AgCast 217: Why Ducks Are More Valuable Than Crops in the Delta, Lessons from the Delta, Part 8

Transcript:

Patrick Dill: The rice fields mimic those wetlands. They’re, it’s not the exact same, the food sources aren’t the same. But we can get what we need to out of that. So we, we we’re gonna use this, it’s what’s there, 80% of the Mississippi Alluvial Valley is agriculture. That’s why Ducks Unlimited care about rice.

Chad Fiechter: We’ve been talking about the economics of rice production in the Delta, but there are some factors that we haven’t considered, namely the overlap with water management, wildlife, and the ecosystem. In some cases, that intersection, especially with duck hunting, expands the economic opportunities on farms.

Welcome back to the Purdue Commercial AgCast. I’m Chad Fiechter. This episode is part of our Lessons from the Delta series, where Todd and I traveled through Arkansas talking with farmers, researchers, and industry leaders about rice production systems. In this episode, we’re in eastern Arkansas, standing in the middle of a rice field—trying to understand how one of the most water intensive crops in agriculture is also playing a role in conservation, and why organizations like Ducks Unlimited are working directly with farmers.

[00:01:04] WHY DUCKS UNLIMITED CARE ABOUT RICE
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Chad Fiechter: All right, Patrick, you were just saying something about those birds. What, what’s their name?

Patrick Dill: So those are black neck stilts. They are actually breeding now in the rice fields here. So when you’re, we’re driving around here, we will see a lot of these, we’ll see a lot of shore birds and stuff. These are just really cool.

Chad Fiechter: All right. So tell us a little bit about yourself and where we’re at.

Patrick Dill: Alright, so my name’s Patrick Dill. I’m the Rice Stewardship Coordinator for Duck Unlimited. Uh, we are in Poinsett County just outside of Harrisburg, on a, uh, rice farm, rice soybean rotation. We are at a USGS well.

So one question that we get a lot is, is why does Ducks Unlimited care about rice? We would do wetlands, flooded timber, stuff like that. Waterfowl breed in Canada, North Dakota, South Dakota, that’s one of our primary target. It’s a priority one zone for us. That’s where we’ve spent a lot of our early time working, but we also realized as an organization you gotta send healthy birds back up to breed. You gotta send enough birds back up to breed. And those birds will migrate during the winter down to the Mississippi Alluvial Valley. Through the Gulf Coast and, and parts of California. So those have became priority one areas also. They’re just non breeding grounds, so we’re right in the middle of a priority one non-breeding area for Ducks Unlimited.

So what we’re trying to do is provide habitat, food, cover from the elements different, predatory species, that we can send healthy birds, enough birds back up to Canada. So they can reproduce and keep population numbers where they need to be here.

[00:02:42] RICE FIELDS ECOSYSTEM
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Patrick Dill: So the reason why this historically was great for waterfowl is that it was flooded timber, wet lands, different kinds of moist soil. It’s also the reason it’s great for rice farming. Yeah, very hydro soils. So we hold water great here. Perfect rice fields. So what made this good for waterfowl is kind of what destroyed it. Where we converted it to rice farms. But also we can use those because rice fields, like we can see the black neck stilts mimic wetland still. We still see a lot of the same species. If we go out there right now and we walk through that water, we’re gonna see all kinds of macro invertebrates.

There’s a rice field right there, where the water’s coming from one patty to the next. We’re gonna catch enough snakes that we’re not gonna wanna walk into another rice field., There’s, there’s turtles. There’s birds, there’s fish. So you’ll see a lot of these shore birds, they’ll go from like a ditch to a pond to, uh, they’ll bounce around. And they’ll get fish eggs on their feet, and then when they come back into the rice fields, they’ll bring those eggs with them. So, the ecosystem that out in this rice field is crazy.

Chad Fiechter: Wait, wait. You’re saying that you could, you could actually get fish to move into rice fields? Like when they harvest, sometimes there’s fish?

Patrick Dill: Well, it’s not gonna be like huge fish, but like little minnows and stuff like that.

So as, as the birds are traveling and they’re moving between the ditches and the ponds and the, the streams and stuff, they’re gonna get fish eggs on their feet. And when they go from that ditch over into the rice field, some of those eggs are gonna come with them and they’re gonna get put in there. So yeah, if we go over there right now and we kind of played around, we could see little things swimming around in the, the water.

Todd Kuethe: So what do ducks eat?

Patrick Dill: Ducks eat a little bit of everything. They feed on seeds from moist oil units, native seeds. Uh, so what we would think of as weeds probably here is what you would see in a moist oil unit. Like a smart weed. Yeah. Um, different times of grasses. They, and they probably prefer that. But the leftover rice seed, is high in nutrient content also. So we, we can see a lot of that.

Todd Kuethe: So you don’t have to worry about the ducks coming in and like eating everything?

Patrick Dill: No, no. We don’t.

Todd Kuethe: Like they can coexist with the rice plants not affected. Right?

Patrick Dill: Right. So the timing of the migration with the timing of when we plant and harvest rice. There’s, there’s not a lot of overlap. You’ll see some early kill. But that’s not an issue.

Most of the ducks are gonna come in winter, late fall, winter. Harvested and we’re, we’re just got waste seed in the field. What we do though is we will put, we have pipes with, called structure for water control, or boxes on the end of it where you can put boards in it. They’ll put the boards back in after they’ve harvested and catch rain water. Some people will artificially flood the rice fields for waterfowl. That just brings the water back up. So now they’ve got a wet habitat to come to. They also have that waste seed. Also, you’ll get macro invertebrates, protein sources, that will come into the rice fields after harvest. Those macro invertebrates will help deteriorate the rice residue. And then the ducks can use that, especially when they’re going back north in the summer. That protein’s good for them.

Chad Fiechter: Okay. So what’s your background? ‘Cause you obviously know a lot about rice and you work for Ducks Unlimited as a conservationist, right?

Patrick Dill: Yes. So I got a, I got my Bachelor’s from Arkansas State in Wildlife Management. Did a short little bit with Fish and Wildlife Service, worked for Kansas Parks and Wildlife. And then I worked for, USDA NRCS, Natural Resource Conservation Services, for seven years. I left there, worked for Arkansas State and ARS or agricultural research services for another three years. And then we did research on groundwater in the state. And actually this is one of the projects that we did it on. So, so roughly about 15 years of conservation work on farms. And then while I was at Arkansas State, I got my master’s. My master’s was using satellites to identify flooded rice fields in the winter to quantify how much habitat was there.

[00:06:44] THE WATER PROBLEM
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Chad Fiechter: so what exactly are we looking at? You, you said we’re coming here ’cause there’s a lot to see in one spot.

Patrick Dill: Again, what makes this really good for rice, for waterfowl, is the hydro soils, uh, because we can hold water. The water’s not seeping through the ground. It’s, it’s, you put it on the field. It’s in the field.

What this is not great for is aquifer recharge. So when you were coming from Memphis, I don’t know if you could tell, but we have a Crowleys Ridge. Anything East of Crowleys Ridge, it was recharged relatively easily. You have the Mississippi River right there. There’s a lot of sandy spots. So you’ll get infiltration.

On the west side of the ridge, you just don’t see that as much. So we have groundwater decline areas where you see your hotspots of rice. So a lot of the work that we do to make sure that our rice fields is to help rice farmers be productive, but also manage those resources so that there’s still water. So that’s why we, we met here. We have a USGS observation well here.

I’ve got, so here’s a map of the priority areas.

Chad Fiechter: Wait, this is Ducks Unlimited priority.

Patrick Dill: Yes. Yeah. So, so here’s your priority one breeding area, then down, here’s your priority one, non breeding area. And then we’ve got those cones of depression right here. So where the, the darkest red is, is where we’ve used more water than we can, um, recharge.

We are roughly right there.

Chad Fiechter: So for the interested listener, there’s a map with green to red. We are standing in a red area, correct?

Patrick Dill: It’s smack in one of the red areas.

Todd Kuethe: And that just means that the water is, it’s very low.

Aaron Shew: How deep is it?

Patrick Dill: So if we look at this, well, right here, I think at the lowest it was this year, it was at 130 feet down.

Chad Fiechter: To water?

Patrick Dill: To water. So from here down, it’s 130 feet till you hit water.

On another well prior to coming across the ridge. When you’re looking at the graph, it, it kind of bebop between 25 and 30 feet. So, I mean like almost a hundred foot difference of water.

Chad Fiechter: Geez.

Aaron Shew: So pre rice, let’s, let’s say 1920 pre-major irrigated ag production here, what do you think the water levels would’ve been?

Patrick Dill: Uh, I think that would’ve been similar to what you see over there.

Aaron Shew: Okay.

Patrick Dill: Um, I, I, if we’re not pumped the water out, I think the water would’ve been just as hot.

Aaron Shew: The water would’ve been very similar.

Patrick Dill: Uh Yep.

Aaron Shew: So a hundred feet in a hundred years.

Chad Fiechter: To put that into perspective, rice uses more water than any other major crop grown in this region. And in some areas, groundwater levels are dropping fast. So the challenge becomes, can a farmer keep growing rice under the same practices?

[00:09:21] SOLUTIONS + FARMER RESPONSE
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Patrick Dill: We’re doing a lot of work to mitigate that through different ways we’re either irrigating more efficiently, to where we are trying to irrigate different ways so that we’re not using as much water. Rice uses the most water out of any of the crops that we grow in Arkansas. It uses 30 acre inches of water typically. You can do different things. The way you irrigate it, you can row irrigate it kinda like what you would do with beans or corn. Use a little bit less water. It might affect the yield a little bit. You can do AWD where it’s, it’s a similar set set up here. But we will pump it up and then we’ll let it kind of go down to a mud flat. That also helps with carbon. Different greenhouse gases. And, and the water’s not necessary for the rice to grow. It’s more for weeds.

So the weeds can’t grow in the water. The rice can, so if we hold water on it, then we don’t have the same issue with the weeds. Which is the issue with row rice or, or rice growing furrows. Um, if you don’t have that standing water on it, then you’re gonna have weed problems. So then you’re gonna have

Aaron Shew: Pigweed.

Patrick Dill: Yeah, you’re gonna have,

Aaron Shew: And if you get pigweed, we don’t have any traits in rice.

Patrick Dill: Yep.

Aaron Shew: Right. So soybeans. You’re fine, but you’re kind of screwed if you, if you grow rice and you get a bunch of pigweed.

The other thing, so I don’t know how many listeners might understand acre feet or acre inches of water. So like at any given time a flooded rice field’s gonna have optimally between roughly two and four inches of water. So when we say 30 acre inches of water. It means that throughout the course of a single production season, you would put a total of 30 inches on that field.

And so alternate wetting and drying though, for example, it’s like you flood, you drain, you flood, you drain. You might get as little as 14 acre inches put on a field so you can cut your water use in half, you’re gonna take some yield hits. Some varieties do better than others. You got weed issues. Fertilization is different. I mean, it basically, it changes your entire management plan. But you can save water and potentially save greenhouse gases.

Todd Kuethe: But do you, does that increase like labor time or management time?

Aaron Shew: Both.

Todd Kuethe: Or is it actually

Patrick Dill: both?

Aaron Shew: AWD does both.

Patrick Dill: Both. And well, even furrow. Because furrow, like right now, if you go out there, there’s no beds. It’s just flat. They planted the rice into it. But if you have like a, a soybean rice rotation and you’re planting your soybeans into beds, as long as nothing crazy happens, it’s not super wet when you’re harvesting and those beds are still intact, you might clean it in the fall or the spring. But you can use those same beds to plant rice into. So you might just run through, clean out the furrows really quick. But the time, the, the diesel, to flatten everything and then turn it back into beds. And then flatten everything that’s, that’s removed.

Aaron Shew: The big trade off though that’s, is the levee building though, too.

Patrick Dill: Yep.

Aaron Shew: So,

Patrick Dill: Just to get an idea of 30 acre inches or two and a half acre feet. An acre foot, and this is a rounded up number, is 326 gallons. And that’s two and a half acre feet of water for every acre. There’s, that’s just a crazy amount of water.

Aaron Shew: Times 1.5 million acres of rice in Arkansas.

Patrick Dill: Yeah, exactly. It is a lot of water that goes into rice production.

And, and so what you’re gonna see these, these red spots, that’s where your rice production really hits. Um, you’re gonna hear a lot about rice capitals. Poinsett County is typically the highest producing rice in the state. It flip flops because of rotations. So if it’s a a rice heavy year, they’re the highest. If it’s a bean heavy year, just ’cause the way the rotations fall, then they’re second. And I’ve got the, the numbers here, but you’re gonna see a majority of rice is grown right here. And then right there. And then that’s just there, there, it’s not a coincidence that you see that water decline area where the, the highest rice is.

Chad Fiechter: So, okay, here’s a question because, um, there’s spots where we, like in, in the Midwest where we just started irrigating.

Patrick Dill: Yep.

Chad Fiechter: You know, it just kind of became economically viable. But you’re saying you’ve been growing rice here, using this amount of water. Is more water being used? Is less water being used? Like where

Patrick Dill: We’re definitely becoming more efficient with the water. Um. Like I said, there’s, there’s different ways to irrigate. One easier way, and what you guys might be used to is, like with Polypipe. It’s called multi inlet rice irrigation, where they’ll pull polypipe from the riser all the way across. And they’ll punch holes in each patty. So instead of pumping up water in the top patty and letting it cascade down. They’re pumping up each patty at the same time. Uh, it makes it more efficient. The water gets across it a little quicker.

Chad Fiechter: So at that, the research station, the Northeast Arkansas Rice Research, they’re a very efficient water. What we observe, that’s a really efficient water system.

Patrick Dill: Yep. And, and, and I, I, I think that’s what you’re gonna start seeing. Farmers, you know, they’re, they’re dependent on this. They, they realize it. And that’s what we’re gonna go see this reservoir in a second. You’re gonna see more of these reservoirs, more service, water, um, and more efficiency.

And, and I would expect that you would start to see some sort of rebound in the aquifer just based off of that. It’s, it’s definitely slowed down a lot, uh, over the last few years. But yeah, because of the farmers realizing, you know, that this is happening, they’ve taken those steps to make sure that they’re gonna leave it better than they found it. That’s, that’s the goal to most people that farm. They don’t wanna give their their kids something that’s, you know, not gonna work.

The rice fields mimic those wetlands. Uh, they’re, it’s not the exact same, uh, the food sources aren’t the same. Uh, but we can get what we need to out of that. So we, we we’re gonna use this, it’s what’s there, 80% of the Mississippi Alluvial Valley is agriculture. You can’t change that overnight. You don’t wanna change that overnight because the human population is skyrocketing. We gotta feed everybody. A good way to do that’s through rice production. So we’re not gonna try to get rid of it. We gotta keep it. We just gotta work with each other.

[00:15:10] Duck Economics
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Colson Tester: Another really important component of like Delta land values, delta culture is duck hunting and like the recreational aspect. So like Aaron was talking about how back in the 18 hundreds, you know, people moved in here and started to log. Clear the land. Drain it. Today there is immense value placed on places that weren’t logged and what they call a green tree reservoirs. So places with live trees that can be flooded, and then hunting for ducks. So sometimes those are more valuable than Class A crop land is

Chad Fiechter: No way.

Colson Tester: in the Delta.

Aaron Shew: People make tens of thousands of dollars putting up duck blinds and up cabin. Stuttgart is the duck capital of the world.

Chad Fiechter: Really? I’ve never been ducking. So is there, there’s gotta be just a crazy amount of money in like guided duck hunts

Colson Tester: Yes.

Chad Fiechter: or hosting

Aaron Shew: An insane

Chad Fiechter: groups?

Colson Tester: Lots of, of state i there’s a lot of people in state that duck hunt. But there’s, especially the, in prime of Delta, there’s immense influx of out-of-state duck hunters. Some of the duck, like clubs have own wildlife biologists. They have their own management. It’s like very, it’s very professionalized.

Chad Fiechter: Because you’re trying to like, you want the mo the best environment for the ducks?

Colson Tester: That’s right. Yes. They’re like farming, they’re farming, they’re farming rice and farming soybeans. Or whatever, but they’re doing it in a way that is optimal for duck hunting.

Aaron Shew: It is economic decision in the farm.

Todd Kuethe: Well, I mean, we have a little bit of that in pockets of the Midwest, where guys are trying to be very intentional about deer population management.

Aaron Shew: Um, that’s what y’all gotta us up to do. We’ll bring you down a duck hunt. And y’all, y’all bring us up for a white tail hunt.

Todd Kuethe: Uh, we’ll have to introduce you to some other people. ‘Cause

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Neither of us are hunters.

Aaron Shew: Frankly, I love to whitetail hunt, uh, so does Colson. But, if we’re gonna do it for the experience, come down and let’s go duck hunting. We’ll, uh,

Chad Fiechter: Yeah, it, it’s a thing. It’s like, if if you have kids, you have a son, you’re like, we’ll take that’s like, that’s a rite of passage?

Aaron Shew: Very much so.

Colson Tester: People are like at the level of, of they have, a, a George Foreman or or a grill in the duck blind. making, you know, they got a Blackstone in there and they’re cooking bacon and eggs and biscuits while they’re duck hunting.

Chad Fiechter: So this isn’t just production agriculture, it’s a system that supports recreation, tourism, and a deeply rooted culture in the Delta.

What we saw here expands our assumptions about agriculture. These farmers aren’t just maximizing yield, they’re balancing production with water, use, wildlife habitat, and long-term sustainability. And in situations where water is becoming the limiting factor, that balance matters.

[00:17:58] TAKEAWAYS
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Todd Kuethe: What surprised you while you were there?

Chad Fiechter: I don’t think anything really surprised me other than like the nuance of farming, it became very apparent to me. You know, we were moving across counties and they were still growing rice, but they were growing rice in different ways across the county.

Because I’ve raised corn and soybeans, like I’ve haven’t really thought about the unique differences between raising one specific crop. So I’ve always thought about it in sort of like systems thinking. And it was very different. And then the, the groups of people who were working in those areas were different. So that, the west side of Crowley’s Ridge, there was like one group of farmers and then on the other side there was a different group of farmers.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. And, and the, and the production practice would be different.

The commodities they could grow would be different. Their access to water is very different.

Then there’s also the whole harvesting it and selling it the different uses of rice. There’s not like just like number two yellow rice. There’s the quality grain after it’s harvested dictates what can be done with it. Some of it ends up just like as animal food, pet food. Some of it we eat here.

Chad Fiechter: We were, was just with some of my nieces and nephews and I was like, do you guys know what the difference between brown rice and white rice is?

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. It’s the same rice.

Chad Fiechter: It’s the same rice.

Well, one of the things I think we both agreed was it was fun to think about a crop that’s, that has grown for human consumption. At least in my world, I won’t speak for you, but a lot of times I’m thinking about commodity production that’s going into animal feed, or it’s going into fuel, or it’s going, you know, like there’s.

Todd Kuethe: Industrial use.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah, exactly. This is gonna be consumed by people, right outta the field. Could be.

I think one of the other things was the idea of like, it being a staple food. So like, it’s not really a staple food in my diet. It seemed to more of a staple food to people who live in the Delta.

Todd Kuethe: Which, which is funny to me because, there’s this weird love- hate relationship with rice among rice farmers. So they eat at a bunch. And apparently, like if you go to an extension event, like you’ve gotta have rice on the table, right? It’d be like going to the National Pork producers and just having turkey burgers. They eat rice probably as much as Brian Martin, our guest that was a, the hog farmer eats pork.

Chad Fiechter: No, no. 100%. You are thinking about ways to eat rice.

Todd Kuethe: But they have this harmless view of nature.

But there’s so many things in nature there that like want to do harm to you or could do harm to you. There’s the snakes, there’s mosquitoes, which we came strategically to avoid the depth of, uh, mosquito season. Uh, the ticks. People were like, oh, don’t even look at the grass. You’re gonna get a tick on you. And we, we met with, uh, when we met with our friend from, uh, uh, ducks Unlimited. He, he called our host Aaron And said, Hey, just wanna let you know I found a tick. Make sure you guys are checking for ticks. Like he followed up later about his tick incident.

Chad Fiechter: Well, and

Todd Kuethe: think that said he saw what, 46 snakes in a day or something

Chad Fiechter: like No, I think that there’s a part where it was like, there, there’s a pragmatism towards navigating this. The, the things that are gonna kill you, that I like as a person who’s grown up in Indiana, we don’t really have sort of like off limits things like you, you sure you can walk through there? Don’t, don’t worry about that. You can do that in there. It was like, don’t go under the trees. Stay out of the tall grass. Right. It was there, we, we found rules fairly quickly where it’s like, Hey, do this, do And it wasn’t sort of like. People with a, over an overabundance of caution. It was like hardened people saying like, stay outta the grass, don’t trees. You know what I mean? because, because sometimes people give you advice and you’re think

Todd Kuethe: I’m go stand

these, these, these were not like nervous. Uh, type people.

Chad Fiechter: I, I don’t we met anyone

Todd Kuethe: that it wasn’t like they were like the stereotypical, like overprotective mom, you know, where it’s not, it’s not like they’re like making their kids wear, uh, uh, air tags in their clothes. ‘Cause they wanna know where they are. Like, it’s like a, like I generally don’t worry about anything about it. Worry about these ticks.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah. Well, and they also in ticks, mosquitoes, snakes, like, it was like, do this, do this. And I was like, well, maybe my fear of snakes, like maybe this is what I need, like, and I need to just go and learn how to deal with snakes.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. The other one is they also recreate a lot where they work. So they have all these big, uh, ponds, retention ponds is what we would call them. A hundred acres or more of water that they’re saving to be able to flood the fields when they need it.

But those are also full of crazy amount of fish. Every time we went to a po we went to ponds particularly in the morning or at night. Fish were just like all over the place. So they’re duck hunting, they’re fishing, like they’re recreating,

Chad Fiechter: They’re hunting gators.

Todd Kuethe: They’re hunting gators. Yeah.

Yeah. So like the, yeah, it just, all this stuff, um, so like this working, recreate like you just, like, it had a real sense of place.

And the part of it too is again, this idea of them being sort of the dairy of crops. Like you’ve gotta be around that farm. Like talking to the farmers. There’s like. Kind of like a morning check and an evening check. And that’s not even like the, like work, like, that’s not like you necessarily doing anything. You’ve gotta at least like check in on everything.

If, if if our listener is as clueless about rice production as I was before we went.

Chad Fiechter: to be fair, neither of us have any experience with irrigation.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. Yeah. But so

Chad Fiechter: probably other

Todd Kuethe: places too. This is my misunderstanding. Call in. Write us. If I’m saying this wrong, um, but you, you plant the rice and then you flood it, um,

Chad Fiechter: For weed control.

Todd Kuethe: In part for weed control, in part for weed control, um, the rice does really well, but there’s like an optimal amount of water to have in there. And if there’s a lot of, uh, rain that comes through. You can have too much water. Mm-hmm. If your levy breaks or, um, there’s something wrong with your, well, like, you can have too little water. Yep. So what they’re always doing is like, fiddling with the water to get it to that optimal level that you want. Against nature, trying to make it more or less than you want it to be.

Correct. Um, and so these, the water chasing is that act of like aiming for optimal all the time. And these farms are huge. Yeah. They’re thousands of acres. And so it’s not like, it’s not like a, a backyard garden where it’s like, I’m gonna go check and make sure there’s no deer out here and I can, that’ll take me two minutes.

Chad Fiechter: You’re talking, you’re, you’re moving around in a pickup truck. You’re, you’re walking on levees, you are literally checking physically, like what’s the depth? Yes. Do I need to adjust something? Is the pump still working?

Todd Kuethe: And, and, and, and then we think about technology in agriculture, like there’s all sorts of, this used to just be like an art, like some guy would kind of feel it out or sense it, right?

But now they’re, they’re checking flow meters, they’re checking depth, all of that, like electronically. Some of that they’re able to do, you know, remotely to get some idea, but then you’re gonna have to go. At least every once in a while, a couple times a day, it sounds like in most places, to verify that data with your own physical senses.

Chad Fiechter: No, and I think that was the thing is that, that I think Colson said it. wonder how many sort of technological tools have been developed for rice farming because specifically around water, but it still struck me that almost even the most technologically advanced they were doing these rounds. The wa the person in charge of water or persons was literally doing physical rounding, checking all these fields, making sure that even though they would have sort of on their phone, what’s the levels? Are we working? Is the pump working? So it was like, it wasn’t something that you can like tech your way out of

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. Well, and, and the, and the pumps sometimes are electricity. Some places they’re diesel, right. So there’s like a, a mechanical thing you gotta think about. Right? So like if you, we, when we were even at the experiment station, which should be as close to like a perfectly controlled environment, they were talking about like issues they were having with the power company, with like. You know, is this well working or is this Yeah. And like we gotta get somebody to come out and check it. Right. Um, ’cause some of that you can’t do yourself.

Chad Fiechter: So I think what I’m coming back from this. Specific experience is maybe not specifically tied to rice, it’s around sort of the general concept. I’m like, oh, that was so fun to like take a deep dive and like pull out all of my preconceived notions and just experience something. Uh, like I love that.

Todd Kuethe: So I’ve spent a lot of my career in the corn belt. And thinking about corn belt economics and corn belt stuff. I mean that Center of Commercial Agriculture, that’s bulk of what we do. Right? Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: what we do.

Todd Kuethe: But I was like, oh, I need to get into other kinds of agriculture. Yeah. Like we, we like on the way home, we were discussing like, oh, it’d be cool to go to California, see some permanent crops. It’d be cool to go to. Uh, out to Eastern Washington and see like the dry land agriculture up there or like, um, I’m like, oh, we should go back to, I should go to, I’ve been to Montana to go to the national parks, but I should go like just visit farms.

Yeah. Um, that I was like, I wanna do more of this. That’s a big part of it. The other one, and I’m maybe should not say this on the podcast, but I’m going to. I learned a lot from the extension folks. And sort of what would be kind of our colleagues. And we did talk shop a little bit about, about funding and grantsmanship and hiring talent and all the things we think about as academics.

But what I really loved was like when we hung out with the farmer and talked about his experience, um. Or like you mentioned, the Duck’s Unlimited, right? Yeah. Or, or even the, the folks that were running the distillery Yeah. About, you know, their farm and their production of, we went on a tour of the distillery. They told us their whole distilling process. Right.

That I was like, I need to spend more time around practitioners that are actually doing this stuff. And then go talk to the academics or think about the academics. But I would like, I was like, man, like it’s, I wish I was doing more of that. ’cause I talked to, you know, other university type folks all the time right here at Purdue. Right When we travel around, I’ll go to conferences and it’s people like us. Yeah. From other departments, other colleges. And I was like, man, I gotta just like spend more time.

And even like spending time with Colson. And so he works in farmland investment and was talking to us about like sort of how they acquire properties, how they go through like, like that part of his job as a kind of a practitioner is somebody who studies land prices, right? So, uh, I should probably mention I’m the Schrader Chair in farmland economics. I study land prices, right? Yeah. And I, I’m working right now on our extension report about, um, which our listeners will have already been able to read about Indiana land prices, right? Mm-hmm. Um, but like spending more time around the practitioners working in that space. Like I just wanna do more of it going forward.

If you think your place, oh my gosh, would be as beneficial to us as this one was, get ahold of us.

Chad Fiechter: And I think that’s probably the biggest takeaway from this entire series. When I step outside of what I know, for me, the corn belt outside of systems I’m familiar with, I started to see how many different ways there are to make agriculture work. In the Delta. It’s water, it’s rice, it’s wildlife. It’s a completely different set of constraints and a completely different set of solutions.

The underlying theme is the same. Farmers are adapting. They’re managing risk, they’re making decisions with the resources they have, and they’re building systems that are designed to last. And for us, this trip was a reminder that if you really want to understand agriculture, you gotta go see it. You gotta talk to the people doing it, and you gotta be willing to challenge some of your own assumptions along the way.

We had a lot of fun putting this series together and we hope you found it valuable. If you did, make sure you’re subscribed to the Purdue Commercial Ag Cast. We’ve got more conversations like this coming. Along with our regular Ag Economy Barometer updates.

Thanks for joining us for the lessons from the Delta.

We’ll see you next time.