know their hard-earned dollar on what you've produced um that's a really big accomplishment right so um but back in the day like i said nobody was really buying dried peaches right and so we had the marketing thing pretty well figured out at a small scale like the brand i mean all that stuff worked really well but early on you know we weren't a vertically integrated business and we had um with product quality was one of the one of the most challenging things that we dealt with back back in the early days because um you know using this fruit that's being tossed out like there's there's a bunch of considerations to it and there's a whole bunch of um there's a whole bunch that lot that goes into trying to make like the perfect dried peach right from something that was unmarketable and so one of the biggest issues we used to have way back when was pit fragments right and i used to do a lot of sampling in the stores myself so all the different little locations i would sell into i would sit there and do sampling with customers and talk to people get their feedback and try and keep working on the product to improve it and i can think of this one time that this lady um you know very nice gal came up to me uh it was it was in santa monica in california and um she tried our product and she got a pit fragment and she she was trying to be nice and i was like oh oh my god i got a pit fragment i was like oh i'm really sorry um you're trying to try another one and she got a pit fragment on the second second one it was just traumatizing because i was like man here i am i'm trying to do a really good thing i believe by upcycling this fruit uh you know getting on the market but um and i'm doing everything i can from the operational basis to work with our co-processors at the time to like get some of these pit fragment issues sorted out but yeah i mean there's nothing worse than like disappointing a customer but also like giving them a bad experience it was it was it's terrible and especially when you get it face to face it's horrible um so that was one of those kind of north stars for me as well as like hey like we need you know we i've always known we need to invest in the processing but it really is like the table stakes to start an ag processing business in california California is millions of millions of dollars, right? There's no way to scale into it like the old days. We used to be able to process under a tree in your backyard. That's just not how it works anymore. So we had to make this huge scaling leap. And yeah, one of those kind of just awful, awful experiences. It was one of those things that really kept me very motivated to make sure we can improve our product quality.

Speaker 01: 26:33

And that actually segues really nice into kind of the next question I wanted to ask you is, you talk about how you can't really start a processing facility inexpensively anymore in California or anywhere, but California definitely more so than some other places. Some of these things are legal challenges and, you know, potential liability issues and FISMA and regulatory issues. I've been allowed these things that go along with the food waste space. And I know then in all my years in ag and in ag law, one of the issues that some people cite as not wanting to go into this upcycling of food waste is They're worried about liability issues if they sell, say it's the grower or the original processor and they're selling that then to an upcycler. They're selling to a third party and they're worried about liability or perceived liability issues. A lot of states and the federal government have passed legislation. Florida is one of those that has regulations in place and the federal government does somewhat recently for donations to nonprofits, but there aren't necessarily any laws that in a lot of places that have helped if you're a for-profit corporation in terms of upcycling food waste because it's not donations to nonprofits. And then we've got FSMA as well. We can talk about that a little bit more in a minute, the Food Safety Modernization Act for our listeners. Can you talk to us a little bit about some of these issues and how you guys work through some of that from the ugly company's perspective?

Speaker 00: 28:03

Yeah, well, there's definitely a lot there. I'll say this because it's worth mentioning, right? Like we get sued quite often and the lawsuits always come from California and New York. So go figure, right? And that's usually on the consumer package good side. Specifically, we go out of our way to do an audit of our packaging before we ever send anything new out. Like we get our packages audited to make sure they're in compliance to all the rules, this, that, and the other thing. And I mean, it's just the slip and fall, you know, get sued for everything you can imagine, like under the sun is just out of control, in my opinion. And it's, it's not only is it like detrimental to our business because i basically have to i have to set aside a pretty significant portion of our budget just knowing we're going to get sued every so many months i like literally like clockwork if every six months we get sued you know and sometimes it's more you know we got a back-to-back one here that we're dealing with now um so you're not only on a business level does that does that hurt um but like i mean personally i'm a human being myself and i'm sitting here trying to do something i got great people working here we're moral people we're doing what i believe to be a great thing for the for the world and it genuinely hurts like it genuinely hurts me as a human being to get sued by somebody when it's just like wow this is the next level of just absolute scumbag right so that hurts I think it's worth saying because anybody that enters the space and consumer packaged goods like you got to have a tough stomach and you got to be ready just to get sued left right and the other thing and you know I've actually talked to our congressman about it and some of these things and like there's I don't know there's no real there's nothing in the pipeline that I can tell it's ever going to prevent somebody from, you know, some consider package good business from getting sued for just absolute nonsense, um, coming from New York and California. Right. So they go figure. Um, but then on the, the more applicable to the ag portion and to the upcycling and, um, you know, some of that kind of liability. Right. So I'll give you my experience early on. So, yeah, I mean, early on, I mean, you know, no nonsense. Like it was very tricky, um, for Ben Moore to go to farmers and say, Hey, I want to use the product that you're throwing out. Um, here's my plan for it. And almost every farmer was like, Hey, honestly, it's not worth, it's not worth the risk exposure. There's no role. And you got to think like, I'm, you know, they were paying me to haul and dump the fruit, but, but I'm over here saying, Hey, let me take the fruit. You know, I need you to handle it in the same sanitary manner. You're handling your, your fresh product. Right. And so, so it still meets all the food safety requirements, things like that. But I also, I am not, I'm not able to pay you very much for it because I'm a, I'm a small fledgling business. And so most people either like, you know, abruptly or politely like slam the door in my face to use their fruit but there was a few farmers that saw the saw the vision saw what this could be saw how this could benefit them and were willing to take that risk and so like i said early on i mean you know even me having these relationships with these people being from here and being a you know a relatively trusted person that's from the industry um that you know it was even difficult for me right so to be an outsider and to come in and do it would be probably even much harder and you'd probably probably need way more resources than what i was able to do uh myself but um yeah i mean there's definitely a level of kind of risk exposure that um farmers have when they when they send their value-added product out to people um and then they basically need some assurance is that like hey this is not going to come back not going to come back to in a negative way and with our process and us being completely vertically integrated now like it's something we take very seriously we just we just you know did and passed our primus audit the other day and so We got all of our ducks in a row. We have a great state-of-the-art facility that we're doing. And it also helps that the farmers can come visit our facility, check it out anytime that they want and see what's happening and be comfortable. Hey, what we're doing is really not going to expose them to much risk. So yeah, it's definitely something to be aware of. And doing the actual audits and things like that that are really driven by the retailers primarily, that very much helps everybody from all sides of all stakeholders be comfortable with what's happening here because ultimately the fruit yeah it might be ugly it might have it might have um you know wind scars and things like that but it still is the exact sanitary standard of what's going to the grocery store right so there's there's no functional difference it's not like picked up off the ground it's not you know rotting in a field i mean it's literally just just great tasty food that had a cosmetic issue or something that it just couldn't be sold in the grocery store so

Speaker 01: 32:30

that's what i was going to say like with fisma the food safety modernization act for our listeners you guys still have to follow all of that you still have to have your primus audit you still have to check all these boxes. It's not as if food safety requirements are not there as they are otherwise in the industry. I wrote an article a few months back earlier this year about some, you talked about the audits and things going to retailers. A lot of times retailers, actually most times retailers, have much higher standards than what the law requires as far as sustainability and food safety issues. And I wrote an article a Yes, you know, you comply with the law, but then there's this next level of requirement of being able to be in a lot of the larger retailers around the country. And so these audits and a lot of these things play into that as well. And so consumers can feel safe knowing that this is safe product. It's just, it's ugly. It started off ugly in

Speaker 00: 33:30

the first

Speaker 01: 33:31

place.

Speaker 00: 33:31

Yeah. It's funny. I mean, that's a great point. Cause like legit been more of the truck driver. I mean, people would joke that I have an alligator stomach. I'll eat anything. You know what I mean? I'll eat it off the brown. It doesn't matter. I'm cool with it. I never get sick. I'm good, but that's not what we're doing. Right. As, as actual business, you know, we have, it's good. Like I said, it's completely, you know, traced all the way back to the field, like in a sanitary way. And yeah. And I think it's cool. Like we work very closely with a lot of our retailers to exceed what the actual requirements are. Um, because that's, it's really driven by them. It's room by, hey, what does this retailer need? They got a reason for it and we want to be the people that can meet that. But with that said, it doesn't matter. You're still going to get sued. So be prepared for that.

Speaker 01: 34:10

I like to always say I'm in probably the most hated industry in the country because of all these frivolous lawsuits. But I've been on the receiving end of a lot of those working in-house for various ag companies. And you're right. There are so many frivolous suits that come out. Consumers that get frustrated or I've had some where a consumer had another issue and they were trying to blame it on the company I was working for. And they thought this would be a good way to not have any issues on the other side of how things really happen. So, you know, you're always going to have, no matter how great of a job you're doing, you're always going to have lawsuits. And it's almost, you're not going to like to hear this, it's almost a testament to how awesome and well-known your company becomes the more lawsuits you get, because, you know, the deeper pockets you have. They know who you are. So the more known you become, the better of a company you become. You kind of are more open for those kinds of things. You're always going to have the opportunity

Speaker 00: 35:16

Yeah, no, it's, I mean, it's, it's really terrible. Cause like we have a nationwide brand, like we're, we're very well known. Our packaging stands out. And so we, we get targeted along with a lot of the big food companies and we get swept up in this wave of just these crazy lawsuits. And it's like, Hey, the, you know, the $50,000 that cost us, I mean, that's literally somebody's job here that I now can't afford to keep here. Well, I can't afford to hire. I mean, like this, these are human things happening here and it's, it's, it's absolutely gut punched. But then beyond like the day to day, what concerns me is like i mean you kind of have an iron spine to deal with some of this stuff and it's just like it's totally demoralizing and it's it really is like pretty unfortunate and all it does it just increases the barriers to entry to where hey people are it's easy it's better to throw the fruit out right and so um i i definitely you know overall kind of long-term concern of like it just keeps getting harder and harder and harder for a small business and ag to to make it in any form or another we've been able to outpace a lot of these various entry and been able to solve them but like I mean, it's mission impossible times a thousand to start an ag production business in Central Valley of California from scratch. But with that said, I do love California and I do love, I mean, I still think this is an amazing place to live. It's an amazing place to work. So definitely don't want to just, you know, kind of do this all over California here because I think it's, I think it's kind of a larger societal problem that like we're okay with just maliciously targeting businesses for when they're trying to do good things, right? It's kind of a sick, I think it's kind of a moral sickness we have a little bit as a society that's creeping up on us so

Speaker 01: 36:49

absolutely between the lawsuits and then state local federal regulatory issues you know it makes it really hard for small ag businesses to start up and so i get excited when i see a small startup business um or when i get a new client call me that they're starting an ag business that makes me genuinely excited and i hope that they can succeed because we need more we need more people entering and not leaving this this industry

Speaker 00: 37:15

yeah yeah no Oh, definitely. Definitely.

Speaker 01: 37:18

So we hit a little bit on sustainability and a lot of your, you know, a lot of the big retailers are making you check these, you have to do sustainability audits for a lot of these big retailers. What's interesting is just the nature of your business also is sustainability. What you guys do with the upcycling of food waste is sustainability. So you guys are already ahead of the game in some of these sustainability audits as well. Do you want to talk any about that at all

 Speaker 00: 37:48

yeah I mean I'll just talk about the sustainable concept in general right I think that's something that you know hey just pretty universally like anybody anywhere you talk to would like to have a you know a healthier planet a more sustainable kind of ecosystem of various things it's you know that's not really like the point of differentiation right with people like everybody's like yeah like what nobody wants for it to be thrown out so that's a pretty agreeable common ground thing that we all have that we can all agree on and so that's a big part of our brand is to to authentically any, any customer buys our bag, they know if they're buying our bag, like they're saving fruit from being thrown out. So that's a, that's a huge benefit. Right. And it's, and then that's the kind of our special sauce of the brand is like, Hey, like you have been more of the farmer truck driver is the face of the brand. Right. And so they, they know that, Hey, what we're doing is legit. It's not greenwash. It's not some kind of big thing that they, that's, you know, just kind of smoke and mirrors like made up. This is as real as it gets real people, real farms. Um, so that's huge. And then just, you know, big picture, like this is a, a, a, a pretty great time to be trying to do something sustainable, um, in general, because we get, you know, a ton of our support. Um, people often think like, Oh, the federal government is like going to make some rule. It's going to solve the problem. That's like, Hey, I don't know about that, but that's not really been my experience. A lot of this stuff, it really is driven by the retailers. Like they set their goals. They have like, Hey, we're trying to save this much fruit for me and throw out, or we're trying to, you know, decrease emissions here, that, and the other thing. And so that really helps us just that mentality helps us get our foot in the door to, to get an opportunity to, to sell in their stores oftentimes. So this is a really neat time to be alive and have a business like this that, hey, if I was trying to market something sustainable and upcycled 30 years ago like that, we probably wouldn't have gotten nearly as much attention as we're able to now at the corporate level. So I have a deep appreciation for retailers that have sustainable goals and take that type of stuff seriously.

Speaker 01: 39:39

You know, it starts the consumer and the retailers. And like you said, the federal governments or state or local governments are never going to solve these issues if It really is consumer and retailer driven. And then the legal compliance is one thing, but then the above and beyond with your retailers to be able to sell there and meet their standards and then ultimately meet the consumer standards because it's all very driven in that process.

Speaker 00: 40:03

Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. I agree with that.

Speaker 01: 40:07

So before we get to some, some more personal questions to end the podcast, I want to know what's your goal for the future. Anything else you want to tell us about the ugly company, anything you want our listeners to know, kind of final words about the ugly company that you want to, to convey. Yeah.

Speaker 00: 40:23

I mean, you know, like the day to day goal is just, just to keep growing, keep staying in business and keep, and just, and keep what we're doing, uh, touching more people's lives. Um, and that's something that's really neat. Like since we've, you know, most, most recently I'll mention, like we answered, you know, walmart and sam's club and that is to me very near and dear to my heart because like that's where i shop right and i've always wanted you know me being a country guy like that's where a lot of us rural people we straight up do our shopping at walmart right and um great value items and it's you know with their business model we get stuff to the consumer at a lower price point than in some other areas so that's very near and dear to my heart um i i love going into walmart now and seeing our product in there and and legitimately like there's there hasn't did like an upcycled zero added sugar you know dried fruit that's available to purchase before and so now as we're expanding across the U.S. and not just with Walmart and then but with our other retailers like it's really really cool to see something like this that it really started with my grandma drying on the fruit of the roof of the house right like taking that concept now to everywhere that's something that excites me and so that's why I'm just honored and excited every day to have another opportunity to wake up and keep at it keep growing and then also the other thing too is we are We are entering a season of fundraising as well because we've been growing as much as we have. We've got some really big plans there. We're very eager to start truly doing some legitimate marketing and having what we hope, depending on how much investment we can raise, some legitimate budget to spend towards building our brand and doing that type of stuff because most all of our investment has really gone towards building our operation. That's the classic ag guy in me is I know the platinum standard of having an ag business is you've got to be able to produce juice like nobody else you got to have the lowest cost of anybody else in your category and then you got to have the best quality and if you can do those three things like you're going to make it well now we're entering this time of our business where hey depending how much fundraising I can raise like we're really going to start juicing up our brand and do it some cool stuff with that so that's really exciting the last thing I don't want to say to the listeners I just really appreciate your time joining in you're probably you know we're probably from all different parts of the world different walks of life so I appreciate you hearing our story appreciate you're hearing about our brand and if you want to support, we're at theuglyco.com. There's a store locator on there that can help you find our closest product. Yeah, just give it a try and see what you like. Every fruit, everybody has a different palette, so every fruit variety, I like them all, but people have their specialties they like, so go ahead and try them all.

Speaker 01: 43:00

And the store locator on the website is really easy to use. I've had some store locators on some brands' websites that freeze up a little bit yours is really easy to use and it doesn't freeze up and it really pinpoints so um few more questions on the personal note so what do you like to do for fun outside of farming and the ugly company if you had outside of that

Speaker 00: 43:23

yeah no i mean my favorite thing to do is turn my phone off and spend my time with my wife and my family right like that's that's what i want to do right um so hey this opportunity with my business has been pretty amazing it's taken me you know all over the world and done some things i never thought i was going going to do. But yeah, I mean, ultimately my favorite thing to do is, is to just shut it down and shut the world out as best I can. Uh, but I'm, you know, I'm, I'm pretty experienced welder. So I love, love building stuff. Um, yeah, I love, I got, got my goats and my chickens and things like that. Um, so, you know, I, I just love building things. Right. So I just built like an extremely bad-ass chicken coop. Uh, it's like the Taj Mahal of chicken coops, like, you know, log, it's a log house basically thing. And I, I was, I don't know, I don't know how I got involved that involved in deep in that specific thing, but I'm like, man, these chickens living a nicer house than I do. So maybe I should re-divert my focus elsewhere. But yeah, I mean, that's what I like to do is just hang out with my family and, and just stay on the farm, build stuff, close the gate. Hopefully nobody shows up this weekend, um, and just shut the world out as best as possible. And like, I don't, I don't even have a TV, you know, I, I, like I don't watch movies. I, you know, I watched the Raiders games, like on my laptop, you know, like I'm just, I'm just one of those people. I don't got social media. I'm not, I'm not trying to, uh, you know, I like the face-to-face interaction. Right. So that's how I like to enjoy my time.

Speaker 01: 44:35

Your chickens are really lucky. They hit the jackpot in terms of places to live.

Speaker 00: 44:39

The

Speaker 01: 44:42

last question. There's so many beautiful areas of California. It's so diverse from north to south, east to west. There's so many different things. What's your favorite place to visit and your favorite thing to do in California?

Speaker 00: 44:57

Well, my favorite place to visit is the kitchen because my wife is always cooking up something good. And I mean, that is my favorite place, right? with that said it's also beautiful too because she's in there but um i i would uh i was i saw the pre-read i was like oh do i really want to answer this question all the way because i do i want everybody to know my secret spot you know uh but since you know hey since you've all taken the time to to listen to the pod and you've gotten this far i will i will share uh my favorite place in california is court right reservoir um it's up highway 168 past shaver lake p and it's a it's a really tiny reservoir like way up you know way up in the mountains the fishing is incredible I mean you're pretty much limit out I mean you have some bad days here and there but like you'll limit out you know within a couple hours almost every time there's no there's no like water sport activities there because the lake is cold you know and so you don't have any jet skiers or anything crazy like that which that's cool but I'm up there to fish and to hang out hiking up there is really awesome camping there's a ton of great jeep trails I take my jeep up there but yeah what I would recommend is hey go to Courtright Reservoir and then do the quick hike up to Maxim Dome and I often like I'll go up there and I'll sleep there overnight you want to be careful a little bit like in the later season when there's thunderstorms but yeah I'll sleep on top of this dome I mean you can see all the eastern Sierras you can see the western Sierras you can see the whole whole shebang up Coronet Reservoir and then do the hike to Maxim Dome

Speaker 01: 46:26

that sounds amazing sounds like something my family and I would love and I have actually never heard of it or been there so we may have to add that to our travel list thank you so

Speaker 00: 46:35

there's your secret spot

Speaker 01: 46:38

well we'll try not to have people take over your secret spot and make it not quiet and peaceful anymore

Speaker 00: 46:43

yeah sorry i'm willing to share i'm willing to share like so we got good people here if they've stayed this long so

Speaker 01: 46:48

well thank you for sharing that and thank you so much for your time today i really appreciate it this has been awesome and i know our listeners are going to love hearing this

Speaker 00: 46:56

i appreciate it thank you very much amanda thanks for your

Speaker 01: 47:02

time Thank you for listening to the Legal Field Podcast. For more content, please visit the Facebook page of Florida Ag Law or go to floridaaglaw.com and join us next time on the Legal Field Podcast to see what's growing on.

Agriculture industry. This podcast is for you. If you are interested in protecting and preserving our agricultural heritage, forms, and way of life. Then come join us in the legal field and see what's growing on.

Welcome to another episode of the Legal Field Podcast. My name is Amanda Carl, and I am the host of the podcast. Today we are so happy to have Quinn and Grace Pittman on the episode with us. They are neighbors and friends of ours here in Osteen. So welcome to the show, both of you.

Thanks for having us on. Thank you.

And they are the owners, operators, and founders of Quinn Pittman Goat Milk Products here in Osteen, Florida, and country and worldwide, I think, that you guys are selling your products. For our audience who can't see you guys, can you please tell us your ages?

So I'm 18.

And I'm 14.

And these two at very young ages are very successful agripreneurs and are doing a great job and are great role models and examples for my kids and for other young people, especially young people who want to get into business. We've known these two, my husband and I have known these two for about eight years when we moved into the community. I think Quinn was about 10, and Grace, you were probably about six. And I know your faith is really important to you as well in everything that you do. Quinn, I'm gonna let you talk first about how this whole business came to be and your ideas and how you shaped and started this.

Well, I started when I was seven, and uh I was walking through Publix with my dad, we were joined shopping, and uh I just came across this little bar of goat cheese and uh four ounces for seven dollars, which at the time being six or seven was an inordinate was a massive amount of money for such a small thing. And so I'm like, Dad, dad, I want to get goats and I want to make cheese. And he's like, okay, whatever. Um, and then at the time we were living in the city, and then we moved out to the country, and um I kept that passion of wanting to do that that goat cheese for three years while we built the house and built the infrastructure, and then uh for my nine-year-old birthday, my parents bought me my first couple goats, and then I started doing it. Started doing the cheese. I started selling milk, started selling yogurt and ice cream, and we do farmers markets, and it was pretty successful for the first couple years, but you can't grow big with uh cheese and stuff, it's just not not something you can get big in. So through Providence, we ended up starting the goat soap business with uh some milk that we just didn't think was good enough for cheese, because it's very high standards for the cheese, and uh been doing it ever since.

And so you then moved into the the uh soap business because you can expand that, you can ship that, and it's not perishable and doesn't have to uh just be sold locally.

Yeah, we can ship that nationwide, which is what we do.

That's awesome. And about, you know, how long did this process take for you to get into the soap? How long have you been into the soap business?

Soap business we've been doing for probably the past four years. Um did cheese for three and then started doing the soap after that, and I've been going with the soap ever since. And now uh my sister does it, Grace does the soap.

Grace is now the goat queen. I am. You are the goat of goats now. Um and you know, Quinn, you are 18 and Grace, you're 14, and you guys already have this incredible career in this business, and I feel like you see so many people coming out of college in their mid-20s, and they have no idea what they want to do. They have no career path, they have all this student loan debt, and you guys are a great example of how hard work and vision can really pay off into something that's profitable and something where you have a career path at a very young age and you know, not have to have so much debt. Um, so Grace, you're handling all the goat stuff now. Can you talk to us a little bit about you know how many goats you guys have, how many how much soap you're selling every year, where you're shipping to, you know, any of these details about the the soap company now.

So we have about 11 goats. And when we started, it was kind of tricky because we had to move our soap area and so we had to pick up on the back orders. And so it was going pretty well, and we sell about 20,000 bars of soap annually. That's incredible.

That's a lot of soap. That's a whole lot of soap. Are you guys you guys are shipping nationwide?

Nationwide.

And about how many, like I know you guys are going to the post office all the time and shipping, you know. Are you sending out shipments every day probably, or about every day?

They're about every day, or if it's a slower week, every two days.

And your soaps are really amazing. I ordered them for Christmas presents a lot too, and the shapes and the scents, they're pretty incredible. Um, and they're great gifts, they're great to use, you know, every day. And they're really the cutest soaps that you can possibly buy. Um, I know that they're different than what we buy at the store. So without naming any of those other brands and why they're bad, um why is the soap that you guys sell better than what you buy at the grocery store or at Walmart or wherever?

Well, what you buy at the store, they take out those oils that cleanse your skin, and so they're not actually soap, they're cleansers. And so we make actual soap. So we keep all those oils and salts that you need. And the milk has special proteins that are good and absorb into your skin. And so you don't have to buy those really expensive lotions that go along with the cleansers.

So when you're buying the, let's not name the brand, but you're buying their soap, then they're also selling you the lotion and they're getting money off out of you twice because you have to then moisturize your skin. Which is great about bees because you can buy it's one-stop shopping. Um, you know, whether you're 40 or 14 in a business, there are challenges when you start a business. Being an entrepreneur comes with a lot of challenges. I, after almost 20 years of working for other companies in law, I started my own company last year, and there's challenges along the way. Um, Quinn, I'll let you answer this one since you kind of started all of this. What are some of the challenges you guys faced along the way, and how did you overcome those?

Well, a big thing was figuring out our soap recipe. So there were some online, but not in the kind of volume that we were doing. So we had to figure that out, and then dealing with livestock, you're gonna have problems with livestock as with anything else. So goat casualties or goat sicknesses, or the milk wasn't up to standard. And so all that stuff, and all that stuff is um can set you back, but then if you just keep going, perseverance will always there's always a end to it. It doesn't keep going forever. So as long as you keep going, then there's always an end to it, and you can always move out forwards after that. Oh, sorry, go ahead. That was probably one of the biggest things at the beginning was just keeping going, figuring out if it's gonna work. Um no one else had done it on the kind of scale we were trying to do it. So just figuring out if it would work and then just prayerfully considering it, and then God decided to bless it.

So absolutely. When you're when you're following his plan and what he has called you to do and what he wants you to do, um he will multiply that. And I think you know, what you guys have learned along the way is are things that people haven't learned a lot of times in their 30s, 40s, 50s. If you can learn to overcome adversity and figure out how to get past these challenges, that helps you mentally when you're older and adult and help you overcome some real major adversities as you know grow and get older. And I think a lot of times people haven't learned that by the time they get to their 30s and 40s, and when something's set them back, it makes it a little bit harder. Um so your whole family works in this business. Your mom and dad help out of this business as well. Um, Grace, do you want to talk to us a little bit about how that whole component works, how you guys all work together? You all have your own roles in helping with this, and it's really cool to see.

So I'm at the soap, and mom packages it. So, you know, she takes the orders, she gets she uh packages them and labels them and drives over to the post office and sends them on the way. And my dad helps Quinn building the uh infrastructure.

And we'll talk here in a few minutes. Quinn has a whole different role now as the company is expanding as well, um, that he's moving into as well, right?

Yep.

And you guys both, Quinn, you started being homeschooled at White Green. And it was your first grade. In Gray, so you've been homeschooled all the way through, correct? Um, Quinn, do you want to talk uh about how that has helped and shaped what you guys do in your business?

Yeah, so I mean, the short is that if I were public schooled or private schools, I wouldn't have been able to do any of this. Um with homeschooling, you can do the work that you need to and then you can go do something else while you're at home. And all my friends that went to public school and private school are not in that position. They're stuck in school all day with repetition and just learning stuff that they probably won't end up using. Um, meanwhile, I'm learning how to milk goats, make soap, all that other kind of thing. And uh I wouldn't have been able to do that without homeschooling. If I were a public school in a government indoctrination camp, I wouldn't have been able to do that.

And Grace, do you have anything to add to that too, about how it's helped and shaped what you're doing?

Yeah, I mean, I have to spend all day in school, like when said, I can go and help with the goats or do the so it I mean it just takes a couple hours when you're homeschooled. So it makes your uh time schedule really flexible.

And you're learning to run a business too, and you're learning those life skills that you can't get sitting in a classroom a lot of times. A lot of times there are those those kinds of skills. And our kids are in a homeschool hybrid where they go somewhere most days, but they're not learning that some of the typical things. They're learning a lot of those life skills, which I know is so important. Um we see a lot of the trades, we see a lot of um ag industry folks where you know they're aging out, and we need to have the next generation of people that actually have life skills. Um, so I think it's so great that you guys have had that ability to build this business that you probably wouldn't have been able to build and the skills that you wouldn't have been able to learn sitting in a traditional classroom. Um I know that you guys are expanding the business. So, Quinn, do you want to talk about what you guys are doing now and your your new farm that you have in Putnam County?

Yeah. So uh a couple years ago, a lot of the goats is doing really well. We bought a large piece of property in this little town called Crescent City in North Florida ish. And um we bought too much. So for goats, it was too much property and too far away. So we figured we just need had to figure out something to do with all that land and then make some money off of it. So we're now getting into uh polyculture farming and sustainable farming and grass-fed beef. So I run cows, pigs, chickens on that farm, and then we sell the produce. Um and then I also run a butchery service now. So I'm less into the goat soap now and I'm more into more typical farming, but in a polyculture style and regenerative farming. So cycles and then keep maintaining a land and instead of destroying the land, um actually helping it by the way that we run our animals.

And you guys are going to be bringing some of that product here to Osteen to sell as well. Is that that's the plan as well? So you guys have chickens, you have cattle, you have hogs up there, that you're going to be selling the meat from that. Which is really awesome to expand that to you know to another aspect of agriculture. You guys were taking this agripreneur thing to the next level, which is really awesome. Um, and then Grace, you're taking over, you've taken over the day-to-day goat business, you're the goat queen, and now what's your name, Quinn?

Um, I don't have one yet. I have not been. You gotta come up with one.

You need your title.

Yeah.

Um so if you guys could walk us through maybe kind of a day in the life of, I know every in farming, every day is different. You never know what the heck's gonna come up. You never know when your goats have gotten out, or you know, they've broken a fence or something has happened, or you've got an a dog or a coyote that's coming in the night and unfortunately killed some of your herd. Um, we'll start with you, Quinn. Kind of what's a day in the life of um some of the things that you're doing.

So, first thing I wake up and I go and look the goats. So the I have all the goats at the farm now, um, along with everything else. So I get up, I melt the goats, and then I give them feed and water, make sure they're all in tip top shape, and then I take care of the chickens, feed and water, cows, make sure they've got water around. They're free roaming right now, and then the pigs make sure they got feed and water. After that's done, which takes a little less than an hour, um then I go fix whatever fence the dogs broke in the night, because I'm sure they broke something. And then I um we'll move on to a project during the day. Right now I'm building a uh a chicken slaughterhouse, and then uh just take care of things that come up during the day. Um and at the moment that's pretty much it. Uh so been working mostly on construction projects and then maintaining the chickens and the pigs and the goats and the dogs and the cows that we have up there now.

How about you, Grace?

Well, we're still in school, so I'm worried it's not nearly as exciting as Quinn's. Since he goes over at the farm, I don't do any of that. So I get up, get ready for the day, do my school, get the oils and for the soap ready. And that was pretty much it.

And you guys have been featured on Glenbeck, I think. You guys have been on Blaze TV, you've advertised, I think, on a lot of different um podcasts and you know, around the country. You've made it really huge as agripreneurs. I mean, you guys have done an amazing job in such a short period of time. And, you know, we see, as I mentioned earlier, we have a lot of farmers and producers and ranchers that are getting older and their kids don't want to take over, and we've got lots of farmland that's being developed, especially here in Florida, and we see that we don't have a lot of young people in some ways getting into this. So, what advice, and we'll start with you, Grace, and then we'll go to Quinn, what advice would you give to young people who either want to get into ag business or business in general? Um, because we need your generation. We really do to keep up our it's a food safety is or a security issue, a national security issue. Um how do we encourage other young people?

Well, when you buy something that you love to do, you want to turn into a business, you have to stick with it. So you can't just do it on days that you want to do it. You have to be able to do it on days that you don't want to do it, and to always do it with excellence so that people can depend on you and they're gonna know you're gonna do a good job. That's really wise advice.

Um, I feel like I know a lot of 30 and 40-year-olds who would not have that wisdom. So that's very wise advice. How about you, Quinn?

Well, first thing is you just gotta find you just gotta start going. Like you're not gonna be successful immediately. That's one of the things with starting businesses and doing something new is you don't know how it's gonna go. So the likelihood of you just immediately doing amazingly at it is so slim. But if you just start, then there's something to build off of. Call your local farmers, call your local 4-H people. Um as a farmer, I would love it if someone would call and say, Hey, I'd love to learn this stuff. I can teach it, you know. I've have all the time to teach, um, and but I don't have enough hours of the day to do it all myself. So if they call your local farmers, call anyone like that. Just start calling places, and then there will be someone who wants to help and wants to teach you and wants to help you grow in it. Like I have. I've been trying to get some people to join up, but uh they're uh they're set going to college.

So you guys are both very wise beyond your years with experience um beyond your years. Like I said, I think there are a lot of adults who don't understand that concept of, and you're an adult now, and I shouldn't say adult, you are legally an adult. Um, there are a lot of people who are in their 20s, 30s, 40s who don't understand that. Keep at it, keep working. You're not always going to succeed. Don't give up. Don't, you know, I hate to say it this way, don't go cry in a corner and just give up. You've got to keep persisting. And I think that you guys are very wise beyond your years in that. And ag has so many opportunities. There's food safety jobs, there's like what you guys are doing, things in kind of niche areas. There's traditional farming, there's so many different avenues for people to get into. They just have to ask the questions, dive in, um, figure it out. Being that I am an ag lawyer, kind of have to touch on a little bit of regulatory and legal stuff. Have you guys experienced any challenges, issues, regulations you have to follow, legal issues, and kind of how do you overcome that? Um, I know sometimes in the niche areas you have your own unique issues.

So at our area, we have a pretty major issue, which isn't massive right now, but we the St. John's Water Management District, um originally the property we bought was a fernery, so it's all irrigated and uh the port property was divided, but we got the property with the bar five vials, but not the pump. So we need to put in our oil well to irrigate our fields to grow other stuff. And uh the pump that is made to run that size field is a six-inch well pump. The St. John's Water Management District taxes you for every gallon of water if you use a six-inch well pump, which is the size you need for that. So that's one thing we've been dealing with. Um haven't haven't put a well in for the fields due to that. Um and then uh Florida's not too bad, but we gotta label all our all in the beginning when we were doing goat cheese and goat milk, you gotta label everything not for human consumption because raw milk scares people. Um that's one thing. Um permits, another one. But those are some of the big ones that we've been dealing with more recently.

And it's great to live in a state where we have fewer regulations than some other states. You know, you look at California and everything is regulated and everything is taxed, and there are just so many hurdles to jump through, especially in agriculture and water use air. But we do still have some, you know, some hurdles to jump through. But Florida has been over the years a lot better and more conducive to agriculture and to production than a lot of other places.

We wouldn't be able to do a lot of stuff we do if we were not in Florida. Florida is definitely the place to be for a lot of this.

Absolutely. And the FDA for soap actually you know has some special regulations. So, you know, if you make sure you have the right salts and right ingredients, then you don't actually have to get special licenses as long as they don't have any cosmetic claims like it cures or anything. And we don't need any special licenses for the soap. That's great. So that's been uh very nice.

Yes. The least hurdles you have to jump through to actually conduct your business and make money and be successful are are better. Um well, we know Christmas is right around the corner. I like to buy a lot of um of soaps for people for our Christmas. Where can our listeners order your products?

Well, we if you want to order our soap, you can go to qpgoatsoap.com and if you use the code LEGALFILED, then you get 10% off.

That's awesome. People can stock up for Christmas. People can everybody need some uh good goat soap products for Christmas. And I always like to kind of wrap up my podcast with some fun personal questions. So I'm gonna I have a few questions for you guys, and we'll start with Grace on the first one, and then go to Quinn, and then we'll go back and forth. So, what do you like to do for fun outside of business or school?

Well, mainly I like to read action and adventure books and the our church is a lot of activities. So I like to be in the choir and I take voice lessons and um and in in the chancel choir, like the adult choir at our church for extra singing events. So I really enjoy that. Awesome. How about you, Quinn?

So right now I'm actually rebuilding a 1956 Chevy truck. Um so that's one of the things I've been working on now, and then I also like to build guns and uh that kind of thing. So whenever I have the free time, I do that.

So how's the truck coming?

Um getting new parts today. So hopefully we get that running soon. Pulled it out of a uh pulled it out of a field and it's been sitting in for over 20 years. So ought to be able to see how that goes.

My boys have been working on this excursion downstairs here for two or three years, putting a Cummins deselage in it. I'm ready for that to be done. Um so what is or was your favorite subject in school? Quinn, we'll start with you on this.

Um science was fun just because I could do it hands-on. A lot of my science I ended up doing with the goats. I did, you know, actual science with uh goat chemistry. And then uh I was always kind of good at English, so I did that too. And history. I liked history.

My boys like to say recess and lunch. So you have to have a subject recess, right?

Yeah. I liked lunch.

Eating's good. How about you, Grace?

A few years ago, I would have aggraded the boys, recess. But now I think grammar.

Ooh, that's a good one. That's a real I think especially in the age of social media, internet, people post things, and you know, I think grammar is so important. It always has been, but I feel like now when your words are out there a lot, um, that's really important. Okay, Grace, your favorite Bible verse.

Well, favorite Bible verse is Psalm 2, 5 through 6. Then he'll speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, As for me, I've set my king in Zion, my holy hill. That's an awesome one.

And for our listeners, that was memorized, not read. So that is awesome. How about you, Claire?

Uh, I like Psalm 58 in its entirety. Um, I don't have the full verse memorized like my sister, which kind of hurts my soul. Um, but basically it's about uh how God will come to judge, especially in the time that we're at where there's so much evil going around, um, knowing that God says he will come to judge those. Uh it always kind of comforts me. So Psalm 58. It's a good one.

That's a very good one. And my last fun question here, which I think is a very fun question. Do you have a favorite goat of all the goats you've ever had, or a least favorite one? I need a least favorite animal of all the livestock I've ever had because he was a real jerk. So if you have a favorite or a least favorite of any of your goats, Quinn.

Oh, I love them all. Um, but no. Uh I've had a few favorites. Um one was cre one was named Carmel, and then another one, I have one named Lily, had another one named uh Ranger, all fun goats, and then least favorite um would probably be one that I I I really like, but Sergeant Bill, because he'd break all the fences. He was a super fun doat, really friendly, but he'd always break the fences.

So I had a ramp, we had sheep, I had a ramp who came across the field Monday and hit me in the head and gave me a concussion. So he was my least amor of all time. Yes. How about you, Grace?

Um my favorite one of our first first goats was Rainbow. Remember, she was really fun. And that we have now, it's probably Freya, because I mean she kinda acts like a dog, you know, she'll jump on you and she wants to get her pets. And the least favorite is probably one that we used to have, named Rosie, just because she wasn't the brightest. So I think she like hurt my mom a couple times and poor Rosie. Couldn't do things right.

She just wasn't very uh cooperative and yeah, I get that. I get that. Sometimes it happens with livestock. I get it. Well, is there anything else you guys want to share with our listeners about anything you do, anything in your lives, anything at all that you would like to, any message you would like to give to our listeners, because I think this has been a great day. I appreciate you guys sharing what you guys do um for our listeners and inspiring others.

Well, the one thing I'd I'd like to end with is to actually call your farmers. Like uh there is so much need for work and wanting to teach people in this field. So make some phone calls. They ever they always pick up or they will pick up eventually, and uh they will want your labor. I'm I'm sure of it. Because I am one tough.

How about you, Grace? Um I'm not really sure. I think Quinn kind of hit a nail in the hand, you know, just to reinforce if you want to do something, perseverance pays off, you just gotta go for it.

And I'm calling your local farmers too, buy from your local farmers, buy from your local producers because you're sure Yeah, exactly. Buy from you guys. Don't forget to go to the website, use the discount code, and we will also put that in the post when we share this podcast too. So go use that discount code and buy some goat soap products. And if you're here locally near Volusia County, look out for will you guys be posting when you're selling the meats of feedback.

FreerangeFarms.com is a website for meats and butcher service.

Our store is gonna open in about a month, I'm pretty sure. Okay.

So we will have an actual location in Osteen.

Keep an eye out for that for all of our listeners. And if you're here local, come buy some meat. And if you're anywhere in the the world, probably country or world, order some soap products. Thank you both for being here today. I appreciate your time, and you guys are both awesome and an inspiration to young people around the country. So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to the Legal Field Podcast. For more content, please visit the Facebook page of Florida Ag Law or go to FloridaAglaw.com and join us next time on the Legal Field Podcast.

Comply or Die: When Social Responsibility and Sustainability Compliance Goes Well Beyond Food Safety Laws and Regulations
 

FSMA. The Produce Safety Rule(i). Preventative Controls for Human Food(ii). Preventative Controls for Animal Food(iii). Foreign Supplier Verification(iv). Sanitary Transportation(v). It is 2025, and your client (let’s call it “ABC Produce” or “ABC”) “thinks” it finally has a handle on the plethora of laws and regulations surrounding food safety. Policies, procedures, and people have been put into place at ABC to achieve compliance with all of these laws and regulations, so ABC Produce’s business is on track for a smooth ride without seatbelts needed? Not so fast – ABC’s compliance ride will be taking some rollercoaster-like twists and turns because of social responsibility and sustainability.  

In today’s complex business environment, mere compliance with federal, state, and local food safety laws and regulations alone is not enough for most retailers, brokers, and buyers. Influencers and consumers are demanding transparency across the supply chain because they want their wallets to align with their hearts. And without their purchases and social media posts, we all know that ABC Produce’s business can’t improve its financial standing or customer demand for ABC’s fruit and vegetables.   
 

Most retailers have established their own food rules and standards, which ABC Produce and its employees, subcontractors (including domestic and H2A labor providers), vendors, and suppliers have agreed to comply with long ago. Though some of these are not statutory or regulatory requirements for selling the product, ABC will become legally, contractually obligated to comply with the rules and standards if ABC chooses to become a supplier or maintain its supplier role. Food safety from crop to consumer is only the ticket into the concert, folks. If ABC wants an all-access pass with VIP sourcing opportunities, then it must understand, monitor, verify, and certify with a recognized third-party audit provider two newer barriers to entry: 1) Social Responsibility and 2) Sustainability.  
 

Now, don’t let those alliterative “S” words confuse you, as there are distinct differences. In the simplest of terms, “social responsibility” focuses on labor standards and health and safety, while “sustainability” focuses more on environmental impacts and business ethics. Social responsibility and sustainability do go together—like peas and carrots—but each term has essential and differing components for compliance.  
 

If you or your clients have confused the terms - don’t feel bad. We all have been guilty of combining them. Maybe it is because those same retailers, buyers, and brokers who are asking ABC to comply with food safety laws and their internal food safety standards are the same ones who began the discussion several years ago by combining the concepts of “sustainability” and “social responsibility” in writing and seminars. Examples given by these retailers, buyers, and brokers were fuzzy and were provided in non-mandatory, online seminars during COVID without retailer or buyer agreements in place, and ABC was given no real deadline to comply or show that it was meeting benchmarks in this new compliance journey. ABC may have even blindly answered “Yes” to the multitude of information-gathering questionnaires sent by each customer concerning both topics. Sound familiar? Maybe not, as the legal teams for many produce companies never even saw the questionnaires.  
 

ABC thought that doing business with several outwardly respectable labor providers and having a tight and federally compliant H-2A contract for pay, transportation, food, and housing would equal simultaneous compliance with “social responsibility.” ABC is also a respected brand in its own right and has a year-round supply of its core produce items from both internal, domestic grower contracts and international grower contracts. ABC has achieved superior food safety scores throughout the supply chain, maintains high credit ratings, and is a “preferred” supplier for multitudes of domestic and Canadian store distribution and processing centers. However, this just might not be enough in this new world of sustainability and social responsibility requirements.
 

Late last summer, the proverbial “hammer” was dropped with a consortium of larger brands requiring social responsibility and sustainability audit certification in accordance with international standards, including ISO and the United Nations. We aren’t in Kansas anymore - or California, Arizona, Florida, Michigan, or New York. Simple legal compliance in those states does not equate to international standard compliance or ABC’s ability to demonstrate compliance during an audit. In the seminars mentioned above, ABC, along with most of its fellow producers and suppliers, realized that it had a major, internal knowledge and capacity deficit when it came to this new level of compliance, as well as a budgetary deficit.  
 

ABC, like most other produce entities, added a food safety team member or a retained consultant to its management pool 10-15 years ago. This one person or small team probably wears more than the food safety/quality assurance hat and is already stretched thin with maintaining and transferring to buyers via a myriad of electronic systems the required training, monitoring, testing, and trade recordkeeping documents—oftentimes, by every truckload. These compliance champions may even lead every single farm or facility tour because “they know all the answers.” Of course, everyone’s favorite “Safety Guy” or “Safety Gal” who saves the day during every food safety audit can manage two more emerging compliance areas that sound similar, right? Not so fast, my produce friend! Crop to Consumer corporate compliance for social responsibility and sustainability may just have more ambiguities and complexities than food safety. Why?  
 

Food safety in the produce industry has evolved more from response to the following: 1) outbreak-driven lawsuits, 2) commodity-association membership requirements, mutating FSMA guidance and 3) customer directives founded on perceived or known risk—potentially from a commodity grown, harvested, packed or even processed far differently than ABC’s product. Time and time again, a “one size fits all” approach has shown to not work well in food safety, and it is already proving to make social responsibility and sustainability compliance extremely difficult.   
 

ABC will have to be able to “prove” its compliance with the social responsibility and sustainability requirements put in place by its customers, but how will it do this?  Well, some retailers are now requiring this “proof of compliance” through a “SMETA” 4 Pillar Audit. SMETA stands for Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audits. The four pillars of these audits are: 1) labor standards; 2) health and safety; 3) environmental impacts; and 4) business ethics.  
 

These SMETA 4 Pillar Audits are a new concept for most in the agricultural industry in general. The standards in these audits are often applicable more for manufacturing, and the application in the world of produce just doesn’t translate very well. Produce companies selling to many of the desirable retailers are starting to have to comply with and undergo SMETA audits, and they truly have no idea what to expect. This is a whole new world of compliance and audits for the industry. What ABC and others thought was going to be a pretty smooth ride has now turned into a rollercoaster full of drops, inversions, and helixes!
 

ABC has always worked hard to treat its employees well and to use only vendors, subcontractors, and suppliers who treat their employees well. ABC also acts as a good environmental steward, and its leaders are very ethically minded.  So ABC might think “why do we need to jump through more hoops when we are doing the “right” thing already. This buyer-imposed ‘social responsibility and sustainability’ thing is too costly and too time consuming. We are already complying with “the law” – we don’t legally have to do this, and we are not going to!”   
 

ABC can absolutely make this choice and not contractually obligate itself to comply with retailer, buyer, and broker-imposed social responsibility and sustainability requirements. Consequently, ABC will also be choosing to walk away from a market for its product, income for its business, and an opportunity for its business to survive and thrive. The agriculture industry faces enough challenges in America - high costs of labor and inputs, weather challenges, a society that has been taught to hate and distrust farmers, regulatory challenges, and more – and ABC might think it is simply avoiding more challenges to its ability to just survive. However, realistically, ABC Produce’s choice to “avoid more challenges” really could be a choice of taking itself out of the produce marketplace. You see, producers now have to accept that we live in a world where food “compliance” means far more than statutory and regulatory compliance – it means complying with private, contractual obligations with customers. Producers, including ABC, now must consider whether to “comply or die,”
 

___________________________
(i) 21 CFR Part 112
(ii) 21 CFR Part 117
(iii) 21 CFR Part 507
(iv) 21 CFR Part 1
(v) 21 CFR Part 1  

As published in the March, 2025 edition of "Farm to Firm - The Official Newsletter of The American Agricultural Law Association"