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.

 SPEAKER_03: 1:16

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Legal Field Podcast. My name is Amanda Carl, and I am your host of the podcast. And today we are so excited to have our special guest, Eric Larson. Eric, welcome to the podcast today.

SPEAKER_00: 1:31

Thank you, Amanda. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_03: 1:34

It's great to have you. Eric is a technology consultant and also fractional technology executive. And we will get into that a lot more throughout the podcast. But what he's doing is so fantastic for the ag community and providing this counsel on technology on IT, on how to keep data security procedures in place and compliance with a whole lot of things technology-wise. So Eric, if you could for our listeners kind of tell us who you are. Tell us a little bit about your company. We'll get into more details later, but who you are, how you got into IT, and specifically ag IT.

SPEAKER_00: 2:16

That sounds good, Amanda. So um I'm probably actually gonna flip that around a little bit because I actually got into ag first before I got into the IT realm. Um, but I I've been in the industry now for over, boy, more than I can uh more than I'd like to uh claim. Probably 30, over 30 years now. Um yeah, just over 30 years. I started back in 1994. Um basically uh you know working through college and um I I've I've always been interested in the agriculture industry. I grew up in South Florida. There's a lot of agriculture, and uh my family was in it. Um and I started working for a tomato packer called Garjulo uh down in Naples, Florida. And uh it was great. I started working in the sales office there, and I was pursuing a degree in marketing, which is what my degree is in actually. And um, as I got more involved, I did some produce sales, I did some logistics work, and uh to this day I'm still in contact with some of the folks that I worked at at Garjulo um in the industry. But as time went on over the next couple of years, I really started to take an interest in the analytics of the sales and the customers, and even did some category management work um with Monsanto when they were involved with Gargiulo. And it kind of just went from there. Um, I got into IT. Um, I did some studying up in IT and uh leadership. Um, and uh I I basically, you know, just kind of went from there. I started working with um the import division. We did um berries from Horty Fruit down in South America, and I started working in that division. Um, and they're actually now what we know as Nature Ipe Farms. Um so I started with them a long time ago, um, and I basically uh worked with them. I went out on my own for a few years, um, and then went back to Nature Ripe Farms, uh, was there for several more years, and then we wanted to move up to North Carolina. So um I worked then for LM companies in Raleigh, which is where I still live in the Raleigh area. And eventually uh I was there for about 11 years and then went to A Duda and Sons and uh was there for almost five years or so uh and had a great time there, and that's where you and I met, Amanda. So that's kind of what brought me here today. So um I I'm also have been very active in the industry. Um I've chaired the PSO, which is produceupply.org, uh, and have done several other um uh things, you know, working with the Produce and uh um traceability initiative and such. So I've always been very active in the uh industry as well.

SPEAKER_03: 5:08

And it's pretty neat. We both uh came together working at ADUDA and Sons. And what I kind of like to consider critical support roles for the industry, that you know, production is super important and we have to have the production, the sales, but we also have to have these support roles to make sure that what the production side and operation side is doing can actually lead to success for the company. And now we're both we've launched fra fractional companies in our support um roles. So I think that's really cool that that we got to meet and work at DUDA, and now we're kind of doing similar things in legal and in the IT world.

SPEAKER_00: 5:45

Yeah, absolutely. You know, and you know, and and that's kind of why I formed Transform It, um, you know, in in working with the industry, mostly with the volunteering in the industry. And I had gained some really great experience and knowledge working for some of those large grower shippers. Um, but I really saw in my volunteering efforts that a lot of small to medium-sized farms, packers, and distributors really still need that IT help, you know, especially when cybersecurity came around. I spent some time at the produceupply.org on a committee where we were working with cybersecurity uh best practices and guidelines for smaller organizations. And it really opened my eyes to see, you know, how unaware some of these organizations were to some of the uh risks that were in front of them. So um and also back 10 years or so ago, I got my um project management professional certification to lead projects, which has helped me with ERP implementations and such. And those smaller to mid-sized companies also need that help too, you know, making sure their projects are are moving along fine. Um yet they don't have the uh budget to hire a full-time CIO or director of IT or VP of IT. So um I thought this would be a really good niche to get into and uh having a lot of fun with it over the past three years.

SPEAKER_03: 7:10

I like to say in this fractional or consulting space that you can help these small and mid-sized companies get the benefits of for me, you know, chief legal officer, general counsel for UCIO without having to pay the benefits. You know, they don't have a flute time person, they're not having to pay benefits, but they get that that knowledge and that experience of someone like you to be able to help them out, but not have to commit to that full-time role and benefits. And it's so critical. Um, we'll talk a little bit about you know why the technology um expertise is so important in the ag industry, but it really is. It's a matter of national security. Um, it really is so important for these small and mid-sized companies to have available to them what the larger companies have.

SPEAKER_00: 7:57

Exactly. And what really gave me the idea was we had hired a cybersecurity um consultant or slash partner um because we knew our team in IT didn't have the uh experience deep enough to know all the latest threats, to really be on it every day all the time. And by us, you know, versus you know, just using somebody on our team, we were able to hire a specialist that augmented our team and we could scale up and down as needed. And and so that's when I got to really thinking, hmm, I could probably do something like this with my skills and experience for for other organizations.

SPEAKER_03: 8:33

Now tell our listeners specifically, I know you have a wide range of services that you provide, but at Transform It, what kind of specific services are you providing to your clients?

SPEAKER_00: 8:43

Well, uh, you know, pretty pretty much, you know, the name Transform It um is intentional, um, and it has to do with digital transformation. So um basically, um, you know, I I like to help organizations who are not where they need to be digitally to essentially hang with some of their competitors or be able to exchange information through the industry. Um, but in order to do that, you've got to go through a transformation. You know, you've got to be able to select, pick out the right processes, software, and such that will fit your business and is appropriate to your business that's not going to break the bank and it's not gonna cripple your operation. And so I think that's that's what I find is is most important.

SPEAKER_03: 9:31

Absolutely. And you know, I like we mentioned earlier, IT is such a critical part of businesses, no matter the size of the business, but it's so critical for these small and medium-sized businesses to have this expertise, these services. And we know IT and ag has its own particular set of issues. Um, so I kind of want us to to hone in on a few specific issues related to businesses in general, whether they're ag or not. And then we're gonna touch on some things that are very specific to agriculture and have you share some of your expertise with our listeners because I think this is so important, especially this first part to any type of business. Um, and the first thing is, you know, we we have seen this explosion post-COVID of remote work. And it's great because you can I work remotely. Um I think it's wonderful. And I think that for companies, you can bring in talent from all over the country and in some places all over the world with this opportunity for remote work, and you're not just limiting yourself to the talent in your geographic area. And so there are but there are some issues that come along with that, besides just, you know, worrying about somebody standing up without their pants on and being on camera, which we saw a lot, a lot of these weird things at the beginning of COVID, right? We saw people that forgot they didn't have on pants and some of those things. But there are some more serious issues, um, pros and cons of remote work. So can you talk about some of these IT issues that companies might face with remote work and maybe how they can work to resolve those?

SPEAKER_00: 11:04

Yeah, absolutely. And and probably even to elaborate on my on my last answer too, a little bit to go deeper is you know, the the main the main services I provide are or I would say probably threefold. Um, right now, what what seems to be in most demand and what my clients are looking for. Um one obviously is just kind of general um CIO or VP of IT for higher stuff, you know, managing, maybe bridging a gap. Um, second would be uh project management leadership. Um, and then third would be FSMA 204, um FDA regulation readiness. So those those are really what I've been spending a lot of time on lately. And getting back to that first item is right where this question is, where you're at, is you know, setting up these uh the ability to work remotely uh where it's convenient um but also secure, you know. So and a lot of these organizations, you know, they don't have the the leadership to really think this through and and put together a process or have had you know done this before. Um so I think it gets down to when you bring in your own devices and you know enable workforce, uh remote work, work from home, you know, there's things to consider, you know, there's um you know, there's there's pros and cons. So the pros are um uh for like uh you know, you're you're able to get your uh workforce to um work whether they need to be home for some reason or if they're traveling. So many people travel. Um but also you know, the the advent of all this technology in the um virtual meeting space, you know, has has really taken off and even saves some travel expense, you know. But um as an IT leader, um you really have to think about mixing data security with data availability and convenience. Um obviously Paramount is protection of your company's sensitive information. You know, there's there's important trade secrets, maybe there's there's sensitive information that you know you don't want to leak out of your organization. Um, so that has to be considered. Um you also want your employees to have easy access as well to information is needed when working remotely or traveling. So one thing I always had run across in the past was um, hey, you know, I I'm on the airplane all the time, and it, you know, and sometimes they have Wi-Fi, and sometimes when they have the Wi-Fi is not great. You know, I need to be able to um have access to at least some of my files when I'm working and make sure they get synced up well. So, um, and there's plenty of technologies out there right now that do that. In fact, most people already have if they subscribe to like Microsoft 365. Um, so being able to develop a solution that allows certain files and folders to sync down to a user's computer safely and effectively and can be very convenient when traveling. Um also um, you know, we we see a lot of diverse work teams, um, you know, and and uh and hybrid teams where some are on on site, some are working from home, some are outsourced, and really building that cohesion um between all those different types of teams is critical to get things done properly and most cost effectively. So using tech uh applications like Microsoft Teams, where you can have a central file repository, a chat functionality, um, maybe even a uh what they call a Kanban planner, like a uh a planning tool. Um, I help organizations with all that stuff to really, you know, I I kind of look at the and I'm a car guy. I I've I've always loved classic cars. I I I love taking things apart, uh putting things back together. But my analogy is something like that platform, Microsoft Teams, is kind of like the oil in the engine, you know, it keeps everything moving smoothly and prevents it from breaking down. Um, so that's important to have in an organization.

SPEAKER_03: 15:23

And you know, I think that's all um so great and important because, like you said, you've got to have some sort of balance because it's hard. You know, if you're say a you know, a salesperson and you're traveling all over the country every week and you're spending all these hours on planes, you don't want that to be wasted time. So you need to find that balance where people can be able to make productive use of their time, but also protect the confidential information of customers, of the company, you know, all those proprietary documents and things just to make sure that that's not, you know, getting out on a public network, but at the same time balancing that ability of employees to get work done in different places because that is the world we live in now. I mean, look at us right here. We're on Zoom recording a podcast in two different states. And um, you know, technology makes that great and it makes you know, us have the ability to do a lot of things, and you just don't have as many people in the same spot in an office anymore. So we have to make that work on Sharklet. And I think that does provide a lot of opportunity. Like I said earlier, you've got the ability to work with people or hire people that may not be in your geographic area because of this um, these this ability of remote work or this diverse type of work that we that we have now. So when we're talking about bring your own device um policies, you talked about those. Do you recommend written policies for companies? Kind of what should be in those, and can you help businesses put together those policies if they do have a bring your own device to work? And what are the what are the pros and cons there of those policies?

SPEAKER_00: 16:59

Yeah, I definitely recommend having a written policy for several reasons. Um obviously, probably the first one is um many companies nowadays have to adhere to ISO standards or SOC standards. Um, and this is essential for that. Um, you need to have uh written documented policies. Um, but you know, if we were to drill down on BYOD policies, bring your own device policies, you know, there's pros and cons um to offering that, but also having the policy. So some of the advantages or pros of a of a bring your own device policy um that I've seen anyway has been um your expenses to the organization are more planned. Um, you know, people are hard on their cell phones, you know, and sometimes they get broken, the screens get broken, and this and that. And um, and usually in a well-designed BYOD agreement with the employee, you've got a little extra built in there, almost like an insurance note to say, uh, or saving plan to say, you know, hey, we're gonna expect the X amount of percent is gonna need to be uh, you know, screen breakage and stuff like that. Well, you basically build that into what you're offering the client, the uh employee, the you know, as part of their BYOD package. You know, they basically get a certain amount of money per month to own, run a phone, um, and then maybe every couple years uh a little uh burst to you know to say, hey, you know, here's an extra couple of hundred dollars, two hundred dollars for the next time you have to refresh your hardware. So the pros are it's a planned expense for the organization. It's like leasing, you know, it's uh it's always the same amount, you can count on it. Um another pro is employees get to choose their own phone. You know, the phones nowadays, well, and I say nowadays, but even the last 15, 20 years, employees, you know, a phone is such a vital part of their life, and you know, they they have a preference on what operating system is on their phone, what you know, what the hardware is. You know, you've got the uh the apple, you know, the Apple um camp, you've got the Android camp. Um, so they like to choose their own phone and their own platform. Um, they can also use it for personal use um as well. Um, and then the convenience um of just you know having this information at their fingertips when they're not at the office, uh, such as email or maybe even some file sharing. Um, the cons, um, probably the two biggest cons that I see or or drawbacks to a BYD policy in particular is you really got to watch out because you have personal data combined with company data. And um the technology has come a long way with this. Um, there is software out there on the market now that essentially carves, so to speak, an area on your phone or partitions an area on your phone, which is really for corporate use versus the rest of the phone, which is for private use. So there is the ability to really divide them up. Um, and then you have data security, um, and then just lack of control and monitoring are concerns. And again, uh there there is software in place now on the market that allows companies to remote wipe that partition of the phone with the company's information on it. Um, they can control what apps are loaded on it. Uh so so there's there's solutions out there, but it has to be really thought through. It has to be um executed properly where it's a combination of security but also um operability, um, where it doesn't annoy or frustrate the user.

SPEAKER_03: 20:58

It's come a long way in the last 10 years, if I'm correct, but you know, BYOD was a lot scarier probably a decade ago before a lot of these options were available to companies to remote wipe or have this segregation um of the personal and the company data.

SPEAKER_00: 21:17

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I I remember um kind of somewhat being on the bleeding edge of this um w um maybe 10 years or so ago when I implemented our first policy on this, and you know, a lot was learned. Um was it executed perfectly? Oh heck no.

SPEAKER_03: 21:35

Uh it never is the first time.

SPEAKER_00: 21:38

Yeah, but we um but it was good, you know, the the uh the employees really liked the freedom and the uh you know of having their own phone and having the um ability to do that. There were, you know, obviously some hiccups where if somebody lost their phone or dropped their phone, you know, there were some issues there, but um they quickly got used to it. Um and uh and and I was very careful about what information, you know, was on the phones, you know, uh corporate information versus private information, uh, really trying to keep them as as separate as possible. Because once these technologies came out to do that, that's basically when I said, okay, yeah, we can try this out, you know, we can do it. And and it worked pretty well. And that was 10 years ago. Um, it's just grown since then, you know, with all these uh collaboration platforms like Slack and Teams and all that, you know, it just is is really grown now and it's it's essential.

SPEAKER_03: 22:37

And to your point about controlling and kind of having a a more more of a lock on cost in instances like what's happened to me recently. The I won't say if it's Apple or Android, but the particular phone that I have decided to do a forced update one night a couple weeks ago. And lo and behold, the next day my phone my storage was full on my phone and it didn't function anymore to force me to buy a new phone. Which I'm gonna get stuff. So at that point, that's my own expense. You know, even if I worked in another company, not for myself, that's my own expense. The company's not getting any of these unexpected phone expenses or kids dropping their parents' phones or you know, all these other things that happen unexpectedly to damage phones.

SPEAKER_00: 23:22

Yeah, absolutely. And and that's why I also recommend too that when these agreements are drafted, that there's there's a contingency or a little extra buffer in there for when this stuff happens too, where it's not unfair for the employees either. Um, you know, that they've got extra uh built into their agreement for when these things happen.

SPEAKER_03: 23:43

Well, you know, I think that the we're you know, the the use of, like you said, the use of our phones is critical. You know, we're tied to them all the time. When I didn't a couple weeks ago when my phone just decided to stop functioning because it was full after the update, you realize how dependent we are on them to conduct our business and to do everything um throughout our day with these phones. So to your point about having the employees comfortable with the type of phone that they have, with having their own device, it, you know, it really is important uh when thinking through these policies and when companies are trying to figure out what they want to do.

SPEAKER_00: 24:20

Absolutely. And you know, whether it's good or bad, we now live in a I want it now world.

SPEAKER_02: 24:26

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 24:27

So, you know, people are obviously expected to be able to produce information, execute agreements, you know, whether it be at 9 30 in the morning or 8 30 at night, you know, and and unfortunately and or fortunately, you know, that's that's the way it is today. And we have to be able, from an IT standpoint standpoint, uh, support that.

SPEAKER_03: 24:49

I think especially it was coming before that, I think, but especially in a post-COVID world where a lot of people went to working remote or we were working weird hours because we were also homeschooling kids and you know, all this weirdness, I think there is that expectation a lot of times now that you've got it in front of you on your phone. So you need to respond or you need to execute the agreement or you need to do this thing. So for good or for bad, this is where we are and this is the world that we're living in. But hey, it keeps, you know, keeps you busy, keeps me busy in our different industries.

SPEAKER_00: 25:19

So yeah, and I think as part of I think as part of employee training in the organizations, I think that should be addressed, you know, is is you know, um proper use of the phones and you know what's healthy and what's not, you know, and and and that's where your HR group gets a little bit more involved. Um, but to be able to have that ability is huge in today's world.

SPEAKER_03: 25:43

Absolutely. Now, on some other issues that are specific to agriculture in the world of technology, I know that you have a lot of expertise and are doing a lot of work, and I think you're actually speaking next week on this topic of FSMA 2.0. And for our listeners who aren't familiar with what Physma is, the Food Safety Modernization Act, um, can you talk to us a little bit about what Physma 204 is to start with?

SPEAKER_00: 26:11

Yeah, absolutely. So uh I tell you what, I've spent a lot more time than I thought I was gonna spend on this in my business over the last three years. Um but it it but it's it's it's for a greater good, I believe. Um but basically what FSMA 204 is, the final rule, is it's regulation put out by the FDA that is intended to reduce the amount of time it takes for the FDA to perform a recall um on product. See uh prior to FSM 204 regulation, um, which which is where we're at right now, but um it takes the FDA approximately about 35 days to conduct an investigation. Um, and and as you can imagine, that doesn't work when we legitimately have a serious problem with um a particular food that is getting people sick or you know uh people are dying, you know. We have the technology to be better than that. And you know, the FDA recognizes that um they recognize that they spend a lot of time and effort um in these 35 days where they're having to chase down paper records, no digital records, and that's what takes all the time. And it's been confidently estimated that it's gonna take uh an average re recall to go from approximately 35 days down to like five days, which is amazing to yeah, and and it's basically just because of the digitization of the information. So um this is FISMA 204 final rule is essentially an iteration um of what originally began as the Bioterrorism Act of 2002, uh, which basically started the rule of having to have lot traceability, you know, be able to trace back product to a particular lot, um, or or some sort of you know focused um group of product uh for a particular farm or grower. And then as time went on, um around 2010-2011, the Produce Traceability Initiative came along, which was to enhance that or create another iterate iteration on that, which allowed to have case labeling and palette labeling with that traceability information on those labels, um, and sometimes even on the palettes themselves. And so between that, um utilizing EDI to send some of this information um electronically, but also having that human readable on the case and palette labels really helped um traceability moving forward. But it wasn't enough. And because it there was still a lot of paper uh um involved and and and it still took you know time that to track things down and the data standards weren't where they are, but the FISMA 204 rule really um is uh you know requiring anyone who is asked to provide traceability information to provide it in an electronic sortable spreadsheet form, so which is essentially you know Excel or something. So basically you've got um what they call critical tracking events, which is um maybe initial packing, um storage, uh shipping, uh receiving. And so you've got all those critical tracking events at each node in the supply chain. You know, a a shipper will ship product to a distributor. Center who will receive product and then in turn maybe perform a transformation to that product. And you know, like if we think of you know, we've all seen those stoplight bell pepper packs, you know, um, where you have the red, green, and um yellow bell peppers. And so basically they're taking these three different lots, usually, or three different products, combining them into one package, and now they've created this transformation, which is essentially a new product. Um, and then they may ship it out to either a retailer or maybe uh another node in the supply chain. And so FSMA 204 is really to digitize this whole process. And um, so I think I think it's it it it's it's great. And and I think the produce traceability initiative laid the groundwork for this to happen. 95% of the information needed to support FSMA 204 compliance is already on the case labels and has been for over 10 years. Um there's just really, I would say, two to three more elements of data that are needed to make this work, and then of course, transmitting that data electronically through the supply chain. I think some of the advantages of this could be it can build trust in our food supply by improving the transparency in the supply chain. You know, sometimes, you know, we get into waves where recalls become frequent, um, and that starts to erode consumer trust, you know, and and being able to react quickly, really know where the product comes from is going to help trust. Um, and uh some of the challenges I've seen to this though, um, I I think largely what I've seen is at the retail level, um, a lot of the receivers at the retail level have not tracked product to the case level. And um, you can you can imagine the volume that many of these large-scale retailers have. And, you know, to do one extra click or one extra scan can totally cripple their already tight process. You know, we all know that our industry has very tight margins, and you know, we can't we can't afford to to lose any more profitability. Um so so the lot of work, a lot of work has to be done, has to be done to be able to do this without affecting the operational operation materially. Uh then the next challenge is the data standards. You know, we've always had uh data standards in place now for 20 years or so. Um, but many people are unaware of these data standards. You know, GS1 obviously is the front runner in this, uh, the global standards um organization there. Um, but data is not where it needs to be uh from a standards perspective. You know, getting um and I and I'm actively participating right now with the IFPA on a supply chain of the future initiative where we're working at um harmonized data standards, you know, is is getting the data exchanged through our industry uh standardized and harmonized so that it's easy to pass through, you know, and and there's less confusion and you know it's it it's essential. Um and then the other the probably the third challenge I've seen obviously is competing priorities and costs, which is you know, no real great shakes there, right? You know, we we we can expect that. Uh so many companies have you know only a certain amount of dollars to spend on projects, you know, and I I could say you know, with an IT, I know that's for sure. Um so there's competing priorities, you know, to get things done. The the the staff is only so big and there's only so many things they can handle, and there's only so much money to be able to spend on it. So working that into working those software updates into um you know uh into the organization sometimes has to be orchestrated with um roll-ups to software or um change releases and stuff. So uh there's there's definitely some planning and strategy to do there.

SPEAKER_03: 34:10

To your point that it's it's a challenge from a cost perspective sometimes. You know, companies, especially small, mid-size growers, have to choose, you know, what they're putting their money into. And we've got input costs that are rising all the time, and those profit margins are so thin. And you know, in Florida, the estimates are that the average hourly um labor cost for H2A labor is$27 an hour when you factor in housing and transportation and food. So, to your point, with those thin profit margins, that does become a challenge, but it is so critical for transparency, for consumer trust. Um and a lot of the products you're talking about, like the stoplight peppers or the um convene, a lot of the convenience packaging of the pre-made salads with the nuts and the dressing and things in them. Consumers want those kinds of products. Consumers want the convenience products, but it does bring some of these challenges, like you mentioned. So I think the transparency that FSMA 204 can bring is very critical for that consumer trust. Now they've pushed back the um compliance deadline. Now, what's the current date for FSMA 204 compliance?

SPEAKER_00: 35:23

It's July 20th, 2028.

SPEAKER_03: 35:26

Okay. It was January of 26th, I think, correct? And then they pushed it back.

SPEAKER_00: 35:31

Yep. Um, it was pushed back um largely due to the challenges I've talked about, you know, most of it, I think, at their at the retail level, um, to be able to because what we were seeing um was a lot of companies just hastily putting together processes and and um um implementations to just satisfy um the the regulation itself. And I think a lot of the retailers and a lot of the people in our industry do find value in improving traceability and digitization of these records and want to do it right. And so, you know, worked along with the FDA to come to an agreement to say, hey, let's let's take a step back and let's let's do let's do this the right way. Let's not just slop it together and put it out there. You know, let's let's design our systems intentionally and get it done right. Um, this is a big thing for our for our industry.

SPEAKER_03: 36:26

And companies do not need to be waiting until and say, oh, we have until 2028 to that point, is these are complicated processed processes to get into place. Companies need to be doing this now so that when 2028 comes, it is not hastily thrown together that they are ready to go.

SPEAKER_00: 36:45

Yeah, oh absolutely.

SPEAKER_03: 36:48

Some, you know, a couple of other issues that are specific in ag and technology. Um I kind of want your opinion for our listeners. Should agriculture have a heightened sense of awareness with cybersecurity due to food security being an issue of national security? You know, we we see that there have been incidents where foreign countries have perhaps tried to hack into different food companies, food systems. What are your thoughts on that with that heightened sense of awareness?

SPEAKER_00: 37:17

Well, my answer to your question is absolutely. Um, cybercrime, uh, cyber warfare, um, it's all about having control, you know, especially when it comes to international relations. You know, if other countries or any form of terrorism are able to control how we are operate as a nation, um, you know, for our food supply, et cetera, um, you know, everything's digital anymore, you know, and and if they can get a hold of something uh from the other side of the world and cripple operations, shut things down, um, steal information, that really disrupts our supply chain logistics. And um so every company needs to have some level of cybersecurity processes in place and training.

SPEAKER_03: 38:09

Um, so for our listeners who may need IT assistance, they may need cybersecurity assistance, they may need FSMA 204 compliance assistance. Um, what is your website and what's a good way to get a hold of you? Because I want them to have your information um because these are such critical things. Our our ag industry is so critical to national security, to keeping our people fed, clothed, housed. Um, and so keeping them um out of some of these cybersecurity or physical compliance issues. What's a good way for our listeners to get a hold of you?

SPEAKER_00: 38:47

Probably the best way is just go to my website, you know. Unless, you know, you're already connected with me on LinkedIn. Um my company's also on LinkedIn, I'm on LinkedIn. Um, but I would recommend the best way is going to my website at www.transformitonline.com or transformitonline.com. Um, on there you'll find uh a comprehensive listing of our services uh as well as um a link to book some time with me to have you know a free initial discussion on any questions you may have, I'm happy to help. And um, so you're able to get that. Um, you can get my contact information, my email, everything right from there.

SPEAKER_03: 39:32

And since we've talked about some really serious things today, like cybersecurity and food safety and all kinds of stuff, let's talk about some fun stuff before we end.

SPEAKER_00: 39:43

So that's great. Um, yeah. Uh so as I mentioned earlier, um I'm for over probably 30 year years now, I have a love for classic cars. Um, I'm a very mechanical person. That's probably why I'm also an IT, but um, I am a huge uh lover of classic cars. I have a collection of classic cars. I buy and sell them. I go to these national auctions and such, and sometimes I even do the work myself. Um uh quite often. I've I've done everything. Uh, engines, transmissions, paint, all that stuff. So it's been my hobby over the years, and I really love it. I think it's a way of preserving the history of America. Um, and uh I I just have a great time with it. And now my son, who's you know, uh into his mid-teens, uh, is really taking an interest in it as well. Um, so it's a great father-son bonding experience as well. And so I I really love that. I love to, you know, showcase my cars and talk with other like-minded um people who appreciate this and and and really enjoy that a lot. It's a it's a great escape for me.

SPEAKER_03: 40:57

Which is so great and great for your son to be doing with with you too, because I've seen a lot recently in younger generations that may not always appreciate some of the classic older things. I mean, sometimes my kids tell me way back in the 1900s, so what they consider flassic may just be people our ages. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00: 41:16

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03: 41:17

Way back in the 1900s. But it's great to see that appreciation passed on to the next generation. I mentioned in my last podcast with our last guest that we had, but my husband is currently putting in and a couple of our my sons are currently putting a Cummins diesel engine into a 2000 excursion, which has had all kinds of things disrupted. But it's great and cool that they have that ability to work on that together and to have, like you said, that father-son bonding time.

SPEAKER_00: 41:45

Oh, yeah, and they like Fords too. I like that.

SPEAKER_03: 41:47

Yes. Well, we also have an 88 suburban, but they like the Ford excursion better. And they're putting that diesel in. Okay, what's your favorite car of all the ones that you've done?

SPEAKER_00: 41:57

Um, you know, I think the favorite my favorite car I have right now um is my 1989 Lincoln Mark 7 LSC. Oh. Which for most old people, they'd probably know that, but it's a two-door sports car, kind of like the hot rod Lincoln. It was, it's got essentially the Mustang chassis in it, wrapped in um, you know, a really nice, luxurious uh uh two-door uh sport coupe body with some really incredible high tech for its day back in 1989 with analog brakes and it it it uh and and air suspension and stuff. It really was a pioneer of a lot of tech back in the day. So um I love that car. I was fortunate to be able to find one with only 20 some odd thousand miles on it. And I love taking it out for a drive, and it's like going for a drive down memory lane.

SPEAKER_03: 42:51

That is uh how did you find one with only 20 something thousand miles on it? That's incredible.

SPEAKER_00: 42:56

Oh, I found it on an online auction. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 42:59

Wow. The things you can sometimes find in online auctions.

SPEAKER_00: 43:03

Exactly. Yep. And I have an understanding wife, so just have to be careful with that.

SPEAKER_03: 43:08

That always helps.

SPEAKER_00: 43:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 43:10

I hope my husband would say the same thing about that most of the time.

SPEAKER_00: 43:15

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03: 43:16

So, what are some of your favorite things to do and visit in your area? You're up in North Carolina, you're in the Charlotte area. What are some of your favorite things to do up there?

SPEAKER_00: 43:25

Yeah, so um, like I mentioned, I I I pretty much grew up down in South Florida, which is beautiful as well. Um, but my wife and I wanted to experience another part of the uh country, and we moved up to uh North Carolina, and we just love it. You know, you know, you're a half a day drive from the mountains, you're a half a day drive from the coast. Um, but even locally where I am here in the Raleigh area, we have some beautiful greenways to walk around. And especially this time of year now, where you're seeing leaves fall and just taking the dogs out for a nice walk is is very cathartic sometimes in the world we live in.

SPEAKER_03: 44:00

Absolutely. We love to visit the mountains of North Carolina every year, and we often talk about how that's one of the greatest things about North Carolina is you have beach and mountains so close to you, um, and without having to go on a 12-hour drive to get to either one. So that's lovely. And a final question before we wrap up your favorite sports teams.

SPEAKER_00: 44:24

Okay, favorite sports teams. Um well, I will admit that you know, with this car crazy stuff I've got going on, I don't have as much time to watch sports as I'd like to because I'm I'm into that. But um I love the Carolinas, uh Carolina Hurricanes hockey, NHL hockey. Um we've got um we've got an arena nearby that you know I go to, my family goes to, and we love to watch those games. That can really get exciting, especially when it comes to playoff season. And being born in northern New Jersey, I have to be a Yankees baseball fan. So I I keep an eye on those guys as well to see how they're doing.

SPEAKER_03: 45:05

You know, having grown up a Braves fan, we always disliked the Yankees. However, fun story. Um I was showing at the Florida State Fair showing a pig and was auctioning off my pig, and I didn't know who the buyer was, and somebody pointed out to me. And I look out in the crowd, and I think it was a senior in high school, it was George Steinbrenner sitting right there who bought my pig. And I went over and talked to him, and he was a lovely man. He asked me where I was going to college, what I wanted to do in life, and it really changed my perspective on the Yankees, still a Braves fan, but he was a lovely man who bought my pig and sat there and had a conversation with me like he was a normal, you know, just everyday regular man, um, not the controversial owner of the Yankees. So that is my Yankee story. This he was a really cool guy.

SPEAKER_00: 46:00

That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_03: 46:01

Yes, it was awesome. Well, Eric, is there anything else that you would like to say to our listeners before we cut off? This has been amazing. I appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_00: 46:11

Oh, I really enjoyed it, Amanda. Thank you for asking me to join your podcast. Um, I enjoy them very much. Um, uh the only thing I would say is that, you know, I I I'm in this for the love of it. I mean, obviously I need to make a living, but you know, if if you have any questions or any concerns, like I said earlier, you know, hit me up, contact me. Um happy to jump on the phone with you and and discuss any questions you have. You know, free of charge for, you know, um that initial call just to to chat things out. If you have a you know, question or something like that. Um I'm I'm really interested, you know, uh in our industry. You know, it's so important. It's what I do, it's it's who I am, and I want to help those involved in the industry. It's important to me. So um don't hesitate to reach out to me.

SPEAKER_03: 47:01

Thank you so much. Thanks for your time and your passion for this critical industry. I think um, you know, we we both have such a passion for keeping this very important industry afloat. So thank you for your passion and thanks for your time.

SPEAKER_00: 47:16

Absolutely. Thank you, Amanda.  

Hello and welcome to our first ever Ask Me episode of the Legal Field Podcast. These Ask Me episodes will air the second Thursday of each month, and on these episodes, I will try my best to answer all of your questions. If you have any questions that you would like for me to answer during an Ask Me segment, please email them to me at Amanda at AG Law.com. That's Amanda at f o r I a l. Now, before we get started with this ask me episode, I have to provide some legal disclaimers. The information provided in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. It is not intended to create and receipt. If it does not constitute an attorney client relationship. You should not act upon any information provided without seeking professional legal counsel tailored to your specific situation. We recommend consulting with a qualified attorney for advice on any particular legal matter. So now that that stuff is out of the way, the listeners have submitted some really awesome questions thus far, and I'm going to take some time to answer a few of those questions here today. I've actually received quite a few questions over the last couple of weeks regarding the loss of ad classification for tax purposes on your AG properties. Many of you have had your AG classifications removed by your local property. Appraiser's offices this past year seems to have been quite a regular thing in this past year, and some of you have asked why your property taxes have been reassessed and some of you say yours have doubled where there has been no change in your use. Now, let me say this has been a really hot topic lately, especially over the last few months especially notices have been sent out this year for a lot of folks who have not had their AG classification renewed, and many of you have had your AG classifications dropped after many, many years of having that classification. I've been working on a lot of these issues for quite a few clients here in Florida, particularly in Central Florida. So just know, if you're dealing with these issues with losing your ad classification or having your assessments changed dramatically, you are not alone. So first of all, let's do a little bit of education here on what the ad classification is. Despite some common jargon that's often thrown around. This is not an AG exemption. It is not exempt a property owner from paying taxes on their property. The AG classification is set forth in section one ninety three point four six one of the Florida Statutes, and it provides for the property to be classified at the value of the property for agricultural uses. And this protects the property owner from having the land assessed at the same rates as developed property. This is especially important here in Florida where we've got so many areas where we've got development popping up all around, and those ag lands are being surrounded by these developments that are popping up all around. And so it's a way to allow our ag producers to keep their land in agriculture and not have it assessed at what the value would be if it was developed into a subdivision or into a multi-use, um, property. Now, in counties all over the state of Florida, I've seen a lot of people, as I said earlier, having their ad classifications removed by county property appraiser's this year. It's happening where people have had their ag classification for twenty years, for twenty five years, for fifteen years, and then suddenly they weren't renewed this year. And I believe that there are definitely some reasons that we have seen an increase in denials and non renewals. But I'll say that's a whole conversation for another day, perhaps offline if anybody would ever like to discuss that. I will say that one of the big issues that I'm seeing is that folks who have had damage from Hurricanes, and they're still trying to rebuild, and they've lost their ad classification because they don't currently have production agriculture or they don't have production agriculture on all of their property because they're still trying to rebuild from Ian and Milton and even some people with Helene and other parts of the state. And so this includes flooding damage, fencing damage, so many other types of damages that come from hurricanes and other natural disasters. But as we know, most of what we have seen here over the last few years in Florida has been significant hurricane damage. And I've been seeing a lot with clients and, you know, folks around the state that the county property Appraiser's are coming in. And oftentimes they're seeing that production has halted or has been slowed, or there's not production on the entire parcel or not. Um, any sort of, in their opinion, ag work going on on all of the parcels. So they're denying and revoking AG classifications. However, as I've seen a lot these same property Appraiser's offices are unaware or say that they're unaware of a very critical provision in one ninety three point four six one that I mentioned earlier, which is the statute that provides for these classifications. And this specific provision in that statute protects agricultural producers after a natural disaster. So section seven C of the AG classification statute one ninety three point four six one provides a property owner with five years of the AG classification. If you've had hurricane damage or damage from any natural disaster for which an emergency declaration has been made and it has halted your ag production. This subsection was obviously added by the Florida Legislature and it was added a few years ago, but it was obviously added for good reason. If AG producers have damages from a natural disaster, particularly hurricanes here in Florida, it's really expensive to rebuild. You know, as it is, you're you've got fences down, you've got trees down, you've got flooding, you've got all these issues and especially for smaller producers, but for all producers, it gets very expensive to rebuild. And if you're having to worry about getting the money to rebuild and having to worry about your property taxes going up because you don't have the classification, because at the moment you're not currently in production. Because of that hurricane damage, we would have even more ag lands going to development than we already have. And as we all know, we are seeing Florida develop very rapidly and a lot of ag lands going into development. So the legislature passed this for good reason, so that if you have damages that halt your ag production, you get five years of the ag classification after that, even without having your operations back up and running. It gives the producers, it gives the property owner time to get things fixed and back up and running. I've seen many property Appraiser's offices this year who seem to be, or at least act clueless as to the existence of this provision, and I've managed to get multiple clients at Add classifications reinstated under this subsection of one hundred ninety three point four six one. By going to the property appraiser and explaining them, they have an obligation to keep that add classification for the property owner for five years, and they do not have the authority to revoke that when there was hurricane or other natural disaster damage. So Hurricane Ian was three years ago. If someone had damage from three years ago, they still have two more years from now of the classification. Hurricane Milton was a year ago. Someone still has four years, um, of the classification. If they had damages that halted their production. If you've had your Act classification denied, it may have been denied for other alleged reasons by a property Appraiser's offices. Um, if you have a bona fide ag operation and not a hobby farm, then you might have a solid argument for the reinstatement of your ag exemption. Also, if you have a legitimate agritourism operation, you might have a solid argument for the reinstatement of your AG exemption. There are some property appraiser's offices that don't seem to properly apply this ag classification in agritourism operations, and sometimes it just takes a little bit of education and conversation with them. As for the questions regarding significant increases in assessed values this year, not necessarily the revocation or denial of ag classifications. Um, just so everyone knows, the property Appraiser's office is typically do assessments on January first of each year for that following the following year, and there could be many issues involved in such significant increases. If you've had your your taxes or your assessed value double. And those would need to be reviewed on a case by case basis to see why your assessments increased so much. There could be a host of reasons for that. Some of them legitimate, some of them not legitimate. And you would need to push back and try to get your assessed value to the appropriate place. Now moving on. Another question that I receive from a few listeners, and we see this happening all over the state. We see it happening a lot here in my county of Volusia County, but we're seeing it happen everywhere. And a lot of this has to do with the development I mentioned earlier. These questions focus on what actions can be taken against either local governments or neighboring private property owners or developers due to flooding issues on your properties due to development, construction, or other actions taken by either private property owners, developers and local governments. This is a big one. And again, this is going to be a case by case analysis. But I do want to provide a few options that are out there. Perhaps if if your facts meet these scenarios, there are some possible options for folks who are experiencing major flooding issues caused by either government actions or the actions of neighbors and And developers. The first of these legal actions is something that's called inverse condemnation. So inverse condemnation is basically a claim made by a property owner that the effect of a governmental action on its property is so devastating that it's the equivalent of the direct exercise of eminent domain and requires just compensation. And these claims are also can also be referred to as regulatory takings. And sometimes these claims happen because of some action the government has taken that has allowed this flooding to occur to establish liability. Um property owner will need to prove that it was deprived of all or substantially all economically beneficial use of its property, and that can be temporarily or permanently. And if your property was flooded, um, due to government drainage, your access was cut off by a road project or a regulation. Is major land useless? You might have an inverse condemnation claim. So this could be sometimes a wide variety of things. Government actions that have led to the subsequent flooding of your property. And you could potentially have an inverse condemnation claim. So basically, just think of it as if it wasn't a taking where they physically came in and took your property and took ownership of your property, but their actions were led to the effect of taking your property because it made your property not be able to be used in the way that it needed to be used. And that's why they're called regulatory taking sometimes and why it's inverse condemnation. Now, if the flooding issues involve perhaps a neighbor's action being the cause of the flooding or developers being the cause of the flooding, then there's also a potential for a lawsuit under common law nuisance. And Florida's common law follows what's called the reasonable use rule for surface water, which allows property owners to manage runoff in a way that's considerate of their neighbors. But if that runoff management ends up harming another property, then it may give rise to liability. Um, for that person who has not been reasonably managing their runoff and has been harming the property of another. So if a neighbor changes their land in a way that significantly increases runoff to your property, there's a chance of liability if a neighbor negligently fails to maintain their property in a way that prevents excessive runoff, they might be responsible for damages to your property. And then kind of a third thing here on a broader scale, there's also the potential for a claim for public nuisance. Um, and this is when an action significantly interferes with public rights affecting a community or neighborhood at large, um, construction or things that affect local waterways that lead to widespread flooding. and there are a few factors that need to be considered in public nuisance. Um, and again, all of these are potential causes of action for when your property is flooded. And all of these causes of action, along with a whole host of other potential causes of action. This is not an exhaustive list, of course. These are just some of the the big things that I wanted to discuss and throw out there. Um, these are all very fact specific and must be analyzed on a case by case basis. So you can't it's not just a one size fits all. You need to look at all the details and the facts and the facts that can be proven. Um, to be able to see if you do have a case for one of these causes of action if there is flooding on your property. Now, that's all the time that we have today for our Ask Me episode, but if you have any other questions or topics that you want me to discuss in the next episode, again, please feel free to email those to me at Amanda at AG Law.com. Thanks and have a great day!

    Speaker 2: 01:17

Hello, and welcome to the Legal Field Podcast. I'm your host, Amanda Carl, and we are so excited today to have Stephanie Stuckey as our guest on the podcast. Welcome, Stephanie.

Speaker: 01:29

Thank you, Amanda. I am so delighted to be here.

Speaker 2: 01:32

Thank you. Well, Stephanie is the CEO of the Stuckey's Company. Yes, that Stuckey's, that many of you know and have been to, and is always out and about promoting the brand. So if you don't follow Stephanie on social media, I would highly recommend it, especially on LinkedIn. And I want to talk a little bit as we get started about the Stuckey's Company. Most of us who are 35 and older, some of us way more than 35 or older, have very fond memories of Stuckey's. I remember as a kid, for good report cards, we would go get ice cream at Stuckey's as our reward. And we had kind of our local one that was a gathering spot. And I know a lot of people who worked at Stuckey's, and it was the ultimate road trip stop long before that other company that rhymes with Stuckey's came along that a lot of people like to stop at. So Stuckey's was our ultimate road trip stop. So, Stephanie, can you give us a little history on the company, on the brand, um, how many stores at Peak, when it was founded, and a little background for folks?

Speaker: 02:30

I'd be happy. Let's take a little trip in the Wayback Machine. First, I'll do a quick correction. I am now the chair of the board. I transitioned my role. Oh, it's been almost two years, and it's been delightful. My business partner became CEO. He's doing a terrific job. His name is RG Lamar, and I am at his side supporting the team and helping this company grow as the board chair. I also do branding, marketing, events. So there's a lot packed into my title, but I am happily no longer the CEO. As for the history of the company, we were founded in 1937 as a roadside pecan stand. And my grandfather grew from that to at its peak by the 1970s. We had over 370 stores in 40 states. And one of those was in your neighborhood. We were known as a road tripping brand. We were mostly on the Interstate Highway. And but we were connected to small communities because we would be at the highway exit for these small communities. So I love hearing stories like yours that that was your go-to gathering place for ice cream rewards. And we sold pecan snacks and candies. We're best known for our pecan lagrel, but also just a lot of fun, kitschy souvenirs, coonskin caps, snow globes, Florida marmalades, ashtrays shaped like toilets that say put your butts here. I mean, just silly fun stuff. And yes, we get a lot of comparisons to Buc-ee's. I will say I absolutely love Buc-ee's. I think it's fun what they're doing, and they're helping people rediscover and discover for the first time the road trip. So I'm all for Buc-ee's. I stopped there as well. My grandfather sold Stuckey's when I was a little girl. It was out of our family for decades. Unfortunately, the brand declined over years and years. And there are a lot of factors. But suffice it to say, by the time I had the unexpected opportunity in 2019 to buy the company back, it was six figures in the red. And those stores had dwindled to today there are 13 original stores. There's also some additional locations that are licensed that are grandfathered in and they carry our name, but they don't look like an original store. So we've got about 28 stores total. We don't own or operate them. And my business partners and I have really changed the company around. And we are focused actually just the way the company began on pecan snacks and candies. So we bought a manufacturing facility in Wrens, Georgia. We sell pecan snacks and candies and we supply to almost 5,000 retail doors nationwide, everywhere from mom and pop candy shops to convenience store chains, grocery store chains like Food Lion and Ingalls, and a lot of hardware, bombgars and rural King, and the military. We're in all the Navy Nextcom shops. So 90 plus percent of our revenue is focused on the product. And then we still have these legacy stores that I love and I have an emotional attachment to. But the real driving force of moving this brand is making pecan stacks and candies. That was a lot. And I'm sorry, it's 87 years. I was trying to do an elevator pitch, but I think it may have been like a 200-story building that I did the elevator pitch for.

Speaker 2: 05:49

Well, it's it's fitting that this episode will air on Thanksgiving when everybody's eating pecan pie that um you know that this is you're more focused now on the pecan side of things, which is great. And, you know, these these businesses who have that have been around a long time are so critical in in our country, foundations of communities, foundations um of our country. So it's it's great to see um, you know, this brand, the way you guys are taking it back to its roots, which is really cool um to go back to those pecan Georgia pecan roots. Um and you can't beat a they're just the best. Georgia pecan.

Speaker: 06:27

And I've said something about pecans by the way. We are the only snack nut. I know how it's interesting. I tend to like identify myself with the pecan. We we are the only snack nut native to this country. I mean, you don't see a Brazil nut in your backyard, do you, right? Or a cashew plant. No, we're the only nut that's native now. Almonds are now grown in this country, but they aren't native. And so that's why so many people have an emotional attachment to the pecan. They'll say, Oh, my grandmother had a pecan tree in her backyard. Well, of course you did because it grows wild. So we just love that connection. And we do source, yeah, we get our pecans locally, most of them from Georgia. Georgia grows a third of the national production, and there were some 18 states. I hope I got that fact wrong. If I got it wrong, it's like 18 to 20 states that grow pecans natively in this country, and Florida is one of them.

Speaker 2: 07:23

That's a really cool. So every week I try to do a Florida Ag Facts, you know, minute post on my Facebook page, and that's a really cool ag fact about pecans being the only native snack not to the United States. That's a very add in to a Florida ag fact.

Speaker: 07:40

And and you know, like you said, it's Thanksgiving pecan pie time, but people are reinventing the pecan pie and they're making bars and cookies and all sorts of fun things. Pecans also go in fruitcakes, pecans aren't just for pie anymore. So 'tis the season. It is pecan season, and we're getting the new crop bagged and shipped out all over the world and well, really all over the country. We focus domestically, but in the Navy, we are we are global, so we can claim the world. But yeah, it's pecan season, best season of the year.

Speaker 2: 08:07

Bourbon balls, one of my favorites, bourbon balls of pecan.

Speaker: 08:11

Absolutely. Yeah, shout out to Kentucky.

Speaker 2: 08:14

Yes, absolutely. So you said that you know the company was sold when you were a very small child and you ended up going to law school, correct? Yes. Do you want to tell us about your professional history and kind of how you ended up where you were or where you are now, um, taking back over the Stuckey's name and Stuckey's company?

Speaker: 08:38

Yeah, so I'm still a lawyer and I I just so value that part of my professional career because it was my career for over three decades. I practiced several areas of law. I started as a public defender. I transitioned from there to being a state representative, and I was on the judiciary committee for 14 years. So I went from arguing laws in court to crafting laws in the state legislature. And then I transitioned from there. I didn't run for re-election, and I ran an environmental nonprofit law firm. And then I got a call from the mayor of Atlanta and he asked me to head up sustainability for the city of Atlanta. So I became part of the mayor's cabinet and did all things related to the environment. And so at that point, I was transitioning to doing environmental law. And then I, when the mayor's term ended, I was transitioning to a new role. I was looking, I was actually still working in sustainability when I got a call that's from some of the investors that owned Stuckey's at that point that the company was for sale. And I would not have pivoted to such an extreme extent had it not been a family business that I had a very strong emotional connection to. And no one else was stepping up to the plate. That's the bottom line. No one else wanted to buy the company.

Speaker 2: 10:03

And it was perfect timing, right?

Speaker: 10:07

And then I found my business partners a year later. So there was there was that first year that was really hard. I we had a handful of employees who were really terrific in keeping the business alive. And we were still trying to figure things out when I I got my business partner. And he's just RG Lamar. He's been such a blessing.

Speaker 2: 10:27

And it's really hard in that first year of trying to run a business, especially kind of jumping into it and transitioning into that, having not been, you know, there working to come in and take over. So that's a really hard first year, I'm sure.

Speaker: 10:42

Absolutely. But as we know, a running a law firm is a business. And I I skimmed over some of my legal career. I did when I was in the legislature, I did have a private practice with two law partners who are still law partners. And I see them all the time. We had dinner the other week and we joked, I can always fall back on my law degree. But that that is a business. And so I was very fortunate that I had that business experience. As my partner once said to me, Stephanie, practicing law is not an intellectual exercise. It is about making money. And even though she didn't mean that a hundred percent, the whole point was I would often just want to take cases because I thought they were interesting and I was passionate about the the client. And she would say, Okay, can they pay? And you have to you have to deal with the realities of running a business as much as you may be fascinated or interested in something, you do have to pay your staff and keep the lights on.

Speaker 2: 11:47

It's a business. And that legal background, I'm sure, really helps when you took over Stuckey's because there's, you know, I tell people all the time, my niece is going to law school, and I tell her all the time, even if you don't end up practicing law, um, and I tell a lot of people this, there's so many things that your law degree and that level of training helps you prepare for and helps you have a different mindset for um that sets you up for success.

Speaker: 12:13

I agree. And I still have my law license for that very reason. But we use outside counsel at Stuckey's because, you know, the saying, the lawyer who represents him or herself has a fool for a client. You you don't represent yourself. And and I'm not an expert in trademark law. We do quite a bit with trademarks to make sure our our logo and other trademarks are protected. And business law was not my background. So we have outside counsel, but just being able to effectively work with outside counsel and understand the law. I did take business law and some business law-related classes and in law school and certainly in the legislature, I dealt with business law. So it's good to, it's a great background to have. You just learn how to analyze. And if you've done trial work, which I did, you know how to present while on your feet. You know how to defend a tough case. And I'm defending a tough case some days with Stuckey's. We're we're a legacy brand that peaked in the 70s. So I'm advocating for what is sometimes a tough cause. And so you've got to build those skills. And absolutely, I credit my legal training for where I am today.

Speaker 2: 13:30

There are so many different ways to be an advocate and so many different um causes to advocate for. So that background is really important. Um so what's your goal? Go to law school.

Speaker: 13:41

Tell your niece, go to law school.

Speaker 2: 13:43

Exactly. Exactly. So you and your business partner, what's your goal or vision for the Stuckey's brand? If you want to tell our listeners kind of how are you making this happen? What is your plan? What is your goal for the future?

Speaker: 13:58

You know, I'll tell you, the goal has shifted for me, but I think the team goal remains aligned that we want to be a premier provider of pecan snacks and candies. And we're really more in the BG space where we're we're selling to other retailers, but we do have a small candy outlet, which I run, by the way. It's connected to the candy plant. And we've had financial goals. We've said, oh, we want to hit 50 million in sales, which we're not there yet. Uh reduce that quite a bit. We're we're probably in the 10 million range. Uh the season's not over, so we'll see. Uh so we, you know, we have the typical business sales goals, but as I've been in this longer, and you have all the crazy ups and downs that go with running a small business, you have those, you have those Wednesday nights at 3 a.m. because our payroll is on Thursdays when you wake up in cold sweats praying you've you're making payroll and you're not overdrafting and you don't have to put it on your credit card. I mean, that's the reality of running a small business. And if you haven't had those moments, honestly, if you really run a small business, it takes grit, it takes these tough moments and it builds that that resilience that you need. And so going through these crazy ups and downs of of this journey to revive a brand, my my goals have shifted. My my goal is am I providing quality jobs for an amazing team in the small town of Wrens, Georgia? Are we providing a quality product that makes lives people, makes people's lives better? You know, are we helping to advance America's native nut by talking about the pecan and lifting up our pecan farmers and letting people know there's there's a farmer behind the pecans that you buy in this country. So that's more of where I'm focused is are we building community? Are we making connections? Are we making lives better? I know that sounds a little lofty, but that's what really motivates me. That's what keeps me going in these hard times when we're just like, oh my God, we've got to add a third shift to meet all the production demands.

Speaker 2: 16:09

It's like, all right, we're employing people, we're making a small business combined with agriculture and nature and natural disasters and all those things that can also go wrong that no one can prevent, no one can help. So you throw all that together and it is stressful.

Speaker: 16:28

Yeah, but it's about the team. I mean, my business partners are the ones you want with you in a foxhole when the fighting gets hairy, you know. And and it's only when you're tested by hard times. Hurricane Helene kicked our Patootie. It was the worst. I don't ever want to go through that again, but we may, you never know, but what a blessing. This has been a hurricane-free Oh yeah, largely in the west.

Speaker 2: 16:55

I think in a decade we haven't had a Gulf storm. I think I saw the other day. And what a blessing. I still kind of knock on wood and think we're not out of November. Maybe we have a late storm, but I'm holding out hope. So my dad has hunting property in Georgetown, Georgia, over between uh Columbus and Albany. And so we die, South Georgia. We just went through it last weekend, and every time we drive through, I, you know, look at the the pecan trees on our way and see how they've recovered from Helene, you know, how like how people are recovering. Because when we drove by right after, I it was it was devastating. Um see the damage that was done to the pecan growers in that area. It was devastating.

Speaker: 17:37

Yeah. Well, you're in pecan country, that whole area, and then where our pecan plant is, the the turn the the storm took a turn that no one was anticipating and went towards Augusta, and that whole Augusta community was devastated. And that's where we are. We're right outside of Augusta on Highway One. So I mean the bigger picture was you never know what's gonna happen.

Speaker 2: 17:59

No, you don't. And I it that's what makes you know agriculture, small businesses, it makes it so tough. But like you said, it's the people. We see it in in the ag industry with a lot of you know clients all the time. It's the most resilient group of people. It is and you have to be when you're dealing with forces of nature, when you're dealing with storms, when you're dealing with price issues, when you're dealing with labor issues, it you have to be the most resilient people.

Speaker: 18:25

And I'm sure the economy I've got a a lot of uncertainty. The government spent down. I mean, we're connected with the USDA, and we're we're all connected.

Speaker 2: 18:41

And you you overcome those struggles, and it's with a great team. Uh and it seems like you have on your social media, it seems like you have the most wonderful team there in the plant, you know, all over. It seems like you have just the most amazing team.

Speaker: 18:56

I mean, seriously, from Sabrina who cleans the floors. Well, Sabrina does a little bit of everything. The other day she was finished doing her cleaning work and she's like, Can I help? And I was like, Heck yeah, you can. So she was stocking the chocolate truffles in the candy shelf, and she loved it. And I was like, listen, from now on, if you get done, come help in the candy shop, which she loves. So, yeah, it's you know, and um Amanda, who works in food safety and procurement, we we had a huge chocolate order. We're backlogged, and Amanda's been working the chocolate line for three weeks, starting at 6 a.m. We changed the shift. So our food safety procurement person that is a desk job, you know, it's a managerial type role. She's working the chocolate line.

Speaker 2: 19:45

So she's we all need more Sabrinas than Amanda's in our lives, apparently.

Speaker: 19:48

Yeah. Yeah. And I I will say not everyone wants to be on social media, so I'm respectful of that. We have a lot of great team members that you just don't see. Like Tara's like, You can only show my hands. Yeah. So And I love it when when our employees have interesting hands, like some of them have tattoos going up their arms. And I'm like, yes, it's okay if I can't do your face, but can I please show you beautiful tattoos while you're making chocolates? So it makes I I need stuff that looks interesting and fun. So that's incredible. It's great. And you get to know the employees better that way. They know I'm out there. You know them personally. What they're doing. And I'll tell them, I'm like, you know what we're making today, that's going to Rural King. That will be out in Colorado or that will be in Nebraska. And it's kind of fun to think, I made that.

Speaker 2: 20:33

And it makes out of their work too to know, you know, this is where this is going. And, you know, that's that servant leadership on your part as well to know the employees. And that makes a work environment just so much better. Um, you know, I've been in work environments where management doesn't know anyone who's, you know, who's working underneath them. Um, and when you have a leader that's in the trenches that knows the employees, that knows about them, that knows their tattoos, um, you know, that's that's something special to make it more than just a place that they go to work and clock in. They have pride. And that level of pride makes for better employees, too.

Speaker: 21:11

100%. And it it gets very real if you're in a small community. Wrens Georgia's population 2,000. So I can't go anywhere without running into employees or relatives of employees. So in a small community, really everyone's connected and half our employees are related to one another. If there's a funeral in town, honestly, we we'll have 10 people absent because they're related.

Speaker 2: 21:36

I didn't realize the population was that small. So we drive through there about once a year and pass the plant to go to Helen, Georgia. We'll be going through next week to stop by Helen on our way to Bryson City for Thanksgiving. Uh actually pecan pies at a lovely bakery in Helen that is so good, we drive out of our way to go get pecan pies from a bakery in Helen, Georgia. What's the bakery's name?

Speaker: 21:58

Do you remember?

Speaker 2: 21:59

I don't want to put you on the spot. It's IGA. It's the IGA grocery store right in downtown Helen. Yes. Wow. Your baked goods are amazing. I'll give a shout out to Betty's. Their baked goods are amazing, and their pecan pies are delicious.

Speaker: 22:12

So instead of baking over there, you gotta hook me up with them because IgAs are independent, as you know, and we have our product in some IGA locations, and so we might be able to set up an account. We did have an account in Helen, it was a kettle fudge place, and they sold our candies. And honestly, I don't remember what the falling out was. You know, sometimes things happen. I think we had an order late, it may have been on us, but and then they were happening.

Speaker 2: 22:41

I'll have to talk to them when I'm in there next Tuesday, picking up pecan pies.

Speaker: 22:44

We'll make it anyone listening, y'all hook us up. We're all about connecting, help us spread this little comeback brand to more locations. We're always looking for new uh retailers. I will tell you, if you recommend a large chain, that's a little harder for us because you have to go through distributors and the markup gets tight. And so there's a lot that goes into that. But like a small retail shop is easy for us to set up. We just distribute direct to them.

Speaker 2: 23:14

Well, Betty's is amazing. So I'll try to make that connection because I'll y'all tell them maybe your pecan pies would taste better if you had Stucky's pecans. Yeah.

unknown: 23:23

Right.

Speaker: 23:23

We do that. We we provide ingredients, we do private labels, so I can't brag about some of our accounts because our name isn't on it, but we'll make product for other companies. So that's one of the things we do to keep the the machines running, kiddo. Uh we may not have demand year-round as strong as we need it to be to keep the staffing for Q4. And so if we can make sure Q1, Q2, especially, we're filling that demand with some private label. We're gonna do it. Happen. We'll connect that stuckey's. Let's make it happen. And and she no one's the wiser. They don't she doesn't have to say made with stuckey's pecan pecans, but she can. It may help you anyway. I'm always middle and dealing, you can tell. That's you got to.

Speaker 2: 24:12

It's how things get done. I think it really is. And I think you know, I think a lot of times women can make that get done, you know, in those ways too. You know, I think we're we're really good at that skill.

Speaker: 24:22

So well, my male partners, but yeah, I think sometimes women are just like, oh yeah, let's go do that together.

Speaker 2: 24:29

And hey, I know so and so and so and so, and you know, we're always matchmaking in one way or another.

Speaker: 24:34

We partner with a pimento cheese company, it's called Jenny J's Pomina Cheese, absolutely delicious. They put our pecans in their pimento cheese, and it says made with Stuckey's Pecans. And that all started at a little social mixer for moms, moms of kids who go to Auburn. And my son went to Auburn for one year. He's now at Coastal College in South Georgia. But in any event, it was like a mom's event, and we started talking, and literally within two weeks, we made it happen. And they've been selling our pecans for two years. They're awesome. I love the genny days, Linkies.

Speaker 2: 25:10

Pimento cheese is one of my favorite foods. So I'm always finding and trying different canoe cheeses when I travel. So good. That's amazing. See, we can make things happen. We'll make Betty's happen. We'll try to be pleading. Sorry, I get off on tangents there. Um, so we we've talked a little bit about the pecan side of the business. Do you guys partner with growers? Um, do you own some of the um the farms or do you partner with local growers?

Speaker: 25:40

Yes, it's all about partnerships. So my family has a small pecan grove, about 100 acres, and my business partner has tenfold of that with his family, Lamar Pecan. So we both are pecan growers, but my business partner is legit a farm farmer. He ran his family's farm before joining forces with with me and taking on the Stuckey's adventure. And he is chair of the Georgia Pecan Growers Association. So we are very, very tied in with the pecan community in Georgia, and he brokers all our relationships with foresting our pecans. We source from shellers mostly, and the shellers will source from the growers. So there's a three-tiered system, right? You grow it, then you process it. Meaning, you know, when you we see it's pecan tree shaking time, right? And I had this naive notion when I started this adventure, even though my family was in the pecan business, I'd never really been around it. And I went to see the tree shaking. Oh my gosh, everything comes down. You get limbs, you get branches, you get dirt, you get squirrels falling all over the place. And that initial crop, what you get is just big truckloads of nuts, debris, stuff, right? And so you have to clean all that out. That's the first step. And then you have to shell them, which is a whole process. And then you do what we do, which is the value add, right? The roasted, the coated, the flavored, the candied, all of that. So we take them shelled, and we are a critical middle link in bringing farm products to market. Because yes, some people love pecans and shell, and we would we do sell pecans and shell. But the majority of folks want their pecans shelled and they they like them raw, shelled or pieces. We sell all sorts of pieces, and we sell meal, which is the fine grain. And it's like breadcrumbs, it's kind of that consistency. And anything you can use for breadcrumbs, you can use pecan meal, and it's better than flour because it's gluten-free. So people have gluten issues, they just love it, and it's got protein in it. So it's delish. So we make so we do all of that sort of value add product, and we help pecan growers get their product to market. And so that is that is our space. And so we really sort of own that space, even though we have this strong connection to the growing community. We we see our role in in the process as doing the value add.

Speaker 2: 28:27

And this is a great education for a lot of our listeners, too, who may not be in the pecan industry, have seen anything in the pecan industry, to understand how critical every link in that supply chain is to eventually get that product to the consumer. There's so many critical components and so much labor and so much hard work that goes into that bag of pecans that you buy to put in your pies or whatever.

Speaker: 28:52

And the, you know, this is ag law. So, you know, understanding that process is critical to being an effective advocate for your clients in this space. So we have to negotiate these contracts. And how do you, you know, agriculture is such a tough market when you're trying to negotiate pricing.

Speaker 2: 29:14

Absolutely.

Speaker: 29:16

Changes and it's it's complicated even more by the tariff situation. And I don't want to get political, but the, you know, the tariff situation existed under the Biden administration too. So it's it's it's agnostic at times that we we have tariff challenges throughout, and just making sure you're locking in as much as possible what your pricing is going to be because the consumers want consistency in their pricing and they don't want sticker shock. Now, more than ever, we're trying to be conscious that consumers are looking for value in the product, but also value in the price. So, all that's critical to have an attorney who's gonna help you negotiate your contracts and what the terms are.

Speaker 2: 29:59

And so that certainty and also understanding kind of, you know, where the the grower side, where they're coming from, and some of the certainty they need to make that negotiation happen to benefit both parties to make sure the product gets to market because ag is hard. You're right. It is so hard. There's so many variables that, you know, I think the consumer often doesn't understand a lot of this stuff that goes on to get that product to market and these contract situations and negotiations and the labor and the tariffs and the, you know, just all these things that add up, supply chain issues and you know, transportation, as we saw during COVID, when supply chain just caused so many issues. And I'm sure you guys dealt with all kinds of you know that during COVID. Um, it just creates so many challenges that I think the end consumer doesn't always understand. I like to do a really good job on podcasts and my Florida Ag Law flag facts of trying to educate people on uh these components of where their food comes from to understand why there may be you know price issues at the store. It's not the grower, it's not your producer, it's not the you know, anybody in that supply chain really trying to gouge you most times.

Speaker: 31:09

There's a lot of margins are so, so tight in grocery. I I had no understanding. Like honestly, when I started this adventure, I did not understand the difference between markup or margin. I didn't have a clue what COGS was. Like, what's Cogs? And they look cost of goods sold, Stephanie. Yeah. So all of that, and you have to understand that whole structure, how the producer in the agriculture industry interacts with often there's a distributor, often there's a broker, often there's a buyer, right? Uh manufacturers will employ a buyer, and all they do is buy the product. And we don't just buy pecans, we buy sugar. That's that's America made. Uh, we buy chocolate that's processed in America, but obviously the cocoa beans are coming from another country. We don't grow that here. But understanding all the different components that gets your product on the shelves of a supermarket, plus, you have to pay once you get on the supermarket, they expect you to pay for promotions. Right. You don't just lock in at one price, they want quarterly promotions locked in there. And then they they want you to, you know, sometimes they want everyday low pricing. Yeah, that's we're in Walmart. Walmart wants everyday low pricing. We're not in every Walmart, but we're actually in quite a few Walmart locations in Florida. We're in a vintage vibe set, and you'll find a Pecan Long Group. But anyways, it's it's it's a complex network.

Speaker 2: 32:40

That's amazing and hard to get into as well, to get into that Walmart network, um, which takes a lot of work.

Speaker: 32:50

What's interesting is they really do value Made in America. So, and they value family brands, but made in America especially. So they have a Made in America once-a-year annual showcase, and you can apply if you are a small vendor, you want to provide to Walmart, and you pitch, you go to that event. If they select you, you go to that event, and it's it's like Shark Tank. Only people aren't as mean, they're nice. And you have 30 minutes with a Walmart buyer, and they'll give you a golden ticket if they choose your brand. And quite often you you don't go in every store. You don't want that, you're not ready for it. So they'll work with small brands and they'll say, Okay, your brand is known in Florida. Let's say you make a citrus juice or something. Uh, we'll we'll put you only in our Florida locations. Let's see how you do. And maybe that's where you stay. You don't go nationwide at Walmart, but that's a good study account. Yes.

Speaker 2: 33:48

So primarily to scale up to nationwide. That is just a huge challenge and more than maybe you could take on for a lot of small businesses to keep up with the demand.

Speaker: 33:59

Exactly. But but made in America, that's a big deal. And here's the interesting thing. I'm would love it if any lawyers have more insight into this. But I've been doing just online research, so not extensive. I haven't gone to a law library and really delved in. But from what I can tell, the Made in America label, there is no official certification. So if you want to slap on your packaging, Made in America, there is no, it's, you know, like to be uh have sustainability certifications. There's a number of respectable organizations out there, and you you put their seal on there, right? And you can't do that unless you've actually earned the certificate or we're SQF certified, which is a food safety certification. You have to actually get that certification from a credible outside independent organization that's been vetted and approved, yada yada. There's nothing like that for made in America. So you can slap that label on now. Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but but if you aren't made in America, people can call you out on it. And so that that, you know, hopefully there's the court of consumers out there who will say, wait a minute, you get that packaging from you get your you get you make that in Mexico, like, but we are 100% made in America. So we we're we're gonna start putting made in America on our packaging. And there's all you're listening who thinks I'm mistaken in that, please call me because I would love some insight.

Speaker 2: 35:31

And so on the cocoa issue, too, you the University of Florida has been working on cocoa production in Florida. So maybe one day, maybe one day we get cocoa production here in Florida. There's a few people, from what I understand, testing it out in South Florida, Miami Homestead area. So maybe one day we'll have Florida produce cocoa. Let's do it. Have full-on um American um. So I you know, I do a lot of, we talked about advocacy. I do a lot of what I call advocacy work for a lot of my clients to help keep them, you know, out of the headlines, you know, to help preserve some of these small family businesses that are so critical. And as you know, one regulatory or legal issue can just shut down an entire business. And a lot of times they're struggling with these targets, they're struggling with pricing. What advice would you give to other small businesses, small family farms, small businesses in general for keeping up, you know, to keep fighting, you know, any advice that you could give to them to keep up the work on this?

Speaker: 36:37

Well, of course, have a good attorney. And your attorney is going to hopefully keep you in the loop. But I can't stress enough how important it is to have a trade association that has your back because I can't, stuckies can't afford a lobbyist. And we can't afford to have somebody who is 24-7, you know, paying attention to all the regulatory ups and downs. But our trade associations do. And so we belong to the Georgia Grown Program with the Georgia Department of Agriculture. That is a huge partner of ours. We belong to the National Confectioners Association. I sit on their board. So anything dealing with sugar pricing and candy business, uh, confectioner business, some people belong to the bakery and confectioners, but we're less baked goods. We're candy. So we belong to the confectioners association. We also belong to the retail confectioners international, which is the small candy shops throughout America, and also the small candy manufacturers. And then the other one is I mentioned earlier, the Georgia Pecan Growers Association. So all of those groups advocate for you and they keep you up to date. And I get in my inbox all the time, I mean, like once a week, a tariff update from the Confectioners Association. And they they don't just have one lobbyist, they have a team. And these aren't contract lobbyists, these are full-time in-house lobbyists. And once a year we have a lobby day and we fly in and everything is super organized, and we we go to all the congressional offices and we deliver little parcels of candy. I can't tell you how welcome we are. We we have a pack, it's called the candy pack, and it's very sweet, pun intended. So, you know, it's just belong to a trade association, convenience store association. I belong to that because we are we still have those licensed ducky stores. So we have our foot in that door. So just and that's safe.

Speaker 2: 38:44

Yes. Yep. That's it's what that's kind of one of the reasons I left in-house counsel life. I was general counsel right before I started my own firm for a fertilizer company and had been in-house for another large company. But I wanted to do a lot of fractional general counsel work for small farmers because, like you said, a lot of times you can't have your own person or your own lobbyists. But those trade associations, there's so many great ones within agriculture as well that have those lobbyists on the ground, state capitals, the federal capital, you know, boots on the ground for you all the time with just paying your dues. Um, you know, really just for a low price.

Speaker: 39:25

And often they will help you personally engage. So if you think, oh, well, that's a little removed. No, like the um Georgia convenience store, uh, Georgia Association Convenience Stores, GAX, once a year they um do a lobby day, right? And then every single day they have um they host the snack room at the Capitol, and different members can come in and sponsor the snack day. And so you can get access personally to your representatives often through these associations more. Easily than picking up a call or the phone. Sometimes you can just pick up the phone. Um, I'm also uh a big fan of having fractional. Uh what you do, I think is it makes so much sense if you're a small business. And I'll give you an example. We have a fractional CFO, and before that we had in-house, and frankly, we had a challenge getting uh the quality of in-house counsel that we needed in Wrens, Georgia, right? Right. It's hard to get someone who has the chops of running uh finances for a CPG brand who's going to move to Renns, Georgia, or even Augusta, Georgia. And after years of really having challenges with that, we decided uh to go with CFO with the CFO who is fractional, and it's been a game changer. She's been terrific. And so I'm a big fan of doing fractional.

Speaker 2: 40:60

I like to say you get the benefits, but I have benefits too. Yes, where it makes sense. Where you need it, but you don't need it full time. And you know, there's a lot of ways that it makes sense, a lot of reasons that it makes sense.

Speaker: 41:12

Um depends on the yeah, it depends on the role, but absolutely you're going to get that level of expertise. And let's be real, if you're trying to meet payroll, you don't have to there are 1099, so you don't have to mess with some of the financial burdens that come with having a full-time employee, you know, the Social Security and the Medicare and all the, you know, setting them up in payroll that way.

Speaker 2: 41:36

So it's a little It's a whole lot easier.

Speaker: 41:39

Yeah. Every time you hire someone, you have to add like a third of what you're offering for all of the benefits that you offer as well. So you, you know, as a fractional employee, you have to figure out your own health care and all of that. But we don't.

Speaker 2: 41:56

It provides so exactly all the benefits without the benefits. It really is.

Speaker: 42:01

It really is. And when I have my practice, you know, I got my health care through the the American Bar Association. So again, belonging to a trade association has a lot of benefits. Sometimes you can find terrific deals on offering, you know, they'll negotiate insurance plans for their members. And so lots and lots of benefits to trade associations. I can't say enough about how valuable they are.

Speaker 2: 42:30

Absolutely. It just opens so many doors. It really does. Um, so one of your things, I want to talk really quick about road tripping. Um, so one of your big things that I love seeing on LinkedIn is bringing back the American road trip and some of the really cool and funky places that you stop and post pictures of. On your road tripping, what are some of your favorite stops and unique stops and things that you've seen along the way?

Speaker: 42:57

Well, I gotta give a shout-out to Florida. There are two states that really dominate when it comes to road tripping. It's Florida and California. And it's no um mistake that they also happen to be homes of Disneyland and Disney World. I think those two attractions have really helped build that car culture. But California's always had a car culture. And then Florida, for its sunny climate, has just attracted snowbirds all over the East Coast, especially. And, you know, especially back in the 70s, road tripping was the only way you would travel. And so these iconic roadside attractions are throughout your state. So one of my favorites, the world's largest orange in Kissimmee, Florida. And Gatorland is right in that area as well. Gatorland was also, I believe I'm correct, was also founded in 1937, same year, Stuckey's. I know it's third generation and run by the third generation granddaughter, just just like me. So I've met her and they they have carried our product in the past. Hopefully they've got it on the shelves right now. But Gatorland is just an iconic attraction. Uh gosh, there's so many. I love Tarpon Springs with the, they have a sponge museum. How fun is that? I mean, crazy. That's just awesome. And then, you know, there's some sort of quirky retail stuff that I love. Like there's only two Kmart stores still operating, and one of them is in Miami. Uh, I didn't know that. It may have shuttered by now. I was there last year. Carvell Ice Cream has an iconic Carvel ice cream shop with uh it was built like in the 1940s, and it's got just this beautiful signage, and the building is amazing, and that's in West Palm Beach, Florida. So just sort of these fun things that I love to I love to see. There's um the candy, what there's a candy outlet store outside of Miami. There's quite a few great like candy tours. So uh I'll remember the one outside of Miami in a minute, but I think it may be called, oh, the bulk candy shop. And then then in um uh Jacksonville, you've got uh Pete's Candy, and they have a candy tour that's really, really fun. And then Whitestone Chocolates has a chocolate tour in St. Augustine, so there's some really just fun attractions, no matter what you like. Uh, I posted today about the Columbia restaurant in Ybor City, which is my favorite. Yes, the oldest restaurant in Florida, and it's the oldest Spanish restaurant in America, and it's run by fifth generation family.

Speaker 2: 45:53

I think, yeah, fourth or fifth. Yeah, it's amazing. The food is incredible. That's the original location, and there's one outside of Orlando and a couple more, but that one is really cool. And I think they still have the flamenco dancers at the Ybor one that the other locations don't have.

Speaker: 46:10

Oh my god. Well, I miss the flamingo dancers, but I was there at lunchtime. I was there last week, and that whole community is incredible. They've got the chickens running around, and then the one of the original cigar plants is still around. And then the museum there is so fun, and it gives the whole history of that community. You want to talk about a melting pot of immigrants? Every you get everything from Greek, Italian, certainly Cuban, and it's just a melting pot, and the culture and the restaurants there are incredible. So just so much to explore in the sunshine state. I love Wakula Springs, that's a fun one. Uh, they have prehistoric dinosaur bones in Wakula Springs, and then Wiki Wachi is still operating with the mermaids

Speaker 2: 47:08

They were blown away.

Speaker: 47:10

Still happening. Silver Springs with the glass bottom boats now. They had to stop those because it was so murky. The sadly the Everglades have had some challenges, but Silver Spring in Ocala is still operating. So just throughout the state, you're gonna find so many fun places to to pull over and just enjoy yourself.

Speaker 2: 47:33

Such cool stuff. We have five boys in a passenger van to fit them all, and we do a lot of road tripping when we go places because you know it's hard to with flights that get canceled so frequently, trying to rebook. So we just drive anywhere that's under 12 hours out of road trip. And a lot of times What's your rule of thumb?

Speaker: 47:53

I'm like, if it's eight hours or less, I'm gonna drive.

Speaker 2: 47:57

Why if I'm by myself, it's now 10 or less. If it's with the kids, it's 12 or less.

Speaker: 48:01

You're a road warrior.

Speaker 2: 48:03

Yeah, St. Petersburg, the Salvador Dolly, and crafty the Dolly Museum. I always tell people you could spend the entire summer going through the state of Florida and you know, not ever get bored. There's just so much cool stuff in Georgia too. You could do Florida

  These ask me episodes air the second Thursday of each month, and on these episodes, I try my best to answer all of your questions. If you have any questions that you would like for me to answer during an ask me segment, please email them to me at Amanda@FloridaAgLaw.com. That's Amanda at S L O R I D A A G L A W dot com. Now before we get started with this ask me episode, I have to provide some legal disclaimers. The information provided in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. It is not intended to create any relationship. It does not constitute an attorney-client relationship, and you should not act upon any information provided without seeking professional legal counsel tailored to your specific situation. We recommend consulting with a qualified attorney for advice in any particular legal matter. So now that that stuff is out of the way, some of our listeners have submitted some really great questions, and I'm going to take some time to answer a couple of those questions here today. I have received a lot of questions regarding whether folks with ag lands have to obtain building permits in Florida. We are definitely seeing a lot of local governments imposing fines or attempting to impose fines on property owners for failure to obtain permits. For ag lands, this is addressed by section six zero four point five zero of the Florida statutes, which provides, among other things, that quote, notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, any non-residential farm building, farm fence, or farm sign that is located on lands used for bona fide agricultural purposes, not including those lands used for urban agriculture, is exempt from the Florida Building Code and any county or municipal code or fee except for code provisions implementing local, state or federal floodplain management regulations. The statute also provides that, quote, non-residential farm building means any temporary or permanent building or supposed support structure that is classified as a non-residential farm building on a farm under section five five three point seven three ten C, or that is used primarily for agricultural purposes, is located on land that is an integral part of a farm operation, or is classified as agricultural land under section one nine three point four six one and is not intended to be used as a residential dwelling. So if you have property that is used for bona fide agricultural purposes, for most instances, you will not have to obtain building permits under 604.50 for the construction of fences or non-residential buildings on your property. However, we are starting to see a lot of local governments that are going after the owners of agricultural properties. These properties oftentimes are engaged in bona fide agriculture. Yet the municipalities are forcing them or attempting to force them to comply with local codes, particularly the permitting process for building non-residential buildings. We are actually seeing counties imposing fines of$1,000 per day on farmers if they don't tear down these non-residential buildings, these barns, other types of buildings, which were not ever required to have permits under section 604.50 of the Florida statutes. Now, each situation is different, but if you're experiencing these issues where you've got a local government entity, a municipality that's telling you you need permits on your bona fide agricultural land, or if you're unsure of your rights under section 604.50 of the Florida statutes, I would encourage you to seek legal advice from an attorney well-versed in agricultural law. I've also received a lot of questions regarding succession planning and estate planning for agricultural companies and individuals in agriculture. I will say this. So often in agriculture, we fail to properly engage in success succession planning. Now, this can mean either estate planning or even succession of running the company upon retirement. When we fail to properly plan for succession, we often leave those behind us in shambles trying to figure out how to make things work. With estate planning, we leave those behind trying to figure out how to deal with taxes, how to deal with the operations and the expenses, figuring out who's going to run what within the business. And in the meantime, crops are needing to be harvested, products are needing to get to market, and your family is trying to figure out how to achieve achieve all of this while mourning the passing of their family member. And with retirement succession planning, often the lack of proper planning and training will result in either kids taking over the business and having no idea what to do, or so often it results in the older generation who's supposed to be retiring not ever truly retiring because they feel like they can't, because they haven't properly set up the next generation to succeed them and to do that that running of the business. So I try to have these conversations with clients on a regular basis. The beauty of the nature of what I do in being in the ag industry is that I get to know my clients personally and professionally and can have these real conversations with them. I often know their kids, their families, and their situations. And as awkward as this is and as hard as it is to think about your own mortality or what's going to happen when someone secedes you whenever you decide to retire, please don't shy away from the succession planning, whether it be retirement or estate planning. I would advise you to contact an attorney who's well versed in this and don't leave the next generation with a headache. This also helps in the protection of our farmlands overall because it will prevent a lot of these lands from being developed. If you've got the next generation coming in and they're dealing with all these burdens of taxes and operations and mourning the loss of their family member, or they're the next one coming in upon another family member's retirement, sometimes they just get overwhelmed and decide to sell these lands for development. So succession planning is so critical for the protection of our farmlands in this great state. Now that's all the time that we have today for our ask me episode. But if you have any other questions or topics that you want me to discuss in the next episode, which will be the second Thursday of January, please feel free to email those to me at Amanda@Floridaaglaw.com. Thanks and have a great day. 

  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, turf grass, 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. Welcome to our January Ask Me episode of the Legal Field Podcast. These Ask Me episodes air once a month, and on these episodes, I try my best to answer all of your questions. If you have any questions that you would like for me to answer during an ask me segment, please email them to me at amanda@floridaaglaw.com. That's Amanda at F L O R I D A A G L A W dot com. Now before we get started with this ask me episode, I have to provide some legal disclaimers. The information provided in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. It is not intended to create any relationship, it does not constitute an attorney-client relationship, and you should not ask upon any information provided without seeking professional legal counsel tailored to your specific situation. We recommend consulting with an attorney for advice in any particular legal matter. So now that that stuff is out of the way, some of our listeners have submitted some really great questions again this month, and I'm going to take some time to answer a couple of those questions here today. I received a lot of questions over the last month or so regarding agro tourism laws in Florida. So I wanted to give a little bit of an overview on these laws, including some history of the law. Now, Florida's agro tourism laws can be found in sections 570.85 through 570.89 of the Florida statutes. These provisions were first adopted in 2013 and they have been amended since the time of their original adoption. To start with, section 570.85 subsection one states that, quote, it is the intent of the legislature to promote agritourism as a way to support bona fide agricultural production by providing a stream of revenue and by educating the general public about the agricultural industry. It is also the intent of the legislature to eliminate duplication of regulatory authority over agritourism as expressed in this section. So this section originally read it is the intent of the legislature to promote agritourism as a way to support bona fide agricultural production by providing a second stream of revenue. The word second was removed in 2022 by the legislature, thereby removing a requirement that agritourism be a secondary stream of revenue for bona fide ag operation. This opens up great opportunities for ag tourism by the removal of that word second. If you listen to my past Ask Me episodes of this podcast, you will recall that we have talked about the ag tax classification on a prior episode. Well, these 2022 amendments to the agritourism statutes also clarify that an agricultural land classification may not be denied or revoked solely due to the conduct of agritourism on a bona fide farm or due to the construction, alteration, or maintenance of a non-residential farm building structure or facility on a bona fide farm, which is used to conduct agro tourism activities. So again, in these 2022 amendments, the legislature really opened up opportunities for the agritourism industry, which is great for the entire ag industry and the protection of our farmlands here in Florida. Now let's talk for a minute about how the statutes define an agritourism activity. So the statutes provide an agro tourism activity as any agricultural related activity consistent with the bona side farm, livestock operation, or ranch, or in a working forest which allows members of the general public for recreational, entertainment, or educational purposes, to view or enjoy activities, including farming, ranching, historical, cultural, civic, ceremonial, training, and exhibition, or harvest your own activities and attractions. An agritourism activity does not include the construction of new or additional structures or facilities intended primarily to house, shelter, transport, or otherwise accommodate members of the general public. An activity is an agritourism activity regardless of whether the participant paid to participate in the activity. So you see again, that is a pretty a pretty broad definition. So an agritourism operation as defined in the statutes is afforded limit limited liability under these statutes so long as the operation meets the standards and requirements set forth here in chapter 570, which lays out everything for agritourism. And this includes posting of a specific notice of risk on the property that has to be posted at any agritourism operation. You may have seen these signs when you have visited different agritourism operations. And I'm sure that many of you listeners have visited visited some of these great agritourism operations that we have in Florida. Examples include UPIC fields and petting zoos, wedding venues, RV parks, and more. So if you want to know more about agrotourism, what is offered here in the state of Florida, whether that's where to visit, how to start an agritourism operation, or more, please feel free to reach out to me. I have also received a lot of questions recently about Florida's Right to Farm Act. Now there's a lot to unpack with the Florida Right to Farm Act, and so I want to give a bit of an overview on the Act along with a few details of it. Now the Florida Right to Farm Act Farm Act is found in section 823.14 of the Florida Statutes. When you break it down, there are really two parts to the Right to Farm Act here in Florida. One of those is protection of farmers from nuisance lawsuits by members of the public and then protection from regulations by local governments. Now let's talk briefly about that first part, the protection of ag operations from nuisance lawsuits. This part regulates how and when a person can bring a private nuisance claim against a neighboring farming operation. Now the act gives those farming operations that are facing a nuisance lawsuit a defense. Basically, when someone sues a neighboring farm, the farm can use the right to farm defense. And to succeed on a right to farm defense, the farmer must meet a few criteria. The clear language of the Flora Right to Farm Act states that the defense is available to farm operations, which has a definition that's defined as, quote, all conditions or activities by the owner, lessee, agent, independent contractor, and supplier which occur on a farm in connection with the production of farm, honeybee, or apiculture products, and includes but is not limited to the marketing of produce at roadside stands or farm markets, the operation of machinery and irrigation pumps, the generation of noise, odors, dust, and fumes, ground or aerial seeding and spraying, the placement and operation of an apiary, the application of chemical fertilizers, conditioners, insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides, and the employment and use of labor. So we all know this can tend this could be a potential problem in Florida if we didn't have this right to farm defense, as we have a lot of development that goes up around a lot of these farmlands. This is really huge as it means that the right to farm defense is available to more farms than just bona fide ag operations as defined in the Greenbelt Law or the Ag Tax Classification, as it's also called. So this definition provided for allowance of this right to farm defense to nuisance lawsuits is broader than the definition of bona fide ag operations under the ag tax classification statute. According to that statute, a quote, bona fide farm operation is a farm operation that is engaged in good faith commercial agricultural use of land on land that has been classified as agricultural. So although the definition of farm operation is quite broad, there are some limitations on the defense. By way of example, the farm must have been in operation for more than one year at the time of the lawsuit. And the farm also must not have been a nuisance when it began its operation, and the farm must comply with generally accepted agricultural and management practices. Now, note, it does not say the Florida Department of Ag and Consumer Services BMPs or best management practices. It just says generally accepted ag and management practices. Now the second part of the Right to Farm Act, we talked about the protection from nuisance from members of the public, this one relates to government. And this provides protection for farmers from the overreach of local governments. The statute provides that, quote, except as otherwise provided for in this section, in section 486 487 plate 051, and notwithstanding any other provision of law, a local government may not adopt any ordinance, regulation, rule, or policy to prohibit, restrict, regulate, or otherwise limit an activity of a bona fide farm operation on land classified as agricultural land pursuant to 193.461, where such activity is regulated through implemented best management practices or interim measures developed by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection or Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services or water management districts and adopted under Chapter 120 as part of a statewide or regional program. Basically, this provides some protection for farmers to prevent local governments from regulating on top of what is already being regulated at the state level. For example, what is already being regulated in Florida Department of Ag and Consumer Services, BMP manuals or interim measures by the Florida Department of Ag and Consumer Services. So in short, if there's a bona fide ag operation and the state's already regulating an activity on that bona fide ag operation, then a local government cannot provide additional regulations, rules, or limitations on such activity. Now there are some local governments that we have seen attempting to regulate activities on bona fide ag operations that are already being regulated at the state level in violation of the Florida Right to Farm Bill. And we must all protect the rights of our farmers under the Florida Right to Farm Act when this happens. Now that's all the time that I have today for our ask me episode. But if you have any other questions or topics that you want me to address in the next episode, which will be the second Thursday of February, please feel free to email those to me at Amanda@Floridaaglaw.com. Thanks and have a blessed day. 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: 0:18

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, 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, turf grass, 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. Well, welcome to this episode of the Legal Field Podcast. Um, I'm Amanda Perry Carl, and I am your host of the podcast. And we are so excited today to welcome our guest, an old friend, Jimmy Evans, who, among other things, serves as president at PPM Sports Turf in Tallahassee. Jimmy, welcome to the show today.

SPEAKER_00: 1:51

Good morning.

SPEAKER_01: 1:54

And so Jimmy and I have known each other for quite a while. We grew up together in South Marion County, Florida. Our parents went to high school together. So it's great that we have ended up kind of in similar industries to have this conversation today about some topics that we're really passionate about. Um, Jimmy, you have some really successful businesses in the turf industry. We're going to talk in a lot of detail about that later in the podcast. But to kick things off, can you give our listeners a brief intro to you, who you are, and the businesses that you have in this industry?

SPEAKER_00: 2:31

Okay, so I have 27 years experience in the turfgrass industry, which started immediately after graduating high school. Um, I based out of Tallahassee, Florida, originally from Ocala, Florida, and started out in the golf business, which kind of sent me in a different direction after quite a few years into owning my own business, which is a pest control business that specializes in athletic fields. And I have another business that is a consulting business involved and also involves uh precision ag technologies, which is basically items for uh spraying spraying systems.

SPEAKER_01: 3:23

And you're in quite the perfect industry for Florida and South Georgia, where you do a lot of business for pretty obvious reasons for our listeners. Um I want to give our listeners a little bit of background on how you ended up in this perfect Florida business, really, where you've had so much success. Um, when you started high school, went into high school, did you have any idea what you wanted to be when you grew up?

SPEAKER_00: 3:50

To be honest, I had I had zero idea. I grew up at a house where my father owned his own business. Uh it was a masonry company uh building houses and kind of grew up around the construction industry. I enjoyed that, but I had no passion to do that and did not see myself going down that road and really knew that I did not want to have a job that was inside. Like I just couldn't stand being inside. I like being outside doing things, um, and just had no idea. I I I took every ag class that was offered at uh our high school and really had a passion for that, and just really knew that like farming wasn't an option based on you know the financial side of getting into farming. So I just I just really knew I wanted to do something outside of that, like outside it in that industry. And I was very fortunate to have two amazing agriculture teachers that kind of brought this whole industry that I'm in now into light.

SPEAKER_01: 5:00

And those two awesome ag teachers were my ag teachers. So a shout out to Mr. Love and Miss Adams, some of the best ag teachers, I think, in the history of ag teachers, for being out there and encouraging and inspiring so many students to figure out their passions, you know, and and what they want to do. I think we see so often, and especially when we were growing up, it was so many people pushing, you know, you have to go do certain things, you know, not anybody thinking um uh about pushing agriculture and turf grass and some really critical careers. And so I think having ag teachers who are there supporting their students, figuring out what their passions might be is so important. And before we get back on track, I want to say to any ag teachers or teachers and adults in similar roles who are listening, you know, these kids have been placed in your classes, your programs, your teams for a reason, and you have such incredible opportunities to help shape and mold the future generation. And so you may not see the impact you're making right away. It may take years, but you can see that you're positively guiding the futures of your students. Um, so I think it's really great that you bring that up that that your ag teachers had such a positive impact. Now, part of that was that you know, part of that taking some turf grass classes in high school.

SPEAKER_00: 6:25

Yes. I, you know, I started out taking ag in middle school, had a really good ag teacher at Bellevue High School or Bellevue Middle School, and then when I transferred to Bellevue High School, uh Mr. Love was the ag teacher. I was always kind of pushed more towards the animal science and farming aspect of it, and didn't really pay much attention to the horticulture side. Uh, Mr. Love, being the father of a childhood friend, I had already had a relationship with him, so he was very aware of what he was getting himself into by having me in his class. And he had so much patience for me more than anyone else at the school. And when I, you know, as we were like, I think it was like into 10th grade, you know, I was struggling because I was like, I don't know what I want to do, and he saw that I had you know ambition to be outside, so he kind of steered me and pushed me towards Miss Adams class, which was more horticulture based. And we were very fortunate that one of our administrators kind of pushed to have a turfgrass program at the school under the horticulture division, and the school actually built a USGA spec putting green behind our ag department that the class took care of. So going into that, the like I had no clue what I was getting into. I I I enjoyed it, and then just Miss Adams, man, she took a lot, she spent a lot of time and effort in me and kind of like kind of pushed me in that direction. And then we had some representatives from Lake City Community College, which is now Florida Gateway College, come and give a presentation on um about careers like in that industry. Uh, I I would I do want to add in there that it did help that our principal at the time was related to Bert Yancey, who was a seven-time PGA tour winner. So that kind of all tied in, and like there were so many people involved in it that pushed that program. And the whole Bert Yancey thing comes into play later on in my career, but it just was an eye-opening to me because I never had any idea that that was even an a career. Like I I I viewed that like most people, when you tell them what you do, they automatically turf grass. They think you own a lawnmower and you mow yards for a living. They don't really understand the the impact that the turf industry has nationally, but really, really strong in the state of Florida.

SPEAKER_01: 9:15

And I think that's the importance a lot of times of having outside people come into school, the you know, like the Lake City Community College folks, and having people in industries come and talk about some of these careers that may not be front of mind for some students. You know, I think in high school there were so many things that we didn't know existed, and kids in high school and middle school don't know exist unless somebody actually comes and talks to them about it. So that was so important for them to come and provide that and for the the provision of the turfgrass program at Bellevue High School that really is just not normal. Um, so that having that at our high school was so important. So when you were there in high school then, you met with the Lake City Community College folks, and then um that inspired you to kind of go into this career. So, what did you do next after that?

SPEAKER_00: 10:10

So, so this was probably the hardest thing for me at that time, was I really took an interest in it, started paying attention to it, looking into it more and more. And, you know, my senior year, when I decided that I wanted to go down that road, that road and looked into Florida Gateway, the program at that time was probably near its peak. So, in order to be accepted into the program at Lake City Community College, you had to have a year worth of experience, full-time employment at a golf course. So being that I was not the greatest student and did not pay attention in class, my that was a that was a big struggle for my parents because my mom being at the school at the school working was very afraid for me to take off a year and actually go to college afterwards. Uh, that was never a thought in my mind not to do that. Like I had a I had a plan and a goal, and I was working towards that. So I worked at a local golf course full-time for that year, and then worked in construction after I got off at the golf course to make extra money, and then enrolled into Florida or yeah, Florida Gateway College, Lake City Community College, uh the following year. So I enrolled in the what was it, the fall of 99. And I did three years there. The first year was an equipment management certificate, which they basically taught you how to take care of all the equipment on a golf course. And then the next the next two years was an associates in science degree, and then every summer you had to do like a summer internship, like an on-the-job training. So I went through that and did a brief stint, like I think it was two months after graduation. I was I was back in Ocala and then wanted to pursue something outside of there and ended up in Tallahassee, Florida, which worked out really nice because both of my younger brothers were graduating from high school and they moved here to go to Florida State University. So I got to spend all in all, about five to seven years with my brothers as they went through college. They got to live with me. We all live together.

SPEAKER_01: 12:39

Which is awesome. And as a mom of five boys, I you know, I hope that my boys get along when they get older, like you guys get a loss now that you're older. I know that doesn't always happen when you're younger, does it?

SPEAKER_00: 12:49

No, it doesn't. But you know, like I look back at that, and that was that was something that I could, you know, it was just an amazing experience to be that be that close with them and share that time with them and help we all helped each other out uh through that time period, and I think we're closer because of it. Um I just it it just everything kind of worked out the way that it that it did. Um when I moved to Tallahassee and I took a job at Kalaran Country Club, it was actually the home to Bert Anty. Okay, which ties back to you know our principal Jim Yancey. So that was that was just pretty interesting to see kind of how that all went about and and looking back on it now, you know, the history of Burt Yancey and him having a uh fundraiser golf tournament that he held at the golf course I was at. So just an interesting fact.

SPEAKER_01: 13:46

It's pretty fun to see it come full circle, you know, kind of from where this whole potential career path where you started, and then see it come full circle. And I want to point out too to our listeners, especially if you have younger listeners, um the work ethic and the work that you put in to to kind of build your career and you know, working summers and going to college and working in construction to help fund things, you know, I think work ethic is something that that sometimes is lacking in folks. But I think if you put in the hard work, especially to our younger listeners, there are results out there for you. There are opportunities out there for you if you are a young person who will put in the work and the time.

SPEAKER_00: 14:31

Yeah, so I coming coming to Tallahassee and and taking that job, you know, I originally had like a three-year goal. Like my three-year goal was to come up here and get experience, and I was actually looking to try to go overseas to like down in the Caribbean or some foreign country and work at a golf course because a previous superintendent that I worked for had done that, and I would listen to all his stories, it was very intriguing to me. And then, you know, obviously, as you go through your career, things happen, and I I worked for the first 13 years at Calorin Country Club. I worked for a very large corporation called American Golf. They were based out of California, they owned at one time 220 golf courses, and it was a management company, and I was just just it seemed like everything always happened for a reason. I was very fortunate that I had two two great uh bosses in American golf. One of them is probably my biggest mentor in the industry. I still talk to him multiple times a week to this day, and you know, they just they taught me so much about business and about people, all the things that you don't learn in college, you have you have to learn them from a mentor, I th I feel like. Um they just they really helped me exceed expectations and and my business mindset more than just taking care of turf grass. And then American Golf had pulled out of that property, and the original owner can came back to the golf course, and I did a three-year stent there, and it just went sideways. He had some visions that didn't work out, and going to work every day was you know, I'd always enjoyed my job, never, never, you know, felt like I didn't want to go to work or didn't have the ambition to go to work, and then it was starting to change, and that that concerned me. And I did not want to move from Tallahassee. You know, my wife and I are based here, we had a child at the time, my daughter, and an opportunity came up to purchase a local business that you know was 30 plus years old from a very reputable man who was ready to retire. So it went like a it was like an eight-month kind of process to make that all happen. And that was in 2018, and I I purchased that company with three business partners, and from then to now we one of the business partners and I bought the other two out, and we've been kicking since.

SPEAKER_01: 17:13

So it's pretty awesome sometimes when you know God closes a door, you know, he opens another, you know, much bigger and better door and puts you in the place you're supposed to be. Um, so tell us a little bit about that, what you're doing now, you know, and and some of the things that you're that you're doing now in this industry with your businesses.

SPEAKER_00: 17:33

So the first, the first, the original business that we bought is uh PPM Sports Turf. So our business is structured around taking care of athletic fields, all you know, municipalities, county parks, universities, public schools. We take care of some private facilities. Um one of them is a private-owned polo, polo field, and they actually have two farms that are kind of side by side. One has got a game field on it, and one has a practice field. So that is that is really interesting and different to go to coming from the sports, like the sports field side, to go do something like that on a on a very large horse farm. So I really, really enjoy that. That's probably one of my favorite customers to visit. Um, the company when we bought it specifically dealt with sports fields, and being from a golf background, I was able to merge that experience in, and we actually do applications for golf courses also. So that has kind of like opened up different doors and windows, and like meeting different people where it has, you know, the business has has tripled since we bought it, and I went from being the only actual paid employee in the company to now I have two full-time uh employees that I work with every day. Um three years ago, the golf course Cologne that I was at sold to a very young local individual who is based out of Atlanta, and he bought the property, and uh his group reached out to me and brought me back in to help. And I was actually able to help you know do a superintendent search and ended up hiring somebody that had worked for me previously at Kalonian Country Club. So I'm still very tied into that. Um, with that happening, I created another company which is Sustainable Agronomic Solutions, which started out as just a kind of a consulting group, like helping out with local golf courses and doing different things. And then most recently in the last 18 months, we developed a spray rig and built our own spray rig that is put onto a John Deere platform, which connected us with T Jet Technologies, which is like the global leader in precision ag, which has to do with like applications. And we just agreed to a partnership with them to become a distributor of something new that they're gonna roll out in two weeks at a national conference for golf courses. So I think the ceiling on this is wide open. I I I think that we can do pretty much whatever we want with it. I know that the two boys, young men that work with me now, are very excited at the opportunities that they're gonna get with this because obviously that'll bring more income in their pockets. Um, but it's it's just a very exciting thing to take an idea that I was really just doing for myself. And it kind of spawned off into we're gonna be able to help a lot of other people with it.

SPEAKER_01: 20:58

Which is really incredible to think about, you know, you were a kid going into high school who didn't really have any um idea that this is what you wanted to do as a career. And now here you are, you know, helping create essentially spray rigs to help the entire industry. You know, you're making a huge impact on the entire industry with some of the innovations um uh that you're that you're working on. So it's pretty cool to, you know, I want any of our young people listening too to understand you don't have to necessarily um know at eight years old what you're going to do. You have to have somebody that you know can inspire you and help you figure out what you want to do and look what amazing things you can do when you're in your career. Thank you amazing things.

SPEAKER_00: 21:44

I definitely think you have to have an open mind. I I never thought that I would be I would own a pest control company, never thought that I would get to design a spray rig. I never thought that I'd be a distributor for T Jet. Um, I think you just have to set goals. For yourself, keep your head down, and then you work towards those goals, and then you just have to have an open mindset to you know when something when something presents itself to you, you you have to really look at it and see how that plays into what you're doing and make the most of it. I mean, a lot of things have happened, a lot of things have come down the road that we've looked at, and it's not been the right, the right move for us, so to speak. But when this when this happened, knowing where the industry's at, like especially with AI and all the different stuff that everything's going on, like this all plays into that, and it just felt like the right thing to jump into.

SPEAKER_01: 22:36

And you know, speaking of AI, I know, you know, we've talked about this a little bit. You know, there's there's a lot of talk about AI in every industry, and some people dread the the talk of AI. And I will say I'm tired of hearing my kids use those two letters when it's not appropriate. Everything is AI, everything is AI. It's not quite as bad as six seven, but everything is AI. Um I I've banned six seven in my house because I didn't want to hear it. But, you know, there's all this talk about AI. Is it gonna is it reliable? Will it take jobs and displaced workers? And we're gonna talk a lot more about labor here in a little bit, but you know, there's a different conversation here in your industry when it comes to AI. You know, there are jobs where you're always going to need humans, but I know you know, we've talked about how you're using AI kind of to help your business to make sure you have humans for the jobs. Um, and you know, we're gonna talk about that here in a little bit about how you're trying to work to find more humans to do these jobs. You know, we think AI can be helpful in you know, in certain parts um of the industry. So kind of to that end, um we have a we have a lot of issues in a lot of areas of agriculture. You know, we've got land issues, we've got all kinds of other issues, but um specifically in the turf industry, what are some of the biggest issues that you're seeing right now?

SPEAKER_00: 24:08

I I think that just talking with fellow people in the turf industry over the last I mean as long as I've been in the turf industry, the biggest, the biggest interest, the biggest issue has always been labor, right? And I think that as ag if you look at the whole ag market, that's a that's a common theme. When you get into construction, it's a common theme. When everywhere you go, from restaurants to grocery stores, labor is like the number one issue. And I over the past couple years I've been sitting there and I hear the same thing, like you know, I'm an A labor issue. Okay, well, what are you doing? Oh, I'm running an ad, or oh, I'm on LinkedIn, or I'm posting the job, and we're getting the same results. Like everywhere you look, it's just over and over, everybody's having the same issue, but they're putting in the same they're not doing anything different. So just like being on the board for the Florida Turf Grass Association and listening to that, and everybody's talking about different ideas, it just struck me that like I wouldn't be in this industry if it wasn't for my ag teachers. If it wasn't for an ag teacher reaching out to a Florida Gateway College and asking them to come speak, if it wasn't for the administration and the principal pushing the turfgrass program and making that happen with grants. And it wouldn't be I wouldn't be where I was at if it wasn't for the people along the way that that really took time and put their energy into me. So looking at all of that and being where I'm located in Tallahassee, Florida, we have a lot of rural communities, and I just started reaching out to some of the ag teachers and talking to them, and I met a couple of them with open arms where they were like, please come in and talk to our kids. Please explain to them what you do. And it's it was just overwhelming the first couple times that I went and spoke and looking at how many young people in 10th, 11th, and 12th grade have no idea what they want to do. And not only did I have an idea what they want to do, the support at home is not the support at home is not what I had. And they need they need help. And we're sitting here and we're complaining, but we're not doing anything about it. So I feel like the industry as a whole has been amazing to me. I feel like it has provided very well for myself and my family, and I feel that it's you have to you have to pay it back. I I I don't know any other way to put it. I mean, you're gonna talk to a hundred kids, and you just have to go in it with the eye, the eye, the mindset of I'm I want to reach one kid. Like I feel like if I can everything that I do and I put into this, if I touch one kid to motivate him to look at different things or come into our industry, then I consider that a win. And I I even consider it a win if I talk to somebody and they don't come into our industry, but it helps open their eyes to look at something else. I I feel like that if we can start this and and see other areas in the in the state do this, I think that it will catch on and maybe the right people take notice and and we we see more of that coming from our public education system.

SPEAKER_01: 27:31

Absolutely. And you know, I think too often not only is it just that companies are posting a job hosting and that's it, but there's also so much, I think, misinformation that the kids are hearing that any outside jobs or low-paying jobs or unskilled jobs. And we know that's just not the case. And, you know, when we were growing up, society just kind of pushed everybody into college, whether you were getting a degree that was worthwhile or not, not necessarily focusing you on a program that could actually have career paths. And, you know, I think we're seeing maybe a little shift in that. But to your point, you need to be out there in the schools, you need to have administrations and ag programs that are allowing people like you to come in and open these kids' eyes to things because for so long, kids have been taught if you have a job that's outside, you know, it's low skill and low wage, which is the farthest from the truth. We know that in you know, in this industry and in ag in general as well.

SPEAKER_00: 28:33

Um well, there's some there's some interesting stuff talking. The most recent study that's been done is in the state of Florida alone, you have 1,250 golf courses, and that they do 50 million rounds a year. There's 300,000 plus jobs just in golf. That does not count the equipment salesman, the fertilizer and chemical salesman, anything outside of that, that's not taking that into consideration. And it's a$44 billion economic benefit in the state of Florida. So when you look at the ag industry as a whole and you start breaking down the different areas, golf, golf alone is$44 billion. You're not taking into parks and rec, you're not taking in, you know, uh uh universities and athletic fields and all that. So as a whole in the state of Florida, the amount of jobs that are out there, the one thing that I've done that I have seen the largest impact on reaching the kids is exactly what you're saying. They look at the job, they feel like it's a non-paying job. I pull up two, there's two websites our industry uses, one's on the GCSAA and one's on turfnet.com, and it has a job board. I pull the job board up, I go to the bottom job, the entry level, I have a high school diploma job. And I it shows the jobs that are located throughout the state and what the pay is. There are lower level jobs in our country that pay more than what educators make. So when you're sitting in a classroom and you have principals and guidance counselors and teachers seeing these salaries, it changes their mind. Absolutely. They're looking at it going, wait, you have a two-year degree and an entry-level job, you know, pays this plus your benefits, plus you're outside every day. You're outside in the beautiful Florida weather most of the time, except for when it's raining. So it's changing that mindset, and then that gives these kids a chance to go home and say, No, you know, tell their parents, no, look, here's a job board. This is what this is paying. That's that's real life. That's not just somebody sitting up there spitting out facts and pay ranges, like it proves it when you look on the website.

SPEAKER_01: 30:49

When they see that proof and they see those actual jobs, you know, it gives them something to visualize and work towards. I think that that's so important because I, you know, so many kids, to your point of not getting really any guidance or support at home, um, if they're not getting that guidance and support at home, they have no idea what's out there for them unless, you know, people in the community and people at school are helping to open their eyes to some of these things. Um, now tell us some about about some of the things that you're doing in schools and how you're going in and maybe some of the things you talk to kids about beyond the jobs. I know, you know, maybe what what they're going to be doing, what they may have an interest or a passion in that they could translate into the turf world.

SPEAKER_00: 31:38

So kind of go in there and kind of give it, I I give a brief, very brief introduction of like where I was at, the process that I went through, the steps that I took. I have I'm very fortunate because the two the two young men that work for me uh in in the PPM, I kind of talk about how they came about into the industry and I can give examples of of different things. And then I I give them a brief description of like this is what the day in the life of a golf course employee is, this is what a golf course superintendent or assistant does, or a technician which works on the equipment. Um, then I kind of talk about like some of what the parks and rec people that I deal with do. So I kind of give them, you know, here here's like the entry level. Here's where you would start, here's here's how you would progress up through the ranks. And then once you get to this rank in the industry, that's when like you learn about the sales jobs or you learn about research jobs. Um I I touch on the fact that Florida Gateway College now is 100% online. So you can work a full-time job, live inside your your same town, go through school, right? And then from there you can decide where you where you want to move. Now it's very important to explain to them like you're not gonna make the money that's being advertised in Jupiter, Florida, Delway Beach, Florida, Naples, Florida, you're not gonna make that money in Marion County or you're in Tallahassee. Right. So so you have to understand where you where you live is gonna dictate like the salary ranges, right? So I just tell them like you're in high school and you know that you don't want to work in the food industry, why are you working at a fast food restaurant? Right?

SPEAKER_01: 33:27

Like go get the experience.

SPEAKER_00: 33:30

Find find yeah, find something. If you know you want to be outside, start finding jobs outside, find something that interests you, go do that, find a mentor, listen to what they have to say. You do not know everything that you think you know, and and kind of look look in that direction. Um, it's we've probably placed, if I had to guess in the last two years, like a safe guess, we've probably got six kids that are enrolled in Florida Gateway and working at local golf courses or parks and recs department. Uh, the most recent additional employee that I've added, you know, he he went through college, he was a couple shy, shy credits of graduating, started working in golf. He was a golf pro and didn't want to work inside anymore. And he's been with us for 10 months. He's enrolled in Florida Gateway online, he's in his third semester, he's got straight A's through the first two semesters. Awesome. Um, so it's and the point with that is he's third, he just turned 30. It's never too late to make that switch and find that thing that you know brings you happiness.

SPEAKER_01: 34:46

And for so many of our smaller rural counties in Florida, especially kind of outside of where you are, if paper mill closes, if a prison closes, that's a lot of the jobs in that area. And so they're really needing to find other career opportunities.

SPEAKER_00: 35:03

So the one school that I'm working with right now is based out of Liberty County, which is west of Tallahassee in the absolute middle of nowhere. The only opportunities that they have in that in that area are you can work in the timber industry or you can work in corrections. Now they have you know they have an ace hardware, they have a hungry howie's pizza, but there's nothing, there's nothing there. So more than likely, their best chances to kind of get out of there. And you have Panama City, you have Destin, which those two areas right now, our market is about to explode in the next five years in the turf industry over there with all the golf courses being built and all of the development that's being built with like landscape businesses and stuff, and then you have Tallahassee, which is is growing at a decent rate. So the opportunity to be close to home is still there. Um, so kind of showing them now. The the assistant principal that I'm working with there, he's very blunt with with the students and like explains to them like your best bet is to get something that can help you get out of here. You can always come back, but like if you want to make something with your life, you're gonna have to get out of here. And I I I commend him for being as honest as he is with them. And in that, we have added a turf grass class curriculum being offered at the high school. I worked with Beard Equipment, Turf Equipment, my local distributor, and they have donated a considerable amount of equipment to that school to use to help maintain the athletic fields. So the students are are gauging there, and I think that Beard recognizes that it's very hard to get people. So they have a plan, they have a um distributorship, I think it's like right about 35 minutes from there, and they have all kinds of jobs available there for these kids. So it's just another another way for them to get into the industry. Uh, there's a sod farm 20 minutes from there, which is one of the largest sod companies around. So it's just that one worked out because I have a lot of help there.

SPEAKER_01: 37:19

And to our listeners, you can you can tell, and I can tell you firsthand that when Jimmy says he's passionate about mentoring kids and um bringing kids into this industry and inspiring, encouraging them to find a career in turf, you know, he really means this. He's donating his time, his shop, his money. Um, you know, he's super busy and is donating time to try to bring these kids, you know, into this industry. So I just want to say if you're an ag teacher, you know, teacher of perhaps other subjects, or know any groups that could benefit from this level of mentoring, um, just listen up. And Jimmy, I know we've talked about maybe you putting your contact information out there for helping folks and talk about the kinds of outreach you might be looking to continue to do.

SPEAKER_00: 38:09

Yeah, I'm I'm all for that. We are very fortunate that I have a couple gentlemen that are spread out through the state that are very, very interested in this and have started talking like in the Orlando market, the Latcho County market. Um, I and being in the industry for 20-something years, I've been fortunate to make a lot of contacts in this state. So if somebody reached out to me and they were wherever they're at, there's someone I can call and get them to come talk. It's not it would not be an issue to have pretty much anywhere in the state of Florida to get someone from our industry who's encouraged to go and talk to kids. It's it's just getting in the school system and having that teacher reach out.

SPEAKER_01: 38:55

But you know, like we said earlier, getting just getting this in these the kids' heads and getting them to open their their horizons to these different um careers all over the state. Um and I know we've talked earlier about you know your involvement with the Florida Turf Grass Association and then being so supportive of this initiative to kind of get out there in the communities and get out in the schools and um promote this next generation of people coming up in an industry that can provide them with jobs, um, steady jobs. Um and can you tell us a little bit more about that and where our listeners can go to learn more about the Florida Turf Grass Association?

SPEAKER_00: 39:36

So, Florida Turf Grass Association has been around for forever, and we have a website, uh FTGA.org. We host regional turf seminars, which are about to kick off in February, and they run from like February to late April, and they're scattered throughout the state. Um we do offer, like uh if you want to, if you're a student, so if you're an ag if you're an ag student at one of the high schools and you want to be a member, the membership is free. By joining, you get access to a publication magazine, a lot of stuff on social media, um, a lot of interesting articles about the industry, and we also offer scholarships. And I can tell you from being on the board, the amount of applicants that we get for the scholarships are almost they're almost zero. Most of the people that apply are UF grad students that apply for it, and we always end up giving them to them because they're the only ones that apply. Uh, we we do offer. I'm gonna have in Tallahassee, we have about 90 people in the industry come to the local seminar, and we are gonna have five students from two different high schools, and their teachers are gonna bring them. So it's a good thing for them to kind of sit there through an educational class with some UF professors and other respected people in the industry where they can sit there and meet and talk to people and ask about jobs, and I'm encouraging the the companies that come to talk to these kids as they're there.

SPEAKER_01: 41:11

And you know, I've talked to a few teachers over the last year or so, maybe, about how, you know, if students put in, you know, kind of the initiative um to try to do almost anything, that's that's the highest level of students lately. You know, I think when we were, you know, when we were growing up, um, I feel like from and talking to a few teachers, kind of what was the norm and going out and engaging with adults just doesn't happen a lot now. And a lot of that's technology, and a lot of that is kids on their phones. And if you're that student that comes to one of these events and is engaging with the the business owners, you're engaging with the Floor Trifgrass Association members, you're going to stick out because you're that high school student who's coming and engaging with the adults and caring about your future, and you're not sitting there behind a screen and a device. You know, I think that's kind of the the world we're in now. So it's really important to come to these kinds of things and make these kinds of connections because you can make yourself stand out in the industry.

SPEAKER_00: 42:20

Uh absolutely, absolutely. And I I tell the kids when I talk to them, anybody any chance I get, and I have a I have a 15-year-old daughter, so I'm around a lot of teenagers, that it's the most important thing is to look somebody in the face, answer questions, ask questions, and be comfortable. You you do that one, though those little simple things. You're gonna set yourself apart from you know 90% of the people your age. And I I look at the opportunities that are out there right now, not only in our industry, but in a lot of other industries, and it's it's endless. Like the competition was a lot harder when we were coming out. Right now, I don't think there's competition. I don't I from what I see and what I've engaged with, like if you if you have some communication skills and you have some drive and you want to accomplish something, you're so far ahead of the game that you shouldn't have any competition. You you should be able to accomplish anything that you want and find find a mentor. I I preach that. Like I I have two wonderful parents that set great examples for my brothers and I, but they were not my mentors. Like they taught me how to be a person, but in my industry, like I have some very specific people in my industry that have been phenomenal and mentors to myself.

SPEAKER_01: 43:44

And I think it's important as you know, is I can't believe that we're that I've been saying this, that we're in our 40s and we are kind of the more seasoned people in our industries, that it's so important for us to be those mentors for these younger people so that they Have that opportunity. And it's great what you're out there doing and donating all of your time and your energy and your shop and all of this to try to build up that next generation. And I know that the programs that you have worked with are so grateful for the opportunities provided to the students. And I will put in for all of our listeners, I will put these um websites, some of this information about FTGA in the description on the podcast and in our Facebook post as well. So that information is more readily available for you to have to go find out, you know, what's out there for your students if you're an ag teacher or your kids or listening.

SPEAKER_00: 44:42

I would add in there with FFA. FFA has a curriculum-based program for turf grass. At the the GCSAA conference, which is the golf course superintendents of America, is the the yearly conference is in two weeks, and they are actually having a turf grass competition that is solely for FFA students.

SPEAKER_01: 45:08

That is awesome. I did not know that was happening. That is really awesome.

SPEAKER_00: 45:12

Yes, I know our school, your sister's the egg teacher. I know her and I have been going back and forth, and I made one phone call to a superintendent there right down the road from the high school and said, Hey, I need your help. I need you to let these kids come out. I need you to show them this. Here's the curriculum for the competition. Can and he reached out the next day to to the to the teacher and it's going to work that out. And then I'm going to do a Zoom call with the kids and kind of walk through some stuff. But all the resources are there for any ag teacher that wants to look into this. Um I think if you look at the ag classes now, it's it's so hard for a kid to go out and become a farmer, right? Like, I mean, if your family doesn't, if you're if you're not a generational farmer family and you do not have like endless money and a whole lot of grit to be a farmer, this is the next best thing because of the amount of opportunity that is out there.

SPEAKER_01: 46:08

And Snea, like we've talked about before, it's so great for the state of Florida, and it's so wonderful to see folks in the industry so willing to help out and perhaps build their future employees at that golf course, perhaps, or you know, so putting that time and energy into them to perhaps build their next generation of leadership or employees. Um now we're we're running out of time here, but I want to ask you before we kind of get to the end here, um, is there anything else that you want to share with our listeners about any topic?

SPEAKER_00: 46:48

I don't, I don't, right, right off the top of my head, I do not. I just my pat my passion, I love my job, right? I've I've it's it's provided for me and I love it, and I can see myself doing it until I I you know I can't physically do it anymore. But even then, like there's something about helping people, right? There's there's there's a there's you you know you can be successful in your job and you can make all the money in the world and do all the different things, but at the end of the day, when you put your time and effort into someone and you help them and you do it in a way that like sets sets you apart from other people that have been in their lives, like it it the feeling you get from that is overwhelming. And I I see myself like if I had it up to me, like I'd get to where I had both these companies, and I spent 25% of my time in these two companies and 75% of my time trying to help kids, like give it back to the industry as a whole and try to fix the labor problem. I mean it it's it's a it's an issue, it's a it's a massive issue. And we didn't touch on H2B and H2A, and I know there's a lot of feelings on that, you know, nationally on what people think of that. But if if you want to, if you want to we have we have to find labor somewhere. So if you're a person that has a problem with H2H, H2A and H2B, what are you doing to fix it? Like, are you are you mentoring in your profession? Are you trying to engage with students and give them an option or show them a path? Like, I think at the end of the day, you just have to ask yourself, what are you doing to help make the world a better place?

   SPEAKER_01: 48:38

And the the H2A and H2B for our listeners, H2A is the ag um labor program where we it's a visa program where we bring in workers from other countries, and H2B is the non-ag side of that, which does include a lot of turf grass jobs, also hotel construction um and other non-ag jobs. And they're great, but H2B has a lot of limitations, like caps. So to your point, we have to be out there promoting this next generation. And I personally am very grateful for all that you're doing in the industry, um, that all that you're doing for the high school students. And I know that my sister is very grateful for what you're doing to help her program as well.

SPEAKER_00: 49:23

I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01: 49:24

Now we're gonna end with some personal questions because I like to always end podcasts with a few personal questions. If you actually have any free time outside of your work and mentoring, what do you like to do for fun outside of work?

SPEAKER_00: 49:38

Well, it's funny you say that because I feel like you know, a lot of people will say, Man, you do all this stuff. How do you have any time? I feel like I have so much free time. Like I think it's just because when I get the time, I I really try to utilize it and spend it with my family. I have a 15-year-old daughter that is very active in sports, and she keeps us on our feet with everything that she does. And then I have a 10-year-old son who's the same way, and being that he's a boy, he actually really keeps us on our feet. So the majority of my time away from work is spent with my family. Um, I have a brother that lives in Orlando, and I have a brother that lives in Atlanta that we spend uh quite a bit of time with throughout the year, not as much as I think we would all like, but we just I really focus on spending spending a lot of time with my family. Uh, we love going to the beaches, that's probably our favorite trip. Uh every year we go over to the Florida Panhandle and spend a week at the beach and go out on a boat, and that's that's pretty much what we do.

SPEAKER_01: 50:46

The Panhandle beaches, in my opinion, are the best beaches in Florida. We are big fans of Indian Pass, but it all of them up there, but those are the best beaches in Florida. Now, next question: how hard were you cheering against Miami in the national championship game earlier this week?

SPEAKER_00: 51:04

Uh I wasn't cheering against them. I was probably I was a little conflicted. Um I follow football, my son loves football. You know, obviously Tallahassee, I'm a Florida State fan, and it's hard to root, you know, for Miami, but something about them being from the state of Florida, you know, I was kind of I would probably say I was 50-50 on that. I was it it really didn't matter to me who won, but you know, it it was nice to see Indiana come out there. The uh story about the young man, the quarterback for there. I kind of had followed up and read an article about everything that he's been through and that he's going through with his mom. That was uh that was pretty interesting, and I'm you know I'm happy for him and his family that it came out that way.

SPEAKER_01: 51:48

He seems like a really good kid. You know, as a Gator fan, he seems like their version of a Tebow. So I have to like him.

SPEAKER_00: 51:56

I agree with that.

SPEAKER_01: 51:58

Now, final question. What's your you just mentioned going to the beaches? Uh your favorite place to visit, thing to do in Florida.

SPEAKER_00: 52:07

My my favorite, my favorite place to visit in Florida is the 30A stretch in the panhandle, you know, from Seaside, Grayton Beach, Blue Mountain Beach. Um I I just I really like that area. It it is not what it was four years ago. It's becoming a little overpopulated in my opinion. But that's just kind of a place that when I go there, it's like time stops and I really get to enjoy it. I'm very fortunate that we have a we have a large contract that starts down there in that 30A and works its all the way up through uh Wallham County up towards Paxton, which is just south of Alabama. And every once in a while I get to go over there and I'll be by myself, and I, you know, I have two hours and I'll go sit on the beach by myself. So it's just it's just a really special place for my family, and and that that'd be my number one place to visit.

SPEAKER_01: 53:00

You know, it's funny. I feel like 15 years ago, very few people knew about 30A. It was a lot better kept secret, and I see all kinds of reels and posts all the time on Facebook now about 38, and it's kind of sad the secret's gotten out, but it's still lovely. So it doesn't get out anymore. But well, I want to thank you so much for your time. Um, this has been so great. And I will definitely put in our like our description and our posts all of this information so that our listeners can more readily access the different websites and things that we talked about. But thank you so much for all that you're doing and for coming on the podcast today.

SPEAKER_00: 53:42

No problem, and I really appreciate it. I look forward to doing more of this stuff with you. And uh also feel free to put my email address on there. So if anybody has any questions or anybody wants to reach out, I I would love to help and see this kind of movement spread through the state.

SPEAKER_01: 53:58

Well, thank you so much, and thank you to all of our listeners for listening to the podcast today.

SPEAKER_00: 54:04

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 54:05

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 going on.

  SPEAKER_01 0:18

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, turf grass, 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 the latest episode of the Legal Field Podcast. Um, as you all know, I am Amanda Perry Carl, and I am so excited to welcome our guest today, a friend from my home county, Aaron Buss. Erin is the Executive Vice President of Development and Strategy at Southeast Trust Company in Ocala, Florida. So, Aaron, welcome to the podcast today. I'm so happy to have you.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Thanks, Amanda. I am very happy to be here as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

So, a fun fact, Aaron's husband and I have actually known each other for many years since back in high school. And as we were just discussing before we started recording the podcast, um, it's crazy, it doesn't seem like it's been that long ago or that we are the ages that we are, but that has been a few years ago, maybe since we were in high school. Um, in addition to being a fellow boy mom, which we're gonna talk a little bit more about later, Erin, you have a very unique career where you get to do a lot to help folks in our beloved agricultural industry. Um we're gonna have a lot more detail later, but can you give us a brief introduction of what you do at Southeast Trust?

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Sure. So I get to share what services we can provide to any individual in the state of Florida, uh, in any industry. So Ag obviously has a sweet spot in my heart coming from Marion County and seeing that's a big proponent of economic impact. But we can help any individual. And what we help them with is we help them plan for their future financially. So that can be from an investment management standpoint, making sure that they have made the steps to plan for the future of maybe one day retiring. But then also we help them with their future finances when they're not able to make those decisions on their own. Whether they have become incapacitated and they can't make quite the same decisions that they used to when they had all their faculties, or they have passed away. So we help them navigate a plan, and then most of the time, we can help provide the solution to make that plan come to fruition by being named in what we call a future capacity. So we can be named to help their family with their finances once they pass away. So my job is to tell people that we do that. So I get the joy of meeting up with old friends such as you, Amanda, or going around the community and making sure that people know that this service is available.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

And this is such an incredible service. Um, I saw an article just coincidentally this morning as I was scrolling through some of the ag pages that I follow, and it was an article that I think was a little bit misinformed, but it said that old farmers, and I don't like that term, seasoned farmers, let's call them seasoned farmers. Old farmers are selfish and won't hand things over to their children, and that's a big problem. And and I think that, and you've probably seen this a lot, Aaron, for a lot of people, this isn't the case. It's that a lot of them aren't handing things over either because they're scared, because this has been their life, or because they don't know that services like what you all provide even exist and they haven't taken the time to do this planning. So I think that's why this is so critical. We'll we'll talk about this in a lot more detail. But this succession planning, estate planning, you know, planning for the future is so critical for all businesses, for all folks, but especially for our ag industry and to keep our farmlands in production.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

I agree completely. So let's talk a little bit about your background and kind of how you ended up here so our listeners know about you as you're as you're here talking. Can you give us a little bit about your background and how you ended up in your current role?

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Of course. So grew up in Ocala, born and raised here, and I went to the University of Florida, received a degree in business management, continue on to receive my master's in business administration, and immediately started in the financial field of commercial lending. So it was my job to see how I could help individuals and businesses grow, whether it was to provide solutions with a loan for real estate, for equipment, for land, but then also help them make sure that their money was moving in the right places at the right timing, whether that meant that they were sending wires to the right people at the right time, or if they were being able to receive payments electronically and provide solutions for them. So 15 years of helping grow businesses in my hometown was fantastic. I transitioned and then started to run and manage a statewide CPA firm. So I worked with 140 bright-minded accountants across the state of Florida and then transitioned back into the financial arena because I missed helping individuals from a financial perspective. So about four years ago, I jumped back into working in the financial industry and where I work now at Southeast Trust. And it's been a great transition because what we do is more of mission work in the sense that we want to make sure that your intentions are followed out as cleanly and clearly as possible, and helping people through some very difficult decisions and conversations, in some ways, being a mediator with some family members, and sometimes a mediator for an individual within themselves, because it's hard for them to answer questions. And so we continue to give them information to help them see how their future can be successful with or without them. So that's a little bit about me.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

And that's what you mentioned there is so critical. And I think it makes people, especially, you know, as I talked about earlier, this article that was, you know, talking about people not transitioning or having a plan, coming to someone like you, some a place like Southeast Trust, where you kind of do view that relationship very personal and you have um a passion for that. I think that makes people who may not want to sit down and have these conversations feel a lot more comfortable having these conversations because they do feel like they're cared for and that you value the decisions they're having to make and how difficult some of these decisions are. Because these are not fun decisions to have to make sometimes. Right. Right. A lot of these things are are you know are not um fun decisions. And we're gonna dive deeper here in kind of the estate planning side, and then we're gonna talk a little bit more about planning for you know investing in the future while folks are still alive. Um, but one of the things I think people really struggle with in estate planning is we don't like to deal with our own mortality. You know, I think that's sometimes hard. Um, I think it's a little bit easier if you're a believer. I think sometimes it's harder if you're not. But I think whether you're a believer or not, our own mortality is very hard to deal with. Um, and thinking about the people you leave behind. And I think sometimes when people fail to do their estate planning, and I work with this with clients a lot as well, when people fail to deal with their estate planning, they're leaving behind a mess for their loved ones. And so while you may not want to think about it right now, it's so important to make these decisions to leave things behind better. Um, especially when we're talking about agriculture, if you don't leave a good plan behind, you're leaving your loved ones behind with crops in the ground, things that need to be harvested, but things that need to immediately be taken care of. So, can you talk to us a little bit about some of the biggest issues you see in estate planning and then maybe hone in a little bit on ag and you know some of the family-owned operations that you guys see?

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Sure. So, you know, your cut your comment about mortality and talking about, you know, next steps, oftentimes I use the analogy of you know, if if people go away on a vacation, they're going to leave behind things that they value in the hands of people they trust. And they typically leave instructions. So along with my three boys, I have two dogs and a cat. And so we, when we do go on vacation, I only leave my dogs and cats with individuals that I know are gonna follow the directions that I leave. And so I trust that person to handle that plan because I'm not there to do it. And I do that because I love them, I care for them, I don't want anything to happen to them while I'm away. So I put that in the hands of someone that I trust. So that's a lighter way of thinking of when I go on my permanent vacation and I am not able to come back and help those things that I love. So an estate plan is a plan for you to have in place when you're no longer there to be able to give those directions. So sometimes talking about it in a little softer sense of okay, if you were to go on vacation, what do you want to have happen? And be able to comment on the next steps from there. And in regards to one of the biggest things with estate plans that I think anybody needs to make sure that they address is silence. A lot of people will decide to not have a conversation with anybody. No plan is not okay. If you don't have a plan, the state has one already dictated for you. Many times the state's plan is not going to align with what your true wishes are. So by you not making a plan, you have actually hindered the success of what you've worked so hard for to be able to transition into the next steps for your family and their success. So the biggest problem I see is silence, where you don't talk to your family about your intentions, and then the family doesn't talk to you either. So I'm gonna give you an example. Let's say there's been uh a farming operation that has been in the family now, uh it's on its third generation, and the fourth generation, they have four children, and none of them want to carry on the legacy because of several reasons. It happens, and that original now owner may not understand, they may not understand that why won't one of my children want to carry this on, and if they don't have that honest conversation and saying, Mom, dad, I I've decided to go in the field of medicine, I've decided to go in the field of mission work, I would like to be an engineer, mom and dad, I want to be a teacher, which is a very noble profession. Uh we're not gonna be here. So that conversation needs to happen, as well as the conversation of okay, maybe one of those four does want to step up and take care of the farm going forward. What does that mean for the other three when it comes to inheritance and the value and if you wanted to split things equally? So the first step is an honest conversation with your family to see if they want to carry on the family business.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

And that is that is so critical. I love your analogy about going on vacation and leaving a plan behind because I think that makes it so real to people. Um, and like you said, a little more lighthearted as well. Um, those conversations are so important because if you're if you're not talking about um, you know, what your future plans are, or to your point about if you've got, say, four children and and one wants to continue with the farm, well then how do you manage the inheritance for the rest? And those are things that you guys can all that you guys can help with at Southeast Trust, correct?

SPEAKER_00 13:50

Yes. So so what we would do is we start the conversation. We help break the ice basically and say, okay, now's the time to actually put the words out in the world and and let's let's answer some questions that may be difficult to start. But Amanda, as people start to talk about it and realize this isn't as painful as I thought it was gonna be, they they start to open up and and soften up in regards to options. And so it's really important to start the conversation and and we pride ourselves at Southeast Trust to help people start to think and talk to one another. Oftentimes we'll have one one individual come in and they they don't know where to start. And we said you started the perfect place. We can get the conversation going. And sometimes it's easier to talk to us than an attorney. Amanda, you are so kind and easy to talk to. That's not always the case. Some attorneys are a bit uh more abrasive and maybe have a vocabulary that can be difficult to understand at Southeast Trust. We we help make sure people understand the purpose of an estate plan and some of the critical questions that they should have ready to be answered prior to meeting with an attorney. So we can help formulate some skeleton of an estate plan so that that individual and hopefully their spouse, if they're ready to have that conversation together, can then meet with a knowledgeable partner such as you, an attorney who can write the documents. So at Southeast Trust, we do not write documents, however, we have great partners in the attorney world that handle estate plans and do so with diligence. So, Amanda, you've written estate plans. You know that every family has a different need and every plan is different. So it's really important that you work with an attorney who understands how to write a very specific estate planning document for your situation. I can tell you that Chat GPT is not a good option. Using AI for your legal documents in this situation, it is not a good option. It's critical that you talk to a human being who's experienced with Florida law and ag law and estate planning, which all of those are very difficult to find, except Amanda, here you are. Um find it in you. But so we help to formulate that skeleton, be able to of thoughts so that you can then go to your professional attorney to be able to draft a document. And after that point, we can help you interpret it because there is legal language that are in estate plans that sometimes are difficult to interpret. So oftentimes our clients will bring it back to us and said, okay, what does this really mean? And so we can take a document, help interpret it, and say, this is what's going to happen based off the words on this piece of paper. Is that your intention? So that's how we can help the conversation start, but we also can help down the line as well.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

And that's fantastic because, you know, I think one of the cool things about agriculture and all small businesses, but it's like a big family, you know, sometimes it makes it a lot easier to talk to someone like you, someone at Southeast Trust, to have those initial conversations to get those thoughts and intentions down and get a plan in place because it, you know, does feel comfortable to your point about attorneys. Yes, a lot of attorneys are very cold and down to business, and it's not that um familial feeling, which is why I like doing agricultural law because our industry does have that feeling of family, the good, the bad, and the ugly, just like real family. Um, so you know, I think that's really important for folks to come and get that kind of locked down because, like you said, you've got to start that conversation. And once it starts to flow, um, they may have other ideas pop up too, but they may come in having no idea when they come to you guys of what's even possible or what options, you know, even are out there. And being able to open up that conversation with you guys is just so critically important. And from my perspective, too, as someone who does a lot of um fighting to preserve some of our agricultural lands, this estate planning helps to do that as well. Um, it helps to preserve some of these lands for the next generation of um farmers within the family or perhaps outside of the family. So I think that's such a critical thing for our state in general. And the things that you guys do are awesome.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Great. I agree. And it's um that planning in general is something that sometimes you need uh a little guide. You need someone to say, have you thought of this? Maybe consider this. Not all of our advice needs to be taken, right? It's a personal decision. But if you didn't know it was an option, now you do, and maybe you can make a better decision because of it. A lot of documentation that is crafted in an estate plan is focused on finances. So that could be a power of attorney, a will, andor a trust, but a lot of things are also focused on a health standard as well. So when you're planning for your estate plan, not only think of the financial decisions that need to be made for your family's success, you also need to think about decisions related to your health and who's going to care for you when you can't make those decisions on your own. So we do talk a lot about the money part of an estate plan, the monetary, which is important, but so is the decision making associated with your care for your health.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

And that's another place where it is so important to do that because it helps the family, your family there to not have to guess on certain decision-making um items, you know, whether it's a healthcare surrogate form or whether it's uh, you know, a living will, you're you're providing more guidance to your loved ones as to what your wishes are. And so I think that leaves them in you know in a better spot as well.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

Absolutely. So that's estate planning there, you know, for when someone passes away. Let's talk a little bit about investments planning for the future, the duration of your clients' lives. Um, you know, I think a lot of times in agriculture, we see a lot of you, and you guys probably see a lot of your clients maybe land rich and cash poor. They may not have a 401k because they are a family-run farm, they may not have retirement investments. So when they come to you guys, you know, let's talk a little bit about some of the options you guys can present to them and helping them craft this plan for their future and maybe allowing them to retire at some point. Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

If they want to. Not everybody wants to retire if they want to. So, you know, when you look at someone that is heavily invested in land, in in the agriculture industry, you I started to use an ag pun, but you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket in investment or in agriculture. So you wouldn't plant all the same type of crop necessarily at the same time. Some people do and have great success, but others diversify or they rotate different crops, or they have livestock and crops to diversify their income, to kind of make that risk balance out. And the same thing is suggested when you have other investments. So when you have investments, it's really important to be diversified. Your land as a producer is very valuable for your operation. So it's really important that if that's part of the success of your business and your livelihood, that you keep it intact. So there are ways that you can use other resources to expose more liquidity if you don't have that liquidity. But when it comes to investments, it's really important for you to think of diversifying. So if you have a lot of land and you think at some point you do want to transition to retirement, my my thought would be that you would diversify in other types of investments if you have the liquidity to do it. So if you do have the liquidity to do it, you probably would want to also balance that land-rich portfolio with municipal bonds, which are low, low risk, short-term bonds that are typically backed by the federal government. And then also you can dabble in some dividend-paying stocks. So that would give you a more diversified portfolio, the percentage of which would be dependent again on your risk tolerance. So you would have different buckets to kind of separate your idea of investments. You would have the operating business, they would have land, equipment, livestock, and cash. You would have long-term investments that would also have stocks and bonds, but then you'd have some short-term liquidity. So your cash reserves or, you know, a CD or just a short-term fixed income instrument. So you really have to diversify your investments over the time horizon that you have. The sooner you can diversify, the better for your options to retire at the time in which you choose. So there are ways to look at slowly diversifying a portfolio. That land-rich investment, we'd have to really investigate what your options are for each individual case to see what we could do to help pull liquidity from that as it would work for your operation.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

And, you know, this type of conversation investment also, you know, I keep going back to this, but I think this is a huge, a huge thing within our industry, also goes to, again, helping the next generation to be able to come in and take over operations. You know, if, like you said, some people don't want to retire and, you know, want to be busy and working on the farm on the ranches, you know, until they are unable to anymore. But it's important for these, for there to be some thought about future investments and perhaps being able to retire so the next generation can come in and have that time to be able to have some legitimate succession planning and running the business and not just be thrown into it one day without that level of succession planning needed to be successful. Um, you know, there's, you know, I mentioned earlier, sometimes you're just thrown into things and there's crops that need to need to be harvested. There's things that need immediate attention that just can't be put on the back burner while things are worked through. So this, much like estate planning, um, is so critical for the continuity of some of our farm and ranch lands and these family farms to stay in business. Um, you know, it's it's really very challenging, I think, these days to have a third, fourth, fifth generation family business of any type, but especially agriculture. So when you see ones that are successful, you want to continue to pass that on to more generations.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

Absolutely. Succession planning is unique in every industry, but industry knowledge is hard to pass on in an instant, particularly in the agriculture industry, because of the seasonality and the different knowledge that's needed in each part of the production process. Whether it's livestock, whether it's produce, whatever it may be, you have different seasons literally within the process, some of which could take years to get through from start to finish. So having a succession plan and starting early so that you can transition that wisdom in the appropriate time so that you can have the confidence that you are making sure the next person to run this business has the knowledge they need. So again, communication, making sure you know that these individuals really want to take on this step. Take the time to teach them, listen for opportunities for change because that's something else that we often find with succession. Things are done the right way sometimes, and they need to stay that way. However, there may be new knowledge that can be joined with the old way of doing something to create perpetual great change. And take the time to ask questions about sincerity. You know, sometimes people will get in it and then they realize this is not what I can do for the next 40 years. So be honest on both sides of getting someone in to run it andor to be able to step away.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

These are not easy conversations to have, but I'm so glad you guys have them with people. Before we get to some of our end questions here in the podcast, I want to ask if you could tell our listeners if they want to come speak to you guys, what is the best way to contact you if they want to set up a meeting to talk?

SPEAKER_00 28:06

So, Southeast Trust is available all the ways that you would like to communicate with us. So our website, Southeast Trust.com, easy way for you to see all the faces of the individuals that are here on our team to be able to communicate with you. Call us. We do not have a 1-800 number and we pride ourselves on that. Our phone number is 352-291-5999. Yes, that sounds very much like a commercial with that type of phone number. But we have a live person that answers the phone and we pride ourselves on being available to have these conversations in person, on the phone, starting via email if that's best. You can email me at ebus at southeasttrust.com or you can um connect with an attorney and see if we can meet with that attorney with you. Sometimes we have joint meetings together. But when it comes to starting the conversation, we are happy to start in any way that's comfortable for you. We come to homes, we have individuals that come to us. We often will meet um at businesses. So it depends on what the person is comfortable with, and we're happy to start in any fashion that just helps get your one step forward to the next opportunity for creating a plan.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

And you guys have so many combined years of institutional knowledge within, especially the ag industry and within Marion County as well. Um, with the folks that you guys have working there, there's so much so many combined years of knowledge and experience in this industry. So I just wanted to throw that out there.

SPEAKER_00 29:51

Yes, our team is very varied in the sense of our our background of the knowledge we have, whether it's thoroughbred, cattle, crop. We have quite a quite a bit of um knowledge base, but we also have the knowledge base for business operations. Um, and it's been fun for us to learn more about different industries based off of our clientele.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

I love this. I love it so much. Now, I always like to end my podcast with some fun personal questions with our guests. So, Aaron, could you tell our listeners some of the things you like to do for fun outside of work?

SPEAKER_00 30:30

Yes. So, Amanda, as you mentioned, we're boy moms. I have three boys. My my favorite thing to do is to support them with their loves. So they have games, they have performances, they have practices. I like to be there. I like to be present to cheer them on. I may not be the person with the cowbell, but I do cheer pretty loud. But um, really, really supporting my children and doing and what they love is is what I love to do outside of work. But in addition to that, I make sourdough. So I started making sourdough bread almost two years ago, and I really love eating it too, and so do the boys. So I've I've experimented with different things that you can put in sourdough to make it taste differently, whether it's sweet or savory. And my boys have picked up on it and they could probably do it from start to finish, but it tends to be my baby, my science experiment, and I make sourdough maybe three or four loaves a week. And because I love eating sourdough, I have to work out a lot. So I do um I do work out, I run yoga, Pilates, and um, in the meantime, I help people plan for their future.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

You're speaking my language here with the sourdough too. I may have to get some starter at some point. Now, what's your favorite place in Florida to take those boys of yours and your whole family?

SPEAKER_00 31:56

We love to take our boys anywhere there's water to play in or on. So whether it be kayaking or stand-up paddle boarding on one of our beautiful rivers in Marion County, so Silver Springs, or go to any other springs, we love to inshore fish, we love to go scalloping, um, tubing on a lake, anything we can do to be outside enjoying the water associated with our beautiful Florida and soak up that vitamin D.

SPEAKER_01 32:25

I love that. We have a beautiful state with so many places to go and enjoy outdoors and nature. So that is wonderful. And now my final question that goes back to being a boy mom. What's your favorite part of being a boy mom? And what is the wildest part of being a boy mom? Because there's a lot of those. There's a whole lot of those.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

There are a whole lot of those, and that's why it's awesome. I love being a boy mom. There's so many favorites. You know, I love watching them develop their faith and become gentlemen. And a kudos goes to my husband of almost 22 years, who he's a great example. So watching them grow, I love each season because in that moment they have become more and more um filled with faith and seeing how they they like to help other kids and volunteer. So that's probably my favorite part about being a boy mom. But for the wildest, so I mentioned that I go to all their games and performances, and sometimes they're in different parts of the state on the same day, and so I can tell you we we travel quite a bit for them, but when we are home, it is odd, but these three high school boys will all of a sudden just decide that they want to pick me up, and they will pick me up all the time and just carry me to a different part of the house, and I just let it happen because I think it's funny, and it usually ends up with a tickle fight or wrestling, and somehow I tiptoe away, and then they're all having a good time, and I just watch that happen. So I'd say the fact that all three of my boys individually will pick me up at random and and take me to the couch or take me to the other room and just put me down. I just let it happen.

SPEAKER_01 34:15

It's just I love that so much, and enjoy those things while they're still young and home and not grown, right? Enjoy those moments while we can. Amen. Amen. Well, thank you so much, Erin. Is there anything else you would like to add um to the podcast for our listeners?

SPEAKER_00 34:37

So at Southeast Trust, we operate as a fiduciary, which means we are legally and ethically obligated to act in our client's best interest at all times. So our compensation is not fee-based, it's commission driven. So we're not incentivized to sell products. Instead, our success is aligned with our client's success. When they do well financially, we do well financially.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Well, Erin, thank you so much for being with us today on the podcast. I'm so excited for what you could share with our listeners. Um, and thank you for all of what you're doing for our businesses and ag businesses in the state of Florida.

SPEAKER_00 35:21

Amanda, this has been a pleasure. Thank you for asking me to be here and to tell about how we like to help families and their traditions continue. And if we can be part of that, we're we think it's a blessing. So thanks for what you do, and I appreciate you.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

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 to see what's growing on. 

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"