When a rural grocery store becomes untenable, the repercussions can be far-reaching. Access to fresh and healthy foods is crucial for community vitality and overall well-being. By cultivating robust partnerships, embracing diverse ownership models, and formulating a comprehensive transition plan, rural grocers can proactively address sustainability and operational challenges before they escalate beyond control.

In this episode of Something to Chew On, we feature Rial Carver, Program Leader for the Rural Grocery Initiative and Extension Specialist for K-State Research and Extension. Drawing on her expertise and deep understanding of the challenges faced by rural grocery stores in Kansas and beyond, Ms. Carver identifies, develops, and shares vital resources that sustain grocers and support rural communities across the United States.

Water, the essence of life itself, stands as our most indispensable resource, yet often goes unappreciated. Water scarcity and sustainability pose formidable hurdles with far-reaching implications for communities, economies, and ecosystems. To navigate these challenges effectively, innovative research endeavors, advancements in agricultural technology, and collaborative partnerships across academic, governmental, and community sectors become imperative.

In this episode of Something to Chew On, we highlight the work of Dr. Susan Metzger, Director of Strategic Interdisciplinary Program Development, Kansas Center for Agricultural Resources and the Environment (KCARE), Kansas Water Institute, and Institute for Digital Agricultural and Advanced Analytics (ID3A) - Engagement. At the intersection of water resource management, agricultural productivity, and interdisciplinary academic research, Dr. Metzger offers evidence-based solutions for confronting the toughest water challenges of our time.

The sustainable production of beef cattle and other animal protein is complex, and the achievement of ‘net zero’ production from an environmental perspective is challenging at best, making it difficult to know where to begin. Areas of focus in this field include using food waste streams as quality animal feed, gathering all the areas of expertise need to tackle sustainability, impacting the microbiome of feed and reducing greenhouse gases.

Phillip Lancaster, clinical assistant professor and member of the Beef Cattle Institute at Kansas State University, joined “Something to Chew On” to discuss the work he is doing to tackle these issues.

The study of cereal grains comes in many forms, from the fundamental investigation of grain components and their functionality, to processing technologies, to the development of healthy food products ready for consumption. 

In this podcast, we welcome Sajid Alavi, professor of grain science and industry, to discuss the importance of cereal grains research in the sustainable production of grain-based foods that represents close to 70% of the world’s calorie consumption.

When a mechanical engineer, a microbiologist and a food scientist collide, big things happen in a very small way. The old adage, “it takes a village,” appropriately describes the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to solving food challenges.

In this podcast we talk with Dr. Shih-Kang "Scott" Fan, professor of mechanical engineering at Kansas State, about his work on the development of a “lab on a chip” using microfluidics in the identification of STEC producing e-coli and other pathogenic organisms.

The country of Ukraine is a major worldwide producer of cereal grains and cooking oils.  The recent Russian invasion of Ukraine has put food security at risk for many parts of the world.  Our guest for this episode is Antonina Broyaka, former dean of the faculty of economics and entrepreneurship at Vinnytsia National Agrarian University in Ukraine.  Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Broyaka came to the United States as a refugee with her two children and is now an extension associate of the department of agricultural economics at Kansas State University. Her focus here at K-State is on the economic impact of the Russian military aggression on both Ukrainian agriculture and global food security.

This summer, 24 recipients from the 2022 Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders program joined K-State faculty in learning about leadership in civic engagement.

In this episode, we are pleased to welcome one of those participants, Saykwayee Harmony Henry from the Republic of Liberia. Saykwayee is a mother, public speaker, entrepreneur, advocate for the rights of women and children and is the executive director at Kids Development Initiative.

Children in Liberia go to school hungry while companies from other countries use Liberian land to grow and export crops around the world. The heart of Saykwayee’s work focuses on agriculture development and her country’s need to produce food for themselves through practical education and prioritizing healthy food production as a lifestyle and profession from a very young age.

This podcast episode features a team of K-State lipid researchers to help us understand food through basic lipid research and how this work improves what we eat. For this conversation, we welcome Ruth Welti, distinguished professor of biology and director of the Kansas Lipidomics Research Center; Kathrin Schrick, associate professor of biology; and Timothy Durrett, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics.

In this podcast, Jeongdae Im, Jeffrey and Joy Lessman keystone research scholar and assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering discusses destructive greenhouse gases in the food system. From hay bales to landfills, plastics to wastewater, the intersection of engineering and microbiological science has allowed Im to tackle multiple challenges in studying ways to mitigate the negative effects of those greenhouse gases.

In this podcast, we talk with Prathap Parameswaran, associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at K-State. Parameswaran’s research focuses on the use of anaerobic microorganisms in a continuous system that produces energy and isolates materials that might be used to increase soil nutrients and more. Parameswaran discusses his approach to combating water contamination and its importance within agricultural systems.

In this podcast, we talk with Sonny Lee, assistant professor in the Division of Biology at K-State. Lee’s work touches on many areas of microbiome research and casts a wide net in laboratory studies, mining data from peers to aid in complex evaluations, and working with students and colleagues capable of critical thinking and problem solving. Lee discusses how we are in the infancy of understanding how organisms impact our health, a plant's ability to grow and everything dealing with life as we know it.

Listen to our first podcast of 2022, where we discuss weed management techniques, old and new, and the tools being developed to achieve food crop yield optimization with Vipan Kumar, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Agronomy at Kansas State University. Weeds can reduce food crop yields by more than 30%.  In this podcast, Kumar discusses the ways in which this problem might be solved when the need for food production will continue to increase, and the challenges caused by climate change create a moving target.

Transcript:

“Diversity is the key to Sustainability; Challenges and opportunities in the field of Weed Science”.   

Diversity is the key for sustainability. You keep doing one thing again and again you will see a problem that we have seen in our herbicide based methods or weed control.

Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of global food systems. It's produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems. We welcome back co host Dr. Jim Stack Professor of Plant Pathology, weeds can reduce food crop yields by more than 30%. These interlopers compete for resources including soil nutrients and water. We attempt to control weed growth through chemistry, but over time they manage to mutate, overcome, thrive, and adjust to given management techniques. So how is this problem solved when the need for food production will continue to increase and the challenges caused by climate change create a moving target. Today, we will hear more about weed management techniques old and new. And the tools being developed to achieve food crop yield optimization with Dr. Vipan Kumar, Assistant Professor in the Department of Agronomy at Kansas State University, I want to welcome you Vipan would like to before we get started in the technical side of things, just get a little background and understanding of who you are and how you got to the place that you are today as far as your professional interests go.

Sure, So my name is Vipin Kumar, I'm originally from India. I did my bachelor in crop science, but finished in 2008 from Punjab Agricultural University back in India, in the state of Punjab, it's a Northwestern State in India, mainly known for wheat production and rice production. And it's very big in ag, Punjab state. So, my original goal was to help communities there, especially the farming communities to management practices they are doing so I did my bachelor there. And then I started my master actually mastering Weed Science in Pau 2008, fall 2008. But somehow I was also interested to come abroad and expand my education here in the States. So I was looking through some programs and during that time, I got to know there is a master positions open in Louisiana State. So I I applied there and I got invited and came over 2009 That was summer 2009 started my graduate research assistant with LSU, Louisiana State, Louisiana State University. So that program was specifically looking for someone who can help growers in terms of managing their irrigation water irrigation scheduling, developing some crop coefficients for the cotton prop in North East side of Louisiana. So I was based in actually a research center. It was in North East Louisiana, about five, four or five hours from the main campus Baton Rouge. So my whole research was on resource center and I got to know very few people there but I had a very excellent project to work with. So during that time, I was doing a master I got interested in Weed Science because wonderful. One of my committee member was a weed scientist. He was the superintendent with the research center and he was on my committee and glyphosate resistant Palmer Amaranth was kinda getting a lot of attention during that time in codon. So during that conversation and meeting with his students, I got interested in wheat science. So finishing master and then I started applying for PhD program. So I think during that time, there was not a whole lot of opportunity because of the economic constraints, but I found one position in Montana State University 2011 So I started my PhD 2011 in Montana State University, Bozeman, the whole my dissertation research was focused on herbicide resistant weeds, mainly Tumbleweed Kosha, looking at, you know, characterizing herbicide resistance evolution, how we can manage in terms of what strategies growers can use to control herbicide resistant Kosha in Different cropping systems. So, that was for four years I spent there and then just immediately after finishing my PhD, I started my postdoc there and two year postdoc in the same program in Montana State. So 2017 I got here at K State got this position, where I am in his as an assistant professor in Weed Science. Part of my responsibilities. I am 100% researcher. All the focus is on developing integrative weed management strategies for western Kansas. Looking at herbicide resistance evolution in weeds, what are the novel and innovative strategies we can come up for our dry land are no till dryland growers in western Kansas. So that's I have been doing last for more than 40 years in Hays, Kansas. And a little bit history on this tradition. My predecessor, Dr. Phil Stallman, he had spent 42 years on this role. He was kind of He's like one of the pioneer in herbicide resistance management in High Plains specially in dryland cropping system in Kansas. So right now leading a statewide program, research program and little bit outreach program because I've been involved with a lot of growers here are the my appointment is not extension or no extension tents, but the been doing some extension as well. So that's kind of in the nutshell, what I'm doing here. 

That’s great. Okay, well, thank you so much for that overview. That's helpful in me understanding a little bit more about what it is you're doing in reading through some of the information I found on your website about what you do, there was a lot of discussion on no till and the impact of no till on managing weeds and that type of thing. Can you tell me a bit more about what that term means and how it impacts the growing period?

Sure, since the dustbowl period, the soil conservation practices have been you know, taken place among growers in the main reason was those soil conservation practices were to conserve the soil and other resources for longer term because soil erosion in these areas, especially the Great Plains area, or High Plains area was pretty obvious. And because we control it was generally achieved by tillage. So folks still the ground and control the weeds in history, if you see that's like number one method it used to be and then USDA NRCS folks came up with this idea of conserving the soil not to till the ground just to preserve the soil from erosion as well as not to blow the surface soil where we have fertile soil. So, so no till is basically a concept brought up after the Dust Bowl period and got adopted by growers throughout the Great Plains. And no tillage equipments also got, you know, into the market after that like no till drills, no till planters, that growers don't have to till the ground to make the seed bed they can directly go and plant or drill their crops. And this idea or concept was achieved with the chemical weed control. So if you look at after 1940s, when the this chemical era started, like the two four D came into the market, or any other cleaning herbicide came into the market, one of those early products came into the market grower started using those and they found very convenient to kill those weeds and not till the ground. So this chemical era helped to adopt that concept of no tillage in High Plains as well as in throughout the Great Plains. So mostly what growers been doing is they don't tell the grounds they clean their fields before planting and after planting and in season crop by using chemicals and by using herbicides, so it's kind of serving to purpose they're controlling the weeds and they are also conserving the soil. Another aspect of doing no tillage is to conserve the moisture. We are in semi-arid regions our annual precip is not that great. If you look at historically we are between somewhere between 12 to 24 inches, you know depending on the place where you are in the Great Plains so doing a no tillage practice also helped conserving the moisture throughout the winters time. So whatever the snow or the moisture comes, if you don't do the ground, you know it stays there for the subsequent crop to plan and have the crop in place. There are two things basically conserving the soil and conserving the moisture that no till practice came into existence. But however, I would I also like to emphasize over the last 1015 years, what has happened is because we have relied too much on chemicals, too much on herbicides, and we are seeing evolution in weeds, they are developing or evolved resistance to these chemistries, what folks have been using in our systems. So herbicide resistant weeds have really, really become a threat to this Nortel production system and chemical industries are struggling in terms of bringing new chemistries into the market, because there is not a whole lot of investment going into bringing a new motor factions, especially from herbicide standpoint. So the dilemma is to control those herbicide resistant weeds, we need alternate strategies, alternate methods of weed control. So that's where my role kind of come into that where that fit is how we can combine different methods of weed control, including chemical or non chemical, and come up with some sort of sustainable system that can go in longer term.

Yeah, if I could follow up with a question. How prevalent is this problem globally? 

Herbicide resistance globally, it's, it is the number one problem for Weed Science communities as well as the grower community. Wherever folks have been using herbicides, we have been seeing increasing trend after 1980s, we have been seeing exponential increase in a number of cases of herbicide resistant weed population being reported, there is a website called Weed Science dot O R G, that documents every single case been reported to the world. And if you go to that website, you will see after 1980s, that graph has just jumped to the highest level. And it's not only one herbicide, it's basically, you know, all the available herbicide motor factions, we have reported case of resistance somewhere in the world. In the US, we are leading in that graph, country wise, in terms of herbicide resistance, the complicated issue is okay, one time a herbicide fails, for example, glyphosate. So folks start using other herbicides or other mode of action, but now been doing those things, we have been seeing multiple resistance in our weed populations. So resistance not only to one herbicide mode of action, but 23456, even six herbicide mode of action resistance in those weed species. So that's the challenge that we are having a limited options in terms of chemicals.

One of the quality parameters for seed, like the grains and things like that is the number of weed seeds that are also in with the grains. Is that a significant way of moving herbicide resistant genotypes around?

Yes, recently, what happened has most of our soybean, you know, most of our corn, we export to other countries. And there has been international standards in those products. And there's inert material and weed seeds are one of those standards. And recently, we have got email from our society, as well as USDA that come up with the plans how we can minimize those weed seeds in the crop seeds. Because some of the Chinese importer, they have stopped taking some of our soybean because of the big weed seeds present in those crop seeds. So it's a function of what is escaping in those crops, what is leaving in those crops at the time of harvest what you're harvesting with. And that's ultimately making those crop quality lower and making those export important difficult. And it's not only that they have they have also raised concern that hey, we don't have this, let's say big weed in China, you are sending herbicide resistant pigweed in our ways. So that's the hurdle with the growers how to sell those because the quality is lower in terms of having weed seeds in those. Those greens.

Yeah, so you mentioned some, weed genotypes with resistance to five, six or more chemistries. What's the strategy then? How do you get on top of this?

Yeah, I feel fortunate and excited some time that I'm in the field that where there is a lot of growth, there's a lot to do. I don't know if you have probably noticed that recently, a Weed Science area we have so many openings, so many positions coming up in industry as well as in academia and public sectors. And the reason is that we are struggling with these issues of resistance and crop weed competition in different scenarios. So, you know, considering that we are getting, you know, way back in terms of herbicide options. Industry is not coping up with the new molecules in the market. And we have more and more cases of resistance. So the shift of the research or read science research has gone to looking at non chemical strategies, what are the non chemical strategies we can bring into our system? So historically, as I said, folks used to do tillage. But in our system in Great Plains, High Plains, that's probably not a good recommendation, if you want to give folks will not like that, because we've been promoting that no till system for decades. And that is number one challenge. But in other areas, tillage is helping and it's helping those folks controlling those herbicide resistant weeds or multiple system weeds. Another approach we are looking at, what are the ecological tactics? How about the crop weed competition, how we can make our crops so competitive against weeds, that we don't have to rely too much on chemicals. One example I can give that is ecological method we are testing here is cover crops, how the cover crops can come into the system, and helps pressing those weed populations and reduce the seed bank. Again, these are not these ecological tactics don't work like chemicals, but they have a fit in our system. If we can, let's say suppress our weeds from 100 100 weeds to 70 weeds, there are still benefit having that. And you can add with the chemicals method of weed control. So that's just one example than other methods, we are looking as a non chemical methods or harvest weed seed control, that new thing is kind of getting a lot of interest among growers and researchers throughout the globe. So when I say harvest weed seed control is basically a technique when you're harvesting the crop, you have weeds in that crop, so you are harvesting the crop and you're also collecting those weed seeds. And then either you are destroying those weeds by crushing them when they're coming out of the Combine that's called harvest wheat seed destruction or you can put them as a CEF as a narrow line called chaff lining behind the combine. So this concept was brought up or discovered by a grower actually in Western Australia in a dryland wheat grower actually, just similar to what we have in western Kansas, he was struggling with the rigid ryegrass, multiple resistance to the rye grass. So what he did is he started destroying those rye grass seeds when he was harvesting wheat. So over the two, three years when he did that, he found that he reduced the seed bank, he didn't have to deal with that problem with the chemicals. So but in US or in North America, that technology has just arrived. And we are the first one in classes we have bought that destructor and Jeff minor. And we have got some USDA wants to test here in High Plains, how that's going to work in our system. I'm just giving example that those are the kind of approaches we are looking at it from the future work. Third thing which I really like to touch base is the proceeds. And that's the coming future of the Ag digital agriculture or Smart Agriculture. You can name it differently, but that's happening. So from a weed control research or weed control perspective, precision agriculture is another way to look at these problems or herbicide resistant weed problems.

So how specifically does the Precision Ag is it about applying chemical where it's needed when it's needed? Is that the strategy there? Or?

Yes, that there are different aspects there preseason agriculture or preseason technology is what we are, but I can envision is, you know, it can help us at least doing field mapping with to start with if we can detect early detection of herbicide resistant weed population in a farm. And then we can develop strategies accordingly. And again, then the next level of proceeds and that could be a variable rates of herbicide application or spot treatment. We don't need to spray the whole farm maybe, but just a little patch where we have herbicide resistant weeds growing. So that's where we can, you know, have precision ag tools helping us in the future if we have a good set of data, especially if you have good algorithms and good database, we can identify our pig weeds or Kosha or any other weeds in our crops, I think that can help making making your decisions or plans for weed control.

Yeah, thank you. Sorry, Maureen I’ve been dominating. 

No, that's okay. It was you know, as he was talking about some of the methods that they're looking at it. It took me back to my previous life. Were working in the food safety area, we focus heavily on integrated pest management, it sounds to me like the directions that you're heading now that the chemicals are not doing what they're supposed to necessarily be doing. You're looking at these integrated systems of trying to control those weed productions from a whole variety of different areas. And it may be that there are packages or approaches  that can be taken based on location based on crop type based on a variety of other things. But you will have that group of tools in your toolbox. Is that am I interpreting that correctly? 

Yes, yes, you're right, you're on the same page. The things are like with this herbicide resistance management, it's all economic aspects. Economy drives these things, the farmer economy, when they are going to make their weed control decision, they're going to look at what herbicide how much it takes, what is the rate? What is the cost. And if you see, like with the roundup resistant weeds, folks have been switching to other chemistries which are more expensive, and having more other issues as well as like drift to other crops or drift to other organisms from environmental standpoint. Also, chemical control is kind of getting ahead. In terms of some folks, they don't like some chemicals because they are hitting their other organism or other crops sensitive crops. And the second is, economically Is it viable to use that chemistries, for example, you know, most of the folks most of the industry, you might notice these days, they're giving a talk having a true two or three different herbicide mode of action in a tank, they have a pre mixes available two to three actives in those pre mixes. But those are very, very expensive. Those are not cheap products to use. So the idea with the growers with the lower commodity prices, they don't want to put those high expensive herbicides at especially when you are doing in a fallow weed management, you're not getting any output or any return in those fallow fields. So to make the system more economical, you need to think about where my money is going in terms of inputs, those herbicide applications and in fallow systems grower used to spray like three, four times in the season. It's not like one application, and they're done. They used to spray three times four times. And you can imagine like 5000 acres spraying three times $10 an acre, that can multiply pretty quick. So that's where I think the folks or the weed science community is thinking to bring some of those cost effective programs or cost effective management strategies in our system that not only helps pressing this problem or suppressing these weeds, but also give benefit to the growers, and the environment and ecology or agro ecology, like a cover crops. So we are not just thinking integrating cover crops for weed suppression. But we are thinking that cover crops can help suppressing weeds. It can help you know fixing nitrogen, it can help improving the soil quality soil health. And it can also be used for grazing purpose to the animals. So there is a livestock integration as well. So we have we are thinking from a system standpoint that can help folks to be more economically viable.

This next question is kind of out there as it's taking us probably outside of your major focus at this point. But I've done a little bit read a bit of reading recently on the land institute and some of the work they're doing in Salina on perennial grains. Have you looked at that at all or have any thoughts on perennial brains? And if there's any value to that and what impact it would have on what you work on?

Definitely, I have not personally looked at that system yet. But I've been hearing that quite a bit. And we have a cropping system specialist here in his he's been talking one other day was giving a presentation on that side of it. But I think again, I would like to emphasize that Perennial system or perennial grain springing into our system is basically improving you know, our our ecosystem and also increasing the economic value of the products as well as the farm profitability overall. And some of the work being led by cropping system specialist here or agronomist here. Also looking at those forage species or forage annual forages or biennial forages or perennial forages as a part of the system that can integrate into our system. So, from Weed weed management side of it, I think that would be a win win situation that if that species or if those grains or perennial grains can provide that kind of weed suppression benefits what we are getting from other cover crops. I think that's what we need.

So one of the reasons we care about weeds as the as we do the other pests as their impact on production and grow the crops for to feed people, we grow the crops to feed the animals that become the food that they feed people. Are there reasonable estimates of the economic impact or the yield impacts that you know, general rules of thumb? I know there, there are no exact numbers, but what what are we talking about in terms of scale of impact that we have on food production, but then also, what having herbicide resistant weeds contributes to that?

Definitely, there has been several reports in different crops. And I will just highlight some of the examples here for Kosha or, or Palmer Amaranth. Those are the prevalent species here in western Kansas or central part of state, if you like, look at some of the reports on Kosha. previous reports from my previous predecessor and other colleagues in other other states, they have found Kosha is quite competitive. Irrespective of resistance, let's say there's no resistance in these species. These weed species are very, very aggressive, very invasive. They have good traits, good biological traits, to compete very well with the crops. First, you need to understand that the biology behind those weeds, that's why they're becoming more and more troublesome problem for the folks here. So in terms of yield impact, I would say Kosha, let's say you know, you leave the kosher season long infestation in a crop like that the sugar bee does the least competitive crop in among all those crops, we grow in the northern or central Great Plains by up to 95% reduction in those sucrose yield as well as the beat heels we have reported. We have seen in the literature since 1970s 1980s. Wheat 20 to 30%. Yield reduction, going to be the kosher season long infestation, when I'm saying the Kosha is like moderate densities 40 to 50 plants per square meter, if they are present, they can do that 20-30% of damage to the yield big waves, they can choke our our sorghum. So one of the worst fields I have seen in my lifetime here in western Kansas is sorghum because the folks they don't have option, there's not not a single effective option that can go with for controlling pigweed controlling Palmer Amaranth in sorghum, especially when the sorghum is above certain stage, like 30 inch tall, there's no label chemistry to go with controlling pigweed. And that's the time I start getting calls from growers, hey, our pigweed is this much our Milo is already two feet tall, can I spray Dicamba that's the off label you cannot and if you do it, you will hurt you leave you will that will cause a crop injuries that will cause reducing the grain quality. So yeah, really impact. I mean, there's a huge impact. And you can imagine now if those species are resistant, and you are putting the chemical, and they are surviving 70% of those ceilings are surviving. And you know, going up to the seed production, you can imagine that you have put the cost to control it. Plus you still have a problem, and there is a double hit there.

Right. That's the double insult with resistance.

Right. So yeah, that's I think that's where we need to be more proactive. And we need to think more in longer term. The growers don't think in a longer term, they think on an annual basis because their budget is running annual basis. They have like let's say 5000 acres, they have a plan for 5000 acre for one year, they don't have a plan for three year or five years. That's where the problem starts. And as I said, economy drives all these things that resistance management. And that's become really, really challenging for researcher as well as extension person to convince folks to do things they're not doing.

You're talking about the aggressive nature of some of those weeds and thought just came into my mind on the genetics of those materials as any work being done at K State on the genetics of some of these weeds.

Yes, yes, we have a weed physiologist, weed physiology lab in in Manhattan. There has been quite a bit of work been done. And yeah, there's all kinds of different genetic mechanisms they have found in these weed species, why they are adapting to these kinds of situations herbicide applications. One example I can give here is Kosha and Palmer Amaranth. They have developed resistance to glyphosate commonly used chemistry or herbicide in our system in Roundup Ready crops. We have seen both species Palmer and Kosha. What they do is they multiply that target gene so they have more copies of that gene with the glyphosate go and target. So what it does is instead of one copy, single gene in they have Kosha has like 10-15-20 copies of that gene. So that Are those number of copies of that gene produce more enzyme, so the chemical cannot inhibit that much enzyme. So the those plants survive those treatments. That's how they are kinda adapting to that glyphosate treatments or other mechanism recently, weed physiology lab in Manhattan, they have found these multiple resistant pigweeds, what they are doing is they have enhanced metabolism. So some of the genes involved in metabolism in those plants, they got activated, and they are just metabolizing, whatever you're spraying. So no matter what, even a new chemistries is not even existing, it can just metabolic metabolite because it's not reaching to the target gene and hitting those targets side. So that is a more fearful thing happening in the nature, that metabolism based mechanism is also evolving in weed species. And as I said, it's a function of the biology of the species like palmer amaranth, very, very diverse genetic background Kosha. Same with very diverse genetic background, a lot of gene pools, they're sitting in those, you know, individuals and they can, they can adapt, and they can evolve to any of those stresses. Among other biological feature if you read about kosher Palmer, both are highly prolific seed producers, a single kosher plant can produce hundreds of 1000s of seeds. A one female Palmer Amaranth can produce millions of seeds. So that many seed production, it has potential to infest more areas, more lands, and keep going if you don't manage them properly.

Is dissemination and equipment. Problematic locally, though, going from one field to the next?

Yes, yes, big weed or Palmer Amaranth. We had a meeting North Central wheat science meeting, talking with the folks from North Dakota, and South Dakota, they have started seeing palmer amaranth, it was not the case, five years back. And that's happening because of movement of equipment, movement of products, like hay movement, or even animal feed, people take the animal feed and take to the other states, and those farmer seeds go with that. And, and infest those areas. So that's kind of tricky, you know, managing those moments is very, very difficult. That's where we kind of emphasize that control those weeds in the field, so that you don't have to deal with in the products. Okay, or, or green or or equipments. For weeds like Kosha, it's a tumbleweed and doesn't need that many it can tumble miles and miles when the wind is blowing. And that's the kind of beauty of that weed species that finds new areas of infestations with the high winds, especially in the high plains, it can tumble, it's very hard to kind of contain that.

How is the contaminated seeds physically removed from the grain itself? I'm sitting here trying to get in my mind if we're going to be selling to other countries, and they've got obviously a lower limit that's allowed in there. Is there some kind of assuming practice or an air movement as the heavier seed goes through? How's that done?

Yeah, I don't know exactly how that will happen. Because this year, we are talking like a bulk export. And folks just take the produce from the field and sell it to the coop cooperative marketing places and I don't know how much storage they have, and it gets pretty big pretty quickly. So that's where we try to emphasize to the grower Hey, you know, if you can manage in the field, that's the best you can do. You don't let it go to the produce or to the greens I see that's where this harvest we'd see destruction is going to have a fared very well that can destroy the weed seeds don't don't don't let it go into the grains and escape folks to get the contaminated grains. And it's not only that in crops like wheat, we have a problem we have a central Kansas growers they've been dealing with awry federal MRI or CT or MRI issues. So those dry what it does is it contaminate it has allergen, so it contaminate the grains when you export to the you know, Asian country, they don't take that because they are allergic to that allergens in CRI. So the idea there is and it's very difficult there's no inseason chemical you can try and control in wheat unless you have herbicide resistant weed like waxy and wheat or Learfield weed where you can spray some of the herbicide and get rid of those grass species. So in those situation against this see destruction can really really help folks not letting those weeds eat grains in the in the crop grains.

Is there a limit in the seed size? Or? I think that new technology sounds excellent for being able to destroy the seed in the field, or the limit that in terms of which species would be vulnerable.

Yeah, yeah, those are all questions we are trying to address here as a future research in Australia, they have destroyed these rigid ryegrass that's quite a bigger size like a wheat grain size of the wheat seeds we are talking. But the things we are talking here like big weeds, very tiny small black color seed and waterhemp or Kosha. They're very tiny, tiny seeds, very small seed seed weeds. As per my experience. I have gotten the unit last Wolsey last fall September and we put together there was a technical team came and put on a combine and let's try that one of the grower field, we took it by miles south of Hayes and run on a grower farm was heavily infested with the Palmer Amaranth. I couldn't see even a sorghum plant, as all Palmer Amaranth. And I was trying to do that. The idea was how that goes, I was very curious how much destruction it can do especially in crop like sorghum, when it's green, and you know, high material, you're going through the combine what kind of destruction it can do, I was very, very curious. But somehow I found that we collected some of the samples out of the combine, and behind the Combine of that destructor I was always amazed to see like 85-90% of destruction is was doing on those Palmer Amaranth seed, those tiny, tiny seed was kind of pulverized. It was like powder form after that. So I was pretty amazed. So I was telling my team of folks from Iowa State and University of Arkansas, we're gonna run this in soybean, corn, as well as sorghum plots in the coming season to see if what it does and what how the crop species or the how the crop varieties also matters, using this technology, not only weed species, and then how the environment impact those results in high plane versus Midwest versus mid south, how things change from region to region, crop to crop, weeds to weeds. And with this, this grant, we have also a Ag Econ person on the team. So I'm going to look at the economic side of it. Because as I said, economy drives everything. And if you're gonna promote this technology, where we stand in terms of economy, is it cost effective? Is it sustainable? So I think I'm telling more future research here. But that's, that's going to happen.

Good. Good. Sounds promising. Yeah.

Pretty interesting, pretty exciting. And along with that, we are also not looking at one tool at a time. Our main mission with this project, which we got funded by NIFA, based on our TFS grant was to having bringing all the tools together, it's like bringing little hammers together. So we have a cover crops early in the season, we have herbicides applied. And then at the end of the season, we're gonna do see destruction versus Jeff lining, and comparing with what growers are normally doing conventional harvest. So there are three different approaches, we are trying to bring in one growing season, to say, hey, early season management with the cover crop, herbicides, late season management, or weed seed management, with this destructor or outlining how they come together as a system, and help growers if they're struggling with some of these multiple resistant pigweeds.

I appreciate your mentioning the seed grant and appreciate you having come to Manhattan to present the results of that work recently. And that information will be up on our website in the near future. We'll have all of those and have those available for anyone to listen to, as well. I'm glad to hear that it panned out into a larger grant. So that's great.

Yes. And that was really, really good support to get that kind of grant and reach out to the folks what they're really looking for the survey we did me and Sarah, we learn a lot. And some of that information. We just plug in our proposal. And it sold out pretty quickly. And to your surprise, and to my surprise, that proposal was ranked number one in CPPM in the country was in that program, NIFA CPPM program and the Secretary with agriculture wrote a letter to the PI. That was excellent proposal to put together for such kind of strategies to look in the soybean system.

Congratulations on that. That's great. 

Yeah, that's, yeah, that was really, really a great help from the TFs good Add money in that we could create some data to supplement data for the proposal.

But you know, the phenomenon of resistance is just creeping through agriculture. So it's the herbicide resistant weeds. It's the fungicide resistant pathogens. It's the antibiotic resistant bacterial. And we really need to get a handle on it, if we're going to continue to produce at the levels we've been producing. So I'm wondering if the strategies you're looking at it, if there are some general principles that you think will be helpful in, in the other arenas, as well, not just the herbicide resistance, but in the others?

Yeah, the basic principles, we are looking at the diversity in our system, I think, diversity is the key for sustainability, you keep doing one thing again, and again, you will see a problem that we have seen in our herbicide based methods of weed control, you've been doing same chemistries over and over, we have seen resistance issues, diversity, could be anything diverse cropping systems and diverse, you know, diverse methods of weed control, doing different things, you don't give same thing to that we don't do that best again and again, that that test start adapting to that matters or that strategy. So every year you change that strategies and give something new to the past and head those past with a different approach. So diversity, I think, is the key, what we are trying to achieve with this eating greater weed management system or ITM systems that you bring diversity in crop diversity in your herbicide diversity in your read species, overall system wide. I think that's the key principle we are looking at it. And that can be translated easily to the other disciplines, like, as you mentioned, plant pathology or entomology, not to look at one strategy or one thing at a time, but looking at the system level, where things can be bring and can bring that diversity into the system.

I love this area. You mentioned that there are a lot of opportunities right now for weed scientists. And I look at the agronomy department here at K State. It's been really strong in terms of the scope of capabilities, the expertise that's in that department. It's pretty impressive what they've got within one department. So what if there are students that listen to this the either graduates or undergraduate students listening to this? What skill sets? Would you recommend chemistry? I mean, ecology, what skill sets would you recommend if they want to help tackle this problem?

Yeah, that's a great question. As I mentioned, a lot of opportunities coming for fresh graduates and a lot of weed science positions recently opening up in academia, industry and other public sectors and private sectors. What I see as the weed scientists in this position, the four most important skill sets I can see is the knowledge of field based research, field based Weed Science Research, every fresh graduates they need. And then training of all the plants, science, biochemistry, physiology, genetics are those are specialized area already there. If you can take little bit of that have some expertise, you don't need to be doing five different projects in that area. But if you have little, little component of those areas, that really, really help understanding the problem, you know, from the root stand point of view, but applied Weed Science, statistical skills, how to handle the data, because the future is all about the data. With all this digital agriculture, you're going to tackle with the big data set, how to look at the data, there is a lot of data but what you make of out of the data. So statistical analysis, or analytical skills are also very, very important. And then you can also look at the mysteries in Weed Science, especially herbicide you need to know what you're doing and what you're tackling with. Because again, 70%, more than 70% of the calls the growers give me is they asked me the option herbicide option. They don't ask me, Hey, should I try this cover crop? They simply asked Hey, can I spray they can buy glyphosate is not working? How expensive? Is there a generic one? Is there a lower price one what is the formulation? All kinds of chemistry related question will come if you are going to go to those real world situations like applied weed sign, you know Precision Ag or engineering side of it. If you can learn some of the skills. I think that's the benefit as well, because that's happening right now. Preseason agriculture tools, a lot of weed science folks, they have started really using it and implementing into their programs. And that's going to be the future. A lot of the industry investment is going into that digital agriculture, especially from pest management, especially from weed management perspective. So those are some of the skills I just listed is applied Weed Science, applied field based research, chemistry knowledge, little bit of those physiology, genetics, biochemistry is knowledge, statistical analytical approaches. And procedure neck, I think, if you have little bit of all of those, and you can sell yourself, you will get the job, I'm sure. But for the weed scientists, as far as I know, yeah.

Thank you. Thanks.

Great question. And great, good bit of information for the students here on campus to file away as they think about what they want to work on. Yes.

And I think I would also encourage undergraduate students if they are interested in in ag and if they are specifically interested in in weeds or any other pairs, they should do some project, they should contact folks on Main Campus or research center to get involved and to get learn how to handle the project or what to do in terms of research and how the research is conducted and how the data is handled. That's pretty basic. But there's quite a bit of learning before you get into your graduate schools, or Masters or PhD. If you can do a little project in undergrad that'd be really, really helpful.

I enjoyed this conversation quite a great. One other big challenge on the horizon is, of course, climate change. And a number of studies done on how it's impacting the migration of plant populations and impacting fertility of some plant species, things like that it does that come into play here in terms of weed management?

Yes, exactly. If you talk about climate change, or drastic changes in environmental conditions, weaves are one of those first pieces who will adapt to these changes, because they have highly diverse genetic background. And they have already been doing that molecular weight science program in Colorado State has been looking at Kosha from different angle. So they're trying to sequence the whole genome, they're trying to characterize some of the genes, good genes, they call it good genes, which are helping this Kosha to adapt cold treatments, or frost or drought, or heat, or salt, or even herbicide resistance, how those genes can be incorporated into our crops to make them more resilient for the future. Okay, so that's kind of angle to look at these weed species, we have that gene pool in those species, why don't we characterize and understand then how, and what they can do when we incorporate those gene in our crops for the future crops that can be resilient to the, to the these changes in climate environment. But as I said, changing climate changing environment, adaptation is going to be happen, evolution is going to happen in those weed species. Along with that, what's going to happen is interaction of the chemistry with the plant and the environment is going to change. And that's very critical to understand the efficacy of some of the chemicals we are seeing now probably will not be there into that future environmental future climate. Just because plant adapt, and they adapt differently, they have TIG cuticle, for example, the chemical may not penetrate that cuticle in the future, and cannot give you 90 95% control versus less than 70% control. So the efficacy is going to change or with increasing temperature or increasing carbon dioxide, C three C four species who's going to win and depending on those weeds species are those C three or C four, the shift will happen. And there'll be lot to play with climate and the principles of precipitation, how the precipitation change globally, some of these root shifts, also gonna share some some of the prediction has been done. Okay, if Great Plains start getting more rain, for example, we start going to see waterhemp coming this way, in Great Plains, if it's going to get more drier. Kosha is going to start going towards Midwest. There are predictions happening. And I think that's true, based on the biology of those weed species and based on the history of those species, how they have infested, and they have line ated themselves in those geography based on the climate. 

Vipan, you had talked about when you were first over in the US you were working in Louisiana State working on cotton. And with climate change, I'm sure that that impacts this we're seeing cotton work its way into Kansas cropping Are you seeing? I mean, I know your focus is on the weed side of things. But are you seeing some of those other types of crops moving in more and more into these areas, some of the crops that we're used to moving Further north and having some new impacts of weed stress and that type of thing coming in with these new prompts.

Definitely, with changing things with the changing environment and climate, these things are happening. And we need to be very resilient in terms of adopting those things, changing things like we were doing this faculty meeting other day and prioritizing our missions for the unit other days. So one of the priority we have have for next 1015 20 years is to look at alternative crops, new crops, basically what folks need, provided that our conditions get changed, our environment gets changed, we get less peace, we get more dry land, what are the alternative crops, things like barley, millet is number one can be adapted to in the West, that has not been expanded. There's a lot of potential for that crop. There's a lot of potential for canola in the southwest Kansas. That has been happening already happening expanding. In as you mentioned, cotton, yes, it has gone up. It was not the case five, six years ago, but it has gone up 300,000 acres of cotton in Kansas, can you imagine. And then over the top of that you can see the changes, the commodity Commission's have started funding some of the positions for those areas as well, they are looking for a pattern specialist in Kansas, they can support this. So things have been changing with the climate change with environmental change, as well as you know, other changes. And one thing I can I can say for sure, from a read science perspective, you bring new things, new crops, for example, that has long term impacts on our weed population. Some of the previous studies, long term studies, 1020 years long term studies have shown that the crop rotation in competitive crops and what kind of crop you're growing, will have ultimate impact on those wheat population. If you are growing, for example, let's say highly competitive crop like corn, or could be any cereal grains, that grows pretty aggressively, it can shift some of those wheat population over the time, a study done in Nebraska has shown that you keep doing this corn soybean rotation, you will see more and more issues weather resistant Kosha and resistant big weed, but you will bring cereal into the system, you will lower down some of those resistance issues is because the crop competition expressed those cycles of those weed species and don't let them produce seeds. So weight shift is going to happen when these crop change is going to come into play in our system. But as again, I said we have to be very resilient and proactive, like things are happening. And it's going to happen, especially from climate change standpoint. So we need to be resilient, or what alternative crops we can grow. And we can still make these folks or the growers more profitable in the future. Considering all these constraints, weeds and other pests we will have.

Yeah, I'm hoping for mango and oranges.

I'm not sure on that. One more. Yes, really,

This has been a really a fun and interesting discussion. Well, thank you so much for your time. And thank you, Jim, for joining us as well. Do you have any final remarks, or any questions you might have for us before we sign off?

Well, I would like to thank you both for your time. And also I like to reiterate that the support I got through the GFS Grant was pretty timely, and very supportive. And I could develop that project based on that information. So I would keep looking at future opportunities from GFS folks that I can come up with and collaborate with folks from other disciplines. And I would encourage young faculty at K State to look for those opportunities. And to come up with ideas there where they can collaborate with folks like me sitting in Hays versus in you know, in Manhattan and we come to know each other. That's a great opportunity and really appreciate all the support you guys have.

So glad it worked out well. And thank you for your efforts. They're very much.

Thank you.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

In an era of transformative global shifts—defined by evolving commodity trade patterns, the rise of online shopping, and economic challenges—a critical reevaluation of biosecurity strategies is imperative. Collaborative efforts through international partnerships, innovative approaches in business and technology, and the integration of multidisciplinary methods are essential for ensuring food security and forging novel pathways to combat pests and pathogens.

Join us in this episode of Something to Chew On as we delve into these crucial topics with Simon McKirdy, Professor of Biosecurity, Deputy Vice Chancellor of Global Engagement, and Pro Vice Chancellor of the Harry Butler Institute at Murdoch University. A Fullbright Distinguished Chair in Life Sciences Award recipient, Dr. McKirdy's exploration of biosecurity system resiliency, coupled with his ongoing collaboration with K-State's Biosecurity Research Institute and Department of Plant Pathology, helps to establish policies and future frameworks for international coordination and global food security.

In this episode, we host Dr. Philip Hardwidge, associate director of the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases in the Department of Diagnostic Medicine and Pathobiology at Kansas State University. Dr. Hardwidge’s research focuses on understanding, treating and preventing diarrheal disease caused by bacterial pathogens. These pathogens represent important threats to food safety, biosecurity and animal health. His research team is tackling the fundamentals of biochemical interactions, leading to a better understanding of mitigation methods.  

Transcript:

The Many Paths of Pathogens with Dr. Philip Hardwidge, associate director of the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases

We have to be as scientists extremely open and and generally willing to share data be transparent about our
raw data and like other aspects in life know when to ask for help.
[Music]

Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of global food systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik. Coordinator of Global Food Systems.

I'm Scott Tanona. I'm a philosopher of Science.

We welcome back co-host Dr. Jim Stack Professor of Plant Pathology.
Diarrheal disease caused by bacterial pathogens is a challenge in both humans and animals in many instances the introduction of pathogens in animal systems causes illness and in some cases is carried through meat processing affecting contamination of food meant for human consumption. Studies of food safety at K-State includes fundamental through applied research. The importance of research in the area of pathogenic bacteria has been addressed in several of our podcasts to date. Most focusing on the applied research in testing, monitoring, and mitigating potential contamination of food products. However, the basic molecular biology of host pathogen interaction is not well understood. In today's podcast, we will talk with Dr. Philip Hardwidge, Associate Director of the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases here at K-State. His study of host pathogen interaction has led to a better understanding of the mechanisms by which pathogens enter and colonize in a host system. With studies leading to an understanding of how this impacts autoimmune disorders, cancer, and more.

I would like to welcome Dr. Philip Hardwidge to the podcast. Dr. Hardwidge is the Associate Director of NIH and Cobra Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. I am hopeful that he will explain to us exactly what all that means. Before we get started in talking about your current activities, Dr. Hardwidge could we maybe get a little bit of understanding of who you are, what your background is, and what brought you to K-State. What brought you to the area of study that you're in, today.

Thanks for having me on this podcast series. I'm from the midwest, Michigan and Illinois. My father was a Pfizer scientist and we happened to be living in Central Illinois when I was a high school student, so he gave me some interest in Microbiology and Chemistry, so I ended up doing a Microbiology degree at the University of Illinois, and wanted to develop a research program kind of at the interface between Biochemistry and Microbiology, so I knew from a fairly early age where my career would hopefully head. I did a PHD at the Mayo Clinic Graduate School
in Rochester, Minnesota. So, Mayo is a very famous hospital. They also have a very robust graduate training program. And after that, I did a postdoc at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver Canada. Primarily because one of the leading E Coli Microbiologists was running his laboratory in Vancouver and when I finished my education I took an Assistant Professor Position in South Dakota State University back in 2005. There were some unique opportunities to help develop their graduate program, and I had the opportunity to work with germ-free piglets which are a very nice model for some types of E Coli diseases.
I was then recruited to the University of Kansas Medical Center and then subsequently recruited to Kansas State University where I've been since 2012.

Great, thank you for the overview there. In the introduction, I referenced the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is at K-State and what your goals are there?

Sure, so we call this CEZID, Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. This is an NIH Center that's administered by Dr. Juergen Richt and myself. So, [Dr.] Juergen is a Virologist. I am a Bacteriologist and we're both interested in looking at virulence factors. So, namely what features of pathogens. What components of bacteria and viruses cause diseases in humans and animals. We're also looking at host pathogen interactions. And to do this we use basic science. So fundamental aspects of how bacteria and viruses work. How they cause disease, and we also take translational approaches that can be InVitro in test tube[s], lab experiments, or in large animal models of disease. So overall, we're attempting to advance our understanding of new or emerging infectious diseases, or zoonotic diseases, those pathogens that can cross the interface between animals and human beings. So Covid-19 is a great example of both cases. It has recently emerged, and it is Zoonotic. It's believed to have originated from bats, so you know within this center. [Dr.] Juergen and I administer the day-to-day operations, but we’re heavily interested in mentoring junior scientists. So, there are four primary projects each Principal Investigator works on a different pathogen that examines one emerging or zoonotic infectious disease and then there are five pilot projects. So smaller projects we funded with some seed money, and then there are two research cores, uh, to help develop the research infrastructure here at K-State.

Sounds like it's a great center, and could you say something about why zoonotic diseases deserve such a focus, or what's important about them?

Okay yeah, so obviously we've learned a lot more, or the public has learned a lot more, with the Covid- 19 pandemic. But you know zoonotic disease diseases, or zoonoses, are diseases caused by viruses or bacteria that can spread between humans and animals, or animals and humans. So, in many parts of the world there's very close association between animals and humans. So, farming systems can be quite different compared with what we're familiar with in the United States. So, there's very close contact between humans and animals and some good examples would include Influenza. So, we have the flu circulating in chickens and in pigs. These viruses can mutate and suddenly become able to infect human cells and cause disease. Antibiotic resistance is an issue. So, we've tended to treat food animal diseases. So bacterial infections of pigs and cows with very large quantities of antibiotics to control their infections and to promote weight gain. Well, this can evolve antimicrobial resistance in these organisms and some of these pathogens can also infect human beings. So, antimicrobial use in agriculture can have a direct impact on our ability to treat human infections. And then there are vector-borne diseases. So, bacteria and viruses that can be spread or transmitted by mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas. For example, so that the insect, the mosquito or flea, can provide a conduit between an animal and a human being. So, as the mode of transmission. So, many of these diseases are extremely serious. They're relatively new. They're emerging, and the the life cycle, this animal to human interface, explains why they're why they are called a zoonotic diseases.

Great, thanks! And could you describe two, sort of, some of the different projects you, said there's a course of on going ones, and then some pilot ones. So, I don't know which, pick a couple just to give us a sense of some of the work that's going on in a little more detail. love to hear some more.

Okay, so yeah, within our CEZID program, we have four very exciting primary research projects. One of them directed by Dr. Tom Platt, in the Division of Biology, looks at a pathogen known as shigella flexneri. Shigella has a lot of similarities to the hemorrhagic E Coli, the hamburger E Coli, E Coli o157 h7. He's very interested in the environmental behavior of Shigella. So what must Shigella do to survive in aquatic environments versus survive when Shigella has colonized a human host. And many of those molecular mechanisms are very different. The pathogen has to do, you know, many different things make many different proteins depending whether it's living in the environment, or within a human. [Dr.] Stephanie Shames studies Legionella. So, many of you may have heard
the term Legionnaires Disease from this outbreak in the air conditioning vent in a convention in Philadelphia many decades ago. So, Legionella is the pathogen that causes this human disease. And [Dr.] Stephanie studies some of the specific proteins that legionella uses to subvert host defense mechanisms. Bacteria and viruses have evolved
very elaborate mechanisms to short-circuit or subvert our natural host defense. My own laboratory studies those mechanisms as well. So, that's [Dr.] Stephanie's focus. We also have a Flavivirus project, Japanese Encephalitis Virus, Yellow Fever Virus these are Flaviviruses. [Dr.] Scott Huang is trying to design live attenuated vaccines to control flaviviruses. And finally, [Dr.] Nick Wallace is studying Papillomavirus. Papilloma Viruses are believed to cause non-melanoma skin cancer, but the mechanism is not understood. So, [Dr.] Nick's studies are designed to start to understand at a molecular level what's going on between Papillomavirus and skin cancer.
If I could ask a question, you indicate that you're looking at certain proteins to maybe influence the outcome in a human infection, or an animal infection for that matter. We have a lot of vaccines for viral diseases, but relatively few for bacterial diseases. What's the strategy for, you know, using these proteins to prevent disease?

Okay so, if I understand your question right. There are therapeutic strategies so we have ways to treat diseases that have already occurred, or we have preventative measures such as vaccines. Bacterial, many bacteria, are challenging to tackle with vaccines. There can be great variation in the surface of bacteria. The outer membrane proteins, for example, are often targeted by vaccines. This is essentially the outside of a bacterium. These can be very highly variable between strains among different strains. So, it's hard for a cocktail of vaccine proteins to really be effective in preventing disease. There's an emerging strategy known as anti-virulence compounds where we attempt to not kill the bacteria using antibiotics, but we attempt to subvert the bacterium's ability to cause disease. That's also something my laboratory is developing.

How does that work?

Okay, so the the classic antimicrobial penicillin, for example, you know, inhibits cell wall integrity in the bacterium, so the bacterium lyses and dies. There are many antibiotics used that block the ability of a bacterium to make new protein, bacterial cell then dies. Resistance is a major problem here. So, the more often you challenge a group of bacteria with these antimicrobials. The more frequently you select for mutants mutations in the bacterial genome that will allow it to resist those antibiotics. So, one emerging concept is to not try to kill the bacterium, but try to simply block its ability to colonize a human host, or secrete a toxin that would be deleterious to a human or an animal. And that's thought it would be much less prone to the evolution of resistance mechanisms. We're not trying to destroy or kill the bacterium. We're simply targeting a very small component of its biology, namely its ability to cause disease. Some of these targets are a little less obvious to identify. So the cell wall is a very obvious and effective target for antimicrobials. Some of the mechanisms that bacteria use to block the immune system. These are being targeted for these anti-virulence therapies, but they've only been identified and studied relatively recently.

Yeah, thank you. So yeah, so that's cool. So the idea is not just that we haven't targeted this stuff, yet. So it's new, but that even ongoing application of these to it's basically blocking a side effect of what the bacterium's up to. Right? And lets it still propagate and continue on, because you're not sort of killing off only a subset of them. You're not forcing evolution, right? So, that the virulence isn't part of isn't something that it would sort of act against.

Exactly, that's the concept. So, a good example is perhaps the hemorrhagic E Coli this is a devastating disease. If humans acquire this organism, but it's typically an accidental infection, so through undercooked ground beef, contaminated produce, humans occasionally get E Coli infections. Extremely serious, potentially fatal disease but this organism lives very naturally in the intestines of cattle. So, it's a commensal organism. It does no harm to the cattle. So, it's not really something that one would would do a blanket antimicrobial attack on. There there may be a mechanism by which we can have a more selective targeting of their virulence functions. So prevent disease but not select for uh resistant strains of this organism.

Yeah, that's that's really neat, and and you said you're looking at some of those these interactions too in your own lab. Could you say what you're working on in this area?

Yeah so, I became interested in this area through some serendipitous scientific conferences, a few years ago. My lab had always been interested in the biochemistry of bacterial proteins that are able to block the immune system of the human host. So, some bacteria such as E Coli and Salmonella have a secretion system. So, they have a nano scale needle and syringe like machine that allows them to inject proteins into the intestinal cells. They are colonizing so this nano machine allows the bacterium to manipulate the human cells, and try to prevent the cells from establishing a dialogue with the immune system. So the biochemistry of these proteins, how they've evolved to bind signaling hubs in this innate immune system, what enzymatic activities they have to inhibit host proteins. Very fascinating to me, but it became clear through some collaborative discussions, that some of these proteins might be good targets for anti-virulence therapies. And they also might be good model proteins that could be used to study the immune system more generally. In other words, bacteria and viruses have evolved to inhibit the immune system. Can we use some of their examples to build other drugs that would function as anti-inflammatories. That's kind of the direction my lab has gone in the last five or six years.

So, you're turning this then to not just how can we prevent more more disease, right sort of, how can we learn from from what these bugs are doing to actually address other concerns like right?

Exactly, so, if we take, and that's you know that's the value of of basic science and basic molecular microbiological studies, if we really take a close look at what nature has already done. What evolutionary pressures have selected for, we can learn a lot about how organisms interact with each other. And specifically with regard to the immune system and inflammation, we can see very clear examples from bacteria and viruses. They have very very effective anti-inflammatory strategies. So E Coli and Salmonella for example, are great masters of inhibiting inflammatory responses. Well, if one looks at other diseases, other human diseases, such as Psoriasis, which is skin inflammation, cancer, diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease. These all have some common features in that some of the inflammatory signals proteins known as Cytokines are overproduced in too high abundance. So, can we take some of the bacterial strategies that block the production of these proinflammatory proteins, take the bacterial proteins, modify them detoxify them make them friendly for use, and turn them into lead compounds for new new drugs. So that's an emerging area of many laboratories. It's a concept known as drugs from bugs. The bugs are the bacteria and viruses perhaps. They can suggest to us novel therapeutic strategies to controlling inflammation.

Nature did it first.

Nature did it first. So, let's learn from nature. There are many ways to, you know, look for potential new therapeutics. There's random libraries of small molecules, there are you know very robust computational strategies, so letting machine learning, computer strategies to predict chemical interactions, or take a look at what bacteria and viruses have already done.

The work is fascinating and clearly taking a lead, from as you said, what nature has already done is obviously a very effective approach. I'm wondering, with the new N-bath Center going in, kind of in your backyard, what kind of interaction do you see going on between the work you're doing and that center? Is it going to be, kind of running parallel to one another? Do you have direct input in what's happening up there, or direct activities going on in the future?

So, there are obvious parallels between the, you know, the National Bio and Agro Defense Facility, NBAF. It is literally right next door to our CEZID program, and to our laboratories. So, we're very interested in looking for partnerships certainly there will be a lot of training opportunities. So much of the workforce at NBAF is likely to come out of K-State. So, one of our missions is to train this new workforce, both with the book knowledge and the hands-on laboratory skills that will make them good contributors to NBAF. There's a lot of parallels in the mission, you know, so to protect the food supply, to protect agriculture, to protect the population against zoonotic diseases. So, there's good interface between CEZID and NBAF. So, definitely we're interested in establishing collaborations. Dr. Juergen Richt, my collaborator, he's already established several collaborations. We work with the Plum Island facility, already. This is the laboratory that's essentially moving from the Long Island area to become NBAF. So many of the projects are already in place, and certainly we'll see a lot of growth in the coming years about how to safeguard food animal health public health and really preserve our agricultural economy from various threats.

Earlier, you mentioned the E Coli outbreaks that have occurred as a consequence of produce and because of those outbreaks over the past, probably five to ten years, been a lot of research looking at E Coli and Salmonella in particular, and whether plants actually play a role in their life history. And clearly they they do. That it's not really just an incidental occurrence of those organisms perhaps being sprayed on these these plants with irrigation water or something like. That in fact there's compelling data that they truly infect the plants and that they've actually documented an upregulation in expression of effector genes, and things like that. So, there seems to be some strong relationship between E Coli Salmonella and the plants. And I'm just wondering if you're aware of any evidence of that plant component actually helping to drive the evolution of those species or the emergence perhaps of new pathotypes. Because we we know that the plant pathogenic bacteria as well as as some of these share secretion systems and that some of our closely some of the plant pathogens that are closely related to the enterics, you know, have multiple secretion systems. And I'm just wondering if there's any evidence that you're aware of that there's a drive in the evolutionary process for some of the zoonotics? Some of these human pathogens like E Coli or Salmonella.

Yeah, that's a fascinating question. So thanks for bringing that up. It's very clear that a lot of what bacteria do when they interact with human or animal cells also occurs when bacteria need to interact with plant surfaces. So for example, the elaboration of surface appendages for adherence. The pili, the the swimming apparatus called the flagellum, these are all up regulated by by contact with plant surface. Gaining entrance at wound sites or cracks between root hairs there's a lot of physiological similarity between the human intestine and some aspects of plant cell boundaries where these mechanisms are conserved. Whether plant interaction drives the evolution of bacterial pathotypes, or not, is unfortunately rather poorly understood. And I think a lot of that is a function of scientists taking a human-centric view to a lot of what these pathogens do. So, we tend to take the view, and I'm also to blame, bacteria exists to cause disease in people to cause diarrhea, in terms of these intestinal pathogens to cause respiratory illness, of course that's not the case. So, most infections are accidental. The only goal, if a bacterium were to have a goal, is to replicate so to find food source and to replicate. So, our view is often a little bit warped, and we don't give appropriate coverage to what might be going on in the environment. So when new virulence factors emerge. Are sporadic accidental human infections really driving that evolution? Most likely not. More likely the interaction in the between the bacterium and its environment, whether that's in water or with produce, on spinach or lettuce, this is more likely the the driving factor to evolving new bacterial path types. But it's poorly understood. Some of the model systems are are less well developed. Plants also have immune systems, so I've mentioned a few times about an ability of these bacteria to inhibit human immune systems. Well, plants also have immune responses to infection. They essentially try to wall off the infected cells to limit the spread of the infecting pathogen. But again, these bacteria have ways to evade that plant immune system. Secretion Systems are well conserved in how they block human versus plant functions. So, I think this area should be studied much more extensively. I think if more funding were available to really look at the what forces drive the evolution of these bacteria we would learn much more. To some extent, that's a product of our funding system. In that it tends to be slanted towards immediate tangible therapeutic benefits to humans or food animals, and at times basic science inquiry can be ignored or at least underfunded. So, I would target as you suggest this area as a potential rich area of investigation.

I was just going to say your center must be a rich experience for the students. I'm just wondering, how do you maximize that? I mean with the aggregation of expertise you have there and the diversity of projects that could be a pretty rich environment for certainly a graduate experience. I was just wondering how you might comment on it?

Yeah, thank you. We're very excited we're in the second year of this program and one of the main goals is to bring along the next generation of of scientists. So, not only are we mentoring the the junior faculty, you've heard some of their research projects already. Another component of that is mentoring their own students, and postdocs students, can be undergraduates, masters students, PHD students, and the mentoring can be direct or indirect. So, certainly we've seen pretty significant growth in student numbers. Each lab seems to be getting more and more students. We've started several journal clubs. We've discussion programs. We bring in distinguished scientists to speak with students and faculty. So, we try to bring in leaders of the of the various fields have scientific discussions with students. Really set the foundations for their growth, as we've discussed, we do need an immediate workforce as NBAF comes online. But, we also need the the next generation of basic scientists to populate our university laboratories. So, we're also seeing a rapid increase in research infrastructure. So, several new pieces of technology are now new to K-State. So we have single cell capability. So, we can isolate single cells from various tissues work with them in isolation do single cell sequencing, single cell gene expression, analysis. We have new live cell microscopes again. This was not available here until recently. So, I'm very excited that we have a really first-rate group of faculty. We have many people interested in highly capable of student mentoring. And we're really developing first-rate technology, so students can get hands-on experience with techniques that will make them very marketable to academic or industry careers.

In many respects progress is a function of the relationship between science and technology, and probably for the last 500 years it's been kind of a push-pull relationship where one feeds the innovation of the other, or feeds off of the innovation of the other, and it is more of philosophical question. Do you think at this point though we science has become more dependent upon technology to the point where it influences the questions that we ask?

I think there can be a tendency for that. So it's very easy to get excited about a new machine, and then frame scientific questions around what that machine is capable of doing. So for example, if you get a new live cell microscope the tendency can be, let's do all experiments focused on live cell microscopy. But, I'm not too concerned. I think you know good science is done through the classic scientific method, and tried and true technologies are often still the best approach to solving problems. So for example, my postdoc yesterday showed me a very nice set of data that have solved a year-long problem for us. He was using genetic techniques in Salmonella established in the 1960s. But he was he was aware of the older literature, he could recognize the value of that more dated technology, and he knew it was appropriate for the question he was asking. So, it is a challenge, technology makes it some things easier. But, they can kind of cloud our understanding of some of the basic concepts. So, I think there's room for both, but I guess I'll point out that there's been a lot of very important scientific discoveries that are essentially accidental. They're serendipitous, so really it's our job to do well-controlled experiments, have testable hypotheses, have good robust record-keeping practices, and then keep our eyes open, because if we see something unexpected or unusual we want to be able to follow that up, and be confident it's not just a laboratory mistake. So, all the fundamental training students learn in Chemistry 101, in undergraduate, keep a good notebook, rigor, and reproducibility, I think you know these fundamental issues are always going to trump any technological advance, in terms of how we move this field forward.

You've been talking about basic science a lot and about the accidental things that pop up right from just doing some work. And then, you know, as you said in your own work, you know moving to how this might, some discoveries, might actually apply to treating autoimmune disorders and things like that. Right? So, how do you think about either, you know, an individual scientist or the scientific community doing this balance of the, you know, let's work on some really basic questions that we, and we just want the answers to, and we don't really know what the application will be. To then, noting where there might be, you know, some something really useful applied and sort of starting to follow down that path. To then, sort of hey we have a very specific question. Like, you know, Covid, and we have to address.So how do you balance that as either an individual, or as a research group, or as a wider community? What thoughts [do] you have on that?

Thanks, that's one of the toughest aspects, at least personally for me as a professor. How focused and narrow do we get in terms of the minutia of a protein. So, do we need to understand every atom of every protein? Versus when are we ready to apply this to a disease? Translate this into a real therapeutic. I think we have to be as scientists extremely open, and generally willing to to share data, be transparent about our raw data, and like other aspects in life, know when to ask for help. So, most of my translational endeavors in terms of anti-virulence compounds bacterial proteins used to inhibit the immune system have really resulted because I shared data very early on with with someone at a meeting, or a conference, or invited lecturer, and they had a slightly different way of of looking at the data. So, I viewed it in one direction. That I understand how this protein works, and an outsider to my specific field was able to ask a broader question. So, oh if you know that this protein blocks the immune system, have you ever thought about trying this? Or, I know a friend at my institution who could take your protein and try it in their mouse model of inflammation, for example. So it is a challenge. We're constricted by funding opportunities, so it's more comfortable to kind of stay siloed, and work on what we’re recognized as experts to do. But, I think it's far more important to take these leaps of faith, and try to work with translational scientists who might really see the application of your basic discovery, and be able to help you apply it to a broader application. And of course, there's a lot of complexities with university licensing and patenting data ownership, but we have all the university resources to help us with that.

You've been talking a lot about individual organisms that you work with. Have you done any work with the way those organisms interact with one another different types? And what I'm kind of getting at is the microbiome activities that are being tested and looked at in various areas across campus. Does your work specifically get into that area?

Yeah, thank you. We have worked a little bit with the microbiome, and that's something I haven't mentioned yet in this discussion. So, you mentioned the naturally occurring commensal, or beneficial organisms that that colonize all of our mucosal surfaces. So, the microbiota or microbiome, another aspect of the success of a bacterium or virus, if we think about a human infection it's not just the immune system of the host that challenges the pathogen. It's also the bacteria that line the respiratory tract, the intestinal tract, the genital tract, the skin. So, that's another barrier, and it's actually one of our defense mechanisms, essentially. So, how do bacterial pathogens interact with the microbiome? We've done a few studies in that area. So, we've mostly used mouse models to study where we can do fecal transplantation, to study what makes certain strains of mice more resistant, or more susceptible to bacterial infection. And a lot of that susceptibility is driven, not by the strain of mouse per se, but rather which intestinal microbes are harbored within that mouse. So, the microbiome really does play an important role in dictating disease susceptibility. So again, it's interesting to do a survey, to understand what bacteria are present in the gut, what are the correlates of resistance, and susceptibility. But, it's even more interesting, to then use that information to start to tailor different treatments, so the pre and probiotic industry is extremely robust in this area. There's opportunities for collaboration to make animals more resistant to infections, or are more robust at gaining weight over their development time. And there's also fundamental aspects of how the microbiome dictates immune responses so we may again learn a lot from how the microbiome can dampen the immune system in terms of generating new anti-inflammatory compounds. If you take an animal and you rid it of the microbiome, or you develop a germ-free animal in the laboratory, for example, you tend to see very potent anomalously high inflammatory responses. Suggesting, that one job of the microbiome is to dampen the immune system and really make it selective towards pathogens, rather than, towards random insults or challenges. So, this is a huge area to study. We've collaborated with several groups here on various organisms to do surveys of the microbiome, and we're hoping to apply some of this knowledge to potentially discover new therapeutic strategy.

Fascinating stuff!

Very much so, absolutely. Do you have any questions for us, [Dr.] Phillip?

I think we've covered kind of the highlights, and I think I've given you a good flavor of how I approach science, and what my main interests are.

Thank you very much. I enjoyed the discussion. Yeah, really enjoyed the discussion.

Thank you, Thank you all.

Thank you, [Dr.] Maureen

Yeah, thanks much! bye-bye bye-bye!

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website athttps://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.
Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University.

Keywords: Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Disease, Global Food Systems, Kansas State University, Pathobiology, Research

In celebration of World Food Safety Day, this week we are joined by researchers from the Food Science Institute at Kansas State University: Sara Gragg, associate professor; Randall Phebus, professor; Carla Luisa Schwan, postdoctoral fellow; and Jessie Vipham, assistant professor.

World Food Safety Day aims to draw attention to foodborne risks and inspire action to prevent, detect and manage risks. This important work contributes to food security, human health, economic prosperity, agriculture, market access, tourism and sustainable development. The World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations jointly facilitate the observance of World Food Safety Day, in collaboration with member states and other relevant organizations. This international day is an opportunity to strengthen efforts to ensure that the food we eat is safe, mainstream food safety in the public agenda and reduce the burden of foodborne diseases globally.

Transcript:

[Music]

Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik. Coordinator of Global Food Systems.

World Food Safety Day is June 7, 2021. This is a day to reflect on the importance of safe and sustainable food, heed the work being done at K-State, and around the world on advancing an understanding of cause and control of food safety issues, and look toward better nutrition through safe food worldwide. Today we are excited to share with you a panel of food safety experts that work with interdisciplinary teams in the  Food Science Institute  here at K-State. Food safety is a major area of research in the  Food Science Institute , including animal and plant-based foods. Through outreach to colleagues here at K-State, nationally and internationally, the  Food Science Institute 's research team has tackled some of the most challenging food safety problems. From testing in our Biosecurity Research Institute, biocontainment bsl3 facilities, to helping teach consumers in developing regions of the world the basics of handling and preparing safe food. We welcome back co-host Dr. Jim Stack Professor of Plant Pathology, and welcome to our panel of experts Dr. Sara Gragg, Dr. Randall Phebus, Dr. Carla Luisa Schwan, and  Dr. Jessie Vipham. 

World Food Safety Day is a great time to focus on the work being done at K-State in the area of food safety through the  Food Science Institute. We're going to take a bit of a different tact on this podcast by welcoming a panel of scientists that have made food safety their professional passion. They will share with us a vision of food safety research carried out at K-State, and explain how K-State is participating in the recognition of this notable day. I'd like to welcome back to the podcast doctors: Jessie Vipham, Dr. Randall Phebus, and Dr. Sara Gragg and first time welcome to Dr. Carla Schwan. Give us a little background on what the 2021 World Food Safety Day is, and where K-State fits into that? 

Yeah, this is a really exciting endeavor that is led out of the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and it was actually envisioned and put into play back in 2018, so we haven't, I don't think, as a university, here at K-State, participated in the past. But we saw this, the date is June the 7th, it's always every year, June the 7th, and the FAO has asked people to participate, and they've given some guidelines on things that we could do. And to highlight some of the food safety work that we're doing here at K-State, which is pretty extensive. The aim of World Food Safety Day, according to the FAO is to draw attention and inspire action to help prevent, detect, and manage foodborne risk. As we know, it's not just the health aspect of foodborne risk, but it's also how food safety contributes to food security, and human health, and economic prosperity, and success in agriculture, and market access, and tourism, and sustainable agriculture. So, there's a lot of things that are connected to food safety, and you know honestly, we address them all here at K-State in one way or the other. It's really interesting every year they come up with kind of a theme for this. For the event in this particular year, for 2021, the theme is safe food today for a healthy tomorrow. And what they're trying to do is kind of take the one health approach, holistic approach, to how food safety interacts with our daily lives. whether we're producers, or processors, or consumers, or someone transporting, or whatever we all have a role to play. And it's all systemic and integrated, you know, one weekly in the chain, start to finish, can cause a lot of people to get sick. And so, I think it's really exciting that we can do some things here, and Carla has actually kind of taken on some of the leadership as far as putting some of our activities together for that day that she'll tell you about here in just a minute. But you know, the FAO really stresses that governments, processors, consumers, and everyone in the chain has to be coordinated and focused on food safety to prevent all of these illnesses. So, just think about in a world today where we have over 600 million cases of foodborne illness annually, and as many as 420,000 deaths, and about a third of those are actually children under five years old. So, this is truly important and work that you know we do a lot of things here for the United States but our work finds its way out globally. Thanks to people like Dr. Vipham and Dr. Schwan that they're going to tell you about some of their international work 

In the food security arena, we often throw around the figure that we lose 35 to 40 percent of the food post harvest. Free consumption are there analogous figures of loss due specifically to food safety concerns. 

Well, you know, I don't know if there's any figures about food waste or food loss, but if you look at what foodborne illness does to things, other than just, you know, people getting sick and having diarrheal diseases and that sort of thing. You're looking at lost productivity. You look at chronic illnesses across the world. People may be, you know, having syndromes and sequelae well past you know the initial infection, so that the cost is just staggering in terms of economic loss, adjusted years of productivity losses, and that sort of thing. So, you know a lot of what we don't think about from a food safety standpoint is, you know, what does it do to young children with diarrheal diseases and setting them back for sometimes their entire life. To get past the foodborne illness or waterborne illness falls into that category too. 

You know, when we think about losses in the industry, though if there is a food safety concern, the industry does have to respond in different ways. Some of which, might be diverting a raw meat product to a cook operation, for example. And in doing so, that can result in, not lost product per se, but lost income, because cook product operations usually result in a lot less income. And so, there are different aspects in the food industry that can result in different losses. Sometimes the product is destroyed as a result of a food safety concern. And so, that could be quote, unquote, food waste or food loss issue that is related to food safety as well. 

Yeah, I think the World Trade Organization, oh 2017 2019, I can't even remember what the date is they had a figure that they put out that was something like 9.6 billion dollars in loss that the world experiences due to unsafe food on an annual basis. 

Yeah, and then I think for especially, specifically for low and middle-income countries, I think the figure is like 110 billion on medical expenses and productivity productivity losses specifically for those countries. But, I'm sure that you know United States and developed countries also experienced that similar levels of losses. 

Yeah so, it's significant, but the problem really becomes how do you begin to measure some of the loss. Right, so two, I think, some of the points that Randy and Sarah have made you have loss on a very individual perspective, but you also have loss on an industry level. And so, how do you really get figures around that and and ultimately when you look into the environment around economics, as it pertains to food safety, that's a really new and budding area of research, surprisingly. So, I think at this point in time we really don't have a lot of awareness for what the exact costs of food safety are, but I think based upon what we all know, we can really make the assumption that it's fairly large. 

Yeah, thank you very much.

I'd add to that, you know, when we talk about food safety a lot of us always think about pathogens, viruses, bacteria, some fungi, and parasites. But, you know, we also have a lot of toxins and chemicals and allergens that are very important, and just as deadly in some cases, and particularly in some of the developing countries where we, you know, we have grain. You can't just you know throw the grain away but with fungal aflatoxin and mycotoxins that are produced. You know, some of what happens to consumption and chronic consumption of such contaminants, you know, it could be cancers and shortened life and you never really know that, you know, 20-30 years in advance.

Great, thank you so much, Carla. I think could you give us a bit of an idea of what K-State is planning to do for Food Safety Day and how the  Food Science Institute  is going to be approaching that big day. 

Yes, as Dr. Phebus mentioned earlier, we've met a few weeks ago, and I think our food safety team came up with a really great idea of creating a specific video that we feature different students of our department here. And they're all from different countries of the world. For example, we have Costa Rica, we have Indonesia, Cambodia, Brazil, United States, India, Africa, all over the world pretty much. And so, we have those students, we brought them in, and we wanted to just ask simple questions to understand what is their food safety perception. Some of them are food safety students, but some of them are not. And so, it was interesting to see how different people from different countries and cultures perceive food safety in one day, or another. So, we are working on that project, and we're going to have this video ready to release on June 7th as part of the Food Science Institute Initiative for the World Food Safety Day. So, stay tuned for that. Additionally to that, we are featuring some of our students here to explain their projects, and what they are doing in food safety, how they're improving food safety, how their projects impact public health, and the significance in events and science in this area. And so, those videos are going to be released all month of June as part of this initiative, but we're going to be individual videos of our students, and then on June 7th we're going to have our group video of everyone talking about the World Food Safety event, and perceptions. And all of that. So stay tuned for that.

Great! Can one of you speak a bit to the global perspective of the food safety work that's been done? 

You've mentioned, a few of you mentioned, several countries that you've worked in. And I know Carla, you and Jesse, you two in particular, have done work worldwide. How does the work at K-State impact these places around the world, and what do you learn in those places that you can bring back to K-State? 

Yeah, I think so, I think I'll go ahead and take that question. When it comes to food safety, I think that one of the exciting things about food safety, and probably one of  the messages that gets lost in terms of food safety education, is really the breadth of opportunities that food safety provides for students, for education. Right, you can be someone who's very interested in industry, and find a place for yourself in food safety. You can be somebody who's very interested in economics, right, or in travel and and find spaces within food safety for yourself. And so, I think that when you look at food safety it really has a very wide swath of opportunities for itself, and when we first, I guess, started our work in international spaces. Carl and I work mainly in Africa and southeast Asia, that's West Africa East Africa, sorry, and southeast Asia. I think we really began to recognize that food safety can take on a very different perspective depending upon what part of the world you're in. So, my educational background was really focused on you know us food safety focused on industry level intervention work. Right, how do we improve really high quality systems, versus, you know, we get to Africa, we get to southeast Asia and and you're really starting at very rudimentary spaces, and I don't mean to communicate that you know that those environments don't have their own successes or their own opportunities but you're just working in a very very different environment, a very different mindset for food safety, and typically very different cultures. And so, a lot of our work for food safety we had to kind of I think tear down our education and our thoughts on food safety to really begin to look at food safety in different ways. And so, as a part of that you know we've done a lot of work looking specifically at fresh food markets those are huge across the world. So typically, when we think about the United States we have these really beautiful streamlined chains of food production. Right, I have someone who produces livestock or vegetables or fruit that then goes to some form of a distribution group or processing group that then sends that through to a grocery store and that's how we access our food. And then, you get into Africa or Asia and it's like a hair of how things get produced and how things end up you know actually sold to people. And, most the time that hair ball ends up finishing at what they call fresh food markets. And so, we've spent a lot of time working on fresh food markets focusing on what are some of the main points of contamination within those markets. How do we untangle those points of contamination, and then focus on interventions that are very adoptable. And so, that's I think, back to that you know how we untrain our food safety minds. You can't go into that space and and just go, okay well, just yeah, you know, you just gotta do this right you just have to use lactic acid or you just use ultraviolet light. And you're good to go, right. You have to really think about what is going to be the best intervention for this space that is adoptable in an environment where people are living on very low incomes they have very low decision-making power the government has a very strong ability to change their mind on any given day. And so, regulations aren't very clear policies aren't very clear how do you work within some of those constraints. And so, that's a lot of I think what our food safety work has been, is to look at what are very applicable food safety interventions to solve the food safety issues that we have identified for specific environments within Africa and southeast Asia. 

One of the things that I have I've really enjoyed my time working with Jesse and and Carla in their international work, but one of the things that I perceive is that people citizens, of wherever they are, they really have a desire to know proper methods, proper storage, proper disinfection. And that sort of thing and the outreach efforts that I've seen  Carla and Jesse do seem to have really good acceptance and effect. And so, I think that's kind of where K-State gets thrown across the oceans is with our outreach and educational efforts in addition to the science. 

I would say we do more outreach and sort of extension style work than even science. You know, I guess in one sense I think that would be, you know, we're more extensionists, yeah than scientists.

We have developed so much material even for kids. And then, if you remember Bangladesh, but just small things that you can do to prevent foodborne illness that we just sharing that information. It seems so obvious to us, but sometimes you go to those places and just share that piece of information it makes all the difference. And so, I remember in Cambodia when we were doing my project in 2018, the vendors at first they were a little bit worried why we were trying to sample their stalls, and why we're there. Then, our students, our converting students, participate in this study, they explained everything and once the vendors knew what we were doing, they would actually come to us and say please come to my cell and temple here, because you you need to help us save our children, because they're dying from E Coli. And that was to me was so impactful, because I didn't even know they were aware of all of that, and they want us to help, and they want to participate they were so friendly and welcoming in those environments. And I don't know it's such a great feeling of helping someone in this food safety area that we can impact. Even though as Jesse mentioned, sometimes  the infrastructure is not as comparable to the us, but still you can impact make great impacts, and and change their environments and lives by just sharing information. 

I think one of the major challenges with food safety around the world is that when you look at the population of the world, the largest population exists within countries that have compounding public health issues. And so, you're not just dealing with whether or not someone's going to come into contact with raw chicken. Right, you're dealing with someone who is malnourished, who might come into contact with raw chicken, who also might come into contact with a mosquito carrying malaria, which who also might come into contact with water that is contaminated, right. So, you have all of these compounding public health challenges that really create an environment that's hard to work in, but I think very rewarding and it kind of takes food safety from this space, and I don't want to diminish the work of us food safety, because it's incredibly important, but it does take it from this you know hey we're improving these really great systems to wow, you know, if we could unlock one of these components, and find a solution something really powerful could happen. And so, that's kind of a driving force, for I think, a lot of our work, in particularly, Africa and southeast Asia. I think that's a lot of why I keep going back. True. 

Well, Jesse, I think they excuse me. I think you're also forgetting to talk about your work to help with capacity building for governments, like our project in Paraguay. Yeah, you know maybe you should comment also on that. And how working with the governments improve their food safety testing is also important. 

Well, I also don't want to take up too much of the time, but I think that that is a good point and kind of speaks to you. We just talked a lot about low income food safety, and I think the point that you're making, Sarah, is a great one which is that there's also a lot of middle-income countries where the again the food safety dynamic changes. And so, you're not really talking about the same scenario that you are in Africa and southeast Asia so if we move to places in South America such as Paraguay. You're really looking at emerging economies environments in which people are looking to enter into trade, and what does the dynamic of trade then due to the safety of that food supply. What are the lenses from a government perspective that need to change in terms of regulation and the capacity that that government then needs to develop in order to participate in in trade not only for success of trade, but success in protection of their own you know food supply their own public health environment And so, we have participated I think and you could probably speak to that too right pretty heavily in parkway in terms of of looking to work with labs and help with their testing capacity and work with them on whether or not they can actually you know effectively carry out trade programs that still provide that that stamp of approval in terms of safety of the products that are coming in and the products that they're they're sending out. 

One thing that's been really interesting for me participating in those types of projects, and in that project particularly is in terms of evaluating what labs like food safety testing labs, government labs, and other countries have in terms of their capacity. That's always really eye-opening as well, and learning about the challenges of wi-fi issues, and paper-based versus electronic systems, and how to convert a paper-based system to an electronic database for example. And the slowdowns that all of that creates in the pipeline in terms of not just receiving and testing the product. But also, creating the reports, and the invoices, and then getting payment. And so, when you evaluate the landscape, if you will, and then seek to provide solutions, it's very sort of knee-jerk. I guess to say, well we use this system in our government labs and it works great, and that's not necessarily applicable. Right, because no wi-fi or spotty wi-fi. And so, that's another example I think of what you were talking about, Jesse, in terms of we have to evaluate what we're working with, and then be creative, also, in solutions and supportive And so, that's always I found to be very rewarding as well and challenging from a professional growth perspective, also. 

One thing, I always get to chuckle at is we talk about other countries. And it seems like we have this mindset that the U.S. food supply is the safest in the world. And you know, we have to be pretty proud of our U.S. food supply but we still have some major issues food safety wise, and when I look across the country I know Dr. Stack does a lot of international traveling, also, there are countries that probably have at least elements of their food safety system that are better than the U.S. system Australia, and New Zealand, and Japan, Singapore places like that. So you know, there's just such a broad diversity of food safety standards. And what not across the globe and trying to tackle all of them all at one time is overwhelming, but that as Jesse just mentioned, I mean, you can really make a lot of headway with some basic elements in some places. Whereas, in other places you know they're pretty sophisticated, so.

I like that you bring up the fact that we are, we'd like, to tout ourselves as the safest food supply in the world, right. But, we are always learning and improving, as well. And I really appreciate Randy, that you bring up the fact that we can learn from other countries. Also, that we're all here to share and learn together, and that inc that in turn creates a safer global food supply, which in turn improves food security, and nourishes the world. So ultimately, we're all in this together and that's what we're trying to do here in K-State. And on that note, actually I might add a few comments regarding what K-State does in food safety. So really, we're as a land-grant institution, we're involved in food safety from the standpoint of teaching research and extension, and I mean that from a global sense even as Jesse demonstrated, that we're carrying out these types of activities all across the globe. But, what really that includes is not just us sitting around the table. I want to emphasize that K-State has many experts across campus in food safety. And so, we're just here to represent a small portion of experts. But you know, in terms of extension, we actually have consumer educators that work on food safety at the consumer level we have extension experts working with processors small processors especially helping to support their hasso plans and their testing for their facilities and a lot of that also includes small food producers, who are really trying to grow from an incubator kitchen and elevating up and becoming a larger processor in the kansas or missouri areas. So that's an important part of what we do from the extension side, and then of course, food safety is incorporated into so many classes across campus. And not just here in the department of animal science, and then the Food Science Institute. But you know, there are elements of Bakery Science, for example, that they talk about food safety and brain science. And that department is a part of our food safety efforts, both teaching, and research, and extension, and vetmed, for example. I don't want to list too many because I'm going to leave somebody out, and that's not what I'm trying to do. But, I really want to really capture the essence of the collaborative effort that is food safety, and you know not to leave out research right, but we work across so many colleges and disciplines to pull off a food safety project. And I really want to refer back to something you said, Jesse, about this includes economics, as well. And we work with social scientists, and it's animal scientists, as well it's pathologists, and you know it really brings in depending upon the project and the funding agency we work with a variety of disciplines to pull off our food safety research. And I think that's a critical point to make that it's not just us doing food safety work across campus. 

You know, I've been told and I haven't confirmed this myself, but if you go into some of our grocery stores here and buy a processed packaged food, say a tv dinner. Dr. Stack, you and I would refer to them. I don't think they make tv dinners anymore, but a product like that might have 40 or 50 countries represented in that one package. So, we are truly a global supply and food chain and you know the systems. Whether, they're informational systems data systems whatever you know even hot topics like climate change, and things like new emerging pathogens that we've never really seen before. You know, we can never get relaxed, we can never sit back, and say well we know enough to be effective, because everything is changing so fast now. And so, that's what makes food safety in particular food science in general and agricultural in general, but food safety is it's almost every day something new happens whether it's in this country or globally. And so, that's what you know having students coming from all parts of the world, like Carla coming from Brazil, it really makes our program stronger because we have that international flair at a very high level. 

You know, over the past, say 70 years or so, we've experienced the emergence of several zoonotic pathogens from animal hosts reservoirs that have had significant impacts on human health, sars kobe 2. and there are several suggested drivers for that emergence including land use, change climate, change trade and travel for speeding them around. So the first part of this, I'm going to ask you to exclude, so excluding the emergence of antibiotic resistant strains because I'd like to touch on that later, but excluding antibiotic resistance has there been a significant emergence of new foodborne pathogens and what were the primary drivers? 

Well, that is an excellent question. Who wants to address it? I'll give you the first, really beautiful, if you want to call it beautiful example. We went back in 2011 when we had the emergence of never before determined sugar toxin E coli strain 0.04. That happened in Europe mainly in Germany where we had four thousand people just all of a sudden become ill at a really high hospitalization and death rate relative to other sugar toxin E coli infections. And come to find out, it was definitely an emerged pathogen that kind of mixed the virulence properties of more human E coli enteric disease, with what we refer to as enterohemorrhagic types of things. As far as the way the organism attached in our GI tract. And so, that's a perfect example of picking up you know just a floating around piece of DNA that all of a sudden turns on the switch to make something almost a super pathogen in this case. And so, we you know we tracked that one back to the type of bean sprouts that were being produced and marketed out of Egypt. And so, you know that you always have to be aware that these genetic virulence properties can jump from one organism to the other, and most of the time they don't have much of an effect but all of a sudden everything can come together and you've got a really important pathogen at that point.

I think there's lots of examples within salmonella as well. Where we see salmonellas that we don't take very seriously from a public health perspective. We know that they, you know, exist within certain animal populations but we don't really see them show up in public health data. And then, all of a sudden you'll have a large outbreak that will occur with a certain serotype that you just really haven't seen in public health data before. And so, kind of back to some points, you know that are being made is that we have those genetic components, where you ultimately what you end up with is a strain that takes on, you know, the genetic capacity to then cause human disease. I think along those lines there is a level too, where I think, from a food safety perspective. We do need to recognize, and not to communicate that we don't, but that we are dealing with from a biological hazard perspective. A lot of little living microorganisms, and they have a lot of capacity to change, and I know that Sarah and I's advisor always makes the comment, turns out they don't read the book on themselves. Right. And so, we tend to get into a mindset of this is how salmonella behaves this is how E coli behaves and all of a sudden they don't behave that way anymore. And I think that that then pushes us as as food safety scientists as individuals within the food industry to just try to be as adaptive as possible be as open-minded as possible. Particularly, when we're talking about pathogens that have shown the capacity to adapt, and in actuality I can't really think of one that hasn't.And so, yeah go ahead.

I'll give you a perfect example of what Jesse's talking about, and related to climate change. You know, we have data showing that some of the ocean waters are warming right and used to vibrio parahaemolyticus and vibrio vulnificus which are two really important public health pathogens associated with shellfish mollusc mollux it was really you know we didn't see it much up in our northern borders of northern coast even here in North America but now we're seeing kind of a migrate migration and emergence of vibrio problems in shellfish in the harvested in what was traditionally the colder waters. And it's even more complicated than that. We're seeing what we refer to in microbiology as viable but non-culturable. So, you really can't detect some of these organisms until they're maybe in your body, you know, in doing the damage, you know, so it's, you know, all of these science facts. You can get really comfortable thinking, you know, enough and then all of a sudden you don't know, you know. It's causing 4,000 people as the E coli 104 outbreak caused 4,000 people to get sick in a matter of a couple of weeks.

Yes, I think kind of back to close the loop on your question I think some of the driving factors can include you know some natural just variation that occurs. I think that there are some factors that come alongside changes in dynamics in terms of our production and our management practices or the environment. But I think some of it also comes from maybe some dogmatic thought processes within kind of this is this is the way that it is and there's no way salmonella can be in black pepper, or in dried flour and turns out, yeah it can.

So we didn't mention antibiotic resistance, because you asked us not to. Yeah, well speaking of.  

Yeah, no. I just wanted to separate them, because the antibiotic resistance challenge is substantial and you know just by parallel tracks we've learned so much about  how microbes interact. And you know, the rate of exchange across taxa is just far greater than we ever anticipated. Than we would have predicted, probably 15 years ago. And so, you know the obvious concern for antibiotic resistance is the ineffectiveness of subsequent treatment for infection, but I guess to tie it to the previous question. That the question I wanted to pose is for foodborne pathogens. What are the inherent risks of transmitting that resistance to other intestinal bacteria during the course of the infection and subsequent clearing. So, I'm looking at it as you know not only are we concerned about resistance in the foodborne pathogen, but are the foodborne pathogens becoming a vector for moving those resistance cassettes. The genomic islands around just as a course of how we do business. 

So, I might comment on that a little bit from the perspective of shiga toxin producing E coli actually. So, we actually don't recommend antibiotics as a course of action because a lot of times what can happen is that sugar toxins being produced in the cell and the antibiotics that then might lyse the cell and release it. And then, suddenly you have a mass release of the sugar toxin that can kind of overwhelm the body all at once and create many complications from a clinical perspective for the patient. So you might ask the question, then well why should we care about antibiotic resistance genes or characteristics in something like aztec, and it's really from a perspective of what you're mentioning Dr. Stack in terms of then if we do have s tech in cattle or in the environment or in our guts, for example. That there are other microorganisms around other bacteria that can then share those genes so even if a antibiotic resistant s tech might not get treated in a human with an antibiotic, because of the concerns I mentioned. There are concerns though that it will be sharing its genetic makeup and sharing those genes to others. And so, now we might have something that was a susceptible bacteria that is now harboring antibiotic resistance genes. And of course, the risk there depends upon what is being shared with, and then of course how broadly does that. Then share its genes, so you can see there's kind of a domino effect, but when you think about animals, and their gi tracts, and their environments, and our gi tracts, right. They're a separate sort of ecosystem with a variety of different bacteria, and other microorganisms hanging out, and that can impact the sharing of genes, and that is a concern. 

Yeah, one of the big issues that has emerged over the last decade in antibiotic resistance is clostridium deficient and my father was just in the hospital, he passed, but I was actually talking to some of the doctors there at fighting  clostridium deficient antibiotic resistance in a hospital environment. Whether that's in the cafeteria, whether your general population is consuming food, or the food being brought to infirmed patients. And now it's expanding to cafeterias, and schools, and places like that, and a lot of the isolates are antibiotic resistant and that makes it even more difficult to address. 

Yeah, from the research we have conducted and commenting back on on Dr. Graham's point, we've seen that some of because we did some whole genome sequencing with the isolates from the research. And we've seen that some of the isolates collected from the year before. Some didn't have antibiotic resistance. And then, next year they already presented that antibiotic resistance, and really looking at the whole genome sequencing and comparing those strains they were the same consider the same strain, but acquired some of those genes they didn't have before and really this complex environment that you have many different species playing around, and they just interact so much that it's so easy to see then you know something that didn't have now all of a sudden, he has this resistance. 

And you're referring to your work in southeast Asia right?

Yes to my, specifically, my work in southeast Asia. 

And well, I just I think I would just follow up on a lot of the conversation with you know that this in the whole area of antimicrobial resistance and research in antimicrobial resistance is an incredibly complex area, right. There's so much to consider, and I think, the more we know the less we know. And that's just what's being made clear right is that as we begin to unravel some of the components around amr and antibiotic resistance. It really is becoming clear how well are you measuring it, how well do you know, you know, phenotypic versus genotypic can you trace back to you know source all those things become incredibly complex, right. And you almost get into you can really get into a very circular space. Where one set of isolates collected from one environment could be a lifetime worth of evaluation to try to identify what exactly is going on there. And are you measuring that as accurately as possible. And I think a point that I just wanted to make is you know when we started doing Carla's research, and looking at that whole genome sequencing of the isolates that we collected from fresh markets. I think it became very clear to us early on that there's so much out there in terms of taking that data evaluating that data, and then re-evaluating that data because they're just a lot. And you could probably speak to it better than I could. There's a lot in terms of understanding these genes, what they mean, how they interact together, what the names are, what you know there's various names for the different antibiotic resistance genes. I'm trying to ensure that you see that from a phenotypic perspective. 

And not only just the genes. Sometimes, we focus on the genes that could  come for a resistance to specific antibiotics, but then it has the gene. But, somehow it's not expressing resistance or it doesn't have the gene. But it's expressing resistance, and then you look you dig a little bit a little bit deeper and you find it has some pumps that were not present before that people didn't know about. And now maybe that efflux pump is helping in this specific antibiotic that we were not aware before. And so, it's very interesting to look over time, and the database that ncbi provides, and just see that you know last year we saw five different resistance five different genes that could encode resistance. And then, this year we have like additional two if flux pumps that were not that before and are helping to explain why we might might see that, or why we might not see that resistance in those isolates. So, it's really interesting how it just changes as the more gathered information, less we know. Probably, as Jesse mentioned, and yeah.

And today, the way we trade food and agricultural products. Whatever that gene is down in Brazil, could be in America in two days, right. Yeah so, then they will adapt you know I mean I think that again not to just kind of continue with the same comment but they are going to from a bacterial perspective right we have to recognize a food safety mindset that they're going to adapt. And so, we're always working with a, I don't want to call him a foe that seems harsh, but we're working on prevention of a group of organisms microorganisms that are going to adapt to whatever we're doing, and that's got to be part of that thought process.

Yeah, I had to follow up on that. In the plant world, we have of course a group of enteric bacteria that infect plants outright, and we're finding what we would have considered a species in the past, they're so variable that they're exchanging on genomic islands. They're not just exchanging resistance genes, or genes for adaptation they're exchanging whole secretion systems, so that we, you know, we can have certain populations with one or two secretion systems and all the one with half a dozen. So, those are the tools that those bacteria need to adapt, and maybe, even adapt to new host species. I, to get it to kind of bring us back to world food day, world Food Safety Day,  what do you consider are the pressing gaps in our knowledge? And what are the opportunities for reducing the impacts from foodborne illness? What do we need to head what's our vision?

Oh I think that a huge one, a huge one, is understanding the role of foodborne disease on nutrition gains. And again that comes back to when you look at the population of the world and the percentage of that population that lives in environments where nutrition is a major concern major concern and I mean I think that that could be applied to high income countries, as well. But, you know my focus is really low income countries. And so, I guess I'll speak to it from that space having an understanding for the dynamics between foodborne disease and negated nutrition gains. Would I think change the discussion around investment in sanitary and hygienic infrastructure around the world. Which, ultimately, at the end of the day, I think is it's alarming that has not been a bigger conversation. That we have such large populations of the world that are living in incredibly unhygienic unsanitary environments. And so, I think until you are able to say the reason why Africa is not seeing gains in their nutrition outcomes, or the reason why Asia is not seeing gains in their nutrition outcomes has a lot to do with diarrhoeal disease. Which is a hypothesis that most people working within food safety and international spaces have. I don't know that you're going to see a huge investment in that space. And so, I think having data that really can explicitly show that would be huge. 

And I'll also add to your question jim if you especially if you bring it back more toward home and developed countries, is we are in an era where we're really going toward minimal processing of foods, what we lovingly refer to as clean labels. You know, doing away with preservatives and you know really going toward fresh and local, and that sort of thing. And to me, you know, some of this technology is opening the doors to new issues in food safety. I'm not, I don't, want to just come out and say that those types of products are less safe. But, they have to be managed differently. If we're not putting preservatives and things in foods then obviously you can have more microbial growth And so, I think it's an error, that especially me, I'm really into interventions and things like that research as far as food safety. It's something that's a very pressing and real issue today, and I think it is as we look into the next five years, I don't see it changing. I think we're really going toward that more natural clean label green produced type food system, and we have to address it. And I think, if you look at fba for instance, they have just come out with a document that's kind of giving their vision for the new era of food safety is what they call it. And a lot of it is global supply chains, minimal processing, and emergence of new pathogens, things like what we've talked about today on this podcast. 

And I might add too, that and this is a little biased because I'm a primarily salmonella researcher, but I feel like the salmonella problem is going to continue on our radar for the foreseeable future, you know, we've made tremendous progress on chicken toxin producing E coli, you know. Particularly, we focus a lot on the beef industry and we've made tremendous progress there. What we haven't made progress on, and you might argue we've made some progress, but is reducing salmonella in terms of public health. And as well as a in different food commodities, including beef for example, and we're making a lot of progress and starting to understand why that might be and particularly in different food products. How is it in a cow, for example and therefore, why is it a risk, so we're starting to make progress, but in terms of like the healthy people guidelines for the government, we aren't making progress there. If you look at it from that perspective. And so, I feel like food safety is going to continue to really be emphasizing funding to figure out what the salmonella issue is, why it's a problem, and then what do we do about it. And that's in a variety of products right, Jesse you mentioned flour, right and we've mentioned beef it's been in produce just to name a few of the many so salmonella will definitely continue to be on the radar for a while.

Yeah, salmonella is actually a bonafide plant pathogen based on all the genetic work done in the last few years. Yeah, 

Interesting, thank you for sharing, that I did not know that.

I was just going to close the loop here and talk about I think part of the extension and outreach, you know, the consumer side. How do we educate consumers to then make sure that, you know, if we are all diligent and make our part and everything everybody's doing their part all across the chain. And then, when he reaches consumer and they don't know what to do, and how to handle their food safely, that could be very detrimental to you know preventing food-borne illness. And I think just looking at the calls of action that the World Food Safety Day calls for one of them is team up for food safety, and I think we really could use that to team up for food safety and educate people around us our friends our families. And I find sometimes hard to just communicate, and I think I have spoken enough times to my friends not to eat a raw, not raw but underdon, burger. That now, when they are eating with me, they look at me and they said “okay, yeah. Well done please.” and they asked the server to be well done, and I guess you just have to do it over and over and over again until, you know, we’re to a point where people just have that in their minds, and they know some of the practices they can choose. Some of the choices can be safer than what they used to do, and I think just it's as much as important as everything else just the consumer awareness, and they know what to do.  What they can do to protect themselves and their families.

I just want to take a minute and actually underline that, because as we were going around I thought if no one says it I'm gonna be selfish and take a second stab, because I think that, I mean as much as that sounds a little crazy, and I don't know, I get kicked out of every food safety group I exist in. But, we need a grassroots movement back to consumer education. We really do because we've moved away from it and there is a true lack of, I think, understanding of just really basic food safety and home food safety information in upcoming generations of people. My mom always kind of takes the stance that it’s because of home economics, and I think I think she's got maybe a point. But, her point is grounded in that it's due to a lack of food safety education for consumers. And so, whether that's home economics not being in high school anymore, or not right, it means that there isn't something that is providing particularly young people with some level of information on ‘this is how you safely prepare food within your home’ and we do we have to have a grass root roots movement back to it, because we've kind of forgotten it. 

One of the scariest things, as a food microbiologist myself, is walking around the tailgates at football games and watching what goes on at tailgates relative to food safety. It's amazing that we don't have huge outbreaks every weekend, you know, in these types of environments. 

You know, unfortunately, for us, people don't want to invite us over for, you know, let's be honest we don't have friends, we're safety scientists. A lot of my friends actually say that they're intimidated for me to even be near them when they're even five feet within the kitchen. 

So but, when you're traveling internationally they all want to be sitting right next to you. 

That's huge, and they're like if Jessie doesn't eat it, I'm not gonna eat it. That's so true.

But, I really like how you all really close the loop with that conversation, because it's something we talk about amongst ourselves a lot but really struggle with. And another thing kind of going back to one of my comments earlier about how it takes all disciplines. And food safety is one of the things that we also really need is working with our social science friends and colleagues to understand how to get the message out in a way that it will be received and valued. And because that's another piece right is I could put together all the data I wanted on salmonella in cattle and but how do I make somebody care about it? How do I deliver that message in a way that's meaningful for my mom in her kitchen? Right, and how it translates from what we do here to the burger that she needs to cook well done. So, it really takes a whole team to address that question, as well. But, I really like though, how we started out talking about processors, consumers, researchers, everybody, and now you closed it with the consumers, as well. It's really good point. 

And, I guess that comment, and some of the comments that have been made throughout the discussion, brings back the importance of the Food Science Institute at K-State. Which is truly an interdisciplinary group, and you've got scientists and researchers from all aspects of research in that area, and very important approach to getting things done the right way.

The Food Science Institute is very focused on food safety, in along with general food science, and I would just like to remind everybody that as June 7th comes up, and the week before, and probably the week or two after, at our food science website, Food Science Institute, website we will have the video posted that Carla mentioned. We'll be sending that to the food and organization. Hopefully, it'll see some international use, and we'll continue to put out as much information as we can about our food safety program. And just general guidance for consumers and processors.

That sounds wonderful, and we will definitely get some connections to those sites through our global food systems website. As well, so that we can get the information out and share all the great things that you're doing, and the students are doing. I think this is an exciting time. 

If you're really interested in this topic you can find a lot of things going on World Food Safety Day gotta get that hashtag in there. I really enjoyed the discussion, so thank you so much for your time today. You know there's a difference between observing human behavior and understanding it, and that's our challenge. 

I agree with the comments about the need for re-engaging the public in food safety, because it seems like we're in this era of well undercooked is better. And you know, if you watch the food network shows it's almost sinful to cook things all the way through. I think your challenge is big, so good luck. 

Yeah, well and I think to that point, right. It may be one of the best ways to kind of close this down, is that the whole Food Safety Day, and their big theme, and has been, you know, across the different years, has been food safety is everybody's business. And so, you know, I think that that's something that we very much believe here at K-State that food safety is everybody's business, and that we're really attempting to cultivate an environment in which we take that into our classrooms, we take that into our research, and we take that into our extension. And so, engaging with the consumer is a huge part of that, and making sure that they are a part of that everybody's business  is a really important one.

Well, great. This has been a good experiment having a having a group of people discussing on an important topic like food safety, and we're really excited to be able to put this out in time for food safety International Food Safety Day and I want to thank you all for joining us, and we'll look forward to talking to you again sometime.

Thank you, thank you very much, thank you all, thank you, thanks so much, have a great day. 

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

Keywords: Salmonella, lymph nodes, cattle, contaminated, research, food safety, animals, ground beef, Kansas State University

This week, Dr. Sara Gragg, associate professor of food science in the Department of Animal Sciences and Industry, discusses how and where pathogens access meat. The study of E. coli, salmonella and other toxin-producing pathogens has been a major focus of researchers at Kansas State University for many years. Gragg has presented extensively on the topic of food safety and studies processes in food safety and microbiology. Her research program investigates pre- and post-harvest issues affecting the meat and produce industries, with specific interests in addressing how pathogens contaminate food products and the application of interventions to prevent or reduce pathogen presence.

Transcript:

[Music]

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy.

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a food scientist.

The safety of the food we eat is important to everyone. Studies of food contamination with E coli, salmonella and other toxin producing pathogens has been a major focus of research at Kansas State University for many years. Questions on pathogenic contamination in meat and how the organism enters into that food system are at the center of research activities in several disciplines. Today's guest is Dr. Sarah Gragg, associate professor in the Department of Animal Science and Industry at Kansas State University. Her research program investigates pre harvest and post harvest issues affecting the meat and produce industries with specific interests in addressing the manner by which pathogens contaminate food products, and the application of interventions to prevent and or reduce pathogen presence. She is particularly interested in studying the pre harvest transmission of foodborne pathogens in food animals, as well as investigating interventions to reduce foodborne pathogens in live animals. I would like to welcome Dr. Sarah Gragg to the podcast, something to chew on. We're looking forward very much to having a discussion with you here today. Before we get started on some of the technical side of what you do, can you give us a bit of background on yourself, who you are, and how you got interested in the work that you do?

Yes, absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you, Maureen. And thanks to the entire team for inviting me today. I really enjoy the opportunity to be here with you and visit with you about my passion, which is food safety. So with that I'll share a little bit about how I came to be a food safety researcher. I was actually in high school and walked into my Agriculture class as a freshman didn't know what to expect. And we had a new teacher that year. His name was Todd Berkshires and he was starting us off on our Agriculture classes but also in taking our FFA program forward as well. We had a co-advisor, as well, in our FFA program. And so I got to know these two teachers interacted with Todd Berkshires the most and as part of FFA, we have to have something called a supervised agricultural experience program or an SAE for short. And, I grew up right outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. And I had like two or three acres and had some close friends that I also would show and train horses with, and so, I was definitely a part of agriculture but I wasn't per se the traditional farm kid if you will. And so, I didn't know what I was going to do for my SAE program. And his wife, Dr. Mindy Berkshires was a brand new assistant professor at the University of Nebraska Lincoln at the time. And he said why don't you go work with her in the lab because food science and technology is actually an SAE emphasis area. And we can see if maybe that's something that you want to do. And I said that sounds fantastic. And so I got to meet Dr. Berkshires and spend some time getting to know her and her graduate students and getting to know the lab and decided that was absolutely what I wanted to be doing for my SAE. And so, I was very fortunate at the age of 14 to sort of luck into food science, if you will, I don't think I'd ever heard of it or known what it was at the time. And so as a part of my FFA program and working with her in the lab, I was able to complete some different research projects for science fairs, and different other competitions and activities through FFA. And so I got to work alongside her and her graduate students while also logging hours for my SAE. And so, after several years of that, I realized this is what I want to do for my career. This is something I'm passionate about. Something's very interesting to me. And I also really enjoyed agriculture and wanted to make a career out of it. So really with that the rest is history. I stayed at Nebraska, to do my undergraduate in food science and technology. And about the time I was a junior in high school, the Berkshires family relocated to Texas, to Texas Tech University. And at the time, I knew that I was going to be following them for graduate school. So I stayed at Nebraska did my bachelor's and then transferred to Texas, to attend Texas Tech for my masters and my PhD. And so while I was there, my master's work consisted of looking at lactobacillus, and some different strains, as an intervention to control E coli. Oh, and 5787 in fresh spinach. And so, produce safety was really the focus for that degree. But at Texas Tech, we had a lot of exposure to meet safety, as well as pre harvest safety, working with cattle, and other animals as well. So then, I stayed at Texas Tech for my PhD, again with Dr. Berkshires, and worked on cattle lymph nodes, actually, and trying to isolate salmonella from cattle lymph nodes. So looking at the prevalence, which is how many animals out of a certain population have salmonella in their lymph nodes, and also trying to quantify how much salmonella was present as well. So looking at prevalence and concentration.

And so that actually was my entire Ph. D. program. So did that for my dissertation work. And we worked with both domestic cattle as well as cattle in Mexico for the various parts of my project. And we also worked with the United States Meat Animal research center in Clay Center, Nebraska, for a large portion of my dissertation work. So that was what I was up to, before I came to Kansas State University. I did a little bit of a postdoc at Texas Tech as well. And then this job at K State came available. And I have been with Kansas State ever since. And so I joined in June of 2013. And I'm currently an associate professor with a 60% research 20 or 40% teaching appointments. So that's a little bit about how I got to this point in my career.

That's great. Thank you very much. You know, looking through the research activities that you've been involved in, it's covers quite a bit of distance, I'm going through the leafy greens and the produce side of it into the animal side. You know, you talk a bit about calorie search. Have you done research on other animals as well?

Yes, actually, so cattle is definitely probably the area that I've researched the most in terms of live animals or in terms of livestock, but also have done some work with swine. We actually as a food safety team here at K State have wrapped up recently two studies looking at hog carcasses. One study was looking at salmonella from carcasses all the way through trim, and trying to identify interventions that are effective at reducing salmonella. And then we did what I would call it that project sister study where we were looking at reducing ShiGa toxin producing Escherichia E coli on carcasses. And so, that those are probably two of our most recent studies. And then we also are working on a collaborative study that just got funded with Texas Tech University to look at salmonella in hog lymph nodes, as well. And so that's going to be as I mentioned, the dual institution project, where we're going to look at a variety of different hog lymph nodes, from hogs around the country with different plants, and both trying to determine prevalence as well as concentration of salmonella. So really, beef cattle and hogs are probably my two main livestock I've worked with.

I'm curious on the the lymph node work, and this will be a question of based on ignorance. How does the contamination in that part of the animal's body impact human food consumption?

This is a great question. So I'm going to focus primarily on beef cattle because that's where a lot of the lymph node work has been done to date and that's where we have the most data. So we have looked, a lot, at what are called peripheral lymph nodes, so those are lymph nodes that are sort of on the outside of the body embedded in the fat tissue of the carcass. Now, when beef cattle are taken apart, which we would consider fabrication, there the fatty tissue oftentimes gets cut away and is sent with trim to grinding. Since those lymph nodes are a part of that fatty tissue, those lymph nodes then can sometimes get incorporated into ground beef. So when we have lymph nodes that have salmonella in them, those lymph nodes then are in the fatty tissue, the fatty tissue goes to ground beef, and then any salmonella within those lymph nodes now gets ground up and is a part of that ground product. So then for consumers who might enjoy a hamburger that is less than well done or cooked to 160 Fahrenheit, could potentially be at risk for salmonella in that hamburger, potentially from a contaminated lymph node. Now, I also do want to point out that those that salmonella is within a lymph node, and that lymph node is embedded within the fatty tissue of the carcass. So if we were doing a carcass wash at the abattoir, let's say hot water, or lactic acid, for example, those washes do help reduce pathogens on the carcass. However, if salmonella is embedded in the lymph node, and in the fatty tissue, of course, it's protected from those interventions. And so that makes it very difficult to protect against any salmonella entering the horse through the lymph nodes. So we have to really then think about, what can we do in at the live animal side? So pre harvest to reduce the chances of having someone else in the lymph nodes? Also, can we remove lymph nodes? That's been a question. Animals have hundreds of lymph nodes throughout their bodies, right? So it would be very, very challenging to get every lymph node removed from every carcass. And so some studies have looked at what if we just remove maybe the biggest six, right? So some are bigger than others, right? Some, if they are contaminated and contaminated at a high concentration could in theory, be providing a larger load of salmonella into the ground product, then a teeny, tiny lymph node that maybe isn't as contaminated, for example. So it's really kind of hard to predict and know which lymph node might be contaminated? And, and really, what's the best way to approach this from an intervention and a food safety perspective, but it's a very important area of research currently.

Yeah, that is really fascinating. Sarah, and the way that you explain it is really helpful in understanding the implications for the consumer. I'm just curious about salmonella, who knew that salmonella hang out in lymph nodes is the same? Could you talk just a little bit about the physiology? And maybe that will allow you then to get into some of your findings in terms of what can we do pre harvest? Is it? Are there particular kinds of rations that help reduce the amount of salmonella? So first, I'm wondering, is it just a natural part of the physiology of the animal? And what have you learned about ways to reduce it pre harvest?

Yeah, great question. So I will kind of start, I guess, by how salmonella even ends up in the lymph nodes and kind of talk through some of those points. So salmonella is oftentimes naturally in the gastrointestinal tract of cattle. And in most cases, cat cattle are not clinically ill if salmonella. Now we have over 2500 Different serotypes of salmonella, and not all salmonella behave the same way in every post, if you will. Now, what might make us sick, like a salmonella Newport, for example, might not cause any issues in cattle. And so it's really hard to pick up at the feed yard level because that you might walk through the pens and think oh, well if they're that contaminated with salmonella, they should be ill and I can pull them and treat them it'll be fine. That's that's just not how it works because cattle are not as susceptible to salmonella. As humans are. In general, right. There are some serotypes like salmonella, Dublin, that can cause clinical illness in cattle. So I'm speaking more in general terms that cattle generally do not get sick. And so they harbor it in their gastrointestinal tracts they pay In their feces, their feces end up in their pins, and cattle lay down, it gets muddy and wet, and so it gets on their hides. And so salmonella is very much in their environment as well. So when we think about that situation with cattle, if it's in their environment, and if it's in their GI tract, it's possible that it's also finding its way to the lymph nodes. And there's a couple of different ways to consider that. One is through the gastrointestinal tract. So salmonella can pass through actually the lining of the GI tract.

They can utilize what are called the M cells of peyres, patches in Peyer's patches are essentially like immune tissue in the GI tract. And someone will actually utilize that to pass through. And so then they can enter into the bloodstream and also be drained to the lymphatic system. Oftentimes, they're in Gulten in a macrophage or some sort of immune cell. And then those immune cells might carry the salmonella to the lymph node. And then we don't really know what happens after that. One of the problems with salmonella in lymph node research is if we're getting these from animals at the abattoir, so they've already been euthanized and are hanging on the line. I have that one shot. So if I wanted to sample cattle throughout it's, it's I can't just get a lymph node from a live animal, right? I have to get it at death's. And so it's not like I can sample the same animal throughout its lifetime to see when that lymph node became positive, and did it stay positive? And did it ever go negative? So those are some of the questions we have in terms of what salmonella finds its way to the lymph node through the GI tract, for example, how long is it positive? We don't know? Does it get cleared at some point does it pass through that lymph node to another lymph node, for example. And there's some research that's kind of looked at that but we still need some more effort there to kind of identify, but again, challenging research. Now there are some other ways that we sort of hypothesize that salmonella finds its way to the lymph nodes. Now, some of those peripheral lymph nodes that I mentioned, one that I have researched, and a lot of others have particularly is called the sub iliac lymph node. Now, the subiliac is a larger lymph node that kind of sits on the hind hip of the hind leg of the animal, and it drains the hind leg in that region. So we were always scratching our head. Why is that lymph node positive? How did why is the hind leg contaminated with salmonella that lymph node perceived it right? So there are some questions about is it an abrasion, that salmonella is entering through and then gets filtered to the resident lymph node, maybe it's biting flies, we know that flies love to hover on feces, right. And so maybe they're hovering on the feces and then they go bite the hind leg of the animal and introduce salmonella transdermally. And then it finds its way to the lymph node. Now, there has been some research done by some of my colleagues that have looked at what happens if we actually do transdermally introduce salmonella at different points throughout the body. And there's been really interesting research trying to understand where salmonella ends up if it's introduced transdermally. And it does tend to be in kind of the surrounding lymph nodes in that area. So that helps us kind of understand how it can happen not just through the GI tract. Now, it is though, like the sub iliac lymph node on that hind leg, for example, that can probably find its way into the ground beef system B just because of its location and adipose tissue, and then that adipose tissue goes to ground beef. So what do we do about this? Right? Well, we're still trying to identify what to do about it actually. So if we go to the farm level, we need to try to minimize salmonella in the environments and in these animals as well. Now, I will say that generally there are trends to when we find salmonella in cattle lymph nodes as well as in cattle feces and the general trend is it peaks in sort of summer to fall As you go south in the United States, and then we've also done some studies in Mexico, I think one study was, I think, September in Mexico, and we had extremely high salmonella prevalence. But you know, we were going south. And we were at that peak prevalence time. So, in general, salmonella is not found as often in lymph nodes or in cattle feces at other times of the year, and especially like here in the Midwest, we don't find salmonella as much as we would as we move south.

So that helps us also sort of target some of our efforts in terms of where do we think the biggest risks are? How do we help those feed yards or those avatars and then, you know, we can apply it to all regions as well to just help minimize any prevalence we have throughout the United States or throughout the world eventually, as well. So pre harvest, good, you know, good management practices, trying to help keep salmonella out of the environment, cleaning, water troughs, and so forth. But also, as you mentioned, what are we feeding the animals? And so we have actually looked at different studies where if we add a supplement, for example, like a probiotic, does it help reduce salmonella in perhaps their feces in their environment? And then of course, in the lymph nodes as well. So that is a pretty important area of research in terms of what can we get that we can feed to the animals that will not, of course, be harmful? Right? It has to be, it has to have animal welfare in mind, but also productivity, right, we don't, we don't want to also reduce their effectiveness in terms of their growth and what they're already consuming for their diet. So we have to work with like ruminant nutritionists and feed yard experts to help identify things that might work, things that could be beneficial without harming the cattle and their and their daily game in their productivity, while also trying to improve food safety. And so it's kind of a balancing act there and definitely an interdisciplinary effort to try to tack this issue. And then I mentioned, of course, you know, at the avatar, there are questions about, should we be removing some lymph nodes? What if we remove some of the bigger ones? Does that reduce the amount going into the grind, and then in our ground beef product? So we're still trying to figure all of those things out, but it's a Farm to Fork question.

That's fascinating, because it really has shows how little, you know, toward any sort of, I don't want to say global because that's not what I'm implying. But you don't have a method for for really positive controls the moment it appears. Right.

Right. Well, I mean, I will say, you know, the industry is doing the best they can, right? Oh, sure. Healthy cattle with clean sanitary environment. But yeah, we haven't quite found the magic bullet or the silver bullet, if you will, to address this issue. And I think some of us that have worked in the pre harvest space, kind of get frustrated with the salmonella problem, because salmonella just won't go away. It's and you know, when you think about salmonella from an overall public health perspective, it just won't go away. So like the Healthy People, 2010 and the 2020. And you know, now we're getting ready to hear about 2030 for salmonella. We aren't making much progress towards those. And there's a lot of effort going on to try to address this issue. Because salmonella is problematic. And we're doing what we can. We just haven't quite found the solution yet, in general.

Are any particular breeds or subtypes of in this case, cattle or swine? More or less? I don't want to say resistant because that imply something we don't know. Are they more or less likely to be hosts for salmonella?

That's a very good question. So I will say from the lymph node perspective, one of my projects that I worked on during my PhD work at Texas Tech, actually compared what we would call feedlot cattle are fed cattle to what are called Cole cattle. So cattle that maybe were like old breeding stock that were done being used in that way and then you know, sent to the avatar. So, oh, feedlot cattle versus other cattle, if you will, or cold cattle was one of our primary objectives. And what we determined there is that feedlot cattle are far more contaminated with salmonella in their lymph nodes than coal animals. And now when you think about it, I kind of describe the feed yard environment, right, we have animals and pins together, and some may have salmonella, and maybe at high levels and others might not. And then they're hanging out together. They're eating out of the same bins, and drinking out of the same water troughs. And so that kind of explains, I think, why some of our feedlot cattle are going to be more contaminated, particularly as we move south and in the summer and fall, then our cover

Is the contamination from the lymph nodes in ground beef, the major contamination point, or what are the other? What are the other major areas that contamination could occur? I guess that's kind of a two question. Question. Yeah.

That's a great question. So part of what prompted the lymph node research, you know, a decade ago, I guess, really is when we kind of got into this business, if you will, is, you know, we, we have these carcass washes that are pretty effective at reducing salmonella on the carcass. So we might have a certain prevalence or concentration, pre wash, and then it's hard to find salmonella carcasses post wash. But then when we grind up the carcass, salmonella's there, so what gives? Right, why, how is this possible? And so then started asking the question of what all is actually going into the grind? Right? And, well, it's not just lean tissue. And it's not just that oppose, there's lymph nodes in there, too. And so that kind of prompted some of that question. So to answer your question, I would say yes, we know lymph nodes can be a source of contamination. If any salmonella is remaining on the carcass, post intervention, or if it's cross contaminated after for example, during fabrication without clean and sanitary environment, and personnel working to protect against that, then, you know, potentially pathogens could be introduced, post washing of the carcass as well. So a sanitary environment sanitary tools, trained personnel. But we also have to remember that if we are using a carcass wash like hot water or lactic acid, for example, we have to use it properly, right? It has to be at the right temperature, and it has to be mixed to the right concentration, because all of those things help to reduce salmonella on carcasses if salmonella is there in the first place. And so there are a lot of different ways I guess that salmonella might find its way in. But we are particularly interested in understanding the role that the lymph nodes specifically plays. And hopefully we're going to be looking at that very soon as well.

Great, thanks.

Sure, you have other things you'd like to talk about other than salmonella, but we're obviously really interested in the nose, they're going back to the consumer end on Maureen’s question. I was wondering about the effects of salmonella, you know, my awareness of food poisoning, or borne illnesses through beef sort of started 30 years ago with E coli, which of course, have very different mortality kinds of consequences. I'm wondering how sick the cells make people and how big of a problem is this for our country in general? 

Very, that's a great question. So you brought up the ShiGa toxin producing Escherichia coli. Right, and, as we call them, are definitely very concerning from a public health perspective if they're present. Right. So salmonella. It's, you asked a sort of a loaded question with salmonella. You know, when you think about how there's over 2500 serotypes right? Not all of them are going to behave the same way. And so I'll comment on that a little bit more here in a minute. But what I will say is that salmonella has oftentimes been associated with the number one cause of death for foodborne illness. So that's a problem and salmonella can make a lot of people sick and it can make some people not very sick, right and so people do die from salmonella. And you know, we generally the classic gastrointestinal illness, right it are the symptoms and salmonella can last you know, three to seven days. Sometimes it can last longer than the 24 or 48 hour bug but you might kind of think is the general foodborne illness. And it can cause some issues especially in immunocompromised individuals like it can also lead to like septicemia for example, but in general, healthy immune competent individuals, stay home stay hydrated. And generally it can have in a few days or you know, a day or 234. And you might not, you know, even consider going to the doctor or the hospital just depending it really kind of varies, but a lot of that can depend upon not just your immune status, but what serotype you were infected with and at what level. So, some salmonella serotypes that you hear about in the news potentially associated with outbreaks like salmonella Newports Salmonella enteritidis salmonella typhimurium, some of those you may have heard about and associate with foodborne illness. So those are some of our most clinically associated serotypes, if you will. So for whatever reason, and some research is looking into this, they are more virulent for humans and can cause more severe illness. Not just that, but at a lower dose as well. So some outbreaks have shown that those more clinical serotypes might be around 10 100 cells versus some other serotype outbreaks have been around a million cells or more. And so it really can depend on a lot of different things with salmonella. Now I will say this interestingly, when I was doing my research at Texas Tech on lymph nodes and salmonella in lymph nodes, when I was working with the Meat Animal research center and Clay Center, Nebraska, Dr. Dana Hart high up there she was serotyping our isolates. And the majority of the serotypes that we found were Montevideo and a Anatum. And Montevideo and anatum aren't generally associated with being highly virulent, or having a lower infectious dose. To be clear, we found all types of serotypes right, we found a quite a variety, including some type of Miriam's and Newports. So it's, even though Montevideo and Anatum were the we're the largest, it doesn't mean that there is no risk associated with them. But it is interesting, though, that some of the ground beef data in terms of salmonella serotypes from the United States Department of Agriculture, Food Safety Inspection Service, in past years, has shown a higher prevalence of Montevideo and an Anatum as some of the stereotypes. Now we do know that Montevideo Anatum are often associated with cattle, we often find them in our cattle studies. But the fact that we found them also in our lymph nodes, and we know lymph nodes go into ground beef. And we know that ground beef sometimes has Montevideo in an autumn at a higher prevalence. I don't think that's a coincidence, either. But I haven't investigated that that's just my personal hypothesis and trying to make connections, if you will, to all the data that's out there.

Yes. Which gears just a bit, looking over some of the activities that you're involved with on campus. Um, you are also affiliated with the Center for Food Safety Research and Child Nutrition, which I think is in college years. Program is and what your involvement is with it.

Right. Absolutely. So I work with my great colleagues over there. Dr. Kevin Roberts, Dr. Kevin Sauer, Dr. Powell, Paula Pious, excuse me, and some others that have been fantastic colleagues and collaborators. So that center is aimed at addressing the need for like school, school lunch programs, for example, and child nutrition programs in general. And so they have as part of their center different funding. Research projects, oftentimes is a micro lab study. I'm involved with some of those studies. And so we have a good time trying to address some of the questions out there and they're a great team to work with. So what we've done in the past is looking at cooling of large quantities of food. So as you can imagine in a school lunch program, It's kind of hard to know how much food you're going to need from day to day. And so at the end of the day, I might be left with several large pans of chili, for example, why don't want to just throw that out? So how do I cool it properly so that I don't have a risk of foodborne illness for the students.

So there's something called the temperature danger zone, which is the temperature where bacteria can grow more readily in a food product. And some sources would say it's 40 to 140. Fahrenheit, some would say it's 41 to 135, I tend to say it's the 4140 rule, because I think it's easy to remember. So if a food product is held in that temperature danger zone for too long, and if there are bacteria present, they can grow. And depending upon the bacteria, it could make a toxin that could make you sick, right? Or it could grow to a high enough level that the actual bacteria might make you sick, depending upon what the bacteria itself is. So we need to make sure that we're providing resources to schools on how to cool properly when you have large portions of chili or rice or tomato sauce, for example. So we've worked together to address some of those questions, looking at different cooling techniques. Do we cover it? Do we not? Do we cover it a little bit? Do we put the pans in ice water? And then in the fridge? Do we just put them in the fridge. And so we've looked at a variety of different food products to help try to address some of those questions. And then another study that we did was looking at food served away from school on a field trip. So a lot of schools might provide sack lunches to students. Well, when two field trips start, right, usually we leave at 8am. Everybody gets on the bus and we go you know, visiting outside looking at different things while the lunches stay on the bus probably. What's going on with those lunches? Are they properly packed with ice or ice packs in insulated coolers? Sometimes these field trips might happen in a situation where it's a very hot day. And we all know how hot our cars can be at the end of a hot day. You think about what a bus might be on a hot day. So we tried to answer the question of if a sack lunch is take bank being taken for students on field trips, how are they being stored and how safe is it? So the FDA Food Code has what's called time as a public health control. So we can consider for hours as the public health control if like temperature controls not available, for example, it's called time as a public health control. Well, we need to answer the question is that effective in a scenario where maybe a sack lunch is not receiving proper storage conditions for refrigeration, and maybe it's on a hot bus for three or four hours. So we worked on a study trying to simulate what those bus temperatures might be. So worked with school officials around the country since of temperature data loggers in the month of May in June, I think it was to North Carolina, and Arkansas maybe and ask them to put these temperature data loggers in a bus and outside of a bus. And we tried to look at that sort of 7am to noon or one timeframe to see what the temperatures were doing to know what the risks might be for a cooler of sack lunches on a bus. Well then we tried to create a worst case scenario. So we took that information and then made it worse right temperature wise. And so we created a program on a smokehouse and ramped up the temperatures like what might happen on a bus on a hot day. And again, exaggerated right? Let's stress the system as much as we can to create a worst case scenario and then prepared sack lunches that had salmonella or Listeria monocytogenes inoculated on them and had temperature probes and different sack lunches throughout the cooler and tried to determine not just what's the temperature doing in those coolers and in those sack lunches, but did salmonella or listeria grow. And we had determined based upon preliminary studies that a cooler packing scenario with no ice or With ice, one layer on the bottom or worst case scenario, so those are what we also used in our study. And we determined that the pathogens did not grow during that four hour four to five hour time frame.

And so we determine there's pretty low risk in one of those scenarios of the pathogens being a problem in terms of growth. But of course, there's a huge caution there, right, we looked at salmonella, and we looked at listeria, and we only looked at turkey sandwiches, carrots, and apple slices. There are other pathogens, and there are other food products and their other different formulations of turkey sandwiches and stuff. So we still recommend not keeping it on a hot bus and having at least one layer of ice and eating, of course, within the four hours with food code recommending only four hours as the time point for public health control. So that's a little bit of a summary there. And I have to acknowledge to that Dr. Phoebus, was associated with those studies also. And so our food safety team, as a whole has worked with this group. So it's been a it's been a different approach to research than, you know, the cattle and the lymph nodes and things I've been talking about. And so it's been a very interesting experience that I've enjoyed learning about as well.

Did anybody ask you what you found in food science is a discipline that got you so hooked on it or was not there for other sources of scientific disciplines?

That's a great question. I think it's, you know, I really like pipettes, and I really like the benchtop. And I really enjoy getting to take a meat sample or a spinach sample or something and do different micro techniques that in a day or two, I can see E coli or salmonella on a petri dish, and I can count it and what can I do to treat that product to have less salmonella on the next time that I count? Right? That's fascinating to me. But we'll be what I'm really hooked on is the importance aspect, I really appreciate that what I do could impact lives. And if I can find some sort of solution to a problem, that might reduce salmonella in the food supply. And that's fewer people that get Salmonellosis and fewer people that might have serious illness or die from it, then my job is, it's definitely worth it right. And I feel like I've made a positive contribution, not just to science or to the university, but to public health and to society. That's ultimately what I want to do.

That's very well thought out.

There, I've got a follow up to that your opening narrative about how you got into food science, you framed it as sort of chance and, you know, yes, there's a lot of chance and how we end up in our particular paths in life. But I can't help but notice that it wasn't just chance that you had this exposure to an academic who was a woman in food science, who sort of got you started. I wonder if you could reflect on your time as a graduate student and now your own time with your students in your lab? I wonder, do you have some opinions about what we should be doing to encourage women to choose and to persist in science?

Yeah, absolutely. So I actually am very appreciative that you brought this up, because it's always really important to me to acknowledge that I didn't get here by myself, I had tremendous opportunity, and mentors. And I had people take an interest in me in my professional development, and in my education from a very early age. And so and so I often say I don't know what I would be without Todd and Mindy Brashears I don't know because they introduced me to food science and you know, now my career and so I feel like I will always owe them so much gratitude. And I'm always wanting to make them proud. Because it's as if they hadn't provided like, I don't know where it would be so no, it's you can imagine how important it is to me to pay it forward. And so it I find probably some of my greatest satisfaction. Feeling like I have impacted a life like I have helped a student become a better scientist, help them to be grow in their professional development. maybe help them learn themselves and about life in general. And so if I can do that for one or two, or however many students like they have done for me, then I'll feel like my job is done. Because I think that investing in the future, the way they and others invested in me, is the key to having future scientists and, and having a safe food supply. And so for me, that's really you know, that at the end of the day, that's also what gets me the greatest satisfaction. So in terms of the women aspect, yes, I will say that, you're she has been a wonderful mentor to me, in terms of what it's like to be a working mom as well, and how to balance those things and still be successful. And I've learned so much from her from a personal perspective in that way, too, that, you know, we really need to enrich and encourage that in other women also, and in young ladies who might be interested. And so for me, you know, sometimes we have opportunities to work with different young lady groups that come through at K State. And those are the types of things I think, you know, I should be going to visit and sharing my story about how this woman invested in me at age 14, and look where I am. And she still mentors me today, right? I, you know, text her, often just, and we chat often. And she's still very much involved in my life. And so we need to start that with others at a young age and provide them mentors and role models and a path forward through STEM careers, so that we do continue to have young ladies interested in being the next generation.

Very well said, Thank you.

That is fascinating. That's a wonderful testament to what you are doing as a teacher, as an instructor at K State and having the students going through your program, what an opportunity for them.

Well, thank you. I mean, they do so much right, in terms of the research in helping to teach and training new students that are coming in. And so, you know, I think graduate students and undergraduate student workers are also somewhat of the unsung heroes, right? You know, I did a lot of the lymph node work myself, so I can talk about it. But I also get to talk about the lymph node work my students are doing today. And so you can't forget to acknowledge how important it is to not just recognize what they do and their success and how important they are, but also recognize their contribution to science and how important it is to keep fostering that so that we have great scientists coming out to carry the torch in future generations as well.

I would like to ask you if you've got any final comments or any questions of us.

You know, this has been a wonderful time. I really enjoyed talking with you about my research and kind of about who I am today and how I got to this point, and I really appreciate the opportunity and thank you for all the very insightful questions and hope that we can maybe do it again sometime. Thank you so much.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

In this podcast, we talk with Dr. Justin Kastner, associate professor in the Department of Diagnostic Medicine/Pathobiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Kansas State University. Kastner co-directs the interdisciplinary Frontier program, which is focused on crossing disciplinary borders, and overseeing scholarly activities for several academic units. Since food production, shipping and trade are all managed through regulation and international policy agreements, students in Kastner’s courses benefit from his experience in international trade policy at the World Trade Organization in Geneva.

Transcript:

Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the K State Global Food Systems podcast something to chew on.

Food production, shipping and trade are all managed through regulation and international policy agreements. History lends a trove of background and information on how these agreements were reached, how the safety and affordability of food is managed through these systems, and points to the importance of an interdisciplinary understanding of the system in maintaining availability of healthy food for consumers. In this podcast, we talk with Dr. Justin Kastner, associate professor in the Department of diagnostic medicine pathobiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine at K State.

Dr. Kastner brings a holistic perspective of pedagogical innovation in student mentoring, co-directing the interdisciplinary Frontier program focused on Crossing disciplinary borders, and superintending scholarly activities for several academic units at K State. Welcome, Justin, the Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On and to get things started off, can you give us a little bit of background about yourself, who you are, what brought you to the area of study that you are in and perhaps what brought you to K State? 

Thank you for having me. I am not a native Kansan, but for all practical purposes, a native on, incidentally, true to the theme of the global food system. The second Food Science son of a food scientist, dad, and my brother and I both got to grow up in Manhattan, because my dad, first counselor, who retired a number of years ago, took a job at Kansas State University. So my brother and I were born in Pullman, Washington, the home of Washington State University, the home of a really, really high end, fantastic dairy product called Cougar Gold cheese, which actually the CASPER family, and all generations and all within our sphere of influence, continue to enjoy. And dad works in Food Science at Washington statement. Fortunately, providentially got a job and moved to Kansas State. And so my parents moved us I was, I think, three months old Marine, if you can believe that. And so we grew up here in Manhattan, and my brother and I were thoroughly indoctrinated and manipulated by my dad, to become food scientists as well. And when I was in university at K State, in the late 1990s, that was the time when mad cow disease or BSE was a sort of conflict filled and trade dispute filled public health issue. And when I was finishing my time as an undergraduate at Kansas State, in the late 1990s, I was quite keen on studying that issue and other related other food safety related issues in global trade politics. And so my wife and I, we, we got married, we moved overseas, and to study that issue, actually, in the UK, did a master's food safety and international trade in London and then studying public health in Edinburgh, Scotland. And, you know, I think part of my journey has been falling more in love with the policy aspects of science, including food safety, but also more and more in love with history. And so one of the things that happened after we finished our time in the UK is I was able to work for a summer in food safety and animal disease related policy at the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. And I even now, in my job the case date, I teach courses related to the work of the WTO and its principle trade agreement that governs and sets guidelines for food safety, animal disease and plant disease regulation. But while we were in Europe as you as many people listening to this podcast who relate, we just became more and more fascinated by history. So for my PhD, which actually live in Canada, in southern Ontario at the University of Guelph I, I emphasized historical, specifically late 19th century late 1800s, trade disputes over food safety and animal disease, and kind of looking at some of the policy and on economic and political precedents for resolving disputes over food safety, which I had, of course, witnessed at the WTO. And so to sort of be quick here, when my wife and I moved back to the United States, we were fortunate to return to Manhattan, and I've been on faculty here for a decade and up close to two decades, I guess, and have been involved with quite a quite a wide array of undergraduate and graduate programs, I've developed a number of courses teaching, teach a number of courses and involved with the College of Veterinary Medicine, or I'm on faculty that run not a veterinarian involved with the undergraduate and graduate Food Science Program, the undergraduate honors program, and case data lathe as well. And I'm just really honored to get to continue to help students not to put too strongly and help students fall more in love with the policy and historical aspects of the food system, which I myself had experienced when I was close to them leave. 

You and I have talked in the past. And so we've had the opportunity to interact. But I was reading through this again, and kind of getting myself back up to speed on your background. And I find it interesting with the focus that you have, where the College of Veterinary Medicine fits, how did you end up in that particular college with the background and the clear understanding that you have of history and politics and all of the things that go into that? 

I think part of the story is that but you know, the early 2000s here at Kansas State, there was a real movement to set up they weren't called this but you know, basically clusters of multi disciplinary research and teaching groups of faculty that were to some extent kind of charged to and given permission even to operate outside of their home departments outside of their home colleges for the sake of the wider University multidisciplinary tackling of complex problems, including food safety and security. So one of those programs, which was actually I think it was called the targeted excellence program. And one of the targeted excellence programs was for food safety and security. And there were a number of faculty, physicians and faculty, existing faculty who were mobilized for that effort. And one of the new positions was actually here in the College of Veterinary Medicine in my department, Department of diagnostic medicine pathobiology, which is actually one of the most diverse in the sense of scientific disciplines. One of the most diverse departments at K State because we have folks studying all kinds of issues, some directly, some indirectly, veterinary quite a few epidemiology minded scholars, certainly food safety, certainly virology bacteriology in just a very diverse academic department. And as I know, I'm preaching to the choir here. But you know, part of I think the advantage that K State has had is that we have been less snobbish about departmental barriers, and very willing to think across departments across colleges, and even komentar students who advise students might have in my case, I've been involved with helping mentor, undergraduate and graduate students, many, perhaps most of whom are not even actually in the College of Veterinary Medicine, in but in other graduate programs and undergraduate programs. And then through my involvement with the honors program that was exceptionally multidisciplinary, because I spent, you know, about four years helping students from all of the different undergraduate colleges at K State, feed their intellectual curiosity about a range of topics, not just the food system, but I think the short answer is the targeted Excellence Program was how I ended up being based here at the College College of Veterinary Medicine, but one incidental and collateral benefit of that is that I have become more and more conversant about veterinary history, which is something that actually emphasized in my PhD of wealth. And we have really one of the great patriarchs of the history of veterinary medicine in the United States on faculty, faculty emeritus here, and that's Dr. Howard Erickson. I'm sure you guys know and I've really enjoyed working with Dr. Erickson. You'll see him as a as a mentor in the field of that industry.

Justin, I really appreciate hearing your background both in terms of sort of the path to took to get here as well as your PhD. I studied political communication. And your story about how you were socialized into being a food scientist really reminded me that I didn't know what a food scientist was, until my first job out of college, I worked for the National Academies Association in Washington, DC, and we had several food scientists on the staff. So my introduction to food scientists was through policy and politics, but I don't think most people probably have that appreciation for the role that food science and policy the way that they go hand in hand. I wonder if you could talk for a little bit about any how you see those two fitting together? I mean, some people might understand them to be contradictory, right? Science, purely objective policy? Not purely objective? Do you ever feel attention? Do your students feel attention? Do you have trouble convincing your more science minded students to policy matters? 

Well first of all, I think you and I are very unusual, and how we came to become aware of the term food science you sounds like experienced it in no an actual policy workplace. In my case, I was you know, indoctrinated by a family member. But I always joke, or I sometimes joke that most pop culture conversant Americans know food science through the National Lampoon's Vacation series, because Clark Griswold, the Chevy Chase, playing character, he is a food scientist. And so if you ever want to see the essence of Food Science, all you have to do is watch Christmas vacation, or European vacation, and you will fully appreciate the wonders of being a food scientist. You know, I think, more seriously that one of the artifacts of higher education not just in the United States, but everywhere, is that we have these names for undergraduate and graduate programs, in my case, a PhD in food science, that, yes, is merited because maybe we take courses and we are examined, and we are expected to emphasize, like in the case of food science, it's typically you know, food microbiology, food chemistry, food engineering, and food processing expertise. But the problem with these terms, like food science is that just like with any academic program, in a complex society, in a complex world, those titles will never and should never fully convey what makes you you, I tell my students that all the time, like, you should not expect the title Master of Public Health or MS in food science, or doctorate of Veterinary Medicine, you should never let those terms be the the limiting descriptor of what you bring to the table. And that's why my favorite part of favorite part of the graduate degree titles is actually MSC or Ms. Masters of Science or PhD, Doctor of Philosophy, because those convey thinking they convey a scholarly approach. They can convey intellectual curiosity, yes, about whatever the state of degree title is. But certainly not just that. And so I think in my case, fortunately, food science by being either within a narrow definition of Food Science, relatively diverse having food, microbe biology, food chemistry, food processing, but because of that, implicit diversity, there's maybe more of a openness to true diversity, and, you know, embracing all the different facets of the global food system. So I'm very thankful to the food science discipline for that very reason. And I just might add that, I think some disciplines, you know, graduate program titles, for instance, that are very precise, they may actually be very appropriate. You know, you think about someone with a PhD in say, virology that would not necessarily expect a biologist to be conversant on healthcare policy, but what I would expect them to have an understanding of the scientific underpinnings of viruses in society and in public health's reality

That makes sense, and I would agree with your virologist example. But I would push back a little bit and say that while you might not expect the virologist to have an expert, an expertise in policy, I would expect anyone with even an undergraduate BS to have enough familiarity with the way that policy is made and an appreciation of our system of making policy with its strengths and weaknesses to be able to engage it in a particular way, right? I mean, back to your earlier point, I really liked the framing of his initials that matter more than what comes after the initials.

And I think that that is something that maybe we need to emphasize more. There was an article 20 years ago in The Economist, basically, citing I think it was Arnold Toynbee, some quasi famous British historian, who said that the land grant university system was America's most important contribution to higher education, because it was all about being practical was all about solving problems. It was all about, you know, kind of technical information delivery there in frontier America, you know, in our case in 1863, and then Kansas State Agricultural College was founded, but one of the other sides of that coin in places like a land grant university culture, is that we tend to sometimes I think, I think it's fair to say, We downplay those initials, pH, D, and s, to maybe because we're trying to be practical, right? And that's our heritage. At the end of the day, you know, I'm always mindful the fact that, in fact, one of my high school buddies, his dad, who was a faculty member at K State, an agricultural economist, he said, his name is Dr. David Barton. He told me once that education prepares you for your last job, meaning, you know, when you are an undergraduate student, or you're a graduate student, you're developing the critical thinking skills. Those MSc and PhD initial alluded to skills so that as you go on in your career, you can continue to learn, you can continue to make sense use your human faculty of reason to understand complex problems, navigate new issues, like a pandemic, which by the way, I had no courses. But I couldn't take that when I was studying public health in Edinburgh, we did have courses on pandemics, but no one really prepared me for COVID-19. And I don't think anyone has a degree, master's of science COVID-19, you know, from the 1990s, right. But we choose an MSc Xu understand. And DVM is an MDS.

I love that framing of it prepares you for your last job. I think we spent so much time and understandably so thinking about recruitment in terms of preparing you for your first job. But that's not the point at all.

One of the things that I wanted Justin to talk a bit more about is the Frontier program that he had put together. That is something I remember again, in the past, I remember discussing with you and it's it's quite an interesting endeavor that you had gotten into, can you give us about a bit of background and detail on what that one was?

Yes. Well, you know, like everyone listening to this podcast, and you're, you call you Maureen. It's a common experience in higher education in academic life, and probably in any workplace, to notice those kinds of similarly like minded colleagues that we have, and then collaborate with them. When I was in graduate school, studying BSC studying International Trade politics in London. My wife and I,we lived in a postgraduate student housing complex filled with graduate students and residents from all over the world. One of my fellow students that wasn't living there. His name's Jason Nicholson. He was studying international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. And we became friends mainly because he would fly home to his home state of New Mexico and bring back all kinds of good southwest fare and beauty. My wife and Jason and I, we cook these meals to, you know, remember what spicy food tastes like as we were living in bland food, London. And as we became friends with Jason, Jason, I realized that we both had had excellent mentors. When we were undergrads. We both realized we had this fascination with interdisciplinary approaches to problem solving. And then we also incidentally, just both love Star Wars. So we had a lot to talk about all the time, a good reason to like each other. And so Jase, and I became friends. And fast forward 2004. I was on faculty here at K State and Jason was on faculty at kind of in a parallel way, his alma mater, New Mexico State, in the political science or government department, and we decided that we would start something called the Frontier program, and it was all about crossing disciplinary frontiers of kind of a metaphorical statement that had two meanings. One, we wanted to have students be encouraged to be intentional to think outside of the rooms stated, academic department or academic program, baby food science in case of a case State student in political science in the case of the New Mexico State University students, but also to intentionally studying issues at borders, including international trade of food, and other issues that happen at nation state boundaries are frontiers fronteira. And so the frontier party was born out of that kind of idea. And Jason and I and others, Dr. Avenues share case state, we were able to grow that program and through different partnerships over about a decade and a half, including, perhaps most notably the US Department of Homeland Security in their career development grants program. We build a fairly, you know, I don't think it's too daunting to say this, but just very, I think exceptional program of experiential learning and CO mentoring. So Jason and I would, with other faculty and universities, we would take as many as 2030 students, three to four times a year to international trade ports, used to be socially engineering groups, meaning we would have students from political science, sociology, public health, food science, different universities. And we would travel to international trade ports to policy centers to groups like the Congressional Research Service that you probably know about, Colene, in Washington, to historical archives. Remember, I mentioned earlier my interest in history. And we would just give these students a chance. It's not a course as a field trip, and chance to be with peers who are not in their own major, make friends with them. But it'd be a total geek out field trip, you know, learning about international trade, learning about food inspection reports, learning about what was in on the bookshelves in an 18th century, you know, Virginia archive related to food and health meeting with incredibly competent policy analysts and the Congressional Research Service in the Library of Congress. And we would do these trips we did, I think we've had today we've kind of stopped numbering because the program with DHS has ended, but we have probably had 300 400 students travel on these trips. And in COVID, you know, we obviously haven't been doing this, but mercifully, I do every two weeks have resumed based sessions that are similarly diverse in terms of academic disciplines, and we call them crossing disciplinary frontiers gatherings. And so we're encouraging the students and we discuss what they're learning what they're interested in the relevance of thinking across academic disciplines quite a bit on history, quite a bit on the history of public health, obviously, right now at the moment, and I just, I'm just really honored Maureen to have been involved with with Dr. Axelsson in this sort of effort, what we call the Frontier program, the Frontier Field Trip program and crossing disciplinary frontiers. And that also, we're also very grateful, actually, to the Global Food Systems Initiative case state, which did support a good number of these trips several years ago, including trips for not just K State students, but students from for his state. So if you're a pure state legislator listening to this podcast, please know that at Kansas State University, we took very much a non KSU only approach to our mentoring. And we were able to take students from just kstate for UC on some of these trips, and that was really underlining.

How do you say that those activities in that student learning directly impacting the global food system at the state level?

Yes, good question. I mean, I think that what the analog, of course, is COVID. How are we managing the pandemic? We're doing it with public and with private actors. We've got governments, we have local government at the Riley county health department involved. We also have private health care providers involved. We've got private pharmacies, private grocery stores, and the food system is no different. You know, the safety, security and operation of the food system in the state of Kansas is inevitably dependent on both public and private actors. So I would say that, you know, helping students, not only the certainly at Kansas State, grow in their understanding of the multifaceted nature of the food system, having an appreciation for microbiological science as well as regulatory affairs. You know, many students, many K State graduates are conversant in both domains. And, you know, some do work in the expressly public sectors. So one of my first mph students, Ryan Bradburn, graduated from K State and mph in food safety, biosecurity, he works for the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. And he's very much a government regulator, helping to ensure the safety and security of our meat and poultry Supply here in the Midwest. But then we have other students like for instance, me fairly recently, Dr. Danny Unruh, who actually was one of the students on the global food system grant. And Dr. Andrew now is working for a private firm. But just like Ryan is also a key player in the safety, security and operation food system, in Kansas and in the Midwest. So I think that we have to remember that. And we always said this to the Department of Homeland Security. And they themselves designated the food and agriculture sector, the critical infrastructure, key resources sector of Food and Agriculture as an expressly public and private phenomenon. And so K State, you know, in the words of my, my father, taste state, does many things well, but one thing that we have always done well, is graduate students who understand the food system. And that includes the so called hard sciences, as well as the so called Social soft sciences, social sciences. And those students who have gone on, like Ryan, like Danny, to work in public and private sectors are making a real difference. And you and I, we're all guilty of taking it for granted, but that they are the Clark Griswolds saving the day. Right? Can we agree on that? Colene? 

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I totally forgot about that. It's much cheaper to go back and watch those with a whole different twists when I'm watching those movies.

Yeah, oh, man. It's funny, soft skill. Is writing. So writing is the skill that carries everything else? What's the common experience for a graduate student whether you're doing an MPH report, an industrious thesis, a PhD dissertation, even these coursework only programs at K State, many of them have some sort of writing or written product capsule, that is so good and so appropriate, because Thank you cannot write clearly without thinking clearly. And, you know, it's back today, one of my, one of the graduate courses I teach is, is a, it's a writing course, for science students, and not just food science, and public health, but certainly those disciplines. And I just love it, you know, it's maybe it's not as immediately exciting as a trade policy course, or a history of public health course, child, grateful to teach. But it is exciting to see students refine their faculty of reasoning become better thinkers, literally, because we're teaching them how to properly use a semi colon, or we're teaching them how to be more grammatically parallel in their writing. And then what does that bring along or brings along clarity of thought to begin to understand more effectively articulate what they're interested in the problem they're tackling or the solutions they see? And that is, so the essence of education, and it's a soft skill, I'm pretty sure that writing is a soft skill. I think that's a fair statement.

Maybe the moral of the story is, you're the person who was commenting where rate was right, if we think of it, we categorize it as a soft skill, but there couldn't be anything more important than those kinds of skills. Great. Let's let's go to trade because, you know, it's kind of a big deal, and it's obviously a big deal and an expertise of yours, Justin, now that I'm reminded about your experience in the UK. I wonder if you would be willing to sort of think out loud and comment on Brexit. You know, everything that you read in the mass media about Brexit usually talks about the consequences for lower economic output in the UK and perhaps in other places, or just in the increased amount of difficulty in moving products across board. But now that you're here, I'm thinking that there could be some real serious food and food safety consequences, thanks to Brexit. And I wonder if that's true. Or if there are other things in relationship to the food systems I'm not thinking about in terms of Brexit.

First of all, I'll address the Brexit issue, I think something that has to be remembered on the practical side of international trade is that at the end of the day, trade, international trade, commerce, the movement of goods and services across nation state borders, that occurs because of bilateral have to country agreements, you have to have. I mean, in addition to the private actors involved, you know, the producers, the wholesalers, the transport station, chain, the retailers, the consumers, that's all implied and necessary, but it's only when you have a government to government agreement, which was what we would call a bilateral trade agreement. Only when that happens, and trade occurred. The inconvenience for my, my colleagues in not just the UK, but also in the European Union, is that one of the consequences of Brexit is that because Brexit was basically or you know, because the UK had really been, to some extent, and in a positive and healthy way, reliant on a lot of being on their bilateral agreements being established on the basis of European Union, wide negotiations. Now, all those bilateral agreements that Britain has enjoyed the UK has enjoyed, they have to basically renegotiate, right and and this is the big consequence. And in a technical age, which we all live in highly complex age, where you have multiple categories of trade, issues of trade, technical barriers to trade. In my case, when I sitting, sanitary and phytosanitary, food safety, animal disease, plant disease issues in trade, that that effort is enormous. And so yeah, there's definitely, and I'm not making a political comment about this. But there's definitely a bureaucratic cost to having to renegotiate all this all these bilateral agreements, is there opportunity for Britain to maybe hatch some new trade deals? That's, I'll leave that to the economists to comment on. But when it comes to food safety, there's a lot of effort because judgment calls have to be made. And now that you know, and even yesterday, one of my master's in public health students, she's a government officer from Thailand came to Manhattan to do her MPH in food safety, biosecurity, and her MPH field experience was during COVID was done largely virtually, with a colleague of mine, who's one of the SPS representatives for the European Union to the WTO Geneva. And, you know, if there's anything that was very evident yesterday, and her field experience presentation, was just how her home country, Thailand has to put forth a lot of effort to be able to have a robust trade, relationship and hurt. In this case, it was poultry export trade, poultry being exported from Thailand to EU nation states. And the amount of detail, the amount of scientific and capital intensive investment that has to be made by countries to be able to trade with others, is sizeable. And then if you can just imagine if a country like Thailand, was in a situation like the UK is, and had to suddenly renegotiate with all of those bilateral agreements, that would just be a nightmare, and very challenging. So, but I think like some of the things that we've seen with the pandemic, and in society, a lot of these decisions Brexit included, are not being made necessarily unexpressed, the economic terms of the made because of issues of identity, sociological forces that, you know, a psychologist or a political science and sort of sociologists would be almost better at describing then say a trade economy coins.

Agreed. I'll come back to that toward the end. But thanks for that. Let's go to the other side of the globe. I'm thinking about what lesson we might learn from COVID. And it's spread a Coronavirus, and it's spread from China. And, you know, it's not obviously a food system issue. But clearly, like almost everything else is connected to the food system, as I understand it, the best that we understand not a closed book and by any stretch, but it originated in what essentially is a food market and was certainly spread around the globe, thanks to movement of goods, movement of trade and services. Are there any lessons that are sort of like tentative lessons? I know it's still early, but how did we do in terms of thinking about our agreements between countries and the movement of goods? Post spread of Coronavirus or during pandemic Do you do you have like an early assessment of how we did as a globe regarding trade and the threats from these kinds of pathogens?

First of all, let's acknowledge that a pandemic is an extraordinary event that is inevitably a negative event for someone. But I think one of the good news stories, one of the bright points of this is that, and I actually talked about this in my graduate course on the multilateral trading system for food safety, animal disease and plant disease is that we really saw the vindication, we really saw the value of having what I was called a rules based global trading system. What does that mean? It doesn't mean that there's a juggernaut force, policing the world, making sure that every country does everything correctly. It's about there being international treaties or covenants or agreements on what the rules should be. When it comes to these technical science, latent issues like food safety and animal disease, and the main trade agreement for that is the agreement on the application of sanitary and phytosanitary measures or the SPS agreement. One of the things that happened early on with COVID when there will these wet markets these in the market and Wuhan, but not just they're also the frozen seafood products that were being moved to large metropolitan areas. Like Beijing. There was a some alerts sort of occurred. Obviously, the news sources and people were trying to understand What's this new, this novel Coronavirus, but one of the kind of interesting but not necessarily talked about issues was the Russian Federation. And I think February of 2020. They did the right thing. They follow the rules of the SPS agreements, Article Five, which basically is is a requirement that if you're going to make regulatory changes on what you allow into your country, you have to do it on the basis of a scientific risk assessment. Okay. And this is designed to take out some of the arbitrary, discriminatory and chaotic trade practices that have plagued humanity in agriculture for years, for millennia. But there's a subsidiary or part of article five of the SPS agreement that says that when we have something new when we have a problem that we don't understand, like a novel Coronavirus, countries have the right to temporarily or provisionally just unilaterally stop trade. And then they are to do a risk assessment. And so Russia did that. They had, you know, they some of their veterinarians had gotten wind of this and they were worried like what might this be, you know, what could the spread to you know, can we will begin it through consuming certain products. And so they stopped trade from China. And, and then incidentally, they later opened up trade because in this you know, the kind of the, the kissing cousin to this as you guys all remember, early on the pandemic, everyone was hyper paranoid about wiping down their cereal boxes. I know I did that. Shame on me, right. And then but that was a kind of like what Russia did, right. They were, metaphorically speaking, wiping down their cereal boxes. They were taking extra precaution because this is a new challenge and no one understood. And it was only after the risk assessment jet eyes came in and started saying, Well, this is actually what's going on. You know, it's being transmitted prior rarely, you know, in the respiratory manner, you're probably not going to get it by ingesting, ingesting it.

And we change our behavior, you know. So now, you know, at least in the classroom, we're not actively wiping down cereal boxes anymore like we weren't in February, March, I guess, March of 2020. And similarly, Russia, they have resumed trade with China, and having a better understanding of the risk. Well, the good news story and all that is that you see the value of having science based rules, in a treaty to give guidance on what ought to be done. Will there be revisions to things like the SPS agreement? Will there be changes to say, the Paris based World Organization for Animal Health, terrestrial animal code, aquatic animal code? Because of COVID? Yes, there will be. But that takes time that you know, you get a scientific consensus. And we're still just barely a year beyond this pandemic. So I'm a big fan, actually. And of course, I worked with the WTO. But, you know, when people say things like, we don't need to have the World Health Organization involved right here, people say, you know, we shouldn't be concerned about what's going on with COVID, in Brazil, or whatever. Those are incredibly irresponsible statements. And then they also ignore what we have seen recently, and that is the value of having countries being encouraged to follow rules. And, we have a rules based multilateral trading system, doesn't mean that we're giving up all of our sovereignty to some, you know, world government. But it does mean that we have guidelines that are rooted in science, and that are rooted in good reasonable practice.

Thank you. That's really, really helpful. I think that you and I could talk for an entire graduate seminar on sort of this tension between this understanding of nation state sovereignty and this rules based system. My big question is, how do we help encourage trust in that system amongst our general population? And I'd love to hear your thoughts about trade. I mean, just as your comments here suggest, you know, public conversation about trade is not very happy right now trade sort of on a on a in terms of public discourse on a downward trend. But thanks for that happy story. I hadn't thought about the fact that the system worked, in many respects, regarding COVID. So that's encouraging. I appreciate that.

Do you have any, any questions of Colene or I, any comments about the Global Food Systems Initiative, or how what you're doing might be impacting overall. And again, our focus is on the state of Kansas and kind of, it was so interesting, listening to some of the international discussion that the two of you brought to this to this, this podcast, and it's in my mind, I can fairly easily bring that from the globe, to the state, and see where some of these things fit is from a communications perspective. And we are such an agricultural state, there's so many parts of what are produced here that don't stay here that are shared and traded globally. And it was just really interesting to hear your take on how some of these things will be impacted and bringing it all the way back down to a local level.

This is both a question and an exhortation. I think that the social justice, issues that are upon us need to be given attention. So I think, My compliments to you Maureen, for your leadership on trying to kind of turn up the volume on all the different disciplinary insights, that case date faculty and students have, whether it's food, microbiology, and trade, public health. And I think, social justice, this, this reality that we have so called Rich, so called poor segments of society that are experiencing not just food safety and food system issues, but also the pandemic differently. I think that is an issue that needs to be amplified. So you probably are already doing that. But I just wanted to ask that question.

There are things going on, and I couldn't agree with you more. I work with an organization here in Manhattan and rally county outside of the K State position that is wholly focused on the types of things that you just talked about at a very local level and the pandemic has brought out challenges in availability of food, availability of access to good health care to affordable housing, all of the things that you think that you just described, have just been exacerbated. And certainly we see it, there are activities on campus that are addressing these things. But they do need to be brought to the forefront. And those are things that need to be addressed. They are part of the global food system in a big way. These these get down to the essence of each person having enough to survive in a healthy life. And I think you're absolutely right. And I will certainly look forward to bring that to the forefront more on some of these podcasts. We've got, as you will know, we look at a variety of different takes on the system overall. And I think this is definitely a topic that could be brought forward in the future as well. 

Thank you, Justin, this has been great. 

Thank you, Colene. Thank you for having me on Maureen.

Well, we really appreciate it. And it was really an interesting discussion went in a direction that I hadn't anticipated in some ways, but I guess that is some of the expertise that Colene brought to this today. Thank you very much. 

Thanks so much.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

Keywords: Food, Pandemic, food safety, global food system, podcast, policy, science, trade, veterinary medicine, research

How do we plan to feed 9.8 billion people by 2050? Increasing the availability of sustainable, arable land through the use of modern robotics could help to expand food production, and reduce the need for destruction of forested land. 

 In this episode of our podcast, we talk with Dr. Dan Flippo, Patrick Wilburn Keystone Research Scholar in biological and agricultural engineering at Kansas State University, about the work he is doing to mesh state-of-the-art robotic technology with food production to move toward sustainably feeding the world past 2050.

Transcript:

Robotics + agriculture with Dr. Dan Flippo, biological and agricultural engineering

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

I'm Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science.

I’m Jon Faubion. I’m a Food Scientist.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Kansas State University Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. How do we plan to feed 9.8 billion people by 2050? Increasing the availability of sustainable arable land through the use of modern robotics could help to expand food production, potentially reducing the destruction of forested land. In this episode of our podcast, we will talk with Dr. Dan Flippo, the Patrick Wilborn Keystone Research Scholar in Biological and Agricultural Engineering at K State, about the work he is doing to mesh state of the art robotic technology with food production to move towards sustainably feeding the world past 2050. Dan, welcome to the podcast. We were looking forward to understanding more about your current research. But before we get into that, can you give us a little background on yourself and how you became interested in this area of study.

So I am actually from Kansas, they grew up near Wichita, a little town called Douglas on what's called a hobby farm nowadays, we didn't call it back then. But my dad worked at the post office all day and then came home and farmed. We didn't have too many acres. It was just enough to, it was more of a side business for him. And he wanted it, like it, for it to expand, but it never worked out. He was plagricultureued with machinery problems. And so we had, I have so many memories of broken tractors and that New Holland baler, his was kind of his bane of his existence, it caused a lot of problems. And so I kind of grew up with this mentality that farmers, you know, they're more machinists, mechanics, you know, and they cost it machinery and things like that. And so I went to, I came to undergrad here at K State, in mechanical engineering. And so some of the professors that are still over there taught me and after that I had really no interest in going back to grad school, I went to work at Cessna aircraft in Wichita. Worked there about eight years. And then I mean, my wife and for son, we quit that job and went to grad school while I was at Wichita State System paid for a master's degree in robotics, and mechanical engineering, but emphasis on robotics. And then we went to the University of Oklahoma. And I studied under Dr. David Miller, who is well known as far as planetary science, planetary robotics, planetary exploration. So nothing to do with agriculture really at all up to that point in my education. So I did a lot of wheel to soil interaction traction, specifically with robots and built a very big test apparatus. And I wanted to teach at K State actually. So the reason we went to Oklahoma, went out of state was the purpose of getting back to K State. And so I learned a lot about just the robotic world and the robotic feel soil interaction, it was regolith, really not soil that. And then after I graduated there, there was new university jobs, nothing and I was really set on being in Kansas. And so opening came up in a John Deere in Iowa, programming large tractors and so this is kind of my getting back into the agriculture world and agriculture industry. So I worked at John Deere for about two and a half years, and that's when K State job came up. And it turned out it more of a postdoc for me, kind of introduced to a lot of features and the customer world of agriculture machinery. Didn't like Iowa, it’s really too cold for me. So in 2013, I applied and we got a job here K State. And Dr. Joe Harner. He's already department head, he had a kind of a vision for robotics and kind of that next phase of agriculture. So he was very intent on getting someone who has specific interests in robotics. And so I came in 2013. And we've been here since then. I teach agriculture machinery courses, off road machinery courses, hydraulics, some mechatronics. engine power transfer. My research is in robotics. And so specifically small robotics, what I mean by that is like wheelchair sized robotics, in the agriculture field, so we've kind of focused on the smaller side, just for safety reasons. Because we've found that, you know, once a robot is big enough to hurt somebody, then the amount of sensors and, and technology and complexity goes way up. And so we've kind of, we've kind of focused in on the smaller robotics, and to try to stay away from all that complexity. If my robots ran into you, they would just either stop or run over your toe or something like that. But they wouldn't, they wouldn't hurt you. So we've been successful. We've been successful with that. We've gotten several grants through USDA, some corn commission grant and some EPSCoR grants with and throughout this time here at K State, I've had some really good collaboration with people. Dr. Stephen Welch has been kind of a mentor to a lot of us. He's got some fun stuff going on. And he's always big into dreaming. And so he's, he's on several of my grants. I'm on his EPSCoR grant, Dr. Brian McCormick over an entomology, we've worked a lot with him, he's always fun. To come up with crazy ideas. We had some ideas about shooting lasers at aphids and things. And so he was all about that he enjoyed that. And so this is where we're at, you know, right now we're trying to finish several of these big grants we got one of them is the high sloped hill, where we're trying to increase our arable land, by farming on on hills that conventional tractors can't go is wouldn't be safe. And so we have these smaller wheelchair size tracked vehicles that plant wheat on hills, and either lead cattle graze on that weed or are harvested. So we're working on that we're working on a Dr. Ajay Sharda, who's my colleagricultureue, he's got an NRI grants, National Robotics Initiative. Both those are and it's, we're have a robot that looks for aphids on sorghum and using machine learning. And this, when it spots an aphid or thinks it does, it sprays just that one plant. And so we have a spray rig on a four wheeled robot, and this will save an immense amount of chemical, both for costs for the farmer and environment. And so I think with you know, it kind of brings up a point where these robotics, we're kind of in a new world, as far as farming goes up into this point, we've progressed, you know, we started with just scattering a seed, then the horses and oxen, and then there was a phase change kind of facing that's assessment term, aircraft term phase changes, when you go from one look to another, a big change in design. He went to two mechanical tractors, you know, there's a lot of farmers thought that they we had cabs on our, on our farmers and we had auto steer, then we had bigger and bigger tractors. And we've come in some some issues with just making tractors bigger and bigger. And we, we've done that because of labor shortages and skilled labor shortages. And so we run into problems with the road, and you know, transportation, getting those big tractors, on Highway, soil compaction, things like that. So what we're really trying to focus on is the smaller vehicles, and this has allowed us to kind of open up the world and kind of get rid of a lot of assumptions about farming, you know, really is you're just getting the seed in the ground. And then you're taking the yield from that plant. And so how do we do that? We have a small vehicle, so we've had to kind of rethink how to plant were we thinking, you know, the options are kind of open right now we can we can think about multi crops in the fields and more environmental conscious farming. You know, one thing that we kind of talked about here is that we're able to do more environmentally responsible agriculture, because we're bringing in technology because we can rethink how we do things with the smaller robots and stuff. That's kind of where we're at.

I'd like to hear just a little bit more about what you think this opens up. So you know, you mentioned the phase change and You know, each of these new technologies really changed the way our culture was done right and a change sometimes change what was what was actually grown change how it has grown change the, you know, economics and, and the nature of farms. And so, you know, with all the openness of the future that you just talked about, it's hard to say, but I'm curious just about what kind of where you think we're heading with all this change? You know, what, what is it? What is it set up for us?

Oh, that's a good question. I mean, I'm just thinking, you know, right now, with my robots, I'm trying to think through how we can redo things but want for instance, I was just having a conversation with Dr. Sharda, the other day about, you know, the whole Native American, they do the three sisters method where they grow beans, squash, and corn all at the same time. And those three crops help each other one fights off bugs, the other one gives, you know, the corn gives the beans, some of the verlon with the small robots and automation, you know, we can think about multi crop fields, and not just mono mono crops. And so that kind of a lot of people, you know, I think farm and they take it a certain way. And right now, there's a lot of startups with, with agriculture robotics. And there's tons of them, a lot of bigger companies like the company I worked for, and even the other two big companies that do agriculture equipment, they're a little scared of having their tractors being autonomous, and then they do concept vehicles, things like that. But, it's a big risk to have a big tractor, computer controlled risk. And for the people that are there, you know, if there was a Sunday there in the field, which has happened, you know, things like that. So, there's a lot that has to happen before, I think these big companies are going to, really sell on autonomous tractors. But the startups are crazy. And they're mostly smaller vehicles. There are some like mid tractor size startup companies. But I think it's going to kind of generate this startup level of people coming ideas and ask them questions like, Why do we have to do it this way? And maybe they're not farmers, maybe they maybe they're just either hobby farmers or urban farmers? You know, why not? I saw a gantry farming thing where it just has like a small bed that you put in your apartment or somewhere and it has a gantry, that plants and that takes care of all the plants and things like that. Um, where are we going? Yeah, that's, an interesting question. I, I don't see us getting rid of tractors for quite some time. I mean, the, the amount of power and work that is done in one pass in those tractors on a flat field is amazing. And I think the tractor companies have really come a long way as far as technology and things. And they're expensive, too. I think for a long time. These smaller tractors, these smaller robots that we're working on, are coming in kind of augmenting, either like on high school Till's or farmers that are just getting going, you know, that scalable, you know, they, they want to farm more land, they just kind of bind the robot, things like that. Right now, we're trying to just get people to rethink because farmers have the kind of the tendency or reputation of being somewhat stubborn. And so they do things the way their dad did data, data is another one. I mean, there's so much data right now, coming off of agriculture vehicles, and fighting over who gets that data. Other companies will say that, that data is the farmers. But so there's so much data that no one knows what to do with. I mean, we have images of fields. And so right now, I think there's going to have to be some people really picking up the data, data analysis part of it to try to help farmers make better decisions.

Do you see the initial use of your work? You mentioned urban farming and that type of thing. And kind of the difficulty in introducing this into the very large scale? Do you see it first being introduced into the smaller urban farming or, you know, smaller farming type systems prior to and then kind of building up from there?

I do. I think people that enjoy that technology, you know, the people that get the iPhones and stuff like that, they all kind of think this is really cool. And start there. I see a big community doing that. That's why with this grant, we kind of try to focus on sloped Hills because this is not any place where a tractor can go. And so this kind of helps feed the world. A big push, you know, I'm sure you guys have heard the 2050 push where, you know, we have to feed over 9 billion people by 2050. And so this is kind of an industry rally cry, you know, John Deere kind of talked about that a lot. So we have really, he tried to bring awareness about that as well. And so one way of doing that is, is opening up these little pills that no one's using.

So do you conceive of these as being scalable? If, if a large producer wanted to take them on rather than having to do, I don't know, how many passes on a, on a three on one subsection field, that there'll be multiple of these units is that?

Yes, yes, it's kind of the scrubbing bubbles, technique. Remember that commercial. So you have, you'll have a bunch of a swarm of robots that will work day and night, to get the work done. And now, my robots are pretty slow, you know, they make one pass really easy, but you can have a bunch of them. And so we're gonna have to, you know, networking, as far as wireless connectivity, you know, in the rural areas, and things like that, is gonna have to be extended quite a bit. So right now, you know, thanks to the bigger tractor companies where we have RTK GPS, which is, you know, very sub centimeter accuracy GPS, and that's, we have a lot of stations and stuff. And so we're able to use that, but we're gonna have to, we're looking at right now, you know, different wireless technologies, Dr. Sharda, especially, is looking at different wireless technologies to get to talk from, you know, inside the canopy of like corn. And so one one, not another nice thing about these small robots is that we can be under the canopy of crops. And we're not looking down at the leaves that are healthy, we're looking at from up and seeing where the bugs are trying to see where water stress is, and try to get to a better health picture of what's going on underneath.

So I was wondering if you could share a little bit more of the details of what has to be done to make these workable, I mean, so we've got some of the promise, right? Sir, we can open up areas like the soap pills, that can be more scalable, you can think about doing things differently, right, in terms of, you know, planting multiple crops, and you can reduce the use of pesticides. Right. So he's awesome, super positive. Right? So, what are the challenges for making it work?

The biggest one, I think of right now is how to keep these guys powered, and how to service them. What I mean by services is, if they're planting, get them seed to plant, if they're harvesting, get that seat away from my vehicles are all like electric, so how to get batteries to them, without them coming back and having to do that. And so we're looking at some different things that actually, I don't know if they're gonna work or not, but we're looking at UAVs, you know, unmanned aerial vehicles to be carrying batteries to service and swap on these on these ground vehicles. And so that's one way of servicing the robot. So you can keep working. We were trying to stay away from fossil fuels, we're trying to keep you know, it all electrical. But the power density for diesel is so much more than a battery. And so it's just a big challenge. You know, if you have other robots, UAVs or other ground robots that are servicing, then you have to have quite a bit of communication between the two, you have to have routing plans. And things get a lot more complicated. And so I kind of see that once you work with multiple robots, them all working together, you know, that's going to be quite a task. And we have some very smart machine learning people working on this. And yeah, just getting them power and getting them seed or getting the heart the yield back from them. I think that's one of the things that it's kind of holding us up right now. You know, one thing I will say is that one thing we didn't see coming is getting seed in the ground in a no till situation like on a hill, my robots weigh about 180 pounds 200 If you load them down batteries. So a normal conventional planter, you know, takes at least 300 pounds to push down. And so we tried it, we loaded down with weight even and so we've had to think of some different ideas. And so now we're going with a powered Tiller planter that actually is is more or less a disk with with teeth on it. And it spins, I think it's about 240 rpm, and it it cuts a furrow do this ground and then we put seed in it then recovered back up. We just can't press a disk in there like a normal tractor. Good. So this takes up power. It's not ideal. It's not what we're going for. But we try to, to go with the simplest possible design and then kind of if that doesn't work, we kind of work ourselves up to more complex issues, but that's those are the biggest things that we run across right now is you know, you could have robots that when they ran out of juice, they come back, get recharged, and then go back out. But for a bigger field, that kind of becomes an not very good solution.

What we see is the major push backs that you might get from farmers have spent 3035 years using different approaches in the mechanics we expect to have to answer to.

Most of them don't believe that this will work. So yeah, and a lot of them, you know, my dad was same way kind of your link to the land. That's John years phrase, but they see farming as you're on a tractor. You're out on the field, you know, your field.

Bouncing over the phone. Yeah.

But the thing is, a lot of these bigger farmers have five 7000 acres, you know, doing their field? Is it them on the tractor? Can they really see how their crops are doing? And they can, in certain instances, you know, for what, for example, we have this duck shares, we're going on this NRI grant that spots, aphids. And so right now, you know, an entomologist, you call them up, he'll come to us a few places in your field. And say, either, yes, it's bad enough, you need to spray or no need to wait a little while. So either spray the whole field, or you don't spray enough, you know, and it's just issues like that. And so I think the pushback is, is people, you know, Agra culture, it's a culture and so people are kind of back against, that's not farming, you know, that's not sure. And I think, I think I wasn't around when this happened, but talk to my dad, you know, when people went from horses to tractors to this kind of the same tune. Yeah, attitude, same, you know, you're working together with your horse to, to work the land, you know, I read somewhere where, when calves come on tractors, people were like, you know, I want to smell the dirt, I want to smell the earth. And the auto steer, you know, it's not me steering, it's just a computer, how is that farming, you know, it's kind of kind of a fight every time, I do see a lot of the younger farmers just really be a lot more open to technology, a lot more able to do that. One thing is UAVs. Now UAVs exploded into the agriculture market, because, you know, farmers one, they thought oh, not to walk as much I could see my whole field is a huge help. And it wasn't really farming, it was more of a help for farming. And so I think maybe they didn't have to justify that they weren't farming anymore, but they just this is something that helps them. And so one way for us to kind of get in or not us, but you know, robotics to get in is kind of scouting, if we have these scouting vehicles that go out, and it's a lot like you UAVs scout over the top, but they Scout underneath. And it's kind of it's not farming, but it's more of a help to the farmer. And I really think farmers are all about help.

I've talked to an old rancher actually, a few years ago, and we were talking about advances in this and then the other civil kind of give me an example. That well, there was a time when a PTO shaft was very high technology in the forums I was working on. So you know, what's, what's normal, and what's cutting edge continues to evolve. So I think the trick is to be able to survive that first party evolution and get some buy into it.

Yeah, and tractors themselves have become so complicated. And you know, that's a lot of different forces are pushing their emissions and things like that and features but I don't know if how many farmers can actually work on the tractor nowadays, not like we had to. Yeah. So the technology is there. They're just still driving now. So I understand the pushback there. And I probably feel the same way if I was a farmer. Sure. So we're just trying to trying to help you know, we're not gonna, we're not taking over farming. We're just trying to help, you know, help spray aphids help on uphills, you know, get a little more yield. Right.

Now, then you mentioned that you were working with Dr. Wells on some of the activities you're working on. And a minute ago, you talked a bit about working with people on machine learning, what you've got specific activities that you're focused on in building these types of things. What other kinds of expertise within the university do you bring in in helping to solve some of these problems or work through some of the challenges that you're facing?

Who else have I collaborated with?

Yeah, yeah.
One great thing about my job is that I have such good people around me. See, well, Welch is one of them. Brian McCormick entomology. We have a lot of people in engineering. So, Stacey Kulesza. She is in civil engineering. She does a lot of soil sensing for us, Jared Hobeck. In mechanical engineering, he's, we're talking about some ideas with with genetic algorithms for for tillage tools, some we work with Terry Griffin, who is a agricultural economist, yeah. Then we have, you know, the computer scientists, and they do machine learning, genetic algorithms. Lior Shamir, Bill Hsu, Sanjoy Das, he's an electrical engineering. So we will work with most anybody and some, I really enjoyed, I've learned a lot, a lot of things we also have. So our departments, sorry to interrupt you there, our department is we have machinery, which is what I am. And we have environmental and biological. That's three options of our, our department. Now we're all very much different. But it's been really fun to work with, let's say the environmental group, one example. That is they look for blue green algae, how to predict that happening on on lakes, and reservoirs, things. And so we have, we actually just got a grant, we build a kind of a robotic boat that takes sensors at different depths, and trying to get data for them to actually put that together to predict a bloom happening. So that's another fun thing. I'm working with these environmental people, and I get to make robotic boats and things like that. So I really love my job. A lot of fun.

Oh, before we know what this will look like the pollutes of the Midwest, if you can get the hills farmed.

That's right. Weeds everywhere.

Yeah, really.

I remember talking with Steve Wells about that idea about a year ago. And I clearly it's the same thing that you're working on describing exactly what it was you were you were talking about doing an increasing? I mean, basically, what he was explaining to me was, you're increasing the amount of arable land substantially, which makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Interesting.

We have to worry about, you know, erosion and things like that with hills.

And so sure

I'm sure concern. And our robots rolling down the hill uncontrollably. That's another concern.

Do you have any feel for the impact of having worked in the industries you worked in, prior to coming to a university setting? How that how that may be swayed or impacted or affected the job that you're doing now? Or was it just kind of a building block to get where you are?

Ah, yeah, it's had a lot of impact, you know, well, so I worked in several different industries Cessna aircraft, I was just a design engineer for the interiors. And so I learned a lot about how a company works as far as drawings, numbers, you know, engineering changes and getting a drawing released all that dealing with, we did all very custom stuff, interiors for the these people. And so it was good kind of get a sense of organization. So that's kind of what I'm brought to. Sometimes I teach that and then I also right now I'm also a coach for battle bot team, and Junior Senior High battle bot team. And so we use that in the battle bot team and then work in a John Deere, I learned a lot about you know, the, the relevant cut, you know, conventional features of tractor, a lot of customer feedback, a lot of kind of issues that are going on with the tractors nowadays, especially with the missions and things like that so they know more about farming than I do and so they know they have a lot more equipment than I do or or can get hold of, but you know, explaining like for range here, what that means what's going on in that transmission. So that's been really good to take that and then also like I talked about the 2050 kind of cry You know, I really brought that to our department and really have I made a big deal out of it and I got that a John here but so it's been good all that to say it's been a really good experience. I would I would highly recommend, you know, he got me started late here at K State late in my life but I would highly recommend the experience you get from working in industry. And so I would not want to go back to industry. Good experience.

Well, I was wondering, since you just mentioned being back at K State here, something I didn't ask you when you opened up, but want to ask now, so, why so interested in getting to K State? Or you said that was, that was your goal, right? When you went to get your last degree down in Oklahoma, and you left so that you could come back here? So, what are we looking for here? Why, why K State?

Well, it's nothing more complicated than me just loving Manhattan long. I, you know, I came here from undergrad and fell in love with it. I tried to stay tried to get a job here in Manhattan. But at that time, there wasn't anything. I mean, I think McCalls had a factory or something. But there was nothing much. So I like the AG. Ag school. So, and I've always had a I've always loved case study. And I want to be home, I want to be close to home. I did not enjoy being you know, Iowa was too far for me. I didn't mind Oklahoma so much. It was warmer. I like that. But I don't know, I don't know that I don't have a better answer than I just like it here.

It's been a good of an answer. So then. So then let me ask the flip side of the of question about what you brought from industry, which is, what's different about working on kinds of things you're working on now? In a university setting, right, as opposed to what, you know, you mentioned all the startups working on, you know, robotics and agriculture. Right. You know, what, what's the difference between, you know, working on maybe things that are, you know, like this are related to this. So you mentioned that a lot of the companies aren't necessarily going to sort of adopt some of the things that you're talking about right away? Because they're, they're focused on different things. But what's the difference between working on this kind of stuff in a large, you know, large established industry versus a startup business versus university setting? Are you exploring different kinds of questions and the kinds of, or different kinds of, you know, pushing the boundary more and the kinds of robotics you're working on, you ask them different questions, how would you describe the difference?

Well, it's probably different for different people who are different jobs, but my jobs were fairly, very structured. And so you are given tasks to do and maybe a feature to work on, you know, I programmed tractors or thing problems to fix, there was very little creativity that I could put into play. And, you know, we tell our students all the time and worked for a big large company, you work for a small section of that product. And you do it a lot more times, like for a small company, you would kind of be on, you know, designing it, testing it, marketing it, selling it, you know, supporting it, here, you know, a large company work on one little spot, and everybody else handles everything else. And so it, I didn't feel like I had much freedom there to try things, especially creativity wise. So here at K State, so much freedom, you know, and and some people don't like, the, the freedom, some people don't like the lack of structure that you would find in industry and, and so there's so much freedom that I have no one cares when I come to work, no one cares, my leave. But yet I have got a lot of responsibility to get stuff done. And, and that really fit me a lot better than and work in a certain time during the day and really not having the chance to dream and think up new things. And so, this morning, I worked on a new kind of a brad program for our department, that probably never happened. But it is fun for me, and kind of really good for me to think through that. And I like that I like to design, I like the I guess freedom to be creative is the biggest change for me. And it fits me. It's not any better than industry or worse, it just fits me better than the industry did. And so, you know, with a small company, you know, you probably have more freedom, and a little less security, but a little more freedom to, to work on products and things and create.

So how do you think this applies to the future of robotics in agriculture? So what's the are you working with startups or any industry on this? Are there other people who are doing this in this area? And what like, what are the different roles that are being played out by, you know, by the startups and industry and university in research settings of sort of kind of envisioning where we could be going in agriculture and sort of working on particular solutions.

Well, now that we are working with several startups, We're working with big in industry as well. So several of the big industries had their own small robotic projects going on, you know, fence and AGCO, they had the Mars program, I hear that John Deere has one going on, but I can't confirm that. But we work with some small startups, as far as there's a, there's a company and Topeka it, it's working with vineyards. And he's doing some fun stuff there with robotics and spraying. So there are a lot of it's a lot of roles going on, and you know, to kind of rethink what agriculture is with, with a whole new set of tools with, with automation, and small robotics. And I think a lot of these ideas could be taken up and used in startups and things and, and then, you know, it's like the electric car, people are getting more and more used to it. And so I see the same thing happening with agriculture robotics today. Did I answer your question?

Yeah, oh, that's great. Thanks.

The only other question I had, and this may be similar to one that Scott answered, asked him a bit ago, but if you had a way of looking into the future, what comes after this kind of technology? Where is this technology leading agriculture overall, let's assume that it's picked up and it's used, and what's coming next?

So if this was fully adopted and used, it'd be a lot more lobby a lot more probably, farmers at home, keeping track of their robotics swarms, you know, doing robotics, and doing agriculture. One thing that I would love to see is that kind of a robotic farm, you know, for ag for university purposes. We proposed this a while back, it was called case utopia that was kind of, I was very proud of that name. But it was just a piece of land that was fully run by robots and for farming. And I can see, I can kind of imagine a class where we teach a class and data would be coming in off this farm from these robots. And the students would take the data and analyze it and see what needs to be done. And, maybe a student would be in charge of a certain plot of land, you know, to control the robots and, and, and how to do the fertilizer, and when, when to plant and keeping track of the soil. You know, I see that as an amazing teaching tool for students in agriculture, you know, automation. You know, I could also see the downsides where we lose our farmers. And, you know, would that happen when we have big huge corporations that just run robots? I don't think so. I think there's always going to be farmers. Just like, there's always the hobby farmers now, you know, it doesn't make sense for them to be hobby farming, but they are, because they love it. And so not a really good answer for that. I'm sorry. It's

No, it's there was a fine answer. I guess, as I've been listening to you talk over the last period of time, just thinking about the, you know, the potential of multi-cropping in the field, or the potential of improving the environmental impact. It's, and then you you talk just a minute ago about these huge corporate owned farms that may or may not be separate for I mean, that's what I'm looking for opposite of one another and their approach on things, but possibly could be, it's just, it's an interesting, it's an interesting mix of potentials and possibilities that you've been describing that could come out of this. So it's, I'm sure that some of this technology will be picked up, it's just going to be very, very fascinating to see where and how it's used most frequently.

Yeah, I think, you know, I think there's a lot of government regulations coming down the road with, especially with pesticides and herbicides. So I think we're gonna have to get creative with how we keep that yield up, and how we make more yield to meet that 2050.

Now, it's been great, it's fascinating stuff. It's just there, there are so many, there's so much potential, and I'm excited to see what happens, those other effects are dealt with, right? So we've got the positives, but then, you know, there'll be there'll be shifts, there'll be shifts in what's planted, right, you know, there'll be shifts in you know, in labor, right, sort of you were mentioned labor drives, was driving, you know, some of the technology but then technology drives labor changes, too, right. And so like, it's just going to be so many differences. It does feel like I guess actually, this is one of the if you've already said it, I guess feels like a more substantial and some of those other technology changes that you've described. And I wonder, wonder if you think it is just, you know, then the next step in the chain of, you know, technological changes that have, you know, shifted farming, but it's not, you know, hasn't obviously hasn't gone away, right? Or if it is something a little more substantial than what we've seen before.

Does it fall into the disruptive change? Category?

Yeah, I mean, I mean, as far as labor, I mean, we'll go away. You know, we, with robotics, you won't need somebody to drive a skilled labor to drive the tractor, but you will need skilled laborers to run the robotics, right? And keep track of them and service them. And so it's, this has been fascinating.

Thank you so much.

Do you have anything for us, Dan, before we sign off here,

No, good luck, thanks for what you're doing.

Well, I appreciate your time. And thanks, Scott, for coming on. And no, this was great.

Really exciting. Thanks. Thanks.

Thanks a bunch. Bye. Bye bye.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.
Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University.

In this episode, we welcome Dr. Stephen Higgs, university distinguished professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology at Kansas State University. On this episode, Dr. Higgs discusses interdisciplinary biosecurity research programs, agrosecurity and collaborative research. Higgs, who is director of the Biosecurity Research Institute, or BRI, also highlights the role the BRI will play in transitioning work to the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, adjacent to the K-State campus. Dr. Higgs’ research is focused on mosquito-related viral spread, but through his oversight of the BRI, he has expanded to the areas of food safety and security, plant and animal disease and zoonotic disease. 

Transcript:

Yeah, never quite know in this way of research, right? You never quite know what's going to happen. And any day I walk into the BRI maybe a day when one of our researchers makes a discovery that changes the world makes it a better place. I honestly believe that's how I feel every morning.

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

I'm Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science.

I would like to welcome today a guest host, Dr. Jim Stack, Professor of Plant Pathology, and Director of the Great Plains Diagnostic Network. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the K State Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. In today's podcast, we are joined by Dr. Steven Higgs, director of the biosecurity Research Institute, and a University Distinguished Professor in Diagnostic Medicine and Pathobiology. His research is focused on mosquito related viral spread. However, through his oversight of the VRI Research Center, Higgs has an expanded association with activities carried out in various sectors of K State to include food safety and security, plant and animal disease and zoonotic disease. In this podcast, Dr. Higgs will discuss interdisciplinary biosecurity research programs, agro security initiatives, and the development of collaborative research. And the BRI's place as a platform for transitioning work that will be conducted at the new national and agro defense facility here in Manhattan, Kansas, and adjacent to K State and the BRI. Welcome Dr. Steve Higgs to the something to chew on podcast with the Kansas State University Global Food Systems Initiative. And we really appreciate your time and your willingness to chat with us today.

It's a pleasure to be here.

That's wonderful. Before we get started, it's part of the discussion I'm sure we'll get into some of the details of your work that you're doing and the facilities that you oversee at K State. But I think before we head down that path, maybe get a bit of a background on you, who you are, what brought you to the type of research that you enjoy doing and maybe what brought you to Kansas State University.

Okay, so, yeah, so I just go by Steve. I've been here at K State since 2011. And my background is from the United Kingdom. I grew up in a very small market town called Wantage and Oxfordshire about 20 miles from Oxford  within 60 miles from London. I, it was a small community, it's a country community, which is why I love Manhattan. And I you know, I was a country kid, eventually went to university to study zoology, and then specialized in parasitology. Actually, parasites that could potentially infect livestock. I was studying them in mice, but it was Coccidia that could infect chickens and cattle and so forth. I then went to the London School of Hygiene, I ended up in the environmental microbiology facility in Oxford, and then I was sent to the United States to Colorado State University to learn genetic engineering of mosquitoes. And I'd never been to the States before I came here I stayed a month and then I came back the following year to do a course and was offered a job and so I briefly went back to England came came back came to the United States with the intention of staying no less than a year and some 25 years later, 30 years later. Here I am, I worked at Colorado for 10 years, then University of Texas Medical Branch for 10 and then visited K State to see the Biosecurity Research Institute at a time when I was not really looking for a job and just was one of a better term blown away by the facility and the people here and and what could be done here.

So what was it about the facility that wowed you?

So, you know, my background in terms of research and education and training has been focused on viral diseases of people and virus viruses that are transmitted by mosquitoes. And that's obviously very important because hundreds of 1000s of people are infected by these pathogens every year, I came and looked at the BRI and thought, well, this is so much more of a broad scope and broad impact potentially, because unlike any other facility in the world, and I mean that there is no other place like the BRI we can study foodborne pathogens, we can study plant pathogens, as you Barbara Valent, and Jim Stack. And then they studying viruses here, which is what my background is, but not just of people, but also of animals in particular, livestock, the bread was just incredible. As far as I'm concerned, never seen a lab that could do all that because there isn't one. And I thought well, coming here as a matter of this, that it is a truly global impact on and it touches everything. It is a Global Food System in one building, because we work on those pathogens that affect pre harvest, post harvest food, plants, animals, foodborne pathogens, everything. If it was wider than I'd ever sort of, considered before.

Steve, the connection between food security and public health is very tight. And when we look at the goals that collectively the global community has set in terms of enhancing public health, improving food security, and raising standards of living, all of those things really are integrated. And it's hard to tease one out, if you don't address all of these things, we're not going to reach a goal. So the question, looking back, say over the last 20 or 30 years, where do you think we've made a lot of progress on the public health side? For some of these mosquito borne, you know, vectored viruses, where have we made the most progress? And where are we still needing to make progress in order to achieve those kind of global goals?

Like, like you say, Jim, these are very tightly interconnected, that they're inseparable in terms of, human health and well being the pathogens and the effects of food and diet, we know that if you don't have the diet, you don't get the food and your susceptibility, and the consequence of the disease can be very different. In terms of the mosquito borne pathogens, one area where there has been obvious progress has been in mosquito control, there have been some, you know, techniques that have arisen that we're not even thought of, but not not on, on the radar, I talk about things like not genetic control, necessarily, but technique of using, for example, or back here to reduce populations or to drive populations down. And we, you know, you look at 100,000 cases of dengue. And, you know, there's probably been two and a half million people, just in the United States infected with West Nile, each one of those infections essentially starts with the very simple process of one mosquito that happens to be infected biting somebody. And clearly reducing the population as a hazard. Its goal and consequence reduced numbers of infection. And so we have made considerable strides in that particular area. It's remarkable to me, it's remarkable to me sat here still having this career in mosquito borne viruses, just of how much we don't know. You know, we've known about some of these diseases since the late 1800s. You know, so 120 years ago. And, you know, I got into this in about 1985. And thought, well, this is going to be a short career. If we've known about him for 80 or 90 years, there can't be any questions left to answer. And that is so untrue. We don't know some of the most fundamental things about these viruses and how they interact with the mosquitoes, and how they spread, and how they cause some of the diseases. It's sad and it's remarkable. There was hoping in genetics, when we started getting genome of mosquitoes. And this includes anopheles for malaria, it was like a huge hope of, oh, well, if you understand the genetics of the beast, then we will understand the diseases and we can manipulate it and, you know, maybe make mosquitoes, it can't be infected. And really that hasn't transpired. Which is, which is sad. We don't know, something that I'm particularly into, we don't know why some types of mosquito can be infected by some viruses, and some can't, you know, put it the other way why some viruses infect some mosquitoes and others don't, that seems pretty fundamental, because you want to control the species that are responsible for the diseases that you're trying to fight. So basic research has to still be done. One area that I look at my career, and I'm, I suppose my research, my group's research has been more diverse than most other groups. And I'm, I'm very proud of that, because we kind of invented a term a long time ago, you know, virus vector vertebra interactions, I came up with that. And that's what we've been doing. We haven't just looked at the these diseases from the perspective of a virus infecting a mosquito. But we've looked at the interactions between that virus and the mosquito, the interactions between the mosquitoes and vertebrate hosts, sometimes people that they buy, and the relationship that the broad scope of that relationship, but it's very complex, and still lots more to do.

So oftentimes, progress is a function of innovation in technology. And over the last decade or so, we've seen the application of some new technologies, for example, Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes, and more recently, the gene drive technologies. What are your thoughts on the adoption of those the application of those in the real world? What are the pros and cons of that?

Complicated question, Jim, you know, this has been something that has been discussed for many, many years. Like I say, I came to the United States in 1991. Because the there was getting to be technology that could maybe predictably, engineer mosquitoes that has progressed in leaps and bounds as new technologies came in gene drive was being discussed, then, even though you know, just as a concept with no idea that something like CRISPR, Caste Nine would come along and actually provide that capability. So it's been discussed. And the ultimate goal has always been to release those mosquitoes with reduced capacity to, to be infected and transmit the different pathogens, particularly malaria. I mean, that's been a huge focus, especially for the Gates Foundation. And there is still a hard push, I've been involved in some of the CRISPR Caste Nine discussion in the context of malaria and other pathogens. discussions have been supported by the foundation's National Institutes of Health, and then the Gates Foundation and others. It's, it was gene drive on the horizon. I think that's what the book was called. And it's still very much on the horizon, the horizon is getting closer. But we still haven't quite got to the point of having those resistant mosquitoes that could be released unreduced reduce the incidence of infection. We're at a point where genetically engineered must be there's a technique called redl has been widely used, and it's actually been approved for use in the United States now to question but that depends very much on constant release of mosquitoes in absolutely huge numbers to push down the population. The wall back here, technology, which was one of those strange things from you know, Gates funding, that it was kind of a not exactly a back burner, but it wasn't a front runner, and then everything came together, but that it worked. And not only could it suppress populations, but it actually made the mosquitoes less susceptible to infection in some cases. And so, that is certainly something that is has been moving forward to combat for example, the Zika outbreak in Brazil and things like that. So that is actually, you know, happening as we speak. On a regular basis, those types of mosquitoes, you know, I'm always a little frustrated by that term innovation, you see that in, in grant requests a lot, you know, it has to be innovative, but sometimes old and well tried things still still work. But I do understand, you know, that we, we need to look at novel techniques and novel approaches, because, frankly, some of it, some of the old ones are past their time, if you like.

What are your views about the effects or possible unintended consequences of doing things like reducing or maybe drastically reducing mosquito populations? Right, so this is that that is a different way of attacking the problem rather than, you know, preventing bites or infections. Right. And, and are there are things to be thinking about in terms of, you know, ecological consequences, etc. So how does that all factor in?

So, in terms of ecological consequences, Scott, it would seem to be that there are no species of other organism, you know, predators or whatever, that wholly depend on the mosquito, I mean, we are never going to get to the point where there are no mosquitoes out there. If we can alter the species composition of the populations, to, for example, reduce the incidence of disease. So if you were, for example, eliminating the Anopheles Gambi population in Africa, that would reduce malaria incidents, the chances are, there's another mosquito species that might bite, but not might not transmit, that will probably fill the spot of the one that you'd remove. But there really are no even bats if there's no animal that holy depends on mosquitoes that couldn't switch prey, I guess, as far as I can understand, but as much as I've read.

Yeah, so it makes these interventions, a fairly safe and certainly worth on your view, take it whatever those effects might be sort of in terms of the outcome is like very much worth.

Yeah, and one technique that, you know, I saw firsthand in when I visited Africa a few years ago, was Gates Foundation, kind of pushed and promoted the use of insecticide impregnated bed nets. And, you know, relatively simple technology, I mean, had to be sort of fine tune in terms of usefulness of the nets, and, you know, education of people to use those nets. But I went to a village in Africa, there wasn't, I didn't see an insect the whole time I was there. They hadn't had a malaria deaths. You know, this is something that kills, you know, half a million children a year, some, you know, a child dies of malaria, I think every 30 seconds, still, these these bed nets, eliminated the mosquitoes and reduce the incidence of malaria to two to zero in this village and, you know, kind of low tech, but extremely effective.

I'd like to take the discussion out a little bit further in, in your backyard today is being built the National Agricultural Biosecurity Center, the NBAF Center, which I'm sure you've been watching happened over the last several years. Where's the intersection between the VRI and NBAF? And how do those two organizations fit with one another?

So, right, right from the very beginning, at the time, when I was interviewed, I was asked what I thought about NBAF. And, you know, I was very pro NBAF because of the impact it will have in terms of protecting United States providing new knowledge, vaccines and so forth, to secure our food supply, and it will have a global impact on securing global food supplies in many respects. So right from the very beginning, we've had very open productive discussions with the people involved with NBAF, you know, frankly, at all levels, from, you know, senior Homeland Security and USDA. People and we've had lots and lots of visitors from Homeland Security as they were building and an even before they were building it in discussion, design and so forth. And then USDA ever since I got here, because they were USDA people here in Manhattan, the US Department of Agriculture, ARS, arbitrary, Arthropod Borne Animal Diseases Research Unit. When I got here, they helped build the insectary in the BRI. We're doing their research in here. So we all understand that you can be an expert at one thing, but collaboration really gives the power to move research forward, we understand that and we've always had that very open discussion of how we can help him valve as its as it's moving forward. One of the things that happened early on was the state of Kansas, dedicated $35 million to develop research capabilities here at the BRI, in collaboration with the USDA on diseases that were priorities for NBAF. Unwell, we used it in NBAF study to NBAF but which we could all also handle the BRI there was some very significant hurdles in terms of approvals for us to be approved to work with these pathogens, whether I mean, just like Jim Stack wheat grass, we know were the first non federal non government lab that able to work with some of these pathogens, like African and classical swine fever has never been studied a non federal facility. So we'd be breaking new ground. We have a number of USDA people who are here in town and are at Plum Island and who embark including, for example, the director, Alfonso as adjunct faculty, to different departments in K State that gives them the ability to work closely with us to be on committees and so forth and interact closely. BRI is not just research, it's education and training, we do a huge amount of training. On one of the conduits that link, the BRI and NBAF is educational programs or training programs. So early on, we received an award from Homeland Security to train Principal Investigator scientists. You know that NBAF is a modern replacement for Plum Island, Plum Island. I've visited plumb a few times. But the first time I went up there to meet the scientist, it was a very small room. And like seven people showed up, and I'm thinking, wow, where's everybody else? They said, Oh, well, the other, the other person, the other two people can't make it today. So I was amazed that, you know, in that 350 person facility, there were really only about nine principal investigators. Well, NBAF will have certainly double that, maybe more. So it's critical that they have the right expertise. And we've been involved in the training of principal investigators. Like I said, we got the Homeland Security grant, there was then a USDA award that came out. So we've got five more scientists, graduate students being trained at the moment. The wonderful thing about that particular program is that they are guaranteed positions with the government, but for most certainly NBAF after they complete their degrees. So we're still training those people when NBAF opens, ultimately, we're going to have good case data is going in to, to direct some of that research. Obviously, researchers have research teams. And so we also have another award, largely based here at the BRI. That is training laboratories support staff. So that's, you know, that's an incredibly impactful relationship before and bath ever opens its doors and starts research. And we certainly hope and I was, I now have regular meetings with the director of NBAF and with other USDA, people. We certainly all intend that relationship will not end when NBAF opens its doors but will continue long term.

I can certainly see the need and the importance of kind of being connected at the hip between the two facilities.

You can ask them again, because then I don't have to answer them off the cuff as it were. Right.

Well, one of the other things that you mentioned the Arthropod Borne Animal Disease Unit here in Manhattan, there's several other units from the Center of Excellence for Emerging Animal Diseases on the Center of Grain and Animal Health. How do those programs work into what you're doing at BRI? What kind of intersection do you see? Does that overlap with NBAF? Are there any intersections there? We've got obviously a concentration a lot of efforts going into these areas. So just curious how you work together on those?

Those, okay. So, CEZAD and then now CEZID in particular are groups that focus on, on diseases of animals. And that is very relevant obviously to, NBAF Global Food System generally but also inbound, I tell people that the BRI is you can either say the BRI is a smaller and baffle and NBAF is a bigger, bigger BRI, because we have very similar capabilities NBAF has level four. But the reality is that the BRI maybe a smaller version but has a much broader portfolio in terms of research, education and training. Now NBAF will work on a relatively narrow range of of diseases, it won't work on on poultry diseases, it won't work on foodborne pathogens, and it won't work on on plant pathogens, all of which the BRI will continue to work on the this seed is, is new, it's NIH funded, it's 11 and a half million dollars run by Juergen Richt and Phil Hardwidge, it's training people supporting innovative research on some of those projects are here at the PRI, which is which is always good, good for us. And CEZAD was funded last year, so it's got it, you know, almost another five years to go. So some of the research that is supporting is on those and NBAF priority pathogens. So that just consolidates a relationship with NBAF scientists, we know the people involved, they come here like, like I said, you have that average true unit, who staff regularly work at the BRI we are at the BRI their biosafety level three research facility. I've got multiple projects planned this year that are happening at the BRI, and some of those are specifically being conducted by USDA Arbor Drew Research Sciences as principal investigators got one coming up imminently. So it's an all round, productive, collaborative relationship between all of the people that are involved. Does it answer the question?

Yes, it does. Thank you so much. It does. And I have just had the opportunity just recently to start a discussion with Dr. Hardwidge. I was very excited to start understanding what he was doing and where that works fit into the overall picture of safety. And it certainly fits into the food safety area, the more I learn about what's going on in some of these areas, the more excited I am about it.

It is so exciting. You know, I mean, I come to work full of enthusiasm, everyday, sometimes more enthusiasm and less enthusiasm than other days, but always with enthusiasm. Because, you know, as a scientist, you can plan things, you can hope for a particular result. But you're never white, nothing in this way is research, right? You never quite know what's going to happen. And any day I walk into the BRI, maybe a day when one of our researchers makes a discovery that changes the world makes it a better place. I honestly believe that that's what that's how I feel every morning. I go home at night thinking well, it wasn't today sometimes. But I still go home, you know, happy and looking forward to the next day.

That's great. I'm gonna put Dr. Stack on the hot seat here for just a moment.  You've had a couple of questions that you had for Steve, what kinds of activities are you involved in there, Jim? And how, what's the relationship between the work you're doing in plant pathology and the BRI?

Yeah, sure. So I, from the plant perspective, I think we've been very fortunate that right from the beginning, the idea at BRI was to be comprehensive with respect to agriculture, public health, looking at that total package and not just isolating, which is very common. In the scientific world, we you create these silos, not necessarily by intent, but bits. As a consequence of the practice the funding streams and all of those things. You tend to get isolated, but the intent right up front with BRI has been to house all of the disciplines that are critical to sustaining our agricultural systems that then support public health. And so I think You know, we've been lucky that we came into the building right as it was going operational. Our first project was in 2009, with the wheat grass project. And, you know, we had, we're lucky to have on staff, a world renowned scientist, Barbara Valent, who has now been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, to lead that project. And her knowledge of that system was critical. She was the first one to look at this emerging population in South America and say, We need to be paying attention to this, this is a critical issue. And it's a good thing she did, because she, through her leadership, we assembled a team that conducted some of the fundamental research that is being applied now, as in fact, as was predicted, this pathogen began to spread around the world. So up until 2016, it was confined to South America, but now it has spread to Southern Asia in 2016, hit Bangladesh 2017, into eastern India, and in 2017 18 timeframe introduced into Zambia in East Africa. And that's a critical issue in East Africa, because that's part of the wheat belt there. So the risk of it spreading into Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia is quite high. And again, this goes to the ability to have a facility like BRI on campus that allowed us to do all this early research. We developed the diagnostic the detection assays that are being used globally. So again, having a facility that puts all that under one roof is quite good, because we share we use the same technologies. I mean, we use the same technologies, we oftentimes use the same approaches to the pathogens, even though the pathogens themselves are fundamentally different. And so they're the discussions we have. We're also fortunate that Marty Vanier and Bob Krause established a program called BRI fellows, and it's the leading researchers at BRI that get together on a regular basis have launched and discuss research. And it's an opportunity to say, wow, I didn't know you were doing that. Tell me more about it, I might over use that in my program. And so things like that happen, where we're able to get more out of it than just a building with individual laboratories. So it's been fundamental to us, it's been a critical asset for the scientists in plant pathology. I hope that answered your question.

It absolutely did. And it's given me a couple of ideas. And I'll probably be reaching out to all of you on a later date. No, it's wonderful. And as you know, Jackie, or I'm sorry, Jim, you and I have had discussions on a few occasions about the importance of interdisciplinary and thinking outside of the box. And I'll take this back to you, Steve, when, clearly you've got a lot of different areas that are feeding into the BRI. And different approaches, different types of research are happening there. Do you ever get outside of the basic sciences with what you're doing? And with that, I'm thinking of Scott here, and I'm thinking of some of the sociological research activities going on campus? Is there ever an interface between some of those types of activities that work at the BRI?

No, we haven't really opened up that collaborative avenue if you're like, I mean, we know that these some of the decisions that we work on are the types of diseases have very significant impact on on communities, obviously, and cluding sociological aspects, but, you know, the facility itself is very much designed to safely contain what we affectionately call high consequence pathogens. So it it does not have that component to it, although, I go to all sorts of enjoy, I used to go to all sorts of meetings and you know, inside K State and and outside and discuss our work I was, you know, I had a Zoom meeting and I did a presentation to the University Distinguished Professors Group on Tuesday. And we're always looking for new ideas, new partners, new ideas, new things to write grants and get money on. And we would certainly welcome that we've got a group in the National Cultural Biosecurity Center led by Dr. Venier, that very much interact with communities in Kansas with, you know, for the purpose of emergency preparedness. And that takes in, you know, the aspects of those small rural communities up to big cities. And then they've worked with people who run feedlots and processing plants, all that sort of thing to to develop that preparedness, you know, they've got, you know, considerable money over the especially Homeland Security, to prepare us as a nation against in, in currencies of potentially devastating pathogens. I was going to just build on, I was delighted when Jim mentioned the Marty Vanier and Bob Krause Fellows Program, because how fields move forward is quite often that diversity of ideas where you know, somebody who's never worked with mosquito borne diseases, viruses before, suddenly says, oh, have you ever thought of this? And, you know, you're so wrapped up in your own field that you sometimes have almost blinkered vision. And that sort of that's the innovation and the creativity that we need. And I say this, in all honesty, but what we do here, and this is my work Jim's work on yourselves on Global Food Systems. This is something that is too important for politics, and it's too important for egos. It's something that affects us all. And one of the significant joys for me here at K State is that we have a nominal expertise, we have great personalities, but they pulling in the same direction. I haven't seen the personal agendas, the personal politics, I mean, everybody wants to make a contribution and perhaps be known for it like our recent work  SARS, Covid too, and mosquitoes. But it doesn't get in the way of collaboration. And that's it's something we take for granted, I think, here at K State. But it isn't something that happens everywhere.

I wanted to make me want to back up just a little bit and ask why. Why BRI is so unique in this comprehensiveness. Right, so you said you and Jim both talked about the benefits of these interactions, and the benefit of there being the possibility of jumping in right in an area and you know, plant pathology, and then next to people studying mosquitoes. But but it's not typical, right? Or it's maybe, you know, particularly unique, so why is that? And what could you say a little bit more about, like, how it happened to come this way, and maybe what the challenges were, because we've talked about the benefits here. But so what happened?

So, um, I guess simply put, it's visionary leadership, you know, I can't take credit for any of this. I arrived at a going concern, you know, maybe at its infancy and it's certainly grown tremendously since I've been here. But in the early days of developing the BRI, Jim GEICO was involved. President refold was involved on trim which evolved. And, and subsequently, thank goodness, all of our our senior administrators and leaders. There is a sketch, I think, on a napkin of us facility like this. That was Jim, he probably knows more about this than I do. Because he Jim was actually a previous director of the BRI. So he knows more about how it came to pass in me. But there was that vision that these things are compatible. I mean, you know, inseparable in many ways from a Global Food System, perspective. Plants, animals, foodborne pathogens, they all affect us, they're all interconnected. And somebody said, you know, it should be under one roof, and that I hate using the word unique because the minute you say, Oh, it's a one of a kind, you know, oh, it's unique, then somebody hit lashing, you know, there's this place elsewhere that also has this, but in my experience, I can use the word unique with some conviction because I really do not know of any other facility that under one roof has the ability and the expertise to safely and securely work with foodborne pathogens, plant pathogens, and those animal diseases including zoonotic pathogens, that affect people. There are other facilities that you know, have a narrower portfolio and a much bigger footprint but There's nothing like the BRI. Jim, any comments?

You covered it fairly well. I would say why? Why that was the strategy here. I think it does go to what Steve said the, the leadership, at the time recruited a number of faculty to tackle this idea. And in the idea, the stimulus came from Senator Roberts, who came to K State and said something to you know, don't quote me here, but it something to the equivalent look, every year, you asked for this basket full of things, why don't you give me something big that that we can really sink our teeth into. And so the leadership basically looked at what we were doing at the time, and they pulled together people like Curtis Kastner, who's director of the Foods Science Institute. And, you know, I think, you know, other faculty were involved in it got together and said, what we really need to be, you know, the one thing we can't do yet, is work with some of these very high consequence pathogens that are either emerging or on the horizon that we should be paying attention to. And that's where that sketch on a napkin came from. So what that looked like, and literally, you know, sketches started to appear, well, it would look something like this. Well, of course, that went through many evolutionary steps. Before it got to a blueprint of what we see now is the BRI. I will re-emphasize, I think the point I made that is, I think the silo effect that you see in academic institutions, is not really this intentional, designed to keep people apart, it goes to some very basic things like our funding streams, and we don't apply to the same grants. We don't publish in the same journals. We're not oftentimes evaluated by the same sets of criteria. I mean, overall, yes, but there's a lot of variation in there. I think it's a you know, it's the island effect in ecology, where things diverge, to kind of evolve in their own tracks based on the selection pressures that exist inside, I think some of it is just the way we do our work. We don't have as many platforms for interaction. And fortunately, for the types of things I do, we now have to be BRI, that is that platform, it's the incubator building for thinking where we can sit together and think out loud and say, well, that's not gonna work. To come up with that one Stack, you know, but it's a good opportunity to, to learn what other how other people look at similar problems. So I think I don't think it's by design, I don't think people want to be siloed I just think it there are fundamental aspects of the academic institution that lead to that.

On a course in recognition of, of Senator Roberts contributions, and being a catalyst for these discussions and the creation of the VRI, we are based in Pat Roberts in hall

I was wondering how much that interaction benefits, if we talk a little bit more about how those benefits accrue. So some of its just from ideas, right from other people that maybe have not been working in the same area, but Steve you also talked about the complexity of the problems. And so for example, like a mosquito borne disease, it's not just the genetics of the virus that matters, or this or the genetics of the mosquito that matters, but interactions. And I know, you've done work on like, the interactions between the host and the mosquito in terms of right sort of that really affect the, you know, have an impact on the infectiousness of the virus, right. So I'm wondering how much having a bunch of different kind of work happening at the BRI might potentially help when you turn to look at these complex systems and looking at multiple parts of the systems, right.

Yeah. It's like, it's like Jim said, we do meet through our work and sometimes socially, and, you know, it's sad, but true that we were never far from our work, are we, as scientists, you know, you go out socially and most of the time all you talk about is work and, and that's what happens. I was involved in a conversation yesterday about, you know, a well put, could these pathogens of plants influence pathogens of animals and pathogenicity. When I did that UDP meeting the other night, I was specifically asked, Well, are there plant pathogens out there that can affect humans or, or animals and Dr. Stack immediately came to mind because he'll tell you he's working on this most bizarre pathogen radiobacter tops occurs, which bridges that that relationship between plants and animals in seems to have its foot in all kingdoms if you like. But Scott, to answer your question, just those casual conversations, being able to express, you know, frustrations of something that didn't work, and then having a different point of view with without the the dogma of, you know, people saying, Oh, well, that doesn't work because it never has, you know, for the mosquito side of things. When I first came to the States, it was a group funded by the John D And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. It was a parasite group. And then there was an arthropod borne diseases group. And the innovation there was it brought in people who knew a lot about insects in particular to software, but nothing about mosquitoes. Nothing about the diseases that they spread, but had a tremendous capacity to work with an organism that was relatively easy to genetically engineer. And that was where the breakthroughs come. It was, you know, you grow up in the sciences. And you know, you get convinced, oh, well, this has never been done before. And everything has been tried. And it just doesn't work. And I won't give up but it isn't where you focus your efforts, because often isn't where the funding is. But then you get to talk to a plant pathologist, or, you know, a food microbiologist. And you have to sort of press that reset, because they can throw out something at any time that you go home at night and you wake up Saturday, wake up at two o'clock and monitoring dial, I wonder if that would work and if that would apply. And that's what happens. And you agree, Jim? 

Yeah, absolutely. And more recently, for me, the bacterium that Steve just mentioned Rathi Pachter hypothesis I'm kind of working on for how we describe the new genetic population of this bacterium. And the hypothesis I have is that it most likely occurred within an animal. And so that's outside my area of expertise. And so I've been talking to the scientists that VRI on how we could explore that how we might figure out if that's where this rather substantial genetic change occurred in this bacterium? So I think, again, it's an opportunity to learn from other people.

Well, I guess that's kind of what it's all about, isn't it? Is getting groups in the room talking to one another, and learning from other people, understanding the diversity of where research can take us.

I have one more question for Steve. So certainly, within in the plant world, there is accumulating data on the ability of viruses to actually alter the behavior of their vector of their arthropod host. And I'm wondering if you see the same thing with some of the viruses and the mosquitoes, does the infection of the mosquito by the virus actually change its behavior? Say it's feeding behavior for conduct D something like that?

Good question. Yeah, I mean, so when I was a parasitologist, a long time ago, you know, there were some fascinating parasites, I launched it for infected and made them run up glass grass stems, late at night so that they could eat be eaten by sheep. So there's been discussion on how viruses might manipulate mosquito behavior in such a way that it would favor transmission. The, you know, these so the interest in these viruses can infect an animal at a very low dose, you might get one West Nile virus particle, and three days later, the animal is dead. And yet in a mosquito, you might get, I mean, serious, you might get 100 million or 1000 million virus particles in that mosquito. And it infects it for life, the whole life of the mosquito and some of these mosquitoes can live months and does not seem to have any of the pathological consequences to the vector. We have noo, we have no idea how these mosquitoes couldn't be infected and churning out. That's a technical term right? You know, having virus replicating enormous titers, and yet really just play about as normal. It's been suggested that maybe the viruses could disrupt feeding patterns in such a way that a virus would a virally infected mosquito would feed more frequently than a non infected mosquito. And the advantage to the virus, there would be that it would be transmitted more frequently and more efficiently. Is it possible that viruses could influence longevity, that wouldn't be obviously to the virus's advantage? Because the longer that mosquito lives, as long as it's infected for life, the longer it can be transmitted. So that would be not a good thing. It's been suggested there have been a few publications that say, Yeah, infected mosquitoes breed more often. And then there have been equally reputable publications. So well, no, they don't. We looked at mosquitoes over a long period of time with West Nile to see if there was pathology. And we had to take those mosquitoes out to become geriatric mosquitoes before we saw maybe a little bit effect, but it was inconsistent. We discussed at one point looking at mosquito behavior in infected mosquitoes. Technically, we never quite figured out how to do that to be honest, because the one thing you want in an infected mosquito is for it to be closely contained. I tell people, you know, one time mosquitoes are infected every week, we count those mosquitoes frequently, maybe every day, as we take samples, because we always have to, we take that safety and security very seriously, you have to know where your organism is, at all times. And so most of our studies are done in relatively small containers. To study the true behavior, a mosquito would need large cages. And maybe remote observation we talked about cameras to track must be no Flight Behavior and so forth. And, and we never really were able to figure it out. Because if you've got a very large cage with 100 mosquitoes in that it's difficult to keep counting them, you know, occasionally they die, they're on the floor, it's easy to do in a small carton, but not in a big container. And all of this is done in a laboratory setting, I had a very nice friend who said, you know, you can say that this happens in a lab with this species of mosquito, this type of virus, this period of time, but you cannot extrapolate beyond that. And the truth is, we don't know what mosquitoes really doing in the wild very, very thoroughly, you know, just to study them in the wild, you have to be in that environment with them, you know, some of the the Para domestic mosquito patterns that are indoors, but some of the mosquitoes are in you know, jungle environments, for example, or in in grasslands, where are they? How often are they flying? You can take snapshots, but not really know what the true behavior is. The bottom line at the moment is there is no consistent there are no consistent data that suggests that the behavior old or the feeding patterns, black pants or anything are consistently changed by viral infection.

So I am not asking you to comment here. But I mean, just as a as a working hypothesis, you might predict that though, since the virus is dependent upon the vector to deliver it to a toast for replicate, unless evolutionarily, the the virus in say, the human host, or the animal host is incidental, and it's its main focus is the vector itself. And so those are some of the hypotheses that are being kind of tossed about in the plant. So well. Thank you, Steve. Yeah, appreciate that.

Lots to talk about Jim.

Indeed.

There’s lots to talk about. 

The only thing that I that I wanted to get an opportunity to ask you about was no, there's some work on SARS, Covid to BRI, and sort of in the current world that we're in sort of any, any thoughts you have about about some of the complexities that we've talked about about you know, host virus vector. I mean, there's not a vector here that we're worried about, but complex interactions, that there are lessons that We might have for SARS Covid. Two and COVID. Going forward.

Yeah. Oh, Scott, I could have paid you for that question. So, you know, so last year, as the university was, was closing down, you know, personal interactions very much, and many other facilities and buildings were being closed down. It was early. I mean, we knew we knew this was the case, but it was quickly realized by the bar leadership that the PRI isn't the sort of facility that you can just close down and open up again, it's not like, you know, you flip the switch is such a sophisticated facility in terms of air handling and safety, security, everything and keeping our pathogens secure, that we really just couldn't close it, and then turn the turn the lights back on and parently generate generators and or the HVAC system. And I'm be back to normal. So, you know, thank goodness, we were able to rearrange our stopping slightly with a reduced stuff. But we've never closed we've always had people on site. An Luckily. Again, the administration said, well, this research that you do, on the expertise that you have can, could be turned towards COVID, we already had investigators sort of knocking at the door saying I can work we need the answers. For COVID. It's a new pathogen in a new environment, and there's so much that we don't know. So one of the beauties of being a University is that we can be nimble. Government labs probably don't have that luxury. But we were very quickly able as an institute, and I mean, as a university, the K State Institute, not just the BRI, to enable research to be done on SARS, Covid too, you know, the IBCs, the IR cooks met, especially to review proposals and protocols for us. And we were very quickly able to wind down and complete a couple of research projects, but start projects on SARS, Covid two. And my theme, obviously, was mosquitoes. And I posed a very simple question, can this virus can infect mosquitoes and could it be transmitted, because if it could be transmitted, then that would potentially have a huge impact on transmission dynamic, you know, mosquitoes bite, feed on almost anybody indiscriminately, if they can find them. And it's the right mosquito, they will feed on people. So that means that children and you know, different age groups, you might not be susceptible to being exposed to the virus would all be exposed. So we did? Well, we say it's relatively simple. So we actually inoculated the virus into three species of mosquito, which is the most rigorous test of a virus capacity to infect a mosquito, we get three different species. And whereas as a researcher, as a scientist, you, you hope for positive results. There was a, there was a big part of us, basically saying, Well, I hope the experiments work because we know what we're doing, and we're gonna do them properly, but please, please, that this virus does not infect mosquitoes. And that, that is, that is what happened. And we were the first researchers to do these experiments and publish it in a peer review. Journal. I got the data on this with a UDP meeting the other day. So we, we published the work, the university very quickly wrote a journalistic piece to highlight it. And today, that work has been reported in 618 news outlets in 42 countries and been translated to 18 different languages. You know, that's, I mean, it gives me personal pleasure. But in terms of highlighting the capabilities of what we can do at the BRI, in a relatively short space of time, that really puts us on the map. I mean, that puts a university on the map, which is, which is good for all of us to get that sort of attention and recognition. And then we had other researchers, notably Juergen Richt team, you know, doing studies on pigs on in cats. Early on, there were a few cases reported that companion animals could be infected. And so it was important to do that research to just, you know, get the data so that decisions could be made based on data and not just on assumptions. 

Great work.

I suppose just a comment that, as you said right at the beginning, the Global Food System Initiative is something that I think more broadly touches all of us at the university than maybe any other initiative. Jim does brilliant presentations on the impact of food insecurity, local and global scales, politics and everything. I mean, it's so impressive. And for you to for us to have this program here and for you to have the leadership roles in this is so important at all scales for K State and for and for the world. Really.

I want to thank all of you. This has been really interesting discussion. And thanks so much for coming on for giving me your time.

Thanks a lot for your time today. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks very much.

Take care. Yeah, bye bye. Bye.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

In this episode, we welcome Dr. Christer Aakeröy, university distinguished professor in the Department of Chemistry at Kansas State University. Dr. Aakeröy’s research lab focuses on supramolecular and crystal engineering. By translating molecular function into predictable intermolecular recognition, he is creating versatile pathways for improving processing, performance and shelf life of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, dyes, and energetic materials.

Transcript:

I'm thrilled to bits with the way that this is working out. And even if we don't make the world's best new fertilizer, I'm still perfectly comfortable with learning so much more about what is required. And maybe I can't make the difference but my students and Ganga’s students and postdocs can take this to the next level and I think that's the legacy that is worth pursuing.

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy.

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a food scientist.

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Kansas State University Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. In today's podcast we will visit with Dr. Christer Aakeröy. Dr. Aakeröy is a University Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at K State. His area of research is focused on the science of communication and change between molecules. This work emphasizes the synthesis of organic molecules, some of which are used in the formation of cocrystals. This versatile material can be used in creating new methods for delivery of important components in agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and other areas where controlled directed releases useful. In this podcast we will discuss Dr. Aakeröy's interdisciplinary work with Dr. Ganga Hettiarachchi, Professor of Agronomy here at K State on the targeted release of soil nutrients in crop production.

I should say before we start that, unlike my usual self, I'm going to be rather the mirror today. I'm just fascinated by the work that Christer is doing. But I know that you're a chemist. So I know that you'll have a lot smarter questions about Reno that presupposes a lot of don't question. Fair. But you know, and Christer, just for your edification, as I, I'm really fascinated by you have to know that. Obviously, I'm not a chemist. And it's probably the weakest of my subjects when it comes to scientific understanding. I'm really I understand what you're doing. But the CO crystallization that's, I'm, I need some help on that. So just definitely specific growth as we go along to get that but I'm really curious. And I hope that when we leave here, I understand this idea of CO crystallization better.

Okay, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna attempt some ill advised or ill conceived analogies in that case, to try to put that science across. And yeah, it might get a little risky at times, but we'll clean you be happy to know that chemistry is only about communication. That's all there is to it. There you go. There you go.

I was struck by that. As you know, the first word on your description is communication. And I think, Oh, really? I'm intrigued, but I'm not sure. So let's find out more.

To welcome today, our guest Dr. Christer Aakeröy, who is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at Kansas State University. In welcoming Dr. Aakeröy, as I get started here, I would, I would like to say that I have people ask me how something like chemistry fits into the Global Food System. And from my perspective, it's a critical piece. And this is critical as any of the other pieces is as critical as transportation, or Agronomy or Plant Pathology or any of the above. One of the analogies I use frequently is to discuss food from a grocery store or from a farmer's market being at the very tip of the iceberg. And that's where we interface most frequently with the food that we however, the fundamentals that happen in research in the basic sciences and chemistry and physics and those types of areas are at the base of the iceberg. And those are the things that support ongoing abilities to move forward with technologies and that type of thing and it's as critical a piece of the food system as anything. So with that being said, I will then jumped into, again welcoming Dr. Aakeröy, and asked if you could give us a little background on who you are, how you got interested in the work that you're doing. And then maybe we'll just take it from there.

Thank you very much. And thank you very much for inviting me to this podcast as well. Maybe we should warn the listeners to this particular episode that I have relatively limited experience with farming or food science, food production, and food distribution. But as a chemist, I still believe that chemistry is underpinning all of these different efforts that we are looking at. So maybe there's going to be something that can be useful to the listeners. At the end of the day. 

My own background is quite, quite diverse. I grew up in Sweden, I have a Norwegian passport. And I was never ever ever going to be a scientist. My goal when I was in high school was to be a psychologist or a psychiatrist, I didn't really know the difference between the two at that point. I applied to go to do psychology at Uppsala University in Sweden, they had only 10 positions. And I was the first on the reserve list. So I didn't get introduced ecology unfortunately, as a result that I decided to take a year off. And maybe this was my first contact with food because I took a job in a meat processing plant meat packing and meat processing. I learned a lot about the sort of rather harsh end of the Global Food Systems industry. And I can't really say that it was love at first sight, I have to be perfectly honest. It was long hours hard work. But I learned a lot about people I learned a lot about different skills. And it wasn't really something that I ever thought I do. But I spent a year in a meat packing and meat processing plant. After that I decided to switch so I became a substitute teacher and stuff because I still couldn't get into psychology at Uppsala University. So I became a substitute teacher. And I don't know, if you remember what it was like, at school, when you had a substitute teacher. If you had a substitute teacher, nobody would do anything. But it was to me it was a really, really interesting and valuable experience because you walk into a classroom with maybe 30 or 40 students. They're not interested in you if you're not interested in the topic. And it is really a challenge to try to basically have maybe 30 seconds or a minute to win or lose that battle. You walk in you try to read the room, you try to figure out who how you can communicate with these students. And it turns out that I, I think I won more battles that I lost by and large, which made me realize I wanted to become a teacher at the end of the day. So I went to University eventually. I did Chemistry, and I had minors in Mathematics and Biology and in Pedagogy. So I actually got myself a teaching degree from Uppsala University, I started teaching still never had any intention of becoming a full time proper scientist. Long story short, I had a chance to travel to the UK to do some Chemistry at the University of Sussex, which is south of London. It wasn't really because I was interested in Chemistry, per se. It was more a case of having an opportunity to do live abroad. First London which is which was a fantastic experience. One thing led to another I was offered a place to do a PhD at the University of Sussex. I didn't quite know what a PhD was, unfortunately. So of course I had to say yes, so I accepted Teamspeak and that was in Chemistry. I still didn't really know what I wanted to do at that point, which is strange, because at that point I had a doctoral degree in chemistry. I applied for two jobs. One was the British Petroleum. And one was at Queen's University of Belfast, I interviewed at both places. My interview at Queen's University in Belfast is probably was the other of the whole podcast itself. But I was offered a job at Queen's University Belfast and I stayed there for three years did Inorganic Chemistry. I got tenure. And then I resigned two weeks later because I had been sort of headhunted by Kansas State University. I couldn't really refuse. To be perfectly honest, I never saw myself moving to your living in the United States, let alone in the Midwest, in the middle of the Midwest. But now I've been here for close to over 20 years and certainly from a career perspective and a life perspective. It's probably the most definitely the best decision I ever made.

I have, like I said, I've lived in that K State now for over 20 years. My research spans a wide range topics, food size is bad in minor, minor, minor minor, out of that. We did a lot of fundamental research in chemistry. And we can talk more about that in a while. I teach a variety of freshman classes I do, like I still really, really enjoyed the teaching. The bigger the class, the more enjoyment I get out of it, I think. So I can't wait for this particular lockdown and, and zoom based educational methodology to be over so we can actually get that teaching in person again, because luckily, the research is going my students are in the research labs on a regular basis. So we haven't been too badly affected by that. But yeah, I mean, so difficult times, but we're going to get through it. And we're going to get through it because of big science and STEM research. That's basically what's going to help us out in this process. So that's a little bit of a starting point.

Well, thank you for that background and overview. i It's interesting to understand the directions and different directions that people take and getting from, you know, what they think they want to do when they're 18 years old, where you actually ended up today and certainly ending up in Manhattan, Kansas is taking you a long way from where you started.

Actually all senses that he senses. Absolutely. In reading through the research that you have been most heavily focused on at K State. I keep seeing the term cocrystals over and over again popping up. Can you explain to us in layman's terms a bit about what that research is? What is the cocrystal? And how does it impact research?

Right, so let's in that case, we have to probably go back to basics a little bit. So making a contrast is essentially trying to convince different types of molecules to coexist in a crystalline or solid material. And that might sound relatively straightforward. But it turns out that molecules more than likely are not keen to coexist with other molecules that are different from themselves. In the same crystalline, solid environment. In many ways, molecules are rather selfish. They like to hang out with molecules that look exactly like themselves. They are a little bit suspicious. Molecules, they don't look like themselves. So in some ways, they are a little bit like people as well. So one of the one of the buzzwords that we use in my research is that we think we like to talk about the Chemistry that we do in terms of molecular sociology, or psychology, we are basically, we're basically trying to figure out how we can convince molecules to interact productively, to recognize other molecules to bind to other molecules. Because when different molecules bind and hang out together, they can perform and do very, very different things. And there are many analogies that you can make with this. For example, if you have a football team, with only quarterbacks, that football team is not going to win anything at all. But if you have different molecules or players in different positions, then as a whole team, then you can do very, very, very different things. And the same is true for molecules. I think one of the illustrations that we sometimes refer to is that, let's say, let's say if you have a cup of coffee in the morning, and some people for some reason like to put sugar in the coffee. At the end of the day, you forget about a cup of coffee, and you leave the coffee cup sitting for a day or two, you come back to it and the water is gone. And at the bottom of the cup, you will have crystals of caffeine. And you'll have different separate crystals of sugar. Now each trickle contains billions upon billions and billions of molecules of caffeine in caffeine crystals, and billions upon billions of dollars of molecules of sucrose, no sugar in the sugar crystals, you will not find a single molecule being able to fit in to the other type of crystal because they're the molecules are so selective and so specific about what other molecules they're willing to spend time with, and what other molecules that are willing to recognize and bind with. So in that sense, molecules are very, very selfish. So making a cocrystal to figure out what molecules want. And what we tried to do in my group, then we did for a longest time, that was the basic research that we did was to try to interrogate individual molecules and find out. So based upon the shape, the size, the particular functionality of a molecule, what would that molecule look like in a potential partner? Is it something to do with shape? Is it something to do with size? Is it something to do with the different elements that make up that molecule? So in many, many, many early experiments, we played a molecular dating game, if you like. But it's really like a dating game. So we essentially, we introduced one target molecule to another set of molecules, maybe three or four different potential partners. And we let them spend time together, we dissolve them together in some solvent. And as the experiment, figure out, if they did crystallize together in a cocrystal, or if they just went their separate ways. So based upon hundreds, if not 1000s, of experiments, we can begin to figure out dating guidelines for molecules. So this point, we are really treated, that knowing what a molecule wants. So if you can draw a molecule, if you can describe a molecule to me, I can probably give you a pretty decent idea of what kind of partner is the best fit for that molecule. And that is the basis for how we make country schools. So calculus is just a macroscopic overview of that. So we convince one type of molecules to form a new solid material with another type of molecules. And the reason why we want to do that is we want to make new materials where the properties of that material is taking the best of both worlds. And that's really the driving force for making cocrystals. And that's just very, very briefly what a country's length, this might sound a little bit like, like, regular dating, as well. And, um, we have actually made the molecular dating. I'm going to tell you about that.

Fascinating. It is fascinating, Christer, this is really helpful to me, I find myself wanting to follow up on several different possible threads of the, you know, human social analogy that you suggest to us. So when you say that you had a dating app for Oculus? I can I assume them that the rules that you have discovered, for what molecules like to hang out with other modern molecules are fairly contextualist or objectives? In other words, I would think that whether or not size or shape or whatever other characteristic is relevant to a good match would depend by and large on what kind of molecule or what class of molecule? I mean, how hard is it to sort of abstract out these rules to other kinds of molecules and larger groups?

Yeah, no, I mean, that is that is the the big question, because, obviously, in order to have these, in order to identify these guidelines for molecular dating, they have to be somewhat transferable between classes of compounds and between classes of molecules, you can't just have one set of guidelines for molecule A and then have another set of guidelines for molecule B, because then you're not making any progress. But it turns out that, by a large molecules are just like many of us quite superficial, in that sense, is looked for, for a few couple of key characteristics. They don't really worry too much about personality, initially, at least it's usually about looks in some usually about a trade. And it's usually about appearance. And that typically most frequently leads to a recognition event, which leads to binding. And once that binding takes place, the chances are that you are going to poetry's to where both partners are present together, whether the properties of that material are going to be better or worse than those expressed by the two individuals. That is difficult to predict. But the big thing the molecular dating app that my students put together, essentially will be really, really, really somewhat frightening. primitive in essence, because you've put in a few descriptors of your molecule, and then the program will list a set of potential partners as likely, very likely or highly unlikely to be suitable candidates. And that's it. So it's, it's a swipe left, swipe right kind of deal. But just for molecules. Wow, you didn't know that about molecules. So they had personalities that had a social life like that, did you?

I had no idea. No, I did not.

Ultimately, the reason why we want to pursue this is that, for example, if I can, there is the first application we looked at here was actually in the pharmaceutical industry. Because it turns out that a vast number of potentially useful pharmaceutical drugs fail to reach the patient, because they have, they may have a really good biological properties, biological activity, but they have very poor physical properties, physical properties, like solubility, for example, you'd be astounded at how many compounds fail in development, because they're not soluble in water. Now, if a drug isn't soluble in water, it's not going to be good to water based organisms like us. So what we tried to do in that context was to try to combine the biologically active, maybe a cancer drug, which was poorly poorly soluble in water, with a co former, a partner that was very, very soluble in water. Now, if we convinced the two to live together in one crystalline material, we could take advantage of the favorable biological activity of the cancer drug, and the favorable physical water solubility or the other component. And that will then take us from something that couldn't possibly make it to the market into a formulation that potentially could make it to the market because now, it combined the best of both worlds, trying to figure that out in advance, is still something that we can't do with too much certainty. For the longest time, we would still be trying to work out how we get those molecules to live together, and that we have a pretty good handle on.

you, in some cases drives the process by a solvent that is almost partitioning, or do you have to add energy to the system to get it to just fleetingly change? Its its three dimensional property, so it would then start it would interact? And then once it's sort of caught?

Yeah, I was gonna say, Yeah, well, not to push this analogy too far. But initially, we made we do all these experiments in solution. So we have to have a solvent that we can use. And more often than not, it's the solvent is some sort of alcohol. I'm not saying that that is helping the molecules to get together. But you need to find a solvent, it could be, it could be an alcoholic, could be water, it could be acetone, it could be chloroform, it could be all sorts of things. But you need some sort of solvent in which both components are reasonably comfortable. Because if they're both reasonably comfortable, then there is no partitioning or no segregation, within that experimental space within that mixture. And that will then facilitate the close proximity of the two, or the different types of molecules. And that's ultimately going to make it easier for them to nucleate or to bind to recognize them to nucleate. And ultimately, to crystallize together. solvent is an important choice, but we don't have to add, we don't heat them up. We simply rely on the sort of improved the ability that Partner A and Partner B have together to the stability they have with themselves. Okay, yeah. So this is pretty much like a partnership between humans as well. I think the idea is that two humans in a partnership will be stronger than the individual components by themselves. And I think the same applies in many ways to molecules to so there’s an energetic benefit to having different components together. So molecular diversity in this sense is a really strong driving force for what we try to accomplish.

Gotcha. Okay. And how do you measure the outcome of the experiment? If you now have a solution that has a compound B, compound, see this the cocrystal have that?

Yes. Yeah, it's relatively straightforward actually. So in the case of, so you can measure some simple things the left if we take the example of caffeine, which is pure, solid, and sugar, which is the pure solid, so we can measure their melting point meaning there thermal stability separately, and we can make measure their solubility of water separately. And then we make the country school. And then we can measure the melting point of the cocrystal, which is inevitably going to be different to the melting point of individuals we can make, we can measure the aqueous solubility. And by doing those kinds of measurements systematically, we have, we fixed the target. And we test it out with a series of different core formers that are a little bit different from each other. And that way, then we can begin to correlate physical properties of the bulk material to some sort of feature of the individual molecules. Because ideally, at the end of the day, we would like to be able to predict basic properties that are fundamentally important just by looking at the molecules themselves currently, that cannot be done.

Yeah, right. Otherwise, it just be a series of giant survey experiments every time.

Exactly. And I'm too lazy to do 1000 experiments, I would rather just do experiments to do the right experiments. These guidelines and the way we're developed now, structure property correlations, is helping us to do that. And I think having multiple components in one Christian crystalline environments means that we can make these we can tailor make the properties. And we can make them more or less suit or more suitable to a specific target and to a specific application. So for the pharmaceutical applications, we typically we're looking for increased aqueous solubility, so solubility of water. In many agrochemical applications, we're looking for the opposite. We're looking for maybe fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides that are less soluble in water, which means that you have a slow, much more controlled release of the active substance. So if you have a sudden rainfall, which can happen all over the place, the whole, all the pesticides and herbicides that you've sprayed on the crops in the fields is not going to disappear overnight, it'll still be slowly slowly released over an extended period of time. Now, if we can tailor those kinds of simple properties, stability, mechanical strength, melting, temperature, ability to withstand moisture, heat, then we have something that is classified or can be thought of as smarter or more responsive material. And that can be an issue anti cancer drug, it can be a fertilizer, it could be pesticide, it could be an explosive, it could be all sorts of things.

Great segue into discussing a little bit about the seed grant proposal that you received funding for recently, as the title of this is exploring cocoa crystal technologies for efficient and sustainable nutrient management. And this project you're doing in conjunction with Dr. Ganga Hettiarachchi, and in the Department of Agronomy and in the Agricultural College, can you give us a bit of background on how you ended up working with Dr. Hettiarachchi on this and kind of the direction that that proposal is taking.

But again, it's it's I think it's random, I think that's the best way to describe it. Actually, I actually met Ganga at a sort of a Buddhist ceremony. It was not a Buddhist, but she was hosting a ceremony for Ali was the sort of funeral service for a parent at one of my students. And Ganga was kind enough to host this in our house. So that's where we met up. And it turns out, the first thing she said to me is that I was your student at one point to which made me feel incredibly old, obviously. But it turns out, Ganga, who is now a full professor in Agronomy was in my very first class that I taught in Inorganic Chemistry here at Kansas State University. But anyway, so yeah, we had met before. And we started talking about the things that she was doing, and the things that we were doing, and we realized that there was an interface that we might be able to explore and exploit because she is sort of world famous world class soil scientist, and she knows everything there is to know about sorry, chemistry. I know nothing about solid chemistry, but I know how to change physical properties of materials such as fertilizers. So that made us think that maybe if we can make some new formulations and new or different types of fertilizers with slightly different properties, then she would be able to test them out in her lab with her expertise. And figure out if these new formulations, actually, they made a substantial significant impact on performance in such a way that we could maximize efficiency and minimize negative environmental, environmental impacts of over fertilizing, for example. So that's how that little project got started. That's great.

They had in looking through the proposal that you submitted on this, I know that you're in the process of working through this project at this point in time and don't have results yet. But there were three separate approaches, is can you step through some of those and explain a bit about how the cocrystal portion of this is going to be working with an interfacing with what the soil science pieces of it is doing? Right, I'm referring to the organic urea cocrystals for ionic cocrystals And then you have organico crystals for developing both nitrogen and phosphorus. It's there's some background you can give us on those.

Yeah. So, the starting point for this is very simple molecule called urea, urea is the is the probably the most common fertilizer, I think approximately 220 million tons of urea is produced every year globally 90% of that is used as fertilizer. Now, urea has a lot of great advantages, it has the high nitrogen content 46% of the weight of urea is nitrogen. So, it has the highest nitrogen content of any fertilizer, it is cheap to a large extent, but there are several drawbacks with this particular fertilizer first of all, it is really soluble, which on some level is good, but it also means that it can leach out into the groundwater really rather quickly, which is a disadvantage. Urea by itself is not absorbed or taken up by the plants urea has to go through several steps, which takes place in the soil. So urea is converted to ammonium ions to hydrogen carbonate and to nitrates. And then in those formats, then the plants can make nitrogen be more accessible. Now, the breakdown of urea is usually done by a naturally occurring enzyme that will break down urea, but a large amount of the urea that is being broken down does not reach the plant ultimately, because the breakdown is too fast, some of the urea is going to be into greenhouse gases. So some of the urea when it breaks down produces ammonia, and dye nitrogen oxygen, oxygen oxide, which are both greenhouse gases. And nitrate ions contributes negatively to eutrophication as well. So there are plenty of drawbacks with urea. And at the end of the day, it turns out that almost 50% of the RIA that is applied to crops globally is not going to reach the farm. So if we do the math, then it means that we are spreading maybe close to 100 million tonnes of fertilizers that will never reach the plant. Now that is not efficient. So, the way we're going to try to tweak this a little bit was to try to make cocrystals of urea, where the CO former or the partner would tailor their solubility in such a way that the unwanted breakdown of urea was going to be slowly slow down. So, a smaller portion of was going to disappear into the atmosphere and a smaller portion of the urea was going to disappear into the groundwater. So that would maximize the efficiency of the transformation from urea to nitrogen that plants could actually absorb. So, initially, our job is to try to make a large number of different characteristics of urea.

So the what we are trying to accomplish in my group then is to try to change some of the physical properties or the Yeah, some of the physical properties Urei itself, notably its solubility and stability, because we want to try to minimize urea breakdown in such a way that we don't siphon off a lot of the nitrogen into unwanted products that will have a negative environmental impact. And we don't want to siphon off nitrogen in forms that will lead to increased eutrophication. So we want to max it really would like to have 100% of the nitrogen that we put on the crops end up in the plant. So we call for most that we combined with urea are primarily there at this point at least to try to reduce Use or control the solubility of water in such a way that urea goes in much more slowly. And there is more of a controlled release of the fertilizer over an extended period of time, which, in principle then should maximize the efficiency of the formulation and maximize the distribution of fertilizer onto the fields. Ultimately, if we can limit the amount of fertilizer that we distribute, without losing any of the beneficial effects on food production and food supply, that is obviously the ultimate goal for that particular part. And for those other two projects that we have funded in that seed grant, it's going to be very, very similar. We haven't done a lot of work in that area, because we really only started a couple of months ago. So initially, our focus had been primarily on making these organic crystals. I'm happy to report and I just found this out literally a couple of hours ago, because I was on a Zoom meeting with Ganga in the agronomy department. And her and her students or postdocs have started to work on exploring if there are notable differences in soil samples that have been treated with pure urea compared to those that have been treated with cocrystals of urea, because you can imagine that the worst case scenario for us would be that once they go into the soil, there is no noticeable difference in their effect. But I'm happy to report that it turns out that the formulations that we've made, these countries and stuff we've made, make a significant difference in terms of how the breakdown of urea into these different components take place. And this gives us a lot of encouragement, because now we can begin to tailor make partners, because we know that it works, the proof of principle is in place. So we can now begin to target co foremost that can provide additional value to the fertilizer, we can provide micronutrients, we can provide components that would control the way in which the enzyme breaks down the array itself. Which means that again, we can dial in release and transfer and transformation of nitrogen that can be utilized by the plant to nitrogen, it can be utilized by the plant in a much more manageable manner. And I think long term, that's really what we're hoping to do to better manage the nitrogen cycle. And ultimately, the goal to do that is to provide more sustainable food supplies, and maximize efficiency. 

And also to minimize the environmental impact we I personally live in the country, and we are water comes from a well. There's farmland all around us. And nitrates is probably my biggest concern about the water coming out of that. 

Well, right. Yeah, to pick up on that point. And if we can, if we can more, or if we can better control the release of nitrogen into the soil and make it more available to the plant when they needed, then of course, we can address both environmental issues, cost and sustainability all at once. So it's kind of a it's a, in some ways, is a blue sky project. But I think the results that we've seen, even after a few months on working on this are actually quite promising. Wow. And we couldn't do any of this without thinking that global food systems avoided us and I couldn't do any of this without the expertise that can get a heterogeneous group are providing us as well. So it's yeah, it's a really, really good interface between two areas where she's in the field in a very, very different way. And I'm in the lab, doing very fundamental science and I in a million years, I didn't think I was going to do something that you one day might be actually be able to buy in a store. But here we are, may not be too many years down the line.

The initial results that you just stated are really exciting. I think that the potential for having a major impact is as you said, it's kind of a blue sky project with the sounds like demand the potential is high. What are the other things that I know from this and really through the Global Food Systems we're trying to promote in a big way one of the things we try to promote obviously, is the interdisciplinary activities which clearly you and you and Ganga have have taken to a great level. But the other thing is with the students and I was you know in thinking through how the students are interfacing with one another, I thought you know, the soil students have most certainly taken chemistry classes. So the chemistry has been important part of what they do, but the chemistry students, chances of them having background in the soils area is probably pretty limited. Where do you see the benefit of that kind of interaction are the students having the ability to work together and kind of broaden their base understanding of things as you work through this project.

But I think every time Well, first of all, every time you step out of your comfort zone, you learn something about yourself about what you do and what above what other people do. But I think in practice, so we spent 10 years developing molecular dating rules. And then suddenly, we go over to agronomy. And we, we look at actual samples of sand of soil. And we begin to realize what the challenges are, and how we might begin to address those by changing what we do in the chemistry lab, in order to better suit and better serve the requirements and the challenges that real life scientists face on a daily basis. And ultimately, then, the real life challenges that the farmer or the consumer are facing on a daily basis. If you don't walk out of your lab, if you don't physically see smell, I should say taste. But almost if you don't feel that in your hands, you don't really, really understand what you need to be able to do in order to make a difference. So I think I know that my students has, has really started thinking much more differently and much more deeply about how she can use her skill set on making these concrete skills into being able to translate that into products, to translate that into something that will have a huge benefit, not just to know the local economy in in the Midwest, but also to people back in her home country. So she's from Zimbabwe, and she there is a very agro driven country as a learner, we've been having several conversations about that maybe one day, she would like to go back and educate, teach and make a big, big difference in terms of how farming is done in the faraway place 1000s of miles literally away from Kansas State University. And I think the students in the agronomy department also get a different understanding of how you make these particular compounds and what is needed in order to characterize and classify and, and develop new materials. So I couldn't really think of a better connection between real life out there and synthetic fundamental chemistry in the lab, in my group, I mean, I'm thrilled to bits with the way that this is working out. And even if we don't make the world's best new fertilizer, I'm still perfectly comfortable with learning so much more about what is required. And maybe I can't make the difference. But my students and Ganga students and postdocs can take this to the next level. And I think that's the legacy that is worth pursuing.

Absolutely.

You are singing the Global Food Systems Initiative song.

I didn't realize you had a song as far as I know, I mean, it's, it's so critically important. And I recall, when I first started working in this position, I'm talking to somebody out of the chemistry department. And so that was there was a physicist or the chemist and I was telling them kind of the work that we were trying to do in bringing interdisciplinary groups together. And one of them looked at me and said, We don't have any impact on the food system. We're in this area. And I thought, oh, goodness, there's work to be done. And convincing on both sides of that equation, that there's so much interaction that's so critical.

Well, I mean, I think as a chemist and I, obviously a little bit biased here, but I think chemistry forms a critical part in every single scientific pursuit because we can make new things. Yes, we can make new molecules, we can make things that never ever existed before. And as a funny aside, actually, I never realized this until I started working with Ganga on this project. So you Raya, this molecule that I've been referring to several times, was first synthesized in 1828, by foolish Birla. And this was essentially represented the birth of organic chemistry. This was by and large, the first organic molecule that was synthesized in the laboratory. So there is there's a historical arc here that I that I quite like as well. Yes, indeed.

Just to follow up on this point about collaboration and interdisciplinary research, you know that I've been fortunate enough to be a part of, I don't know, four or five of these podcasts now. And it really is interesting for someone who has a life outside of the scientific enterprise, to come to a new understanding about how science works. I mean, even, you know, from outside of science, I think of it as a competitive venture. So, early on in our conversation, I was thinking to myself, I wonder if there's anyone else in the world who has a lab that's doing similar kinds of investigations with molecular dating rules? Surely there is, but maybe not, I don't know. But now that we've come full circle, for the end of the conversation, I'm realizing that the most important point was that this collaboration happened. And you might not have ever discovered the ways that they would have been applied without this kind of collaboration. So I'm glad we got this thing.

To address your point as well, of course, there is, I mean, science and getting to a certain result or finding a cure for COVID-19, or finding a better material, there is a competition. But I think getting gaining an advantage. You do that by collaborating with other world class scientists. And we have a lot of those on this campus. And right now, we can do different things with our cocrystal technology, purely because we're collaborating with soil scientists that we couldn't do before. And as a result, other groups that might be working in similar areas that were trying to do similar or related things on a fundamental level. Now as Grambling because they don't have the same sort of soil scientists working with their materials that we have. So not only is it a friendly collaboration, where we learn something and the students learn something, it does give us an advantage, a competitive advantage, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna lie about that. That's, that's part of the equation as well, of course.

That's part of what you know, through working for the global through the Global Food Systems at Kansas State, being able to I mean, that's agriculture is one of the main areas that K State offers, I think that probably internationally, we're known, known well, for those things. And so wherever we can, we can find ways to, to build off of that, and, and take advantage of, as you said, world class research in the areas that we'll be impacting that system overall, is, is something that we want to continue doing.

Yeah, I mean, even though I have, have a relatively recently evoke an interest in, in Global Food Systems, I think having this kind of umbrella, where a lot of different scientists from different areas can meet to exchange ideas, really leverages the expertise in different departments and different colleges even in unique and highly productive ways. So of course, I'm very grateful for that. And I'm delighted to be part of those.

It's wonderful. And it's interesting that the way you and Ganga came together was so random. I'm hoping that over time, we will be able to take a little of that randomness out of the equation and find better and better ways of connecting folks together to have some discussions to see where, where, where the fit that works, or doesn't work.

Well, maybe you can design an app for how to get different faculty together.

I've got some ideas on how to do that. Let me know, I would be happy to take that on. 

It's probably being licensed as we speak. I'm not quite sure if I can reveal that in public. 

Yes. Just one more sort of like, big picture question, after urea, what's next? I mean, do you see yourself continuing with working with other molecules that might have applications in the food system setting? Can you imagine what that might be next? Or do you think you might go back to focus more exclusively on some of the work that's more applicable to the Cancer Center? I'm just curious, what's next?

Well, I have a relatively short attention span. So I tend operate with numerous projects all at once. So we have projects going in, that are sponsored by the Department of Defense for making more stable explosives. We are working with Yeah, I mean, that's another that's another I was not gonna say impactful because that's what we tried to minimize impact sensitivity. But we're working to improve stability of explosives. We are working with pharmaceuticals. We are working with agrochemicals sometimes it's difficult to plan ahead and I'd like this random walk through the scientific world and the real world and sometimes you just come across an opportunity to do something. Right now we are potentially looking at fragrances, which is a whole different story where we can try to control the release of fragrances in a more fashion. So there's a lot of things I mean, every time we think about how can we control or improve the physical properties of any material or any substance, we might be able to make a difference, it's just a matter of finding enough hours in the day. And it could really be that there'll be looking more closely at pesticides and herbicides, to make them more targeted, to make them more efficient. And to make them more environmentally friendly.

I can think of dozens of applications of something like this, all the way from the agronomy of the agricultural system all the way up through the finished food product, things like like flavor enhancement, or flavor compounds coming coming out at different times during the during the the eating process of things like managing the chemicals that are used to extend shelf life of products. They're just there's so many applications that something like this might fit nicely into.

Yeah, I think all you need is curiosity. Yeah.

Yeah, I think getting the Christers and the Gangas of the world to sit down and talk over a glass of wine.

You call it random, and the way that you tell the story of how you ended up in science and at Kansas State, and you know, there's there does seem to be a sense of randomness to it. But, I have to think that there isn't that not that it's preordained, or anything like that. But as you very well say it's curiosity and expressing interest in those around you, that leads us to these seemingly random discoveries. And I can't help but also observe that, you know, 10 years in your lab, developing these technologies, so that now that you've got this really strong base that can be applied in so many different places, I find that really inspiring as well. It's like, it's sort of like you have empowered curiosity. Now that's really going to help in all kinds of applications.

Yeah, I mean, I never planned to work with explosives, to work with soil scientists, or to work with agriculture, anti cancer drugs, I think you just need to listen. You just need to listen to the challenges around you and listen to the presentations that other people give and the work that other people do. And I think then you can begin to find a niche for yourself. And if you're lucky, then you find the right collaborators, and things tend to work out. But listening, I think is almost as critical as the curiosity part.

Absolutely. Do you have any questions of us there any thoughts on the program at this point?

I hope you're planning to can continue it. I think that's a request more than a question. And what do you what do you need from the projects? I mean, what would you ideally see happen with each and every single project that you fund?

Yeah, I have to go back to my funding source, which is the state of Kansas and what the status looking for is expansion of business expansion of jobs in the state, but also helping to to improve the ecological impact of the food system in the state there, you know, just all anything positive that will help move things forward within the state of Kansas. And, as you know, and you know, we've worked with groups with a Feed the Future labs and other groups, things that positively impact the state of Kansas are not just from the state of Kansas, there are there are things that are happening all over the world that researchers at the University can look at and bring back to help us better understand what's going on within our systems within the state.

Was, I think that's, I think we should try to pursue that as much as we can. Because that clearly is a real driving force for what we do here as well.

Yeah, absolutely. So and I think what you're doing, he's got a direct potential direct impact. So this is wonderful.

I was just thinking that doing podcasts like this ought to be a basic requirement. And I think it essentially is an informal sense. But in all seriousness, being able to communicate the value of this research, and the way that it happens is, I think, really important for the public to have a sense of the way that this work is done. It won't be funded by the state of Kansas, if there isn't a greater appreciation for the ways that teaching and research go together for the ways that their deputy sometimes seems to drive these innovations. I just, I really appreciate marine that we're doing this and thanks for being here, Christer. I think it's really important.

Can I just add to that as well, and since we might have listeners who are not necessarily in their labs, I think sometimes you do not have any idea if your research is going to have a real life application or not. But sometimes it happens. And I think it's therefore it's incredibly important to support fundamental research. Because you don't know in advance where those findings and those results are going to take you. And we will not improve quality of life by itself. That can only happen through sustained research efforts, driven by universities, that's where all the exciting stuff happens. And I hope that we can continue to get resources, or even more improved resources to do what we do, because ultimately, some of us will find something that will have an incredibly important impact on the lives of people in the region, or, more broadly speaking, nationally, and globally.

Could not agree more. And I'll just follow up on that quickly before we have to sign off here. But you know, the, as you know, Christer research isn't done in a bubble. So you've got I'm sure colleagues, at other universities, within the US and around the world that you work with, and collaborate with and learn from and that type of thing. And it's just so important for us to be able to do that. And these podcasts at this point in time have been picked up since we started that picked up in over 60 countries. So I'm really excited that there are people around the world that are listening and understanding and interested in what we're doing. And hopefully the you know, when there's a collaboration that makes good sense, we'll be able to facilitate some of that as well.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Excellent. Well, thank you so much. Christer. 

Okay, well, thank you for inviting me and putting up with my analogies and otherwise attempts at explanations.

I think that that background in psychology has served you very, very well, even if it didn't happen at the graduate level. It's made you a fabulous explainer of chemistry so much appreciated.

Thank you. This has been absolutely fascinating. And it just opened so many different channels for further thoughts that I'm grateful. And I think that's one of the characteristics of good science. With this really is so thank you.

 Thank you for taking the time to appreciate it.

My pleasure. Great.

All right. Thank you so much. And hope to see you all soon. Thank you. Bye bye. 

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Sara Rosenkranz, associate professor in The Department of Food, Nutrition, Dietetics and Health at Kansas State University. Dr. Rosenkranz's primary research is focused on the influence of physical activity, sedentary behavior, nutrition and obesity on cardiovascular and metabolic clinical health outcomes. Her work has assisted in a successful application to the Food and Drug Administration to have resistant starches four added to its definition of fiber. 

Transcript:

Focus on Nutrition, Behavior and Lifestyle with Dr. Sara Rosenkranz, associate professor in Food, Nutrition, Dietetics and Health.

If you're an expert in one area and not the others, it's important to have a strong team around you who can help understand the other behaviors because there's such an interaction between them. And if you're not accounting for those other behaviors in some way, shape or form, you actually may come up with an answer that's quite a bit different than where the truth actually lies. And so I always think having nutrition and physical activity in or you know, information or expertise on your team is really important, no matter if you're, you know, on one side or the other at that interaction.

Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy.

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a food scientist.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Kansas State University Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. From an individual's perspective, all of the things that go into producing, transporting and distributing food is only supportive of what we consume. The food we eat directly affects our health and along with lifestyle food is a major component in influencing overall well being. In today's podcast we visit with Dr. Sara Rosenkranz. Dr Rosenkranz is an associate professor in the Department of Food, Nutrition, Dietetics and Health here at Kansas State University. She's a recent recipient of a Global Food System seed grant where she is studying the effect of fiber and resistant starch concentrations in food and their impact on the cardio metabolic outcomes in humans. Her broader area of interest includes behavioral aspects of lifestyle on health outcomes with a focus on nutrition and dietary intake. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us today. And welcome to the Global Food Systems podcast, Something to Chew On. Could you give us a little background on who you are and how you got interested in your area of teaching and research at K State?

Absolutely. So I feel like I've been around a long time at this point. And my background goes way way back in terms of where my interests kind of come from. So I'll try to give you the short version. But so I graduated from Manhattan High School here in Manhattan, Kansas, and basically did my undergrad in psychology and then did a master's degree here at K State in kinesiology and specifically kind of exercise physiology area. And there I got, you know, I became really interested in taking some nutrition courses and I had been an athlete pretty much all of my life. So between my master's degree and my PhD, I went to work for USA Triathlon, I traveled around and put on coaching education clinics, and my husband was involved in junior national team triathlon training. And so obviously, with sport, nutrition became a really critical topic. And so building off of my master's degree, I decided that I wanted to come back and actually get a PhD in human nutrition. So my two loves our exercise physiology and human nutrition. And my research really is exciting to me, because I often combine those two primary loves that I have so kind of looking at both mechanistic as well as applied approaches to understanding the influence of, of lifestyle, on the whole on cardio metabolic health outcomes. And so that's really kind of what drives the very large umbrella under which my research sits. Specific to this project. I was really, really fortunate that Dr. Mark Cobb was a mentor of mine for quite a long time and we knew each other speaking of small worlds that we were just talking about, he and I did triathlons together for a number of years and he helped to mentor me and he introduced me to this current collaboration that I've got going on sort of multi pronged across the grain sciences and industry, they bakery science and working with MGP ingredients. So we were really interested in looking at the effects of fiber consumption on cardio metabolic outcomes. And then we got really interested in this resistant starch kind of world. And again, this is all really I owe this connection, this collaboration to Dr. Hobbs. So I would be remiss if I did not mention that. And so really, some really exciting findings that we had led me to continue on in this work. And it was an opportunity to allow my graduate students to obtain training that was really transdisciplinary, which is also really exciting to me. And I think one of the real goals here is to help to train students to fulfill the industry needs at the end of the day. So understanding those connections between brain science and industry, and human nutrition, metabolic health out, and how that interfaces with the FDA and their regulatory processes, has been a really big learning experience, not only for myself, but for my students. So there's a very long winded short answer to your question.

No, that's great. So the what you were talking about on the resistance starch is that the seed grant, the GFS seed grant that you're referring to are is more expensive than that. Okay.

Yeah, so the GFS seed grant is kind of the latest development in terms of that collaboration, because we've worked on a few different projects with the same team partners leading into the latest efforts for the seed grant, which the seed grant is really meant to examine the opportunity for making further health claims related to resistant starch for being able to meet the FDA regulatory guidelines for making such health claims and involve a little bit further work from from where we've been, which we were involved very, very recently, just within these last couple of years in helping to get Rs four resistant starch for designated as a fiber. And so that was sort of my introduction into this real regulatory world at the FDA. So I was really fortunate to have some strong partners who obviously had done that quite a bit before. So yeah, the GFS grant is kind of our next steps. So things that we started to talk about while we were doing some shorter term studies, while we're working on that fiber classification, kind of like, well, where are we going to go from here and say, we developed this collaboration together to work on the longer term consumption question and how that impacted cardio metabolic health and in more particularly, our bad cholesterol, or LDL cholesterol, as well as blood pressure. So in terms of FDA regulations, those are the two primary outcomes that they're really in, they're really interested in in terms of being able to make that cardiovascular health claim.

That's fascinating. As I was reading through this, I was thinking back to the work I did over the past. I mean, I, in my past life, I did a lot of work with the food industry and with FDA on exactly what you're talking about here, and would be really interested in understanding how your interaction worked in getting that process in place in the classification. I, the discussions on fiber are ongoing with the food industry, as you probably learned in that activity. And interesting to know where the university fits in those kinds of discussions. And how about that piece work?

Yeah, absolutely. And so as a cereal chemist, you probably actually have a much more in depth knowledge in terms of some of the structure function interfaces when it comes to fiber. So part of our team, not only Dr. Mark Cobb, and myself but Dr. Ody Maningat who works with MGP ingredients and Atchison, Kansas, and he's their vice president for ingredients or research and development and he's their Chief Science Officer. He's a K State alum. And, and you guys probably already know him and then 

Also classmates of both John and mine.

So that small world keeps cropping up again and again, doesn't it? Along with Ody or Dr. Maningat I should call him his formal title, but Dr. Paul Seib, who's also emeritus professor of grain science and industry and then Dr. Yong-Cheng Shi has been a part of our team as well. So sort of together with them. We're talking about it You know, things that are going to be beneficial to MGP ingredients that also are possible with the expertise that we have at K State. And certainly I defer to Dr. Seib and Dr. Shi and Dr. Maningat when it comes to understanding the ins and outs of the structure of those starches and how they intersect with human health. And my heart is really, as a clinical researcher, and I work exclusively with human subjects, I really haven't done much with rodent models, although a little bit on collaborative teams. So really kind of understanding how we would translate these questions into projects that are going to meet the requirements of FDA and what they're looking for. So I had the opportunity to sit in on some calls with the FDA with my whole team around and then and then we would be able to meet up afterwards and talk about what the primary concerns from the FDA perspective were based on the existing literature and why in the initial classification for resistant starch, really resistant starch types, one, two and three were indicated as fiber but resistance charge for was not and sort of understanding why the studies that had been done previously, were not enough to make the case for a fiber classification for that particular type of resistance starch. So my job really is working with Dr. Haub, who's the other human clinical researcher on the team to come up with ways that we could design a study that would allow us to assist MGP and grant scientists and industry in translating that work that they're doing based on crystalline structure based on processes that they use to create this resistant starch type that comes really from wheat, which obviously has a huge impact on on the state of Kansas, in more ways than one to translate that to a project that's going to be acceptable, according to the FDA criteria. And I don't know if that answered your question or not, but if not, I'm happy to follow up.

No, that's great. Thank you.

Yeah, sometimes when I'm talking with relatives, or friends, or people I don't even know. And they find out that I'm a food scientist, or cereal chemist or whatever. They'll ask me to de convolute some terms that we use all the time and understand and they don't have a clue. And one of them, you mentioned, I think about the second sense of your when you started speaking and it was a lifestyle. It's an umbrella term, but what are we actually saying? What components go together to make different lifestyle?

So obviously, that's a great question. And I appreciate that so much, because I think as a researcher, we sometimes forget how much we know and how specific our research vernacular is. So when I say lifestyle, I've got something really, really specific in mind. And they're really a compilation of different behaviors, that definitely have strong research support behind them in terms of their ability to impact health outcomes, and in particular, health outcomes that are, you know, non communicable chronic diseases that are really in the top 10 or so of our most prevalent causes of death. And so I am really talking about physical activity or exercise. I'm talking about your dietary intake, talking about sleep, I'm talking about, you know, some of the cancer preventative behaviors, like wearing your seatbelt, not smoking, using your sunscreen. And so if we kind of take a look at those things together, then that's what we're really kind of trying to look at is what are the effects of these behavioral aspects on really important health outcomes? And obviously, I've focused primarily on the nutrition or dietary intake, and then I, I still dabble quite a bit with physical activity and exercise and the interactions that are specific to those two key critical energy balance related lifestyle factors.

Excellent. So there's no single, one single definition and if the researcher developed that, in the best way to utilize it to to get the answers that they hoped there were to get the answers they're testing for.

I suppose. Yeah, it's a great point because I think if you're an expert in one area and not the others, it's important to have a strong team around you who can help understand the other behaviors because there's such an interaction between them. And if you're not accounting for those other behaviors in some way, shape or form, you actually may come up with an answer that's quite a bit different than where the truth actually lies. And so I always think having nutrition and physical activity in or you know, information or expertise on your team is really important, no matter if you're, you know, on one side or the other at that interaction. Great. Thanks.

Sara, if I could follow up, I had a similar question to John, as I reviewed your data and your research, a term kept coming up that occurred to us a couple of times already, and that's cardio metabolic outcomes. I frankly, I thought about that a lot. And I thought I don't know what those are now, I've heard you mentioned them. And I'm getting an idea LDL and HDL levels, blood pressure, could you talk a little bit more and maybe provide a few more concrete examples of what cardio metabolic outcomes are? And maybe that will provide a chance to sort of talk a little bit even more about the interaction of nutrition and exercise in relationship to our cardio? Cardio metabolic?

Absolutely. Another really great question and, and friendly reminder to me that I need to not speak in the way that I speak sometimes, and I apologize for that.

No, no, you don’t apologize. I just, you know, for someone who doesn't deal with these issues every day, it's pretty understandable that we come up with specialized languages, right?

We all fall prey to that. It's more efficient.

Yes, that's exactly right. And I know that I'm speaking to a whole bunch of very knowledgeable people. So for me, cardiometabolic is, is kind of, if you speak with young people, today, they have this term, it's probably already out of vogue at the moment called shipping, where you're kind of putting two things together. And that's exactly what I'm doing. And that is, you know, cardiovascular risk factors, and then metabolic risk factors. And so we know that there is a lot of shared risk when you're talking about people who have cardiovascular disease. And people who have diabetes mellitus type, type two diabetes is a one that we're most familiar with. And so cardiometabolic risk factors for me are ones that we would understand from the research literature can help to predict risk for cardiovascular mortality, or cardiovascular morbidity or sort of complications related to cardiovascular disease. And we know that people with type two diabetes mellitus often have stronger, much stronger risk of death from cardiovascular disease related issues as compared to people without type two diabetes mellitus. And so these risk factors that I think about are you know, you go to your doctor and you get your blood test, and you get screened for your total cholesterol, your bad cholesterol, your your healthy cholesterol, your HDL, your triglyceride levels, they'll test your fasting glucose, which definitely is related to not only cardiovascular disease, but also to that diabetes mellitus issue, blood pressure, would be another one that crosses over quite a bit. And then we think about things like body composition, or waist circumference, BMI. And then, you know, really, there's some specialized things that I've looked at a lot with my research, and that is markers of inflammation. And we know, for example, that C reactive protein is a global marker of inflammation. And that inflammation in the body is sort of what connects the risk for a lot of these different chronic diseases, which are big causes of death for us in terms of the United States and other westernized types of countries. And I think the other one that I look at often is things like insulin, and that's probably familiar to most people as it relates to diabetes and you know, controlling blood glucose. So insulin and glucose outcomes would be definitely sitting more primarily in that metabolic world, but certainly crossover into cardiovascular disease too. So the reason I kind of combine those into one term is because there's so much commonality there. So those would be really the primary things that we look at is insulin, glucose, inflammation or oxidative stress, and then our lipids and blood glucose, blood pressure, and other things related to the metabolic syndrome, which again, crossover between cardiovascular disease and And the more metabolic types of disorders or diseases that we have.

One thing and again, reading through some of the background that you've got in your training, the Bs in psychology or BA in psychology has me intrigued to understand where that fits into what you're currently teaching how you're doing, how you approach the work that you're doing. 

Now, what a great question. And something that I often talk to my students about. And, you know, that is, my path toward where I am now has been quite circuitous is how I would describe it. I definitely didn't follow that trajectory of, you know, bachelor's to Master's, straight on to PhD and on into my academic career, I've traveled a lot and had a lot of experiences, but my BA in psychology is still foundational to the things that I do, and I think allows me to understand not only the mechanistic or physiological side of the work that I do, but also the behavioral aspects. And so I think, for me, I think about, for example, I used to teach a class called exercise testing and prescription when I was a student within the Department of Kinesiology. And one of the things that I would often mention to my students was that I could write the perfect exercise training program that would, you know, be almost guaranteed to get somebody the results that they wanted. But if they didn't do it, then it was literally worthless. And, you know, similarly, that holds true for a diet, like if I prescribe somebody or write a specific diet for somebody to follow, but it's impossible for them to adhere to, or they're unwilling to, or unable to, for some reason, then it's not worth anything at the end of the day. And so when I was getting my undergraduate degree, I really had in the back of my mind, that I wanted to work with people with eating disorders. And I had some opportunities to do that I was involved in running an eating disorder support group and had some experiences that are somewhat sort of seared into my brain, that made me realize that it was not work that I felt that I could do without really negatively impacting my own mental well being. And I really got involved with some coursework, as well as some research that had to do more with behavioral modification, and specific specifically around cigarette smoking cessation, and had an opportunity to really kind of get into some of the behavioral world around those lifestyle factors that we were talking about earlier. And so that, you know, that is really still a big part of what I do. And it's kind of cool, because I am, I described myself as the jack of all trades and the master of none. And that means that I can walk in both worlds in terms of behavioral research, but more that mechanistic and physiological research as well. And I think it's really important to be able to do that, while still having a strong team of expertise around you. But it allows me to get into some of this real transdisciplinary or interdisciplinary work. And, you know, I love that people have started to get away from silos and reductionist kind of thinking, and more into thinking about systems and thinking about how one thing might impact another because that's kind of the way my brain likes to think. And maybe it has something to do with my background. And Maureen, did that answer your question?

It did. Thank you. Yeah, it's in looking at it. It seems that it would be you call it foundational, and I could see how that would be the case with the kinds of things that you work on and that you're building on, it makes perfect sense. That would be quite a great add to some to it to a technical degree that you're that you ended up with, with your PhD to have something like that to help keep you focused on the for the personal side of things, or the, you know, the human side of making sure that understanding and kinesiology understanding of nutrition, those types of things make sense to people?

Yeah, I think too. I would just add to that, that it's kind of about that translation issue as well. And so the application part, you know, so one of the questions that was sort of drilled into me at an early age in my academic career was, will so what, why do we care about this, and how would we apply it? And that's always I think, a really important background question to have in mind.

Sara, as I look at some of the work that you've done recently, I'm really intrigued by the fact that your research seems to span and perhaps even speak to, maybe you can speak to this more the the interaction between personal behaviors on health and health outcomes, as well as sort of the social systems that we find ourselves in. I mean, I, you know, look at some of these work you've done recently on sugary drinks and the outcome that that has in terms of personal health, but then you've also got the articles about nutritional levels of middle school food, it's different districts around Kansas. And it's recently, a commentary about the amount of activity the schoolchildren have, and how that can have a direct impact on their academic Well being a little bit about both from a standpoint of an expert in health and health outcomes about interaction between those two personal and social systems. And then how do you approach that, as a researcher? Do you? Do you find yourself pulled in those two directions? Or do you feel like it's important for you to be able to say things about both of those?

Wow, as that's quite a question, is great question. And the reality is that you hit on something that's really often on my mind. And that is, you know, this juxtaposition really between, you know, individual or personal level functioning, and, and the systems in which we sit and, and that balance between mechanisms, outcomes, a lot of the work that I do, and, and then the so wet question that I just mentioned before, and I do think it's important to be able to talk about both of those things I so often see in, I'll just say people in general, but in particular, in my students, oftentimes, early on, when they come to their undergraduate career, for example, they might be very, very strongly in the camp, that personal responsibility is, is where everything is that if you are, for example, and well, or if you're overweight or obese, then you really just need to exercise more and eat less, for example. And then I think, throughout their time at K State in one of our degree programs, they're likely to get a little bit more information a little bit more opportunity to, to see the impact that systems or the environment around them can can really have on those things and, and get away from this idea that things are quite so simple. You know, if you've got somebody who's a working adult, maybe they're a single parent, and they've got two or three different jobs, and their priorities are really around, you know, making sure that their kids are clothed and fed and well educated, then they may not really have in terms of their their hierarchy of needs, or in terms of their priorities, their own personal exercise, physical activity or dietary intake, for example, and would you then condemn them for that? Or could it be something that would be potentially understandable, and of course, it's the latter and my students always, inevitably get there. But I think it's it's a really common error that we make not only about others, but also about ourselves, you know, in terms of blaming ourselves for these behaviors or sort of not understanding maybe that impact of the real ability to choose some of these things that we do, and the overall impact of the people around you, the household maybe that you live in the community that you live in your opportunities for access to healthy foods, or healthy physical activity behaviors. And in COVID, it's a really interesting time right now, we actually have got a new study going on right now, where we're working with K State research participants who are now largely working from home. And they are, you know, we've had given them the opportunity to work on their sedentary behavior. Many of us are now you know, in a system, whereby we've changed our work environments, and we become largely quite sedentary and that research data suggests that we have done that and that some people are resilient and they will schedule in all of these different opportunities to get outside and go for walks and walk their dogs and fix healthy meals, etc. But other people are not faring quite as well in the COVID environment. And so this study is really all about, about that, you know, that switch from the way that we normally work. So I do think it's incredibly important to understand not only the individual level factors that predict these really important health outcomes, but also the systems and the larger context in which people work and you know where their priorities might be. And I probably got really sidetracked and answered your question in a way that was not what you intended. But yeah, you've hit on something that's so incredibly important to me. I remember vividly my PhD defense. And I was sitting outside in the hallway waiting for them, the people on my committee to come back out and tell me yes or no, did I pass my doctoral prelims or not? And I remember sitting out in the hallway, and I could just hear laughing, coming from the room, and I was just like, what are they laughing at? What did I say that was so funny, and I was feeling oh, my God, I failed. And I went back in the room. And really what came out of all of that discussion was that I passed, unfortunately, but that they really felt that I needed to find my specialization that I needed to be known for something. And so I've resisted that. I thought about it. I nodded. I agree. And I think that is important, because that's how you get grant funding. That's how you get published. That's how you get recognized as being an expert. But at the same time, there was this poll, as you described in your question, originally, for me, because I definitely think both, or all sides of that are incredibly important. And what you'll see in my Vita is really interesting, back and forth. Sometimes between work, what you'll see is just a reflection of my varied interests, how it's really difficult for me sometimes to just pick one path and go down it. So I've tried very, very hard to pick some lines of research that are things that are interesting, compelling, important, help to develop strong collaborations, etc. And then dabbling in areas where I still have a lot of interest, like, for example, the school foods, menus, dietary quality question that you were talking about before, and oftentimes, honestly, it's my students who lead me down some of these kind of different pathways. And I'm happy for that to happen. Because I did that as a student, I led my major professor down a path that he probably would not have otherwise traveled. And so as long as it's something I'm interesting, interested in, and I think it's important, and it helps me to push one or more of these lines of research forward, then I'm happy to be led, I guess, off the beaten path a little bit, I want students to..

We all struggle with these questions of how should we specialize? How specialized should we be? Should we ignore this interesting path? Should we stay with this one. So I appreciate hearing you reflect on how to try and balance those. And I really appreciate your story about your students, and you know, where they start and where they end up. Because I deal with political discourse. I'm often frustrated by the fact that most people see this as an either or question, our health and our well being as a consequence of what we do period, or our health and well being as a consequence of where we find ourselves in the system period. And of course, both are true. And both can be true and are true at the same time. But that's not that's not an easy answer. Either way isn't, but it's closer to the truth. So I appreciate that it's not an easy way to engage researchers to think about those in tension with each other at the same time.

That was very, very well said. And I could not have said it better, for sure, very succinctly. But exactly where my mind was meandering, I tend to be an external processor. So sometimes I'm thinking as I'm talking, but I love the way that you just worded that.

You should do more podcasts, because I think that's what they're all about is external processing.

That is exactly the case. That is true. Well, and some of the discussion that was just had here, I think points back to the complexity of, you know, I'll say the complexity of the global food system, because that's what I'm representing. But the way all of these things interact with one another is incredibly complex. And you can't, you can't look at things in a silo or from a unit direction, unidirectional perspective, things interact, and there is no black and white to most any of the questions that we have.

Absolutely. Just another little quick anecdote. I most recently, the most recent semester where we got our teaching evaluations, I had a student to reflected that I said sort of too much when I was answering questions, and I sort of laughed while see I said it again, I laughed out loud when I read that evaluation, because I do I rarely give concrete answers to anything. It's always well, there's no black or white, there's no Yes or No, there's no either or. And as scientists, I think we do that because we understand the lack of certainty, and the complexity around the different answers to questions that we might give. But it's often dissatisfying to the audience or to our students as well. So another balance point to be had there.

I think, you know, you've really touched on one of the central dilemmas of five communication, which is, many audiences, for understandable reasons, expect concrete direct answers to guide behavior. And that's not certainly what science is about producing, right. So it’s..

We often produce more questions than we do answers.

Exactly exact.

Truly what science is about, that is exactly what it's about, you know, parting comments that you met want to make sure the listener has in mind.

You know, I really don't think when particular food is gonna be the answer to all of our woes. And so I continually see people trying to find one specific thing, I think, kind of reductionist, and I would just encourage people to kind of use what we've just been talking about, and understand the bigger picture of the overall quality of their diet, the overall influences of their lifestyle behaviors, especially right now in this very difficult time that we have going on right now, with the COVID pandemic, and everything else that we've been facing in this year of 2020. And think about the bigger picture and how these critical pieces fit together. And I suppose give yourself some grace would be how I would put it just hang in there. Hopefully, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and things will get better.

And honestly, what you stated was Global Food Systems related. Yeah, it's what I really hope that the listeners pick up and that the faculty that we visit with pick up and learn from this as a Global Food Systems is not a group of singular activities that are happening here. And there. It's just this incredibly complex interaction of things that are touched by I think everything that we do on the K State campus one way or the other. Whether it's humanities, engineering, human nutrition, or agriculture, all of those areas have an impact. And so, you know, when, hopefully, as we work through this, and people pick up and listen to more of these, and one of the outcomes of this I'm hoping to, is to get more faculty members just to talk with one another, learn what each other is doing. And understanding how that computer engineer has a direct impact on nutrition. There are things where those two areas of study, come together and overlap with one another. And those are just two that I pulled off the top of my head, but I think you understand maybe what I'm getting at.

Absolutely 100% agree. And I would just like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you today. And for all of the great thoughtful questions. Even though I was externally processing a bit, I really, really appreciate it and I agree with you Maureen regarding the potential for collaborations is probably beyond what many of us had imagined they would be. So hopefully, we'll continue to work in teams and across disciplines. And really, I think that's how problems are going to get solved is to get out of our silos and talk to one another, and collaborate with one another in meaningful ways.

I agree this whole conversation is made me think, Hmm, the next time I teach persuasion, how can I hit up Sara and get her expertise and help communication questions that invariably come up in persuasion class? So thanks, thank you for your time and your expertise there. And thanks for that. Shout out for just a little bit of grace. I think we that's a great way to go in this pandemic, when so many things are uncertain. So thank you for that.

 Absolutely. Thank you. 

Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Bye bye.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

In this episode, we discuss one professor’s pure joy in impacting the community by keeping food safe. Dr. Valentina Trinetta's research focuses on understanding the ecology of foodborne pathogens and identifying microbial entry routes into the food supply chain. Dr. Trinetta also works on the development and implementation of antimicrobial intervention strategies to reduce and control foodborne pathogens in different commodities.

Transcript:

The Power of Passion: The next generation of researchers with Dr. Valentina Trinetta, assistant professor in animal science and industry

We are in a phase where the food system has become so complex that we cannot not consider it all the part of this chain or this system.

Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy.

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a food scientist.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Kansas State University's podcast something to chew on. In today's podcast we visit with Dr. Valentina Tonetta. Dr. Trinetta has passion for understanding ways to keep food safe is outpaced only by her passion for teaching. Her research focus is on understanding foodborne pathogens ecology and identifying microbial entry routes into the farm for food supply chain. Dr. Trinetta also works on the development and implementation of anti microbial intervention strategies to reduce and control foodborne pathogens in commodities. Dr. Trinetta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Animal Science and Industry at Kansas State. She carries a BS in Food Biotechnology from the University of Pisa Italy, a master's in Genetics, Biotechnology for food safety from the University of Naples, Italy, and a PhD in food science and technology from the University of Milan, Italy. Dr. Valentina Fernando, we want to welcome you to the Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. Before we get started, in our discussion today, I would like to ask you to visit with us a bit about some of your background and how you got to become so interested in the area that you work in today.

Thank you for the invitation. As you probably understand from my accent, I am Italian. I was thinking when I was a child that I wanted to be a medical doctor. But I realize that I'm very afraid of blood and needles. And so I decided to become a doctor of food. So since my start in the university, all my degrees are in Food Science. My masters and my PhD are in Food Science. And slowly I got very interested in food safety. I spent part of my PhD at Penn State University and really fell in love with research and the opportunity that I could see at Penn State and in general, doing your research in the United States. Therefore I continue with a postdoc at Purdue. And before starting my position at Kansas State in 2016, I worked for a corporation a chemical company Ecolab in Minneapolis, and in all my experience I work with different commodity but always in food safety and trying to control them transfer foodborne pathogens in the food supply chain. Since 2016, I moved to Manhattan, Kansas, with my family. And I am an assistant professor in the Department of Animal Sciences and Industry. And I'm also a faculty of the Food Science Institute. I have a heavy load of teaching Food Microbiology and then all the rest of my appointment is research.

Very interesting. I see you had mentioned that you are in the Department of Animal Science and Industry. But it looks to me from looking at your areas of expertise in the studies that you've obviously done before you came to K State. You got interested in capabilities for reaching beyond just the animal science area? Is that correct?

Yes, exactly. I'm working a lot on product safety. And even if I am part of the Animal Sciences and Industry department being part of the Food Sciences Institute is key, because I'm fortunate enough to be connected with the multicultural department of Kansas state and with some faculty in Olathe campus, and they're pretty strong in Urban Food System. And the last three years, we have been pretty successful on working on produce safety. In Kansas and Missouri, we do have several projects, looking at improving shelf life and quality of berries, trying to help the Kansas producer with transportation and ensuring quality of these small crops, we recently got a bigger grant on sponsored by USDA NIFA, to help always grower in Kansas semi story to make sure their water that they use for crop production is a safe. And so this has given me a little bit of versatility of not always working with the same type of commodity, but working with different people, different reality, different food matrices, and trying to apply the same type of mental approach, but in a different way. Because the situation and the production of produce is completely different than animal food.

So help me out a little bit I people as I talk to people or students and talk about the supply chain, and now they're starting to hear people are starting to hear about the supply chain is that applies to the COVID vaccine. How would you define the supply chain? What's the good definition for that that we could use? Or I could use as a starting point in talking to two people or students?

So I think I would and this is also based on what in my previous job that represented the supply chain for the corporation or for the company. So I always refer to that situation, at least in my mind and to talk with students, I think we can define production chain from farm to fork, but I would define supply chain all those operations that transport the product. So when I talk about supply chain, I always refer to the part that goes towards retailer when the finished product is produced and there needs to reach the consumer they. Regarding your question about COVID vaccine, I was fortunate enough that to be involved in a recent grant getting sponsored by USDA NIFA was a emergency call. And we put together a set of experts from Kansas State University. And since the strength of the Food Sciences Institute and animal science is the ability to work in the food wings at the BRI we partner with a virologist at the vet school and we are going to see all the parameter that can in the production part of animal food that can influence the spread of COVID-19. So we are excited we started officially this project in September. We are still at the BSL two level working with surrogate we are ready to start with the BSL three virus at the BRI in January. We are going to evaluate air flow different surfaces, foot contact, not foot contact and understand how the food industry can use the tool that we already have as disinfection and sanitation to try to overcome the spread of COVID.

Valentina, I want to learn more about this research regarding COVID-19. And that you're working on. But before we leave this concept of the production chain from farm to fork, I wanted to follow up on Jon's question a little bit. I think that that's a very interesting and informative way to distinguish the supply chain from the production chain. I, as I listened to you talk about, for example, the work that you're doing with K State Olathe, and water in the urban food system, I was reminded that, at least it seems to me that food safety really emphasizes that food systems are a system and a very complex system. I mean, I think about how contamination with water can end up contaminating crops and end up contaminating a salad that ends up in a restaurant somewhere. So what I'm getting at is, is it really a chain? Or is it something even more complex than a chain that you as a food safety scientists have to think about in terms of like larger, complex interactions?

I think it’s more complex solving, as compared to the mere definition of a chain. And I'm gonna give you another example of another type of research that I'm doing that seems not connected, but I think it is. So I am working on a lot in feed safety. I'm working with this swine group in the animal science department. Because I came across this very problematic stereotype of salmonella that recently has been seen pretty often in United States at the retail level or production level. So in piece of pork meat, we had several outbreaks with these salmonella. And so I was reading several article and I came across a work that some professor from the vet school did on African swine fever, demonstrating that one of the way to turn off transmission of this virus is through feed, and I start researching about these salmonella serotype. And there are a lot of entities such in Canada and North Europe that did preliminary study. And they found a lot of the stereotype in our feed and feed meal. So I was fortunate enough to partner with this swine group at Kansas State and is almost four years there. We are researching the presence of the serotype from feed. Now we did the feed, we are investigating the farm. And they recently got a GFS a seed grant through the Global Food System Initiative, where we are gonna understand if we've lived pig, if they drink or they eat or they ingest somehow this pathogen if they keep it inside their body and then at slaughter, there is still the partition. And so like this pathogen can go at retail level. So what I'm trying to say is that, that I don't think it's a matter of water meat to anymore I think we are in a phase where the food system has become so complex that we cannot not consider it all the part of this chain or this system. So it's very fascinating for me also investigating what we call pre harvest beside harvest. And I think I came to this consideration because working at Ecolab that is a chemical company and see all the work that they do with the food industry and with their client on giving information and giving tools for cleaning and disinfection. I am pretty comfortable with saying that the industry as all the metal the potential to produce safe food. I think we under look some points that are coming before the production.

Right? Right. That's a wonderful example and exactly what I was getting at. And it's a great example not just because of your point of looking at a different point in the food system, but also because it required some interdisciplinary outreach and connection on your part that I would assume is absolutely vital. Now in tackling those complex interaction,

I we had, we had working with a historian, because that was the migration of these foodborne pathogen from Europe to United States until 15 years ago, this particular serotype of salmonella was never seen in the United States on log in. And so we are trying to understand if there was a change in the in how this one industry worked, that allow the transition the migration of these microorganisms from Europe to United States. And so we have a KPI in the history department that is helping with this research. So has been very interesting also for that.

Absolutely no, that is that is even more interdisciplinary than I realized. That's great. Thank you.

And even more complicated, because if it's coming from Europe, and then goes into another complete, I guess web if you want, or set of connections. So it's not not just finding the particular serotype here and tracing it down. How'd it go make it to the US to begin with. And then since it's gotten in the US, that's another set of problems. So it appears that it keeps the idea of mitigating the problem as one of the potential focuses of the research. Beyond just figuring out now it's here we have this problem. How do we get rid of it? How do we control it?

I love the fact that you're working with somebody in the history department. I know that you've heard my spiel before Valentina, but just the critical importance of bringing in various focused ideas on how to tackle big problems is so important. And sometimes we forget about the impact of what the humanities brings to some of these questions. I think that's wonderful.

Sometimes is difficult to make this connection. So the Global Food System Initiative, really gave me the possibility to stretch my mind a little bit and say, Okay, this is the occasion where I can try to truly do a multi or interdisciplinary project. So I contacted the professor from these departments.

Yeah, no, that's wonderful. You know, I'm curious, going back to the discussion that you provided a bit on the research you're doing in livestock processing facilities, where do you see the information you develop is going to be critically important. But I'm seeing that we are hopefully going to watch this COVID issue go away over the next year? Where do you see some of that information and work that you're developing now sit after this as this part of our lives is closed up? You know, once we get our hands around COVID? Are there going to be outcomes of that that will be impacting the industry long term and how they do the work in those facilities? Or is it something that will be shelved until the next time we have something like that happen?

So my hope is that what we produce is gonna be relevant for COVID-19, but also for how to better mitigate if we have another problem of this type. I think our approach is that since we are not we did not propose the development of new cleaning or disinfectant tool, we are going to work with what the industry is already using. And we did it on purpose because we know that sometimes the adoption of a new system becomes too difficult for the food industry. So we part we start with the advantage of proposing to the industry what they already know this step forward. The ease that we are gonna try to combine factor and parameter that sometimes been looking a separate way that can be pH or concentrate or temperature, and we are going to try to combine them and see and see a way to enhance the capability of these chemical compounds against COVID. Now, I think all our study will be applicable to other type of pathogen and viruses. Also, because unfortunately, we are seeing an increase of antimicrobial resistance. So, the fact that we are going to offer also results on the physiology of the virus and what is happening when the virus is treated with this compound can be useful if we see in a rise of salmonella, multi resistance pathogen in the poultry industry, understand and take the results that we are going to produce from this grant. So I do not see it only for COVID-19. I see it as the way to explore with the tool that we have now, but enhance and improve if something unexpected is gonna happen again, to make our food safe.

Is it possible that contamination by other microorganisms, salmonella, for example, work could actually create a micro environment that would facilitate the length of life of COVID 19?

So it's something that we cannot disclose, because I saw a lot of study where there is a symbiotic relationship between viruses and bacteria. And an example of that is not a virus, for example. But I think COVID is so new, that we do not have that knowledge yet, but definitely think that there is an interaction. Thank you.

Don't question makes me think of another that's much more simplistic, and it will but will show my lack of rudimentary knowledge and biology. But I was I'm struck by the fact that Valentina, you usually work with bacteria like listeria, E coli, salmonella, and now but I mean, as you as you referenced in some earlier discussion, as well as this project, regarding COVID, you're being brought in to think about viruses in the way that they're transmitting. And under what conditions is that? Is that a relatively easy jump for someone like yourself, who's usually working with different kinds of bacterial pathogens instead of viruses? Or do you just provide different kinds of expertise to the project? How does? How does that translation work?

Yeah, so I'm not a virologist, and bacteria and virus are completely different. So we made sure we had the virologist in the team. I think we got this grant, because we brought in a different perspective of how the food industry work, what they are using for clean sanitation, how food products are produced, what they need to do the in the operator and the employer in order to producing keep the environment and the products safe. So we brought in all this knowledge, that is definitely definitely applicable to virus. Now we needed the virology is because the mode of action and how to cultivate and how to enumerate and recover the virus is completely different as compared to bacteria. So I think is a good example of synergistic activity. And all of us bring a different perspective. Right?

No, I agree. And as I hear you talk about that synergy it, it just makes me think about how how interesting it is that the safety of the workers in these facilities is directly related to or connected to the safety of the food and the way that it's pretty I don't know, maybe it's, it's not that revolutionary of an idea and for food safety, like yourself, I'm sure it's not. But I don't think I would have automatically put those two kinds of risks together as as interacting and influencing one another.

Actually, the majority of foodborne illnesses that we have is because of hygiene, or poor hygiene of worker or wrong way to handle food. So they are very much related.

They very are connected. Right,

Does the neurologist that you're working with, Can you I guess the term would be carry a culture of, of COVID? Is there a way to keep it alive for an extended period of time outside a system that that has the cells that it would normally populate?

Yes, because we will, we are working on these trying to keep the virus alive for longer because our study is going to be over time at a different temperature. And we are going to understand the survivability of the virus for example, on Stainless steal at refrigerated temperature for one week. But we have been reading also that there is a group that was able to recover a COVID on a piece of meat to when this piece of meat was frozen for at least two weeks. So we do have some evidence that the virus can survive.

Yeah, it's ironic that you should be investigating it living longer, rather than shorter, even a good experimental reason.

Volunteer, I really look forward to hearing the results of that research, as I'm sure many people will be very interested, you know, in Kansas and around the world. But I haven't I have a completely different line of questioning for you. In the materials to prepare for today. We were given some information about some of your social media posts. And I have to say I had a lot of fun looking at your labs Twitter account. And I wonder what's going on with that spinach that you posted? Can you explain a little bit about the experimentation that's being done on the color of this spinach?

Yeah, so I need to say that all my graduate students and undergraduate students are helping me a lot to be active on social media. And after I'm going to explain you about the spinach, I want to tell you what I had my undergraduate student do for food, food micro but so this project of the spinach is funded by KDA. So is really to help increase the production of safe products in Kansas, a lot of time, especially in the last two years, I think all of you heard about outbreak related to lead to and leafy green. So we also know that consumer one grass organic, natural way to preserve their food, they don't like the idea of adding a lot of chemicals. This step of washing leafing leafy green spinach salad is key to prevent illnesses. The problem with washing products that are so delicate is that they lose color. They become mushy, they short term very much the shelf life. We have in the industry, a lot of chemical sanitizer that are very effective against E coli or salmonella, but they are so effective, that they kind of bleach or discolor the product and therefore cannot be used. So, what we are trying to do in this research is to test some natural compounds that are essential oil and encapsulate them in water solution in a motion and then in using them in water solution and understand if there is an effect against E coli and if the parameter of quality Keep such as color, we want to try to imitate the small producer of Kansas. This is why my student is working, relatively small batch. But since we need a lot of replication, then you saw all the picture of spinach laying down on the in the hood, right? Right. Yes. Yeah. So this plant is that of this peanut are inoculated with the pathogen. And then we tried the different antimicrobial intervention for different time and different concentration. And when we see that one particular treatment is effective than the other part of experiment is to double check, none of the quality parameters are compromised. 

Yeah.

And do you determine the color instrumentalist? Or do you go to a some kind of visual human assessment.

So we do both, we like to record our parameter with the cement with a calorimeter, I think is more objective. But we also take picture of your time of the product. And like when we see maybe mold, or some defects, that's also a visual quality parameter that we can use to assess the shelf life of the product. In collaboration, we will later we are able to measure respiration, antioxidant, a lot of a lot of parameters that contribute to the quality of produce.

So you didn't have to go out and establish what the quality characteristics for good versus poor spinach. Were you had those accessible to you?

Yes, yes. So there are established now we didn't need to go out and understand they're established. We did a similar work with berries. And in particular, we work with strawberries, and was very much the same. Apparently, there is a certain level of red, and that indicated the ripeness. And that's what is prepare by consumer. So is this done?

Add that color is labile to, to the whatever it's encountering and processing. So it will bleach?

Is yeah, the green, the green, the chlorophyll is very sensitive. So for example, all the last loose all this peanuts, or the colleagues of this tuber can be very much affected.

Okay. Valentina, I find that really fascinating and really hopeful on the low levels. I mean, you know, it's an experiment, I'm sure it will take time before you know exactly what works and what doesn't. But the idea that a natural oil might have the same kind of effectiveness but not caused the damage to the food. That seems really brilliant. I hope it works. But I'm also really impressed that KDA is funding this research that obviously could help local growers in Kansas but could also be applied, I would assume nationwide as well, correct?

Yes. And I think this is another example of my research, that is multidisciplinary, because my expertise is in food microbiology and safety. So I know how to control count characterize pathogen, but I am working with a chemist that knows how to encapsulate essential oil and make a motion and deliver these, these oil. I should say that these are ready the second proposal that KDA found us the first one was on a novelty packaging material. And I think Katie in the state of Kansas as shown a lot of interests and being open minded in trying to help these the the products grower and understand that we the products grown in Kansas should also start reaching outside Kansas so not produced just to say satisfy the Kansan, but also start to expand their businesses.

Wonderful.

I had an interesting discussion with a with another researcher just yesterday, actually, that some of this, some of this discussion worked into it and in developing more potential for work in the, in the rural parts of Kansas. And a lot of it did focus back on smaller farmers being able to produce produce specialty crops. As with the the commodity crops, that really does kind of push people out, as the farms get larger, and the commodities take over more space, they're less people that are living in these areas, and in the idea of trying to populate and grow those regions. The idea of the smaller farmers and these specialty crops has been, I think, coming more to the forefront with KDA.

I agree, this is why we were trying to offer them a solution for transportation or extension of shelf life. Because as you, as you say, Kansas is big. And there are some areas that are rural, we need a lot of time to reach those areas. So I think the point where we can now help and improve is transportation and storage.

Yeah, I've got a couple of questions that aren't associated with one another at all. But one of them, I'll go back to your social media discussion that we had. And I thought it was interesting that you brought that up, Colene, because that was one of the questions that I had here. But what I'd like to know is, you clearly have a good handle on how to get information out. And man, it's fun. And it's interesting. Have you seen feedback on how impactful that is? Do you have a good feel for how well that's being utilized or looked at?

I don't think so. I mean, every year, or every semester, I'm growing my followers, and I'm getting more interest among K State students. So I know that I mean, actually, I know that, for example, we have been engaging in a lot of students from biology that do microbiology as a major, so I can kind of measure my impact at university level. But I wouldn't be able to measure in a more broad way. But what we have been doing is that we have been presenting all the activity that I put in social media, and I use with within the classroom, at the International annual meeting over food safety and microbiology. So that one was a broader way to impact colleague and students.

So at this point, would it be safe to say that the directionality of your interaction with the people out there that might be the ultimate end users of this knowledge? It is pretty much one directional at this point, they're not coming back to you. And asking questions or the like.

No, we are not there yet. I will keep going and see if I can get there.

Well, Valentina as the comms scholar in the room, I have to come to your defense and say that, you know, different, different communicators have different audiences. And it's, it seems pretty clear to me that by looking at your Twitter feed, your audience is clearly students and potential science students at Kansas State and beyond. I mean, that I get from your Twitter feed is that food safety research is fun. And I don't know if you could have a more important message for bringing new and diverse students into science and food safety research. I mean, I just think it's outstanding. And, you know, sure, we want the great information that you're learning to get out to Public that will use it. But I think that there's another way to think about the effectiveness of your communication, and that's in bringing a new generation of people into food safety research. 

That's very true.

Yeah, thank you for this perspective.

It's pretty clear that your students have fun. I wonder, you know, what are you doing that makes it so fun for your students? Do you attribute that to sort of like your own enjoyment in the research or did you have a colleague or a past faculty or a past mentor who sort of encouraged you to think about approaching your lab and your interactions with students in a particular way.

I think is both, I think that definitely I am passionate. And because during my training, I felt this passion from my advisor. And that's what led me to become a professor, I definitely want to give the same to my students. So when I communicate or when I'm explaining concept, I'm always trying to making engaging or trying to relate them to real life for daily routine. I'm I also know because I work in the lab a lot that if you do not have fun, you, you are not productive. Not too much fun, but just a little bit of fun. So I think a relax and nice environment is, is key to good productivity. I'm also and this is what I did during while I'm teaching, I also know that sitting and listening for 15 minutes to the instructor, sometimes is difficult. So I add some friend in the area of food safety and microbiology that are also professor in other university that are very creative. And this person play the ukulele and telling the study of bacteria with this ukulele. So now I play piano, but I cannot bring my piano in the class or I don't want I don't feel like I can engage with singing. So I have been reading about some publication and they were saying that, okay, you are not a musician, you are not a singer, but to try to engage them with one of your other skills. And so when I was in high school, and even in elementary school, I was acting. And so that's kind of what I make them do. Sometimes we try to be the bacteria that are injured, or stressed. Or some other time, I make them write a poem. And then they needed to tell them allow and one of them even did the rap on Twitter, there are a lot of playable games, because I think for kind of, everybody's interesting to be a detective. So I'm making them detect the bacteria that made a certain person sick, or the food that is potluck made time people ill. So I'm trying to, to make it a little bit different. Because I know that if I do present them all the time, the 15 minutes lecture, I might lose them on the way I do have a lot of 15 minutes lecture, but then I'm trying to give them a break with these activities.

Back in the gym, dark past when I was in graduate school, a fellow graduate students in the same lab, wrote an anthem to our particular discipline to green science called Green scientists. And it got so popular that it was actually sung in a national meeting.

I remember that clearly.

Yes, yes. But you have to be willing to put yourself out there. You can't hide behind the podium.

But Valentina to that, I mean, in in in an encapsulated way, that's that's the true dimension of interdisciplinary and you're, when you're talking about writing poems, I'm thinking about last year, to try and pull the humanities and the understanding of some of that thing into global food systems. On World Food Day, we had a poetry contest. And I'm thinking, you know, most of the people that were that that got involved in that were of the English department of the humanities areas. Wouldn't it be just great to pull in some of the folks that you have in it and then maybe team them up with somebody out of the English department and have them work together on coming up with something that's interesting and fun.

That would be fun.

Valentina, I have to say that you give me a lot to think about as I prepare for the next semester. I mean, John's got a great point, you know, you can't be afraid to put yourself out there. But I do think a lot of faculty members, they hesitate to try to innovate in the classroom, because they don't see it as their strength. But their mentor gave you a great lesson. Think about other things other than being a scientist or being a professor that you do, and use those to encourage different ways of learning and thinking, I think that's really inspirational. Thanks for that. Yeah.

No, I don't think so I just wanted to make sure that the message that comes out is that I am passionate on my work, because I had great advisor and teacher, that gave me the desire to give the same passion to the student, and that all the work that I do, even if it's in my contribution is in food, microbiology, I'm having a broader impact, because I'm working with different people. And my research is multidisciplinary, because I'm convinced that the food system is complex, and every lead player is important to overseeing look at the problem.

Very good. You're singing my song out there, Valentina.

I've been learning stuff left and right here. This is great sad, clicky.

But you make me want to be a food scientist. Thank you. So find future scientists to send to you keep doing great work.

Thank you so much. All right.

Well, thank you all for your time today. And Valentina, thank you so much for coming on. I think this was just a fun discussion and all of us learned so many things, and not all things that we expected to be hearing today. So this was this was great. Thank you. Very true.

Thank you again for the invitation.

Everybody have a wonderful, wonderful holiday and hopefully get a little rest over the break.

Happy holidays. Goodbye, everyone. Holidays. Bye bye. Bye.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

In this episode, we welcome Dr. Vaishali Sharda, assistant professor of biological and agricultural engineering at Kansas State University. Her research focuses on the complex dynamics of food-energy-water systems. Vaishali’s modeling is based on farm management scenarios and integrates agro-hydrologic models and climate data. This research couples human activity and natural systems with applications in sustainable agriculture, water resources management and applied hydrology with particular interest in the Ogallala Aquifer and farming in the Great Plains.

Transcript:

Tackling the dynamics of food-energy-water systems with Dr. Vaishali Sharda, Assistant Professor of Biological and Agricultural Engineering

So, you know, when I tell people that I'm a modeler, they're like, you know, she sits in front of a computer and punches numbers and you know, but then there's that part of it where you translate that information into tools that the stakeholders can use. And that to me, is, is a really important component.

Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy.

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a food scientist.

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Kansas State University Global Food Systems podcast something to chew on. In today's podcast, we will visit with Dr. Vaishali Sharda, a small but mighty advocate for tackling the question of climate, water availability and crop management in today's challenging environment. Dr. Sharda’s main area of study deals with modeling based on farm management scenarios, integrating agro-hydrologic models and climate data. This research couples human activity and natural systems with applications in sustainable agriculture, water resources management, and applied hydrology with particular interest in the Ogallala Aquifer and farming in the Great Plains. Dr. Vaishali Sharda is an Assistant Professor of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at Kansas State University. Sharda carries a BS and MS in Agricultural Engineering and Farm Power and Machinery respectively from Punjab Agricultural University, and a PhD from Auburn University in Biosystems Engineering.
I would like to welcome you, Dr. Vaishali Sharda to the podcast today, we would like to learn a little bit more about your background, about who you are, what got you interested in what you're doing, maybe how you got to K State, and then we'll open this up for a good discussion with Dr. Lind and Dr. Faubion. So would you like to start by telling us a little bit about yourself?

Sure. Uh, first of all, I like to thank you all for giving me this opportunity. I definitely appreciate it. Talking about my background. So I'm originally from India. I did my undergraduate and my master's in Agricultural Engineering from Punjab Agricultural University in Punjab, which is not India, and I applied for my master's in Agricultural Engineering or Water Resources in 2001. And then September 11 happened and I did not get a visa to come to the United States. So then, you know, life happens, I got married, had a daughter and then my husband applied for a PhD and he got admission at Auburn University. So we all came together to Auburn. I had already given my GRE and my Teufel with the plan that I would also start my PhD once we are in the United States. So and that is what happened. I started my PhD at Auburn as well. I changed my field a little bit. I used to work more in farm machinery, but then I moved on to the Water Resources and Agricultural Water became more of my research area. After finishing my PhD at Auburn in 2012. I moved to Washington State University on a postdoc opportunity which was at a research station in Prosser which is in Yakima Valley, and I used to work with a unit called Ag Weather net. So they are basically a network of agriculture of weather stations. And but the director there was very involved with crop modeling. So that's how I started using crop models extensively for water resources management. I worked there for about a year and a half and that's when my husband got his faculty position at K State. And we moved from Washington State to Manhattan and I was still working remotely for Ag Weather Net for quite some time after we moved to Manhattan And as it is with mostly with, you know, dual career professionals at one place, it is not easy to get employed at the same Institute. So we kind of worked around that for a little bit, I worked at University of Nebraska Lincoln for about two years at their water center. And I was part of the Ogallala Water Cap, which is a USDA NIFA funded project. And we looked extensively at integrating agricultural models, hydrologic models, economic models, and using climate information to inform these disintegration. So I worked both in Nebraska and Kansas as part of this project. And while I was still working at UNL, I got a, I got this assistant professor position here at K State, which tied up really well since I was already working both in Kansas, and Nebraska. So it was an easy transition for me. And so I started working part time at K State. And then in fall 2019, I started my tenure track position at BAE and I have continued my work on integrating crop models and hydrologic models, I have gained more knowledge about economic models and a big appreciation of the socio economic impact of everything that we do as engineers, as water resource managers. So I'm incorporating more of that into my research. And that is how this idea about this proposal, the Global Foods Seed Grant that we got came up to kind of integrate the information, and, you know, have that bridge between the two disciplines. So that's how it happened. That's a brief introduction.

No, that's very good. Thank you so much. It gives us a good understanding of how you got to where you are today. And clearly, there's a good solid background in the in the research area in the Great Plains, in areas where water is critical to to the agricultural business side of things, I was looking at some of the information that was provided on your background and work and one of the questions that I had is, you talked about just a minute ago about the social socio economic interface there. How do you get the information that you're working on to the user? Or how do you make that impact? Either the grower or the, you know, those folks that are being directly impacted by the the information that you're developing?

Yes, thank you for that question. Maureen, I think we rely heavily on the extension component of the land grant system. So while working at Washington State and even you are now and that case, day two, we have always had the opportunity to work with Extension agents, whether those are county agents, because they actually connect really well with the producers. Now, I have been to a lot of meetings with that, where I have directly interacted with producers, and somehow they place their trust in in the extension component of all their all the land grad schools. So I think it is a great connection. And working in the climate change climate variability area. Initially, I think we you know, as a graduate student, I realized that producers have their mindset. And they have their beliefs, which has come from many, many years of experience. And they don't like when a scientist who's probably half their age comes and challenges it, and tries to tell them that you should not be doing a certain thing this way, rather doing it my way. So that is, I think, where the extension people come in really helpful because they know the connection, they know the ways and they have that capability to translate your very technical information into turns where producers understand it and appreciate it and are perceptive of it. So I think I would say that extension plays a big role. And at K State at the Southwest Research and Extension Center in Garden City, Dr. Jonathan Aguilar is he's a great asset to all the work that we do and he helps to connect our work to the farmers there. We can we conduct field days of a lot of producers in the region come and listen to what is being done what is new and especially specifically in irrigation research, and and they pay attention. And they are very open to adopting new technologies or ways to conserve water to sustain the life of the Ogallala Aquifer specifically.

If I can follow up on that Maureen, I really appreciate the question. I've had it on my list too. And I, you know, I take your point about some voices, just having more resonance with the farm audiences than others. And everything in the social scientific literature about diffusion of innovations would indicate that, you know, you're absolutely right, you, you talk to the people who are closest and already have entrusted the producers. But I have to tell you that as I read your piece on ideal irrigation rates in Texas, High Plains with soybeans, I grew up on Nebraska farm on a corn and soybean farm. I know what a you know, what a visceral decision it is, whether to irrigator on or not. And as I read that piece, I thought, wow, this is so immediate, to the decision making of every farmer with a center pivot in now, obviously, that was in a particular context. And part of the argument of the article is, it's going to vary by every context. But what I'm getting at is, I don't quite want to let you off the hook. Surely, there's a way that you can go about your research, which provides information that's really useful and immediate to farmers. And it seems to me that that's what you're doing in your research. Did you ever or do you think about the end user when you're designing your questions and designing your research?

Right, right. And we totally do. And that's where decision support tools come into picture as well, you know, you get there. I mean, farmers are one of the smartest people that are out there, you know, you tell them that this is the reason behind doing something that they're we're asking them to do or we're recommending, they'll listen to you. And that's where decision support tools come into picture where you give them an app, for example, with I have a farmer in Nebraska, who we worked with extensively and Ogallala water cap, and he told me about a time that he has 42 apps on his phone that he uses to kind of to manage. And I mean, given that his farm is huge, he has a huge operation, and you know, all kinds of different enterprises. But this is where I think you know, if you want to, I know the context of your question. So decision support tools, and designing them in a way that they're appealing. And that they're user friendly, the interface is not overwhelming. So that you know, you just punch in simple numbers, and we can give you a suggestion of when to irrigate, you know what your soil moisture is like you from right from, say feeling the soil, to relying on the soil moisture sensor data, and then inputting those parameters and then coming up with an irrigation strategy. So that is partially what we talked about in that paper that you're referring to the soybean study in Texas High Plains, there is another paper that I'm currently working on for Kansas, it's for GMD three, and I work with Nathan Hendrick. So we're an Ag Econ. And so, you know, we are trying to look at how can we save water while not compromising on yield? Essentially, that is the main question that is out there. And that is what the farmer wants. They do want.

Yeah, that is the holy grail.

Right, right, you know, they do want to save water and sustain the life of aquifer. I have met with farmers from western Kansas and eastern Colorado, who said on your face that they know that they're if their grant kids choose to farm, they might not have the water that they have now on the farm. So they want to make mends to their current practices, but it's a financial decision at the end of the day, you know, they do not want to give up on their bread and butter. So we have to come up with smart and intelligent ways to reach the farmer so that they listen to us and they adopt the strategies that can help them.

Is this a strategy that has better outcomes or more outcomes or more efficient if the people that adopt these, these changes or these methods are contiguous, or doesn't matter that they might be isolated with other you know, other producers in between?

That was something you know, that's a great idea and we haven't looked at it from that point of view. But I would say that, you know, if it's, if the strategies or if they irrigation, different irrigation management scenarios are adopted, as you know, not not as a separate entity, but more more on speed given spatial scale, that they might be more effective. Yeah.

My wife grew up on a farm in South Central Kansas. And there were clearly thought and opinion leaders out in the field, that a lot of different producers that would look to them, and in some cases may make them. So I just wondered if that apply, in this case, to my will? Or on the other hand, there were people that no matter what they did, everybody else was going to do the opposite.

And, you know, I mean, there's that, obviously, I've heard it so many times, that people are farmers turn on their center pivots, when they see their neighbor is irrigating. And I mean, I agree that used to happen. But I think especially in areas where water is scarce, like invest in cancers, people are getting smarter about it, you know, nobody turns on their central pivot because their neighbor is, or at least that's my experience to the farmers that I have talked to, don't do that anymore. So

So if all of this research, and it's it's translation, then out into the productions, producers field is wildly successful beyond your wildest imaginings, what would we what would we see what would the outcomes be that you could look at, or point to say.

Well, the long term outcome would be that we would be able to extend the life of our aquifers, or, you know, make it sustainable long term, especially given the future impact of the changing climate and keeping that in mind. So I think the long term significant effect of this research would be definitely to increase the life of our water resources.

Great. And perhaps more than more next generation is a visual staying on the farm of meaning successful.

And, you know, there's another one of my graduate students spent this summer in Garden City. And what we are trying to do now is, as part of the Ogallala watershed, let me backtrack a little bit, what we did was based on the information that we have, from the environmental data, which is your weather data, and then you know, in field observations of plan data, you know, growth in season growth, metrics, like Leaf Area Index, biomass during the season of the crop that you're growing. So based on that, we calibrated our models, and then we studied the irrigation impact. What we are trying to do now is having more infield data, for example, data from soil sensors, data from drones that tells you about crop stress, and disease, and then combination of satellite data. And we have aerial data from a manned aircraft. And they are collecting data and sending those images to us. So you know, combination of all this data, so it's more like a machine learning, artificial intelligence, kind of, so you have your environmental data, you have your infield, in season data, and then you combine everything together to make your decision, I think more informed.

Right as robust as possible.

As robust as possible. So that is the next step that we are taking to hopefully make our models even better. So the results that we have from the calibrated models from what work I have done in the past are great. And the farmers that have adapted those irrigation strategy. So a combination of how much water is available in the ground. So we call it plant available water, and how frequently do you irrigate? That's called irrigation frequency. So the combination of the two is what we were using so far. But with this data set, I think we can add a layer of information to the models.

Great.

And I think that would be really interesting to look at. So he's my grad student that's right now working on it, and I look forward to seeing his results. That how are they better? Hopefully better And then what we already have?

Well, you know, I, I hear you say that it's the extension folks that get out and get face to face with producers and sort of make the sale, if you will. Do you feel like you're an advocate? Do you enjoy that process as well? Or is it just a set is that an end of business that you're just not comfortable with, because you sound like a spectacular advocate.

I completely enjoy it. You know, and I think I have come a long way from being a grad student at Auburn to I just love talking to people. So you know, and it's so it's enlightening to you know, hear other people talk about their experiences. And I have no doubt that the farmer who has worked all his life in a field knows more about, you know, the entire management package of growing a crop than I do. But we are all learning from each other. So I really, really appreciate that part of the job, though, I did not get to do much of it this year. But you know, that's something I completely enjoy. And I love when people challenge your science, you know, I love to tell this story that when I was a grad student at Auburn, I went to present my research to farmers and extension agents in a extension meeting. And here is this, you know, five feet tall girl from India, who is new in the country and talking to a group of farmers and extension agents and telling them that climate change is happening. And it's anthropogenic, and we are causing it we humans are causing it, and how it impacts the weather, the day to day weather, as well as what impact does it have on our border availability. And after the present, after my presentation was over, I would say good 65-70 year old, tall, well built farmer approaches me and tells me whatever you presented is all wrong. And you know, climate change is it's been happening forever. We are not causing it. It's a natural phenomena. It's written in the Bible. And you know, and I just gave that my PhD advisor was standing behind me and I kind of gave him a look. And he was like, he gave me the look that you have to handle it. This is part of the training. So I told him, I was like, I respectfully disagree. In my mind, my faith and my science, they run parallel, they cannot merge. So you know, but I, you know, that's part of the job that teaches you so many things and you learn how to how to handle and how to defend your science. So yeah,

As someone who teaches communication, I of course, love that story. I assume that that kind of experience was unique to your extension, training and background. I just wonder how many other scientists would be benefited by having that kind of experience of interacting with the public to present their findings?

Yeah, I completely agree. It's enlightening, you know, you, this is something that you cannot learn by doing research in your lab setting, you know, until and unless. So, you know, when I tell people that I'm a modeler, they're like, you know, she sits in front of a computer and punches numbers, and you know, but then there's that part of it, where you translate that information into tools that the stakeholders can use, and that to me, is, is a really important component. And I think, you know, growing my father has spent all his life in extension, he retired as the additional Director General of extension in Indian Council of agricultural research, which is parallel to USDA here. I should say that I grew up in the middle of it and you know, I grew up hearing about farmers and you know, how they're how research translates into field practices in the end, and that's where it should end. I mean, I love this part of the job, though I do not have an extension appointment.

Sort of the opinion that science regardless of what their research areas would benefit by taking actual formal instruction and how to speak to people that are different than they are. It's not an inborn ability, and it's something that can be at least developed. And it makes a real difference, I think, very can.

I agree, I mean, I was just thinking about, I wonder if there are any ways that you can integrate those kinds of training experiences into any students that you're working with. And if you don't have the extension appointment, it may not be obvious, just a little bit of foreshadowing, we're talking in our department about ways that we can provide opportunities for graduate students across the campus to be able to have just just those kinds of experience, we will be in touch in the future. That's really, really outstanding, the perspective that you think your work?

Yeah, so I Maureen knows about it, that we support my graduate students who were going to come join our research team, but not able to come because of the pandemic, their travel plans changed. And the grad student that I have right now is he's on the BSMS. In our department, we have a BSMS integrated program. So it's essentially a fast track Master's, he really enjoyed. As far as I hear from him, being out in the field and doing the field work, though his idea is to work more in data and in models, but he really appreciated being out in the field, in Garden City. So and that's why I really appreciate the partnership that we have with Dr. Aguilar over at the Southwest Research Station, because I think that's essential to, to what we do.

And the research that you're doing. Is there any of what you're doing this steps into the area of water contamination? Or are you just looking at water availability in in these areas?

I'm not looking into contamination. But that is one thing I want to do. And I, you know, that is one thing that there was there, there was a call for a proposal, I think few, I think a month ago or so. And I scratched my head. And I wanted to look out for a person who is more focused on contamination and water quality parts so that, you know, we can partner together. But that is definitely something there about, there's a lot of work being done in Nebraska, on groundwater contamination and the team that I was part of at the Water Center, a lot of our colleagues that do that work, but I definitely want to bring that work to K State as well. And you know, start looking into it.

Do you mind if we go back to climate change for a little bit in the narrative from back at Auburn? I am really interested to hear you talk about the way that you're integrating lots of different datasets and data into your models, the more information the better, hopefully more robust, more accurate predictions based on models with more information. I know enough about our understanding of climate change and how it will impact rainfall patterns, humidity levels, when it's hot variability, I'm wondering now, how much can we rely on the information that we have about climate in our models in the future? In other words, we've got some predictions about the way things might be changing. But is there enough variability now that we can be less competent our predictions, and therefore that might hinder your models just because of the variability thanks to climate change?

Yes, and my answer to that is to run an ensemble of models, you know, we cannot rely on just one model, just one forcing, and make decisions or make forecasts based on that. So as far as climate variability signals are concerned, for example, I've worked quite a bit on El Nino Southern Oscillation. And so which, you know, the prediction that they're putting out there for next three to six months, is based on I think, 16 or 18 different models, so they run an ensemble of models, and then based on that, they forecast what the answer conditions are likely going to be in next three to six months. So that is, I think the way to go even for crop models. You know, I one of my papers just came out where we use two different models that have just using one so you know, that gives us more confidence. And especially when you're forecasting yield, or when you're, you know, using some historic information to make forecasts. I think ensembles are a really powerful tool that we can use.

Can we can we step over to the grant that you were given the seed grant through the Global Food Systems Initiative and talk a bit about Maybe you can give us a bit of background on what that area of study is, I know that you've had some challenges because of the COVID situation and that type of thing. But I do look forward to seeing, you know, possibly some good information coming. But can you give us a little background on what that was? And there is and where you're going with that study?

Right. And so in that, in the, in the grand that we got working with Dr. Kate Nelson, from Department of Geography, and so she works in spatial, social, you know, setup and sustainability of our more from the demographics side of things. I think, the idea started, we were meeting for another, another, I think it was a USDA call. And you know, when at around the time the GFS call came out, and we were like, you know, we can propose this idea for a smaller time, smaller time period, where we can get our initial data in and set up this vulnerability index. So what was the index? So the background basically, is that we are, we were trying to look at a watershed and the eastern Kansas River Basin, which is a combination of both rural and urban areas. So stepping away from focusing only on agricultural, rural agricultural areas, and take bringing into account urban areas as well. And that's where Dr. Nelson's expertise comes into play as well. So the idea is to look at the watershed, and given and so the phase of research that we are in right now. So we have climate change data for the watershed for the regions. So one of our students has downloaded data from I think we are using two scenarios of climate change. So he has downloaded I think 19 models, and for that area, and we have converted all that data into a format where our models can use it, we have the soils data, so soils information from the area, I think we have, we have identified around 120 major soil groups, so there of course, you know, tons of smaller soil groups, but 120 major soil groups that we are going to use. And then we are focusing on corn and soybean, so two crops for that area. And so the idea is to combine the concept of exposure, exposure here being the climate impacts. So that includes like Colene mentioned, you know, precipitation changes, temporary changes, temperature changes. Another thing that we are going to focus on is the increased frequency of extreme events. Now, those extreme events could be a flood, or it could be a drought. So having a lot of precipitation in a very short timeframe, which can cause floods, and then not having precipitation for an extended period of time, combined with very high temperatures that can lead to drought. So we are also looking at those two extreme events. And then we are looking at adaptive capacity, along with sensitivity. So how sensitive are your rural as well as urban systems to these shocks? And then how can they adapt? So Dr. Nelson's expertise and her students will do the adaptive capacity part, I'm doing the crop suitability part based on the climate shocks. And then we will combine these three components to form an index or that is the idea that can hopefully translate into if we have this climate change information in the future. How can we be prepared depending on this information, so that our rural and urban systems don't feel that at all, they're ready to deal with that shock. So this index will tell us that how vulnerable is a system to these shocks. That is the broad idea behind this proposal.

I'm curious, as I heard you talk about this, I was reminded that you focused on the Kaw River Valley or the Kansas River Valley as your area for this pilot study. I'm wondering if that was more choice of convenience, or if there's something unique about this watershed? Or is it the watershed because of the flooding issues and in the worldwide watershed and why this watershed to delimit? The area of your study?
Right so definitely flooding in the area was one of the drivers we also wanted to look at. So most of the areas invested can't are very rural. So there are not where where agricultural happens, there are not big urban centers. And this watershed, we are looking at Topeka, we are looking at Lawrence, we are looking at the western parts of Kansas City. So we do cover quite a few urban areas and the watershed as well as good bit of ag. So that that was another. So another thing that that, you know, I mentioned that this whole idea started as part of another proposal that we were thinking about. So, in that proposal, there was also a component of groundwater wells. So, this net, this area also has a great network of groundwater wells, that kgs managers, so that was another company or another driver behind choosing this watershed.

No, that makes sense, it reminds me, I talked to enough policymakers to know that there's a common misconception that climate change is an urban problem, and that it will affect urban areas more. So having this kind of vulnerability index, to show relative vulnerabilities between River and urban areas, I think will be really informative, potentially for policy makers. Right. And, you know,

I mean, in look back 10 years, we have seen a lot of extreme events already in this area. So you know, you don't have to ask people to scratch their memory, you know, kind of think about it, Oh, when did we have the last flood or when was the last drought? So you know, it's very recent. So I think that that is definitely front and center, hopefully, in the minds of policymakers as well, that this problem needs to be addressed.

It also occurs to me that you have a new audience to get information out to once you produce this vulnerability index, if it works, right. So farmers are unique lot with their own challenges. But now you have a different public to try and reach. I think that will be an interesting challenge to find ways to get these messages out to municipalities, emerging emergency preparedness directors, senators, just more variability in your audience to more more challenging potentially.

Yes, and interesting.

I really, really, I mean, I'm very interested in and until you started talking about 100 different majors, 120 different major soil groups, I'm like, Oh, yes, sure. The kind of soil that you have will make a big difference in whether or not a massive amount of rainfall will impact that soil group. So fascinating. I'm really curious to know what kind of factors will be included into the social dimension, or the social side of this index. That proposal alludes to things like inequality, I assume a relative age will make a difference to I assume kinds of occupations. But those are all just assumptions. So I'll probably will have to just wait and see. But I am really curious to find out what factors get thrown into the social side of the model.

Right. Right. And you know that I don't, I cannot. It would be unfair to speak on Dr. Nelson's behalf. But she definitely has more information on that

We’ll bring her in next.

Yes, yes. She just came off her maternity leave. So I'm sure she's ready to rock and roll.

There we go. There we go. It's interesting that you brought 120 soil groups in and made me think of the podcast we did last with Dr. Ryan Hansen, who was in chemical engineering. I don't know if you've had the opportunity to meet with him in the past, but he was talking about the number of microorganisms in a gram of soil. I believe it was in the vicinity of a billion 120 different groupings of soils. And you take all of those groupings and multiply that by the number of different microorganism groupings that are going to be developing in different areas in different parts. It's amazingly complex.

Yes. And these are just major soil groups. You know, I mean, within, you know, within that soil group, there are like, so many different soils. So, sure, yes.

We've got a lot to learn, I think.

Yes, we do.

That's, that's fascinating, big, hard question. That was probably in the end, but I'll go ahead and lay this on, you know, we can maybe struggle with other I, it's, it really is appropriate because we've talked so much about science communication and getting you know, applicable findings out to different kinds of public's both private decision makers as well as potentially policy decision makers. I, I really, I found your work about aquifer stabilization to be particularly delicate because because I spent about four months traveling around Kansas in 2014, at a series of public meetings about water, and heard lots of different people talk about, you know, in rather conflictual ways about what do we do about the decline in the Ogallala Aquifer. And amongst the many different things that I heard from community members and farmers and extension experts, a common refrain I've heard, especially from the general public, the the interested but general public was, we shouldn't be growing corn in western Kansas until as farmers figure out that we can't grow corn in western Kansas, we're never going to solve this problem. And as I read some of your work, I was really struck by the property and how problematic that might be. I mean, I can I can appreciate the sentiment. But given the your work to try and maximize yields for farmers without depleting water resources, how would you respond to a concerned citizen who said something like that to do? We've got to stop growing sports planes, or we've got to stop growing?

Yeah, that is a hard question. I mean, again, it as I, as I said, when we were first talking about compromising yield, by cutting down irrigation, you know, it's hard to convince anybody to give up their income, you know, and cutting down areas. I actually met a farmer, I think, earlier this year in one of the meetings at Garden City, and he said that they went from irrigated corn to dryland corn, and they're actually making more money, because they're not spending as much money on inputs. So, you know, there, there is a way around that, I hope and, but it's hard to we actually, we did a paper earlier this year on transitioning from irrigated to dry land, as well as to pasture. So you know, just completely changing to a pasture. I was part of that group. And Dr. Bill golden, who's an economist here at K State, he had some very interesting, you know, observations in that paper, so that I can forward you that paper if you want to read it. But I agree that there is. I don't think we have to completely give up growing corn. But we have to come up with strategies, where it's not as hard as it is now on the natural resources.

Very fair. Yeah. Well, and I, your point that, you know that back to something you said earlier about, farmers have a great deal of experience, you know, on the ground in their particular area, they're going to be in a much better positioned to make those kinds of decisions, at least on their own farms. And I know from a farmer's perspective, that's the fear is that someone will make that decision for them. Right. So we could talk for another hour about where that responsibility lies, and who should be making that decision. But I appreciate that you're doing research, not just on how to maximize profits by minimizing inputs, but on potentially completely different ways of farming or different crops?

Great, yes.

That's an interesting feed into something that's been floating in my head. And I'm not sure I know how to ask this question. But when you talk about different crops being grown, do you feel that there's potential for crops that aren't normally grown in these areas? And I'm thinking in terms of, you know, we've got a lot of work in the Olathe campus done on small and urban farming on smaller farming enterprises in some of the rural areas where, you know, there's there's less demand on water, they may be more water consuming crops in vegetables or fruits or whatever it might be in smaller quantities. But the very large scale demand, isn't there. Do you see any, any potential in that kind of thing growing, becoming a larger enterprise in western Kansas? Or is it just a niche that's going to be a niche forever in the state?

Yeah, I think so. I, you know, diversification is it's great. But you know, for a farmer or for a farming enterprise that has been growing corn for generations. And you know, sometimes the farmer will come to you and say that this is what I know how to do. You know, so there's that fear of diversification and what will happen, so I think it will will require a combined effort not just on the bait on the on the part of farmers and scientists, but also policies that support that, you know, I don't know if that that could be some kind of subsidies, some kind of tax credits, you know that I mean, that's not my area, and I shouldn't speak to that. But there has to be some sort of incentive where that risk is covered, I guess, you know, of trying something new and what will happen thereafter? There is a farmer in the Lawrence area, and he exclusively grows organic wheat. And, and he also has a vegetable farm and he is very successful. But did he tried, like, did he transition his land from corn? No, that's where he started. He is young, he's probably 10 years younger than me. And he's doing great. He's so innovative. But you know, because he did not have that traditional. He did not grow up on a farm that was growing corn or wheat. He started this new thing that appealed to him. And it's working great. He sells to Whole Foods in Kansas City, you know, so he has that niche more like you said, you know, it's that niche market that appeals to certain people, but not everybody.

I want to thank you very much for your time. And this was really, really an enjoyable conversation. I very much enjoyed it.

I really enjoy it definitely been my experience. I love that conversation. Thank you for it.
Thank you this, I did not expect it, we'd be able to talk so much about the very people that we're all here to serve right, Kansas, Kansas farmers, the next generation of Kansas who's going to have to live with or without an aquifer. So I think that's really been fascinating and really interesting, as well as the way that you're improving your research by including new information in your models all the time. I think that's really fascinating. So thanks. Thanks for taking time to share it with us.

Thank you.

Thank you very much Vaishali.

Thank you, Maureen.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.
Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University.

Milling of wheat into flour seems like it would be pretty straight forward.  An application that simply requires running seed though a crushing process and sifting out the flour as the appropriate particle size is reached.  The reality is milling is very complex, technically challenging and requires fully interdisciplinary participation. 

Variations in the quality of the flour from the perspective of baking performance in large scale production has always been challenging.  This is particularly true when growing seasons change the seed mix and the impact of temperature, moisture, fertilizer use, pest pressure and more changes the quality characteristics of the flour.

The need for highly educated professionals in this area has never been greater and with the expertise of the likes of Dr. Kali Siliveru, K-State is laying the groundwork for preparing the next generation of professionals to better understand the impact of the milling process on the quality and safety of foods we eat every day.

We welcome special guest, Futurity CEO Jack Bobo. Jack finds himself at the intersection of food, technology and design harnessing science, policy, values and communication. Bobo supports businesses that are enhancing the healthfulness and sustainability of the global food system. His study of food technology and consumer attitudes and trends helps to create a better understanding of the future of food. 

Transcript:

A Futurists Thoughts on Food with Jack Bobo, CEO of Futurity

But, you know, you need a diversity of players to be able to do those kinds of analyses to because of all the trade offs, you know, again, that's what it comes back to, is that on a single dimension, organic might look good on multiple dimensions, then it's going to be more complicated, doesn't mean it looks bad, but it's certainly more complicated conversation.

Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems. I would like to welcome today a guest host, Dr. Jim Stack, Professor of Plant Pathology, and Director of the Great Plains Diagnostic Network.

I’m Scott Tanona. I'm a philosopher of science.

Today's guest is Jack Bobo. Jack is the CEO of futurity, a food foresight company that works with food and agriculture organizations to better understand emerging food trends and consumer attitudes and behaviors so they can position themselves to thrive in an ever more complex world. Jack previously served as the chief communications officer and Senior Vice President for Global Policy and Government Affairs at Intrexon Corporation. He is a globally recognized thought leader having delivered more than 300 speeches in 50 countries on the future of food, the role of science and technology and sustainably and nutritiously feeding the world and how to build consumer trust. In 2015, he was named by Scientific American, one of the 100 most influential people in biotechnology. Prior to joining Intrexon Jack worked at the US Department of State for 13 years as a Senior Advisor for global food policy, food security, climate change, biotechnology and agricultural trade. Prior to his career at the State Department, he was an attorney at Cromwell and moring LLP, he received a JD, a Master of Science and Environmental Science, a Bachelors of Arts in Psychology and chemistry, and a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Indiana University. Again, I want to thank you so much for joining us. This is a real treat for us and I think is going to be a real treat for the listeners that we've got on our podcast series. I'd like to welcome you duck Bobo to the something to chew on podcasts here at Kansas State University. And we'd like to start by asking you to give us a little background on yourself and what brought you to the high level of interest in the food system.

Well, thank you, thank you for allowing me to be on this podcast. I'm really excited to be here. So like some of your previous guests, I'm going to go way back. I'm going to go back to when I was growing up in southern Indiana. And I didn't grow up on a farm but I did have a cornfield that it came all the way up to my backyard. And my family we had a family garden at my grandmother's house. And unlike many of the gardens today we grew corn, peppers, green beans, cantaloupe, strawberries, watermelons and pretty much everything you can name and my mother canned everything. And I like to tell people that we were all organic, because we had child labor, which was me and my brothers. And so I didn't grow up with a bit of an understanding of what it meant to produce the food you eat. But I certainly never thought that I'd be working in food and agriculture. When I grew up. I went to Indiana University and as an undergrad I ended up with degrees in psychology, chemistry and biology. I was as indecisive then as I am now was a Peace Corps volunteer in Central Africa, came back and got a master's degree in environmental science and a degree in law. Well, that led me to the US Department of State where I worked for 13 years on global food policy. And I always Thought I'd work on environmental policy. But once I got into the food world, I realized that really, there's nothing more important than agriculture in terms of the impact on the environment. So if I really wanted to try to have a positive impact on the environment, food and agriculture was the place to be. Well, after that, I spent a few years working for a biotechnology company that was working in food and agriculture as well. And for the last year and a half, I started my own consulting firm, where I work on the future of food. I work with food tech startups and big food brands, helping them understand what is the future of food look like? Where a consumer trends and attitudes going? And how does one get ahead of the trends so they don't get run over by them?

Great. Well, thank you for that. Thank you for that overview. That's quite a background. And it's interesting to hear that you that you kind of started your professionalism, professional focus on things, internationally, looking at things that were going on in, in various parts of the world, and probably in very poor parts of the world, where, where food and food availability was more of a challenge than it is here.

Yeah, absolutely. I was a volunteer and gap on in Central Africa. And I was a science teacher, but I was in perhaps the most isolated corner of the country. And certainly, food insecurity was a everyday reality for the people and the students around me.

And I think the natural first question is, so what is the future of food?

Well, well, that's a good question. And I've got a futurist answer, which is futurist don't predict the future. What we do is we try to help organizations understand what does what are the possible futures that are out there, and work with organizations to try to figure out what's your preferred future, and then develop a path to get there. So it's less about predicting, and it's more about understanding what's possible, and try figuring out what's the best possible outcome we can have. And that might be by working with dairy and livestock, but also with the newer plant based and alternative protein companies.

Also, so then it's gonna be hard for me to wrangle some more answers out of you, if you don't want to predict things which everybody wants. Right. But so yeah, plant proteins are obviously, you know, old trend. What are the other kind of new-ish things coming up that are maybe maybe instead of predicting what the future is? What kinds of possibilities do you see opening up that, like the average consumer may not be aware of?

Yeah, well, so, what I worry about more is less the opportunity, I see that there's tremendous opportunity with alternative proteins, but also just improving the livestock sectors that we have today. I mean, now you have facial recognition for cows that are making our productivity, you know, better and improving the health and welfare of the animals, you've got robots out in the fields that are, you know, waiting for companies, you have, you know, these alternative proteins, where you can produce eggs, proteins through fermentation. So there are a lot of exciting things happening just across the food chain. But what I worry a little bit about is how the food industry in some ways is going after each other. The alternative protein companies plant based company, as you're talking about how 10 years from now, we're gonna see the end of the livestock industry. And then the livestock industry responds by talking about how Ultra processed these other foods are. And what I worry about is that what these companies are doing is they're really undermining consumer confidence in our food system. And I think that's important because people are really worried about really small risks are food has never been safer in the history of the planet, and people have never been more scared. And I think that undermines the confidence and people just don't enjoy food as much as they once did.

And what else plays into the role of the that lack of confidence? Is this Are you concerned about concerns about like pesticides and GMOs and things like that as well?

Well, I'm not worried about them, but certainly concerned about people's worries.

Yeah. Yeah, well, because, you know, if we're looking at places like the United States and Europe, in many parts of the world, those technologies are beneficial farmers that are using some of those technologies really like them, but the biggest benefits are often in other places. So if you're a farmer and you start using a herbicide tolerant crop or a BT crop that's insecticide resistant, you know, you probably save a little bit of money or you save a little bit of time. But if you say take that same technology to South Africa, or China or India, all of a sudden you end up with 70% yield increases and dramatic reductions in pesticide poisonings. And so the real benefits are in other parts of the world. And we often don't see that. And so I worry about the lack of innovation being available to people in other places. Recently, within the last year, Europe has developed its Farm to Fork strategy. And it really builds on these kinds of concerns, because they're hoping to go to 25%. Organic for all of the agricultural land in Europe by 2030. And this sounds like a good thing. And you will end consumers think about it, I'm sure that they're pretty excited about it. But under the Well, based on the research from the European Commission, organic production in Europe is about 36%, less productive than conventional agriculture under real world conditions. So if they move to 25%, organic, that's going to cause an 8% reduction in production in Europe. And the country that sends the most food to Europe is Brazil. So Europe is planning on exporting its environmental footprint to the most biodiverse country on the planet. And so that's where it's not really about right or wrong, or good or bad, but there are real choices and consequences at play.

So you work with a lot of different country companies. And as you mentioned, in your TED talk, the world's gonna add quite a few more people to the planet, this entry. And I'm wondering as you work with those companies, are they just tracking markets and market development? Or do they have a vision for what the food systems should look like, say 3040 50 years down the road?

Well, that's a good question. And many of the alternative protein companies, they do have a vision. And unfortunately, often that vision doesn't include much of a role for the livestock industry. And I think that's part of what's creating this tension is this expectation that they're going to usurp the role, or they're going to replace animal agriculture. And I think they're, they're mistaken in that because, as you said, we're going to add another two to 3 billion people to the planet in the next 3040 years. And that means that we're going to need to increase production of food by at least 50, or 60%, if not 100%, in areas of like protein. And so there's this huge market opportunity for everybody. The alternative protein industry can grow to be a trillion dollar industry in the next 30 or 40 years. And that wouldn't require the elimination of any animal industry at all. And so instead of talking about how they're going to replace what's there, they should talk about meeting this future need, because that's big enough. And, you know, it's an opportunity, and it's not the sort of problem that's going to create the pushback that can slow down new innovations.

So does their vision, focus on markets? Or food security outcomes or health or life outcomes? I mean, and I don't mean that in a data set, and just what are the drier, they're developing their strategic plans?

Yeah. So if you look at a lot of these, it's really focused on the environmental benefits. So let's just use plant based proteins as an example. So you have Impossible Foods You have beyond meat. And those products are, by and large, intended to reduce the impact of agriculture on the planet. But what's interesting is if you look at why people are buying those products, 95% of purchasers are doing it for health reasons. And I think that there's an interesting disconnect there if the reason you're producing a product is because of its environmental benefits, and the reason people are buying it are because of what they have a perceived health benefit. And then when you go and do the nutritional comparison, you find out that it's not actually nutritionally better at all. I think there's a risk of consumers being turned off about, you know, whether or not those products are delivering on what they want.

How do you approach industry with this type of a dilemma? How, what is the discussion with companies that are kind of working against one another, and trying to put things out in such a way that it's going to be benefiting all?

Well, so part of what I do is I always tell people my personal mission is to de escalate the tension in our food system, so that we can all get about our business of saving the planet. our own way. And so give you a concrete example of putting that into practice. Back in 2017, there was a lot of conversation around clean meat, which is the lab grown or cell based meat. And I gave a talk at the new harvest Conference, which is sort of the research arm of the cell based lab meat industry. And I encourage them to kill the term clean meat. Now, after my talk, there was a lot of pushback the people at the conference, were not terribly happy that I had told them that they were calling their product, the wrong thing. But I worked with the companies in that space over the next nine months, and help them to understand that the use of the term clean meat was implying that the other meat was dirty or unethical. And that that might not be a particularly good way of marketing your product. If you're trying to tell people you're evil, stop being evil and consume my product. But that might not be a good message for the consumer. And over the course of that nine months, I was able to convince all of the companies in the sector that they would drop the term clean meat and took about a year and a half. But pretty much all of the organizations that are working in the space and you know, moved away. And that's why you hear more about cell based meat or cellular agriculture today.

The challenges that are around the world, from a food perspective are incredibly varied. You know, what you were facing what you were discussing was going on in Europe, as opposed to some of the activities happening here, as opposed to what was going on in Gabon when you were there, and is probably still some of the situation there? How do you? How do you get your hands around messaging, some of the futuristic ideas or thoughts that you have, when you've got such variability worldwide, in different areas around the world?

Will, I think it's, it's not as hard to come up with good messaging, the trouble I have is convincing people to stop using the bad message. You may have run across the Eat Lancet report that came out a couple of years ago. And it's an example of a report that, you know, had a lot of positive aspects to it, it was talking about how people need to shift some of their diet so that we're eating a more balanced and nutritious meal. And many of us are eating too many calories. But there was the language they used was frankly, you know, somewhat off putting or offensive to a lot of livestock producers. And the message never really got put forward. So we never ended up having an important conversation about, you know, what our global food system should look a lot like, because it sort of quickly degenerated into, you know, two different sides. Now, as an example, I was working on the Rockefeller Foundation's food vision prize, I was a judge, and then later a mentor for two of the 10 finalists. And each of the finalists. In their proposal, were pushing for reduction of animal agriculture and moving to these alternative proteins in their food vision for the future. And what I told them was, if their goal was to improve the planet, and to improve health, and they were saying we want to reduce animal protein by 30%. I said, Well, why don't you just say that your goal is to reduce the impact of protein production by 30%? Well, maybe that's going to happen because of plant based proteins and cell based meat. But if the livestock industry can deliver the environmental benefits that you're asking for, why not let them have a seat at the table. And so instead of saying a reduction of 30%, in animal products, saying the reduction of 30% of you know, the impact completely changed the dynamic of that conversation, and they at least were able to realize that, you know, they had these biases in their mind that, you know, they were looking for a particular future, and that the language they were using wasn't going to help them to get there.

So that's, that's really interesting. I was going to ask, because you've been talking a lot about language and the importance of language for consumers and for producers as well. Right. And in some cases, some of what you're recommending is just a shift from one kind of language to another that might make it more palatable or, or better convey what's actually happening, right sort of with. So but but in some cases, like this is a case of not just a change in language, but it's a it's a shift, maybe a subtle shift, but a shift in goals, right, sort of an I wonder, right, sort of to, to instead of reducing, right, the impact of certain animal production, to just reduce the impact sort of overall right of you know, whatever, it's a shift, right. So I'm wondering, like, how much of the tasks for getting the different actors in the food production system? and the consumers right to together, like on the same page and something that works well for all of us and is sustainable. You know, how much of it is like, look, we actually have the same goals in mind, we just have to be talking about it in the right way. And how much of it requires some shifting, you know, and what we're trying to accomplish?

Yes. So I think this is actually one of the areas where futurism has a role to play. Because often, when people are looking at the future, they're sort of saying, Well, what do I need to do today, what needs to happen tomorrow in order to get to a very specific future that they've already imagined. Whereas, you know, there are actually lots of possible futures that could be sustainable, that we could achieve in different ways. And that it's actually really helpful to start with a vision for the future, you know. So, for me, I have a vision for the future that is both sustainable and nutritious, so that people are nutritiously fed and that food is sustainably produced. So I have a very clear vision of what I want that future to look like. But I actually am very flexible about how we get there. And so one of the fathers of Futurism, Bob Johansen, he always says that the future rewards clarity, and punishes certainty. And what he means by that is, it's really important to know where you're going, but you'd never, you shouldn't be so fixed on how you're going to get there, because reality is going to intervene. And so it's a little bit like, you know, somebody is traveling down the highway, and they know where they're trying to get. And all of a sudden, there's a detour. And they just stopped because they don't know how to get there. Well, people who are flexible are gonna say, Well, you know, let's just go off on this, let's get out Google Maps, and we'll find another way of getting to our goal. And so having that flexibility about how you get there is really helpful to organizations, it's helpful to companies, and not being so fixed on what it's going to require.

So, so that's good. I wonder. And I'm sure there's, there's lots of ways in which we kind of have a similar vision, and maybe if we just shift and act towards it in a different way, we can sort of get on the same page. But I wonder, sort of maybe to kind of a question that Jim was asking earlier, if, if the, if the visions are enough aligned to get us there, or do we does the futurist require also work? You know, in helping us with that vision, right? Not just Yes, yeah. We're all working to write but sort of, have you considered this goal even right, nevermind, you tour the power the path, right, but sort of even where we're aiming for.

Yeah, and that's why, you know, in the visioning exercise, you know, one builds different scenarios to try to understand, you know, the range of possible futures. Because if you just start out and sort of write down what that future is, then, you know, you're really limiting yourself. Because there, there are all sorts of, you know, ideas that could be brought to the table. And so really, you know, it should be the result of a process. And part of that is going out and looking at sort of the signals of the future, you know, what, what's happening around the world today that, you know, could suggest new opportunities in the future. And that's, that's going to be important, because, again, you know, we don't quite know, what the world's gonna look like, you know, even 10 years from now, let alone 20 or 30. I think it would, you know, if you look back at 10 years ago, well, what companies, you know, exist today that you couldn't live without, that didn't exist at all, you know, just 10 or 15 years ago. And, you know, it's really pretty shocking, you know, that, you know, companies like Google and Facebook and Instagram and all these things that people spend all their time on, you know, didn't exist, you know, not too long ago.

If I could follow up on Scott's thinking there. industry, government, academia, all these sectors are contributing to the research and technology development that drives progress. But on the government and academic side, a lot of that is influenced by policy. The policy determines what the priority priorities are going to be, what initiatives we're going to pursue. And I'm wondering, you know, maybe somewhat based on your experience at state, but now that, you know, you've had time to reflect on that and interact with the industries that are driving progress. Do you think we have the policy right, or should be policies, right, to realize some of these goals or are there specific policy challenges we need to address.

Yeah, well, I always tell people, I'm a science optimist, I'm convinced that science and technology consume can address many of the problems we have. But I'm a regulatory pessimist. I'm not at all convinced that the scientist will be allowed to go there. And so, I think that goes to your point that, you know, I think that there is a real risk that we don't achieve our goals, because the policies, you know, don't allow us to go there. I mean, I think that's pretty clear. If you look at what's happened in Europe, over the last 20 years, you've had an exodus of science scientists working in biotechnology in many fields, because you know, if you can't, doesn't help if you can do research in a lab, if you can never bring a product to market. And it's very hard to understand, you know, what opportunities never came to be, you know, because you can't quantify, you know, the discoveries that weren't made or the products that weren't commercialized. But there's certainly a cost to it. And I think that, you know, we need to try to find a way of figuring, including that more in these conversations, that goes to what I was talking about earlier, in terms of local sustainability. And you see that in the UN Food System Summit, that's going to happen next year, as well. There's this emphasis on local sustainability, regenerative agriculture and other things. And I think we forget that, you know, it's a continuum, local sustainability is about using less water, fertilizer, insecticides and other things. But global sustainability is about being more intensively preparing producing products, so that you have less of an impact in some distant place. And because consumers think about sustainability, in terms of local, and companies and organizations, often things in terms of global, there is that disconnect in terms of how they're, they're envisioning, you know, how we get to a sustainable future. And right now, you know, in many places, there is a very strong push for policies that will prioritize local sustainability. And they're really just going to be exporting their environmental problems to other parts of the world, that are even less capable of, you know, absorbing those impacts. And I think, you know, that's, that's why it's important that, you know, we have close conversations about these issues, so that we, you know, keep a proper balance, you know, it's about trade offs. It's not about, you know, one being right, and the other being wrong. But, you know, we need a balance of both.

Any wisdom on how to influence policy development?

Well, you know, I think that, you know, researchers at universities, and the work that you do, certainly has an impact on what people are thinking about in Washington, DC. But in my experience, many universities don't take advantage of the power they have, you know, we seldom see researchers, you know, coming and knocking on the door, saying, you know, the fact that you're opposing these technologies, or it'd be the fact that we don't have a regulatory path for Gene edited animals are, whatever it might be, means that we're just not going to do any work in that field, you know, that instead, the research, just go do something else. And so again, nobody ever hears about the problem that, you know, they just ignore it, or they walked away from. So I think the research community needs to be far more engaged in these conversations than they have been historically. Otherwise, it's going to be consumers that are driving the policy. And, you know, frankly, you know, consumers have never cared more nor known less how their food is produced. And because they care, they're asking for policy changes, but because they don't understand it, those policy changes may not result in the kind of change they actually want. And so I think we need a broader spectrum of voices in the conversation. So I absolutely think there's, you know, there's a role for industry, the private sector, university researchers really need to, you know, spend a little bit of time looking at how they can influence these policy conversations.

Yeah, thank you for that. I agree with that assessment. I think we're a bit challenged right now, in deriving a set of policies that unleash the capabilities that are clearly there, but in a manner that doesn't create more problems than it solves.

Well, one area where I think universities could use of health as in science communication, which of course is what this podcast is all about. But by and large, I don't think there's enough of an emphasis on the role of science communicator. At most, you know, big research universities, people aren't necessarily rewarded for it. I know they are more now than they were in the past. But we need, you know, a lot more science communication than we've had.

So I, yeah, I agree, we need more and better science communication. And this is across the board, not just in areas of food. But I wonder how much I mean, I hear this a lot. And I worry sometimes not that we're doing this. But I worry sometimes that we sort of then put the onus on the scientist, and I'm wondering, to communicate more to communicate better. I'm wondering, sort of, if you could say something about some of the other factors, you said that consumers never cared more, but knowing less about their food, where, where it comes from maybe how its produced, I forget what you said. But there's a lot of factors here, some of it is sort of the media at large, some of it's sort of the way our food is advertised. Right. And that is not on the scientists, you know, that's on people, maybe we're doing the advertising, right. And there's, just so many factors here. I wonder if you could sort of talk a little bit about what you think, that interplay there is and what other what other ways there are of getting consumers to better understand and not just the local impact, but the but the, you know, the science behind the behind food production and, and the global issues and global impact of different production.

Yes, so I'm, I'm just finishing up a book now, why smart people make bad food choices. And it certainly doesn't put the blame on, you know, the universities or others. A lot of it has to do with psychology. And, you know, a lot of the problems we have today weren't necessarily sort of intentionally brought about. But, you know, back in the 80s, there was this move towards, you know, looking at nutrients in foods, were we breaking down our foods really better understand, you know, its components and what its components do in terms of health. But once we started doing that, then it led to companies saying, oh, you know, fat is bad. So I'm going to give you low, low fat cookies, well, those low fat cookies still had a lot of sugar. But you know, health halos, our mind immediately jumped to the positive aspect of it ignored all the negatives. And so, you know, we have a lot of things that are happening all at the same time. And so when I'm talking to scientists, I'm encouraging them to, you know, communicate more when I'm talking to companies, I'm talking about the importance of trust, you know, that we need to, to build trust, because consumers aren't going to allow you to deploy new technologies if they don't trust you. You know, science tells us what we can do. But it's the public that tells us what we should do. And so we really have to be working at each of these levels. And, you know, it's not enough to try to communicate on a controversial issue. I think we all know that when it comes to things like GMOs, it's not an information deficit model problem. More information is not going to convince people that these technologies are safe and effective. What's going to change is whether or not people trust you. And I'll give you a concrete example. In, you know, the Impossible Foods, their product is a GMO hamburger, but obviously, it has not received a lot of pushback from the public. But imagine for a moment if Monsanto had created the Impossible Burger. Well, I think we all know that it would not have been a hit. But all of the journalists would have said it failed, because nobody wants a GMO burger. Well, that obviously isn't true. So why people think it failed, and why it actually failed are often different. The reason it would have failed is that nobody wanted a GMO burger from a large multinational company. And because they misunderstand what's going on in situations like that, they also companies like Impossible Foods misunderstand it as well. They think that consumers trust us because you know, we share their ethical values. And that's partially true, but it's only true as long as they're small. The moment Impossible Foods went into 18,000 Burger Kings was the moment that people push back on the fact that it was Ultra processed. No rich people cared that it was Ultra processed, but it was $20, a burger and high end restaurants. They only cared when poor people could afford it. And so you know, the relationship of companies to the consumer changes as they scale. So I just mentioned that, there are a lot of different things going on. It's not just our relationship to industry, it's relationship to the kind of industry the point that they are and their development. And so that's why I spend so much of my time trying to de-escalate that tension. Because it's not making people happier. You know, people are less happy, you know, then than they have been in a long time. People in the United States tend to be less happy than people in many developing countries that obviously have much More difficult circumstances. And that's because so much of the messaging that's going on is convincing people to worry about smaller and smaller risks. Because that's what we do as human beings, you know, we, we focus on hazards, we don't focus on risk.

And we're very bad judges of risk. I totally agree with that. And something else you said, is really interesting to me, too. And I think the way he was talking about how policy drives so much of what research gets done, and but you just talked several times about the ways in which at least certain groups of consumers drive, drive the future of food drive some of the innovations in food, right. So could you say something about what you think that interplay is between the well off people interested in sort of certain kinds of food products and the impact that has on our system overall?

Sure. Well, you know, it's interesting that if you look at 2019, the biggest diet trend of 2019 was clean eating, but the biggest IPO of 2019 was beyond meat. And so on one hand, you know, consumers believe that the most important way to a healthier life is to eat whole foods and simple ingredients. And yet, they're investing in companies that are fundamentally producing an ultra processed product. And so there is this disconnect that's happening. And the consumers that are pushing some of these trends, you know, they are focused more on health and wellness. And yet 85% of consumers are more value shoppers. And so trends often get pushed in a direction that doesn't necessarily reflect the needs of the vast majority. And I'll return to the Eat Lancet report, as an example, you know, they the report kind of demonized animal products, and that, you know, we're eating too much meat. And yet, if you went in analysis was done, the cost of consuming the diet that they were proposing, it was clearly more expensive than the diet, people were eating. And so, if money is not an issue, then you can eat healthy any way you want. But if money is an issue, then you need to take that into account. And too often when you have people from a certain socioeconomic status where money is not as much of an issue, they're balancing their environmental desires versus taste and quality and other things. But for many people, you know, they don't have the luxury of balancing those. And just to give one concrete example, there, there's a report that looked at, you know, do consumer, what do consumers worry about in their food? And how important are environmental issues? And the report said, like 65% of consumers said that, you know, environmental issues were very important in their purchases. But then when they broke that down as to well, what does that mean for you? Well, for most people, that meant that you were reducing pesticides, or you were making food more affordable? Well, my guess is that was not the same consumer saying those two things, you know, for some reducing pesticides equated to environmentally sustainable. On the other hand, some people thought making food more affordable, made it more environmentally sustainable. And obviously, those two things are actually, you know, in conflict, if you reduce pesticide, you increase cost, and, you know, so, you know, we have different parts of the community that are at odds. And, you know, only one of those is really at the table most of the time.

So, like, we've spent quite a bit of time talking about the foods that we eat, and you know, what's in people's diets. Another very important component of food security, or the future food is how food gets to the table. So the distribution technologies and systems. And I'm wondering if you've given as much thought to that, as you have to the rest of it, I'd just be curious what you think about the role of distribution in realizing this vision for safe, nutritious food in the future?

Yeah, well, certainly, you know, in the age of COVID, there's been a lot of interest in food supply chains. And I think there's a lot of concern about long food supply chains. I'm a bit of a contrarian here on that topic. You know, I understand why when we look at the bottleneck that was caused by meat processing, that people would be concerned about the consolidation of that industry, but it's, it's worth looking at, you know, what the alternative is, and if we go back, just two years, there was a swine fever outbreak in China. And as a result of that, you know, they had to slaughter half, you know, 500 billion pigs or something like that. And the reason the problem was so bad is because they had such a highly distributed processing, you know, backyard processing and other things that exacerbated the, last pandemic. And of course, in response to that China has gone massively in the direction of the more consolidated processing that we have here in the United States. And so, you know, there are always going to be those kinds of trade offs when we think about our supply system. But, you know, my view is that the, the global trade and the diversity of our supply system, you know, really strengthens it. And it's, it's fine to buy local, you know, it's good to buy local support your community, but it's probably unrealistic to think that that can solve all of our problems. You know, if you were to look at the environmental footprint of local production, you know, for many products, it's going to be greater than something produced far away. And the reality is, you're going to end up with a much less diverse, much less nutritious food palette, you know, if you do reduce, you know, the, the reliance on these global supply chains. So I think they're to our credit, and we need to improve them, we need to reduce the some of those risks. But you know, calls for, you know, increasing inventory so that we don't have the disruptions we had in the past, I think it's short sighted. The reason we have if you increase a inventory, what you're really doing is increasing slack in the food system. And slack is a lack of productivity and efficiency, and it means higher cost. And again, I'm personally more concerned about people on the lower end assist socio economic scale, and they're the ones who are going to pay for, you know, having the luxury of inventory that's going to be there when somebody wants toilet paper, you know, in the next pandemic, 50 years from now.

What about the energy aspect? That wasn't too provocative?

No, quite interesting. What about the energy aspects of that, you know, the, right now agriculture is being looked at as one of the primary drivers of climate change, and land use change. And if we're going to move more food over greater distances, in shorter periods of time, it's gonna take a lot more energy to do that. And if energy is one of the important contributors to climate change, how do we reconcile that, you know, we're going to move more food at the same time we want a better environment?

Well, you know, one there, it's always worth doing a lifecycle analysis to see whether or not something produced in New Zealand really has a, you know, a bigger carbon footprint, because the transportation, most of the time, that's actually not true. But I also think that, you know, when somebody talks about the carbon footprint of transportation, often the conversation then turns around, says, well, we should be doing producing food, you know, organically and regeneratively and other things like well, either we're going to look at the carbon footprint or we're not, you know, if the carbon footprint matters, then organic production loses every single time, regenerative agriculture is probably not going to win, you know, any of these conversations. My personal perspective is that, you know, we need a balance of both, that our food system is stronger because of the diversity, but that one solution is not going to solve the problem. So producing food in Brazil might reduce the global environmental footprint, unless you're deforesting land to expand that. And so you know, right now, you know, as I mentioned earlier, Europe, Europe is the number one export market for Brazil, Brazil's top export destination is Europe or sometimes China. And so, you know, it's not just, you know, the distance traveled, but it's, you know, where it came from, as well.

So some of comments that you've made over the last, you know, several minutes, really deal with one of the things I've focused on most heavily since I've been at K State, which is trying to get a good interdisciplinary activity going between different players. This is probably more of a comment than I'd like you to just speak to that it is really a question, but it's clear that interdisciplinary and bringing in many different facets of study, then looking at these questions is going to be critical in coming up with any kind of a solution. Could you speak to that?

Yeah, well, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, too often, we have You know, an analysis by, you know, one group that's, you know, has a vested interest in the outcome. And I think we need to have more of that multidisciplinary approach. I think organizations like the World Resources Institute, tend to do a pretty good job of balancing those. You know, but you know, other organizations have been a little bit disappointed, and, you know, their lack of concern about, you know, productivity as being an important factor. I've had conversations with the World Wildlife Fund and others, and they're not really convinced that productivity is that important. And, you know, frankly, I don't understand how they can view that because, you know, if we double productivity by 2050, and we need twice as much food, then that's great. But if we double productivity, and it turns out, we don't need any food, then we've just cut in half our environmental impact. And so there's a benefit. But, you know, you need a diversity of players to be able to do those kinds of analyses to because of all the trade offs, you know, again, that's what it comes back to, is that on a single dimension, organic might look good on multiple dimensions, then it's going to be more complicated, doesn't mean it looks bad, but it's certainly more complicated conversation.

Yeah, and in that discussion, even thinking outside of the use, the term that I should not use ever is the hard sciences, but looking at the the need for the social impacts, and understanding where those fit in, in dealing with some of this, the situations that you've discussed, I think, is is of critical importance as well.

Yeah, I think, you know, many Americans forget that, you know, before COVID Hit 40% of Americans at some time in the previous year, didn't have enough money to buy the food they wanted. So, you know, these are not, you know, problems for, you know, foreign countries, developing countries, whatever. I mean, these are, you know, realities for many people today, and it's obviously, you know, significantly worse today.

Right, and I think it's, it's not just a problem outside of the United States, I think there have been studies done certainly within our university campus and within our town and surrounding regions that show a fairly high level of people before, even before COVID that weren't, weren't able to purchase the quantities of food needed.

Yeah, I mean, I spend a lot of my time these days, you know, talking about, you know, behavioral sciences, cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, and I think, you know, the, those areas are going to have a big impact on our ability to, one figure out how to communicate these issues, but also how to reshape our food environment to begin delivering some better outcomes.

You think we're missing anything in the academic environment in terms of training those next generations of students that are going out?

I think that they're, you know, students are quite capable. And I think the challenge is just understanding, you know, what are the problems that are going to be and that's hard to anticipate. And so they're often I think universities are being squeezed in order to train people more like, you know, a technical school as opposed to train people how to think. And I think that the direction that we're going, you know, we need people that are have a good foundation and systems thinking, in addition to whatever, you know, specialization they might have.

I completely agree with that. We just published a paper on that idea.

You'll have to send it to me.

We'll do. I will just say, thank you so much, Jack, and very much enjoyed the conversation. And I did want to comment on your TED talk. What you did at the end, was very creative. enjoyed that very much.

Well, thank you. I wasn't at all sure that it was going to, to work. So it was actually louder in person. I wish they had sort of up to a little bit of volume on the video. But my fingers were crossed. They said, well, we'll just cut it out. If it doesn't work.

It was great. Thanks for joining us.

And hopefully everybody listening here now goes and watches that TED Talk and sees what's gonna happen at the end. Yes, this has been great. Thanks. I was wondering if there's sort of any one thing that sums up what you think either gay anybody worried about food systems from production to the consumer and should be should it be doing to to address all all the range of things that you've been saying?

Well, the one thing I think is important is that I am I often hear a lot that, you know, consumers are anti science or different groups are anti science. And I think it's worth remembering that, you know, I have never met anybody who's anti-science. I've met a lot of people who didn't trust the government and didn't trust industry. But they all love science. I think we sometimes, you know, confused that lack of trust with a lack of, you know, belief in science. And so we need to be aware that when somebody says they don't trust the science, you know, even if you know that that's not correct, it's probably we're trying to understand why they don't trust the person saying it, you know, instead of the thing that they're saying. But the last thing I'd like to say is just, you know, I would encourage, you know, students, scientists and others, to expand their networks, one of the things that, you know, I worry about is that people have not built a big professional network that's going to be there. And I personally don't look at networking as a job skill. I look at it as a life skill. And it's how you build relationships with people. And it's how you help people before you need their help. And if you're out there helping people every day, you can be confident that the day when the day comes that you do need somebody else's support, they'll be there. And it's never been more important because unfortunately, like my daughter, the kids today are going to be graduating into the worst economic climate since the Great Depression. And so, you know, there's never been a better time to reach out and you know, ask questions and you know, get to know other people.

A message. Thanks so much.

That is a great message. Yeah. Thank you so much. And with that, I think we will sign off and I and again, I so appreciate your coming on with us Jack and have enjoyed the conversation and look forward to getting this out to share with listeners.

Well, thank you so much for having me on. Really appreciate it. If I can be of any help, let me know. Thanks.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.
Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University.

In this episode, we focus on a critical element of any research endeavor — having the correct tools to do the work. The interdisciplinary research of our guest, Dr. Ryan Hansen, assistant professor of chemical engineering at Kansas State University, focuses on food and health related studies. Dr. Hanson uses innovative approaches in microfabrication, polymer science and surface chemistry to design novel synthetic biological interfaces for characterizing microbial populations.

Advancements in Measuring Techniques: our ability to understand microorganism interaction with Dr. Ryan Hansen, assistant professor of chemical engineering

With the microbiome is that it really does require a range of skills. It's not just going to be one person that can do, you know, genetics or, you know, one person that makes these cool devices, right, or one person that specializes in bioinformatics. It's a combination of biologists, computer science, computer scientists, chemists, engineers, right. And so, so it really does require, you know, it takes a village, if you will, right, it's going to be a very big interdisciplinary effort.

Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

And I'm Colene Lind, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State. I studied the public's role in science and environmental policy.

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a food scientist.

A critical element of any research endeavor is having the tools needed to do the work. Today's guest is Dr. Ryan Hansen, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, and the Steve Hsu and Warren and Gisela Kennedy Keystone research scholar when it comes to micro organisms, and the interaction of microbes and complex systems, the tools being developed in Dr. Hanson's group may change or at least have direct impact on the ability, speed and accuracy of these studies. Ryan, welcome to the podcast. I would like to welcome you Ryan, Dr. Ryan Hanson to Something to Chew On. We're really looking forward to hearing a little bit more about your research activities. Before we move into that I would also like to welcome Dr. Colene Lind. Dr. Lind is an associate professor of Communication Studies at Kansas State and will be joining us from on occasion as a host. And so welcome, Colene. 

Thank you, Maureen. Great to be here. 

And with that, Ryan, could you start out by giving us a little background on who you are? And really what drew you into the area of study that you're into, and then maybe we'll take it from there?

Sure. So I am an Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering at K State in the Tim Taylor, Department of Chemical Engineering. And I've been here for five years now I'm going this is my sixth year. I started in 2015. I came over from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and I had worked there a couple years. But my background is in chemical engineering. So I graduated with my PhD from the University of Colorado. And they're I studied chemical engineering and I looked at materials polymer science for biomedical applications. And then I hung around in Colorado, it's where I'm from, and I went to the Colorado School of Mines, which is also where I did my undergrad. And I kind of went more than the biomedical route for a while. And I developed blood diagnostics. So tests that could actually diagnose bleeding disorders. And so I did that for a few years. And then my career took a turn to the National Lab scene. As I said, I was at Oak Ridge National Lab before coming to K State and I was there for a little over a little over two years, two and a half years. And there I got to do a lot of things, but it actually got me into some environmental microbiology. And I was also able to use some of the skillset that I had developed in my previous research, which was focused on developing and designing devices for, for measuring and biological systems or characterizing biological systems. So I got to apply that at Oak Ridge and do a lot there. For those of you that don't know about a national laboratory, it's funded by the Department of Energy. I was able to pick up some aspects and microbiology some aspects of design devices, micro nanofabrication. So these are all I would say very different fields, but it was really unique because I got to combine them and really participate in a very new area of research and I really liked that. And while I was there at Oak Ridge I I decided that it was really fun to do my own research. And I really enjoy the the freedom of research that I was able to do at Oak Ridge. But that was certainly a temporary situation. So that got me thinking about faculty positions, and I had been out, I would say, Yo, boy, six, maybe more than six years, from my PhD to that point. So I've been out a long time. But I really thought at that point, boy, it would be fun to be a faculty member. And I, you know, I jumped around, I had quite a few experiences, but I saw K State, and was really interested in case state. And one of the big reasons was, because I could see myself fitting in with their emphasis on food, and their emphasis on biosecurity, and their emphasis on environmental research, as well. And you know, those are some of that was new to me. But I knew that being at Oak Ridge, where we were looking at some environmental microbiology, it would be somewhere where I could expand my research and grow. And so I really liked K State. For that reason, I really liked the Department of Chemical Engineering as well, it was a nice size, there wasn't it wasn't really big, there was enough faculty there that were all really, really good and very welcoming. And I realized that I would fit in just very well with the culture here. So I started in 2015, and have been here since. So that's a little bit about my career progression. 

What are your research areas? What are you hoping to end up with, and at the end of the day, all of those.

So my research is really at the intersection of microbiology, and material science. And so we look at interfaces and using interface using materials to characterize microbes to separate microbes. We study how microbes interact with their environment, how they interact with surfaces with membranes and with each other, basically. And what we do is we're developing devices, we're developing materials that really help aid the microbiologist and making new measurements and progressing their research. What I found, when I started was that the tools that the microbiologist actually has are, are fairly limited and have been around for decades. And microbiology is just this field of exploding knowledge. There's, there's all sorts of new organisms that are being discovered all the time. And there's so much more out there. And I saw that and I said, you know, it would be for someone to come and develop new tools that can help a microbiologist, do what they're doing and study these organisms at a higher, a higher level, learn more, that would be great. That would be a lot of opportunity there. And so that's what I've been doing. I've been basically developing new tools, new systems, new materials that are geared towards studying microbes, and how they interact in their environment.

 Interesting. So it's, it's not more it's not a quantification it's more of a characterization of behaviors?

Yeah, I mean, currently, you Yeah, well, there's there's quantitative aspects, for sure. And in my research, but it is, it's it's characterizing, characterizing how microbes interact, how they, how they work with each other to survive, how they inhibit each other. And I think we'll get into this, I think when we get into our, you know, some of the global food system work, but it's really trying to characterize, okay, how are these organisms interacting together and natural systems, bacteria, microbes, the, you know, they don't, they don't interact in a vacuum, right? They're there, they interact in these very complex environments. And it's because it's so complex, it's been very difficult for a microbiologist with the standard tools, they have to piece together these, these small pieces of information and get a bigger picture of what's going on. And that's, that's a broad statement. But you see that in any system, any kind of ecological system, whether it's soil or plant or in the ocean, simply there's a lot that's unknown, that needs to be discovered. So yeah, so that's, that's what we're doing. And you know, there's quantitative parts of our work, certainly with that, but yeah, a lot of a lot of instrument development and a lot of engineering actually.

So, I know when I first met you, when I first came on board at K State, what came to my mind my background, pretty heavily focused on the food safety area, and the first thing I thought of when I saw what you were working on is food safety, specifically, and the potential of some of these types of activities being carried out. You were talking about the complexity of microbiology and the systems that they are that they're growing in, and the ability to, to measure and test but food systems, food matrices are incredibly complex. And just thinking of the possibilities of what you're doing, and where that would fit into these complex systems was just, it certainly hit the mark with me. And I understand that, you're probably well, you can speak to this a little more I'm from, from my background, people are looking for something fast and cheap, something that they can take out onto a floor and work on and do the tests. And it's done. I know you're not there yet. But is that something that would be an ultimate focus? Or?

Yeah, so I certainly think that there are some ties in industry to what we have been doing and what we're going to continue to do. And we want rapid detection, for example, or rapid characterization of a sample to save time to save money to prevent, for example, contaminated food from being put into distribution. And these all require better techniques for detection, right, if we're going to go with foodborne pathogens, right? Being able to detect contamination without having to culture is a big deal. Right. And so, yeah, we're working on materials and interfaces that capture pathogens, foodborne pathogens, specifically, and isolate them from their environment so that they can be detected. You know, one, one important step that people often forget is there's a separation component here, where you have to separate out oftentimes a pathogen from everything else in this complex matrix. And to do that, you need materials. And that's actually where the chemical engineer comes, comes in. Because a lot of people are listening to this thinking, Okay, this is a lot of microbiology, but there's the separation aspect, where you're trying to pull out a certain organism, in this case, a pathogen, and you need that to detect it or to characterize it. And so that's really one thing we're doing. And one, one way we're using these materials and these interfaces is to, to pull out pathogens from a sample, it might be water, it might be food, and then characterize it. So yeah, and, you know, certainly I think, from the industry perspective, that's one area where we're, I think we have a lot of ties into what companies need. You know, the other thing that we're doing is also looking at this at a fundamental level. One project that we have starting up, this is an NSF project that I have, and it is focused on isolating foodborne pathogens that have what's called a viable but non culturable phenotype. Basically, these are pathogens that are a small, a small subset of an overall population, but they have a unique phenotype. And what they do is they actually can turn off their metabolism go into this dormant state where they can't be treated with antibiotics, for example, but what happens is that they can resuscitate over time and then come back. And so obviously, that causes a lot of problems. That causes a lot of problems in clinical settings that causes problems also, potentially with foodborne pathogens. And so we're interested in separating out those types of cells so that we can study their, their genetic makeup study their their RNA that they're being expressed, find biomarkers that will allow us to detect that that specific population of cells because right now, that's really hard to do, you're looking for, it's very hard to separate out these cells that are that look very similar, but are behaving differently. And so yeah, so that's one example where that would certainly improve food safety. And it also ties into clinical applications as well. 

So it appears, at least in thinking a bit and actually, I'll have to admit to coming from a biology background from a developmental biology background, are you are you focused in on dealing with the cell surface architecture or chemistry as a way to as a way to remove the selectively two from the rest of the from the rest of the matrix?

So in some applications, yes, some applications you can actually go back to this just idea of separating out a pathogen from let's say, a water matrix or a food matrix. There are antibodies that you can use to target individual pathogens. And so what we're doing is we're developing interfaces that allow us to orient those antibodies and not only combine the antibody, but we with a surface but also provide a structure on the surface that allows that cell to interact with the surface in a very high level. Contact lenses so that you actually can improve how efficiently you capture these organisms. Once you get efficient capture, that translates to sensitivity. And so that's, and that's key, because sensitivity is everything right? If it's there, right, and it's, we'll say one cell per milliliter, right? That's a really low concentration. But in some cases, that might be what you need. Well, if you need it, if you have an application like that, you really need an efficient separation process. So yeah, that's certainly one way of doing this is to look at the surface and target the cell surface and make an engineered surface so that that cell is going to stick on that surface. Once it comes in contact with it.

I was just looking at some of the information background on what you've been working on. And you may have just spoken to this, but there's a mention of a photo degradable hydrogel application that you're working on. Can you explain a little bit about what that is?

Yeah, I'm so excited about this. So this actually, the way that came about was actually interesting, because I work on photo degradable hydrogels, or they're more generally photo polymer. So these are polymers that are either formed by light or degraded by light. And that was my background. And I put that on the shelf for, you know, six or seven years. But then when I started working here, I realized that I could use a lot of those materials I worked with in grad school for some of these applications. And so what we have done is we've designed these polymers, we, and they're hydro gels. And so basically, hydro gels are these really water absorbent. polymers, they're these cross linked polymers that absorb water. So just, you know, just like material you would find in a diaper, right, that's super water absorbent. These materials do the same thing as far as being very compatible with an aqueous system. And we decided to try to actually capture cells into these hydro gels. And what that does is basically hold these cells in place, so that you can look at them and look at a lot of them at the same time. And then what we do is we take a pattern light source, and if we see a cell that we want, so let's say that we see a cell and it's behaving oddly, but let's say it has this, this culturable. But non-viable phenotype, right behavior. And when we if we see that, right, that might be a needle in a haystack, we want to get that out and separate it so we can study its genetics. And so what we're doing was we're designing these polymers so that we shine light right over that cell that's trapped in this hydrogel, and it pops out. And we were what we can now do is, we can now just take that out in a little droplet, and isolate it and then study its genetics, at least that's where we're going and what we're doing. So it's a separation technique again, and it's, you know, it's hopefully going to be a very, very practical type of technique that a lot of people can do. And so that's, that's the idea of the materials and the photo degradable hydrogels. You know, the other thing with that, and this gets more into the medical side of things is people are really interested in using bacteria as therapeutics. So there's this initiative from the NIH bugs is drugs, that's basically looking at using bacteria, oftentimes engineered bacteria to deliver therapeutic agents to a tumor site, or simply to colonize in a tumor site and kill that tumor. And so they're seeing that some types of bacteria can do that. Well, the challenge there is that you also have to deliver it into a tissue. And so just like they do this with drug delivery, what they do with drugs is they'll encapsulate them in a protective coating. And then they'll shine light on it, and it releases the drug in that specific site. What we saw that we said, well, we could probably do the same thing with bacteria, because people are really interested now and using bacteria to deliver a drug to a cancer site. So we also are kind of moving that direction where we're saying, Okay, let's, let's encapsulate these potentially therapeutic bacteria into these polymers that fall apart in life. And then if they can fall apart in near IR light, so this is really, really low energy light source, and it penetrates through tissue. So if you can do that, and if you could get the chemistry, right, you could actually have this on demand release of bacteria into a tumor site or into some type of disease site. So it's, again, it's this intersection of microbiology and material science towards a new direction now towards more of the clinical side of things. I know that gets off of the food application. It brings up kind of a new area we're going.

It's fascinating and actually, I may be stretching this just a bit but on the health side of things, I could see probably applications Then in meat animals or in, you know, in the veterinary side of things, so things come full circle, one point or another.

They do I found that to be true in my career as well, because I, I started out in environmental, doing environmental work in industry, and then I went to biomedical and then I circled all the way back around to the environmental side when I got K State. So yeah, things always come back around. It's interesting how that works.

Yeah, absolutely.

Is there an organism that you're using as I don't want to say a test but sort of a model.

Yeah, there's, there's a few organisms that we have experience with. I mean, the one that everybody uses is e coli. Because you can, you can manipulate that very easily on a genetic level. People can do all sorts of things with e coli. So when we're thinking about drug delivery, right, equalize the first thing that they think about. But you know, certainly. And of course, there's a strain of e coli. That's a foodborne pathogen. And so that's an organism that makes sense for not only me, but most people that are developing these materials to start with, standardized as an organism. In the past, I had a student who worked with Campylobacter Did you know, which is a common foodborne pathogen, and that is actually an organism that has this culturable, but non viable phenotype. And it causes problems and infection. And so we're looking at potentially working with that organism, and then certainly, you know, I will probably get into this, but I, you know, I'm not just looking there, I'm also really interested in what's going on underground in the soil. And so there, we're looking at classes of beneficial bacteria. So moving away from the pathogens and looking at beneficial organisms, we're working with axis beryllium, specifically axis beryllium bracante. So this is a bio fertilizer, it's a commercially available bio fertilizer that fixes nitrogen into plants. And so we're studying that organism a lot. And that kind of moves us underground and around the plant and gets us into bio fertilizer. So those are, those are a few organisms that we've recently been working with. And you know, but it's, we're always it's interesting, because, what we're doing when we go back to looking at these environmental systems is that we're uncovering new organisms nor characterizing new organisms. So we're always, you know, we're always out finding new organisms and pairs of organisms that interact in certain ways and that have new applications. Great. Yeah.

Ryan, I find it so interesting, you know, the first when you first started talking about your work, and you made it really clear for you to understand what the the need and the challenges for that you're trying to meet, the way that these microbes are so variable, the complex interactions that change the way that the fact that many of them have been discovered yet really, really fascinating. And now for the last few minutes, talking about how your work takes you to so many different kinds of little miniature ecologies, I realized, wow, you have to go from the soil to an animal gut to all kinds of different plants. I'm just thinking about this from a practical perspective. As you know, running your lab, how do you do that? How do you move from all of these different contexts, and yet be able to do work that is useful in all of these different ecologies? I mean, just does that make sense at all? It seems like it would be a real reality.

Yeah, so that's a good question. I so you know, it's the, the link for me is that all these areas, they really need, they have the same problems. There's so much that's unknown in any system, whether we're looking in the soil, or whether we're looking at plant roots, whether we're looking in our gut, there's many organisms that are unknown, and, and their function is unknown. So we're really developing these generalized tools that hopefully translate from one we call it a microbiome. So this is basically a community of organisms from one microbiome to the next to the next. And hopefully, they translate. So if we develop something that's useful in the soil, maybe that applies to the gut, and maybe, you know, we're looking at studying interactions between beneficial bacteria in the soil. Somebody that has a biomedical background and is into more medical microbiology can pick that up and apply it to the gut. Right. And so I think the uniting theme here is that there's similar needs in all these areas of microbiology, and there's Just so much that's unknown in each area. So let me put that into context. I looked up some numbers before we were talking. So I'll look at the soil. So the soil, if you take one gram of soil, you could ask, what are you going to find in that sample? Well, one gram of soil can harbor up to 10 billion organisms, 10 billion, so I didn't, I didn't misspeak there 10 billion. And with that, there's about 60, anywhere from 60 to 40,000, difference, different types of organisms with different species. So what I do when I present this type of work to my class is all simply way out. eight grams, 10 grams of bacteria. And I'll ask my students, how many organisms do you think are present here, then, and you think there's actually more organisms here than people on Earth? And of course, people don't think that. But in fact, there are, there's 10 billion organisms and about 10 grams of soil. And so I think it's really fascinating, just all the unknown information that's there. It's just very ripe for discovery. So, so anyways, I think, you know, the uniting theme there, though, is that people need new tools everywhere in microbiology. And so for me, that's great, because I can go a lot of different places, especially when I'm looking for funding. And I can say, Okay, this might tie to energy, this might tie to food, this might tie to health. But at the end of the day, microbes shapes so much of our life, energy, food health environment, that, you know, I think the possibilities are endless for, you know, what we what we can do, and and I think there's a need for the engineer in here, as well, it shouldn't just be isolated to the microbiologists.

I attempted to follow up on that idea that there's real value for you. Because you are interdisciplinary and have to be in the kind of work that you're doing. But speaking from my own perspective, I know that comes with its own challenges, too. But let me just go back to a minute for this idea that the 10 billion in one gram of oil, I mean, it reminds me, I have found really inspiring as I've listened to you talk to the last few minutes, I mean, just the idea of discovery of the unknown and pure discovery is just so comfortable in what you're talking about. And then the idea that there could be enough commonalities between these very, very different settings. It's also sort of it gets that it's kind of a really inspirational quality about science in general. I wonder, yeah. Because the work that you're dealing with is on such a tiny, tiny scale that, you know, some like me from outside the science has no idea how to envision it, that you're 1 billion in one gram. That's a great example. Do you have other examples of the ways that you try and help either your students or the general public understand and envision what's going on in this little tiny, tiny scale that you work with?

Yeah, that's a great question. I do. And I do it from a chemical engineering perspective, because those are my students. And so for example, we, in chemical engineering, we talk a lot about reactors and reactor design, right? And so you would look at that, and you'd say, okay, that has nothing to do with what I'm working on, right? Well, that's actually not true. So you think about a big reactor, right, and we design a reactor to, you know, operate at a temperature and pressure and volume to do a reaction? Well, our devices are really scaled down file reactors, what we do is we take we our devices take organisms, and we put them together in little, little reactors, not big ones. And when you do that, you can you can miniaturize the whole process and basically have 10,000 reactors and do that in a single test. And so I think, you know, I think for me, it's, it's, it's kind of finding the commonalities with my traditional discipline and what we're doing, because oftentimes, it can feel a little disconnected, but really the principles of what we teach you can find in the research we do, and so I think it's just especially for engaging undergrads saying, hey, you know, what you're learning. You know, this was done. Some of this was done decades ago, but we're still using these principles, and they translate what we're doing now. The course I teach is called transport phenomena. So it's, fluid mechanics and heat mass transfer, well, mass transfer, which is the study of diffusion of chemicals through time and space. That's how bacteria communicate with each other. They send the soluble chemical signals to one another, so you can apply a lot of what we learned to new systems. And so I think I think just making sure that you have that connection with students and you say, you know, you're learning stuff that we're actually applying, and we're making discovery with, and I've really engages students, students really want to, I think take ownership of material, they want to have an impact, they want to know what they're doing isn't just, you know, what was done in the 50s, or 60s or 70s, or whatever, right. It's having an impact now. So I think always connecting research for me, keeping research and teaching, integrated and, and not separating the two is really important for this type of engagement. And so I think that gets that what you were what you were saying, and so just some examples there 

It just seems that this is a sort of a type of science and discovery that it's almost a step change, it's the, it reminds me of the the initial development of radio immuno acids, where all of a sudden people had, you know, magnitudes, greater sensitivity and many magnitudes greater specificity. And after that, the work on that, once that work got out and into the general scientific public, where it ended up being applicable was incredible. In terms of GE, I never thought it, I never thought of using it for, you know, X, Y or Z. And do you think this technique, is that that powerful at this point? Or at least potentially? 

Yeah, I really do. I mean, I think that it made certainly, the tools and the methods were developing, they have their challenges, and they're not, we're not there yet. But we've seen some really promising results. I think there are some hurdles that are still there that we have to overcome. But if we can do that, and it's, you know, it's this field of kind of these, these engineers and microbiologist working together, you know, if we can do that, I think that this field is just going to continue to progress in a very rapid manner. So for example, one limitation that's very common is that most microbes in environmental systems don't grow. And so, you know, we talk about, okay, there's, there's 10 billion organisms in the soil. Well, the problem is 99.7% of those organisms don't grow, we're getting wood and to study then you have to grow them in microbiology. So we get that point. 3%. Right, that's a small fraction of what's actually there. And so the rest of it is dark matter. We don't know what it is. And, recently, they're great. 

I love that characterization. Dark matter? 

Yeah, yeah, that's what they call it, it's biological dark matter. And then recently, there's, there's a field, you know, in the past decade, I would say that's taken off, and it's called meta genomic. And so basically, meta genomic, you're actually able to get an idea of everything that is in a community of organisms without having to grow it. But, you know, from application side of things, you have to be able to grow an organism to use it, right? If I get one or two cells, and I'm, and they're producing an antibiotic, I can't, you know, I have to, I have to amplify that right, I have to grow that dramatically, to actually produce something. So the trick is figuring out how to culture these uncultured uncoachable. And I use that in quotations, uncoachable microbes, or bacteria, in this case, grow in a laboratory setting is a new challenge, right. And so, engineers and microbiologist are addressing this, how do we, what tricks can we do to recover new organisms? There's one group that actually, this is years ago now. But they were actually able to take a device and isolate individual organisms and then put it back in the soil where the soil contain all the metabolites that were needed, and start growing organisms that they could never grow before. And when they did, that, they were able to actually take new organisms that were producing new antibiotics, and isolate those. So that that gets at antibiotic discovery. And obviously, there's a need for new antibiotics. And so, you know, so that's a technical hurdle. But I think that's something that we're making progress on. And we continue to make progress on how do we recover organisms. And it's not just soil, you can look at any ecosystem, whether it's freshwater, you know, whether you're in the ocean, or in the soil, or any environment, most organisms you can't recover right now. So, but to me, that dark matter that's out there, it's just exciting, because, because I think that there's going to be more technological innovation that's going to get us there and get us to recover new organisms that do things that we've never thought of or that are producing new molecules that could be very, very useful. 

Sounds fascinating. Really. 

We'd have a really exciting pieces that we you had been involved in a, a workshop that we did earlier on on microbiome, and I appreciated the presentation that you did there. But it was it was one where we had speakers from a variety of different areas on campus that are doing research in the microbiome area. And I was, I was so excited to see there were a few people that presented there that I don't think knew what you were doing, understood the kind of work you were doing. And I'm hoping that that interface connected for you on campus, but it's, it just brings out the criticality, the importance of having this interdisciplinary understanding and work going on. You've, you've touched on so many different areas that just reach out into agriculture, that reach out into biology and reach out into so many areas of research on campus, and that that interaction is so critical.

It is it is, you know, and I think K State is a great place for that. I mean, we have an emphasis on food, but we have veterinary medicine, right. We have biosecurity applications all over. You know, and as we said, the microbiome, it touches all of these areas. And so, you know, I think that, you know, that was some of the motivation of having that microbiome research was to get people on the same page in the same venue, and really see how we can work together. You know, the other thing with the microbiome is that it's, it really does require great range of skills, it's not just going to be one person that can do, you know, genetics, or, you know, one person that makes these cool devices, right, or one person that specializes in bioinformatics, it's a combination of biologists, computer science, computer scientists, chemists, engineers, right. And so it really does require, you know, it takes a village, if you will, right, it's going to be a very big interdisciplinary effort. And so really getting, you know, we can do so much more, you know, this, the sun will be so much greater than, than the individual parts, if we can come together and tackle these big problems, because it's very complex. It really is. And I don't think there's one, you know, I've never met one single scientist that can do all of this. 

Well, it sounds like a great hunt really does that, that that would be the sort of thing that would get me up and back in the lab, I think, 

I do think it's really, we haven't talked too much about my global food project. But you know, there's similar things going on there, where it's understanding the interactions and plant roots. And using that to improve crop growth to improve drought, stress and crops. And that gets towards, you know, agriculture, obviously, and, and making plants resilient in the face of drought in the face of climate change. You know, relying less on chemical fertilizers, more and bio fertilizers. And so you know, there, there's another and I really think that's, you know, one of the, one of the big applications that I that we can do and do well here at K State with our emphasis on food. And so, yeah, I mean, I think I think for me, this is the fun part of research is that you, you don't always know where it's gonna go, but it can, it can, and you can end up in some really exciting and cool places. True.

Ryan, I would love to hear more about that particular work. I mean, when I when I read about the fact that you are interested in interactions and caring in the axis beryllium binome I thought, I wonder roots of what plants I wonder. So yeah, now, I love the idea that you might be able to promote plant growth without synthetic fertilizers. So please tell me more.

Yeah. So this is a global food systems project that kicked off last May. And we the goal of it is to understand important interactions between axis beryllium. And I mentioned that this is a well known bacteria, it's probably one of the most well known class plant growth promoting bacteria. What it does is it fixes nitrogen and provides ammonia to the plant for growth. So that's important, that's important specifically, while it's important for many crops, I'm focusing on corn and you know, corn is obviously a very valued commodity here. And so I think people some people use assel sprung alone for recording growth, but the problem is that these bio fertilizers really aren't very reliable. And and there's sort of this this issue of, well a plant growth promoting bacteria, will it be successful there? Or how reliable will it be when I implement it when I inoculate it into the soil or on a seedling and then there's a lot of risk associated with that from the producer standpoint. It when you know you have chemical for lasers that are going to give you a lot of bang for your buck initially, right? But, but long term are obviously very environmentally bad, you know, can degrade soil quality have a lot of environmental issues, there's really a need for transitioning to bio fertilizers. But there's a perception that bio fertilizers aren't very reliable. And so what we're trying to do is improve that and in the way we can improve that, I think is if you can understand the interactions that are going on between your beneficial bacteria. So in that case, that would be a axis beryllium on and the organisms that are already there, right, so the plant rises here. So this is the area just outside the root, where there's a very rich assortment of bacteria, and all sorts of microbes on that root surface. So that's where these cells interact. And for plant growth, promoting bacteria to interact with a plant, they have to establish themselves into these rhizosphere communities. Well, what interactions are important for that bacteria to survive in the root? We don't know, people don't know those questions. We're out to find those and to uncover important interactions. And if we can, and we've already actually done that, and have some really promising results. Just very recently, last few weeks on this, if we can understand those interactions, we can basically profile plants, we can look at the microbiome of the plant and say, okay, these organisms are present. And we know that this organism does well when those organisms are already there. And so that is kind of this site specific approach to bio fertilizer, where we already have some knowledge, we're not just blindly dumping in bacteria into the soil, we have some knowledge of what's already there. And we can match it to what we're putting in the soil. And that might improve the reliability, and hopefully, the perception of bio fertilizers. And so you know, we're very interested in that idea. We have a tool that we can use that can uncover these interactions very efficiently now. And so certainly, that's where we're going with that. And again, we're looking at corn and axis beryllium, because that's kind of a high impact application. I think. So but it wouldn't stop there. I think we could use it for all sorts of systems. And so that's where we're going on on that one. And then ultimately, what we want to do is if we find these sets of organisms that worked really well together, can we actually start putting these over a seedling and then showing that they're improving plant growth? Because what people are interested in, in this area is not just one organism, it's a consortia. They always say, microbial consortia. So is there a collection of organisms that can do the job better than just one in isolation? And most people will say yes, but we they don't know what that collection is. So we're looking for those networks, those interactions that can improve these bio fertilizers. And again, we think we have a tool that can do a good job at that.

So Ryan, the global food system, seed grant activity is based obviously, on the quality of the research that's put in and that type of thing. But we're also focusing heavily on interdisciplinary. So who are you working with on that particular project?

Yeah, so I have a strong collaboration with Assistant Professor in Department of Biology, I guess, which is Tom Platt, Dr. Tom Platt. So he actually is a microbial ecologist, and he knows a lot of the genetic side of things. And he works. He's traditionally worked with Agrobacterium tumor patients, which is a plant pathogen, but he gives us a skillset that we don't have as far as genetics and sequencing and understanding bacteria on a molecular level. And so you know, certainly for me, I'm an engineer, I'm doing devices, I making materials, I don't have that skill set. So that's one collaboration. And we've been actually working together for four years now. And so we have a, and we develop this device together. So we have that collaboration. And then also, I think important is industry and industry ties. And so we've engaged Bayer crop science. And so they've shown some interest in this work for developing bio fertilizers for improving drought stress in crops, and certainly are working on that in that engagement. And, you know, having them are more more or less an advisory role for us right now. But we hope that it leads to more and we hope that it leads to interest from Bayer. I mean, certainly they have a good relationship with Kstate. And you know, I think beyond that there's a lot of other companies that are smaller startup companies that are interested in that are developing these bio fertilizers, these these consortia of microorganisms that you can add to the soil or that you can amend the soil with So, you know, we're always out for collaboration we work with with KSURF, and they help us find some of these industry contacts. But I think certainly, keeping that strong tie is important. And I think industry sees a lot of potential here, because, you know, we talked about some of these devices, they can, they can screen, they can look at a lot of different interactions. At the same time I had mentioned, we can make 10 to the fifth small reactors on a single chip right on one test, from an industry perspective, you know, you're going to find that that combination rapidly and quickly and cheaply, the alternative to that is you're looking at how organisms interact by traditionally spotting them together, maybe looking at 10s of interactions at a time, whereas we're looking at 10,000 interactions at a time. And so just the time and the money that you can save from doing that rapidly from an industry perspective, I think is very valuable. And is you know, something that for a company that invests in this type of technology, which would really offer a lot 

Plus, and give you much more powerful data when you go to analyze. You can have 10 to the fifth on the thing. 

Yeah. So yeah, so we can look at that, you know, you're thinking about these different combinations of organisms trying to find the right combination, we can assemble 10, to about 10,000, I believe, right now, it's the number of 10,000 different different combinations of organisms and find that right combination, I say this, this shows the most promise, I almost, I almost liken it to an interview process. Let's say that you have, you know, you have 10,000 candidates, right, and you have to figure you got to get the candidate that fits in the most and does the job that best right? Well, I want to do that really rapidly, I don't want to go one by one, right and do that I want to do that at one at a one one shot, right. And so our devices designed to do that to where you can, you can consider 1000s of different organisms, you take the top one, and you are the top combination of organisms and you combine it with the bacteria that you already know, is beneficial. And you have your consortium, you have your mixture that you can then add to your crop. So that's the idea. Again, there's not many technologies out there that can do that. And that's certainly something we think we have we have an advantage with.

This is absolutely fascinating. 

I have many more questions, but we've got not long right. Yeah, maybe you can help me in a relatively short amount of time understand this. I think that you've gotten this last little bit, it's really helped me understand the sort of the leak that you're making with your tests of being able to take a number of. Is it something about the tests that you're doing themselves? Or there's something about the computing of the actual looking at all the different combinations? What allows you to make that jump, Ryan?

That's a great question. So what allows us to make that jump is basically miniaturizing everything. So what we do is, if we, you know, cells are about one micron, so your hair is about 10 microns, 100 microns in diameter cells, one might affect common bacteria. So this variation here, we'll just say it's one micron in length, well, that basically means we can scale down all these reactors into these little small reactors, and put 10,000 on a ship that's, that I can hold in my hand. And when I do that, I can look it with a microscope, we have a force of microscope, and I can look at everything at the same time. So this is called high throughput, high throughput study. So we can basically, when you miniaturize everything into these small devices, observation of all these different reactions, if you will, again, going to chemical engineering language here, all these different reactions are reactors going on at the same time. So it's making things small. And when you make things small, you increase the throughput. So that's, that's probably the answer, I would say to your question.

Thanks. That really helps me pull it back to you know, the nanotechnology.

Yeah, that's the connection.

It might feel testing messages is so much easier because of computing power. But there's also a little bit of analogy here. And that when you've got little tiny political messages on Facebook, for example, as opposed to a 30 second commercial, there are much greater combinations to be tested at once out there. So it's not exactly the same, but I get it.

Yeah, right. These ideas, you know, they can translate to different different fields. I will just say it's, it's been, it's really defining, you know, for professors to talk about their research. It's, I'm sure you, you get this with everybody. It's always really fun. And you can go on a long time, but I do want to thank you guys for the opportunity. I think that's, it's great to get the word out there as far as what we're doing, not only in my lab, but in K state as a whole. I think we're just, we're doing a lot of great things here. And so You know, thanks to the Global Food Systems for, you know, not only the opportunity that you guys give us, but also the messaging and the communication that we can do through that program. So, thank you guys very much.

I will continue to follow you Ryan. I just I'm your work just fascinates me to know and so great. Great, so exciting. I really appreciate the time from all of you. And again, welcome Colene. This was a lot of fun. Thanks a lot.

All right. Thank you, everybody. Thanks, everybody.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

In this episode, we discuss the importance of what is in our soil and how its nutrients or contaminants affect plant growth and the food we eat. Dr. Ganga Hettiarachchi, is one of the world’s leading scientists in the fields of trace metal and nutrient chemistry in soils. Hettiarachchi's research at K-State focuses on understanding the chemistry of both nutrient and contaminant elements in soils, with the goal of developing solutions to agricultural or environmental problems.

Soil Chemistry: What’s In It For Us? – food science from the ground up, with Dr. Ganga Hettiarachchi, professor in the Department of Agronomy at Kansas State University

I think current practices. Most of the time if you think about farmers, they try to do the best they can do to protect their soil. I mean, that doesn't really, they do not want to do things to harm their soil.

Something to chew on is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

I’m Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science.

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a Food Scientist.

Hello everybody and welcome back. The food we eat is a product of many factors including seed quality and variety, weather conditions during the growing season, and processing and storage. But one of the most critical aspects of growing food is what it is grown in the soil. Soil provides nutrients to the growing plants through its components, which include minerals, water, organic matter and microorganisms. Additionally, soil provides a critical avenue for carbon dioxide sequestration, a major factor in reducing greenhouse gas. In this podcast, we will be talking with Dr. Ganga Hettiarachchi, Professor in the Department of Agronomy in Kansas State University's College of Agriculture. Ganga is one of the world's leading scientists in the fields of trace metal and nutrient chemistry and soils. Her research at K State focuses on understanding the chemistry of both nutrient and contaminant elements in soils with the goal of developing solutions to agricultural or environmental problems. I'd like to welcome Ganga to Something to Chew On and look forward to hearing more about you personally and about your profession.

Thank you for inviting me. So I was born and raised in a suburb of Colombo, Sri Lanka. And then when I was about to go to university, I had opportunity either to go into Agriculture Science to go into geo sciences. And my mom was leaning towards geosciences, because that means that I could go to university from home, because it was a university, the base we noted before that was in Colombo, and then the Agricultural Sciences, it was in a different city, my dad thought that doing Agricultural Sciences, more like applied sciences would be beneficial. So he encouraged me to actually take opportunity, although it was in a different city and go and do that. And then while I was doing my Bachelor's, third year, we get an opportunity to so we do sort of agriculture courses, starting from Agricultural Engineering, Agricultural Economics, to Soil Science, Food Science, Animal Science, everything pretty much. And then third year, we get a chance to select what area we want to specialize in. And then finally a fourth year we do only that and then we have six months research projects as a bachelor student during doing like 100 on a degree BSC honors degree. So I chose Soil Science, I could have gone and do some other things. Because the prospects job prospects for Soil Science wasn't that great at that time in Sri Lanka, but because my desire for Soil Science, I stick with that and I did my specialization in soil science, and I did a project related to phosphorus chemistry to my final year. And then I got a opportunity to come to US on a Fulbright scholarship to do my Masters. And I came to Kansas State University and did my Masters and stayed at Kansas State University. Same progresses. Dr. Gary Pierzynski and did my PhD in soil chemistry as well. Only difference was when I was doing my master's I did again Phosphorus Chemistry, but I changed my focus and did more like Environmental Chemistry focusing on contaminants and how to handle soil contamination, remediation focus, more specifically, incident stabilization of soil lead, cadmium and zinc. And then I took a I did a postdoctoral fellowship at USBC National Risk Management laboratory at Cincinnati, Ohio. And I went back to my university because I was actually when I was doing my Masters and PhD, I was on study leave as an assistant lecturer at the same university. I did my bachelor's, so I went back and work as a Senior Lecturer over there for two years, and took a position as a research scientist and Adelaide, Australia. So I was at the University of Adelaide and the CSIRO, Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization for three years before came on to this position. So I actually replaced since Dr. Pierzynski, decided to go to Administration, I was the replacement for his position.

So you shifted when you started your masters, it was you shifted into more of the environmental side and looking at the chemistry of environmental contaminants what led to that shift?

How is it actually it's the same principle a lot of people ask me that, because I focus on soil contamination remediation, that came for my PhD and then when I was in Australia, I was again working on nutrient chemistry, phosphorus and micronutrients. It same principles only saying is, when it comes to nutrient as a soil chemist, I tried to find ways I can maximize nutrient availability to plant and synchronize nutrient availability to replant update, who couldn't have enough is again understanding chemistry of that, and then trying to minimize the bioavailability of it. For example, when I was doing my PhD, I was looking at things in Southeast Kansas and the tri-state mining area, we are seeing wholesale issue concentration was too high. So that seemed was causing phytotoxicity. We cannot get any plants to grow in those mining materials. So I was trying to see how we can minimize zinc bioavailability so that we can get grass growing and the with growing grass minimize contaminated material moving from by being by water. And then when I was in South Australia, I was looking at zinc as a nutrient, because in most of the strain in South Australia has lot of high pH, high Calcareous area soils, so zinc is not available for plan to take up. Most crops are suffering from zinc deficiency. So I was looking at things over there are two ways to maximize things bioavailability so I think it's the same principle, same understanding, just looking at depending on situation, looking at either to increase bioavailability you decrease bioavailability.

And the results of your research get promulgated out through by what way how do they actually reach the people that might benefit by it?

Yeah, so in various ways. So the when we were dealing with so the first project after I moved to K State as a faculty member, it was funded by US EPA, and that's to looking at Urban gardening, sustainable gardening at brownfield sites. So brownfields are actually sometimes not necessarily contaminated, maybe mildly contaminated, but because of perceived contamination is abandoned or underutilized. So looking at those kind of soils, and then how to get those to put into urban gardening or some other use. So in that project, we actually directly dealt with communities. We chose the Brownfield sites to establish our test plots, working with communities, so we had that direct community involvement, as well as other part of it for research, research, technical assistance, kind of programs to we needed to work with communities, we made a lot of the factsheet for people to use, as well as we did lots of workshops, different places. So through workshops and things like that when I was in Australia working on micronutrient and ways to enhance micronutrient availability. We use again, journals that, oh, the magazines actually goes to farmers. So I remember when I receiving sometimes directly phone calls from farmers, actually, just before they are deciding to apply fertilizer, asking me why I think that liquid would work better for their soils compared to granules. And I had that similar experience over here. After one of my PhD students, like most recent papers, Jay Weeks will know Him. And then I got an email from a farmer named Brisca. Asking about, again, the same type of questions. So I think sometimes it's great again, that that person like that was published in the recent paper was published in Science Society of America journal, that's not what actually reads the farmer, based on that case are the key sorry, the the kind of intervene, I think that was what elegent farmers so I think they we do need to be do we should not think that publishing in, although that is our goal, progressional goal to publish in peer reviewed journals. But at the same time, we do need to do those kinds of interviews, those kinds of workshops and things like that, so that information will get to farmers, gardeners, who in uses.

I was just going to ask you were talking about the Brownfields and identifying contaminants in inner cities and those types of things. Did you get to the point to where you were working with actually cleaning those up? How does that happen? How do you clean up an area once it's contaminated that way?

So the then doing brownfields work, we were supposed to actually not just go to any brownfields. The EPA grant required us to actually go to brownfields where communities intend to have decided you can convert that to transform that into an urban garden or a community garden. So we work with those communities to assess thing when we were doing that process, since we cannot actually test everything under the sun to we do some kind of history information, trying to gather industry information, using Sanborn map, talking to neighbors talking to community and then then trying to kind of narrow down what things need to be tested. And we had seven sites within that project. And first site was in Kansas City, Missouri and then the second site was Tacoma, Washington, Seattle, Washington, and then site was Indianapolis, Indiana, one was Pomona, California, and then we had a sighting feeling as well to all those places after talking to them we sometimes we only tested for inorganic contaminants, because we found that the most common contaminants most common contaminant been those brownfields thats lead. Sometimes it was lead and arsenic sometimes it was we thought that cadmium is also another common contaminant, but we did did not find it by contaminated with all three and Indian qualified we found in addition to lead arsenic, we found polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon concentration to be elevated as well. So, depending on site see what we found were different. And then if it is organic contaminant more and then we try to see what other ways to degrade that enhance degradation of that, but with inorganic contaminants, we were not trying to remove thee they are not degrading they are they are most of these inorganic contaminants are persistent. Only thing we can do is we can look at ways to transform the those into less mobile for more or less bioavailable form. So useful amendments and use other understanding about that particular chemical and that particular soil and treat are try best way to keep it in place. So that it will not move from soil to plant. And in any way. The something like lead is not something easily moving from soil to plant. Even if it's more it actually stays in growth rather than moving from room to shoot. So the understanding how they behave in soil and how they behave in plan, like the uptake and all that we can decide what's the best approach?

And do you set when you go into a site? Do you set specific thresholds that you would consider these sites that ought to be remediated? Or how are those…

So how that works. So we do know that when soil lead concentration, so if you look at EPA, the residential swill lead limit is 400 milligrams per kilogram. But that was determined, we decided, based on 10 micrograms per deciliter of children's blood lead concentration. In 2012, the CDC had a group of scientists looking at all the health sciences looking at all the effects of a bad lead on children health. And the recommendation was that no blood level is safe for children. CDC cannot go, I mean, going forward two micrograms per deciliter is not practical. So they went with this 95th percentile, which was five micrograms per deciliter limit. And currently CDC is in considering to actually bring it down further to three micrograms per deciliter. So, after CDC is the change from 10 to five, actually, EPA did not do any kind of change to the residential soil lead limit. But we all know that based on to whom we talk to me know that this this concentration of soil lead could be 150 200. But again, as a soil scientist, I know that the what really matters is not the total concentration, you could have even 400 to 400 or higher, so lead by the city is not bioavailable, then it might be safer than a soil with 159 milligrams per kilogram of lead. But but but the lead is bioavailable. So I know, I think that what we use is not the total concentration, we look at total concentration because that's what mostly people want to know. But at the same time we make decisions based on bio accessibility. Because bio accessibility is we do have tests, proven tests with animal to animal feeding studies, that we can mimic gastro intestinal dissolution of soil lead, and then determine what's the the amount of lead that can be bio the maximum amount of lead that can be bio accessible to human child or the adult human if they accidentally ingest that soil to other decisions we made based on both?

And are these treatments, radiation treatments that you would apply to the soil? Are they if this were to roll down to the level of the producer? Would it be the gardener or the farmer or the land owner or teller would they be the ones that would be having the responsibility of doing these treatments?

Yeah, so yeah. And then most of the time these soil amendments as is towns are things that province will gardeners use. For example, when it comes to that it's it is phosphorus to all of us use phosphorus as fertilizer and fertilize other garden I mean loans and everything with phosphorus. So, the reason phosphorus is the most effective treatment for to reduce lead bioaccessibility phosphorus can induce formation of lead phosphate and specific group of lead phosphate known as Title Five and that has very little solubility even if it is subject to very acidic summer conditions. So So phosphorus or either depending on soil properties, we may not be directly recommending to use straight fertilizer. It may be that the organic source of phosphorus, organic source of phosphorus that slowly releasing phosphorus and maintaining phosphorus in a high enough level to promote these kinds of transformation and reduced bioaccessibility of lead, because you know that phosphorus has two sides. So these kinds of benefits are they are it's a fertilizer plant with two compete their lifecycle to we need to maintain good, good phosphorus levels. But at the same time, the phosphorus nitrogen ending up in surface water can cause eutrophication. Considering all that some of those sides, if we find that the extractable levels of phosphorus is already high than what we recommended could be slow releasing fertilizers mostly like organic, like, like compost. Did I answer your question?

Yes, you did. Thank you very completely.

I know that you had mentioned the Dr. Jay Weeks a little bit earlier. And I've visited with him in the past, actually, he was one of our hosts for a period of time. And we talked a lot about sequestration of co2 and with global warming and everything we know about co2 in the atmosphere. Can you tell us a bit about how that system works? And is that something that you're working on as well?

Yeah, I work on it. And before I had a PhD student and actually working on entirely that over PhD, and then if we look at why we are interested in a carbon soil carbon sequestration and so it depends on the AVI looked at what the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere and what's the carbon dioxide concentration and a carbon concentration in the an organic carbon specifically in the top one meter of soil. And then you see that the top one to one meter of soil contains organic carbon two to three times higher than what we have in the atmosphere. And then simply will do we know that the geologic carbon tools can be much high and then the other marine and environment carbon and can be high, but if you consider why we consider as soil carbon sequestration as a mitigation efforts, the soil is in direct contact with the atmosphere. So soil can be a simple source for carbon. So I do know that the soil can be your thing to the photosynthesis and photosynthesis processes using carbon dioxide and water, when sunlight is there to convert inorganic carbon to organic carbon, and then this organic carbon gets into soil. And then the part of it can be composed and release carbon dioxide back. And at the same time, there can be waste with this carbon this because the organic carbon actually going to be part of what we consider as soil organic carbon or the humors. And then finding ways to keep this carbon in soil longer, longer. We consider the call as carbon sequestration. So the I was interested in like, I'm always interested in understanding basic, like mechanisms. My whole research interest is understanding mechanisms of any processes that I'm interested in. So, we were interested in looking at the temperate soils like Mali soils from that was Dr. Chuck Rice's Long Term field study is actually close to 30 years now. And at the time we sample it, it was over 23 years, and I post on the continuous court. And they had these treatments, different levels of nitrogen fertilizer, and also to two different sources of nitrogen fertilizers. And then looking at the carbon sequestration mechanisms, like how carbon getting sequences, how soil mineralogy can impact that sequestration. And then also we compare that system with a long term field studies about that long, more than 22 years long study from Brazil as well, because soil types are different. So no farm soil that was a Mali soil. And then we consider those soils that are relatively younger. And then when we consider the Brazil that soil goes and oxic souls and that was highly weather and high in iron, aluminum and manganese, oxy hydroxide. So there are mechanisms. When we look at carbon sequestration mechanisms, you could see that more influence from a mineralogy and it doesn't mean that when you go to moleculer levels and looking at that level, even in Mali soil they're both in their contribution from mineralogy. So initial contribution from mineralogical evidence And in both systems, again, you know that the all of us as researchers, we have interest. And then sometimes depending on funding, we move from one to another to at the moment I do not have active projects that looking at carbon sequestration. But I am always interested in that aspect of the potential of soil to the carbon soil carbon sequestration to be mitigation efforts for climate change.

Is this something that takes a little bit of doing to get farmers to buy into the idea of changing their methods to to help enhance co2 sequestration? Is it something where they're going to have to change what they're doing? Or are there current practices that will work well into that?

I think current practices, most of the time. If you think about farmers, they try to do the best they can do to protect their soils. I mean, that doesn't really they, they do not want to do things to harm their soils. So the those both those studies, I mentioned, one in North farm and the one in Brazil, actually both had killed and Northfield system that we compare. So you know that no note here low reduce tail is something that farmers moving towards most farmers, it's hard for us to find feel sometimes that continuously. So the no till practices, adding the residue back into soil, use cover crops, and all sorts of those things that you mean opportunities for farmers to increase, soil carbon levels increase, as well as not just increase temporary but but maintaining good soil carbon levels. That's something farmers actually willing to do, I think, not just you know, having incentives by having an incentive, definitely will help. But you can see the incentive, I actually read recent articles related to getting prairies to enhance carbon sequestration, and Texas and they were talking about how that can work, how the farmers to keep those things or how people to maintain those kind of natural areas, as is goodwill college, because the public company is they are looking for ways to get carbon clean. So maybe they can work with people who are maintaining prairies and contribute into this carbon sequestration, reclaiming carbon so they can work together. So there can be not not just government incentives, there can be like private entities that are willing to work with and do this kind of creating carbon trading. So those kinds of things could work, I think farmers why they would consider doing this because they know that if they can maintain good organic carbon concentration in soil that would enhance microbial activity. So that is promoting nuclear cycling, and then promoting nuclear cycling, meaning that the amount of fertilizer inputs are going to be reduced over time. So there are a lot of positive things that farmers going to gain by doing it. And then this carbon sequestration is actually part of soil aggregation as well, too. If you improve soil aggregation to the then that will improve a lot of other physical properties as well. So the the AI and water movement in soil so I think it's a win situation for farmers. It's something that's going to improve their soils and into their soil productivity in the long run.

Are there parts of the world that have a greater need for this kind of approach than others if we you know, we talk about the Southeast important part of Kansas, but if we look globally, are there areas?

Yeah, I think if we look at like Africa and the other soils like, very deficient in carbon, the end then they may not have that many sources, but they could consider the conservation type of agriculture management practices to preserve carbon in soil and enhance carbon in soils. So yes, the highly weathered soils and then the drier areas, the arid and semi arid climates. If you find less carbon in soil to that will be more beneficial, even more beneficial for those farmers to do those kinds of practices.

So I was wondering back to thinking about contaminants, I was wondering if you're talking about processes to do to make inorganics less bioavailable, I was wondering if there are things that people do to their soil that actually do the reverse that make things worse. You know, that set up the mechanisms set up mechanisms that actually make those inorganics uptake into uptake into the crops more than they would have otherwise.

Yeah, so the we sometimes do it intentionally. So we call it pride extraction. That's a method of phyto remediation. phyto remediation is in general, meaning like using plants to remediate soils, sediments or water, sometimes we intentionally try to remove use plants to remove contaminants from soil, it does work for some contaminants, but not folk, highly mobile contaminants like lead. So for something like lead, it's more effective to try to introduce stabilize it, for them trying to extract it. So the attempt to enhance lead uptake by adding EDT, to the key leading the enhanced lead solubility by acylation and getting plants a carb, but no matter what, since plants are not taking lead, that much what happens when you add something like that to enhance the photo extraction, you would put that I mean, that lead can be subject to maybe moving downward or moving elsewhere to so that could be problematic. So that's why we do need to understand how we can deal with each of these contaminants. And each of those situation like what's the best way to handle it, but the something like arsenic for example, they are raw group of plants, we call that like hyper accumulators, that means they can accumulate these contaminants higher than normal plants would do. And then, so, those kinds of hyper accumulators would allow us to do that clean up, like use plants and grow plants for some time to do the cleanup. But if you do, but unfortunately, that doesn't work that well for most trace elements, contaminants, most trace elements are the zone to soil follow is very strong. So they uptake is very low. And then even if you find a hyper accumulator, you know that the removal is going to be dependent on not only how much they can accumulate in their plant, but also the biomass. So, most hyper accumulators will do their high packing laters meaning that they can have like a high concentration in their tissue, but they are not really a large biomass producers. So, if you do calculations, it can take a long time to do the cleanup, it may take 20-30 or more years to do the cleanup, but still, if you want to do that kind of cleanup, so, that would be the situation where we tried to do enhance availability, so that plants will take up and to your question, if you asked like can we make it more bioavailable, so, it ended up being food crops or something which we do not find? It can happen if we do it without understanding that particular soil. I think it can happen if we try to just do it without understanding the situation of soil. I can give you a example if you look at arsenic, arsenic is something that we are very much concerned about. And you see that people talking about some moss and it came out but Jews or somebody making apples or making rice and things like that. And then one thing I want to tell you that arsenic, lead and all other potentially toxic trace elements, they are naturally present in soil. So there's nothing called like positive lead positive, arsenic positive or negative because it's everywhere in various, you know the concentrations that are not harmful to us in most cases. And then in the air we breathe Again, if what matters is the concentration, is it a ball concentration that's going to harm us. So, if it is not higher than that, then then we are not concerned. So, same thing in waters in water you find these three potentially toxic trace elements in very small quantities. So, consolidation, so, we are concerned if it is a bottom the drinking water who the that motor quality standards. So, if you take arsenic is less bioavailable under oxic conditions. So, that means like the urban gardening Oh, we are the corn no we to any kind of gardening we do the latest soils in the biome because arsenic under that condition arsenic is going to stay as arsenic five and we do know that arsenic five species do chain by soil colloid and then they are by they are not bioavailable, but if you consider rice paddies and that is grown and then soils underwater. So, when soils and the water then the there's less oxygen going in and then the the whatever the oxygen labs can be consumed by microorganisms and then soon after about 10-14 days after the submergence, so it will become in like sub toxic to anoxic, under that as some toxic or non toxic environment those these Robotnik because I am Iron is a good Kevin iron oxide is a good scavenger for arsenic. So, the iron oxides and hydroxides can undergo reductive dissolution, the dissolution actually induced by reduction of irons. So, that these arsenic can really and then actually cool So, this release arsenic in five form can reduce into arsenic three, and then the arsenic retention to soil Polo is less than the arsenic five and even if it's routine, it's not actually retained via stronger the mechanisms. So, they can be they can become easily more bio available and then under under toxic conditions the arsenic availability can be high, but then again soils turning into an anoxic conditions more or less no oxygen under that conditions arsenic can get the sunlight and it can get people to the into sulfides and become a less available. So, so, so, I so, I think we do need to understand what the situations we are dealing with, and then understand the chemistry of soil understand the behavior of that particular contaminant. So, organic or inorganic contaminants of interest, and then then then think about things through that, how we can better manage it better, better manage it,

When you've got a contaminated soil, and you've talked about a few ways of mitigating some of that contaminants being taken up into the plant. Do you have when the soil is taken care of? And you're, you're mulching it? You're adding composted soil on top of that and working it in? Do you have a dilution effect over time there that will help mitigate just total quantities of material that's in there.

Thank you for bringing that back point. That's one thing I forgot to mention before. So, the things about why we sometimes go with those organic sources other than direct fertilizers, if you think about composed to any other organic source, we add in high quantities. So sometimes like 1/3 or one food by volume to offer 15 centimeter soil so and then mix it well. So, the immediate benefit that farmers get from that kind of application is the dilution effect. Sometimes dilution effect can be very high, and depending on the amount you make, and it can be to the 40% of dilution, then you do it that so and then maintaining that not by adding every year, but adding it every three months in every meal. So farmers can maintain that dilution in two years, the adding high quantities of organic matter will that would be the immediate benefit that farmers going to get and then the transforming into less bioavailable forms. Sometimes take time. And if it is a soluble P we are adding, we know that it can be quiet. I mean, it's relatively fast, but again, it depends on wheels. Late availability, because a lead is not available for plan to take off, could be the lead is not available for phosphorus react either. So because of that leads and those reaction can take place, take time. But the immediate benefit of adding something like organic matter would be dilution.

Well, as John said, this is a very, very complicated topic, but it's probably as critical to our food supply as any soil, if the soil quality is not there, the crops are not going to grow appropriately. And so that's just a fascinating area.

If you look at, we are looking at so we were originally going with a FAOW2 standard and those cortex limit, who lead concentration in any type of vegetables, but if the started looking at those by themselves, but at the same time, sometimes you see that these initial numbers coming out of scientifically, there's no base. Unfortunately, those could be completely decided by like toxicology tanpoint. And as some of you have food scientists, so you know that everything in food is not bioavailable, so we have to kind of consider that as well, especially when you are developing these types of standards. So that's a complete subject area that we can talk.

That is that is another complete subject area. And yeah, many times regulations are set, not necessarily based on based on the science that that's needed to set them behind it.

Yes, absolutely. Very intense learning situation. For me, certainly, like, I was probably one of those people that thought that soil was just something that held the plants, you know, physically.

I've learned I've learned with soil scientists, you do not call it dirt do not call it. So,

I was going to say that soil is very important for environmental quality. So the one of the causes I am teaching environmental quality, something that I tell my students this school is you can expect to learn about environmental quality, from the perspective of a soil scientist to how soil can how much may rely on soils, you know, not only to like group plans, and you know, provide that way but and then sometimes our objectives could be like holding a building or some something completely different. But at the same time, a lot of if we look at like these recycling, we expect soil to do lot of things, you know, feel the contaminants, degrade contaminants, and protect, cover groundwater, and then protect cover surface waters, and then with carbon mitigation and other efforts, and then help with global climate change. I think I think there's a lot that we can do,

And much more dynamic system that people appreciate.

Yes, speaks nicely to the global food systems approach towards interdisciplinary research. It touches on so many things and there's so many areas that work into it.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.
Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University.

In this episode, we will visit with Dr. Marcellus Caldas, a self-described economic/environmental geographer. Dr. Caldas research focus remains on the analysis of land use and land cover change, environmental processes, spatial patterns, and its effect on policies and governance at different scales. Dr. Marcellus Caldas, is the Assistant Provost, International Collaboration and Educational Programs, Office of International Programs.  

Transcript:

Food Production and Environmental Challenges in the Rain Forests of South America - with Dr. Marcellus Caldas, Assistant Provost, International Collaboration and Educational Programs, Office of International Programs

Trying to see their perspective how they feel about that now what's going on with him and try to see know where the problems come from. It try to work with policymakers to show for instance and that also there is that helping is create much more problem for the be part of the population that they didn't consider.

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

I’m Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science.

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a Food Scientist.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Kansas State University Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. In today's podcast, we will visit with Dr. Marcellus Caldas, a self described economic environmental geographer. Some of Dr. Caldas past research included the study of the cocoa economy, and effects of that economy on the Atlantic Rainforest of Brazil. This work evaluated the attitudes of cocoa farmers and implications on the environment. Dr. Caldas research focus remains on the analysis of land use and land cover change environmental processes, spatial patterns, and its effect on policies and governance at different scales. Dr. Caldas is a Professor of Geography and Geospatial Science. Marcellus carries PhDs in Applied Economics from the College of Agriculture at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and in geography from Michigan State University. Welcome, Marcellus. And thank you so much for joining us today on this podcast. We're looking forward to learning a lot more about your background and about the work that you do in the food related area. But before we get started down that path, could you give us a little background on yourself? And how you got interested in moving into this kind of activity?

Yeah, good morning everyone. I think my story is not so different from many people that work within the environment was a small boy in the Amazon. So I was born in the Amazon, the Brazilian Amazon, and was our boys. It was a boy scout, I had a trip in the summer of 1968, or 69. So the idea of the trip was to go and learn about the trans Amazon highway, the trans Amazon highway was a federal road that the Brazilian government was building, you know, crossing the Amazon from east to west. The idea was to bring people to the land, and connect with land the people. So in that trip, now, I had chance to see no, what was the Amazon going outside the big city, and see the jungle and see the population that live in the end. So. So in that trip, instead of seeing that the development that they go over there was proposing, now, as a young boy, what I saw was a bunch of destruction, you know big trees, erosion, you know Native American pushing out of their lands, and so on. So that was very touching for me, you know, seeing that type of seeing it wasn't what I was expecting to see. No, I was expect to see wildlife. And I saw by doing that. And when I went to college, I decided to become environment values. But not this sense. But in the sense of this study, you know, I'm an economist by background. I have a PhD in applied economics, by the College of Agriculture at the University of San Paolo. And I have a PhD in geography where I work with GIS remote sensing, and my idea was to learn how to preserve forests conservation for us. Now, that's what I do work with Phil in the US political change. I do environmental studies, and trying to implement and change policy. That's basically some of my background.

As I was reading through in your background, you mentioned that working in the Amazon, you had done work on cocoa plantations or cocoa growing activities in that area. Can you expand a little on what that was about?

Yeah, one of the things that we had done, in fact, wasn't Amazon was that the Atlantic forest was when there was a professor in the College of Agriculture. In one of the university in Brazil, we had a grant from Conservation International, to look at the farmland, his decision of the cocoa farmers. Now, the Atlantic forest is one of the most degraded forests in the world, probably Brazil has now just 4% of that forest, the rest was completely logged the Forest, for globalization, in agriculture, and so on. But the cocoa plantation it's very interesting because they have a production system where they use the shades of the big trees, known to protect the trees, the cocoa trees. And what happened is that Brazil was one of the biggest producers will number one, in terms of cocoa. And the state of Bahia the place that I was working, he was the number one for the country. And cocoa is like any other commodities that are boom bust, and we are going through a very good boom. However, in a 1986 and seven, know the cocoa price went down, at the same time that he sees that which boom to seize, will start to appear in the cocoa farms, and in this state of Bahia. So there was a perfect storm for the farmers. Simple reason, cocoa, the disease wasn't damaged from the Amazon. And nobody could understand how that this is appeared in this stage of my year that was more than 3000 miles for that place. So many tourists appears we were interesting to understand now how the farmers were responding to this crisis. So we got this grant phone Conservation International to interview farmers and try to figure out what they were doing. And what we saw was a big change. No, the cocoa was basically a transition in the state of Bahia, especially in the south part of the state and very conservative area in the farmers that completely changed land use. So we start to see farmers selling farms that they had for more than 100 years now selling to pay the debts that the fees and the price would cause them to them. So we start to see the cutting of the whole plantation, the bigger trees into grass land, in some place, we saw coffee in someplace, we saw a coconut. So it was very interesting to see how they change the perception, you know, they said that they couldn't support know what the trees was doing. They have in the area Research Center that diversity specifically for coco but with we saw the economic deprives the sending could do much to help them so now is different. So after 30 years, we start to see that they get injection of money, they develop new wires that are more resistance to disease and you start to see now the cocoa come back. But what was done was done so they lost many areas of forest that will protect very protected by the cocoa farm for the brokers system. That's what they call their one day clean underneath the big trees plant cacao. So that was the study to understand the formula to use disease, how that was changed. Now, the lands changed in the region.

Is there any resistance amongst any people or groups to the approach that you're using as a work that you're doing? Are you, is it pretty well generally seen as a good thing?

Well, no depends where you are in the country. So if you are in the Atlantic Forest, no, we don't have much forest there. So there are a huge interest in protect that there are endemic animals that are they gold monkey on the Beco lounge or the small monkey with His face is completely, no big the bite is almost a gold. That is another one that's the face is gold and the body is black. So designing them for their so people like when you do this type of work, but you cannot say the same when you go to the Amazon. Now, when you go to the Amazon do this type of work? No, it's you got to make sure that you are well connected with people that work there, especially farmers. No, we don't go in just to start to do your work with contact all these. No Association cooperative is make sure that people understand well, your work. If not, you can get in trouble I'm going to give an example was in 97, I think I was with a professor for Michigan State. And we're looking at we'll try to identify lightning areas and Amazon use remote sensing. So the idea was to go to the field, collect some points, some polygons using GIS, and use that to help us to validate the classification of the image. We got lost, you know, in the jungle going around, and we decided to stop and to get some points put in map to see where we are. Well, we saw that two guys came in a horse with rifles, guns and asked us what we are doing there. So we had to explain what we're doing. And the guy Yes, What's this gringo doing here as to what my colleege it was me? And so, we had to explain it. We have to give a name say well, we work with these. And we know this people say yeah, but okay, but next time, don't don't come to this side. Now, and we can understand when we were driving because there are so many logging roads inside the forest, when we had to drive we saw that this group that actually they were doing illegal logging there. So depends where you are, you are going to see no these type of things happening. So, it's interesting work. But it's a little dangerous if you are not prepared to work with disputes. So that's what I tell my clients that never go to this place alone. No, never go without contact people talk to people, let's do the baseboard first before we can go to the field. Now, if people don't have any idea how much danger is stored in some parts of the Amazon, a lot of gold mining, illegal gold mining, you can no work with could be driving around. And suddenly you get in a place that nobody knew. We have these big people, villages or whatever you want to call. Now we could use all kinds of people there working, logging, mining is kind of dangerous. So

It brings to mind what you recently got a seed grant through the global systems here. And part of the topic is assessing rural perception of Land Management, what you just described is kind of scary. I mean, in there, there are a lot of things. What have you learned there that relate to the work that you're doing here? Or are they just totally different landscapes that really don't overlap with one another.

Yeah, they are totally different landscapes for many reasons, one of the things that we see here. We are in an area that is very well developed now, people are very well informed themselves, the management of the landscape. We are looking at fire Conservation Reserve programs now. So people knows how to manage the fire. What happens he that sometimes the fire gets out of control because of the wind, you know, and that's going to affect the perception or some farmers around say, well, these are going to affect me, I'm going to just know, do this type of things to avoid this by coming to my property. Now they're very, very informative. They are the owners of the land, now going to places in Brazil like the Amazon. There are a lot of public land and people are grabbing land. Now, imagine that Oklahoma and Kansas in the beginning where people would come grab land. That's what happened in the Amazon. That’s what is happening right now. Now people are there is a law in Brazil that say that you use the land for five, five years in one day. You are the owner of the land. So that's kind of thing that people do in the Amazon. People don't want to use to go around and start asking questions about what we're doing. It's kind of dangerous if we go to the middle of the jungle start. It's kind of compared to what you see here. Now, it's a jungle there. And here it's completely developed. Now, if you go to the savanna there in Brazil, in the middle of the country where the agribusiness in general are working, it's completely different. Now, they're gonna treat you the same way. So enforcing the works. Governance works. Not completely like here but works, they not gonna kill you, like in the Amazon. So that's the big difference that I see. No, people don't like to talk about this. But this is the reality. If you look at indicting aiders, they, we had a bunch of kills that will not say, a word, a highlight in the newspaper or the world environmentalists being killed in the Amazon. So, no, I think that there are some places that we can see that it's similar, but places that are completely closed.

I see part of the activities that you head up at K State includes coordinating and collaborating initiatives to do research internationally. Can you explain a little bit what that brings to the state of Kansas? What is the importance of that kind of international collaboration? And, you know, what's the value to the food system within the United States and certainly within the state of Kansas?

Yeah, that's, I think the one of the things that my position we strive to do is to create more opportunities for faculty to work in problems that don't have boundaries. You know, what, let me give you an example. We produce soybeans in the United States, Brazil lost produce soybeans. Now, which kind of problem both countries are facing that could be solved in benefit both countries. So the idea is to develop collaboration help affects develop preparation is that gonna help both countries, we have a disease in soybeans, and in Brazil, that we don't have any United States, or develop a collaboration for them, can help us to stay one step ahead. Now, look at the problem of the wishbone that happened in the state of Bahia, Brazil, if Brazil had been working with orders, now, maybe they wouldn't be suffering what they know suffered, because of the disease. So the idea of this, which kind of collaboration would benefit us and others, of course, there are people's there are some people with more interest in doing or no local regional state work at the international work. But there are also people that would like to do a little bit more international work, because they can no benefit for injection of funds. In some regions, for instance, now we have a lot of interest in helping African countries. So there are funds available now for people that want to work. But we need to know which countries so it's very important to see what are the problems in my office in helping them to learn about that opportunity to that country and connect people. For from that country with people from here in developing this type of proposal that can benefit both countries. That's the idea of the resource.

Would you say that the problems that you're addressing in well, in all this work, are they you think of them as like people problems? Or do you think of them as you know, economic problems or something else?

I think that both I think for instance global warming. So that's a societal problem that we need to face in there are problems that are problems that we created. Now, for instance, a bad manager of your soil in your farm. Now, if you're not aware, if you don't know how to do it, even to just increase the problem. I think that the thing is that separates these problems, what are the problems that we create? What are the problems that is the government that creates? What's the problem that society in general creates, it's look at the case of Brazil. Now, these were what's known big problem of inequality. There are 1% of the population. Very, very rich, and there is a middle class in the middle That's not to big and the majority population is poor. So no its a problem that society creates. So depends on what you are analyzing. And we can separate these problems.

When you look at, like any of these things that you've described, and going back to the cocoa production in Brazil, and there was a disease was one major factor here. Right? So the price in general is another factor, who, for problem like that, how do you think about like the different stakeholders and the like, how do you go about addressing sort of the challenges that you've got? Right? You know, is this work where you're talking in interviewing lots of different people? Are you looking, you know, more at the system's point of view? Where do you intervene? And, you know, what do you do?

Yeah, yeah, that's a good question, what I tried to do I try to connect the different scales, what try to look at the local scale the Farmer, Know, what are the problems he's facing, and try to connect these to a large scale, like a regional scale, or national scale for global scale. Now meaningful, the problems that you face at a larger scale, were sometimes developed at the module, B, a large scale, and it was a national policy that was created to prevent now, some things to happen. And that's affecting different farmers in different ways. So the idea is to review. Now my working to view this farm and trying to see their perspective, how they feel about that now, what's going on with him, and try to see know where the problems come from. It tried to work with policymakers to show for instance, and that also there is that helping is create much more problem for the be part of the population that they didn't consider now, and how to change that or how to create other policies that can benefit the majority of the population, not just the 60 groups. Now, that would be benefit from their policy, and so on. So it's my work that works at the different scales, now try to understand, I do a lot of work for the field. I do fieldwork, interview farmers, lens less people, policymakers in try to understand how this system works, you know, what can be done now to adjust and create policies to benefit society?

How often is it that there are groups of people that have just been entirely overlooked in the policy decisions that are made? And often are you actually finding? Well, look, we know who the stakeholders are, but we just didn't know what they what they wanted. And when we do this fieldwork, we discover new things about them. Are you also pointing out, you know, new pockets of people and stakeholders? And, that if that should have been included in part of the process and weren’t?

Yeah, that's one of the things that's very important doing this type of field work now is to look at groups and think that through and see it? No. I'd like to use some example of Brazil, people can compare now with the United States, and being in the United States now we see now that business the industry, it's very well organized in doing pressure and developing for their own interest. This is a very different thing in South American Latin America in general. Now, some places like Brazil, the agribusiness for instance is very strong business, and they have a very group very well organized compress of the government. But if you look at the other part of the society, like small farmers that they don't have all the support, they leave it for resistance, it just produced to eat now, they don't have this lobby. And many of the policies that are developed now, it's going to focus on one part of the supply chain. Now, general commodities, and forget from the other part, that the people that produce just resistance to survive. Now, and that's one of the things so the idea is to know look at these different agents in the supply chain, and see how these policies are affected by these different agents.

So in many ways the farming system in the US is changed over time, a lot recently, right but but we understand sort of all the parts in some ways and it may be less the case Is that where there's less overall organization? Or like you said the different lobbying partners are not, you know, not as well developed and not as well established? And hasn't everybody? Or they're still missing pieces, though here in the US have voices in the food systems that are just sort of not not being represented? Do you think?

I think they are very well represented. They are not too strong. No, that's the difference for me, they are represented different from Brazil, what they are, some pieces are not represent are not part of the analysis. Here they had part of the nest, although they are not too strong. Now, that's one of the big differences that I see. Now, if you look at, if you ask you, what is the agricultural frontier in the United States? People are gonna tell me, we don't have it. Right. So by saying that we don't have a it we say, Well, we know we are. We are now using everything that we have, we know everything that's going on, and so on. But if you look at countries like Brazil, or countries in Africa, where the agricultural frontier is to moving now, there are a bunch of piece that you are learning when you move to these frontiers. Now, sometimes people know, have made a mistake in my perception say, well, but we don't have any agricultural frontieres anymore. No, we do know there are places in the Amazon known place in Africa that nobody's living there just now in case of Brazil, some indigenous people there. So from Brazil we are still moving. And there are a bunch of things that we we don't understand how that works. Let me give you an example here. Now that I see, for instance, if you look at scientific papers, no research has been done in the last nine years about Linda COVID changed Amazon. The you're going to see that people blame the agribusiness for what's going on in terms of deforestation far so well, but when you look at how they interpret ag business, in fact, they are talking about large farmers. No data classify activities by the type of the crop is the commodity by the size of the farm, by how intense now is the use of inputs that and to facilitate, know the analysis, they call agribusiness. However, know the classical definition of agribusiness, is the whole agents. Reform gate, the production to the tables for there. I like to say from the fuel to the fork, but it's not there to this issue that they apply when they're in why and what's missing there. Now all those so far, they cannot capture these peak definition was the organisms from pre farm gate to post farm gate. And we always consider agribusiness equation variables modeling. So but in fact, it's very endogenous because no in frontier areas, when do I buy a chainsaw? No, when do I buy seeds to put grass, the agribusiness, they're working for you and how can you comment for that in the modeling. So there are a lot of things that we are trying to understand now in this process of development, that here we are marching now informed because these are happening now. 1800 1900s. Now, if this happened and is still happening now.

Can you give us any specific specifics on the impact that you have had directly on policy and governance related to these to these activities? I may have missed something that you said prior to but are there any are there any specific detail or specific activities that you point to that were impacted?

Yeah, I think that as a professor, one of the my main goals was to call attention for problems now helping advance the leader at work in my field that led us when the COVID change or land use science. I think that the leader of land use science talks a lot about drivers of political change. And one of our demands that we had now I don't, it's not just me. But the group that I have been worked with for many years. It was trying to show new drivers offline for a change that people can. We didn't have a leader to. For instance, I have a colleague and co author for him one paper that talks about to contention, let to COVID change. No. And before nobody can understand what what was contention when COVID change and the idea was to show that fight for land No, in the Amazon was leading to deforestation. And one of these The was a consequence of the Brazilian law. No, the Constitution that was not pay attention for this details. Let me give you an example of they're now in the in the presidency of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, he was a leftist president in Brazil, he was supporting social movements organization for land reforms. And these organizations, they were in occupying large profits. In many parts of the country, especially in the Amazon. The Amazon, we had large farmers, when they say large farmers the big they are 30,000 hectares 60,000 acres. And it's very difficult to monitor them on the field, a large property like there. So search movement organization where we occupy these lands now and try to force the government to appropriate the property and transform the property in small farm for them. So we start to look at satellite image, and we start to see different patterns in the landscape now and we'd like to grant for our National Science Foundation, we get some grants or get together and delete scam. Now, see how those lender forms settlements are affect Linda COVID change. One of the things that we learned with this proposal was that because of this law, that say that if you work in land for five years in a day, now you get the right to the land, and the government has the ability to this is appropriate, your land in give to others, we start to see that these movements they occupy, know this part of the land, these old properties properties, large profit, and they're the own it to protect the land. They will create militias. Now to monitor the land. So we start to see a lot of crime in some locations and the Amazon. At the same time we start to see a lot of deforestation. Well, people ask, How come the deforestation, the land reform and they create a encampments inside the forest to produce foods force of resistance, and the owner of the property, because a lot of the propets now are for land speculation. When they saw that they would lose the land. What they did was to occupy the land, cleaned the land for the grassland and wait for the ground to disappropriate and pay the value of all the infrastructure that he developed on the farms that had developed in the land. So with that, we start to see this contention now be a factor in political change. So that's one of the big advances. You know, I'm showing that the way there is contention can lead to clinical change in the Amazon. Another one and was separate know, this type of movement for spontaneous settlements. Let me give an idea what that means. There are two types of settlements for land reform in the Amazon one that is a consequence of social movement organization, they occupy the land. So Ricky, I'm usually turned off by the land, because that's the perception off of the land, the less people that want the land, they finally, but if you ask the owner of the farm, they say no, they are not occupied. They are invading my property. So it's a very interesting, you know, definitions that you need to work on. Talk to the people. In the case of the Amazon when the Brazilian government was opening the trans Amazon highway, bring people without land, to learn to talk people what they did was to develop settlements. Now in the 1970s. Now for these people they gave, they're gonna gave 100 hectares now, for families 300 hectares to 500, for people that want to create the business in develope it even more, no more advanced agriculture. Well, after four years, the kids of that family that moved to the Amazon, they became adults, they start to look for them, or land to create the farm on the acre bears. Now, this is a small piece of land, to be honest in the Amazon for a family, especially because of the soil that's nice roared and so on. So this perspective moves deeper in the forest to create their own settlements. Now, no social movement organization or behind your just little, what they call the life cycle of the household, they start to open trails and the forest, mark their own land, and use for five years after they have enough people, you know, around them, they decide to go to the ground, say, hey, we have this therapy for living here. We're living here for 10-15 years. So we need this for you need to legalize need to take off the land so we can get credit. You know, and so to improve the farm is completely different. The similarities in terms of the deforestation that they did in the air on the land was the forest like in this social movement organization. So now the governor didn't know that. And we have to show the data, Turing's talk to policymakers to see now how they can help this group for no increase the deforestation. So this is one of the consequences of the work.

What are the different ways that you can make your research and the results aware? I know as a faculty person I, you know, published in scholarly journals, are there additional ways that you need to get that information out to different groups?

Yeah, yeah, I wonder you're working places like that. No real need to make sure that to have a broad impact? No, the idea is to prepare the information, not just the cost for us, but also for the farmers development workshops, develope talks, now where you're going to educate them about the problems that they face policy makers the case of Brazil, no, they are in Brasilia, the capital or in the capital city in the state. Now and we have connections, we need to you need to develop this connection to people so that you can present reports you can present, make your case, to show why these need to change. Sometimes we need to work off nouns for known nongovernmental organization to present report then because they have the larger genes and so on. So let's think there are many different ways to do that depends on what you know, if you want to create too much, no. First, sometimes going to the newspaper is a good one. Just want to call it data flows. Sometimes you just want to work with for the policymakers directly now in this state, and show them the importance of that let them fight for that thing for you. Now, depends on what you are looking for. How important is that thing, no perspective for that side. In particular. I'm what the most important thing is, I promise you, it's not to be afraid to show what you are doing, how important that for society.

Great, thanks.

The work you're doing with Dr. Joslin out of out of geography and Dr. Bergtold out of Ag Econ on the title of this is “Agricultural Food Production and Conservation Reserve Programs in the Context of Wildfire”. Can you explain a bit about that particular project? And if there are things that you've just discussed that tie into this or how does this project play out in the overall perception of what you're working on today?

Yeah, that's a good question. You we look at the perceptual of farmers for a while, you know, try to understand how they perceive the danger of fire in their property, how that can affect food system. And values, norms, beliefs are very important ways to look at these now how much I value no conservation my profit. Now these thought to that is very difficult. Because we it's the way health measure is this for a modeler How to measure these things into models. And that's the most important thing that they're trying to figure out how to look at the various how to look at perception. How to look at normals how these is important for a farmer? No, that's producing to make money. No, that's, that's awesome. He in the West, now we start to see people associate in some location, well fires to conservation. Where are these, these, this guy was responsible for this big fire, he doesn't take care of this E CRP. And there why I don't have any here, no, in my profits, because I don't want to take the risk of no fire that come to my property, you know, it this. That's one of the things that I think that my work has do that's components, trying to understand, at the same time, try to develop known ways to create policy, understand how to influential policymakers for, you know, for change in that thing. So it is a work that is still in the beginning, we had the first data collection, but because of the COVID. Now, we couldn't move much, because some students tabulate the data for us. And they had to ask was, when you finished the collection of the data? No, it was in March of this year. And we know it is rolling, going back to that is to is that create modular proposal to submit for some fund agents to try to understand the influence of fire in the perceptions of the farmers and land use of us.

Yes, I recall the I don't know if this is what prompted this particular study. But there was just an absolutely devastating fire wildfire in the southern portion of Kansas.

Yeah, not just in Kansas, we know, after we start to look at these, we start to see no immediate differential location that goes from Nebraska, all the way down to Texas. So wildfires, so fire that became wildfires, and sometime we know no lack of management, no. And all they do is try to figure out the perception of the farms, how this is going to affect for CRPS in the United States, into effects conservation and so on. Yeah, I think that's, it's interesting and would be great maybe in the future to have, instead just one, but another one speaker, with a little more expertise in the West to do a comparison. Like I am not an expert in the United States, my work is in land use land cover change in Latin America, and tropical countries. You know, and it's sometimes difficult to do the comparison with the United States because my field now, but I see that's important is the environment economist, because that's where no changes that are occurring, the hands of no natural resources. So if we look at Brazil 4% of the GDP in Brazil, come for the agriculture sector. Now, the agriculture sector since 2008, now inject $350 billion in the Brazilian economy. So you know, it's 10% of the labor force was on that field. And because I was born there, now, I have interest to understand this process ologies affect the use of resources. Especially, if you look at climate change, how these change can affect society in general. So in maybe another person from the West will have a different perspective. Now I look at a the company compatible. Now inside production, like US are the biggest oil producer. And Brazil is the second one and they compete but there are the other thing is that they complement each other so that we wouldn't be making the maybe it is a little bit more interesting for the larger means.

Yeah, it'd be interesting sometime.

So it was a pleasure to talk to you guys and I hope that I have answered your questions.

You have!

My insight, I hope it is interesting for people. Learn a little bit more about what I do and why it is important, my perspective.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.
Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University.

In this episode, we discuss the highly dynamic area of food safety as it pertains to food processors, regulators, and technology providers. Dr. Randall Phebus’ area of study focuses on improving food quality and safety through laboratory and processing-based research. He also specializes in food microbiology as it relates to food safety, food biosecurity and defense and public health. Additionally, Dr. Phebus works with undergraduate and graduate students, helping to provide the knowledge needed for the next generation of food-safety experts.

Transcript:

At the Intersection of Industry and Academia – Food safety, interdisciplinary research and technology integration, with Dr. Randall Phebus, professor in animal science and industry at Kansas State University

This is really exciting to me. You know, it's kind of opening up a new era of integrated food safety and a lot of it is based on machine learning and artificial intelligence and food safety culture developments.

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a food scientist.

Hello everybody, and welcome back to the K State Global Food Systems podcast something to chew on. The food we eat comes to us from a variety of sources, some through a complex international food chain, and some from our local farmers. Regardless of the source, the safety of that food is paramount in protecting the well being of you, your family, your friends, or your customers. In this podcast, we speak with Dr. Randall Phoebus. Professor in the Department of Animal Science and Industry here at K State. Randy specializes in food safety education research, where his teaching and study spans most food categories. He works closely with food processors, regulators and technology providers across the country focusing on food safety process validation. Randy's research has taken him from the biosecurity Research Institute at K State where to scale food safety studies have been carried out on beef processing, to the study of bakery products in proving that the oven is an effective microbiological kill step. Well, thank you so much for agreeing to do this. I've been wanting to get you on here for a while. And we've finally gotten around to doing it. And looking forward to the discussion. Welcome, Randy.

It's great to be with you guys. Today.

I've had the opportunity of working with Randy for many, many years. Your focus is on food safety, and certainly you're known around the world for a lot of the work that you've done in that area. We'll look forward to learning more about the research and understanding where your focus is and how that information has been used. But I'd like to start out with getting a little bit of background on you, who you are and what got you interested got you started in the area of food safety of microbiology and all of the things that go along with that.

Well, I'll tell you what, that they answer that it goes way back. My family. I'm from a little town in Tennessee called Waverly and my father and mother had been in the grocery business since before I was born, which was before 1968. We'll leave it at that. And so, you know, I grew up in the retail side of the food industry with my parents working at the unknown in the grocery store. And all through school and even college, I worked and supported that family business. But during that time, I also had a very keen interest. I have a lot of young folks pursuing a degree in veterinary medicine. And that's what I went to the University of Tennessee to study. And after I got my undergraduate degree in animal sciences, their University of Tennessee, and with discussion with some of the close friends in the veterinary field that I worked with, I made the decision that really wasn't what I wanted to do and just pure fortune, I was able to connect with a actually a Kansan, Dr. Jim Riemann, who was a meat scientist, specialist, that professor there at the University of Tennessee, and he convinced me in one meeting, basically that food science, and particularly food safety, which is my area would kind of be my calling in. So I was somewhat familiar with it just from my family heritage, but I really got into the food science and got my master's degree there at University of Tennessee and then state owned for PhD in food safety, which I got in December of 1992. And I actually came to K State and began my assistant professor position here and food safety and in the Animal Science and Industry department a month before I got my degree, my PhD degree actually. So I was here in November of 92. And although I've had numerous opportunities to go to industry or even to go back to my home university over the years, I have chosen to stay at K State. And I think pretty much I'm going to complete my long career here at K State. So I'm in my 28th year as being a professor of food safety. And it's been a really dynamic ride, I guess we would say, to participate and watch how food safety has evolved and progressed across the globe, actually, in this last three decades is phenomenal. But then to look at where we are today, and look like we're going to be doing in the future, relative to public health and food safety, I think, I think the next decade is just going to be off the charts and in terms of what we have to do and can do to improve public health and food safety. So here at K State, yes, I'm on a 70% of research appointment. But I also, my 30% teaching appointment is just as exciting to me, where I'm mostly interacting with undergraduates, I teach the Introduction to Food Science course here, with so I'm the person who gets the students coming into the food science program on their very first year. So I try to instill enthusiasm and excitement in those students and really help them get off to a good start in our food science program through that course.

And you do that really well.

Well, thank you, Jon, I appreciate that.

I'll step back and ask kind of a global question on where you are on the work that you're doing these days. But what do you think are some of the most critical food safety issues in the food supply chain today?

Well, you know, we always in food safety, we're always focused on those pathogens that continue over the last several years, could be 100 years, causing us grief, things like salmonella, and E. coli, Listeria, they're not going away, we've got data showing that some in some cases, they're expanding. So that is still the big focus, I guess, just from pure food safety. But as we sit back and watch what's happened, just you know, over the last four months, COVID it's not per se a food safety issue, or we don't think it is at this time. But you never know what's going to come down the pike. I mean, today, you're working with salmonella. Tomorrow, you need to convert and work with a virus, you never know what's going to be on the agenda, you know, even the next day, but particularly in the next couple of years out. And to me, that's an exciting, you have to be adaptable and flexible and nimble to make sure that you can, you know, address what is, you know, the real focus point of any particular time and food safety. But looking ahead, I really think what's going to be exciting going forward and in hopefully we can even talk about that is we are integrating other technologies at a very rapid rate into our food safety, traditional type food safety programs. So here I'm talking about machine learning and blockchain and artificial intelligence and all of these things that us microbiologists really didn't think much about in the past. We are now coming up with great ways, probably just scratching the surface to make very good advancements that probably weren't thought about 10 years ago in terms of public health. So that's kind of what drives me in terms of excitement getting up every day is Yeah, and I know a lot about salmonella. I don't know much about blockchain. But I do know that I'm going to get left in the dust if I don't learn, because it's going to happen. It is happening right now. So hopefully that answers your question. But you know, you never know today, it's the integrated dynamic aspects of things that, you know, we look at things like nanomaterials, and they're using the food system. Well, they have so many implications, whether it's food safety, or nutrition, or personal safety of the people handling them. And so you can't just be any kind of one type of a scientist that anymore, you get to kind of span or cross disciplines, which to me, you know, I'm one of these people who's kind of like a sponge when it comes to wanting to get new knowledge every day. And whether that's in my field or outside of my field. That's what excites me.

Is there an issue a potential problem that you think that academic scientists or industrial food science are missing? That are they're ignoring or they're not wanting to face? I mean, are we kidding ourselves, in some cases, are just ignorant?

Well, you know, that's probably always going to be the case, try to take the optimistic approach to most things. We've got all the hurdles that are always there in terms, particularly in academia, of finding out and learning who's doing what, whether it's on campus or out in the industry or in another country, it doesn't matter, but breaking down those silos and those information barriers. That to me is where we are we continue to have difficulty even as much as we try to go interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary in our approaches to solving problems. I think we're making progress. But we still have a lot to do there. And, you know, that's one of the things that's always even before Maureen came to campus was exciting to me about our Global Food Systems Program is that's the goal, you know, is to get people out of their box and to get them talking across disciplines. So that we can bring new tools or new remedies to the table in an applied way, you know, not just dream up, but actually get them to work.

Do you think the university and this is a loaded question? So are there roadblocks that the university has to that interaction, or particularly to that interaction that might drive grant or contract? Reception to the faculty?

Well, that's kind of a difficult question and ganas guy even thought so much about it as a focused thought process. But you know, just being here so long I, Jon, you're one of the few people been here longer than me, I think. So you kind of pick up on what some of those barriers are to make this happen. And yes, we have differences in ways we approach things or rules and whatnot, across different colleges. Or if we're working at, for instance, the Biosecurity Research Institute, which is where I do a lot of my work. Sometimes I, you know, I value that facility like crazy, because I can do work that nobody else in the world can do at scale and that facility, including things like COVID, but you know, some of the barriers to getting in there and doing work efficiently and making it you know, there's not enough hours in the day to do all the paperwork and the IBC approvals and the IRB approvals in the biosafety training, I just think all of those things are important that we need to find ways to maximize the efficiency and take out some redundancy.

Yeah, and I think intellectual property has become an important factor or in some cases, almost a holy grail. And that certainly slows the process down in getting that resolved, if in fact, we do get it can get resolved between an industry funder and a university, doer or recipient.

All of that intellectual property and everything. And, you know, really, the root of all of that discussion is our budgets, you know, we continue to have budget issues, they are increasing as we were on the phone here. But to me, a lot of what I just went through in that list, for instance, training, I got a big staff, lab staff, and to have them trained and medically cleared through Via Christi here in town. And some trainings, we've probably got 20 modules, we have to go through each person each year. And I have to pay for that. And really, you know, there's not many budgets that you can cover all of that with not, you know, not even to mention the managing of all of that. So, right. I've always been looking, you know, just outside of the scope of science in my research program, but how can I do things more efficiently so that I'm not trying to do the paperwork as much as I am doing the pipetting. And in spreading plates and generating data? That's what my passion is, you know, right.

Randy, you were a recipient of a pretty major grant over the last couple of years. Can you talk a bit about that? You mentioned BRI, and the capabilities that you have there, and I think that grant opportunity took you into the facility. Can you give us a bit of background on what that was? And maybe some of the outcomes?

Absolutely. You know, even in my career that that has been a defining grant, defining program, that we got back in? Well, we submitted it in 2011. And were awarded the grant in 2012, through the US Department of Agriculture's NIFA program, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. And we were the recipient of what's called a cap grant, which is Coordinated Agricultural Projects grant. And that grant was $25 million over a five year duration. And it was multi institutional. I think we ended up with 17 Different institutions and two or three different agencies, government agencies working under that grant, there was five of us that managed it on a daily basis. The grant with to no cost extensions turned into a seven year effort. And K State was extraordinarily important in the overall $25 million grant we brought about nine in a little over 9 million to K State directly of the funding, which we were by far the largest recipient, recipient of the subcontract now that grant and it was focused on understanding and controlling ShiGa toxigenic E Coli across the entire beef system. So here we're talking about counting Production, Water and Environmental Management, beef processing, particularly, and then all of the things that happen as far as training the next generation of food safety specialist and doing teacher education in our K through 12. So it spanned everything you can imagine, for I'll tell you what I was tired at the end of it, it just ended in December of this past year. But to see what we accomplished in terms of working with the industry, it wasn't just us academics, even the beef industry was majorly involved letting us work in their facilities, helping us teach serving on advisory boards, and it was just a very big public private partnership effort. And, you know, we gained an understanding through all of this at a level that probably wouldn't have happened with your normal granting process of say, you know, a couple 100,000 to this project, and to that project, to be able to pull all that government funding together, pull the team together and make them work together toward defined goals really was efficient, I don't think you're going to see any more of the cap grants at the level of 25 million per project anymore, they've indicated that's probably not going to happen. But the concept of getting people, you know, interdisciplinary type people working together toward a common set of objectives, really did work. And so right now, you know, we've published manuscript and abandon manuscripts, and probably 100 grad students are out there working in the industry out of the project. So I think, you know, over the years, you're going to see substantial evidence of the importance in the work output that that grant generated for food safety, particularly the safety in this country. That's incredibly incredible.

You know, I think that the everyday listener knows about E coli. But the other half of that name of that bug is probably unfamiliar to you guys. Why is it? Why is that a big deal?

Well, that's a great point. Everybody in school hears about E coli. It's on the news all the time. And it is generally a, you know, very beneficial, required healthy organism for our GI tract. It's the most common organism in our GI tract, but there is a subset of E coli that is what we refer to as Shiga toxigenic e coli. That means they produce a toxin that's similar to the toxin Shigella dysenteriae. A produces that's the organism that causes dysentery all around the world. And it's extremely potent, can be extremely deadly knocks out your kidneys, and particularly in young adolescent type people, causes hemolytic uremic syndrome and bloody diarrhea. We also refer to this group or not getting into much science here, but we call them Entero Hema Rages, which means that they produce bloody diarrhea. So it's a major issue. And it's been particularly related to the beef industry for quite some time now since about 1992. When we had the Jack in the Box outbreak and kind of made its rise to fame during that time. Even during that time K State was very in my group and was extremely focused on controlling chicken toxigenic E Coli worked with Cargill and Freekeh, Skandia. And we developed here at K State, the steam pasteurization process, where a very large percentage of the US beef processors adopted and installed these big steam cabinets for major manufacturing, food safety in the beef industry. I remember that. Yeah, that organism, you know, continues to cause problems. We talked about it in beef, but as far as manure and water runoff from feedlots and dust and things like that, we have problems with fresh produce, whether it's leafy greens or sprouts or whatever it might be that organism, you know, crosses several different food commodities, we've had problems with it in wheat, which is then transferred to raw flour coming out of your, your area, Jon. And that's one area that I'm working on right now is working with the industry to develop interventions to kill or control, she can talk to unique e coli and salmonella in flour in baked goods. So you know, you can't just focus on one commodity these organisms span the gamut basically melons, and peppers and spices and all kinds of things.

Yeah, we've certainly seen recalls and all of those areas over the years based on those organism organisms. Yep.

And I might add that it's not just human food, you know, we're doing The same scientific research validation projects we call them for pet foods. And pet foods now under the Food Safety Modernization Act are basically regulated to the same standards as human foods. And so they'd have to have those validated processes in place, which is kind of my specialty is validating commercial manufacturing processes for their ability to control these organisms. So we've been doing almost as much pet food work as we have been human food work here at K State for the last few years.

It's a huge business that a lot of people don't know anything about.

Well, that's true. And you know, here in Kansas, you know, we have all of the agriculture and the meat processing. So that means we have a lot of byproducts that go into the pet foods. Yeah, so if you look at the pet food industry, here in Kansas, and Missouri, especially, we are probably the biggest in the nation. So it is a huge issue for our state.

Manhattan was chosen several years ago, as the new home for the National bio and agro defense facility with the M bath is what we call it, will there be an intersection with the kinds of work you're doing? And that facility? That's not I know, directly associated with the university, but it certainly physically directly associated with university and very, very close to the other laboratories you've worked in? What kind of communication and overlap Do you see with that facility once it's completed?

Well, I think it's going to be a tremendous positive impact on our community in our region, not just our community, but our region, but especially Kansas State University, because what's really going to happen, I think, is we're going to have a lot of opportunities for scientists, particularly the vet animal, you know, oriented type scientists, to work with the NBAF government scientists. And I really think it will spurn or found a lot of innovation. And, particularly, you know, like, for me, I do a lot of applied research, which means I'm taking technologies, maybe they were already developed by the technology industry, but they need to be either adapted or validated for the food industry. And so I take those, and I'm not necessarily developing the technology, I am proving it, the proving its effectiveness in a lot of times, that's either done here at Call Hall, or over in the BRI. So that's applied research, but I think NBAF will help with a lot of basic research interactions where, you know, we're understanding the molecular side of things or generating physiological responses to vaccines and things like that. And you know, that'll strengthen both the government program and the case they program us working together. In terms of food manufacturing, food processing, I don't think there's a major connection there, per se that you immediately see, I guess, it because it's mostly animal health, and for an animal disease control type focus, if we take COVID as an example, you know, they they invest in DOD and all them understand that that is a threat to our national security. And they are interested in helping in whether that turns whether COVID There turns out to be a food safety risk or impacts the food chain or whatever else, it has something to do with massive security. We do have right now in existence as NBAF is being built. There are some transition funds that the government has provided to kind of foster the work in the interconnection with K State as that building is being built. I see that as being really big because it helps us leverage additional funding. When we go after other you know, government funds. For instance, a group of it's just submitted a USDA NIFA grant, we're waiting to hear back from controlling COVID in meat and poultry processing. Well, you know, the NBAF transition fund was very valuable in saying, you know, we can leverage this amount of money towards your grant, if you get it to improve what you do, you know, to get more out of the government funding. So that's kind of where we, I hate to say play the game, but it's play the process of pulling money together opportunities and resources together from across different groups, so that we can do better, more complex, more integrated projects, and do them quickly and get data out there. Obviously, we need to know how to control COVID and meat and poultry processing where it's such an issue right now.

Let me let me just skip back. You use the term validation or when to validate a process. What does that mean? In the real world? 

In the real world? It's actually a process that's mandated it began back in 1994 when HACCP by Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points was mandated for producing or manufacturing a meat and poultry products, which is a science based system where you actually have to understand your process and demonstrate that it is capable of controlling whatever food safety hazard is related to your product. And then there's a kind of a connected term called verification. So you got validation, which is scientifically proving the capability of a process. And then verification means that on an ongoing basis, you are proving that your system is working, the way it was validated, so they go hand in hand, you know, so half up was mostly for seafood and meat and poultry. But now with the Food Safety Modernization Act, it basically brings that same risk based scientifically based mindset to preventive controls. That hasn't been. So now we're basically doing that approach across all of the food categories. And so validation means specifically that I go in, and I will, under our bio containment Facilities and Operations, I will actually inoculate the food product with the organism of interest. And then I will apply whatever technology we're interested in, in quantify the impacts of that in terms of reducing the level of that organism, generally, we try to depending on what part of the process where if it's an animal harvest situation like a carcass wash, we would like to see two to three logs, which would be 99.9% reduction of what we put on there. As far as reducing that particular pathogen. If we're doing maybe sub primals, like loins or roast, which wouldn't have very much own it, by the time it gets to that point, if we can show one log reduction, that's a major advance that would be 90% reduction. So again, that kind of tells you it's not just one point in the process that we try to control this, it's at multiple points and kind of have an additive effect of microbial protection throughout the whole process. And you know, that whole process includes restaurants and consumers, you know, they're just as reported in the food safety chain as, as the manufacturers are. So that's kind of how we operate is looking at the systemic reduction that we can get when we mimic a full production process. And not universities can do that. But with our BRI facility, we can follow all the way from a live animal through harvest, through fabrication through manufacturing of hotdogs, and hook it all together under one roof.

Excellent. If I remember, HACCP, it grew originally out of the US space program, I think,, yeah, that's correct.

That was it was actually invented by the Pillsbury company, back in the early days of NASA to ensure that none of the food that the astronauts would be consuming would make them sick. I teach this in my intro to food science course. And I try to keep people laughing a little bit. But can you imagine being in your spacesuit and having diarrhea or throwing up, you know, that would be kind of a math, it would be deadly? And so perhaps up was, its predictive management, basically, you are anticipating what could happen, and then instituting controls to make sure it doesn't happen?

Significant difference in approach to what a lot of people think, yeah.

You talked about the criticality of interdisciplinary research and, you know, the, need to understand things that are outside of your current area of expertise. And you've also talked about and providing some basic research in some of these areas. We've got several departments on campus that really just focus on basic research, you know, whether it's physics or biology or chemistry or some of these, how do you see these groups? How do you see the intersection between interdisciplinary and the fundamental sciences on campus and the need for that kind of interaction from the basic research perspective?

Well, that is exactly the point I was trying to make. And Maureen is the manager of our Global Food Systems Program, I'm looking for you to make that happen. A lot of the technologies that we are dealing with in food safety today, particularly the what we call intervention technologies, those like carcass washing or cooking or whatever else. The way the industry and consumer preferences are everything's going to minimal processing or clean labels where you don't use preservatives or chemicals, ingredients in the product. And yeah, that may appease people who are looking for all natural and things like that. But, you know, from a scientific standpoint, it can cause challenges in terms of food safety, and shelf life and food quality. And so, as we Look to develop these technologies, for instance, high pressure technology, which just applies, you know, high 80 psi 80,000 Psi to per square centimeter to a product, it kills the organism, you know, I need someone like in our physics department or in our engineering department to figure out how to make that technology work in a high paced food production scenario. So, you know, that's where we team up and I heard some other podcasts that you've done. And just knowing who is on campus, doing what, or even who has an interest in doing something is where our Global Food Systems program can really help. You know, I just found out and we actually was able to get an internal grant recently, um, controlling organisms in wheat. And a part of that grant was rapid detection of the organism based on using these extremely one atom thin layers of graphene. Well, until we had the Global Food Systems program, I really didn't know we had someone on campus, looking at that, you know, and so we were able to hook up and get a seed grant. And as soon as we get our labs open back up this week, we're going to be, you know, addressing that. So to make the answer a little bit shorter is we need the engineering we need the basic sciences mathematicians, the IT people, big data people to partner up with us microbiologist and, you know, predictive models, people and actually pull it together and address the food system, not say the automobile system, you know, that sort of thing. Can I just point one thing out that happened this week that I think it's going to be really important for the future of food safety in the US and probably the world. But starting here in the US, as the Food and Drug Administration just released their what they call blueprint, that the title is the New Era of Smarter Food Safety, it's a blueprint that the FDA is going to follow, that really takes us into the next decade of food safety. In particular, they point out four pillars of things that they're going to address, but it basically comes down to advancing technologies, managing things that we haven't managed before, to any degree, which is the food supply chain, in looking at how we document and digitize the food supply chain, so that instead of doing a trace back because of an illness, that's going to take, you know, three months, we can do it in three minutes, based on big data and blockchain technology. And then, a piece of that is food safety culture, you know, we can have the world's most wonderful technologies in place. But if we have a cook, or a person working on the processing line, that when the supervisor is not looking they don't they cut corners, then we're always going to be at risk. And so developing a culture where that doesn't happen, is part of it. And, you know, this is coming out of the FDA, but one of my very close friends over many years, Mr. Frankie honest, as the deputy director of the Food and Drug Administration, he was formerly at Walmart, and before that, at Walt Disney World, running their food safety programs. And this is really exciting to me, you know, it's kind of opening up a new era of integrated food safety, and a lot of it is based on machine learning and artificial intelligence and food safety, culture development. So, you know, what we're doing here at K State is the reason I get so excited is right in line with what the FDA blueprint is calling for. And as long as we, you know, continue to develop that and formalize it and get more people involved with it, including more students, then we're going to be leading the way I think you're in a state or one of the institutions that leads the way.

I listened to Frank Yiannas's presentation at the virtual IFT meeting. He certainly covered exactly the topics that you've that you that you mentioned. And he's been trying, he's been working on those topics for some years, I think even before he got to FDA. So it's interesting to see how some of that is starting to play in and interestingly enough, the last blockchain series that I attended at K State was in the business department. So again, the interdisciplinary approach to things is critical and connecting, connecting you all and getting those discussions going along is going to be a fun, fun challenge over the next years, but I there's a lot to be done.

I just really appreciate you guys doing these podcasts and getting our messages out and, you know, instilling some interest in the public, whether it's our students or what other people around the country listening to our podcasts, so I encourage you to keep it up.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

In this episode, hosts talk with Dr. Gordon Smith, professor in the Department of Grain Science and Industry and head of the International Grains Program Institute at Kansas State University.  Professor Smith has worked in food processing areas as diverse as hot dogs, breakfast sandwiches and baked goods. Through his passion for understanding the science behind food, supporting research and providing guidance to the next generation of scientists, Smith is focused on helping to solve critical challenges in food production and food safety.  

Transcript:

Perspectives On Food Chemistry - the importance of understanding the fundamental and applied science of food, with Dr. Gordon Smith, professor in grain science and industry, head and IGP Institute Director

The results can be much, much less positive and much less impactful to the society that we live in.

Yeah there can be a lot of thought roadblocks there. Yeah. So how often do you think these things work? Quite well, right. So where you've got the right personality. Together, I think most of the people were searching out. And most of the departments who look for these partnerships sort of know what they're getting into and doing it and they're ready?

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

I’m Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science. 

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a Food Scientist.

Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. Food System professionals are trained to study and better understand many aspects of the food we eat. Production, nutrition, logistics, ethics, social implications, and sustainability all play an important part. However, an underlying need in the understanding of a food system begins with fundamental science. It is that research that provides the foundational building blocks for understanding food science. In this podcast, we talk with Dr. Gordon Smith, professor and department head in the Department of Grain Science and Industry, and director of the KSU International Grains Program. Gordon is a Chemist by training, and with a deep understanding of the science and interest in its applications. Those fundamentals led him to work in commercial food safety, large scale production of meats and bakery goods, as well as processing of fruits and vegetables. Prior to coming to K State, Gordon worked at the intersection of industrial and academic research and product development with ConAgra Foods, Sara Lee, and other food industry manufacturers. Gordon, welcome to the podcast. I'm really excited about bringing someone in from my home department at Kansas State University. I spent many, many years working on my Master's and PhD in the Grain Science department. And it's really a special pleasure for me to introduce Dr. Gordon Smith, and share more about him and the programs currently carried out in the Department of Grain Science and Industry. Gordon, can you give us a little background on yourself, how you ended up studying chemistry and how that all led you to the food industry.

Thanks for having me. It's my pleasure. We do have a unique situation here within the department of K State. And I'm looking forward to telling your audience about that. And so for my background, I was raised as the son of a college professor. And what that means, among other things is you're exposed to college professors from a very, very young age, and that you live in college towns. And so I was born in Pullman, Washington, moved to Corvallis, Oregon to Oregon State, and then to the University of Tennessee, where my father retired after 25 or 30 years. And so, you know, I guess I was raised as a purebred academic education was important. Science was important. I was in the laboratories, you know, as young as I can remember five or six with my dad. And that translated kind of in high school over to a love of chemistry, thanks to a just phenomenal high school chemistry teacher. You know, I had a great teacher in high school, I had great teachers in college. And it translated into a love of chemistry that continued on through my master's. And so I have a master's in organic chemistry. Then I moved to the more applied side of things and have a PhD in food chemistry and food science that led me in the beginning to make the choice, the conscious choice not to be an academic because I saw, you know, kind of the life of my dad and I wanted to do something a little bit different, but with a love for academia. And so I spent 25 years in the food industry. And then almost six years ago made the move back to academia and it's been a it's been terrific ride from graduate school or undergraduate to this point forward. And it's just been a terrific adventure and I've really quite tickled that I choose science and did I choose food science in specific.

That's great when I look through and actually I've known this I've known you for many years now and looking back your background is in need science more than in grain science. Can you talk a bit about about that background in that the work that you did over the years in the meat area? And kind of how you transitioned out of that into the grains and milling and baking side of things?

Yeah, funny I would. The way I think about myself is my background is I'm really a chemist, first and foremost. And chemistry is chemistry, regardless of what the substrate is, or the discipline, or the food type. And so I always prided myself in having a very strong fundamental chemistry background. And it just so happened, you know that I went to meat science section within the animal science department at Texas A&M To get my PhD. But my PhD was in food science, even though I was better than a meats group. And the specific area of my study was meat, protein chemistry. And so it's what I've done in chemistry, it just turned applied. But that, you know, adventure into meat proteins led me into an industry job was Sara Lee, which in the beginning was about meats. So I was hired by the meats group at Sara Lee, which was a massive, publicly traded corporation at the time, and half non food and half food. And so you know, again, obviously, most people know the sara lee brand, but also ballpark and Jimmy Dean and Hillshire farms and products like that, and champion, and playTex bras and legs and coach leather, and kiwi shoe polish. And Annika, as you know, hired by Sara Lee did pure meats for about two or three years. And it became obvious again, you know, almost 30 years ago that what consumers wanted was convenience, convenient nutrition, especially for breakfast. And you know, what has become commonplace sense was not commonplace at all at all at the time, which was breakfast sandwiches. And so we started working on breakfast sandwiches for the Jimmy Dean brand. I got the opportunity to work for Jimmy specifically, which is really interesting purebred entrepreneur. But the work on sandwiches put me in a bunch of bakeries, both sara lee bakeries and Kopec bakeries, especially around specialty breads. So bagels and baguette and French toast and pancakes and on agos croissants. And so again, I get a whole lot, especially baking experience by being responsible for the breakfast sandwiches initially for Jimmy Dean, but that obviously spread beyond that brand to other Sara Lee brands. But that's how it started. So introduced to bakery goods through you know, through sandwiches. And then when I made the move from, from Sara Lee to ConAgra, you know, then my, I became truly a food scientist. So I did little meats at ConAgra and did tomatoes and potatoes and popcorn and you know, on it goes so, so not too radical to be here after some of what's happened since my early career days.

So what's it like to be moving from the different food product areas? Alright, so from me to tomatoes and brains. So chemistry is in common between all these but tell us something a little bit about what that's like sort of switching to a different subject area like that.

Yeah, you know, that journey, I think all of us learn at some point, and I certainly learned it younger in life. You know, I like to do challenge sports. I like to mountain climb early on. And you know, and what you kind of discover is, it's about the journey much more than it is about the summit. Staying on top of the mountain is really rewarding and beautiful and all kinds of things. But the trial to get there is much more meaningful in a lot of ways. And I would tell you that my career's been the same way. You know, it's been about the journey. And I, I would I like many academics, I am a lifelong learner, I value education, both formal and informal. And I always found the challenge of taking the biology to chemistry and about chemistry the new and applying it to something new, just terrific, really, really rewarding and meaningful. And so you know, a lot of things you can teach yourself if you have the fundamental, you know, kind of basics and if you have an environment where learning is critical or important to the business as well and I was blessed that places I worked valued, someone who's capable of becoming technically competent about the new subject areas.

Can you give us a little notion of what the industry experience brought to the academic setting? A lot of times those things are, are considered quite different from one another. But obviously, you've been here for a while now. And we're able to bring something to that program that may not have seen in the past. How does that change work?

Yeah, so, you know, I guess the first kind of caveat is I value both experiences really deeply. And so the industry people think that I'm an academic that play the industry guy, and the academics that I'm an industry person who plays my academics, I've been a misfit for the majority of my existence. And the organic chemists that turned out to be the food scientist. And so I'm used to that, of having a news show background. And so I love the fact I've been able to do both. And, you know, both sides believe they understand the other side first. So industry thinks they understand academia, and academics think they understand industry. And the truth is, unless you've lived, truly lived in both places, while you may intellectually kind of understand what's going on, you certainly have no emotional connection, or no, you know, heart connection with what, what really happens in the other world. You know, this, you know, now, after nearly six years in academia, I'm sort of kind of imagining that I know a little bit about what it's like to be a true academic, but I would say it still will take four or five more years. You know, it's, again, another journey that's slow, to truly, you know, embrace what this is all about. But you know, the things that are different between the two, and what a industry person or an academic can bring to the other world is, I had faculty tell me when I first came here, they understood industry, I go, Well, I have a litmus test. So my litmus test is, have you ever had a job and so these are lifetime at academics, they do? Have you ever had a job when someone could walk in today, and fire you on the spot? Go thanks for your service, we just don't need you anymore. We're not going in that direction. We've sold the business, there are 100 different reasons. But you would go home to your family and not have a job. And to most academics, certainly the who have never been an industry at all, they've never been in a position like that. The system just doesn't work like that. There's more worrying to longer term, you know, those abrupt decisions, just not so common, and place. And so it's difficult to understand the industry into you understand how fragile your position or your existence is, regardless of how good you are, you can be the best there is and the best rocket scientist on the planet, right to the point where we decided we're not making rockets anymore. And the minute you do that, the need for rocket scientists has gone to zero. And so I think that's a, you know, this idea of, you know, industry people, or the business is a kind of fragile world. And it can change really, really quickly. And so we deal with industry, people, you're trying to solve industry problems, and you need to keep those realities in mind. You know, that kind of sense of the business, fragile nature of business, and the sense of urgency that business has, if we don't do it, we're losing money. If we don't do we're leaving money on the table. If we don't do it, someone else will do it before us and be the first mover into a new category. And so those are things that, you know, industry person certainly understands that can bring to this environment. Some of the things. 

I was just going to ask how much you think that those different kinds of approaches to problems, but shapes the kind of work that's done, like the kinds of problems, the kinds of questions that get asked or the kinds of solutions that the people are looking for. I was wondering if you maybe have an example you can pull out of your hat or just say something a little bit more about, you know, about, yeah, how these different kind of backgrounds and shape? What gets done.

Yeah, it's a really interesting question. And you kind of hear it in some of the pure stereotypes of both groups, like academics like to go deep and it's esoteric, and it has no meaning in the real world. And if you can't do you teach and all those kind of stereotypical comments about academia and the inverse for industry, people, industry people really don't know very much. They're, you know, everything is shallow, everything is fast. They have no interest in the deeper understanding of things. And so of course, Like many things as stereotypes are based somewhat in reality. And to your question, you know, one of the realities is this idea that because speed, as I talked about earlier is so critical to business. And it is. And science, in many cases just isn't fast. You know, no matter how bad you want a cure to the Coronavirus, viral cures just take time, they take time to develop, they take time to prove small scale, they take time to prove on larger scale, they take time to develop and essentially extend out and execute. And so the speed is what drives not necessarily unwillingness for industry people to want to understand things deeper or better, or, you know, more thoroughly, they just simply don't have the time to do it. And funny, what they do have in many cases is the money. So industry scientists have money that academics may never see. And yet they have no time and the academics have the time to understand problems more deeply. But they don't have the funding often to be able to do that. So you're absolutely right, the simple reality is the base constraints of the two environments affect how problems and solutions are developed every day, no doubt about it.

So what happens at the intersection, then, sort of when you've got academics working with industry?

I was talking to a friend of mine a week ago, and there are a number of us who've worked at the intersection most of our lives. So when I worked for Sara Lee, I managed a budget, where we were allowed to work with academic and do research with academia, when I moved to ConAgra, that became a more formalized position with a much larger budget. And when I came here, this department is Maureen well knows is heavily connected to industry. So it had the good fortune to live at the interface. And the answer is the activity at the interface, the productivity, maybe that's even a better word, right? The productivity of the interface depends completely on who the people are, who are interacting there. It's all dependent on the attitude and the personalities and the tolerance for looking at problems differently. And if you put the right people at the interface, the results are just can be spectacular, have a huge heart for public private industry government University consortium, I think they can be very, very effective. But it's completely dependent upon the players that are involved. And without the right people in the right attitude and the right respect for others, the results can be much, much less positive and much less impactful to the society that we live in.

Yeah, there can be a lot of roadblocks there. Yeah. So how often do you think these things work? Quite well. All right. So where you've got the right personality? together? I think most of the people were searching out. And most of the departments who looked for these partnerships sort of know what they're getting into and doing it and they're ready. Are there a lot of challenges there?

Yeah, I think there are challenges. There are certainly professionals on both sides. People in industry, who are very skilled at working with academia and academics who are very skilled with working with industry, and I have some of my favorites, I won't name them. But I mean, there are some people in my mind who are the textbook, you know, academics in my industrial experience, people who provided high value, and timely results and insight into our business that we would not have gotten otherwise. So there's no doubt that those people exist on both sides. And there are people on both sides who want to do what they want to do. And they really don't want to be very connected or very inhibited by the constraints that come with projects. And one of the simplest constraints. Again, we're back to you here. The semblance of theme is time based industry, there's a critical path. There's a development timeline, there are deliverables, you know, certainly, you know, certain times during the month, you know, or monthly deliverables, probably not weekly in many cases, but I mean, their deliverables are things you're expected to accomplish. And again, I didn't say things you were supposed to get done and things you were supposed to accomplish. And so getting to a point and going well, I just didn't have time or my graduate students on vacation or the universities closed is simply and inadequate. To answer for why the timeline didn't get met, and no one in industry has a concept of that, you know, they don't have graduate students have employees and employees are salaried employees, and they're being paid to do a job. And it's as simple as that. And so thinking that in either environment is the same across the aisle, is not just unfortunate, it's counterproductive. And I've had to, you know, shockingly, you know, I've set with the CEO of, you know, gazillions of billions of dollars in earnings company, and had to try to explain why academics were failing to deliver against the time and expectations that were agreed upon at the beginning of projects. And that is a very unpleasant situation to be in if you're an industry scientist.

So Gordon, the Grain Science Department at K State is unique in a lot of ways. Can you give us a bit of background on the department itself, and where you see the unique value and what it offers?

Absolutely. So this is the only department in the country that is kind of comprised, and with a mission and the kind of ecosystem to deliver on that mission. So we're one of a kind in this country, there are some international universities that look similar, sort of most of universities in China that have patterned with a lot of influence from students back and forth against this department. But essentially, you know, this is a grain products based department that specifically is the Department of Grain Science and industry. So it's just not a Grain Science department. And that an industry is a nod to our reliance and our partnership with industry and everything that we do. And so we look to work with industry professionals, as a matter of practice, we try to solve industry problems, we try to be relevant. We try to train students who are prepared for industry jobs, and certainly as undergraduates. And against that we have kind of, we confer three degrees. So we don't, we actually confer four if you count the graduate degree, but we have three undergraduate degrees, a BS and bakery science, a BS in knowing science, and a BS in feed manufacturing science. And the feed science also, in the modern world includes pet food, which is a obviously critical industry in the US and abroad. And so the graduate degrees here are all in Grain Science. And so there's a number of K State individuals who are Grain Scientists, with master's and with PhDs as Maureen’s one, and they're all over the world. So not just in this country, but the reach is quite impressive. And so with those degrees, you have a department that is kind of unique, and its approach to things. And you also have a massive diversity of students. So Feed science student doesn't look like a Mill science student, and they don't look like a graduate student from Europe or from China, or from India, working on a Grain Science degree. And so the diversity in this department, not just within students, but within faculty is simply incredible. You know, we have the four major religious groups representative within faculty, we have six different nationalities, again, male and female faculty, these programs, which historically were male dominant, are not male dominant anymore. So the idea that, you know, if you think about flower Miller's being male is simply untrue. And so now it more and more looks 5050. For bakery science students, it's female dominated and has been for a long time. And feed scientists is about half and half. And so again, it's a very diverse, very interesting group. And unlike almost any other unit at K State, we compile the industry experience. So if you look at the 18 or 19 faculty members that we have within grain science, we have about 150 years of industry experience. And so the norm here is for high class, high respect. academics who also have spent time in industry. And so we have some purebred academics, but the majority of our faculty has spent time in industry and I think that really is good for our students.

What I was just going to mention is the recent seed grants, Global Food System seed grant programs, there have been a few of those that have been one are provided. To to some of the folks in in your area. Do you want to talk a bit about some of the research activities that are going on in Grain Science these days? And one of the other questions that I like to throw out there, because I think it's such a critically important piece at this point in time is the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to tackling some of these problems.

Yeah, exactly. So I will start with any summary of research will be a smattering. And it will undoubtedly leave somebody out. I would refer people to the department's website, if they were really interested in a date, comprehensive review of the research that going on because I'll never get all of it. I always get criticized for leaving something out. But but a few of the highlights that kind of demonstrate the diversity, if you will, is we have a number of faculty who are experts in a lot of different areas. And so if you look at connectivity to the industry, Dr. Greg Aldridge has been a consultant for the pet food, he's a pet food nutritionist, and has been connected to the pet food industry. We're working for them. He's an older IMEs scientist for a number of years. And, you know, he has a large research large international research group that essentially is plugged in to industry funded projects, because there's not a lot of competitive funding for, you know, pet food or pet food science. And so, again, we're we've kind of become the go to place for pet food manufacturing and the interface between manufacturing and engineering. I heard and another feed science professor Dr. Chad Pollack had the dissertation defense for his first PhD candidate this morning, and she was working on processing, you know, essentially the impact of processing on enzyme levels and the way that enzymes in feed affect digestibility in poultry feed. And so now, that is a more traditional kind of feed science project that ties processing the chemical, the chemistry or the chemical components of the feed and nutrition to the animals all into one place. And so you can go from there to several of our more chemistry more dear near and dear to my heart, Yong Kim, she and Yonghui Li are both chemists, Dr. Li is a world renowned starts chemist, and one of the best that there is. And he continues to work on modified starch and the impact on product acceptability, quality, nutrition stability, that he is a start to modification expert. And as the world moves to a more full cleaner labels, all natural, then some of the modification technology that has existed in the past becomes less desired by the industry. And all natural, you know, non chemical sounding, non complicated. Starch modification is actually very technically difficult. And then Dr. Li, again, another chemist is more of a protein chemist. And he has benefited from some of the seed money grants, but he is working on how you might extract natural antioxidants from either grains or spent grain material. And so, you know, how do you add value. Antioxidants are extremely expensive, expensive chemicals, historically, they've been both natural and chemically made. And so this idea that we could take extracts from grain products is a very natural sort of way of getting to antioxidants, all natural antioxidants, and cereals. And those are desired greatly by the food industry. And so, you know, again, the kind of basic, you know, basic chemistry, and then we have others working in the interface of flour milling and safety, certainly the e coli and the salmonella concerns and flour, which are, you know, when Maureen and I were in school, there was zero, you know, so I say it facetiously, right, there was zero risk. Microbial contamination.

There was certainly much less focus on it. 

Yeah, yeah. And we were taught that I mean, again, the way food micro and we were taught it was it's a low water activity, shelf, stable, dry bake, you know, for finished goods, and they're just not much risk. And what we've seen is the world we live in constantly surprises us, scientists included and microorganisms change and the manufacturing systems change. And so now we have an emerging threat to the industry and our third to consumers. And that's then met, enforced by the industry and by the university complexes. And so we have a number of scientists. Here, Dr. Kelly Silveru, myself, Randy Phoebus, in food science, who have a great interest in microbial safety, flour and baked goods. And so we've gotten some good industry support for those projects. There were some grants out to the federal funding agencies, again, around grain flour, grain safety. So those are some examples, again, not nearly all the research that we're working on, but it does give you kind of a feel for what the department is up to.

As you said, it's a broad, it's a broad based number of categories that you are impacting and touching and some very interesting, interesting work. Dr. Silveru’s, his work I found fascinating, because, as you said, is, when you and I were in school, there's a kill step on bread, it's not an issue, don't worry about it. And as we both worked in the area of food safety over the last many years, it has become a big problem and a big issue. And it's been really interesting watching the kinds of activities that are going on on the milling side in approaching this problem.

Yeah, I agree. And it's, it's a world. You know, again, I have a soft spot for food safety, it's critical to consumers and critical to the consuming public. And it's a world where whatever you think you knew, or think, you know, you can be sure that it will change. Yep, those organisms evolved, the world becomes different as I had an old friend that talks all the time that unintended consequences as you try to make the system better, or products better for consumers, you create new challenges. And that is part of what makes food science so exciting, is it's not static at all. It's ever changing. And you and I both could tell story after story after story where some of the stuff that I was taught, you know, in high school and college and even in graduate school simply has been proven to be found not to be true, or to be significantly modified by the scientific process.

Or, by the way things are handled in the world today. It's exactly things morph and change. And as I was, I've been listening the last couple of days to some of the IFT convention presentations and looking and discussing the way the food system is set up today. Is it appropriate? Are there things that we should be going back to but that's a sidebar comment, but it's interesting to watch the way things are changing. And as you said, the some of the things that we were taught back in the day are just either not correct or not relevant to the situation we're in today. Yeah. A question I had to I wanted to probably give you a pat on the back if nothing else, but the milling department at K State and you guys put together a flour giveaway recently. You want to talk a bit about that.

Yeah, we did. So all of us, as human beings had been affected by the COVID crisis. And, you know, again, I went away for a vacation myself at Spring Break, as the students were out and I never came back like everyone else, nobody would have predicted it, again, really kind of uncharted territory. And so as a consumer, much like both of you, I was met by the same things at retail, you know, first not interested really going around a bunch of people. Number one, and number two, once it became apparent that we had to shop for groceries, then the lack of what I could buy was just unprecedented for living in the US. I've traveled all over the world. I've been in markets where, you know, we're good for very limited. So I had seen it before, but I had never in this country walked into a grocery store and not been able to buy flour or toilet paper or hot dogs or it's simply almost unfathomable really interesting philosophic, philosophical kind of conversation where you go just to happen to us, but it did and the kind of impact it made to our faculty was for flour you know, again, I can't imagine in there not being flour on a retail shelf in this country. And yet there was you know, store after store for sure you couldn't buy a flour if you wanted it not five pounds, or 50 pounds. And so that is one of those things that we have the capacity to do something about. So we have a flour mill much like any manufacturing facility, you know, not running for a while is fine not running for a long period of time is actually counterproductive. And so there's a point at which running the mill is good for the mill is good for the faculty. And so this kind of convergence of us getting the mill back operating, and there being a need that we're uniquely suited to kind of address. And with the really gracious kind of support we have from the Kansas wheat commission and others to provide, we then print shop at the university run by one of my one of my buddies, Jason Ellis, and that communications provides the labels. And so there are other people who are interested in participating allowed, essentially four of us to run the mill to produce product. So as you might suspect, the mill is not set up to produce 10 bag, 10 pound bags of flour. So those are very small, that becomes a very hand done process. physically challenging, but nonetheless, you know, we manufactured about 15,000 pounds of flour, and we distributed to the local community, with no expectation of how much we might give away, it could be five pounds, or it could be all of it. And, you know, in the end, we gave away every pound that we manufactured, we in fact, almost we had agreed that we're going to pass flour out from three to seven at about 645. We ran out of product, it really worked out very well, I think people were people, we're pleased to help them understand once again, kind of what the department can do. And we do value our place in the community. But it was something that we could do. We're also extremely well supported by the Dean, the Provost and the President. And so the President came out and pack some flour himself. And then he drove by on his way out of town to see how things were going when we passed the flour out. So again, I am thankful to work at a place where, you know, these kinds of faculty administration initiatives are so well appreciated and supported by the senior administration of the University.

It was such a nice outreach to the community at a really tough time.

We appreciate it. It's, you know, we've heard nothing but positive feedback. And so, you know, it's one of those things where you take a chance, and you hope it works out, proceed in the spirit of wish it was given? And in this case, I think it was so.

Do you have a specific area of research that you're involved in at this point in time?

Yeah, so my my interest has for a long time, and then really in, you know, a couple of areas. So years ago, when I was at Sara Lee by force of situation, I was turned into a food safety professional. So we had a major outbreak, one of the first Ecoli outbreak, Listeria outbreaks, and then meat processing facilities, and that forced kind of all hands on deck and changed me from being a product developer to being a listeria E Coli salmonella expert for a number of years for about three years. And so it put me at the interface between the science and technology, the regulators, and the operations of large scale meat processing plants. And so I think it's funny people think about hot dogs, and you go, how hard can it be make to make hot dogs need to go it's really not that hard. All of us could do it in our kitchen. Sara Lee wasn't making a hot dog or to Sara Lee was making a million pounds of hotdogs a day out of one facility and we had five or six. And so, the sheer number of volume gets to be kind of impressive. So, I got to work at the interface. I got good at it, I got where I knew the community and understood the science and that carried over to my responsibilities at ConAgra and it also carried over to my interest when I came here. And so not just microbial safety, but also chemical safety. And so, krill amide is a process induced toxic and I worked on it extensively at ConAgra it has a place in and baked product safety, cereal safety. And so I remain interested you know kind of microbial contaminants and process induced process induced chemistry as it relates to baking grain products. And I continue to be interested in ingredient in chemistry, especially protein chemistry. And so you know, my as both of you might have spec you know, my day job keeps me plenty busy, especially during these times. And so I, you know, I have co advised students I haven't had, I haven't tried to carry a research program that was standalone, I haven't tried to carry my own students, because I found the demands of being a good department head just don't allow the time that would be necessary to have the kind of quality of research program I would expect of myself. But I do have collaborators both within this department and beyond, who are willing to have me as part of teams and to be on committees for students, even to co advise. So I have got to do some of that. And I really, really enjoy it.

That's great. If you had stated, I think it may have been a letter when you were first, or a little overview when you're first hired. But there's a statement that you said that you would like to make the department more relevant to students? How do you approach that question? How? How do you make this thing? I mean, the department itself is, we talked about the uniqueness of the moment, we've talked a bit about some of the offerings within what is the relevance coming out of that group?

Yeah, so there are two kinds of related components or pieces to this. You know, I would argue that we, we remain relevant to the industries where we provide employees to the academics that we provide research, and also in industry as well. But our peer reviewed, research remains outstanding, our ability to be competitive, and very competitive money, national sound science, foundation, money and Department of Defense money, we still are very competitive with highly competitive federal dollars. And so no way, and we're certainly sought, our students are so sought after by employees, we still have a near 100% placement rate for undergraduates. So I would argue that we're doing pretty good at being relevant and actually feel pretty good that we have young faculty who are just outstanding, by any metric that you would use good teachers, good researchers are publishing or productive or finding funding, where I would be more critical, would be not relevance. But awareness. We remain after nearly six years of me being here, a much too well kept secret, you know, really well known in a small circle, not as not as well known broadly. And it's a problem is shared by many food science departments, not just this kind of more specialized Food Science Group. And so, you know, the challenge is, how do you make people aware of, you know, first that we're here, and secondly, what we do, and third, about the opportunities that most of us believe are terrific ones, for careers and for impact on society, and for fulfillment and self fulfillment, is just a real challenge. And we have tried, and I know, you know, Maureen, we have tried and tried. We've had high school, high school groups here on the weekends, we have a open house KSU open house, present, that's almost unprecedented for trying to get people in our facilities and connected with our students. We have tried to big and small one on one and with peer students, and we still have a great opportunity to drive awareness of grain science and awareness of you know, career possibilities, an impact, and that we should have the answer. But will you certainly continue to try hard to unlock the unlock the puzzle?

It's a problem with a lot of really great departments and a lot of great broad truths. Right? There's, lots of people who like do great things on how do you get people to understand it, and how to get people to know it and see it and join? Yeah, right.

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And in a world where, you know, it's, you have to be accepting of kind of the, the professional careers that these are, you know, and so if you're, if your dream is to sit in an office, and look at a computer screen all day long, that's really not what we're training people to do. And that's why I decided to be a food scientist, right? Is I had worked in a chemistry laboratory since I was a freshman in high school, all the way through college in a federal lab and all the way through my master's degree. And it finally occurred to me that spending the rest of my life in a chemistry laboratory with no windows and no connection with other than my peers might not be my calling in life. You know, that I mean, the biggest, the biggest joke was I go to parties, and people would ask me what I do for my graduate research in chemistry, and I tell them and they gloss over and go, Well, that's nice. And I go, so this is gonna be my whole life. Yeah, I pour my life into something that's completely unrelatable to anyone who's not in the field. And what brain science allows you to do is work on things that everyone, like it or not, bread is everywhere, and either you love it, or you're afraid of the gluten, but you know what bread is. And I think that's terrific. And I think it's, you know, again, it's very relatable, everything we do here, you know, involves talking working with people involves working with your hands, involves using your mind. And it's kind of the perfect interplay of those three, three aspects.

I wonder whether there's some parallels, though, there are still because, you know, chemistry is everywhere, too, right. So, you know, everybody knows bread, but everybody knows. Chemicals, too, right? So if you say, like, you know, that you're a chemist, right, it's a lot about the difference between what a, what a chemist on a day to day, basis does, right, which is, which is different from what people understand. And the same is true for bread and Grain science and grain production. Right. So the data, you know, what you're doing in terms of food sciences, still somewhat removed from? Right, the product that people are familiar with? So, you know, yeah. 

Well, what do you think of that perspective? And I would go yes, and no, you know, certainly for industry people. And so it goes back to you know, my mixed background is everything you do in food science industry is designed to put a product into the marketplace. It can be great dissertation level science, it certainly I've done dissertation level food safety work. But in the end, it isn't about the work, it's about the product. And I would argue in many things we do within the department again, Maureen has kind of seen it that there's there's hardcore science going on here that I could explain to a non scientist and they would glaze over and have no idea what I was talking about. But when I was talking about, but when I said, Well, you know, this science ends up in making bread that tastes better over time, or bread that has better color or bread that has is better for you nutritionally, then everyone could relate to that. And so again, I have one of my favorite organic books is sitting on the shelf above my phone. So I look at it, it's a one I learned a lot out of. And I'm I mean, it's hardcore chemistry. And unless you're a chemist, there's nothing in that book, that would be very relatable, but most of what we do here, even the hardest core science has a tangible foot, and practical, you know, products, processes, experiences of consumers.

It's a, it's a general question about, you know, applied versus pure science, right, and everybody does some sort of Applied Science, whatever, whatever it's in gets to, you know, the more applied you are, the more you get to say that he worked and, you know, for medicine, or, you know, whatever sort of other safety applications or whatever, you can explain it to people, and the further and further away you get from that, the more work you have to do to explain things, and then that's the application right there. And, you know, in everything you do, right.

Yeah. And that's in funny, is your role aware, right? Is historically, the more applied you are, the less real science you are, is the people who are the real scientists, the nuclear the rocket, you know, physics are the people who are highly theoretical, and as you move to applied, then people go that really isn't science. And of course,

There at least, historically has been that kind of view about things. Yeah. Yeah. And Maureen and I thought that I would vehemently oppose that kind of, yeah, yeah, that kind of thing. And, you know, the bottom line is, it's all science. And, you know, it all works along the scientific method. It's where we teach our students and what I believe you know, with all my heart is, if you want to be a great applied scientists, then you better understand the fundamentals. And the more you understand the fundamentals, the better of doing applied science you'll be and so we this department again, another unique thing is we have a feed mill and a flour mill and a bakery, where you can practice your craft, and you can use your hands and you can exponentially experience. You know, the science we teach you and we have, you know, world class scientist who can teach you the fundamentals. So the, you get both. So that you get the basic, and you get the, you get the kind of foundation. And then we teach you how you think about that foundational learning in terms of real life problems. You know, one of my old meat experiences as we're running a product in the large manufacturing facilities are getting the hot dog story. And the hot dogs are turning green, green, green, like really impressive green, and you go, so we, nobody's made the green hot dog. So it's not it's not microbiology, that's causing the hot dog to be green, it's not some kind of contaminant. So there's not copper or, you know, some kind of trace material that's making it green. And so we we look and look and look and thought and thought and thought and finally, what we figured out was the the water coming through the pipes into the plants that was potable, that was for consumption, human consumption, had enough trace minerals in it, that it was that was interacting with the iron in the meat, the iron is indigenous to the meat cells. And it was converting the iron pigment to a green color. And you go, man, incredibly, you know, kind of complicated science, to get to a very practical consumer consumer outcome right brain on dogs not good. You know, that's, that's an example of it's the, the foundational understanding of the system that allowed the solution of a very practical problem. 

And there is something I was going to jump in a little bit ago and state there was, there's something about as you said, you spend hours working in laboratories have spent many, many classroom times working in laboratories. And then when you walk out of that, and walk into a bakery, we'll walk into a mill, it's fun, it's fun to see that the basic science that you had been studying and learning is applied right there in doing things that that will impact the population that are going to feed the world and those types of things. So going into those labs, I remember the first time walking into the mill, it was like, wow, this is this is pretty cool. Just seeing how it functioned and how it ran. 

And, yeah, yeah, that's it. That's exactly right. So you know, it's an is something like we talked about earlier, that changes with the wheat that you use, and the products that you're trying to manufacture. And it's really quite a, an amazing spread of different kinds of technical challenges. And that's the world that our students kind of join in, join up for, which I think is just terrific.

And one of the things too, that, that I loved when I was working in that side of the industry, was the opportunities to get together with there, there was one meeting I would go to every year where we had, we had wheat breeders, we had millers, bakers, and and consumer groups all in the same meeting talking to one another, and you never really ever get at least before now you wouldn't get that kind of interdisciplinary interaction with a group they the languages were always a challenge and getting each other to understand what each other wanted. But that was always such an interesting piece. And that kind of goes back to the question I'd asked you earlier on interdisciplinary and the importance of that. But at a university here, you've got the breeder sitting right there, you've got the baking experts sitting right there, you've got the milling experts, and how all of those things come together and interact with one another is, is within your grasp in doing research. Okay, state.

Absolutely.

Very exciting.

I love the, you know, the use of the platform to try to get the word out. And having a philosopher involved is just terrific. It would be fun to, to come back sometime and talk about the philosophy of science, because I'd love to do that. I greatly appreciate your both your willingness to do this. I think it's a terrific public service. And, you know, the more we can get people to think that you know, demystify the science. Everybody wants to think science is unknowable. And that, of course, is ridiculous. All of us start at some point where, you know, we knew two plus two, and that's about all we knew, and everything else I know about science I've learned through a lifetime, not from yesterday or from 20 years ago, but it's a it's a continual and gradual process and it's accessible to everyone. I refuse to believe that science is the purview of the few chosen, special people. It does require hard work and harder work for some of us and others of us, but it's an accessible world. That's just You know, kind of a glorious Swan to be a part of, for people who are called to do it. You're here. Very good.

I'd like to thank you again for for agreeing to sit down and chat with us.

Yeah, thank you very much. And if any of your listeners would want to contact me the website is the best entrance way to there it has my contact information and the way to kind of get in contact with the department.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

In this episode, we switch gears to shine some light on an area of the food system that may not be overtly understood as critical by many. Dr. Matthew Sanderson, Randall C. Hill Distinguished Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work and professor of sociology at Kansas Statue University joins our three hosts in discussion. Sanderson's research aims to better understand the social aspects of human nature as major drivers in approaches to relations between people and the ecosphere. His research includes a focus on social processes that integrate economies, politics, and cultures into an increasingly shared — but sometimes contested — space.

Transcript:

Human Dynamics Within Systems - The Sociological Application in Globalization, Development, Migration and Environment, with Dr. Matthew Sanderson Professor of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work.

We want those students also engaging with two other groups, right? We want them not just engaging with each other in their academic silos, which we are very good at doing, but to get them out of their comfort zone and be able to sit take the engineer and the sociologist and the agricultural economist and the agronomist, take them out into the field with the farmer and have them understand the system, the agricultural food energy water system from the perspective of the stakeholder. That may seem simple, but that's a pretty radical move for a PhD science science level training.

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

I’m Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science. 

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a Food Scientist.

Hello everybody, and welcome back to the K State Global Food Systems podcast something to chew on. In today's podcast, we are switching gears to shine some light on an area of the food system that may not be overtly understood as critical by many. But in many ways human interactions and relationships within a given culture will guide people on how they eat, accept scientific findings in producing food and interact with one another in economic, political and sometimes contested spaces. The social aspects of human nature are major drivers in approaches to critical questions, willingness to adjust lifestyles are working norms, and interest in social drivers of using natural resources in a much divided time. Today's guest is Dr. Matt Sanderson. The Randall C. Hill Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Anthropology and social work, and professor of sociology at Kansas State University. Matt is currently exploring social drivers of natural resource use. This work concentrates especially on agricultural production, and water consumption in the High Plains Ogallala Aquifer region of the United States, our guest today is Dr. Matt Sanderson. Matt is coming to us from the sociology department at Kansas State University. And we're really excited to have you here today Matt, and understand better where the sociological aspects of your research into the global food system overall, before we get started in a discussion, as we normally do, I'd like to hear from you a little background on who you are, and what brought you to the point of your area of study what got you interested in sociology and, and working in this area?

Oh, gosh, well, thank you for having me on today. It's a real pleasure, glad to be here. And I usually, most people that know me know, I don't really like talking all that much about myself. But how I got interested in sociology and sort of how that connects with the global food system. Long story short, I was an undergraduate major here at K State. In business, I was a finance major with a minor in economics and decided after right around 911. It was 2001, 911. And I decided, there were some big questions that I still had after completing that the bachelor's degree. And so I made a big shift and went back to try to study something that I thought would give me more insight into humans, and how humans work and why the world sort of works the way it does. I was very interested. I didn't know what at the time I didn't have the language or the way of framing these questions, but I was very interested in questions about the market, and about power and about inequality and about how that works to shape human behavior and influence things like culture and social structure and norms and values around us and so on. So, sociology, I took a jump, I applied and looked at different programs in political science and sociology. I landed in sociology mainly because if I didn't have a great reason other than it seemed broad enough to answer the questions that I had, which were very big. And, you know, that's a strength and a weakness of the field. Its breadth But I loved it. And so I thought, well, I could do anything for four semesters. And if I don't like it, you know, trying a master's degree I can, I can go back and find a job in the banking world, the banking sector, the finance sector, and after two years, it'll still be okay. And I did the Masters, I loved it. I said, Well, I never really set out to get a PhD. I never thought about being a college professor. But here I am. So I guess this is the next step is to try. Look at the PhD. So did that. And long story short, I went to a small but very focused, concentrated, pretty respected program at the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City, and comparative international sociology. And I was really studying what is now called Global comparative sociology was comparative international then. And so I'm a comparativist. I'm a historical comparative sociologist, I'm very interested in making comparisons, analyzing social change over long periods of time, and across cases or across places. So sort of longitudinal comparative designs, finished a PhD, I got my first job in the middle of the right at the onset of the Great Recession in 2008. August of oh eight, I started my job first job at Lehigh University. In Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was a joint appointment and as a sociologist, and they're global studies, new initiative and Global Studies, which is this interdisciplinary center that tried to integrate different types of work going on at the university, around issues of global importance around health, environment, community, social change, those sorts of things. And I love that. And I left that job only, because there was an opening back at Kansas State, my alma mater, and it was this was 2011. And I decided that if I was offered the job, I'd come back, and here I am. So I've been back at K State back home and my alma mater, since 2011. As my parents would probably tell you, they were very pleased. But they were also very surprised that we brought the grandkids back home and everything back home, because I had spent most of my life trying to escape Kansas, and especially rural Kansas, where I had grown up. And so to come back in your 30s, I had never thought I'd come back ever. And here I am. But I decided that what would give me the most meaning is something that's driven me since the very beginning, is not the attempt to not the chance to make the most money, I could have done that with my business degree, because I made a lot more money. But the chance to really try to impact have positive change impact the place that I places I call home and in Kansas, and especially rural Kansas, and with the knowledge and skills that I have. And so it was time to come back home. And since 2011, I've been engaged in a number of areas. A number of different types of work in Kansas and the broader Great Plains, but mostly engaging with rural communities around food, agriculture, rural community change. So in a nutshell, I mean, that's the last what 25, you know, 20-25 years? Yeah. That's that's how we ended up on this call. And and, you know, a couple minutes.

That sounds great. Just a curiosity. We're in rural Kansas, did you grow up?

Yeah, it's not so rural anymore. But I'm from Spring Hills where I went to high school, Spring Hill, Kansas. Southern Johnson County, northern Miami County on the line there. It's now a bedroom community for Kansas City. 40 years ago, it was the friend rural, outlying area of Kansas City, but it's changed a lot, a lot of subdivisions around now and so on. And my parents, my folks still live there, and my brother still lives in that area, as well. So still call at home. And I've been watching the change, kind of, you know, sort of urban encroachment into that space for a long, long time and seeing that change. And I also have family, you know, throughout the Great Plains, Nebraska, Lester, Kansas, Oklahoma. So this region really is home in a number of ways.

How was your training up to this point and your experience up to this point, or has it conditioned, the way you look back at those times? 40 years ago, when you were in Spring Hill, do you come to different conclusions now?

That's a great question. I mean, I one thing that sociology gets view that I'll never be able to fully repay my teachers and professors, but it gives you what we come to call the sociological imagination. And so what that means is that it gives you a lens through which you can understand yourself in the context of the larger society around you. And you understand much better about the forces and factors around you that shaped you and are in your head and have interacted with you're literally the DNA in your body to help shape how you see and interact with the world and vice versa. It shows you how you change that very context that shapes people, the society that you have an impact through every thought, and every action that you have every day, there are literally 1000s we don't think about them. But every thought every action is consciously remaking the very structures around us that make people that shaped people of who they are and who they can become. And so, as I've gotten older and approaching, you know, middle age now, I definitely look at home and think about home differently. And I can't unsee what I've learned about the society around us and how that shapes people, so to have more sort of theoretical or even philosophical view, yes, for sure. Having sociological training has reshaped how I think about home and what it what that means. And also given me an analytical lens to diagnose and think about what's happening there, and why and what to do about it.

I noticed that a lot of your work focuses on migration and the impact of migration in various, obviously globally, various parts of the world. Focusing down in on Kansas and the agricultural economy in Kansas view, have you done any work? Or do you focus it all on that aspect, that migration aspect on agricultural economy in Kansas?

Yeah, sure, sure. So I'll back up a little bit and tell you how I got into this spot. I seem to I don't think of myself, as you know, trying to be very comfortable with very controversial things. But I sort of end up in the middle of these things.  I think I'm more so now because I study migration, and I study water. And those are those things in rural Kansas, are can be very tension can generate tension and be, you know, controversial. So, but I am a social scientist, or I think of myself that way. And so I try to understand and analyze with the lens and the tools that science gives us. And so with migration, yes, that was actually my entry point into studying rural environment issues, real water issues, caught up with groundwater conservation, so on. I wrote my dissertation on the relationship between migration and development. And this was a very across national study and playing, you know, overnight, 92 countries and over the past 50 years looking at, statistically what are the drivers of why people are moving across boundaries? And secondly, what are the consequences of those movements of those migrations, those inflows on communities? How do we measure that? Is it quote, good or bad? And for whom? And for what and over what time period? These are the questions that I was motivated with in the dissertation, I didn't start studying migration because I was thought of myself as a necessarily an immigration expert. I study it from the aspect of development. That's first and foremost, what I'm interested in this idea of social change, this idea of incessant growth economically, socially, culturally, for positive benefit, this idea of development, that's what I was really, fundamentally after, by going in sociology. And so I started becoming more interested in migration because everywhere I looked with development, you see people moving and they're either moving out or they're moving in people move that is the, it's endemic to human societies. It goes back south is it is the human story, it goes back to the beginning of humanity, people move now. The difference now is that we have things called national boundaries that never existed. So we have something called international migration that didn't exist 2000 years ago, for that matter, even 600 years ago, or 500 years ago. And so now International, the movement of people seems more complex because we are fixed by national boundaries in places. But that is, by far the anomaly of the human condition. I mean, most humans have never lived, most humans that have ever lived in the face of the earth have never lived in one place their entire life. Most humans have walked around figure moved around across all kinds of borders, and so on all through all that. So I was very interested in migration that way. And that led me Of course, from my experience in Kansas, I began being becoming very interested in southwest Kansas, because that was where growing up and throughout my childhood, and youth and so on, I had heard about all the stories of immigration. So I naturally went to the place I was most comfortable with. And that was southwest Kansas, I tried to understand, given the tools I had, what's going on here, why in Kansas, of all places, do we have this, these inflows of immigrants, particularly Latino immigrants, but in the early 80s, also Southeast Asian immigrants as well, and today, Somalis, Burmese and so on? How can we explain that? And what are the consequences of that? So I started looking at that published a lot of work on that I was trained as a social demographer. So I'm trained to look at population change, fertility, mortality, and migration. And found a lot of things about that, some of which are interesting, and some of which are not probably, but I'm fascinated in all of it. And that we could talk later if you want to, but that's what led me ultimately into looking into groundwater conservation issues as well. On the environment side, because I was trained in population and environment, those were the two substance barriers of training. On the population side, I looked at migration, that was the first part of my career up through tenure, I looked at migration issues. And then the sort of second part of my career now is looking more on the environment side and water, groundwater conservation, and food and agriculture, integrated food system sort of stuff. And it all comes together. For me out there in western Kansas, we have, it's just a fascinating place. It's got, there's water challenges, it has rural community challenges, it has population challenges, and also lots of opportunities and these things as well. So I'm naturally find myself constantly, although people are leaving that area, and they have been for a long time, I find myself going in the opposite way with my students. I'm traveling out in the middle of nowhere, Western Nebraska, western Kansas, panhandle of Oklahoma, spending a lot of time out there trying to figure out what's going on. And really, how do we, how do we encourage, how can I help facilitate a more regenerative, resilient rural community in these places?

What's the if you had to pick, two or three top limiting factors to flourishing of those communities flipped over? What might those be? Yeah, wow, too much. I mean, there's, there's immigration, but then there's diversity within the spot that has they've been immigrating to, if you will, are migrating to?

Yeah, well, I think, I think 10 years ago, I would have said, the limiting factor is something on sort of the population side, the human side, so something around immigrant density, and those sorts of things trust, those sorts of things in the community. Today, I think, I think actually less and less about, and this may be an estimate to as a social scientist to say, but today, I think less and less about the human side than I do the limiting factor of water, quite frankly. Because without water out there, none of that exists. Period. You don't have anything like a garden city without the Ogallala Aquifer underneath that period. So you'll have a lot fewer people. As the groundwater levels decline, and we shift back to dry land on dry land agriculture out there with something is inevitable. And we're arguing over the timeline over which that happens, and more importantly, why that might be worth why the water might be worth saving. But I spend less and less time actually out there talking about community level dynamics, People to People relationships, than I do, thinking about people to nature, people to environment, people to water relationships, and why that's so difficult. For a lot of sociologists environmental sociology, which I'm sort of a part I guess, is a real challenge to the field and my discipline because sociology developed as a purely, it was developed in the late summer. There's a question over when I developed but 19th century post enlightenment, right industrial revolution, there's a lot of change going on the transition from a rural to an urban society is fully in place in the late 19th century. Sociology really arises, you know, is birthed in that transition from a rural agricultural society to a modern, quote, modern industrial, manufacturing based society and all the tensions and traumas that, that brought about, that's really what sociology focuses on. And we're still there. It and one of the founders, Emile Durkheim, a French Swiss sociologist, was really trying to set sociology apart from psychology, and from some other social sciences that were emerging. So really think he went too far in trying to remove humans from the natural environment and make everything about humans themselves. So environmental sociology emerges in the mid late 20th century very recently, to try to re embed put humans back in the natural environment and talk about things like physics, and chemistry and biology, and these sorts of things, to sort of re re wed the human component that we've been looking about to these kind of biological chemistry, physics, relationships that we're looking at.

I know that at least one part of the state in the South East has been depopulated, and had significant problems because of their success in mining and the consequence of of them there is this sociology, seek to understand those horses as well, and any attempts at finding other ways for those communities to if not prosper, at least continue to stay together and not self disperse.

Yeah, so that's a good question. And the analogy, the analogy, or the case you bring up of mining communities, is for better or worse now being applied to groundwater dependent communities. Why and so, yes, and that's controversial as well. I know, I know that. But if you talk with more than a few irrigators, they'll tell you, yeah, we're miners, we mined the water. This is not, this is not a renewable resource out here. This is a finite resource, just like a coal seam. And when it's gone, it's gone. You know, and then we get into some really deep stories about what that means for human values and why that's happening and whether that should happen. But more than a few also say, You know what, no, we need to pull back. And we can extend the life of this thing, unlike a mining community in Southeast Kansas, or West Virginia for that matter. And we should have communities out here as long as we possibly can, because I or whoever goes back four or five generations, this place has meaning it's worth saving. And the water allows us to live out here. So let's get organized and try to figure out how we extend the life of this. So I can pass it down to my kids and so on. And that's the conversation going on, in a lot of these communities is even though it's not talked about that explicitly, it's do we want to look like this will be controversial, but do we want to look like a rural West Virginia? Or do we want to look like a more scaled down version of a sustainable version of, you know, eastern Nebraska type rural community? What do we want to do and those conversations that's active right now, in western Kansas, in church basements, in home now, maybe not as much with COVID? Because we can't get face to face patient. So we'll say, oh, we'll say over zoom, or wherever. I mean, those are the conversations that are taking place out there. And they're not only talking explicitly like that, but they're really talking about in a number of conversations, you know, who do we want to be? Where are we going humans are always trying to figure out what this means and who I am, and where are we and how are we good? Where are we going forward? And we do as sociologists I do as a sociologist work on issues of transition. So there are a number of tools, you know, what do we want this place to look like? And who do we want around us? And why? And are we troubled by who's around us and why and what gives us meaning and, and hope, and what challenges that and so on? So we work with those very issues. And I was struck by your mining example, because there are increasingly examples being drawn between southeast Kansas and southwest Kansas. Yeah,

It's hard to imagine the difference between Coffeyville and I don't know. Yeah, right. Southwestern Kansas. Amazing.

Yeah, or a place like the Ullyses. Syracuse. So, yeah, some place out over the over the aquifer where or if you go north right around west of Scott City where the water and in that area is already pretty low, what's left and some wells are off now or so on at Northwest Kansas, you've got some areas too that are that are having some challenging times. So working on a USDA project and on the Ogallala, and a number of us are starting to think about given we've been on this project, well, this will be the fifth year we're going to be wrapping it up this year, but a number of us are looking ahead and thinking about what's next. And a lot of the work that I did on that project is pointing to really pointing to this idea of transitions, that some places are going to want to save the water as best they can conserve it as best they can extend the life as best they can. And some are not. And that's community lead change choice, sort of self determination, right? So how do we facilitate how do we ease the transition back into a dry land form of agriculture with that base, with a lot fewer people operating a lot more land when a lot less capital? And in other areas, we're going to still have water to go after for 150 years or so it looks like so highly variable places to place to.

Yeah, sounds interesting. I spent a number of years in Minnesota. And in that case, it was communities redefining themselves, when there was no longer a timber industry to rely on. Were they going to keep an alive or further north when taconite mining was no longer profit. Yeah, but they Yeah, they stay there. They have to leave and it's there. In each case, the solution was somewhat similar, but somewhat different. And they were well underway by the time I got there. But it would have been interesting to, to see before to see the before side of that.

Yeah, exactly, another interesting comparison in with the forestry industry, the logging industry. And also think about, think about how to transition really what that means for the people that are living through those changes. And it's the same sort of dynamics, but the sort of population environment relations aren't exactly analogous. But the same sort of process here is in people's minds, because we're talking really there about culture, about norms, values and beliefs. And those don't change very easily or rapidly. And that's really what I think, you know, we've come to find out and a lot of areas in our, in our world in our in our society is the economy moves, the population shifts, things, it's a very dynamic market driven economy, it shifts quickly, the structures change, but culture does not culture lags. It does not automatically change when the economy changes. And that tension or that slippage between the economic change. And the cultural lag is really the source of a lot of tension and contradiction and confusion, argument in our society a lot. 

Stigmatization people are tagged with, with being adverse to whatever play ever amounted to progress or old fashioned or inflexible, there you go in their views.

Yeah, yeah. Right. And then we argue over how fast should the change be? or not, and who benefits from those changes. And that's, that's really what we're, I think we're looking at over a lot of dimensions of society is a very dynamic market driven economy, if we're going to have that we're going to have incessant continual change, transformation. But humans, that's a very new thing in human affairs, if you go back over the scope of human history, 150-180,000 years, most humans, most humans that have ever walked on the earth, right? They were born into one family, they had one role in that group, and then they died and their kids would likely have the very same status. Right? And so we don't we don't live in that world. We live in a world that is much more open dynamic. I'm worrying about unsustainable on the resource side, but it's a much more dynamic, fast paced change world. But evolutionarily, I mean, we evolved in groups that were changed was very slow and incremental over time. 1000s of years. So we haven't caught up our culture lags the things in our head around our values, norms and beliefs. Those things get shaped In a context, but the economy and the material parts are always moving forward and outpacing us. So we're arguing over where we should be and who we are all the time. And that's a new idea for human humans, those who are given those are given questions for most of our species history, who you are and what you were was, where you were born and where you are. Now, we now we invent now we have to invent those things, and they're constantly being changes. And so we have identity crises. And we have them at various stages of our life, kids middle age. So anyway, well,

So Matt, you talked a little bit about some projects that you had worked on at K State one that was wrapping up, can you give us some notion of some of the interdisciplinary research activities you've been involved with maybe some specifics of different groups you're working with and some of the outcomes that you're looking for in those works?

Yeah, sure. So just real quick rundown of those there was there's a USDA cap, coordinated ag project cap led by Chuck rice here at K State and Megan Szczepanski and Regan Alaska met Colorado State involving collaborators. I think there's I mean, the team is huge. It's 70 to 80 people total, across the seven states over the aquifer, that project is you know, in the in the no cost extension, fifth year right now, it'll wrap up. And really what we're looking at there is, on the social side, I can't speak to the natural side of things, the agronomy side, and so on, but on the social side, trying to understand and build an integrated model of, of producer decision making. So under conditions of climate change, under conditions of market change, and under conditions of social change, and trying to build with a team of agricultural economists, and agronomist and hydrologist, and sociologists, and a single model that can A predict what has explained what has happened in this region, but also B look ahead a little bit and say, Okay, if these things change, then we can expect these sorts of scenarios going forward in this region. And bottom line, we can expect these scenarios to affect groundwater levels, over this time, time horizon, that's really the outcome we're trying to get is, is what will this do to the groundwater levels, if we change this price, this quantity, this value, this social cultural component, what happens to groundwater levels, that is a fascinating project to have been involved with. And to some degree, five years feels like we're just getting started. I mean, it's crazy. But that's a massive, massive undertaking. And that's why it hadn't been done it these, you know, I worry about the timeframe we're up against with some of these challenges. In the in the material world, but five years, we just, we built the dataset, we've got the model running, but it feels like we need another five years. And I'm not just you know, trying to ask USDA for more money, although we're going to be doing that. But five years feels like you know, now we need to see how this works, really, because it took that long to build this thing and communicate with people and learn how they these other folks how they talk and how we think as a team. So been involved with interdisciplinary things a long time. That's, one example. 

Another example I worked on was with Marcellus Callidus and Jessica Heier Stamm, and many others, some of them have left K State on an NSF project on couple of natural human systems, where we were looking in the Smoky Hill River Basin to try to again develop an integrated model of how humans in the environment interact with water over time, in this particular place, and what that means for levels in the Smoky Hill water and what that means for biodiversity in our in our streams and river and Smoky Hill River and our creeks and tributaries. And what that means for farmers who are farming over this particular area, trying to build a model of how if you change the some factors on the human side, what happens to the environmental aspects of that system, the water levels, the fish levels and so on. Vice versa, if you have some external forcing event, like a changing climate under different scenarios, what happens to the environment side? And how does that feed back into effect the human dynamics of that system in a feedback loop? Right? So we're trying to build this integrative loop model of how this thing works over time in this in that particular region of the smoky hills. So that's another project I was involved with.

 And another project I'm involved with, and I'm involved with right now is is called the NRT. It's a national research traineeship award to Melanie Derby from the National Science Foundation, Melanie, Dr. Derby in engineering, and the team was Stacy Hutchinson and Nathan Hendricks and others, big team as well, where we're trying to now it's a graduate traineeship award. So all most all the money goes into funding graduate students in an interdisciplinary approach to science. And the top the focus of that project is the Ogallala Aquifer and farming systems over the Ogallala. So it's it has a bunch of acronyms, but it's R cubed rural resource resiliency, national research, traineeship, and we're trying to figure out with students, And a little sort of sketch together curriculum that we're still building and developing as part of this project. How do we train the next generation of students scientists, to work with each other on very complex problems to try to get some traction on the things actually, so NSF putting money into this sort of a program as as a spearhead to kind of, I think, okay, my own interpretation, really to try to get people out of their disciplines and into rooms thinking about complex problems together as a part of their graduate training, so that when they leave the world, they leave that their PhD, they're ready to talk with an engineer is ready to talk with a sociologist, and may not know be an expert, but but at least can have a conversation about what a model should look like and what sort of things a sociologist brings to the table and vice versa, how a sociologist could understand how an engineer what they bring to the table? And what are their how do they look at the world as a starting point, as another extract to that project, we want those students also engaging with two other groups, right? We want them not just engaging with each other in their academic silos, which we are very good at doing. But to get them out of their comfort zone, and be able to sit take the engineer and the sociologist and the agricultural economist and the agronomist, take them out into the field with the farmer and have them understand the system, the agricultural food energy water system from the perspective of the stakeholder. That may seem simple, but that's a pretty radical move for a PhD Science, Science level training, is to actually have people talking with stakeholders who are acting out the system that we're studying, but that's a part of it. So these students will spend time in southwest Kansas with the research and extension folks out there, Jonathan Aguilar and Garden City, they'll spend time with farmers for a week or so this summer, and again, a little later. And then another group, we want them interacting with our policymakers in Topeka. So these students, graduate students, PhD and Master's students will spend time during when the legislature is in session. And with COVID, that has been a real interesting deal. But try to get them together with you know, have face time with policymakers to learn vice versa, about how policymakers look at food, energy, water issues, as well, to get some understanding of really trying to get between the farmers, the policymakers and the scientists trying to get some traction on what this system actually looks like, from what depending on the position you're in, in the system, if that makes sense.

So involved there to what this nerd I'm very excited about it. And it's high risk, high reward is challenged me in a number of ways when I teach in that PhD seminar, some sessions go well, some, some don't go well, because we have a very diverse group of people all very smart. But we it forces us as instructors, professors to say, how do we teach this? How do we, how do we how do we have to go back to basic pedagogy? Like, how do we, you know, where do we start trying to teach systems thinking? And how do we get people seeing this from different angles so that we can actually use science to solve problems and not just study them? That motivates me. And so that challenge is very, the big challenge, but it's very exciting. It motivates. So those are the three projects on interdisciplinary things. 

The last thing I'll say there so I don't turn this entirely into a monolog is that with interdisciplinarity I've increasingly finding myself spending less time in sociology and and that I don't like that some days because I feel very like much like a fish out of water a lot of days, swimming with the engineers and so on. But, but but but when you are in that world, it's also a exhilarating because it's refreshing, it's new. And you really have to have a committed group of people that are willing to sit with each other and endure lots of communication problems. And, yeah, you got to be dedicated to learning how another person thinks, because we will not get anywhere, if you just sit down and, you know, give the traditional spiel that you give to, you know, your sociology students or your engineering students. So that's been challenging in this kind of second part of my career. But it's been a lot of fun working in interdisciplinary teams. And, I think that's really how we're going to if we're going to solve any of these big problems, we're going to have to get outside of our department, I think.

I was wondering, yeah, if you could give an example of one of the kinds of things about the human environment interaction that really, really matter, for understanding these systems. Right. So what were the kinds of values or beliefs or norms that that you're talking about, that that come up that are, you know, maybe interesting or surprising about the effects they have? Or about the ways the changes in the environment are affecting those? Because that's, you know, you're studying both ways, right?

That's right. So that's a great question. So one of the things that I've sort of zeroed in on over the years and narrowed the focus on is culture, I didn't set out to study culture, but I'm open like to think I'm somewhat open minded about, as a social scientist, I sort of am driven, led down the path that the data lead me and they've increasingly led me to culture. When I opened up that box of culture, it was a black box. It there are a lot of moving parts, but I don't know how they all work theory, there's theories about how culture works at the collective level, at the group level, but also at the individual level within the mind itself. And as I've sort of focused more on culture, I've become very interested in how culture responds to environmental changes, both in the social environment, but also in the natural environment, and vice versa. How culture human ideas, really non material ideas in their head, shape, the landscape, shapes, the atmosphere, shapes, the water systems. Right? So I'm very interested in that two way feedback and looking at culture and these relationships. So there are a lot of findings coming out from this work. I'll point to a few, I think, I think one of the bigger ones is the this idea that values held values affect natural outcomes. Right? So with held values, we're talking about fundamental ideas, guiding principles about right and wrong, good and bad, just unjust, fair, unfair. These are human constructs. These are made up ideas. They all come from somewhere. But ultimately, they're held in human minds and humans can change them. And we do. We change these things on various timescales, and they are malleable. That gives us some hope. That change is possible in our relationship with the natural environment, that change is possible in our relations with other humans. These things, these values, while they're very deeply held, and they don't change quickly, often, they can change and they do change on varying timescales and varying spatial scales. So what we found what I found with a bunch of graduate students, and I would listen, Steven Lauer just graduated fantastic graduate students, and Mariah Fisher in the Geography Department working with her lots of good students working on these things. What we found is that there are different types of values. First of all, not a huge surprise. But more importantly, that these value sets seem to drive worldviews, ideas about the world. And those values and worldviews together really shaped something as material as the flow of water in a stream. Okay, that sounds maybe far out, far fetched. But you can see these effects in the models in the statistics and the data, right. So people there are different types of values. They're really like five different types of values set. From this perspective, I'm working within their environmental or biospheric values. There are more humanistic altruistic values, there are values that are oriented more towards traditionalism. There are values oriented towards self interest, egoistic values, we call them and their values around openness to change and change itself, these five types of values that really shaped landscapes, and they also shaped interactions in group settings. What we found in a nutshell is that people not surprisingly, holding stronger environmental values, more deeply held values around relations between humans and the environment, right and wrong, what we should or should not do with, or to the natural environment. People holding stronger environmental values farm differently. When they farm differently, that as different as clear effects on things like land use, and land cover change, that has very clear effects on water levels, that has very clear effect at a scale way beyond the farm level, or even western Kansas that has very clear effects on atmospheric levels of carbon. So people, vice versa, that have, and I'm speaking generically here the day to get more nuanced and complex. And that's all in journal articles. But people that hold more strong traditional values, and self interest values, farm differently than people with stronger altruistic and environmental values.

 I'll step back and say that in a couple things about that. People over the Ogallala Aquifer, the producers, the farmers, and so on, they hold each of these values to varying degrees. No one scores zero on any of these five values. And I talk a lot about that with students in a world where we polarize ourselves and put ourselves into camp, I'm a Republican, I'm a Democrat, I'm a progressive, I'm a conservative, I'm a farmer, I'm a urban citizen, you know, we have all these values we put on people, I give these tests, these values, tests, often the students in class, and one thing that always strikes them is that nobody scores zero on any of the values, we all hold them to varying degrees. And so in that there's a lot of commonality in shared values, there's just different degrees of commonality or difference. And that breaks down a lot of barriers, when you can start thinking about values that way, and shared values in that way, that breaks down a lot of barriers to trust and, and and in trying to produce some sort of positive change. So nobody holds no farmer holds these zero on any of them or or five on all of them, for that matter, all of our high levels on all of them, either. They're all sharing them to some degree, and there's some difference. The next thing I'll say is that in places that get labeled as flyover country, and more pejoratively is redneck land, and places where there's just a lot of backwards, people and so on and conservative in this that the other, ie much of rural America, when you actually give when you actually look at values, when you actually look at beliefs, you actually look at norms, you measure them, you see a lot of diversity out there, that's struck. There's a lot of diversity. And yeah, and you can see it in the data in the data, right? And we look at we talked with urban folks as well. And we give them the same questions. And we look at the data. Yes, there is a rural urban difference on sort of conjunctions or groups of these clusters. But there's also a lot of shared values between these two groups that I think get drowned out in the noise and the day to day sort of were different, or they're backward or were better, or whatever it is, right? So And here, I'm just talking about farmers. I'm not I just surveyed farmers, and there's tremendous diversity and farmers in western Kansas who would have known. They're not all the same. They have different ideas, and they have different worldviews. And some of them are operating under more constraints, financial social than others. But there is a degree of shared values operating there amidst diversity is one thing. So long way of answering that was we sort of look narrowed down on culture and especially on values and worldviews to try to understand how that shapes landscape change, how that shapes environmental change, and vice versa, how those changes then come back and reshape culture, reshape the ideas that are in humans heads about farming over long time periods, right.

So yeah, so what's the best way to be? Or what are some different ways about thinking about that diversity, right? Instead of looking at the map and seeing, you know, off Kansas or all of Western Kansas, like, one color, right, but once you see the diversity and everybody's views? How should that shift? Our thinking about land use about water use? And how to how to like adjust policy, because you're talking about, on the one hand, like individual values, right, but then we're also talking about, you know, collective decisions and general policies and individual actions that affect other people. So how do you translate that, that understanding of the diversity of views into thinking about water use and farming?

Well, yeah, so it's a good question. And it really gets back to this agency structure debate that's been going on in sociology, social science. Sure, Humanities philosophy, as well for a very long time. And that debate basically is about individual and society, self and society. How To what degree are these aligned or misaligned and when we when we talk about natural resource management, there have a common pool resource, which is what we have with the Ogallala, they're all drawing, essentially, from the same bathtub, they each put a straw, right each irrigator put the straw down into the, into the tub, and when they pull it out, it lowers the levels, other places. So we have a common pool resource problem, where one person's actions affect another person. And in some degree in unknown ways, still, now the hydrogeology geology has gotten a lot better about that. We can measure love well levels, and so on. And Kansas geological survey does that very well annually, and so on. Not my area. But my understanding is Kansas is really a leader in being able to measure this resource, this water compared to places like California, Central Valley, and so on. But we do have a common pool resource raises questions about fairness, about power of any one actor and what they can do to other actors in the system, fairly or unfairly. And so, enter, you know, a project where we're asking questions about, what should we do with the water that's left? And that raises all these questions of, well, if Joe or Jill, or Susie or Bob pulls this water out, you know, I'm out, I'm out of luck, and they've got more wells, and they've got more money and so on. These people working on these have been wrestling with these questions long before a little, you know, token sociologist comes along and starts asking these questions. I think what a sociologist can bring to that conversation is to try is that is the skills to try to make our values more explicit, and put them on the table in a structured discussion facilitation environment, and allow people who are at the table to make decisions about this shared resource that they otherwise wouldn't make in their own house or with their own farm family, or they'd otherwise, I don't want to say we're facilitators or adjudicators, like, you know, mediators are legal process by any means, but where otherwise, you would resort to, you know, you know, suing the neighbor or doing this, that or the other, make sure that your water was protected, say, okay, as a community level, at a community level, what, what do we want to happen? And why? And there, as you just heard from the discussion about values, there's a lot of diversity in the responses about what should happen with that water and why it should happen. But very few people are explicitly acknowledging their fundamental ideas about right and wrong in those conversations. They're drawing on what we call a cultural toolbox that they're given. And they don't really question it, because it's so deep in their mind. They've been so socialized, they don't. It's just not their opinion is right. And it's natural, because it just is that's the only thing that they know it's right. It's fair, you know, when you open up that box and allow conversations about, well, why do we want to save water? For who? Who benefits about that? And why do why would we want to conserve this? Why would we not want to conserve it? You don't you do start up discussions about tradition, and convention and outreach And toward others, or lack thereof, and the environment, and you really more deeply at the deepest level. And this is what we've been looking a lot at over the past year to really open up bigger conversations about identity, and who people are, and what gives their life meaning. And the water out there is really allowing these things to have these conversations, these feelings, these ideas about who they are to, to manifest sort of on the landscape, but they're asking questions about fundamentally about who I am I, and what am I doing? And those are questions in turn about. And this gets very provocative, but about humans and the natural world, at the deepest level about God, and about your idea of reality. And about often, as I said, in some public talks, whether you ultimately think that God put the water in the ground for you to use it, or whether that's not the case. And those discussions are rarely happening in policy circles. Those are never happening. We're arguing there about rights and legalities underlying all that what I'm trying to say underlying all that is a whole nother level that isn't talked about, but is really driving those discussions. And that's where I want to be, I want to be at the underneath level of the real driving motivations for people to action. Right. And that's what we're trying to do with this with these in very humbly and with these projects.

That's incredibly hard work. But I guess the idea, yeah, right, then. But yeah, you make these underlying things a little bit more explicit. And then you're also able to point out where, where there are commonalities, right, and give a place for discussion. So that there's a possibility for agreement to another level, I guess.

Yes. And so Exactly. So who am I to say whether we should conserve water in Western Kansas? That's a controversial statement as well, because of course, Kansas water law says the water in the under the ground, again, is to be used for the benefit of all Kansans. And I'm not maybe not a lot of people are aware of that. But Kansas has a very, very interesting water law that Texas does not have, Texas has right of capture, which says if the water is under your ground, you do with it what you want. And for your benefit. Kansas doesn't say that Kansas water law says the water under your ground is to be used for the it's called the beneficial use clause. The water under your property is your right property, right. But it is to be used for the benefit of the citizens of the state of Kansas. Right. So bringing people together. And at least making explicit why we're doing what we're doing with water in this place. is I think the least that should be done. Because if even if it does, we it's pumped dry, we will know why we did it. There will be no mistake about why it was done if we talk about our values. Otherwise, if we never if we never have that conversation, it'll be which we may never get to that level on the scale we need. But if we never have that conversation, we're going to argue a lot about this water law or that water law or this, this, this farmer or that farmer. And the conversation I'm much more interested in is about why we did why we're doing what we're doing. And if we collectively, as a group, decide that it's not we're saving or we're not we don't think it's this is there's a reason why this isn't the ground, it's the US and so on. At least our heirs and our ancestors will know why we did what we did. Whether we conserved it or not. And we'll be explicit about that. I don't think it's too much to ask, but it's very controversial and very hard work for sure. 

Fascinating.

I really appreciate the input that you gave us. This was very, very interesting discussion and brought to light a lot of areas to consider when we are looking at some of the hard science problems. You know, water usage is obviously one of the areas that you've been most heavily focused on, but I really appreciate your time and this has been really great.

No, this has been a great conversation. Thanks so much for joining us.

No, I'm glad to have the opportunity to share something about what I've learned and what we've been doing and, and why we're doing it. One last thing, Maureen and not to get on you, this is a very common thing, but you listen to what I been talking about and so on, I think we'll have to start talking about all sciences as the hard sciences now. Engineering into it's always like hard science and soft science. And I'm not at all opposed that many things about what I do are soft in the sense that they're fuzzy. They're unknown. There's a lot of uncertainty. We don't have a lot of precision in the measures and so on. I feel like what we're doing is maybe the hardest science, I never missed an opportunity to point out so I'm not calling you out directly. I'm just saying in general, hard and soft sciences. I don't know maybe we need a new dichotomies ation of our Science. But more on that later for another podcast.

Very, very fair. Fair comment. Yeah, no, the conversation. You guys helped me out here. You'll have to help me come up with the right word to differentiate between the two approaches, but Well, again, I really appreciate your time. This has been an enlightening conversation. 

It's been really great. Keep up the good work.

 Thanks so much. 

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

On this episode, Dr. Dustin Pendell, professor of agricultural economics, and host of Kansas State University's Beef and Cattle Institute podcast Cattle Chat and returning guest Dr. Jessica Heier Stamm, Kennedy Cornerstone Teaching Scholar in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering join hosts for a timely discussion. Both Pendell and Heier Stamm study supply chain at Kansas State University, but from different perspectives. The discussion focuses on the COVID-19 situation and reviews ways in which product moves today and how that may change in the future. 

Transcript:

Preparation and Management of Challenging Situations - The Bottleneck Effects of the Widely Defined and Critical Supply Chain, with Dr. Dustin Pendell, Professor in Agricultural Economics and Dr. Jessica Heier Stamm, Associate Professor in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

What happens if this was an African swine fever or mostly foot and mouth disease where humans don't necessarily get impacted but it's the animal side?

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

I’m Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science. 

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a Food Scientist.

Hello everybody and welcome back to the K State Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. In last week's podcast we talked with Dr. Jessica Heier Stamm about her work on methods to continuously monitor and improve the widely defined and critical supply chain. This week Dr. Heier Stamm agreed to come back and talk about this important area with Dr. Dustin Pendell, whose work is more focused in the area of agriculture. Dr. Pendell, Professor of Agricultural Economics and Director of the Graduate Programs carries out broad research activities in the areas of livestock and animal health issues that span from the producer to the meat supply chain and into the final consumer. Good morning, everyone and welcome back to Something to Chew On. Today's guests, we have Dr. Jessica Heier Stamm and Dr. Dustin Pendell. You will recall that last week's podcast we had a good discussion with Dr. Heier Stamm and she gave us a little background on who she was and what her area of focus was. This morning. I think we'll start with Dustin Pendell and have Dustin, could you give us a little background on who you are, what you do and what got you interested in this area of study?

Absolutely. First off, I'd like to thank you for inviting me today to participate in your podcast. And a little bit about myself. My name is Dustin Pendell. I'm an agriculturalist here in the Department of Agriculture Economics at K State. I've been here on campus for five years. Prior to me joining here at K State. I spent nine years at Colorado State University, the faculty member there where I conducted research and teaching. And then I spent four years at K State get my PhD, grew up in a small cow calf operation in west central Illinois, growing up in Illinois, and they grew up on a cow calf operation. So that's where my interest in the cow calf industry in the beef industry also have degree in Agronomy, so interested in crops as well. So that's a little bit about me, and a lot of my work here at K State is very interdisciplinary. I spend a lot of my time working with that veterinarians, epidemiologist, folks over in animal science. And with my upbringing in the cow calf industry and my background undergraduate education in Agronomy. I've always had this appeal to work on issues, relevant timely issues. And it's not just me being an agricultural economist trying to solve it. It's me being an economist trying to work with the animal scientist trying to work with the the crop scientists, the soil scientists, the Ag engineers, etc. So that's a little bit about me, like I said, I'm currently here at K State, I teach a undergraduate class called data analysis and optimization. I teach a graduate level class called economics of animal health and food safety. That's part of my appointment. Another part of my appointment is outreach extension. And then I'm also have a research appointment where I conduct research mostly related to issues related to animal health. I'm also the director of our graduate program in the Department as well. 

What do you do in your spare time?

Yeah, my spare time I pretty much travel wherever my kids are and do what they are doing. So.. 

yeah, yeah.

So Dustin, just kind of launching into the topic that we're here to talk about today, which is a follow up from Jessica's podcast on the supply chain. Can you give us a little high level background on what does it take to get product from the farm to a consumer these days?

Yes, so the supply chain that in the food industry is quite complex, I believe. Pick a product Pick a cow calf, for example, a calf that is calf born, which takes months, planing it, you know, through the gestation and breeding etc planning process through that calf is born, raised on it operation till a certain weight, maybe 500 pounds, it's weaned from there, it could stay on the operation, maybe as the background here stocker, or it could be sold through a sale barn. And then it could be taken to another farm, potentially raised for a while till I get to a certain weight, maybe 6-7-8-900 pounds from there, it could be sold again through sale barn, or it could be taken to a feedlot to be put on feed for, you know, 120 to several 100 days, 100 days. From there, it goes to the processing plant, where it's processed, and made into a whole bunch of different, I guess, pieces. From there, it can be shipped either locally, in the US internationally, maybe to different warehouses, where their distribution, it can be further processed, once it gets to wherever it is, then that could go into the retail outlets, or it could be diverted to the food service. And of course, every step along the way, you've got other actors or other players, whether it's transportation, other people providing inputs into this food system. And so that's just one particular example, using beef industry. I mean, every industry is going to be slightly different. You've got perishable or non perishable products. And so there's a lot of different complexities, I guess, a lot of steps.

A lot of steps. 

One of the things that we've been talking with Jessica before was about individualized decision making versus kind of top down organization. And one aspect of that also is how many different paths there are through through systems and through supply chains, like you're just discussing and how centralized they are. So you say something about, or Jessica jump in sort of about in general, you know, how centralized these chains are, how, right versus how local they stay, or how they something about all that sorry, that's a lousy question, but I guess you get what I'm asking.

So thinking about this, kind of here is maybe this concept of centralized versus decentralized, we're talking about your individual actors. And we think, across time, we've started to see a lot more the structure of maybe certain industries in agriculture, where they become more consolidated. As an example, over the last two decades or so 80% of the beef industry 80% of the animals slaughtered are controlled by four companies. And so the structure has went from a number of maybe smaller, packing plants to a few really large individuals, maybe that's becoming more centralized. Now, I think, people you want to ask yourself, why is that happening? What are some of the benefits? And what are some of the costs of that, thinking about some of the benefits, we see, probably a lot of it comes back to costs. There's a lot of cost efficiencies that might be saved by becoming larger when you've got cold storage, for example. This is one example when you process a beef, you have to keep that beef in a cooler after you've done that. And so the more animals or the more pounds of meat, you can run through that cooler, you're going to lower those average costs. And so I think, as we've seen across time, the structure of the industry change. Again, I'm using just the livestock industry. I think costs have driven some of that. But I also think there's other factors that come into play when we think about this notion of a centralized maybe versus a decentralized system, not just cost. But it could be environmental issues that could be public health, probably international training. There's a lot of things I think that come back into this notion of a centralized versus a decentralized system. Now, I think as we're going through what we're currently going through with COVID If you follow anything on social media, there's a lot of comments, a lot of maybe pushback of people saying, you know, the current system that we're in this large, having a few large actors, a few large players, control a lot of the system maybe isn't necessarily a good thing, and maybe we should do a lot of have a lot of smaller, local, more regionalized either packing plants or food distribution? And so I think that's, that's a question that we need to look at and we need to answer is, what are the trade offs between where we've evolved to today versus what some people are calling for now is more mauler regionalised, distribution or packers? So I guess that's what I what I've heard what I'm seeing what I've been thinking about recently about this notion of centralized versus decentralized, or, you know, are we wanting to go back to where we were 20-30-40 years ago, I guess I'd like to get maybe what Jessica's take is, on this tour, this idea of individual versus kind of a centralized?

Well, I see a lot of parallels between what Dustin just described for the supply chain, let's say, for beef products, and other supply chains over time, because of cost and other pressures, supply chains in all kinds of industries have gotten very lean. So think about buzzwords like just in time delivery, or, you know, lean manufacturing, operating with the very least amount of inventory being held as can sustain the production line for whatever product that is, and concentrating operations in a small number of firms or locations. We see this on the pharmaceutical supply chain. Right now, that's also creating some some challenges with the COVID response. Because there are drugs in shortage, there are personal protective equipment items that are in shortage, because those supply chains have been designed to provide just the routine amount of supply and any disruption at any point in the supply chain can create havoc in other places. And so I think, across industries, this question that Dustin raised about what are the trade offs? What are the costs and benefits of a lean supply chain of consolidation of concentration in a small number of firms is one that we will very carefully need to study. There are obviously costs to carrying stockpiles of inventory of n95 respirators. But there are also as we're seeing very real costs of not having those stockpiles. Likewise, there are costs of consolidating beef production among four major players, but there are costs of not having a resilient and redundant systems that can be responsive to shocks or vulnerabilities or disruptions in other places in the supply chain.

So what I think what I'm hearing is that the major changes that have taken place in supply chain using cow calf, as an example, has been a consolidation and increase in scale. Is that correct? Or are there more?

No, I definitely the increase the scale. Economies of Scale is a big factor. I mean, it's not probably the only factor though. But it is most definitely in these economies of scale, allowing them to come back to these cost efficiencies. I also think that, you know, sometimes, when you have not only cost efficiencies, I think there are some other things that probably play into whether it be you know, think about slaughter plant, we have a few really large slaughter plants from where are they located at? Well, we know here in Kansas, we have some right southwest Kansas, Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma Panhandle, eastern Colorado. Who wants a packing plants we have a bunch of these throughout the country, really small, regional, how many people want these in their backyard? I think there's a reason why we've seen them in Kansas and western Kansas, for example, there's not a lot of population. So I think their kinds of scale are driving it is Jessica kind of pointed out. But I think there are some other things that we also need that one needs to also consider when they think about this from the bigger picture through all these different trade offs.

So I'm curious about what sort of process would be a good one for thinking about these different trade offs and thinking about how what goals we want out of our system, what we, what we want to achieve how much we care about Say you know that resiliency and how much we're willing to pay for it. Either you have thoughts about how to approach, thinking about these things.

I think modeling is a great tool to be able to examine different systems designs and understand the trade offs and dialogue with stakeholders about the trade off. So I think there are two really important components to considering what a next generation supply chain might look like. The first is understanding the perspective of all the stakeholders and understanding, you know, what, what does each one want out of the supply chain, or what's not working in the current supply chain, you know, if you talk to cow calf operators, today, they're very concerned about your concentration in the packing part of the supply chain, they're very concerned about being able to sell their animals for a fair price. You talk about the Packers, obviously, they're very concerned about the welfare of the workers, the continued operations, being able to sell their product as well. And so having an of course, the consumers interested about what prices they're paying at the grocery store, the welfare of the workers, the safety, health of their communities, and so forth. So understanding what's working or what's not working in the current system, and then taking that to a model to represent, you know, what are the costs and the benefits? If we configure the supply chain in this way? What are the costs and the benefits if we configure it in this way, I'm not an expert in policy or markets or economics. And so there are also some social science aspects of enacting those changes that need to be accounted for as well. And so I think, you know, what Dustin said at the outset of these challenges, interdisciplinary is going to be absolutely critical to us re envisioning what supply chains can look like.

Just to add to that real quick, I agree, we need to talk to the stakeholders, figure out, wait, first of all, who are stakeholders, it is going to be your producers, it's going to be everyone throughout the entire supply chain all the way to your final consumer, and figure out what what are their wants, and their needs. If you take a look at any research that has looked at what consumers want in the food side. And there's generally three or four attributes that always come out on top, you know, price, they want, you know, food that is affordable. Here in the United States, I believe we spend less than 10% of our disposable income. It's down around six or 7% of our disposable income on food. You compare that to some of your third world countries from developing countries, they might pay upwards of 50% 50% of their income, their supposable income is spent on food. So price is one of the attributes, generally food safety, safe, tasty and nutritious. Are your other attributes that consumers typically want to see. But then I also think you need to take into account what those producers and then all your other actors throughout that supply chain is, Jessica brought up another good point about modeling, rather than trying to change the system. And then we'll figure out what all the impacts are. We could use the modeling that Jessica talked about. And that can give us a better idea of what would work what wouldn't work. How much would those costs be by changing the various systems? That way it gives us a better idea of kind of those those benefits and costs that we've talked about. And so I agree with what Jessica said there in terms of thinking about how might we go forward with the supply chains?

In the current situation that we've got with food and challenges in the supply chain? We've been hearing, as you said social media on television, that there's a lot of food being dumped produce milk, are there long term impacts of something like that happening? Is that going to be a flash in the pan? Or do you think going back to some of the other comments that you made a little bit earlier? Is that going to have some force change on the decentralization or the way we look at getting food moved around?

Well, what I think in the short term what that is doing is that is you're starting to see that show up on social media, whether it's Twitter, Facebook, what etc. And I think that's really upsetting some people and I think those could be vocal could be asking for change. We start to see possibly some Are policymakers starting to do investigations? Wanting to know more? What should we be doing different how we should be doing different? Which kind of leads back to that last question that Jessica talked about, maybe we should model look at what a different structure would look like and take a look at those costs associated with possible different structures. And so there's a lot of things I guess, one could think about in this.

Just gonna follow up to that, I think we have seen some changes in policies and practices and supply chain operations, as news of the food waste has gotten out, right. So you all may be more familiar with the nuances and the details of this than I am. But USDA changed some guidelines to allow restaurants to sell the produce the eggs, the meat and things that they had would have received through their regular channels, even when they were not serving customers in the dining room. And so they could sell those products as if they were a grocery store, which is not typically allowed, right. And so redirecting some of that food that would have been potentially wasted back to consumers through a different channel, right. So they're not getting it through the grocery store, but they're getting it through the restaurant channel, and other ways to reconfigure that supply chain that had been designed to send products to restaurants, products to schools to now get to, to grocery stores, or direct to consumer in a way that hadn't been done before the pandemic. And so I think some of those short term changes, will maybe remain short term changes, others may be candidates for consideration about ways that we can adapt the policy more permanently going forward. So I think it'll be interesting to see what some of those responses may be.

And I would concur with that I just don't know long run, what will happen or if, if anything will happen. But I think, you know, some of what we're seeing in the media, social media, I'm just not sure if it'll just die out. And then as we think about the supply chains, how they should or maybe what they should look like in the future, that will then be incorporated into some of those potential policy changes that Jessica mentioned.

That relates to a question that I had, which is basically how easy is it to change these things? You know, how themes as if these supply chains develop, and the sins are made by industry, in ways that, you know, are not going to make it straightforward for us all this sort of say, hey, look, let's do something a little differently, everybody. So like, how stable are is the way things are set up right now? And how easy is it to change?

Some supply chains might be a little easier to adapt, and change. Others are going to be like we pointed out right at the very beginning, the food system is very complex. And so I don't think these are things that you can change very easily, especially overnight. Going back to the live animal, or fruits and vegetables. You know, we've got biology that gets that comes into play here, this is good, that's gonna be a little different to maybe a manufacturing sector. And because of the biological lags or the biology that gets involved in the animal agriculture, or I guess fruits and vegetables, that in itself is one complexity that maybe other industries don't have that don't see. I think that's a complexity right there. That's gonna be very hard to change. And it's not in the whole, there's so many players are so many people are so many other industries are that are involved in the supply chains. It's not just talking to the Packers in the feed yard, that maybe your cow calf producers, it's all these other industries that impacted, right, you've got your pharmaceutical industries that provide, you know, the medications to the industry, you've got your feed industry, so you get your grain producers. And so you've got a whole bunch of different players that might not actually produce the calf or produce the chicken. But you've got all but they're definitely involved in that chain. So changing this, the supply chain, I don't think it's very easy at all. I think it's going to be extremely complex. I think it will take a while to think through alternatives. And if we want to implement them, they'll have to be implemented slow as there's so many other people that are being impacted, and they will have to adjust and change their supply chains as well. So my initial initial reaction to your question.

I echo what Dustin shared and just chime in with a small anecdote that others may have seen. So this is from the healthcare side. It's so there's a shortage in hand sanitizer and distilleries, you know, mobilized to produce hand sanitizer instead of whiskey. And now there's a shortage in plastic bottles to put the sanitizer in so it can be dispensed. Right. So, health care supplies, supply chain personnel, you know, hospital resource managers have been trying to find out who are the producers of small plastic bottles, so they can dispense the hand sanitizer that they're getting in, you know, really, really big jugs in practical ways throughout their system. So just something as small as what bottle Do you dispense it in, can throw a wrinkle into even a creative solution. And so if you compound that through the entire supply chain, whether it's pharmaceutical, medical supplies, or food, fruit, vegetables, meat proteins, every one of those supply chains has those little nuances, those complexities all the way through. And so thinking about those implications is certainly tackling a complex problem.

In some cases, you have the cost of success when you have a critical ingredient. And the product is so highly desired that you've lost full access or appropriate access to, to the critical ingredient. Not enough blueberries for McDonald's yogurt, or whatever. And so now they have one component that's missing, and they can't, they can't sell the product at all. So it ramifies out even further into the mind of very minor ingredients in the system.

I guess another complexity to add on top of that is that the consumer and certainly in the United States is used to being able to get whatever they want, whenever they want it and not having eating locally, obviously, that's going to be very seasonal. That's really not what the consumer is used to.

And I think that's just probably a temporary. I mean, we're just we had such a huge shock to the system, right? You think about the demand side, we have people scared. And so they're all going out, rushing out buying products, whether that be meat, because we saw the pictures of the meat cases, for bare in the social media in the news, or, you know, Clorox wipes toilet paper. So you’ve seen this initial huge shock that we're not used to seeing, from demand side, on the demand side, thinking about groceries, on the restaurant side, now suddenly, everybody stays home, nobody's going out to eat. And so you got restaurants that are in there that are shut down, at least temporarily. And so that's a huge shock to their system as well. And thinking back to earlier questions about dumping milk, or this or that, in comments about the supply chains, how we've got them, we can't just change them overnight. Right? So we're making the same milk that's going in these little cartons that go to school, where you can't just turn on take the little cartons and sell them in a grocery store. You can't change our supply chain overnight, like Jessicas has talked about. It's I think that is some of these issues that we're seeing right now. Now, are they changing? Will they be able to adapt? Absolutely. But they just can't do that, that change, I can't make that change overnight. And so I think it is a short term shock, as we start to gradually open up as we start to go, you know, open up the economy start to go out to restaurants, etc. I think as demand builds back up, we'll start to, you know, we'll start to things will start to get back to, quote unquote, normal, if you will. And so I think it's just gonna take some time. But I think this is just a short term shock to the system will advance and then we can talk about the supply side shock as well.

What's the least likely factor to change? What's going to be? What might be different out there? Is there something that just is now have we learned something that makes it impossible to go back to some part of the system?

That's a good question. I’ll have to think about that one.

Or is it was it going to be a trial and error? What will we find out? When we have go back the way it was and find the problem? 

That's a good question.

I’ve been really interested in the question and I don't have an answer off the top of my head. Think about it. 

I've been pondering it as well in a different context in the context of some spice industry, if you will, or the flavor industry. Some of those very minor ingredients are quite unusual and susceptible to alteration, and susceptible to contamination, and we have problems with sanitizing them, because you know, that they're difficult, and it might change them. So we might, we might find that what we've what we've decided to do, might be very, very difficult to do at least one step, perhaps. So I think it's just gonna have to be a learning experience.

Yeah, your, your might be right there. Yeah. What, as we tried to go back to some things and realize that maybe it didn't work. Maybe it doesn't work, maybe we've improved, we've learned or maybe what we're doing now isn't working, we have to go back. And there's really no other way to around it.

As far as as for nosocomial diseases are concerned, for example. Would it be possible? Or would it be in the realm of possibilities that that certain strains or certain varieties or certain genetic compositions of a feed animal or a bird or whatever might be selectively susceptible to those or? or pass that disease more readily on to a human? Or am I asking the wrong? The right question? Maybe?

Yeah, I might want to leave that to an epidemiologist or public health, not not an economist.

I had a bigger picture thought on what may or may not revert to the previous normal with respect to supply chains. This may be my optimistic side talking, but I'm a perpetual supply chain educator, my hope is that we don't go back to a scenario where we only think about supply chain when it's broken. You know, so now everybody knows about the disruptions in the food supply chain in the Lysol wipes supply chain in the PPE supply chain. We know about supply chains now, because they're not working the way that we expect them to. I may be overly optimistic, but I hope that we continue to think about supply chains and how they impact our lives. And, I hope that people get excited about solving those problems.

Do you think there's a ways in which we can be more attentive to different kinds of risks to the supply chain coming on? Now? I mean, I think, I don't know that much about this. But I have a sense that, right. I mean, farmers are sensitive to the possible diseases that their animals have and their crops have. Right. And so when we thought about and heard about bird foods, etc, before, I mean, sort of from the general population side, I think, you know, I mean, we worry about the transfer over to humans, and we're all going to get sick, but we're also, you know, aware that that's the ag industry is worried about this with respect to their animals, and then sort of, you know, perhaps diseases, etc, the same right, but, now we're looking at and that would disrupt, right, sort of, like a major, major disease amongst all right, you know, amongst livestock, you know, we know that's going to disrupt the agriculture industry, right, but we haven't, it seems to me then, like intentive to like how, how major things like this economically would, would shift. Right, so people getting sick, right, would totally mess up the supply chain the same, this kind of way, right? Does this just raised like new issues that we haven't been attentive to, and maybe thinking about enough? Are these are these things people have been thinking about? And then just like we weren't, we weren't ready for it?

That's a really good question. You know, question that I've asked myself over the last couple, two, three weeks, is we're talking about we're seeing COVID-19 which is a human and animals aren't impacted. mean, they are being impacted now, because we've seen that the bottleneck with packing plants, not having a labor force to keep their packing plants open. Thus, we don't have a place for our live animals to go. And so if you see in the news, how they've been euthanizing animals for welfare reasons. What happens if this was an African swine fever or mostly foot and mouth disease where humans don't necessarily get impacted, but it's the animal side, which is exactly what you're talking about. Because it's going to enter deuce, I think a whole others. There'll be some similar issues that we're seeing now. But I think it's going to open up a whole lot of other issues that we haven't experienced, from the fact that you're gonna have a whole bunch of animals that are sick. So we're going to have to think about depopulating potentially lots and lots of animals. What do we do with those animals? Some of the things I think that could be similar, as you know, we've seen the federal government and maybe state and local governments as well pass legislature that legislation that provides relief, economic relief, stimulus funds, I guess, you could say. So that would be something similar, I could see that happening already on the maybe if it was a different disease, helping out maybe producers who are losing livestock, which I think we're seeing that now, I think that could be a similarity, I think you're going to probably see similar issues in the supply chain, except now there's just not enough animals going into the supply chain. So it's not enough animals bid up the price. So prices, I think at the retail level will be extremely, could be pretty high, we could start to see issues with international trade, where maybe we're wanting to import more. But same time, maybe some people don't want to maybe don't want to ship product out of maybe they're scared? It's an interesting question, I guess I'd have to think a little bit about all the different differences between what we're currently seeing on the human side versus an animal. But absolutely, I think you're gonna see a lot of there will be a number of things that are the same. But there will be certain maybe it's disease specific things that are different. That one might have to think about to kind of think through kind of trace out the impact who's being impacted, and then subsequently up and down the entire supply chain.

I think I heard somewhere in your question, a thread about whether this has been on the radar of the public, the policymakers, the researchers, this kind of an outbreak. Yeah, yeah. So I'll pick up on that thread. It has been the potential for a global pandemic, whether human animal or zoonotic. So across species, is the subject of a great deal of, research and study much of it at K State. And what's been interesting to see play out in this particular event, is that this is a perfect storm, that is sort of the worst case scenario that a lot of these researchers have considered. And as much as we would like to say, you know, couldn't we have been more prepared for XYZ? It's, you know, some of that preparation was there, some of it's a matter of, of managing the situation in the moment, and some of it is a matter of every possible scenario is playing out here in terms of impact on on human health impacts on the economy, impact on supply chains, and all of those components at once. And so yes, there has been attention paid to this, but there's certainly opportunity for us to learn, because I think, you know, the science is pretty clear that these kinds of events are going to become more common, not less. And so this isn't the last major event, whether human animal or both, that we'll need to deal with and so whatever we can learn from this event, can only help us be more prepared for what's coming down the road.

So now that you've had chance to interact you to? Do you see areas that that in your areas of interested overlap that you are that you didn't know before or…

Not I think we've served on one PhD students committee, we looked at kind of a systems approach, building a model. And as a director of the grad program, a lot of what we as economists do, is we look at optimization. And I know Jessica, teaches some supply chain classes. She's teaching a game theory class for which we've got one of our grad students already enrolled in that this upcoming semester. And so I think there is probably a lot more overlap on what both on the teaching side, as I teach, I teach an optimization class as well, in the spring term, teaching, but I think from a research standpoint, I think Jessica and some others, just had a paper came out recently, if I'm not mistaken, that looking at some agent based modeling, in southwest Kansas, thinking the beef industry livestock. So I think there's some interesting things with that particular research. And I think they could easily adapt that to other parts of the industry aspect, whether it's Packing Plant Industry, or others. And so I think there are probably a lot of overlap and interests, whether it be from a teaching, or especially a research side, as well.

Is it your sense that the work that you two are doing and how many other people number doesn't matter, that are producing these results? And these recommendations, are they being effectively communicated to the actors that can actually make a difference in the, for example, in the supply chain? Are we doing an effective job of communicating up and out?

I think we can always do better with that aspect of research, we get excited about the results. And we get excited about the student successes. And when we're able, we also engage with stakeholders to make sure that we're informing our modeling and our research at the front end, and evolving with their feedback through the middle and delivering those recommendations out. But I think that those pieces always can be improved. That's my perspective. And that's a priority of mine, in my current research, going forward, just partnering with state and local health departments, and so forth, but there are challenges in that as well, from the perspective of what's appreciated and rewarded in the university structure. But also just the bandwidth of the practitioners and finding the ways to engage that are best for them. And I think, you know, extension does a lot better job of this, in terms of engagement than other parts of the university.

And to follow on that, if we go back and look at maybe 15 years ago, when I started where we are now, you know, there was a lot of emphasis on, you just got to publish publishing your top in journals, work with other economist. Fast forward to today. It's, it's all about, are you having an impact, not necessarily in a top journal, but who are you helping? And one way to look at that is, you know, if you're in try to solve real world problems, you work with economists, engineers, and maybe a Veterinary Epidemiologist. And so I think we're starting to see a lot more of that. I think that we can do better, as Jessica pointed out, but I think we have seen a lot of that, you know, in my short 15 years and at the university. I also think what we've seen just within the last 2-3-4 weeks, I think we at the university, I think the our K State Extension has done an outstanding job putting out those relevant resources as timely resources, whether that be financial planning, whether that be in the public health, or whether that be helping model transportation in a particular region, for maybe livestock, and so I think we're starting to see a lot more of that communication, a lot more of the outreach, a lot more of the extension. And these last several weeks showing everything all the great things that we're doing at K State. And I hope going forward, that we will continue to communicate that information, whether that be a podcast or whether that be short factsheets or a radio interview, to the necessary people, whether the leadership at university leadership in Topeka, or in Washington, DC.

Well, Jessica and Dustin, I want to thank you both for your time here today. This has been a really interesting conversation. Each time I talk to somebody on campus, I realized how much more in depth research is being done in areas that impact people on a daily basis. And I think this, this added some clarity to some of the things that we're dealing with today and gives us a little insight on what we may be looking forward to in the future. So thank you so much for joining us today. 

Yes, thanks for the opportunity.

Yes, thank you very much.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

Dr. Jessica Heier Stamm, Kennedy Cornerstone Teaching Scholar in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering at Kansas State University, explains the applications of supply chain engineering in the humanitarian response of the current pandemic. Dr. Heier Stamm develops quantitative models and algorithms to designs and improve humanitarian relief and public health systems. Her work has modeled the impacts of facility location decisions on cholera response in Haiti and earthquake response in Nepal. 

Transcript:

Demand for Humanitarian Response – How to Apply Industrial Engineering Toolbox to Solve Problems Related to the Humanitarian Response, with Dr. Jessica Heier Stamm, Associate Professor in Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering

The transdisciplinary perspective and having multiple kinds of expertise at the table is critical to making the model the right model, whether that's in the public health and humanitarian sphere, rather in the animal environmental health sphere.

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

I’m Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science. 

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a Food Scientist.

Hello everybody and welcome back to the K State Global Food Systems podcast Something to Chew On. COVID-19 has affected all areas of our everyday life. One of the things that we rely on the most but rarely consider is the supply chain. Do you buy locally produced products. Even if an effort is made to do that many of the things needed for everyday life come to us through a complicated and many times an international supply chain in a time of crisis, a functioning supply chain is critical in getting essential materials to where they are needed. Today's guest is Dr. Jessica Heier Stamm Associate Professor in industrial manufacturing systems engineering and the Gisela and Warren Kennedy Cornerstone teaching scholar. Dr. Heier Stamm uses operations research and game theory tools to analyze supply chain systems in which decisions about systems control are made in a decentralized way. This work is addressing two central research questions. What is the impact on systems effectiveness as a result of decentralization? And how can systems be designed to mitigate the adverse effects of decentralization? Answers to these questions can help us gain a better understanding of the supply chain and will have direct implications for participants in that supply chain in designing and managing those process systems. In the last few podcasts, we've been discussing viruses and research dealing with the physical nature of the organism, and computer aided models that help us to understand how viruses spread. Modeling can also be used to establish methods of getting help to those that need it the most. Again, from our socially distance homes and offices, we would like to welcome Dr. Jessica Heier Stamm to the podcast. The logistics systems are critical in the movement of people and supplies. Logistics modeling can apply to medical situations like we're seeing today with COVID 19 outbreak, or Congestus will be used in the critical movement of food and supplies. I'm excited to learn more about this area of study. Jessica, before we get started on research that you're currently involved with, can you give us a little background on yourself on who you are and how you become interested in this area of work? 

Certainly, first, let me say thank you for the invitation to be on the podcast. I think it's never been more important to examine Global Food Systems challenges from transdisciplinary perspectives. And I agree with what you said Maureen that the logistics are a big part of that. So I'm a native Kansan. I grew up in Quinter, on a small farm there. And early on, I enjoyed using math to solve problems. But I also had this deep desire to make a difference in people's lives. So that through a somewhat circuitous path led me to earning an industrial engineering degree at K State. And at the time that I was entering college, I didn't meet an engineer until I was a senior in high school, let alone know what most engineers did or what industrial engineers did. But I came to learn that industrial engineers design, improve and manage systems that produce goods and services. And I was really drawn to the opportunities to use math and statistics and business skills to make things better. But the examples that I saw in the standard curriculum about the systems that traditional industrial engineers were working with, were not the examples that I wanted to see myself working in through my career. I was really excited about using the same tools in that industrial engineering toolbox. To solve problems related to humanitarian response to getting the goods and services to people in need people that have been affected by disasters or long term public health challenges. And so at the conclusion of my undergraduate studies, I decided to go on to graduate school and really focus on becoming an expert in supply chain engineering, but with the intent to apply those skills in the humanitarian domain. So I earned my PhD at Georgia Tech. One other fact that I didn't mention is that I knew that I wanted to be a teacher, before I knew that I wanted to be an engineer. And so a faculty role really helped me mash up those two interests that I had, I had an opportunity to come back to K State, and I just couldn't turn it down. So I joined the faculty about nine years ago. And about three years ago, I became a graduate faculty member in the K State, interdisciplinary master's in public health program. So now I have what I tell my students is the best job in the world, I get to work with them on important challenges that the world is facing. And I get to interact with stakeholders who are making decisions about logistics systems and help them find ways to solve those problems.

And how would you over the nine years that you've been here? How have the problems or circumstances or situations that you're bringing your expertise to have they changed? Have they shifted? I sense there's going to be sort of a tidal shift coming up. But has there been a change over the last few years any otherwise? 

The predominant area where I'm focusing my work continues to be in disaster preparedness and response for human public health systems. At the same time, since I've been at K State, I have worked on a number of projects that touch animal health that touch environmental health, water, decisions around water and land use. And I really see those things holistically, right, I think about myself as a person who studies supply chain systems that support human animal and environmental health. And at K State, we really prioritize and recognize this notion of One Health, how all of these components are linked together. And in studying them together from a multidisciplinary perspective, we can have a greater impact on those problems. So I do think that my focus has broadened to think about how that tool set is applicable to a wide variety of domains.

In reading through the work you've done in the recent past, your focus has been on decentralized systems. What are the pluses and minuses, the differences between looking at this type of activity from a centralized system in a decentralized as the decentralized? Better? Is it just more common? What is the focus for that perspective?

Certainly, I would say that the majority of systems if we think about these complex supply chain systems that support human animal environmental health, they really are comprised of multiple stakeholders, all the way from the private sector, to the government, to the nonprofit organizations. And so these, these systems in practice are more often decentralized than not. On the other hand, most of the tools in the toolbox that we bring to bear to model these systems have been built from a centralized perspective, the perspective that we can optimize a single function to achieve the goals of the system, that one person can, or one entity can determine what the constraints and boundaries of the system are, and make the decisions to control actions within that system to achieve the goals. And that's fine. But those kinds of models really end up optimizing components, isolated components within this broader system. To get a bigger picture and a better fidelity to the real world. We need to account for that decentralization for the different levels of decision making for the different objectives and information that stakeholders have, and for the ways in which decisions are actually made. If we think about it from that system's perspective, we may have been optimizing sub components, but the result is not a system optimal solution. And so it's very important to think about how do we adapt our traditional modeling approaches to account for that real decentralization? And then what insights can these new models give us to better understand to better design to better manage those systems, Maureen, you also asked a broader question about whether decentralization or centralization is better. I think, you know, from a philosophical perspective, the answer is it depends a lot on on the nature of the system

That makes total sense is we know, the food system, the medical system, whichever you want to look at is made up of a lot of parts. And it would not, there would not be a centralized focus on how to do that. And it's interesting to understand that you've got a lot of centralized focus is put together and that is the decentralization.

Could you give an example of a centralized system and how some of the techniques that are traditionally used would address optimization there, and then, you know, example of just how different it is once things are not centralized?

Sure. So we think about a single, let's say, transportation for optimizing the deliveries, that it needs to execute in a given timeframe, let's say a day, that single transportation firm owns the assets that it's using or contracts with its drivers in their assets, and can make decisions, how to deploy those resources to meet the demands that it's facing from its customers. A traditional optimization model works well at that scale, to be able to deploy those resources to maximize on time delivery, or maximize profit or minimize cost, whatever the objective function might be for that firm. But if we think about the ecosystem that that firm works in, even within other segments of that same company, they are serving different markets, they are serving different consumer segments, maybe one branch of that company is operating, truckload delivery, and another branch of that company is operating, express air freight with last mile, local truck delivery. In a lot of our major transportation companies, those two branches of the same company operate as independent entities. And the resources, the drivers, the pilots, the planes, the trucks that belong to one of those entities are not necessarily shared or even visible to the other part of the same company. Could there be synergy? By pooling those resources and allocating them to the pooled demand across those two different segments of the same company? Absolutely. Are there costs associated with collaborating across those two divisions of the same company? Yes. And so one thing that we focus on in in the research that my group does is how do we think about allocating the costs and benefits of collaboration of making this decentralized system function a little bit more closely to the centralized one, in a way that makes those two separate entities more likely to want to collaborate, so that they both come out ahead. And that's it, that's a hard problem to figure out how to allocate costs and benefits across entities to to move towards achieving the system wide objectives that you might achieve with a centralized approach. But recognizing the realities that those two segments of the company are still going to make their own decisions according to their own profit objectives or market objectives.

So that is the main issue there that there is not centralized decision making between the two? Or is it that there are different sets of interests, that you're not looking to optimize for a single thing, but these different subunits are trying to accomplish different things?

Both and. Right, so there's not centralized decision making. And the reason that centralized decision making may not be realistic to achieve is that there are different objectives. Even if the bottom line objective for the overarching company is profitability, the way in which each organization sees itself contributing to that, and the metrics may be different for each. I can take this a bit more specific to challenges that we've seen in public health emergency response. So we think about one project that my students and I worked on was looking at the response to the cholera outbreak in Haiti that followed the 2010 earthquake there. And so about 9-10 months after the earthquake occurred in January of 2010. In the October timeframe, cholera was discovered in Haiti. For those who may not know cholera is a serious bacterial disease that can be easily treated with routine methods. But if those treatments are not readily available, people with significant illness can die within hours. So that makes easy access to treatment facilities a high priority and combating the disease and the consequences of that disease for the population. Many international and and local non governmental organizations, health organizations, United Nations agencies were involved in the response to cholera in Haiti, the publicly available data that we accessed through the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization identified more than 100 unique entities that were operating cholera treatment facilities in Haiti, at the peak of the operation, there was some degree of communication between many of those entities that operating facilities via the United Nations cluster system that tries to bring together independent organizations who are operating in the same space, to share information to share objectives, and so forth. But there was not a centralized agency who had the authority to direct these NGOs and other responders about where color treatment facilities needed to be located. And so the actual system was quite decentralized, individual organizations made decisions about where to set up their color treatment facilities. And what we saw was that there was a great concentration and services and facilities available in the capital city. But there were many rural areas where there was no cholera treatment facility available within any reasonable transportation distance for the population, or based on the conditions. And so the result of that decentralization was redundancy in some areas, so duplication of service, and disparity so complete in availability of service in other areas. We don't believe that we could achieve complete centralization, there is no entity with the authority in many of these international disasters to dictate what Non Governmental Organizations will do and where they will operate. But what we were able to do with our models was to demonstrate the potential benefit of reallocating the same resources in different locations, and how that would impact the accessibility of treatment of cholera for the population across all of Haiti. And we see those results as a starting point for saying, you know, what are some mechanisms that could encourage this still decentralized system to behave more like one that we could achieve if we did have this hypothetical centralized control, things like providing additional resources to organizations that are willing to operate in remote communities, because obviously, that operation has additional costs. Those organizations are not as visible to their funders and to donors if they're operating in rural areas. And so what are some mechanisms, even information sharing about where demand is not being met, and how organizations might be able to better use their resources, recognizing that organizations will still make those decisions independently. But providing information or providing financial support to help them make those decisions more readily could be a mechanism to moving towards this more centralized outcome?

It is very interesting. I'm kind of curious about how, how to think about modeling, this independent decision making. In some sense, everybody, all the organizations that are down there have some set of common goals. Right. You know, they're trying to address the humanitarian crisis, and they have different focuses, probably for sure. Right. But they've got some common set of goals, but you're just talking about costs and such as cost of money, but costs too, while funding right sort of through their donors. Could you say a little something else about like, what, what the incentives and what the goals of like different individual organizations are in a crisis like this and how you think about them and how you think about what's driving their decision making?

Certainly. So a number of scholars have looked at what some of those objectives are, we have not specifically been investigating the components of those objectives but have benefited from the work that others have done. There are the missions of the individual organizations, right? What is their priority? What is their organizational purpose. And to the extent that that can be captured in a model, you know, that that goes into their decision making, there is also the need to secure continued funding. And for many of these organizations, that does mean demonstrating to their donors that they're being financially responsible, that the funds that the donors are giving, are going directly to the cause to the mission. And so anything around management or logistics, or investing in systems that might make some of these practices more efficient, goes into that overhead category that is not counted as direct investment in mission. And so it can be an opportunity to educate donors about the metrics that are used to evaluate the operation of nongovernmental organizations. So there's that the need to continue to receive donations, and then to demonstrate financial stewardship of those donations. So how many people are they serving per dollar that they invest or? And so there, it gets to some very nuanced mathematics, right? If you choose the wrong metric for any optimization model, or a decision maker is not solving a mathematical model, they're using a heuristic decision process in their heads to make that decision. So if you back out what those criteria are, we can get a model to give lots of different answers depending on which metric we put in that objective function. And so thinking carefully about whether we're measuring efficiency, right outputs over inputs, or effectiveness, did we accomplish the goal that we set out to do which was to minimize the number of cases and minimize morbidity and mortality? Or even equity? Did we serve the people across the country at the same level? Or were we prioritizing people that lived in urban areas over rural areas, so how you choose those metrics, and then how you combine or balance those metrics can have a big impact on what the outcome is.

Since the stroke of the COVID pandemic, we are starting to hear more and more examples of large organizations, both private and public, that are making huge changes in what they do, what they make, what they, you know, essentially, who they are, and going from, you know, forwards going from making radiator pumps to ventilators or whatever. And are, are these the sort of models that those folks could apply to optimize this change, in course, this change in process that they're putting themselves through.

Certainly, there is a role for models to help with that. If you think about changing from producing automobiles to producing ventilators. That's potentially a subset of the suppliers, the raw material suppliers or the parts and equipment suppliers could be similar, but a variety of them are going to be different. And so identifying procurement strategy for the new parts and equipment that are necessary identifying an efficient and effective production process or how are you going to need to retool, reconfigure the factory. What does that physical space look like? And then what is the the distribution chain look like once the ventilators have been produced? They're not going to be going out through the the regular distribution chain that Ford has. So who are the other partners that need to be at the table to think about what is the end target for these new products? Yes, the kinds of supply chain models that we use to improve the traditional automobile supply chain can be reconfigured and re adapted to design manage and improve this adapted supply chain for ventilators.

Thanks.

I see that you use game theory tools to do some of the research that you're working on and analyzing these systems. Can you tell me what game theory is and how that works in the analysis that you're doing? 

Yes, game theory is a formal way to represent decisions of multiple stakeholders when those decisions have strategic interaction. So if I'm making a decision, and it doesn't impact you, and it's not impacted by any decision that you make, there's no strategic interaction between those decisions. But the minute that something that you decide impacts, the options available to me are the outcomes for me based on my decisions, then there's a potential to model that as a game. The name comes from formalizing the strategies, the actions and the outcomes in table games, board games, and so forth. But it's been applied to economics, supply chains, political science across a variety of different disciplines. The purpose is to model and then better understand the behavior of decision makers in these strategic environments. The way that it comes into play in the research that I do on supply chains, is to overcome the limitations of the traditional optimization models that have taken this centralized perspective where there's a single decision maker. So if we use game theory, we can bring in the perspective and objectives of multiple decision makers and identify the impacts and the outcomes of decisions by each of those decision makers and then predict what what they would do in practice, and what actions would be beneficial or detrimental to the overall system based on on those decentralized actions.

So one of the main games of game theory that maybe people have heard about is the prisoner's dilemma, right? Where two people are making decisions on their own right in cooperating, they're gonna do better off but there's incentives for each of them to, to cheat or to not cooperate, right? And then that drives them to a situation where things are not good for any of them overall, right? So a lot of what I have heard about game theory is the ways in which the equilibrium states that people end up being when they're individually making these decisions on their own interests are often not in their collective best interests. Right. Tell me what kinds of things you see when you apply game theory to these human humanitarian decision making?

Certainly, so you're right, that much of the study of game theory has identified that the outcomes in equilibrium are not those that would be mutually beneficial to the players. And what we see when we apply this in supply chains, particularly with respect to public health, I'll make a couple of points. The first is we used game theory ideas to model decisions of individual patients in seeking where to obtain a vaccine for the h1n1 pandemic, right. So, vaccines were available at a number of different clinics, information was available to the public about how many vaccines were available at each location, people make decisions about where they're going to seek health care, based on their own objectives, we might imagine that those objectives include the distance or the travel time to get to the facility, and the relative waiting time or congestion that they're going to experience at that facility, which is a function of how many other people are there, and how many vaccines are available at that place. And so the traditional optimization approach, if we're thinking about a vaccine distribution problem, is to say, we're going to send out the vaccines and we can tell people where they must go if they want to receive a vaccine. That doesn't work, when people are independently rationally making their own choices about about their health care. And so a more realistic approach is to say, here's where the vaccines are, what decisions are people likely to make? And that gives us a metric for what is likely to happen in the system. And what we saw when we applied game theory in that way, modeling the individual patients decisions was that some facilities had more vaccine than they had people willing to visit the facility to receive the vaccine. Other facilities were overwhelmed and highly congested. And so what that speaks to in turn have, you know backing out some policy recommendations is the opportunity to design that distribution system a priori, having accounted for people's likely decisions. So we would make different decisions about where to send the vaccines. If we assumed up front, that people are going to make their own choices about where to visit, then we would make if we assume that we could tell them where to go. Since we know that the situation is really that people make their own decisions, let's design the system so that it operates effectively under that scenario. So that's one, that's one perspective, that's one thing that we see when we incorporate game theory into those models. And to your original point that the decisions of individual decision makers are not necessarily in their mutual best interest. The idea of game theory is that people are going to make their decisions. And in an equilibrium solution, there's no way that one patient could switch to another facility and be better off in terms of the distance she had to travel, or the waiting time that she experienced, there would have to be collective movement of groups of people who were coordinating. And so that moves to another branch of game theory, where we explicitly model the opportunity for decision makers to collaborate with one another in groups, smaller, large groups. And what we see there is that if the system the incentives, the mechanisms are designed, well, we can actually achieve group decisions that approximate what would happen if we could tell everyone exactly what to do, even when we don't have to tell everyone exactly what to do. What do we mean by that? designing the system and the mechanisms means figuring out a way to allocate costs and benefits. So if we collaborate, that presumes that we have a way of sharing information presumes that we have some binding agreement that we're going to do what we say we're going to do, these kinds of models apply more readily to organizations, necessarily, then to individuals. And so the context where we're exploring this is with healthcare and public health organizations, thinking about their supply chain decisions. So if we work together to procure the supplies that we need, there are supply chain synergies, because we have a greater total demand, we can collaborate on transportation, we can share inventory management costs. But in order for us to collaborate, we have to have information systems that talk to one another, we have to decide when we pay for transportation, do I pay for 50%, and you pay for 50%? Or you pay for 60? I pay for 40? Was that decision based on. And so if those cost and benefit allocation mechanisms are designed in appropriate way, we can achieve those supply chain synergies that we would not be able to achieve otherwise, if individuals were acting just on their own according to their own objective functions. So we see both ends of the spectrum. When we model things with game theory, we see. Yes, the reality that decentralized decision makers can end up in an equilibrium state where none of them is as well off as they would be if they collaborated. But we also see what system design parameters are necessary to achieve that collaboration and move the system to that better equilibrium.

I was just gonna ask how specific those kinds of recommendations are and well, and how general are they right sort of other general things that you can say that about supply chains where you can induce better collaboration, or you can put into place the right kinds of mechanisms that would allow collaboration to work, where you can generalize these policy recommendations to a wide variety of situations like maybe food supply chains, as well as vaccines, supply chains, as well as, you know, humanitarian situations or there's really very specific deep situation.

Great question. We are working toward generalizable insights based on general models that would be translatable across industries. We are not specifically there yet, with respect to the cooperative game models that I described. For a number of reasons we're trying to incorporate the multiple objectives and the decisions over time to be able to make those models generalizable. What we have been able to see with respect to the public health systems that we've studied, is that certain nuances of those decisions depend very heavily on the context. It's a what, what is the form of the objective function for individual decision makers? What are the demographics, the geographic configuration of supply and demand points, and so forth. And so from that perspective, the models can be really useful in identifying areas where we need additional health care providers, or we need to recruit existing health care providers to be able to distribute vaccine, for instance, where we need to account for different demographics in terms of just the underlying healthcare infrastructure in a particular location. So at this stage, we have primarily focused on what specific recommendations can we make for the dataset that we are exploring? Then we're working on backing that out to generalizable models?

At the beginning, you mentioned I think, I think I remember mentioning, interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary work, can you tease out a little more information on the need for interdisciplinary activities and understand how those different facets work into the kind of modeling that you're doing?

Certainly, and to highlight that, I think I'll go to three models that are more closely related to food systems, some work that we have done. And I'll start by saying that the transdisciplinary perspective and having multiple kinds of expertise at the table is critical to making the model the right model, whether that's in the public health and humanitarian sphere, we're in the animal environmental health sphere. I see my role in these teams as somebody that can help the team visualize what the system is as a whole and how the different components of the system linked together and then find the mathematical linkages that we can use to model those connections. But I cannot know what the right for instance, disease transmission model looks like. For that I need an epidemiologist I cannot know for human decisions, how to represent values and beliefs and norms and policy choices. For that I need a sociologist and an economist. And so I see my role as bringing those pieces together and helping them talk to one another, not the people, right, which is another challenge of interdisciplinary work is, is helping the people learn to talk with one another and understand each other. But to make the pieces of the model talk to one another in a way that links everything together. So some specific examples. I've worked on a project to understand some of the interdependencies between the beef cattle industry in the transportation industry. The case study region that we use for that project was southwest Kansas, obviously, a major center for beef cattle operations for the country. And this collaboration involved partners in electrical and computer engineering, in computer science at the Beef Cattle Institute, and in psychology, in addition to myself, to try to understand these interdependencies to try to model the different components of that system and then try to understand some strategies for managing those interdependencies. So when we have infrastructure systems, like the food system and the transportation system that depend on one another mutually they're vulnerable to shocks to cascading shocks and cascading failures in any of those systems. And so one important priority for this project was to identify mitigation strategies. For these disruptions, and understand the potential impact of secure information sharing, let's say, via blockchain technology or something similar, the impact of that secure information sharing on the system outcomes, if there is a disruption in one of these infrastructure systems. And so being able to represent each of those granular pieces in a mathematical model requires those multiple expertise at the table. So the bottom line, that connection to where my work comes in, is really to understand how to allocate these costs and benefits of information sharing across the stakeholders, the cow calf operators, the stalkers, the feeders, the Packers, how do you allocate the costs and benefits of sharing information, let's say via a blockchain technology in a way that can encourage everybody to participate, and can help achieve system resilience if there was a shock in the system, because there's a blizzard, and the transportation is not available, if there's a shock in the system, because there's a suspected foot and mouth disease outbreak. You know, how does that cascade through the system? And what strategies can we put in place to mitigate those impacts?

Interesting, the blockchain technology is something that I had seen introduced to the food system. Oh, probably, in the last five years. There was a gentleman with Walmart that's now with the FDA that really pushed it hard and had a big voice in all of this. Do you see that as being and continuing to grow as a major connector for these systems over time?

I think that it has great potential. I am not personally an expert in blockchain and its specific strengths and weaknesses and opportunities. I defer to my electrical engineering colleagues for some of those specifics. But I do think that systems like it have the potential to overcome some of the challenges that we see with adoption of information sharing and traceability to the extent that it's able to ensure the security and the privacy that stakeholders have been concerned with. And I think it has some of that potential. Again, from my perspective, it comes down to how do you allocate the costs and benefits of that technology in a way that makes it attractive? If there's an upfront investment in deploying the technology across an operation, you know, a herd or a feedlot, or a packing facility? Who bears that upfront cost? And who reaps the benefits? Is there a benefit in routine operations in terms of a premium price for the product? Or is the benefit solely in these low probability high consequence disaster events, and changes the calculation in how you allocate the costs and benefits across stakeholders?

So with the idea of interdisciplinary and partnerships, you did a great job of explaining the criticality of that, is this something that carries forward with you in teaching is this notion of inner interdisciplinary, brought into the classroom?

Yes, and I'm working to increase that as well. So one class that I have really enjoyed developing and teaching is one around quantitative models in health. And so over the the series of times that I've offered this course, we've had students from the College of Veterinary Medicine from the College of Agriculture from palliative engineering, more importantly, had speakers from across different disciplines in on campus and from industries outside to try to, to come around this common topic of using quantitative models to advance human animal and environmental health. And I think it's a really beneficial experience for the students to see how, you know, the statistics or the optimization or the epidemiology or whatever it may be that they're coming to, from their own disciplinary perspective, also has linkages with things that other people are working on. And by bringing those pieces together collaboratively, they're able to tackle problems of growth. Human importance. And I think, you know, I've found even in my undergraduate courses, where the curriculum is much more specific and detailed, and there's certain amount of information about operations research that you must cover in this semester. The more examples that I can bring from multiple industries, from multiple perspectives about ways that these models are relevant, the more excited the students get. They want to know that what they're learning can make a difference in systems that are important to them. And when I was a student, I really was really excited about the tools in this industrial engineering toolbox. I was less excited about the examples that I saw, where those tools were being applied. And so my goal as an instructor is to demonstrate the breadth of systems where these tools really do have an application and have the potential to have an impact in the hopes that that conveys the message to the students that whatever their passion is, there's a way to use these quantitative tools to make a difference in that sphere.

That's great to hear that that's that that's the approach that you're taking. Because I think it's critically important to the students, that they start seeing that broad perspective of how these things interact with one another.

Well, it's the world that we live in, right. So regardless of whether a student is going to leave with a bachelor's degree and go out into industry and begin a traditional career in industrial engineering, where they're going to pursue their own passion and path or they're going to go to graduate school work on research. No matter which of those paths and any that I didn't name they choose, they're going to be operating across multiple disciplines, multiple cultures, and need to understand the role that they play and humbly accept the things that they don't know. And the ways that they need to rely on experts in other domains.

So absolutely critical. So very, very well said. One last bit of discussion here, I wouldn't when we were just starting. Before actually, we started to record here. We mentioned the fact that our most recent podcast was with Dr. Caterina Scoglio,. And you said that you had had the opportunity to do some work with her. Do you want to speak just a bit about some of that interaction? And what kind of research you you carried out with Dr. Scoglio?

Certainly, actually, the example that I gave with the beef cattle and transportation infrastructure systems is a collaboration with Dr. Scoglio. And so far, a very, very productive one drawing on her expertise in network systems. And the expertise of folks at the Beef Cattle Institute and colleague in psychology, Gary Brase, thinking about how people make decisions in these kinds of environments. And so it's been a very fruitful and interesting opportunity to think about the way that each of us brings those perspectives to a common problem. One where I think K State is really uniquely positioned to think about the challenges in that space.

Good, I find myself highly educated, or at least much more comfortable discussing these, these topics than I was before.

It's been interesting. Thank you.

 So. Jessica, do you have any questions for us or any closing comments?

You know, as I think about the role of supply chains and Global Food Systems, especially in light of the challenges that we all are facing right now, in the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic. We see supply chains on display, right? If I had said six months ago that I work on supply chains for human animal and environmental health, I get some nods. Right. But now, the supply chain is at the forefront of our minds. We don't necessarily notice the essential service that supply chains provide in delivering our most basic needs, whether it's food and medicine, or the tools that we need to do our work like a N95 respirators or spare parts for the tractor, right? The supply chain does all of those things. And we don't notice a supply chain until it stops working the way that we expect it to work. And so I think we have a really unique opportunity right now, when supply chain logistics is at the forefront of our minds to take advantage of that, I hope that one outcome of this very trying time is that we think about ways to design supply chains, so that they're more resilient. And I hope secondarily, but equally importantly, that another outcome is that students get really excited about the real impact that they can have, by studying and working on supply chains on things that impact people's lives every day.

Well, that's a great, great way to end the discussion. And I want to tell you, I really very much appreciate your time. And as Jon said, I learned a lot here. I've worked in areas that dealt with a supply chain for years, but you brought a new twist to understanding how some of these things work. So I want to thank you for that.

Thanks for the opportunity. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed talking with all of you and I hope that you stay safe and well. 

Likewise, you as well. Have a great day. 

Thanks. 

Bye bye everyone. 

Bye bye.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

This episode brings another timely discussion about the challenges caused by the current worldwide pandemic. Dr. Caterina Scoglio, Paslay chair professor in the Mike Wiegers Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Kansas State University, explains the use of modeling in predicting the spread of epidemics. Dr. Scoligo specializes in developing theoretical models for the spread of disease. By using a generalized epidemic model framework software for the simulation of spreading, she apples models developed by her team to human and animal infectious diseases. Scoglio has developed models for the movement of ebola in Africa and protein corona formation in nanoparticles, which has been validated by experimental data. She has also developed network architectures and protocols for secure communication in smart grids.

Transcript:

How the Analysis of Big Data Joined with Biological and Social Scientific Research Helps in Understanding a Pandemic Spread, with Dr. Caterina Scoglio, Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Now, in my experience, the predictions are very hard. So predictions for what I think are only valid in short term. So maybe it is possible to predict how many cases will be New York tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. But I cannot I think is very hard to say how many deaths will be in total during the epidemic right now. So I think those are whatever, making the comparison about the different scenarios that is the best use of the model.

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

I’m Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science. 

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a Food Scientist.

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to something to chew on. Managing life within a worldwide epidemic that necessitates both isolation and outreach provides an underlying platform to focus on what we can do in the moment to help. Today's guest, Dr. Caterina Scoglio, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Kansas State University, has been instrumental in developing big data based methods to understand how to help in the moment. An interdisciplinary approach to her work has provided Dr. ScaleIO with the ability through modeling systems to tackle questions of disease outbreak by developing new tools to provide a risk assessment before infection happens and guidance in implementing preventative measures. Dr. Scoglio’s research focuses on developing network based technology and tools in several fields. She conducts research in network theory problems and develop solutions to real world problems in the fields of computer networks and infectious diseases modeling. She has developed theoretical models, and has applied models and tools developed by her team to human and animal infectious diseases. today's podcast is again being recorded through zoom. Jon, Scott Courtney, our guest, Dr. Caterina Scoglio, and I are all practicing social distancing. As we converse through the phone on our computer connections, the current challenges with COVID-19 in the US and around the world are on the upswing, and we're facing ordeals that many of us never considered possible here. However, there are those that have considered this possibility and focus a good portion of their life's work on just this type of situation. Here in Manhattan, Kansas, the National bio and agro defense facility is nearing completion. This facility will focus on protecting the national food system against threats of potential impact of serious animal diseases. Additionally, K State is home to the Biosecurity Research Institute where comprehensive infectious disease research and teaching on threats to plant animal and human health is carried out. Research in the fundamental science of infectious outbreaks is critical but understanding the social science side of how people manage these situations, and the way in which these activities promote the spread of infection is equally critical. K State does have the ability to marry the social aspects with big data analysis and identify potential for the spread of these diseases. Today, I would like to welcome Dr. Caterina Scoglio, to the podcast. Catarina, your training is in electronic engineering, which on the face of it to me seems a long way from research carried out and Biosecurity Research Institute or other science based activities. 

Yes, that is true. That is true. As a matter of fact, many people are surprised by my research topic. There is a reason for that. My work research work when I joined K State in 2005, was on computer networks. And one of the biggest challenges in computer networks was in is still malware propagation. So the fact that there are some viruses that can spread and knock down all our computers. And so I started working and studying that problem. And I understood that the methods that were used in epidemiology were also used for studying computer networks. And so from that, and understanding that K State had a strong emphasis on infectious diseases, I decided in 2007, to start working on the spreading of viruses, among people and animals.

Wow, that's very interesting. As we get started in the discussion and get into more detail on this, I think that there are going to be a lot of questions that all three of us have for you. Could we step back just a little bit and maybe get a little background on you who you are, what your history is, what brought you to, to the kind of work that you're enjoying doing?

Yes. So I was born in Italy. And I studied and worked my first period of my life in Italy in a National Research Center. And in 2000, my husband had the opportunity of moving to us because he was working for IBM, Italy. And he got the job from IBM, US. So we moved to Atlanta. And at that time, my research work was on computer networks. And so I worked for five years at Georgia Tech, Georgia Institute of Technology. After those five years, I applied to many places. And I got the five interviews among those, I like K State the best, and I moved to Manhattan, Kansas. 

Wonderful.

So in your work, you're using the same ideas that you've applied to malware propagation that you're applying to biological virus propagation. Is that correct?

So is just the spreading process. Obviously, the details are completely different. As a matter of fact, I'm not an epidemiologist, I'm not a biologist, and my work is always multidisciplinary. So I need the guidance of biologists, virologists, people that are experts on the specific pathogen. But then the modeling approach has one kind of unique unifying theme that is related to how to simulate stochastic processes of spreading.

So how would then say any immunologist or of our virologist, or an epidemiologist? How would they take the results that you have and add their own particular value? To them? I assume that they're most useful in the context of the larger field of science?

Yes. So we receive the input in the modeling phase, the initial phase is the modeling, how do we model this process? What can we use as the infection rate, the number the how aggressive is this disease? How quickly can people recover? So we get from them a lot of preliminary informations, then we do our simulations. And then we provide them with results normally in different scenarios. So if we do these, for example, then this will happen.

So Catarina could use say whether these models are for application to be used, sort of to deliver information to policymakers to help in their decision making, are you developing new models and doing more theoretical work.

So we are doing work in both directions, for example, we are trying to improve all the time, the models, there are some assumptions for the models that are not supported by empirical evidence. So we try to modify the model in order to be following that empirical evidence. On the other side, we also try the models in different scenarios. So we can tell, for example, what is useful, what is not what to do, for example, and this is something that has been discussed a lot what to reduce our knot, which is the reproductive ratio to a number less than one that will guarantee that an epidemic will die out.

So some of the modeling work that you're doing, it doesn't just input the R naught or zero number, but actually helps determine that?

So, for example, a very recent work we have done for a COVID-19 in in China, because we had the data and we were trying to couple the policies done at a given point in China by the Chinese government, with Viega with the data that we were seeing and saying that there are different strategies that can replicate, replicate the behavior, and for example, If you just do social distancing, but you don't use the masks, for example, you reduce the number of cases, but maybe you don't go to or not less than one.

Or if you include connect, you've got up to four days of asymptomatic infectivity. That changes as well.

Exactly the type of different scenarios. 

So there’s been if you for the people who sort of follow someone who's been out there and look at some models, right, there are these things. We're talking about this separately, right? There's compartmental models, right? Where we've got the susceptible and the infectious and the recovered people, and you treat them as all different groups, right? And then you look at the transmission rate between them. Right? So is this you doing them additional modeling to then determine the figures that go into that? Or is this all sort of one big package, you know, you're working within a model to figure out what happens? And then you're including more variables or more factors, right, besides just sort of some simple assumption about, you know, a standard transmission rate from one area to another?

Yes, yes. So try to include the more and more information, the more data we can in the model more accurate model is going to be. And one specific viewpoint of our modeling is kind of based on understanding the contact network impact on spreading. And the concept is simple, is that in a spreading scenario, not every person has the same role. It depends on the connections, the movement of each person. So if you think about a network of nodes, and links, there are people that have a lot of links. So those are the so called the Super spreads. And it's very important to understand the role and what happens with their, their role in the epidemic. So vaccinating them, or at least educating them is extremely important.

Cool. And so when you mentioned node sort of this is going back to where you came from, right? That this doesn't work analysis type of thing, where you treat each person as a, as a node with different connections between them, right, and human connections, are I take it sort of individual contact of some sort or proximity. Spreading. 

Yes, exactly. 

Interesting. 

And so what kind of other factors are in there that you get from data, you know, the social sciences in terms of how people actually interact and behave sort of how varied are these nodes you were looking in? I mean, I'm curious, just in general, what kinds of things you have to say here, but you were just looking from data in China, you were saying and I'm curious about sort of, you know, what, what other factors you bring in there in terms of in terms of these networks, right, and sort of how to model them and sort of how complex it and how that like translates to other areas?

Yes, exactly. So I think one important experience we had a few years ago was an NSF project. We received, we were awarded in order to study the shape of these networks in rural regions. And so we went to test the and survey people in Clay Center and Channel, so two towns in Kansas. And we had the interesting results, say that is called Magneto. Era regions are very different from the contact nets of urban areas of states. And we got a very interesting result due to that.

Interesting.

 Before COVID-19 came crashing through the door, what kind of were you looking at other specific diseases or other different pathogens?

Yeah, so we will get influenza because was the time when we had the h1n1 outbreak that at that time was a big deal. Now we see that it's nothing compared with this one. Yes, but it was an important thing. So we went there, and we asked them about their contact or their movement, their willingness to follow the directions of radio, TV and governmental agencies. And the end, we got interesting results that I can share with you if you are interested. Yes, so what we saw that, obviously, rural regions, the contacts are much less so people have fewer contacts, but there are very strong ties among people. And what we saw is that 49% of the respondents said that they would still visit at least one or two households outside their home, even there, even if there was a serious effect. Make in the net that we told them to remain at home? I think this is still valid.

Absolutely, you can see that happening. This question may be something that you've already discussed. But there were two models in papers that I was reading through. There are two models, one of them is SIS, and one of them is FAIS. Can you explain a little bit about what those two are? And how they differ from one another? How one may be more appropriate in one situation? And another?

Yes, yes. This is a very interesting question. So one topic that was at the center of the attention a few years ago was how to model the behavior of response of people, because the model the classic models, for example, SIS, or SIR, do not include anything of that. So people become susceptible then become infectious. And at the end, if they receive immunity, they are recovered. So they are outside of the game. But in the case of some for example, sexually transmitted diseases, they recover and they are again susceptible. So that is the difference between si s or SI are at the end, if you are immune or not. However, they don't consider any anything about the response of people. And for this reason, what we did was to include another compartment, which was the compartment of the susceptible but alert person. So a person is still susceptible, but takes some preventive measures to reduce the infectious the risk of becoming infected. And so it is more than we saw how the epidemic threshold moves, somehow given a contact network. And so that is a way to quantify the benefit of alertness.

Where I've seen more and more posts, just in the last few days of people lifting or organizations listing things that you might expect susceptible, but alert individuals to do and specifically saying don't do these things, even if it is your family, don't go visit them. They're no different than anyone else, etc, etc, etc. So I think it's really the first time I've seen this since we started worrying about it so much.

Yeah, so this is a way to model that behavior.

So I don't want to have us dig down too much into the different models. But I find all this kind of stuff. Fascinating. And I'm curious sort of. So you introduce this other compartment. And that's one way of sort of thinking about how to make models more realistic, right? Sort of not all susceptible people are the same, right? There's a difference. And now, but this model, I take it sort of from the two compartment model, right? So it's got the individuals, does it treat all the individuals in the compartments the same? Or do you do modeling different kinds of alertness or alertness, the spatial to like variations and alertness across regions? Or time? Or could you say more about this?

Yes, so our models are network models. So they all the nodes that are susceptible, they are not in the same condition, their risk to become infected, that depends on their position in the network. So our model is an individual based model. Some other the most classic models consider an aggregate of homogeneous susceptible people then homogeneously distributed, in fact, that and so on. So one characteristic of our network of our approach is that is individual base. So each node is in a different position, because of its the role played in the net.

Interesting, too. So and this also indicates one of the reasons somebody like you is involved in doing this modeling, right? Because that is much more complex analysis, right? Because you're treating each person as an individual. And, and you have many, many, many connections, sort of, you know, between the model, whereas the, it's much simpler to do much simple models, right? I can do some back of the envelope kind of calculations looking at information I've got, but that's nothing. And then, you know, an epidemiologist might be able to, you know, do some basic stuff. And then their computational epidemiologists who sort of do more work, could you say, so, and then you've got the more and more complex model gets, the more you really have to be thinking about how you're doing the computing work. So I wonder if you could say something about the range of that complexity and the way the different kinds of ways from simple to complex, you can think about modeling the real world question, you know, that we're dealing with now with COVID. And like, what that whole range looks like.

And I think that includes the jump between data and big data and walking into that realm of how you handle big data.

Right, exactly. So, the more this there is all these range of increasing complexity model starting from the homogeneous differential equations based models, where you have three differential equations system with an equation, and you can easily medically solve them up to what are called agent based simulations. So the agent based simulations are very complexes, very expensive, where you simulate with an agent, which is a simple piece of code each individual. So you need to input the schedule of each individual. And then in that type of teammate simulations, you can have all the details about the community. And you can input in those models, the behavior that you want to represent the to the detail of the single individual's obviously, these are huge simulations and require big computers, high performance computers in order to be to be run. But it's also true that these two complex models require also a lot of data. In order to be meaningful, you need to know really what people are going to do. And so sometimes we do not have that level of data, the more the big data source is available, the more those agent based simulations can be realized.

In what form do you get your data, for example, from China?

Oh, so we got that from the publicly available data. That is they were I think text files published daily. For each location, I believe the something very interesting at this point will be for those people who can obtain the movement tracing of people. So if we have all the data, either through cell phones, or either through other sources, stapler, this kind of internet data of how people move, that will be very, very useful and very interesting.

Now, so one of the projects that you worked on in the past was on Ebola and the movement of that outbreak. Can you talk a little bit about that research?

Yes, we were in that research. Also, there, we were supported by NSF to establish the efficiency and the efficacy of contact tracing, because at the beginning of an epidemic, contact tracing is very effective. So you can really try to detect a person, and if it is effect that isolate immediately and trace, or people that were in contact with that person. And so we were analyzing the conditions of for how fast we need the to detect, and in fact, that person, and how fast we need to follow up with a contact tracing. And the result was that the earlier you do all these steps, the better it is. So at the end, I think and it's true also for unfortunately, we haven't done a good job a for COVID-19. But early mitigation is the most effective policy, because you can see I think, our cylinder control, you can kind of follow be earlier than the epidemic not try to follow up. I think one of these, in these meetings, one of the White House doctors were saying we are kind of trying to follow up with the disease, we should anticipate we should be earlier than then following up.

So right now with COVID-19, we're in a situation where testing is much more limited than what epidemiologists want. Certainly, it's been pretty hard to do the contact tracing and because information comes back and not enough time sometimes and and at this point, we're pretty far spread out. Right, are there lessons we can draw from some of the modeling about sort of where somebody might be trying to still do that. So there are some areas where you're way beyond contact tracing, right, sort of just so endemic in the community that seems that there's probably no point, you know, but sort of at the edge of some outbreaks, you might be able to still stop and and catch it and stop it in that community. Are there lessons from modeling to sort of say where predict here's where you should put your contract tracing efforts? And then here's where you should be doing sort of other mitigation type efforts?

Yes, I think this is a very good point. So a contact tracing is going to be valid where the epidemic is still not in the community in a broad way. So some of the rural communities, I think, are in this condition, not only because they are the beginning of the epidemic, but also because the contact nature is kind of structured. So you have a few contacts, or at least many, much less contacting.

Yeah, right, the public transit in a big city or something like that, right?

Exactly the public transportation, but you have also, so you have a few of these contacts, you have some locations that are very critical, because many communities will have just a few location where they go for shopping or for the pharmacy, where people can get infected, but also they can both tested and educate. And maybe masks can be distributed. So those are, I think, a feasible strategies that if there are resources could be implemented effectively. And they should be also giving giving results.

Yeah, really interesting. Truly, I hate to ask this, but is there any indication that this is going to be happening with COVID-19? 

In many places, politician, I think our governor has been very active. So I think if she can get some of those tests or masks, maybe that could be a good, a good news, because maybe not a lot of those tests will be enough to do a good job in some rural communities.

One of the studies that I also noted you working on there was a mention of development of models of protein, Corona formation, nanoparticles. What's that one about?

So that was a project we did a few years ago when Jim revere started a very interesting and exciting Institute for computational medicine. And so that was a completely different topic about is the following when you use nanoparticles, for example, to deliver some medicine or something in the body of a person, while those nanoparticles that you can imagine like being some spheres go through the blood, some proteins will attach on top of them, making what is called a Corona. So in this case, a corona of a protein around a nanoparticle. And then ending in which proportion different type of proteins will attach on top of the nanoparticles was our research topic.

I think, obviously, the corona word caught my attention as I was reading through that. So different finishes in the modeling that you're working on interest, the same.

You are right, because now we call the Coronavirus is because you have an internal part, which is done by RNA, I believe. And then you have all these proteins on top of that round of the sphere to do the corona. So it's similar.

So one of the things that's interesting about this, was this a network analysis tool for that?

No, it was no, it was just based on these different proportion of proteins that were attaching on top of was, if I can tell is a seal the study of a dynamic process, because the amount of protein change with time and you need to study how that happened. But it was not a network based model.

Interesting. We've also model cattle movement, is that right? Yes. Could you say something about that?

Yes, yes, because another topic of our research is for cattle diseases. And so we have been using similar models for for cattle and for cattle in southwest Kansas, we have been also developing synthetic data for cattle movement, because currently, there is no not a mandatory requirement for the industry, the cattle industry to provide the movement of their cattle that will be very useful in the case of an epidemic because obviously, you want to know where infected animals go and how to understand which farms are infected from those movements. And so what we did was to create a base on some data we had some Synthetic movement of cattle that people can use freely because they are synthetic. They are not the true cattle movement, but they are just simulated.

That's interesting. The podcast that we most recently published was with Dr. Megan Niederwerder, in the veterinary medicine school. I don't know if you're familiar with her at all, one of the things that she talked quite a bit about was the movement of contaminated feed, and places that it goes and how difficult it is to manage understanding the feed coming into the country or where those pigs are where the feed is worldwide. And it sounds to me like what you were talking about just now would fit right into that kind of a study in figuring out how you manage something like that. Yes, that is similar, or any of the, you know, just stepping back to the Ebola work that you had done. Are those modeling systems in use today? Are those things being used in any part of the world looking at things that are happening? Are they on the shelf now to be pulled off when the sign of something maybe starting.

A similar model, and we participated to that was used last year when the Democratic Republic of Congo had a an Ebola outbreak that was risking to be kinda to thread into Uganda. Since we had the collaborators in Uganda, we visited Uganda, we did some work there with our model. And our model was used by the health officials in Uganda to understand that the risk of each of their counties of getting Ebola, so four kinds of risk assessment, and we published the paper, we had also a good intuition a good result on which city county was going to be the most at risk, because there a few cases appeared, actually. And we published that result before those cases appeared. 

So, if you were to be working on what's happening here today, how would you approach that question? So we've got an outbreak here, and I somebody comes to Katherine and says, Could you please help us modeling? What's going on here? How would you approach that problem?

Yes, if using my expertise, the first thing I will do is to try to create a base on data, the contact network of the community. And so understanding how people move and how they get income, and then from that, I will start building the network base models, considering which compartments I need to include. So for this case, I would definitely include the susceptible, but expose the because we have the expose the compartment where you don't show signs, and then I would include the two types of infectious people infectious, symptomatic, and infectious as symptomatic. And so any exposed people can transition to one of these two, and then I will let them transition into either recovered or hospitalized, and from hospitalized either recovered or that and with this model, I will try to do simulations, trying to change something that could for example, represent social distancing, and how to do that by changing the network. So normally, I have 15 contacts, my graduate students, but now I don't. So I have now only two contacts, my daughter and my husband. And so adapting the contact network can give us a different results. And that is one way but I can also reduce the infectious rate. Because I put mask, I wash my hands. So my beater, the probability of becoming infected is a smaller number. So things like that.

One of the things that we haven't quite said, but you mentioned in the beginning talking about using these models for decision making, I think that's people, when we look at sort of models and predictions that come out a model that's very different views, maybe about how out in the public, there are different views about sort of what these things mean. And so I think sometimes when people hear predictions from model, they think that this is, you know, well it's a prediction about what's going to happen. And they are they're their models that make predictions, but you just raised there one of the most important things, I think, come out of models, and this is at least the way I think about it so curious about what you say, right, which is that they're to help us make decisions, right? And in particular, for something like this. Like what kinds of things can we do that are going to make the most difference? And so what you learn from a model, that what you would learn from something like this would be All right, what should we be putting our energies into? Right? Sort of, you know, how much is social distancing going to make a difference? And how much is washing our hands gonna make a difference and let people get the infections like some people were talking about for COVID-19 at one point, like, let people get infected, you know, and raise up herd immunity, but then treat them better or you know, whatever. But then you look at sort of, you look at all the different options, and then you look to sort of see, well, how many people are going to be in the hospitalized bin? If we did that? And oh, well, that won't work, right? Because we don't have enough beds or something. And so then you look at different kinds of entry points for interventions. So I mean, that's at least the way I think about the usefulness of models. Is that how you think about what the modeling that you do should be used for there are other aspects to it, too?

I agree under percent is very models have a big responsibility there was a few days ago, and an article in The New York Times. So I think we have these two possibilities for using model. One is for forecasts, and one is for decision making, looking at different scenarios, and deciding the mitigation strategy. Now, in my experience, the predictions are very hard. So predictions for what I think are only valid in short term. So maybe it is possible to predict how many cases will be New York tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. But I cannot I think is very hard to say how many deaths will be in total, during the epidemic right now. So I think those are whatever, making the comparison about the different scenarios, that is the best use of the model. 

As you said, it's a hard thing, right? Because it's sort of I mean, we need to forecast to this is this one of these things that I find complicated and interesting is that interventions take time and effort and money, and they have other effects, obviously, right? So we're looking at effects on the economy of the blocking down social distancing. And so you have to, you have to look at the forecasts from different different scenarios and take them seriously, right, because how many deaths might we prevent? If we did this? How many things might we prevent if we did something different? So you have to take pieces of the forecasting seriously of sort of but then as you say, the forecast overall is a different thing. Right? So because the forecast overall is so highly dependent on all these other variables, and through all the different actions that we take, and so many other things that we can predict, right, that it becomes hard, but we do still use the forecasting part in small pieces.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. As a comparison, especially in a competitive way.

Fascinating and absolutely timely to what we've, what we're looking at today. It's interesting to get a better understanding of how those models are developed. And just listening to what's on the news every every night, understanding what those workers are doing and putting those models together and understanding a little bit more about what their limitations are as well. Well, this has been a great discussion. Caterina, I very much appreciate your time and willingness to come on for a chat. Hopefully, we can do a follow up one of these days, hopefully, so.

Thank you. I mean, for making what could have been an arcane topic. very understandable and very interesting.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Thanks so much for talking with us.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

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The consumption of seasonal, locally produced food sustains nutritional value, reduces the carbon footprint, and supports the growth of local economies. In many ways we have lost our connection to food — including understanding where our food comes from, how it is produced, the comradery developed in sharing food, and why it is important to eat seasonally and with intention. 

In this episode, we talk with Nat and Alison Bjerke-Harvey, co-owners of Piccalilli Farm in Geary County outside of Manhattan, KS. With formal training in history and environmental biology, Nat and Alison’s interest and passion for food has taken them beyond those areas of study headlong into the food system. From baking to cheese making, they have now landed squarely in the arena of sustainable farming and community building.

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This episode of Something to Chew On brings us a timely discussion, the current world-wide Coronavirus challenges the topics discussed with Dr. Megan Neiderwerder are not only timely, but instructional on helping us to understand what a virus is and how they impact the world around us. Megan’s teachings cover viral diseases in swine, equine, avian, bovine and canine species. Dr. Megan Niederwerder, Assistant Professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine here at K-State research investigates control strategies for endemic and foreign animal diseases of swine.

Transcript:

Welcome to the New Normal - What are Viruses and How do they Impact the Animal and Human World with Dr. Megan Niederwerder, Assistant Professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine here at K-State

Most people have been exposed to a Coronavirus. Of course, it's coronaviruses in general are probably the second leading cause of colds in humans, but it's a different Coronavirus. It's different than the one that's currently circulating and so we don't have that underlying immunity to the one that causes the common cold.

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

I’m Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science. 

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a Food Scientist.

 Hello, everybody and welcome back to Something to Chew On. There are times when we take stock of our lives, try to better understand where we fit in the natural world, and to find ways where nature manages to provide us with some answers. today's podcast brings us a timely discussion with Dr. Megan Niederwerder, Assistant Professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine here at Kansas State University, with the current worldwide Coronavirus challenges. The topics discussed with Dr. Megan Niederwerder is not only timely, but instructional on helping us to understand what a virus is, and how they impact the world around us. Megan's teachings cover viral diseases in swine, equine, avian, bovine and canine species. Her research investigates control strategies for endemic and foreign animal diseases of swine. She is internationally recognized for her expertise in two primary areas of research, including the role of the gut microbiome on outcomes following viral respiratory infections, and the risk and mitigation of foreign animal disease introduction and transmission through feed and feed ingredients. today's podcast is being recorded in a manner that I certainly never anticipated. Jon, Scott, Megan and I are all in different locations. Courtney is recording via zoom at her home due to the spread of the Coronavirus. Our new normal is to stay connected in an unconnected environment. We've talked frequently about recording podcasts with someone that was off site. But I always figured that Jon and Scott would be in the same room with me chatting with someone else remotely. The time that we're in today is quite different, and the Coronavirus spreads and keep social distancing as part of the new normal. We are each in our own space and hoping for science to help bring a return to a healthy world. With that, I would like to welcome all and specifically welcome Megan to the podcast. The podcast is in this series is focused on the food system at Kansas State University. And certainly animals are a critical part of that system. This is actually the 20th recording in this series. And I was surprised to look back at the list and realize that this is the first podcast that we've done on animal related research between the College of Veterinary Medicine, the College of Agriculture, and the Department of Animal Science and Grain Science and Industry. There's a substantial amount of work being done in this area, whether it's through animal health, or food and feed and just a whole whole bunch of other areas that we touch on in the area of animal health. So, Megan, I've got a ton of questions for you as we go through this. I doubt that we'll get to all of them. But what I'd like to start off with is getting to know a bit about you and understanding how you got interested in this area. And then we can see where the discussion takes us. So Megan, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Sure. Well, thanks to everyone for the opportunity and invitation to speak with you and thank you for your work on the global food systems. I think it's really important and like he said, important to talk about animal health and animal diseases as part of the efforts for global food systems. So my name is Megan Neiderwerter and I am a veterinarian. I actually went to Kansas State or veterinary school I've been a veterinarian for about 10 years now. And as part of my veterinary practice, I worked with dogs and cat zoo animals as well as pigs. And when I decided to come back and pursue a career in academic research, it was really based on my desire to provide information or to research questions with regards to population health and livestock. And I've always had an interest in infectious diseases and the ability to ask questions. How do things work? How can we improve animal health? And the opportunities that research affords in an academic setting is to really understand how we can improve animal health at a population level. And even in my case, it's my research is focused on swine health. How do we improve the health of pigs around the world? 

How long have you been on the faculty? 

I've been on faculty now for almost five years at the College of Veterinary Medicine in the diagnostic medicine pathobiology department.

Great. Can you tell us a little bit about what your research is on swine health?

Sure. So there's I have really two main areas of research and both, again, focused on viral diseases and swine. One of the areas that I focus my research on is looking at the utilization of the gut microbiome to improve pig health in the face of respiratory disease. So when we think about pigs after they are weaned pigs are typically weaned about three weeks of age from their mothers. And they have a high incidence and high susceptibility to respiratory disease at that time. So we typically call that poor sign respiratory disease complex, because these respiratory diseases often have a viral component, a bacterial component, and often are due to environmental stressors as well. And so some of the respiratory diseases that are currently challenging pigs throughout the world, have been around for many decades. And so that means, you know, we're at a place where we want to look at alternative approaches for how do we improve the health of these pigs in the face of respiratory disease with alternative strategies. And so the focus of my work has been how do we utilize the DEP microbes, and the beneficial bacteria in the gut, to actually improve or enhance animal health in the face of the respiratory challenge environment. So, again, focused on the main virus that I have done is Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Disease syndrome. It's really considered the most costly disease of swine production in the United States currently. And my work is really focused again on those gut microbes, and how do we improve disease. And the second area of research that I have is looking at foreign animal diseases, and the risk of foreign animal disease entry into the United States through feed and feed ingredients. And so that work has been focused on the fact that we import millions of feed ingredients, millions of kilograms of feed ingredients from all over the world that then are used to feed and provide nutrition for our pigs in the US. And so with the, with the introduction of porcine epidemic, diarrhea virus, we started to recognize that feed ingredients may be a potential route for transboundary, animal disease bred. And so my research is really focused on understanding the risk of other foreign animal diseases, such as African swine fever virus, and V.

Cool. I was interested. So I was going to ask just about the first set of things. So how is it that the gut microbiome for pigs actually affects their health? Does it prevent them from getting things? Are you talking about recovery time? Like, what's the relationship there? And it's curious, because that's not something we totally normally think of. Right? So this is a gut and you're talking about respiratory disease, right?

Yes, yes. It's not an inherent thought, to think about our diet, and the microbes in our gut affecting our health outside of the debt. It's more inherent to think about how those beneficial microbes may help resolve diarrheal disease. But in fact, they really play a role in systemic immunity throughout the whole body. And so what we think happens is that the gut is that really the largest immune organ in our bodies. And so the way that those gut microbes then communicate with the mucosal immune system in the lining of the gut, impacts how the immunity respond to the immune cells respond to pathogens and other areas of the body such as the lungs. So when we think about some of those beneficial microbes, not only stimulate the immune system, but they also communicate with the immune system in different areas of the body, through metabolic products of those microbes. And so we think there's a couple of different ways Oftentimes these, the exact mechanism by which these gut microbes impact disease outside of the gut, is not fully elucidated. But what we see is that pigs respond better to a respiratory challenge. So let's say they have fewer lung lesions, are they gain weight normally, or they replicate the virus to lower levels. So it almost creates a more resilient or resistant pig when they are exposed to these pathogens.

That's fascinating. I'm fortunate to be blissfully ignorant on most of this area, is that confined is that that phenomenon confined to monogastric? Or does it extrapolate to ruminants?

Well, we could assume that it extrapolates to ruminants, but they're really, this is really a new area of research. So a lot of the research that's been done has been done in my phone of respiratory disease. There's a great study with pneumococcal pneumonia, and a few other respiratory disease pathogens, where they will see that the presence of endogenous microbes or fecal microbial transplantation, or maybe those mice that did not receive antimicrobials, and have more diverse microbes actually respond in a better or more robust way when they're infected with respiratory pathogens. And so a lot of this research is fairly new. But you know, when people ask about what impacts the microbiome or what the microbiome impacts outside of the gut, it's sort of easy to go well, probably most things, we're just learning, and we're just at the cusp of learning exactly what those are.

Thanks. Yeah. Thank you new world of science here. And for all that, right. Are there particular strains, you said something about the diversity of the gut microbiome is important? Or what kinds of things in particular are you looking at? Right? So there are particular microbes? You're investigating? Are you your own work? Are you looking at the diversity? Tell us a little bit more about like, what's what's going on there?

Sure. Yeah. So that one of the most interesting things about some of these respiratory diseases in mice models, but also in pigs, is that a fairly common and consistent finding is that the more diverse the microbes are in the gut, the better the animal responds to respiratory disease challenge. So and that's been shown and some of the work that I've done with pig both, let's say, if the microbiome is more diverse prior to challenge, almost like there could be a prophylactic or preventative measure with regards to the microbiome on subsequent challenge, which is somewhat exciting, because it gives you the idea that microbiome modulation may be able to prevent or at least put a pig in a better place to respond to disease prophylacticly, but some of the microbes that we found that specifically seem to be beneficial, we found that a non pathogenic E coli seems to be beneficial in the pig gut, we found that increased in Ruminococcus seems to be beneficial when it's detected in the gut, and then also fecal microbial transplantation. So we've used fecal microbial transplants from older aged fowl that had high histories of health and, and great litter characteristics, took the feces from that those cells transplanted into younger pigs, and actually showed that fecal microbial transplant can provide benefits with regards to respiratory disease, when given prior to challenge.

Wow, that's, fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. And in the things that we're looking at, I hesitate even making this jump at this point in time. But the things that we're looking at going on in the world today with with Coronavirus and these viruses that are in humans, what are the chances that the kinds of things you're looking at now in swine and in animals is the same as what you're going to be seeing in humans is in helping to manage some of these things?

Yeah, I think some of the similar parallels that we've seen is when we talk about foreign animal disease such as porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, when that was introduced into the US swine herd in 2013, within eight weeks of its first identification in a pig herd, it had been detected in almost all of the major swine producing states. And the reason that is is because we have approximately 1 million pigs on the road every day being transported between different farms and everything is fast paced, pigs are moving, we see this you know, even within the country, let alone global distribution. Reach See that, you know, the movement of people and animals happens very quickly. And so we've seen that with the Coronavirus as well, and that the global movement of people makes it difficult to contain these viruses once they're introduced. The other sort of interesting parallels when we talk about African swine fever virus. The USDA released, I think, two years two weeks ago, that if African swine fever virus is introduced into the United States, which, of course, we're doing everything to prevent that, there will be a 72 hour standstill where no pigs will be moved. And so again, if you think about that, in parallel to what we're all currently doing, which is trying to stay in our homes and not be exposed to other humans, there are some similarities. And that just goes back to how these infectious diseases can be spread because of how rapidly humans and animals are moving throughout the world.

So even in cases, almost as though humans are a secondary vector, moving the pigs around 

Well, so pig production in the US is fairly specialized. So when you think about the different age groups of pigs, there are certain farms that specialize in pregnant fouls or guilt, and farrowing. So that they have young piglets that they nursed. And then those piglets may be moved to a nursery facility where they live for several weeks prior to going to a grow finish facility. And then those pigs baby moved once they're ready to go to market. And so this has increased the efficiency by which we can produce pork in the US because of these specialized operations. But it also means that pigs are frequently moved, you know, during production? 

Sure, do you have? Do you have an opinion on that trade off, right, between the efficiency and the basically the security of the food system there to an outside pathogen to a foreign pathogen?

Yeah, I think that you know, is the movement of pigs can sort of unveil the vulnerability of a pathogen being moved, but I think the the focus of course, one is prevention of any pathogen entering the second is rapid identification of pathogens, if they do become introduced, so that if a pathogen is introduced, there are protocols and procedures in place to stop pig movement. So that again, the pathogen can be contained, and eradicated as quickly as possible. So, you know, I think as these diseases are introduced, similarly, when I talk about P dv, it changes people's mindset, and again, can help us learn about the best way to prevent the spread of any virus or bacteria. If it's introduced. 

we sort of moved off in one direction and you'd started to talk a bit about I think it was feed materials or feed ingredients. Yeah, animals as a source. What, what ingredients are the are we particularly concerned with?

Sure. So some of the research that we've done has looked at what's the stability of foreign animal diseases in feed and feed ingredients? Can viruses be transmitted through the natural consumption of plant based feed? And then how do we mitigate the risk of those viruses in feed? And so the first part of this research was really to understand if we inoculate feed ingredients, and subject those feed ingredients to temperature and humidity conditions that stimulate transoceanic shipment? Because is what we're concerned about, if feed ingredients are being imported, from China, or from other areas of the world that have different diseases or foreign animal diseases, could the virus survive? And would it be stable. And so we've looked at various ingredients such as soybean, organic soybean meal, conventional soybean meal, pork, sausage casings, and pet foods. And what we found is that it looks like soybean meal supports the stability of viruses such as African swine fever virus, classical swine fever virus and the rabies virus. And so it looks like there are certain ingredients and I think it has to do with the protein content of these feed ingredients, or the moisture content. But there are certain characteristics of individual feed ingredients that promote stability of these viruses. And of course, those are what were concerning high risk ingredients for import. 

That's truly something that a lot of people wouldn't even think of, you know, when we think classically of viruses, we think that they need some kind of some kind of host to survive unless they're unless they're very, very dried down. low water activity. And yes, this really opens the window on something that needs to get to be figured out at least approaches to controlling it. 

Yeah, and I think that goes back to understanding sort of the global distribution of many commodities. And that includes feed ingredients for our livestock here in the US. So certain feed ingredients that we put into the feed, some of which we do not manufacture in the US, we can only get from China. But there are other feed ingredients that we could locally sourced, that, of course, would reduce the risk with regards to introduction of viruses onto the farm. Right.

Interesting to the comment of only being able to source materials internationally is very true. And in human food consumption, as well. I recall some instances in the past where there were challenges in buying from certain areas, and we realized in the, in the food industry overall, that some of those were the only places you could buy those particular ingredients. And just the idea that those viruses can, can survive on some of these things. Is, is a little scary. And it's as John said, it's going to be something that we really need to better understand the how and why and how to control.

Yeah, I think we've operated with a lot of assumptions that were untested. And that the time was, I guess, the time now has come to really test those and get solutions.

Can we can we take this back probably as much for our listeners as anything to the to the basics of, quote A virus is Can you can you talk a little bit about what a virus is, and what makes it what makes it so special? What makes it different from other organisms in the characteristics that it imparts here?

Sure. So, a virus, one of the biggest differentials from other organisms that have virus recording, is that to replicate a virus requires a host cell. And so when we talk about replication of virus, let's say in a pig, for a pig virus, it requires the pig to actually replicate the virus particles so that there is more virus. There's a good, there's a, there's a important point there when we talk about contamination, because the virus is not replicating when there's no host cells. But if it's a highly stable virus, that's when we can see the virus essentially being maintained as infectious. There's a couple of different characteristics about viruses that I think are important to always think about. One is that viruses can either be made of the genetic material can be either RNA or DNA. And it can be single stranded or double stranded. And then another characteristic of viruses that we typically talk about is it viruses can either be envelope, or have a lipid membrane, or they can be non envelope. And so just general characteristics of viruses. If we talk about a non enveloped viruses, virus is typically much more stable in the environment. It's less sensitive to disinfectants. And then when we talk about an envelope virus, typically those viruses are more sensitive to disinfectants and less stable in the environment. And the other factor that we think about is when we talk about DNA versus RNA viruses, RNA viruses typically have higher mutation rates, because they have less proofreading when they replicate themselves. And so when we talk about RNA viruses, such as influenza, and of course, we know how much influenza changes every year. This is one of the reasons we have to get a new vaccine each flu season. When we compare that to, let's say, a DNA virus, DNA viruses are typically much more stable, less mutations. So there are certain things about different viruses. One of the characteristics of African swine fever virus is that it is a very large virus. So some viruses are, you know, maybe 10,000 faces, you know, we talk about African swine fever virus, it's much larger, much more complex. And when it has much more complexity with regards to the genome, that means it produces more proteins. And that's when we see challenges with regards to vaccine production. So one of the biggest challenges right now with African swine fever that I'm sure you've seen in the news is that there is no currently commercial vaccine that we can use to protect our pigs. Right, right. 

In essence, the viruses takeover they hijack the host cells, enzyme and other systems to make more of themselves. And that's yeah, I think that right, so what are the envelopes made of? Those are those polymeric sugars or I would have expected them to be more resistant to cleaning solutions, for example. 

Yeah, that was my thought as you were describing this.

Yeah, when we think about the envelope, it's mostly lipids, and then has proteins on it. Viruses typically use proteins on the surface glycoproteins on the surface, to actually bind to the host cell receptor, enter into the host cell and then replicate. But when it has that envelope, it often has those lipids that make it more susceptible. When we talk about non envelope, it's proteins that are surrounding the genetic information. And so it's more stable.

I'm just gonna say that one of the reasons so it's particularly effective is that like really just an on the envelope viruses attaching to the lipids and the protein, or as they were just so there's so as effective and non envelope viruses?

Well it depends on the virus, of course, but in general, a lot of the characteristics, of course, when we talk about hand washing, and the importance of handwashing, a lot of it is the mechanical, you know, cleaning of the hands, but of course, it depends. It depends on the different viruses. But yes, in general, these, these soaps are fairly effective against a broad range of viruses. But it again, sort of depends on the virus. Some viruses are very hardy and very difficult to eliminate from the environment.

So this is random. But here's a question. Are viruses alive? In your opinion? I mean, because they're, they're their own little strand, they can't replicate on their own right? When I was a kid, I was taught one of the things of one of the properties of life is that, you know, replication right? I know at the time, people disputed whether viruses are alive, right, because they can't replicate themselves, they you the host, do you have it?

That's sort of like the day one virology question for the students. So if you consider it if you consider alive or not alive, it's interesting, because when you actually talk about it, in, you know, when we talk about diagnostics, and what we think about with viruses, we more use the terminology infectious, versus non infectious, so weak, because one of the biggest diagnostics, one of the most widely used diagnostic tests to detect viruses is PCR polymerase chain reaction. But that test looks for viral genetic material. So it would look for the DNA or the RNA associated with the virus. But if you have a positive PCR test, it doesn't necessarily mean that the virus is infectious. So those are sort of the terminology when we think about infectious viruses, we think about can that virus if it was exposed to a susceptible cell, would it be able to gain entry into the cell and replicate and be infectious to that cell? So really, those are sort of the terminology at least in diagnostics that we think about, but the whole is the virus alive or not alive, I think people have different opinions, I suppose on that, which, which maybe makes it again, a good academic question for the students.

So here's just a random question. And in terms of terminology for disabling a virus, what, what's most often used to sort of kill wood, right?

Yeah, we usually say inactivation of the virus. So that because what could happen is, let's say, and we've done a lot of these experiments in feed, and let's say we expose the feed to heat treatment, or some sort of chemical, that inactivate the virus. If we take that seed and test it on PCR, it may still have viral genome. But if we tested on cells, it wouldn't be able to infect the cell. Maybe that's because lipid envelope has been disrupted. Maybe that's because the glyco proteins now can't find the host cell. There could be some different factors. But what we would talk about that is inactivation of a virus.

One of the areas of study that you had listed there is control strategies for endemic and foreign animal diseases. Can you speak to what some of those control strategies are or things maybe that you're researching?

Sure. So when we think about in general diseases in livestock, we first of course, we would like to eradicate or eliminate the disease from a herd. So we think About Coronavirus, you know, ideal scenario is that we would eliminate that from a herd. But then if you can't eliminate it, or if the herd is endemic for that disease, then you start thinking about can we use a vaccine strategy to improve the response of pigs to the virus? Which there are some vaccines available for the heard? And then sort of third is, Are there alternative strategies to actually improve the response of the pig to the virus when it's exposed? And so some of the strategies that have been looked at in that area is, are there certain genetic properties or genetic aspects of the pig that actually improve its ability to respond to viruses? Are there microbiome characteristics of the pig that improve its ability to respond to viruses? And so the focus of my work in that area goes back to that microbiome? Can we sort of set up the pigs gut health to help the pig respond to any pathogen? You know, it's really the goal. But you know, one of the largest sort of economic losses in pig production is the respiratory disease susceptibility of those young pigs three to five weeks of age, right after weaning. So we think about how do we improve gut health to improve respiratory health? And even as sort of a supplement to all of the other activities that are going on? How do we reduce the stress of the pig so that it can respond better to infection? How do we improve the nutrition of the pig so it can grow? Normally, even under disease challenge? So kind of think about some of those things? With regards to foreign animal disease? We really think about how would the virus be introduced into our country? And how do we mitigate that risk. So some of the big aspects of foreign animal diseases, particularly with African swine fever that we consider his contaminated pork products, we know that the virus survives for long periods in pork. And so that can be a risk factor for infection in pigs. And then, of course, we've talked about feed and feed ingredients, being a risk factor and understanding how we mitigate that risk for disease introduction.

So when you say pork, does that mean that humans are vector transferring the diseases back back to five pigs in the US possibly, or how? From pork? 

So yeah, so importantly, African swine fever virus, humans are not susceptible to that virus. And pork is still safe to consume, even if pigs are infected. So that's an important point to highlight when we talk about pork products, and what we've seen in other areas of the world, is that oftentimes, people, you know, may bring sausage in with them through the airport, and not think about the risks that they are bringing in potentially contaminated pork products into the US. It's illegal. And you know, there have been illegal confiscations with regards to finding the pork products that should not be brought into the United States. And one of the big aspects with regards to foreign animal diseases is educating the public so that they understand that bringing in products from other countries into the US can be a huge risk factor for our animals here, as well as are our crops here.

Fascinating, why and explain the explain the impact on crops, for you just saying if they brought some other crop carrying disease into the US.

Right so, crop carrying disease. So when you talk about products, you have an apple or a banana, or any meat products? You know, the biggest reason for that is that there are certain agricultural diseases pests that we do not have in the United States that we want to maintain our crops are animals free from and so when people bring in agricultural products illegally from other countries, the risk is that those commodities of products could potentially have diseases that we do not have here. Sure. 

So one of the kinds of fundamental differences in approach between scientists who wanted to go around the world finding new varieties of various and sundry crops versus people who wanted to keep them out by inspection. And actually the son of one of the first presidents of Kansas State was one of the folks that was critical in going around the world and bringing in new, new varieties of, of agricultural products.

And shipping them over.

Yeah, I think there's definitely a balance between, you know, learning from different agricultural products that could be beneficial, and then making sure that those agricultural products don't contain microbial pathogens that, yeah, impact the rest of the crop so.

Do we find that the contaminated materials are more frequently sourced in and maybe developing parts of the world? Are there differences in different areas around the world that cause specific problems in products that are moved into the United States? Or is this just kind of is different in different areas around the world, and you just have to be careful, regardless of where you're shipping from?

Yeah, I think you have to be careful regardless, because what we've seen oftentimes is that maybe a product is manufactured in one country, and maybe it's processed in another country. And then maybe it's shipped to a secondary, you know, a secondary country before. So there's all these steps. And again, that goes back to efficiency of the global trade that has been established over years to make these products available to people all over the world. But there's risks with regards to determining where the product came from. And if there was any risk upon its manufacturing or processing, that puts it at risk for contamination of the diseases that are in that country. We know, for instance, that there are crops that are grains and crops that are dried on the roadways in China. And those roadways are of course, shared with trucks and vehicles that could be transporting pigs. And so when you think about that, and the potential for those crops to become contaminated, because of the sort of risky agricultural practices with regards to drying on the roadways, you can imagine how those feed ingredients may become contaminated in the environment, and then could potentially maintain the virus during shipment. So it sort of depends on the ingredient. But it depends on where it's coming from to. 

Sure. That makes total sense. Yeah. I've seen that in India. 

Well, could ask a question back to gut microbiome. Are there any standard practices that you'd recommend if farmers to be putting into place to to improve the health of their herds? Or is there are there particular kinds of things that you would have to do like the fecal transplants? So other standard things that we do that actually that hurt our swine herds? Are there particular? Yeah, that would make it really easy to improve their gut microbiome so or is this something that would be actually kind of complicated to do or require new techniques?

Well, we're really still learning about how something like fecal microbial transplantation or microbiome modulation could be implemented in a broad scale and swine herds. But one of the biggest challenges with regards to fecal transplants, even on the human side when we talk about so in human fecal microbial transplants are most often used for recurrent Clostridium difficile infections that have been already treated with antimicrobials. And so this is somebody who's been treated with antibiotics probably multiple times and then gets the fecal transplant. And oftentimes, it has a fairly high success rate. When we talk about that in humans, and even in pigs and some of the work that I've done, we don't have sort of the foundational knowledge to say, let's take feces from 10 pigs or 10 humans, and based on the microbial characterization within that equal transplant, I can pick out the ideal donor, we don't really have that information. So when you think about is going to be your donor. For fecal transplants, oftentimes you go off of phenotype. So let's say the pig grew really well. The pig has had a great health history. The pig doesn't have certain pathogens circulating. It's very similar in humans, you know, you talk to the donors to say have you had any you know, history of diarrhea Have you had, you know, these infectious diseases we need to screen you for but sort of so you're sort of looking at the the phenotype of the person as opposed to, or the pig, as opposed to the genetic characterization or the microbial characterization of the actual transplant. And I think once we get there, then we'll be able to really sort of implement this more on a broad scale where we go, these are the characteristics of feet transplant, that really provide benefits under these circumstances, or in our, you know, modern day pig production. 

That's fascinating. 

Getting up in front of you. Exciting time. So what's the Chinese proverb for the Chinese curse? You should you should live in interesting times.

Yeah, well, in that, what were you gonna say there, Scott?

Oh, I was gonna ask more about the, the gut microbiome, but you know, I've got another question that's been floating around in the back of my head. And Megan, I was wondering if you could say something about what makes a virus like easily transferable? Right. So one of the things with the novel Coronavirus, right. So this came from a reservoir. And my understanding is that the think of the reservoir was bad, right? And that it was living in, that's then transferred through some other animal and then finally got to humans, right. And so there's something about these kinds of viruses that once they leave that, that reservoir where the animal reservoir where they were hanging out for a while, maybe without actually hurting that population, but they transfer to humans, and they're particularly problematic for us is a bad one, right now. What makes what makes a virus like, first of all, easily transferable like that, and what about that kind of thing makes it dangerous in a way that if some of the viruses that you're studying in swine are, you know, there's no risk of transfer, or infecting humans in a way that's going to hurt us?

Yeah, I think one of the important sort of components to what's going on with the Coronavirus is that, as you said, the way that it was the humans were exposed to it was this very close interaction between humans and wildlife, where we're seeing that maybe a virus that has been around in the wildlife population for decades, and has never caused the problem to that wildlife species or to humans, because of the the lack of close interaction, when a human is then exposed to that virus can become infected. And I think one of the important things about viruses is that they have this high ability to mutate into change. So of course, most people have been exposed to a Coronavirus. Of course, it's coronaviruses in general, are probably the second leading cause of colds in humans. But it's a different Coronavirus. It's different than the one that's currently circulating. And so we don't have that underlying immunity to the one that causes the common cold. And so one of the things that can make viruses transmissible is, of course, that oftentimes viruses are transmitted through the oral nasal route. If you think about respiratory diseases, those are ones that can make you cough can make you sneeze, that can create these aerosols that, again, oftentimes can contain large amounts of virus, if a person is in the acute phase of infection. The other thing about viruses is that even though they require cells to replicate, some of them can survive in the environment for an extended period. And again, that goes back to, you know, DNA versus RNA and versus non envelope. But when we think about touching, handle doors and touching our phones, and we want to be sure that, you know, we're taking the precautions to not only wash our hands, but think about the types of materials that our hands touched throughout the day, and make sure that we have those clean. So those are a couple of the characteristics with regards to viruses.

And those are there. I was just gonna say so is there anything particular about the type of virus or what it is that makes that makes it particularly harmful to humans? Right, sort of like so why is it that the viruses that you're studying that are caused a lot of disease in pigs strikes or don't happen to cause diseases in humans? Is it just kind of, you know, luck, or is there some particular characteristic about them that makes them not dangerous to humans, but something like the novel Coronavirus, right? Transferable and it's gonna infect us and make us sick.

Yeah, they're, they're typically the way that the virus is determined, you know, determines what host to that is susceptible is based on the proteins on the surface of the virus. So those proteins only recognize certain host cells. And then also on the host side, the host has to have the correct receptor, or it's often a protein, again on the host cell. So those interactions are what allow the virus to actually take it, you know, have the receptor bind to the, or the protein bind to the host cell receptor, and enter into the cell and cause infection. But viruses have a wide range of how they cause disease. When you think about a virus like HIV, people have HIV as lifelong infections, because that virus actually integrates itself into the host genome. Whereas you think about other viruses. And the infection is fairly short, maybe it's three to five days. And that's the only time period when you are shedding the virus, and then your immune system clears the virus. Some viruses cause chronic infections, some are very acute, some cause that like African swine fever, in pigs, causes extremely high mortality. So we see almost 100% mortality, whereas other viruses have mortality rates less than 1%. So really depends on the virus and the mechanisms by which that virus has evolved to cause disease. And also sort of this variation that we can see with regards to the length of time that the virus may infect the host. And, again, host susceptibility has a lot to do with the actual cells of the host, and then the proteins on the virus. 

Interesting. That's very interesting. What I was going to ask we were going to be putting on a workshop global food systems is going to be putting on a workshop on microbiome in another month or two, and hopefully, it'll be face to face that if we're still in the situation we're in right now, we may, we may try and take it to a virtual level. But on the microbiome as I was putting the ideas together on this, and Megan, thank you for your help. And in working with me on it. There. There are a whole lot of different areas working on microbiome. And I wonder in my mind, how those things how those areas overlap, or if they do not overlap, what are the similarities and differences between, say, soil microbiome and what you're working on with swine gut or things that are being worked on in I know, in poultry gut? Or is that a fair question to ask you? I mean, it may be that the study areas are different enough?

No, I think I think it's an interesting, it's a good comment to have about the microbiome space. Because when we think about the research, really, it's been over the last decade that we've seen this expansion in microbiome work. And really, the vast majority, I mean, every year, the number of microbiome publications increases on both the human side, and let's say, the swine side, you know, there's probably over 50,000 Publications now on the human side. But the vast majority of those have been in the last three to five years. And even on the swine side, we talk about maybe 1000 publications on the swine side. So it's this, it's this new area of study that is very complex. And when we think about the microbial communities, in soil, or in our guts, or in the guts of pigs, or poultry, and we think about all the interactions of those microbes, it's very complicated. It's very difficult to replicate, let's say outside of the host, because you think about the immune cells of the host impact the microbial replication in the gut. And then the microbes within the gut interact and metabolic products impact what other microbes may do or make, may produce. So I think there's a couple of challenges with microbiome research that is probably fairly consistent in any microbiome research, one of which is replicating what happens in the natural environment in a laboratory setting, but also, how you actually analyze the microbiome. There's many different areas. You can use meta genomics, you can use whole genome sequencing, you can use 16 s ribosomal sequencing.  One thing which is based on bacteria, you can use microarrays to look at populations of microbes, you can look at transcriptome, so maybe what the microbes produce? What, what does what's sort of the response between the host and the microbes. So I think it's such an exciting space, because we have so much to learn, and there's so many different areas. And really, if you look and see, you know, an aspect of the microbiome again, more than likely, it probably has an impact on some sort of disease in the host or in the, you know, in maintaining a healthy crop in the soil. And so I think it's really exciting. But again, it's important for people to sort of wrap their head around the complexity of, of how we research the microbiome true. 

Another term I've heard used in that reference, the microbial ecology of the gut, is that correct?

Yes

Okay, good. Yes, Maureen.

Well, I was just gonna say, with what little life I've probably read and understood enough on the microbiome to be really dangerous in the area. But what I have read has absolutely fascinated me. And it seems, from my limited understanding that it's got the potential of changing the way we look at health in many ways, the way we are looking and understanding what's going on in our systems and how to manage and control healthful activities helpful. Is that a fair? Is that a fair assumption? On my part?

Absolutely, I think one of the most sort of fascinating and exciting things that I think about is, you know, in the future, are we going to be inoculating our young babies, and, you know, on my side, the young pigs with microbes that we know will improve the health of that person, or that animals throughout their lifetime, that's really exciting. Because you go, wow, we can if we learn about these microbes, what they do, and then on on the human side, or on the pig side, understand what diseases they're going to be susceptible to later on in life, and give them those microbes that are going to help them be resistant, or less susceptible to those diseases. That's a whole nother avenue to think about how we can prophylactically or preventatively provide health to people, or HIV or pigs. You know, prior to early on in life, I think it's really, really fascinating and exciting. And we think about, we are what we eat, you know, we haven't really talked about the diet. But you know, the other fascinating thing about the gut is that, you know, everything we eat in talks the microbes, so when we talk about learning about the connection between nutrition and microbes, and overall health and neurologic conditions that may even come in, later on in life. It's really, like you said, I think fascinating and exciting. I think, you know, it'll be very, very cool to see where we're at even, you know, five to 10 years from now in this in the microbiome world?

Absolutely. Absolutely. 

You know, what, what comes to mind with what you just stated was just some reading I did while that's been it's been a while ago, but on, on childbirth, and on the difference in the potential of the child with a vaginal birth, as opposed to a cesarean section and the number of microbes that that child was introduced to, during that process. And just thinking about all of those kinds of things, is, as I said, fascinating, I mean, it just it, it makes your mind kind of swim on all of the areas that those microorganisms are going to be touching and relating to how, how well we are in the long run.

Well, in nature, there's at least one example in nature for that. qualities are born without if they were if they were, there's a transfer of microbiome from the mother to the baby that allows them to eat and digest the eucalyptus, eucalyptus trees, which they wouldn't be able to do otherwise. So there are examples in nature of what we're trying to do. 

Is there a feed of us swine, then studied in terms of the effects on the microbiome and their health right there? How much do we know about like, what the diversity are the type of feed that pigs get affects? affects their gut affects their health?

Yeah, so a lot of the focus of course in the nutrition side is what components of the pigs diet do we need to make the pig gain and have they to gain as much weight and as quickly as possible and maintain maintaining health? I think an area there As we should sort of bridge the gap is, as we understand the best nutritional outcomes with regards to grow. Also thinking about are those the best nutritional aspects is that pig is in certain health challenged conditions. And so oftentimes we do these, the research studies in, in herds that are fairly healthy, that maybe don't have a disease challenge. And then when we get into a disease challenge situation, we understand that pigs, not only eat differently, of course of a pig is not feeling well, they may not eat as much, but they're also able to they also metabolize, and take nutrients from the, from the feed in different ways based on their health challenge. And so I think that's another sort of exciting area where we can maybe bridge the gap in different disease settings, what sort of nutritional aspects of the seeds should we shift to, again, set the pig up for the best possible health outcome?

And does diversity of feed correspond to diversity of microbiome?

I don’t know off the top of my head. I don't know if we know that if we think about you mean, like, if a pig was that different threats throughout its lifetime, increase the diversity of the microbes? Right. Yeah, I think that's an interesting point, because you think about the feed at source, of course, in most high ball security operations is highly standardized, and right and changes as the pig ages. And so most pigs are not fed, you know, different diets, or, you know, a wide range of different diet that you think about maybe in developing world, when people hold pigs in their backyard. We talk about backyard operations. So we talked about this with regards to disease, oftentimes, those families may feed the pigs scraps from their meals. And so of course, I don't know if there's been a good study looking at, you know, if a pig is exposed to a wide range of foods throughout its life, what happens to the microbes? But my assumption would be yes, that the diversity would influence.

Because a lot of the work to this point has been more directed phenotypically, you're trying to change some

entire animal characteristic and improve it or keep it the same, as opposed to going at the genotypic level.

I think this has been a great conversation. very timely. I've learned a lot. It's been great. I've ever seen plastic work.

Yeah. Thank you for the discussion. It's been I've really enjoyed talking with you all. And hopefully we can all meet face to face soon and yeah, thanks for thanks again for the opportunity. 

Well, we'll look forward to the face to face and thank you all for coming online. And yes, I learned a ton here today.

Likewise, likewise. Thanks again.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

The production of food includes everything from large-scale growing and processing facilities to small backyard gardens. Our guest this episode, Dr. Jeremy Cowan discusses teaching future growers —and eaters— the importance of growing food with people in mind at every point in the production-consumption loop. As a land-grant institution K-State is challenged to teach, learn and research ways to feed the world. Local fresh produce has long been lacking in most diets and questions on the sustainability of current large farming practices is top of mind when considering our long-term ability to produce food. So where does the small farm fit in today’s food production realm?

Transcript:

The Three-Legged Stool of Sustainability – The Intricacy of Teaching and Producing Healthy Food with Dr. Jeremy Cowan, Assistant Professor of Sustainable Food Production Systems at Kansas State University

We as a society are so focused on convenience when it comes to food that we tend to ignore nutrition and we see that in our health bills or medical bills and things like that. Obesity rates, cancer rates, people are not feeding themselves well because they don't take the time to feed themselves well.

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

I’m Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science. 

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a Food Scientist.

Hello everybody and welcome back to Something to Chew On. In this episode, we will be discussing the complexity of teaching and producing healthy, affordable local food. Our featured guest, Dr. Jeremy Cowan, Assistant Professor of Sustainable Food Production Systems, focuses on regenerative agriculture and specialty food crops systems and explores the possible contributions of biodegradable plastics and permaculture, an agricultural system or method that integrates human activity with natural surroundings to create self-sustaining ecosystems. His work focuses on training future growers and eaters, the importance of growing food with people in mind at every point along the production consumption loop. As the land grant university we are challenged to teach, learn and research ways to feed the world. Food production can include everything from large scale growing, and processing of food products to small backyard gardens. Local fresh produce has long been lacking in most diets. And questions on the sustainability of current large farming practices is top of mind when considering our long term ability to produce food. Another major consideration of food production is one that we probably don't often consider, and that is the social implications of moving off the land. So where does the small farm fit in today's food production realm? Welcome to the podcast. Jeremy.

Thank you. Happy to be here.

Your area of expertise is in small farming, which I am sure as we get through this discussion is going to be explained in much more detail on what small farming actually means. In the past, we've done a lot of several podcasts with researchers on campus that have talked about very interesting research in soils, soil health, microbiology in various areas. And it seemed to me that a lot of that research is more geared towards large scale farming. Having listened to all of those and really thinking about what you do, though, I think there's probably a good potential for a lot of that information to have direct impact on what you're doing as well. So I would like to get into a little bit more of that, hopefully, as we talk through this. But initially, I'd like to step back and learn a bit more about you how you got interested in this. And what brought you to K State.

Oh, that's a story that could go way back. So a lot of them do it for me. So when I started my undergrad, I was polisci major, I was planning to go to law school and then be a staffer for some congressmen somewhere and get into politics. And that didn't work out for my family too well. And about a year from finishing that degree, my I was faced with a choice to change majors. And I had a really hard time with that. Because the I think the dominant social expectation is that you go to college to get a high paying job. And you know, the path that I had looked at taking would have been decent, or at least I thought it would have been decent in that regard. And all of the other ones that had any kind of interest to me would have sent me back a year or two in college. And so I sat back and had some reflective time and I thought to myself, well what do I enjoy, because you can still go to law school with any degree. And so I thought back to some of my pre adolescent years when I felt motivated to go start a garden in my parents backyard, and how much I enjoyed that process. And so I figured, I looked at I looked at the requirements of a horticulture degree, and it would have only sent me back one more semester from what I was currently Because I'd picked up a few courses that were related in community college. And so I went majored in horticulture, and I loved every minute of it. I thought that I never really realized that there could be that much joy in plants generally. And actually, at that time, I was more focused on landscape plants and not in the food world. And I enjoyed it and did so well in it at the time that I applied for grad school right off the bat. And I started a Ph. D program right outside right after my Bachelor's, and quickly ran out of money and decided not to go load up on student loans, I went and got a job. And I was working in landscaping for a while, and still had that desire to go to law school. And so I applied for law schools and went to law school and was doing a joint JD MBA. My goal wasn't at that point, it transitioned from politics to real estate. And this is a really long story, transition into real estate. And this was in the early 2000s. And I was finishing up my MBA in I finished in 2007. And if you recall, the real estate market in 2007, was about to take a giant crash. So I was in real estate, I was doing some consulting at the time, I was actually making really good money, and then all of a sudden the floor was dropped out from underneath everything. And I was struggling to make ends meat. Well, I had gotten married about the same time and my wife is working. And so I had some freedom and said to start my own landscape company. And at the same time, we found some property to hold all of the landscaping equipment that happened to be on an avocado farm avocado orchard. And we made ourselves a big garden. And I was just like, Oh, I remember how much I really liked this. And about that time, we started having children. And with that we were thinking about nutrition and lifestyle and things like that. And I thought to myself, you know, I'd probably do really well, in my mind anyways to focus more on sustainable food and healthy food. And from the growing standpoint, so I started looking to go back to school and finish the PhD. Learn what I could about sustainable farming, I decided I wanted to shift to vegetables. So I was looking specifically at sustainable vegetable production. And I called faculty all over the country. And everybody said, Sorry, we don't have money. And then I got a random call one day from professor at Washington State University saying how would you feel about working in plastics. And I was like, that doesn't sound very sustainable. Right. And so, but I knew that, you know, grad school was just the stepping stone to academia. And you're not necessarily stuck in the realm in which you go to grad school. And so I took on a project, looking at the use of biodegradable plastic mulch films for producing tomatoes in high tunnels. So that is how I that was my path.

As far as the small farming thing went, I guess to me, I don't know that my specific expertise is in small farming, as much as it is in vegetable production. I would say that if I had personal preferences, I'd probably lean towards small farming, especially when we start the conversation of sustainability. And especially when we contemplate the three legs of that sustainability stool. I think that in large scale farming, we see a lot of work in economic and environmental sustainability moving forward. But I think the social end of it is completely neglected. And so to me, it's really difficult to manage a program in sustainable agriculture without contemplating labor and community and things like that, that often are either shunned or overlooked entirely in more large scale agriculture, at least from my perspective.

So can you say more about the three legged stool of sustainability?

Sure. I, you know, and there's always this discussion about what does sustainability mean? And I think the general consensus question, yeah, well, I honestly don't think that there should be a single answer. I think that sustainability should be highly context dependent. But I think what, at least I've gathered as the consensus is, is that in order to be sustainable, it has to be economically viable, environmentally sound and socially responsible. And so for any enterprise, and in any field, it doesn't necessarily. It's not necessarily just within agriculture, that that's the case. So I like to keep my answer to that question intentionally vague because I think it should be because I think it's context dependent.

Interesting so you in reading through your bio. On the website you talked about the work you did with plastics and with what is biodegradable I mean you did a fair amount of work in that area obviously what what is that? 

So biodegradable plastics are just what you would expect they're plastics.

Sounds like an oxymoron to me, right, right.

So, since the 1950s, polyethylene plastics been the go to mulch material and in generally plastic material and agriculture, specifically in mulches, polyethylene is very workable, it's very functional as a mulch. Biodegradable plastic films, substitutes that polyethylene with molecules that have the potential to break down completely into nothing but carbon dioxide, water and microbial biomass. Now in practice, we've had things on the market since the 80s, that have claimed to be biodegradable and early on, they were not actually biodegradable, but rather they were photo degradable, or Oxo degradable, meaning that they would weather to the point that they'd fragment and they might fragment to the point that you don't see them, but they don't actually go away. And so when you talk about microplastics, and nanoplastics, that's usually either you've got some sort of photo, or Oxo degradable, some sort of degradable plastic that doesn't get fully broken down through those microbial processes. So when you're talking about biodegradable, there's several different feedstocks that can be used to create a product that would that has the potential to break down fully. One of those complicating factors is the soil environment isn't necessarily ideal for the early stages of breakdown. So biodegradation is a two stage process. It starts with weathering, which you have heat, light water, and things like that will start to break down the molecules to the point that they they shrink up enough that increase the surface area, and once it hits some certain threshold, then the microbes can start going to work on it, but it has to break down enough for them to have access to the to the molecules to start consuming them to complete their own microbial processes. And so once it gets to that point, it tends to speed up and that's when the bio degradation actually happens.

Does this have to happen in fallow ground? Or can it be? Is it process that works in ground that's actually in production?

I mean, the short answer is it can be either I think that in production, it's probably more effective at the breakdown insofar as so one of the studies that I did, we looked at post tillage degradation, right. And I used the word degradation intentionally because we weren't measuring bio degradation. So we didn't have the capacity in the field in my lab to measure carbon dioxide evolution in the soil and things like that and actually measure the bio degradation. So what we did was, we planted a broccoli crop on plastic, we used two different biodegradable films and then a nonwoven fabric, which is kind of like a landscape fabric. And at the end of the broccoli season, so during the season we we followed the or we measured the amount of visual degradation. So our surrogate for that was how much soil is visible in what was originally mulched. So you'd get pinholes and then pinholes would open the cracks. And so we'd measure that pre tillage. Then when we tilled it down, we'd go and get a golf cup cutter. So it was about four inches in diameter and six inches deep. And we'd pull soil cores and then spend a lot of time sifting out plastic fragments from the soil cores. And we did that every couple of months for the next for 13 months post tillage. And during that time, we had two other tillage events. So there were at least three tillage events. We had the one where we tilled it down, and then we had to in prepping the beds for the next season. And so when I say that in production, it's probably more active. It's because there's more mechanical processes that work on breaking things down small enough for the microbes to actually attack it. And so in that study we had the nonwoven fabric was made out of poly lactic acid. I don't know if you remember the I Yep. PLM the SunChips bags, compostable and obnoxiously loud. Those are PLA and PLA is fully has the potential to completely biodegrade. But the limitation is that it will only biodegrade at higher temperatures, like what you would find a municipal compost, so over 150 degrees Fahrenheit, and you're never gonna see that in the soil unless you're solarizing and you have the right environment for it. And so it didn't degrade at all. I shouldn't say that it broke into smaller fragments, but we were still able to capture 100% of what we expected to capture based on what we were sampling. We had another product and once you get into commercial products, we start talking about trade secrets and proprietary blends. So we don't know exactly what everything we have our suspicions. But a product that's on the market called Bio agri that product. Over the 13 months post tillage we were, we were only able to find about 65% of it after the 13 months. So you know, from that we extrapolate that 35% breakdown and in about a year. And then we had another experimental product that was made out of a class of compounds called polyhydroxyalkanoates, or PHA’s. And those that went after 13 months, we weren't able to find. Now it also performed least well in the field because it broke down faster. Part of that had to do with the manufacturing process that when it came off the line, it was folded in half. And so that crease where it was folded, broke down really quickly. But it also was an experimental product. And so as an experimental product, it may have been manufactured such that it was gonna break down faster anyways, but it was still, you know, proof of concept we weren't able, and we were sifting down to a millimeter square. So we weren't able to find anything bigger than a millimeter square when we were doing our sifting. So..

In a land grant environment, which this is, producers could expect, or would anticipate being able to go out and reach into the extension communication system to get the information, for example, to go to this sort of make this sort of change. Does that exist in this part of the world, I would presume it would exist in the vegetable growing parts of the world. And those though, California central valleys, but…

Yeah, so I think that the relevance is probably fairly low. For the traditional Kansas crop mix, you know, where you're on a heavy grain rotation, you're not getting a whole lot of plastic out in the field anyways. So it may not have high relevance for the folks here, unless you're talking about some of the smaller farmers that then would be growing vegetables or fruits and use plastics as part of their as part of their general routine. You know, the advent of the Internet, and it doesn't matter where it was produced, you can now access information on all of that stuff. So, you know, the project that my doctoral work was funded on, and then another subsequent project that was related to that. Were all USDA SERI funded and, you know, between Washington State University and University of Tennessee and also worked a little bit with Texas A&M. 

Did you in fact?

Yeah. And so we published several papers on it. We published several factsheets and we had established a website biodegradable mulches, or biodegradable mulch.org. I'm not sure if that still gets back to the system now that the grants gone up, I don't know if UT still maintaining it that I haven't looked lately. But there's a lot of papers that were compiled there. If anybody wanted to look for more information on biodegradable plastics.

So what do you think the prospects for these are and and both in terms of large scale production and then the small farmers?

That's a great question, because So I recently reviewed an economics factsheet on biodegradable mulches where they had done basically the, you know, the economic analysis for where the breakevens on plastic switching from regular polyethylene to biodegradable plastics. And so with traditional plastics, you have to remove the plastics from the field. I mean, some people will till them in and then they're just a mess forever. But in general, you've got to spend the labor to go and cut the mulch, pull the mulch, take the all the mulch to the dump and then pay for dump fees. Because while plastic mulch is potentially recyclable, the access to facilities is relatively low in the US and then having a lot of soil and plant debris on the mulch tends to increase weights and recyclers don't like to clean them. So unless you're going to clean them, which then is another massive labor expense, then recycling is not an option for most growers.

So what brought you to K State?

What brought me to K State, the job description. That's another story in and of itself, but so this job description was specifically geared towards sustainable quote unquote, sustainable agriculture focused on small scale farming regenerative agricultural practices. The word permaculture was used in there and and it was teaching and it was running the student farm and it was everything that I wanted when I went through grad school and was starting to look for jobs and wasn't available when I first graduated. So you know, Kansas was a big question. Mark for us. I've never even driven through Kansas, let alone for any period of time before my interview. So yeah. It's been an interesting transition because of that. So a lifelong west coast, resident and native and coming to the Midwest, there's been some real positive things and then some real negative things ie chiggers. 

True, totally understandable what, what is permaculture?

Permaculture is so it's a system of design that's intended to mimic natural systems. So Permaculture is coined from combining permanent and agriculture. The idea stemmed from a Tasmanian scientist back in the 1970s, he was influenced by several writers from the early 20th century, late 19th century, with the idea being that if we mimic natural systems, the systems themselves would become more sustainable. So if we provide more of the ecosystem services that a natural ecosystem would provide, say, a forest ecosystem, then assuming we can capture the yields that are necessary if we're in a more natural state, or at least designed the system so that it performs more of the ecosystem functions of a natural system, that the system would be more resilient and not have some of the potential issues that large scale monocultures would inherently have.

Interesting. Do you work at all? Net? Well, from any perspective, do you work at all with the Land Institute in Salina? Have you had an overlap there?

I have had some interaction with the Land Institute, we've talked about trying to acquire some of their current is a product for a research project that we're doing. We were looking for brands specifically, and they don't have brand for from Kernza available. And one thing I found is that and I don't know if this is a me thing, or a Midwest thing or a Kansas thing, but I've had very hard time finding funding for the work that I'm doing. So where my specialty is vegetables and vegetables isn't a very prominent class of agricultural products in the Midwest, I've found that it's a little bit more difficult to get funding for research. And as a result, things have been a little bit slow on the taking off. I got a good startup package. And so I've been bootstrapping a lot of work that we've been doing, but that'll only go so far. 

And that is the realist of research. 

One of the reasons that we were looking at the Kernza brand was that I have an interest in integrating crop production. And so one thing that we're looking at, we have a project that's very permaculture related, where we're looking at integrating mushrooms into a vegetable system or fruit system, strawberries, I guess, were one of the crops we're looking at using. Well, that got us asking some other questions about mushrooms. And so if we were to look at different substrates as far as the protein source in the substrate, is there an impact on yields or quality of the mushrooms later on? So we were going to look at comparing different brands sources. So rice, wheat and oat bran are very commonly used in bag mushroom production. You know, if we looked at quinoa Bran or Kernza, Bran or buckwheat Bran do these things have, is there a difference in the protein profiles that would come through in the subsequent mushroom crop? And so we went looked for these different brand sources. And the closest thing we could find for quinoa brand would have been out of the Netherlands and buckwheat brand. I think we were looking at Korea or something like that. And, you know, Kernza brand doesn't exist unless you make it and I don't know, in talking to the land instituted in sound like the quantity of Kernza could have been available to us in any kind of a short order given that we needed 50 pounds of brand.

No, no, yeah, yeah, you would have needed 400 pounds of Kernza.

Yeah, so we're gonna start off with just doing the rice out and wheat and look at the protein profile of the subsequent mushroom crop and see if there's any big difference. So we'll look at the three different brand sources. We're getting the brand analyzed right now as far as nitrogen and micronutrients and then we'll we're also going to do different levels of protein or nitrogen as our analog for protein. Just to see how that affects the mushroom crop in the bags.

Do you see mushrooms is a solid cropping potential in this area for small producers?

Um, well, it's it. It definitely has potential insofar as mushrooms can produce be produced in a garage in closets in a high tunnel, right? The mushrooms. I mean, they feed on dead things, and you can put dead things anywhere. I mean, that's maybe a little overly bland or not bland, but Koi. But the reality is, is if you have a carbon source and you have a nitrogen source, then you can basically grow mushrooms. I mean, there's, there's more to it. But I've seen mushrooms grown on logs in woodlot. Now woodland is a little bit less prevalent in Kansas. But I've also seen it grown under shade cloth. So what we're doing out of the student farm, our project that I mentioned, that's permaculture related, we have a project that we've started that using Hugo culture as a system for we're looking at season extension using who culture and I guess I should step back Hugo culture is German for mound culture, Hill culture, and it's basically creating large wind road mounds that then could be used to grow crops on. Currently, there is nothing in the literature about Hugo culture, it's all popular press, anecdotal stuff. And so you know, as far as research goes, it's wide open, it's also impossible to get funding for because there's nothing to say, here's what somebody else did. And let's build on that. So what we're going to do is we're going to look at shady side versus sunny side, whether or not you know, the shady side will extend a cool season crop later into the summer for us. Whether the sunny side can help us get in earlier get out earlier with successional planting. But then we thought, you know, we've got these mounds, we're going to irrigate them for the vegetable crop or the fruit crop if we put strawberries on them. And because that moisture will be maintained in the soil, what if we laid down some mushroom logs at the base and at the top of this and to see if we could produce a mushroom crop at the same time with it, we were thinking with little extra effort. Now drilling mushroom logs is no small feat, especially when you're drilling about 1000 feet of them.

I'm aware of a local farmer that has mushroom logs. Talking mushrooms.

Yeah, so 1000 not a small differences took us about five or six months to get through it. I mean, not full time, obviously. Nope. It was no small feat. My grad student I think wants to kick me.

So won't when they start producing mushrooms. Right.

So that system I think might have some potential. We'll see the you know, we were approaching it from a more commercial aspect as far as what the potential benefits could be. One because I thought that would be more fundable if we're looking at season extension for commercial crops. You know, the flip side of that is if I was to bring an economist into it, the amount of labor involved in building these mounds has been surprisingly large. But you know, if you've got a lot of extra wood material that you're say trimming out of an orchard or trimming out of a riparian area or cleaning up a roadside, if you have access to a lot of woody material, Google culture might be a more environmentally sound method of disposing of the that wood and burning it. Right, having all that carbon dioxide float off into the atmosphere instead, you can bury it. Yeah, sequester it for a much longer period of time.

That's, that's fascinating. He really is really,

Can you say more about the student farm?

Sure. So the student farm currently comprises about eight acres of what is the Guyer Forestry Research Center that's part of K State. It's located at the Tuttle Creek State Park. It's not part of the park, but you have to access it from the park and the Guyer Research Center is about 60 acres and it has a lot of long term forestry research happening there. So in 2008, my predecessor Rhonda Yong ki was able to carve out about three acres of that and started the student farm where we have a student farm club here that's housed in the Horticulture Department and the students and other interested students and sometimes faculty through their courses will bring students out to work on the farm to teach on the farm and the farm had sat fallow, so to speak for about two years between the last time it was actively managed and once I was able to get it managed, again, maybe a year and a half. But we hired a full time farm manager last January and this last year, we produced 8000 pounds of produce for Derby and Kramer dining halls. Wow. He's sports grill at the Union. And then the little grill out on Dyer. Oh, sure. stuff. That's great because they couldn't get more local than us. No,

So we're literally right across the street from the little grill. So we're producing mostly vegetables right now. There had been an orchard that was planted a few years ago using money from the greenhouses. found here at K State, but because of lack of management, there was some deer, you got to be able to do that we had a lot of rubbing damage on trees, there's there's three trees that still have still put up green leaves, but it's just a matter of time before they go, they've been completely girdled by deer robbing. So at some point what my intent is to plant another orchard. In fact, with the permaculture theme, there's this idea of food forests, which is a multi level, or multi tiered polyculture system that focuses on food producing plants, but planted in a massive polyculture. And comparing the potential productivity of that system compared to a more traditional orchard system. And so we have the space now we were able to expand the farm from the three acres that it was originally, I guess I should say it's more seven acres. There's another about acre of the shop and the shared storage and dependencies. But that shared with the Guyer, folks, so yeah, we have plans. And this last summer, we piloted a small farm practicum out at the farm, we had eight students sign up and they took on a project for the summer and one students project was an aquaculture project, he started nine, we were able to get some IBC totes food grade IBC totes that he's installed and created a you know, we've got goldfish out there that that have survived the winter so far. And in fact, I just met with a professor of biology that's interested in doing some work on the emotions of those fish and stress and how that works. So I don't know if anything will come up that I you know, I think it would be fantastic to collaborate on something like that. And the system, that particular system was built so that it could be expanded we can we currently have one bed one fish tank, we could probably fit for more fish tanks and about nine or 10 more beds. So it's expandable, we have two high tunnels. So the Aqua cultures and one of the high tunnels we have another high tunnel that specifically for vegetable production. Interestingly, our soil test last year said that we had something like 400 pounds of nitrogen per acre in the soil there. So either somebody spilled something, yeah, I don't know what happened. But we've been gladly soaking that up with our vegetable crops. So we had some amazing eggplant and peppers in there last season, as well as tomatoes. And

Is there any potential of doing work with the cat's cupboard here? I know that they're just down the hall from wherever we're recording this?

Yep. I don't. I don't know if we've already started. But I know that we've had conversations with cats cupboard about providing some fresh produce there. My farm manager so Regan Hale is our new farm manager here. And she's been doing a great job of reaching out to folks. And I know she's had conversations with cats cupboards. I don't know the status. 

I know there's some limitations with what they can handle in there. I think it's all just dry and shelf stable at this point in time, which is not what you're doing. No, no, no. But the the idea of being able to help the the hungry students on campus, which is it's an issue, I mean, availability of food to students here is an issue with thinking that there's a good potential link there. But it's interesting to know that you're already supplying those vegetables to student housing and the food services there. That's great.

So what do you say to the students who are working on the farm there? And then I'm curious in what, their interest in path is and is related to another thing that I want to vote for you to talk about a little bit more and the role of small farms right, in general, right. So there's, there's lots of different small farm things, some of them, you know, as a business as a livelihood, some of its just the backyard thing, you know, and some of its like, small is relative to right. So there are some very large small farms, right. So could you just say something about, like, what, what your interests are and what, what kinds of things you want to sort of see happen?

So the first part of your question was, what are the students? Yes, and I should probably pull them at some point. And I do and I teach class, you know, what are your interests and I'd say that the vast majority are there because it's a major requirement for horticulture production majors that they take either fruit or vegetable production. I would say that there's a small proportion of our horticulture students that actually want to get into fruits or vegetables, some sort of food producing horticultural crop or cropping system. And so for those students, they tend to be our regulars out at the farm. I guess my vision for the student farm has been since I got here and what I interviewed on was the idea of creating the premier small to mid scale diversified food training center like farming training center in the Midwest, and, you know, that's kind of a very narrow definition. But at the same time, it's something that doesn't really exist. You know, there are some farms that do training, mostly private, and mostly in the city environment. So over in Kansas City and St. Louis, I've seen some operations that are doing farm training like that. And our extension offices do quite a bit of it as well, especially in the urban counties in Kansas. So for me, I'd love to be able to get people out there for workshops. And, you know, we've been talking about trying to establish a harvest festival, some sort of conference slash just celebration out at the at the farm at the end of the seasons. Great idea. That's a great idea. Yeah. But with, we could definitely use more help as far as people goes, and getting that done, the students seem really excited about it. But at the same time, they tend to be busier than what would be required of having the students help us organize that and Reagan's focused a lot on creating a plan and executing that plan for growing produce out there and marketing that produce and whatnot. But it is, it's on our agenda. In fact, we've been, as we've been developing the idea, what we've come to is, is that we have to grow pumpkin so that we can have a pumpkin chucking at this event, and we need to grow enough tomatoes that we can have a dunk of Professor like a dunk tank, but with tomatoes in the tank instead of water. 

Dunk a dean would be even better actually.

Right. That would be fantastic. That was the sucker. They've all said it's got to be me. So I mean, that's been the limitation is just manpower right now for getting that off the ground and some funding. But, you know, we have big plans for the farm. We've already the Save farm or the Save organization service members. They've had their bees out there for years, they've been out there helping the students with, you know, field prep and doing some of the work as far as you know, tractor work when there wasn't somebody who knew how to use the tractor, they'd have somebody out there that would happily go till for us. They've done a beekeeping last summer. Last summer when we had our small farm practicum. They did a beekeeping workshop for the students. And so it's been a somewhat fruitful relationship there. And I hope that that continues, and we've been working with the Kansas permaculture Institute. And this summer we're planning to offer a permaculture design certification course. We've still been going back and forth as to whether or not we want to offer it for credit, because the timing would be such that it would have to go through Go Global Campus, and there's a lot of costs involved in putting on that and saddling students with a higher costs of Global Campus fees plus the cost of putting on the course plus the cost of tuition. It's just been something that we've been struggling with as to whether or not that's feasible for students without, you know, saddling them with more debt. In doing that, so, but we are putting on the course. So the last two weeks, last week and a half before the fall semester this year, out of the student farm we'll be putting on that course. And that information can be found at the KPIs website, which is Kansaspermaculture.org.

Are these sorts of approaches amenable to cooperative sorts of undertakings? Could you have a group of owners of land that yeah, the southern Kansas had an egg Co Op at one time. There have been other sorts of coops I just wondered if this particular type of farming had any. So I think they just are disadvantaged.

Cooperative efforts in the food system are highly I think they they're, they're underutilized and would be favorable to one approaching that sustain that leg of sustainability and social responsibility, right. I was previously the director of extension for Spokane County in Washington. And in Spokane County, we had started a food hub called link foods and link foods had started with 30 farmers or farms. And it started basically as a marketing cooperative for those farmers. So the big boon for farmers there was that Spokane, two major economic drivers currently is education and healthcare. So there's three universities in the Spokane area. There's also two major hospitals and several other medical centers in that area, and as institutional buyers, small farmers have a really hard time accessing those markets because of insurance requirements. So where some of these folks are requiring $5 million in liability insurance in order to purchase food. Most small farmers don't have carried So the Co Op, the big benefit for farmers aside from the marketing was that for $100 a year, they had a joint liability policy that would allow those farmers to access those institutional markets. And so for the first several years, Gonzaga University was the biggest buyer from the cooperative. And so we have the small farmers that would have never been able to sell to the big institutional buyers now able to sell into Gonzaga and Gonzaga was doing a great job. They had a local food initiative they were their goal was to provide 20% of their dining menu from the local area. And so they were highlighting farms in their menus at the restaurants on campus and in the dining halls on campus. They were buying a lot of local food. And that was great. It really got the co op off to a good start. The coops also selling into the school district, they're doing a food of the month or a vegetable of the month type of thing. They're selling into the hospitals now they started a CSA. So for all the farmers that you know, had all this produce, they posted on the website that were buyers would go and basically pick and choose what they wanted. But not everything would sell. And so for those things that wouldn't sell then everything was brought into the CSA and then the the co op was just offloading people's extras into the CSA, which, you know, at first, we had some farmers that were like, What do you mean, you're gonna do a CSA, you're gonna compete with my CSA, but the reality was, was that it was a great outlet for the majority of farmers to offload those things that they weren't selling. So it was a huge benefit to the farmers, it was a great benefit to the community. As far as just recognizing that we actually had agriculture really close to Spokane. Spokane is very at the very north edge of the Palouse region, which is massive grain growing region, probably the most productive grain growing region in the country, if not the world, as far as per acre yields go. But you know, the vast majority of that, that we all get shipped out to Japan. So you know, even though it's a massive agricultural region, nobody's eating local grains there, because it's all getting exported. There's a couple of producers now that have started to focus on that local grains. And in fact, part of the cooperative they started a malt house. And they're doing local malt, which of course, all of the micro breweries and home brewers they're just dying for. They just think it's the greatest thing ever. But they're using Palouse grown grains, in their malts and in their beers. 

So you see small flickers of this things you're describing in this area? And I suspect it's probably population. If nothing else, what do you see the potential for those kinds of activities? Certainly, locally, but even in other areas around the state?

Yeah, so I definitely think population has something to do with it, as well as just ingrained culture. So Kansas is a is the wheat state, you know, and even if corn and soy are maybe passing, or maybe the reality is, it's a grain state, and that's, you know, staple crop, but not necessarily where people are looking at getting the variety and nutrition from their diet. And so I guess I shouldn't ignore beef, but

At your peril.

But then, where's the beef going? I mean, even the beef is going to be exported out of the state. And for the most part, so I think population is probably the key driver, you have to have enough population so that that subset of the population who really wants to have local foods is there. But again, the culture here in Kansas may not be quite as focused on local because we have such as, you know, global mindset when it comes to our agriculture, that who's thinking local, I think it's going to be a smaller proportion than states like Washington or California or coastal states on either coast. And so, you know, if you get closer to Kansas City in Wichita, you're starting to have that population.

It's just gonna ask if you're seeing that in, in the larger cities.

In fact, this weekend, I was just giving a couple of talks at the Wichita had a farmers market, entrepreneurship workshop and food producer entrepreneurship workshop. And I think a lot of that is evidence that we have that maybe not critical mass, but we have enough mass that we're approaching critical mass for creating those kinds of environments in those cities. I think Kansas City is probably farther along in which ties in to fashion have been surprised by that. Yeah, bigger cities and having more people both growing and eating and but I think there has to be that critical mass of people who want local food and then you have to have the growers who are willing to stick their necks out to either create a co op and a food hub or to just buck the system and flip for that institutional policy or wishing it to push the envelope.

I've seen certainly in Manhattan in This area there's there is a small population that supports that. And, it's a pretty strong group, but it is not large. Yeah, right. It's just

well, and I mean, to be economically viable, you need enough buyers, right? You're right, your production worthwhile. So there are farmers who farm out of what's the word? It's almost charity. You know how many of our small farmers are just doing it as a hobby, and they have off farm income to support it. And, you know, I, when I was, I was farming while I was in Spokane, and it was great on my taxes, because I'd get a little bit of a write off every year. But at the same time, we were eating really well. So.

So can you talk about more about the social aspects? I mean, so the, the prospects, you're just saying that the prospects for some of these initiatives and for small farming, and maybe some of the permaculture stuff depends on a population, people who are interested? How do you shift that? Should we shift this? Should we should you just be working for the people who are already interested? Would you like to see, you know, more of a shift in the population? How do you make these things happen?

It's a really tough question. You know, you could approach it from several different angles, you know, we as a society are so focused on convenience when it comes to food that we tend to ignore nutrition. And we see that in our health bills, or medical bills and things like that. Obesity rates, cancer rates, people are not feeding themselves well, because they don't take the time to feed themselves. Well, and how do you overcome that? I don't know. It's something that you either have to start in the home in young with young kids in school. But then, you know, is that where the money is? As far as education goes, is in nutrition education? Or is it in STEM? Should these things be the same? Maybe they should.

It's part of the same programs.

And then, you know, there's also the mindset and production side, especially in large scale production, you know, we have this, this call to save or feed the world. And when I think of that statement, and through the lens of sustainability, or social responsibility, and sustainability, you know, if your farm is going out of business, that person cannot feed their family. And if our goal is to feed the world, we I think we need to have the perspective that starts from home, you know, if we have farmers going out of business and having to go move to the city, because they're bankrupt, because they can't they, you know, their yield this year, fell off below that critical threshold of keeping them in business. You know, maybe we should give pause to the dominant mindset of, you know, get bigger get out, because that's not socially sustainable. That's why our rural communities are crumbling. Because we have farms that are getting so big, they're bigger than big cities. Yes. And is that sustainable? You know, I could play into some of the fears of certain classes of people and you know, you get to where the farms so big. What's the end result of that consolidation? The end result is one farm one farmer. And when that happens, who's that farmer? We talked to some conservatives out there, and they might be concerned about having the government run all the food production. But that's, that's the ultimate end of that policy of get bigger get out is that, you know, you have consolidation to the point that it's one farm, one farmer, and who is that? So that could be positive, that could be negative? I think most people would probably think of that as a fairly negative thing. And when you have, you know, farm sizes in the 10s of 1000s of acres. It's not. It's not conducive to community and social responsibility.

Right. Yeah. And so that's how I was just gonna say, so small farming, at least for you is partly about the community and support for the community and sort of having, yeah, and population centers where they're right, you know, more than one farmer around sort of.

Sure. Yeah. Well, on the flip side of that is, is, you know, there was a time where everybody was a farmer, and everybody helped their neighbor out. And that sounds quaint and delightful to somebody. I mean, I think it'd be great if there was some more of that, but at the same time, now, you're talking about economic viability and the ability of our society to advance technologically economically. And there's this conflict between, you know, communities that stay intact and neighbors who like each other and will help each other and being able to advance economically. And where do you, you know, where's the sweet spot between those and I don't have the answer to that. And I doubt anybody does, because it's so subjective and will vary from person to person. But what I can say is, is that You know, in the regime of consolidation that we were in, it's definitely not good for communities. And it's not good for the social sustainability of the system generally.

Yeah, that's it you, you take people out to towns that had had better days. And you hear them saying, Well, where did they all go? You know? Where are they now? And the answer is just almost every place, right? Everywhere but here. 

But here, that's about a month ago, we did a podcast with a historian here on campus that did has done a lot of a lot of work on farming in the Southern Great Plains. And we got into a discussion about small towns in the state of Kansas, and just the 1000s of them that are just not there anymore, that have just disappeared. And they're continuing to disappear. Because as you said, you'd get these farms that are 10,000 acres plus, and where do your neighbors live? You don't have neighbors, and you are always your hospital.

Some people complain that their kids don't want to stay on the farm anymore. And so they have to sell because they don't have anybody to pass it on to or, you know, with that general thing, but you have to look at what's the cause of that if there's no community for the children to have friends and activities and things like that. So I mean, it becomes a chicken and egg question, do you preserve the community to keep the community or do you preserve the farm to keep the farm and those two things don't seem to go together anymore, you can't preserve the farm and the community at least in the dominant global paradigm of agriculture?

Well, at the very start, we talked a bit about some of the other research that was being done here on campus, and what positive impact that can have or just direct relationship it can have with the smaller farming operations. There's a lot of work being done also in Feed the Future Labs, which I'm sure you're aware of, and small farming globally, not just within the state of Kansas. And if I think I'm correct in that small farming basically is a growing enterprise worldwide.

Well, small farming has always been by the numbers the most numerous. As far as the numbers go, there have always been more small farms than big farms. That's just a function of their small farms. And they're easier to start. They're cheaper to start, right. And they're less capital intensive and all that. I do think that in the US, there's a growing interest in small farms, but at the same time, there's also a it's really hard to sell a local potato in any market that's grown on a small farm when you're competing against large farms and export, you know, imports from the northwest or wherever. And so I think there's this tension between the desire for producing and consuming local foods and the ability to afford local foods. You know, where you've got, a lot of these commodity crops are subsidized through crop insurance and things like that. It's not necessarily something that's accessible to small farms. And as a result, they're having to charge the full price of What food should cost, because they're actually paying for all of their that production puts and the production costs, versus the larger scale farms that are focused on one crop where there is an insurance policy to help them overcome yield deficiencies and things like that. And so it makes it really hard for small farms to compete, even for those people who might be more inclined to buy local. If they can't afford it, they can't afford it.

Well, when looking again, kind of stepping back to the, to the science to some of the research that's happening there. I think I remember one of the gentlemen working in the Feed the Future labs talking about. And I don't, I don't remember specifically what the measurement was, but introducing some of these higher technologies to small farmers, where you've got a small farmer in Africa capable of using his phone with an app. And, you know, a camera of some sort to actually do measurements. Do you see that kind of connection between some of these research activities and small farming practices? Or is there is there still a pretty big gap between newer technologies, and what's actually happening on the small farms?

Well, I, from what I have seen, I haven't seen much use of that kind of high technology. In fact, I wasn't even aware that there's an app on your phone that you can take pictures. 

I may have totally misunderstood what he was saying.

I can totally see the applicability of that we're talking about there's drones that are used for that kind of a shooting and I've seen in Washington State I had a colleague in extension that had got a drone that he installed some of these cameras to be able to go out and do assessments of smaller fields. I think vegetable systems tend to be smaller in general than some of the than the grain systems. And so as a result, you know, 100 acre farm is a large vegetable farm, at least in some places, some places 100. Still small, but but that's accessible for using a drone, you can fly a drone over 100 acres in a couple of hours, and then have some data back really quickly. And there are farmers that I know they're doing that as far as the handheld device, I think if I was an urban farmer, and I had access to that, I'd love to be able to use that kind of technology, in order to save myself some money on fertility or, you know, maybe early detection for a disease or past that would be great. I think that that would be embraced. But at the same time, you know, I subscribed to a grower magazine called Growing for market. And I don't see that kind of technology being advertised in that kind of an outlet, which would be something that small scale farmers would read. And that's where they would find that. Yeah, that's one place. I mean, in Kansas, we do have some vegetable specialists in our extension, but not too many. And I don't know what they're putting out. But that would be the kind of thing that if it was there, I'd love to see them putting that kind of information in the hands of growers. But I'd be fascinated by it. I think it would be great if it was applicable at that scale.

Yeah, I forget how much that was aspirational or experimental still, or I don't think I think that particular project was Yeah, I don't think that one was yet describing something production. 

But in the aspirational side of it, I mean, in my mind, I can see some of that kind of thing happening. I can perceive that that's possible. 

To be able to go out and yeah, use your smartphone, snap a picture and know how much nitrogen you need to put on. Right. Yeah, that week. Yeah. That'd be amazing. You know, contour plot.

Spend great conversation Absolutely. 

This has been spectacular.

Hopefully I got my foot in my mouth anyway. No, that's great. Yeah, my coming to vegetables might have been a little long.

No, not at all. 

Do you have any follow up questions for us?

Oh, I hadn't even thought about that. I guess it'd be great to come up with collaborations with folks. I mean, we have the student farm and we have the ability to test some things on a smaller scale that may be applicable to small farms, but if it has applicability outside of that scale, as well, I mean, we're we just acquired some Emmer wheat some Ethiopian blue changed Emmer wheat with the idea of trying to do some intercropping work with it. Nice. I don't know if you're familiar with Masanobu Fukuoka is One Straw Revolution. It was one of those that inspired some of the back to the land and some of those kinds of movements in the 70s 60s. But he was a plant pathologist with the Japanese Government and left to go back to his family farm and over 40 years had developed a system of intercropping where rice dryland Rice was his primary crop. And he was intercropping, a winter grain as a cover for the winter. And he had root crops like radish and things like that. And then vegetable crops. And he had them all intercrop together. And he said it took him about 20 years to finally master it. But at that point, all he was doing was a little bit of sowing and a lot of reaping. And the system basically ran itself and he claims in the book that at that point 20 years into it that he was achieving greater per acre yields on his rice than the paddy systems were in conventional agriculture. So I was thinking to myself, you know, if we could come up with a system that worked in the Great Plains with, you know, rice probably isn't the best one to go with here. But you know, so I mean, we were going to look at the Emmer. I picked the Emer because Costco stopped carrying their Pharaoh wheat and we were really big fans of it, and I'd buy some of that wheat from the farm if we were able to get it.

So there are students who are interested in being out in the farm or you have room for a lot more.

So actually, we just got our small farm practicum approved for the catalog. It's now Hort 591 I do have a prerequisite in there that you've taken either fruit or vegetable production, but for non majors, we've been making exceptions to get them out there and try to utilize what skills they've been developing in their own programs to help the farm grow. So we had a marketing student out there last summer that helped us market our field day that we put on. So it'd be great if people were interested in wanting to work out on the farm. There's the Hort 591 that will be offered this summer. Next fall are our student farm club. They meet generally on Thursdays and they also get out to the farm most Saturdays to have more workdays this last Saturday. The previous week, I had tapped some maple trees. So they went out on Saturday and collected some water from the maple trees. And we're boiling that down. And we're all super amused to see how you can go from as one person put it, water that tasted like I was licking a tree to sweet, sweet sugary goodness. That's amazing. So we have work days out there on a regular basis on Saturdays. 

And you have students that work on local farms as well. I'm aware. And yeah, in turn on some of the local farms and so that's Yeah, I think there. There's potential available around the area of tours that are interested.

And for other people are interested in permaculture small farming techniques in general, the kinds of things that you're working on and what where do they turn.

So extension is always a good place to turn, especially in the counties that have horde agents. The Kansas permaculture Institute's a great place to look for information on permaculture, especially education in permaculture. At some point, I'd like to put on the catalog, a permaculture course there's currently an intro to permaculture course on the catalog, but it's an ag ideas course that's delivered through North Carolina State. I think we've had four students taken the last five years so it hasn't been big. But I think if we were to get that established here on campus, I know University of Kansas has a permaculture design course they offer every semester and they've been getting 20 to 30 students per semester to take that so I think it would be a benefit to have. Great.

Well, thanks so much for being here. Yes, thanks a bunch.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

Governmental organizations, universities and the food industry carry out research relating to food-system challenges. These challenges can deal with agronomic, nutrition, engineering, safety and even sociological impacts on food systems worldwide. Today’s guest, Jeanette Thurston, newly appointed director of the K-State Food Science Institute, has had an influence on many of those supporting organizations and now works with diverse interests in the area of food science at K-State. Jeanette brings a rich background in the science of food system-related research that has led to advances in areas as diverse as norovirus detection and water quality run off from small-scale dairies. 

Jeanette specializes in water-related public health, waterborne and foodborne virology and protozoal parasites, and food safety. In this episode, Jeanette shares some of her work with university- and government-based research and discusses her goals as she embarks on the organization and future direction of the integrated work carried out at the Food Science Institute.

Transcript:

Bringing Diversity and Change to the Way we Look at Food Systems. A Discussion with Dr. Jeanette Thurston, Director, K-State Food Science Institute

Another requirement for a lot of these grants was including the social sciences, which is an incredibly valuable piece that we never thought of.

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

I’m Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science. 

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a Food Scientist.

Hello everybody and welcome back. Governmental organizations, universities and the food industry at large carry out research relating to food system challenges. These challenges can deal with agronomic nutrition, engineering, safety and even sociological impacts of food systems worldwide. Today's guest, Dr. Jeanette Thurston, newly appointed director of the K State Food Science Institute, has had influence on many of those supporting organizations and now works with diverse interests in the area of Food Science here at K State. Jeanette brings a rich background in the science of food systems related research that has led to advances in areas as diverse as norovirus detection to water quality runoff from small scale dairies. Dr. Thurston specializes in water related public health, waterborne and foodborne virology and protozoa parasites, and food safety. In this podcast Jeanette shares some of her work with university and government based research and discusses her goals as she embarks on the organization and future direction of the integrated work carried out at K state's Food Science Institute. Good morning, Jeanette. Welcome to the podcast.

Thanks so much. It's great to be here.

There's clearly a lot of microbiological work being done at K State. And we've touched on a few of those in recent podcasts, particularly those areas that impact soil and soil health. Looking at your past work, and some of your experience, you have worked in these areas, but your work may have taken a little bit of a different twist. And you can explain that or tell me I'm wrong as we get into this podcast, but it seems that some of your focus was looking a little bit more possibly on contamination issues, instead of maybe soil health soil contamination or contamination of water. I would like to talk more about that as we move into it. And again, you can correct me on what I've taken a look at there. But what I'd like to start out with honestly is a bit of background on you who you are, where you came from, what got you interested in the kind of work you're doing today.

Oh, that'd be great. Thanks, Maureen. So actually, I was born in Illinois. We moved when I was very young to Tucson, Arizona. My dad decided want to be a cowboy. So we just all there. And you know, I think my love for science really began when I was very young. When in Tucson at that time there was it was a very small city there wasn't like right now Tucson, for example, has about 100 million, I mean, a million people in the city, but back then it was much, much smaller and where we lived was very rural. We lived in about five acres across Tucson in the Sonoran Desert. And if you've never been to Tucson, I highly recommend all everyone to get out there and take a look at it's absolutely beautiful. It's not what I think a lot of people think as tumbleweeds and nothingness. It's actually has a great deal of diversity, both floral and fauna. And so you know, I like to say that was kind of my living laboratory growing up is playing outside. I was a tomboy, I played outside from sunup to sundown, playing with corny toads and lizards and making it farms. And anyway, so, you know, thanks to my parents that they moved us out there and provided such a wonderful childhood. So that's where it began. And then, you know, I had some, I went off to the University of Arizona for my bachelor's degree, I had some actually I ended up having a child in the middle of that. So with Ashley coming along, I decided, You know what I need to find a career that's really going to support us. And so I went to a community college it was Pima Community College in Tucson, and that is where I met a professor who really ignited my passion for Microbiology. And so what I neglected to say is I went there because I thought I'm going to become a nurse, because it's two years easy out and get a job anywhere in the country. I can support us just fine because by the way, I was a single parent. And so She ignited this fire. And my parents saw that passion in me and said, You know what you love microbiology so much. You know, your family's really important. Your quality of life is really important. And let me tell you what Jeanette my dad said, Let me tell you what, Jeanette, you're going to spend as much if not more time in your job than you are at home. And it's so critically important that you love what you do. And so I headed back to the University of Arizona Long story short, I got my bachelor's there. In the course of that I met Dr. Charles Gerber, who a lot of people you can find him on the news was Dr. Germ. He does a lot of that work, but he's actually very well known in the water quality public health arena. And so I didn't, I did a internship in his lab, my very last semester of my bachelor's degree, and he came to me, sat me down, and he said, so we can do with the rest of your life, Jeanette, and of course, yeah, I’ve got a little girl. And I was like, I'm going to get a job and, you know, support us. And he said, You know, I think you need to stay for your master's degree. And so I did, and I worked on constructed wetlands, I looked at the fate and dissemination of waterborne pathogens in those systems. As I'm sure all of your all the folks who are listening in today know that Arizona doesn't have a whole heck of a lot of water. So constructed wetlands are a really nice way to have beautiful park like environments, especially in the northern part of the state. And so we looked at those systems for reducing pathogens so that we're taking wastewater and treating that waste like human wastewater and treating that in these constructive wetland. So that was my master's degree. And so once again, Dr. Gerber has looked at me and he said, I really can go out and get a degree gonna, what do you can do with the rest of your life? And I was like, Well, I'm gonna get a job. Like I told you last time we had this conversation and see how far they are. And he's really thinking I need to stay anyway. So I end up staying for my PhD as well. And so for my PhD I really honed in on understanding the disinfection efficacy of drinking water disinfectant. So chlorine and chlorine dioxide, ozone UV on viral pathogens, also did some surface water work looking at pathogens and surface waters that are used for fresh produce irrigation in Latin American countries. So anyway, so that's actually my story. I mean, it was thanks to a lot of important people along the way, you know, starting with my parents and the way we grew up. And again, my parents were outdoor folks, we went camping all the time. And so I just a love for the environment. And then that individual there at Pima Community College, my teacher who showed me the love for microbiology, and then continuing on and Chuck Gerber's lab and him having the confidence in me and remember I was at Well, one thing I forgot to tell you is, I'm the first one in my family to get a bachelor's degree. And so and certainly the first one to get, you know, a graduate degrees as well. And so that was a big thing for Dr. Gerber to take me on. And I was a single mom, by the way, as well. So I had a lot going on, and for his confidence and his belief in me and supporting me through the way it was. Anyway, he really set off my career quite well.

Wow, that sounds great. Yeah. what a wonderful amount of support you had for somebody, obviously, that believed in what you were able to do. Yeah, yeah. To read on through it. Very fortunate. Yeah.

So how'd you end up in Washington, then?

Oh, okay. So I missed that step. So. So for my first job after finishing up my PhD, I took a position with the USDA, the United States Department of Agriculture, their Intramural Research Branch is called the Agricultural Research Service. And so I was offered a position there, I had a couple other opportunities, but they were postdoc opportunities. And so you know, as I said, Before, I was a single parent. And for me, the safe bet was a full time permanent position. And it was quite a nice position. It was research microbiologist, what they call a Kaplan, scientist in Lincoln, Nebraska. So I went from Tucson, Arizona, living there most all my life pretty much to Lincoln, Nebraska, a little bit cold, a little bit. A little bit different environment. But what a fantastic opportunity. My boss was Dr. Jim scheppers. And again, I've been lucky throughout my career, I have all these people who've really supported me and believed in me, and Dr. Shepherd is certainly one of those as well. And so I started a research laboratory there and I had graduate students and undergraduate students and gotten in grant funding. Of course, agricultural research, service, scientists also get funding from the USDA, so that helps support my program as well. I was there for eight years I loved what I did was a fantastic place to work. I did a wide variety of research in that area, from working directly with small dairy producers on their farms trying to understand ways that we can treat their wastewater so they weren't getting in trouble for the leaking of that wastewater into roadside ditches, which as you know, is a violation and you can have EPA knocking on your door for those kinds of things. So worked with some of them looking again, you know, that was my background, my master's degrees and constructed wetlands, we looked at constructed wetlands treatment of this kind of wastewater in Nebraska. And so myself, and actually, that was my first experience working with Extension specialists. And so it was a wonderful pairing between the two of us because he was able to identify the needs, we were able to come in and offer solutions to the needs of the producers need needed, excuse me. And anyway, so I worked on that project we worked on cattle feedlot yards, we also looked at wastewater spray irrigation and understanding the fate and dissemination of pathogens from those environments, either from runoff or from aerosol drift. I think those are the some of the major prize, I continued to work in the water quality area looking at drinking water disinfection, continuing on with UV disinfection and some other disinfectants as well. So that was eight years in Nebraska, absolutely loved it. But I'm high energy person, as you can probably tell, because my hands are moving. None of a nobody can see this, but I'm a very high energy person. And so and I like to change things up. So I was ready for a career change. And I had to serve on a peer review panel at what used to be the National Institute of Food and Agriculture previously was an was named CSREES cooperative research and I always forget extension, and there's two E's there and I never remember which one goes first, last service. But anyway, so I was asked to serve on a panel for their water and water quality program back at that time. And, and the program, the panel manager had asked me to serve a second year. And by the time the second year rolled around, I got to know the National Program Leader versus panel manager actually was from K State by the way, Dr. Bill Hargrove Oh, yeah, yeah. So he's fantastic anyway, was so I guess, thanks to him, that I got my last position at the National Institute of Agriculture. But anyway, I said, you know, science leadership at the national level, sounds very interesting to me, this is something that maybe I might want to do. And lo and behold, a position came up for to be a national program leader for food safety, I threw my name in the hat. And I was lucky enough to be chosen. And I took my family and drove across halfway across the country again. So halfway across from Tucson, and then my parents were teasing me saying, you just keep getting further and further from us, right. And anyway, so I started at the National Institute of Food and Agriculture in 2009. I was there for 10 years, at a couple different positions there. As I said, national program leader for food safety, where I oversaw along with my colleagues, I wasn't the only national program leader in that program, but we oversaw the portfolio, food safety, of course. And then again, I learned that job and I felt like I was doing it pretty well. And I was ready for a change. And so started looking for new positions. And one came up at the National Institute of Food and Agriculture at my agency, and it was a science program officer. And that position was to help oversee the entire science portfolio of the agency alongside the Associate Director of Programs and the director, of course, and so threw my hat in the ring. And I got that. And I did that for the last five years of my tenure at at National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Wow, that sounds very impressive. I mean, you've Busy, busy, busy and diverse, I think. And you've seen and done a lot. I would imagine at those at those in those NIFA positions, that you saw just an enormous amount of not only research, but activities that moved over into the industry side of things. And so when you're talking about food safety, this is talking about meat safety, generally, is that not true? Or it was the food safety on that side of it over all foods?

It was over all foods. Yeah, yeah. So there's a wide variety of different programs. And when I first started, they had a fairly general program. And for those of you who are aware of the programs, we had it NIFA prior to becoming NIFA. In 2010, we had a real paradigm shift in our programming, right? And so that we had our very first political director, publicly appointed director. And that director came in and said, you know, what, we need to do things big, It was focus, scale, and impact were his three words. And so sure enough, we were told to sit down and think on that level. And so 2010 We actually committed $100 million in the food safety program. And that, so you're thinking meat safety because of the sugar toxigenic E Coli coordinated agricultural project, which we committed 25 million to but we also had some other programs too. So we also looked at viruses and food. And as you know, or I'm sure I'm sure Maureen, you know, that viruses and food, of course, are more from the hand food handlers, right? So we had a $25 million project on that. And by the way, $25 million for our little agency was huge. It was hadn't been done before. Our climate change programs were committing, I think it was $40 million or bioenergy, $45 million. These were huge grants. And actually really important to the work that you're doing Maureen is that these grants were required multidisciplinary teams and interdisciplinary. And I would argue, maybe even it would have made them even more competitive. I can't speak for all the programs for that transdisciplinary approach. And so those teams that were picked that year, as you know, K State was a co PI on Michigan, toxigenic, e coli. And beef grant, I think that was led out, I don't think I know, it was led out of University of Nebraska, and the one for viruses was led out of North Carolina. Dr. Leon Juncus, was the lead of that. And these were huge teams with multiple universities, tackling challenges, you know, looking at opportunities, but also taking those harder challenges from all the way from in the case of produce, for example, it'd be when it's grown, you know, from from production all the way to the consumer, they are tackling those social challenges as well. You know, thinking about the virus cat, for example, I think I had told Dr. Jacobs that, you know, this was near and dear to my heart, because my background is enteric viruses, enteric viruses or foodborne viruses, which are borne viruses, you know, they go hand in hand. And I told her because when I was in grad school, norovirus was a tough nut to crack. This virus, by the way, is that virus that you hear about that takes down, you know, large, a cruise ship, right, yeah. And believe me, you know, when you have it, because you're out for 24 to 48 hours, and it's just miserable. But anyway, that was an organism that I worked on in grad school, but not the human noroviruses, we use surrogates. It's because we didn't have a way to culture it and use it and study it in the lab, which was really important for the kind of work particularly that I was doing. And so I told her, when she got the grant, I said, Boy, if you guys could crack that nut You have made my day. And sure enough, they say, I'm getting goose bumps. So I can be a huge nerd when it comes to this stuff. But anyway, so they did crack that nut, they were able to culture using a very complex now it's not widely used, because it is very complex culture system. But boy, you know, the rewards for the position that I had at NIFA were tremendous. While I wasn't actually doing the research, I certainly had a heavy hand in enabling that research and pointing the direction. So I think maybe I've gone off from your question. That was very, very exciting. 

That is exciting. That's a good story to tell a good story.

And that you're raising some things about the way science works and food policy and other things work that maybe a lot of people don't really, you know, understand sort of the role of program officers or government agencies for helping shape, you know, what gets done, and then, you know, you so you played couple roles, like one of them, was that right? And then the other one was, was thinking more, more in the regulatory lines, too, right? Or? 

No, no? Yeah. So for USDA, the regulatory agency would be your food safety inspection, service FSI s. And throughout. Yeah, yeah, I get it. Well, you know, and I don't even know if I could tell you all the different agencies and their missions. USC is a huge department enormous. It's a second biggest department behind DoD Department of Defense. So, no, I worked for the Agricultural Research Service early in my career, which was, which is the Intramural Research Branch of the USA. So I was, I was a scientist conducting research and publishing papers, and you know, graduating students, just like you all do here at K State, I just reported to a different person, right. And actually, I was housed, I was housed at University of Nebraska Lincoln, as there are a lot here. You know, I gotta tell you, that is the most fantastic partnership. It benefits everyone, at least, at least in my experience. And then I worked for the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, which is what we call the Extramural Research Branch of the USDA. So we're the ones who we have oversight of the capacity funding that you all get here at K State and other land grant institutions receive, we also provide external grant funding opportunities. And so I, maybe I'm reading into your comment, but perhaps everybody wants to understand how we make those decisions on what kind of science and when I say science, my definition of science coming from USDA includes research, education and extension work outreach work. So well, we collect stakeholder input, and I think one thing that I always like to say as a national program leader when I was in my previous position talking to faculty members that either came to DC to visit us or when we went out and gave presentations was, you need to reach out and provide input to these folks in these positions, because that's how the science priorities are determined. It's through the current literature. It's through important information that's provided by, you know, faculty, and even students and staff and, you know, people all over this country. And, you know, I think it was a really proud moment for the Associate Director of Programs. Dr. Merrill Broussard, you know, firstly, he passed away last year, but two years ago, he implemented a really fantastic stakeholder input approach that we hadn't done as an agency before, where they go around the last two years, they've gone around to four different locations, regional locations, to be able to collect on the ground stakeholder input from my mom and dad, from small producers, from small farmers, from small processors from, from people in academia, from people, even at the high schools, because remember, the mission is Research, Education extensions. So anyway, so collecting that kind of information and collecting information, current literature from participating on high level committees, either around the government or within professional organizations, all this information is gathered, and then really a team of national program leaders gets together. And they sit and discuss what are the top priorities that we're going to be addressing, for example, with the flagship competitive grants program, afri. And they'd probably be having those conversations probably right about now as well.

So with the work that you're doing their work that you did there, now that you're with us, it's no longer the case. What kind of overlap and discussion did you have with groups, it's at FDA. So you're doing a lot of research on a lot of different food products, it's in the food safety side of things, obviously, they're going to be the ones that are going to be setting, setting the requirements and regulations there was a good connection between our groups? 

There absolutely was so when I first started, actually, we had a joint program together, and it was looking at, I see if I remember, right, it was looking at methods for detection pathogens in the environment. And as you may already know, that one of the limiting steps is really being able to extract micro organisms from an environmental sample that boy, that's a limiting step, we can detect to the end of the day using molecular techniques, because they're very sensitive. But if you can't pull it out of that sample matrix kills you. Yeah, that's right. The Matrix skills. Yeah. So that was one person, we had a joint program with them. And also the food safety outreach program. That's a joint program, joint partnership between USDA and FDA, and they work very, very closely together on that program and identifying from what I remember from identifying priorities and how to actually develop that program in the first place, that person has been going on for, I don't know, three to five years now. And the actually, the funding just increased again this year. So it's very well supported.

So if I want to ask like a little bit more just about the role of government in sort of shaping sort of what happens, right. And in, in the food and agriculture world, and like, in all these different ways, right, sort of, there's the pushing of the, you know, particular priorities for sciences, right, you know, the major needs that we have, right, and then there's the using of that information to shape regulation, and, you know, sort of what, what are your views about sort of what you know, from from that other side that, you know, you saw being in Washington, seeing the way these pieces, you know, kind of work together sometimes don't work together? Do you have views on? You know, the whole mix of it? All right, in terms of how, how we do better and in the world of food safety?

So let me make sure I understand your question. So it's understanding the role of government and setting the stage for the science that needs to get done to tackle those challenges of bigger need. It's very difficult, in my experience, identifying the highest priorities, because what I can tell you is, well, you know, when I was at NIFA, National Institute of Food and Agriculture when I was there, we were very happy with the increases that we got every year from Congress. However, a $1.6 billion budget is nothing in comparison to science organization like NIH. And I would argue, and I'm sure my NIH colleagues would disagree, but I'm gonna say it anyway, I would argue that agriculture, the breadth of agricultural science is much, much larger. And the challenges all along the way are bigger, of course. Maybe it's just because I'm, I'm biased. But that's what I guess my point is, is we have a very, very small budget, to be able to tackle all the challenges in this country as well as the global challenges as well. And so that's what was very difficult as being able to take you think about this huge funnel of all this input that you had. And you had to funnel that down and be able to prioritize, okay, this is the big. So for example, in 2010, what are our biggest challenges? Well, we wrapped our heads around five different areas that year, it was viruses, we burned viruses, it was shiga toxigenic e coli. It was understanding gut ecology and shutting of pathogens. In that case, that was sugar toxigenic e coli, we had an emerging issues, which was kind of a bigger bucket. So it's kind of a catch all, but it was looking forward to having a proactive approach. I think that's actually another point I'd like to make is, I think the agency prior at least in our food safety portfolio, we were really tackling the here and now we weren't thinking proactively looking into the future. And I think that needs to be done as well. But again, with a very, very small budget, 100 million sounds like a lot. But I'll tell you what, that 100 million we mortgaged ourselves for five years to carry out what we did in 2010, which really tied our hands behind our backs as far as new funding for new programs. I don't. Does that help answer?

Yeah. And certainly, we saw that at the principal investigator level, in 2010, because the world kind of turned upside down on us, or, you know, to different to different areas, which is fine. But then it also affected follow on the size and frequency of follow on awards as well. But we'd never been faced with a group that prioritized the way it did. So that was our we had to relearn the way we wrote grants.

Yeah, well, you know, not only the priority areas that were chosen, I mean, I will, I will say that when I'm talking about those prior to that 100 million, that was just for what we called our challenge areas, we still had quite a bit of funding in our foundational applied science program. So there was still a lot of opportunities there. And that bucket continues to grow. But right, so we were focusing our big dollars. And the other part of that was requiring integrated projects. I remember that's integration of research and in our case, for the food safety program, it was integration of all three science areas research, education and extension, which we hadn't asked anyone to do before. So that was really hard to do. And I think people still struggle with that it is, it is a real challenge.

Could you say something about the rationale for that? Why do you think all three need to be in? 

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. So when you think about, so research can be done. And it's fantastic when it's done in a publication is written. That's great for fellow scientists. But that information really needs to be delivered to the people who the science was, was actually done for, right? Yeah, the people who need to use it. So that's where extension comes in. And then as far as education, we need to be training the next generation of scientists who will be tackling these challenges, the current challenges we have, we're not able to solve them, but then the future challenges as well. So all three are critically important. And for us to be advancing agriculture, and making sure that we're highly competitive globally, and making sure we're keeping our environment, you know, safe. And anyway, does that make sense?

Yeah.

And you said there are challenges people, right. So kind of new for a lot of the groups that you were funding? Right. And so can you say something about the challenges of putting all three of those pieces? 

Yeah, so, and chime in Jon. But it's, you know, I know, for myself, now, my experience in Nebraska, I didn't do any teaching when I was at Nebraska. So that would have been a challenge for me to come in and bring in an education piece, I was working close to the extension. So that was easy for me, but remembers the some of our sciences, they're doing fundamental science, in their laboratories that are interacting with others. You know, so one, building those relationships, and having those interactions of who even to work with, I would think, would have been a little bit challenging. And so back in 2010, what I don't think any of our programs offered I could be wrong was we didn't we didn't allow for planning grants. So this was, boom, here's, you know, all these great opportunities, but you need to have a fully integrated proposal. So people were probably scrambling for those collaborations and those connections. Quick, can we add you to this. And that's the next problem that I was gonna bring up. So a peer review panel, as you can imagine, and it's easy to be on a it's easy to react to something that's written God knows. I know that it's easy for me to tear apart something that somebody else already wrote. Because you're reacting to it. So, you know, your pure peer review panel took a look at those and said, Oh, we can absolutely tell that this research team went over to this extension group and said, Can you just add a couple more objectives. And so it looks like a tag on. So you don't really have that complete integration, that back and forth conversation and planning that needs to happen to really, truly make an impact on production practices, or mitigation strategies, or whatever it is that you're trying to tackle. So that integration is incredibly, incredibly important.

And hard, hard, hard, 

because you find, yeah, people find themselves sitting in their little castles. And then and then meeting, yeah, late in the funding year, to find out what everybody has been doing. And then they attempting to write that up as an integrated effort and serve. So really a pseudo integration, yeah. Or was 

And possibly realize the things they missed along the way they should have been focusing on as a team. 

And that's why the planning grants were so incredibly important because PI started to get the idea. But the other thing, I think I would I can't believe I'm saying this, I'm speaking in favor of the department heads. is the best department heads kept people's nose to the grindstone on that, and Oh, very good. You know, that's I'm Yes, I think I think it was, and that was part of the part of the success of some of the grants that have been more have lived up to the expectation of being able to deal with the outreach as well as with the hard science.

And I can tell you that, you know, I was there long after 2010, you know, and I can tell you that the quality of those proposals, integrated appraisals really significantly increase. And I would like to think that we're and I think I know we're having more impacts with that kind of work than we would with the kind of work that's done individually, rather than cross communicating across pollinating if he will. I think another another requirement for a lot of these grants was including the social sciences, which is an incredibly valuable piece that we never thought of previous well. And by the way, speaking of stakeholder input, that came about because and I don't remember the name of the organization, but their professional organization, I believe, had reached out, drafted a white paper got in the hands of the director of NIF at the time, which was Dr. Sonny Ramaswamy. And that went a long ways because hey, guess what you saw the every one of our almost every one of our solicitations, saying you must include an understanding of social behavioral sciences. 

That's been popping up in grant applications over and over since then, too. It's amazing how frequently the social science side has been put being pulled back into it, which is clear those agencies listen. Yeah, they did. Absolutely did. Well, now you have moved then from the next activity to Kansas State University to take over the Food Science Institute. Yeah. And a little background on what brought you to that point. And maybe we'll discuss a little about what your goals are with the Food Science Institute. 

What it is, yeah, so. So I grew up, if you will, at a land grant university, University of Arizona, and then I moved on, even though I work for the USDA, I was on campus at University of Nebraska as adjunct. I had graduate students that I advised and I moved on to DC and had that job. And my former boss, Ashley Broussard would say to me, you know, and it was an eval, I think it's an evaluation time right now here, right? And he would sit me down, he would say, so what's next career development? What's next? And some of the things that I had said to him. I think it's maybe even my first year working with him. As I said, at some point, I want to get back to academia. Because this is the truth. And I'm going to get goose bumps again. The most rewarding part of my career has been mentoring students. There is nothing more fantastic than mentoring students. I have one short story if I can share loosely. So I one of my first graduate students in Nebraska didn't have a lot of them because I wasn't there that long. But one of the few. She started with me and I did the same sit down. So she was an undergraduate in my lab, and it was getting ready for her to finish up her bachelor's degree. And I had the same talk with her as Dr. Gerba had with me, I sat her down because I saw real potential. Her name's Amy Kaler. And I said, somebody can do the rest of your life. You know, what do you want to do the rest of your life? And I'll never forget, she said, I want to work for the CDC. And I said, Okay, I said, Tell you what, why don't you stay here, get your Masters with me. And you will have the tools you need to be competitive for that kind of a position. And so sure enough, she did she stayed in my lab she worked at on an emerging pathogen called microsporidia. Anyway, gets her master's degree. And I have some, some friends over at CDC and one of them said to me, Hey, we're looking for, you know, lab manager. Do you know anyone. And I was like, Amy Caylor is getting ready to finish her degree. Anyway, long story short, she now works for CDC loves her job I keep, I mean, I've lost touch with her over the years, but I keep up with her, you know, online, you're looking, she's publishing, she's, she's still there. Anyway, that gives me goosebumps. And that is incredibly, incredibly rewarding for me to see my students be successful and get the kinds of careers and lives that they wanted. So anyway, so I want to get back to academia. And I heard about this job. And I thought I had a little bit earlier than I thought I would leave the federal government. I left at 18 years. But I thought, you know, I know folks at K State I know the kind of work they do. I know, especially know quite a few people in the Food Science Institute. It's a good place to be, I'm gonna throw my hat in the ring. And so I did and here I am. So…

Yeah, very, very good. So you came here? And what is the Food Science Institute at K State?

So I've been here about six, seven months. Now I have to stop saying six months. So seven months? Oh, my goodness, it's been a long time. So the Food Science Institute, it's not a separate department, food science program, the undergraduate program is actually under the Department of Animal Sciences and industry. But the Food Science Institute is an interdisciplinary institute that has a graduate programs. The the focus of the institute, of course, is the same mission as everyone else is research, education, extension, and we function all those areas. We have faculty from all over the university, I believe it's five colleges and 13 departments. And we will actually need to expand that. Because there's some new areas like artificial intelligence that we need to start making some good connections. There's a lot of good opportunities speaking with the federal government. So yeah, so we work across the university and tackling important challenges and food science, food safety.

Are you going to are you going to be having students of your own in the position that you've got? I mean, that you had mentioned that that was something that, yeah, definitely peaked your interest.

It does. So actually just happened to take on a new graduate student. She's a master's level student, she's going to be doing a systematic review, understanding water quality, and you know, that's my guess, selfishly, water quality, but its impact on fresh produce production. And the United States, Mexico, Canada. Anyway, so she's just getting started on that. So yeah, I'm pretty excited. I have my first student. We'll see where that leads, I think the dean is, talk to me about, would you like to get back into research and have a lab again, so what we'll see where things take us, but what I've told him and I've told others is, I need to understand my job. I've these last seven months now, it's been a lot of learning, meeting a lot of people understanding, you know, what the Food Science Institute does what who's in the Food Science Institute, meeting stakeholders. This week, for example, we're heading out to meet some folks at Corbion and National Beef. And so getting to know some of our important stakeholders, industry stakeholders, as well as other stakeholders. I've gotten to meet a couple donors since I've been here as well. And really trying to understand the whole landscape of the Food Science Institute and really trying to be able to narrow down and identify those areas that I need to be focused on. So I do have some priorities for this year, like everyone's priority, it's to increase enrollment. So how do we go about doing that? And I think in food science and marine, John, you can certainly chime in, I think a lot of people don't quite understand what food science is very true. Very true. So actually, one of the things we'll be talking to Corbion about is some of their food science outreach that they're doing in the Kansas City area. And maybe we can get some good ideas from them. And we're doing a lot of recruitment activities and thinking about increasing enrollment. But also the other part of that is also thinking about ways that we can retain students as well, and how we can increase the breadth of both our on campus but also our online programs.

I think one of the unique… go ahead. 

No, I was just gonna ask. So what are the major misconceptions about food science?

Oh, so chime in, feel free to chime in? So a lot of folks, you know, as a kid, what's food science. And so I've been in some of these recruiting activities. Since I've been here. I've been fortunate enough to be in quite a few and whether it's junior high kids, or if it's high school kids, and I've actually we've had some that are elementary school kids. A lot will tell you that it's the chef at your restaurant.

Culinary science, which can certainly overlap.

Yep, yep. And so then I understand that there's actually a lot of science and I think the other piece of it, there are so many job opportunities of food sciences that interdisciplinary science, whether your passion is biology or if it's getting a mystery of his engineering or if it's nutrition, there are just so many incredible opportunities. And the other thing that I'd like to add, and I didn't know this before coming here is that almost every single one of our undergraduate students has a job, undergraduate soon it says a job upon graduating, yes, they do. And they paid darn well. And while that may not speak a lot to this, the prospective students that are coming in mom and dad are like…

It shouldn't be the entire motivation for a particular major, but it doesn't hurt. Yeah, well, for that,

Just I guess the point is, there are so many opportunities, and we're just and you know, companies like corbion, they're doing this outreach. But one, they have an incredible passion for STEM. But they but they also need to fill these very important positions that at their companies. And so there's a real glut. And so I think we can help fill that.

And I think a couple of departments that make up the institute have had longer and more effective histories of interacting with industry. Yeah. And I'll speak for my and Maureen, right, the great. We really had no place else to go for funding. And so oh, yeah. Yeah, for a very long time. And so we learned to build relationships, which turned into recruiting relationships, which turned into internship relationships, oftentimes, which then turns into employment. Opportunity. That's great. So it was driven by necessity. That's a lead. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. But that's, still a good thing. Animal Science, of course. Oh, yeah. Animal the same, the same thing?

Yeah, they have a lot more students.

And he built relationships with they do producers with funders with processors? 

Yeah, and that's, yeah, one of the things that I've seen, since I've been working in the position that I've got on campus with the interdisciplinary approach to things is actually getting these people to want to work together how to how are you kind of you do have a lot of people in a lot of different departments, my guess is that you got a pretty small core that actually worked together a lot and a lot of peripheral that are on the list. But it's really tough pulling them in how, what's your What are your thoughts on how that's gonna change moving forward? Or maybe morph into a more collegial working environment? Yeah, collegial is the wrong word. But more of a, you know, an accepting that this is the right direction to go.

Yeah. So there are, you know, just like, when I was doing research, there was a few people that I worked with only so much, so many hours in the day, you know, and so I think I think initially, is just getting everybody to know each other. Not to say they didn't know each other before. So one of the things that we've started as regular meetings, I'm not sure how that's going. Because it seems to be to your point that there's a core group that always attends so obviously need to think about some additional additional methods of getting people to talk and actually just share and what I can tell you in our faculty meetings, just going around the room and sharing what my most recent research ideas are, or what, you know, a grant that I just submitted, or new graduate students that are aboard or a trip to Caribbean, and this is what they're interested in, just talking to each other, I think is a good way to start. But I think also this next so I have like, as I said, I had sketched out my own priorities for this next year. And one of those is to get us talking more about research opportunities. When I say research, I should probably say science opportunities, back to my own definition, science opportunities, and getting everybody in room who's interested and going from one of these larger grants, let's start talking about all the expertise that you all bring and what your ideas are. And let's put a grant and together I think that's probably the best way to facilitate those kinds of discussions. I know Maureen and I have talked about at least one idea. But you know, there's a lot of good opportunities right now, whether it's the NSF NIH AI opportunity right now, or it's one of those sustainable ag systems grants that the USDA has, I think there's a lot of opportunities for us to stretch ourselves even beyond the Food Science Institute faculty that's listed on the webpage. So you know, for example, I know that we would love to get some folks from computer science and food science faculty. So that's all on me. And I have I plan on doing that here this next this next year, so 

Hopefully I can help you with that a little bit as well. Absolutely. Yeah. Anything that I can do. 

I've seen those announcements come through the email of the faculty meeting and like in person, I think it's absolutely brilliant. Because you've been given sanction by the people that you work for to do this. So their expectations and as the faculty Appreciate that that sanction has been given that there are expectations, they're going to be more likely to participate. There's no, there's always a fraction of the faculty that say, if we just wait long enough, they'll go away.

Well, you know, the my impression actually isn't my impression. And the time that I've been here isn't that folks don't want to go after the things they don't want to they do want to work together, not that they don't want to work together. It's that they're doing their own thing, what they need, is that, that person to come in and say, and, you know, get them all together in a room and say, Hey, let's talk, what do we want to do here? That's been my impression. So you know, we had a faculty meeting recently, we're talking about, you know, a big meeting. Well, you both know, the IFT meeting. And so my question to them was, well, have you organized it before? And, you know, let's think about different ways of, you know, our booth because they have booths at those meetings. And traditionally, we talk about our undergraduate graduate online programs. And I said, Well, you know, this is industry, boy, you know, it's probably a lot of good research opportunities, maybe we can highlight some, some of our research as well there. And, and how do you guys organize that? You know, how do you discuss getting prepared for this? And it was like, you know, kind of crickets? And well, we really haven't. And well, you know, one person takes it on, and they do it. That's right. Yes, that's usually the way. And it's because there isn't that middle person who takes leadership over, you know, it's not gonna be just ideas and their ideas, but I'm going to be the one that pulls them all together and get some talking and identifying what we need to do at those kinds of meetings to be effective. But I think that's I think that's what is because we'll get so darn busy. And they're very busy. You know, they're teaching classes, they're doing research, they're doing extension, depending on their appointments, they have you know, they're advising graduate students, and hey, guess what, they have a home life too. So there's a lot going on.

Yeah. Well, it also gets you then you get feedback from not the right word, but you can profit, I guess professionally from those successes. It's like having a grad student.

Yeah, that's right. That's where I get goosebumps again. There. Yeah. Yeah.

So the time things are one of them than a time challenges. The other is sort of the subject matter. And right, you know, kind of understanding how to put something together, right. So one of the things that happens when you got these big interdisciplinary projects is, you know, somebody thinks about their piece, and somebody else thinks about their piece, and they still kind of live independently, it's a totally different thing to put together a truly integrated, interdisciplinary package. Right. So what do you what do you think about, you know, that aspect of interdisciplinary work that the food scientists wants to write be encouraging, right?

Yeah, no, that's right. And you need to get in, I would like to say that you need to get in the other your colleagues shoes, right. And you need to be able to try to understand how we had a conversation about marine, correct me if I'm wrong, we had a conversation about speaking the same language. Yes, we can. Sometimes that's difficult and a interdisciplinary meeting, because you're physicists there on the team, maybe speaking one language or microbiologist, and then you know, don't understand the whole conversation. So the, you don't get that cross talk. And that synergy, if you will, between the disciplines is just what you're looking for, to be successful. And I think everyone wants to be successful. So I think an understanding that I think people will try harder to listen to each other and ask questions, I think sometimes we get in a room. And our colleague may use a term, we don't know what it means. And some of us might be shy about asking, What do you mean by that? And I think we need to be more open in our conversations. And I think that'll help these discussions and putting together these interdisciplinary grant opportunities.

Yeah, language, and what words people use may are such a huge barrier in some of these, some of these discussions, because as you said, the physicist and the microbiologist do not speak the same. They can be talking about the same thing using completely different words.

That's right. Yeah. And at some point, if it if you're not very careful about it, it starts sounding judgmental. Right, right. Yeah. Oh, you can't be a scientist because you don't understand. Yeah. Where's your laser? Where's your? Yeah, becomes a problem.

So what are your some of your long term goals for the institute? I know that, like you're early on here, you're kind of setting your own goals year on year right now, what's your vision long term for this? Activity?

So are we there yet? Yeah. Well, yeah, no. No, I'll never be there. Because we'll always be wanting to advance the work that we do. But of course, you know, in very simplistic terms, advancing the mission of the Food Science Institute, which I like I said, to be cutting across not just research, I think sometimes we focus on the research, but we lose sight or maybe some people lose sight of the extension work that we do that's incredibly valuable, as well as the teaching and the educational programs that we conduct. And so you know, advancing and all those three areas right now So for this next year, and probably for the next several years, there's gonna be a real focus on recruitment and retention and thinking outside the box of how to get kids to understand what food sciences to get the word out, not only Well, right now we're focused in Kansas. I would like to share one very novel, recruitment idea that one of our faculty came up with that we just tried, it looks like it's going to be pretty successful. It's called home for the holidays. So we offer scholarships to our undergraduate students that are juniors or seniors that have a real passion for food science. Of course, all of our students have a real passion for food science. But those that are juniors and seniors are those who can probably talk a little bit more about their experience. And some of these have had research experiences in the lab or internships or those kinds of things. Anyway, they go home for the holidays, right? So Christmas break, they go home, but our break is a little bit earlier than the local high schools. And so these folks go, this is the first year we've done it. These folks went into the high school and talk to their classes of their former high school teachers and talked about food science. And yeah, so. So this was the first year. So thinking outside the box like that, having a broader reach. Certainly, we need to get out to the western portion of the state. And we need to think about diversity of our programs, why that's really important as well. You know, I think about underrepresented students, you know, first time college goers like myself, very important, non traditional students. Also, those single moms and dads are those moms and dads that are out there that would like to get an education have different challenges, how can we work with them and make them successful as well in our programs. So students is one big priority. Another big priority, as I said, is research and thinking about how we can provide or we can get together get our heads together on our strategic path as far as what kind of research opportunities and things that we are best suited to tackle. That'll be conversations this next year. Some very, some simplistic, but it's actually kind of a big deal is rethinking our space, then making it more attractive to students. So I know sounds kind of simplistic, but just even our front office and thinking about how we can redo that space so that we have space for the students to come in and feel comfortable and talk to us and sit down and chat and meet with our faculty. 

And that makes a lot of sense. space that you've got, you've got the very traditional front desk, that's it stops everybody right there. And what Yeah, no, and well, many, many places are set up that way. But I can appreciate having that more open and inviting. 

And yeah, so and other things like you know, making sure that our faculty have the spaces they need. We're in the process of remodeling some of our food microbiology labs for safety reasons, but for other reasons as well, it's been a long time. So that's another priority. And then the last priority is really getting connected with stakeholders. I haven't done a lot. I've done a little bit. But I want to get out there and do a whole heck of a lot more. And this would include maybe thinking of an advisory board, I'd talk to you about that. But you know, also thinking about actually how we're going to go about collecting broader stakeholder input for our programs to help guide us in our conversations, the faculty helped guide us in our conversations of what our priorities should be across research across, what can we do better in our classes? What are some of those new topics that we should be tackling in our courses that the students really want to hear about an extension? What additional extension programs should you be considering? So those are the big priorities for this year. So wish me luck. 

That's pretty good basketball. Yeah.

I guess it'll be two or three years, I'm sure. 

Well, you came here you asked for work. So that's right. It's a challenge. Right. It's a good challenge. You have anything else to add Scott?

Oh, this is great conversation. Thanks so much for being here.

Well, Jeanette, this has been a great discussion, great conversation. I want to thank you for being here. And we very much enjoyed having you.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Thanks a lot.

Thanks so much. This was fantastic. Great. Take care.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

The history of agriculture can be viewed from many different perspectives including breeding crops with improved quality and yield characteristics, understanding fertilization requirements, challenges with water and weather patterns, but there are also historic social and political accounts that had profound effect on the landscape of today’s farming communities.  In this podcast,  Dr. Bonnie Lynn-Sherow shares a sobering look at some of the challenging  events uncovered by her research as she dug into changes that occurred in land ownership and farming practices of white settlers, Native Americans and African Americans on the United States great plains.   

Transcript:

Agricultural History in the U.S. Southern Great Plains. One Story on “Who Wins.” with Dr. Bonnie Lynn-Sherow

So we have a number of moments, really big moments in US history in terms of farming that I see echoed today.

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

I’m Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science. 

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a Food Scientist.

Hello, everybody and welcome back. We can review the history of agriculture from many different perspectives, including breeding crops with improved quality and yield characteristics, understanding fertilization requirements, challenges with water and weather patterns. But there are also historic social and political accounts that had profound effects on the landscape of today's farming communities. Our guest today is Dr. Bonnie Lynn-Sherow, Associate Professor of American history and executive director of the Chatman center for rural studies. Bonnie researches and teaches the environmental and agricultural history of North America, with particular emphasis on North American Indians and minorities. In this podcast, we are going to take a sobering look at some of the challenging events uncovered by Dr. Lin Shiro, as her research dug into the changes that occurred in land ownership and farming practices of white settlers, Native Americans and African Americans on the United States, Great Plains. Welcome, Bonnie morning. In the past podcasts, we've had discussions on a lot of technical aspects of agriculture and production and nutrition, and we've talked about the aesthetics of food. But I think this is the first time we've ever taken a dive into the history of the complex food system and what that might teach us on things going forward. So I'm really very excited to learn more about you and the history that you study, and where that fits into the food system today. Okay. All right, welcome. So with that, could we start out Bonnie by you telling us a little bit about yourself?

Sure. My training is in American history, as you mentioned, but I actually all historians have lots of specialties. My specialties are agricultural history, history of food, but they're also very deeply embedded in history of race, and culture. So my first book was about African Americans and North American Indians and their relationship to agriculture, especially in the Midwest, specifically in some counties in Oklahoma, which then I extrapolate into the experience of North American Indians and African Americans and the rest of the country.

So what what got you interested in this I, sometimes people take it all the way back to their childhood, sometimes not. But how did you get started in this area and really find that interest.

Well it was actually very, as you say, most people take a very convoluted pathway to where they end up, especially at my age now it's gotten even more convoluted. But I would say that I grew up in southwestern Ontario, which was a heavily agricultural region and I took it for granted, I didn't realize how productive it was, it is the most is the set of most productive counties agriculturally in the entire country of Canada, heavily involved in onions, tomatoes, a number of other what we would consider to be high value crops today. And so I grew up in this bounteous place. And I didn't realize how bounteous it was until I moved to the United States, and ended up in some, you know, pretty much some food deserts and Evanston, Illinois, and places like that, where I could no longer get the fresh summer corn that I wanted to eat on a regular basis. But my research essentially moved from when I was an undergraduate, when I was working in Amherstburg, Ontario, and it was a primary Historic Site. That was my first job. And there were a lot of native people that I had to interpret specifically, names we would recognize, like to come see actually was died and visited the site that I worked out for, you know, during his lifetime. And so when I decided to do a PhD, much, much later on, I immediately wanted to do North American Indian history and My advisor said, Well, you really ought to go to Oklahoma, because there's a wonderful newspaper there, that has been a continuous operation and continuous publication since the beginning of Oklahoma since before since Oklahoma Territory. So I went down there. And I actually talked to the newspaper editor. And what became extremely clear to me is that the story of native people's relationship to agriculture had never been told, it had not been explored in any kind of effective way. And the deeper I got into the project, the more I realized that a number of African Americans, you know, newly freed, slaves had walked all the way to Oklahoma with the promise of agricultural land. And so I'm sort of like wondering, like, my, my goodness, we're in the I'm in the nexus of the United States, I'm in the last best west of the entire country. And we have white settlers, who would be potential settlers, many of them from Kansas, but also up on southerners from Texas who are vying for this last best place. But we also have African Americans who've come out here, hoping to be a part of essentially Westering and in the American tradition, and we have native people who've been here all along, who are trying their best to adapt into an agricultural mode of production. And I thought, My gosh, this is the primary power play of the United States who's going to win. And it was clear to me that the relationship of these four of these cultural entities to each other was just as important as their relationship to the land itself. And then I realized this is a very, very important story. Who wins? How does farming turn into what we what we now realize is a a white dominated agricultural economy. How did that happen when there were these other people who were trying to do the same thing, and that unfolded into an extremely interesting project. I wasn't completely convinced about what I was going to study until I met with Ray doya. Re DOJ as a Kiowa elder, who I was talking to, rather casually and explained to him I was very confused about the way agriculture worked in the region and Central Oklahoma. And he says, Well, I'm confused too. He says, Why is it that Kiowa men Kiowa families farm and farm and farm, and they lose ground every year, they lose ground economically, and socially and culturally. And specifically, they actually lose real ground, they lose parts of their farms, he says, but my white neighbor five, down five miles down the road, he says he's got a new tractor. And he's got a new truck, and he's got a new combine, and he's adding ground, or we just bad people. And that just broke my heart. And I was like, Ray, I can't imagine that your pet people, and I can't imagine that you're bad farmers. And he was, and I was right. They weren't it was an historic structural racism. That prevented Kiowa people from becoming successful farmers. And there were several aspects to that. One of the aspects, of course, was that what everyone takes for granted, in a place like Kansas, especially if you're white, is the is the Experimental Station, which become, you know, part of the United States Department of Agriculture, the Hatch Act, which then provides extension publications to farmers. And then eventually, of course, the entire farm agent system, which provides direct help to farmers. And what I discovered right away, of course, in a place like Oklahoma's the 1890 school, meant that African American farmers could not access the resources of Oklahoma State. They were forced to go to Langdon Langston rather, I'm sorry, the historically black college, just outside of Stillwater. And even worse, the Kiowa farmers were prevented from accessing those resources, and told that they had to work with a Bureau of Indian Affairs agent who would help them to become farmers. And neither of those other support systems got any funding whatsoever. So for example, for every dollar that was spent in Stillwater, Oklahoma State, Langston University got five cents. That's all. So suddenly, the whole picture started to emerge. There were some there were some interesting aspects to this. The chi was story. As a group, they had all Ways worked as in clans. So they created a village. And then they work together. Well, of course, allotment, which most people are not aware of which was the breaking up of reservations into 160 acre parcels per person. They that forced the breakup of a support system of neighbors and friends and relatives that would help you in times of trouble. And suddenly they were isolated from one another, which was not a natural or even actually very helpful system with which to begin learning how to become farmers. And, you know, sort of ruminated on that since then. Especially in Kansas, when you consider that the Mennonite migration to Kansas around Newton that that group came over together and bought 100,000 acres together. Nobody called them socialists. Nobody said, oh, you can't do that. But suddenly, for Native people, though, they weren't allowed to do that. And it didn't occur to me actually, till really recently, how hypocritical the Bureau of Indian Affairs and USDA was regarding native people that way. And then, of course, at the time that they were beginning to take up farms. Kiowa people still had horses, and they were transferring over to cattle, they were natural herders. And quite frankly, if if you look at what Oklahoma people, Oklahoma farmers, landowners are doing now with their property, they're hurting, they're not, they're not trying to graze, you know, multiple, they're not doing all MacDonald down on the farm, south of Oklahoma City, that there's not enough water there, the sand and soil is not conducive to that at all. And this is what Native farmers were being told to do. And they knew better. They were like, no, we want to become pastoral. And so they wanted to raise animals and they ran into a major problem right away, they needed water for those animals. So they had to spread out along watercourses permanent streams and creeks, which put them farther apart from one another, of course, and then they wanted, they needed wood, because there was no other heating fuel. And so they ended up in these patch places these 100 nakey 160 acre places, which would be great for cities, you know, eventually they would be covered in little towns, because of water sources and wood sources weren't so good for for you know, crop row crop production. And they wanted to become pastoral. So they actually pushed against the Bureau of Indian Affairs agencies about how they should use their property, and try to put horses and cattle on their on their land. But there was this little problem with a little five letter word called Texas. And eventually, every time they would put out of this, we're talking the 1880s 1890s, right up until the turn right up until Oklahoma statehood in 1906. Every time they built up a herd, that herd was stolen, literally stolen from them. Texas, Ben DeRose essentially would come up in the middle of the night and cut the fences and take every one of their cattle. If they didn't take them all. They brought up their own cattle and pastured them on Kiowa land, Kai was had 6 million acres of common pasture, which they needed, frankly, given that pasture quality there, which was pretty low. I mean, you needed about 20 acres per steer to to keep them alive, which is pretty much I think, the average size here is about six or six acres per animal. So they would so they would enter in the springtime, they would go in and try to take their cattle into big pasture and they would find it it was already destroyed by Texas cattlemen that had been overwintering there illegally. And of course, the US Army would try to move the Texas band or bandits out and and that would end up in wars. And so essentially, they would simply move the Chi was out of the way. So they just consistently got smaller and smaller and smaller parcels of land to the point where they their fractionation of their land became so dramatic that the only way in which they could make any money at all with which to subsist was to rent their land out to a white farmer, who would have access to capital who could take out a loan. American Indians were not allowed to take out loans, because their land was actually held in trust and the way that we would hold land and trust for a minor child. Their land was held in trust and they could not use their land as collateral for loans, believe it or not. So talk about being put into a box canyon in terms of production and so that was the story that I uncovered am a very similar story unfolded with African American farmers. They came together in walking trains, they literally walked and they set up 25 All black towns in Oklahoma, we had over 20 black towns in Kansas. And they wanted to be a separate economy because their long experience with slavery, let them understand, help them understand that they had to help each other. There was no question that they were not going to get a lot of help from their white neighbors in terms of being successful. And so they attempted to set up these internal economies for themselves. As you can imagine, that did not work out very well, when they got very, very little support from the 1890 College case state was integrated from the beginning. So we all know about the story of George Washington, Owen, who was the first African American graduate from Kansas State University will KSA see at the time, and he became a expert in a number of different agricultural products, but especially agricultural education, and worked at tusky. And he worked with web, WEB DuBois and George Washington Carver, in fact, and many other leading agricultural experts at Tuskegee, who became leaders in African American education. 

How does this history intersect with agriculture today?

That's a really, really big question. Historically, I can see threads leading back directly to the first part of the 20th century. Specifically, I see a lot of repetition between the kinds of agricultural resistance that we saw in the 1890s. Interestingly, right up through the 1920s, I see a lot of agricultural resistance. As farmers in general have a reputation and a history of being kind of rabble rousers doing things to get attention when they don't feel the things are fair, they feel very strongly about not being treated fairly. Part of that goes back to I think we talked about this about agricultural fundamentalism, in which farmers believe that their work is more significant and more central to the United States experience than other forms of work that they actually produce things that people require in need, and that they're the center of what keeps the United States going economically now, as their numbers have dropped over time, they have become less politically relevant. But that has not prevented them from feeling that they're still economically relevant. And what I explained to my students, of course, is that the agricultural economy as a sector of the United States, economy has continued to grow almost exponentially at times. And yet the number of people involved in production agriculture has shrunk to almost to the disappearing point. And of course, it has a lot to do with technology has a lot to do with international global markets. And the way in which distribution of food happens and the processing of food happens. But that has not prevented farmers from feeling that they need to have a greater voice and the way in which agriculture is unfolds, especially US policy. So we have a number of moments, really big moments in US history in terms of farming, that I see echoed today. No, one of the course of the populist moment in the 1890s was a big one. And interestingly enough, I love showing the Omaha platform to my students, because almost every single thing on the Omaha platform has become reality for Americans today. William Jennings Bryan's he actually got co opted, of course by the Democrats. But the platform remained very similar. And really, that platform included the direct election of senators, because they felt that state legislatures had absolutely too much control over national agricultural policy. It included increasing the amount of bullion and silver that the US government held as a back for paper dollars. So that would that's what the silver issue is. And many people even today don't understand that the United States government essentially didn't have enough cash and gold in order to produce enough paper money, which caused huge amounts of inflation. So it was extremely difficult for farmers to come up with enough cash to do basic simple things like pay their taxes. And of course with that, and as we all know, farmers only get one paycheck a year. And so holding over for that whole year meant that you generally had to take out what they called a note or a loan. And we call it nicer things now. But, and debtors prison went away in the 1830s who Ray However, people the sheriff could come and confiscate everything you owned and many of the farmers in the 1890s had been through The major economic upset in 1873, they had seen 10s of 1000s of farmers lose everything that they owned. And so they're very sensitive to changes in policy and sensitive to changes in the economy, especially as it affects their one paycheck a year, which is pretty dramatic.

And they found their voice in the Grange. quite loud. Yeah,

yeah, all of our heads and Kelly started the Grange up in Minnesota. But that was more of like, a self help organization, you know, like, we'll hang out together, and we'll help each other. But it was really the farmers alliance that became the political arm and then became the the populist platform for sure. Raise more hail on less. Yes, that was definitely Lisa's phrase, you know, which it's interesting, you know, she was not actually a farmer, her. Her father was a pharmacist. And I believe she was married to a professional man too. So but she had been deeply affected by the changes in agricultural policy. So farmers are well known for getting upset, let's put it that way. And so I see a direct connection between their reaction to big changes in policy between the 1890s again in the 1940s. And then again, in especially in the 1980s, we have tractor, Cade, we have farmers breaking, I would guess I would call it civil disobedience, we've had a number of issues of civil disobedience. And now we currently have a similar thing happening again. So we have farmers, again, who are very upset about the imbalance in trade and the trade war and the tariff war, which, of course, is in a, you know, on proportionate in its effect on them, based on the other people in the United States. And from what I understand, farmers telling me today, and this was just recently, two weeks ago, in in Lawrence is they all understand that right now, the economy, the agricultural economy, is like a big bathtub, and it has a plug in it, which is the payments to the farmers that are losing money because of the trade war. But as soon as that plug gets pulled, it's all going down the drain. So they are very clear that they aren't. This is not a sustainable system whatsoever. So on the one hand, they're hard bitten about the economics of farming. And they understand that they have to take care of themselves and that their individual entrepreneurs in a sense, but on the other hand, they realize that as a class of people, they face very, very similar obstacles. And I know that for many farmers right now, their sense of grievance is growing. And that's their sense of grievance is growing. And that's being reinforced by the number of suicides in agricultural communities, which has increased dramatically in the last in the last two in the last two years. And, and we had, we saw a similar increase in despair in rural communities in the 1980s, especially when we saw farmers who had completely paid off their farms, they were without a mortgage. And then they had because of the agricultural low prices, as a result of Russia essentially re booting its own agricultural economy, and they no longer had Russia as a market. That was the what do you call it that that was the trigger for the fall? That of course that we all remember, or maybe some of us remember how high interest rates were? Oh, yes, my my so so farmers who were taking out loans against their property values, which were at that time, super inflated, when the price of commodities went down, of course, their interest rate didn't change, their loan payment didn't change, and many of them had to remortgage farms that had been paid off for a generation or more. When was this? This was in the 1980s.

In fact, Kansas State had a hotline. That's correct. Yeah. It had three or four specialists that dealt with there were counselors, there were ag economist, finance folks,

lots of that we had I mean, well, right program at K State got started as a result of the agricultural crisis of the 1980s. And we forget how much just total distress happened in the 1980s. And it was no joke to take to make a decision to drive your tractor and park it on the Washington Mall. I mean, you don't make that lightly. No. And, and so that we the generation farmers we have now of course, is dramatically aging, the number of the average age in Kansas as well over six 60 Now, and the number and what's interesting, according to the demographics that I've learned from one of our own sociologists on campus, Matthew Sanderson, is that there's a slight bump in the number of people who are in their 20s, who are in rural areas. And of course, we continue to see the population of the over 60. Communities however, the people in the middle are missing. So people who are in their 40s and 50s, at the height of their economic power or economic potential, are essentially hollowed out from those communities. And that's a big, big concern for me, too, for maintaining a tax base for many of these communities. And of course, we I think we mentioned earlier that more than half of Kansas counties now fall below, right, the definition of a trend here,

I was listening to a presentation a little earlier today, discussing Kansas counties, where the average population was less than 10 per square mile.

And in some places, it's seven.

So one of the things I mean, you're talking about farmers as a group, you're also talking about sort of how different groups are affected very differently to right. So what kind of similarity you see, today, I mean, in terms of bias on the effects, or how, you know, certain subgroups are seeing things differently. I mean, I was really, I was just gonna say I was really struck some of the some of the history, I knew a lot of it, I don't but but the, the, the challenges that the, that black farmers versus white farmers versus the Native Americans in Oklahoma face was just striking how different that was. Right. So what strains of that do you see sort of going through from?

Well? That's a really good question. I mean, the I think the most striking thing was the Agricultural Adjustment Act in the 1930s, provided relief for land owners. And so anybody who was a tenant farmer, didn't get a thing didn't get $1. And, of course, in the Americans throughout the American South, and in much of Texas, and even Oklahoma, you had a lot of tenant farmers. Even in Kansas, we've always had tenant farmers, people who rent their ground instead of owning it. And the Agricultural Adjustment Act was very, very clear that it didn't provide any money to tenants. And so we saw an enormous exodus of tenant farmers off their properties in as a result of the 1930s, which we consider, you know, a New Deal program, we don't anticipate that that's going to have a racial component. But it did. And really, what we have all throughout American agricultural history is a distinction between owners and workers. And agricultural workers, of course, far outnumber owners now, massively. It's totally disproportionate now, and in fact, almost all of the farmers I know, are also tenants, right? Yes, they don't, they own maybe, you know, 400 acres, but they're renting an additional 1000 from someone else, as farms turnover as a result of, you know, inheritance. And people don't want to come back and work it of course, just like Native Americans had to rent their ground for their grass money. Because they didn't have any ability to rent it to farm it themselves, because they didn't have any capital and all of that litany there. I mean, just it's similar now is that people have left the farm a long time ago, and they don't want to come back. And, and so there's a lot of ground out there that's being rented. But the majority of the people I think, that we see working in, the agricultural sector today aren't even in that situation. I think we see them not as either owners or tenants, but literally as day workers. So there's been a de Skilling and also an A parallel de-munition of their value in agriculture, that they're expendable. And of course, that's a long term and a long time process that we see. So I mean, when, when we think about people who are only here to pick crops seasonally, and that's really what we're talking about in general that began at the beginning of the 20th century, and that continued on through the 1930s and 40s. With the Bracero program in the 1950s Anytime especially this very clearly happens during World War One World War Two when you have a large number of young men and and women actually leaving agricultural areas for work either in factories like Wichita, we saw a lot of small towns completely empty out as a result of of that, especially in Kansas

And four consecutive very good crops. 

Yes, well, absolutely, I've had forgotten all about that, thank you. And so, you end up with a lot of crops in the ground and not enough people to harvest them. And that's that put a lot of pressure on the federal government to create the Brasero program in a legal way. And so you actually have now generations of people who are used to coming to the United States, and working for a season and working seasonal crops moving from one part of the country to another, they might be harvesting grapes in the Central Valley in California, in the Napa, Sonoma, and then moving over to another part of the country to harvest on their schedule. So it's not just like, one time coming up, and then going home, they move from place to place and all the way across the country. When I lived, I lived in Northern California for about four years. And I'll never forget my complete and utter shock, the first time that I came across a tenant community. And I was living in Northern California, and that's well known for Almonds, and apricots, and just you know, 1000s and 1000s of acres of these high value crops, but they're also very, they're also very labor intensive crops. And you have to get up there and pick apricots. You can't vacuum them off the tree I found anyway, they do have some mechanical picking, but not very much, you still have to do a lot of it by hand. And those large fruit and nut farmers had housing, you know, so called housing for their families. But I had never seen anything so dire in my life. I had never seen people living in the late 20th centuries, the 1990s living without running water, and without latrines, you know, outdoor latrines, and places that clearly didn't keep anyone warm, or cool, depending on the time of year. And I was so disappointed to see that there was still a class of agricultural workers being treated that way in the United States of America. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. And so I do think I see that. That's the thread that I see. I see agricultural workers, people who have been expendable within the policies that have privileged land owners, I have seen them consistently devalued and made almost invisible.

And back East the term would have been the hired man who would have worked for 25-30 years, and was doing a little bit of everything. The farmer didn't you get out to other parts of the country? And it really has it recreated for quite a while sharecropping.

Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. And sharecropping was one of the reasons that African American farmers left American. So yeah, and of course, we have the whole story of the furnishing merchant. The furnishing merchant was somebody who bought your crops and gave you the loan to put the next crop in the ground. And low and behold, oddly, you know, what you owed was always more than what you sold. And I, you know, one of my one of my favorite things to do is to tell students stories about how especially black farmers, but any kind of farmer that was not in a privileged position. How they got around those things, and no, so fun little story. So one, one family, this is in the 1880s. They grew cotton. I'm pretty sure that I'm thinking about Alabama here. And he realized that when he took his cotton, you know, this gigantic, you know, 600 pound bales, they obviously don't check all the cotton in the bale, you know, it's wrapped up in and so they, they stick a long fork in there, like a long, it almost looks like a crochet needle. And they they pull out some and then they check the quality that way. And what this African American tenant farmer discovered was at any time, he went to have his bale sold, and they pulled out the cotton, it was always grade B or C, but his neighbor who he was working right next to itself was always grade A. And his neighbor was white. So he convinced him to take his bales for him. And so the two had a pack that they made a little arrangement between themselves. And I found the same story in in Oklahoma, with African American farmers, finding interestingly new immigrant farmers, which I think is so fascinating. Farmers from Russia or Germany. We're brand new, and didn't have that history of racial tension or discrimination. And as far as that German farmer was concerned, like I have a bit wagon, you have a horse together, we can get a lot more done. They would work together pretty closely. And often African American farmers are smart enough to get that white farmer to sell their crops for them and get a little bit ahead. I always love those stories.

Changing gears, one of your titles is executive director of the Chapman center. Yes. Can you tell us a little bit about the center?

Absolutely. No, yeah. Chapman Center has been around for 14 years this year. And it started when Mark Chapman who's an alumn of case k state history alumn, his family, homesteaded in a little area called Broten, Kansas. And Broten is just a little bit to the east and south of Clay Center, Kansas. And it was condemned for flood control in 19 in the 1960s, to create Milford Lake, Milford reservoir, not really like it's really a reservoir. And it's not actually underwater, not the way Randolph was underwater for Tuttle Creek, but it was within the floodplain so that if the water ever did top, its banks that this this is where the water would go and kind of like our spillway, so it's kind of in the spillway, and so they condemned everyone in this in the town, everyone. There's some wonderful stories about Broten. That way the postmistress refused to leave Broten. And the same the day that the bulldozers arrived to literally knock every single building down in the town, she was sitting in the post office, the bulldozer was sitting outside the door. And she shut the when she closed the curtains and closed up the post office box, and walked outside and locked the door, put the key in her pocket, and walked away. And then the bulldozer knocked the building down. defiant, to the end, she was great. So that's a really great story. But Mr. Chapman had an idyllic childhood. Growing up in Broten of fishing in the written the creeks and rivers and chasing animals and raising, you know, wild animals. You know, everybody seems to me everyone in a small town before 1950 had a pet raccoon, I could be wrong, but it sure seems that way. Everybody had a pet raccoon at some time. And if you if you thought, you know, Tom Sawyer was a good life than a boy, I'll tell you being raised in those small towns in the 40s and 50s. Must have been pretty fun. But he felt bad because his parents Leo and Irene Chapman moved to Clay Center as most of the residents of Brighton did they move they even physically moved the church five miles away, and saved it. But his parents were in their 90s. And he was worried that the story of the town was going to be lost. And so he approached the history department, myself and a couple of other historians and asked if we could do some work on that town. And Dr. MJ Morgan, who was an adjunct professor in history department, she thought this sounded like a fun project. And she really took it on and started to train students in how to do that kind of research. And so Mr. Chapman was so pleased with the work that MJ and the students did I was kind of hands off at that point that he essentially paid to have a center created to continue to do that work. He said, if I learned so much about my town, through the work of these students, what about all these other towns and he didn't even realize at the time, how many towns there were. We know now? How many towns there were, but that's because of the work of a wonderful man in Rossville, Kansas named Melvin Brenzel, who was the state audiologist from like 1950 to the 1990s. 

I didn’t even know such such thing existed.

 Oh, yeah, I don't remember getting your hearing tested when you know the beep test. He administered the beep test. So he did that for the whole state, going from school to school. So he was he was I witness to the number of schools are closed because of the school closings in the 1960s the consolidations and also how small towns were just curling up and dying all across the state and he was so concerned about the stories being lost. Talk about a goldmine of information that he created. So He will, when he retired, he spent 11 years, get that, 11 years researching and recording the location and basic information of every single place name in the state of Kansas. We had oh my oh my word, oh my word. And we didn't know this. We had no idea. One of our one of my students was at a sale barn. And she saw this ad on the wall. And it was called, you know, place names in Kansas lost, found, interesting things like that. She's with a little phone number. And she goes, my goodness, I wonder what that is. And she pulled it off the sale barn bulletin board and brought it to me. And I read it. I was like, Oh, my gosh, and I immediately called him, it turned out he's not very far away. He came right over. And he had an index get this of over 9000 place names. Oh, my gosh. 9000. My favorite one, everyone asked him, What's your favorite place? That doesn't exist anymore? And I'll tell you what it is. It's magic cans. 

Magic! Name was a little tiny school. It is now on the Fort Riley reservation. And that's what happened to it. And how do we know it's not still there? Oh, yes, it could be there. Speedy Kansas. Oh, my gosh, there's so many great names we. So he had it all beautifully laid out of all these 9000 place names. If you look, if you look at a roadmap today, you won't find even 700 places on that map. So that's 84-8300 places that we essentially can't drive too easily and existed at one time or another.

So are some of these still being used. But it's just like a small, smaller community that, you know, still calling themselves this, it's just not on the map.

I would like I would say the majority of them are just gone. They're like magic doesn't exist in any way, shape, or form. What does exist in many of these towns, and I don't have a proportional, we haven't done that kind of that would be really hard to work through what doesn't go away or the cemeteries. So interestingly, what we'd like to talk about is even though most towns are gone, and the people don't live there anymore, they still want to go home. At the end of their lives, they still go home. Think about that. That's interesting, isn't it? This cemetery,

Just participated in one of those funerals two weeks ago.

Daniel Boston said way back when you wrote the American, yeah, that Kansas had the largest number of dead postoffs. Oh, yeah, of any other state. And he put it down. If I remember correctly, to people moving west, they will just pick up the towns and Northwest. It's much more complicated.

Much, much more complicated than that. Yeah. And I think people like to want to hear some simple answers. Why did the town die? Oh, because of the railroad, but didn't go through or something like that. But what I tell people is, there's really only a very few reasons to make it down. But there's literally limitless numbers of ways in which the town died. That the main focus of the channel, it has been for the past 13 years, we have our other big focus has been in providing undergraduates research experience in which they get professional training and how to do the research that professional historians do. Um, if you think about it on our campus, students who are chemistry majors or other kinds of bench scientists, majors, or even archeologists, in anthropology majors can get field experience, or bench experience and doing what their professors do. Well, how do history students get that kind of experience, so they're not going to stand behind me and watch me write a book. So this is a very boring, you know, I'm not going to sit there with a dictionary and say, Okay, you look up these words. So that's not a good way to organize an undergraduate research experience, but researching these small towns is, is within their grasp. So what we did is we created a format, a series of, I call our bag of tricks, where we unlock the secrets of how you learn about these towns like these are this is this is hard earned information that we have databases, we subscribe to a number of online databases as well as collect material in which essentially is unpublished that students can use and, and then we tell and then we but the greatest part of it is we bring in those the nearest community members to help us. Yes. So if you think about it, if we wanted to learn about Leo and Irene sprouting, and we went and talked to them, they were they were in their 90s. And we went and interviewed them. So suddenly, we have students that are talking to people in their 80s and 90s. And they form these fantastic bonds, and suddenly our students are like, wow, they're, they get so excited. They're like I want to go find out about this for, for funeral prefer Martha who who's in the nursing home and wanting to know more, and she has pictures for me and I'm going to go meet her at her house and, and suddenly we had students all over rural Kansas, doing these things, and it made them excited, it got the community's excited, and led to a number of really fantastic interactions. And then I won an, I was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities, digital digital history or digital humanities award in which I basically use that money to create a digital online database. And all of our students work, the best work is published. So not only do they get the research experience, they get this interaction with engagement, they also get a publication before they leave. And so it's been very popular.

Again, changing directions. You and your husband, Jim are both historians. And locally, you've also had a sideline of restoring historic homes.

Well, we restored five, and one of them was in partnership. We restored the Damon Runyon birthplace, fourth and Osage that was very important to us to do. And the very first house interestingly, we purchased on the corner of sixth and pierce Street, it's 529. Pierce Street, was our very first house. And we had no idea at the time. But the President of Kansas State Agricultural College, Thomas Will lived in that house for the two years that he was president of the university. And that was because he was a populist president and he didn't believe in being treated differently than other people on campus. He didn't want to be he wanted himself to be considered a first among equals. So he was actually president of the Bicycle Club, which is amazing, because remember, bicycles then were the giant wheels with the tiny one in the behind. So I love to think about Thomas wheel, and all of these high wheel bicycles all around my house. That's a fantastic view. So that was the very first house that we did. And the reason that we did it, the reason we did all of those, those things was had to do with believe it or not the Walmart, this kind of corporate behavior, which pushes commercial activity to the edge of cities, is what's killing the downtown's of towns. And as historians, we knew the trajectory of those kinds of things in towns and we said we ought to become urban homesteaders will become urban homesteaders. And we'll go back into areas that have been blighted, and will reestablish. And so that's how we came to buy 529. And we restored it, and we loved it. And then we had to buy the house next door in order to protect our house. And then we bought the Damon Runyan house with some help from Telestrator. And then we restored a house behind that one. And then our last house was a house it was owned by Oh, what was his first name is his last name is Daughter's Curtis daughters. And he was a board member of the Board of Regents and he built the house, he bought the house from someone else right after it was built, and where the Municipal Court is now, that was supposed to be the courthouse and for the holes for the city that was Courthouse Square. But then someone in town donated the land that the courthouse sits on today on points Avenue, with the caveat that they put the courthouse there and so in most small towns, you will notice that the courthouse and the jail are together in a square in this in the center. Clay Center is a perfect example. But are separated the jail was in one place in the in the courthouse in another place. And that was the reason and so so Charles Curtis, that's his name. He built he you know, he moved into this house so he would have easy access to the courthouse and he moved into that in like 1899 and then the courthouse got built downtown in 1904. So I'm sure he was quite disappointed. But he lived there till the 1930s. And by the time we got it, it had been abandoned and not lived in for over 20 years.

Any ones that got away that you wanted to?

Oh there's unfortunately there's been many of those. Yeah, but I I don't think people today remember Burn Forster? 

They do. 

Oh, I'm glad you guys do. Burn Forster was one of the original framers or writers of the 1966 Act National Park Service Act have created the National Historic Register for the United States. And he was a member of the National first National Trust for Historic Preservation. And he was the dean of the College of Architecture here at K State and when we were first thinking about moving downtown, etc, and I wanted to learn more about historic preservation. I could called Burn. And the first thing he said to me is like, well, who are you? And why should I talk to you? Eventually, he became one of our closest friends he and his wife Enel, and he was extremely inspirational. And, and he said to me, he says, not, not everything old should be torn down, he says, But not everything new should be built. And it was such a fine. Oh, such a good way to look at things because people just assume that if it's new, it's better. And he said, That's not true. And he says, But not everything old was very good at the time, either. So he said, you know, be discerning about historic preservation, I've always taken that to heart.

So, I mean, we can't change history, right? And in some ways, we don't want to go back to, you know, many of the ways things are right.

I never want to back! Yeah, no, I think about tuberculosis. And I never want to go back.

It's really easy to get nostalgic for certain things, right? Or a certain way of farming are all these loss towns and right, but so. So what's your perspective on like, the way we live today into towns and the way we do agriculture, like all this, that you kind of, you do look back on the past and sort of say, oh, but that's a piece that I would love for us to, like, recreate or regenerate or do something like that? Yeah, that's still Yeah.

You've stunned me now. I do believe that. People knew their neighbors better. I do believe the connection between people was stronger. My dear, dear friend, Pat sobble, just died on December 7, and he was 98 and a half. And I just finished putting together all of his ranch stories in a book, we just published it. And talking to him for three years. This is what most strongly struck me as what's missing from our lives today in rural United States. He was a rancher in Chase County, and the stories that he could tell the intimate stories he could tell of his neighbors, and of things where, where men and women got together and families got together, I feel strongly that were missing a lot of that he knew everyone around him in a way that we don't know each other today. I mean, I'm not the first one to make this observation. But it really came home to me. He had some wonderful stories about his father putting him in a wagon or on or just both of them on horseback and just visiting just going around to the neighbors to see who was up and who was doing this and that and just sitting around not doing much of anything. And he had some great funny stories about the first time he saw an indoor flush toilet and, and his father actually put him on horseback and took him to see the neighbor who had one, you know, so they could all have a look at it. And it's that kind of thing. Ray Joya actually. The a Kiowa, oh man that I mentioned at the beginning, he told me something very similar. And it didn't occur to me until much later that how similar it was he said, he used to be able to stand on the back of his farm porch. And look out at the valley and see the lights in the dark. And each of the lights represented a little farmstead. And he knew the name of every one of those lights. He says now goes, no one knows the names of those lights. And so I think that's what I'm nostalgic for, I guess. But I don't think that that's impossible to recreate, I actually think it would be quite good and quite possible. That's the distances now between farmsteads that makes that more difficult. It's also the fact that so many agricultural families have to have off farm jobs. So you don't have people at home very often. And so I don't have any solutions for that. I'm a big advocate of getting broadband and greater Internet access to agricultural and rural areas so that people don't feel so disconnected. Not just from the world at large, but from one another.

One of the thing I wanted to bring up, because I thought it was really very cool. You and Jim, I don't remember exactly how this worked. But we were invited to Barack Obama's inauguration. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

It was a shock. We don't know Barack Obama. But there's a there was an historian. His name is Fergus Fordwich. And he works for the Smithsonian. He's written many, many books. And he came out from he lived in Washington, DC, and he came to Manhattan, Kansas. He actually sort of came out on his own, and he was looking for information related to the very first home homestead in the United States which there's a museum Homestead, Nebraska where you can actually go and see the first patented homestead and talk about it. But he wanted to know about the first land grant school as well. And so someone said, Well, you know, you need to go and talk to Jim and Bonnie and he was who and they were like we said, we'll meet you for dinner. So we took him out for dinner. We didn't know him at all. And I remember very clearly Jim saying to me, Do we have time for this? And I said, we should be hospitable. Because we want when we go to other places, and we do research, we want other historians to be hospitable to us. And it's like, oh, yeah, you're totally right. And so we took Fergus out for dinner. And at the end of the meal, we had convinced him that K State was the first operational land grant school in the nation which we had researched, and we knew. Absolutely, without question. Michigan State Michigan claims it, I will claims that they all have a different reason for claiming it. Michigan's is to me the most disingenuous, they said that they had a research farm back before Michigan, was a school Michigan State was a school, and that that farmer was running experiments on it with a little group of students or something. And so that counts is the first land grant. Yeah. And I'm like, no, no. Yeah, I'm really I'm like, I'm thinking I was running around with his beat with his beans, too. I mean, that doesn't get so. So But anyway, he became convinced and so forth. Fergus went on to write his thing about homesteads and land grant colleges, and that was all great. And then suddenly out of the blue, and that was like, 2005, and then suddenly out of the blue. No, no, it was 2010. And so out of the blue is, we get this call from an office in Washington, DC, and it's from Chuck Schumer's office. I don't know Chuck Schumer either. And I'm not in his district. So but what it was, they were putting together a portfolio, and it was going to go to the members of Congress and other dignitaries and invited guests to the second inauguration luncheon. So right after you see the president inaugurated, there's a social event, and it's limited to 200 people. So not even every member of Congress gets to go. You have to own a small country, I think, if you're on the guest list, and they give them a special gift, each time that this has happened, and I don't know a lot how far back that tradition goes. But apparently about a century, it goes back. And everyone gets a gift. So this gift in 2012, was going to be a series of essays, written by historians about the 1862 presidential administration, which, of course, was Abraham Lincoln's, and boy, 1862 was a busy, busy year. I mean, we got the Railroad Act, we got the Banking Act, we got the moral Land Grant Act. We got the Homestead Act, The Congressional Dome was completed. During this all in the middle of a war. In addition to that, I mean, it was just incredible the number of things and so historians were asked from across the country who were experts in those particular things. And we were extremely honored to be included as one of those historians. And we co authored the essay about the land grant school system. And so we started with a celebration here in Manhattan, of a group of people who got together to have a wonderful party, at the same time that people are dying in the Battle of the Bull Run back East. In Virginia. It was like this, I think it was the second day of the battle. And it was not going well. But here in Manhattan, people were celebrating about the fact that they had created a college and looking forward to the future in the middle of one of the darkest moments of US history. So we wrote that essay. And then we each have we got a copy back from the Government Printing Office, which is all on vellum and everything but then it got better with Oh, great. Isn't that nice? We get to put that in our library. And then we got another call and say well, aren't you coming? Are like excuses what what they said, Well, you're invited we have tickets for you. I said, Well, that would have been good to know six months ago. Yeah, that would have been good to know earlier and they let us know like the end of November and you know, the inauguration in January and I'm like, Oh, we're never gonna get a ticket to DC of it at the airlines are just jammed. And then we're never going to get a place to stay. But somehow, it all came together. The tickets were available. They were not expensive. A friend of ours said hey, you can stay with my mom in DC and we were like We're going. And it was the most amazing experience. It was. I can't explain to people enough how different Washington DC and I've been to DC more times than I can count probably 30-40 times at least. And I have never been to DC at a moment in which I saw people so joyous in my life. Getting onto the train onto the just to get downtown, people were pouring into your free that day, everybody was pouring in wearing little flags and carrying babies. Women were singing kids were jumping up and down. And, when we got out of the subway, walking up to the security, I'll never forget this. There was just all this wonderful feeling of camaraderie. And just sort of like we're all in this together. And when we went through the security, I remember I had a lipstick. And that was the only thing I had with me was a lipstick. And the security man he looked at and he goes, Hey, goes all bet this looks beautiful on you. Could you put some on for me? And I did. And he said You are beautiful. And wow. Not what you expect from you know, Customs and Border Patrol today. And we were seated with people from all over the country to that was wonderful. There was Native Americans near us. We were sitting next to the granddaughter of Medgar Evers. We had people behind us. We had a lovely couple behind us that sobbed through the entire event. And it just and then at the end, this is wonderful. We were walking through and a big loudspeaker came on and said, we're looking for the Tuskegee Airmen. And there was a number of Tuskegee Airmen that had been invited that were sitting in our section and, and these were very tiny little people. I mean, these men were in their late 80s, early 90s. By then, and, and one of them was standing beside me and I. I said, Sir, I believe they're calling for you. He goes, Oh, my gosh. And I said, Hey, we the Tuskegee Airmen here. And so everyone just parted so that he could walk through and they put him in a limousine to take him to a special reception. Yeah. It was a wonderful experience. I'm really glad that I wish all Americans could have that. But for me, it was it'll always stay with me.

Bonnie, this was such an interesting discussion. Are there any other questions?

Many, many, but we should. I enjoyed it.

Do you have any questions for us?

No, no, no, I'm just, I'm just really excited about global food systems. And I'm really excited about the podcasting. I think you're making a really big difference on campus. I am seeing the profile the Global Food Systems is really going up and I'm looking forward to working with you guys more.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

At the very heart of sustainable food production is the health of soil.  Not only does soil health and microbial community impact the production of food for humans and animals, soil can be a major player in the sequestration of carbon – a main variable to climate change.  Through focused research goals in finding ways to improved and protect the environment while also boosting agricultural productivity, Dr. Chuck Rice shares his thoughts on many facets of the complex agriculture system, new technologies, water policies and soil health. 

Transcript:

Where Soil Health Meets Global Food System Challenges - A Discussion with Dr. Charles Rice

There's lots of challenges. There's, you know, the increasing population. How do we deal with increasing production but also food waste? But how can we do that increased production without harming having impact on our natural resources?

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

I’m Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science. 

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a Food Scientist.

Hello everyone and welcome back. At the very heart of sustainable food production is the health of soil. Not only does soil health and microbial community impact the production of food for humans and animals, soil can be a major player in the sequestration of carbon, a main variable to climate change. Our guest today is Dr. Chuck Rice University Distinguished Professor and recipient of the Marielle venir professorship in the Department of Agronomy at K State. Chuck's research goals are to find ways to improve and protect the environment, while also boosting agricultural productivity. In today's discussion, Chuck shares his thoughts on the many facets of the complex agriculture system, new technologies, water policy and yes, soil health. Dr. Rice, welcome to the podcast. 

Thank you. 

I've heard recently that you've received a $10 million USDA grant. Very exciting and we will talk more about that as we get into it. But first, I'd like to hear a little background on who you are and how you got to where you are today.

Okay. Well, I actually grew up in Illinois a small town outside of Chicago at that time, many years ago. It was a rural community. They called it the super boonies, Yorkville, but now it's part of the suburbs of Chicago, but I didn't really grow up on a farm. But I was active in 4H. My parents, I was a first generation college student, my parents, my mom worked in a cafeteria, my dad worked in a factory, but they were really supportive of science education. You know, they bought chemistry kits, we had a microscope, they we hatched an egg, cut a window and an egg and watch the check grow. So I had a lot of that kind of science background in that. And I had really some key teachers third grade, that third fifth and, and then freshmen in high school that were really instrumental get me involved in science, I guess I was attuned to science, but things like we made butter and then but what really got me started into science and biology related was my freshman, high school biology teacher. We he took a select group at the end of the year to a the sand dunes in Michigan. And we studied this we spent camping, but spent the time from looking at the development of plant communities from the lake beach dunes all the way into the climax forest which is a beach maple forest and Western Michigan. So that kind of what got me started and then to certain things, moments in time in college, got involved with water and soils in geography. I was a geography major. I switched in midterm but to the geography and really got involved in soils particularly did an internship at Argonne National Lab on surface mine reclamation at that time. And then my advisor for college. I was thinking about doing a master's in land use planning at Northern Illinois. And he said well, we've done as about as much as we can do for you. You ought to go somewhere else. I got married and my took my wife and myself and went down got a assistantship at Kentucky do surface mine reclamation for my masters and then stayed on for my PhD in soil microbiology nitrogen side tackling in knotel systems, so that was my real first, real indoctrination into agriculture.

You stated in some of the materials that I read online that soil microbiology impacts everything beyond the local level, it gets to be an international. How can you explain where that how that impacts and fits into the bigger picture and how that might, the bigger picture may bring information back to the local.

Right, right? Well, so soil microbiology is a relatively new field, particularly with a new techniques. But people don't really understand the value of soils, and particularly the microbes and soils. I often tell people at for the human aspect, that we only understand about one person awakened only cultivate 1% of the microbes in soil. So we know genetically, there's the other 99%, but we really don't know their ecology, but yet that 1% We get 90 plus percent of our antibiotics. For human health. We did an analysis about 50% of our anti cancer drugs, anti immunosuppressant, or even number suppressant drugs come from soils, which a lot of our microbial origin. So the whole world's wide open for trying to discover what the other 99% are doing, both for human health, but also for this planet. And so while I'm not necessarily doing the work on human health, I do quite a bit of work on what those microbes are doing in soil, for our culture, but also the effect the planet. And so the, the hot topic, no pun intended, but is the carbon cycle. So carbon, stored in soils, is about two to three times more than what's in vegetation on this planet. And a lot of that carbon, is processed by the microbes as we're getting into fall here, tree leaves, drop, corn, soybean residue, all that plant material is processed by the microbes in a portion of that is then sequestered or stored in soils. So now we have the tools to understanding the global carbon cycle and those microbes, how they're involved really affect our planet because of global rise in co2 and the implications that has on climate change. But, you know, now we have the tools to understand those microbes and really, to create healthier soils, and store more carbon become more efficient with nutrients.

So I take it, you're no longer are you the scientific community, are no longer at quite the loss, you were to be able to cultivate these. Are you is that part of the problem that you

Yeah, that's still the case today. That we know with the molecular techniques now, genomic analysis that we can know, we know, DNA strands, the DNA, but we really still can't cultivate a lot of those organisms. And we really need to have those tools so that we can understand the ecology, how do they fit in the soil environment, how they interact with each other. So we know the genetic potential a little bit what their potential activities, but trying to figure out how they live in the soil, how they live and plant roots, the potential there for increasing efficiency, water resilience in crops, is really key. It's really a kind of the next, next frontier.

So how do you study some of this? If you don't, if you can't bring it into a lab and cultivated that’s part of what you're talking about? Right? It's sort of that being able to sort of in the lab, then see what's going on? Are you at? Are you at a loss? If you can't do that, are there things that you can do to know, actually in the field, right?

Yeah, so there's, I don't. So there's people that do the genomic analysis, and I guess I'm looking at the products of that microbe activity. So I look at processes, and not the individual organisms, per se, but those groups of organisms and how they process nitrogen, or how they process carbon, so I'm looking at the tivity, and what environmental factors affect that activity, but I don't know necessarily who they are. But I want to know what they're doing.

Famous story when people were studying slime mold, dictyostelium. They knew that they aggregate it and they knew that there's something you control that aggregation, but they couldn't figure out what it was and all they could see was the spot on chromatography paper, and so they called it magic spot. For about five years until we finally got to characterized,

Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, I didn't know that. But yeah, they I mean, it's, it's something like that, you know. It'd be nice to grow, cultivate those organs. So we could look at their specific mechanisms and their ecology. But at this point in time, we know enough that we can, some of the general enzymes that make those products are really useful, and then what controls them. So I'm looking at things like moisture, and how human management of soils affects those processes for the detriment or for the benefit.

Could you say some of the things that you see there? Like, what, what are the kinds of interesting effects that that you're that you're studying? And that you're looking at? Right, in terms of the effects of, you know, water or human activity? And what are the outcomes? Are you looking at mostly carbon sequestration? Or what other kinds of things that are was interesting.

Yeah, So I guess, well, the current topic that's been working on soil health, but you know, that's very generic and how to improve soil health, and particularly, the microbial aspects of that we know the chemistry and the physics measurements, but microbial techniques, which you know, are just time out are fairly new. And so how do those measurements can be used to indicate direction of soil health, but the reason for the interest in soil health is for multiple effects. One is carbon sequestration. You mentioned, you mentioned, like I said, there's three, two to three times more carbon in soils, and then there is in the atmosphere, or in vegetation. So understanding how that carbon is retained in that soil. How can we put more carbon to the benefit of the environment to the atmosphere. So things that we're working on is we know that certain soil management practices like less tillage is beneficial for more fungi in fungi are more efficient with a carbon so more of their carbon a process or return is retained in the soil over bacteria. Also, we know that the fungal hyphae that permeate through the soil just like if you look on your bread moldy, bread, you know, those hyphal strands, those hyphae, grab onto the soil particles in physically bind them together. And what happens is that organic carbon is trapped inside those aggregates. And that protects them. And that's one of the mechanism for carbon sequestration. So I use, I work on both agricultural systems and grassland ecosystems, the Konza prairie here. And so I try to understand the principles of the prairie ecosystems, because they're water resilient, they're nutrient deficient, and look at those principles and try to figure out how those principles could be applied to access them, make them more resilient, more efficient.

The idea of the microbiome, I think, is just absolutely fascinating. And the work you're doing, obviously, as on the agricultural side of it, and looking at the human side of microbiome, and how those things are all going to fit together, I think in the future is going to be open up new areas that we never even considered.

Now, we're really excited. It's a fascinating time to be microbiology, so I saw microbiologists, and there's going to be lots of job opportunities, too.

So this is an area that is being viewed this specific area with more favor as far as funding potential.

Sure. Yeah. Well, I think so. You just mentioned the $10 million grant. Part of that was a component of that was soil health, and how do you improve soil health as well as being more nitrogen deficient? The goal of the program is to be 50% more nitrogen efficient in agricultural systems, which is a really daunting task. But it's aspirational. But really, I'm biased, but I think microbes are at least part of the key for that we can talk a little bit more about that. But the National Academy of Sciences came out a report last year, talked about breakthroughs research in agriculture and food systems. And the plant and soil microbiome was one of the one of the themes out of the five.

Well that’s certainly hopeful. Yes, yeah. You'd hate to find yourself in a situation with doing unsustainable research or you got a grant.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, no and USDA, NSF Do we all have are currently putting more money into kind of the microbiome area?

A lot of the work that you're doing in the area of climate change. I mean, obviously, that overlaps into this quite a bit. How do you respond to people that really don't believe that climate change is caused by things that we're doing today?

That's a good question. And it's changed over time. 20 years ago, it was a lot more controversial than it is now. But you still get the deniers or the skeptics. What I try to do, particularly when I, if I'm given a presentation, and there's usually skeptics in the room, is that I just try to show the data. And, and now, it's easier to show some of the implications of that. So actually, this morning's class, I show the rise in CO2 in the last 800,000 years. And if you put that that concentration graph, you know, shows that it varied between 180-280 parts per million, up until the beginning of the last century, but then there's been a huge increase, not only have we surpassed the 280, you know, when I came here, okay, stay in the late 1980s. It were we're doing experiments at looking at elevated CO2 on effect on plants. And that was 350 parts per million. So we're above that to RNA. And today, we're above 410 parts per million. And so just, if you put on a graph on a timescale, it's to sit here bounce around between 180-280. And then it shoots up dramatically. And so you can't deny that co2. And so we're beyond what our human existence pretty much in that 100 or 800, almost a billion years. And then we talk about sources, and about 80% of that increase is from fossil fuels. And we know that because of the carbon signature of that. So we know it's traced back to fossil fuels and the other 20% is from human activity, deforestation primarily. So that's two pieces, I show that data and then I show well, what's what we talked about CO2 and as a gas, heat trapping, and potential and then try to show the temperature records. And again, I'd say it's a little bit easier now. Because the last 20 years, it's continued the temperature records for the planet, aim for the country, US has continued to rise, and we set new records almost every year, but certainly decade by decade. And now we're seeing the other things that's happening. And that's the change in extreme events, not only temperature, but also rainfall. And, you know, the last few years, it's made it easier to talk about it because here 2012, we had a major major, a three year drought that affected Kansas, and the central part of us. And then last year, September or Labor Day, last year at rain, what a 10 inches in about four hours, and flooding. And then this spring, it's just been a disaster across the central part of the country with major major floods and huge amounts of rainfall. This year, just in Manhattan, it's been you know, it seems like oh, we get a four inch rain storm event each night, you know, and every couple of weeks, so and now we can track those and so we can show not even forgetting or not even talking about the future. What's happened already is more extreme events, both on temperature and water. And then that's affected the agriculture sector which tends to be one sector that's more conservative, not politically but in the idea of climate change. So they're being affected with their normal operations, and then we can talk about the future implications. But the point here is that, you know, these things are already observable now. And then what's potential in the future. 

Being able to look that at a longer time scale much must be a really big help because I know farmers will tend to to answer the well. This is Kansas we get really good one you're really bad, the other and that's just what it is. 

And they're right you know, the weather is always changing. And they've had to deal with it. But the problem is, or the challenge is that those changes are occurring much in a greater extreme and much more rapidly. So you could breed a crop. And you know, it takes 15-20 years to produce a new variety, while 15 to 20 years, we're in a new paradigm. And so, we it's a challenge for our culture, and it needs that investment in our culture, for the research to keep up with those increasingly rapid changes.

Do you have the opportunity to take this information out to an interdisciplinary group? Um, you're, obviously you're teaching within your program, and but you've got a lot of information. I think that that is valid. 

Yeah, I've been fortunate, I guess, to have opportunities to talk to a variety of people, groups, from local citizens, I talked to, you know, Kansas producers, but I gave a talk. Last fall, I guess, was earlier this year, sorry, in Wichita, to one of the TV stations down there, and they had a panel and talked about climate change. And that was broadcasted on the NPR or the TV equivalent of NPR. But then I, you know, I, I try to present the facts. And then I guess one of the things is trying to relate it to local level, it's one of the things I've learned is, figure out your audience and then present the material at that level. So I've saw I have talked to producers by talk to I've given testimony at the Kansas legislature or briefings in Congress, in the US Congress, but I've even talk to the legislators in New Zealand, Brazil, and some other places. So it's given me a variety of opportunities to learn how to transfer that information to different groups.

How much of the research that you do is interdisciplinary to I mean, so you got this work with the IPCC, which is very interdisciplinary, right? And is that a kind of thing where you just contributed sort of talk about how that happened? Right?

Yeah, well, he made the process of how I got selected via an IPC or and then what he did for it. So we had a, I guess, a little bit of background, we had a major grant, from Congress to work on climate change, and air culture mitigation. In Kansas State was lead and I was the project director for that was 10 universities, or 10 institutions, and it was about $15 million. But that set us up, this is early 2000. So it set us up as the group of leading experts on agriculture. And so there was other countries that wanted to basically mimic our consortium. So Australia, in particular. And so I got engaged with Australian scientists, and some of our colleagues, all scientists, that made it easier, but and so in during the that time period, the US was doing bilateral negotiations on research on climate change. They weren't in the the global UN effort. And so Australia came to us and said, you know, we want to work with this group from K State, this consortium led by K State. Well, one thing led to another and State Department was doing these bilateral negotiations, and they asked me to participate in those negotiations. So I go and set coordinate plans for research to coordinate between the US, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and Canada were the four countries. But then the State Department asked me to, or asked if I'd be willing to be nominated for the IPCC. The process is that each country nominates a person, then that’s sent to the UN center, and then they look for expertise, diversity, other criteria, and then I did get selected for two rounds to report that 2007 and the 2014 report. It's a fascinating process, because you're right it is the ensnared interdisciplinary so Even in agriculture, if you think about it, there's soil scientists. But there's animal scientists, there's agriculture, agriculture economics, there's sociology. You know, modelers, engineers, so it's a very diverse even when the agriculture sector and then you have to each chapter as it's written, so I was one of the lead authors for the Agriculture chapter, but then you have to coordinate, and then talk to how your piece fits in, like, for example, biofuels, well, how does that fit into the transportation sector? So then you have to bring in a new whole cadre that don't know anything about soils, or, or have, you know, perceptions on agriculture that are not necessarily true. And so it's just, yeah, it's fascinating. And, you know, you could, I could stay in my lab and do soil microbiology work, but to be transformative, and what impacts the world you need real science is really complex. Now, you really have to be transdisciplinary. In order to bring these complex systems in, I would argue Agriculture is a complex system, because involves sociology involves, you know, the physical environment, the soils and the water, and that, but then it's economics. And so one of my jokes is that USDA, in these large grants required that you have a sociologist, and so it's not just putting them on the grant, but it's embedding them in the project. And so my joke was, I'm not very social person. And but I've learned to work with sociologists, and but it's been really valuable and educational to understand why consumers or why farmers don't accept certain practices or understanding. And so it makes my work, hopefully more impactful. 

In that sense, has that kind of thing changed any of what you actually do? Like in your work? Has it changed the direction of some of the projects or any of the actual research methods?

Yeah, I guess I would, in one sense, No, I'm still doing my detailed field and lab experiments. But I now work with teams of people. And so I'm looking at how we can design agricultural systems that improve soil health, or affect the microbiology, and then how those practices would be accepted by producers. And what's the economics? When I give, we were talking earlier, giving talks to various groups, you know, I give briefings to Congress or a lot of times talks to producers, you know, okay, fine, you know, the soil microbiology is great, or soils are great. But you know, what does it mean, to my bottom line, my profit, you know, we can be sustainable all we want, but if you're not, for the for soils, or, but if you're not providing a profit, that farm is not going to be sustainable. And so it has, I guess it has affected how I think about this, the whole system. And that's one of the advantages, being on the National Academy Board, is that it's pulling in from all these different disciplines and trying to develop what's the future of agriculture.

Can you talk a little bit more about the National Academy board and this clearly a very prestigious position? And it's, it's a something that your peers brought you into that and put you in that spot? So how does it work?

Yeah, so the National Academies, now it's all merged sciences, engineering, and medicine used to be three separate, but they have the honorific which are the fellows. But then they have operational unit. It's still kind of called the natural National Research console, but it kind of is really under the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. So under that, the research console, they have different divisions in different boards. So while back, I guess, about nine years ago, I got asked to be a board member of the board on agriculture and natural resources. And then three years ago, I ended up being appointed as chair of that board, and I just found out yesterday I got reappointed for another three, three years. It's a you know, it's well, one is prestigious. But the idea, at least my goal on the board, particularly as board chair is we do different studies on issues related to the US, related to Agriculture and Natural Resources. And part of our job is to be also looking at what's the future of Agriculture and trying to help lead innovation in agriculture natural resource, that the challenge that our board is that we have Agriculture in natural resources. So there's agriculture, but then there's also soil water, forestry, and so they can be synergistic. But they can also be in conflict with each other, you know, if Agriculture is imposing impacts on water or, or forestry. So it makes it challenging, but I think it also makes it fascinating, because it is one whole ecosystem, and how can we have, you know, sustain food production? And sustain the environment?

Is the anticipation that you on the board will be advocates? Or, you know, is it a bully pulpit, as well?

Well, yeah, we produce policy, relevant information. And, but so sometimes, so the National Academy was set up by Abraham Lincoln, the same year as same time period as the land grant system universities. And so it was designed to be provide scientific advice for Congress. And so we are, we can be commissioned by Congress to do a study on a certain topic, and hopefully provide money for that, or they direct the agencies to provide money for that. Because the studies aren't necessarily cheap, because you're bringing in expertise and depends on the activity, it can be a three months, or it could be a three year effort. So there's a lot of staff time, my time has volunteered a lot of other people, all the studies, the experts are all volunteer time except for their travel. So then, Congress, but more recently, we'll get group states or even NGOs will come to the boards and say, You really need to have a study on this topic. We're doing run right now on soaring of Tennessee horses, which is looking at the ethics and how to detect soaring as the Gatewatch of horses. And so there's training but then they can also put devices in hooves that cause pain, and create that exaggerated gait. So what we're being asked to do is how can you detect some of that? So, you know, here on my own, and I'm dealing with, you know, Tennessee, walking horses, and so on, or we're going at this, but at a rad advocacy? Yeah. So. So then we will, then this recommendation will be you know, how do you detect that and of course, that could lead to legislation. In that sense. Citrus greening is a major issue for the orange industry. And so we were asked to evaluate their research program. And, there's multitude of sources, as agriculture as typically they got consumer groups, industry groups, the federal government supporting sectors research, and so it was very disoriented. And how do you bring those groups gather and groups together and then figure out what are the top priorities to have a more effective program? It doesn't necessarily lead to well, parts of it could lead to legislation, but would we directed and say, Okay, you need to coordinate better and these are the topics so yeah, I'm trying to think food safety, of course, are right now we're, we're looking at some of the innovations robotics in ag, you know, how do we spur that innovation? So it would the studies, workshops, could come out and say, Okay, these are the priorities and that would help direct industry and as well as the federal government on direction.

So a lot of people in the public maybe, maybe elsewhere, right start to think about sciences, a little more politicized now, right. And sort of part of that is like climate science, right? And sort of, you know, the way you talked about it was just, you know, here, here are the facts, right. But of course, a lot of people view this as it, you know, as John was just saying, sort of, you're already like advocating a bully puppeting. Or you gotta, you got an agenda, right. And, and then a lot of the things that you're just talking about, you know, there is at least sort of, oh, maybe some trade offs, or some areas where you kind of you might have some questions about, alright, so how much of what we're doing is really, you know, value driven or policy driven, or we have, we have a point, or there's something we're trying to accomplish, and how much of what we're doing is really just like, oh, you know, here's the facts, folks. Right, as we see them, could you? I mean, how do you think about, you know, I guess, like all of that, you know, either as it comes up on the National Academies and other people on the board thinking about those issues? And, you know, are they are they going for further being, like, truly objective? Or can you be objective? You know, and then, you know, all the way back to your science and IPC, I mean, it's a big huge question, but just like, in general, I think about these things.

Well, yeah. Um, so, yeah, a couple examples. IPC was probably a good one. You know, the critics say, well, the IPC is just pushing their own agenda. But I will tell you, you know, if you've had in science, right, peer reviewed manuscripts, and then you get outside people look at your work. And, and, you know, you know, you get, you don't get all these great comments here. You got pages of that. And, you know, usually there's two or three reviewers. For the agriculture just agriculture chapter alone, we had, I'm forgetting the number exactly, but over 2000 individual comments, and we had to respond each single comment. Now, we could say, we accept that we'll make changes or no is wrong, but and then we had a reviewer watching us to make sure we just didn't ignore those comments. And that's all. So you got to have the comments that you make, or the recommendations you make aren't just off the cuff. They have to be based on scientific background, and you got, and so you have, you know, hundreds of people watching you, and then the reviewers are watching the other people watching, make sure we're responding to those. So there's a lot of oversight, you can't just, you know, forget the fact or the science, you know, yeah. And so IPC, we would say, you know, this is I forgot what the terms were, but this is highly likely, you know, and some uncertainty level, you know, there's a 50% chance that we're wrong or whatever. But, you know, it's fair, the scientists are fairly conservative, you know, so even if you say, Well, it's a 90% chance that it might be right. It's probably a lot higher than that. But scientists, at least in particularly an agriculture, but we tend to be more conservative and are judged.

Like yeah, right, so not not going too far.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Status, establishing likelihood. Yeah.

But there are cases, you know, we're in negotiation or discussion for the National Academy to look at water in this country. groundwater, and it, it's probably as sensitive a topic as climate change, or maybe even more so. Because our country doesn't have a water policy. It's as a whole. I mean, we have Kansas policy, we have Texas, you know, and water is very dear to not only the state, but to an individual and it doesn't respect state boundaries. It does. Yes, that's right. And so Texas is very, you know, you can pump it, if you any water below your land, of course, it goes beyond that. But you can just pump until it runs dry Kansas, actually, as a state has a more advanced water policy, though, than most other states in this country, which is interesting.

California has this heritage system.

Yeah. So, we've talked about how do you it's a major issue, affecting our culture, but also going to affect competition with industry and cities. And that's already happening out west on surface waters. And so how do we do we need to look at what's the science behind what how do you mind What the recharge rate is, and then look at opportunities for efficiencies. But it's probably going to have to come into some discussion on water policy, which could be challenging, you know, because the state water rights issues, but, but we'll have to, if we're based on science, and say, these are policy options, not prescriptive, but say, you know, if you do this, this could affect, you know, save water you do this other policy or, or programs, it could undermine and increase water use, or Yeah, so. But you'll have, again, you'll have to be the economists and, and, and sociologists to help design or provide those policy options. We're not saying it's this policy, but these are the implications of those different policies to help. 

Yeah, yeah, I think that's one of the clearest explanations of why we need sociologists. Truly, honestly, series. Spectacular.

Yeah, but also why you need the science to write together the pieces, right, sort of it's, you know, the thinking about designing serious policy without having some science behind it telling us what the implications are going to be of doing this thing, or that thing is just sort of mind boggling.

Yeah. But and that's why, like, you know, I enjoy working these interdisciplinary groups is, is having that interaction and and other viewpoint to think about, oh, yes, there's just, there's the economic or sociology piece, you know, I can design agriculture practices, but nobody takes them up. I haven't done the world any good.

This one's kind of a wide open question. But basically, what are your thoughts on the future of agriculture? When you're talking? I mean, we, you've talked a lot about the science and the under the climate change, and those kinds of things. But there are a lot of challenges coming forward.

There's a lot of serious challenges. But agriculture, in this country, and around the world is in everybody's conversation. I think, now, it's a wonderful time to be in our culture. But it's also we got to get it right, because there's a lot of interest in agriculture right now. And so we need to take hold of that opportunity. There's lots of challenges. There's, you know, the increasing population, how do we deal with increasing production, but also food waste? But how can we do that increased production without harming having impact on our natural resources, forests, grasslands, soil water. And so I really think I was at a roundtable, week ago, of innovations are can't really what you just talked about future of agriculture innovations. And so from a technical standpoint, we need to be innovative agriculture is one of the least technology advanced sectors, I think it's like seven out of eight or something. And so we need to think, look at those other sectors, but robotics data, data acquisition and data analytics are going to be critical. Looking at efficiencies, this new grant that we have, we're supposed to increase water use efficiency by a rain fed agriculture, by 50% and nitrogen by 50%. As well as the same time increase production by 2% annually. So that's kind of Yeah. So but you know, I think if we can look at, there's a lot of startups let me back up. There's a lot of startups, now interested in agriculture all the millennials from Google and all that they're pumping millions and billions of dollars into agriculture startups. So I've been talking to companies. They're looking at robotics, and so instead of spraying a whole field for herbicides or chemicals, they got sensors on and spot spraying. Okay, this is wheat, and this is a corn plant or cotton plant. Okay, I want to spray this one, but not this one. And so one, you've reduced your chemical use. So that's profit for the farmer, but you also have less impact on the environment. So things like that are really key. We talked earlier about the microbiome. There's a lot of investment in looking At taking advantage of the soil microbiome to increase productivity and increase efficiency, so there's a company called pivot bile that is, has taking a microbe and adding it to corn plants, corn roots. So it's not a legume or sore, it's not fixing nitrogen inside the root, it's actually living around that root. And it's fixing nitrogen, and then shares that nitrogen to the corn plant. So it's in its early stages. But if it works, and I like the concept, then what that means is, then we wouldn't have to apply as much commercial or synthetic fertilizer. And that makes it more efficient. Because if it's fixing nitrogen as the plant is growing, then it's sharing that nitrogen and not giving it and then it's not available for loss, it's out of the system.

What's the advantage of the microbe? I can see the advantage to the corn plant.

They're living in the root and they're getting the carbon. Okay, so root exudates, from the, from the plant. And so they, so they're just, they're after carbon, they're after energy. And so if you added a microbe before and microbe to the general soil, it couldn't compete. Because there are microbes out there that have been that are used to low nutrient low carbon status, we think saw as a rich, but relative laboratory media, they're very poor. And so the general biology additives to soil generally don't work. But you now you have this root rhizosphere. That's a special niche. So it's almost like a laboratory culture. And so you can add that microbe and it's getting the carbon, a continuous supply of carbon is growing, and then it's fixing nitrogen. And they've manipulated the microbe. So it fixes excess nitrogen, and then that nitrogen goes then to feed the corn plant.

Typical post harvest biochemist asking you to pre harvest Yeah, right. Right. Question out of ignorance. I think.

So. Thanks. So how much of this you study grasslands to? Right? So how many of the kinds of things like that that you're talking about, are mimicking processes that are, you know, that you see in in grasslands? And how much does it sort of, like, brand new innovative, like, we're gonna do something different?

Yeah. So well, I guess the basic ecology if you look at, like the tall grass prairie, it's never tilled. Okay, so we don't have to do tillage. And that's what we're trying to promote. In agriculture is no till systems, but it has diversity there. And we can come back to that because it has different plant communities. But we don't add nitrogen, or nutrients, nitrogen, phosphorus, other nutrients to the system, other than what comes through the rainfall. So their nitrogen economy of that system is either recycle it, or do some nitrogen fixation. Well, it turns out, most of the prairie nitrogen is recycled. It's very, very nitrogen efficient. But it's also in my model climate resilient, you know, the droughts it slows down, it has deep rooting systems, it has diversity in there. So it's climate resilient, it's water efficient, it's nutrient efficient. And it's a fairly stable ecosystem, you know, you don't have past outbreaks and wipe through. Well, so how does that translate to agriculture? So there's just those basic principles. Well, can we design that we don't have to tillage, so we got no till? We're still planning monoculture and single crop, which you know, some people think, well, we can do polyculture, that's going to be hard to do. But can we increase the diversity, not maybe in space in one point in time, but can we increase that diversity over time, so the value is then you plant a corn crop and then you have cover crops, or you do rotations that are plant corn every year you plant corn, soybean, wheat, or other crops, and do cover crops so you have continuous cover, so it's more like the prairie. You can actually choose your cover crops for what you want to do for the soil. So say if I got compaction, I want to plant a tuberose crop like tillage radish, or turnips, they'll create bio pores in the soil. You don't have to tell it or I want nitrogen. Well, I plant a legume in that system. To fix nitrogen for the succeeding crop. So there's, we need to have design or cover crops, or our mixes to make the agriculture system more efficient and resilient. So and then, part of the innovation is that a lot of people are going out and bioprospecting those microbes in those root systems to figure out okay, can we take those microbes and then put them into an ag system? Cool.

Can you say something about why polyculture? Is, is a challenge? Is it sociological? Is it economic? Or is it sort of a matter of the, you know, I don't know. Other aspects of the biological processes?

Yeah. Well, if you think about, like the prairie, you got, you know, you know, 100 different kinds of plants, but say, even a polyculture, you know, slanted to West Jackson was really doing the polyculture work. They backed off a little bit. Now we're looking at perennial sorghums, and wheats and that, but the polyculture, conceptually is nice, because you have a diverse mix out there.  You know, pest outbreaks are going to be less but the problem is, how do you harvest that. Now, if you're going to graze it, that's fine, you put animals out there and graze. But if I want, I got I want harvest the grain from a wheat, and a corn, and, you know, some legume, I got three different species out there, they're gonna mature at different times. And then I got to figure out how to separate the grain. And if they mature at different times, you know, one's ready to harvest the other one isn't. But if I wait to the one that's later, that we're for the first one's probably going to shatter. And so it's someone's technological. But then I guess it's somewhat sociological in the sense of how do you manage three or four crops growing at the same time? And so you know, the systems we were talking about earlier with cover crops and, and rotations. It takes a lot more knowledge and skill. Well, now, if you got three or four crops growing at the same time, the management skills have to increase dramatically. 

Are there similar issues with the managing the microbiology of the soils. Do you think in terms of the complications? And how much additional, you know, basically, management expertise it takes?

That’s a good question, I haven’t thought of it that way. I guess from an occulant side, adding these organisms like the corn, we're used to adding treatments on to corn seed or soybean seeds for for, generally for pest control, but, and legumes, we coat legume seeds for rhizobia, that fix nitrogen that's, we got 57 years of experience in that area. So that's not necessarily a new technology, and it's just, you inoculate it then you plant it. And then you just hopefully provide the environment. So you're not actively managing those microbes that's providing a good environment, and then adding the inoculant. to that. I suppose there be certain things you got to worry about, if you're doing seed treatment, adding a fungicide that might affect that added microbe or added bacteria. If you're adding chemical fertilizer, you're gonna make sure it doesn't. It isn't caustic to those microbes. So there's a little bit of that, but we're probably I guess I'm once you know, it's those are practices that most farmers are used to doing dealing with.

When you're talking about diversity, the scale you're talking about, you're talking about maybe two different three different plants going in corn and wheat or whatever it might be. What are your thoughts on kind of the small farming the smaller farming type practices that I know with the reduction in population in western Kansas, the state looks at ways of trying to increase population and bring in other other kinds of growing patterns. What are your thoughts on the small versus the very large agricultural practices? 

Yeah, I guess from a technology standpoint, these innovators I don't think I think they're scale neutral. At least I hope they are. There may be out modifications, but in my global travels, I was so, so one one way, or one thing that we do like to manage nitrogen is look at sensors that detect the greenness of plants. And if it's less green, that means it's generally nitrogen deficient. So then you can go in and apply more nitrogen. Well, you know, so we got drones and other on tractor sensors. But I was at a one acre rice paddy in Vietnam. And they're using their smartphone and sensing the greenness for color from the smartphone and then one of the international research centers, Irie had developed an application well then this is how much nitrogen need to put on your rice. So here's, you know, one acre, rice, Paddy farmer, Vietnam, and a cell phone or smartphone technology. And so in that case, is technology neutral is packaging it differently, but the information still is applicable. You know, I've heard people say, Well, no till has to be large scale, big farms. But Brazil is you can plant knotel by hand, or they got no till planters or horse drawn or oxen drawn. So it doesn't have to be now. And there are some farmers, least in Brazil, I've seen are doing organic knotel. Not using herbicides. It's possible. But it's a lot harder. We talked about the sociological aspects, the management skills required for organic no till is much, much higher skill level and management skills.

So when you get into some of the smaller farming practices, I didn't take my question to the level that needed to be and you're looking at small farmers putting in a variety of different vegetables, fruits, grains, whatever it might be. Is there more of a positive impact on the microbiological soil?

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, because if you get more plant root systems, we're worried about the above ground, but more root variety, as a good thing for the microbes, because they're feeding off of different sources of types of food from that roots. So, you know, I talked about earlier, well, increasing diversity. And that was probably more big farms is adding cover crops and rotations in that sense. But a small farmer can actually do it easier because he or she can plant well. I mean, it's very common practice to plant corn and beans in the inner row, you know, if they're hand harvesting, or that's easier to do than trying to run a machine through these rows and crushing your inner row. thing. So you could do things, like some of the things you could actually do easier on a small holding. So the principles still apply. And, and going back to soil health, particularly the continent of Africa, though, a lot of those countries, I was in Ghana, February, they really need soil health, because their soils are so devoid of organic matter. And if you could improve organic manner, improve aggregation. So when it does rain, infiltrates, and then it's held in the soil, then that makes those soils and those small holding farmers much more resilient and not subject to the variety of climate extremes, weather extremes. All comes back to the soil.

The fundamentals, yes. You talked a little bit I think earlier about the grant that you've got coming in, what are the outcomes that you're looking for from that program?

Well, so it's a five year program is based in Southern Great Plains, primarily Oklahoma, and Kansas. And the idea is to Well, I mentioned earlier but the idea is to develop systems that are that increase production, also increase total factor productivity. And that's what's I'm not that's an economist, again, working in the Transdisciplinary Areas, how to figure that one out. But simply it's looking at how much inputs you put in, and what's the output and so the efficiency or the, the cost per unit of bush or grain produced, and then we have to increase water and nitrogen efficiency by, like 50%. By, well, it's, I forgot the timeframe, but we have to provide the tools for them, we are going to do it in five years. And then also be climate resilient. And so if you think of Kansas, and Oklahoma, in the non irrigated areas, we are extremely vulnerable to these weather extremes. And we talked about that, you know, from super dry to almost flooded conditions. So we have a group at University of Maryland that's also in the project. And they have expertise on modeling. And particularly, they've looked at weather. When I say, weather probabilities. So I've seen this et Cie, in Colombia, where if, for example, in April, we can look at the winter weather, what's the probability that the summer is going to be a wet year or drier, cooler, wet? And so it's not a climate model, but it's a more of a statistical model and say, if we got a 30% chance it's going to be dry, or 30%. Chances wet? So can we take that information? And this will be the challenge, and I predict we will fail many times, but that's okay. You learn from failure. But can we say okay, there's a 30% chance it's going to be a wet year or 50% chance? Well, instead of planning your normal summer crop, should we look for something that can take advantage of the extra water? So instead of planning? Well, maybe instead of so you harvest your wheat, and now if it's gonna be a wet year, the chances are, we can go to double cropping with sorghum, or even if it's really wet corn, okay. Or if it's going to be a dry year, maybe we aren't going to double crop, but we want to keep that soil covered. Well, maybe we plant a summer forage, and then that forage can be used for hay. So there's still a little better income, but you're still keeping that solid cover and keeping the microbes fed and some economic production from that. So looking at tying in, improve soil health to be more climate resilient, and maybe some weather projections, and once I predictions, but projections, it'll be a challenge. And that's why I said, I think we I, I expect we will fail some, but I hope that we will have some successes or learn from those failures. Because I'm sure there'll be times when we say okay, it's going to be a wet year. It's not. Okay. So that's, but that's what science and innovation should do. We hope to get involved some of the technology. So can we put in, in ground sensors for soil water for nitrogen to make on the go decisions to? So there's, I'm excited, I think it's a huge opportunity, a great opportunity. And if we're truly innovated, innovative, can we really produce some transformational change? Not incremental, but translate transformational changes in agriculture.

Very exciting. Yeah. Sounds like a really exciting project. Well, the last, the last question that I had, in my mind to bring to you is just something on the Nobel prize that you were named in in 2007. Can you give us a little bit of background on what that was all about?

Yeah. That was interesting. I wasn't even aware that we were even up for it. So the first thing is it was for the IPCC, IPCC report that came out in 2007. And it was for the entire group. So it's not like I won the Nobel Peace Prize I did, but I shared it with several 100 others. Scientists are authors of that report. Like said, I wasn't even aware that we were up for it. I woke up that morning and had a text from one of the faculty members on campus that congratulations on winning the Nobel Prize. I thought it was a joke you know, and then for a while there, we weren't sure, because it was a shared and it has actually split with Al Gore, he got half of it. And then IPC got the second half. And so we weren't sure it was for, you know, for the name group or for us included. And so there was a lot of confusion that morning saying, Okay, are we individual recipients and but anyway, it turned out that we, it was a shared, but we are part of that sharing process. And in fact, there was a lottery for groups, you can send 20 people to the ceremonies in in Norway. And so, of course, all the, you know, administrators, you know, leaders got there, but I think there was out of that 20, I think there was six slots available. So there was a lottery and I was had the potential fortunate I didn't win the lottery. So but we got a plaque, and there's artwork associated with each Nobel Prize. And so we got a copy of that artwork on that. So it's very, so it's kind of kind of, it was cool.

Yeah, no, it's very cool. Very, very, very nice. No. Okay, are there any other questions? I know that we, we've want to be conscious of your time, and the other folks around the table. Do you have anything more you want to add? Any questions of us?

No, not again. Thank you. It's been good conversation.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

Dr. Jay Weeks is a recent graduate in the College of Agriculture at Kansas State University where is research focused on soil chemistry.  Jay joined with the Global Food Systems Initiative at K-State early in its relaunch and has been instrumental in the development of “Something to Chew On”.  Prior to his new professional journey into the agriculture industry with Indigo Ag, Scott, Jon and I talked with Jay about the student experience, the expansion of information sharing at K-State through podcasting, and his personal and professional development during his time here.

Transcript:

The Future of Food: Food Systems, Podcasts and Farewells - with Dr. Jay Weeks

I feel really fortunate to be beginning my career in agriculture right now because of where we stand. From an environmental standpoint and the public perception of agriculture. I think people are willing to, to say, you know, there's enough information out there people understand that we need to make changes right.

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Maureen Olewnik, coordinator of Global Food Systems.

I’m Scott Tanona. I'm a Philosopher of Science. 

And I'm Jon Faubion. I'm a Food Scientist.

Hello, everyone and welcome back. At its core, a university exists to help students become aware of the world around them understand the past and learn to identify current and future questions and how to confront the challenges of their generation. Our guest today is Joseph J weeks. Now, Dr. Weeks, J became involved in the global food systems at K State early in its reincarnation and well into his work toward completion of his PhD. The idea of using podcasts to help deliver information on those core university requirements in the area of the food systems was a cloudy notion in my mind when I first met Jay, his enthusiasm for this form of information sharing helped to develop the current platform, something to chew on. Jay worked with me, Scott Tanona and John Faubion, on the idea of bringing information on K State food system related research to students, faculty into the world. Its current success is testimony to the university's ability to accomplish the goals of developing the next generation of leaders like Jay. Jay, as you moved on to your new job and new life, we hope for your continued input and direction from the perspective of food systems professional. Congratulations. Now, let's hear a little bit about Jay how he got here, how he completed this series of goals and where he is headed. And I get to say this this time. So Jay, welcome to the podcast.

Happy to be here. It's exciting to be in this seat for once.

Absolutely. Well, this is a little bit of a bittersweet podcast for us because this is Jay’s last time that he's going to be taking off and moving on to another, another part of his life. But congratulations on your PhD.

Thank you. I really appreciate it.

And your job and your job.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, like you said, it's, uh, I'm sad to be leaving all of you. But I'm excited for the next step as well. So very, very way things go.

That's right. Very exciting. Well, as our audience knows, Jay, you've been the one sitting in this spot for the last eight months, six, eight months. And this was pretty much your brainchild, and in putting this podcast system together, and I really appreciate all the work you've done on it. It's been a real journey for us so far. And it's been quite a success. And so we're really excited about it. And I guess we'll just take the same tack that we do with the other presenters.

My own medicine.

Yes. Tell us a little bit about your background.

A little bit about my background. Well, if I go all the way back, my interest in food, sort of stems from the fact that my grandparents owned a small dairy farm in central New York. So growing up, you know, my grandmother watched me when I was really young. And so became familiar with, you know, being around the farm and all that when I finally was old enough, I got to participate in farm activities. And I thought that that was really cool. So I spent school breaks, and summers and things like that, on the farm all the way up through my undergrad actually. And I wanted to run the farm when I was done. I wasn't even planning on going to college, although my mother especially thought differently and said, No, you're going to college, you decide to do something different afterwards, then that's fine. But I want you to have that. So I decided to pursue a degree in agricultural sciences at Cornell University. And I didn't know what I didn't know which is kind of a running theme in my life and that fell in love with soils and found out I really liked chemistry, which I didn't know before and found that I could marry soils and chemistry and use that you know those passions to do make progress. And in other parts of the world, I had a professor who was doing research on lead contaminated soils. So I became interested in the pollution components of that. So I decided that for graduate school, I wanted to do research and lead contaminated soils and tried to protect people from those soils, and that when they're trying to grow fruits and vegetables, and that sort of thing, especially in inner cities. So I met a professor, I worked here at K State, Dr. Ganga Hettiarachchi, at soil conference in San Antonio. You know, she, we hit it off right away. And, you know, here I was, that's how I got started.

Excellent. So that's your background? That's my, what about your foreground? What's up next.

So I started off with the, with the soil lead stuff. But I, you know, after a couple years of that, realize that I really was more interested in soil fertility. And I realized that there was probably a greater chance to make a global impact working in soil phosphorus than in necessarily working in soil lead, although both are very important for different reasons. So I started pursuing research related to improving the use efficiency of, of soil, phosphorus fertilizers, and trying to understand the chemical mechanisms there and how we could improve farming practices and make better fertilizers. So I pursued that for most of my PhD research. And then, you know, again, I started seeing that there are other options out there besides just working in soil phosphorus, and that it's not just limited to, you know, you none of these things operate in a vacuum. Right, you know, so phosphorus interacts with the carbon. And you know, so I became more interested in carbon cycling, and things like that. So this opportunity came along at a company that's relatively new called Indigo egg, where they are trying to build a one of the things that they're trying to do amongst many, that they're trying to build a carbon markets, where they actually pay farmers to implement practices that build carbon on their soil. So they can sequester carbon as a, as not only a means to improve soil health, but also reverse climate change, right? And because not, because those practices initially, are always profitable for the farmer, especially at the beginning, sometimes by paying farmers to sequester this carbon that sort of makes that process roll. So I'll be working as a soil scientist, they're helping to move some of their work from their r&d departments into into commercial commercial products and things like that.

And this is in bucolic rural Boston. 

This is they're based out of Charleston, Boston. Excellent.

So could you How much of that is, is about like the economics, right? And how much is it about sort of the science? So what kinds of things are they developing? That you can say? I mean, and talk about right? And what kinds of what they're doing. You said they have to incentivize farmers for doing things to so like, what's going on there? I mean, I don't know how much you can say about what they're actually up to. But..

yeah, I mean, because I'm still a little bit out, right? I don't want to I don't want to overstep, overstate what they're doing. But you know, we really scientifically, we know that there are ways to build the carbon stores in the soil, and that it's beneficial for for soil health, because it improves nutrient cycling, improves water holding capacity makes makes the soils more drought resistant, if you're growing crops in them and that sort of stuff. But there are there can be financial barriers to, you know, to growing a cover crop for a variety of reasons, some of it is just the cost of growing it, and terminating it and things like that. So I really think that I personally believe more in market based solutions to problems. And I think that if we're going to come up with ways to mitigate climate change, or actually start to reverse some of the effects of carbon emissions, that we really need to find financial incentives, because although there will always be people who adopt these practices for the good of the environments, or find that it's beneficial on their own farm and things like that, I really find that if, if we can build functioning markets that pay people and incentivize people to implement these practices, and they get the added benefit on the in the field to then it's a win win for everybody in that case, and it's not just relying on the farmer to do what's right, because it's necessarily what's right, even though in the long run, it probably would benefit them anyway.

Do you think this is transportable successfully outside the limits of the US? Is this a model or an idea that that would work? In Africa, for example?

Oh, yeah. I mean, absolutely. I mean, as long as there's a functioning carbon market, right. So as long as there's people putting money into that market to pay for these practices, which sort of depends on you know, the political process and what the consumers who are buying the products of the companies are paying for the carbon offsets For as long as that sort of process exists, then yeah, I think it could be, you know, it could work anywhere.

And clearly sounds to be a mid range to semi long range solution, as well, if at least unless I'm, if I'm understanding it correctly, this is something we're not gonna see large quantitative differences in right away.

Well, no, I mean, what the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere right now is something like 415-420 parts per million, right? You know, if we, if we implement this in in five years, that's not going to all of a sudden be back.

No, no, no, no, I'm 100. Yeah, what I was gonna do was make an inequality between that rate of change in the rate of change in politics, you could find yourself on the wrong side of the political balance, and then you'd be all up?

Well, yeah. I mean, that's why again, I think it's important to build markets around this sort of stuff, that that can be resilient to at least some of those whims of the politics, right. You know, we, as we've seen in the last few years, the politics can be pretty capricious, and, you know, what gets implemented by one administration can easily be redacted by the next. So if we build something that, you know, the public or the private sector believes in and that farmers buy into, then that can operate independently of, you know, then of what the government's doing? Ideally, although, yeah, the government will always have some influence over them.

Yeah. So what's the idea with the carbon market? So this is people paying for offsets? Is this is the idea generally, you know, I actually don't know that much about what people are proposing here is it but is, it is generally that governments are going to be paying right for these offsets, or that other other people who are using right emitting a lot are going to be paying. So it's just sort of it's just between content producers, right.

Yeah, it's my understanding that, at this point, I'm not 100% certain, but it's my understanding that the government won't be paying necessarily for the offsets that it's, it's going to be the the company's doing the right meeting, right? Because they want to be able to say that they're carbon neutral, or even carbon negative, because now with increased public awareness that there's, there's possibly a market for that, right? People will pay a little bit more to know that, or have the idea that their products are or not, are more sustainable, right.

So yeah, so this, and again, this isn't about the company in particular, just sort of about the idea. Right? So then, so then we have the potential to sort of, you've got the potential to mitigate. Right? So right, you know, people do this personally, too, right. So if I'm gonna take a flight somewhere, right, how do I offset right, my, my, my carbon footprint there, right, and I do something else, or I pay into something that, you know, does something good to plant some trees or something like that right. Now, you know, generally that's not gonna, that might mitigate your impact, right. It's not reversing it by itself. Right. And I think that's one of the big challenges with that is it might slow down, right, the rates of increases, right. But, and so one amongst many things to be doing Sure. Right, you know, sure.

But I don't necessarily I know.

I don't, I'm not picking on you or the company either. Right. But I sort of, yeah, I mean, all these ideas are, it's hard. 

Well, and you mentioned that the offsetting your flights. I know, there are companies who have tried to set up personal kiosks in the airports, pay X amount of dollars for every mile, you're gonna fly or whatever. And for my understanding is those actually weren't that successful, because it was sort of confusing to the consumer. But it's actually what I understand a lot of the airlines have signed on to an agreement where they actually are purchasing offsets to some degree as part of an international agreements. So I think that it's that right, the, you know, whether it be American Airlines, or Delta, or somebody who really commits to buying those offset credits, if that's really what's going to build the market, if we can get more companies on board, doing that sort of thing. And people vote with their dollars to support companies to do that, that's a better way to do it. 

And then and then we need more ways of actually sequestering carbon. So then we Yeah, right.

Yeah. But that are mutually beneficial, right. What's great about what I'm hoping to participate in is that this is beneficial for farmers anyway, right? So it's not a sort of a win win, right?

Well, taking it back to kind of your time moving through the university setting, how you work, you identified a major professor that you wanted to work with and went through and work for that. Who else did you have as mentors kind of working with you on the way through that? That piece of it?

Uh, well, I mean, there's been I've been thinking back I've been getting really nastalgic. Yeah. Yeah, weeks here, but there's been a lot of people who've had a really positive impact on not only my career, but also my, you know, my personal development as well. I mean, you Maureen, had have had tremendous impact, giving me this opportunity. Just getting to know you better over time. And you and Scott and John as well. It's been great to get to know everybody. But my graduate committee has been has been really influential in helping me to identify what my research priorities are and ways of thinking about my research that I might not have considered right. It's really important than I think, you know, in my experiences isn't even done enough that we need to have other people outside voices challenging what we're doing in research, so that we get outside perspectives, and we don't get too siloed. And what we, the mental models we build of the impact that were of the things that we're doing? How did our maybe absent from the real world, so constantly asking those questions. So that's been really influential. Obviously, my friends out at piccalilli farm have had a been immensely influential net analysis and have been great and really have been a significant influence on my life. But, you know, other things that have been immensely influential have been podcasts, to be honest with you. What got me into doing all of this to begin with is a couple years ago, a friend of mine sent me a couple podcasts that were like three hours long a piece, he's like, I think this is really interesting, you'd be, you know, I think you'd find this fascinating. And I was like, three hours, time. So

 I remember having that talk.

Like, who's got time to listen to this. But I, you know, I eventually, you know, in the car, and things work through a couple of months, like, wow, this is crazy. And that sort of opened up my mind to a lot of different possibilities. And what people are talking about it, it's helped me frame my research a little differently, too, because you get outside perspectives from different scientists, you know, listen to physicists listen to philosophers, and psychologists and all that kind of stuff. And it really helps me build a more interdisciplinary, understanding of the problems that we have in society, and how sciences is one part, you know, technological solutions are one part of those solutions to those to solving those problems. But there, as we've talked about, in previous episodes, that it's only one component, right? You know, it has to work politically. It has to work socially. It has to work to scale and all that kind of stuff. So, I mean, there's been a lot of different influences. I'm sure I'm missing people and things in there. But what am I grateful for the opportunity? 

What about the rigor of working on a dairy farm? As a means to focus you? 

Sure. Well, yeah, I mean, there's definitely something to be said for growing up. Never cultural family. You know, my, my grandfather won both grandfather's on both sides and my grandmother's to work, we're constantly working seven days a week, you know, from the time the sun comes up to the sign the sun comes down. Yes. And that's just the way life was.. You can't stop the cows no matter what, I can't stop the cows. That's for sure. So yeah, I think it was enormously influential, although, you know, I've changed my thinking about, you know, hard work a little bit. Over time, I think, you know, staying focused and working hard, is really important. But I also think that, you know, always grinding and outs and always doing the same thing, because that's what needs to be done is maybe not the not always what you should be doing. Sometimes you need to take a step back. And, and say, you know, is what I'm doing still working for me in the capacity that I needed to, and where do I need to make those changes. And I think sometimes if you're always focused in and this happened in grad school, too, you know, you got to get this project done, you got to get this project done, you got to focus on publishing this paper you lose sight of, of the whole thing. So you know, especially as I've gotten later into my, in my degree process, I've sort of slowed down a little bit, which, you know, isn't isn't always advisable. And reevaluated, and that's, that's actually part of what turned me into going into the commercial sector for a job versus academia. I think academia has a lot of positive things, but thinking about my own personal goals, and where I wanted to focus my efforts, you know, it's not for everybody, but that's by taking that step back is, I think, important.

So, in the process of working through you, you went through and talked about some of the mentors that you had and people that that influenced you. How, what kind of interaction with students had a very positive or negative I mean, how did that interaction work as you were working through your programs?

Oh, yeah. So I've had a lot of different interactions with students, both graduate students, fellow graduate students that I've been working with, I had some that really helped me get started. And I as I got older, I began to appreciate how much they helped me get off and running and how important it is to have older graduate students and postdocs in the lab, so that you can sort of they can help you speed along your development. You know, this is where you need to go to do this. And this is how you accomplish this and I was much further along because, you know, people like Philip were, you know, helped me get started in my research. So there's definitely that aspect. I've had the opportunity to work with students and other departments, which has been good, you know, learning how different research groups do different things, and how geology looks at soils very differently than soil chemistry in the Agronomy department looks at soil. So it's helped me build that perspective as well working across departments. I taught I was a teaching assistant for six semesters here, and two semesters at Cornell. So I was able to interact with a wide array of undergraduates. And that was, that was interesting as well. I learned a lot about how people learn. And I learned a lot about how, you know what makes sense to me, because of the way I learned doesn't necessarily make sense to other people. And one of the most striking things was mindset, and how important some of this stuff is, and I hate to sound cliche, you know, saying that there's a difference between a growth and a limited mindset. But it really makes a difference in some of those undergraduate students. I had a really bright girl once she missed class, she was on a field trip or something like that. And she said to me, she's like, No, I really enjoy what we're doing in lab these days. And I want to teach eventually, but I'm afraid that I won't have enough smart kids to do some of these things. And I was like, What? What do you mean, you're afraid you don't have enough smart kids? And she's like, Well, I'm not sure that everybody's gonna get it. And I'm like, well, everybody can get it, you know, eventually, just we got to, you know, think about how to do this differently. And she was, she was really shocked, she'd really thought that there was this dichotomy that there were some kids that were going to get it, and there are some kids that that weren't, and never the twain shall meet. Right. Yeah. And, you know, that made me think, well, you know, she didn't come up with this out of nowhere, right, somebody had taught this to her, whether it be, you know, I don't know, it could be parents, it could be her own educational experience, but it was coming from somewhere. And that really makes it you know, that matters. So it makes me wonder sometimes with students that are struggling, if it's, it's a framing issue, in some ways. So my you know, my interaction with students has been diverse, and it's been different depending on you know, kind of where they're at along their, educational process, but there's always something to be learned for sure.

So we've talked a little bit about where you've come from and, and where you're heading to, in the process of starting into your graduate work. And from that point, till the till, till now, have your impressions or thoughts about what agriculture is about changed. I mean, you came out of you came out of a situation where you were working on a farm and, and had all kinds of notions of what that was about even thought about taking over that farm. And you're heading down a path that's totally different from its agriculture, but it's totally different. How do you think about agriculture in a different light? Or are your opinions on what it's about? Have they changed?

Well, yeah, I mean, as I've gotten older, not only just about in agricultural specifically, but I find that a lot of things tend to be on a spectrum, the, you know, a lot of things that are presented to us as is, you know, in these individual silos, whether it be an agricultural sandwich, conventional agriculture versus organic agriculture , or sustainable agriculture , or small agriculture versus big agriculture , and all that kind of stuff is that is that none of those fit neatly within little boxes. And when I, when I started, I definitely sort of had that mentality, right. I mean, we were, we were a small, pastured dairy, we were trying to do things as environmentally friendly as possible, and, you know, supported the agriculture or the organic movement, to some extent. And I kind of grew up with this idea that, you know, the big commercial agriculture wasn't, wasn't always the best, right? But, you know, I, my perspective has definitely changed and that there can be very good, very environmentally friendly, very successful, very big farms. And there can be very small farms that do things that are horrible for the environment, right. And there's, there's organic, that's, you know, is very careful to, you know, recycle all their nutrients and all that kind of stuff, and they're gonna be organic, that is even worse than some of those really big conventional farms that none of this, you know, we it's easy, because I think mentally we like to put things in little boxes because it's easier to think about rather than everything fluctuating. But we really have to identify agriculture on an individual farm basis. And what what works well in one region, or what works well on one farm doesn't isn't going to work on another and that there isn't a simple prescription to what makes farming environmentally friendly or productive or even financially sustainable, that we really need to consider all of the options that are on the table and make the best choice individually.

Do you think there are particular issues with scale, sort of doing things on the large size? I mean, sort of like you just said, so there can be huge farms that do things better in some ways, right? Is the risk to the environment, though from a small farm, even if they're like really being bad, right, sort of the impact of smaller right? How much do you think that's a factor to really worry about?

Well, it depends on what they're doing. Yeah. Right. You know, if that small farm is in the, you know, at the beginning of a tributary that flows into a large reservoir that New York City uses for its drinking water, that could be, you know, hugely detrimental, whereas a farmer out in western Kansas that maybe doesn't have x, you know, that's maybe pumping groundwater for irrigation, but does things as sustainable as possible as building the carbon on their soil? Is drought resilient, that might not have anywhere near the environmental impact? It's tough to quantify that plus, you know, it depends on what you're, what you're quantifying, you're quantifying water usage. You're quantifying use of certain fertilizers, you know, greenhouse gas emissions, there are so many very different variations.

Yeah, this is super important. I think we've talked about this too, a bunch of times here, I think it's important to keep on emphasizing that, right? There's no, there's no one dimension, right? You know, there's so many different things. And sometimes you try, you do better on one dimension, sort of it makes it harder to do better on this other one, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, it's important for people to acknowledge that, right? I mean, there's always going to be trade offs with things and one way or another, you know, if you want, if you want food, that's, that's produced in ways that maybe are better for the environment, while it's probably going to cost more in the in the grocery store, right? That's the crazy thing about the commodification of a lot of grain crops is that it's a race to the bottom, you know, the more you produce, the more the price goes down. So when the farmer makes less than then they have less money to implement those practices. You know, I think, going back briefly to the carbon market thing, I think that's the nice thing about that as essentially as a secondary source of income for farmers to, to get paid to do those sorts of practices independent of their yield. And I think that that's really, important.

Yeah, that sounds really promising. It really does.

Do you get much pushback? When you? What has the type or the amount of it changed over the course of say, three years? Four years? 

In my own personal opinions on things? Or? 

Well, you either one, you know, when you when you're talking about this, somebody puts up their hand goes nonsense or some other?

Yeah, I mean, sometimes people push back on things, I always welcome criticism, I think that's the only way that you can really make sure that what you're saying is true and holds up to debate, right? So anybody out there that wants to review anything, I say, please, please leave a review on iTunes. Yeah, but you know, it's interesting. It's an it's a fascinating time to be in agriculture. I was just having this conversation with my roommate the other day, I feel really fortunate to be beginning my career and agriculture right now, because of where we stand. From an environmental standpoint, and the public perception of agriculture, I think people are willing to, to say, you know, there's enough information out there, people understand that we need to make changes, right. And technologically, the sky is the limit right now. It's just, you know, it's what, what incentive structures are we going to put into place that allows some of these things to flourish or not? So it's, it's great to be thinking about what the food system could look like, even 10 years from now. So yeah, I mean, there's pushback, but I think people are becoming more and more open minded, especially as you know, I don't think a lot of people in the past have had a lot of, we kind of went through this dip, right. I mean, there were people who came from there was a lot of people a while ago, that had some relation to farms in their family, right. But as farms have consolidated in the small farms have gone away, to some extent fewer and fewer people in the greater population have any connection to the farms in general. But that slowly, that trough is slowly building again, people are now paying more attention to what they're eating, where their food is coming from. So that's sort of opened up a lot of space to start talking about how could we be doing things differently? And, you know, some people might be willing to pay a little bit more for those kinds of things. So I, you know, I'm hopeful. I think there's less pushback now than there what there would have been 10 years ago.

10 years ago, it was still very much an argument about whether or not this was a way of life that had limits to which you wanted to or should allow change. So you ran up against those walls in any discussion, and that's changed substantially.

Yeah. And I think that there's a lot more willingness to compromise around things like you know, whether it be genetically engineered crops, is using those things as one tool in the toolbox of many different options. As opposed to it being, you know, either you're going to be organic, or you're going to be an agro chemical user. Right? You know, it's a much more hybrid use of some of these tools.

So you while you're doing all your studies here, you've spent time on a farm here, too, right? So can you say something about how that like, how that worked like the, you know, keeping, keeping connected to actually, you know, being on the farm and doing that work, but now, you know, you're going, you're going to Boston, right? Sort of right? Are you gonna, are you gonna miss all this to like, what did it mean to you while you were here? And then, you know, how's that going to be going forward? Are you gonna still try to find some connection to the land like that? 

Well, yeah, I mean, my position is going to be something like 50% tribal, so I'm still going to be visiting a lot of farms around the country to make sure that what we're what we're proposing is, is working in the field, it's important to really have that, that connection to the farmers. They can't just, you know, farmers, like nothing less than somebody standing in a big city being like, You should do this. Yeah.

I'm from Boston, and I'm here to help.

My future boss, said that he's even had farmers say, you know, you're one of those guys that works from a stand up desk. Yeah. Well, that's, that's, you know, that's not the goal. Yeah, it's really important to stay to stay connected to the land because farmers are doing what they're doing for a reason. And it's important to understand how, you know, if we're, if we're proposing any changes that works within within their model. But from my own personal standpoint, yeah, I've been working with Piccalilli farm for five, five years now or so. It's been great just because of the camaraderie I love Nelson and their daughter, Mary, a lot. So it's been great to have that connection. But I believe in that physical labor is a really important component to a healthy life. I think that the research out there shows pretty conclusively that getting exercise is good for your mental state, and your emotional state and all that. So it's been beneficial there. But yeah, I mean, I didn't have much experience with vegetable farming in growing things, like you know, pea shoots, and sunflower shoots in a greenhouse. So it's been, it's been a really great experience, to learn all of that sort of stuff to Nelson, it really opened up my eyes to a lot of different practices that I wouldn't have been familiar with before. Also, you know, it's given me a different appreciation for the use of food, you know, as something you eat, you know, they're, they're great cooks, and they're, you know, they're interested in using things like sunflower shoots in a dish, which is something that I wouldn't have ever had experience with. Before even you know, eating different cheeses, fresh chev, and that kind of stuff is just something that I didn't have a lot of exposure to. So yeah, I mean, having a diverse array of experiences with different kinds of farms is it's always good to get more experienced, no matter what you're doing, you know, the more you you more you interact with people who are, your more tangentially related, but are doing things differently, the more you're going to understand that, that everybody's human, and everybody has their own needs and priorities, and that, you know, people are doing what they're doing, because for a reason.

One of the things that I know that you are really good at as well, is mixing wonderful cocktails. So you have mixed a cocktail or two, cocktail or two. So there's a lot of chemistry involved in that there's a lot of there's a lot of artistic thought that goes into it. I mean, where did that come into your life?

Well, yeah, you know, I often bartending I got a lot of people asking me, you know, whether or not I use much of my chemistry knowledge to make better cocktails, and the sad answer is no, not really. You know, I understand some of it, you know, that, like, ethanol is a great, you know, agent for you for extracting certain flavors and that sort of thing. But honestly, you know, I liked bartending because it was a break from some of that kind of stuff. And it allowed me to explore the artistic side of food a little bit more. I mean, I think a cocktails are absolutely beautiful, you can take you know, three or four different ingredients that you might not think go together and they can just be in the right proportions. And if you shake them just enough for stir them just enough or you garnish them just right. That, you know, it can transform into something completely different. And I love that and I love sharing that with people. You know, it's, it's great when I have somebody who's like, oh, you know, I like to drink gin and tonics or something like that. So you're like, Well, let me show you this gin cocktail, you know, you would have never, never had an experience with before. They're just blown away by and I think that that's great. It's, it's a fun social thing. It also you know, honestly, bartending helps me become a little more social. Helped me talk to strangers a little bit better. It helped me with my, I guess you all listening will be the judge of that helped me with my podcasting to being able to have a conversation with people that you might not necessarily know. So yeah, there's I mean, there's all kinds of interactions there. But I'm not saying that everybody should should go into the bartending business, but it's not, you know, it can be an immensely beneficial experience. 

Well, in that is kind of a segue into some of the discussion we thought about heading into on in the area of podcasting. As I started this out today, I mentioned that this was really your, your brainchild, this was your baby as we put it together. And when you came to me and said we should we should try podcasting. And you said an hour long, I had the same reaction you did with your friend giving you a three hour long podcast thinking, no one's gonna listen to an hour long podcast. And we've both seen really great response to what's been happening here, which is encouraging, but just really fulfilling to see that there are a lot of people that are interested in understanding what the faculty members on this campus are doing. So you talked a little bit about how you got into the podcast, what were your thoughts about this particular one, when we got going?

Well, I mean, podcasts as a media have been around now for I don't know, a little over a decade. And like I said, I just got into them a couple years ago. What I but I mean, they're rapidly growing here in the last few years. And I think the reason for that is that people are starving for nuanced conversation on some of these big issues. You know,  I've always been pretty critical of the of the media, you know, some deserving, some not. But you know, I think what draws a lot of people to podcasts that are an hour long is that was it a couple of things, you know, one, there can be a lot of podcasts, and they can be produced cheaply, and pretty, you know, pretty easily on topics that there just isn't enough of a market for otherwise, right? You know, some of the topics we cover or more popular with the public, and some of them, maybe not necessarily as much, but nobody's gonna go out there and you know, spend, you know, $50,000 to make an hour episode about one of the things that we're talking about, right. So this is a really great way for people to explore all different aspects of life that don't always get a microphone, you know, because the barrier of entry is so low. So it's really great in that respect. And, you know, again, like I said, the the nuance we can spend, we could spend an hour discussing, you know, the, you know, why it's important to consider, you know, certain whether we should be eating fats, or sugars or something like that, right, or, you know, any of the topics that we've covered. We haven't published this yet, but the the Linda Duke one talking about the art and the aesthetics of food, you know, there are people out there who are interested in that sort of thing. But, you know, how often would we be able to broadcast you know, Linda  Duke to all these people who don't necessarily have access to it. So I just think it's a really great media for exploring ideas and learning more about, about life, I'm always fascinated by the world. 

So tremendous irony to this, in that back in the 50s, at the start of the television age, it was not uncommon to have half hour or even hour long talk shows where people would discuss particular ideas. They tended to get broadcast generally on Sunday mornings, but you had a chance to engage not one on one, but at least be exposed to those ideas and those opinions. And that sort of went away. And it's good to see it come back in podcast form.

Yeah, I mean, like I said, people are I think people are starving for more detailed discussions of some of these issues and ideas. And it's it you know, people are so busy, too, that podcasts are great, because you can listen to them, whether you're at the gym, or if you're on a commute or you know, whether you're cooking dinner or something like that I can consume podcasts in a variety of ways that I can't read a book. And I think that's another reason why they're becoming more and more popular.

Yeah. And that's, that's maybe a sad commentary on sort of why they're popular. Right, sir. But I do think it's true. So lots of people have long commutes, right, and what else are you gonna do? Right. But I love that podcasts have filled in some of that. I also think people really looking for community too. So it's not just ideas. I think that's another thing that podcasts provide a lot of right is this feeling of right, that conversation and there's these people talking and you're entering into, you know, entering into, you know, somebody else's world in some conversation, right. And, I mean, a lot of them aren't very idea. Focused, right. Some of them are idea focused about content. Some of them are just like, friends chatting over dinner kind of stuff, right. And then some of them are funny, and some of them Yeah, so it's amazing the diversity of stuff that's out there and I love that we're able to provide one little, you know, niche. Right. And it's pretty cool. Really is.

Yeah, it's fun. I think you're right that there is a community. But I know I listened to two podcasts where I sort of identify with some of the people who were or you know, the hosts. Oh, yeah. Right. And it makes a difference. Yeah, you could imagine some of these people is, you know, pallin around having a beer with them. 

There you go. Right. That's our goal. Right. So this one, right.

Yeah, it's great. And like you said, you know, it is sort of sad that people have these situations where they have the opportunity to hear podcasts instead of reading a book or whatever, but they're gonna have those anyway. Yeah. So I'd rather be filled with, you know, more substantive content than being filled with something else. Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's amazing. The podcast world is amazing, really is cool. I'm really glad you kick this thing off. So So tell us more about like, yeah, I don't know, the process and how you felt going through it. Starting it and seeing it actually successful? 

Well, it's Yeah, I mean, it's pretty cool. Because, you know, I had actually talked to a couple people about having idea to explore more food related ideas. In a podcast setting, there was an informal conversation sort of thing about, I don't know, probably six months to a year prior to teaming up with Maureen here. And when she mentioned that there was they were thinking about doing a podcast, I you know, it just happened to be a really great coincidence. You know, so we were able to kick it off. I mean, I, I was just curious to see whether or not I could do it, right, it's fun to have those sorts of challenges. And I, you know, I guess I would like to, to some extent, turn it back around to you guys, what it's been like, and we can make this a little more of a discussion. What's it been like, for you guys to be involved? You know, I know that you were a little excited, a little skeptical when I came to you at first saying, hey, you know, is this something you'd be interested in doing.

I was definitely skeptical, sort of not about the idea, but about sort of how much I would be comfortable in this role, right, because I think that this is something that we probably haven't ever talked about in the podcast, but we talk about it a lot outside of it, right? When we're talking, you know, a bunch of us are academics, both our both our guests, and, you know, people who are hosting here, right. And our, the way we do things is really different, right? Sort of when you when you talk, it's you know, it's in front of a classroom, or it's, or it's a presentation of research, or you know, you know, working with colleagues one on one, and those are all very different kinds of, you know, interactions and, and plenty of us do things sort of out in the public, but it's still, there's still something very different about being recorded live right at every little thing that you say that might just go a little wrong. Right. And you know, about, you know, how, so I was worried about how prepped, I would have to be right sort of how how much I would need to know, don't want to say something ridiculously stupid, right? You know, so yeah, so this was a challenge. So it's, but I but I'm, but I love podcasts, too, right? I don't listen to enough of them. Because Luckily, I have a very short commute. And on a bike, so it's not a good place to listen to a podcast, right. But, uh, and I'm committed to the idea of communicating, right. And the idea of getting ideas out, right, so. So I jumped in, I guess, right, you know, it's been, it's been great. It's been surprisingly not too bad. And I don't know, I think I'm sure I could be much. Absolutely. And better as though it's like, it's been great. But..

There's a word weird vulnerability. Yeah. And you're like, you're having your conversation being recorded.

It's like, oh, it's it's, as was alluded to earlier, we just some extent, even though we might claim we aren't, we generally know where we're going with a lecture or with a presentation. So we've got the confidence of that, that knowledge net down there in case something goes wrong here. It's wherever it goes, you know, it's a random walk through science, and you have to be ready to flex your head and respond.

Well, and I think that that's why it appeals to so many people in this format is that it's more conversational, right? It's more like you're sitting around a table talking with people as opposed to, you know, the quote, unquote, sage on the stage or whatever, that's just sort of telling you what you should know. It's more you know, these people, we're all just people exploring ideas. And…

Yet the idea is that it's a threat free environment, I think, makes a big difference as well. I'm not going to stand up, hopefully not to disagree with her.

Now it's been really good. Reach. I have not gotten directly involved in doing the podcast until just recently and have enjoyed what I've done so far. But the whole idea as you said, when you and I first talked about this, I was thinking about doing a podcast, but I was thinking 15 minutes, you know, something very short, just little clips on what faculty are doing on campus. And I'm really glad you talked me into the hour approach to it because it's being picked up all over the world, which just shocked me. People in many parts of the world are interested in what we're doing here. And it's giving a little bit of voice to some of the research that's being done here that, you know, that may not, may not get out in anything other than a peer reviewed journal or something like that, where you've got a small handful of people that would read it. So it's been a great journey. For me, it's been very, very interesting. And hopefully, we're going to be able to keep that going.

I'm sure you guys will do great. I look forward to listening to some more in the future is after I move away, and you guys continue with this, but yeah, I mean, you bring up another good point, as far as podcasts in general is, not only is it a low barrier to entry to make the podcast, but it's also pretty easy for people to access them all over the world, right? People who might not necessarily have access to other means of educational materials, you know, can be downloaded in any country anywhere. And they're there for, you know, as long as the internet's alive, right? Which may be good or may be bad. Think a little bit about like internet archeology and stuff, right? It's like stuff that you can find from 15 years ago, that's, that's still there, but it's out. Now, think differently, or the public perception is differently. You know, there'll be a huge graveyard of podcasts just available somewhere, 

Which is waiting to be mined for Well, yeah.

But there's so many of them too, though. This is the thing, right? sure that there's so much out there. It's kind of Yeah, it's kind of crazy.

Next week, we're putting on a big data workshop, this is gonna be one area of big data as we move forward. Lots and lots and lots of information sitting out there. Yeah. Yeah.

Jay, what was your most surprising thing that happened in a podcast? One of our, one of the ones that we had here? Or, you know, something that you just weren't expecting? Or something that you learned? Or? Or? Or, you know, I don't know.

Well, it's funny I think Maureen and I have talked about this a little bit is, I think this is true of everybody is that are most people, at least as people love to talk about themselves, right? You know, we thought at the beginning of this, that sometimes it would be challenging to get a faculty member or something to talk for an hour about what they're doing. But it hasn't been as a challenge at all. But think about day to day life. When do you besides us being in this room? Do you sit and talk to somebody about themselves for an hour, right? You never, we never get to have those conversations anymore, because people are busy, or they don't want to get into something that's controversial, and have that weird, you know, social moment, and all that kind of stuff. So I really appreciated just getting to know people, because people can be pretty fascinating. And they have a lot to share. And that's another great thing about the podcast is more people get to share what they know and what they've learned. And I think that that can only be a good resource for people moving forward. 

I think the degree of passion that people exhibited for what they were doing, and dedication. Yeah, but beyond that.

We've never had one that we walked out of here and said, that didn't work. Or we can't, you know, we're not going down that path or whatever. It's they've all been positive. I mean, I think we've had good experiences across the board.

People are huge repositories of information and ideas and, and passions and that sort of stuff. And it's, it's fun to explore that a little bit.

I find myself thinking every now and then. Oh, I wish so and so we're still alive. What a what a podcast that would make sure Yeah.

What do you think? You have something Jay?

Well, I you know, thank you all for, for being part of this project and giving me the opportunity. It's been a real pleasure to work with you all. And we can all stay in touch for sure. And like I said, I'll be look forward to listening in the future.

Yeah. And, and thanks for making this happen. It really has been great. It's been great to be involved. Absolutely. Glad you glad you pushed. 

Yeah, I remember saying well, maybe he comes back again, it comes back it goes. It's not too bad.

Yeah, no, this is all right. I could do this.

Yeah. And we just wish you all the best.

I appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks so much. All the best.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

Linda Duke is the director of the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University. Formerly the director of audience engagement at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, she joined K-State in June of 2011 and has worked diligently to develop the atmosphere within and opportunities to engage with the museum, while also educating students about the roles of art in our lives. Our conversation covered the many ways we can experience art and its complex relationship with what we eat and drink. Scott and Jon joined for this one as well.

For more about Linda and the Beach Museum check out: https://beach.k-state.edu/  

Transcript:

Food as Art and Experience with Linda Duke

In our culture, we we think about nutrition and we think about weight and diet and, and that kind of thing. But I think our aesthetic appreciation of food is only recently kind of beginning to be given more importance.

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of Global Food Systems produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Jay Weeks PhD candidate in the Department of Agronomy. My co host is Scott Tanona, an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy who specializes in the philosophy of science. How often do you consider the aesthetics of your daily life? Think about the last meal you had. Or perhaps you're eating right now. We're or are you fully in the presence of what you were tasting? Or were you thinking about the myriad other things you had going on? In the hustle and bustle, I know I forget to stop and smell the proverbial roses. The more I think about it, it said in something I tried to focus on more and more. Fortunately, today, to help us better explore the art and beauty in our lives. Our guest is Linda Duke. Linda is the director of the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art here at Kansas State University, formerly the director of audience engagement at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, she joined the University in June of 2011, and has worked diligently to develop the atmosphere within and opportunities to engage with the museum, while also educating students about the roles of art in our lives. Our conversation covered the ways we can think about art, and how we personally experience our lives, mainly through the lens of our relationship with food. I don't want to spoil it. But there's a description of beans in this interview that really captures something we probably all could pay a little bit more attention to. Scott and Jon joined us as well. This talk is one where it's really up to you what you take from it. So enjoy. Linda Duke, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Jay. Happy to be here.

So you came to K State in the summer of 2011. Correct? That's right. So what brought you here?

Actually the job to the chance to be the director of the Mariana Cussler Beach Museum of Art. In truth, I didn't really take it seriously. When the university first contacted me, they had a search firm, and I just threw away the first few emails I got from them, because I didn't think the description sounded like a good fit. But they stuck with it. And the search firm guy eventually called me and talked me into coming for an interview. And that's when I realized what a great opportunity it was.

So what got you into art in general? Is that something that you had always enjoyed? Or?

Yes, I think, I think in our family. My brother is an artist, Our father was a commercial artist, you know, back in the days before all the technology, he illustrated products, you know, drew pictures of them to go into magazine ads, and, and whatnot. And so as a family, we always went to art museums and saw art. And then I think I was struggling because I was and I don't say this as a boast. I think it's just a weird thing that I was born with. I'm pretty good at drawing. But I also knew that I wasn't an artist in that way. And so I really anguished over that a bit as a young person. And then I started studying art history in addition to studio art, and really fell in love with sharing the arts with people in that way. And I guess I'll just say one more thing that I studied tea ceremony as a young person at university and then in graduate school.

I wrote about that and I wanted to ask you, 

Yeah, and one of the things that a tea host does in Japanese tradition is create a client sets up a temporary shared experience, you know, chooses a work of art to display chooses the incense, the tea, the sweet the utensils that are used, and the whole thing is designed to really create a wonderful aesthetic experience for the guest or the small number of guests. And at a certain point, I realized that's what my job is in the art museum. That's exactly what I do. I'm like the tea host at the art museum. And so that's been, that's been a real privilege for me to be able to do that.

So could you say what you pay attention to then? Besides that the art pieces in particular, right, so that the tea is about the whole experience. So how do you think about the museum that way?

Well, I think the hospitality part of it is really important to me, one of the things I felt uncomfortable with when I first came to the beach is that visitors come in the front door, and the galleries aren't there, they're upstairs. And so people who haven't been there before, feel a little bewildered and sometimes stumble into the offices. And so I'm really happy that we've been able to work on having student lobby hosts, and they do a wonderful job of welcoming people. And then when people get upstairs, there are more student employees to welcome them to the galleries. And so I just I do put a lot of importance on making people feel comfortable. Sometimes we have visitors with various kinds of disabilities. People from cultures everywhere, I always want them to feel welcomed in our space.

Is it? Is it difficult when you walk into other art galleries to take off your curatorial hat and just experience? The gallery? Or are you always sort of working in the back of your mind catching, catching things do you think are good or bad?

I don't really think of it in terms of good and bad. Oh, man, I don't know how deeply to get into this. But another fortunate thing, and this is getting back to your question, believe it or not, but early in my time working in art museums, I encountered some research that was being done at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, on aesthetic development, is what the researchers were calling it. So they were very interested in the kinds of thinking people do when they're trying to make meaning of an art experience. And it eventually developed into a curriculum that we teach teachers to use and to be facilitators of discussions is called Visual Thinking Strategies. And that really changed my professional life, because it helped me in my own viewing to learn to slow down and really appreciate deep ambiguities that are often in works of art, and how provocative that is when there's a contradiction or an inconsistency. And how many thoughts that triggers. So I remain very fascinated by that process. And that really benefited me as an art viewer, too. When I go to museums.

Tell us more about that. What was that educational experience like? And what does it mean to be a visual thinker into taking those aesthetics and things like that?

Well, I'm first of all, I think in our culture, even though we're awash with visual images all the time, especially now with technology, as a culture, we really privilege language as the way to communicate as the embodiment of knowledge or the conveyor of knowledge. And for that reason, I don't think we really pay very much attention to nurturing visual thinking skills, or to understanding how much variation there probably is among people. I feel that some people are, and I think there's research to back this up, are more oriented to know the world visually, and others are much stronger verbal thinkers. I went through a period, when I was working at the hammer in Los Angeles, I started asking people, how do you think, are you conscious of thinking in words, and I was totally blown away by how many people said, Of course, I had people even tell me, I even think about punctuation. And I was like, because I don't I I've and I think, and I think a lot of people with learning differences, dyslexia and, and other differences from the norm, probably a high percentage of them are visual thinkers. And so I think for me, what I've loved about the VTS work is that it sets up a discussion protocol where people are constantly asked to connect what they know, in a sensory way with language, and to go back and forth. And so I think, pedagogically, it's sort of serves people at both ends of the spectrum.

So it makes them more adept or more aware of these two types of origins.

Or fluent, a stronger, fluent, more exercise connection between them.

So I don't want to sort of dig too deep, like you're just saying, but we're, there's some views about sort of thinking cognition that I think are sort of the in the end at all has to be in some sense. language based, right, you know, you don't you don't have, like a proposition or a view about something unless it's kind of expressible in a sentence, right. And we've got these sort of views about visual thinking that are sort of, you know, I mean, some of us definitely, like, we'd like pictures, right. And some of us, you know, to organize our thoughts, sort of, you know, on a on a page with diagrams and stuff, but, you know, Can you can you push more like what you actually mean by like visual thinking, Do you have a specific, you know, way of describing it? Or is this kind of, it's so open ended, that it's hard to pin down?

Well, I'm starting to feel pretty nervous here. Because now, no, I, the reason I feel nervous is because I think we're venturing into a realm where I can certainly give you my opinion, based on my experience and my life work. But that's very different from the kind of scholarly knowledge that I'm suspecting you guys want in these podcasts?

No, not necessarily.

No, I mean, actually, I think personal anecdotal evidence is, you know, and that's worthy of discussion as well. Right?

Yeah. Well, I think first of all, I am not convinced that thought is ultimately language. And I think, but I think there are some people who struggle mightily, for example, people with certain kinds of autism struggle with the lack of fluency between those two, and Temple Grandin has written about that. And I've spoken pretty extensively with her about that. There are other people who are researchers who have said visual thinking is so quick, that people are largely unaware of it. So it's not like people say, well, tiempo wrote a book called Thinking in pictures, but most people would say, I don't know how I think, and I'm one of those people.  I couldn't tell you, I know that I don't know what words I'm going to say until they come out of my mouth. Unless I'm planning to say something, I can do that. But it's not my normal mode. And so I don't know that that may be too out there. But I think a lot more research needs to be done on that. Because I think we waste a lot of people's lives, we waste a lot of giftedness, when people are thinking in a way that's not the norm and doesn't get doesn't get the support it needs as they're growing up.

Can you give an example of an exhibit or of a piece that you saw that really kind of exemplifies this? That example, the visual, the visual thinking how important it is as a way of kind of thinking about the world, or just approaching it or, you know, changing the way you view? Right, because you experienced something that you were looking at, right. And rather than sort of thinking about it in words, right? Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you something that recently, well over the last couple years, every three weeks, I do a VTS seminar with veterinary pathology students. It's different students each time unfortunately, it would be great if we had multiple sessions, but they're rotating through a fourth year program in pathology. And so just once again, yesterday, I was with one of those groups and we were looking at An image, I always start them out with slides of images that I've chosen. And then we go upstairs and practice in the galleries, and they take turns being the facilitator. But an image that I really like to use is, is a painting by a man named Vernon Fisher. It's called Man cutting globe. And the, the painting is done in a style that looks kind of like a 1950s reading primmer like a dick Jane and Sally book for those of us who are old enough to have learned to read that way. So black outlines flat areas of color, some people say it looks cartoonish. And it shows a man wearing a red polka dot tie and a white long sleeve shirt at a table and a little boy, looking over his shoulder watching what he's doing. And on the table is a globe. And you can see the edges of the continents. And he has his hand in a position like you would stab with a DAG or any any has some kind of tool in that hand that people debate the meaning of during the or the the identity of that tool. And it's going into the globe, it's going into a hole that's been caught in the globe, and on the table. So there are two holes visible in the globe. And there are three pieces that look to have been cut from the globe laying on the table. And then across the bottom of this painting. There's something that looks like the periodic table with those little rectangles that have the symbol for the element and the atomic weight, and then the name of the element. And the letters of those rectangles spell out the words man cutting globe. If you look really closely, some of those are genuine elements like oxygen for oh, and some of them you're like Trinity, is that an element. And there's another little tiny projection style map of the world up on the upper border so tiny that most people don't even notice it. But oddly enough, the the continents appear backwards. Like we're seeing them from behind. So that painting fascinates me when I do it with people for the first time, because it looks like such a simple image like a cartoon image. But it has so many things that could be visually discovered about it, the time period, probably the 40s, or the 50s. The sense that there's some kind of instruction going on, or at least a demonstration between an older generation and a younger one, the reference to the elements that make up the earth. And the fact that with this kind of violent hand position. The world is being cut into carved up in a sense, like a Jack O' Lantern, and yet it's not carving a face. And so people often spend time trying to think, why are the cutouts in the places that they are. And they're all the two that we can see are in the Pacific Ocean, maybe near the bottom of Japan, maybe out in the bikini at all. And I say that because I know more about this artist's work most people don't never heard of him. But he did a whole series of work about the nuclear weapons that were tested in the bikini Islands, which left them so polluted that they're still on inhabitable.

One of the sites was called Trinity. Actually.

See it just goes on and on. So Jimmy, and the fact that the style of the illustration kind of dates it, but it dates it to the period when that was going on. But it also kind of coalesces into some questions about plundering the earth or using the earth, what's being taught to the next generation. So there are dozens of things that people could discover about that image. If they looked at it long enough for thought about it. We usually don't you know, we usually look quickly and maybe we would notice one of those things about it. And I don't know if that answers your question. But what I like about the VTS process is mostly just that it slows people down.

Yeah, I was gonna ask exactly that, right? Because you said a lot of times, we're just looking quickly, right. And a lot of people experience museums this way too, right? Through and boom, boom, boom, boom, right, but so say more about the value of actually just sitting and looking and experiencing?

Well, I think it's, if you're not used to it, if you haven't, sort of exercise those mental or intellectual muscles, it's not so easy to do on your own. And that's the other good thing about this process, I think it uses a group process to model something that we could each do on our own. So people hear the comments from others in the class or whatever the group is. And many times they're like, oh, my gosh, I never I didn't even notice that, or I wouldn't have thought of it that way. But that's interesting. And so it kind of the group process kind of demonstrates a critical thinking and observation process. That's, I think, very valuable. And again, the fact that people are asked to find words for what they think and now and the facilitator repeatedly asks them, what did you see that made you say that? What's the evidence, not, not out of doubt. But to keep prompting that process to make someone more conscious of their own thought process? I knew it when I looked. But now I have to go back and tell you how I knew it. So it's an unpacking kind of process.

More and more, we see museums that offer you the chance to have an audio guide, and stick something in your ears or put like, and that tends to be very just straightforward and descriptive, and then move on. And do you think that that works against the kind of process that you're talking about? Well, do we fool ourselves by thinking that enough?

I do in the sense that I think it's, it's easy to be in a passive mode and just listen to that and have someone tell you, what you're seeing and what's important about it. They're not going to tell you what, why it should matter to you. You're the only one who can do that. Yeah. So yeah, I am not wild about that. Although we do know, we do offer smart Wi Fi in the museum, people can download an app where if they want more information about something, they can just point their phone at it and get it. But at least it's not on a droning tour that it's there has to be more choice and action involved.

So one of the things that we talked about a little bit as far as taking some time to experience you know what you're doing in the moment, I noticed this while I was actually getting ready for this interview today, I was eating my lunch. And I was reading the description you gave about the aesthetics of food and how we often don't necessarily pay attention to everything. And I realized that as I was eating my salad, I wasn't even tasting myself because I was concentrating on my on the reading, right. And then I wanted to get into the aesthetics of food and how important that is not only for enjoying the food itself, but for appreciating where food comes from, and all of that and the connections that we can make. So I'll let you take it from here about your thoughts on that.

Yeah, no, thanks. That's a huge topic. I feel like you know, I think I told you in an email Jay, that I see the art museum and to some extent, my role as being one of connector. I think the arts are a big enough tent that a lot of disciplines can benefit from participating in the arts. And I feel the same way about food, I feel that it is such a squandered or under utilize resource for education period at all levels. Because I think, you know, just like we were talking about BTS and bringing to consciousness bringing to language, and that that's really what you were talking about bringing thought to language, if it wasn't originally language. Bringing that sensory experience to language can be a really important thing for people to be fluent at. And I think we could start in early childhood, kids eat snack at school, they lunch at school, and there are people like Alice Waters, of course with her Edible Schoolyard project and all that who have known that for years and kids grow gardens and cook food together at school and talk about it and write a bout it and measure it and, and all of that. But I think it's just as true at university. I mean, what do we teach here at K State that couldn't in some way be related to food. And maybe if we could do a better job of making people more conscious of that, maybe it would also change the status of food in our culture, because I feel like well, from my travels abroad, I feel like Americans sometimes don't demand or expect the food that they're served to be as good as people in other cultures often do. That, you know, if we travel, we expect that we might have to eat something subpar in a bus station or an airport. And that's not always true. Every place in the world. I feel like in our culture, we, we think about nutrition, and we think about weight and, and diet, and, and that kind of thing. But I think our aesthetic appreciation of food is only recently kind of beginning to be given more importance. And I think that's a really important thing to happen. But it's only one of the things I mean, there's the science, there's all of this, that needs to be better appreciated and better understood.

Yeah, I mean, we really will at least historically have focused on the the quantification of things right, when we have been sort of neglected the more qualitative aspects of food and things like that way. So what do you think, you know, if you were going to be delving into a college course or something like that, or teaching a college course? What do you what would you change? How would you, how would you, how would you start to integrate some of these ideas into, you know, into practice?

Well, I mean, it would depend on what you were teaching. I think this is a topic that needs the leadership of the university as an organization, I think, because I think faculty have to be given the support they need and, and the sense of the importance of teaching in ways that connect with other disciplines and helping students think in that way. So I don't know, there are, there are a lot of ways and I think some of them do involve just this issue of science communication or communication period, the relationship between experience and knowledge and language, and being better, better at using language. I brought something in case it seemed like it would be worth it. It's a footnote or an end note from one of the articles I sent to you, Jay, I think I told you that I had an opportunity a few years ago to spend a month at the American Academy in Rome, which is a site that's dedicated to interdisciplinary conversation and stimulation. And I had not long before that I had been, I had gotten to do a little project with Alice Waters, the the chef I mentioned, and she had recently helped the American Academy completely redo their food program. Because to save money, they had started getting cheaper and cheaper food, and putting less money into paying their kitchen staff and all of that. And the food got bad to the point where a lot of the fallows and Rome prize winners and all the creative people who were staying in residence there started eating at the local restaurants instead of and that's when they realized that the heart of the academy was the table. It was that shared experience of eating food together and the kinds of ideas people talked about over meals. And they brought Alice in to help them reinvent the whole Academy really, in a sense, because that was the heart of it. And I was so impressed by what she told me about that. I decided when I went to the academy that I would interview people about their aesthetic experiences with food but with the more standard aesthetic experiences that people think of like paintings or architecture or music, or whatever. And so that's what I did, I spent a month with a little digital recorder. And I got, you know, these famous writers and artists and musicians, and the kitchen staff and the gardeners, I would just interview anybody who would talk to me about aesthetic experience. And I was really impressed by how many of them chose to talk about food. I really was struck by that.

And you just asked about the set experience in general exactly started talking about…

Yes, yes, they could pick anything.

Well, there's this entire literature of, of people talking about food in different ways. There's a writer named AJ Liebling who was famous in the New Yorker, quite a while he wrote an entire book that was based on a year that he spends a student in Paris, and it was all around eating all around food. 

And it's really quite telling you this idea of the aesthetics of food being important is a little more advanced than we have had here. I think that's,

Is it because we've always just focused on price. And like what happened at the institute you're describing, you know, because, you know, they wanted to cut costs, because low budget isn't unless they cut a little bit out and a little bit out a little bit before there's nothing left? Or why do you think that that is why do other cultures value at so much more than that? Maybe we do?

I mean, I think there are probably a lot of reasons, but but maybe one of them is that it's a sensory experience. And, and as I said, I think our culture tends a little toward the puritanical and, and doesn't value things that we know, through the senses as much as things that we know, through language.

And there's a utilitarian aspect to that too. pragmatic, like sort of, right, so that right, so you want the thing to serve a certain purpose, right? Yes, is like free nourish

exactly energy, you know, freshing my heart and that's all Exactly. Yeah. And you know, I mean, there are other things, there's the rush of something that's very sweet, or the addictiveness of something that's salty. I mean, we have those two, but backing off and taking the time to really cherish food and value is I don't think it's been a real strong theme in our culture. But I feel like it's starting to come up now. And I think that's a good thing.

Do you think it has something to do too, with, with how our culture has has framed health in the, you know, things that are really sweet and really, really full of fat or something like that it really savory have often been considered unhealthy, even though the science now is, you know, kind of debates that and some are suppose especially considering fast, do you think that's why we've shied away from some of that kind of stuff? Or what do you think about that?

Well, I mean, I guess, again, I would say we've, we've explored the issue through words, rather than through experience, you know, through received knowledge received information about what our bodies need, and been maybe less attuned to how food feels when we eat it. I don't know. I think there's a lot I think it's complicated.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, that's interesting, right? And rather than trusting yourself to dictate, you know, what you should be eating and what tastes good, and what feels good and all that kind of stuff. We've relied on an outside source.

I think there's even been some really interesting research more recently about how different diets, you know, with different ratios of fat and protein and carbohydrates, how there's quite a variation in terms of how an individual person thrives on one diet or another, that it's not a one size fits all thing.

I think what it's interesting now what we're seeing, I mean, with a lot of these diets, there's a lot of still looking at how much protein are you getting versus how many carbs and right gluten insert in there's it's very much not how you're thinking about food at all right, in terms of the sensory experience, right, but but at the same time, we have this birth of all kinds of fancy coffee shops and microbreweries and you know, better restaurants that this is happening at the same time. Right. What? So there's like a little bit of maybe we're going in both directions at once. Yeah, right.

Yeah. And I'm certainly not saying that nutrition studies aren't important. I think that's hugely important and interesting. I'm just pointing out that I think we haven't. As a popular culture, we haven't been in touch with our bodies when it comes to food.

So what do you want? I mean, what do you think we need? And how do you serve? What would you want? Like, maybe just Jay mentioned college students, but like, kids, what would you tell younger kids sort of in terms of how they're thinking about food or how they're approaching? Eating?

I don't think it's so much a matter of telling them as what kinds of experiences you create for them. And, you know, I mean, I, as I said, I think Alice Waters in the Edible Schoolyard program has been thinking about that, you know, kids sharing food experiences and talking about it and writing about it. I, you know, I mean, just getting way off topic, maybe it's just talking with someone the other day about parents having battles with their children about food, where, you know, and I experienced that as a child myself, you can't leave the table until you finish that glass of milk or whatever. And I don't know, I mean, I feel like young children need to get the message that they that we do respect how they feel about food in their bodies, and that they should never have to eat or drink something that they don't want to. If they're picky eaters, when they're little, I guess my own experience, as a parent tells me it takes care of itself. I had one adventurous eater and two picky eaters, and they're all adventurous eaters now, so it didn't matter.

Yeah. And it's also been hypothesized that children's ability to discriminate different flavors and intensities changes. Yeah, so they go through a period where everything is just way too. Yeah, everything. So that's why they want macaroni and cheese and

Exactly like, and so what's gained by forcing them to eat something that they don't don't enjoy? And yeah.

Firstly, takes care of itself. We took some friends to a restaurant with a French was a very nice French restaurant. And they took their seven year old along and we thought this is going to be quite the battle. And he ordered the mussels and the snails. And we didn't get one of them. So yeah. Just they've children very quiet. Yeah,

and a lot of that. I mean, there's a lot of factors there. But I think one thing that you mentioned is, you know, giving them experiences too, right? And I was wondering if you say more about that, that notion you were talking about before with with VTS with visual thinking, putting words to sort of what you're experiencing? Because that's that's a major challenge in all aesthetic experience. Yes. I think it's a challenge people have with food, too, right. Sort of our there's a, there's a taste you like, but like, how would you describe exactly doing to you? So like, what do you have to say about like that?

Yeah. And so one of the things that tea ceremony ingrained in people is this sense of being present in the moment. In fact, there's a scene that often is hung as a calligraphy scroll in the tea practice room that reads Ichi go eta, which kind of means one time, one chance, sort of like this moment will never come again. So that that sense that the tea ceremony as an art practice, is trying to give people a moment to really notice what's happening right now, right this minute. And, and one of the rules, if you will, of tea ceremony is that you don't discuss anything while you're in the tea ceremony that doesn't have to do with what's happening right now. You're not going to talk about politics or the weather, but you can talk about the taste the texture The sound of the bamboo scoop, hitting on the side of the table, those sensory things that are happening right now. And so the it's a kind of, again, a mental exercise for being in the present, which is probably the most difficult, uncomfortable place for our attention to stay. We're always going backwards or forwards, but to be right here. I think rom das wrote a book called Be here now.

And to some extent, I guess our culture, tries to do things like that being served wine.

That's what I was saying that

he would be watching your carving carving the turkey haggis, the ceremony of the haggis and Scotland in the like,

yes, and people. That's why I was thinking of my tea teacher, when you asked me about language, it's the language of wine, or the language of tea. If any of you have ever been to a Chinese tea shop, I had the experience of going there with two T experts one time. And so the tea house was this was Chinese tea, pour the water over the tea and a little cup. And my friend would taste it. And then he would say something like, you know, I'm thinking it's the such and such farm in Assam. And I'm thinking it was the spring before last, and the west side of the hill. And I was like, Are you kidding me? But that's how wine people are too. But that's like a super intense version of being able to bring this stuff to language.

And that actually can have the opposite effect sometimes for people trying to get into this, right, because it's sort of there's all this elite knowledge. Right, exactly. And right. So I think it's important, easy to make fun of that. Right. And it's easy to be that gets put off. Right. Yeah, challenge by Right. Right. But But when you're talking, I mean, I think something you've said something about is, you know, how much you want the aesthetics, right, the the art experience, whether it's food, or whether it's visual art or whatever else to be open. Right? And, and not to not have these barriers, right? Yes. And I can say more about like, what what it takes to sort of, you know, get in enter into a museum and you know, experience

That's very, very relevant, because I think, in, in this country in the US, we've kind of made our history knowledge be the qualification for enjoying visual art. We've made people unintentionally, maybe, but we've made people feel like if they don't know very much about art and art history, they probably should keep their mouths shut in the museum. And then we've tried to make them feel better, but also shut them up by giving them an idea. And telling them what they ought to know about what they're looking at what they should have thought. And so we haven't respected beginner experiences with esthetics. But everybody has aesthetic experiences, and it's not like beginners is less valuable than experts. And yet, we've we've belittled that, or we haven't paid attention to it. And that was the other thing about the VTS research that really moved me when I first learned about it, that it, it totally blew that out of the water and, and said, This is worthwhile, you know, whatever people can do, if they stop and think and notice, is important. It has value. It's even deeply moving. And I know that as a facilitator, because when I hear people speak their own truths in front of works of art, I mean, sometimes it's very moving, and it can be such a simple thing that they noticed, but their effort to put it into words is more poetic than I could have ever made it and, um and that kind of brings us back around to teaching because you were asking about teaching about food. I think the VGS work absolutely promotes the idea that you as the teacher, need to take responsibility When your teaching doesn't work, and not blame the learner, I don't know, I think sometimes it's painful to hear someone who's burned out on teaching, and they're seeing as students nowadays, you know, you just can't get their attention and and VTS, the philosophy behind that doesn't give any credibility to that. It's, it's take responsibility, if you're the teacher, and what you're doing isn't working, find a way to meet them where they are, for some reason, you're not meeting them where they are. And so I think that principle of meeting the learner where they are, whether it's in the arts, or in some other subject.

Was it an emphasis on growth, mindset, teaching and learning as being in learning as being an experience rather than just trying to get to the right answer? Yes, right. I do think that's something that we need to focus on more is that not everybody is going to, you know, be at the same place and be able to get, you know, like all the biochemical pathways or something like that, right, but, but it's the experience of learning that, that is really what's going to serve a lot of students rather than, you know, what they remember from from x class.

And the thing is the biochemical pathways, they might be difficult or even impossible to learn, if you don't have your own reason for wanting to know them. And so it's more about when you give people information than it is about giving them information. Of course, we want to give them information, but we sometimes dump it on people, and then we complain that they couldn't remember it, or they mixed it up. But we didn't create a situation where they needed it.

So speaking of visual and learning, I listened to a podcast on Sean Carroll's MindScape the other day, and I gonna forget the lady's name, but she was talking about how mythology has been passed down in oral traditions. And some of the ways in which some of these really long stories were remembered and passed down was that the person responsible for curating that knowledge actually associated certain ideas with certain places, I think they called it a something Palace, mental palace, or something like that. And they associated, you know, this aspect of the story with this part of a building, and then they would walk around the building to help them remember each part of the story, rather than just the cornice the book in the corner. Yes, yeah. Do you? Are you familiar with that sort of literature? Or, or that sort of teaching style? And what do you think about that?

Well,  I'm only familiar with it that I know that in indigenous cultures in this country, but probably in others as well, often had stories associated with land features. And so there was a sense of history and mythology and origin stories, and all of that being very tied to geographic features and places. So it seems very similar.

Yeah, it made me wonder about more as a memory

As a memory as a memory tool, but also as a way of learning things as a system to write, write, rather than just remembering this follows. This follows this, you know, in pure abstraction that you could sort of walk around your house, and then you'll visit that when you needed to recall. Yeah, and a certain port part of me, or I associated this with the drain or whatever, right, which sounds kind of crazy if you haven't experienced it, but it made a lot of sense. When she when she explained to us I thought it was really interesting. Getting back to some of the work you did with the food aesthetics and things. Were there any favorite descriptions that you had? I want to I want to try to capture you, because you brought some of the notes from 

Well, I had a short quote that I pulled out from one of those interviews, and it really struck me because this woman is an award winning art historian and scholar. And when I asked her to talk about an aesthetic experience, she not only chose food, but she chose to talk about the beans that had been served lunch. And I just thought I'd read this short. I was quite amazed. So she said, I'm going to talk about my aesthetic experiences with food here, beginning with today's lunch, in particular, the beans. I feel a little bit like when I talk about food. Food is something that I'm very interested in. But it's a different sort of aesthetic experience from what I'm used to with visual aesthetics. And sometimes I feel like words fail me. But I'm not willing to let them fail me because talking about this stuff is what I do in aesthetic terms. So let's see what we can get. I think the key to the bean dish today was the contrast in texture between the sort of smooth and creamy beans, which were, I mean, with the bean is some sort of grain to it, especially when you're cooking from dried beans. As you bite into it, you can sense different gradations of that. But in these, it was so perfectly cooked that there was no gradient or real texture, it really had this consistent smoothness to it. There was like a balance going on there, in terms of not just texture, but you have that kind of mellow almost a nuttiness to the sort of mellow buttery nutty bean flavor. And the same thing with the bread, which is another mellow flavor, contrasted with the sharpness and bitterness and acidity of the tomato on the chart. So it's like the entire dish is about contrasts. It was fun.

Let's, let's enter amazing quote. If people who know me know I love being so I really appreciate it, though.

So yeah, we don't think about our food that often it that kind of level. Right? So yeah,

yeah. And it could feel silly, you know, she felt a little embarrassed almost to launch into this. But it was her truth. She didn't know those things about the lunch.

Sure, and cooking, right, sort of some, you know, good cooking shows, or try to talk you through some of these things, too, right. And so this is something you think about, right? If you try to learn the art of cooking, or to learn to try to create experiences like that.

I came across the quote, from Dwight furrow, he does a blog called edible arts. And are you familiar with that? Yeah. But he said, You know, when he was referring to preparing a meal and things he said, the idea is not merely to create a fantastic concoction or to add a new flavor note to a dish, it is to capture the essence of something that has hitherto gone unnoticed and to impress upon the diner that there is something here to be explored and understood. Great. Yeah. That was a really interesting way to capture you know, everything that goes along with Yeah, food.

Yeah. Yeah. And you could almost say the same thing about a visual art experience.

So what do you have to say about art and food? So we've been talking about sort of the art of food, right, but how about the combination of like visual art and food or other things like that? Do you have any thoughts about how they how food has shown up in visual art or how it's showing up today and works?

Yeah. Well, like I said, in history, tea ceremony has been a practice that has involved a tea ceremony meal and all the cookie darts that go with it. There are some artists who have done really interesting work, like I'm thinking, trying to remember his name. There's a West Coast artists Leeming way, I think is his name, who did a whole series of hospitality projects. And I remember one of them was he had a little miniature efficiency apartment, set up in the gallery of an art museum. It might have been the Whitney. And visitors could sign up to spend the night in that little efficiency apartment with Leeming way and he would prepare dinner for them. And so there were two little beds in their eating area kitchen, and he would fix this food for them. 

Could people watch them interacting and him preparing food? I can't remember.

Well, that tradition comes into the US in the Chef's Table, where for a little more money, you can actually get a table in the kitchen. Uh huh. And watch Alice Waters or whoever do that. And you're and they will come over and they will talk about the food in those terms. They will, uh huh. Share their aesthetic with it. It's quite fun.

That's interesting. Have you ever experienced that? Yeah. Really?

Yeah. How? Not to? Not with not a cheap a nice, but yeah, that's another Yeah, I'm kind of a foodie. Oh, wow.

Oh, good. I think we've been touching on several times throughout this discussion. And we're talking about the tea ceremonies, or the chef's table or anything like that is just how profoundly social food is, as an art, right, how all of these things always come back to and sitting, how important it is to enjoy other things. If you're sitting at a table with a bunch of people talking, talking about it and that sort of thing. And maybe, you know, today, although I do think that that's it's changing along with the appreciation of higher quality food and things like that when people are going back to just having dinner together at a table. Yeah, right. Yeah. As opposed to like me today eating my lunch and not tasting myself, right. So yeah, I think that's it. importantly, I don't know if anybody has anything more to say about that. But it's just something that it's seems very deeply human to have to share food is a social experience.

It very much is. And there have been studies that have been conducted, that have been funded by food companies actually looking at outcomes where families are made, it's made easier for them to eat as a group as a family. And then, you know, further on down the line, they would look at other sorts of outcomes from that. It's very clear that that's positive, not negative.

Interesting. Well, and then we want to be respectful of your time. Is there anything that we haven't covered today that you'd like to talk about? You'd like to touch on?

Like we've covered a lot of Meat.

John Scott, do you have anything?

No, it's fascinating, fascinating.

Well, hey, Linda, we really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed talking to you.

Look forward to checking in again. If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

Dr. Jim Stack is a professor of plant pathology at Kansas State University and director of the Great Plains Diagnostic Network. His areas of research emphasis include detection and diagnosis of diseases in natural and agricultural plant systems, threat identification, vulnerability assessments, and risk analyses for natural, accidental, and intentional threats to plant systems, as well as epidemiology and management of field crop diseases in the Northern Great Plains. Additionally, he is a great thinker about the food system in general. This conversation largely centers around the more “wicked” problems that humans face, and how we may need to rethink our approaches in future. We definitely do not have all of the solutions, but only by talking through ideas are we going to make progress. Dr. Maureen Olewnik, the Global Food Systems Initiative Coordinator, joined Scott, Jim, and Jay for the talk as well. Enjoy!

For more information about Dr. Stack check out: https://www.plantpath.kstate.edu/people/faculty/stack/

Transcript:

Rethinking Current Approaches to Food Security with Dr. Jim Stack – Food Systems/Plant Pathology

What is a reasonable population that the earth can sustain without maximizing the pressure on the systems that we need for survival. So that's what I mean by we've got it backwards. Instead of chasing population, we should be asking ourselves what's a reasonable population for the world so that we can develop systems that can meet that demand?

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of global food systems. It's produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Jay Weeks PhD candidate in the Department of Agronomy, my co host is Scott Tanona, an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy who specializes in the Philosophy of Science. Sometimes, with large, complicated endeavors, we need to take a step back and ask whether our current approaches and underlying assumptions are truly serving our end goals. Given our ever globalizing food system, it's important to take inventory of what we've learned and consider where things could be improved, or go horribly, horribly wrong. Our guest today is Dr. Jim Stack. Jim is a professor of plant pathology here at Kansas State University, and the director of the Great Plains plant diagnostic network. His areas of research emphasis include detection and diagnosis of diseases in natural and agricultural plant systems, threat identification, vulnerability assessments, and risk analysis for natural, accidental and intentional threats to plant systems, as well as epidemiology and management of field crop diseases in the northern Great Plains. But as you'll hear, he was a great thinker about the food system in general, our conversation largely centered around the more quote unquote, wicked problems that humans face. And we definitely don't have all the solutions. But this was a really great and constructive discussion to have. Only by talking through ideas, are we going to make progress. Dr. Maureen Olewnik, the Global Food Systems Initiative coordinator, join Scott, Jim, and I for the talk as well. So we hope you enjoy Dr. Jim Stack. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you very much. It's good to be here.

Been looking forward to this for a few weeks now. But before we get into the discussion that I hope all four of us are going to get to have. We always like to get your perspective on your background. So you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to be where you are today.

How did I get to be? Um, good fortune. I mean, I've been pretty blessed to have a series of great jobs throughout my career. Interests, interest and in are stemmed from probably having an Irish heritage. My folks from Ireland, so the topic of the day being hunger, and there's a lot of ties to Ireland. I tell the story often, you know, how bright my family is, they stayed in Ireland for the famine, and came over to the US for the Great Depression.

Good timing. Yeah

That’s right. Yeah. But I think during the years when I was trying to figure out what I was gonna do with my life, I always, always been a news junkie. So at the time we were talking about famines in Ethiopia, we're talking about famines in Bangladesh, we're talking about famines, and Biafra. These are headlines, these are pictures on the evening news. So I think that leaves an impression on people when you see at some place in the world, there's a true shortage of food, either through war through production failures through climate impacts, oh, the these are real. We don't see that much in the United States, certainly not to that level. But these are very real events that happen up to this day. The, you know, World Food Program, World Bank, are projecting that in Yemen, Ethiopia, Southern Sudan, that it would be approximately a million deaths to food inadequacies over this two or three year period we're in right now. So this is a complex issue that we have not solved yet. And so I think that had a major bearing on the direction I took.

So when you know before we ever started the podcast, we always like to ask the guests what you know what they would like to talk about and sort of get a map for the conversation a little but had a time, when I asked you you said, you know, my interests are in food security. And they're broad, ranging from policy to production and distribution, said, as you know, there are many scientific issues embedded within the food security challenge, but equally important are the policy and philosophical considerations for all the science that is dedicated to addressing food security, perhaps we have not done enough thinking. Uh, so, you know, what was behind that? That response? And in, you know, given all these issues and things like that, well, you know, what do you think?

Well, so I'm guessing the podcast has a finite period of time. That question within, but I think people have called this a wicked problem, meaning that it's complex to the extent where one issue impacts the other. And this is clearly in that realm, this food security issue. But we automatically make assumptions about the solutions. Well, if there isn't enough food, it means we need to produce more. If there isn't enough food, it means we need to ship it from this location to that location. And I would argue that that thinking will ultimately exacerbate this problem, not solve it. And so that's what's behind that statement I made, I think, I think more thinking needs to go into this. So I don't know how to jump into this. But say, perhaps, our thinking backwards, is the way I like to explain it that we keep saying that the population is going to be this level. So we've been doing this for decades, say the population is going to be 4 billion, it's going to be 5 billion, it's going to be 6 billion, it's going to be 7 billion. And in order to feed six, 7 billion people, we need to produce more food. And we need to create the systems that get food to people who need food. So production and distribution. And that for those times when there is a natural disaster, famine, drought, whatever the natural catastrophe might be that we need to be able to move food to those people. So it's always about feeding the next population target. And right now we're saying and the puppet actually, the population models are pretty good. They've been very accurate over the last 20 to 30 years. So looking ahead, we have no reason to doubt that they're not too far off the mark. So we're going to have 9 billion people on the planet by 2043, quite likely to have 10 billion somewhere between 2055 and 2060. And now they're saying that that's not going to plateau, that we may in fact, have 11 billion people by the end of the century. And so what we need to produce more food, and we need better distribution systems, and we need better food aid systems so that we can produce more and and get it to the people who need it. Well, let's take that apart, and say, Well, what does that actually mean? Well, let's look at the challenges we have right now. Which are many, some of them are significant, the climate issues real, the climate is changing, there's ample data to support that. And that will have an impact on our ability to produce food. I would argue, okay, there are many issues in the food security, one of the most important water, and that doesn't get as much attention as it deserves approximately 70%, somewhere between 65 and 75% of the freshwater on the planet goes to agriculture. The last figures I saw were only about 24-25% of the agricultural lands are irrigated, but they provide 40% of our food. So there's no scenario under which we're going to feed the world's population without irrigated agriculture. That's off the table. And so we need to figure out a way if we're going to amp up our production systems that are going to require more water. Where's that coming from? At the same time, if you look at the original Millennium Development Goals of 1999, and now the Sustainable Development Goals of just a few years ago, if we look at those, what are they calling for? Well, they're calling for food security. No one should be food insecure, no one on the planet. Okay, so we're talking about 9 billion people are going to be food completely food secure. We're talking about enhancing public health to the level where People don't suffer from the chronic diseases that are plaguing us right now. As well as emerging infectious diseases, which have sudden and real impacts. And we're talking about raising standards of living. So if we do all those things, that means more energy, it means more water. And these are the very things that are challenging us in order to meet our food demands. So if we start, if we look at it from the perspective, we're always going to ramp up our systems to meet the advancing population, we never solve the problem, because the population will increase until it crashes. What I'm suggesting is we turn that around, that we learn from the biological systems that we study. And we know without exception, at least exception that I'm aware of, we know without exception, biological organisms stabilize according to the available nutrients. So I can predict how many bacterial cells there will be in a culture by the amount of carbon and nitrogen I put into that culture. I can predict predator and prey populations based on the relationships that have been long identified. And and that again, almost without exception, the exceptions come in when you haven't introduced infectious disease, or some other major climatic perturbation. But, you know, in general, predator prey populations follow certain behavioral patterns that we've been able to predict. Right now, we actually calculate how many cattle per hectare based on the productivity of the hectare. So the composition of the pasture grasses or whatever the the plant composition is, we can actually predict how many cattle or sheep that hectare can sustain. We have formulas for that. So my question is, why can't we do that for humans? Why can't we actually determine what is it reasonable population that the earth can sustain, without maximizing the pressure on the systems that we need for survival? So that's what I mean by we've got it backwards. instead of chasing population, we should be asking ourselves what's a reasonable population for the world so that we can develop systems that can meet that demand? And it doesn't mean withholding food from people who are hungry? It does not.

I was going to say this is going to be highly controversial.

Of course, it will be because that's our immediate thought is that it means withholding food does not mean that at all, it means basing the the the calculations on the productivity, the reasonable productivity of those systems, and letting our population stabilize around that mean, yes, it change, it means changing our thinking. But what's the alternative? The alternative is to accept the unspoken assumption that everything else is limitless. Now, is that a reasonable assumption I asked you are all these systems without limits? If they are all good, let's go.

Okay. So I've got a lot of questions. But I want to jump in first with a comparison to like mid late 20th century, right where 1970s, where people are worried about the population explosion. So there's no way the planet can sustain, you know, whatever, 6 billion people, right. And then we have the Green Revolution, right sort of things change. And in fact, we have technological solutions to actually ramp up productions in ways that people hadn't foreseen. So how do you compare that to the current situation? 

Yeah, so it's a good question. And I haven't always thought the way I do now, you know, there's, it's been an evolution. But I've been working on this issue for probably about 20 years in terms of my thinking. And so how this is different. One of the people who referenced was Paul Ehrlich, from Stanford, used to have a title like, I think it's one of his books, Population Bomb, right? You know, so the implication being, that the world's population is going to increase to a point and then there'll be a major crash. I don't see that at all. I don't see anything that's going to cause that. So what I'm talking about is constantly doing the same thing over and over again, and not achieving the goal. So our goal is food security for everybody. It's public health for everybody. It's a reasonable standard of living for everybody. That's what I'm talking about. If we always look ahead to what the population is going to be and keep ramping up, knowing that what we've been doing for the last 50 years hasn't achieved the goal. Perhaps we need to think about that a little bit differently. So what I'm suggesting is developing systems developing the technologies doing the science necessary. To get to a point where the vast majority of people, the overwhelming majority of people are, in fact food secure, we don't have abject poverty. Will we have income inequality? Always, but not to the point where people are starving? Or or people are dying because they lack access to the medicines and the health care they need. I think we can do that part. So when I look at this hunger challenge, the title of one of the manuscripts and developing is feeding a growing population in a shrinking world. Well, that question really comes down to three types of questions. The first one is can we feed 9 billion 10 billion 11 billion? Yes, I think we can. We can do the science and we can develop the technologies necessary to feed an increasing population. But I think the outcomes the same, where we always have starving people, we always have people that need health care, because of the way we're approaching the problems. So I just look at it in that respect. So the first question is, can we Yes, we can do the science, we can develop the technologies necessary. We're already doing now. Amazing developments are going on? The world is populated with a lot of very bright people. So yes, we can do the science to get to where we want to be. The second type of question is, will we feed 9-10-11 billion people? Oh, those are questions of policy. And our track record and policy is awful. It's just abysmal. And we haven't demonstrated an ability to learn from the failures in policy. And so I look at that and say, you know, will we? I think, yes, eventually, but not before a lot of people suffer unnecessarily, because we didn't do what needed to be done in a timeframe to affect the outcome in a meaningful way. So I think, you know, that's the second question, will we? The third questions more difficult? It's the one we dealt with to start. And that question is, should we? So the first two questions are scientific in nature, you can have a reasonable discussion, and maintain it being intellectual in nature. But the third one is become it's more philosophical, and so quickly, transitions into emotion. And it's very difficult to have that conversation. And again, I reiterate, the goal is actually the same. It's to ensure that we don't have a disproportionate number of people without access to health care and food. That doesn't even make sense in today's world. We already have the technologies, we've already done the science necessary to feed our current population, yet, hunger persists, we should be challenging ourselves on why that is. Right.

Good. So So then to be clear, then I think at least one different and there's a lot. We're all I'm sure gonna start jumping in on but one of the differences here as I was reading some of what you're saying a little pessimistically to start with, right through, right, oh, we're, and it's pessimistic on some views, right, in terms of like, sort of our policy and other things. But in terms of our ability to feed people, it's not pessimistic there, right. So so so what, what I was hearing for a moment was, Oh, we're not going to be able, there's limited resources, water, etc. We're not going to be able to feed all these people, we have to figure out how to limit the population. But what you just said wasn't that was right. Yeah.

It's a matter of fact, I'm an optimist by nature. Yeah. So we are going to solve these. The question is the timeframe. So if I was a young person, looking at a career, I'd be excited to jump into this arena. Because your career would be meaningful, you'd be solving some problems that have been intractable for as long as we've been walking upright. And so I, I think we have in place the educational systems that are necessary to generate the people that are going to solve these prompts. All that's going to play out, the question is, does it play out by 2050? Or does it play out by 2150? And that's what I'm saying is, is if we can change our thinking now, we can shorten that timeframe till we get to where we need to be. And I go back to what's our real thinking on limits? Are there any limits in this world? Is there a limit to freshwater? Well, no, we can desalinate the oceans. So now we have a lot of water. Is there a limit to land area? Well, yes, kind of but we keep ramping up yield per hectare. So you know, what is that limit? I don't think people don't it's actually a really good book. Charles man's the author. Oh, the wizard and the Prophet. It's very good book about that. And it's basically a profile I'll have Norman Borlaug and just went blank another person that they kind of had a co evolutionary pathway. But they looked at the world differently. One was a pessimist. One was an optimist. One was a technologist, one was a philosopher, you know, the, you know, they are social scientists, I should say, rather than philosopher, but, you know, they looked at the same situations from different perspectives and drew different conclusions. But it's an excellent read, and it deals with this, do we believe there are limits? And the problem I think we have is nobody's even asking that question in a meaningful way. We talk about sustainability, we talk about resilience. But those terms get tossed around so much. Now, they actually don't have any meaning whatsoever, because they're applied to everything. So I don't know if that answered your question or not. But..

so a couple of things. The first being, you know, a lot of people seem to think that the as conditions improve, and especially women have access to education in the developing world, and things like that, that the the population in those areas actually starts to decrease, right? Families have fewer, fewer children, things like that. So the idea is sort of that, you know, once we reach that 10 or 11, in the Senate, a living comes up that it'll sort of plateau. I mean, that's, that's the argument that I've heard. Second question is, you know, if we, if we all intellectually agree that, you know, there's a carrying capacity, and we need to, you know, slow the population down and things like that. You mentioned the emotional part, if we start putting that out there and saying, you know, maybe people should be having fewer children or something like that to slow population growth. How do you even How do you even start to approach that problem, because it's so emotional, and people want to have their own ability to make their own decisions, right?

Again, it's about how you frame this issue. The goal is not to control population. The goal is to create a system, an ecosystem, a planet Earth, that is appropriate for a certain population level. So it's not focusing on the population, it's focusing on the systems that support people. And so you, you identified a few things which are right on the mark, we already know how to do this. When you increase public health, when you increase education, birth rates decline. So we already know how to do this, we're just not doing it very effectively. Sometimes it's very difficult. If you just look at what's going on in the Congo, right now, with the Ebola outbreak, you have rebel groups, and you have populations that are attacking health care providers, because they believe that the vaccine is going to cause AIDS. And so education is, is absolutely critical illness, everywhere. So we already know how to do this, we're just we've just focused on the wrong thing. We're focusing on food production, we're focusing on being able to supply enough to a future population without focusing on the needs of the current population to the level necessary to affect the trajectory. Now people say, Oh, well, if the population gets too big a disease is going to come along, like avian influenza or something. And it's going to take out the population. I've run some numbers, we have some models who play with run some numbers, even if you go back to this Spanish Influenza of 1918. And use those numbers, which vary somewhere between 30 and 100 million people dead globally.

Let's take which as a percentage was really significant, right? 

Yes, absolutely. But even if you take that number, and you adjust it, it's not going to change the fact that if we continue to do what we're doing, at some point, we're going to hit 10 or 11 billion people. Because nothing's changed. All it's done is affected the it displaces the curve. But the curve still continues when that's resolved. And right now we have in place mitigation measures and response protocols that are going to minimize the number impacted. Well, what about war? Well, if you look at war, I mean, okay, this is gonna sound really awful. Not enough people die from wars anymore. You know, you go back 100 years and we talked about millions dying in a world war, but war has become technology oriented and strategic in nature. And so we spent a decade in Iraq, and 4000. People thought that's awful. But it didn't really impact the population. And that's I think you look at what are the major factors that could change that trajectory, they don't have the same level of impact anymore.

So in other words, I mean, these things are just the population is gonna keep on increasing, and even some things that slowed down even if we had a major disease or right sort of it's not, it's not changing the trajectory that we're on. It's just pushing, pushing the date further down,

Barring the zombie apocalypse. Yeah.

When you say that, we need to think we need to change the way we think. Who's the we and how do you impact? How do you move that needle on the we?

Yeah, so it's a good question. We have national, we have international organizations that have accepted some responsibility for food security, and for public health. Off wow, this guy, I don't mean this to be too critical. But the nature of international organizations is it's difficult to actually do what needs to get done. So you only have to look at the Ebola outbreak of was it 13 or 14, to see that it was clear to a lot of epidemiologists with a group now that predicted the trajectory of that, back in March of that year, World Health Organization stepped in in August. By that time, it was far too late to affect the outcome. And you did so you look at the Food and Agricultural Organization, the United Nations and the World Food Program. They've rallied around the notion that to solve this food security problem, we need further intensification of agricultural production systems. And we need better global trade systems. We need to bring more developing nations into the global economy to global marketplace. Well, there are consequences to that they're being realized right now. One of the consequences of intensification, of course, is more inputs to get more output. And there are implications for that. With respect to trade networks, we're already seeing the massive global mixing of path pests and pathogens that are having major impacts on our ability to produce enough food. Just look what happened in Bangladesh in 2016. And that was a consequence of the global trade system of moving wheat seed. Well, grain from one location to another.

For the listeners that wouldn't know what that is. Can you explain sorry.

So in 1985, a new disease of wheat emerged in Brazil. And it it stayed in Brazil for almost a decade, causing increasing impacts, like a lot of diseases, very weather dependent. So when the weather conditions and it's been linked to El Nino, when an El Nino comes in, you have epidemics. And this is a very impressive disease. So we've seen 500 1000, hectare fields, all debt. So it's very quick. It's very impressive. In the mid 90s 95, or so it was introduced to Bolivia, probably trade farmers bringing seed across the border. And then one or two years later into Paraguay, same route of entry. It stayed in South America until February of 2016, when there was a massive epidemic in Bangladesh, a Bongo we it's the second most important provider of calories in Bangladesh. And they but they don't produce enough so they historically imported from the Ukraine. Ukraine had two political problems, unable to make that meet the demand for Bangladesh, Bangladesh on the open marketplace, this is the suspicion you can never fully Prove these things. Week gets imported from South America and the genomics and genetics have been done on this. It's clear that the outbreak in Bangladesh was the population that came from South America. That's very clear. And so it was introduced. We is a very important prompt grown on more acres globally than any other crop. It provides 17% of the protein in the human diet. So it is the crop we have to protect, but we have a system or pathogen that moves in seed. And we have a global distribution system that's moving seed across the planet. That's just one example that's happening in every commodity it's happening. It's everywhere. That's the way we do business. now. So again, you go and say, Well, what should we be doing? Well, instead of focusing on prevention, which is overrated, we should be focusing on surveillance in early detection. So we can hit these things when they're small, and not wait until we have a flaming epidemic to respond. So there are a lot of things we can be doing better than we are doing currently. But it does take a change in thinking.

So what about the trade itself? Right, and, and the general approach of increasing production in certain areas, and then distribution, right, sort of, because there's, there's concern about sort of the global network and a whole range of issues. It's not just sort of the possibilities of transfer of pests and pathogens, but also, sort of further instability, like when prices change, and you have to, you know, get your food from other places rather than sort of local autonomy, right, or producing your food. And, you know, this is my area. So I know there's a lot of questions that come up when, when we're talking about this model of increasing production in certain areas and delivering. 

So it's a very complicated issue. Imagine, I don't even know where to begin on this one. But let me begin here. A few years ago, a group published a paper, recommending that we create global committees to regulate the production of food, so that if we do an analysis, we would determine that it's more environmentally friendly, it's more energy efficient to produce maize corn in Iowa, than it is in Kenya. So Kenya should not be allowed to produce corn. We should grow it in Iowa and ship it to Kenya. The same with water, we should be deciding that we should not be irrigating crops in western Kansas. That's dryland rain fed agriculture. So they should not be allowed to irrigate there. So there's, they actually published a paper on this, and they believe that I can't think of a worse model for achieving sustainability than what they propose us. So say, why just say, What could possibly go wrong?

Well, yeah, I mean, not to mention all the people who are going to be left behind in systems like that, right. I mean, okay.

It's a disaster in thinking I just, at least, that's my opinion. So you look at the trade issue, you know, we're moving so many problems with this, I think our our eagerness to bring some of these countries into the global marketplace, superseded our thinking on what was necessary for them to do that safely. So we should have been simultaneously investing in their infrastructure to ensure in this a double edge, we to ensure that what they were putting in the marketplace was clean material. The other is that what was being shipped in they were prepared to handle. And there is a long list of pests and pathogens that have been introduced into Africa on food aid. Because you have to move quickly. There's an economist Charles parings, from Arizona, who, who's he dedicated his career to studying the impacts from invasive species. And he said once that a cargo container has a sampling of the organisms every place it's been. And there's wisdom in that because that's, in fact, what we find hitchhikers. on everything. We're moving organisms in wooden wooden furniture. I have a couple of slides our use of electric guitars manufactured in China. When they arrived at the port in Australia, there was a hole in the assumption was it was a quality issue that they had drilled too many holes for the faceplate on this electric guitar. When they pulled the faceplate off, it was an exit hole, there were galleries, inset galleries all throughout this wooden guitar, we're moving insects and everything. The same with pathogens and pests. It's just there, there are consequences to the global movement of people and goods. If you look at what we know about evolution, their evolutionary consequences to this as well, if you look at what how we studied evolution, when I was going through the system, we learned about island biogeography geography that you know that if you had two islands separated by a certain distance, that the species would grow away from each other would evolve away from each other and genetic differences would take so we all know that the Galapagos a great place for having studied that. Okay, but those geographic boundaries now are irrelevant. We're putting plants and plant products on airplanes and flying them over mountains, or putting plants and plant products on ships and transporting them across the seas. So the geographic boundaries that once kept organisms confined to certain areas are irrelevant. The consequences of that are we're finding that our concepts of taxonomic separation, don't actually hold up. So an example being in the UK, they imported plants from South America, they ended up in a greenhouse, in a nursery, on a bench with local plants, to different species, that should not be able to interact, actually hybridized and created a new species, a hybrid species, we would, if you do your pest risk assessment, that wouldn't have been one of the options. So these two things hybridized. And the scary part is the phenotype of the hybrid would not have been predictable, based on the phenotype of the two parents. So how do you do a risk assessment, you can't sit that's just one example. There are others. So there are consequences to this global trade that we haven't fully grasped. We're making so much money, and it's solving so much problem. I don't think anybody wants to grapple with it right now. But the investment and the research necessary to deal with those problems, is wildly inadequate. The investment in the infrastructure we need for early detection and surveillance is wildly inadequate for what we're doing.

So, you know, I think part of what I get out of what you're saying is that a lot of these issues are consequences of incentive structures that are not well aligned to they're aligned to certain groups, but but not others. Right. In, you know, we we tend to focus on, you know, trying to find solutions through technology, and you know, hard science, when some of these might be, you know, social science issues and that sort of stuff. So you've laid out a whole bunch of, you know, areas that we need to think about, what do you what do you think about as far as solutions?

Well, yeah, let me let me follow up first, sure. happening, internet link, follow up. Something you said there about the social side. The social implications are staggering. And we already have examples of this. So if we look at the Arab Spring, we all remember the Arab Spring, okay. 2010, spread across North Africa into the Middle East, and we are still suffering, the ramifications of that Arab Spring. So what was the cause of that? Well, there were many underlying cultural problems, social problems, and political problems, lots of those. But the proverbial last straw was the sudden increase in the price of wheat, that the government jacked up the price of wheat sent the food vendor into the street, he ml itself emulates. And pretty soon you have massive protests in Tunisia that spread across the region, the proverbial last straw was food. Now fast forward, what's going on right now in the Mediterranean area, in Italy, and 2013, there was an outbreak of a disease in olives. In southern Italy. It's called Quick decline of Hollows, and it's caused by a bacterium. So it started to spread. And the government came in and does what phytosanitary agencies do, they slapped a quarantine on it. And then they decided to do an eradication zone. So they went in and started cutting down the trees. But this isn't like cutting down a field of corn. These trees are over 1000 years old. And these trees weren't just planted by the current generation. They've been in my family for 14 generations. This is a major issue, you had people climbing up in the trees and tying themselves to the trees to prevent the government from cutting them down. This, the local populations blame the scientists for bringing that in, because they were studying this organism at the local Experiment Station. Now, ultimate genetic analyses proved it wasn't the same organism, they the scientists weren't really responsible, but the scientists are actually facing charges and potential jail time for not reporting it in a timely manner. And so there were these massive social upheavals. Were This is present tense, this is still playing out. And social scientists are doing a really nice job of documenting it, give them a lot of kudos, they jumped right in and said, Okay, how do we sort this out? And the problem is scientists don't talk to the public very well, or very often, and we need to deal with that. But the social implications are massive. The Bangladesh story I told you earlier with the week PLAs pathogen, so the government came in and knowing the history in South America, they decided to eradicate, the only way to eradicate was they burn the fields. The problem was a lot of the acreage in Bangladesh is farmed by people who don't own the land. So they grow the wheat, to sell to the market, to get the money to pay the lease on the land, and what's left buys the food for their family. Now the government comes in and burns all that they have nothing and it drives them deeper into poverty is a bad too, the social implications of what I'm talking about are enormous. So I just want to toss that in based on your comment there.

And that's just a really important thing to pay attention to, you know, when we're talking about food security issues, right? It's not just sort of how many people are, are starving, or how many people are hungry, right, or sort of order and poor health due to not having sufficient nutrition, right, sort of it's, it's it's huge, as you just said, in sort of, there's a lot of stories that I think are like this, right?

So, there's the Yeah, the poverty hunger cycle. So people who are hungry, become malnourished, they earn less in the market, there's lots of data on this, they earn less in the marketplace. And they drop into poverty. Those in poverty, can't afford to buy enough food, or the right kinds of food become further malnourished. And that system, that cycle just continues. So we need to alleviate poverty, in order to eradicate hunger, but we need to eradicate hunger in order to alleviate poverty. So how do you break into that?

So do you think that these are things that we know some Mike, so you said, Well, we already know, we already have technological solutions to, you know, increasing production, and at least in some ways, and we'll find more, right? Some of the social science on this is seems to be pretty good, too. I mean, sort of this is similar, you know, on trade issues, you know, if you just open up trade, it's gonna hurt some people, right? And so, you know, it might lower cost overall, right, you know, but somebody who was producing the thing, right is now not going to be able to compete, right? And sort of similarly, like you want to go and sort of for, for the population as a whole for the country as a whole, eradicate this disease, stop it right and stop a greater disaster. Right? If you do that, without dealing with the repercussions on this, and the people who are growing that land, right, growing on that land, right, then often there's this, you know, a lot of damage that has now been done, right? So do our, is it something that people just overlook? In general, when we would jump in and do this? Or is there something we don't understand about some of these repercussions?

So one of the challenges we have for all of these issues, the bottom line, is the bottom line. And so it's about money. I think what we're seeing and I don't know the number, but if you look at then the number of countries that made that transition from poor and underdeveloped or lesser developed whatever terminology we'd like to use into that middle tier of countries that are, you know, becoming economically sound, and players in the marketplace. If you look at those almost without exception, that proportion of the population involved in agriculture plummet, and the viability of sustainability or just like the word of ice, but people who live off the land plummets, they can't that's not economically viable. In in the economic systems that are surviving, that are thriving. And so that's where we need social scientists integrated into these decisions were making to help in the transition from a sustenance based existence to having a place in the market. And that involves education, again, involves a different way of looking at the market. The United States, the biggest mistake we could make is believing none of this can happen here. That would be a horrific, none of that. None of what that we could have hunger than we could have a declining public health. We're already seeing a couple cities. Yeah, right. And so, but we act as though that can't happen here. Because we have such an advanced economy, it only 100 years ago, and that's just five generations, where we had food riots in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and it has happened here in the past, it can happen now. I think we're not paying attention to the things that are going to ultimately matter in my opinion.

How do we pay more attention to these things right as policy issues do we need? Do we need to get people in government? That's it You know, pay attention to these things or at least know who to who to listen to, or, you know what I mean? What do you think right now, you know, we've talked about these these wicked problems, right? There's a lot of implications. There's a lot of potential for, you know, positive things and a lot of potential for disaster. Right. You know, right here right now, you know, where do we need to go? What do you think?

Yeah, so a lot again, in that, but let me try to condense that. But right now, because and I don't remember the exact number. So I'm gonna throw a number I don't remember it is 80% of the population, the United States lives within 15 miles of a grocery store that sells whatever you want seven days a week, 24 hours a day. So foods on anyone's agenda. It's just not because it's available. And so far, it's affordable by most people.

Okay, so only, even relatively, right. So most people, right, yeah.

Only a very small proportion of the population is actually impacted by the cost of food. We do have certain issues. There are exceptions. Yeah. Food deserts. Yeah.

And I thought the numbers of people who are food insecure, even in like Manhattan are pretty high. But yeah.

Well, so some of that goes to definition. Yeah, right. What's food insecurity? Is anybody starving in Manhattan? No, do they have the so what is food security, it's about access. And it's about affordability in our access. It's available and affordable. And it's also about culturally relevant food. So not everybody eats everything. So it's, there are a lot of things tied up in food security. But going back to what do we do, I think we need to address the things that could impact. So this issue of pests and pathogens, we're not going to get out of the way, the only thing you need to know about trade rules is that trade rules. And if it gets down to a decision between taking a risk, based on the health of a system verse is the economics of the system, the decision almost always goes to the economics. So we will import things at a risk. If it means a potential economic impact. That's just the way we do business. So if that's the way we need to be overt about this, if that's the way we want to do business, let's put in place the systems that minimize the impacts of those decisions. I don't think those conversations are we avoid having those conversations, rather than having them and putting in place what we need to have to protect us. So I think some of this is just having the open discussions of about identifying what the real issues are associated with the way we do business now.

So So is detection sufficient? How much you have to deal because a lot of this issue is sort of production sort of in the in places where, you know, trade is occurring in the infrastructure and policies, right in places where they introduce greater risk to the people who are then right, or the place that we're importing, right? The food or whatever it is that we're talking about, right. So do you think detections enough or sort of we have to somehow impact policies sort of everywhere? What do you look at it?

We have simultaneously two issues being bantered about by FAO Food and Agricultural Organization. One is further intensification. And they indicated 90% of the increase food that we need will come from further intensification of the lands that are already under cultivation. That's a big ask. At the same time, they're saying we need to move to to low input sustainability that's coming out of the same organization. Kind of ought to be talking. So I look at it. Let's expand that out. We have a lot of academic institutions, government agencies, nongovernmental organizations have bought into the concept that we need intense, further intensification of existing agricultural systems. That's the agricultural community. If you go to the environmental community, they're publishing papers saying the worst thing that ever happened to the planet was intensified agriculture. Perhaps we ought to put them in the same room at the same time and hash this out. The same is true with the invasive species and the the biodiversity decline group. They look at agriculture as causing species loss as causing species decline. And they're recommending doing what we do for risk assessment. What do we do? We I look at where an organism occurs and the environmental conditions that allow it to flourish at that location. And then we do climate matching around the planet. And Harrington probably talks about this, but you do climate matching around the planet and say, the same conditions exists here and here. So let's not move stuff from here to those locations, because if it gets introduced, it may flourish. So that's kind of how we do a pest risk assessment. Well, the, the environmental group is looking at it and using the same technology and saying, Well, these species are threatened in this environment. So let's look around the planet and see where they would do well, and we'll move that whole community there. Well, that's kind of inconsistent and thinking, because that creating the opportunity for them to become invasive, because our ability to predict how organisms are going to behave in new environments is limited at best. And so again, these people ought to be in the same room. At the same time we go to meetings, we go to conferences that are theme oriented. So the cross fertilization of these ideas, is not taking place, at a level adequate to actually come up with the solutions you're looking for. We, in my opinion,

Yeah. On campus, as you know, the global food systems, that's you and I have had this conversation several times. So what we're trying to do is figure out how to get people just within our little university or at K State into a room get that diverse population. How do you do that? You know, you mentioned earlier that you were doing presentations around the world on this? How do you tackle that huge problem of getting that sociology group with the agronomy group with the plant pathology group with the political? How do you do that?

So it's like any other enterprise, in the in the Human Sphere, it's about relationships, I think you have to seek out people and trying to do that, get a grant that would allow you to hold a workshop first, to bring people of different perspectives together, and say, let's let's have a conversation has to be the right people, because not everybody can have these conversations without feeling threatened. So you have to put these people in the room and at least identify the issues in a clear manner that you can have a larger meeting on, and then get those perspectives erred in front of everyone in front of the different perspectives, so that you can at least understand the opposing viewpoint on what you're doing it until the understandings there, you can't get to a point of identifying potential solutions. So I think the start is start developing relationships across these disciplinary boundaries that we have.

I was gonna say, I mean, there's some of this, you know, is that we as a, as a society need to think more about how we have we instill values into, you know, children, so that they grow up, you know, being more willing to engage in these sorts of things, right? Because I mean, a lot of this, I mean, a lot of this is human issues, and human relation issues and human values issues as far as what incentivizes humans, that sort of some of its evolutionarily driven, obviously. But I mean, do we need to be thinking about how we, how the next generations should be approaching these things, and talking to much younger people about this to solve them in the future?

So absolutely, yes, we need to do that. It's not enough. I think we need a lot more interaction between scientists and policymakers in a more meaningful way. So please, let me clarify, everything I said we need to do is going on at some level. So I didn't mean to imply in any sense that none of this is happening. This is all happening. But from my perspective, I have a sense of urgency about it right now. I think we are crossing into territory, that is going to make it more different. No. That's wrong, not more difficult. I think we're crossing into territory where the impacts are going to be greater. So for example, that issue I brought up Do you believe in limits? You know, at some point, there are limits. And if we look at our ability to produce food, right now we can produce far more than we need. Okay, we know that based on loss estimates, which I think are over estimated, but even if they're half correct, we can produce far more food than is necessary to feed the current population. We can do that. But if we keep adding people without change During the way we're doing business, the surplus is going to narrow, so our margin for error narrows. Now when we have a prolonged drought in Australia that affects wheat exports or a prolonged drought in the Ukraine that affects exports, both of which we have experienced in the previous 15 years, the impacts are going to be greater because there's just not enough to satisfy that demand. And then you look at the, again, the redistribution of pests and pathogens at increasing rates. So we have this tendency to think we should focus on catastrophes. So I will ask you this, you know, we're worried about that avian influenza strain the h five and one that's going to come around, and that one strain of virus is going to take out 20% of the world's population, we worry about another SARS we worry about FMD coming in, because it alone, even though it it as a disease, it's not going to do that. But as a market effect, it's going to devastate the cattle industry, we worry about those one organisms. So in some of the food security models that we play with, for a variety of reasons I won't go into we've identified 30% displacement in the mean as catastrophic. So for any population, that would be catastrophic if there was a 30%. So the question I have is, what's the difference between a single organism causing a 30% displacement, or five organisms, each causing a 6%, displacement, still have 30% loss. That's what I see is changing right now, because of the magnitude of change. And we know from a lot of experience, that there's a delay, from the time of introduction of these organisms to when they realize their full impacts. And China's seeing that right now in a big way. They, they opened up the doors in the 90s. And right now, they're just stomping out fires from invasives. Well, that's going on globally. At some point, we have to pay for that decision, or, in fact, lack of a decision. So I think we can do all of this. It's a matter of the timing. And I think what happens now as we go from the 7.3, or 4 billion that we're at now, up to 10 billion, our margin for error shrinks, because we're not going to be producing that much more food, that we maintain the margin for error. I don't see that.

So I know you don't have all the solutions. You don't you know, you're not saying that at all right. But but I know it's on your view, not just food intensification, delivery, right? Sort of just production, right and better delivery. So I'm What do you want to have happen. And I asked this, because I've heard you say education several times, right. And I'm very, in general skeptical about our ability just to sort of have information out there and sort of even talk to people and sort of have things improve, I mean, a lot of what you're talking about needs policy decisions that are, you know, going to change the way we interact, right change, you know, shift money or shift resources to, to places that need their infrastructure improved, tried to sort of make them better able to handle invasives coming in, or less, less likely to send them out. And you know, that these kinds of things, right, so this isn't just sort of, if we let the dollar determine where we're gonna buy our produce from. Nothing's gonna change, right? We run all these risks. So so like, how do we just in general, like what what do we look? What are you looking for, to kind of come up on top right to sort of start to address these issues besides just like us sitting here, and our dollar is gonna determine where we're buying produce from, and then we'll have some detection mechanisms. Right. So what do you what do you want overall, like the picture to look like?

So I know you don't have all the solutions. You don't you know, you're not saying that at all right. But but I know it's on your view, not just food intensification, delivery, right? Sort of just production, right and better delivery. So I'm What do you want to have happen. And I asked this, because I've heard you say education several times, right. And I'm very, in general skeptical about our ability just to sort of have information out there and sort of even talk to people and sort of have things improve, I mean, a lot of what you're talking about needs policy decisions that are, you know, going to change the way we interact, right change, you know, shift money or shift resources to, to places that need their infrastructure improved, tried to sort of make them better able to handle invasives coming in, or less, less likely to send them out. And you know, that these kinds of things, right, so this isn't just sort of, if we let the dollar determine where we're gonna buy our produce from. Nothing's gonna change, right? We run all these risks. So so like, how do we just in general, like what what do we look? What are you looking for, to kind of come up on top right to sort of start to address these issues besides just like us sitting here, and our dollar is gonna determine where we're buying produce from, and then we'll have some detection mechanisms. Right. So what do you what do you want overall, like the picture to look like?

Yeah, to go to that education issue? To me, it's not about providing information. It's about building the educational infrastructure in these countries to self serve. Okay. Yeah, this distinction between just providing information, because when you do that, when they educate themselves, their solutions will be centric, so that the solutions won't be imposed by some World Organization, or by another country that's providing them aid, which we do if you look at what's going on in Africa, with respect to investment from China, Africa is is got a lot of issues right now. So because some of those countries have been so poor for so long, they have little, they don't have as many options as we do. So for example, agreeing to allow another country to fund a port in their country that allows them to tie in into the global marketplace. So that's a good thing. But in exchange for land. So you look at Saudi Arabia, look at South Korea, you look at several countries are buying land in Africa, China big time, lots of land, keeping it in agriculture, but to export to their countries. That's China's food security strategy, is have Africa produce the food. Now, you could argue that, well, Africans can get paid for that food. And with that money, they'll buy the food they need. But if we look at that strategy, it hasn't worked so far for everyone. And so I think there are challenges to that model. And if there's a political difference, I mean, just look at what's going on. Now, with respect to tariffs. There was a political disagreement between the United States and Mexico. And we said, we're going to impose tariffs on what's coming in, that would affect the price of food in a big way. So I think you're never fully secure. And most people look at countries in Africa and southern Asia as that's where the food security problem is. But Japan's not food secure with respect to food production, they buy a lot of their food, their populations much greater than what they produce. And that's true of multiple countries, that they have the financial means to buy food. So with the current model of letting the global marketplace solve food security, what that means is you have to have enough resource to buy that food. And almost without exception, if commodity independent, it goes to the person who pays the most. So your poor, stay poor, and food insecure, while you're rich, get the food and the increasing economic well being. So I don't think this global distribution system is a long term solution for the planet, I just don't see it. And let's think what are the consequences of global marketplace, we've talked about challenges of climate change of water, if these things, when you move food, it takes energy takes seldom more food movement, because we're going to add 28% more people to the planet. That means moving more and more food that takes more and more energy to do that. And when you move food, you move water. So even our grains that are somewhere between nine and 14%, moisture, when you're talking about millions of metric tons, you're moving water from one location to you're taking it out of some of these places. But now imagine tomatoes that are 80% Water, most of what you're moving is water. So the two problems that we really need to get our hands around water and energy are exacerbated by this model for food security.

Yeah, along with the various nutrients and things like that, that are at least this point considered non renewable, and that sort of thing. Absolutely.

So I mean, so yeah, we're going to solve all these issues. It's the timeframe that I'm really trying to draw attention to. We're going to fix all of this.

Yeah, so I'm way more skeptical about Yeah, I was gonna say, how do we solve these things? Right?

So because if you just look back through history, there are times when challenges look insurmountable. But it's a question of how long are we willing to wait until we do what needs to be done. And our history is, we're willing to wait pretty long, you know, we have to be dragged kicking and screaming into meaningful change. But we always get there. And it was Winston Churchill who said, you know, he loved Americans, because they always did the right thing, after they tried every other alternatives. So it's, you know, change is hard. Some of these things are hard, because people benefit by one direction or another. And so you're pitting who's going to benefit most by making any management decision or any policy change. So, you know, right now, the World Trade Organization is completely on board with trade as a solution to the economy. There's not a single country that I can think of that hasn't identified increased exports, as a solution to their economic woes. Everybody says that, well, there are consequences to that. And there's a limit to how many of the problems that that actually can solve without creating new problems. What I tell my students is, every generation solves a few problems and creates a few more and these are the ones who are leaving to the next generation. And so we will solve these, it's just a matter of the sense of urgency that's appropriate to the magnitude of the problem. And, and we all see that the same way.

Right? So I guess, I guess one of the main issues here, though, and you've highlighted very, very well, how much the issues are about, you know, international cooperation, right, and recognition of how interconnected, so many of the issues are, right. But the solutions are gonna have to be along the lines of, you know, if we want to solve the food security issues, and we want to sort of addressed our own biosecurity here, like in the US, we have to think about investing more in other countries, right, sort of their basic instance, infrastructure in their education. Right. And so, I mean, this, this seems like, right, and maybe in their, their agricultural systems, and sort of a whole variety of I mean, this seems like the kind of thing that would, you know, begin to start to address what you're talking about. But then we have to figure out, like, how and who, and you know, what way? And are we really willing to do this? And do we really see this and coordination problems are really, really hard, right, sort of, like, from our own point of view, it's really hard to see the long term implications of sort of a certain way of doing things that are right, you know, where we're given what how the system works now, right. It's in our own best interest to do something else.

Yeah, I agree. So really good point. And Maureen, and I've actually had several conversations about this. It's, there are issues of scale involved here. And I'm not a fan, I might have been clear in some of my comments. I'm not a fan of top down. I do not believe there's a solution to global food security, or insecurity, that doesn't even make sense to me. Because the problems not the same everywhere, that the limitations are not the same everywhere. And this is why I was saying before, we need to build the like the educational and public health infrastructure locally. And we're I mean, I've talked about is, you know, perhaps what we need to do is get a teams of people involved, scientists have different disciplines, both the social and in the hard science side, and look at an area. So whether that's a village or a region, or Guapa, but identify an area and say, Let's improve the quality of life in this area, how do we what what's missing? What do we need to do? What do they need to do? Help them build the systems they need to improve their quality of life, food security, public health, education, those types of systems, we can do that. And then you replicate that until it doesn't work. And then you find out what, why it doesn't work here. And you create the solutions for that location. If enough of us do that. We can address all these things. Because to me, it's a series of local problems. It's not a global problem.

And do you think it's a series of local scientific problems, like problems that science can address? Or is because I mean, you said social science too, but sort of but we know a lot of you know, what is needed? Right? And but worse, actually, there's a tension between sort of what, what's going to be good for, you know, one group of people and what's going to be good for another group of people looking at that group of people? Right? 

Yeah. So it's not just about science. To me, science is not the limiting part about this is policy. Okay, here's how I describe it. Maybe this was the image we're talking about. So describe it. If you want to be successful, you need to make good decisions. And in order to make good decisions, you need information. And what controls the flow through that process is, is certainly the beginning. part about that, from information to decisions is experience. Experience allows you to, to sort out relevant from irrelevant information. It allows you to look at past decisions to know which ones were successful and which ones weren't. So the beginning part of that from information to decisions is largely influenced by experience. While we're rich and experience of hunger, we've got millennia of experience in hunger and famines. But when we look at the second half of that equation, from decisions to success, what guides that part is policy, because policy provides the framework for decision making. So it steers your decisions in a certain direction. If you don't have the policy, right, you don't end up where you want to end up. So we need to put more thought into the policy. And we haven't been successful in doing that. And again, I think some of that goes back to the thinking that we have a global problem. We don't have a global problem, we have a network of problems that don't have the same issues involved. So we need to change how we look at this hunger problem, this food security problem, it's not the same everywhere. It's not the water issues, not the same everywhere. The land availability issues, not the same everywhere, none of these things, the corruption in government, the wars, the history of any given country, are not the same. And it will and you know, the all you have to do is look at Europe, we have the European Union. But yet they struggle at times to make progress in a given area. And it's not for lack of desire. It's because we're talking about different countries, we're not talking about different states of the same country, we're talking about different countries that have different institutional cultures, they have different cultures, they have different languages, oftentimes, they don't have the same bureaucratic structure. So the agencies that are tasked with doing different things, they're not even the same. So it becomes more difficult to look at this as an aggregate problem, instead of an individual problem.

Is part of the some of the issue that that some of the people that need to put in resources, whether that be money would be one of them are not the people who are experiencing the problem. And there needs to be more sacrifice on the parts of some people to as inputs to help these other groups to get going. Right? It's sort of like a slap in my backyard. But like, you know, if you want to help the food security of another country or another part of even the United States, that's gonna take a sacrifice in resources from somebody else in the United States to do that. Right? And is there not the not necessarily the Will there to do it in some cases?

Yeah. So if I understood your point, I think this goes to that scale issue. And the scale is not even going to be the same in different places. Sometimes it's going to be very local, sometimes it'll be regional. And so the ability to cooperate, is absolutely critical. And that'll be defined by their history. And you only have to look at different regions of the world where conflict has been going on for 1000 years, to know that that's easier said than done to solve. So scale becomes an important issue in this. And again, that's why I'm kind of going to, it's not a single issue. And if you want to make real progress, we have to kind of back off from that. You know, there's a the old adage, this is when you can tell how old I'm getting to kind of remember these things, but you know, teach someone or give someone a fish, you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish you feed him for life. I think we need to incorporate that thinking into how we're approaching this problem. I don't think the solution is let's figure out a way to ship them enough food. I don't like that as the solution, because it exacerbates so many other issues.

I mean, I don't I don't I don't think so either. But what I'm just saying is that there there needs to be resources for somebody to do the teaching. Right? 

Sure. And that's not always the case. You know, what we can find it, just look at the impact Bill and Melinda Gates are having. That's real impact, what they're doing. It's impressive that they've dedicated their lives now and their resources to making real change for folks, it can be done. And there probably many people like them, maybe not with as much resource. But we need to kind of reorient the thinking of some of our government agencies that do these things, to look at the world a little bit differently.

Yeah, and so I think it's super important to recognize that that ever, like very much is hit. It's not one problem, right. There's not a single issue, there's a whole bunch of different issues. I think that's great. And we need to recognize that and, you know, I probably have, there's a lot more we could probably talk about, of course, right about sort of what that might look like down the end. But the main thing that I think that I that I want to take away from right here, from what you're saying is the shift to paying attention to these issues, not so much what the what the policies are going to look like, right, or sort of whether we can actually do it right, but just sort of look the food security, the global food security issue, right, and how we make the planet sustainable for, you know, however many billion people that will be at whatever, you know, point is an issue very much not just in production and distribution, right, sort of, there's no way we address that problem without hitting all sorts of policy, all sorts Economic all sorts of education and all sorts of infrastructure issues, right? So, so you've been going around talking to different people? How successful have you been in sort of convincing people to be paying more attention to this? 

Well, as you might imagine, I get mixed reaction. You know, it takes time to influence someone's thinking, I'm okay with that. I'm okay with people identifying where I need to fix my thing. I don't pretend to have this all sorted out. All I'm trying to do is get a discussion going in an area, which I think is deficient in enough thinking. So, you know, no, one person is going to have this sorted out. But I believe that the more thinking that we do, and the more exchanging of thinking, the better chance we have of getting to a better place. And I you know, so look at what our options, okay, let's just keep pushing the sample up, let it go. Let it go. And we and we can support 25 billion people on the planet. The consequence is that we're going to nourish them through manufactured protein tablets, synthetic food, we could do that. Is that really a desirable outcome? No, I like fresh food. I don't want to end up I wouldn't wish that on my children and grandchildren just wouldn't do that. I mean, so we have some decisions to make about what we think is a good vision for the world of the future. And and the decisions we make now will affect that.

And the critical importance of bringing diverse groups together, I think absolutely. Is the central portion of what I'm hearing you say? Yeah, absolutely.

Well, Jim, we want to be respectful of your time. This has been a really great conversation. Does you have anything else you'd like to say? Or Scott, Maureen? Do you have any further questions?

Well, thank you for not laughing or throwing anything.

No, I mean, I think you make a really good point. It's, it's, you know, the point of this podcast is to have discussions like this, and I hope anybody out there that's listening, you know, has appreciated, you know, kicking around some of these ideas. I mean, we don't have necessarily all the right answers, but the only way we're going to get to them is through discussion and collaboration and that sort of thing. 

Right. So lots of room for contribution to this. 

Clearly, young people out there starting their careers. You have a bright future ahead, right. Yeah. Well, thanks, Jim. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

Dr. Jeremy Marshall is an associate professor in the Department of Entomology and the new Office of Undergraduate Research & Creative Inquiry faculty director at Kansas State University. He has training and degrees in biology, chemistry, environmental and evolutionary biology, genetics, genomics, and philosophy, and teaches courses on insect biology, behavior, genetics, and evolution, as well as interdisciplinary courses like Art and Insects and Bees, Plato, and Who Knows What. In 2016, Dr. Marshall developed a new model of undergraduate research experience capable of providing research education opportunities for more students than most traditional approaches. Scott, Jon, and Jay had a really great conversation with Jeremy about a number of factors that can make or break learning for students. This conversation is a little lighter in regards to food, but it does come up throughout the conversation.

For more about Dr. Marshall check out: https://entomology.k-state.edu/people/faculty/Marshall-Jeremy.html

Transcript:

A Fresh Look at Science Education with Dr. Jeremy Marshall – Undergraduate Research

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of global food systems. It's produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Jay Weeks PhD candidate in the Department of Agronomy. My co host is Scott Tanona, an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy who specializes in the Philosophy of Science. What makes information knowledge? If a teacher stands in front of a class and tells you to remember something, and you get the right answer on the test, did you know it? Why do you remember a lot from some classes and nothing from another? Today, we are sort of taking a break from directly food focused topics to explore science, education, something that we feel can be of interest to anybody that enjoys learning. And we assume that if you're listening to this that applies to you. Whatever your opinion on whether we live in a post truth or post normal science, society or something else entirely, there is no doubt that the ability to understand assess and meaningfully incorporate information into our lives, especially for the youngest among us, is important in some capacity. Our guest is Dr. Jeremy Marshall. Dr. Marshall is an Associate Professor in the Department of Entomology, and the new Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Inquiry faculty director. He joined case day in 2006, and has training in degrees in Biology, Chemistry, Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Genomics, and Philosophy. He teaches courses on insect Biology, Behavior, Genetics, and Evolution, as well as interdisciplinary courses like art and insects and bees. playdough. And who knows what, which we dig into into the discussion over his passion, his undergraduate research. In 2016, Dr. Marshall developed a new model of undergraduate research experience capable of providing research education opportunities for more students than most traditional approaches. Scott, John and I had a really great conversation with Jeremy about a number of factors that can make or break learning for students. Like I said, this conversation is a little lighter in regards to food specifically, we do touch on some related topics. But if you have any interest in education as an activity, I have no doubts that you will find this interview worth your time. Enjoy. Dr. Jeremy Marshall, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to see where this goes today.

So, but excited to talk to you. We talked a little bit briefly before and we'll do an intro before the podcast starts. But we always like to get everybody's perspective on their background. So when you tell us a little bit about yourself.

Okay, so I like to actually back up to when I was a kid, when I normally talk about this, because, for me, it's sort of the big Y in terms of everything that I've done in my career. And what I'm doing now, starts there. So I grew up in Mississippi, and then in Georgia, my parents didn't go to college. When I went through school, I actually had pretty bad speech problems. So I stuttered really badly all the way through elementary and, and middle school. So it took a lot of work to try to get past those sorts of things. My parents tried as best they could, but they were. They didn't know how to help, basically. And so when I went to college, I just went to a small school that offered the most money, right? That's all I really looked for when I was looking for a place to go to school. And I was completely lost it know what I was doing. I didn't know how to study I never really studied going through high school. You know, my parents in elementary school focused on things like hey, you need to do well on the spelling test. Because, you know, that's the thing, get memorize the words and you can check it, it's easy to check, right? Oh, you got it made 100 on your spelling test. That's great, but really didn't have anything else. And so, turns out the first year of college wasn't tough even though I still wasn't studying and didn't know how to do that. It wasn't till the second year hit that I realized I need to to learn how to study so I started bombing classes also I started dating my, my wife then so I like to blame to blame her little bit district cheated. She does not like she does not like that story. So I had a whopping 1.9 that semester, and it was on scholarship. I was in danger of potentially losing it. I went to my professors and talked To them, they said, Well, what are your study habits and I went, I don't study. And so they sort of started from there, right? These are the things you need to be doing, stop worrying about the grades, that you're getting focused on learning the material. And it really was that sort of undergraduate mentor that really made a difference for me, and the kind of person that I've become, and how did I go about learning how to think right, and so it sort of started there. And then my master's was kind of the same way I was at least more confident. The area I was focusing on was life history evolution. So how was it that I actually worked for my Master's and PhD both on amphibians and reptiles, I wasn't working on insects at the time, and going out sampling, just trying to be a good scientist and trying to figure out how to think and it really wasn't until my PhD, that my advisor was very old school, he actually required all of his PhD students to do two languages, which was was not a requirement of the university and get a doctoral minor in philosophy, which was a six core sequence and write in defend a paper. Once again, this was not a requirement of the university, it was his requirement. It was then that I essentially sort of broke down everything that I thought in terms of how I approached science and the kinds of questions I was interested in, and sort of built up a my own sort of personal philosophy of how to approach work. But through that entire process, even as a master student and as a PhD student, I always involved undergrads and the things that I was doing, because I thought reaching back and helping was the right thing to do. And my first job was at the University of Texas at Arlington. In a biology departments, I did the same sort of thing, right, from day one, I recruited at eight undergrad start my first week, they helped me set up my lab, we help you get going. And that's what I built from, and then going from there to here, our department doesn't have a long history, or didn't have a long history of recruiting undergrads to be involved in research, but I did. So I started with five and then recruited five, basically, every year, you know, three of them, or four of them would go away, and there's only be one or two sort of left to keep going, but then just bring in the next crop and, and just keep building. And so that's sort of my background of struggling, not having a lot of direction early on, having someone helped me that's been sort of the drive for me to want to give back and, and help others. And that's those moments when you have those students in your office and they're in the same boat that you were they're struggling there. It's common that students end up my office crying at some point. I mean, I thought it was a bad thing at one point, but just having them being willing to talk and discuss the issues or going through is actually helped them. And so those are the things that sort of really drives me every day. So that's hopefully that wasn't too much background. But that's

no, yeah, I mean, that's great. You bring up some really interesting points, and it's something that I don't think it's highlighted enough is sort of people think about the struggles of first generation students. And there's not a lot of discussion about some of those very specifics, right about No, you don't know what you don't know, going into these things. So what are some, what are some of the ways that you tried to help those undergrads, what do you think is most fundamental or foundational? To get them out on the right foot?

So this is gonna sort of sound a bit odd to a lot of a lot of people. But what I actually tried to emphasize is failure. Right? So it seems like an odd thing to sort of emphasize, but it's okay to fail, right? There's not this sort of magical thing that you always have to be perfect, right? The way that we succeed in life is by failing and learning from it. And so we reframe it a bit. We talk about productive failure. So you're doing this, you're not successful, right? And most most students think, Hey, I've, I've prepared all this time for this particular exam, and I bombed it. Well, then what do you do with the exam? Well, I just put it my backpack. I haven't looked at it again. Well, that's not what you need to be doing. Right? You need to go back look at every single question that you missed. And ask the question, why was it because I, oh, I just made a stupid mistake. Was it just because I, I wasn't actually prepared for that particular kind of question. What was it? If you figured that out? Then you go back and try to figure out okay, well, I was a stupid thing. That's easy enough, but I didn't know the material go back and relearn the material. And so Students aren't forced to do that. And so oftentimes, they'll never do it right. And so what I, what I do in my classes is, we give them an exam, they get to see what they what they missed. And then then they have the chance to go back and actually correct those things. And the other thing I do is what's called the worst three. And so basically every exam, the three questions that you did the the worst on, or the ones that you skipped, because I actually provide choice on my exams, as well. And this is sort of a curious thing, right? It turns out that students oftentimes know, let's say, they know 70 80% of the material, but you might ask, right, questions that don't fall within that 80%. Right. So students know a different 80% of the material. So you provide some choice. But that's actually really good for me too, because the questions that they choose, and more importantly, the questions that they don't use, let me know what I did a poor job of, of teaching and explaining. And so when I say do your worst three, it's usually the three questions that they didn't pick. And so now, I provide more material, they get to go back and review those and answer those and learn that material. And then when they get the corrector exam, they're now focusing in a very invalid, individualized sort of way, the things that were tough for them, right. And so now they get a chance to learn from that and move forward to the next one. And when we started doing these, these kinds of things in our classes, the difference between how they did, obviously, their grades will go up, we give them half credit back and things like that. But what ends up happening is when we get to the final, right, when things are cumulative, and everything's built upon each other, they now know it, right? Because they've had this chance to see it again and go back over it. So yeah, so what I really try to focus on is that it's okay to fail. And we need to build on those to try to be successful or more successful the next time.

So yeah, the failure stuffs great. And I think that's, we don't emphasize that nearly enough, right? I like tell my kids, my students, my kids to my own kids, right. And then the students I have right sort of that yes, failure is good, right? We learned from failure. And if you actually, if you're not failing at something you're trying at, it might mean you're not pushing yourself hard enough. Right. So I think that's super important. I love what you're doing. One question, I was wondering what you thought about was, how much about that whole process? Are you talking about do you think one of the that's important, what's important is like, the psychological attitude towards failure, and how much of it is the actual process of going and learning stuff, right? Because the sort of the comfort with making mistakes and or trying something and failing is like, super important for you just ability to do that. And even how well you're going to do right, you know, this is part of the focus on like, the growth mentality versus like a fixed rate knowledge mentality or whatever, right? Sort of, then you had sort of some time where you don't know something and you're like, oh, it's, oh, that's has to do with me, rather than just like, oh, there's something I need to learn, right? So some of its like, psychological, right? Like the state of mind, you have, right, exactly. How important is that component to it versus just doing stuff?

And sorry, to end to build on that? Do you communicate the stakes, right? Like, you know, we're often teaching students the eye test or something is like, some, like it's the end of the world, right? If they fail, one test, when now in school is probably when you should be failing the most, because the stakes really aren't that huge. Right?

Right. Compared to lots of Yes, that's right.

And so we’ve actually done two things, to sort of address these points. In terms of the stakes of individual exams. We still have, you know, loads of classes on campus that are essentially set up as high stakes courses, right, where, there are one or two exams for the semester, or they have one big paper or something like that, you know, in one big paper is fine. If you've built the structure, right? Throughout the course, they've done many parts, they've gotten a lot of feedback, so they're very comfortable with that in product is going to be I am not a fan of having high stakes, just a couple of exams within a class. So we while we still have, you know, three or four exams, percentage wise, they don't make up, you know, maybe they make up 20% instead of 80% of a class or something like that. We really focus on learning that day, right? So I rather you show up to class, and we do something and you're involved with it. And then we use that and we build we move on to the next thing, as opposed to I don't care if you show up to my class, which is kind of what I went through. When I went through college. It was we don't care if you show up. We're going to teach what we teach. People are going to know instructors and faculty Just gonna list off all the things they think you need to know, you have to somehow keep up. And then you have an exam. I don't, I am sort of at the other end of the spectrum, I rather engage them, I want them there. And so that we lower the stakes. But even if it's a low stakes test that's worth 10% of your grade or whatever, each individual exam or 20%, whatever, whatever it might be, they're still going to be nervous, right? They're still going to have that anxiety. And so, why then, is it important to have the kind of mindset that you're talking about Scott, when it's, is it this sort of psychological state? You know, what, if? What's curious if you let students know that it's okay to fail, and you're going to have the opportunity to go back and look at those things that you do poorly on, they actually study more for the exams, going into it, it's not the other way around, you always say, Oh, well, if you give them too much, too much leeway, they're not going to prepare at all, I do not see that phenomenon at all, it's actually the other way around. Because they know you care about them. Everything that I do in my career is built around one simple word care, right? I want to care about the student as much as I possibly can. And as long as they know that, they're going to respond to you wonderfully, and they do they respond in class. When we do our undergraduate research program, they respond beautifully. In know, we've grown our miners program, and entomology over the last three years, we had five students, now we're at 16, technically, we've done that over two years. And the we have students joining the program, who, who may be getting a minor in entomology might be tangential to the things that they're going to do within their life, but they know that we care, and they want to do it. And that's how we're actually we don't have a major, so we just have minor so. But they're drawn to us, because we care, like, Oh, my home department, we don't we don't do these things, you know, you care so much you do. And that's what we really go for. And so there is the psychological part. And honestly, that's what I'm, that's what I'm hoping for, right? I want to connect with you emotionally, right? Not reasonably or rationally, not as a scientist, I want to connect with you as a human first and then build.

So there's a, like, very, you mentioned totally different views about what education is about, right, you know, in some sense, right. And so you shared your story about how you came to, to become teaching and what you care about, and what you're motivated by. What are your views about sort of what universities are here for, like, what are we supposed to be doing? Because we don't always serve, especially first generation students? Well, there's a lot of, you know, the, at least a lot of what university teaching is about is, seems to be oriented around this idea that here's this knowledge, right, and sort of come and get the knowledge if you can, and if you can manage to do it, right. And then, you know, there's some help provided for you, but, but at least at a big research university, like Kansas State, there's a lot of us who focus a lot on teaching, right. But the kind of attitude that you just described in the kind of attention that you just described is not as typical, partly because, you know, a lot of us we spend a lot of time on research to, and that's a major focus of what professors do. Right? So, so, so just put this what you're talking about, just in the context of, you know, a research university like Kansas State in general.

That's right. And so I would, I would suggest, sort of first and foremost, that just because you are a large research, one university, and that may be your primary focus, it doesn't mean that you can't be a caring, quality teacher, right. It's just how, you know, you may have a, you may have classes that have a few 100 students in them, you can still do those things well, and do them differently than just standing up there and reciting a bunch of information. I do not think that a university's primary responsibility is just to essentially deliver information and then whatever the students are, pick up, they pick up.

And I mean, I don't want to characterize like things. I mean, so like, yeah, yeah, most teaching is not like this. I mean, most of us No, I mean, so there's phenomenal teaching can stay right out of, you know, throughout all the departments everywhere. There's a lot of focus. There's a lot of great classes. There's a lot of innovative stuff going on, right yeah, but there is you know, oh he's right. There's a little bit in the background. There's an old model that like a lot of us have picked up a long time ago that's been around it's just kind of like a here is the source of information.

Yeah, yeah. And that's how I that's actually how I started when I started teaching. I did the same thing because that was the model I actually didn't, the things that we do now I never had as a student, I mean, in some lab classes, maybe. But it was mostly sort of this idea of sort of stand and stand and deliver.

Do you get a lot of people saying that there just isn't time to dedicate to the sort of stuff that like you're doing?

So there are, there are always going to be they're always gonna be sort of faculty that sort of that say, this worked for me, I'm gonna stick with this, it seems to be working fine. You know, we've had really successful students. And all that is, is perfectly true. But the question becomes, who is that true for? Right? And so is it? What kinds of students are these approaches working for? And in what kinds of students are they not working for? And it turns out, it's the students that were probably a lot like me that didn't know what they were doing that you maybe you're, you're a little bit lost are. So for first generation students, students that have different kinds of backgrounds, and we have we pull from students from all over the world. Right? So where's here's a, here's sort of the great story that I like to use. So there, when I teach a genetics class, I like to use Legos to model protein structure, right? We use it for protein synthesis, and then how it works. It works out beautifully. And so they get to learn how DNA is put together, and then how that might work to make proteins by just using Lego bricks. It's a really cool lab. In teaching this one particular course there were roughly 15 students in the class 12 of them. Yeah, 12 of them. were originally born and educated outside of the United States. Okay, I said, Okay, we're gonna, we're gonna play with Legos and do this. Essentially, none of those students had ever played with or experienced Legos before. And so when I, when I said, here's the little bag of Legos, they just started moving them around on the table. They weren't, they weren't locking together or building something in it. And that was really one of the first times that happened here. Not actually that long ago, maybe six or seven years ago. Right went, Oh, everyone didn't play with Legos when they were growing up as a kid. And it's that sort of just drove home that point of, you know, what, not everyone has the same background, we need to be structuring, structuring things in a different way. So we had to have an hour, we made an hour session to play with Legos and learn how to build with them. So the lab would actually make sense. Sure. Right. So yeah, it's a Let's Play. You know, it sounds ridiculous, right? But it was necessary, and it made the lesson work well, and then they would understand the concepts. 

And there's preconditions for everything, right, sort of, you know, you're always building on something else, right? So you're always sort of in you give some you given an assignment, or whatever it is, and you're kind of assuming, here's what everybody knows, right? And yeah, here's the note don't know how to manipulate and sort of don't know, naturally do that. I wanted to say about the first generation thing, too, which was interesting, because we didn't define it here. And it just occurred to me, I was at a meeting not too long ago, where somebody, we were talking about students and first generation students, and one of the faculty members said, you know, there was this moment when we were having this discussion. And I sat back and I realized, oh, yeah, wait, I'm first generation and wasn't, wasn't even like thinking of that. Right? So first generation, you know, your parents, you're the first one in your family to have gone to college. Right? And sort of like this. It's funny, number one, how sort of even people have then sort of gotten there into college, not necessarily identifying that way. But that also means that they're not thinking about what they don't have that everybody else does have that right. And certainly, since faculty have gone, your teachers or professors, right, your instructors have gone through college and gone through a lot of QA. Yeah, there's all these things that we just, you know, sort of they're in our blood almost at this point, right. And we it's easy for us to forget right about where everybody's coming from. Right. 

That's right. And so what's curious is there's even a difference between sort of my generation going through college, right, so our generation is going through college and current generations that are first generation students. And so it turns out that the populations there, there were a much higher percentage of quote unquote, first gen, we didn't use that word, right. A lot of us were first generation students that we were the first in our families to go just because that's kind of how it was working out. Whereas now, because there are so many more that have actually gone to college when you're a first generation student in today's world, it actually puts you further behind than you word so I actually hadn't thought about this but but One of our assistant Dean's, and in the College of Ag had actually talked about this and I went, you know what? You're right. Because my kids now going to college, they we've, we've talked about everything that they need to be doing and who they need to be talking with what resources to use, they're taking advantage of everything they possibly can. And all it took was one Chino, it just took one generation to go through to sort of understand a lot of these sort of simple kinds of things. And it puts them at such an advantage, right, my daughter is a junior right now. And you know, she's advanced so much relative, to those around her. So she tries to help those around her that are first generation, but she's certainly doing all the things that she needs to do for herself as well. And she knows, right, she knows who to go talk to she can look through websites of information and say, Ah, these are the, these are the important players, this is what I need to go to. And that's critical. Those are skills that you only gain with experience. 

So and that starts even before you step foot through the door, right? I mean, even selecting a college and knowing you know what to do in high school to get prepared and all that kind of stuff right? 

They were right, right, they were building out their resumes in an elementary and middle school, right, you're gonna, you're gonna have to have something you're passionate about, right? It's not necessarily about doing 1000 things, it's, it's doing those few things that you're really passionate about, to be able to tell a good story. I mean, you're thinking about, it's a little ridiculous that you're, you know, you're talking to your 12 year old about thinking about what your story is going to be when you write an essay when you're 18 years old. 

But anyway, the other end of the you know, the other end of that, I didn't think about that at all in high school, I'm somewhat older than the rest of you, folks. And at that point, at least for some people, the expectation of their parents are you will go to college someplace. And in even fewer, well, in a significant proportion, you will go in this particular major, because that's the way it's going to be. So I didn't have the advantage of that or more. I'm, I'm not an abject failure, because but it was viewed somewhat differently. I think, because my parents generation, many of them went to school as first generation students on the GI Bill. Yep, yep. Yep. So there's that little blip, that sort of pre baby boom blip, that did that. So it was a bit different. I was gonna go back to your exam theory back about 15 years ago, I moved to a here are 20 questions, answer 15. And what I found, and I don't know if this works for you as well, is that it changed the way students structured their test taking, rather than just putting their heads down and doing here's number one, number two, number three, and doing them in numerical order, and maybe getting stuck, and not distributing time appropriately related to the difficulty of the problem. If they had to do that first and decide which of the questions they weren't going to answer, it actually improves their scores in the long run, because it made them think what they were think about how they want to approach the test.

Yeah, no. So, there are students that that clearly go through the entire exam, just just read, read over it, make marks by them, right, you can see that here are their marks, these are ones that they're, they're going to target. And do that there are some that still work through it, just straights. But they're answering every question. And so what happens is that they actually go about answering everything. And then the ones that they feel the most comfortable about are the ones that they go back and circle that they want, that they want to have counted. And so there are some, it's, it's been really curious. You know, and maybe it's maybe it's sort of a group of sort of high achieving students, they want to answer they want to show me that they know all of it. Right. And they're actually interested in the ones that they didn't circle, they really still want to know how well they did on those. So it's, it's, it's kind of fun, right? And those are the students that usually sort of rise to the top in any class that they're in. And so it's not really designed for them, but there's a there's a there's a part of it, that's actually for them. But I don't think we actually fully gotten to your original question of how does this sort of fit sort of the university model? And I think there's actually a big push across the university. I know there is within the College of Agriculture to have all of us become better teachers in the classroom and that It doing the right things doesn't necessarily take that much more time if we think about how we might restructure things. And there's always you're entirely right. I mean, most of us have appointments that are really heavy research and just a little bit of teaching. And you know, honestly, if you do well on the research parts, as long as you're not just the most horrible person in the world, returning to teaching, it doesn't really matter. There's sort of the sort of historic incentive structures are very much focused on republishing. That's right, in the way that we're restructuring our university budget model. You know, there's a, hey, we need to be good at doing teaching and doing these kinds of things. But yet, you know, so we talk about that in faculty meetings. And then we have faculty go, but I thought we were a research university, why are we? Why do we need to care about doing this? Why are we so focused on teaching right now, we do great stuff with research, why aren't we focusing on that I don't understand what's going on. So we do have, we do have a lot of faculty that are still confused in a way, right, they don't really sort of know where they, where they fit, they're, they're sort of fine with what the sort of the old idea is. And when we talk about these new teaching approaches, they're a little resistant to try them. But ultimately, we're training our graduate students to be the best possible teachers that they can be. And there are faculty that, you know, older faculty that are willing to sort of change and do these things in our, in our younger faculty are, for the most part already. They feel that it's, it's, it's their role, it's the thing that they're doing to give back. And so I do think that the old model will change, regardless of sort of what budgetary structures are, because they want to give back, right, they want to do the best thing they can for their students, even if, and this is the part that has been really curious. Over the last, you know, half years, I've been interacting with a lot of faculty and even upper administrative types across campus. There are people that want to do the right thing, regardless of whether or not they're going to be rewarded for it. Right to go ahead and just do it. And let's see what happens. Because the worst thing that you can do is fail. Right? So why not take a chance, do it. And if you're not reward, I mean, none of these individuals are ever going to be at a point to where they're worried about their job in some particular way. Right? It's just how are you spinning your energy? And it's, and it's that culture that's going to make and makes K State great, right? It really isn't sort of this, let's just sit back and do the things that we've been doing it is, let's actually try to do what's right and what's best. And that's the thing that's gonna carry us forward.

I would, I would argue, this critical thing that has to occur is there has to be some kind of recognition doesn't have to be monetary, or anything like that. But somebody has to tell you, you have to be reinforced positively in the end. I'm in the College of Agriculture as well. Yep. And if department heads don't do that, yeah, then you've broken that link of confidence.

Yep. Yep. No, I actually, I think I actually agree with that. So my, I've been lucky and what within entomology, we had a wonderful department head that just left and John Roberson and our current interim department head prime McCormack is is equally wonderful. And they're just really supportive. And they'd say, look, where's your passion? What is it, you want to do focus on it and run. Even if that means you're, you're doing things that aren't exactly the things that you'd been doing for the 10 years before. But if this is the thing that's actually going to help you be excited about what you're doing every day, it's actually helping the art department be better. It's actually helping our college and the university better, we need to be doing those things. So you're right, that little bit of reward. And support is important, because we do have faculty in other departments where the department heads don't support them. But what's curious is that those faculty are still doing the things that they think are right, even if they're not rewarded. And now the The important thing to do is when we have the opportunity to get into positions of power or leadership on on campus is that we make sure that that, that the higher ups rights know that these are the kinds of things that are going on, and we need to we need to be changing the way that we do these things. And that's gonna that's happening, but I think it's gonna happen very slowly, because there's gonna be a lot of pushback and in some places, but…

Yeah, I feel like we're getting a lot into the weeds of sort of what the internal life of a department or university our serve a lot of public doesn't really understand how much of sort of how, of course, is actually going to be taught right, or what professors actually going to do. In a classroom is actually, you know, it's either influence or dictated right by a lot of these things, right. So that which is sort of what's rewarded what's recognize, what are you going to get your promotions for. And these things are really important, I think, for everybody to understand at least a little bit of and we've been talking a lot about that. I was curious whether, when you think about your teaching, and you think about what Kansas State needs to do, to be as good as a candidate, educating its students, why don't you think about the land grant mission, right? 

When you do that, so being in entomology, and so I'm actually gonna back up just a little bit. So for me, my undergraduate degree was I double majored in Biology and Chemistry. My master's was in biology, my PhD was in environmental and evolutionary biology. My postdoc was in genetics and genomics, I did not start doing anything insect related until my postdoc, although actually my first undergrad project, I did identify insects, but I was focused on the little frogs that eat them. So but it ultimately the project was an intimate, intimate, logical type of project. But I was just excited about these little teeny tiny frogs I was working on. And so for me, it was really about sort of basic science was sort of the thing that I was was doing and really focused on during all of my training, and in my first position, and it wasn't until I actually applied here to K State, that when they were looking for someone doing behavior, and genetics and genomics within insects, they didn't really sort of care what kind of background you had, as long as you were presumably good at those things. And we're using insects, and I started working on crickets, and we were really successful. And so I was lucky enough to sort of get that job. But it wasn't till I was here, that I really started thinking about the applied components and, and thinking well, is the land grant mission, something that's actually different than a regular university. And that's something that's developed over time, I've been here now 13 years. And now it's completely integrated into the things that we do. And once again, there's a story that sort of goes along with this for me, and teaching a class once again, about seven or eight years ago, and we have a diverse population of students. My sort of philosophy of science kind of training, and the way I thought about things was, you know, you don't have to have a reason necessarily to do science other than to answer and address the question, right, there doesn't have to be this sort of human element that sort of tied to it. But when I asked my students that question, most of them always said, Well, science only matters, if it's applied to the everyday life. So people think if it helps the world, um, and, you know, I look at the class and go, this, it just, it just makes sense. There's a perspective that needs to be added to what the background of what each individual goes through. And once again, that was a turning point for me. So, now, when we think about the science that we do, or think about the way that we go about teaching our courses, we build it around problem solving. And so how do we go about thinking, right? What's the role in job right back to that sort of one of those original questions, the role and job of university? It isn't to say, here's information, right? Because there's all different ways to get information now. It's really how do we take this information, and think about it and combine it and use it and novel ways to solve complex problems. And it's these, if they were easy problems, we'd already solved them, right? Complex problems are complex for a reason, you can't just be one kind of thing anymore. And the reason it's a problem is because it affects humanity in some particular way. Right? That's how we define it as a problem. And so we need to think differently in the courses that we we teach. So I do a, an art and insects class, and it sort of sounds you know, fluffy or something maybe, right? Well, we focus on insects and art, but it's really about their intersection. And how do we, how do we combine the tools and things that we think about in these disciplines and no longer think about them as, as I continue on one end, or the other are two separate things. It's that they're completely integrated and they overlap. And so when we're when we're doing science, the kinds of things we know. Art actually helps us do our science. And when we're doing art, the kinds of things that we do in science help us do our art in the night.

So say more about this because I do have a specific example that you talk about in that class. 

So yeah, so here's a, here's a, so I teach, I co teach that normally with a faculty member in the, in the art department, and he focuses on color, right. And so just in our discussions, and these are examples that we end up using in class, and we build on them, thinking about how color is structured, and how you build a particular color. And so how a color might be perceived. Thinking about butterfly wings is sort of a classic model, you have a bunch of different colors and spots, and he would go, well, actually, this color is really this. And if you adjust the the the frequency of light at which you're actually viewing and insects have a very different sort of spectrum of seeing than humans do, you would actually see this pattern instead, you go, wow, like what I mean, it sort of opens up the the idea of that, that perception, we're so biased by sort of human perception, lots of times these problems are biased by the perception of other kinds of things. And so this is where art informed science. Now the other way around is that if you are depending on the kind of artists that you are writing, depending on the kind of point that you want to make, if you actually understand anatomy of things quite well, then you can actually, you're actually doing your art in a different way. And so we actually have a lot of artists on campus who love incorporating insects, and let's say if you really want to get across something that's a little bit more terrifying. Maybe you're emphasizing structures within the mouth and the eyes, and exaggerating those in a way that you can do it in a fake way. Right. But if you do it in a real way, it's actually often much more terrifying than the fake thing that you can think about. I mean, so insects are great sort of inspiration for that. And so they're sort of a long list of, sort of examples and things that we look at that sort of go in both directions. And I also do an honors seminar class, that's called BS, Plato, and who knows what, and it's actually built around the idea of what counts as perception in knowledge based on who's perceiving it, or not, right. And so we run through some of the classic things with the cave with Plato, and what counts, we also think about intelligent intelligence and perception within BS, we focus a lot on what they're able to do. Because it turns out, there's been some brilliant research over the last decade that shows their problem solving skills, and the fact that they actually have a recognition of a concept of zero, right, which is, it's a pretty dramatic sort of thing. They actually understand nothingness. And so there's sort of this higher level, which is a huge deal, which is a huge deal. It's the idea that any sort of organism, we've thought, you know, it was a big deal over the last G since the 70s, that other animals could count, right? And you go, and my PhD advisor was one of these people that actually focused on counting in lower kinds of…

Yeah, and so I don't, I don't want to get too much like but so what do you mean by account? Sort of, like, what does it mean for an animal to be able to count.

So it's able to recognize a difference between one to two, right? 

So right, or three and four, it's not just measuring like the size of a pile, but they can actually sort of recognize that there's more of a particular thing there.

And this, if it's a resource, right, it all comes down to more resources, where you're where you're going to invest your time. And it turns out, lots of animals can distinguish between numbers up to about four or five or six, right. And so they're pretty good at the sort of low numbers. And it turns out, they're actually misses, sort of, really, in the weeds, there are neurons that are associated with numbers that fire. And so that's how the sort of the basic mechanism works, to sort of fires the two neuron and one fires the one neuron. But to build a use memory and higher level counting to know that this area, I'm going to remember I'm going to develop a mental map of counts. And this, these are things that bees and wasps can do. So imagine that right? You have a bee that's, that's, that's going over a landscape. And they're not just seeing sort of pretty colors that we see. They're actually envisioning this world. It's made up of sort of black white violets, red sort of coloration rights, because they're in the UV spectrum. And they've developed an idea of, oh, this is a good patch, right? There's a whole bunch of resource here that they've counted, and there's very little resource there. And so it's this really specific sort of thing. They have these very complex cognitive maps, that most people would never imagine that bees could be able to do. And students don't recognize this. So they're perceiving the world entirely different than you are and the information they have, does that count as knowledge, right? Is it just information? Or does it count as knowledge? And if you go back to our classic definitions of these things, they actually check off essentially, almost off the boxes of accounts is knowledge, which blows students minds that there are other organisms besides humans that actually can do thing know, things that know things?

Yeah. Yeah.

Has that be like those be concepts have they been? Is anybody tried to exploit them in the world of agriculture, right to attract more bees? Because they're so important to certain agricultural systems? You know?

Yeah. So it turns out, there are groups that are the reason that they're studying bees and looking at this is so they can apply it back to these these problems of how do you go about studying and understanding pollination patterns and those sorts of things, those that are those that are the one of the reasons that's going to end up being really important at some point, is not just sort of the protection of of bees and other pollinators. But if you want to design a system, right, if we screw up bad enough, and bees go away, we still have a job that needs to get done. How do we do that in potentially an artificial sort of way. And, the mechanisms are already in place in there, if you understand them. And so there's, there's a lot of sort of artificial intelligence that's being built off of these kinds of findings.

Oh, that's, that's fascinating. That is cool. And, and I just noticed, too, that we went from talking about sort of, I was gonna dig deeper into like, what's going on with those bees, just cuz I want to know, and then jays, like, Well, tell me how this is actually useful. Interesting things, like how you're talking about your students, right? You go anywhere. But, it was interesting. I do want to ask, though, about the thinking about bees having knowledge, what do you think? What do you think that does for for students? And what do you think that does, maybe also, for scientists, if they like, start thinking, doing interdisciplinary work in a way where you're kind of asking really different questions than you normally would have? Right, sort of it's, you know, the, does the B have knowledge or, you know, not, is not going to be a standard research question. I try in entomology? That's right. I try. So you're asking a kind of different question. You're integrating this with philosophy you're integrating with, and you're interacting, you know, the insects stuff with art, right? So that you're kind of looking at this a little bit differently, because you're thinking more about the, you know, how colors are piled up. So what do you think that does to students, and then to scientists, if they're going to go so far as to like, do some research or use science?

Yeah. And so the the intent of both of those classes and sort of that discussion, and then thinking about in terms of even the idea of complex problems, like, within food systems, and how do we feed the world really comes down to the idea that we can no longer sort of work as, as, as individuals and think that we can solve a particular problem we have to work across boundaries across disciplines in order to sort of gain their their particular perspective. And there's, obviously over the last couple of years been this question is, well, why does it matter so much to have diversity? In opinion, in perspective, when we're trying to solve problems? We know what I've already given two examples, right? Just in my own classroom, both with the Lego bricks and the importance of the direction of science. It's all about perspective, right? Because my background and perspective is different from someone else's. Now when we approach a complex problem, it's complex, and it's problematic for different reasons. Right. And if we're going to solve something that's that complex, we have to talk together, we have to work together. And that's, that's really all I'm trying to get across to the students. They're, they're freshmen, right, they're taking their first step in college, it's their, it's the seminar, it's a one hour thing we meet once a week, a lot of them think they're coming in, they're going to be dropped into one of the one of their lanes to do their major and to finish. But the idea is that you know what, along the way, if you want to do anything big, you're likely going to have to be working with somebody else. And you need to learn how to work with others. You need to learn how to appreciate what it is they bring to the table and not just automatically assume you know, everything. It's actually even change my approach in general, I go into most interactions, assuming I know almost nothing, right? So I know nothing. I fail at everything. What do you have let's build from your typical…

Well, that's fine.

Well, no, but that's how I approach things because I don't want to go in and make the assumption that this is what I know. And I'm going to lead or dominate from this particular position, I rather let you come to me, let's figure this out. Let me think a bit, and then we'll build a move forward, I want our students to be able to do the same kind of thing. That's what the university is about. It's not a, it's not about picking up things that if I gave you, you know, 20, textbooks, right, and 100 papers, there's your university degree, right? If you could do that, you could go pick it up for, you know, a few 100 bucks, what's the purpose of the university? Right, the university is more than that. It has to be and that's the way that we have to sell ourselves to the world, right? It's about how do we think it's not about just the information. Now, there's a lot of useful stuff when you're working on how things are done that are critical and important. But once again, it really is the thinking component that universities provide.

And plus in the non University world, the post graduation world, students aren't going to find themselves told to go lock themselves in the tower and work out a problem and come back in the next six months, they're going to be interacting with of necessity, that's right with people and it's not just even in your action piece is is shouldn't be assumed. Yep. So it I think you're addressing a really critical sort of thing. Yep.

How do students react when it's revealed that you know, things like BS or whatever see in different spectrums? Right. So that, you know, there's whole worlds out there that we our senses can't can't pick up, I'm always reminded of a was it Buckminster Fuller has the the quote, I'm gonna butcher but it's something like, you know, since the publication of the electromagnetic spectrum, we've come to realize that everything we see, taste, hear and feel is like 1,000,000th of reality or something like that, right? Is it really wild for them to have that realization?

So what's curious is, so because these are honor students, right, so they're bright kids that have been exposed to a good bit. And so in their heads, they have this idea that we don't perceive everything about the world, they sort of have that idea. We don't perceive everything. But I think it's rare that they actually see concrete examples. Right. And so providing that part, you know, the most common comment I'll get, other than, you know, hey, this was a great class or something. Not really, but you know, so is that, I still can't believe bees can do that. Right. So something built around that is, and that's only that's one day, that's, that's a day out of, you know, you know, 13 or 14 sort of lectures that we do, but that's the thing that sort of that they really remember. And so it is important. The other most frequent comment is I can't believe you wore that bee costume because I build off of right that I get them I introduced them to the bees by dressing up as a bee and doing the waggle dance and stuff. And you're famous. You're famous on Canvas for that's this is my thing, right? So dressing up in insect costumes. Yeah, it's important to me as a person to do these things.

So you, I mean, you do the costume thing. And you and you have the bunch of videos under the YouTube channel, insect fusion, right? In some of these things aren't even necessarily, you know, strictly educational. Right? What's your philosophy behind that? So first what what are those, the SEC fusion and then so…

Both on Twitter and YouTube. So I started I taught the art and insects class for the first time. Last summer, so summer 2018. And I sat down at my desk to do the standard, let's make a video with your little head in the corner sort of thing. It bored me to death, right? I couldn't even watch what I put together. I made it when I can't. Students can't watch this. This is horrible. And so I started just doing random things to incorporate into it and to try to be more engaging than just sort of a head in the box. And from there, it sort of developed into so for me, I like to say that apparently this little kid that's been repressed to me since I was you know, five or six or something just exploded out as soon as I put a video camera up and started dressing up. It turns out it's been really engaging, right? So students, like the fact that their professor is willing to do something that's that's, you know, sort of, you're trying to meet them where they are right, you're not in an ivory tower, you're not unapproachable and it trust me, you dress up in a costume, they will approach you write, they're no longer scared. You are not you aren't on a pedestal anymore. You are now ready for them to talk to and about a month before classes start and so I've already started it now. I send students a video about once a week. And it's not always necessarily educational, it might just be something silly, right. But once again, they're getting a little, a little piece of me and the way that I approach things. And so by the time class starts, they are on the edge of a walk in. So last last fall, I walked into general entomology, and students are on the edge of their seats. And they're just staring wide eyed, like, what's he going to do? And I thought, This is great. And then I had this just flood of, Oh, crap, they expect the person that's in those videos to be the thing that's teaching them all the time. And you realize it's really tough to be that all the time, right? You can't, it can't be silliness all the time. That's my avatar.

 But figuring out a way to sort of make short videos that we use to engage before a class and every once in a while during the class. And we do a lot of active learning kinds of strategies within the class as well, we have will act out things. So if we're talking about predator prey interactions, probably a bad example. But let's say if it's predator prey stuff, we might act out how that might work. And so we actually have one day where, you know, we've talked about 10 Different kinds of topics. And we have examples. And we break them up into 10, small groups, and I co teach this with another faculty member, Dr. Tom Phillips, and entomology and he is a wonderfully gifted actor. So he also sing, so he has a lot of talents. And so what we do is we have him he has to improv with every group. So if the group does a little skit that represents the example that they have, they get X amount of points. But if they, if they include Tom, in the, in the skit, they get a few extra points, right? And so they all want to include him, and he has to basically learn it immediately. Like he gets a little script that they've written out and goes, Okay, I'll do this. And he's just awesome, right? It's fake dying all over the floor and doing it. I mean, it's just wonderful in students respond incredibly well to these things. Because not only is it sort of fun, it's not just, it's not just sitting there. But now there is another way to take an example that we've talked about and work with in class, another process. And now they have another way to sort of visualize it. And it's very easy in their heads. And so on exams. They are there, they're obviously using it as a skeletal structure. A lot of times, oh, this was this thing. And this was how this worked. And so anyway, there's a lot of benefits to doing that.

Yeah. So I wanted to ask, I mean, so I'm going to put on a curmudgeon II hat for a moment. And it's about this. And so I, I'm a super fan of active learning, right, sort of, as you know, we've talked before, and I do lots of things in my classrooms too, right? Sort of teaching over the summer, and tomorrow, we've got, as part of the final, we've got a classroom activity, right. So we're, they got to basically do a simulation sort of thing, they're competing against one another. And that's part of the final, right. And so, I'm a fan of all this stuff. But these things take time to write. And, you know, there's, you know, if it's just pure silliness, or if it's like playing with Legos, or it's like acting something out, right, in some sense, that's time away from, like, real learning, right, you know, or the, like, the actual content and digging in, right. So, so there's always a little bit of at least, I mean, there's a trade off, right. And sometimes it's a big trade off, right. And so I know there are skeptics who look at these activities, in general, and depending on how far how fluffy as you say, the word you use earlier, how fluffy they get, right? It's easy to be very skeptical of those, right? So they have I do think they have to have an educational purpose, they have to play some sort of, like scaffolding role, like in the sense that then you can use them later. And it didn't just engage you and make you excited and make you think about it, but has to do something still right. That's my view anyway. So what do you think about this?

So I love this question, by the way, because I get it a lot. And there are lots of sort of offshoots of it. But But fundamentally, research shows that the the sort of normal way that we would go about teaching, and we think there's this idea that we think if we stand up in front of a classroom, and if we say A through Z, that the students are going to learn and understand a through z, it doesn't quite happen that it doesn't work that way, right. Research suggests something entirely different. And so it actually suggests that they're only getting a teeny tiny small bit of information. And if you think about what do you want to have happen in a particular course? Write what information do you really want them to have? Not just for a particular exam, but six months out a year out five years out, what do you want them to carry with them the rest of their life, they're not going to carry all that material, right, they're not going to take all the things that they memorized and crammed and dumped out on the exam. They're just not going to write. So we need to think very differently about the way that we approach our classes and go, you know, what, these are actually the important bits of information, these are the things that we're going to repeat, and look at and use in different kinds of ways. Because this is the thing that we want them to take with them, and that they're gonna remember six months, a year in five years out. And if you think about your course, that way, you actually have plenty of time to engage in ways that are going to help them remember those critical things. And so we don't do things that are 100%. Silly, right? But there are times when I'm entirely willing to do something that's maybe 80%, silly, because I know that 80% silliness, is going to translate a lecture or two or three down the road, that all of a sudden they go, Oh, wow. Now that makes complete sense. And now they have an activity, right? It's all about how do you go about building better neural networks, right. And I encourage my students, we talk about these things all the time, when it comes to studying or, or how it is it we're going to learn things best? Well, neuroscience suggests that smell is really critical, right. And so if you're going to go about studying a particular subject, it's always good to actually have a particular kind of candy or gum that has a particular flavor and smell that's associated with it, that you use when you study that particular thing. Also, it's best to try and pristine. Also, if you have a chance to work in a different kind of room or space. So you can look around the room. This is how people that do memory speed competitions, this is how they work, you have a mental room or house that you can go into. But actually, what's really important is we have a physical space. So where we're at right now, right, this little small space where the walls are completely blank is a horrible place to study, right? You would not want to be in this room. But if you were in the library, right, that had a lot of books and shelves and things that were on the wall, when you study a particular subject, you have a particular scent or flavor, you're looking at things you now have, you have something to go back to. And that's all that these activities A lot of times provide is an anchor, right? Because you're now experiencing that not just with sight, right? But you're, you're hearing it, you're smelling it every once in a while, there's tastes because we do some disgusting sorts of things sometimes with but I won't say disgusting. I enjoy eating insects, but for lots of them. It's disgusting. I mean, right? And so, but we do those kinds of things for a reason, right? We want it to be an experience, so they can pull all these things together. And so I really, really, like those kinds of things that are gonna allow them to remember and I know that if we do something in week one, and then on the final, if they're still talking about it, right, it's worked, right, it served its purpose. And that's how we do it. So I don't mind saying, you know, what, in a typical class, maybe you cover topics, you know, one through 100, right? Maybe in my class, I really drive home, maybe topics one to 30. Right, but I picked those 30. And all the other stuff is there, right? It's there, it's sort of they can cover it, we go over it. But for the most part, we focus on the important points. So they can use that information later. So we restructure things very differently. And not everybody does this. Right. And there are a lot of people that will that do say Well, that's not the way you should be done.

I think that's important, important point too. And so you do make sure that even if you aren't harping on everything, right, that they are exposed to it to some extent, because I worry that when we're always saying, well, information is ubiquitous now with the internet, and all of that, and we should be scaling back to make sure they really learn the things we want. That one of the points of the courses is not necessarily that you remember everything but that you're exposed to that try all of these things. So you know that they exist. That's right.

That's right. And so you have all the tools at your fingertips to be able to dive deep into something. And so you know, the right question to ask, right? Just because you have a ton of information about one particular thing doesn't mean that you know how to ask the right question. But if you're if a course is structured in a way that you you have sort of the you understand the processes and some of the critical information and you know how to ask the right kind of question, then you know, exactly the information to go find you're not you're not lost, and we have actually a lot of a lot of courses that are designed to go about how do you how do you diagnose problems, right? Our department head does a class, the insect pest diagnosis course. And he's approached that class very differently than the way it's normally taught. He basically approached it as a problem solver, we're going to go out and collect data information, you're going to, you're going to basically build your own sort of book, write your own little guide on how it is you can find problems. It's not just giving them the information, right? They're experiencing it. And students have actually not necessarily been a fan of that approach. Because they want to be, they want to be told, they don't want to have to explore and solve, right? Because it's not as easy. But you know, what is the thing that's going to help them in the long run? And so whether it's a, whether it's an approach that is like mine, that maybe students want to be engaged with, because they think, Oh, this is fun, or it's an approach that is exploratory, and they're like, Oh, why can't you just tell us the information? Why do I have to discover it myself? Because you know, what, if you discover it yourself, you're gonna, you're gonna know it, and you're gonna be able to use it later. Both are trying to get it exactly the same thing, you're approaching a problem differently, you're not just giving them a bunch of information, right?

And it's the skills and the tools to try out are there too, that are developing those into one of the hardest things is being able to transfer like learning something in one context, and then being able to use that information somewhere else that's like, super, super hard trying to transfer questions really hard. So, you know, we've been talking a lot about teaching about educational experiences, I wonder how you think this might translate into how people use science, right? I mean, so this is, you know, we were talking about global food systems here in general. And so we don't have to focus on that in particular, but you know, that I want to frame a little bit like, you know, we've talked about basic science, right. And so basic science, a lot of a lot of applied questions, like to eventually get to the application, you know, you have to have some people just doing basic research to it right? Here, we're talking sort of about education and learning, right, and sort of a lot of the problems of the world sort of depend not just on some experts doing things, or some industry doing things, but sort of, you know, all of us in understanding the problems and doing what our part to try to fix them. Right. I wonder how you think about how people use science, right? So, you know, in a regular, like, just in general, right, sort of like the general population, sort of, you know, how they absorb science, how they use it, how they think about it, right, and whether some of what we're talking about here might translate out into, to not just a student, but sort of to somebody who's not right now. 

And that's right. And so in terms of sort of the general public outreach of the kinds of things that maybe we're doing, or just how does sort of the everyday person, how do they interpret science and right now, if we're, you know, 100%, honest, science is sort of under attack, right? The idea of, of how science is being used day to day, you know, when you have those that just want to say, the science is fake, it's not real, don't listen to it. What are you supposed to do in that context? Right? We're, we're in a place where science is viewed as maybe not reality, right? The things that are actually observed. And we do study say this, well, you know, what, if, if enough money is given over here, another study can say this other thing. And I'm going to believe that one instead of you know, these 1000 people that say, this is our, you know, sponsored thing over here is going to say something different. And so it's a very difficult sort of space to exist in. And so how do you reach people in a way that they feel comfortable with what it is that you're saying? It's a pretty fundamental question, right? And it turns out, for me, it really wasn't until this past year, since I started, you know, the YouTube channel and Twitter. And so, Twitter's been something very different for me, I was never sort of a social media sort of person, but looking at how individuals are being successful at doing really good science communication, to get out information and how is that being used and absorbed? And it turns out the reason that the general public largely doesn't like academics is because they, think we all think that we're somehow in an ivory tower and where we know everything, you know, nothing just Listen to us, it's combative. We approach it with an intellectual sort of mindset and try to give you facts. The other side is using emotion. And so I saw this. This what was it? I guess it was maybe in March, we had our science communication. We even hear it here. We had a keynote speaker that talked about one of the reasons that we're having such a difficult time getting across our sort of ideas and the data, the things that are real, right. It's not an opinion how the reason that we're losing is because we're fighting with facts, and they're fighting with emotion. Right? We need to be connecting emotionally, not just with facts, because the facts actually don't matter in a lot of cases, right? They want to, they ultimately want to believe the thing that sort of matches themselves don't matter. You mean for for, for whether or not what not a person in the general public is going to decide whether or not what's real and what isn't? Right? What actually is real doesn't doesn't oftentimes matter, they want the thing that sort of matches them. And is the thing that's made the emotional connection, right? If I made the connection that said, hey, you know, what, this thing is dangerous, if you do it, you might die, right? They they're making that connection, as opposed to, well, this, we've done a lot of studies, and they said, there's there, they're no, none of these Nisour negative side effects that do this, and that you're you're not using the same language, you're not using the same parts of the brain. And we make emotional decisions very, very quickly. Whereas rational ones take time to process. And so we're losing sort of the public battle, because we're not actually fighting and, and communicating with emotion. And so and that's, that's actually one of the things that when I look at, who are those that are sort of on academic Twitter and trying to get their, their message out the those that are being the most successful, you know, it's the ones that are trying to connect emotionally. And so if you look at that particular lens, you go, there, the reason that this is working, and then you look at those that are basically only sort of successful among other scientists, in essence, don't matter that much, right? You're doing a thing, it might be fine, you're connecting with people, there are some professional benefits, but you're not reaching the public. It's those that are doing the emotional parts. And so we think about how should the general public what should they think about science? Right now they're being told what to think about science from people that don't have science as a priority, or something that actually matters. So if science is going to matter, we need to be reaching the general public, emotionally. 

Not just with facts and logic question. I mean, sort of, you know, a farmer wants to know, right, sort of, don't just be too academic on me, right? Like, tell me actually how this is important how this is useful, right? And right. So emotion isn't always just I think I mean, sounds right. It's not always just like, let me get you riled up. Yeah, it's like, speak to the things that I care about, too. 

Yeah. I mean, no. And I want to, and I also want to get across the fact that that, you know, when you're when you're doing these things, it's that you care about that other, you care about the other person, you're not you're not approaching them as somehow as an enemy or that something is wrong. It is approaching sort of the no matter who you interact with, as in a caring way. And you're using, you're utilizing your sort of emotional skillset to get across a set of information that's going to benefit them, their family, those are the ways that we actually communicate the best.

So one of the things that I wanted to make sure we covered here, and so I can kind of tie it in with this is you are focusing on undergraduate research, too, right? I mean, that's taking up more and more of your time these days. Are you talking about these sorts of things with students right at the very beginning of their science education, because so many of us have been inculcated with the remove the emotion from it as part of our education. Right? So is that something you guys cover and focus on that program? So?

No. So because when I really care about the kinds of programs that we've been, the kind of program that we've been building for the last three years is really an introduction to how science works. Right? And so we try to remove a lot of barriers for students. So it's a small amount of time, it's only 10 hours over the entire semester, or over about 10 weeks. There's no cost for they don't have to sign up for it as a class. 

And so low time this is particular this is a program that you're talking about. 

Yeah, yeah, this is a program that we've developed and it will be across campus this fall. And hopefully, it's something that we end up growing to where a few 1000 students a year are running through the program. And because of my new position now, in directing undergraduate research across the university, I think we'll be successful and, and doing it. But what ends up happening is, if you try to remove as many barriers as possible, you also don't ask students to think originally on their first experience with science, it's sort of ridiculous that we would say, Oh, we're gonna have you sort of work in lab for a bit. And then, you know, if you come up with an idea, you can explore that. We barely ask that of our graduate students, why would we ask that of a brand new, or random undergraduate who's had no experience. So, we give them the small kinds of projects. So, they learn how to do something, they learn how to analyze data, to do a little bit of research on the topic, put together a scientific poster, and then we have them present through a poster symposium. And what's great is that, it doesn't really matter what the project is, right? Does it just, it just, it just doesn't matter? It does, they just, it's just going through the process of how science works. And then it's the confidence that they gain giving that particular poster because the first time they give it, it's not going to be all that wonderful. So they get a chance here, once again, this idea of sort of productive failure, they get to screw up a little bit, learn from that, and then someone comes around immediately, and they get a chance to present it again. And then they screw up a little bit less. And then they get to learn from that and do it all over again. And by the time they've given it four or five or six times the confidence they have and the way that they give their poster is entirely different than that very first one. And they leave there that confidence that they gained now, for lots of students that are sort of scared to even approach how to do science or get involved with a lab. They think, oh, I can't do it. I don't know what that is. Now they've gained that they feel that once again, it's the experience has given them emotional value, right? It's given them a sense of I can do this, and they're ready to take the next step.

And you're talking about getting students into doing research undergraduate students into doing research who might not have been thinking about it at all at all. Yeah, yeah. That's it just because you talked about the barrier, right? Yeah. We've got we've got undergraduates who are already ready to go and sort of totally into right, you know, the idea, and they want to do some research, and they know that that's a possibility and are there and then we've got other students who sort of somehow get picked out in a class, right? Or something happened yet. And then he started getting engaged in research, maybe a professor notices that or something like that. Right? Yeah. But then for the, you know, so many other students, right? They don't come in knowing this, or they don't come in, you know, they don't happen to have that sort of opportunity where they get, you know, they get into it, right. So what you're trying to do is to open up to every possibility statics, right, right, we can all get engaged and get some research and they kind of, kind of get their feet wet, maybe is that kind of the way. It's there?

Yeah, it is a we don't exclude anyone, right, everyone's welcome across all and we've had students from every possible major on campus participate in this upcoming fall, it'll span from, you know, dance, and music and theater, to philosophy to English. And then, you know, all the physics and biology and chemistry, I mean, every discipline will be involved. And having students, and this is sort of the the great part that sort of adds into that, that the interdisciplinary sort of dynamic as well is you may have a student that's in, you know, a sort of a classic STEM field, but they might actually want to do a research project, right, a scholarship project in English, or philosophy, or art or something else. Great. Those are the things that we want. So it turns out, roughly half the students that are involved in the program, have a very clear idea of I kind of want to do something in this area, the other half, really just want to explore, and those are the ones that we really try to sort of cross pollinate, we try to give them experiences that are outside of their major. Because we want them to gain that. Because you're gonna interact with that faculty member in that lab or that group or that department, whatever the case might be in a different kind of way. So yeah, we really want to make it as open as possible, give them that first taste, and really give them the confidence to take that next step. Even if for most of them, that next step isn't going to necessarily be in a STEM field or career.

I think that's an important point, right, is that you know, we sort of talk about the quote unquote, public a lot of these students if they get this, this experience are going to become the public. So giving you know, if you eliminate the barriers, give them a small project that still highlights the scientific process right now. Now we have a whole bunch of people who aren't going into research that now have a better understanding of what that is exactly. You talk a little bit about the scalability of this sort of thing. 

Yeah. So right now, the sort of the great part about a project like this is that normally what we do with students is we bring them in, we spend, you know, three months, six months a year, sort of training them, and they get good at something, we hope to keep them in lab for two or three years, it's a, it's a great model for those students. And it's, something that we have to sort of continue to do. But it's entirely impractical. If you have, you know, 1000 faculty and 23, or 24,000. Students, you just can't do that. And so there needs to be another way to sort of approach allowing students to sort of gain this undergrad research experience. And so because these are such small time, things, they don't have to be novel, original kinds of things. It's just about process. A faculty member is maybe only committing two or three hours, right, maybe of that entire 10 hour project, maybe two or three hours. And if you do it, right, so I did 26, myself last fall, just me, goodness, anything is my goal before this new position was to do 50, myself this fall, and I still might try it, because if you do it right, you actually can work in small groups. And they're all just doing slight little variants of the same kind of project, they get to work together. So there's some peer mentoring that's involved as well. They do their thing, you work with them on their parts. So they're still getting some individual attention. But they're also getting a little bit of group attention as well. And they're working through the process. And so if you think about it differently, you can act one faculty member can actually serve, a lot of students are not just thinking, Oh, I have to really, the mindset is different for the pie. The way that we do this is not thinking about what's best for the pie, it's thinking about what's best for the student. And so if you can commit just a handful of hours, right, that's really all you're asking a handful of hours, to participate in a program that you're going to train, maybe a lot more students, I'm mostly asking faculty, if they're willing to do two, right? If you can do two, and then some say, oh, I can, I can probably do three or four, great, I love you, right, you'll be at the top of my list all the time. But I'll take whoever right, I'm just, I just want them to be involved. And the great part is, if you do this, right, you actually are finding new great students for your lab and for your colleagues, labs. And there, they end up going on there that they're sort of the you know, end up being the best students in your department you're like, and they came out of nowhere. And so we've had students, you know, we've grown our minor program, because of this. We have almost half of our graduate students in our department now have come from this program. Because we have those that are coming from other other disciplines that go, this is great, like we can, this is actually a career I can do this. And so the benefits, you think, well, if everyone does that there's not a net change across all departments. True. But now you're getting our students that are really excited and motivated about the work that they're doing. They end up being better students within your, within your department. And so the benefits that we've seen have been astronomical, just by being willing, our faculty and all of our all of our faculty and entomology participate. And a lot of the research scientists at the USDA are also involved and more will be involved this upcoming year just in terms sort of our group, but within entomology. And so they all see the value the person who just won the Truman Scholarship, right, Claire Wycoff, she's a she's an Ag Economics major she did our program is an entomology minor, gained a little bit of research experience working in a lab at the USDA, and her entire proposal built, built around sustainable ag and dealing with these wicked problems was right. So it's aligned from the UN report is built around the insect experience that she had for 10 weeks. And so when they released the letter saying, Oh, this wonderful student doing this, you know, a nice quarter of the press release was about her experience in our program. And so that's, those are the kinds of things that can happen, right? So we might think that they're small, and it may not be the same value as a larger sort of year or two long, sort of year experience, but they actually can be very transformative.

So what's an example of just a small project a student might do? 

So,  they are all over the place, right? So let's say that For me, I have had. So I will do this caveat, because I recruit from all over not everyone necessarily wants to do an entomology kind of project. I'm sort of the oddball in my department and the oddball in the college, my background is all over the place. So I've had a simple things where we've gone out with students and just surveyed insects on different kinds of plants to see sort of looking at Habitat usage done that a few afternoons, I've had students that really liked, you know, big cats at the zoo. And so we set up projects where they went to the zoo, and they observe big cat behavior. Three or four times over a couple of months, I've had education students that were interested in how videos how effective videos might be, or something like that. So we've had students do those sorts of things. We had a student who is a, in one of the majors in what was human ecology. I don't remember the name, its new name, but within human ecology, who was also an athlete, and so she did a survey on how sleep deprived athletes were versus non athletes, and how successful they thought they were in classes or something like that. I've had psychology students, because I'm, I enjoyed doing game theory, things like that. So we had two psychology students do a project where they were, we did a simple game, to look at cooperation versus cheating. And they basically tested some of their colleagues, they played the game, and some college students play the game. And then one of them worked at a nursing home. And they had they had this they had the, the residents there play the game, they their apothem, their hypothesis going into it was that the those that the nursing home would actually cooperate with each other much more. And it turns out, it was exactly the opposite, right? College students cooperate with each other wonderfully, and those in the nursing homes were just cheating each other left and right. And they thought it was the greatest thing in the world. And so it's, it's, these are things so what I like to do is I meet with every student individually, talk to him for 1530 minutes an hour, just depending on sort of what it needs to try to figure out. You know, who they are, what they're interested in what they want to do with their life, and then try to match them up with a faculty member. And then if I can match them up with somebody else, great. If not, I just take them myself. And then once I filled all the slots, because I don't turn anybody away, whoever keeps showing up, I just keep taking them, which is why I ended up with 26. Last year, it was only going to be like 10, I thought Well, 10 is petitions a breeze, and then it just kept growing. And so what I had them do in that case, so I had a lot of students, how do I actually handle so many at once, but I'm doing all these other things as well, is one of our labs, they have a ton of different strains of different species of, of little beetle, right, the little red flower beetle, right, which is a significant pest out of Tom Phillips lab. And so what we would do is say, so, doesn't do genetics, or environment matter, and how beetles grouped together. And so we basically had them use two different strains. And we set had them set them up to where they would either be associated with things that were their genetic, same type, or things that were genetically different, right, we had all sorts of possible combinations. And then we bring them we leave them like that for a couple of weeks. And we bring them all back together and look at how they associate and build groups. Do genetics matter? Does the environment matter? And it turns out, it's strain specific, right. So some strains will call up more with their own strain. And then other strains really like hanging out with other beetles. The year before, we tried this with actually different species. And there was one string that like the ride on the back of a weevil and we couldn't get it to stop in our little in our experiments and be like, Well, what do we call that? I mean, I don't they like to hang out for sure. I don't know what's going on. But it's it's it can really be anything right? None of that is are none of those are things that I normally do in my research, right? I've never been sort of my focus. But there are things that I know a little bit about, and it's enough to set up a small project that they're interested in. And then what's awesome is they then dig deeper themselves and they get a chance to really own that particular project. So that's how I approach those things.

That's awesome. That's really great. I'm glad you're doing that and you're scaling that up here on the university. We want to be respectful of your time we've been talking for a while now. Scott, John, do you have anything else you'd like to add?

No other than just it's fascinating and super valuable.

Is there anything we haven't covered or anything you'd like to say, before we sign off?

No, I think I've rambled pretty good. So no, I'm good.

Well, Hey Jeremy. We really appreciate it. This is great work. We look forward to chatting again. Awesome, thanks. I appreciate it.

Great stuff.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

Dr. Kim Kirkpatrick is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences here at K-State where she is the director of the Cognitive and Neurobiological Approaches to Plasticity Center (CNAP) and leads research at the Reward, Timing, and Decision Lab. The main focus of her research is the role of timing and reward processes in determining impulsive and risky choice in rats. This was a very interesting conversation where we discuss the role of diet, specifically those containing foods high in certain types of fats or sugars, in promoting impulsive behavior that may be linked to obesity. There are all kinds of implications for this type of work in our personal lives as well as governmental policy and we try to dig into all of that. A fascinating topic that surely many of you will enjoy!

For more about Dr. Kirkpatrick and the projects she is working on check out: https://www.k-state.edu/psych/research/kirkpatrick/

Transcript:

Diet, Impulsivity, and Obesity: Does What We Eat, Influence How We Behave? – Dr. Kim Kirkpatrick – Psychological Sciences

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of global food systems. It's produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Jay Weeks PhD candidate in the Department of Agronomy. My co host is Scott Tanona, an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy who specializes in the philosophy of science. Do you ever wonder sometimes why you do the things that you do? Or why, when there seems to be an obvious rational route to a specific goal, some people repeatedly undermine their own desires and best intentions. The current scientific literature and decision making is extensive and far from complete. But what is becoming increasingly apparent is that in some ways, we may be in less direct control than we might want to believe. Our guest today is Dr. Kim Kirkpatrick. Kim is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences here at K State, where she is the director at the cognitive and neurobiological approaches to plasticity center, and leads research at the reward timing and decision lab. The main focus of our research is the role of timing and reward processes in determining impulsive and risky choice in rats. This was a really interesting conversation where we discussed the role of diet, specifically those high on certain types of fats, or sugars, and promoting impulsive behavior that may be linked to obesity. There were all kinds of implications for this type of work on our personal lives, as well as governmental policy. And we tried to dig into all of that. Definitely, it was a fascinating topic that I'm sure many of you will enjoy. So we now bring you Dr. Kim Kirkpatrick. Dr. Kim Kirkpatrick, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, it's good to be with you.

So I've been pretty excited to have this conversation. I've been looking forward to it ever since we got into contact. And before we get into what your lab does, and your research and all of that, we usually like to get a little bit of background information. So if you wouldn't mind, would you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Yeah, so I'm a professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences, I also direct a center of Biomedical Research Excellence over there, the C nap center, and I've been at K State since 2008. Before that, I actually taught and did research for eight years at the University of New York in the UK. And then going back a little bit further, I did my graduate training at the University of Iowa, and my postdoctoral training at Brown University.

So what got you into psychology?

You know, I actually started off, as at Iowa State University, and I went there for engineering. And I took a general psychology course, and it was taught by a neuroscientist, and it just lit me up, I loved it. And I changed my major, like, almost right away, was illuminating to see, you know, explanations for things going on around you why people behave the way they do, or what, why, and  it was really the brain, which is like, I just seem so fascinating. And so, so much that we didn't know about it. It just sort of seemed like this frontier that I just wanted to, like, get into.

How would you say the fields change, like since then to now?

We know a whole lot more. So I think that's good. And I hope I have made my own little bit of contribution there. I definitely, I think that there's a lot more public awareness of neuroscience now maybe helped a little by Big Bang Theory. And then brain health, I think is really become a really big issue. I think this understanding that we need to not just look after, you know, things like our heart, but we need to also really think about our the aging of our brain as saying something that's very near and dear to me for our research programs. I think about brain health and how, like things that we eat and do kind of affect our brains.

We have more information certainly is the general overall quality or veracity of that information. Higher or lower, we seem to get a lot of population of social media sites with information that's potentially spurious.

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, I mean, I'm sure you guys are aware, the replication crisis, I think that has shone a spotlight on some issues with all sciences. And I think there are some things that came out of that that, you know, have made people aware that we really need to think about the robustness of our methods. I think neuroscience certainly has advanced to Having much more elegant techniques that allow us to get at functioning specific cell types and networks. And in that sense, I think has been very good. But oftentimes, as we start to really drill down and become more specific, we also begin to lose some of the power to really detect effects. And so I think there's always a trade off between specificity versus whether you can really get the the power of you need, I mean, because if you're getting really specific, you might now get down to where you're dealing with five neurons, and then are you gonna really be able to figure out what those five neurons do? Yeah.

For the listeners who don't know, what is the replication crisis? And why was it? Why is that important?

So really, it refers to the fact that some of the results that have been reported, even ones that are like in textbooks, haven't really bore up to being able to be replicated when others went and tried to, you know, do the research very similarly to how it was originally done. And I think what really kind of came out of it was this recognition that some of its because of the way we do our statistics, and too much of a focus on P values and trying to just get over a certain line, and not enough of a focus on effect sizes. And it turns out a lot of these things that don't replicate very well, are really small effects. And so they're just probably, you know, spurious. And something to do with the group that was, yeah, it could be something with the group that was tested, or whether presuming.

Something is a replication when in fact, is not a replication. It's not a true statistical replicant? 

Sure.

So well, so and this is it just for everybody? You know, for people who are listening, it said, not to Psychology and Social Sciences. You know, a lot of other areas, a lot of medicine and cancer research, right? 

Oh, over pharmacology is a really big one. drug development research was a huge one, I think the one thing is really kind of shown us is that you do really need to have robust designs, you need to have good sample sizes. And also it turns out that within subjects research is much more replicable. So if you, you look at an individual's behavior, relative their own baseline performance, that's much more replicable than if you're looking at comparing two individuals.

Good. And and some of the responses to this, I mean, so, you know, there's there's been these increased efforts to do more replication, the incentive structures for scientists to do these are not great, right? So this is, this is a hard thing, we don't actually do a lot of just like, let's try to do exactly the same thing, right. But, but some of the response to this has been that looks, we've got some maybe some things about our statistics that we need to worry about. But some of it is just about the transferability. Right, from one area to another, right? So you do a study on, you know, group of undergraduate students at your institution. And then you say there's this general phenomenon, right, but doesn't necessarily apply somewhere else. Because like, people are so complex, right? So just, I don't want to push you too much on this stuff. But what's your main thought? I mean, how much of this is like the things didn't replicate? Because as John just said, they were actually looking at like a different population, or there's something different going on, and how much of it was, things didn't replicate? Because, you know, we were looking at such a small little effect that maybe we thought we found something that wasn't there. 

I think there probably are some of that, too. There's all effects have boundary conditions, right. And that can affect replication if people go outside of those boundary conditions. One thing we do a lot in my research program is we build a nested replication to a lot of our designs. So that way, if we get a result, that seems like funny, like not what we expected, we can at least look at the nested replication conditions. So nested replication. And replication is where you maybe have like one or two of the conditions within your study, that are things that you already have done before. So it's actually like provides a way to connect together, like if you do two experiments, and the second one, you now include at least like one condition from the previous experiment. And then there's actually statistics you can use it's kind of Bayesian statistics where you can use the first experiment as priors for the second one. And you can actually do tests on like, you know, how likely is that effect is thing going to replicate if you do it again and again. So I think that's one really good way forward. Whenever I kind of write my grant proposals and I have to talk about robustness and replicability. I really call upon nessa replication as a real strength.

So what kind of work is your lab doing?

Yeah, so I mean, we were really interested in impulsivity, which is when you aren't really able to wait in order to maybe get a better outcome. So we specifically study and if you guys know the marshmallow test, yeah, it's very well now. Explain it. Yeah, steady decisions, kind of like the marshmallow test where, you know, this was done in kids where they kind of had a choice between you could get one marshmallow now, or you could wait 15 minutes, and then you can have two. And for some of the kids could wait, and some didn't do so well. But what made it so famous and my philosophers know about the marshmallow, is it when they went back and looked at these four year old kids, when they were teenagers, they actually found that the kids who could wait had higher LSAT scores, they actually were performing better on a lot of metrics of their, like, social, you know, abilities, and their, you know, abilities to like, deal with, you know, challenges and things of that sort. And they really funny enough, they actually went back and looked at these kids when they were, they're in their 30s. And they actually found that the kids who waited for the two marshmallows had lower BMI. And that's kind of interesting, when you think the kids who waited for the two marshmallows actually are thinner later. Yeah. And what that tells us is, it's not really about the marshmallows, but it's about the self control, you need to be able to wait for the marshmallows. So I mean, I think this is really fascinates me that so famous that this test, you do just one time with a kid, when they're four actually predicts all of these things like later in life, even we into well into adulthood.

That's interesting, because that crosses metabolic changes across brain development stages.

Yeah, and all different kinds of like SES, and lifestyle, and just, I mean, all different kinds of things that are and this does like to be a well replicated effect.

So is this did you get interested in this early on in your psychology career? Or is it something you came to after some period of time.

I kind of migrated there, but it was kind of my research program, you know, just as it does, you tend to kind of build and progress. And then I would also say that a lot of my research is student driven. And so one of my students was actually the first person who kind of started doing impulsivity research in my lab. And she found some really exciting things. And we just kind of built from there, we kind of continued doing it. I always like to let my students take me interesting places.

Interesting. And how do you decide which ones you've not? Which student but which? Which research project? gets to move forward with these undergraduate students?

This is actually a PhD. Okay. It was her dissertation that really get that question where we're going. Yeah, we do have undergraduates can do some interesting things, too, though.

So how are you testing impulsivity? Is this more marshmallow tests or what's going on?

Well, we have some work, most of our work is in rats. But we do also do some work in people. So in our rats, what we do is, they're actually in a special box where we can give them these levers that they can press. And we have these little food magazines are called that actually let us deliver automatically with the computer, different numbers of food pellets. These aren't nearly as tasty as marshmallows, that I go around by tasting. But so the rat can choose like, does it want to get food, put one one food pellets and maybe has to wait five seconds? Or it can be for, say, 20 seconds? And it could get to? So it's the same kind of question, right? It's just asked in a different way. Now, of course, the rats don't really know what those contingency are, they have to learn them through pressing and getting things. And we also, don't just ask them once, we asked them hundreds of times, and we can change them out and change the delays. And then people were actually doing something that's very similar to what we do in the rats. We have actually a food dispenser, very much like the rats, it dispenses mini m&ms. And people get a question on the computer screen, it's literally says like, you know, one m&m In five seconds or two m&ms in 20 seconds. And then they pick and then they have to wait, and then the m&ms Come out? And yeah. And they I mean, their behavior actually looks very similar, though, between the humans and the rats.

Is there? Is there an assumption that everybody's gonna want more food or more m&ms? Or is there you know, what's the utility function here?

Something really interesting. There we go. Because some people just want just won't.

Yeah, and some just want like, just one. 

And so we'll just pick the five and it doesn't matter, no matter what, but always pick like the five, which is the biggest one we offer. But we actually found that people, we've done some work looking at how diet, you know, kind of predicts what people do on this task. And we found that individuals who eat very low sugar diets actually really only wanted the small choice m&m, no matter what. So I thought that was interesting maybe reflects them like kind of having such a really high level of self control or possibly just that they've developed a preference where it's like, I just don't eat much sugar, so I'm not gonna walk. Right.

And yeah, cuz, yeah, as we want to find out what you're doing with all this, but I think one of the basic questions are about sort of, if you're measuring impulsivity, right? It's kind of an assumption that, like, Oh, if you wait for more, that makes more sense, right? You know that you're, you've got more self control in that sense, right. But yeah, but yeah, there's a lot of factors which you control for, right, by looking to sort of see what their other interests are. 

Yeah. And I thought it was really interesting that people on the low sugar diet, I mean, they're actually exhibiting self control, but they're doing it a different way, from what we think about what the marshmallow kids, they're not really necessarily doing it by being willing to wait for maybe a longer term outcome of like, I'm going to fit into that dress on Saturday, right? Rather, what they're doing is they're, they're regulating their amount preferences, saying, I'm just gonna prefer to eat really small amounts of that food type.

Probably just the same thing in terms of salt, or people are on low salt diets to see the same effect.

Yeah. So I really want to dig deeper, because we just found this in a study we did pretty recently, I would like to dig deeper and try to understand some of the strategies that people engage in, saying self control is certainly one that we know is really important, but there may be other, maybe even some decision biases that people develop like or heuristics that people develop, where that just allows them to say just almost be automatic in those decisions, where they just say, I always just pick the small one or something.

I might explain what he meant by heuristics.

Oh, yes. So heuristic is really just kind of like a rule that you can use, that helps you be able to make decisions more or less automatically, you don't really have to think too much about them, you just, you just do it without thinking. And that can be really beneficial. If people can establish those if they're wanting to like change their health, because then they're just doing those behaviors automatically, almost habitually, rather than having to actively work at them.

And is it true that actually sort of a lot of how we live our life is really just like this, we kind of like develop these rules, and we kind of tend to just follow them, right? We're not every day processing. Each decision we make, right? In a way we're like, alright, which is going to be better for me, right?

Yeah. Yeah, there's actually, so I don't know if you've heard of Daniel Kahneman. Yeah. So he's got the system one versus system two, and the system one are these biases, heuristics and just automatic processes, they guide the majority of our behavior. But then we do have the ability to engage. So this more complex systems, but people are actually very lazy cognitively. They actually would much prefer to engage system one and only use system two, when you're really forced to…

right. And it's not like that's a decision either, right? It's just kind of what happens, right?

I mean, I think it's because system two is really like it's it's labor intensive, it actually uses a lot of brain fuel, if you will, to engage system to

So these actually different physical systems, are they kind of, you know, how do you think about these as when you say, system?

I think there are bound to be different brain networks, although I'm sure there's overlap. But I think the thinking of it as a system as more a way to just distinguish that, you know, sort of psychological processes.

Yeah. Yeah. And when you say there's biases in system one, this is because they're automatic. And they, they work well, for a lot of circumstances. But under other circumstances, they like send us the wrong way. Right? Is there like some standard examples of those?

Yeah, well, even just the example, I was going back to my low sugar people, a choose small bias, maybe it's really helping them with their dieting, but it maybe won't work so great if they're like making decisions about money.

So some of the work you're doing in your lab is looking at what dictates who who has these biases and things right, and you know, whether or not you're you're genetically born with it, or whether or not it's your diet that's affecting this. And so what's going on there? 

Yeah, so we're, we are looking at those factors. And we are also interested in whether we can change decision making. So we were really interested in dietary factors. That's one of the big areas we look at, we do also look at individual differences, to try to like it, you know, what kinds of variables might just, you know, predict how people are going to choose in different situations. And then we're also developing interventions. My current NIH grant is actually all about developing these interventions where we're trying to train self control. We've actually gotten a great success with this with our rats, and we are currently working on trying to translate it with our humans. I think one advantage we have with the rats is that they live with us. And so we can just, you know, really train and train and train them and they become really self like happily self control, not over self control, but like happy level of self control. And it does seem to provide then some resistance to problem behaviors that emerge from impulsivity. But we haven't quite got it working in people yet.

Oh, well, so how does it working rats, what do you do to train them?

We actually give them experience where they have to just work at learning the delays that they experienced in the task. So we might just give them like 10 days where they just get the 22nd delay that they'll later have to choose about. So they have no choice there is that they don't have a choice. So it's forced exposure to us the kind of delays that they're going to later have to make choices about, I think one thing that happens is they really learn the delay. Like they learn them better than they do when they're in their choice environment.

I was gonna ask you whether or not there are differences in populations for time length discrimination.

Yes, that's actually one of the variables we look at, we found that poor time discrimination is a predictor of impulsivity. And that's true in people is true in our rats and ADHD, is, yeah, it's associated with poor time discrimination and heighten impulsivity. Yeah, so that's one of the factors we look at. And we think they're time discrimination does get better when we give them this training. And then we also think that they just learn how to wait. Better. And so we have that factor as well. But we have been very successful in training the self control rituals who that means.

Are there dietary factors and things that control the ability to maintain self control? So you know, not every person is able to, to have discipline, right? Or to the same degree, what are, what are some of the factors that might impact that?

We've looked at high fat, high processed fat, I should say, so Christgau, and high sugar diets in our rats. One thing that's very nice in rats, is that you can control their dietary history. So we can really say that is really the diet, because oftentimes, diet actually is confounded with a lot of other things in people. But associated with all kinds of other things that might like low SES, and you know, even just like where you live, there are also notable wires, if people aren't good at reporting their diets, even when they mean to, you know, and then plenty of people try to hide what they eat, but, but in our rats, we can actually, you know, control this experimentally. And we found that both high fat and high sugar diets, if they get a few weeks of exposure to them, make them more impulsive. And then we find even, so they were on the diet for several weeks. And then when we remove them, and give them some time to like, just get back to normal, their weights dropped back down to normal. And then we retested them, we actually found that in a subset of the high fat rats, they actually still remained impulsive. But the remaining high fat rats and the highest high sugar exposed rats actually recovered and looked normal. So we think that fats particularly seem to reproducing major, like pervasive and probably long lasting changes in the brain in the brain and make you more impulsive. Yeah, at least for the rats. Yeah, so fats are very inflammatory. So these processed fats that I'm referring to, so we think there's probably neuro inflammation that's causing damage, and that's long lasting.

Like, what's the difference when you're talking about process fat? So like, do you haven't tested other things? But do you have a hypothesis about what's the difference between the process fats like why? Why the more inflammatory right and might be affecting the brain more than other fats? 

Yeah, it seems that the, the processed fats, I'm not, I'm not sure exactly what the reactions are. But they actually damage the blood brain barrier, which is the very, that kind of keeps things out of the brain that are designed not to hurt our brains. And then that allows it become more porous. And then it means that the fats themselves can get through as well as a lot of other things that can lead to inflammatory processes.

Wow. And so what's in the category of processed fats? Or Christgau? You said, but what other things? I don't know anything about fats?

Yeah, so it'd be really any, like, for example, your hydrogenated vegetable oil would be another example. So anything that's really being you know, like, processed through this, like a natural fat like butter would be a natural fats, but anything that's being kind of processed to change its constitution, and then saturated fat, I think is a really key element too.

So does this create sort of a like a vicious cycle of impulsivity, then, you know, if you're on a poor diet, and then you aren't able to control yourself, you eat further poor diet. So you just kind of spiraled down down the hole, then?

Yeah, I think that's exactly what happens. And we've actually been able to really kind of chart that in our rats and see that vicious cycle development happens so and I think if you kind of think about people who are living and like what are called obesogenic environments, and if you've kind of come across that term, but it's their environments really promote obesity because there's a lot of fat food fatty foods like you know, your lots of McDonald's and other kinds of fast food rest John's in the area, that would be a really big problem when you think about it, because people are probably more likely to eat those foods because they're readily available and cheap. And then as they eat those foods is going to undermine their self control. And it means that they can't just drive past those restaurants anymore, they're going to be tempted to want to go in.

Is there any indication that this affects children, or adults more so or less so if a child has a high fat diet early on, does that, you know, promote this behavior more as an adult?

I think that in terms of the brain health effects, almost certainly are going to be worse in a developing brain. Because you could actually alter the trajectory of development if you're producing neuro inflammation during that time. So I would expect that with children, if you are producing this kind of high level neural inflammation, you would really see different developmental trajectory in the brain, and probably much more likely to have persistent long term effects. 

So it's also suggested that perhaps parents or other professionals are really taking the wrong approach when they're trying to deal with young obese individuals to try to get them to change their behavior. If they're doing things that are still allowing a diet that's allowing more impulsivity.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, I think changing the diet is probably the first step. And then maybe some self control training would be another really good thing, we've actually started doing a little bit of work with healthy hawks, which is at the University of Kansas, their childhood obesity treatment program. And one of the things that they found is that impulsivity is actually the big predictor of dropout from the program, and also from like failure to go along with the exercise and the dietary requirements, which, you know, not surprising, right? So we're kind of working to see if we can develop our interventions, we've done in our bats into an app that the kids can maybe use to practice their self control, I think maybe we could do some scaffolding where we could get their self control, maybe looking a little better than they might be able to stick with the diet and the exercise and might be able to stick with the program.

So I wanted to follow up earlier about that. But so you're talking about training the rats, right? Not as much success in humans yet, but you don't have as much control, what have you. What have you been doing? What have you seen for training people to be less impulsive?

Yeah, I mean, like I said, it's very early stages. But there is some, there's a little bit of literature in kids. It's a little bit older, actually. But we're individuals did this kind of delay exposure training, same sort of thing, the same sort of thing. And they found, at least in the short run, they were able to get improvements and self control. In our rats, we've actually found that our intervention effects lasted when we retested them nine months later, which is I think, 15 human years, I think so we actually have a technique that's not just strong in terms of its effect size, but also really long lasting.

What are those interventions? 

Sorry, where we just give them that first exposure to the delays repeatedly, and then later give them choices between the delays of the good.

So what would this look like in humans is this sort of thing like, right? Oh, I'm hungry, right? Now, let me let me like, set up my lunch, but put it off to the side for a little bit before you did, or like things just like spend a bunch of time just doing that kind of thing are

We actually with the healthy hawks, we're developing a game that the kids play, it's a type of space invaders like game. But what they have to do is like they press a button to fire a shot at the ship, but then they have to wait a certain amount of time before their missile recharges. And they can fire again, and we don't tell them how much they have to we. So they have to just like it rats, like experienced the delay and really learn about it, and kind of practice it. And we're, we really like to get it so that they could play it on their phone. And then we've also thought a little bit too about just having an adult, I think would be probably more likely to work. But there's another kind of training that you can do. It's called mindfulness training. And it's where you kind of really practice like paying attention to certain kinds of cues. And we're thinking that some mindfulness training for really paying attention to delays, could maybe be a nice thing. And then we could couple that with practicing, like experiencing and learning about delays. And the two together might be a really good way to go. I think.

Interesting. It's almost like self talk when you're listening to yourself.

So one of the things that are one of the models of addiction and impulsivity and things like that, that I've heard of is that you know, some of these, some of these dietary choices could be affecting the the gut microbiome, and that may be releasing neurotransmitters and things that that may be impacting how people behave. What are your thoughts on that? How much of an impact do you think that that has?

I'm certainly changing their micro. How's it going? We give them the phases that we get them. And I mean, the gut brain axis is obviously becoming very popular because this is recognition that I think was the serotonin. I can't remember what it's a high pretty high percentage of serotonin where the precursors, like rely on things in your gut. So I think without a doubt, it's a little far afield for me, but I would think the microbiome is pretty key as well.

Yeah, I think that's a fascinating aspect of it. I saw also in your in your publications list that you have looked at a little bit of the social factors that may be influencing some of this stuff, too. I'm fascinated by the rat Park stories from several decades ago. Bruce Alexander, right, we started all that. Are you doing something similar like that? And then and looking at how it impacts impulsivity. So maybe you could start from that idea, and then talk about what you're doing? 

Yeah. So there's two. So this really relates to enrichment. And it's, it's pretty well established, the individuals who live in more enriched environments, you know, have a lot of, you know, better self control, better coping skills, the kind of things that we see with the kids who can, if you will pass the marshmallow test.

Enriched in what, what do you mean by enriched? 

Well, in terms of people, this would be like having a lot of opportunities to like, learn and advance yourself, like after school programs, experiential, yeah, experiential kind of, you know, environments who, and then also having, you know, a warm house to go home to and healthy food to eat. In rats, they stimulate enriched environments by giving them both social enrichment. And also you can give them novelty enrichment, the novelty enrichment kind of stimulates the opportunity for experience. So you literally give them toys, and then they can interact with the toys and kind of get this novelty enrichment effect. We have done some work with both the social and novelty, we found that social enrichment, promotes self control. So even just having one other rat with them, just having a buddy was actually enough to significantly promote self control. We actually found that giving them toys partially reversed that effect. So now they were getting a new toy every day. So they were kind of like the spoiled rich kids. Maybe you're having like less frequent changes in toys, maybe it'd be better. But we were kind of like over almost overreaching now with the toys. And that actually kind of backfired a little bit, which is interesting.

So it's always try to start to scale some of these findings. Globally, right? Or at least in the United States, where we're seeing an increase in Well, some people say an increase in impulsivity within the general population, but certainly obesity issues and things like that does. How does that translate? You think that or the fact that more people are looking for meaning or maybe feeling more lonely in the social isolation and all that are having an influence on obesity in the United States? And that's, you know, sort of that's sort of part of the explanation.

I think that's certainly could be possible. I think there are probably a lot of variables driving that. And no, I, I've seen things as well about the kind of new, more like social media culture where people don't actually interact physically with each other. So you may have a lot of online friends, but if you don't actually have, like, face to face time, that actually seems to be related to a lot of problems with like anxiety and depression. It suggests that maybe we actually need physical contact with people to really like, get the effects of the social enrichment.

But somehow, we don't really know what kind of social enrichment might help with impulsivity? Is that,

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't think it really know a lot about that. But I think certainly like having some form of physical contact, you know, it seems to be a good thing.

So was this, what you're talking about the same sort of thing about drug addiction? I remember reading some rat studies, right about sort of the social network really reduced, right?

Yeah. And of course, impulsivity addiction are strongly interrelated. So I think they're probably affecting the same systems.

Interesting. So can I go back and ask about sugar, because we're talking about fat and it was fat that you sort of labeled as are the saturated. So also, we should distinguish are just not all fat, because you were looking particularly at these processed fats. Right, you know, but then sort of one of the things that's happened in nutrition is that people have realized, Oh, the fat was the boogeyman for a long time, right? And, Geez, it's not nearly so bad, right? And certainly not all fats, right. But sugars, perhaps much worse for like, a lot of health effects, right. So. So you're looking at both of these and you saw, particularly the process that seemed to have a longer term effect is that sort of I don't know, how does that line up with sort of this shift in understanding recently about the health effects of sugar versus fat?

Yeah, well, I would say I mean, the sugar did produce effects. It just was it, they rebounded, they kind of looked okay after they stopped eating the sugar. That suggests to me that maybe the effects of the sugar are really quite qualitatively different from the fats. And we know that sugar is addictive. And that it actually getting exposed to sugar alters your reward system in a very similar way, actually, to taking drugs. And it may be that if you just go off sugar that you're able to then like restore your normal reward system functioning again. So I think that's why we probably don't see the pervasive effects.

But if you're on sugar, if you're on sugar, it's a bad thing. When you're on sugar without a doubt. And, you know, sugar is definitely associated with a, you know, a whole host of other health problems as well. So yeah, it wasn't trying to just make fat, the bad guy. Sugar is pretty bad as well.

What does sugar do to the reward system?

Well, it seems to like dampen your dopamine response. So that you actually kind of need You need to eat more sugar, for example, to feel the same, like positive reaction hedonic reaction that you would feel when you maybe used to eat less sugar, much like you see with drug use.

So if you, you know, if you have a couple m&ms one time, the next time to get the same height as the EB three m&ms and that sort of thing.

Yeah, I mean, we're less. That's really, you know, it drives people that want to eat, eat more of it. Yeah.

And, and in fact, but we got to specify here that we're, I think we're limiting pretty much to sucrose as opposed to glucose. Yeah. So sucrose m&ms? Glucose, popcorn? Sure.

So in Okay, so So what's going on there? What's the difference in why?

Well, they're different sugars. They're different. Different structures, they're processed differently in the body of sucrose, glucose, one fructose, right? Correct. Yeah, yeah. Glucose comes in a variety of polymer sizes and complexities. And it's processed very, very differently. 

So its impact on the brain and body, it could be different. It's causing that sort of thing. Oh, certainly.

Yeah.

Another thing that I saw that you were getting into is you started studying female rats for some of these studies, too, because typically, it's a male rat that's used, right? Do you see? Are you seeing differences in sex and gender, how that how that's making a difference in some of these results?

We found a little bit of an effect of gender on a result. Again, this is all the rats. But basically, two things. One, is it females, she just regardless of whether you give any kind of intervention or anything, seem to be more self control than males in their choice behavior. But in terms of looking at the efficacy of our interventions, we actually found that females were more variable in, you know, more individual differences and their reaction to our interventions. But overall, there was no sex difference in efficacy of the intervention. So that was kind of promising, because it suggests that you could still, you could deliver an intervention to females, and it would be just as effective as it was in males.

Could you say something about why it's only been male rats for so long that have been used and not so much female rats? Like this is true in general, right of the field? 

Yeah, the issue really has to do with estrus cycle. So this poor girl rats, they go through estrus every three to five days. And I think it's maybe why they're very their behaviors more variable, is because their their hormonal environment is just turning over so frequently. I think the traditional way of kind of dealing with that is people either would measure their estrus and account for it, or they would ovariectomized them. So that's where you, you know, you remove the ovaries, and then that stops them from cycling. But that's not really ideal to do, because I knew now I've got a group of rats that had a surgery, and then your males didn't. And so that's not really good either. And so I think it's just mainly because people felt like they needed to control for estrus, but then it's really hard to do. Of course, we don't do that in people, right. So in that sense, like from a transactional standpoint, in our work, we just let the females be, and we're like, they're just going to do what they do. We also just recently developed a modeling technique to account for estrus in our data. We do live regression analyses, and we actually just added the sine wave component in to our regression, and we actually found we detected in estrus cycle in our choice behavior was there in the females and we also checked for males there was no estrus or in our male rats, so. So we think that maybe we can just account for it statistically moving forward, trusting. 

And so that's specifically about impulsivity, the same choice function. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

You're really addressing a lot of different aspects of this seems to be very, very productive, very broad based. What's the next question you want to ask?

Yeah, well, I've got a few things in the works right now. One is we actually are very interested in trying to delve into the dietary research more, we want to try to get a little bit more like the brain mechanisms of particularly the high fat diets. We're also wanting to use our interventions and see if we can rescue some of the effects of the diet on choice. And then we also have some ideas about using omega threes to possibly rescue the brain effects because omega threes are really wonderfully anti inflammatory. So we might be able to kind of do some of that rescue of the effects of the diet on the brain. And then we've got some other things in the works. I'm actually working on a collaborative venture where we're wanting to do some genotype analysis of our rats to see if we can identify genes that might predict individual differences, as well. So they will probably still keep working on our interventions. We want to start delving a little bit more just all the brain mechanisms of those.

But you're looking at the same background popular, they're all what Sprog douleurs, Italy's same temporary, it,

If you start looking for doing genetic analysis to sort of start looking at different different groups of different populations are at seven different types are like and how many actually I don't know anything about this is there, there are a whole bunch of different kinds of rats you can get for these kinds of studies are worth

playing to go there, because it to do proper gene analysis, you need about 1000 animals. And it's pretty laborious to do these tests on them to figure out their impulsive choice. So we probably would only start with one this day with our Sprog dollies. But you could ultimately do that if you had the resources to do this kind of testing.

So that I know this is far afield what you do, but sort of what's the difference in all these different routes? I mean, so this is like this went back to the replication crisis is one of these kinds of things we sort of in you talked about the difference between sort of trying to get very specific in control and power, right, you know, there's this other thing that sort of control for as many variables as possible, but then that restricts your ability to then generalize, right, you know, so what are the factors that are in choosing your, your model organism when you do all these studies?

So there's the outbred versus inbred difference, which is a really big one. So outbred animals are ones where, you breed them with individuals from other lines, so that the genetic stock is always varying. And there are different strains that have different original source animals, and then they, you know, continue breeding from there. And then the inbred is where you breed within a line. And they will oftentimes do that to create animals for specific models.

homozygosity increases.

And so there's like, we have done some stuff with strains that were in bred like, that were developed for specific functions, like, turns out these, these one rats are called spontaneously hypertensive rats, they were bred specifically to be a hypertension model. But it turns out, they're really hyperactive and impulsive. It was just sort of accident. Yeah, so I think they have special animals they bred for obesity research. So and then, of course, you can also do, you know, genetic knockouts and create special models as well, 

Across all of these rat models that are out there, do they what's the rate at which they transfer to human applicability, right. Like there's a big issue in pharmacology that, you know, they see effects in rat models, but then when they try to use them in human populations, they're not able to really see anything, right. How well does that transfer? Just a guess?

I think that it depends a little bit on your questions. So I think if you're certainly if you're dealing with things, where the behaviors you're looking at are likely to be very kind of high cortical type functions, you're probably not going to get as good a transfer because rats have a pretty underdeveloped cortex. But for more kind of lower level stuff, or you're dealing with, like reward system, for example, that seems a lot of that seems to transfer pretty well. We I mean, our decision making work that we do, I think we're dealing with fairly low level processes. So I think there has been good translation there. But it's always a challenge in terms of the translation issues, and I think you just have to try and see if it works or not.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, you have to do the basic research. Basic Research.

Yeah, I see you moving to a larger scale? Because you know, because this is global food systems and things like that, right? Do you have any? Do you have any ideas about like governmental policy or school lunch policy or anything like that you would like to see to help with obesity issues and children and that sort of thing? What are your thoughts on that?

Well, one of the things that I've really been thinking about quite a lot with children is it just an oftentimes don't really have choice about their diet. And so they may be getting exposed to foods that could then you know, set up a pattern where if they're really impulsive, because they ate a lot of bad foods when they were younger, that then could be set up to a lifetime of impulsivity and unhealthy eating. So I think it is really essential that in cases where, you know, we're determining the diet of the kids that we really make sure that they're eating foods that are good, not just for their bodies, but for their brains as well. So I think that's a really essential one in terms of policy.

So like making sure that the school lunches and things have the rights, the right composition, and that sort of thing right now. It's really interesting. It's something we don't often hear enough about, probably.

Yeah, I mean, you could give a healthy food. And it's something that seems like a well balanced diet, like maybe you give them some lasagna, but if you use a saturated process fat, when you eat it, there could actually be problems lurking in there that are gonna have a negative impact. So thinking about the ingredients of food as well, rather than just the end product of the food.

So gonna ask about effect size, because it's something we started with, right? So of all the other factors that sort of might affect impulsivity, right? Sort of, you know, variety things, you're talking about SES, socioeconomic status, and sort of all these other things that sort of affect us, right? So how, how big is the dietary effect compared to these others, just with respect to this impulsivity issue?

Certainly in our rats, it's quite, it's pretty big.

But you're not looking at a lot of other variables there either. That's kind of their control. That's one strain of RAD. And it's sort of like only a small certain environment, right?

Yeah, yes. I think if you put it in context, where there could be other moderators, it's going to be weaker in people than it is in the rats, where we have the full control.

So in terms of like, non dietary stuff, right, sort of the food, sort of the type of food versus like enough food calories, right, sort of to feed the brain growing and development versus sort of other kinds of factors, what's your mean, for and actually, sort of, even with food, like choice, having choice, like learning how to make your choices? That's one of the things that you talked about, sort of what other kinds of recommendations do it's hard, it's hard to translate basic research into recommendations. Right. So but what are the things are you concerned about sort of about, especially raising kids?

I think another thing that I have thought a lot about is that we are a very instant gratification society, I sort of think back to, you know, when I first like use email, and how long it took to boot up your computer, like, get your email open. And now if it took that long, I would be going crazy, like what's wrong? Like, why is it taking so long? I think there is like value in making kids wait for things, and kind of not just automatically fulfilling that instant gratification. And that can be a way that really self control can be just built into upbringing, if you don't just automatically always, you know, go for the fastest option. I think it's good to be bored a little once in a while. And this promotes creativity, right?

Yes, it does. Yeah. Do you have any you have any thoughts on the in this is sort of the kind of out of left field. But do you have any thoughts about how like things like bad food are advertised and the impacts of that might have psychologically on these sorts of things?

It's really interesting, the advertising is fascinating, because it turns out that we form associations between food labels and the foods themselves. So that McDonald's arches elicits the same response as actually a hamburger in our brains, which is really fascinating. And I think in terms of that, I mean, the labeling is actually you know, it's it's eliciting desire to want to eat the food. So I think we're being mindful about those associations, I think it is probably definitely important. Another issue, and this, again, is going pretty far afield for me, but I know that you know, in the cereal aisle, for example, they put the foods the, at the level of sugar. So and I mean, we know that with decision making, that things like that actually really do influence your decisions if the food that you first see is the one that you're most likely to pick. So maybe also trying to combat some of those factors would be a good thing.

Yeah. And this is one of these like, really basic things. It's sort of been behind a lot of what you do and you talk about but sort of it's hard for I mean, even when you know a lot about it, it's hard to Think about yourself as you know, as a, you know, your the processing the thinking we do. So much of its automatic, so much is controlled by other things, right? And we like to think we're in control of things, but you know, you just Alright, so if you feed me different food, apparently I'm behaving differently, right? So so how should we be thinking about our own selves psychologically, in general, like those are their major shifts in terms of how to think about yourself, self that you would recommend to people that's really interest me.

I think sometimes we give ourselves too much credit for being like this really advanced species, like what we do is still very much driven by maybe our animal past, if you will, I think being very aware of the importance of habits is a really important one. And that establishing habits can actually go a long way towards you being able to change your behavior, that's much more effective to establish a habit than to try to like just consciously to decide at the moment to decide to do keep with it, but it actually takes about two weeks of just daily practice of a habit before it becomes pretty automatic. So if people can just like use their system twos for long enough to get the habit established, then that habit will just kind of take over.

Two part question, when you test the rats, do you test individuals? Is it like one rat in the box being tested? Yes. Would you predict or hypothesize that that might change if there were multiple rats? And what I'm getting to is the idea of people eating by themselves versus having a meal with others? Whether that would change the that's really interesting.

Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm sure that there's social effects, we know that. Actually, much like in people, the rats actually engaged in social learning about what to eat. So they actually will smell each other's breath. And if they smell a certain food type on a rat that's looking really healthy, they're actually much more likely to eat that food themselves. So I think certainly food choice would be influenced by other individuals.

That's fascinating, interesting. Well, we want to be respectful of your time. We really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us got John, do you have any further questions? How's it been great. Is there anything else? We haven't covered that you would like to say?

We covered a lot? Yeah, yeah.

Fascinating stuff.

Yeah. Thank you so much.

I hope everybody enjoyed. Thanks so much, Dr. Kim Kirkpatrick.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

There are so many needs when it comes to food, including the availability of food and its impact on health. How does one make a difference to meet these needs? The ability to identify needs and a passion for making a difference is what drives today’s guest, Vickie James, Coordinator of the Manhattan/Riley County Food and Farm Council.

In this discussion, Vickie details the Food and Farm Council’s work to increase knowledge, build partnerships and provide solutions to the complex food system challenges in our local community.

Dr. Sandy Procter is an assistant professor and extension specialist focusing on maternal and child nutrition in the Department of Food, Nutrition, Dietetics and Health at Kansas State University. A registered dietitian and former coordinator of the Kansas SNAP-ED nutrition education program, she possesses a wealth of knowledge surrounding human nutrition that spans from pre-pregnancy all the way through advanced age. Our discussion was quite wide-ranging covering some more technical topics relating to maternal health and breastfeeding to the more social considerations of how to demonstrate healthy eating habits to children and provide recommendations to adults.

For more about Dr. Procter check out:                    https://www.hhs.k-state.edu/fndh/people/faculty/procter/ 

Transcript:

Improving Family Nutrition at Home and Abroad with Dr. Sandy Procter – Maternal and Child Nutrition

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of global food systems. It's produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Jay Weeks PhD candidate in the Department of Agronomy. My co host is Scott Tanona, an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, who specializes in the philosophy of science. Everyone, everybody, we're glad you're back. The field of human nutrition is fascinating, and obviously important. But as we all might imagine, very complicated. It seems like almost every day there's press coverage of a new study concluding that something like coffee or chocolate is good for you, or is going to give you cancer. Scientists and doctors have learned a lot over the years to keep us healthy. Yet many questions and seeming contradictions remain. So how do we make sense of all this? One way is that we can all buy all the books and read all the papers to make decisions for ourselves. But many of us, even if we would like to take on this endeavor, sadly do not have the time. Fortunately, another route is available, and that is that we can rely on specialists to spend their careers assessing all the information and distilling the findings down into recommendations that they then provide to us through various means. Our guest today is Dr. Sandy proctor. Sandy is an assistant professor and extension specialist focusing on maternal and child nutrition, and the Department of Food, Nutrition Dietetics and health here at Kansas State University, a registered dietitian and former coordinator of the Kansas snap Ed Nutrition Education Program. She possesses a wealth of knowledge surrounding human nutrition, the spans from pre pregnancy all the way through advanced age. Our discussion was quite wide ranging covering some more technical topics relating to maternal health and breastfeeding, to more social considerations of how to demonstrate healthy eating habits to children and providing recommendations to adults. Regardless of your background. I think everybody can find something interesting. In this episode, our Global Food Systems Initiative Coordinator, Dr. Maureen Olewnik, joined by Scott Nye for the interview as well. She has a strong background in serial chemistry and brought an additional perspective to the conversation that I think you will appreciate. Lastly, if you're enjoying the podcast, please tell your friends either in person or on social media. Word of mouth is an important mechanism by which we grow our audience. Also, if you wouldn't mind taking a moment to rate us and leave reviews on whatever platform you happen to be listening on. We will be most grateful. We want to continually improve the program and your feedback is a tremendous help. Okay, sorry for the long intro heavily. We now bring you Dr. Sandy proctor. Enjoy. Dr. Sandy Proctor, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks. It's good to be here.

So we usually start off with a short intro how before the podcast is even recorded. But we would like to get your perspective and your background and how you got here. So if you don't mind, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Sure. I'm originally got my bachelor's from K State in dietetics way back and started on a traditional what I thought was a traditional career path for dietetics in a clinical setting and progressed through a variety of different dietetics positions, each of them still long term care and then feeding college students and infant and child feeding programs. And each of them I realized I was sort of embracing the idea of moving further back, I wanted to move back further to make a difference earlier. And so I went from basically instructing patients as they were leaving the hospital about eating more healthfully to ultimately when I completed my PhD working with maternal and child nutrition and actually beginning to understand that we can can really affect change earlier than then before birth and and also beyond just a single generation through some of the the genetic differences that we know that adequate or inadequate nutrition can make.

Yeah, so I definitely want to get into the Maternal and Child Health things as it gets really important that a lot of people will be interested in that. To get you into that when you start moving closer and closer to childbirth were the things that you were noticing in society or in people that made you you know, sort of key on that or what got you interested in that specifically?

Well you know, as s in a role of nutrition or dietetics, or in health care, you realize that so much of what we do is focused on people's people's health or correcting something that's wrong with people's health. And so, so many of the chronic diseases that we deal with are nutrition, food related, that it is just a real goal. And I think of many people who are in nutrition related work, to catch that audience at an earlier time to to get to them and help them understand how valuable changes can be earlier in their life. So if you're a parent, how starting your child with that, right kind of food is, essential, or even earlier than that, talking with mothers about breastfeeding the minute that their baby is born. And so those were the kinds of nutritional interventions that really captured me as I sort of progressed through my early work career.

So most of your work now is an Extension agent with case date, correct? Extension specialist or specialist. Sorry. So what does that mean for people who aren't familiar with the extension system?

Well, and that's why I wanted to tell you why I corrected those agents are educators that are out in the field, and they are in Kansas, housed in every county, and they cover a variety of subject matters, topics, generally, they may be community development, or they may be agriculture, and National Natural Resources, family and consumer sciences. And then specialists are faculty members at the university level, usually or regional level, that are subject matter specialists. And we provide programming information, resources for those extension agents that are out interacting with local audiences.

Your specialty is maternal and child health, mainly us nutrition, nutrition. So what are some of those things that you're doing? What does the day look like for you? Or what programs are you working on?

Well, for many years, in this role, I worked as a coordinator across the state for two nutrition education programs, both the expanded Food Nutrition Education Program, and snap it and both of those are aimed at low income audiences, to help them better utilize what limited resources, they may have better feed their families, and to, to follow as closely as possible optimal eating information, helping them learn how to cook, if they aren't able to do that, to use some of the health foods that they may not know how to incorporate into their diet. So really complete sort of nutrition education for themselves, their families, how to shop, how to keep their food safe. So kind of all information around that. And so that really fit well with my my research or my focus area on maternal and child nutrition, because those programs really focused at the homemaker who was trying to better feed their family and and to make to stretch that food budget and to make better decisions that was going to, you know, affect the health and well being of the people in the family.

So you mentioned sort of supporting agents, but these could you say something more about these programs that you're working on there? This isn't all just sort of, for agents out there? Are you contacting the public? Are you working writer on your own to write

Those two programs I mentioned are both USDA programs that are delivered in Kansas through extension. And so we are the the sole teachers, the sole delivery agents have both of those programs, and they're delivered in about 80 counties for SNAP Ed and about 10 counties for the smaller program, F snip, and so as the specialist supporting that, and the coordinator was really a lot of just program management across the state. And there are there of course, it's both of them are based with the information that comes out from USDA. So my plate and the nutrition information that is developed my plate is that the basic pictorial embodiment of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. And so both of those programs are based on getting that type of information out to audiences and in a variety of different ways in different curricula. And so specifically, what I did is as coordinator of those programs, and this was until 2018 was to really coordinate the effort And the the direction that our programming took in specific areas identified by the the local programming, but then facilitated through the state and supporting the the agents and the educators with the tools and the information that they needed in the training to keep them so that they were able to deliver those programs soundly.

So one of the benefits of it being on a county by county basis is you can target specific programs to benefit the people in that specific county. Correct.

That's one of the beauties of of Kansas and the extension in Kansas, it's very locally driven it if you were to compare what a specialist does in Kansas versus other states, in many states, from what I understand, it's kind of top down, we would decide at the state, a program that we wanted to send out over the state and everyone would do a program on on this topic in in Kansas, because it is locally driven. And there's that local funding, and that local board that is really driving some of the direction that extension takes place in those local needs are going to be identified. And then as specialists, we help agents realize what resources might be available to meet that through a series of lessons or through information provided to stakeholders or whatever they might identify that they need. So it really, is challenging for both, I think, maybe specialist for sure, agents, probably, but hopefully is a much more flexible system for the stakeholders. And the people of Kansas.

You had mentioned a local board. And I don't know that I may have missed the definition of what that is. So who would be on that board? And is that true? Is there a local board in every county, working with the agents?

There is a local Extension board that supports every extension office, and there are extension offices in every county, and now districts and so that may be a district board if there are counties that have gone together. And that even is through a change in Kansas law that they would join together as an extension district. And then there's a board that guides those there, their work and the hiring and the oversight of those programs. So our extension agents are they have input from the state, but they also have input from local stakeholders.

And then that board, that local board who makes up that board is local people who are elected to elected and people who are interested in what extension has to offer. And you know, extension, oftentimes people only know maybe about four h as part of the extension. And so there are people who are interested in youth development and people who are used to interested in and focused on community development or health or water. The Global Food Systems is one of the grand challenges. But probably one of those at least challenges is going to be a focal area for people who are interested in serving on the sport or people who are just really interested in seeing a vibrant service in their communities for the well being of what can happen when extension is really involved and informed.

Could you just say something about the way like what extension is doing here in Kansas versus like in other states, you described? How just different terms of the locality. But is this, I guess is anything like this is like everywhere, in across the whole United States, like every state has universities working, you know, with Extension agents throughout the state? Or is this sort of just in our, you know, breadbasket areas or like how does that work?

That's an excellent question. And I should broaden my description here. We are in Kansas, the land grant university, there is one in every state that was set up by moral just immoral, I think is his name back in the 1800s. Is when he first started off 1860s I think it was Abraham Lincoln's idea to have land grant universities he thought it was important that the average person out without that was not able to necessarily go to a university have the benefit of the excellent work that was being done at a university. And so he had this idea of land grant university and then Morell was the person I believe he was a senator. He was definitely a congress person that was involved with many times proposing this and getting it to actually come to fruition and getting a piece of land in every state put aside for land grant. universities and now in many states, there are Sea Grant air grant, lots of other types of universities that do that same research, and then make sure that that research part of that research challenge is to disseminate that out to the people of the state.

And it's a key part of Kansas State's mission, right.

And we find ourselves in today's conversation, oftentimes, you'll find us packaged into the discussion around engagement, because in extensions worked, is truly engaged work. And so getting back to the topic today, with the global food systems, it is important that we look at the role that key state has, with all the amazing research and the connections out across the globe. As far as developing the information and discovering all the amazing science, that's that's there. But it's also, at least in our estimation, that engaged part that taking that information out to the consumer, whether that be individual families in in, you know, the most rural part of Kansas, or if that is some sort of community setting where we can change the environment and, and really make it a healthier situation, because we have agents that are working as part of the school wellness committee, and they're going to have healthier food served at at vending opportunities, all of those types of opportunities that engaging and changing step by step, the possibilities moving toward toward health is is what the role of extension is either directly or indirectly, but aiming at those sort of components set that allow us to have a healthier life.

And I think, you know, you were talking about kind of education and providing information a lot. And I think it's really easy to see, like the the job of the land grant and of extension is sort of serving that role. It's kind of core, right, you know, sort of information. But, but, but I like the way you're focusing on engagement there too, right? Because there's a lot, there's a lot of this that isn't just about here's some information, let me give it to you. It's about, like you said, working with people and getting them interested in involved. And, I mean, yeah, agents are doing things to besides just providing information.

Absolutely. That's the classic model, when you think back to it. Let's take it, you know, around the 30s in the Dust Bowl era, and those agents out there teaching people how to, and I'm out of my element here, but circular plow, say and prevent the, the wind blowing in the erosion in some of the things that were the real. One of the real parts of the problems to the problems with the decimal. And part of that was education. But part of that was application to it wasn't enough just to say, oh, I need to, I need to eat more fruits and vegetables every day, but an understanding of not only do you need to eat more, here's how it could happen. Here are some samples, and you can tell your kids really like it. And this is a recipe that makes it really easy for that to happen.

In your opinion, what are some of the best ways to engage the public?

Well, I think, you know, I think that's a challenge that is ongoing with us. And when I first started being interested in extension, I was just a kid I was in four h and to me it was just fascinating to go to the extension office and see all those brochures that were written. Most of them in you know, in food nutrition were written by the same person is like, Who is this amazing person with these credentials that can write all this amazing stuff. And it all fits, you know, it's color coded fits in these these little holders and it was just the coolest thing well, that you know, that has changed obviously we don't do a lot of print information anymore, we do some because that's still a way that works for people but we do a lot of electronic information and we do you know blogs and and all sorts of of more modern we in with some of our young pregnant moms in some of our nutrition classes, we we do tweets or we do YouTube Live or whatever the form is that can really make sure that it is effective because it's just like nutrition isn't nutrition until it's eaten. Information doesn't do any good until it's received communication is two way so it has to be received as well as sense so the best way is what is going to work best for the two that are communicating whether it's the sender, but the receivers as well. So we'll find sometimes that we have multiple ways in the middle of programs and Depending on if something spans generations, that's not atypical at all. Or it could be that we start everybody off with face to face, because that's going to really build some, some rapport and some trust. And then we may go to online so that this young mom can, you know, get that last two or three lessons after she puts the kids to bed, but we still have that, that face to face touch with her. And she knows this and knows who to contact if there's questions. And so I think extension works really hard to identify what those best methods of communication and and information delivery are.

So K State does a lot of work internationally, with through the Feed the Future labs through many other activities where people are traveling, how does that affect the extension side of K state's outreach? Do we have any overlap or any, any connection between some of those international activities,

We do have some and I imagine there are more in agriculture proper than I'm even aware of. But I can give you an example of one that I was really fortunate to take part in just a few years ago, and I was approached by Sajid Alavi, with the Feed the Future work that he was doing and he was developing interested in developing a new food for very young children. That would be replacing the corn based food that they were had used in aid programs. And it was going to be sorghum based. And so there was a lot of work being done on what that would look like, and what all else that would include and, and the recipe for that. But also, it they were interested in information of you know, how can we work with these young moms? And how can we, you know, build their trust? And what do we need to know about, you know, we're brain scientists, we're not that familiar with young children nutrition. And so I was brought into that, that project very early. And I have a background from an earlier project of working in Kenya with doing some nutrition education. And so I thought that maybe some of that information might be transferable, as we started to learn about working with rural families in Tanzania, for this, Feed the Future project, and also with the community health workers who were sort of our, our go between sin and made it all possible, they could translate, they had relationships already with the families. And so that sort of that extension role developed for us. So we weren't just walking in there, like the experts and, you know, trying to change things or offer them, you know, food for your babies, you'd be very distrustful if you're given a food for your baby, but we worked with the local health educators to build that trust, and they could start to see a real benefit to their kids, they they really showed health benefits right away. And so then we had a role at the end, to work with those same health educators to make sure that the moms knew what to do next, because when the project ends, and the food source goes away, the moms want the health benefits to remain. And so to have those discussions with folks who worked as our outreach people, you know, we had some sound nutrition information, but they had knowledge of local plants and inexpensive fixes that maybe families didn't typically use to feed their family. A lot of times historic plants are so nutritious but our thought of is poor people's food are fed to the animals and not not eaten the way they were even a generation ago. And so when you have a child who's in a really healthy situation, and looking good, you have a health educator who's saying you can keep your child this active and healthy by adding these things, these simple things to his diet. You have a a motivated, engaged listener that's ready to say I can make these changes because I see how it's going to work and I'm I moved to keep my child healthy.

To drill down into this project a little more, what were the health challenges that were presented? And then you know, how did you move into correcting those?

I was part of a big team and so I need to talk about that because it was a really, I thought, really visionary group of people. We had Sajid whose work is with of course with grains and extrusion he was learning he was extruding the grain, meaning that it was being pretreated. So it cooked faster. And one of my experiences was in Kenya is that one of the things that is extremely hard on the natural surroundings, but also expensive is fuel cooking fuel. So if it cooks more quickly, that's a real bonus to the family, they don't have to go and collect wood, they don't have to buy food, they don't have to spend a lot of time cooking. So those that was a real benefit. So you had this extruded product. And then we had also from our Food Nutrition Dietetics and health department here at K State, we had sensory specialists who were able to do all kinds of testing to make sure not only was this a nutritious food that they were going to get, but it was by far one of the tastiest things that they'd ever come in contact with. And it really helped because when you're trying to get people to try your food and to taste your food, you want to make sure that it is even more attractive than what they're used to eating. And then another one of our group, also from our department was Brian Lynch shield, working with the the lab the basic nutrition and finding out how can we formulate this food so that it has increased nutrients. It's very digestible. Sorghum is historically not real digestible, but when you extrude, it that helps the digestibility and then mixed with some of these other products that increases some of the attributes, and then the whole micronutrient array that was added to it to make it so it overcomes some of the main problems, which were vitamin A deficiency and iron anemia, iron deficiency anemia, so lots of efforts went into it, even looking at the feasibility of with some of the agricultural economics folks that we worked with Nina Lilya, and her students doing a study on the feasibility of making this this extruded product, because it was USA ID in addition to USDA, yes, we can make it here in the United States and ship it but what would be the feasibility of making it in country and making it a sustainable type foods at some time in the future? So there were multiple aspects to it. And so seeing what the costs of those grains either grown or purchased, and did you know that they had extruders in I think it was in, in Kenya, not in Tanzania, but right next door. So just learned an awful lot and found out so much about working with our partner and in country was a non governmental organization, NGO, and the ability to get an IRB through a foreign government, when you're working with young children, is not to be missed, if you think you've done science. Yet. That is a lengthy, lengthy product process. But those who don't know an IRB is what, oh, internal review board the permission that you get from, in this case, the government and all the layers of the government in Tanzania and the health agencies, as well as our university to make sure that every step of what we're doing treats, people and processes and all parts of the system with respect and very aboveboard, so that ethical, ethical research is being done all the time.

Were there any learnings from that experience that you were able to bring back that had some impact here in the states?

It's really interesting that you asked that because obviously, there were, you know, the bigger project ones were the huge ones related to the brain and the sensory, and I think it's gone on and sort of continued growing. But for me, personally, one of the things I learned was, then coming back and working with those low income programs is, you don't know what low income is until you try making connections and finding support systems outside of this country. Because the support systems that we take for granted, whether it's, you know, the WIC program, or and I shouldn't say that we take those for granted, but that are here and part of our structure are so non existent food stamps or snap as we have those those things that are there, when a family simply isn't able to have enough money to feed themselves. There isn't anything there in other countries. And you know, so just finding out that, that ability to to depend on some of those resources and build on those and really help people maximize what's available to them is key because we forget to be extremely grateful. I think for some of those things that are available, that are not in other countries structure.

Could you talk a little bit about how important those programs are for getting people out of poverty, right because there's not but necessary that people are sitting on these, you know, for a lifetime, right. But by having these programs to help people through tough times, you know, that helps them move further up in the in the income ladder.

I can do that. But I don't have the facts and figures in front of me. So this is just sort of rough. But I do know, that snap itself, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is one of the great indicators of economy writing itself. And that is because if you look right now, the use of SNAP has gone down. And it continues to go down. It was at its height, I think, in 2010, which reflects the 2008 economic disaster, I guess it's fair to call it and it was at its height, but is has continuously and appropriately worked its way down, because more people are able to support themselves and their families and move away from that, that support system. And so there's lots of discussion about is that really accurately what that reflects, but best estimates are that, it really is a really good inverse relationship to the economy. And that it kicks in when it is when it's left to, to being delivered as it was originally or subsequently designed. It is most responsive, when the need is high, and it fades back into less need when economic times are better.

So what are some of the ways the besides, you know, at a macro scale on the economy and things like that? What are some of the ways on a local scale, you assess the effectiveness of some of these programs?

Well, the one of the ones I mentioned that the expanded Food Nutrition Education Program is one that is really a hallmark it was in in created in 1969. It was Orvil. Friedman was the Secretary of Agriculture at the time, and he wrote a letter to Lyndon Johnson, who was president and said, Mr. President, there are people in this country who do not know how to feed their families, and they need the information that and this is his words, that extension, Homemakers would, you know, give them at a meeting, but these people are not likely to go to meetings. So we need these educators to go into the homes and to work with the families one on one. And that's the way that program was started back 50 years ago. Well, the beauty of that program, and the reason it's still alive after 50 years, in my opinion, is because in the 80s, before anyone was calling for evaluation, we developed we I was not in it, but they the program developed a very complete evaluation system that is looks at a family's practices pre program, and then post program and also addresses other aspects of their behavior that change over time. So instead of just how did you like the program, it really is these are the changes that that we have made as a result of the program, and that has been able to allow our program to, to really sort of continue prove its impact through the years. So that's one example.

It's really obvious, I think, Well, maybe it's not obvious, but it should be obvious to people like how nutrition matters for health, right, you know, but could you say something more about like, the the the other impacts, right, sort of what what, what difference is there for a family, right? So when they, when they improve their nutrition, it's just like in terms of just calories in terms of sort of, you know, vitamins and micronutrients? And sort of like, what impact does it have on people overall, in terms of the well being?

Some of the micronutrients are simply, I mean, all of them have ability to change life, but some of them are truly intergenerationally life changing. And what I'm thinking of is iron, the capacity to learn is increased exponentially when a child has enough iron in their diet during the formative times in their life. And so we talk a lot in maternal child nutrition about the first 1000 days, and that is during pregnancy during from the time of conception during pregnancy to their second birthday, and that is really key for optimal nutrition. So, and there's lots of nutrients that we talk about folic acid because we know that if it's missing, and that's most typically found in fruits and vegetables, but it can also be added to lots of grain foods. It's a B vitamin that's going to prevent many of the neural tube defects that we see still in other developing nations. And so that one is really key. So having a very diet with with again, one of the main things we talk about is increasing fruits and vegetables because nobody no matter what, nobody, nobody eats enough, it doesn't matter, it's not a message that's targeted at this audience or that audience, it's like, you can be safe if you say more fruits and veg. So there's, there's folic acid and vitamin A, which is either beta carotene as a precursor in fruits and vegetables, or, in the actual form version in animals is one of the main causes of blindness, lack of vitamin A, in the developing world. So, you know, some of these, nutrients that are not that difficult to obtain in foods are really lacking across the globe. So when you're talking global food systems, you know, it's like, yes, the, the macro giant, commodity type, making it work, and even down to the farm and making, you know, the farm, the farm prospers, but down to the individual and down to the, you know, the whole cross ability to, to, you know, just figure out the necessary foods to be on the plate is is a key part, I think about what I think when I think of global food systems, it's it's that that mega, but taken down to the mega number of individuals that benefit from it, and I don't think I answered your question completely. But iron, vitamin A, are two of the biggest ones. And probably those are some in then there's different populations and different ones that are specific to, you know, where they are, but those are two of the ones globally, that are particularly an infant and maternal.

That’s a great answer my question, I think, great, because, you know, it's, it's, again, it's just not about, it's not just about calories, right? Right. So there's so many things that are important,

It's so important to get out of this country, and no offense to this country, but to talk to people who really, until just recently, and most of them still don't talk, there is no talk of obesity, because people are struggling to get enough of, of, you know, enough. And so it's really hard for people to get their head wrapped around, buying an eating, or growing and eating a variety of food, because more to them means more of the starchy, you know, center of their plate food, whether it's maize, or, or whatever that rice, whatever that food is, that gets them that full tummy feeling that they are able to have enough to eat and their kids are able to go to sleep and so to introduce a concept of very diet is, is really beyond the scope of a lot of a lot of people's thinking at the individual local level. And so having some of those, those local educators that can put it in perspective that resonates with those families is key.

You talked about sort of getting some of these nutrients from you know, variety of sources. And obviously, the varied you know, fruits and vegetables is a great way but, but supplements to grains and stuff, right. And so, you know, in this country, we've got a lot of experience of additives, right, you know, vitamin D and milk and you know, the list is long, right? Sort of what, what's your view about? Or? I don't know, if you have a specific view about this, but what do you think about the difference between adding essential nutrients to food, like through the, you know, through a manufacturing process, or like improving, you know, shortening the cooking time through extrusion, like, ahead of time, versus like, trying to get these nutrients, you know, and your calories and sort of increasingly cooking, you know, getting getting, making things easy, more easily available, like through other methods, right. So, like, basically, you know, should we just be trying to eat more fruits and vegetables? Or is it okay to sort of set up a system where, you know, hey, we need certain things, let's get it into other parts of our food, so we don't have to worry about the fact that we're not eating enough fruits and vegetables.

You know, I think, I don't think it's one or the other. I think it's I think it's a mix I remember it seeing in Kenya, and they stopped the bus after about the fifth time I made him stop. And so I could hang out the window and take a picture of this sign that said, Ken salt, and it's iodized salt. And it's like, that is huge. And in we are the one of the only developing nations that doesn't require that iodine be in all our salt. We have the option of it, but we have the freedom to not pick iodine too. So we do have in some cases, reoccurrence of goiter indeveloping nations where they have iodine added to the salt. It's a simple fix relatively simple fix for problem that is a health issue forever and ever. And not only is it goiter, but it's also cretinism. In developing in infants, you know, it takes a different form when it's birth and young children. So it's, it's, it's a simple fix and it needs it's an inexpensive and complete coverage of people to get that, that nutrients that they need. I feel the same way about folic acid, it really corrected a lot of things, I think we're we're starting to find out now I think that there are some sort of individual age related, you know, folic acid more is not always better as you age, there's some some issues, it looks like that there can be too much and it may affect heart health. And so to have it across the board in every you know, every cereal or bread may not be the best solution. But it's certainly solved one of the huge problems that we saw in our country, and worldwide too, so it wasn't just the US. So I don't really think there's, as a dietitian, I'm programmed to say if we can get it through our diet that is probably best. But we know population wise that there are several nutrients that we cannot get adequately, easily through our diet, even in this country. During pregnancy, it is difficult, if not impossible to get enough iron to for women during pregnancy, at the level that is needed. So that's one of the main things that's almost always included in a prenatal vitamin. And it's simply because diet wise, it would be very difficult to do that at a time when many women aren't feeling like eating enough, let alone more to support that particular nutrient. So I think it's a mix of if we can get it from the diet, great. But if there are ways that we can affect health of populations, in through appropriate supplementation, then I think those need to be pursued.

And fruits and vegetables in particular fresh ones are expensive, right?

They are. They're seasonal, I mean, we got issues we can we can talk about that across Kansas, and you may be able to get him in the southeast corner, but the Northwest, you know, and when we talk about fresh, how fresh is fresh, it's different if you live in California, and it truly is grown right there versus you know, it's shipped in and brought in and so you can have fresh, you know, something at your western Kansas grocery store. 

So how quickly do things lose their nutritional value?

Oh, a lot of them will are losing like vitamin C. And some of those are really volatile, they'll go away shortly after they're harvested. And so ideally, we'll tell people that canned food may be inexpensive, but it's picked at its peak. And it's captured, the nutrition is captured at that point. And so we encourage people that instead of thinking that everything ideally is fresh, that you have a variety of food and that you not worry about it being we have a healthy, very complete food system that you not worry about it necessarily being organic, and it doesn't necessarily need to be fresh because foods are are picked and and packaged at at a real optimal nutrient level.

Could you say a little bit more about food access. In Kansas? I think a lot of people thinking that, you know, in the United States that food is accessible to pretty much anybody, right? Because a lot of people have cars and that sort of thing. But you know, depending on your situation, your access to a grocery store might not be possible, right?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and this is something we talked about a lot and again in our programs and extension, but I think food access is a really big part of it. And in Kansas we have areas and even in our county here in Riley County, we have areas that food access is not easy. And when you think about that, there's two components to it, there has to be a place where food is provided like a grocery store, but then you have to have the financial support to be able to to access the access and so you may be you may be several miles away from a grocery store but it's not a food desert if you have a car and you can hop in your car and go to the grocery store as many times a week as you need to but if you don't have access and there's not public transportation, and you don't have the money to make that happen or you're working hard to get the money so you have two jobs and you're the store closes while you're you know so it works and the same is true. If you even count in the pantry only serves people in one county and you work in that county but you live outside the county because the cost of living is less there. And so you've got access problems that, you know, we best intend to fix things and help things, but we create some of those as well, sometimes with our systems. And so, it is not that difficult to identify what we call and now I think they're starting to develop new terms, but food deserts where food access is more limited than you might ever think, in a country with this much to offer.

Yeah, and you said even here on campus, you know, hidden hunger is a real issue more than you would think, you know, university in a relatively prosperous area around.

Yeah, and that's, that's something that that people much smarter than me have been aware of for a while. But the we have a case cat's cupboard as a food pantry that has been a male vailable for last couple of years. Because it was identified that as costs go up for college students, they may be able to, you know, live in, in a very expensive area, or they may be able to hold down a job or to to make their tuition and books. But sometimes that last thing that that is covered is his food, and they'll go without the variety, or the quantity of food that they need to stay healthy. And it was identified in several different ways from several different directions. That was not only an issue here on our Kansas State campus, but on many campuses across the country.

One thing I wanted to make sure that we covered what we have you what we have you here, you talked about for young mothers and young parents and child nutrition and things like that it's important for them to get things like iron and folic acid and whatnot. Is there. What other things do you think young parents should keep in mind or you wish more people understood about child nutrition?

Oh, you just touched on it. Now we're here for the rest of it.

That's great, as long as you need.

One of the things that I've been partnering with another extension specialist, he's in family child development and nutrition is I've had a real focus for a while on parenting through feeding. And I think that's a real important aspect of it is that the whole idea of adequately nourishing your child's not only nutrition, nutrient needs, but their whole, their whole, just educational and emotional support, oftentimes happens through parenting and parenting is always on display. If you think about it, during feeding, it's a given a take, and so I early subscribed to the idea, of an educator. She's a registered dietician who's also has a master's in social work and, and has spent her life counseling families on feeding problems with children. And her name is Ellen sadder. And she has developed what she has come to call the division of responsibility in feeding. And basically, she's saying it's up to the parents to, to, to choose the to, you know, to provide healthy foods in a safe and dependable setting for the child, but it's up to the child to decide how much food to eat, or if to eat it all. And so thinking about that, and working with parents, if if the child has the responsibility of how much to eat, and whether or not to eat at all, that means that instead of prodding your child to just take two bites, just just take a bite, clean your plate, or whatever the current dialogue of the day is from parent to child. Instead of doing that we trust the child's appetite, and the fact that they are programmed to grow. And we do other things. So we make this the setting. You know, I'm not saying that it's an entertainment, you know, everything's always perfect. It's not that at all, but it's a functional, very positive time, where kids feel supported, as they learn to navigate food and their own eating capability to become eaters that are capable. And we work a lot with parents through programs, to to sort of instill that, that strength in them and then to also understand that what they're looking at may not just be, you know, picky eating, there are other things that it can be around and how To how to sort of arm themselves with information and and some tools that might help them pass through some of those, those challenging stages.

Is there some research out there the sort of shows, if you allow the child to make these decisions over time that they do develop us, are they given the adequate nutrition that didn't need rather than trying to force it on the child at any particular time?

It's not that they develop faster, it's that they become competent eaters. And so they trust their own ability to start and stop eating, to have the ability to say, I don't care for that, or I don't feel like eating now, I'm not going to eat anything. And that's not a time for mom or grandma, or granddad to freak out. It's, it's, it's, the child has that responsibility to be able to say that, because we know as parents that they're going to eat when they're hungry. I mean, there's a few ground rules that we understand about how they're going to eat when they're hungry. And that, you know, if they go on a, let's say, they go on a food jig, and they only will want to eat one food for a period of time, you offer a food that you know, that they like, in addition to new and different foods, and you continue to offer foods, you don't make a big thing about it, if they're only, you know, going to eat one food. And so you kind of yes, there is research, and that's, that's the whole point, there is research that shows that by doing that, you let them know, kids know that there are boundaries, you know, that they can be cranky and obstinate, and food is still going to be on the table, they're still going to have that interaction and that support from their parents. And so it really gives them sort of this, this framework for success and, and it shows that there's all sorts of research on this. But there's it shows that when children are very little in their brought to the table, and they have this this sort of responsive parenting feeding, they develop their vocabulary, better they interact, they learn communication skills earlier, as teenagers, they're less likely to have delinquency behaviors, there's less likely to have drug use less likely to have nutrition. Like food disordered eating. And so there's, there's a ton of research out that shows that if people develop young people, kids develop into competent eaters, that a lot of the issues that come along with that have a food sort of framework to them can be avoided.

So this is interesting on so many levels, but this is all about the social part of delivering food, right? It's not about what you're delivering as much as how you're delivering and everything like that is interesting, because, you know, when so much of what we're talking about with global food systems, you know, production and then sort of, you know, whatever, but sort of food is food is complicated, right? And sort of, and it's so social, right and cultural. Right. And this is I think an important part to be you know, highlighting and man, you know, battles between parents and kids around food or jobs. Yeah, right. Yes. Right. Yeah, it's always gonna happen. Yeah, so obviously, you know, you said no, you know, food doesn't become punishment, I heard you say, right, that's always gonna be there. Alright, so it was always hard for me as a parent, right, not to sort of do a little bit of that forcing. I mean, we, I think we tried to do something that was kind of like this, we said, our kids aren't gonna starve, they'll, you know, they'll eat right? You know, and, and we're not gonna make something just for them, we're gonna make what we're gonna make, and they can choose to eat or not. And so, you know, we felt pretty good about that. But man, there's so many times I'm like, No, you got to eat this, right? 

You know, and, it's built into us, you know, it's like, I made this for you. And it's sort of, you know, it still comes out. But I think, just, even if you are only, you know, cognizant of it, and 90% of the time you try to do that, it's just remembering that the, for lack of a better term, the clean plate club, or the to Bike Club, which is interesting. You know, they're well meaning books coming out from all different directions that talk about that, but that's infringing on the child's responsibility is to decide how much to eat or if to eat at all. So if we can just say, you know, here's, here's what I'm offering today, and you can have, you know, you can have this or this. So there's choices involved, but you control that the food is healthy, you control that it's offered regularly, so the child doesn't have to wonder where their next meal comes from. And you keep the you know, the discussion, it's not about, you know, punitive and you keep the discussion light and positive, that those are very positive aspects not only of eating competent Stephen A parenting.

I was just gonna say it's fascinating to listen to you describe that and to the impact that has the effect that has as the child grows. Expanding that out just a little bit. What are the guidelines if the child 30 minutes later comes back and said, I'm ready to eat now?

Well, according again to Ellen Sattar, that's one of the things that you do is you can say, okay, you don't have to eat this. But your next opportunity, you know, you'll have a snack it at three, like we always do, and then there'll be supper, so find the ground rules. And yes, that Yeah, and so there won't be the opportunity to come back and, and, you know, demand something in 30 minutes, or dig in the snack or whatever it might be. And, yeah, so it gives, it gives parents a break, too, because you have sort of this set of things that you can, you know, because nobody wants to screw up their kids eating. But when kids aren't sure that where the next meal is coming from, or that they, you know, can trust themselves, let's say that somebody is so worried about some child's weight that it's like, no, don't eat that you or don't, don't take more, you know, you've had enough or something like that, when you're over doing that part of their responsibility. It undermines their ability to trust their own satiety. And so there's instances in settings where kids will just eat meat and eat and eat, because they're not sure that, you know, they will get a chance again, because you know, it's been restricted or something. And so, there's lots of cases like that, where, and that that can be normalized, but it is then you know, there's there's feeding clinics and parenting, feeding clinics and all sorts of, of manifestations of trying to get that message through to parents that it's really, and and you know, when you think about it, it starts at the very beginning, if a child is breastfed, they can't be forced fed, they are able to say I've had enough and I don't choose to eat right now, from the very beginning. And so if an infant that's just born has that capacity to do that, we need to nourish and support that, as they grow to be competent, older eaters, too.

So are there other trade offs there? Is there evidence that also like that trying of different foods? increases their palate longer term? So that like, actually, if you, right, sort of, if you force some new foods on them, does that actually have benefits? 

Or no, no, I think trying enforcing is the key right there. You there are, and I, this changes all the time, so I can't tell you, but there, there are windows, where offering different foods are less likely to be rejected. And so try a variety of foods on a regular basis, and to re offer and to be okay, if, by trying this food today, I'm going to look at smell it and you know, set it really close to my face and look at it for a while, but I may not eat it till next time. Because the senses all come into play at the same time. And so it's not necessarily taste is the one that's going to win out. But yes, by offering a variety and then being real calm about the way that that food is offered, or that you know that it can be rejected without upsetting mom, I can reject the food, but Mom's not gonna reject me because of that. And so being able to to feel confidence in making those choices and not upset that family relationship is key in a child's development.

You mentioned the role of breastfeeding and sort of setting up healthy child development and you did your PhD on the effects of breastfeeding. Correct. Could you say a little bit more about the science behind that and the importance of it?

Well, if we weren't gonna be here all day, before we are now. Yeah, it's just pretty amazing. All the things what I particularly looked at with my research was this was back in, like, early 2000s was the effect of prolonged breastfeeding on child overweight. And there's a lot of research and we used big data from WIC and looked at datasets for Kansas infants and those who who are breastfed at least six months started to show some real protective effect against overweight at age four, and h four we use because it's the nature before they introduce in schools and get other outside food things and so and since that time, it's it's been repeated and reaffirmed in a lot of different places. And that was actually taking Kansas and looking at it because there had been a nationwide study that didn't include Kansas and so it you used, it used WIC data, looking at that audience where we knew that we had at one time we had a higher incidence of, of child overweight in WIC audience than in a generic across the board. zero to two, audience and so on. Yeah. So there's that. And then there's all the nutrition support that's much stronger. And the fact that, you know, so many things are available through breast milk that we're just still struggling to continue to find what it means in should it be added to infant formula even to this day. And so, yeah, and then the whole, nurturing and the child's ability to be in charge of their eating, there's just a myriad of benefits to it.

What are the mechanisms to protection against being overweight? 

Is that oh, that's yeah, and that has changed over time to they used to think that it was, I need to check these again, they used to think that it was was something enzymatic, I think, or something, but now they're starting to think that maybe it actually is a some sort of genetic or DNA sort of programming early on, that's a programming thing. And I, I am not as up to date on the information as they used to be, but they have started to have more. More thinking, and I think that it's actually their thinking that programming for satiety sets in earlier something about that.

I mean, it's got to be really, really complicated. I'm sure we don't like, like you said, we still don't really understand everything. 

That's it. That's the beauty of nutrition, you know, it's really relatively young science. And so a lot of this stuff, just like the biome, and I was just going to ask Mike, yeah, they're just starting to figure it out. And to really attribute some of the science to some of the changes and, and the, you know, the autoimmune diseases and things that that come up, they're just starting to really start to put some of that together. 

So it’s which is another whole aspect of food that sort of it's not then just even about the nutrients, but it's about sort of what else are you getting when you're eating right, sort of what other microbes right are you getting?

And what did you get once it's in there? And yeah, it's crazy. It's, so I wanted to ask, I keep on talking here, I'm sorry, but asking you questions, but I'm sure other people say things too, but sort of, you just said something about nutrition, being a young science and sort of Alright, so one of the first things I think people think about when they I don't know, but sort of with nutrition science, one of the things that I hear when I talk to people about science communication, right? You know, nutrition comes up as one of these examples. Well, first, they said it was this, it was bad for you. And now they say it's that and then insert it. And then you know, this is fat and sugar, and it's sort of butter and margarine, and it's all these things and sort of, they don't know what they're talking about. Right? So what do you think about this? 

Cuz I'm sure the reason I got into the field is because it's so interesting, and it's still evolving. It's like, yeah, you know, I think we're at our most boring when we think everything is solved, and we figured it out. And let's move on. And so I think that's a perfect example, when I, when I first started out in dietetics, we actually, you know, fat was the, the evil. And, you know, if I would have ever thought that I would get to the point where I would think that, you know, dairy fat now, it's got some really sort of very positive properties that they're starting to find out about. And, you know, avocados and nuts and all these things that weigh back, you know, it's like fat. But such healthy types of fat and the effect of different kinds of fat and what it has to do. And yeah, and the one of my favorite ones to use an example of that, and I love doing it when I'm talking to an audience of seniors is like, member eggs. Member her eggs used to be the criminal, you were right, eggs are back, you know, they're positive. And so and then just the other day I saw something, it's like, well, maybe dietary cholesterol is a problem. And it's like, man, don't go there. Because we're finding out now all this stuff about choline and eggs are one of the best sources of choline is like this nutrient that's been around since the 1860s. But they're just starting to figure out that it may reprogram some of the biome and have you know that we need different levels at different times during our life, depending on you know, whether or not we're making estrogen is women in childbearing years. And so it's like, this is really fascinating stuff. So yeah, so eggs. They're good right now, you know, and I love talking to people about that, but I like getting them to the point where they understand that it is a young science, so you're just figuring out vitamins back in the 20s and 30s. of you know, 1920s and 1930s. So it's stuff is really relatively young. And I just threw out a textbook. I think I told you this, that it was 2000 and it was saying, don't try to attribute anything to To choline, because it really is a nutrient that doesn't have any, any use in the body. And it's like holy cow, somebody gets a hold of this. That is so not where the research is now. So, yeah, to me, that's the fascinating part. But I do understand that it frustrates people. But I think, you know, since the fact that we eat every single day, many times a day, most of us to be able to sort of tweak our eating pattern, as nutrition changes shouldn't be that foreign. It's not like, we're going to find out that we got a bad car, and we have to live with it for 10 years, you can make adjustments to your nutrition as you go along. And it shouldn't be that sort of much of a jolt to people to sort of learn and adapt as they go along. But again, I guess that's sort of job security for nutrition educators for you.

Yeah. So, this is a you know, there's always uncertainty, right? You know, there's uncertainty Now, like all science, right, sort of like, all right, and we make mistakes, right scientists. So that's important. So the but one of the things this brings up is sort of the question like, when do you turn the science into policy? And when do you as a extension specialist, turn the science, it's out there into a recommendation? Because that's kind of where some of this can go wrong? Sometimes, right? Sort of, we've got the science, it's uncertain. Oh, you know, so eggs, maybe, maybe not, you know, fat, whatever. But so then it comes down, like, reduce your fat. And I think one of the issues that you just hinted at was that sort of too often, we take those directives, way too seriously, too extensively. We don't tweet or like all of a sudden, too early, we're gone. But sort of how do you balance that to sort of, like, How soon do you start to make a recommendation? How confident are you in recommendations? You know, how do you handle that?

Also, to add to that, I mean, we're all genetically different, right. And we all have very different backgrounds. We have different childhoods. You know, how do you think about that, too, because there probably isn't one policy right? For everybody. Right?

Yep. And I think that one is just really, it's just really starting to unfold. I think we're really just starting to learn about that. And I think that, for example, choline is a perfect example of that. And I think gluten may be another one, where it's going to react with different people, and they're going to have different, you know, different sort of reactions, or reprogramming, actually from some of these nutrients. And so do you get a lot of questions about gluten? Oh, yeah, that's one of the lessons I wrote a few years back was on gluten when, when it was going from, because again, when I was in school, they talked about celiac, very few people have celiac, this is something you may need to know about. If you're in a clinical setting, learn about this. And then to the point where, oh, let's all try it. It's a great weight loss diet, and everywhere in between. And so I, just a few years ago, felt like it was time and there was lots of stuff being developed out there to write this lesson on. Okay, here's all the reasons that we know of today, why you might need to talk about gluten restricted diets, and it's there's allergies and additions to you know, and intolerances. In addition to celiac, and there's all these things, and then, you know, does it is it effective for weight loss diet? Well, in extension, we try to, you know, really not be black, white, you know, we weigh the science we talked about, and it's like no, it doesn't seem to really be effective just for weight loss. And it's super restrictive, you lose a lot of nutrition in the offing while you, you know, throw the baby out with the bathwater, as far as you know, getting rid of gluten. So, yeah, we get a lot of questions about that vitamin D is another one. There are people and research out there that say that vitamin D is the solution to a lot of things that whether it's autoimmune diseases, you know, all sorts of things that are being attributed to vitamin D, at some level, but the research supports only bone health right now. That's where the science is most complete. We've had recommendations that we increase it during pregnancy, it's pretty exciting stuff, but they're not there yet. So what we end up doing what I think we are bound to do in at least in these two programs, and I think it's just good sense is we follow those US Dietary Guidelines for Americans, those are put together by really strong appropriate groups of people who look at the science, see if there's enough weight to the science at the current time to say, you know, we can now say this about this, if we can't see it, we can see it's looking like this. But you know, we the science isn't there yet. So this is all we can say like about vitamin D, they really can say bone health, there's all those other things that they are starting to attribute to it and depending on who the scientist is, there's tons of pressure to make some of those changes. But you have to weigh the science and make sure that you know and that's when something becomes you know, research, even applied research versus public health policy. And so it's a continuum.

We want to be respectful of your time. Maureen Scott, do you have any further questions? Do you have anything else that you would like to say before we sign off?

Um, no, I think I appreciate the opportunity to talk about more things than I ever thought we would be talking about today. I hope I've done well, by extension extension is a very huge and complex system. And I my slice in family consumer sciences is part of it. So, you know, to talk about extension and their focus on the grand challenges, one of which is global food systems, I think really merits a bigger look than what I was able to share with you.

Well, if people want to get in contact with you, how might they do that? 

Oh, I’m just Proctor@ksu.edu. 

Great. Dr. Sandy Packer. Thanks so much. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks. If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

Dr. Nathan Nelson is a Professor of Soil Fertility and Nutrient Management at Kansas State University. A native of Manhattan and an avid outdoorsman, he possesses a strong interest in developing agricultural systems that not only maximize productivity but protect environmental quality as well. Our discussion in this episode covers how and why farmers make the fertilizer decisions that they do and what that means for water quality. Nathan directs the Kansas Agricultural Watershed (KAW) Field Laboratory, a unique 18 plot watershed project, to better understand how cover cropping and fertilizer application practices impact phosphorus dynamics on Kansas no-till fields.

For more about Dr. Nelson and the KAW project check out:

https://www.agronomy.k-state.edu/people/faculty/nelson-nathan/

Transcript:

Cover Crops and Agricultural Fertilizers: The Complexities of Crop Nutrient Management with Dr. Nathan Nelson – Soil Fertility

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of global food systems. It's produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Jay Weeks PhD candidate in the Department of Agronomy. My co host is Scott Tanona, an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy who specializes in the philosophy of science. Welcome back, everybody. Often in popular culture, agricultural fertilizers get a bad rap, while they're used definitely does have the potential to come in and environmental costs through promotion of algal blooms or emission of greenhouse gasses. The truth is, these amendments are necessary to produce the abundant and affordable food supply that many of us around the world enjoy today. To discuss the ins and outs of soil nutrient management, we spoke with Dr. Nathan Nelson. Dr. Nelson is a professor of soil fertility and nutrient management here at Kansas State University, a native of Manhattan and an avid outdoorsman. He has a strong interest in developing agricultural systems that not only maximize productivity, but protect environmental quality as well. Our discussion in this episode covers how and why farmers make the fertilizer decisions that they do, and what that means for water quality. Dr. Nelson directs the Kansas agricultural watershed Field Laboratory, a unique 18 plot watershed project to better understand how cover cropping and fertilizer application practices impact phosphorus dynamics on Kansas no till fields, Scott John and I had a great conversation talking with Nathan, having known him for a number of years, I always appreciate the points of view that he brings to agricultural research, I think you will to enjoy. Dr. Nathan Nelson, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. I appreciate the invitation. And I look forward to the discussion.

So I typically do a small intro before the podcast even begins. But in your own words, what's a little bit about your background? How did you get here?

Sure, yeah, um, you know, I've always been really interested in conservation and natural sciences. Since you know, young age, I grew up on a very, very small farm, just outside of Manhattan, Kansas here, but spent a good portion of my younger years up through high school, spending summers on my grandfather's dairy, which is out in out in Utah and western, the western states. And so and that's where, and so I was familiar with agriculture, and things like that, but really passionate about conservation and ecology and environmental things, actually went to school started off in a conservation kind of biology type program, and did a lot of work looking at natural resource conservation, like parks and wild lands and things like that. And it didn't take me too long to realize that a lot of that was managing people that were and their access to natural resources. Whereas in agriculture, you're managing the natural resources. And agriculture quickly became much more interesting to me, it was always familiar to me. But now very interesting is really, really the number one user of natural resources. I still feel fairly passionate that is our most important use of natural resources that feeds us. And we need to conserve it and make sure that we protect the resources, the soil resources that we have, as well as the water resources, everything that goes around it so that we can continue to provide food sustainably. And so that's kind of the background of where I got into then I came to Kansas State actually here, spent a few years here, finished up an undergraduate degree here at Kansas State, went to North Carolina State for Masters and PhD in soil science. And worked in soil fertility, nutrient management, a lot with the animal industry in North Carolina, and then moved out to Idaho in Kimberley, Idaho, near Twin Falls, worked for the USDA in the their irrigation soils research lab and then moved back here to Kansas State so it kind of made a little bit of tour of the nation and ended back up at home.

Was it the you know, you were seeing environmental degradation and things is that what got you really interested in it or just enjoyed the outdoors and being part of it and wanting to conserve it for the future?

Some of both. I've enjoyed the outdoors and really enjoyed doing that. But then at the same time, I saw some degradation and some When I was a kid, I don't want to throw my dad under the bus. But he came from a, you know, a different mentality. And, you know, we had, you know, a burn pile and things that got spread out on the land. And when there were some trash that didn't know what to do with you found a goalie and it stopped some erosion. And I thought, well, you know, that's one way to do it, but maybe there's a better way. So and we still have good discussion. There was one time when he actually dumped a bunch of sheetrock in a landfill. And then later on, he says, Well, you know, he learned that that was a good soil amendment. And I said, Well, yeah, but you weren't using it that way anyway. No, it wasn't covered leaded paint. And I still I was like, come on. Gypsum can be a good land can be a good soil amendment. But anyway, 

Not all in one place.

Where it's gonna get washed away in the next big rainstorm. But anyway, so some of that, and I kind of just noticed, I said, Well, you know, there's probably a better way to manage some of these resources. And, I was pretty passionate about keeping things clean. I really enjoyed using fishing and outdoors and water, but wanted to see cleaner water.

So you were working with the animal industry as a grad student, what was that project? What were you doing?

A few different projects mainly, first, I was looking at ways to process swine lagoon effluent to recover phosphorus from it. So looked at precipitating out struvite, which is a magnesium ammonium phosphate mineral, which it can precipitate out naturally, we're trying to enhance that precipitation and then recover the product. So that was a lot of fun. And looked at that as a nutrient source for plants as a fertilizer, then I started looking at phosphate leaching in sandy soils, typical of the North Carolina coastal plain, to try and make some estimates of how fast it was moving, what soil properties affected its leaching, and if this phosphate leaching was actually going to maybe become an environmental problem years down the road. So looked at that.

So a lot of work with phosphorus, why phosphorus?

You know, it was a little bit what it's available, but also I was quite interested in phosphorus because it has a it plays a pretty big role in water quality and algal blooms and so forth. If you get too much phosphorus in freshwater, you can get algal blooms and fish kills and some other things. So there was an environmental side to this that was I was interested in trying to keep it out of the water, but at the same time, it's an incredibly important for our agricultural production. So we need this nutrient it's pretty important for the farms and it just kind of made a good blend of my interests of agriculture and, and conservation and protecting water quality.

Nathan Help Help rookie or novice out here. When you refer to soil fertility, what do you what are you actually speaking about?

So for me, soil fertility is I'm going to say it is a pretty broad field, but basically nutrient management managing nutrients in agro ecosystems, if you want to kind of be specific, but so that would include both on the fields as well as that area around the fields and water draining off of the fields, that whole system, we're looking at managing the nutrients to maximize sustainable production of agriculture and minimize any any negative effects. And so this would go for any nutrient increasing, so part of this is an understanding of the cycling and soils cycling through plants. So there's a nutrient cycling side of this fertilizer management so how to what sources of fertilizer, how to place them at a time them appropriately. So it's the fertilizer management as well. And then some crop management and best management practices to keep that nutrient in the field. So it's that entire dynamic, pretty broad, broad area more than just fertilizers…

and does that conversation or does that subject cover anti nutrients as well? high salt concentrations and..

Oh, yeah, the like, sure. Sure, high salts, maybe some toxicities and things like that. Those would fall into soil fertility. But they also salt will also go into some soil physics and stuff because cuz that doesn't in some of these things bridge into some other areas because high salt content content often relates back to or or deals with soil physical properties and irrigation and some other things that bring in some other areas of soil science beyond just soil fertility and but the same thing soil fertility brings in some things from soil microbiology, and there's there's overlap between all these disciplines. 

Yeah, great. So thanks. So as the fertility just about like mostly delivery of nutrients to the plants, then is when you use the word fertility as opposed to other ways in which the plants are affected in their health.

Yeah, primarily, primarily nutrient delivery him.

So not everybody that listens will be familiar with like fertilizer application and things like that, right? I mean, fertilizers get thrown into the agro chemical category, in the get lumped in with pesticides and herbicides and that sort of thing. How does the farmer make a decision about what fertilizers to use what, you know, what goes into a fertilizer application?

Sure, yeah. So you know, every farmer aisle, in general, you're going to be looking at what your plant needs, and can it get that nutrient from their basic building blocks nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, then you got calcium, magnesium, and go through the whole list of, of elements that plants need to acquire out of the soil. And so you're going to look at what the soil can supply. And if the soil can't supply it, you're gonna look at some other way to supply that nutrient. Could be through manure could be through from fertilizer, it could be, you know, changing cropping systems to improve availability of some nutrient. Or it could be just changing cropping systems that choose a crop that may be tolerant of a deficiency. So there's four different things. Primarily, producers add nitrogen, and phosphorus, and potassium, and then some micronutrients. And when they make their decisions there, they're going to look at the crops that they're growing, the system that they're in, if they're irrigated, they still bit different than dry land, their yield potential there, their soils and climate, make some estimate of how much nutrient they're going to need. And then choose a fertilizer source. And their choice is gonna, there's gonna be some personal preference, there's gonna be some equipment, some management styles, a lot of different decisions go into exactly what fertilizer and nutrient source, they're gonna, they're gonna choose. So there are a lot of things, it's hard to say, this is exactly what every farmer does, they're all gonna do something different.

Sure. But there are tests that farmers can do right to determine or estimate how much of some nutrients that is available to plants before they make those sorts of applications.

Sure, yeah, there are soil analyses, and we highly recommend producers to analyze their soil. And a lot of them do, some don't, some make recommendations based on that a lot do that I think the good. The producers that are progressive are going to pay quite, quite close attention to those analyses, because that's going to help them make sure that they're not spending extra money on fertilizer that they shouldn't, or they're not losing some yield, because they don't have enough nutrient things like that.

So I want to ask it, along these lines, how, how fertilizing has changed over time, you're talking about sort of your dad being kind of old school, right? And then you're also mentioning concerns about phosphorus leaching, right. We're, we're there you're talking about, specifically from the waste pools. Right, you know, but, but this is a general concern. That's, you know, I don't know how long it's been but sort of increasing attention to right. fertilizer runoff, right, leading to algae blooms, and things like that. Right. So could you say something a little bit about, like, how, how techniques have changed over time? Or how, you know, how much awareness has changed, right? So is it so in the farmers mind is mostly about cost? Like, you don't want to over fertilize because you spent too much? You know, versus attending to the concerns about right over nutrient, you know, over nutrients? Right, and, you know, elsewhere?

Sure, so if we go back 50-60-70 years, really, that's when fertilizers really started becoming more prevalent in agriculture initially, yields were a little bit lower. They were growing crops that worked, you know, that they were mining a lot of the nutrient in the soil, right. So when people first started applying these fertilizers, a lot of the focus in soil fertility was on finding the right rate and actually helping producers make sure that they're maximizing yield. Okay, initially, and actually, for quite a while fertilizers tended to have Lower and fairly steady cost. And with that lower steadier costs, the idea was, there wasn't a downside of applying too much. Or, you know, you'd want to make sure you had enough. And so there was a lot of building up the soil building soil fertility was a lot of the very common mentality and to do that with fertilizers. And then, at the same time, you had a lot of manure. And that's what people had been using, bulky, kind of stinky, kind of tough to manage. And with this new fertilizer that came along, that was really nice and handy to manage. Somewhat, the manures kind of maybe fell out a little out of fashion a little bit, right. And people looked at that more of as a waste product. And so there was a period of time where you had a lot of nutrients and manure that were really viewed as a waste and trying to get rid of it. Your objective in managing that was to get rid of it. Because you had this easy fertilizer that was cheap. And then not a whole lot of attention to losses. Now, over time, we realized that, oh, no, there are some issues with loss. And that can cause some problems in water bodies, groundwater, as well as surface water, as well as saltwater. And also, fertilizer prices have in the last 10 years become a lot more erratic. Some spikes have gone up, and they've been quite expensive. Why is that? You know, I'm gonna have to speculate on that. One is exactly why I think it's got to be complicated. It's complicated. And part of it has to do with, I think we're moving more towards a world market where the US doesn't control so much of the fertilizer market. And you have other countries with a lot of purchasing power. And then all of a sudden, you know, back in the 60s, when we were the number one user of a lot of this stuff, and supplier, we control the market steady prices. It's more than that, though, probably. But that's part of it. Anyway, so there, there are a lot of factors that went into this, but he had a little bit more of erratic prices. And that has stayed about true, they haven't really stable that stabilized a whole lot. They're stable. So producers are a little bit more interested in, especially in the last 10 years, producers are more interested in the economic side of managing and not over applying fertilizers.

So I want to get to a couple things. One, I want to talk more about what the ways in which fertilizer is lost, because people have a lot of concerns about getting into groundwater or or into freshwater bodies and stuff like that. But first, could you say a little bit about her about the issues surrounding manure and fertility and why manure application is more complicated than it? It might seem our right, right.

Sure, yeah. It has it comes really comes down to the concentration and the physical state. Right. So our fertilizers are highly concentrated nutrient sources, I mean, some of them we're looking at almost 50% of the product is the nutrient that we're interested in. Whereas in manures, you might be 1% 2% 3%, pretty, pretty diluted, from a nutrient standpoint, so you have to add a lot of it. And then it's difficult to know how much nutrient is in the manure. Right. So manure is, by nature very heterogeneous. What they eat, right, depends on what they eat, and depends on how the bedding is mixed with it. And, you know, it depends on what manure source you're looking at, from one farm to the next from one animal to next, whatever, some are a little bit more consistent, and some are very inconsistent. So there's a little bit of a guessing game with how much nutrient is there. And then the availability is different, because a lot of that nutrient is in an organic form that has to mineralize before the plant can use it. And it's a little bit hard to know exactly how fast that process is gonna go. So that has to do with soil and temperature and moisture and, and other things. So there's a lot of uncertainty about how much nutrient is there. And it's, it's a low concentration, so it's more expensive to haul. You have to have different equipment to apply it. So all of those factors kind of come into it's a little bit more difficult to manage.

Are there upsides to it in terms of the like the physics of the soil? 

And sure, yeah, there are definitely some upsides to it. And there's a lot of organic matter that can really improve the soil. You get a wide variety of nutrients and micronutrients and some other things they can help replenish the soil you get You know, some areas, we're running into some sulfur deficiencies. And but if you're using newer you don't have to because it supplies some other nutrients that you're maybe not counting on. So there are definitely some upsides.

And this stuff is becoming a greater concern as livestock operations sort of become more and more concentrated in certain parts of the country, right?

Yeah. So as the livestock operations become concentrated, you get a lot more manure in one area. And then to distribute that at agronomic rates, you have to haul it further, right from the source. Furthermore, the livestock industry itself tends to become concentrated in certain areas, like there's an area where there's a lot of chickens or broilers produced this area here is that a lot of Turkeys maybe somewhere else, and then somewhere else, there's a lot of hogs in this place. So and they tend to concentrate together a lot of those farms together. And so then you get, again, more of those nutrients all in one area.

An example would be like the Chesapeake Bay, right, where they have a lot of poultry operations. 

And yeah, a lot of poultry out there. So you truck all the grain in, which has a more concentrated nutrient content in it. Animals eat the grain, then the that you're left with the nutrients in the manure, and it's tough to haul that tough to get enough money to haul that back out where the grain came from.

And so when you're talking about the different types of animals, that means that different types of nutrients and sort of different qualities of the manure to right is that monogastric versus.

Yeah, very different from when you go from like, poultry to swine to beef, very different amount of nutrient they get different feed, they process the nutrients differently in their bodies. ruminants, like cattle can use a lot of the phosphorus, particularly some talking a little bit more about phosphorus here, but a lot of the phosphorus in some of these grains is in the form of phytate. I was gonna ask that question. And, and so the cattle can use that form of phosphorus, whereas the swine in the chickens cannot. And so then they end up supplementing swine feed and poultry feed with other phosphorus forms, because those animals can't use the phytate. So there are different ways to get around that as well. But anyway, those are just some of the details, some examples of why there are differences from one animal to next.

Getting back to the losses, what are the main ways in which fertilizers or nutrients are lost into other aspects of the environment? And how does that relate to the environmental quality issue?

Sure. I'll try and do this without giving you might like, week long lecture. But it really depends quite a bit on which nutrient you're talking about. The main nutrients that we're concerned about from a law standpoint are generally nitrogen and phosphorus and the last mechanisms and pathways are very different for nitrogen and phosphorus. Quick overview, nitrogen can be lost through gaseous forms as ammonia, or as nitrous oxide. So both of which can have some environmental implications in air quality. Nitrogen can also be leached as nitrate, and that leaching can move it into deep groundwater, or it can move it in through shallow groundwater into surface water from a base flow kind of mechanism. And that depends on the hydrology and of the area where you are, if you're not in western Kansas, where we don't have a whole lot of rivers, but we have a lot of groundwater deep groundwater, a lot of this moves down into the groundwater.

And that type of soil matters or two, right, so we got a sandy soil, it might move more quickly, whereas the high clay soil, it's more slowly right.

Is one type of loss worse than the other is moving to deep groundwater, more worrying or more difficult to handle or deal with and another type of loss.

You know, it depends upon the water use and so forth. Because we've got some cities in western Kansas that have to treat their water to if you have nitrate concentration, higher than 10 parts per million nitrate nitrogen, then that's above the drinking water limit and you have to treat that or it can cause some negative impacts on human health. So you're gonna have to treat that to get the nitrate out because they're pumping groundwater, but that exact same problem occurs For the Des Moines Waterworks, and they were pumping water out of surface water. Right? And so it kind of depends on where that water is being used, right? And what you're gonna have to do with it. If it goes into surface water and it moves down the Mississippi out into the Gulf of Mexico or in the Chesapeake Bay are into salt water, then it can cause then it can be an agent in eutrophication. Saltwater tends to be nitrogen limited. So you add nitrogen, you're basically fertilizing anyway, it's pretty simple, you know, add these nutrients to soil, we get higher growth, add these nutrients to water, you get higher growth, it's just you're growing algae, not crops.

If you add it, they will grow. Sure, yeah, sure.

And what's the problem with the algae growing?

Changes the ecosystem, right. The whole process referred to as cultural eutrophication or something just eutrophication is basically increase the fertility status, so you have more algal growth, you'll favor some algae species over others. And sometimes some of those algae species can cause problems. Or some toxic algae, some that release toxins. Anyway, so there's might be a shift in the type of algae. But overall, you get more algae, those algae die, then they decompose and that decomposition process, it can reduce the amount of oxygen. The microorganisms that decompose biomass are very efficient at pulling oxygen out of the water. So they'll pull out of the oxygen out and then the oxygen levels drop below what fish can eat, and then you get fish kills and our fish leave the area that contributes to what we refer to as the the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, where it's just our hypoxic region, where we have low dissolved oxygen because of that process.

Right? So nutrients management is complicated, right? Because we've got we need it for farmers need it to grow the food that we're and we're all leading. But then we've got all these potentially negative aspects too. So I want to get into your research. So what kinds of projects are you working on? And what are you trying to accomplish?

Sure. So I tend to be focused more on phosphorus management and phosphorus transport in the environment. And so the projects that I have are focused on that area. One of the main projects that I have right now is looking at the effects of fertilizer management and cover crops on phosphorus loss. So, and this stems, I'm gonna give you a bit of a background before I get into the details of this. 

You know, this is a really, this is a really cool project. So yeah, please describe the whole setup for everybody.

Okay, I'll give you a little bit, kind of what led us to this. Sure. Okay. So one of the ways to control phosphorus loss is to place it below the soil surface. If you put it below the soil surface, then that fertilizer is not going to be able to be kind of washed off with rainfall. Right? Heavy rains right after a fertilizer application can remove a lot of phosphorus. And I should put a little caveat next this one I say a lot. A lot from an environmental standpoint may not be that much from an agronomic standpoint. Okay. So like if you look at these systems, you might have 50 to 75 pounds of P 205 pounds of phosphorus cycling a year, through the fertilizer in the crop and things like that. If you lose two pounds, that's a lot. Okay, for the invite, because from the from the environment, but from an agronomic standpoint, that's a small percentage of what's actually out there and so it doesn't make that much of an economic impact in that year of application and year of cycling whatever.

Before you go on just out of curiosity rainwater not affect other nutrients. Nitrogen, same way doesn't pull this year. So nitrogen goes off. Yeah, gaseous right?

Well, you can you can have gaseous losses. Nitrogen is very mobile. And so it tends as soon as the rain so if you serve supplied like a nitrogen fertilizer, as soon as the rain hits that, it'll move that down into the soil. Okay, so initially, the first little bit of a rainstorm event generally that water is infiltrating and because that's very mobile, it moves down and it moves right down with with water, and so it doesn't get lost in runoff too much it tends to leach more, okay. Whereas phosphorus absorbs the soil particles. And so it will stay concentrated in that surface soil. And so it doesn't tend to move down deep in the soil but tends to move often in runoff. And And furthermore, two pounds of nitrogen loss even in runoff is not a big deal even environmentally, you know, whereas two pounds of phosphorus can have a pretty big impact. Yeah. So what led us to this is phosphorus. One way to manage phosphorus or to keep it from being lost in surface runoff is to subsurface apply it. It's more expensive, takes equipment that you have to put it down in the soil, that equipment is more expensive and are and move slower takes more fuel. Furthermore, it's hard to custom apply it that way. Right. Whereas broadcasting it or just dropping it on the soil surface, you can use equipment, the moves a lot faster. And a lot of fertilizer dealers will custom apply it that way. So you can just make a call, ask somebody apply your fertilizer, and they'll get it done at a fairly economic price.

So is it fair to say that a lot of farmers in Kansas prefer the broadcast method or using the broadcast method?

Sure, I wouldn't even just limit that to Kansas, just a lot of producers everywhere. There are economic reasons where broadcasting makes more sense.

And this is in a dry granular form, typically, where's the subsurface supplies of liquid form?

 Subsurface could be liquid, it could be dry, too. It depends on equipment, a lot of times there's liquid phosphorus that subsurface applied, but it doesn't have to be. So I ended up getting a lot of questions from producers saying, Well, you know, I know you'd rather have a subsurface apply it from an environmental standpoint. But what if I'm growing cover crops, right? If I grow cover crops, will that allow me to broadcast as fertilizer, and particularly their interest is broadcasting in the fall, they've got a lot more time to do these field operations. And so it's a lot easier to do the fertilizer application in the fall.

And for our listeners that have a non ag background, how would you define a cover crop?

So a cover crop would be a crop that you're growing, after you're after you harvest your main grain crop, you'll plant another crop, let that grow over the winter, or over the kind of the period where you wouldn't normally have anything growing in the field, and then you will terminate, or a lot of times you spray it with herbicide, terminate that crop prior to planting right prior to planting the next crop. So you would have something using a cover crop would keep a crop growing in that field year round, but you're not going to harvest that cover crop. Now some people do harvest it, but I'm going to from my standpoint, if you're harvesting it, it's just a second crop. A true cover crop would stay out there, you're not going to harvest it.

Why might a farmer do this?

Plant the cover crop? Yeah. Well, it can help build the soil that looked at a soil building kind of thing. It by keeping a crop out there growing all the time, you can see some improvements in soil biology, where you have more active microbial communities, which might help turn those nutrients over a little bit faster, it adds carbon to the soil. If you build your organic matter than your soil, you get some other, you know improvements in soil structure, very long term kind of benefits of soil management to say, hey, look, I'm going to try and invest in my soil and make this so that I can continue to use this soil for years to come pass it on to my children. Cover crops will also help with some other things that can help manage weeds. So if you're growing a cover crop, then they'll generally outcompete, you know, non desirable weeds. And the cover crop can sometimes be easier to kill the weeds so you'd rather grow something that's easy to kill, and then kill it and then plant your main crop. It can stop erosion. So there's a variety of reasons why.

So there are economic and environmental benefits possibly from growing these?

There are some agronomic and environmental benefits. I will say that there's a lot of discussion as far as the economic benefits, right? So the economic benefits can be tough to pencil out sometimes. It really depends upon the economic benefit would come in and long term. Right? 

It's not because it's investment sorry, because you have to because you have to plant it and either whatever it is a seed expensive typically for these things, or is it you know…

It can cost you $20 an acre, which is a substantial amount still a sunk cost. 

Yeah.

What kinds of plants farmers wanting?

Oh, there's a whole variety of crops out there the implant as far as winter crops. Looking at triticale Haley and rye and hairy vetch and there are some rapeseeds there's some radishes and some turnips and some sun hemp and some other things that are kind of summer crops that they might grow. It depends on the cropping system when they would, when they would plant it and when they would terminate it.

And what sort of benefits they may be looking for long term right. 

Alright, so how about the question? Does it help?

So yeah, and so We didn't know, we did not know at all, and particularly what the effect of cover crops were on water quality in a no till system. So a lot of our producers don't till. And we encourage that that's a great way to stop soil erosion or slow down soil erosion. I can't say stop, but you know, reduce it. And we just didn't have any. And when I started looking through the day, there was nothing out there at all. And I said, Well, you know, this is a great question. It could reduce runoff because the cover crops are using water. initial thought was the cover crops going to use water over the winter, you'll go into the spring with drier soil, you'd have less runoff in the spring. So less potential for loss there as well. And so it seemed like a very interesting thing. But we thought, well, let's do a project. So So we put together we designed a facility we refer to as the Kansas agricultural watershed field lab, where we have 18 experimental units that we can measure Edgefield runoff on and so each one of these units are about 1.2 acres or a half a hectare inside, so it's a little larger than a football field. So pretty, pretty large area. And we collect all the water at one point, and 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, we monitor the runoff that's coming off. So we have equipment out there that takes measurements, I guess once a minute to see if there's any runoff, it's high resolution, high resolution. And then if and then if there's runoff, then it triggers a sampler. The sampler collects water samples so we can measure how much water is coming off how much phosphorus, how much nutrient nitrogen, sediment, everything. So we put this facility together. When I say we it was, you know, some faculty here, we got a lot of support from the university, some administrators bought into this idea I was very grateful for and they gave us some funds to start this project. And then our initial project was funded through the for our research fund, which is a research fund managed by the International plant nutrition Institute and the fertilizer Institute, which basically came from a lot of fertilizer dealers around the nation that said that they were interested enough in understanding these processes that they put money into a pool to investigate it. And so we were funded through that. We've also received some money from the Natural Resource Conservation Service and, and the Kansas corn growers and Kansas soybean commission, multiple partners came in and they were interested in the same questions. So we started this study back in 2015, was our first crop year. So October 2014, was our first when we kind of said, Chris, in the sites that okay, we're starting.

This is the first site in the country like this.

This is a fairly unique site. There are other large studies where they're looking at Edgefield runoff. The unique thing about this is they're very, we have, we have the ability to do replicated research, we have 18 of these plots in a fairly close proximity. I call them plots or small watersheds, but watershed is in a really small edge of field runoff. And so there's 18. So we can replicate treatments, a lot of other places that don't have that many. So there are other sites that have and we visited several of them really good setups, just smaller number of treatments, maybe looking at pasture systems rather than crop systems. So their differences. 

So the replications are important because otherwise just sort of guessing at what the causes are and things like that run a heavy

Independent probability you can't treat you can't treat the data the same way.

Year to year weather variability has a pretty big impact. And so if you're going to look at it, like some kind of a trend analysis, say, Well, I'm going to look at one treatment and look at that for a few years and then look at another treatment for another few years, you had different weather and you're going to that whether it's going to override any treatment effect. And so there's some ways to do that kind of research. You know, comparing before and after it's pretty tough, doesn't have very much statistical power.

Is there a lot of variability between the plots one, or the other lot of other factors going into the kinds of things you're studying or

There are definitely other factors, the soils that are out there, the slopes and even just details without getting it all. There's definitely definite plot factors that come in here. Our plots are fairly uniform for this kind of a study. Okay, they're there. They really are. They're fairly uniform in size and in shape and in slope and whatever. not exact but as exact as you can get for an area that big.

But so then the point for looking at the year to year variation is that you get some ideas sort of within a year given the weather, right sort of what's the rain have different possible outcomes that you have like that's that's the part of the point of having that replicability.

From one year to the next definitely. And then also, when once we implement practices like cover crops or fertilizer management, you want to see how that system changes the soil properties over time. So there are some things that might have a very fast response. And then other things in the system that might take a little bit longer to change. So physical properties, organic carbon, those take longer times. And so you really need to look at this over time. And make sure that your treatments have the same impact from one year to the next, as you as a system kind of build. So yeah, so that we set the study up. And now we are in our fifth cropping year.

Nice. So just to get everybody on the same page. What were the treatments? Oh, these 18 plots? What did you do?

Yeah, so the treatments. It's a factorial experiment. So we have two different factors, cover crops, and fertilizer management, we have two levels of cover crop, which would be with cover crop without. And we have three levels of fertilizer management. And this is all focused on phosphorus, because that was our question, three levels of phosphorus management. One is no phosphorus fertilizer. Another one is fall, broadcast, phosphorus fertilizer. And then another one is spring injected phosphorus fertilizer. We are changing multiple things here. If you look at our phosphorus treatments, we're changing rate from nothing to with fertilizer, we're changing sources, because one is using a dry ones using a liquid. We're changing the time and the placement. It's really a system. The reason we chose these systems is because these were typical of the way producers would manage the fertilizers. And we just couldn't replicate every piece of the system. And so we had to say, well, these are the big questions. You know, we'll compare these systems. And so that's why it's set up is really a system. And so it comes up with six treatments, right? Each of the three fertilizer management is with and without, without fertilizer, or with and without cover crop. And then it's replicated three times what was the cover crop changes from year to year, based on when we're able to plant it. Again, this is a little bit the way producers run, the changes aren't drastic. We generally always have a Brassica and a small grain. The small grain has changed from wheat to triticale. Really depending upon kind of the year and, and availability, which one we think is going to grow better for the time we're planting it and when we are going to terminate and what our next crop is. And then the brassicas typically been rapeseed. So rapeseed in winter wheat or rapeseed and try to Kaley

How long do these studies last? We talked about fast and slow changes are we looking at, like we were developing in variety, if we work, it'd be 1012 years that it would have to have to run.

For this study, we will go five years. The first year was really a a year to move into the rotation and the system, right get the get the treatments established. And then four years have more data collection in that system. And those it's a corn soybean rotation. And so that gives us two years of corn and two years of soybean. And so what have you found? Yeah, so this is what this is why we do research. Right. So going into this, I felt positive that we were going to see some good impacts of cover crops on reducing phosphorus loss. I will say that we have seen that. And well, I'll tell you my assumptions going into it. I felt that the cover crops were going to reduce runoff. And by reducing runoff, they were also going to reduce the amount of phosphorus lost from the two systems or from the system. I also thought that we were doing a really good job of controlling sediment already with no till. And so by adding a cover crop to this, it wasn't gonna make a whole lot of difference. And so we weren't going to get a lot of sediment reduction from the cover crop. But we'd get some phosphorus reduction and we'd get some reduction in runoff. And it was wrong in all three accounts.

That's why you do science.

That's That's why you do it. So first, we have reduced sediment loss quite a bit, even in a system where we typically see low set loss, the cover crop is reduced a quite a bit more, we had very low sediment coming off, I mean visually very clean water coming off of the cover crop plots. So that's been great, sort of looking like 70% reduction in sediment not well, it's very consistent year round. It's not just in the springtime or not just, you know, in big storms in the summer, it's year round, we get less sediment loss, less concentration and less overall loss. Typically, with less sediment, we get less phosphorus loss because phosphorus had strongly absorbed to the sediment and so introduce reduce sediment loss, you would reduce phosphorus loss. However, the cover crop reduces the particulate phosphorus to the phosphorus, since it's already the sediment, but the dissolved reactive phosphorus actually increases. And there's a dramatic increase in dissolved reactive phosphorus. And so from three of well, we've got data collected. Now on three years, we're getting our fourth year now of the four years in the rotation. Two of those three years are actually, I think, two of those three years, we had pretty much no impact on total phosphorus loss. Cover crops didn't affect total phosphorus loss, but they affected the form of phosphorus, higher dissolved phosphorus, lower particulate phosphorus and lower sediment loss. The cover crops did not well, the cover crops have had a variable impact on runoff. Where some rainfall events, you'll have higher runoff losses. With a cover crop and some rainfall events, you'll have lower runoff. And so typically, by the time you look at the entire year, the total amount of runoff is about the same.

Going back to the different forms of phosphorus or loss versus with cover crop versus not cover crop is one. Is the partitioning better for water quality one way or the other? Or is it too early to tell?

Yeah, that's a pretty tough question. And probably a better question for an aquatic biologist than an agronomist 

have to get one of those on the show.

But I, what I do know is the dissolved reactive is a much more biologically available form of phosphorus. So algae can access that phosphorus much more quickly and easily. They can take it up better. And so it could potentially cause a faster algal bloom whether or not it causes a faster algorithm. That's what you should ask a aquatic biologist.

You know why you're seeing these differences? Like why are the cover crops creating more reactive phosphorus than without?

Let me hold off on answering that question just for a second. The advantage or the disadvantage of particulate phosphorus is you can end up with a lot of legacy phosphorus, so it's going to move slower through the system. So you might lose move a lot of phosphorus sediment, and it might not be immediately available. But that sediment will get deposited in a reservoir, and might be a long term source of phosphorus for years to come.

So even if you stop phosphorus loss at some point, it's still going to be cycling through. 

Yeah, it's still gonna be cycling through the system. And so that's why it's kind of tough to say, Well, which one would you rather have? I'd rather just have less phosphorus. Okay. But you're definitely not. You're probably not making it any better by changing those two forms. Okay. Now, your question was, why?

Because this is counterintuitive, right? Because if you read a lot of the literature about cover cropping and things like that, it seems to indicate that phosphorus is going to be retained in the field, right? And their losses are gonna be less yet? 

Well, I'll tell you, there's not a whole lot of literature out there. So there's a lot of speculation. So a lot of people want to say there's been a lot of people say that, Oh, cover crops and reduce phosphorus losses. And a lot of this, I think kind of goes back to some of the research done in conventional till, where, you know, conventional till there's a lot of erosion, a lot of phosphorus moving with that sediment. And so when you plant a cover crop and stop that sediment movement, you really stop a lot of phosphorus, okay, because you have a lot of erosion. And so it's kind of taking that same mentality to a no till system saying, well, our cover crops are going to reduce phosphorus loss. Previously, I had said that there hadn't been a whole lot of research done on this. And I should really preface that there had not been a lot of research done in the climates that we have here in Kansas. So the other research had been done in northern climates, such as like Norway, Sweden, Canada, areas that have substantial different climates. And they had found that cover crops caused an increase in dissolved phosphorous, and had attributed that to the freeze thaw cycles and snowmelt runoff that they experienced in their climates. So basically, you get a lot of snowpack around the cover crop tissue, it freezes. And then the next spring when all that snow melts, it releases this phosphorus and, and we have a different system here, we don't have a lot of snow melt run off. Okay, we have some cold winters, but not a lot of snow, a lot of freeze thaw during the winter. And, so it's different system. And so I thought, well, that research doesn't necessarily apply to what we're going to find here. And I still kind of feel like the processes that we're looking at may still be different than what they're what they observed, even though we saw the same result. So there have been other studies that have found an increase in dissolved phosphorus from cover crops. So what is causing it here, it is possible that you could have some additional phosphorus lost from the cover crop tissue. Particularly even though these are winter annuals. So they overwinter and then start growing in the spring, there is some freezing that occurs over the winter. So you can have some tissue that gets frozen could release some cover some phosphorus, after we kill the cover crop, we've seen a little bit of increase in dissolved phosphorus. So it's possible that there could be some phosphorus coming from that cover crop residue. We've done some research and looked at this. And sure enough, we could estimate the amount of phosphorus coming out of cover crop tissue, it's possible that that could be the source. I'm not convinced that's the only source. The cover crops what the cover crops do from a runoff standpoint is they although they're not decreasing the overall amount, overall amount of runoff, they are decreasing the time or increasing the time that the runoff is in or the waters in the field. Or they're decreasing the time of the runoff. Right. So where we don't have cover crops, the runoff comes off the field a lot faster. So you get higher peak flows. 

Just faster runoff that help explain the sediment.

Definitely helps explain the sediment. Yeah, so one of the reasons why these cover crops really help sediment is because the runoff is coming off slow. But what that's going to do also is it's going to increase the contact time with soil. So it's possible that we're releasing desorbing more phosphorus from the soil into the water, or even from fertilizer.

Do you see the broadcast applications? Making a difference versus the injected applications in that respect? Is there more desorbed? When it's retained in the field in the broadcast application?

Sure. The broadcast? We haven't talked about the fertilizer treatments at all yet, right? No. So we tend to see higher phosphorus concentrations and runoff from the broadcast treatment until we apply the spring injected. And then after that, they're about the same. And but I will say over time, those concentrations, once we make our broadcast application, over time, those tend to decrease the concentration tends to decrease. And then by the time the next spring comes around, we apply our spring fertilizer, we see an increase in phosphorus loss right after application of the spring fertilizer, and then they're about equal from there on out.

So they're equal rate at that point. But for total phosphorus loss than the total phosphorus total phosphorus.

If you look at the total mass, because there's been lost during this winter and early spring period, the total loss is higher.

Right, sort of and that was consistent with what you predicted then that was great. Except that then the crop didn't help the cover crop mitigate that at all right? Yeah. Well, or change the nature of the runoff, right. Yeah, right.

So there was no fertilizer by cover crop interaction.

Not really no, not nothing consistent. There have been a few years where you see some subtle things. But I would need a lot of graphs, it's probably probably too detailed to discuss.

What's the primary source of variation that you encounter here, primary source of variation, but contributes the most of the variation that you see.

Gosh, there are a lot of things that contributed there's a lot of variation in this kind of data. Weather creates a very big, a lot of variation from one rainfall event to the next. Right. And from one plot to the next, because you have differences, even though I said these are very similar, still huge differences in the amount of runoff that comes off of one plot to the next, anytime we get less than two millimeters of runoff, it's really hard for us to analyze the data, because we get some plots that didn't produce enough runoff. So you have to get enough runoff that you get runoff from all your plots, then you can collect all your data and analyze it. We still get a fair amount of plot to plot variability. These are big plots, differences in crop growth and things like that. So that contributes a lot to variability as well.

Yeah, but Britain, none of that invalidates the approach. So you can take this approach to allow if you want if you needed to or wherever so it's, it has, it has a global reach, potentially, at least it does, it could definitely be expanded.

 I will say that what has helped us a little bit with our study is the factorial design, the fact that we have half of our plots in cover crop and half without we have a lot more power to look at some main effects.

So you've seen the yield effects. We didn't get to that.

Oh, yield. Yeah, we have seen some yield effects. And their weather contributes a lot more to the variability because you know, we might get five to 30 Different runoff events in a year, right. So we'll get variability from one event to the next, but we still get runoff yield, we get one yield each year. And that's a factor of all the weather. And we've had a few years they've been pretty tough. And the last two years, we've had some pretty low yields. And so our corn and soybean yields have been pretty low, because of some drought conditions. And there we have not seen the effect of fertilizer, either the amount or the placement really strong. Okay. We have seen the effect of cover crops though, because when you get into these years where we have less water, if you had a cover crop that used water in the beginning of the year, then.

Also the actually uses the water that the crop men can't use, you see lower yields in the cover crop,

See some lower yields where the cover crop is you have some lower yields, you might also the cover crop, you know, shades a little bit, there's a little bit of some slower emergence we've had, we've had some years where we get a lot of cover crop growth in the spring, you've know, there's not a lot of water that grows really well. And then you try and plant a main crop in there and a little bit of a, you know, a yield drag because your emergence is slower.

You didn't kill it off.

Well, you kill it off, but they're still there. Right? It's still there. Yep. And so some of that is learning on our part. And initially, when we moved into this, I wanted, because with water quality project, I wanted to grow as much biomass as we could to make sure that we had enough biomass out there to impact water quality. I've since learned that we didn't need that much biomass, we've had some years where we get very low biomass. This last year even we had, I don't know the numbers, but it was a few 100 pounds per acre, very, very low biomass. But we've seen some very big impacts on these heavy spring rains, even though it's not very much biomass. And so I've learned that this is we don't have treatments that with high biomass and low biomass, but from my observation, we don't need as much biomass as I initially thought. When we were growing a lot of biomass, that's when it hurts, your crop yields a little bit more. And so we've changed a little bit of our management, you know, to and some of this, it's not necessarily even our change, it's what Mother Nature gave us. Right? We had a really cold winter. That's why we had not very much biomass this last year. But we when you get when you don't have as much biomass than the main crop can grow better.

So one of the advantages of growing a cover crop is that adds carbon to the soil which can increase water holding capacity and that sort of thing, which is supposed to make soils more resilient to drought, right. So do you think over time, you'll stop seeing the negative impact of cover crops in these drought years or in Kansas where you have, you know, the Kansas climb and all of that probably won't make as much of a difference. There's a too early to tell. Sure.

There are two sides to that. First off, we need to recognize the soils that we selected for this our soils. This is a runoff study. So we selected soils that are going to give runoff and that but they're very typical of this area of Kansas northeast Kansas has a lot of soils that have heavy clay subsoil, and so you don't get a lot of infiltration, not a fast infiltration into this. And they're on sloping hills and things like that, if you were doing the same study on a soil that did not have a heavy increase in clay, you might see differences in the amount of in the cover crop effect on runoff. Okay, now to your question, because we have that heavy clay subsoil, it's going to take a little bit of time for the cover crop to really improve soil properties there enough to really improve things like water holding capacity, and maybe even change infiltration or, or deep percolation, I would say, so that, for these soils, it's going to take more time for some of their soils, it might be faster.

So what's going to happen with the project does it after the fifth year are you going to try to continue it on or?

We're definitely going to try and continue it on. We're looking at changing up some of the treatments, we'd really like to keep the cover crops in place. Because there are we are seeing some improvements in soil physical properties already, such as improved aggregate stability. In the surface, what we're hoping is maybe that can move down as you get more cover crops, those roots grow down deeper, it's a slow process. So we'd really like to see how the cover crop continues to change the soil properties over many years. From a nutrient standpoint, I'm fairly convinced that the subsurface injection is really improving our nutrient losses, or decreasing our phosphorus losses and making for more efficient system making Yeah, and so that's probably a good way to go. We are in what we call a build and maintain phosphorus management system where we're trying to build the soil test levels up and then maintain them at a high level. When I say high, it's not really high, but it's high enough that the soil could supply all of the crop requirements. And we just replace what the crop takes out. There's a different approach to this, where we could mine the soil, the phosphorus out of the soil, and only apply fertilizer, if we think there will be a yield loss that year if we don't apply it. sufficiency approach. I really think from a water quality standpoint, there might be some advantages. In the sufficiency approach, particularly because we are not applying fertilizer, we see dramatically less phosphorus in our runoff. So our control treatment, which we really didn't talk about much or control treatment is showing noticeably lower phosphorus concentrations year round, from the other fertilizer treatment probably lower yields to you know, as as early in some in, in one year, we saw a very significant yield effect at this out of three years. Another year. It was significant at the 10% level. And then the other year, there was no yield effect that last year, the third year of the project. There was an those because weather had a bigger impact. So there is a yield effect. But actually, the cover crop had a bigger yield effect, then the fertilizer.

Just shows how complicated all of this is. It is yeah.

It's complicated.

So sorry. Okay, so I wanted to ask you about that part. So given how complicated this is, right, so all these sorts of questions, right. So all right, you're looking at phosphorus runoff. But oh, you know, there's different kinds of phosphorus runoff and right sort of what's the effective of the cover crop? Well, did you mean on yield? Or did you mean on sort of quality of soil or sort of so many different factors, right. And then, and then there's questions about sort of the, how you translate this right, sort of to what if the weather's a little different? Or what if we're going somewhere else? Right, and sort of, or what if you're doing a sufficiency approach? Right. So, two big questions here, right. So given all that complication, sort of how do you translate a study like this into recommendations, right, number one, and then sort of thinking longer term or down the line? How do you see like in terms of people's uptake, right, sort of, you know, you just did this really complicated study, right. So what do you recommend to them? And sort of, you know, how do you convince them? Where do they get convinced, right? Sure.

Um, you know, from this kind of a study, and particularly where we're looking at a systems approach. Our recommendations are going to be a little bit more broad in general, right. So some of the things we have learned is Cover crops are definitely an advantage for soil concert. They do a great job of soil conservation and reducing erosion. From a water management standpoint, they reduce peak runoff rates. That may that could be an advantage from flood management, stormwater management other things, right, there could be some other advantages from that stream bank erosion, a whole host of other things. I'm not for sure if the impact on the hydrology is enough to impact these other things. But still, I view that as an advantage. So it's slowing the runoff, that's an advantage. So, cover crops still have advantages for water quality, but they are not a silver bullet. Right. And in from some standpoints, using a cover crop may mean that you need to pay more attention to some other nutrient management standpoints. And so from when we look at nutrient management, we're looking at the time you're applying it the source, the rate, the placement, those things, I would say that definitely when you're moving into a cover crop system, I would recommend subsurface placement of your fertilizer, because that's going to reduce the dissolved phosphorus concentration. And that's what is typically being increased from this cover crop. So as far as rate, you know, that's where that would be the next question that that we're looking at is, can you using this cover crop? And from a water quality standpoint? Can we do something different than our typical build and maintain fertilizer management, and still maintain our yields and maintain our economic competitiveness, but still managed? And that's, that's a part that we need more next time need more research on? Because? Well, as I already explained, my assumption here, right, is true. 

So we need some science.

Yeah. And so we just look at where we're going to hit at the next step, to try and drill down and improve our agricultural systems. So that we can maintain good quality water. 

We hear in popular media and stuff that eutrophication issues are becoming more and more prevalent to the public, right? news organizations pick up issues in Lake Erie or Chesapeake Bay, or even here in Kansas, and different areas. We talked before we started the podcast, where do you see all of this maybe going? All right, I mean, is there going to be governmental intervention? Or are farmers going to are we going to need to come up with more economical ways of managing these nutrients for farmers? So they switch to this where do you see nutrient management going? In a larger and a larger context?

I think definitely there will be more interest in, in reducing losses, and reducing environmental impacts of nutrients. I think we see that from the public in general. And when we see more issues where the public, you know, actually has to pay for this, whether they pay for it in increased treatment costs or something like that, then they're going to naturally be interested in stopping this problem. It's a very complex problem, though, a very, very complex set of issues.

We have because farmers aren't the only ones that are contributing to this, the nutrient sources, exactly wastewater treatment plants and all that also, depending on the system, contribute

there, are other nutrient sources. Some of the water bodies impacted, I'll have to say are not natural. That's a whole nother thing. Right here in Kansas, we've got a lot of reservoirs that have severe algal bloom problems, toxic algal blooms over the past 10 years that have really, really a big change. And some of that has been attributed to nutrient management. But at the same time, we have to recognize these are all reservoirs. There was not a lake there for a reason. So you can't expect it to behave the same as some other water body, right. Anyway, there's a whole whole host of questions related to this. I think in the end, it's still in our head, it's to our advantage. Ours meaning society and ours, meaning the agricultural community and ours meaning farmers. So our advantage to reduce losses. Again, reducing losses is not going to fix every problem. It's not going to make our water crystal clear tomorrow, but it will conserve a resource that we're paying for managing and it will, in the long run, I believe it will improve the water quality. It's going to take a little bit of while we're going to take some time, because there's some legacy nutrient that are in these different water bodies, but it will take time it will improve it and we've seen that in Lake Erie when they initially made a big push to improve water quality, through tightening regulation on wastewater treatment plants, it responded fairly fast. I mean, years, but, you know, they saw improvements. And you know, I, we can see that, again, if we reduce losses from agriculture.

Great. We want to be respectful of your time. Is there anything that you'd like to say that maybe we haven't covered here? We're Scott, and John has anything you like to ask?

Oh, this is your end to end of podcast chance to pull forth?

So I will say that as far as the future, where's it? where's this going to go? You asked about regulation and other things. I think that the future to me is fairly bright on this standpoint, because the industry itself, I talk about the fertilizer industry, the agricultural industry, in general, the leaders in that industry want to see lower losses, they have they see that as an advantage to their industry. There are food consumers or consumers, I mean, like in the food chain, large companies that are looking for ways to document sustainability of their products, and water quality, making sure that they have, that their products are produced in a way that is sustainable from a water quality standpoint, it is an interest. And I think there are probably people in the public that might view that favorably when they're looking at making purchasing choices. And so there are a lot of things going in there. And from different areas that I think would say that in the long run, I think we will move towards a more sustainable system.

Just just quickly to take into their as far as food processes and things like that, what sort of metrics are they looking at for sustainability in that regard? Do you have any examples?

In regard to water quality, we're at the watercooler. Like you can't buy anything right now that has a stamp on it that says, you know, water quality approved or whatever, but no, you see, I mean, is that what you're referring to there?

Well, so the best example of the food industry looking at, at documenting sustainability is the field to market movement. And so they've got web pages, you can look at it, they have a field print calculator that tries to document the sustainability, from energy to like carbon emissions to nutrient loss, all sorts of things, they try and put all this into one thing to give their product or a grain or whatever a sustainability print. The water quality side of that is still under development. They have a very rough rubric. And I know from talking with them, they're interested in improving the metric for water quality, but it's a tough metric to approach. 

As we've just discussed, right? Well, Nathan, hey, we really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us and thanks so much. Thank you very much.

Thanks. Thanks for having me. I've enjoyed the discussion.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

Dr. Harry Klee is a Professor in Horticultural Sciences at the University of Florida working to understand the chemical and genetic make-up of "flavor" in fruits and vegetables. After starting his career at Monsanto, in 1995 he accepted an endowed chair position tasked with developing better tomato varieties through traditional breeding techniques. Enjoy this wide-ranging conversation covering plant breeding, genetic modification/gene editing, why tomatoes at the supermarket don’t taste very good, how Harry’s lab is producing a better tasting tomato, and much more!

For further information about Dr. Klee and his lab check out his website at: http://old-hos.ifas.ufl.edu/kleeweb/index.html

Transcript:

Making a Tastier Tomato with Dr. Harry Klee - Plant Breeding and Molecular Biology

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of global food systems. It's produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Jay Weeks PhD candidate in the Department of Agronomy. My co host is Scott Sonoda, an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy who specializes in the philosophy of science. Everybody, welcome back. Today's guest is Dr. Harry Klee. Harry is an eminent scholar and professor in horticultural sciences working to understand the chemical and genetic makeup of flavor in fruits and vegetables. His career began in Monsanto in the mid 80s, where he helped to develop the techniques that launched genetically engineered crops into agriculture. In 1995, he was offered an endowed position at the University of Florida working to develop better varieties for the state's tomato industry through traditional breeding techniques, and he remains there still today. In 2009, he was elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And three years later, in 2012, he was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, Scott, John and I had a lot of fun talking with Harry, we cover a wide range of topics, including traditional plant breeding, genetic modification, and gene editing. Why tomatoes in the supermarket often don't taste very good. How Harry's lab is identifying compounds that are important to producing better tasting tomatoes, and what it's like to be a scientist and industry along with many, many other things. Hope you enjoy. Dr. Harry Klee, welcome to the podcast.

It's a pleasure to be here.

So we'll have introduced you a little bit in the intro to the podcast here. But tell us in your own words, a little bit about yourself. How did you get to where you are today? 

Ah, how did I get here? Actually, I started my Bachelor's degree in Psychology. And I very quickly decided that psychology was a field that I didn't want to be in that it intrigued me actually, I got into science because I worked in a mental hospital for my summer internships. And I saw the remarkable things that could happen to people who were crazy when you gave them drugs. And I started to say, oh, you know, maybe behavior is all about drugs, I need to know more about biochemistry. So then I got into biochemistry and got into from there into microbiology, and from there into plant biology. And here I am working on tomatoes.

So did you start taking microbiology courses and biochemistry courses in undergrad? Or is it something you knew when you graduate you want to pursue in graduate school?

Actually, I did not take any Microbiology as an undergraduate, I looked at it as a major and the university said, you can't take any microbiology courses, even if you're a major until you're a junior. And I said, Well, that's crazy. Why do I want to go all the way to my third year before I even find out if I like this? So no, I took chemistry and a little bit of Biochemistry as an undergraduate but no Microbiology.

So then you said you went on to graduate school? Right out of right out of undergrad that yes,

yes. Straight into a Biochemistry PhD program.

What would you do there? 

Actually,  my first project was working on frogs, we actually went out and, and in the summertime, we'd go out and capture bullfrogs in the ponds, and we'd bring them back to the lab and cut out their livers. And I decided that that was not for me, I did not want to work on anything involving killing animals. So at that point, I switched. And the last part of my PhD actually was working on BT bacteria. e coli.

So, from there, how'd you work your way into the plant sector then?

So at the time that I was finishing my PhD, was a very exciting time for plant biology because people had just discovered this organism, this bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens, actually took a piece of its DNA and put it into plant cells. And I thought, oh my god, this is this burgeoning new field that we were just calling Biotechnology was something that really intrigued me and I thought that wow, if I could understand how this organism worked, we could use it to genetically engineer plants and that would be the coolest thing ever. And so I went and did my postdoc on Agrobacterium. And that turned out to be the foundation for my career, and then led me from there to Monsanto, where I worked for a decade for them.

So there, I mean, it must have been a fascinating time to be starting in science. So why is Agrobacterium so important? Like what's happening there to just allow us to do the biotech no logical transformations?

Well, Agrobacterium is what we would call today a plant pathogen. It makes tumors in trees, it's a real problem in the orchard industry, for example, and people didn't know how it worked. And literally the year before I got to the lab, a good friend of mine, Mike Thomas show, figured out that it took a piece of its DNA and transferred it into the plant, where it incorporated into the plant became part of the plant DNA. And it stayed there and cause these tumors. And people said, well, you know, if we could understand how it makes the tumors and get rid of the genes that make the tumors, but just leave the part that makes the DNA get transferred, and incorporated in you could put anything you wanted, in between the ends of this DNA and get it into the plant. pathogen to vector. Yeah. And so we said, oh, you know, this is the key to being able to, it just breaks well, that we returned, inter Kingdom DNA transfer, you know, from bacteria into a plant. And we thought, nothing else can do this. This is remarkable. And if we understood this, and we could, we could harness that power to introduce things which, for example, genes that confer resistance to insects or herbicides. And so I thought, this is a field that I just have to get into. And we still didn't know how to truly harness it. When I started my postdoc. We were figuring out the rules, how does the bacterium work, what's required for that DNA transfer, and that was my postdoctoral research. And when I finished up and it was time to get a job, I can remember I interviewed for several academic positions. And I interviewed at Monsanto and, and literally at Monsanto, they had just made the first transgenic plants literally, like a month before I interviewed there. And, and I went there. And I interviewed and I was just blown away by what they wanted to do, and how dedicated they were and how focused they were on improving agriculture and helping farmers. And it's funny because I got a job offer from the University of Illinois and Microbiology. And I told the chairman, I said, No, I think I'm going to come to Monsanto. And he said, you're going to watch? And he says, Well, you should come back. And to a second interview, I said, I don't need to do a second interview. This is what I want to do. On the air. And so, I went to Monsanto and got involved in the earliest stages of what I would consider the second green revolution. You know, we were a dedicated group of people. And I know everybody today likes to bash Monsanto, but I can say firsthand, these were and still are truly dedicated people who were trying their best to make agriculture better. And I was involved and, you know, it's kind of fun as you fly across the Midwest in an airplane, you can look out the window and said, I did that. And there aren't very many people who can say that. Sure.

Yeah, that's true. That's very true. Are there I'm a serial person serial biochemist. And we fight the hexaploid nature of the plant. Are there limits is that bacterium efficient in a in such a polyploid? Ik?

Yes, ah, yes, you can. There still, it's more of an art form to transform certain plants. I think that people are more using for some of the monocots, which Agrobacterium doesn't infect very well. It still can be easier to use other techniques like the particle gun, where you bombard the tissues with free DNA. But Agrobacterium works quite well. For example, in maize, And, you know, we transform? Well, we can transform canola, which is a tetraploid. We basically the limiting step is, merely can you take tissue and regenerate it into a whole plant. And that's still hard with some crops. But, but yeah, Agrobacterium works great for you, for you, us types. 

Maize is what a lot of people would call corn, although that's not universal.

So when you have the transfer of tissue, you need to bring it to a whole crowd, what needs to happen there.

Basically, the system, you introduce DNA into single cells. And what you need is the ability to take that single cell that you've introduced the DNA and regenerate a whole plant. For some plants, that's really easy. The first plants that were transformed were things like tobacco, Petunia, trivial, the tissue culture for tobacco was worked out a century ago. And it's easy to take a single cell and regenerate a whole plant from in other plants, it's much harder. Maize was probably 10 years behind tobacco, for example, it was just harder to work with.

What makes them so much different?

Their response to the plant hormones, they, we use tricks with, with hormones to, you know, you take a single cell typically, and you grow it as a callus on artificial media. And then what you do is you trick it into making shoots by applying a hormone we call cytokine. And, so the suddenly those that mass of cells will start to form an organized shoot that comes up on and starts to grow and looks more like a plant. And then after that, you can cut off that shoot from the callus and stick it on a different medium, which forces it to make roots. And again, you know, this kind of technology has been worked out in some species for many years, a lot of plants are micropropagated. That's the way they work. It's for example, or micropropagated, you can make billions of orchids that are absolutely identical through tissue culture. So it just depends on the species.

And these hormones are naturally produced anyway, right? I mean, our plants are using these in the environment. Absolutely.

And to come full circle, the way that Agrobacterium makes tumors is it actually has genes that cause the plant to make oxygens and cytokinins. And that's how it tricks the plant into growing these tumors, which are the home for the bacteria.

In a cereal that's basically living but very slowly living, you'll have hormones that are produced and released under specific stimulation that will go into the seed itself and cause it to to start turning itself on and starting to Germany.

Yeah, yeah. All plants make these hormones.

So you're no longer with Monsanto. After Monsanto. You came back to academia, right? I did. So how did that happen? What made you decide to come back?

Um, I guess a couple of things. The first thing was that we actually developed products and you might think being an accompany once you develop some products that would give you some freedom to do more exciting things. Well, that's not the way it works. The closer you get to products, the more focus there is on making more products. And so it became very product oriented. When I first went there, everything we did was basic science, it was discoveries, research, and we were publishing papers in the best journals. You know, we publish papers and science and nature, which are the top level publications. We were everything we did was discovery. You know, we had to figure out everything there was about what we now call plant molecular biology. But after we figured out how to do this stuff, it became more of what can we do to make products. And also success in a company basically means that you move up in the bureaucracy and you become more of a manager rather than a scientist. And so I said, you know, running a big group is not what I want to be. I want to be a scientist on one. I want to keep my hands in the science and I was very lucky. I was offered an endowed chair at the University of Florida in 1995. And they said we love what you're doing. We want you to work on tomatoes and whatever you want to do is fine with us. When I said that sounds great, either.

Yes. Monsanto had what they called a Fellows Program. And you could be a science fellow or you could be a manager. And in theory, on paper, those were two equal parallel tracks. In practice, though, the fellows were not given the same respect as the managers, if you had 25 people working for you in a big budget, it was worth a whole lot more than some publication, right, and a couple of technicians.

Or a patent here and there. Yeah.

So he started working on tomatoes. So why tomatoes? Well, what's the problem? And what are you trying to solve? Or what are you trying to solve?

So tomato was the number one vegetable crop in Florida when I moved there. It's still sort of is. And it's so it's a very, very important to the Florida's agriculture, I work at a land grant university, our mission is to help the agriculture in the state of Florida. And so it made perfect sense to work on tomatoes. And when I looked around, I said, Well, what's the biggest problem with tomatoes and and the biggest problem was flavor. In fact, there's a great article that I still have that was published in the New Yorker, I think, in 1987, or something like that, that basically talks about how all of the commercial tomatoes look great, but their heart is a rock and they taste like cardboard.

Could you say something about how we got there?

Yeah. So that was the first question. I said, How could you've done this, right? And obviously, and, in fact, there was another book that was published a few years ago, I'm trying to remember what the name of it is, oh, tomato land. This guy published a book called tomato land. And he talks about what motivated him to write the book was, he was running a writing on the interstate highway in Florida. And there was a truck full of tomatoes in front of them, and one of them bounced out of the truck, bounced off the road and hit his windshield and cracked. And I made I shouldn't do that. And so you look at that. And you say, how did this happen? And I guess I'm giving away the punch lines of some of my seminar that I'm going to give later today here. But the reason is actually fairly simple. And that is that the growers are not paid for flavor. The growers are paid for how many pounds of red objects they put in a box. And flavor is not something that they're paid for. In fact, if you talk to them, they'll say, not only am I not paid for it, but if I had a tomato, that tasted really good, the wholesaler is going to take the box of tomatoes, put them in the refrigerator, and it's going to ruin the flavor. So not only am I not being paid for it, if I had it, someone else down downstream would probably screw it up system won't keep it. And so if you look at it, the supply chain, it's very difficult to produce high quality tomatoes at one end, and get them to the consumer at a reasonable price at the other end. It's very difficult. And so they're most growers. Well, in fact, today this is not true when I first moved to Florida, but today, the majority of tomatoes grown in the field in Florida don't go to the consumer, they go to the food service industry. And the only thing that McDonald's or subway care about McDonald's particular, they want it to be round. They want it to be about the same diameter as a hamburger bun. And they want to be able to make eight uniform slices that don't drip all over you and just sit there and look pretty on top of your hamburger and so the majority of tomatoes in Florida today go to the foodservice industry. In fact the majority of tomatoes that are now in commercial production that go to consumers come from either Mexico or Canada. You know you get you can get a better tomato out of a greenhouse and Canada and you can and field out of Florida.

Have you seen those greenhouse facilities? Quite incredible.

They're amazing. Yeah, I mean, they've got it down there. producing large numbers of fruits, they pick them when they're fully ripe, as opposed to Florida where they're picking them when they're still green. And so, the whole system is set up to not reward the grower for producing quality.

So how much that has changed? Okay, we'll get into the science. But I wonder how much sort of what were the cultural forces that have shifted this and how much of that was maybe actually due to the scientific developments to like giving people a image of new possibilities.

I would say almost nothing to do with the science. It's all really based on economics. The growers in those greenhouses and the growers in Mexico can produce a cheaper product. And to some extent, the consumers have recognized that the Florida field tomato does not taste that good. And so there has been this shift towards vine ripe tomatoes, which honestly don't taste a whole lot better, but tastes a little bit better. There's been all of these new niche markets, now you see cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, which have a lot more flavor than the big ones. You see the tomatoes, like the compound, the tomato, which is much smaller cells at a premium, you know, you're talking $3 A pound maybe versus $1, a pound for field grown tomato, more people are willing to pay for that ticket, because they know they'll get a quality. The compiler has very specific requirements, it has to be picked, when it's ripe, it has to be shipped quickly, it can't be refrigerated. And people do recognize that. Unfortunately, though, most people still buy on price. You know, I would say that 20% of the population will maybe shop at a Whole Foods, I don't shop at Whole Foods, I think they charge outrageous amounts of money. And I'm not gonna say it. But some people will shop at places like that there's been much more growth in farmers markets. But that's seasonal. You know, on a year round basis, you know, there's kind of this dichotomy. Everybody would like to eat like Alice Waters, and eat only what's seasonal, and what's local. But the reality is, most people don't want to do that. Most people want their tomato 12 months of the year, they want their cantaloupe, 12 months of the year, and we pay the price for that. And the price is that you have an emphasis on ship ability rather than flavor. But so I think still 80% of the population buys on cost, not quality. And then they complain about the quality, right?

So for me, tomatoes are one of these things that I pretty much only season except for the little those small ones, because those ones year round, those are not bad, right? You know, but there's no point in buying a tomato on the store and winter.

It's not gonna taste very good.

So what's your plan to change that? Or what are you guys doing to make improvements? So the tomato in LA tastes better, but also is economically viable for the farmer?

Well, so what we've done is to focus on, first of all, what is the genetics of flavor? What's gone wrong with the modern tomato? Why does it taste that way? Some of it is production, but a lot of it is the genetics just are inferior, as if you don't select for something, you will essentially select against it. And so tomato flavor is extremely complex, we've identified dozens of genes that affect flavor, and the growers basically have completely ignored him. And while the breeders have six have ignored it. And so what happens is you've you know, you've got two copies of every gene unless you're in a hexaploid. But you got two copies of every gene, you could have a good copy and a bad copy. And if you don't select for it randomly, you stand a chance of getting the good one as the bad one. Well, what's happened is that we've ended up with modern tomatoes. If you look at the whole spectrum of the genetics of tomatoes, modern tomatoes are one tiny, tiny sliver of them they've been highly inbred breeders have taken each other's varieties and exchange them either willingly or unwillingly, very, very narrow genetics. And what's happened is that a lot of the desirable alleles of genes, the copies that have the better properties have been lost. And so you end up with a tomato that basically is genetically inferior in terms of flavor.

How different is the tomato, in the sense of having lost a lot of this genetic diversity? See versus others I think is the same story is true for a lot of agriculture projects, right?

I would argue that any crop that has been intensively bred, if you look at nutrition, or flavor quality, it has deteriorated. And I can go down the list, I can say strawberries are another classic example where people have bred for very large fruit with very little flavor. Basically, all they've done is to increase yield is add water. And that's what we've done with tomatoes, we've just added water, you know, you just diluted out the flavor chemicals with more water. And that translates into yield, you can look at, there's some studies with grains that if you look at micronutrient contents of some grains, you can find that the modern varieties have less than the older varieties. So it's not it's not just tomatoes, it's any intensively bred crop.

And as a precursor to doing all the flavor biochemistry, did you actually go in and have to use sensory techniques to identify what the flavor was? Yes, in that way? Yes, absolutely. So you do that in house? Or did you go out to someone.

We collaborate with a group in food science, and so we have done consumer panels in our food science department, we've, anybody who's done these kinds of things can appreciate how much work this is, we've tested 160 different varieties of tomatoes over probably a decade now. And just think of the logistics of getting enough ripe fruit at the same stage to give to 100 consumers on one day. It's it's been a large amount of work, but basically what we've done, I apologize if anybody's going to attend my seminar today, because you're gonna know the answers.

To people listening to this one not worth hearing twice.

But the reality is, what we've done is we've we take lots of varieties, we've covered the gamut from old heirloom varieties to wild accessions to the most modern, highly inbred varieties, we give them to our consumers. We take samples back to the lab, we grind them up, we measure 68, different flavor associated, potentially associated chemicals. We then go back and say, which ones did you like? Which ones did you not like? And we estimate it when? Yes. And so you end up with a giant statistical puzzle? Which chemicals are correlated with liking and which ones aren't?

So I have so many questions about this, but sort of two of them quickly. One of them is how do you control for so many of those other factors, right? Because these tomatoes all grow in different ways, right? So you're going to be sensitive, you know, to their growth environments. differently, right?

Yeah, that's a very complicated answer. But so what we've tried to do is, we kind of, we embrace the diversity, as long as we're measuring what's in it on the day that we harvested, and the consumers are telling us how much they like on the day that they how we harvested it, it doesn't matter. 

So the point isn't so much, which varietal of tomato right or heirloom, it's sort of what are the chemicals? And so then it doesn't matter as much?

That's exactly correct.

So ask a question that would be very sensitive to it, right?

Yes. So the first question is simply which chemicals drive people to like those tomatoes? The second question is more complicated. And that is what is the underlying genetics, and that's where the environment plays a huge role. And so we have ways to deal with that. The best way we deal with it is we always have what we call a check variety out in the field. We've grown it every season, and we put it through our consumer panels every season. So whether we've had a dry year or wet year, cold year, we can always correlate everything back to that one variety that's always present. That's the best way that we have to control the genetics, the environmental influence on the genetics. But that's the extremely difficult part. And honestly, it was easier to figure out what the chemistry of flavor was than it was to figure out the genetics of flavor.

So how much you looking at the, like a lot of these are volatiles, right, sort of how much? How much just texture play role and other factors and people's reactions and how much is that complicated that part of his story? 

It does complicate things quite a bit actually. So, so well, not quite a bit, what I'll tell you is it's kind of funny. So we've, we've used our statistical models to say, can we develop a prediction software, where we can just grind up a sample and predict how much people will like it without having to do the consumer panel? And what we found is that about roughly 85% of the time, we could do a perfect correlation. Based on the chemistry, oh, breeder, if you're a breeder, 85%. It's like, wow, yeah. We started to think about what's wrong with the other 15%. And, and it turns out that in most cases, you go back and you find that they're, for the most part, they're just really mushy. Meili is the term we use. And there are texture problems, and they stand out like a sore thumb. The chemistry, when we look at the chemistry, people should really like this, what is this and then it's like, I don't know if you've ever grown heirloom tomatoes. But there are a few like, well, Brandy wines, a great example of it. brandy wine is one that if you pick it off the vine, and when it's perfectly ripe, and you bring it in your house and eat it right away, it's delicious. You let it sit on the kitchen counter for 24 hours, and it gets mushy. And they're terrible. And so that's what we would find we would find that texture did have an influence. If it was so the way I like to phrase it is texture can kill the flavor. It's in most tomatoes, they're within a range that it doesn't make much difference. But if they are way too firm, or way too soft, it's just kills it. And they're, they're awful.

So you've used the term heirloom a few times, and I know that's becoming more and more popular. You see it on restaurant menus and all that kind of stuff that using heirloom tomatoes. What does that mean?

Yeah, so. So my cynical definition is, it's a variety that farmers decided decades ago wasn't worth growing anymore. It's basically I think I would define an heirloom as first of all, it's something that breeds true. So it's not a hybrid. It's old. And it may not taste good. And in fact, so we've screened hundreds of heirlooms, you know, besides the 160, we've tasted probably 500 Different varieties, some heirlooms are awful. I mean, just because it's old, doesn't mean it's good. But so there is no legal definition of an heirloom. But basically, in general, I would say that I would consider heirlooms to be something that's, let's say pre World War Two. Self pollinated, so you can save seeds. And at some point, someone thought it had some properties that were desirable. And that's about it. That's the definition.

Sure. It's become kind of trendy to put on.

Yeah, it's a misnomer.

Well, but on the other hand, right? There was something that's lost, right? So in fact, right, sort of a lot of the better tasting tomatoes. Right?

Yeah, but they're terrible to grow. Right. I mean, this is the thing is that most of the heirloom tomatoes, they don't nobody grows them anymore commercially, because they're terrible to grow. So why low yields the low yields? Issues, no disease resistance survived the harvest process? In some case, yeah, very soft. They're just they just wouldn't cut it today, about the only way that you can grow them as if you're, you know, selling them at a farmers market and you're going to get $6 a pound. And even then it can be challenging.

Yeah, this isn't a phenomenon. Only for tomatoes, certainly ancient grains as an example. Yeah. Of the same sort of thing, the progenitors of modern day trading on the Stiven. Wheat.

Well, yeah, I mean, that's why we've ended up with the varieties we have now. They don't have any flavor, right? It's because we're selecting away from That's right. That's right. We're properties of Yes. Right. Right.

So what we've actually tried to do is to capture that and turn it to our advantage. So one of the things that we've done, we say, well, okay, the commercial tomato market is challenging, we, we, we know how to improve flavor. We need to do that in a package that delivers all of the performance that growers want. But there is an audience out there that's much more receptive and that's the home gardener. And so what we've done is we've taken that knowledge of the home that the heirloom tomatoes and again, you know, we've we've screened hundreds of these we say well okay, what happens if I take the ones the very best tasting ones, and I crossed those to a modern disease resistant high yielding firm variety, what is the what is the hybrid look like. And so we've done that. We've done it with dozens of them. And in a few cases, we've identified lines hybrids that have all of the flavor of the heirloom parent and five times the yield of them. And so we've gotten a few varieties that are just magical. Really, really good. And so we're working with seed companies. Now they're trying several of them. The first two, actually, were just commercialized this year. Congratulations. Yeah, it's exciting. But the home gardeners love us. We actually started a program, we got so many doing things like this interview, we got so many requests for these things that we decided, why don't we set up a system where people can donate to the research, and we'll send them seeds? So we've actually done that we've sent out I think we're up to over 12,000 people now we've sent seeds to.

Wow, and what do you ask from them? Or is this totally Well, direction,

We've asked for a donation of $10. Because that's the minimum, the university will process on a credit.

I was thinking more in terms of tell me any problems you had with it, tell me the weather is related to what you felt?

Well, so this is where we're going. And the reality is we've gotten some real dedicated home gardeners have given us immense feedback. And it's been really useful. They tell us how our varieties do across the country, we've sent them now to all 50 states and 40 countries. And we're getting feedback from people. And so actually, we have just decided to do this in a more formal way. And what we're going to do is to start to use unreleased varieties. And people will agree they'll have to agree to get them that they will provide us with feedback, we recognize that not everybody will do that. But we think we'll get enough. We're going to set up an online system where they can report when they planted them when they harvested their first fruit, any disease problems. And what we're going to do is I'm going to have someone in the lab, my technician is going to if they have problems, like with diseases, send us pictures, and we'll help you diagnose it. If we can't diagnose it, we'll hook you up with your closest extension agent. We want to formalize this in kind of a citizen science kind of yeah.

This is very much what you if you read some of the older documents related to the Extension Service, this was the sort of populist, my deal that they had of including as many people as they possibly could in the process. So congratulations.

Oh, I think it's gonna be really fun. It's gonna be a lot of work. And I can tell you come usually from September through November, I'm getting at least probably five emails a week where people will send me detailed descriptions of what they have done over the season, and how well the bite tomatoes have done. And you know, they'll either say love this one didn't like this one at all. But it all comes together and helps us in order to do the next generation.

Do you ever get sick of tomatoes? 

You know, it's funny, I actually don't eat practically any fresh tomatoes. And the problem is that, you know, you have to eat these things on adulterated in order to rate them, right. And you can't even add salt. And I really no longer a big fan of fresh tomatoes. But I eat a lot of processed tomato products, our freezer at home is full of tomato sauce, which we'd all winter.

Yeah, is there a possibility and I'm sort of looping around with the interaction between the food industry and the sort of research, I can see a food company that produces a huge amount of tomato sauce, wanting a flavor company to be able to compound a fresh tomato flavor that they could put into this as as an ingredient. Do you see that as feasible or possible or likely?

So it's kind of funny. So I'll digress just a tiny bit and tell you that the way the citrus industry works, they harvest the oranges, they score, squash them and extract the juice, and then they heat them up very quickly. And all of the flavor volatiles are driven off. They actually collect the flavor volatiles and they add them back. And that's routinely done with orange juice. I have visited some of these big processing places in California and I say, Well, you're not doing that. And they said to me, for tomato They say no, we don't do that. I say why not. And they say, the object here is to drive off water as quickly as possible, and concentrate the product down. They said, if we want flavor, we're going to add basil or oregano. Yes. And so they don't do that. And I am baffled as to why they don't do that. They do not collect those volatiles. The again the citrus industry is a paradigm that says you could do that you could add them back. Now I've seen a lot of recipes for home gardeners, were actually there's a famous guy, actually, you should get him for your podcast, if you ever can, Harold McGee, he wrote a book on the science of cooking. And he actually published a recipe in the New York Times in which he adds back leaves at the very end, because the leaves produce some of the same volatiles that the fruit do, and it adds back flavor. The way that I do it is we just hold back some of our tomato. So we will typically my wife, and I will roast the tomatoes to drive off a lot of the water, put them in the blender and make the sauce and then we'll add in some that haven't been treated in any way at the end to give us that fresh flavor. And that works great. makes a huge difference.

And certainly the hot breeders will breed some hops where they want, yes, volatile hops and others. They want clarity and they want bitter and they'll put them in at different times in the process.

Yeah. It's very, very similar to making craft beers. Yeah, you add the hops again, at the very end that changes the whole complexion. Yeah.

So you're doing this through traditional breeding methods, right? habitation, right. But you come from a genetic engineering background. So tell us about that.

Yeah, so the tragedy is that we probably just can't afford to do the regulatory packages to do this by GMO. I always tell people, you want a great tasting tomato, I could have given it to you five years ago with GMOs. We know the pathways, we know the genes, I know how to manipulate those genes. We've actually done a lot of it experimentally. You know, we do test GMOs and some of our consumer panels to validate some of the work that we've done on the predictions. But we're not gonna sell those things. And I think they're number one is the cost. Number two, a lot of the same people who are so fanatical about flavor are the ones that are most anti GMO. So I say, Hey, you're you wanna you don't want your damn GMOs and eat your crappy tomatoes? It makes no sense. But, but no, we're not doing that. Now, we are thinking quite heavily about gene editing. Because gene editing, at least today in the US, it will not be considered GMO, there are some things the problem with gene editing is at this point, we're really good at taking away stuff, we're not so good at replacing, right. So that's still a problem. 

But, gene editing, you're talking about CRISPR technology, it's like that, right? So a little bit about that. For listeners who may not be familiar with what that is, what gene editing is and how that's different than.

So gene editing has the potential to really transform plant breeding. We do use gene editing, not in anything that we've released as a variety, but we use gene editing as a tool. We can go in and we can knock genes out, we can make mutations, and in most cases, we're making mutations in genes that have already been mutated by nature. We're just reproducing what nature has already done. The advantages, we can go into it very quickly. And very precisely. You know, I'll give you a good example. There's a mutation that knocks out the conversion of lycopene to beta carotene, and tomato, that results in a deep red color tomato. They're beautiful. People love them. It's a natural mutation that knocks out this gene. And it's widely used in the industry to give you a deep red tomato. So we know the mutation we know. And so I could take, for example, an heirloom tomato, and I could knock out the same gene with gene editing with CRISPR and make it high lycopene. So it's exactly equivalent to what I could do by traditional breeding, but I can do it in six months. Instead of several years of backcrossing, and fixing all the rest of it, so we are using that technology and we're if the public, I mean, I think we're still in that stage where we don't know what's going to happen, but it would speed up tremendously improving varieties, if we use that. And I'm enthusiastic about it. The government says that it's not going to be regulated, as long as we're doing something that exists in nature.

I've listened to Rob Fraley from Monsanto give talks about how GMO was rolled out to the public. And it was in he, if I remember correctly, he basically said that he wishes they could do it over again, because it would be perceived differently. What do you think is important about gene editing and how it's conveyed to people who aren't familiar with these types of methods so that we don't end up with the same situation that we have with GMO?

So as Rob would have told you, the first thing that that we did wrong when we were at Monsanto was, we focused on producer traits, we were we focused on things that were really important to the farmer. And the consumer didn't see the benefits. We as a society have done a very, very poor job of educating the public about science and about things like risks. How many times have you heard that? Oh, I don't want to fly someplace I'd rather drive right? When you know that statistically, it's far safer to fly. We have not done a good job of explaining it. And so the consumer says, Why should I take this risk, even if it's minimal? When I don't see a benefit directly? The problem is most people don't have any idea where their food comes from. They don't understand that. The BT, the BT gene introduced into corn to fight off insects is safer than spraying it with tons of pesticides. They say, Oh, it's GMO. That's bad. Well, you know, we've been really poor at doing that. I think with CRISPR and genome editing, we have to be careful to make the case that this is identical. We're not doing anything that nature couldn't do itself. So no, no fish, Gene, tomatoes, even though that was never actually done. We're, we're doing things within the species, we're not introducing anything new, that that couldn't be done by nature itself. And I think the first things we have to do are things that the consumers will want. And that's why actually I've been approached by a lot of people about, can you make a tomato that tastes better, that's genome edited, so we can get out there and show that this is something that consumer will really like. And I think that's important.

So the bit about that you've said several times, like we're not going to do anything different than what has already been done in nature, we're just reproducing mutation. How important do you think that differences between sort of, you know, bringing something cross species or something like that? Is that so it's important to, to the consumer in the public, right, because they see it different? Yes. I don't know. Do you think there are any different risks? Right? That happens, like sort of you know, that when you do bring in genes that have not traditionally been right, in the population?

Well, I do think we have to be careful in everything you can, you can make some pretty nasty stuff with traditional breeding. Sure. And we have and there are some good examples of traditionally bred crops that have produced unexpected consequences. But people don't hear about that. 

So he said, give some examples.

Oh, there's, I'm trying to remember. Yeah, you do. I'm trying to remember is it celery was the one of the classic ones where they had the high levels of a compound that caused a reaction in people's mouth. Well, I mean, I can give you in the case of tomato, some of the wild relatives of tomato make some really obnoxious glyco alkaloid compounds, they don't taste good, and they're not good for you. I can read those things into tomato and make a tomato that is not very healthy for you, and it would be completely unregulated. And, you know, there are things in green tomatoes that are not good to eat, you know, they go away when the fruit ripen or they're cooked. Those same compounds, the glyco alkaloids. I could put all the glyco alkaloid I wanted into a tomato using traditional breeding and nobody could say anything about it and it could kill you. I mean, it wouldn't kill you. I'm just kidding. 

Yeah, except in breeding, you're in traditional breeding. The idea is you're not doing it the breeder is not doing it. It's nature that's doing it and we select. That's right. What nature's right. Yeah, that's the critical scientific difference, right?

I think there have to be regulatory processes. I think we have to look at every product we make, even with genome editing, and make sure we haven't screwed something up. But I think that the public has an easier time with stuff that oh, yeah, there is a natural equivalent of this out there already. I'm not doing anything weird. But to me, the height of hypocrisy is the BT chain. Where, you know, I'm in Well, first of all, I think there's, hopefully I hopefully, I do offend some of your listeners. There's this misnomer that organic is chemical free. And that couldn't be further from the truth. You know, I can spray a field until it's blue with copper, and that's considered organic. I can spray the bacterium that contains the BT, you know, there's, there's only a few different says in the genes between bacillus, thuringiensis, and bacillus, what's the toxic one, I can't remember the name of it. I can spray Bacillus thuringiensis all over your plant. And that's organic. But I take the single gene that has the protein that kills botulism, that's I was gonna say, no, not botulism, nevermind. I can take a single gene out of that organism, put it in the plant, and that suddenly, that's evil. And it's not organic. I think we'd be going a long way. Organic does not necessarily equal sustainable. I mean, to me, the definition of sustainable does not equal organic. And and I think that the organic farmers would be a lot better off if they would drop the, the, the commercial hype, in organic, a large part of organic, the reason that that organic was defined as being GMO free was so that they would capture that group of people who didn't want GMOs. And that, to me is hypocritical. You know, I think we can, if we used certain GMOs in combination with organic practices. 

We would be a lot better off using organic methods to get high yields is going to be in many cases worse, like on less sustainable long term, right?

Absolutely, absolutely. You could make organic, a lot more sustainable if you incorporated certain parts of GMO into it. And they won't do it. It's purely marketing.

And that the conflation is people will conflate organic with some kind of quality factor that because it's organic, I ought to be able to taste it, feel it smell it. There's something quality wise, that's different. And that's not it's not true, either.

Yeah. So there's one of the things I think, to really try to understand what this is sort of, you know, people care about things, and they care about important things, right. And people from the scientific community can be very like, wow, right? Organic actually can be way worse in the whole all these different ways, right, sort of the conversation is a really hard one right? To sort of connect up though, like, what do you care about? And let's not get people defensive, either, right? We can offend some of our listeners, but sort of but there's a reason there's something people care about when they say, oh, I want organic food, right? Sure. And again, the key is to then say, right, how do we, how do we pick up on that and talk about how to actually achieve these things? Right? Not necessarily with this particular labor label, especially if it's come from, you know, big, big, you know, farming practices, right?

If is it better to if I'm live on the east coast? Is it better to eat something that was grown locally, non organically or to buy an organic product that was grown in an industrial farm and synchronous and driven cross country? I think I just read an article yesterday about the efforts to ban plastic bags and supermarkets. And someone actually did a study to show that in terms of in the environment, actually, the, the plastic bags are less destructive than than using paper bags effect on climate. Right. 

Yeah. Right. So I think but then But then yeah, so that this is a trade off then Right. You know, the trade offs here. What's your effect on the climate in terms of greenhouse gasses versus right, you know, how can we there is an issue with the plastic and the Yeah,

I think in the end, I think a big problem that I have is, people don't trust the government. And, you know, I mean, all of this stuff with the roundup and the things about it causing cancer, this is complete crap. And people need to ask, well, people don't even know what questions to ask is the problem. And I think you have to look at agriculture in a much different way than we are today. And it's not just as simple as everybody grow organic, because if everybody switched organic, we're not going to be able to feed the people on the field. You know, people are going to starve to death. If we switch to organic. There's nothing wrong with organic. You know, it's, an admirable goal. But I think there are trade offs and to say, Oh, I'm doing the right thing by eating organic is not necessarily true. And there are ways to improve it, we need to pay attention. The fact is, the Gulf of Mexico is being polluted by nitrogen runoff that runs down the Missouri and Mississippi River. That's, that's a very real and it's a bad thing. But can we just eliminate nitrogen fertilizers? Not if we want to feed everybody on the planet? So we need to, to me, we need to have a discussion, we need to say what are the priorities? And I think that the people who are the organic people raise important questions about how we should be doing agriculture, but they don't have all the answers.

Is it possible that the degree to which consumers will accept measures that are taken to address problems is sort of related to the severity of it, and I'm thinking of the wine industry, when all the everybody was all vines being wiped out? And they were, what they found was a pretty nasty set of inorganic chemicals that were good at it. And I'm not sure that if people were faced with that today, they would say, okay, that's That's all right. Go ahead and spray that. Like, was it copper sulfate? I think?

Yeah, well, copper. So well, copper sulfates can be used organically.

Yeah, there's some irony to that inorganic compound that can be used organic.

That's right, because it's natural.

Well, I mean, I think part of it is understanding on both sides, right, the consumer and the scientists that really everybody in the end is working towards the same goal, right, of having a healthy, you know, sustainable, that's a loaded term food supply. And there are these evil people unnecessarily out there, although there are some bad actors that are, you know, trying to manipulate the food system, right. I mean, you like you said, when you were working at Monsanto back earlier in your career, the scientists there had good intentions, right? The evil empire, and the people who are trying to, you know, grow organic food or purchase organic food, are trying to do it, because they're trying to do the right thing. Right. So it's ascribing good intent to the majority of people, and then how can we work together as scientists and consumers to make progress?

So yeah, one of the things we have to recognize, though, is sort of there isn't any one goal, right? I mean, so I think that's another trap, we can fall into, Oh, we're all trying to accomplish the same thing. No, I mean, there's trade offs, like even about affects the climate we just talked about, right? Sort of, you know, greenhouse gasses versus pollution, right, you know, nitrogen runoff versus feeding, and there's no, there's no single goal here at all right? And then everybody's got their own interest, of course, right. You know, if you're a grower, right, it's, you know, you care about the economics of, you know, your own family, for example, right, you know, and so, and these things do not always, they cannot be achieved at the same time, this this fact of living in a society. Right. And, and also, like, what are the different goals? I mean, I think we're hearing about sort of a lot of the different ways and there are trade offs. And that's, that's even harder, right, then what you just said, Right?

Sure. Yeah. I mean, I don't think that there's you're never going to satisfy everybody right. But I think you know, having the cheapest, most nutritious, abundant food supply overall. I mean, would I mean that's sort of a panacea right? It's that yeah, that's not gonna happen. Because you like you said, I mean, there are people who are gonna buy that cheap tomato regardless because they don't value the $3 Tomato over the $1 Tomatoes, right. So maybe there isn't one single so it's a good that's a good point. We want to be respectful of your time we know you have a busy schedule we really appreciate you taking you know close to an hour to talk to us if there were people listening who want to get involved with your tomato program what would be the best way for them to get in touch.

Oh, you can just google me and tomatoes and you'll probably get to our webpage

and I will put some links to your lab page.

Yeah, yeah. Anything else you'd like to say before we end?

I think you, what you said at the end is variable. portant to me, you know, we're all in this together. And I think we've become a very polarized society. And what we see with the federal government today is very similar in science. You know, this is the same phenomenon as vaccinations. There's some bad information out there and there's some very polarizing people and I don't know what the answers are, but we've got to try and bridge the gaps.

This has been a great conversation. 

Yes, thanks. 

Thanks for the time and you're very welcome.

Thanks. Okay.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. 

Dr. Jessie Vipham is a K-State alumna and food microbiologist currently serving as the faculty hire in global food systems and nutrition for the USAID Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Sustainable Intensification (SIIL). This was a fantastic, wide-ranging conversation that started with Jessie’s graduate studies using direct-fed microbials in cattle systems and then moved on to the work she does now managing food safety projects in several developing countries around Africa and Southeast Asia. Some of the highlights include how she tackles large challenging issues related to food safety, the importance of trust to the success of a project, and the benefits of bidirectional learning.

For more information about Dr. Vipham and SIIL check out their website at: https://www.k-state.edu/siil/about/people/index.html

Transcript:

Research in the Developing World with Dr. Jessie Vipham - Food Safety

Something to Chew On is a podcast devoted to the exploration and discussion of global food systems. It's produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University. I'm Jay Weeks PhD candidate in the Department of Agronomy. My co host is Scott Tanona, an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy who specializes in the philosophy of science. Hi, everybody. Welcome back. We've got a great interview for you today with Dr. Jesse Vipham . Jessie is a microbiologist by training focusing on food safety, and currently serves as the faculty higher in global food systems and nutrition. For the USAID Feed the Future Innovation Lab for collaborative research on sustainable intensification here at K State record a lot of ground in this conversation starting with Jesse's graduate work using direct fed microbials and kettle systems, and then moved on to the work she does now managing food safety projects in several developing countries around Africa and Southeast Asia. Jesse is a brilliant, thoughtful lady. I really appreciated her perspectives and things like how to tackle large challenging issues related to food systems, the importance of trust in the success of any major project, and the benefits of bi directional learning for countries like the United States that are invested in international development. This intro doesn't even begin to do the full conversation justice. I have no doubts that this will be one you'll enjoy. We're happy today to be interviewing Dr. Jesse Vipham. Welcome, Jesse.

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

So I will have introduced you briefly in the intro before starting this. But we'd like to have you describe yourself a little bit and your background and how you got to where you are today.

Okay, that's easy enough. Well, I am trained as a food microbiologist, so a lot of my background is in food microbiology, food safety training. I have my PhD from Texas Tech University, as well as my master's degree, my bachelor's degrees actually from Kansas State. So being here on the faculty is a little bit of a homecoming, it's nice to be back in Manhattan, I was raised on a registered Angus cattle ranch in northeastern Nevada. So I've been involved in agriculture and agricultural pursuits most of my life, food safety, food microbiology felt like an opportunity for me to remain in that environment, while also getting a chance to kind of move into more laboratory based sciences. And so that's been a really nice career choice for me, because it's kept me with my roots, but also allowed me to do some different things. I'm currently in involved in the USAID Feed the Future innovation labs here on campus. So my position has moved me a little bit out of domestic food safety, and into international food safety. And so I do research mainly in Southeast Asia and Africa on food safety questions, as well as food systems questions, agricultural production questions. So that's currently where I'm spending most of my time.

Great. Yeah, we want to get into all of that. Obviously, was there something about microbiology when you were younger, that really fueled your interest? And what was it about the lab?

So actually, I didn't fall in love with microbiology until I got to my master's degree. My background for my bachelor's degree is Ag Econ. And so I, I remember so vividly, I was walking across campus, it was getting super close to graduation. And I was thinking to myself, Oh, my goodness, what am I going to do with my life? And I decided I was going to go to get my master's degree in meat science. I don't know where that came from. But I went over and spoke to Dr. Melvin hunt. And he said, Yeah, you should check out Kansas, Texas Tech. And that's what led me there. And actually, Dr. Mindy Brashears, is who I got engaged with there. And she's a food microbiologist, I started spending time with her. And I realized that, you know, microbiology is super cool, because there's a lot of questions that are left unanswered in that science. And it's a very investigative type of research because you can't see what's happening. And so you have to sort of go through a lot of critical thinking, to try and identify, Okay, what's the best way to test what we need to test? And then how can we use what we know about the discipline to lead us to our conclusions because we can't see what's happening. So we get to do this really cool lab based stuff. And then there's just this interesting, investigative evolving piece that comes with microbiology that love. It's kind of like a puzzle. It is a puzzle.

It's such a people sometimes think about science so much is about sort of, you know, the observable things, right, sort of the directly testable things. And I don't think they quite realize how much in fact, I mean, it's not guesswork, but you're making all these inferences about exactly what he said things that you can't see, right? It's absolutely, it's a neat endeavor, but complicated, right?

Well, and when you take something like microbiology, and you apply it to something like a food system, the complexity just becomes more interesting. Because you are moving from, okay, we have these complex things that we're trying to understand about these microorganisms. But the food system in itself is a complex evolving, you know, situation. And so how do you get bored in that environment? I mean, I think it would be really hard to so. So that's, I guess why I'm into it. And, and like it.

So are there things that you were working on in the Masters? And then sort of early in getting your PhD that you're still working on now? Or have you kind of shifted away from some of the earlier work?

Yes, and no, so my thesis and dissertation research was really based in more domestic food safety questions. Like I said, I'm from a cattle background. So I'm really interested in the beef industry kind of, you know, that just feels very comfortable, comfortable for me. And that's where I spent a lot of my time. But during that time, Dr. Breshears, spends a lot of her time in Central America, doing research for food safety there. So Honduras, Mexico, she's done some different stuff in Panama. So she's really engaged in food security style research. And I got to be involved in that, although it wasn't directly any of the projects I was doing. And I think that that's where I kind of caught the bug for that recognition of, you know, in domestic food safety, there's a lot to be done, but you're sort of moving the needle just a bit by that you're making a really good system just that much better. Versus there's all this space for improvement, particularly when you're talking about developing nations. So that I think just felt really exciting to me to go into a space where people weren't really doing research. And there was a lot of room to move, versus kind of trying to, you know, pick away at important questions, but maybe not as big of questions.

So the possibility for a bigger impact was greater than before? 

Yeah, absolutely. And they're both domestic and international food safety research is super important and super valid. Sure. I just became a little more interested in the international side.

So before we get to the international stuff, your PhD dissertation title was reduced burden characterization and RNA gene expression of salmonella and bovine sub biliary, iliac civilian lymph nodes associated with administration of direct fed microbials. 

Oh, that anyone's ever read that.

But my question is, with a direct thread microbial, I mean, were you was it like a probiotic sort of thing? And what are your views on the kind of in the building industry around probiotics?

So yes, so a direct fed microbial would be a probiotic for animal use. So probiotics are for human use thought that would be where that name would apply. And then direct fed microbials applied to animal feeds. So same thing, but it's we have it kind of categorized differently. So what the question that really came up during the time that I was in my dissertation, was this question around the Harbour Bridge of salmonella and E. coli, in bovine lymph nodes, and there's a lot of lymph nodes within, you know, a carcass. And it's really challenging to remove all those. And so for the most part, they ended up being part of ground beef, it's totally fine. It's totally safe. But that there is this opportunity for pathogens to sort of evade the the typical interventions that we have within beef slaughter, to, you know, show up in ground product. And so that was a big question that a lot of researchers that are involved in beef safety, were investigating at that time. And so Dr. Brochures and Dr. Guy Lonergan, who's also at Texas Tech, they had done a lot of research on on these direct fed microbials as far as pathogen shedding in feedlot cattle, and thought that, hey, you know, maybe there's something going on, that's, you know, more systemic than just, you know, through through the shedding in fecal matter. And so that's where that dissertation came up. I think that there's a lot of promise to direct fed microbials. But I think that what what this conversation that I would like take advantage of a little bit is that there's a A lot of value in food safety to what we call multi hurdle intervention approaches. And so I think where direct fed microbials come into play is that it's a way to sort of from a pre harvest on farm perspective, begin to start paying attention to food safety issues, whether we realize it or not. And there's also

even before it gets the slaughterhouse, I'm sort of thinking about it ahead of time,

right, before we get into a situation where we're bringing large loads of pathogens, potentially, into a slaughter facility, is there anything we can do on the farm or at the feedlot level, that has an impact on that, and it also just so happens, that direct fed microbials help, you know, with cattle growth, so you can actually see benefit in feeding that from their growth perspective. And so it was, it's kind of a win. And, and like I said, I think it's a really nice proactive way to begin working on food safety, before we're trying to clean it up, you know, right before the consumer buys it, or something along that line. And that's, you know, that's a very typical practice that we see in us, as well as European and, you know, other food safety systems around the world, this sort of multi hurdle value chain approach to food safe. 

So you say multi hurdle, you mean, 

So it's kind of that concept of, you know, if you have someone running down the track, and you have a bunch of hurdles, hopefully, eventually, you'll trip them up. So, so the purpose is, is that if you have an intervention a lot, you know, at certain points along a value chain, and hopefully, it's a strategic position that you're putting that intervention in, so where there's potential for contamination, you're, you're hopefully reducing either the presence or the concentration of pathogens as they move through that chain. And we have lots of points of contamination where, you know, product can be safe until that point of contamination, we can clean it up. And then there might be also more points of contamination as we move through that chain. So having interventions throughout that space, can really help us to ensure that food safety is a part of what we're doing, as we practice throughout.

You don't have to rely on any particular point, sort of to totally take care of it right, sort of, but you're hoping.

Yeah, well, it's also a little bit of that, you know, it's easier for a lot of people to carry a big load than just one person. And so how do you kind of get an entire value chain, from a food production standpoint to say, Okay, we're gonna, we're playing our part in reducing the chances of bacterial pathogens getting to the food supply, and we're hoping that others along the way will, too.

The other big thing that people will the public hears about is antibiotic use. Right. So how do you how does the feeding cattle, the microbes, right, so basically, the probiotics sort of how does that mesh with that? Is this an alternative? Or is it sort of to work with it? Or how does that how does that work?

Like? So I think that that's a really great question, we spend a lot of time really focusing on antimicrobial resistance. From a food safety perspective, I won't comment too heavily on that area, because I don't spend a lot of time that's not my expertise. And so I would probably inevitably, out, you know, speak out of turn. And so I think that, but there are some really fantastic researchers at Kansas State who are looking into those things. I'm Dr. Apley, in the vet school would be, you know, one of probably the top people. But I do think that, from a food system perspective, we are always attempting to find alternatives. And that's not necessarily saying because we want to stop using something eventually. But there's, there's definitely contexts in which certain interventions or certain applications have, you know, more, they're better suited for that situation, or that context. And so I think providing the food industry with as many different tools as possible, is always a valuable pursuit. And I think that, that there's lots of science being done in order to try and identify, you know, what are some of the different strategies that we can use, and give options to people as well as I think, you know, try to be forward thinking and attempt to say, Okay, how do we see changes in the food supply, impacting what we're doing now, and vice versa? And so I think that that's what I would say from a probiotic or direct and microbial perspective. I think it's just another tool that can be used to help to support the health and the safety of our food.

Farmers are incentivized because the faster growth rates and the better health of the cattle and things like that overall, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't know that it comes down to just that, but there definitely is a dual purpose there. And so, you know, the direct fed microbials, there's data that is published, that shows that, you know, it's, you know, a good product to feed. And honestly, quite, it's pretty standard practice. I mean, also, most farmers are doing this now, well, not necessarily farmers, but from a feedlot perspective, it would be you'd be hard pressed to find feeders that are not incorporating some form of a direct fed microbial, or eye on a four or something like that in into the feeds that they're feeding is part of,

they're just like powders that get blended in, or what does it look like? Or is it all kinds of stuff?

So direct fed microbial is actually a culture. And so you would have some type of usually lactic acid bacteria is what gets incorporated. So it would be actual live culture.

How long has this been, you know, technology or tool that's being used sort of semi-commonly?

I mean, it's a pretty common technology. And so, you know, I would speak incorrectly. But I mean, for at least, you know, since I was doing it's been well, before that, so I mean, it's been around for quite some time, and there's been a lot of research that's gone into really identifying, you know, what are the specific strains that should be used from a direct fed microbials standpoint, if you jump into probiotics, and probiotic use has been around for a very, very long time.

Foods, all of that, you know, have a some form of, you know, probiotic involved. Right.

Right. And it's like, what, last couple of decades or something, right, sort of a fad in terms of human food now, right, right.

Well, it within our culture, you know, that you can find a good point. So I just got back from Ethiopia. And, you know, one of the super common foods that they eat, I mean, it's I'm common, I mean, it's the staple food is injera, which is a fermented teff product, usually, sometimes wheat, and they make kind of a bread out of it, and they consume that with absolutely every meal. And that's been, you know, what their culture has done for probably longer than our culture has been around. So.

Yeah, well, I just I'm sorry, I had to ask you about things. I'm fascinated by the microbiome stuff and all that. So I wanted to get your take on.

Well, things. So no, I just, you know, I think that that is a super interesting area as well. And so, but, you know, I always tried to say, you know, and reiterates, you know, it's a tool. And, and there's lots of other really great things that can be used out there from an intervention perspective. 

So, you know, one of the main reasons we wanted to talk to you is your work with the international work, as you alluded to before, so you work for the USA, Id Feed the Future innovation lab are one of them here on campus? 

Yes, I'm with the sustainable intensification innovation lab.

So I guess, just to start out, what are the USAID Feed the Future labs?

Okay, so the Feed the Future program is an arm of USA ID. And so really, that arm is probably the smaller arm when you really look at their entire portfolio. And it's specifically designed to do it's a research for development arm. And so it's designed to engage with US universities, in order to create research projects to investigate certain questions that kind of perpetuate issues in food systems around the world. And so we currently have four of those labs, I think there's like 26 of them total 24 of them something like that. And they're, they're scattered around the United States, certain universities have multiple other universities have, you know, one and and they are targeting either specific value chains, or targeting certain concepts that apply to certain value chains. So a concept based lab would be like the sustainable intensification innovation labs, so it's more of the concepts around sustainable intensification as they apply to agriculture production food production, versus the sorghum and millet innovation lab that we have here is is focusing on how do we see improvements in sorghum and millet within the target countries.

And I want to ask when you said value chain so you mean a particular product or stock?

Sorry, I didn't really know that's good. As we've talked a lot about value chains I'm sorry. Yes. So a value chain would really be you know, how does a certain product like sorghum or wheats, meat milk move from farm all the way into a consumers home.

So specifically, what does the sustainable intensification Innovation Lab do? And I guess more broadly, how do you define sustainable, right? That's a word that gets thrown around a lot.

Yes. And it's not that's not the first time anyone's ever asked me that question. So it's really what the sustainable intensification Innovation Lab is focusing on. And the definition of sustainable intensification is, how do you keep up the level of production from an agricultural perspective, or at least, you know, keep it up or increase your productivity without increasing the amount of land and resources that you're using to do that. And so it's really looking at, you know, as we move forward, we're not getting more land, and we're probably not getting more resources. And so how do we conserve the resources that we have, while also maintaining really productive food production, because the population is going to increase as that those constraints on the resources continue to happen. And so that's really what sustainable intensification, innovation labs looking to do. And so we've got different types of sustainable intensification, projects happening all across the world. We have six target countries, to in West Africa, which are Senegal, and Burkina Faso, to an East Africa, that's Ethiopia, and Tanzania, and then to in Southeast Asia, which is Cambodian Bangladesh. And so we have different value chains that we're targeting within those countries, we have different practices being used, but they all apply back to that concept of, you know, sustainably, creating agricultural production without causing more stress on the resources that we already have limitations to.

So what are some examples of projects that you're working on one of these countries.

So I personally am not engaged per se on a given projects. So that's the other thing about innovation labs is that Kansas State is the management entity of the sustainable intensification innovation lab, or the sort of minimal Innovation Lab. But as part of that, there's sub awards in which we have given to different institutions in order to conduct research. So we're involved in the research, but not I'm not necessarily a lead on, say, a given project or a coPI i on a given project. And so some examples of what we are doing, though, is we have projects in Senegal that are really looking at Integrated Crop livestock systems, and how can you use sort of resource recycling in those systems? And what are the major opportunities or constraints within that type of a system? In Cambodia, we are focusing on horticultural production from a smallholder perspective. So women are really engaged in vegetable production in the country of Cambodia. And that project is specifically working with women to see how, you know, if you engage women in a project, does that then, you know, increase their knowledge and capabilities and the resources that they have to to be stakeholders within a given value chain. And so that project is really looking at can we use conservation ag practices on vegetable farms, and then engage women in order to see if that has any impact on the sustainability as well as the production level of vegetables there? And, and we have lots of others. And but I think that I, like I said, not being super intimately involved in some of those projects, it's hard for me to kind of comment exactly on all of them.

Sure. So, since you're involved with a lot of the projects, what are some of the biggest challenges that you that you see? And what are some of the ways that people are going about trying to solve them?

So, you know, I think from my perspective, personally, there's a few major challenges that I think we face from different levels. And so I want to start off by sort of highlighting the challenge of conducting research in a developing nation context, because it's not as straightforward as we think about research here at Kansas state's right. So if to put it very much in my realm, if I wanted to do a project to look at the prevalence of salmonella in a certain product in the United States, it'd be pretty straightforward for me to to do that. Right. We have the lab capacity for it. We have the student workforce for it, we have the Compliance Office is here to support us in all of that. And, and so you have, from an administrative perspective all the way down to undergraduate help you have the modalities for that. We spend a lot of time working on capacity development from a research perspective. And that becomes a lot more dynamic than it sounds. Because you begin to start having conversations like, okay, there is no governing board for biosecurity levels in the whole country. But I need to make sure that I'm bringing good practices in and that I'm not teaching students that it's okay to throw pathogens in the trash, right. And so you still want to be able to create that capacity. But you sort of have to do it without your common, right without the infrastructure. And so that's definitely a challenge. And I think the more we move into some of these research areas, such as food safety, or even that medicine, where some of those those laboratories become a little bit, not as straightforward as say, doing some agronomic work, where you kind of have the land space, and you can do some of those trials, it does become more interesting to begin to say, Okay, how do we not only bring research projects into wherever it is that we're working? But how do we also, you know, create that capacity so that when the projects over our partners have that sustainability in what's happening? I think so from a second perspective, trust. And I think that everybody kind of boxes me a little bit when I kind of go into this, but I'm learning more and more that research and collaboration is very much based on mutual trust. And whether or not you and your collaborator recognize that, that you're both there to support and to help in that situation. And I do think in development work, we need to be really conscientious about creating the same types of trust and collaboration that we would with any US based partner that we would engage with. And there tends to be some challenges in some of that, because you have to spend a little bit more time than you naturally would. So it takes time for someone to go okay, yes, I believe that you're here to help support me and that, that we're going to work collaboratively collaboratively on this. And so that might mean a few more trips to Cambodia than you had anticipated. So that you can build that trust. And your partners do feel like you're there to partner with them. And be engaged for the long term and not just sort of show up say here, here's a project, here's some funding and we need the final report by August's, you know, I think that spending time on the ground is really, really valuable. And in that can be a challenging thing. From a, you're trying to manage a position within your home institution in the US and also trying to really create that level of trust with your partners in other countries. From a food systems perspective, we are lagging behind in research, specifically for animal source foods. So it's it's challenging to do, say like a livestock feeding trial in in some of these countries that we work in, because where do you find 30, similar cows to put on a feeding trial that you can, you know, do all the randomization that you need in the blocking that you need to make sure that you have control of all the other variables? Right, salutely. And again, like I said, and not to suggest the agronomic data is super straightforward to collect, but you you don't necessarily have the same challenges in saying, okay, you know, we were going to take some of these fields and get some people engaged. And we'll do some trials from a agronomy perspective, livestock is a much more challenging resource to find. And people tend to in developing nations look at livestock as somewhat of like a kind of a walking bank. Right? So they're valuable. Yeah. And so they're a little less likely to be like, sure, take my cow, because no, I need that cow. Because if something happens, I know I can take that cow and sell her for $800 in comparison to the, you know, maybe couple, you know, 20 $30, I'll get for a few bushels of wheat. And so I'm not going to just kind of throw her around to anyone who's asking for and so that would be one area and then I think as we move more into issues of like, food safety, that medicine, that those are under researched areas in developing nations.

So I've got a lot of questions about this. But one of them is related to this bit about trust. And so one of the things that you highlighted there is that you don't always necessarily have the same goals. Right. So there's other things right, sort of, you know, you want to study and learn something, right. But other people have to be worrying about other things, right, sort of as they're being involved in the study. Right? So how can you say more about sort of how you negotiate that, and sort of, you know, that there's, I mean, this happens in a lot of research, right, sort of human subjects research is sort of sometimes like this, right? Sort of, you want to learn something, but you have to ensure that, you know, you're taking care of the patient, right, and that the patient's health is coming first, right? And, you know, sometimes those come apart a little bit, right, you know, jeez, it would be really neat if we could learn this thing, but we'd have to put people at risk. So we're not going to do that, right? Could you like highlight some other ways that like some ways that happens and the kind of research you're talking about? 

Yeah. So I think a really good example that we had happen is we work pretty significantly in Ethiopia. And that's a country where I have several projects happening. And it's that country is very near and dear to my heart. But it has definitely had some challenges in the last few years from a safety perspective, just because there's some differences in opinion from a political standpoint. And so it's really been challenged in trying to create cohesiveness from a full population level. And so you kind of get into these situations where you begin to start asking, Okay, well, it's not super safe currently, to just be traveling around the country. We do have research sites in all these different places, because that's how rigorous data is collected, right, we do some sampling here and there. And that's how we're able to, you know, have our random sample that's hopefully indicative of the whole population. But I'm working, you know, with a certain region, and it's not necessarily safe for them to go into another region at this point in time. And so you begin to start saying, Okay, so what's the right thing to do? Is it to try to hold off on our timelines? Or do we need to try to stick to our timelines? And sometimes as a scientist, that's hard, right? Because you want to say, No, I've been trained to, I want to do it based upon the timelines that we've identified this as the proposal we turned in, these are the documents that were being held accountable for. And we have to stick to these things. But at the same time, you kind of get into this place where it's like, but I'm not going to risk, you know, the health of my colleagues, or put them in a position that makes them super uncomfortable to make sure that we stick to our timelines, because I'll tell you one thing that doesn't translate Ethiopia very well, from a cultural perspective is just timelines. They are I mean, they've got this new common phrase, they say chigger, Elam, which means no problem. And they kind of live in this space of, it's okay, if this doesn't happen exactly now, or exactly how we said it would, because we'll get there it's going to happen. And in the US, we tend to not think that way at all. It's No, you said this was going to happen today at two o'clock. And it's 205. And it hasn't happened. And so you know, there's a big learning lesson for me in that, which is that I am, even if I am the lead of a project, I am there as a support team member to the incontri institutions, because, because that is how it needs to be. Because if we want to see development in the ways that we want to see it, it needs to be my own country, colleagues who are really gaining the opportunities. And so I can't just drive that point and drive over them in order to make sure that I'm keeping to say, a US based timeline that I think is really important. And so that's kind of one example that we've particularly had to manage. And I've just had to kind of learn to take some deep breaths on things, and learn how to just be honest in reports and say to our funding group, this is happening. We're managing it to the best that we can, and these are the strategies we're using to manage this. But we're in a situation where our colleagues really should not be visiting that research site at this time. And we can't tell you when that's going to get better. And it's going to depend upon all of these factors that we can't control and I'm sorry.

Do you think funding agencies recognize the challenge of doing research internationally like this? So they're understandable?

I do I, you know, so we work with both USA ID and USDA, FAS. And they are, in my opinion, really easy to work with from that perspective, they're, they're very willing to say, okay, you know, we work in this space, too, we understand the challenges of doing research in environments where you can't control all the parameters. And you know, we just need, we just need you to write us up a paragraph that tells us what, what is happening, and we can support you as we move forward. 

It's great, because I come from experience in the past, or they have tried to really control things. And it's just resulted in the collapse of projects completely, or

I think that there's a lot of lessons that have been learned from a development research for development context, and no mean and just a natural development context. And if you look into development, research and work that's being done, there is evolution that is really beginning to happen. Where, you know, maybe in the past, we haven't really considered too much. From a truly agricultural productivity research standpoint, we haven't stepped back and said, Well, how does human nutrition have impact that? How does you know the role of gender influence some of the outcomes? How does the role of climate and resources and economics and I think that that's the if you look at the types of projects that are being funded across the board, from a development standpoint, those are all becoming factors that they want you to address that Hey, weren't we're not really interested in you just testing X y&z varieties of wheat? We also want to know whether or not that's appropriate for the people who are looking to use it, whether or not it's appropriate for the community or the country in general? And does it have any impact on health or on social dynamics, cultural dynamics? So I do think the development has kind of done a trial, air look back, adjust trial air look back adjust approach to how they've moved forward. 

From a research standpoint, it's not all just about, in fact, a lot of the issues have nothing to do with the particular variety of wheat or whatever, right, sort of their, their social and economic and right, you know, all these other things. Yeah. So, one of the major things that you mentioned a bunch of things, but sort of in the difficulty of doing some research, but what do you most want to learn in some of these areas that you're working in?

Oh, that's such a good question. Well, so you know, my interest always comes back to more of a public health perspective. And I do think, and there is a lot of movement currently happening from that side. Right. So what does this all mean for human nutrition? What does it mean for enteric? Disease? What does it mean for child development? So that's very much happening, something I want to learn and would love to see become, you know, a major part of what we are looking to do in development is how do we create better food safety systems that are contextually appropriate? Right? So not just saying, well, here's how we do food safety in the European Union. Here's how we do food safety in the US plug this in, it'll work that's currently happening. 

And it doesn't work. Yeah. 

Surprise, surprise, right, you look into I mean, I can go right now to the Ministry of Ag, or the Ministry of Health for any given country in Africa and find a pretty well thought out food safety program. And that's not to say that they don't have the full intention of actually making that happen. They just, at this point in time, don't have the capacity, from several levels from a agricultural production perspective, from a ministry and governance perspective. And from a private industry perspective, you just don't have the same system. And so for me, I would really love to learn, how do you do that? What are some of the things that do translate quite well? And then how do we kind of take the things that translate, move them into other countries other regions and and start to see that grow? And I think that that is going to be a lot of what I will hopefully spend most of my life doing.

We'll see. So how do you measure progress and things like this, right? I mean, I mean, you're talking about very big thing, big social problems and that sort of thing. What are some ways in which you guys assess that you are moving forward?

Number one lesson of my career And, and it was a hard learned lesson, you cannot focus on some of these big things that you think you want to focus on. Right. So I think when I was being trained, and coming up through my PhD, right, I measured progress very differently. And so you kind of want to see all of a sudden, a new food safety program happening in a given country and you you want to see people engaging in that, and you don't want there to be corruption, and you don't want there to be, you know, all of these things that play into why certain food safety programs are not successful. And that's just not going to necessarily happen, probably even necessarily my timeline. And we think of Norman Borlaug a little bit, right, because I don't think that he, I think he knew that he had an influence, but I don't think that he recognized in his lifetime, the impact that his research really would ultimately have. And, and so I think focusing on some of those big things is just maddening. And so, from my perspective, progress that I tend to try to measure is things like, again, I know that I'm kind of moving back into social perspectives, but you know, does the university that I'm working with in a given country have higher laboratory capacity, then when I started, are my colleagues in, you know, whatever country I'm working with, gaining more access to publications, gaining more access to attending international meetings, where they'll benefit from the conversations that are happening, you know, it has to be those things, because those are, those are the most tangible things that are in front of you at that time. And, you know, we may be doing some really great stuff that 10 years from now will come into fruition, the challenges is that there's this whole value chain that needs to occur, right, so we might produce the data, you know, now, I mean, one of the big things that we're seeking to do is there's very little data on just, you know, what is within from a bacterial pathogen standpoint, within a vegetable value chain within a meat value chain for a given country? And then, you know, how do we create good surveillance programs, you know, that's we're very much in the grassroots of a lot of that. And so that information may be taken up 10 years from now, the right governance is applied, and then things start to move. But that's 10 years from now. And so I think, for me, progress has to be measured in these small things, particularly students, you know, I mean, students and getting maybe get a little bit, you know, emotional because the students that we're engaging in, in some of these countries are just so wonderful, they are so excited to be given the opportunity to engage in the research and to meet someone that's outside of their culture, and to try to understand something that's, you know, that is new and fresh, and they're just motivated beyond belief to show up, right, they'll show up on a Saturday, they'll show up on a Sunday, they don't care, they want to be there for it. And so for me, it's like, great, we're training, you know, so we have a project in Cambodia, where we're working on laboratory capacity with the Royal University of Agriculture. And we have about 25 undergraduate students that have showed up to absolutely every sample collection that we do every lab day that we've done, and I know that we're going to leave that project, and there's going to be this whole group of undergraduate students who, you know, without the project may have had access to all of that, but may not. And I know that as I leave that, that, that they did, and that I learned a lot from them in that process. And my graduate students learned a lot from them. And, we hopefully bestowed a lot of information and, and talents or sorry, skills is the right word that they can use.

Credit and gratitude can be a pretty powerful thing, right? I mean, that's something we kind of take for granted, maybe in the US where access to education resources is, you know, much more ubiquitous and easy, right?

There is definitely a level of gratitude that you can witness in a very big way, in a lot of the work that we do, and I do think, you know, I think our poor students sometimes get a bad rap, but and they have, you know, I think that there's a lot of gratitude to be had in the US too. And you know, and part of that is we, you know, I just got back from Ethiopia and I taken a undergraduate students with me that had shown Lots of interest from the first time she showed up on campus. And, you know, she'd written me this, this thank you letter. And so I, you know, I think that that's, that's kind of the to hinge part of the gratitude, right. So I think there's a lot of students here at Kansas State, that would be very grateful for the opportunity to go somewhere like Ethiopia or Bangladesh and, and not just go to around and see, but go and sit in on the meetings and, and conduct the research and be a part of that. And then the students in those institutions within the countries we're working in, are very grateful for the opportunity to work with those young people, because they see you right there. I mean, it's really easy to look across at someone that's the same age as you and who is similar to you, and have this really rich interaction versus, you know, me and a young student, there's, you know, we kind of get into a little bit of this, you're, you know, you're a doctor, and I'm just an undergraduate student, and so there's not maybe necessarily that same level of camaraderie in it. And so I really do believe in sort of taking students with me and giving students there that opportunity to to interact with a student from Kansas State, because it's really powerful thing.

So you said, you mentioned that you do have graduate students? Do you have a sort of a structured approach that you take to including them? And that sort of thing? Or? Or do you just kind of is it just kind of project dependent?

I think that they would probably suggest that I don't have very much structure to anything that I do. I am, I'm one of those professors who's super lucky, because I have two students that are just wonderful. And so might as well just give a shout out to them right here right now. They're, they're both wonderful. I would say that what I, the approach I took was that I needed students to be engaged in these projects that I have, in a way that I felt they could sort of take forward some of the research, right, so that I wasn't focusing much on, you know, on the ground, you know, sample collection methods, those types of things, even though I mean, I try to be as heavily engaged as as I possibly can. I also really wanted to provide an opportunity for the two of them to, to begin to start connecting the dots in a lot bigger way. So I'm a really big believer in critical thinking, my trainers, my trainers, my advisors, they're kind of like, my advisors, we're big on that as well, right? It's not just about, here's the research, here's how I did it, these were the findings, but then how does that fit into the greater concepts that exist. And so I really wanted them to have an opportunity to not only be trained, technically Well, in food, microbiology, but to also have a chance to go and be in a country for periods of time. And so you know, they've gone and they've spent a month before they've spent, you know, a couple weeks here and there, they've made several trips, they've made relationships. And so I think that they're starting to really see how what they're doing in the lab really translates back to some of the bigger questions that we have from a development context. And and so I don't know, I think maybe I went off a little bit from what your question was asking. But so I kind of had a two fold, if you will. So they are they do train in a lab, they know how to do you know all the food, like you gotta have the basics, right? But they've been asked to do it in this very uncontrolled environment. And the two of them have just exceeded my expectations. They've gone in to lab that didn't have anything in it. And they've made it this functional lab that has pipettes and vortexes and all the cool lab stuff. And that's all based upon their hard work and effort. And I couldn't be prouder of the two of them. They're just fantastic. Very cool.

Nice job graduate students. Keep up the good work.

And if you know any great graduate students that are highly motivated, we'd love to take them on. So.

Excellent. Sounds good. Well, we want to be respectful of your time. But is there anything else that you think that people should know about the kind of work that you're doing or that they may not understand? They would like to look to a topic you'd like to approach.

Well, I was talking about bi directional learning. And I think that is an important piece to what we do. And and sometimes I do think it gets a little bit forgotten. But there's a lot that we can learn from the research that we're doing. And sometimes I get into conversations where people tend to, you know, not necessarily wrongfully think but think that, you know, Kansas State is taking these researchers to Cambodia to Ethiopia and providing, right we're bringing information we're bringing them in. And we absolutely are. But there's a lot of really highly trained people, technically savvy people that we're working with all the time. And we learn a lot from those endeavors. And I do think that a lot of the research that we are seeking to do doesn't just answer questions for Cambodia. It answers questions for Cambodia, but it also I think, gives insights into how does that translate into something that's powerful for the United States or something that's powerful for for the European Union's so I think particularly from a food safety perspective, right, the more we understand about, you know, foodborne pathogens throughout the world, the more we understand how those pathogens move and end up transmitted. And so, you know, there's a trade issue, there's a public health issue there. And that doesn't just that, you know, that's not border controlled concept, that concept impacts all of us. And so, and I think there's a lot of examples of that throughout the Feed the Future programs is how do we do research that definitely supports development helps you move people along, but is super important for just global food production, and global health? And, and I think that that's been a mission of mine, all along the way is, you know, how do I do things that helped me learn and grow? And, and hopefully, I'm engaging with colleagues that see, you know, want to do that with me. And I think we've been very lucky to, you know, we've got such great collaborators around the world, really intellectual and interesting people who helped me see the world in a whole different light. And I feel like I've grown, you know, 10 years in the last three, because I've had these opportunities to sit across from these super wise people who understand things differently.

Yeah. So how much of that is the different context the different different problems that they've been dealing with? Or sort of, you know, the different infrastructural contexts, right, so for the food safety bait, like, we've got all this, as you said, infrastructure, so they're, they've been investigating other ways of handling some of the same issues? Is it? Is it? Is it a lot of that? 

Yeah, you know, I think that and honestly, there's a lot of nations around the world that have issues that are threats to the United States, and when we are lucky, not lucky, because we've got great people working on the safety of our food supply, and our animal supply and our green supply. And so, you know, that's not just happening, it's not just a coincidence, but there's definitely so you know, I always use the example of Foot and Mouth Disease, you know, we are we've, we've had really great strategies to keeping that out of us. But it's always there, it's always a risk. And there's a lot of nations around the world that that they deal with it all the time, right foot and mouth disease is, is a disease that exists within their country, and they're having to manage it. And so there's a lot, there's a lot we can learn. And I always use the example of you know, the sorghum and millet innovation lab actually got to be involved in engaged in something very similar to that, you know, based on the great work that they're doing, there was a pest an insect that came into the US maybe, see, I'm gonna get the story wrong. But, you know, that came into the US it had never been here before, it was a very serious threat to sorghum production. And, you know, one of the researchers here at K State was just happened to be engaged with with researchers that knew all about it. And they were able to get ahead of it and and do the, you know, the appropriate steps to try and manage that for you know, sorghum producers in the United States. And that was because of, of a collaboration that was because of mutual trust. And and this hard work that the sorghum and millet Innovation Lab and Kansas State researcher had put in, and so we're learning things all the time. That's very cool. Yeah, help us.

So the message is partly, there are a lot of issues we all have. We all share we have to work together to address right and there are a collective group problems, right? But also, then the knowledge is, you know, it's gonna take all of us, right. So there's absolutely not just us saving the world, obviously, right?

You know, I mean, I do, I just think that there's such a value to, particularly from a food perspective to really understanding how food moves and the challenges to food production around the world, because we're not going to be able to, to not participate in the the challenges that are in front of us. And I do think that those challenges have been fairly well characterized at this point in time. And so and I do, I think Kansas State researchers agree, I think we were excited to be engaged in research that's helping to overcome some of those challenges or fill gaps. And the more people that we can engage with in different spaces and different nations around the world, it just, it helps the world it helps Kansas, you know, it helps us all individually. And so I'm a big believer in, in the research that we are doing, and activities that are happening. Excellent.

So I have to ask, is there been any, like amazing food you've been exposed to around the world that you wouldn't have otherwise been?

I'm a foodie. So you have to understand that about me. So I love Southeast Asian food. And there's so there's this great quote by Anthony Bourdain about how, you know, he was meant to slurp noodles out of a bowl, sitting in a colorful plastic chair in Southeast Asia, and I couldn't agree more. I just I think Southeast Asian food is really fantastic and dynamic. And nine times out of 10, there's a head involved, but you know, I've grown to kind of like get past some of that stuff. And and really recognize, like, particularly Asia, just the spices, and the types of ingredients that are available to them are really just dynamic and beautiful. And I love food. Anyways, in would describe food as beautiful. But their food is particularly beautiful in the context of of all foods.

Yeah, it's important. Remember that perspective, right? I hit on a plate or something is normal to some cultures for their food system?

Well, I think that, so this, this could be a whole podcast. But I do think it's also interesting to begin to start to look at, you know, how do people eat around the world, and, it's definitely different. And there's no better or wrong way. But there's definitely differences in how people eat. It was funny, we had some Cambodians who came to visit, and they're always treating me to just beautiful food. And I tried, I really did. Try and find some foods that I thought would be fun. And they were super gracious and tried absolutely everything. But by the end of the trip, they were interested in maybe getting some Thai food or something that, you know, in some way, looked like home. And I think that that's kind of one the more beautiful things about food is that we kind of want to put it in the sciences production perspective, all the time. And there's just such a beautiful emotional connection, I think with food that everybody has, whether they want to admit it or not, you know, there's, there's something about home, in, in the foods that we eat, and the foods that we like, in foods can take us to such a place and memory. And I think that that's a special thing about food, which is why I believe in producing it and, and saving, you know, keeping it safe and and making sure that people all people have access to it, because I think that's a beautiful part of human existence is that you get to share in food and food consumption.

It occurs to me, I wonder how much sometimes food safety seems to me to work against the beauty of food. Right, you know, right, and art of cooking. And so, how much of the way, the way you're just talking about food there and you know, being so focused on food safety is kind of curious, right? In a sense, because they're two very different ways of approaching food. Right. And then it and internationally. I imagine some of the recommendations, some of the food safety recommendations might not play out nearly as well as they would sort of maybe here where we're more used to hearing certain kinds of recommendations, right, you know, don't eat food, you know, unless it's been cooked to a certain amount or you know, whatever. Right. So how does that play out? You think in New York.

So I mean, I have several food safety friends who love oysters, and they're just always gonna love oyster There's raw oysters. I love them. Yeah. And I personally, I mean, I think it feels like swallowing a looky loo. So I don't have nearly that personal connection with rosters, but they love raw oysters. And I think that people can tend to think that food safety is more about the do's and the don'ts. But for me, you know, I think food safety is a really dynamic discipline. And there's always a risk to be calculated. Right. And so I think that that is entirely risk free, nothing's risk free. And I think that individual people can kind of calculate that risk for themselves. And so for me, I always tell, you know, people that hey, I'm a pretty good risk assessor. And so there's certain foods that I know, probably, I have a high likelihood of vomiting, and I don't like to vomit. Now, my friend, my friend, Dave, he seems to not worry that much about vomiting, he kind of can push through it, and he would rather eat the street food is valuable to him. Now, does that change the science around it? No. I mean, he's definitely a public health stat. I mean, we're gonna keep we're gonna put him in a number of foodborne diseases. But at this point in his life, you know, he is young, he's healthy. He doesn't have you know, any, you know, immuno compromised disease, you know, or he's not immuno compromised. And so he vomits. And that's about it. Now, as he gets older, he might want to think about that differently. Right. And so I think that people tend to kind of think about food safety as, as that we're like, the people who are there to say, No, you don't get to do anything fun. Versus can we take what we know, to apply strategic interventions to a value chain to try to make it as safe as possible? We can't make there's no such thing as 0% in food safety, but we can make it as safe as we possibly can. And then what's the role and responsibility of consumers in their decision making? And so you know, I think we've got a lot of great science that can help us get to that food value chain, and safe food value chains perspective, and then education extension programs that can help consumers think through what is their risks associated. And then I think there is a part of it, where you sometimes you end up vomiting, particularly if you're gonna eat your street food.

But you know, maybe sometimes it's worth it.

Well weigh that risk a little bit. And I by no means him, you know, cheering anyone on in that area, as I think as a food safety scientist, I wish to just, you know, maybe don't do this, I really don't do this at home. I'm not a big believer in like swallowing raw eggs, and things like that. But then again, like I said, I've got lots of, you know, epidemiologists, food, microbiologists, food safety scientists around me that eat things like gras, oysters and tar tar. And they just say, Hey, I've assessed the risk, and I don't I'm not that worried about it.

And just one one last question that I have for this sort of off topic. But one thing I've heard a lot is that there are foreign corporate entities that are investing a lot in agriculture in developing countries, is that something you've seen at all in the countries you've worked in? Or no?

So which, which companies? 

Are you not even necessarily like, chemical companies or anything like that, but like wealthy individuals buying up large tracts of land, you know, whether they be from China, or I know, Brazil is investing a lot in South and Southern Africa, is a way of providing possibly another source of food for their own home country, as anything that you've witnessed or not really.

So yeah, I mean, to some degree, in most countries, even our own, you can see things like that happening, where there's investor foreign investment occurring. And I mean, I think that there's someone wiser to comment on some of those issues than me, what I think is very valuable from a global food systems perspective, is that we try to manage equity as best as we possibly can. And equity is always a huge question in lots of different areas, right. And equity is different than equality a little bit, you know, and so we're looking at how do we kind of help support certain groups so that they have the advantages that are maybe afforded to other groups? And so for me, I think that there always has to be a question of equity involved in the things that we're doing. And I do think that there's a lot of private industry investment that's seeking to do Things like that. So I think that lambda lakes would be a really good example of that. They have obviously, their, you know, products that they produce that they have interest in. But there's also this really cool research arm that they have, that has a development perspective to it. And they're doing some really great things, particularly in East Africa, looking at milk and kind of butter production and some of those things. And, you know, one of the questions that they commonly ask in the research that they're doing is, you know, how do we help creates opportunity for for the people that we're working with and around? And so I guess that that's where I will, I will come down on that, as I think that no matter who the development group is, whether it's research, whether it's private industry, whether it's government, NGOs, which would be non government organizations, you know, that we kind of always have to go back to that question of equity. And are we engaging in a way that helps everyone get involved.

or the capacity building we were talking about before? 

Absolutely, and private industry. And I know, I'm just talking, talking, talking, but private industry has a huge role to play and it's very unengaged, not necessarily, from because they don't want to be engaged, but I think that there's been a lot of challenge in identifying how private industry can engage in some of the development that's happening. And, you know, where's the benefit for both sides in that? And so, you know, there's a lot of discussion around, you know, does it make sense for private industry that already exists in places like Brazil or the United States European Union to go and engage there? Or does it make sense to kind of try to do some grass roots entrepreneurship, particularly with youth, there's a lot of discussion around youth entrepreneurship in different contexts, to create that private industry. And depending upon who you are, I think You think differently about both those two sides. But from my perspective, it's a underdeveloped part of development. It's super necessary. And if there's anyone from private industry listening, I think that, you know, take a look, lots of opportunities, lots of opportunities there. And there are lots of young people in some of the different countries that we work in, who are really energetic, motivated, bright people, and they don't have the opportunities that are as vailable in the United States. And so I think you would find a workforce that is super excited to get an opportunity.

Great. Well, we certainly appreciate you taking the time to talk to us, is there any way people can get in contact with you, they would like to share where they can find more information? Sure, yeah. I mean, your email address anything like that.

But what I will say is, that Kansas state's, you know, is highly engaged in this conversation, I think that from all the way up, from an administrative side down to a researcher side, down to a student side, we have people who are really excited to do these types of activities. And that's if you want to look into what the innovation labs are doing, as well as just what individuals at Kansas State are doing. There's a lot of cool stuff happening, a lot of great researchers that are doing really important, robust science in this area. And I couldn't be prouder to be involved in Kansas state's efforts here because I think that it's a a exciting new frontier that Kansas State has decided to engage in. So please look into what Kansas State is doing from a global food systems development perspective. Great, thanks. Thanks a lot. Thank you. It's was really fun.

If you have any questions or comments you would like to share check out our website at https://www.k-state.edu/research/global-food/ and drop us an email.

Our music was adapted from Dr. Wayne Goins’s album Chronicles of Carmela. Special thanks to him for providing that to us. Something to Chew On is produced by the Office of Research Development at Kansas State University.