Latest / Conservation Stories / Farming Data, Water Innovation, and Resilient Living with Billy Tiller

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Farming Data, Water Innovation, and Resilient Living with Billy Tiller · Conservation Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign. This is Tillery Timmons Sims, here again with another episode of Conservation Stories. Conservation Stories is a podcast that's brought to you by the Sand Hill Area Research association, or SARA, as we call it. And we are always bringing to you different and unique ideas and individuals that are making some changes here, not just on the high plains, but all across agriculture, culture. And I'm excited today because I have a friend here with me, Mr. Billy Tiller. He is from Amherst. So if you know where. Amherst, correct? Am I correct?
• 0:45
  Speaker B: Actually, I'm from Beulah, Texas.
• 0:47
  Speaker A: It's Beulah. Okay, okay.
• 0:49
  Speaker B: The middle of nowhere. So it's not, I'm not surprised, but my wife's mammers, so I have to be careful that I don't, you know, embrace them. But yeah, here I very close to the Sudan community and run some of my business out of Lubbock.
• 1:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I knew, I couldn't remember if it was which one of y' all were from Amherst originally. But we've got some mutual really good friends.
• 1:17
  Speaker B: That's good.
• 1:18
  Speaker A: And relatives and that kind of stuff. So anyway, I'm glad you're on, Billy. You're always doing something, always doing something. And maybe the only person I know that talks faster than me, so, so I hope people can, hope people can keep up with this today. So I, I, I brought you on because you're always doing like something interesting. You have, you've got a corporation, a cooperative of farmer data. That's super interesting to me. But you're also doing stuff out of state with water. So give us a little bit about your background, where kind of this entrepreneurial spirit came from.
• 2:01
  Speaker B: So, yeah, I was raised, I'm a fifth generation farmer, raised on a farm out here west of Lubbock, Beulah, Texas, actually, south of Sudan. Today it's all dry land and we raise cotton, grain, sunflowers, wheat, those type crops, mainly cotton probably. If I was to say what I am. I'm a cotton farmer, but I've spent my, I've done that since 1982, but I've spent my whole life, I got an accounting degree from Texas Tech and then I was a banker for a decade. I was an ag lender, run an ag lending group out of Sudan and Littlefield for a decade, 2000. But I was always focused on farming. So there was never been a day since 1982 when I didn't farm. But in 2000, I kind of had. After we'd sold the bank and had left that venture, I just, I Got involved with a lot of consulting work around financials and especially financials that involve private placement memorandums with young startup companies. And because of that, I got real involved in just kind of understanding what was going on, helping some of them raise money, actually even working more on the investor side, helping them decide if it was an investment that possibly good for them. But anyway, long story short, probably mid-2008, somewhere in there I had the idea to sort of do my own ventures. And so I started out and I actually we sold this in 2012. But I had a. I had a. Basically a document management company. We built. We actually didn't build the software. We licensed white labeled a set of software where we were working with the crop insurance industry and did that. Then while that was ongoing, I had a group that we brought together. We were trying to build a data exchange for agriculture where we could swap data between usda, the farmer. And really we were just too early. It wasn't long after the iPhone had come out and people had heard the word cloud. And so the idea of storing something off site, people didn't think it was secure, even though you know it was, but they didn't think it was a secure way to do it. So we really didn't get that off the ground. And at some point I actually out of that venture formed a data cooperative. And to be honest, probably the hardest thing I ever tried to do because I was working all across the United States. We had members literally in every ag state and everybody wanted something different. And so that really led. We built a software group. So I have a data solutions company now, it's known as GIC llc. It's kind of an off branch of what we tried to do with the cooperative. But I realized that my idea was too big to actually I couldn't serve everyone. And so we just downgraded it and began to work in specific projects. We built data solutions. And so along those lines, probably the most prevalent solution that most people know of, in 2019, we bid and won a project in Nebraska that was with the Twin Platte Natural Resource District. And the idea behind the project was that they had been notified by the state through something that's called the integrated management Plan, that they were withdrawing too much water out of the river. Now this was growing, so it's not surface water, but the rivers in those parts of the world in the Ogallala Aquifer are tremendously connected. And so that connected use was if you're irrigating a lot, the stream flows in the river drop and this is the north and the south. Platte river in Nebraska eventually becomes a Platte river in our district, in the district I work in. But they were actually notified by the state, had been notified, really in 2009. Look, you gotta find 7700 acre feet, you can return to the river. And they found it. And they found it by buying up wells and creating well fields where they were actually pumping water into the river, as crazy as that sounds. So it does sound crazy, but it was a solution. They made it work. But then in 2019, they were notified. Oh, our calculation is a little different now. And you need to return 25,000 acre feet. Now we're talking about just turning into a lot of water in a 320,000 acre irrigated basin. And so because of that, we went and presented the idea of maybe we could help the farmers manage their water better. And it wasn't really just my idea in the beginning. I had a really good friend that lived in the district, and so he took us to the, you know, state of Nebraska, the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources. So we got to really look at how the data was curated that they were utilizing to build the modeling around that. And so given that, we came to the conclusion that maybe farmers weren't using quite as much water as they thought. And then the other premise that I had that I thought really led the project was if farmers knew how much water they were irrigating, I think they would be more cognizant of trying to conserve it. And so, I mean, farmers are great stewards, but if they're not sure, if they're pumping every day and they don't know the gallons they're putting on their field, then, you know, I'd love to. You know, people want to blame them, but the truth is they, they need certain tools. And the tools that were available at the time were just flow meters. You know, you put a flow meter on your well and there wasn't good telematics. So it's not like you could bring that to your phone and look at it today. That's little. But the problem, there is a problem with the flow meter. And the flow meter problem is this. It is. You can buy a flow meter, you put it on, and you can begin to understand your water use. But that flow meter is not static, meaning it's going to deteriorate over time. You got sand in your well, you've got mechanical issues. And so we learned very quickly through talking to universities and others that there's a real maintenance cost to flow meters. There's initial cost and then there's long term cost. So we actually went to Twin Plant and said, look, we were working with a guy named Roark Paulman. I think you've met Roark Rourke's up in Nebraska's out of Sutherland. And I was sitting in his office one day and it's in the winter. And he said, you know, I think we could use, we could do it a different way. And I said, well, give me some examples of ways that we've measured water before. And he said, well, at one point we tried to use the electric smart meter. He said, all these electric wells and about 80% of the wells in the Twin Platte Natural Resource District are electric wells. And he said, I think we could use the electricity. So we began a really deep dive into an algorithm on how we could use electricity to understand can we turn that into a water meter. The beauty of that is I've worked in IoT projects in the field before, meaning out trying to connect all the fields, get the data back in, bring it in through cellular loran or all those methods. But it's always difficult. But in this case the idea was let the electric company manage their water meter, I mean their electric meter by they're wanting to know how much electricity you're using and can we somehow piggyback them, take care of all the maintenance on the meter. How good can we make this? And what we could build would be a very scalable project. That means that we're not deploying any equipment in the field, we're using someone else's equipment, they're keeping it up and then we get the data off of it. We went to the electric companies and they were super collaborative, so they worked very closely with us for us to do some initial testing. And out of that we came to the conclusion that electric smart meter data is broken into 96 segments in a 24 hour period. So every 15 minute, 15 minutes it reports the kilowatt usage during that time. And because water even, even if you're only pumping from 20ft, I mean there's some shallow wells close to the actual river stream system that next to the Platte, and then there's some deeper wells as you get away from the Platte River. But I mean, it takes a significant amount of energy to lift water to the top of the ground.
• 9:55
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 9:55
  Speaker B: And because of that we could actually tell when a well was pumping water when it was walking dry. These are things we had to understand so that we'd know can be small amounts of electricity Used for ancillary things. But if there was a dedicated meter to the well, we came pretty quickly to the conclusion that we could capture the electricity and we could create a stopwatch, a time frame. How long is that irrigation event did it last? Sometimes they'll last 48 hours or longer. And so the other piece of the equation we needed, we needed to know what the flow rate of the well was. What are these, what is this well pump? And so Twin Platte, actually the natural resource district, they agreed that they would begin to actually collect pump rates. And what, I mean, they take an ultrasonic flow meter. Now, they do own all the flow meters. They have employees that go to the field and actually gather that in season. What's it pumping? And you know, it's a pretty static area, meaning we live in an area of Texas where when you start pumping, you might be pumping 300, and when you end pumping, you might be pumping 180. I mean, it's just. But. But in Nebraska, there's only one area in that district that that really is impacted like that. Most of the district is pretty. Well, it's pretty even through the year. I mean, there's.
• 11:10
  Speaker A: And that's, that's really. That. That's like the deepest part of the Ogallala. That's where the water of the Oglala is.
• 11:18
  Speaker B: Yeah. Well, the town of Oglala, Nebraska is in my project. So that should tell you something about the saturated sand and saturated thickness that's there. So they do have a ton of saturated thickness. And the water level doesn't change a lot, although we have all sorts of audits. We have, we have, we have level devices and a bunch of wells so we can see if the water's dropping. We have flow meters on some wells, 90 wells, in fact, that actually tell us if we're close. We're auditing all the time to see if that our algorithm using our method is close to what that is. And we found over time that we have to keep these, these meters highly calibrated or they can't tell us. So flow meters are not the best answer either. They have their. Their variance develops over time. Ours is static pretty much. I mean, electricity can change and the uses can change, but the time of pumping, we're spot on. I can tell you how many hours a well run within, literally in a whole season, within minutes. Because all we do is prorate the bookends and then we know everyone in the middle is 15 minutes. So we built that out and we started that in 2019. 20. 20 was our first deployment. And you know, today we're in 2025 and it's just a continual process of improvement. The beauty is there's like 2411 fields that say fields. There's 2,700 plus wells. There's around 480 registered users that operate in that area. And they're all involved. I mean 100% of the farmers in that area are signed into the program and that's pretty crazy. I've done a lot of ag tech things, but to have that big a buy in because I believe the Twin Platte was just their management, their employees. Incredible. Holding meetings, trying to explain to farmers why they needed to do this so that they could keep irrigating without restrictions. We're kind of a model for the state of Nebraska. I mean, Nebraska Department of Natural Resources is always looking closely at what we're gathering in our project. And you know, if you just put a flow meter on something, I mean it really only tells you how many gallons you pump during a season unless you have good telematics and can bring out the information to a database. Whereas we can tell you exactly what day they irrigated on and what happened after what happened before. You can learn a lot about irrigation because of that. We're kind of a place that many venture companies seek to actually do work with us. So we've had several well funded groups that have come in and actually put their devices on pivots and wells to see if they can actually utilize the fact that we know how much was irrigated. So it's been an incredible project and we did prove right away within the first couple of years farmers will irrigate some less just by knowing they can look on their phone every day. So we built a phone app and so they can look and see what they irrigated the day before. We get the electric data during the night, so we get all the electric data for the prior day. So we're near real time. We're not actual real time, but we're near near enough that they can see how many flying. And just knowledge of that is huge. We're actually working now with several other companies. We haven't chosen any, but we're looking at scheduling assistance. You know, should a farmer irrigate or not looking at, you know, all sorts of satellite and infield radar things that can be put on the pivot. There's all sorts of devices. We're trying to find one that will really tell farmers, should I be irrigating? Because you know, farmer irrigates his dad did it, he does it. It's a gut instinct. But there's a lot of data today and, you know, even things like now NASA has something they call open et. We're taking a strong look at that to work with Open et. Is it good enough? And you know, it's NASA, so I want to first of all say it probably is, but is it good enough for us to help the farmer understand his evapotranspiration at a field level? We're working with a company called Arable that actually has a really neat device and they actually capture hyperlocal rainfall. I think we got 200 plus devices out across the district in those where we can actually see where it rained. I'd love to find a way to actually understand rainfall at every field. You know, there's a lot of ways to do that, radar, et cetera, but they're not always that accurate. If you've ever looked at online tools, hey, it's right and a half inch over here and you get over there and it's raining an inch or it rained 2:10.
• 16:04
  Speaker A: Right, right.
• 16:05
  Speaker B: In their defense, it's very difficult. So I'll stop there because I could talk for hours about what we've done there. But it's. I want to say this just kind of to wrap it up. It's been an incredible project that really Twin Plaid had a vision for. We gave them a way to do it, maybe in a less expensive way, but yet make it scalable across the district. But they also work with like, Olson Engineering out of Lincoln, Nebraska. So they're always studying.
• 16:30
  Speaker A: Great group, great group.
• 16:32
  Speaker B: And Dr. Jim Snyder there. And then on wells that aren't electric, they contracted with a group called Ethos Connected, and Ethos actually puts devices in the field for that 15 to 20% of the wells that aren't electric. Yeah, we get that data. It's a challenge for them, but it's a challenge when you manage devices. So that's something that I try to avoid because it's not my forte, but. But it's got to be done in places. I mean, Tillery, I'll say this. This has been said to be in many places. I've been the largest fixed IoT project in the world. The number of acres it's covered, devices that are. I don't doubt it. I mean, if we had to. If, you know, I sort of cheated to get there and I cheated by actually piggybacking. The electric companies have been. I mean, there's several of them in that area. They work with us to pass us data. So it's been incredible just to name some of those. Midwest Electric Cooperative, Dawson Public Power, Nebraska Public Power, and there's some others that are smaller. But Custer Public Power, they've been. They've been incredible. And then a couple of real small ones that just. They're not small, but they're small in what they actually serve in our region. But yeah, I mean, it's the reason we have such adoption is the employees at Twin Platte and then the collaborative effort of so many others to try to get an answer around irrigating. So it's, it's been an incredible project that.
• 18:03
  Speaker A: And that was my question is, you know, I've seen, I have seen in Kansas, you know, some districts that have, you know, where the farmers have said, I mean, we gotta police ourselves before we get policed, you know, and I think technically that's what our, you know, water districts in Texas were intended to do. Of course, you probably know that we had a lawsuit, you know, I think it was a potato grower that sued the district north. North of Amarillo for, For fines. Yeah. And. And for being fined for over pumping the agreed amount. And anyway, he won, you know, and so.
• 18:46
  Speaker B: And for those that aren't from Texas, you know, it's the, it's the right of capture.
• 18:51
  Speaker A: Right, Exactly.
• 18:52
  Speaker B: The reason he won is it. That is the law in Texas. That's the law.
• 18:57
  Speaker A: There's no teeth. Right.
• 18:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. When you, whether you agree or not, it is a private property. Right. And if you can stick a straw there and they allow you to put a well there, then you could pump it day and night. I have, you know, I've seen the water dwindle in Texas. A lot of that has to do with. We just don't have any good recharge. That's one of the things. And then it's very hard to bring people together to collaborate around restrictions and in. You know, I've always. Because I used to be an ag banker, you know, I always worried back then I was worried about the water even in the 90s and. But I also knew that farmers had paid the top dollar for those irrigated acres. So it was a struggle. You know, how do you get. They paid for the water and now they want to pump it and their neighbors pumping and so they're trying to pump as much. So it's difficult. In Nebraska, the farmers don't own the water. Okay. So it's a different.
• 19:53
  Speaker A: That whole equation is off the table.
• 19:56
  Speaker B: Yeah. So that, that's why they are regulated. I mean the state, they have a right. Most places only have one. Well, that's all they have. And then of course it's good water, but. But yeah, it's. I have no solution for that. I've spent the last 40 years trying to understand the issue. I used to have irrigation. It's not that I lost irrigation. I irrigated in the 80s and then just based on a desire to have more dry land, I literally, in the early 90s I changed it all to dry land. I swapped acres and did some things. But I also went into a banking career for a decade where I was doing both and couldn't manage the water. So there's probably always have people say how did you know to get rid of those irrigated farms? I said, oh, I had no idea. It was sheer happenstance. There was no brilliance.
• 20:46
  Speaker A: Right. Hey friends, I'm excited to tell you about NASA. NASA Acres, which is part of the Earth Science division of NASA is coming to our area. They're coming here because they want to learn about how we farm and they want to see if there's ways that they can help us. So NASA Acres is a project that we have been partnering with for several months now and they will be here for and tour October 6th, 7th and 8th and we will be in Tarry County. We will be heading then up to Cress and over to Morton. We're going to be in a lot of different places. We're going to put that agenda up on our website on the homepage so you can see where we are. And if you want to come by and just see what NASA, what do they have to do with agriculture? We would love for you to meet these folks. They want to meet you, they want to talk about maybe how you can participate and have remote sensing information available for your farm. This is a farmer led effort. So if you're an ag, ag business or if you're a farmer, come out and just kick the tires on what it might be like to partner with NASA on an ag project. So what is it? I mean as an, as a dry land farmer in, in our area, how are you, how are you managing? Are you, are you really reliant on crop insurance or are you, are you able to harvest some?
• 22:15
  Speaker B: I would be an, I'd be kind of an oddball out. And, and the reason is of course I've done this. This is my 43rd crop. There's, it's very seldom that I don't harvest a crop. So the last few years I've Harvested. I think last year we harvested almost all the acres. But you got to understand something. I. I've. I've had an opinion for a number of years now that we, we're going to grow cotton. We got to get through August and I can't be sure that I'm going to get rain in late July and August. And so I plant skip row, which I didn't do early in my career. I skipped every acre. And then I'm very low plant population. So, you know, we, if we have a really good year, I'm not going to make two bales of cotton like I did at one time. I could make two bales on dry land in a really good year, but I'm going to be down there in something less because I don't have the plant population for it. But cotton is a very forgiving plant. It'll actually compensate for itself. So I sort of set it up to just compensate for itself. Now, my yields last year were not good. I had a couple of fields that caught another inch of rain that actually made decent. But for the most part, you know, I just, I harvested it. I mean, you know, so. So I went ahead and harvested everything. That's. I kind of. That's, that's, you know, that's just how I think I grew it all year. I'm going to take it. I'm going to try to take the harvest. But I'm going to tell you, with the cost of. I don't have the newest type of harvesting machine for cotton. Some of these machines, when you put them in the field and every hour you put on them, it's cost a lot of money. It's a big decision and it's their financial decision. So it's like I told the guy one day, he said, what are you going to do? I said, well, do me and I'll tell you what I'm going to do. But you, you make any decision you want. So am I. The thing is, I am relying on crop insurance to this extent. If there's a shortfall on my yield, I got to have it right? But the problem is really in the dry land, it's just not. There's nothing advantageous to just going the crop insurance route. There's nothing there. It's. I mean, you got a picture. A few years of low yields, you know, it's just a backup plan and that's all. And you know, we've been waiting for a year like this year, even though it hasn't been perfect, because I've had some Hail. In fact, I'll have a hail adjuster out on Monday on several acres of cotton that we got a week ago. But for the most part the cotton looks pretty good. We had a decent start. It's a little thin because I planted it thin to start with, not knowing it was going to rain so much. And now I'm using plant growth regulators to actually try to actually shake that cotton up so it won't be so rank to harvest. And so anyway, that's sort of where it's at. But I have no, you know, I really don't have a solution to the financials and agriculture right now because it's across the board. It's even in the Midwest. We've really been hit the last few years of drought with not enough water to really compensate for the lack of rainfall. And you know, you can look really smart with one decision or you can look like an idiot. But we have struggled in 22, 23 and 24 to get rainfall in that finishing part of the season and it hurt our crop immensely. Yeah. And you know, so Bud, when you're skip rowing, you're thin, you're probably going to be able to harvest it. I mean, and this year there's, there's going to be some really good solid plant dry land cotton. I mean it's incredible. So, you know, this would have been a year for me to go back and plant it like that. And it was, it would have been a home run. But, but yeah, I did never know.
• 25:52
  Speaker A: If you just had a crystal ball. Right.
• 25:54
  Speaker B: Well. And I just kind of stick to my plan. You know, my plan is I'm, you know, I pretty much plant cotton to keep cotton and, and it's going to have to be pretty stinky for me not to keep it even after a hail or. Because in the reason is in the long run I've just found I'm better off. You know, I may manage it a little different, not fertilize it, not put any more inputs in it to try to keep clean from weeds. But there's some of that. Well, I wish. You know, our real trouble, Hillary, Artillery is just input cost. You know, they're, they're just so much, the margins are really slim. It's, it's, it's just a difficult time to make it all work. So hopefully some of those things will. You know, I've hoped it for years but, but this is, the last couple of years have probably been the most challenging. Challenging economically. This one looks like it could be okay. Of course, we don't have much demand for cotton right now, and that's hurting our pricing.
• 26:51
  Speaker A: Right. Yeah. We've got so much competition now with, you know, other regions, particular Brazil, you know, that. Oh yeah, you know, as I was in Europe couple, I guess about a year, some months ago, and at the EU and, and then in Poland and. And then we had some Polish, some kids that were here, farmers that were here. And we were just comparing like the subsidies, but not just the subsidies, the price that they are getting. You know, they have way more yield, like in. In some cases 17 times the yield that we have in.
• 27:29
  Speaker B: Whoa. That's crazy.
• 27:31
  Speaker A: Yes. And then, and then their prices are good. And then, you know, and one of them made the comment like they, they were surprised at how much lack of innovation they were seeing here. And I will say, like, when we were there, I was. It was. There's a lot of innovation and there's a lot of money going into innovation there. But, you know, farmers, they're, you know, they're getting subsidized to. For their, the things that they're buying, you know, their. That equipment, you know, and so it is hard to, it's hard to compete against, you know, a government that puts that much value on their food supply chain.
• 28:16
  Speaker B: Right. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not as familiar with some of those places, so I wouldn't understand their subsidies, but yeah, it's. I don't know. I. You know, we've got a valuer our food supply here. We really have to, because it's one of the cheapest in the world. And it's, it's continual and for the most part, you know, I've never. We don't have many places in. Around us that we'd consider starving because there's always food. In fact, there's food waste going on all the time.
• 28:43
  Speaker A: Right. Well, it's interesting because now we don't have. You don't have people that are. Are starving from lack of calories. You have people that are starving from lack of nutrition.
• 28:53
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 28:54
  Speaker A: You know, and so that's really more where we are. Yeah. In fact, we, we have a, a project going right now across rural West Texas where they're doing some health initiatives and finding, you know, just astronomical levels of people that, you know, in, in small community where there's, you know, half the people are either diabetic or pre. Diabetic.
• 29:15
  Speaker B: Wow. What's driving that? Is it a lot of processed foods? Those kind of things? Is that what you're. Yeah.
• 29:22
  Speaker A: And a lot of times there's Lack of access to other food that's not processed food, you know, and, and also, I mean, you can say what you want about processed food, but so many of us, that's, that's all you have the time for. Like, it's a cult. It has to be a cultural shift, you know, of people gonna have to have more hours to be home in order to cook this kind of food that is better for them and learn how to do those things, because there's no one home to do that anymore.
• 29:57
  Speaker B: You know, maybe someday we do a show where. So during COVID I used to travel. You know, before COVID there was a time running JSC, working on data solution projects. I was traveling 200 days a year. And so Covid happened and then, boom, I wasn't traveling and wasn't going to speak at conferences and those kind of things. So I was here.
• 30:20
  Speaker A: Absolutely.
• 30:21
  Speaker B: So I got involved in, you know, I couldn't cook. I couldn't, I could scramble an egg. That was the extent. But, but I started cooking and, and today I refuse to eat. I, I, I cook everything. I mean, me and Chris will cook everything we eat. But the crazy part is, you know, all my kids are grown, and so if we cook, this is our solution. So I think everybody has fun if.
• 30:43
  Speaker A: We, I want to hear what the solution is to this, because I know what you're going to say.
• 30:46
  Speaker B: Our solution is, you know, I got three big freezers in the garage. We cook like we're cooking for my four kids and us. And then we eat this little bit of it. And then we, we've got a really good vacuum sealer and we'll vacuum that. We'll, we'll take everything we didn't need. We'll vacuum it up into serving size and date it and put the name on it, throw it in the freezer, and I'm going to tell you, you can read all the things. Don't keep it up. I mean, I don't know if it'll ever go bad if it's vacuum sealed. And I do that all the time. Like, I'll, we'll, we'll cook some. I mean, this is over, like on the weekend, we might cook a lot of stuff. I mean, right now I could feed you out of my freezers for probably. We could, you could come live with us. We'd probably eat four or five months without needing any food.
• 31:29
  Speaker A: Yeah, well. And, you know, I was, it is funny because I, I had my car worked on this last week and where it was, where it was in the Shop. It was like, I don't know, it's a half a mile from me. And I'm like, they're like, do you want to ride? I was like, no, I'm just a few blocks away. And they're like, yeah, this is bizarre, you know, and, and I'm walking home thinking, you know, my goodness, I get something that I miss. Like, I enjoyed about COVID was I walked all, everywhere, all the time. I saw my neighbors outside, my kid, the kids were playing in our front yard or, you know, everywhere. All the time. I started baking, grinding wheat, baking bread again. You know what I mean? Like, just doing things that, like, we.
• 32:20
  Speaker B: Didn'T, we didn't have so much busy time going on.
• 32:22
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 32:23
  Speaker B: And I think that, you know, I was still working, but all of a sudden I didn't have a front to back date of travel. I was. Everybody started, hey, we'll do a zoom call. You know, the other thing that's kind of unique, I think is. And I didn't even know what a, you know, any of these would work, but there was this invention called the instant pot. You've probably seen them. And so the instant pot, to me, people cooking them. But I don't, I don't cook in it. Here's what I do. I take that vacuum bag, it's in a very good, high quality vacuum bag, put about a half inch of water in there, throw that food in there, close it, put it on high pressure for 20, 22 minutes. And that's my. So I don't even have to wash that thing because when it's done, I just dump it out of that. And you use bags that are, even though they're, they're plastic, they're food grade, made for heating and stuff. But, you know, it's kind of a cool deal because even the heat. Because you know, the problem with trying to reheat and the reason we don't like to freeze things, you dry them out. When you try to reheat them, you mess them up. But I'll tell you what, you ought to take some brisket or steaks and what's left? Just put it like. And then guess what? When you go to actually heat that up, that stuff is as moist as. In fact, some, some foods become better as they absorb all the flavors and set up. Anyway, I have a whole thought on how we get to eat better.
• 33:40
  Speaker A: I like that idea. That's a. I mean, and I did so much that when my kids were younger and I've realized, like, how much I prioritized you had. I don't prioritize my own. You know.
• 33:54
  Speaker B: It'S not good every day. Who wants to cook? You know, so if there's some way get a selection going where you're not able to. You know the other thing you mentioned, a potato farmer. I'm a firm believer that we have Villa vilified the potato.
• 34:09
  Speaker A: I don't find a lot of foods. Yes.
• 34:12
  Speaker B: And you know, the sad part is you can buy a 10 pound bag of potatoes for $4 plus.
• 34:17
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 34:18
  Speaker B: Change in. Most people that are on tight budget, they won't buy them because they believe that it's all these bad carbs. You know, sometimes you ought to have somebody from the potato industry own.
• 34:28
  Speaker A: That's a great idea. You know, I heard just, just the other day that like a lot of those simple carbs when they're frozen and reheated.
• 34:36
  Speaker B: You got it. That's right.
• 34:37
  Speaker A: They become actually a slow carb. I had no idea. That's actually a great idea. I have a friend that actually is part of that potato, the potato association. So it'd be fabulous to have her on list.
• 34:49
  Speaker B: I've done better dieting when I'm eating potatoes, but all the potatoes I eat. So I'll get a 10 pound bag of potatoes. I will cook the whole 10 pounds at once. I'll throw them in vacuum bags and I'll freeze them and then I'll reheat them to eat them. And then what happens is you take those simple sugars and actually because they've been frozen, when they're frozen they become resistant starch is what the word for it is. So they're not something your body really wants to absorb. But what happens is they feed the. The bacteria, the, the good bacteria in yours like your colon. So they're really so in the potato industry as a study on this. I mean, that is so.
• 35:27
  Speaker A: That's so fascinating. Yeah. And then in potatoes we grow. In case people don't know, we do grow potatoes not far from where you live.
• 35:34
  Speaker B: That's a lot of potatoes from.
• 35:36
  Speaker A: A lot of potatoes are grown in there because we have that. Perfect.
• 35:39
  Speaker B: We had water when we had really good water. They were really. I mean there was Smith.
• 35:44
  Speaker A: We still have a potato shed though.
• 35:47
  Speaker B: Okay. I didn't even run. There's still some potatoes growing up there. Okay.
• 35:51
  Speaker A: Yep, yep. There's a potato shed there. I was there last year touring that and yeah, it's still there.
• 35:59
  Speaker B: You know, another one is have you ever been through this select milk, dry milk plant there in little field.
• 36:04
  Speaker A: I Never have that.
• 36:05
  Speaker B: I would love to do that facility. They would love to have you come in and interview them. I promise you they're most, they're a super group. I've been there and seen that place and, and you know, they're that, you know, that's really an innovative group, Select Milk. So, you know, they developed the idea behind. Oh, what's the, what's the, what's the milk that. Fair Life. So Fair Life sold it to Coca Cola, but it all started with Select Milk.
• 36:36
  Speaker A: Hey friends. Here on the high plains, we have got a chance to work with NASA's develop project. The focus is cover crops using satellite tools to identify things like when they were planted and how they're managed and how can we build real research to see what value they bring or maybe they don't bring. So if you're a farmer, you're planting cover crops, we'd love your help. A short form will be sent to you with some basic information like your planning date, termination date, maybe the years that you had cover crop. Your information is going to stay protected, but it'll make a really big difference in showing what cover crops are really worth having in our region. If you want more information, want to be part of this, you can visit sarah-conservation.com we'll have some information there. And you can also reach out to me at contact sarah-conservation.com and, and I would be happy to put your name on the list. Thank you very much. There's some great minds. You know, I feel like I, I wonder what will come out of these, these few years because I, what I saw, you know, when I was in, in Europe, when I was in California, like places that are highly regulated, it, it drives innovation, you know, and sometimes when there's no pressure to change, nothing changes, you know, and then it's too late. Things should have changed two decades ago and. But there was no pressure for them to change. And so sometimes I'm not, I'm not a fan of, I'm not saying I'm a fan of regulation, but there needs to be a balance of, you know, you can't have an expectation all the time that people are always going to do the right thing. They don't always do the right thing, you know, and so sometimes, you know, that's part of what I think. You know, you see that in the preamble of our Constitution to support, you know, to promote the common good.
• 38:40
  Speaker B: Right.
• 38:40
  Speaker A: You know, the general welfare is what it says. Promote the general welfare, you know, well.
• 38:46
  Speaker B: We, I think we need to re industrialize America. I wish that, you know, I wish we had, you know, when we lost the cotton mill out of Littlefield.
• 38:54
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 38:55
  Speaker B: You know, but we couldn't compete on labor costs with China, but with automation. And people say, well, does that really put people to work? Well, somebody's got to build the equipment that goes in there. There is oversight. I would love to see some things because it's wasteful to move stuff 7,800 miles just to say it gets to a place that's cheaper labor. You know, that's why one of my, really one of the biggest things I do today, I've launched a chemical company there in Lubbock to actually, you know, free animal lines. So we actually partnered with a group called Vulpis that is kind of unique. They're a. The drivers behind the company. It's a Chinese family that immigrated from China about a decade ago and they made chemicals in China and so they understood how to use Dulin manufacturing. And I was introduced by American Farm Bureau to them in 2022. And then we formed a partnership and actually we've launched several items that are really good for the environment. And what I mean by that is, you know, we, we deal with a lot of things that we maybe could use less chemicals if they were more efficacy and more the quality was higher. So we're trying to promote quality. We created a water product that you can put with your spray solution before you spray. And what it does, it does a lot. It's similar to what ammonia sulfate does without using ammonia sulfate, but it's just a proprietary group of fermented acids. And it actually makes the water not get the minerals in the water not chelate or get bound to your herbicides. I was using some lower rates of herbicide early in the season because I didn't feel like I needed to put out the top rate because I was getting really good results because my ph of my water, my water was better. And then the other things they've worked on that we have got out this year, very high purity, shooting for 99% so that we can use less of them. And so there's a drive there, you know. You know, people said we've got a chemical plan. Why do you want people to use less chemicals? Well, we just like them to use what they need to use. I mean, I don't, I haven't figured out how to farm without them. So what I got to do in the meantime is be the most judicious user of the chemistry that we have.
• 41:09
  Speaker A: Exactly.
• 41:10
  Speaker B: So there's a lot of innovation going on there from their group trying to actually rectify some of those things.
• 41:16
  Speaker A: That's really exciting. So tell, tell me what, what's the name of the, the name of the.
• 41:21
  Speaker B: Group is Grower Freedom Alliance. So if someone wanted to look at it, they go to gfatexas.com and that kind of explains the whole process. We're a buying group. Farmers came in actually part of the buying group. Then we actually leased a massive building out at Reese Air force base. About 100,000 square feet. And wealth is the chemical, the chemical company Bulbous Agriculture. They've renovated the building and we've got, you know, we've got mixing tanks, chemistry tanks, all that stuff. Yeah, got a state of the art lab. They're. They're incredible people. So yeah, sometime when, when if I'm in Lubbock and we have time, I'll holler at you and you can come out. They, they really are. They, they. They've done an excellent job. In fact they have one chemical right now that they've filed patents on that would. We could actually lower the use of. We could clean up the chemicals with a process they have and it's a well known chemistry. So you know, maybe some of that will come out because they're world class chemists. I mean the, you know, the father of this group's been doing this for 40 years. So that's his whole body. He's worked in pharmaceutical and agriculture.
• 42:33
  Speaker A: So that is really exciting. And it's exciting to me that those kind of things are still happening here where we are, you know, it's happening locally, it's exciting. Well, it's been great to visit with you before, before we conclude, I have a, I have a surprise question for you.
• 42:50
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 42:52
  Speaker A: Who is one person, living or deceased that you think people should know about?
• 43:04
  Speaker B: Somebody that is living or deceased that I think people should know about. Well, you know, Tillery, that's impactful in your life, man. There have been so many that have been, you know, I would say first, you know, I'd be like the athlete that would say, you know, living today, one time deceased, Jesus Christ. Of course I'm a Christ follower, so you can say that. But then who in living flesh has impacted my life? You know, there's been so many people that have poured into me through the years when I was in banking. A brother in law of mine, Eddie Hedges, that we actually ran the banks together and he was so impactful. He had 30 years of banking experience or maybe more at that time. And he really did have such an impact on me, man. It's just I'm sitting here thinking I've actually had the, you know, I've got to sit on boards with just really astute people, a lot of them. I love this. There were farmers and people would not realize, you know. You know, Tillery, there was a gentleman. I said, I will tell this quick story because it was so amazing to me. There was a gentleman. His name was Rex Griffith and he was from the. Where was he from? He was from over close to maybe Bledsoe back in there. Lehman. Not Lehman, maybe Bledsoe. But I remember he served on the telephone cooperative board with me. This guy was visionary. You know, we went to the first time, and he's an older guy, he's deceased now, but we went and looked at, you know, talking about cellular phones. And so we decided we were going to get into that and everybody had the bag phone. And I remember I got on the plane with this guy and Rex looked at me and said, billy, I promise you in your lifetime you'll be carrying that phone in your pocket. You'll just have a little phone in your pocket. Yeah, he was telling me this, and this is, this is years ago. I mean, when the cellular phones were just coming out. We got involved in it. And then that blew my mind. But the one that really blew my mind before the Internet was the Internet. We were trying to decide if we wanted to try to be an Internet service provider. And we went to a conference and actually watched for the first time. First time I ever saw the Internet. So we come back, we were in the boardroom and, you know, everybody was older and I'm like 26, I'm a kid. And they're like, well, what do you guys think? I said, I gotta have it. I said, I gotta have this Internet. I did. I said I would use it every day. I said, I mean. And they said to me, well, how many people do you think will, you know, we had. I've forgotten how many subscribers we had. But he. How many of our subscribers in this five year region do you think would be on it? And I was trying to be conservative. And you know what he said? He said, someday they'll all be on it. That's what it said. I'm just like. And everybody laughed at him. So I sometimes think about him, you know, this guy. So, you know, there's so many we.
• 45:56
  Speaker A: Can say, you probably, but, you know, that's what. This is something that I've been wanting to start for a while and I thought this. I'm going to start with you because. Oh man, there are so many, There are, you know, so many people that have gone before us. Yeah. That are so impactful and, and it's to be able to honor, you know, you mentioned Eddie. You know, I mean, Eddie's, Eddie's parents. Oh, I mean. Oh, yes.
• 46:25
  Speaker B: Oh my gosh. Are they not Arthur Hedges? You know, the beauty was I got to actually sit on a JEN board where he was the manager for a number of years. A guy with tremendous integrity. And you're right, you know, every, A lot of people, if they're fortunate, I feel very fortunate. You missed, you'd mentioned your father because my father didn't have a college education or any of those things. Still, when people say, who's this who get. Name the five smartest people you ever dealt with. And I always list him because it didn't matter. I can't explain it. He had a knack for solving an issue like didn't matter whether it was complicated or not. He would begin to dwell on it. And so I'm like, be careful that you rank because I, you know, I'm college educated but I mean, I'll never discount a guy that's made it through life and worked hard. So, you know, you ought to do something about that and give the guy a little heads up. He could think through the top five people. Yeah, yeah, right. I think of college professors that really believe in, you know, if I think, I often think about this and I've said this to a lot of people through the years, but you know, if I've been successful and you know, my success, I would hope in the end would be that my grandkids would go, well, we knew how he believed and what he believed and that would be most important to me. But I think about failures like I've had some close calls on businesses because I've been in so many things over the last 43 years. But you know, I just want to be honest, you know, God, I was fortunate that God put me with a partner. And my wife, of all those years, she always believed in me, you know, even when I was facing failure. No, you'll figure it out. I'm not, I'm not worried about it. Which drove me crazy to an extent. She would, she would say, no, I'm, I'm riding with you, you're driving and you will figure it out. So, you know, it's sometimes, isn't it funny how when you tell people, it's like a self fulfilling prophecy, right? If you. If you're positive with somebody, all of a sudden they're like, well, I only have one choice. You know, we got to survive out of this. And so.
• 48:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
• 48:29
  Speaker B: There's a lot I wish our world was more positive with people. We always, always find the most negative thing about somebody. We, you know, we ought to be a people of second chances. There's a lot of people.
• 48:40
  Speaker A: Oh, I totally agree. I mean, we. Doug and I, we record a podcast about our bankruptcy. Yeah. You know, and talk very openly about what it was like to go through foreign bankruptcy and then. And where we are now, you know, because so many people are in that transition and wanting people to be aware that there's hope. And that's why I wanted to start this is because I want people to have an opportunity to highlight people that may have. They might not be famous.
• 49:15
  Speaker B: That's right.
• 49:16
  Speaker A: But. But there, it's important for us to honor the legacy that they left and. And, you know, not just for them, but their families to hear that. That they are not forgotten.
• 49:28
  Speaker B: It's true. Yeah. It's always cool to, you know, it's not always. Maybe the rest of the world doesn't know these people, but there's always somebody. You know, everybody needs a sponsor in life. And, you know, my dad sponsored me to start farming. Wouldn't have been able to do it without him. And I think everybody needs a sponsor at some level. So. Yeah, that's a good thing that you're thinking like that, because those are we. We need positive outtakes because, man, when we become a nation with no hope, that is just too sad.
• 49:58
  Speaker A: It's true. It is true. And there is. There's. There's a lot of good out there, and it just doesn't get a lot of attention. So I think the more we focus on it, the better. Well, thank you so much. And I. I hope everybody's enjoyed this. I knew we would go all kinds of places, and I'm. I is my favorite thing. So I hope people have learned a lot. And friends, thanks for joining us. And I. I hope that you will like, like Billy and I just did think through some of those people that have been impactful of your. In your life and remember the example that they set. And I look forward to another episode with you on Conservation Stories.
• 50:41
  Speaker B: Sam.